here on dirt

March 2083 - Jeremy Nova is 67, Alice is 61, Jeremiah Day is 26, Stephanie is 23, Willow is 7 months. (Justin Kim is 23.) Last update, June 2082.

He's at Fort Bluewater, and he has an appointment with General Deppiesse. Of course, he didn't give his real name. This is where they had him wait, a library of sorts, not a typical waiting room. Outside there are soldiers playing basketball, but that isn't even the interesting thing. Jeremiah doesn't wonder why he isn't waiting in the perfectly good waiting room. He doesn't worry about the fact that he is an army deserter waiting to speak with a top military general. What's killing Jeremiah, more than anything is, what is that thing on the table?

Naturally, he has to pick it up and investigate. It's lighter than it looks. He doesn't know if he turned it on right, the buttons aren't labeled. He hears only static, mostly, and some sporadic muffled voices, an occasional bit of a song.

And then the door opening behind him.

General Cabe Deppiesse says, "Can I help you?"

Jeremiah puts the thing down, not remembering even if he turned it off first. He follows Cabe into his office.

Cabe only stares, waiting for Jeremiah to start.

He does. "Say I have this friend," Jeremiah says. "And he kind of didn't show up for his service."

"Your friend would be in some trouble," Cabe says.

"Right," Jeremiah says. "But let's say, he's really sorry about it, and he wants to make up for it. Would it be possible that his record might be cleared if he were able to reenlist? Since you guys kind of need people and everything. Now, especially."

"Are you calling us desperate?"

"No, Sir," Jeremiah says. "Not at all."

Cabe just stares.

"But let's say I- I mean, my friend just got carried away. And he would hate to say marrying his wife was a mistake. But you know being young and in love, and we can make some rushed decisions sometimes. I mean, people can."

Cabe says, "Like your friend?"

"Right," Jeremiah says.

Cabe says, "What makes you think we'd want somebody like your friend in our service? Since he flaked out once, what's to say he wouldn't do it again?"

"Maybe he grew up a little," Jeremiah says. "Maybe he has a family now to protect. A wife, and a daughter."

"I'll assume there is no friend," Cabe says.

Jeremiah says nothing.

"I have a daughter of my own," Cabe says. "Wait here."

Jeremiah waits. The room is cold. There are books, models of classic war planes, a picture of a little girl.

And swords on the wall. The room is very cold, but Jeremiah starts to sweat.

***

Stephanie finds herself browsing online travel brochures lately, not to the mountains or the tropics, but something more extreme. To space. Charter tours of the moon, or you can even book a "cruise" out around the orbit of the Earth, floating freely in space with satellites and a clear cloudless view of the stars, more stars than you can even hope to see here with just ground under your feet and clouds over your head.

These kinds of trips are so expensive still. Not even Keri dares ask her daddy to fund a trip. The world is so much bigger than this tiny little town. The universe is so much bigger. Being stuck here, being trapped in a house with a baby, feels like a box, and it's enough to make her feel claustrophobic.

So now he'll brush it off to saving the world, when really he's just saving his own ass from their impulsive choices. He'll get an adventure in space, while she's stuck here on dirt with their baby.

The baby, Willow, starts to cry then, and breaks her from her daydreaming. Stephanie wonders, can a baby really be as angry as this child seems? Is that possible? What could she have to be angry about? What did she do wrong to make this child hate her so much?

"I'm coming," she says. "I'm coming."

Soon after, Jeremiah is home, which means he hasn't landed himself in jail or military lockdown. So that's one very good thing.

She wants to be angry, because this was so fast a decision. It went from an idea to a solid meeting in the space of hours. No one asked her opinion. No one asked what she wanted. No one asked if she'd be okay. If this works, if this clears his record, there's really no say-so in it.

"It worked," he says. "I'm all clear. I start tomorrow morning, o' six-hundred."

"Okay," she says. "When are we going to tell my parents?"

"Later," he says. "Not now."

He takes the baby from her arms and places her on the play mat. He takes Stephanie into his arms. He isn't sure if this is right or wrong, and he doesn't particularly feel called to save the planet like some others might. But it does feel good to be doing something worthy. He's a father now and a husband. He wants to become worthy.

Then he picks up Willow again. Not surprisingly, she's just golden with her daddy.

Stephanie's parents adore her as well. Everyone does. She's so beautiful, they say. That dark hair and those crystal blue eyes. She's a vision.

They really just let you have these things, babies. Anyone old enough to do the deed can just have one. There's no test to pass, there's no approval needed. It's not that she doesn't feel smart enough to be a mother, but maybe it's just not as blissful as she imagined. Maybe she just can't stand being stuck inside with her all day, while everyone else is working and interacting with the world.

But she's so beautiful, everybody says. She is indeed beautiful. She's lovely when you've spent the whole day on a farm, or teaching music to unappreciative college kids, or in lecture halls.

When you come home to her in the evening and she's already tired, nearly falling asleep in your arms, she's a doll.

Stephanie thought once she was married, once she became a mother, she would have already found her direction in life. It's not always the case. And in her case, marriage and motherhood happened before most girls even finish college. But these were her decisions, and her choices. Willow was not a surprise baby, but instead, conceived of what most of their wild ideas are conceived of - pure impulsive whimsy. "Let's have a baby," they had said, before even stopping a moment to consider what that would mean.

If Stephanie has a direction, she hasn't found it yet. The only purpose she's found is being a wife and a mother, and is that enough? She never thought of herself as a very forward-thinking woman, and definitely nothing of a feminist, but she was taught to be an equal, to have a mind and purpose of her own.

And now she has to teach this little girl to be a woman in this world, when she's still so much a girl herself. What if they have nothing in common? What if she doesn't like sports or camping or fishing? Will she be a prissy girl, a snob? Will she be popular in school? God, what if she wants to be a cheerleader?

***

They couldn't logically put off telling her parents for very long. Alice especially never warmed up to Jeremiah. She can't find the least thing she has in common with him, and she doesn't like the direction Stephanie's life has taken since they've been together. It's too bad, Alice thinks, that Stephanie didn't stick with Justin instead—he was always such a good influence on her. Alice still believes that her daughter might have finished college if she hadn't hooked up with Jeremiah.

But Stephanie knew her mother wanted to run for School Board President in the fall, and she also knew that would mean her parents moving to the city to live on campus, and that she and Jeremiah would be left in charge of the house. Stephanie didn't anticipate how it would all fall apart with Jeremiah leaving. "I'll look after the house still," Stephanie says. "I don't see how anything has to change."

"You two don't see much of anything, do you?" Alice says. "Why now, of all times? Eight months before the elections?"

"It has to be now," Jeremiah says. "It's the only way this works."

"You're going to leave my daughter, and this baby, just like you left that other girl. She still calls here, you know."

"This has nothing to do with Bella Bradshaw! And I didn't abandon anyone! I didn't abandon her! Is that what she tells you?"

Alice isn't fit to talk about this right now. Maybe she's angrier than she needs to be. She's just a little tired of working her life around their wild choices and the mess they leave behind. She storms off through the house, leaving the three of them alone.

Jeremy doesn't see his daughter fit to take care of a whole house and a child all on her own, especially if he and Alice were to move twenty minutes away. He asks Jeremiah, "Who's going to take care of them while you're away?"

"Daddy, nobody needs to take care of me," Stephanie says. She says this out of principal, more than anything. She's acutely aware that she's never taken care of herself a day in her life.

"She'll get, like, a military allowance, or something," Jeremiah says.

Jeremy says, "You two just never think things through for very long, do you?"

Stephanie thinks they didn't get a chance to think things through this time, the decision was all so fast. Though that always seems to be her excuse. When she knew of Jeremiah being in the military before, it was no big deal. There hadn't been a serious military conflict in dozens of years. She never imagined something like this could happen.

"Your mother is just upset," Jeremy says. "You knew she wanted to run for the school board. This is a big deal for her. And we can't leave you here alone. So this is just going to take some working around is all."

"Well don't let me burden you," Stephanie says.

They manage to get out of the house, leaving Willow with her grandparents for the night. But they're more angry and depressed than anything. They do a little shopping. They stop into Centowski's to look at some pottery. Her mother likes pottery, and maybe they might buy their forgiveness in gifts?

"You'd think they'd be proud of me, trying to save the planet and all."

"You'd think," Stephanie says. "It's just the election, I think. They will be proud, I think."

"You think?" he says. "And playing off Bella, that's a low blow. I did not abandon that crazy girl!"

They bought out almost half of the entire spring pottery collection.

Orlando says, with a big smile on his face, "You kids come again now."

But Stephanie knows something else that might make Jeremiah feel better.

She's too shy to come out and show him, so instead she lets a bit of thigh out into the light...

and lures him inside instead.

It's okay though, they fully plan on paying to bring this ensemble home with them.

Then they stop by the Sleep Cheap Lodge to visit Justin on his midnight shift.

Justin says, "You guys want a room or something?"

"No," Stephanie says. "We're all taken care of."

Jeremiah can't believe she actually announced that.

Justin is actually quite pleased to find out their news, since Keri is intent on joining the military herself. He says, "Maybe you could keep an eye on her for me?"

"Sure," Jeremiah says. "If I'm stationed with her, of course I would. I don't know how it works though."

"Thank you!" Justin says. "So much! You don't even know what that means, knowing I'll know someone up there with her." Stephanie isn't sure if he looks like he'll cry, or reach over the table to hug Jeremiah. Either is a pretty safe bet.

"No problem," Jeremiah says, as this conversation gets just a little too soft for his tastes. He excuses himself to the bathroom. He'll let Stephanie deal with the waterworks. She's been dealing with her best friend's softer side since the second grade.

"Do you need to get some air or something?"

"No," Justin says. "I'm okay." She knows he's not going to cry. He's been crying, done crying. He's cried to her quite a few times and he seems resigned to it all now.

But then he asks her, "Are you okay?"

Nobody's asked her that yet. It stops her cold, because she just doesn't know. Her throat swells and she tries to joke it off. "So, we're going to be army wives together." She wishes he would laugh, but he only watches her with that tender expression that means he understands completely and she doesn't have to say it out loud. She doesn't know how to take this seriously, as if she took anything in her life seriously. It's still too new, and all of it together is just too much.

"Is the pool heated?" she asks him.

"Yeah," he says. "But it's tiny."

"I don't care," she says. "You wanna play marco polo?"

"Sure," he says.

The water is heated, but the night is cold and their breath puffs out in clouds.

It doesn't turn out to be any fun. The pool is not just tiny, but microscopic! Even with her eyes closed she knows exactly where he is, mostly because she just kicked him in the butt.

There's hardly enough room for them both to stretch out without running into each other. "This is a really really tiny pool," she says.

"I told you it was," he says.

"I'm sorry I kicked you in the butt again."

"Don't lie, you liked it," he teases.

She pulls herself upright. He stares up at the stars but she knows that he's listening.

"I never wanted to be an army wife," she says.

"Me either," he says.

Jeremiah comes wandering from the bathroom then, calling her name, looking for where they'd disappeared to. "We're out here," she answers back. He strips to his swim trunks and cannonballs into the pool, a burst of warm mist into the cold spring air.

*******

notes: This story is mostly inspired by how I forgot to really consider much how this would affect Stephanie until after the fact. I figured she had her parents around, so she'd be fine with the baby. But then pleasure Sims are so hard to keep happy with those piddly little wants they roll.

Then there's also some conflict there with Willow - I've never seen such an angry-looking baby! It's definitely not turning out to be everything she thought it would be. And if becoming a mother is about having to give up much of your own consideration for your child in general, then Jeremiah getting ready to leave only amplifies any conflict she already has with motherhood, I would think.

Jeremiah was also a logical choice to volunteer, since he was already in the military once, and wants to be again. He also wants to be a General as a LTW.

How funny that they're friends with Keri though, I can see him trying to duke out that position with Keri in the future - you guys wanna place bets on who'll get it first? ;)

*** outtakes ***

Only Jeremiah would go to work for the military in his surfer hat :)

And just because, since I could find no good use for this one but I needed to share! I love these two silly goons, lol!