Chapter 4: Stewie-LM

It was late at night in the Griffin household, but everyone was still wide awake and alert. Peter, Lois, Stewie and Brian had gathered in the living room earlier in the day after having received a very important call.

Meg had gone into labor, and hours later Lois took another call in the kitchen while the other three waited. Stewie and Brian kept glancing at each other while Peter had headphones on and was preoccupied at whatever he was listening to. Because he played it far too loud, it was clear that (of course) it was Bird is the Word, that and he kept flapping his arms over and over.

"When will he stop listening to that drivel?" asked Stewie.

"If I had to guess, when time stops." said Brian.

Seven years had taken their toll on the two, predictably both good and bad. Stewie was rather tall for an eight year old, with a scattering of his father Peter's brown hair, and aside from the shape of his head he looked fairly normal. Brian, however, was old and tended to walk on all fours and had a difficult time moving around as he once did, but his mind had not suffered one bit and he could still quip with the best of them.

"Lois has been in there for a while..."

"Hey, call your mother mom! Or mommy! Or momma!" said Peter, who had in fact stopped listening but only because the batteries had ran out. "Or a combination of those three at different intervals!"

"First, that's an outdated joke, dad." replied Stewie. "I only did it a grand total of one time if you don't count flashbacks. And second, I miss the time that not everyone could understand me."

"I'm sure everything's fine." said Brian. "Oh look, here she comes now."

Lois entered the living room in silence at first, but with a huge smile plastered on her face and several tears at the corners of her eyes.

"That was Mike."

"Who?" asked Peter.

"Mike, Meg's husband." said Lois, who then sighed heavily. "Now's not really the time to be joking around, Peter."

"Oh, that Mike. I feel like we've never really said his name until now. And didn't Meg almost marry someone else with that name, like two or three failed weddings ago? Or is it the same guy? I don't think it's the same guy."

"He's on the wall!" said Lois who pointed to Meg's wedding picture, which happened and was taken just over two years earlier. Along with Meg, said man was about a half foot taller than her, average build but fairly good-looking, with short black hair and several freckles on his nose and chin. When Meg had brought him home to meet them, they'd at first fallen back on old and nasty habits, questioning how someone like him had fallen for her. But Meg herself was not the same girl that they once knew and ridiculed, and going off on her own had done her a world of good. She was confident, happy and quite attractive... more akin to Lois herself, and they'd been very proud of her. Off to the left side in the picture stood Peter, Lois, Chris, Stewie and Brian, with her husband's family on the other.

Megan and Michael Bordeaux.

"I'm sure I'll never forget this. Oh, and it's still such a shame that his last name wasn't Myers. I mean, Bordeaux? Sounds like the name of some laundry detergent." said Peter.

"Anyway, now that his nonsense of the hour is over with... Meg's had her baby, about twenty minutes ago. It's a girl!"

"Yes!" yelled Brian.

"Noooooo!" yelled Peter, who curled up into a ball on the couch and started sobbing.

"You seem awfully happy," said Stewie, "and the fat man quite down."

"Stewie!" yelled Lois.

"Again, I miss the time that not everyone could understand me."

"I bet in Vegas that Meg's baby would be a girl." said Brian.

"And I bet in Vegas that Meg's baby wouldn't be a girl, because Brian tends to be wrong about a lot of things." said Peter. "Betting against Brian these past seven years is how I paid off this house!"

"I couldn't lose, Stewie. You know why." said Brian. "Easiest ten grand I ever made!"

Stewie, meanwhile, was barely clued into his surroundings after what Brian had said. He could hear Lois and Peter presumably talking some more about Meg and her baby, but it was muffled and far away as if he was underwater. Years ago, said baby had appeared to them from twenty-five years in the future as an eighteen year old teenager with a striking resemblance to Meg, and though she hadn't said much about the future the bits and pieces that she had gave him a timeline of what was to come. Meg would eventually have a daughter, whose first and then only memory of Brian would happen when she was only a few months old. While that meant that Brian would be alive for at least another seven years, the way that the girl (Christina, he remembered) had spoke and looked very heavily implied that he didn't last long after that. Stewie knew that she had told Brian something more but the dog wouldn't say anything else about that day no matter how much he'd pressed him.

Brian had only months to live.

Stewie knew that this day would come, and instead of feeling happy about the birth of his niece he felt like he was going to be sick. Lois tried to say something to him but he still couldn't hear her, the reality of the situation had finally hit him and it hit hard.

"... Stewie, are you okay?"

He looked at her, and trying his best not to cry he put as wide a smile on his face as possible, one that would've made the Joker proud with how creepy and unsettling it was.

"Yes, yes I'm okay! Why wouldn't I be! Everything's just fine!"

And with that, he couldn't hold back anymore and ran up the stairs as fast he could into his room and slammed the door.

"Meg used to do that a lot." said Peter, whose demeanour then quickly changed as tears filled his eyes. "And oh my god our little girl's all grown up and had a baby!"

"I... I'll go and talk to him." said Brian, who looked at both Lois and Peter. "And congratulations on the birth of your granddaughter Christina."

"I never told you her name, they haven't even picked one out yet!" said Lois.

Brian coughed into a paw. "Er, never mind. Anyway, I'll go talk to Stewie. He's not jealous or mad or anything like that, he... I think he's realizing that things change and he's not ready for them." he said, trying to be as vague as possible.

"Oh, I forgot to charge the stair chair Brian, so it might be kind of slow." said Peter.

Indeed, the stair chair was slow, taking a minute to move upwards at what seemed like an inch, and at times Brian swore that it was going backward. He groaned, and not for the first time in his old age he wished he could still climb the stairs.

Thirty minutes or so later...

After he'd finally reached the top, Brian stood outside of Stewie's room and could hear him sobbing inside, which made Brian himself quite sad.

"Can I come in?" he asked, after knocking lightly on the door.

Stewie unlocked it and let him in, and then jumped back onto his bed. Brian tended to sleep in his room instead of Peter and Lois's the past few years, but since he had trouble climbing or jumping there was a bed made for him on the floor at the foot of Stewie's own. He went over and laid down on it, while Stewie changed position and leaned downwards on his bed towards Brian, and propped his chin up with both of his hands.

"It's just... it's all happened so bloody fast! Where did the time go, Brian?"

"We... we grew up, Stewie. And that's not a bad thing."

"But what if I don't want to grow up? I was a baby for what, like twenty years? Or at least it felt like it. Remember all the fun we used to have? But now you're... you're old, Brian. And it's like I didn't comprehend it until just this moment."

Stewie got off the bed and sat next to Brian on the floor and stayed silent for about a minute, and his eyes stared off into the distance and didn't meet Brian's.

"I don't want you to die, Brian."

"I know, Stewie. I know."

"I could do something! Extend your life, de-age you even! It'd be trivial next to my Time Machine, Multiverse Viewer and a Roomba that doesn't smear feces all over the house!"

"No."

"But, but..."

"No!" yelled Brian, perhaps a bit too loudly. "No. I've had my time, Stewie. Way more than I should have, and for the most part it's been a good life. Nobody wants things to change or end but it does, and it's not like I really want to die either. But you have a lot more ahead of you than me, and you have the rest of your family who all love you. I... I'm not saying that it won't hurt, but you'll be fine after I'm gone."

"Oh, Brian." said Stewie, and gripped the dog into a hug. They held each other for a few moments, before Stewie recoiled and pinched his nose in disgust.

"Ear medicine." said Brian. "That and Bengay. I'm old."

Stewie started chuckling before breaking out into full-blown laughter, and Brian soon joined in as well.

"Why can't medicine smell good?" asked Stewie. "I swear they pick the worst possible smells just to punish people."

For a few moments, Stewie seemed to be back to his old self, but as he looked at Brian he thought a bit more about what he had said earlier.

"Stewie-Prime and Brian-Prime are never going to grow up." he said.

"Prime? Ripping off Star Trek there. And not the good one." said Brian.

"Okay, okay... we're variants of the originals."

"And now you're doing Loki."

"Quiet! You know what I mean, years ago we found out during one of our many travels that we're not the original Stewie and Brian. There's always one, one universe that all others of a kind branch off of! And in the original, I'll call them Stewie-1 and Brian-1 so as to not offend you, time never seems to pass or if it does it's very slow or nobody notices. Have you ever wondered why over twenty years felt like one or there were multiple birthdays and Thanksgivings and Christmases?"

"Not really, no." said Brian. "But it did always feel like something was off."

"Precisely!" said Stewie. "And up until the point that Meg went to college our universe was identical. But now... now it's not, Brian. I envy that universe, because that Stewie and Brian will never really change or age."

"I don't."

"What? Why?"

"Because nothing ever changing isn't really living, Stewie. Can you honestly say that you'd want to be a baby forever, or live with Peter, Lois, Meg and Chris and me for eternity? You've all changed since then, mostly for the better. And... and in the original universe your niece won't and will never exist because Meg will probably be stuck like how she used to be forever! That's not living, Stewie. That's hell! Which I still don't believe in, but you get what I mean. And no, we might not be the original Brian and Stewie but that doesn't matter." said Brian. "And there's plenty of other Brians and Stewies and Megs and whatever out there in the multiverse that feel the same."

"Brian, I believe that might have been the wisest thing you have ever said." said Stewie. "And, I did try calling Stewie-1 and Brian-1 a few times but they never answered the phone. Stewie-1 and Brian-1 are dicks."

"You do remember that up until seven years ago we were exactly like them in every way, so what does that make us?"

"Dicks, but slightly less so. I spoke to an alternate Stewie the other day whose only difference in his universe was that the couch in the living room was a darker shade of purple, it was so uninteresting that I hung up after about two minutes." said Stewie.

Stewie stood up and stretched his arms and legs for a bit, and headed towards the door. "You know, I do feel somewhat better now Brian. Things will be alright, or at least I hope they will be. I'm heading back downstairs, are you coming?"

"Er..." groaned Brian, thinking about having to use the dreaded stair chair again. "I think I'll stay here. Unless you'd carry me?"

"Sure."

Brian seemed much smaller than he ever remembered, but that was only because Stewie had grown so much bigger. And not just physically. He still knew that Brian would... leave soon (he didn't want to use the word die), but he'd be able to endure it even though it would hurt like nothing had before. Though part of him was still envious that Stewie-1 would never have to go through that pain, regardless of what Brian had said, and always would be.

He was Stewie-LM (a self-appointed multiverse designation), and just like his older sister he was a lucky Stewie. And also one of the luckiest, even if he didn't feel so at first. His giant monument to Brian in Quahog's pet cemetery later on was one of his earliest (known) achievements shown on the news nation-wide, built single-handedly at only the age of nine, and definitely wouldn't be his last.