Erin didn't go far, just out of the reach of the warm firelight, so she could hide in the darkness, so she could think. She had to think, she had to be rational, she knew she was panicking. If she could just gather herself she'd be able to think, but it felt almost impossible in that moment. She wanted to run away, all the way back to the triple falls, and disappear from this time and all the heartache that had been laid at her feet tonight.

'Coward!' Her mind screamed out the word, over and over, until she was a sobbing mess of tears, her eyes raw and sore. She tried to make herself stop, to grab hold of her senses. She gasped a moment, her fist pushed painfully against her breast bone. She began a harsh violent rhythm, pummelling against where her heart should be, but she didn't have one, how could she? She'd left him alone, she'd run away, she hadn't saved him!

"Fuck!" This chant took over, soft at first, spilling from her lips in rougher and harsher tones, until she cried out the word in a shriek and heard it echo around the tall dark shapes of tree trunks about her. As she panted from her impotent rage an unnatural silence spread out before her, resounding in her ears like a high-pitched ring, all the creatures and life in the wood stilling for a moment in the wake of her outburst of grief, as if in solidarity of her pain.

She heard a branch snap behind her and whirled, ready to lunge at her attacker, mind swirling with violent thoughts in response to her own ruthless feelings.

"Calm down." Nathaniel's voice, steady and collected came out of the shadows.

It was the first time in Erin's life that anyone saying those two words to her seemed to have the desired effect, like he was the tourniquet stemming the spurting emotions, allowing her that much needed moment to finally begin to collect herself. Her mind pushed forward the thought that he must have seen her flee the camp and come after her.

"You calm down!" she flung back, unable to think of anything sensible to say and her words held no true note of conviction.

"I was unkind before. I was angry," he began.

"Yeah, no shit! Me too!" Erin countered, and huffed uselessly, slowly beginning to wipe the streak of tears from her cheeks with trembling chilly fingertips. She heard, rather than saw him hesitate, and then he took a few uncertain steps forward, her eyes now adjusted enough in the night to make out his form a little better. She held her body tense and rigid for any further cruelty he wanted to deal her, she was ready.

The world around them was slowly coming back to life, the soft hum of insects, the call of night birds in the trees, the snuffle of animals in undergrowth. It suddenly made things feel less icy, like the sounds of nature and living beings had brought warmth back into her very own blood, and with the warmth all anger melted, like frost touched by the first rays of sunshine.

"I have had time to think, time to understand. I am myself again. I heard what you spoke of with Uncas..." Nathaniel looked for a moment like he had a whole speech planned out, his eyes coming to her face in indecisive glances, but Erin didn't let him begin.

"Is he right? Are Uncas and your father right? Is there nothing that can be done here?" She tried to ask the questions as the fact-seeking arrows they were, but there was a note of pleading in them and she relinquished the façade. "Please, just tell me they are wrong?!" If anyone had any hope for another path in this moment it was surely Nathaniel.

"If my brother feels his end is coming, then-"

"Nothing can be done, right?" Erin finished, half scoffing at the situation.

"Perhaps-"

"What?" Erin narrowed her eyes, it was rather clear, whatever his idea was, he didn't like it at all, by how haltingly he had tried to speak of it, how uncertain he seemed. It was a characteristic that didn't suit him. "If you have a way, tell me? I will do it, I will do it, dammit!" Erin bit out the words, trying not to lose herself in the heat of the moment.

"Your home-" He paused, glancing away, back towards the camp, as if fearing being overheard by someone who was not really there. "What you said to Uncas... that your medicine is better there."

"Yes, it is, but he wouldn't even let me speak," Erin flustered, an icy prick of comprehension touching her mind. She refused to let it grab too firm a hold of her, so she would not go leaping head first into assumptions, that hadn't got her anywhere good lately.

"My brother, he told me you can see the future because you are from the future." Even in the dark she could feel his eyes trying to bore holes into her soul. "Is that true?"

"Yes." Erin's mind whirled, was Nathaniel about to suggest that they become allies in this plot, or was her emotionally exhausted brain flying to the only idea that now made any sense, the only thing she could possibly do to help?

"He said, in your time, your doctors can even bring people back from death. Is that true?"

"Yes... in a... way." She was tripping over each word as hope and fear clutched at her, each trying to win out.

"And what you said just now to Uncas, that your doctors know more. Could your people save him?"

Erin's mouth flapped a moment and hope prevailed, she grasped at it with both hands. "They could try, he would have a chance of surviving... more than here. They have medicine that doesn't exist here, antibiotics, special surgeries to stop the poison." She didn't know why she was trying to explain all this, the details didn't matter to Nathaniel, just as they didn't really matter to her, a chance was a chance. "I can't promise he will be okay, but it's better than him dying here."

"Then I will tell my father what must be done. I fear, he will not like it," Nathaniel said with a certain nod.

Erin felt off balanced by this statement, what about any part of saving Uncas would Chingachgook not like? She heard Nathaniel begin to move and her body responded, leaving all questions until later. She stumbled forward and reached out, catching him around his forearm, wanting him to understand the dangers this way held. "I don't know if Uncas can go with me. I don't know if it's safe, or if he will be hurt when we go back to my time. It hurt when I came here... and I don't even know if I can go back at all."

Nathaniel nodded, as if taking her words into account, but his expression held no pity for her. "Do you feel you can go back?"

Erin considered this question quickly. "Yes." It felt like the truth.

"Then that is your answer. If he stays he'll die." Nathaniel shrugged off her touch, it wasn't an unkind gesture, just one of impatience. "You said you'd do anything, as will I. This is anything. Risk be damned."

Erin looked up at him then, her eyes expressing so clearly that she wished she didn't have to ask the question that whirled within her thoughts, but she knew she had to. "Do... you think he can make the journey to the falls?" She felt her bottom lip tremble and gritted her teeth, giving herself no pity either, she could fall apart later. "He seems so... weak."

Nathaniel lifted his shoulders in a hopeless gesture. "He's not made time our friend, that's for certain."

Erin's mind drifted back over the last few days and her recent conversation with Uncas. How true Nathaniel's words were, if only they'd had more time. "Uncas wouldn't even listen to anything I said," she said, with a forlorn sigh.

Nathaniel shook his head. "He's stubborn, if he's set on something it's hard to turn his mind away."

Erin shook her head in sad dejection. "It's like he'd...just accepted death! Like he'd given up. Your father too. Is it really so hopeless here?"

"Yes. A wound like that means only one thing here." Nathaniel gave her a dark look.

"I said I could help, but even then Uncas didn't want to listen. Why?" Erin gave him no true time to answer, answers didn't really matter, only the outcome. "Can you convince him? Can you help? Can you make him understand what has to be done? That there is hope?"

"I can try." He looked over at her, a hard gleam to his eyes.

"I wish I'd said something sooner!" Erin lamented, unable to help herself having a moment of self pity. "I wish he'd told me how bad it was. We would have had time to plan and-"

"No use going back over it now." Nathaniel gave another lift of his shoulders. "I understand why he didn't tell you, why his mind didn't seek out your time as a way to survive. Surviving isn't always living. Staying here, it's honourable, a good death from a battle. Something he understands, that he can choose. Can't easily choose a way you don't know." His eyes met hers. "It's the way our father taught us, the way of the great warriors from a long dead past. A useless way." Nathaniel's eyes narrowed. "Can't live in the past either."

"Wait," Erin said, trying comprehend what she was being told. "Are you saying... Uncas won't want to go? That he'd rather die here?!"

Nathaniel gave what appeared to be a very subtle nod. "One thing about me, Miss Cooper, I'm a selfish man, selfish enough to deny him that choice for the chance of him finding a way, to survive and maybe to live after."

"Selfish?" Erin's brow rose in surprise. "For wanting your brother to not die... I don't understand?"

"No, I don't expect you to," Nathaniel said bluntly. "Sure he won't forgive me either, but I love him too much to give him that. Sometimes to save someone, you got to hurt them. Like I said before, Miss Cooper, I'm a selfish man." He let out a bone weary sigh and looked back at her, knowing he had to explain more before they could finish this conversation. "For Uncas and my father, this path is hopeless because it is the way of things. I thought that way too, once. Everything had a place, a reason, a way. Then I met Cora, someone my father had said would see me and my kin as beneath her, lesser, so I should see them that way too. A different breed. But Cora, she changed everything."

Erin could see this was true, his eyes gleamed with meaning, his body full of new hope and determination.

"I believe love can overcome class and creed, perhaps even death, if you try and see there is not one path, but many. I just can't see this path because it is unknown to me, as Cora and her love once were. I'm willing to go down that path blind if there is a chance to save my brother now. Even if I do not understand, even if I will lose him. Even if I am being selfish."

Erin felt a shiver run through her skin and she openly admired the conviction of this man. Just like Uncas, Nathaniel was a true hero, not because of his bravery or his prowess upon the battlefield, but for the strength of his love.

"That was very stirring," Erin said knowing she sounded far too sentimental, her eyes threatening with tears again, but this time tears of sheer relief, that she was no longer alone. She had felt so alone without Uncas' steady hand to guide her through this.

"Stirring or not, we got a job to do." He turned without another word and made his way back towards the camp.

Erin watched him in semi-baffled silence for a few seconds before she crouched down, taking a few deep slow breaths, resting her forehead on her knees. For a moment she tried to dissect and understand what Nathaniel's words fully meant, but instead all she found was a steady growing need to do what had to be done.

Nathaniel was right, this was the only way. Uncas would not survive here, she had to take him with her. A garble of doubts and worries tried to push themselves forward, their pleas ranging from valid to ridiculous, but she flung them all aside. She didn't have time to deal with anything else, she had to step up and finally be the hero.

She had to save him.

/

A/N

Another Friday, another hello to anyone stopping by.

A much shorter chapter this week but one I wanted to be contained between Erin and Nathaniel. I really love the idea that Nathaniel's own world has been turn upside down because of his love for Cora. I can assume a reality flip like that must be rather mind-blowing and make it possible to see things you thought were set in stone to be changeable or completely out of your comprehension. I thought Nathaniel's original anger towards Erin would stem from him feeling useless for a little while and he was lashing out, unable to accept the truth, while his father and brother have already come to terms with it.

That's why I really wanted this idea to come fully from Nathaniel's mind, even though it did flutter through Erin's own thoughts. It calls back to his character in the movie, in just how much he really will do for those he loves; jump into a waterfall, run injured across rough terrain and offer himself up in place of another.

Now he's willing to change his entire mindset, just for a chance of Uncas living on.

Let's hope Nathaniel is right. Until next time. Thank you for your time here with me :)