He felt her shiver as his body warmth mixed with hers, yet she did not say a word. He slipped his arm over her shoulders and squeezed gently. She wiggled closer and sighed.
"I…I didn’t mean to wake you," a sniff punctuated her whisper.
"You didn’t love the Trevor of your world. You never did."
She protested weakly, "Yes I — sniff — yes I did."
He spoke in an almost fatherly voice with a tone he had not used in a long time. A tone of compassion. "Don’t lie, Nina. Don’t lie to yourself. You and I both know the truth. I can see it now. I can see it clearly. For your sake, it’s time you see the truth, too."
"I don’t…I just…I’m afraid. That’s all, I’m afraid."
"You grew up shy and lonely, an outcast," he told her in much the same manner he had once told the same story to his Nina in the midst of a raging thunderstorm. "You didn’t know why, but you felt different from everyone else."
"How…how do you know that? How..?"
"Because the woman I loved…my Nina…she had the same beginning. She grew up the same way. You two are the same in many ways but now I realize why you are also different."
"Different?"
"Yes. Do you want to know? Do you want to see? Are you brave enough to see?"
He gave her a nice hug to help her find that bravery and continued, "The more I became like the Trevor you knew, the more you feared me. I could see it. At Erie Coast…"
"I deserved to be yelled at."
"No, no," he stroked her hair. "That’s wrong. I screwed up, Nina. My plan was a long shot. The type of long shots I always take. You were a ruse to draw their main forces away from the center of town. When they withdrew to the fortress, there was nothing you could do. If I had been of my right mind I would have known that. Instead, I refused to take responsibility for my mistakes. So I blamed you. I lashed out at you. I’m sorry."
"Don’t be sorry, you wouldn’t have been acting that way if I didn’t trick you into it."
"There you go again, apologizing for me. I’ll bet you apologized for your Trevor all the time. But he still bullied you. He probably hit you once in a while, didn’t he? But more than that, he messed with your mind, Nina. Knocked you down and kept you there."
"He was a great man. Great men are different than the rest of us. Look at everything you’ve accomplished. Sometimes great men just do things different. They’re allowed."
"No. Your Trevor was not a great man, Nina. He was a brute. A vile man. I say that because there’s a big part of him in my belly and it don’t sit too well with me."
"You’re different. You…I couldn’t change you. In the end, you didn’t become him. Just like me and your Nina. We look the same, but we’re completely different."
"That’s where you’re wrong. You are the same. The same genes, the same body, the same mind. I’ll bet you had the same childhood: good parents who tried to help you get over the feeling of being an outcast. But with each year you felt yourself different from the other kids. Even then, you were thinking like a warrior. Getting ready for the coming fight."
"How do you know all that?"
"Because that’s what my Nina was like. But then, at some point, things changed and the two of you ended up different."
She swallowed hard and wanted to know, "What happened?"
He found it ironic that he was telling her the truths of her life. Perhaps sometimes it takes an outsider to see the larger picture. The way Lori Brewer or Dante or even Knox or Jon kept his life in perspective back home. A perspective he lacked on this parallel Earth.
"You gave in. You decided it was more important not to be alone than it was to be true to yourself. Let me tell you, if I had ever raised a hand to my Nina she would have tied me in a knot. She was faster and stronger than me, the same way I know you're faster and stronger. Yet you let him beat you down because you were afraid to be alone."
She did not say a word. He went on.
"The things you did with your Trevor, you did them to keep him. You did them because you thought that’s what it took. You let him use you like an object; you let him…let him degrade you. To cheapen you. Because you were afraid to walk away."
He felt her flinch. A sigh from her lips became a sob.
"You let him define who you are. Then you did everything he wanted, no matter how it made you feel. You let him use you, and why? Because you were afraid to be alone."
She shivered, as if a chill had worked its way beneath her armor. Then it came out. She muffled each burst as best she could but she could not hide from him. Not any more. The tears flowed and her chest heaved. The woman he knew to be so strong and brave fell to pieces as she confronted the only nightmare that had ever managed to scare her. The nightmare of loneliness.
"I…I have hated every second…ever…every day…of my life," she spoke between breaths. "Every…day. I never knew how to…how to…"
Trevor answered for her, "How to fit in?"
She wiped a hand beneath her eyes.
"So you let him use you like a toy, just so he wouldn’t chase you away."
"I thought…he wanted to do things. I did them. I thought he’d love me for it."
Stone ran his hands along her shoulders and arms in a comforting caress.
"Me and my Nina," his eyes glazed over with wonderful memories. "We had all sorts of fun together. But through it all, we had respect. I always respected her. To be with her, together, I mean-wow-we had fun. But we sometimes just sat and talked, for hours over a bottle of wine. We played racquetball together and went horseback riding. I’d give anything for just one moment with her again. If only…if only to talk to her."
This time Trevor fought to stave tears. He concentrated on her, on holding her tight, on forgetting for the moment how she had deceived him. After weeks of nothing but anger, violence, and lust, he found his soul cleansed by offering compassion; something he rarely had the opportunity to do. The kindness he showed her, despite all she had done, provided a counter balance to the evil he had wrought since coming here. In a way, he found it healing.
"You really loved her, didn’t you?"
"Yes. I loved her, very much. But you know what else? I liked her. I liked just being with her. And I respected who she was. I didn’t want to change her; I wanted her to share with me the person she was. And she did. It took a lot for her to do it, but she did."
"I’m nothing like her," she did not ask, she stated a fact.
He corrected, "That’s not true. You’re very nearly the same person, you just made a different choice. Our memories and our experiences make us who we are. You made a decision my Nina avoided. So yes, you’re different but I know you have the same strength that she has."
"The same…strength?"
"Yes," he insisted. "The strength to be who you are. Don’t let someone else define you. Don’t let someone else cheapen you."
"Strength…" she turned the word around in her mouth.
"You have it. You showed it once, didn't you?"
She turned around in her sleeping blanket to face him. The glow of the lantern flickered in her blue eyes and sparkled off streams of drying tears.
"Come on now," he said to her. "Go ahead, tell me. You need to. Don't worry, I figured it out a while ago."
She nibbled at her lower lip, cast her eyes down, then back to him. And then Major Nina Forest admitted, "I killed him."
He touched her cheek and encouraged her to, "Go on."
"One day, after a battle, we were alone. He said I was…he called me a worthless…"
"Shhh," he kept her from finishing whatever cold insult the Trevor Stone of this world had berated her with.
She said, "I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was the heat of the battle. I had just finished killing…killing things. I felt invincible for a moment, like I sometimes do when I’m fighting. I felt… comfortable."