Sand Castles
Time: During and directly after the season three episode “Thicker Than Blood”.
Hayley Simmons was fighting for her life. This was not an unusual state of affairs for her, but it had all happened so quickly. One minute she, Jeff, and about twenty other Resistance leaders had been waiting for Liam to show up, and the next they were being attacked from every direction.
Within half a second, Hayley had recognized their assailants as Volunteers, whipped out her gun, and started shooting back.
“Scatter!” she yelled over the deafening fire. “They’ve got us surrounded.”
But there was nowhere to run. There were four enemy fighters to every Resistance fighter, and they had bigger guns, better angles, and the element of surprise. In short, the Resistance didn’t have a chance.
After a few minutes almost everyone who wasn’t dead was futilely trying to get out of the old building. It’s a death trap, thought Hayley in rage. A damn death trap. She was taking shots at the enemy from behind a crumbling pillar, trying to put down as much of a cover as possible for the remaining Resistance leaders.
“It’s no use!” Jeff yelled from behind her. “We have to get out of here!” Jeff was her most trusted friend and the best fighter she’d ever seen.
“And go where?!” Hayley replied, taking out two of the faceless Volunteers. “We’re going to die no matter what we do.”
She felt Jeff grab her roughly be the arm and shove her towards a hallway littered with the dead from both sides. “Go!” he said. “I’ll cover you.”
“Like hell,” she muttered. “If I’m going to die, I’m going to do it on my feet.” She whirled towards the advancing forces and began firing without bothering to get behind anything. And I want to see it coming, she added silently.
“What are you doing?!”
Hayley didn’t answer, as it was fairly self-evident what she was doing. Just then, out of the corner of her eye she saw a movement. She spun but didn’t have time to shoot. As if in slow motion, Hayley saw the ball of fire hurtle towards her.
This is it, she thought, steeling herself for the killing shot. At least I get to see what kills me. A split-second before the energy beam hit the spot where she was standing, she saw Jeff crouch and leap towards her.
“No! ” she screamed as he hit her with force of a freight train, driving her to the floor. She felt his body shudder with the impact of the bolt meant for her, and then everything went black as her head hit the concrete.
When Hayley awoke, everything was dark. There was a crushing weight on her chest, and a horrible stench all around. She couldn’t breathe; there was no fresh air. Panicked and stifled, she began to struggle, but hysteria got her nowhere.
With the tightly controlled willpower of a born soldier, she forced herself to stop and lie still. After a moment she realized that there was air, but not nearly enough of it. She was disoriented, in shock, and going through adrenaline withdrawal. Sickened, she also realized that the weight on top of her was a body.
Drawing in as much air as her lungs could scrape up, she began to work at pushing the body off of her. Not an easy proposition, being a little less than five feet and with a paralyzed arm. Somehow, she managed it. There was an amazing force of will in her, and she turned it all towards her task, not allowing any other thought to creep in.
With one last push, she threw off her prison and dragged herself out from under it. Giving herself only a moment to fill her lungs, she flipped the body on its back.
“Jeff,” she whispered, swallowing a lump in her throat. There was a hole blasted clean through his chest. No wonder she’d been trapped under him. He was a bearish man, over six feet and husky, but somehow lean. Not only had he saved her life by taking the blast, but he’d covered her completely when he fell, concealing her from the enemy checking to make sure everyone was dead.
Hayley pushed his light hair from his forehead affectionately and closed his eyes. “You always had to be the hero,” she said bitterly. “Never could let anyone else be the one to sacrifice.” She bit her lip. “Sleep well, old friend. I’m sorry I can’t give you a proper burial, but… You understand.”
She knew he would. He was a good soldier, and he knew that in battle one couldn’t afford to get sentimental over giving someone a proper send off.
Edging away from his body, she began to assess her injuries. One leg was broken, but it was a clean break across the shin. Her ribs were bruised…maybe broken. Time would tell. She had a myriad of scrapes and cuts and a piece of shrapnel in her shoulder. But she was alive.
“God only knows why,” she muttered to herself, the emotions of relief, guilt, and grief warring within her. Finally, she settled on a cold rage. Hate was something Hayley knew, an old, dependable friend. Right now, she needed something to keep her going, and hate could do that…for now. It could give her the determination and strength to live, if only to exact revenge on those who had caused this atrocity.
Later, hate would have to give way to rationality, grief, and even healing, but for now it was all she had. Clinically, and with raw efficiency, Hayley set her leg without a cry of pain, despite the fact that there was no one to hear, and fashioned herself a splint using debris from the firefight and Jeff’s old jacket as a bandage.
Tearing a strip from her pants leg, she made sling for her skrilled arm. Her old sling had come off in the fighting and was lost beneath the carnage. Gritting her teeth, Hayley scrambled to her feet. The pain from her broken leg was intense, but not unbearable. Most people would have passed out right then and there, but Hayley knew from long experience that her threshold of pain was much higher than that of “most people”.
A blessing and curse. Forcing herself to walk, she surveyed the battlefield. Rage welled up at the sight. Dammit, this was supposed to be a safehouse! Cooling her anger to the level she needed, Hayley went from room to room, counting the dead and looking for survivors.
She found none. All nineteen other Resistance leaders were dead; most with their eyes open, still clutching their weapons. Despite the pain and revulsion she felt, Hayley couldn’t help but feel a touch of pride at this. Also at the fact that among the dead were more than a fair share of Volunteers.
“You fought well, brothers and sisters in arms,” she said softly. One by one, she turned them over, closed their unseeing eyes, and placed their weapons respectfully on their chests. Anyone seeing this would know someone had survived, but they would figure it our sooner or later anyway, from the body count. Besides, this was important.
She knew them all. Every face, every body. Luet, her mind supplied, unbidden. Jean-Paul, Mack, Jeremiah, Sierra, Marie, Rob, Pete, Hunter, Christy. The list went on.
After making sure there was no one else alive, Hayley’s survival instincts kicked in. Soon, someone would be coming to clean up, investigate the massacre, and to look for her. She had to find someplace to hide out.
She hobbled to a door of the building. She was in a row of deserted warehouses, condemned buildings, and abandoned houses. A ghost town, she thought. Safest place we could think of. She spotted a broken-down home on the edge of the complex. She could get to it, but no farther, not without a vehicle or medical attention. It wasn’t nearly far enough, but it would have to do. At least, she assured herself, if they come looking for me, they probably won’t expect me to be so stupid as to hang around this place.
Before she set out on what was sure to be an agonizing journey, Hayley took a jacket from a dead Resistance member. “I’m sorry, Sam, but I need this right now.”
Half-dragging her broken leg, Hayley began to limp towards her target. Wincing at her vulnerability in the open field, she went as fast as she could physically go. Finally, she reached her destination. A condemned house had never looked so good. Almost crawling now, she pulled herself up the front steps and into the house.
Not even bothering to look at the rest of the house, Hayley single-mindedly dragged herself to the downstairs bathroom. There was a hole in the wall, making a window into what had been the dining room of the home, and the window to the outside was broken making it rather drafty, but she didn’t care about that.
Her hope was that that former residents hadn’t taken everything with them when they’d gone. She was right. In fact, it seemed that they had cleared out without taking much of anything. Rummaging through the medicine cabinet, Hayley found a half-empty bottle of rubbing alcohol without a cap, some slightly dirty gauze, and five aspirin, not in a bottle.
As she began to tend to her injuries, Hayley caught a glimpse of her reflection in the cracked mirror. She hardly recognized herself. Dirty and smudged, caked with dried blood, her face seemed suddenly gaunt and starved. Her cloudy-blue eyes were haunted, there was a laceration tracing her left eyebrow, and her lips were chapped and split. Her cheekbones were black-and-blue, and her right eye was swollen and purple-yellow with a hideous bruise.
Gingerly touching her face in amazement, Hayley tried to squash her emotions, and failed badly. Tears sprang to her eyes in an embarrassing loss of control. Wiping them hurriedly, she turned to finish treating her wounds, but she was again stopped as the rough edges of a broken fingernail caught a snarl in her hair.
Glancing once again at the mirror, Hayley this time concentrated on her hair. She had allowed it to grow to almost shoulder-length in the past few months, and now it was in a horrible mess. Hayley Simmons was not one to worry about her hair, but this was really bad. It was tangled into a hopeless rat’s nest and soaked in dirt and grease. It was even singed from a couple shots that had come too close for comfort. Worst of all, it was matted with sweat and blood.
Jeff’s blood, she thought. At that thought, Hayley was overcome by a compulsive need to get her hair scrubbed clean of all blood and traces of the battle. It was extremely disturbing, but something in her demanded that it was necessary.
She raked her fingers through her hair, but it was hopeless. Driven by the urge, she drew her knife and began obsessively hacking away at the matted blond locks. As she cut, tears began to flow. She couldn’t stop them, and worked even more frantically at her hair.
Soon, she had most of the gore out, and her hair was shorter than she’d ever had it before. It still wasn’t enough, and in a shockingly extravagant waste of supplies, she poured nearly half her stock of alcohol over her head. As she scrubbed her scalp with her fingertips, an irrational sense of relief overcame her.
“Clean,” she breathed, though it wasn’t true. She was as dirty as ever, but she was free from Jeff’s blood, and that’s what mattered.
As her hysteria faded, Hayley realized the back of her head was stinging. She touched the spot gently and felt an oozing gash underneath the shorn hair. She recognized it as the place where her head had connected with the ground.
She carefully wrapped nearly half the gauze around her head, letting her hair flop over the bandage. Then she began the rather difficult task of getting the shrapnel out of her shoulder. Her left hand was the paralyzed one, and, as Hayley found out, using your right hand to get something out of your right shoulder is not easy. Also, she had no tweezers and was forced to use her knife. Eventually, she got it out, and wrapped her shoulder in some of the remaining gauze.
She then carefully peeled off her shirt. There was no way she could get it off without ripping it, so she saved herself the trouble and simply cut it off. She took an old, mildewed towel, cut it into strips, and used it, and the last of the gauze, to bind up her ribs.
Then she wiped her entire body down with the last of the alcohol to make sure none of her cuts got infected. Shivering from the evaporation of the alcohol, Hayley wrapped the jacket tightly around her. It was big on her, as Sam had been quite a tall woman, but it would keep her warm enough.
Exhausted, and faint from loss of blood, Hayley knew she had to find food, water, and get some rest before she could even begin to figure a way out of her predicament.
The roof had caved in over the bathtub, and it had filled with rainwater. It was a rather brackish pool, and she didn’t even want to think of all the diseases she could get from it. But her need for water was greater than her fear of infection, and she forced herself to drink as much as she could hold.
In her dehydrated condition, Hayley didn’t even flinch at the taste. When she was done, she pulled herself shakily to her feet and began to explore her shelter.
The house was run-down, but not completely. The roof was mostly intact, though she wouldn’t bet on it on a rainy day. The outside walls were also intact, as were a few of the windows. She limped to the kitchen, hoping that there might be some food. Searching through the dilapidated cabinets, she found only a few dented, unlabeled cans.
“With my luck, they’re probably dog food,” she muttered. She was hoping they would be canned fruit, though. She needed the sugars badly, because she’d lost so much blood. There was no can opener, but using her knife and a large rock as a hammer, she managed fashion a fairly respectable tool.
The first can she opened was corned beef hash. Cold corned beef hash. That was probably the most revolting thing she could think of, other than dog food or yams. But she needed the food, so she gulped and set to work. It didn’t taste nearly so bad as she had expected, probably because she was so hungry, but she only managed to down half the can.
In a wild hope, she opened another can. “Bingo!” she whispered, hoarsely. There was her fruit. Canned maraschino cherries. All the sugar she could have hoped for. She polished off the whole can and drank the juice to the last drop.
Without even the energy to think, Hayley stumbled into what had been the living room of the old house. There was a rusty, broken set of box springs and a ripped up, soiled mattress on a busted bed frame. In her delirious state, it looked inviting.
There was nothing to cover herself with, so Hayley curled herself in to tight ball, drawing her arms and legs entirely inside the oversized jacket, and jammed herself inside the mattress itself. Not comfortable, not pleasant, but warm.
It was mid-December, and while it had so far been a mild winter, it was winter, and hypothermia was a real danger. Hayley knew there was a good chance she had at least a mild concussion, but she hadn’t slept in more than two days because the way things in the Resistance had been since the crackdown. Now that they’d lost so many leaders…
The thought the Resistance was dead was too much to bear, and Hayley Simmons did something she hadn’t done since she was five years old, the day her mother had abandoned her, leaving her to an abusive step-father. She cried herself to sleep.
When Hayley awoke, she was surprised to find that she was still alive. In truth, she hadn’t really expected to survive the night. She wasn’t quite sure whether the fact that she was alive was good or bad. She’d been in battle before, and it was as much a part of her nature as breathing. But she’d never been the sole survivor of an ambush before, never had someone sacrifice their live for her.
She couldn’t even begin to deal with it. There were only two reasons she had forced herself to live this long. The first was because Jeff had died to save her life, throwing that life away would be the most unforgivable of crimes. The second was revenge.
With that, she lifted her head and massaged her stiff neck. There was a light covering of frost on her hair, the only part of her body left exposed during the night. Her feet were freezing, but not frostbitten.
If it was possible, she hurt more than she had the day before. A pervasive ache spread throughout her whole body, in addition the acute pains from her head, shoulder, and leg. The only part of her body that didn’t hurt was her useless left arm.
Thank heaven for small favors, she thought wryly, forcibly uncurling her painfully stiff body. Grunting, she struggled to her feet, putting a little weight on her broken foot and stretching her cramped muscles.
Hayley guessed it was mid-morning. She had gone to sleep in the early afternoon of (she hoped) the last day. Her mind did feel rested, though her emotions were whirling like a thunderstorm. Before she could think what to do, she heard a noise outside the building.
Warily, she drew her knife. Again she heard the noise. It sounded like someone was sneaking around outside the house. Whoever they were had to be taken care of immediately, before they discovered her.
Hayley cursed herself for not taking a Volunteer weapon. She obviously hadn’t been thinking clearly, the need to get out of the safehouse-turned-slaughterhouse overwhelming forethought.
She crept, as quietly as one possibly could in a creaky house with a broken leg, toward the unknown enemy outside. Looking around the doorframe, she saw a familiar figure standing outside, his back towards her, peering around the corner of the house.
“Liam…” she whispered, almost inaudibly. It all came flooding back now. Who had called the meeting, who had picked the place, who had betrayed the cause. Her anger and hate had finally found a focus other than the generalities of the Taelons or the Volunteers. Liam. The betrayer. The traitor. Liam the murderer. The soulless alien bastard who had lied to her.
Hayley had been betrayed so many times in her life that she was used to it. She was also extremely sensitive about it and to her, traitors were the worst kind of criminal.
Her knife was poised to throw. She could easily have killed Liam without him ever having seen it coming. She had no qualms about the honor of stabbing a traitor in the back, either. It was more than he deserved.
The only thing that saved Liam from becoming a piece of meat on the point of Hayley Simmons’ knife was her burning desire to know why. She could not live without knowing why Liam, one of maybe two people Hayley had completely and totally trusted in her life, had suddenly betrayed her.
“Protector!” She spat the word at him.
Liam whirled towards her, a relieved smile upon his face. “Hayley! I knew you were alive, I knew it! You have no idea how worried I—” He stopped abruptly as he saw her condition and the look on her face. And the knife in her hand.
“Why’d you do it Protector?” She made the word an obscenity.
“Hayley, I—” he began, a helpless expression on his face.
“Shut up!” she screamed. “I don’t want excuses, I don’t want explanations, I don’t want apologies. I just want to know why you did it.” Her voice was cold as steel, and just as sharp. Liam shivered.
“Tell me,” she continued, “so that I can kill you.”
Liam closed his eyes and swallowed, an unspeakable sadness etched in his features. He looked ten years older and half-dead inside. “I know words can’t even begin to help, but I am so very sorry—”
“You dare try to apologize!” Hayley yelled in outrage. “What kind of monster are you?”
“Hayley, if killing myself would bring them back I—”
“Shut up!” she yelled again. “I can’t bear any more hypocrisy from you!” At this point Hayley no longer cared whether she found out why he’d turned against the cause, she just needed him to stop talking, stop trying to placate her.
She came at him as fast as she could, knife aimed at his heart. But her body simply could not respond correctly in its present condition. Her broken leg and injured shoulder severely restricted her range of motion, and her subconscious mind still counted upon her left arm to balance her.
Liam was able to snatch the knife from her hand and use her own momentum to propel her safely past him. She stumbled and cried out, and Liam tried to keep her from falling. She clawed at his wrist and he let her go.
“Hayley, you have to listen to me!” he yelled futilely. She swept her good leg in a clean semi-circle, hooking his ankle and tumbling him to ground. Even severely injured, an angry Hayley Simmons was a force to be reckoned with.
She climbed on top of Liam, pinning him quite nicely, and began pummeling him with well-aimed, well-thrown punches.
Liam at this point felt he deserved almost any punishment life threw at him, so he struggled only weakly. That is, until he realized that her efforts at bashing his skull in were starting to be rather effective. Then his survival instincts kicked in. He struggled to his feet, dragging her with him. He was forced to hold her by her right arm, as that was the one presenting him with a clear and present danger.
She was rendered harmless, for the time being, and she knew it. “Okay,” she said with only hate in her eyes. “Finish me off in cold-blood, if you’ve the stomach for it, coward.”
“That’s not why I came here!”
“No, I suppose you came here to gloat over your victory!” she laughed bitterly in a blind rage that left little room for rationality.
Holding her at arm’s length he tried to talk her down, but she didn’t let him get a word in. He became aware of a steady stream of vulgarities pouring forth from her mouth, all directed at him. Half of them he didn’t understand, and the rest he only wished he didn’t. When she got around to cursing his entire family line, including and especially his mother, he couldn’t take it anymore.
“I didn’t do it!” he yelled.
Hayley stopped in mid-epithet. “I don’t believe you.”
Liam sighed. “You don’t have any reason to, I guess. But you look like hell, and I’ve definitely got the advantage here. If you’ll just sit down and listen to me, I’ll let you decided whether all this is my fault. If you think it is, then you can kill me.”
He meant it, too. He was still trying to decide whether he was responsible more than indirectly for the massacre. If Hayley, after hearing the whole story, thought he was, he had very few objections to dying by her hand.
In a show of trust, he let her arm go. She couldn’t support her own weight, and she began to fall. He caught her quickly and helped her over to the decaying porch. “For pity’s sake Hayley, sit down. You’re half dead.”
“Thanks to you.”
“Will you please stop it?”
“I don’t have to take orders from a murdering son of a—”
At this point, Liam desperately leaned forward and kissed her roughly. She slapped him, appalled, her nails leaving half-moon marks on his cheek, but it had the desired effect of shutting her up.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Now will you listen to me?”
“Fine,” she said levelly, her cloudy eyes piecing him through the heart. “If you didn’t arrange for the meeting and the ambush, who did?”
Liam took a deep breath. Despite his anger and hurt at Augur, he chose not to tell Hayley that Augur was involved. Hayley would surely make good on her promise to kill the one responsible, and he didn’t want that. Augur was still his best friend, and Liam knew that Augur had done what he’d done only out of love for him.
“An Amoralist named Max Pratt was hired by Da’an to terminate the remaining Resistance leaders, so that Da’an could get back in Zo’or’s good graces.”
“Da’an?” squeaked Hayley, not quite as shocked as Liam, but close.
Liam nodded sadly. He related the entire story from the day of their last meeting until now. As he concluded, he handed Hayley he knife, hilt first.
“Here. You’ve heard the story. If you think it’s my fault, then use it now.” He met her eyes with resignation to whatever fate she assigned him. Hayley would have been awed by this move of trust, but she saw quite plainly in his gray-green eyes that he was actually looking for someone to assign blame to him.
She shook her head. “No. No, you did the best you could under the circumstances. There was nothing else you could have done.”
“I don’t know…If I hadn’t made myself the central figure…”
Hayley looked sharply at him. “Look, it was the only thing to do at the time.”
“But if I had gotten there faster, or—”
Annoyed, Hayley grabbed the knife out of his hand and jammed it into her boot. “Are you trying to get me to kill you, Liam?”
He ran his fingers through his curly hair. “No, I guess not,” he said at last.
They both knew Hayley would never apologize for her attempt on his life. To her mind, there was no need. She had acted the only way she could have, considering the facts that she knew. She had had no reason to believe that Liam was anything but a traitorous wretch who deserved to die.
Liam noticed that Hayley was shivering. “Here,” he said, stripping off the long, black leather trench-coat he had taken to wearing and wrapping it around her slight frame. Hayley had never thought the look suited him, but she knew he wore it because it had been a gift from Lili.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling a little. “So Pratt is dead, right?”
Liam nodded solemnly. “I killed him myself…” He looked disturbed. “Damn, Hayley, you know I’ve never gotten any pleasure out of the death of any living thing. I’ve grieved for every single person who I’ve seen die, whether they were enemy or ally.”
“I know,” Hayley said. It was true. She knew Liam didn’t deal with death particularly well, and she’d seen him in anguish over the death of someone he didn’t even know. Even those deaths he’d been powerless to prevent, he seemed to take on as his responsibility. It was a major vulnerability, but it was also the main reason why she’d given him her trust in the first place.
“But,” he continued, “when Max Pratt died by my hand, I got pleasure out of it. God help me, I killed another human being and I enjoyed it. That scares the hell out of me, Hayley.”
Hayley shook her head. “You killed a monster, Liam. He may have been a human being when he went into SenDep, but when he came out… Every scrap of humanity was killed in those tanks. By the time you met him, Pratt was a soulless, heartless, creature, not even worthy of being called a man.
“I know you. If there had been even the tiniest bit of good in him, you would have never been able to kill him without remorse. Kill him; yes, but not without grieving. You rid the world of a creature of pure evil. There’s no shame in that.”
Liam flashed her that rakish grin she had always found so annoyingly attractive. “Thanks. I am sorry about that kiss. It was the only way I could think of at the moment to shock you into silence long enough to stop cursing my parentage and listen to reason.”
A ghost of a smile played briefly upon Hayley’s lips. After a moment, she leaned forward unexpectedly and kissed him, every bit as hard as he had her. His eyes widened in surprise as she pulled away.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“Just getting even,” she replied. “You caught me by surprise, so I figured it was only fair.”
“I guess it was,” Liam said, pleasantly shocked at her actions. “Look, I’d love to sit here and chat all day, but we’ve got to get you to a doctor.”
“Agreed,” Hayley said, trying to stand. Liam reached out and helped her to her foot, as her right leg was now too painful to support any of her weight.
“My car is parked over by the…the…well, across the way,” Liam said. “You can’t walk that far, even with my help. I’ll have to carry you.”
Hayley looked at him, disbelieving. “I don’t think so,” she said, setting out determinedly in the general direction he had indicated. After half a step, her leg gave out and Liam managed to catch her before she hit the ground.
“Now,” he said, as he held her up. “You have two choices. Either you can consent, and I can carry you to the car in a fairly dignified manner, or I can bonk you on the head, throw you over my shoulder, and carry you to the car like a cavewoman.”
“You wouldn’t!”
Liam narrowed his eyes.
Hayley made an inarticulate sound of frustration. “Fine.”
Gently, Liam scooped her up like a child and held her tight. She grimaced, but said nothing.
“You okay?” he asked worriedly.
“Yeah,” Hayley lied. Her leg was like fire, and she felt very dizzy. The only thing keeping her from passing out was how it would look. She did not want Liam thinking of her as a weakling.
Not that there was any chance of that. Liam was amazed that she was still alive at all, much less functioning within reason. When he thought about the strength it had taken just to stay alive since the battle…Well, it made him very glad that she was on his side.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you,” he told her, half on impulse.
“I don’t need you to take care of me!” Hayley snapped through her fog.
“Sorry. Of course you don’t.”
After a moment, she added tiredly. “But I don’t think I would mind it. For a little while. Just this once.”
Liam straightened perceptibly. “As you wish.”
Assured of this, Hayley Simmons, despite her best intentions, fainted.
Liam clutched her even more tightly and quickened his step. Reaching the car, he laid her carefully on the backseat, and wrapped the seat belt around her. As he strapped her in, his hand brushed her forehead. It was feverish.
Liam drove as fast as he safely could. He didn’t want to throw his precious cargo around too much. Half way to his destination, he heard a miserable sound from the backseat.
“Hayley?” he asked.
“Present,” she mumbled. “I think. What happened?”
Liam looked at her in the rearview mirror. “You fainted.”
Hayley’s eyes widened. “No, I didn’t. I don’t faint.”
“Hayley, you fainted.”
“I…fell asleep.”
Liam grinned. “Never give up, do you?”
Hayley ignored that. “Where are we going? Augur’s?”
Liam shook his head. Though he had forgiven Augur, he didn’t really want to see him right now. “Some place better,” he told her.
Hayley started to sit up. “Not a hospital!” she protested.
“Calm down, I’m smarter than that,” Liam assured her.
“Then where?”
“Renee’s.”
Hayley lay back, groaning. For Renee to see her like this…not even able to walk. How humiliating!
“At least you’re alive,” Liam offered, reading her thoughts.
Before Liam could ring the buzzer to Renee’s luxurious penthouse apartment, Hayley started to worm her way out of his arms.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I’m going to be standing, if you don’t mind,” she snapped. Renee and Hayley had long history of friendly (and occasionally not-so-friendly) competition. While they were friends, in a loose sense, allowing the other to see her in a position of weakness was not acceptable.
Hayley didn’t have much choice at this point, so she had to settle for simply not depending solely upon Liam to stand. If she had known how much seeing her in Liam’s arms would have unsettled Renee, she might have elected to stay there.
“Liam!” Renee said when she opened the door, not quite pleased to see him unexpectedly. “What are you—” She stopped abruptly at the sight of the battered Hayley struggling to stay upright. “Oh my God, what’s happened to you?”
Liam told her the short version, while she helped Hayley to her very own bedroom. Not once did a thought of superiority cross her mind, contrary to Hayley’s opinion. In fact, Renee’s only thought was actually of admiration and amazement. Not that she’d ever admit it, of course.
“Don’t worry about a thing,” Renee said, tucking Hayley between the silk sheets of her bed. Renee had gone into mother-hen mode the moment they’d entered the apartment. “I’ll get my personal physician up here to look at you right away.”
“No,” Liam told her, firmly. “Dr. Belman.”
“Liam…”
“Dr. Belman,” he insisted. “I don’t know your guy, but I trust Dr. Belman with my life. And with Hayley’s.”
Renee snorted, but called Belman. While Belman was checking out Hayley, Liam wandered around the apartment. Very expensive. Renee didn’t do anything cheap. His gaze wandered to a photo of a cute little girl of about four years. He picked it up for a closer look, but it was immediately snatched from his hand.
“I’ll thank you not to touch my personal things,” Renee said, replacing it on the shelf.
“Who is she? You?”
“Never you mind!” Renee was about to say more, but the door to her bedroom swung open just then. “Dr. Belman, is she alright?”
Belman grunted. “Alright is not the word I’d use, but she’ll live.”
Liam let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Thank God.”
“I fused the break in her leg, so she can walk, though she’ll limp for a while. Basically what she needs now is plenty of rest and chicken soup. Don’t let her get out of bed for at least three days. And for pity’s sake, give her a shower.”
“Thanks, Doc,” Liam said.
“Any time, Liam,” she replied, giving him a kiss on the cheek. On the way out she called back, “You might want to put something on that eye.”
Renee looked at him and made a face. “She’s right. Where’d you get the shiner?”
Liam blushed. “Never mind. Got any ice?”
“I have a steak.”
“Please, no…”
The steak did help with the swelling. Once Hayley woke up, Renee made her take a bath until she was wrinkled like a prune. Liam sat by her bedside, waiting on her every need for the next day and half. After that time, Hayley started to chafe at the bed rest restrictions.
“I’m hungry,” she said, beginning to sit up.
“I’ll get it!” Liam said, jumping up. “What do you want?”
Hayley scowled at him. “I can get it myself. I need to get up.”
“You need to recover,” Liam corrected, pushing her back gently.
“If I don’t start doing things for myself, I’ll go crazy,” she said.
“What happened to letting me take care of you for awhile?” Liam asked.
“You’ve done that. Thank you. Now please let me up.”
“No. I’m going to get you some food. If you are not still in bed when I come back, I’ll re-break your leg!” With that Liam turned and headed for the kitchen.
Renee was there, getting herself some coffee. “You’re still here.”
Liam grinned. “Yup.”
She sighed. “You know, I agreed to let Hayley stay here until she was better, but I didn’t say anything about you. Don’t you have duties or something else do to except hang around my apartment and eat my food?”
“Not really.”
Renee banged her head lightly on the door post and left. Liam shrugged and made Hayley breakfast. Bringing the tray into her room, he noted with satisfaction that she was still in bed. “Here you are. One deluxe breakfast for my brave lady.”
“Humph.” Hayley looked annoyed, but set to work on the food. Liam watched her like a hawk, making sure she got the proper nutrition. Halfway through the meal, she stopped eating and pushed the tray away. She rolled over one her side and stared out the window, her eyes troubled.
“Hayley what’s wrong?” Liam asked. “Are you all right, do you need medication or something?”
She bit her lip and finally turned towards him. “I just can’t believe the Resistance is dead,” she whispered. “After all our work, our planning, our fighting, it’s just all swept away so easily. Like they were just playing with us before, and whenever they felt like it they could just wipe us out completely without hardly an effort on their part.”
“I know,” Liam said, unsure of what else to say.
Hayley’s storm-tossed eyes got a faraway look in them, and began to fill with tears. She barely noticed. “When I was four,” she said distantly, “before my mother took me and left my father, we used to go to the beach as a family. We went every day, one summer. My father would take me down to where the sand was damp, and he’d help me build sandcastles. That’s my only clear memory of him.”
Liam was seeing a side of Hayley he’d never seen before. A softer, human side. She continued.
“We would spend hours making these ornate constructs, with moats and turrets and walls, all of which were to defend the imaginary inhabitants of our castle from the attacking enemy force. It was so grand, and it looked so…strong and mighty and untouchable. I remember being absolutely sure that nothing could get through those walls we’d built.
“And at first nothing could. All my toys couldn’t get into the castle, and my father’s imaginary armies couldn’t defeat those defenses. Even the occasional wave that would come up higher on the beach than others didn’t harm the castle.
“But eventually, the tide would come in all at once and sweep the castle away like it was nothing…like it never existed.” Hayley looked sadly up at Liam. “That’s what happened to us. Nothing could stop the tide, and nothing could save the Resistance.”
Liam was silent for a moment, overwhelmed by the power of her emotions. Finally he asked quietly, “What would you do after the castle was gone?”
“We’d…build another one,” Hayley said, a light going on in her eyes. “Further up on the beach. We’d carry water from the ocean itself to make the sand wet enough, and we’d build a stronger one out of reach of the tide.”
Liam smiled. “Then I guess that’s what we have to do, huh?”
Hayley looked gratefully at him for a moment. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a movement in the doorway. Suddenly, she grabbed Liam by the shirt collar, and kissed him passionately. When she let him up for air, he heard Renee’s voice say wryly, “Well, I was going to ask how you were doing, but I can see that you’re obviously feeling much better, so I’ll just leave you two alone.” Despite her flip words, the expression on the beautiful CEO’s face was extremely satisfying.
Liam turned to stare at Hayley, mouth hanging open in surprise.
“I’ll have you know that that was solely for Renee’s benefit,” she told him defensively.
“So now you two are fighting over me? I’m flattered.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Liam grinned mischievously. “I’m just saying that was an awfully realistic kiss simply for the purpose of making of a woman who isn’t interested in me, jealous.”
“Are you saying…” Hayley asked incredulously. “Are you saying that I’m infatuated with you? Impossible!”
Liam shrugged. “Why not? I like you,” he added shyly.
Hayley groaned. “Liam, you sound like a kid with his first crush.”
Liam stared pointedly at her.
“Point taken,” she said. “But…”
“But what?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know!” Hayley was mightily confused. “You have got to be the most annoying person I have ever met.” She was silent for a moment. “So…maybe I do like you,” she admitted at last. “Damn, I sound like a schoolgirl.”
“How about…you’re attracted to me?” he suggested.
She narrowed her eyes. “Maybe.”
“Come on,” he coaxed.
“Alright-so-I-am-attracted-to-you-now-please-go-away-and-leave-me-alone!” Hayley said, all in one breath. She ducked under the covers and lay there, her heart pounding. Liam leaned over, kissed where he approximated the top of her head would be, and left the room, whistling.
Two days later, Liam stood with Hayley at the airport terminal. “You don’t have to go, you know,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“I mean, you could stay here, with me. In Washington. Help me rebuild the Resistance here.”
Hayley half-smiled. “I wish I could.”
“Why can’t you?” he asked, child-like.
“Look, Liam,” she said. “Jonathan’s playing games with the Taelons, Renee needs someone to keep her from letting innocent people get killed for ‘the greater good’, and Lili’s dead. Between that, the crackdown, and the massacre…we have almost no leaders left. You know that. We need to spread out our strong leaders as much as we can.
“You’re in DC, and I’m going back to California. We need to work as team, but not in the same place. I’ll rebuild from one coast, you rebuild from another, and hopefully we’ll have a Liberation again someday. But this time, we’ll start off right. No loosely organized cells, no lax security. ”
Liam nodded. “You’re right…I just wish…”
“Yeah, me too,” Hayley interrupted hurriedly, before he could say anything mushy. “But this is bigger than what two people might like to happen. Personal relationships are dangerous, I’m sorry to say. We can’t afford to get tripped up in wishful thinking right now. We’re fighting for freedom.
“Now is not the time to start a relationship, Liam. Duty won’t let us, and we’re both people of duty. Call me after the war…then we’ll see.” She smiled. “Don’t worry, we’ll do this thing. We’ll beat the Taelons, if we have to rebuild this thing from the ground up.”
“We just might have to,” he pointed out.
“Then that’s what we’re going to do,” she said firmly. She looked out the window. “They’re boarding. I have to go. Goodbye, Liam.”
She stood on tiptoe, put her arm around him, and kissed him, this time without hiding behind any pretenses. “Thanks,” she added. She turned to go, hefting her bag of meager belongings. Halfway to the boarding ramp, she turned back around and faced him.
“The Resistance will come back, stronger than ever, I promise you.”
“I don’t doubt it!” he called, smiling.
“I’ll take care of everything.”
“Just take care of yourself,” he told her. In typical fashion, Hayley ignored that and was soon lost in the small crowd of passengers.
Liam stared after her, shaking his head. He knew she’d make good on her promise. The Resistance would rise again, and would probably start strongest on the West Coast, since she didn’t have to worry about any other duties, like he did.
There goes an incredible woman, he thought. I just hope she lets herself live long enough to see her dream come true.