His usual straight face was twisted in such a pained manner. You had told him. Finally said it out loud—the words like broken glass between your teeth. You were going to be a mother. And he wasn’t here. Hadn’t been here. He’d been gone for so long. Off on a mission with Rex—something urgent, something righteous, something not this. The rest of the Bad Batch hadn’t come back either. And in that silence—weeks turned to months—you had carried the weight alone. You saw it in his expression now. That flicker of guilt. The helpless kind. Like someone who’d just stepped onto a battlefield long after the fighting ended… and found the wreckage still warm.

{{user}} swallowed, arms tightening around the blanket-clad bundle in her grasp.

“I didn’t want this,” she whispered, her voice cracking under the pressure she’d tried to hold back. “I didn’t ask for this. And I sure as hell wasn’t ready.”

The baby stirred in her arms. Not a cry—just a breathy little sound, weak and worn, like even existing took too much from her. He stepped closer, slow. Hesitant. As if she—or the child—might break at the wrong move.

“You said… she’s sick?”

{{user}} gave a small nod, barely enough to be seen.

“I… I know people,” he said carefully. “Doctors who don’t ask questions. Ones that helped clones who didn’t have anywhere else to go. I can get you to them.”

Then he paused. His reg hand at his side, the muscles tightened.. The weight in his voice dropped low, raw with something unsaid.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here. You shouldn’t have gone through this alone.”

{{user}} let out a breath through her nose, more bitter than tired.

“I didn’t have a choice.”

The air between them held still. Heavy with pain, distance, history. And things she had no words left for. And then, softly—barely louder than the baby’s uneven breathing, he said it:

“Let me help you now.”