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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 shifting 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 again 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, "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. "It's true. We were attacked."

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

Readjusting the handset and lamenting that this conversation needed to happen in such a morose way, he lowered his tone. "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 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 anyone 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."

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 promise I'll make it up to you. Is everything else okay?"

"Uh, yeah—yeah, everyone here is fine. Most places are closed, and Mom and Dad are staying for a few days until it settles down."

The comms 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 check-in. 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?" Tom asked.

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 and plopped himself into it. He could already feel his skin tingling. Blood rushing in his ears and likely turning their tips red. To Sasha's credit, she quickly recovered, masking her wide-eyed shock but when he remained immobile she jerked her head toward a chair after ensuring 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. 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... that voicemail he couldn't bring himself to delete on repeat while he struggled to summon 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 in his head while he tried to convince himself it wasn't that bad—good plans blown to shit when 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 his pallor change and caught the lightning-quick shift of Sasha's gaze. "Yes, sir."

The XO furrowed his brow over the uncharacteristic meek response. "Cold feet?"

Behind his sternum, Tom's heart hammered and clung 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 at 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, and she fought for breath, snapping her focus to the floor and her boots. There was an immediate stabbing pain. 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. Frankly worse and more devestating than he'd tried to prepare himself for. In an instant, nausea 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, palms clammy and stinging while Sasha made a beeline for the exit. And he'd bitten down so tight that his temples throbbed. Itched 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, but by the time he shook Manazir, Sasha was long gone, and he was due back at his station.

By the sixth day of unsuccessful attempts to corner her, it became clear that Sasha was winning the game of avoidance. He'd tried hard to surface 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.

Like a mirage, Sasha was before 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 far beyond an hour considered decent, and Tom would laugh at the irony, were his thoughts of her, and the approaching date on his calendar not eating him alive. She sensed someone was watching, and removed an earbud, but when she looked over her shoulder, Tom almost wished she hadn't. The type of sinking disappointment he saw contort her features radiated pain in his chest beyond words. He was breathless. Pulse hammering double time while he saw, rather than heard her soft scoff before she turned her back to him. With juxtaposing precision Sasha hit the emergency stop, collected both her towel and water bottle, and calmly dismounted the belt. It was his chance to speak; likely wouldn't find another because Sasha if anything, never repeated 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. With a conviction he'd never quite seen before, Sasha kept her gaze averted; couldn't look at him. Every time she did, she 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 gave 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."

Rolling her jaw Sasha shook her head. "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. "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?!"

Her lip trembled despite every effort to force it still. Features contorted and eyes glowing an impossible hue in contrast to their reddened rims. 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 shone through, though she tried to mask it. Tom hadn't forgotten the last time he'd asked that question.

In a way that felt like a freefall, his stomach rolled. There was a stretched pause before answering, an attempt in vain to prepare himself to break what was left of her heart. He likened it to driving headfirst into a wall, and he'd never felt crueler before in his life. "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. Fighting in earnest to remain composed, she bit the inside of her cheek while the gravity and finality of the situation sank in. There was no way back from this.

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, nor stop how he reached for her. Pulled her flush against his chest and clutched the back of her skull.

"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 she'd harbored for months alone, and it was this mix that pushed the hot, angry tears to spill down her cheeks.

They seemed to burn Tom's skin where they pooled on his shoulder. "I'm so sorry."

His firm embrace grew stronger, 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 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.