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xp_logsWhen they arrive in San Francisco, Moira and Nathan go back to the hotel where Aliya and Tyler were killed.
Moira eased the rental car into the parking lot of the slightly run down Holiday Inn and searched for a parking spot. The hotel was, thankfully, not as crowded as she had feared it would be--the vacation rush was over now--and headed towards a fairly secluded space in the back, next to a set of trees. As she parked, one of her hands left the wheel and brushed Nathan's hand. There had been a stressful silence for the last twenty minutes of the ride and the link was pulsating with twisted thoughts and emotions.
Nathan managed a faint smile for the reassuring touch. It had been harder than he'd thought, to be traveling that stretch of highway again. For the seven years that had passed between then and now, it still looked almost the same. Oh, a few new buildings had gone up, a few of the old ones had come down, but... still, very much like he saw it in his dreams.
Moira pulled the keys out of the ignition and sat there, watching him quietly. Nathan took a deep breath, swallowing. "I suppose this is where we get out of the car and go inside, huh?" he asked hoarsely, trying to smile again. Not quite managing it this time.
Turning slightly, she put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. "We can wait as lon' as ye need," she responded gently. "We've got all th' time in th' world an' if'n ye need a few minutes--or longer--we can do tha'." There was a slightly odd feeling of deja vu, Moira noticed and her mind kept wandering back to that memory dream she had been sucked into.
Nathan took another deep breath, telling himself to relax, or at least to try. His eyes flickered to the west end of the parking lot, the high wooden fence surrounding the pool. From there, all he had to do was look up, up to that fourth-floor window.
"I'm surprised I didn't kill myself, jumping like that," he murmured.
Moira glanced out the window where he was looking and grimaced. "Glad ye dinnae." Reaching up, she tucked a stray piece of hair behind his ear and just waited, trying to smooth out the tangled knots on the link as best she could.
Nathan reached out for his sunglasses, putting them on. "Let's go," he said quietly, opening the door. "We didn't come so that I could sit in the parking lot and brood."
Nodding, she stepped out, adjusting the smaller sunglasses as she locked the door. Really, she wasn't sure what she was supposed to do so Moira did the only thing she could think of. She followed him in.
Nathan walked right past the front desk, ignoring the curious look from the concierge. He punched the button for the elevator, which was thankfully empty when it arrived. Moira followed him in, and Nathan hesitated, staring at the row of buttons. They seemed very large, suddenly. The only thing he could really see.
Stepping closer, her hand at the small of Nathan's back, Moira looked at the buttons as well. A flash of memory from the dream hit her and she blinked as she say in her mind's eye Nathan avoiding the elevators and taking the stairs three at a time, if not more.
"I'm not sure I'm going for that level of reenactment," Nathan said unsteadily, and saw his hand reach out and hit the button for the fourth floor.
It took forever. It took an instant. The doors were opening on the fourth-floor hallway, and Nathan jolted forward out of the elevator, his hands shaking so violently that he clenched them into fists at his sides just to be able to stop it.
"They changed the wallpaper," he muttered distractedly, and turned left. "4018. It was 4018."
Quietly, Moira trailed after him, hands shoved deep in her jean pockets. Neither of them were bothering with shielding the link and she was getting pieces down the link. It was a little distracting as she kept trying to focus on the images and walking at the same time. But she kept quiet because it was very obvious Nathan was having trouble as it was.
Within a few minutes, she realized they had just passed room 4016 and she tried to brace herself.
They had rebuilt the wall his telekinesis had destroyed. Nathan stopped dead, just short of 4018, and stared. Part of him had been afraid that they wouldn't, that this would be an open space, adapted to something else. Part of him had been afraid that they would. That 4018 would be back to being a room, a mirror-image of what it had been seven years ago. As if nothing had ever happened here...
He managed, he didn't know how, to reach out with his telepathy and make sure the room was unoccupied. "Come on," he said, his voice a bare whisper. He stepped forward to the door, waving a hand at the lock. The little light went green and he turned the doorknob.
Even while giving Nathan the space he needed, Moira was still right behind him. Another flash of memory was large enough to confuse her and for a second the room switched between the bright, shiny unbroken room it was and turned into a broken shell of a room. She steadied herself and concenctrated on Nathan and not what was coming down the link.
It was almost the same.
The bedspreads, some of the furniture was different. But the layout was the same. So much the same that he stopped, swaying a little, memory trying to overlay reality and put Tyler on the bed, Aliya on the floor. Blood everywhere...
"I d-don't know... if this was a good idea," he forced out, hating the stammer in his voice.
Moira stepped up and slide her arm around Nathan and found herself being gripped tightly. "We can go, if ye like," she murmured, blinking as her vision swam. The stronger he was seeing the memories, the more they were being pushed down the link. Nathan, bending down over Aliya, the door bursting open, gunfire, more blood and pain and glass and--
A car backfired in the parking lot and they both jumped, startled.
But it seemed to help as the memory faded slightly, going back to reality. Or at least making an attempt to.
"I don't know," Nathan muttered, his eyes stinging. She nestled against his side, as if trying to get as much of her body in contact with his as possible, and he clung to her almost desperately. "I don't know why I ran. When I saw them. When the team came through the door. I don't know why I fought..."
"Felt like part o' ye died tha' day," she murmured, head half buried in his chest. "But there was a small part tha' wanted ta live." Oh, that Moira understood with every ounce of her being.
He detached her, gently but firmly, and moved across the room to the window. Remembering, as he moved slowly, how it had felt to run at the glass, barely shielding himself, barely able to slow his fall. That last bullet slamming into his lower back, one more impact he'd barely felt.
The pool was below, a large blue oval. Nathan laid his hands on the glass and stared down at it. For a moment, he felt a flash of vertigo, the memory so overwhelming that it made his legs go rubbery.
"I didn't look back."
The memory rebounded into the link so hard that Moira had to grab part of the wall as the room tilted slightly. For a second, her vision was filled with a blueish tint. Not a proper blue color but a wispy kind. Then she realized as something zoomed past, nearly out of sight, that this was what Nathan had seen when he hit the water. That silence, nearly comforting, and the floating sensation before the bullets started hitting the water.
Comfortably numb until he reached the edge of the pool and had to leave it.
She started to say something but then stopped, realizing she couldn't say anything to make this better. Moira just tried to clear her vision and waited.
Nathan turned around to face her. Away from the window. "I don't need to be here," he said shakily. It was just a room. A room full of ghosts and echoes, and no more answers than it had possessed that day seven years ago.
Nodding, Moira held out her hand to him. "Let's go, love."
They stay in San Francisco for the night, planning to head out to Sacramento in the morning. Moira winds up in Nathan's dreams again, and sees a little more of what was.
Quiet. Too quiet. Nathan moved through the apartment, his gaze flickering over the furniture, all in earth tones Aliya had so carefully chosen. The only bright spots were Tyler's toys, lying here and there on the floor. Wasn't like her, to let him leave them all over the place like this. Where had they gone?
Moira stared, startled and unsure, as she found herself in an unknown apartment. The kitchen was small but it seemed that nothing was out of place. Except for a toy dinosaur sticking out of the breadbox. Frowning, she backed up a few steps as she became even more unsure as to what was happening.
"Aliya?" Nathan asked, hearing someone in the kitchen. He smiled and crossed the living room in a few easy strides - the apartment was on the small side, but it was theirs - and poked his head around the door. "Have you got the munchkin in here with--" He stopped, blinking at the red-haired woman standing in his kitchen.
"Nathan, thank--" The words died at the look on his face, the confusion turning into something harder, colder. Moira blinked and looked around again. He had mentioned Aliya and the munchkin and..."Shit..."
Nathan frowned. "Uh... hello. Have we met? And if not, what are you doing in my kitchen?" Inwardly, he was already deciding how best to incapacitate her, if the answer was something he didn't like.
This was really not very good, Moira decided, suddenly weary. It had been a very, very long day already and now she was confused on top of, well, whatever this was. She bumped against the counter and frowned as it shimmered slightly. Mentally, she cursed. A dream--somehow she'd gotten pulled into another dream memory of Nathan's. "I...think yer dreamin'. Or I am."
Nathan stared at the sudden wavering of the counter. "Oh," he said quietly, sounding almost defeated. "Sorry, Moira. I did it again, didn't I?"
"Nay matter," she responded, smiling at him slightly. There had been a quick shot of pain when he hadn't remembered her, even if it was a dream, and she tried to push that away. "We're bot' fine, so nay worries."
He turned, walked back across the living room to the patio doors. "Come out and look at the view," he said softly, pulling them open.
Padding softly across the floor, Moira instintively avoided the toys on the floor even while knowing they wouldn't hurt to step on. Some lessons learned never do leave. "Gorgeous," she murmured, walking out onto the patio.
"I still love the desert, you know," he whispered as she joined him by the railing. "Hate it and love it. It wasn't all bad, living here..."
"'Tis different." And it was. At heart, Moira was an ocean woman and was drawn to places with water. With life. The desert had its own kind of life and draw, she supposed. Glancing at Nathan as she looked at him, she could understand why he would be drawn to this place at times.
"I'm not usually here, in my dreams," he said, staring out at the blue, blue desert sky. "We only had this apartment for a couple of years, towards the end..." If he kept staring out at the desert, he didn't have to turn around and face the rooms behind him. All the little details, all the little memories.
It almost felt like there was a nice breeze. Moira concentrated for a second, realizing that the weird feeling around her was probably the link. They _were_ dreaming and in each others--or at least Nathan's--head, so the link was all sorts of odd feeling. "Was this th' last place?" she asked finally.
Nathan nodded. "The place we left from," he said very quietly. "We drove. All the way to San Francisco. I thought it was the easiest way to keep off the radar."
Almost hesitantly, Moira reached for him. Her hand encountered his arm and he almost felt real, not dream quality feeling, either. Nearly solid. Probably because outside of the dream, she was pressed tightly to his chest.
"This is insane!" a voice hissed from inside the apartment. Nathan turned slowly to see Aliya - and himself, his younger self, setting a suitcase down by the door. "You're going to get us all killed," Aliya went on, her voice low but shaking with anger. "Nathan, I know you're grieving, but this is--"
"Enough!" his younger self growled under his breath, whirling on her. "We're leaving, Aliya, and that's the end of it."
"You're not thinking clearly!"
"Mom?" The little boy, his blond hair rumpled, stood rubbing his eyes by the short hallway that led to the bedrooms. "Dad? How come you're yellin'?"
Her eyes widened as the scene unfolded in the room before them. It was slightly out of focus but getting better as the dream adjusted itself. Moira had never seen Aliya except in the picture Mistra had sent her and in the last dream sequence and she couldn't help but watch with interest. Her and Tyler. It was very obvious that he took after both his parents and she felt her heart clench slightly.
Shaking her head, she glanced up at Nathan, watching as his face tightened as the two attempted to stop fighting with the arrival of Tyler.
"It's okay, Ty," Aliya said immediately, going over and hugging him. "Go back to bed, sweetie. We didn't mean to wake you up."
"He should be getting dressed anyway," the younger Nathan said, his voice hoarse, and Aliya looked back over her shoulder, glaring at him. "No," he said, clearly in response to something she had said telepathically. "We don't have the time."
It was odd watching the events solidify in their joined dreams, she thought vaguely, too intent on watching what was in front of her to really focus on anything but that and Nathan.
"We're going on a trip," her Nathan murmured beside her.
"We're going on a trip, Ty," the younger Nathan said, kneeling down beside the little boy and his mother. His expression was tightly controlled, but the dark circles beneath his eyes spoke of too many sleepless nights.
Tyler brightened. "All of us? Cool!"
"Enough," her Nathan murmured raggedly, his voice thick with pain, and the apartment, the whole dream, dissolved around them.
Suddenly Moira found herself staring at the ceiling in the darkened hotel room. Her heart was beating loudly in her ears and she took a deep breath to calm it. She felt Nathan shift beside her, arm tightening around her almost to the point of knocking any air out of her lungs. They were both covered in sweat and Moira didn't know if it was from the lousy air conditioning or what they just saw. "Nathan?" she whispered, trying wake up just a little more.
"He was so happy." Nathan's voice was a weary rasp, little more than a whisper. "So used to Dad going away all the time for weeks on end. Aliya would take him places sometimes, but we had never gone anywhere together, the three of us." A long, painful silence. "He loved the trip to San Francisco. Loved it."
It was hard rolling over with the death grip he had on her, but she managed somehow. Nestling closer, she rubbed his back, trying to get the tension out. "Nathan, I'm so sorry..."
Nathan took as deep a breath as he could, then let it out on a long, ragged sigh. "He was such a good kid," he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut. "Even with living in the midst of all of that... craziness."
"I know. Kids are so bloody resilient." She looked up at him, face outlined in the dim light. "Are ye goin' ta be okay?"
"Yeah." He freed a hand, smoothed the hair back away from her face, then wrapped that arm around her again and held on tight. "What a way to spend a weekend, huh?" he asked.
"Couldnae pay me ta be anywhere else, though," Moira answered truthfully.
Moira eased the rental car into the parking lot of the slightly run down Holiday Inn and searched for a parking spot. The hotel was, thankfully, not as crowded as she had feared it would be--the vacation rush was over now--and headed towards a fairly secluded space in the back, next to a set of trees. As she parked, one of her hands left the wheel and brushed Nathan's hand. There had been a stressful silence for the last twenty minutes of the ride and the link was pulsating with twisted thoughts and emotions.
Nathan managed a faint smile for the reassuring touch. It had been harder than he'd thought, to be traveling that stretch of highway again. For the seven years that had passed between then and now, it still looked almost the same. Oh, a few new buildings had gone up, a few of the old ones had come down, but... still, very much like he saw it in his dreams.
Moira pulled the keys out of the ignition and sat there, watching him quietly. Nathan took a deep breath, swallowing. "I suppose this is where we get out of the car and go inside, huh?" he asked hoarsely, trying to smile again. Not quite managing it this time.
Turning slightly, she put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. "We can wait as lon' as ye need," she responded gently. "We've got all th' time in th' world an' if'n ye need a few minutes--or longer--we can do tha'." There was a slightly odd feeling of deja vu, Moira noticed and her mind kept wandering back to that memory dream she had been sucked into.
Nathan took another deep breath, telling himself to relax, or at least to try. His eyes flickered to the west end of the parking lot, the high wooden fence surrounding the pool. From there, all he had to do was look up, up to that fourth-floor window.
"I'm surprised I didn't kill myself, jumping like that," he murmured.
Moira glanced out the window where he was looking and grimaced. "Glad ye dinnae." Reaching up, she tucked a stray piece of hair behind his ear and just waited, trying to smooth out the tangled knots on the link as best she could.
Nathan reached out for his sunglasses, putting them on. "Let's go," he said quietly, opening the door. "We didn't come so that I could sit in the parking lot and brood."
Nodding, she stepped out, adjusting the smaller sunglasses as she locked the door. Really, she wasn't sure what she was supposed to do so Moira did the only thing she could think of. She followed him in.
Nathan walked right past the front desk, ignoring the curious look from the concierge. He punched the button for the elevator, which was thankfully empty when it arrived. Moira followed him in, and Nathan hesitated, staring at the row of buttons. They seemed very large, suddenly. The only thing he could really see.
Stepping closer, her hand at the small of Nathan's back, Moira looked at the buttons as well. A flash of memory from the dream hit her and she blinked as she say in her mind's eye Nathan avoiding the elevators and taking the stairs three at a time, if not more.
"I'm not sure I'm going for that level of reenactment," Nathan said unsteadily, and saw his hand reach out and hit the button for the fourth floor.
It took forever. It took an instant. The doors were opening on the fourth-floor hallway, and Nathan jolted forward out of the elevator, his hands shaking so violently that he clenched them into fists at his sides just to be able to stop it.
"They changed the wallpaper," he muttered distractedly, and turned left. "4018. It was 4018."
Quietly, Moira trailed after him, hands shoved deep in her jean pockets. Neither of them were bothering with shielding the link and she was getting pieces down the link. It was a little distracting as she kept trying to focus on the images and walking at the same time. But she kept quiet because it was very obvious Nathan was having trouble as it was.
Within a few minutes, she realized they had just passed room 4016 and she tried to brace herself.
They had rebuilt the wall his telekinesis had destroyed. Nathan stopped dead, just short of 4018, and stared. Part of him had been afraid that they wouldn't, that this would be an open space, adapted to something else. Part of him had been afraid that they would. That 4018 would be back to being a room, a mirror-image of what it had been seven years ago. As if nothing had ever happened here...
He managed, he didn't know how, to reach out with his telepathy and make sure the room was unoccupied. "Come on," he said, his voice a bare whisper. He stepped forward to the door, waving a hand at the lock. The little light went green and he turned the doorknob.
Even while giving Nathan the space he needed, Moira was still right behind him. Another flash of memory was large enough to confuse her and for a second the room switched between the bright, shiny unbroken room it was and turned into a broken shell of a room. She steadied herself and concenctrated on Nathan and not what was coming down the link.
It was almost the same.
The bedspreads, some of the furniture was different. But the layout was the same. So much the same that he stopped, swaying a little, memory trying to overlay reality and put Tyler on the bed, Aliya on the floor. Blood everywhere...
"I d-don't know... if this was a good idea," he forced out, hating the stammer in his voice.
Moira stepped up and slide her arm around Nathan and found herself being gripped tightly. "We can go, if ye like," she murmured, blinking as her vision swam. The stronger he was seeing the memories, the more they were being pushed down the link. Nathan, bending down over Aliya, the door bursting open, gunfire, more blood and pain and glass and--
A car backfired in the parking lot and they both jumped, startled.
But it seemed to help as the memory faded slightly, going back to reality. Or at least making an attempt to.
"I don't know," Nathan muttered, his eyes stinging. She nestled against his side, as if trying to get as much of her body in contact with his as possible, and he clung to her almost desperately. "I don't know why I ran. When I saw them. When the team came through the door. I don't know why I fought..."
"Felt like part o' ye died tha' day," she murmured, head half buried in his chest. "But there was a small part tha' wanted ta live." Oh, that Moira understood with every ounce of her being.
He detached her, gently but firmly, and moved across the room to the window. Remembering, as he moved slowly, how it had felt to run at the glass, barely shielding himself, barely able to slow his fall. That last bullet slamming into his lower back, one more impact he'd barely felt.
The pool was below, a large blue oval. Nathan laid his hands on the glass and stared down at it. For a moment, he felt a flash of vertigo, the memory so overwhelming that it made his legs go rubbery.
"I didn't look back."
The memory rebounded into the link so hard that Moira had to grab part of the wall as the room tilted slightly. For a second, her vision was filled with a blueish tint. Not a proper blue color but a wispy kind. Then she realized as something zoomed past, nearly out of sight, that this was what Nathan had seen when he hit the water. That silence, nearly comforting, and the floating sensation before the bullets started hitting the water.
Comfortably numb until he reached the edge of the pool and had to leave it.
She started to say something but then stopped, realizing she couldn't say anything to make this better. Moira just tried to clear her vision and waited.
Nathan turned around to face her. Away from the window. "I don't need to be here," he said shakily. It was just a room. A room full of ghosts and echoes, and no more answers than it had possessed that day seven years ago.
Nodding, Moira held out her hand to him. "Let's go, love."
They stay in San Francisco for the night, planning to head out to Sacramento in the morning. Moira winds up in Nathan's dreams again, and sees a little more of what was.
Quiet. Too quiet. Nathan moved through the apartment, his gaze flickering over the furniture, all in earth tones Aliya had so carefully chosen. The only bright spots were Tyler's toys, lying here and there on the floor. Wasn't like her, to let him leave them all over the place like this. Where had they gone?
Moira stared, startled and unsure, as she found herself in an unknown apartment. The kitchen was small but it seemed that nothing was out of place. Except for a toy dinosaur sticking out of the breadbox. Frowning, she backed up a few steps as she became even more unsure as to what was happening.
"Aliya?" Nathan asked, hearing someone in the kitchen. He smiled and crossed the living room in a few easy strides - the apartment was on the small side, but it was theirs - and poked his head around the door. "Have you got the munchkin in here with--" He stopped, blinking at the red-haired woman standing in his kitchen.
"Nathan, thank--" The words died at the look on his face, the confusion turning into something harder, colder. Moira blinked and looked around again. He had mentioned Aliya and the munchkin and..."Shit..."
Nathan frowned. "Uh... hello. Have we met? And if not, what are you doing in my kitchen?" Inwardly, he was already deciding how best to incapacitate her, if the answer was something he didn't like.
This was really not very good, Moira decided, suddenly weary. It had been a very, very long day already and now she was confused on top of, well, whatever this was. She bumped against the counter and frowned as it shimmered slightly. Mentally, she cursed. A dream--somehow she'd gotten pulled into another dream memory of Nathan's. "I...think yer dreamin'. Or I am."
Nathan stared at the sudden wavering of the counter. "Oh," he said quietly, sounding almost defeated. "Sorry, Moira. I did it again, didn't I?"
"Nay matter," she responded, smiling at him slightly. There had been a quick shot of pain when he hadn't remembered her, even if it was a dream, and she tried to push that away. "We're bot' fine, so nay worries."
He turned, walked back across the living room to the patio doors. "Come out and look at the view," he said softly, pulling them open.
Padding softly across the floor, Moira instintively avoided the toys on the floor even while knowing they wouldn't hurt to step on. Some lessons learned never do leave. "Gorgeous," she murmured, walking out onto the patio.
"I still love the desert, you know," he whispered as she joined him by the railing. "Hate it and love it. It wasn't all bad, living here..."
"'Tis different." And it was. At heart, Moira was an ocean woman and was drawn to places with water. With life. The desert had its own kind of life and draw, she supposed. Glancing at Nathan as she looked at him, she could understand why he would be drawn to this place at times.
"I'm not usually here, in my dreams," he said, staring out at the blue, blue desert sky. "We only had this apartment for a couple of years, towards the end..." If he kept staring out at the desert, he didn't have to turn around and face the rooms behind him. All the little details, all the little memories.
It almost felt like there was a nice breeze. Moira concentrated for a second, realizing that the weird feeling around her was probably the link. They _were_ dreaming and in each others--or at least Nathan's--head, so the link was all sorts of odd feeling. "Was this th' last place?" she asked finally.
Nathan nodded. "The place we left from," he said very quietly. "We drove. All the way to San Francisco. I thought it was the easiest way to keep off the radar."
Almost hesitantly, Moira reached for him. Her hand encountered his arm and he almost felt real, not dream quality feeling, either. Nearly solid. Probably because outside of the dream, she was pressed tightly to his chest.
"This is insane!" a voice hissed from inside the apartment. Nathan turned slowly to see Aliya - and himself, his younger self, setting a suitcase down by the door. "You're going to get us all killed," Aliya went on, her voice low but shaking with anger. "Nathan, I know you're grieving, but this is--"
"Enough!" his younger self growled under his breath, whirling on her. "We're leaving, Aliya, and that's the end of it."
"You're not thinking clearly!"
"Mom?" The little boy, his blond hair rumpled, stood rubbing his eyes by the short hallway that led to the bedrooms. "Dad? How come you're yellin'?"
Her eyes widened as the scene unfolded in the room before them. It was slightly out of focus but getting better as the dream adjusted itself. Moira had never seen Aliya except in the picture Mistra had sent her and in the last dream sequence and she couldn't help but watch with interest. Her and Tyler. It was very obvious that he took after both his parents and she felt her heart clench slightly.
Shaking her head, she glanced up at Nathan, watching as his face tightened as the two attempted to stop fighting with the arrival of Tyler.
"It's okay, Ty," Aliya said immediately, going over and hugging him. "Go back to bed, sweetie. We didn't mean to wake you up."
"He should be getting dressed anyway," the younger Nathan said, his voice hoarse, and Aliya looked back over her shoulder, glaring at him. "No," he said, clearly in response to something she had said telepathically. "We don't have the time."
It was odd watching the events solidify in their joined dreams, she thought vaguely, too intent on watching what was in front of her to really focus on anything but that and Nathan.
"We're going on a trip," her Nathan murmured beside her.
"We're going on a trip, Ty," the younger Nathan said, kneeling down beside the little boy and his mother. His expression was tightly controlled, but the dark circles beneath his eyes spoke of too many sleepless nights.
Tyler brightened. "All of us? Cool!"
"Enough," her Nathan murmured raggedly, his voice thick with pain, and the apartment, the whole dream, dissolved around them.
Suddenly Moira found herself staring at the ceiling in the darkened hotel room. Her heart was beating loudly in her ears and she took a deep breath to calm it. She felt Nathan shift beside her, arm tightening around her almost to the point of knocking any air out of her lungs. They were both covered in sweat and Moira didn't know if it was from the lousy air conditioning or what they just saw. "Nathan?" she whispered, trying wake up just a little more.
"He was so happy." Nathan's voice was a weary rasp, little more than a whisper. "So used to Dad going away all the time for weeks on end. Aliya would take him places sometimes, but we had never gone anywhere together, the three of us." A long, painful silence. "He loved the trip to San Francisco. Loved it."
It was hard rolling over with the death grip he had on her, but she managed somehow. Nestling closer, she rubbed his back, trying to get the tension out. "Nathan, I'm so sorry..."
Nathan took as deep a breath as he could, then let it out on a long, ragged sigh. "He was such a good kid," he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut. "Even with living in the midst of all of that... craziness."
"I know. Kids are so bloody resilient." She looked up at him, face outlined in the dim light. "Are ye goin' ta be okay?"
"Yeah." He freed a hand, smoothed the hair back away from her face, then wrapped that arm around her again and held on tight. "What a way to spend a weekend, huh?" he asked.
"Couldnae pay me ta be anywhere else, though," Moira answered truthfully.
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