"Oh. Well. Cool. I am pretty sure I read somewhere that like a third of women in ancient Rome died in childbirth. Which, uh, to be fair is like twice the rate in less populous areas, Rome was super disease-ridden, and also most women had multiple pregnancies over the course of their lives so it works out to, I don't even know, not more than a two or three percent risk of death per live birth at most, and there's no way that's the riskiest thing I've ever done but the other things seemed more - like being the slayer might give me some kind of advantage."

"Aren't there, uh, healing powers?"

"Oh yeah. Yeah those might help. I forgot about those. I guess maybe I only have to worry about the excruciating pain, and possibly the risk of a late miscarriage and being poisoned by rotting fetal matter.

" - I am sorry for bringing this up, this seems like it might be kind of distressing."

" - I mean, you're the person they might happen to.

I'll - I don't know how much I can do, but I'll do it."

" - OK. Thank you."

"Do you want a hug?"

"Yeah, that might be good."

Hug.

Hug.

"We should build ourselves a house."

"...yeah. Maybe we should."

She's.... not really sure she wants to live with Ryan or share a room with him all the time or anything, but it does kind of seem like the thing to do, and he seems OK, and Wishbone could probably stay with them even if she had to go somewhere else to see Alex, and - she's tired.

"So, uh - good talk. Very good talk. We should maybe go to sleep. Separately. Maybe we can try in the same bed sometime before we do this, but, uh - right now I feel like this was a decent amount of progress for now."

"Yeah definitely. See you later."

"See you."

Annnnd she heads back to her room, where it's time to overthink one hundred percent of her brand new thoughts and feelings.

Snuggles?? Does this call for snuggles??

Dog snuggles are good. She pets her dog.

So I think today...... mostly dramatically improved things.

Oh? That's - really good.

Yeah. I mean, consider the baseline we're working with, but I feel - somewhat less awful.

He wants us to build a house to live in, though. Which is I guess.... kind of normal and sensible, but will result in having to make decisions about how we would live in a house together.

- I don't actually know that much about how normal humans live -

I mean I'm just saying, like, it's not abnormal to live in a house with a person who you're - making if not raising a baby with, insofar as it is possible to even have a normal in an insane situation like this, but -

He doesn't like you. I dunno if he'd want you to visit. Also separately I feel somewhat more OK now but I don't know if it's an amount of OK that leads to feeling not traumatized after having sex with someone who you actually objectively barely know. And if that happened I - dunno if I'd wanna be living together.

That makes sense. You could say how about no house until there's a baby on the way?

Yeah, that makes sense. I guess we can always build houses without, like, actually having to live in them.

I'm supposed to be thinking about whether it's a good idea to get married.

You sound unsure about a lot of things that people should be sure of before they get married, honestly.

Yeah. I think it's probably a bad idea. Some small part of my brain would be appeased but I think that's not actually a tradeoff worth making. Not that there appear to be any other humans in the universe, but - still.

Yeah, you guys might well get married. But... later.

Yeah.

In objective terms we're still at 'the second time he hugged me I didn't want to cry or throw up or anything'. It is sad that this constitutes progress.

That sounds like pretty reasonable progress under the circumstances.

Maybe. It feels... other than totally hopeless.