A/N — Happy New Year! xoxo — kals

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Chapter 10

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"Kara's pregnant."

Danny stared at Captain Chandler, his mind spinning, convinced that he had somehow misunderstood. He hadn't thought that Captain Chandler tracked him down to deliver good news, but...

That was impossible.

Kara couldn't be pregnant.

She got her period.

No, they hadn't done an official test, but Kara had been certain. And, since then, they had toed the line, both of them aware of how important it was to remain professional.

No, he was asleep and this was all a terrible nightmare.

His mind somehow conflating the pregnancy scare from August with the vaccine trial.

He must have said something aloud, because Captain Chandler raised an eyebrow. "Do you want me to pinch you?"

"How is..." Danny's throat was so tight that he could barely force the words. "How is she doing?"

Captain Chandler's face didn't change, but the way he hesitated told Danny that the news he was about to deliver wasn't good. "Doctor Scott is still hopeful. The others don't seem as sick."

Again, it took a moment for the meaning to register.

Kara was sicker than everyone else.

Because she was pregnant.

But how could Kara be pregnant? Or, more critically, how could she be pregnant and not know? By now she would be months along. Shouldn't she be puking or showing or...something? Weren't the guys always talking about how sick their wives were when they were pregnant? How they fell asleep at the drop of a hat and couldn't stand the smell of food? This had to be some sort of mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake or maybe a goof, like last time. But even as his mind spun, Danny knew that Captain Chandler wouldn't be here, delivering this news, if Doctor Scott wasn't certain.

And Doctor Scott was never wrong.

"Can I see her?" Danny barely recognized his own voice.

Captain Chandler hesitated for only a second, then nodded. "Doctor Scott has a few questions for you as well."

As they headed towards the helicopter bay, Danny avoiding eye contact, knowing that every member of the crew was watching and wondering. None of them would think that Captain Chandler pulling Danny aside right now was a good thing, but Danny doubted that a single one of them could imagine what just happened. Even Danny couldn't wrap his mind around the idea of Kara being pregnant.

Again.

Or still.

Or whatever the right word was.

Danny felt disconnected, numb, as he sat down before Doctor Scott, answering her questions robotically.

Did you and Kara have sex?

When was the last time?

Do you know when Kara's last period was?

The question that she didn't ask was the only one that mattered.

How could you not know?

"We had a ... scare," he said abruptly. "Back in August. The condom broke. But Kara got her period. And after that we realized how stupid we were being and we stopped. So the test has to be wrong." He stared at Rachel, hearing the desperation in his words, the plea for her to tell him that this was all a mistake. "It has to be wrong. It has to be."

Doctor Scott set down her pen, a hand lifting to push sweaty hair back from her face, and Danny really looked at the woman for the first time. He took in the dark patches under her eyes and the exhaustion in her face, realizing that the woman was still wearing her hazmat suit, as though she had stepped out of the tent for only a moment.

And he knew that Doctor Scott wasn't wrong.

"Many women bleed at the beginning of pregnancies, Danny," Doctor Scott explained. "Kara could easily have confused the bleeding for her period. Did she ever take a test?"

Danny thought about that day, in Kara's cabin, neither one of them wanting to give themselves away to get what they thought was an unnecessary test. "No."

Doctor Scott sighed, looking down at her paperwork. "The bloodwork is consistent with a fetus of twelve weeks, which is the most likely conception date given the timeline you indicated."

If only he had pushed Kara to steal the test from Rios.

If only she had been the one to get Dengue Fever.

If only Kara hadn't volunteered for the vaccine trial.

If only...

But regrets would change nothing. "She..." Danny stopped, the words feeling idiotic. Yet he had to know. "She wasn't sick."

"Many women aren't." Doctor Scott stopped, taking a deep breath, before looking up. "I'm sure that Lieutenant Foster has no idea that she is pregnant. And given her current condition, I see no reason to inform her."

No reason to tell her that she was pregnant when she was dying.

Danny would do anything to go back to the days in the Arctic when his biggest worry was convincing Kara that he wasn't going to walk away. He thought about the time he spent whittling that block, imagining his life if he turned into those guys who saw his kid once a year, if that, while Kara moved on and got married to some other guy. He didn't even know what Kara had done with the block — tossed it, most likely, not wanting the hint of the relationship between them.

If only they understood how much worse things could get.

Suddenly, Danny desperately wanted that block back. He thought about the night they spent mourning the baby-that-never-was — except that there was a baby, they just thought there wasn't — and he couldn't wrap his mind around the idea of that baby being real again. He brain felt the way it used to when he was a kid and he fell asleep watching the television, only to wake up uncertain about whether he was awake or asleep and what was real and what wasn't.

This was a nightmare.

But one that he couldn't wake up from.

"Would you like to see Kara?" Doctor Scott asked, interrupting his spinning thoughts.

"Yes."

He stood, following Doctor Scott to the hazmat suits and dressing mechanically, barely acknowledging Tex or Miller or the Master Chief as he entered the hazmat tent. Commander Garnett was sitting next to Kara, holding her hand. Upon seeing Danny, she stood, swaying slightly before she caught her balance and eased back onto the cot next to Kara. She tried to smile, but her lips cracked and bled. "Kara will be happy to see you."

As Commander Garnett moved, Danny got his first real look at Kara, and it was in that moment that Danny understood two things with crystal clarity.

First, he and Kara would never have that future they imagined. There would be no wedding bells or babies or even the sex-a-thon he had planned for the second that they hit civilization. Their time together was now limited to days, maybe hours, in this tent separated by layers of plastic.

Second, his role now was simple. He would sit here, holding Kara's hand, giving her what peace he could before she died.