At least they had more notice this time before flying out of the country with Slate. A lot more notice. One problem with that, though, was while it did eliminate most of the stress she had felt the last time trying to get everything ready in time, now Lee was feeling the stress longer.

Again, just like before going to Columbia, Lee was extremely worried and nervous. But unlike the last time, Lee knew that they had to go: Romania was about to adopt a registration act similar to the one that had ended up throwing her into the camps, and if Lee could do anything about that, she was not going to let others suffer like she had in the camps.

Like with Columbia, this trip had resulted in a shopping trip. It was definitely coming in to winter now, and who knew what kind of conditions they were going to be facing over there. And while Tarin's winter wardrobe had expanded in the last couple of years, neither of them really had enough for what Lee figured they would need in Romania.

Lee had both their bags from Columbia open on their bed as she went through the clothing they had bought. All the while listening to Tarin complaining. about the cold.

This was a rather normal occurrence, Tarin normally complained when the weather started turning cold in the fall. This was different in that he was complaining more than normal. "Do we need to go shopping again?" Lee asked, looking up at her husband with a slight frown on her face. "Find some more warm clothes for you to take?"

Romania…why the hell had he thought Romania would be a good idea? Let alone Romania in November? Tarin had spent time in front of a map after Slate had talked them all into this. Romania was even further north than New York City. And had he mentioned it was November? It was going to be freezing cold. Tarin sighed then, remember why they were really going. A registration act. A registration act like the one that had landed Lee in the camps. A registration act like the one that had nearly taken Lee away from him. For some reason, all that remembering didn’t improve Tarin’s mood and he scowled at the suitcases that were sitting on his and Lee’s bed.

Lee spoke, and it took a second for her words to sink into his gloom. When they did sink in, he simply shrugged his shoulders, “It’s not like it matters. I’m going to freeze to death no matter how much I wear. If I wore all the clothes I’d need to stay warm there, I wouldn’t be able to move a muscle, and that’s not very productive. Is it?”

Lee looked worried, and stressed and Tarin sighed slightly. It wasn’t her fault…and the truth of the matter was…he was worried too. There were so many things about this trip that were different from the last. For one, they were going to be dealing with a Registration Camp…and Tarin could remember what the last one had done to Lee. Who knew what seeing one again would do…and with how….fragile Lee had been after the incident at the Pharmaceutical company, Tarin was simply worried.

“I’m sorry…” he said, reaching up and running a hand through his hair and jogging loose a memory of the last time they packed like this. “I shouldn’t be taking the weather out on you. There’s nothing you could do about it if you wanted to.” He said, standing up and moving to give his wife a squeeze, “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked after a moment.

Tarin had enough of a problem with winters here in New York as it was. Lee know that from his complaining through the entire winter. And they were going to be going somewhere that was probably even colder, Romania in November.

"It does matter," Lee sighed. "I don't want you to freeze to death, and I'm sure we can find something else to help you stay warmer and still be able to move.

But then Tarin was stepping up to her, wrapping his arms around her, and Lee hugged him back tightly. "We need to do this, Tarin," she whispered in his ear as she continued to hug him. "We can't let this mistake happen again, to others, and this time we can actually do something to stop it.

"We need to at least try, right?" Lee asked, pulling back to look at her husband.

Tarin actually smiled slightly when Lee pointed out that it did matter whether or not he was going to freeze to death and that they could potentially find a way to both keep him warm and preserve his mobility. “Is there really something out there like that?” Tarin said into Lee’s hair, keeping his arms around her and laughing slightly. “Besides, I don’t think I’ll freeze to death any faster than anyone else…I just like to complain.”

It wasn’t that answer he was waiting for, though, and Tarin stayed right where he was, leaning into Lee when she hugged him back. At least she wasn’t pulling into herself at all this time. Her words made him frown, though and he dropped his arms and sighed slightly. That was the long and the short of the whole thing, wasn’t it? They had the ability to stop a great wrong from happening. They had a real opportunity to save lives on a grand scale, and make sure that the people responsible couldn’t hurt anyone ever again.

“We do.” He agreed, nodding his head, “Are you sure you’ll be okay though?” he added, voice low as he looked at Lee across the short distance he’d put between them. “Something bad always seems to happen when we do these things…” It was strange, those words coming out of Tarin’s mouth. Lee was the one who always worried, but Tarin couldn’t help it. There was just something about this trip that was sticking in his craw. He shook it off for the moment and plastered a smile on his face, “At least I’m not getting a haircut this time….right?”

"Of course there is," Lee said, smiling as well even if Tarin couldn't see it because they were hugging. "There are people who work in the arctic and antarctic, Tarin. There has to be something like that out there."

Tarin agreed that they had to try, that they had to go to try and put a stop to what was about to be happening in Romania. But then he was asking if she would be alright.

But then Lee glared at Tarin slightly. "You better not be getting a haircut this time," Lee said, then softened her look. "I know something bad normally happens, but we're not going to let it this time, right? We're going to do something good, and everything is going to be fine."

Lee commented that of course there ha to be clothing out there that was both lightweight enough that a person could move in it, and warm enough that a person didn’t freeze to death while in Arctic or Antarctic conditions. Tarin supposed that was true…to a point. “I’ve seen pictures Lee, those coats and things those people wear are huge.” he stopped talking and sighed, “I don’t think I’ll need anything that intense anyway.”

Lee had pulled herself from the hug and Tarin dropped down to sit on the edge of the bed. She was teasing him about his hair and he chuckled low and shook his head, “I might make mistakes, Mrs. Brooks, but I rarely make the big ones twice.”


That’s when things really took a Twilight Zone turn. Lee was comforting him. being the optimist and assuring him that everything was going to be okay. He shook his head, “I hope it works out that way Lee, I really do.” he said softly, then looked around the room again before bringing his gaze back to his wife. The camps were something they never talked about. Tarin had never asked and Lee had never offered up the information. He sighed now and patted the bed next to him.


“I’m just worried about you seeing that…and I’m scared to see it again too after last time.” Tarin frowned, the only time he’d seen a camp it had been thrown into absolute chaos. “What’s it like on a normal day in one of those places?”

When Tarin asked a question he had never asked her before, Lee's eyes dropped, looking away from her husband. She didn't want to bring those memories to the forefront of her mind, so she had never actually told Tarin about what the camps were like.

But, with what they were going to be going into, maybe he did have a reason to know now. Maybe it would help, somehow.

Sitting down on the bed beside him, still not looking over at him, Lee thought for a moment. "It was horrible," Lee finally said, her voice quiet. "It was cold, and always seemed to be muddy. The clothing we had wasn't overly warm, and what little we actually had for blankets wasn't much better. There wasn't enough food, I was pretty much always cold and hungry once I got there..."

Lee stopped speaking, her eyes closing as she sat there, head down. "The guards were the worst, though," she finally continued. "They seemed to enjoy beating on people. Though most of them didn't like getting the shock from touching me, so they'd find something else to hit me with more often than not. And it didn't seem to matter how old the people were to the guards..."

She answered. To be completely honest, Tarin hadn’t been expecting an answer. Since she’d gotten out of the camps and come back from Canada, the most surefire way to make Lee stop talking was to bring up the camps. Lee continued to speak, to actually talk about the camps and Tarin’s facial expression turned from surprise, to horror, to disgust, to irate anger.

Tarin had known that it was bad in the camps. People had told him over and over again, even while Lee was in there just how bad it was. Tarin had been numb at that point though. He’d been completely driven while Lee was in the camps and Tarin hadn’t felt much of anything after the breakout and after Lee left. Then there were the events after that, the possession, and the killings. Tarin didn’t want to get distracted by that though. It was the almost all he could do not to get up and simply walk out the door to find every single bastard who had touched Lee in that camp.

Tarin realized he was still staring and Lee, and that his jaw was clenched so tightly that he was almost surprised he hadn’t broken any teeth. Lee didn’t need his sympathy about the situation, they’d dealt with that. Then again…Tarin frowned and reached out to lay his hand on Lee’s back and nodded. It really did put everything into perspective.

“Okay. So we’re really going to have to worry about the guards if it comes to that, right? They’re pretty sick bastards from what you say. I guess you’d have to be to work someplace like that.”

Tarin frowned some more, trying to get his mind of the topic…trying to tell himself that they needed to just move on. “How did you do it?” he asked, brows down together and his hand still on Lee’s back.

Lee jumped, her eyes shooting open when she felt a hand on her back. Something that she hadn't actually done in months, but with the thoughts of the camp fresh in her mind, she couldn't stop herself.

As Tarin started speaking, and Lee's rational mind was able to convince her subconscious that it was only Tarin and that she was safe, she closed her eyes again, still just sitting there beside her husband.

"Well, they're the ones in charge there, and they like to make sure that everyone knows it," Lee replied.

But then she frowned as she heard Tarin's next question, and actually looked over at him, frowning. "How did I do what?"

Tarin’s jaw clenched unconsciously when Lee flinched away from him. This had been their lives after the camps…at least until Lee had left and when to stay with Rachel in Canada. The simplest touch had made her flinch away and the haunted look in her eyes had been something that Tarin had thought would never go away. It had, after a time, but it was back now, but Tarin didn’t move his hand from her back. Instead he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. If he’d learned something in his time with Lee, it was that sometimes she needed to be pushed, just a little. This was one of those times.

Lee said that the guards were in charge and they liked to make sure that everyone knew it. Tarin nodded his head, the only memories he had of guards were them running frantically and taking down everyone they could. One had caught him unawares. Tarin could still remember the sound as the spirits had ripped him limb from limb. He shuddered and held Lee just a little tighter for a minute. Hopefully she didn’t mind.

Lee asked what he meant when he said that he didn’t know how she did it, and Tarin turned his head away from her to ask, “How did you make it? How did all of you make it?”

As they sat there half-packed, Tarin shook his head and thought back to what Lee had said about the guards. “Everyone knows the guards are in charge until the collars go off.” Tarin said and sighed, loosing one arm from around Lee and running his hand through his hair. “If you thought Colombia was bad Lee, this could be way worse. I don’t know how much you remember from the breakout here, but it was absolute carnage. It’ll be the same there. Nobody deserves to be treated like an animal that way, but there’s going to be some bad people there.”

It seemed strange to Tarin that he was almost lecturing Lee like this. Surely she knew what they were walking into…but then again, maybe not. It was a difficult thing to think about under the best situation, but thinking about it with the full knowledge that maybe they were walking into it again might have been worse. “You could stay here. I can do this for you.” he said, wondering if there was even a small possibility that Lee would let him spare her this.

She had jumped, yes, startled slightly by the touch, but when Tarin wrapped his arms around her, Lee melted slightly into the embrace. Things had been very bad, and yes, the memories were still horrible, but Lee had moved past all of that a long time ago, and she did not want to go back to being like that again. The time in Texas, and going to Las Vegas to get married, had shown Lee how much she had missed out on because of how she had been feeling and acting back then.

How had she made it through the camp, if things were as bad as she had said? As Lee sat there, she took comfort in Tarin's arms wrapped around her. "I'm not sure about them, but I didn't want to die. To be honest, I think it was thinking about going to Texas that got me through it, even though I didn't think I'd see you again. Even if I didn't think I'd be getting out of there. It was something good to think about, that wasn't painful. And that helped me keep calmer so I didn't siphon so much."

But now Tarin was leaning back slightly, offering to go for her, that she didn't have to go. Lee simply shook her head as she turned to look at Tarin. "You had to go to Columbia," Lee pointed out quietly. "I think this might be the same for me. We didn't do anything to try and stop it here, I think I really need to do this."

When Lee melted into his arms, Tarin breathed a sigh of relief and held her close. It was one of the things he’d worried about not being able to do again. It was almost hard to believe now that those dark months after the camps had been part of his and Lee’s lives. Things were hectic now, and they still had their fair share of excitement that wasn’t really exciting at all, but those dark months seemed kind of like a distant smudge. Tarin was glad he’d had his talk with Sebastian, he could think about those times now without the nerve wracking guilt that had always previously assailed him. Then again, that was probably because Lee didn’t have a clue they’d talked about him learning to control the merging and use it as a tool rather than the other way around. Tarin had kept that little bit back, she was a nervous enough wreck about the practice he’d been doing with the astral projection.

She explained, more things that he’d never known about her time in the camps. Maybe it was a testament to just how meant to be the two of them had been, but Lee had thought about Texas while she’d been there. That was what had kept her going when the guards were provoking and touching her simply to hurt her. She’d planned on never seeing him again, but thoughts of the two of them going to Texas he kept her going. It was simply amazing. Tarin hadn’t been quite that lucky, or as good at coping.

“You’re stronger than I am.” he said simply and quietly, “I didn’t go through a quarter of that and it’s kind of a wonder things didn’t end up twice as bad as they already were. I don’t know if I could have made it.” He was curious, if Tarin cared to admit it to himself. Any increase in her siphoning caused the collar to activate. How would it have worked with his powers…it was still mind-boggling to think of a torture device so well suited to its task. Would it have worked the same for him? Would any spirit he encountered have triggered the thing? He shook his head and turned to look at Lee as she explained why this was something that she had to do. He nodded.

“I definitely understand.” he said simply, then squeezed Lee one more time before letting her go, “When you have to do something, you have to do it. It’s a little different this time too, isn’t it? We know exactly what we’re walking into. No pretensions about rebuilding anything. It’s funnier how much easier that makes it to be careful.”

Tarin thought that she was stronger than him because she had managed to survive the camps? His arms were still around her, so she couldn't really look at him, but she shook her head against his shoulder.

"I had to be strong, or I would die that much sooner," Lee whispered against Tarin's shoulder. "It wasn't just when they touched me. If I get angry, or upset, in any way, I guess I start siphoning more without realizing I am, so I'd get shocked."

Closing her eyes, Lee returned the squeeze as she felt Tarin's arms tightening around her. But then he was pulling back, so reluctantly Lee let her arms loosen, let them slip from around his shoulders, and once her arms were free, she dabbed slightly at her eyes, just in case she had actually cried at all.

But Tarin said that he understood why she had to do this. Lee gave her husband a small smile. "Yeah, it is easier, rather than simply having things sprung on us while we're there," Lee agreed. "Plus, if this does get difficult for me, you'll be there this time to help me get through it."