2.24 Intruding

Guy cries at the new waste of money  beautiful machine of science that Sun brought with her. 

All that advancement...so wonderful! So... expensive. 

Once he gets over its astronomical price, he gets distracted by the fancy looking console. 

Oooh, science! 

He's just randomly tapping buttons, but what if he discovers something? What if he finds the cure to some disease? 

What if he could make a clone? That would be cool! 

Meanwhile downstairs, Sun is freaking out about an imperfect clone of her own. 

She's pregnant. 

The initial wave of panic becomes a deep sense of dread. She wasn't supposed to stay here forever. Carrying Paolo's baby makes her living situation- and her life- so much more complicated. She was going to quit her job and put her engineering degree to use after finding a place and saving up a little. Now she has a child to provide for. She does. She can't imagine Paolo wanting to play house with a woman he just started dating. Plumbob, she was so stupid! Why did she move in with a guy she's barely seeing seriously? He even has two kids! 

How is Paolo going to feel about all of this? 

Then another thought hits her; she never even broke it off with the other guy she was seeing. He might think the kid is his! 

Sun buries her face in her hands. What is she going to do? 

Tula walks in and sees Sun hurry dramatically out the front door. She arches an eyebrow; something tells her that Sun's going somewhere interesting. 

This warrants an investigation. 

Anxiety and panic lancing through her veins, Sun half walks, half sprints into the art gallery. She's going to break it off with Michael. They haven't seen each other in a while, but not long enough for it to be mathematically certain that this baby isn't his. Sun knows it probably isn't, but that "probably" isn't too reassuring. 

No need to tell Michael though. Telling him would then require telling Paolo that the baby might not be his and...and... 

Too complicated! She has a plan. She just needs to follow it. 

Michael smiles at Sun as she greets him, stumbling through small talk. She seems nervous- more so than usual- and he wonders what it could be. He might have picked up a knack for sniffing unease as a journalist, but Sun isn't too hard to read. Her hands fidget by her sides and her smile seems tense. 

Once Sun finally gets through her little questionnaire, Michael opens his mouth to speak. "What's wrong, Sun? You seem like you want to tell me something." 

Sun smiles- still a bit unnaturally, Michael notices- and says in a quick jumble, "I've uh started seeing someone- well, er, moved in with him- and I think we should stop dating." 

Michael isn't too pleased about this. 

"We date for a year and you just start seeing someone without telling me?" 

Sun flinches. When Paolo went AWOL, she just sort of...continued things with Michael. It wasn't ever serious, at least she didn't think so. 

"But you never asked me to be your girlfriend," she says innocently. 

Michael stares at her, astounded, "We both weren't seeing anyone else! We even talked about this, remember?" 

Her face flushes. They did, one particularly romantic night when they went camping under the stars together. She might have possibly got caught up in the moment, and made a few promises about their relationship that she didn't ever think about following up on... 

Aside from disinterested art gallery visitors, there is one witness to Sun's spectacular screw-up. 

Tula can't really hear what they're saying through this glass, but she doesn't need to. It's obvious from the way the man looks at Sun that they're involved, or used to be anyways. He seems quite angry with her. 

She stares, dispassionately but engaged, as Sun waves her hands around, probably in an attempt to get the man to lower his voice. She's embarrassed of this interaction. Tula wonders why; sure, Sun is with her dad, but by making such a big deal out of it, she's only inviting attention. Besides, why would her dad care that Sun's seeing someone else? As far as Tula knows, they haven't agreed to any terms of commitment yet, beyond the normal responsibilities of a housemate. And even if they did, Sun should either revise the terms or not make such a big fuss about it. Simple. 

She watches with mild confusion as the man reaches up to touch Sun's face, only to have his hand roughly swatted away. Is he angry or sad? Rough or tender? It's hard to tell. 

She obviously has more to learn about romantic interpersonal relationships. She takes out her phone and snaps a few pictures, wanting to have both evidence and data from this particular case-study. 

After coming home, Tula uploads the photos of the secret meeting from her phone onto a USB stick. Who knows when this could come in handy? 

Sun comes home not long after, and goes upstairs to talk to Paolo. Her resolve to announce their impending bundle of joy fizzles when she sees that he's fast asleep. 

She glances at his dresser, which becomes staring when she notices the pictures of Krista. Everyone heard about what had happened to her. Hell, Sun's sister was one of the paramedics that saw Krista...dead. Nakisha had told Sun in a low, somber tone that she had never seen so much blood in her life, that sometimes she still felt guilty about being too late. 

And somehow, knowing that, Krista had never been brought up between Sun and Paolo. The tiny town's first murder in Watcher-knows-how-long and they just...never spoke of it. He was married to her, and has a daughter with her, but he never talks about Krista. 

It shouldn't bother her. It's been years since then, and maybe Paolo just wanted to move on, but the thought persists. What if she's pregnant with the child of a man hung up on someone else? What if she's intruding? 

Quietly, she creeps out of the room. This wasn't for her to see.

Paolo wakes up early the next morning for work, completely unaware that someone else was in here. He's always slept in here, ever since becoming an adult. It never occurred to him that he could sleep downstairs with Sun, or put away the old photos and their bittersweet memories. 

Everything is, more or less, as it always has been in this room, except for the fact that he now sleeps alone. 

Sun calls in sick for work, feeling nauseous enough for it not to be an excuse. With Paolo gone for training for the day, Sun is jittery and on-edge in the house. 

So she does what she does best; busy work. She's found that she can't stop a task until it's really finished, just how she wants it. 

The exact precision needed in engineering soothes her and occupies her for most of the day. Why can't this be her job? She much prefers it to tending to the mostly boring and sometimes aggressive plants at the lab. Living things have a way of doing what they shouldn't be. At least when a machine breaks down, it can be fixed. A dead plant? Pft, no way. 

And at least machines don't need to eat. She has to stop her little time-suck project and get a late lunch. 

She finishes her meal quickly, but barely tastes any of it. Without something to occupy her, Sun's thoughts turn back towards reality; she's pregnant, and Paolo needs to know. 

But does he really? Maybe it's a false alarm...maybe her period's just late... 

Even as she tells herself these things, she knows it's not true. 

The sound of the door opening pulls her out of her panicked reverie. 

Oh crap, it's him, she feels her stomach drop. 

Caught between her instinct to flee and her rational decision to talk to Paolo, Sun is paralysed. Before she can make any moves, Paolo's already in her path, talking to her. 

Except she's not hearing a word he's saying. He must notice, because he suddenly stops speaking and trails off. 

"...are you alright?" 

The question is asked innocently, but it tears through Sun's immobility. Suddenly she feels irritated beyond belief. 

"Do I look okay? Gosh, Paolo! No, no I'm not!" 

Paolo stares, surprised, "What's wrong?" 

Sudden tears of frustration prick her eyes. She knows she's being irrational, but she can't seem to stop herself. 

"I...I'm pregnant and I don't know what to do!" she cries, throwing her hands up in frustration. 

Paolo can only make this panicked-happy expression. "Pregnant?" 

"Yes! Pregnant! With your baby!" she exclaims. She sighs, then pinches the bridge of her nose. 

"I-I...I always thought I'd be having kids if I were married, you know? And you and I aren't even proper boyfriend and girlfriend," she says with a sigh, "We live together and stuff, but we aren't together-together, y'know? And I feel a bit old to be a mom...but not really ready to be a mom either, and you already have Tula and Guy and you might not even want another kid...or me..." 

"Sun, wait, no, don't talk like that. Of course I want to be with you. I wanted you to move in here, right?" Paolo is quick to soothe her, "And any baby we're going to have is going to be our kid. Of course I'll love them." 

"You say that now," Sun sniffs, "But babies are a lot of work and we both work full-time and you have two other kids now..." 

Paolo takes Sun's hand, "That would never happen," he says firmly, "We'll get through this together. I promise." 

Sun looks away. She can't help but feel dread, but then again...

She has no one else. She'll have to trust Paolo. 

"Okay."