As the sound of the TARDIS faded away Vastra turned to look at Jenny. The girl was deathly pale, her eyes downcast and she had one hand resting gently on her stomach. To a clueless bystander she would have looked as though she had just seen a ghost but Vastra knew why her darling Jenny was in such distress. They were both in shock. When they had been sat under the tree in the garden that morning neither of them had expected the day to end with the news that they were going to be mothers.
"Jenny...?" Dark eyes flicked up from the floor and fixed themselves on the Silurian. There were tears swimming in their depths, barely being held back as Jenny focused all of her efforts on trying to stay calm. She wanted to speak, to say something to break the silence, but she was scared that if she tried the tears would flow free and there would be nothing she could do to stop it. She felt her lower lip tremble and immediately squeezed her eyes shut feeling the first tear roll onto her cheek.
Vastra must have moved at the speed of light because it seemed as though Jenny's eyes had only just closed as she felt the woman's body next to her, pulling her close and allowing her to bury her face in her shoulder. The Silurian rubbed her back and kissed her hair, hushing her and whispering soothing words until Jenny had managed to cry herself into a state of fatigued rest. She wasn't entirely sure why she was crying if she was honest, perhaps it was just a mix of the shock and her hormones. Slowly she lifted her head to look up at Vastra once more and as she caught hold of her love's gaze she noticed a slight hint of hurt in the gentle blue orbs.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, trying to wipe away a few stray tears from her cheeks, "I don't think I've 'andled this very well..." She managed to smile ever so slightly and once again she dropped a hand to her stomach. Vastra's eyes seemed to follow Jenny's hand as it moved and for a short while her eyes were fixed on the girl's stomach. She couldn't quite believe that there was a little creature in there. A little creature that was made up of just her and Jenny. It was theirs. Maybe that was why it had hurt so much when the maid had begun to cry. Somehow Vastra couldn't shake the fear that those tears were a sign that Jenny didn't want this. She knew that the girl was young, and that it was all such a shock, but in the Silurian's eyes anything that they created could be nothing but perfection. Not a flaw. Not a mistake. But did Jenny see it that way?
"Are you okay?" It had taken Vastra a short while to find the words but they had come to her eventually. Jenny had been watching as the woman stared at her stomach, almost mesmerised. She wandered what Vastra was thinking. Was she as scared as Jenny? Maybe not, after all she wasn't the one with the child inside her.
"I'm okay... just..." She didn't know how she could explain all of the thoughts rushing through her mind. Her head was pounding and she felt as though her brain might melt from the sheer pressure that all of her musings were placing on it. "It's all so sudden, isn't it?" Vastra nodded. There was a feeling in the pit of the Silurian's stomach that she couldn't quite shift. It was nerves, she knew that, but what was causing them? The baby? Jenny's reaction? The suddenness of it all? She just didn't know. Jenny was watching her closely, her eyes scanning her face as they so often did when neither of them could find the words to explain how they were feeling. The girl had a knack for understanding Vastra without words being necessary - human instinct she supposed. Vastra didn't quite have that ability.
"What are you thinking?" She had to know. She tried to avoid asking it of Jenny but she couldn't shift the urgent need she had to know how the girl felt about the baby. Jenny was too unreadable for Vastra to just figure it out like the girl did with her. She was too complicated at the best of times, and even more so with her moods all out of whack.
"I'm thinkin' about 'ow scary this is," she sighed "and 'ow, if you'd asked me 'ow I'd feel about being a mother this mornin', I would 'ave said I wasn't ready." Vastra tensed up and Jenny immediately slid her hand over to squeeze the other woman's reassuringly. She wished Vastra would let her finish speaking before jumping to conclusions. The Silurian wasn't very patient when it came to allowing Jenny to answer her and more often than not she would get the wrong idea before the maid had even finished giving her her response. "But," she continued, looking up into Vastra's eyes, "now, I think maybe we can do it."
Vastra's head tilted slightly in confusion. Had she just heard that right? Was Jenny really saying that she was okay with it? As if reading her mind Jenny shuffled a little closer to the Silurian. She gently took Vastra's hand in both of her own and guided it to rest on her stomach, pressing the cool, scaled palm against the point where their child was growing.
"No need to look so shocked love" she murmured as she studied her love's reactions carefully. Vastra's eyes were once again fixed on the girl's stomach and their hands entwined over it.
"I... I only thought... you were crying, and I assumed..." Jenny giggled and Vastra pulled her gaze away from her stomach. "What? What are you laughing at?"
"Nothin'," the girl smiled and lifted one hand to cup the other woman's cheek, "just you an' your assumptions again. You really thought I'd be un'appy about this?" Vastra shrugged a little awkwardly and Jenny shook her head. "When are you gonna start just askin' me 'ow I feel, hm? It really would save you a lot of worry an' bother love."
"I know. You are right of course, you always are." A scaled cheek nuzzled against Jenny's warm palm and the girl sighed contentedly. "I promise, no more assumptions. Anything to make you happy my love."
~.~.~.~.~.~
When the two women finally managed to make their way up to bed the hour was ridiculously late and Jenny was more than ready to sleep. She was almost certain that as soon as her head hit the pillow she would instantly fall into the land of dreams and not return to the waking world until well into the morning. Vastra had already insisted that she should stop her maid duties for a few days at least. She had wanted Jenny to stop all together, but she knew that that was a long shot and so she settled for her sweet girl simply having a short break.
In the past month or so Vastra had taken a liking to unlacing Jenny's corset for her at the end of each day. Jenny had asked why at first but Vastra had refused to tell her although the girl was pretty sure it was only because, more often than not, the act had a tendency to lead onto more risqué practices. Even so, as Vastra's nimble fingers pulled at the lacing of her corset that night, loosening it bit by bit, she seemed a little distracted.
"You know, you should not be wearing this love, it's not good for the baby." Jenny raised an eyebrow earning her a withering look from the Silurian who caught sight of it in the mirror just opposite to the side of the bed the girl was perched on. "What was that look for? I was only saying..."
"Yes, my love, but I didn't know there was a baby when I was dressin' this mornin' did I?" the girl sighed and shook her head slightly. "You're not gonna be like this the whole way through the pregnancy are you?"
"Like what?!" Vastra stopped for a moment and regarded the girl's reflection in the mirror. She could see that Jenny was tired, and that she probably didn't mean to cause offense, but still something in what she had said had hurt Vastra. The Silurian hadn't been aware that there was anything wrong in her commenting on the girl's attire, what had she managed to say that was so wrong?
"Givin' me points on what's good for the baby an' what's not. I mean, we only just found out an' already you're tellin' me off for wearin' a corset."
"I only commented that it was not good for the baby."
"Yeah an' I know that. An' I wasn't plannin' on wearing it tomorrow for that exact reason. What did you want me to do, predict that I would find out I'm 'avin' a baby today and dress accordin'ly?!" Jenny didn't mean to be so snappy. She knew that she was tired and that her emotions were riling her up again as they had been doing for a while, but she couldn't seem to suppress her annoyance. She didn't even know why she was angry about it, Vastra was only showing she cared, but for some reason the girl couldn't stop herself from snapping.
Vastra sighed, trying to tell herself that it was only the pregnancy and the hormones. She finished loosening Jenny's corset and pulled it off of her before crawling over to her own side of the bed and curling up under the sheets. Jenny turned to look at the woman over her shoulder but she had turned her back. The girl cursed herself internally. Why was she being like that? Why did she have to push Vastra away when she knew that she needed her more than she ever had before? Her annoyance at herself only made her more angry and she threw her corset down onto the floor, stomping out of the room with her nightdress in hand to finish changing elsewhere.
Vastra hated when they fought. She hated knowing that Jenny was upset and she hated knowing that it was all her fault. If she wasn't so insensitive then there would have been no reason for Jenny to snap at her. Clearly she had said something wrong without meaning to as she always did. She didn't blame her sweet girl for being so angry with her. She was sure she would have been angry with herself in Jenny's position. What Vastra couldn't understand was why Jenny had put up with her for so long - why she continued to put up with her.
A door opened and closed somewhere in the house and Vastra could hear Jenny's footsteps coming back towards the room. She listened as the girl shut the bedroom door behind her and slid into the bed. A warm little body wrapped itself around Vastra's own and she instinctively allowed herself to release all of the tension in her body. Soft lips pressed against the scales on the back of Vastra's neck and she closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the tingling feeling each of Jenny's kisses left in its wake.
"I'm sorry," the girl whispered softly, only ceasing the kisses for long enough to speak, "I'm so sorry. I'm 'orrible to you an' you don't deserve it. An' I'm sorry." Vastra shook her head and was about to speak but Jenny hadn't finished. "Don't do that. Don't shake your 'ead like I'm talkin' rubbish darlin', you know as well as I do that it's true."
"If I had not said anything about the corset..."
"No. That's no excuse. I shouldn't be so 'orrible to you no matter what you say."
"But you don't mean a word of it." Vastra rolled over to face her darling girl and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Jenny had been crying again, her eyes were all red and puffy. The Silurian kissed each eye gently and then pressed her forehead against Jenny's and pulled the girl so close that their lips were only inches apart. "You are not intentionally horrible to me Jenny, I know that. We very rarely fought before you got pregnant, and certainly never as we did before," she rubbed the girl's lower back and kissed her once, "it is the hormones that are making things more difficult for us, but it will get easier, I'm sure." The girl nodded and smiled slightly. Vastra had such a talent for calming her. She didn't know how the woman did it but just a few words from Vastra could take Jenny from thinking the world was ending to being entirely at peace in herself.
"I love you" Jenny was beginning to doze off and the words were small and soft as they passed her lips but Vastra couldn't suppress her smile at hearing them. She kissed her darling girl again and lay back so that Jenny could rest her head on her shoulder and curl into her as she slowly drifted off to sleep.
The Silurian lay awake for a long time after the girl had dozed off. She held Jenny to her with one arm while the fingers of her free hand traced delicate patterns over her love's stomach. As she lay there in the dark silence of the night she tried to imagine what their child would look like. It was hard for her to even begin to think of how a human/Silurian mixed child may look but she tried to picture it all the same. Vastra imagined a tiny little baby like the ones that she had seen human women carrying around with them in the streets of London, only the baby she imagined didn't have the same fleshy quality about it and it certainly wasn't of a normal human colour. She imagined the child with emerald scales like her own, only much softer and more sensitive. She imagined that its crests were less prominent than any Silurian child she had ever seen and she even wondered if it might have little shell like ears like Jenny's as opposed to her own lack of the outer shell of the ear. Whatever the child looked like she knew it would be beautiful, how could it not with Jenny as a mother?