Safe and Sound

[Anna Fernandez]

[directly after The Unfixing]

Anna laid back on the hospital bed, adjusting the angle of the top one third with her remote. Up... down... Her fingers twitched, and she forced herself to put the large controller on the table beside her bed. Idle hands were the devil's playground, but idle thoughts were worse.

She plucked at the sheets covering her bandaged belly, and sighed, trying to close her eyes and get some rest. After all, that's why she was here. Observation and rest. Her eyes tracked over to the monitors that were printing out the baby's heart rate and checking her for contractions. There had been a few when she'd arrived in the emergency room, prompting this little overnight visit. Of course, she'd arrived in the wee hours of the morning, so she had about 24 hours of unbridled boredom ahead of her unless she could convince the doctor on call she was fine.

How was Jamie doing? Was Aidan okay? Tess had seemed to have things under control, but it was Anna's opinion that her younger friend was pretty good at looking like she was okay. Por favor, ayudar a todos ellos trabajar juntos en nuestro tiempo de necesidad. Please help them all pull together in our time of need.

Anna struggled to shift position just a little, trying not to dislodge the bands around her stomach that were attached to the machines to her right. Resting her head on the thin plasticky hospital pillow, it's case about two sizes too big for it, she looked at the window. Even with the blinds drawn she couldn't help thinking about what might be on the other side of it. Apollos, perhaps?

Stupido, I am four floors up. Still...

She put her hand on her stomach protectively, and whispered another prayer of thanks that no one had been permanently harmed. The sun would be rising soon. She needed to rest. Sleep, however, was impossible.

[Tycho Auriville]

It wasn't until the fourth call roused him - again - from what was trying to be a heavy sleep, that Tycho had actually answered his phone. After the first few times his father's gambling debts had been referred to him, Ty had learned not to go public with his contact information. Though it wasn't circulated much these days (years had passed since he'd last found himself hounded by bookies, thankfully) habit still drove him to ignore unfamiliar numbers when they flashed up on the tiny mobile screen. He figured that even if it wasn't one of Harry's friends, it was probably a telemarketer and they weren't much better.

But this one had been exceptionally persistent, letting just enough time pass for the hazy lull of sleep to take hold again before shattering the quiet of his bedroom with shrill deliberation.

Ty was a patient man but even he had his limits, the borders of which were directly shaped by how many hours he'd worked (twelve), whether or not there was beer in his fridge (there wasn't), and the time (oh-dark-thirty).

So when he was forced yet again to grope blindly across his bedside table, he did so with every intention of giving whoever the hell was tormenting him a real piece of his mind. Groaning, Ty forced his eyes open and blinked at the screen.

Anna Home.

Everything from that point on was a bit blurry. He remembered snatches of conversation - break in... Anna hurt... hospital - and the sensation of nausea settling heavy in his gut, a clumsy attempt at finding his keys in the dark before he remembered that nifty invention called electricity. In fact, it wasn't until Tycho found himself striding down an anemic, unflatteringly-lit hallway with the cloying smell of antiseptic lemon in his nostrils that he came back to himself, suddenly aware that he was miles from his apartment with no recollection of the journey.

Ty took a moment to breathe before he stepped through the appointed door. The last thing he wanted to do was burst in with tassels of panic streaming behind him. There'd been enough of that served up already.

"Anna," he said it quietly as he arranged himself in the doorway, partly because he didn't want to startle her and partly because the sight of the dark-haired woman lying pale in the bed, machines beeping softly beside her, stripped all the body from his voice. Something lurched uncomfortably in Ty's chest and he moved forward, brows stitching together as he made purposeful tracks toward Anna. "I would've been here quicker but my keys and this idiot on the freeway and... nevermind, nevermind. It's not important. Are you okay?"

Which was a stupid question, really, because if she'd been okay, she would've been at home. Ty winced internally as he leaned carefully over the side of the bed, a calloused hand coming up to smooth her hair back from her forehead.

[Anna Fernandez]

Her face lit up when Tycho opened the door, and she smiled. "Yes, I'm okay. No stitches. We'll be fine." Anna searched his face, and lifted her hand to take his. She followed his eyes down to where the IV line was on her wrist. "Jus' a precaution. I was a little dehydrated when they brought me in..."

She looked at a clock. "Three hours ago? It seems longer." Anna squeezed his hand. "I'm glad you came."

[Tycho Auriville]

Tycho wasn't overly fond of hospitals, mostly because he always felt so out of his depth that it was hard to shake the feeling of being taken advantage of. Case in point, the clear line of fine tubing that snaked from Anna's arm to a bag of clear fluid hanging off a polished metal stand at the side of the bed. Logic told him that such a resort couldn't possibly mean anything good, and yet she was whole and alert and trying, of all things, to reassure him.

Tracing the back of her hand with his thumb, Ty nodded.

"I know you're okay," he smiled softly, uncertainty creeping at the edges of his eyes. "But are you okay?"

[Anna Fernandez]

Por supuesto, she almost said, ready to brush away concern, but she hesitated. Under the dim lighting of her room her eyes looked a little more sunken than usual, her expression just slightly strained. "Ah... maybe?"

She squeezed his hand unconsciously. "I don' feel... safe, anymore. Did you get the whole story? Apollos -" her voice broke, and she took a moment to gather her thoughts as the scene flashed into her mind. Apollos standing over her, hand on her mouth, bony claws scratching into the tender skin of her abdomen.

Anna closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and exhaling it shakily.

[Tycho Auriville]

Crap. He'd made it worse, instead of better. Ty winced internally and made a mental note to remember that timing was everything. Guiding thoughts toward the malicious home invasion that was only hours-old while Anna lay in a hospital bed probably fell into the 'reassess your plan' category.

The monitor on the right beeped frantically for a moment and Ty's eyes darted over. The rhythm slowed with Anna's breaths and only once it had settled into the lingering pattern of evenly-spaced beats did he speak again.

"Tess told me," Ty murmured. Which was true, although he'd gotten Clifs Notes at best. Even if the girl had been able to give him a cohesive summary, the alchemist doubted that much of it would have been absorbed; his brain had stopped processing after they'd reached the point where Anna and hospital collided.

Nodding toward the monitors, Tycho shifted to safer ground. "So I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that that one," he pointed at the little screen that had gone wild, "is your heartrate. What's the rest of this for? You look like Robocop."

[Anna Fernandez]

"Ahh... baby's heartbeat, and contractions." Anna tried to twist a little to point out which was which, but it was too painful to move. His eyebrows raised at the word contractions, and she was quick to reassure him. "Jus' a precaution; I'm not having any."

She gently patted her stomach, carefully avoiding the bandages under her gown. "I have the monitors strapped to me here and here. If I have to go to the bathroom I'm in real trouble." Anna smiled, trying not to think about the message carved into her skin and what it might mean. "But after the doctor's satisfied that everything is okay I can go home. Probably tomorrow morning."

The sun was just now rising and straining against the closed blinds. Before Ty could reply, the door opened and her nurse, Renee, came in. "How are you feeling, Anna?" The woman smiled and went to the computer to check the monitors.

"I'm tired. It's hard to sleep, but I'm trying to rest." Anna held out her wrist dutifully when the nurse asked, letting her scan her hospital bracelet.

"You're getting ibuprofin for the pain," said Nurse Renee, almost a question rather than a statement. "And I have your next dose. Do you have enough water?"

Anna nodded, lifting her hospital supplied cup full of ice water. She carefully swallowed the provided pill, and lay back on the pillows.

Nurse Renee clicked her tongue as she looked at the print out from the monitors. "You've had a few small contractions since you were admitted?"

"Yes, but nothing I could feel."

"And how's your pain right now?"

That stupid pain scale. Anna pondered the question. "About a three? It hurts more when I move, so I'm trying not to."

"Understandable." Nurse Renee looked up and over toward Tycho as if seeing him for the first time. "And is this the father?" She beamed at him.

[Tycho Auriville]

The smile on his face was natural, an instinctive response to being audience to a conversation that wasn't necessarily his concern. Tycho tipped his head at the nurse - who, thankfully, was focused on Anna - and turned his attention back to the monitors with new interest, now that he had a better understanding of what they did.

Though he in no way counted himself an expert or, for that matter, even an amateur in the field of pregnancy, Ty wasn't wholly ignorant. That would have been quite an accomplishment given the fact that his mother made a modest living midwifing out in New Mexico. Their little ranch had seen four or five babies born a year, sometimes more. He'd never been present for an actual birth (by choice; Tilly'd wanted him to be exposed, said it was the most primal, beautiful experience he would ever be witness to, but the process had always felt as though it were a private one, the kind of old waters that Ty didn't want to disturb) but he'd helped out here and there during appointments. There'd been a lot of water fetching and towel gathering, that sort of thing. When he was real small, just his presence seemed to relax the expectant mothers. A living prophesy of what's to come, Tilly had said to him in a whisper that curved like a smile.

It struck him now, how different all of that was to a hospital setting. Where his mother shook leather bags of rattlesnake bones and counted the ocular rings around irises, here there were probes and electrical readouts. Magic of a different kind, he supposed.

Caught up in his thoughts, Ty only half-registered Nurse Renee's question. He turned, already halfway to nodding before her words filtered through.

"Huh? Oh. Oh," Tycho laughed a little nervously and shook his head, wide-eyed. "No, I'm..."

What? What?

"I'm the moral support," he settled on carefully, lifting his and Anna's clasped hands a little and pointing. Ty beamed fuzzily. "And the handyman."

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna blushed, a mad giggle threatening to rise in her throat. "No, no, él no es el padre." She blushed hotter. "What he said."

Nurse Renee just smiled and nodded, and soon she was out of the room with a direction for Anna to order breakfast as it was available now. "And rest if you can." Once the door closed behind the nurse Anna sank back into her haphazard pile of pillows, relaxing muscles she hadn't known she'd clenched.

She turned her head toward Tycho and tightened her grip on his hand. "The handyman?" The giggle she'd suppressed surfaced, and she added, "How handy are you?"

[Tycho Auriville]

"You follow orders and get yourself discharged, maybe I'll show you later," Ty offered a roguish grin that gave way to an embarrassed chuckle halfway through. Ducking his head, he reached out and lifted the breakfast form from the table. In one smooth motion he crumpled it up and tossed it toward Anna's grinning face. Unfortunately, the finer points of aerodynamics were working against him. The scant ball of paper buckled against the air and lost most of it's momentum, landing with a pitifully harmless plop atop her belly.

Tycho could see the remark coming. He cut it off at the pass.

"Handy is a loose term," he informed her loftily, "and doesn't include projectile accuracy. Unless it hits the mark. Then it totally counts."

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna grinned, plucking the wadded up paper from the sheets. "Uh huh. Well, I suppose I should eat, but," and she yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her hand.

She shrugged. "I'm not very hungry."

"Then you should rest." His thumb was tracing another circle on the back of her hand, and it had an almost hypnotic effect on her. "I'm not going anywhere."

Anna smiled, taking a deep breath and relaxing, her eyes on their clasped hands. With him there she felt secure enough to finally give into the pull of sleep, and she let her eyes close slowly. Sólo por un minuto...

The next thing she knew the sun was well up behind the closed blinds and the nurse was wheeling some sort of machine into the room. She blinked, looking around for Tycho after a moment of confusion as sleep dug in its heels instead of retreating peacefully.

[Tycho Auriville]

One of the benefits of a lifetime of baching it on the road was that when it came to catching winks, Tycho could pretty much scrounge up a nap anywhere. He'd slept in some fairly treacherous and uncomfortable places over the years. A cot in the hospital? That was practically 5-star treatment by comparison.

Sprawled inelegantly on the narrow foldout, Tycho stirred as a rhythmic squeaking pierced the silence. His brown hair, shot through with gold, tumbled with careless abandon across his brow and a throbbing in his cheek told the story of where he'd lain with his face against a corner joint. As his eyes fluttered open, the source of the noise came rattling around the side of the bed and came to an abrupt halt.

"Oh," said Renee with an apologetic smile, "I didn't realize you were still here."

Tycho shrugged and scrubbed at his face. "Don't worry about it," he grunted as he hauled himself up, patting the side of the cot as he went. "This thing's a low-rider."

The sleepy disorientation painted over Anna's delicate features wrought a smile from the man. For half a second he could see the little girl that she must've been once, all big, searching eyes and expressive mouth.

"Hope you studied hard, kid," Ty murmured, looping his arms over the guardrail on the bed. "Looks like it's quiz time. Just remember to circle B if you don't know the answer. It never fails."

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna smiled at Ty, and pushed herself up as best she could on the bed as Renee set up an ultrasound machine next to her. The nurse talked while she helped Anna get into the right position and pulled the sheets down and under her belly.

"Dr. Phillips looked at your chart while you were sleeping and he thinks you're fine to be discharged. They obviously didn't want to take any chances that you might have gone into premature labor, but you haven't had a hint of a contraction since you were in the ER. So," and the nurse brandished the business end of the ultrasound, "we'll just check on baby and see about getting you back home."

"Sounds good to me," said Anna, and Renee eased her hospital gown away from her stomach while expertly keeping her as modest as possible.

"We'll change these before you go, of course," said Renee, indicating the bandages n Anna's stomach. She placed the instrument against her skin below the edge of the first aid tape. Anna found herself staring intently at the little black and white screen as Renee expertly located the baby that was growing inside her.

[Tycho Auriville]

... Oh God, where were they supposed to be looking? Tycho squinted at the screen, trying to sift through the grey static and make out anything that looked even vaguely baby-ish. All he could see was snow, like they'd forgotten to position the bunny ears properly. Maybe he was just slow on the uptake, missing the obvious like some kind of womb-deciphering deficient, and... should he pretend? Was that what -


"Whoa," Ty breathed, eyebrows crawling to his hairline as the picture suddenly shifted and grew more defined. Illuminated in the crackling screen was a tiny profile, unmistakably people-shaped. "There's really something in there!"

His eyes found Anna's, the gold flecks in the green seeming brighter in his soldered excitement.

"I mean, I knew that, but..." Ty trailed off in wonder, a private smile quirking at the corners of his mouth. He shook his head. "Look at that, it's got a head and everything!"

Renee, who had managed to maintain a professional exterior, gave in and chuckled softly. "That's always a good thing," she winked, shifting the probe carefully over Anna's stomach. "Well, there's no sign of any abnormalities or physical mutation. Have you - "

"Hah!" Ty interrupted, staring intently at the monitor. He prodded Anna's shoulder and pointed triumphantly toward a little white circle. "Hand!"

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna smiled. Ty's enthusiasm was a mirror of her own. The picture shifted to a more internal view of the baby, which was just bizarre.

"Baby's looking good. Lungs... kidneys..." Renee kept looking at the screen as she continued, "Have you done the prenatal screen for the X gene?"

Anna blanked for a moment, taken out of the situation by the question. "No, I haven't."

"Oh, well, we can do that before you leave, if you want." The nurse sounded so cheerful. "We'd just extract a little amniotic fluid. It's perfectly safe, and then you'd know."

"No," said Anna, feeling uncomfortable. "I don't want the test done." There was only one real reason to try to find out before birth, and that was simply unthinkable.

"Okay," agreed Renee, picking up the ultrasound wand and setting it down in another spot. Feet and legs came into view and then - "Oh! Do you want to know the sex of the baby?"

Anna perked up, unconsciously squeezing Tycho's hand. "Yes! Can you tell this early?"

"Sometimes, if baby cooperates. And... Well... There you have it. She isn't being modest at all." The nurse pointed out the area on the screen. "Definetely not a boy."

[Tycho Auriville]

Anna was having a baby. A baby. And it had a head - slightly alienesque, true, but very obviously a cranium - and hands and a little torso that he could see sloping delicately on the screen. Tycho was trying not to freak out but his chest was doing this weird humming thing, like the swell that invaded your lungs as you slowly cranked to the top of a big drop on a rollercoaster, and his mouth kept sliding open in a slack, stupid grin.

Anna was having a baby. Anna was going to have a -

"Daughter," Ty breathed, a stunned trill in his tone. Absurdly, he suddenly felt as though he needed to avert his eyes, as though he'd been caught trying to stare up skirts in the ladies department at Sears. With a faint colour in his cheeks, Ty turned his attention to Anna.

"Got yourself a little princess," he grinned. "Oh man, Santa Anna, look at that. She's already breakin' hearts."

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna beamed, unable to take her eyes off the screen and the black and white staticky image. "Eva," she breathed, and conversation didn't resume until Nurse Renee had left the room with promises to to return with discharge paperwork.

Anna lay back with a happy sigh. "I was hoping it would be a niña." She smoothed her gown over her belly, the smile twisting as the pain of her wounds reminded her of the night before. She looked at Tycho, and didn't know what to say. I'm glad you were here for that. "First ultrasound?"

[Tycho Auriville]

They were caught in the mutual stumble of the moment, pinned somewhere between amazement and awkward uncertainty. Tycho let loose a slow breath, his thumb absently rubbing at the tension in Anna's palm.

He nodded. "Very first. Tilly isn't much into modern convenience and I'm her youngest, thank God, so there wasn't really any opportunity. I'm glad, though. This was..."

Incredible? Frightening? Right?

Tycho let the thought die naturally and backtracked a little. "Eva," he repeated, testing the name out. He liked the way it curled just so, like a joyous wisp of song. "That's pretty; what's it mean?"

[Anna Fernandez]

"Life."

Anna smiled shyly. "Eva Soraya Esperanza. Life, princess, and hope." She shrugged, blushing slightly. "I may have thought about names quite a bit. Un poco. I don't even have a boy's name as back up."

Hope. Something the world needed a lot more of. Anna fidgeted with the sheet, tucking it around her a little tighter.

[Tycho Auriville]

Tilly had a theory about names. They picked you, she said, or at least they should. There was a power in identity, alchemy wrapped up in the beat of syllables and the divination of origins. Trying to force one that didn't fit was like trying to put a vagabond in a grandstander's suit: it covered the vital bits, but the seams just didn't lie right. A man could spend his whole life trying to live as an Ernest when he was really a Mack, and oh the trials he would reap. It was best not to force the issue and let the universe guide you to the right choice the first time 'round.

Of course, Tilly also thought that grasshopper wings could give a person prophetic dreams. One had to take everything she said with an ocean's worth of salt.

"Big name to live up to," Ty mused. "Good, though. A whole lotta good in there."