This chapter is a bit short but it seemed like a natural break point so here it is.

**Previously**

Charlotte took a sip of her drink, looking at him over the rim of her glass. “Can you imagine what our kids would be like?”

Yves nearly dropped the bottle mid pour but steadied his hand and finished before carefully setting the bottle down and taking a deep slug of his drink. “Cherie… I would love nothing in this world more than for you to be the mother of our children. I cannot imagine anyone else who would be able to keep up with them!” He sobered. “But I did not think this was possible”

Charlotte took another sip of her drink and set it down. She took a seat and drew Yves down beside her, their legs intertwining as they faced each other. “It is an experimental treatment. My own stem cells used on a matrix to form the organs properly, the correct endocrine balance to get everything to differentiate into the proper tissues…”

“Do you mean?” Yves face was a mixture of confusion, elation and fear. “Do you mean you could become pregnant, have a child? We could have a family, our babies?!?!”

“One day, maybe.” Charlottes tone was somber. “Two years before I’m fertile but they say 5 years would be better. Thats if it works at all… we don’t know yet. Right now I have the uterus and ovaries of a 10 year old but they are growing fast. Anyway, technical details.” She leaned forward and kissed him, a slow lingering sensuous kiss. “The point is, yes, I might be able to have your babies one day… and I very much want to.”

Yves returned the kiss in kind and they spent the next several hours in bed… and on the futon, and the kitchen table… there were a few other places but by the time they were both happily exhausted sunset was casting its garish lightshow over the sky and they fell asleep tangled together on her… now their… bed.

***** And Now*****

The barest hint of predawn crept into the room as Charlotte quietly donned a swimsuit and ran through a stretching routine before slipping into the water. 5 hours later she pulled herself up onto the dock to be greeted by the smell of something delicious. Yves was still cooking and they shared a quick but passionate kiss before she went on to the shower.

A few minutes later they ate together, neither having bothered to dress. There was a pregnant silence between them at first but Yves broke the ice.

“When you told me about your being transsexual that first night I didn’t think anything of it… all I saw and felt was the beautiful woman who danced in my arms and whose lips tasted of the finest wine. I was… am… intoxicated by you. Sometime after that I realized I had fallen in love with you and I began to dream of a life with you…” He took a sip of his coffee and was silent for a moment.

“One of the things I dreamed was that perhaps we could adopt children, give a loving home to those who had none. I’ve seen you with children and you are a natural mother so I hoped you might share that dream…”

Charlotte broke in “Why didn’t you ever mention it?”

“I was afraid I would chase you away… I knew you had been hurt so badly before and I didn’t want to make you feel that I was… like him, you know? I did everything I could to make sure of that and I think by doing that I hurt you. I love you Charlotte and I would never intentionally cause you pain…”

“Yves you have not caused me pain… you have given me joy. If for some reason I am not able to bear our children we will adopt, absolutely. We might adopt anyway…” Charlotte sipped at her coffee, watching the smile spread across Yves’ face. “I have seen you around children too and you are as much a natural father as I am a mother. We were both lucky enough to have loving parents and I want to pass that love on, to pay it forward.”

She took another sip and sighed. “I grew up thinking it was impossible even to adopt and that was entirely aside from the question of finding someone who could love me. Things were very bad here for people like me back in the Trump/Pence years… My parents homeschooled me so I wouldn’t be sent to a conversion camp. There was Grams, and Mike and Markie… but aside from them and my parents my teen years were spent alone. I wasn’t unhappy, I knew it was the only way I could be safe…”

Charlotte sat for a long moment, staring into her cup. “Then when I was 18, I’d just finished my bachelor’s and was on my gap year before grad school when I met Roderick… He swept me off my feet and for a while I was so happy… Then he started wanting me to have sex with other men and when I refused he threatened my parents… said he would kill them if I told anyone.” She was quietly crying, tears falling unheeded into her rapidly cooling coffee.

“So I did what he said but it got weirder and weirder and in the end I was just being tortured and raped for days on end… I was left alone but trapped, no way to even know where I was and almost no food except when it was time for another torture session. He showed me video of them skinning my parents alive after I got a message to them…”

Quiet crying had progressed to hiccupping sobs and Yves picked her up to carry her over to a sofa settling her in his lap, held securely in his embrace while she wept out the anguish that filled her heart.

After a time the tears tapered off and she simply held tightly to Yves for a few moments before leaning back to look up into his face. “You must think I’m crazy, freaking out on you so much.”

“We all have our own crazy Cherie. That is a part of what a relationship is… handling each other’s crazy. I don’t think that word fits you anyway. You’re the sanest person I’ve ever met, which considering what you’ve been through is an absolute miracle. Don’t be ashamed to share that with me… I will always be here for you and sharing a burden makes it less, yes?” He reached down to kiss her tenderly. “Now go check your messages, there’s an encrypted one from the lab.”

Charlotte launched herself from Yves’ lap and snatched up a tablet, applying her thumbprint, retinal scan and password to unlock the file. She spent the next hour engrossed in the results, checking some items on another tablet she held. Yves grinned at her newfound exuberance and dutifully kept her supplied with coffee until she came out of it with a smile on her face.

“I knew the spatter patterns and the clotting were weird! From the concentrations there were at least 8 separate dumps and they were all mixed together and I mean thoroughly mixed. Like the remains were put in a large container and mixed for quite a while. That’s not the kicker though! The whole gory mess was loaded with enough anticoagulant to make a living person bleed out through their pores! These guys were stored for… I don’t know how long.”

Charlotte glanced at the time. “Shit, you have to get into town! Want me to take you?”

Yves had already dressed and refilled her cup once more before bending down to kiss her. “I love you Charlotte and thank you but I need the practice and I’m not going over 30% anyway… its not like the boss is going to chew me out for being late!” He headed for the ‘parking lot’ “Besides, I get the idea you’re going to be out and about today so I might need to get myself home!”

With that he closed the hatch and Charlotte sat back in her seat for a moment, bemused. It had felt so familiar, so comforting to be kissed and assured of his love in that way, casual though it was. She had missed that easy intimacy which had only been hers in childhood for so long that it was almost foreign and yet she yearned for it more than she thought possible.

She sat for some time, simply treasuring the feeling. After a time she turned her attention back to research and soon realized she needed more room to work than the tablets provided so she shifted to her study. She was still there sifting through databases and purchase records she should not have been able to access when Yves arrived home that evening.

Charlotte didn’t notice at first when he called her name but definitely paid attention when he found her in the study and reached down to kiss her deeply. She had a moment of panic until she realized it was him then relaxed into it and returned it in kind.

He dipped a finger in her still mostly full and very cold coffee cup and shook his head. “You haven’t moved since this morning, have you?”

Charlotte thought for a moment then tried to jump up and run for the bathroom. Unfortunately her legs didn’t agree with her intentions and she wound up nearly falling over in her haste. Yves gently caught her and helped her hobble to the bathroom, closing the door and remaining outside while trying not to laugh at the heartfelt sigh of relief coming from within.

Charlotte emerged with a much relieved look on her face and pulled Yves down into an intense kiss. Once they broke for breath she couldn’t keep the smile off her face. “I’ve found it! That much of the substances used had to be traceable and it was… to a shell company, and another shell… damn corporate crooks and their onions! I even managed to get down to the accounts used to supply the money but the damn Cayman banks are tighter than a tick’s ass.”

“Anyway, so I started looking for a drone that could carry 1/8 of the total weight since the splatter patterns and densities made it clear that there were 8 drops.” Charlotte walked into the kitchen and poured both of them a double shot of cannabis infused absinthe. They both took small sips and savored the floral taste mixed with the bitterness of the wormwood.

“And you found something? Yves arched an eyebrow at her as they sat.

“No. Well I didn’t find anything off the shelf anyway but I got started thinking how I’d build for the specs needed and what I’d use, where I’d obtain it, that sort of thing. I came up with several workable designs but even the lowest noise was over 70 decibels, very much loud enough to have been heard.”

Charlotte took another sip and paused for a moment. “Anyway, I scrapped all that and went back to the drawing board. I’d been thinking about it the wrong way. A lighter than air craft would be quiet but large enough to attract attention so that was out. A normal drone was too noisy so that was out. But what if I used a combination of a smaller gasbag and less powerful fans? That got me down to the 45 decibel range but still enough that someone should have noticed.”

“Okay, that makes sense…”

“So anyway I finally had this ‘Duh!’ moment and realized… active noise cancellation. At 45 decibels it worked well enough in sims to reduce the noise to under 20 db. The noise of the… erm… deceased… hitting and splashing all over would have been louder. If it all happened at the same time it would just be the one noise, hard to pinpoint like a single gunshot can be.”

Yves shook his head and took a sip of his drink. “I am really glad I’m on your good side. You are one very scary woman…”

She laughed at him. “I have to go out to the Weapons Station tomorrow. If anyone has records of the control signals used for those drones they will and I know just the fellow to talk to…”

Yves pulled her into him and she relaxed against him. “So do I have anything to worry about then?” He teasingly murmured into her ear.

Charlotte snorted. “I think not. Gordy is like a grandfather to me and he doesn’t swing that way anyway… although he is kinda cute…” she teased in return. “Besides, with him I don’t have to screw around for half the day while the buck gets passed ever higher. He knows exactly what I’m cleared for.”

Yves blew into her hair, causing Charlotte to giggle. “Why am I not surprised you have the clearance required for that sort of thing?”

“Hmmm… perhaps its because you have the clearance to know that I do?” She twisted around to look at his face as his expression went briefly blank.

“I knew it! You sneaky bastard!” She was laughing as she said it and kissed him while he did his best to hide his chagrin under the duress of considerable distraction. “Of course I know you checked me out Yves, I did the same for you! Its a reasonable thing for people like us to do, especially if we are going to share our lives together.”

Yves pulled back a little and looked into her eyes. “I don’t quite understand Cherie. I am very happy that you want this but just a few days ago you turned me down and then right after changed completely… Why?”

Charlotte got up and refilled both of their glasses, taking a sip while handing his back to him. She sat sideways on the sofa next to him, one leg tucked under and was silent for a moment. “When I went out to Edisto” she began in a near whisper “I swam with that dolphin family and I saw the mother and her kids and it made me want that so badly, want you to share that with me so badly…”

“Its like I said before, I realized the ghost was me and that I was the reason I couldn’t have that happiness… that it was me and my…issues…” She took a sip and a deep breath “Here I have this wonderful man who is everything I could ever want and I keep pushing him away when he makes it clear he wants the same thing I want. It just hit me and the only thing I could see myself doing was to finally allow myself… allow us… a chance at happiness.”

She leaned over and kissed him deeply. “So that was what I did. I guess I’d been getting there already since I’ve had Mel working on your runabout for like 2 months now but it all came to a head right then and I had to say… do… what I was feeling… What I have been feeling for longer than I’ve let myself admit.”

“I think that’s the most you’ve ever said to me about your emotions, how you feel about… well anything really. You usually deflect in some way when I bring things like this up.” Yves was persistent but gentle in his tone.

“You’re right and that’s something I’m trying to work on. Just… promise me if you catch me doing that with you that you’ll call me on it, ok? I’ve been doing that for so long that its second nature and I don’t want it to be anymore. I want to share my thoughts and feelings, my life, everything with you. Its just… that’s an ability, knowledge that was taken from me and I’m having to relearn it. You said I was broken in a lot of ways, and when those breaks heal they are stronger… but this is one of those breaks that has just begun to heal and it is still very fragile and the nerves are very raw.”

Charlotte had to take a moment to get her thoughts in order. “I’m gonna freak out on you a lot for a while. There’s so much stuff that I never truly processed, never allowed myself to think about and now that I’m letting the emotional walls down and letting the good stuff free all the horrific crap is coming out right along with it. I know all this stuff intellectually, I’ve certainly got the degrees for it… but the reality of doing it… That scares the shit out of me.”

“I can’t say I can even imagine Cherie… but I am here. Freak out all you need to, I’m not going anywhere.” Yves pulled Charlotte around and cradled her back against his chest, his arm around her waist. “I’ve got you my love, and you have me, body and soul. All the rest is just the shit we have to deal with… together. Not alone, never again.”

After sitting this way for a time, each of them finishing another glass of liqueur Charlotte raised herself back into a position facing Yves. She began to talk, about everything as it had happened, every detail which was burned into her memory. The evening fled away as Yves made them dinner and still she talked, sometimes shaking and crying and twice more even breaking down completely but more hugging and comforting and liqueur helped her to get through it.

Finally it was early morning and she was talked out, hoarse and exhausted but in that state of mind that doesn’t allow sleep. Along the way Yves had shared his own demons and she grew to know the horror and pain that had been his burden.

“We’re both pretty fucked up, huh?” By this time they had drained the bottle and started on another. Charlotte looked up into his face from where she had nestled into his side, a small smile on her face.

“Els fotuts són els que no poden funcionar, no es pot viure, no pot, finalment, aprendre a estimar de nou. Som els supervivents, els que vénen de l'altra banda segueix viu en lloc de ser emocionalment mort ...” (The fucked up ones are those who cannot function, cannot live, cannot eventually learn to love again. We are the survivors, the ones who come out the other side still alive instead of being emotionally dead…)

“Ok, so we’re survivors, but that doesn’t make us any less fucked up. And English please, my Catalan really sucks and I’m too stoned to be puzzling it out just now…” She softened her words with a kiss.

Yves returned the kiss and favored her with a lopsided grin. “Sorry, I didn’t realize I was doing that. It was the first language my mother taught me and I was… am… just so comfortable with you…”

“Then I will just have to work on my Catalan won’t I? Right now I just want to lie here in your arms and watch the sun come up together. You know neither of us are going to be in any shape to do much more than walk around the house until tomorrow, right?”

“I thought it was already tomorrow…” Yves mumbled with a chuckle and Charlotte relished the feeling of the rumble in his chest.

“Good. I’ll message Marge for you and Gordy for me… although that does mean we’ll have to put on an oyster roast tonight cause I know Gordy and he won’t want to do anything on a public level. If what I’m beginning to suspect is right this all needs to be done as invisibly as possible and inviting an old friend for an oyster roast is pretty innocuous.”

“Are you going to share any of this with Thomas?”

“I can’t Yves. Tommie is an awesome guy and I love him to bits. He’s a first-rate cop for a town like Charleston… but this is something way out of his league. I like my friends alive and the best way to keep them that way right now is to keep them as ignorant as possible, let them believe I’m chasing my tail. I wouldn’t even let Mel and Lisa in but they are already in at least partly and we’re going to need them if I’m right about this.”

“You are beginning to make me a little nervous here Cherie. This sounds like you are planning to start a war.”

“I have never in my life started a fight Yves, not in that way.” Charlotte’s expression was stony, her tone flat and emotionless. “Given a choice, I will run away from a fight. I do not think I have a choice here. The first blow has been struck and it was by our enemy. They will strike again but it will be for the last time. This will not be allowed in my city.”

“Ah, then you are planning to finish a war. I will be by your side every step of the way Cherie. I have your… backside?”

“Six Yves, the phrase is ‘I’ve got your six’. It’s a reference to a 12 hour clock where 1800 would be 6:00 PM and therefore at the bottom of the clock, meaning the back.”

“You Americans are so strange… I still can’t get used to thinking in your bizarre Imperial measurements… And what sort of sense does a 12 hour clock make?”

“None at all but you do indeed have my backside as well… if you can manage it that is.” Her tone was teasing.

“Not even with a truckload of little blue pills Cherie. The mind is willing but the body is weak, non?" Yves kissed her lightly.

They lay there together as the first hints of light turned into the blaze of a new day, Charlotte having attended to the needed messages. Eventually they fell asleep cuddled together, caressed by sunlight that penetrated their bones with warmth and comfort.