Edward Crichton - To Crown a Caesar

“And you wondered why I couldn’t tell you,” she said around a few lingering sobs. “I knew you would react like a child. Say something stupid like that. I just knew it.”

“I’m sorry, Helena. It was the only thing that popped into my head. I can’t think straight anymore and you surprised me,” I paused. “I still can’t believe it.”

“Well you’d better start, you jerk.”

“But how?” I asked, looking at the sand for answers. “It hasn’t happened before. We were always so carefu…”

“These things sneak up on people all the time, Jacob.” She sniffed. “It must have happened that night during the siege when we were supposed to be covering Santino again.” She shook her head. “Or even back in Byzantium, I don’t know. Tracking these things has become more and more difficult the longer I’ve been here. I can’t tell for certain how far along I am.”

“But you’re certain?”

She pounded my shoulder again. “I know this isn’t the kind of thing you know anything about, but everything has been mostly normal for a long time and to miss…”

“All right, I get it.”

Female biology not only confused me, it practically scared me.

Still.

A baby? A son? A mini-Jacob…

My family had never been large. It had been left small and became strained because of my father. As a result, ever since I could remember, I’d always wanted kids of my own. Fifty for all I cared. But I always figured it would be in a cushy suburb with a white picket fence, and a guy who still delivered milk to our front door. Not in the first century A.D., surrounded by people who wanted to kill me, not to mention an empress who probably wanted to chew on my guts while she killed me. I couldn’t imagine raising a kid in Rome. It almost seemed… irresponsible.

“What are you thinking?” Helena asked.

Most of the anger was gone from her voice by now, but the wake of tears were still evident on her lovely face, tears that caught me off guard. She really must have been worked up over this child to actually cry. Her reserved attitude over the past few weeks made sense all of a sudden… over the past year really. Had she wanted this all along? Was I really that blind?

I glanced up at her. “A baby?”

She smiled. “Yes, Jacob. A baby. Yours and mine.”

She reached out and placed my hand against her stomach. I didn’t feel anything. I suppose I wouldn’t this early on, but something told me she was right. My child was there.

“But how can we raise him here?” I asked. “Now? He doesn’t deserve to grow up in the ass end of civilization.”

“She won’t. We’ll find a way to get home.”

I pulled away from the future mother of my child, stood, and walked back towards the scene of our fight. I rubbed my chin and thought.

“What?” she asked as she slowly caught up to me.

“I… it’s… look, I just don’t know if we can responsibly raise him here. Not only that, but we also have no idea how a journey through the orb could affect him. Remember how painful it was? And what if we go when you’re still pregnant? Who knows what could happen. I just don’t see how we can do this.”

She stepped around to face me, her eyes narrow.

“You’re not suggesting that we…”

“What? Of course not. I just feel…”

“Jacob, stop. There’s something else I need to tell you.”

“We’re not having twins are we?”

She smiled. “You know I can’t know that, but there is something else you need to know. The reason I debated telling you for so long, and especially tonight, was because I have no idea what’s going to happen to us. If I die tomorrow, I wasn’t sure I wanted you knowing you lost your unborn child as well…”

“That’s not going to happ…”

“Let me finish,” she said, cutting me off with an upraised hand. “It was hard to tell you, yes, but I always knew deep down that you deserved to know. This child is as much yours as it is mine. You had to know. But, I didn’t want to you to know because of this exact conversation. I wasn’t sure what you would think. That’s what worried me most because, well… the fact is simply that I want this baby. More than you can possibly imagine.”

She turned her back on me and looked at the ground, her hands massaging her stomach. I stepped up behind her and wrapped my arms around her, gripping her wrists in my hands.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time,” she continued. “It was something I’ve wanted to talk to you about for months, but I didn’t think under Galba’s bed was the appropriate place to do it, even though it was relevant even then. You see, this child — our child — is something I’ve wanted ever since I was thirteen years old. A little girl of my own. Someone who I could play with, spoil, love, go shopping with. Everything. At the time, I suppose what I really wanted was a sister, but later I knew what I wanted was a child. But like all dreams, every day I had to wake up to the truth.”

“Your prearranged marriage,” I said softly.

She nodded. “I told you I never hated him. But I could never see him as the father of my child either. I knew that, like the marriage, children would inevitably be forced on me as well. It scared me. I didn’t know if I would love them or not. Half of each child would be his. Someone I didn’t love or even really like. How could I only love half a child?” She turned around. “Then I met you, Jacob. Yours is a child I could love.” She squeezed her eyes closed. “We have to do this. This may be our only chance.”

I gave it some thought before I cupped her chin with my thumb and index finger, tilting her face up, waiting as I mulled over her words. After a few moments deep in thought, everything pointed to only one conclusion.

“I want this too,” I said, before a smile grew on my face. “Looks like you won’t be going dancing as often as you’d hoped.”

She returned the smile and hugged me tightly. “I can live with that.”

Finally. This was the reaction I should have provided ten minutes ago. I held us there for what seemed like hours before the gravity of the situation dawned on me. I separated us and looked down at her.

“I forbid you from going on the mission tomorrow.”

“No.” She pulled away, surprise in her eyes. “No! You’re not going in there without me!”

“Helena, you can’t. It’s irresponsible.”

“Jacob, I’m pregnant, not crippled, and it’s too early for it to inhibit me in any way.”

“Nope. Not happening.”

“Yes, Jacob… it is.”

There was no hint of backing down in her voice. She wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

I met her stare. “You are the most frustratingly stubborn woman I have ever met!”

She smiled. “I know. It’s why you love me.”

I wanted to yell at her. Bay at the moon. Punch her in the face. Something. My emotions were all over the place. Happiness. Fear. Joy. Anger. Frustration. They were all there. This woman never ceased to amaze and confuse me. It was my turn to get angry.

In mock frustration, I gently pushed her away and kicked sand at her.

“Fine!” I yelled making my way back to the camp, “but you’d better not let me die, or your ass is haunted! Haunted!”

Her smile continued to enchant. “Just go back to the tent. I’ll meet up with you soon. I want to enjoy the moonlight for a few more minutes.” Then her smile turned coy. “At least now we don’t have to worry about getting pregnant anymore if you want to have some fun lat…”

“Bah!” I waved my hand at her, and with half of me actually frustrated, the other half joking, I stalked my way back to the camp with my own smile still beaming.