Chapter 2- A New Edition

"Hey…do these pants make me look fat?" Kate poked her stomach for the millionth time as she and Sawyer walked back to the truck having enjoyed a delicious truck-stop dinner.

"Sweetcheeks…I don't think they call it 'fat'…"

She turned on him, her eyes a little wide, "But…but I can't be showing already! I'm only…"

"Four months? Seems bout right to me." Sawyer put an arm around her shoulders. Before he knew what was happening he was slapped right across the face.

"This is your fault." Kate blazed.

"What? We used protection! It's only 99 effective, Freckles. Don't blame me for the faulty manufacturing of Trojans." He put his hands up in defense, her mood swings took some getting used to…he was beginning to think he needed to buy a cup in case she ever got any of her knee-jerk tendencies back.

"I blame the sperm that got through! What the hell is wrong with your sperm? Why can't it hit the latex like all the others? Why do I have to choose the one guy on the whole fucking planet with Mighty Sperm?"

"That any relation to Mighty Mouse?" He opened the passenger door for her and by the time she was sitting down she was mopey again.

"Sawyer…am I still going to be pretty when I'm fat?"

"I don't think they call it 'fat', Freckles…" He tried again.

"So you DO think I'm fat!"

Times like these Sawyer wondered what drug he'd been on when he told her to keep it. If babies did this to women he had no idea why the world had problems with overpopulation. Who put themselves through this for the hell of it?

Sometimes he thought he wouldn't get this badly abused in prison.

But then again in prison he was far less likely to have such a pretty (and female) roommate.

Rock. Hard place.

----

"Is it blue or pink?"

"I don't know yet, the time isn't up. You're a doctor, don't you know you can't rush results?" Ana Lucia snapped at Jack as she walked to the couch he was sitting on.

Tapping his foot impatiently Jack eyed the clock, "Maybe you should-"

"Jack!" Ana snapped. When he looked sufficiently chastised she smiled and patted his knee. Knee pats were about as touchy-feely as Ana got without some sort of catalyst.

The timer buzzed Jack jumped up, chomping at the bit to check the results of their pregnancy test, but he soon realized he had jumped up alone. Turning his head he saw Ana Lucia still sitting on the couch, lost in thought.

"Ana…"

A sniffle told him that he was going to have to wait a bit longer to see those results.

Jack took a breath and let it out again, he took a seat next to Ana and grabbed one of her hands, "Listen, I…I understand if your having a lot of painful flashbacks. If you want to just sit here for a minute and-"

"I don't want it to happen again." She cut in, her voice a little deeper because she was trying not to cry. She had cried far too much about this already, it was all in the past and she wanted to make herself let go.

"You don't want to have a baby or you don't want to risk losing a baby?" It took a lot to fight off saying 'my baby' instead of 'a baby'.

She didn't meet his eyes, just turned her head and looked out the window.

"Last time I…Danny…" Ana motioned with her hands hoping she could communicate all the scars on her heart but she couldn't. Luckily, Jack was passed words with her.

"I'm not Danny, Ana…and I'm not going to leave you." Jack reached out and cupped her face in his hand, "You understand that I'm not going anywhere right? I'm like a bad hangover, right?"

Ana cracked a smile at the joke, one she had made when they first got together. But she didn't respond to Jack's question. He gently lifted her left hand to her face so that the diamond solitaire on it glittered in her eye, "I'm not going anywhere without you, Ana."

"You say that now but what if…." She hadn't meant to voice those fears that she buried in a part of her heart she liked to pretend was dead.

"What if…..what?" Jack had the patience of a saint with her. He was a doctor and in many ways she was someone desperately in need of healing. It was such an attractive feature to him, and the amount of healing Ana needed made her irresistible. But it wasn't like Sarah, it was different, deeper. He had felt the hum of tension between them the first time they met, and it was the good tension. The tension that made you step up your game and try to play your cards just right.

He would've befriended her if she wasn't in need of his particular brand of care. She was strong, smart, and she kept him on his toes. She was as high maintenance and low maintenance as he was. She was his perfect foil…and she needed him. She'd die before she admitted it, but she needed him. And in many ways he needed her too.

"I know we talked about kids and…I know you want them. You know I want them…it's just…" She hid her face in her hands, smoothed her hair and tried to speak again, "Those bullets did a lot of damage to me. What if I can't have kids?"

"Ana I-"

"Don't say you love me Jack...just let me finish. I know you need to heal me… and I know I need to be healed. What if this is something you can never heal, Doctor? What then?"

Jack took a deep breath. Of course he'd considered that option but there was no use simply telling her that.

"Ana…I do want a family. But I don't think you quite understand that you're my family now." He leaned in close to her so that his words were merely whispers against her skin, "I love you. I don't see you as damaged, and if you can't have children I wouldn't leave you. Would you leave me if I was sterile?"

"No but-"

"No buts, Ana." He stood up and offered her his hand, "You're stuck with this hangover for a long time."

She smiled and let him help her up, "Let's go check the test."

----

"Corn dogs!"

Sawyer nearly swerved off the road when Kate gripped his arm and practically threw him into the windshield so he could see the sign "Georgia's Finest Corn Dogs!".

"God damn woman! You want to get us killed for a fried hot dog?"

"Yes." She tugged at his arm like a five year old, "Can we please stop? I want a corn dog really badly."

"Yesterday you wanted pineapples, the day before it was chili, the day before it was cheesecake…what the hell is in your stomach?"

"The fruit of our loins now pull over."

It was face the firing squad or pull over. So he pulled over. When he finally found parking outside the joint he saw it was positively crawling with people. Not just people. There were a couple of off-duty cops.

"Uh, Freckles. Does the pig in your stomach want to find more of its kind? We got cops here."

Kate bit her lower lip. She might be pregnant, but she wasn't stupid. She couldn't just go traipsing around cops…it was crazy, beyond crazy! Looking down at her stomach she saw the slight swell. At five months she was really starting to show but it wasn't big enough to prevent her from seeing her feet, so it was still cute in her book.

And the cuteness wanted a corn dog…badly.

"What if I wear some sunglasses and put my hair up?"

"Are you crazy? Kate there's two policemen out there!" Sawyer ran a hand threw his hair, "You're willing to be recognized for a corn dog? You do realize that our one advantage over them is that they don't know you're pregnant? One of those guys takes notice of your pretty little face and suddenly we lose the only Ace we got!"

Kate was biting her lip so hard it threatened to split.

"But I want-"

"A corndog! I know you want a damned corndog. People in hell want ice water!" He started up the truck again but when he looked over at her she was giving him the puppy eyes.

A devious glint flashed in her eyes, "You know…I want that corndog…pretty badly…"

She spoke she ran a hand from his knee to his thigh and let it creep towards his fly.

"Freckles are you going to trade me sex for a corndog?"

"If that's what it takes."

----

"Aaron's asleep." Charlie announced as he closed the door behind him.

"How come it takes you a half an hour to put him to bed and it takes me five minutes?" Claire folded her arms over his chest, silently accusing him of spinning wild tales for the toddler that the boy could barely comprehend.

"What? No crime against bedtime stories…" Charlie began unbuttoning his shirt, "Turniphead loves my stories…and he's such a good audience! Not like those blighters I used to play for, he genuinely cares about my artistic creativity."

"He's two, Charlie. The most artistic creativity he does is with Crayons on the wall."

"And kid's a bleeding genius with them." Charlie offered her a You-Love-Me-Because-I'm-Mad smile and she fell for it, leaning in to kiss him.

"Have I thanked you today?"

"For being a fantastic boyfriend, a loving substitute father and dynamite in the sack? No, but I won't stop you if you feel so inclined."

Claire wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. Pushing him back on the bed she straddled him…only to have her knee land painfully on something in his pocket.

"Ow!" She rolled off him and rubbed her knee, she'd bruise if a butterfly ran into her and she knew she'd have an ugly spot there in the morning.

Charlie's face suddenly went bright red, "You alright?"

"Fine…" Claire rubbed the spot again and reached out to touch the bulge in his pocket, "What is that thing?"

"Uh…what thing? It's nothing…it's trash…it's…" Charlie tried to back out of her reach but she eventually pinned him down and forcibly turned out his pocket. She no longer suspected drugs on him…they had long since had that row.

"What's this…" She held the small velvet box in her hands before its meaning dawned on her and she gasped, dropping it, "Charlie is that…"

Charlie dove to the floor to get the box and while he was there went to one knee, "This wasn't how I was planning it but….Claire…"

She was still a bit short of breath and every minute growing shorter of breath. Charlie opened the box to reveal a platinum ring with a round cut diamond.

"Claire…would you….would you…" He couldn't for the life of him remember the words, he looked around the room frustrated as though hoping something would reveal it to him.

"Marry you?" Claire offered.

"That's the ticket." Charlie offered the box to her inspection again and was relieved beyond measure when she took the box and held it close to her eyes, trying to examine it through the growing tears.

"Oh Charlie it's beautiful…what are those little stones around it?"

"That's sand." He smiled at this announcement proudly, as proudly as Aaron when he used the bathroom all on his own.

"Sand?" Claire was wondering if she was hearing things.

"From the island…I had them put same from the island in the setting around the diamond…cause that's where we met. And that's where Aaron was born. And that's where I knew I loved you, Claire." Charlie looked at her adoringly and she returned his lopsided smiled.

Shaking she took the ring out of the box and put it on her finger.

"Oh Charlie!" Flinging her arms around him and kissing him, she assumed that he knew she was saying 'yes'.

----

Sawyer had a hat low over his face as he stood in line at the 7-11 with Slim Jims and Diet Coke for him and a Slushie, a cheese-filled pretzel and a box of Twinkies for the mother of his child (whom he was beginning to think was fathered by Hurley "Lard Ass" Reyes because of all the junk it ate). Kate was wading her massive belly through the isles for any other toxic waste to feed their unborn child when the TV over the cashier's head flipped from local to national news.

"Hey…Sweetcheeks… look at the news." He summoned Kate with a wave of his arm.

"In other news wedding bells are ringing for Dr. Jack Shepard and Officer Ana-Lucia Cortez. The couple, as you may well remember, were among the survivors rescued from the island owned by the Dharma corporation. When the survivors managed to get through the Corporations elaborate set up and call for help more then forty people were rescued. Many achieving instant stardom-"

The picture on the screen changed from the news' caster's head to a video of Ana Lucia and Jack having a beach wedding.

"You'd think they'd be about sick of the beach….is that what I think it is?" Kate nodded her head towards the close up of Ana and Jack, careful not to upset the massive sunglasses obscuring most of her face.

"- as you can see in that picture the couple are expecting their first child due sometime in the early spring. This is the first couple to officially tie the knot from the island although convicts Kate Austin and James Ford made like Bonnie and Clyde before the rescue ships even docked in LA. Their whereabouts are still unknown although authorities did scan the Cortez-Shepard party for the pair. In other news…"

"That's $22. 95 please." The cashier said and Sawyer had to pull his eyes from the TV screen to see his purchases.

He thought the total was stupidly high before realizing that Kate had thrown in a few more items: Ding Dongs, French's Mustard, Croutons and 3 different pints of Ben and Jerry's ("Freckles you better eat that ice cream before it melts all over my truck").

As they settled into the car and Kate delved into Chunky Monkey Sawyer finally had time to digest the news he'd just heard.

"Don't that just take the cake?"

"Cake?" Kate's ears perked up and a drip of ice cream oozed down her chin.

"It's a metaphor, Sassafrass, you can't eat it." Sawyer started up the engine and mused, "Never would've thought our resident Boy Scout, Honor Code, Straight Laced Doctor Boy would have a shotgun weddin'."

"It's sweet isn't it?" Kate was already halfway done with the Chunky Monkey and eyeing up the pint of Half Baked.

"Sweet? I know what you have to do to make babies, now I'm gonna die with the image of that skinny ass man all over Rambina." He shuddered for effect but after a moment he turned to Kate with a smile on his face.

Reaching out a hand to tuck a stray curl behind her ear he says, "Well, least we ain't the only ones with a bun in the oven."

"Bun?"

I have to stop using food metaphors…

----

"Sawyer-"

"We are not stopping for you to pee."

"But I have to-"

"You peed twenty minutes ago!"

"I'm sorry that there's a fetus playing kickball with my bladder! Maybe you want to try carrying the spawn of Satan?"

"Now baby, last night you were calling me God…you might wanna make up your mind." Sawyer managed to smile even though the fact that Kate had ceased to be able to go an hour without peeing four times was wearing on his last nerve.

At the rate they were going the FBI was going to catch them when Kate made him pull into an Exxon so she can sample the many delights of gas station lavatories. That would be fun. He could see the headlines:

Vicious Felons Caught With Pants Down

Now he had nothing against that title…but if they were going to run it there was a much different connotation that he would've liked associated with it. For example, running that headline with a picture of him and Kate being hauled out of hotel room clad only bed sheets and whipped cream would be so much better then running it with a picture of Jose the gas attendant asking him if he wanted his oil checked while Kate tinkled.

He turned into the next rest-stop much to Kate's glee, she waddled to the bathroom in as much of a hurry as a woman who was eight months pregnant could.

Carpe friggin' Diem. Sawyer thought as he stretched his legs and sauntered over to the snack machine and stocked up on Apollo bars and Twizzlers (Kate's craving of choice this week). The last thing he expected was to hear an excited squeal and have Kate tug his arm half-off his body.

"Sawyer!" She whispered, wouldn't do to draw too much attention to themselves, "Look! Look at this!"

Handing him an Entertainment Weekly she gestured to the upper left corner: "Pace Pacing Down Aisle". Next to it was a thumbnail of Charlie in a tux looking nervous as a schoolboy on his first date. Kate tore the magazine out of Sawyer's hands and flipped through it until she saw the page dedicated to the Drive Shaft guitarist's wedding. There were paparazzi shots of Claire in a white sun dress and pictures of little Aaron as the ring-bearer. A shot of the happy couple kissing. A picture of Charlie and his brother hugging. Aaron and the little flower girl, Charlie's niece.

The article had nothing bad to say about the Pace family. They loved the fact that Charlie and Claire met on the island and that Aaron was born there and that Charlie was adopting him… there were quotes from the couple as well.

"Oh listen to this, 'Claire is the reason I'm clean and level headed…she's the first person that makes me want to grow up'. 'Charlie is a big goofball, he always makes me laugh and he genuinely cares about Aaron. He's not an obnoxious pop star at all, he's very down to earth.'. Oh, Sawyer, isn't that cute?"

"Cute? Your hormones must be haywire again." He would rather die then admit that he was kind of happy to see Charlie and Claire get married. Although with Jack and Ana Lucia hitched and multiplying it seemed like the bachelors of the island were dropping like flies…

"Come on, Freckles…let's get back on the road." Sawyer swung an arm around Kate's shoulder and kissed her hairline, the other hand snuck up to her stomach. He wouldn't admit it to her, but they both knew he liked to check up on things in the womb every once in a while.

----

"You know," Kate chewed on a Twizzler thoughtfully, "it took Claire a long time before she thought of 'Aaron'. Maybe we should start throwing names around."

Sawyer tried to grab a Twizzler but Kate slapped his hand away.

"What do you think about Annie?" Sawyer asked.

"Out." Kate didn't hesitate.

"Why?"

"I used that as a fake name in Australia when I was on the run. I was working for this really sweet-"

"Save me the sob story…what about Margaret? It was my aunt's name."

The aunt that took me in went without saying but nonetheless Kate shot it down instantly saying, "I used that name when I seduced this-"

"Don't finish that sentence!" Sawyer pushed his long hair out of his face, "How 'bout you throw around some names?"

Kate opened an Apollo bar and thought. It had to be a nice name.

"What about Jessica?"

"Out." Sawyer wasn't the kind to offer explanations but Kate knew out meant either his childhood or his scams, and either was she wasn't going to fight him.

"How about…Amy?"

A fond smile crept onto his face followed by an enthusiastic, "Hell no."

She rolled her eyes, "Between my fake IDs and your many notched bed post, we should probably move to boy's names…"

"How about Shep?" Sawyer immediately offered, "I always liked Shep."

"Shep's nice….for a sheep dog." Kate shook her head, "No."

"What about Ace?"

The candy bar froze on the way to Kate's mouth as she fixed Sawyer with a glare, "It's a baby, Saywer, not suit for cards."

"Arthur?"

Kate snorted at the offer, "Arthur? That is the last name I would've thought you'd suggest…so…nerdy."

"Arthur as in the Fonze? Come on, Freckles! You never watch Happy Days?"

"I'm not naming my child after a womanizing greaser."

"I suppose 'James' is out of the running then." Sawyer gave her a big grin and nodded, "I don't hear any suggestions from you."

"Harry?"

"No…I'm not making any son of mine a 'wizard'."

"Jacob?"

Sawyer didn't say anything just looked at her oddly and gave his head a pronounced shake.

"Clark?"

"As in Kent? As in Superman? No and while you're at it count out Lex, Bruce, Dick, Robin, Peter, Parker and any one else who was at any time a Superhero or the alias of a Superhero."

"What about Leslie?"

Sawyer genuinely shuddered and looked like he'd just tasted something particularly nasty, "No girly names."

Both were silent and frustrated for a long time. There wasn't anything to see where they were driving, just miles of desert on all sides. After an hour they passed a gigantic sign for a Sam's Club.

"You ever wonder if the Sam that Sam's Club is named for is a man or a woman?"

Eyeing her wearily Sawyer shook his head, "Never put much thought…if they just say Sam its hard to tell."

"Sam's nice, though. It's discreet. Gets the job done and no one has to know what you are until they meet you. No judgments. It's not like Butch or Sunshine is coming. It's Sam. It's almost ambiguous."

It was as if lightening struck both Sawyer and Kate at exactly the same moment. Without speaking they smiled at each other and nodded.

TBC

Author's Notes:

I was going to include the little miracle's birth but I decided to wave it to next chapter for effect.

Questions to ponder: Just what kind of nicknames will Sawyer bestow on the fruit of his loins? How would Kate deal with labor when she can't have a doctor, a hospital or even an epidural? How exactly do you go about raising a child when your on the run from the FBI and when your only source of income isn't exactly…legitimate.

I appreciate every single review I get! A slight warning: next chapter might not have much Jana or PB&J, as the outline stands now its purely Skate but I might add them in (doubtful)

I was trying to do an update weekly thing…so I will do my best to update once a week.

But I liked where this chapter was and felt that adding too much more would be rambling.

PLEASE REVIEW! (and never stop harassing! You're doing great girls!)