He had heard and figured out the word she had tried to cut short. Obviously not quickly enough. And moved and leaned down so he could look at her better.

She took a deep breath, closing her eyes though she didn’t move away, as she nodded. “Yes,” she whispered. “I did. It’s very fuzzy, but I have the memory of seeing Tarin sitting there, holding my body…” At some point as she spoke, Lee’s eyes opened and she found herself looking up into green eyes. “And…” she frowned as the crease deepened between her brows. “He…saw me…

“The next thing I remember was the pain in my chest and I was back in my body. But Tarin wasn’t there. I didn’t see it happen, but he’d merged with the healer who’d tried to save me, and he…they…it…brought me back. The bullet hole hadn’t been healed…It was gone.” As she finished speaking, her lip was pulled back between her lips and her eyes dropped as her mind wandered in those memories.

She had died. Actually died. Like, not just in the kind of temporary way that people died sometimes and were brought back by CPR or a shock to the heart. Dead in the way that the other Tarin had seen her spirit outside of her body. As far as this Tarin knew l, that wasn’t something you could come back from.

Unless your ex husband resurrected you. Apparently.

That…was a lot. A lot a lot. Suddenly Tarin felt like a monster for pushing, for insisting on more details after the woman had mentioned that she had legitimately died.

The look on her face and the way Lee was lost in thought made him feel even worse and Tarin mentally kicked himself for being a self absorbed asshole.

“I’m so sorry…” he said halfway reaching out towards Lee but dropping his hands when he realized he had no idea what he was going to do. Pat her on the arm? Hug her. After he’d pushed her to share her awful traumatic story.

“I never should have pushed. I’m so sorry that happened to you. I can’t even imagine what that was like…I had no right”.

Lee shook her head, shaking the memories away, when she heard Tarin’s voice. “That was the one time that a merge was good,” she said as her eyes rose, looking at him again. “We had been trying to do good, and definitely did help and do good, but it did not go anything even close to the plan.

“I mean, the one that happened during the breakout here in New York almost certainly saved ours, and others, lives. But that was not good,” her voice dropped to a whisper again. “Start to end, there was not one thing that was good during that merge.”

But he was apologizing, saying he shouldn’t have asked about it. Lee reached a hand out and lightly touched his arm. “It’s ok,” she told him sincerely, her voice soft. “It was what…14, 15 years ago. I think the memories are just feeling fresher because of all the merge talk.”

It was still surreal to hear Lee talk about his powers doing all of these things. A him that had existed and lived an entire life on this side of the rift.

Most of the people Tarin knew had never met or wanted to meet their counterpart. It had been too weird. He was starting to understand why. It was like having amnesia because some of the things Lee said seemed like him. Things he could have predicted before they came out of her mouth.

This though? This was a lot.

“It’s not exactly the kind of thing you forget. Especially when someone bumbles into your life trying to dig it all up.”

Once again Tarin marveled at just how much Lee was helping him and just how much he was hurting her.

“We don’t have to do this…”.

“True,” she said, not fully aware that her hand was still on his arm because she didn’t feel any energy flowing into her. “But maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world that someone who wasn’t there knows. Though…I did sorta tell Kevin and Blaine, but I don’t think even Kevin believed that mummy died and a unicorn brought her back to life.” Lee couldn’t help but laugh slightly at that. It said something when the true events of your life were so fantastical that even a child didn’t believe it was possible.

“No, but we could change subjects. Would you believe that nothing even close ever happened to me when I’ve lived elsewhere?” She asked, then laughed again. “And yet, I keep coming back here.”

A…unicorn? This merge has resulted in a magical unicorn that had resurrected Lee after she’d been fatally shot while trying to do something good.

It was utterly absurd. It was utterly incredible too.

“Next you’ll tell me you saved the world.” Tarin said, noting for the first time that she’d put her hand on his arm at some point. “It wouldn’t surprise me.”

Changing subjects was a good idea. Tarin had tucked the information about these merges away and would know to look for…something…if he got too emotionally distressed. All the better to not get emotionally distressed. Ha. Ha.

As to the rest, Tarin just kind of shrugged. “Home is home. I never really felt at home on the other side. I didn’t even say goodbye to anyone…”. There hadn’t been anyone to say goodbye to, not anymore.

“I was hoping to figure out if there was a place for me over here when the rift closed. It’s safer…that’s for sure.”

He trailed off, uncertain how to continue, “it just gets so easy being…other…knowing that if you do things different bad things are going to inevitably happen. So you don’t for a long time, then you do and you find out all over again why you just don’t….”

It had been a bit of a weird tangent, but Tarin was feeling a bit better.

“Did you still want to check out the ESB?”

“Next you’ll tell me you saved the world.”

“Well, not the whole world,” Lee said with a simple shrug. Then she laughed despite the fact that she was almost serious about it. They had never gotten that far with Slate, and she hadn’t really done much of anything with Haven, for saving the whole world. Just parts of it.

As he continued speaking, the smile that had accompanied her laugh disappeared. He really wouldn’t have anyone to say goodbye to, would he? He’d left home at 14, he hadn’t had some other side of the rift her to make the first call to reconnect with his family. It didn’t sound like he had really anyone that he had connected with in any meaningful way over there.

“It sure is lonely, though, isn’t it?” she asked with a slightly bitter smile. “All that thinking you can’t.”

And the Empire State Building. With everything they had been discussing, Lee had actually forgotten that that had been their destination. “Honestly, that was an excuse to get you away from the shop,” she admitted with another shrug. A shrug that caused her hand to move slightly on his arm. Her eyes dropped to see that her hand was still there. She quickly pulled her hand away. “Sorry, contact is…weird when I’m not siphoning,” she said, not realizing that a slight blush had started crossing her cheeks.

“Very.” Tarin said candidly. “But it’s some peoples’ lot in life to watch from the sidelines. It’s too dangerous for them to get in the game.” He’d learned that lesson the hard way more than once. He was learning that lesson again right now.

“Honestly, that was an excuse to get you away from the shop,”

“Well, it worked…though I can’t really stay away from there forever. Since we are being honest…I lied earlier. I need to get a few new things before I can stay there again.”

Lee noticed her hand then and jerked it away from his arm. Her cheeks were slightly pink, but that could have easily been from the walk or the pent up energy from the last couple of days.

“I’m sure it would be.” He said with a small smile that was a bit more brittle than it probably seemed.

He was alluding to the fact that he thought he was too dangerous to not be lonely. She just shook her head slightly, sadly. “Everything, everyone I’ve seen, and in my own experience, that is very very rarely the case,” she said gently. “Even when it feels like it would not only be dangerous, but impossible, it is rarely the case that someone is meant to ‘watch from the sidelines’.”

He needed to get some things before staying in the shop again. Lee nodded. That made sense. Even though he hadn’t actually done it there, the way that he had reacted to the idea of sleeping in the bed there…Lee was sure that was one of the things he needed to buy.

Though that could wait, as far as Lee was concerned. It’d still only been one night since the merge ended, and (she assumed) he’d had a dreamless sleep because of the energy she had siphoned. She wasn’t about to let him deal with the first of those kinds of nightmares on his own. If after that, he still insisted on dealing with the aftermath on his own…Well, at least at that point he would have a reasonable idea what it was he was actually going to have to deal with.

“But at least I can turn my siphoning off now, so I won’t end up crashing,” she said. “It always scares me when I end up falling asleep despite having enough energy that I feel like I’m going to bounce off the walls.”

It was absolutely stunning to Tarin that Lee could be so unfailingly optimistic after everything she had seen, experienced, and done.

He knew that they had barely scratched the top of the iceberg too.

What she was saying just didn’t compute for him. Not right now. It wasn’t that he thought the other Tarin had been wrong to do what he’s done with his life…no, it wasn’t that.

Tarin wasn’t going to argue with Lee though. If how far arguing had gotten him so far was any indication, it wouldn’t do any good.

Lee was talking about her powers again and Tarin’s brow furrowed as he considered what she was saying.

“So you still get tired? Even when you’re full to bursting with energy like this?”

“Tired?” Lee asked, more to herself than anything as she thought, really thought about what it felt like when she crashed. “No…it's more like falling asleep despite the energy I have. And it happens quickly enough that I don't get an alarm set to make sure I can wake up.”

Her head had tilted to the side in thought as she spoke and her teeth started worrying at her bottom lip. “I don't know, it's like my body or brain just kind of…shuts down at about the six day mark…”

“Six days?” Tarin said, trying to wrap his mind around all of that. “You’ve been awake for six days before?”

How did that even work? Tarin didn’t remember much from high school biology, but he knew that human beings needed sleep. It hadn’t occurred to him just what it would mean for Lee to have so much energy.

“I just kind of assumed that if you couldn’t sleep that you didn’t need the sleep.” he said, brows furrowed at the realization.

“I’m guessing that was more of a problem in the past than it is now…at least not usually.” he added, rolling his eyes slightly at himself.

“Is that going to happen this time? Are you going to be awake for six days because of me?” Tarin had a sneaking suspicion that might be the case. Lee had a tendency to worry her lip when she was thinking about things that bothered her. She’d done it a few times last night, at the shop today, and was doing it now.

“Does anything help?”

Lee simply nodded when he first questioned how long she had been awake before. But then he continued. “I have. A couple times,” she replied. “The time I’m awake isn’t really bad, just boring. I don’t feel sleepy and my brain doesn’t get foggy or anything until just before I crash, so it’s not like I’m walking around in a tired stupor for five days.

“But no, I’m not going to crash this time,” she reassured Tarin. “I stopped siphoning as soon as he was gone. I couldn’t do that before. With how I feel right now, I might be able to nap around dawn. If not, I’ll have to start siphoning tomorrow and will sleep tomorrow night.”

Did anything help, when she had energy levels like this? There certainly were, but most weren’t weren’t feasible for her to do most of the time. “Well, being able to stop siphoning definitely helps. And when I’ve got energy like this, my speed and strength are quite a bit more than normal. If I can use those, it helps burn through it faster, but most times I don't really have a way to. The best I can normally do is go for a long run.”

Tarin had a feeling that when Lee said she went on long runs to help her burn off her extra energy, she wasn’t talking about a couple of miles. He had the feeling she was talking about something that he probably couldn’t even wrap his head around.

Speed and strength too. That explained how she’d been able to manhandle him so thoroughly the other night. He hadn’t had the wherewithal to think about it at the time, but as small as Lee was, she’d easily been able to pin him down.

Not wanting to dwell on that thought for too long, Tarin groped around inside his brain for something else to talk about so he wouldn’t find the tables turned on him. It was good that she didn’t feel particularly bad when she was awake for long periods, but it had to be weird to be so awake when everyone else was asleep.

“Sooo. Yeah.” Tarin said. Stopping for a moment to sort through things had helped. He’d managed to get everything sorted in his head…at least until he was in a place that it would be more appropriate for him to properly deal with this new potential aspect of his power.

“I think I’m good now.” he said a bit awkwardly. “Thanks. Again.” he really needed to start keeping a tally of the things he owed Ms…

“Hey, what’s your last name?”

He seemed to take everything she was saying about her powers in stride. Well, this aspect of her powers was easier to accept, and he had already seen evidence of her strength.

But this left them standing in silence now. Though, it did seem to be a far more comfortable silence than they had been having previously.

“Hey, what’s your last name?”

Lee’s eyes widened as she looked over at him with a slightly guilty look on her face. “I’m sorry! I didn’t even think…I thought…”

Lee took a deep breath then looked over at him again. “Smith. My name is Lee Smith,” she properly introduced herself. Then her mind started trying to figure out what to say now. Since they had just been talking about her energy, she thought she’d ask about something he’d said earlier.

“You like to work out? What do you do for your workouts?”