Sorry about upload mis-fire, folks. Hope you enjoy the chapter.

David was checking a load of building materials as it came off a truck when Kim and Indali came looking for him one afternoon in mid-February. Danged cheap concrete; half the blocks were cracked or broken in two. The two females waited while David and the driver argued good-naturedly about the damage. Kim, holding Indali, pretended to drop the little girl, catching her on the way down. Indali shrieked with laughter at this game. When that lost its luster, they played a counting game. In the end, the driver loaded all the broken pieces back up and drove away.

"Trouble?" asked Kim.

"No, not really" David replied with equanimity. He had learned that the locale had its own time-space continuum and quality standards. Indali was hugging his knees, and he swung her up in his arms, then hoisted her to his shoulders, finishing the counting game on her behalf, "Eight, nine, ten!" He started walking toward the tents, checking his watch, and Kim fell in with him.

"There's a doctor who just arrived with MSF, Geert Friemans," Kim told David. "He's Dutch. I served with him in the Combined Forces in Bosnia. He's one of the foremost orthopedic surgeons in Europe now. I think he can help you with that shoulder. I trust him, and I think you can, too."

"Was he your boyfriend?" he asked, artlessly. If he was her boyfriend, then she probably had a good idea of who he was.

Kim blinked at him, glanced at Indali, embarrassed. What did that have to do with anything? But she saw no reason to lie or demur. "Y-yes." She had been way to young for him and it had been a tour-of-duty romance, neither expecting anything more. That had made it easier to remain friends. If David was expecting details, he was going to be disappointed. She felt a flush rise to her face nonetheless.

He lifted Indali down to the ground, rubbed his shoulder, sighing. It sure didn't take much to make her blush, especially considering that she served four years in the Marines. "I'll meet him."

"Geert!" Kim strode up to a tall, blond man in wire-rimmed glasses and hugged him energetically. When she stepped back, he kissed her on both cheeks and said something that made her laugh.

Kim beckoned David over. "Dr. Geert Friemans, meet Gilberto do Piento. Geert, I told you a bit about Gil's shoulder; I think you might be able to help."

Geert motioned for David to go into one of the makeshift exam rooms. David stood back waiting for Kim to go first, a request for her to come along. Once the curtain was pulled, David shucked his shirt. The bruises were almost gone, showing yellow and green instead of black and blue. Still, they were remarkable for their sheer square-footage. Their faded hue revealed a parade of old scars, evidence of his prior occupations.

Geert just stared at the altered skin tone for a moment, dumbstruck. "Man," he said in heavily accented English, "What happened to you?"

"Ongevallen," was David's curt answer, in Dutch. Accidents.

Geert looked at Kim, eyebrows raised. She gave him an innocent stare. Accidents, indeed.

Geert shrugged with his eyebrows only, and zeroed in on the shoulder. "Came in the back, ja? Exited here. Pretty large caliber. There's probably some bone fragments or loose cartilage in there causing you problems."

"Can you do anything about it?" asked Kim.

"Ja, sure. Come back tomorrow morning at 6:00. I'll clean it out for you."

They walked in the direction of the school tent together, David hyper-alert, focused and intense. "I will do this only if you are there in the room, the whole time. Drächen can stay with Sister Angela and Indali until the surgery is over, and then I want her—and you—with me until I wake up. And your Sig." He paused to draw a breath, and she saw how scared he was. Scared that something would happen to him, that someone here wanted to harm him; frightened of what would happen to Drächen if that were true. A mere mortal, with mortal concerns.

She stopped walking, and he reflexively stopped, too. She put her hands on his shoulders, looked into his agitated eyes. "We'll do it whatever way you need it to be. It's going to be okay."

They made the arrangements with Sister Angela, and arrived early at the surgery compound the next morning. The anesthesiologist came in for the pre-surgery rundown.

"You have a choice for your pre-anesthesia, either Ketamine or Methohexital…"

"Methohexital," interrupted Kim. David looked at her, questioning.

"Ketamine causes hallucinations," she told him. He nodded, approving her choice; the dreams were enough, already.

"For the general, all we have is Isofluorane."

Kim nodded, David nodded, and the doctor went to get his gear.

"Ready, Marine?" asked Kim. David felt the pinch of the needle going in, and then everything started fading, Kim's hand on his the only clarity. Geert came in, said a big hello.

Why do surgeons always do that? he wondered. I can hear just fine, I just can't move. He was starting to feel panicky, fight the anesthesia, then everything went black.

"Erklärst es wieder." He could hear Drächen clearly, but he didn't know which story she wanted him to tell. "Erklärst es wieder." He tried to talk, tried to remember, tried to reach out for her.

Then he heard Kim's voice, quiet and calm. "OK, Sweetcakes, I'll tell it again." Her hand settled on his for a moment, gave a squeeze, and he relaxed. "Once upon a time, the world needed Drächen. She was born to her Mama, Marie, and her Papa, David. Oh, how Mama loves Drächen! Mama nurses Drächen, and changes her, and sleeps with Drächen in her arms. There is no limit to Mama's love for Drächen. Papa loves Drächen…"

"And Kim!" piped up Drächen.

"Yes," said Kim, slowly, "Kim loves Drächen…"

David wanted to hear the rest of the story, but he was so sleepy…

He is wide awake. He has been waiting for hours, watching through his scope, but he is not tired. He sees everything in the target's apartment: the outlines of the furniture telling him what rooms he's looking into: sofa is the living room, nightstand is the bedroom, crib is the baby's room. A hallway light comes on, spilling in to all the rooms. His target enters the baby's room, leans over the crib—smiling, he can see through the scope—just reaching in a tender hand, smiling. Moving the crosshair from the target's mouth to the target's forehead, Jason Bourne squeezes the trigger.

David jolted awake in the dark, gasping, his shoulder protesting sharply his sudden movement. His heart a sledgehammer in his chest as he looked around. He saw Drächen nestled in Kim's arms, both of them asleep in a cot pushed close to his bed, inside the same canopy of mosquito netting. He tried to swallow, to breathe. His mouth was dry and he couldn't seem to get enough air. He closed his eyes. He felt a weight on the mattress beside him, looked to see Kim setting Drächen there, felt her touch his forehead. Like Marie used to do. She disappeared momentarily, reappearing with a bottle of water and a straw. He drank, lay back, feeling his daughter next to him. Feeling sick all over.

"You take her," he whispered, raspy.

She had never seen him pass on cuddling Drächen before. Her face showed concern. "Are you in pain?" Kim asked, gently retrieving the sleeping baby. "A bad dream?" At a whisper, her voice was smokier than ever.

He nodded his head: yes and yes. She had some pills ready and she put them in his mouth, held the water for him again, balancing Drächen on her hip. The pills consumed, she settled back onto the cot, snuggling the child close, unable to resist nuzzling that red hair.

David closed his eyes, worked to settle his mind on something else. "How did you know that she nursed?" he asked.

"You heard the story? She told me all about nursing. She has great nostalgia for her nursing days." Kim smiled a bit, remembering how long it took her to decode Drächen's terminology. "She taught me several new German words for 'boobs.' 'Busi' is my favorite."

David grunted. He remembered those days, too.

"What a wonderful gift for her mother to give her," Kim said. "Had she always planned to nurse?"

David swallowed. "I don't know," he said, eyes closed. "I wasn't with them when she was born. I sent Marie away… For her safety. I didn't know the baby was on the way… I only found them when Drächen was four months old."

"Oh." Kim thought a moment. "You know, all she needs to know is that, the first time her Mama and Papa saw her, they each thought she was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen. I know that's got to be true." She reached over and grasped the hand on his good side.

The pain in his shoulder was receding, and with it any clarity of mind. He pulled her hand to his face and tucked it under his chin. He looked as vulnerable as a little boy, seeking that small comfort. Kim tried to doze, despite quickly losing all circulation in her arm. She snapped awake when she felt someone climbing into the cot with her and Drächen. It was Indali, her dark eyes apologetic, but intent on joining them. Kim sighed, made room.

When he opened his eyes again, it was daytime. A chair was in the cot's place next to his bed, and Kim was sitting in it. Watching, waiting.

"Drächen?"

"She's with Sister Angela and Indali at breakfast. She gave you a kiss before she went. That little girl has a big love for her papa," Kim said. "How are you?"

He took an inventory of sensations. "I'm okay," he said.

"How's the pain?"

"Not too bad."

Kim nodded, knowing that this meant that anyone else would be begging for morphine. She looked at his eyes, her face neutral. "You had a bad dream last night."

"Yes." Looking away.

"Was it a mission, a flashback?"

"Yes." Eyes flying around the room, everywhere but on her.

"Can you tell me?"

His eyes finally came to rest on hers, guarded. "I staked out the apartment, waited for the target to come home. I had a clear shot through the window in the baby's room…" He looked so ashamed, his eyes bereft.

Kim focused on keeping her body language detached, took a breath. "I think you have stress injury, David. PTSD. It needs treating." She paused, her eyes not relinquishing their contact with his face, while he recoiled, looked at the ceiling.

"In the Corps, if one of your men got injured, wouldn't you take him out of the field? If Drächen had a broken leg, wouldn't you put a cast on it? You have bounced back from trauma after trauma… Your body and your mind have finally had enough. It's possible that you had stress injury even before your Treadstone training. What was your Treadstone training, anyway?" She restrained herself from mentioning the missions he'd executed with MSOC, the loss of his parents when he was a child. He was already on the verge of being overwhelmed by the memories that he was actively dealing with.

He kept his eyes on the ceiling, muttered, "Water tanks… Body board… Hood over my head… No sleep… Pills…"

Kim digested, disgust welling up in her. "Wombosi told the press that when a gunman came to kill him, some of his children were with him…"

"Yes."

Though Kim was outwardly impassive, there was sorrow mixing with disgust inside her now. The choices he'd been faced with in that moment would be enough to make anyone unravel. She set those thoughts aside. David Webb didn't need her pity, and it wasn't going to help him, either.

"Here's what I know. Any intensely stressful situation pulls you into your lower brain, where you can only act on instinct. Pile on too many of those situations, and you get trapped there, in the instinctive brain, in panic. Your natural inclinations and training helped you resist that effect for a very long time. Now that time is up. You can retrain your brain to react differently to stress, though. I only have the basics, but I can help you get started. It can only be good for you, for Drächen, to tackle this."

They agreed that she would come by once a week, specifically to work on this with him. "The rest of the time: just friends," she said. Still, she couldn't stop thinking about how she felt when he clasped her hand to him while he slept.

David was gathering his things to move back to the orphanage compound the next morning when a woman wearing an MSF badge and a white coat came into his recovery tent.

"Hi, I'm Rebecca," she said, holding out her hand. She was from the North of England, judging by her accent. "I'm the physician's assistant who helped Dr. Friemans with your surgery."

He shook, meeting her eye for just that brief moment, before turning back to his task.

"You're headed back to your regular quarters?" she asked. "I just need to do the final follow-up exam. Would you remove your shirt, please?"

In a hurry—he wanted to eat breakfast with Drächan, Indali and Kim—he acquiesced.

She fixed a blood pressure cuff to his upper arm, looking at his face as she squeezed the Velcro tight to his bicep. He could feel her breath on his skin as she pumped it up and took the reading. "I didn't need to do any of your after-care," she said, "as you've your own private nurse."

He glanced at her; her face was alert, focused on his with a hint of a smile. He looked straight ahead again. "Kim's not my nurse, or anyone's nurse, for that matter."

Rebecca moved around in front of David to check the incision, touching lightly around it with her ungloved hand. As she leaned in to get a closer look, her breast brushed his arm. Twice. His body responded. Noticing this, Rebecca slid her hand from his shoulder to his belly and down the front of his pants.

His first thought was of Kim: What would she think? His distaste for being ambushed quickly eclipsed his arousal. He had her wrist in his hand and up in the air before either of them blinked.

"You don't glove up for exams?" he asked, holding her wrist, not twisting.

"Oh, I must've forgotten," she said, face coloring.

He turned her loose and picked up his shirt and his pack. He left her standing there with her clipboard, checked his watch as he pulled on his shirt. Still time to eat with Kim and the children.