okay so this chapter like. talks about eating disorders and stuff. tw for that
-Saturday, December 1, 3:39 pm/Rose & Kanaya's condo-
Rose: 17 weeks along
Roxy: 7 weeks along
Rose stood on her tiptoes and leaned over a little, reaching up to place the star on the Christmas tree. Kanaya, who had been in the kitchen working on a Christmas gift for Roxy, walked into the living room and immediately ran over to Rose.
"Rose, get down from there!" she scolded. "You don't need to be doing that! You could hurt yourself or the babies!"
"I'm pregnant, not an invalid," Rose sighed, rolling her eyes. "Besides, it's not like I'm going to slip and fall or anything—"
"Watch out!" Kanaya stuck out her arms to catch her wife, but nothing ever landed in them.
"See, Kanaya, I'm fine," Rose insisted, a tinge of humor in her voice. "The star is on the tree, the tree is decorated, and our weird hybrid babies are still in my womb. Everything is fine."
Kanaya sighed, but finally agreed. "If you say so. But with there being twins instead of just one baby, I worry about you, Rose."
Rose stepped down from the chair she had been standing on and followed Kanaya back into the kitchen. "What if they have horns?" she wondered aloud. "Casey doesn't have horns, but she's the only hybrid baby we know of. Oh, god…what will happen to my vagina?!"
"Rose!"
"Why don't you go back to making the present for my mom?" suggested Rose, a bit halfheartedly. "I go back to the doctor next week. Maybe by then Baby B will have flipped around so we can see what's in between its legs."
Kanaya slapped Rose's arm. It wasn't so much that the troll was offended by what she was saying, it was how it was worded that made her uncomfortable.
"Can we not talk about our children like that?!"
-11:32 pm/Mr. Egbert's house-
"Thanks so much for watching her," Vriska told Joseph.
He looked down at Casey and smiled as he tied her tiny pigtail. "Of course," he told Vriska. "I just love watching my favorite granddaughter!"
Casey giggled before being kissed by her mother. "Bye, Casey," Vriska sweetly said, "I'll see you in a few hours."
"Okay Mommy!" Casey laughed, waving. "Bye!"
Vriska said goodbye one last time before walking back to her car. Although he could be a little awkward, she was grateful John had a father who was willing to watch Casey almost every time she needed him to. And now that he was married to Roxy, it was even more likely that she was able to be watched. Especially today.
She had finally decided to routinely talk to a counselor to get her shit together. And she had taken it upon herself to actually look for a new counselor rather than go to the shitty one she had been seeing at the hospital.
After driving around town for a bit, Vriska finally found the counseling center she had made the appointment at. "Olive Branch Counseling Center," she quietly said to herself, eyeing the suite in the office complex she would be going to.
Vriska parked her car and double-checked the appointment reminder on her phone before getting out of her car and going up to the office suite. A soothing waterfall effect greeted her ears, which was a huge change from Mary's dull, drab office off of a dark and dingy hallway. The waiting area was filled with fluffy couches, one of which Vriska promptly took a seat on.
Her butt sunk into the couch cushion and she looked around the room. Through a small window on the door she could see a table with a coffee maker and an electric kettle on it. Psychology magazines were strewn across tables and, although the blinds were closed, this place had a much more pleasant feel to it than the hospital did.
A head poked out of the door to the hallway. "Hi!" a lighthearted voice exclaimed, going up to Vriska to shake hands with her. "You must be...Triska?"
"Vriska," the troll corrected with a smile, though slightly annoyed. "And I'm assuming you're Marni?"
"Yes, I am," Marni replied, opening the door to the hallway. "Alright, you can just follow me to my office, and we can get started."
Marni's office had the same vibe as the waiting room. Her "desk" was rather a comfy recliner with a lap desk in it, and Vriska assumed she would be sitting on the couch opposite the recliner. "Just have a seat on the couch," Marni instructed, as she herself sat down in the recliner.
"Okay, so tell me about yourself." Marni grabbed a legal pad and a pen and prepared to take some notes. "Let's see, where to start...okay, let's go back to your childhood."
Vriska thought for a moment, trying to remember her crafted humanized life story. "Well," she uneasily began, "my mom was a single mother. My dad left when she told him she was pregnant."
Marni made a sympathetic hum and scribbled on her legal pad.
"I have an older sister. We're actually fraternal twins—" She didn't feel like getting into it, but she read something on the internet and decided to go with that. "—but she was born more than a month before me."
"How is that possible?" asked Marni.
"Well, our mom did drugs. Meth, heroin—especially meth. So Terezi—that's my sister's name—was born prematurely, thankfully with little drug effects, but the doctors somehow made it possible for me to stay in a little longer, I guess."
"Interesting…"
Vriska coughed before continuing. "She wasn't the best mother. That's an understatement, actually—she was abusive. Not so much physically abusive, but she just yelled at me a lot. I was basically her slave. But she died when Terezi and I were in high school, so we didn't have to deal with her anymore."
Marni smiled a bit. "That's good, at least."
"Okay, well," Vriska continued, "after Mom died, I dropped out of school to work. We lived in a crappy enough apartment that we could actually continue to live there, since I worked three jobs, and Terezi had one of her own." This was an obvious lie to her, but how else would she be able to fill in the gap between Alternia and Earth? "And although Terezi is legally blind— she can see, but not well— she graduated high school and all that stuff. She's always been the successful one. I've just...been here."
Marni wrote down these things on her legal pad and thought for a moment. "Have you...felt overshadowed by your sister at all?" she asked.
Vriska nodded. "Yeah; not recently, though. She always had a boyfriend— they're actually married now— and I was always jealous of her. At least, until John."
"Is John your husband?"
"Yeah. We actually met when we were thirteen, but we never actually dated until he got out of high school. I was actually his first girlfriend."
Smiling, Marni wrote this note down. "Has your relationship always been strong?"
"For the most part, yeah," responded Vriska. "His dad didn't like me very much when we first started dating, but he eventually warmed up to me, especially after we got engaged without consulting him first."
"Really?!" exclaimed Marni. She laughed out loud. "Oh my gosh! Well, I guess he had to get used to you at that point, right?"
Vriska laughed in response. "Yeah, although he still didn't really like me. We're all cool now, though." She paused. "Yeah, so, anyway...we had been engaged for about half a year when I...kind of got pregnant."
Marni raised an eyebrow with a laugh. "Kind of?"
"Yeah, just a little bit," laughed Vriska. "Anyway, John's dad pretty much had to get used to me after that. It still really stressed me out, though. Since I would obviously be pregnant when we got married, I had to figure out how to make my wedding dress fit. I was just...really worried about gaining weight. I stopped eating and had to be hospitalized."
"Was the baby okay?"
Vriska sighed. "Yeah, but I had to be hospitalized for a bit, and got diagnosed with anorexia. Nothing too bad, I guess, but it definitely wasn't fun. After about a week I was released from the hospital, but, you know, eating disorders aren't something you can just get over."
Marni nodded.
"Well, we got married in April that same year. Then, in September, Casey came. She had a few problems after being born, but she recovered quickly and she's fine now."
"So Casey is…"
"My daugher, yeah," finished Vriska. "She turned two this past September." She paused, trying to find the right words. "Casey's not...my only daughter, though."
Marni sat back, intrigued. "Oh?"
Vriska sadly nodded. "Yeah. Last year the anorexia flared up again—I had been doing so good!—and then I found out I was pregnant again. And then the whole thing started over again, minus the wedding dress part.
"This time, though, I really didn't want the baby. With Casey I was just...scared, I guess, but...I wasn't working, and John was still in college, so I...decided not to tell him. I did tell one of my closest friends, though, and she's...not exactly overprotective, but she's been more of the mother figure in my life, although she's just a few months older than me."
"So...why did you decide not to tell your husband?" asked Marni.
"I...to be honest, I don't really know," Vriska confessed. "It's not that I don't love Casey—I really do—but after I had her I realized how hard it is to be a parent. Especially when there's only one source of income, and things to pay off. But I knew we couldn't have another baby. Not that soon, at least—I might want another, but maybe in the future, when we're more financially stable."
"So what exactly happened…?"
"I stopped eating again." By now, Vriska's eyes were watery, and she had to try her hardest to not cry. "And the same thing happened. I had to be hospitalized, John got really mad at me, and…the baby died. Fifteen weeks. I could see her little fingers, and her little eyelids, and…oh, my god, I don't know why I didn't ever want her!"
Marni reached over to the table. "Do you want a tissue?"
"Yes please." Vriska took a couple of tissues from the box Marni was holding and wiped her eyes. "That's…pretty much it. At least, for the sad stuff."
Marni made a few notes, leaving Vriska sitting there in awkward silence. "How have you been dealing with all this?" she cautiously asked.
Vriska thought for a moment. "Well, I've…been really sad lately over The Larissa Thing."
"Larissa being…the second baby?"
"Mm-hm. John got me a puppy for my birthday last month to try to fill the hole a little bit, which did help, but…a dog and a baby aren't the same thing."
Marni nodded empathetically. "I understand. I can't have kids, so I totally get where you're coming from on that."
Vriska frowned. "I'm…sorry."
"No, no, it's okay," Marni laughed. "I have two adopted kids. They're great." She paused. "Well, is there anything else you'd like to add before we get to discussing?"
"I don't think so. If there is, I'll add it later."
"Great. Okay, where to start…"
-Monday, November 28, 1921/Minneapolis Tribune office-
"Can you type?" a balding man with a very obvious toupée asked.
"Can I type?" The Condesce—well, Elizabeth now—smiled. "Of course I can type! I'm quite adroit when it comes to it."
"Great," responded the balding man. "That means we don't have to employ someone to type up the column for you."
"Well, I'm just a two-in-one deal, aren't I?!"
Condy thought that the human sense of humor was dumb and idiotic, but she knew she had to play along if she was going to get what she wanted.
"I'm Walter, by the way," said the man. "I look forward to working with you, Ms. Crocker." He glanced down at the job application sitting on his desk. "You know what? I'm just going to call you Betty."
Thanks to godlessAdversary, katella only, Oreoo, fanmadeFinatic, JohnEgbert1235, Guest, spinifexed, and lady_of_space (on AO3) for reviewing!