This is the sequel to Coward's Bravery and this will probably make little to so sense without reading that first.
I published it as a separate story because even though it's the same, it's kind of different in a weird way to me. I don't know, I can' explain it. It's like taking everything Coward's Bravery was and turning it in on itself in the moments when it happens.
Plus it's the grand finale!
I just love Mary and Marshall and can't stop writing them recently.
/|\
One day, she just couldn't run anymore. Her lungs were burning in the slow, steady heat of the hot coals of denial. These lies couldn't carry her any longer. No matter what she did, she couldn't take another step, couldn't fight him anymore.
She'd spent so long running just to catch her breath, running, running, running. She held herself to this image, this standard of fearlessness, but she was running. She was supposed to be the one who stood unafraid in the clutches of danger, laughing. But there was one thing that scared her shitless and it was the last person on Earth who wanted to cause her harm.
In reality, she had nothing to be afraid of when it came to him and the way he looked at her and the way he felt for her.
So she'd tried to avoid him because even if she couldn't fight it, she was still so afraid of it. She shook in her boots and never made eye contact with him, fighting to keep control long enough to put the mask back on so she can keep pretending.
In her stubborn pride, she believed that if she'd just had a little longer she could pull it back together, sew up the ripped reams, add another layer of glue and tape to what had been hastily repaired one too many times already.
She thought she could take back a fight she was quickly loosing and had quite possibly already lost.
She'd been a coward.
But unfortunately, he called her out. He was confused- why she wouldn't look at him or why she wouldn't hold a conversation with him for more than sixty seconds.
He didn't even know what was going on, at first. But then he figured it out and he knew it was wrong to push her when she was so fragile, something she never was, but he'd been waiting so long for this day and her broken could balance and hold together until he shifted it's gravity and it would all come clattering down in the most beautiful way.
He knew that was all it would take, a little push, the tiniest shove over the edge. She couldn't fight him any longer and she'd stopped running and he's not sure what's kept them from falling together for as long as they have.
He was scared to. Scared for both of them, scared for her, scared for him, scared for them. He covered it because they couldn't both be standing here, terrified of each other until they both just walked away.
He was scared because if this was for real, it meant big change and the timid, heartbroken Mary he's rarely ever seen and had little skill in dealing with but if se was faking him out then she'd laugh and maybe leave and he could handle neither.
He'd been such a coward.
"Look at me," he'd demanded, and immediately she'd known that it was over, all bets were off because his voice was rough and raw and Marshall didn't do those. At least not together.
She fixed her eyes on a button of his dress shirt.
"Mare. Look at me," even more insistent the second time. She swallowed heavily and, for the first time in almost three days, met his eye.
He'd watched it all come apart. The second she looked him in the eye, she crumbled. Slowly at first, but gaining momentum like an avalanche. Her mouth opened slightly in a silent gasp and the little strength she had left was gone. What he saw in her eyes was like watching a wrecking ball bring down an immense building, a mountainside give way to gravity.
Her jaw had clenched in a last effort to keep him at arm's length. A suicide mission that she'd already botched up. She dropped her eyes, one last attempt. Big mistake.
Not two seconds after she'd turned her gaze from his eyes to the tiled floor, he was standing so close the tile was covered by his feet and he once again filled her clouded vision.
"Mary," God, that was when it was really all over for her. To her, she had a chance until she met his eyes for the second time, him just two feet away.
He watched her break again, crack, splinter, and finally, shatter. Bust apart, explode with immeasurable force, and finally, break down.
She'd been so brave.
He caught her easily as everything gave out simultaneously. She looked up at him, a lone tear streaking down her face, which he caught just as effortlessly as her weight.
But then he looked in her eyes again and everything that she felt, he felt too; everything that she was feeling because she couldn't hold him off, he was feeling because he couldn't even be held back by himself.
It was completely inappropriate, and entirely ill-timed, but he couldn't help himself. She had finally broken, feeling as though the world were ending but he was standing there with her in his arms, destroyed as she was, knowing that it had only just begun.
He'd kissed her. Abandoning all forethought, forgetting the meaning for the word consequence, he'd kissed her.
And she must've been really far gone, because she'd kissed him back like she hadn't just lost her mind over trying to stay away from him.
He'd been so brave.
They were big, bumbling cowards, but they were so brave.
Taking bullets, getting in gun fights, standing eye to eye with dangerous criminals, that had nothing to do with it.
It was the way they'd skirted around each other for ten years, the way they'd wasted so much time yet used it so wisely. It was how when one got to close, the other stepped way back and how when they came close to being too close, there was an unspoken dare, a challenge to cross the line. They contradicted themselves and each other until they couldn't do it anymore and then they just kept doing it.
But they couldn't even do that anymore. They couldn't pretend to pretend or believe and not believe. It was one or the other from that split second when his lips touched hers and she didn't beat the shit out of him for it. It took everything they'd ever done for or against each other and put it wildly in perspective, forced them to see themselves as they had been and they'd been foolish.
Courage is not the absence of fear, but what you turn it into, the actions you take or don't because of it, the way you turn it into something that isn't fear at all.
They were courageous. They'd been afraid, cowardly. They'd been scared of change. But they'd been so brave, hoping for the very change that terrified them.
Courageous. Courage wasn't the loss of their cowardice, but the use of their bravery to overcome it.
/|\
How many cherries would I have to put on top of how many 'pretty please's for you to review?