A/N

Song this time, rather overdramatically but what I needed to write this chapter at the time; It's Hard (Letting You Go) by Bon Jovi.

/

Erin stared into the crackling flames, her mind slowly working. Her whole body felt so far from herself, detached from the earth, floating in some firmament high above, and she wanted to go higher, further away, to leave everything behind.

If she'd only said something sooner would Uncas have had a chance? Had she doomed him with her stubborn silence? She twisted and turned the questions as she floated, wishing bitterly that she had any answer, that she could think clearly, that she could turn back time.

Time felt like it crawled by slowly, Nathaniel still sat by Uncas, wiping his brother's brow every so often. Chingachgook hadn't returned. Erin could only assume, having done all he could for his son's temporary comfort, he had gone to make his own peace with what he thought would come next.

Silence had become an ongoing feature and, knowing her input and very presence wasn't welcome, she'd retreated inward, knees pulled to her chest, unwilling to confront the reality of what all this truly meant. If she could just hide a little longer, maybe she would return later to find nothing was really as bad as she'd thought? Uncas would be sitting up and smiling, laughing at her good-naturedly, for being so upset for no real reason.

Didn't she know his father always overreacted to the tiniest thing? He was fine, he was going to be fine, it was a lot of fuss over nothing. The beat of chanted denial kept repeating in her head, merging with the steady anxious thump of her heart.

The truth nudged at her like a sharp needle trying to break past skin barriers to the soft sensitive nerves beneath, and she knew, soon it would pierce her and there would be no room for childish, obstinate hiding.

But... Cora had said Uncas would be fine, hadn't she? No, not really. She hadn't said that. Erin had just picked out the pretty pieces and formed it into a picture she wanted to see.

Why hadn't she told Erin any of this plainly? She must have seen the lines, she must have known what that meant.

Cora's words came back to her like a half-remembered echo in a cave. 'I cannot ask him to stay in bed. I could bleed him, give him medicine that will really be no aid at all, while we wait to see what will happen, and risk him being here at Fort Edward-'

'It is up to him, and whatever God he holds counsel with, what comes next.'

Erin mulled over the words, repeating them in her head, and came to the uneasy conclusion that Cora really had known the true extent of the situation. Perhaps she had been trying to soften the blow of the news or... Erin's eyes drifted to the bag nearby, the brown glass bottle buried within.

'You will know when... if... you need it.'

Cora had truly meant 'when', she'd only corrected herself because she'd let the truth slip. But why? Why hadn't she just been upfront about it? She'd come to Erin with her concerns after her vague worries had been emboldened by Alice saying the blade was tainted, why had she not pursued the issue after that point? Was she worried what Nathaniel would say? His father-?

Then came that dreaded piercing needle, and Erin couldn't pretend anymore.

Erin knew the answer, she just didn't want to admit it. Her gaze drifted over to the two men, lingering upon the sleeping face of the man that had so recently kissed her and she had kissed back. She could still feel the weight of his hands upon her chest, pushing her down to the mossy ground in desire, down into the water in hatred...

It was Uncas.

It had always been Uncas.

After Cora had last examined him and caught out his little secret, he must have asked her to say nothing. He had known all along that he was dying, perhaps since the cliffs, perhaps on their first night at Fort Edward, perhaps later... but he had known. He had seen the growing signs and he had remained silent. Why hadn't he told her? This just caused more questions to pool within Erin's mind and she was left feeling empty and useless. Now, Cora's look of deep distress towards Nathaniel at their parting made some sense, she had been painfully torn between her duty and her love. Cora's words once again came back to Erin's memory.

'I have to respect his wishes above all else, can you understand what I am telling you?'

Erin wanted to feel sympathy for the unenviable position her friend had been put in, but she just felt numb and huddled her knees closer to her chest, burying her face into her arms. All she wanted to do in this awful moment was go home, and this unpleasant fact left her feeling ashamed that her first instinct was to run away.

Erin felt exhausted, her mind crying out for rest, to sleep only a moment so she could think clearly, and she allowed herself to doze in and out of consciousness. How long she stayed that way, may have been minutes or hours, time seemed to have no meaning as she tried to find any kind of relief, her body wanting and needing to shut down, just for a little while, just a little-

A low noise prodded at her brain, willing her with a stern insistence that she had to come back down to earth and face factuality. For a moment she refused, the noise butting against her stubbornness until she had no other choice but to confront it.

"Hmm?" She turned her face up from her little sanctuary with glassy eyes, the depths only just beginning to regain some understanding of lucidity back.

"Miss Cooper?" It was Nathaniel who stood above her, he had been trying to gain her attention for some time Erin realized by the impatient hint to his request.

"What?" She snapped the words out like they were acidic to her tongue, angry at him for distracting her inward moping. Angry at him being angry at her. As she began to notice her surroundings, she felt her body shiver as the wet material of her clothes clung to her. She still wasn't dry, her attempted escape from reality must have been much shorter than she'd realized.

"My brother, he's awake."

Erin's eyes rippled with sudden conscious energy at the news and she was up on her feet in a beat. "Is he okay?"

"He's awake." Nathaniel's voice held no note of patience and his expression was a glower. "He asked for you."

"Oh," Erin said, and felt her breath catch in her throat, like a lump she could not swallow. She hadn't really thought how she'd feel seeing Uncas again after he'd... after everything. She squared her shoulders, straightening her back. "Can I go to him?" Her voice bristled with self-defensive undertones, her arms coming to fold across her chest as her emotional shield.

"If you wish." Nathaniel's eyes narrowed as if he wished she'd just drop off the face of the earth instead. He made to turn away and Erin knew she couldn't leave things like this between them. She was not close to Nathaniel, she had no right to expect his trust, but they both cared deeply for the same people, Cora and Uncas, that surely had to count for something.

"I know you are angry with me. I would be too. He said he was fine, I trusted in that because I wanted him to be fine. If I could change any of this I-"

"But you can't!" Nathaniel said briskly, and pushed past her with a deliberate shove of shoulder, going to sit on the other side of the fire, eyes resolutely upon her as if she would suddenly reveal herself as some monstrous foe to be defeated, his muscles taut and ready to take her down. Then he turned away, breaking the tense eye contact and placed his head in his hands in a clear state of desperate grief.

Erin caught her posture before it could sag from the knowledge of what this all now meant. She wasn't just dealing with the whys and reasons, the lies and secrets, but reality. She had to hold herself together, she couldn't be a mess when Uncas saw her.

She made her way carefully to where he lay, his brow was still beaded with sweat and his bottom lip trembled with fevered shivers every so often, but it was subdued, he somehow looked better. His eyes found hers and she saw why, he was himself again, that deep intelligent gleam concealed within the dark depths of his eyes was shining brightly.

He had reached for her hand before she had settled herself in a kneel beside him, his large grasp enveloping her fingers. His skin was warm, too warm, but comforting. For a moment she found it hard to meet his face, his eyes. She was angry and hurt, but most of all she felt like she was at fault in this. For coming to this place, for changing things, for existing at all. Erin feared if she looked too deeply she'd see the same accusation of blame Nathaniel held towards her in Uncas' gaze too. Erin felt if she saw that now she would fall apart, the bullets of guilt shredding her into pieces.

She felt him squeeze her hand and, knowing she couldn't continue this charade, she looked up, finally finding his face.

Erin felt a strange kind of dejection that there wasn't even a hint of blame in his look, only kindness and deep sorrow. If he'd been angry, if he'd said this was her fault she could have raised all her defences up and sheltered from this as a form of self protection, but instead she was left vulnerable and naked in the wake of a generous warm heart that she felt she did not deserve.

His eyes were the rich dark brown of rain soaked earth and a silent question reached out from them, his expression clear that he did not trust his voice in this moment.

"I'm fine." The tremor in her own voice betrayed so easily that she was not.

His hand moved, palm coming to her cheek, resting a moment, thumb softly stroking the line of her cheekbone. "I am sorry." The apology was rasped against a dry throat.

The tears welled back again and she couldn't prevent their escape.

"I know." She mumbled out the words, barely audibly, unwilling to trust her own voice now too.

"No, you do not," he said, as firmly as he could manage, his hand guiding her face back to look at him. "I remember what I-"

"You were not yourself." Erin caught his hand, covering it with both of her own, bringing it to her lap in a gentle act of prayer that he would listen and understand.

"That does not make it right. I thought I was in control." He paused, allowing his head to fall back upon the shirt Nathaniel had made him a makeshift pillow of. "I could have hurt you, I could have..." He could not finish.

"I don't care!" Erin's words strained against the lump in her throat. "I care that you didn't tell me, you didn't tell your family! Why? We could have helped, we could have found a way to help!"

He looked away, finally understanding that he had to confront the truth too.

"I don't care what you did in the grips of a fever and too much damn medicine! Uncas you-" Her words now failed and she gasped for a moment, wiping angrily at her tears.

When she looked back at him, his expression was smooth but his eyes were full of sympathy. He was sorry, not for what he had done, but because they'd all found out his secret.

"You never were going to tell anyone, were you?" She tried so hard not to sound angry, but she was angry, so angry. "And you knew! You knew it was bad!"

He gave a small nod. "I knew," he said, his demeanour not changing.

"How long? How long have you known?" She didn't give him time to answer. "Cora too, why-"

He cut her off. "Knew it could happen since the cliffs, knew for certain second day at Fort Edward." He paused, swallowing hard as if talking pained him.

Erin tried to let this information settle, that meant he'd known his fate as early as their meeting in the mess hall, or perhaps as late as that evening when he had asked her to meet him in the infirmary. Any anger felt like it had been wrenched from her as her memories tried to pull out any tell tale signs or hints. But she felt as if she had been fully oblivious to it all, too consumed with her own feelings to even now remember if she'd missed blatant red flags.

"When I had to show Cora, I asked her to be still, to say nothing. We both knew nothing could be done." He lifted his shoulder slowly in what Erin supposed was meant to be a half-hearted shrug. "She too saw the lines. Once that comes, it is over. It is known."

Erin's mind flashed up the sight Nathaniel had shown her only a short while ago, deadly vines reaching, searching, trying to twine around his heart as it still beat, until they strangled the very life from him. Then her thoughts went back to Fort Edward, Cora's reluctance to say Uncas would be well on that last day. Erin knew she'd been holding something back. She'd known it! Why had she not pushed for the truth?

Erin knew the answer, she hadn't wanted to hear it. She'd wanted so badly for everything to be fine.

Uncas' eyes drifted to where his brother's hunched figure sat and then searched a moment, not finding what he sought, then he nodded in sad understanding. "My father knows it too. That it is over." He sighed heavily and took a brief pause to swallow hard again. "Cora counselled me to tell everyone, to prepare you for what would come, but she also asked me what I wanted. I told her it was my fate to keep, and I wanted to continue, that I had to go on and finish what I had set out to do. I knew what was to come."

"I don't understand! Why would you lie..." Erin said, unable to say the rest of the accusation.

"Not a lie. Just not the full truth." He tried to smile. "I wanted to see you home before... before it took me. If I told you, or my father and brother, our journey would be delayed, you may have stayed in this time out of duty to me. My father and brother may have abandoned your care out of a senseless need to try and save me. I knew I was already lost." He took in a deep breath. "I thought I could endure a few more days and I wanted to see you safely home. That was my last task. I thought the medicine would last until after we reached the falls, by then you would be gone and it would be too late for my father to worry uselessly. We could say our goodbyes with clear hearts and eyes. I could go in peace. It seems I was far too confident in my own strength."

"Wait..." Erin said, trying to gather up all these threads. "So, what, you wanted to get me home, say goodbye, and then what? You knew that you'd die?!" Tears came again and she forced them back.

He didn't reply straight away but nodded in agreement. "Out here in the forest, with my family. It's what I wanted. My choice."

It all made a strange and sickening sense, why he'd been so careless, why he'd pushed for the intimate night in the infirmary, his reluctance to talk of any kind of future for them. Why he hadn't wanted his family to know. Why he'd asked her to not look up his fate once she was home. To him all these outcomes had been decided already. There was no future, not for him.

Erin's gaze snapped to him, two emotions pulling at once. One wanted to slap him hard across his stupid fevered face, and the other wanted to wrap her arms around his neck and sob in complete despair.

"There must be a way... something we can do... just let me think a moment, let me think! Dammit!" Erin felt like her thoughts were scattered pieces of paper blowing in a storm, and she snatched at them, trying to clutch anything from violent air. "Okay, first, we have medicine to help, maybe your father knows how to stop it spreading, so we can have more time to find a way, he may-" He stilled her panicked descent into rambling with a light touch upon her wrist, his fingers lingering in a circle around braided bracelet and sensitive skin. Erin wanted to recoil in resentment from that tender gesture.

"Willow bark and brown bottles cannot help me now. I know this, my father knows this. If there was a way, my father would have done it. I am glad he saw it this far along. I know he would have tried many ways otherwise, but I knew it was the end from that second day," he said, his voice so steady and certain. "I have seen it be the end of many men, as has he. Nothing can be done. There is no medicine, no doctor, no hope. I cannot be saved, not this time."

"No!" Erin could feel that lump hardening, threatening to choke her. Tears wanted to well again and she gritted her teeth in spite against the emotion.

"Come." He tugged her gently and Erin resisted against what he wanted, stubborn to any requests he now had, because giving in meant she had to accept everything he had said. "Come here, Mouse." He breathed out the words in his own tongue very gently, a soothing lullaby, and pulled lightly again. This time Erin didn't resist, the affectionate use of endearments taking away any strength she had left to fight in that moment.

He held her in his arms for a long time, his warm palm smoothing back her hair with the same consoling gesture he had used to calm her in the past, while she trembled and cried silent tears. It felt obscene, she should have been comforting him, but it felt like she didn't have the resolve to do anything but weep.

"You can't," she said, through a barely contained sob into the blanket. "It's not fair. You survived the cliffs only to... It's not fair!" She buried her face in his shoulder, grateful and distressed by his familiar scent, her mind racing.

He was dying, he was dying, he was dying!

Her mind rolled over the same repeated words, making it impossible to think of anything but that terrible chant.

"Perhaps my fate was always carved into unmovable stone..." He was stroking the fine hairs at the nape of her neck and her nerves stiffened; renewed energy, a second wind, propelled by his words, that sucked all the stubborn resistance back into her body. "...and I could not escape it, no matter how much I fought."

Erin turned her head in a feeble shake of defiance. "We..." She grasped and grasped and found only air, and then her wits came back to her like a heavy blow of cold hard stone. "...We can go to the waterfall!" The words were pushed harshly past lips, a triumphant chance of overcoming this, her heartbeat quickened. She lifted her head, pulling away from his consoling of her grief with a renewed light, hope, there was hope. "You can come with me, you can come to my time. There may be a way to save you. The medicine is better. My doctors, they know more than this time, they-"

"Do they know magic?" he asked with a little wistful smile.

"N... no," Erin stuttered, "you don't understand!" How could he truly understand, all he knew was this time, and she had never explained the nuance of all the things that were possible in her own time. "Look, just listen to me!"

"Erin." He said her name with a demanding air that made her waver and still a moment. "Stop. It is alright," he said, and he smiled a frail version of that beautiful smile that always caught her breath. "I am not afraid, I am ready. The pain doesn't matter, now there is no fear. It will all be alright." He reached for her, hand wanting to press against her cheek, to make her accept that this was all going to happen.

Erin jerked back from his touch. "No!" She shook her head. "You are just giving up! You aren't even trying!" She was filled with fury but didn't know what or who to direct it at. "If you cared about me at all, you'd know I could never just leave you to die!" The last word was a gasped whisper and she flinched from him, unable to look at him a moment longer. She couldn't think while looking at that expression, it was one that had lost all hope long ago, and she had to get away before it consumed her too. He tried reaching out to her again but Erin refused, pushing herself to her feet as if backing away from a terrible nightmare.

"Erin," he said, his hand still suspended in the air, willing her to come back to him.

She wanted to rush into those arms, hold him close and tell him no harm would ever come to him, she would find a way, she just had to think, she just needed time, she could do this.

She had saved him!

Looking into those beautiful expressive eyes, that had made peace with his own death, her heart broke into a million tiny pieces and blew away, leaving her ribcage an empty shell. The poison was already taking the golden hue out of his skin, replacing it with a dull greyness. Even his eyes, the light was dimming. There was so little time left.

'He doesn't have long,' the defeated part of her pushed forward, appealing to the hopelessness all around her. 'Go to him, tell him you love-'

'No!' Her fear and anger and need to still win this battle fought back. 'I won't!' She had to find a way to make him understand that hope was still there, it was! But she needed time to gather herself, and she couldn't do that while being confronted by a man that had already accepted a doomed fate.

'Run!' Her mind let the word loose in a breathless plea.

She stayed as if frozen for a few seconds, eyes wide and terrified, then her fingers grasped hard, clutching at her skirts tightly, the harsh pressure bringing back biting heat to her body, and she moved, turning away from the man who needed her, and fled into the tree line.

/

A/N

Hello all and a good Friday to you.

So the truth of everything has been revealed. I feel so deeply sorry for poor Erin in all this, but also for Uncas, who has already accepted this is indeed his end. Would you have spared those you love the full truth like Uncas did, knowing (as far as he is currently aware) that this was an unmovable death sentence? Would you have tried to see the one you care about back to safety? Would you have respected Uncas' wishes as Cora did? Would you have kept your head better that Erin did? My heart really breaks for Chingachgook, knowing he can do nothing to save his son. I would need a moment alone in the woods too! So many terrible choices to make, what an awful set of circumstances :(

But, yes I am also the terrible person that wrote all this angst :))))

Hopefully, once Erin has had that little moment she can do something and there can be a way forward... let's see what happens next time.

So, yes, now the truth is all out I can disclose the song I wrote chapter 59 to, was True Liars by Meg Myers, if anyone was wanting to still know. Both Erin and Uncas were lying to themselves for varied and different reasons, both thinking they were doing the right thing. It's hard for me to say, even as the writer of this, if I think the right or wrong choices were made by the characters, I do believe we can lie for noble reasons as well as selfish ones. Sometimes a lie seems the only option, but sometimes the truth would have been the better option. I leave how you view what has happened to your own thoughts.

Thank you for staying with me, especially once again Flowangelic and MohawkWoman *heartsandhearts* I just managed to get this chapter out as I had so little time after getting home. Man, vacations are exhausting, I need a vacation from my vacation lol

Until next week (which will be very slow and normal, yay!), I hope you enjoyed.