Give me truth.

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Tuesday, September 11th, 2001—USS Carl Vinson, Operation Southern Watch, East Indian Ocean, 2338 IST

Tom stood impatiently, shifted his weight predominantly from his left foot to his right, and rested against the hull. The line of sailors trailed the p-way. Zigzagging and breaking to avoid exits, entrances, and choke points like a deformed snake of blue. A senior lieutenant from engineering stepped out, 'Bennet' he recalled, and Tom couldn't help but overhear him tell Moreno he couldn't get through before wishing his friend better luck. Unsurprising then that Tom's first four attempts to connect were unsuccessful, and he'd thought to give up after the sixth, but tried once more and, to his shock, heard ringing versus the automated busy tone.

"Tom?" came the breathless response.

"Yeah, it's me—"

He'd barely said the words before she was pressing, urgent and unsettled. "Have you seen the news?"

The muscle in his jaw flexed. "That's why I'm calling, we're being re-routed. I don't know how long we'll be gone but I want you to call my parents. Dad has friends at the Pentagon—"

"I already spoke to them," she interjected. "They haven't been able to get through, the news said the networks are overloaded, we can barely get calls to connect—so it's true? It was a terrorist attack?"

He shot a glance at the communications specialist who'd borne witness to no less than a hundred similar calls at this point. "It's true, we were attacked."

"Oh my god," she muttered under her breath. He heard their baby stir in the background, not a full cry but a definitive gurgle and then footsteps. Imagined she'd gone to check.

He readjusted the handset in his grip, lowering his tone and lamenting that this conversation needed to happen in such a morose way. "Listen, I know you wanted to wait until I got back, but I spoke with the Chaplain… he said California recognizes proxy marriages—"

"Tom…"

"Just, hear me out. This is a war, Darien. If anything happens to me, you and Ashley need to be taken care of. We're being extended indefinitely, and we'll probably be at EMCON for a lot of it." She remained silent much to his dismay, usually not a good sign. "I promise we can still have a ceremony when I get back, and you don't need to tell your parents we already did the paperwork if that's what you're worried about."

He heard shuffling blankets. A pause that sounded like their landline handset switched sides before she answered him. "Okay. I'll look into it and see what we need to do to get it done."

Some of the tension eased, and he let out some air. "Thank you. I know it's not ideal or what you wanted, but it's important and I'll make it up to you. Is everything else okay?"

"Uh, yeah, everyone here is fine most places are closed, and Mom and Dad are staying here for a few days until things settle down."

The coms specialist gestured that his two minutes were almost up. "That's good, listen I have to go, there's a bunch of us trying to call home. I'll try and call again before my first shift, okay?"

"Alright, be careful, Tom. We love you."

October 12th, 2001—USS Carl Vinson, Operation Enduring Freedom, North Arabian Sea

"You know what this is about?"

Spencer shook his head while they traversed the meandering p-ways. "I heard we picked up some specialists from the outpost in Kabul when that place got lit up. I'm assuming they have intel?" Both men side-stepped and flattened themselves against the hull to allow a superior officer to pass before continuing their journey toward CVIC. Tom tipped his head. It would explain why they'd been summoned from Strike Operations on the fly, though upon entering the room, all plausible theories evaporated from his mind.

"Gentlemen," the CO acknowledged. "Take a seat—you'll be here a while."

Tom merely blinked, words failing him while Spencer wheeled over a leather chair, plopping himself in it. He could already feel his skin tingling, blood rushing in his ears and likely turning their tips red if he had to guess. To Sasha's credit, she quickly recovered, masking her wide-eyed shock. When he still didn't move, she jerked her head toward a chair, cautious to ensure everyone else was preoccupied. It was the proverbial slap Tom needed, and he tore his gaze away, robotically retrieving it for himself.

Keeping his eyes trained on the presentation boards was an exercise in discipline Tom hadn't endured for years. Barely keeping track of their brief. In honesty, he only caught every third word or so while his knee bounced incessantly. Instead, he was ruminating on the impossible circumstance he now found himself in, mind replaying the voicemail he couldn't bring himself to delete. How to work up the courage to tell her. And the awful twisting sensation in his chest only intensified when she was called upon to provide input, and it became prudent for him to look at her. The blue lights in the combat center illuminated her skin in a way that short-circuited his brain.

An hour.

An hour of stolen glances thrown sideways. An hour of scrambling to craft the words, the where, and the how. His plan was to pull her aside, away from prying eyes. An hour of repeating it over again in his head while he tried to convince himself it wasn't that bad. Plans which went up in smoke the second Commander Manazir approached.

"Ah, Chandler—" Manazir shifted through the throng of shuffling bodies to reach his lieutenant. "Chaplain tells me you picked a date?"

Tom felt the color drain from his cheeks, catching the lightning-quick shift of Sasha's gaze. "Yes, Sir."

The XO furrowed his brow a little over the uncharacteristically meek response. "Cold feet?"

Tom's heart hammered behind his sternum, clinging to a dying hope that his XO would stop talking. "No, Sir."

Manazir studied him for another beat before offering something Tom recognized as an attempt toward a reassuring smile, as close to that as their XO came. Manazir clasped his shoulder. "It's normal, happened to me the night before I married my wife, but it was the best decision of my life. I meant to ask how you're both adjusting. How's the baby?"

Sasha's mouth opened softly while she took a shallow breath, snapping her eyes down to the floor. There was an immediate stabbing ache. She returned her seat to its place, movements rigid and stiff where normally fluid, and tried to suppress the tremor of her hands.

Tinnitus rang in Tom's ears when he caught her expression, which frankly was worse and hit harder than he'd tried to prepare himself for. In an instant, his guts rolled.

"Chandler?"

"Sorry, Sir—" Tom shifted his eyes back to Manazir, forcing an excuse on the fly. "Running low on sleep, they're both doing fine, Sir." He clenched his fists, his palms clammy and stinging as Sasha made a beeline for the exit. He'd clenched his jaw so tight his temples throbbed. Itching to end the conversation so he could find her and explain. Do something—anything—to wipe that look from her face and ease the surging guilt. By the time Tom shook Manazir, Sasha was long gone, and he was due back at his station.

She was avoiding him. That much became clear by the sixth day of unsuccessful attempts to run into her. Did his best to find convenient reasons to be between Strike Operations and OZ during shift change, hoping to catch her in a p-way. Tested subtle inquiries disguised as general conversation to uncover which berthing unit the newer analysts were assigned to. Tried to figure out how to get his shift to sync with the OZ divisions', hoping to catch her in the mess, but this was no DDG. This was a floating city of twenty-two hundred sailors launching near-constant combat sorties toward Afghanistan. It stood to reason then that fate took pity on him on the sixth sleepless night.

As if from thin air, she was in front of him, pounding miles on a treadmill in the workout space he knew to be between their berthing units. For a moment all he could do was loom in the door jamb. It was long past any time considered decent, and Tom would laugh at the irony, were his thoughts of her, and the date on his calendar not eating him alive. She sensed someone was watching, and Tom saw as she pressed pause on her MP3 player and pulled a bud from her ear. When she looked over her shoulder, Tom almost wished she hadn't, because the type of sinking disappointment he saw contort her features radiated pain in his chest.

He was breathless, his pulse hammering double time while he saw, rather than heard her soft scoff before she turned her back to him again. Sasha hit the emergency stop button with juxtaposing precision, collected both her towel and water bottle, and calmly dismounted the belt. It was his chance to speak; he knew that. Likely wouldn't find another because Sasha, if anything, never repeated her mistakes. This gym space would be blacklisted, Tom was sure of it, but the words were jammed tight in his throat. A conversation he'd painstakingly planned to the exclusion of sleep.

She was almost to him now, and by dumb luck, he was still stuck in the doorway, which meant she couldn't leave. Something Sasha was very aware of as she averted her gaze with a kind of conviction rarely seen. She couldn't look at him. Every time she did, she just fell deeper into the hole she couldn't seem to escape. "Move."

The way she said it seemed to eviscerate something internally. "We need to tal—"

"No. We don't." Her arms were folded, and she cast her eyes to the right, beyond his shoulder.

"We do, just let me explain—" Finally, she looked at him and the searing chill in her icy stare was enough to grant Tom pause.

"There's nothing to explain. We broke up, you moved on, and honestly? It's none of my business. Now move."

"Sash—"

Something scorching and anguished broke through her indifference, lighting her eyes. "Don't—call me that."

Tom's brow furrowed into a repentant line, his response soft, if dejected. "Please—it's not—it didn't happen the way you think."

Sasha shook her head and rolled her jaw, exasperated that he was refusing to do as she'd asked. "The way I think? Are you listening to yourself? You called me and said you still loved me and a month later you got someone pregnant!"

Tom had the decency to wince. "I didn't plan—"

"Oh, so it was an accident? You tripped and your dick fell in?" Sarcasm dripped from every word over the stupidity of such a statement. He'd used the opportunity to step through the hatch, securing the door behind him so they wouldn't be overheard. "No one spontaneously gets pregnant, Tom. Clearly, you didn't wrap it up." He wasn't even angry, she noted. Resigned instead, his eyes sad and pleading with her, and she hated it. Hated how much it hurt.

"She was on birth control. It was around Christmas… she must have messed up taking her pills, I don't know…" the explanation was monotone. Resigned, until the pretense became too much, and his voice became raw, and he dropped the act. Allowed a crack and let her see the turmoil he was in. "I didn't mean for any of this! I missed you so much I could barely think straight. Everyone kept telling me to move on, told me it would never happen unless I tried, so I did, and she got pregnant. What was I supposed to do? Abandon her and my unborn kid?!"

Sasha's features contorted, her lip trembling despite her efforts to force it still. Her brows were set in a deep twisted line, eyes glowing an impossible hue in contrast to their reddened rims, and Tom could physically feel the way it tore at him.

Her battle against indifference lost under the weight of the situation, Sasha looked away again, pushing her tongue between her lip and gums to stop the hot flood of tears. Her shoulders raised in a hopeless shrug. "Why are you telling me this?"

Why? Funny. In Tom's hours of soul-searching, he'd never asked himself that. Why he so desperately needed her to believe that he loved—had—loved her. Why he couldn't seem to live with the idea that she'd think otherwise. That she might go so far as to hate him. Not when he—had—loved her.

"Because it's the truth," Tom said, his words soft and tinged with regret. "And you're walking around with this look on your face like you meant nothing to me, and you're wrong. I never meant to hurt you. I meant every word I said, but I had to let the idea of us go… it was the right thing to do. And I was… I was gonna call you when you got back and explain."

"Do you love her?" Sasha's words were constricted and pitchy. The vulnerability shining through, though she tried to mask it with careful indifference. Tom hadn't forgotten the last time he'd asked that question.

His stomach rolled, sinking in a way that felt like a freefall. There was a stretched pause before answering, an attempt in vain to prepare himself to break what was left of her heart. Likened it to driving headfirst into a wall, and he'd never felt crueler. "Now? Yeah. I do," he breathed. "She's the mother of my kid… it's different." Not a lie, but it didn't accurately surmise his confliction. Didn't communicate that he still missed her every damn day of his life… that standing before her now, made his lingering feelings impossible to deny.

It felt like a hot poker was rammed down her throat and she found herself counting to help that statement not hurt the way it did. Her heart was loud in her ears, its rapid pump thrumming at her ribs while it shattered. She ground her teeth, fighting in earnest to remain composed. Bit the inside of her cheek while the gravity and finality of the situation sank in. That there was no way back from this. Sasha cast her eyes off again, staring at a spot but not seeing.

The silence seemed to last for eternity. An eternity where there was nothing Tom could do but watch the wheels turn in her head, and the sadness cloud her expression until he couldn't do it anymore. Couldn't stand and watch, and he also couldn't stop how he reached for her. Pulled her flush against his chest and clutched the back of her skull as his features twisted in earnest.

"I'm sorry."

It was mumbled, raw, and muffled against her crown where his nose was buried, and in a moment of weakness, Sasha's heart overruled.

She unfolded her arms, still laden with the towel and bottle, a physical barrier and protection from him, to encircle his waist. Couldn't fathom how a simple touch could simultaneously create and fill a void. Hurt so potently, as much as it healed a wound. The same one she'd been harboring for a little more than a year since leaving him. And it was this mix that pushed the hot, angry tears to spill down her cheeks, burning Tom's skin where they pooled on his shoulder.

"I'm so sorry."

His firm embrace grew stronger, his lips pressed against her temple and in an instant, the ugly, heartbroken sobs she'd been suppressing surged. To Sasha's relief, she managed to choke the first down and remove herself from his grasp. Using his shock to her advantage, and before Tom had processed, she was out of the hatch and slipping around the meandering corridor.

For several seconds, he could do nothing but stand. It felt like his lungs were in a vice. Like she'd just reached into his chest and ripped something from him. He scrubbed a hand down his face and cleared his throat. Blinked until the fluorescent lights rendered sharp again, rather than blurry, and sank onto a workout bench.

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an. None of the other stories are abandoned, I realize I have gone almost two months without updating El Norte, but I just needed a break from Season 5. Hope to update that one soon with some new chapters I have drafted.