[Tags: Clean, M/F, dog, golden retriever (M), cat (F), love, family life, slice of life, pregnancy, pregnant, drama] Prologue: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/23671187/ Chapter 1: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/23875926/ Chapter 2: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/24179264/ Chapter 4: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/24623668/ Epilogue: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/24765232/ Come Sunday evening, Freya and four other Paw Scouts were packed in Mrs. Parker's van, chattering away about everything that had happened over the last day as they were driven to their homes. "That archery thing was stupid, anyway." "You're just mad you never hit anything." "It's harder than it looks, okay?" "You thought you'd hit nothing but bull's-eyes?" "[u]One[/u] would've been nice." "Could've been worse. Least you didn't get a bee sting." "Who was that, again?" "Uh...I forget." "I think she was from another school anyway." "Ooh, hang on, here's the turn-off. Ma, can we get some ice cream before we go back? Please?" The salamander at the wheel finally joined the five girls' conversation. "Sorry, but not this time," she apologized. She was answered by a chorus of "aww"s, followed by Ellen asking, "How come?" "It's almost dinnertime for most of you, including us," she said. Another chorus of grumbling agreements followed before the girls went back to their chatting. They were interrupted when Freya noticed they were going a different way than she expected, and asked Ellen's mom, "Uh, are we going to my place first?" "Yep." One of the other girls spoke up, "But my house is closest." "We'll go to you next," Mrs. Parker said, "but Freya's parents asked me to drop her off first, if I could." "...Huh?" Freya blinked. She glanced at Freya in the rear-view mirror with a shrug. "Didn't say why, just asked. You're the second-closest anyway, so it's not a big deal." "Uh...okay, cool." Soon, they were in front of the store, and Freya hopped out with a "thank you" to Mrs. Parker. She unlocked the front door, let herself in, and announced, "I'm home!" as she re-locked the door behind her. Footsteps from the back approached, and as she expected, her mom came out, smiling at her. "Hi, Love." "Hi, Mom," Freya replied as Mom knelt down and hugged her. "Is Dad here?" "Yep, he's upstairs. I'm just getting some work done," the other cat said. "So, how about I wrap up and you can tell us all about it?" "Okay." She was about to pull away from the hug when she noticed that Mom was still hugging her. She hugged her parents a lot, but this felt...different, somehow. "Um...can I...go, please?" she asked. "Hm?" "You're...still hugging me?" "Oh!" She let Freya go, straightening up. "Sorry." Freya cocked her head, asking, "Are you okay?" "Yes. Why?" "Mrs. Parker said you said to drop me off first." Her ears swiveled back as she shrunk nervously. "Is something wrong?" At first, Mom looked like she wasn't sure how to answer, which only confused Freya more. "Me and Dad just want to talk to you," she said. "About what?" She smiled and shook her head. "How about you go upstairs and say hi to Dad, okay?" she asked, patting Freya's head. "We'll talk after dinner." "Um...okay," Freya agreed. "But first..." she trailed off, looking at her mom's middle. "Oh, right. I forgot." She arched her back a bit to let her tummy stick out more, and Freya hugged her again, pressing her cheek against the bump. "Hi to you too, little sister," she purred before they walked to the back of the shop, where they split up; Mom went to her workbench and Freya went upstairs. Having only a little bit of time to think about what Mom was talking about, she frowned in thought. It didn't sound like Mom was mad, and if Dad wasn't either, she probably wasn't in trouble. From how things like this started the last 6 months, it was probably something about the baby or something. That was probably why Mom was acting weird when she got home; the books she and her parents read told her about how sometimes being pregnant made moms act weird because of all the changes in their bodies, and sometimes Mom got clingy and stuff. Whatever, seeing how Dad acted would help. When she stepped into their apartment, she announced again, "I'm home!" as she slid her backpack off. "Hey, Junior. I'm in here," Dad called back from the kitchen. She took off her shoes and walked in to see him at the stove, something frying on a pan in front of him. She recognized the smell, but had to ask to be sure, "We having fish tonight?" The golden retriever nodded, smiling over his shoulder at her as he poked at the food. "Yep. Thought you could use something nice; you must've had a long day and night. Didn't it rain last night?" "Not...really where we were. Cloudy and windy but not really any rain," she said. "Oh? Huh. Lucky." Setting the spatula aside, he turned to give her their usual hug. "Well, Mom'll be up in a little bit, then you can tell us all about it while we eat." "Okay," the cat agreed, "but, uh, I got a question." "Yes, hon?" "Is Mom...okay?" He nodded, looking at her curiously. "Far as I know. Why, what's wrong?" She looked back at the door to the shop. "She was, like, huggier than normal, but it's also, like, like she's...I dunno..." she trailed off as she looked back at him, "thinking about something?" He chuckled, nodding again. "Did she tell you we wanted to talk to you after dinner?" "Yeah." "We do. But that can wait. All we really want to talk about is what's going on in your life." Freya wasn't sure what to think about that, and it must have showed in how she looked at him. "How about you go put something comfy on and come back?" "M'kay," she said with a smile as she headed to her room. Once he couldn't see her, the nervousness she was really feeling was plain as day on her face. They asked Mrs. Parker to drop her off first, Mom was acting funny, and now they were making her favorite food for dinner? This all sounded like they had bad news for her. "What now?" she whispered to herself as she shut her room's door. "Am I getting kicked outta my room?" They promised they wouldn't do that and had been working on turning the spare room up here, which Mom used like a bigger closet, into the baby's room. Freya even helped them sometimes, all to better pretend she was happy, but now it hurt to even look in there. Said so in her diary. She had a bad feeling she was going to be doing another one of [u]those[/u] entries later tonight. Still, she didn't let it show as she and her parents sat at the table and talked about her camping trip. She didn't like hiding things like this, but she guessed she was good at it. The chat went good enough, even if she kept some things to herself so they could get to the next part of their talk faster. Once dinner was done and the dishes were in the sink, they took her to the living room and had her sit in a chair while they sat on the couch. "So..." Freya started, "what's going on?" "Well, honey, me and Mom had a talk while you were gone, and there's a few things we want to tell you and a few things we want to ask you," Dad said. She nodded, waiting for them to go on. "First," Mom said, "we want to tell you that we know the last 6 months have been hard for you sometimes." "And it's been hard for us sometimes, too," Dad added. "There's a lot of ways it all can go, but what we've been going through is very normal." "And by 'we,' we mean you, too," Mom finished, giving Freya a chance to say something. She cocked her head a bit, not sure what to say at first, but going with, "Yeah, but it's been mostly good, right? I mean, I got a dad [u]and[/u] I'm getting a little sister. That's good, right?" Mom nodded...or she did, but only after nodding a little, then finishing it, like she didn't know if that was the right answer. "Yes, those are very good. At least, we think they are." "...Whaddaya mean?" "We also wanted to tell you that we're really proud of how grown-up you've been," Mom said with a smile. Dad joined her smile, explaining, "We know there's been a lot to do to get ready for the baby, and once she's here, it might get harder. We never want you to feel like you're being pushed out of the way, but you've really impressed us with how understanding you are." This just kept getting more confusing. Why would they need to tell her this? "Did you think I...wouldn't be?" "Love, you're a great kid, and we never want you to think you're not," Mom said, almost making Freya twitch from those words. "You're not 'just a kid,' either. We know you're smart, you do your chores without us asking you, and you're very caring." "So caring that we'd bet you'd do something hard, or something that hurts, to make things easier for others," Dad said, "even if you weren't sure it was the right thing to do but you knew you wanted to help." No kidding; it was hard and painful to smile at them now, with how they were getting to her without even trying. "Thanks. I mean, I guess I do. I [u]want[/u] to be good." She could at least tell that much of the truth; a little truth mixed with a lie helped her look more honest. Her parents nodded, then waited for a bit, with Mom and Dad looking at each other before looking back at her. Mom took a deep breath and said, "That actually brings us to what we want to ask you, now." "Yeah?" "Love...this might be a hard question to answer, but please, be honest with us. That's what we really want; we want to know about you," Mom said in a sadder voice. Before Freya could ask what was wrong, Dad set a hand on Mom's back and asked Freya, "We don't expect you to always agree with us, but that doesn't mean we don't want to help you when you have problems you don't know how to fix." Freya couldn't keep smiling anymore, not when she was getting this nervous. "What is it?" Mom took a breath and asked, "Have we ever told you something, or told you to do something, that you thought was wrong, but you were too scared we'd be mad at you to say so?" That made her thoughts stop. "What?" "Have you..." Dad began, stopping a second to think, "have we ever made you do something your conscience told you you shouldn't do, but you didn't want to tell us?" "N...no?" "Are you sure?" he asked. "Take the time to think about it." She couldn't really think about a question like that, but she pretended to, at least. "You mean, like...when you tell me to eat my greens even though I don't like 'em?" "No, honey, that's just something you don't like," he explained. "I mean when a little voice in your head says, 'This is something a bad person would do so you should stop.'" "Or," Mom said, "any other time we might have been happy about something, and you weren't, but you thought it'd be worse if you said how you felt?" No...no, they couldn't know. They just couldn't. They'd have found out by now if they were going to find out at all. But they were right about one thing: There was a voice in her head right now, but it wasn't little, it was yelling at her that, even if they didn't know, this was her chance to tell the truth. As always, she didn't believe it. "Then...no. I mean, I don't think so. Like...do you think I do?" she asked in the most honest voice she could. They looked at her as if waiting to see if she meant it, but she didn't dare take it back now. Finally, she got an, "All right," from Mom and an, "Okay," from Dad. Whew. "Then we just have one other question for you," Mom said, standing up and walking to her and Dad's room. She came back with some sheets of paper in one hand and sat back down. Freya nodded at her, waiting for her question, and she got it when Mom handed the papers to her and asked, "What are these?" She looked down to read them, quickly seeing they were entries from her diary. She was about to tell them that, and then she read this one: [i]Sunday, December 11 I dont think I can tel them and I dont think I should but I wish sometimes this wasnt happening.[/i] Ohhh nooo. That was as far as she got before that feeling, that one she got when she knew she'd gotten caught, hit her. When she felt cold, and like she was going to cry, and just...FEAR. She kept looking through the pages, her hands trembling. Yep, this looked like everything. Even the one from yesterday. "You know what these are," Dad said, his voice softer than she expected. She still kept her eyes on the papers as she managed to ask, "H-How...how'd you...get these?" "I was in your room last night," Mom began, and she didn't sound mad either, "and you left your diary up. I wanted to see what you were up to lately. You left it unlocked, too." If Freya didn't want to shrink until she just disappeared, she would've been a little relieved Mom sounded sorry. "I saw the last one, and..." she paused, "I got scared." "We wanted to give you a chance to tell us this was bothering you so much," Dad added. "We don't even know if there's more than what's on those pages. Anything you've told anyone or kept inside that you didn't put here." He reached over to set his hand on Freya's knee. "We wanted to know, too, if we ever made you keep it a secret even if we didn't mean to." She set the papers down and just hunched over, staring at the ground and too afraid to say anything. When she stayed quiet, Mom said, "So, we agree you kept this a secret because you wanted to, not because anyone made you." She nodded, shutting her eyes to keep herself from crying. Dad rubbed her knee, saying, "Now that we know, we need to talk about it. We're not trying to put you in a corner and make you talk, we really want to know what you think so we can help you and you don't have to hold everything in anymore." They paused, then he asked, "You can go first. Is there anything you want to say now?" Nothing that she thought they wanted to hear. Or so she thought, until that voice came back, the one telling her to tell the truth. Now it was finally sounding like something she could believe. But even after all the months of thinking about this, she may have had a lot to say, but she still wasn't ready to say it. "Yeah...yeah, I have...some things to say," she spoke up, opening her eyes but staying hunched over as she nervously looked back and forth between them. Dad nodded and sat back, folding his hands in his lap while Mom waved for her to go ahead. "But...I need...a minute. Can I...can I please go to my room?" she asked. They looked like they weren't sure about that, so she then explained, "You know what you're gonna say, but you were never supposed to know. I just want a little time to think about what I wanna say." Mom hummed before she and Dad looked at each other, then back at her. "Okay," she said. "That's fair," Dad agreed. "Whenever you're ready." Freya made herself smile a little at them before standing up and walking to her room. The first thing she did was sit on her bed and hug a pillow, burying her face into it as she went ahead and let herself cry her fears out. This was gonna be hard, and it was gonna hurt. But as the pillow soaked up her tears, there was at least a little relief that, [u]maybe[/u] this time, it could end with her feeling better, not worse. [u]Strained Promises[/u] Chapter 3 Pregnancy is rarely easy, and not just for the mother. Busted. Prologue: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/23671187/ Chapter 1: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/23875926/ Chapter 2: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/24179264/ Chapter 4: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/24623668/ Epilogue: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/24765232/ Uses characters and ideas inspired by or based on Undertale, which is (c) Toby Fox. Thanks also to :iconflyingwolf: for getting me that game and for being my other main source of inspiration. This story's copyright policy: "Sharing is caring." Do what you like with this story, not like I can do anything to stop you, in fact I'd be flattered you'd want to share it or save it so you can read it whenever you want. All I ask is that you link back to the original source.