#oh and also i have a maisy one shot idea. our minds..... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

amyscascadingtabs · 5 years

Text

i’ll walk through hell with you

chapter 7. i’m gonna stand by you

read on ao3 here and read other chapter here!

the happy ending.

BONUS: i created fake social media posts for this! they’re here, look at them after or have them open in another window! you’ll get when it’s time - there are two instagram posts and a text conversation with rosa.

and when you decide, it’s your time to arrive

i’ve loved you for all of my life.

~ halsey, more

december.

Once Amy starts trusting that she is pregnant and the obsessive test-taking comes to an end, there’s the question of when to start telling people. There’s also the question of what to tell them.

“It just feels like I’m faking it,” she complains from the couch as she tries to write down ideas in her notebook. “It’s happy news, but it feels wrong to not even mention what we went through before getting here.”

“So tell people about it?” Jake shrugs, handing her the McFlurry she sent him out at ten p.m. to buy. “That's always an option.”

“I know, but how? How do I say hey, please be happy for us, but know that we went through hell to get here, without being overly dramatic or too personal?” She takes a spoon of the soft-serve, chewing on the mini smarties, and tries to stifle a moan when it feels like fireworks of pleasure are exploding in her mouth. “Oh my god, I love you.”

“Me or the ice cream? Never mind, shouldn't ask.”

“It's so good.”

“Can I try some?”

“You should have gotten your own.”

“You would have eaten that too,” he grins, taking his spot at one end of the couch and stretching his legs. “But I'm proud of you. McDonalds is at least an unhealthy craving. Grapes was just lame. You have the chance to eat whatever you want and blame it on pregnancy cravings, and you want grapes.”

She sticks out her tongue. “Screw you. Anyway - thoughts on a pregnancy reveal?”

“We make our own Die Hard-style short film with explosions and animations, the end slate says something like Peraltiago Baby number two, coming in June. Super badass.”

“Nope. We write everyone cards?”

“Lame and time-consuming. We have an announcement at work and one each with our families?”

“Maybe, but I still don’t know what to say.”

“We tell Leah and trust her to spread the news for us?”

“We definitely should tell her first, but counting on her to spread the news means they’re going to get twisted in some way. Remember when we went on vacation and she told all her teachers we were moving to Mexico?” Amy shakes her head. “It’s better if we say it ourselves. I don’t think I’m ready yet, though.”

“Okay,” Jake nods. “Let’s wait, then. Are you sure I can’t have any of that ice cream?”

“Not unless you want your hand chopped off.”

“Wow.”

Amy wishes they could hold off on telling people until she was sure she felt ready, but reality is quick to get in the way. The first-trimester nausea finally gets better around week thirteen, and suddenly the weight gain is a fact. She doesn’t mind it too much - she’s growing a human, all that matters is that they’re healthy - but it does make it increasingly difficult to hide. A size bigger uniform for work is easily solved and conceals the tiny bump rather well, but regular clothes are not as efficient. Her bras don't fit, her regular jeans won’t button, even the most flowy of shirts in her wardrobe seem to cling to the slightly rounded shape her stomach is taking. She’s running out of time.

With two days left until they're leaving to celebrate Christmas with the Santiagos, Amy realizes she has to give up. She's tried every possible outfit, considered whether she can just wear pajamas for the duration of the event, and very reluctantly accepted that it’s a bad idea. She's out of options. Both of her red dresses are too tight, she doesn't have any bras that work with anything sleeveless, and even the tasteful floral wrap dress she was hoping for manages to frame her bump in an obvious way. She tries on several blouses with a generous skirt, but it's still notable to the trained eye and her mom had eight kids. Amy’s screwed.

“This doesn't work,” she groans as she pulls off the blouse, throwing it on the growing no-pile. “I look stupid.”

“You look adorable,” Jake insists from his watching position on the bed. “I’d say go with the wrap dress.”

“It’s nice, but it shows off this.” She points demonstratively to her stomach, watching his eyes turn soft as he follows her hand. “This baby’s not hiding. I think we have to tell people.”

“Do you feel okay with that?”

She considers it for a moment. “I guess? I still don’t know what to say about the infertility stuff, but… I’ll figure that out.”

“It’s not like you have to make an official announcement, right? You could tell people privately, whenever you’re ready - if you want to.”

“That’s true. Maybe... it’s okay if we just enjoy these news?” She shrugs. “We are having another baby. That’s awesome. Seems fair for the world to know.”

Jake meets her tentative smile with a wide, goofy grin. “True that. So, how do we tell everyone? We’re not seeing the squad again until after Christmas.”

“We could take a cute picture with Leah and post it on social media? I know it’s cheesy, and a little impersonal, but it’s efficient and I can’t be bothered to plan an announcement.”

“I could totally work that Die Hard short film out -”

“No Die Hard.”

Jake grimaces. “Fine, fine. Your way, then. So, cute picture of Leah in a big sister-shirt?”

“Yeah, and she could be holding the latest sonogram pictures? And some short, sweet caption with that. We’ll think of something until tomorrow - that, and another thing.”

“What?”

“We have to tell her.”

Amy is, of course, overly prepared. She’s bought the pedagogical children’s books. She’s researched and taken notes on all the recommendations for how to manage the conversation and explain the matter in a way her three-year-old will understand. She’s made sure Leah’s not too tired, too hungry, or too grumpy for any other reason. Still, she’s never felt less prepared for a conversation with her kid, and she’s anxious as they take a break from playing with her toy dinosaurs - who either seem to run a bakery or catch criminals, or if it’s both, Amy can’t tell - to drink some water and subtly reveal the life-changing news.

Jake must pick up on her nervosity, because he’s the one to start the conversation.

“So, bumblebee,” he ruffles his daughter’s hair and laughs as she immediately pats it down again, “We’ve got something to tell you. A surprise, I guess.”

Leah shines up at the word surprise. “What?”

“Do you remember how miss Edwards at your daycare had a baby?” Amy tries to lead her on to the topic. “And her belly grew and got really big, and then she wasn’t at work for a while because she was at home taking care of the baby?”

Leah scrunches her forehead and pouts her lip in focus, but she nods.

“And you know how your cousin Maisie has a little brother, and Sarah and Samuel are getting a baby sibling soon?”

Another nod.

“Okay. Well, baby,” she says slowly, but her heart is beating fast. “You’re also getting a sibling.”

Leah looks around, as if the sibling in question would be hiding in her room somewhere.

“Oh, no, not today,” Amy adds, and the girl frowns.

“When?”

“This summer,” Jake fills in, “when it gets warm outside and you don’t have to wear a jacket anymore.”

“But where’s the baby now?”

“Right now the baby’s in here.” Amy pokes at the tiny bump, and Leah tilts her head as she tries to piece it all together. “It’s small, but it will grow, and then you can talk to it or feel it kick in there, if you want.”

“And when the baby comes out and grow bigger, they’re going to think you’re the coolest person ever and want to play with you all the time,” says Jake, catching Leah in his arms and tickling her neck so she giggles. “You two will have so much fun.”

“Like Anna and Elsa?”

“Well, we don’t know if it’s a sister or brother yet, but yeah. Like Anna and Elsa.”

“Okay!” Leah’s expression turns serious. “But I’m Elsa.”

Amy laughs. “Of course, baby, you can be Elsa.”

Leah accepts this, and insists they keep playing the dinosaur game which remains incomprehensible to everyone but her.

“I think that went pretty well,” Jake mumbles to Amy, and she nods, relieved.

“Dada?” Leah looks up from the dinosaurs.

“Yes, bee?”

“How did the baby get into mama’s tummy?”

Amy has never seen her husband look so uncomfortable before. His face goes from normal to beetroot in a matter of seconds as his eyes go wide, and she’s trying not to explode with laughter as she looks from Jake’s mortified expression to Leah’s curious eyes.

“We’ll read a book about that later,” Amy assures her daughter while Jake mumbles something about a very important call from the Captain as he looks at his blank phone screen and hurries out of the room. “I promise.”

Leah doesn’t seem particularly interested in changing from her Frozen-shirt or taking pictures with the sonogram print-outs she claims looks like a fish, mama, but then Jake promises her ice cream for dessert if she does and it’s a done deal. She tires after thirty seconds and she refuses to hold the pictures in any other way than in front of her face, but they get the shot and it’s good enough. It has to be, because only a minute later, their three-year-old has thrown off the sweatshirt and changed back into her t-shirt.

Amy types up the caption, presses share, and puts her phone in front of them on the kitchen table.

“Now we wait for Charles to call and yell at us for keeping this from him,” she states, and Jake snorts. “I’m betting four minutes.”

“I’m going to go with three.”

It takes one and a half.

It’s a great Christmas.

Sure, everyone is asking the same questions and she explains over and over that she’s feeling okay, better now that she’s in her second trimester, she doesn’t have any intuition as to what they’re having but Jake’s claiming it’s a boy, they’re excited, and they’re pretty sure Leah is, too. She clenches her fists underneath the table when her mom mentions how wonderful it is with a big family, how lovely it is that Amy and Jake finally decided to expand theirs, and she can see Jake do the same as he gets ready to defend her - their - honor, but she shakes her head and changes the topic before he has a chance.

She doesn’t want to be upset today.

There’s no point to being angry with her family all around. Not when Julian high-fives her and tells her good for her she keeps reproducing with those Peralta genes, not when Christian gives them actual useful tips on how to adjust from one to two kids. There’s no point in being upset when her brothers wives all tell her she can borrow maternity wear if she wants, or when Jake makes note of the mistletoe above their heads and kisses her so long and reverent that both Tony and Simon start wolf-whistling. There’s no point to being sad when Leah pulls at the edge of Amy’s dress, asking to go up, up, and Luis takes a picture of Amy and Jake kissing their daughter’s cheeks under the mistletoe.

She’s just happy.

She feels quick little flutters in her stomach throughout the day, a feeling she vaguely recognizes from the first times she felt Leah move inside her. They’re gone before she has the chance to lay a hand there, but she feels them.

Leah insists on sleeping in her parent’s shared bed that night, and even though it’s barely a queen-size and they’re all forced to huddle together with the three-year-old somehow taking up the most space, they give in. Jake and Leah both fall asleep in what seems like seconds, and Amy wants to join them, but her brain refuses. It’s not that she’s feeling anxious - her heart is so full from today, made fuller by her daughter’s face pressing into her shoulder and Jake’s hand reaching across her so he can rest it on the little bump - but there are some things she can’t stop thinking about.

Her mom’s comment about them finally deciding to expand their family, for example. All the congratulatory wishes streaming in after the picture - even Holt messaged them to give his well-wishes - that she can't fully take to heart, because no one sending them knows what she's gone through. She thinks of the shame and disappointment she’s felt throughout this year, of how much it would have hurt her to see a sweet announcement like this from someone else when she’d just had a miscarriage or another negative test. She wants to be honest - not just for her own sake, but also for the sake of a possible acquaintance out there who could be going through the same thing, feeling equally as alone in it as she did.

Amy grabs her phone from the nightstand, smiling at the mistletoe picture she's made her background, and tries out a few captions in the Notes app before settling on one.

She turns off the comments before anyone can react, not feeling like she needs anyone’s thoughts on this, and she's about to put her phone away again when she sees a single text from Rosa.

Proud of you.

Amy smiles.

She's just about to fall asleep when she feels the brief flutters again. This time, they don’t disappear right away, but repeat until she's certain of what they are.

She can't feel them from the outside yet, but she rests her hand below Jake's anyway, letting the reason behind the flutters know she's there.

“Hey there,” she whispers, lightly tapping her fingers against her abdomen. “Merry Christmas to you too, baby.”

The next little movement is right below her fingertips, and this time she can't stop herself from tearing up with joy.

february.

Everyone’s convinced Jake and Amy are having a boy. Jake claims he can feel it, and Amy believes him. She’s a Santiago, and two girls in a row are more or less unheard of in her family. Charles claims he can tell because of the position of her uterus, which grosses everyone out, but a vote is a vote. Rosa’s saying boy, as is Terry, as is Gina, as are all of Amy’s brothers and her parents. Karen Peralta invites them for dinner and talks for at least twenty minutes about how excited she is to have a grandson before Jake dutifully reminds her they don’t know the sex yet, and she waves it away and says she thought it was obvious.

The only person who doesn’t believe they’re having a boy is Leah. From the first time anyone asks, the three-year-old declares with absolute certainty that she’s having a sister, and doesn’t change her mind. Amy’s nervous about how they’ll manage the inevitable disappointment and tries to write down a pedagogical conversation plan in her head as they go for the anatomy scan, but she ends up never having to use it. It turns out Leah’s correct.

“So you’re going to be just like Anna and Elsa,” Jake tells her as he’s putting her to bed that evening. Amy’s secretly listening in on their conversation through the baby monitor - modern technology is the best. “How does that make you feel?”

She can see Leah holding up her hand on the little screen, doing what she thinks must be a thumbs up. Then her tone turns serious again.

“Dada, how did the baby get inside the tummy?”

“Uhm, didn’t you and mama read that book about it?”

“Tell it again,” Leah insists.

“Okay, okay. Cool, cool, cool. This is cool, Jake, you can handle this,” Amy hears her husband mumble to himself.

“What?”

“Nothing, bee, here we go. So, sometimes, when two people who are adults and love each other a lot, they decide they want to try and make a baby. So they take a part - cells, you remember? From both of them, and those, well, stick together? I guess. And sometimes that becomes a little baby that grows inside a mom’s tummy until it’s big and ready to come out.”

It’s pretty much an accurate description. Amy’s proud of him, but Leah doesn’t seem satisfied.

“But how do they take it?”

“You’ll learn about that when you’re older, bumblebee.”

“Like algebra?”

“Who told you about algebra?”

“Grandpa Holt.”

“That tracks. Ehrm, sure. Like… algebra.” Amy can see him grimace from a distance on the screen. “We’ll go with that. Anyway - all you need to know is that everytime it works, it’s a miracle. You were our first miracle.”

“Miracle,” Leah repeats, yawning. “Dada, can you sing now?”

Amy hears Jake take a deep breath of relief before he begins to sing the Tangled soundtrack.

“I’ll give it to you,” she tells him when he slinks into their bedroom ten minutes later, red in the face when she points to the baby monitor and he realizes she's been listening. “That was impressive.”

“You owe me big time,” he groans, slumping down on the mattress next to her, and she chuckles and kisses his forehead.

“Algebra, huh? Could you replace my X without asking Y?”

“If you had used that pick-up line on me, I literally never would have slept with you.”

april.

Leah's feelings about becoming a big sister are fluctuating to say the least. Some days, she'll ask how the baby is doing and press her hands to the ever growing bump, laughing when she's able to feel a kick. Some days she doesn't want to talk about it at all, and they make sure not to force it on her. Some days - and those days are the ones that break Amy's heart - she's angry, shutting Amy out and wanting only Jake to take care of her because she's not sure how to handle the fact that her mom looks different and is tired and can't pick her up like she used to. It's after one of those days Amy has her first breakdown about feeling like she's not enough for two kids, that she was stupid to think she ever could be, and maybe this was a bad idea. She cries under a blanket as Jake puts Leah to bed because Amy wasn't allowed to, and there's a series of soft kicks like her baby’s trying to comfort her, but it only serves to make her more out of breath. Her eyes are all puffy and red when the door to Leah's bedroom opens and the girl peeks out, giving her a cautious look before tiptoeing out to the couch, climbing into her mother's arms and burying her face in her chest.

“I don't want to be a big sister,” Leah confesses in a quiet voice. “I want to be little, too.”

“You're always going to be my little baby,” Amy promises her in full honesty then, hugging the girl as close as she can. “Forever.”

Other days, it's easier. They try to keep her involved as much as she wants to, letting her choose what outfit they’re bringing in the hospital bag and asking her opinion on where she thinks the crib should be. The girl definitely has an interesting taste in baby fashion and Amy ends up vetoing the suggestion that her little sister should go home from the hospital in a baby Santa suit, but as long as Leah feels she's been part of the decision-making, it’s good. One night, they go through photo albums of what she looked like when she was a baby, making the three-year-old proudly exclaim that she was so cute.

“You really were,” Jake agrees, catching her in his arms and tickling her. “You think your baby sibling will be as cute as you were?”

Leah just shakes her head at that, making them all laugh.

“Well, she sure is confident,” says Jake when he returns from putting her to bed, finding Amy still looking through the albums. “Crazy to think she used to be that tiny.”

“Even crazier to think we'll have another one that little, and one day they’ll be a three-year-old, too.” She lightly strokes the top of her bump, feeling a sharp kick way too close to her ribs.

“So many levels of crazy.” Jake shakes his head in bewilderment. “I wonder when you get used to the thought.”

“Never?” Amy shrugs. “Sometimes I still think this is a dream.” There’s another strong kick at that, making her flinch. “Oof. Fine, very real dream.”

It takes her a while to fall asleep that night, with her thoughts and a wildly moving baby helping to keep her awake for longer than she’d prefer. She thinks of how they’re nearing a year since they started fertility treatments, when she fought through the needles and bloating and hormonal chaos because she was praying for something to finally work, and she wonders what her reaction would have been if someone had told her about what she’d go through in the next months.

The events of their struggle to have another baby and her eventual spontaneous pregnancy feel entirely separate in her head, two roads not intersecting. She’s still bitter over their struggle, still wishing she could have saved her energy and frustration, still trying to forget it more days than not. The infinite gratitude she feels over the fact that they are having another child hasn’t erased those memories. It’s mitigated the pain, made the flashbacks much less frequent and helped her towards acceptance, but Amy knows part of her will always remember.

In an odd sense, she’s happy about it. It reminds her it was never a guarantee.

may.

The cat plans have been put on pause indefinitely, but it doesn’t keep Jake from bringing the topic up. One day, he’s coming home with onesies that have patterns with cats on them or a stuffed animal that looks like one, one day he’s leaving web pages with sources for why it’s good for kids to grow up with cats open on her computer, and another day, he’s coming with new name suggestions from what seems to be out of nowhere.

“So for baby names, I was originally thinking Benjamin, but since that’s no longer on the table, I’m down to Meredith and Olivia.”

“That’s a weird combination of names,” Amy huffs. Jake looks the other way, tapping his feet against the floor and whistling in a way that’s probably supposed to come off innocent, but only succeeds in making his behaviour look more conspicuous. “They’re a reference to something, aren’t they?”

“Why would you say that?” Jake snorts. “That’s crazy!” His laugh is overly loud, and she shoots him a warning glare that shuts him up in a second. She’s nearly nine months pregnant now, so her don’t fuck with me-looks are pretty scary at this point.

“Tell me what they are, Jake. I know they’re not Die Hard-characters, and they’re not from Harry Potter or Ninja Turtles, so I’m going to make an assumption and say they��ve got some kind of relation to Taylor Swift.”

“Well, that depends on how you define relation -”

“Jake.”

“Fine, they’re her cats. But they’re nice names!” He wags his index finger in front of her, a childish grin on his face. “They work for humans!”

“Let the cat thing go, babe.”

“Nuh-uh, never.” He leans down, putting his face as close as possible to her bump. “Hey, kick once if you want us to get a cat ASAP.”

It takes a couple of seconds, and Amy almost thinks she’s won, but then Jake puts his hand on her shirt and instantly there’s a kick aimed against it.

“Traitor,” she mutters to the child still trying to play football with her ribs. “I’m the one growing you, you’re supposed to side with me.”

The cat conversation might be able to wait - Jake reluctantly accepts that a three-year-old, a newborn and a kitten would be a little much to take on at one time - but the name conversation’s more urgent. They’re having a baby in a month, maybe less, and even though Amy thinks it feels like forever as she waddles around with swollen ankles, unable to see her feet anymore, she knows it’s not. They need to make a decision.

“This is hopeless,” Jake groans as they look at their handwritten lists one night. They've each written down ten names, then switched with each other and crossed over ones they disliked, leaving them with exactly zero names. “How did we even decide on Leah’s name?”

“Technically, we decided on Leo as in Leonardo like Ninja Turtles, the painter and the actor, and then we found out we were having a girl and Leo became Leah.”

“I know why, I just don't know how. You said no to all of these!” He points at a scratched-out name on the list. “What's wrong with Luna?”

“Sounds too much like Leah.”

“And Abigail?”

“Too different.”

“Meredith?”

“You’ve got to let go of the obsession with Taylor Swift’s cats, man.” Amy massages her temples. “And too Grey’s Anatomy.”

“Fine. What about Olivia, then? Come on,” he says when he sees her pressing her lips together, “no one will know that’s where it’s from. It’s a cute, normal, human name. It’ll work with both our surnames and it goes well with Leah without sounding exactly like it.”

“I don’t know…”

“If we use Liv for a nickname, they’ll be Lee and Liv, which both sounds kinda badass and kinda adorable.” Jake tilts his head to the side, giving her the puppy eyes she swears were passed down straight to their first-born daughter.

He doesn’t entirely convince her, because she doesn’t want to give in to her principle about no Taylor Swift-related names, but she doesn’t hate the sound of Leah and Olivia. Really, the more she thinks about it, the more natural it sounds. She’s not giving him that satisfaction, though, so she tries to hide the smile on her face as she takes his list and writes down OLIVIA below the scratched-out names.

“This doesn’t mean I’m agreeing,” she warns him when his face lights up in excitement. “It just means I’m considering it.”

“Oh no, you’re definitely agreeing. Just like you will with the cat,” he grins, proud of himself, and she lets him have it for about three seconds before she whacks him in the shoulder.

(One evening - almost a year later - when they’re about to move into a bigger house with a garden, and their youngest daughter has started taking her first unsteady steps, Amy does agree to the cat. It’s a moment of weakness, she argues, but she never truly ends up regretting it.)

june.

Since Leah was born a timely two weeks before her due date, Amy’s hoping for the same thing to happen again. Everything is ready as can be for the arrival of their next family member, and they're just waiting, going day out and day in hoping today will be the day, but nothing’s happening. Leah asks every morning when she wakes up if today’s the baby’s birthday, and she gets equally disappointed each time they tell her they don't know yet. She also keeps asking about when she'll get to have her sleepover at uncle Charles’, which seems more of interest to her than the actual event of becoming a big sister, and she gets more and more upset for every day they have to tell her not tonight.

Amy enters her fortieth week of pregnancy, which is the most pregnant she's ever been, and time seems to move impossibly slower. She's swollen, achy, and tired, ready for this to be over and labor to start, but their baby seems to be enjoying herself in there, because the due date comes and goes without a single contraction. No more painful Braxton-Hicks than regular, no water leakage, no nothing. When the clock passes midnight on June 23rd and Amy’s officially past her due date, she’s getting seriously frustrated.

“This baby has to get out,” she complains as Jake rubs her feet that evening. Sometimes she’s pretty sure he’s an actual angel, but also, it’s what she deserves right now. “Starting tomorrow, I'm trying all of the tricks.”

“Or you wait a few days longer? You know she’ll be born eventually.”

“Nope. I need her out of me,” she says, feeling in the exact same moment how the kid’s trying to stretch out from her curled-up position, pushing her feet to Amy’s ribs and her head somewhere seriously uncomfortable, and Amy curses in pain. “Come on, kiddo. You’re clearly uncomfortable too. Don’t wait it out.”

She gets another kick in the ribs for that.

A quick Google search informs her there are many at-home methods available to try and kickstart labor, so she starts with the least terrible ones and works her way up. Sex isn’t bad, but it’s also sweaty and impractical and has no effect whatsoever. Walking is boring and makes her feet swell up like crazy. Jake suggests they go to her favorite bookshop in New York so she can walk around there and have an awesome story to tell if labor were to start in Strand’s Bookstore, but the only thing that happens is people give her sympathetic looks and she nearly cries when a book she wants to look at is on one of the lower shelves. The spicy Chipotle takeout they bring home just gives her heartburn. Pineapple makes her tongue hurt. The raspberry leaf tea tastes like chewing on grass. She saves the castor oil for last, wanting to avoid the distasteful liquid at all costs, but even that has little to no effect and Amy’s furious. On top of it all, Jake can’t stop laughing at her as she waddles around their apartment all grumpy and uncomfortable, and his laughter makes her even angrier.

(Leah just says Amy looks like a couch. That isn’t much better of a self-confidence boost, but it does, at least, make her laugh.)

When Amy’s three days past her due date with no changes, Leah decides she can’t take the anticipation anymore and throws a full-on tantrum. It takes them nearly ten minutes to figure out that the three-year-old’s not crying because she wants the baby to come out, but because the sleepover she’s going to have when her parents are at the hospital is never happening. They try to comfort her with promises of Disney movies and ice cream at home instead, but it doesn’t work, so they give up and call Charles to see if she can stay there an extra night. Charles also cries, because unfortunately, Nikolaj has gotten a stomach bug making them unsuitable for babysitting. After a moment’s consideration and consultation with their still-sobbing daughter, they call Rosa instead, and Rosa’s confused but accepts the request.

“And you're sure you know how to take care of kids for a whole night?” Jake asks when their friend stops by to pick up Leah, who is hyped to hang out with her aunt Rosa for an evening, and drags her into her room to show all her dinosaur toys the moment she steps inside the apartment.

“I assume there's instructions,” Rosa nods to the thick babysitting binder Amy's holding. “And I’ve taken care of my nieces. I’m pretty sure I can keep her alive for a while.”

“Solid. She eats pasta and she's supposed to go bed at seven, but that usually never works, so don't get too stressed about it.”

“Great.”

“Brush her teeth before she goes to sleep and don't let her backflip off the bed,” Amy adds. “There’s lots of information in the binder and we’re a phone call away if there's any issues.”

“Send us pictures if Jocelyn braids her hair!”

“Send us pictures anyway. Please update us.”

“Got it,” says Rosa and lifts up Leah on her shoulders, making the girl scream with laughter. “Pictures, pasta, no backflips. We’ll be fine. You guys enjoy your last night alone in forever,” she grins, pointing to Amy’s baby bump. “Text me if you go into labor.”

“I wish,” Amy groans, and then they’re the overly emotional parents who kiss and hug their oldest daughter goodbye until she begs them to stop.

Rosa leaves with Leah, and the apartment turns the peaceful but unnatural kind of calm they rarely experience at daytime anymore. She guesses it will be but a memory once their second baby finally arrives, but for now, she turns to Jake and asks,

“Wanna have a date night?”

And so they do.

Their last night on their own before life with two kids is gentle and undramatic - a shared bath, a takeout dinner in front of a Harry Potter movie they’ve seen a hundred times before, cuddling and chatting on the couch before going to bed at midnight with hope of a night’s undisturbed sleep.

Nine years they’ve done this, she thinks as he kisses her, and then the bump for good measure, goodnight. Nine, crazy, ever-changing years that have turned their lives upside down more times than she can count, and every day, she wakes up grateful that it’s him she gets to do this with.

It takes her upwards an hour to fall asleep. First she has to pee, then she can’t find a comfortable position, then her back is hurting and Jake has to get her heating pad. When she finally sinks into a dreamless unconsciousness, Amy’s so tired it feels like she could sleep for days.

She sleeps for an hour.

It feels like it’s only been seconds before a dull ache in her lower back and stomach wakes her up, mild at first but increasing steadily, reaching a truly painful point and then ceasing.

Weird, she thinks, and tries to fall back asleep. She’s too tired. She just wants to sleep. Whatever’s going on can surely wait until tomorrow.

A few minutes later, the same pain appears, a little stronger this time. She opens her eyes to glance at the alarm clock - 2.04 in the morning - and shifts her position in hope for that to help, but it doesn’t.

The next time it returns, her clock says 2.08. This time it’s real painful, worse than any Braxton-Hicks she’s felt before this, and it feels a lot, too much, like how she remembers the real deal from when she was in labor with Leah.

2.11, the same sensation appears again, lasting for a full minute and forcing her to breathe real deep to manage the pain. Her belly’s going rock hard for the entire time it’s lasting, too. Definitely suspicious, but she’s still too tired to reflect over it.

2.14, it happens yet another time.

Nope, is the only thought Amy can think when she realizes how close together they’re coming. Nope, nope, nope. She’s way too exhausted. She can have a baby in the morning, when she’s slept, and she’s not a fan of the idea of doing anything before then. This isn’t happening, she tries to convey to her body. This can wait until tomorrow.

2.17. This time, she can’t be still. She tries to find a comfortable position in their bed, but it doesn’t work, she needs to lean against something for support. She slides down to the floor and puts her crossed arms on the mattress, placing her head down and lightly swaying with the rest of her body as she breathes, breathes, breathes through the wave.

2.20. Another one. Amy’s fuming; she’s not having this right now, she’s tired, and no matter how badly she wants to meet this baby, she really wants to sleep before she does.

2.23, the same thing happens again.

2.26. She tries to muffle her groan in a pillow when it’s impossible to be silent. The pain is nearing what feels like an unmanageable point, and she hears Jake stirring awake at the other edge of the bed.

“Ames? What’s happening?”

“Nothing,” she says too quickly in an exhale. “Nothing’s happening.”

“Okay,” he replies in a skeptical tone, stretching himself over the bed and looking her in the eyes. “So you’re just doing that for fun, then?”

She doesn’t reply, but she's hyper-aware of him watching her scrunching her face in god-awful pain when the next contraction hits.

“Babe,” Jake asks, giving her a look of mixed worry and entertainment when it's over, “how many times has that happened?”

“Ten,” she hisses. “It’s fine. They’ll stop. I want to go back to sleep.”

“And how close together are they?”

“Three minutes. Two.”

His eyes widen with fear.

“No.” She shakes her head. “I need to sleep. This baby waited this long, it can wait until the morning.”

“I really don’t think that’s how it works.”

“It should be.”

Jake laughs nervously, stroking her hair. “Sure, but - maybe we should really, definitely, go to the hospital?”

“No, I want to go back to sleep.”

“How exactly do you plan on doing that?”

“I don't know.”

“You know, if we go to the hospital, you could have the epidural like you did last time. Then you could probably sleep for a while.”

She stares him down. “Promise me.”

“Uh, sure. Promise.”

“Okay. Let's go. But only for the epidural,” she declares, and then another torturous contraction forces her to shut up.

A quick call to their doctor confirms they should be going in immediately if contractions are that close together, so Jake is rushing, running around the apartment like a chicken with its head cut off as he packs the final things for their bags. Amy tries to help, but she's pretty useless, because every two minutes she has to lean against the nearest piece of furniture and rock slowly from side to side until the pain subsides. She's not sure how she gets in the car, because each contraction makes her feel like everything else blurs and she can't think, can't speak, can't do anything but try her best to breathe and not faint when the pain radiates through her lower back and core, intense and demanding and so much worse than she remembered.

Only a year ago, she remembers as Jake squeezes her hand and tells her he loves her, they’d been sitting in this same front seat as she cried and cried after finding out their first IVF transfer didn't take. It feels like a lifetime ago, and at the same time, like yesterday. She wonders if she could have predicted this back then, and figures probably not.

“We're having a baby,” she whispers to Jake in a break between contractions, and he smiles so wide she thinks his face is going to break. “You ready?”

“So ready. You?”

“To meet her? Yeah. To give birth? Not really.”

“You're gonna kill it,” he tells her, and there's another contraction just then so she can't reply, only grit her teeth and squeeze his wrist really hard. “You're already killing it.”

“I really can't wait for that epidural,” she mutters through the pain, and Jake just laughs.

Amy's not sure how she gets through the twenty-minute car ride. It's absolute hell, because she can't move in any way, can't do anything except keep breathing and keep holding on to the thought of the pain relief she's going to get once they get to the hospital. She wonders why people willingly choose to put themselves through this without any drugs. She sure as hell isn't going to, not after having learnt the difference last time.

Jake gets them parked and grabs their bags as Amy maneuvers herself out of the car. She manages just in time, closing the door in the same second as there’s a sudden warmth down her thighs and she almost wonders if she’s peed herself before realising what’s happening.

“Water,” she tries to communicate to Jake, and he digs up a pink water bottle from her bag before noticing her wet leggings.

“Oh. That kind of water. Well, at least you didn’t get any on the seat? Very considerate.”

She just glares at him.

Amy guesses it’s meant to be something like a five-minute walk through the corridors, but when she has to stop every other minute for the contractions that seem to have increased fivefold in strength, bringing with them an uncomfortable pressure that she really does not like, it’s probably closer to twenty minutes before they can be guided into their room.

Their doctor - the same one she had for her first labor, an older woman with dark hair and a comforting smile who perfectly meets Amy’s rock-hard criteria for professional but nice - does a quick examination, which Amy can barely feel in comparison to how much pain she’s in by now, and then she laughs.

“Yeah, you’re having a baby tonight alright. Good job getting here in time,” she nods to Jake, who looks unsure if he should accept the compliment or freak out over the possibility of not having gotten there.

“Great,” Amy huffs. “So can I get the epidural? Because I want it now. Please.”

“Oh no,” Dr. Cowan laughs. “You’re eight centimetres dilated and this seems to be progressing quickly. My guess is you’ll be pushing in half an hour, so I’m sorry, but there’s no time for that.”

“What?”

“You could have the laughing gas, if you’d like, but anything else will just slow labor down.”

“You promised,” Amy hisses towards Jake, and he holds up his hands.

“I’m pretty sure this isn’t my fault.”

“You promised!”

“What are we fighting about here?”

“I don’t know,” she confesses, and then another brutal contraction washes over her, together with the realization that she’s going to have to do the rest of this unmedicated.

She’s not happy about it.

Really, Amy's not sure how she gets through it.

To say that it's bad is an understatement; it's excruciating, some kind of evil torture she genuinely can’t believe humans were made to be able to handle, agonizing to a point where she's nearly hoping it will render her unconscious because that means she wouldn't have to take it anymore. She tries the laughing gas, but it just makes her feel dizzy and out of control, so she powers through without it. Jake tries to tell her she's crushing it, that she's badass and strong and doing amazing, but she can't waste any focus listening and eventually she tells him - not very gently - to shut the fuck up. It makes her feel kind of bad, because she knows he’s trying to be supportive, but at the same time, she really couldn't care less about his feelings because she's pretty sure she's going to die every time the pain increases.

But somehow, she survives.

One good thing - and it's not even good, it's more like a band-aid on a gaping chest wound in comparison - about no epidural is that she's free to move around, trying different positions in hope for something to ease the pain. Nothing does, but some ways give her a little bit more power, a little more control over what's happening. Amy supposes it's worth something. She does love control, even if she’d trade it in a heartbeat for some sweet, sweet pain relief. She ends up standing sort of on her hands and knees on the bed, getting some help from gravity, and it feels like the last bit stretches on forever but later on she’ll learn it was really fast. It's scary, a surrealistic thing to feel how her body just takes over, like it knows how to do something her head definitely doesn't.

And then, right as she’s certain she's not going to make it even another second, it's over.

There’s a moment of petrifying fear that something's wrong, that her baby’s about to be taken away like Leah was for the first traumatic minutes of her life, but then she hears a sharp, gurgling cry and she's not sure what’s happening but suddenly there’s a baby on her chest and everything is so, so, right.

Her daughter's kind of purple still, a little slimy and a little bloody and completely perfect, and Amy's shaking with a mix of shock, adrenaline and tears as the newborn puts her tiny hand high up on Amy's chest and she can't help but grip it, whispering a gentle hi, baby, hi, as the child squeaks in return.

She's imagined the sensation of holding her just-born baby in her arms since the first day she started thinking of having another kid, and yet all the fantasies pale in comparison to the explosive, unyielding love she feels when the newborn opens her eyes, gazing carefully at the world for the very first time.

“You know what time it is?” Jake asks her once when they’ve been moved to the recovery room, trying to fathom what just happened. “It’s five-thirty. She was born at four-thirty. When did you say you woke up?”

“Two a.m.,” Amy mumbles, and he shakes his head.

“So you did that in, what, two and a half hours? Man, you’re insane.”

“Thanks.” She chuckles, stroking her fingers over the thick, dark hair that appears to be a dominant trait for Santiago-Peralta children. Their newborn daughter is blinking at them as she tries to figure out the whole breastfeeding thing, seeming pretty exhausted from the events of the morning but not really wanting to sleep, either. “It was awful.”

“But worth it?”

“Yeah,” Amy nods without tearing her eyes away from their hour-old miracle. “Worth it. I’m not doing it again, though.”

Jake grins and kisses the top of the newborn’s head. “Very fair. I mean, we literally have the two most perfect kids the world has ever seen, so it’s not like you have to.”

“She really is perfect, huh?”

“For sure. You really are,” he whispers to their baby, running his thumb over her round cheeks and tiny nose. “Just like your sister.”

“Leah,” Amy bursts out, sitting up a little straighter and instantly regretting it because she’s sore and ungracious in every way. “We need to tell her! We never even told anyone we were going in! Fuck, I gotta text Rosa. Can you get me my phone?”

Jake brings it to her, and Amy carefully transfers their daughter over to his chest so she can have her arms free. The newborn whimpers at first, not too happy about the move, but then Jake softly pats her back through the pink and blue hospital blanket and lets her grip onto his thumb with her fist, and she’s at peace again. Her little head snuggles into his chest as she relaxes, and Amy just watches, barely making an attempt at wiping away the happy tears.

It’s been an obvious feeling to her, to hold her children for the first time and know that they are hers in some miraculous way, that they were part of her - but it’s another unique and indescribable feeling to watch Jake hold them and know they are his just as much, always safe and loved in his presence. Although she could never have predicted the sensation, she’s always had an inkling of it - a deep conviction and a ceaseless, rightful confidence that he would make the greatest dad. It keeps being proven correct.

“I forgot how small they are,” he mumbles, and there are tears in his eyes, too.

“She’s like a pound and a half bigger than Leah was.”

“Doesn’t feel like it. Do you think they look the same?”

“A little?” Amy tilts her head. “Same hair, same nose. But so different, too.”

“I think she looks a lot more like you than Lee did,” Jake smiles, stroking the little fist holding onto his thumb before kissing it. “I’m fine with that. You look like your mom, kid. Oh, don’t look so upset,” he says when the newborn scrunches her face together, “it’s a great way to look. Would you rather have my nose? Yeah, right. I didn't think so.”

Amy laughs, letting them continue their exchange as she snaps a picture of them and then sends that and another one of the first baby pictures to Rosa.

Rosa’s reply is as instant as it is shocked. She congratulates them, tells Amy she's crazy, promises them they can talk to Leah once she wakes up and even offers to drive her there later in the afternoon “if it means she'll beat Charles to meeting this baby”.

Amy figures she should probably text more people to spread the news, but the important thing is Leah knows, or at least will know, so she puts her phone on the side table and turns back to Jake.

“Rosa’s going to call us when Leah’s awake,” she says, unable to keep herself from leaning over and kissing their baby’s cheeks when she squeaks a little again.

“Great. You want to get some sleep before?”

“Oh, so bad.” Her exhaustion faded away somewhat in the chaos, pure adrenaline and a cascade of hormones keeping her awake, but it's catching up with her now. “Promise you two are good?”

“Olivia and I are great,” he promises, and his smile and their daughter’s softly blinking eyes makes her certain he’s right. “You agreed to that name, right?”

“One condition.” Amy yawns. “You are never allowed to tell her she’s named after a cat. Ever.”

She thinks she can hear him mumbling something about not making promises he won’t be able to keep, but she’s falling asleep before she can protest.

Leah’s and Olivia’s first meeting doesn’t start out great.

Amy’s trying to be methodical and gentle, making sure Olivia’s in her bassinet and she can have both arms free to hug her three-year-old, but then the infant starts wailing the moment Leah enters the room and she gets terrified, immediately trying to run out with tears streaming down her cheeks. Jake has to chase after her while Amy tends to Olivia, who’s decided she needs to eat right this second and not a moment later, except she’s literally ten hours old and not very good at nursing just yet, which only serves to increase her frustration before she calms down enough to figure it out. When she does and Amy can take a deep breath, Jake and Leah return. Leah’s calmed down a little, but she’s still red under the eyes and skeptical to even say hi to her mom and her sister. Amy’s heartbroken as the girl wraps her arms tighter around Jake and turns her head away, and there’s a second where she wonders briefly again why she thought this was a good idea.

But then, Jake asks if Leah wants to see the gift Olivia brought her - a nifty trick Amy found on some Instagram account - and the three-year-old squeals with happiness as she unwraps a singing Elsa doll, and it’s upwards from there. She dares to climb into the hospital bed and first look at the baby, then carefully pat her head, then laugh as Olivia finishes nursing and makes another squeaking noise. Amy figures Leah won’t want to hold her sister at first, but once she’s told them all about her sleepover with Rosa - it seems to have included gymnastics, a Disney movie and cake - she’s looking at the baby with a little more interest, and then she asks the question all on her own.

“Can I hold her?”

They put a pillow in her lap and a pillow behind her back for support, and Jake holds his hand under Olivia’s head throughout, but they let her. It’s the best thing Amy’s ever seen in her life. Just when she thinks it can't get better than this, Leah leans her head down so her cheek is touching her little sister's, and Amy has no way of stopping her happy tears.

She’d never thought people were lying, per se, when they’d described how your love just doubles when you have another child. She’d been certain she would love another baby just as much. It had been part of the reason she fought so hard to have one, but she realizes now that she was never even close to understanding the full meaning of double the love. The power with which she loves Leah has grown exponentially for every day, reaching infinity and still becoming stronger, and today, it's like her love for Olivia has clocked in at the same level, stretched out a hand and increased in tandem with the love for her sister. Amy wonders how it makes sense, how it’s possible for a heart to grow that big, but she's accepted that it’s one of many questions about motherhood she’ll never know the answer too.

Instead, she just makes sure she takes a series of pictures to document the moment, and then she meets Jake's eyes for a second to mouth a silent I love you.

They get to go home the next afternoon. Amy was expecting it to feel more natural with their second child, less like they’ve stolen someone else’s baby and is pretending to know what they’re doing, but it feels just as absurd as the first time when they secure her in the car seat and carry her outside.

The sun seems to be shining particularly bright as they drive, but Olivia sleeps for the whole way home.

She does not, however, continue with that for the rest of the day. Rather, she wants to eat for most of it. Which is fine; Amy knows and remembers that’s what it’s like at first. Still, it’s exhausting and far from painless while they’re both trying to figure it out, and it keeps her stuck to her corner of the couch for hours on end. This gets Leah jealous, making her throw a tantrum because she wants Amy to play with her in her room and she can’t, and there's a moment where everyone except Jake is crying at the same time before Leah calms down and accepts the suggestion of everyone watching a movie on the couch and ordering pizza for dinner. Partly to celebrate, partly because no one has the energy to cook.

There's going to be an adjustment period for them all, Amy figures. She’s certain it will come with a cavalcade of challenges, but as Leah insists on being Jake's helper as he changes a diaper and shines with pride as she hands him too many wet wipes and picks out Olivia's pajamas, she can already tell it's going to be more than worth it.

When it’s time for Leah to go to bed, she claims she wants everyone there to read stories. Amy asks, just to make sure, if that means her sister too, and Leah nods. She’s very intent on storytime taking place in her bed, though, and so Amy ends up squeezing herself to fit in the toddler bed with Olivia on her chest and Leah on her side. Jake has to sit on the floor.

“This is unfair,” he grumbles, and Leah laughs and snuggles closer to her mom, pressing a kiss to her baby sister’s head.

“Read the story, dada.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it.”

They read two different stories, both of them yawning through the second one. Amy’s pretty sure Leah’s about to fall asleep, can feel the little arm draped across her stomach going heavier, more relaxed, but as Jake closes the covers to the second book, there’s a whisper.

“Another book,” it comes out in a yawn, and Jake laughs.

“Are you sure, bumblebee? I think you’re getting pretty tired.”

“No.” Leah shakes her head. “More stories.”

“Fine.” He presses a kiss to her forehead. “One more. Just for tonight.”

He begins to read, and a few minutes later, Leah’s sleeping. She has her mouth open, one arm still resting on Amy as if to hold her in place, her other arm hugging the stuffed lion animal she still sleeps with.

She seems so big in comparison to her little sister, yet so innocent and peaceful as she’s sleeping, and entirely magical to watch. Every day, Amy thanks her lucky stars that she gets to watch this child grow up and take on the world, and it blows her mind to think she’ll get to do the same with the baby curled up on her chest. It seems so far away to picture this tiny infant growing up and becoming her own unique individual, too, but she knows it will happen, and she cannot wait for the rollercoaster ride she figures raising these two children will be.

She’s squeezed into a far from comfortable position in the narrow toddler bed, she’s still sore and in pain after the nightmare that is childbirth, she's sleep-deprived and figures she's looked better after a 48 hour work shift than she does right now, but both her children are sleeping so close to her, and she's never been happier.

There’d been a time, not long ago, where she thought she’d never get to experience this. A second child had seemed like something the universe wasn't willing to give her, until it was, and now she’s living the reality she once feared would remain a dream.

She knows she’s never going to see her infertility journey as something beautiful, because it wasn’t. It was heartbreaking, soul-crushing and lonely even with Jake by her side, and the few comments she’s heard about how it must all have been worth it, though have made her want to punch someone. It was a curveball life threw her, an unfair challenge she had to go through for some reason, and she’s happy she survived it but she’s not grateful it happened. She’s simply accepted it. In the end, her life also gave her this; two objectively perfect children who are the best thing to ever happen to her, even pushing their father down to a still close second-place position. Her gratefulness for them still doesn't erase the painful experiences, but it makes them fade into the background, to a point where they’ll eventually become but a faint shadow of a memory. Amy figures that is the most she can ask for.

It takes her a moment to realize she has no idea how she's going to get up from this position. She’s closest to the wall, and she gets now that it was an unwise choice. Leah’s holding onto her arm, Olivia’s sleeping lightly and already stirring, and Amy has strong doubts in her own ability to get up without waking anyone.

She looks to Jake, hoping he might be able to help her, but finds that he’s fallen asleep on the floor using a stuffed animal as a pillow and holding his thumb between the last pages of the book they were reading. It looks ridiculous and deeply endearing at the same time, and even though it means she’s so screwed and she’s going to have to wake him somehow before Olivia starts screaming bloody murder, she can’t be mad about it.

All she can do is laugh.

and at last, i see the light

and it’s like the fog has lifted

and at last, i see the light

and it’s like the sky is new

and it’s warm, and real, and bright

and the world has somehow shifted

all at once, everything looks different

now that i see you.

~ i see the light, from tangled

#my writing #b99 #brooklyn 99 #brooklyn nine-nine #peraltiago #jake x amy #b99 fic #brooklyn 99 fic #brooklyn nine-nine fic #b99 fanfiction #brooklyn nine-nine fanfiction #jake x amy fic #jake x amy fanfiction #peraltiago fic #peraltiago fanfiction #iwthwy

58 notes · View notes

mysteriouslyzealouspandalov-blog · 5 years

Text

Jon and Dany's relationship has always been the endgame, says 'Game of Thrones' director

New Post has been published on https://relationshipguideto.com/must-see/jon-and-danys-relationship-has-always-been-the-endgame-says-game-of-thrones-director/

Jon and Dany's relationship has always been the endgame, says 'Game of Thrones' director

Dany and Jon, sittin' in a cabin…

Image: hbo

The penultimate episode of Game of Thrones Season 7 was arguably the most stressful installment since the Red Wedding — North of the Wall, we saw one of Daenerys’ beloved dragons die, before being resurrected by the Night King, while back in Winterfell, Arya and Sansa escalated their cold war to nuclear levels, all thanks to Littlefinger’s puppeteering.

With only one episode left this season — and only six episodes to come in Season 8 — we’re rapidly approaching the show’s endgame, which means that characters we love are probably going to start dying again, and alliances will be forced to solidify or shatter in the face of the Night King’s advance on Westeros.

SEE ALSO: Prepare for a super-sized ‘Game of Thrones’ finale and start freaking out about the cryptic episode title

With that in mind, we spoke to Alan Taylor, director of episode 706, “Beyond the Wall,” to discuss the developments of last Sunday’s episode and the tensions rising heading into the finale — including the fact that George R. R. Martin was apparently dropping hints about his ultimate plan for the story way back in Season 1.

Taylor on location in Iceland

Image: helen sloan/hbo

The last time you directed on the show was in Season 2 — has the experience changed much since then?

Yeah, it’s funny; it’s very, very different, and yet the same. The first two seasons, it had by no means the scale of audience attention that it has now, and when I came back after being away for a while, I sort of thought I’d be returning to the same enterprise. When I came back, I was immediately struck by how much bigger the whole thing has gotten. It was always big — there were always two units functioning simultaneously in different countries, so it was always a certain scale — but now instead of one bunker you walk by on the way to the stage, now there’s 10.

The main difference, I think, is probably the certain story elements, like the dragons. The visual effects are a huge part of it in a way they weren’t before. If you’re doing one shot on a frozen lake with a dragon, it’s actually seven shots that are being stitched together in various layers, shot in various ways to compose into the story beats, so it’s a much more complex machine now than it used to be. But the funny thing is that the spirit remains the same. It still feels like an indie production. People are still completely unpretentious, including the actors and how they do the work. It still feels scruffy and rough and ready. It’s got the worst craft services of any production I’ve ever been on — it’s got two crackers and some cold tea. [Laughs.] It hasn’t gotten bloated at all. It’s still lean, but the finished product is huge.

How long did that final battle on the frozen lake take to film, all told?

Oh boy. I’d forgotten how many days we were there on that frozen lake, but I can tell you it felt like roughly forever. It was getting up pre-dawn every day, going to this quarry that was outside Belfast. The crew would be there already, sweeping whatever rain and stuff had happened off the ice and restoring the snow on our set, which was huge and 360 degrees.

I remember the DP — who is brilliant, Jonathan Freeman — despairing because he realized one day we had bright sunlight, which is horrible when you’re North of the Wall, and fog, which is impossible to shoot in, and snow and rain all in the same day. He’s trying to pull a coherent vision out of all those elements. Coupled with the fact that when Dany arrives, she’s sitting on a huge styrofoam green thing on top of our [island], and you’re shooting three layers of shot … any time anybody goes through the ice, you know you’re going to be shooting that later in a dunk tank on a sound stage. It was huge and insanely complex. We were there for weeks, and I know that the investment of my time was something I’ve never experienced in television. I think from my first scout of that location to finishing the episode took five months, which is way into feature film territory, not television.

I honestly had no idea you filmed the ice lake battle in a quarry in Belfast instead of in Iceland until I saw the behind-the-scenes video from filming.

Yeah, that was tricky. We knew we were going to be running around in Iceland for the most part for the first half of the episode and then have to find a way to transition to our ice lake, and we were lucky to find an intersection in this gorge that we were in in Iceland that could believably take us to this new set, so that worked out. We had to shoot the frozen lake close to home, because there’s too much prosthetics and pyrotechnics and stunts that we couldn’t do that remotely somewhere on location. We had to do that somewhere near base camp.

I’m so fascinated by the biology of the dragons – can you talk me through the process of what happened to Viserion after the Night King hit him and we saw that explosion from his throat?

A tremendous amount of thought went into them from the early stages. It was very important to David and Dan that the dragons be quintessentially believable. They had a huge disgust for dragons that had four legs and wings. Many times you see dragons rendered that way, and their point is that nowhere in nature do you see a creature that is built that way. So they were adamant that they had to have large hind legs and that the wings had to be elements of the four legs.

Beyond that, the biology of how you blow fire and what’s the pilot light like on the inside of the throat … One of the fun things here, and there’s a lot of debate as to how much we could do it, was when he gets stabbed through the throat, he’s trailing blood as he falls. He’s also trailing smoke and flame as he falls. So he looks like a jet fighter going down. We were mindful of what the reality would be if you punctured one of these guys there.

And then a lot of thought went into the logistics of the scale of it; how much room is going to be required to arc around, how much ice will it tear up when it hits the ground? And besides all that, trying to make sure that it had a chance to play emotionally. One of my favorite shots is the one where Viserion sinks below the ice, and it’s the one time we take a long time with the moment and let it stretch. We’re in a full battle at the time, but we had to let that moment hang long enough… and the visual effects department did a wonderful job of realizing it, you feel the mass of the creature. It feels so lifelike in death. I think it really worked well.

There’s also a lot of effort going into giving them moments of character. There’s a tiny moment that probably not many people noticed, but when Dany and Tyrion are walking out to the dragons when she decides she’s going to go off on this mission, they’re just waking up from a nap. You see three dragons raising up in the foreground, and one of them shakes his head side to side. That’s because our storyboard artist, who’s kind of brilliant, who has two dogs, knows that when her dogs get up from a long sleep, they shake their head. You can see, I think it’s Viserion in the background, doing that gesture. It’s little observations like that to make sure the dragons are fully alive.

We see Jon and Daenerys share a moment of intimacy on the ship, but then there’s that subtle shift and Dany pulls away and shuts down on him – what’s going through her mind in that moment?

Certainly those who have read the books or are reading the books know that we’ve been heading in this direction for a long time. I’ve mentioned before that it was a revelation to me about the scale of George R. R. Martin’s thinking that he came to visit the set in Season 1, when none of us knew what we were contending with really, and said a few things that made it clear that, for him, this whole epic thing — this story he was telling — all came down to these two and them getting together.

Of course, back then, none of us knew that. We didn’t know that Robb Stark was going to [die] – he seemed like he was the heir apparent, and the fact that this bastard sidekick brother and this girl on a whole different continent were going to turn into the core of the show, we didn’t see that coming yet.

SEE ALSO: All your faves are meeting in the ‘Game of Thrones’ finale and there’s gonna be a rumble

I think we’ve known for a while that Tyrion is making fun of Dany, because he sees what’s coming. I think there’s a bunch of things at work in that scene, and they pulled it off wonderfully. It’s just the right level of swooning for each other but drawing back. It was one close-up of Emilia that really tells that story very well, where you see her, she’s going over the edge, and then she forces herself back when she pulls her hand back. It’s probably because she’s got a lot of responsibility. She can’t be falling like this. Tyrion has already made fun of her for this, so she’s got that motive to draw back. I think everybody understands it’s pretty inevitable.

The tension in Arya and Sansa’s relationship is almost unbearable right now. How did you and Maisie approach that final scene between them from Arya’s perspective?

All my favorite scenes are the scenes between the girls. I think it’s probably because I have two young daughters who spend a healthy amount of time hating each other’s guts. Watching these two feel each other out and test each other and feeling the balance of power shift back and forth between them was a real delight. I remember reading the script and thinking, “Oh my God. It’s eight pages, and they’re just standing there. What are we going to do?”

We blocked it in a way that felt like it had a little bit of momentum to it, and there’s a nice thing where they’re turning the tables on each other. [In their first scene together, where Arya confronts Sansa about the letter] each one takes some time with the bloody carcasses hanging behind them… you really feel that they both have a case to make. What I also like is they’re both legitimately lethal at this point, and we know that Arya can kill things at the drop of a hat. I think we’re starting to realize that Sansa has gotten somewhere quite dark. She’s learned a lot from Cersei, as she says at one point.

SEE ALSO: ‘Game of Thrones’ is effectively killing two of our favorite characters

I love the fact that that tension is there, and I just wanted people to feel that you weren’t sure who was going to kill who, but it was quite believable that either one could kill the other. There are things like the dagger in the scene between them and the fact that Brienne is being sent away to clear the deck so there’s no police in town. The idea is to build up the expectation as much as possible that one of them is going to die, and hopefully surprise people by what happens.

Game of Thrones airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.

WATCH: The Night King from ‘Game of Thrones’ finally found a use for those giant chains