Scheherazade: Part Four

by Alicia McKenzie

She was dreaming. In her dream, the Oasis had changed somehow - shifted? her sleeping mind wondered with a shudder of horror - and everything was cast in soft shimmering blues. Domino opened her mouth to call out, but her voice was muffled somehow, the sound refusing to carry like it should. Something was wrong, this wasn't--

--and something pulled her out of the dream. Domino jerked upright in the chair, her eyes snapping open. "Nate?" she muttered, her attention drawn in the direction of the bed as another, even stronger surge of groggy confusion streamed up the link. She slid out of the chair, wincing as she discovered her foot had gone to sleep. "Definitely should've stayed on the bed," she muttered to herself as she limped over to check on him.

Nathan's eyes flew open as she approached, and Domino hesitated at the half-panicked look he gave her. "Hey, asshole," she murmured finally, sitting down carefully on the edge of the bed. Flinching, he started to shift away, but she laid a restraining hand on his chest. "No, stay still. You might start bleeding again."

That was fudging things a bit - the wound was more or less closed, Franklin had seen to that - but she hated it when he acted like he didn't want her to touch him. It reminded her of the bad months, just before they'd found the Oasis, and that was not a time of her life she'd prefer to leave in the past where it belonged.

Nathan blinked up at her, trying to focus. "What--what did I do?" he croaked, and Domino frowned as she picked up on the sudden tension that had gripped him. Sighing, she reached out and brushed silver hair back from his forehead, letting her hand linger. He felt hot. She didn't like that.

"You didn't do anything," she said, the words coming out low but savage. Hell, he'd done enough insane things while under the influence of the shifts; he didn't need to start blaming himself when he actually hadn't done anything at all. "Some stupid shit of a newcomer stabbed you in the bar."

Shifting on the bed, Nathan gave a croaking laugh that turned almost immediately into a wince. "Great. Tell me--tell me I at least broke a chair over his head. Something."

"Sorry, babe," she murmured. He grimaced, looking away, and Domino gave him her best ironic smile. "If it would make you feel better, we could pretend you did," she went on helpfully.

"Never mind," Nathan muttered crossly, but reached up to take her hand. Reassured by the strength of his grip at least, Domino found herself relaxing slightly. "I suppose Franklin intervened?" She nodded, and the little furrow between his eyebrows deepened as he scowled. "I hate not remembering these things. Why the fuck can't he get rid of the residue without screwing with my memory?" He looked up at her, his expression fitful, disturbed. "Telepaths are SUPPOSED to remember everything."

Domino sighed again and laid her free hand over his lips to stifle any further complaints. He growled at her, and she gave him an unrepentant smile and patted him on the cheek. "Don't worry so much," she said as flippantly as she could manage, trying to lighten the situation a little. He'd start brooding in earnest, if she didn't. "I remember enough for the both of us. I could tell you in exquisite detail about every time you've pissed me off."

Nathan muttered something that sounded under his breath, but Domino felt her smile widen as he turned his head into her hand. "Oh, I'm sure you're keeping a list," he grumbled as she stroked the side of his face gently.

"And checking it twice," she said mockingly. "But naughty can be nice, sometimes."

His eyes, which had begun to droop tiredly shut again, snapped right open at that. Domino blushed at the direct, suggestive look he gave her. "Oh, really," Nathan said measuringly.

"Yes, really," she said with a soft snort. Remembering.

***

Habit had been the problem, after that meeting in the jungle. Intellectually, she'd known that this Nathan was a stranger, that she was possibly taking her life in her hands if she let down her guard around him. But logic, while all well and good, had never been her strong point. Her natural predisposition, one the shifts had only encouraged, was to trust her instincts.

And her instincts hadn't looked on him as a stranger. Maybe it was because he was less like the Nathans she'd met in the shifts - although he had something of that same restlessness - and more like the Nathan she'd known in her own world. Oh, there were differences, ones she noticed almost immediately, but they were subtle. Intriguing, rather than unsettling.

It would have been much easier to maintain a safe distance if it hadn't become so very obvious, early on, that he felt the same connection to her as she did to him.

At first she'd wondered whether she was so starved for company that she would have responded in the same way to anyone, but she'd soon seen that for the self-deception it was. It wasn't simply having company. She could have--disciplined herself better, if that had been it. It was having him, at her side again, alive and well.

He had been 'well', too, for longer than either of them should have had the right to expect. Looking back, she could see what he'd been trying to do, how he'd avoided manipulating the shifts directly. Neither of them had been aware of the existence of the temporal residue until they'd come to the Oasis, but Nathan had clearly understood something of what would happen to him and tried to hold it off as long as he could.

It had given them time, time to know each other as the people they were, not the ghosts they remembered. Enough time for things between them to grow so charged that an explosion of some sort had been inevitable.

It had been storming that night, too. All the significant moments of her life after the end of the world seemed to happen in storms.

***

*NATHAN!* Domino shouted at the top of her mental 'lungs' as she ran headlong through the driving rain. *Nathan, where the HELL are you?* The wind screaming in off the water was so powerful she was having trouble staying upright, and the fact that the wet sand of the beach kept trying to suck her feet in up to the ankles wasn't helping.

Generally, she wouldn't have been racing over unknown ground in the pitch-black of what had to be a hurricane - no, definitely not a smart thing to be doing - but the alternative was to try and do something about the creatures chasing her. Since she had a single, small knife, and they were eight-foot long giant lobsters with natural armor that a missile launcher would have had trouble piercing, she was inclining to keep running and hope that somehow managed to give the things the slip.

She wished she hadn't gotten separated from Nathan. The shift had opened up unexpectedly, swallowing them both and dumping them here, several hundred metres offshore. He'd made it through the shift wall, she'd seen him barely twenty feet away in the water, but before she could start towards him, he'd been shouting at her to get to shore. And she'd felt the lobster-things moving in the water around her, circling in for the kill.

He'd followed her, though. Surely he'd followed her. The words 'I'll be right behind you' had definitely reached her over the shrieking of the wind, or she would never have left him behind.

She was running out of beach, and the rock face she was rapidly approaching looked alarmingly sheer. Gritting her teeth, Domino picked up speed, charging right at the rock until she was close enough that her body started to recoil reflexively, expecting the pain of a hard impact. But it never came, because she leaped, trusting to her luck to let her find holds she could use to pull herself up, out of reach--

--only the rock was slick with rain, and she didn't even manage to get a good grip on it before she found herself falling back to the sand. "Damn it!" Domino snarled, dragging herself to her feet and trying again.

No luck. No fucking luck at all. Something gave a chittering screech from behind her, and Domino whirled, drawing her knife in the same moment.

There were three of them. And they looked just as much like giant lobsters as she'd thought they did when they'd first crawled out of the surf and started chasing her. Paler, pinkish rather than red, but somehow the innocuous color didn't make them seem any less threatening. They waved claws as big as her torso at her threateningly, chittering again, and their eyes were--glowing? Just a little. Enough for her to see that they really looked like they were giving her a malevolent glare.

Well, too bad. "You want a piece of me?" she growled, jabbing the knife towards the nearest. Just a feint, but all three of them backed away, clicking at her. Were the damned things intelligent? she thought wildly.

Their claws were--stained, with something darker. Blood? *Nate, where ARE you?* A ripple of nausea went through her, violent enough that she shuddered, faltering a little.

The one on the left lunged at her, as if sensing the opening. Domino took a step back, raising the knife. The eyes, she needed to go for the eyes--

And Nathan charged forward out of the darkness of the storm. He ran right up and over the one in the center, the impact of his weight slamming the creature to the wet sand. In his hands was the walking stick he'd been using in the last shift, only it was glowing gold with telekinetic energy now, and as he whirled it in his hands and brought it down like a spear into the body of the creature closest to her, it went right through the lobster-thing's armor like a knife through hot butter. Impaled, the creature shrieked, thrashing helplessly in its death throes.

Nathan was already whirling to face the other two. The third was leaping over the one that had been stepped on, and Nathan extended a hand, as if gesturing for it to stop. The creature was flung away, landing on its back a good ten feet down the beach where it stayed, its legs waving frantically in the air.

Still trying to get back to its feet, the one he'd stepped on clicked angrily, then seemed to rethink its strategy and lashed out with a massive claw, knocking Nathan off his feet before she could even shout a warning. Sprawled on the sand, he started to struggle back up, but the creature grabbed him with both claws and started to shake him violently. Domino shouted something she'd never be able to remember afterwards and dashed forward, kicking at the thing, trying to get its attention, make it turn so that she could try for an eye.

It lifted Nathan three feet off the ground and then slammed him back down, so hard that she heard the air being driven from his lungs. She shrieked a curse and tried to stab it, driving the knife into what looked like it might be a seam in its armor.

All she managed to do was bend the point of her knife. "Let go!" she shouted, kicking at it again as it tossed Nathan back and forth, never quite losing its grip. "Nathan!" Maybe if she jumped on the thing, she could reach its eyes with the knife--

#Dom!# Nathan suddenly shouted in her head. The air flashed gold around her, and she let out a yelp as she was blown sideways, as if a giant hand had just reached down out of the sky and swatted her out of the immediate vicinity. Crashing to the wet sand nearly ten feet away, she laid there wheezing, seeing stars.

He hadn't just done that. He hadn't. That son of a--

"Dom!" she heard him shout, aloud this time. Blinking in an attempt to clear her vision, she started to push herself up to a sitting position, and saw him. He was on his feet, running towards her - well, trying to run, he was limping pretty heavily - and there were two of the lobster-things apparently trying to rip each other to shreds. *Now,* she thought a bit dazedly, *why couldn't they have done that to begin with?*

Nathan had reached her by that point, and she didn't quite have the breath to protest as he hauled her up off the ground and dragged her forward. There was a shift wall shimmering fifteen feet down the beach, and Domino pulled it together enough to realize that they were making a break for it, and this was a good thing.

She was still going to kill him.

They hit the shift wall, and Domino gritted her teeth as she felt herself stretch and twist and warp until she thought every cell in her body was trying to separate from its neighbors--

--and they emerged onto a mist-choked moor, in the shadow of something that looked an awful lot like Stonehenge. Rather nice, really. Definitely better than the place they'd just left. Too bad she wasn't in the mood to appreciate the scenery.

"Bastard!" she snarled, pushing him away. Nathan stumbled and fell heavily, cursing under his breath and glaring up at her. "What the FUCK did you do that to me for?"

Nathan glowered at her and then looked back at the shift wall, which receded, fading into wisps of silver light as he raised a hand towards it. "The shifts are drifting apart," he muttered through clenched teeth. "We're okay, they won't follow us through."

"That's really a shame!" she shouted down at him, utterly livid. Not putting her knife away. "I should've just walked away and let them eat you!"

He bared his teeth at her. "And I should have let you stay where you were while the one crawling down the flonqing rock face snuck up behind you and started snacking!" he growled.

It took the wind out of her sails as completely as if he'd slapped her.Domino opened her mouth, then closed it again. Then glared at him, sure he was making it up to save his sorry hide. "A third one," she said skeptically. "I didn't see a third."

"Typical," he gritted venomously, hauling himself back to his feet and swaying a little. Domino scowled up at him, aware he was quite deliberately looming. She hated it when he loomed. Pushy bastard. "Would it be SO hard just to say thank you?"

"I beg your pardon?" she snarled, and poked him in the chest. He tottered backwards, then regained his balance and continued to glower at her. "You toss me around like a rag doll--"

"I did it to save your life, damn it!" Nathan snapped, his eyes flashing dangerously.

"I can take care of myself!" Her conscience was twinging a bit, urging her to stop right there and not take this any further. If he really had saved her life, she shouldn't be quibbling about being roughed up a little in the process. Her cheeks burned, but she glared up at him stubbornly. "You could have just said 'Hey, Dom, look out--"

"Well, pardon the fuck out of me, but I was being gnawed on by a giant lobster! My usual eloquence must have deserted me," he growled.

She was laughing scornfully, before she entirely knew what she was doing. "You? Eloquent?" she mocked, putting her hands on her hips. "Since when?"

"Oh, shut up!" Nathan snarled, taking a step toward her with a look on his face like he was contemplating swatting her again.

At least, that was what she THOUGHT that expression meant. In any case, 'them were fighting words'. She'd never coped well with being told to shut up. "Make me!" she challenged him.

"FINE!" he roared, and grabbed her.

Domino didn't even have time to yelp as he proceeded to kiss her like she hadn't been kissed in, well, a whole hell of a lot longer than she wanted to think about. This was not an acceptable way to win an argument, she thought dazedly, half-heartedly trying to push him away. If the sudden weakness in her knees didn't do her in, the oxygen deprivation would get her eventually--

Nathan suddenly pushed her out to arm's length and stared down at her, his eyes wild. Domino gaped up at him, still not quite able to absorb the fact that he'd done that.

Then she reached up, grabbed his face between her hands, and kissed him back. Pure instinct, but it felt so right, and she slid her hands upwards, fingers tangling in his too-shaggy hair as he pulled her closer.

"Thought we decided not to do this," Domino murmured breathlessly as they broke apart for air once more.

"I don't remember saying that," Nathan said, reaching up and brushing a stray lock of wet hair out of her hairs. The gesture so incongruously tender that Domino's eyes blurred with involuntary tears. She could still hear the roughness in his voice, though, and as she blinked rapidly, his face and the haunted look there came back into focus.

She wanted to take it away, to replace it with something else. A smile, at the very least. "Come to think of it," she said hesitantly, looking up at him, her mouth quirking in a rueful grin, "neither did I."

And he smiled back. "Well," he said, almost gravely. "I'm glad we've got that settled." He reached out and slid her jacket down over her shoulders. The smile was turning into a honest-to-goodness smirk, Domino noted mirthfully. "Shall we get out of these wet clothes?"

"Mmm. Sounds like an idea."

***

Blushing slightly as she remembered just how wild things had gotten in the hour before the shift had destabilized, dropping them in the middle of a ruined city, Domino leaned over and kissed him, rather more gently than she would have liked, but just fiercely enough to convey how fondly she regarded the memory. "You and your innuendo," she murmured.

"Yeah, yeah. What was that for?" Nathan murmured as she drew back. His eyes were drifting shut again, and Domino sighed, reflecting how perverse it was to wish that he was carping and bitching and trying to distract her while he snuck out of bed, instead of just lying there.

"Downpayment for later," she said softly. "Go back to sleep, old man."

He muttered something under his breath, shifting and wincing again. "You'll stay?" he asked weakly, his eyes cracking open a little as he peered back up at her.

"No, I thought I'd wait until you fall asleep, then go find Patrick and carry on with the torrid affair we've been having behind your back," she said gravely.

"Sounds like fun," he said with an exhausted sigh and closed his eyes again.

Domino stayed where she was until she was sure he was asleep again, and then stretched out on the bed beside him. Definitely better than the chair, she thought, and listened, reassured, to the steady beat of his heart.

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