Without Them

"Maxine?" Aaron suggested.

"Oh my god…are you kidding?" Taylor laughed. "The poor thing!" It was the wee hours of the morning and Aaron and Taylor were just lying in their bed trying to think up baby names. So far they couldn't agree on anything.

Aaron turned on his side and laid a hand on her round midsection. He felt the baby stir under his hand and smiled. "She sure likes to move doesn't she?"

"She?" Taylor questioned. "How do we know it's not a boy?"

"Well, we don't but 'it' just sound so degrading. I don't want to call our baby 'it' forever." He explained.

"Okay…that's understandable. What about the name Logan for a boy?" Taylor said casually. Secretly she had always loved that name.

Aaron thought a moment. "What would his middle name be?"

"Aaron of coarse! Logan Aaron Pace. You have to admit it has a nice ring to it." Taylor turned onto her side to face Aaron with a serious expression.

"Logan Aaron Pace." He repeated. There was another silence. "I like it." He said with a semi-nod. Taylor face broke out into a smile as she reached over and pecked him on the lips. "Now let's just hope it's a boy so we don't have to come up with a girl's name!" Aaron joked. But their laughter was cut short by someone calling Taylor's name.

It was Stanley. He was complaining that he had re-broken his finger for the fourth time.

Taylor looked at Aaron sympathetically and he knew she had to go. She was a good doctor but he felt like he was loosing her all of the sudden. With Jack around she didn't have to do everything. In fact Jack did most of it. Without all of the parents, things just seemed to complicate themselves even more.

000

Marie sat on the beach watching the sunrise slowly over the horizon. Part of her was glad that Sawyer and Tina had taken Bailey for them and another half of her wanted to see a boat coming over the edge of the water to bring her family back. She felt very empty that morning for a reason unknown to her.

"Morning." She heard a whisper in her ear and then strong, warm arms wrapped themselves around her and she knew it was Will. She leaned back into his embrace and lost herself for a moment in time. Bailey never left her thoughts though.

000

"They left us! They fucking left us Hunter!" Christy yelled at him. He was incredibly immature about the whole thing. They had left two days ago and Hunter hadn't stopped with the jokes yet. "They left us for a better life and you know what? THEY'RE NOT COMING BACK!" Christy had had enough of the conversation and began to walk back towards the beach camp. Hunter's hand grazed her arm as she past him but she threw him off of her.

"Look, just because I'm not grieving the way you want me too is no reason to get upset." He said calmly after her. She turned around on the ball of her foot.

"What?" She asked confused.

"You heard me. The jokes…they're a defense mechanism. I don't know how to be sad like everyone else. To tell you the truth…I don't want to be sad like everyone else." Christy's eyes softened and her shoulders came down from their tense position. "In fact I'm not sad."

"You're not?" Christy asked amazed.

"No…I'm angry. Mad as hell that they're gone. Don't you think I realize that my parents left me and Noah because they love something more then us." He looked down at his feet. "Don't worry, when I'm not being an ass…that's all I think about."

Christy felt a pang of guilt in her chest for the things she had just said to him. "I'm sorry." He shook his head.

"S'okay. I understand that a few people are a little tire of me." Christy smiled a small smile at him as she walked up to him and hugged him.

"I'm not tired of you. I could never tire of you." She whispered in his ear. He smiled and gladly wrapped his arms around her waist in return.

000

Taylor was experiencing a rare lull in the whole doctor action so she went to find Aaron. She felt like she hadn't seen him in years, even if she had spent almost the entire morning with him.

She could find him at the caves so she figured he had found his way down to the beach. He was always fond of spending time down there with all of their friends. Come to think of it…she hadn't seen them in an even longer time then she had thought.

'God I am the worst friend on the face of the planet,' she thought to herself. 'Without everybody here…things are just spiraling out of control.'

She turned the corner of the path to head down to camp as she felt the living thing inside of her jump. She laid a hand on her bulging midriff was she walked.

"Taylor!" Someone called to her. She turned around to see which way the voice was coming from and saw Will behind her carrying a bunch of fish.

"Hey!" She yelled back. She waited for him to catch up with her and tucked a piece of blonde hair behind her ear.

"I haven't seen you in the longest time." He set down the fish to hug her. He pulled out and looked down at the object in his way. He looked back up to her. "You've gotten bigger." He stated flatly.

"Thanks." She said sarcastically. "You do know I'm going to get a lot bigger than this." She reported.

Will looked at her like she was crazy. How could she get bigger than she already was? But then his face softened and he tapped her arm playfully. "I'm just joking. You're actually quite smaller than Marie was a six months." He reached down and picked up the bundle of fish he had been carrying.

"You know…I think you and Aaron and me of coarse are the only ones who don't have to ask me how far along I am." She turned to him and looked at him sincerely. She could smell the dead fish he had cradled in his arms and it almost made her eyes water. She quickly turned away from him to get away from the stench.

There was a short silence before Will said something again. "So how are you handling being Head-honcho now?" She looked at him oddly again but couldn't stand the smell of the fish once again so she answered him while looking straight ahead of them.

"I'm not head-honcho. I'm just the girl who fixes everyone's nicks and scratches." She said humbly.

"More like the girl who does everything for everybody." He could see her lay a hand on her stomach. "You do way more than you think."

"I don't do that much. I mean look at yourself…catching fish!" She said straightforward.

"I'm only doing this because I know how. You do the hard stuff. Do you know how many people would be dead if you weren't here?" He waited for her to answer. "Pretty many of them."

Taylor smiled at the kind words from her friend. Then decided to change the subject. "So how are you and Marie getting along without Bailey? And Tina and Sawyer?" She heard Will sigh.

"I think I'm doing better than Marie. At least I know what we did was right and I can sleep at night know that." Taylor took from what he said that Marie wasn't being very healthy at the moment. She wasn't sleeping as well as she had been and eating just wasn't something she wanted to do.

"I'll have a talk with her. Tell her she needs to sleep and eat more than she needs to mope. I know it's hard to give up a baby and I can only image what that's like but she still has to think about herself." Taylor and Will could now see camp and went their separate ways, happy they got to see each other.

Taylor quickly found Aaron and went to spend some time with him and Noah.

Next Chapter:

Casey and Jack discover that without kids…they could either have a really boring life…or a really exciting one.

A/N: I figured I could do this for you since it'll be god knows how long before the next chapter update!