:) *NOPE! I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN ABOUT MAHOGANY OR DARKLING. DARKLING IS OPEN ON THE LAPTOP NOW, MAHOGANY MAY BE UPDATED WITHIN THE WEEK. I MAKE NO PROMISES. THANK YOU FOR THE CONTINUED INTEREST. * :D.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A/N - I'm much happier with this chapter than the last. Thank you to those who stuck through that last crap fest with me! Thoughts on this chapter?

Blair slammed her fists into Jonathan's back. Or Sasha's – whatever. She was equally furious with both at this point.

"Put me down!"

He was taking this too far. The caveman carry was too much. Sweeping her off her feet would have been one thing – and she refused to entertain that small sliver of her that would have, for reasons she would have likened to temporary insanity, had her wandering thoughts venturing down the path of utilizing the action as a weapon.

She was over love triangles. So over their sordid triteness that they appeared to her as tiny cities spotted amongst the country side from a tiny airplane window.

She was no longer seventeen. No longer naïve enough to believe that the push and pull and biting and spitting would end any other way than it always had. With an ending. She'd been left sitting on the tiny bed, the blinds drawn until the blurry haze enveloped the room the same it did her the last time she'd been a point in a triangle. It may not have been the ending to the geometric figure that everyone else had expected, nor the end would deem to be the its actual ending, for that matter, but it was their true ending. Their final end. Their last stand. The moment Charlie's heart had stopped beating it had cut any ties that held her to him. Chuck had seen to that. With his mission to get to the bottom of as many liquor bottles as he could find before pouring himself into his private jet and disappearing to God knows where for months.

But like she'd said, Blair was over it.

Kicking her feet against Jonathan's flat stomach, and coming dangerously close to sterilizing him, she screamed, "Sa-"

"Price!" Chuck roared, drowning out the sound of Blair's voice from even her own ears. The windowless treatment room door cracked against Chuck's back. He ignored it. Sidestepping Blair's failing feet, he demanded; "What the fuck do you thi-"

An explosion of sound buried Chuck's outburst as he charged backward into the room.

Nate jolted to his feet. "Eric!"

Glass crunched under Chuck's feet as Jonathan's progressive charge forced him further into the room. "Put her down!" His shoulder blade came into contact with Eric's back, and the latter tripped over his own feet, nearly dropping the precious package he held in his hands.

"The microscope-" Arthur managed to exclaim before he was cut off by the spitfire slung over the good doctor's shoulder.

"Jonathan!" The smug bastard didn't respond. Glaring at Chuck the entire way, he cross the room until he came to plastic chair adjacent to the one Nate had just vacated and unceremoniously flopped her into its cold embrace. Blair considered pulling Johnny's hair, but thought better of it. A well placed kick to the groin when he was least expecting it later would be much more satisfying, she decided.

Grant felt jerky movement against his chest and averted his eyes from the two men whose actions he'd been tracking. "Fuck! He's convulse-" he sputtered, alarm cutting the word short.

"I swear to God, Price, if you don't tell me just what the hell is going on-"

Ignoring all but the sea of light green staring up at him and the shallow but steady whooshing of breath past Vanessa's lips, Nate crossed to the center of the room. Chaos reigned around him. Chuck barked orders that Jonathan didn't heed, Blair screeched angrily, alternating the target of her onslaught between the the two brunettes. Nate set Vanessa down gently on the examination table. Her eyes held questions that he couldn't answer. Without dragging his gaze from her watery one, Nate signaled Eric.

Eric's throat worked as he swallowed. Glass crunched under his feet, but the sound went unnoticed amidst the frequencies ping ponging off the stark walls.

Behind Nate, Chuck jabbed a finger into Jonathan's chest. "Look, I don't what the fuck you think you're doing, but-"

"Chuck, stay out of this!"

Chuck whirled to face Blair. "I'm sorry? He hauls you over his shoulder like some fucking knuckle dragger and you're defending him?"

Nate held his breath and Vanessa's hand as Eric fiddled with the contraption.

Vanessa didn't speak. Words would have formed on her tongue had she asked them too. She'd awoken in Nate's arms, unsure of her surroundings, but vividly aware of two things: her lungs were on fire and she was no longer bleeding.

"This is going to be cold," Eric told her apologetically. Vanessa nodded, swallowing against the onslaught of tears. When he realized he couldn't lift her gown without exposing her, Eric tore a hole in the paper garment and squirted the jelly he'd found in the same drawer as the Doppler over her still slightly rounded midsection.

"I'm not defending him!" Blair returned. Chuck scowled.

"Sure as hell-"

Blair surged to her feet, cutting Chuck off as Jonathan looked on, amused. "Sure as hell what, Bass? Even if I was – it's no business of yours!"

Nate lifted Vanessa's hand to his lips and pressed reassuring kisses across her knuckles. He wanted to tell her he loved her, tell her he loved their child before it was too late again to ever say the words, but the frozen tongue sensation he'd felt earlier had only intensified until his tongue lay useless in his mouth. Instead, he continued to coat every inch of the back of her hand in light kisses, hoping that they would convey what he couldn't verbally.

Grant wildly searched the room for a place to lay Zach. Finding none, lay the child on the cold, linoleum floor. He wasn't sure how much longer the boy had. He was paler than anyone should ever be and his skin had begun to take on a waxy quality that had fear tightening in Grant's chest. He swore under his breath. His fingers vibrated as he pressed them against the Zach's thready pulse. It was weakening, slowing to a faint twitch beneath Grant's firm pressure. He needed to... do something. Anything. What was he supposed to do? Arthur crouched down beside him then, and Grant sighed audibly. The creepy old bugger unsettled Grant with his unwavering monotone and unending proper vocabulary, but he was the closest thing to an authority on the virus that they had. Or the doctor was. Grant wasn't sure, but he didn't care as long as somebody helped the boy!

"You don't get to have an opinion!" Blair tried to stop her jaw from clenching. It wasn't any of his business! She could do what she damn well pleased. And she was stupid if she listened to that insane fraction of her clearly delusional self that was insisting on making noise about precisely why it was that he cared. Because he didn't care. And she didn't care if he did or didn't. There was not any caring between them. Currently or otherwise. He didn't get to care. He'd left her then, splintered into a million jagged pieces, and he'd fled the second they'd come face to face for the first time in practically a decade.

And she'd been moronic enough to chase after him like some.... flighty little twit!

No. She's chased after him to give him a piece of her mind. (And not the piece that would mutter incorrect statements whilst inebriated, attempting to explain or defend his behaviour all those years ago.) To tear him several new assholes.

He didn't get to care. And she wouldn't be the main attraction at his circus again. She wouldn't be thrust into his sick, twisted game. If he found pleasure wanting her (and that's not to say that he did, he didn't – and even if he did, she wanted no part of him) when he thought another party already had her, then it was his issue. Not hers. She'd been done with him the second – no, she'd been done with him before Charlie had passed. No! She'd couldn't be done with him, because she'd never been started with him! And she couldn't put an end to something that had never started.

"You don't matter! You never mattered!" Blair screamed, her arms flailing wildly, emphasizing her point as she crowded Chuck's personal space. He stepped back, his face showcasing too many emotions to decipher.

Out of the corner of his eye Nate saw Eric's hands hesitate. Bringing his lips to Vanessa's palm, he slid a quick encouraging look at the man he'd known nearly all his life. Eric nodded. Dragging in a shaky breath, he slid the small contraption against Vanessa's olive skin. She swallowed audibly. Silently, Nate squeezed his fiancée's small hand. It would be ok. No matter what the fetal Doppler picked up – or didn't pick up – it would be alright. He would spend every last morsel of energy, utilize every breath to show her that he loved her. Show her he that he loved them both.

He wasn't his father. She wasn't his mother. Baby or no baby, he would show her that. She would know. She had to know. He'd spent nearly ten years resigned to his fate as Blair's eventual husband. He'd never believed that a person's soul had an equal counter part – another half, and that it lived in another human being. Not until he'd met Vanessa. Not until she'd been back dropped against Toronto's skyline, fat rain drops splattering against her soft skin. And he wasn't going to loose that feeling now; wasn't going to loose her. Couldn't loose her.

The Doppler slid over top of her belly button and Nate found himself holding his breath. Releasing the air in one quick whoosh, he bent to kiss away the tears that trickled from the corners of Vanessa's eyes, leaving salty trails across her cheek bones. Her shaky breaths ghosted across his forehead as she turned her face into his. His eyes slid closed as he pressed his forehead into hers. Finding his voice he whispered, "I want to say this before..." opening his eyes to catch and hold hers, he continued, "before we know." Her gaze turned liquid and her lips parted, poised to form a reply, but Nate brought their intertwined hands to her lips to prevent the words from being voiced. "My world didn't make sense until you were in it. Until you, it was a series of random events that I lived through. Another day, another gala, another fight, another meal, another test, another game. Another and another and another. Until the rain came and washed it all away. You cleansed me. You taught me to experience life. Showed me that it was what I did that defined me as a person. What I believed, what I wanted, what I loved." He allowed himself to drag in a shaky breath to steady his wavering voice. "Not what anybody else wanted for me. Not what they wanted me to want, wanted me to love. Me. What I wanted. You didn't expect me to be something I wasn't. You saw me. You wanted me. And you need to know that I see you. I want you. I love you." Strong fingers slid to cup the slippery curve of her abdomen. "Both of you."

Arthur took in Zach's twitching form. Grant looked from the top of Arthur's grey head to the dark crimson marring Zach's pale face. The old man's gnarled fingers had yet to come within a foot the boy's waxy skin. And it hit Grant then, linoleum flooring digging into his kneecaps and the freezing early morning air wrapping itself like a noose around his neck, that they weren't going to. The boy wasn't going to make it. And Arthur didn't want to soil his hands – or his suit jacket, apparently – attempting to reverse the prognosis.

Nate swallowed against the lump in his throat. "There wasn't a breath I took that I didn't love you both with every beat of my heart. I was scared I wouldn't be able to be the kind of father to our sons and daughters that I always promised myself I would be. That they deserved. But I'm not him; I'm not my father, and if it took nearly loosing you both to realize that all you can do is love your children with everything you are and lean on each other for the rest, then it has all been worth it a thousand times over." Tears openly ran down Vanessa's face. Nate captured them with his lips, one hand on their child, the other entwined with its mothers trembling fingers. "It will be ok, sweet pea. No matter what. It will be ok. We'll be ok. I promise." Shifting his palm to allow Eric and the Doppler access to the area it had previously covered, Nate wiped the jelly on his tattered shirt before tangling his fingers in Vanessa's hair. "I love you, V," he whispered breathlessly against her lips. "Both of you." Tears slid down Vanessa's cheeks to mingle with Nate's on their joined lips.

"I love you too, Fitz," she whispered back. "Forever and a day."

Grant was torn. He'd spent his formative years elbow to elbow with men he'd sworn to give his last breath to before leaving them for dead. Yet here he was, considering doing exactly the opposite. And the boy could be no more than ten years old. His little Suzie would be nine next month. Fuck. But he couldn't risk letting Zach... What little he'd glimpsed of the bodies that littered the path on his and Nate's mad dash to the clinic had been enough to tell Grant exactly what it was that they were dealing with. And the...mess that they would be left with... after... would be nothing compared to the storm of projectile bloody vomit the boy had unleashed on Nate and V. They were all more than likely already infected by now, but on the off chance that one of them was not... Grant couldn't risk it. Hooking his elbow under Zach's small knees and hoisting him quickly into his arms, he stood and hastily strode toward the door.

That's when it happened. Zach's heartbeat strengthened, echoing in Grant's chest and reverberating off the walls.

No. It wasn't Zach's pulse. It was too quick... like the sound of hooves slamming a hurried tattoo against the dry, dusty ground. Like....

Grant's head twisted around on his neck, his shoulders following suit, and his eyes landed on the couple that he considered to be family in the center of the small room.

… a baby's heartbeat.

A/N - I know I said Darkling would be next the last chapter of TTE, but I have an anal/OCD type personality and could not rest until I'd made amends for the lack of quality of the last chapter of TTE. I haven't forgotten about Darkling, it will be updated. Promise. :) Thank you:)

Lynne