Marshall, I need you to remove the phrase "she's my partner" from your arsenal. I know she's your partner…

Look, Mary and I –

I get it. You know what? I don't get it. I don't even think you do, not really, and until you do, until you figure this out, I think we need to put any appointments with ministers, any anything with ministers, on hold.

If you're having a baby, trust me, we're having a baby.

Like many things, an oreo, over time, becomes the very best version of itself.

(Wikiquote In_Plain_Sight 5/31/12)

Marshall hiked slowly up the gravel path to the house for what might as well be the last time. Best to get as much of the mess over with as possible in one twenty-four hour period.

The Albuquerque heat was sweltering. He could see Abby out front, oversized gardening gloves on. She looked perky and adorable as ever, the work bringing out a light flush in her cheeks. His stomach hated him. He had to agree with his stomach. She came down to greet him as he approached. When she reached to throw her arms around his neck and kiss his cheek, he shied backward.

"What's the matter?" she asked, full of worry, "Did something go badly wrong at the office? I just woke up and you were gone. No text from you, no nothing."

"I wasn't at the office last night", said Marshall honestly. "I was at Mary's. She called about two a.m." Abigail's face clouded with wariness.

"I thought she was supposed to be in Denver…" Marshall couldn't help but hate the way she said "supposed to be". Mary wasn't supposed to be anywhere but safe in his arms. Then again, he wasn't supposed to be breaking Abigail's heart. But nevertheless, here he was.

"She wanted to see me." He was unable to make his voice anything but flat, and it was starting to piss Abby off. That was good, that was healthy. Let her get good and angry at him. Let her blame him for everything, and go easy on herself. She deserved so much better than this. Truly, she did.

"She didn't come all the way back from Denver just to talk to you in the middle of the night…"

"Actually, Abby, that's exactly what she did", breathed Marshall. Abigail yanked off the gloves and threw them down, slammed her hands on her hips.

"Marshall Mann, when the hell are you going to man up and say what you mean and mean what you say?" she shouted. Sooner than you know, and entirely too late, thought Marshall.

"Fair enough", said Marshall through gritted teeth, "Here it is: I've decided that Mary is the woman I want to be with. I've decided that asking you to marry me was a mistake." There. He couldn't be any more bluntly cold than that. Abigail's lips pursed, her eyes glittered with hurt and indignation. She coiled like a snake preparing to strike.

"Did you spend all night there?" she spat. What was he supposed to say to that?

"Yes."

"Did you sleep with her?" A long silence. "Did you FUCK her?"

"Yes."

He saw the blow coming, but he did nothing to move himself out of harm's way. Abigail held nothing back. With a closed fist, she might have broken his jaw. With an open hand, it just stung like a bitch.

"What was it, Marshall? Was I not messy enough for you? Because you know she's a total fucking mess…!"

Marshall contemplated the gravel. To say he didn't like himself very much right now was a grand understatement. But he wasn't going to allow that fact to enable Abby to disconnect him from the truth. Not owning his own nature was the source of all this hurt in the first place.

"Sometimes…" said Marshall slowly, "messy is what a person needs…"

"Then you should be the most content man on the face of the planet, because you sure hit the mother-load!" snarled Abby. "She won't be true to you, Marshall, you do realize that? Mary can only love a bad-boy asshole – or hadn't you noticed?"

"Maybe what we all just found out is that I am more of a bad-boy asshole than any of us had ever realized before…" suggested Marshall, quietly, slowly, with resolution and self-loathing in equal measure.

"Well, I hope you two are very happy together", Abby boiled, "When you run out of conversation, you can talk about how fucked up you both are…"

She dragged his ring off her finger and hurled it with stunning accuracy. It felt like a wasp sting where it struck his cheek on top of her reddening slap mark. Instinctively, he nimbly caught it with one hand as it bounced down his front, before it could get lost in the gravel. He slipped it into his jacket pocket.

There was nothing more to say to Abigail. Hopefully he had done all the damage he could do here. He turned his back to her and slunk off down the hill to his car.

Brandi was the first person Marshall encountered when he stepped back into Mary's house, soul-weary in his bones.

"What did you do to her? She's been singing to the baby all afternoon. Mary doesn't sing. Mary doesn't even let other people sing."

Marshall met her gaze, and Brandi got a rare glimpse into the fathomless depths behind his eyes.

"I loved her", said Marshall simply. "You should try it sometime."

He pushed further into the house, leaving a frozen Brandi behind him.

Mary was sitting on the back porch bathed in late afternoon light, alone except for Nora cradled in her arms, and she was indeed singing.

"… And if that mocking bird won't sing, Momma's gonna buy you a diamond ring. And if that diamond ring won't shine…"

Marshall slipped silently out of the back door and stood a long time out of sight, enjoying the opportunity to observe the two of them unaware.

Mary glowed. That was the only word for it. For the first time that Marshall had seen since Nora was born, Mary really looked like a mother. Not an overworked, underpaid babysitter, not a secret service agent on high security detail. A mother, overflowing with warmth and affection, pouring this easy love down onto her little one, Nora glowing it all back to her tenfold over, the picture of maternal bliss.

And Marshall understood, better than anyone else ever could, that this was for one simple reason: she just plain felt safe enough that, finally, she could afford to let her emotions flow. Mary didn't need to change the way she felt about life, the universe, and everything. She just needed to be safe enough that she could feel.

He had taken her, and taken her hard. Not so much for the pleasure of it, as to make her belong to him – a belonging that was inherently pleasurable far beyond merely the carnal. He had wanted her, grabbed her, lusted her into submission, until her fears of being unwanted could not stand in the face of the fierceness of his desire, of his committed body-and-spirit need of her.

He had had to make that leap of faith, blaze a trail for her to follow. And now he reaped his reward for his courage, watching her secretly in the evening light, memorizing the new shape of her features, softened now by tenderness. Mary, as he'd always imagined her, made flesh and blood before his eyes…

He walked over and knelt beside her, and in her unguarded-ness she lit up with happy surprise at the sight of him.

"Whoa… nice hand print!" She knew where he'd just come back from – there were no prizes for guessing who had put that on Marshall's face. "Geez – who knew you could pack so much angry into such a small package…"

"Well", said Marshall softly, "I did a pretty good job of cramming it in there." Mary reached over and stroked around the outline of the hand-shaped red welt on Marshall's face, with such unbearable delicate tenderness that his stomach somersaulted and his vision blurred. "Oh, Mary…" he whispered breathlessly. Her affection was like a deluge on a nine year drought…

Marshall cleared his throat to be able to speak more clearly. "I'm going to follow you to Denver."

"Huh?"

"I actually know a guy who's been wanting to swap assignments for a couple years now… of course, I would never go as long as you were here… but now it works out perfectly…"

"Wait, what do you mean 'perfectly'? Marshall, you can't transfer, you'll lose your promotion to branch chief. You'd be back to inspector."

"I can't stay in Albuquerque. We can't stay Albuquerque. Abigail shouldn't have to deal with us any more than she already has. And I don't want to force her to be the one to move."

"Do you have any clue how miniscule my apartment is?"

"We'll get a house", said Marshall quickly, nonchalantly, as if WITSEC inspectors moved in together every day, "And, Mary… it means we will be partners again."

"Um, is that a conflict of interest? Won't someone get their knickers in a twist worrying about whether you'll be able to deal with placing me in jeopardy and, you know, vice versa?"

"Mary, seeing you in harm's way is no more difficult today than it has been for years now… That's how it's always been, for me… We've got the track record to prove that we can perform under those conditions…"

Mary nodded slowly, thoughtfully, then whispered, "It's been the same, for me…"

She was still lightly stroking his cheek. He still felt dizzied by it. Would he ever get used to this? He could enjoy trying…

"Marshall?"

"Hm?"

"I'm really sorry it had to happen like this…" Mary's eyes were huge with genuine regret, fixated by the slap mark. She knew what all of this was costing him, internally. Nora had drifted off in her lap.

Marshall caught the hand that stroked his face, almost painfully, stopping her and giving her a little shake to drive home his message.

"That's the last time I ever want to hear you apologize for anything to do with this. I mean it, Mary." There was just enough of scary Marshall present to let her know he meant business.

Marshall reached into his jacket pocket. "As long as I've got this hand, I believe this belongs to you…"

He laid the diamond engagement ring on Mary's palm.

Mary, of course, said the first thing that popped into her mind.

"The same ring you gave Abigail?"

Marshall shrugged his shoulders.

"It's a family heirloom. I can't replace it."

"A ring with a past." Mary raised the antique between her thumb and forefinger, gazed at it appraisingly. The setting and stone sparkled in the sunset.

"A ring with a past for a girl with a past. From a guy with a past", said Marshall slowly, thickly. "Sometimes, having a past makes a thing more beautiful…"

"Yeah, but only if it was beautiful to begin with…" Mary turned to look at him. Marshall stroked the locks of hair out of her face and stared up into her eyes.

"Exactly." Mary was frozen, stunned. Even at her worst she could not possibly have argued such sincerity. "Put it on", said Marshall, the sound barely coming out of his throat…

"Are you sure you don't want to take this slower?" asked Mary shakily, "I mean, we only just started being 'us', in that way… Don't you want to wait and see how it goes?"

"If there's one thing I've learned, Mary", said Marshall with a gravity and a self-assurance that made her heart skip several beats, "it's that with you, a man can't 'wait to see how it goes'. The moment a man steps into the ring with you, he has to know how he wants it to go. And he has to have the unshakable conviction that that's how he's going to make it go. I've been moving way too slow for way too long. I feel like I'm only just now getting up to speed."

Mary did not even try to stop the two slow tears that ran down her face as she pushed Marshall's ring onto her hand.

This was what had been missing the last time she had worn an engagement ring. This pure, unconflicted fear. This sense of rightness. This overwhelming immediacy that she wanted to charge into, not back away from. She couldn't believe she had missed out on that feeling all her life, 'til this moment. But she had it now, had it with Marshall, all she had done was let go, was stop trying so hard to be right and strong, and in that moment he was suddenly right there, being everything she wanted – needed – him to be. Her rightness and her strength – and she relinquished the responsibility to him.

No one – let alone a man – had ever looked at her with the certainty that was etched into Marshall's face.

The tears on Mary's face and the diamond on Mary's hand glittered alike in the desert sunset. Marshall could not decide which was the more beautiful. He would take them together, the joy and the anguish, knowing that the one could not be so potent without the other.

And at the end of the day, couldn't the same be said of he and Mary? Their life together may not be the most uncomplicated, the easiest. But could one of them ever be without the other? Without Mary beside him, every day, Marshall started to forget who he was. And he knew that the same was true for Mary.

By asking Mary to release him, he had nearly killed off his own soul. Free from her, free from the courage and the passion and the determination she called up in him – demanded of him – he was next to nothing. Neither of them could be themselves without the other to act as constant reminder of their own deep inner nature.

And isn't that the purest form of love, mused Marshall, to live your own highest truth, no matter what the cost?