(no subject)

[steelartisan]

Serenity is a very nice ship. Cozy. The room Kate and Piotr inhabit is small, but it's comfortable, and Mal and his crew are both kind and generous to let them live there for so long.

But small passenger bunks on a small spaceship, however cozy, do not have lots of extra room for easels. And it's generally considered rude to accidentally smudge oil paint on your host's floor and walls.

Which is why Piotr is out by the lake, taking advantage of the morning sun to work on a new canvas.

Comments

[prydeful]

"Da." Absently, as she turns the pages till she sees another infant being held by a woman.





"...Why this, though?"

[steelartisan]

"Hmm?"

The brush gets set down carefully, so he can take a few steps sideways and crouch beside Kate. He wants to see what she's looking at, for the direction this conversation is going.

(He holds his hands carefully away from her, though, and lets them dangle between his knees. They're all smudged with paint. He never has learned the art of avoiding that.)

[prydeful]

"Why babies?"

It's not exactly the question--or not the only one--she wants to ask. But it's a start.

[steelartisan]

There are answers and answers to that, as there are questions underneath the one she's asking.

He has to think about it for a minute.

"I like babies. Children. They are so open. Full of possibility. Everything is the future for them, and everything they're thinking shows."

He smiles a little, crookedly. "They are always interesting."

[prydeful]

She's tracing the child's features for a minute.






"Do you want one?"

[steelartisan]

"I have always wanted children," he says simply, and with a rueful half-smile.

It's not the whole answer. But it's still true.

"Someday. If I could. I like children."

He loves them, really. And he loves family.

He says this mostly to his sketchbook, quietly and thoughtfully, and only at the end does he glance at Kate, a little hesitantly.

[prydeful]

She's biting her lip, a little, and not looking up.

"Do you want them with me?"

[steelartisan]

And the answer, instant and certain, is yes, of course.

But he doesn't know what she thinks.

(And there's Mikhail. Always that, in the back of his mind.)

"I love you," is what he says finally, and with a small and crooked smile.

"I don't know what you want. Da. Someday. If you do."

[prydeful]

"I love you too."

That's soft, and to the sketchbook as much as Piotr.

It's a minute before Kate looks up, looks over at him and looks tired. Because it's Piotr, and she does love him, and since she was thirteen and a half she's thought off and on about being married to Piotr and having children with Piotr. Because Piotr was brought up to think family was the most important thing, and probably without that he still would, and she knows it.

And because for herself she does. She always has. Stryker used that against her, once, made her see the dreams she had before finding out about mutants and X-Men, and mother was there at the top.

And she doesn't know how to say it, really, so she just lets the words tumble out, says, "Phasing induces miscarriages most of the time," without thinking about building up to it or gentling it.

It doesn't say what she wants, and she realizes it after the words are out. And she doesn't know how to say I want them too, to say, I want them with you after that, just looks down at the charcoal lines on paper.

[steelartisan]

What do you say to that?

Oh and are you sure and I didn't know and I'm sorry and--

"Oh."

[prydeful]

"Not all." She shrugs, a little. "Just--it makes it harder. Stress on the system. Too much and the fetus is--split, I guess. It's hard on it."

And nine months is a very long time.

"And I phase in my sleep most the time," she half-whispers, smiling crookedly and without humor.

And then Kate doesn't say anything for a moment before saying quietly, "I do want them. With you."

That makes it worse, she thinks.

[steelartisan]

"Katya..."

It does make it worse.

She wants his children, their children, too, and just hearing that is a joy he's longed for, and it does make it worse.

"We know very smart people," he says finally, and a little helplessly. "Maybe..."

Maybe something. Sometime. He was brought back from the dead; surely there's a way to help them have a child?

[prydeful]

"Shh."

Just that, softly, as she leans against him.

Only part of it is because she doesn't want to hear about maybes she doesn't trust.

"Odds again, Petey," Kate says after a silence, fingers tracing his. "Nine months is a long time. I phase in my sleep she doesn't say again.

"But maybe," she whispers, and squeezes his hand. "Let's...let's make sure there's no problems with conception first. And then worry about keeping the pregnancy. Just--it's a long time to not phase," she says again, tiredly. "I don't think I can even half-promise a child that's biologically ours, Piotr." I can be okay with that if I have to, but can you?

[steelartisan]

He slips an arm around her silently. She fits in the circle of his arm; she has always fit so well.

"All right," he says finally, and quietly.

It's not. Not really.

But it has to be.

[prydeful]

"Really?" Her smile's crooked as she looks at him. "You're fine with not ever having a baby?"

It doesn't sound very much like she believes him.

[steelartisan]

That's because Kate is smart. And because Kate knows her boyfriend.

Piotr exhales.

"I want a child," he says to the lake. "Children. A family. And there are more reasons I have not said."

"But I want them with you, Katya. If that means there are obstacles, then there are obstacles. I do not want to hurt you."

He doesn't need to think of Kaylee, weeping in her engine room, to know how much this could hurt them both.

[prydeful]

And because Kate is human, even if a mutant sort.

"I know," she murmurs and turns to kiss his shoulder. "I want you to have them. I want us both to have them. I just don't know if we can."






"What other reasons, Piotr?"

[steelartisan]

He's not looking at her, now.

This he hasn't said to anyone.

"You remember when my cousin Larisa asked me to come to Moscow. Months ago."

[prydeful]

"...Uh-huh."

In the immortal words of Han Solo, she has a bad feeling about this.

[steelartisan]

Now, whyever would that be?

"She was a journalist. She had found that people were being murdered -- burned up, all the same way. All of them descendents of my grandfather."

"I did not know some of them," he adds absently. "Barely or not at all."

It's not hard to know where to start in this story. It's hard to know what exactly to say. How much detail to go into.

"She said she had found that we were descended from Grigori Yefimovitch Rasputin. Our grandfather was his son. I doubted -- it is not an uncommon name. It seemed fantastic. But she had done the research, and she was right."

[prydeful]

This is Kate, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"Right. Okay. Why not? Makes as much sense as anything else in our lives."

She wants to hit something.

"What does this have to do with babies?"

[steelartisan]

He doesn't really want to tell this. There are reasons he's held it in so long.

And it's worse to tell it to her, now, in this context. With what she's just said about phasing. But it will never be any easier, and she won't thank him for waiting; Kate has always preferred to get things over with.

"He was a mutant, and a magician. Rasputin. He learned from Sinister. When he died finally, at the end, he put his essence into all his descendants. Babies."

"He meant to be reborn. But he needs his power to not be split among the bloodline for that to happen. To only have one left alive."

He wants something to do with his hands.

[prydeful]

For a moment she's speechless which, really, is something of an accomplishment.

And then she's punching his shoulder.

"This is the sort of thing you tell your girlfriend when it happens, you idiot! Not keep stoically to yourself! You're not Scott! Don't act like it, you colossal tin jerk!"

[steelartisan]

"I did not know what to say."

He's smiling for a second, though -- only a second, but this is so Katya. Small and fierce and full of words.

...And punches, but he can take those.

"And." This one's harder to find the words for. "My uncle is dead now, and Larisa. But I will not be the last one. Mikhail made sure of that."

He's kind of glossing over the after he broke Sinister's influence on him and stopped trying to kill me part, but whatever.

[prydeful]

She's angry.

She's incredibly angry, as she glares at him and debates whether to punch him again.

She decides against it, for the moment, and forces a breath as she rubs at her eyes with one hand.

And what she says, when she's sure she's controlled her temper, is, "So we're going to start trying for a baby, then."

It's not really a question.