2.5 The Rain Alone

Lynx's girlfriend is pregnant, yet he's the one violently throwing up.

For a moment he wonders if Mariposa put plasma fruit in his pancakes again. Is she trying to kill him? Did Brooke say something to her, maybe? No, that's silly. Brooke seemed normal at work.

Everything. Is. Fine.

Baby stuff has started appearing all over the house.

Mariposa spent her entire meager paycheck on a crib and stroller, and asked Lynx to give her an equal amount of his money for other necessary supplies. He agreed to this.

The room with the blue wallpaper becomes the room with the pink wallpaper.

Brooke has been subtly avoiding Lynx, but she drops by his house on the day before their regularly scheduled D&D night, to tell him she's quitting the group.

Lynx rolls his eyes. "You stopped by in person just to say that? Or what?"

Brooke glances around the lawn nervously. "Is... is Mariposa busy?"

"She went to the store. Why?"

Brooke is visibly relieved, but turns her gaze to the street, watching for Mariposa's return. "Valter told me she's pregnant?"

"Oh, are you here to call me an irresponsible dipshit? Because I already got that talk from Astral The Unemployed."

Brooke narrows her eyes. "Maybe I wanted to say congratulations."

"You didn't," Lynx says flatly.

"Look, I... I'm pregnant, too," Brooke mumbles.

"You know, I'd say congratulations, since I know you and assface have been trying for kids for ages now, but now that I've personally witnessed how awful he is, I really don't feel like congrats are in order," now his tone drips with venom.

Brooke glares at him. "I want it to be my husband's. But the dates match up for... for... you know. It being possibly yours."

Lynx glances at Brooke's belly skeptically.

"Well, say something!" she implores.

"What do you want me to say?"

"Now that you've gotten in my pants, you're going to just be a dick to me?"

"Well, am I? Am I just a dick to you?"

"No, you do not have the right to turn this around," she snarls.

"You're the one being unfair here. I care about you, and you're going to pretend otherwise for some reason I cannot even begin to understand."

"I don't think caring about people is something you're capable of understanding."

Lynx shoves his hands in his pockets, so he can't flip her off. The instinct is there and he has to suppress it. "What are you going to do? If the kid's mine? Do I have to worry about your safety?"

Brooke sighs. "Chen doesn't know about... what we did... but he's convinced I've been sleeping with you since high school. He's demanding a paternity test."

"Good, I want a paternity test done too."

"Oh, yeah? You gonna step up if it's yours? Chicken Fries?"

Lynx doesn't rise to that. "I have a right to know."

"I don't know what I'm going to do, Lynx. I haven't told him, so... so everything is hinging on this baby being his. I don't know how he'll react if it's not."

"I'm really scared you're in danger."

"I'm not in danger, don't be stupid. I just think... he'd make me give the baby up. He'd make me choose between him and the baby."

She's making a good show of playing concerned mom-to-be, but Lynx has heard her lie to him enough to see through the act. "Do you even want the baby?"

"Honestly no..." she admits. "But Chen wants to be a father so badly. I have to at least pretend to be happy."

At that point Mariposa rides up on Lynx's cycle, bag of groceries on her arm. She greets Brooke as a friend, and, to save face, Brooke follows Lynx and Mariposa back into the house, as if this were a normal social visit.

Brooke picks up a game controller. Mariposa turns on the stereo and starts dancing. She can tell immediately that Brooke is pregnant, and so the women start talking about impending motherhood.

"This is so cute! Our kids can grow up together and be best friends!" Mariposa is more excited than Brooke has ever seen her.

Lynx plops down on the sofa and stares at his feet. He considers dropping everything and moving to a different city where no one can find him. Maybe even another country.

The photo of his parents, hanging above the stereo, has never seemed as judgmental as it does right now.

Not long after that there's a knock on the door. Epiphany has come to visit.

"I can't believe I've never been to your place before," she says.

"Well, you're free to join my D&D campaign and be here more often. There's a vacancy."

 "I'm sorry, I wish I had time for that."

Epiphany mailed them one of her paintings, to decorate the baby's room.

"Yeah, we got it," Mariposa says. "Thank you so much! We have it in the baby's room upstairs. Over the crib."

"You have a really lovely house," Epiphany says.

Mariposa's smile strains.

Epiphany follows Lynx upstairs. The painting she donated to her future niece or nephew is indeed hanging in a place of prominence over the crib.

The siblings get to talking about things. Their elder sisters, their careers, their future plans. Epiphany has finally saved up enough money to start traveling. "Maybe I'll finally meet my dream guy," she says, only half joking.

Lynx decides to tell her about Brooke. He has no one else to tell.

"Wow Lynx. You really messed up."

"Yeah, yeah. It's just weird. Waiting to see what happens."

"Now you've dragged me into it! Now I know this awful secret. On one hand, I'd want someone to TELL ME if my boyfriend were cheating! On the other, you're my brother, and if I tell Mari, she'll probably defenestrate you, and I can't have that on my hands either."

"What does that even mean."

"You realize you've done the most stereotypical thing ever?"

"I dunno?"

"Every man who cheats says his relationship or marriage doesn't count because his girlfriend slash wife is "crazy". Every woman who cheats says her relationship or marriage doesn't count because her boyfriend slash husband is "abusive"."

"Excuse me? In this case both of those things are true."

"The only way this could get more stereotypical is if Brooke actually wanted to be with you and you kept telling her you'd leave Mariposa 'when the time is right' and begged Brooke to keep quiet until then. And then, like, eventually she wises up and-"

"Brooke doesn't want to be with me, and this isn't one of your dumb unpublished novels."

Epiphany pouts at him.

"Sorry, your novels aren't dumb," he backtracks.

"Are you okay?"

"...No. I've loved Brooke since we were kids. And it's not that I'm watching her be happy with someone else... it's that I'm watching her be miserable with someone else."

"You're putting her on a pedestal she can't live up to, you know."

"No, I'm not! She'd flawed, I'm flawed, I get it."

"Let me rephrase. You're imagining a great relationship you could have with her. That's what's on the pedestal. That's what doesn't exist."

But it could exist, he wants to say, but has enough sense not to.

"You and Mari are having a kid. You need to stop playing with her."

"I'm not playing. I told her straight up we're not serious. She just doesn't care what I have to say."

"Obviously she doesn't understand and you need to make her understand."

"Pippy. I cannot control this woman's mind. She rejects my reality and substitutes her own."

"Don't stand there and tell me you haven't given her mixed signals, and happily taken advantage of her."

Lynx shrugs. "Fine. I'd feel dumb repeating you word for word."

"You need to start thinking about what your son or daughter will see as they're growing up."

Finally, Lynx frowns. The silence in the air starts to permeate his mind. His ears ring.

"Pippy... I just feel so powerless. I can't change what happened so I don't know what to do. I never meant to hurt anyone. Do you hate me?"

"I think you did a huge dumb, but I don't hate you. You're still my little brother, and you can figure this out."

Hugs.

"I have a niece and a nephew already, but I'm really excited for you to have kids too."

"Great, that makes me feel so much better," he snarks. "And please don't use plurals."

The hospital either gives Mariposa a generous maternity leave, or she quit her job, Lynx isn't sure.

She has the house to herself most of the day throughout the pregnancy, while he hides in cubicle at work and pretends not to ever glance Brooke's way.

Mariposa rolls a wish to read a book about pregnancy. Then I catch her in the backyard reading Doctor Macabre.

She spends a few hours yelling at kitchen ghosts or something. It fills the social bar.

Upgrading some household objects now. Very useful.

And then, one morning, it's baby time.

Lynx freaks the eff out. "Oh. My. Plumbob. This will make me LATE FOR WORK!"

Actual image of the only day Lynx has ever been late for work.

He stayed in the hospital while Mariposa gave birth to their daughter, but once that was over with he immediately left for work, so Mariposa walks their newborn home in the rain alone.

"Welcome home, Solana." Mariposa never quite felt like this was home before, but once the words leave her mouth, she finally believes.

This is where she's meant to be.

Lynx leaves work round 3 PM and, to his credit I guess, immediately rolls wishes to spend some time with his new baby daughter.

Behind him, Mariposa rants incoherently to the wall.

He can't tell if she's happy, or stressed out, or what... and suddenly it bothers him. It never bothered him before. He never cared. But now this tiny child depends on them to protect her, and he knows, deep down, he can't trust Mariposa to protect her.

But what is he supposed to do about that? Hire someone to secretly supervise Solana when she's with her mother? That would never work out...

Weirdly enough, it's a phone call from Brooke that solves all his problems.

"They're yours," she sobs. "I wish it wasn't like this. My marriage is falling apart!"

"Brooke, I can barely understand you. What are you talking about. They?"

"Girls... twin girls... I'm sorry, Lynx. I can't live with this guilt. I'm going to tell her."

"What?"

"I'm telling Mariposa what I did. What YOU did. She deserves to know."

"Brooke, this is a really bad time for you to-"

"You can't hide this for long anyway!" Brooke shouts. "They're YOURS!"

"Brooke?" The connection is gone, she's hung up, but Lynx is still standing there calling her name. "Brooke? Hello?"

There's no answer. But faintly, from the nursery, he can hear a ringtone he doesn't recognize, at first, because he's never heard it before, because no one ever calls that phone...

It's Mariposa's.

And she's answering.










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Etc.: He dead. Legacy over.