"You know you've barely said a word since they pulled you out of the water."

"Hey…." said Tom, the wind licking his face as he stood on the stern of the ship that had rescued the survivors of the USS Nathan James.

"Hey yourself."

"Wolf?" he asked, as Sasha Cooper came to stand beside him. Wrapping her hands lightly around the metal railing she chose to fix her eyes on the horizon line.

"Will be fine….." she nodded steadily, "… half man, half mountain. Right?"

"Right."

"Tom I know a part of you sank with the James….." she said quietly, eyes still locked forward. He turned slightly, inclining himself toward her. Wanting to say more than he knew he would be able to find the words to. "It's normal, you know? To feel all the things that you're feeling right now. Every single one of us feels the same way."

"I hope that isn't true."

"I know you're angry…."

"No, no I'm not. I'm not angry. Not anymore. I'm just…."

"Sad?" she offered, turning her head and catching his gaze. As she held his eyes gently he managed a faint smile.

"Tired, so very tired."

"Tom I…." but when she reached her hand to rest on his shoulder he froze. He didn't yield at her touch, and she withdrew it again with a heavy sigh. "We won, you know that right? And I know we lost the James. And I know we lost even more sailors, more friends. I know all of that but we won. We won and we're going home. That has to count for something, right?"

"Sasha…."

"You could've gone down with your ship, Captain. But you didn't. You fought. You fought to come back…." gritting her teeth, willing gravity into her voice she locked his eyes once more and spoke firmly, "… so don't quit now. I know you're sad, I know you're tired, but you chose this. So keep choosing it: fight to stay."

"You know no one asked you to be here… "

"No one ask….." cutting herself down mid-sentence so as not to raise her voice, to fly headlong into yet another argument of raised voices and no forward movement Sasha closed her eyes and held her tongue .

"I'm sorry, that was out of line."

"You've spent so long out of line this week Tom Chandler I'm not sure you'll ever be on the right side again….." she said, with a steady calm, "… at least not with me."

"It's just gonna take some time is all. I came here to spend time with Sam and Ashley. I'm doing the best I can."

Standing with her hands braced on her hips in the centre of the kitchen Sasha chewed at her cheek. Her baggy white t-shirt and ever loosening jeans did little to conceal the weight she had lost since returning from their last mission. It stung Tom to know that he had done that. In addition to everything else he was sucking the life out of her. He was running, she was chasing. He wished he could slow down long enough for her to catch him and yet something drove him onwards. The fear of falling. The fear he had already fallen, for her, in a way that could never be undone.

"I wish I could believe that was true."

"I can't help you with that."

"Then you need to do better. You need to do better because I don't know how to do this with you Tom. What's worse is that I'm not even sure anymore that you want to do this."

"That's not true."

"Isn't it?" she gasped, throwing her hands in the air and then dragging them through her hair. Holding her head, her hands either side of her throbbing temples she waited for his next move.

"What are you trying to do here Sasha. Why are you picking at the scab?"

"Because it's not a scab. If it was then it would be temporary. There would be healing. Only there isn't, is there? You're not healing. You're walking around with a giant open wound and you won't let anyone close enough to try to help. What do you expect me to do? Huh? Just stand and watch. Just stay quiet while you let yourself bleed out?"

Tom's stomach dropped, and for a moment he fell silent.

"I'm fine."

"The hell you are."

"I survived, didn't I? I'm still here. We're still having this conversation and that's a damn sight more than they'll ever have."

"So we're back there again?" she groaned. It wasn't insensitivity to his loss, to his despair, but loss and despair of her own. He was haunted by ghosts and she was living with one.

"I'm sorry, okay Sasha? Is that what you want to hear? I apologise that my grief and my struggling to handle the losses is such a giant inconvenience to you."

"How dare you?" each word, every syllable was expelled from her lips with distain. Blue eyes blazing she shook her head slowly side to side: as a warning.

"It's just gonna take time. It's just gonna take some more time to…."

"You've said that before. You've said it all before. It's just noises, Tom! It's just the stuff you say over and over again to make me go away."

"Apparently it isn't working…." he mumbled drily, but she chose to ignore is deliberately ill placed dig.

"It's the same sorry story that barely scrapes the surface. You're placating me. You're placating me like I'm just some hysterical spouse trying to bring her sailor all the way home."

"I am home."

"No you're not. You're not even close. You're here in body, just. But your heart and your head are still on that ship at the bottom of the ocean."

"You don't understand…." he said, and for the first time she thought she might have spotted a chink in his armour. A flash of light. Tilting her head she softened, relaxed.

"So help me, help me to understand: make me understand. I know that the James wasn't just another ship to you. That goes for all of us, every single sailor who served on it. You might have been captain but we all had the watch."

"I can't…."

"Try! Tom please! You have to try! Because if you don't then I can't help you. I can't do this. I can't be with you if you won't let me all the way in!"

"Then maybe you can't do this. Maybe we can't do this."

"Maybe we can't."

"Is that what you want?" he barked gruffly, folding thick arms across his broad chest and throwing up yet another field of defences.

"You know it isn't but I don't know what else to say. I can't keep fighting with you. I can't keep pretending that everything okay while we go round and around in circles. I won't keep kidding myself that we can survive like this. Besides, even if we could don't we deserve more? After everything we've been through don't we deserve more than just survival this time? More than that, don't all those people lost deserve it? Don't they deserve more than us wasting the life that we still have?"

"It's a bullet."

"What is?" she whispered, barely hanging on. Knuckles white, heart bursting and threatening to blow she fought hot tears and echoed, "What is?"

"You said it's an open wound. It isn't. It's a bullet. No clean in and out. It's buried in me and it's poisoning me from the inside out. I don't know how to change that. I don't know how to give you what you want."

"I want you Tom, don't you get that?" she said, in the closest to an impassioned cry that Sasha Cooper would ever come. Stepping forward, closing the space between them she searched for his eyes. "I want you. I want all of you, good and bad. Not just the shiny polished version turned out in whites. Not the brave face you put on for coming home. I want the messy, complicated, lost, angry, raw Tom Chandler that you try so damn hard to hide behind all that brooding and silence and jawline."

"No, no you don't."

"You don't get to tell me what I want. …" there she was, he smiled, inside at first before it slowly found its way to his eyes and the corners of his mouth. "You don't get to tell me what I think or how I feel. And if we're doing this then you get all of me too, and I swear to God I will be a pain in your ass till the end of your days. You don't get to leave me on the bench. I won't be an afterthought. I won't wait around. I won't be left behind. I'm not Darien."

"No, no you are not."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" she asked, smarting as his tone.

"She was my wife. She was sweet and kind and patient and she put up with more than she ever should've had to being married to me."

"And what am I? What does that make me?"

"A pain in my ass."

"Okay, okay I think we're done here….." she sighed, finally surrendering. Throwing her hands in the air she turned on her heel and made for the door

"Not even close…." he said, grabbing for her wrist and holding it fast.

"What?" she tested, arching a dark brown eyebrow pointedly and challenging him to give her sufficient reason to stay.

"Here, take this."

"Scotch?" he hesitated, taking the glass from her as she emerged barefoot onto the back porch of the Florida rental he had taken with the kids to get away from it all. Sitting herself down in the rocker beside him she took a deep breath to ready herself.

"I'm ready, I'm here. I'm listening. I just thought we both might rather do this with a decent whiskey in hand."

"You scare the crap out of me Sasha Cooper, always have. And not just because you've got a better shot and bigger balls than any sailor in uniform. Because you're smart. You're smart and you're stubborn and you're a thousand miles a minute. You give me whiplash."

"You've never had any problem keeping up before…." she replied, taking a sip of her drink and deliberately staring a little too long and daring him to be the first to look away.

"My point is that we can go round on round and you match me blow for blow. It's exhausting, and exhilarating and terrifying. I never know what's coming next with you. I'm standing there waiting for you to go right and you went left three hours ago. You know my next move before I do half the time. Worse than that you've found a reason why it's a dumb idea and you've already come up with a better one."

"Well, yeah, that's true."

"I can't let you close because you're the only damn person on the planet who can get that bullet out and I don't know what happens when you do….." and then there it was, more than a chink. The armour was split open clean down the middle and he was finally talking to her.

"I do."

"Yeah?" he smiled wearily, falling back into the porch rocker and swilling the ice cubes in his glass.

"You make the incision, you dig in and you take it out. There'll be bleeding, there will, but you're ready for it. You catch it, stem it, you apply pressure and then you hold it….." reaching across the space between them she found his hand, and interlaced her fingers in his, "…. tight."

"Sasha…."

"Then you cauterize the wound and the healing begins. You hold the bullet in your hand and you look at it and you never forget that it was once a part of you but you realise that it isn't anymore, and with time you start to move on. You'll always have a scar, you'll never be the same as you were, but it doesn't kill you. It doesn't eat you alive."

"I do want this Sasha. I want this more than you know."

"I want this too."

Gathering himself up from his seat Tom set his drink down on the table between them and then relieved Sasha of hers. Grabbing for her hand he dragged at her arm until she came to him. He dragged her down onto his lap and stared up at her, his face the perfect picture of pain and cautious hope.

"I want you…." he rasped, pressing a kiss against her shoulder and then resting his forehead against her, "… I need you. Don't quit on me, Cooper. Please?"

"Wow."

"I should never have gotten off the ship. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, for all of it. All the bad choices, all the time I've been lost in my head. I'm sorry that I left you behind, I'm sorry that I shut you out. I won't make you promises I can't keep, but you have my word that I'll do better or die trying."

"You know for a normal person that would be really very romantic but from Admiral Chandler it's actually pretty terrifying so…."

"You were never an afterthought Sasha…." he murmured, reaching for her face and tracing her jawline with his fingertips, "… but I should've made you a priority and I didn't. That won't happen again."

"You really mean that?"

"A woman who is very rarely wrong once told me that whatever is broken can be fixed….." smiling she pressed a kiss against his cheek, breathing in the familiar scent of him and closing her eyes, "… does she still believe that? Does she think it could be true for a tired old Admiral and the stubborn ass sailor he's in love with?"

"You know that's the first time I've heard you say that out loud…." she breathed, drawing away to take in his whole face, every line and muscle movement, "… in as many words. At all, really."

"It's been true for a very long time…." he murmured unaffectedly, something inside him finally unclenching, "… and I won't give you cause to question it from now on."

"I have conditions…."

"I wouldn't expect otherwise."

"You wanna hear them?" she smiled, sitting herself upright in his lap and preparing herself to state her terms.

"Honestly? Not right now…." he smiled back, encircling her waist with his arms and leaning up to kiss her slowly. "Can it wait? Because you know I'll meet them, right? Every one."

"You didn't even hear them yet."

"I don't know if you noticed but I've gotten kind of used to going with my gut and figuring out the details as I go along."

"Are you saying being with me is like curing a killer virus and fighting a war?"

"I'm saying I'm ready for my next mission…." finding a wry grin that lit her heart on fire Tom furrowed his brow, "… no, but seriously. I'm saying I'll do whatever it takes to make this work."

"Fall of the Gods is how long?" she swallowed slowly, her breath catching as he stroked lightly at her collarbone.

"A solid three hours, plus they went to the out of town theatre so the drive back alone will be…."cutting him off Sasha's lips hit his with a hot urgency.

As he returned the kiss, deepened it, folding her into his broad chest she felt the crushing weight that had been sitting on her lift. Heading back into the house hand in hand, they walked towards whatever would come next for them with certainty. Not of ease, or simplicity, or even of peace in their fragile world, but of unity. Whatever came next they would face head on, together.