Maggie enters, bearing two steaming mugs. Smiling slightly, she walks to Kirsten’s side and hands her one. “Thought you could use this.”

Kirsten takes the offered mug eagerly, wrapping her chilled hands around it and inhaling the comforting aroma with a sigh of pleasure. “Thank you. This is perfect.” Taking a small sip, she lets the coffee roll over her tongue, savoring it for a timeless moment before swallowing. “Bless you, Colonel,” she breathes. “This is just what the doctor ordered.”

“Seeing as you’re sitting in my bedroom,” Maggie replies, smirking, “I think we could dispense with the formalities, don’t you?”

Kirsten glances up, the expression of a guilty child plain upon her face. She begins to rise, but Maggie motions her back down. “No. It’s alright. Stay.” Her smirk softens into a true smile. “I have a strange sense of humor, sometimes.”

Nodding, Kirsten returns the smile with a hesitant one of her own. The space between them is like a chasm; one which she suddenly wishes she could cross.

If she only knew how.

Maggie lowers herself to perch casually on the lower corner of the large bed. Koda doesn’t twitch. The Colonel captures Kirsten in her steady regard. “You were pretty impressive out there,” she murmurs. “Didn’t know you could handle a grenade launcher.” Her lips twitch with a smirk just dying to come out. “Learn that in Bionics 101?”

This time, Kirsten gets the joke and chuckles, saluting Maggie with her mug. Her grin fades. “Absolute terror,” she amends, looking back down at the still figure on the bed. “It was like…I don’t know…like I knew what she was going to do before she did it. And I knew that I wasn’t going to be left behind.” She swallows hard, vision trebling as some strange almost-memory steals through her consciousness like a thief in the night. “Not again.”

Maggie raises an eyebrow in silent inquiry. Kirsten shakes off both the question and the strange feeling with a deliberate closing of her eyes. When she opens them again, she is more her old self—more or less. Her smile, when it comes, is natural, unbidden. “She was a sight to see, though, wasn’t she?”

“That she was,” Maggie replies. “I had myself half-convinced I was watching some old Audy Murphy flick.” A frown creases her forehead. “The top-kick in me is furious with her. It was completely foolhardy and dangerous in the extreme.” The frown disappears as she shrugs. “But it worked, and we’re alive to tell the tale. And I guess that’s all that really matters in the end anyway.”

“So that means you won’t take it out of her hide later?” Kirsten queries with a small smirk of her own.

Maggie snorts. “As if I could.”

Kirsten sobers, looking back down at the bed. “There will be a later, though, right?” She looks up, startled once again, this time by the warm hand that clasps her wrist.

“There will be,” she affirms in a tone that brooks no dissent. “Things like this…take a lot out of her. Almost everything, I think.” She looks down at Koda, her smile warm and affectionate. The adoration on her face causes Kirsten a brief stab of discomfort before she pushes it savagely away. “She just needs some time to get those batteries of hers recharged, and she’ll be good as new.”

When Maggie releases her wrist, Kirsten lifts her arm to finish the last of her coffee. Then she makes as if to rise. “I’ll…um….”

“No. Stay.”

Kirsten looks at her, eyes slightly widened.

Maggie smiles. “Stay. I need to go tell everyone that she’s doing well, and debrief the General as well. I don’t expect to be back until morning, at least. And….” She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, opting for the truth, even though the words are like shards of glass in her mouth, “I think she knows you’re here, and I think that’s very important to her.”

“But….”

“Please.”

Keeping her emotions under tight control, Maggie rises gracefully from her perch on the bed and quickly strides across the room. A soft voice halts her in her tracks.

“Maggie?”

She doesn’t, can’t, turn, but Kirsten knows she’s listening.

“Thank you.”

Unable to speak for fear her voice will betray her, Maggie settles for a nod, and continues out of the room.

*

Eyes closed, Koda finds herself floating on a current of…something. Air, water, she can’t tell which, nor does she especially care. It is neither hot nor cold, and the breeze—or at least what she thinks is a breeze—carries with it the scent of spring and sunshine and gentle summer rains.

An undercurrent is the sea, and the earth, fecund and moist as if from a fresh turning. Maternal, almost. Ripe with the promise of birth and rebirth.

Secret smells.

Good smells.

“Must be what it feels like in the womb,” she whispers, loathe to open her eyes lest it shatter the peace she feels.

A warm wave of gentle laughter rolls over her like far-off summer thunder. “Your wisdom grows, Tshunka Wakan Wacignuni.”

Finally giving in to the inevitable, Dakota opens her eyes, and finds herself bathed in the affectionate regard of Ina Maka. “Wandering Wolf?”

The Great Mother spreads her arms wide. “Apt, don’t you think?”

Koda looks around her. An infinity of colors swirl and dance to the rhythm of what she recognizes as the earth’s very heart. Its beauty is far beyond anything she’s ever seen and her very soul aches in sweet recognition. “I suppose,” she murmurs, entranced. “What is this place?”

“It is known to many by many different names. I prefer to call it Thamni Ina.”

“The Mother’s Womb.”

“Exactly. It is a place of healing. And of rest. You are always welcome here, Wacignuni.”

“It’s so beautiful….” Her tone is one of reverent awe, and part of her, raised by man, tries to hide her face, feeling cowed, insignificant, unworthy of such an honor. “Ina Maka, I….”

“Shh,” is the reply as the Mother rests a warm hand over Koda’s eyes, gently closing them. “Rest, Daughter. Regain your strength. You will need it for the journey yet to come.”

Unable to fight against the overwhelming pull, Dakota surrenders into the Great Mother’s embrace. Joy suffuses her as the energies of earth and tide combine to flow over and through her like a river over burnished stones. She cries out in ecstasy, and her voice is swallowed up, becoming one with the swirling energies, her voice, and her joy, now and forever a part of the eternal dance.

*

Hearing a soft moan, Maggie blinks tired eyes and closes the book she’s been trying, for the past hour, to read. A smile transforms her face as she notices Koda’s eyelids begin to twitch—the first sign of life she’s shown in days.

She eases herself onto the bed, touching Dakota’s forearm so that, should she waken quickly, she won’t dislodge the IV snaking from a plump vein in her forearm.

Arctic blue eyes flutter open, their color warming to a deep, vibrant blue as they set upon Maggie’s smiling, handsome face.

“Welcome back,” Maggie murmurs, gently squeezing the wrist in her grasp.

“How….” Clearing her throat of the rusty hinges stuck there, she tries again. “How long?”

“Three days.”

Dakota’s eyes widen slightly, then she looks away, noticing for the first time the body that shares her sleeping space.

Kirsten is curled up in an almost fetal ball, facing away and deeply asleep.

Koda turns startled eyes back to Maggie, who smiles. “We’ve been taking turns keeping watch. How are you feeling?”

Dakota takes careful stock of her body. All in all, she feels much better than she has any right to. Her hands itch like fire, but that’s to be expected, she imagines. All that is left from her battle is a slight sense of tiredness—strange after three days of sleep. Her body is too well aware of the small form pressed against its length, and she fights down the urge to snuggle into it, to give in to the implicit comfort and welcome offered—even with Kirsten turned away. Instead, she blinks, and casts a smile to Maggie. “I’m ok. You?”

“Aside from a few bumps and bruises, fine,” Maggie replies, shrugging. “Same with our intrepid doctor over there.”

“The others?”

Maggie’s expression becomes somber. “We lost ninety eight. About twenty or so sustained serious wounds. Two or three others are touch and go, but the docs think they’ll pull through…eventually.”

“Damn,” Koda whispers, eyes closing against the ache of so many gone.

Maggie strokes the soft skin of Koda’s arm, offering the only comfort she can. Part of her longs to tell the grieving woman how her actions saved the lives of ten times that many, but she stills her tongue, knowing that to Dakota, as with herself, those words would only be useless platitudes falling on deaf ears.

Koda opens her eyes again, emotions trapped behind the stony mask she now wears. “My brother?”

“Is fine. Manny snapped his collarbone and cracked a couple of ribs, but he’s doing okay also. Andrews earned himself a broken ankle and a trip to the OR. Can’t stand his crutches, but he’s gonna have to learn to deal.”

“Alright.” Dakota nods once, an almost savage gesture that flicks the heavy bangs from her forehead and resettles them, haphazard, against her face. Though her palms are still heavily bandaged, her fingers are free, and those fingers reach for the IV tubing at her wrist.

“Dakota, don’t….do that,” Maggie finishes with a sigh as the woman in question sits up and efficiently removes the IV catheter from her arm, pressing down to stop the minute flow of blood dotting the wound.

“I’m fine,” Koda remarks, swinging long legs over the side of the bed and steadying herself for a moment before she plants her feet and stands. There is a brief instant of dizziness as her body once again becomes accustomed to being vertical after three days horizontal.