"What did she do?" she asked, and he sighed, glanced at her, put his arm around her.
"How are you doing?" he asked.
"I'm fine," she assured him.
"The baby?" he asked, putting a hand on her stomach. A sharp kick answered him and they both smiled. Zack dropped his hand and gave her a squeeze. "She wants to write a book," he said.
"About what?"
"Us."
"What?"
"Oh, she's going to mess with it so it's not really us." His voice dripped with sarcasm. "Change the names, the places, the details." He was so tired that he wasn't even bothering to use his usual guarded tone, not that he used it that often with her anymore anyway. "She even asked me to suggest a title." Syl put a hand over her face to stifle her laughter.
"What did you say?" she couldn't resist asking. He gave her his best serious expression.
"I said she should call it I'm an X5, Capture me Now," he said dryly. After that, Syl couldn't stop herself from laughing anymore. She fell backward on the sofa laughing and finally Zack just had to smile.
Syl woke up grinning. Good memories. It was dark, still very early
morning obviously. She stretched luxuriously, catlike, and turned over to cuddle
close to Krit and fall back asleep. But he wasn't there. She frowned, rolled
onto her back and listened to the night, trying to figure out where he'd gone at
two or three in the morning. He wasn't in the bathroom. He wasn't in the
kitchen. Or if he was in one of those places, he was being very quiet about it.
She got up and dressed, for some reason tying her hair back, for some reason grabbing a gun from under the bed. It was like automatic- a comfort maybe. She went downstairs in full defense mode in case there was an intruder, in case she'd find Krit in the middle of a very violent- but very quiet- altercation.
He was standing in the den, staring out the window at nothing. She stopped in the doorway and shifted her weight from one foot to the other for a long time. Finally she just cleared her throat; he glanced over and she knew he'd known she was there all along. His eyes trailed to the handgun held loosely in her hands. She was playing with the safety, clicking it on and off in her nervousness. Krit walked over and took the gun from her, setting it on one of a bookshelf. He wrapped his arms around her and she smiled into his embrace, holding him close.
One week after that, Ben stopped killing people.
"Good," Krit said that night at dinner. "Maybe Jondy found him again and kicked some sense into him." Syl allowed a small smile.
"Or Max," she said. "He was in Seattle last we heard." She shrugged. "One of those two are the only ones I'd think could get through to him."
"They were always close," he agreed, then let out a long sigh. "I'm just glad we don't have to see that when we listen to the news anymore."
"Why listen to the news anyway?" Syl asked, smiling. "What's its relevant to us?" Her smile faded slightly as she realized the idiocy of that statement, given that Ben had been a top story for weeks. She shrugged and ate a mouthful of potatoes.
Krit chose that moment to reach across the table, take her hand, and say, "Let's have a baby, Syl." For a long time the only sound was her chewing, swallowing, and taking a sip of water. She turned her hand over and held his, squeezed.
"Okay," she said. He looked shocked, like he'd been expecting her to say no and had a whole speech ready in his head to comfort himself, but nothing for the possibility that she would say yes. So he just smiled a slow, happy smile and stood up, pulling her up into a hug and kissing her deeply. She laughed when they finally pulled apart, breathless.
"Wait till I finish my food," she joked. Krit laughed and sat back down across from her. He was staring at her like she was the most amazing thing he'd ever seen, and she rolled her eyes and smiled at him- a little nervously but mostly not.
Do what makes you happy. Montana was pretty and the air smelled good and she'd never been more sane than she was right now. Ben had stopped killing, Tinga was safe, Zack was free. A baby seemed like a pretty fantastic idea.
They tried unsuccessfully eight times.
"Maybe we have to wait till you're in heat," he suggested one morning when she very upset about it. "That's how it worked last time." He smiled but Syl remained silent, knowing that it was possible to get pregnant outside of heat. She sighed and he asked, "What's wrong?" But she just shook her head. He took her hand and squeezed. "We have lots of time," he assured her, then a sly smile spread over his face. "And it's not as if I'm not having fun trying." He winked and got a smile from her and kissed her softly.
"Pig," she said, giving him a playful shove. He laughed, giving her another kiss before getting up to make them something to eat. Syl lounged in bed for a while and Krit came back with their food, Belgian waffles that she'd had no idea he could make.
"You're just full of surprises," she remarked, raising an appreciative eyebrow before digging in. They were delicious and she told him that through a mouthful. He laughed and kissed a bit of whipped cream from the corner of her mouth before starting on his own plate. She reached over and trailed a hand through his dark hair, loving the feel of it, how soft it was. He glanced at her and smiled tenderly, and she felt her heart flutter.
Then the phone rang.
Krit sighed and reached over but suddenly she found herself blurting,
"Don't answer that." His fingers paused on the receiver and he turned and gave
her a strange look.
"It could be important," he said. She was just staring at his hand on the phone, listening to the ring, but then suddenly the strange feeling left her and she blinked several times, laughing a little, embarrassed. Krit reached for her hand and squeezed it, picked up the phone and said, "Hello?" Then Syl was pushing away her waffles because the look on his face made her want to throw up. He said something, she didn't even know what, wasn't even sure it had been English. Then he hung up the phone. He didn't say anything to her, he just turned and stared. His usual olive-toned face was pale, which made him look very strange and very frightened.
Finally she couldn't stand it anymore and she whispered, "What?" As soon as the word came out an invisible wall broke inside of her and she was crying. "What?" she sobbed. He spoke in a tiny whisper, not even breath, not even close, not something anybody who wasn't X5 would have had a hope of hearing. Syl almost didn't hear it, and what she thought he said sounded like something horrible, something she didn't want to know he'd just said.
But for some reason she repeated, "What?"
"Tinga's dead," he said it again, that same whisper, and suddenly she wanted to slap him, slap him hard, because how dare he tell her that she'd heard him right. But there was more. "We're going to Seattle."
And Syl just sat there.
