End 10
It was dark and Sandra's view was somehow distorted, as if she were looking at everything from low down. There was a crackle of light and a muted cheer and the lights reappeared more steadily. They were harsh electrical lights that made her flinch with their intensity. A moment later they dulled slightly to a soft blue colour. It was raining outside - the lights illuminated the drops as they dashed past the open door and the noise of the falling water was almost a waterfall as the torrents hit the ground. A small boy sat beside her, gripping the sides of his seat with wide-eyed fear, his knuckles pale. They sat on fold out chairs on the sides of the room they seemed to be in, closer to the still-open door than the more permanent-looking seats and panels that took up the other end of the room. There were two other people in the room, the one who had been under one of the panels - fixing something? - and one who sat on the chair nearest to them, seemingly typing something into a computer. Their faces had the strangely hazed quality that dreamscapes sometimes bring, but she saw as the man at the front got up from underneath the panel and took a seat in the foremost chair. Suddenly the picture resolved a little and, though the faces were still hidden from her, she saw the buttons and switches that the newly seated man was touching and the form the room around her took. It was a craft, she knew. And this was knowledge, not recognition. The woman turned to face her and though she couldn't make out the features of her face she was reassured and the boy beside her responded to the unseen gesture too, relaxing his death-grip on the chair marginally.
A face appeared in the rain, framed by the blue-lit droplets.
"Emma? Where is she!?" The new form shouted, the voice confirming it as male above the roar of the rain. Something in her heart fluttered. Mum… why wasn't she here? She should be here.
"I thought she was with you!" Anger from the front of the craft.
"She must have gone back." The woman stood, revealing that she was heavily pregnant.
"I'll get her." The voice from outside called again. "We'll follow you in one of the cars. GO!" He disappeared.
They would never see him again after that terrible night, a cold knowledge settled over her heart.
The man at the controls hesitated for a moment before hitting the buttons to shut the door. With much shaking and groaning from the walls around them, the double helix struggled into the air.
The double helix… where did that come from? The question, though subconscious, was enough to pull Sandra from her dreams and into the world of the waking. She tried to grasp at the dream as she surfaced, trying to fill in details, trying to continue the story that her mind created, but she felt it drag away from her and she opened her eyes. The sight of a strange ceiling above her momentarily disorientated her but further exploration revealed the neat hotel room that she had been allocated in Sanctuary. David's bed was empty and his scattered pyjamas told her that he had already made his way out into the world. Shaking her head to try and shift the strange feeling that there was something missing, Sandra got quickly out of bed and headed out into the main hall.
She was surprised to find that she had slept late, she was normally up long before anyone else, but this morning Sanctuary was full of the bustle that late morning brings to those on holiday. As the morning rush faded, Sandra sat alone in the breakfast room, thinking of her dream. Something big had happened that night - and she had no doubts that it had been a memory and not something her mind had made up as entertainment - but she didn't know what it was or why it was so important.
"We'll follow you in one of the cars..."
Where had they been going? Where were they planning on meeting him? Why hadn't he ever got to that meeting place with her mother? Why the big rush? Were they being attacked? Were they running from something?
Sandra remembered little of her childhood, memories lost in the blur of time, the fantastic and the real combining and contrasting - her life had been so full of both. At school she had learned not to talk of her unusual family. Learned not to object when Jesse claimed to be her father, even when she knew she had none. Why had this memory surfaced now?
"Mum?" Sandra looked up, jumping a little as her young daughter called her name. She met her eyes and frowned at the worry she saw mirrored there.
"What is it, are you ok?" She asked, wondering at her expression.
"I'm fine. How about you?" Liz replied, offering her a tissue. Sandra looked at the proffered object for a moment before realising that, in her daze, her grip on her cup had relaxed and a puddle of coffee was forming on the floor between her feet. She swore.
"I'm so out of it at the moment." She laughed, placing the cup carefully on the side and taking the tissue. "Anyway, what was it that you wanted, love?"
"I was wondering if you'd tell me about Grandad."
"Grandad?" Sandra asked, still lost in the past and momentarily confused. "Oh, right."
"I mean, we've never really talked about him before. I don't even know his name."
"You know…. he died when I was young?" Liz nodded attentively. "Well, I don't really know much," Sandra continued, trying not to hesitate with every pronoun. "Mum had to bring me up on her own, with the help of Uncle Jesse and his wife. Adrian and Tammy were like brother and sister to me."
"Yes, I know." Liz interrupted impatiently. "But what about Grandad?"
"Well…" Sandra searched her mind for something, anything she could say, "I know…"
"Sandra." Sandra looked up at Jesse's call from across the room, grateful for the distraction, any distraction.
"What is it?" She asked, standing as he hurried towards her.
"It's Megan."
Middle 10
Shalimar flinched as another wave of nausea flooded over her, leaving her moaning as she pressed her forehead against the cold tiles. She wondered if it was worse this time or the same, and the memories had faded from before, taking away their pain. Not having the energy to get back up after the nausea had passed, she rolled onto her side and closed her eyes, enjoying the brief respite.
A hand on her shoulder brought her back to herself, opening her eyes to find Emma's looking back at her.
"Why didn't you wake me?" She asked, tone scolding.
"You looked so peaceful." She smiled, thinking of her sleeping lover in the moments that she had savoured before she had been forced to run for the bathroom. She moaned as her stomach turned again and she forced her eyes closed against the spinning room.
"I want to be here for you, Shal. Don't leave me in the dark about things like this." Emma's arm around her shoulders offered her world a little stability and she slowly sat back upright, leaning into Emma's chest and taking comfort in her warmth.
"I wasn't going to…"
"Would you have told me?" Emma interrupted. "Would you have told me if I hadn't woken up?"
"I don't want you to worry."
"It's my job to worry, Shal. You deal with it and I worry about you, it's the way it goes." Shalimar laughed briefly, and then stopped as her stomach responded, cramping and pulling her in on herself painfully. "Sorry." Emma winced.
"No, don't be. I'll be ok in a minute." Shalimar replied breathlessly. Feeling the world calm a little more, she offered Emma her hand. "Help me up?" She asked, leaning on Emma until she felt stable. "Well that wasn't pleasant." She smiled, rinsing her mouth out from the tap and wandering back into the bedroom.
"Is that it?" Emma asked, following her.
"Until tomorrow morning. I think so." Shalimar replied, diving back underneath the covers and hiding her head.
"So what do you think? Was Adam right, is it worse?" Shalimar considered it for a moment, still beneath the covers, savouring the warmth.
"I don't think…" Emma looked down at the pile of covers when Shalimar didn't continue.
"Shal?" When there was no response Emma pulled the covers back off her lover. Pain was etched across her features and Emma could feel the fear emanating from her in waves. She was curled up as if she was trying to make herself fit into the smallest space possible. Later she would forget the panicked call for Adam, Shalimar's hand around her wrist so tight it would bruise, the way Adam ran into the room, Jesse and Brennan's faces in the doorway.
It was the look in her eyes as she held her gaze, so much in that stare that it was almost a physical force boring into her. That was what she remembered of that moment that was hours long.
Emma smiled as Shalimar opened her eyes a few hours later in the lab. The immediate panic that flooded the room had Emma at her side in moments.
"It was just the sickness." She assured her. "She's still fine." The emotions lightened as Shalimar breathed out slowly.
"Hell. I don't think I can do that every morning." She laughed. Emma reached up and brushed away a lock of hair from Shalimar's forehead, letting her hand stray to the side of her face and linger there.
"How are you feeling now?"
"Good. Fine." Shalimar replied. "I guess that was what Adam meant by twice as bad, huh." She chuckled. "I wasn't expecting that." Shalimar caught hold of Emma's hand as she went to move it away, sitting up as she focused on her wrist. "Oh, Emma, I didn't do this did I?" Emma glanced down at the soft yellow bruises that were appearing there.
"I hadn't noticed." She laughed the injury off. "Shared pain. Hey, did you ever hear that joke about the machine that they invented…" As Emma continued to tell Shalimar the obtuse joke, revelling in the temporary light that filled her face. Neither of them were to know that things were going to get much, much worse before long.
Beginning 10
He was quiet at first. He had no part in their conversations and only appeared when called, standing meekly to attention. For a while Shalimar wondered if perhaps he had always been so introverted. If he truly didn't want to be there with them. But she didn't stop trying as she took on the role of his tutor in fighting skills, lessons for which he attended reluctantly, standing silent and scowling as he watched her demonstration, less than enthusiastic in his own attempts.
It was a month after he had arrived at Sanctuary when she first saw the side of Jesse Kilmartin that she would love forever.
Morning sickness had struck hard that morning and, though she had been expecting it, it didn't make it any easier as she sat shaking on the cold tiles of the bathroom, waiting for her stomach to realise that the room wasn't moving around her. She jumped as a glass was placed on the floor by her hand and a cold flannel made its way to her brow.
"I locked the door, you know." She whispered with a small smile.
"I'm sorry, I'll go." She caught his arm as he went to leave.
"NO!" She looked down, abashed. "No, stay, please?" With his own smile he took a seat beside her self-consciously, helping her lift the glass with shaking hands and holding her as she cried a little.
That day Adam watched, curious, as Jesse, triumphant, pinned Shalimar to the floor. Both laughing more that he had ever seen either or them laugh. And he smiled. Because this is what he had wanted.
Two months, longer than ever before, and still there was no sign that this would end like the others. She was jubilant and Jesse celebrated with her, so caught up in her joy and energy he forgot to hide himself away from the pain he knew that love could cause, and he became part of their family. Loved and loving in equal amounts.
When he found Shalimar later that same month, with her knees tucked into her chest and her face so blank and empty of emotion, he felt something within him break for her. Lost again, although he could not know that it was for a third time. And he sat beside her again, and as she cried he held her close, her tears fire-hot rivulets down his skin. And when she became angry he took every punch she threw, not caring about the bruises, only wishing that the emptiness that he saw in her eyes would go. Would be relieved by something - anything.
Anything…
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