adivasheadvoices | (no subject)

Is it a blessing or a curse to be reunited with those who are gone?

The question has been much on Kate's mind since she returned to this place and found her Harry here, seemingly alive -- and yet, as he told her, trapped in this purgatory, unable to move forward or back. So Kate finds herself in a position no widow has ever been in: she may have the enjoyment of her dead husband again, but not the keeping of him. Should she leave this place at the end of the world, he dies to her again. And she's not sure she has the strength to lose him more than once.

They're heavy thoughts, but she can cast them off for hours at a time in Harry's bed. They only begin to creep up on her when she slips out of his room while he sleeps. (He looks too much like the dead Hotspur of her nightmares, then, still and quiet. She used to love sleeping beside him; now she prefers him awake and laughing.)

So evening in Milliways finds her in the common room, dressed again in her mourning black -- the only clothes she has here -- and splitting her attention between brooding glances at the fire and fascinated people-watching.

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She blinks.

"D'you say so?"

"Indeed, Kate, indeed!" In an instant, propelled by the notion and his own implacable need, he bounds out of the booth and tugs her hand. "There's always someone in the infirmary. It cannot do us any harm to ask."

There's her Harry. Bemused but smiling, she lets herself be tugged to her feet.

"Then lead the way, love, and let us ask."

Oh but he knows this route well, when he dragged himself stiff and bandaged back and forth (and was reprimanded oft enough for disturbing his stitches and proving nothing for it). Never did he bound so toward the infirmary, nor with so light a heart.

They fairly skid to a halt at the entrance, and he pushes inside like an old friend. "Good morrow! What ho, who is home?"

"Oh, great, who'd you break this time, Harry?"

The young woman who emerges from the back room of the infirmary is tall and dark-haired. The short-sleeved shirt she's wearing doesn't hide the old scars on her forearms. She's grinning ruefully as she comes out -- and looks slightly taken aback that Harry has an apparently unbroken woman holding his hand.

"Oh, hi. What can I do for you guys?"

"Broken, nothing! Mended, I dearly hope." He takes Kate by the hand, and rests the other at the small of her back. "Nita, as I am a teller of truths, I would have you meet my wife." There is no small amount of pride in his voice, and why not -- is there any such a lady in all the world as his?

Kate raises her eyebrows and inclines her head. "Madam."

And Nita straightens up. She's a geek and an avid reader; when she met Hotspur, she recognized his name right off the bat (and thankfully kept that fact to herself).

"Lady Percy," she says, with a slight bow. "Nice to meet you. My name's Nita Callahan, I'm a wizard."

"You must believe her," he murmurs to Kate. "We came to know each other well since I arrived."

"Welsh, art thou?" Kate asks, smiling.

Nita laughs.

"Nope. Irish, if I were gonna be anything from the British isles."

He smirks. "I pray you, hold it not against her." And a wink to Nita.

"Not here, not I."

She gives her husband a fond grin, then kisses his cheek and pats his shoulder.

"Now off with you for a time, sir. Methinks 'tis best we women speak of this alone."

"Say you so? Wouldst condemn this establishment to suffer me and my pacing?" He shakes his head and steps back. "Very well. I'll be back anon, though."

Anon may be quick indeed, given his patience.

Nita blinks at him as he leaves, then gives Kate a curious look.

"Ma'am, are you . . . with child?"

Kate takes a deep breath. "So much I hope you may tell me," she says.

"Sure -- I mean yeah, we can check that. Just." She jerks her head towards the door. "If that's how he is just for the pregnancy test, I shudder to think how he'd be for a delivery."

Kate snorts.

"A right terror he'd be, I am sure. Mayhap 'twill be a blessing that I am otherwise occupied."

"For once that might be true. C'mon back, we'll set you up with a test."

The actual test only takes a few minutes to complete.

It's the ensuing conversation that lengthens the time to ten minutes since the women kicked Hotspur out of the room -- then twenty -- then twenty-five.

And then, finally, Nita pokes her head out of the infirmary.

"Hey, Hotspur, get in here."

Anyone who did not know him would call the speed at which he returns "startling alacrity." Of course, had you been stalking the hallways in tighter and tighter circuits, hoping for a word (or something to overhead, mayhap), you should have thought yourself ponderous slow.

"An age I've been waiting, God's blood! Tell me there is an answer."

"Do you think I'm dumb enough to come get you without one?" she asks, holding the door for him. "Sheesh."

"It is conclusive, then." He grins. "I'll swear fealty to your science, Nita, by all the dancing devils in Wales!"

"Aww, you're a prince. Now go talk to your wife."

Who's sitting on one of the plastic chairs by a bed and looking vaguely shell-shocked.

"A prince? I never!"

But straightaway he's at his Kate's side, and takes up her hand as he sits.

"Do I read you right, my love? If my joy is in vain, let me hear it now."

She squeezes his hand and smiles, tentatively.

"Aye, love, thou read'st aright. We've a child."

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