Chapter Fourteen

"Face it, Daria!" she cried, wiping her stinging eyes. "We're freaks! No one's gonna want us because we're dangerous! Even Mom - she's never seen what we can really do!"

She was overcome by a wave of tears and succumbed without a struggle. "No one will want us..."

"Sure they will," Daria said, a faint note of doubt in her voice.

"No they won't!" Quinn's eyes widened with her distress. "If they knew... my friends would all turn on me!"

Daria sat up, scooted over next to Quinn, and laid her arms gingerly around her. Quinn sank into them, and Daria felt her boundless fear; although Quinn's mind was blocked from her, her tense, quivering body was not. Daria sensed that something much darker was at the core of her misery.

"Quinn?" she asked hesitantly. "Yesterday..." Quinn turned to look at her. "That body in the girls bathroom. Was it-"

"Daria, no," Quinn said shakily. "Not now."

Helen was still tending to Amy when there was a knock on the bedroom door. "Can I come in?" DeMartino asked weakly from the other side.

Helen looked at Amy, who was sitting up in bed. She had calmed down considerably since Daria and Quinn had left the room, but her eyes were so swollen from crying that she had exchanged her contacts for glasses. Amy stared at the door with a stony expression.

"Come in," she said.

DeMartino opened the door and crept in. He stood at the foot of the bed, his eyes shifting from Amy to Helen. Helen gazed at him with such fierceness and suspicion that it made him nervous. Amy observed their silent stand-off before gently putting a hand on Helen's arm.

"Why don't you give us some time alone?"

Helen glanced down at Amy, then forced herself away from her side. As she left the room, she gave DeMartino the evil eye one last time.

"If you dare hurt her..."

DeMartino unleashed a half-suppressed groan of rage, then glanced at Amy with embarrassment. Amy stared at him coolly.

"I hope you're not expecting an encore performance."

"NO!" DeMartino gasped. "I won't TOUCH you. If I'd -"

"Yeah. I know," Amy said, clipping each word. She gazed at him squarely, trying to contain her emotions. "Let me tell you how this will work. This life inside of me may contain half of your DNA, but that does not mean you get to move in with me and my boyfriend. In fact, you will have no claim on me whatsoever."

DeMartino nodded. "BUT -"

"The kid. I know." Amy gazed down at her middle with wonder and apprehension. "When this kid is born, I will need you around to help me understand, you know, what little quirks I need to look out for. But that doesn't mean you have to get close."

DeMartino nodded, his bad eye bulging a bit. Amy tried to suppress a shudder, then let out a shaky sigh. "I wouldn't be so harsh... well actually, I would... if not for the fact that I've been through so much with my boyfriend. All the trials and misunderstandings, not to mention our temporary split. Now that we're finally past the ugliness and have learned how to really trust each other, I don't want to hurt him. I don't want to give him a reason to leave."

Amy's chin trembled, and she felt her eyes water. Valiantly, she sought to maintain self-control. "We're planning to get married," she blurted out.

DeMartino looked at her with a grave expression, then wound his way around the bed toward Amy. She winced, half-expecting a violent move on his part. Instead he leaned forward and, as if afraid of being overheard, whispered, "Tell your BOYFRIEND that you are carrying HIS child. Then, let ME deliver it. I'll take it away from you and raise it MYSELF. Your boyfriend will believe it was STILLBORN. You can still have another baby. And life will go on as BEFORE."

Amy stared at him, then peered down at her swollen middle. Hope shined in her face, which was quickly joined by sadness and uncertainty. "I'd need time to think about it," she murmured.

Again DeMartino nodded, and Amy looked him over, as if trying to size him up. "After all this, I still barely know who you are. What were you like on that other planet of yours?"

"Not much different," said DeMartino, "I was a FARMER, a neighbor of Norlek's - Jake's - family. That is, until the great WARLORD took our fields away."

"That's too bad," said Amy, trying to feel sympathetic. "What about your family? Parents... brothers... sisters?"

"NO siblings. Parents were DEAD. It was only me."

"Really?" Amy's brows now lifted in unforced sympathy. "So no... I don't know, whatever your people would call a 'wife'?"

"No," said DeMartino, his face flushing with embarrassment and irritation. "Never INTERested."

"So this child thing must feel like a pretty shocking development for you," Amy said softly, a faint smile on her lips.

DeMartino eyed Amy's belly and swallowed nervously. "It IS a bit inconvenient," he whispered.

"Did you ever see yourself fathering a child? How will you know how to raise one?" Amy asked these questions without malice, but with simple curiosity.

DeMartino couldn't answer, and Amy sensed that she was overwhelming him. Feeling the life inside of her wiggle about, she cautiously reached for his hand. They both winced a bit as her fingers encircled it, but Amy was relieved to find that his skin felt like normal human skin, and DeMartino remembered that the touch of another human wasn't so bad. Amy laid his hand on her stomach and held it there. DeMartino waited, then felt several small flutters. His eyes widened.

"THAT was-"

"Yeah," said Amy, nodding.

DeMartino drew his hand away, but continued to look at her belly with awe. For a few moments neither spoke. Then Amy shifted herself into a more upright position and straightened her glasses.

"So," she said, "What do they call you on your home planet? Not 'DeMartino,' I assume."

DeMartino flushed and looked down. "No," he said. "My NAME is Gobsnotter of the House of Lugaplutz."

Amy stared at him. "Your name is..."

"Gob-"

"Gobsnotter?" The compassion in Amy's face drained away. She laid it in her hands and shook her head vigorously. "I'm having a kid with a guy whose name sounds like something you hack up when you have a cold?? Ugh!"

"Well if it makes you FEEL better," said DeMartino calmly, "I don't think 'Amy' is a very pretty name EITHER."

Amy looked at him, considered his words, and a mild chuckle escaped her lips. DeMartino smiled a little. Just then, the door flew open to reveal a tense Helen.

"I can't find Jake. Where is he?"

DeMartino looked stunned as he finished his sweep of the apartment. He joined Helen, Amy, Daria, and Quinn in the living room. "So he went ahead and DID it," he muttered.

"Did what?" asked Helen, standing up from her chair, hands squeezed into fists.

"He surrendered," DeMartino replied. "He SAID he was going to, but I thought he would wait-"

"What do you mean, 'he surrendered'?!" Then Helen's eyes widened with fear. "No..."

"He gave himself up to Mr. Phelps?" Daria asked in a low tone.

"I thought he would at LEAST wait until he'd said good-bye," said DeMartino, subdued. "But I guess he was afraid he would lose his nerve."

"So Dad's gone?" Quinn whispered, scarcely able to believe it.

"And you knew!" said Helen to DeMartino angrily. "Why didn't you tell us?!"

"HEY!" DeMartino shot back indignantly. "It's not as if I had a lot of TIME! He didn't even leave a NOTE or -"

"So he's got, what? Ten minutes on us?" asked Amy, sounding calmer than she had since discovering her "news." "In this high-rise, that's enough to get you to the parking garage. Assuming he didn't teleport or whatever you aliens do."

"I'M the dimensional specialist," said DeMartino. "Not Norlek."

"Do you think that's where he went?" Helen asked DeMartino in a low, tense tone. "If we hurry, maybe we could catch him-"

"He doesn't WANT to be caught!" DeMartino shouted, his eye about bulging out of its socket. "He doesn't want you INVOLVED anymore, don't you SEE?!"

"No!" shouted Helen. "I don't accept that! We may not want to be on the run all our lives, but neither I nor the girls ever asked for Jake to go back to his home world!" Her eyes filled with tears. "He told me once what they do to dissenters, and I would never, ever put him in that position!"

"Which is probably WHY he didn't tell you!" said DeMartino. "Sometimes a man has to make SACRIFICES to protect what he loves!"

"Well are the rest of us in this family, or aren't we?" Helen demanded. "He can't just choose something like that without our input!"

Her words echoed around the room, then were followed by a heavy silence. DeMartino looked resistant, but then slowly turned his head toward Daria and Quinn.

"This is for YOU, you know," he told them. "It should be YOUR decision."

Quinn glanced at Daria. "We should at least talk to him," Daria said solemnly.

"Fine," said DeMartino. "Come with ME, all of you. Or-" He looked at Amy.

"You'll need me to guide you around," said Amy. "This complex is a maze."

DeMartino nodded slightly. "We'll TELEport. It will be faster."

When they reached the garage, it was still. There was no sign of Jake. Helen breathed in short, tense gasps as she surveyed the rows of cars - until she spotted their own.

"He didn't drive away, at least," she said. "Maybe he decided to walk, or he never came down here."

"Or he took the BUS, or hitchhiked, or took a CAB, or -"

"Would you please be quiet!" Helen shouted.

"Yes, please do. I hate shouting."

The voice came from behind her, and the Morgendorffers, Amy, and DeMartino turned to find Mr. Phelps standing at the top of a short flight of stairs, looking down on them.

"It's about time you came down here," he said. "I was growing bored."