A/N: Short, but gets the point across. Highly personal, as almost all of my South pieces are. For the TRvBC Life and Loss challenge-thanks to Martienne for running the challenge! Also, fuck the lay/lie rule. I never can figure it out.

"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."

-Norman Cousins

She lays in bed, her fists clenched tight around the sheets and her bright blue eyes darkened with unshed tears. Her body is pristine on the outside. Untouched. Smooth, pale limbs, long light blonde curls a halo on her pillow. But on the inside, she is rotting. Violated. Raped in body and mind by the person supposed to protect her, she slips through her life as a ghost. A member of the living dead.

As she ages, her body begins to match the deterioration on the inside. Mottled scars on her thighs, the underside of her forearms. Eyes ringed in dark purple bruises. On her hips the hand-marks of her latest throwaway, burned into her skin with sweat and lust and numbness. When she looks at herself in the mirror she sees bits and pieces—the holes, huge chunks of her soul that he took from her every night. She sees the remainder , the fragments of who she once was, and the sorry excuse of a person she is now.

And she sees her twin.

Her twin, so blissfully unaware of what has been done to her. He is shining, dipped head to toe in the elixir of success that should have been hers. Had everything not been ruined.

If she were not tainted.

But she is, and he isn't, and along comes Project Freelancer. Her choice. She is in control; she feels so powerful when she is asked to be a part of such an elite group of Marines. She will be the best. She will succeed. She will prove to all of them that she is not tainted goods. And she won't get close to any of them. That distracts, that gives them a chance to see that little pocket of Death nestled in a corner of her heart.

Then comes Washington.

Agent Washington, who she slips into calling "Wash" far too quickly. He's good. Too good, and it scares the shit out of her. He can meet her pace by pace, measure for measure, and even though she pushes herself to her limit he is still right there, damn it! He doesn't let her win, but he doesn't let her lose, either. He is her stalemate, and a dizzying one at that, bringing out parts of the old her that she thought she had buried long ago. Not the sadness, but happiness. When he touches her, grabbing her hand in the mess or brushing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes, she feels it. A flash of sunshine. The burn of possibility.

She loves him, and their lips haven't even met. That is how she has to leave it, and leave him, with her heart wrapped in the curse of being tainted.

For the dead in spirit need not love.