Dum Spiro, Spero
      Chapter 6  - 

You came here to bury my brother? I thought you already did that once?"

It was like the sound of the first shot fired in a battle. One moment everything was peacefully still, and the next, all hell was breaking loose, people running every which way, shots being exchanged, fires burning entire communities, bombs being thrown. And in the few seconds between peace and battle, existed the moment all survivors seemed to remember... exactly where they were when it began. He'd heard war stories from enough veterans of "real" wars and mob wars, to notice the immediate change in their demeanor when recalling the start of a particular battle, an awful mix of pride and fear. They seemed to remember everything, the weather, the approximate time of day, the person they last spoke with, second for second.

"Don't you dare!" she spits.

He stands back, caught off guard, by her quick response. Her face is a blank mystery of well hidden emotion. She has thought about this, for far too long, so much so, she's almost removed from the situation. He lifts the bottle of tequila to his lips, and swallows long and hard, it's the only way he's going to get through this, that was for certain.

Michelle grimaces at the sight of him, ragged and getting more wasted by the minute. Falling, falling, falling, until he finally reached the end he craved, eternity, sentenced to an afterlife... Sometimes she wondered how much truth there was to that possibility. On the outside he seemed okay, most days, but the occasional look, the occasional moment betrayed the exterior. Maybe he no longer risked everything in order to gain, maybe he risked it in the hopes of losing it all, to give him a real reason to give up, give in, step over that edge that seemed to cling desperately to the pallor of his skin, no longer lit with a golden glow, eyes cast downward, emotional battle scars increasing the depth of every new wrinkle. He looked older, carried himself differently, his walk no longer cocky, just brisk, his confidence no longer secure, just enough to get him what he wanted, baseless and unmotivated.

If this was hard on her, surely it was killing him, even more slowly, and she would not let that happen.

"Up until a few weeks ago, you couldn't possibly imagine what it feels like to know you've taken someone else's life." The sound of her voice, startles him for the second time this evening, coming from some unexpected well of strength, that only she had directions to. Her face contorts with a mask of shame and guilt, as she stares at him, with a lopsided gaze. "He haunts my dreams sometimes. Did you know that?" She brushes the strands of loose hair away from her face. "But even worse than that, he's that big shadow that was always going to follow us."

His eyes, betray his true interest in her words, desperately trying for aloof and uncaring, but managing only slight registration. He listens, more intently than he ever has.

"It's strange, how he's such a curse..." she searches for the words that will make him understand "and yet such a blessing." Danny's face reacts, with all the due skepticism a statement like that requires. "I hate what I did to you when I took him from you, and I hate not being able to hate myself more for what I did. I took someone's life, and I can justify it, what's wrong with that picture?" She questions herself, as much, if not more, than him.

"You tell me," his voice drifts from behind, sounding like it came from a distant echo chamber, to her unprepared hearing.

"I don't know what it is Danny, the reasons we had to meet under such horrible circumstances, but we did, for whatever reason. And mostly, what I want to do, is to just let him go," she pleads.

He chuckled, involuntarily. It was the only response he could react with. He didn't know whether to be angry or frightened by her reasoning, but his shot nerves spoke for him, in the form of a chuckle. Somewhere far back in the corner of his mind, tucked next to the manners his mother had taught him, he knew it was a bad idea, before the sound ever emanated from his mouth. But he couldn't help himself, it bought him two seconds to get his bearings.

He winces, his voice, raising a few octaves. "Just wash your hands of him and pretend he never existed, is that it? Thanks Michelle, that's exactly what I want to hear from you." He waves the bottle angrily in the air, throwing it at the rock formation, sitting squarely next to Michelle, the tequila splashing her two year old jacket.

Suddenly he knew he'd never forget the feeling of dread that consumed him, at that precise moment.

She closes her eyes, promising herself, the dignity of remaining undeterred or shaken by the slightest hint of emotion. "No, I didn't say that's what I wanted," she responds quietly. "I said I want to let him go... because the longer and the tighter I hold onto that memory, my god Danny... *you* hold onto that memory... the longer, and the bigger that shadow is going to loom" Her tone was even, gentle almost, resigned, and more than anything the lack of anger or any discernable emotion disturbed him. As if she was expecting this lack of understanding from him, it didn't surprise her. Had he really fallen that far, that fast? She expected the worst from him, as second nature? "Don't you get it? I can't bring him back for you, or erase what I did, but I can't let him hold us back either." She takes a step forward, reaching her hand out to bridge the gap, but he does not respond.

"He was my brother Michelle, my brother... my flesh and blood," he holds his chest, grasping his shirt. "Put yourself in my shoes, I killed Rick, how do you deal with that?"

"I don't know, I wish I did," her eyes spring unexpected tears.

Her eyes implore his own, throwing him a lifeline, hoping he'd grab a fistful of it and hold on tight. She never did know that it hurt him to see her hurt, that it only made him feel worse when she hurt for him. Like it wasn't enough for him to feel bad, his pain had to spill over onto her, innocently wrapped up in his problems, with one unlucky spin on the wheel of fate. Yet, he never said a word. He thought maybe she understood that it went without saying, sometimes.

"You don't know? You don't know? Well neither do I!" his voice, booms.

Don't blink, don't even *think* of blinking, because if you blink, you're surely going to move your eyes to some desperate point of attention on the other side of nowhere, unable to look her in the eye and continue this conversation. You *will not* blink.

"You believe in God Danny. I know you do. And He forgives people. You forgave your *mother*, enough to choose avenging her death over us." A sound catches in her throat, it was halfway between a laugh and a cut-off sob. Her eyes fixate on his face, no doubt wondering if it was the same face of the man she called husband... best friend, she'd never seen this man before, no matter how many times she'd seen this face.

"I never chose her over us. Never," he states emphatically.

She turns, to watch the water, not wanting to get into the particulars, that was another argument for another night. "That's not the point Danny. The point is that forgiveness is the ultimate act of grace, in life, real forgiveness that let's you let go. I have to forgive myself, tonight, and maybe you can..."

"What?" His eyes dart, mercilessly, back and forth in anger. "Spare a little for you, like you did for me? Do practice what you preach Michelle, it would really help your argument," he says, icily.

If soldiers remembered clearly the start of the battle, the one thing they remembered even more clearly was the first death they witnessed. They'd recall how it seemed to instantly change war from being a noble expression of patriotism, to a very real, very ugly reality that they'd have nightmares about for years. Suddenly death wasn't a peaceful passing in the night, it was haunting and tormenting, and played with their conscience. Sometimes they would swear they felt phantom feelings of pain, as they watched someone die before them, maybe it was the pain of the little piece of innocence inside of themselves that died with the body before them.

Her shoulders drop in defeat, but her sadness weighs more heavily than any accusation he can throw her way.

"I can't forgive someone who has no remorse. If you would have just told me you were sorry... just once..."

The burning in the pit of his stomach, from the tequila, was long gone, replaced by something resembling a full percussion section drumming out one long dirge song in his intestines. And for a moment there was complete silence, waiting for the next bomb to go off. Michelle stands, mouth agape, staring right through him. He could almost see his figurative death reflected back at him, or maybe it was just her own broken spirit, clinging to what little she did know to be true of him, and finding it slipped through her fingers like a child losing grasp of a balloon and watching it float away above their head, wondrous and sad, all at once.

"Was he hurting when he died?" He speaks, from some place distant and lost.

"I don't know. I was too scared to stick around and find out," she responds, matter of factly.

"Was there a lot of blood?" His eyes burn, as they stare, at the salt water, lapping at shore, swallowing the sand of the beach.

"Stop this Danny, it's not going to bring him back." She chooses her words carefully, spacing them, like she's having a hard time remembering the English language, at a complete loss.

He turns to her, stepping nearer, his body looming closely, as he grabs her hands. "Don't you understand, that I need to know these things? That while your nightmares are about the things that happened that night, mine are about the things I don't know about that night, because what I imagine is so much worse."

Her heart, hurts, it physically aches to watch him search for answers, to questions best left unasked. "Why would you want to picture that kind of thing, at all, Danny? Of course it's going to be ugly. Why would I ever want you to live with those pictures, in your head?" She strokes his cheek, mindlessly, opening a crack in her solidly built defenses.

"Because part of me feels like I'll never *really* understand how you could do that, if I don't have all the answers," he responds as truthfully as possible.

"And if I tell you that he was hurt or there was blood everywhere, on my clothes, on my hands, how quickly will you hate me for what I did?" Her steady resolve, quickly turns into bits of sand, falling through her fingertips.

He fights the urge to reach out and comfort her. It wasn't right, he couldn't *feel* anything, for anyone. He had no right to feel, anymore. He was not allowed. It wasn't fair that he was left to pick up the pieces of his life, of everyone's life. It wasn't fair that he still had a life to mend. And if he didn't feel anything, he didn't risk giving in to those darker moments when it seemed easier to give in to losing it completely.

"Don't you see, that's the problem. I could never hate you, even when I should. Ever. I just want to understand and bury that shadow where it belongs." His voice is a mix of begging and visceral pain.

"If you want to hide behind your pain, and pretend it doesn't exist, all while thinking that's all there is to you, or that it's all you deserve to feel, that's up to you. But you're so wrong. I'm not going to watch you fall into that place you can't -- or don't want to -- escape." She was crying now, just quiet tears that slid down her cheeks effortlessly. "You couldn't have come and saved him that night Danny. He was in a place that was too far away. All the stitching in the world, wouldn't have made him whole again. And look at what he's done to you, he's torn you right open."

"I let him die on this beach, alone and bleeding," he cries. "I let you become the reason my brother was taken away before I could help him, I let you have that burden."

At that moment, he idly wondered if anyone even understood the irony of young soldiers sent to war to kill, in order to keep peace. Kill in order to not be killed. Death insuring prosperity. What was worse for a soldier? The war on the ground, or the war in them, the one that didn't go away, when the shooting stopped, momentarily or permanently.

Just when was this tour of duty going to be over with, anyway, and how many victims would lay wounded or dead before him, before it was over...

"He was gone before that, wasn't he?" He asks, knowing not to expect an answer, she didn't really know. "You only took his body, the rest of him was gone long before that."

She holds his face gently between her hands. "And it wasn't up to you, to be his saviors, don't put that on yourself, please, I'm begging you."

If only...

"Like I ask you to be mine, Michelle?" the level emotion, surprises her.

"I'm not in the business of saving lives yet Danny. You don't even know your own strength..." she stares at him with complete wonder.

"Yes I do. Her name is Michelle," he tucks her stray curl, behind her ear.

"No, I'm the one who fell apart," she admits, almost embarrassed. "You're the one who held it together..."

"For you, only for you," he whispers.

"Then do something else for me. Let him go," her words carry faintly in the wind...

Chaos begetting serenity.


 
*Amantium irae amoris integratio est= The quarrels of lovers are the renewal of love