1978

Billie stood with her forehead pressed against the window peeking into the hospital's maternity ward. 20 new babies all sleeping in their pink and blue bassinets; she counted, 11 boys, 9 girls, wasn't that the way it always worked? Couldn't ever be 50/50 for some reason, and couldn't ever be more girls than boys, it seemed to her it had always been that way, she wondered why? Most of them were asleep and not moving, and others were crying for something, she had also spotted a couple that already at the age of one day old managed to turn themselves over in their bassinets and get themselves undressed, those were apparently quite the overachievers. Billie had asked one of the attending nurses how long it takes a baby to learn to turn itself over and she had been surprised when the woman told her close to six months. Apparently that nurse never saw these babies.

That feeling registered in the back of her head and she knew another Immortal was near; she felt her back stiffen but otherwise she didn't move.

"See anybody we know?" Methos asked as he came up beside her and peered in.

"They had to put two of them into incubators, they were born too early," she said.

"Nothing new there," Methos said, "Thank God medical science has come as far as it had, a few decades ago they didn't have incubators for them so when the parents took them home, they kept them in the oven at night since it was the warmest place in the house."

"Hey," Methos felt his wife elbow him in the ribs a few times, as she often did when she wanted to make sure she had his undivided attention, "Hey, I've got a new question for you."

"What's that?" he asked.

"Alright, I can understand having one baby a time, I can even understand the logic in twins," she said, "But why do you think God created women, human women, to have multiple births? Three, four kids, five, what the hell? Ain't a woman alive with that many tits to feed them all."

Methos choked on the laugh that tried to get out of him. Leave it to his wife to be so blunt about such things.

"That's why today they make formula," he told her, "Multiple births are going to be becoming a more common thing all the time."

"Why?" Billie asked.

"Now that they've gone and invented a test tube baby, modern science is going to be experimenting with all kinds of things just to make a point of showing the world they can do it, they never take into consideration that you need to be an octopus to care for them all," he told her.

Billie pressed her forehead against the glass again and said, "One kid at a time isn't enough for these women, they ought to learn to be thankful that they can even have kids at all."

Ouch.

This wasn't the first time that they had discussed the many questions of why Immortals couldn't have children, and Methos also knew it wouldn't be the last time either. Of course he knew he was getting off easy, Billie might like children but she had never spoken much in favor of having them either. But that didn't change the fact that he knew that she, like every Immortal before her and after her, wondered why the fates that be had screwed her over out of her chance to even have a child. Especially, she had noted, given how many women could have children and just threw them away, both when they were born and now before with abortion being legalized. Perhaps you had to be a mortal to understand these things, but she was an Immortal and he was one too and to a whole breed of people who were born unable to have any children, it just didn't make any sense that if a person could have a baby and was able to have it and wasn't in any danger of dying if they carried it, why they would opt instead to have a doctor remove it and throw it away in the trash. Oh if only the shoe were on the other foot, he thought more than once, if only it was the mortals who were barren, just think if the 4 billion of them were never able to have any children, and only the few thousands of them could. But, he decided not to dwell on the subject, instead he decided to try changing the subject a bit.

"I once knew an Immortal woman who worked in a maternity ward," Methos told her, he didn't know why he started to tell her this of all things, it just popped out, "This was…about 20-30 years ago, they kept the mothers pretty doped up at the time, I don't think most of them even saw their babies for the first couple of days."

"So what?" Billie asked.

"Well…during one particularly slow period, when she knew the mothers would be kept in their rooms for a few days recovering from cesareans, she would come in and take one of the babies out of the ward and take it home with her."

Billie turned to him and asked him, "Are you serious?"

"Oh yes…she'd do that every so often, pick one baby, take it home for the night, wrap it up on an old sheet, keep it in a dresser drawer on the table, feed it milk at the same time she fed the cat…and then she'd go back to work the next day and put it back in its bed and nobody would be the wiser…it was a very short handed hospital."

"I guess so," Billie laughed, "And they never caught on?"

"No, I don't think so," he shook his head, "She was very careful about it."

Billie shrugged and said, "I guess it takes all kinds."

"You have no idea," Methos said, "See, she was an old one and I knew her a long time before that…she used to roam from one village to another, and steal a baby when nobody was looking, tried to keep them for herself, but we always caught her and took the baby back."

"We?" Billie asked, "You and your infamous brothers again?"

"One of them," Methos answered, "That was a very long time ago, before a lot of things happened."

"I suppose I'll have to take your word for that," she replied.

They had been married for almost three years, and it was within the first year that Billie found out her husband's true identity when they unexpectedly walked into a challenge with a very old acquaintance. After the fight he had been forced to tell her the truth, but only a small part of the truth; Billie was still in the dark about 99% of his life and even she knew it. Though, Methos had already made one giant leap for his own personal record in that he had actually married an Immortal, and he had known from the start that he could trust Billie, so with time passing she found out a little more about him than she had before. Of course it was too soon to tell, but he sincerely hoped that she would prove trustworthy enough that he could confide in her what he couldn't in anyone else. That was the problem with living as long as he did, to some degree every Immortal had things they couldn't discuss with other Immortals, but few carried around as many secrets as he did. It was very easy to imagine just how lonely that could get after a while, but to do it for 5,000 years, even he found it inconceivable and he'd had to do it all this time to ensure his survival.

One thing that Billie kept asking about, though she never really pressed the subject, and neither did he, she always asked about his brothers; which was to be expected, it was his own fault for opening that can of worms, but that damage was done and now Billie wanted to know all about them: who they were, what they were like, when the last time he saw them was, etc. He sincerely doubted she'd feel the same way if she ever did meet them, but he took solace in the fact that it wasn't anything he need worry about anytime soon. He hadn't even seen any of his brothers since before the turn of the century; he had no doubt they were still alive, but he hadn't had anything to do with them for almost 80 years, and for some reason he just didn't see the universe getting cocky enough to drop them back in his lap at this point in his life.

Billie looked up and saw a nursemaid come into the room. She'd gotten to know the young woman as well as she could since they never really talked to each other in the several months Billie had been coming to the hospital to see the babies whenever there was a boom in the local births. The poor dear on the other side of the glass was deaf, but she was able to read lips and she could sure as hell read hand gestures and follow where a finger pointed. She knew Billie wasn't the mother of any of these babies but she also knew that the young woman got a kick out of seeing them since she couldn't have any of her own. Billie pointed to a girl in one of the front bassinets; the nursemaid came over and found the one she was pointing at, one with the last name McTeague.

"What a horrible name to give a child," Billie commented.

"Why do you say that?" Methos asked.

She looked to him and said, "You saw 'Greed', you know why."

"Yes, I saw it back when it was the full eight hours," he told her, and added under his breath, "Eight hours of my life I'll never get back."

Billie elbowed him again and told him to be quiet. She watched as the nursemaid brought the baby over to the window and grabbed one of its tiny hands to wave at them.

"Hey," Billie said to her husband, "Why do you suppose parents always say that their children are beautiful?"

"What do you mean?" Methos asked.

"I mean look at them, they're all positively ugly," she said, "All pink and wrinkled like those bald cats, and they want to call that beautiful, my mother never had any trouble telling me I was ugly, I got along fine."

"I've explained this to you before, Billie, you never had a mother," Methos told her.

"Well I had a woman who raised me, that's close enough," she replied, "Anyway if she wasn't my mother maybe that's why it never bothered me when she said it."

Methos checked his watch and told her, "We better get going, it's getting late."

Billie waved the nursemaid off and followed her husband out of the hospital, when they were alone by their car she asked him, "Do you think someday modern science will find a way to do that test tube stuff for Immortals too?"

"What?" Methos asked.

"Well since we can't have kids naturally, maybe science would find a way we can do it unnaturally like the mortals are doing now," she said.

"I doubt it," he told her.

"Why not? Immortals are scientists too, aren't they?" Billie asked.

"They are, but that's not the point," Methos said, "Even if they could do it, for normal people it's a very chancy thing as it is, for our kind the odds will be even worse, it wouldn't be worth it."

"But you don't know that," Billie pointed out.

"No, but give it about ten years and let's see what progress the mortals can make before we start counting any chickens," Methos said as he got in the driver's side.

In response, Billie clucked and squawked as she got in beside him and she reached over and pecked him sharply with her teeth.

"Very funny," he replied in his usual cynical tone.

"I got a kick out of it," she said with a small smirk.

A/N: Like it or hate it, I'm anxious to know what everybody thinks of this story, feel free to sound off.