A/N: Aaaaaaangst and melodrama! Dear Terra Nova fans, who are awesome and kind and (hopefully) forgiving…please do not murder me for this. I'd really prefer not to be murdered.

Character death and angst monkeys ahead, you've been warned. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go work on the next chapter of "Bubbles" to make myself feel better. :D

Promises

Every time the men leave the safety of Terra Nova they encounter much the same routine.

Lieutenant Washington tells (orders) Reynolds to come back safely. His reply is a quick nod before he goes back to reassuring his fiancée everything will be alright. He makes them both the same promise: he'll return safely.

Wash tells (at gunpoint, Jim will later joke, though the situation is hardly funny and the mirth never makes it to his eyes) Shannon to bring her CO back to her. His reply is a squeeze to her shoulder before he turns to promise his wife everything will be alright. Elisabeth knows better than Maddy, however, and is less easily consoled. Jim makes two promises: he'll return safely and with the Commander.

Alicia asks Taylor to come back to her. It's the morning before they leave and she props herself upon an elbow, her hair tickling his chest as she leans over him. She doesn't ask him to come back safely (they both know it's too great a request and one he'll never manage) just to return to her. It's the same request she makes every time he goes OTG, and every time he keeps it (she lives in dread of the day he doesn't, knowing it has to come sooner than later). His reply is a smile, almost patronizing (because he always comes back, doesn't he?), as he knocks her arm out from under her. He uses her sudden lack of balance to roll them, preferring to use kisses, deep and heated and more intimate than such a simple gesture should merit, instead of words to reassure her. Show, not tell. She takes it as a promise, as they lay together sometime later, a tangle of limbs amidst a tangle of sheets, when he presses his lips to her forehead, brushing aside her damp hair.

It leaves her hopeful, it leaves her with a mixture of longing and dread pooling in her gut as she waits, playing at commander while he is away. It's a sensation she never manages to shake, no matter how many years they've done this, whenever he's away from her. When he's not at her side the anxiety gnaws at her conscious mind, an omnipresent itch to remind her of his absence.

The frantic calls of the gate guards have her running, sprinting down the stairs (if her feet even touch them), looking for the men in her life, waiting for them to keep their promises.

Reynolds breaks his promise. He returns bloodied, sagging, his left arm holding his side uselessly, ugly tears marring his back. He's limping, a makeshift tourniquet around his upper thigh. He's standing, but only because Shannon's got his good arm slung around his neck, supporting the bulk of his weight. It's like some sort of trance as he hobbles towards medical, leaving a trail of blood and dirt in his wake, staring, but not seeing, hearing, but not understanding, the voices that call out to him. Realization strikes him, pulls him out of limbo, only when he hears Maddy's sobs as she clutches him to her. It ruins her new summer dress, a handsome white one he'd bought her not a week prior, now stained a macabre crimson.

The dread in the lieutenant's gut intensifies.

Shannon breaks his promise. Only two return to the gate. Once relieved of his daughters betrothed (he stares after them numbly for a minute, wiping the boy's blood absently of his shirt only to find that too is already soaked) his eyes meet hers. And she feels her heart break, a knife turning in her back. Jim reaches out to clutch her shoulder (black does not stain and the blood does not bother her), she returns the gesture. Her friend's eyes are hollow, and she wishes, more than anything that he would stop looking at her so. A mixture of sadness, regret, and surrender that looks so foreign on his face. A far cry from the mischief and well intentioned teasing she's grown accustomed to, fond of.

Her heart positively sinks.

He doesn't say it directly; he doesn't have to.

"Slashers, Wash, three of them. We got them but…." He shakes his head, she wants to scream for him to just tell her. But she's in charge. She's leading Terra Nova, at least until Taylor returns, and there's little room for weakness. "Mira was waiting. Somehow she knew and…" He trails off. She isn't certain why but his hold on her shoulder becomes an arm wrapped around her, enveloping her in an embrace. It's not the relationship they've ever had (they drink, they talk, they fight, but as a rule they rarely touch), and it carries with it a sick sort of finality. "I'm sorry, Wash. I'm sorry," he repeats it, over and over like some sort of mantra, into her hair.

She fists her hands in his jackets, closes her eyes. Somehow it's worse with Shannon. From another soldier she could bear it, from Reynolds she could bear it. But to see the man she's come to associate with good humor, with hope, even in the darkest situations, break…

His words turn the dull ache in her chest to realization, bringing with it a soul searing pain.

Only two return to the gate. Slashers, Sixers, Mira…

Nathaniel….

She isn't sure if she cries (though she feels moisture leaving trails down her face and absently notes they must be tears), she knows she does not cry out (she's their leader and cannot afford to; her chest is to constricted to permit the flow of air anyway). It shouldn't surprise her (but it does) that the day she's lived in fear of for the last two decades has finally come.

"I'm sorry, Wash. I'm sorry."

She nods numbly against the fabric of his shirt, moist from tears and blood. She hadn't asked for him to return to her safely, he could never keep it. All she'd asked was for him to come back to her.

Taylor breaks his promises.