Chapter Text
When Xal’s alarm went off, she snoozed it. It wasn’t to turn over and cuddle with Alleria, though. She stayed on her side, staring out the window that Alleria hadn’t hung blinds on yet, facing the Blue Mountains.
Which—look, the view was incredible and Alleria herself had lay there several times admiring the line of distant crags above the tree canopy, framed in clouds. But Xal was more the type of person to be impressed by a clean inbox than a beautiful mountain line.
Alleria rolled towards her and put a palm on her forehead, pretending to feel for a fever.
Xal scoffed, batted her hand away, and then went to go have a shower before she left for work.
Alleria didn’t think anything more of it until Xal was in the kitchen holding her mug of coffee. Instead of sipping it and scrolling through her phone, she was simply holding it and gazing vacantly out at the little living room.
Alleria glanced down her own front. Her sleep t-shirt was so old it was basically transparent. On any other morning, Xal would have either said something cheeky or done something cheeky about that. Today, she was staring at the living room.
Alleria sipped her own coffee, watching through narrowed eyes.
Xal’s phone buzzing brought her back to life. She glanced at it. “Shit. I need to get going.” She gave Alleria an absent cheek-kiss and bustled out. “Speak with Gerard about 9News,” she called on her way to the garage.
Alleria went out to help her with the gate, and then came back in.
Xal’s coffee was on the bench, barely touched. Alleria spent a moment frowning at it. It joined the rest of the morning’s evidence: the alarm, the window, the living room, the absent kiss. None of it was much. All of it was too much.
She poured the strong coffee down the sink (yuck) and washed the mug, had a shower, and called Gerard as instructed.
“Hello, Mrs Windrunner,” he said with an audible grin, knowing specifically how much that irritated her. “I gather our boss has instructed you to tee up 9News with me?”
“‘Our boss’,” Alleria repeated, hating each syllable. Which was the point. What a fucking troll he was—no wonder Xal loved him. “Right.”
“Are you free at any point today?”
“I’m on call until Thursday,” she told him. “So I might be free? It’s hard to say.”
“Well, I’ll let them know, they might want to risk it.” She could hear typing. “Could they come to you?”
Alleria looked out the window into the thick bush. “Uh, if they want to…”
“All I can do is let them know…” he said in a sing-song voice. “I’ll converge with Xal after she’s back from the doctor’s this morning and let you know. Bye for now!” he said, like he hadn’t just dropped a nuke into the conversation and hung up.
Alleria stared forward, frozen.
Back from the doctor’s?
She took the phone from her ear, held it in front of her and opened a message window to Xal.
And stared at it. There weren’t a lot of reasons why Xal wouldn’t tell her about it, and the ones that overlapped with ‘distracted all morning’ were even fewer.
She looked up, making a face. But wouldn’t she have said something if it were serious?
No sooner had she asked that, she answered it herself: the opposite, if it were serious, Xal wouldn’t want to worry her until she knew how serious.
“For fuck’s sake,” she said, and then typed it out a message. “Hey, you seemed a bit off-colour this morning, is everything okay?”
She had to wait for a reply, which she was both happy about (because it meant Xal wasn’t texting and driving), and stressed about (because the suspense was fucking killing her). When it came, it was simply, “Got some big meetings today—nothing serious. See you tonight. I should be up by 8pm.”
8pm. Alleria’s eyes rose briefly to the clock on her phone: it was barely 8am. She had to wait 12 hours for an answer?
Phone in hand, she focused back down on the reply field again. I could just tell her I know about the doctor’s appointment, she thought, thumbs hovering over the keyboard. Then realised that if she said that, Xal would ask her why and she would need to blame Gerard. That was not happening, even if he called her Mrs Windrunner at the crack of dawn.
She would have to wait. Fuck.
Guess it was time to clean.
The problem with having a tiny little house and not very many possessions meant that it was cleaned—even thoroughly—very fucking quickly. She then emptied the gutters, whipper-snippered the whole front area and bundled the dry grass to use for kindling later, and chopped more wood even though it wasn’t even nearly cold enough to start stockpiling.
She barely got to 11am like that. A grocery-shopping trip, an online-shopping haul to get blackout blinds, and hosing the spiderwebs out from under the house then got her to 2pm, which left her 6 full hours to suffer and not invent horrifying realities where Xal had immediately been diagnosed with some sort of aggressive, terminal cancer the moment she could finally start enjoying her life.
God, what an awful cosmic horror that would be, she thought, doing Xal’s trick of staring absently forward at the living room. The universe couldn’t be so cruel, could it?
She even ended up calling Turalyon. “I need you not to read into this,” she told him. “But can you ask God for something for me.”
“I would ordinarily invite you to ask Him yourself,” he said, “but I can hear you’re upset.”
“I’m fine,” she said dismissively. “But can you just ask for the universe to be even slightly fair today.”
There was a long pause. “I can hear that you don’t want to go into it,” he said in his Pastor Voice. “But, for personal reasons, it makes me worried you would ask.”
“Don’t worry, I’m fine,” she said. “Can you just ask?”
Another pause. “Alright.”
That was slightly reassuring. Probably if there was a God, He would listen to Turalyon. “Okay, thanks. I appreciate it,” she said, and then hung up before she was tempted to divulge something that wasn’t even her own secret.
Alleria spent the rest of the day torn between obsessively checking her phone and lobbing it into the creek, until Xal finally blasted her offensive Lamborghini horn outside the gate she couldn’t open at 8:21pm. Alleria didn’t even mind going out to help her. Every second after 8pm had felt like an eternity.
Xal looked tired, Alleria thought, as she accepted the takeaway Xal had brought them and walked her into the house. Tireder than usual, though? She couldn’t tell.
Xal clocked something was up from that—giving Alleria a searching look. Once they were inside and the house looked like it had been end-of-lease cleaned, then Xal turned to Alleria. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Do you?” Alleria found herself asking. “You were really off-colour this morning. I know something’s wrong, but then you told me it was nothing.”
Xal’s eyebrows jumped. “I made it that obvious?”
Alleria made a face. “More or less.”
Xal clocked her phrasing, but didn’t press her on it. She took her stilettos off, slipping on the Ugg Boots Alleria had bought for her. “I had a doctor’s appointment today,” she said. “Just a check-up, nothing serious.”
“If it’s nothing serious, why did you forget to drink your coffee?”
Again, Xal paused, hearing her. She thought about that—for too fucking long. Then, she said, “Well, I’ve never much cared about my health before, beyond how it affected my performance at work,” she said. “But I do now.” She took off her blazer and went to take it into their bedroom. “It was genuinely just a check-up. As far as I know, I’m well.” She left it at that.
Alleria did not believe her for a single fucking second, but where could she really go with that if Xal didn’t want to tell her?
Alleria plated their food, they ate it, chatted about unrelated things. Xal didn’t seem as distracted as she had in the morning—but, then again, Alleria wouldn’t put it past Xal to be deliberate in not seeming distracted for the sole purpose of putting Alleria at ease.
It was maddening. And Alleria was not at ease. Why wouldn’t Xal just tell her unless it was really bad?
To make matters worse, Xal didn’t fall asleep quickly, which was something Alleria knew happened when there were things on her mind. She didn’t seem like she wanted to start anything, either—so they kissed briefly and then lay completely awake, side by side, until Alleria, who had at least physically exhausted herself during the day, ended up mercifully asleep.
When she woke up, Xal was already in the shower, which was at least a slight return to normality.
Xal’s phone was lighting up on and off on the bedside table; emails, notifications. As soon as Xal turned off Do Not Disturb, it was always relentless.
Alleria would ordinarily have turned over and dozed for another few minutes; today, that phone had its own fucking centre of gravity. She could feel its presence, its pull, just beside her.
Just a glance, she was telling herself. Just a peek, then you’ll know. Like a fucking intrusive thought that she had absolutely no intention of giving oxygen to. Xal had trusted her with the passwords. She wouldn’t breach that trust.
In the end, she decided to move the phone into the kitchen so she could relax. In doing so, she accidentally caught sight of calendar notification: 9:40am Dr Liora Naidoo, AMH results/next steps.
Fuck. She turned the phone over in her hand, looked aggressively forward as she put it on the kitchen table, and did a lap of the house making strangled noises. Then, she went and buried herself in bed, the wailing of the hot water pipes still audible through the pillow.
Why did she look? Why had she done that? WHY? Because now she had to fucking know it was something medical, just like she definitely already fucking knew anyway. Jesus fucking Christ.
She turned and lay on top of the pillow, staring upwards. So it was a medical. It required follow-up—a discussion of next steps a day after whatever had happened yesterday. That seemed urgent.
Although it could just be a rich person thing? she realised; people tended to have everything ready for Xal immediately, whereas the rest of humanity needed to wait the allotted time period for whatever it was.
Taking measured breaths and lying still, she tried to convince herself of that. There was no point in worrying. Xal would tell her in due course. She didn’t need to read anything more into it than what Xal had told her.
It didn’t help, because unfortunately she knew Xal too well. If it truly was nothing, Xal simply would have been transparent and upfront about it. Because she hadn’t, Alleria knew it was something.
Her stomach dropped. Her heart picked up.
What if Xal dies? The thought slithered into her head, heat-seeking. Looking to curl around any warmth of hope in there. What if she’s gone, and I’m left here?
She counted her breaths. She argued with her thoughts. But that constrictor kept coiling around her, squeezing.
And the thoughts didn’t stop. The tap had shot off the pipe. What if she’s finally shaken off Dimi only to be diagnosed with some aggressive, terminal cancer? What if she’s finally happy, finally free—finally surrounded by people who care about her only to die?
And Arator liked her, too. Even fucking Sylvanas did. They talked about her. To each other, to her. Bringing Xal into her life had roped her family all in towards each other again. Talking, texting. Laughing.
What if that ended?
What if Xal died and scattered all of them to the wind again?
Just like when—
No, she thought, and then pushed that thought down. Deliberately didn’t think of roads, or cars, or—
Blood. She sat up. She needed to move.
There was a track down to the creek. She put her boots on and fucking ran it. It was steep, she wasn’t wearing a fucking bra, and her thighs were burning by the time she got to the wet rock.
She stood there for a moment, listening to the magpies, the lorikeets, and the trickling water. And the sound of her harsh, coarse panting.
She probably could have stopped there, counted her breaths, done a grounding exercise. Instead, she just fucking jumped into the water. Probably immersing herself in any large number of parasites and pathogens and spores and whatever. The water safety crew at work would be horrified.
It smelt like moss and mud and something else damp, which meant she would also smell that way. She didn’t care. It was freezing, it stung her skin, and it made her limbs go numb. The only thing she could think about was how fucking cold it was.
Because of that, she ended up getting out quite quickly. There was no use in her throwing herself to the wolves just because something might be wrong with Xal. Not yet.
Early Autumn sunlight hit her on the hike back up the hill. Warm and bright; steam rose off her skin as she dried in it. The squelch, squelch of her wet boots was vile and rhythmic. She took a breath in with each pair of steps, a breath out with the next. By the time she reached the house again, she was—at least emotionally—less of a chaotic mess.
Xal had finished showering and was in the kitchen, grinding her own coffee. Alleria stopped in the doorway when she saw her, words on her lips. She forced them out. “I’m worried about you.”
Xal turned toward her. For a moment, surprise made her release the grinder. It stopped.
Alleria could only imagine what she looked like. Probably how she’d felt a few minutes ago. Wet, half-dressed, and with mud and slime on various parts of her person.
Xal abandoned the coffee, walking over to her. She reached out, hesitated—then put a warm hand on Alleria’s chilly arm. “I don’t want you to be worried,” she said gently. Then—withdrew her hand. “I need you to trust me that there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Then why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”
Xal looked away. There was that expression again—vacant. It was only there for a moment. “I also need you to trust me that it’s best I keep it to myself.”
Alleria felt anger rise about that, which was probably not fair. To stop herself from saying something she’d very much regret to someone who was quite likely sick, she marched to the bathroom and simply had a shower. She didn’t even look at Xal again, which she knew would hurt her. She hated herself for it.
Xal was gone by the time Alleria got out of the shower.
There was a weak coffee on the counter, waiting for her.
Alleria leant on the counter near it, staring at it, feeling her insides twist and coil. Torn between wanting to crawl back into bed, run back down to the creek, or go into Sydney after Xal.
Xal had an appointment. This morning. She was probably going to hear something terrible, wasn’t she? I should be there with her, Alleria thought. No one should hear bad things alone.
Before she could stop herself, she took her phone out and began typing out, “I don’t want you to fucking protect me, I want you to be honest with me about what’s going on—” And then just deleted it and locked her phone. They could argue about this, she knew. They were fucking good at that. But if Xal was going to hear something bad, arguing with her girlfriend before it would make it feel even worse.
“Fuck!” she yelled, hearing it echo off the walls, and then took her consolation coffee and went to sit on the couch with it and her phone.
Her phone sat on her knee while she stared out the window and sipped from the mug.
Xal’s appointment was at 9:40am. Two hours away. Maybe Xal would tell her after that what it was about.
You know what it’s about, that slippery voice told her. AMH results. Something about those requires follow up.
She sat there with that knowledge for a few minutes.
She could—
She looked down at her phone. Oh, fuck off, Alleria, she said, telling herself off. No ‘research’.
She lost the fight almost instantly after that, opening google to find out what an AMH was.
The Google explainer read: ‘AMH, or Anti-Müllerian Hormone, is measured through a simple blood test and used to estimate ovarian reserve, often as part of fertility assessment or planning for pregnancy.’
That—
Oh.
Alleria sat back, stunned.
For several minutes, she stayed there, processing what she’d read.
Maybe it wasn’t—? So she didn’t make any assumptions, she googled, ‘What are the reasons someone would get an AMH test?’
They were what Alleria expected: fertility assessment. Fertility planning. Diagnosing issues getting pregnant, and—ovarian tumours.
There was that jolt of adrenaline again. Maybe it was cancer after all? Maybe this Dr. Liora Naidoo was an oncologist?
She had no control over her hands anymore. They ended up searching for Dr. Liora Naidoo’s credentials, history, qualifications and—
‘Dr Liora Naidoo is a fertility specialist treating late-life and complex fertility issues, including diminished ovarian reserve, recurrent loss, and previous unsuccessful IVF.’
So, not cancer.
Part of her wanted to cry with relief. Just being able to keep Xal; to not have her slip between her fingers like sand, gone on the wind. Knowing that Xal didn’t haul herself from under Dimi’s thumb only to immediately get sick and die before she could discover what it meant to be free.
The rest of her… Less relieved.
Xal wanted a baby.
God. Not that. Not again.
She closed her eyes and spent a moment trying to sort through the Pandora’s box of emotions she’d just opened. Through the mixture of memories of holding Lirath, then holding Arator. The giant hole in her chest, in her soul—the sound of crying. Her body feeling like a sack of lead; of hoping the bed would swallow her. And in the middle of it this helpless creature that wanted more of her than there was.
At least it made sense now why Xal had chosen not to tell her. She knew about Arator. She’d seen what Alleria had been like with Dimi’s granddaughter. She knew children were a truly loaded topic for Alleria.
So Xal was going to this ‘next steps’ appointment with Dr Naidoo by herself at 9:40am.
For one wild, unacceptable second, she thought about driving to the clinic. Not to go in. Not to confront Xal. Just to sit somewhere nearby, as if proximity was a substitute for honesty.
But what did she hope that would achieve? If Xal saw her, she’d need to come clean to Xal about what she’d seen and what she knew. And regardless of how she felt about Xal’s decision to shelter her from it, it was stolen information.
Her phone—at this point a deeply cursed object—was heavy in her hand. She googled, “what are the next steps for a person who has low AMH?”
There were a lot of results. Most of them suggested an urgent review with a fertility specialist, then there were terms like ‘low responder’, ‘fertility preservation’, and ‘egg banking’. She was reading through a list of options on the actual clinic page of this Liora Naidoo person when she came across, ‘For patients with very low AMH, treatment using their own eggs may have a significantly lower chance of pregnancy than treatment using donor eggs.’
Donor eggs.
Alleria stopped and read that again. Then she looked up, out the window, and into oblivion because that was not information she could un-know.
Amazing, now look at what you’ve done, she found herself thinking. Xal had specifically wanted to protect Alleria from knowing any of this because of the exact reaction she was currently having.
She doesn’t want you to feel like you have to give her an egg, Alleria’s brain oh-so-helpfully told her. The thought of that was unexpectedly extremely alarming.
She couldn’t have another baby. She was still trying to get the first one right after two decades of completely fucking it up—completely. Babies and pregnancy and maternity wards felt like loss and death and grief and a feeling of complete detachment from her body and what it was doing.
A baby.
Alleria looked down at the phone again, at donor eggs, at highest chance of pregnancy, and felt the old, familiar horror rise through her ribs. The crying. The weight. The terrible, bottomless need of something helpless and alive.
Xal wanted that. Or might want that. Or had wanted it enough to have blood tests, appointments, results, next steps. And Xal was allowed to want it. Of course she was.
She was allowed to want anything. She was allowed to not avoid things just because of Alleria’s damage. She was allowed to want softness, family, noise, a child’s bedroom, tiny shoes by the door, all of it.
Alleria’s throat closed. She was even allowed to want it without Alleria.
Alleria put her head in her hands for a moment, staring at the old carpet under her feet. They’d only just started building their life. Was this a clincher for Xal?
What if wanting a baby made her as lost to Alleria as if she’d died of cancer?
No—not that. She couldn’t let that happen. She could be something. She could help somehow. If Xal needed a donor, if she needed—
God, that—
She sat up and put a hand on her chest.
Could she be part of it?
The thought landed so hard she almost recoiled from it. Not the pregnancy. Not mothering. But the other part—the clinical part. The useful part.
If Xal needed an egg, Alleria had eggs. Probably. Maybe.
Jesus Christ.
Alleria sat back, closing her eyes for a moment. Fucking stop it, she told herself. And physically shook out her muscles. It was absolutely ridiculous. She couldn’t make her body part of this and pretend it wasn’t going to trigger her, or impact her son. Did she want to give her son front row seats to his mother fucking up another child? His half-sibling?
Anyway, it was stupid. She was older than Xal—or she felt older, anyway. She’d been out in the weather for 20 years. Probably her ovaries were dried up raisins. She’d lived a much harder, much more physical, much more strenuous and cortisol-filled life, there was zero chance her AMH was better than Xal’s. She’d probably find out there wasn’t a single viable egg left in her.
Listen to me, she found herself thinking, ‘I’ll probably find out’ as if I’m about to go and get my levels done.
Anyway, that thought distracted her from a green light on the highway while she was getting bread and more bananas. Then, she found herself staring into the flashing lights of one of those ridiculously expensive children’s ride-on things at the supermarket while the check-out chick kept saying, “Mrs Windrunner?” repeatedly until she tapped her phone on the EFTPOS terminal.
It was ridiculous anyway, her levels would be terrible. Stupid to even worry about the idea.
In fact—as she was driving past the Wentworth Falls Medical Centre on her way back home, she just fucking pulled over. She should just fucking get her levels done, prove there was no point in even considering it.
After that, she could focus on Xal. Or, at least, focus on figuring what the hell was going on in her own head so she could figure out what support she could scrape together for Xal.
She had to wait to be seen by the doctor. When she went in, it was to a friendly-looking older woman who looked on the cusp of retirement. “Mrs Windrunner!” she said warmly, showing her to a seat opposite her desk. “What can I do for you today?”
Alleria was aware of how restless she was being. “I don’t want you to read into this,” she said, glancing at the door to make sure it was closed. There were way too many people in that waiting area who looked too interested in the fact she was there. “But I need my”—she paused, trying to remember the acronym—“AMH levels done. The ovarian one.”
The doctor very responsibly didn’t have much of a response to that. “Of course,” she said, and immediately whipped out a pathology script and started writing on it. “What are you hoping the result will tell you?”
Alleria grimaced. “Honestly? I hope it’s so low it’s basically nothing. That’s the simplest possibility.”
The doctor’s pen paused on her script. She thought for a moment, and then sat back. “That’s an unusual thing to hope for an AMH test,” she said, not unkindly. “Did you want to tell me a little more?”
Honestly? Not really. “I just want to rule something out.”
The doctor gave her a long, measured look. “Do you think you may be perimenopausal?”
“I sure hope so.”
“Have you been having symptoms? Because we could—”
“No,” Alleria said, and then winced. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound rude. I’m actually being ridiculous about something.” She paused. “Could you tell them to just make it available on MyGov so I don’t have to come in for it?”
The doctor exhaled and then went back to writing the pathology slip before handing it over. “You’re welcome to come back if you need any further support.”
Alleria thanked her, went next door to have the vial of blood taken, and then drove home.
The house was empty. Arator had classes, and Xal hadn’t said she’d be up tonight. That unfortunately left Alleria entirely alone on the couch with the Band-Aid inside her elbow. It itched. She tried not to scratch it with about the same success as trying not to think about what Xal had discussed with Dr Naidoo at 9:40am.
It was worse in bed. There was a full moon outside, and the blackout blinds hadn’t been delivered yet. It meant it was very bright in the bedroom, and she could stare outside at the trees, her eyes travelling along each branch as they swayed in the breeze. Wide awake.
Women are probably in this position all the time, Alleria told herself. She and Xal were just girlfriends—their relationship was still new. It probably wasn’t that uncommon for women at the end of their reproductive life to need to make a decision for their bodies that their relationships weren’t ready for.
Perhaps it wasn’t even that complex: she intended to stay with Alleria, but it couldn’t wait. She had to make an uncomfortable decision now. Perhaps she’d be happy to do it all separately.
Even as Alleria thought that, she knew it was bullshit. To protect Alleria, Xal may not say as much. But she knew Xal would want to share it. And she deserved to not have to face it alone. She deserved someone to be holding her when that baby was placed in her arms.
Fuck. Alleria closed her eyes.
Fuck.
Alleria ended up sleeping, somehow, and poorly. And she was on duty for the next two days, which meant she needed to have her phone not on silent, which meant that every single notification she got the following day had her fucking checking the phone and thinking about those blood test results.
When Xal’s text came through, she was already at her wit’s end.
Xal’s text was a picture of an empty chair opposite her at whatever restaurant she was at. “I keep looking up.”
Well, that was fucking it. She didn’t care what a mess her head was. She opened a reply field, typed, “Where are you? I’m coming,” and then jumped in her car and drove back into fucking Sydney.
Xal waited the nearly two hours it took Alleria to reach her. By the time Alleria arrived, there was a cold chicken salad waiting at the table, ordered in advance. Thoughtful, but not the reason she had come. Xal was. She sat opposite it, composed as ever, until she looked up and saw Alleria—and the warmth in her eyes gave the whole performance away.
Alleria gathered Xal up in her arms, probably crushing or crumpling or in whatever way damaging her perfect suit, and kissed her thoroughly.
Even as she was kissing Xal, she was thinking, she wants a baby. It made Alleria aware of her smooth, flat stomach. Her breasts. That slender waist. They’d be fuller. Bigger. Alleria had had pink cheeks and soft skin when she was pregnant; would Xal be like that too?
She tried to push the thoughts away, but they were persistent. Persistent enough that she didn’t realise how long she’d been kissing Xal until Xal pushed her away slightly. “I’m not complaining,” she said quietly beside Alleria’s ear, “but we’re not alone.”
Alleria looked to the side of them; staff avoided making eye-contact. Patrons pretended to not have been slightly mortified.
Alleria released Xal and went to go sit in the previously empty seat. “Sorry.”
Xal looked charmed as she sat down herself. She had a private smile. “It’s good to see you.”
Alleria stared across at her with an intensity she wasn’t sure how Xal would interpret. She wanted to immediately confess everything. She couldn’t.
It was an easier dinner than it should have been, given the weight of what Alleria knew. Xal had ordered exactly the sort of thing Alleria would have chosen if she’d been capable of making any healthy decisions, and for several minutes they ate quietly, letting the awkwardness of Alleria’s dramatic arrival settle around them.
Except Xal kept looking up at her. Not in the usual way, not to say something dry, or to throw something cheeky at her. She simply looked, then looked away, then looked back again a minute later.
And Alleria could not stop trying to fucking read it. Had the appointment gone well? Badly? Did she seem maybe less sad than she had on Monday? Or was this just the same amount of sadness, but now with some acceptance?
Or was she happier, perhaps, and wanting to share it with Alleria but not sure how to broach something this enormous?
Maybe the appointment had gone badly. Maybe Xal had spent the afternoon hearing something final and had still come here alone, ordered dinner, and sent Alleria a picture of the chair opposite her because she could not quite bring herself to ask for company outright.
Or maybe Alleria was going insane and was now interpreting salad and eye contact as evidence of something when Xal always wanted her company, anyway.
Xal cut another neat piece of chicken. “I’ve been thinking I might shift some of my week up there,” she said, casually while she ate her dinner. “With you.”
Alleria glanced up, immediately overinterpreting that.
“I’ve also asked Gerard to map what would happen if I stepped back for a few months,” she said. Again, so damn casually. “The board are considering CEO appointments over winter so I think we can probably expect the position to be filled towards the end of that process, or soon after.” She took a mouthful, chewed, and swallowed. “Soon afterwards, I was thinking I might finally use my long service leave. Perhaps, anyway. I haven’t decided yet.”
Maternity leave, Alleria thought, but said nothing. “For anything specific?”
Xal inclined her head. “I haven’t decided yet. Perhaps.”
Alleria stared down at her plate. Every part of her was screaming ask her about the appointment today!! She didn’t say anything, however. Xal would tell her when and if she was ready.
You’re going to let her be alone in this? another part of her asked. You’re going to come all this way and let her stay alone with whatever happened in that appointment?
She must have been making a face, because she realised Xal was watching her. This time, there was calculation in it. “Are you still worried about me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not unwell, Alleria. I told you that.”
Alleria grimaced. “But you had another appointment today.”
Xal sat back. It was a moment before she spoke. “I did. Just a follow-up about some blood tests I had done,” she said, not even asking how Alleria knew. Maybe she’d guessed how. “I would tell you if it was anything serious.”
Wanting a child is serious, Alleria’s mind unhelpfully told her. She was handling this terribly. “I need a moment,” she said before she straight up confronted Xal. She stood and made a beeline to the bathroom.
Once she was in there, she just went and leant against the far wall. The tiles were cold against her forearm. She could see her reflection in them: her in her cargos and a sweatshirt—easy to throw an SES jumpsuit over for a callout.
She could be gone at any moment, almost always. This had ruined her family.
So many things about who she was had nearly fucking destroyed her family.
And yet, here she was. She and Xal were going to need to have a conversation about this. But when? Now?
When her phone buzzed in her pocket, she put her hand to it, expecting it to be Xal, checking on her. It wasn’t.
The notification was an email. New Results Available in My Health Record.
Holy shit.
She stared down at it, and before she could overthink it, she tapped on it with her thumb and logged in. Perhaps it would be terrible, perhaps it would make everything a thousand times simpler than—
“Anti-Müllerian Hormone (AMH): 5.4 pmol/L
Comment: Slightly higher than expected for age. AMH reflects ovarian reserve only and does not assess oocyte quality or predict pregnancy. Correlate with clinical context.”
She read it again. And again.
Not good enough to mean anything. Not bad enough to save her from thinking about it.
She hated every word of it.
Locking her phone and slipping it back into her pocket, she looked forward at her reflection in the tiles again, and then leant her head against her forearm. Why did I fucking check that?
She couldn’t. She couldn’t do that to Arator. Or Xal. Or herself.
The door to the women’s opened with a slow, measured squeak—not someone yanking it open to use the toilet. There was only one person it could be.
She opened her eyes, looking down at her boots on the tiles, at her legs at her old, ratty cargos.
Xal’s stilettos struck out a slow tap, tap on the floor as she approached Alleria and laid a warm hand on her lower back, rubbing a reassuring circle on it. She didn’t say anything.
So Alleria did. “I’m not even the one who had a doctor’s appointment.”
“I’m not sick, Alleria. I mean that,” she said. There was a pause, then a single laugh without humour. “I’m actually very well.”
“But not the way that matters to you.”
The hand paused on her back—Xal didn’t remove it, but she did shift her weight. For a second, her thumb stayed where it was, warm through Alleria’s shirt, as if she were deciding how to respond. It only took her a moment. “You know.”
Alleria stood up and turned slowly to face her with a reluctant nod. The cat was out of the bag now. “I saw a notification. I wanted to check the doctor wasn’t an oncologist,” she said, and then added more subduedly. “And yes, I’m aware of how unfair it was of me to google that. You’d tell me if you wanted me to know.”
She wasn’t sure what she expected from Xal; anger, maybe. She’d breached her privacy, after all. That wasn’t what she got. Xal put a hand on Alleria’s stomach as she often did—smoothing the fabric, her eyes on it as she toyed with a loose thread that had pulled a tiny hole there. “That’s not strictly true.”
Alleria frowned. “It’s not?”
Xal shook her head. “I wanted you to know,” she said in a steady voice. “But I also knew it would be a bad idea to tell you.” She didn’t need to elaborate. “I thought I would—wait and see if it was even possible, rather than cause this.” She gestured to them in the bathroom.
Alleria put a hand over hers on her torso. She grimaced. “There’s more.”
Xal looked up at her, the question on her face.
Alleria took her phone out. “Please don’t—interpret this in any way. Please.”
Xal watched her steadily for a moment, and then accepted the phone. It was unlocked on the results page.
It took Xal half a second. Her breath caught, and then the colour drained from her face. She pushed the phone back at Alleria like it was burning hot. “No,” she said. “Alleria, no, that’s—no. Not your eggs.”
“I didn’t do it to—” She stopped, abandoning that. “I thought it might give me a very simple answer.”
Xal looked perhaps even slightly haunted. “I would never ask that of you. I know what you’ve been through. I know how much Arator means to you, and how fragile that still is.”
“I know you wouldn’t.” A silence stretched between them. Calm, quiet. There was no urgency to it.
Alleria believed her; that was the awful thing. Xal wouldn’t ask. She’d stay alone with it for 1000 years rather than ask, if she thought asking would hurt Alleria in any way.
Which meant Alleria had to stop hiding behind the egg thing and look at the actual problem. She swallowed. “You want a baby.”
Xal watched her. “At 43, and with my ovarian reserve, it’s almost in the same way a little girl wants a unicorn,” she said, and then exhaled, looking down between them again. “But that’s the way things turned out for me. I wasn’t safe to think about introducing a child into my life until now.”
Alleria heard that, feeling a knife twist in her chest. Just another thing Dimi might have taken from her. The memory of him holding Tilly while he said the most awful things to Xal was never far from the top of Alleria’s memory.
Nor, she found, was the memory of Xal holding Tilly herself. That smile. “I think I already knew, in a way,” she said. “I just—didn’t know it was something you would actively pursue.”
“It may not even be possible. I don’t know yet,” Xal said. “It would make everything very simple.”
Alleria thought of Arator. She hadn’t planned him, and still he owned a piece of her so deep she would never get it back. Xal had planned for that wound. Hoped for it. Paid specialists to tell her whether it was still possible.
God.
“I know simple would be easier,” Alleria said. “For both of us.”
Xal looked up at her. She could hear the ‘but’ before Alleria even said it. “Simple would be easier.”
And yet, both of them just stood there for a few seconds, looking down between each other.
Alleria didn’t want to say too much. “I don’t know what sort of help I’d be, Xal,” she said eventually. “I’m not—” She swallowed. “I have a lot of baggage.”
Alleria could see her draw a deep breath and then release it. “I know,” she said. “I’ve been making plans that don’t require anything from you. I thought that was the fairest way to want it.”
Alleria wanted to promise her that they would find a way to do it together. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t let Xal build this beautiful dream around her only to have her collapse under it like she had so many times for Arator and Turalyon.
But she equally couldn’t let Xal assume she’d have to build it completely alone.
“I’m not sure I can be load-bearing,” she said eventually. “But I can be something. I want to be there for you.”
Xal slipped her hand out from under Alleria’s and took it properly. For a moment, she just looked down at their hands, her thumb resting over Alleria’s knuckles. Then her face softened in a way Alleria had no defence against. There was joy there—small and quickly hidden.
Alleria knew what it meant. She hadn’t promised Xal co-parenting, or eggs, or that any of this wouldn’t hurt like hell.
But she knew. She knew, and she was still here anyway.
Then Xal drew a breath. Alleria watched her tuck that feeling carefully away as she said, “I have an appointment to discuss treatment options on Friday.”
“Friday?” God, what a huge fucking relief. “I’m not on call on Friday.”
Xal’s shoulders loosened. “Come with me. It’s on the Northern Beaches.”
Alleria nodded. It wasn’t an answer to the larger question. It wasn’t an offer, or a promise, or a plan. It was only a chair beside Xal in a room where neither of them knew what they were going to hear.
For now, that was all she could promise.