A/N: Thank you to those who reviewed, and sorry for not responding, I do appreciate your comments. So here's the next chapter. Hope you enjoy.

You get more than your usual ninety minutes – long haul travel does that to you, and you've never come close to harming Meredith. Not only does your mind not register her as a threat, she can take care of herself – a geek she may be, but her dad was military, you didn't grow up around military men without learning a trick or two for self-defence. Still, you're woken up far too early by your cell-phone. Meredith groans and buries her head under one of the pillows as you locate your phone in the set of jeans you discarded the night before as you crawled into bed.

"What?" you snarl into it.

"Where the hell are you?" Nate's voice demands and you stop just short of a groan.

"It's called a vacation Nate. I need one. I can't exactly keep going at the pace you're setting. You guys don't get injured often, I bloody well do! I should be back soon."

You hang up and switch the phone off, tossing it to one side. You don't want the team involved, they don't need to know this side of your life. Sure they've met Meredith, but they don't need to know about the family you left behind once. You roll back to curl up against Meredith again and realize you must be really off your game as you encounter only the still warm indent where her body had lain, her glasses on the bedside cabinet – she's practically blind without them, but she'll know the layout of her house. You hear the shower and realize she's freshening up. Ten minutes later, she comes back out, her hair wrapped in a towel, another around her body, and her fingers tracing along the wall until she reaches the bed and retrieves her glasses. She lifts an eyebrow and jerks her head towards the en suite.

"Go, shower now," she orders as she moves over to the wardrobe to grab clothes, not even waiting to see if you obey. When you get out the shower, Meredith's at the mirror, a cleared patch in the steam so she can apply face-cream and pull a brush through her hair. When you return in clothes, you nudge her out of the way with your hip as she's plaiting her hair. It's friendly, familiar, even the towel she snaps towards your ass in retaliation is normal. It can almost make you forget.

Once the two of you are happy with your appearance – it's only family, but sometimes your appearance is the only shield you have against reality's harshness (and Sophie would probably love to hear you say something like that) – you head for the main ranch-house. Ilea's in the kitchen, sat at the table, staring out the window. She doesn't start at your entrance, just offers a bleak smile.

"I wasn't sure you'd come," her accent hasn't faded, even if her voice is muted.

"What must you think of my Ilea?" you ask, lifting an eyebrow.

She looks up and offers another bleak, almost dead smile, her eyes not dancing with the light they once held. "I was thinking that some people don't like to see their loved ones die."

You grimace slightly, remembering that while Ilea had been crippled, she hadn't been unconscious as Morse breathed his last. Dan might not be dead yet, but they all knew he was dying. "Where's Ma and Dad?"

"Upstairs," Ilea supplies, "Dan's not up yet." That's unusual, he was always up at the crack of dawn, an old habit that refused to die. "It might be a good day…" A sad smile flickers across her lips. "Don't be surprised if he doesn't know who you are though. Good days don't always mean memories."

You don't ask what she means, just heads upstairs to find Sylvia and Dan. Sylvia is outside the bedroom, eyes squeezed tightly shut, but she knows you're there, holding her arms out to you in what's half an order, half a plea for comfort. She looks tired, and old, two things you've never equated with the vibrant Jamaican woman before. You wrap her in your arms, letting her sob quietly into your shoulder for a few moments, although there's no tears accompanying the heaving of her body – you assume it's the same as with Meredith, Sylvia has no more tears to cry for the unfairness of this situation. Then again, you all learnt a long time ago that 'fair' wasn't something that commonly applied to you, didn't you?

"How you doing Ma?" you ask quietly, not sure if Dan's awake yet.

"I've been better," Sylvia replies, pulling back from you and forcing a false smile onto her lips. If you didn't know her, you might have been fooled, might've thought that the light glimmering in her eyes was happiness, not another emotion entirely. But you do know her, and you know that she's trying hard to conceal how she's really feeling. The glimmer is the echo of tears shed, of pain hidden, of grief unspoken.

"Don't hide with me Ma. You've never hidden from me in the past. Please don't start now." You can feel pain in your chest, and dread in your stomach.

"It's hard," Sylvia's false smile has dropped, and her eyes have flickered to one side, staring at a spot down by your elbow, seemingly entranced by the scar that you got from trying to teach Parker to cook (Parker and sharp cooking knives don't mix, you're never trying that one again). "He keeps asking for Martha…"

Martha. Your biological mother – because she's not really your mom, you never really knew her. Sylvia's your Ma. She's the one who raised you, who taught you, who comforted you after nightmares, who helped you overcome your claustrophobia (and what a yelling match had occurred after Dan found out that Sky and Sylvia had locked his son in a woodshed at his son's behest), who loved you regardless of what you did (most notably when you beat the crap out of one of your fellows on the team when he'd been harassing a girl who had plainly said 'No').

"I mean, I know he loves me, or loved me, it's all a little confusing right now… But I could never hold a candle to Martha. Hell, you must think I'm mad. Jealous of dead-woman who my Alzheimer's suffering husband thinks is still alive."

You shake your head. "No. I think you've never had to suffer from him asking for a wife who isn't you – except when Ilea was playing his wife and even then you knew better."

You attempt at humour falls flat as your voice catches and you can't quite bring a smile to your face. You curse yourself silently – he's not dead yet! Just pluck up the courage and go in and see him.

As ever, Sylvia seems to read your mind – she always can, she used to read people for a living, she might even be better than Sophie (Sylvia knows how to apologize when she screws up, but she never really needed to, the team knew she was sorry, and she never double-crossed them, she wouldn't). "I won't blame you if you don't want to see him."

"I feel like I should…" you whisper, looking at the floor, guilt twisting in your gut as you realize that you don't want to see him. You don't want to find out whether he remembers you or not. You don't want to look him in the eye and see no recognition. You don't want to see an empty shell that used to be one of the most formidable crew leads in the Northern Hemisphere.

A hand cups your cheek, and Sylvia draws your face up to look her in the eye. She's slightly taller than you, not so much without a set of high-heels (she was always four or five inches taller on the job, Dan was slightly taller than her when she was out of heels, and you're considerably smaller, Meredith's even smaller than you), but enough that you have to look up slightly to meet her eyes, which you still try to avoid doing. Eventually, after much eye-shifting, and a gentle snort of almost-amused laughter, and a slight tap around the back of your head, your eyes meet, warm, chocolate brown meeting steely blue-grey, a soft smile is playing on her lips, it's sad, but it's genuine.

"Oh honey…"

The warmth in her voice nearly makes you break. Nearly. You manage not to. You aren't going to break down in front of the woman who's losing her husband. Not a chance. Not the woman who's already missing him, the woman who swore to 'love, honour and obey' him, even if the certificate wasn't signed with her real name (neither was Dan's for that matter, and the names weren't what mattered, it was their hearts, their minds, who they really were). He wouldn't do that to her. He wouldn't make her feel worse, not when he could see her already battling with her emotions.

"Baby boy, it's not about what you feel you should do. It's about what you want to do. If you don't want to see him, don't. There's days I don't want to see him. Honey, do what you want to do. Baby boy, don't force yourself to do something you think you'll regret."

Baby boy, her pet name for you (she might use 'honey', and 'dear', and 'pet', but she uses those with the others, 'baby boy' was just for you, like 'bookworm' was reserved for Meredith), it's almost your undoing. The tears are welling closer to the surface, you fight them down with everything you have. You're not going to break down in front of someone who's already suffering so much.

You hesitate. You can't lie to Sylvia. You never really could. Unlike Sophie, Nate, Parker and Hardison, she knows you. She watched you grow. She's known all the incarnations of you, and she can still see straight through to the central you. Your essence, you soul – not that you really believe in an immortal soul, if you did, you'd probably go insane knowing you were going straight to hell for what you've done. She sees the man who is still essentially the little boy she helped raise into charming southern gent. Finally you find you can reply.

"I'm sorry Ma, I just can't…"

She smiles that sad smile at you and nods. "I understand baby boy. You want to remember him as who he was. Not who he's becoming."

You want to kick yourself for ever even considering that Sylvia wouldn't understand your point of view – hell, Meredith's probably already said that to her. You smile at her, and it's painful, and sad, and you really just want to put your fist through the wall, but there's genuine gratitude in it.

"I'll talk to you properly later," Sylvia promises you, pushing you back towards the stairs. "I assume you're staying with Mer in the bunk-house?"

You nod, a clogging sensation filling the back of your throat, you feel like you can't breathe, like you've been crying for hours with only short gasping breaths that aren't really enough to supply your oxygen needs. You kiss Sylvia's cheek quickly before you hurry down the stairs, and practically run out, past Meredith and Ilea who don't try to stop you and don't call after you. They don't try to follow either, and you're not quite sure whether you're relieved about that or upset. Doesn't a family comfort each other? Then again, they know you – like Sylvia knows you, perhaps not as well, or maybe better, but either way, they know you well enough. Right now, you'd probably just lash out at them, and you don't want to push either of them away when you know you're all going to need all the support you can get before this is over. (You don't want to hurt either of them if you lash out physically). After all, family looks out for one another, that's what you've always been taught, that's what you've always known. (You don't really remember being taught it, you just remember knowing it, perhaps you learnt if from watching the others).

You find your way to the stables – there's only a few of horses here now. You know Sky's old gelding had to be put down a couple of months before, and Morse and Ilea never particularly enjoyed riding, and consequentially never saw the point of owning horses (not that Ilea had any use for one now…). Sylvia's dependable quarter horse Glenfiddich (she always had a thing for whiskey, Scottish one's in particular) is snoozing peaceably in his stall. Meredith's quiet, sweet appaloosa Ian (you're never letting her read books like The Raw Shark Texts again) is watching you curiously, nickering quietly when you move closer to him, you offer him a brief scratch behind the ears. Your own sorrel mustang Flax offers an exuberant welcome, snorting happily when you offer her the apple you snagged on your way through the kitchen on your way into the house.

You stroke her nose gently, your eyes straying to Dan's proud akhal-teke. A horse that he'd won in a game of poker – it reminds you of the job you pulled at Kensington race track, and Nate winning Baltimore in an attempt to help Willie. (Only with Dan things would've gone so much smoother, IYS wouldn't have instantly been on their tails because they wouldn't know Dan, and Sylvia would've seduced Sterling if required, and you would never have made the mistake of that afternoon with Aimee in the horse-stall). The golden horse arches her neck, clearly aware she's under scrutiny and making the most of it while she can. Martha. Named after your departed mother. You leave Flax, much to her displeasure and move over to Martha, stroking her neck, the pleased shudder that runs through her as you hit what's obviously a sensitive spot.

You don't even realize that tears have begun to sneak down your face to begin with. Martha does though, and she snuffles your hair gently, almost pressing a kiss to you head. You chuckle quietly (bitterly) and it's now that you realize you're crying (sobbing, breath hitching, shoulders hitching). Now that you realize the tears streaming down your face, the hitches in your shoulders as you sob and you wonder how you didn't notice the hitches before. You bury your face in the ever-patient Martha's neck, shuddering against her as you cry, your tears soaking into her glossy coat and your hands reflexively clenching and unclenching.

It hurts, damnit all! Why does it hurt so much? He's not dead yet! Or is he? Is he really alive if he can't remember who the people around him are? What they mean to him? You snarl at yourself, startling Martha slightly, but she doesn't pull away, just tosses her head slightly, the muscles of her neck flexing against your face. Of course he's bloody alive! A pulse and breathing meant he was alive. Not having memories didn't mean he wasn't alive, it just meant he couldn't remember! You're suddenly furious, inexplicably, at them for not telling you sooner – you should've been told! He's your father! At yourself, for not picking up the phone sooner – they could hunt him down, but what good would that do, wasting time and energy that could be used looking after Dan to tracking down you when you didn't answer at first. At life for doing this to you – after all you've all been through, couldn't, just for once, just for one Goddamned minute, couldn't something go right? Just as suddenly as the anger appears it's gone, leaving the tears of fury painted on your face, and the grief as strong as ever, the pain still twisting in your gut, the helplessness you feel at the entire situation. You can take on a dozen men with guns without blinking, you can wade into a fight without appropriate back-up, and yet you can't help your family when they need you most. At least, not in anyway that you feel matters.

After what feels like hours, you let go of Martha's neck and slide down the stall door, leaning your head back against it, and closing your eyes, trying futilely to stop the tears that are still running down your cheeks. (You tell yourself that it's a choice, and it has nothing to do with the fact that your knees have gone week, and you probably would've fallen if you hadn't sat down first). You slam your fist into your knee, wishing it was a wall, wishing you had a punch-bag to beat the crap out of – there will be one somewhere, but you're not ready to face Ilea and Meredith again to ask where it is, and you don't want to risk running into someone when you go in search of it yourself.

You'll just wait here a while, it's warm, there's the comforting sounds and smells of horses all around you. The rough wood of the stall door feels good against your back, and you relax against it – as much as you relax at all that is, cause you don't completely relax anymore do you? You just offer a parody of it to reassure your team that you're alright. You consider taking Flax and riding out to find somewhere deserted to scream out your grief, but you're not willing to do that alone. Even the sure-footed Flax could take a tumble, and if no-one knows where you are, things could turn deadly. You're upset, not wishing for death.

Not your own at least.