And she'd come back and built something beautiful and was in no way waiting for him anymore, because she didn't remember that she ever had been.
He held that reality carefully, examining it without flinching. She deserved that happiness. She'd earned it across centuries and lives and had paid for it with grief he'd caused by being what he was.
So how can he say that she was his mother and tell her that he loved her greatly, more than a son should have?
Then Kate.
He'd walked through that hospital door with no expectations, focused entirely on assessing the environment and understanding what Martha needed.
And then Kate had looked up from the hospital bed with those gray eyes, and he'd stopped functioning for four seconds.
He'd known her in another face. Had loved her—differently than Rosaine, but no less completely. Had watched her sacrifice herself for him with a selflessness that had broken something fundamental in him and had woken from the dead knowing that she was gone.
