stephanie nashton does it all (forthem) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-08-22 01:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | !dc comics, *narrative, stephanie brown |
narrative: steph at home.
WHO Stephanie Nashton
WHAT Being without her husband.
WHEN Today.
WHERE The "farm".
WARNING sads. so much sads.
Twenty-four hours since she’d seen him last, and Stephanie Nashton was a puffy-eyed, barely coherent, barely breathing mess.
She had gone longer without seeing him, sure, but just knowing that Eddie was out there somewhere out of his riddled mind and having no clue who she was or where he was had her heart in pieces and her panic rising by the hour. Their conversation didn’t help matters. The fact that she was carrying his baby? Really didn’t help matters. She was a certifiable wreck, and after spending hours upon hours pacing and crying and trying her goddamnest to track him down with nothing to go on, she’d exhausted all her efforts to not just go out into the crazed streets below. Instead, she laid on their couch with Matilda laying at her feet, Lucha in her arms, and Bandit curled up by her head. She clutched her phone and journal, and the comm was pressed into her ear. All in hope that she would get news that this was all just some sick prank.
“Stephanie, honey?”
Steph jolted up on the couch (pets scattering in fear and annoyance) because that wasn’t a voice she’d heard in years. But instead of seeing her mother with her short hair and lab coat and concerned face, she only saw the gleaming sun-shaped face of Machina on the computer screen set up on the kitchen bar. Smiling softly over at her in that coddling sort of way she always did.
“Mac?” she croaked out, and the computer’s gaze did not break.
“Yes, honey.” No pings, no confusing computer noises. Just the sound of her mother’s voice slightly computerized. “Since Eddie isn’t able to use me right now, you’ve got temporary usership.” The blonde’s eyebrows furrowed, but she shakily pushed herself off the couch and walked with a wobble to the computer. Head pounding, eyes puffed, heart still racing with a panic that she couldn’t stop. She pulled the tiny square box out of the computer, and she held it in the palm of her hand. It felt warm, and she suddenly felt soothed in a way that none of the words of her family couldn’t even dream.
She went into the bedroom, clutching that piece of alien technology in her palm, and as she sat on the edge of their bed, she put on the arm strap that Eddie always used for Mac and adjusted it for her tinier wrist. Mac clicked into place, and Steph laid down on the bed, curling up on Eddie’s side.
“Diagnosis, please, Mac.” A series of pings, and a colorful light washed over her body. Mac rattled off vitals in her mom’s voice: increased heart-rate, labored breathing, extreme fatigue. Yes, Mac. She knew she needed to sleep. She knew that the panic attack she was having weren’t good for her or the life she was growing inside her.
“And the baby?”
“What baby, honey?”
“My baby, what about my baby, Mac? Don’t fuck around with me. Not now, not-”
“You’re not pregnant. Baby girl, you’re not pregnant.” Stephanie’s heart stopped. In that moment, it wasn’t some goddamn alien tech telling her either. It was her mother. Her mother telling her that she wasn’t actually having Eddie’s baby. That she had gotten excited for no reason after all.
She didn’t burst into tears, she didn’t scream, she just stared into the abyss, to that closet that still had those fucking bullet holes in it from months and months and months ago when she cracked. And here she was, cracking again.
“Was I ever-,” Steph started, swallowing tears away. “Run diagnosis. Was I ever pregnant?”
If it actually was Crystal Brown standing in that room, she would give her daughter a pointed look and a squeeze of her hand before running some tests. Now? It was just another wave of warm, colorful lights. “No, Stephanie. Your menstrual cycle will begin in the next few days. The stress and your body readjusting is probably why you were late.” There was the slightest pause, like Mac was thinking before just going ahead with it. “Baby girl, I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to get pregnant.”
Stephanie balked and sat up, staring at the box on her wrist. “What? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“My scans are saying that your body might not be able to sustain life. That the last pregnancy put too much strain on you and your body. That realistically? You won’t be able to get pregnant again.”
She resisted the urge to throw the goddamn thing across the room, but she took the strap off her wrist and shoved it underneath Eddie’s pillow before burying her face in her own to drown out the sobs. She cried until the sobs were just dry heaves, and when she finally surfaced? Well, there was a post by a certain son of a bitch lion bragging about having her husband.