A/N — TW again. This story is hard for me for so, so many reasons. xoxo — kals

x

Chapter 3

x

Danny stared at the skeleton. Chloe was small for her age, a constant source of irritation for the third grader, but she compensated for her small stature by never running out of energy. Every time he visited, Chloe seemed to be doing something new. Soccer, chess club, art class, martial arts, swim team, piano. The list of Chloe's activities was endless. Danny recalled Mandy laughing as she left to take Chloe to her third activity of the day, joking that the child was only happy when her schedule was jam-packed. And now she was dead, all of that joy and zest for life gone, her skeleton all that remained. His gaze fell, and stuck, on the dime size hole in the side of the small skull.

How could Zack have done it?

Searing pain, worse than the bullet he took in Rota, hit Danny square in the chest. Zack had loved his family, his children, more than anything. And yet...he killed them.

Shot his beloved wife and children.

Danny reminded himself that his parents were dead. Zack was infected, Mandy and Evie most probably sick as well. Chances were that they were sicker than Kara was, even, and that there was no medical care available. Zack must have been terrified — imagining what might happen if he and Mandy died first, leaving the girls alone and sick or, worse, to die alone. ZACK had done what he thought was the best thing for his family.

There was no other possibility.

But even as Danny told himself the same things over and over again, justifying his brother's decision the same way that Scott had earlier. But no matter what he told himself about what happened in that house four years ago, Danny couldn't get past one, single fact.

Chloe hadn't been sick.

She couldn't have been. That's how immunity worked. Even as Zack and Mandy and Evie got sicker and sicker, Chloe wouldn't have had a single symptom.

How, then, could Zack have done it?

How could the brother Danny idolized from his earliest moments walk up to his perfectly healthy child, placed his gun to her head, and pulled the trigger? The image that formed in his head was enough for Danny's stomach to heave, and for a split second, he thought that he was actually going to vomit.

Him.

The man who had seen thousands of dead bodies.

Dozens — perhaps hundreds — killed at his own hand.

Finally, his stomach settled, and an eerie calm settled over Danny as he zipped up the bag holding Chloe's remains.

He had officially identified them earlier, an odd experience given that the DNA he previously submitted was far more reliable than his confirming that, yes, Chloe had broken her left wrist and Zack had a compressed spinal disc from an injury during his time in Afghanistan. Mandy was slightly harder to identify, since she shared no DNA with Danny. But even then, it was just a matter of confirming that the skeletons identified as Chloe and Evie were related to both Danny and the adult, female skeleton found with them, who was then identified as Mandy.

Turning, Danny looked at the largest bag, the one that held Zack — or his remains anyway. This was all that was left of his older brother, his oldest friend. From his earliest memories, Zack had been there, right beside Danny. Partners in crime from earliest memory, supporting each other through thick and thin, their bond unbreakable. Zack was the one to join the Marines first, and then to teach Danny the ropes. He never would have made it through basic without Zack's support. And not just with the Marines, but with life. Zack was the one who taught Danny about girls and money, right and wrong — showed Danny how he wanted to live his life. Zack was the man Danny wanted to be.

The man he thought he had become over the past two years since Rota.

Everyone loved Zack. He was fun, but dependable. Cool but kind. Zack was the kind of guy that every guy wanted to be, and every girl wanted to date. But somehow none of it went to his head and, once he started dating Mandy, Zack never looked at another woman. Instead, he got himself discharged, found a solid job back here in Salem, proposed, got married and started reproducing at a speed that Danny found dizzying. He used to tease Zack about it, how easily he fell into domesticated life. Zack never batted an eyelash, though, only saying that Mandy and the girls were his world, so he didn't need anything else. Once Danny met Kara, and they had Frankie, Danny thought that he understood. Zack had found meaning in his life. But this...

This Danny couldn't understand.

Benz had killed himself, true, and Danny had found what peace he could with Benz's decision. But what Zack did was so, so much worse. Because he hadn't just given up for himself, he had also taken away any chance the girls had to survive. Danny pictured the Chandler children, so sick when they arrived with the cure, and now the picture of health.

An image of Chloe at the breakfast table in Mayport, eating cereal next to Frankie hit Danny like a truck. Laughing, teasing. And once again Danny found himself struggling to breathe. Chloe could be here with him right now. Perhaps not here, in the truck, but at the hotel. Waiting to identify the bodies of her parents and sister, preparing to give them the burial that they deserved. Horrible, yes, but Chloe wouldn't have been alone. She and Danny would have stood together, bonded by their loss the same way as Carlton and Cameron or Kara and Debbie were.

Zack took that away from Chloe.

And from him.

Fury erupted, shattering his calm, and Danny barely stopped himself from smashing his fist into the body bag that held the last remnant of his brother.

Had Zack thought about Danny at all?

Had he imagined what it would be like for Danny to arrive home to find everyone dead?

Worse, to find out that Zack was the reason?

Forcing himself to breath, focusing on the air moving in and out of his mouth, Danny tried to think objectively. Zack wouldn't have done something so drastic unless he was desperate, pressed beyond all endurance, to the point where he could see no other path forward. All Danny could hope was that the girls were all asleep, or drugged, and hadn't know what was happening. Because the idea that Evie and Chloe's last memory was of seeing the man they loved and trusted walk towards them with a gun was enough to make Danny want to destroy every last bit of this truck. It would be easier to believe that Zack was too sick to understand what he was doing, that he was even delusional, like the Master Chief had been. Yet even as he tried to convince himself that Zack hadn't acted deliberately, Danny knew that wasn't what happened.

He shot all of them, point-blank.

One shot, one kill. The way Zack was trained.

The way Danny was trained.

An image of Frankie, asleep in his bed, thumb in his mouth flashed through Danny's mind. He rolled to the side, a tiny bit of drool sliding from his mouth as he murmured something about Curious George and wiggled his toes. And then, without warning, the image changed, warping, as Danny saw himself walking towards the bed, pistol in hand.

"No!"

The word was ripped from his throat, yet the vision remained — frozen rather than banished. Swallowing hot bile, Danny backed away from the bag that held his brother, moving towards the door. Needing to get as far away from this hellhole as possible. Zack's actions were those of a desperate man, there was no other explanation for what happened. But if Zack could be pushed to that point...

What did it say about Danny?

Earlier, after the identifications were completed, Jasper had disappeared back to his work and Scott agreed to provide Danny with some private time. When Danny stumbled out of the trailer into the sun, Scott straightened from where he was leaning against a park bench. "Are you okay? I know what it's like. "

Blinking, Danny took an instant to reorient. He needed to focus, block out everything about what just happened in that trailer, as if he was in the field. "Yes." The word was brusque, but it was the best that Danny could manage. "I need to talk to Wilson about the cremations."

"We can head there now." Scott waited until they were walking to speak again. "Principal Dowler came by while you were busy. He would like to see you, if you're up for it."

That unnatural calm was back, and this time Danny recognized it. From Gitmo, just after Frankie died, when he understood that nothing would ever be the same again. Still, Danny reminded himself, he had made it through that, and he could make it through this. He had found a way to accept that Benz took his own life and, somehow, he would figure out a way to accept what Zack had done. But that was for another day — maybe after Kara got home from this cruise. Right now, in this minute, he needed to detach.

Danny found himself nodding. "Sure, it would be good to see him again."