"ODETTE NO!" I lunged for her as she snatched up the pistol and raised it up towards her head. As the muzzle touched her temple, I grabbed at the pistol and jammed my finger down on the mag release. Odette closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. My shoulders slumped in relief; I'd been right about the magazine disconnect.

Odette's eyes snapped open as the magazine slipped from her bed and clattered to the floor. She lowered the pistol and stared at it for a moment, mystified, then looked at me, as if she'd just now noticed I was there. Her eyes suddenly filled with burning anger.

"You BASTARD!" she screeched, lunging at me and swinging wildly. I did my best to ward off her blows, but a few managed to connect. Damn, she had a mean left.

"Hey! Knock it off!" I said, "Knock it OFF!" I managed to grab her wrists and shove her away. A second later, she broke down in tears again.

"You bastard," she said between sobs, "You bastard."

"What on earth were you thinking?" I asked. There was no anger in my voice; just pure disbelief and horror.

"You bastard, why did you stop me?" she asked, "Why won't you let me end it?"

"End what?"

"The hurt," she sobbed, "It hurts so bad…"

"What?" I asked, "What hurts?"

"It's not… not your problem."

"I'm making it my problem," I told her, "What happened? Was it… Robert?" Her shoulders began shaking as she nodded. "What did he do to you?" I asked.

"He…" she sniffed, "He died."

"Oh. Oh God. Odette, I am so sorry," I said.

"You… you didn't kill him," she sobbed, "I did." That almost floored me.

"What?" I asked, "What happened?"

"I… He…" she stammered, "We were out on a lake, in that stupid little rowboat of his. He… he pulled… pulled the ring out of his pocket… and… and asked me…" She paused, "Then something hit the boat and knocked us into the water. I felt… something grab me…"

"The naga," I said. She nodded.

"It… it grabbed me… opened its mouth… oh God, the teeth… it… it tried to eat me… then Robert… Robert grabbed it… pulled it off of me… it let go, and I… I climbed back into the boat. I grabbed an oar… and started hitting it… just hitting it, so it would let go… let go of Robert. But then… the oar broke. So I started… started stabbing at it… just stabbing, like it was a harpoon. It let go… and sank… and I pulled Robert back into the boat. He… oh God!... he had a… the naga had speared him… with one of his spines… through the leg… he… he started screaming… thrashing around… and then, he… he… I… I didn't… didn't even get… get to tell him… tell him yes." She buried her face in her hands as she finally broke down and began weeping uncontrollably.

I don't know why I pulled her into my arms; instinct, I guess. Whatever the reason, I pulled her close to me.

"I know," I said after what felt like hours, "I know how much it hurts. I know what it feels like."

"How could you know?" she asked, "How can anyone know?"

"Because I've been there too," I confessed.

"You killed someone you loved?"

"I couldn't save someone I loved." She sniffed, then picked her head from her hands and looked at me.

"Who?"

"My… it was my brother," I said. I took a deep breath to steel myself before I started the story.

"It was my junior year of college, a month before I turned twenty-one. I'd gotten a call earlier from my Mom, saying she had to go over to Chad's apartment to help with something. Eight o'clock that night, I'm in my bedroom trying to decide on what my first drink was going to be when the phone rings. It's Mom; she said that Matt and I had to get our butts over to my Chad's apartment right away.

"It turned out he was drunk, and raving about how he was going to kill himself. Mom had spent the last six hours trying to talk him out of it, but she hadn't gotten anywhere, so she called us. She hadn't meant for me to come; the message was just for Matt. There wasn't much he could do, though, so I tried talking him down. I… I told him how much I loved him, how much we all loved him, and how screwed up everyone's lives would get if he did go ahead and kill himself. It took four hours… God, that was the longest four hours of my life… and I finally, finally thought I was getting through to him... but then…

"I don't know what set him off. All of the sudden, he got real angry and ran up to his bedroom, locked the door. We'd already called 911, they had a police car standing by, but by the time they got there and managed to break the door down… he'd already… he hung himself."

Now it was my turn to choke back tears. Odette just stared at me, trying to process it all.

"And the truth of it is, I can't really blame him. We all had a rough time growing up. Hell, that's the understatement of the century. Our father was a drunk who used to beat the shit out of his wife and kids. Chad was his favorite punching bag. Mom finally had enough and left the bastard. Judge gave Mom full custody of all of us, thank God, but the damage was already done. The son of a bitch wiped out our savings; we had to live in a one-bedroom apartment until Mom met Matt, my stepfather, and they got married. But even that didn't heal everything. See, at the divorce hearing, Chad told the judge what our father did to us, and the son of a bitch publicly disowned him for it. Called him a lying bastard, said that no son of his would do such a thing. Told Chad that he was dead to him. Chad never recovered from that. It really messed him up in the head. I found out after he died that Chad became a full-blown alcoholic at age 16. Given what the son of a bitch did to all of us, it's a miracle that Mom and my little brothers are still relatively normal, but even they have issues sometimes." Tears were streaming silently down my cheeks by this point; my soul felt once again like it had been torn from my body. The two of us sat in silence on the edge of the bed for a long time.

"That's why you don't drink," Odette said slowly. I nodded.

"I'm scared to death that I'll wind up like my father," I admitted.

"I… I'm so sorry," she said after a moment.

"For what?" I asked, "For me having a drunk kid-beater for a father, or for almost making me relive the worst night of my life?"

"I… I'm sorry… but it… it hurts so much!"

"I know, but suicide isn't the answer," I said, "It just causes more pain. Maybe not for you, but for the people who care about you."

"No one cares about me," Odette said as tears began falling from her eyes again.

"I care about you," I said, "And so does the rest of the Team. Look, I know it hurts, but you cannot blame yourself for what happened to Robert. You had, what? Four minutes to try and save him. I had four hours to try and save Chad, and I couldn't stop him. You can't blame yourself, and you can't keep it all bottled up inside. Believe me; I did, and I almost lost my mind."

"But how… how can I…"

"Talk to Dominique," I said, "Or talk to me. I'll always be there if you need me. I swear it, Odette, night or day, no matter what's going on, if you need to someone to talk to, if you need a shoulder to cry on, if you need anything, you come and find me, okay?"

"Okay," she nodded, sniffling.

"But I want you to promise me, promise me, that you will not ever try this again."

"I promise," she mumbled.

"No, look me in the eye, look me square in the eye, and promise me you will never try to kill yourself again." She screwed her eyes shut for a moment, took a few very deep breaths, then opened her eyes and looked square into mine.

"I promise, Steve," she said, "I promise I won't try to kill myself again."

"Thanks," I said, and the knot that my guts had twisted themselves into finally began to ease, "Thank you so much." For a long moment, we just sat there, on her bed, looking at each other, tears trickling down both of our cheeks. Odette abruptly stood up, and I started to freak out, but she just walked over to her dresser and retrieved a box of tissues.

"Thanks," I said as she offered me one. We wiped our eyes, blew our noses. I felt like I needed to throw up.

"You know something," I said, "It's been five years, and you're only the third person I've told that story to. I mean, all of my friends knew that my father left us and they knew Chad died, but none of them ever got the full story."

"Only the third?" she asked, "Who where the other two?"

"Well, the first was the psychologist Mom and Matt sent me to right after Chad's… death. The second was one of my college professors, he found out after the pshrink didn't work and I had a complete emotional breakdown in his class. Doctor Young; he was the one that really helped me get through it."

"It never stops hurting, does it?" she asked

"No," I admitted, "not completely. It does get easier, though. I promise you, it does get easier. And like I said, if it ever gets too much to bear, call me, no matter what time it is or what's going on, I promise that I will be there if you need me."

"Thank you," she whispered. Then the room was filled with an inhuman growl.

"Hungry?" I asked as Odette grabbed at her stomach.

"Yeah," she said, trying her best not to laugh with embarrassment.

"I think they're still having dinner over in the cafeteria. Why don't you come with me?"

"Okay," she said. We stood up and I headed for the door.

I froze as I head a sharp clack and whirled around to see Odette loading the magazine back into her Smith & Wesson.

"Don't freak out," she said as she slipped the pistol into her cross-draw holster, "I promised you, remember?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry," I said as we began heading for the door again, "Plus, it wouldn't do you much good to break it. I know someone on the other side, remember? He'd make your death absolutely miserable.

"What? Doctor Bryson?" she asked as we headed outside, "I thought he was your pastor, a man of God."

"Yeah, but he was also a huge prankster," I said, unable to keep down a big grin.

"Oh yeah right," she replied.

"No, I'm serious. One time, when I was in grade school, he lead the church's Youth Retreat. We were at a camp site up in New York, and he—"

My voice caught in my throat as an unearthly shriek shattered the air around us.