Author's Note: Special thanks to JJ2008, JMS529, RPenelope (welcome! And the plan is to do one every day for a year, but I tried last year, too, for a slightly different daily prompt and ended up falling behind), and Jayne Leigh for the reviews!

QUOTE PROMPT #019 – NORAH/MARY/MARSHALL

"Sometimes you roll the dice on people. That's what we did, all of us, when we signed on this journey. You take what you get. There are too many ways to die out here and the one thing we can't do is kill each other. We're all we have."

She glanced down at her arsenal and frowned when she found that her supply had dwindled. The war was endless and she sat, shivering in the trenches for any sign of the enemy. Her allies had long since given up, surrendered in the face of such conditions. Off to her left, she heard a crunching noise. Quickly grabbing her weapon, she crept out from her hiding place, only to find herself with a face full of snow.

"Mom!" Norah cried out, wiping the snow from her face. "I can't believe you did that!"

"Oh, believe it, Bug," Mary gloated. "There is only one snowball champion in this family and that's me."

Norah sighed. "That's only because Marshall isn't playing."

Mary scoffed. "You think I can't beat Marshall?"

"Nope," Norah challenged, a smirk on her face.

"Well, let me tell you something, I- ARGH!" Mary screamed as she found herself covered with snow.

Norah burst out laughing. "Good job, Marshall!"

He chuckled as he high-fived Norah. "Why, thank you, Norah. I couldn't have done it without your meticulously distraction."

"You two played this?" Mary asked, incredulous.

"Come on, Mom." Norah rolled her eyes. "You don't think I would be that easily fooled, do you?"

Mary put her hand on her hip. "You're suppose to be on my side."

Norah shrugged. "I am... unless we're having a snowball war. Then, me and Marshall are a team."

Mary smiled despite herself. As much as she wanted to be irritated that her daughter had chosen sides against her, it warmed her heart that Norah had such a close relationship with her stepfather. Mary shook her head. "Okay, you two, let's head inside before Brandi and Lyssa drink all of the hot chocolate."

"Whoa!" Marshall exclaimed when Norah whizzed by him, nearly knocking him over.

"You know there's going to be hell to pay for that, right?" Mary told him, throwing her arm around his waist.

Marshall leaned down and kissed her nose. "I'm looking forward to it."

QUOTE PROMPT #020 - MARSHALL/ABIGAIL (FOLLOW-UP TO #013)

"To lose is to win, and he who wins shall lose."

It should have been his happiest moment. He was standing at the end of the aisle, his brothers standing next to him, as his beautiful, young bride marched towards him. His mother stood in the front pew, wiping her eyes. His father was beside her, a small frown upon his face. Abigail's own face contained a wide smile, bright enough to light up the entire room.

Marshall felt no happiness, however. He felt only a pit in his stomach, a hole in his chest. It all boiled down to the one person that wasn't in attendance. Mary. His best friend. His partner. His... Marshall sighed internally. She wasn't any of those things anymore. Their friendship had fallen to the wastelands. He was her boss, not her partner, and he suspected, though she hadn't said anything, that he wouldn't be that for much longer, either.

Somewhere, it had all become too much, holding out hope that he would mean more to her, that they could be more. He had moved on... or so he thought. His first instinct was still to protect his partner, to be there for her in the middle of the night and until that stupid conversation on the balcony, her first instinct had been to call him.

But he had gotten what he wanted, hadn't he? Mary no longer called on him to get involved in her personal life. He was about to marry the woman he loved, settle down, have a family. So, why, then, was his heart clenching? Why were his eyes searching wildly for a sassy blond to come rescue him from the mistake he was about to make?

"Marshall, honey?" Abigail said, grabbing his hand as she reached the end of her destination. "Is everything okay?"

"I don't know."

QUOTE PROMPT #021 – MARY/MARSHALL

"Scars show us where we've been, they do not dictate where we're going"

"What are you doing?" Mary asked, eying her former partner skeptically. She was laying on her bed with her wrapped ankle elevated on a pillow, the result of a particularly rough game of tag football with her daughter and nephew.

Marshall looked up from where he sat at the end of the bed, examining her injury. "I'm healing you."

Mary felt a shudder flow through her at the husky tone in his voice. "And how are you planning on doing that?"

"Just watch." He placed a kiss on one side of her ankle and then the other before moving up her bare legs to her knee. He ran his thumb over the tiny bit of raised skin. "This is where you cut your knee chasing after the boys that threw rocks at Brandi."

Marshall peppered small kisses on the inside of her other leg. "That's the brush burn you got the academy." He raised her blue cotton shirt to reveal the wound from when she was shot by the gang banger. He slowly licked from one end of the scar to the other.

"This-" He had to clear his throat when it cracked. "This is where I nearly lost you."

"Marshall," she whispered, running her hands through his hair.

He caught one of her hands and kissed her palm. "These are the hands that saved my life out in the dusty desert." He repositioned himself so that he straddled her waist. He stretched the neck of her shirt to reveal her shoulder. He placed a kiss there. "This is where you had to have surgery after you saved Norah from being hit by car."

Marshall breathed a kiss over her lips. "These are the lips that kiss me every morning and every night, that kiss away the boo-boos on Norah and Evan."

"And this," he placed a lingering kiss between her breasts, "this is the heart that was broken and battered for years, but that never completely gave up on the possibility of something more." Marshall brushed away a stray piece of hair from her forehead. "How's the ankle?"

"Ankle? What ankle?" Mary replied.

Marshall smiled, lazily. "Then I guess my mission was successful."

She sighed, happily. "Definitely. But I'm afraid that it might hurt a more later. Do you think you'll be up to the challenge of distracting me again?"

"Always."