Chapter 4

Sarah was in Alex's room, talking to her. Hr emotions were a bit mixed; with a bit of concern for Johnny on the one hand, and on the other, a sort of giddy glee at engaging in girl talk about a cute boy.

"So," asked Sarah, "how did this happen?"

"Well," Alex smiled, in spite of a lot of worry on her part as to how Johnny would take this new development, and about the future in general, "if you don't know how babies are made, then there is something seriously wrong, seeing as you have a kid yourself - and another on the way."

Sarah punched Alex lightly in the arm. "No, I mean, how did it come about that you two- er- got together?"

Alex looked at Sarah. She was unsure whether this would cause more trouble to explain than not, and deciding that either way, she had to know how Sarah would react to the information, decided to explain the situation.

"Well, after everyone had left, John looked so sad. I asked if I could spend the night, and he told me he would set up one of the guest bedrooms. He apologized for only having time to get me one gift. Then he just looked - so lonely."

Sarah's face turned down a little at that.

"I think he was looking at all of these families and realizing that he didn't have a family himself - well, not one that he was fully part of." his wasn't going well, she thought, as Sarah began a full-fledged frown. "He seemed so sad, so lonely. And I knew how he felt. I really have no family to speak of, and have spent more than one Christmas alone."

"That's too bad."

"Well, he was sad, and a little bit vulnerable, and suddenly I felt the loneliness flooding back as well. I haven't had the best of luck with boyfriends. I sort of creep most of them out."

Sarah looked at Alex and nodded. "The psychic thing, right?"

"Most of my visions are not literal, like John's. Although occasionally I get flashes like he does. But usually, I see symbolic images. Often in the form of ghosts - not real ghosts, I don't think. Just - symbols. Recently I saw - some disturbing symbols. But in any case, this power usually makes boys - " she fumbled for a word "-not want to be around." She hung her head a little shamefully. "On occasion I have - gone a lot further than I wanted to just so someone would stay with me for a few more hours."

Sarah looked at Alex with a growing level of pity, which Alex decided was worse than the guilt or regret or whatever she might have been experiencing hearing about John's loneliness.

"Well, to make a long story short, I suggested that we give each other - other gifts. He didn't get what I meant at first, until I started to unbutton his shirt and pull his arm to go upstairs."

Sarah asked without thinking: "and what next."

"A lady doesn't tell," Alex said, with a little bit of a fake English accent. "But Noelle is here, nine months later, so I think you can do the math."

"Oh, right. I'm sorry. How thoughtless."

"It's okay."

"So, what now?"

"That depends on a lot of things. But if he will allow it, I'd like to be near John for at least the next several weeks."

"Oh. You don't want - longer than that?" Part of Sarah had hoped that if Johnny found someone it would put the guilt she felt out of her head. The feeling that she had betrayed Johnny by not waiting. The feeling that he was alone, that he should be hers and she his, and that her marriage to Walt was slowly killing him. She no longer felt that there was any chance of them getting back together. She didn't really want it, anyway. Nor did she feel that there would any more dalliances, like that time shortly after his coma had abated. Nevertheless, she could not help but feel that Johnny was empty because of it, and that being around her and Walt was going to put him into an early grave. She felt a sense of doom around Johnny, a feeling that he had some sort of fatalistic curse over him. Sometimes she wondered if his attempts to use his powers to catch criminals and the like was driven by a death wish, and that his obsession with a politician was not ultimately about putting himself into a situation where he would get killed. He seemed so - hopeless a times. Somehow Sarah felt that he could be set right, and everything smoothed over, if he just was able to find someone else.

"I don't know. I don't know what John wants, either." She looked out. "But it might not be so bad, you know. To give up my freedom and nomadic lifestyle for something that is... not so..." she fumbled for the right word "solitary. And now I don't have just myself to think about, either." She looked at Sarah. "I don't know. Maybe that's why I wasn't more... cautious. Maybe I wanted to get pregnant. To have a baby and have a reason to settle down."

Sarah thought back to when J.J. was conceived. She suddenly remembered that Johnny had been very, very careful about making certain that he used contraception - except that night, when he and she had practically set out to make a baby. She wondered - had he been uncautious? Was it possible that he, like Alex, might have secretly harbored a desire to be - trapped was the word she hit upon.

Meanwhile, Walt was wondering much the same thing. He had asked Sarah a few times about her previous relationship with Johnny, before Johnny had come out of the coma, and had understood pretty clearly that J.J. was not "an accident;" although he wasn't absolutely certain that Sarah had intended to become pregnant that night, it was fairly clear that neither party cared to prevent it.

He had also found out that Johnny had usually been the one to remind Sarah about contraception rather than vice versa. This had happened in a usual roundabout way, when he had reminded Sarah himself and she casually mentioned that he was being a lot like Johnny. This back when Johnny had been practically a corpse; no threat to the relationship and so such statements had not bothered him too much. Such revelations had faded rapidly into non-existence after Johnny's recovery, and in particular after Walt and Sarah's reconciliation.

Of course, Walt sensed that Johnny was a different man since the coma and the subsequent powers and burden it had brought him. But nevertheless, he couldn't bring himself entirely to believe that Johnny had been so careless as to forget something as important as birth control. Which left two options: either Alex was lying, to Johnny about being protected or about the baby's paternity, or else Johnny had subconsciously wanted not to be careful. He leaned toward the latter explanation.

The question that remained, he realized with some concern, was whether Johnny actually cared for Alex per se, or whether she had just happened to be there when Johnny needed to make a connection to someone, anyone.

More importantly, though, the thought occurred to him - why hadn't Johnny seen this coming?