Hmmm. For the first time, I was genuinely stumped over this one. I guess it's because so is not such an obvious word to use – it can be put in a lot of places to mean a lot of things. But anyway. I'm not going to pretend I know much about grammar. Just that I really enjoyed writing this one. Although it's shorter than most, I like it. And ...yeah.

Thanks: Courtesy of AG, as always :) And the characters, also, are not mine.

And: a request. I am getting sick and tired of not knowing what the spoilers are telling us vis a vis Tiva – they're all so cryptic and open and bleurgh and I NEED TO KNOW. So if anyone has any news/knowledge of where Tiva are going this season – seriously, anything, even something very tiny/specific – I would really appreciate you letting me know. It just seems – for the last episode, and the two coming up, which seems to be focussed on Gibbs and then Vance – that the whole Tony/Ziva storyline is getting put in a box in the corner in the dark for a while...and this thought is making me cry :) So yeah. Any news (because we really hear NOTHING over here in the UK).

Well, that's the end of my rant for today. I'm going to go and watch Broken Bird now, instead of doing my Paradise Lost homework...it might be a classic, but that doesn't mean that I cannot despise it with every bone in my body (and it's not just my bones, its my ligaments and everything).

Hope you enjoy!

So

It was never simple, it was never careless. Every single move, every step, every glance, every word they spoke was chosen. It was never effortless. Not after everything.

In the beginning, there was blood and wounds and tears and pain and poor fools just stumbling around with mouths open in grief and fear. And all it took from her was a look, a badge, a scarf and a slouch, and there was something in the chaos, in the maelstrom of helplessness and rage. There was something that he could anchor himself to, and so he did, all night, as he stood outside her building. She offered him espresso and he gave her pizza and back then, it might have been simple, it might have been easy. Perhaps it was. It was.

But not now. Not after everything that happened, everything that crashed and collided and stabbed so honestly into them, so lovingly. There was truth, death and no forgiveness. There was a plane flying far away.

And then there was nothing. No shadows, no blur. Nothing to be distorted, nothing to be subverted. There was no scream, no fury, no sense of loss. There was just an end. She was so very everything, and suddenly the world and his reality just tumbled away and it was then that he realised nothing remained.

She was just so. Just so. Never slightly, never quite. Never almost. So frightened, so lonely, so angry, so proud. So loving and then so hating and so never in between. So imperfect, and he was so quietly adoring. He made jokes and quips, he searched through her things and worried late into the night, he tried so hard to impress, so hard to entertain.

He tried so very hard to break her, and then somebody else did it, so very well, so suddenly, so beautifully and cruelly and simply, and there was nothing left for him to mend.

So time passes, and they stay so very still and quiet.

Always appreciate reviews, folks :)