A/N: Again, thanks for the kind words. They've been awesome. This is a bit of a transitional chapter here, but it moves us along, back to Terra Nova. There's still lots more Wash story yet to be. Enjoy!

Two weeks after the re-taking of Terra Nova, and one week after the incredibly moving memorial for Lieutenant Washington, the colony starts to finally look like itself again. It helps that while the Phoenix guys had done a lot of damage, they hadn't really rocked the foundations of the colony, which makes the rebuilding that much easier. At least physically if not metaphorically anyway.

On the fourteenth day back, the pre-dawn patrol finally starts up again. For years, Nathaniel Taylor has done this perimeter walk with his lieutenant, always rising before the sun each and every morning.

On this first morning back on the walk, Jim Shannon joins him instead.

Almost immediately, Taylor notices that Shannon is oddly – especially for him – subdued. He's sipping from a thermos of coffee, but not saying a word. It's weird and a bit unsettling for Nathaniel. Mostly because Jim Shannon is never quiet.

Taylor chuckles at that, which makes the sheriff look over at him, an eyebrow arched, curiosity written across his handsome features. "Commander?"

"Just thinking about you."

"Me? Should I be worried?"

"No…I just…I noticed that you're awfully quiet this morning, Shannon." He pauses for a moment, then adds (with a degree of forced – but not completely unappreciated by Jim – levity), "I think Wash would have appreciated that."

"Figured you would, too, sir," Jim tells him. There's more than a hint of sadness in his tone, like he hasn't quite come to the place that Taylor is pretending that he has. The Commander has lost so many people before – including his wife. He knows how to act like he's handling things well even if there's no possible way that he could be. He knows how to look strong for everyone. Like he's healing and recovering just fine.

But he's not, and anyone who knows the Commander even a little bit knows that. That said, they're all going to allow him to play the part because truth be told, everyone around Terra Nova needs the strong and put together Nathaniel Taylor, not the one who would like little more than to disappear into his quarters and with the help of ample amounts of alcohol, grieve the loss of yet another loved one.

So Taylor pretends to be healing, getting better with each day

Jim, on the other hand, is downright awful at being able to hide what he's feeling at any given moment. When he's angry or frustrated or irritated, it shows.

It was the one of the traits he'd shared with the lieutenant. She'd certainly been better at masking herself behind military training, but he'd always known when she'd been in one of her less than pleasant moods. He'd been able to read her like a book, much to her absolute annoyance and chagrin.

Right now, the emotion Jim's having a hell of a time hiding is guilt. He feels the loss of his friend deeply in his soul, but more than that, he's aware of how her absence is affecting others – like the Commander and like Reynolds.

She'd laid down her life for him and his family. That's the kind of debt that doesn't get repaid with one act or even a thousand. It's a life debt that requires justifying the sacrifice. Which is all to say that Jim Shannon intends to ensure that what Wash had done for he and has family will never be forgotten.

And he starts that by doing something that he knows she'd want; making for damn sure that the Commander is watched over.

"I like quiet in the morning," Taylor admits. "It's a nice time to see nature waking up. It's quite lovely out this early."

"If you say so."

Taylor stops, turns towards the younger man, and grips his left shoulder. "You don't have to do this, Jim. Go home, climb back in bed. I'm sure your wife would prefer you be there rather than here."

"Actually, Commander, she doesn't really care. She sleeps pretty heavy. And she has cold feet."

Taylor laughs at that. "Wash did, too."

And then just like that, he starts walking again.

Jim knows he should let it go, shouldn't push on what he's just heard, but he can't help himself. It's his nature to pull on threads even when doing so runs the risk of causing the entire ball of yarn to come wildly undone.

He catches up to Taylor, moving in step with him. Lets a few seconds pass, and then quietly, as respectfully as he can manage, "So you two were together?" He'd always suspected, even assumed it, but for the first time, he's pretty sure that he's hearing confirmation – albeit a rather heartbreaking one - of it.

Taylor doesn't reply for several minutes, long enough to make Jim think that maybe he isn't going to answer at all. The cop is even considering dropping the subject all together (too soon, he thinks) when Nathaniel says softly, "We were."

And then he moves off, towards the Command Tower.

Nathaniel Taylor isn't a man that spends a lot of time talking over feelings. He's loved – truly loved - exactly two women in his life. They've both been taken from him in inexplicable acts of horrific violence. What he feels right now, there are no words for. Simple emotions can't define the depth of his hurt or his loss.

He won't even try to make them.

Jim watches him go, his expression growing grimmer. He thinks about his family, wonders what it would be like to lose Elizabeth.

He hopes to God that he never has to find out.

The first real signs that her psyche may already be coming apart show themselves with two days to go until his father sixtieth birthday.

This time, on her way down from the stims (he's started cocktailing different ones, just to see how they alter her personality – he's discovered that if he mixed blue and red, she becomes extraordinarily violent whereas green and yellow make her very pliable), she starts rambling on about neutral zones and evac sites and other such related issues.

He thinks maybe she's delirious thanks to fever again, but after a few minutes, he realizes that it's more like she's experiencing a flashback episode. One where she actually believes that she's back in Somalia. In the middle of the war again.

"Lieutenant," Lucas calls out, grabbing at her forearms. His hands are warm against her unnaturally cold skin, but if she notices, she doesn't show it.

Instead, she pushes him roughly away from her and starts pacing around, barking out orders to men and women only she sees. He hears names he recalls vaguely from his youth – people his father had trained and then eventually, inevitably buried. She calls out for someone named Harrison, asks where the hell Taylor is. Then grunts in disgusts and curses rather colorfully. He notices with some degree of amusement mixed with morbid curiosity that she seems not to be noticing that her hand is injured – one of its fingers broken (by him). She's waving it around, speaking loudly and demonstratively.

He could stop her if he really wanted to – no matter what kind of episode she's having, he's still much stronger than she is right now – but he chooses not to. He's curious and intrigued. And so for almost a half hour, he watches as she weaves her way through some dark and terrible memory of her past.

It's utterly fascinating what he sees. She's agitated and irritated, yelling at men that only she sees. She keeps looking around as if expecting something to come at her from behind her. And she keeps asking where Nathaniel Taylor is.

Finally, after what seems like an eternity, bored with the bizarre show, which seems like it will never end, he grabs her arm roughly and spins her, causing her legs to give out from under her. She tumbles to the ground, slamming her knees against the hard rocky surface. It's the pain she feels when that happens that snaps her out of her violent flashback episode.

From the ground, she looks up and sees Lucas, but her expression is strange, like she doesn't completely recognize him.

"Lucas?" she gasps after a long moment.

"Right here, Alicia," he responds, choosing to play along with her.

"Where are we?" she asks, looking around her. "Are we still in Somalia?"

"No. We're near Terra Nova now."

"Terra Nova? What is that? Is it a camp? Where's your father? And why do you look so different?" There's alarm in her tone, like she knows something is very wrong. She tries to move but her body won't cooperate.

"Take it easy, Alicia. You're badly injured. You need to rest. Just close your eyes. Everything will feel better and make more sense when you wake up."

For reasons she can't explain, she doesn't believe a word he's saying. She also can't manage to keep herself from losing consciousness.

"Maybe we should cancel it," Jim says as he comes around to the front of the table. It's just after dinner time, and the kids are all doing their separate things allowing him a bit of quiet time with Elizabeth. "It's the last thing he wants."

"I know, and if he was anyone else, I would agree. But he's not, Jim," Elizabeth reminds him, stepping into her husbands' strong arms. "If we cancel his birthday celebration, people will take that as a sign that we're not recovering. That's he not okay."

"He's not okay, Liz. How could he be?"

"Jim," she chides. "I agree with you. And if it were you…I don't know how I'd be. But no one else knew about their relationship. She was a solider and a good friend to him. Unless he wants to start telling everyone…"

"He barely told me."

"Exactly. Which means business as usual."

"Right," Jim sighs, sliding his arms her and holding her tight. "I keep thinking," he says, "That I should have tried to change her mind."

"If you had, we probably would never have made it out. And we never would have retaken the colony. She knew what she was doing. She made the choice knowing what would happen. Don't take that away from her."

"I don't want to take it away from her. I just…"

"Wish it hadn't happened."

"Yeah."

"Me, too."

He's holding her in his arms when she comes back to her senses just a few hours later, the pain radiating through her skull nearly blinding. When it's obvious that she has to, he very gently helps her turn over to throw up the water and soup that she'd ingested earlier that day. Once again, she hears him whispering soft words into her ear, telling her that it's going to be okay.

And once again, though she can't remember why, the way he's acting feels so familiar to her. And so right. Like maybe this was how he was meant to be instead of how he actually turned out.

When she's done throwing up, she turns back over in his arms, lays against his chest and reaches up to touch his cheek, desperate to feel warm flesh beneath her shaking fingertips. He can feel the tremors winding their way through her, and he thinks to himself that absent desperately needed medical assistance, she hasn't much time left before she'll succumb to her vast and terrible injuries.

"Do you know where you are?" he asks once she's stilled. "What year it is?"

"2149," she gasps, wincing as every word takes considerable effort to grind out.

"Yeah. For awhile you were…somewhere else."

"Thanks to you," she answers, remembering in a flash how all of this came to be. The images are hazy and unfocused, but there's no doubt that he's responsible for her damaged and broken state.

"I'm doing what I have to do," he insists.

"And I'm dying because of it."

"You are," Lucas confirms, putting his hand over hers. "But not before we both do what we need to do. We can both make it that long." His tone is soft, gentle, almost understanding of the pain she's going through. Almost sympathetic.

"Lucas…he can help us…"

That's all it takes for him to remember what he's doing and why. He won't be knocked off course by silly things such as empathy and compassion. None of those monsters in Somalia had felt any of that for their victims. Everyone hurt had been simply a means to an end – and so too, for him, is Alicia Washington.

"I have a story for you, too," Lucas tells her, his hand squeezing hers, much harder now, almost uncomfortably. "One I think you've read about, but probably never really heard about. I'm guessing my father didn't invite you into his bed by first talking about his dead wife. Or…did he?"

Even in her state, his words crack against her like a fist to the face. The idea that she had climbed over Ayani's body to get to Nathaniel burns at her. It's so far from the truth, but more than that, it cuts right to the deeply buried inferiority complex she's always had when it comes to his beloved long buried wife.

"That's not how it happened," she insists, wondering vaguely why she feels the need to explain herself to this little bastard. She and Nathaniel had always gone to great lengths to keep their relationship private and quiet, but of course some had known (such as Guzman) or suspected (as she's certain Shannon had).

She'd long wondered if Lucas had known about them. Apparently, he had.

"I'm sure it's not. But shush now, I've got one hell of a bedtime story for you, Lieutenant. It's a real…heartbreaker."

2138. Somalia.

He's fourteen years old, and he's taking college courses, some of which quite literally bore him to tears. There's only so much knowledge to be found around this little village, though. What there is, Lucas Taylor absorbs like the sun soaking up drops of water on the ground.

On the day they come, he's sitting on the porch of his house, long legs up on the rail, a plexpad on his knees. He's reading through what most ordinary people – including his father - would consider an unbelievably boring book on the theories of astrophysics, and all he can think is, this dude who wrote is a complete moron who doesn't know what the hell he's going on about.

He hears the sounds of their tanks before he hears or sees anything else. It's just a loud obnoxious rumbling noise somewhere in the distance. Then he sees the dust rising up into the air, clogging his sinuses. He stands up and watches as they approach, not quite understanding what's occurring.

His mother does, though.

She comes outside, eyes wide with a kind of panic and fear that he's never seen before. She puts an arm around him and says, "Go inside. Hide."

He shakes his head. "No."

"Lucas, please. Now isn't the time." She turns him towards the house. "Hide in the attic. They won't find you."

But he's not leaving his mother out here on the porch alone. She's clearly afraid, and absent his father, he's the man of this house. It's his job to take care of her.

When the men get out of their vehicles, there are dozens and dozens of them. They're dressed in fatigues and they're carrying monstrous weapons and speaking in a language he doesn't know or understand. They're laughing, and amused by what they see – women and children with almost no defenses.

Still, to their credit, the people of this little village don't go easily. They're the wives and kids of soldiers, and so they put up at least a small fight. Small being the operative word. It's over within minutes, and everyone is rounded up.

And then strangely enough, the soldiers do little else but wait.

Several days pass. The soldiers get bored and start playing around with their hostages. No one is hurt badly, but the psychological torture is monstrous. Women are molested (though not out and out assaulted) and children beaten, but no lines are crossed. Not yet anyway. Everyone can tell that the worst is yet to come. They just don't understand what the worst is to be.

Lucas does, though.

He's fourteen, and out of sight and out of mind, but he understands perfectly what's occurring here. His fathers' library is comprehensive, and full of books on war strategy. He's read the chapters that deal with sacking villages and terrorizing civilians. He knows that what is happening here is all about taking from the soldiers that are winning the war – in this case, his father and his unit.

It's about making the losses personal. And they are. Terribly so.

The end game happens four days after the tanks roll in. His father and his men – curiously absent the woman that many within the unit have come to see as his second in command despite the fact that she's just a medic – return home after fifteen days of intense jungle fighting.

They're exhausted, and returning to their houses and families believing that they're coming home for a brief break from the hell they've been knee-deep in.

Instead, they're dumped into a whole other vat of it.

They enter the village to find their loved ones lined up against the walls of every building, guns pointed at their heads. The shocked and horrified soldiers are then told that they have an option – they can pick someone to live or they can lose every one they have ever loved. His fathers' men are tired and worn down, but they're willing to fight if it means they can win. But they can't, and they know it.

Each man makes his or her choice.

Including his father.

While he waits to die (because surely, his father will choose his mother – as he should), Lucas watches as the women who are chosen to die are raped and brutalized. The children are all executed quickly, almost mercifully so. He thinks to himself that it's a shame really because there were so many things that he'd wanted to do, but as the man of the house, it's better this way.

And then his father speaks, and says softly in a voice he barely hears, "I choose the boy to live."

His mother lets out a soft sob, and he sees her nod her head in agreement (of course she does, that hardly justifies the choice), but if she says something else, Lucas doesn't hear it. He's too busy screaming at his father, begging him to change his mind.

His father doesn't.

A few minutes later, it's his mother who's screaming.

Nathaniel wakes up gasping for air from a nightmare that he's had a hundred times (if not far more than that). It's the one of Ayani being brutalized in the middle of the home that he had brought her to. He had wanted her close – and safe. The irony of having wanted the same for Wash isn't lost on him. Nor is the reality that his choices had likely damned them both.

He rubs at his eyes, then crawls out of bed. He makes his way to the front room, and stops. Looking around, he sees the signs of everywhere. No, she hadn't ever moved in with him – that would have meant coming out to everyone – but she had left quite the impression on his living space. As he had hers.

On the bookcase, he sees a plexpad, and knows that its hers not his. He fires it up, and looks over the listing of novels. She's been someone who'd always enjoyed a good spy thriller, sometimes a crime-solving tale.

He puts the plex down, and paces his quarters. After a few moments, he steps outside, inhales the fresh air.

"Commander?" he hears. He turns and sees Reilly there, watching him, her eyebrow slightly lifted.

"Reilly," he nods. "Patrol?"

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry if I startled you."

"You didn't. And before you ask, I'm fine."

She doesn't believe him for a minute. She also knows better than to indicate such. Instead, she nods her head. "Anything I can do for you, sir?"

"Just be safe, Corporal."

It's an utterly bizarre thing for the Commander to say, but she has the sense to reply in a manner that doesn't show her worry. "Will do, sir. Goodnight, Commander."

"Goodnight, Reilly. Oh, and Corporal?"

"Sir?"

"If I didn't tell you already, you did damn good work when we were outside. I'm extremely proud of you."

"I was trained by the best, sir," Reilly responds. And to her mind, she had been. The lieutenant had seen to it, putting the younger woman through drills that would have made the old the old Marine Corps DIs proud.

"Yes, you were," Taylor agrees.

She's about to reply when her eyes catch on digital read-out of her sonic rifle. It's just a few minutes after midnight. "Sir," she says. "It's your birthday."

He chuckles. "Is it?"

She smiles at him in response, a slightly sad expression.

"Another year older," he sighs. "Carry on, Corporal."

Reilly nods, spares one last look at Taylor, then moves off. As she walks down the path, her eyes going every which way, she makes a mental note to speak to Jim Shannon again about the Commander. No matter what he says, he's clearly not doing well at all. Which means someone has to watch out for him.

Which means everyone has to watch out for him.

Because that's what Wash would want.

The day of his fathers' sixtieth birthday (an event he's assuming will be celebrated whether his father wants it to be or not), he allows his captive to have a few moments of lucidity and self-awareness.

Instead of giving her the cocktail, he injects her with only the yellow stim. Her senses are humming, and her body is aching with pain and over sensitivity, but at least she's still within her own mind, able to think for herself for the first time in awhile.

As a weird kind of mercy – his version of a last meal perhaps, he lets her spend some quiet time down at a stream, bathing and cleaning herself.

Which isn't to say he doesn't watch. Not for some sick voyeuristic kind of reason (though he'd be a fool not to admit that she's beautiful in a darkly powerful kind of way), but because he doesn't trust the lieutenant not to try to either escape or try to find a way to incapacitate or even kill herself. She knows what he's intending to do to her, and it's the last thing she wants to do. Which means that she can't be left alone for even a minute.

Bathing takes her almost an hour – none of her muscles are cooperating, but she refuses his offers of help, even threatens that if he even attempts to touch her, she'll rip vital parts of him off (he doesn't doubt her).

When she's done, she announces such (almost shyly, he thinks), and waits for him to bring her a blanket before coming out of the water. It's silly really because she's not a bashful woman and he's seen everything anyway, but she's intent on not allowing him even a moment more of ownership over her.

It hardly matters to him what she does, though, because as far as he's concerned, he owns her completely anyway.

He hands her clothes – the same ones she's been wearing for the last two weeks. The ones she was wearing when he'd shot her oh so very long ago. "Put them on," he says. They're filthy and oily, but it's hardly the first time that she's been forced to wear the same clothes for a long stretch of time.

She considers refusing, but knows he'll get what he wants one way or another. If she doesn't dress herself, he'll just drug her up, and do it himself, and frankly the idea of him clothing her sickens her more than she cares to admit. She takes her time, though, enjoys his impatience probably more than she should.

When she's done, he steps towards her, touches both hands to the side of her face. "I'm going to do you a great favor," he says to her, his finger tracing over one of the bruises on her jaw. It's an almost intimate touch.

She snorts in derision.

He chuckles. "You have no faith in me, Alicia."

"Can't imagine why. Oh wait, you're a fucking homicidal lunatic, Lucas."

"No, I'm not. I'm just a boy avenging his mother."

"No, you're a boy who refuses to grow up and realize that the real world isn't clean and neat. Your father loved your mother more than you will ever know, and what you're doing right now mocks that love and mocks who she was."

She's not surprised to find herself on her knees a few moments later, blood seeping from her lip. She thinks to herself that she should probably learn when not to taunt the bad guys, but then again, after all of this time, why start now?

"He let her be destroyed, do you understand that?" He's grabbing her by the hair, pulling at her scalp, making her sees bright spots in front of her eyes. He throws her against the wall again, buries his foot into her gut. She hears a snap, assumes that he's added one of her ribs to the finger he's already broken.

"Do you think it didn't destroy him?" she gasps out, tears stinging her eyes. She coughs harshly, painfully.

"No. I think he moved on. He found someone else. He found you." He leans over her, wraps an arm around her waist and speaks the angry words into her ear.

"I'm sorry," she says simply. "But I won't be sorry for loving him."

"He will be."

And then he's slamming her down on the ground, holding her down as he jams the needle into her arm. It occurs to her almost immediately what he's doing, and panic races through her as she realizes that this time, he's not just cocktailing two of the stims.

No, this time, the little bastard is combining all four of them.

"Lucas, please…" she whispers, finally allowing the plea to escape her lips. She can feel the drugs racing through her, feel her mind being forcibly wrenched away from her. She knows that beneath all of the chemicals, she's dying anyway, and she realizes that she has almost no chance of surviving this, but what he's doing, it's too much. What he's going to make her into, it's too horrific. "Don't."

"When this is over," he tells her as her mind fogs over. "I think you'll see my mother wherever you're going because I think you're actually a good person who fell in love with a horrible man. So I think you'll see my mom. Tell her I love her."

He sounds so young, she thinks.

So sad.

So broken.

Just like me.

He doesn't want this damned party. It feels wrong. He's in no mood to celebrate getting older. Especially since he'll be doing it alone. Again.

Honestly, though, that aside, he's really in no mood to celebrate anything. The only reason he allows the party at all is because the colonists so desperately need to be happy about something. So if they need him to be the figurehead for that for a few hours, he's willing to allow that.

Because that's what he does.

The celebration is brilliant really. It has her fingerprints all over it, suggesting that his lieutenant had set up the plans for it well in advance.

Well, of course she had.

It's almost eight when he finally begrudgingly takes the stage to speak to everyone, interrupting their drunken dancing. He glances around, his eyes settling on familiar faces. He remembers doing this not too long ago for a different celebration – the Harvest Festival.

He remembers seeing her standing next to Malcolm.

He takes a breath, finds the words he needs to say.

"Thank you," he tells the gathered crowd. "What you have all done today, it means a lot to me. It means everything to me. And not just because I'm another year older, but because I'm still here. Because we're still here. What we've been through, we went through as a community, and we came out on top."

The words flow from his lips – from his heart surely – but he'd be lying if he claimed that there wasn't something practiced in them. These are the words these people need to hear, ones that he's so good at delivering.

So he says them because that's what he's supposed to do.

And they clap and they cheer and he smiles and does the same.

And then all hell breaks loose.

He uses Skye's intel one last time, uses it to find an opening back into Terra Nova. There are holes in the gates – too many of them to be honest, and he crawls with the incredibly obedient lieutenant right through one of them.

And he then he waits, way in the back, watching as his father gives one of his perfect inspirational speeches. Football coaches everywhere would be envious.

Just as his father is wrapping up, he leans forward, and says to Wash, who is staring ahead without any kind of expression on her face, "The man on the stage is your enemy. Kill him, Lieutenant Washington. Do your duty."

"Yes, sir," she answers emotionlessly. Her eyes are vacant, but somehow astonishingly focused.

He presses his gun into her hand, smiles as her fingers close around it. He watches with a smile as she steps forward, lifting the weapon and aiming it with cold precision right at his fathers' heart.

And then he sees her fire.

TBC…