Sohna and Vivian - My Brother's Keeper

"I'll need to do an ultrasound."

She blanched, but Tom had been expecting that.

"Why?" she finally asked, her voice a bit querulous.

"Because, as I said, your baby appears to be developing more quickly than is usual," he explained again. "With an ultrasound, I can measure its progress more accurately so that we can determine the delivery date."

"I thought it was due the beginning of June."

He sighed.

"We may need to revise that depending on your baby's level of development. The ultrasound will show us that."

She was silent, though he knew it was only because she couldn't immediately think of anything to stall him with.

"If you'll just follow me in here ..." he instructed as he opened the door to the corridor. Get them into the room, he thought. One thing at a time.

The slight nag of guilt hung over him although he knew he was doing exactly what he would do with any patient in her situation. At least he hoped it was. Since he'd stepped momentarily through that portal in the park and touched the damp stone walls and cold iron bars on the other side, he'd become fairly obsessed with Virginia and her husband. Yet no matter what wild interpretation his mind insisted on giving it, he couldn't overlook the fact that the both of them were just people. People from a place that shouldn't exist, certainly, but still people. He'd run quite a few medical tests on Virginia; she was as human as he was.

That, however, only made her odd reaction to any inquiries he had about her baby even more incomprehensible to him.

Fortunately, he thought, the both of them followed him quite docilely into the ultrasound room. He indicated that she should sit on the exam table.

"When we plan this ahead of time, I usually ask my patients to bring a videocassette," he announced, hoping to relax her with the promise of a reward. "Since you didn't have time to prepare, I have one here you can have." He took it out of the case and slipped it into the VCR.

"What does it do?" asked Wolf - Tom didn't think of him as Simon since Virginia never called him that.

"It'll record this session, so you can take home a movie of your baby." He had to willfully stop himself from explaining the function of a VCR. He wasn't supposed to know they weren't from there, and in any case, they had a perfectly valid New York address (his bills got paid) so they must be somewhat familiar with this dimension.

He felt like he was in the Twilight Zone. Wolf didn't help by continuing to act like any typical father, albeit one who had never heard of ultrasound.

"We can see our baby with it?" he asked, intrigued. "Virginia, isn't that amazing? How does it work?" A sudden sobering thought seemed to occur to him. "It won't hurt Virginia, will it?"

"Absolutely not," Tom assured him. "It's completely painless and harmless to both mother and child." He held up the puck as he continued to explain. "I'll place this on her abdomen and the sound waves it emits will bounce off your baby. The reflection will show up on this screen" - he indicated the small screen on the unit - "and that is what will be recorded on your tape."

"Sound?" For the first time in all their visits, Wolf appeared to be concerned.

Tom thought he knew what was bothering him.

"The sound is far above the range of human hearing," he informed them. "Your baby couldn't possibly be harmed by it."

Husband and wife exchanged looks and, if anything, Wolf seemed even warier.

"Could I hear it first?" he asked.

Tom shrugged. It wasn't the first time he'd been asked for such proof. He held out the puck and casually flipped on the machine.

Wolf recoiled, his hands flying to his ears, and to Tom's horror, his eyes flashed a brilliantly surreal yellow-green. The doctor stood staring, dumbstruck, unable to move. Why hadn't he realized it, he wondered, especially after seeing them come out of that portal? The first time he'd seen him, he'd thought he'd turned into a werewolf and there had been that report about one on television that same night? He was only dimly aware of Virginia's presence, with a kind of vague knowledge that she had risen from the exam table, and was saying something, though he had no idea of the content of her words. With fascination he watched as the werewolf lunged for her, helpless to stop him; helpless to save her throat from being savagely torn out ...

He snapped back to reality, his paralysis gone, realizing only then that he'd been holding his breath.

"Are you sure you're all right?" his patient was asking her husband. Wolf didn't speak, simply nodded and placed a hand on the firm roundness of her swollen stomach. She put her hand over his, then looked up at Tom.

"I think we'll pass on the ultrasound," she said, and turned to the door, pulling her apparently still somewhat dazed husband after her.

"Wait!" he called, desperate that they shouldn't just walk away, though he knew there was nothing professional about his desire to stay in their company. Virginia threw a glance back at him and picked up her pace. "I know about the mirror," he said. "In Central Park."

Her face turned ashen. A look passed between the couple, and they turned back to him in unison, eyes haunted, though while Virginia's held an expression of panicked terror, Tom couldn't help but feel that Wolf reminded him more of a cornered predator.

"What do you want?" he asked, his voice low and smooth; menacing.

"Nothing," he answered, too quickly. It wasn't strictly true, although he had no intention of revealing their nature if they chose to ignore him. "Well, knowledge," he amended. "What is the place that it goes, that you're from? Why are you here?"

Wolf growled softly.

"All right, all right," he added hastily. "But at least tell me why you came here to deliver your baby? It couldn't have been because of modern technology or improved medical practice, because every time I've suggested anything, or even asked you any questions - that I would ask any patient of mine, by the way - you've refused. So why?"

To Tom's relief, the predatory gleam in Wolf's eyes faded, to be replaced with a look of confusion. Virginia bit her lip. For a moment everyone was silent.

"You're werewolves ... ?" he finally asked, hoping to draw them out.

Wolf still appeared confused. Virginia hesitated, then said, "No. Well ..."

"Virginia's human," declared Wolf.

"Which is why ... we're here," she finished, as if that explained everything.

"You're saying you're not human?" Tom asked Wolf, incredulously. "But you have to be if she is."

Wolf looked even more confused. He scratched his temple nervously.

"What?" asked Virginia.

Tom took a deep breath.

"This is your baby?" he said, indicating Virginia's belly. "The both of yours, I mean." He didn't wait for their affirmation; they'd given it often enough before when he'd suggested that maybe they'd gotten the conception date wrong. "If you weren't human there's no way you could have gotten her pregnant."

They both blinked as if this were some new concept they'd never considered. Finally Virginia said, "Well, that may be true here, but ..."

"Look," he said, interrupting her. "You came here for prenatal care for a reason. Since I already know about where you're from and what you are, can it hurt anything for us to talk awhile?"

She still seemed somewhat wary, and then it hit him what she was afraid of; had been afraid of all along – being the main attraction at a freak show; tabloid fodder of the most sensational kind.

"It will be completely private," he assured her quietly, then added, "I think I know what you're worried about. Please believe me that I won't tell a soul."

She still wouldn't have agreed, he could see that in her eyes, but surprisingly, Wolf did.

"Let's talk to him, Virginia," he said softly. "We came here because you needed a human doctor, but you were too afraid to ever tell him anything. Maybe it's our baby's destiny for him to have found out."

Tom led them quietly into his office and shut the door.

Three hours later he was a guest in another office, that of a young man who had been introduced to him as King Wendell, ruler of the Fourth Kingdom, which as far as he could tell was where the portal in the park had led to. Tom's senses were still reeling, not only from the shock of traversing the mirror once again, but from the story Virginia and Wolf had told him. Although they'd called it the "short version," he'd been treated to what he was sure was the complete history of their lives together, Virginia ending the narration with a "... so you see our baby couldn't possibly have been conceived any earlier." And although Tom still thought otherwise – Virginia could have easily been pregnant without realizing it before traveling to the Nine Kingdoms – he had virtually stopped listening when she'd explained how Snow White had essentially turned her attitude around. What mattered to Tom was not that this was the same Snow White of the fairy tale, but that she had been dead for some years yet still appeared. Hope grew in him, and the more he tried to squelch it by telling himself it was false hope, the more the other side – the side that wanted to believe in miracles – kept insisting that everything around him proved the possibility existed: Julie could return to him.

Virginia sat back against the upholstered purple velvet back of the gilded chair as Wolf introduced Dr. Oberon to Wendell, her hand on her baby. Though her fingers felt nothing, inside she felt the near-constant fluttering that had been brought abruptly to her attention during the "ultrasound incident" in the doctor's office. Wolf hadn't been the only one who'd reacted badly to the device; their child had leapt inside her, and settled down much less quickly. Even now it gave her the chills to think of what might have happened if she'd blindly submitted to the routine scan. At least now the baby's activity had returned to a normal level. She smiled. That flutter had been something she'd felt for quite awhile now, yet hadn't associated it with the baby's movements. So some good had come of the incident, at least.

Still, she was not as convinced as Wolf was that the doctor should be told everything, but was unable to think of a good reason why not. Obviously he was a better choice for the delivery than some Nine Kingdoms doctor who had something against half-wolfs, but there was something about him that seemed false to her.

Wendell suddenly interrupted her thoughts by saying, "Oh, Wolf, I have some news. Your aunt sent the missive back two days ago. Congratulations, you're an uncle. Your sister had a boy. And they're both doing fine."

Which reminded Virginia of what Oberon was doing here in the first place –

"Wendell, Dr. Oberon thought it would be a good idea if he could talk with Wolf's aunt. Is there some way we could send a letter asking her to come?"

"Of course," the king replied, but her husband wasn't so sure it was a good idea.

"Oh, Virginia, you know she might not want to come right now, what with my sister's baby being so new and all. It may take a couple of months." He turned to Oberon. "Would that be okay with you, Doc?"

"Hmm?" asked the doctor as if he hadn't even been listening. "Oh, certainly. A month or two, barring any emergency, which I don't foresee happening, should make no difference."

Virginia's suspicions were hardly lessened by his response. If it made no difference, why had he insisted on accompanying them immediately? And why was he paying so little attention? To her further irritation, Wolf had immediately launched into the reason they had come back, which she wasn't sure was a good thing to reveal in front of Oberon.

"We've decided the only way to really find out what Grimm knew is to go to the country he's from," her husband was explaining. "Unfortunately, they speak another language there."

"Oh, yes," Wendell agreed. "The mice."

"Exactly. If we could take a couple of them with us?"

"By all means," Wendell agreed. "Everything here is at your disposal."

The words jolted Virginia out of her qualms about the doctor. The last time she'd heard them was right before they'd left. Right before the others had gone to face the ... thing she'd found in the cellar of that shack in the swamp.

"Wendell, where is my dad?" she asked suddenly, almost afraid to hear the answer.

"Oh," said the king in a voice she really didn't like at all.

"What? What happened to him?"

"Oh, nothing," Wendell added hastily. "Antony is fine. It's Samantha. The Swamp Witch poisoned her, I'm afraid, and there's no known antidote. They came to take her back to the Wizards' Citadel. Antony went with them."

For a moment the room was silent. Then Wendell continued, "She did manage to defeat her before she lost consciousness. If you like you can speak to Gwen. Or your grandmother, I suppose, though she's taken to her rooms ever since then and won't come out."

Virginia did not feel like tackling her grandmother just then and said so. Wendell sent a servant to summon the blue fairy.

"Where exactly is this Wizards' Citadel?" she asked.

"Oh, it's not in any one place, as I understand it," said the king. "Although Wolf could probably explain it better than I could."

That's right, she thought. Duh! When will I get used to that?

Her husband looked appropriately sheepish at the reminder.

"Well?" she asked. "Where is it?"

"Wendell's right," he answered. "It moves around. Usually it's on the coast, though."

"It moves around?" she asked, confused. "How? Does it fly?"

"No," he said. "It moves by magic."

"You mean it just disappears in one place and then appears in another?"

"Yes."

"Well, then how do you find it?"

"You're not supposed to. They find you if they want you."

"But ..."

They were interrupted by Gwen, who arrived with the servant who'd summoned her for the king.

"Ah, Gwendolyn," declared Wendell, "Virginia was asking about Antony and the whole adventure with the Swamp Witch. I thought you'd be able to give her the most comprehensive account of exactly what transpired ..."

But Gwen wasn't paying any attention to his words. She was staring at Doctor Oberon with a look of utter amazement.