Copyright: I don't own Terra Nova or any of it's characters.
"Where are we going?"
She hadn't gotten an answer, she had just been pulled out of the house and taken along the path on an unknown journey with an unknown destination. It was suspicious and Natalie was skeptical.
Not that she had any reason to be, it was her mother, Lieutenant Washington, one of the most respected persons, and she was hardly dragged out of the house.
"Outside," Alicia replied, with a roll of her eyes. The exasperated tone coming off too much like a complaint, and not at all like a serious demand.
"I see that, but why? Where are we going?" For some reason – which Alicia truly didn't understand – her daughter dreaded being outside, and for a girl who was OTG for two and a half years, and talked about her love for the wildlife, it was odd to say the least.
"Lunch."
Natalie stopped in the middle of the street planting her feet flat on the street ground a foot apart, "Don't you have work?"
Her doubt in her ability to spend time with her irritated Alicia, "I can have lunch with you."
Natalie shrugged her reply off and picked up her pace again – she sensed there was more to her reason for this random outing, "I'm not talking about it." She was firm on her decision.
"Is that why you think I asked you out?" It wasn't totally false, but...was it totally insane of an idea for a mother and daughter after years apart to get lunch together?
"Why else would you?"
"Doctor's orders."
Wash was trying to end this conversation without a fight, the vendors were no less than a yard away and people crowded the marketplace.
"We use that doctor as an excuse a lot."
They'd weaved through the people, a table was set up across from them, Alicia pointed to it, "Sit. I'll get the food."
|~Brother or Mother~|
She was exhausted and sore, and all she wanted was to curl up in bed and soak up the few hours of sleep left before she had to wake up for patrol. Instead, she was on the uncomfortable floor of Natalie's bedroom, pressed against the wall, sitting, and waiting for her to talk about her nightmare.
It was a routine they'd shaped into over the past couple of nights. Alicia would try and get Natalie to talk about her nightmare, and it never worked. She never did.
"You got to tell me what's going through that mind of yours." Alicia turned her head in her direction, her gaze settling on the teenager.
Her eyes were set on the opposite wall, avoiding Wash's gaze, "I don't want to talk about it."
This was not the time to be stubborn.
"You had a nightmare, I understand, but you need to talk about it."
She didn't speak for a while, Alicia could've sworn she went back into her trance, but she didn't. Eventually, she hugged her knees tight to her chest and whispered, "Do they go away?"
"They can."
Natalie finally turned to meet Alicia's eyes, "Have yours?" Deflection was always one of her greatest lines of defense.
Alicia sighed, they were not talking about her nightmares now, "This isn't about me, this is about you, and your nightmares."
Natalie was persistent, "But, Mom, do they?" She had to know.
"Natalie..."
She fiddled with her nails, "You'll think differently of me if I tell you. I can't, I just...does it help? Talking?" She clarified.
Her eyes drifted to the ceiling, closing them tightly, before refocusing them back on her daughter, "I won't lie to you, they don't always go away," She admitted, trying to stop the lies between the two of them.
"I can't take the risk, then."
This was where she needed to motherly, a quality which she had always lacked, courage, loyalty, and fight, however, she had plenty of.
"I won't think differently of you," She offered.
"How can I know that?"
|~Brother or Mother~|
He awaited her arrival outside her unit just like every morning. It was a routine they'd gotten into over the years. They got dressed and ready for the day, then set off to patrol the fence.
She exited her unit, and met him, "Good Morning, Wash," He greeted.
"Sir." It was accompanied by a yawn.
As they walked towards the fence, falling into step with one another, he looked at her, amused, "Rough night, lieutenant?"
She snorted, "Natalie was up all night with a nightmare. She wouldn't go back to bed, or talk about it. By the time I got back in bed, I had an hour before my alarm would go off, and at that point there was hardly a point in going back to bed."
Taylor turned away from the jungle blocked by the gate, and focused on his subordinate, "The joys of raising a teenager."
"I believe that's boys, sir." The smirk was ever present on her face.
"She has plenty of time to experience both, Wash, no need to rush it." He was teasing her again, his grin mirroring hers.
She rolled her eyes, and focused them back on the distance ahead, looking for gaps in their defenses, "Can't wait."
The hint of sarcasm did not go unmissed by Taylor, "Was that sarcasm, Wash?"
"No, sir."
Neither did the smile tugging at the corner of her lips.
|~Brother or Mother~|
Strategically, Alicia waited until the last moment to tell her the news. It was an intelligent decision on her part, she knew her daughter well, and knew how she would react.
But she couldn't assume how far she would go to get out of it,
"No. Absolutely, positively, most certainly without a doubt, no!"
Natalie had one hand resting on each of her hips, her fingers holding a solid grip on the yellow fabric. She made no move to move, just stood there like a statue staring down the women as if she was the criminal in the house.
Her indignation wasn't annoying, it was just amusing to watch, "I don't recall giving you a choice."
"You didn't, but you should've." It was a suggestion – a word of advice for the future.
"I was never planning on it. Now, get your jacket and shoes, we're leaving in five minutes." Alicia already had her jacket and combat boots on. She had just stopped by to pick up Natalie then drop her off with Dr. Shannon.
Natalie was unmoving, "You should've given me a warning."
"You would've bolted," Alicia argued. It was the very reason she sprung it up on her last minute, if she told her a day before even two hours, she would've hid away. Whatever happened, she did not want to become known. The possibility terrified her, to an extent that was irrational and concerned Alicia.
What on earth had she done that could be worse than she had already accomplished?
She couldn't argue with the facts, "Well...fine, I agree." The difficulty for her to agree proved just how far they had to go to restore any sort of relationship between them.
"But, there is no way on this earth that I will talk to Dr. Shannon." She meant it, dramatics or not, she wasn't going to give in easily. She was good at keeping secrets, and she would take this one to her grave.
At least she hoped.
|~Brother or Mother~|
A smile started creeping on her face as she ran her fingers down the ankylosaurs' back. It comforted her in a strange way. She was just getting to know the ankylosaurs, but in an odd way it reminded her of a different time. Whether it was a better time was still up for debate.
The animal was still in its little habit, a man made one which she had to admit wasn't half bad though it could use some work. She would pick it up, but she didn't know if she trusted herself to hold the innocent creature. He was just a baby – she was far worse, she'd done far worse.
She had acknowledged what she'd done, but she never understood her choice, or accepted her decision. She regretted it, immensely and every day she dealt with the constant reminder of her actions. It left a hole in her heart, a hole that she couldn't fail, no matter how hard she tried. No dinosaur, no amount of time with Lucas would fill that gaping darkness surging inside her soul.
"This is wrong, it should be in the wild, free with a family. Not here caged like some beast. It's just a baby, it doesn't know how to act out to say and show you what it doesn't want. It doesn't remember the forest, the feeling of being free, or else it would've left. You have to let it go, let it experience life and become who it must. You can't be protected from everything forever."
She hadn't been there when the egg first arrived, she only met the ankylosaurs when he was just a babe. She assumed it had been in captivity since it was just a wee bairn. It was a close assumption, except it had a life threatening condition that needed surgery.
"You're talking about yourself?"
It was a mere reference back to herself, hardly noticeable – she didn't even notice she slipped it in there, at the time, but the doctor did. It could've been a sign for her talk about it, if it was, Natalie chose to ignore it, "No, I'm talking about the ankylosaurs."
Deflecting and lying, Elisabeth was told about her deflecting mechanism and repetitive lying. It made sense four years ago when she was hiding sneaking OTG and searching for the truth behind Lucas' betrayal, then her own betrayal, but after that point three years ago the lies should've stopped, but they continued. And she didn't know why.
Elisabeth tried to get her into a room to talk about the nightmares. She followed the women reluctantly, but was silent, staring off into space as if waiting for someone to come down and save her.
|~Brother or Mother~|
This marked her third visit this week. Either the doctor had no patients or they really wanted her to talk about it. She sensed it was the second, she had after all confessed to doing something. Luckily for her, she hadn't said what.
She never talked to Lucas about it, it was like her dirty little secret. She thought it would be the only secret between them, that if she talked about it, he would think differently of her, but boy, was she wrong. He had more secrets than she could've known about, he kept control of her never telling her the truth, and she still didn't know why.
"Kill or be killed," Elisabeth recited her previous statement. They'd been having a conversation about her nightmares, Elisabeth was probing her thoughts and Natalie blurted out the mantra running through her mind. It always ran through her mind, even after she came back here and was 'safe'.
"What does it mean?" It was clear she meant to you.
She meant to deny it and deflect, she should've, but she didn't. She told the truth, honest-to-goodness.
"It's a rule, out there." She felt so bare as she spoke; her lies protected her – hid her from what she'd done. She never confronted reality, except in those sleepless nights she spent reliving her actions and playing out the consequences.
"Either you kill, or your killed. There's no injuring, they're aggressive – too vicious to be touched."
The doctor nodded, they were making progress, "In your nightmare, what happened?"
Natalie swallowed the knot in her throat, and pressed her lips together, biting into one softly as the memory flashed into her mind, it was all to real. She tried to pretended it was just a dream, a figment of her imagination but that never worked, she remembered the pain all to well, remembered the tears that trickled down her cheeks, remembered the feel of it's breath on her face. There was no way of convincing herself it was nothing but a dream.
"I was running, I was trying to outrun it. Next thing I knew I was pressed to the ground." She felt the sting in her hand as they tried to brace her fall. She whimpered as she felt a sharp piercing pain in the small of her back. "It's claw was digging into my back, I
"I killed it." Saying out loud was nothing like actually doing it.
Elisabeth tried to not be alarmed by the confession, but she couldn't control her nerves. She couldn't even not look shocked. She had been told of the girl's crimes and her relationship with Lucas, and while she felt some sympathy for the child, she loathed her and her decision to abandon her own mother.
"Killed, what?"
"Velociraptor," She answered, with no small amount of fear.
The event started to replay in her mind the day still embedded in her mind, "I was pinned to the ground, I couldn't escape, I was helpless." She remembered her tears streaming down her face, the animals breath on her face, the blood seeping out of her wounds, it was all so familiar,
"I called out, but no one came. I was stuck. I kicked, I pushed–I fought, but I couldn't do anything. I was getting colder, it was getting dark, I knew what I had to do." She wiped the lone tear coming down her eye.
"My knife was by my hand it was close enough to reach. I grabbed it and I stabbed it in the stomach." As she spoke her voice remained even.
Author's Notes: Sorry for this emotional rollercoaster I've put you on. This may not be what you thought you signed up for. Anyway, this is Wash/Taylor endgame, and while I won't spoil what will happen with Natalie she will find some form of happeniess and Wash will too.
I'll be tying it back to the episodes soon, I promise.