Alex rounded on Emily. "You're pregnant?" she asked incredulously.
Emily winced at the words as if she'd physically struck her. She turned to Lily and muttered, "Thanks, kid..." The girl shrugged as if it couldn't have been helped and returned to the colouring book that was sitting open on the coffee table, crayons scattered around it. Turning back to Alex, Emily held up her hands to plead for patience. "I can explain..."
Crossing her arms over her chest, Alex seemed to silently dare her to come up with a satisfactory explanation for how she'd wound up pregnant.
"Maybe we should sit?" Emily suggested, considering the fact that she didn't entirely trust her legs to support her in the face of Alex's ire. When Alex nodded once in concession, Emily gratefully (and wearily) dropped into the nearest sofa.
"Well?" Alex prompted when she said nothing further.
Emily exhaled slowly in an attempt to fortify her nerves. Words still failed her, so she exhaled again, before finally launching into her explanation. "Going undercover is sometimes...shall we say, messy. Sometimes you have to do things you don't like or want or even find morally repugnant."
"Like sleeping with your target?" Alex fired back, finding it extremely difficult to stay calm when confronted with such a brutal truth.
Emily's gaze was cast towards the floor, unable to look in Alex's eyes, but she nodded.
"How could you do this, Emily?"
"I didn't have a choice!" Emily insisted. "If I hadn't he would have suspected something and he probably would have killed me..." She shook her head slowly, helplessly. She looked like she wanted to say something more, but couldn't quite seem to find the words.
Alex, for her part, didn't seem to be having the same trouble. "Weren't you on birth control?" she asked, as if the answer should have been obvious.
Scraping her teeth across her bottom lip nervously, Emily spent a few moments stammering before she confessed, "I didn't know vampires could get pregnant..."
"Jesus Christ, Emily..." Alex muttered, tossing her hands up in resignation. Then, she seemed to realize she'd just cursed in front of a four year old. "I mean... Sorry, Lily, please don't repeat what I just said."
Lily glanced up from her colouring. "I know what swears are," she informed Alex quite proudly.
Emily couldn't help but grin, just a little, at the girl's candour. She wisely didn't say as much, though.
It took a few moments for Alex to remember that she was in the middle of fighting with Emily, at which point she once again rounded on her, fixing her with a pointed stare. "Vampires can only conceive with other vampires," she said, uncertain whether Emily knew that fact or not, "And a born vampire is almost always much more powerful than a made vampire..."
"So I've been told," Emily said with a nervous little laugh. She hadn't even been a vampire a whole year yet, didn't know the first thing about being undead or a mother and suddenly she was facing the reality of having to raise an incredibly powerful undead child...so, suffice it to say, she was more than a little nervous. "Look," she said, gesturing helplessly, "Everything you could possibly be thinking about me right now, I've already thought it about myself. I hate that this happened: that the government pimped me out for a profile, that I'm pregnant by a monster in every sense of the word, that I had to come to you on my knees begging your forgiveness... You're possibly the only person I've ever truly cared for and the fact that I've hurt you like this is killing me. The only thing worse would be losing you because of it."
Alex shook her head slowly, teeth scraping across her bottom lip so hard it was lucky she didn't rip it open with her fang. "Emily, what you're asking me..." She didn't seem to have the words to describe the ridiculousness of the situation, though.
"I know," she agreed. "But you don't have to forgive me – you never have to forgive me because I'm not sure I can ever forgive myself." She exhaled shakily, gave a half sob. "Besides, I'm not even sure I'm going to have it," she added meekly.
In a small voice, Alex asked a breathless, "What?"
Emily looked up from where her gaze had been deliberately trained on the floor to finally meet Alex's eyes, pleading through expression alone for Alex to understand, rather than condemn. "Like you said, I was sleeping with my target," she murmured, "It's one thing to have fucked him to maintain my cover – that, I can compartmentalize, I can live with. But having his baby would mean real undeniable proof of it. I don't know that I can stomach spending not only the next seven months, but the next eighteen years, being constantly reminded of him and what he did to me."
"Okay," Alex said slowly, digesting that.
In an even smaller voice, Emily added, "It's okay if that makes you hate me. I'm not even sure I like me right now."
"I don't hate you," Alex insisted. "I could never hate you, Emily. And I don't want you to make a decision based on what you think I want. If you want to have this baby, I think you should do that. And if you decide not to have it, I'll support you in that too."
"But?" Emily prompted.
She sighed, looking rather like she wasn't sure she wanted to say the next part aloud. "But I don't know that I can trust you anymore."
Emily had been afraid of that, but she could hardly blame her for feeling that. Afterall, if the situation were reversed, she wasn't sure she would be forgiving. "Just...don't ask me to watch you leave," she said.
"Em...even if we can't be together, I don't want to lose you completely," she insisted. "Lord knows neither of us is any position to turn down a friend." She gave a small self-deprecating laugh.
Emily knew she was right. But that didn't make it any easier to swallow the loss.
