She wanted to hate him.

Oh did she want to hate him. But she just couldn't. It was something that she just wasn't capable of doing. It wasn't his fault and she knew that. Whatever fate had decided to send her to him was the cause of all this. Just like the situation Nick was in the middle of, he was an innocent.

It was cruel. If she thought this place was bad before, it was unbearable knowing what she did now. To be able to love again, to be able to touch and be touched...then to have it ripped away from you. She didn't want to lose this. The memory of touch and feel, the memory of his lips against hers. The memory of feeling love again. She would hold onto it with everything she had until time wrenched it from her.

There was a difference in her hell this time. Although she couldn't be at Nick's side, she could see him and always tell when he was thinking of her. For the past two months, she had been watching over him by concentrating on the memory of his touch and she would be able to see everything going on with him. She saw the drawings of her that were piled on the table in his room, the drawings of everyone close to him scattered around the room. She saw Nick working through the anger at the situation he was in. She knew he could never fully forgive his biological mother for all she had done, but he was learning how to move on.

Brian knew that Nick missed Aaron beyond anyone else, so with special permission from the doctors, he arranged for Aaron to be sent to Montana and Brian brought him to Nick. That one gesture did more to bring Nick happiness than anything else. When they saw each other, the only thing that existed was the other. Aaron and Nick hugged for a half hour straight after Aaron ran in the room yelling Nick's name and for the rest of the three days he was there, he hardly ever let go of Nick. Nick didn't mind, because he didn't want to let go of Aaron either. Aaron brought letters from his sisters for Nick and a thick letter from Jane and Bob Carter. He read the letters from his sisters and answered them back with letters of his own promising to come see them as soon as he could. The letter from Jane and Bob.....he tried to open it. He just couldn't. Time after time he tried, but he just wasn't ready. For now it laid in a drawer in the cabinet beside his bed. Someday, he promised himself. Someday he would be able to read it.

Nick still didn't sleep a lot. He spent most nights roaming the halls of the clinic. He knew almost every hall like the back of his hand. There were some places in the clinic he didn't go, like the staff areas and the wing where the long term patients were. He'd tried to go there, gone down the hallway and looked in a few of the rooms, but the thought that it could have been him was too overwhelming to him. What scared him the most though was that no one in there had light around them. They were just shells and Nick knew better than anyone just where they were. He just couldn't make himself face what almost happened to him.

Katya watched Nick struggle through sessions with his assigned counselor, still trying to hide what he was going through. The only time he couldn't hide was during his art therapy, there every emotion he had was there on the canvass for the world to see. Only when there was something in his hands did he open up.

It tore Katya apart. She knew that if he didn't open up and soon, it would destroy him.

During another session of the counselor trying to coax Nick out of his shell and Nick fighting him all the way. "Nick, pretend I'm your mother. Yell at me, curse, do what you would do to her if she was standing here." Katya couldn't take it any more. She ran headlong into the darkness surrounding her and kicked and tore and pushed at it until it bled into Nick's reality.

She knew she didn't have much time before she would be sucked back into oblivion, but she was going to make her time worth it. In a flash of light, she dove into the human form in front of her, that of the counselor.

Nick was looking down at his hands and trying not to look up at the idiot that was trying to get him to play make believe. He snorted, what a waste of time. This was not going to help him at all. None of this was.

"Coward."

Nick's head snapped up and a cry of horror left his lips. There standing in front of him was his worst nightmare. It was the monster who had brought him into this world. She was smiling that cruel smile of hers as she looked at him, "You are pathetic, do you know that? You think any of this hurt me? NEWS FLASH, Nick. I don't care. It doesn't hurt me, in fact it makes me happy. The more miserable your life is, the happier I am. And I must say, you've made me very happy lately. Not only are you miserable, but you've made everyone around you miserable. I win all around. You are just like your bastard of a father, bringing misery to everyone around you like the coward that you are."

Before Nick could bite it back, he clenched his fists by his side, his eyes blazing in anger. " I AM NOT A COWARD!!! You are the coward, you bitch! You are too fucking scared to have any feelings for anyone but yourself. NONE OF THIS WAS MY FAULT!!! I was only a baby, I didn't ask to be born to a coldhearted bitch! So you were raped! Other people in this world are too! Other people get pregnant from something that horrible too! But there is a difference between them and you! They didn't blame an innocent child for the sins of it's father. They did something that took more courage than you've ever had in your pathetic life! They got over it and put the blame where it belonged, on the sick bastard that did this to them!

Did you ever stop thinking about yourself long enough to realize that if everything you tried to get rid of me didn't work, than there must be a reason for me to be here?! That whatever power is out there had a plan for me." He shook his head and scoffed in disgust, "And one thing I am sure of, more than anything, that plan doesn't include you. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to forgive you for what you've done to me, but there is one thing I will be more than glad to do!

I can forget you."

By the time Nick was done, his chest was heaving for breath and he sank to the floor, exhausted but relieved to have all of it out of him instead of balled deep inside. He looked up and his eyes widened as the image of the monster that was his mother started to shift and contort until Katya stood before him. She smiled, the first real one that Nick had seen, and reached out to cup his face. She just looked at him for a minute and then she too started to fade, leaving him staring into the face of his counselor. He knew that Katya had done this to get him to open up and finally start to heal. The relief of not carrying around the heaviness of the hate inside him was immense and it felt so good to be free of it that he was left with tears streaming down his face.

The counselor pulled Nick close and let him cry, letting him get it all out of his system.

Katya watched with a smile on her face, despite the overwhelming exhaustion what she had done had caused. She hadn't even known it was possible until she had done it and now she knew why it wasn't done often. She laid down in the darkness and closed her eyes, knowing that Nick was going to be ok, she had made sure of that.