Two Heartbeats
Posted on Wed Jul 2nd, 2025 @ 7:50pm by Lieutenant Commander Aer Feshau-Patton
390 words; about a 2 minute read
Begin personal log.
I cried today because the replicator gave me mint tea instead of lemon.
I didn’t even order lemon.
But I was so sure it would know.
And then I laughed. Which made me cry again.
And now I’m recording this with puffy eyes and a blanket around my shoulders like a first-year cadet who just failed her first diplomatic protocols test.
I’m four months pregnant.
Four.
Months.
Two lives growing inside me. Quiet. Mysterious. Whole. And completely beyond my control.
I’ve stood on collapsing borders.
I’ve lied to diplomats with phasers under the table.
I’ve felt the gravitational wake of temporal fractures no one else could sense.
And I have never, not once, felt this kind of vulnerability.
It terrifies me. And it humbles me. And it moves through me like a second heartbeat.
Jack keeps talking to them. He calls them “the cadets.”
I pretend to roll my eyes, but I catch myself listening, hoping they hear him.
Hoping they know he’s steady and strong and stubborn as stone.
That he loves them already, without knowing their names or which one just made me cry over tea.
I don’t know what kind of mother I’ll be.
I keep trying to plan. To list. To prepare.
And then a moment hits—like a wave—and I find myself clutching an old memory crystal, breathing in rhythms I haven't practised since my Listening, whispering names from a lineage that stretches so far back it feels like starlight.
Part of me wants to wrap them in everything. In El Aurian lullabies, driftwood stories, Federation ethics, and whispered truths from a world that no longer exists.
The other part of me just wants them to be free.
To laugh loudly. To speak boldly. To never have to whisper who they are.
I’m not ready.
But I am.
But I’m not.
But I am. I think.
This is more than hormones.
This is more than heritage.
This is the first thing I’ve ever done that isn’t about duty or diplomacy or disaster prevention.
This is mine.
This is ours.
And I want to remember this moment exactly as it is: messy, hormonal, weepy, terrified, hopeful... and full of life.
End personal log.
RSS Feed