Pretty good sex, out of context.

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November 18th, 2000—Bremerton Boardwalk, Kitsap County, WA

Sasha took a deep breath, willing herself to think a little less as her back hit the mattress. It's not that he was bad, was pretty good sex, out of context… it was that she'd imagined another man over the one she'd taken into her bed. It was the realization she'd been trying to move on, but was stuck. Knowing it was her own damn fault she was broken. And it had everything to do with finding herself alone on the frigid boardwalk, too numb to move or go home late into the night on her twenty-fifth birthday.

The distant lights of Seattle twinkled and danced upon the reflective water. Stared long enough that at some point they'd morphed into a mirage. Perhaps thanks to the treacherous way her eyes watered. She sniffed and swallowed. Her breath when she exhaled, sending clouds of condensed moisture into the air, and for the damn life of her, all she could feel was the awful aching chasm. The one she'd lived with and nursed and tended with metaphorical Band-Aids and careful distraction.

The Nokia in her pocket buzzed, and she wet her lip. Blinking away the blur in her vision to review the caller ID, an unknown number. After taking another moment to compose herself, she answered. "Hello?" There was a beat of silence as if the caller didn't know whether to speak, and the sudden, irrational gut-feeling was undeniable as it was all-consuming. The secret hope that he'd call, galloping away despite her desire to protect against probable disappointment.

"Hey."

The jolt through her heart stilted her speech, made it breathless where she needed it to be firm. "Hi," she replied. There came another pause while she fought to recover from how much she'd disclosed with one simple word. "You got a new number?"

"Yeah, it's a long story…" he sounded relieved. Like he'd fretted the way she'd respond. Almost as equally, Sasha fretted he'd hang up and lose his nerve.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Anyway, I figured it's been a while… it's your birthday, I should probably check in." Hated how nervous he sounded. Stupid. Like he was a teenager and not a grown man. Recovering slightly, he added softly, "Happy Birthday, by the way."

She couldn't answer immediately, forced to blink while her lip curled and wobbled in response to the deep, consuming pang brought on by the sound of his voice. "Thank you." She'd tried to keep that from showing in hers but failed miserably.

"Hey…" The tenderness with which he'd said that tore at her soul. "Are you okay?"

She laugh-scoffed, the sound a little watery as she pushed her left hand deeper into the pocket of her coat. "Yeah, I just…" she trailed off. Battling the desire to prove she was fine. To herself… to him… to the world, maybe? Fuck it. "I had a weird day, you know? It was different. I uh, I ended up moving to Washington." She paused before choosing to admit the truth. "I couldn't be in Norfolk anymore."

Tom had to smile at the irony even as his heart rolled. "Would it surprise you if I moved because of the same thing?" His tone was gentle and knowing. Heard the soft chuckle and imagined the way she used to tuck her chin when she did that. He'd give anything to see her right now.

"Not really… but I doubt your parents were thrilled."

"You don't doubt wrong," he sighed. Rolling more fully onto his back while he peered at the ceiling. "I'll be back there next week for thanksgiving… won't be the same without you."

She hunched her shoulders inward, tucking further into herself against a particularly stiff breeze. Befitting of the chill in her heart at imagining them all gathered. The heat of his parent's fire, and the welcoming warmth of his family who'd served as her own. That was all gone now. "Where did you end up?" She redirected.

Her avoidance hadn't gone unnoticed, and he let it go. "San Diego—figured I'd try sunshine?"

Sasha smiled softly, nuzzling her chin deeper into her scarf while loose hairs whipped in the wind and stuck to her face. "It's a good base—great for your career."

"I guess—what about you? You just get back?"

She didn't bother questioning how he knew her most recent deployment schedule. "About a month ago." She paused again, weighing her options. Too scared to ask outright if he was struggling too, or he'd figured it out. She inhaled and exhaled heavily, preparing herself to approach the topic. "I uh… I started seeing someone." Cautious in her delivery.

There were several seconds of silence before she heard a soft and resigned sigh. "So did I…"

Damn it. The sharp stab was more intense than she'd anticipated or hoped it would be. "That's… good. It's a good thing, I'm happy for you—"

"Sasha."

Her brows knotted, wondered how he could do that. Say her name with so much emotion it felt like a declaration in and of itself, a gravitational pull through the other end of a phone. There was almost something desperate about it, enough to make her throat close and words seem impossible. "Mm?"

"I love you."

Her features crumbled, the threadbare dam cracking beneath a surge, and the hand buried in her pocket found itself pinching the bridge of her nose.

"I know you've made your decision—trust me, it's all I've thought about. I heard you—but I love you. I don't care if the timing sucks—"

"Tom—"

"—I mean it. We can make it work. It's been months, Sash. Four months of radio silence, and you're still the first person I think of every day. That's never gonna change—"

"You can't know that."

"Yes, I can."

"It's not—"

"Why can't we try?"

She exhaled his name. "We've talked about this—and you just said you're seeing someone."

"It's casual." His dismissal was as easy as it was adamant. Imagined it similar to her own arrangement, and later she'd feel guilty for that, but at present, she was too focused on wiping stinging cheeks and a dripping nose.

Shaking her head, she shoved the hand back in her pocket. "We won't even be in the same continent half the time, and that's if our deployments sync up. That's not a relationship… that's a hook-up when we're both in town."

"You've never been a hook-up to me. You know that."

"It's a figure of speech." Her tone was a little more clipped, exasperated. Knew he was splitting hairs because that's just what Tom did when he couldn't get his own way.

This was all wrong. The churning in his gut told him so. The desperate beat of his heart, ready to beg if he had to, but pride wouldn't let him. An odd paradox when he'd already laid bare too much of his soul without meaning to. His sigh was heavy. "Sasha…"

"It's better this way." Her eyes cast off again, watching a wayward plastic bag billow a lonely path until another gust pushed it into the water where it slowly sank. Why that visual seemed to hurt too, she didn't know. Only that she wished her heart would believe her own words.

Tom didn't bother hiding his bitterness. "Right."

"We just need time," Sasha whispered. Time for what she didn't know, perhaps for the limbo to end. To either be done completely or to cave and give in to her wants.

"Do you love him?" The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. Not that it was his business or his place anymore. But maybe he'd find it easier to move on if she had.

"No. I wouldn't even call it dating." She was being plainly honest with him now, couldn't find it within herself to restructure a wall. Not when it would so miserably fail regardless.

Tom scrubbed a hand down his face and then up again, rubbing his eyes with his forefinger and thumb to dispel the heaviness. The very distinct heat he knew all too well since she'd ended things. Nothing much left to say or risk losing what little dignity he had left. Yet at the same time, he'd stay on this line just to listen to her breathe if he could.

"I hate this, Sash." At first, it was quiet. "I hate it." And then more torn than she'd ever heard.

The fire in her throat burned when she swallowed it down, her silence lingering. Burdened with the weight of regret and impasse and the shared knowledge that it was time to end this call. Still, neither of them made the first move.

Sasha closed her eyes, let herself fall and savor the sound of his breathing for just a few seconds more before pushing it down. "I'm glad you called."

There was molten rock behind his sternum now. Already counting down the seconds until she was gone. Again. Slipped through his fingers like fine grains of sand.

"I have to get home." More meaningless filler to keep herself from spewing her guts and confessing she was desperately lost. Mind and heart failing to relinquish him as her bearing, despite logic and fact.

"Alright." Wrong. This was so very wrong, and he felt like lead settled atop his chest. "Be safe."

Her vision blurred again; those words still echoed in her head at random wherever she went. "I will."

"Sash…" he hesitated again, knuckles white where he clutched the phone too hard in his grip. "My door's open. All you have to do is come home."

December 10th, 2013—USS Nathan James, 30 NM Offshore, Palm Coast, Florida

Tom scrubbed a hand down his freshly shaven cheek. Florescent lighting caught the glass of his eyes as he studied his reflection, mapping frown lines he swore weren't present before. With both hands braced upon the sink's edge, holding his slumping weight, he let his chin fall toward his chest, breathing a scoff upon noting the long, black strand of hair twirled within the shaving cream. For several seconds, he pondered it. Why a single strand of hair should propel him back thirteen years, standing in their modest apartment in Virginia, reeling and spinning and finding reminders of her in mundane and unexpected places. A ghost that wouldn't let him be. He turned the faucet, rinsing the basin before patting his face dry, used the boar bristle brush to smooth and direct his hair until the ends threatening to curl lay in a singular uniform direction. At the very least, he'd tempered the potent adrenaline in his veins, his edges decidedly less feral.

When he exited the washroom, the glance she threw over her shoulder was casual until it wasn't. Their eyes locked until she turned, perhaps too stiffly, back to the screen. Tom's hand lingered outstretched on the knob far longer while he scrutinized, cataloging it as something he'd surely dissect beneath the blanket of night.

"Do you need anything? Food, water?" he asked.

Sasha turned again, eyes tracking while he stepped toward her with confident strides, towering now and seeming somehow inches taller despite knowing that was impossible. There was something in the way he carried himself in uniform, exactly as a Captain should. Different from the Lieutenant she'd known in the past, yet not completely unfamiliar. Just enough to elicit introspection. It suited him; she mused.

"Coffee?"

Tom's lip quirked. The hint of something fond lighting his eyes. "Black, three sugars?"

Of course. Her response was soft, a non-verbal graceful nod, while the hint of a smile played at her mouth. A dusting of pink at her neck when she re-read the same sentence for the third time since he'd reappeared, and the words sank no further than the first and second pass.

His expression became more serious, lids narrowed as he clasped both hands in his lap and perched against the desk. "What do you know about him? Michener."

Sasha leaned back in the chair, turning it a fraction to face him more fully, that ever-present sour taste in her mouth strengthening. "Not much. We ended up in the same safe zone—Doak Stadium?"

"I know it," Tom confirmed softly.

"Obama split the rest of the cabinet when they couldn't reach the bunker because of the travel restrictions. They were supposed to establish quarantine zones in areas that hadn't been affected yet. The idea was to create independent hubs that could function essentially like mini-cities until Doctor's Scott and Tophet could locate the primordial and share it with the network of labs—they handpicked a few important personnel—"

"So you were assigned there instead?" Tom clarified quietly.

She looked away, toward a picture on his desk of the XO and him. Of intrigue because it was taken off-ship in what looked to be a backyard, beers in hand, leaning on each other like they were old friends. Her expression twisted, morphing until it became ironic as much as it was sad. "No, actually. My husband was a Doctor, they needed his expertise, and I just ended up there by proxy."

Tom blinked slowly, dissecting that information and letting it rest between them, allowing her the moment to pick at a nail, suddenly intently focused upon it. "Before you know it, there's a full-on outbreak." She paused. "Twenty thousand people—gone. I assume his family was there too—not a stretch to understand why he'd want meaning for all that."

"Which he got when he found Ramsey?"

She drew her focus back, tilting her chin upward in confirmation. "I think it's the most logical explanation."

Tom mulled over that before bobbing his head, her stance corroborating his own gut feelings on the matter. And it was out of place, but the thought occurred that marrying a Doctor seemed to fit, and she'd obviously loved him if the glass in her eyes was anything to go by. He had questions, of course, about that—how she got from point A to point B, but they remained on the back-burner.

"And you never interacted with him?"

She shook her head softly. Odd as that sounded, she hadn't, not directly. Rather knew of him and that he was leading the zone. "No. My expertise was foreign affairs, international relations between emerging players in Asia and the US. I spent the last year pretending to be a diplomat, but when I failed pre-op, I ended up benched. Everything I heard after came from my contacts at the Pentagon and White House until they went dark."

He wanted to pry. The subject of what kept her grounded percolating in his mind, but Sasha had never been one to divulge her secrets unless necessary, and he respected that. Tom straightened with a soft inhale, pushing himself up again and away from the desk—an idea forming in the back of his mind. "Pause on that," he instructed. Referring to her reviewing his logs and detailed account of actions taken since the Arctic. "We pulled the archives from the White House, there might be something there."

Sasha pushed herself away from his desk, allowing him access to the computer again. Her eyes narrowed in confusion. "You went to the White House?"

Tom merely inclined his head in response, distracted by his present course, and Sasha let it drop. Assuming she'd encounter the details within his logs, given time. "There." Tom pulled open a video, grabbing a remote from his desk and turning on one of the overhead screens. Next, he reached for his phone, instructing the XO and Master Chief to join them in his Cabin, before pressing play.

They watched in silence for a few minutes before the XO arrived, knocking once to announce his impending entrance before stepping through. His reaction, Sasha noted, to discovering her inside was less subtle than the Master Chief's. A distinguishable pause, and a lightning-fast brow quirk at the Captain before he closed the door and came closer.

"Footage from the White House," Tom said. Redirecting their attention to the screen again where Jeffrey Michener was pictured addressing a Senator in what appeared to be a congressional hearing. Master Chief Jeter arrived moments later. Acknowledged silently by his Captain, where he joined the huddle in watching Michener's address.

"He's got strength," Jeter commented.

Tom hit a key, toggling to the next video, a press conference on the status of cases in Florida dated July 8th.

Mike turned to Jeter, speaking low. "How much does the crew know?"

"They know we've got the President—some of them even know he didn't quite come willingly."

"And that he was with the Immunes?" Mike pressed.

"No. We'll have to turn him quickly to avoid that question."

Mike rose his brows. "Well, in my mind, if he doesn't walk out of that room committed to our cause by sunrise tomorrow, we'll never convince our crew he's worthy of being followed."

Sasha watched with interest as Tom turned away from the screen to observe the exchange between his officers. His input when it came, was calm, as it was firm. "This is about more than just the crew—the country needs a leader."

She flicked her gaze back to the XO Slattery. Curious to hear his response.

"Yeah? And if the first 200 people who come into contact with him think he's tainted, it's not gonna work."

Tom lifted his chin but didn't argue or respond verbally because his XO had a point, however cynical the delivery. "There's a way out of this—we just need to present a better narrative."

"Better than you're 'the chosen one'," Mike retorted sarcastically.

Sasha shifted in the chair using the armrests to push herself up until she was standing, intent now to contribute to the conversation. "He lost his family and his purpose—" her eyes caught Tom's for a moment before shifting them back to Slattery's. "We just have to give him a new one."

Mike frowned a little in confusion, clasping both hands loosely in front of his lap. "How do you know that?"

Tom narrowed his eyes but chose not to interject, watching instead to see how this would play out.

Sasha was forthright and plain when she responded. "Because I was there."

Minutes later they stood huddled in a communications room, watching via surveillance while Slattery brought the President up to speed. Sasha stood back, quietly observing where in contrast, Tom peered and listened intently to the exchange via headset. She didn't miss the curious side-eyed glances the young woman 'Granderson' threw her way. Apparently, she'd need to get used to that kind of reception from his crew.

"Leaving him without a guard?" Jeter commented, drawing his own headset away while they observed the XO leave Michener in possession of the laptop, and exit the wardroom.

Tom clarified quickly. "We need to see what he does when he's alone."

Ah, Sasha noted. Seeing now that Tom had already planned this far when he'd ordered the Master Chief to have Granderson set up a live feed. Couldn't deny it was a smart play and the hint of warmth at her lip communicated as much.

A few moments later, the hatch to the communications room opened, revealing the XO. "Hey."

Russ held out the headset still within his grip. "Well done detective."

"What's he doing?" Mike asked, taking it from Jeter and drawing it over his head.

"Pacing," Tom answered. "Biting his fingernails."

Sasha unfolded her arms and stepped closer, lingering at Tom's left shoulder while she too studied the screen, thoroughly invested now in seeing what their 'President' would do.

"He's eyeing the laptop," Mike commented, tone a little excited. "Gotta be curious after what I just dumped on him."

Jeter pushed his hands into his pockets, rapt now with focus. "Here he goes."

Michener pulled something from his pocket, choosing to bypass the two flash drives containing detailed logs on the James' activities since the attack in favor of something else.

Mike postured. "What the hell is he—what is that?" Michener had fetched a red drive from his breast pocket. Mike turned, wide-eyed and accusatory toward the Captain. "Nobody frisked him!?"

Tom shut him down with a stern response. "He was unarmed." Before addressing Lt. Granderson. "Can we get a better look at the monitor?"

"I'll change angles sir," Alisha answered.

"Can you zoom?" Tom instructed, eyes widening while the President pulled open a video file. Sasha moved closer, her ear hovering near his headset. The volume, just loud enough to overhear though she wasn't wearing one of her own.

She let out a soft scoff and shook her head when she recognized the voice. "That's Ramsey."

'…This is our calling, and if you are watching this, know that we are calling you…"

"Jesus," Sasha muttered, just as Tom turned to meet her gaze with his own troubled one, though he hadn't expected to find her so close. Close enough that he could smell the scent of his own soap mixed with something familiar. A thing he'd only ever defined as her, and he was floored that he could still remember it so clearly after this many years.

She drew back, putting a more respectable distance between them again, and tried to ignore the XO's razor-sharp focus.

Tom removed the headset, tilting his head in disbelief as much as sarcasm. "Now we know what we're up against."