steelartisan | (no subject)

(no subject)

It's not just with Milliways -- and interdimensional portals, and time manipulators, and the astral plane, and alien technology, and so forth -- that time does strange things. Eight and a half months ago, they learned that Kate was pregnant.

Nine months, now, give or take a few days. Nine months, and -- as far as they can tell, as far as any scans have shown, they hope, they hope -- a healthy baby to be born any day now.

Katya is, as she has been for a few weeks (and, to be honest, for nine months), excited and happy and stressed and, above all, impatient. Increasingly so.

Also, at the moment, frowning at the floor with a hand on her belly. Piotr pauses in the doorway, studying her.

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This is easy to do, and, it must be said, requires less moving around; the bag can stay next to the bureau while she opens and closes drawers.

She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror when she straightens from zipping the case shut, though, and pauses, staring intently at the woman there.

"Do you think I should get my tattoo removed?" she asks Piotr when she's caught his eye, though she's frowning at the mirror again after that.

She's many piercings, but she rarely wears anything but one, maybe two pairs of earrings; that's more common sense, now that she's back with the X-Men, than anything else, though. And since they started trying to have a baby, a maternity navel ring was required, and she barely gives it thought.

But she's never once thought about her tattoo, never even told Piotr what it means or why she got it, because it's so much a part of her now--and suddenly she's realized she's going to have a baby, and wonders if it's weird. (And doesn't admit to herself that it comes down to what she thinks her own mother would think of it. Not even in her own mind.)

Piotr blinks.

"Do you want to?"

"I don't know." It's a little sheepish, and she looks over at him with a shrug. "It--is it weird? Suddenly it feels weird. I think I'm having another attack of, 'oh my God I'm going to be a MOM,' except this time I'm..." She stops, and tires to find the words, frowning.

"...You're...better, I think, or going to be better...at all of this, or--or the way people think of doing this as normal--than I am. And I just...I guess I saw it and tried to picture my mother having one, and I...felt like I was one more step from--from something. Mom-like." She makes a face at the words as they come out of her mouth, because it's not really what she means, but--she doesn't have the words for what she does mean.

And it's closer than she wants to admit, anyway.

"You will be the mom of our daughter," Piotr points out, fondly.

And a little drily.

"She will grow up with many stranger things than a very pretty tattoo. And you will be a very good mother to her."

He says this like fact, because that's how he sees it.

She relaxes at that and goes to wrap her arm around him best she can, head resting on his chest.

"You're biased as hell. And I love you," she murmurs, smiling. And admits, closing her eyes, "I got it because of you. Because I missed you. So it's good to know that you at least think it's pretty. Though I am sure you could have designed a better one," she adds, wryly.

Piotr's arms go around her in turn, and squeeze a little tighter as she continues.

(He is biased as hell. But he thinks that that doesn't mean he's wrong.)

"It is."

Then, smiling a little, "If you want another tattoo sometime, I will try to fit a design to it."

And he'll still think she's an excellent mother! So there, Katya's insecurities.

"Mmm, now that idea I might get used to." She grins. "Do I get to design one for you?"

If Piotr fears, well, Kate's...not the artist, to be fair, out of the two of them.

You don't need to be, with many tattoos--and yet.

"And if you ever figure out why I got this for you, I'll give you a prize," she adds, gesturing at her arm.

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