Page 4

March 13th, 2027

After the amazing lunch Lynn, Nate, and the girls headed towards the med-bay so that Lynn could show her girls where she worked every day. As a doctor she didn’t have a classic 9 to 5 job and it took them a while to find a good rhythm with the girls. It wouldn’t have been possible without Toby, who had taken over the position as lead doctor of the CIA with Lynn working as his assistant. He had even moved into Lynn’s old room, being on-site almost 24/7 now. This gave him a new opportunity and Lynn more freedom as she craved more regular working hours than before.

The twins had inherited their curiosity and interest in anything around medicine from their mother, and they were pacing around the med-bay with wide eyes and parted lips.

“Mama what is that for?” Luna asked while she held a rubber hammer in the air that she had found while digging in one of the drawers.

Lynn and Nate had let them explore freely, only intervening if there was a risk of them getting hurt by some of the instruments, although all of them were packed in sterile packages, so there were no open blades or anything that the girls could hurt themselves with.

“It’s to test if your reflexes work the way they should,” Lynn explained, stepping over to the examination table, and pointing to it. Ann came closer, handed the hammer over to her mother, and was lifted onto the table by Nate.

“You sit and let your legs hang from the table, okay? ”

Ann nodded enthusiastically.

Lynn hovered the hammer over Ann’s leg, checking for the right point before she gently bopped it against a specific point on the girl’s knee.

Ann’s lower leg trembled forward a little and the child widened her eyes in shock. Her mouth as wide as humanly possible before she exclaimed:

“I didn’t move my leg.”

“I know, Little Star. It moved because I hit a trigger point on your knee with the hammer.” Lynn rested her hand on her daughter’s shoulder, a wide smile on her face.

“It’s like magic,” Luna commented. She had stopped looking around in drawers and watched Lynn examine her twin-sister curiously.

“Your Mama is doing a lot of magic here. She even healed my knee when I hurt it a few years ago. If she hadn’t helped me, I wouldn’t be able to run around in the garden with you now,” Nate added, pride shimmering behind the ocean blue of his eyes.

“Really?” Ann asked, looking at Nate’s legs that were covered in jeans, as if she could still see the injury.

“Yes, your father had hurt his knee pretty badly and I needed to cut it open and stitch him back together.”

“With a knife? Like when you cook?” Luna’s face was a mixture of disgust and curiosity as she couldn’t imagine what a surgery would look like.

Lynn laughed out loud, followed by Nate’s rumbling belly-laugh. The girls didn’t understand why their parents started to laugh, changing insecure gazes between each other.

“No, Baby. Not with a knife. I use a scalpel when I perform surgery.”

“Oh,” Luna answered, but it was very clear that the little girl had no idea what a scalpel was. Lynn hurried to one of the drawers and pulled the two parts of the scalpel out to show their kids. Of course she kept them in the sterile package as she didn’t want to risk anything.

“When you fix these two parts together, you have a surgical scalpel.”

“Doesn’t look like a knife to me,” Luna commented, suddenly not interested in the scalpel anymore.

She stepped next to Nate and leaned her head against his leg, wrapping her arms around it. She was done exploring this room, but she didn’t want to say it out loud. Nate had his hand on the back of Luna’s head, almost covering the entire brunette mane on top of his little daughter. Both girls had been Daddy’s girls, but Luna even more so than Ann. It didn’t matter if Lynn was at home or not, the girl came straight to Nate if something was on her mind.

“But it is really sharp and it can cut through your skin cleanly. After a surgery you always have a scar from where the doctor needed to use the scalpel.”

“Like on Daddy’s chest?” Luna mumbled into Nate’s leg and Lynn could see her husband stiffen.

She stepped closer to him, ready to give the girls an answer that would change the topic again, but Nate was faster and said:

“No, Little Moon. The scars on my chest are from when the bad guys caught me. Not a surgery.”

Pride glimmered behind the chestnut of Lynn’s eyes, seeing her husband talking about his torture without even flinching. Yes, he was clearly uncomfortable, with his free hand clenched in a fist and his jaw ticking, but he was doing pretty well.

Luna withdrew her arms from around Nate’s leg, looking up at him with her beautiful ocean-blue eyes.

“Why do you have these then?”

Three years. He had been able to protect the girls from his traumatizing past for three years, but now he needed to decide whether he wanted to lay that burden on their shoulders or not .

“You remember that I told you that Daddy worked with Uncle Oli to catch bad guys?”

Luna nodded and Ann appeared behind her, curious about the story Nate was going to tell them. He raised his gaze to hold Lynn’s, seeing the reassuring smile on her face that made his racing heart come back to a normal rhythm.

“Well one time the bad guy caught me instead and asked me some questions. When I didn’t answer them, they used knives and cigarettes to get the answers.”

“Did that hurt, Daddy?” Ann asked, her lip trembling, the mouth formed into a little pout while she tried to understand the severity of Nate’s story. Of course they couldn’t. They were three. But Ann had always been the more empathic one of the twins and her face showed him that she at least had an idea what his story meant.

“It did hurt. But thankfully Uncle Oli came to save me.” Nate smiled at his girls, although his heart was heavy. Hundreds of therapy sessions had helped him to leave the past in the past, but talking about this topic still made his stomach turn and his heart bleed.

Luna wrapped her arms around Nate’s leg again, burying her face in the fabric of his jeans. Ann followed closely, choosing the other leg and giving him the tightest possible hug.

His eyes alternated between his little girls before he looked up and saw Lynn beaming and her eyes glistening with pride.

“I am so proud of you” she mouthed towards him, and the smile that accompanied her words healed his temporarily bleeding heart in an instant.

“Your dad is a hero!” Oliver’s voice appeared behind him and Nate carefully turned around to look at his best friend. Oliver was casually leaning against the doorframe, watching the scene with a wide smile on his face .

Both girls pulled their faces back to look at their favorite uncle, but they had their arms still wrapped around Nate’s legs, as if they wanted to be close to him.

“I’m not. I’m just…” Nate started, but Oliver silenced him with a casual wave of his hand.

“Nuh-Uh. You are a hero. End of discussion.”

“I agree,” Lynn added to the conversation, letting Nate groan in frustration. He would probably never understand why getting caught by a terrorist made him a hero. He’d just failed at doing his job. But that was a discussion he was tired of having with Lynn and Oliver, so he just let them have their opinion on that.

“I just came to let you know that we might have ice cream in the kitchen. So when you’re done with your tour, don’t forget to come back and get your bowl.”

“Oh yeeeeees, ice cream!” Ann and Luna yelled in unison, the hug for their father long forgotten while they jumped up and down in excitement.

“Only after the tour, girls!” Oliver repeated, pointing at them with his index finger in a poor attempt at being “the bad cop” although he was the good cop 99% of the time.

They moved from the examination room towards the patient rooms. The med-bay had four of them in similar layouts, although two of the four were able to be turned into ICU rooms if necessary. They weren't used often, but when an Agent’s injury was too excessive, they were able to use the advanced medical technology. Nate’s fingers automatically moved into Lynn’s small hand, wrapping around her palm with an intensity she didn’t understand. Her head turned to observe what was bothering him.

Because of the torture he had to endure, Nate had always been skeptical about anything involving the med-bay and doctors, but it had improved so much over the last years that he even did his yearly checkups at the dentist without panic attacks .

What was bothering him so much today?

Lynn couldn’t hold back her smile because, even with his ticking jaw, the lips pressed together in a thin line, and the slight frown between his brows, he looked as beautiful as the day she met him.

“I’m the luckiest woman alive,” she whispered, helping Nate out of his panicked state with it. He turned his head towards her and Lynn could see the storm swirl behind the ocean-blue of his eyes.

“What’s wrong, Honey?” she added after waiting a few seconds for a verbal reaction that never came.

Instead of answering her, Nate looked around and looked for his princesses. Both were standing next to a sideboard in the hallway, Ann had a stethoscope around her neck while Luna held a clipboard in her hands, both babbling words they had heard Lynn say when she told them about her day at the dinner table.

“I don’t like this room,” Nate said in a low and gravelly voice. Lynn tilted her head, her face changing into a look of confusion while she tried to understand what he wanted to express.

Suddenly she understood. She leaned back a little, her lips parting while a long “ohhhhhhh” escaped her throat.

Her hand wiggled free from Nate’s tight grip and she carefully slid it underneath his shirt before her fingers found their place on top of the long scar on Nate’s right side. It was a visual reminder of the time when Lynn had almost died and Nate needed to donate a part of his liver in order to save her. She had been treated in the room in front of them, the room that had bothered Nate so much.

Her fingertips carefully stroked along his scar while Nate wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pressed her into his side. No words were spoken between them; they weren't needed.

Lynn turned her face to the side and placed a single, loving kiss on Nate’s neck, before they stepped away from each other and followed their girls into one of the patients’ rooms .

Luna had jumped into the bed, while Ann started to examine her with the stethoscope. The fact that she was currently checking Luna’s foot with it made Lynn chuckle.

“I think you broke your foot, Luna,” Ann said loudly, convinced that she was doing the right thing.

“Oh no,” Luna answered.

“We have to put you in a cast now.”

Ann turned around to look at her mother, silently asking her where she would find the material to put a cast around Luna’s perfectly fine foot.

“No, Sweetie. Not gonna happen,” Lynn answered, earning herself a big pout from Ann. It reminded her so much of Nate that she couldn’t hide her smile.

“I see so much of you in our daughters,” she said to Nate, who stood behind her and wrapped his arms around Lynn’s middle. His chin rested on top of Lynn’s brown hair, an appreciative hum leaving his throat.

“But they have your intelligence and curiosity,” Nate answered while a smile creeped back onto his face.

Luna jumped off the bed and stepped towards her parents, closely followed by Ann who still had the stethoscope around her shoulders.

“Can we have the ice cream now?” Luna asked with a wide smile.

“Of course. Let’s head back into the kitchen. Do you remember the way?” Lynn answered while she felt Nate letting go of her so that they would be able to move.

Luna and Ann nodded enthusiastically but waited for Nate’s “then let’s go” before they started running, as fast as their little legs allowed them to. Out of the patient’s room, into the med-bay hallway, into the entrance hall, and out into the main hallway. From there it was only a few steps to the kitchen, where Oliver and Marta were probably waiting to spoil the girls with their ice cream .

Nate knew that they had probably only bought it to impress the girls when they visited headquarters.

Lynn and Nate were about to leave the med-bay through the automatic door when they suddenly heard a high-pitched scream echoing through the hallways.

Lynn’s heart instantly became so heavy that she was scared it would fall out of her chest. She knew exactly whose voice they had just heard. She felt dizzy and lost balance for a second when Nate rushed past her, out of the door, and into the hallway. The same moment Nate started to run towards his daughters, Oliver stepped out of the kitchen and saw one of the girls lying on the floor.

Ann held her knee in front of her, her whole body shaking with heart-breaking sobs. Nate’s veins felt like they were filled with icy water instead of blood, but he managed to push the panic away when he reached his little girls and dropped to his knees at the same time as Oliver.

Luna was kneeling next to her sister, also with tears running down her reddened cheeks.

“What happened, Baby?” Nate asked.

Instead of an answer, Ann cried even louder, managing to sit up, and reach her hands out to her father. Nate sat himself on the floor before pulling Ann onto his lap and pressing her against his chest.

“Shhh, it’s all okay, Little Star,” he whispered, gently rocking back and forth while caressing his hand over Ann’s back.

Lynn finally arrived at the crime scene as well, her hands shaking, and her breaths shallow. She was not able to suppress the panic attack and she needed to stabilize herself against the wall of the med-bay while waiting for the panic to subside. It felt like her body was held hostage and she was unable to move or even breathe. It had been a long time since she had her last panic attack so it hit her unexpectedly and worse than usual.

Watching and hearing Ann still crying loudly in Nate's lap didn’t make it any better .

Nobody prepares you for the blunt agony that you feel when you hear your children cry. That even the simplest scream makes your blood curdle and that with the innate instinct to protect your kids, your fears of them getting hurt increased exponentially with every passing year.

“What happened?” Lynn managed to blurt out in between shallow breaths, keeping herself together as much as possible to not suffer from another panic attack. It was the first accident, the first injury. She wasn’t ready for this.

“I don’t know,” Oliver said. He was holding a crying Luna on his hip, trying to calm her down as best as he could.

Ann didn’t stop crying for a single second, her small chest rising and falling heavily as she struggled to get oxygen into her body because of all the crying.

“It’s all okay, Baby. Daddy’s here,” Nate repeated multiple times while trying to soothe Ann’s pain and fear.

Lynn kneeled next to Nate and Ann, pressing a light kiss on top of her daughter’s head before her hand joined Nate’s on Ann’s back to comfort her.

Surrounded by the love and safety of her parents, Ann slowly started to calm down. Her cries became quieter until all they could hear were some sniffles. She still had her face buried in Nate’s collarbone, trying to hide from the world around her.

“Luna, can you tell Mama what happened?” Lynn had her head raised towards Oliver and her other daughter, who had stopped crying and just watched them with a tear-stained face.

“She tripped over her own feet and then fell. It was so fast. I couldn’t catch her.” Luna started to cry again after she was done explaining, obviously feeling guilty that Ann got hurt.

Oliver pressed her closer to his upper body while assuring her that this was not her fault and she shouldn’t feel bad for what happened .

Lynn switched her attention back to her younger daughter, gently tapping her shoulder until she finally released her face from Nate and looked at her mother.

Her tiny face was dark red from the shock and crying but other than that there was no visible injury.

“Can you tell me what hurts, Little Star?” Lynn gave her daughter a little smile, although her heart still beat rapidly in her chest and every beat felt more and more heavy as if Ann’s pain was wrapped around it like a weighted vest.

“Knee,” Ann pressed out, sniffling a little, but it didn’t help the large amount of snot that was smeared around her face and on Nate’s neck.

“Which one?”

“This,” Ann answered and pointed on her left knee, the one that was on the other side of Nate’s body.

Lynn quickly rounded her husband to see and examine the damage on her daughter’s knee. Ann watched her curiously, a frown still present on her face.

On top of Ann’s kneecap Lynn could see a large friction burn that she probably got from sliding over the linoleum floor. It was bleeding a little, but it was nothing too concerning. The knee itself looked good, no swelling, bruising or deformation that would indicate a serious injury of the joint.

“Mama will carefully touch your knee now, okay, Baby?”

Instead of answering, Ann let out another high-pitched scream before burying her face into her father’s neck again. Lynn looked at her husband with furrowed brows and he shrugged his shoulders a little. Ann’s sobs had triggered Luna again so that both girls were crying once more. Lynn was overwhelmed to say at least, not knowing what to do with her little girl. It was unusual for her, but again, nobody prepared you for being a parent .

Movement behind them caused Lynn to turn her head around and, when her eyes fell on one of her best friends, she sighed in relief.

“Toby, can you help us out?” she asked immediately when the blond man had stepped out of the elevator.

“Of course. What the hell happened here?”

Toby had been on a date with his newly announced boyfriend today, only being on-call instead of staying at headquarters. During times when there was a little less action, he was allowed to do this, but needed to stay in a radius of 15 minutes car drive to headquarters. Which limited the choice of restaurants for dates but at least gave him the opportunity to see something else than the CIA the entire day.

“Ann fell and hurt her knee,” Oliver explained after nodding a greeting at Toby.

“Okay. Why don’t we get her into one of the examination rooms and then we can have a closer look. Is that okay with you, Ann?”

Curiosity won out over fear when Ann looked up to Toby and gave him a slight nod. Maybe getting her out of the situation would help to calm her down and allow Toby and Lynn to examine her knee properly.

Carrying his daughter towards the med-bay didn’t feel great for Nate; his veins still cold as ice, his hackles rising in anticipation of something happening, but he pushed through it because he knew that his Little Star was in good hands.

The others followed him closely, even Oliver with Luna. They had tried to get her into the communal kitchen, but she had screamed and wiggled around to get out of Oliver’s arm to follow her sister. The twins had a very strong bond right from the day they were born, so in the end Oliver had agreed to let Luna watch her sister getting treated.

Ann looked so incredibly small on the large examination table and letting her out of Nate’s arms had led to the little girl starting to cry again. If because of pain or just because she had to let go of the safety of her father was unclear at this point.

Lynn and Toby both put surgical gloves on before they stepped next to the crying Ann with smiles on their faces. Toby’s was honest, Lynn’s the biggest acting she had ever performed.

“I’m gonna touch around your knee a little and you tell me if it hurts, okay?” Toby said in a warm voice.

Ann shook her head in response, clinging onto Nate’s hand for dear life.

“Okay, Baby. Can Mama do it instead?”

A tiny nod was enough for Lynn to start examining her daughter’s knee as best as she could.

She started to touch around Ann’s thigh, slowly nearing her fingers towards the tender knee. Her girl didn’t show any reaction other than some sniffles and sobs while she tried to fight the snot. Instead of touching the knee, Lynn decided to get Ann’s foot out of her shoe and started to examine the entire lower extremity. Her foot, ankle, shin and calf looked good. No indication of a broken bone, a torn ligament or a sprain. That was good. Lynn sighed a little in relief, but her shoulders tensed again when her hands made their way up to Ann’s knee. As gently as possible she grabbed her lower leg and started to move it around a little, secretly checking for torn ligaments. Both Lachman and McMurray tests had negative results, meaning the main ligaments were intact. That was good, because operating on such a young and small knee wouldn’t be the easiest and she didn’t know a pediatrician that would be experienced enough that she would trust them.

“ACL fine, PCL fine, meniscus looks good as well. Looks like she was lucky,” Lynn commented and Toby nodded in response.

Nate wasn’t a doctor but sighed in relief because, for once, he’d understood every word that his wife just said. He hadn’t been that lucky back then to hear those words after his kickboxing accident .

“Is it broken? Does she need a cast?” Luna’s voice appeared from behind them, making Nate look around and into the wide eyes of his daughter. To his surprise there was no sadness in Luna’s eyes anymore but… excitement? That didn’t make any sense to Nate, so he switched his attention back to Ann, who suddenly exclaimed:

“Oh yes, I want a cast. Can I have a cast, Mama?”

Lynn looked at Nate, trying to understand why the girls were so obsessed with having a cast. They had already been like that an hour ago in the patient’s room. But Nate shook his head with a grimace on his face.

“Ann, your leg is not broken, you don’t need a cast.”

“Ohhhhh,” the little girl exclaimed, suddenly sad again with a pout on her face.

“Baby, why do you want a cast?” Nate asked. There was not a single brain cell in him that would understand someone being excited for a cast. The heavy and way too quickly smelly things came right out of hell. He was happy he didn’t have one in the last years, the time in 2011 after Oliver had found and freed him was enough for him. Leg and arm in a cast at the same time was the most annoying combination ever.

“Mama told us about the woman getting a pink cast. I want a pink cast too,” Ann explained and somehow this made totally sense in her little head. Luna nodded in excitement, mumbling something about wanting a cast as well.

Lynn started to laugh while Toby carefully disinfected Ann’s wound while she was still occupied with the whole cast-thing. He then placed a beige band aid on top.

“Baby we can get you a pink band aid on the way back home, okay? And you and Luna can both wear pink socks the entire evening. Deal?”

“DEAL!” both Luna and Ann exclaimed.

Nate looked at both his girls with a smile on his face. Some days he wondered how the hell they could be his kids as they were so different from him, but on other days, especially when he had fallen asleep while reading them a bedtime story, he knew there was no DNA test required.

“Come on, girls. Let’s get you some ice cream for being so brave and then we can drive to the pharmacy to buy your pink band-aids,” Nate suggested and both Ann and Luna started to run towards the communal kitchen.

“NO RUNNING!” Nate, Lynn, Oliver and Toby yelled at the same time but the girls didn’t listen. They had already disappeared behind the next corner and Lynn mentally prepared herself for another accident. Thankfully there was no scream but Oliver and Toby followed the girls as quickly as they could, leaving Lynn and Nate behind.

That first accident leading to the first official injury had been scary for both Nate and Lynn, so they took a small moment to hold each other close while whispering words of reassurance to each other.

“You’re the best father, you know that?”

“It’s nothing. I just did what I needed to do. I’m so proud that you were able to treat her so professionally. I wouldn’t be able to. I was so scared.”

“I was, too.”

“I know. But you did amazing, Darling. I love you so much.”

“I love you more, Nate.”