A/N: Hello! Obviously, I own nothing. This is my first Haven fic, not totally sure where it's going, I am a terror about plotting, and seem to go by the flying by the seat of my pants method so I fully anticipate some plot knots if I continue it! Would love to know what you think.

War is hell

She doesn't remember during the night but perhaps that would be the most obvious time. It is during the day, when it should be too busy, too bright, too distracting. It isn't. She remembers and it is dark once more, a sticky gelatinous night that is inhaled like the dust of the scrubland surrounding them.

A figure at the end of her cot.

It is Captain Malloy. A light from somewhere glints a blade across the dog tags hanging around his neck. She can smell the coffee on his breath from here, the blood recently washed from his face.

She knows before he tells her.

Dead. The boy they gave every breath to save is dead. He bled like a split dam all over the floor, into the earth until it turned the ground to rust. It came from his nose, his mouth, his ears, from everywhere and Malloy is glad she didn't see it. But, she sees it now. She sees the way his fragile collarbones stood out, how the sweat pooled there, how his eyes asked a question in a language she didn't understand.

She doesn't understand. There is no sense in it, no reason.

She will learn.

There is a reason for most everything.

There is a reason why the following day a baby survives even as his mother slips from their grasp. They call him Marshall after Captain Malloy, who, despite his protests, cannot disguise his pleasure. He tells her something over their tinned noodles that night - which later, much later - she will think quite profound, he says that everything is easier to accept when you realise that no individual matters: not one of us is worth a damn, excuse my language, no man (or woman) is worth anything alone.

So, it doesn't matter if we die? she asks. But, that isn't what he means.

A little of each of the men they lost and saved beneath canvas, in flickering light, late into most nights and throughout the day, are here in Haven, in the veterans now in her charge. We only lose little parts of a whole, splinters.

She liked Malloy, liked the muscle that joined his neck to his shoulder where her tongue could find a smooth scar and the radiating beat of his pulse. He kissed her on the inside of her arm, the only place it tickled. He made their rushed love-making seem like something that mattered. Until he began to turn his gaze from hers, flinch from the intensity of her touch, avoid her in the mess, and it was as if he knew.

It was an incendiary bomb, on the road to Incheon. They brought him back to the base and she hoped he was already dead. He was not.

It was she who drew up the morphine, a dose far exceeding any recommendation for sedation or pain. A lethal dose: a liquid death. She forced herself to look at his face as she administered it, at his half open eyes, whites turned red, the setting of a crimson sun. Then she sat beside him, her fingers resting on a miraculous patch of skin by his shoulder, a freckled golden piece of the past. She is not religious so no prayer was brought to mind, but she did tell him he was worth far more than a damn. She never doubts she did the right thing.

He visits her sometimes. In the little hours: the gaps of time where the lines blur. A lilting smile and the dust still in the sweaty roots of his sandy hair. She wonders about baby Marshall, the tiny Korean boy probably long renamed by his grandmother. She hopes he runs and rolls and lives. Sometimes, when she thinks of something before the doctors, when her ministrations elicit a difference in a traumatised vet, she says a thank-you to Malloy, for reminding her every splinter heals a whole.

Devices and desires

We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us.

There are twenty-seven holes in a pattern on the tops of his sandals; there are six diagonal scuffs on the toe of the left. He did not polish them as asked. He usually does as he is asked but, today, on this particular Sunday, he has not. The sermon continues in a similar vein and James suspects that his mother is not really listening, either, although she is not examining her court shoes, which are also unpolished.

He sighs and lets his attention wander, rather pleasurably, to the forthcoming trip to Rattlesnake Canyon. James' chest swells with pride under the ticking stripe of his Sunday shirt as he recalls his father's assertion that he is ready for the hike, and the promise of being allowed to use the new Rolleiflex camera. He must be smiling because his mother gives him a little nudge and a half-smile to indicate that the confessing of faults is not necessarily something to grin about.

After church they go for root beer floats at Arnie's, but his mother seems distracted and her eyes follow people drifting home from the Sunday service along Main Street in a way that is too vigilant, too watchful. He flicks his tongue into the frozen foam on his spoon.

"Are you OK, Mom?"

A film disappears and her cheeks fill with colour. "Oh, I'm sorry, honey."

"Do you have a small pot to hang on my knapsack?"

"Hmm?"

"To scare the mountain lions, y'know?"

She looks at him quickly this time, refocusing, the line between her eyebrows deepening. "Maybe you shouldn't go on the hike this weekend."

"What?" James almost chokes on a lump of ice cream and covers his mouth with a napkin. "You're kidding?"

"I just think you could wait till the Fall."

"No!" he says, a little too loudly, a knot in his chest.

She leans in closer, lowering her voice, but she is not angry and when she reaches across the table she holds his wrist too tightly.

"Is this why I got root beer instead of Sunday school?"

"I'm sorry, James." Her fingers find the pulse between the fragile bones below his palm.

"But, Dad said."

"I know, and he's sorry, too."

His father will not look at him when they return home and James is disgusted with both of them as he stomps up to his bedroom and slams the door. He lies face down on the bed and presses his face into the quilt, breathing in the smell of washing powder, the scent of home. He pummels a fist into the pillow, hot resentment a ball in his chest. He pretends he is paralysed, like that kid, Brian, the next block over. He pretends he can't feel anything, can't move; that he doesn't care.

James hears the doorbell and the frustrating rumble of indiscernible voices. He allows curiosity to get the better of him and shakes the pins and needles from his legs. He opens the bedroom door slowly and drops immediately to his hands and knees to avoid being seen from the bottom of the stairs. The backs of his parents are visible, his father's flannel shirt and his mother's dress with the sailor collar, and between them a man he recognises - if only as a mild distraction from his church daydream- the young minister standing in for Reverend Patterson.

Suddenly, James wants very much not to be seen.

Heal thyself

Sarah never wonders what Stuart has seen and she keeps up a monologue whilst she bathes him, one that has nothing to do with either of their lives before they came here. She asks questions, though, she asks about his thoughts, his food preferences, his opinion of Senator Kennedy, and she leaves spaces in case he ever decides to slip a reply between her words. The other nurses laugh a little but mostly they leave her be; the striking newcomer who can render even an arrogant Resident speechless with a glance. They do not entirely trust her, or her 'special assignment,' and although she is eminently capable they do not catch her eye as they head out to a diner after work.

She finds she doesn't care. Her heart skids against her rib cage as she thinks of the stranger and his promise.

In the locker room she changes into her civilian clothes, tossing the starched white uniform into a laundry hamper. Sarah's hands run down the sides of her dress and she takes a deep breath, smiling to herself. Yes, she will meet him after work, how could she not? It seems the only thing to do. He is so intoxicatingly peculiar and she finds herself wondering how he tastes, how he feels. Shaking her head to dispel such thoughts, the shiver down her spine continues and she picks up her bag.

Somehow, it feels as if there is string, something fine, the web of a spider manipulating her body like a marionette as they sit and drink from bottles of beer. Then, it is gone and she feels the most terrific relief. When her hand touches his face she is sinking into him, cell by cell, his skin trembles under her fingers, as if he has never been touched before.

She thinks so little about what they are doing as he catches her hand, and they are tripping up the beach, plunging into the front seat of the car, removing their clothes. Sarah sees nothing but Nathan, and her hands run over his shoulder blades. He will take flight, he will leave; she knows that for certain, then.

He will leave but he will not be gone.