A/N: Hello!

I'm having a blast writing this story. As I mentioned before (on my tumblr, writingmccord), I will eventually get around to my other works on here too and finish those, but I'm just having a good time with The Fling :-)

Thank you for your thoughtful reviews! I love that there's a little corner of us keeping the fandom flickering with life.

Enjoy!

"Oh," Jess says, her voice mostly emotionless but tinged with confusion, "I thought you knew."

"No," Elizabeth breathes, annoyed that she would think such a thing. "Why would I know that?"

Jess shrugs, "Don't get snappy with me." She murmurs.

"I'm upset, okay?" Elizabeth snaps again.

"I know." Jess says calmly, folding her arms over her chest on her bed, "But it's not my fault and you're taking it out on me."

"You should've told me that it wasn't happening today." She says, "I was prepared—I was ready."

"Were you actually?"

The question throws Elizabeth, and she has to reach out for her desk, feeling a bit dizzy as the sudden pressure in her head makes it throb. She'd had a headache ever since leaving the clinic from throwing up, but now it makes her feel like the room is spinning around her.

Was she prepared? She'd told herself she was, that she was going to do this today and that she wasn't going to back out. She'd been prepared to take the rest of the day off and relax and prepared to come back with her career potential in tow once more. The thought of being rid of this worry intrigued her, but definitely didn't necessarily excite her.

Mostly, she knew she would feel a new layer of guilt because she hadn't told Henry about it at all.

"You say that you were prepared, but I don't think you are, Elizabeth." Jess says, and she looks up at her roommate, "I've watched my sorority sisters go through abortions and mentally it's so hard on them," she reminds. She'd told Elizabeth that before, though.

"But I haven't ever seen them be so conflicted about it upfront, and haven't ever seen them have to wonder about it so much because they loved the father. It wasn't really an issue for them in that matter." Jess says, shaking her head, "You—God, I just know you're going to regret it, Elizabeth. You are. I can see it in the way you talk about it."

"I'm not," Elizabeth counters, unable to come up with a better argument at this moment.

Jess sits up straighter, "You can look me in the eye and tell me you won't have any kind of guilt? No regret? Not even about not telling Henry? About not even giving him the opportunity to say his piece? I'm not saying that he should change your mind if it's something you really want. I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying is that you're so unsure about this for a reason and you're not listening to that reason in your head."

"How can I listen to that reason?" Elizabeth gets out, and she wants to add on to that, but can't.

She wants to say that she can't listen to that reason because she's only just started dating Henry and now he's deployed and they're both in college and she wants a career and doesn't even know how to be a mother because, well, she hasn't had one in a long time now.

But instead, she just stares at Jess, waiting for her answer.

She shakes her head, "I'm not telling you not to do it, Elizabeth," She says, her voice getting lower and quieter, "But do you really, actually want to go through with this?"

"How could I not?" It's not meant to be rhetorical, but something about it feels like it hurls off her lips.

Jess shrugs, "Things work out sometimes," she says, "If you want it to work, that is. If you don't want it to work, then you should go ahead with the procedure, and I won't ever say another word about it." She's staring at her with a sharp eye, and Elizabeth feels like she might crumble under the pressure of Jess's gaze.

"But you're still standing there and still haven't been able to look me in the eye and tell me that it's something you want to proceed with," she reminds, scolding her much like a mother would—or maybe this is what it's like to have a big sister.

Elizabeth looks down guiltily. She hasn't been able to say that because she's not sure.

Today's appointment made her even more unsure about everything, and she just wishes she would've told Henry while he were here with her. Now, she feels like if she tells him over the phone in God only knows where, he'll feel like he's being trapped or something. She can't make him feel like that, and she doesn't want him to feel guilty for leaving—she never told him, how would he have known not to leave?

And now she feels a tear running down her cheek, and she swipes at it quickly and forces a breath into her lungs. "I can't talk about this right now," she breathes, "I have a paper to finish."

"Liz," Jess softens, the concerned tone coming back and replacing the stern one, "Give yourself a break."

"I can't," she almost snaps again, her voice shaking just slightly. She shakes her head, "I can't give myself a break because I need to get a job with the CIA—I can't let anything slip because I have worked so hard for this, Jess, and if I throw it all away on…" she can't even bring herself to say "on a baby." So she just looks at Jessica and swallows hard, "It's not meant to be, Jess. I'm not meant to be a mother and—"

"What makes you say that?" Jess asks, then criss-crosses her legs and softens her body language some, "I'm not…I'm not trying to argue with you, Liz. I'm trying to understand what the hell is going on in your head." She's shaking her own head as she says it.

Elizabeth sighs and finally can't hold it together anymore. She lets out a sob that wracks through her body all the way out of the pit of her stomach. She covers her face with her hand, and the next thing she knows, she feels arms wrapping around her. If she would've let her mind play tricks, she would've continued to let herself hope it was Henry for longer than a second, but she knew it was Jess—she could smell the Giorgio perfume. And she was, after all, grateful.

She lets herself stand there and be held, and Jess pushes the back of Elizabeth's head into her body, and she buries her face into her neck.

"It's okay," Jess whispers, stroking her hand through her hair, "It's alright."

"No it's not," Elizabeth whimpers pitifully, her shoulders shaking again.

"I know," she whispers back, "But it's going to be—we'll get through this. You're…" Jess hesitates, and Elizabeth's ears perk up even amidst her crying. Jess takes a deep breath, "You're one of the strongest people I know, Liz. You really are. I'm not saying that because you're my friend, but I admire you for what you've always done and how you've always managed to stay on your feet even when you haven't always had anyone in your corner."

Elizabeth sniffles and feels her tears pooling on Jess's shirt underneath her own skin.

"You let one night get the best of you." She reminds, "It was one night, and things happened, but you've never let that get you down before, babe. Look at all you've overcome," she reminds her again, still stroking her hair down her back.

Elizabeth doesn't think about her story or "journey," whatever you want to call it, as a story of overcoming. She had a terrible, bad thing happen to her, and she had to go on living her life because there was no alternative. She always felt awkward whenever people would talk about the things she's overcome—she lost her parents, it's one of the worst things to happen in your life. But what else was she supposed to do other than overcome it? It's no hero story, it's life.

But Jess continues, "You made it through high school after your parents died in your freshman year, and you basically raised your brother whenever you guys were home together."

It's almost as if she knew the exact reason Elizabeth had said she wasn't meant to be a mother, and now she's digging around in that wound with a careful precision. Elizabeth nods. She's right—she had mostly raised Will because her aunt and uncle both had to work full time jobs to be able to board Elizabeth and Will during the school year.

"Will doesn't seem like you messed him up either, hon, so I think your basis for not knowing how to be a mother is a little murky. He's a pre-med student at Duke, for God's sake."

Elizabeth pulls away slowly and swallows thick, not even bothering to wipe the tears away since she knows her face is a mess. Besides, it's just Jessica who's seeing her. "It takes a lot more than just not letting them die," she whispers. "And it helps when your brother had a clear goal and knew what he wanted to be in life from the time he was thirteen."

"You've got the hardest part down though," Jess says, laughing sadly and wiping Elizabeth's tears away for her. "You know what I learned in nursing school? In L&D?"

"L&D?" Elizabeth asks, her brows lifting, "You work in labor and delivery?" She has to say the words in order to confirm. Jess hardly ever talked about school, which ultimately means, too, that she doesn't talk about her nursing clinicals even though Elizabeth knows she gets up every morning bright and early for them even after the nights she stayed out late.

She nods and smiles, tucking Elizabeth's hair behind her ear after unsticking it from her cheek. "I do," she says, "We learned about something called 'attachment disorder,'" Jess begins, her voice a little more serious now. "It's when a mother...for whatever reason...can't form that bond with her baby. Sometimes it even starts before the baby's born—if she's overwhelmed, scared, or not ready. Stress, trauma, even how she was raised herself can all play into it." Jess pauses and swallows thick, dropping her eyes from Elizabeth's. "But the thing is...it's not a reflection of who they are as a person. It doesn't mean they're bad or unfit. It just means they're human, figuring it out as they go."

Elizabeth furrows her brows as she tries to absorb what Jess is saying, but she's not sure she's catching on completely—she's also not sure she's fully absorbed that Jess actually does pay attention in classes. She never talks about her grades or classes, so she's always just assumed she probably isn't going to graduate after all. Here she is proving her wrong—proving her judgmental stereotypes of sorority girls totally wrong.

"It's really common for mothers to feel disconnected, even before the baby's born, you know? Especially if the pregnancy came as a surprise—it can feel like it's something happening to them," Jess says, her gaze steady on Elizabeth. "They might not feel the overwhelming love or connection everyone talks about right away. But that bond doesn't always form instantly. It takes time. And even if you don't feel that attachment right now, it doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't mean you can't be a good mom."

Elizabeth lets out a shaky breath. Jess's words settle somewhere deep in her chest, but she feels a weight she didn't even realize was there—something about this makes her feel like she's not entirely broken, like the fear of being a bad mother doesn't have to be the thing that defines her choice.

"You're not broken, babe," Jess says softly, her hand rubbing up and down Elizabeth's back in slow, reassuring motions. "I know you're scared, but you've already been taking care of people your whole adult life. It's all just..." Jess shrugs, "Another step in learning how to take care of someone."

Elizabeth swallows hard, her emotions still bubbling under the surface. Jess's words are calming, but they don't quite chase away the nagging fear in her chest. "I don't know if I'm ready," she whispers again, her voice thick with doubt.

Jess leans back and looks at Elizabeth's eyes, "You don't have to be ready," she says, "You just have to know you're capable. And you are."

The surety in her voice startles Elizabeth, and she just stares at this girl for a few moments. Then her mind quickly shifts onto her mom, thinking about her and how she used to hug her whenever Elizabeth was upset as a kid. She would hold her just under her chin, and then she would hum a song to her—"You Are My Sunshine."

"I don't feel capable," Elizabeth admits.

Jess sighs and shrugs, "And if you don't," she says, nodding, "Then that's when you should proceed with your decision. I fully, one-hundred percent support you in that if you think you genuinely cannot imagine raising a child, particularly this one." She clears her throat quietly, "But I want you to be sure of that—I don't want to see you hurt."

Elizabeth looks down and sniffles, swiping at her face where it's now itching from the saltiness. Jessica hugs her again and holds her there for a moment, "You are my idol, Elizabeth Adams, and I'm sorry that life has thrown you a curveball. But you're capable of so much." She reminds, pulling away, "Even the hard stuff."

After Jess had to leave for class a few minutes later, Elizabeth let herself cry for about an hour, sobbing into her pillow and mourning all that's potentially been lost because of one poor decision she made—well, a night full of a series of bad decisions. Her future, her career, her potential at a good life with Henry. Oh, and Henry, too. He's not lost, but he is for the next three months.

When she thinks of that, she sits up and looks at the calendar by her desk, crawling over to it. She flips through from today's date, December 6th. January 2nd, February 2nd, and then Friday, March 2nd—the date he was supposed to come home from deployment. She takes a deep breath and pulls her hair up into a ponytail, pulling her bangs back with it all and piling it on top of her head.

From the bed, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and sighs, realizing she looks like an absolute, utter mess—and she feels even worse than she looks. Not only does she feel sorry for herself, but she feels sick, too, and she's so exhausted and tired of being exhausted and sick. "Why did I have to ruin everything?" She whispers to herself in the mirror, shaking her head.

She stands up and slides off her bed, walking to the bathroom, but then stops and sprints back to her desk when she hears the phone ringing. "Hello?" She picks up on the second ring.

"Elizabeth," Henry breathes, and she immediately beams.

"Henry," she whispers, "I'm so glad to hear your voice."

"I'm glad to hear yours," Henry says, the line crackling pretty badly. She focuses in, trying to understand each and every word and refusing to tell him it's bad signal. "How are you? I've been thinking about you nonstop," he says.

Elizabeth feels a lump in her throat. She doesn't know how to answer—she'd just been bawling her eyes out on the bed for hours when he'd called. She wanted to tell him everything, desperately wanted to tell him she was pregnant and that it was his and that she was scared and didn't know what to do. But the words wouldn't come.

"I'm fine," she lies, her fingers twisting around the phone cord.

Henry let out a low hum like he didn't believe her, "You don't sound okay."

"Finals," she reminds, laughing faintly, "Stress from all that, you know."

"I miss finals," he says, immediately retracting his statement, "I mean—I don't mean to—they are stressful—I just—"

"I get what you mean," she saves him from having to keep on stammering, and she's chuckling through it, "I'd much rather be here stressed about finals than doing what you're doing." She says, then a thought crosses her mind. "Are you safe?"

"For now," Henry answers, and it's all her heart can bear to hear on the matter.

"Good," she concludes, unable to bring herself to ask him more about it.

"I wish I could be there for you," Henry says, sounding a bit homesick already.

She smiles, though, appreciating the sentiment, "You don't have to worry about me," she says.

"I do, though," he replies, and her stomach sinks again. Does he know? Has he realized it finally? Has he put two and two together that I'm pregnant? "I don't know why I feel like that, like I have to worry about you…but I do." He adds, and she breathes again and pulls the phone away from her face, removing the mouthpiece from hearing distance.

She shuts her eyes and clenches them tight, the mouthpiece resting on her shoulder as she keeps the earpiece up to her ear. Is he worried because I'm pregnant? Does he know, or is it some weird instinct? She scrapes the back parts of her brain for any biology information she learned in school, but she can't recall anything about a father's instinct when it came to this.

Henry continues and brings her out of her trance, "I've just been sitting here and thinking about how I didn't even get to give you a proper goodbye—it's just been driving me crazy."

Elizabeth swallows hard, her grip tightening around the phone. She thinks back to the last day they got to spend together—their first full day together after their accidental sleepover in her dorm—and how he held her hand and told her that he'd see her the next day. She thinks, too, about the devastation in his voice when he'd called the next morning and told her his orders were to ship out that day.

"Henry," she says, pausing for a beat to try to stop her voice from trembling, "You're going to be okay, right?"

There was another beat of silence before he answered. "I don't know," he admitted, the phone line crackling again loudly in her ear. She hadn't heard him sound scared before. In fact, every time he talked about deployment in their short time spent together he sounded confident. But now, he sounds unsure and her heart aches at the raw honesty in his voice. "But I'm going to do everything I can to come back. I have to."

Her mind darts so suddenly to the pregnancy, the reality of what was happening inside of her—something she'd tried to keep as a concept, as a decision to make and a problem to solve. But hearing Henry's voice suddenly made a new weight lay on her.

For the first time since she'd been sitting in her and Jess's bathroom floor, staring at a positive pregnancy test, she allows herself to imagine not just what she was carrying but imagine, instead, what it could become. It isn't fear that sweeps over her this time, but a surprising, disorienting sense of what she thinks may be responsibility.

For the first time, she feels a flicker of something other than fear—a fierce, protective resolve. Maybe, even, an equation in her math brain: if he has something to come home to, he'll come home. She won't tell him; she won't tie him down in this way while his mind should be focused on getting out of wherever he is. No, she wouldn't do that to him. But in the quiet that follows, she realizes she wasn't just protecting him—she's protecting something bigger, something she isn't ready to name but can't bring herself to let go of.

"Good," she whispers, and then she closes her eyes and sighs, unable to believe she's about to say this. But she does. "You have someone who loves you waiting back here at home."

It comes out so quiet that, when she hears the silence, she's not sure she even said it. But then the phone crackles and he starts speaking. "Is that your way of telling me you love me?" He asks, "Because if so, I love you too."

She squeezes her eyes shut tighter and bites her lip, taking a sharp breath when he says it. How can we love each other after only two dates—or is it three? We never did talk about that. How can we love each other that way? Is it really love? She tries to not second-guess herself, or even second-guess him, but she also is realistic: war and pregnancy both can do some major emotional damage. How is she not building all this love on fear?

I loved him that first night I saw him, a voice in her head says, but she tries to shake it off as she feels, again, like she's going to throw up.

"Keep that in mind while you're in your tin can," she breathes, thinking of how devastated she would be if something happened to him up there.

There's more crackling on the line and finally she hears someone in the background, and he groans into the phone, "I gotta go." He says urgently, "I'm glad I got to talk to you—I'll call same time tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay," she says. "I love you, Henry. Be careful out there."

"I love you too," he says, and she wonders if he, too, can't get enough of himself saying it. "Bye Elizabeth."

With that, the line went dead, and she hung up the phone. She continues to play with the phone cord mindlessly, though, thinking about how she'll be able to talk to him again the same time tomorrow—how she'll have to make sure she's back in time to get his call.

Her mind drifts off to her mother now, led by her heart pulling it there. I wish you were here, she thinks to herself, twirling the phone cord around her fingers and letting go, then doing it all over again. I have so many questions to ask you.

The journals of her mother's pop into her mind, too. She's never read them—even as a kid she felt it was too personal to read her mother's journals, like too much of a breach of privacy. But she didn't want to throw them away, either, and her aunt needed to clean out the rooms in her Massachusetts house after Elizabeth and Will had both moved out. So she brought the books with her in a box, and they sit up on the top of her closet now.

She looks over her shoulder toward the closets, and she slinks up from her chair and drags herself over there. She has to grab the step stool to reach the box, but once it's down, she blows the four layers of dust off and sneezes first before opening the box up.

Laying the journals out on the bed, she stares at them. Maybe it's still too private, she thinks. As she studies the outsides of them, she realizes how well-used they were, and how old they're starting to look now. Some of the pages were yellowing even on the outside edges that she could see, and the covers were starting to fade pretty badly. Some more than others. One, the one Elizabeth knew to be the last one Suzanne had used, still looked mostly new.

Finally, she lets her breath out and deflates her chest, and she reaches for one of the journals. She flips through the pages and reads the dates—all from 1980. Another book was all 1977. Another book was filled with firsts of Will's, so she knows that it was from 1970. She gets to a book where Suzanne is talking about her fresh marriage to Ben, and the dates are 1967.

She flips through them a bit, scanning for anything to give her some sort of advice—some sort of desperate word from her long-dead mother. She gets to a page dated June 5, 1967, and she sees that the handwriting is a bit more scribbled and rushed.

"I'm late. Late. I can't believe I'm writing this down, but I've missed my period. The kind of late that makes your stomach drop and your palms sweat. I know what that means. I think I've known all along, but to put it down on paper? To admit it feels like the world is shaking beneath me.

Ben keeps saying everything will be fine, that we'll figure it out together. But how can he be so sure? We've only been married two months. This wasn't the plan—we'd been careful. We were supposed to be a couple for a while first, live in our little house we're renting, figure things out. And now? Now there's this—this thing that's growing inside me.

I keep thinking, 'This can't be right. It must be stress, or something else. I'm only 20. I'm not ready for this. I didn't even know if I was ready to get married, but now? How do I go from just being a wife—something I didn't even know anything about first—to being someone's mother too? How do I take care of a baby when I don't even know how to take care of myself some days?

What if I'm terrible at it? What if I can't do it? And what if Ben...what if he changes his mind? I know he loves me, but we never talked about this. He never said he was ready to have children. He's so young too and he's just starting his job with the company. Can we really do this?

I feel like I'm in freefall. I didn't expect this. I didn't expect any of it."

Elizabeth is leaning against her dresser, her back up against it as she sits in the floor criss-cross and the journal in her lap. She feels herself holding her breath, so she makes a breath whoosh into her lungs. She didn't know either, she thinks, I was an accident.

The irony makes her laugh to herself, a snort that turns into a chuckle. She had never known that she was an accident before—her parents always loved her and never treated her differently than Will. Then she wonders, too, if Will was an accident. She closes the book as she feels the stinging in her eyes, and she takes another breath and grabs for a different book.

This one looked a little newer, but not the newest. She opens it to see dates that ended in 1980, and she flips through a bit until she sees her name.

"Today's the day Elizabeth became a woman." Elizabeth stops reading and feels her cheeks redden—she remembers the day clearly and felt embarrassed back then and embarrassed, apparently, now too. "She was scared, confused, and I wasn't ready to be the one to explain it all. I kept thinking, she's still my little girl. How did we get here so quickly?

I tried to stay calm, telling her it was normal, but all I could think of was how young she still seemed. The time snuck away from me, and it hit me then, how fast time was moving. Just like when I found out I was pregnant with her. I wasn't ready for that, either. But here we are, me—sitting down with her, telling her things I didn't even know how to say at her age.

It feels like the years are slipping by faster than I can hold onto them. Sometimes, I still feel like I'm not quite sure what I'm doing. But I guess, like everything else, life doesn't give you a choice. It just happens.

Elizabeth looks up from the book, unsure she can go forward anymore. She hasn't found any direct advice and is starting to feel disappointed—though she's not sure what she was hoping to find. But she did see how unsure her mother was, and how unsure she'd felt about everything through Elizabeth's entire life.

She wondered how Suzanne had gotten through it all—she supposed her dad had a lot to do with it. They really did love each other and seemed like they were each other's best friends. Her heart aches a little more for Henry again—she'd consider Jess to be her best friend right now, but that's only because Jess has been there for her longer. She loves Jess, too, but not in the same way as Henry.

She looks down at the book again and keeps reading from that entry.

"I gave her the sex talk, too. I wanted to make sure I covered all the bases—my mom didn't tell me in enough detail and it had me thinking I wouldn't get pregnant on my wedding night."

Elizabeth snorts, murmuring aloud to herself, "You tried, Mom."