Well, it's been a while . . . . I've been focused on other pursuits and like most of us, I wasn't feeling particularly inspired by the recent promos. All I can say is Ugh, Rookie Blue. Just Ugh.

So I got this idea, and darn it, I felt compelled to write it up. It's a bit of a "fix-it." The story is told in two chapters, which I'm posting together. I only separated them to make for an easier read. It's loosely based off of a few of the promos-not all of them because I don't think I've seen them all. Keep your chin up, everyone, and thanks so much for reading and for being so amazing!

"How did he tell you?"

Shaking her head in disgust, Andy looked down at the kitchen island that separated her from Traci. The napkin she'd been shredding lay in a tattered heap beneath her hands, which had since taken to drumming themselves nervously against the granite counter top. "We were working a case together, and I could tell something was 'off' with him, Trace. He didn't seem ready to talk about it, though, and I was trying not to push. So nothing all day and then finally in the car on the way back to the station he dropped it on me." With her hands, she simulated a small explosion, tossing the napkin shreds into the air for effect.

Traci waved her along impatiently. "How did he say it?"

"'McNally, we need to talk,'" Andy recounted, rolling her eyes. "That alone got my attention because how often does Sam actually ask to talk about something?"

"Once in a decade?"

"Exactly. So I knew it was something big. I thought maybe he wanted to talk about the Santana investigation or something that had happened with his family." She drew in a breath, searching for the fortitude she needed to continue. "I could tell he was nervous, and that made it so much worse. Finally, he just said, 'Marlo's pregnant,' which was pretty much the last thing I'd expected to come out of his mouth. I guess he could see that I was confused because he added, 'She says it's mine.'"

Closing her eyes, Traci groaned. "That's rough. I guess there's no real way to sugar coat a thing like that."

"No, there's not," Andy agreed bitterly. "How do you tactfully tell your current girlfriend that your ex is having your baby?" She pressed both hands firmly against the counter, hoping that the solid surface might somehow ground her. "I can't believe this is happening. I mean, it's straight-up soap opera, right? In real life, this is not the norm."

"Andy, I'm really sorry. Nothing about this is fair—to either of you. He must've been so nervous about how you'd react."

"I get that. I really do. But can you believe he waited almost an entire day to tell me? She cornered him outside of the Penny the night I got attacked, and he kept it to himself."

"You do realize he probably wanted to tell you but held off because of the attack?"

"I do. And I even get that this is as much of a shock to him as it is to me. Right now, though, I just really need to wallow and be angry on my own terms."

Traci nodded in understanding. "Then, that's what you should do. Take some time and figure out how you feel about all of this."

"And then what happens? I stand by and watch my boyfriend having a baby with another woman?" She drove one index finger into the counter for emphasis. "Or do we just call it quits? That way he can go off and raise a family with Marlo."

"Is that what you think he wants?"

"I have no idea what he wants," Andy muttered. Throwing her hands into the air, she felt the irrepressible strains of unchecked hysteria lapping at her insides, and she knew it was only a matter of time before she crumbled into a pathetic heap of sniffles and sobs. "I know what I want, though."

"Which is?" Traci asked as she took out a bottle of wine and two glasses from a nearby cabinet.

"I want Marlo not to be pregnant with Sam's baby. I want to know that I'll be the only woman who ever has a baby with him. I want our first child to be ours together. And I want to be standing here right now having any conversation but this one."

"I know you do," Traci said sympathetically. "This is an impossible situation. Are you gonna talk to him?"

"I can't even look at Sam right now, let alone talk to him. All I see are these images of him with Marlo, and it's killing me. I spent a long time watching him with her and trying to be cool about it. Now it's like it's happening all over again." Clutching her stomach, she slumped forward. "I feel nauseous."

"Here," Traci said, foisting a glass of red wine at her. "Take this and go sit down on the couch. Dex has Leo tonight, which means we have the place to ourselves. So we're ordering takeout, cracking open a pint of ice cream and planting our butts firmly on the couch until one or both of us passes out."

"You don't have to do that . . . ." Andy responded weakly, all the while taking the glass from Traci as she'd been instructed. With the doleful eyes of a woman who'd only recently been introduced to an unpleasant, new reality, she allowed herself to be ushered toward the couch.

"You're right. I don't have to do it. I want to do it," Traci assured her. "There's no way I'm letting you go home alone tonight."

As she settled herself on one end of the couch, Andy asked, "What would you do?"

"I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that. This is one crazy situation, and I'm not sure there's a right way to handle it. Honestly, I don't know what I'd do if I were in your shoes."

"Great. Thanks," Andy laughed dryly.

"Well, look at it this way. What I'd do and what you should do are two separate things. My relationship with Steve—if you can even call it that—is completely different from what you have with Sam. You've put each other through a lot of stuff over the years and whether that speaks to your ability to make something like this work, I couldn't say for sure. It's gotta count for something, though. Would an ordinary couple have the resolve to make something like this work? Probably not. But you and Sam might."

"So you're saying because we've already been through such hell together, we should be able to handle this, too?"

"Honestly, I don't know, but you're both much stronger than you were three or four years ago, and maybe that means you have what it takes to get through this. What if Fate delivered this particular hurdle to your doorstep because it knows you two can handle it?"

"Do you want to know what I think?" Andy demanded suddenly. Without waiting for an answer, she declared, "Fate sucks. We've been through enough already, and maybe this is just one hurdle too many. Enough is enough. That's the message I have for Fate or whoever comes up with this crap."

"What about Sam? How does he feel about all of this?"

"He wants to talk, and I'm not ready," she said firmly. "I'm not ready to discuss how we can make this work, and I'm definitely not ready to hear him telling me we're finished."

"I doubt you'd ever hear the latter from him," Traci reflected as she sipped her wine. "I don't care what hurdles come his way, Sam Swarek won't stop loving you."

"But does it follow that he'll still want to be with me now that Marlo's having his baby? Maybe it's too impractical."

"When he told you, did he give you any indication about what he was thinking?"

"I didn't give him a chance. We got back to the station, and I took off." With a shrug, she admitted, "Maybe I should have stayed to discuss it with him, but I was just so angry. All I could think about was getting out of there."

"I think leaving was probably a fairly normal reaction given those circumstances."

"Normal," Andy murmured cynically. "Absolutely none of this is normal. I mean, who has issues like these? Stuff like this . . . it's not normal and it's not fair. I can't help but feel like so many people get handed these nice, heaping plates of happiness while Sam and I have to earn every scrap we get."

"Which is why your message to fate is 'enough is enough," Traci concluded, smiling indulgently at Andy.

"Exactly. Thank you, Fate, but I've had enough."

Sam dropped his keys on the counter, sending them skittering across the smooth surface with a ferocious indifference. Their jagged metal edges scraped across the cold stone, gaining momentum until finally, they flew off into the air, collided with the refrigerator and fell to the ground. Having already moved past the kitchen, he barely registered the fall. Like everything else in his world, the keys hardly mattered. To Sam, there was only one thing that mattered—one person—and without her, he wasn't sure he'd ever truly care about anything again. Hours of driving around the city after she left had presented him with that one pitiable truth.

"Damn it," he growled. With pugilistic force, he rammed his foot against the couch, propelling it into an unsuspecting side table and nearly upsetting a lamp. The lamp shimmied and swayed but somehow managed to remain upright in spite of the blow.

With the stamina of a deflated balloon, Sam sank down into the arm chair beside the couch. How had he let this happen? More importantly, why had it happened? Happiness, always so elusive for Sam, had been within reach and in a move that probably shouldn't have surprised him, the duplicitous hands of Fate had snatched it away from him. After all, it had happened before—more than once, in fact.

Sam ran a desperate hand through his hair, clutching at the ends as he tried not to collapse beneath the weight of his regret. He regretted that he'd ever started a relationship with Marlo when he knew he was still in love with Andy. He regretted that he'd allowed his unfulfilling relationship with Marlo to carry on as long as it had. He regretted that he hadn't told Andy how he felt sooner.

Now, here he was alone, left with nothing except the prospect of being tied to Marlo and their baby for the rest of his life. He couldn't even begin to fathom how he was going to handle any of it without Andy. She gave him a tomorrow, and without her, his life stretched ahead of him like a long, dull processional of lackluster days and painful nights.

Suddenly, this ugly, new existence was his future, and he wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. How in hell had everything changed in just two days? As Sam looked around his living room, a daunting sadness settled in around him, manifesting itself in one small, lifeless groan. Dropping his head back against the chair, he shut his eyes. With that one brief glance around the room, he'd seen too much. Like a trail of breadcrumbs, tiny pieces of Andy were scattered everywhere. If she didn't come back, they'd merely be reminders of what he'd had before time suddenly ground to a halt and his life stopped moving forward.

So many fragments of her were there with him. Andy's favorite grey T-shirt rested in a crumpled heap atop the coffee table—a messy reminder that when she'd tugged it over her head and tossed it aside, maintaining a tidy living space had been the last thing on either of their minds. If he'd only realized that that time could potentially be one of the last that they shared together, he might have insisted that they linger on the couch a while longer. If he'd known what the future held, he probably would have tried to keep her there forever.

And it wasn't just the T-shirt. Beside it in the small dish on the coffee table, there were several of those toffee candies Andy liked so much. Personally, Sam didn't care for them, but they'd always left her mouth tasting like syrup and her breath smelling like caramel, and that was something he liked very much. Leaning forward, he slipped one out of the dish and popped it into his mouth. As it began to dissolve against his tongue, he closed his eyes again and tried to make himself believe she was sitting next to him.

Even the blanket on the back of his chair had been folded up and left there by her because, as she explained, his apartment always felt like an ice house (and just to be clear, she wasn't talking about one of the nice ones with a space heater inside). As soon as they'd sit down in the living room to relax, she'd huddle up beneath the blanket and insist that he join her, claiming that she needed his body heat to help her warm up. How many times had he felt the sweat beading on the back of his neck as she pulled the blanket tightly around them and pressed herself into his chest for warmth, declaring that finally, she was beginning to warm up? At some point it had occurred to Sam that maybe Andy just wanted to be held by him. If that were true, he wondered that she didn't just ask for what she really wanted. Then again, he could have turned up the heat in his apartment, too, but he never did.

Now, as Sam relaxed against the back of the chair again, he found that if he dropped his head to the right, he could just make out the scent of Andy's vanilla body lotion on the blanket. It was enough to soothe his disheveled nerves. The day had been long, and he was so tired . . . . He couldn't even begin to think about sleeping in his bed or even on the couch—not without her. So if sleep overtook him, it was going to happen in the chair. With a groggy determination, he admonished himself not to move a single muscle for fear that he might lose Andy's scent. And that was all that was keeping him going at present because when it was gone, he was pretty sure he'd never have it back again.

"Hey, man," Oliver said carefully, watching as Sam entered the Staff Sergeant's office and pushed the door closed with an apathetic flick of his wrist. "How're you holding up?"

Sam dropped into the chair across from Oliver. "I'll assume that's a rhetorical question."

"Have you been getting much sleep, Brother?"

"Plenty," Sam informed him with a rueful smile. "I think it was an hour last night and, ah, forty-five minutes the night before that."

"McNally still won't talk to you, huh?"

"Won't talk to me . . . hardly looks at me . . . ."

"It's only been four days," Oliver reminded him. "How about Marlo? Have you spoken to her?"

"No," Sam said firmly, feeling defensive at the suggestion that he should be thinking about something other than his up-ended relationship with Andy. He was tired. He was emotionally spent. Thinking about Marlo and the bomb she'd dropped on him was more than he could handle. "Why would I talk to Marlo?"

"Well, there's the obvious . . . . Don't you think you need to talk about how all of this is going to work?"

"I haven't seen Marlo since she cornered me in the parking lot, if that answers your question. Right now, she's not my primary concern. Marlo's had months to adjust to this," Sam insisted in a tone that was surly, at best. "It's McNally I'm worried about."

Oliver exhaled slowly and leaned back in his chair. "I honestly don't know how you're handling this, Sammy. A lesser man would be falling apart right now."

"And a better man wouldn't have screwed up his life in the first place." For perhaps the hundredth time that week, Sam fought against the memory of the night Marlo had told him about the pregnancy. He'd been stunned by her admission, incapable of believing it was anything other than a bad joke. When he quickly realized she wasn't kidding, he'd waited for the "benevolent but"—a singular utterance that would absolve him of any responsibility for creating a child with a woman who was not Andy McNally. When Marlo offered no such addendum, he'd reached the inevitable conclusion that she must feel certain that he was the father. And that meant he probably was. As soon as that had all been neatly compartmentalized in his mind, Sam's immediate thought had been Andy. He was going to lose her.

"I can't lose her, Oliver," he muttered as he leaned forward and dropped his face into his hands. "What should I do, man?"

"Just give her time. This is McNally. She loves you."

"Time," Sam scoffed as he raised his head to look across the desk at Oliver. "And you think she'll come around. Are you sure she won't just take off?"

Oliver tapped his fingers against the desktop. "She might," he conceded. "But if any woman is going to stick with you through a thing like this, it's McNally. No one loves you the way she does."

Sam sighed. "So you think I should just back off for now?"

"Now, I didn't say that. You've got to let her know that no matter what, you're still in this. She needs to feel like you still want to be with her. You do still want to be with her, don't you?"

"Of course I do," Sam snapped. "I love her."

"Then just make sure she knows that."

"Easier said than done," Sam grumbled.

"I didn't say it would be easy. You'll probably have a lot of doors slammed in your face before she ever comes around and agrees to let you back in. Just give her the time she needs to sort it all out, and when she's ready to listen, you make sure she knows that she is, and will always be, a priority in your life."

"So you think she'll eventually come back?"

"I don't know, Brother, but for your sake, I hope like hell she does because you don't do well when she's not in your life."

"You can't avoid him forever," Chloe said from the desk adjacent to Andy's. "I mean, you could, but it would be super awkward."

"We're working," Andy reminded her through gritted teeth. "Besides, what am I supposed to do? I'm not ready to talk about it."

"It's been a week. When do you think you'll be ready?"

"I haven't figured that out yet. It's not exactly a conversation I'm dying to have." Andy looked down at the report on the desk in front of her, hoping Chloe would take the hint and stop needling her about Sam.

"He's watching you, you know . . . ."

"I know."

"He's always watching you," Chloe informed her. "Probably drives by your place at night, too, if I had to guess."

"I don't care," Andy insisted. "And stop looking up at his office. He'll know we're talking about him."

"Well, I think it's sweet. He misses you."

"It's not sweet," Andy said abruptly. "He's having a baby with another woman. That is not sweet."

Undeterred by the venom in Andy's statement, Chloe said, "That's not the sweet part. It's sweet that he so obviously misses the connection you two have."

"Should've thought about that before he made a baby with someone else . . . ."

"Come on, Andy. Things happen. You know that if it were up to Swarek, he wouldn't have chosen this either."

"He did choose," Andy hissed. "He chose to be with Marlo instead of me, and now he's going to be tied to her for the rest of his life. It's all a very permanent reminder of a time I'd rather forget."

"Then maybe you should transfer."

Andy narrowed her eyes at Chloe. "You think I should leave?" she asked, realizing with some surprise that leaving was the furthest thing from her mind. In fact, she hadn't even considered it. "I'm not doing that anymore."

"Then talk to Swarek."

"Nope. Not ready yet."

"Just talk to him," Chloe groaned, dropping her head to the desk in mock frustration.

"And then what?"

"Well, one of two things will happen. Either you'll end the relationship for good or you'll agree to try and work through this together. You can't stay in limbo forever, Andy."

"I like limbo. What's wrong with limbo?"

"What's wrong is that it can't last. You're just trying to avoid getting hurt any more than you already have been. The thing is, eventually, something is going to happen, and when it does, it will hurt. You can choose to wait for that to come along or face it head on right now."

"What if it's Door Number One and the answer is that we're done? I don't think I'm ready for that kind of finality."

"Then, tell him that. You need to have this discussion with Swarek."

"Maybe," Andy responded hesitantly. "Has anyone ever told you that you're annoyingly persistent?"

"Sure. It's one of my best qualities," Chloe chirped.

"So is he still watching us?"

One week, five hours and thirty minutes, Sam noted as he looked at the clock on his stove. That's how long it had been since he'd spent any meaningful time in Andy's presence. Other than a few abbreviated conversations about work-related issues, she'd barely spoken to him.

He'd expected the separation to be bad. He'd expected to feel empty and alone. But this was beyond any pain he could've imagined. The distance was literally killing him. He wasn't getting any sleep, he didn't feel like eating, and he had run out of beer in his refrigerator.

When the knock finally came, Sam almost didn't hear it. It came in the form of two muffled thumps that were barely distinguishable for what they were. He heard them and froze, waiting for confirmation. At length, he heard two more knocks—this time, slightly more distinct but still uncertain in their delivery. Crossing the room quickly, he reminded himself that it could be anyone. Instinctively, however, he knew who was on the other side of his door.

At the sight of Andy on his doorstep, Sam tried to remain calm. He certainly hoped he didn't look as addled as he felt.

"Hi," she said weakly as she studied him intently from her side of the door.

Stepping back to give her the space he assumed she needed, he asked, "Are you coming in?"

When she nodded slowly and crossed the threshold, he resigned himself to the fact that one way or another, he was about to find out whether Andy McNally was going to be a part of his future. Of course, before they even got to that point, he expected a long, emotional conversation that was liable to leave them both feeling raw and exposed. He expected to hear how much she resented him for what he'd done to them. He even expected her to say she hated him. Expectations could be tricky things, though, and as he watched her enter his apartment, fully expecting that she would slip past him and settle herself on the couch or at the table, she shocked him by walking straight into him and wrapping her arms around his neck. Burying her face against him, she simply stuck. That was the only word Sam knew to describe it. In an instant, his arms were around her, and Sam's only problem was that he couldn't tighten them enough.

It wasn't at all what he'd expected her to do, but thankfully, it was what he most needed from her. Her scent was overpowering, and she felt amazing. He'd missed how good she felt in his arms. To Sam, she often seemed so soft and fragile, but at the same time, there was also an incredible strength about her that fascinated him.

"Come sit down," he whispered into her hair, nudging her toward the couch. She didn't fight him on it and seemed content to let him guide her toward the middle cushion instead of insisting on sitting at opposite ends of the couch. That's when Sam knew they had a chance, even if she couldn't see it yet.

"I'm glad you came over," he said, feeling clunky and awkward but determined. "I'm not sure what it means, but I like that you're here."

She looked at him sadly. "I'm not sure what it means either. I'm not okay with any of this—not by a long shot—but I wanted to see you." Sighing heavily, she asked, "Have you talked to Marlo?"

"Not since that night in the parking lot. But McNally," he said, taking one of her hands to emphasize his point, "I don't want to talk about her. Right now, this is about us."

"Sam, you're having a baby with her. It's not just about us anymore. It's never going to be about us again." As much as he'd been thinking those same thoughts for the past week, hearing her say them drove a knife straight into his heart. Seeing the wounded look in Andy's eyes, pushed it even deeper.

"Sam, I'm mad, sad, angry . . . . I just feel sick. And not to minimize what you're going through, but I don't even know what I'm supposed to do with all of this. This isn't the way it's supposed to be happening. This isn't the future I want."

"It's not what I want either. Do you think this is the way I pictured our lives together?"

"I don't know what you've pictured. We've never really talked about it. But it hardly matters now anyway because no matter what either of us saw, we're not going to get it."

"McNally, it still matters," he said, feeling the heat rising within him. "I want all of that with you—kids, a dog, a house, a family. And I'm sorry about Marlo's announcement, but it doesn't change the fact that I want my future to be with you."

"I wanted it, too," she said solemnly. "But no matter what happens now, it won't be special. You'll have gone through it all with her first."

"We can still have our first kid together," he insisted. "It will still be special. Our baby will be special no matter when it comes into the world."

When she didn't respond, his voice grew raspy as he repeated himself, "It will be special."

In a sad monotone, she said, "I just feel like so many other people get to be happy and we have to keep earning our happiness. This is not a normal situation, Sam. The odds of us surviving something like this are pretty bad."

"We have to try," he told her, feeling breathless and flattened.

"Why? Why do you want to try?" she demanded.

"Because I love you, and I need you with me. I know I'm asking a lot here, and it's not fair to you. But I'm doing it anyway because for me, there's no future that doesn't have you in it."

He could tell from her expression that she was softening. Thankfully, she was softening. "Sam, you're having a baby with Marlo. It hurts. It really, really hurts. Not just because it's happening but because of who it is."

"Why does it matter who it is?"

"Sam," she said impatiently, "you know what I mean."

"McNally, I promise you, I have no idea what you mean."

"She replaced me," Andy said sharply, biting off each word as it left her mouth. "And even when I was back—I was right here—you chose to stay with her. Now, if we somehow manage to push past all of this and stay together, I'll always have a reminder of that time. It's not just the baby. It's Marlo, too. She'll be with us for the rest of our lives."

"I never chose her over you," he said forcefully. "Marlo just . . . happened. Nothing about that relationship was right because it wasn't with you. I didn't love her." Sam raked a hand across his face. He didn't know how else to reassure her. He hoped she believed him when he said it, and even if she didn't, he hoped she'd give him the chance to show her how much he meant it.

"Sam, I love you—so much. For me, you've always been it," she said simply. "But this is something that I just don't feel equipped to handle. I can't stand by and watch you raise a child with Marlo. The whole idea feels lonely and pathetic to me."

"I'm not asking you to sit back and watch. I want you there. There's no way I can do this without you."

"I doubt Marlo would be okay with that. I'm sure the last thing she wants is to co-parent a child with another couple."

"It's the reality of the situation," Sam said with conviction, "and it's the only way I'm doing it."

"That's an easy thing for you to say, but all I keep seeing is you, Marlo and a baby with me on the sidelines waiting for the leftovers."

"Andy, I'm never leaving you behind. If you're willing to try, you're coming with me wherever this goes. I need you with me."

After that she lapsed into silence, and Sam figured she was thinking. Hoping that he'd said enough to convince her, he decided to ride out the silence and wait for a response. In truth, he was prepared to give her almost anything she wanted if it meant she was willing to stay and fight for them.

When she finally spoke, the hollowness in her voice nearly broke him, but beneath it, there was a tiny sliver of hope as she said, "I'll try."

"You'll try?"

"Yes. But I'm not making any promises."

"It's not a 'no,'" he pointed out.

"It's not a 'yes' either," she reminded him. "It's a 'we'll see what happens.'"

At length, Andy yawned and pushed herself up from the couch, surprising Sam when she said, "Time for bed. I'm exhausted."

"You're staying?"

"I said I wanted to try. This seems like a good place to start. Unless you don't want . . . ." she added hastily.

"No," he responded before she could rethink the idea and retract her offer. "I want you here with me tonight. There's never going to be a time when I don't want you here."

"Then, let's go to bed. I'm really tired." She gave him a small half-smile, and in her eyes he could see that she was as exhausted as he was.

As Andy wandered down the hallway to his bedroom, Sam could almost convince himself that the past week hadn't happened. But it had, and that meant there were fresh wounds that needed dressing. Some scars would be left behind, too, and there would undoubtedly be more discussions like the one they'd just had.

When he walked into his bedroom, Andy was already in bed with her back to him. Feeling mildly apprehensive, he approached the bed, wondering if he should offer to sleep on the couch. She must have sensed his hesitation because she looked over her shoulder at him and said, "Sam, hurry up. I'm cold."

Crawling into bed, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her back against his chest. "You're not cold," he whispered as he buried his face in the crook of her neck.

"No, I'm not. I just wanted you to hold me."