"Tell me," she said. The big black eyes melted his heart. There's just something about them, just a little too pronounced about their irresistibility. Which is why he'd gotten involved the first time around.

And here he was again, twenty years later; no, twenty-five. Concocting plans not so very unlike the ones before; collaborating with... Such an ugly word. Same agency, nonetheless. Same product. This time, though, they had to be sure it would work. Because he could remember.

"Remember what? Tell me."

He looked up, startled. He must have spoken aloud.

Susan was not so very unlike Naomi. Even the physical form of her face was similar. Black eyes, liquid eyes, looking into his, wanting him to... Wanting him to do what, exactly? He hadn't known then. He knew even less now.

Naomi had taken him places, taught him things, horrible things, about how the world works, how the world had always worked, why they, here, now, had to do something about it.

And, he sighed, looking into Susan's eyes, she'd been right. Right about all of it. But still, he wasn't at all sure it had been worth it.

He sighed. "She had a kid. Made her feel bound to the land, somehow. Needed a place to grow up; not so very unlike the tree we planted together. Or was that later, after, in memory? Anyway, the tree's still there, though the house behind it burned a long time ago."

"You're not making much sense, Uncle Eli," said Susan. It was an honorary title, but one with some teeth to it. Because at that last moment, those long, long last moments, he was the one who was there. He was the one she'd entrusted with her legacy. Susan.

"Naomi," he said, eyes half-focused on Susan's face, and half-focused on infinity, on the abyss. He sighed, remembering. Wishing he could forget; not daring to forget. Holding every detail of that horrible day in his mind, because it was all that was left of her. That horror, and, of course, Susan.

In the mean while, he'd studied the movement, the native one, not the one brought from outside. It had in fact begun to reawaken. That's disingenuous, though; when in fact He had begun to reawaken it. Them. One heart at a time. Showing that even that god-forsaken place was anything but.

So much blood. So very much blood, so red, so very red, glistening in the sun. So hard for him to believe it had all come from a body so small, so naked, so vulnerable. And that she was still looking at him, with those big, black, liquid eyes.

"I'm so sorry," he told her, taking her hand between his.

"For what?" asked Susan.

"When we were taken," he said, "they drew lots." And his voice stopped working. It just wouldn't go on, couldn't tell that tale. And yet, he felt she knew.

They looked at each other in silence. The sunbeam moved across the floor.

Suddenly, he looked up, felt the urgency. He could see she felt it too. "When the time had fully come..." he said, getting up, moving quickly to the door, grabbing his bag, and beginning to run. He could feel the weight, and hear the clank of steel in the bag.

He could hear her behind him. He rounded that same corner. Perhaps that time had not fully come. Or something. This time, he could feel it. He could taste it.

Others must have felt the moment as well; he saw several people he recognized from that other time, running. Around the corner, yes. Through the archway, yes. Up the sun-painted street. With Susan's quick footsteps right behind him. And into the plaza.

He glanced up at the hillside, and his heart nearly failed him. Crosses, against the sky. Right where they'd made the captives...

But no, these were empty. A warning, perhaps, but empty. A threat, not a promise. A threat the authorities would certainly carry out, again and again and again until they were all dead, until they'd all been made to drive nails into each others' flesh.

Susan scooped him up from where he knelt. "Hurry," she hissed in his ear.