Will turned twelve on the water planet. His parents have lots of memories. More headcanon than canon, but still fits. Rated Teen and Up.

CW: traumatic birth

The Fifth Day of Lazarus

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Chap 2

There aren't a lot of milestones to celebrate while travelling in space. Penny turned sixteen a few days before they set off from Earth, and they hosted a party for her which became a going-away party for the family. John's birthday ticked over when he was deployed, and Don's was just before the first robot attack, three months into the journey on the Resolute. Judy will turn nineteen in another six weeks, and Maureen isn't ready to accept her baby girl isn't a baby anymore.

Maureen hadn't celebrated her birthday in years, beyond the kids giving her a card and a voucher to a day-spa she never made time to use. Memories of John being home, making breakfast in bed with the kids and spoiling her rotten made the empty, quiet mornings of single adulthood feel more depressing than celebratory, so in the end she just stopped altogether. But three weeks into their habitation of the Water Planet, John surprised her in the best possible way, whispering soft happy birthdays into her skin, and she learned to appreciate the day again almost instantly, even if they all hate sweet potato cake.

In space they kept track of dates as a matter of habit, and Alpha Centauri is using a whole new calendar to account for a new solar cycle. They were supposed to nominate themselves equivalent birthday dates when they arrived – some policy wonk had devised a change-over system so that new settlers could transition to the new calendar, and Penny delighted in talking about the use of the Roman calendar and its basis for the Gregorian as an example of history repeating.

For the most part, they don't worry about dates in space, but since landing on the aptly-named Water Planet, they started to note them again, even if the seasons don't match. Like travelling to the southern hemisphere, John said – the same but a little different. Or very different.

"Exactly twelve years ago my contractions started", Maureen says into the dark. Beside her John hums to acknowledge he heard her, but it's not a happy sound. The memory of that day, and of the subsequent hours, will remain with him as one of the worst days of his life. And they've been through a lot since then.

"Too early", he says, and she can hear the pain in his voice. Maureen rolls over into his side, the closeness of her body all but forcing him to wrap his arms around her to accommodate. If they're going to talk about this, it's going to be from the comfort of each other's embrace. They've been on this ship for four months now, their new normal (or perhaps rediscovered normal) feeling more comfortable by the day. It's alarming how easily they slipped back into old habits from when their marriage was happy, and she sometimes wonders if it would have been so easy if they'd stayed on Earth and talked about their problems. Somehow it feels like multiple near-death experiences worked in their favour in that regard, healing their rift almost overnight as their battle scars from the other planet fade. But there are some wounds that will always hurt, regardless of what planet they're on, and some memories they will always carry together like a shared burden.

"I was so scared", she whispers into his chest. His arms tighten around her shoulders, pulling her closer.

He was scared too. The middle of the night moans of pain, the tiny spots of blood in the bed, the echo of Maureen's desperate no, no, no, as more contractions ripped through her – all of it still fresh in his mind. He was terrified.

"I think I broke every traffic rule between the house and the hospital", he says.

"Thank God my mother was staying with us at the time", she replies.

The girls were left at home with their Grandma while John carried Maureen to the car and laid her on the back seat, and then promptly broke several laws to get her to the emergency department while she moaned and cried the whole way. It's too soon, he can hear her say in his memory. It's too early, he's too early, John do something.

"You know", he starts. He stops for a second as his voice cracks, and then clears his throat and continues. "That night was the first time it occurred to me that it was possible to lose you"

She blinks long and slow into the dark. Her fingers flex against his chest.

"And not because of something I did, or something I said. But because sometimes you just… lose people"

The pain in his voice cuts through her like a knife. Will was born eight weeks early, with a weak heart and failing kidneys; both he and his mother nearly bled out during labour, and for 36 hours John was left alone to make monumental decisions while Maureen was in surgery and then unconscious, clinging to life while her tiny son did the same. She wishes she had been there for him, imagining his panic and his despair, powerless while his family suffered.

"You've always been this… this dynamo", he continues. "But that night…"

She holds him a little tighter.

"And when the doctors asked me – when Will was barely breathing and his heart rate was dropping and they asked me if I wanted them to keep fighting for him…"

Maureen's breath hitches.

"All I kept thinking was, what would Maureen do?"

He turns his head and plants a kiss against her forehead, the two of them clutching each other. "You never give up fighting for your children", he says, his voice tinged with awe at her strength and resilience; her fortitude and capability. "So how could I live with myself if I did?"

That night was the first time he'd had to make a parenting decision without her; the first time it had rested on his shoulders alone, the future of their family and the fate of their son in his hands. Maureen had always been the decision-maker, and he accepted that from the moment he met her, tiny baby Judy on her hip. He joined their little family to become her support pillar, the one at her back as she went head-first into any project she put her mind to, motherhood included. He relished his role in their family.

He can still feel the flush of white-hot panic as he stood in that corridor, speaking to the doctor, faced with a choice he never trained for, wasn't ready for. He could handle a battlefield. That damned hospital hallway was something different.

"When I woke up", she says, her voice rough with emotion. "And you told me he was sick, but he was holding on…"

He remembers. They cried together, that day, her body wrapped from surgery, her arms littered with IVs and wires. He had to tell her about the bleeding, and the emergency hysterectomy, and Will's critical condition – had to explain that she couldn't see him yet because he was in neo-natal intensive care and she wasn't strong enough to get out of bed. She cried some more, wanting to hold her son, and all he could do was hold her, and tell her he loved her, and loved the name she suggested in their bed two nights earlier, William Robinson is a strong name, it suits him.

He didn't tell her about the doctor's choice until much later, when Will was starting to put on weight and thrive.

"He's a fighter", says John, a smile in his tone, the conversation turning away from the pain and instead towards hope.

Maureen thinks of that damn aptitude test, the panic on her son's face as he tried so hard to be good enough to go to space, and she thinks, if only they knew how hard you already fought to be here. That's why she did it; that's why they are stranded; because she knew her son could do the impossible. He already had. He lived, when even modern medicine, in his very first hours, thought he wouldn't.

"He gets that from his dad", she says, squeezing him.

John scoffs. "We both know it's all you"

"Don't sell yourself short", she says, her tone light but genuine. "You nearly died several times over for us, soldier boy"

They make light of some of their trials, because they can't do anything else. But she tries not to think about the Chariot, John's hand on the hatch, about to drown himself in tar for her. She tries not to think about his choice to go back to the battlefront on Earth; how a man such as John would see sacrifice as duty, and his death as acceptable collateral for the right cause. She tries not to wonder what life would be like without him, though they've both had to face that reality several times since that night twelve years ago.

"I think we're all fighters, in our own ways", he deflects, but it's not an empty observation. If that planet taught them anything it was their limits, and the lengths they will all go for one another.

"The girls are excited for Will's party tomorrow", says Maureen, pulling them back from the past and into the present. "They refuse to tell me what they planned for him"

John smiles. That sounds like them.

"I saw Don putting together a playlist", he says with a smirk. Maureen smiles too, though it's a confused smile, a delighted smile –one that John often inspires in her, as she contemplates possibilities she can only imagine by looking at the world through his eyes.

"You know what they say", he continues, his fingers walking over her back. "Where there's music, there's dancing"

She giggles a little and rolls her face into his shoulder. There's a damp spot on his tee-shirt from where she was crying, but there's no more tears now. Will is healthy and sleeping peacefully down the hall, about to turn twelve, and their family is in a constant state of peril but relatively safe in this little bubble.

"Are you promising me a dance?" she asks, incredulous. John avoids dancing until the last possible moment, though he's quite good at it. Normally she had to drag him kicking and screaming to Navy events, and practically bribe him to the dance floor to take her for a spin. He always went willingly in the end, she thinks because he liked seeing her so happy, but it was a game they had to play at every party. And now he's changing the rules, and she'll give him credit, this new John is full of surprises.

"As many as you'd like", he says. "Although knowing Don's taste in music it might have to be a dougie"

She bursts out laughing at the mental picture, letting the shake of her body bring out a laugh from him too. "I would pay to see you do that", she says through her dying chuckles, and that inspires another round of laughter from him.

By the time they calm down their hold isn't quite so tight, the two of them lying side by side on their backs with Maureen's head rested on John's bicep. Her left hand flings gently back into his chest, and his left hand comes up to hold it, then brings it to his lips and he kisses the back of her knuckles.

"He's growing up so fast", says John with a smile.

"He's still our little boy", says Maureen, clinging to that truth for as long as she possibly can, at least for now.

"We've got really awesome kids", says John. She just hums and smiles. One of the first things she loved about him was the way he loved Judy; she's been falling for him ever since, watching him be a father all these years.

"They've got really awesome parents", she quips back. He snorts, but doesn't disagree; takes the compliment as he lets her have it as well.

"That's us. The Awesome Robinsons"

This time she snorts. "Sounds like a terrible remake of The Incredibles"

"Hey, I loved that movie as a kid"

Maureen shuffles onto her side but back further on her side of the bed. "Well, come on Mister Incredible, we should get some sleep. No doubt Will is going to wake us at the crack of dawn tomorrow"

John settles on his back and throws his arm higher on the pillow, his other hand resting on his chest. The man could sleep anywhere, in any position – military men are like that, she's heard – but she still finds it funny that in a foreign bed in another galaxy he sleeps just like he used to back home. The same positions, rinse and repeat.

Will used to sleep that way when he was a baby – one hand thrown up over his little head, snuffling contentedly in his crib – once he was healthy enough to bring home. Maureen used to sit for hours and watch him. She hasn't ever really stopped.

"I can't believe my baby is going to be twelve", she whispers.

John puffs through his nose with a tiny smile, sleep starting to pull him in. "We're getting old, babe"

"Speak for yourself", she says, and then lets her eyes close too. Maybe he's right, but she doesn't care. Getting old is a privilege these days. She intends to enjoy it, and watch her kid's birthdays come and go, and one day she will get them off this planet and into their new life. And until then, she plans to enjoy dancing with her husband and eating veggie cake with her son. He's earned it.