"Is this is how you want to repay him, after everything?" I asked Miesha.

"I just want him back..." she whispered, the tear that had been building in her eye, slipping onto her cheek, silently.

My eyes narrowed, "What are you talking about?" I asked her as my wrists throbbed from where they bled and my head throbbed.

"I just...I want my brother." she said and it was this she held on to as her shoulders squared, her resolved strengthened and the hold she had on that gun steadied.

"By killing me?" I asked, eyeing her weapon with eyes that I hoped looked dubious, than the frantic and desperate that I truly was.

Would she fire it? Did she have it in her?

I hope I never had to find out.

"By doing what needs to be done to pay the price that will save a loved one." she said, her english no longer rough around the edges, but much much better than before. She was enunciating almost perfectly, the only thing giving her away was the slight presence of an 'accent', as I'd like to call it, almost as a residue of having spoken the C'Riel tongue all this while. But my brain seemed to acclimate better to the way she spoke than before, because some part of it recognised the C'Riel way of talking. It's funny how the brain goes about searching for something familiar, something to hold on to, something to make itself feel better, in situations that often don't require them. Or was this a situation that required it most? While I was made to pay the price of someone else's need.

"And Rafe? What about him?" I asked, my eyes narrowing, "Do you know he bears a wound for you?"

I watched her jaw clench, "I did not ask him to." she said simply.

I nodded my head, agreeing, because she was right. But she was also wrong.

"That's the thing about him, you need not ask him. He would do it anyway." I said, my eyes locking on hers, not letting her look away. The least I deserved was to be looked in the eye when she was telling me that everything that my ethrés had done for her meant nothing to her.

Her gun shook again and she closed her eyes as another tear slipped free. My eyes narrowed a little, waiting for her to open it.

"And you would repay the kindness of a seven year old with a gun to the face of his ethrés?" I asked, leaning forward in my anger, forgetting that any movement caused the digging of the metal binding my hands together further into my skin. I gritted my teeth against the pain, leaving my eyes locked on the woman before me.

"You are no ethrés of his." she said, her teeth gritted.

I leaned back, laughing, wincing when the stupid metal cut deeper into my skin, blood slipping easier down my fingers and onto the floor. I could hear the almost silent drip drip of my blood onto the floor.

"You would say that, wouldn't you?" I said, "Gosh, he speaks of you with so much affection, you are tarnishing it wit-"

"You cannot move me with your lies!" she said, "Humans do not possess-"

"Fine. Don't believe me, but what possible reason does he have to lie about this?" I asked, raising my voice above hers to be heard.

"I do not know what you have done to make him lie for you-"

"We went to register ourselves today! Would we do that if we weren't really-"

"They were made to accept your claim only so that you could be captured!" she said, gesturing at me fiercely with her gun.

I went silent for sometime, my heart beat my only companion, as I thought back to how anything they could have done would've have lead to this. This nightmare.

Before someone I trusted. Someone Rafe trusted. Cuffed. At gun point. Bleeding. With my head feeling like it would split open...

I pressed my eyes closed, muttering a low swear as understanding slowly dawned on me as to why I was experiencing these physical symptoms.

"Was there something on the blade?" I asked, remembering Rafe running the sharp instrument against the inside of my palm. One slice was all that would be needed for whatever was on the blade to seep into my skin.

Miesha smiled, "You are smart. Is this smartness what helped you when you trapped my poor boy-"

I laughed, cutting her off, "What could I possibly threaten Rafe with?" I asked.

Did she even know him?

My smile slipped and I stared at her face, very very serious. "That man is everything to me. I would rather die than put him in a situation like that." I said, "And I would believe him if he told me something that went against everything I believed it, or at least, I would give him the benefit of the doubt."

She stared at me, her eyes a dark swirl of anger, uncertainty and determination all at once.

"Just imagine this. Imagine, if I am telling the truth. A possibility that I might be his other half. The one he has been waiting for and looked for all his life. And you took it away in a few seconds where you were plagued with greed and lack of trust in him. Can you possibly face him again? Look him in the eye ever again? Do you think he would ever want to look at you again? Want to have anything to do with you?"

"Why should I believe anything you are saying? You are just proving further how manipulative you are." she said, blinking again as tears collected on her lashes.

I just looked at her, "Are you C'Riel so arrogant that you cannot even consider that you aren't right?"

"What do I have to do to prove it to you? Would anything I say or do, do anything to prove it to you?" I asked, already knowing that she wouldn't believe a word that I say.

"Speak to me in my language." she said.

I just shook my head, "I can't speak your language." I said.

She just laughed, "Then wh-"

"But I can understand a little. Say something." I said, closing my eyes.

This was the moment of importance. I needed to prove it to her. I needed to understand what she was saying. Or at least...I needed to be able to identify something about it.

Please, help me. I appealed to myself for the second time that day, feeling like an absolute idiot, but having no choice about the matter.

When she spoke, my heart stuttered, reeling from the speed she was speaking in and trying to strain my ears to catch her soft words. I wasn't able to catch it all, but a pattern appeared in my head and I heard a single words being said repeatedly.

Son.

Or at least, child.

"You're talking about Rafe. You're calling him your child." I said, opening my eyes to look at her.

Her jaw went slack with shock and she held the gun higher, shifting closer, "That is not possible! The Human brain cannot-"

"There's a lot of things you'll seem to think that we cannot do, but have done anyway." I said just as a I felt something rush along my spine, tickling the back of my neck. I let out a breath in relief.

He was here.

He was here.

Then, realisation struck.

I looked at her, "Get out of here. Run. He's here. And if he sees you like this..." I shook my head, I wouldn't put him through that. "He can't see you like this...Run!" I said, raising my voice on the last word when she stared at me with wide eyes that darted from me to behind me-where I assume the door to this room stood hidden with the wall. She dropped the gun, turning around and typing away furiously on a data pad that appeared on the wall behind her. I heard shouts and screams coming through the wall behind me.

Miesha frantically turned to look behind her at the wall and then at me, her eyes guilty and confused and scared. When a short passage behind her-which I assume was some kind of an escape panel in case of emergency-opened up, she turned to me and opened her mouth, seeming to want to explain herself.

"I know. GO!" I said, shouting over the noise that suddenly filled the room as debris and rained over me and my ears rang from the loud boom. No large piece of the wall found me, surprisingly and I thanked God for that. I looked up, blinking through watering eyes and let out a sigh of relief when I saw that Miesha had escaped and the panel had closed in after her. I coughed, just as I felt familiar hands catching on mine. Four seconds later, blood rushed into my wrists and they screamed from both relief an agony. I winced, my arms dropping to the sides, because I couldn't hold them up yet. I was picked up from the chair and held close. I leaned into him, burying my nose in his neck and closed my eyes. When we stepped out into the open, my lungs sighed in relief.

"Next time, maybe bombing the wall shouldn't be on the list." I said, smiling against his skin.

I felt him look down at me and opened my eyes to meet his gaze. I wasn't surprised to see his eyes reflect his anger, turmoil and relief swirling with amber and drowning with black.

"It was the fastest way. And it was a low grade bomb, so while it would splinter everything in a certain radius of the surface of where it was placed, it wouldn't compromise the safety of the person within the room. Unless they were too close to the door."

"And how did you know I wasn't near the door?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.

"I read the heat signatures in the room," he said and I just hummed and closed my eyes, as my heart beat out of control at what he had just said.

"So, I knew exactly where you sat and calculated that into my plan of what the quickest way to get in would be." he said.

Which meant he had also seen someone else with me in that room. A woman. Specifically someone who was plump and holding a gun to my forehead.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

"How did you find me?" I asked, my eyes still closed as I tried to control my breathing and act like I wasn't bothered by what he had just said. Though I highly doubt I had fooled him.

"I am forever, and shall always remain, plagued with paranoid impulses when it comes to your safety." he said, simply.

I snapped my eyes open and looked up at him, accusingly, "By which you mean you bugged me?" I asked.

"Bugging you would have only meant I could hear what was happening around you. I decided to offer you the privacy of keeping your words a secret. So, I put a tracker on you."

"Oh, how considerate of you." I said, leaning back against him, my words holding no heat. Because, I knew when to pick my battles. And this was one benefit from his paranoia. I was safe.

"When did you do this?" I asked.

"A long long time ago."

Asshole, I thought and wasn't sure if I hadn't said it out loud. He had never really undone all those bugs and trackers and whatever other hell those voices in his head told him to tag me with when I had asked him to, on that fateful day that his room exploded.

The straight-faced liar.

It was quite disturbing that I had a small smile on my face and I realised, with annoyance, that maybe his stalking tendencies didn't really bother me as much as it should have. Something he had pointed out to me on before.

"I suppress the urge to check the tracker every time I do not know where you are."

I grunted in response, because I was scared I would laugh at the mildly proud tone that he had adopted. I quieted as he sat me down on the hood of a four-wheel drive Hover and tending to my bruised and bleeding wrists with a large white, practically flat, case that he had retrieved from the vehicle, as his band of C'Riel soldiers bustled around us, constantly in motion and making com calls and whatnot.

When one of his soldiers stepped up to us, but not exactly within Rafe's range of sight practically standing at his back, my eyes flicked up to Rafe who had his head bent to see my hands, and took in his expressionless face as he tended methodically, but still gently, to me. He stood without acknowledging the man behind him for long enough that I considered clearing my throat and letting him know. But just as I was about to, Rafe spoke.

"Get her." He said, in english for my benefit, I assume.

When the soldier at his back turned in one swift move and all the others, save half a dozen who remained with us, got into another four-wheeled Hover and took off, my eyes widened.

I pleaded with him, my hands catching his own, "Rafe, don't do it. She didn't know what she was doing."

He just caught my hands again and looked at me, "What did you think would happen, Amour?" He asked his voice soft enough that it had me stilling in awareness of just how close his control was to snapping, "That if you let her go, I would not know?"

I let out a shaky breath. "I just wanted to protect you."

"I think you have done enough of that." He said and just before I could ask him what he meant he continued, "Now, it is my turn to return the favour."

"Doing this won't help anything!" I said, trying to get off the vehicle and talk some sense to him.

His eyes flashed up and my breath caught, a chill rising up my spine and my heart and breath speeding, just like it would if I were to stare into the maws of an angry predator.

He was really angry.

"Sit, Amour." he said.

"I will, if you let Miesha go." I said, raising my chin in defiance and glaring into the eyes of a lion.

He caught my challenge and swallowed it whole.

"Done. Sit." he said.

Confusion spread through me as I settled back into the makeshift seating arrangement he had made for me. He bound my wrists carefully with something akin to gauze, except so much softer and soothing as I stared at him in shock and confusion. He had let her go? That easily? I didn't expect my bargain tactic to work that well. Suspicion spread through me.

"When you say, let go, you don't mean down and over a cliff right?" I asked, narrowing my eyes, getting arguments ready in my head in case a storm blew over.

A smirk lifted his lips, almost reluctantly it seemed, "No." He said simply.

"Into the ocean?" I asked, still dubiously.

He looked at me, before shutting the case again and tossing it back inside the vehicle. He came back to me and helped me to my feet and lead me to the vehicle.

"Rafe-"

"Miesha is safe." he said, turning to around and facing me and meeting my eyes so that I knew he wasn't lying. I continued to stare into his eyes even though I knew the second I saw them that he was telling the truth. I was trying to find out what he was trying to say.

"I promise." he said and I sucked in a breath and nodded.

"I trust you." If he said Miesha was safe and he would let her go, then I trusted him. I had to. If I didn't trust him, then I couldn't trust anything.

"I have to tell you something," He said, his brows pinching, "Get in."

Dread spread through me.

"It's Kylee isn't it?" I asked, catching his arm in a tight grip, even though the action caused a slight throb at my wrists.

I caught the look in his eyes and my heart stopped for a minute. He didn't answer me and for a second he couldn't hold my gaze either. But I had already seen the answer in his eyes. And I knew that what had happened.

"Get in." he said, again. He said only that. And that made it all the more...

"No," I said, stepping away, running my hands through my hair.

No. No. No. No.

If I got in that car it would become real. It would all become real. Everything we had fought for. Everything..everything-

A sob caught in my throat when Rafe came to me, catching hold of my arms and gently pulling them away. It took me a long time to hear him over the ringing in my ears. When I did hear what he said after the ringing stopped, I couldn't understand it. I just stared at him, a dull numb feeling spreading through me.

I don't remember much of what happened after that. I remember looking at the moss covered ground as we hovered over it while driving, then I remember looking at Rafe..I followed the path of his arm and saw that he held my hand, but I couldn't feel it. Then, I remember walking. Or rather...I remembered...I remember...I was...

Where was I?

I looked up and saw Dr. Stevens. He was talking. Maybe even saying something important, because my eyes had already moved past him to the bed where...where she lay. I walked to her and just stared. She looked...she didn't look peaceful. She didn't look asleep. She looked dead. She looked haggard. She was...

My eyes slipped over her listless hair, her pale face, the dark circles, the sunken cheeks, the cracked lips...to her bony shoulders...the elbows that practically stuck out of her bruised skin...all the way to her stomach.

Something happened then. Every single part of me that held me up...let go. I don't remember falling to the ground. I didn't feel any pain. Maybe I didn't fall. Or maybe I didn't. But now I could only see the edge of her cot and the floor. Fingers caught my chin and I saw eyes.

Rafe.

A breath stuttered into me and I opened my mouth.

"She's still..." I couldn't even say it.

His eyes confirmed it and I just stared at him...not really seeing him. Not really looking past him either.

Her stomach was the only part of her that wasn't stuck to her bones... She had died pregnant. Her child had died with her. I closed my eyes. I didn't feel like opening them for awhile. But...then I remembered.

"Fu-" I said and I don't know if anyone heard me, when Rafe leaned forward and I looked around, I realised I wasn't on the floor anymore.

"Funeral..." I whispered.

"She will get a C'Riel parting." he assured me and that's all I heard before I stared at the ceiling...which was what I could see when I opened my eyes. So I closed them...or they closed on their own..I don't remember.

I didn't remember.

And I just wanted to forget.

I don't know what time it was when my eyes opened. I woke up crying. I woke up sobbing. The tears reached within me and pulled out every bit of my heart and poured it on the floor. Piece by bloody piece. I didn't realise that I was crying on his shoulder, until my cries sounded muffled to my ears.

"In the end," I said while I sobbed, my voice curling my own toes in pain as I struggled to get the words out, "I couldn't.." my breath stuttered out of me, returned and left again.

In the end. I wasn't even there with her.

She was alone when she passed. Her baby and her.

They were alone.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That was hard for me...for some obvious reasons. And I'm sorry I'm updating late...inspiration has been lacking lately. But I saw some of your comments for an update and I thought I owed you this.

But, I'm still sorry I can't give you a better excuse.

Until next time guys. *waves*

Oh and the song is All the King's Horses by Karmina (feat. on Reign). Sounded fitting. Haunting and lost.