Earth

2027

There really was so much that Aeryn and Jace needed to say.

As they were about to leave, her gaze fell to his chest and her brows pinch. She gasped in horror. "Jace."

"It's not serious."

Aeryn looked faint suddenly. "Are those bullet holes?"

"I got–"

"How are you standing? You need treatment. You–"

"Listen." He took her face in his hands, forcing her attention on him. It hurt to raise up both his arms, but he tried not to show it. "I have the mesh. I really am fine. It's all superficial."

The panic melted into sorrow. "No, Jace."

"It happened a long time ago. I'm fine."

"We talked about the mesh. It's barbaric."

Jace lowered his hands. "I need to get as strong as I can."

She covered her mouth and looked down. As much as he wanted to say she'd overreacted, he really couldn't. The surgery involved planting hundreds of seeds for the mesh all over his body beneath the skin. Then, it sprouted and bloomed, connecting in a giant web. The pain of that was unimaginable, but the worst had been the fusion with his nerves and tissue. Few people were willing to undergo the horrific transformation.

"I should have been there for you," Aeryn said.

"Come here." He drew her to himself, ignoring the pain, and held her tight. "You have too much to worry about. Put it all from your mind." She looked up to him and for a moment it was like she'd never left. The years were peeled away. He was looking at the woman he loved like he'd expected to do for the rest of his life.

Back home, Jace would have sawed off his own legs to have just a moment with her again. No pain compared to losing the person you loved and needed. It would have been better to live through the agony of the mesh every day for the rest of his life, or the Commanders using the Neuralweb to set his nerves on fire. The explosion when Aeryn was captured that peeled the skin from his back. He would have rather lived through the pain of all of that at the same time than the all-consuming grief of losing her.

When she met his eyes, he was certain that she saw it written across his face. "I've got you now," she said, gentle and soft. Her voice and her touch melted him into a feeling of peace he hadn't had since he lost her.

What happened next was inevitable, even if he wasn't sure whether it was right or wrong. Aeryn had easily found the broken pieces of his soul and held them in her hand. He needed her like he needed air and he couldn't pull her close enough. Her hands slid up his neck. Her nose brushed his.

"I missed you," he whispered.

Aeryn's lips slid over his. The taste of her mouth consumed his senses.

They both hesitated, even started to pull back, but it was like resisting gravity. Jace didn't know if he'd ever be able to kiss her again. So for this one time, he forgot about how his days with her were likely numbered and that she'd fallen for another man. He dug his hands into the dip of her back to bring her close while he kissed her deeply.

His skin ached for the feel of her against him. For one more morning waking with her close or one night of her falling asleep against his chest when those had once been countless.

"What are we going to do?" she whispered.

"I don't know, Aerie." He couldn't pull himself away from her. "I really don't know."

"I guess we could start with fishing those bullets out of you."

----------------------------------------

Considering that Vehru could track their location and there wasn't actually anywhere to hide, Aeryn had told Jace that as long as her home was clear, she wanted to take him there. Using the excuse of checking on their missing analyst's location, Jace fished for information on Vehru, and found that she was currently in an Aerolux with Trin.

"I want to set up cameras in case Vehru comes to our house. She's lying about captives. We can capture the truth. Even if she says the footage is altered, some people will believe it."

"There will be backlash for releasing it. Just do it at the right time."

Jace had no idea what Vehru would do about Aeryn attacking her Replica in Trin's body but recording it was a good idea. The worry churned in his gut as they escaped into Aeryn's neighborhood.

On the way to her home, they stopped to pick up Theo, while Aeryn complained that she'd told him to escape. It was as ridiculous to think that Theo would leave without her as it had been for Jace to think Aeryn would do that to him. The three of them clearly were tangled in an inextricable web.

So they all wound up in the basement of Aeryn and Theo's home. Although, he supposed it was more correct to say Rory and Theo's home. The other man had set up a few small cameras around the house while Aeryn grabbed the medical supplies.

If the deep ache in his bones from the impact of so many bullets had not grown so distracting, the situation might have been unbearably awkward or confusing. Or just plain emotionally devastating. As it was, sitting in an armchair in the home of the man who married Jace's wife, he actually felt like laughing.

"This situation is pretty fucked up," Jace said with a smirk as Aeryn carefully extracted a bullet from the skin beneath his collarbone.

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Aeryn paused and then just nodded. "Yeah..."

Some of the bullets that pierced his suit had not gone deep enough to remain in his chest and instead left behind small wounds. Others punctured the skin entirely, or were jammed into his mesh. Aeryn hadn't used the handheld X-Ray scanner yet, but he suspected some had managed to damage the mesh. Just breathing hurt like hell now that his adrenaline had waned.

As hard of a time as Aeryn had even seeing the bullets, he couldn't let on that it hurt. She removed two more and paused for a moment with her eyes on the blood dripping down his chest. It wasn't that she couldn't handle a bit of blood. Aeryn had suffered injuries herself and had seen others with plenty. The longer they'd been married, though, the worse her reaction to him getting hurt became. Jace swallowed down the pain so she wouldn't notice.

Aeryn looked at Theo. "Can you get a bowl of water to rinse things off?"

He rushed off up the stairs.

When Jace had first seen Theo approach in the hallway after arriving on Earth, the encounter had been as brief and devastating as a bomb. The impact of that now was stretched out into long minutes and the promise of a new reality that would not be changing any time soon. It was incredibly strange.

Probably the only thing more awkward than sitting in the house of his wife's husband was doing so shirtless while the woman they both had married pried the bullets loose from his body. Bullets he'd gotten from invading the other man's planet. It almost managed to be morbidly amusing, except that it was a genuine living nightmare.

Fuck him. There had been no preparing for this. He actually felt bad for kissing his own wife.

"Am I hurting you too badly?" Aeryn asked.

Jace shook his head.

Theo hadn't said much. But the other man looked at the bloody needle-nose pliers that Aeryn rinsed in the bowl of water. "What is in your blood?"

Aeryn flinched as she dropped another bullet into a cup. Metallic blue separated in beads from the blood. "Biofluid," she said. "He needs it to help carry fuel to his implants and to facilitate repair when necessary."

Theo grabbed the thin flashlight from the table that held the medical supplies and shone it on Jace's hand. "Fascinating. There's a bit of a tint beneath your skin, isn't there?"

"He's an astrobiologist," Aeryn said. "You'll have to excuse him."

"Hm." Jace studied the other man. He was on the thin side but he was a good-looking guy with kind eyes. "Makes sense. You found someone even more nerdy than you."

"Ha," Aeryn said.

"What have you had done that allows you to minimize the damage of gunshot wounds like that?" Theo asked.

Jace explained the mesh to him, as well as the various treatments he'd undergone to strengthen his body against damage.

"You can study him later, Theo," Aeryn said dryly.

"If you want to study something, shine that light in my pupils." Jace grinned.

"Great, you got him talking about his toys. How many are implanted inside you now?"

"I am curious," Theo said, though he seemed to think better of it after Aeryn cast a look over her shoulder. "It can wait until there's no blood."

"It can wait until after the million other important things we need to talk about." Aeryn cleaned a wound she'd just removed a bullet from. She tapped her ear, clearly asking if it was safe to remove his earpiece yet. He shook his head in the negative. Soon, when the base was officially cleared.

They were quiet as Aeryn continued working on him. Once the healing pods were set up, Jace could use them to heal within the day. For now, he supplemented the pain medicine with some gin he'd spotted on their bar. Taking too much medicine made his mind sluggish, and he didn't want that. A bit of alcohol with the pills always seemed to help cut the pain without making him want to sleep. Maybe he'd built more of a tolerance to drinks than drugs.

Now there were only a few bullets left and they were the ones that he thought might have broken through his mesh, which meant they could be difficult to pull free. Aeryn looked more sick with each passing moment.

"Look away," Jace said.

"No. You're not doing this yourself."

He ripped one of the bullets free. Blood gushed from this one. It had definitely gone deeper than the others.

"Tissue damage," she chided. "Don't stick your fingers in your chest. What is wrong with you? You said the medical unit isn't finished yet."

"I said look away."

"Don't." She slapped his hand when he reached for another of the deeper ones. "You're being ridiculous. You need more pain meds. This has to hurt."

"The doses I need now to make a difference are so high I'll be incapacitated. There's no time." He grabbed the gin and guzzled what remained. "That'll help."

"Jesus Christ." Theo walked behind the bar. "I've never been so emasculated in my life, and I was once thrown in the dumpster by our high school quarterback in front of my crush."

"Theodore," Aeryn said softly.

Jace smirked, but quickly lost it when she clamped the edge of a deep bullet. "Aeryn hates it when men bulk up too much," Jace said. "She's not into over-enhanced cyborgs."

She looked to Jace, clearly torn between assuaging the feelings of both men. "You are not a cyborg."

Theo grabbed another bottle that he offered. But Jace shook his head and thanked him.

"I'd really rather that you be an asshole." Theo lifted his hands. "It'd make me feel less guilty for stealing your wife."

Aeryn groaned.

"You didn't steal her," Jace said. "We lost each other."

Aeryn pried the last bullet free with a grunt and threw it down in the cup. "Enough with the self-deprecating jabs. Both of you stop." Then she ran the handheld scanner over his chest. "Look at that. Three of them fractured your ribs. Not badly but it could get worse with any pressure. The swelling and bruising is starting. This is a mess."

"It couldn't be helped," Jace said. As soon as the words left his lips, he caught Aeryn's hand, raising a finger to his lips to tell everyone to be quiet.

He could tell no one else heard it, but in the quiet, Jace detected one of those lethally quiet footsteps.

In one motion, he rose and yanked Aeryn behind him. Motioned at Theo to duck behind the bar.

Vehru now stood at the top of the stairs. And she looked fucking pissed.

"Not entirely accurate," Vehru said. "He let everyone shoot him because he's stubborn and arrogant." One step down the stairs. "Arguably self-sabotaging."

Aeryn clutched his arm, starting to move from behind him. Jace refused to let her, though. He easily held her back, covering her.

The commander looked past him to Aeryn. Her golden eyes burned like the sun. "It's shocking that you're the one who is even more stubborn and arrogant, though. Of all the foolish things I anticipated."

"Move," Aeryn said. "I need to face her."

Vehru's glare turned cold. "What you need is to understand the consequences of your actions, Witness. I give you so much freedom. That doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want."

Pricks of electricity flashed over Jace's scalp. The pain ate across his body within a second and knocked him to his knees. His entire body spasmed, blood squeezing from his wounds, scarlet droplets falling onto the hardwood floor beneath him.

Aeryn grabbed him. Yelled in a muffled voice he couldn't hear. His every nerve-ending ignited with the pain now and he collapsed onto the ground.

Black spread over his vision. He had to get up. Had to get Aeryn and Theo out of here, but he only managed to twitch his fingers as he tried desperately not to scream.