Lee was splitting hairs, but she was so vehement about the fact that Tarin hadn't ever really hurt her. That it had been him as someone else...Rachael didn't know the details of all that...Robert hadn't shared details, just that Lee was delusional about the situation. Rachael wanted to pry, wanted the details of this situation, but didn't ask, just kind of shrugged her shoulders. Studying the guacamole on the table in front of her as she sighed.

"I wasn't agreeing with him...but I only know the details that Robert gave me Lee. It's not like you've been particularly forthright with information about the two of you. I knew there had to be more to the story...but if it wasn't actually Tarin at all who hurt you...I really need to kick Robert in the balls."

But then Lee was actually opening up...actually talking a little bit about why Tarin had apparently taken responsibility for something that had happened to her. Then apparently taking a stand against both herself and Robert...Rach looked at Lee with startled eyes, blinking a couple of times before laughing ruefully and shaking her head. "I think you've got the wrong idea Lee...I'm on Tarin's side...and since you're not doing anything to explain more I'm going to stay that way."

Lee continued though, determined not to say anything else about what had happened to make her leave New York. Apparently this was how Lee dealt, she internalized, cried on her own then tried to move on. "You were just telling me that you're never going to get over him. Maybe it would help if you heard yourself say that it's the right thing. If you can't even talk about it, how can you be sure at all that it was the right decision...I don't even get it Lee..."

Boy...Rachael was just laying it all out there...it might have had something with the three beers she'd downed in a quite short amount of time...but more likely it was just a desperate need to know what it had been. Granted, she hadn't been around the couple very much, but there was absolutely nothing fake about the way they'd been around each other. They'd been so perfect. One of those couples that even in the few hours they'd seen each other, Rachael had been jealous.

"If not for your sake...then tell me so I don't go crazy." Rachael fixed Lee with a look, "Or maybe I'll just call him and ask myself. I bet he'd tell me AND be happy to know where you've gone."

Lee sighed as Rachael talked. She was right, how could she understand how it wasn't Tarin who hurt her. Especially with how it was really only Robert who had been giving her the information. But how could Rachael understand without going into the whole merging explanation? At this point, there really was no point in going into an explanation of something Rachael wouldn't even understand.

Cause really, what did it matter if Rachael understood, now, about merging, about how when Tarin merged he didn't have control of what was going on. And how, at least most of the time it seemed, those merges resulted in a consciousness and personality that for one reason or another, had wanted her dead. Lee wasn't with Tarin anymore, though, she wasn't going to be in that kind of situation again. There was no reason to bother explaining the almost unexplainable to her sister.

Of course Rachael couldn't just leave it there, though. Picking her beer up, Lee closed her eyes and sighed as she listened. "It is the right thing," she said, though her voice was not exactly confident as she said that.

"Don't call him," Lee said, sitting up straight as she glared across the table at Rachael. Lee had a flashback to bursting in to Tarin's hotel room in Maine, and had a chill of almost horror run down her spine as she thought of that situation being reversed. "Don't. I don't want him knowing where I am."

Taking a deep breath, a frown on her face, Lee took a quick glance around them in the restaurant before turning back toward Rachael, though her haunted eyes were lowered to the table. She did not want to tell Rachael, she did not want to tell anyone, for that matter, but what choice did she have if Rachael was going to call Tarin to find out otherwise? That was something Lee couldn't have happen.

"In the camps, during the breakout," Lee said quietly, not wanting Rachael to hear it, never mind anyone else who might be around. But how could she actually say it? She had enough of a problem thinking it, how could she put it into words?

"I-" Lee tried to continue, closing her eyes. Even when she had talked to Rupert about this, Lee hadn't gotten into all of it. "It was horrible there," Lee said, hoping that a change in tact would make it possible to actually get the words out. "Absolute hell. I--I killed people...I didn't want to, but did...We..." Lee swallowed, hard. This was so much harder to say this time than it had been when she had told Rupert, and Lee didn't know why. She took another sip of beer, trying to buy herself a moment or two.

"We...we merged...I took too much energy, almost killed him, too..."

Lee looked pissed, Rachael really couldn't blame her though because the threat she'd made was definitely a little below the belt. But then she was practically begging Rachael not to call Tarin, not to let him know where she was. Rachael was slightly disgusted with herself, she'd never really intended to do that...but now more than anything she realized that all of her inklings abut the situation there were correct. If Lee was that desperate to keep Tarin from finding her, then he hadn't wanted this at all. Lee had just confirmed in as many words it wasn't what she had wanted either...something had to be done.

As bad as Rachael felt now about threatening Lee with calling Tarin, it had been effective. More reluctant than a kid who knew he was going to get shots, Lee started to spill at least some of the details of what had happened to make her leave.

There was a break out at the camps she was in...Rachael had known they were bad, but what Lee was describing and the way she was describing it sounded considerably worse than even that impression had been.

Rachael's eyes widened a bit when Lee explained that she'd killed people. It was hard to believe looking across the table that the slight and pretty woman sitting across from her was even physically capable of something like that. Rachael didn't believe for a second that Lee would lie at this point too. The thing of it was, she was even more confused than before...and it didn't look like Lee was going to spill another word. Merged...merged...what the hell did that mean?

She'd almost killed him too? Rach assumed that meant Tarin...somehow she'd managed to hurt him while this...merge was going on. Rachael frowned even more deeply...."Aren't you the one who was just telling me not ten minutes ago that when whatever it is that happens...happens....it's not Tarin's fault that you get hurt? Why is it different for you? I'm still not sure what you're explaining to me...but I'm a little confused why you had to leave...and Lee...I'm sorry if this is going to sound harsh...but if someone had used a damn electric shock collar on me...I probably would have killed them too."

"Because it wasn't Tarin who was hurting me, and it was me who hurt him," Lee said softly. Damn it, was she still going to have to explain the merging? She really didn't want to, didn't want to have to keep bringing it with her now that her and Tarin were done.

The fact was, she was going to have to, one way or another. Whether she wanted to or not, Lee knew she'd never actually get away from what happened when she and Tarin merged.

But why was it different for her when she had almost killed Tarin than all the other times he had hurt her when he had been merged? "Because he's not in control when he merges," Lee explained, not even really caring at this point if Rachael understood all of it. "Those other ones he'd been forced into, he couldn't stop them from happening. This one..."

Lee squeezed her eyes shut as she relived the fear and horror she had felt as Tarin was asking her to merge with him, as the stalker was bearing down on them. "We didn't exactly have a lot of options to get away from the Stalker, but I knew how bad an idea merging would be, and I still agreed. I was scared, I was angry...I should have known I'd be siphoning more than normal...And we had no control over what was happening..."

Lee's eyes snapped open and she looked up at her sister as she heard her last words. She shook her head. "I wanted them dead, but no one should have to die like that. No one should ever die how a lot of people did that day..."

This time, Rachael was silent the entire time Lee was talking to her. Explaining things to a further degree than she'd ever really expected. What Lee was saying didn't make sense though. Robert was right about one thing....Lee was delusional about the situation, but it was in the exact opposite way that he thought she was. Rachael's heart went out to Tarin in this situation, and she decided that she was going to do whatever she could to get the two of them back together. If Lee was that worried about what seeing Tarin would do, then that was the first step. Somehow Rachael had to get Lee back to New York, then she had to find Tarin. If the interaction happened the way she suspected it would, things would be set in motion and hopefully everyone would end up happy again.

Rachael just couldn't keep her mouth completely shut though, some of the things that Lee was saying were simply not adding up, not at all.

"From what I'm getting...and I might be wrong here...." Rach said with her head tilted to one side and confusion written clearly on her face, "But you've said several times that neither of you had any control that night. I think you're putting a ridiculous amount of blame on yourself here. Besides Lee...you just said that it was Tarin's idea to do what he did...and if the alternative was the...stalker killing the two of you. I think if you asked him he'd be stoked that things turned out the way they did. Did you even bother to ask him? I still kind of can't believe that it's all just over after everything...."

After she had told Rachael about how she had killed the guards, Lee's eyes had closed again. So she didn't see the confusion on her sister's face when the younger woman finally spoke again. The confusion was, however, very evident in her voice.

Yes, the merge had been Tarin's idea, but that didn't change what had happened, didn't change the fact that she had wanted those guards to die. Didn't change the fact that she had taken more energy from him than she had ever taken from anyone before that day.

"And just because from day one he said he didn't care if he ended up in an exhausted heap, doesn't give me a green light to take that much energy," Lee replied in a whisper. Nothing gave her that right. And what if it had happened some other time, she wondered. Like that night they had spent in Maine, where they had both passed out in the bed together. Neither of them would have been able to get up and leave, neither of them would have known she had taken too much energy until it was too late. A shudder ran through Lee's whole body at that thought.

"I couldn't even touch him after the merge, I was too scared to," Lee continued, her eyes still closed. She could see Tarin laying there, in the mud and blood on the ground. "We were still in the middle of the camp, and I couldn't even touch him to get him out of there without fear that that one little touch would take what little he had left..."

Lee could feel tears welling up behind her eyelids at this point despite all her attempts over the last however many weeks to push all those thoughts and emotions away. "I made him get up, though," she finally continued after swallowing the lump that had formed in her throat. Told him that if he loved me, if he had ever loved me, he had to get up..."

Lee took a deep breath. She couldn't cry, wouldn't cry. Not here. "Things end. Those five months were like five years for us, Rach," Lee explained. And it was true in a way. They had gotten so close, so much had happened for her and Tarin, that it was almost as if more time had passed, like they had been together so much longer than they had actually been. "And no, I didn't ask, but he didn't try to get me to stay, either."

"Lee!" Rachael exclaimed, her hand coming down on the table hard enough to make the glass bottles on the table shake. "You're being ridiculous here...you didn't have a clue that was going to happen." Her voice was quiet now, hissing almost through her teeth as she watched the play of emotions across her sister's face. She was absolutely miserable....there was nothing happy or resolved about the way she was talking.

"You did what you had to do to stay alive Lee. Tarin knew the risk he was taking...he knows everything about what you can do. He also must have had an idea that you wouldn't be able to control things any more than he would. But you didn't ask him...you walked away from the love of your life without asking him if he'd known what he was getting into. You just assigned yourself the blame and took off."

There was more, so much more that Rachael wanted to say to Lee, so many more holes in her sister's logic, so many holes. "Why not try for a real five years? Maybe even a real ten or fifteen? Jesus Lee, I can't believe you just gave up. Of course he let you told him that's what you told him you needed to do. Did he ever deny you a thing when you told him you really wanted it?"

Rachael sat back and drained the last of her third beer, "I think I understand now...but I still don't get how you did it..."

Lee jumped, her eyes snapping open, when she heard Rachael's exclamation. How could Rachael think she was being ridiculous? Lee had killed people, she had wanted them dead. And worse than that, she had almost killed Tarin? How could she be being ridiculous about that?

But why did Rachael have to be talking so logically? And why oh why did she have to make it out to be the same way that Lee had thought about Tarin going to Maine? But this was different, it really was. Tarin thought he was a monster because of the merges, because of what he did during them that he couldn't control, that he couldn't stop no matter what he tried. But Lee had wanted those men dead. If Tarin thought that badly of himself because of the merges, what would he think of her, now?

As Rachael continued, Lee dropped her eyes again and picked up her beer, downing the last few sips rather quickly.

And then Rachael asked if Tarin had ever denied her anything that she had wanted, anything she needed, and Lee suddenly found it hard to swallow. It's not like he really spoiled her or anything, not like she got everything she ever wanted, but Tarin had done everything he could to make her happy. If she had wanted to cuddle, no matter how tired he was, he had held her, if she needed time to wind down, he had made sure to keep his distance even if that wasn't what he wanted.

"Just because you haven't had a hard life and had to make tough decisions, doesn't mean others haven't, or can't," Lee said. Yes, it was a little harsh, yes she didn't exactly have to be like that, but Rachael had pushed and pushed and pushed. Lee had made her decision, it wasn't up to Rachael to approve of it.

Rachael could tell that she'd struck a nerve with Lee. The play of emotions across her face wasn't as mellow as it had been a few minutes before, in fact....she looked really angry now. But Rachael knew that Lee was having to think about the things she was bringing up.

It was true though, Lee was saying all these things, taking blame for all this stuff, when she had just finished explaining that Tarin wasn't responsible. It was absolutely ludicrous that Lee was blaming herself and letting him completely off the hook. It was also obvious that Rachael's words were sinking in. Especially when her sister spoke next, her nasty words were more than proof enough. Rachael just smiled and shook her head.

"You're right Lee. I've never had a hard moment in my life. Not compared to you of course." She stopped a moment and tipped the empty beer bottle in Lee's direction, almost like a salute. Her smile didn't falter though, she'd made difficult decisions, she'd had hard days...but Lee was right, her life had been way more difficult. So Rachael wasn't going to argue.

"I'll tell you something though Lee. I saw the way that man looked at you, and you sure as hell didn't argue with what I just said to you." she paused for a moment and shook her head, "and you think you're doing something noble here by turning your back on what was probably the best thing to ever happen to you. But what you're doing is making a decision that's going to make sure you're never happy. I'm not going to push anymore or ask anymore questions, but think about this Lee, really think about this before it's too late."

Well how the hell was she supposed to argue, Lee couldn't help but wonder. The way Tarin had looked at her, the way he had touched her....but Lee had made her decision, had made up her mind. Like she had said, doing what you wanted and what you needed to do weren't always the same thing.

But then, even though Rachael said she wasn't going to push or ask any more questions, she told Lee that she needed to think about what she was doing.

"I have thought about it," Lee said slowly, her voice finally managing to lose a lot of its recent emotion. "I was awake for four days straight after the breakout. I spent a week at Robert's. Even trying not to, I've spent lots of time thinking about it."

As soon as she had finished speaking, the waitress was back, with another couple of beers. Great, just what she needed. Glancing at the menu again, quite pleased with the fact that Rachael wasn't prodding her to not look this time, Lee realized there really wasn't much choice. At least not for her, considering pretty much anything Mexican would remind her of her first encounter with the cowboy hat.

"I'll have the quesadilla," Lee said softly, handing her menu over. All she wanted at this point was to eat and get out of the restaurant, preferably without Rachael, though if worst came to worst, she could always just lock herself in her room to get some peace and quiet for the night.