DIRECTLY CONTINUED FROM AUSTRALIAN ADVENTURES...

Chapter 1: Baby Mine

The General squeezed his eyes shut...hard, his breathing becoming labored, harsh. Then, with a nearly indescribable expression of pain, he looked into Himself's face. "My seed?" he stammered. "He...my seed...in Bunny?"

Himself nodded silently. Maximus turned, gazing down at Joimus just as she opened her eyes, looking up at him, lifting her hand toward his. His fingers had barely touched hers when Himself said, "The babies, Maximus. Both of them are...yours."
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Maximus paused, his whole body going rigid. In his mind he went back to that first night in the abandoned shed behind the burnt farmstead. He closed his eyes, remembering lying there chained to the wall, with no idea yet what had happened to him, only that every part of him hurt, every part seemed to fight against his own being. All eyes in the room locked on the General's face as emotion after emotion played across his features. As he imagined Sid, his essence somehow transferred to… his...form, knocking on the door of Bunny's caravan, he gripped his upper lip tightly between his teeth, the muscles of his chin twitching beneath his beard. Sid had used his body...intimately...with a woman other than Joimus. (A YOOK By Any Other Name)

He wanted his mind to stop, wanted in no way to go further with this mental re-enactment, but still the images came. His warm seed, bearing with it all he was, all his heritage, all his manhood, had flowed into another...and not by his own choosing. He turned, walking to a window wall, leaning his forehead against the glass, his eyes gazing unseeing toward the harbor.

Now there was life growing, life from his seed. He smacked his forehead hard against the glass in a way that made the watching Nash cringe. HIS seed! His nostrils flared. Bunny carried his child. HIS child! Sid had stolen his body, stolen his identity. Now he intended to steal his child. Purple flashed suddenly in front of his lids. He curled his lip, reaching out his hand toward that color formed only when blue has blended with red. He gripped his fingers around the sight of it as it floated there in front of him, a flash of purple, mocking friendship, mocking loyalty.

The others watched silently as the General's fingers squeezed something they could not see, tightening and squeezing until in Maximus' eyes great drops of purple slid through his fingers, falling to the floor. He looked down, his eyes dark and deadly, gazing as the red parted itself from the blue, leaving two separate puddles of light in front of his feet. Lifting his boot, he planted it slowly, deliberately, firmly, in the center of the blue, then turned and said in a low growl, "MY child!"

Franki sucked in a ragged breath. During her time in epis, she had witnessed many things happen to the General, but this was her first glimpse of the warrior who had palmed the broken arrow in the arena. The fierce power of his presence was almost frightening when standing in the same room. Then she was distracted from her mesmerized study of him by a series of half- strangled sobs. She looked down at Joimus who had turned her face into the back cushion of the couch, her arms folded tightly around her head.

Himself became aware of it, too, and strode over to the General."Maximus," he said commandingly, using a tone of voice that only one who had also been the General could muster, "there is another child to consider." He indicated Joimus with his hand.

Maximus blinked, giving his head a hard shake, and focused on the couch. His face crumpled and he breathed, "Oh...gods!" Hurrying to the couch, he knelt quickly beside it, cupping his hands over her shoulders, trying to get her to turn toward him. She kept her face pressed into the back cushion, though, and her arms locked around her head. He could feel her shoulders shaking beneath his hands and little, "oh, oh, oh" sounds escaped his lips.

 

 

"Joimus," he implored, his voice breaking, "look at me!" But she would not, so he slid his arms completely under her as he stood, lifting her up and strode with her to their room, kicking the door closed behind them with his boot.

He lay her gently on their bed but she rolled away from him, burying her face in a pillow. He stood beside the bed a brief moment, remembering how they had lain side by side mere moments before, cuddled together, his hand on her stomach. Looking at her now, her whole body shaking with muffled sobs, he knew he had done this to her and he pressed his hand to his chest, feeling the splitting crack that streaked through his heart.

                                 

He got up on the bed next to her, gathering her onto his lap despite her resistance. Robbed of the shielding pillow, she turned her face into his chest. Wrapping his arms protectively around her, he rested his chin lightly atop her head and just sat there, holding her, murmuring soft endearments.

When her sobs calmed somewhat, he began to run the fingers of his right hand through her hair. She was curled into him, her left ear over his heart. Its beating had ever been for her the sound of home. Lying there, finally quiet, she listened to its steady rhythm. He knew what she was doing and so silenced his lips, letting his heart speak for him as he kept up his soft stroking of her hair. When he felt her arms begin to slide around his torso, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut in relief.

                               
"I'm staying here," Bunny said, unlocking the door to her large room in the W hotel.

Sid smiled at her. "Now WE are staying here," he corrected.

She was still a bit shaken from events in Himself's apartment and just let her purse fall from her fingers to the floor as she headed towards a chair. "Uh-uh," Sid said, sweeping past her, sitting first and holding out his arms. "Come to Papa!"

 

 

She slid onto his lap, curling her arms about his neck, letting her head rest on his shoulder. He pressed his palm over her stomach, needing to think. He, a synthetic nanotech organism, had actually put life in a human woman. It had largely been due to the old Pinocchio Syndrome found so often in puppets, robots, and nanotechs that he had taken Maximus' body in the first place. Now, lying within Bunny, was the ultimate proof that he was "real." It was by an act of his, HIS, this child now grew. That the seed was stolen was entirely irrelevant in his mind.

                                  

Bunny knew much of what he must be thinking. "You know how Maximus feels about children," she said softly. "He will not take the news...well."

"He may take it however he wills," Sid growled. "It changes nothing. He was not there when my child was conceived."

                                     
She closed her eyes. That Maximus' body had been there but not his soul made all this so very...complicated. She seriously doubted that the General would NOT see this child as his. If a man's seed, especially a man such as Maximus, were not his own....what was? Where would all this lead?

She looked at Sid's profile as he stared at her stomach. She loved this possessiveness of his. She WANTED him to feel possessive of her. He had always left her just a bit...unsure...in his independence, his self-sufficiency. She thought again of how his lovemaking had been that night in Bellingen as he explored every aspect of what it was like to feel, to touch, with human nerve endings. She smiled, reaching out to the finely-defined line of his jaw.

He saw the curve of her lips. "What?" he asked.

"Just thinking of the caravan," she murmured.

His own eyes lit at the memory. "I was good, wasn't I," he said, not making it a question in the least.

"You were," she agreed, leaning up to nip his earlobe.

As the door to Maximus' room had closed behind him and Joimus, Himself sighed deeply, turning to look at Jack. He noticed how the Captain's thumb made little circular patterns atop the hilt of his cutlass. Jack was entirely loyal to Maximus. Again Himself sighed. He feared he had his work cut out for him. It was going to be a bumpy ride and he wanted to get through it with as little spilling of blood as possible. Even though Jack had witnessed Sid's, um, activities for a long time now, only he, Himself, really knew what Sid was capable of. When he had been filming Virtuosity, being so completely amoral, killing so easily, had been a bit of a blast because it was not who HE was at all. But it was different for Sid. Sid just WAS Sid. He didn't go home at the end of the day, kick off his shoes and toss back a couple of VB's with his friends. He didn't leave Sid behind like Himself could.

Even when Sid had stolen Maximus' body, he hadn't left Sid behind but was still Sid clothed in the General's flesh. He rubbed his hand wearily over his eyes. That was it. Sid was still so very, very Sid when the baby had been conceived. He understood, truly he did, why Sid would consider the child his. He found himself dreading the time when the rest of his characters heard the news. Sid had not made a single friend amongst them. There had only been that very strange, recent friendship between him and Maximus and Joimus that had resulted from their mutual deaths. He shook his head, never having quite been able to grasp that. All he knew was that they seemed to have bonded somehow, to have come to understand things about one another that were not normally possible.

               
His eyes turned to where the General had been standing by the glass. Evidently, however, that was over. He had been amazed how even after Sid's attempt to drop him off the top of Uluru, after Sid's kidnapping Joimus and taking her to the Olga's, still Maximus had maintained a certain level of feeling for Sid. He had no idea what the General had been seeing as he stood by the window wall, what the motions of his hand had meant, but the result of whatever it was seemed obvious. The two of them were back to where they had been before...only worse.

Brushing a wandering wave off her face, Maximus looked down at Joimus. "Our child," he said, his voice soft, tender, "means all the world to me." He shuddered suddenly and she knew he was seeing the trampling hooves of Praetorian horses. "All the world," he repeated. "I want you never to doubt that."

He looked seriously into her eyes. "That you and I...together...have made... this...." He lay his palm on her stomach. "This for me is a miracle beyond imagining."
                                

He licked his lips. "I know I handled that...badly...there in the living room. It is just all so new for me and there is much I need to...sort...in my mind." He sighed, then tightened his arms about her.

She, too, was sorting through it, her thoughts running here and there. She felt like she had, only moments before, held out to him in her hands a gift precious and...rare. Then Sid had walked up with the same gift, turning and smirking down at her. She bit her lip, rather ashamed of herself that she was letting her own need, her own ego, come between Maximus and a child that was his. She wanted to be better than that, yet...still...it hurt, and a tear overbrimmed and rolled down her cheek.

It seemed to her as though she had been crossing some avenue, on her way to a joyous celebration, and a bus had come and run her down. Something was gone, something that had been there just a bit ago. It had been so marvelous as they lay there together before Sid came, calling Maximus' name. Now it was changed, different, and she wondered could they ever get back again to that moment, that one, brief, sweet span of time when it had all been simple.

Now what had been just between Maximus and her had become entangled in Sid's plottings. There was, though, that one thing she was truly grateful for...that she had not lain with Sid when he was in Maximus' body. It was then that it hit her, that if she HAD lain with him and had conceived as a result, would she consider the child to be Maximus'...or Sid's? She began, then, to understand what it must be like for Bunny, Bunny whose heart belonged to Sid.

She looked at Maximus. "This is no simple thing," she said, her voice low and serious.

He nodded, yet...still...how could he get past that it was seed formed within his own body, bearing with it all that was essentially him, that had made Bunny's child? He knew himself well enough to know that he could not, could never, look at a child standing in front of him, formed from his very seed, and not see himself as its father. He had had a child taken from him before by force. Was there anyone who expected he would stand idly by while yet another was taken?

In the living room, Jack was saying much the same thing. "You remember after the fight with Tigris, how Commodus used the brutal death of Maximus' son in his effort to provoke him to foolish action. Does anyone think, after what he has endured, that Maximus will easily let go of another child?"

"Remember?" Himself said sharply, turning on his heel to look at the Captain. "I was THERE! I felt every feeling, experienced every heart pain!"

                               

He paused, composing himself. "But you are right, Jack. Maximus will never let go of another child." He sighed deeply, knowing as well the inner workings of Sid's mind, that Sid would find in the baby his proof of life, an extension of his ego, a relationship like none he had ever known. The child would be...valuable...to Sid in every possible meaning of the word. There simply was no outcome for this that both men could live with. He shuddered. And how great would the collateral damage be?

It was dinnertime and Himself had asked the others to gather at Otto's on the Wharf at 6. He glanced at his watch then at Maximus' closed door. "I think we should leave them alone," he said.

Jack nodded agreement. "Best to let them be right now."

                             
Indeed, as the day had worn on, Maximus had lain beside Joimus on their bed, one arm flung across his face. His head pounded from the tension of his emotions and he had closed his eyes, finally sleeping. Joimus lay beside him, her thoughts too scrambled to permit rest. He had only slumbered a short while before he began to groan in his sleep, his head turning from side to side as though he were trying to escape some unbearable scene. He was chained, his arms spread wide as in that last time beneath the arena. Only now he was between two columns at the top of a low flight of steps. Joimus, her belly great with child, stood just out from their bottom, her eyes locked on his form so that she did not see the great troop of mounted soldiers riding towards her from the left. He shouted her name, but no sound came from his lips. Frantically he yanked his chains, but remained held fast. The horsemen drew ever closer, yet still she did not see them. He screamed her name again, "JOIMUS!"

                             

He sat bolt upright in bed, sweat pouring from his brow, blinking
rapidly. Vaguely he began to hear her calling his name and realized where he was, that she was clutching his arm. He grabbed her, pulling her to himself, his eyes squeezed shut as he rocked with her back and forth. His breath came in great sobbing gasps. He could not, twice in his life, suffer the loss of all he held dear. He did not think he would survive it a second time.