The Soldier on the Grave

I should feel better about solving this one, but I don't.

I can't-- for all my lip service about the nobility of service, and dishonor and sacrifice and unquestioning duty, I know damned well that the way they let down Devon Marshall and Charlie Kent is more the rule than the exception these days. They couldn't admit how messed up it all is in order to give Devon all the help he needed to get through it, because face it, despite how fucked up it leaves all of us, some of us are stronger than others, and Jesus said we're supposed to help the least among us. Devon was among the best in going at all, and rendered the least by doing what he thought was right. Sometimes I think the lucky ones are the ones who don't make it back.

But I can't quite bring myself to admit it out loud-- no matter how much they fail us with lack of leadership, lack of training, lack of care or commitment when we come back half-crazy from all the things we've done at their request, the fact is they're just as human and as afraid and as doubtful up the chain of command as the rest of us out in the lines. The fact remains that in the end, it still comes down to me and the decisions I made, as well as the ones I avoided thinking about, avoided making. I'm the one who pulled the trigger each time. I committed myself to it. I made the decision that this was something that needed to be done. That taking other people's lives for my country was justified, when the longer I did it, the less justified, more murky it seemed. But I wanted to be patriotic. God and country and brotherhood and all that. But God and brotherhood? I don't think God would approve of our inability to sort this mess out, to think broadly enough about the bigger picture to stop making it come down to a guy and his spotter hiding behind the smallest, shittiest bit of scree you've ever seen in your life. And brotherhood? Well, the higher ups are more concerned with their own fears to remember whatever they felt when they were out doing the real work. Country? The country part keeps getting in the way of the brotherhood-- I couldn't protect my brothers and carry out my duty to country at the same time.

So they've lost the country part in it all-- the Kents and the Marshalls. While we've given them back the brotherhood between their sons-- perhaps the most important thing of those three-- I can't quite believe that what we've done on behalf of the Bureau in holding the rest of that unit accountable will really restore the betrayal of that part of the country-- the part that's supposed to make us all safe in the first place. Instead, they betrayed country and tried to undermine the belief that these two were brothers when it's an undeniable truth that you don't have to see eye to eye on the politics to still trust your life to someone. That's brotherhood, and they were brothers. They-- she-- but still them, too, in the end-- they tried to turn that into a lie.

And despite how fucked up it all is, I still can't fit words around all this shit in my brain. Hank knows it, the others know it, but even between us we can't really talk about it except by allusion. Yeah, we're on the same wavelength, but are we, really? Do they feel as betrayed and conflicted as I do? Or is it, for them, more a matter of personal regrets rather than a questioning of all the reasons we were there in the first place, whether all the sins of ommision and sins of commission we made served some better good for country? Because they sure as hell didn't serve God. Thou shalt not kill. Pretty clear, that one.

And her. I've been nothing but an asshole to her when she's stuck with me, helping despite the fact that she has no idea what it's like every day to be there, to do the things you no longer believe are doing anyone any good, despite the fact that I keep telling her it's not so simple as heroes and villians when in the end I really know she knows what it means. The country part of it all-- they do need heroes and villians. The being shot at? It's not a good enough incentive. If everyone stopped agreeing to go-- stopped letting the higher-ups disregard God and brotherhood, and the role they really ought to play in deciding what "country" means... well, she's right, even if she says she doesn't believe in the God part. She believes in the brotherhood between those two boys, that was enough for her, that she knew that was the most important of them all. She doesn't need to believe in God to still be doing what He said-- helping the least among us. She does that-- and it's an undeniable truth that you don't have to see eye to eye on the politics to still trust your life to someone.

I need to make her try to understand I know what she meant when she was talking about heroes and villians, despite the fact that it's all a lie-- that every one of us who makes it back is both desperately afraid of and desperately in need of the lie all that "All Hail the Conquering Hero" shit is. We have to get out of bed somehow every day-- we have to believe it had some value, that we had some value, that there was some higher purpose that meant that the intimacy of pulling a trigger and ending another life despite the clearest, most undeniable commands, ones not murky and corrupt like the ones sent down from the higher ups. Love your brothers. Thou shalt not kill.

It's never just one person who dies, Bones. Never. Never.

She puts her hand on my arm-- reaches out to me, squeezes. Doesn't look disgusted. Doesn't get up and leave. Doesn't think it's as easy as heroes and villians. Knows that I don't think so, either.

You know, we all die a little bit, Bones. With each shot, we all die a little bit.

She keeps just listening, accepting, her face showing no condemnation or anger. She squeezes my arm again, the warmth of it seeping in and battling the cold we all feel every time we have to remember what we've done, all over again. So I cover her hand with my own. That hand-- the one I used to pull that trigger so many times, the one I look at sometimes and think "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."

It's too late for that. I'm already going to Hell. But that doesn't mean I don't have a duty to try to restore a little more brotherhood before I go. And if that means I need to pull the trigger some more, to stop murderers from destroying more brotherhood, then it's worth it, no matter how much it hurts. But still...

I don't know how much longer we sit there until the breeze picks up and the gravedigging crew has arrived, waiting for us to leave so they can fold up the chairs and return Charlie Kent and Devon Marshall to lie with the rest of their brothers. She offers to drive me back to my place, and I let her-- all that anger to solve this is turning to the same shaky, cold grief that comes when we realize all over again that country thinks less of God and brotherhood than it should.

"Mind if I come in so I can call a cab?" she says, and I start, realizing that we've already arrived.

"Sure," I manage. I'd let her just take the truck and go get it tomorrow but if she got pulled over without me the Bureau would kill both of us.

She comes in and calls the cab, gets told it'll be half an hour due to some accident on the Beltway, and says fine. "Sorry," she says, "I'll go wait outside."

My hand snakes out and grabs her wrist before she can touch the doorknob, and I don't know what's come over me, except I'm so cold, and she's warm, and she's looking at me with sympathy instead of disgust, so I pull her to me and kiss her. She's still for a moment before she places her hand at the back of my neck and kisses me back, then stops to look at me and say "It's okay. It's not simple. It's hard. But it's okay. You're okay."

I can believe it as long as I'm holding her, but I'm so desperately cold, still, so I hold her even tighter, hoping she can warm me up, just a little. She pulls my head down and kisses me again, her tongue in my mouth and her lips on mine giving me back breath to breathe and warmth to feel, her hands running up and down my sides as I pull her hips flush against mine.

It's almost as painful to say it out loud as what I said back at the cemetery, but somehow I manage it anyway.

"I need you," I say, and she has that same unquestioning look as she nods and starts to unbutton my shirt.

I finish the job, shedding everything and then taking over for her while she's still stepping out of her skirt, picking her up and sitting her on the counter as I pull her panties and bra from her because I'm still freezing, and if I don't get inside her...

I can't help it, I shout as soon as I fill her, it's like I don't know what, just... better. She's wrapped her arms and legs around me and is giving me that same accepting look as she holds me, just holds me until I'm ready to start, and then suddenly I am. She's so hot, and every time she takes me in, keeps holding me to her as I try to drive it all out, it's like a little bit more of it melts and I'm finally starting to not only feel normal again, but better than I have in years, even. She understands, and keeps holding me, pulling her to me, telling me in that soft warm voice of hers that she knows, and it's okay, and that I'm not a bad man, and that I do what I can, and that I can keep going.

And then all of a sudden, I'm so hot I explode, shouting her name out as my whole body quakes with the force of it, and she keeps holding me, telling me "You're a good man, it's okay, I want you, it's okay for you to need, you're a good man" in this way that I could actually believe as long as she keeps telling me, as long as she keeps looking at me like she understands and still wants to work with me, let me be with her.

When I'm done shaking from the force of it all, she pulls me to her one last time and embraces me, then pushes me back a step so she can scoot down off the counter. Looking at me with that same calm acceptance, she takes my hand and leads me down toward my bedroom. I follow, knowing that as long as she's here I can't be cold, and then I warm up all over again when she says...

This is too much.

I can't do this.

I can't do that to her.

She needs someone who's not flawed-- not conflicted-- not incapable of getting over things like this so that he can just do his job without his own weaknesses almost preventing us from finding who did it.

It's a wonder she didn't walk away, didn't let me have it for almost compromising the whole case because I can't deal with my own shit. The mere fact that she didn't walk away from me right at the cemetery-- that she still sat there... still listened… that's more than I possibly deserve.

I can't do that to her, no matter how much I need her. I need her too much to be good for her. I need too much, period. I can't ask her to heal all the broken things, can't scare her by showing her all the things that are broken. I need her too much to ask her to help me with anything beyond our work, such a small, tiny part of it-- the tip of a black, lonely iceberg she's willing to stand on with me. I can't ask her to dive under the water and deal with the rest of it. That's my burden, not hers.

But oh, it was nice to warm up just that little bit, where her hand rested over my arm and under my hand those few minutes. It's the first time I've been warm in a week.

The "If thy right hand offends thee" quote comes from the Gospel of Matthew, ch. 5, v. 30.