They pulled Andrew out of school in order to go on their planned motorcycle trip, but he was still taking his textbooks with him so as not to fall behind. Boone even got his son's teachers to e-mail him a list of the material the boy was supposed to cover during his absence. It wasn't that he didn't trust Andrew to do the work; it was just so that he had an idea what he might be expected to help him with if he needed it.

Boone had cleared his schedule as well, they'd scaled back on the events for that week, only booking as many as Kevin and the rest of the crew could handle.

The night before they were to leave, Shannon was awakened by the familiar and unwelcome ache in her gut. Sighing deeply, and silently cursing the timing to herself, she got out of bed and headed for the bathroom across the hall, reaching for the small box under the sink.

Once finished, she slipped gently back between the sheets, not wanting to wake Boone.

Though usually she could have jumped up and down on the bed like a naughty toddler and wouldn't have awoken him, tonight he groaned and rolled towards her.

"Shan?" he groaned again and pressed his forearm across his stomach. 'Shit, now? We're just going away.' He wasn't exactly surprised; he'd seen the numbers written on the calendar in the kitchen, like a count down to doomsday.

'Believe me, I'm not happy about it either, but there's not much I can do about it is there?' Shannon responded.

'God, I feel like crap, this is one of those times I hate having telepathy,' Boone whined as he shared her discomfort.

'At least you can shut it out, I can't. I'll feel better by tomorrow anyway, though we won't be having any vacation sex this trip, at least not the conventional kind, there's always other fun things to amuse ourselves with, though,' she added with a lopsided grin and a suggestively raised eyebrow.

'Hmm hmm,' He agreed. 'You know, before you left you used to be in agony for days at this time of the month I remember. I never really noticed that it's so much better now,' Boone said, thoughtfully.

'It got a hell of a lot worse before it got any better,' Shannon told him, deciding that now was as good a time as any to tell him the rest, though that it was the day before vacation kind of sucked. Her luck with timing seemed to be on short supply tonight.

'What do you mean?' Boone frowned. 'What happened?'

She admitted that, in desperation, the pain more than she could endure actually driving her to the point of heaving, she'd ended up having surgery.

"You had surgery in Europe?" He blurted, his alarm evident, like most people he only trusted the medical care in his own country.

"Well, no, actually it was here." Shannon hesitantly admitted; her voice subdued, much lower than his, trying to calm him.

Boone was stunned, 'What?'

'Not, here, here,' Shannon clarified, meaning not California, 'but here in the States, yeah, in New York.'

'You had an operation right here in the States, you were in the same country as me, and you didn't call me? I would have come! I should have been there.' He looked so hurt, just as she'd known he would.

'And then what, Boone? Would you really have been able to walk away after?' He shook his head. 'It doesn't matter if you could anyway, I don't think I would have been able to let you go, even if you could have, and I wasn't ready to come back yet. It was easier this way. For us both.'

She should know, Boone thought ungraciously, Shannon was the master at taking the easy way out. 'I suppose you could look at it that way, but I wasn't given the choice though, was I?'

'Boone, it was minor anyway, just day surgery, and I was back on my feet in no time,' she assured him.

This time he nodded in understanding; it was a moot point anyway, there was nothing they could do about something that was in the past. He looked at her curiously, sensing that she still had hidden thoughts. 'There's more though, isn't there, something you're not telling me?'

Shannon admitted as much; then gently told him the other information she'd been given. That with slightly more invasive surgery the doctors thought she could probably conceive again once all the scar tissue had been cleared.

He simply gazed at her, the words registering but taking some time to sink in as he struggled to process the concept. They stared at each other across the hands breadth of space that separated then, each waiting for the other to blink.

Boone flinched first; his eye lashes fluttering several times. 'A baby? Another baby?' He rolled away from her and pushed himself out of the bed, going to stand at the window, wrapping his arms around himself. She'd come to understand it was what he did when he was mulling over issues of particularly significant importance.

His thoughts were chaotic, the shock and disbelief playing havoc with his brain. He didn't know what to do, his mind ricocheting like a madly out of control game of Pong. He found himself breathing raggedly, his heart almost beating out of his chest.

"Boone?" Shannon sat up and pulled herself up against the headboard.

"I don't…" He pressed a hand to his forehead; then ran it through his hair tugging on his bangs, his head a total mess. When they'd crashed on the island, he'd resigned himself to never realizing his dream of being a father; of showering the love and attention he'd never gotten himself on his own offspring. He'd always thought that four would be a good number, boys or girls, it didn't matter; he'd just wanted his own kids so badly. When Shannon had told him about their baby, he'd been ecstatic, forgetting and forgiving all the manipulative mind games she'd played on him, instantly loving her again. Then after Andrew had been born, Jack had broken the news that she probably couldn't have any more. By that time it hadn't mattered to him though, he had the woman he'd always loved, and the unexpected son he'd given up hope for. "Shit Shan!" He fought back the tears, wiping his eyes angrily; then dropping his hand to his waist again, hugging himself once more.

Did he even want to risk losing her in surgery, or in childbirth, as he once almost had?

'I don't think it's really that risky a procedure, Boone.' Shannon told him addressing his unspoken worry, easily picking his concern out of the crazy kaleidoscope of thoughts her reveal had caused. 'And we're not on the island anymore.'

He glanced quickly at her; then back out the window again. "Stay out of my head for a bit, Shan, please? I just need to be alone with my thoughts for a while."

She brought her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, just watching him at the window. From her perspective most of him was in shadow, the light of the moon falling across his side, turning his body into a series of angles and planes. He was all lean muscle, still a bit too thin for his height, but he was definitely beefier than he'd been at Christmas. As he shifted his stance, his butt flexed, the muscles bunching under the skin, making her smile in appreciation. She wouldn't have minded watching him stand there naked all night long, though she certainly appreciated it more when he was naked and in her bed.

Shannon gave him a few minutes then, curious; she ghosted her mind quickly over his, not sure if she was surprised when she gained free entry. She pulled back immediately; she'd half expected to find that he'd erected a shield, that he hadn't spoke volumes to her about his trust of her. She wasn't about to betray it. It was what she'd been wondering about anyway, she hadn't gone deep enough to get even a glimmer of his thoughts.

A baby, we could have another baby, he thought wildly, fighting for control. The tiny selfish part of him vied with his sanity as his world spun; I could hold another baby, my own, again! Boone forced himself to consider everything reasonably.

A baby. He was thirty-two, almost thirty-three, he knew people had kids at that age, but he'd come to grips with the fact that for him, it was over; did he really want to go through all the bullshit again? But still, a tiny little life, cradled in his arms, maybe this time a girl with his dark hair and Shannon's eyes? He could almost picture her.

Perhaps if they'd found this out when they were first rescued, but now? They'd taken Jack's diagnosis as engraved in stone, it hadn't occurred to them to question it, or ask for a second opinion once they were back in civilization. Boone didn't hold it against the doctor, after all, he'd told them when they were still in the wild; the surgery Shannon had just described would have been out of the question.

They were a different family though, more so than almost anyone could have imagined. There was no reason to suspect that their possible child would have any special gift at all. How much of an outsider would he/she feel, being shut out of the intensity of their lives inside each other's minds? After all, Jessica couldn't sense dead people and Sarah wasn't psychic. Still each of them only had one special parent, this baby would have two. But would he love it any less if it were…what had Claire called it, a Muggle? Would he feel sorry for it?

Andrew was ten, and very much the focus of Boone's attention. He'd been through hell and high water with his dad, how would he feel about suddenly having to share not just the spotlight, but Boone as well? He'd been pretty good, better than that actually, at accepting Shannon, but a sibling? He'd never known anything but being an only child. Boone remembered how much his own life had been enriched when Shannon had become his sister. Was it fair to deny Andrew the same opportunity?

If she had the surgery now, there would still be a recovery period before they tried again. Andrew was obvious proof that he could impregnate her, but it would still be at minimum a year or more before she actually gave birth. She'd been testy enough pregnant at twenty, how much worse would it be when she was thirty-two? Was he really ready to deal with her? He knew well enough that he was pretty fragile psychologically. He could just picture the role reversal, polar opposite from a regular couple, himself in tears after she'd snapped on his ass, hugely swollen and administering to him, trying to cajole him out of yet another funk. He grimaced at the mental image and cursed himself for the broken man that he still was, but would a new baby somehow let him find himself again?

He'd managed to spin himself into frenzy as each argument in favour brought about an equal argument against, becoming more worked up by the minute. The turmoil all in his head, he'd remained for the most part motionless, as he'd stared unseeingly down at the ground.

Not getting anywhere except further depressed at his inability to form a decisive opinion, he turned from the window. Shannon was sitting on the bed watching him quietly, trying to imagine what he was thinking, respecting his privacy.

The sight of her broke down his defences completely, "I don't know! I don't know what to think! Shan, damn." He started sobbing in frustration.

She was at his side in an instant, drawing him against her. "Ssshhh, baby. It's okay Boone you don't have to decide what to think tonight. Ssshhh." She held him and rocked him gently. "We'll talk about it tomorrow for as long as you want. Come back to bed, okay?"

He pulled away and shook his head, 'I'm not going to be able to sleep.' He searched her face, the final argument; the one he'd been trying to avoid, firmly at the front of his thoughts. She hadn't wanted to have kids at all. She'd told him exactly that just last summer. "You never wanted kids." He reminded her, biting the inside of his lip, his breathing still ragged, his shoulders shaking.

"I know what I told you, but I'd do it for you Boone. Because I know how much it means to you, and I love you, I'd give my life for you. We could make it work, I could make it work." She told him sincerely, her hand cupping the side of his face, her thumb brushing the tears off his cheek.

"That's not right, though. We both have to want it, a baby, I mean. I can't be the only one, and you can't just want it for me, you have to want it too." He started crying again, his confusion, and his shame at being unable to deal with this without breaking down, compounding his misery.

This time Shannon firmly pulled him towards the bed and threw the covers back, forcing him to lie down. 'Tomorrow, Boone, we'll deal with all of this tomorrow,' she soothed him, silently.

There was one more thing he needed to know, however, before he could even contemplate resting. Boone rolled towards her as she got in on her side, his tear filled eyes gleaming in the dark. 'Is there any danger to you if you don't have the surgery?'

'No, now close your eyes.' She pulled her right arm out from under the blankets and drew him in; he complied quickly, putting his head on her shoulder, sleep however, a long time coming for each of them.

All in all, it was a pretty shitty way to start their weeks' vacation.