[well I say faith is a burden
it's a weight to bear
and hope is hard to hold to]
Andrew Peterson, No More Faith
It takes us fifteen minutes to get back to the SRU, and Spike speaks for none of us.
Boss drives, because he is the only one he trusts to. I think he should have let me - but he needs to feel like he is keeping us safe now, and driving the car we're in is a small way he can do that.
Jules is in the front seat next to him, so that leaves me and Wordy and Spike in the back. And all of us are silent, but it is a different kind of silence for everyone.
I am deadly silent, with fury radiating off me. Today should not have happened, and it is a sick sort of irony that I left Afghanistan only to have my friends blown up here too.
Wordy is silent and sad, defeat and regret lacing his posture. His silence is the healthy kind, the kind that will allow him to grieve properly and then move on. I could almost hate him for that, if there was any room in my heart for more hate.
Spike is in a shocked silence, the kind of silence that really only happens once in a lifetime. It is the silence of the road away from innocence, the silence of horror at what the world can be. I was silent like that once, but that was a long time ago.
Boss is silent because there is nothing to say. He is a negotiator first, and he knows better than any of us when words - any words - will be wasted words. Later he will talk, but for now he will let us have our silence; and I'm grateful for that.
Jules is silent because she thinks she's supposed to be strong. She's spent a lifetime proving herself in a world of men; and the lessons she's pounded into herself for so long are not easily forgotten. Strong people don't lose it in front of their teammates - so she will hold it together until later.
Ed is angry like me, but he isn't here in the car with us. He will be coming to join us for debriefing soon, but for now he is back at the university, taking care of...things. And somehow it's easier to have two members of our team missing from the car, instead of just one. I wonder if it makes it any easier for Spike.
Spike will be the measure of this, the one we look to whenever someone asks how we are coping. It is all of our loss, but it is his loss first - and none of us will ever forget that.
I look at him and he looks back, and I know he doesn't see pity in my eyes. I don't pity him. I envy him, mostly because he made it this far before losing his innocence. I envy him for being able to see the good in the world, even in the world he sees. I envy him for his firm grasp on hope, and his endless optimism.
But right now, the only thing in his eyes is an emptiness, and it scares me. The team needs him to recover from this as the same person he's always been, because if even Spike loses hope, then we're done for. I reach over and pat his shoulder, trying to help him remember Lew's last words. They were words only for Spike, because we all know Spike is the one who carries the hope of the team. Lew had to die, but he gave the last gift he had to Spike - and this is what it was: hope.
Maybe someday he'll understand why Lew gave it to him and no one else; and maybe someday he'll be able to accept it.
But for now, we have lost our hope.