Hello, again! Despite the appearance of this opening chapter, this is NOT an AU fiction. I wanted it to be as cannon as possible (with some allowances here and there). So please just read on a bit through this dream like sequence. Thanks so much! :)

SESSION ONE:

Jo was sitting in her living room with all her friends around her. They were all watching the Bachelor hand out roses. It was down to the last rose of the evening when the programming switched to a commercial. Greasy, cheese-laden pizza filled up the whole screen. It spun and tilted, the camera zooming in and out.

Suddenly, Jo felt sick. She rushed for the bathroom, barely making it when she lost her dinner.

"Jo, are you okay?" Allison asked. Ever the mother, she touched a cool hand to Jo's forehead.

She shook her head and her stomach heaved again. And then she felt it, even though there was no real way to tell. That soft flickering presence could not be denied.

"I'm pregnant." Jo panted. "It's Zane's." She could see her friends' reactions to the revelation that without some quick thinking, their lives had very audibly begun ticking down.

Soon, there would be no way to hide it. She would show. People would know.

"Oh, how wonderful! How far along are you? Who's the father?"

And Jo couldn't tell the truth.

"But doesn't he have a right to know? Zane's the father."

Jo shook her head fiercely. "Biologically, only, as far as this one is concerned." How would that conversation go?

"I never asked for this. It's not my problem. You figure it out." Zane could be such a child at times. "You're not going to make an honest man out of me!" He could be so mean.

But Jo was terrified for the life of her child. Zane would know how to keep them safe. He could write new lives for all of them, lives no one would ever question. They could run before Mansfield was on to them. They could start over someplace else. Zane would teach high school physics. Jo would stay at home and decorate the baby's room. Blue, for a beautiful boy with Zane's eyes and her nose.

Zane didn't want that. Zane didn't deserve that. He hated Lupo for trying to make him live like that. He wished Mansfield had caught them and sent them all to prison. There, Jo's head was shaved and she was alone in a cell for ages. Everything was grey and no one ever heard her cry.

Mansfield came and they tied her down to a cold table.

"You can't do this! What about my baby?" No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't break free. She couldn't stop them from sticking needles up her arms.

She couldn't stop them from pushing the plungers down. She couldn't stop Zane from hating every beat of her heart even as she and their baby died. She couldn't even die before the tiny rapid beat slowed and stopped altogether.

"GAH!" Jo jerked upright in bed and sucked in air. Winded like she'd just run an Iron Man marathon, she swiped the visor off her eyes. Beverly's VR therapy aid fell to the bedspread as Jo hurried to the bathroom to be sick for real.

Panting over the toilet, she had to admit there were worse reasons to be sick than a hangover.