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[beentodamascus]

The bookshelf was giving Adam more and more books written in Farsi, and he was taking it as an opportunity to practice; his Farsi had never been as fluent as his Arabic, and he'd always felt like he didn't have enough time to polish up. Time, time. All he had on his bloody hands now was time

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[9mmshotglass]

Coffee was the first thing on her mind when she walked into the kitchen and then she stopped, stilling, and then all desire for it fled. She moved, her voice tight in her throat, urgent. She knew that look. She knew it. Shock and horror and memory.

"Adam."

Silence.

"Adam?"

There was no approximation, no English translation, of the phrase she uttered (it took away from the Farsi meaning, ground it into something that sounded stupid). He was gone, gone like Crews in one of those moments. Her fingers closed around his wrist, the pressure firm, there.

"Come back," she said throwing every ounce of firmness behind her voice. "Come back."

[9mmshotglass]

She was cold draped around him, feeling the tension and the sorrow with such acuteness it was sharp enough to cut. Memories could be achingly real when they were disturbed from their carefully laid graves and struck back with an unholy vengeance. She knew that intimately.

Dani squeezed her eyes tight and her touch was firm but gentle, just reminding him that he wasn't alone.

No one was alone, not really. There were over three hundred people on this godforsaken island, so technically no one was alone. Except in their head. You can't go home when you were stuck in your head because there was no home to go to. Just you and the what-ifs, the sharpness of memory, grief, loss. They were a thousand razor blades and a thousand cuts.

Her thumb brushed across his cheek to wipe the tear away.

"I can't make it better," Dani whispered. "But I'm here."

[beentodamascus]

He could have been fine. He hadn't forgotten, nothing like that. Fiona was still the first thing that he thought of when he woke up. It had been two years, and she was still the first thing that he thought of.

Oh, Fi.

His arms went around Dani, holding on tight, holding on for dear life. The silver was on the table, and his eyes kept going back to it. It had looked so beautiful on Fi's jacket that morning.

[9mmshotglass]

Dani didn't protest at the tightness or the way her healing bruises flared, she just held on right back ad rocked him gently. She was turned away from the table, but she knew he was staring at whatever it was that had hit him so hard, could feel it in his grip. If she said anything at all, it wasn't words. Words were fucked up, nothing was fine, the Universe was still moving, rushing by.

Can't take the past back, you know. We can only keep moving through the present. Everything is present and there's no future. Just now. And now. And now. It was close to what Crews had been talking about that time she hung up on him. Car phones and Zen. She smoothed her cheek against Adam's hair, murmured to keep herself where she needed to be, to remind him she was there