This is a result of too many O'Briens in my life. First, Tim O'Brien, whose _The Things They Carried_ has a direct reference in here, and second, John O'Brien, whose _Leaving Las Vegas_ has a direct reference in style. No plagiarism is meant by it, though, and I recommend both books to everyone.

More importantly, though, this story is a result of the #plotting crew, particularly Lynxie, Alicia and Duey, who keep encouraging me (especially Lynxie, who encourages in the very successful Sharp Objects Style). Not to mention Persephone Kore, ShaiPeriHawk, Redhawk, and KayJay. It's just that you're all so nice!

I don't think you need to read my previous story, "Ours," in order to understand this one, but I would suggest it. This is more of a companion than a sequel, I hope.

As with everything, this is for Tim.

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death: --
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it: the marble eyelids are not wet;
If it could weep, it could arise and go.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

This is how it happened.

"Mr. Summers, your wife was in excellent health. Even at her age, she was in better health than most active people 15 years younger. That's what makes this even more difficult to understand.

"Most likely, the clot started in her lungs. We aren't sure why or how ¡¦it could have been a genetic anomaly, it could have been the result of age, or even some complication from the stillborn delivery a couple years ago."

"So she had a heart attack."

"Essentially, yes. More specifically, she had a pulmonary embolism which led to a heart attack.

"I'm sure you know ¡¦this was something of a freak occurrence. Usually, when someone throws a clot, it migrates towards the brain and causes a stroke ¡¦but as strong as her blood pressure is and as healthy as her arteries are, it most likely would have been broken up before it got to her brain. The fact that it went to her heart instead ¡¦well, it was just the worst kind of luck."

It's easy to kill someone over the things they say. Even before I had left the morgue, I had that man dead in my hands ¡¦even though I left him alive, I had him dead in a thousand ways.

This is how it happened.

I hear her in her sleep. She isn't awake yet. I'm not either. Now. I feel it in my chest, now, this pain in her sleep. Now. Now. Like swallowing a knife down the wrong pipe. Now.

Harder, faster, breathe and it hurts. She hurts. A lot. Hurts, now, hurts so much she wakes up. Hurts so much she wakes up and wants to scream and kill.

Her legs hurt ¡¦like nails in her blood, hammering down in time with her heart.

Hurts so much I wake up.

I don't know what's wrong. I can't hear her talk -- I can only hear her scream, and only in her head, because she's trying to breathe at the same time as she's trying not to. Hurts so much I want to wake up.

When it happened before, in the hospital, the last time she hurt this much, I couldn't walk. Couldn't lift my head off the floor. They were killing her, the baby was killing her, the baby was dead. And she was alive and the pain was numbing, and then it wasn't at all but I still couldn't lift my head, because the numbness was in our blood, had virused itself through our bodies until after we were drunk on the floor in our den and six years had run away.

But I have to talk, will talk, will ask.

"Dom?!" And everything else doesn't need to be asked. In her huge eyes, anger beyond hatred, and fear beyond anything.

"Dom?!!"

She wants to answer me so badly, to tell me everything, but her mind can't form the words anymore than her mouth can. Her chest hurts -- now -- like someone's stabbing it from the inside. Now.

I take her by the shoulders, thinking in the back of my head that my hands will shake the all of the pain out of her. Her hands grab at my wrists but can't close around them, and she makes shallow, shaky gasps that frustrate her because she's trying so hard to fill lungs that hate her for trying, hurt her for trying.

The sheets tangle around her legs, I try to pull her upright but the pain opens like a door in her chest when I do, so strong I go dizzy and almost drop her. She wants to scream and can't. I want to scream and do.

This is how it happened.

Stories like this don't have beginnings. I read once that you can tell a true war story because it never seems to end. That's because nothing ends, because after the ending ¡¦like someone dying, which seems like an ending ¡¦there's always the reaction to the ending, then the attempt to return to normal, then the failure to do so, then the new kind of normal that develops, then the reminder of it, and it never leaves you, it just becomes a permanent requirement in the telling of your life. But it's not just war stories; its all stories. You can't tell real life in a story. You can't get it all, and you'll never get it all right. You can't make it sound as real as it was.

Her hands, concrete-pale against our quiet sheets, were soft fists, her nails barely touching her palms. So unnatural I knew it couldn't be her, knew she had to move and make me stop seeing things that weren't real. The lay of her hands wasn't something physically possible, and so alien to see in her that I wanted to hit her and make it stop.

My ears rang, loud, loud as church bells in Venice.

Her feet were under the sheets, too, twisted in angles.

All the sweat died. It was so warm and slick, her shoulders hard to hold through the slippery slick of her skin, the thin straps of her nightgown falling over my thumbs and tangling me. But the warm was dying, and her sweat was gone.

Her eyes weren't closed, but they weren't open like open eyes are. It's almost like someone cut them part way open, and the wound won't let them close, and the glass violet of her pupils glared at nothing, there's no distance.

I could hear my own horrible breathing. My own in-out, in-out that took too long and made too much noise. Took up too much of the room, filled all of the silence with my dead breathing.

I stood up. The bed jumped back into shape, free of my weight, and bore her empty weight without burden. She could lay there forever and the bed would only accept her, mold itself around her and cradle her.

Her head was tipped back a little, held against the pillow so I could see into the slit of those violet eyes. Domino has never been a woman of ambivalence. She hated or loved, she killed or adored. There wasn't a meditative middle for her to sit in, and that was the last thing ¡¦the last proof that she wasn't there, in those unhating, unloving eyes.

The screaming in my head, the tolling bells, stopped.

I stopped. Everything. Breathing. I stopped my own heart, heard the blood slush to a halt in my veins, and I made the world dead-silent for me. For her.

This is how it happened.

"Babe, turn out the light."

"Bite me."

"Please?"

"Bite me."

"Not fair, babe. ¡¦ three a.m."

"Hmm....bite me."

"Some of us like to get up early, you know."

"...bite me."

"Light. Out. So I can sleep."

"Nate, shut the fuck up. I'm reading."

"No you're not."

"Then what am I doing, pretending?"

"Yeah. Cuz you don't want to sleep. Huh."

"....not tired."

"Yeah right. Making me tired you're so tired. Making me want to sleep with the light off."

"Maybe I can't sleep."

"Bullshit. Turn out the light, Dom, you're tired and I'm tired and now I'm grumpy. Ow!"

"Deserved it, prick."

"Bitchier than usual, huh. Ow!"

"Hell, Dom, that flonqing hurt! What's the matter with you?"

"Dom?"

"Dom?"

"Bite me, asshole."

Click.

This is how it happened.

She's dying. I can hear her. The small leftover piece of my brain that isn't screaming is shouting orders, and I follow, I'm a good soldier and so is she.

I ask her if her arms hurt, if she feels sick, and I feel her "no" rather than hear it. The back of my head is working, and the phone is dialing. I don't know what I tell her but the dispatcher is hysterical at me by the time I finish and drop the phone. I have Dom in my arms, dragging her upright as she fights me because the stabbing in her left side, below her heart, gets meaner the more she moves, until it turns into lightning and shoots right through us both, because her shields are blown and I can feel everything.

I almost black out, but that would mean dropping her and I won't drop her. I don't drop her; I'm suddenly awake like just after falling in water, and holding onto her tight, holding her bare arms in my hands and squeezing them purple, and she's hissing now, hissing fast.

She wants to fall. She wants to fall to her left, she wants to drop beneath the pain and not feel it anymore. I don't let her.

"Dom, breathe. Breathe, breathe ¡¦

She wants to fight what she can see, and she's fighting herself by breathing.

This is how it happened.

And of course, I should have known. I knew, all my senses told me, but I listened to her stubbornness instead. I knew in the back of my head, but worry that seemed like looking for trouble and I don't look for that anymore, at least not always.

I knew, and I know the exact moment I knew, or at least the exact moment I should have known. We were running that morning, about ten strides faster than a jog, in the woods behind our house.

Dom runs on her toes. Always has. She's got fast muscle tissue ¡¦made for speed, quick stops and starts, bursts of power. She forces herself into endurance, makes a duty out of 10 mile runs to keep her physical condition balanced. I'm too big to be a comfortable long distance runner, but I can put up with it more happily than she can ¡¦and she puts up with it pretty well, considering how much she truly hates it. But she does it and doesn't ever complain, and I don't think hating it has been a conscious thought to her in the last 20 years, just a subconscious truth.

Its hard to run on your toes. Takes up a lot of energy over a long distance, and those calves can spasm out in shock after a while. But Dom won't run any other way than always on her toes, so the laces of her Nikes would make this flick-jump motion while mine just flopped.

So we ran, me on heels, her on toes. It does this thing to her calves, makes the muscles gather up and stand out in a way that I will see forever. I'm in love with her calves.

We'd hit just about the 7 mile mark, this big sagging tree with a faded lightning scar in it. The sun was low in the cold sky, and our breath made whiter clouds than when we started. I don't mind cold, and the hit of it in my lungs, that hot echo in your chest of cold air, invigorated me. I wanted to run harder, faster, to chase and catch her, slip my hands around her waist and hoist her in the air while she swore at me and slapped my shoulders, or maybe laughed at me and kissed my chin. The trees made a shadowy canopy over us, so the grey above was just a faded background behind autumn.

Dom wore gloves, these purple pieces of thinsulate felt. She'd dressed warmer than usual ¡¦she's like me, happy in the cold, and I thought maybe she was just finally starting to feel age, maybe just a little. In the summer, she wears these little black sports bra things that drive me crazy. But she was wearing bulkier stuff, a real sweatshirt, and she looked incredibly cute. Dom's hard to catch looking cute ¡¦she tries deliberately not to and generally succeeds ¡¦and she hates being called it. But she looked cute that morning, and I said so.

I told you she's not an ambivalent woman. She doesn't put things off, avoid inevitabilities, ignore something in order to have a smoother ride for the moment. "Cute" either gets me a surly grin, or a knock on the jaw, or my personal favorite, "bite me, Summers, and shove ¡¦ute' up your ass," which usually was followed by a knock down fight that ended in my favorite way to end a fight with Dom.

I slowed and looped her around the waist, pulling her into my hip and stopping us.

"Let go, Nate," she said, on the tired end of an angry sigh.

"Dom?"

She pushed off, taking advantage of my surprise to slip free, and kept running, body held in a tight, determined way that looked funny on her.

And she wasn't on her toes as she ran away.

I knew that something was wrong.

This is how it happened.

When you talk about the dead, about dead things, talk with someone who knows. People who don't know can't talk about the dead. They expect death to be a jump from alive and vital to cold and empty. Not even a jump; that implies movement, when they expect it to be a snap ¡¦once one way, now the other, a momentary switch that has no levels or gradation.

It isn't like that. It's a walk. It takes time, it means movement and change over a period of time.

The easiest way to see it is in terms of heat.

She was warm for a long time.

Unconscious on the floor, I don't know what wakes me up. I don't know how long it had been but I don't think about it, don't ask myself it. I fight to my knees and my arms shake as if I'd never lifted myself up before.

I ¡¦ beside the bed, cheek on the carpet. I almost fall again while blood runs from my nose, from when our link busted and tore me open.

I finally get to my knees so I can see her. I put my arm under her back and haul her to the floor with me. The back of her hand slides along the bed and then knocks unceremoniously on the nightstand before bouncing on the carpet beside me, falling palm up. It's a soft fist again.

I can't say her name. I can't open my eyes. I can't do anything but feel her warm body in my grasp. My right hand is pressed against her back, gripping her to my chest, and it doesn't fight me in any way. I can feel the ridge of her shoulderblade under my palm. My left arm is caught around her waist, so the tarsal bone of my thumb holds her just under her ribcage, and the weight of her is so much more than ever.

My body is absorbing her heat, taking it in so I feel like burning.

I should wish for tears. I should wish for screaming, for roaring, for my heart to explode into light and stop the world. I should wish for time to turn like a fast bend in traffic, go left and go off two wheels, flip and crash when gravity wins, so I can change all this.

But I can't do anything.

And she looks ugly while she's dead, ugly in a way that would strip all meanings of ugly ¡¦fat, mutilated, disproportioned, wrinkled, skinny, sallow, cruel, sick ¡¦out of the word and make ugly mean dead.

Better yet, don't talk about the dead to anyone, because no one can know.

This is how it happened.

We got married nine years ago. We got married on February 6th. It was snowing when she took my hand and held it between us. There was no wind, just that soft quiet of falling snow. I married her with heavy boots on, and she had a brown fur-lined parka with the hood hanging down her back, so the snow could gently pat her head with crumbles of white.

No one was there, just us.

She grinned at me, that under-her-eyes grin that betrays all of her mischief, and told me that she knew the minute she met me that she was either going to fall in love with me or kill me, and at the time, she was betting on killing, and that the only reason this wedding was happening was because she hadn't gotten around to killing me yet.

She put the ring on my finger, and brought my hand to her lips to kiss it.

I told her that I loved her enough to keep her from killing me for the rest of our lives, so she would have to stay in love with me forever.

I put the ring on her finger, and then took both her hands and brought them to my mouth, and kissed each one, and blew on them until they were warm again.

I carried her through a threshold of trees. She felt light and I laughed, bouncing her in my arms until she laughed too and jumped out of my grip.

Sometimes, it feels like she was always getting free of me, and I never knew quite how to hold on to her.

She turned back to me, grinning, and grabbed me by the arm, swinging me into her embrace and kissing me while the snow fell around us.

So it's okay when she gets free of me, because she'll always come back, and being the Chosen One is nothing to that.

This is how it happened.

Jean and Scott flanked me in the front yard. They'd pretty much hauled me out of the living room, while EMS took care of Dom.

They spoke most likely; I don't remember what was said.

There were flashing lights, most likely; I can't see them.

There was a gurney, body bag, ambulance personnel, and maybe even a coroner. Most likely.

It would be the normal course of action.

If someone could look at me with my own eyes, they'd be impressed that I stood up, stayed there, didn't sway or fall or walk or cry. I know they would. I think my parents were.

Jean was probably wet-cheeked with tears.

Scott was probably dying to do something, to comfort me.

The world was in the dark of 3 a.m.

This is how it happened.

"Breathe!" That is the last time I speak in English. The rest is Askani, because I'm praying.

Her violet eyes find and hold on to mine; we collapsed on the bed, facing each other, my head still ringing with the shot of pain I'd felt in her. Her breath is hitching, these caught motions that shake her whole body not out of strength but out of pain.

I'm counting the pain with her, counting in words instead of numbers. Searing. Hot. Now. Now. Now. Now. Stabbing. Hot. Now. Here. Here. Here. Now. Now. I'm clutching her hand, she's trying to clutch mine.

Her eyes roll up.

I'm holding her face now, screaming, and I throw us upright.

In my head, her voiceless voice: "Nate!" And something beyond white blinding me ¡¦and then black, and I can see the room again.

I'm holding her under her arms.

Her neck suddenly loses its power, and her head wobbles and finally drops back, hanging to the side. In one movement, like buckling under weight, her shoulders slump forward, which kicks her head forward so her crown bumps my chin and her lower back hunches out.

I shove my mouth over hers, and force all of the air I will ever have into her lungs.

It doesn't come back out. I keep doing it anyway.

Her hands curl into soft fists.

The link snaps ¡¦like tight chains snapping, this loud rumble of sound ¡¦and I am on fire in my head.

I know I am dead ¡¦and I know I am wishing ¡¦and I know I am beyond wishing ¡¦and I know that a thousand years from now I will wake up with tan carpet under my face, turning colors with my blood.

And I think, this isn't happening. This isn't how it happens.