Skulduggery stared at his partner and the only thing he could get out was just a simple "What?"
"Did you not hear what I said?!" Valkyrie screamed and felt how the panic started to wrap its claws around her. "I am pregnant!"
The worst chock let go of him and Skulduggery managed to take the few steps that separated him from Valkyrie. He laid his arms around her in a hard hug. He stroked her back slowly while he whispered calming words in her ear.
Valkyrie started to cry and laid her arms around Skulduggery. She desperately pushed herself against him and clenched her fists around the back of his suit. Her whole body shook from her violent crying and instead of getting calmed from Skulduggery's words her panic rose. She wanted to be anywhere except for here and now. She wanted to rewind the clock to before she had seen that god damn pregnancy test!
"Valkyrie, take some deep breaths. Calm down. Everything will be alright."
"No, it won't, Skulduggery! I don't even want children! At least I don't think so… I can not see myself as a mother! I don't know how to take care of a child! I was barely there under the first years of Alice's life! It was my reflection that was with her most of the time!"
"Sch, easy. You would be a wonderful mother, Valkyrie."
Valkyrie looked up at Skulduggery with tears streaming down her cheeks and with bloodshot eyes. "You think so?"
"I know it. I have seen how you act when you are around Alice and you are like a second mother to her. I know that there is a difference in taking care of a sister and your own children - I have after all had experience with both of those things – but not as much as you think. The difference above all lays in that with your own children you have to do basically all of the raising on your own, while with a sibling it is enough with you being there when they need someone to play with or talk to."
Valkyrie smiled a little and dried away a few tears. "I will confess that I totally forgot that you had a family a long time ago. Sorry, but I just got so shocked when I saw the plus, even though deep down I already knew. I just haven't want to confess it to myself because I am terrified of the thought of having responsibility and take care of a completely defenceless little human. I am terrified that I will do the wrong choices and that the child will have to go through all the same things that I have gone through and that is something I wouldn't even wish my worst enemy."
"If you want to keep the child you will not be alone in raising it, Valkyrie. I will be here and even your family and our closest friends. I can guarantee you that Tanith would love to babysit."
As if her best friend had known that they were talking about her, Valkyries phone rang. On the display stood Tanith's name and when Valkyrie answered her girlfriend shrieked in her ear. Valkyrie was forced to hold the phone away from her as not to get tinnitus.
"Val, I have something wonderful to tell you! Is Skulduggery close by?!"
Valkyrie turned on the speaker function on her phone. "Yes he stands next to me. You are on speaker so it's just to speak."
"Good! Well…" Tanith got quiet for a few seconds before she giggled. "I and Ghastly are going to have a baby! I am pregnant, Valkyrie!"
Valkyrie froze and felt how her pulse started to soar again. She looked up at Skulduggery but he did not reveal anything. He looked down at the phone in Valkyrie's hand before he said with neutral voice "Congratulations Tanith. What did Ghastly say when he got a hold of the good news?"
"He literally jumped out of the couch he was sitting in when I showed him the test! He was shocked at first of course but when he finally understood what I had told him he lifted me up and spun me around on the living room floor."
"Congrats Tani. I am really happy for your sake", Valkyrie said and smiled despite her own concerns. She was genuinely happy for her best friend since she knew that Tanith had wanted to have children for a while now and that she had been worried that she wouldn't be able to get any.
"Thanks both of you! I am so happy! I can not believe it's true! I wonder what gender it is. I hope on a daughter and Ghastly of a son. What do you think?"
"Son" said both Skulduggery and Valkyrie at the same time.
"God you are so boring!" Tanith laughed.
Valkyrie took a deep breath. She opened her mouth to say something but then closed it again. Skulduggery took her hand and pushed it. He looked Valkyrie in the eyes and nodded. Even if it was hard for her to tell Valkyrie knew that her best friend deserved to know.
"It got so quiet. Has something happened? Was I calling at a bad time?"
"I…" Valkyrie bit her lip and felt how her hands were covered in sweat. "I and Skulduggery also have a thing to tell you. We are also going to have a baby, Tanith. I am also pregnant."
The silence that followed was so thick that you would have been able to cut through it with a knife. Valkyrie was just about to ask if Tanith was still there when a new scream of happiness escaped her.
"Is it true?! Oh my god! We're going to have babies at the same time, Valkyrie! Oh god, this I could never have hoped for! Do you understand what this means?! We can go and shop baby things together! We can even have a joint baby shower!"
"Tanith…" Valkyrie began but got interrupted by Ghastly that now had joined the conversation.
"Why are you screaming like that Tanith? Has something happened?"
"Ghastly, Skulduggery and Valkyrie is also going to have a baby!"
"What are you saying?!" Ghastly took the phone from Tanith. "Skul, is this true?"
"Hello to you too, old friend. Yes, it is true. Don't ask me how it happened but that's how it is. Valkyrie is also pregnant and as far as I know the child is mine."
"Oh my god..." Ghastly whispered. "It's just to congratulate then."
"Thanks but we don't know if we will keep the child. Valkyrie isn't very happy about these news."
"Skulduggery!" Valkyrie screamed and stared furiously at him.
Skulduggery shrugged. "They deserve to know the truth, don't they? Better that they get to hear it now than later and gets their hopes crushed."
"You could at least had let me tell it myself, you idiot!" Valkyrie screamed and felt how the tears once again poured down her cheeks.
"Eh… I'll call you later, Valkyrie. I hear that you've a few things to talk about. Congrats once again, no matter what you decide on. I love you, sis." Tanith made a kissing sound before hanging up.
Valkyrie laid down the phone on the basin and took a deep breath before she turned towards Skulduggery. She was still crying but this time it was tears of anger. Her body began to shake and she clenched her fists hard. "You know what? Sometimes you are very insensitive, mister Pleasant."
Skulduggery took a step back from his partner. He knew that when she had that tone and called him "Mister Pleasant" she was extremely angry with him. The best thing he could do then was to give her some space and don't touch her. He had had to learn this the hard way and had still not forgotten their first real argument where she had locked him out for several days afterwards. He hated arguing with Valkyrie and did everything in his power to avoid arguments to the extent that it was possible.
"I apologize if I have hurt your feelings Valkyrie, but I say the same thing now as I was saying just now: our best friends deserve to know the truth. How do you think Tanith had reacted and felt if she had found out afterwards that you were pregnant but hadn't told her?"
"That is not why I am angry and you know that! I am angry because you consider yourself having the right to decide over me! When I had wanted to tell Tanith about my thoughts whether we should keep the baby or not I would have done so! It is not even half an hour since I found it out myself and that is far from enough time for me to have been able to decide what I should do! I am terrified right now, Skulduggery!"
"I understand that, Valkyrie, I really do. I felt something similar when I found out that my late wife was pregnant with out daughter. I was of course happy and expectant, but also terrified that I wouldn't be able to give her a good and safe life. I was terrified over that I wouldn't love her, that I would be a bad father. The thing I was most afraid of was that I would be like my own father: violent.
You have to understand Valkyrie that I already had a lot of hate inside me when I met my wife. I was terrified over that all that hate I had inside me and all the violence I exercised on my enemies would trickle over to my family and above all to my daughter. What if I did the most forbidden thing and hurt my own child, as my father had hurt me? What if I under any of all the nights that she would cry uncontrollably and be uncomfortable, which I knew would come, just got enough and decided to silence her?"
"Skulduggery…" Valkyrie whispered and stretched out her hand towards him.
Skulduggery took her hand in his and continued: "I hadn't had to worry, since when I got to see her for the first time knew that I would do everything in my powers to make sure that nothing happened to her. I can not describe in words how happy I was when I got to hold her for the first time. All my doubts disappeared immediately and I knew that I never would be able to harm her. She was my everything."
Valkyrie's tears had now passed over from tears of anger to tears of sadness. She could hear in Skulduggery's voice how much he still missed his family. She laid her free hand over her stomach without thinking about it and didn't understand that she had done it until Skulduggery laid his hand above hers.
"Valkyrie, I am not telling this to you to make you keep the child, but because I want to make you understand that I will support you no matter what you decide to do. I have had the good fortune to experience how it is being a father once and that is enough for me. If you on the other hand choose to keep the child I will do everything in my power to make sure that our child will be safe and get loads of unconditional love.
With that said I also have to confess that this frightens even me. I have no idea of how this happened or how it is possible since it should be impossible. I have no idea if I also want another child, if I can take of another child or even if I am ready for it despite it being such a long time ago since my own child got taken away from me. I do not think that you never really get over your child's death, especially if it's a brutal death." Skulduggery took Valkyrie in his arms, hugged her and gave her temple a kiss.
"Thanks, it means a lot to me to hear you tell this to me and that you are honest about where you stand in this situation. I know that it may sound strange, but I am relieved over hearing that you feel doubt just like me. I was so scared that you would be overjoyed over the news and think that I am horrible that even consider abortion."
"It is your body, Valkyrie. It is you that is going to carry the child, no one else. Of course the choice is yours, don't believe anything else."
"I know, but it still feels as if I let down my family if I would do an abortion. My parents, especially my mum, has been talking about grandchildren for a while now. They are starting to get old and would really like to experience how it is to be a grandmother and a grandfather before they get to old to keep up with it. Alice is just 17 and are way too young to get any kids yet. She has for gods sake not even had a proper relationship yet! "Valkyrie laughed and dried away her tears.
"What your parents want has nothing to do with what you want, Valkyrie. You can not make them happy at the cost of your own happiness. I have seen a lot of women under my 450+ years that has become pregnant just because it is expected of them. It hasn't ended good for many of them and above all for the children in question. How can you be expected to take care of someone that you haven't wanted in the first place? It is hard to bond with someone that you don't have any emotional connections to."
"Wow, this conversation escalated quickly." Valkyrie couldn't help but smile.
Skulduggery laughed and gave her a kiss. "It may be, but I am just saying what you need to hear. Becoming a mother is not a simple task and many sacrifices must be made. You have to be prepared for those sacrifices, Valkyrie."
"I know and that is what scares me the most. Will I really be able to put myself and the thing I love to do most of all to the side to instead have to devote all my waking time under many years to come for someone else? I am scared that I won't be able to and that I will go crazy." Valkyrie sighed and looked into Skulduggery's eye sockets.
"The thing that scares me most of all is that I won't be able to love the child, Skulduggery. What if I carry the child for several months and love it as long as it lays in my stomach to as soon as it is out of me won't be able to connect to it? What if I only see the child as an obstacle? What if I purely think that our child is ugly?"
Skulduggery couldn't help it. He started to laugh.
"What's so funny?!" Valkyrie said angrily. "I am serious! What if I give birth to such an ugly child that I won't be able to look at it?'
"My dear Valkyrie, you never cease to surprise me. Have you ever seen an ugly new-born?"
"No, but sometime must be the first. What if I will be the first?"
"You won't be. Considering how beautiful you yourself are and how bony I am, I can't other but think that the child will look a lot like you. With your beauty no child can get ugly."
"Don't say that. Considering that I have no clue as to how you looked like when you were alive maybe our child gets all your traits instead? What if I wouldn't like your appearance when you were alive?"
"I want to remember that I on multiple occasions have told you that I was quite handsome when I was alive and that I had nothing to be ashamed of."
"But you have an ego that never stops growing so what you perceive as beautiful I might perceive as ugly."
"Now you're just being stubborn." Skulduggery laughed again and pressed Valkyrie against himself before he gave her a new kiss.
Valkyrie sighed of pleasure and kissed Skulduggery back. When they pulled apart from each other she lay her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. She could feel how she relaxed and how her thoughts started to become more collected instead of flying around like an angry swarm of bees in her brain. "Thanks once again for being so understanding, Skulduggery."
"You don't have to thank me for anything, Valkyrie. I am your partner and one of my duties is to be understanding of your feelings."
"I know, but I still want to thank you." She looked up at him. "I must be able to ask a question that I need to get a serious answer to. I want you to answer truthfully and don't say what you think I want to hear."
"Of course, Valkyrie. Have I ever lied to you?"
"Not what I know." Valkyrie lay her hands around Skulduggery's cheekbones and looked into his eye sockets. "Skulduggery, do you want me to keep this child? If it was you that got to decide, would you like to be a father once again?"
Skulduggery lay his hands on Valkyrie's shoulders and squeezed them carefully. "You wanted an honest answer Valkyrie and that I am going to give you. My answer is that I will support you no matter what you choose. If you choose to do an abortion I understand why and I won't be disappointed or angry with you. I won't leave you but be there for you. The same thing applies if you choose to keep the baby. If you want to give that which is called parenthood a chance I will be by your side all the way."
"But if you had todecide? Would you want to have another child?"
Skulduggery was quiet for a while before he slowly said "If it was up to me I would like to keep the child."
"God, you're not making the decision easier for me…" Valkyrie sighed and closed her eyes.
"I understand that, but you wanted to know where I stand in this and now I have told you. Whatever you choose I will support you as I said, Valkyrie. I love you, until the end."
"I love you too, Skulduggery. Until the end." Valkyrie smiled and stroked her belly. "The whole thing still feels so unreal… I still can't understand that I have something that is growing inside me right now and that has been doing so for several weeks already…"
"I couldn't believe that it was true either until my wife's stomach started to grow and I could feel how my daughter was moving in there. It is easy to believe that the woman in question imagines, especially in the old days when there was no pregnancy tests or ultrasounds."
"I sometimes forget that you are born in a completely different century than the one I have grown up in."
"Not strange, Valkyrie. If you have grown up with certain things it can be difficult to understand how others who were born before you have had it. Especially when the person in question has lived close to 500 years."
"And I that thought I started to get old when I turned 20. Alice asked how old I was and when I said that I had just turned 20 she said 'that is like really old!''", Valkyrie laughed.
Skulduggery also laughed. "Children are wonderful. They have a totally different time perspective than we adults have."
"They sure do. I can not understand that she is almost a grown-up! She can take her drivers license next year if she wants to!"
"It is important to take advantage of the time you have, especially if you have a non-magical family. Now you have the luck that your sister also is magic and probably will live for a long time as well, as long as she continues with the magic."
"I am pretty sure she will. Which is also one more reason to why mum and dad has started to nag about grandchildren. They know that I and Alice will live long after them themselves have disappeared." Valkyrie sighed. "One side of me wants to fulfil their wish since I really want that the years that I and Alice have left with them will be full of happy memories that I can look back at when I am a few hundred years old and miss them."
"You can still create many nice memories without a grandchild in the picture, you know. Don't get a child just because others want you to have it, Valkyrie."
"I know, Skulduggery. I'm just so confused right now. One side of me wants one thing and the other the total opposite. Moreover I feel like a betrayer towards Tanith if I would choose to do an abortion, since she is so happy over her pregnancy. You heard how happy she was when she told it and how happy she became over the thought of being able to share this experience together with her best girlfriend. The side of me that is thinking of keeping the child thinks it would be nice and make it easier to have a best friend that goes through the same thing as myself and that can help me in the meantime. If I keep the baby Tanith and I can always support one another through the pregnancy and also through the first time after our children are born, but that of course is only if I am going to keep it..."
"The best right now I think would be if you call Tanith and tell her what you think and feel right now. Maybe it will make your decision easier, maybe not. But I think that it is important that you talk to someone and above all another woman. Even if I am an excellent person to discuss with I have no experience of caring a child, just being a spectator of it."
"You are right as usual, Skulduggery. I will call Tanith now immediately. I will go upstairs and talk if that's okay? I would really like to talk undisturbed with her."
"Of course, Valkyrie. I will be down here if you need me. I was going to make some tea for you that you can drink when you've finished talking."
"Thanks darling", Valkyrie said and gave Skulduggery a tender kiss before she walked out from the bathroom and went up the stairs to the upper floor.
She walked into her bedroom and closed the door behind her. She took a deep breath before she took up Tanith's number in her phone and called her. While she waited for her best friend to answer her phone a thousand thoughts had time to fly around in her head. How would Tanith react when she got to hear Valkyrie's thoughts around her pregnancy? Would she be understanding in the same way as Skulduggery had been?
"Val, I was just about to call you! How are you? Have you and Skulduggery had time to talk?" Tanith asked when she answered.
"Hi, Tani. I feel good under the circumstances. Just a little dazed. This whole thing with me being pregnant came as a bit of a surprise for me. I did not think that Skulduggery could knock me up, considering that he's..."
"A living skeleton without any human body parts?" Tanith filled in to Valkyrie when she hesitated.
"Yes, exactly."
"Have you thought of that your child could have been produced with help from magic? Both you and Skulduggery are pretty powerful sorcerers so it's not completely impossible."
"That thought has struck me as well, but I guess that we have to wait until I have visited Synecdoche. She can probably help us get the right side of this."
"I hope that you won't take offence, Valkyrie, but is it okay if I ask about what the whole thing was about considering that which Skulduggery said about you not knowing if you want to keep the baby? I know you've said that you're not that keen on children, not yet for a while at least. But now that you're actually pregnant... What are your feelings around the whole thing?"
"I actually don't know, Tanith. One side of me wants to make an abortion, but the other wants to give the mother role a chance. Both sides are equally strong so I am literaly torn. I still can't really grip it. I think that I am still in shock."
"Not so strange since you don't want to start a family, not yet for another few hundred years, if ever. It is a completely different thing for me that on one side has lived longer and that actually wants to become a mother, so I will confess that I can't really put myself in your situation right now. But you should know that both I and Ghastly support you 100 % no matter how this will end."
"Really? So if I would make an abortion you wouldn't be disappointed with me?"
"I will confess that the first thing that appeared in my head when you said that you also were pregnant was that I became relieved that I would have someone else by my side that would be able to help me through the pregnancy since she will go through the exakt same thing. With that said I won't be disappointed if you choose to get rid of the child. Skulduggery has probably already told you this but you should not walk around and carry a child you don't want. It is not super either to you or the child, especially the child."
Valkyrie did not notice that she had held her breath until she let out the air in a deep exhalation. The relief that washed through her almost made her dizzy. She hadn't needed to worry what Tanith would think, she supported her no matter what would happen in the future.
"I must confess that that thought also has occurred to me. About that what you said of having someone at your side that is going through the same thing, I mean. I still remember very clearly how mum acted when she was pregnant with Alice. Especially at the end when she was biggest and Alice wanted out. She wasn't the most funniest person to be around then."
Tanith laughed. "I can imagine. Being pregnant is not a cakewalk, even if you avoid the worst ailments. I am dreading a lot over how it will be going forward, actually. The only thing you can hope for is that you won't be bed bound but still can continue to do the most yourself."
"I would go crazy if I would become bound to my bed for the rest of the pregnancy. You know how I get when I get restless."
"All too well, Valkyrie." Tanith laughed again. "I have to go now. Ghastly calls. He wants us to sit down and write down a plan over what needs to be done going forward. Number one on that list is of course book a time at a midwife. I am actually considering calling Synecdoche since she is one of the few doctors I trust. She also has her own private clinic so China isn't controlling her in the same way she is doing with all the doctors at the Sanctuary. I still don't trust her. It doesn't matter that she has done a lot of good things for the magic community."
"You do what feels best for you, Tanith. We have to catch up when we both have been on our doctors appointments. Congrats to you and Ghastly. I am very happy for you two."
"The same to you and Skulduggery, Valkyrie. I hope you will make a decision soon. Don't wait too long, because if you want to cancel the pregnancy you should do it soon before it's too late."
"I know, Tanith. Don't worry, I will make a decision soon. Love you. Say hi to Ghastly."
"Love you too, Valkyrie. Say hi to and congratulate Skulduggery from us." Tanith made a kissing sound and hung up.
Valkyrie looked down at the phone in her hand and felt how a part of the anxiety and shock that had laid over her like a thick blanket slowly started to lift away from her. Her conversation with Tanith had made her thoughts clear somewhat and she knew that no matter what happened the upcoming months she had support from numerous directions. She was not alone in this and that she was extremely happy for.