Hi! Thank you for all your reviews, as usual. Hope you enjoy this chapter!
It had been a rough week for Felix and Tamora. On Monday, Tamora awoke around 3 in the morning feeling overwhelmingly nauseous, a side effect of her pregnancy which she definitely was NOT enjoying. Felix, being the gentleman he was, got up and tried to comfort his wife, which wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the fact that it was, after all, 3 in the morning. Tuesday came and would have been slightly better, except all the players that happened to come in that day to play Hero's Duty or Fix-It Felix were all terrible, which was disheartening for both Tamora and Felix. On Wednesday and Thursday, Tamora experienced more morning sickness, causing both to feel as though they were lagging through the entire day. Friday actually wasn't all too bad, which was a relief to them both. However, it came to a catastrophic end. The arcade closed at 9 like it did on most Fridays (which was a relief to the couple) but to celebrate the anniversary of the first arcade cabinet ever invented, Mr. Litwick held a 24 hour "Game On!" event which started at midnight. That Saturday had to be the worst Tamora had ever experienced, as she was already exhausted enough from battling cybugs all week and carrying a baby. Felix was also exhausted too, having never eaten pie for about 24 hours straight. When the arcade finally closed down, the two were dead tired as they returned to their home. They hoped that they could finally get a decent amount of rest after such an exhausting week. But, the two didn't get very much sleep that night either…
Tamora was busy fighting off cy-bugs as usual. She was a lot bigger however (stomach wise) and felt terrible. Bad cramps and wooziness were beginning to take their toll on her but she wasn't about to let anyone else know that. She knew that the arcade would only be open for another hour or so and that she'd probably be able to hold on until then. She was quickly advancing on a ledge close to where the beam was, hoping to turn it on.
"Markowski! Watch your back!" she yelled as a cy-bug began to creep up behind him.
Turning around quickly, he blasted it away from him. "Thanks Sarge-WATCH OUT!" he yelled a moment too late.
Tamora had accidentally walked off the ledge and was tumbling to the bottom. How could I be so careless!? She yelled at herself. Next thing she knew, she came to a stop at the bottom. Her body hurt even more than it had before. She went to stand up to brush herself off, but quickly doubled over with a new pain which she had never felt before. She heard a soft trickling of water and realized her water had broken. SON OF A SLOT MACHINE…she was going into labor. Not knowing what to do, she decided to call out for Felix for reasons she didn't even know (there was no way he would be in Hero's Duty almost an hour before the arcade closed). Suddenly, a flash of light came before her and there stood… her mother?! Tamora's mother was just another reason that she had turned out to be such a harsh human being.
Her mother was brutal to her as a child, calling her rude names and irrationally blaming her (only 5 years old at the time) for her father's death, who had died fighting for the planet as a Space Marine. After going through her entire childhood believing that she was the cause of her beloved father's death, she too had joined the war, which only further angered her mother, claiming she would only die worthless as the day she was born. After returning home from being deployed for the first time, her mother made it quite clear she wanted nothing to do with her and vanished shortly afterwards. Her mother was just another reason as to why she didn't ever care to express her feelings, for her mother always made her feel worst.
"Tamora, you aren't ready for a child," she said softly, talking to her as if she were still a child.
"No, I am! I just need help! RIGHT NOW!" she cried as she felt another sear of pain go through her body. "Please! Help me!" she said through gritted teeth.
"I can't. The same way you didn't help that nice young man, Brad when he needed you most," her mother said. Now that one hurt Tamora real bad. Scenes of their wedding flashed through her mind. The only event she had invited her mother to after being disowned.
"How are you supposed to raise a baby when you can't even protect those closest to you?" her mother said with an evil smirk.
"But mother, I-" she started when yet another flash of light came from nowhere, and out jumped Felix. THANK THE MODERATOR!
"Tammy! I'll help you!" he said calmly.
Tamora began to relax at the sight of her husband when all of a sudden, a cybug came out of nowhere and quickly devoured him. Images of the same fate happening to Brad flashed before her eyes.
"No.." she whispered and progressively got louder. "NO!" she screamed again with tears in her eyes.
"Tammy, I told you. Tamora…"
Meanwhile, Felix was also having some pretty unpleasant dreams.
"FELIX! I TOLD YOU! YOU AREN'T FIT TO BE THE FATHER OF MY CHILD!" Tamora yelled at him.
"But…Tamora I-" he began, as tears began to fall from his eyes.
"NO FELIX. I need someone who's tall, and brave, and heroic, unlike some people who fix broken windows for a living. Besides, I'm sure the baby won't even like you! You don't do anything cool. You're afraid of ducks for Moderator's sake! Good-bye Felix," she said as she slowly began to fade out of the room.
"TAMORA! NO!" he cried.
Felix awoke with a jolt, realizing that it had only been a dream. He looked next to him to see if Tamora was there, and sure enough, she was. However, she was shaking in the most alarming way.
"Tammy? Tamora! TAMORA!" shouted Felix as he tried to shake his trembling wife from sleeping.
She quickly sat upright and punched Felix straight out of there bed, still shaken from her dream. After realizing that it was a dream, she frantically looked around for her husband, realizing she had just hammered him into the wall.
"Felix? Oh, I'm sorry shortstack! I didn't mean to do that," she said quickly as she got up to help her husband.
"No problem sweetie," he groaned, as he used his hammer to fix his now ghastly looking face. He looked up at her and realized something was wrong.
"Oh my land! You've been crying!" He exclaimed, surprised to see her beautiful face with tear stains on it.
"I'm fine Fix-It," she said sternly as she tried to avoid looking him in the face.
Felix, knowing his wife to a somewhat high degree, knew that when something bothered her she would avoid eye contact at all costs. He also knew that she rarely ever cried, much less shook violently in her sleep.
"Sweetie? Look at me," he said cupping her face in his hands and staring at her with puppy dog eyes. "What's wrong?"
Looking into his baby blue eyes, which caused her fail at concealing any emotion, Tamora began to recount the events of her nightmare to him. Steadily she described to him her unhappy childhood in which her mother always seemed to disapprove of her for wanting to go out and fight in a "man's war" (as her mother had called it). She also told Felix that she thought that she lost him to another cybug, just as she had her first fiance.
"Felix, I'm not ready to be a mother," she whispered unhappily. "I don't know the first thing about babies or being a mom or love. I just get everything that I love killed," she finished, clearly on the verge of tears.
"Tamora Jean Calhoun," he said, startling her a bit as he barely ever called her by her full, maiden name, "if there is one thing that you have taught me, it's how to love. Before I met you, I thought I was happy as a sunflower in May. But you came along and taught me there is so much more to love than being admired by your co-workers and given pie every day. The tough as nails Sergeant Calhoun I know of is never afraid to look a new challenge straight in the eye and stare it down till' it shrivels into less than a speck of dust. You, my dynamite gal, will make an excellent mother."
Tamora looked at the little handyman and wondered how the hack he could make her feel so good with just a few sappy words of encouragement. She would never know…She again looked at him and realized that he too looked somewhat upset.
"Thanks Fix-It. What were you doing up anyways?" she asked.
Felix sighed. "I wasn't exactly having the greatest dream ever either. But don't you worry bout it ma'am I-" he stopped as the Sergeant pulled him in for a sweet, passionate kiss. She felt his body go weak as the kiss went on.
"I'll do it again if you tell me what's wrong solider," she whispered, smirking deviously.
With a bright red hue all over his face Felix, stuttered out, "Y-yes ma'am. Eherm. Well, you see I just dreamt of you leaving me. I mean, I know it was kind of ridiculous but you kept saying that I wasn't fit to be the father of your baby. And it's true; you're tall and beautiful, and brave. And then there's me, who is scared of ducks, short, and just a handyman who fixes windows with a hammer. Golly, that doesn't even make sense," he said sadly.
"Fix-It if I ever hear you mention, much less think that I would ever leave you, I will personally feed you to the cy-bugs. You are so many other things than 'just a handyman'. You're my husband and so much more," she said gently.
"How so ma'am?"
"Well, you've fixed my broken heart, first to see me cry, first to hear about my mother, first to give me a baby, Felix, a BABY!…which also means you were first at, ahem, 'other things' if you know what I mean," she said with a sly smirk. Felix immediately began to blush intensely, which made Tamora laugh.
"And I wouldn't ask for anybody else to EVER be the father of my child, except for you. Besides, you will definitely make a great father, Felix. You're so loving and caring and compassionate. Who WOULDN'T love you?"
"Thank you ma'am," Felix said bashfully, still blushing.
"Anytime Fix-It," she said as she pulled him into his promised kiss, which was just as sweet as the first one.
As they began to drift off to sleep, Felix gently placed his hand on his wife's stomach and said through a yawn, "You are gonna be one dynamite kid if you have half the spunk your mother has."
Unbeknownst to him, Tamora smirked silently as she heard her husband speak to their baby.
*Another cute little chapter there :) . I think I'm gonna do a chapter about the two of them trying to design a nursery at some point, and suggestions for room themes would be very much appreciated! Please leave reviews, and thanks for reading! *