Chapter Seven: The Best Luck I Had

Approximately three months later:

Peter groped blindly for the cell phone on his bedside table. The incessant ringing had woken him up. The other side of his bed was empty, his husband out patrolling their city.

"Hello," he answered, still half-asleep.

"Peter, it's happening!" Rebecca all but yelled into the phone.

"What?" he asked, his blue eyes going wide.

"My water just broke. The baby's coming!" she hissed.

Shite. He wasn't sure whether the thought was his or Chess', but that hardly mattered at the moment. He fumbled with the light switch.

"Stay right there. I'll be downstairs shortly," he informed her.

"Alright, but hurry," she urged, right before he hung up.

Peter called another number, even as he shrugged into his clothes.

"What is it?" the Cape rasped over his headset.

"Hello to you, too, dear; Deveraux's going into labor," Peter explained as he headed towards the elevator.

"I'll come straight home."

"Don't bother. You can meet us at the clinic," Peter rattled off the clinic's name and address as he stepped out of the elevator and into Deveraux's apartment. Rebecca, he saw, had already thrown on her coat and footwear.

"Okay, I'll… No, I have to stop by home anyway, unless you want the Cape to show up at the delivery room?"

Peter, who was in the process of helping Deveraux towards the door, cursed. He hadn't thought of that.

"Faraday, if you show up with so much as a mask, I swear to—"

He was cut off by a cry of pain from Deveraux, as a contraction hit her. He hung up and focused on her.

"Alright, it's okay. Just hang in there." As they hit the lobby of ARK Tower, Peter barked out an order to one of his men to have a car brought around for them. Within minutes Peter guided the immortal into the backseat and sat beside her. He told the driver their destination and they took off.

~PF~

Worst case scenario, if Vince did show up as the Cape, they would still be able to do damage control. Peter owned the clinic, of course. But he would prefer not to have to test his employees' loyalty by asking them to ignore the vigilante's inexplicable presence at the birth.

There was too much to keep secret. Fleming wouldn't hear of having the delivery at a public hospital.

Flashback

"There would be too many questions," he explained to his daughter as they sat in the penthouse. No one outside of their close circle—and the Jackals…and Patrick Portman, with whom Vince had put in a request for paternity leave*—knew he and his husband were expecting. For now, Fleming wanted to keep it that way.

"You mean you don't want anyone to find out you've discovered a way for same-sex couples to biologically reproduce," Jamie frowned.

"Didn't you say that the discovery was made by LuthorCorp?" Vince interjected. The two Flemings ignored him. LuthorCorp had never taken credit for the breakthrough made years ago and they weren't worried about the company getting recognized for the achievement now. Besides which, LuthorCorp had never put the theory to the test. The only specimens produced for the deceased CEO were short-lived, frog-eating clones.

"Dad, do you know how many people this would help? How many couples would want the opportunity that you and Vince have?"

"What I know is that my child is not going to go down in history as a science experiment. He—or she—is not going to go through life as a freak. I will not let the media destroy this child's chance at a normal life!" he banged his fist on the coffee table for emphasis.

"And don't tell me about all the people this would help," he continued. "Do you know how many children there are that are waiting to be adopted?"

"I didn't see you worrying about those children when you spliced your DNA with Vince's!" Orwell retorted.

"Fine, I'm selfish. Is that what you wanted to hear, Jamie? I am. I realize that I can't force Orwell to sit on this scientific discovery forever. All I ask is that it wait so that your brother—or sister—won't be dragged into some scandalous media frenzy as an infant."

The woman's brow creased. After so much time spent hiding from the public eye (and her father's investigators), she didn't know how to respond to that.

"What do you have to say about this?" Jamie looked at her stepfather expectantly. He shrugged.

"Peter, don't you already own the press in Palm City? Couldn't you just, I don't know, order the reporters to give our family some privacy?"

"People disobey orders, Vince. Yes, I know one would have to be a fool to disobey me and invite my wrath—"

Don't you mean mine? Chess corrected him.

"—But as satisfying as it is to dole out punishments, it does not keep the damage from being done in the first place. The best way to keep a story from being printed is to keep the press from getting wind of it."

That is precisely why there have been no reports of my being a separate personality, Chess added. And, yes, I know the secret identity helps.

End Flashback

~VF~

Jamie wound up driving Vince to the clinic. To Peter's relief, Faraday was wearing plain clothes when they arrived.

"How is she doing?" Vince asked.

"The doctors say she's doing fine. Everything is progressing normally," Peter replied. "Now we just wait. No telling how many hours it will be." He remembered Danielle had been in labor for roughly twenty hours when Jamie was born.

"I'll go get coffee," Jamie volunteered. Her father stopped her with a hand on her arm.

"Thank you. It means a lot to me, you being here."

"Hey, this is my sibling we're talking about. Someone has to keep an eye out to make sure you two don't goof up," she teased, before going off in search of the cafeteria.

"She was joking, right?" Vince asked after she'd left.

"Partially," Fleming replied, his lips curving up.

~PF~

"PETER!" Deveraux screamed ten hours later. Both expectant fathers were standing near her bed. "GODDAMN YOU! IF YOU DON'T GIVE ME VISITATION RIGHTS AFTER ALL OF THIS—GAHH!"

"It's really far too late to negotiate now. So this is the joyous experience you were so fond of repeating," Peter remarked dryly. "What happened to childbirth being such a wonderful…?"

"SHUT UP!" Rebecca interrupted him.

"I offered her drugs," the attending doctor, Isabella Groh, said helplessly. "She insisted that she didn't need drugs for her previous childbirths and she wasn't going to start now."

"That's because it's been like a thousand years since I last gave bi—argh!" She hadn't remembered the pain being this intense. Was it too late to change her mind about the drugs?

"Okay, Deveraux, breathe," Vince said. "Remember you practiced breathing."

Deveraux breathed, in and out, remembering the Lamaze she'd been taught.

"Not helping," she gritted out.

"She's dilated. Rebecca, I need you to push through the next one," the doctor said.

"What?"

"Push," Groh repeated.

"Already? No, I can't—"

"Yes, you can," Peter pointed out. She looked into his face, so like Gregory's, and nodded. She had done this before. She could do it again. She was starting to feel rather Zen about this.

"Ice chips?" a nurse offered her.

The plastic cup hit the beige wall just as the shape shifter started to push.

"Okay, good, I can see the head," Dr. Groh announced, either not noticing or not caring about the patient's outburst. "When the next one comes, push really hard."

Finally, a cry split the air, expressing all of the anguish at being thrust out of nice, cozy accommodations and into this huge, freezing room with harsh lights, not to mention the indignities of being slapped and manhandled.

Dr. Groh snipped the umbilical cord before the infant was whisked away to have the detritus washed off.

~PF~

Deveraux had forgotten that newborns looked significantly better after they were cleaned up. She looked down at the now clean baby in her arms with undeniable pride.

"May I?" Peter asked, reaching his hands out.

Deveraux thought of refusing, but he had asked, not ordered, and he didn't seem to have any more energy to start a fight now than she did. (The exhaustion she vaguely remembered from long ago.)

Oh so carefully, Rebecca handed Peter his son. He weighed just less than ten pounds.

The birth certificate would read 'Peter Faraday Fleming.' With Faraday substituting for a middle name, the CEO figured the name could be easily abbreviated as 'Peter Fleming,' (though that probably hadn't yet occurred to Vincent). The certificate would also state that Pete's parents were Vincent Faraday II and Peter Fleming, Sr., with no mention of Rebecca's role.

The lawyers had discussed adoption with Fleming. Apparently, it was sometimes used in surrogacy cases to make sure that both spouses were legally the child's parents. Peter thought the notion that either he or his spouse would have to adopt their own son was absurd. But if it did become an issue, he was sure papers could be forged later on.

In the meantime, let people wonder whether Peter or Vince was the biological father. There would probably be competing opinions. Pete, as far as one could tell from the few strands of hair on his mostly bald head, was going to have Fleming's black hair. But (mercifully) he'd inherited Faraday's ears. Eyes were difficult to tell early on, as irises could change, but Peter suspected their son would favor the vigilante in that respect.

"You knew about the gender, didn't you?" Vince accused. "That's why you had the nursery painted blue."

"Nonsense; the color was chosen because blue is supposed to be soothing. Chess suggested red, but I didn't think you'd approve."

"Yeah, right," the prison guard replied.

"Are you mad at me?" the older man asked.

"No; nothing is going to upset me today. He's perfect," Faraday proclaimed, beaming down at their baby. He sighed, and then added, "even if he does have your chin."

~JF~

Jamie left after seeing her baby brother. Meeting him, she'd felt a pang—of what, she wasn't certain. Almost on autopilot, she'd dialed Rollo and asked him to meet her back at the apartment. He was already inside when she got back. She didn't remember driving home; lucky thing she hadn't gotten into a collision.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, after they had sat down on the living room couch. He wasn't sure what to make of the expression on her face. Though he'd known her so long, her face could still be as unreadable as a stranger's.

She shook her head.

"Nothing's wrong. I've just been thinking," she answered her boyfriend. "We've been together for a few years now.

"Do you want to get married?"

*That was not a fun conversation for either participant. Portman never did get over the fact that Fleming had ordered a hit on him and thus didn't know what Vince saw in the man.

Author's Note: And you thought the only cliffhanger in the story was going to be the baby's gender.

Thanks to those who have reviewed or added the story to their list of favorites!

Chapter title is from Michael Franti and Spearhead's "Say Hey I Love You."