Sorry it's been so long.
They joke about dying sometimes.
They joke about it when they're fucking around in the barracks, going over battle drills, or just shooting the shit in the chow hall. They laugh about getting Purple Hearts, they daydream about the ferocious firefights they'd get into where they'd kill all their enemies and dive back in to just save a buddy and then later on they'll turn around and tease each other about wanting to be a hero.
But no one ever seems to want to talk about when they can't sleep at night thinking about what would happen if they were to fail, if they were unable to be the hero they so often dream about. No one wants to talk about how happy they feel when they get their first confirmed kill because hey, they scored one for the good guys and they saved their buddy. And then absolutely no one wants to talk about the horror that creeps up on them when they realized they just celebrated killing another human being. Are they monsters, or are they heroes?
Jane remembers every one of her nightmares and they're always the same ones. She doesn't tell anyone but Frost and even then, she leaves out specific details because despite them being dreams, she's afraid to say it out loud lest they become reality.
Frost confides in her sometimes or sometimes he just listens. Sometimes he'll ask her questions that make her chuckle and answer with a sad smile on her face and other times he'll ask things that cause both of them to lapse into an uncomfortable silence, thinking about the questions.
He only tells her he's scared once during the span of the entire deployment. Frost utters it with such defeat and shame in his voice, Jane has to resist the urge to punch him but instead just glares at him, willing him to look her in the eyes.
He doesn't, and Jane scoffs.
"That's normal, you idiot. I'm fucking scared every time we roll out that gate. If you're not scared, you're wrong. Fear keeps you alive. It keeps you vigilant. If you're not scared, you're one of four things: stupid, lying, crazy, or all of the above."
Maura's mouth is on Jane's throat in the dark bedroom and Jane feels every puff of breath Maura exhales onto her skin.
She doesn't remember how long she's been awake, but Jane knows she hasn't fallen asleep yet. Her left hand dangles over the side and her fingers occasionally twitch over the pistol grip wedged underneath her mattress, and she takes solace in feeling the cool polymer.
Jane slowly untangles herself from Maura, taking care not to wake her, but once she's free, she doesn't leave the bed. She sits up and she lets her gaze linger over Maura's naked form in the bed.
She watches Maura's chest rise and fall and she counts them in her head and at twenty-nine, she realizes she's holding her pistol and flicking her safety on and off at each count. Jane stops and lowers the pistol to her lap, resting her hands on top of it.
It's been happening a lot more recently. Sometimes she'd wake up and other times she just won't be able to sleep. Sometimes she'd count and other times she'd tell Maura her dreams, her nightmares, what happened overseas, anything that comes pouring out and tonight, it just seems to be both.
"It assaults all your sense, Maura – the smell of death in the air, the weapons, the machines that cause it and the incessant buzzing of flies that gather around rotten corpses in the fields. When you hear everything at once, it was like I was under a lawnmower. I was just a tiny ant stuck under a lawnmower and I was so scared."
Maura lets out a little groan, shifting in the bed and Jane pauses, anticipating. She lets out a breath when she realizes Maura is just dreaming.
"I didn't tell you this, but I thought I was going to die over there. Honestly, I'd made peace with it. I didn't tell you, God that would have been horrible. It would've been like a suicide note. Who the fuck would tell someone they loved that they knew they were going to die?"
Her leg's fallen asleep from the weird angle, so Jane shifts and picks her pistol up and cradles it, almost lovingly.
There's a photo of Jane on the dresser next to the bed, taken during Maura's photography phase. The picture's blurry and partially out of focus because Jane had panicked the second she'd realized she was the subject of the photo. Jane remembers complaining about how weirdly narcissistic it was to have a picture of her in the bedroom, but Maura insisted that it was for herself.
Jane looks at the photo, but she isn't sure that she's actually seeing it.
"I accepted that I was going to die. I accepted it and it didn't happen. It didn't fucking happen and now I've got a problem in my head because I went through all the bullshit and now I'm going through it again, but this time I survived. Do you understand? I lived, but I keep telling myself I should've died."
She loves her Glock. It was like the child Jane never had and she doesn't delude herself when she says that she takes care of it better than she ever would have with a child. Hell, she probably took better care of her Glock than she did herself.
"No, I don't want you to understand. That would mean that you would have to share my worst experiences and I love you too much for you to be tainted by that information. I want someone to remain innocent at least. Maura, do you still want me?"
Jane has to choke this out because she doesn't know any other way to say it.
"Please want me. I need you to realize that my issues aren't about you. They're not your fault. Sometimes I hear you crying and it breaks my heart, Maura, because you blame yourself for not being able to do anything and it's not right. It's not your fault. They're my issues, even though sometimes you step in them. The last thing I want is for you to become a casualty of my war."
Jane slowly stands and she takes a long, hard look at the woman, her girlfriend, her love, in her bed and she clenches her pistol even tighter.
"I'm sorry. I don't know why you stay with me." Jane turns away and leaves the room.
When you've had a gun and you've shot and killed people and you're supposed to be dead anyway, the journey from living and killing other people to a soldier killing themselves isn't far at all.
Maura jolts awake at the sound of a gunshot echoing through the house.
"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. "
―Tim O'Brien, 'The Things They Carried'