(A/N): We're back with Vi, Evie, Pip, and Hettie, in the aftermath of Evie telling them she doesn't want kids.

Trigger Warnings: Everyone tries to be supportive, but some mildly insensitive things are said on the subject in the process, most of which are corrected (forcibly or otherwise). Lots of baby slander, basically. Certain characters don't think about what they're saying before they say it, or don't have the perspective needed to be the most tactful, but no one means it in a hurtful or offensive way, they just don't know better. More in the end notes, since I can't really explain it properly without spoilers. Just know there's a lot of talk about babies/having babies/having kids, and not all of it is handled tactfully/with the sensitivity it deserves.

January 16th, 1966

Vi

"I don't think I want kids."

It was a strange thing to say- or at least, that's what the subconscious part of my brain was trying to tell me- but as I stared up at Evie where she was hanging out over the edge of the roof with a worryingly apprehensive look in her eyes, I forced myself to push any such thoughts aside. "You don't?" I asked as casually as possible, and I saw the tentative relief bloom in her eyes as I didn't make a big deal of it.

"You don't?" Pip asked skeptically, and that relief died. "Are you sure?" Hettie smacked him on the arm, and he jumped. "Ow! What? What did I do?" She glared at him pointedly, and he stared back at her with wide, clearly confused eyes. There was more than a little hurt there, too, which I knew she would be having a hard time with.

I elbowed him lightly in the side. "Tact," I hissed at him softly, and he shot me an almost panicked look.

"Am I-?" He cut himself off, frowning deeply. Pip always looked just... wrong, with a furrowed brow- like you knew something had to have gone extremely awry with the universe, when you saw him like that. "Did I... say something insensitive?" His voice was nearly unbearably soft, as though he thought the likelihood of making another mistake was high... and the outcome would be terminal.

Hettie shook her head, even as her grimace told the opposite story; she squeezed his shoulder with the same hand she had smacked him with. "You- It, could've been a bit more... considerate- empathetic- but..." She trailed off, and it was obvious she wasn't blaming Pip- none of us were- but he still sagged as though she had just delivered the dressing down of a lifetime.

"I'm... Sorry, Evie." He didn't look up at her right away, which was something he had learned was sometimes necessary from his time dealing with Hettie, but when he did, he was clearly making an effort to seem as non-judgemental- and empathetic- as possible. "I- I didn't mean it." Evie stared down at him fondly- at all of us- evidently not angry in the least. Hurt, maybe, a little, but not angry.

"You still have no idea what you said, do you?" She asked wryly, with more amusement than even I thought the situation warranted, and Pip flushed, answering her question without words. Not that that ever stopped him, anyway.

"I- I know the words that came out of my mouth, but... I'm not entirely sure why- why-" Why it might hurt her.

Evie shook her head at him with an almost indulgent smile. "It didn't upset me, Pip. You didn't upset me. I think Hettie and Vi just know that... Well, sometimes, men don't believe women." He blinked, and a kind of horrified comprehension spread across his face. "Women don't believe women, a lot of the time, too- especially when it comes to this. It's not-" She paused, and took a deep breath as if to prepare herself. Give herself time to think. "I don't have a problem with kids, in general. I think they can be pretty cool, actually- after a certain age. And I can't say that I won't-" She paused again, the corner of her lips tugging downward as if she was thinking about something else. "If I didn't have to deal with the whole... pregnancy/baby portion of things, I could maybe see myself doing the other 'motherhood' type things, someday, but... only once I found the right person to do it with... and only when we were both ready."

It was a lot. A lot of information, a lot to take in, and a lot to think about- later, when I didn't have to worry about keeping my facial expression and voice as casual and accepting as Evie needed me to. "I mean, yeah," I said faux-nonchalantly. "Babies suck, that's kind of their thing- and having kids before both parents are ready is just a... an awful idea, so... yeah. I'd say you've got it pretty figured out." I felt Pip and Hettie staring, even as Evie smiled down at me with some slight dubiousness- like she wanted to believe me, but didn't know whether she should... or could.

"I don't dislike them," She said plainly, as if she was giving her opinion on the weather, rather than infants. "They seem... perfectly nice-" Pip snorted, then immediately tried to hide it with a cough. Hettie, beside him, made no such effort. "-they're just, well..." She hesitated, then sat back from the edge of the roof to make a grabby gesture with her hands, before staring down at us pointedly. "Y'know?" Um... did we?

"...they're grabby?" I asked supportively, despite my uncertainty, and Evie made a face that told me I hadn't quite hit the mark.

"That, too. I don't- I can't hold that against them, I just- The tiny hands, and the big eyes, and the lack of teeth, they're just a bit... creepy."

I blinked, and off to the side I heard a loud bark of laughter before it was muffled as Hettie pushed her face into Pip's shoulder. Partially muffled, at least. When I glanced at them briefly, I caught Pip smothering his own grin in Hettie's hair, as if neither of them could help their amusement- so, I guess it was up to me to reassure Evie, yet again. "Maybe you're missing something," I told her, and her eyebrows drew together a minute amount. "Maybe that thing that makes babies seem cute to people- what if you just don't have it?" I saw Hettie lift her head from the corner of my eye, suddenly no longer having trouble keeping her laughter from spilling out. Evie frowned down at me.

"Do you think babies are cute?"

After considering this for a second, I shrugged. "Some of them, sure- definitely not all of them. Tiffany's baby looked like a petrified toad wrapped in a blanket, honestly, and they wouldn't shut up about how cute the thing was." The corner of Evie's mouth quirked up, even as her brows remained slightly furrowed. "Nigel was pretty cute though, right? He was all chubby cheeked and drooly, with that sparse, downy hair that babies have-" I cut myself off, seeing her frown. Evie, clearly noticing my pause, sighed quietly.

"No, he had that- No." She seemed like she'd been about to say something bad about him- to point out some flaw that I hadn't noticed or cared about- before she remembered he was just an innocent baby, and decided to keep it hidden away in her head. Well, he had been an innocent baby- he would have to be six or seven, by now. "That's one of the reasons I knew I- I know he was cute. Objectively. That doesn't help." I hesitated again, wary of making her feel isolated, or unrelatable.

"I mean, most of the people saying Tiff's kid was cute were probably lying, but- Tiff wasn't. Tiff thought the kid was the cutest damn thing in the whole world- maybe... maybe you would, too. If you had one of your own?" I heard Hettie make an angry noise in the back of her throat, right before her hand came into contact with my arm. "Ah! Hettie! Was that really n-"

She cut me off with a sharp glare before, somewhere between leaving me and reaching Evie, that glare turned into a soft look. "Ignore Vi, she's talking out her arse." Irritation crawled up my spine to nestle red hot at the base of my skull; Pip slipped a hand into mine, and suddenly, the heat of said irritation mellowed to a mildly unpleasant warmth. "She just doesn't want you to feel bad, but she's- Sometimes, even if the people around you can't relate to what you're going through, it doesn't mean you're wrong. As I said to Pip: Being different doesn't make you weird; it doesn't make you broken- it just makes you different."

Evie's lips lifted- then almost immediately fell back down again, unfortunately. "Hettie," She said calmly, evenly, despite the pain evident in her eyes. "It's okay. It's not- It's fine. No, I don't think the fact the kid is mine- er, biologically- would affect my issues, but... Vi's just trying to offer any possible solution she can come up with. She's- trying to be supportive, just like you are... give her a break." By the look on Hettie's face, I had the feeling she had already been giving me a break for a while, oddly enough.

"It's just-" Hettie cut herself off, before she could get too frustrated. "I know you, Evie. Whenever something like this happens- comes up- you've already gone through every 'possible solution' a hundred times over, long before anyone else ever hears about it. And... I know what your, 'God, I wish she hadn't said that' face looks like better than anyone." Evie smiled slightly, even if it did look a little sad- then her eyes lifted, and a real smile appeared.

"What's going on?" A voice asked from behind us, and I knew without having to check that it was Lou. When I did look, though, I saw her standing only most of the way down the yard toward us, wrapped in an oversized jumper that had to be Pip's, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. This is what Evie had smiled at.

"Morning, Lou," She said, despite the fact that it had already been past noon when we'd first come out here, and Lou stared up at her with a bemused face, as if she truly couldn't comprehend how, or why, Evie might be up on the roof. "I love you guys and you're forbidden to forget it, Pip's family are off the Christmas card list because they called him weird, and I don't want babies because they creep me out."

Lou blinked heavily, then glanced at me; I shrugged and said, "Evie's also hiding a note she insists is a shopping list in the left pocket of her trousers, just so you're completely caught up." Evie rolled her eyes at me, and I wished I was in the right state of mind to stick my tongue out at her in return- oop, never mind, Hettie took care of it for me. Lou blinked again and looked to Pip, who still seemed a little hangdog. This didn't stop him from joining us in updating Lou, however.

"She also lied about who she was on the phone with, but she's still mad at me for eavesdropping, so pretend I didn't just tell you that." Evie shot him a surprisingly believable glare, and Pip answered it with an equally surprisingly cheeky smile. Lou, for her part, didn't seem any less confused.

"Okay," She said easily. "I'm hearing you. But... why is Evie on the roof?"

(A/N): Warnings Continued:

Pip voices his shock that Evie doesn't want kids (because she's rather maternal, as we've established), Hettie smacks him on the arm and Vi elbows him gently (I suppose physical violence technically needs to be tagged, then?). Hettie also smacks Vi later, when she's similarly insensitive. Evie tells them that she thinks babies are creepy, and Vi brings up two babies that they know (or knew), as examples of the fact that even she thinks some babies are ugly, while others are cute. Evie explains that while she isn't keen on the idea of babies, she doesn't have issues surrounding kids that aren't toddlers, and might want kids eventually, with the right person, as long as she doesn't have to deal with the pregnancy or baby section of things. Vi suggests that she may not think the baby was creepy if it was hers (which is a common argument for women who say they don't like kids- 'you just don't like the kid because it's not YOURS, if you had kids of your own, you would love it') and Evie says that whether or not the kid is hers biologically (she specifies biologically, since she recently had that conversation with Lisbet and Jerremyah about kits, and now that she's made her mind up about becoming a vampire, knows that if she does eventually want to do the whole motherhood thing, it isn't going to be possible to do it the 'traditional' way, aka, biologically), she's still going to find any baby creepy, because babies are just sort of alien to her.

Hettie is the most sympathetic/worried about being sensitive in this case, because she probably caught a lot of flack from her mother about having kids/wanting kids (which is the main reason why Hettie is currently extremely on the fence about wanting kids herself), and knows how it feels. Pip is the sensitive/empathetic one MOST of the time, but there are certain situations- like this one- where he didn't have the personal experience to relate to it, and didn't have the time to try to put himself into Evie's shoes, so he's unintentionally being a bit insensitive, and then beating himself up over it (after Hettie gets through with him). Vi says Hettie will be affected by Pip's hurt look, because Hettie always feels bad about making Pip feel bad more than anyone else, because she knows he's trying his best and he's the only person who has literally never said a mean thing about her, which she values VERY highly.

I feel it's at this point that I should mention that I don't have a problem with babies myself- I'm nervous around them, because they throw up and they're fragile and I'm worried about breaking them (the same reason I'm nervous around small animals), but I think they're cute 99% of the time. Evie's reaction to them is entirely her own, and trying to come up with a third thing for her to find creepy about them (which ended up being their lack of teeth) was quite difficult for me. (End Warnings)

Tiffany/Tiff is someone Vi works with, and Nigel is one of their cousin's kids, who they probably haven't seen since before/around the time their parents died- hence why he's now 'six or seven', since Evie was probably around 17 or 18 when their mother died and 19 or 20 when their father died, so assuming it was on their mother's side, that would be about right for them to stop seeing them after that.

Also, the petrified toad comment made me think of Trevor, Neville's toad.

You may have noticed that sometimes Hettie has a more 'sisterly' relationship with Evie than Vi does, sometimes- like when Vi wanted to stick her tongue out at Evie and Hettie did it for her. This is because Hettie doesn't feel the same urge to try to be seen as responsible by Evie that Vi does, which is why Vi doesn't want to do something 'childish', like stick her tongue out at Evie. I think a few years earlier, when Vi was still avoiding her responsibilities more, she absolutely would have stuck her tongue out at Evie- but also, Evie probably wouldn't have rolled her eyes at Vi like that, at that time. Basically, Vi and Evie's relationship holds a lot of baggage, and Hettie and Evie's relationship holds different baggage, so accordingly, they act differently with Evie than the other does, if that makes sense.

It was a productive week, this week; I wrote chapters 671-679 (five of those in one day, Saturday the 18th was especially productive!), and typed them all up.