Chapter Twenty-Eight:

That's Life

She didn't know why she'd come here, she realized as she gazed out over the water as the sun made its journey westward.  Had she been trying to hold on to something that was slipping through her fingers?  To find some memory of happiness amidst the pain?  Whatever it was, it wasn't working.  She was lying to herself, and just being here made the ache more intense.

Releasing a sigh, Katya gazed dumbly down at the pebble in her hand.  She'd seen him throw pebbles out into the water once.  Maybe that was why she'd picked it up, with the intention of doing the same thing, but even the thought of that memory made the ache swell in her chest and rise up her throat like bile.  Swallowing it back down, she opened her fingers and watched as the pebble slipped through them, bounced off the weathered wood of the dock, and vanished into the water below with a soft plop.

What doesn't kill you will only make you stronger.  The words came to mind, and she wondered for a moment if she were trying to force herself to face it all at once, to meet the pain, defeat it, and banish it to some dark corner of her soul were she wouldn't have to think of it with every breath.  But she knew that it wouldn't work that way.

Off in the distance, she could hear her siblings talking, and while she could have focused and tuned her sensitive hearing to their conversation, she just didn't feel like making the effort.  If they'd thought she was crazy for wanting to come here, for making them take this one small stop on their way out of Seattle, they hadn't shown it, but she knew she hadn't exactly been herself lately.  Maybe they'd come to expect her little eccentricities.  To be honest, she hurt so much at the moment that she just didn't care.

A seagull called, but she didn't hear it.  Some well-trained part of her brain picked up on the sound, even though she was oblivious to it, analyzed it, decided that it wasn't a threat, and ignored it, and it wasn't until the bird flew down low over the gentle waves where she and Zack had splashed like children that she even realized that it was there.  Tears welled up in her eyes once again, and she cursed herself for coming here, for tormenting herself with bittersweet memories.

What are you doing here? she asked herself, but this time she could admit that she was trying to hold on to something that she couldn't have.  All Zack would let her have were the memories, and in coming here she was trying to hold on to them with both hands, but the memories were intangible.  She wanted to hold on to the man, and the memories were slipping through her fingers.  The dock she stood on now and the afternoon they had spent here were shadows in her mind, and she was only hurting herself more by being here.

"Just go," she told herself as she took one last look.  Maybe they'd go to Iowa, she thought.  Somewhere in the Midwest would be nice, somewhere with no docks, no shorelines, and no memories.  Closing her eyes against the view before them, she turned to go.

The scent of him slammed into her before her ears even registered the sounds of his footsteps, and for a moment, she thought that she was losing her mind, but when he emerged from behind a pile of boxes stacked against a chain link fence, she knew she couldn't be dreaming.  No dream would have survived the stabbing pain in her chest.

He hadn't expected her to be here.  When he'd directed Logan to this place, he'd expected to find it deserted, but he'd needed to come here anyway, to stand on the dock and remember, and maybe to make himself hurt a little more.  God knew he deserved to, but as he rounded the corner and saw her standing there, he froze in place.  It was all he could do not to turn around and run.  Or fall at her feet and beg her forgiveness.  He couldn't decide which impulse was stronger.  In the end he did neither.

Her first expression was one of shock and of fear, and Zack had no way of knowing that she was fighting off the impulse to turn and run as well, but she covered it over, rather well she thought, and stood her ground as they faced each other. 

He looked good, she had to admit.  Save the sling on his arm, no one would have ever imagined the condition he'd been in such a short time ago, but she couldn't let the relief show on her face, she wouldn't let it show, and stood, arms crossed in front of her, trying to look as though she hadn't a care in the world.

Katya recognized this scene.  Hadn't they stood like this before?  Back in the barn at the ranch when she'd come to see him after their first encounter?  It seemed like a lifetime ago.  The air had been just as heavy then, the situation just as tense, though now it was layered in a sort of sadness that hadn't been there before.  She'd spoken first then, that pitiful little "hi" that had started it all, but "hi" wouldn't do here.  It was over now, and she wouldn't sacrifice her pride by letting him know how much she was hurting.  Her pride was all she had, what little of it there was left.

She watched as he took a breath, his eyes moving down to the dock at his feet for a moment before he spoke.  "I'm sorry.  I . . . uh . . . I didn't know you were here."  He cursed himself as he spoke the words.  The impulse to throw himself at her feet was starting to win.  He watched as she took a rather shaky breath, then a step forward, and another as she moved to walk past him. 

"Goodbye," she said, her eyes never meeting his as she pushed her way past him.  It surprised the both of them when his right hand shot out to grab her by the arm.

"Wait, Katya."  She could feel the heat of his hand running down her arm.  She felt the tingling in her toes, in the fingers of her other hand, and she trembled slightly and prayed that he wouldn't notice.  She wished he would go away, leave her alone, and let her hurt in peace.

Zack winced when he felt her tremble.  He'd hurt her in a hundred different ways, and he couldn't blame her for being a little repulsed by him.  It would be such a little move, he knew, to let go of her arm and slide his hand along her shoulders, to pull her against him, bury his face in her hair and tell her everything.  If he told her he loved her, if he told her why he had to do this, maybe then she wouldn't hurt so much, but no, he knew better.  He couldn't tell her how he felt.  He didn't deserve her, and nothing would change that, but he couldn't seem to let go of her arm.

"What?" she asked after a moment, trying to sound annoyed.  She didn't trust herself to look at him, so she kept her gaze firmly riveted on a trashcan twenty feet away.

"Good luck," he said finally as he reluctantly released her arm.

"Good luck," she muttered back as she began to walk away.  She wouldn't turn back to look at him.  If she did, she would surely burst into tears.  Not that she thought he would care.

And then she heard it, Zack's relieved sigh, and something snapped in her.  Here she was, hurting worse than she'd ever hurt in her life, and he was relieved to be rid of her.  Relieved?  She could almost hear the blood boiling in her ears as she turned on him.

"Good luck? You unfeeling bastard."

"Wh-What?"  He'd been watching her walk away, glad that she would be safe from him.  He'd been trying to savor his last sight of her and reveling in the pain of it, pain that he knew he deserved, but her angry outburst surprised him.  He remained speechless as she stalked back to him and cocked her head to the side angrily.

"You are the greatest asshole to ever walk the face of the earth, do you know that?"  He stared at her dumbly, and Katya allowed herself a moment of satisfaction for catching him off guard.  "Do you treat everyone this way?" she stormed on, wondering if she should give in to the urge to plant her fist right in the center of that bewildered face.  "Do you just send them away as soon as you don't have a use for them anymore?"

Oh God, he'd hurt her again.  Would it ever stop?  It seemed as if he did something to cause her pain every time he breathed.  He took a fortifying breath.  It would have been easier if he would have told her the truth to start off with.  "It's not like that, Katya.  I'm just going to keep on hurting you if you don't go."  He was too ashamed to look her in the eye, so he let his gaze drift down to the dirt at her feet.

She'd been expecting him to yell, to argue back, and the fact that he didn't only angered her more.  The man was a complete, screwed up mystery.  "What the hell are you talking about?"

"You have to go.  If you don't go, I'll just keep hurting you."

"Hey guys," Tanya beamed as she and Sergei leaned back against the Aztek, "whatcha doing?"

"Enjoying the show," Jondy chuckled as Mikhail leaned over to give the cat in her arms an affectionate pat.  "Those two are at it again."

Beside her, Alec merely rolled his eyes.  He was trying to act annoyed, and doing a rather good job of it, he was sure, but to tell the truth, he didn't mind a little romance.  He was almost used to Max and Logan making eyes at each other, but now it seemed to be coming at him from all sides.  People were pairing off left and right, and every time he turned around, something reminded him of Rachel.  It made him more than a little bitter, and that old pain kept rising to the surface, refusing to let him be.

"Don't you guys think we should give them some privacy?" he asked, trying to look bored.  Six pairs of eyes turned towards him.

"No," Jondy shrugged.  "Why would we do that?" she asked innocently, a smile breaking out onto her face as she turned back to the two people arguing no more than sixty feet away.  From his place near the front bumper, Logan chuckled.

"I'm still not with you," Katya replied in annoyance, completely oblivious to the existence of their very interested audience.  Zack must have hit his head harder than they'd thought, she decided.  He wasn't making a bit of sense.

Releasing a frustrated sigh, he ran his right hand over his face, pressing two fingers against his eyes in an attempt to clear his thoughts.  She was angry, and she was hurting, and he had to make her understand.  Dropping his hand, he reached down to grasp her right hand gently with his own, massaging the back of it with his thumb as he studied the elastic bandage still wrapped firmly around her wrist.

"This," he said simply, holding her own hand in front of her as evidence.  "This and a million other things that are infinitely worse."  She frowned at him for a moment.

"Okay, let me get this straight.  You're being a jackass to me because you're afraid you're going to sprain my wrist again?" she asked skeptically, wondering how long it would take to get him back to the hospital, preferably to the psycho ward. 

"Yes," he began.  "No." He shook his head in frustration.  "Oh, you know what I mean."  He gave her hand a gentle squeeze before letting it go.  "You know what Manticore did to me.  When they couldn't get to the people around me, they used me to get to them."  He turned away from her and took several steps towards the water.  "I can't risk that again, Katya."

She saw the slump of his shoulders, heard the catch in his voice, and suddenly all the anger melted right out of her.  He was afraid of hurting her, and as silly as it was, she felt a little flutter of hope.  She took a step towards him.

"You're afraid you're going to hurt me?"

"Yes," he said, not turning to meet her.  "Haven't I already?"

"Zack," she began, but paused a moment to collect her thoughts.  "You can't spend your life running every time you're afraid of something." 

"No?" he asked as he turned to glance over his shoulder at her.  He raised his eyebrow in an attempt at humor, but she was too caught by the sadness in his eyes to feel it. 

They'd spent one winter in New York City, Katya remembered, and one night around Christmastime, she'd passed a little boy gazing through the window of a toyshop at the electric train which wound its way through a miniature village in the display.  His clothes had been clean, she remembered, and the coat he wore had been faded, but warm.  He was well-fed and well-clothed, but there'd been a longing in him that told her what money his family had went towards food and clothing, and the little extras that his parents might have expected at his age had been ignored because of necessity.  Something about him had tugged at her, and she'd stood there and watched him until his mother had come out of the second-hand clothing store next to the toyshop and led him away, her voice bouncing into a merry rendition of Jingle Bells as she'd tried to distract her son from the train in the window.  As they walked away, the little boy had glanced back for a moment, his eyes taking one last look at his heart's desire, at the toy he wanted so desperately, yet knew that he couldn't have.

And it was that same expression that shone back at her through Zack's eyes now.  Her heart almost skipped a beat.

"No," she responded.  "You can't."

Turning his head once again, he gazed out over the water.  "Katya, you don't understand."  He shook his head once more, and she took another step to stop beside of him.  "Everything and everyone I've ever cared for, I've lost at one time or another.  Some of them, I've lost forever."

"And that's why you're trying to send me away?  Because you think you're responsible?"  He shrugged and kept his eyes fastened out over the water as the warm glow of the sun grew ever closer to the horizon.  "Because you're afraid you're going to lose me?"  He gave no response to her last question, and Katya felt her heart rise into her throat.  Zack was terrified of losing her because he cared.  The thought made her almost giddy.  There was still hope, she realized, and she wasn't going to let him have his way, not this time.

Taking a breath, Katya made her decision.  Stepping around in front of him, she turned to face him and lay both hands on his chest.  She held back a satisfied smile as she felt his heart quicken beneath her palms and gazed up at him with determination.  "No," she said simply.

"What?" he asked, clearly confused.  She was making this harder than he'd thought she would.  Every second she stayed made the moment when she finally left seem all the more painful.

"No," she repeated, this time more firmly.  "I'm sorry to disrupt your plans, but I'm not going anywhere."  He blinked at her for a moment as the words soaked in.  Shaking his head, he took a step backwards, but she only followed.  He reached up to take one hand from his chest, but when he released it to remove the other, she reached up to lay it on his cheek, angling his face so that his eyes met hers directly and spoke again.  "No," she repeated again, shaking her head.  "I'm not letting you get rid of me."

Sighing, he shook his head and reached up to move her hand from his face, but it only ended up back on his chest.  "Katya . . . " he trailed off, not quite sure what to say.  "I can't lose you."  It came out as a whispered plea, and it was all she could do to keep from grinning from ear to ear.  She was wearing him down.

"Oh, but you'll send me away instead.  That's ingenious." 

"I'll only hurt you, Katya."

"You know?  You're starting to sound like a scratched CD."

"Please . . ."

"No," came her response.  "What are you going to do about it?  Run away?"  She smiled slightly.  "I hate to tell you, but I'll be right on your heels.  And don't even think about beating me up," she said, a joking tone to her voice as she traced a finger over his lips.  "I think we've already proven that I can take you."

Zack sighed and shook his head.  "Why are you making this so hard, Katya?" he asked as his hand raised, unbidden, to cover her left hand which rested on his chest.  He'd have given anything to be wrong about this, anything in the world, and right now, he wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around her and never let her go.  But that wasn't an option.

"You are so used to making decisions, aren't you?" she asked.  "To giving orders and expecting them to be followed?"

He frowned.  Yes, he was, but this didn't have anything to do with that . . . did it?

"Well, as a C.O. myself, I don't take very well to other people making my decisions."

He frowned.  "So?"

"So, you haven't asked me what I think about the situation.  Maybe I have a plan of my own."  She was toying with him, and he knew it, but somehow he couldn't resist.

"Fine, what do you think?" he asked, annoyance in his tone.  He watched as the nervous smile crossed her lips, and she slid her hands up to his shoulders.  Taking a deep breath, she opened her mouth and made the biggest gamble of her life.

"That I'm in love with you."

His jaw dropped open, or rather it would have if her lips hadn't covered his the moment the words left her mouth.  She put everything she had into the kiss, all of her hopes, all of her fears, every dream she'd ever had in her life, and she almost sobbed with relief when she felt him kissing her back.  She would win him, she vowed, or she would spend her life following him until he gave in.

With a muffled groan, he pulled her towards him with his good arm and held on for dear life.  Somewhere in the distance he could have sworn that he heard the sound of claps and cheers, but the thought flew right out of his mind with everything else.  All he knew was that he needed her.  He needed her, and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it.  In helpless frustration, he pulled away and buried his face in her hair as his mind spun in circles.

"I'm sorry," he whispered into her hair.  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."  He pulled her closer as he felt her arms tighten around him.  "I'm sorry.  I never meant to hurt you."  And never once did the little voice try to tell him that his apology was a wasted effort or a sign of weakness.

Pride be damned, Katya thought as she swallowed back tears.  "Please, Zack, don't go," she whispered against his ear.  "You say you don't want to hurt me, but if you leave me now, I swear to God that I'll die inside."

It was the sound of tears in her voice that caught him, even before her words had sunken in, and when he pulled away to gaze down at her, he saw them pooling in her eyes.  "Oh God, I did it again.  I'm sorry, Katya."  And somehow she managed to laugh through her tears.

"You silly ass," she said as she leaned up to kiss the healing skin on his forehead, and when she pulled away, they merely stood staring at each other for a moment.  Then he lifted his hand to caress her cheek, his eyes catching her gaze and holding it.

"I am so scared of losing you," he finally said.  He could feel her trembling now, and he wasn't quite sure that he wasn't doing a little of it himself.  He took a steadying breath before he continued, his eyes never leaving hers.  "Everything I've ever loved I've lost, but I can't bear the thought of losing you."

Smiling slightly, she lifted a hand to his face, and he turned his head for a moment to lay a gentle kiss in her palm.  "That's life, Zack.  That's life for everybody.  Not just for you, or for me, or for anybody ever born with a barcode or a serial number.  It's the brave people who take one look at the obstacles in their lives and decide to keep on living regardless.  If you let fears and challenges make your decisions for you, then your life isn't your own anymore.  You have to make the best of what time you have.  Maybe that's truer for us than for everybody else."

He thought of his sisters.  "I'm starting to realize that now," he admitted as a small smile crept over his features.  Leaning over, he brushed a kiss over her lips and took a deep breath.  They hadn't taught him about this at Manticore, no indeed, but he was riding on instinct now, and he knew what he had to do next.  He pulled back slightly, not because he didn't want her near him, but because he wanted to see her face.  His stomach was going in circles, twisting, and tying in knots, and somehow, he'd never felt so wonderful in his entire life.  He smiled down at her, his gaze searching her face for a heartbeat before they came to rest on her eyes.

"I love you, Katya." 

He watched as her eyes went misty all over again before he leaned down to kiss her.  Tightening his arms, he tried to pull her closer, then swore abruptly and pulled away when he put too much pressure on his injured ribs.  They stared at each other for a moment, then burst into laughter as they realized what had happened.  Leaning over, he wrapped his arm around her once more, this time being careful of his ribs, and swung her in a little circle before setting her down again on her feet, and this time, when his lips met hers, neither one of them noticed the sounds coming from their enthusiastic audience.

Smiling lightly, Jondy reached into the pocket of her jeans with her spare hand, pulled out a tissue, and handed it to Tanya, who promptly passed it down to Sergei, who insisted that he was "fine."  Glancing in the other direction, she saw that Max was leaning back into Logan's arms, and she thought better of asking if it was time to go just yet.  Beside her, she saw Alec roll his eyes.

She nudged him gently in the ribs.  "What's the matter, Alec, too much romance for one night?"

"I'm just afraid they're going to get more affectionate than they are right now," he grumbled.  "There are some things that I just don't want to see."  Glancing behind him, he caught sight of Max and Logan and jerked his thumb in their general direction.  "Case in point."

"Oh, come on, don't you want a little kiss, too?"  He eyed her suspiciously for a moment, then slid a few inches closer.

"Depends on who's offering," he said with a grin.

With a wicked gleam in her eye, Jondy leaned over and plopped Milly right into his arms.  The cat gazed up at him in adoration, but she didn't get any closer than that before Alec handed her back and escaped by getting into the car.

"Suit yourself," Jondy said with a smile as she heard the 44's laughing behind her. 

Sighing, she scratched Milly's head and turned to glance back at Zack and Katya.  They were, she noticed with a smile, still oblivious to the world.  Behind them, the sun was rapidly making its way towards the horizon, and she frowned for a moment.  She hadn't realized that it was so late, and she had an appointment to keep, one that she'd broken for the last few days. 

Glancing over at Max and Logan, she saw that they were already getting into the car, so she turned to say her "goodbyes" to the 44's and followed suit.  A happy ending, she thought to herself as Logan pulled out onto the street, and somehow it stung a little bit as she glanced back out the window for one last view of Zack and Katya.  Sighing, she turned to face forward and looked ahead towards the Space Needle as it grew larger in the distance.  Logan knew where she wanted to go, knew where she went every night that she was in Seattle because he'd given her a ride there a few times in the past.  And for a moment she was glad that she didn't even have to ask him to take her there.