When Sean doesn't wake up to the sound of the alarm, he assumes that he's just too early. The light in the room begs to differ, though, and while he likely wouldn't be able to get back to sleep either way, he forces himself to begin the tedious process of waking up. That in and of itself is something odd, since it isn't usually a process as such for him, and he has to fight an uncharacteristic sluggishness in his limbs as he stirs under the sheets.

It takes a moment for the truth to come to him, in bits and pieces at first and then all the rest at once, but as soon as he clues in, once he places what it is that feels so strange yet familiar about everything, he pushes himself to sit up in one fast motion. His head swims in protest to the sudden rush, but he's not so foggy that he doesn't know exactly where he is, where he never thought he'd have to wake up again.

"No," he says, his voice hard and flat as he staunchly refuses to believe what's happened for as long as he's able.

The second time that Sean sets out at the crack of dawn, it's with considerably more determination and with a far different attitude. The days since his breakdown certainly haven't been easy, but every day the pain grows a little duller, seems a little further away. He'll always miss Maeve fiercely, always regret so much about what happened to her, but he's got other things to live for now, and that's not anything he should feel guilty about. She took a piece of him with her when she died, but he's always been able to stand as his own man, and he's kept a piece of her with him, as well. He'll get by.

More important than his pain abating with the days, perhaps, is the fact that the days continue to pass with a stunning regularity. They rapidly turn into weeks, with Sean and Meredith still solidly back in the real world, not a beach or palm tree in sight. It's too good to be true, but even a healthy dose of skepticism can only go so far when a man's every sense other than his gut is telling him something's real. So when the day finally comes that he can no longer treat this as a mere temporary reprieve, he becomes a man on a mission. If this is real (even now, even as he commits himself to the idea, the almighty if remains important), the time to continue shirking his responsibilities has passed.

He doesn't like the idea of leaving Meredith alone while he runs off (all in the name of duty, as always, boyo), but taking her along with him as he tracks down his errant cousin just isn't an option. He needs to be smart about this, efficient and safe, and these aren't traits that he tends to possess when Meredith's involved. Besides, he's pretty sure that she likes it even less, so he can't complain. Instead, he just promises to return within the week and prays that she'll be safe on her own in the meantime. Anything can happen, and it usually does, but treating her like a china doll to be coddled and fussed over is no way to begin their life together. He has to trust that she can take care of herself, no matter how much the act of leaving hits way too close to issues he's still working his way through.

He finds Tom on his very first night out, tucked snugly away in one of his nicer hidey holes, a drab but spacious apartment in Galway, no doubt funded through all manner of dark dealings. There's a fight, of course, but it's mostly just a formality. Tom never questions how Sean found out about Terry, and he never bothers to pretend that he has any real claim to be raising her. Hell, maybe it's for her safety that the other man never goes all out in taking Sean to task for coming to take her away. Maybe he really does care for her. It doesn't matter. He's come to take his daughter home, to wipe all the crime and the alcohol and the hurt clean from her life before she even has to go through it all. There are complexities and tricky questions about the child in his arms and the woman he once knew who'll never exist now that he'll have to address eventually, but for the first time in either of their lives, he knows that he's doing what's right with regards to Theresa. Tom doesn't enter into it. Their mutual hatred was well-earned on both sides, and it's far too late to do anything about that.

He's back before even three days elapse, most of it due to his taking the roads a lot slower once he's no longer traveling alone. That's one promise kept. A good start, he thinks as he arrives home and heads inside with a small, squalling bundle in his arms. Now comes the hard part: everything else.

Another day down without waking up in the expected place, yet another spent traveling, and as nice as their time in London was, Sean's really not sure what to make of all this anymore, which is making him nervous. Never would he have imagined that upon finally coming back to his family's home for the first time since losing Maeve, he'd have bigger concerns on his mind than that, but as he sits behind the wheel of the small off-road vehicle with Cassidy Keep looming in the distance, the implications of his return are only a small portion of what's got him so edgy. Most of his attention is focused firmly on not thinking about the one thing that's been taboo since this all started: the quiet, increasingly difficult to ignore thought that maybe this is it. Maybe there won't be any waking up elsewhere for them this time, maybe, for one reason or another, they succeeded in getting out together.

But he's not thinking like that. He can't. It would just be setting himself for disappointment, and there's already more than enough of that in his life. He's not stupid.

But it's been almost a week now.

"Almost there," he says to Meredith, deceptively light, although he has to speak up over the rattling of the vehicle as they move over increasingly bumpy terrain.

Sean wakes to a dull, throbbing pain in his shoulder, and he spends a few long moments trying to figure out whether he expected that or not before realizing that it doesn't really matter. His eyes snap open a moment later, though, already knowing what's going to greet him: a darkened room that isn't their own, familiar only because of its similarities to the many other hotel rooms he's stayed in in the past. Whatever this is, it's not quite over yet, although he feels about a thousand times better now that he's got a few hours of sleep in him.

"Meredith," he whispers, gently nudging her under the covers. "Meredith, wake up." If she wants some more sleep, she can always go back to it once she's finished indulging him.

It's a long damn time before they manage to get a moment to themselves. The ride to the border had been miserable, dealing with awkward explanations in between jibes and taunts from a man who seemed more enamoured with the idea of killing the two of them than the target of his mission, so much so that by the time they came across Romanova's car abandoned by the side of the road about twenty miles out, Sean had been ready to put a bullet between Creed's eyes and try his luck on his own with Meredith. Still, the prospect of wandering stranded through Soviet territory with no reason for being there, legal or otherwise, struck him as marginally more insane than playing along with all of this, so he reined in the impulse.

They almost snagged a minute alone at the guard station, but Wolverine had vetoed his request to stay with her in the back of the truck at the last second, leading to an argument that had ended with his taking her along as they ventured out. It had ended both far better and far worse than it could have; the guards had all been dead, which made things pretty easy for them, but the perpetrator had insisted on tagging along with them the rest of the way, and if there was one person he trusted less in all of this than Creed, it was Mystique. Any chance they'd have had to break away from the group to talk after that had been lost when their hostage and driver, Ivan, had made a break for it and needed to be chased down.

All in all, the idea of ditching the lot of them and getting as far as his scream will go is starting to look more and more appealing. Eventually, though, they get their chance.

They're stopped at a small village for supplies to get them the rest of the way to Minsk, where Ivan's informed them the Black Widow is heading. For an interrogator, he sure doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut. Stashing the truck behind a two-storey box of a building (the biggest one in the entire town), a discussion ensues about how to split everyone up to get everything they need. While splitting up at all strikes Sean as a truly terrible idea, given all the unknown factors in the group, it's exactly what he's been wishing for for hours, so he's not about to complain. It's another matter entirely to get them to agree to let he and Meredith go off on their own, but he's nothing if not persistent, and eventually, they strike off under the pretense of securing breakfast for everyone with a plan to meet back at the truck in half an hour.

Finally.