A/N I forgot to add this note when I published this chapter so I am correcting that error now. I had to write this story simply because even though I know I am a little late to the party with this one, I just saw Race to Witch Mountain this past weekend. Now, if your mind goes in a thousand different directions like mine does whenever I'm introduced with new characters you might have thought the same thing as I did, that Seth and Sara were simply made for each other just by looking at the pair side by side. Then of course the movie ruins it by introducing them as duh duh duuh! SIBLINGS! Uhhh! I inwardly groaned and although I enjoyed the movie I just couldn't get it out of my head that these two otherworldly beings were just simply meant to be. So, Taa Daa! In comes the greatest thing about Fanfiction! Could I have made the story where they weren't siblings and as such forgone all the negativism I'm sure I'll get with this "Taboo"… Sure! But where is the FUN in that! :) Enjoy!

Reality Check

The trip back home was going to be a long one and Seth was flustered that it had taken so much extra time to complete their mission on Earth. What was worse is that even before he had arrived on Earth he had felt out of sorts. On the way there he kept having strange dreams and waking up in a cold sweat with visions of long blonde hair brushing his cheeks and blue eyes dancing above him. During everything that happened while on Earth he had been able to put that all aside with so much else to occupy his mind. Now, eight days into the trip back and with nineteen days to go until he and Sara arrived back home, his dreams had resumed and he found it increasingly difficult to be in the same proximity as Sara without feeling that same unfamiliar frustration building.

Seth knew he was being short tempered with Sara and she didn't understand his sudden shift in mood. How could she? He didn't understand it himself. She was just always there. With no one else to occupy her she was in his space all the time. She would go on and on about how they were going to be hero's when they got home. He didn't feel much like a hero right now. He knew he needed to be nicer to Sara; they had always got along, never arguing. That is the one reason his parents had trusted them to work together to accomplish the task of retrieving the experimental data needed to convince the councils not to invade Earth. He was happy, ecstatic even, but it was dampened by this ever growing need that he couldn't put a name to and every time Sara was around him he had the disconcerting need to touch her but instead he grew irritable and harsh with her.

Sara bounded into his small compartment and flopped on the bed next to him, "I'm bored Seth. Please come play Ganga with me."

Sara's hair had landed across his face and the silken tresses tickled his nose leaving the smell of fresh strawberries in its wake as he flung it away from him like it was a the hand of a Siphon.

"Really Sara, aren't you supposed to be monitoring the flight deck?" Seth sat up and scooted to the end of the bed until his side was against the cold metal surrounding it leaving him no more room to move away. He stared at the wall in the opposite direction of her.

Sara was hurt. She knew Seth was mad at her for some reason but she couldn't figure out why. She wondered if it was because she had insisted that they enlist the help of Jack Bruno to help them, but everything had worked out, surely he was over that by now. Besides she thought he had really liked Jack by the time they had escaped, I mean without him they wouldn't even be alive right now. She missed Seth and their easy friendship. She used to be able to talk to him about anything and he would tease her sometimes calling her such a girl but she always knew he loved her and she could count on him for anything.

"We are on autopilot. Besides, we are in the middle of space, other than an asteroid belt, what is there to hit out here and the ship will warn us in plenty of time if we happen across one of those." She paused looking at his ridged posture and decided she would just ask.

"Why are you so unhappy Seth?" Sara sat up and scooted toward him laying her hand on his arm to try and get his attention.

The touch of Sara's hand on his arm jolted Seth. He felt a surge of blood rush through his veins and pool in his loins. His face flushed instantly and wide eyed with shock he turned quickly to her to tell her to get out and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and he nearly swallowed it.

Sara was in a white shirt, cut low in the front with thin straps holding it up. It showed her navel above a pair of white "panties", as he had heard them called on Earth, and nothing else. Seth's eyes swept quickly down the length of her seeing her clearly for the first time in a long time; her tanned skin from the Earth's sun, the roundness her body had taken on in the last few months instead of the awkward angles it used to be. Her chest, where it was flat only a short time ago, had blossomed into two ripe apples with the tips of her nipples brushing the thin cloth covering them. Her sleek muscles bunched and gave shape to her body as she moved even closer to him. She had even colored her toenails with something, so that they gleamed with a pearly pink cast against the golden hues of her skin.

Seth couldn't find his voice, so he stared at the pink against her skin trying to form a coherent thought to tell her to get out.

Sara taking Seth's silence as a positive move in the right direction after so many days of snippy retorts she unabashedly threw her arms around his neck hugging him close.

"Oh Seth, I miss you and I know you have been angry with me but can't you please forgive me and just be my wonderful, lovely brother again?"

Seth was torn between his instinct to protect Sara, years of being her big brother, friend, confidant, and this new feeling he suddenly and painfully was aware of. This desire he felt to touch her, in ways that were most definitely not brotherly.

The brother side of him won out and he wrapped Sara in a loose hug trying to keep as much of her from touching him as he possibly could in the midst of an embrace. He most certainly kept the bulge in his loose pants from her, keeping his lower body straight as he had turned to her.

"I'm not angry with you Sara. I'm just worried about home and mom and dad. I have just had a lot on my mind. You haven't done anything wrong." Seth breathed in and the sudden smell of fresh strawberries again assailed his senses.

Seth broke the embrace and gently but insistently pushed her toward the door saying, "Now go on, get back to your post where you belong. It isn't my shift for two more hours and I want to get a nap in before it is my turn."

Sara, thinking everything was back to normal between them, happily sauntered out and back to her post oblivious to the turmoil she was leaving behind.

Seth watched in misery as his eyes followed her out, staring at her hips as they swayed slightly when she walked and groaned when she was out of ear shot as he flopped back on the beds thick padding. His hand found the aching bulge and rubbed it through his pants. What was wrong with him? His body felt detached from his brain like it had a mind of its own and had decided it wasn't communicating with him anymore. Seth groaned again, as he increased the pressure on himself and in a few short seconds his back arched as his body released a flood of fluid leaving him sticky and wet. What was wrong with him? This could not be normal. Maybe he had caught something while on Earth. Maybe Earth's atmosphere wasn't as compatible to their own environment as everyone thought. What if it was contagious and he gave it to Sara?

Walking slowly to the bath chamber Seth played out everything that had happened while on Earth in his head. There was no evidence he had come into contact with anything harmful at least that he could recall and he had excellent recollection skills. So if it wasn't a virus or contagion then what was it? He wished he had his father to ask because he always knew the answers to everything. But then again, telling his father how he felt when looking at Sara just now somehow didn't sit well in his stomach either.

Sara just wanted her wonderful, lovely brother back. As the hot water of the shower ran in rivulets down his tormented body to the drain, to be run through the recycler and back out at him again, Seth couldn't get the idea that he just wanted Sara, as anything but a sister, out of his head.