log; bigby & snow WHO: Snow White, Bigby Wolf WHEN: September 15 WHERE: Snow's office in 701 WHAT: Snow gets new memories as well as something else. STATUS: Complete!
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It was tricky, gaining new memories. Even trickier when those new memories came with an awkward new body. She remembered months of getting used to it, the gradual decline of movement, the swelling in her feet and belly. She remembered going to war with the wooden soldier from the Adversary's army, come to kill Fabletown once and for all. She remembered it failing when Bigby showed up and saved the day. Goldilocks had tried to kill them, after Bluebeard put a spell on them, which was what had gotten her into this position in the first place.
Her desk did enough to hide her rounded belly, but the chair did nothing for her posture or easing the dull ache in her back. Everything fucking hurt. How women could do this more than once was something Snow wanted to rattle out of their stupid heads! Why would you do this to yourself?
When she heard the door and saw Bigby approach, Snow felt a sudden jolt of nerves and fear unlike anything she'd felt. The rage she'd felt upon finding out was gone, but in return, there was this uncertainty that Bigby would be there the way he was in their world. After all, he was 30 years in the past.
Snow stood up, slowly, belly and hips first, using her hand as leverage to push herself up. This was ridiculous. She felt like a fucking kick ball, or worse, a water balloon not quite ready to burst but horrible awkward to hold in your hands. "This is how I woke up this morning."
Of all the things Bigby expected, this hadn't even made the list.
He'd rushed up there (because of course he had), burst through the door without talking to anyone else in the office (because of course he had), but when he got to the doorway to Snow's office, he stopped dead in his tracks. Stared at her belly. Up at her face. Back at her belly.
"Holy fucking shit, Snow."
Her features flattened at that. She wasn't sure what she expected, but she figured he'd just know, like he told her he could do. He'd said something about knowing what mood she was in. Couldn't he tell this wasn't the best of outlooks? Wasn't there some creepy scent thing that could tell him what she found herself gritting her teeth to keep from barking? The worst bit was that she couldn't even remember how it happened. Maybe in retrospect, that might have been a good thing, but for now, she was unhappy that she hadn't even gotten to go on a date before she'd been knocked out.
And because she hadn't melted his brain enough, she flatly added, "It's yours."
There were enough pregnant women here that Snow waking up surprise pregnant hadn't immediately come to his attention. He'd been out that morning (likely before she changed?) and hadn't walked past her office closely enough to notice.
And if this didn't put him off from leaving Mount Weather proper before sniffing around whatever room Snow was in just to check on her, nothing would.
There was no handbook for this situation. No precedent. In hundreds of years, Bigby had never actually gotten someone pregnant, by accident or otherwise, and the stupid thing that came out of his mouth in his confusion was, "I didn't do that."
"Immaculate conception is not a real thing," she growled in frustration. He didn't do that, indeed. Snow just hadn't found the time in the last half a century or so (probably longer) to get down and dirty with anyone. The fact that she'd been nursing a crush on the wolf was way out of her mind until his confession in the woods. She'd stamped it out and made sure that no one could see it.
She rested her hand on the desk. It was surprisingly easy to get tired when you were worked up and pregnant. "The baby's yours, Bigby."
Bigby had barely admitted to himself that his feelings for Snow were more than friendly. It was impossible to ignore, sure, but he'd done an admirable job acting as if it wasn't a priority and talking himself into accepting that nothing would ever happen.
He was quiet at first. Back home, he'd been thrilled -- but he'd also been aware that they'd slept together in the first place. Now he was behind, so far behind that it wouldn't occur to him to even ask her out for another thirty years.
"How far along are you? You should sit down." That was easier than reacting.
"Seven months? It's a little hazy, given that I've got two sets of memories now." She waved him off, not intending to sit down. Between the pregnancy and still dealing with the repercussions of Goldilocks shooting her in the head, however, she had to turn to half-sit on the edge of the desk. Jesus, her feet felt like they'd been pumped full of water.
Snow remembered his face when she told him. He'd been so ecstatic that she couldn't stand it, had to snap at him because he'd never even told her they'd had sex while under that spell. Just like that, everything she'd worked so hard for went pffft! right out the window. (And all of that was before her ex-husband announced his intentions to run for Mayor of Fabletown.)
For the moment, she let the weariness affect her. Her hand slid over her face, pressing the bridge of her nose. "Look, I know you're far back — way far back in our timeline — so I'm going to let you off the hook here."
Bigby stubbornly dragged over a chair, planting it beside her. "Let me off the hook for what? I'm not going anywhere. Just because I'm not there yet doesn't make me any less of a father." And he'd been fine (in shock! but fine) until he'd said that.
Realizing his impending parenthood was like a punch in the gut, hard and unexpected and enough to make his eyes sting. There was going to be some kid running around in the next two months who might look like him, who might feel the world the same way he did. Somewhere among all the killing he'd done in the Homelands, he'd accepted that he'd never do the opposite. The revelation was like cracking him open and exposing a vulnerability he thought he didn't have.
Except Snow could argue that it didn't. The child would share his genetics, yes, of course, but he'd had no hand in making this child because he hadn't gone through it. She'd accepted the fact that this was going to make life even more difficult in the few hours she'd been awake (thank you, bladder). She couldn't expect him to step forward. She was just about to say so when —
Knock, knock, knock.
It could not have come at a worse moment. Snow's nerves were frayed, and she yelled, "Not now, I'm fucking busy! Leave a note on the damn door, and I'll get with you."
A few seconds passed without another knock, but a cup of coffee manifested on her desk out of nowhere. At least she knew who it had been; she'd have to thank Loki later.
This would have been easier to accept if they had been a couple. If they'd gone out on a date. If they'd fallen in love. The truth was that Snow was waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop, because it always did.
They were going to be parents. In all her long years, Snow never thought that would happen. It had never been on her mind, at least not after everything with Rose and Charming. Her very round belly was real — she could even see her belly button beginning to poke outward — and there was nothing that could change that now. She was absolutely terrified. There was going to be a little person who depended on her.
"I don't know what's going on in your head right now, and that pisses me off more than I'd like."
Bigby didn't jump at the sound, but he did snap his head toward the door like it was an attack instead of a harmless intrusion. He smelled the coffee before he saw it. Must have been that little shit with the magic.
Not important.
"I can't say this isn't a fucking surprise," he said bluntly. There were a million other things he could say, and some of them might actually have been good, but Bigby had never been very good at saying the right thing. "And if you could stop acting like I'm already out the door, that'd help. We're…"
Going to be parents. They were going to be parents. Snow hadn't said anything about them being together in the future, she hadn't suddenly confessed something, and she definitely didn't feel for him now. (Right?)
"We're…" Bigby tried again. "You're not cutting me out of this because of some bullshit you want to call kindness, Snow. Fairness. Whatever. I know you well enough to know there's some shit about this you're leaving out. What aren't you telling me?"
Snow's blood was up. She wanted someone to take all of this out on. Coming from a Bigby who had cared for her far more than she'd been willing to see, that he'd saved them in the battle with the wooden soldiers, when her idiocy would have gotten them all killed… He'd been the only person to never let her down. She realized that she desperately wished that he was on the same page she was, that he'd gone through everything she had.
"We weren't together when it happened." Obviously they'd been together in the vicinity, or this wouldn't have happened, but they hadn't even been dating. It wasn't even until they'd awoken from the spell — Jack's spell, and Goldilock's attempt on their life — that he'd confessed his actual feelings for her. It had made her uncomfortable then, but over the course of those few days, she'd come to realize that on indisputable fact: she had never not been able to count on him. He kept his word, he looked out for her, even when she was a wretch to him. It conflicted, quite frankly, with the long years of her life and experiences. It conflicted with the ideals she had about happily ever after.
She pushed off the desk with a groan and sigh and began to pace the room. "We were under a spell. Neither of us was in control of ourselves, nor can either of us remember it. It was all so that Goldilock could try to kill us again."
"Fuckin' Goldilocks. I always knew she was crazy." Crazy and patient.
Once it settled in -- We were under a spell. Neither of us can remember. -- he was just angry. Hundreds of years of almosts and maybes and keeping his damn mouth shut about exactly what Snow meant to him, and it came to this: tying them together with something more permanent than his gratitude or his infatuation when neither of them were aware, let alone able to truly consent.
Bigby leaned against the desk, arms folded and jaw tight, and even forgot to tell Snow to sit the hell down.
"Snow, if you want me to fuck off out of this, I'll get it." It was genuine, but his voice was shaking with rage. "If I'm a reminder of whatever fucked up plan Goldie was trying to pull on us and you need to get over that alone, I'm not going to bother you." It would kill him to be away from her and to miss out on his own child coming into the world, but Bigby wasn't going to end up like the dwarves to her, some living reminder that her own wants and desires weren't respected. Not over this. Not after all that bullshit with Crane and Georgie and the Crooked Man that was fresher in his mind than hers.
That wasn't what she wanted at all, but Snow couldn't see any way that this didn't feel like entrapment for him. He was thirty years or more in her past. He was clearly not in a place where he wanted to confess feelings for her. She didn't want to be a burden to anyone, let alone to him. Her mood quietly slipped from angry to desperately sad. If what he'd said to her back in the forest was true, then he'd pick up on it.
"No, Bigby. I don't want you to fuck off out of this." She'd told him she would have been interested in that date after his confession, and she'd meant it. Snow opened herself up to her own feelings, something that people had seen even though she'd worked her hardest, but that meant nothing if he was not in the same space. "If it was a reminder, I would have —" She couldn't even say the word abortion, but if it had been that painful a reminder, she'd have done it. "I just don't want you to feel obligated, like I trapped you into this, waking up pregnant."
"You didn't do anything wrong," Bigby insisted. "Neither of us did. I…" He reached as if he was going to take her hand, then thought better of it, letting it drop. He shook his head.
"Fact is, there's going to be a kid in this world with us as parents, no matter how it came around. Never thought I'd have kids, but if this is happening, there's no way in hell you're doing it without me. It ain't the cage you seem to think it is." The actual idea of a baby was the least grim part of this, as far as Bigby was concerned. It was a little like pulling out his own teeth when he added, "Doesn't have to mean we're anything more than we are now, but no kid of mine's growing up without a father. Being an obligation's not a bad thing."
Like everything these last few months, this set Snow's emotions on edge. She could feel her eyes stinging. She swallowed hard, trying to shove it all down, but the more she pushed, the more it shoved her right back. She didn't want their child to grow up without their father, even if they weren't together. But at least back in their world, she knew that Bigby wanted her along with the child.
This would have to do.
Snow stopped pacing long enough to reach out, slip her arms around him, and hug the hell out of him. "I'm so glad you said that. I wanted you to be around. I want the baby to know you."
Something he said had upset her. Bigby could smell the subtle change in her scent when her mood dropped a little, but without asking it was difficult to tell exactly what had gotten to her.
This wasn't really the time to ask, though, was it?
He was careful when he hugged her, hyperaware of her belly between them. The scent of her hair and her sorrow and the heavy pregnancy hormones clouded his nose and mouth, making it difficult to speak. The best Bigby could do without making some kind of fool of himself was hold her, resting a protective hand over her hair. "Snow, I will never leave you," he promised emphatically. In his own time, he'd promised the same no more than a few weeks ago, but it must have seemed like the better part of a few decades for her. He wondered if she remembered it.
Her memory was good, though maybe not as strong as his. Maybe that was because she'd put things out of her mind from that time period — she didn't like to remember Ichabod Crane — or that it was just fresh in his memory. It didn't matter because it sparked remembrances from all over their history. He was the one person she had always been able to count on, even hundreds of years before any of this mess happened. He'd never once asked for anything in return from her.
Looking back, she could see so clearly what he'd meant that it wasn't sudden. He'd let her use the lycanthropy stained knife on him, in return for what? Centuries of Fables talking shit about him or running from him. It couldn't be a happy life, and yet, he'd stuck it out.
"I know, Bigby," she whispered, her voice heavy with emotion. She hugged him just that much tighter. "You're the one person who's always been there for me, and you have no idea how much I appreciate that."