In This Corner...
Title: In This Corner...
Author: windfallswest
Fandom: The Dresden Files
Pairing: Harry/Marcone undertones, but what else is new?
Rating: PG-13, because Harry can't keep it clean.
Disclaimer: <----
Word Count: 14k
Notes: Also at AO3.
Summary: AU, plot from the end of Death Masks. Harry is a girl, Susan is a boy, and guess who gets pregnant this time. Warning for discussion of abortion. Ass-backwards spoilers for Changes.
Labour was a bitch, even without the faerie complications. I don't really have hips, to look at, but I more than clear six feet, and I'm built to scale, as it were. Good thing, too-I know it's not polite to discuss another woman's weight, but Maggie topped nine pounds when she was born: it was a wonder I managed to squeeze her out at all.
Let me back up a little.
My ex came to town. We fought demons, had alarmingly intense bondage sex, turned a ritual duel into a free-for-all, and a whole bunch more scenes from a theological grab-bag of an action movie resulted in me getting shot. Anyway, I was kind of busy for a while there after I got myself upright again, and when I finally got home, I was spending my time mostly zonked out on the couch or, even better, zonked out in bed. Not down in my lab. I still wasn't feeling too good.
And then there was the thing with Marcone, which was all kinds of fucked up, but that's me and Marcone for you. And while I maybe found some time in there to think back on the steaming awesomehot sex with Hawk Rodriguez, I can maybe be forgiven for not remembering what we, er, hadn't remembered.
Anyway, it wasn't until I was knocking holes in the floor so I could Han Solo me a fallen angel that I really got back down there again. In between giving my new excavating pick some exercise, I filled Bob in a little on what had happened in the latest episode of disaster in the clusterfuck that is my life. He was unusually silent as I went on, but I figured I'd just finally come up against something that seriously intimidated him. I should have known better.
"Uh, Boss?" Bob said tentatively as I finished smoothing down the cement.
"Uh-huh?"
"Um, I don't know if you..."
I sighed. "What is it, Bob?"
Bob hesitated. That was not like Bob. I looked up, starting to get a bad feeling about this.
"Somewhere in there you got laid, right?" Bob asked out of nowhere in a bad imitation of his normal cheerily prurient tone.
"Stars and stones, do we have to have this conversation again? I am not discussing my love-life with you. End of discussion."
"But Boss!" Bob objected. "Your aura-"
"It was last week," I snapped, contradicting myself. "I doubt my aura is still doing anything interesting."
"Harry," Bob shouted. "You're pregnant!"
__ __ __
"Harry?" Bob asked after I'd let the silence go on for rather too long. "Are you all right?"
"Do you want me to throw this pick at you?" I wasn't actually holding it, though, which probably undercut the threat a little.
"Wow, so hormonal already?"
I reached over and grabbed about half his reading material off his shelf with one hand, baring my teeth. "If you are fucking with me, you're going in next. I've still got concrete left."
__ __ __
I took tests. I took kind of a lot of them. They all said the same thing. Looked like I had a bun in the oven. Hell's bells.
Now the question was, what was I going to do about it?
God, what a question.
I wasn't-I mean, I like children. I'd never really thought about having them; I'd never been in a position where it seemed possible. I wasn't in that position now. Children were something to think about after you were in a permanent relationship and had some money in the bank. I had neither. It had, pathetically, been more than a year since I'd had so much as a date. I couldn't even manage to locate a suitable adult person to neck with at the drive-in. I was not in a place in my life where I was prepared to take responsibility for a helpless, inarticulate, fragile miniature human being.
Not to mention the danger factor. I demonstrably couldn't even order a frigging pizza without somebody trying to blow me up. There was a war on, still, and I was at the top of the hit list. I didn't have Michael's divine baby-sitter drafting service, complete with holy backup. Talk about cheating. All I had was Bob, and there was no way I was ever going to leave a baby with Bob. No. Just, no.
There was a war on, and pregnancy, it messes you around. I didn't really know much about how hormones effected magical abilities, although obviously wizardesses got pregnant sometimes. How had my mother handled it?
So maybe it wouldn't effect my power, who knew? Would it effect my judgement? One hotheaded decision could be as fatal as a flubbed spell, as I had ample reason to know, and I'm not famous for my, ahem, extreme rationality normally. I thought back over the past week. I couldn't imagine doing all that with a kid at home. Hell's bells, one hour in the wrong part of the Nevernever and I could lose a year. Even without that, when a case came up, I was often away from my apartment for days at a time.
And then, cold as it was, there was the problem of money. People are expensive to keep alive; I barely managed it myself, and I had a lot of what I needed already: clothes, furniture, education of a sort. Kids are plain expensive. I didn't have reliable access to that kind of money, but I had enough in the bank right now to do the other thing.
Come out and say it. To pay for an abortion.
I sat on the closed toilet lid, my face in my (recently washed) hands and let that bounce around in my head for a while. Abortion. It was the sensible thing to do, but something inside me shrank away from the thought.
It wasn't...look, I'm not political, and I'm not trying to tell anyone else how to live her life. All I know is how I felt. Creating life is a profoundly transformative act, and the magical implications are just as enormous as all the others.
Life creates magic, you see. We shape and direct it with our thoughts and emotions, but we produce it with every breath. Everyone, not just wizards. Even animals, even a rockslide, creates magic, has magic working within it. That's where ley-lines come from, all that energy bubbling up and pooling and flowing, and part of why some places just feel special. The ancient Japanese called them kami; Americans tend to put them on postcards. It's a part of nature, and so are human beings, even though we tend to forget that.
Humans are more complicated than just about anything else of our size: not only do we move and grow and interact, we think and build and emote. A tornado or a rainforest produces way more magical energy than a person, but it's also a lot bigger, more unwieldy.
That's how come black magicians use other people as batteries: it's like eating potato chips instead of a balanced breakfast. Actually, that's a really good metaphor. It's something that feels really good at the time, but if you do it too much, your metaphorical arteries will clog up and you die at age thirty-five looking like the Blob. Or maybe alcohol, because it's addictive and it changes you, and it eats you away from the inside out. And once you get the taste for it, it's always with you, no matter what you do.
The point being that magic is essentially a positive force. I don't really go in for religion, don't get too deep into philosophy. What I believe in is magic. Magic is a positive force. Ending the pregnancy would be by definition destroying something, and I was conflicted about it, even though it was the smart thing to do.
I called Murphy, offered to take her for lunch. Her voice on the phone and the way she looked at me when I showed up-not at Mac's, a Mexican joint over in Pilsen where I went sometimes but I wasn't known-said she was afraid I was dying of plague or something after all. Geez, I knew I didn't usually pick up the tab, but was it that bad?
"Do I look that bad?" I asked, sitting down.
Murphy only gave me half a smile. "What's up?"
"Yowch."
Murphy heaved an aggravated sigh. "Do I have to drag it out of you?"
I braced myself. If there was anyone I knew who could understand, it was Murphy. Maybe not the magic stuff, but the rest of it. We were both single women with careers, fighting forces both freaky and dark. I had never been more grateful Murphy was clued in.
Murphy was staring at me. I realised I was staring at her and not saying anything, winced, opened my mouth, closed it again, fiddled with the force ring on my right hand, and avoided her face.
"God, Harry, am I dying or something?"
My eyes jerked up and I looked at Murphy as close as I could to her eyes, steeling myself. I think I jumped two feet in the air when the waiter asked me what I wanted to drink. Tequila, and keep it coming. But no.
"Harry-" Murphy started again once he'd taken our orders.
"I'm pregnant," I blurted, looked up at her, then away.
It was Murphy's turn to gape like a fish; her mouth snapped shut on whatever sprang first to mind, then came out with, "Um, Hawk?"
I nodded miserably. "Murph, I don't know what to do."
It came out kind of plaintive, and I was a little ashamed of myself. But Murphy, god bless her, just reached across the table and took my hand.
Our food came, and Murphy told me a story about a noise complaint someone filed that had gotten shunted over to her department. It turned out the guy upstairs had been raising goats.
"Not even a little voodoo?" I asked.
"Sorry. He was making cheese. These organic people, I swear." Murphy took another bite out of her empanada. "Unless there's such a thing as cheese magic."
I shrugged. "You could use it as an ingredient in a potion, I suppose. And faeries are wild about dairy products. Milk, pizza. I haven't tried yoghurt. A faerie will do just about anything for a slice of pizza, though."
Murphy's brows shot up. "Really?"
"Well, the lesser fae. The sidhe go in more for blood." I made a face.
"Harry," Murphy said a minute later.
"Mmm?"
"Do you want to talk about it?"
I hesitated. Well, that was what I was here for, wasn't it? Murphy was giving me this look, like she was trying to be supportive but my lack of communication skills was reaching the point where she was tempted to bang one of our heads against the wall until I developed some. You gotta love Murphy; she's good people.
"What do you think?" There was that damned whine again.
"Have you told him yet?" Murphy's tone was gentle.
I shook my head. "Not until I decide...what I'm doing."
It hung there between us for a moment.
"I guess that's the question, then."
Silence.
"Have you ever...?"
Murphy had been married twice, after all. I knew both had ended in divorce, but she'd never told me why, and I hadn't asked.
Murphy looked down at her coffee. "I thought I was, once, when I was with Greg. False alarm."
"Were you...would you have kept it?"
"I was in a different situation than you are now. I had Greg." Murphy took a seep breath. "But no. I was trying for sergeant, taking night classes. Things were already...both of us were working too much. I would have caught hell from my family, if they'd found out, but no. "
The Murphy clan was Catholic, right. "Do you ever think about it?"
"Sometimes. I don't know...it wouldn't have changed anything that happened between Greg and me, not really. But that's not what you're asking." Murphy was making serious eye-contact with her coffee again. "A lot of things would have been more complicated. My career. Me and Greg. Me and Rich." Murphy made a face at that one. "Well, that might have been an improvement actually."
I chuckled dutifully.
"If I'd had a kid with Greg, it'd be a teenager now. It might be nice, to have something of him. But that's not a reason to have a child. You can't make it a...a replacement person."
"I'm not-stars and stones, Murph, I'm not trying to replace Hawk." Although it was a sort of attractive thought, leaving behind a legacy, something of me that would remember and continue, the way I remembered my dad. I hadn't thought about it quite like that, before. Of course, right now my own legacy mostly consisted of enemies. I still didn't know how big the unexploded minefield my own mother had left for me was. I frowned; Lea was just the goddamned tip of the iceberg.
"I never said you were."
I drummed my fingers on the wooden tabletop. "So you want kids now?"
"Harry." Murphy clamped down on my fidgeting hand. "This isn't about me or what I'd do. I can't make your decision for you."
I grimaced and pulled my hand away to fidget with the straw in my coke instead. "Hell's bells, Murphy, you know what the life is like. I've got demons and vampires and the whole faerie circus out gunning for me half the time. I can barely support myself, anyway. Even I can see it's a stupid idea."
Murphy sat back and picked up her coffee again. "Uh-huh?"
I glared at her. "Don't give me that. I'm not making excuses. Do you think I want to-"
"You want kids." She sounded surprised.
"Well, not right now. Not like this. I always just kind of thought, you know, eventually I'd settle down, do it right. Well, not settle-settle; wizarding isn't something I can quit. And I figured I'd have to use a turkey baster or something. I wanted my kids to have parents and a real home, though. Some measure of security." Something like what Michael had; hell, I'd be happy with a quarter of what Michael had. All I have is a three-room apartment with a talking skull, a box of depleted uranium, a cat the size of King Kong, and a fallen angel buried in the floor.
I bit my tongue on the rest of it. I didn't want to jump feet-first into that sand-trap of a political argument. As soon as you say 'the baby's alive already', people assume you're a raving lunatic hellbent on overturning Roe v Wade. I hadn't decided what I was or wasn't going to do yet, but there was no doubt in my mind that the blastocyst or whatever was alive. Bob had said it had changed my aura, and I believed him. Magic is a creative force, and I was apparently creating.
"There are other options. Adoption." Except any child of mine stood a more than fair chance of being a wizard. I thought of my child, at the hands of another Justin. I thought of my child, being kidnapped, possessed, broken. Like hell. I'd made myself a promise, a long time ago, that no child of mine would grow up like I had.
There was only one rational choice. I met Murphy's eyes, just for a second. They were full of compassion.
__ __ __
"Are you going to get married?"
I groaned. I hadn't really meant to tell Michael, but it had just kind of popped out. Also, I had to have some excuse for saying that Charity's pasta sauce smelled like rancid shoe-leather. Oops?
"Who to? I don't see any candidates, do you?"
"I would think to the young man who's responsible," Michael said so mildly I had to resist the urge to try and punt his head. Note: impulsive I may be, but I'm not actually stupid enough to throw down with one of the Fists of God in a fit of pique.
"First of all, I'm just as responsible for this as Hawk is." More, if you consider the fact that I was the one in control of the enchanted binding-cord. But it was going to take more than spaghetti to get me to admit that in this company. "Second, he's in Central America fighting vampires. Besides, I asked him already," I grumbled into my hot chocolate.
"You've told him?" Michael asked.
"Nooo, it was before," I mumbled into the rim of my mug.
"Harry," he chided.
"Look, I appreciate that you think everybody can have what you and Charity have. I wish I could, too. But Hawk and I just aren't going to happen, okay?"
Michael gave me one of his looks, the ones that made me feel like somewhere little fluffy kittens were crying. He held up one hand, palm out. "Okay. But you still need to let him know."
"Yeah, yeah." Stars and stones, was Michael not going to be able to forgive me for this. "Um, could you not tell anyone? For a while?" I slouched further in my seat and tried not to think about it. I'd found myself doing that a lot, lately, and I couldn't keep it up much longer.
"Sure, Harry," he said gently. Dammit. "If that's what you want."
I looked around Michael's house, the kid-art stuck up on the fridge, the loud, happy shouts and thumps of its creators, the way Michael and Charity looked at each other over the sticky little beasts, and felt like a worm.
__ __ __
I was working again, which mostly meant I sat in my office for eight or so hours every day, reading nth-hand paperbacks from used book stores. I was about twice as hungry as usual, but bound and determined to ignore it. The third or tenth time I caught my hand slipping down to rest on my belly, I decided it was time to neaten up my filing system. Well, invent a filing system. Don't look at me like that; I hardly ever had trouble finding what I was looking for. It was more like re-inventing. Sort of tightening up around the edges.
This was ridiculous. I'd make the appointment tomorrow, and that would be that. Like I'd told Murphy, it was the only sensible thing to do. Tomorrow.
My office had never been neater, anyway, not that it was doing me a lot of good. I'd been neglecting my business this past year, and it showed. Why else would I go on Larry freaking Fowler again, right? Of course, I wasn't usually what you'd call swamped-just ask any PI. And I'd taken it a step further: I'd had to specialise. I only ever had too much to do when at least half of it was set to kill me.
Back at my apartment, I dinked around with the wards some, resetting the emergency lock-down with more than one thought about the unintended consequences the last time I used it. Bob and I talked about how they'd held up under fire and even came up with a few improvements.
The next day, I had an actual case. Nothing big, just one of the other tenants who couldn't find his keys and decided to take a chance on the resident wizard. I couldn't make it any worse, right?
As long as he didn't try and psychoanalyse me, I decided, I'd refrain from cracking wise about a shrink buying into a professional wizard. I thought that was pretty big of me. And hey, who knows? Maybe he was in such solid mental health his eyes were open to the possibility of weirdness in the world around him. Maybe I should ask: sometimes I think I could use a good shrink. The rest of the time, I'm pretty sure I'd be the ruin of a good shrink.
I found his keys, anyway. They were in an empty disposable coffee cup in the dumpster out back of the café a few blocks over where he'd eaten lunch. I had an old-fashioned sword-cane back at my apartment that Eb had helped me enspell to focus earth-magic, which as a discipline includes manipulating gravity and magnetic fields as well as throwing big chunks of stone and dirt and tectonic plate around. My old teacher, Ebenezar McCoy, is really good at that stuff. I don't hold a candle to him. Fire and air are my preferred elements, although manipulating pure energy-like the thaumaturgy I used to locate the shrink's keys-is where I really shine; but I can do a simple trick or two without a focus.
I didn't feel like digging through garbage for a half-hour's fee, so I followed the connexion, like a string, that I had hold of to the keys on the other end and murmured a few words to pull them up along that line. Softly, so I didn't accidentally hit myself in the face with the dumpster. Someday, I would take time to work on my precision and control. But I managed not to mutilate myself, so I called it a win.
I put my hand out and caught the keys. Sadly, this just looked like I was rummaging around in the dumpster to an outside observer, who in this case was my client, the shrink. He'd decided to tag along, and I hadn't stopped him. Whatever. I tossed him the keys. He handed me a twenty. Sweet. I hadn't had lunch yet.
It was windy and in good Chicago style still pretty nippy in early March, but I was outside already so I tugged my duster a little tighter around myself and walked the six blocks to McAnally's. I ducked through the low door and kept ducking down the stairs: Mac's food can't be beat, but his location is not gawky-wizard friendly. I could easily reach up and touch the ceiling, if I didn't mind getting my hand chopped off by one of the thirteen fans hanging from it.
I wove my way through the thirteen tables squeezed in between the thirteen carved pillars and sat down at the bar (thirteen stools). Mac's is Accorded Neutral Ground and a hang-out for a lot of local practitioners; all the thirteens disrupt the sorts of energies from our auras that make anything technological break down and cry, or one bad mood blight an entire room. I especially appreciated this because otherwise I'd often have been that bad mood, and it would have sucked if Mac banned me for brooding. A wizards' bar that doesn't allow brooding would never get off the ground, anyway.
"Steak sandwich, Mac," I told the man behind the bar. He grunted, which was standard, and tossed some meat on the wood-burning stove. Like I said: wizard bar. It's a minor miracle he keeps the lights on and the fans going.
I watched him grab a bottle of one of his personal microbrews without actually registering anything more than that Mac makes really good beer and I could sure use a drink. Er.
"Uh, just water today. Thanks," I fumbled out just before he popped the cap.
Mac raised an eyebrow at me, but wordlessly put the bottle back and drew me a glass of water. Turning down beer was not usual behaviour for me, but it was Mac's very wise policy not to ask his patrons questions.
Thank. Fucking. God.
I stared at the water Mac slid in front of me, and in an odd moment of dissonance, wondered why I'd bothered. It was stupid. I knew what decision I had to make. I'd make the appointment tomorrow, no more putting it off. Not like I couldn't find room in my schedule.
"Life's not fair, you know."
Mac glanced up at me, over his shoulder instead of in the big mirror behind the bar, since it was too dirty to reflect a clear image. I must have really had him puzzled with my teatotalling, because you don't usually get so much as a blink out of Mac with a remark as trite as that.
I took a sip of my water, then started drawing a five-pointed star inside the condensation ring where Mac had set it down. "I mean, it's not all black and white. Things don't just fit into neat little boxes. Sometimes you don't have any good choices. Then what do you do?"
I took another gulp of water. It was way less satisfying than beer.
"You make a bad choice, that's what. You make a bad choice because that's all there is, and you live with the consequences. It doesn't mean you want to do it. Or that you're happy about it, or you'll feel good about it afterwards. But there you go. What-"
Mac came over and tipped my glass toward himself, making a show of bending and sniffing the contents.
I snatched it glass back. "You did not accidentally pour me vodka, asshole. Besides, vodka is odourless. Some bartender you are."
Mac gave me a look that said I'd been asking for it and slid my food in front of me, through the multiplied pentacle-doodles. Suddenly, I discovered I wasn't very hungry after all.
__ __ __
Michael just happened to be passing by my office around dinner time for the third time this week. I switched my braid back over my shoulder irritably while Michael chattered on about getting a car with airbags and how Charity handled being pregnant and getting all misty-eyed about when his oldest was a baby.
"Michael," I cut him off. "Can you just-I'm not sure I'm keeping it." Which was not at all what I'd meant to say, which was that I wasn't keeping it. I'd decided.
"Harry-"
"Look, Michael, I know how you feel about it. I don't need a friggin' guilt trip, or a lecture, or to take time to consider my options. You want to know what my options are? Any kid of mine would be living under a death sentence, period. The only thing every vampire in three of the four courts would like better than killing me is getting to my family first, and sooner or later, they'd manage it. I just don't have the resources you have. Tell me, where could I leave a kid and know it was safe? I'd need a bodyguard, not a babysitter. If I had that kind of money." I ran down, staring hard at the ground, not wanting to see the look on his face.
"You might be safer out of town. In another line of work," Michael suggested.
I snorted. "Don't bet on it. I'm not running, Michael. I can't. And besides, it's too late. I could spend the rest of my life tending beehives a hundred miles from civilisation and I'd still be marked. Believe me when I say that this is the only way."
"There is always a way," said Michael quietly.
"Yeah? Tell that to Shiro."
"Harry." Michael's tone was reproachful
"If I have this baby, both of us are going to end up dead. I'm not prepared to accept that. Just leave it," I told him.
Michael paused. "I just came to ask you to have dinner with us, Harry."
"Look, you don't-thanks, but I'm not hungry. I've got stuff I need to do at home."
I fled without once looking back up at him. Nothing like a living saint to make you feel like crud. And anyway, I did have things to do at home.
__ __ __
I'd started avoiding Bob, and so wasn't making any progress in replacing the foci I'd lost during the recent festivities. My skin crawled every time I stepped outside without my shield bracelet, and I'd been especially careful about not going out after dark.
Eventually, though, I had to bite the bullet and get back in the lab. I had a spell to do for a client, and I needed to check my silver to see if I had enough for another shield bracelet.
"Hey, boss. 好亥不見."
"I knew buying you that Japanese stuff was a mistake."
"Hey, that was Chinese, I'll have you know. You have no culture."
I rolled my eyes. "I'm not sure we have the same definition of 'culture', Bob. The anti-roach charm is roach poison, pandan leaves, a lightbulb, and diatomaceous earth. Right?"
Bob rocked a little on his shelf. "Yeah. You could throw in some cloves to help with the smell."
I grunted and got to work on the spell. It sounds great, doesn't it? Not glamorous, but it worked, and you'd think it would have made me a small fortune by now. I spent a lot of time trying to perfect it back when I first had the idea, but I'd never gotten it to hold for more than about a month or so. Also, the client had to leave the inscribed lightbulb filled with dead leaves and what looked like talcum powder screwed into the socket where I set the charm. And I had to set the charm to the location personally.
The real problem, though, was the smell. The charm worked great while it lasted, with enough range to chase the buggers out of an entire apartment building. But it left the whole building smelling faintly of disinfectant and glue. One failed test run had resulted in everybody in Billy and Georgia's building getting high off non-existent fumes. Oops.
I was, predictably, scratching tiny runes into the glass of the lightbulb when Bob said, "Have your boobs gotten any bigger yet?"
"Stars and sky!" My hand jerked, and I bent to examine the surface, checking to make sure I hadn't gouged any unintended marks. "That's none of your business!"
"You don't have to be embarrassed, Harry. Lots of women take a few kids to fill out," Bob continued blithely.
"I'm not having a-a kid," I snapped. "The pregnancy. I'm not going through with it."
"Really, Harry? I thought you-"
"Shut it, Bob," I grated between clenched teeth.
"Sheesh, guess I hit a nerve. Look, how was I supposed to know? You're still walking around with your aura all glowy," Bob said sulkily.
Of the two of us, I really thought I was the one with more right to be sulky. "I've been busy."
"Okay," Bob agreed quickly in a small voice.
Dammit, I wasn't being unreasonable. Bob pried into my personal life, and I shut him down. This was the order of things. I went back to the squeaky process of carving glass.
"You know," Bob interrupted me. My head snapped up and he rushed on, "I could make you a potion. For, you know. Since you haven't had the time."
My jaw hung open. It always floored me when the little amoral pervert showed he cared. I swallowed.
"Uh, thanks Bob. Just let me finish up here."
"Sure thing, boss."
I could just have stopped the charm and picked up again while the potion stewed, but I didn't want to chance the roach poison getting into anything I was going to drink. So I finished prepping the charm, put everything away, and washed my hands and work surface carefully. Bob rattled off the recipe and I mixed the ingredients-unsurprisingly, the soured milk wasn't a problem.
The potion went on to simmer; it would take a while to cook. Instead of sitting there and watching it like a deer in the headlights, I asked Bob where my scrap silver and silver chain were and started working up a new shield bracelet. I'd need more silver before I could finish it, but it was demanding, finicky work and just what I needed to distract me right now.
"Okay, boss," Bob interrupted my concentration again, although this time I didn't startle. The work had been going slower and slower this past half hour, until I'd stopped even pretending.
I turned to the potion, bubbling happily, and gathered my energy and will to pour into it, fusing ingredients and metaphor into a suspension of magic. I drew in my focus, ready to direct the accumulated force of my churning emotions.
I.
"Uh, boss?"
I stared at the potion, the increasingly rancid smell of hot, sour milk in my nostrils.
"You know, this isn't really the sort of magic you want to risk getting-Harry? Harry, are you okay? You're not being cursed; I could tell. Oh, empty night this is not in my job description."
I tried to choke back the sobs, but then I wasn't breathing. I buried my face in my hands and gasped for breath about half as often as I needed it, curling protectively around my stomach.
Bob stopped panicking when I stood up. It took me two tries before I could make myself pick up the overcooked potion, even with hot-pads. I took it upstairs and dumped it down the kitchen sink. Then I picked up the phone.
You can't do anything with magic that you don't really believe in.
"I need you to come over right now."
"Uh, who is this?" The voice on the other end of the line was male, but an octave or so too high.
I ran a hand through my hair, dislodging some of it from the braid I'd put it in this morning. "Cr-Daniel? Matt? It's Harry Dresden. Is your dad there?"
There was some thumping and jostling on the other end of the line, and then an operatic shout of DAD! that cracked in the middle.
I winced. "I must be out of my mind."
More percussive noises, and something that might have been a blender. Then another voice, lower and a little distracted, came on. "Hello?"
"I need to borrow a handkerchief," I told him. "How soon can you be here?"
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. "Half an hour."
Twenty-five minutes later, Michael knocked on my door. I had to drop my pick and scramble up the ladder to let him in. He followed me down to the lab and watched me finish digging up Lasciel's coin. Miraculously, Bob said almost nothing. Michael said even less.
Finally, I exposed the coin and the little steel circle around it. Michael pulled an embroidered handkerchief from his pocket and wordlessly bent to wrap the tarnished coin in it.
I watched his face, looking for contempt, disappointment, signs he was going for his sword to complete the Denarian-defusing process. Michael's expression was thoughtful and a little worried.
"Thanks," I said at last.
Michael nodded.
I cleared my throat. "Can't have one of those in the house with a kid, y'know?"
Michael smiled a little, tucking handkerchief and coin into his pocket. "No, can't have that."
"You fink. You knew, didn't you? How did you know? Why didn't you...?"
"Our purpose as Knights of the Cross is to save the Denarians, not kill them. I'm here to help you, Harriet."
"Ugh, don't call me that." No one calls me Harriet. Eb calls me Hess. Even Marcone had so far never tried to call me Harriet, or I really would have killed him.
Michael's smile flashed extra brightly for a second. Then he sobered. "There's more. It's good that you gave up the coin of your own free will; but when you touched it, the Fallen left an imprint on you."
My blood went cold. "Imprint?"
Michael nodded. "A shadow, in your mind. It will try to tempt you into taking up the coin."
"But it's gone now, right? I mean, I gave the thing up. You guys lock it in some vault full of holy wards or something and that's that. I mean, I couldn't get it out of there even if I wanted to, so what's the point?"
Michael's expression was grim. "I'm afraid that's not how it works. The only way I know of for you to get rid of the shadow is to set aside your power as well. Stop using magic."
"The hell you say."
"Harry, your child-" Michael began, his voice gentle but passionate.
"-Will need all the protection I can muster. And don't you dare suggest I run away again. I won't live like that. All my other responsibilities don't just disappear because my uterus is occupied. I am still who I always was." I crossed my arms and stuck my chin out stubbornly.
I could give up my magic. I could stop using it, and it would shrivel away and die. I could even disappear into whatever protective custody the Church had set up for people like the girl Lydia we'd rescued from Kravos and then, a couple months later, from Kravos' ghost.
I could do it. Maybe. But all I've ever been, all I've ever wanted from life, is magic. The kind my dad gave people when I was a kid, and then the other kind once Justin adopted me. I'd never really managed to convince Michael that magic isn't unnatural and generally bad for you. Magic is the energy of creation. It's as natural as sunrise and storms, as tides and mountains. Magic is life. Magic is my life. There is a lot of it in me; and if I let it drain away, I didn't think there would be much left except an empty husk.
And, too, there were people here who depended on me. Murphy, Michael himself, the Alphas, the handful of small-time practitioners I'd helped get a handle on their powers. Sure, I'd been ignoring them for the past year or so; I can make crappy decisions like everybody else. I'd let them down; I didn't want to keep doing it.
Michael looked at my face and sighed. "I take it it hasn't started talking to you yet."
"Uh, no?" Not so far as I knew. Now wasn't that an unsettling thought? "Uh, what exactly can this thing do inside my head? There are limits, right?" A horrible thought hit me. "It can't touch the baby, can it?"
"I don't know. I've never heard of anybody being in your exact circumstances; of course, Nicodemus has destroyed almost all the records from more than a few centuries ago." Michael didn't look like he was happy with that answer, either. "You were the one who picked it up; it should have only as much power as you allow it. But Harry, Lasciel is a deceiver, a seducer. It will know what to offer you, how to make itself appealing. It's had thousands of years of experience manipulating human nature."
"Stronger men than I?" I was trying for flippancy, but it flew wide of the mark.
"This isn't just another petty, malicious spirit you can conjure," Michael warned.
"Hey!" Bob objected.
"Bob, shush," I told the skull. I turned back to Michael. "I've had demons try to get in my head before." Justin hadn't, technically, been a demon. He'd been more than close enough from where I stood, though.
Michael followed me up the ladder. He stopped at the front door; he was still wearing his serious face. "You're a good woman, Harry. We'll be here for you, if you need, or want, our help."
"Uh, thanks." I swallowed something distinctly lumpish in my throat.
"Do you mind if I ask you a question?"
"I'd want you to," I blurted out, anticipating what had put that pained look on his face. "If-if it got to me. I'd want you to take me out. And, um, take care of my child. Find it somewhere safe."
Michael blinked, clearly surprised. "Never doubt it. You have my word. I would care for your child as one of my own."
"Oh," I said, profoundly moved. I wasn't, really wasn't going to start crying again.
"Ah, I was actually going to ask you if you'd mind my telling Charity now," Michael said a little sheepishly.
"Oh. No wonder you looked like you were about to jump into a sewer. I...guess not? She's not going to start introducing me to Nice Church Boys, is she?"
Michael laughed. "Don't take this the wrong way, Harry; but I think she'd be afraid you'd be a bad influence."
__ __ __
Oddly, my life picked up again around this monumental change. Michael, Sanya, and whatever angels watched over them had recovered the Swords, but Nicodemus had broken my blasting rod, in addition to apparently lifting my shield bracelet when he'd had me strung up down in Undertown-I'd never thought I'd meet someone who had a less subtle recruitment pitch than John Marcone. Some people probably think being tied down and stripped naked is the ultimate in making you feel physically exposed and vulnerable; but believe you me, there is nothing like waking up in formalwear and realising a demon has removed your underwear while you were unconscious. And I say this having also been strung up naked from my wrists, although I was sort of asking for it that time. For certain values of 'asking'.
In hindsight, I had really a lot of reasons to be thankful Shiro found me when he did. And-did what he did.
Ahem. As I was saying, the rod alone was better than two weeks' work to replace, and now more than ever I didn't want to be walking around at less than full strength. I had my staff, still, but even vanilla mortals look at that sideways.
Michael and Charity insisted on feeding me real food about three times as often as I'd been used to getting it. I really didn't understand where I stood with Charity: she still lectured me about my behaviour with regards to everything from getting pregnant outside of wedlock (wedlock) to getting her husband hurt, again; but she also insisted on serving me double portions and making sure I drank herbal tea, not coffee. (I am taller than Charity. Hell, I'm practically taller than her husband. I seriously think I could have pumped the stuff via IV and the kid would still not have come out a dwarf.) The first time I went over after Michael told them, I found myself surrounded by a hip-high throng of astonished kids. I absolutely did not cry at all then, either. Charity was slicing onions in the kitchen; that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
The first thing I did, though, was climb back down into my lab and have Bob take a really good, long look at my aura. I let him out of the skull to do it, and he swirled busily around me in a manner that reminded me a little too much of being inside a house fire.
"Well?" I asked.
"There's definitely something in there," Bob said, still circling.
"In where?"
"Your head. Aside from you, I mean. I'd never want to imply that there wasn't already-"
"Bob. Has it touched. Anything. Else?"
"Nope, don't think so. The womb is a pretty serious barrier. Sort of a natural ward. It's really very interesting; the first wizards were women, you know. Men just took it over later and turned it into a measuring contest-"
"Are you sure?" I cut him off.
"Your daughter is gestating peacefully. As for your other passenger, well, I guess it's just waiting for the right moment."
"Well, isn't that a cheery thought?" I huffed a sigh and looked with disfavour at the hole inside my summoning circle. I really didn't feel like more manual labour today, but experience has taught me that you never know when you'll need one in a hurry, so I might as well fix it-
"Did you say daughter? You can tell?"
"Duh. She's a nice little blastocyst, snuggled up on the right rear-"
"Do not finish that sentence. You are still prohibited from mentioning those parts of my anatomy," I reminded Bob. Firmly.
"Aw, but boss-"
"Do you really want to annoy me while I'm hauling out the concrete?" I asked him.
I called Eb, whom I had at least refrained from bothering during my period of panicked dithering at more or less everyone I knew. He offered to let me stay with him at Hog Hollow, but I meant what I'd said to Michael: it wasn't in me to run and hide, any more than it was in me to give up on my little girl.
I don't blame my parents, not really. It's not their fault they died. It sucks, but I finally figured out it's not fair to blame them for something they couldn't control. I knew my dad, and I loved him. He made sure I knew them both, that we never left mom behind. And because of that, I like to think I haven't left him behind either. Both of my parents are still with me, in a peculiar way.
But it still isn't the same as having someone to hold you when you're hurt or scared. Someone to share your home with, a real, breathing presence. Someone to whom you will always be connected, even when you fight, even when you're far away, not because of your choices, just because of who you are.
I'd had a little of that with Hawk, who'd taken me as I was and loved me the way I loved him, even if we never said it until it was too late. But even when we'd been lovers, we hadn't been...close. We had our own lives, our own spaces. I'd like to think it would have grown into something more, but we'll never know now, will we?
I sent a message to Hawk's drop address asking him how to get a seriously confidential message to him. I didn't think me getting knocked up would stay a secret forever, but we both had enough enemies it was worth being cautious. I thought I knew what Hawk's decision would be, but he ought to know, and our daughter-stars and stones, our daughter-deserved for me to try, anyway.
Part Two
__________
[1]好亥不見 (hăo jiǔ bú jiàn): Long time, no see. Our English greeting is actually a calque of this Chinese phrase.
Author: windfallswest
Fandom: The Dresden Files
Pairing: Harry/Marcone undertones, but what else is new?
Rating: PG-13, because Harry can't keep it clean.
Disclaimer: <----
Word Count: 14k
Notes: Also at AO3.
Summary: AU, plot from the end of Death Masks. Harry is a girl, Susan is a boy, and guess who gets pregnant this time. Warning for discussion of abortion. Ass-backwards spoilers for Changes.
Labour was a bitch, even without the faerie complications. I don't really have hips, to look at, but I more than clear six feet, and I'm built to scale, as it were. Good thing, too-I know it's not polite to discuss another woman's weight, but Maggie topped nine pounds when she was born: it was a wonder I managed to squeeze her out at all.
Let me back up a little.
My ex came to town. We fought demons, had alarmingly intense bondage sex, turned a ritual duel into a free-for-all, and a whole bunch more scenes from a theological grab-bag of an action movie resulted in me getting shot. Anyway, I was kind of busy for a while there after I got myself upright again, and when I finally got home, I was spending my time mostly zonked out on the couch or, even better, zonked out in bed. Not down in my lab. I still wasn't feeling too good.
And then there was the thing with Marcone, which was all kinds of fucked up, but that's me and Marcone for you. And while I maybe found some time in there to think back on the steaming awesomehot sex with Hawk Rodriguez, I can maybe be forgiven for not remembering what we, er, hadn't remembered.
Anyway, it wasn't until I was knocking holes in the floor so I could Han Solo me a fallen angel that I really got back down there again. In between giving my new excavating pick some exercise, I filled Bob in a little on what had happened in the latest episode of disaster in the clusterfuck that is my life. He was unusually silent as I went on, but I figured I'd just finally come up against something that seriously intimidated him. I should have known better.
"Uh, Boss?" Bob said tentatively as I finished smoothing down the cement.
"Uh-huh?"
"Um, I don't know if you..."
I sighed. "What is it, Bob?"
Bob hesitated. That was not like Bob. I looked up, starting to get a bad feeling about this.
"Somewhere in there you got laid, right?" Bob asked out of nowhere in a bad imitation of his normal cheerily prurient tone.
"Stars and stones, do we have to have this conversation again? I am not discussing my love-life with you. End of discussion."
"But Boss!" Bob objected. "Your aura-"
"It was last week," I snapped, contradicting myself. "I doubt my aura is still doing anything interesting."
"Harry," Bob shouted. "You're pregnant!"
__ __ __
"Harry?" Bob asked after I'd let the silence go on for rather too long. "Are you all right?"
"Do you want me to throw this pick at you?" I wasn't actually holding it, though, which probably undercut the threat a little.
"Wow, so hormonal already?"
I reached over and grabbed about half his reading material off his shelf with one hand, baring my teeth. "If you are fucking with me, you're going in next. I've still got concrete left."
__ __ __
I took tests. I took kind of a lot of them. They all said the same thing. Looked like I had a bun in the oven. Hell's bells.
Now the question was, what was I going to do about it?
God, what a question.
I wasn't-I mean, I like children. I'd never really thought about having them; I'd never been in a position where it seemed possible. I wasn't in that position now. Children were something to think about after you were in a permanent relationship and had some money in the bank. I had neither. It had, pathetically, been more than a year since I'd had so much as a date. I couldn't even manage to locate a suitable adult person to neck with at the drive-in. I was not in a place in my life where I was prepared to take responsibility for a helpless, inarticulate, fragile miniature human being.
Not to mention the danger factor. I demonstrably couldn't even order a frigging pizza without somebody trying to blow me up. There was a war on, still, and I was at the top of the hit list. I didn't have Michael's divine baby-sitter drafting service, complete with holy backup. Talk about cheating. All I had was Bob, and there was no way I was ever going to leave a baby with Bob. No. Just, no.
There was a war on, and pregnancy, it messes you around. I didn't really know much about how hormones effected magical abilities, although obviously wizardesses got pregnant sometimes. How had my mother handled it?
So maybe it wouldn't effect my power, who knew? Would it effect my judgement? One hotheaded decision could be as fatal as a flubbed spell, as I had ample reason to know, and I'm not famous for my, ahem, extreme rationality normally. I thought back over the past week. I couldn't imagine doing all that with a kid at home. Hell's bells, one hour in the wrong part of the Nevernever and I could lose a year. Even without that, when a case came up, I was often away from my apartment for days at a time.
And then, cold as it was, there was the problem of money. People are expensive to keep alive; I barely managed it myself, and I had a lot of what I needed already: clothes, furniture, education of a sort. Kids are plain expensive. I didn't have reliable access to that kind of money, but I had enough in the bank right now to do the other thing.
Come out and say it. To pay for an abortion.
I sat on the closed toilet lid, my face in my (recently washed) hands and let that bounce around in my head for a while. Abortion. It was the sensible thing to do, but something inside me shrank away from the thought.
It wasn't...look, I'm not political, and I'm not trying to tell anyone else how to live her life. All I know is how I felt. Creating life is a profoundly transformative act, and the magical implications are just as enormous as all the others.
Life creates magic, you see. We shape and direct it with our thoughts and emotions, but we produce it with every breath. Everyone, not just wizards. Even animals, even a rockslide, creates magic, has magic working within it. That's where ley-lines come from, all that energy bubbling up and pooling and flowing, and part of why some places just feel special. The ancient Japanese called them kami; Americans tend to put them on postcards. It's a part of nature, and so are human beings, even though we tend to forget that.
Humans are more complicated than just about anything else of our size: not only do we move and grow and interact, we think and build and emote. A tornado or a rainforest produces way more magical energy than a person, but it's also a lot bigger, more unwieldy.
That's how come black magicians use other people as batteries: it's like eating potato chips instead of a balanced breakfast. Actually, that's a really good metaphor. It's something that feels really good at the time, but if you do it too much, your metaphorical arteries will clog up and you die at age thirty-five looking like the Blob. Or maybe alcohol, because it's addictive and it changes you, and it eats you away from the inside out. And once you get the taste for it, it's always with you, no matter what you do.
The point being that magic is essentially a positive force. I don't really go in for religion, don't get too deep into philosophy. What I believe in is magic. Magic is a positive force. Ending the pregnancy would be by definition destroying something, and I was conflicted about it, even though it was the smart thing to do.
I called Murphy, offered to take her for lunch. Her voice on the phone and the way she looked at me when I showed up-not at Mac's, a Mexican joint over in Pilsen where I went sometimes but I wasn't known-said she was afraid I was dying of plague or something after all. Geez, I knew I didn't usually pick up the tab, but was it that bad?
"Do I look that bad?" I asked, sitting down.
Murphy only gave me half a smile. "What's up?"
"Yowch."
Murphy heaved an aggravated sigh. "Do I have to drag it out of you?"
I braced myself. If there was anyone I knew who could understand, it was Murphy. Maybe not the magic stuff, but the rest of it. We were both single women with careers, fighting forces both freaky and dark. I had never been more grateful Murphy was clued in.
Murphy was staring at me. I realised I was staring at her and not saying anything, winced, opened my mouth, closed it again, fiddled with the force ring on my right hand, and avoided her face.
"God, Harry, am I dying or something?"
My eyes jerked up and I looked at Murphy as close as I could to her eyes, steeling myself. I think I jumped two feet in the air when the waiter asked me what I wanted to drink. Tequila, and keep it coming. But no.
"Harry-" Murphy started again once he'd taken our orders.
"I'm pregnant," I blurted, looked up at her, then away.
It was Murphy's turn to gape like a fish; her mouth snapped shut on whatever sprang first to mind, then came out with, "Um, Hawk?"
I nodded miserably. "Murph, I don't know what to do."
It came out kind of plaintive, and I was a little ashamed of myself. But Murphy, god bless her, just reached across the table and took my hand.
Our food came, and Murphy told me a story about a noise complaint someone filed that had gotten shunted over to her department. It turned out the guy upstairs had been raising goats.
"Not even a little voodoo?" I asked.
"Sorry. He was making cheese. These organic people, I swear." Murphy took another bite out of her empanada. "Unless there's such a thing as cheese magic."
I shrugged. "You could use it as an ingredient in a potion, I suppose. And faeries are wild about dairy products. Milk, pizza. I haven't tried yoghurt. A faerie will do just about anything for a slice of pizza, though."
Murphy's brows shot up. "Really?"
"Well, the lesser fae. The sidhe go in more for blood." I made a face.
"Harry," Murphy said a minute later.
"Mmm?"
"Do you want to talk about it?"
I hesitated. Well, that was what I was here for, wasn't it? Murphy was giving me this look, like she was trying to be supportive but my lack of communication skills was reaching the point where she was tempted to bang one of our heads against the wall until I developed some. You gotta love Murphy; she's good people.
"What do you think?" There was that damned whine again.
"Have you told him yet?" Murphy's tone was gentle.
I shook my head. "Not until I decide...what I'm doing."
It hung there between us for a moment.
"I guess that's the question, then."
Silence.
"Have you ever...?"
Murphy had been married twice, after all. I knew both had ended in divorce, but she'd never told me why, and I hadn't asked.
Murphy looked down at her coffee. "I thought I was, once, when I was with Greg. False alarm."
"Were you...would you have kept it?"
"I was in a different situation than you are now. I had Greg." Murphy took a seep breath. "But no. I was trying for sergeant, taking night classes. Things were already...both of us were working too much. I would have caught hell from my family, if they'd found out, but no. "
The Murphy clan was Catholic, right. "Do you ever think about it?"
"Sometimes. I don't know...it wouldn't have changed anything that happened between Greg and me, not really. But that's not what you're asking." Murphy was making serious eye-contact with her coffee again. "A lot of things would have been more complicated. My career. Me and Greg. Me and Rich." Murphy made a face at that one. "Well, that might have been an improvement actually."
I chuckled dutifully.
"If I'd had a kid with Greg, it'd be a teenager now. It might be nice, to have something of him. But that's not a reason to have a child. You can't make it a...a replacement person."
"I'm not-stars and stones, Murph, I'm not trying to replace Hawk." Although it was a sort of attractive thought, leaving behind a legacy, something of me that would remember and continue, the way I remembered my dad. I hadn't thought about it quite like that, before. Of course, right now my own legacy mostly consisted of enemies. I still didn't know how big the unexploded minefield my own mother had left for me was. I frowned; Lea was just the goddamned tip of the iceberg.
"I never said you were."
I drummed my fingers on the wooden tabletop. "So you want kids now?"
"Harry." Murphy clamped down on my fidgeting hand. "This isn't about me or what I'd do. I can't make your decision for you."
I grimaced and pulled my hand away to fidget with the straw in my coke instead. "Hell's bells, Murphy, you know what the life is like. I've got demons and vampires and the whole faerie circus out gunning for me half the time. I can barely support myself, anyway. Even I can see it's a stupid idea."
Murphy sat back and picked up her coffee again. "Uh-huh?"
I glared at her. "Don't give me that. I'm not making excuses. Do you think I want to-"
"You want kids." She sounded surprised.
"Well, not right now. Not like this. I always just kind of thought, you know, eventually I'd settle down, do it right. Well, not settle-settle; wizarding isn't something I can quit. And I figured I'd have to use a turkey baster or something. I wanted my kids to have parents and a real home, though. Some measure of security." Something like what Michael had; hell, I'd be happy with a quarter of what Michael had. All I have is a three-room apartment with a talking skull, a box of depleted uranium, a cat the size of King Kong, and a fallen angel buried in the floor.
I bit my tongue on the rest of it. I didn't want to jump feet-first into that sand-trap of a political argument. As soon as you say 'the baby's alive already', people assume you're a raving lunatic hellbent on overturning Roe v Wade. I hadn't decided what I was or wasn't going to do yet, but there was no doubt in my mind that the blastocyst or whatever was alive. Bob had said it had changed my aura, and I believed him. Magic is a creative force, and I was apparently creating.
"There are other options. Adoption." Except any child of mine stood a more than fair chance of being a wizard. I thought of my child, at the hands of another Justin. I thought of my child, being kidnapped, possessed, broken. Like hell. I'd made myself a promise, a long time ago, that no child of mine would grow up like I had.
There was only one rational choice. I met Murphy's eyes, just for a second. They were full of compassion.
__ __ __
"Are you going to get married?"
I groaned. I hadn't really meant to tell Michael, but it had just kind of popped out. Also, I had to have some excuse for saying that Charity's pasta sauce smelled like rancid shoe-leather. Oops?
"Who to? I don't see any candidates, do you?"
"I would think to the young man who's responsible," Michael said so mildly I had to resist the urge to try and punt his head. Note: impulsive I may be, but I'm not actually stupid enough to throw down with one of the Fists of God in a fit of pique.
"First of all, I'm just as responsible for this as Hawk is." More, if you consider the fact that I was the one in control of the enchanted binding-cord. But it was going to take more than spaghetti to get me to admit that in this company. "Second, he's in Central America fighting vampires. Besides, I asked him already," I grumbled into my hot chocolate.
"You've told him?" Michael asked.
"Nooo, it was before," I mumbled into the rim of my mug.
"Harry," he chided.
"Look, I appreciate that you think everybody can have what you and Charity have. I wish I could, too. But Hawk and I just aren't going to happen, okay?"
Michael gave me one of his looks, the ones that made me feel like somewhere little fluffy kittens were crying. He held up one hand, palm out. "Okay. But you still need to let him know."
"Yeah, yeah." Stars and stones, was Michael not going to be able to forgive me for this. "Um, could you not tell anyone? For a while?" I slouched further in my seat and tried not to think about it. I'd found myself doing that a lot, lately, and I couldn't keep it up much longer.
"Sure, Harry," he said gently. Dammit. "If that's what you want."
I looked around Michael's house, the kid-art stuck up on the fridge, the loud, happy shouts and thumps of its creators, the way Michael and Charity looked at each other over the sticky little beasts, and felt like a worm.
__ __ __
I was working again, which mostly meant I sat in my office for eight or so hours every day, reading nth-hand paperbacks from used book stores. I was about twice as hungry as usual, but bound and determined to ignore it. The third or tenth time I caught my hand slipping down to rest on my belly, I decided it was time to neaten up my filing system. Well, invent a filing system. Don't look at me like that; I hardly ever had trouble finding what I was looking for. It was more like re-inventing. Sort of tightening up around the edges.
This was ridiculous. I'd make the appointment tomorrow, and that would be that. Like I'd told Murphy, it was the only sensible thing to do. Tomorrow.
My office had never been neater, anyway, not that it was doing me a lot of good. I'd been neglecting my business this past year, and it showed. Why else would I go on Larry freaking Fowler again, right? Of course, I wasn't usually what you'd call swamped-just ask any PI. And I'd taken it a step further: I'd had to specialise. I only ever had too much to do when at least half of it was set to kill me.
Back at my apartment, I dinked around with the wards some, resetting the emergency lock-down with more than one thought about the unintended consequences the last time I used it. Bob and I talked about how they'd held up under fire and even came up with a few improvements.
The next day, I had an actual case. Nothing big, just one of the other tenants who couldn't find his keys and decided to take a chance on the resident wizard. I couldn't make it any worse, right?
As long as he didn't try and psychoanalyse me, I decided, I'd refrain from cracking wise about a shrink buying into a professional wizard. I thought that was pretty big of me. And hey, who knows? Maybe he was in such solid mental health his eyes were open to the possibility of weirdness in the world around him. Maybe I should ask: sometimes I think I could use a good shrink. The rest of the time, I'm pretty sure I'd be the ruin of a good shrink.
I found his keys, anyway. They were in an empty disposable coffee cup in the dumpster out back of the café a few blocks over where he'd eaten lunch. I had an old-fashioned sword-cane back at my apartment that Eb had helped me enspell to focus earth-magic, which as a discipline includes manipulating gravity and magnetic fields as well as throwing big chunks of stone and dirt and tectonic plate around. My old teacher, Ebenezar McCoy, is really good at that stuff. I don't hold a candle to him. Fire and air are my preferred elements, although manipulating pure energy-like the thaumaturgy I used to locate the shrink's keys-is where I really shine; but I can do a simple trick or two without a focus.
I didn't feel like digging through garbage for a half-hour's fee, so I followed the connexion, like a string, that I had hold of to the keys on the other end and murmured a few words to pull them up along that line. Softly, so I didn't accidentally hit myself in the face with the dumpster. Someday, I would take time to work on my precision and control. But I managed not to mutilate myself, so I called it a win.
I put my hand out and caught the keys. Sadly, this just looked like I was rummaging around in the dumpster to an outside observer, who in this case was my client, the shrink. He'd decided to tag along, and I hadn't stopped him. Whatever. I tossed him the keys. He handed me a twenty. Sweet. I hadn't had lunch yet.
It was windy and in good Chicago style still pretty nippy in early March, but I was outside already so I tugged my duster a little tighter around myself and walked the six blocks to McAnally's. I ducked through the low door and kept ducking down the stairs: Mac's food can't be beat, but his location is not gawky-wizard friendly. I could easily reach up and touch the ceiling, if I didn't mind getting my hand chopped off by one of the thirteen fans hanging from it.
I wove my way through the thirteen tables squeezed in between the thirteen carved pillars and sat down at the bar (thirteen stools). Mac's is Accorded Neutral Ground and a hang-out for a lot of local practitioners; all the thirteens disrupt the sorts of energies from our auras that make anything technological break down and cry, or one bad mood blight an entire room. I especially appreciated this because otherwise I'd often have been that bad mood, and it would have sucked if Mac banned me for brooding. A wizards' bar that doesn't allow brooding would never get off the ground, anyway.
"Steak sandwich, Mac," I told the man behind the bar. He grunted, which was standard, and tossed some meat on the wood-burning stove. Like I said: wizard bar. It's a minor miracle he keeps the lights on and the fans going.
I watched him grab a bottle of one of his personal microbrews without actually registering anything more than that Mac makes really good beer and I could sure use a drink. Er.
"Uh, just water today. Thanks," I fumbled out just before he popped the cap.
Mac raised an eyebrow at me, but wordlessly put the bottle back and drew me a glass of water. Turning down beer was not usual behaviour for me, but it was Mac's very wise policy not to ask his patrons questions.
Thank. Fucking. God.
I stared at the water Mac slid in front of me, and in an odd moment of dissonance, wondered why I'd bothered. It was stupid. I knew what decision I had to make. I'd make the appointment tomorrow, no more putting it off. Not like I couldn't find room in my schedule.
"Life's not fair, you know."
Mac glanced up at me, over his shoulder instead of in the big mirror behind the bar, since it was too dirty to reflect a clear image. I must have really had him puzzled with my teatotalling, because you don't usually get so much as a blink out of Mac with a remark as trite as that.
I took a sip of my water, then started drawing a five-pointed star inside the condensation ring where Mac had set it down. "I mean, it's not all black and white. Things don't just fit into neat little boxes. Sometimes you don't have any good choices. Then what do you do?"
I took another gulp of water. It was way less satisfying than beer.
"You make a bad choice, that's what. You make a bad choice because that's all there is, and you live with the consequences. It doesn't mean you want to do it. Or that you're happy about it, or you'll feel good about it afterwards. But there you go. What-"
Mac came over and tipped my glass toward himself, making a show of bending and sniffing the contents.
I snatched it glass back. "You did not accidentally pour me vodka, asshole. Besides, vodka is odourless. Some bartender you are."
Mac gave me a look that said I'd been asking for it and slid my food in front of me, through the multiplied pentacle-doodles. Suddenly, I discovered I wasn't very hungry after all.
__ __ __
Michael just happened to be passing by my office around dinner time for the third time this week. I switched my braid back over my shoulder irritably while Michael chattered on about getting a car with airbags and how Charity handled being pregnant and getting all misty-eyed about when his oldest was a baby.
"Michael," I cut him off. "Can you just-I'm not sure I'm keeping it." Which was not at all what I'd meant to say, which was that I wasn't keeping it. I'd decided.
"Harry-"
"Look, Michael, I know how you feel about it. I don't need a friggin' guilt trip, or a lecture, or to take time to consider my options. You want to know what my options are? Any kid of mine would be living under a death sentence, period. The only thing every vampire in three of the four courts would like better than killing me is getting to my family first, and sooner or later, they'd manage it. I just don't have the resources you have. Tell me, where could I leave a kid and know it was safe? I'd need a bodyguard, not a babysitter. If I had that kind of money." I ran down, staring hard at the ground, not wanting to see the look on his face.
"You might be safer out of town. In another line of work," Michael suggested.
I snorted. "Don't bet on it. I'm not running, Michael. I can't. And besides, it's too late. I could spend the rest of my life tending beehives a hundred miles from civilisation and I'd still be marked. Believe me when I say that this is the only way."
"There is always a way," said Michael quietly.
"Yeah? Tell that to Shiro."
"Harry." Michael's tone was reproachful
"If I have this baby, both of us are going to end up dead. I'm not prepared to accept that. Just leave it," I told him.
Michael paused. "I just came to ask you to have dinner with us, Harry."
"Look, you don't-thanks, but I'm not hungry. I've got stuff I need to do at home."
I fled without once looking back up at him. Nothing like a living saint to make you feel like crud. And anyway, I did have things to do at home.
__ __ __
I'd started avoiding Bob, and so wasn't making any progress in replacing the foci I'd lost during the recent festivities. My skin crawled every time I stepped outside without my shield bracelet, and I'd been especially careful about not going out after dark.
Eventually, though, I had to bite the bullet and get back in the lab. I had a spell to do for a client, and I needed to check my silver to see if I had enough for another shield bracelet.
"Hey, boss. 好亥不見."
"I knew buying you that Japanese stuff was a mistake."
"Hey, that was Chinese, I'll have you know. You have no culture."
I rolled my eyes. "I'm not sure we have the same definition of 'culture', Bob. The anti-roach charm is roach poison, pandan leaves, a lightbulb, and diatomaceous earth. Right?"
Bob rocked a little on his shelf. "Yeah. You could throw in some cloves to help with the smell."
I grunted and got to work on the spell. It sounds great, doesn't it? Not glamorous, but it worked, and you'd think it would have made me a small fortune by now. I spent a lot of time trying to perfect it back when I first had the idea, but I'd never gotten it to hold for more than about a month or so. Also, the client had to leave the inscribed lightbulb filled with dead leaves and what looked like talcum powder screwed into the socket where I set the charm. And I had to set the charm to the location personally.
The real problem, though, was the smell. The charm worked great while it lasted, with enough range to chase the buggers out of an entire apartment building. But it left the whole building smelling faintly of disinfectant and glue. One failed test run had resulted in everybody in Billy and Georgia's building getting high off non-existent fumes. Oops.
I was, predictably, scratching tiny runes into the glass of the lightbulb when Bob said, "Have your boobs gotten any bigger yet?"
"Stars and sky!" My hand jerked, and I bent to examine the surface, checking to make sure I hadn't gouged any unintended marks. "That's none of your business!"
"You don't have to be embarrassed, Harry. Lots of women take a few kids to fill out," Bob continued blithely.
"I'm not having a-a kid," I snapped. "The pregnancy. I'm not going through with it."
"Really, Harry? I thought you-"
"Shut it, Bob," I grated between clenched teeth.
"Sheesh, guess I hit a nerve. Look, how was I supposed to know? You're still walking around with your aura all glowy," Bob said sulkily.
Of the two of us, I really thought I was the one with more right to be sulky. "I've been busy."
"Okay," Bob agreed quickly in a small voice.
Dammit, I wasn't being unreasonable. Bob pried into my personal life, and I shut him down. This was the order of things. I went back to the squeaky process of carving glass.
"You know," Bob interrupted me. My head snapped up and he rushed on, "I could make you a potion. For, you know. Since you haven't had the time."
My jaw hung open. It always floored me when the little amoral pervert showed he cared. I swallowed.
"Uh, thanks Bob. Just let me finish up here."
"Sure thing, boss."
I could just have stopped the charm and picked up again while the potion stewed, but I didn't want to chance the roach poison getting into anything I was going to drink. So I finished prepping the charm, put everything away, and washed my hands and work surface carefully. Bob rattled off the recipe and I mixed the ingredients-unsurprisingly, the soured milk wasn't a problem.
The potion went on to simmer; it would take a while to cook. Instead of sitting there and watching it like a deer in the headlights, I asked Bob where my scrap silver and silver chain were and started working up a new shield bracelet. I'd need more silver before I could finish it, but it was demanding, finicky work and just what I needed to distract me right now.
"Okay, boss," Bob interrupted my concentration again, although this time I didn't startle. The work had been going slower and slower this past half hour, until I'd stopped even pretending.
I turned to the potion, bubbling happily, and gathered my energy and will to pour into it, fusing ingredients and metaphor into a suspension of magic. I drew in my focus, ready to direct the accumulated force of my churning emotions.
I.
"Uh, boss?"
I stared at the potion, the increasingly rancid smell of hot, sour milk in my nostrils.
"You know, this isn't really the sort of magic you want to risk getting-Harry? Harry, are you okay? You're not being cursed; I could tell. Oh, empty night this is not in my job description."
I tried to choke back the sobs, but then I wasn't breathing. I buried my face in my hands and gasped for breath about half as often as I needed it, curling protectively around my stomach.
Bob stopped panicking when I stood up. It took me two tries before I could make myself pick up the overcooked potion, even with hot-pads. I took it upstairs and dumped it down the kitchen sink. Then I picked up the phone.
You can't do anything with magic that you don't really believe in.
"I need you to come over right now."
"Uh, who is this?" The voice on the other end of the line was male, but an octave or so too high.
I ran a hand through my hair, dislodging some of it from the braid I'd put it in this morning. "Cr-Daniel? Matt? It's Harry Dresden. Is your dad there?"
There was some thumping and jostling on the other end of the line, and then an operatic shout of DAD! that cracked in the middle.
I winced. "I must be out of my mind."
More percussive noises, and something that might have been a blender. Then another voice, lower and a little distracted, came on. "Hello?"
"I need to borrow a handkerchief," I told him. "How soon can you be here?"
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. "Half an hour."
Twenty-five minutes later, Michael knocked on my door. I had to drop my pick and scramble up the ladder to let him in. He followed me down to the lab and watched me finish digging up Lasciel's coin. Miraculously, Bob said almost nothing. Michael said even less.
Finally, I exposed the coin and the little steel circle around it. Michael pulled an embroidered handkerchief from his pocket and wordlessly bent to wrap the tarnished coin in it.
I watched his face, looking for contempt, disappointment, signs he was going for his sword to complete the Denarian-defusing process. Michael's expression was thoughtful and a little worried.
"Thanks," I said at last.
Michael nodded.
I cleared my throat. "Can't have one of those in the house with a kid, y'know?"
Michael smiled a little, tucking handkerchief and coin into his pocket. "No, can't have that."
"You fink. You knew, didn't you? How did you know? Why didn't you...?"
"Our purpose as Knights of the Cross is to save the Denarians, not kill them. I'm here to help you, Harriet."
"Ugh, don't call me that." No one calls me Harriet. Eb calls me Hess. Even Marcone had so far never tried to call me Harriet, or I really would have killed him.
Michael's smile flashed extra brightly for a second. Then he sobered. "There's more. It's good that you gave up the coin of your own free will; but when you touched it, the Fallen left an imprint on you."
My blood went cold. "Imprint?"
Michael nodded. "A shadow, in your mind. It will try to tempt you into taking up the coin."
"But it's gone now, right? I mean, I gave the thing up. You guys lock it in some vault full of holy wards or something and that's that. I mean, I couldn't get it out of there even if I wanted to, so what's the point?"
Michael's expression was grim. "I'm afraid that's not how it works. The only way I know of for you to get rid of the shadow is to set aside your power as well. Stop using magic."
"The hell you say."
"Harry, your child-" Michael began, his voice gentle but passionate.
"-Will need all the protection I can muster. And don't you dare suggest I run away again. I won't live like that. All my other responsibilities don't just disappear because my uterus is occupied. I am still who I always was." I crossed my arms and stuck my chin out stubbornly.
I could give up my magic. I could stop using it, and it would shrivel away and die. I could even disappear into whatever protective custody the Church had set up for people like the girl Lydia we'd rescued from Kravos and then, a couple months later, from Kravos' ghost.
I could do it. Maybe. But all I've ever been, all I've ever wanted from life, is magic. The kind my dad gave people when I was a kid, and then the other kind once Justin adopted me. I'd never really managed to convince Michael that magic isn't unnatural and generally bad for you. Magic is the energy of creation. It's as natural as sunrise and storms, as tides and mountains. Magic is life. Magic is my life. There is a lot of it in me; and if I let it drain away, I didn't think there would be much left except an empty husk.
And, too, there were people here who depended on me. Murphy, Michael himself, the Alphas, the handful of small-time practitioners I'd helped get a handle on their powers. Sure, I'd been ignoring them for the past year or so; I can make crappy decisions like everybody else. I'd let them down; I didn't want to keep doing it.
Michael looked at my face and sighed. "I take it it hasn't started talking to you yet."
"Uh, no?" Not so far as I knew. Now wasn't that an unsettling thought? "Uh, what exactly can this thing do inside my head? There are limits, right?" A horrible thought hit me. "It can't touch the baby, can it?"
"I don't know. I've never heard of anybody being in your exact circumstances; of course, Nicodemus has destroyed almost all the records from more than a few centuries ago." Michael didn't look like he was happy with that answer, either. "You were the one who picked it up; it should have only as much power as you allow it. But Harry, Lasciel is a deceiver, a seducer. It will know what to offer you, how to make itself appealing. It's had thousands of years of experience manipulating human nature."
"Stronger men than I?" I was trying for flippancy, but it flew wide of the mark.
"This isn't just another petty, malicious spirit you can conjure," Michael warned.
"Hey!" Bob objected.
"Bob, shush," I told the skull. I turned back to Michael. "I've had demons try to get in my head before." Justin hadn't, technically, been a demon. He'd been more than close enough from where I stood, though.
Michael followed me up the ladder. He stopped at the front door; he was still wearing his serious face. "You're a good woman, Harry. We'll be here for you, if you need, or want, our help."
"Uh, thanks." I swallowed something distinctly lumpish in my throat.
"Do you mind if I ask you a question?"
"I'd want you to," I blurted out, anticipating what had put that pained look on his face. "If-if it got to me. I'd want you to take me out. And, um, take care of my child. Find it somewhere safe."
Michael blinked, clearly surprised. "Never doubt it. You have my word. I would care for your child as one of my own."
"Oh," I said, profoundly moved. I wasn't, really wasn't going to start crying again.
"Ah, I was actually going to ask you if you'd mind my telling Charity now," Michael said a little sheepishly.
"Oh. No wonder you looked like you were about to jump into a sewer. I...guess not? She's not going to start introducing me to Nice Church Boys, is she?"
Michael laughed. "Don't take this the wrong way, Harry; but I think she'd be afraid you'd be a bad influence."
__ __ __
Oddly, my life picked up again around this monumental change. Michael, Sanya, and whatever angels watched over them had recovered the Swords, but Nicodemus had broken my blasting rod, in addition to apparently lifting my shield bracelet when he'd had me strung up down in Undertown-I'd never thought I'd meet someone who had a less subtle recruitment pitch than John Marcone. Some people probably think being tied down and stripped naked is the ultimate in making you feel physically exposed and vulnerable; but believe you me, there is nothing like waking up in formalwear and realising a demon has removed your underwear while you were unconscious. And I say this having also been strung up naked from my wrists, although I was sort of asking for it that time. For certain values of 'asking'.
In hindsight, I had really a lot of reasons to be thankful Shiro found me when he did. And-did what he did.
Ahem. As I was saying, the rod alone was better than two weeks' work to replace, and now more than ever I didn't want to be walking around at less than full strength. I had my staff, still, but even vanilla mortals look at that sideways.
Michael and Charity insisted on feeding me real food about three times as often as I'd been used to getting it. I really didn't understand where I stood with Charity: she still lectured me about my behaviour with regards to everything from getting pregnant outside of wedlock (wedlock) to getting her husband hurt, again; but she also insisted on serving me double portions and making sure I drank herbal tea, not coffee. (I am taller than Charity. Hell, I'm practically taller than her husband. I seriously think I could have pumped the stuff via IV and the kid would still not have come out a dwarf.) The first time I went over after Michael told them, I found myself surrounded by a hip-high throng of astonished kids. I absolutely did not cry at all then, either. Charity was slicing onions in the kitchen; that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
The first thing I did, though, was climb back down into my lab and have Bob take a really good, long look at my aura. I let him out of the skull to do it, and he swirled busily around me in a manner that reminded me a little too much of being inside a house fire.
"Well?" I asked.
"There's definitely something in there," Bob said, still circling.
"In where?"
"Your head. Aside from you, I mean. I'd never want to imply that there wasn't already-"
"Bob. Has it touched. Anything. Else?"
"Nope, don't think so. The womb is a pretty serious barrier. Sort of a natural ward. It's really very interesting; the first wizards were women, you know. Men just took it over later and turned it into a measuring contest-"
"Are you sure?" I cut him off.
"Your daughter is gestating peacefully. As for your other passenger, well, I guess it's just waiting for the right moment."
"Well, isn't that a cheery thought?" I huffed a sigh and looked with disfavour at the hole inside my summoning circle. I really didn't feel like more manual labour today, but experience has taught me that you never know when you'll need one in a hurry, so I might as well fix it-
"Did you say daughter? You can tell?"
"Duh. She's a nice little blastocyst, snuggled up on the right rear-"
"Do not finish that sentence. You are still prohibited from mentioning those parts of my anatomy," I reminded Bob. Firmly.
"Aw, but boss-"
"Do you really want to annoy me while I'm hauling out the concrete?" I asked him.
I called Eb, whom I had at least refrained from bothering during my period of panicked dithering at more or less everyone I knew. He offered to let me stay with him at Hog Hollow, but I meant what I'd said to Michael: it wasn't in me to run and hide, any more than it was in me to give up on my little girl.
I don't blame my parents, not really. It's not their fault they died. It sucks, but I finally figured out it's not fair to blame them for something they couldn't control. I knew my dad, and I loved him. He made sure I knew them both, that we never left mom behind. And because of that, I like to think I haven't left him behind either. Both of my parents are still with me, in a peculiar way.
But it still isn't the same as having someone to hold you when you're hurt or scared. Someone to share your home with, a real, breathing presence. Someone to whom you will always be connected, even when you fight, even when you're far away, not because of your choices, just because of who you are.
I'd had a little of that with Hawk, who'd taken me as I was and loved me the way I loved him, even if we never said it until it was too late. But even when we'd been lovers, we hadn't been...close. We had our own lives, our own spaces. I'd like to think it would have grown into something more, but we'll never know now, will we?
I sent a message to Hawk's drop address asking him how to get a seriously confidential message to him. I didn't think me getting knocked up would stay a secret forever, but we both had enough enemies it was worth being cautious. I thought I knew what Hawk's decision would be, but he ought to know, and our daughter-stars and stones, our daughter-deserved for me to try, anyway.
Part Two
__________
[1]好亥不見 (hăo jiǔ bú jiàn): Long time, no see. Our English greeting is actually a calque of this Chinese phrase.