A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!

March 11th 2021

Chapter 70
Our Night of Fear

"What do you think? Ready to call it?" Lucas quietly asked. It was six in the morning, Marianne was sleeping, the sun was out… Sooner or later, they were going to have to rest up, too.

"Morgan will be here soon, I might as well wait for her at this point," Maya sighed, standing back from where she'd been peering into the crib, same as him. "You should go ahead, I'll join you," she insisted, clamping her hands at his shoulders. "Don't be a hero," she 'scolded' him.

"It's a half hour, I can make it," he smiled, even if a great part of him wanted to listen to her.

"Yeah, but then we'll start talking, it might be a while, so that half hour will be more like a whole one… and then some."

"I know we did our own vows, but that doesn't mean I don't believe in the whole 'for better or for worse' part," Lucas reminded her.

"Alright, I get it, you're amazing, gosh," Maya sighed with exaggerated exasperation.

Luckily for them – because they were really struggling through this home stretch – Morgan arrived at 6:15 to pick up the diaries. Lucas stayed upstairs with Marianne, while Maya went down to let her friend and colleague in. Normally, they would have brought the boxes down already, but there really had been no time, and honestly… They were so tired that they feared dropping the sketchbooks all over the place.

"Okay, don't take this the wrong way, but you look like…"

"Crap? Hell? All this and more… probably, yeah," Maya candidly nodded. "Marianne's got a fever, we were up all night with her," she revealed, and Morgan's reaction was exactly as Maya would have expected. By now, she was as good as one more aunt to the girl, and this always showed whenever they got to interact or when she came up in conversation. So now, to know that she was not doing well…

"Did you take her to see a doctor, did…"

"No, I called, and I explained everything. They said it should pass, and… well, she's not getting any worse, so…" It was hard to explain the feeling she and Lucas had, telling them that Marianne would be okay. It had been so hard earned, but now they had it, and they would hold on to it.

When they went up the stairs and into the room, they found Lucas peering in on the sleeping baby. Maya could just see how much he was resisting the urge to lie down. He would wait for her.

"Hey, sorry to hear about last night," Morgan told him as she came to get a look at Marianne without waking her. Lucas nodded, looking very much like he wouldn't open his mouth to speak because he assumed that he'd just end up yawning in her face. He was looking at the boxes now like his reflex was to go and help her. "Oh no you don't," Morgan stalled him. "I've got this, alright? I lug musical instruments around all day," she tapped at her arm muscles with confidence. "I'm going to bring the cart to the top of the stairs first, but that's just common sense."

The boxes were carried down, one by one, and they were loaded into Morgan's car. When she had the last one in, she came back and hugged her friend, requesting that she be sent updates as to Marianne's condition. She also stipulated that Maya and Lucas were in desperate need of rest, and so if she received any of these updates before noon, she would come back and make damned sure that they went to sleep again. Maya chuckled and promised that she'd be asleep before Morgan ever made it to school.

Going back into the house, she found that her grandmother was now in the kitchen, working on breakfast. Despite the almost-morning toast she and Lucas had enjoyed earlier, they would never ever say no to a Granny Lizzie breakfast. Of course, this one wasn't for them, seeing as they were headed to bed. Maya got to the top of the stairs again just as Cara came from her room. She looked confused, like she was missing time. She'd been in the other room with the rest of them, listening to stories, and then the next thing she knew it was morning and she was back in her bed.

"You fell asleep, we brought you back," Maya revealed. Inside, she kept hold of the urge to smirk, recalling the way her sister had called her Mom in her sleep.

"You should have woken me up again, I would have stayed," Cara insisted.

"No, really, it's all good," Maya promised, opening out her arms to bring her into a hug. "You need to go to class this morning, we're fine."

"Tell that to your voice, you're almost slurring by now," Cara frowned.

"I'm going to bed in a minute, I promise."

"Is Marianne okay?"

"She's sleeping again. It'll pass," Maya confidently nodded. "You did more than enough, okay?"

"Will you…"

"… keep you updated, yes. Going to be doing a lot of that today, I think." When she'd been following after Morgan while her co-worker brought the boxes down, Lucas was supposed to be calling his parents, letting them know about the night before. She had a similar call to make, two of them actually, to her parents in Los Angeles and to her grandparents at the Hunter Hart house. This was just something they'd want to know about. Whether it would also mean that those of them who were local would drop by throughout the day, well… frankly, they wouldn't be opposed, especially while they were sleeping. Elizabeth could look after Marianne on her own, yes, but she hadn't gotten much sleep either, had she?

When she returned into the room, Lucas had shut all the blinds, and the curtains, shutting out the sunlight and leaving the low light of lamps.

"If we weren't so dead tired, this would almost make me wonder what your intentions were," Maya intoned, the effect somewhat ruined by an escaping yawn. "Sorry," she waved this off.

"My intentions are pure. All I need is my little spoon," Lucas promised.

"Right here," Maya pointed at herself with both of her index fingers as she walked around to her side of the bed. They both climbed under the blankets, and to say that they sensed the exhaustion in their bodies really felt as though they were putting things too mildly. Lucas put his arms around her and fell right into big spoon mode, and Maya only got halfway to thinking of some comment, nowhere near to actually speaking it, that she had already fallen asleep. This was just as well because he was already gone, too.

The next time Lucas opened his eyes, he discovered, a whole seven hours had gone by and was ticking ever closer to eight. Maya was still asleep next to him, though she'd turned on to her back, which was usually the sign that she'd woken up at some point, then turned, in an effort to remain here while he was still sleeping… only to doze back off again herself. He hummed, almost burrowing down until he could lay his head at her shoulder. A few seconds later, her hand lifted until it could come to rest on top of his head and brush at his hair.

"Good afternoon," she spoke, just on this side of wakeful.

"Looks that way," he sighed. Turning his eyes toward the crib, he found it empty. "Gran…" he started to ask.

"Your parents are here," Maya informed him. "They didn't mean to wake me. They took Marianne downstairs, and I went back to sleep."

"When was that, do you remember?" Lucas asked. She stretched her neck to get a look at the clock. No matter what, it was startling to realize it was mid-afternoon.

"Couple of hours ago, looks like."

"Both of them?"

"Yeah. Your dad picked up the baby, and your mom saw I was awake, so she came over for a few seconds to say hello. Pretty sure my grandmother went back to the basement when they got here, but she might be up again now."

Finally getting out of bed, they went about freshening up a bit and then changing out of their PJs. They still felt a bit weird, the way they would, after their clocks had all been left in shambles, but the sleep had done some good at least.

"Wait," Maya stopped Lucas before they could head downstairs to find the others. He turned to look at her, and her eyes were as expressive as ever. They said that, right about now, after all this time had gone by and things appeared to be on the mend, she was finally able to let out the last piece of their night awake. The fear. Everything she'd felt but hadn't allowed herself to express, the idea that this would not be something that would pass but rather something so much worse. It had been there with her, all along, and ignoring it had demanded more and more from her, until it became near unbearable. But that was behind them, and now… He held her, and the fear shook free from her, even as it came from him, too.

"It's never going to get easier, is it?" Lucas sighed.

"I don't know about you, but I really want to hug my mom and dad right now and apologize for any time I might have made them feel that way, whether or not it was my fault."

"I'm pretty sure they know," Lucas hummed. "But mine are downstairs, and I kind of want to do the same with them, so what do I know?"

"A lot of things, all of them good," Maya declared. "Is it weird that I'm a bit nervous all of a sudden? Like, we're up here, and we think that things are getting better, and then we'll go down there and…" Lucas shook his head at her. "I know, I know, if something had happened, they would have woken us up and…"

"I was going to say that I was feeling it, too," he revealed.

"Oh…" she blinked, gave an awkward smile. "Right."

"But your point is a lot better, so let's go with that."

As she had said, they were worrying over nothing. Marianne may not have been all in the clear all of a sudden, but she certainly looked at ease in her grandfather's arms when they found the two of them in the living room.

"Your mother heard you guys moving upstairs, so food will be on the table in no time," Thomas informed the two of them as he moved to rise. Lucas immediately signalled for him not to bother. If Marianne was at ease, right now, they preferred to have her stay that way. Still, they both came over to have a look at her, to lightly feel to see how her temperature was doing. Lucas gave his father a look overflowing with gratitude for his being here this way. To look at him, he was clearly all too happy to be there, holding his granddaughter as he did. Maya aired her own gratitude and added a side hug to her father-in-law and a kiss to her daughter's head.

"How's it going?" she asked Thomas.

"Oh, well, fussy just a bit, but nothing we haven't seen before," the man reported, looking to that precious child in his arms.

Melinda emerged from the kitchen just now, and the scents she brought with her suggested that she'd adopted a policy of 'breakfast foods are timeless' in working up something for the late sleeping pair. She hugged both Lucas and Maya in turn, both of them in their own way. She hugged her son as his mother, while she held Maya simply as a mother, hugging another who'd had a rough night. Each received these hugs like they were exactly what had been needed.

"Are you hungry? You must be hungry, please, come along now, have a seat," Melinda guided the two of them into the kitchen and toward the table. "Don't worry about the baby, we gave her bottles when it was time," she tipped a nod to Maya. She'd managed at the very least to mention that those were available when she'd been awakened earlier. "Everything went down just fine, all is in order. Really, the only issues are the fever and fussiness, but those are just going hand in hand. I believe by tonight all will be right again, tomorrow morning at the latest. You just see."

There was never any questioning of Melinda Friar's predictions, and they sure didn't start today. Marianne was back to her old self, having made a swift recovery, by the next morning. The next night that came, the one after their sleepless one, was on the whole much more relaxed. Despite the fact that they had slept from sometime before seven in the morning until somewhere close to 2:30 in the afternoon, when evening rolled around, they didn't have to be asked whether or not they were ready to turn in as soon as possible. The urge was still there to keep a firm eye on Marianne, and they did, getting up a few times through the night, but they were always hopeful journeys. They could see that things were settling down, growing better and better.

The sun rose up on Tuesday morning, and as Maya awoke, she walked over to the crib, finding a wakeful Marianne, staring back at her with excited eyes.

"Well, Miss Pumpkin, as I live and breathe," she 'gasped,' before lifting her up out of the crib and into her arms.

There was not a note of fussiness in her, not now. All Maya found was her daughter's morning anticipation, the look that seemed to say, 'the world is massive out there, I just know it, and I want to see it all.' Maybe she was too young to actually think it or know it, but Maya would look at her, and inside she'd have no doubt whatsoever that this was what her daughter was thinking, feeling, to the best of her very young self.

"Let's bring that whole smile over to your dad, huh? He needs to get a load of that, don't you think?" Maya beamed as she brought Marianne over to the bed. Making her job easier, she found Lucas had rolled on to his back, so she could easily lay the baby on to his chest. Even asleep, he received her and closed his arms around her like reflex. A few moments later, he opened his eyes and saw her there. The way he just smiled now…

"Good morning to you, too… Careful there, Fingers, that's my eyes," he laughed.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners