Coughing forced him back to consciousness. Something was wrong with the air. It was thick with grit and heavy like a years worth of humidity. His chest heaved, protesting against the weight and the horrible quality of the air. Gregory forced his breathing to become regular. He had to be calm He had to think rationally.

There had been an earthquake. He'd passed out under the rumble. Was he injured? Gregory did a mental inventory of his body, starting with his feet. They were bent awkwardly beneath him, but they worked. His arms were around his head. The back of his left hand ached, and he was fairly certain the crustiness on the back of his hand was blood, but he was alive. That he could work with. He blinked, trying to discern if everywhere around him was equally dark.

It was lighter to his left. The black was slightly more gray. Gregory moved his head slowly towards the light and got ready to defend himself if the motion disturbed any of the rubble above him. The air exploded into a fresh haze of dirt, and in a blast of adrenaline he was free. The rubble lay around him as if a bomb had gone off but he was free. He lay there, panting and trying to catch his breath.

The sky was a glorious blue, even the clouds coming in off the ocean were beautiful. The air was so sweet it stung his eyes. Gregory rolled to his side and let himself finish coughing. Another second and everything came pounding back into his mind. Olivia and Trey were at the house. They'd need him he had too- He headed for the car in a run and stopped.

He turned back to the rubble. Where was AJ? He contemplated the possibility that AJ might be dead and sighed. If he was alive, AJ was alive.

Damn.

"Hey!" He yelled as loudly as he could. "Deschanel! Can you hear me? Move something, bang something."

Over to the right a board moved. Gregory lowered his hands to the debris and started pulling. The stack of rubble next to him to grew slowly. It was heavy, hard work. Sweat was running down the dirt on his face when he found a grimy hand reaching for him.

AJ looked just as much like hell as he imagined he did. After they extracted him from the mess they both had to catch their breath. "Olivia- Bette-" AJ panted out finally as he wiped dust from around his eyes.

Gregory nodded quickly. "The car seems to be all right. Let's go."

A thousand little lights twinkled above her, teasing her through the smoke. Was it smoke? She couldn't breathe. Why couldn't she breathe? What was wrong? Coughing hurt, and her chest hurt. How long had she'd been coughing? Hours? Days? Olivia moved her head and realized she was lying on the floor. It was dirty and hard. She moved her arm, pushing something off of her head. There was light above her, somewhere, far above her. What was it? Daylight? How could it be daylight?

It wasn't bright enough to be daylight and it was twinkling. Daylight didn't twinkle. Chandelier. It was the chandelier, the big heavy one in Gregory's living room. Why was she in Gregory's living room?

Trey. Olivia suddenly tried to sit up. She couldn't, her legs wouldn't move. Something from the ceiling was over them and it was too heavy for he to move. She struggling up on her elbow and tried to push it off. It was too heavy. Trying to pull herself out from underneath it was useless as well. She craned her neck, looking around, listening for Trey. She couldn't hear him crying.

As she moved her head, she looked for something, anything. In the edge of her vision, someone else was here. Who was there? Gregory? Olivia chided herself for wanting Gregory to save her. He wasn't her knight in armor anymore.

Bette. The other person was Bette. She had been with her before the house fell down around them. Before the earthquake. For twenty years she'd lived in California, and the earth had never turned against her like that before. The last time the power had been out, and Gregory had walked her up to bed with a candle before heading back downstairs to finish his work before the candle burned down.

She had to focus. She had to get to Trey.

"Bette!" Her voice was hoarse in the thick air. She starting coughing again and fought the spasming of her chest to shout again. "Bette- you have to get up."

A groan, and then a curse. Bette sat up, complaining as she shook dust out of her hair. "Spend a hundred dollars getting it done and a dammed earthquake comes along and fills it full of dirt. I should move back to Texas. Nothing ever fell on me in Texas."

"Bette, oh Bette you have to get Trey." Bette knelt down next to her and took her hand but it did nothing to quell Olivia's fears.

"Let me get you out first then we'll get him together. Okay?"

Olivia started to protest, but Bette hushed her as she grabbed her shoulders to pull her out. "You can't see the mess on the stairs, but believe me, I can't get up there by myself."

"But you have too-" Olivia stopped fighting Bette as the chandelier dropped a few inches and hung there. The glass droplets tinkled in the silence as the wood began to groan ominously.

"I have to get you out of this mess before that relic from the Titanic drops on your head, that's what I have to do." Bette looked around, getting up for a tool. "Okay." She knelt back down next to her and shoved the piece of wood under the mess on Olivia's legs. "I'm going to try and lift this up. You have to let me pull you out. All right?"

Olivia nodded quickly, unable to take her eyes off of the slowly spinning chandelier. How much did it weigh? Two- three hundred pounds? Would it kill her immediately or leave her trapped to die slowly?

She forced herself to look up at Bette. She had to trust her. "All right."

Bette levered up the pile of rubble pinning her legs and suddenly blood rushed through flattened veins in an explosion of a thousand pins and needles. Olivia gasped and tried to slide them out. Her legs moved like they were made of dough but Bette grabbed her arm. The chandelier dropped another inch then another.

Something snapped.

The chandelier crashed down and exploded into shards of glass. Bette's eyes were huge and round in her face. "I think I'm going to have to start dying the grey out of my hair after that one."

Olivia bent her head to Bette's shoulder, deeply grateful to be alive. She didn't want to think about what would have happened if she was alone. Her legs aching was the most wonderful thing she'd ever felt. Tears were in her eyes as Bette dragged her to her feet.

"Come on. Have to get the blood flowing again." Black tracks of mascara and tears cut down the dirt on Bette's face. "We've got to get up to that little boy and make sure he's okay."

Olivia wrapped her arms around her best friend, saying everything in a hug she didn't know how to say on her own.

Bette pulled herself together first and headed for the stairs. They were worse than the floor of the dining room. She shook her head slowly and reached for the first broken piece of corning. "Gregory couldn't just buy a nice single floor ranch..."

Olivia wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt and realized she was just spreading the dirt around. "Gregory only gets the best." She helped Bette with a large piece of what had been the ceiling and sighed heavily. "You'll have to remind him to rebuild more earthquake proof."

"Me?" Bette took a second to remember that they're position were reversed. She looked away quickly, still slightly uncomfortable with being the second Mrs. Gregory Richards. "I guess so. I still like the idea of moving back to Texas. Ground stayed put there."

AJ and Gregory pulled into the driveway of the remains of the mansion at 5 Ocean Avenue. A bomb could have gone off in the house with less damage. A whole section of the third floor was lying in the garden, but most of the rest seemed to be intact. Gregory was out of the car almost before AJ had come to a stop.

"Olivia? Olivia! Bette? Where are you? Are you all right?'

AJ left the keys in the ignition and followed him. Lending his voice to Gregory's.

The chandelier looked like a relic of ages past, sitting dilapidated in the middle of the living room. Gregory's eyes flew across the rubble. The path up the stairs was clear. "Olivia! Answer me!"

Only more silence. "Damn.' Slipped from his lips as he ran up the stairs two at a time. They'd be in the nursery. If they were gone already, they'd be in the nursery-

He reached the door and nearly crashed into Olivia. "It's Trey-" She gasped out, terror cutting her breath short. "He's having trouble breathing Bette-"

He grabbed her shoulders, waiting for her to calm. "Bette's trying to help him- Gregory-" Her hands were shaking as she grabbed his hand. "Gregory, we have to get him to a hospital."

AJ was just a step behind him. "Take the car." He offered immediately. "Take the car and take them both. Make sure my grandson's all right."

Bette lifting Trey from the floor and handed him carefully to Gregory. "He's all right now, but I think he got more than a mouthful of plaster. Poor little guy keeps coughing it up."

He held Trey to his chest and wrapped his free arm around Olivia's shoulders. Her hair was soft through the dirt as she brushed against his cheek. "He's going to be okay." Gregory promised simply as he led her down the stairs. "He's going to be okay."

He gave her Trey as he rescued the car seat from the wreck of the hall closet. Olivia was whispering to Trey as he buckled it into the back of the Mercedes with practiced fingers. Olivia put Trey in it and let him finish the buckles.

"It used to take you an hour just to get all the straps right."

In spite of the chaos of the earthquake, Gregory smiled sheepishly. "I guess I've had a little practice since then." He got into the driver's seat and made sure she was secure before he started the car. The roads were a mess, trees and power-lines were a constant hazard. Olivia didn't speak to him. She kept turning around to check on Trey.

She was constantly touching him, stoking his face, brushing back his hair from his forehead. "You're such a good boy." She whispered encouragingly as Trey yawned at her sleepily. "Such a brave boy."

Gregory caught one of Trey's yawns in the rearview mirror and for a moment he was back twenty years, driving up the coast to see his parents with Olivia and baby Caitlin. "He must be okay. The car's putting him right to sleep."

Olivia's hand caught his shoulder as she turned back towards him. "Oh thank God. Bette and I were so worried. When we got up there to him he wasn't breathing, his crib had fallen over." She shuddered, her terror wasn't over yet.

He took his hand off the wheel to pat her fingers. "You and Bette were there. He was safe, and he's going to be."

She nodded, resting her head on his shoulder for just long enough to feel safe again. "He's going to be okay." Olivia repeated as she closed her eyes for a moment. She could still hear the horrible sound the chandelier had made as it sank into the floor. That and the terrible roaring of the earthquake.

Her ears were suddenly filled with it again.

Gregory put a name to her horror. "Aftershock- get back."

Panic filled her throat in a tight knot. Gregory's arm forced her back into her seat in slow motion. Her eyes snapped open as the brick facade of one of the gift shops collapsed down in front of them. The brakes squealed and ground into the loose gravel and debris covering the road.

the car came to a gut-wrenching stop as a chunk of brick and concrete nearly bigger than the car crushed the hood. The airbag exploded into her face and white heat cut into her abdomen. The pain exploded until all of her vision went white.

The airbag had left sore patches of skin on his face. Gregory lifted his head from the steering wheel and rubbed blood from his lip off onto the sleeve of his jacket. His head throbbed for a moment, but he shoved it away. He opened his eyes slowly and let them adjust to the darkness. He was in a car, slumped over the wheel. It wasn't his car. He knew that immediately. Gregory looked down at his hands.

It was AJ's car. AJ gave him the car because-

Trey whimpered in the back seat. Trey was there because he needed to go to the hospital. Olivia said he was having trouble breathing. He undid his seat-belt and reached back for Trey. The little boy calmed when he realized he wasn't alone. He reached to undo Trey's car seat, but Gregory stopped.

Olivia was turned away from him, her neck bent at an awkward angle. Her side of the car was considerably more damaged. Her airbag was still slowly letting out its air. He reached gently for her head, careful to lean her back slowly, always checking for an injury. Her neck seemed to be all right. No swelling or bruises. Her head was all right. He couldn't feel anything on her forehead.

Gregory rested her head on his shoulder and he reached down for her belt. Her body was bent up and forced into the belt at an odd angle. Something was wrong with the seat of the car. Her knees were up too far. She was breathing slowly and steadily but it was shallow. Her lips were cold.

Gregory reached down across her stomach. The flesh beneath the belt was purple and oozed blood where her camisole had slipped up. He pulled it down, but it worried him.

He patted her cheek as he pulled her towards him. "Olivia? Hey- come on sweetheart. Come back to me."

Olivia's breath caught slightly and she moaned as he pulled her towards him. "It's all right. You're safe. It was just an aftershock. You're okay." He tapped her cheek, trying to bring her around. "Come on Liv, you can do it."

Her head was heavy on his shoulder. He dropped his fingers to her neck and counted her pulse against his own. Hers was rapid, far faster than his. He knew enough to know that was a bad sign. "Olivia-"

"Dammit Olivia." Gregory didn't even know where the tears had come from and suddenly they were assaulting his eyes. He could lose her. She could never wake up. She might never look at him again.

He held her closer, rocking her against his chest. "Please- Liv, you can't-" His throat was getting tight. "Liv- Olivia- please."

"Please." Gregory kissed the top of her head and let the tears run down his face. "Please..." Not her. Not now, not ever. He couldn't deal with it. He didn't know how to live in a world without her. He couldn't.

Eternity rushed by him in the car. Minutes stretched into years without her. Years where he waited desperately, barely daring even to breath, for her to return to him. The air closed in around him, thick and acrid with the smell of gasoline.

Somewhere around him in the chaos that had been the street towards the clinic, a brick broke off and settled into the debris with a thud. Trey yawned in the silence. Murmuring to himself in that innocent baby way. The car settled. his seat creaked as he readjusted her weight.

None of it mattered while she was silent. Nothing. No sound but her breathing.

"Please." His prayer cut into the silence. "Please."