-4:52 pm/John & Vriska's house-
"No, no, Princess, be nice." Karkat snatched the wooden block from Katrina's hands and gave it back to Casey. "Casey had it first. You need to wait your turn before taking it."
To be honest, Karkat had no idea how he was doing it. Ever since he'd found out he was going to be a dad, things had…changed. He rarely got angry or irritated and had barely dropped a curse. He was sure all his old friends—Sollux, Eridan, even Gamzee—would laugh at him if they found out what he had been up to lately.
Even when he and Terezi were engaged, he'd thought about having kids—not seriously, of course, since he was still new to the idea of someone being raised by their genetic parents. He'd just laughed the idea off—If we had a kid, his first word would be "fuck," that's for sure. But he began to think about it more seriously after two months of marriage—the second he walked into the bathroom and saw Terezi shaking with fear, holding the prematurely delivered eggs. He remembered watching his matesprit silently sob as he dug a small hole next to a bush, and watching her fight back tears as she gently placed the shoebox into the makeshift grave—the first time a troll had buried their dead in sweeps. It was then he had made up his mind: He and Terezi were going to become parents at some point.
And he remembered the time that "some point" came. Terezi ran squealing into the kitchen, waving the positive pregnancy test in the air, announcing "We're having a grub!" to her husband. As the weeks passed, he'd joke around with Terezi every time she complained about her growing stomach and clothes not fitting. Every night before going to bed he'd talk to the egg growing in his wife's stomach, tickling it and making Terezi laugh before finally kissing her stomach goodnight and rolling back over. He was overjoyed the moment Terezi smiled with her eyes and told him "It's a girl." The time Katrina hatched, the time she said her first word (which was "Dada", by the way), the time she climbed out of her chrysalis and smiled up at her parents—every single moment had been one of the best moments of his still-ongoing life.
The front door suddenly opened, making Karkat jump and look up. John's dad entered with a sigh, tossing his briefcase, hat, and suit aside, and stopped when he looked up at Karkat. "Hello," he nervously said, deciding to come into the living room and sit down with the group. Mr. Egbert still held a slight grudge against the Vantases, after he found out John was lying to him about them just so they could get some money, but he knew he should have let it go a long time ago.
"Um…hi, sir…" Karkat felt the same way, sort of. He felt almost intimidated by the man, even though someone who had raised an honest person like John wouldn't be so hardhearted. "Um…I'm still sorry about taking money from you…"
"Karkat, don't be. That was several years ago; I understand now." The older man reached out and picked up his granddaughter, sitting her down in his lap. "What have you been doing here?"
"John asked me to watch Casey until you got here. And you're here, so…I guess I'll go now—"
"You can stay a bit; I don't mind. The girls are playing, anyway." Mr. Egbert watched as Katrina crawled over and handed Casey a stuffed spider. "How old is she again?"
"She'll be four months old on the 9th," Karkat told him.
"Only four months?! She's as big as Casey!" John's dad paused. "Forgive me, what's her name again?"
"Katrina."
"Katrina," Mr. Egbert repeated. "Can she talk?"
Karkat nodded. "Right now just the simple things, 'Mama,' 'Dada,' 'food'… And of course, the expected baby babble."
"…I see. Trolls must be different from humans." Mr. Egbert let Casey crawl out of his lap and watched as she pulled herself into a standing position on the coffee table. "Vriska won't explain everything to me; would you mind doing that? I'm still not used to this whole 'aliens are real' thing…"
The mutant-blooded troll coughed. "Well, to be honest…I have no idea how this works, either. Back on our home planet, all of us came from a surrogate mother, basically."
"Wait—all of you? You, Vriska, Terezi, all came from the same mother?"
"Not genetically, at least I hope not. This probably sounds kind of gross, but every so often we had to donate, uh…'genetic material' which would become the new grubs. Once they hatched, only a handful survived, and out of those who survived grubhood, only a handful managed to become trolls."
John's dad was silent; he didn't really know how to react. "…So what happens if one survives?"
"Oh, um, yeah. Instead of parents, trolls have lusii. They're kind of like parents, I guess. But if your lusus dies, then you die. On Alternia, if you're different in any way, you're killed. That's why Terezi and I decided to come here—she's blind and I'm a mutant. We would be dead already if we had stayed."
Karkat could tell Mr. Egbert was uncomfortable, so he took it as his chance to leave. "Well, um…Terezi's probably home now, so…we should go." He quickly picked up his daughter and left the Egberts' house without a word.
-5:58 pm/Maple Valley Regional Hospital-
John sighed and sat up when he heard the curtain begin to slide open. This was probably the doctor coming back with the test results he had told John he would run about twenty minutes earlier.
"Well, Mr. Egbert," the doctor said to John, "your wife is definitely pregnant. However, we'll have to do an ultrasound to determine exactly how far along she is."
John nodded. "What about the other tests?" he asked. "Did you find anything else?"
"Well, it looks like she also has anemia." The doctor paused. "And, judging by what else we found in her blood, it looks like she hasn't eaten in at least 48 hours."
"48 hours?! Wow…" The brunet sighed and rested his chin on his shoulder.
"Has she struggled with eating disorders in the past? What do you think could be her motivation?"
"Well…she did have anorexia about a…year and a half ago, when she was pregnant with our daughter, but she got over it pretty quickly—"
"Do you think being pregnant might be in connection with the eating disorders?" The doctor scribbled some things down on his clipboard before looking back up at John. "Do you know what exactly triggered the anorexia last time?"
"Um…well, we were engaged then; she was worried about not fitting into her wedding dress. But..this time, I don't know why else she wouldn't be eating other than—" He hesitated, but he knew he had to tell the doctor all that was going on. "—other than wanting to get rid of the baby."
"If you already have a daughter, then why wouldn't she want this one?"
"I don't…know." John sighed. "What are you going to do to help her?"
The doctor looked back down at his clipboard before giving John an answer. "Well, she'll have to stay here until she gains enough weight to be considered healthy, and we'll have to prescribe her an iron pill to help with the anemia. We'll also put her in counseling to help her with the eating disorder, and continue to monitor the fetus to make sure it's healthy as well."
Another doctor, this time a lady, came in, wheeling a piece of machinery John recognized to be ultrasound equipment. "Hi, I'm Dr. Larkin, the OB-GYN here," she said to John. "I just need to get a real quick ultrasound and then we'll be able to move your wife to a room, alright?"
"Okay."
John carefully watched as the female doctor lifted Vriska's shirt and squirted the gel onto her stomach. It was then he realized she actually looked pregnant—not very far along, but he could tell she was. The wand was moved around her stomach and an image appeared on the monitor.
"It looks like she's…about fourteen or fifteen weeks along," she told John, staring at the tiny grey blob. "Just a few more weeks and I'd be able to tell whether it's a boy or a girl!" She laughed before looking back to the monitor. "Everything looks alright, I don't see any bleeding or anything…"
"Good." John sighed before standing up; some nurses were coming in to move Vriska to an actual room. Dr. Larkin switched off the machine and gently wiped the gel off Vriska's stomach.
"When she wakes up, I'll need to ask her some questions," the woman sternly told John. "It's important that she doesn't try to harm the fetus. If she doesn't want it, then we'll discuss adoption or a safe abortion, alright?"
John nodded and began to gather his things. He hated to admit it, but…he was extremely angry with Vriska. Why didn't she just talk to him about it? Why did she have to harm their baby in one of the worst ways possible? Whatever her motive was, he knew he had to talk to her about it as soon as she woke up.
-6:28 pm-
All Vriska could see when she opened her eyes were a blur of colors.
She had no idea where she was, or what had just happened. She felt extremely weak and was shivering uncontrollably and she had no idea why.
She tried her best to sit up, but only fell back onto the pillows after trying to do so. Now that she was awake, she could hear something…it was almost like the whirring of a machine. Wait, it was the whirring of a machine.
"Oh. You're awake." That had to be John's voice. The human sighed, setting the book he was reading on a nearby table.
"What…happened? Where am I?" Vriska asked, reaching up to rub her eyes. An IV cord was coming out of her wrist, and she could feel the cold medication dripping into her veins.
"Why didn't you tell me you were pregnant, Vriska?" John tried to swallow the knot in his throat, holding back tears. "You're almost fifteen weeks along. In a few more weeks, we'll get to find out what it is."
"John…"
"Why?!" The brunet suddenly jumped out of his chair. "Why did you try to hide it from me, Vriska?! I don't understand why you'd want to! This is our child we're talking about, why didn't you want to tell me about it?!"
"I'm…I'm not ready for another one, John." Vriska rubbed her freezing arms and broke eye contact with her husband. "Casey's not even a year old yet; I was wanting to wait until she was at least two before even considering another…"
"But we're having another baby already, so why can't you just accept that?!"
"Maybe I don't want another baby, John!" Vriska raised her voice a considerable amount. "Maybe I'm fine with—with Casey being an only child! Maybe I don't want to go through another nine months of eating fifty pounds worth of food a day, being freakishly hormonal, having to pee every half hour, puking my guts out every morning, maybe I just don't want to be pregnant again!" She let out a long sigh and crossed her arms.
John slowly nodded. "I understand," he told his wife. "I understand how much of a selfish bitch you actually are."
Before Vriska could deliver her defense, the door opened and the doctor walked in.
John quickly grabbed his bag and stood up with an irritated sigh. "I'll be back tomorrow," he told Vriska disinterestedly.
"Okay," Vriska squeaked. "I love you."
There was no response.
Okay I swear I did not plan for the chapter to end like that and I swear there will be a good outcome to this all but it may take a few chapters so please be patient
XellanxLarxene – Are you a psychic or something? Hehe…
matespritheavymetal – You might as well continue to keep an adequate tear supply for the next few chapters. Lol, just kidding :P
homestuckTroll – She never does.
godlessAdversary – Like I said in the A/Ns, this will have a happy ending, I swear…
2outherngemiinii – Thank you!
homestuckva88 – I hope you liked this chapter as well :3