Chapter 83: Choice

Olivia looked at Alex staring at Ettienne, Ettienne staring at Alex, and said something quietly about being tired as she slipped out of the room and left the pair alone. Her quarters were right next to Alex's, and she went in, looking around.

It was sparse by civilian standards, but since her impressions of military housing had come from TV shows' depictions of tents and hard cots and military footlockers, compared to that this was nice. The bed, when she sat down, was firm enough to give her some support but not firm enough to aggravate the stitches between her legs, and she lay down with a sigh.

Now, in the quiet and privacy of her own room, she allowed herself to cry. The last three weeks had been overwhelming, between the kidnapping and Sandra's torture, her escape with Clayton that she really didn't remember much of because of the drug withdrawal. And because of Sandra—she simply hadn't been able to fight her aversion to being touched by female doctors since, but whenever Alex had come close she'd fought the urge to flinch. She knew Alex saw it, and understood, but Olivia hated herself for feeling that way.

And there was another possible complication. She'd missed her period; it should have started earlier this week but it hadn't, and combined with the slight nausea and the constant fatigue—of course, it could have just been the stress, and if it had been a light one she might have missed it in the heavy bleeding coming on the heels of Sandra's torture. But the other possibility, the one she couldn't help thinking about, was that she might be pregnant.

Her mind had retained little snippets of memory, like photographs, through the gray fuzziness of drug-induced hallucinations and pain, and one of those memories had been of excruciating pleasure-pain as Clayton came inside her, as she was forced to come around him, again and again and again. She didn't hold it against him; there was nothing he could have done, not with electricity applied; she remembered the April Troost case; April had drugged a wealthy man, gotten him alone in a hotel room, forced an ejaculation with an electric probe and used that to impregnate herself—then accused the guy of rape and blackmailed him later knowing there was no way to prove that he hadn't raped her; the baby's DNA would have come up as his.

She was conflicted; she didn't know how she felt. She hadn't been raped; Clayton was someone she knew, liked, cared about, and this wasn't his fault. It wasn't hers either. And even though her memories of Medellin FOB were fuzzy, she didn't remember having any discussions with doctors about contraceptives, so she assumed she wouldn't have gotten anything then. And she hadn't been at SouthCom all that long.

It was hard to believe that only four days ago she'd killed a man in Medellin and shot another. Already it seemed a lifetime away; when they really wanted to move someone or something, the military could be terrifyingly efficient.

Her problem was that if she was pregnant, there was only one person who could be the father; Clayton. And as much as she liked him, she didn't know him well enough to know how he was going to react in this situation. She didn't know if he was the traditional type of guy, who would want to marry her so that there would be a name on the birth certificate; didn't know if he even wanted kids. And there were her own insecurities; despite Elliot and Clayton himself telling her she'd be a great mom, would she really? How would she work and care for a baby at the same time? Being a single parent was hard; sure, she'd loved every minute with Calvin and his leaving had cut her like a knife, but Calvin had been old enough to be in school most of the day, and he was a pretty independent little guy already. A baby would be totally different. Could she handle it? How would she do it? Although it had hurt when Social Services had turned her down saying she had no close family and no support services, with Calvin she'd understood what they meant. She'd been worried about what Don would say about her leaving in the middle of the day because Calvin got in a fight at school.

Abortion and adoption was out of the question. If she was pregnant she wanted the baby. But after what Sandra had done to her, torn her and left all that scar tissue—could she stretch enough to have a baby? Would she want to jeopardize her life, and the child's, by trying?

She couldn't sleep, and after tossing and turning for what seemed like hours she finally got up. Usually when she had sleepless nights like this she would go for a walk to clear her head, and Allie had taken her on a quick tour of the base when they'd gotten here, so she knew where the recreation room was. Maybe a quick walk there and back would help.

She could feel the stitches between her legs pulling a tiny bit when she took long steps, so she took short ones. They'd given her a wheelchair, and she was supposed to use it for long distances but right now she needed the physical movement, the actual activity of walking, and so she took short baby steps down the halls and around the corners to the recreation room. And when she got there she found it wasn't empty.

Clayton looked up at the sound of hesitant steps, and saw Olivia hovering in the doorway. "Couldn't sleep either?" he asked with a rueful smile.

"No," she said, but her smile was slightly forced, and she looked like she had something on her mind. He didn't want to pry, but…"Come in and sit," he said, indicating the chair across the board from him. "I'm looking at this chess game Alex and I started and I really can't see how I'm going to win this one. She's got me backed into a corner and I think I'm stuck. Do you play?"

"A little, but Alex is better. Comes of being a lawyer; she can think strategically. I'm not as good at that as she is." She sat down in the seat he'd indicated, took a peek at the board and smiled. "Although even I can tell you're definitely not going to win this one. Alex has you neatly boxed in. You can't move without sacrificing something."

He groaned theatrically, happy to see even that ghost of a smile on her face. "Wonder if I can just reset the board and tell her someone knocked it over and we have to start the game over."

"I tried that. When she was trying to teach me to play. I got tired of her beating the pants off me all the time and I told her I knocked it over and we had to restart. She set up the pieces exactly how they'd been sitting when we'd last played." She laughed at Clayton's open-mouthed gape. "She has a photographic memory. She takes a mental snapshot of the board when we're done for the day so she can think it over later and plan a strategy. It's part of what makes her so good at chess and at her job. So you can forget about that plan, it's not going to work." Then she thought. "I don't know. Maybe she'll let you get away with it."

"I'm going to try it." Clayton reached out to start moving pieces back to their respective sides of the board. Olivia picked up the white knight and looked at it thoughtfully, then said, "Have you ever wanted kids?"

Clayton's mind tumbled head-over-heels and froze. He couldn't think for long moments, then… "Why are you asking?"

"Well…we were talking about Calvin, back there, and you told me I'd be a great Mom. Elliot said the same thing too. I was wondering if you'd ever thought about having kids yourself, and whether they'd fit in with your job."

Something about that didn't quite ring true for Clayton, but he put that aside and focused on the question. "I can't say I've never thought about it, but right now I can't really see myself with kids," he said finally, slowly. "I mean, it might be a possibility sometime down the road, but this project I'm assigned with right now is a very high-stress, high-mortality assignment, and even though I'm officially a desk jockey, that's no guarantee against getting hurt." He gestured to his broken leg. "So no, I don't want kids. Not now, anyway. And it's not a matter of the whole outside entanglement issue, if that's what you were going to say," he said as she opened her mouth to speak. "It's that we face real threats and it would be far too easy for someone to attack any children we might have in order to get to us. Velez kidnapped you to get to Alex; think about what you went through. There are monsters out there who wouldn't hesitate to do those sorts of things to a child—you of all people would know that better than anyone, you prosecute those monsters. And the thought of something like that happening to my child…" he shuddered. "I don't know if my military oaths would hold in that situation. I don't know if my people's oaths would either, come to think of it. We're all so close, so much like family that what affects one of us affects all of us. I actually think a great deal of our determination to help Alex was because we could see Ettienne fell in love with her."

"If it's any consolation, she's in love with him too," Olivia smiled at him. "She might not say it now, she might not even have consciously admitted it to herself yet, but she is in love with him. And I don't think it's going to be a casual thing with her either, not like it was with this one lawyer she went out with, once, Trevor Langan. Smarmy defense lawyer, I never could see what she saw in him, but she swore she was in love with him, even got ready to say yes if he popped the question to her but all of that ended when he hid his relationship with her in order to take on a very wealthy client that she ended up prosecuting. And even when he found out she was prosecuting he refused to drop the client."

"And that's a problem?" he didn't understand.

"As a prosecutor she doesn't get to choose who to prosecute; the DA decides that, and her only choice was to recuse herself. The DA at the time was a real hardass and would suspend her if she told him…and all Trevor had to do was to refer his client to another partner at his firm. And he refused. She recused herself, took the suspension and broke up with him. I never heard her mention his name again." She looked thoughtful. "I don't think it was the client, or even the case. She didn't mind the suspension—okay, maybe a little, but she was honest when she told Trevor that wasn't it. It was the fact that while she sacrificed the case, her spotless record, and her reputation for this, he wouldn't give up his retainer fee to save her that."

"Son of a bitch. His penalties were lower than hers but he wouldn't even give up that much?" Clayton shook his head. "Did she have that gun of hers then? If I'd been her I'd have shot him."

Olivia laughed. "Don't think she didn't! I think she had a mental image of his face on the targets at the range for months after they broke up!"

"Oh, were you the one who taught her to shoot? I wondered about that."

"Yes, Don and I took Alex to the range and taught her how to shoot. Then later when Velez threatened her life Don got out his old Academy piece and got the gun registered to her and expedited her permit. He's former military, so he's pretty responsible about his weapons and he wouldn't have given it to her if he wasn't sure she could shoot it." She smiled thoughtfully. "I don't see she's going to have the same problem with Ettienne not wanting to sacrifice something petty for her. On the way back I've seen him shorten his strides to match hers so he wouldn't accidentally walk past her and have to make her run to catch up. The only thing I'm worried about is that as she gets better she's going to get fed up with the fussing." She saw Clayton's look. "Well, that's what she would have called it before all this happened!"

She stood, took one last look at the chessboard. "So, my advice? Just accept that you're going to lose. She might let you get away with resetting the board, but then again she might not. And if she decides not to, there's this look she'll give you that says she knows you're cheating. And she'll try extra hard to wipe the board with you next game."

Clayton looked down at the board ruefully. "When you put it that way, I guess it'll be safer if I leave it alone. Liv—" but as he looked up he realized she was gone.

The question she had asked haunted him as he left the rec room and headed for his quarters. Why had she asked that?