Memories from Demios have a dream like quality. The exhaustion and the hunger put her in a drunk-like state. Some things Shane's sure aren't even real, never took place. Others she knows happened. All of them muddled through. She knows they spent three months there. She can't, for the life of her, remember more than a week.
The memories, real and not real, come in flashes. The radio. The funerals. Rescuing Phousse from a Chig patrol. Drowning. Cooper's angry eyes. The 58 eating dirt. Nathan's mouth on her neck. Patching Paul's legs. Shivering in her sleep. Nathan's hands fumbling through her clothes. Cooper punching Paul. Eating grass. Phousse crying. Nathan's release. Hunger. Cooper, Paul and Vanessa leaving. Nathan never taking a stand, interrupted by the lights in the sky. The colonel's smile, full and healthy. The ride home.
She feels Nathan's hands in her sleep, invading her nightmares, soothing, caring. She should feel bad about it, but doesn't. Good dreams are a luxury she rarely gets to indulge.
She remembers falling through the planet's atmosphere, hearing Nathan on her earpiece. Phousse passed out beside her. Take her home, she told him. Shane was okay with dying.
Two seconds after she closes her eyes, she wakes up in a hospital bed. Cooper is sleeping on a chair at her right. Nathan is at her left. She's alive. She doesn't know how. Phousse is dead. She doesn't know why.
She blinks. Blacks out. Comes back. A few hours later, maybe days, maybe minutes, the doctor comes, asks Nathan and Cooper to clear out. They don't want to. They want to know, whatever it is. They are afraid she's dying. They want to be there. The doctor says it's private. Shane says they can stay. No secrets among the 58, she says. She doesn't want to find out she's dying alone, she thinks.
She's not dying.
She's pregnant.
Cooper looks at the doctor as if he's just said Shane's a unicorn.
The color drains from Nathan's face. His eyes are round, his sight unfocused when he looks at her. His mouth on her neck flashes in her mind.
It was real. It was real.
They stand there in silence for long seconds. Maybe hours. Maybe days. The doctor excuses himself. Suggests Cooper leaves too. Cooper doesn't. Shane doesn't ask him too. Nathan storms out.
Shane feels nothing.
When she wakes again, he's there. Staring at her. Maybe he woke her with the power of his stare. His eyes fall when she looks at him. He whispers . "I wasn't sure that was real…"
She smiles, a tired sad smile that takes too long to stretch out as if her muscles forgot how to move that way. "Me either".
Nathan starts sobbing. Out of the blue. He reaches forward, buries his face on her neck and cries, cries, cries. She should be crying too, maybe. She feels too exhausted to cry.
He stops crying as suddenly as he started. Puts his hand behind her neck, turns her face against his and stares at her with red rimmed eyes. When he speaks, it's softly, less than a whisper.
"I could have lost you both."
Shane thinks he means her and Kylen and isn't that a very Nathan thing to say when she notices his hand on her belly. He means her and the baby. Oh. Oh. Right. There's a baby there now.
They transfer her to Earth and two weeks after she's settled, he shows up at her doorstep. Went to hell and high-water to make sure they found him a spot in one of the Earth based squadrons. Always so bullheaded. Shane knows why they transferred him. Boss Ross knows he would go AWOL again. Everyone knows. Better let him have it his way.
She doesn't want him to stay, she doesn't want him to go, so she just doesn't say anything. He settles himself at her apartment and talks his way through her day. She's silent and he's filling the world with noise. She should ask him what he wants from her. She should ask him about Kylen. She should kick him out when she finds him sleeping on her couch. She should tell him she doesn't want any of this. She doesn't want a Marine father to her child. She doesn't want her kid to live through what she had. She doesn't want a dead father to her child. She wants the war to end, now. She wants him to leave. Leave her, leave the Marines, just leave. She doesn't say anything and he stays.
When he starts talking about baby names, she stops him. Not Vanessa. No. Her baby can't remind her of death. And she cries. She cries for the first time in months, for the first time since Demios. She cries and Nathan's hands are there, soothing, caring.
She cries again when Julie is born. And again when Cooper holds the baby with Nathan's help and looks at Shane with fascination and confusion in his eyes. "What does that mean? A godfather?".
"Means you're family", Nathan explains and right there, right then, she thinks she loves him after all.
Nathan kisses the top of her head.
His hands are there.
They never leave.