Oh, was she having some regrets? Was she now? "I hope not. like I said, I only have so many pairs of pants." He muttered as he ran a very orange light.

She got on him about his speeding. She always did that. He knew how to drive in the city! "Really? We are getting into this again? You don't even remember me, and we're getting into this. #@$%in brilliant. I know how to drive. Hell, you make me drive everywhere, tellin me I don't know how to drive."

She asked what she was supposed to talk about if she couldn't ask questions. He gritted his teeth. "That's a question. I just said-" He shut himself up. Jesus, why was he being such an ass?

"I'm... #@$%, I'm sorry. I just... I'm having a hard time... with this. With... All of this, okay?" He closed his eyes for a solid moment, still driving, by the way, but using his sixth sense to feel the way. It calmed him sometimes.

He didn't stop to think that she had no idea he even had a sixth sense.

Her face reddened a bit. Was she getting chewed out for an argument her older self had started? It felt like it! "There's a pretty big difference between knowing how to drive and not driving like a lunatic just because you can!" Was she gonna back down? Oh hell no!

He ground out something about questions again and she puffed up in her seat like an angry snake, all set to unleash hell upon him for daring to try and snap at her like that, when he.... deflated.

She took a lot longer to deflate... but got there eventually. Still kept her arms crossed tersely though.

"....It's fine." She started, and sighed, and then looked over at him. It looked like he was trying to center himself or something with his eyes closed.

"I understand. I'm... not mad. I'll stop poking at you." It wasn't like this was any easier on her, either. She had just started to deal with her own situation before he had shown up and now she needed to deal with being a wife and a mother on top of it all.

Her teeth were starting to hurt from clenching them. Ugh.

She looked back at him. His eyes were still closed.

She glanced at the road. They were... still speeding.

Holy@#$%HISEYESWERESTILLCLOSED

"Holyshit what are you doing, open your damn eyes! Are you trying to kill us?!" She leaned over and latched onto the steering wheel, pretty convinced they were going to swerve and crash any moment, to go through the wrong light and get side swiped.

He deflated, She deflated. The car was flat for a moment. He nodded, eyes still closed as told him she wasn't mad. He wasn't either. Was he? Terrified. That was more of a word for him.

He'd rather be fighting a room full of people who wanted to strip him and sell him for parts. At least then he would know where he stood. He changed lanes to go around someone as they neared a red light, and suddenly he heard her talking, and felt her bolt forward to grab the steering wheel. "whuh- @#%$!"

She grabbed the wheel, which turned the car to the right a bit. He jerked it the other way and overcompensated, pushing on the breaks just a little too late, and causing them to bump into a lamp post at a relatively slow speed.

He reached out a hand for her in reflex, stopping her kinetic force so she didn't get banged up. He, on the other hand, winced a little bit as the airbag deployed, and he was pushed into his seat aggressively by it.

Coughing and batting down the airbar, he cursed ."What the hell! What'd you do that for?!" He started to climb out to check the damage on his relatively new car.

A series of things happened that she wasn't even going to pretend to understand. They absolutely started to crash because of course they did his eyes were @#$%ing closed!

She'd never been in a car crash before, not even a relatively minor one, so her reaction was to just kinda lock up in preparation for... whatever was to come.

Only it didn't play out like she thought it would have. A strange sense or, like... nothing? overcame her. His hand went out and stuff related directly to her just stopped. She didn't know how to handle that.

The airbag deployed. His hand dropped and she lurched away, pressing herself into the door behind her while her brain scrambled to connect the dots and figure out what had just happened. He'd... done something, that much she was sure of. Her chest was rising and falling with deep, quick breaths.

.... and then the anger returned.

"What in the hell do you- What did I do that for!?" She slapped around blindly for the window button and started rolling it down.

"You were driving with your EYES CLOSED? What in the @#$% was that about!?"

It took a moment to clamber out of the now open window.

"Look, I know you are upset. I @#$%ing am too, but that is NO reason to pull some stupid stunt like that and just- RRGH!" She fisted her hands in her hair and ground her teeth together.

"What do you want from me?!"

A crash like this wasn't exactly new for him. He did pit maneuvers in squadcars all of the time, and he had managed to slow a fair amount before hitting the pole. He didn't stop to think that she hadn't experienced anything like this before. The Shelby he knew was... a little more hardened. Mean, she'd all but killed Roach. Someone else finished the job, but she'd ruined him, on all accounts.

He looked to her incredulously. "Do I look like an idiot? Why would I drive with my eyes closed if I couldn't?! I can see without my eyes, mostly." She didn't know that. How could she know that? He just. He needed a second. He needed a second to think and she just kept pushing.

He looked at the new dent on the front of the car, hood bent in a little bit. Damnit... There could be all sorts of leaks and seal breaks, frame tweaks. He would have to give it a full once over before he drove it any long distance again. He looked back to her with a raised eyebrow as she climbed out of the window.

Why?

"What do I want from you?! I want my goddam wife back! Can you do that? No. No you @#$^in can't." He turned away for a second, rubbing his forehead. Jesus, what a @#$^y thing to say. She didn't do anything to deserve this... He wasn't mad at her, he was mad at... everything. This world. God, if one existed. He leaned against the car and took a breath.

"Look... Just... get in. The house isn't far. I'll drive slow..."

Did he look like an idiot? Yes, he was certainly starting too. He could drive without his eyes mostly? What did that even mean?!

And then he laid into her. Really, really laid into her. Her hands dropped to her sides from her hair and she stared at him, mutely for a moment, before her face went red with an angry blush.

"Well I'm so sorry to disappoint, she's not here right now. You're gonna have to @#$%ing wait for her to show back up!"

Did it sting? ... Yes. It certainly did. She was Shelby. She'd known no other version of herself, but here, in this future world to her, she wasn't wanted. She'd woken up in someone else's clothes, someone else's life, and with someone else's expectations stapled into her skin and she just couldn't get away from it all!

He ordered, or maybe requested, that she get back in the car and she stubbornly refused to budge.

"What for? So I can get dragged somewhere else to be even more of a disappointment to someone else?"

She sniffled. @#$%, her eyes were welling up. This sucked!

"This was a bad idea. You should just wait until your Wife is back. Nobody there wants to meet me."

She reached for her necklace.

His expression faltered, falling into confusion as she said that he would have to wait for his wife to show back up.

She didn't know? Oh god... She didn't know. His back was still faced toward her when she yelled back at him. He replied with only silence, his shoulder slumping a bit. He fought back tears just as she did, though he didn't show her.

"She's not coming back... Only the gas is temporary... The injections aren't reversible. You're how you're gonna be." His eyes stayed fixed on the ground at his feet.

He sighed, shaking his head a little bit. It was the first time he'd said it himself. It made it feel more real to say it outloud. Damn. He was going to cry again. Twice in one year.

"Go...You gotta do what you gotta do."

Her fingers paused before touching her necklace.

She... was stuck like this? forever?

In the span of an hour she'd gone from kinda figuring that she was once more permanently 21, to meeting him and finding out that there was a chance she'd suddenly poof back into being a full-grown woman again, and now was back to... square one.

The syringe in her leg.

Permanently younger.

This knowledge didn't help anything at all really.

"So... I'm.. just like this forever? I'll never get those memories back? I'll never get that life back?" The idea that she was going to have to keep living in her own shadow forever, the shadow of what felt like a dead woman to her, was... horrifying.

Suddenly everything hurt. It all hurt and she couldn't muster up the energy to figure out why. His rejection hurt. Her lost life hurt. Her new life hurt. The idea that none of it would ever come back, always be out of her reach, hurt.

She somehow managed to suck the tears threatening to fall back in, and her expression went flat.

"...It's fine." She shifted from panic and pain to plotting and planning in a heartbeat and started chewing on her lip again. Started pacing as well.

"It'll be fine. I just have to... study. research. I'll learn it all again." Her phone chimed in her pocket, she ignored it.

"I vaguely remembered what your car looked like, I think... it must all still be there. I just have to unlock it."[/color]

Unbeknownst to her, she was emulating almost exactly the same behaviors she had slipped into when her older self had first met him. In the face of extreme mental trauma, she had slipped into work mode then, too. Did her own research in an attempt to track down Roach, and had been fairly successful at it. Not that it had mattered much.

She tried to steel herself, shaking her hands out lest they start to cramp from clenching them.

"I wanna meet Jr." She turned back, facing him, too caught up in her thoughts to offer any sympathy to him at that moment.

"...I think I need to meet him."

She went to get into the car, regardless of if he was still leaning against it. Sat, buckled herself in and looked straight ahead.

"Yeah... yeah." He wiped his face real quick as he blinked his eyes clear. He felt that same hurt, though his wasn't from being lost, but rather feeling loss. Her tone shifted.

It's. fine. It's WHAT?! He looked to her, but paused when he saw a familiar expression on her more youthful face. She did this. It was her in crisis mode. He watched her quietly as she came to the conclusion that she wanted to meet JR.

He nodded. "Okay..." He quietly got into the car as well, and then started it. After a little protest, it did start. He backed out, leaving a little bumper behind, ad then drove the last few miles to the house.

Colin was waiting out front, JR in his arms. He usually was. He was thoughtful like that. He might not be expecting her to be with him as well, though.

She didn't know what house was supposedly his. ...Theirs.

But, when she spotted the familiar figure of her dad, quite a bit grayer in the hair maybe, standing out front with a baby on one hip, her heart jumped into her throat, and tears formed in her eyes instantly. That was her daddy!

She waited anxiously for the Prius to stop. Her dad finally spotted her and carefully set the toddler down on the grass in the front yard.

"Dad!" She practically ran out of the car and into his wide-open waiting arms.

"Shelby!" He captured her in a crushing hug, lifting and spinning her and she cried all over him immediately. It had been a little more than a year since she had last spoken to him, in her time at least.

"Oh, Hunny, where have you been?" He set her down and his large hands gripped the sides of her face. He took a good long look at her and that's exactly when the realization hit him.

"...what... happened to you?" He was not looking at his daughter as she had left him. He was looking at his daughter, much younger, and with all of the fine little wrinkles that had been settling onto her face suddenly gone. She looked ten years younger!

Colin looked up to Saph, clearly confused and unable, or unwilling, to form the connections at the moment.

A little warm hand on her leg caught her attention and she looked away from her dad, down to the toddler who was standing and sucking on a binky. The little cogs in his developing brain were clearly working on overtime as he slapped her leg a few more times, and then lifted up hands up in a clear request for her to pick him up.

"Uppauppa!"

Oh, that was just adorable, but.... she hesitated.

Colin hopped in, placing a hand on her shoulder, as Saph joined them.

"How about we all go inside and sit down? I'm sure you've had a heck of a day... both of you."

Saphirus Parked the car as quickly as he could without being too fast, or whatever. She was gone before he could shift it into park. By the time he made it to them, Colin already had her in a big old embrace.

He ended up sheepish, to the side. He leaned down to grab up Jr, but the little guy was staring at his mom. He locked eyes with Colin for a long moment before hanging his head. He let JR go to her, and watched. Being protective as he was, he stepped in just in case he needed to scoop the little one up.

Jr reached up. She hesitated. Colin interjected, and Saph scooped the kid up. "Good idea... Have you eaten?" He looked back to Shelby.

The toddler tried to turn to look at her the whole time. It had been a year, but that was still his mom, he definitely didn't forget her. A little goldfish floated about her head curiously as they headed in toward the cozy little house.

It wasn't much, but it was enough for their small family. They walked past some of her paintings on the way down the hall toward the kitchen/dining room. She might see her art studio on the way down the hall to the left. The living room was to the right on the entrance, but it made more sense to sit at the table in the kitchen.

On the way in, he felt Colin's hand rest on his shoulder for a second. He nodded. "I'm okay..." Well enough to say it, at least...

Probably didn't sound very convincing. He sat on at the head of the table, son on his lap, facing out toward her as they settled. A knee bounced softly as the little one squirmed and tried to climb down to get free. "Hold on, Jr... hold on."