"I'm so sorry..." Marcus muttered, not looking at Rosie.

The pair had moved to the downstairs living room at Marcus's insistence and Rosie noted that he had caved to her invitation to sit next to her on the couch instead of sitting in his recliner. But, even still, he was as far away from her as possible and he wasn't looking at her, instead keeping his face buried in his hands.

He was a disheveled mess; obviously somewhat drunk, his clothes were damp with sweat from the exertion he had just put himself under. It was difficult for her to tell from the distance he was at, but it sounded like he was using some sort of implement to destroy part of the next door house, the one he had assured her that there was nothing of any use in.

The fact that this was very interesting behavior was an observation that Rosie would have consciously made even just a few days ago, but now all she was thinking about was her concern for him.

"It's fine," Rosie said, trying to sound as reassuring as possible.

"But it's not," Marcus looked up at her. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yes." Rosie massaged her throat for effect, which she had remembered to contuse slightly to replicate slight bruising. "You didn't hurt me. I think you thought you choked me harder than you actually did. I'm completely fine."

"I hope so," Marcus said, seemingly unconvinced. "It could have been a lot worse."

Rosie cocked her head quizzically, wondering if this was leading up to something.

It turned out, it was.

Breathing in and out deeply, Marcus looked down at the floor. "My, um, former fiance... I did this to her... I've had nightmares my whole life. They got worse after I enlisted and started seeing combat. But it was nothing uncontrollable until after the Battle of Honolulu."

Marcus sighed. "After I woke up in the hospital two weeks after the battle that's when they got incredibly bad. I didn't realize how much so, at first... Elizabeth... Liz... We had been together for nearly two years and she just wanted to be there for me. She refused to leave and was committed that I would recover and we would be fine. I had, uh, woken up and attacked her a couple of times over the next few weeks, after I was discharged from the hospital and elected to leave the Air Force. She was always able to snap me out of it before I actually hurt her. She even still refused to allow me to sleep somewhere else. But finally, there was a night where she couldn't snap me out of it..."

Marcus trailed off for a long moment and Rosie was afraid she would have to prompt him further or that he wouldn't continue.

But he did.

"I nearly killed her," he said, softly. "She was in a coma for two days and in the hospital for over a week. First thing she said to me when she woke up was that we'd work it out; that we'd be okay. She didn't press charges and people knew exactly what was going on. I wasn't in any trouble, once she was able to explain it to everyone. But that was the line for me; I'd finally crossed it. So, I left her. I left everything. I took Governor Inouye up on his offer to allow me to live wherever I wanted and I chose here."

Marcus glanced at her. Tears had formed on the edges of his eyes. "And I just did the same thing to you that I did to Liz... I wanted to be more specific when I warned you about me, but I didn't know how to tell you..."

The sun was setting now; the dying light of day was a warm yellow as it played across his face. Rosie was, as she often was of late, transfixed by him.

"Marcus, I..." she whispered, not able to find more words.

"I'm surprised you're even still here." Marcus said, glancing again at her. "I didn't think you'd stick around after that."

"I'm fine," Rosie said again, her voice cracking a little with the overflow of emotion she was feeling, many of the specifics of which were utterly indecipherable to her.

"So," Marcus continued, as if he hadn't heard her. "Tomorrow I'm taking you home. I'm going to call the Governor tonight and get his permission to violate the lockdown. Given the situation, I'm sure he'll give me a pass to do so."

"But I don't want-"

"I don't care what you want," Marcus cut her off firmly. "I should have seen this coming. I tried to keep you from it, but this is just who I am."

"I don't believe that at all!" Rosie exclaimed. "You're a good person! Despite everything that's happened to you, you still always do the right thing."

"If that were the case," Marcus responded sadly, "I would have taken you home the night you got here. I don't even know why I let you convince me to let you stay."

"I may know why," Rosie said, meeting his eyes with hers.

"Well, do illuminate me," Marcus sighed.

"Because you're lonely. Living out here all by yourself? Not having anything to do with anyone? Even if you don't admit it to anyone or even yourself, I think you are."

Before Marcus could begin to protest, Rosie kept speaking.

"There's nothing wrong with feeling lonely!" she said. Then, with more truth than even she realized, she added quietly, "I'm lonely, too."

"Even if I were, it doesn't matter," Marcus replied. "Out here... With everything I've done, with who I am... This is where I belong."

Moving without even realizing it for a few moments, Rosie slid across the couch until she was nearly touching him. Marcus eyed her incredibly warily and she could tell he was contemplating getting up.

"Please don't move," she whispered, begging him. "Please... Everything's fine. I'm okay. I'm not mad at you. I think I understand what's going on and what you're going through."

"I... wouldn't bet on it," Marcus muttered, trying to scoot farther down the couch, though since he had started as far to his side of it (and away from her) as possible, he didn't move much. "It's nice of you to say, but..."

Rosie raised her right hand and slowly extended it towards him. She wasn't even consciously doing anything anymore; she was allowing her body to determine her actions. At that moment she had reached a complete, calm serenity. For this moment, she didn't worry about anything and didn't think about anything save for what her subconscious was telling her it wanted. She didn't understand this feeling at all, but maybe if she followed its instruction, she ultimately would.

He flinched a little as her hand touched his cheek, but he stopped moving and she raised her other hand and brought it to his other cheek and cupped his face, gently turning his head towards her.

"What are you doing...?" he whispered, his eyes alight with panic.

She thought about this for a few moments, before slowly pulling him towards her and raising her chin in order to align her lips with his.

"I'm doing what I want to, apparently," she stated, smiling a little.

"This is very, very bad idea."

"I don't care what you think."

His skin felt so warm on her hands and it almost felt as if small electrical pulses were radiating off of him. She had no idea the feeling she was about to have, but she looked forward to it with barely contained excitement. Her lips almost touched his and she almost began shutting down all unneeded systems in order to fully analyze and enjoy this moment, but then something entered the very edge of her currently assigned scanning range.

She froze and processed what she was reading for a quick moment.

"There are people here," she said.

"Wait, what?" Marcus asked, befuddled, looking to his front door, which was locked as it always was.

She couldn't blame him for being confused. At one moment, she was initiating physical intimacy of some sort with him and the next she was warning him of something that a human wouldn't likely be able to notice. Marcus, as fine an example of situational awareness she had ever seen among humans hadn't noticed, for instance.

But it was true; she was now detecting at least seven humans entering his property at various places.

This observation had, of course, slipped out of her mouth before she had been able to think it through properly, but there was something about these humans that had differed from the ones from the military who had been present the other day. No, these humans were trying to hide their presence to the best of their ability.

Now how was she going to tell him this without breaking her most important rule?

"Rosie, what are you talking about?" Marcus pressed, slowly and carefully removing her hands from his face.

"There are people out there," she said. "I can't tell who, exactly, but they're trying to be stealthy."

Marcus just stared at her. "Um, okay..."

The sun had just dipped behind the horizon and the world of Oahu had entered twilight. There were no lights on in the house, currently, except for the one in the kitchen and Rosie took this as a good thing.

"Rosie...?" Marcus said.

"You have to trust me," she said firmly. "You have to."

Maybe her eyes perfectly conveyed the sudden urgency she was feeling, but at any rate, after a few moments of staring at her with a look of confusion, Marcus got up from the couch and he took a knee down next to it and pulled forth a long firearm from under it that Rosie hadn't known was there.

Ratcheting the action authoritatively, Marcus stood up and turned to her, holding the firearm in his right hand and his cane in his left, which he leaned on.

"Okay," he said with a growl of readiness. "I'm not about taking risks. Let's go. Quietly."

And with that he led the way upstairs, steering well clear of the kitchen and the light emanating from it. They ended up in his bedroom and Marcus set the firearm on the bed and pulled from his pocket the zippered pouch that contained the pieces of his mobile phone, which he began to assemble.

"I've been hit here before," he muttered to her as he did so, gesturing for her to take a seat on the bed, next to the firearm. "Just don't touch that."

He slapped the battery into place in the phone. "Yeah, if it's a visiting patrol, they're in no way following protocol, especially in a low light situation."

"Who do you think it is?" Rosie asked. Her scans now indicated that there were nine of them and they were setting up a perimeter around the house.

"I don't think it's anyone," Marcus replied, turning the phone on. "But suddenly I have a bad feeling and that's kept me alive on more than one occasion. An over abundance of caution has never steered me wrong."

By now Rosie was convinced it wasn't the military. Her calculations honed in on the thing that made the most sense to her.

Whoever they were, they were here for Marcus.

There was no way that they could have known she was of the Fog. She hadn't even gone near a human populace and even though she had lived in the middle of sprawling metropolises on a multitude of occasions, no one had ever figured out that she wasn't human.

They didn't know what she was. She wasn't part of the equation here; Marcus was.

"There are ten of them out there," she said, throwing all caution the the wind. "I don't think they're here for anything good."

Marcus just stared at her for a moment, before quickly dialing the phone number that she recognized from the key tones as the one he had called several times before during her stay.

The phone was picked up on the other end and Rosie could hear the speaker perfectly. It was a woman who sounded like she was in her late twenties.

"Hickam Field Security Forces, Sergeant Jimenez speaking."

"Sergeant Jimenez," Marcus stated. "It's Marcus Hardy."

"Senior Master Sergeant Hardy!" Jimenez exclaimed excitedly. "How are you, sir?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Hey, do you have any patrols on Iroquois Point?"

It took a moment for her to reply. "No sir, not currently."

Suddenly a different sort of fear made itself known to Rosie. She must have been projecting this perfectly with her face because when Marcus looked up at her again, he froze and studied her intently.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," he said into the phone. "You'd better send a couple vehicles out here, please."

"Sir...? May I ask why?"

"What do you mean why, Jimenez? Because I just fucking asked you to. Nicely, I might add."

"What's the issue, sir?" Jimenez asked, obviously trying to be amicable, but still a little confused nonetheless.

"My friend thinks she saw someone on the property. Send at least two patrols out here. If it's nothing, I'll make everyone coffee and have them bring you a cup."

"But, sir-"

"I know the goddamn regulations," Marcus snapped. "In situations involving me and this location I helped write them. I can ask for a patrol whenever I want for any reason I want and I don't even have to explain it. Just because I've never done so without shooting people first doesn't mean I can't. Two or three vehicles, at least a dozen personnel. Now."

"Yes, sir." Jimenez said, obviously relieved that if this was a mistake of some kind, she wouldn't be on the hook for it.

Marcus waited while Jimenez routed a patrol to their location over what sounded over the phone like a radio.

"Twenty minutes," she reported. "No one'e even near you; that's the best we can do."

"It'll have to work," Marcus muttered. "Let them know we may have unidentified targets here and to identify themselves clearly when they arrive. Oh, and Jimenez? This is Rosie. Rosie, this is Staff Sergeant Jimenez. She's a friend of mine. Stay on the line with her until the patrol gets here."

With that, Marcus pressed his phone into Rosie's small hands and staggered over to the closet where he opened it, revealing the cache of weapons that she had discovered during her stay, but had wisely left alone.

He had just lied to Sergeant Jimenez, Rosie realized. She hadn't seen anyone, but that was how he had phrased it.

Why would he do that?

Marcus had had this feeling on more occasions than he cared to remember.

It was the feeling of impending dread in the pit of his stomach that was all too familiar to him. And it was also almost never wrong. Something bad was about to go down.

He had been in enough combat and had seen enough shit to know when to trust his gut. Marcus briefly wondered on how this young, tiny, eccentric girl sitting on his bed making awkward attempts at small talk with someone she had never met could have possibly known if anyone was nearby.

But really, it didn't matter.

For whatever reason, her telling him this and the tone in her voice when she had, had been enough to trigger the gut feeling and Marcus was and had always a been a strong proponent of the mantra 'better safe than sorry'.

It didn't matter if she had no proof. It didn't matter if she was completely full of shit. It didn't even matter if she was insane. Rosie was seemingly convinced of what she had said and this had been enough to put Marcus directly into the combat ready mindset.

This was just the way he was programmed.

Moments after he pulled the closet door open, with Rosie hopefully distracted by Sergeant Jimenez and with his back turned to her, Marcus pulled a small silver pill case from one of his many pockets.

He popped it open revealing the small white pills he scarcely ever took, given the amount of alcohol he consumed on a regular basis.

Then, he took ten times the recommended dose of the Tramadol narcotic pain medication he had been issued to deal with particularly bad flair-ups of pain in back and left leg. He wasn't supposed to mix them with alcohol, but at the moment, he didn't really care. He was already in more pain than usual based on the fact that he had just destroyed a home office about an hour previously and he noted that he was probably dehydrated as well.

This wasn't going to be fun.

Dry swallowing the bitter pills, Marcus discreetly returned the case to his pocket.

"Marcus?" Rosie said, her voice straining a little as she tried to speak quietly.

He turned to face her and was again shocked by how genuinely frightened she seemed. If she was making this up, she was entirely convincing. Marcus had seen and experienced fear many, many times and this was the real thing. If whatever she was thinking was entirely made up, then maybe he had been right about some of his suspicions on her state of mind.

Maybe she really was crazy.

But it didn't matter. Whatever was happening, whatever was causing this feeling of dread within him, was something that he simply couldn't ignore. He had long since learned that one.

"What is it?" he asked.

Covering the phone with her hand, Rosie looked at him in panic. "There are eleven of them now."

"Uh huh," Marcus said, trying to remain as nonchalant in his voice and mannerisms as possible, in an attempt to keep her calm. Of course, that would be nearly impossible given what he was about to do.

The sun had set a little while ago and there was very little light available to him, so Marcus pulled his small flashlight from his belt holster for it and set it up so it would illuminate his closet and nothing else. The curtains to the upper bedroom deck were drawn and the only light currently on in the house was in the kitchen. If there was someone out there, they wouldn't have a very good idea where he and Rosie were.

Ignoring his pain, Marcus threw on his armored vest, double checking to make sure the metal plates were in place on his back and chest. Next, he pulled the Glock 17 from it's holster, ratcheted a round into the chamber and ejected the seventeen round, standard magazine, reloading it with a thirty-three round one from his closet. He returned the pistol to its holster and secured the holding strap firmly to account for the extra weight and balance difference of the larger magazine. Next, he pulled forth the M4 carbine, chambered a round from the huge one hundred round magazine and flipped the safety on, before throwing it over his shoulder, using the weapon's sling. Then, he grabbed the two hand grenades he likely wasn't supposed to have and affixed them to his vest. He glanced for a moment at his prized .338 Lapua rifle, but knew it would do him little good in a close quarters fight.

Marcus did a gear check. On the vest he had four extra thirty round magazines for the M4 and two extra seventeen round ones for the Glock. He tightened the vest and all of the gear straps on it, before limping to the bed and picking up the Mossberg 500 shotgun.

The shotgun had six shells loaded in it and six more on a side saddle mounted on the firearm's receiver, before Marcus pulled one off and loaded it into the weapon. He briefly considered grabbing more shells, but realized if he had to fire twelve shells from his shotgun, the fight was going to go on long enough where having and using the M4 would be preferable.

Rosie watched him do all this with a look of pure fear and that unnerved him more than anything, because now he wasn't certain what she was afraid of.

She may have been afraid of whomever may have been outside.

It was just as likely she was afraid of him.

Rosie had only paid the minimum amount of attention to Sergeant Jimenez; just enough to keep the conversation going.

Marcus had just picked up the firearm from on the bed next to her and checked it before putting it back down and kneeling in front of her.

"Here," he said, pulling out the small silver pistol he always carried, cocking the hammer and extending it to her.

"Marcus-"

"Have you ever fired a gun?" he asked.

"No..."

"Well, it's easy. You just point it at what you want to not be alive anymore and pull the trigger."

"I don't-"

"I don't care," he snapped pressing the pistol into her hand. "The safety's off and the hammer's back, so it's a light trigger pull. Don't even touch the trigger unless you intend to fire and keep your hand and fingers below the line of the slide right here, or it'll bite the hell out of you when you do. Keep it pointed away from you at all times. And if you have to fire, be aware that it'll be loud and bright, given the lighting conditions, so try to be prepared for that and not be startled."

"Marcus..." Rosie said, trailing off. Sergeant Jimenez was on the phone, asking if they were okay, but neither her nor Marcus paid any attention to the exasperated woman.

"It's okay," Marcus said, with a small smile. "If it's nothing, it's nothing. I haven't had a good combat training exercise in forever, anyway."

"There are twelve of them now," Rosie whispered, so Sergeant Jimenez wouldn't hear her, a tear trailing down her cheek. "And they've started moving closer to the house."

"Okay," Marcus nodded, though she couldn't tell if he fully believed her or not. "If that's true, I'd better get set up. Remember, finger off the trigger unless you have to fire. Don't let the slide bite you and pretty please don't shoot me or anyone who looks like they're in the Air Force, all right? If it's not me or them, it's weapons free. If it's anyone else, light them the fuck up."

Marcus sighed. "Now, into the closet with you."

With that, Marcus basically grabbed her and escorted her to the closet, before helping her inside. He turned the flashlight off and returned it to his belt before he began closing the door.

"Don't go!" Rosie blurted out. She was crying now; tears were streaming down both of her cheeks. "Please... Stay here..."

"If I do that and what you're telling me is true, then we've lost the initiative," Marcus replied gravely. "I can't allow that to happen."

He began closing the door and it was almost shut before Rosie could find more words.

"Why are you doing this?"

Marcus froze, the closet door only open about an inch. He likely couldn't see her, but she could see him perfectly, even through the darkness and her tears.

"Because," he said simply. "It's what's right."

Then the door was closed and he was gone, leaving Rosie in the darkness with an increasingly worried sounding Sergeant Jimenez on the phone in her left hand and an armed pistol in her right. In less than a minute, an explosion sounded from below, followed by gunfire and Rosie was faced with an inescapable choice, one that she had never been confronted with before.

It would be nearly another seven minutes of utter agony before she made her choice.

This choice would be in direct violation of every order she had ever been given and every protocol she had ever followed.

But until then, for those seven eternities, Rosie was in hell.

Author's Note:

Well, it looks like Film School is going to consume my life. So, updates for this story will hopefully be every Friday, or possibly Saturday if I forget to on Friday. I should be able to crank out at least one chapter a week...

I Had This Thing, by Röyksopp