A/N: Thank you for the encouraging reviews! I'm glad you all feel I'm writing in character, because that's my first goal. And if you choose to review this chapter, thanks in advance. I'll update every weekend, either Saturday or Sunday.

Warning & Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Marta probably could ask him to explain the details of the passport and the camera flash, but even when she stands in the doorway (and of course, he knows she's there), Aaron ignores her. Concentration draws down the corners of his mouth and gathers between his eyebrows. For a few minutes, she observes, but the heaviness of her eyelids is too much. She shuffles to one of the queen beds, pulls back the covers, and crawls into a cocoon of fabric-softener smell and cotton. She curls on her side and shuts her eyes and hopes not to dream.

Nothing awakens her. Her eyes simply snap open, maybe mid-nightmare or maybe not. Better not to remember. How long has she been asleep? The clock says over an hour. She pushes aside the heavy, green comforter and climbs out of bed.

"Aaron?"

Silence.

All his rigged equipment is out of sight. On the little desk lies her finished passport.

A parting gift.

Numbness starts in Marta's fingertips and creeps up her arms, into her chest. She tries to breathe, but his words are echoing, bouncing off the walls that squeeze closer. "You can't run, not alone … You won't make it to sundown." So he expects her to … well, die, sooner or later. Marta's knees hit the carpet, then her hands. She weaves her fingers together behind her head and tries not to hyperventilate, not to throw up. Not to cry.

The automatic lock on the door disengages with a click. She jumps up and dashes around the bed, ducks just as the door swings open. Her peripheral vision identifies him. She freezes, half-hidden.

Aaron holds up both hands, and a green-lettered plastic bag—Subway—dangles from his right one. "Hey. It's just me."

Marta opens her mouth, then closes it. At the moment, she's as likely to scream as to give a coherent response. Her heartbeat pounds through her entire body.

He sets the bag on the night stand and steps closer. "What's wrong?"

"You …" She sinks onto the edge of the bed. Not alone. Not going to die. Well, possibly not.

"I was hoping you'd sleep longer, didn't want to wake you just to say I was going out for food."

"I thought …"

A moment hangs while he studies her face. It's the same piercing look that petrified her when she told him she didn't have the chems, when he held the sides of her face between hands that could break her neck. He nods slowly, looks at the bag of sandwiches, then back at her.

"You thought I wasn't coming back."

She forces the fists at her sides to relax, the air to fill her lungs. Admit it? Deny it? But in her hesitation, he nods again. How does he read her like that? No one she's ever met, known, dated, not even her family would call her transparent. Maybe witnessing two shootings is enough to shatter the ice around anyone, even Dr. Marta Shearing. She shivers.

For less than a second, his expression opens into something Marta can't name. Then he twitches a smile that doesn't warm his eyes. "So I brought you to a Comfort Inn in New York with the purpose of abandoning you. You truly make no sense, Doc."

She scrabbles for a response, but he doesn't seem to need one. He opens the Subway bag and hands her a foot-long.

"Turkey club with the works. You don't have any dietary restrictions, do you?"

She shakes her head and takes the sandwich. The bagel for breakfast seems a lifetime away, but until now, food hasn't entered her mind. Her stomach rumbles, not loudly enough for anyone but her to hear. But his mouth twitches again. Of course.

He digs into his own sandwich with the focus of a starving refugee. He devours the first half of the foot-long and reaches for the second without pause. He picks a crescent of salami off the wrapper and pops it into his mouth.

"Hungry?" she says. Where did that teasing tone come from?

This smile, half self-deprecating, does find his eyes. "Accelerated metabolism. As you know."

Oh … When had he eaten last? "How accelerated?"

"I was getting a little shaky."

"I didn't even think."

"Normally I keep MREs on hand, but …" He shrugs. "Sandwich okay?"

"It's delicious."

Aaron nods and finishes the second half of his sandwich before she finishes her first. She tucks the wrapper around the remaining half of turkey club, and the tension in her every muscle begins to release. Their silence no longer feels like a rubber band, stretched to the point of snapping.

"Tell me something," he says as he tosses his trash in the can beside the nightstand.

She waits, but he flops back onto the other bed and folds his arms over his chest and turns his head. That wasn't a preface. He's waiting, too.

"Something?"

"You know. About you."

"Well, I … I'm …" Heat rushes into her face. "You know I have a sister. Her name's Ilene, and she designs greeting cards for Hallmark."

Aaron rolls onto his side, propped up by an elbow. "Interesting family dichotomy."

"The artist and the scientist. That's us."

"All right, so … that's your sister. How about you? When you're not at work. What do you do? To unwind, to be yourself."

"My work is my … self, Aaron."

He nods. "So your mind is on viral mapping twenty-four/seven."

"Well, no, of course not." Marta scoots back on the bed until her spine touches the headboard. "All right. I like to ... well, I go to concerts."

"Hm. Not the symphony?"

"No. Pop concerts. The louder, the better."

"Why?"

Why is he asking? "It's about … not thinking. I don't know if that even makes sense. It's about getting lost in a group experience with all these strangers you don't need to know, and just … feeling. Music does that for me."

His smirk morphs into a grin that crinkles around his eyes. "Taylor Swift?"

"I've seen her twice." Her own smile feels rusted.

"Maroon 5."

"They're one of my favorites."

"Justin Timberlake."

"I haven't seen him." At Aaron's mockingly relieved eye roll, Marta adds, "Yet."

"Justin Bieber."

She balls up her napkin and throws it at his head, and he catches it without looking at it. "There are lines I won't cross, Aaron."

He tosses the napkin toward the ceiling, and this time he doesn't catch it so much as allow it to fall straight back into his palm. "Good to know."

"Turnabout." She crosses her ankles and slouches down so that the headboard is supporting her neck. Ow. She grabs a pillow and stuffs it between her neck and the wood. "What about you?"

He pitches the napkin into the trash can across the room. "Me?"

"Of course, you."

For half a minute, he doesn't answer. Then he sits up as if this topic is too dire to discuss at ease. "What I do, to …"

"To be yourself." Maybe he doesn't want to tell her. She shouldn't assume he meant for her to ask.

But after another pause, he lies back on the bed again, arms folded, gaze on the ceiling. "I read. I like crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles … Sudoku."

"Really?"

"Yup." From the side of his face she can see, his expression is casual. But something's shifted in his voice, almost a hush, not unlike the tone he used to tell her that her family needed to believe she was dead.

"See, you're not predictable, either," she says. "I would have thought wilderness survival, target shooting, intense daily workout at the gym."

"Well, yeah, of course. But you asked about activities not related to my work."

Ah. Right. Still, it's surprising that when he's allowed to choose, he gravitates toward things that utilize his enhanced mind rather than his enhanced body. … Wait. No. Marta pictures the dim gaze of Kenneth J. Kitsom, and Aaron's choices aren't surprising at all.

Maybe he senses her connecting dots he'd rather leave unconnected. He rolls to his side again and looks ready to change the subject.

"I'd think Sudoku would be ridiculously easy for you," she says, because for some reason, she can't stand the thought of this window into Aaron being shuttered.

He grins. "I can do a book in about an hour."

"A … book? A whole book? In an hour?"

"I look at the page and I see the numbers … pretty much instantly."

She huffs, and his grin widens, then fades.

"For most people, it's about the mental challenge. For me, it's about the reliability of the pattern, the steadiness, the pen filling it in. It's relaxing."

"I can see that, I guess. But what about when you want to be around people?"

He shrugs and lets their new, easy silence fill the spaces.

"You're an introvert?" That doesn't fit at all.

"No," he says. "But personal relationships are restricted and very closely monitored. Could compromise me, or so I'm constantly told."

A scoffing noise escapes her. "I know your file, the medical side of it, at least. Don't try to tell me you let—us—make personal decisions for you."

He pauses again, collecting. "What's the point in it, when nothing can be honest?"

"It just seems lonely." It's all Marta can think to say, but he gives her such an incredulous look that she forces a laugh. "I'm sorry, I guess I sound ridiculous."

Aaron smiles, shrugs. "Nah, Doc. You don't."