The chapel was usually sweet, small and cozy when the sunlight poured through the western windows, but today it was gray with weak light from the fog. As if even the ocean was in mourning. Though it was full of people, the chapel was unnaturally quiet, as if no one in the assembled crowd could find the words to speak. People were crowded into the back of the church, those who came late standing up, forming a line of dark clothing that encircled the pews.

Sean looked over the faces surrounding him from his position as pallbearer. Roger was on his right, he was still crying, but unlike his father, he seemed to have no shame showing it. He patted Sean on the back, clasping his shoulder and giving him a half smile as he wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. Ethan was on his left, quiet and composed in his dark suit. Sean reached out and took his hand, holding it for a moment before Ethan pulled him in to hug him.

He couldn't help liking the Baxter family. Roger was always making his parents laugh, so few people could do that, and Ethan was a friend. Someone who actually understood what it was like to grow up with parents that everyone knew and looked up too regardless of what they were really like. They had connected immediately, each knowing the burden of living up to a legacy. Michael, Mark, and Ben Evans were the other pallbearers. He knew Casey had asked his dad too, knowing that Alex had been one of his oldest friends. But Gregory had declined and Ben took his place. Sean still wasn't really sure why.

Caitlin was crying as the music from the organ echoed out from the pipes in the back of the chapel. Bette was next to her, uncharacteristically dressed in black and dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief.

"It's going to be one of those funerals where no one can wear makeup cutie," she had explained when she found him before the service. "Alex was just that special to all of us. And too young. Far too young." Then she hugged him. Sean was certain he had been hugged more today then the rest of the last few years. Everyone was touching each other, clinging to each other because they had been reminded how fragile their own lives were.

Casey stood next to Father Antonio, he still looked stunned. As if all of it was a horrible dream that he would wake up from at any moment. He hadn't been Casey after his mother died. The joy and confidence was gone from his face, as if his inner sunlight had been clouded out. The Father had a hand on Casey's shoulder, reminding him that life was still out there for him without saying a word. He couldn't imagine loosing his mother. Watching her fall to cancer in just a few short weeks like that. Alex had been so alive and then she was gone.

Olivia didn't have Alex's strength, making her seem all the more precious to her son. She hadn't taken her face out of Gregory's shoulder since the service began. Maybe that was why his father had passed on the position as pallbearer. He had known Olivia would need him. His arm was around her and Sean felt better knowing she was safe. Just months ago, he wouldn't have trusted her to his father. It was a testament to how much Gregory had changed that now Sean wouldn't have trusted her to anyone else. She needed his father to be strong for her, and Gregory needed her to cry. Mom had a way of expressing the feelings dad couldn't let out. Maybe that was love for them.

Now a lone violin filled the chapel with sound, rich and full but full of bittersweet goodbye. Sean didn't know the tune, but Roger leaned forward to whisper to him. "Ashokan Farewell, Alex requested this in her will. I've always thought it was a beautiful song." Sean turned back to the coffin, taking his corner of the pale blue silk that covered it. They folded it neatly, military fashion into a triangle. Roger stepped forward to hand it to Casey as the fiddle was joined by a guitar. When Roger returned it was time to bear the coffin out of the church, back to the hearse that would carry her to the cemetery.

Sean stepped into his place, turning forward to the crowd in time to see his mother get up and hurry towards the back of the church. Dad was a step behind her, catching up and making her safe in his arms before they disappeared into a back hallway. As he lifted up the coffin with the others, he hoped she was all right. Bette had mentioned her feeling sick again this morning, but Gregory would take care of her. Sean trusted that.

Olivia dropped her purse as soon as she reached the bathroom, the clasp falling open and spilling the contents all over the stone floor. Gregory kept her from hitting the floor too quickly, guiding her and catching her shoulders. She had hoped to make it through the service without vomiting again, but her will had lost out to the rebellion of her stomach. He kept his hands on her shoulders, letting her decide when it was safe to lean back from the toilet. "Oh sweetheart…you were doing so well." He observed sympathetically.

Retching miserably, Olivia wasn't sure if the tears on her face were from being ill, or the sorrow of the funeral. She was letting Alex down, missing the end of the service to throw up in the bathroom. Worst of all, Gregory was missing it too and all because she couldn't control her own body. His hands left her shoulders, returning after a moment with his cool, wet handkerchief.

He started with her eyes, taking the tears away before cleaning the fluid from her mouth. "It's all right sweetheart." He promised as he helped her to sit on the floor, back against the wall. "You're all right now Liv."

She couldn't help noticing that his pants were dusty from the floor. His hands were warm and comforting as they chased her nausea away. "Rinse and spit." He ordered firmly, pressing the paper cup to her lips. Gregory had to keep her trembling fingers in line as she followed his orders, spitting the water and the terrible taste back into the cup. "That's a good girl."

"I'm sorry." Olivia managed to whisper finally. "You should be out there, watching the service."

Gregory disagreed as he kissed her forehead. "The service will continue without me. Alex wouldn't forgive me if I left you alone."

Mentioning Alex brought a renewed burst of tears from her already swollen eyes. Gregory hushed her, kneeling in front of her and holding her close to his heart until the new torrent started to abate. "I can't believe she's gone." Olivia choked out. "She was just at the ball, smiling, beautiful. Oh darling, how can this be happening?"

He didn't have an answer, not even for his own pain. It would have to be enough that he was here. For Olivia, it seemed to be, as she slowly quieted down. Her fingers found his hands and held on. Gregory's hands were always so warm in contrast to her cool ones. Keeping her close with one arm, Gregory started retrieving the lost items from her purse. Lipstick, house keys, sunglasses, even her cellular phone, all of it had been scattered when she dropped it.

Leaning forward, he caught the purse itself and pulled it up towards him to replace the contents. It was there, on the bottom of her purse, mocking him because they had both forgotten about it. He dropped her things back into the purse, but caught thin plastic with his fingers and pulled it out. "We were going to take this a few days ago, weren't we?"

Olivia nodded, her chin still trembling. "Right before the hospital called. I completely forgot I even had it in my purse."

Gregory tapped his fingers on the pregnancy test thoughtfully. "Maybe we should take it. Your symptoms certainly haven't gone away."

Struggling up from the floor, she took a few tentative steps before catching the counter for support. "We can't do it now." Olivia insisted weakly as she turned back to face him. "This isn't the place."

"Where else?" He asked softly, a tiny bit of joy creeping into his haunted brown eyes. "Alex would understand. She knew we were trying-" He embraced his wife, feeling the breath catch in her chest. "Remember how she was teasing you?"

Olivia nodded, resting safely in his arms as she ran out of tears. "She thinks I'm cute when I'm pregnant." Finding some strength in her indignance, she disagreed firmly. "I look like hell when I'm pregnant. Everyone knows that."

"Hell is in the eye of the beholder Liv." Gregory's smile was almost enough to make her find new tears as he pressed the pregnancy test into her hand. "It just takes a few minutes doesn't it? Maybe we'll salvage something about this terrible day."

Olivia tried to give it back to him, but he folded her fingers over it firmly.

"For me." He cupped her chin and tilted her face up to his. "Please."

"What if it comes out negative?" Her bottom lip shook slightly and she tried to break eye contact. "I don't think either of us could handle that kind of disappointment today."

"Why are you so convinced it'll be negative?" Gregory's fingers caressed her neck, feeling her pulse race beneath his fingertips. "Not even you could 'just have the flu' for this long."

"There are other things that could make me nauseous Gregory." Turning away from him, Olivia studied her reflection in the mirror with mild disgust. "It could just be stress. There's been a lot going on lately." She made her excuses weakly, wetting her fingertips and brushing stray pieces of hair back into the tight twist on the back of her head.

"Let me." Gregory pulled her hands away, taking over with steadier fingers. "Close your eyes." He requested gently, rinsing out his handkerchief and taking it to her face gently. "Maybe you're right. It was all useless, especially those three days you spent in bed with those horrible fertility drugs-"

Olivia's eyes snapped open in surprise. "How do you know about that?" She demanded as Gregory smiled at her knowingly. "Did Roger?"

"Hold still." He shut her eyes again with his hands. "It's going to be nearly impossible to make you look human again if you won't hold still Olivia." The reprimand in his voice was gentle, almost amused. She had gone to so much trouble for him. The injections had made her completely miserable, but instead of blaming him for wanting a child, she had tried to hide her suffering.

"Roger didn't tell me." Gregory wondered again just what she would do if she learned about her first round of fertility drugs. "I never would have let you take them." And he wouldn't have. He had seen the fear in her eyes when her weakness overtook her. He couldn't have asked her to do that again. His guilt wouldn't have let him. "Your other accomplice confessed."

He had to pause and find his way past the knot in his chest. "Alex thought I needed to know just how much you wanted to make me happy and once I knew where to look, I found the needles in the garbage by the bed."

Olivia made a face as she remembered how nervous the injections had made her, and he chuckled as he ran his fingers along the line of her cheek. "I admire you Liv. I don't think I could have given myself those shots in your place. Not if I had known how wretchedly ill they were going to make me." He admitted as he let her look at her reflection again.

"I didn't know it was going to be as bad as it was." She confessed in return as she studied the paleness of her face in the mirror. The improvement was slight, but her appearance recovered hundred times more when she managed to smile. "Alex volunteered to help me. She understood what it was to love you-" After all, she was the other person in the world who had known what it was to love Gregory Richards, and she had given that up so Olivia could have him. Now, with Gregory's hands cupping her face and his feelings for her naked in his eyes, she wasn't sure if she would have been able to give him up if their positions were reversed.

"I made her promise not to tell you-" She continued, the words falling together easily now that they were both being so honest. "I wouldn't even have asked her, but she insisted that all the dammed chemotherapy treatments had given her a lot of practice with needles."

Gregory's eyes stung as he caressed the side of her face. He remembered them both hiding Olivia's injections from him. Alex comforting Olivia, sharing her resolve to give him a baby. Failing to speak, he just kept touching her, taking his comfort in the softness of her skin.

Olivia found her voice after she took a deep breath. "She thought we were, our foolishness about having a baby, one of the most romantic things she had ever seen. We have such beautiful children; why not try for another one?" And they did, Caitlin and Sean were wonderful, amazing human beings.

Now that they were alone, and he no longer had an appearance to maintain, he could let himself cry. Olivia reached for him this time, starting to realize just how completely she possessed him. How different things between them had become once he wanted her again. When Gregory looked up from her shoulder, tears had escaped his control. Without speaking she kissed him, taking the pregnancy test and locking herself in the bathroom stall.

He put his face in his hands and sighed heavily, feeling his whole body shudder. Picturing the light Alex brought into a room when she smiled only made the dull ache in his heart sharpen. The world was a cruel, truly sadistic place. The world had Cole St. John. Olivia's pregnancy would just put another person he loved in the line of fire. Suddenly Gregory didn't want to know. It was better that they ignored her symptoms, just as she had been doing all along.

He looked up from his hands, ready to call her back and admit he was wrong to push her into the idea, but Olivia was already setting it on the sink. Washing her hands and looking at him with a new sense of serenity. "Darling, can you time three minutes? I didn't put my watch on this morning."

Gregory hit the tiny gold button on the side of his watch and watched the tiny black hand tick off his future, one second at a time. She sounded so calm, like they were just waiting for something in the kitchen at home. Envious of her quiet reserve of strength, he watched her silently as she dried off her hands. "Good thing I remembered to wear mine."

Olivia returned to him, wrapping his arms around her stomach, resting her head back on his shoulder as they both determinedly kept their backs to the test on the counter. Undoing the clasp and removing his watch from his wrist, she covered the face of his watch in her hands. "Watching the hands go round makes them seem slower."

He agreed as he kissed the soft lilac scent in her hair. "What if my watch stops?"

"Then we'll have to start counting." She answered impishly, finding the humor to tease him. "I don't think you've ever looked this nervous Gregory." All the ways up from his fingers, his muscles were tight and even his face was tense. "Where's that law school calm of yours?"

"I forgot to put it on this morning." Gregory replied quietly as she realized that his fingers were the ones trembling now. "It was right there on the table next to your watch-"

Olivia peaked at the hands on his watch, careful not to let him see through her fingers. Two minutes and forty seconds. She let his hands rub gently over her stomach and waited in silence, feeling even the air around them grow heavy with impatience. Discovering Gregory's hands were sweating made her start to giggle. "You're nervous." She observed, remembering his hands being cold with sweat when he proposed. "I'd almost forgotten you can even get nervous."

Fidgeting with the buttons on her jacket, he leaned back against the counter and forced himself not to turn around and watch the test develop. As if he could oblige it to come out the way he wanted just by glaring at it. "I am." He admitted finally, squeezing her just a bit tighter. "I've never done this before."

Surprised, Olivia turned her head back to study him as she tried to remember how she had told him she was pregnant before. "You haven't." She repeated softly, watching the hand of his watch pass the nine. Two minutes, twenty-five seconds. "I never told you until I was sure."

"You waited just like this, by yourself, two–"He paused, wincing as he corrected himself, "No - three times?" New admiration softened the tension in his body and she snuggled back into him, relishing the intimacy of the moment.

"It used to take longer. Ten minutes instead of three." She explained as the humor of the situation started to reach her. "And tests back then were barely accurate, I never knew for sure until I went to the doctor. Compared to the horror of sitting in that tiny little room by myself, waiting for the results of a blood test, this is nothing."

Feeling the air slide out of his chest as Gregory sighed; Olivia peaked through her fingers at the watch again. One minute, fifty seconds. He fidgeted with her jacket again, slipping his hands inside to caress her stomach through her shirt and wondering if it really was their child causing all this trouble. If her lingering nausea and the dizzy spells that made it so hard for her to concentrate were actually the symptoms of pregnancy he had believed them to be for so long. "This is hardly 'nothing' Olivia."

When she concentrated, she could almost hear his heart pounding. It was deeply amusing to see him so far out of his element. Gregory flustered was something that happened so rarely. She had to enjoy it while it lasted. "Well that was unfair of me, wasn't it darling? I've left you completely unprepared for this kind of waiting. I really can't blame you for being nervous then, can I?"

Wondering where her sudden change of heart had come from, Gregory wished he could see her face. "Aren't you?"

Helplessly amused by her husband's new introduction to the situation, Olivia kept giggling and that only made him more agitated. "Not nearly as much as you are," she replied as she peered down at his watch again. One minute ticked past. "I really don't think I've ever seen you like this." Turning around in his arms to face him, she found wicked pleasure in the apprehension in his eyes.

"Besides, you know I just get sick to my stomach when I'm nervous, and we've already dealt with that." He had to agree. Olivia was past any type of nervous state for her and she continued to enjoy the way the tables had turned on him. "Really darling, you can face a courtroom full of people and defend a murderer without batting an eye, but one little pregnancy test has your hands shaking like leaves." Gregory impatiently tried to look at his watch, but she pulled it away, hiding it behind her back.

"This is different Olivia." Gregory insisted, pushing off from the counter and pacing the tiny bathroom. "This is you." He put his hands in his pockets and took them out again anxiously, still pacing like a caged tiger.

"Everything is different when it's you." Fighting with himself, he ran a hand through his hair, tearing it out of place. "Don't you see that?" Pointing wildly at the door, he caught her by the elbow. "The whole world could fall apart out there and all I'd be thinking about is you."

All her amusement faded away as the hand of his watch ticked past the twelve. Looking from it to her husband, Olivia set the watch down on the counter next to the pregnancy test and gave him her full attention. "That's a frightening thing isn't it?" She finished for him as she cupped his cheek with her hand. "When you look at someone and know, really know that as long as they're here, nothing else matters."

Tracing her lips with one finger, Gregory nodded and felt his anger fade away. "And you're right here."

Distracting him as she kissed him, Olivia stole the pregnancy test from the counter and held it behind his head to read it. Breaking the kiss as soon as he realized what she was doing, Gregory brought her hand around to look. He stared at it blankly for a second, falling halfway between laughter and tears. "I don't know what this means." He held it up to her, shaking his head dumbly. "I have no idea."

Weeping again, Olivia hugged him, nearly knocking him entirely off balance. "Oh darling, that's positive. We're pregnant. Oh god, we're pregnant."

Gregory knew the world was coming to an end right there as he instinctually returned her embrace. All his plotting, his manipulations, his betrayal of her trust, all of it had come to an end with their baby. All the wrongs, all the pain in the world couldn't hold a candle to his elation as he rested his hand on her stomach. Their baby, their future, the sum total of all his hopes was right there, beneath the flesh of the woman he loved. When he kissed her, sobbing with joy as he tasted the peace of her sweetness, he didn't have to believe in love or perfection. Because he knew them both.