No Turning Back
By
Denise
Sam sat in her living room staring at the two items lying on her coffee table. They sat there, mocking her with their very presence, two white squares on a dust covered surface, promising salvation and damnation in equal measures. Unable to keep staring at them, she closed her eyes.
Rusty, noisy machinery.
Echoing voices.
Dripping pipes.
Sweating bodies and straining muscles.
Mumbled endearments and fumbling caresses.
Their meetings were illicit and forbidden but they didn't care. They were drawn to each other, physically, mentally.
Some felt that they were foolish, that it was not wise to waste their precious resting time with each other. Carnal relations were deemed wrong, a selfish waste of resources.
For the good of the workers, they should have stopped, but they didn't.
They couldn't.
Sam opened her eyes, still feeling calloused fingers trailing across her skin, warm lips nibbling at her neck.
She remembered him inside her, filling and stretching, the fabulous friction bringing her pleasure that was only made better by its forbidden nature.
She'd been happy there, even with the subsistence rations and hard labor. She'd been happy, content, loved.
She leaned forward and picked up one of the items, the narrow rectangular shape fitting easily in her hand. She hadn't even realized it, not until a fateful lunch conversation.
Janet sat gingerly in the commissary chair, sighing softly as she reached into her pocket.
"You ok?" Sam asked, frowning at her friend.
"Just my favorite week of the month," Janet said wryly, popping two brown pills into her mouth. Sam stared as she reached for her water to wash them down. "Just bad cramps," Janet clarified, interpreting Sam's stare as one of concern.
"Right," Sam said, grasping for something to say. "That sucks." She thought back, her mind doing the math as she ticked off the weeks. She'd been due to start during the mission to P3X118. She remembered that. Remembered cursing the timing and packing the necessary supplies. But she hadn't started. Her memories as Thera might be fragmented but she knew that much. They'd been stranded for six weeks and she'd been home for one. And still she hadn't had her period.
Sam looked at the narrow little device in her hand. Missing her period didn't necessarily mean that she was pregnant. She'd missed it before, usually when she was tired or stressed. Hell, sometimes she skipped a month when she skipped too many meals.When she'd defended her thesis for example. And it'd taken a year after Jolinar for things to get back to normal.
Neither of those times had she even considered that she'd been pregnant.
His tongue caressing her nipple, flicking across its pebbled surface. Sucking and fondling while one hand did marvelous things at her core.
But things were different this time. Incredibly, horribly different.
She laid her hand on her stomach aware that she might not be alone. There could be life there, a tiny little collection of cells creating by the merging of two bodies.
Could be.
Or there might be nothing. It could be a false alarm. A mistake. Her body just reacting to stress.
She looked at the pregnancy test. She could know for sure. It would just take ten minutes. Ten minutes and she could make a fully informed decision. Know if she was pregnant. Know if what she was thinking of doing was what some called a crime, an unpardonable sin.
But did she want to know?
There was a certain appeal to oblivion. She could just ignore it. It wouldn't go away but…no, actually it would go away.
She leaned forward, picking up the small envelope. Two little pills and it would all go away.
Could she do it? Oh, she could, but should she do it? It wasn't just hers, it was his too. If she was pregnant, if there was a—it was half his. Didn't she owe him the right of knowing? Yeah, right. Tell him he could be a father again and then what? Start looking for a house with a white picket fence and a dog? See if the Academy Chapel was open? Get ready for joint court-martials. Maybe they could have adjoining cells.
What if she didn't keep it?
He'd hate her then. Hate her for killing the--hate her for doing it. She didn't want him to hate her and she knew that he didn't love her, not that way. Things were finally getting back to normal and she didn't want to lose that. She didn't want things to change.
And she might not even be pregnant. That was a very real possibility. Even people that were trying to conceive sometimes tried for months or years. It was sort of silly to even think that it had happened after a few…a couple…hell several times.
In fact, there was a very good chance that she wasn't pregnant. She'd probably just missed her period because of the stress and bad food. It was actually a natural defense mechanism of the body.
She might be taking the pill for nothing. And she'd know, if she'd just take the test.
But then she'd know. Did she want to know? Maybe she'd rather be blissfully unaware. Always have that shadow of a doubt. Always have a bit of denial to fall back on.
It was just good medicine. Even Janet said so. That time when she'd burned her hand, Janet had given her antibiotics to take even though Sam hadn't shown a single symptom of infection. Prophylactic treatment, she'd called it.
This was just the--it was a lot more than an infection.
There were no do-overs. No retakes. She could never take it back, never change her mind.
But wasn't she used to making decisions like this? Hadn't she been trained—but not for this.
She knew how to wire explosives. She could fly a space ship, come up with a strategy to outsmart a platoon of Jaffa, but she didn't know what to do with her own life.
Kill it or keep it. Her choices were as stark as that. Presuming that there WAS an it. It could be a figment of her imagination.
O'Neill knocked up his second.
They've probably been doing it for years.
She screwed her way to the top.
Looks of contempt mingling with looks of pity.
Maybe the colonel wanted to be a father again, maybe he didn't. Maybe he'd hate her, hate feeling trapped, forced into fatherhood.
Presuming he believed it was his, presuming he wanted anything to do with it, with her.
What the hell was she going to do with--What? Drop it off at daycare on her way to go off-world? Risk orphaning it every time she stepped through the gate?
Could she do that? Could she continue to do her job if half her attention was back at home? Now and for the rest of her life. Could she even bring a child into a world that was always in imminent danger of being destroyed or invaded?
Could she handle raising--hell, sometimes it was all she could do to take care of herself. Was she even qualified to take care of someone else?
Would that be fair? There was a reason that the closest thing to pets that she had was a window full of houseplants.
She was undependable and unreliable and what right did she have to condemn some innocent life because of her mistake. Because she couldn't keep her pants on and her knees together.
Presuming that there was a life. She could be worrying about nothing. Mountain out of a molehill. Much ado about nothing.
Before she could change her mind she dropped the pregnancy test and tore open the pill packet. She dumped it out into her hand and tossed it to the back of her throat. She leaned forward and picked up a glass of water, washing the pill down.
Tears streamed down her face as she mourned the child that maybe never was and definitely never would be.