Author's note - I am a terrible person. Forgive me for not updating. I don't deserve you guys. As it is, please let me know what you think of this chapter! I live for the feedback.

Amartya turned to Nightingale the moment the hovercraft was in the air.

"Are you all right?" he asked her. She understood why he was concerned - she had not moved in several minutes, and was sitting still as stone in her seat. Her nails were hooked into the seat's arms and she was certain that had she moved, she would have torn out its furnishings.

Nightingale did not reply. She could not. She could not speak. She knew that if she opened her mouth, the only sound that would come out would be a scream of pure horror. She had thought, foolishly, that returning to being an Inamorata would be easier than had she never been one at all. She had been Nightingale, the star of the York Bordello, brave and strong and so bitter.

She felt like a green girl again, young and helpless and afraid. Had she seen this girl in the bordello she would have pitied her. This girl was Rose. She was not Nightingale.

"Nightingale! Nightingale, answer me! Are you-" Amartya began again.

"Don't you fucking order me around," she said. She had found her voice, barely. The sound she made was mostly an animal snarl. She did not turn to him. She spat the words through her teeth. "Don't you dare."

"I'm not ordering you," Amartya returned, very coolly and very calmly. "I am only worried, Gale."

The short form of her name - the one used mostly by her sisters - surprised Nightingale. "Well," she snapped, acerbic and bitter. "That makes sense. There's a very good chance I'll kill Victor Trevor. Or myself. And then the case would really suffer, wouldn't it?"

Amartya flinched back, muttered something that Nightingale didn't hear because she was too busy removing her anklet, and continued flying the hovercraft. With shaking fingers - either quivering with fear, or rage, or perhaps both - Nightingale stowed the anklet on the dashboard of the hovercraft.

She felt marginally calmer after that.

Amartya kept looking over at her, but stopped when she began to tear at her clothes. Unbuckling herself from her seat and ignoring Amartya's warnings that, for fuck's sake, that wasn't safe, she unzipped her dress and shook it off. She tore the delicate tights in her desperation to get them off, and flinched for a moment, expecting a shocking for wasting Bobby's money.

She found a coat in the back of the hovercraft - a man's, obviously, since it was far too big for her - and put it on. She sniffed it, half-expecting to find someone's cologne lingering on the lapels. It smelled, instead, of detergent. That suited her very well. Then she sat back down but refused to strap herself in when Amartya mentioned it.

Amartya didn't say much after that.

The moment they landed Nightingale was up and out of her seat, striding out of the hovercraft. She had left her shoes under her seat and so she padded across the concrete barefoot. It was very cold and a pebble here or there hurt the soles of her feet. Amartya trailed behind her but left her alone. It was the team filing out of the second hovercraft that approached her.

"Nightingale," said Pierce, very quietly, as he drew up next to her. Caroline eyed her but stayed far back, seeking out Amartya instead. They began to speak in low voices, heads bowed together. David remained near the hovercraft, leaning against its side. He was watching her very carefully.

"Pierce," she said. His shy, sweet smile was very nearly comforting. He reminded her very strongly of Michael in that moment, though the resemblance between the glimmer of his eyes and that of Sparkle's was even stronger. The similarity hit Nightingale very hard, as hard as the unexpected but comforting embrace of one of her sisters would have done.

"We heard what happened. Sorry," he said.

She smiled. "You don't need to be sorry, but thanks. So, how did it go in the command hovercraft?"

Pierce sighed, the deep sigh of someone feigning abject suffering. His melodrama made Nightingale smile again. "Well," he said. "Caroline isn't talking to anyone, Daniel is talking too much and not entirely appropriately, and David seems to want to kill everyone."

"So, the usual, then?" said Nightingale.

"Pretty much. Just like any other case, you know, plus the added worry about your well-being," he said. The sympathy slipped easily off his tongue and it made Nightingale remember how much she loved him.

"I second that," said Nicholas. He had appeared next to Pierce and was eyeing Nightingale warily. "How are you? You look like you scared the shit out of poor old Amartya."

"Yes, poor, poor Amartya," Nightingale crooned in mockery. "He had to stand there while Victor Trevor groped me - put his hands on me and inside me. Must have been unbearable for him."

Both Pierce and Nicholas flinched. Nightingale didn't feel sorry. After a moment's pause, Pierce spoke.

"Your comm buzzed about fifteen times," he said, fishing it out of his pocket.

"Give it to me," she ordered. Pierce handed it to her and Nightingale thumbed through the missed calls - all from Rose, for the most part, with one or two from Michael. She was ready to dial Rose's number, all her own suffering forgotten in favour of her worry for her sister, when Pierce spoke.

"You can't call Robin with that," he said. Nightingale didn't bother to correct him. She merely stared hard at him until he amended his phrase. "Here, use this instead."

Nightingale turned the comm over in her hand. It looked perfectly ordinary. "What is this?"

"Just a comm, but it has a secure connection," said Pierce. Then, with a little smile, he added, "Impossible to hack."

"And how do you know that?" asked Nightingale, raising her eyebrows.

"Because we tried," Pierce explained. Nicholas, meanwhile, approached Nightingale very cautiously and when she had nodded, ruffled her hair affectionately and left. She watched him as he went, seeing how stripping his bulletproof vest and comm and weapons did not make him look any smaller or any less fierce.

"You did?" said Nightingale.

Pierce nodded. "I did, and half the government's special tech division. The code was written by a Northwestern drug cartel. Fifty government agents couldn't hack this thing. So we paid them to show us how to use it instead. They were pretty pissed when they found out they'd sold their tech to the government."

Nightingale tapped in Robin's number.

"Keep it short, okay?" said Pierce, as Nightingale jammed the comm into her ear. She shot him a withering look in response.

"Hello, darling," said a voice, after a few rings. She did not know how he knew it would be her, but that was her least concern at the moment.

"Robin," said Nightingale. She leaned forward on instinct, reaching out to touch his face. Her fingers met only the empty air and she flinched because the memory of Trevor's hands, of his skin, was more real than the imagined soft warmth of her husband.

"How are you?" he asked. The crackle of the connection did little to mask the beauty of his voice.

"Terrible," she managed. Pierce coughed awkwardly and left her alone, shepherding everyone else away. "I feel like I'm coming apart at the seams."

Robin made a sympathetic noise. "Which makes what you're doing all the more selfless," he said.

In spite of herself, Nightingale managed a smile. "Do you take any opportunity to flatter me?" she asked.

"It's not flattery if it's true, is it?" he replied, and Nightingale could hear the sweet, sly persuasion in his voice so intimately that she had no troubles imagining the gentle smile that went along with it. In the background, she could also hear another beautiful voice - this of Colm, asking whether it was Mummy on the line.

"I guess not," said Nightingale. After a pause, she spoke again. "How are things there?"

"Fine. We both miss you, but are both very proud of you," said Robin. Nightingale heard a different voice behind him - one that sounded far too much like hers for comfort. The voice was speaking to Colm, and Colm was squealing a little giggle for her. Nightingale frowned - her son was a traitor, giggling for a woman that was not her.

"How's your new Nightingale?" she asked, her voice too sweet. She could nearly see Robin's disapproving look as he replied.

"Very well," he said. "Very well, and very kind. She keeps us safe and I am glad for it, for Colm's sake."

Robin's appeal to Colm was so subtly, slyly, and gently manipulative that Nightingale could not help but agree with her husband. He uses his persuasive wiles so smoothly that she never resented his attempts to sway her. Had David said the same thing he would have sounded commanding and Nightingale would have loathed it.

"Thank her for me," she said.

"Of course," said Robin.

"Uh, Gale? Could you cut it-" began Pierce, timid as anything, approaching her with his hands stretched out.

"If you tell me to cut it short, I'll-" Nightingale started, but then she heard Robin's little sigh and she nodded instead. "Yeah. Give me thirty seconds, Pierce."

Pierce smiled and backed away.

"Well, Robin, apparently I have to go," she said.

"Of course, Agent Brightley," said Robin. He sounded forlorn.

"Give my love to Colm. And to my sisters, if you see them," she said, trying not to think of them. It hurt far too much.

"Of course. I was thinking of taking Colm to see Sparkle and Glitter in a few days anyway. Sparkle's particularly broody these days, you know, being so very pregnant and all," said Robin.

Nightingale smiled just a little. She hoped she would be home for Sparkle's due date - Sparkle and all her other sisters had been there when Colm was born, a veritable of doting aunts that terrorized the nurses and doctors with demands for the supreme comfort of mother and son.

"Sounds lovely," she said. She was near weeping. She gritted her teeth. "I've got to go. I love you."

"As I love you," said Robin. Nightingale bit back a sob. Pierce, who had been approaching her, flushed a deep red and turned his back. He chivvied Nicholas, who had been drawing close, away in a flurry of his hands. "Be safe, my love. Please, be safe. You're doing so much good, helping so many. Make sure someone helps you."

Nightingale nodded. She disconnected the call and wiped her eyes as discreetly as she could. Unclenching her rigid muscles one by one, she forced her stiff legs to move as she went over to Pierce and handed him the comm.

"You okay?" he asked. He was sitting in the temporary ring of chairs and tables by the command hovercraft. Nightingale sat next to him, folding her feet up under the coat's hem.

"Not really, no. But why, is my makeup smudged or something?" she asked. Nicholas, who was sitting on the table like some sort of barbarian, chuckled a little too hard at her lame attempt at humour.

"Miraculously, no," said Pierce.

"Crying without looking ugly is a special Inamorata skill," Nightingale explained. "Puffy eyes earn a beating."

"You know, Gale," said Nicholas, after a moment. His teeth were bared and he was grinding his fist into one palm as he spoke. "When we arrest the triumvirate, I think I'm going to arrange for Trevor to have a little accident. What do you think of him falling out a couple windows?"

Nightingale smiled, but it was Erica, who had approached them, who spoke up very timidly.

"You wouldn't, would you?" she asked, looking horrified. She had been rummaging through her medical bag and, with some sort of diagnostic device in her hand, paused and looked utterly scandalized.

"God, no. I wouldn't assault anyone. I'm a government agent," said Nicholas. The relief on Erica's face vanished as he went on. "But, you know, if he happened to trip at the top of four flights of stairs-"

"Enough," snapped David, who had drawn up behind Nightingale's chair. Nicholas and Pierce stopped grinning and stared instead at each other. Daniel, who had ambled over, raised his eyebrows meaningfully at the two of them.

 David waved at Erica, who came forward - seeming oddly skittish of David - and, pointing the device's wand at Nightingale, laid it against her forehead. It began to beep and then Erica drew it down, across Nightingale's neck, and toward the coat's collar.

"Get that fucking thing off me," growled Nightingale, swatting at Erica.

"I need to assess you for health," she complained, very delicately.

"What the fuck would've hurt me back there? That was less than the usual hour's work at the bordello. Only one very small thing went inside me. I was moderately fondled. I'm completely fine," said Nightingale. No one said anything but she could feel the waves of nervousness rolling off Erica.

She continued to press the device to Nightingale's skin and so Nightingale slapped it away, snarling and defensive, like a wounded animal. That, she was sure, did not help her assertion that she was fine.

"I said, get that fucking thing off me!" she half-shouted.

"You need a workup, Nightingale," said Erica. "Your heart rate and blood pressure are elevated, glutamate and adrenaline above normal levels-"

"Maybe if you'd get that fucking thing out of my face, I wouldn't have-" began Nightingale.

"You need rest," Erica concluded.

Nightingale laughed in scorn and turned her face away. She was not proud of spurning Erica, nor of how she had become the bitter Queen of the Bordello once more. But she embraced it - that was the Nightingale that had survived, not the softening, gentled creature that doted on a tame husband and docile son.

It was, unfortunately, the Nightingale that was very much like David, of which she was reminded when she turned her face up toward him. He was staring down at her. His arms were crossed and his face was stony. He looked entirely angry and not in the slightest bit concerned for her. For a moment, Nightingale was furious. Then she realized that was how she must have appeared, too.

For a moment, she could not look away. Then she felt something cold, something that had the stinging smell of alcohol, brush up against her neck.

She whirled about to see Erica lifting a hypo-jet toward her neck.

"Stick me with that thing and I'll jam it so far up your-" she began, jerking away from it. Erica skittered back, too, obviously terrified. Good - she had no right to try to drug her without her consent.

"Nightingale, she was going to ask you," said David, with a huff of indignant impatience.

"Was she?" growled Nightingale. "Because it looked like she was trying to sneak up on me. No one sticks things inside me without my consent. Not anymore."

"It will help you sleep," said David.

"I don't want to sleep," Nightingale countered.

"You need to sleep," he retorted.

"Don't tell me what I need to do-" she began, childish and petulant, but exhausted, afraid, and angry. She could be nothing else.

"Nightingale," said David, with a deep sigh.

There was a long pause. Then Nightingale spoke. "Fine. Stick it in me, Erica," she said. "I'm used to getting that from men, but knock yourself out."

Erica didn't seem to know whether to smile or not - and did something halfway in between - as she came forward and pressed the hypo-jet to Nightingale's neck. There was a swift jab and Nightingale blinked. She had not expected the drug to work so quickly, but the world before her swam and she slumped forward.

"Need a hand getting onto a cot, Gale?" asked a voice from beside her. She was dimly aware of figures about her, some of them murmuring, but she could not make them out.

She lifted her head, recognizing the burly frame, the yellow hair. "If you wouldn't mind, Nick," she said. Her voice sounded very far away, and very young.

"'Course not," he said, and scooped her up in his arms. He was very warm and very big. Nightingale could not keep her eyes open. "Light as a feather, aren't you?"

Nightingale's head drooped against his chest. She figured she would be ashamed of her weakness later. As it was, she could do nothing but loll in Nicholas's arms as he carried her inside the hovercraft and laid her down on a cot.

The sensation that took Nightingale was one of drifting, of ebbing away into sleep. As she went, hoped she would not dream. As it was, she dreamed vaguely of dark hair, dark eyes, and warmth. She was at peace, for the moment.