Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum
By Portrait of a Scribe

"Faith in something greater than ourselves enables us to do what we have said we'll do, to press forward when we're tired, hurt, or afraid, to keep going when the challenge seems overwhelming and the course is entirely uncertain."
-President Gordon B. Hinckley

Chapter 35.

2045 A.D. - RRTS Barracks, Twentynine Palms, California - 0500 hours

When Tank awoke that morning three years after her marriage to Reaper, she knew instinctively that something was not right.

She couldn't put her finger on it; whatever it was was not in her immediate surroundings. Tank couldn't sense anything wrong with the room that might have woken her as it had. Finally she sighed, a depressed feeling overtaking her, and sagged back into her bunk with a faint hiss as her upper abdomen throbbed.

Really, it had started weeks ago, this strange depression. Tank had no explanation for it, and she had only become more depressed when she had begun to have pains in her upper abdomen. Her appetite had decreased, as well, as she had begun to regularly suffer from nausea. Once, she had even been sick.

Tank knew that Reaper was worried about her, especially where her appetite was concerned. Tank had lost weight, making her already slight form even slighter. She had finally promised him that she would head up to the Naval Hospital and get checked out after he had cornered her and threatened to force-feed her if she didn't begin eating again.

So it was that at 0530 hours Tank rose with a grimace alongside the rest of the men and got her clothes on before exhaustedly heading out of the barracks and walking north. She tried to walk standing straight, but it hurt too much and she stooped slightly as she moved.

When she entered the hospital, she was immediately greeted by the receptionist and directed to an examination room, where she was given a paper examination gown and left alone to change. She did so quickly. Before long, she was joined by an elderly woman, the doctor.

"Good morning," the doctor said, brushing her wispy grey hair back from her forehead. "And how are you feeling?"

"Like crap," Tank croaked. The doctor raised an eyebrow.

"Well, why don't you tell me your symptoms, and I'll see what I can give you."

So Tank told her the symptoms. Tank told her about the abdominal cramps, showed her their location, told her about the anorexia and the nausea and vomiting and the uncharacteristic depression and the weight loss. Tank even told her about the way that she had missed her period for two months in a row, now.

By the time that Tank's explanation was through, the doctor's face had creases in it that were not only from her age. No, these creases had caused the wrinkles on her face.

"Well?" asked Tank, somewhat breathlessly. The doctor sighed.

"Let me see your hands and eyes," she instructed. Tank blinked, but did as she was told. Her hands were fine, but when the doctor examined Tank's eyes, her features only creased further.

"Has your urine been dark, lately?" the doctor asked conversationally. Tank thought back over the past few days, and then nodded.

"Yeah, some," she said. Then a sneaking suspicion implanted itself in her mind, and she looked at the doctor's grim expression.

"What do you think it might be?" Tank asked, swallowing to wet her suddenly dry throat. She felt nauseous again.

The doctor sighed heavily, adjusted the glasses on the bridge of her nose. Then she looked into Tank's eyes, and the doctor's blue eyes were searching, piercing.

"We'll need to run some tests," she said, "but I think I already know what's wrong with you."

The doctor's next words reached Tank's ears.

Then she promptly felt her world come crashing down without warning.

2045 A.D. - Robert E. Bush Naval Hospital, Twentynine Palms, California - 1800 hours

"John Grimm?"

"Yes?"

"Can I see you in my office for a second?"

"What is it, doc?"

The doctor took a deep breath, shifted uncomfortably. "It's about your wife, Amanda Grimm."

Reaper froze mid-step, feeling his heart skip a beat. "What is it? What's the matter?"

"Sergeant Grimm, I really think you should step into my office before-"

"What the fuck is wrong?" Reaper was beyond reasoning. His stress levels had been high ever since Tank's unexplained pains had begun; they'd only skyrocketed when she had thrown up during training the previous week.

The doctor sighed, giving up on trying to get him out of the hall. "Your wife has stage three pancreatic cancer. It's inoperable."

Reaper's world came crashing down around his ears.

He almost missed the elderly woman's next words. "We're recommending chemotherapy, and if that doesn't work, then radiotherapy."

The doctor paused, and then sighed and adjusted the specs on the bridge of her nose. Reaper cut her off, though, before she could speak again.

"What are you saying?" Reaper asked, sounding lost. "She'll be alright... right?"

The doctor gave him a pitying look. "I won't lie to you, Sergeant. Patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer usually don't get a good prognosis, due to the rather undetectable nature of the disease's early stages."

She adjusted her glasses again. "Less than five percent of patients diagnosed are still alive after five years. Complete remission is extremely rare."

She paused. "I am sorry, Sergeant Grimm, but due to the already advanced nature of your wife's cancer, I can't give her more than about two years, unless the therapy works."

Reaper felt sick to his stomach. He swallowed in an effort to wet his mouth as his thoughts raced through his head.

Tank was dying.

Tank was dying.

Tank was dying...

...and he could do nothing about it.

"...Where is she?" he dazedly asked. The doctor looked at him sadly, but beckoned for him to follow her. He did so on shaking legs.

The elderly woman led him down a hall to an examination room, where she stopped and turned to him.

"I'll let you two take a few minutes," she murmured gently. Then she was gone, and Reaper mustered up his strength so that he could reach out and turn the doorknob.

Tank was sitting on the examination table when he came in, looking pale and positively ill. She glanced up at him as he closed the door behind him.

For a few seconds, they simply stared at each other, and Reaper could see a yellow tint to the whites of her eyes that had not been there when he had married her, that had not been there on their last anniversary, that had not been there even two weeks ago. He could see the gauntness that her recent weight loss had produced, could see the pain and exhaustion and shock in her brandy-brown gaze.

"...Hey," she finally whispered after a few minutes. Reaper swallowed, trying to wet his mouth again.

"Hey," he breathed. There was a pause. "Amanda..."

Reaper was not sure what he was going to ask, but it seemed that Tank knew him too well by the current time.

"It's true," she murmured, smiling bitterly as she looked back down at her folded hands. "I have stage three pancreatic cancer, they can't operate, and I'm going to die in less than three years."

She took a deep, shaking breath. Tank was trembling like a leaf in the wind.

"Looks like we won't grow old together, after all," she whispered brokenly. Then her features contorted and she gave a single, audible sob before she pressed her folded hands to her forehead and bowed her head, her thin shoulders shaking.

Reaper didn't know what to do, too stunned to do much more than just stare at his wife. After all, what else could he do? He had just found out that the person he loved most in the world was going to leave him soon, in the most permanent and devastating way possible.

"I... I need to sit down," he whispered slowly, wobbling over to the chair on the north side of the room before he collapsed heavily into it.

Then they were silent but for Tank's hitching breaths and his shaking gasping.

Some anniversary this had been.

2045 A.D. - Robert E. Bush Naval Hospital, Twentynine Palms, California - 1900 hours

The first round of radiotherapy had been today.

Tank had gone in that morning, three months after diagnosis and two and half months after beginning of her chemotherapy, to find that none of the drugs they'd used on her had been effective in the slightest. The most they'd done was to clear up the jaundice.

Tank looked up at him as he entered the room, and a bright, though tired, grin overtook her features. She weakly raised a hand in greeting, the IV drip stuck in her arm moving with it. She looked thin, frail...

"Hey," she said. Hell, even her voice was croaky and fragile. Reaper sat down in the chair next to the bed.

"Hey," he replied. Tank studied him for a second, her eyes taking in everything.

"You look thin," she observed. "Have you been eating right?"

"...Yeah." You're the one who's dying. Why are you worried about my health?

Tank's eyes were tired, so tired, as he watched her scrutinize him. "What're you thinking, John?"

Reaper took a shaking breath, and then slowly reached out to take her hand in his.

"Why did this happen?" he asked softly. "Why did it happen to you? Why not somebody else?"

Tank smiled shakily, her hand- Too thin, too weak, this can't be her- squeezing his. "That's the question everybody wants an answer to, John, but it's not the one we have to ask."

Tank took a shaking breath, and briefly closed her eyes. "Y'see, the point is that I've already got the cancer, and that it's probably incurable. The real question you should be asking yourself is what you're going to do when I'm gone."

"But-"

"Don't even say it, John," Tank whispered. "I'm still coming to terms with it."

She took another breath, and Reaper could tell that she was fighting back a sob. "I still have to come to terms with the fact that I'm never going to be a mother, that I'll never get to see you laughing and playing with children on the Queeny Park playground. I still have to get used to the fact that my parents are gonna outlive me probably by a good thirty to forty years."

She opened her eyes and turned to look at him with a small smile. "I'm not too worried about them, though. I'm more worried about you."

"Why?" Reaper asked, barely able to get that single word out around the lump in his throat.

"Because I love you more than any of them," Tank said quietly. "And because, no matter what I may do or say at times, I've never wanted you to suffer, especially not because of me."

Reaper cracked a small, wry smile, seeing an opportunity to change the subject. "Not even that time you kicked me in the face during the rope wall course?"

Tank frowned.

"You know that was an accident!" she protested. "Besides, the blood washed out of your clothes easily enough, and after you got the doctor to reset it, your nose doesn't look too crooked."

"So you say," he said with a quiet, half-hearted chuckle.

"Whatever," Tank sighed, and snuggled down into her hospital blankets with a shiver.

There was a pause.

"I'm tired, John." The quiet admission reached his ears, and it was so hopeless that it almost brought him to tears.

Almost.

2045 A.D. - Robert E. Bush Naval Hospital, Twentynine Palms, California - 1200 hours

Eight months since she had been diagnosed, they thought that they'd defeated the cancer, by some miracle. One month later, they were proven wrong.

"I thought they fucking said it was in remission!"

"It was, John," Tank replied calmly, though tiredly. Her eyes were sad. "But my family has a history of cancer, and it doesn't always stay in remission."

"Then what? What?" Reaper demanded, his voice cracking slightly with the volume and the force of his emotions. He paced the hospital room like a caged tiger, clenching and unclenching his hands. "You can't fucking die, Amanda!"

Tank frowned, and she suddenly looked and felt decades older than she was.

"I'm dying, John," she stated levelly. "The doctors can't help me. That's the reality of it."

Reaper spun toward her, and his eyes were wild and desperate. "It doesn't fucking have to be that way!"

But Tank was already shaking her head. "The radiation didn't work, John, and the chemo's been completely ineffective. They can't operate."

She took a breath. "But if I'm gonna die, I don't wanna die in some fucking hospital. I wanna die protecting the people I love. I've already OK'd it with Sarge..."

This halted Reaper in his tracks. He stared at her, slack-jawed, for a few moments.

"Amanda," he finally choked out. Tank smiled sadly at him, and Reaper was almost able to find a hint of her old, cheerful, sarcastic self in the shell of a woman before him.

"I'm coming back to the barracks, John," Tank said quietly. "I'll need a little help getting back in shape, but I think I can do this... I know I can do this."

"But... why?" he asked. Tank chuckled softly at the question that had been the most often-asked in the past nine months.

"Because, for one thing, it's almost Christmas," she said, "and they're just as much my family as you and the folks back home are."

She took a deep breath. "Also, because even if I'm not strong, I think that I can become strong, even if it's only for the last few months of my life. I don't wanna die weak and shivering in some hospital bed."

Tank shook her head. "No, I'm gonna die in battle. It'll be a shorter, less painful end than waiting it out, anyway."

It was then that Reaper finally broke down, collapsing into the chair and pressing his forehead into his hand. Tank had seen him cry once before, but she had no words of comfort, no words to ease the pain. Any words she could have said would have been lies, or they would have only worsened it.

And so she waited while Reaper vented, and counted away the sands in the hourglass as sweet life slipped by.

She was dying... and there was nothing she could do about it except go out with a bang.

2046 A.D. - RRTS Barracks, Twentynine Palms, California - 0600 hours

Sarge sat next to Reaper at breakfast that morning. The ordeal with Tank had brought the two men closer, to a point where they were almost friends. Sarge noticed the drawn look on Reaper's face, the pallor to his skin, and the shadows under the younger man's eyes. Tank's absence from the breakfast table was also conspicuous.

"Are you sick?" Sarge asked. Reaper sighed, absently stabbing at a piece of egg with his fork.

"No," Reaper replied, completely humorless. There was a pause. "Tank had a bad night last night."

That got Sarge's attention, and he winced as he bit into his toast. "How bad?"

Reaper didn't answer for a moment.

"...Really bad," he finally whispered. "I let her sleep this morning. I'm hoping she'll have enough energy to eat something later on..."

For the past week since Tank had come home, she had taken to sleeping in the infirmary due to the pains that she regularly suffered from, as well as the vomiting that she often endured. Reaper sometimes kept her company.

Around the table, the other men exchanged looks of sadness and sympathy, each of them grieving silently in his own way for the sister who lay dying down the hall.

"How's her family taking it?" Sarge asked quietly. Reaper sighed.

"They didn't take it well in the first place," he grumbled around a mouth full of scrambled eggs. He swallowed, and then continued, "They want her to come back to Missouri, to try the treatments again."

He paused to scowl down at his plate. "Tank won't hear of it, of course."

Sarge cracked a small, wry smile. "That's Amanda for you. Always a fatalist."

"Always a realist, you mean," said a tired voice from the doorway. The men all glanced up to see Tank entering the room, fully dressed for the day's training. She had a weary smile on her face, the same one she always wore nowadays.

As she crossed over to the stove to make herself a mug of clove tea, she looked a bit more like her old self, the way she was before her symptoms had begun appearing. She had even put on a bit of weight, it seemed.

"You're lookin' better today, Tank," Duke said lightly, and Reaper glanced over at the black man in time to see him look over at Reaper and wink. "You sure you don't wanna take me up on that offer I made?"

Reaper saw Tank freeze for a moment before she looked back over her shoulder at Duke with a 'what-the-fuck-are-you-smoking' look on her face.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" she asked incredulously. Duke grinned.

"You, me," he began suavely, staring at his hand as though studying his fingernails, "a moonlit drive along the coastal highway..."

"You wish," Tank snorted, but she was smiling in a way that made her eyes twinkle, just like they used to.

It was times like this when Reaper was simply grateful for the time that they'd had, and the time that they had left.

2046 A.D. - RRTS Barracks, Twentynine Palms, California - 1000 hours

Tank had only been back at barracks for two weeks when the next incident happened.

They were running their usual morning course when suddenly she stumbled and went to her knees, one arm around her middle. Reaper, who'd been running beside her, and Goat, who'd been running shortly behind her, immediately stopped. Reaper crouched next to her and placed a hand in the middle of her back.

"Tank?" he asked. "You okay?"

Tank took a couple of deep breaths. Then she lurched to her feet and staggered onward. Goat and Reaper stared after her for a second. Then Reaper followed her.

Only Goat realized that Reaper's hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists.

Later that evening, Goat found Reaper in the gym, wailing on a punching bag with all the force he could muster. All Goat did was walk over to the other side of the bag and hold it steady. He knew that Reaper would talk- or shout- when he wanted to, and no sooner.

"Why did this have to happen to her?" Reaper asked a few seconds later, each strangled syllable punctuated with a strike to the bag. "Why did God have to do this to her?"

Goat pretended not to notice the tears that he heard in the younger man's voice.

There was a pause.

"Have you ever heard the phrase 'only the good die young'?" Goat asked quietly.

"FUCK THAT!" Reaper roared, the sheer volume behind his exclamation enough to make Goat flinch. Goat had to brace himself as the force behind Reaper's punches increased.

"If only the good die young, then maybe we should never live in the first place!" Reaper continued furiously, each impact of his fists against the sand-filled bag jarring them both. Goat felt his teeth rattle upon an especially potent blow.

"This world is full of sin, trial, and death, John," Goat intoned quietly. "And sometimes God calls the righteous to be with Him before their loved ones' times. It doesn't mean that you'll never see her again."

Then suddenly the punching stopped, and a weight sagged against the bag opposite Goat. He blinked, and peered around the bag at Reaper, who was leaning heavily against it. The younger man had pressed his arms to the rough canvas and buried his face in them. Goat could see Reaper's heaving shoulders trembling.

"But why her?" he panted, and his voice was level if a little shaky. Goat absently wondered how long Reaper had been down there punching the thing.

"We might never know, Reaper," Goat intoned. "Only the Father knows for sure."

Reaper didn't reply.

2046 A.D. - RRTS Barracks, Twentynine Palms, California - 2000 hours

Reaper had become very attuned to Tank during the four years they'd been married. So it was that he was one of the first to notice some of the more interesting- and sometimes amusing- habits that she had formed after the diagnosis, the ineffective treatments, and her return to the barracks.

The first one he noticed was that she would spontaneously begin singing or humming the most random of tunes, uncaring of whether or not she was on key. When he asked her about it during the second week she was home, Tank told him that she'd started humming when she was alone in the hospital and the silence grew to be too quiet for her. She said that she'd only hummed when it was as quiet as the grave.

The second habit that Reaper observed was her seemingly newfound disregard for personal space.

In the evenings after training, Tank would sometimes just go over and pick a person apparently at random from the squad before either sitting on their lap or poking them in the arm or head until she got a reaction.

It was this second thing that she was doing at the current moment.

Her sly smirk as she did so couldn't be hidden.

"Poke," she said as she prodded Jumper's temple. "Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke-"

"Hey! Enough, already!" Jumper finally exclaimed. Reaper had to admire the nervous man's patience- Tank had been poking him for nearly five minutes.

Tank grinned. "Wow, Jumps, I think you just set a new course record!"

"For what?"

"Patience." Tank's voice was matter-of-fact. "And the ability to ignore distraction."

"Behälter," laughed Pug from his bunk. "Leave the poor man alone! Come, you haven't sat on me yet, this week."

Tank looked at him oddly. "But it's not your turn to get sat on, tonight."

"You haven't sat on me in almost a month!"

Tank gave Pug an Air Force salute as she plopped down next to Jumper. "I've known you longer."

It was then that Reaper realized what she was doing, and why she never sat on him while the others were around.

After all, Tank had always said that she "wanted to tell God everything nice that she could about her squadmates so that hopefully they could join her in heaven when they died".

Briefly, Reaper wondered what she would say about him.

2046 A.D. - RRTS Barracks, Twentynine Palms, California - 1400 hours

Tank groaned and pressed her hot face to the cool porcelain tiles beneath her, trying to ignore the agony in her abdomen as best she could.

She really missed Reaper in that moment.

The squad had been called out for a mission earlier that day, but Tank had collapsed due to a flare-up and Sarge had told her to stay at base. So there she was, lying on her left side on the floor of the infirmary bathroom, in pain and with a terrible taste in her mouth, anxiety clenching her heart even as her stomach knotted uncomfortably.

They'd been sent back to South America.

The only problem was that Tank's gut instinct, her woman's intuition, was telling her that not all of them were going to make it back, this time.

Please, God, please don't take Reaper away from me, Tank prayed fervently. Please don't take any of them, but especially please don't take my John.

She groaned as her gut clenched again, and barely managed to heave herself up enough to vomit bile into the toilet. When nothing remained in her stomach, she moved on to the dry-heaving stage, and when that was over, she slumped bonelessly back to the floor with a miserable moan.

"God, why?" she asked into the silence. "Lord, why do I have to suffer so? Did I do something wrong? Is this punishment for the lives I've taken in service to my country?"

There was no answer, but Tank knew, in her heart, that the silence was her answer.

"Alright, Lord," she said softly. "I trust in Your judgment, and in Your mercy. I trust You to do what is best for everybody here. I just pray that You will take my pain away soon, one way or another..."

She trailed off, hearing the atrium door open and the stamp of booted feet.

"...and that You will ease John's pain when I pass away, so that he doesn't do anything self-destructive," she continued quietly. "In Your name I pray. Amen."

Tank drew a deep, trembling breath after the conclusion, laying there in silence with her sweaty face pressed to the blessedly-cool tiles.

A few minutes passed, and nobody came to check up on her. Tank began to fear the worst. Then she heard footsteps in the infirmary, and the low murmur of words that she couldn't pick up. They sounded grim.

Tank's breath hitched in a soft sob, knowing that somebody had died.

"John?" she croaked thickly. The voices stopped. A second later, there were uneven footsteps that entered the bathroom, and a strong hand landed on her right shoulder.

"I'm here." Reaper!

"Thank God," she moaned softly, relief flooding through her. "Thank God, you're alive..."

There was a pause.

"They got Pug, Tank."

Tank's breath hitched in her throat, and she curled up into a ball as the news hit her like a blow to her already-agonized stomach.

"I knew they got somebody," she sobbed quietly, "and I feel horrible for being so relieved that it was him and not you."

Reaper's hands were gentle as he drew her into a sitting position, seating himself so that he could cradle her against his chest, stroking her hair with one hand and holding her head against his shoulder with the other. Tank just cried with both relief and grief, inhaling the scent of blood and gunpowder and sweat on her husband, underneath which lingered his usual musky smell.

Tank just felt glad that she was in his arms, again.

"Are you okay?" she finally sniffled after a few minutes. Reaper gave her a hesitant shrug.

"You don't know?" she demanded, and weakly pulled away so that she could look him up and down. Reaper's face was creased with something that she couldn't name, and with a jolt, Tank realized that he looked like he was thirty-five instead of twenty-five.

Then she realized sadly that he had been looking like that more and more, lately.

"Got a fractured femur," Reaper murmured softly. "That's all."

Tank gasped, and tried to pull away from him, but he held her to him, taking a shaking breath. Tank finally relaxed and allowed him to do what he wanted.

"Don't worry, it's the other leg," he intoned softly, burying his nose in her hair. Tank sighed and leaned into his chest, relishing his heat.

Because really, his warmth was more comforting to her than the cold tiles had been, if only because he was still real, still solid...

...still alive.

2046 A.D. - RRTS Barracks, Twentynine Palms, California - 1900 hours

Tank sighed and lay back on her cot. She was feeling better than she had in weeks, and that was saying something.

The day was February seventh, Tank's twenty-sixth birthday. She'd woken that morning with surprisingly little pain in her gut, and had even been able to keep down her breakfast of toast, eggs, and oatmeal.

Training had even gone well. She had experienced very little discomfort during their daily run, and had actually made it through without having to stop.

A miracle if I ever saw one, she mused. After calisthenics, she had managed to lift weights with them for a solid hour before she finally had to stop. Really, she could've gone further, but Reaper had told her to rest. Sarge'd backed him, and so Tank was forced to sit and watch while the men then had their bi-monthly sparring competition.

Damn, and I wanted to kick somebody's ass, too.

So here she was, lounging on her bunk at seven o'clock in the evening while the men showered and all that.

Tank sighed, pushing out her lower lip and blowing a strand of chocolate-brown hair out of her face. Wish I had a good glass of brandy right 'bout now. Or maybe a piece of chocolate cake. Yeah, that'd be nice.

Because none of the men had said anything about it being her birthday today. Tank had just brushed it off, unconcerned. After all, the days tended to blend together with their rather routine manner. Tank wouldn't have been surprised if they thought her birthday was next week, if they remembered it at all.

At that moment, the men came in from the locker room, most of them clad in their casual clothes, which consisted of fatigues and t-shirts. Reaper had on black sweats and an underarmor shirt. Tank, herself, was clad in a pair of her fatigues, cinched tightly at the waist, and one of Reaper's tan uniform t-shirts.

He eyed her as he approached his bunk. "Is that my shirt?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Tank sing-songed. She glanced down at the t-shirt, and plucked an invisible piece of lint off of it, studying her nails afterward.

Reaper's eyes narrowed. "That is my shirt!"

Tank stretched languidly, closing her eyes and arching into the mattress with a long, contented sigh as she crossed her arms behind her head. "And what're you going to do about it?"

There was no reply.

After a few seconds, Tank cracked open an eye to look at Reaper, only to find that he wasn't there. Blinking, she sat up, looking around the barracks for him.

An instant later, she yelped as a strong arm grabbed her around the neck, pulling her toward a rock-hard chest. Then her head was tilted to the side, and something wet was pushed into her ear.

Tank's shriek could be heard throughout the barracks.

She squirmed out of the grip and leapt off of the bunk, whirling around as she scrubbed furiously at her ear.

"Reaper!" she yelled. She barely noted that the pitch of her voice rose a full octave. "I can't believe you just did that!"

Reaper just smirked at her, tossing a familiar-looking tan t-shirt up and down in his hand as his hazel gaze scanned Tank up and down. Then a draft hit the back of Tank's neck, and she glanced down at herself.

Her face flared red in mortification as she realized that she was standing there, in the middle of the barracks, wearing only her sports bra and her fatigues.

"Reaper!" she shrieked, and dove for her husband. Reaper's eyes grew wide, and he launched himself off of the cot, running for the door with Tank hot on his heels.

"You fucking bastard! You did not just do that!" she shouted, making a flying leap for Reaper. She caught him around the middle, and they went down in a heap. The air whooshed out of Reaper's lungs when she landed on top of him, and Tank made a mad grab for the t-shirt.

Reaper, however, was too quick, too determined, and held it out of her reach. Tank growled, grabbed his arm, and pulled it down toward her. Her fingers finally closed over the tan material, but Reaper would not give it up, smirking at her the whole time.

Tank paused to glower down at him. Then she grinned in a malicious, maniacal manner, and drove her thumb into the pressure point at the base of his thumb.

Reaper let go of the shirt with a surprised yelp, and Tank yanked the material and herself away from him with a triumphant cry.

"Ha!" she gasped out, standing. She planted her hands on her hips and smirked victoriously down at Reaper as he nursed his hand. "Serves you right, you jerk!"

"That's my shirt," he grumbled, but he was smiling faintly as he did.

At least until his gaze landed upon Tank's abdomen. Then it vanished abruptly.

Tank glanced down at her stomach. It was mottled with purple bruises, and had become progressively more so as her cancer had progressed. Now it looked as though she had been punched in the gut a few dozen times.

"Like what you see?" she questioned, shaking out the shirt and slipping her arms through it. Reaper frowned up at her painfully as she slipped the t-shirt over her head and straightened it to hang loosely around her hips.

"Come on, Reaper," she said abruptly. Her eyes twinkled down at him. "Lighten up a little! It's only a t-shirt, for Pete's sake!"

Reaper scowled up at her.

"What is going on here?" Tank looked up at the stairwell to see Sarge standing there, his hands on his hips. Tank grinned brightly at him while Reaper just fumed quietly where he was still laying on the floor.

"Reaper and I just had a little disagreement," she said. It was only then that she noticed the rest of the squad laughing.

"Reaper, man, she totally just owned you!" crowed Duke from his bunk, clutching his sides. Sarge raised an eyebrow at the pair in question.

"She stole my shirt," Reaper grumbled. Sarge's dark brown eyes glanced at Tank's chest, and she smirked, puffing out her chest like a proud peacock.

"You like it, Sarge?" she asked teasingly, deciding to put Sarge on the spot. She pressed her hands to her ribs, pushing her breasts up as she looked down at them studiously. "I think it flatters me, no?"

As the room erupted in a renewed burst of laughter, Sarge's face flared red and Reaper stared at her in mortification, both of them slack-jawed. Tank finally dropped the act in favor of bending over, bracing herself on her knees as she gasped for air through her mirth.

"Your faces!" she wheezed, still giggling madly. "Priceless!"

"Tank," called Jumper breathlessly. Tank looked over at him with streaming eyes to see him picking himself up off of the floor next to his bunk. "Tank, that was great!"

And he promptly fell over laughing again when Tank struck the old 'Captain Morgan' pose.

Disclaimer: I don't own Doom.

…I know. It's cliché, isn't it? The whole cancer thing. Like Tank observed in chapter 31, "Our life is a soap opera." But I did notice that all the fics where it's ReaperOC, if the OC dies at all, then she usually dies during the Olduvai mission. Trying to be original, here… so sorry if it seemed like something out of "Days of Our Lives" or some other 90s soap opera that Spike from BtVS would like. XD Yay for Spike.

Spike is the coolness. Don't get me wrong. But soap operas… Uh, no. Ahem. Olduvai will begin probably the chapter after next or so. If it's the chapter after next, then chapter 37 will probably be short. Lotsa dialogue, you know?

I still haven't gotten an answer, either. SHOULD I CONTINUE THIS AFTER OLDUVAI, OR SHOULD I CUT IT OFF? I need some input here, people. Thanks! :D

Thank you to jess for reviewing the last chapter! I'm glad you caught the RvB references!

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY TO ALL MY FELLOW AMERICANS OUT THERE!

Next chapter should be posted 7-12-10.

-Portrait of a Scribe