Chapter I

White Lies

Michelle Almeida was woken up in the early hours of a cloudy Saturday by a pounding headache and waves of nausea running up and down her stomach and throat, but as soon as she opened her almond shaped brown eyes a strong dizziness forced her to close them again.

She was, as always, wrapped up in the arms of her husband and completely tangled up with him; their limbs were intertwined, their heads were both resting one right next to the other on the same pillow, their noses were touching and while his arms were firmly circling her small waist her hands were one placed on the cheek she had been stroking before she fell asleep and the other buried in the dark, curly hair her fingers had been playing with as she slowly drifted off after the long, exhausting day they had had.

Usually, she would have comfortably stayed in that position watching him in his peaceful sleep until he woke as well and started the first round of their weekend lovemaking sessions by kissing every inch of her body good morning (although that since they were no longer working at CTU and they were running their own business, a freelance security company, free time was something they got to enjoy more often, thus making love before breakfast was a ritual they could practice every single day and not only twice a week on Saturdays and Sundays like they had to before), but she was feeling so sick she had to get up and go to the bathroom to throw up.

Making her way to the bathroom was not an easy task to get done: she was still light-headed and her knees felt weak, so did the rest of her body. Every muscle ached, and she could barely keep her eyes from shutting close against her will, but somehow she managed to get there without making too much noise, so her husband wasn't woken up.

Ten minutes later she was back to bed and in the arms of the love of her life, the man of her dreams, who hadn't even moved or stirred. She was feeling slightly better now, but the headache and waves of nausea hadn't gone yet, neither had the heaviness in her eyes.

I must be coming down with the flu was the thought that crossed her mind before tiredness caught up with her and she dozed off again, but deep down inside she knew better: that wasn't the answer to the equation. Deep down inside she knew what that was about, but she was just too scared to even admit it to herself.

But by Thursday afternoon, Michelle couldn't keep telling in appearance reassuring lies: something as simple as the flu couldn't be blamed for the symptoms she had been suffering from during the past couple of days, and by Wednesday as another wave of morning sickness attacked her even before she had had the chance to have some breakfast forced down her throat, she decided she had to start putting her fears and worries aside and find out if her suspects were or not true, even if she didn't want to… yet.

Her husband had – of course - noticed there was something different with her, and he also had his own suspects on the matter. He hadn't mentioned anything to her, though, and he had pretended to buy all the white lies she told to justify the headaches, the dizziness and the morning sickness, but he did know what was probably going on and the thought of it thrilled him. He wanted nothing but to hold her in his arms and cry in pure happiness, he wanted nothing but to celebrate that little miracle they both had created but at the same time he wanted to give her some time, some space, some privacy and let her come to him and share the news with him when she felt she was ready, when she felt she had had the time she needed to process it all and was prepared to discuss it with him.

And Tony was right: Michelle wasn't ready yet. She wasn't ready to share her suspects with him, or to tell him she might be pregnant, or to buy a pregnancy test and take it… not yet. And he couldn't blame her for it. He couldn't, because he knew where all those fears, worries and insecurities came from.

During the first year of their marriage she had had a miscarriage, and that had shattered them both, that had broken them both into pieces. Then several false alarms had followed, but each time a test was taken it would come out negative, which always left the two of them as sad and as empty as the loss of their unborn child had.

He had been sent to prison and their lives had become a living Hell from the on, so ever since that horrible day the subject of family had never been mentioned again neither by Tony nor Michelle: they were too busy trying to heal what had been damaged by life's circumstances.

But now it seemed as if the subject would have to be brought up eventually, sooner or later.

She knew he knew.

She knew he was giving her the space and time she needed, and she was thankful for that.

She knew he had the same worries and fears as she did, but she also knew he was thrilled and happy, more thrilled and happier than it was probably good: she could sense it in the way he held her, she could see it in his eyes, and she could hear it in the way he whispered sweet nothings in her ears before she fell asleep.

And that scared her. Yes, that scared the hell out of Michelle Almeida.

He had been that happy and that thrilled before, and they had lost their baby; he had been that happy and that thrilled before, and those pregnancy tests she had taken had all come out negative. The symptoms clearly screamed 'yes, you are' to her, but so had they on those previous occasions that had not been more than false alarms.

She didn't want to sit with him on the bathroom floor while they waited for the blue line to appear like they had done before, only to later be disillusioned.

She didn't want to see his heart breaking right in front of her eyes if that turned out to be the case.

She didn't want him to swallow up his tears and hide his pain away and remain strong in appearance just to protect her. She knew he would be devastated if passed the time her suspects were proven to have not been true, she knew it would hurt just the same, she knew they both would fall apart with the same intensity, but if she had to take a pregnancy test and be disappointed, she didn't want her husband to witness as another promising dream met its twilight and said goodbye to its possibility of coming true.

She would get that test done as soon as she could, because the need to find out was starting to be more powerful than any other thing going on in her mind, and it was consuming her.

Oh, yes, it was so consuming.

By Wednesday morning, she knew that she could not wait for any longer.

Her husband would be out all day; he had promised his grandmother he would visit her and take her out to lunch and a movie as soon as he could. The previous night she had insisted he did it on the following day, so that would give her some time alone to go buy the test and finally get rid of her doubts.

Half an hour after he left for the retirement house, she dialled the number of one of the only friends that hadn't disappeared after tragedy hit her life almost two years ago, one of the few persons that were there for her not to tell her what she wanted to hear but what she needed to hear.

She didn't want Tony to be there with her witnessing as she fell apart and her heart broke in two again, but she didn't want to be alone, either.

"Hey, it's me!" Michelle said after the individual on the other side of the line picked it up and greeted whoever it was that was calling her on the late morning of her day off by saying her last name. She decided to tease her a little "You know you don't have to answer the phone like that when you're at home, right?"

"It's a habit" she simply said, and Michelle could have sworn she was scowling. She couldn't see her, but she knew she was.

"I know, getting rid of it was hard for me as well after I left CTU" she confessed.

"You didn't call me just to tell me that, did you?"

She smiled at the obvious lack of social skills that woman always seemed to be making displays of.

"No, I didn't. I called you because Tony went out with his grandmother and I thought you and I could hang out together today"

It was a lie, a white lie.

Like the white lies she had been telling Tony during those last couple of days every time he asked how she felt.

White lies she knew he wasn't buying but that he was letting her get away with.

White lies she knew her friend would buy but probably wouldn't let her get away with after she found out the truth, she knew that too. And it felt awful, lying to a friend, but Michelle's option weren't much.

It wasn't fair game, no it wasn't, but if she told her that what she meant by 'hang out' was 'come with me to the pharmacy buy a pregnancy test and do small talk while I wait for the results, and maybe hold me while I cry if it doesn't turn out positive, and maybe watch me freak out if it doesn't turn out negative' she wouldn't feel comfortable and would come up with excuses about why she couldn't go.

Michelle herself wasn't sure she wouldn't feel weird sharing that personal and important moment of her life with Chloe, but it was the only person she could think of at the time and the only one who had ever listened to her – really listened to her - crying when her husband was in prison, and after that during the six months they lived together in Hell, and after that during those other six months she spent sinking in misery, devastation and work-a-holism, alone and in pain. And she had always been very supportive… in her own particular way. Maybe she didn't hold her hand and rub her back and whisper 'everything is gonna be alright' or gave her a tissue to dry off her tears as others like Kim or Chase had done; maybe she was too harsh and always said truths one wasn't really ready to face; maybe she never knew what was the right thing to say and always said the wrong thing instead because words just wouldn't come out the way she meant them to, but out of all those people that had stayed by Michelle's side during the worst path she had ever had to go through, out of all those people that had tried to help her, Chloe O'Brian was the only one that had made a slight different.

During those four months that followed the 'death' of Jack Bauer, after Michelle and Tony reunited, everything fell back in place and they found themselves back where they belonged (in each other's arms), Michelle's eyes suddenly opened to see Chloe was as alone and as surrounded by sadness as she had once been, that she probably could use some more time with friends, time that otherwise she would spend in front of a computer screen, that it would do her good interact with people, have someone to talk to about her bad days or problems or simply a friend who made her laugh, a friend to have a good time with from time to time.

When she had needed that, Michelle had had Chloe.

She still remembered the first day Chloe had gone check on her because Jack had asked that as a favor. A week had passed sine Tony had been taken away. Michelle wasn't sleeping or eating properly, and all she did was watch old video tapes (their honeymoon's, their wedding's, Tony fooling around with the camera), read the love letters her husband would always write to her and cry herself to sleep in exhaustion. During the course of those seven days Kim, Chase, Jack and some other friends of the couple had stopped by to see how she was doing; they had all tried to get her to eat; they had all tried to get her to stop torturing herself over what had happened; they had all be sympathetic. And neither of them had seen Michelle did not need anything of what they had to offer. But Chloe somehow had understood it. Chloe – the analyst who totally lacked of social skills and couldn't hold a conversation with another human being that lasted more than five minutes - somehow had been the only one capable of making Michelle open up and talk.

Ever since that day, they had become friends. It wasn't the normal, fluffy, clichéd type, but both of them considered it a friendship.

"I can be there in an hour" Chloe's voice took Michelle out of the bubble of thoughts she had fallen into.

"Okay, that will give me time to go run some errands" she thought aloud. It would be better if she went buy the pregnancy test before Chloe got there, so she wouldn't have to put in use another white lie by asking Chloe to go with her do some last minute grocery shopping and surprise her by stopping by at the pharmacy.

"Okay, see you soon, then" was the last thing the blond analyst said before she hung up.

Michelle sighed in relief and tried to shake off some of the nervousness she was feeling. She heard her cell phone beeping, flicked it open and saw Tony had just sent her a text message.

"Grandma says she loves you and that she hopes you'll feel better soon. I love you too, sweetheart"

"I love you too, Tony. I really want to give you good news tonight when you get home" she whispered to her phone.