-12-

The 'What-Ifs'

Elena just sat there stunned for a moment, reflecting on Nate's words. From the amount of blood he had lost, it was causing his mind to remember what never was. In his head, Elena was his wife and their wedding day went through without a hitch. Elena was just happy to see that thinking of this put him at ease, and that he wasn't bleeding out anymore. But now she was more confused than she'd ever been.

"Umm...Nate?" she began to say slowly. She considered for a moment coming clean and telling him everything. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. He was feeling bad enough about all he had done in his past, and considering he almost wanted her to let him die because of it, she didn't want to risk bringing those feelings back. Not for a second.

"Hmm?" he answered softly in response.

Instead of telling the truth, she decided to say something else. Her words surprised ever her.

"Tell me more." she said.

Nate smiled and closed his eyes to remember. Little did he know, he was recalling false memories. He searched his memory and they surfaced.

"It was a small wedding—just Sully, Cutter, Chloe and us of course. It was on the mountain top in Tibet...where I thought I lost you forever. But that's also the place where you came back to me." he told her.

Elena felt herself smile, she remembered everything about that place. "Where you where an eight?" she asked him

"Four. I was a four." he claimed.

When she was caught in that explosion by Flynn, Nate was thrown into panic, thinking she was going to die for sure. After all the drama calmed, she asked him on a scale from one to ten how scared was he that she was going to die? He scoffed and said he was only a four, much to her dismay. She insisted he was at least an eight. Although he would never admit it, he was a twelve.

"I was...so worried that day. Worried that I was going to never see your face again. Hear your laugh, see the fall of your hair around your face. All of it. I even..." he trailed off.

"Even what?" Elena asked, curious.

Nate sighed before he spoke again. "I considered not showing up on our wedding day." he told her.

Elena felt her heart sink. Little did Nate know right now, that's exactly what he did. "...Why?" she asked. She was finally going to get that answer to the question she had been asking herself over and over for the past year.

Nate was silent for a moment. "Because...I didn't want something bad to happen to you. I thought that if I married you, that these terrorist sons of bitches would use you to get to me. Doing God knows what to you. It scared the hell out of me. More than anything I want to keep you safe. I figured that you would be sad for a while, but that would be better than you getting killed because of me."

Elena felt her eyes widen. She threw a hand to her mouth to subdue a gasp. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. She never thought that something like that would be the reason that he didn't show up. She figured that he wasn't ready to give up sewing his oats. This wasn't what she expected at all. Nate wasn't a cruel jerk to here,like Sully said, his reasons for doing what he did were sound...and they really were.

Nate continued. "I had the door open to tell Sully that I wanted to leave, for him to take me somewhere far away. So I didn't have to deal with it all...but I couldn't do it. As bad of thoughts I had of all the 'what-ifs' that could happen, I couldn't help but think of the good ones. Like...where we would honeymoon together, we could see all the sights without being shot at." he said with a small chuckle. "Then spend our nights together too. Telling you I love you every night that I love you, even if we had gotten into a fight about something petty. Then we could spend Christmas with Sully on a mountain somewhere, then New Years...Easter. Eventually we would be spending our days with our children. Stepping on toys every night, washing crayon off the walls. Going to their karate matches or piano recitals. We'd...be exhausted from all we had to do, treasure hunting would seem like a breeze compared to it but we...we wouldn't trade it for anything in the world."

Elena was drawn in by the picture Nate was painting. Her vision blurred with tears as he spoke. She had never heard anything so beautiful. It was exactly the life she had wanted, word for word.

She never thought that it was the life that he wanted too. When her tears fell to her face she quickly wiped them away. She knew it was a life she couldn't have, but wanted more than anything. She hoped so badly that Nate would eventually get his memory back so she didn't have to tell him his life was just a fantasy.

She tried to clear her throat to hide that she was crying. "Maybe, uh...maybe you we should try to get some sleep again, alright? Your wound is wrapped tighter this time so you'll be fine." she said. "We can talk more in the morning."

Nate let out a relieved sigh. "Yeah...goodnight, Elena." he said, quickly falling asleep again in her lap.

"Goodnight, Nate." she answered in a near whisper. She then put her hand against her face and began to weep softly.