Every sound in the hospital had hummed together somehow, merging into a long range echo of the Marion County storm siren. At least the wailing way it had sounded when she was a child, low and long droning, from the basement of a two story, picket fence, and pretty little Indiana home. She didn't remember those few moments fondly, when she remembered them at all. They had been awkward space holders in her childhood. Danny had been the one to always loop her small wrist in his hand at the start of that sound and tug, c'mon Pal, let's go play downstairs...

Him being the second oldest, she should have realized it was a trick soon as it started. She wasn't his 'pal' in anything and he never really wanted to play. Never wanted to ride bikes around the suburban block or climb the apple trees on the very edge of Mrs Larson's yard. When that siren went off she was his responsibility and, usually, soon as he'd gotten her to the bottom of the stairs she'd ended up snugged on the carpet and reading with Rachel anyhow.

The echoed memory of the sound almost made her want to call her sister... not that she'd even know what to say. And the good Doctor Cranston probably wasn't in the mood to read 'Where the Wild Things Are' all over again.

Hey, Big Sister... part of me is a blood loss.

Part of me got poured out onto asphalt.

But, just as well, she couldn't seem to make herself move. Even better, she wasn't even sure where her cell had ended up. Rachel's voice would do nothing but curtly remind her what it was like to feel more than this comfortable numb of nothing that was actually a culmination of everything. Rachel's voice would remind her that she was supposed to be strong, because storms meant nothing, storms were small in comparison to keeping close, a family of seven wedged into a sweat-warm and too small basement with that wailing fucking sound drummed quiet by the wind.

"Kate?" Just another sound, asking her to be strong.

Abby's lightly toned and wary voice should have made her feel something. All it did was remind her, with a flush of anger, that he had a goddamn responsibility to survive, to be stronger than her.

Strong is better?

Prove it, you son of a bitch.

Because she could not (would not be able to) save Abby from the loss of him.

She wouldn't even be able to save herself from it.

"Don't." She shook the negation to the side before the other woman's hand could trace a touch on her and she felt the air shudder at how stuntedly her friend recoiled.

"Okay."

She knew that the scientist was hurting just as much, if not more, than she was. Abby let herself hurt more, as a general rule. Even if it was just to grasp onto the feeling, pacify its presence, resolve and accept it. The technician was much more understanding of her own pain, more confident in just... well, everything. And especially things like this, things that she knew were necessary.

Kate hated her too for a moment, just for that ability to have fear, to have pain, and not be consumed by it. "I can't, Abs. Just... don't."

"Okay."

She finally met the other woman's eyes, trying to breathe evenly as she did. "I'm sorry."

Maybe if I apologize he'll come around long enough to give me hell for it.

"I know." Abby's voice was full of a tone that said she knew more than she should, more than anyone else, and more than Kate had even realized.

She knew somehow.

Because she was giving over a look and a tone that said 'Fragile, Handle With Care'.

Maybe he'd even told her. Maybe he'd used his hands with Abby to tell her a story in silence. It must have been a pretty little story to not hear aloud.

"I'm sorry." Maybe if I keep doing it...

He'd told her stories with his hands and she'd thought the endings were pretty enough.

Now she just wondered if those had been the chapters preceding the ugly end.

She needed to call her sister.

Rachel, read me a story?


For two women so dissimilar in so many daily aspects of living, they were mimes of each other in the dull stagnance of nearly-dead-but-still-breathing. Because their backs were turned toward each other as though they'd brokered claims to opposite sides of the waiting room and they were obviously and quite silently each holding their own court of horror. He'd seen enough of hospitals and waiting rooms to recognize traumatic shock and the way it made a female's body seem sturdy-still, unassailable and frail at once.

Abby was turned toward a window, staring quietly out it as though the movement of the trees and the rain pattering the leaves was counting out her quiet waiting. She was using the room exactly as it was meant.

Kate had faced the wall, one arm wrapped against herself and the other hand lifted, three fingers pressing her lips. She wasn't really even in the room.

He very suddenly remembered a saying he'd once read years upon years before, something referencing a graciously innocent and beautiful sect of angels. It had been so unassumingly perfect a compliment in his mind that he had instantly memorized it for later (flirtatious) usage. It had served him fairly well a few times, in his younger years, but he couldn't imagine a moment in the decades since that seemed to fit it more than in studying the both of them at once.

She looks like red wine in a white glass...

Each of them a still statue of furious and terrified blood in pale translucent skin - something deep and pretty and mulled in a delicate (verging on shattered) vessel.

He wanted to tell them 'darlings, he'll be fine'.

He wanted to drink down a bottle and wave the waiter in with another.

He wanted them to realize that they were so very much the same, while so wildly different in their loving.

Leave it to Jethro to lose a wife and daughter, alienate three wives, drive off another other handful of women along the way... and still have these two incomparable creatures, so still and loyal and beloved in their guarding.

"The Houri," he murmured softly between them as he started small but daring steps into the No Man's Land they'd created in the middle of the room, "are faithful companions to good men. Pure, loyal, exceedingly beautiful."

He neglected the fact that those good men were usually dead ones.

Not either of them responded with any sound at all anyhow (not that he'd expected much - the both of them were more like him than either would care to admit).

Caitlin stubbornly refused to look at him and Abby just turned her head slowly in his direction, the green of her eyes like sea glass and sharded.

"My angels," Ducky sighed out his guilt at so boldly lying to break through their combined silence, "he'll be fine."

Abby looked at him like she was hopeful, grateful, aching for more of the same.

And Kate, when she slowly turned and pressed harder against her lips, just gave him a voided stare that said she knew damn well he was lying and it was less than appreciated.