I sit for a long time and let this new, quiet calm settle over me. I hadn't expected it, to be perfectly honest with myself, to be so seemingly at ease with saying goodbye after the initial rush of panic had worked it's way through me. James' words echo in my head and I chase them around into the corners of my mind to catch them to be stored for however long I will need them before he comes back. I stare at the blank computer screens, the white noise easing into the forefront of my consciousness and pushing out all other thoughts. Effectively, I let myself zone out. It's a pleasant moment for me to savor the fading echo of the conversation I'd just had.

It takes Natasha clearing her throat before I come back to myself. She's watching me with no hint in her face of reacting to what she's overheard and I wonder if she has already slipped into that state of preparedness for a line of questioning from me. There's a calm in her features that is masking the readiness inside her. I don't think I can out-question her, especially not when I consider how tired I am. And drained. So instead, I decide to play on what I think is our friendship and see if she will be honest with me.

"Where are they going?" I ask. She crosses her arms and settles herself back in her chair with a little sigh, but never takes her eyes from mine.

"They're crossing the Void," She answers.

"What does that mean?" I say, and while I appreciate that she gave me a direct answer, I don't feel like it's complete.

"It's a division between two worlds," she continues. "They're going across to find the heart of Hydra and kill it. End the cutting off heads, just go straight for the source."

A little bit of feeling is returning to my limbs, a familiar curiosity over new information.

"What else is there?" I ask, figuring that my request at directness has worked thus far, but I can see in the slight uptick of the corner of her mouth that this is the information being withheld. I would get frustrated if I had the energy for it.

"I can't tell you," she says as gently as she can. "It was Barnes' decision. He assessed the risks and knew that telling you everything, even before he left, might do more harm than good."

"Are they coming back?" I ask abruptly. Her eyes shift a little and it's a kinder version of pity I see. I hate what it insinuates, that despite her feeling like I needed his reassuring words, I am not able to handle the whole truth when I request it.

"They have every intention to," she says, blatantly withholding. But this in and of itself is a concession on her part to at least try to answer my question without actually answering it. Tap dancing around truths. I can't help myself when I laugh a little at what she tells me. It's like every fiber in my being wants me to scream at her that there was no mistaking the hesitation in his voice, at the way he faltered and couldn't answer me. But she must know.

"I'm sorry but that's not helping me feel any better," I admit.

"It wasn't meant to," she says and she doesn't smile. "Would it really help, to know everything at this point? Do you want to carry that with you while you're dealing with everything else here?"

"He didn't even ask," I snap back. "We've always agreed before, that there are certain things I didn't want to know. But we would always find a way to define those boundaries and agree on them. The difference is that this time he didn't even ask. He just left me here."

I get up from the chair, the anger dripping out of my body as quickly as it had come on. She doesn't try to stop me, something I'm grateful for because I don't want to fight with her anymore. I don't want to be in the same room with her either. My mind screams at me to run, to get away, to scoop up Owen and leave. But I don't forget that it's the middle of the night and I am still weak from my surgery. And I especially don't want to admit that this is probably the best place for me to be at the moment.

Despite the protests in my body and my brain I have to walk slowly through the Tower while I settle on one tiny lightbulb in the back of my head that could be a way out of the uncertainty. There is still one person, who could give me any answers at this point, one person who might be willing to spill it all even though it might destroy me.

The medical wing is quiet, peaceful, lit by the ambient light from the windows and a series of tracks of lights that illuminate paths around the wing. The overheads are shut off during the night to keep a sense of routine but I move through the semi-darkness with the assured footsteps of memory guiding me. It hasn't been long since I've been back here anyways, I just hope she is still here.

I find Morgan le Fay still strapped to her bed in the curtained off area in the back of the medical wing. Midnight on the wing has never been a busy time and I spend a few uninterrupted minutes watching her sleeping form. No, maybe not sleeping, caught again somewhere in a drugged haze. Kept just under the surface of the water with the steady drip of medications through an IV. No one knows I'm here, the halls were empty on my trip up here, and for a few minutes I let myself entertain the idea of unplugging her machines. Or slipping a needle full of air into her bloodstream to drop an embolism into her brain. Or slamming an overdose of god-knows-what into her. The impulse to end her doesn't last long. I still need her, so doing her in wouldn't do me much good at all.

But I can't bring myself to wake her up. Not just yet. Maybe I want her to know more of this sensation of losing so much time, of sleeping through parts of your life and waking to find a completely new reality surrounding you. My mind drifts to James, who must feel like he woke up from a deep sleep the day he came back to the world. The day that he was yanked from the haze of the Soldier and saw his friend beneath his fist. I think of the map we made of his memories and my place among them, of the life we'd managed to build together in the intervening years and how it was all hanging in the balance again because of this person in front of me.

Would he have gone off again if Morgan le Fay hadn't attacked us? If I was still carrying Sadie safely inside me would we still be driven apart? Maybe she had gotten what she wanted all along. Separated like this we were weaker, I could admit that to myself right now, that I needed James nearby to prop me up when I was despairing the most. I let out my held breath in a long sigh, disturbing only the still air and heavy silence immediately around me. My head is starting to hurt. To throb from chasing my thoughts around and from the lateness of the hour.

Morgan le Fay can wait, lying in her bed there is little evidence that she will be up and about any time soon. I decide to leave, my questions suspended for the time being. Besides, I need to rest and recover some strength before I face her. But I can't take too long, time is slipping through my fingers like wisps of smoke, no matter how much I grasp at it.