Hi there. This is, like, the third or fourth HM fic I've written, but the first I've ever planned to keep posted long enough for anyone to read. I'm kinda picky. Anyway, I hope this will make sense to you all. It's just something I wrote on a whim, though I feel I could have done a few things differently.

Ah well. Enjoy!

I Can't Be Sorry

Jin tiredly rubs the bridge of his nose as he has so many nights now. He sighs and squares his shoulders to once again deliver the disappointing news to her...though by now he expects she's merely wearied and not crushed by it. He rises stiffly from his chair and walks to one of the rooms in the clinic. She's lying on the bed, hands folded serenely, idly watching the ceiling. Her eyes seek his when he enters the room, though her head never lowers.

They stare at one another for a split second before he says shortly, "No. There's nothing I can do, Anissa. I'm sorry."

The disappointment in her eyes isn't as fresh and hurtful as it was the first time. It's now just cold and familiar. She merely looks away from him and back to the ceiling again. Her shoulders move in something like a shrug and she says lightly, "Oh well. Maybe next time, I hope."

Jin doesn't go to lay a comforting hand on her shoulder. He doesn't stop to cry and moan with her over why they are being cursed like this. This routine is as tiresome as his work as a doctor, so he only turns around and says over his shoulder, "Then I will see you at home tonight. I shall be late."

When she leaves he is staring at the piles of paper spread out on his desk. The black words, the scribblings of his own hand...they all blur together into one inky swirl that swims in his eyes. He knows he is only a doctor, he knows there is nothing he can do, and yet he can't shake the feeling that he's responsible in some way. Why couldn't they have the one thing everyone else on the island had no trouble having? Why couldn't the Goddess bless them?

Jin feels the tears burning his eyes, but not once do they fall.

The next day is wrought with painful reminders, but then everyday was. As though in some kind of fever, everyone was popping up with babies. Gill and Luna were the first appointment of the day. They were having a girl. She was to be named Vivian. Gill was anxious and insisted Jin demand Luna quit lifting heavy boxes at the Tailor's and get some proper bed rest.

Chase and Maya were also having a girl, though neither of them could agree between the name Paprika or Candy.

Owen and Kathy were expecting a boy. Kathy vehemently refused to name him Owen Jr. Owen hoped he had her eyes.

These appointments Jin got through with a friendly demeanor and reassurances that each and every baby was going to be born happy and healthy. This lying had become natural to him, it was something of a second skin. He was good at hiding his hurt from these happy couples. Perhaps maybe too good even.

There was just one he did not have such an easy time with. The farmer, Molly, and her husband. He answered their questions with a clipped, professional demeanor devoid of any joy toward their new addition to the family. He saw them out the clinic with grim warnings of Molly being dehydrated and a made up musing that she might suffer complications in birth. He watched as she clutched her heavy stomach, her husband gripping her arm carefully while he lead her down the stairs and out the door. He prayed she'd fall. He'd prayed the baby would die. She would have two after this pregnancy.

The number mocked him.

At home Anissa was distant. She was no longer the smiling, soft woman he use to remember. Now she was just a murmuring ghost with dead, red eyes. He bolted down the poorly prepared dinner she made him before locking himself in his study like he took to doing every night. Anything to get away from her eyes, the lifeless tone of her voice.

Before he settles down to continue his tedious paperwork, he catches a glimpse of their wedding photo tucked underneath a book. Anissa's smile haunts him through the glass. How was he and she to know...on the happiest day of their lives...that everyday after that would be nothing but a long, winding road straight to hell?

The frame shatters as it hits the floor.

He can't stop himself from crying this time.

It couldn't end like this. This couldn't be what they had to look forward to for the rest of their lives...if only there was some way to just...

The idea hits him deliberately and slowly. No, it's no mere idea...only a cruel answer to an agonizing question.

Some months later he's sitting in the chapel. Molly the farmer had died. Her latest pregnancy did not bode an easy labor and the delivery yielded both a dead baby and mother. The entire town was there, wet eyed, sniffling, still shocked that the vibrant, strong woman they had all come to love could be taken away from them so easily.

Jin listens to the service with an easy air. He is perhaps the only one there with dry eyes and a faint easy smile on his lips. He is much too preoccupied with listening to the happy gurgling of the baby in Anissa's arms. He watches out the corner of his eye as she balances wiping her streaming eyes and rocking the fitful baby. She too is hurt by Molly's passing. He guesses at least one of them ought to be. When the service is over Anissa tells him that she has to get the baby home immediately. She doesn't think she can go on without changing him another minute.

"I still can't believe she's just gone like that," Anissa's says over the changing table. She pins a diaper on the baby and hoist him over her shoulder. "Molly was such a...well...energetic person. It seems so odd that she died... that way."

"These things happen," Jin answers her kindly. He tries to hide the smirk as it creeps onto his face. "Childbirth is a risk for any woman no matter how able-bodied she is. Sometimes the whole process just takes too much out of a person. In any case, I can't really say I'm surprised...I did tell her that working outside in those fields would be bad for her later on."

"Yes," Anissa sighs. "I just feel so sorry for her husband though. He looked so lost...and their poor little girl...growing up now without a mother."

"We must wish them the best, dear," Jin advises.

"Yes...but isn't it funny? The night she dies is the very same night I give birth. It's almost as though the Goddess were shifting the hourglass a bit...the sand leaves one side and fills up the other...all the same, I couldn't be more happy for the safe arrival of our little boy. He's such a beautiful baby, isn't he dear?"

"Yes," Jin smiles. "He's absolutely heavenly."

"He sure is...look at these cute little toes-" Anissa cooed, kissing the child's kicking feet.

"And these cute little hands-" She kissed his chubby, tightly curled fists.

"And these beautiful big-" She was about to press her lips against his eyelids when she froze. She looked down into the rosy, cherub face of her baby son and gazed into his brown, chocolatey eyes. Eyes that so reminded her of someone...eyes that she knew neither she nor her husband possessed.

And with a horrifying, numbing clarity she understood.

Slowly, she turned to face Jin who had been watching her the entire time. His eyes, so glacial, so blank, looked back at her with an indifference that was chilling. She felt the tears suddenly falling down her face and her voice was choked as she asked simply, "Why?"

He merely smiled, that professional, curt smile reserved only for patients and walked past her, stopping only at the door to tell her he would be working late at the clinic that night.

She watched the door close and was left with an empty silence. Anissa knew that no matter how many times she asked him...he would never apologize for what he must have done. Jin would never come to have an ounce of guilt for the terrible, sinful act that forever bloodied his hands.

Anissa looked down into the baby's sleeping face. Against all her good reasoning she realized with a fearful, honest reluctance...

She too would never be any more sorry than he was.