"You know that I don't mean it like that." Rachel followed Santana towards the bathroom. She kept her tone calm, steady.
She had been in a relationship with Santana for six years now, married for three, so she knew her cues very well. She knew when to follow, and when to leave her to calm down, and it wasn't often she would even need these cues because Santana would communicate her needs.
"Well then how did you mean it, because I'd love to hear it?" Santana asked, her tone even, mirroring Rachel's.
"Okay look, if you don't want to try again, that's fine. I don't want you to feel like I'm pressuring you."
Santana stopped what she was doing and sighed, avoiding eye contact. This conversation was so difficult for her. It still carried a lot of pain. It was an open wound that would never heal.
"But you are. And honestly after the last time?"
Rachel began to laugh, but it wasn't a happy laugh, it was an ironic one. This conversation was inevitably full of pain for her too.
"I'm just really skeptical. That's all." Santana added.
"Yeah, I'm sure that it was really traumatic for you." Rachel bit back. Her words were spilling out before her brain could process them. She was speaking purely from deep emotion, but the words hit Santana hard.
"Don't." Santana said firmly, but without raising her voice. "Don't do that."
"I…I'm sorry" Rachel stuttered. She was shocked at her own ability to say such cruel words to her wife. She had said terrible things like that in the immediate aftermath of it all, but not for a long time. They were better now, stronger.
She chanced a look at Santana to see if she was going to react further. She didn't. She walked towards her instead, taking her hand and interlocking their fingers. Santana softly kissed Rachel's knuckles before lowering their hands, the grip firm, holding Rachel steady.
"Look, either we work together on this, or…"
"I know, I know. We've been through this before." Rachel sighed. "It's just…sometimes I wonder. That's…that's all."
Santana squeezed Rachel's hand tighter, willing her to communicate. She couldn't have her wife shut down and hold her feelings in. Not again.
"What do you wonder?"
"Just…I wonder if. Uhm…" Rachel struggled to get the words out. Santana was being so patient with her, the same way she had been this past 15 months when tragedy struck, turning Rachel into a ghost of her former self and leaving Santana to pick up the fractured pieces.
Rachel let go of Santana's hand as she continued, she was worried about her reaction.
"I wonder if we're making the right choice. I mean…99% of the time I know we are, but that 1% it just…it eats at me, and it's just…oh god, I'm sorry, I should be able to talk to you about this without it feeling so hard."
Rachel's pitch was getting higher, and Santana could sense her becoming more emotional. More erratic. She began to attempt to comfort her.
"No, no, I…"
"No? No, what?" Rachel demanded, exasperated.
Santana took a deep breath, planning her next words carefully. She always felt like she was walking on eggshells with her wife nowadays.
"I wonder the same." Santana admitted.
"You do?"
Santana couldn't decipher the tone in Rachel's question. Was she relieved? Mad?
She said nothing as her wife studied her.
"Okay. We're on the same page then." said Rachel eventually, as she drifted into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her.
Her voice was monotone, emotionless. Santana knew she had upset her. She was always upsetting her nowadays. Always saying something wrong that would trigger the wound to open; again and again and again.
How was she to know that agreeing with the same thing initially voiced by Rachel would upset her?
Santana knew that Rachel wanted reassurance, not added doubt, but she had to be honest. She worried that it was too soon. Worried that they still had more work to do to get back to where they were as a couple, before all of this happened. They had definitely improved on things, but sometimes it was much like one step forward, two steps back. They were back in 2022 again, the worst year of their lives, with Rachel turning to pills to mask her pain and Santana feeling shut out.
And what if it happened again? What if they got through 7 blissful months of the perfect pregnancy, only for her to wake up one night and find her wife bleeding? What if she had to watch the fear flood Rachel's face again as they drove to the hospital, hitting every red light on the way? What if she had to watch her breakdown as she's told their baby has died inside of her wife, but she'd still have to go through labor? What if the only time they got to hold their baby was when she wasn't breathing?
Santana wasn't even sure if she could be ready to try for another child when she hadn't even gotten the chance to grieve their firstborn. She'd spent the whole time taking care of Rachel to even think of herself and her own feelings.
"She was my baby, too." Santana whispered to herself, playing with the pumpkin keychain she still kept on her car keys. Emilia was conceived in fall, so it made sense for Santana to buy two matching ones for her and Rachel, the day they found out Rachel was pregnant.
Emilia was as much her baby as she was Rachel's. She knew that, and she knew Rachel knew it too. They had both planned for her, made lifestyle changes for her, been through the grueling and expensive IUI process together. Biology didn't mean a thing, but Santana knew that there was an even deeper void within Rachel, because she had been the one to grow and carry her. She had felt all her kicks along the way, and then she'd had to push her out lifeless, enduring horrendous pain to do so.
She concluded that whatever grief she was feeling, Rachel was feeling a thousand times harder, so she had to be strong for her.
She wiped the stray tear that had fallen before tentatively pushing open the bedroom door. It broke her heart seeing her wife looking so tiny on the bed, curled up in a ball. She quietly got onto the bed behind her and wrapped her arms around her tightly, placing a kiss on her shoulder.
"One day baby, the timing will be right again. Everything's going to be okay."