A/N: this chapter comes with a tw for miscarriage.

September 6, 1995

It was Liv's idea, him going back to school. He'd finished his time with the Corps in May, and married her in June, and he'd not known, really, what he wanted to do. Where he wanted to go. He wasn't in a rush to make a decision, either; he had a bit saved up from his time in the Corps - more than a bit - and he meant to use for it a downpayment but Liv wouldn't even hear about looking at houses to buy - not yet, she kept telling him, we don't need a house for just the two of us - and Liv made enough to cover their bills and he was floating, for a little while there. Just for a little while, though, because one night in early August he'd been lying in bed next to her, her head pillowed on his chest, and she'd just said it, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

El, the only adult you ever talk about from when you were a kid is your football coach. You said you wanna help people; why not do that?

What, coach? He'd asked her ruefully. I hate to break it to you, baby, but that's not really a, uh, viable career path. Like one in a million guys gets a gig coaching ball.

Not just coach, she'd told him, nudging at him playfully. You could teach, and maybe coach after school. And then she'd taken his hand, wound her fingers through his, and looked up at him with the prettiest smile he'd ever seen. And you could coach our kid's little league team, or something.

Yeah, he'd said, thinking that sounded kinda nice. Yeah, maybe, one day.

Maybe sooner than you think.

It had taken a minute to sink in, what she was trying to tell him, but the knowing look in her dark eyes, that bright, hopeful grin; Liv was pregnant, and she'd chosen that moment to tell him, and he'd never forget it, the way they laughed, the way she kissed him, the way his heart seemed to be growing in his chest, blowing up like a balloon so full of love it was a wonder it didn't burst.

Things moved pretty quick, after that. He got a day job working as a mall cop and enrolled in night courses to get his degree. It might be rough there for a little while, he knew, when the baby came and he was still in school, but they'd make it work. He was going to be a father, and to him that meant he needed a fucking job, needed to provide for his family, needed to make sure Liv wasn't doing all the work while he skated along on her paycheck. If they were gonna do this thing, they were gonna do it together.

On his way home from class one Wednesday night he stopped in at the bodega on the corner, bought one of those cheesy, sickly looking roses wrapped in cellophane and carried it back to their apartment, grinning. Liv was working days, and that suited him just fine, because it meant he actually got to see her, spend time with her, talk to her about the future. It meant she'd be waiting for him, when he got home. That cramped one bedroom apartment with a framed picture from their wedding day sitting on the dresser, those four white walls and the blue comforter on the bed, that pretty girl stretched out on the couch, that was home, where his wife was waiting for him, with his baby safe in her belly.

Every time he thought about the baby he grinned. Sometimes he wondered if they were too young for it, still, but they were older than his parents had been when they started having babies, and Liv had finished college and got herself a job and he'd done six years with the Marines and he was starting to think they were grown enough. On Saturday he was gonna call a broker, and they'd find themselves a place, a nice little house in Queens if he had his way, and they'd buy a crib and diapers and all the shit a baby would need and one day a few months from now he'd get to see it, get to see Olivia holding their little one in her arms, would get to hold his own child, his own future, in his hands. Yeah, all right, he was a little scared, but truth be told he couldn't fucking wait.

"Babe, I'm home!" he called out as he stepped into the apartment, kicked off his shoes and locked the door behind him. Usually when he got home from class he'd find her sitting in front of the tv with her feet up, resting after a long day at work, but the door opened right into the living room and there was no sign of her there, or in the kitchen. The bedroom door was closed; maybe she just laid down for a little while, he thought. She'd been dog tired, the last few days; apparently, growing a brand new human all by herself took a lot of energy, and the work was hard. He kept begging her to tell her bosses, get herself moved to desk duty, but Liv wouldn't hear of it. Not yet, she kept saying. I'll be off my feet for months. I just wanna work a little while longer. That was his girl, stubborn and determined, always.

When he stepped through the bedroom door he frowned, though, because the bed was still neatly made, and there was no sign of her in it.

"Liv?" he called, rocking back on his heels for a moment. Where would she be, at nine o'clock at night, if not at home? If she'd gone somewhere she would have left him a note, and he was starting to think maybe he should go back to the kitchen and look for one when he noticed that he could see a light shining underneath the closed bathroom door. Sometimes she liked to soak in a bubble bath, when she was feeling especially tired or especially whimsical, and he grinned, suddenly, thinking about opening that door and finding his wife beautiful and naked, reclining in the water. He made a beeline for the door, tugging his shirt up off over his head as he went.

"Li-" his voice cut out suddenly, because when he reached for the door knob he found it locked.

They never did that. It was just the two of them in the apartment, and they never let a locked door come between them.

What the fuck is going on? He wondered. She must have heard him yelling, but she hadn't said anything, hadn't tried to answer him, not even to tell him to give her a minute. But the light was on, and the door was locked, and that meant she had to be on the other side of it.

"Liv, are you ok?" he called, pressing his ear against the door, straining to hear her response.

Nothing.

Oh, shit, he thought. Pregnant women fainted sometimes, didn't they? What if Liv had been in the bath, or something, and passed out? What if she'd hit her head on the way down, or slipped beneath the water? What if-

"Baby, you're scaring me. I don't wanna do this but if you don't answer me I'm gonna come through this door."

He could do it, he knew. The Corps had made him strong, and he still worked out, when he could, lifted weights at the gym on campus and did push-ups in their apartment on Saturdays. The cheap door between him and Liv wasn't built to withstand any kind of force; if he threw his shoulder at it hard enough, he could take it off its hinges. And fix it later, because he didn't wanna lose their deposit over this.

No answer came from inside the bathroom, and so he grit his teeth, backed up a few steps, and then threw all of himself at that flimsy door, desperate and scared because his whole world was locked on the other side of it.

For a second he stood in the doorway, panting, staring, trying to figure out just what the fuck he was seeing, what the fuck it meant.

There were no candles burning brightly, no softly playing music. The tub was empty, not full of steamy water and scented bubbles. The lights overhead were harsh and unforgiving, and in the corner of that pristine white bathroom Liv was curled up in the floor, her knees drawn up tight to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. The commotion he'd made when he burst through the door had not escaped her notice; she was staring at him, tears staining her cheeks, her eyes red-rimmed and miserable.

"What's going on?" he asked, rushing towards her. He crashed to his knees in front of her, harder than he meant to, and didn't even notice the pain of it while he reached for her face. Pale, she was too pale, pale in a way Olivia never was, and her dark eyes refused to meet his.

"Why wouldn't you answer me?"

"I didn't want you to see," she told him in a small voice, pulling herself out of his grasp and resting her forehead on her knees. In all the time they'd known one another he'd never known her to be like this, so frightened, so closed off, so distant from him, and refusing to hear him. Shit, even when she'd broken up with him she'd been able to look him in the eye. Whatever was happening here, it was bad, and that scared the shit out of him.

"See what, baby?"

"I'm sorry," she breathed. "I'm so, so sorry."

Oh, Jesus, he thought. God, please, no.

The little rose he'd carried all the way from the bodega to the bathroom tumbled out of his grip, then, and landed on the floor, and neither of them noticed.

"Olivia, look at me."

She did, finally, and he found the truth in her eyes. There was only one thing with the power to wreck her so completely, only one loss that she would try, so desperately, to hide from him, and he knew before she spoke exactly what she was about to tell him.

"It's…it's gone," she said.

It must have been grief, that made his chest feel so tight. Must have been sorrow, that sucked the breath out of his lungs, that made his mind go blank, and flat, and grey. He had no thoughts, in that moment, no prayers, no curses. Just a whole lot of nothing. A defense mechanism, maybe, to protect the heart from itself, to shut everything down rather than force him to feel it all at once. Without direction from his consciousness his body shifted; he dragged his legs out from underneath him and sat flat on his ass beside her, and then he reached out, and wrapped one arm around her shoulders, and they stayed that way, for a minute or two, while his brain turned back on again, slowly.

A dream, he thought, is a fragile thing.

"It's not your fault," he told her, pressing his lips against her temple.

"What if it is? It was my job to keep them safe and now they're…it's…just…gone."

"It happens-" his voice was thin, unsteady, and easily drowned out by hers.

"It happens to other people. Now it's happened to us."

That was the thing, wasn't it? Bad things happened to other people. Other people got into car accidents, got cancer, lost their parents too young, lost babies, lost jobs, lost everything. It happened out there, in the world, not here, at home. Only they were other people, now. Sorrow had come for them and snatched their dreams away and they were, both of them, reeling, and lost.

"It's gonna be ok," he started to tell her and he knew it was stupid but really, what else was he supposed to say?

"Don't," she fired back, and when he looked in her eyes they were shining at him, terrible, angry, heartbroken. "You wanted this so much and I couldn't give it to you."

Was there an accusation there? He wondered. Yeah, he'd been the first one to mention kids. He'd been the one excited about the idea, even before they were married, when Liv kept saying we need to wait, we need more time. It was his idea, her stopping the birth control when they got married, just to see what might happen. Did she blame him for this? Jesus, what would he do if she did?

"I did want it," he choked out, "but I want you more."

We can try again, he thought, and if that doesn't work we can adopt, or get a damn dog. If they never had kids he'd be all right with it, he thought, so long as he still had her.

"You are the one thing I can't lose, Olivia."

"What if I'm not good enough for you, El? What if you decide I can't give you what you need?"

The tone of her voice was hard, angry, almost. It wasn't insecurity, he thought, that made her ask those questions. It wasn't that she didn't believe she was good, that she didn't believe she was worthy of love. She just didn't trust him, still, not completely. She just wasn't sure he meant what he said. She just wasn't sure he wasn't gonna up and leave someday, the way her mother told her he would. It was like she expected him to disappoint her. It wasn't herself she was doubting; it was him.

"I'm right here, princess," he told her. "And I'm not going anywhere. I love you."

It felt to him like this was one of those moments. Those fork in the road, once in a lifetime seconds when everything would change, like the roll of the dice was gonna decide his whole fate. He was heartbroken and scared, sitting on the bathroom floor with his arm around her, promising to love her and trying not to let her lack of faith in him cut him to the bone, and she was looking up at him, those dark eyes searing into his face like she could read their futures in his eyes, like she was looking for an excuse to run and one wrong move from him would give it to her, and end it all. He held his breath, waiting; Jesus, sometimes living with this girl was like handling a live grenade.

"You're the one thing I can't lose, too," she told him, and he took in a breath like a diver coming out of deep water, and she burst into tears. With gentle hands he pulled her into his lap, wrapped both his arms around her, and held on tight while her weeping ran its course. They were, both of them, shattered, but there in the silence of the bathroom under the awful fluorescent lights they began, very slowly, to put one another back together.