Dream On

~Sequel to "Nightmare"~

Rating: PG-13; other chapters may be rated higher

Disclaimer: These characters are not mine, they belong to JJ Abrams and Bad Robot Productions.

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Part One

"I'm pregnant."

Michael stares at her from the bed, where he sits reading. "Are you kidding?"

Sydney's eyes fill with tears as she leans against the doorjamb to the bathroom that adjoins their room, shaking her head. She glances down at the pregnancy test in her hand, hoping that the plus sign has turned to a minus in the past thirty seconds. Of course it hasn't.

"But-- honey," Michael says tentatively, paling a little. "Gracie's only five months old."

"I know!" Sydney practically shouts. "Which means that this new one was conceived when she was only four months old, which means that when this new one is born, we'll have a newborn and a thirteen-month-old on our hands."

"Four months--" a sheepish smile spreads over Michael's face. "You think he or she was conceived in Jamaica?"

It is Sydney's turn to look sheepish. "I-- I wasn't good about taking my birth control pill down there, I mean, I didn't take it at the same time every day like you're supposed to. We were probably making this baby when I was supposed to be taking my pill, Michael!"

Michael hides a smile with his hand, but not before Sydney sees. "Sure, laugh it up," she says, biting her lower lip to keep the tears from falling. "You're not the one who's going to be home all day, every day with an infant and a one-year-old. We'll be lucky if Gracie is even walking by then, Michael, and she'll definitely still be in diapers. I'll have two children in diapers, Michael!"

"I'm sure Gracie will be walking," Michael says. "Emily walked at ten months, and Jack walked on his first birthday, remember?"

"Well, that's even better." Sydney tosses the pregnancy test in the general direction of the trash and flings herself down on their bed. "I'll be chasing her around all day."

"Maybe this one will be a boy," Michael blurts out.

Sydney rewards him with a Look.

"I mean, I don't care, as long as it's healthy," he says hastily. "But it would be nice, you know, to have two girls and two boys."

"Michael--"

"Maybe we can name him Sam," Michael says, a smile beginning to spread over his face. "Samuel Michael Vaughn."

Sydney sits up, mouth agape. "I'm still in the how did this happen stage, and you're already naming him-- if its even a him-- after yourself?"

"You don't want his middle name to be Michael?"

"That's not the point!" she stands and begins to pace. "I'm freaking out here, Michael, and you're probably already thinking about converting the guest bedroom into a nursery."

His eyes light up. "Maybe when we find out if it's a girl or a boy, we can paint the walls blue. If it's a boy, of course."

Sydney lets out a frustrated scream. "I don't think I can talk to you right now, Michael. I need to call someone who'll understand how freaked out I am about this."

Michael smirks. "I suggest you not call my mother, then."

"Yeah, and I'd better not call my father until I'm happy about this, or he'll make me want to kill myself," Sydney says, biting her lower lip. Her father has always been skeptical of her decision to stay home and raise the kids, but he's been willing to hold his tongue as long as she is happy; if he thinks she isn't happy, he'll make her feel even worse.

"Until you're happy about this," Michael repeats. "Does that mean you think you will be, eventually?"

"Oh, of course, Michael," she sighs, sitting on the edge of the bed next to him. "I mean…it's a baby."

He smiles, kissing her once, lightly.

"I just don't understand how this happened," she says. He slides over so she can lie down next to him. "I mean, I do, of course, but…I mean, we waited to have Jack until we'd bought the house and you'd made partner, then Emily came just under three years after him, and Grace three and a half years after her," she sighs. "We planned to have all of them, we wanted to have them. And I mean…I could handle a fourth, maybe, in a couple of years, if that's what we decided we wanted, but not now, not when Gracie's still a baby."

"Sydney, it'll be fine," he says, only now beginning to look a little worried by her attitude. "I promise it'll be fine. We can hire someone to help you out."

"No, Michael," she says, her eyes filling with tears all over again. "I don't want someone to help me out, I want to raise our babies ourselves."

"But Sydney--"

"I can do it," she insists. "People have twins all the time."

"Having twin newborns is different than having a four-year-old, a one-year-old, and an infant at home," Michael points out.

"A four-year-old, oh, God, Michael, Emily won't even be in school by the time this one gets here."

"She can go to preschool."

"Then I'll just have to bundle everyone up and drive her there, oh, Michael, do you know what a chore it is to go anywhere with babies?" she says woefully. "And I just gave away my maternity clothes, Michael, I gave them away."

"You'll buy new ones."

"We'll go broke."

"We won't go broke."

She sighs. "I know you're just trying to make me feel better, Michael, but I don't want to feel better right now, I want to freak out about this."

"Fine," he says, clicking off the bedside lamp. "Let's go to sleep."

"And I don't want to hire someone to help me, Michael," she insists. "Taking care of the babies is what I do, and if I can't even do that--"

"We'll see," he says softly. "How do you think you're going to carry around Gracie when you're seven or eight months pregnant?"

"I don't know," she says, the tears sliding down her cheeks for real now. "But people do this, Michael, they have babies a year apart."

He doesn't say anything, and she feels panic slice through her. "Don't they?"

"Of course they do," he says, rubbing her back comfortingly.

"Four babies. Four babies, Michael."

"Go to sleep, Syd."

It is then that they hear Gracie crying through the baby monitor, and Sydney moans. "Hear that? That sound's not going to go away for the rest of our lives."

"I'll go see what she needs," Michael says, kissing her cheek. "It's going to be fine, Syd."

She wishes that she felt so sure.