David Weber - At All Costs

"Your command," he said. "Emily."

"And the media," Honor said, and grimaced. "My mother asked me why I couldn't do anything the easy way. I wish I had an answer for her."

"Because you're the Salamander," he said, his mouth twisting wryly. "Although, just between the two of us, I wish you could jump into a few less fires, at least where your personal life is involved."

"Unfortunately, we're in this one together, love."

"Yes, we are." He smiled a bit more whimsically. "I'm tempted to take the coward's way out and tell you that since you're the one who's pregnant, we'll do whatever you think is best. But you didn't get pregnant all by yourself, and it strikes me that a father shouldn't begin his duties by trying to shirk them. By the same token, you have had at least a little bit longer to think about this. So, having said that, do you have a strong feeling for what we ought to do?"

"Well, I'd thought the best place to begin would be to ask you whether or not you wanted to be a father," she said with a smile of her own. "Fortunately, you've already answered that one. So the next step is for us to decide how we tell Emily." Her smile disappeared. "Frankly, I don't have any idea at all how she's likely to react to this news, and I desperately want to avoid hurting her, Hamish. But I think my mother was right. We don't have the moral right to 'protect' her from something like this. Besides," her mouth tightened, "remember what an ungodly mess we made trying to 'protect her' before."

"You're right," he said. "And so is your mother. And I'm not sure how she'll respond, either. I know she wanted children when we married, and I know she changed her mind after the accident. Her mother had something to do with that, I think."

His expression took on a certain bleakness, and Honor tasted a cold, bitter strand of long-held, steely anger.

"Emily's mother didn't take what happened well," he said quietly. "At first, she wanted us to move heaven and earth to save her daughter's life. Later, when she realized how badly Emily had been damaged, and that it was permanent, she changed. I can't really fault her for not reacting well, at least initially. I didn't handle it very well-no, that's not fair; I completely, one hundred percent screwed up-when I finally accepted that I couldn't make her well again.

"But Emily's mother never did get herself back on track. For her, it was a quality-of-life issue, and she actually told me once-not in Emily's hearing, thank God!-that it would have been far kinder of me to simply let her die than to 'heartlessly condemn her to such a horrible life as a pathetic, helpless cripple out of pure selfishness'."

Honor's jaw clenched. Emily's mother might never have said it where her daughter could hear, but Honor had discovered for herself just how observant Emily was, and how acutely and accurately she read the people around her. There was no way Emily Alexander could have been unaware of her mother's feelings.

"I don't think Emily ever saw herself as a helpless victim," Hamish continued, speaking slowly as he looked for exactly the right words. "I'm not trying to say she was a paragon of total courage, who never felt sorry for herself, never asked 'Why me?' There've been times, I know, when she's had to fight incredible bouts of depression. But she never saw herself as helpless, never saw herself as a mere, passive survivor. She was always her own person, always determined to go right on being her, no matter what happened.

"But I think... I think that despite that, a part of her saw herself through her mother's eyes. Or, maybe what she saw wasn't so much her, as some other victim. Someone else in the same condition, without the combination of support team and sheer guts and integrity that got her through it. Someone else who might agree with her mother that a life like hers wasn't worth living."

"You're talking about her children."

"Yes. No." He shrugged. "I don't know that she ever actually thought it out, or that it ever reached that level in her conscious thought. But I know she started shying away from the notion of having children, even after her physicians pointed out to her that there was no reason, given the state of modern medicine, why she couldn't still have them. And I know it started after her mother's attitude became obvious to those about her. And," he frowned, "I know I never pushed her about it. Never tried to work through it with her. I simply went along with what I believed her wishes to be, without examining for myself-or pushing her into examining for herself-whether or not they truly were her wishes."

"Well, I think we're all going to have to find out," Honor said softly.

"So, what do you two have on your minds?"

Emily Alexander looked back and forth between Honor and her husband, one eyebrow arched. She sat in her favorite nook in the White Haven atrium Hamish had built for her years before, gazing at them speculatively across the constantly rippling surface of a crystal-clear koi pond. Honor could taste her curiosity, and with it a faint edge of amusement, and her own lips twitched as she realized how much she and Hamish must resemble a pair of truant schoolchildren, standing before their instructor with their 'cats on their shoulders to own up to their misdeeds.

But the temptation to smile disappeared as Honor reflected on what they were here to "own up to," and she inhaled deeply.

"Emily," Hamish said, "Honor and I have something we need to tell you. I hope it won't distress you, or cause you any pain, but it's something you have to know about."

"My, that sounds ominous," she said lightly, with a smile. But Emily Alexander had been the Star Kingdom's leading actress before her accident. Her expression might have fooled others, yet Honor tasted the sudden throat-tightening surge of anxiety behind it, and she felt herself shaking her head-hard-before she even realized she was going to speak.

"No, Emily!" she said sharply. "It's not that." Emily looked at her, green eyes suddenly vulnerable, and Honor shook her head even harder. "Hamish and I both love you," she heard herself say with a fierce intensity which surprised even her. "Nothing can change that. And nothing between me and Hamish could ever change the way he feels about you."

Emily looked at her for two or three more seconds, then nodded slowly. Not just in acceptance of Honor's reassurances, but in admission. Strong as she was, confident as she was in herself, she could never quite forget that Honor was all of the things, physically, that she could no longer be. There was always that tiny edge of fear she couldn't quite crush that the sheer vibrancy and physical health radiating from Honor would, indeed, change the way Hamish felt about her.

"Honor is right," Hamish told her softly, crossing to sit on an ornamental stone bench beside her life-support chair. He reached out and captured her one working hand in both of his, lifting it to press a kiss onto its back. "In an odd sort of way," he continued, gazing into her eyes and reaching out to cup the side of her face with his right hand, "you've become the center for both our lives. Maybe we've both simply been too contaminated by our Grayson experiences, but somehow the three of us have become a unit, and neither Honor nor I would ever change that, even if we could."

He paused for a moment, and she closed her eyes, pressing her cheek into his palm.

"But," he continued, after a moment, "we're both more than a little concerned about how you're going to react to the news we do have for you, love."

"In that case," she said, with something very like her normal tartness, "perhaps the two of you should stop trying to prepare me for it and go ahead and tell me what it is."

"You're right," he agreed. "So, to cut straight to the conclusion, there was a screwup with Honor's medical records. Both of us thought her contraceptive implant was current. It wasn't."