Sonder

The first thing Daisy noticed when entering the house was that it wasn’t warm enough. It hadn’t been warm enough since the moment snow started to fall and the temperature began to live below freezing. It hadn’t been warm enough now or cool enough in the summer and now she was having a child and everything needed to be fixed about it now or else—

The farmhouse looked exactly the same as it always did, leaving a nostalgic yearning pressing against her ribs. Same peeling wallpaper in the kitchen. Same creaking floors in the exact same spots that had been there longer than she’d been alive. Same gray light coming through the windows that faced the orchard, the peach and cherry and apple trees bare and snow dusted against the gray winter sky. She had thought it might look different after today, that there would be some visible evidence of the thing that had fundamentally shifted within her.

It looked exactly the same.

Goober was at the front door before the key was fully turned, nosing frantically at her hands, and frankly every part of her he could reach until she pressed her palm flat against the side of his enormous head. Immediately, the gentle giant went still, leaning his full weight against her like he’d been worried and was only just now deciding it was okay to stop. She was home.

“I know,” Daisy cooed to the dog, letting her nails scratch behind his ears. “Poor little baby guy. All alone with his little kitty brother. So sad! The horrors!” 

Goober followed her around as she settled herself. Waited diligently outside of the bathroom as she used it and stared at her side profile in the mirror above the sink. She didn’t know much about pregnancy, would have to go down a rabbit hole on the internet over the next few days, but ten weeks was too early for a bump. Still, her lower abdomen was more firm to the touch than it was supposed to be normally and she was most definitely more bloated than she had ever been. A baby. There was a baby in there.

Her eyes stayed glued to her stomach until Goober yipped impatiently and scratched at the door. 

She was supposed to do more. Drink water. Change clothes. Do one productive thing and then reevaluate. But then the couch had been right there and her body had made yet another unilateral executive decision and suddenly there she was. Horizontal with Goober laying with his head on her stomach and Cheesy prancing his way in to make himself comfortable on her chest. His tail was in her face as the cat kneaded right above the dog's head. 

“You’re ridiculous,” she mumbled, swatting the tail away before turning her head to the now on television above the fireplace. 

Soon, Cheesy arranged himself on the pillow from her bed directly above her head, purring loud enough to feel the vibration in her skull. It was actually very nice. She was going to be unconscious in approximately four minutes if nobody said anything.

Sam settled into the opposite love seat, sprawling out with his phone in his hand. He didn’t speak, just set a glass of water on the coffee table in front of her before sitting down, eyes glancing in her direction every few minutes. 

And then there was Ethan. When he went upstairs, he hit the same spot on the step as he always did. He was pacing—she could hear the creak of the floor. Slower than he used to be from the pain, sure, but nothing would ever stop him from moving around. She closed her eyes and listened to the creaking of her brother’s footsteps and the way Sam laughed under his breath at his phone and the snoring of the two animals on top of her.

The pacing stopped just as she was about to drift off. She heard him on the stairs. The particular rhythm of his too tall body beneath a too low ceiling, slower coming down than it used to be, heavier on the good side. The last step creaked in the same spot it always did. She kept her eyes closed and breathing steady.

He appeared in the doorway, looking at Sam sprawled on the loveseat before his eyes landed on her. She didn’t dare acknowledge him. He would do what he needed, taking as much or as little time as he needed to do the inevitable. After a long moment, he came and sat down in the armchair across from the loveseat, hissing quietly through his teeth at the angle, and settled with his good arm resting on his knee. 

The three of them sat in the quiet. Just the sound of the television filled the room, which nobody was watching or would. A soothing constant of white noise that had found its place in the gray winter. Goober's breathing against her stomach and Cheesy's purring above her head and the distant sound of the snow covered farm settling into late afternoon accompanied the television hum. A usual afternoon since the last harvest. Though the familiarity would only last for so long.

She could feel him staring at her with the expression she'd been feeling on the back of her neck since Harvey's exam room. He wasn’t going to say it. She knew that. He was going to sulk in the silent fury of finding out something so catastrophically important in the worst way possible.

“I know,” She finally said to the ceiling before he could even decide to open his mouth. “I know, Ethan.”

Sam's phone screen went dark in her peripheral just as she finally opened her eyes.

Ethan didn't say anything for a while. When he did his voice was careful. Measured. The voice he used when he was making sure he had control of himself before he said the next thing. An attempt to conceal the unwanted rage flowing through his nervous system. A tool learned in therapy years before, yet hadn’t been fully mastered despite the significant amount of time passing. "We already knew about Rasmodius and Qi. Dude, I thought I knew all of it."

"Yeah,” she whispered, the sound barely audible.

"So what don't we know." Not a question. The Ethan version of a question when he was particularly angry, which never was one.

She looked at the ultrasound pictures on the coffee table. The little jellybean, completely unbothered by all of this. Living its best life in there, ten weeks old, having absolutely no idea about any terrible thing that had happened before its existence. She'd been carrying other things for longer than ten weeks.

"The mines," she finally choked out. "You know I went. Kind of. You know it’s dangerous at the bottom. You know there are monsters."

"Yeah," Ethan scoffed, waiting.

"You don't know what happened when Shane and I got separated."

The television filled the silence for a moment. Some home improvement show. Someone was very excited about picking out crown molding.

"Tell me," Ethan urged.

She looked at the ceiling. She had said this once already today, in Harvey's exam room, with gel on her stomach and Ethan six inches away and Harvey's professional wall of a face giving nothing back. She had said it and survived it. The world kept spinning. She could say it again, surely.

"I got cornered by a Shadow Brute, one of the aggressive ones deep in the lower levels. And it—it wasn't like getting hurt on the farm, Ethan. It was my torso and my head and I couldn't—" she stopped when her voice cracked. "I stopped breathing."

The crown molding show kept going, an entirely too enthusiastic explanation of how incredibly crafted it would be.

Ethan didn't move.

"I died," she said, because she might as well say the whole word while she had the opportunity. "For a little while. I actually fucking died. And then I didn't, because Shane was there and something happened that neither of us fully understand and that he might deny it for the rest of our lives and I came back." She paused. "And then I didn't tell anyone because you were supposed to have your game like two weeks later and then you got hurt and I didn't know how."

The silence that followed was a different kind than the one before it. Different from any silence she’d ever gotten from her brother during a hard conversation. She could feel Ethan processing it from across the room. The familiar quality of his stillness as he worked through something difficult. Not the filing away kind, not the choosing her over his feelings kind. Just receiving something enormous and not having anywhere to put it yet because how were you supposed to put this in a filing cabinet somewhere deep in your mind and just leave it?

Sam, very quietly, set his phone on the cushion beside him just as Ethan took a deep, calculated breath.

"Sam knew," Ethan was still not looking at Sam, at either of them. “Right? You told him?”

"Mr Qi said it," Sam defended. “We… after your back surgery. And Daisy…”

“I told him not to,” Daisy interjected. 

Sam immediately agreed, almost jumping off of the couch as he nodded violently. Instead, his hands balled into fists against his knees as his legs shook restlessly. 

"That's on me. Not him. He was just doing what I asked him to while you were recovering."

Ethan looked at Sam then. Something moved through Ethan's face that she couldn't name—the complicated fight with yourself of loving someone and finding out they kept something from you and knowing, on some level, that you would have done the same. She watched him work through it. Watched him arrive somewhere on the other side of it. He’d never had a quiet face, at least not to her.

He looked back at her. "The scars.”

"Yeah."

"That's what they are."

"Yeah."

He nodded once. Slowly. Like he was filing something into a reachable drawer that he was going to need a long time to organize. His jaw worked, eyes glazed over. He looked at the coffee table. At the ultrasound pictures sitting there with the jellybean and its July 8th due date.

"You died," he repeated quietly, voice breaking on the syllable, though refusing to let anything else happen with it. Making it real by saying it out loud.

"And then I didn't.”

"And then you didn't." He repeated it back. Nodded again. "And you've been carrying that since summer."

"Yeah."

"While I was in surgeries and physical therapy."

"Yeah."

"While everything with Shane was happening."

"Yeah."

He was quiet for a long time after that. Long enough that the crown molding people reached a decision about their living room and the show went to commercial. Long enough that Goober shifted against her stomach and resettled. Long enough that she started to wonder if this was going to be the thing that broke them. Not the fights while she was off her meds or any of the fucked up things that should’ve made them hate each other during their childhoods and her early twenties. This was the thing too big to file away and choose her over despite the laundry list of too many horror stories that they were the protagonists of.

"I would have done the same thing," Ethan finally said through gritted teeth.

She looked at him.

He was looking at the coffee table. At the pictures. His jaw was still tight but his voice had gone somewhere quieter, somewhere past the anger. "If the situation was reversed. If I was the one who—" he stopped. "I would have done the same thing. I wouldn't have told you either."

“E—” She sat up, displacing the dog asleep against her stomach and jostling the cat. 

Ethan interrupted her, “No, Daize. I would’ve… if you weren’t at the game, I wouldn’t have told you how bad the accident was. If I… If I fucking died at the bottom of an abandoned mine and came back to life or some shit, I wouldn’t have told you. Because you don’t deserve to shoulder my burdens more than you’ve had to.”

She pressed her lips together.

"That doesn't mean I'm not furious," he added.

"I know."

"I'm really furious, Daisy Mae."

"I know, Ethan."

"I need like three business days to be furious about this."

"That's totally understandable."

He finally looked up at her. His eyes were red rimmed in a way he was clearly pretending they weren't. "You died," he repeated it again. Like he needed to keep saying it. Like the word kept slipping off of the edge of something smooth and he needed to find the place where it stuck.

"And then I didn't," she repeated softly.

"And then you didn't." He held her gaze. "And now you're having a baby."

"And now I'm having a baby."

He laughed. It came out completely wrong, something he wasn’t entirely convinced wasn’t absolutely psychotic. He pressed his fist to his mouth, taking a deep breath. Shook his head as that hand came up to run through his hair. Looked at the ceiling as a single tear trickled down his cheek.

"Yoba's light," he whispered to no one in particular. "What is your life?"

"I genuinely do not know," Daisy laughed, falling back against her pillow.

Sam, from the loveseat, very carefully, "Is this… are we okay? Like are we—" he asked, angling himself to push his body off of the couch.

"We're okay," Ethan assured. Still looking at the ceiling. Then, after a pause, he looked at Sam with an expression that was complicated and tired and still working through something but so in love with the ridiculous man in one of his sweaters. "We're okay. I just need, like, three business days."

Sam nodded. "Three business days. Yeah. Totally."

"And you're telling me everything," Ethan interjected quickly, back to his sister. "Whatever else there is. Whatever I don't know yet. Not tonight."

"Not tonight," she agreed.

Ethan nodded. Then, he looked back at the pictures on the coffee table. He reached for them slowly with a hiss, settling back in the chair as he focused his gaze on the grainy little jellybean. He sat with them for a moment as the home improvement show continued and the animals resettled back in their designated spots. "July 8th," he whispered.

"July 8th."

He was quiet for another moment. Then he pushed himself up from the armchair with a hiss of effort and crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the couch beside her and put his hand on top of her head. The way he'd been doing since they were younger and he’d gotten unfairly and significantly taller than her.

She closed her eyes.

"Okay," he nodded, though didn’t push himself up. "Three business days. And then we figure out how to tell Shane."

.・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。

Daisy Mae Wilde had made the walk from the drive of her property through the Cindersap Forest to the Coopers’ Ranch more times than she could count. Never once did she do it while ten weeks pregnant with a thick layer of powdery snow on the ground in a coat she thought would be warm enough but wasn’t. Never once did she think she would be in the situation to do so, yet there she was. Doing it. 

Despite the late hour, as if 9pm was late, the fields were still bright from the automatic lights she had installed and programmed to come on from dusk to dawn. Moonlight illuminated against the bright snow, causing the sky full of vast snow clouds to go white. It would’ve been a nice walk in any other circumstances but the one she was in. 

From the edge of the path, the ranch was a warm, glowing beacon of golden light. The flicker of the hearth gleamed through the space between the open curtains, accompanied by the porchlight. Her fingers curled around the ultrasound pictures in her pocket as she stopped in the middle of the snowcovered path. Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders into that performance ready armor she’d grown so accustomed to, an act of defiance against her own fear that she’d developed at an admittedly too early age. The frozen air in front of her turned to a puff of smoke. She couldn’t let herself think about what she was about to do too hard or she’d talk herself out of it and turn around.

So, with one final inhale, she trudged up the porch steps and knocked on the front door. Three hard knocks, not loud enough to wake the young girl asleep amongst a mountain of stuffed animals past her bedtime. 

There was a pause as Daisy shivered. The sound of footsteps approaching the door. The turn of the lock. The door opened and there was Marnie Cooper—reading glasses pushed up into her ever braided and gray streaked hair, flannel robe pulled tightly closed against her chest. The older woman’s eyes immediately found the young woman on her front steps with snow in her hair, cheeks red from the cold and eyes that had been crying and were very close to doing so again. The look that appeared across her face was a familiar one. Concern that concealed itself with warmth without a second of hesitation. 

“Oh, sweetheart!” She exclaimed, immediately moving to gesture Daisy inside. “Come in before you catch a cold!” 

The ranch was warm in a lived in way. A place where people lived and loved first and foremost. The smell of the fire in the hearth accompanied whatever comforting meal Marnie had prepared that night and a cup of peppermint tea. Daisy stood in the doorway dripping onto the mat, nervously glancing around the foyer. Marnie was already halfway to the kitchen before Daisy had even thought to take her coat off. 

“Sit down, baby,” she called back over her shoulder, the particular tone of a woman who had been taking care of people her whole life and found it as natural as breathing. "I'll put the kettle on."

Daisy shrugged her coat off, hanging it gingerly next to the one on the rack. Shane’s. The navy work coat with the JojaMart logo on the back. Her hands hesitated against the peg her hood hung off of, eyes fixated on the familiar fabric. Amongst Jas’s purple jacket and Marnie’s burgundy one, it had taken its station there for so long it almost became architecture to the house. 

Before she could get too emotional about it, Daisy grabbed the ultrasound photos from her coat pocket and rolled them up in her sleeve. Like a teenager hiding something from her parents, something she’d done when getting home after her father in high school. Only this time she wasn’t hiding anything nefarious. At least, she didn’t think so.

Marnie’s kitchen had held many generations before her own. Raising pairs of siblings at this same hand carved table matching the grand dining room down the hall. Countless homework pages and important talks and shared dinners had happened in these four chairs. Including some of her own. It had raised Katie and Shane in their teen years—after Daisy’s time visiting Pelican Town. Two teens with a troubled home life seeking shelter and love from their aunt overflowing with it. 

Now, Daisy Mae sat at that table with her hands folded too tightly in her lap as Marnie Cooper prepared mugs of tea and a plate of shortbread that had not been requested but would not be argued about. 

A mug decorated with a chicken was placed in front of her. Thick and old, probably handmade. Marnie sat down across from Daisy with her own mug, folding her hands around the warm ceramic. 

She left the kitchen silent for a lingering moment. Even with her eyes cast down into the dark liquid of still steeping tea, Daisy could feel Marnie’s eyes on her. It wasn’t an invasive look in the slightest. Just the quiet concern of a woman who had helped raise two troubled kids in a house full of nothing but love. 

“How are you doing, honey?” Marnie finally asked. Yet before Daisy could give the dismissive answer if fine, she added, “And I mean really.” 

Daisy kept her eyes focused on the steeping teabag. She recognized it as one of Emily’s. A homemade blend she probably had countless times during her visit to her best friend’s house. “Not great,” she admitted. 

“Shane?” Marnie asked. 

“Everything,” Daisy corrected. “And, like… I guess he’s a really big part of everything. I just keep thinking about how I never…” Daisy stopped herself with a sharp inhale, one hand coming up to grab the handle of the mug. “I never got to tell him that I love him. And now he’s… where he is and I’m… here, how I am. And I’m just so scared that…” she stopped, finally looking up into the older woman’s warm, hazel eyes. “I’m scared that he’s not gonna want me. Like, he’s gonna get better and realize I’m fucked up and not with the effort.” 

The kitchen was quiet for a moment. Just the tick of the heater and the low sounds of the ranch settling into the night. Daisy looked back down, eyes burning.

Marnie set her mug down carefully, with the deliberateness of someone who had been holding something for a while and had decided the time had come. “Daisy Mae,” she chuckled. “I have been telling that boy to go ask you out since July.”

Daisy looked up.

Marnie held her gaze with the calm of someone making a full and accurate report of something that had been kept quiet for entirely too long. “July. I said, Shane, that girl likes you. Take her to dinner. Go to the saloon, get some food, tell her how you feel.” She picked up her mug. “He looked at me like I’d suggested he swim to the Fern Islands.”

“He never said anything—”

“Of course he didn’t.” She interrupted with the enormous fondness and exhaustion of someone who loved a difficult person very much. “That boy would rather build a whole house than knock on the front door.” She shook her head. “I heard the two of you, you know. More than once. More than I wanted to, if I’m being honest.” She raised her eyebrows in a way that communicated a significant amount without saying it directly. Daisy’s cheeks burned. “And I kept thinking, surely this is the part where one of them just says the words.”

Daisy pressed her lips together, cheeks burning red in embarrassment. 

“He has said it,” Daisy whispered to the mug. “I never said it back. He… He told me more than once and I just… I couldn't. I froze every single time and now he's four hours away and I don't know if he knows that I—"

"Lord have mercy." Marnie sighed the exasperation of a woman who had watched this situation develop from front row seats for months. Then she softened. "Here's what I know about Shane Cooper. He's not a man who does things he doesn't mean. Not once in his life." She held Daisy's gaze. "Whatever the two of you were and whatever it looked like from the outside, that boy meant every bit of it."

Daisy stared at her mug. Turned it slightly in her hands. "I just—" She stopped. Started again after taking a deep breath. "I love him. I've loved him for a long time and I never said it and now he's gone and I don't know how to—"

"I know, sweetheart," Marnie interrupted, quiet and certain as she reached over to place a hand against Daisy’s forearm. "I know."

Daisy let Marnie take her hand, calloused from years of hard, physical labor. Marnie didn’t rush her to respond, to get to the point of why she showed up on her doorstep at 9pm on a Tuesday unannounced and clearly distraught. They sat at the kitchen table that had lived here longer than Marnie had been alive, the shortbread on old china between them as the older woman’s thumb grazed the knuckles of the younger woman across from her. 

It was her Granny’s recipe. Shane’s great grandmother. Daisy wouldn’t come to find that out for years, but it would continue to be present during hard conversations and fond memories made at the table that had hosted so many before this one. 

“I need to tell you something.” Daisy finally broke the silence, looking up at Marnie with glassy eyes. 

Marnie straightened almost immediately, letting Daisy retract her hand. She watched as the younger woman fiddled with the sleeve of her sweater—the one Jas loved so much. She gave Daisy everything. Her full, undivided attention as she folded her hands against the wood grain after pushing aside her mug. 

“Of course, sweetheart,” She encouraged. “You can tell me anything. I’m listening.” 

With shaking hands, Daisy pulled the rolled up ultrasound photos out of her sleeve and unwound them carefully. She smoothed them against the table before pushing them face up towards Marnie. 

Three images. Black and white and grainy. The jellybean with its head and its small curved suggestion of arms and legs, floating there on glossy paper with Daisy Mae’s full name at the top and the complete confidence of something that had been around for a while.

Marnie looked at them, held them away from her for a moment before reaching up to the top of her head and pulling on her reading glasses. Her brow furrowed, the frown of someone trying to understand what they were looking at. It took a moment before her face did something that happened in stages. Recognition. Understanding. And then something enormous and private and completely undone sweeping through all at once.

Her hand came up to cover her mouth.

"Oh," she breathed, from behind her fingers. "Oh, Daisy." She looked up at Daisy with wide eyes. “Daisy Mae.” 

“I’m ten weeks and three days,” Daisy choked out, quickly bringing a hand up to wipe the rogue tears that fell. Her voice was steady. She didn't know how. "Due July 8th." She looked at the pictures on the table between them. "I got to hear the heartbeat.”

Marnie looked up from the pictures. Her eyes were wet above her hand. She looked at Daisy with everything sitting right there on the surface of her face—joy and grief and love and the fierce, unwavering feeling of a woman who had wanted good things for Shane Cooper for a very long time and was now looking at one of the biggest ones.

"How long have you known?" She asked, when she finally found her voice.

Daisy pressed her lips together. “I… I took the test last night. Scared the hell out of Ethan and Sam. Went to see Harvey today at noon.”

Marnie went still. "You found out last night," she repeated.

"Yes, ma’am."

"And you're here."

"I didn’t—" Daisy started, lip quivering as her mind convinced her she’d done something wrong.

"No." Marnie interrupted the moment she realized how wrong the words had landed. She lowered her hand and reached across the table to cover Daisy's. "No, I know, honey. Of course you are." She squeezed once. “I’m so glad you are.”

The kitchen was quiet for a long moment. Long enough for the heater to tick twice and the wind to move outside as it roared through the treetops and Daisy to look at the pictures on the table and feel the thing she had continuously felt when she looked at them: the fear and underneath the fear the stubborn, irrational joy that wouldn't go away no matter how many reasons she gave it to.

"Shane's going to be a daddy," Marnie said softly. Like she needed to hear it in the air. Like saying it made it real and true.

Daisy's chin wobbled. "He doesn't know."

"He will." Marnie's voice shifted then—still the maternal warmth it always held, but underneath it something that was already moving, already thinking, already three steps ahead of anything logistical that could’ve been questioned. The action mode arrived quietly and completely without input from anyone else. "I'm his emergency contact. I can call the facility first thing tomorrow morning and get your name added. It takes about two weeks, sometimes a little less if I explain the situation." She squeezed Daisy's hand again. "And when the visit comes through, I'm driving you."

Daisy looked at her. "Marnie, it's four hours—"

"I know how far it is, baby." She spoke with the finality of someone who had decided before the conversation had even been brought up, a choice she made with no room for argument. "You're not driving yourself four hours to tell that boy he's going to be a father. I'm taking you and that's the end of it." A beat. "He's going to need to hear it from you, face to face. And you're going to need someone in that car with you on the way there." She looked at her steadily. "That's what I'm for."

Daisy stared at her. At the reading glasses and the flannel robe and the wet eyes and the hand over hers and the complete unmovable certainty of her.

"Okay," she whispered.

"Okay," Marnie confirmed. Like it was settled. Like it had always been going to be settled this way. She looked down at the pictures one more time, still on the table between them. At the jellybean. At the small curved shape of something that was going to change everything and had already changed everything and had been changing everything for ten weeks without anyone knowing.

"Something to come home to," Marnie whispered, almost to herself. "That's what this is. That boy has been looking for something to come home to his whole life." She looked up at Daisy. "And you've been scared this is going to ruin things. But I think—" she paused, certain and gentle, "—I think this might be the thing that finally makes him realize how much good he has."

Daisy looked at the ultrasound pictures.

July 8th. Ten weeks and three days. A little jellybean who survived in there despite it all.

"I hope so," she whispered.

"I know so," Marnie corrected with the confidence of a woman who had known Shane Cooper since he was a lost and angry young boy and had watched him become something better and was absolutely certain he had more becoming left to do. "Now," She stood up, squeezing Daisy's hand one last time before releasing it and moving toward the stove with the decisive energy of someone whose plan was made and who had moved on to the next item. "You're going to eat that shortbread and then I'm making you something proper because you look like you haven't had a real meal in entirely too long."

"I had toast," Daisy defended.

"That's not a meal." Marnie was already opening the fridge. "Eat the shortbread. I’m going to heat you up some leftover pot roast that we had for dinner."

Happy birthday to my unexpected muse!

I was severely artblocked for years until I played SDV and got hit over the head with inspiration by blonde pixel guitarist. I’ve not seen traits I have portrayed in such a casual and positive manner before, and it gives me so much joy. Never before did I create and reach out to form connection in a fandom so much! So, yay! Thanks Concerned Ape for cording this guy into your game, he makes me smile and try new things!

I headcanon July 17th to be his birthday, because he feels like a ‚middle of summer‘ type of guy to me. Plus, it makes him a Cancer, which suits him well in my opinion 💕

(Also also. Cancers and Taurus are a good match so I like it for ColaTea reasons as well).