Disclaimer: As several of you may have already guessed, Part VII was loosely based on the OC episode "The Escape." Am I the only one who pictures Sky as Mischa Barton? Her hair is a little darker than Sky's is supposed to be, but that could be fixed ;). Plus, she's actually English, so that works out pretty well. Anyway, please review! This is coming to a close (next chapter is the last!) so remember to review!!! The song is Alison Krauss's "That Kind of Love". Beautiful song. Go download it or buy her CD, Forget About It.

PART VIII: Waking Moments

Who would sell their soul for love?
Or waste one tear on compromise?
Should be easy enough
To know a heartache in disguise
But the heart rules the mind
And the going gets rough
Pride takes the fall
When you find that kind of love

HUNTER'S P.O.V

I had felt intense relief before. Relief and happiness so completely and utterly magickal that I had nearly fainted. One such time was in New York City when Morgan and I escaped alive from Amyranth's clutches. And now, here at St. George's Hospital in London, I almost did faint. Or, at least, I staggered back a few feet before recovering from the shock.

No, Sky didn't die. If she had, I probably would have done a lot worse than fainted. No, she was all right. They had to pump her stomach to get the alcohol and, as we later learned, painkillers out of her system. She was in a recovery room and a drug-induced sleep, but the doctor assured us that she would be all right.

Like I said, relief.

Aunt Shelagh and Raven, both of whom had been pacing the lobby so quickly that I was certain that they were going to leave a ring, burst into tears as Uncle Beck sank down into one of the waiting room's hard plastic chairs and buried his face in his hands with a deep sigh. Robbie, Bree, and Morgan all still looked stunned.

"Oh, thank the Goddess ..." Morgan whispered quietly, to which Bree and Robbie just nodded mutely.

"Thank you, Doctor Rosenberg," I whispered, feeling my throat about to close as tears threatened my eyes. "Thanks."

He just nodded. "She's asleep now, but I think that if one of you wanted to be there when she awakens ..."

Excuse me for the vindictiveness of the next statement, but Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck both knew full well the reason that Sky had gone nearly suicidal. From the looks of depressed resignation on both of their faces, I knew that they were acknowledging internally that the one in Sky's room when she awoke should not be either of them.

But then ...

"Raven, why don't you go see her?" I suggested quietly.

The girl in question's eyes widened. "But don't you want to –"

"I believe that she'd want to see you first," I said, more firmly this time.

Raven looked back and forth between Aunt Shelagh, Uncle Beck, and I, the former of which were staring fixedly at the ground, before nodding slightly.

"She's in room 15B," the doctor said, looking at Raven. "I can show you where it is. The rest of you may, however, wish to go home and get some rest. We'd like to keep Sky here overnight. Standard procedure."

"Why don't you kids go back to the inn?" Aunt Shelagh said quietly to Morgan, Bree, Robbie, and I as Raven and Dr. Rosenberg disappeared down one of the hospital's many white-plastered, boring, and utterly endless corridors. "Beck and I will stay here. We'll call if there's any change or when she wakes up."

"I'm staying," I said immediately, knowing that I wouldn't be able to leave the hospital without feeling a major guilt trip later.

"Me, too," Morgan echoed as Bree and Robbie nodded, as well.

"That's our friend in there," Bree said resolutely. "We're staying for her."

For a moment, I thought that I saw a bit of a twinkle in Aunt Shelagh's eyes, as if she was touched by the devotion that our friends had for Sky and for her safety. Soon, however, she was collapsing into one of the chairs with a fatigued sigh and resting her head against the wall.

"Goddess, I'm exhausted ..."

"We all are," Beck said gently as he sat down next to her. In spite of myself, I felt hope glimmer inside me; was it possible that they wouldn't divorce after all?

... Yeah, right. And maybe cats will learn to fly.

I couldn't believe that I was joking at a time like that. ... I hate myself.

I can't help feeling like a fool
Since I lost that place inside
Where my heart knew its way
And my soul was ever wise
Once innocent was lost
There was not faith enough
Still my heart held on
When it found that kind of love

SKY'S P.O.V

The first thing that I was aware of – dimly, but still – was that my stomach hurt. A lot. My head hurt, too. Come to think of it, pretty much everything was in pain. The light was way too bright, wherever I was. I couldn't really remember. I strained my memory, which just made my head hurt even more. Oh, Goddess ... Ma and Da were divorcing. I had fought with Raven. I had ... what? OVERDOSED ON PAINKILLERS?

Okay ... this was ... strange. After I had nearly killed myself as a teenager, I had promised myself that I would never do something like that again ... and now I had OVERDOSED ON PAINKILLERS?

I must have been pretty damn drunk on vodka shots to have done something like that. Goddess, who am I kidding ... it wasn't the drinking. It was everything else. And my fault. I knew that it was my fault. But acknowledging the truth didn't make the pain any less.

"Hey."

Ooh ... I recognized that voice. Always would. But ...

"Raven? I can't see you." My voice sounded a little scratchy.

She sounded amused now. "Of course you can't, baby. Your eyes are closed."

Ah, yes. Kind of an important factor. It hurt like hell, but after blinking about five hundred times, I could see her. She was somewhat blurry.

"That's better," I said with a smile; seeing her always seemed to bring this completely dopey grin to my face that I couldn't erase no matter how hard I tried, regardless of the situation.

Except, of course, before. But that was different, for lack of a better term.

She looked down at the floor, seemingly finding the patterned tiles immensely interesting. I cleared my throat slightly, which was as sore as it had been when I had gotten my tonsils removed at age ten.

"Are you all right?" Sure. I was the one in the hospital bed and I asked if she was all right.

She just gave an odd laugh and continued to look at the ground. "You're not the one who should have to ask that." She looked at me, and I was startled to see tears in her eyes. I had only seen her cry once or twice before. "God, you could have –"

"I'm all right," I said quickly, sensing that she was about to have an emotional disaster. "Don't try to act like this was your fault, because it wasn't. It was mine."

"But ... if I hadn't brought up ... well, you know who, and if you hadn't heard Hunter and I talking –"

"There was nothing that you could do about that," I said firmly. "And about Killian ..." She winced slightly. "Like you said. You weren't the one to bring it up. Not really. I was being ... as demeaning to my ego this is ... stupid. I get that." I gave a tiny laugh. "After all, look at who's lying in a hospital bed in the middle of who knows where with a massive stomachache."

Raven smiled slightly. "Well, they had to pump it, you know." She looked down for another instant before looking back at me, clearly struggling to choose her next words. "Are you ... why did you do it?"

I didn't answer her for a long time. This was something that I knew everyone would be asking me, and yet I knew that I couldn't give them a reasonable answer. There wasn't one. I had no excuse for what I had done to them, to my girlfriend, and I knew that.

"I ... I didn't want to deal with it," I said quietly. "I wanted to hide and not have to feel anymore."

"You could have talked to me," Raven said softly, her voice barely audible. "I would have listened."

"I know," I said apologetically. "I'm sorry." Now I feel like talking.

"I know that I don't have an excuse for what I did and for what I put you guys through, and I know that I should have been thinking so much more clearly, but things were kind of intense that night what with having just found my childhood home burning to the ground a few days earlier and still having nightmares about that, not to mention –"

"Sky –"

"–the fact that I found out that my cousin hid one of the biggest secrets of my life from me because he didn't trust me with the information, which I sort of understand in retrospect, but then fighting with you was maybe the worst thing of all because the last time that we fought like that you had found me drunk and in bed with Killian, so I was a little upset about that, and –"

"I love you."

"–then I found Da's painkillers and it just seemed like maybe, just for a little bit, they would help get rid of all of the things that I was feeling and couldn't get rid of, but, obviously, that didn't work out very –" Wait. "What?"

She just looked at me serenely. She knew that I had heard what she had said. Suddenly, I found myself unable to breathe.

"You ... did you ..."

She had never said that to me before.

I couldn't seem to form a coherent sentence. "I ..." Or thought.

Words couldn't describe the emotional influx that those three words caused. Just because I responded with stuttered fragments didn't mean that I wasn't feeling the same thing. I hoped that she understood that.

I think that she did ... because with the way that she was kissing me then, I knew that everything would be all right.

Though beauty is rare enough
Still we trust
Somehow we'll find it there
With no guarantee
It seems to me
At least it should be fair

The last person that I had expected to see in my room was my mother. I'm sure that my mouth dropped open with shock when she walked through the door as Julia, a young intern studying for medical school, adjusted the IV drip in my arm. Ma didn't say anything as she sat down in the chair next to my bed and poor Julia all but ran out of the room, sensing the uncomfortable silence that wasn't about to go away anytime soon.

"How are you feeling?" Ma asked after a few moments during which I had been pointedly staring at my hands.

"All right, I suppose," I said quietly. "Sort of hungry."

She smiled slightly. "They won't let you eat anything for a while, huh?"

"They said maybe two days." I shrugged the IV drip. "Hence the liquid Vitamin C."

She didn't seem to find my half-hearted attempt at humor amusing. As a matter of fact, she just looked a little irritated and didn't say anything for what must have been ten minutes, at least.

"I'm not going to comment on ... your less than commendable actions," she said after a while, looking down at the floor, her voice sounding slightly constricted.

My head snapped up in confusion. "Are you ... crying?"

I had never seen my mother cry before. Never. Not even once. Not Shelagh Eventide. She was always too strong for tears. I had seen Uncle Beck cry. I had seen Hunter cry, too, as fervently as he may try to deny it. But never my mother.

She just glared at me through wet eyes as a tear rolled down her cheek, smearing her mascara slightly. "Of course I am." She sounded choked. "My daughter very nearly committed suicide. Do you expect me to be calm? Or not to be bothered?"

Here was my mistake. "Um ..."

Oops. Now she just looked angry as she stood up, sounding furious. "Athar, you listen to me now!" I was taller than my mother, so she wasn't as threatening as she would have been to a shorter person when she was standing up, but when she's in a rage, as she clearly was then, she's a threat to national security. "Just because we haven't been on the best of terms with each other for the past few years and we have not always gotten along every moment of every day, I am your mother and I swear by whatever higher power may exist that nothing, I repeat, nothing, that you could possibly do, however stupid, would ever be enough to make me stop loving you!" She was yelling now. "I was wrong in castigating you for turning down the Dublin offer! I realize that! It was your life, and I was trying to take control of it in a way that only you should be able to. I realize that! I know that you wanted to help Giomanach with his job as a Seeker, and I respect your loyalties to him ... to the rest of your friends ..." Her voice trailed off. "They all seem to know you so well. But I ... I feel as if, in the last few years ... I've forgotten who you are." She gave a sort of choked sob, and my eyes widened enormously. "My own daughter ..." She gave a strange sigh as she inhaled deeply. "No ... I haven't forgotten. I've never known." She stared me in the eyes. "I'm ... I'm not opposed to you helping your cousin with his career. I'm not opposed to you pursuing a life separate from your father and I. I'm not opposed to your relationship with Raven. I'm not opposed to anything except the fact that I may have never ... gotten to know you." I was staring at her, too stunned to probably even blink. "If you had died tonight, Athar, I would not have been able to live with myself, knowing that I never took the initiative to understand who you as a person where."

Wow.

That was ...

"Ma ..."

"I'm not asking anything of you," she said quickly, her voice low. "I just ... I want your forgiveness. I want you to promise me that you won't ... hate me for the rest of your life, in summary."

I thought that I was about to cry myself.

"Goddess ..." I whispered, a lump rising in my throat. "Do you think I ever did? Reverting to my five-year-old self ..." I gave her a tiny smile. "You're my mommy."

I'm not sure who started crying first, but I know for a fact that we both spent about a thousand tears in the span of maybe five minutes. Tears for all that we had lost over the last few years.

And maybe hopeful tears for what we could regain in the future.

But if it's only tears and pain
Isn't it still worth the cost?
Like some sweet saving grace
Or a river we must cross?
If we don't understand
What this life is made of
We learn the truth
When we find that kind of love
Because when innocence was lost

I wonder what it holds for all of us.

There is not faith enough
We learn the truth
When we find that kind of love