Authors Note: These were all written as part for the Communivercery over at Mary/Marshall on Live Journal. The prompt for this fic was "Mary/Marshall; this pain is an illusion" and was written for vegawriters. Angst warning.

Again, and Again

It was like a recurring nightmare, only he wasn't sleeping.

He could still smell the gun powder, still feel the weight of the gun in his hand, and still hear the shoot, ringing in his ears.

He had been too late, again. He should have been able to save her.

He sat, defeated, in the hard chair in the waiting room. How could a cushioned chair manage to be so hard? Why didn't they house couches in these rooms for family.

He'd been here once before, but with a different group of people.

And then there was the only other person who might understand what he was going through.

"I got here as soon as I could." She sank into the chair next to him. "You think they could make these any harder?"

He tried to smile, but it didn't work.

"Talk to me." She knew him. She knew him so well.

"We were out at dinner. I'd been in the restroom. A guy came in, waving a gun, ranting on about how the manager had screwed him out of his last week's check." He rubbed his hands on his jeans, they were speckled in blood. "I could see Abby, on the other side of the restaurant. She was trying to talk to the guy. I saw him level the gun, but I wasn't fast enough." He broke off, tears that he'd been unable to hold back coming again in unrest.

She pulled him to her and he flashed back to another time, another hospital, when it was her in the operating room and Stan holding him as he mourned a love lost too soon. But she had pulled through, and Abby would too.

It was when his sobs subsided again that he realized Mary was still holding him, that he was still resting his head on her shoulder. He pulled back slowly, not wanting to lose the contact that grounded him.

"I can't do this again." He said, voice little more than a whisper.

"Do what?" She was using her scared witness voice, but he didn't care, he was scared. He was in pain. It felt like a piece of his soul had died with that gun man today. "Marshall, she's going to pull through."

"I can't sit here and wait. I did that before. It almost drove me crazy."

"Marshall, you already got the guy." He knew that, he knew that the man who put Abby in this place was in the morgue with his own gun shot, but he knew that Abby was worse off than Mary had been.

"I saw it. With you," he choked back a sob, swallowing to clear his through, his voice cracking anyway. "With you I wasn't there. I could imagine what went on, I could imagine what Dershowitz was. But with Abby…Mary I saw the man pull the trigger. I saw Abby fall to the ground. I was there." His heart felt tight, he couldn't breathe.

"She's going to make it." Mary said, putting her hands on his arms.

"How do you know?"

"Because I did. And if she's got half the spunk I think she does she wouldn't dare die." He was about to open his mouth and say something when the door opened and a mad in a white coat stepped through.

"Mr. Mann?" He said, and Marshall stood. This was it. The world stopped spinning; he only hopped that it would start again.