Author's Note: This is my first Terra Nova piece (FOX owns all rights, blah blah blah). I have a Wash thing. What can I say, I love tough chicks with scars. I usually try to wait until I know a bit more about the character before doing this (or until I know the show will survive) but what the hell. Creative licenses have, of course, been taken. Enjoy and let me know what you think if you'd like.

She aches. Just about everywhere right now.

Her head, her ribs, hell even her legs sting with pain.

Hardly a new feeling for her, but one she dislikes all the same.

When she'd been much younger, she'd invited pain into her life like a long-lost lover. Back then, pain had reminded her that she'd been alive.

For another minute. Another hour. Another day.

Those had been the dark and dreary days of the war in Somalia. Every moment of her existence had been spent in fear of the Grim Reaper coming to collect.

Back then, she'd survived on a not very healthy cocktail of fear, adrenaline and lab-created painkillers meant to keep her body moving far past the point of common sense.

Back then, no one (especially the civilian suits in charge) had cared how you survived, just that you did. Long enough, anyway, to tilt the war one way or the other. Keep going until you can't possibly go on. Keep going until you break.

Until your body crumbles and shatters and your soul implodes.

Keep going until even the best painkillers and stimulants in the world can't keep you upright.

Yeah, that'd been the way of things back then. Unless you had multiple bullets in you (as she had when she'd finally exited the war stage left) you were expected to still be in the trenches. Still surviving. Still pushing on. However you had to.

But the war had ended years ago.

They'd won.

Right?

There are days even now when she's not completely sure of that. With all the blood that had been spilled, with all the loss and pain that had been absorbed, could anyone ever really win? Was victory actually a word worth owning?

Lieutenant Alicia Washington tries not to spend a lot of time on these thoughts. She knows and understands enough to realize that they won't help ease the darkness of her memories or the melancholy of her doubts and fears.

Instead, she chooses with an almost single-minded stubbornness to focus on the here and now.

She's usually successful in this endeavor. Thankfully, around here, there's a lot to keep her attention.

Terra Nova.

Never a woman prone to fits of girlish naivety, she had nonetheless (at least to herself) believed when she'd accepted her old CO Nathaniel Taylor's offer to join the initial Terra Nova team that it would be some kind of idyllic new beginning. It had been, of course, but it had also come with challenges that none of the new settlers had been able to anticipate.

Disease. Famine. Politics.

And oh yeah, the fucking dinosaurs.

Gorgeous amazing creatures with teeth that could rip you limb from limb in about three seconds and leave your still twitching body on the jungle floor to be picked apart by lesser animals.

She'd seen it happen. Almost had it happen to her a time or two.

Yeah, the big animals were a pain in the ass for sure, but they didn't even come close to the annoyance that the Sixers offered.

She runs her palms over her face, wincing slightly as her calloused palms slide over still blossoming bruises. She's always been slow to color, her dark skin often hiding the scars and marks of the rough life that she has chosen to live.

Still, no one takes the butt of a rifle to the face and comes away unmarked.

She can still remember the day when the Sixers had arrived, led by the beautiful Mira even back then. From moment one, Wash had known that the woman would be trouble for all of them. Taylor probably had as well, but he'd been insistent on the idea that everyone deserved a second chance.

Like they'd been given.

Neither one of them speaks much of it, but deep down, both of them will always feel like Terra Nova is their sole chance for redemption for the many sins they committed during the war. In the name of victory.

Undressing slowly, achingly, the woman that many around here know as Wash stares down at the bathtub full of hot water and suds. She's far from a girly-girl (hell, she's not even all that sure what that term means) but she sees no problem with indulging herself from time to time.

Especially after a day like this one.

Ambushed. Knocked unconscious. Beaten and then humiliated in front of the entire colony. In front of him.

Dammit.

She's learned to absorb many disgraces in her life, but somehow, looking weak in front of him is one of the things that she can handle the very least.

This is a man that she has known for over a decade. Her CO in the beginning and eventually a dear friend. For this man, she would blindly rush screaming through the gates of hell. For him, she'd do just about anything.

Then again, she muses to herself as she slips into the hot water, the bubbles covering and soothing her aching skin, some would probably say that she already has rushed into hell for him and with him.

And paid the price for it. Dearly.

Yeah, some might say that that reckoning – that payment - had occurred twelve years ago.

In Somalia.

2137.

The sounds of helicopters fill the air, their massive steel blades punching holes into the dark smoke surrounding the Evac-Zone. She feels a hand on her face, leather gloves sliding gently against the feverish skin on her jaw. She gasps as a finger lightly strokes her cheek – flesh on flesh. Human contact.

"You'll be okay," she hears. "Just hold on, Wash." She feels a hand close around one of her own, squeezing tight. She tries to squeeze back, tries to let him know that despite everything she's feeling, she hasn't given up yet.

With great effort, Alicia Washington opens her eyes and looks up into the bloodshot eyes of her commanding officer, Nathaniel Taylor. He's smiling down at her sadly, his own face covered in blood and dirt. She sees that his left arm is in a sling, his shoulder wrapped in tape that is already turning bright red.

Absurdly, she thinks that maybe he should be the one lying on this cot being evac'd to an emergency center instead of herself. But then she tries to inhale, and she feels her body explode with pain.

Vaguely, she remembers then the sound of gunfire and the feeling of getting pierced. She recalls the agony of her flesh being shredded by a bullet with a nefariously sharp point. And then another one. And then a third one. Only the fact that Taylor had come from seemingly nowhere and slammed her to the ground had kept her from suffering several more of the hideous wounds.

He'd saved her life. At least she hopes he had. Right now, as she fades in and out of consciousness, the pain coursing through her body beyond description, she's not sure she believes that he'd done much more than delay the inevitable.

She meets his eyes, and tries to gasp out words, tries to apologize – for what, she has no idea. The only thing she knows for sure is that she's not sure that there will ever be another chance to say what she needs to. She's not even all that sure what she needs to say. Just…something. She needs him to know – to understand – how much he has meant to her.

How little she would be if he had never come into her life.

The words refuse to come, and instead, she releases a low pained gasp and then coughs harshly, blood staining her lips. She can taste metal, and she feels her stomach roll violently.

"Easy," Nathaniel urges, his voice heavy with emotion. "Easy. Just breathe, Wash. Come on. Breathe. Please." He squeezes her hand again, urging her to once again repeat the motion. Let him know that she's still hanging on.

But she can't. It feels like she can't do anything at all. She thinks that maybe, this time, she's finally dying. She's all of twenty-four, but she's lived enough life already to understand what letting go feels like, and this is it.

Tears sting her eyes. Maybe one or two make their way down her cheeks, mixing with blood and dirt. Harsh salt slides into a cut on her jaw, making her wince. It's absurd really that she can feel the pain of such an inconsequential wound.

She tries to speak again, can only manage his name. "Nathaniel…"

"Sir," she hears one of the medics say, his voice painfully grave. "We've got to go now if there's going to be any chance of her making it." She feels a hand on her arm, and then a prick as a needle is driven into one of her veins. A moment later, she feels a coldness as something is pumped into her bloodstream. Painkillers? Sedatives? She's not sure and she's not especially sure she cares.

All she cares about is keeping eye contact with Taylor. He's her lifeline. Right now, he's her everything.

She sees Taylor nod, and start to move away, but frantically, she reaches for his hand, clutching his fingers with her own. "I'm sorry," she manages with great effort. "I'm so sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about, Alicia," he tells her (in their entire time of knowing each other, he's called her this maybe a half dozen times). There's an almost unbelievable sadness in his eyes, and it just about destroys her. What's left of her anyway. She feels the tears she'd been fighting back fall like rain now, creating watery streaks in the dirty mask that is her face. "I'll see you at the hospital in a few days," he says. "You're going to be okay." He leans closer then, his voice lowering. "Do you understand me, soldier? You are going to be okay."

She blinks, the tears blurring her vision. Pulled along by his force of will, she nods her agreement. She's never been able to refuse an order of his before.

She's not about to start now.

At least, she hopes she's not about to.

It's her last conscious thought before her grievous injuries pull her under.

Five days later, when she wakes up in a hospital in Germany, she realizes that somehow, by the grace of whatever God there actually is, she's alive.

Badly wounded and facing a long period of recovery, but somehow, miraculously – thanks to Nathaniel Taylor, she believes – alive.

She's surprised when he doesn't show up to see her. Like a good soldier, though, she rationalizes that despite his own injuries, he's still caught in the middle of the war and hasn't time to break away to see her.

Turns out that the reality is far worse than that. While she'd been out cold in a hospital bed, the enemy had decided that the only way to take down the great hero of the war would be to destroy him as a man. So first they'd started with going after the rest of the handpicked soldiers in his unit, and then they'd taken his beloved wife from him in the most hideous way possible.

If anything, though, what they'd done had only turned his blood colder. Nathaniel had rallied his remaining men and surged them against the enemy. In a single violence filled weekend, the war had ended in dramatic fashion.

And with an almost catastrophic death toll.

She isn't allowed long to consider the things that he or the others must have done. Instead, she's forced to focus on her own grueling recovery. Three of those hideous pointed bullets to the abdomen have left her weak and unable to do more than sit up for a few hours at a time. It's months before she's able to run a mile, almost a year before she's able to return to her normal workout regiment.

She doesn't see Taylor again until a day almost five years later when he comes to see her. At first, they talk of old times and old battles won and last. They avoid speaking about her injury like the plague, but eventually, they settle around the edges of the loss of his wife. She listens as he tells her what had happened, and she offers as much sympathy as he will accept.

And then, just as she's beginning to wonder why he'd come to see her – he's not a man prone to looking up people just to talk, especially about such painful things as these – he tells her about Terra Nova.

"It's our second chance, Wash," he says to her. "And I want you to be there for it. I want you to be there with me. I want you to join me. Will you?"

She never hesitates.

Feeling much calmer now, she stands out on her front step, her eyes focused up on the massive moon that seems to hang just inches above her. She pulls her leather jacket around her, slightly shielding herself from the coldness of the night. The days around here are blistering hot, but after the sun goes down, it's not uncommon for the temperatures to plummet by more than forty degrees.

"Wash?" she hears. She turns her head slightly, not at all surprised to see Commander Nathaniel Taylor walking towards her. The man is a notorious footer – he likes to walk the grounds of Terra Nova every night. He says he does it so as to take in the beauty of their surrounding. She suspects that he does it to ensure the safety of everyone in his keep.

Chances are, they're both right.

"Commander," she nods, her tone even and controlled.

"Nice night," he says, approaching her, his voice deep as usual. She can smell tobacco smoke on him. One of the first things that they'd planted when they'd settled here had been tobacco. That and cocoa. Some parts of the old world were worth keeping and remembering, he'd said then. She's not a smoker herself, but the scent on him is one that she has come to appreciate.

"It is," she agrees.

He moves to stand next to her, and for a moment, neither says another word. He follows her gaze upwards, towards the sky, taking a moment to marvel at the moon. He's old enough to remember having been able to see it as a child, but this is so much more impressive.

He finally steals a glance at her, noticing the bruising on her face. He'd seen it earlier, just after she'd been returned to the colony, but it's deepened since then, taking on a few colors. With her dark skin, she'll never get the greens and yellows, but the reds and purples will surely make a show.

"Impressive," he notes.

"Hmm?"

"The bruising."

"Oh," comes her tight reply. She'd been hoping that since he hadn't mentioned it earlier, he wouldn't mention it at all, but apparently, he has other ideas.

"It's not your fault," he tells her, his keen eyes still on her, studying her.

"We got ambushed," she answers.

"You did."

"If Mira had wanted to…if she'd allowed Carter to…I would have been killed." She says the words as emotionlessly as possible. Death is something soldiers face every day – even when they're not in war. This jungle, well it's taken several of her men already. One day, she's sure, it'll take her, too.

"True. But she's not ready to kill yet. Carter might be, but not her. Not yet."

"And when she is? Ready to kill?"

"We'll deal with her then, won't we?"

She simply nods her agreement.

After a few more moments, he asks, "What are you thinking about?"

She shrugs her shoulders. "Things I know better than to be thinking about, sir."

"Regrets then?"

She turns her head slightly, a small smile forming her lips. He knows her too well. He rewards her expression with a tiny grin of his own. Yes, he does.

"I suppose," she answers finally.

"Do you regret coming here with me?" he asks, his voice low. It reminds her almost chillingly of the tone he'd used while she'd been on the gurney in the helicopter, awaiting emergency medical evac to the hospital.

"Not for a moment, sir," she answers immediately.

"Good." He looks back up at the moon for a moment and then says, "Get some rest, Wash. You've earned it."

"Haven't we all, sir?"

They lock eyes for a long moment, both of them lost in the memory of the past. For a quick second, each of them can hear the explosion of gunfire and the screams of pain that had quickly followed.

She hears the sound of helicopter blades whirling.

He hears the sound of her gasping for air.

She remembers hearing about the death of Nathaniel's wife from a young man who had been brought into the hospital after the final surge.

He remembers hearing the sound of someone sobbing as his wife's casket had been lowered into the ground.

She thinks about him offering his hand to her when he'd told her about Terra Nova. "Come with me," he'd said.

He thinks about her taking his hand, and replying simply, "I'd be honored to, sir."

They continue staring at each other, and then, of course, she's the one to look away. She focuses her eyes back up on the moon, but that doesn't mean she doesn't hear him when he says softly, "Yes, we have, Wash. Yes, we have."

He's gone a moment later, his boots barely making a sound against the gravel of the walkway. She drops her eyes and looks for him, but he's disappeared into the night, a mysterious shadow as always.

She stays outside a few minutes longer, inhaling the oxygen rich air.

One way or another, Terra Nova is the end of the line for her. She might live to be forty or she might make it to be eighty, but either way, this is home.

And of that, she has no regrets.

None at all.

-FIN.