They both have their own ways of handling problems, but they always intersect in the end.

He goes after people, things, inflicts the same amount of pain that he's feeling upon them before completing the objective he's been sent for. He takes mission after mission until he's ready to drop dead in the middle of the night, and crawls home, broken and bleeding (he hates hospitals because he's always been told never to go) and showers before making his way into their bed.

The green light that's gone so weak over the past few weeks emerges from her hands and washes over him until his body's in one piece. But nothing else is and they don't speak about it because it's still too fresh in their minds.

She cries. She cries and she cries a lot. The magnitude of her sorrow's only expressed with him, but others get to see slight patches of it too, when someone says a word or two without thinking, and cries even more when they apologize. She sequesters herself in their bedroom, opening the door only for him, and doesn't go out until she's cleared for the field, taking missions so often that it feels like they're two teenagers desperately trying to make cohabitation work again.

She's rarely ever hurt when she comes home at night, much thanks to the gun he'd gotten her as a birthday present, but when she is, he puts the utmost care into her recovery, his hands gentle as they always were, and she lets him put her back together again, for both his sake and hers, because she knows what they need.

They stop going out with his friends for a few months, only coming when it's just the adults, because the youngest of her cousin's boys are only two months older than their son would have been, and it still hurts to look at happy, gurgling babies and remember that their own is nothing more than a slowly decaying body in their backyard, that they buried without telling anyone about.

She was pregnant one day and then suddenly was not, and they know that everyone else has come to the proper conclusion, but they change the subject of all conversations that even come close to that topic because neither of them wants to relive that night, holding that child in their arms and feeling the warmth fade away agonizingly slowly.

They eventually put the pieces together, cutting down the time they spend staring at their boy to an hour, and settle back into their social life, trying their best to minimize sidestepping all mentions of their friends' children, and finally meet the little boys. The older one immediately takes to her and bunches her shirt in his little fist, and the younger clings to him like the world is going to rip him away at a second's notice. "You're the godparents, you know?" Their mother mentions, as if it's something trivial, and she stiffens, nodding belatedly a few minutes later.

He hands the baby he's holding back, leaving a crying bundle of joy in his wake, and helps her put the other down in the crib, offering tenuous goodbyes instead of apologies, and they barely make it home before they're falling into bed for the first time in months, giving each other their best apologies in the only way they know. Their pieces fall back together even more and they go back to the couple who simply can't let go when they're together.

There is another baby soon after, but she (she was convinced it was a girl) was lost too early for them to even know. They didn't tell anyone in case it didn't work and she tearfully remarks that it must be for the best. No one knows and they decide never to try again, because it seems like they aren't meant for this, even though everyone else is.

His sister has one happy, bouncing boy and then another, and they watch all the kids play and scream and run together, spending every passing year wondering what their child (children) would have been like. Everyone watches them like they're a time bomb set to blow, but they're only further wrapped up in each other now, unwilling to let go. They're all they have and ever will have, so there's no reason to give up just yet.

Losing him would be a death wish, she says to no one in particular, running her hand through his hair as he sleeps. She's lost too much to be able to survive one more, and losing him would be infinitely worse than losing a child she never got the chance to really know.

She knows he feels the same way, despite the fact that he never says it, when he squeezes her hand in public, when he lets his fingers stay too long around her waist, when he looks her way while standing behind his charge during one of his stints as a bodyguard.

They find themselves falling into each other more often, despite the fact that their friends jeer at them for acting like newlywed years and years into their marriage, but they have nothing else left to do. She's thankful, for a split second, that they don't have kids, but it quickly slips away and leaves an emptiness she can feel throughout her body in his wake. He puts his arms around her and fills it up with good memories and her smiles, and she can't help but wonder why he's so perfect to her when she's murdered his children, never given them a chance to live.

"Only death can cure a fool." "I love you." He whispers late at night, falling into their mission code, knowing she's not asleep beside him. "Fear is greater than danger." "I love you too." She whispers back and settles into his arms again, falling asleep to dream of two other bodies in their bed.