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Frannie couldn't stop staring at the sleeping baby in her arms. She watched every intake of breath, every exhale. Her pulse spiked when his little face twisted into any expression other than serene sleep.

She was waiting for him to cough. She was expecting him to sneeze.

Even though she knew the flu wasn't here - it was contained to their world and it hadn't followed them here on their clothes (even if it had, she'd burned hers shortly after coming through to the Nexus, even the time she'd just walked into her bedroom in Maine for a few minutes before backing out in horror.

Still, Frannie watched her son sleep, listened to the soft silence of breathing unencumbered by snot or phlegm or whatever had choked the life out of her world. Against every odd there was, she was here, Stu was here, and her baby had survived arguably the most stress filled pregnancy ever, to arrive a respectable 6 pounds 9 ounces, with a pair of lungs announcing his arrival. Loudly.

If Frannie could remember how to pray, she would have right then and there.

Gathering type post - tag Frannie, tag each other (feel free to top level with Frannie asleep if you want, or just outside the room). If your pup saw the stationery post, feel free to jump to the conclusion that the hotel's only pregnant woman popped.)

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"For as long as I can, yes. It's too dangerous to try and take him back there. I don't think they ever figured out who was immune or even why they were immune. My...Stu was locked up in a research facility, but the doctors there died and whatever they found, if anything, died with them when the power grids went down."

Frannie exhaled on a little laugh. "And that came out a lot darker than I expected it to."

She tipped her head to the side. "There's an outbreak, where you're from?" she guessed. How serious could an outbreak be, that escaping to another world was the best course of action in order to avoid it? She was reminded, again, of how strange this all was, how different worlds could be from one to the next in ways that were not just strange, but also chillingly familiar. A contagion was a dark fairytale where she came from, with the threat of possibility looming on the horizon for some conspiracy theorists.

"From what I know of history, I think plague fits better that outbreak. It was, we assume, worldwide. I don't know how it didn't spread outside the United States given how contagious it is. No one's sick anymore, but that's only because the ones who could get it have died. Only the immunes survived it and in my town, Ogunquit, Maine, there were only two of us."

She shuddered once, thinking of Harold, and the conflict she still felt about him. No matter what he'd done, or been compelled to do, she knew she wasn't without a share of the blame.

Her mouth opened in shocked surprise, and then she closed it again. An entire town dead, except for two people. She could not even imagine how horrifying that would be.

"A plague sounds right," she said, quietly, after a moment. "I can see why you'd rather keep your baby here." There was no guarantee he would have inherited immunity - and, from the sounds of it, there wasn't much left back home anyway.

Frannie merely nodded at the shock on Joan's face. She remembered the expression because she'd made it herself, even as the world was falling apart around her.

"I can't take him back there. I can't watch him go through...I had to bury my father alone. I can't bury his namesake, too."

There weren't any tears for the dead, they'd been cried long ago. Just a cold, acceptance of what she'd had to face and the strength of a survivor.

Being positive was a trait that Joan had had even before shed begun to work as a sober companion. When you were grinding yourself down to the bone in order to get out of medical school as valedictorian, depression was a very real and possible enemy. And that, of course, was obviously nothing to watching your entire world rip apart.

"But you're here now," Joan said, agreeably. "This is the safest place I've ever been in, personally."

"I am," Frannie agreed, laughing a little when Peter's eyes opened and he started to look around. "We are. And we're going to stay here as long as we can."

Nick's disappearance wasn't far from her thoughts, and she knew the hotel took people away in the same way it brought them. For her part, she was going to do everything in her power to make sure she wasn't one of the ones that left.

"If you have friends here, it's the best way, anyway," Joan said. "Support networks are important, especially for new mothers."

As soon as she said that, though, she winced, and smiled apologetically. "If I ever start to sound too much like a know-it-all, just tell me," she said. "I used to live with people and help them get back on their feet, so I've got an itch to counsel people all the time."

Fran was quiet for a long moment, staring at her son and thinking about how long it had taken her to really connect the bump in her stomach to an actual growing baby, and the world she was still mourning. "I think I'd probably be the last person to shun any sort of counseling. My life the last six months has been like a long, neverending nightmare. So counsel away?"

Joan had to look abashed, just slightly. Not because she was ashamed of what she used to do, but simply that her work was more hands on than any psychiatrist. "I was a sober companion," she said. "Not a proper counsellor. I helped addicts - I would live with them and help them become accustomed to living a life without their drug. In a way it was counselling through a trauma, but addiction is also very different from that. I just know that sharing and being around groups, and helping yourself live as an individual and a piece of a whole, can help emotional healing."

"Oh," Frannie said, feeling both embarrassed and confused at the same time. She'd never imagined that there would be any sort of a calling for that. Maybe she lived in Hollywood?

"I'm sorry for making that jump. I didn't mean to go all leech on you. I think I've lost a lot of my social conventions, living in a world where you could go days without seeing another human apart from the ones you're traveling with."

Joan laughed a little in embarassment herself, but she muffled it with the back of her hand; she didn't want to startle the baby.

"No, I'm sorry," she said. "I'm usually a lot smoother, but I've never, well, talked to anyone from another world who went through what you did, so I'm a little rusty myself." If there was one thing Joan didn't like to do it was make people feel ill at ease - well, unless they deserved it, of course. Frannie definitely didn't. "You're not leeching. I know leeches and you're definitely not one of them."

"Maybe we can just meet for coffee and talk about the places we've come from and the really strange place we've found ourselves?" Frannie offered.

Peter, for his part, was looking up towards the new voice.

Joan smiled. "Sure, that would be great," she said. "You know, I'm always worried about accidentally offending or startling someone in this place. You never know who is used to what. I try to look at it like visiting a different country, and trying not to upset the locals."

Noticing the baby's movements, Joan leaned forward, smiling. "His eyes are so bright," she remarked.

Fran moved Peter so Joan could see him better, pulling the blanket a little away from his face. "They look like old eyes to me," she answered, nodding. "Like he knows just what happened to us, even though I know that's probably not possible and he's just getting used to life on the outside."

He also looked so much like Jesse. Another cosmic, stupid irony and one she could have really, really done without.

"They say babies may have stronger awareness of their surroundings than we do," Joan said. "I was never a maternity doctor, but there's still a lot of myth and superstition in medicine. Only because we can't fully rule it out yet. He can tell you feel safe, I bet."

"If so, I'm going to hope he doesn't remember any of them. I know one day he'll ask about his father, but I'm not in any hurry to have that discussion." Something occurred to Fran that she'd never thought of, not until this moment. "I don't even have a picture of Jesse to show him."

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