I'm sorry people, I really do want to write faster. It's all there in my head, it's just getting the time to exorcise the demon that is Kella Esarosa. I haven't had the time to try and decipher the inner workings of the fan fiction. com app, preferring to spend what little time I have writing rather than swearing like a sailor at my tablet. Thank you Lunaschild2016 for giving me somewhere to start, I'll have a look when time permits.

~Blah, I'm getting too lazy for disclaimers~

Twenty Five

Four observed Kella as she walked into his sim room, Eric trailing close behind her. She looked... better. A lot better than she had been looking since sims had started. Her colour had come back, banishing the grey, waxy look that had dominated her features. Her eyes where bright and sharp, the bags under them all but gone. Her step was light and quick, and the cheeky grin that Four had been missing was back on her face.

"You manage to get some sleep Kell?" Four's question was redundant and he knew it, but the difference in her appearance and behaviour was so startling, he just had to comment on it.

"Mmmm hmmm" was the only answer he received as she popped herself up on the table, baring her neck for the needle in his hand. He looked at Eric as he prepared the injection site, observing the tightness in his neck as he brushed Kella's little flyaway hairs away and gently cleaned her skin with an alcohol wipe. The wipe cleared away the make-up on her neck, revealing the darkest love bite that Four had ever seen, complete with teeth marks. He raised an eyebrow at Eric.

"Sleep's not all you got I see" he hadn't thought that one through before he said it, but Kella's bell like laugh and Eric's smirk showed that they where both clearly in a good mood. "Ready?" Kella's firm nod is a lot more promising than her previous apprehensive reaction to even the mention of simulations, and Four takes that as a good sign. "Be brave" he says quietly as he injects her with the serum. He watches as she fades away, eyelids fluttering and all her muscles going slack as she goes under.

"Heart rate's good so far, what one have we got." If Four was forced at gunpoint, he'd say that Eric was more worried than Kella. But since no one had a gun to his head, he'd keep the fact that Eric was now sweating bullets and jumpy as a barnyard cat to himself. He looks to the screen and sighs.

"Looks like we get to watch her dole out a mercy killing again, she's on the run through the same fields as last time." They watch her run for a couple of moments before Eric speaks, breaking the tension that had been quickly building in the room.

"I wonder how many times she had to do that... end someone's life for their own sake that is. She's seen so much war, she'd have to have done it more than once. I wonder why it's this one in particular she relives." Eric's musings confused Four a little, how did he know how much war she'd seen? Had she been talking again and he'd missed it? He decided that it wasn't worth pushing the question at the moment, he'd wait until things settled down.

"Maybe he was her first mercy kill, or she was really close to him? Maybe he was a lover?" Eric snarled and Four snorted "C'mon man, you know she had lovers before you. If you're right about her age, she's probably had a lot." Four studies Eric's reaction, the reddening of his cheeks and the way he looked away... something had definitely happened here. "Did you ask her how old she was?" Four's question is quiet and as non threatening as he can make it. Eric sighs and nods slowly. "How old?" The young leader suddenly looks much older than his twenty two years.

"Old" is Eric's monosyllabic response.

"That was a well thought out and informative response, thankyou so much for that plethora of information." Four had been hanging around Eric too much, he was starting to pick up some of his habits. It worked though, the corner of Eric's mouth turned up slightly.

"It's not my place to tell you, she will when she's ready. I will say this though. She was a brunette once, and now all her hair is bone white. Use your brain for once, doofus."

They're interrupted by Kella's heart rate spiking much higher than it had done last time. They both looked to the monitor and froze. The man she was about to stab kept changing. He went through ten or more faces that Four didn't recognize before it hit one that he did know, and know very well. It was his own face, screaming up at him in agony from the monitor before him. His own familiar features then morphed into Stuart's. From Stuart he changed to Rose, her eyes wilder than he had ever seen them in real life. And then suddenly he was looking at Eric's face. Kella's heart rate went through the roof. If he didn't do something soon, she'd go into cardiac arrest. He lunged for the emergency stop, but Eric grabbed ahold of him.

"No, she can take it. She can do it." His face is focused on the screen as Kella pushes her knife between Eric's ribs.

The cry that leaves Kella's mouth as she comes out of the sim is a haunting mixture of grief and anger, with the added bonus of making both Four and Eric's noses bleed. It doesn't slow Eric though. He lunges at the distraught woman and wraps her tightly in his embrace while he talks quietly in her ear. Four can't hear what he's saying, but he gets the feeling that the words don't matter as much as the tone of voice. A sob wracks her body as she grabs ahold of Eric's face, now noticing the blood dripping from his nostril. She lets out a cry of alarm and wipes the blood away, a litany of apologies leaving her lips at the speed of sound. Eric shakes his head and runs his hands through her hair in a soothing gestures. She kisses him then, wildly and desperately, running her hands all over him as if to reassure herself that he was really in her arms. By the time they break apart, Four is close enough to hear her whispers.

"I had to kill you, I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry my love. I wouldn't be able to... I... I couldn't do it." Eric shushes her and holds her tight against himself, looking over her head at Four. The worried look on his face says it all.

"Kella, we need to talk..."

oOoOo

"A fuckin' what now?" Four's having trouble getting his brain to work as Kella smiles understandingly at him. They're having a 'driving lesson'. Since Kella already knows how to drive, they're joyriding through the city in the truck she had fixed up for herself. She'd done lots of modifications that Four didn't comprehend and she was testing them out. Four and Eric are sitting in the bench seat in the front of the cab with Kella, Four hanging on to the panic bar above the passenger side window for dear life, and Eric glaring menacingly out the windscreen from between them. Kella absently reaches between Eric's legs to change gears and his scowl deepens.

"A siren, Four. I'm a siren." Kella's face is kind as she waits for his questions.

"Shouldn't you have a tail?" Is all Four can think to ask. Kella laughs her beautiful laugh and even Eric cracks a smile, his crooked grin lightening up his face.

"No, I don't have a tail. I'm a siren, not a mermaid, although I do swim quite well." She gives him a cheeky grin, sticking her tongue between her teeth as she keeps one eye on the 'road'.

"How? Why?...How?... Have you always been a siren? Where your parents sirens? How? Just how?"

"Ok, ok. Let me explain. Mum and Dad weren't sirens, and I haven't always been a siren. I was a soldier, first up. I was good though, SAS; what you yanks would call special forces. I was the first woman allowed in the SAS. They code named me 'White Wolf' because of my name." She appears wistful as she drives effortlessly over the rough terrain, barely paying attention to where they're going. Four tightens his grip on the panic bar.

"Then I got hurt. Bad, real bad. I'd pulled off the impossible for the Australian and Brittish governments more than once, and they'd fixed me up every time I broke. But this time it was different. I'd gotten caught up in a fire, and even the inside of my throat was burnt. I was gonna die anyway, so they took me to a lab in Russia, and they gave me a rebuild." She snorts before she continues. "They figured while they where rebuilding me, they'd make me as dangerous as they possibly could. I mean, this is the Russians we're talking about here. The only people crazier are the Aussies." Her whole body radiates nonchalance, except for her knuckles, which where white where they grip the steering wheel. "They made me faster, stronger, more beautiful than before. They fucked around with my genes so badly trying to save me, that they made something new. They didn't know what to call me. They knew I wasn't human anymore, but I still looked human on the outside. They seriously considered 'Time Lord' for awhile, because of the two hearts, but..." Four can't sit quietly anymore, and he cuts in over the top of her.

"Two hearts? You have two hearts!?" His shocked expression is mirrored in Eric's face, he guesses he didn't know that one either. Kella nods at him absently and takes a breath to move on, but Four cannot just leave it at that. "Two hearts? Seriously? How the fuck did we miss that?" She sighs at him before she answers.

"I turned one off whenever anyone was checking my heart rate" She explained calmly. Eric got a funny look on his face and she preempted his question "Yes, that is why my heart sounds different after we have sex. I can't control it when my whole body feels like jelly."

"Ok, wow, that was a bit much Kell. Continue on with anything other than yours and his sex life, please" Four shuddered slightly as a small flashback of Kella and Eric in the hallway played over in his mind. Kella giggled and continued her narrative.

"So, where was I? Two hearts, Time Lord, right. But then they heard me sing, and they decided that 'Siren' was a much better fit for my species. And so they did, classify me as a separate species I mean. Not officially of course, officially I died in the fire. But, unofficially, I'm a brand new species of humanoid. They burned away most of my humanity, and made me anew." She takes a deep breath before she continues. "I was a bit... unstable... to start with, but I got better. And then they sent me back into the field. It was another ten years before they realised that I wasn't aging."

"So how did you end up on your own" Eric finally speaks, but it's barely above a whisper.

"I got in another tight spot, in Europe again. There was an incident with a nuclear reactor. I contained the blast, but it cost me. I wasn't able to get out of the hot zone in time, and my body was flooded with radiation. I was fucked, again. I was dying, and I was highly radioactive. They decided to put me in a hole. They put me in what they called a 'Cinderella sleep', apparently that's the technical term. They where basically going to keep me on life support until the radiation deteriorated. When you're immortal, you've got the time to do that." She smirked as Four balked. "I was supposed to be transported back to Australia and put in an underground bunker they where gonna build for me. But something went down in Aus and they decided it wasn't safe. So they built the bunker here, believing that America was more stable." She smirks again. "Thing is, from what I can work out, the whole fucking world went mad while I was sleeping. And they forgot about me." The last part is whispered so quietly, Four barely hears it. What he does get, loud and clear, is the look of devastation on her face as she remembers how she had saved the world, only to be forgotten in time.