Title: Love is when.... Part 1
Title: Love is when you take away the feeling, the passion, the romance and you find out you still care for that person Part 1
Author: kaitlia777
Author's e-mail/website: kaitlia777@yahoo.com
Fandom: V 2009
Summary: Picks up where Season 2 ended.
Type / Pairings: Jack/Erica, Joshua/Lisa
Main characters: Jack Landry, Erica Evans, Joshua, Lisa
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Spoilers: Anything from Seasons 1 &2 is fair game.
Beta: N/A
Disclaimer: Don’t own any of the recognizable character, just taking them out to play!
Author's Notes: C’mon, I couldn’t leave it at that, lol!
New York City was never silent.
Except now it was.
Amidst the crowd of living, breathing statues, Agent Erica Evans stood with her arms wrapped firmly around Jack Landry. He, like everyone else, was immobile, standing with his face tipped skyward, gazing up at the V mother ship hanging ominously overhead.
Clearly, Anna had figured out how to Bliss humans.
How could they fight that? It seemed almost impossible. Almost, but not entirely.
Shaking herself, Erica shifted to stand in front of Jack, calling his name again, refusing to release her hold on him. “Jack,” she said, both demanding and pleading. “Jack, please look at me!”
She reached up, cupping his face in her hands, rough stubble against her palms. “Please Jack, don’t give in. I need you. Fight it!”
She wasn’t sure how many times, in how many variations she repeated that sentiment and she let out a breath that was almost a sob when he moved, blinking and lowering his eyes to meet hers.
The others were still immobilized by their euphoria.
“Erica,” he croaked, then his eyes widened almost comically. He glanced around, even as his hands found purchase on her waist, grasping at her hips almost desperately. “Oh, no….”
His murmur was soft and troubled as he figured out what had happened, so, drawing his gaze back to her own, she asked, “Jack, do you feel all right? The Bliss….”
“No. Yes. I don’t…” he paused and shook his head, one hand dropping from her hip to fumble in his own pocket. “I’m me, but that was….”
His voice trailed off and he looked away from the sky, blessing himself with a hand now clutching his Rosary Beads in a white knuckled grip.
She wanted to give him time to collect himself, but that was a luxury they couldn’t afford. Finally releasing her grip on his jaw, she took a firm hold of his arm and began to lead him back the way she’d come, back to the entrance to Project Aires.
That’s when she noticed others had followed her up, out of the bunker. She saw Chris and Paul amongst the men and women trying, and failing, to shake sense back into random civilians as she had with Jack. A few people seemed to have been galvanized into motion, but they ignored everyone around them, wandering off with vacant smiles on their faces.
Ryan had been able to deny himself bliss because of his love for Val. Joshua had once thrown it off with revolutionary spirit and just recently had tossed off a more thorough attempt at brainwashing. Lisa, her feelings for Tyler making her question her mother, turned her back on Bliss in favor of true feelings.
Since that first night in the warehouse, Erica knew she and Jack had shared…a connection. Sure, it had suffered some stress recently, mostly due to her brief foray with the dark side, but still it was there. Somewhere, lost in Anna’s bliss, he’d heard her voice, felt her nearness and realized something was wrong. He’d rallied and shaken off the intoxicating influence, though he was still clearly dazed.
“We’re not alone,” she murmured reassuringly to Jack, though she wasn’t sure how much of his attention was on her. He was still fingering the Rosary a little desperately, frowning pensively as he let her lead him along, so she didn’t push. Instead, she called out, “Chris!”
Her partner and boss reacted to her voice, both abandoning their unresponsive blissed people to jog in her direction. Erica broke into a trot to meet them and Jack kept pace.
“He like them?” Chris asked, eyeballing Jack and the way Erica had her arm looped through his.
“No,” Erica said, her voice chorusing with Jack’s as he gave eyed Chris and Paul in return before looking to Erica and asking, “What exactly…How weren’t you effected?”
“We were underground.” Kendrick and Bolling frowned at her unhappily, but she shot them a dark look. They’d brought her into Aires and Jack was with her. That was that.
“The better question is why weren’t you effected?” Chris asked and Erica was puzzled by the bottled anger her old friend seemed to be directing at Jack.
“I was,” Jack replied offhandedly, turning his troubled gaze to the oblivious crowd. “It was…peace. Everything I’ve ever done that weighed heavily on my soul…it was just gone. But I heard you, distorted, like I was underwater. Then I knew something just wasn’t right….”
It was clear he was speaking to Erica, even if he wasn’t looking at her. Blinking, Jack shook his head, trying to sort out the vague impressions dancing at the edges of his consciousness. “Sorry, it was just very strange.”
“The important thing is that you fought it,” Erica said, free hand patting him on the chest. “We know we can fight, like they do.”
“They?” Kendrick asked, clearly puzzled.
All at once, realization crashed down on Erica. Sure, project Aires knew about the V’s, had known about them for years. It had been foolish to think they’d gone undetected on Earth for decades. She should have known better.
But clearly, they didn’t know that the Fifth Column resistance had been begun by a V and not a human.
It was clearly time for them to pool what they knew. Hopefully, it would be enough to help them fight.
Something was different.
Something felt different.
Medical bag tucked neatly under his arm, Joshua shook himself mentally as he left Anna’s quarters. Logically, he knew there had been no discernable change. The ship’s environmental control saw to that, but he was certain he’d felt a chill when he’d been informed that Amy had blissed humanity when Anna could not.
In fact, the queen’s attempt had weakened her and Joshua had left her in her room to recover, Amy curled up beside her and Marcus watching them both intently.
If Joshua didn’t know better, he would have sworn he saw a look of fear in Marcus’s eyes.
The humans aboard the ship were acting normally. Perhaps, because they had already shown to have allied themselves with her by moving to the ships, she felt they posed less of a possibility of revolution.
Crossing one of the open plan common rooms, lost in thought, Joshua was startled by a chirpy greeting.
“Hi, Doctor Joshua. Nice night, huh?”
Amongst the live aboards there was a small cluster of teen age girls. They seemed to move in a pack, accompanied by an ever present cloud of too sweet perfume and a low hum of high pitched music from their Ipods. Much to Joshua’s confusion, they seemed to be in his proximity a statistically improbable amount of time and never failed to attempt to engage him in conversation.
Peering down at the Alpha of the group, the one who seemed to speak for them all, he inclined his head. “It is,” he agreed, not wanting to get in to the fact that the entire ship was climate controlled. He had a feeling that would needlessly extend the conversation.
Then something caught his eye and he looked more intently at one of the other girls. “You’ve changed your hair,” he said, taking in the long, wavy blond tresses. It looked quite like how Lisa often wore hers. “It looks lovely.”
The girl flushed and touched her hair, murmuring, “Thanks.”
With that the others all burst out giggling and they moved off to huddle on one of the couches, waving to him as they went.
Of all the humans he’d met, teenage females were probably the strangest.
As he made his way into the less populated areas of the ship, Joshua gathered his thoughts. Getting Lisa off of the ship would be difficult, if not impossible, but now he had an idea….
Sitting in the odd, vine covered, egg shaped chair, Lisa blinked, tears trickling down her cheeks. The air was damp and slightly chilly. Had it been warmer, it would have been humid and nearly comfortable.
But it wasn’t warm.
She’d been entirely alone since the image of her double, ripping out Tyler’s throat, had disappeared. When she heard the sound of the secret entrance, she assumed it was her mother, come to rub in her victory once again.
But it was not Mother who stepped into view, but a much more welcome sight.
“Joshua!”
As she said his name, Lisa surged to her feet. She had feared that Mother might have discovered his involvement in the attempted coup. His presence led her to believe he was still successfully playing his role as a dutiful, obedient minion.
“Lisa,” he greeted her, warm, troubled eyes assessing her for damage. “Are…you hurt?”
She shook her head and blurted out the thing gnawing at her thoughts. “She made me watch…Tyler die.”
His expression softened and he stepped toward her, hesitantly raising a hand to touch her arm. “I know. I’m sorry.”
In the cold room his hand seems almost hot enough to sear her skin, but it is a warmth she needed. Collapsing in on herself, Lisa leaned into his chest, burying her face in the soft fabric of his shirt to hide her tears. For a moment, he stood frozen, clearly unsure what to do, but then he embraced her gently.
Later, she realized that Joshua, despite having been in touch with his feelings for far longer than she, had never been in a position to be free with them. He’d probably never hugged anyone before.
They should have been talking, planning, but she just couldn’t. She needed a moment to just mourn, to be comforted by the only person she could trust. Who trusted her, even though she’d screwed up and hadn’t been able to kill her mother.
She wept into his shirt and he made small, comforting sounds, murmured about having a plan. Maybe he did or maybe he was just trying to make her feel better, but it helped just knowing he wanted her to feel better.
When her tears quieted, she turned her face to the side but stayed in the circle of his arms. Who knew how often he’d be able to get down here to see her? She was going to take solace while she could. “Tell me what’s going on,” she requested softly.
She didn’t want to ask, but she had to.
“Your mother attempted to bliss the humans. It might have killed her, had Amy not stepped in. She was successful.”
Lisa did not like that child. Dread filled her as she asked, “Are they all…?”
“I don’t know,” he replied honestly, patting her back. “We’ll figure something out. We have to.”
Earlier, she hadn’t thought she could feel anymore hopeless.
She had been wrong.
Even though he was still a bit dazed, Jack had to admit the massive bunker Erica and her coworkers led him down to was a lot more impressive than Hobbes’s basement. The place was swarming with men and women from a veritable alphabet of federal agencies, as well as uniformed military officers.
Understandably, everyone was going a little nuts over the sudden, mass blissing of…well, it seemed like very few people had escaped Anna’s influence.
The man in charge, Lars Tremont, was not pleased. A vein in the man’s forehead had threatened to burst when Erica and her co-workers had led Jack into the doomsday bunker, then he’d paused when they said Jack wasn’t a bliss zombie.
That made him suddenly very interesting and, before Jack knew it, he found himself being hustled through a barrage of medical exams, brain scans and debriefings. Dozens of strangers came in and asked him a repetitive series of questions for hours. They introduced themselves in a blur -- FBI (not Erica or anyone he knew), CIA, NSA, CTU, NTAC, ATF, DOD, HLS, a slew of different military representatives (Jack actually found the familiarity something of a relief).
By the time they let him leave with Erica, it was late afternoon. That was disconcerting. The passage of time was hard to judge in an underground bunker. He’d thought she would drop him off at Hobbes’s basement, well, he supposed it was his basement now that the mercenary had disappeared, but she’d put the kibosh on that plan.
She’d simply shaken her head. “Paul sent someone over there and we put our things in my car. You can stay with me.”
The streets were still oddly quiet, though people were going about their daily lives. He was eerily reminded of the Stepford Wives film he’d seen years ago. Everyone seemed serene and just…wrong. New York City was supposed to pulse with life, to hit you like water bursting forth from a dam.
This was barely a trickle.
“Was anyone else unaffected?” he asked grimly, gazing out the window as she drove.
“A few,” she replied, strain clear in her voice. “I wasn’t able to contact Sid or Chad, but Paul told me that several nations around the globe have their own version of Project Aires. And they brought in some very confused transit officers.”
“Transit Police?” He wondered why they hadn’t been effected.
Pulling into her driveway, Erica said, “Apparently they were checking on the report of a body down in the underground tunnels beneath the subway. It seems that anyone far enough below the surface was protected from the bliss.”
“But it could happen again,” Jack said, and shuddered. He dreaded the thought of having that not quite euphoria wash over him. Even in it’s wrongness, it offered a sort of peace he’d never known. It was understandable that those unaware would embrace the feeling. A thought struck. “What about submarines? Did water block the…brainwashing?”
She nodded. “Some of the naval officers have made contact with several sub commanders and they seem to be fine.”
Well, that was something. Shouldering his bags, Jack followed Erica into her home. The house was still and silent, though a few things looked a bit out of place. When the goons from Project Aires had grabbed Erica, they hadn’t been concerned with being overly neat.
She stooped, scooping up her phone, checking it for messages with more than a small hint of desperation. Jack knew there were a couple from him, left before the blissing and hoped she’d find one from Tyler. She’d yet to reach him and Jack knew worry was gnawing at her.
Unsure where to go, he set his bags by the stairs and stepped over to right the over turned laundry basket. Habitual neatness drove him to refold the rumpled clothes as Erica tried futilely to call Tyler or Lisa. Neither of them answered.
“Damn it!” she said, slapping a palm down onto the counter top and dropping the phone. “Where is he?”
There really wasn’t anything that Jack could say to make her feel better. If Tyler wasn’t answering, there wasn’t much else she could do at the moment without revealing that she hadn’t succumbed to Anna’s bliss. Anyone who had surely wouldn’t have any concerns for their child aboard the mother ship.
Quietly, Jack stepped to her side and laid his hand atop hers. Without looking at him, she responded by curling her fingers around his, squeezing tightly.
Hand in hand, they stood in the silence, battered and wounded but still in the fight. Both of them were aware that their chances of survival were scant at best, but neither had it in them to surrender.
Together, they’d fight until they couldn’t.
Chapter 2
Comments, pretty please?
Author: kaitlia777
Author's e-mail/website: kaitlia777@yahoo.com
Fandom: V 2009
Summary: Picks up where Season 2 ended.
Type / Pairings: Jack/Erica, Joshua/Lisa
Main characters: Jack Landry, Erica Evans, Joshua, Lisa
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Spoilers: Anything from Seasons 1 &2 is fair game.
Beta: N/A
Disclaimer: Don’t own any of the recognizable character, just taking them out to play!
Author's Notes: C’mon, I couldn’t leave it at that, lol!
New York City was never silent.
Except now it was.
Amidst the crowd of living, breathing statues, Agent Erica Evans stood with her arms wrapped firmly around Jack Landry. He, like everyone else, was immobile, standing with his face tipped skyward, gazing up at the V mother ship hanging ominously overhead.
Clearly, Anna had figured out how to Bliss humans.
How could they fight that? It seemed almost impossible. Almost, but not entirely.
Shaking herself, Erica shifted to stand in front of Jack, calling his name again, refusing to release her hold on him. “Jack,” she said, both demanding and pleading. “Jack, please look at me!”
She reached up, cupping his face in her hands, rough stubble against her palms. “Please Jack, don’t give in. I need you. Fight it!”
She wasn’t sure how many times, in how many variations she repeated that sentiment and she let out a breath that was almost a sob when he moved, blinking and lowering his eyes to meet hers.
The others were still immobilized by their euphoria.
“Erica,” he croaked, then his eyes widened almost comically. He glanced around, even as his hands found purchase on her waist, grasping at her hips almost desperately. “Oh, no….”
His murmur was soft and troubled as he figured out what had happened, so, drawing his gaze back to her own, she asked, “Jack, do you feel all right? The Bliss….”
“No. Yes. I don’t…” he paused and shook his head, one hand dropping from her hip to fumble in his own pocket. “I’m me, but that was….”
His voice trailed off and he looked away from the sky, blessing himself with a hand now clutching his Rosary Beads in a white knuckled grip.
She wanted to give him time to collect himself, but that was a luxury they couldn’t afford. Finally releasing her grip on his jaw, she took a firm hold of his arm and began to lead him back the way she’d come, back to the entrance to Project Aires.
That’s when she noticed others had followed her up, out of the bunker. She saw Chris and Paul amongst the men and women trying, and failing, to shake sense back into random civilians as she had with Jack. A few people seemed to have been galvanized into motion, but they ignored everyone around them, wandering off with vacant smiles on their faces.
Ryan had been able to deny himself bliss because of his love for Val. Joshua had once thrown it off with revolutionary spirit and just recently had tossed off a more thorough attempt at brainwashing. Lisa, her feelings for Tyler making her question her mother, turned her back on Bliss in favor of true feelings.
Since that first night in the warehouse, Erica knew she and Jack had shared…a connection. Sure, it had suffered some stress recently, mostly due to her brief foray with the dark side, but still it was there. Somewhere, lost in Anna’s bliss, he’d heard her voice, felt her nearness and realized something was wrong. He’d rallied and shaken off the intoxicating influence, though he was still clearly dazed.
“We’re not alone,” she murmured reassuringly to Jack, though she wasn’t sure how much of his attention was on her. He was still fingering the Rosary a little desperately, frowning pensively as he let her lead him along, so she didn’t push. Instead, she called out, “Chris!”
Her partner and boss reacted to her voice, both abandoning their unresponsive blissed people to jog in her direction. Erica broke into a trot to meet them and Jack kept pace.
“He like them?” Chris asked, eyeballing Jack and the way Erica had her arm looped through his.
“No,” Erica said, her voice chorusing with Jack’s as he gave eyed Chris and Paul in return before looking to Erica and asking, “What exactly…How weren’t you effected?”
“We were underground.” Kendrick and Bolling frowned at her unhappily, but she shot them a dark look. They’d brought her into Aires and Jack was with her. That was that.
“The better question is why weren’t you effected?” Chris asked and Erica was puzzled by the bottled anger her old friend seemed to be directing at Jack.
“I was,” Jack replied offhandedly, turning his troubled gaze to the oblivious crowd. “It was…peace. Everything I’ve ever done that weighed heavily on my soul…it was just gone. But I heard you, distorted, like I was underwater. Then I knew something just wasn’t right….”
It was clear he was speaking to Erica, even if he wasn’t looking at her. Blinking, Jack shook his head, trying to sort out the vague impressions dancing at the edges of his consciousness. “Sorry, it was just very strange.”
“The important thing is that you fought it,” Erica said, free hand patting him on the chest. “We know we can fight, like they do.”
“They?” Kendrick asked, clearly puzzled.
All at once, realization crashed down on Erica. Sure, project Aires knew about the V’s, had known about them for years. It had been foolish to think they’d gone undetected on Earth for decades. She should have known better.
But clearly, they didn’t know that the Fifth Column resistance had been begun by a V and not a human.
It was clearly time for them to pool what they knew. Hopefully, it would be enough to help them fight.
Something was different.
Something felt different.
Medical bag tucked neatly under his arm, Joshua shook himself mentally as he left Anna’s quarters. Logically, he knew there had been no discernable change. The ship’s environmental control saw to that, but he was certain he’d felt a chill when he’d been informed that Amy had blissed humanity when Anna could not.
In fact, the queen’s attempt had weakened her and Joshua had left her in her room to recover, Amy curled up beside her and Marcus watching them both intently.
If Joshua didn’t know better, he would have sworn he saw a look of fear in Marcus’s eyes.
The humans aboard the ship were acting normally. Perhaps, because they had already shown to have allied themselves with her by moving to the ships, she felt they posed less of a possibility of revolution.
Crossing one of the open plan common rooms, lost in thought, Joshua was startled by a chirpy greeting.
“Hi, Doctor Joshua. Nice night, huh?”
Amongst the live aboards there was a small cluster of teen age girls. They seemed to move in a pack, accompanied by an ever present cloud of too sweet perfume and a low hum of high pitched music from their Ipods. Much to Joshua’s confusion, they seemed to be in his proximity a statistically improbable amount of time and never failed to attempt to engage him in conversation.
Peering down at the Alpha of the group, the one who seemed to speak for them all, he inclined his head. “It is,” he agreed, not wanting to get in to the fact that the entire ship was climate controlled. He had a feeling that would needlessly extend the conversation.
Then something caught his eye and he looked more intently at one of the other girls. “You’ve changed your hair,” he said, taking in the long, wavy blond tresses. It looked quite like how Lisa often wore hers. “It looks lovely.”
The girl flushed and touched her hair, murmuring, “Thanks.”
With that the others all burst out giggling and they moved off to huddle on one of the couches, waving to him as they went.
Of all the humans he’d met, teenage females were probably the strangest.
As he made his way into the less populated areas of the ship, Joshua gathered his thoughts. Getting Lisa off of the ship would be difficult, if not impossible, but now he had an idea….
Sitting in the odd, vine covered, egg shaped chair, Lisa blinked, tears trickling down her cheeks. The air was damp and slightly chilly. Had it been warmer, it would have been humid and nearly comfortable.
But it wasn’t warm.
She’d been entirely alone since the image of her double, ripping out Tyler’s throat, had disappeared. When she heard the sound of the secret entrance, she assumed it was her mother, come to rub in her victory once again.
But it was not Mother who stepped into view, but a much more welcome sight.
“Joshua!”
As she said his name, Lisa surged to her feet. She had feared that Mother might have discovered his involvement in the attempted coup. His presence led her to believe he was still successfully playing his role as a dutiful, obedient minion.
“Lisa,” he greeted her, warm, troubled eyes assessing her for damage. “Are…you hurt?”
She shook her head and blurted out the thing gnawing at her thoughts. “She made me watch…Tyler die.”
His expression softened and he stepped toward her, hesitantly raising a hand to touch her arm. “I know. I’m sorry.”
In the cold room his hand seems almost hot enough to sear her skin, but it is a warmth she needed. Collapsing in on herself, Lisa leaned into his chest, burying her face in the soft fabric of his shirt to hide her tears. For a moment, he stood frozen, clearly unsure what to do, but then he embraced her gently.
Later, she realized that Joshua, despite having been in touch with his feelings for far longer than she, had never been in a position to be free with them. He’d probably never hugged anyone before.
They should have been talking, planning, but she just couldn’t. She needed a moment to just mourn, to be comforted by the only person she could trust. Who trusted her, even though she’d screwed up and hadn’t been able to kill her mother.
She wept into his shirt and he made small, comforting sounds, murmured about having a plan. Maybe he did or maybe he was just trying to make her feel better, but it helped just knowing he wanted her to feel better.
When her tears quieted, she turned her face to the side but stayed in the circle of his arms. Who knew how often he’d be able to get down here to see her? She was going to take solace while she could. “Tell me what’s going on,” she requested softly.
She didn’t want to ask, but she had to.
“Your mother attempted to bliss the humans. It might have killed her, had Amy not stepped in. She was successful.”
Lisa did not like that child. Dread filled her as she asked, “Are they all…?”
“I don’t know,” he replied honestly, patting her back. “We’ll figure something out. We have to.”
Earlier, she hadn’t thought she could feel anymore hopeless.
She had been wrong.
Even though he was still a bit dazed, Jack had to admit the massive bunker Erica and her coworkers led him down to was a lot more impressive than Hobbes’s basement. The place was swarming with men and women from a veritable alphabet of federal agencies, as well as uniformed military officers.
Understandably, everyone was going a little nuts over the sudden, mass blissing of…well, it seemed like very few people had escaped Anna’s influence.
The man in charge, Lars Tremont, was not pleased. A vein in the man’s forehead had threatened to burst when Erica and her co-workers had led Jack into the doomsday bunker, then he’d paused when they said Jack wasn’t a bliss zombie.
That made him suddenly very interesting and, before Jack knew it, he found himself being hustled through a barrage of medical exams, brain scans and debriefings. Dozens of strangers came in and asked him a repetitive series of questions for hours. They introduced themselves in a blur -- FBI (not Erica or anyone he knew), CIA, NSA, CTU, NTAC, ATF, DOD, HLS, a slew of different military representatives (Jack actually found the familiarity something of a relief).
By the time they let him leave with Erica, it was late afternoon. That was disconcerting. The passage of time was hard to judge in an underground bunker. He’d thought she would drop him off at Hobbes’s basement, well, he supposed it was his basement now that the mercenary had disappeared, but she’d put the kibosh on that plan.
She’d simply shaken her head. “Paul sent someone over there and we put our things in my car. You can stay with me.”
The streets were still oddly quiet, though people were going about their daily lives. He was eerily reminded of the Stepford Wives film he’d seen years ago. Everyone seemed serene and just…wrong. New York City was supposed to pulse with life, to hit you like water bursting forth from a dam.
This was barely a trickle.
“Was anyone else unaffected?” he asked grimly, gazing out the window as she drove.
“A few,” she replied, strain clear in her voice. “I wasn’t able to contact Sid or Chad, but Paul told me that several nations around the globe have their own version of Project Aires. And they brought in some very confused transit officers.”
“Transit Police?” He wondered why they hadn’t been effected.
Pulling into her driveway, Erica said, “Apparently they were checking on the report of a body down in the underground tunnels beneath the subway. It seems that anyone far enough below the surface was protected from the bliss.”
“But it could happen again,” Jack said, and shuddered. He dreaded the thought of having that not quite euphoria wash over him. Even in it’s wrongness, it offered a sort of peace he’d never known. It was understandable that those unaware would embrace the feeling. A thought struck. “What about submarines? Did water block the…brainwashing?”
She nodded. “Some of the naval officers have made contact with several sub commanders and they seem to be fine.”
Well, that was something. Shouldering his bags, Jack followed Erica into her home. The house was still and silent, though a few things looked a bit out of place. When the goons from Project Aires had grabbed Erica, they hadn’t been concerned with being overly neat.
She stooped, scooping up her phone, checking it for messages with more than a small hint of desperation. Jack knew there were a couple from him, left before the blissing and hoped she’d find one from Tyler. She’d yet to reach him and Jack knew worry was gnawing at her.
Unsure where to go, he set his bags by the stairs and stepped over to right the over turned laundry basket. Habitual neatness drove him to refold the rumpled clothes as Erica tried futilely to call Tyler or Lisa. Neither of them answered.
“Damn it!” she said, slapping a palm down onto the counter top and dropping the phone. “Where is he?”
There really wasn’t anything that Jack could say to make her feel better. If Tyler wasn’t answering, there wasn’t much else she could do at the moment without revealing that she hadn’t succumbed to Anna’s bliss. Anyone who had surely wouldn’t have any concerns for their child aboard the mother ship.
Quietly, Jack stepped to her side and laid his hand atop hers. Without looking at him, she responded by curling her fingers around his, squeezing tightly.
Hand in hand, they stood in the silence, battered and wounded but still in the fight. Both of them were aware that their chances of survival were scant at best, but neither had it in them to surrender.
Together, they’d fight until they couldn’t.
Chapter 2
Comments, pretty please?