If the theme of the last chapter could be summarized as "Just a Kiss?", perhaps this chapter could be known as "Confession is Good (or is it?) for the Soul"…

####

When one of them pulled away, ragged breaths, an insistent bongo drumbeat, and one prolonged groan echoed. Bianca couldn't bring herself to claim ownership of the latter.

A thousand well-placed condemnations and validations also danced on the edges of lips that still burned. She couldn't seem to take ownership of those either.

So she opted, or was rather roundly pushed, into the safer role: dumb and mute.

"That…"

She might normally take some small comfort in the fact that her companion – who was finally coming into clear, too-damn-clear, focus – had been rendered the same. Comfort, and maybe a little –

"That is why Reggie and I's relationship can never be traditional." Her breathing, at least, had steadied out, and her eyes locked with Bianca's. "I am gay."

Surely, surely that merited at least an 'I knew you were lying to him.' One calculated strike she could deliver, if only to cut a swath through these other….things jumbling though her.

"You're…" Bianca swallowed, lubricated the cracks in her voice, put force into the words that sounded too weak, too brittle and unsure: too much the ghost of someone she never wanted to be, or know, again. "You're trying to distract me. It won't work."

Yasmin had settled on the counter, far enough away to void the accusation. "Reggie wanted you to be the first person we told. He said you would understand better than anybody - that you would be there for us, because you were always there for him. His compass."

Each word wasn't a sledgehammer, but a tiny chisel. Slowly, slowly doing its job. With every word, she heard her brother. With every word, she heard the truth.

A trace of a smile. "He said I would like you, that we'd be friends. The best."

Bianca met eyes that held a more bitter smile. She opened her mouth but, once again, couldn't quite sort through the jumble inside.

"After - after we had been here a while, I convinced him that we should keep our arrangement a secret for now. It would make things easier."

She could have protested or built up a supply of righteous indignation, but trust, Bianca knew too well, had to be earned if it would mean anything.

And she couldn't honestly say she had earned that distinction in some time.

"Many places do not pretend to be even semi-tolerant. Consider it a small blessing that you live here, where who you are is not a crime…nor a reason to die."

Now she looked into eyes that were not seeing her, that were watching their own phantom brigade march into well-traversed enemy territory.

"Is that why you can't go back, because you're gay?"

The woman still kneeling in front of her accomplished another impossible task, residing in two times, two places. "That's part of it, but I've had years of practice in negotiating who I was with who my culture expected me to be. Other things, they were non-negotiable."

Bianca had prided herself on her ability to make the answers appear. To work her own form of hypnosis when needed. This time, though, eloquent words were replaced by only two: "Like what?"

And the answer, delivered with a pair of direct, honest, open eyes, was equally simple: "Like freedom."

####

He was tall for his age, but he couldn't have been any older than eleven or twelve. If the lingering baby fat on his cheeks didn't make that clear, then the quiet quake of his lip underneath that pout of defiance surely did the trick.

The kid was hugging his knees, making even his large frame look like a small ball on the hospital table. The swirl of nurses had mercifully slowed down, but Reggie couldn't be sure if they'd have more than a minute. With a glance to his sister, he approached the boy, whose gaze remained fixed somewhere in the distance.

"Listen, you're not in trouble, okay? We just want to help you out if trouble happens to have found you and, by the looks of what happened –"

"That ain't nothing. Forget it."

Well, at least they knew the kid could speak now. Progress. "It didn't look like nothing."

This earned eye contact. "Why don'tcha keep to your business? You trying to get me punted off again?"

Randi, the hopeful 'good cop,' stepped forward. "No. Trust me, we both know the system…too well" That statement, at least, got a full head-turn. "We just wanted to talk with you about Tyrone."

At the mention of their brother's name, the kid's front crumbled and his eyes got bigger. "I didn't say nothing. You can't tell him I did! He already thinks I -" The boy had learned too early the art – the survival tactic – of the Fifth Amendment, street-style.

The twisting in Reggie's gut was making things clear. Clear, and familiar.

"How do you even know Ty?" the kid asked, obviously relieved to be taking his turn at interrogator.

Reggie shared another silent exchange with his sister before turning back. "He's our brother."

Surprise was overtaken by a fierce blinking and a noticeable roughness in the kid's voice. "He's my brother. Foster, but still the same."

"I know." Reggie took hold of the boy's shoulder. "So we have something in common. None of us wants anybody else to get hurt, especially Tyrone."

The young face was almost swallowed by the hood around it: that hood that had always symbolized brotherly bonds, starting with Georgie. The rough-soft fabric of one sleeve swiped at an eye. "Then you gotta know I can't rat him out."

Reggie studied that fabric. He didn't have the fancy preparatory notes from law school. He just had experience. Hard-earned. "I'm going to tell you a story now, and you can feel free to stop me any time if it doesn't….sound right. Taking comfort from the warmth now covering his own shoulder, Reggie closed his eyes and began. "There was a boy who never cared much about anything or anybody. But that wasn't really true. He liked to put on a show for the guys: be Mr. Tough. Part of his problem was that in reality, he cared too damn much. Especially about his family. Especially about the guy, the big brother, he thought of as a superhero. Not the kind with the cape or the big-bad abilities, but the real deal. This boy would never admit that to anybody else, though. It would totally wipe out his street cred. But the thing is, he'd do just about anything to be the kind of guy in his brother's eyes that his brother always was in his. Even when he knew those things weren't on the up-and-up. Even when he knew they were probably illegal. And even if he had to be his hero's great sacrifice."

Reggie's eyes opened before the closing scene could take its bow on the stage: the hero's fall. He knew the script by heart.

And two innocent eyes, witness to their own script, revealed nothing and everything…everything Reggie needed to know.

The kid's mouth opened, but the words never found their way.

They were cut off by an interruption.

Not a nurse this time or even a doctor. Just a slightly winded Frankie. "He gave me the slip." And slightly frantic. "Tyrone's gone."

####

The butt of the gun had left a blackening bruise on his stomach. Their brand.

Their reminder.

In the cage's corner, Amanda was mostly still. She was trying hard, so hard, not to let it show. But she couldn't entirely control the slight shake that had claimed her arm. Her hand rested on a clear patch of skin below her shoulder: the place where that sonofabitch had grabbed her and tried to –

Jake's jaw shook with the effort of keeping it in place, and with the rush of blood beating against his temples. He had been able to hold them off, keep her safe, by dangling the glittering carrot he knew they wanted in front of them. That carrot, that reason for this whole nightmare, was the only thing standing between them and dangers he'd wrongly stashed away in a little box in the corner of his mind.

He approached her, his hand paralyzed mid-air, caught between action and inaction: too familiar a choice.

Jake chose the middle ground - the neutral in a land of anything-buts - and sat beside her. He could give her one uncompromising offering right now: the truth Moistening cracked lips, he began.

"You would think that the mines would be the worst part, and in many ways, they are. Minimal protection, the most primitive tools, hours in the sun, and…the overseers. But the rivers, those are the real hidden dangers, because you just don't know what calls those muddy waters home. That's where so many of the problems came from. One day this kid – this litte boy just like that boy out…out there - he's burning up with fever and I know it's just gonna be me counting down the minutes. Maybe trying to make him believe in something good, something real before…but he's got me beat at that, because all he can talk about - all he can whisper about in this strangled dalect I can barely understand is his hidden treasure. How he's got the map and how he's gonna take his family away on a big pirate ship and would I please help him. Keep it safe until he's better."

Jake ran a calloused hand down his face because it was the best way, the only way, to get rid of the grime, to take away what he could. Until a softer touch on his cheek showed him another way. The lump in his throat cut, burned, and scraped, rendered his voice raw.

"That piece of paper, I almost tossed it a hundred times. Thought about taking it to his…to his grave and burying it with him. One day, I just started walking. Made it past the living quarters, past the the matchboxes scattered along the rusted ground, until there was only this red sea left. Land-locked and endless. I followed his map and found his treasure, just like he said. A bounty of diamonds, buried in a cove not even they would dare go near. I just sat there for hours staring at those things, those indestructible things that had destroyed so much. And I looked at the red sand on my hands….how it caked into the lines, accumulated and how, sometimes, when they gave me the money for medical supplies, you could even see traces of it there. Sometimes undetectable, but always there: bloodstains you could never wash away, not really. I made a special trip to the overseers' camp that night and made a deal: my knowledge, my key to the kingdom, for them. For their freedom." He motioned to the mines and its inhabitants – its people – beyond the dark walls. Only one problem had existed with his grand plan. His fellow negotiators weren't big believers in the fair trade system. "I left the camp again when Aidan Devane rescued me."

He waited, ready, willing, for the outrage and the barely concealed dsgust.

Amanda's reaction was more quiet, understated. But, to him, it meant everything. Jake held his wife for untold minutes, gladly counting every blessing in his life a hundred times over. When their embrace finally ended, the fire reflecting back at him was all her. Every bit the woman he loved, and would love – protect – for the rest of his life.

"So I take it they want their treasure map back?" she asked.

Jake nodded. "And we'll give them exactly what they want." The fire had lit a match, ignited a spark "Right before we take them down and get us – all of us – the hell out of here."

####

(2010)

The camp boiled under a thick mist of humidity. Since the last strike – this one a strategic blow to the government's propaganda machine – their main foe was the monotony that characterized so much of the resistance. They all knew that their true goals would not be crowned on the fiery head of some glorious battle, but on the wavering, steady backs of consistent hard work.

Yasmin climbed into the ambulance, a blown-out shell that had been relegated to the scrapyard. It would never have everything she wanted, but it contained the rudimentary seeds of everything she needed. Scanning the pictures hanging on the grimy piece of rope filled her with both pride and sickness. She had captured the real faces of the rebels. Not the half-crazed savages the well-oiled propaganda rags presented to the citizens, but grim, determined, faces full of their own form of beauty. The true faces of their foes were also revealed: the monsters behind the masks, behind the formal attire and the eloquent sermons.

She pulled down one photo – possibly the best shot of her career. It paid homage to its subject, her youngest ever, in stunning, crisp detail. It immortalized the beauty of innocence, of life….and the precise moment when it vanished. When it was lost forever.

Her fingers dug into the black-and-white image. The image crumbled into a blur as her eyes stung. It reappeared, fully animated and fully alive, before her other eye; the one that could supply cinematic-quality detail and a full 4D sensory experience.

Blindly, she reached for the trashbin. When two arms wrapped around her and warmth like no other she'd ever known pressed against her shoulder, she released the photo.

And long-held tears released a story they had longed to tell.

In this ambulance, in this place, she had all that she needed.

All that she would ever need.

It was her last thought before the first explosion.

(Present)

The light – the remnant – forced her eyes open. Forced her back.

"Her name was Sadiya. Sadie. We met shortly after I started working with the resistance. She was one of their best, the leader without the title. And I loved her."

"You talk about her in the past. "

Try as she might, Yasmin could not escape the pull of the other woman's words. She had nowhere to flee but back, after all - back to places she never wanted to revisit. "They attacked our camp and, more than anything, they wanted their example." Yasmin could only look forward. "She took her last breath in my arms. When it's really quiet at night, that's the sound I hear."

Into eyes that flinched only slightly. Held her gaze.

That understood.

"I'm s - it wasn't your - " That understood enough not to finish those thoughts.

Bianca cleared her throat instead. "How did you make it out?"

"A few connections." She shrugged. "And an entire parcel of luck."

"Surely you could have gotten political asylum."

The ever-elusive goal. "Reggie's father is trying to help us. It is why we came here."

"Uncle Jack knows?"

She nodded, full of gratitude for the once-stranger who had become her advocate and, she would like to think, her friend. "It is a complex of regulations, though, and, even if granted, the process takes time."

"Time you may not have if they send you back. And that's where my brother comes in."

Beneath all the bluster and the threats, Yasmin knew the fierce protective instinct that drove Bianca's actions. Just as she knew the woman would not apologize when some questionable choices sprung forth from that drive. It was a balance she herself knew intimately.

"We will end the marriage when the appeal has concluded, however it may conclude. I can assure you of that." And it was an assurance she intended to honor, even if their appeal was denied, even if –

"Can it?"

An easy enough question, but it caught her by surprise nonetheless.

No less than Bianca's ever-subtle smile, however. "I'm sure you've seen one or two American movies celebrating the storied marriage of convenience. This town's had its fair share of those scripts played out. Just ask my sister. You can also ask her about the inevitable 'twist' ending, when true love blossoms."

"That won't happen –"

"Not for you, maybe. But what about Reggie? I need to know that you won't break my brother's heart."

She truly couldn't help it, and she really did try to control it, at the very least. But the properly perturbed expression on the other woman's face sent a fresh spasm of laughter. "My apologies," she finally managed, which only caused the crease in Bianca's brow to deepen. "It's just the thought of Reggie and I…never mind." She could do this. She worked hard for the straight, prim line now gracing her mouth. "I can also assure you that Reggie has no romantic interest whatsoever in me."

That assertion was especially easy to make considering her friend had spent the past year pining over a mystery woman who had blazed into his life, only to blaze out just as quickly…and mysteriously.

"Fine, okay. I get it." Bianca's words were practically ground out, and a pair of crossed arms completed the effect.

She really wanted to retain this one light moment, this one break from the tension of remembering, of confessing, and of other tensions better left unacknowledged.

"Since we have established that I am not , how do you say it, a black widow, do you think we can return to the task at hand?" She swept a hand toward the well-dried pictures.

After a long pause, Bianca wheeled to the table. It was a small victory Yasmin would take.

"By the way, I won't say anything."

The promise was barely a mutter, delivered as Bianca busied herself with examing the second batch of photographs.

Yasmin smiled and took advantage of the rare opportunity to really examine the other woman. Bianca was still illuminated by the soft glow of the light. When she absently tucked a hair behind her ear, Yasmin felt her smile expanding in spite of itself. "By the way, I'm sorry about earlier."

The sideways glance lit a match to her face that she couldn't entirely blame on the lights. She gestured at her lips and quickly looked away. "You know, you wouldn't be quiet, so I..."

"Needed to shut me up?"

"Yes, I mean –" The burning intensified. "I was just trying to make my point, that's all."

"Consider the point well-made." The bemused smirk shifted a fraction before both looked away.

Yes, just a kiss.

Just one well-made point.

That was all.