Copyright 2000, Lyta. All rights reserved. No part of this story may be re-posted in part or in full without written permission from me.

Disclaimer: Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict is copyright 1998, Tribune Entertainment Co. Its characters are used without permission, no infringement is intended.

Rating: PG-13

Title:

Author: Lyta

Lyta_1028@yahoo.com

Author’s Note: This is based on spoilers for “The Arrival”.

Summary: Lili makes a discovery.

“A Blessed Event?”

Lili Marquette lay curled into a ball on her bed, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. Her body shook with silent sobs of fear, tears streaming down her face and wetting the pillow. Here she was, lights years from Earth, living amid a civilization calmly preparing to invade her home, pregnant with a half Jaridian child and all she could do was sob hysterically. The rational aspect of her brain ordered her to snap out of it, that this really was not helping her or the baby at all. She needed to get away before the Jaridians discovered she was pregnant.

How was she to have known that Dr. Michael Reed was a Jaridian, the sane part of her asked? She had never felt as betrayed as when the illusion had been revealed to her. The Jaridian tried to speak with her, to apologize in a way, but she had stalked off and returned to her quarters. He did not try to follow her; the Jaridians understood her anger and respected it.

When she had begun feeling nauseous in the mornings, it was easy to attribute that and her other symptoms to a combination of unfamiliar diet and whatever it was Sandoval had ordered Tate and Vosser to do to her. Pregnancy seemed about the last possible explanation, after all, she had only been with the Jaridian once.

She really should have known better. Siobhan Beckett had only been with Ha’gel once too, Liam was living proof of that.

Lili’s hand touched her stomach and rested over the place where her child was developing within her. She had known for certain that she was pregnant for over a week, but she was still uncertain how she felt about the baby. She had been raised to view abortion as murder except in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life was in danger. Lili honestly did not know if her case qualified or if she would be able to live with herself if it did and she did find a way to have an abortion.

She took what comfort she could in the memory of Beckett’s pregnancy, at least her situation was not entirely without precedent. Beckett had been fiercely protective and loving of her son from the moment she regained consciousness in the Resistance headquarters, but Lili had also seen fear in her eyes. She wondered if she would be able to give her child that same unconditional love that Beckett had given Liam.

Would her child be like Liam? Lili had no way of knowing for sure, but the similarities were hard to ignore. It had been a month since she had learned she was on Jaridia, but she felt further along than that. Lili was not a doctor and her experience with pregnancy was limited to television and what her mother had told her when she was thirteen.

Her mother, Lili found herself crying again at the memory of her. She had never wanted her mother more in her entire life to simply be there. Her mother would smooth her rumpled hair, help her wipe the tears streaking down her cheeks and tell her that everything would turn out all right.

FIN