What!?

40

"Miss Bloomington, we should be going soon. Mr. Hamilton was pretty clear that he didn't want us out past five. It's almost that time now." Jensen  says to the woman he was hired to protect. He's sparred with her a few times and she could give him and some of the other seals a run for their money. He suspects that if she gets back up to the level she was before she almost died when she was sixteen that he wouldn't be able to beat her.

Iliana immediately stops looking for gifts for Isaac and Preston. She is shopping for their birthday and she isn't having much luck. She has found a few things, but isn't sure that they will like it, but then she's never sure if they will or not. 

When the boys let her in their rooms once they started being together, she was shocked to find just about everything she's ever given them.  All of them from the time she was a young child. They had pride of place in each room.

She can't imagine the shit they must have taken from their flavors over the years. Some of those gifts were not such great gifts, but she gave them from the bottom of her little girl heart.

Seeing those gifts in their rooms like that never failed to make her cry. At first that would make the boys worried, but when she told them that it made her so happy that they actually loved her enough to keep her little gifts they relaxed and she could see that they were happy that they made her happy like that.

She is walking out to the car when suddenly they are both jumped. Jensen fights them valiantly but in the end he is overwhelmed and he goes down. Iliana isn't sure if he's just unconscious.

She doesn't have time to figure it out either. She manages to fight off several, but one of them manages to grab her arm and jabs a needle in it. After that it's just a matter of time before she is unable to even stand and falls into a black nothingness.

Iliana has no wish to relive the next few hours, days, years, she doesn't know how long the torture went on for but she does know that it seemed like it took an eternity.

She remembers vaguely hearing Blake's voice and she screams out for him to not look for her.

She watches as he gets that call.

She knows that he isn't going to listen to her last pleading even as she watches what happened next from his memories.

She watches in sick fascination as her body is being beaten. She feels the helplessness of not just Blake, but all the boys.

She becomes terrified when they are given the directions to the place where they dumped her body. They don't hesitate and they leave, the only thing they do is let the police know where they are heading. That's it. They are putting themselves in the devil's hands on the off chance to save her.

Iliana is crying even before the boys make it to the trap. She just doesn't see how the boys will survive. But then again she doesn't understand how any of their memories are hers either.

She is screaming silently at the boys to go back. To not go forward. To stop. She can hardly breathe she's crying so hard. She doesn't want to watch any of them die, but she can't stop herself from watching either. She needs to know if any of her boys lived.

She watches as Blake screams her name and runs to her. All of the boys gather round her broken body, encircle it. Then she watches as the boys start running when that evil bastard that enjoyed hurting comes out with the men with guns. The men make some sort of exclamation but then start shooting. 

The boys never hesitate in their running and she can feel the power that they all send to her. She feels Blake taking control of that power and healing some of the worse problems then taking the power and sending it to the ones trying to kill her and her boys. She feels the bullets hitting each of them when suddenly it stops.

The silence is incredible. Then she notices that all her boys are on the ground and are bleeding.

She screams silently believing them all to be dead.

The police come and yell out that all her boys are alive and that reassures her enough that she is finally able to sink back into the darkness. The nice comforting empty dark.

She sighs, she had hoped that she and Blake would be able to get back to that island that he took her to on her sixteenth birthday. She would have liked to go diving with the sharks again, but she guesses that some things just aren't meant to be.

She sighs once more. It would have been nice to be a mother. She wonders if she would have had such a hard time having children like her mother did or if she would have been able to give her lovers each a child. She guesses she'll never know now.

Once more she feels tears falling on her face.

"Ili, come back to us. Don't leave us, please. We need you. If you don't come back soon I don't think Blake will survive much longer. We are all in need of you, please, come back to us, Ili."

"Lia, please, please come back. We need you."

"Lia, I know that I'm your least favorite, but please come back. If not for me, then for the others. None of us are doing well. We are slowly dying. The blood just isn't enough to feed us. Not with us needing more healing from all the wounds we received. Blake uses so much energy that he isn't healing. He's giving more than he has to give to try to help you come back. He says that if you come back and he dies then it's a fair trade."

Those words by Casper are enough to take away the peace Iliana was feeling. Blake was killing himself to try to save her. She can't let that happen. Can't let any of them die just because she's tired of fighting to live.

She pushes a little harder she tries desperately to wake up she starts feeling hands holding her hand and it just makes her fight more, but she's too tired to push past the darkness.

"Ili, come back to me my love." There is a surge of power and suddenly Iliana is able to force herself past the black emptiness she'd been drifting in for however long.

"Blake?" Ili manages to say and open her eyes. 

"Ili!" Blake says or rather shouts. It's enough to bring all the brothers to her bedside. They give her some water and lots of kisses before the doctor shoos them all out of the room to look her over.

"I don't know how you did it, Miss Bloomington, but you've managed to defy the odds once more and survived more wounds and injuries than anyone I've ever seen. Those boys have been dedicated to you and have hardly left your side. We practically have to pry them away to get them to their own rooms or to eat."

"They'll do better now, doctor, I'll guarantee it." Iliana tells him tiredly.

"How long have I been out?"

"You've been here for over a week. How long you've been unconscious before that I don't know. I do know that you were beaten severely. The boys said that you were kidnapped. The police have been waiting for you to wake up to take your statement.

"The ones that kidnapped me?"

"I'm sorry, Miss Bloomington, that I don't know. Maybe the officers will be able to tell you or your boyfriend or his brothers." The doctor tells her even as he checks her over.

He shakes his head, "I didn't believe in miracles or god or anything like that before you were brought in, Miss Bloomington, but seeing as how you are now, I think that I may be changing how I think.

"If you are up to it, I'll send those men back in to visit with you for a bit?"

"Thank you, doctor. I would like that."