Author's Note: A great big thank you to NorthernStar for beta reading this!
The assurances, Incubus, the bulk of my insanity had been buried in a long night of alcohol. Neither Beka or myself got any sleep. We just talked. I couldn't remember exactly what had been said, but whatever it was had put my demons to rest. For the time being at least. I started feeling a little more like the Seamus Harper I knew. That was good. He and whatever else I was were both accepting the possibility of this child. Even though the Seamus Harper I knew still couldn't hear his name and father in the same sentence. I would have nine months to prepare for that, if it did happen, though. And to prepare for single parenting, which seemed more daunting than anything. It didn't seem right for a kid not to have a mom and have a dad like the one I'd probably be.
I wondered what Beka would do once the baby was born. Would she consider her part of this to be completely finished? She hadn't ever seemed too keen on being around kids, especially little ones. But if it came from inside of her, wouldn't she feel at least a little attachment to it? And if she felt attached to it, then maybe she would help me for a while with all the baby stuff I know nothing about. Plus, I wanted my baby to at least have a woman around sometimes as a maternal figure.
"What's wrong, Harper?" Beka interrupted my thoughts.
"Nothin', just thinking about everything. Trying to figure out a lot of it." I wouldn't bring up her role in the baby's life until we knew more about the procedure and everything.
"Me too. I don't know what we should say to Dylan. Valentine-ology isn't gonna help this time...are you okay, Harper?"
I smiled at that, imagining her using a good dose of Valentine-ology to convince Dylan to let us do this. He would probably kick us both off of Andromeda. "Yeah, I'm fine, Bek. I've just got a hangover, that's all," I lied. No, I wasn't okay. Was I supposed to be? I decided the answer to that was a definite no. "And as for Dylan, we should be honest. He always likes that."
"I'm going to go change my clothes. I'll meet you on Command Deck in fifteen minutes." Beka started to exit my quarters.
"Wait, Bek!" She turned back around. "Maybe we should learn a little more about all this stuff before we ask him."
She nodded. "Then, you can do whatever you need to do in Engineering. And we can have lunch together. I'll find some info before then."
This was the first time in hours and hours that I had been by myself. I was starting to think I had become an appendage of Beka or something. Not that that was a completely bad thing. She was usually cool to hang out with, but I do need my space.
I glanced down at the clothes I had been wearing since yesterday. It was time to change them. "What should I wear today?" I had my general collection of Hawaiian shirts and colorful matching pants, darker shirts and matching pants, or stuff I never wore to choose from. I'd been wearing a lot of Hawaiian lately, so I chose a black shirt t-shirt and matching pants.
I went over to my mirror and looked at myself in it. I definitely needed to fix my hair. I combed it out and put more gel in it. I got it looking normal. I glanced down at the stuff on my vanity. Beka had given me some cologne at the party. I didn't usually wear the stuff, but I put some on anyway. I couldn't smell it myself. Weird.
I left my quarters and headed towards engineering when I bumped into Dylan.
"Good morning, Harper," Dylan said.
"Mornin' Boss." I had to remember to breathe. Breathing is good--keeps you from passing out and embarrassing the hell out of yourself.
"Did you enjoy your birthday party yesterday?"
"Yeah, it was a blast. Thanks for that bottle of vodka, Dylan."
"You're welcome," Dylan said. "By the way, Rommie's got a new job for you. You can talk to her about it."
"I'll go talk to her now." We parted ways at last. I hoped things wouldn't be this uncomfortable around him again.
I found Rommie's avatar in my main Machine Shop, waiting for me. "So, what's this new job you have for me, Rommie?"
"I just need to you to upgrade my droids again. There have been some slight malfunctions lately in the droid coordination," she said.
"Ah. That'll be no big deal. I'll get rid of the bugs, and maybe add some new features." I used the console to summon one of the droids to the Machine Shop as my prototype.
The droid entered my Machine Shop and stopped when it reached us. I deactivated it and started some preliminary scans to see what was causing the malfunctions, which took a while to finish. Some subroutines had gone into overdrive, and it was easy to correct. It was time to play around with the new features I'd been thinking about.
"Rommie, we need to make the droids look big and bad, real scary. Scary enough to make intruders think twice about lurking around before we catch 'em," I said.
"Or to scare someone like Trance who is innocently walking down the corridor to Hydroponics?"
"You've got a point there." I also didn't like the thought of my kid seeing a big scary 'monster' and being scarred for life because of it. Droids are all over Andromeda and almost impossible to avoid. "Anything you'd like to change in the droids while I'm here?"
"They are functional and in satisfactory condition. Unlike you, I don't need to change everything constantly and integrate new technology into my life."
"Variety and change are the spice of life. It gets boring if you keep things the same for too long."
"You're finished here and free to go to lunch now."
"Lunch? It's not that late, is it?"
"It's 12:47 hours, Harper."
"Crap! I'm already half an hour late!"
I hurried down to Mess Deck, but Beka wasn't there. I assumed I'd completely missed lunch and just headed to my quarters. I found Beka sprawled out on my bed, a tray of food by her side, reading a flexi.
"You're late, Harper," she said as she continued reading. "Just be sure you're in the delivery room on time. I can't wait for you there." She said that with a little bit of a harsh tone, like I was completely irresponsible for being forty-five minutes late for lunch. She didn't even bother to ask what had kept me from being on time. She paused for a moment, glancing back down at the flexi. "Did you know that the use of surrogates has dropped 40% over the past twenty years? And most surrogates now are paid the equivalent of half a million thrones for what they do?"
"Whoa. I knew it cost a lot, but that much?" Half a million thrones could buy a small freighter. Or a lifetime's supply of building materials for my engineering projects.
"89.8% of people that request surrogates are married couples, and three fourths of what remains are single women who can't carry children. You fall into a small percentage." She held her fingers so close together to illustrate how small the percentage was.
"Where did you get all that info?" Beka had never been a store house of knowledge before. It was kinda weird that she knew so much.
"Andromeda's archives. I got some about the procedure, too. It's a little bit dangerous."
"How is it dangerous?" I thought it was just like a regular pregnancy. Obviously not.
"Even if the blood types are compatible, my body could still reject the embryo. And that could cause some damage."
"Reject it? You mean you can't just put it in any woman that comes along?"
"No, there's a lot of testing that has to be done first. And the anti-rejection drugs don't work in all cases."
"Oh. So you know pretty much everything about surrogacy?"
"Pretty much. We'll need to read up on infant care, too. Make sure you know what you're getting yourself into."
I noticed fifteen or so flexis on my nightstand. "I assume that those flexis on my nightstand are on that?"
"Yeah." She handed me one.
"There can't be this much to taking care of a baby, can there? I mean you feed it, change it and let it sleep. What more is there to life for a baby?"
"That pretty much sums it up." Beka picked up a flexi and started reading it.
I picked up another one myself and skimmed over the first paragraph. "This is a sample schedule for a day with a baby. Up at all hours crying and sleeping only when you're up doing something else."
"You still want to go through with this, Harper?" Beka asked as she was reading one of the flexis.
"Do you?" I wouldn't ever force her to do anything she wasn't totally sure about.
"Yeah. But we're talking about a major committment here. One that can't be broken."
"Speaking of a major committment," I began. I wanted to know what was going to happen after the baby was born, and that seemed as good of a time as any. "What's going to happen after the baby's born?"
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I mean...are you going to just carry the baby, or are you going to help me take care of it?"
She paused in her reading and stared at me for a moment. "I knew you'd eventually ask that. We do spend a lot of time together anyway, so I can help if you want me to."
I just nodded. She didn't really answer my question, then again I didn't really ask what I was thinking. We were both quiet for a long time. She was immersed in her reading, and I was immersed in watching her, wondering what was going through her mind. She eventually noticed and got a worried look on her face.
"Is everything okay, Bek?" I asked, moving a bit closer to her.
"I don't know, Harper. I'm not sure if it is or not." She pushed me away and stared at the floor.
"I know the baby will be fine. Trust me on that. I know I usu-"
"It's not that," she interrupted.
"What's wrong?" I couldn't figure out what was bothering her if it wasn't this. Maybe it was something really personal like my dreams. That made sense. It took me a whole month just to admit I was having the nightmares. Or maybe it was just the fact that she was a woman, and I was never gonna understand her or any of them.
"I don't think it's best for me to talk about it. And we need to finish reading the flexis." She immediately grabbed one. But I could tell she wasn't really reading.
"Y'know it helps if you hold the flexi right side up." I turned it around for her and smiled.
"Why does this have to be so difficult?" she whispered to herself.
"I don't know what's bothering you so much, but I'm here for you." I hugged her, refusing to let her push me away when she tried to.
"I can't stay here anymore. Let me go!" She tried harder to push me away, but I held on. It wasn't healthy for her to do this. She'd really messed herself up before when she was like this. I'd been there and done that too many times myself.
"Just let it out, Rebecca." She eventually quit fighting me. And it was a good thing, too. I didn't know how much longer I could keep fighting back. She didn't cry, but I could tell she wanted to. Needed to. I spent the entire time wondering who or what had done this to her. I wanted to get rid of it. She of all people didn't deserve to feel like that. I didn't know how much time had passed, but my arms were starting to fall asleep. "Do you feel any better?"
She looked into my eyes and shook her head. "I can't do what might make me feel better."
"Why not?" My thoughts immediately drifted to her flash addiction.
"Because...it wouldn't be right for me to do it." That fit flash.
"Why wouldn't it be right?"
"It might lead to a lot of people being hurt in the long run." Flash could do that, too.
I decided to tell her I knew. "If you're having a problem with flash again, then you need to talk about it."
She weakly laughed. "It's not flash, Seamus." She hardly ever called me Seamus. Only when she wanted to get me back in line or tease me. But that wasn't her tone. It was something else...
"Well, then, if you can tell anyone about your problem, it's me. You know you can trust me. I won't tell anyone."
"Promise?" she asked.
"'Course I do." I offered her another small smile for comfort. Whatever it was she had going on, we could deal with it.
Author's Note: Chapter 4 coming as soon as I finish it, probably in the next couple of weeks (due to a lack of inspiration for this combined with a surplus of inspiration to write other ficlets)
The assurances, Incubus, the bulk of my insanity had been buried in a long night of alcohol. Neither Beka or myself got any sleep. We just talked. I couldn't remember exactly what had been said, but whatever it was had put my demons to rest. For the time being at least. I started feeling a little more like the Seamus Harper I knew. That was good. He and whatever else I was were both accepting the possibility of this child. Even though the Seamus Harper I knew still couldn't hear his name and father in the same sentence. I would have nine months to prepare for that, if it did happen, though. And to prepare for single parenting, which seemed more daunting than anything. It didn't seem right for a kid not to have a mom and have a dad like the one I'd probably be.
I wondered what Beka would do once the baby was born. Would she consider her part of this to be completely finished? She hadn't ever seemed too keen on being around kids, especially little ones. But if it came from inside of her, wouldn't she feel at least a little attachment to it? And if she felt attached to it, then maybe she would help me for a while with all the baby stuff I know nothing about. Plus, I wanted my baby to at least have a woman around sometimes as a maternal figure.
"What's wrong, Harper?" Beka interrupted my thoughts.
"Nothin', just thinking about everything. Trying to figure out a lot of it." I wouldn't bring up her role in the baby's life until we knew more about the procedure and everything.
"Me too. I don't know what we should say to Dylan. Valentine-ology isn't gonna help this time...are you okay, Harper?"
I smiled at that, imagining her using a good dose of Valentine-ology to convince Dylan to let us do this. He would probably kick us both off of Andromeda. "Yeah, I'm fine, Bek. I've just got a hangover, that's all," I lied. No, I wasn't okay. Was I supposed to be? I decided the answer to that was a definite no. "And as for Dylan, we should be honest. He always likes that."
"I'm going to go change my clothes. I'll meet you on Command Deck in fifteen minutes." Beka started to exit my quarters.
"Wait, Bek!" She turned back around. "Maybe we should learn a little more about all this stuff before we ask him."
She nodded. "Then, you can do whatever you need to do in Engineering. And we can have lunch together. I'll find some info before then."
This was the first time in hours and hours that I had been by myself. I was starting to think I had become an appendage of Beka or something. Not that that was a completely bad thing. She was usually cool to hang out with, but I do need my space.
I glanced down at the clothes I had been wearing since yesterday. It was time to change them. "What should I wear today?" I had my general collection of Hawaiian shirts and colorful matching pants, darker shirts and matching pants, or stuff I never wore to choose from. I'd been wearing a lot of Hawaiian lately, so I chose a black shirt t-shirt and matching pants.
I went over to my mirror and looked at myself in it. I definitely needed to fix my hair. I combed it out and put more gel in it. I got it looking normal. I glanced down at the stuff on my vanity. Beka had given me some cologne at the party. I didn't usually wear the stuff, but I put some on anyway. I couldn't smell it myself. Weird.
I left my quarters and headed towards engineering when I bumped into Dylan.
"Good morning, Harper," Dylan said.
"Mornin' Boss." I had to remember to breathe. Breathing is good--keeps you from passing out and embarrassing the hell out of yourself.
"Did you enjoy your birthday party yesterday?"
"Yeah, it was a blast. Thanks for that bottle of vodka, Dylan."
"You're welcome," Dylan said. "By the way, Rommie's got a new job for you. You can talk to her about it."
"I'll go talk to her now." We parted ways at last. I hoped things wouldn't be this uncomfortable around him again.
I found Rommie's avatar in my main Machine Shop, waiting for me. "So, what's this new job you have for me, Rommie?"
"I just need to you to upgrade my droids again. There have been some slight malfunctions lately in the droid coordination," she said.
"Ah. That'll be no big deal. I'll get rid of the bugs, and maybe add some new features." I used the console to summon one of the droids to the Machine Shop as my prototype.
The droid entered my Machine Shop and stopped when it reached us. I deactivated it and started some preliminary scans to see what was causing the malfunctions, which took a while to finish. Some subroutines had gone into overdrive, and it was easy to correct. It was time to play around with the new features I'd been thinking about.
"Rommie, we need to make the droids look big and bad, real scary. Scary enough to make intruders think twice about lurking around before we catch 'em," I said.
"Or to scare someone like Trance who is innocently walking down the corridor to Hydroponics?"
"You've got a point there." I also didn't like the thought of my kid seeing a big scary 'monster' and being scarred for life because of it. Droids are all over Andromeda and almost impossible to avoid. "Anything you'd like to change in the droids while I'm here?"
"They are functional and in satisfactory condition. Unlike you, I don't need to change everything constantly and integrate new technology into my life."
"Variety and change are the spice of life. It gets boring if you keep things the same for too long."
"You're finished here and free to go to lunch now."
"Lunch? It's not that late, is it?"
"It's 12:47 hours, Harper."
"Crap! I'm already half an hour late!"
I hurried down to Mess Deck, but Beka wasn't there. I assumed I'd completely missed lunch and just headed to my quarters. I found Beka sprawled out on my bed, a tray of food by her side, reading a flexi.
"You're late, Harper," she said as she continued reading. "Just be sure you're in the delivery room on time. I can't wait for you there." She said that with a little bit of a harsh tone, like I was completely irresponsible for being forty-five minutes late for lunch. She didn't even bother to ask what had kept me from being on time. She paused for a moment, glancing back down at the flexi. "Did you know that the use of surrogates has dropped 40% over the past twenty years? And most surrogates now are paid the equivalent of half a million thrones for what they do?"
"Whoa. I knew it cost a lot, but that much?" Half a million thrones could buy a small freighter. Or a lifetime's supply of building materials for my engineering projects.
"89.8% of people that request surrogates are married couples, and three fourths of what remains are single women who can't carry children. You fall into a small percentage." She held her fingers so close together to illustrate how small the percentage was.
"Where did you get all that info?" Beka had never been a store house of knowledge before. It was kinda weird that she knew so much.
"Andromeda's archives. I got some about the procedure, too. It's a little bit dangerous."
"How is it dangerous?" I thought it was just like a regular pregnancy. Obviously not.
"Even if the blood types are compatible, my body could still reject the embryo. And that could cause some damage."
"Reject it? You mean you can't just put it in any woman that comes along?"
"No, there's a lot of testing that has to be done first. And the anti-rejection drugs don't work in all cases."
"Oh. So you know pretty much everything about surrogacy?"
"Pretty much. We'll need to read up on infant care, too. Make sure you know what you're getting yourself into."
I noticed fifteen or so flexis on my nightstand. "I assume that those flexis on my nightstand are on that?"
"Yeah." She handed me one.
"There can't be this much to taking care of a baby, can there? I mean you feed it, change it and let it sleep. What more is there to life for a baby?"
"That pretty much sums it up." Beka picked up a flexi and started reading it.
I picked up another one myself and skimmed over the first paragraph. "This is a sample schedule for a day with a baby. Up at all hours crying and sleeping only when you're up doing something else."
"You still want to go through with this, Harper?" Beka asked as she was reading one of the flexis.
"Do you?" I wouldn't ever force her to do anything she wasn't totally sure about.
"Yeah. But we're talking about a major committment here. One that can't be broken."
"Speaking of a major committment," I began. I wanted to know what was going to happen after the baby was born, and that seemed as good of a time as any. "What's going to happen after the baby's born?"
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I mean...are you going to just carry the baby, or are you going to help me take care of it?"
She paused in her reading and stared at me for a moment. "I knew you'd eventually ask that. We do spend a lot of time together anyway, so I can help if you want me to."
I just nodded. She didn't really answer my question, then again I didn't really ask what I was thinking. We were both quiet for a long time. She was immersed in her reading, and I was immersed in watching her, wondering what was going through her mind. She eventually noticed and got a worried look on her face.
"Is everything okay, Bek?" I asked, moving a bit closer to her.
"I don't know, Harper. I'm not sure if it is or not." She pushed me away and stared at the floor.
"I know the baby will be fine. Trust me on that. I know I usu-"
"It's not that," she interrupted.
"What's wrong?" I couldn't figure out what was bothering her if it wasn't this. Maybe it was something really personal like my dreams. That made sense. It took me a whole month just to admit I was having the nightmares. Or maybe it was just the fact that she was a woman, and I was never gonna understand her or any of them.
"I don't think it's best for me to talk about it. And we need to finish reading the flexis." She immediately grabbed one. But I could tell she wasn't really reading.
"Y'know it helps if you hold the flexi right side up." I turned it around for her and smiled.
"Why does this have to be so difficult?" she whispered to herself.
"I don't know what's bothering you so much, but I'm here for you." I hugged her, refusing to let her push me away when she tried to.
"I can't stay here anymore. Let me go!" She tried harder to push me away, but I held on. It wasn't healthy for her to do this. She'd really messed herself up before when she was like this. I'd been there and done that too many times myself.
"Just let it out, Rebecca." She eventually quit fighting me. And it was a good thing, too. I didn't know how much longer I could keep fighting back. She didn't cry, but I could tell she wanted to. Needed to. I spent the entire time wondering who or what had done this to her. I wanted to get rid of it. She of all people didn't deserve to feel like that. I didn't know how much time had passed, but my arms were starting to fall asleep. "Do you feel any better?"
She looked into my eyes and shook her head. "I can't do what might make me feel better."
"Why not?" My thoughts immediately drifted to her flash addiction.
"Because...it wouldn't be right for me to do it." That fit flash.
"Why wouldn't it be right?"
"It might lead to a lot of people being hurt in the long run." Flash could do that, too.
I decided to tell her I knew. "If you're having a problem with flash again, then you need to talk about it."
She weakly laughed. "It's not flash, Seamus." She hardly ever called me Seamus. Only when she wanted to get me back in line or tease me. But that wasn't her tone. It was something else...
"Well, then, if you can tell anyone about your problem, it's me. You know you can trust me. I won't tell anyone."
"Promise?" she asked.
"'Course I do." I offered her another small smile for comfort. Whatever it was she had going on, we could deal with it.
Author's Note: Chapter 4 coming as soon as I finish it, probably in the next couple of weeks (due to a lack of inspiration for this combined with a surplus of inspiration to write other ficlets)