Title: Son of Men
Chapter: 11
Rating: T
Summary: When a message comes through the typewriter, it's going to turn everyone's life upside down.
Author's Note: Sorry for the late update. I know I promised a chapter per week. My excuse? Work got in the way, had to plan a business trip halfway around the globe. Which means that I don't think there'll be another update next week cause I'll be in Honolulu for a week working. We'll see :) Until then, enjoy this chapter! Thanks to everyone who has reviewed this story so far. I really love hearing from you guys and appreciate every single comment I get. I just wich there was a way to thank you all personally, but alas, doesn't have that option in their comment setup, bummer!

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When Olivia came to, she found herself lying in a hospital bed. Her body was aching all over, and the nauseating feeling was rather overwhelming. She blinked a few times, her eyes trying to adjust to the dim light in the room, when she noticed her fingers were curled tightly around someone's hand. Her eyes scanned the room immediately, finding a dark figure sitting next to her bed. Peter. She let out a breath of relief when he moved closer to the bed and came fully into her view, his lips forming a warm smile.

"Hey," he greeted her, carefully pushing a strand of her blonde hair out of her face.

"Hey," she rewarded him with a smile of her own before her eyes darted around the room and found her object of desire. Henry slept peacefully in a small bassinet next to her bed.

"Is he okay?" she asked, turning her attention back to Peter.

"They ran a few tests on him, but the results won't come back until tomorrow. He looks to be perfectly healthy though."

There was an awkward moment of silence, and Peter turned his gaze away from her, looking at their locked hands. It took him a second to form the question that was weighing so heavily on his mind, that he had been dying to ask her since the minute the doctor had told him.

"You knew, didn't you?"

He didn't look at her when he asked her, fixing his gaze on the spot on the middle of the blanket where both their hands lay intertwined. He felt her chest rise and fall as she inhaled deeply, giving him all the answer he needed to know.

"How long?"

He turned his attention back to her, finding her looking at him with a mixture of shock and confusion. At first, she just stared at him blankly, searching for a way to answer his question. And then she did what she always did: she shrugged her shoulders, the corners of her mouth twitched into a weird lopsided smile, eyebrows drawn tightly together and eyes pleading with him to understand.

"A few days," came her slow reply as she squeezed his hand tightly, "I've been meaning to talk to you about it but when all this went down, I knew it just wasn't the right time."

"Olivia," his voice broke off mid-sentence, and he tried to form his words, "I'd never have allowed you to cross us over if I had known."

"I know. Which is why I didn't tell you," she paused shortly, observing him. She couldn't quite read his expression. His eyes were filled with anger, guilt, but also with confusion, shock, and relief. She had never seen him send her so many mixed signals before, so she had to ask, "Did I..."

He cut her off almost instantly, "You're fine. Both of you."

Suddenly, there was the smile on his face again, the side of his lips curling upwards, bringing the glimmer and delight back into his eyes as he continued to talk, "Your body shut down, protecting the baby. The doctor said it's a natural reflex."

"I'm sorry," she offered him a weak apology, hoping that for once, it would be enough.

"Your going ahead seemed so careless... considering..." he said as he let go off her hand and ran his fingers through his hair.

"Your son needed help," came her reply while she tried to meet his gaze which he tried to avoid on purpose.

"It could have been a trap."

"But it wasn't," she looked over at the little baby boy who still slept peacefully in the bassinet, "God knows what Walternate would be doing with him now if we hadn't crossed over and gotten him."

"You didn't risk only your life, Olivia. You also risked our baby's life. All the things that could have gone wrong!"

The accusation hung between them, and all Olivia could do was shrug her shoulders at him awkwardly one more time. He was right, she'd been careless. But she had weighed her options carefully and had made a decision that hadn't been as easy as it may have sounded to Peter. Her intention had never been to risk her own life, or her baby's. But with the knowledge that there was a boy in danger somewhere, Peter's son, all she could was cling to the one thing that had kept her going for a long time now. Hope. Hope that everything was going to be all right.

"I had to make a decision," she finally broke the silence between them, "I'd do anything to make sure that my family is safe and out of danger. Henry is your son. He is your family. And you are mine. I didn't take all of this lightly. It was difficult enough to wrap my head around the possibility that I had managed to get myself pregnant during a time when the world around us is falling apart and we don't know how to stop it. And just when I had worked through all that and was ready to tell you, there came that message from the other side. Do you have any idea how hard it was to think straight and not just walk away from all this? I know you, Peter. I know that if I had told you, we never would have gone for Henry. And I couldn't risk that. So I made a decision. Try to help your son, but also make sure that our baby is safe. I never would have done all this if I hadn't been sure that I could keep myself and our baby safe."

Peter's head snapped in her direction, "But look what happened, Olivia, and now you're in hospital!"

"I don't know what else I can tell you."

He inhaled sharply while his hand blindly searched for hers, fingers intertwining immediately, "This is something we should have decided together. You and I, together, as a family."

Olivia just looked at him, her eyes pleading with him to understand, "I saw how hard it was for you to make a decision. If you had known I was pregnant, it would have made things just more complicated than they already were. I didn't want you to have to choose one child over the other."

Peter just shook his head, "And if I had done just that? If I had decided to stay on the other side for Henry, would you have just let me go without saying a word?"

"I don't know."

"And if you had lost the baby?"

"I don't know, Peter!" she repeated exasperated, "I know I didn't think this through but I knew your son needed help. Isn't that enough?"

He sighed, "Is that why you were so insistent that this wasn't a trap? That Henry really existed? Because you are pregnant?"

"Maybe?" she shrugged her shoulders, "Walter once said that everything that happens in one universe results in a counteraction in the other."

"But that reaction doesn't necessarily have to be the exact same event, you know that."

"But it could be. If it wasn't, our worlds wouldn't be so similar and we wouldn't have doppelgangers. I was born in 79, my alternate was born in 81. She was the counteraction to my existence."

"And now you think your pregnancy is the reaction to hers?"

Again, Olivia just shrugged her shoulders at him. When she had thought about it before, it had all sounded so plausible. But now that she had actually said it out loud, she had to admit that it rather sounded like one of Walter's insane theories that was usually proven wrong.

"Maybe I've been hanging out too much with Walter lately," she finally said.

"C'mon," Peter waved his hand at her as he got up from his chair, "scoot over."

Olivia did as Peter asked, letting him slip into bed with her. Her head came to rest against his shoulder, and she immediately found herself wrapped in his arms.

"The nurses are not gonna like this," she muttered making herself comfortable in his embrace.

"Sue me."

For a while, they just lay quietly in the dimness of the room, both listening to the light snoring that came from Henry's bassinet and observing the slow rising and falling of the baby's chest. Occasionally, a loud snore would escape the boy's lips, causing him to twitch in his sleep but he would settle back down immediately without even waking up.

"I'm not angry with you," Peter started after a while, tightening his arms around Olivia and pulling her even closer to him, "Yesterday, all I wanted was to enjoy watching a movie on the couch with my girlfriend. Tonight, I'm suddenly the father of a six month old baby and my girlfriend is pregnant. Can life get anymore complicated?"

"Has it ever been not complicated?"

"I think when I was three and was playing in the backyard buck naked," he smirked.

Olivia couldn't help by laugh, "I would have loved to see that."

"Oh, I bet," he replied with a chuckle that died down only a second later, "I keep asking myself if I'm ready for this. To be a parent I mean."

"I keep asking myself the same thing," she turned to her side, catching a glimpse of Peter's serious expression that softened the moment he saw that reassuring smile on her face, "I guess we just have to try?"

"I guess we do."