She’d wasted more than enough time.

Her life was busy now. She and Quentin had arrived back at Quantico only late on Sunday after a very disturbing case had been thankfully resolved and, after reporting in, had gone home to pretty much just fall into bed and sleep.

So when Diana opened her eyes after what felt like only a few hours and then sat up in bed, her first reaction was to mutter, “What the hell? I can’t get even one night off, for crying out loud?”

Her voice sounded hollow, though she barely noticed that because it was familiar. Like the faint, unmistakable odor, which was, she had decided, as close as she ever wanted to get to the smell of brimstone.

She knew she was alone in their bed, or appeared to be; she was reasonably certain Quentin was sleeping there with her, that they were sort of wrapped up in each other under the covers, which was normal and wonderful.

But not something she was supposed to enjoy for the moment, clearly.

Dammit.

She didn’t look behind her as she slid from the bed and found her nightgown and robe, knowing she would see herself lying there wrapped around invisible Quentin, which would be disconcerting even for her.

Though the connection they shared was different from that of some other bonded pairs in the SCU, not directly mind to mind because neither of them was a telepath, they had discovered that each maintained a sense of the other, an emotional closeness, of course, but also a certainty of physical nearness, and she knew he was near physically. There, in the living world, holding her.

But not with her here in the gray time, something for which she was thankful. She’d managed to get out of the gray time for a good many years without him, of course, but there had been scary awakenings in dangerous places, and she much preferred the certainty of Quentin’s hand drawing her back safely, her bedrock anchor in the living world.

She found comfortable, slip-on shoes that wouldn’t, she knew, protect her feet from the cold any more than her clothing would; it didn’t matter what she wore in this place or time, because she wasn’t here in the flesh and because the gray time was always cold.

Always.

She didn’t bother to look around the cozy bedroom, because it would be gray and featureless and she didn’t want that in her mind rather than the warm and colorful comfort it actually was. Instead, she just went out the door into what was supposed to be a hallway.

And nearly stumbled as she found herself in a very dense forest and had to dodge a tree directly in her path. It was a mountain forest, she thought, considering the slope. She no longer felt more than a split second of disorientation at the abrupt change of scene, but stood looking around at gray trees towering, lots of pines among the still bare-limbed hardwoods, and, between them, downslope and not all that close, what she thought might be a town.