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Hugging her children heals every piece of her broken soul. The warmth of them in her arms after so long, just exactly as sweet as she remembered, if not more so.
She savours it, revels in the feeling that she never thought she would get again just a few short hours ago.
Then a throat clears behind her.
She stands up and Diego is looking at her like she’s grown a second head.
“I, uh, we need to talk.” She lowers her voice as the kids run off to watch TV. “In private. I need to tell you something.”
“Now?” He asks, raising his eyebrows and tilting his head down in a way that is so Diego, and not the new crappy husband Diego, but the one she fell in love with.
“Now.” She nods.
“Yeah, okay.” And it guts her that the tone he uses is so soft, like he can sense she’s on the edge of crumbling. “Okay, c’mon.”
They end up in the bathroom. It’s the only room in the house with a lock, the only place either of them can ever get a moment of peace.
“Five found a subway station with a train that connects timelines.” She blurts out the moment the door is locked behind them, flopping dramatically down on the toilet which thankfully has the lid already closed. “I went with him to explore it but we got stuck down there and even though it’s only been a few hours since you saw me it’s been seven years since I last saw you.”
“Wow.” He perches on the edge of the bathtub. “Okay.”
“It was horrendous.” She swallows, preparing herself for the confession she knows she has to make. “We spent most of it running for our lives. The trains connected the same moment in different timelines, and in almost all of them there were people shooting at us or chasing us or just generally trying to kill is. Of the few that didn’t have that, all but one were deserted wastelands. After six and a half years, we settled there. I needed a break, we both did. I was so close to giving up. I did give up. We kept looking, casually, trying to find a way back, but I had given up any hope of ever getting home to you and the kids.”
“Lila.” He breathes.
“Please don’t say anything yet.” She begs. “Not until I’m done.” Another deep breath as she gets to the part that is killing her, and will kill him.
“It was just Five and I for so long. He was the only thing keeping me going, because if I’d been alone then I probably would’ve killed myself by year three. And when we settled down it was, I don’t know, comfortable? It was safe and familiar in a way nothing else had been for six and a half years. I don’t remember who went first, but we kissed. And we kept doing it because, oh my god, it must’ve been the Stockholm syndrome, but it didn’t feel weird or wrong at the time. Not until the seven year anniversary of us being lost when I found out that he had found a journal with the way back in and that he’d had it for six months and been hiding it from me.
“As soon as I found out there was a way back I felt sick. I was, I am, so completely disgusted with myself. I never, ever, ever, thought that I would cheat on you, and when there wasn’t a way back it didn’t feel like that’s what I was doing. But with a way back? In that moment I have never hated anyone as much as I hated myself. I came straight back here as soon as I could.”
Diego says nothing, just stares at her with his eyes full of tears and a lip trembling with the stress of holding them back.
“I am so sorry.” She forces herself to continue, sliding down off the toilet to kneel in front of him as she begs him to forgive her because if he doesn’t, forget yet another apocalypse, that’s what’ll kill her. “When I said I wanted a break it was because we were stressing each other out and making each other miserable, not because I wanted a relationship with anyone else. I love you, more than I’ve ever loved anyone, apart from the kids, and I will spend the rest of my life doing everything I can to make you forgive me. But if you want a divorce and never want to see me again, that’s fine too. I deserve that.”
She doesn’t have anything more to say, but she wishes she did because the silence is killing her.
“Do you love him?” Diego’s voice eventually comes, eerily steady and composed.
“I don’t know.” She tilts her head down to stare at the floor, counting the tiles on the floor, not trusting herself to look at him or give any more headspace to her guilt than she can bear. “I don’t think so? I feel physically sick thinking about what happened between the two of us now, so I’m going to go with no. But when we were stuck there, I don’t know if I would have called it love, but he was my lifeline. He kept me together, and again, probably an element of Stockholm syndrome to that, but it felt like something.”
“Do you want a divorce?” His voice cracks as he speaks, and he uses his index finger to tilt her head up to look at him. There are tears falling down both their faces, and she can tell the slightest thing could send them both over the edge.
“I don’t know.” Her voice comes out barely louder than a whisper. “I love you, and the kids, and my family, but I kind of hate our life.” She forced herself to breathe instead of dissolving into the sobs that want to consume her entire body. “I love the kids, and you, but I hate that I’m not my own person anymore. I’m Mum or wife and nothing else, and I’m crap at being that.”
“Great, cause I hate this too.” He let out a wet chuckle and crouched down off the bathtub, sitting in front of her on the floor in a way she knows his back is going to hate him for later. “I hate the rut we’ve got ourselves stuck in, I hate that both of us have to be people we can’t stand and that we don’t get to have a relationship outside of being Mom and Dad. And I’ve had a few ideas for how to fix that.”
“How?”
“I think you should get a job, and I should switch jobs or cut back my hours so we can spend more time as a family. In our own place.”
“Don’t you like my family?”
“I love your family.” He grabs her hand and it sends butterflies flying through her body. “I would, however, love them more if they lived down the street.”
She let out a wet laugh to match his. “You hate your job.”
“Turns out I’d hate the CIA too.” And it’s that admission that sends a ton of questions rattling through her mind, but he continues before she can ask any of them. “At least delivering parcels will be more fun now that I’ve got my powers back. And maybe I can switch to something else in the future. Like teaching martial arts or something. That sounds like something I could do.”
“Me too.” She smiles softly through the tears, tasting the salt as she speaks. “We could open our own gym.” All of a sudden there’s a clear image in her head of gym mats and Grace and the twins running around whilst Diego shoots her a wink from where he’s holding a punching bag for Claire as she demonstrates how to pin someone down to a self defence class.
“That’s a fucking great idea.” He agrees like he’s just seen the same thing and pulls her in close against him. “We’ve got this. We can do this.” He breathes deeply as he speaks, and it moves her body with the rise and fall of his chest. “It’ll take some time, and some work, but we’ll be fine.”
“You’re not mad?” She looks up at him.
“I mean, I’m pissed as hell.” He sighs, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. It’s the most tender interaction they’ve had in months, if not years. “But not at you. Never at you. I do kind of want to punch Five so hard he blinks into next week though.”
She laughs, and in that moment she can feel that everything will be okay.