A/N: Thanks to those of you who reviewed! I wasn't originally even thinking about adding a happy ending because it's kind of more character analysis than actual plot but now I've got a seedling of a way to do that with them both in the same chapter after they've gotten together.

You guys, adding to my insomniatic plot-feeding.

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She's a practically flawless liar. Hell, she's spent most of her working life lying to her family about what she did for a living. Still, it's no small feat when she begins to pile on misconceptions on top of false accusations on top of deranged justification until it doesn't even feel like a lie to look herself in the mirror and say that Marshall has no feelings for her and she none for him. It's such an endless lie, it's the almost the truth. It might just be.

It sure as hell is to her.

She's not sure if it's self-preservation or if it's become a self-destructive habit. She's not sure where the line is drawn between the truth and a mile-high stack of lies. In one man's world, it's denial and in another man's, ignorance. So where does cowardice become bravery and bravery a suit of armor constructed of these flimsy half-truths with too many chinks, worn into battle anyway?

Either way, it's a chain with a heavy weight on the end. She drags it around town, not caring which relationship it crashes into and reduces to rubble because tomorrow, there'll just be another link. It's a fortress made of cardboard boxes and the only purpose the lies serve is taped to a post as a warning to all who enter.

So she sits on the throne in her cardboard castle, making herself believe she holds the power and she's got the key. But she knows there's a duplicate. She stays because maybe, she's brave and she'll fight, but maybe she sits alone on a pauper's throne because she's afraid of what it means to leave.

As hard as it is to lie to herself, there's nothing harder than looking him in the eye when he tells her, in not so many words, that he just wants to fix her and hold her, and force powerful emotions into their place in the dark depths of a jaded, black heart and put on her well-worn mask of indifference.

Somewhere under well-meaning defenses, she knows he loves her and some days, when all bets are off and she can't even keep herself out of those things she's locked away, she considers through gritted teeth that she's never loved anyone as much as she loves him or as much as she wants him to love her.

She's a coward.

In what she considers these moments of weakness, she gets halfway to letting him in. She gets to the last lock, brings the key to it, and then she convinces herself that the moment of hesitation she feels means she shouldn't. So she quickly bolts all the locks again and retreats to where things are familiar.

Some days, she considers, however idly, packing up her little kingdom and setting up shop somewhere else, becoming a lesser man's problem. But she knows that to take it down, she'd have to come out and stand bare for a brief moment in which neither of them would be strong enough to be such cowards.

She hides behind and engagement ring when she knows she'll never exchange those vows. She hides behind one night stands that hold even less meaning than they should. She uses a long-term relationship with a man that wants more than she could ever give him as a crutch, yet another lock on the door.

When she's not refusing to acknowledge whatever the hell is going on between them, she sometimes wishes it wasn't. If he loved her like he was supposed to, they wouldn't be caught here. She wouldn't be torn between stubborn pride and notion that if she'd just let him in, God knows how well he would love her (and how well he already does). She's trapped here because of his love for her and she wants to leave so badly because as cornered as she is by the thought of loving him, he's up against the wall because he doesn't know how to stop what he can still hide.

In her mother and sister's outrage when they found out that she'd broken her engagement to Raph, they'd demanded an explanation. She'd told them simply that he was him and she was her and they'd one day find themselves in a lifeless, loveless marriage if they went through with it. But that little Marshall's advocate in the back of her head had trashed every cell, every fiber of that reasoning until she gave up and went to bed, claiming a headache. It's true, her head did hurt. But her heart hurt more.

She's such a damn coward.

She knows that someday, those lies may rip her apart from the inside out and that no matter how hard you try, secrets have this funny habit of not staying secret. She knows that one day, she'll put it out there, make one of those unspoken dares and he won't back off. She knows that these things that happen in her head and in her heart without her permission, sometimes without her even knowing, will quite possibly ruin her someday, not to mention him. But she doesn't need someday, she never has. All she's ever needed is today.

Maybe the way it is turns out to be the only way it works. Maybe one day, regardless of any reactions she has to the way he feels about her, he wakes up and realizes that she's jaded and bitter and just a bit past a little insane and wonders to himself why, on God's green Earth, he's wasted so long hung up on her. That he realizes that he's the kind of man who wants a family and a future and she's not the kind of woman who can ever give him that.

When he does things that just bleed of the way he loves her, she turns the other cheek, looks the other way. Turns his twisted analogies about messy and being the river and all that mumbo-jumbo back in his face until he doesn't recognize it because she's not strong enough to look it in the eye and deny it.

Coward. She's a coward.

But she can't walk away. Because even though she knows that the way he feels for her is not the way she makes it out to be, she can't pack up her house make of sticks and leave him. Because despite the way she believes she doesn't need anyone, she needs him and she needs to be loved by him. She needs to know that there is someone out there who is so unconditional and expects no return, because one of these days she might just show him how much it means to her.

She stays put because she refuses to see the ticking time bomb she's turned them both into. Because she doesn't know how to live without those little red numbers on the screen and him standing on the other side of the moat, waiting for her to lower the drawbridge.

She's so brave.

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I tried to use the same structure and topics as in Marshall's chapter (Same paragraphs in the same place, same coward lines after the same paragraphs, ect.)

So, I think I may have something for a grand finale, but I can't make any promises.

And remember, reviews are like visits from television's favorite US Marshals- without a bounty on your head…