Fertility

[intheheart]

Title: Fertility
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A collection of miniatures on the subject of fertility.
Warnings: discussion of mental illness and internalized homophobia, infertility.
Notes: This was meant to be done by Beltaine. Whoops.


1. As laces just reveal the surge
Olivia is stable now.

It's sort of odd to be stable. She's spent so much of her life dealing with it that being stable has knocked her off balance. She doesn't need to struggle to get out of bed, doesn't need to measure out her daily tasks by how long until she breaks down.

It's not like it's gone. There will always be the specter, lurking in the back of her mind. But right now she's happy, she's productive, she's managing her marriage, her children, and her life with relative ease.

She's stable, and God but she's grateful for it.



2. Silver in the lung

"We're in the black!" Ivy carols, skipping into her apartment and dropping the relevant printout on the kitchen table. "As of today, City Critters is officially out of debt and making a profit!"

"Congratulations!" Gina said, and blew her a kiss. "So we don't need to worry about getting evicted?"

"Not unless something goes very wrong," Ivy says, happily. "Fuck, I can't believe this worked. I was sure I was going to crash and burn."

"I knew you'd manage," Gina says, and smiles. "How stubborn you are? There's nothing you can't do."

Ivy grins. "Thanks, babe, I love you too."



3. A grace without a friend

The baby is a blessing Arelie never even thought to hope for. She's always wanted to be a mother, and now to learn that she's carrying a child of her own, a son or daughter fathered by her great love—it's almost too good to be true.

She cups a hand over her abdomen, sitting on a bench outside the clinic. The baby's too small now to cause even the slightest bulge, but it won't be long before she starts to show. She thinks she can already feel it moving.

What would she give to have Farid with her now?



4. Perhaps the kingdom of Heaven's changed!

Maya has a garden now.

It isn't very large, but it's perfect for her; a three-by-five space of rich earth by her apartment's front door. She fills it with whatever catches her eye at the store, bright marigolds and many-petaled geraniums, sweet daisies and scented verbena. On sunny days she goes outside and sits on the stoop, and watches her flowers bloom.

She thought once that heaven was a warm bed and a full stomach, a day without nausea and a dollar in her pocket. She has all that now, and still more.

She can't imagine heaven without flowers anymore.



5. Beyond which summer hesitates, / Almost too heavenly near.

Summer's in the middle of an autopsy, elbow-deep in someone's guts when she realizes suddenly that she hasn't had a period in a while.

It must have been all the blood on her gloves; that's honestly the only association she can imagine. She finishes out the autopsy, and then, because she is a doctor, draws a vial of her blood and asks a friend in the lab to run it, quickly. The urine tests are too unreliable for her tastes.

Nia calls her that evening and says, "You're probably about six weeks along. Congratulations."

Summer can't stop smiling, after that.



6. The smallest "robe" will fit me, And just a bit of "crown;"

It's been a bitch of a project. Jake's so sick of staring at budget spreadsheets, trying to make money appear, and even sicker of sweet-talking people into donating time or money or whatever towards helping out special ed. But it's done now, he's done it, he's made it work, and he never has to see it again.

"You're officially the best chief of staff ever," Ms. Hirschfeld says, approval thick in her voice. "This is excellent work. Seriously, you could have my job, based on what you've done here."

"I'll settle for a vacation," he grouches, and makes her laugh.



7. Had all my Life but been Mistake /Just rectified — in Thee

It feels as if Hugh's life until now has been a series of mistakes.

Not, perhaps, in work—though he can remember the face of every child he's ever treated unsuccessfully—but everything else. Even Olivia, even she has been taken from him.

And yet there's Joanna. Still, and always.

He isn't sure how she did it, or even what it was she did. He only knows that she believes in him, so much more than he believes in himself. She makes him better, just by being near.

It's hard to despair when there is such faith in the world.



8. I'm ceded -- I've stopped being Their's --

Rebecca's children stopped being hers the day they left.

It happened before then, actually, but that is the day she really accepted it, the day she woke up and found Michael and Danny gone. She drifted through the house the whole day, touching the things they'd left behind—a teddy bear, a childhood drawing, the fine feathery locks of hair from their first haircuts.

She wonders absently if any other woman has ever felt this way, has ever lost a child so completely while that child still lives.

She wonders how she'll bear it, this not being a mother anymore.



9. There is a pain—so utter— It swallows substance up—

Joy is so perfectly named, Acacia thinks, watching her daughter play. All bright gold hair and brilliant laughter and bubbly smiles, she is a sunbeam made solid, dancing around her father in the warm spring afternoon.

She would be such a wonderful sister, presiding benevolent over a horde of younger siblings—and that thought etches agony into her stomach.

It's her fault, not Don's, that there will be no siblings. It's her body that kills their children before they even have a chance to breathe. Joy is a miracle, and Acacia's endlessly grateful for her one perfect daughter, but...

But.



10. That Blame is just as dear as Praise And Praise as mere as Blame

Gail goes her own way. She always has. Even when she was a girl, she made her own choices and accepted the consequences. And the consequences of this choice—

Does it matter what they say? Her father disapproves and her mother shakes her head and her sister worries, but every time the baby shifts in her, she knows she's made the right choice. If she is so confident of her choice, does it matter what they think?

It does, because she loves them, but it doesn't, because she loves the baby too.

That's all then, she thinks, and moves on.



11. 'Tis little I—could care for Pearls— / Who own the ample sea—

There is literally nothing that Aaron wants anymore.

What more is there to want? He's got a career he loves, and if he had a couple false starts, he's here now. He's got a wife he adores, and Clara—if he believed in that sort of thing he'd think they were made expressly for each other. They've made two beautiful, precious children together, and if the twins have occasionally driven him mad, well, that's what children are for, and anyway he grew up with Ivy so he's got plenty of practice.

Life's pretty much perfect.

He is so ridiculously lucky.



12. This is the hardest Miracle

There is always the knowledge, somewhere in the back of Maria's mind, that each of her children was once given up.

It's not an angry knowledge. She was there, after all, as Arelie fought the inevitable, held her as she wept at the sonogram and grieved dry-eyed at the birth. It isn't even sorrowful, for she cannot regret one second of her children. It's more a sympathetic pain, an ache for the families that had to fall apart so hers could come together.

It hits her sometimes like summer lightning, a spark of gratitude so strong it breaks her heart.



13. I'd brush the summer by / With half a smile and half a spurn

Lars is perfectly fine not having children. The very thought of fatherhood makes him shudder a little bit, all of that responsibility heaped on his shoulders. He saw his father bow and buckle beneath that weight, and he is so much less than his father that he can't imagine it will do anything but crush him. So Danny's not wanting them doesn't bother him much. He doesn't think he'd do well.

And yet, sometimes, watching his friends with their children, there's a pang of half-suppressed regret, a smothered "what if."

He doesn't want children, but he'll always wonder what if.



14. The World - feels Dusty

Lewis has always felt that the world is too old. Billions of years—or thousands, if you believe the religion of his childhood—have left it choked with ashes, crowded with the dead and the failures, and half the time he wondered which he was.

To some extent, he still believes that; still sees the darkness in the world first, the age and the unhappiness. But then sometimes there's mornings like this, the trees outside so green they hurt his eyes, Lauren bitching sleepily about the sunlight as she stretches.

He can live with this.

Hell, maybe he'll even grow.



15. From the Mansion of the Universe / A lifeless Diety

Religion's a weird topic in their family.

Ivy's agnostic in a Protestant sort of way, and while she's got no particular objection to religion, she doesn't have the same attachment to it that Gina does. To Gina, it's a constant.

She's not wild about the church, but God is a living presence in her life. She sees Him every time she looks at Ivy, at the faces of their children. He has been a comfort in dark times and a blessing in joy—how can she deny that to her children?

It's an uneasy tension. She hopes it will ease.



16. Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul
Her marriage is over, and she feels fine.

It sounds like the beginning of a REM song but it's just her life, and not the one Cecily expected to have. Not that anyone ever gets married expecting to get divorced. Not that anyone ever plans to have their life fall apart the way hers has.

But she's fine. It's weird, but she's fine. She has her children, and Chris, it must be said, is still a fantastic father. She has her house, her career. She has herself.

She can make a new start. She can make this work.

She's fine.



17. I thought you'd choose a Velvet Cheek

So the thing is, Paige is basically perfect.

Morgan knows ze's sort of romanticizing here but really, Paige is perfect. She's a total sweetheart, she's gorgeous, she's smart and funny and amazing. She's also raising her little half-sister and hasn't batted an eye at her little brother's unorthodox living arrangements.

And the thing is—Paige could have a million other people but she doesn't, she wants Morgan and she's said so. It's Morgan she picked, Morgan she cuddles with, Morgan she kisses and gasps against.

Morgan doesn't quite know how to express everything ze feels, at that. But ze's damn well going to try.



18. And his Metallic Peace

It's a weirdly easy procedure. Danny's doped up on the good shit, but the cut's surprisingly small and she's only got to stay overnight, and the doctor said she'll be healed in a week or less.

Which is pretty awesome when you think about it.

Lars appears from fucking nowhere, leaning over her bed, his face vaguely fuzzy. "All done, then?"

"Yup!" she says, brightly. "Nooooo more babies. Or periods. Fuck periods."

"Yeah," he says, and he's laughing at her so she tries to smack him. Misses, though. He laughs harder.

"It's the good shit," she says, and laughs herself.



19. But Devils cannot mend

Michael spends months thinking about it.

Joy, bless her, doesn't ask, just kisses his forehead and lets him stew. His friends don't get it, on the rare occasions that he mentions it. He doesn't talk to Danny at all, because he knows what she would say and it's neither pleasant nor printable.

What can he say? How can he do this?

Yet how can he not? Danny's found new parents but he is still his mother's son. He doesn't know if he can move forward, if he doesn't.

It's Mother's Day that finally decides him. That's when he finally calls.



20. The earth has many keys. / Where melody is not

Hector has spent so much of his life hating himself that his time with Theo now seems unreal.

It's just—he was painfully closeted until his senior year of college, and even then he hated himself every time he kissed a man. Years of therapy helped with that bullshit, but there were so much more, so many little pockets of internalized homophobia that dating felt like a minefield.

But there's Theo, who loves him wholeheartedly, who chases away nightmares and kisses him in daylight and shuts up the haters, even when the hater is Hector himself.

It's surreal, and perfect.