Gonna Be A Daddy

by Ana Lyssie Cotton and Persephone

"She what?"

"Your cat is in heat, Stryfe," Hope replied patiently, wiping her hands on a towel.

Diamonde let out a yowling whimper.

"Which means...?" Stryfe was frantic. The little bugger had awoken him in the wee hours with her frantic cries and distress. He'd immediately taken her to the Medlab and dragged Hope out of bed to check on her.

"That your cat is looking to flonq a male cat and pop out a load of kittens."

"She's not my cat."

But the statement fell flat, as he worriedly rubbed a hand along Dia's back. She gave a throaty purr and began kneading the towel.

Hope yawned and eyed him. "Right, I forgot. The fact that you pet her, leave her in the warm spot on the bed if you get up, didn't kill or even hurt her for tearing up your hands--"

"She was drunk." Making excuses for her, even.

"--And get up in the middle of the night to take her to a doctor because she's crying -- and stand there fidgeting the entire time, mind -- does not indicate in the least that she's your cat." A half pause. "You're her person." That joke was starting to get a little old, but it never failed to draw a glare.

Stryfe abandoned the glower after a moment and looked, probably without realizing it, a little plaintive. "So what do I do?" Hope had to smile. It was rather funny, really. Even if she did want to go back to sleep.

"I suggest," she replied, yawning again, "that you go back to bed. And either keep her shut up for about a week... or prepare for kittens."

Stryfe looked down at the cat and scooped her up, drawing another plaintive yowl as the blanket fell off her claws. "Right." He took her back to his room and shut the door, with an intense feeling of delaying the inevitable.

--

In a secret lair, under a mountain, a man in a dark cloak plotted. His plans were simple, but complex in their execution. And if he were correct, they would result in victory.

But, only if he was right.

Which he often was.

In fact, he'd only been wrong once.

That he admitted to.

--

Stryfe was relieved when his--er, Diamonde, stopped making those horrendous noises. After all, as fastidious as she normally was, these sounded horribly like she was in pain. Okay, so they'd ended sooner than Hope had said they would, but he wasn't worried. After all, she'd never gotten out. Right? Right.

He'd made sure.

Well, except for that time when Nathan had wandered in... Stryfe frowned. That wouldn't have been long enough, surely? She'd only been gone for about an hour.

A month later, Stryfe was looking at Diamonde oddly. Her belly was somewhat bulgy, like she'd eaten a bunch of marbles.

Absently, he poked at one of the bulges, and it wriggled.

Stryfe yelped. Dia looked at him, bored, as if to say, "Hey, what's your problem? I've been dealing with this for a month." She stretched and gave a yawn then began washing herself, paying careful attention to the little bulges.

Stryfe sat back on his heels. Wriggling bulges. They had to be either some very weird disease, or kittens.

Maybe an hour WAS long enough. He hadn't thought there were any male cats in the immediate vicinity, but then, he hadn't thought there were any cats, period, in the immediate vicinity before he'd started being followed around by a kitten. A very loud and persistent kitten, at that. And there was no telling what Nathan might have brought in; it wasn't exactly as if Stryfe still had the run of the palace.

Diamonde did, of course; it was very annoying. Even if she did keep coming back to him. Or did he mean especially since she kept coming back to him?

He eyed the cat and sighed deeply. "I didn't want ONE cat," he told her balefully, then hastily, since she wasn't his cat, added, "to deal with." Diamonde licked her paw thoughtfully and mewed. "One kitten was more than enough." She yawned again. "This is overdoing it entirely." She stood up and meandered the few inches to his knee, placed her front paws there, and stretched. "You're not listening, are you."

She looked up at him and meowed loudly. He took this to mean "No, not at all. You couldn't have been saying anything interesting, or you would have been giving me food. Or petting my ears."

He complied, scratching behind her ears just where she liked it most. She almost immediately began purring, then clambered into his lap and settled down contentedly.

This was ridiculous.

All right, it was pleasant, too. She was a very warm, soft cat. Stryfe ran a hand over her back and side, pausing when his fingers brushed over the bumps again. She didn't seem particularly uncomfortable, but what if something really WAS wrong....

Hope would laugh in his face if he brought her in, and it *was* only kittens...

At least, it had better be only kittens.

Not that he was *worried*, of course. It could be inconvenient if something were wrong, though.

Of course, kittens would be inconvenient too, but not the same way.

Hope wouldn't kill him, at any rate. Nathan would be too peeved at not getting to do it himself, and if he hadn't gotten around to it yet he probably wasn't planning on it for such a random occasion as inflicting veterinary duties on the Askani healer.

--

Nathan paced up and down, wondering if it would be easier to be out in battle with overwhelming odds against him.

"Relax."

"I can't."

"Relax, Nate, or I'll break your leg."

He ran a hand through his already disarrayed hair, "Aliya..."

"This is a normal examination. Behave."

"I'm behaving."

"No you aren't."

"Fine. Fine." He mumbled. It was at times like this that Nathan Dayspring considered chucking it all in and letting Stryfe have command again. Then he'd consider the ramifications and be smacked back to sanity. It was much more fun having the irritating man under his control.

Even if he did have a bothersome cat and a tendency to make snide comments about Nate's command decisions.

Hope came in then, distracting him from his thoughts. She waved him out of her way and checked the monitors attached to Aliya. Then she asked a few quick questions and nodded. "You can go now."

"That's it?" Nathan looked at her, shocked. "Shouldn't you take her temperature, do an ultrasound?"

"I did that last time." Hope smiled calmly, "Don't worry, this routine checkup is only to check things like heartrate and whether there's been any unusual pain."

"Oh."

"She's fine."

"Good."

"And Stryfe's cat is going to have kittens."

"Oh."

Aliya snickered."Really?"

"Yes. I warned him to keep her locked up. Apparently, he didn't listen."

In all fairness, it was entirely possible that he HAD listened. Diamonde bore a certain resemblance to the proverbial Cat Who Walked Through Walls.

Come to think of it, there had been that time Nathan remembered opening the door to Stryfe's cell -- well, nominally a cell, since they could lock him in, but not really the worst kind -- and his clone had jumped up as if about to say something, then looked at the doorway around ankle level and apparently given up on it. There'd been this tiny little breeze/furblur past his foot right at first....

So Stryfe would probably blame the whole thing on him.

Life was good.

--

Nathan, having fussed over Aliya some more until she threatened him with ostracism and thirteen dinner parties (at which presumably he would have to play host, effectively canceling the ostracism but replacing it with what might actually be worse, especially since they were unlikely to be livened up by a cavorting cat this time), decided that it would be interesting to drop by and see how Stryfe and his kittens were doing.

He opened the door and made a show of peering cautiously through a minuscule crack and determining that Diamonde was safely ensconced in Stryfe's lap before opening it and leaning on the doorway.

Letting Stryfe wander around occasionally and giving him chores in odd areas of the palace had some time back forced them to switch over entirely to a subcutaneous power-inhibitor implant rather than a room-based field, so there was no danger of aggravating the techno-organic virus. Aggravating Stryfe was much more fun.

"Yes." Stryfe nodded resignedly, "She is."

"Do you want to plan a baby shower for her? Or should that be a kitten shower..."

"Now you're being ridiculous."

Nate bowed ironically, "So says the man with a cat in his lap."

Stryfe resisted the urge to childishly stick his tongue out at Nathan. "And how is the Heir to the Throne coming along?"

"Hope says they're doing just fine."

Stryfe blinked at him. "Do you mean Aliya and the baby, or that there's more than one in there?"

Nathan blanched at the thought of twins. "Aliya and the baby."

"Oh."

"You, on the other hand, are presumably going to have to deal with several."

Stryfe looked at the cat in his lap. She seemed to keep ending up there lately, had not been happy with him for removing her to visit Hope during the morning, and after a perfunctory scratch to the back of his hand had settled in as if she intended to make up for lost time. And then some. "Don't remind me," he said grumpily.

Nate grinned beatifically at him. "I'm sure Diamonde will make sure you don't forget."

As if unhappy that she wasn't the center of his attention, Dia dug a claw into his leg. Stryfe gritted his teeth. "Undoubtedly. Now, don't you have better things to do? Like running the country, or defending the peace?"

"Nah. You see," Nathan assumed a lecturing tone, somewhat marred by the hint of glee, "if you're doing it right, the country and the peace can run themselves for a few minutes while you go bother your imprisoned double and his cat. Aliya says you two look absolutely adorable like that, by the way."

"Tell her I said thank you."

"She says you're welcome, and she'll help plan the kitten shower if you want. Or," he added after a moment's thought, "possibly if you don't, but she didn't actually say that part; I'm just guessing."

Stryfe closed his eyes for a moment and fingered Diamonde's ears in an attempt to keep both of them calm. Then he looked directly at Nathan. "Fine," he said resignedly. "But if you dunk her in the punch bowl again, Dayspring,  I swear I will find a way to get out of here and kill you."

--

It had come as no surprise to Nathan that Aliya's way of disciplining the two miscreants who had attempted to break Stryfe out was to give them garbage duty, and a few other desultory tasks, then let them go. After all, she'd thought they were cute.

According to his records, they were now working in the fields. He occassionally thought of visiting them to see if they were harbouring any ideas about relieving the fortress of its tinheaded prisoner. These thoughts were usually followed with the ones that said they were harmless, and cute, and better left alone to become mature adults.

He usually snorted as the thoughts went through his mind. He knew they came from Aliya. He also knew that the two had made it all the way into the Fortress without tripping any alarms. That is, until they got to the cells. And even then, from all guesses, they only tripped something when one of the guards collapsed against the wrong button.

On the other hand, Stryfe didn't appear to even like them. Which was good. After all, a hostile rescuee is much more difficult to deal with. Especially when he captures his rescuers himself.

So he didn't think about them much since other things took his attention.

--

Harrold and Fred had thought they were pretty canny to have escaped notice for this long. After finishing a few punishment details, they'd slipped into the staff that worked out in the fields. Tilling the soil rather appealed to them, in a way. After all, it was difficult to get plants to kick them.

And dirt was much nicer than being held up by the throat while some guy yells at you for botching a rescue mission.

Crops for vegetables were worth a lot with the world as desolate as it was. It was hard work, putting nutrients into the soil, then keeping them there. When it got windy, the blast could drag an entire layer of topsoil off and redistribute it. And the places it went were usually unmentionable as well as being physically impossible to plant on. Even if anything would have grown there.

Of course, it was all for nothing if you didn't plant the right thing.

The two were sure that the new plants were going to come out beautifully. Even if they did seem a little odd. It wasn't the saw-toothed leaves that bothered them. It was the tiny little teeth they sometimes thought they saw. But there shouldn't be little mouths on the plants, should there?

Fred's opinion was that they should never have rescued those blown-away seeds. Especially not when the area they'd fallen into had been glowing like that. Granted, usually it was green that was bad for glows. But even pink had to have some effect. Didn't it?

Either way, the plants were growing in a small corner of the field. One that almost no one went to. Except for them. And maybe a few small animals. At least, the bones looked like they'd come from small animals.

Harrold liked to entertain some of the kids with stories of giant animals like lizards. But Fred didn't believe they could ever exist.

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