"Hehe," Triston laughed.

"Hehehe, no I'm not." Her fear was betrayed in the way she shook her head. "I can't be pregnant, that's silly." Pregnancy happened to people who loved each other and were married and wanted a baby. Triston didn't want a baby, wasn't married, and had no one to love her. She couldn't be having a baby. It didn't work like that.

"How would that-? Its not-" She stuttered.

"No."

Ice, ice, her whole body had been plunged into a bath of icewater and the most irrational sense of betrayal. She had thought, had suspected, but she hadn't really known-- Campion, it had to have been.

She'd kill him.

"You're-- you're absolutely certain?" Aurelie said, chosing her words and tone very carefully. "There's no room for error?" She couldn't help the tone of hope creeping into her voice-- maybe Abeline was wrong. Magic wasn't infallible. It was possible Triston was just ill, wasn't it?

Absolutely was going to hurt that man.

"I-- No. No room for error." Abeline looked away, swallowing hard. "Two gametes have met, the ovum is fertilized, the zygote is implanted in the uterine lining, and it's swiftly dividing as we speak."

Too technical.

She looked to Triston and said, flatly, "You've got a bun in the oven."

Who could have done such a horrible thing to her poor, sweet Triston...?

"There's a plum in your pudding."

How often did this sort of thing happen?

"You have a tiny bean growing inside you."

This is the second passive pregnancy she'd heard of in less than a year.

"The stork is on its way."

Poor Harper. Two of his volunteers getting pregnant. And another one ran away...

"You're knocked up."

...a female passive...

"If nothing's done, you'll be gravid in a few months."

Perhaps Harper was just unlucky...

"You are with..."

But what if it wasn't coincidence?

"...child."

What if he--

Abeline fell silent, hugging her knees tightly. Why couldn't she stop shaking? Was the room really turning pitch black and frozen? Was there a wall behind her, a floor beneath her, or was she falling into a vast nothingness, forever to be cut off from light and warmth?

It was hard to tell with a pudgy baby face, but...

Horation did look remarkably like Harper.

Each euphemism Triston heard curled in the crescent of her ear like a drop of water. They leaked slowly into her brain, a steady drip of words she did not want to hear. A reality she did not want to face. A life she did not want to create, but a life she did not want to end.

Inside, Triston could feel the beating of her heart. She couldn't imagine it, the sound of another life inside her. Her heart worked hard enough to keep itself from breaking. How much more could it take before the ticking ceased forever. Maybe the baby would steal her heart then? Take it and fix it and put it in it's own chest. Then the tick tick tick would come back, but it wouldn't be hers anymore. It would no longer catalog the passing of time for Triston. It would beat the rhythm of life in this stranger's heart.

Suddenly it felt as if the situation finally came crashing down on her. Tears sprung from her eyes as if they were wells tilted upside down. She shivered and shook and buried her face into Aurelie's dress. "I d-don't want t-t-to!" She wailed.

If life were more literal, it was certain the air would have been filled with the sound of Triston's breaking heart. And a steady tick tick tick, as time refused to stop for her or anyone.

Why was there so much sadness heaped upon this tiny body? Aurelie gathered Triston to her, making soft shushing noises and maintaining a constant gentle pressure on her back, circles on her hair.

Little Triston, her bunkmate and friend and barely but a child herself. What did Triston want with the having and raising of babies? Not even a father to care for them both-- it was Luccullis, she was certain of that, but he was long gone and never coming back. After all, he'd left in the first place hadn't he? Why would he ever return? Triston was just a passive girl, and he... He had the freedom to walk away. He didn't even have to know.

"Oh Triston," she sighed, not for the first and certainly not the last time. A trouble magnet, that's what she was. Drew sorrow to her like moths to flame.

"Shush now," she said, drawing up a little straighter, some resolve steeling inside herself. She would protect them, all three of them (for it was three now). No harm would come to this, the closest thing she had to a family proper. She would hold them together and keep them safe. She would find Campion and he would either protect this girl or eat his own body parts.

Most of her was trembling and scared, of course, but she would pretend. Her performance, she thought, would be most admirable indeed.

Eyes cracked and snapped, biting jade, when she turned them away from Triston and towards Abeline. "Everything will be just fine," and it was more than a promise, it was a challenge. This Ixbridge was allied with that professor, and presumeably both claimed to be friends to Triston. This was a test, then, of just how far her loyalties could lie. Did that friendship end with law, with this truth here lying heavy in the room?

Prove me wrong, her gaze said. Be not what I expect you to be.

If she were aware of Aurelie's soothing gestures, she might've felt a pang of jealousy. No, not quite jealousy. Loneliness? Separation. Outside looking in...

It wasn't that she was a galdor and they were passives. Not at all. This same scene-- in another place, with another trouble-- had played out with galdori many times before. As a healer, and forever before that, Abeline had played the messenger. She brought the cold, hard facts to light; it was someone else's role to comfort, someone else's to be comforted.

But she wasn't aware. Her world was busy rearranging itself into something more sinister and confusing than she had ever considered possible.

He had seemed so wonderful, that sweet, sunny, bewildered genius. How could he have pulled the wool over her eyes so thoroughly? Was she so easily blinded? Blinded by his wit, his intelligence, his science? And his eyes! Dear gods, his eyes! Such kindly golden orbs magnified behind such scholarly half-moon frames...

She was taken back to a moment, just over a week ago, where she was cold and wet and in the heather. The professor was so warm beneath her, and she could still feel his voice resonating on her spine.

How could she possibly doubt him, after all they'd been through? They'd risked life and sanity for that discovery, just over a week ago..

Triston's words echoed in her heart: '...maybe a week?'

How could he, after all they'd been through? Did.. did it mean nothing to him?


Healer Ixbridge rotated toward Triston, placing one knee on the floor and her hand on the other as if to rise. But she didn't rise. She stayed there, and it became clear she was kneeling.

"I am wholly in your service, Miss Bricketson."

All she ever wanted to do was to fix things -- to make it all better -- and that was all she could think to do now.

Triston slipped into Aura's embrace, a rag doll with no hint of bone or muscle at work to keep her sitting up. She let herself be comforted like a child who couldn't sleep and was quieted by her mother's rocking. It was nice. She didn't forget about her troubles, the bad thoughts weren't gone, but it seemed like...

Like...



Like that.

She didn't want to move, and probably wouldn't have for a long time if another voice hadn't broken the silence and reminded Triston of who was present.



Triston whined weakly, her throat and nose suffering from the crying fit. She began wiping the tears from her face, suddenly embarrassed for showing so much emotion in front of Abeline. The galdor.

"Does-" She stopped to sniff loudly and keep a strand of runaway boogers from dripping out her nose. "Does that mean you're not going to tell anyone?"

It really is like having a little sister. Aurelie absently reached into her apron pocket for a handkercheif. It wasn't the cleanest thing in the world, but it would do and she handed it to Triston.

Her insides tensed and coiled, her stomach made of some sort of heavy metal. Would this woman tell? Noble kneeling gesture or not, she was still a galdor, and a healer at that. Wasn't she obligated to report such things? Her breath held, awaiting a response.

Abe didn't mind Triston's emotional upset. It was a perfectly natural reaction, and not the worst she had seen in the three-year course of her career. Ever since that first frightened, bawling young man, the healer had quickly become tolerant of tears (and worse) in her vicinity. However, she had yet to learn how to adopt an effective pacifying demeanor. Perhaps it was best that Aurelie was here; the gentle passive could tell the type of lie that Abe could not.

"I shall remain as silent as you wish me to. This may be an unofficial consultation, but you are my patient. Your confidentiality is as important to me as any other's."

There was no small risk involved in her promise. If word got out that she knew and did not alert the 'proper' authorities, social consequences would be sure to follow. But she'd be ethically right, dammit all! And it's far better to be right than to be loved.

Right?

At worst, it would just be her license. Probably.

Besides, she had good reason. If he caught wind of this, who knows what her dear Harper that maniac Moore might do? He was present at Margarisse's death... But, soon, she pushed him out of her mind, almost out of habit. More immediate things to attend to, as always.. and she could calculate her next move later...

"Of course.. the question of what to do... That is your decision. It should be at any rate, and as far as I'm concerned, it is."

She looked steadily into Triston's red-rimmed eyes. Passive, Imbali, what did it matter? A woman's body was her own-- a temple to Life itself. The Everine had no right to profane that sacred place.

"I will support you and aid you in any way I can." Her gaze dropped to the floor, and she added softly, "Right now, I advise you rest, and wait a day, at least, before making your decision." For the unborn's sake if no one else's.

A breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding came rushing out of her in a hiss between her teeth. A decision? Left to a passive? Either Abeline Ixbridge was a very kind woman or a very stupid one, she couldn't tell which. Whatever the reason, Triston was being given a choice, and time to think, which was more than was to be expected in such a position.

Aurelie smoothed Triston's hair down. "She's right, you should rest, think about it..." Though for the first time she wondered, what would Triston choose? She hadn't even known Triston had really felt that way about Mr. Luccullis. There was a funny flutter in the bottom of her stomach-- she squelched it.

"And-- thank you," she added quietly, almost as an afterthought. She didn't know why this woman was being so unusually kind, but she'd help Triston take advantage of it until the healer came to her senses and betrayed them. They'd just have to do it carefully.