My Valkyrie Woman (love regained thread a warrior romance. Woman needed)

[Jagged]

*Please read on...not a sex thread but love romance and sex thread..with a story and chapters to write. Give it some thought and tell me what you think. This is a story with steps and a background all to be written..So any takers?*


The word "valkyrie" comes from the Old Norse valkyrja (plural "valkyrur"), from the words "val" (slaughter) and "kyrja" (to choose). Literally the term means choosers of the slain. Cognate forms include the Old English "wælcyrige" and the German "Walküre."


"Vive la mort, vive la guerre, vive le sacre mercenaire" ("Long live death, long live war, long live the cursed mercenary") -- Mercenary marching cadence and toast.



Independant contractor, private security, consultant, freelance, Mercenary. Any number of names that have been used to mean the same thing. To many it is a dirty word and not one would use for a professional soldier. A type of warrior almost gone in the 20th century despite being necessary even celebrated in many past centuries. I grew up in the United States near Fort Bragg down the road from my grandparent farm. I look back and remember happy times. Playing on the farm hunting and fishing and time spent with my parents when they were on leave. Mom was an Army nurse and dad and MP. I was one of seven kids, four boys and three girls. Grandma was a school teacher and my grand dad a WWII vet and a farmer. We had a close bond in the family almost all my relatives had some involvement with the military. All mom's family were cops and former Navy. Seemed my destiny was chosen for me and I had no complaints signing up at age 18...I would do my two years the plan was always to head to college but then I did the unthinkable....I started doing it for the money.

Most people join the military for some economic incentive, but patriotism is up there and the most important. Not for me it would seem. When I was stationed in Germany I heard about a job in Africa. So instead of reenlisting I soon headed off on a frieghter to Africa. Fought Communists and I think helped out the Congolese. Mostly was with Europeans and a few Americans. Vietnam vets who were plying their trade. They were my mentors teaching me more weapons and tactics. I had planned to head back to the states and rejoin the Army or even the Marines, but seemed my help was always needed on one more job. I bounced all over Africa and even the Middle East and Asia plying my trade. Wrote home but never made it back for three years. During that time I did all kinds of things security for gold mines, police officer, game warden, hunting guide, and even guarding aid workers.

Then there was Heather.....(feel free to chang the name, look and make your own past) dressed in camoflague a black t-shirt and red beret ducking behind a jeep firing her rifle the whole way. With the face paint I had to give a second glance but I knew it was a woman....a beautiful one at that....athletic and strong. Many of the local fighters had taken to calling her lioness I found out later. That day she helped my platoon turn back a group of savages from a village and the love affair began. We worked together for another year as a package. Tending each others wounds, supporting each other and watching each other's backs. We fought with courage, lived with honor and our bond grew every day.

Eventually we head back to the United States through many adventures. My homecoming with then my new wife to be didn't go so great. Mom was happy to have me home. Dad was pissed and thought I was a traitor. My Grandparents of coarse were loving, but mad about me being gone so long. Seemed all my siblings had come home from their military service at one time or another. Heather though one them all over and kept the family together. Soon they saw why I loved her so much.

My dad tried to get us to join the military, but we agreed to at least stay state side. We had jobs all over the place. We worked as police officers and volunteer firefighters, taught martial arts (hell she had taught me), private investigators, bouncers at bars and clubs, and even worked at a few gun shops. Did free security for the women's shelter, and many more worthy causes we had time for that were important. Seemed though over those seven years or so some of the passion died. The fire that we had for each other gave way to routine. Now we both work at local college. She teaches self defense and works for the campus police. I teach military history and coach the rifle team.

Not complaining but we used to make love all the time. Once on a helicopter after a mission and even in a hospital ward. We had been a warrior couple now we seemed like average boring people. We had tattoos and memories, but were a far cry from the couple who got off firing weapons from a moving jeep or rescuing a village of people from a warlord.


So that brings me up to this night. We just had a three hour plus screaming match which was the first passion we have had in awhile. No adventure, no love, and we seemed okay with that and I couldn't stand it. I think we even both cried at one point even threw some stuff. I remember tossing her red beret on the floor. We needed to regain the passion or we would not be in Valhalla
together.

 

[Jagged]

Well a good number of views, but do any women wish to step up into this complex and interesting role? To often I look at the cover of romance novels and see a beautiful but weak woman who is waiting to be rescued. It is hard to find a warrior match and stories come from warrior societies from all over the world and time. They talk of the passion and fire....please post or pm with your thoughts.

 

[sharingfantasies]

Heather sat in the bedroom, the door locked, wiping the tears from her cheeks. She was still upset at the argument she had just had with Jan. It seemed lately all they did was fight. Tonight’s fight had been brutal, the words painfully tearing their marriage apart. She hadn’t even known she could sound or act like a shrew until the past couple of years when they had settled down to raise a family, only after two years of trying, there was no baby. Heather didn’t know why? Was it because of the things she had done in the past? Was there something wrong with her body? Was there something wrong with his body? Were they destined to live forever in this shell of a marriage, working at the college and slowly chipping away at each other until all that was left was two empty shells? Where had it all gone wrong? Was it the lack of a baby or perhaps the inability to get pregnant stemmed for sources of deeper emotions or lack of emotions? Heather had no answers for all her questions, but deep inside she knew that their marriage was on the rocks, teetering on the verge of divorce. And that scared her more than any of the problems they had. She loved Jan but she no longer knew if he loved her. And she couldn’t think of anything sadder than that, even her past seemed like a picnic compared to the loss of his love.

Heather’s past loomed over her, as a powerpoint slideshow of people and events flashed by her. Her parents, older than the norm, so excited to finally have a baby, and so disappointed when that baby girl had no interest in girlish things. From the moment she could move around, Heather had been focused on sports, athletics, action. Her tolerance for pain was higher than most, her ability to move quietly, to shoot straighter, to use her body as a weapon was, according to the marine sergeant that drilled her through boot camp, more evolved than any marine male he had seen. She was bound for the corp, had planned for it, had spent her life working toward that Green Beret.

Then had come John Turner. Charming, handsome, rivaling her for first in all the areas. Tall, muscular, athletic, and tough. And so sexy that she could barely breathe when she was around him. But Heather hadn’t grown up like the other girls knowing the ways of men. She was naive and inexperienced and in love for the first time in her life. When she and John first made love, she saw stars and wedding rings and babies. They came together as often as possible on a crowded military base. Until of course someone found out that they were sleeping together which was against military rules. Heather was so in love, or so she thought, she would have quit the corp to become his marine wife. But John told the others that she had come on to him, that he was being harrassed by her and had only slept with her once because she accosted him in his sleep. There was a military court hearing and, since boot camp wasn’t over, she was released without any type of discharge. Her life was over before it began at the age of 18.

Having no idea of what to do with her life, her only abilities were those taught to her by the corps, she took the little bit of money she had saved and caught a Hostel tour for Africa. As the bus was tilting on the side of a dirt road, the axle broken in two, a small band of guerillas came out of the brush and attacked the bus of young people and guides. Without any weapons there was no way to protect themselves and within minutes the males were dead and the band was dragging the women back into the bush with them. The only reason Heather was with the group was because she had gone a short distance from the bus to relieve an overfilled bladder. She had wandered further than she had planned because she didn’t want anyone to come upon her. When the shooting started, she headed back to the bus as fast as she could run. She had no plans as to how to help, but knew she had to do something. When she got within hearing distance of the bus, she could tell by the screams of the women that the men were dead. There was nothing she could do to save the women unless she avoided capture. With a guilty heart of the survivor, she turned and headed carefully back towards the last village. In the village were some of the national army’s men with the latest in US military weapons. Heather had seen them as the bus drove through town and now they were her one and only target.

At a run, she headed back the twenty miles staying off the main road and keeping to the bush and swales. It had taken her two hours to get here and when she did, she could barely catch her breath to tell the soldiers what had happened. When they started to go out after the captured women, Heather had insisted they bring her along to show them where the bus had stopped. When the soldiers caught up to the band of guerillas, there had been a fight. Although the soldiers had told Heather to stay back, when one of them fell, she grabbed up his M16 and begun to pick off the guerilla fighters one by one. She and the soldiers freed the women with the loss of only the one soldier whose gun she had taken. Back at the village, a new bus was brought in to take the women back to the city so they could go home. The males that had been slaughtered were either buried there in Africa or shipped home if their families could afford it.

Heather had made such an impression on the leader of the national soldiers that he had requested her assistance training his men in sharpshooting. She stayed with the group for four months, helping not only to train but also to fight the war against the guerillas. When she left, she was older, wiser and had earned the respect of the people of that area. The King of the country had heard tales of her and requested, by way of an order, that she make her presence in his court immediately. Heather had decided it was easier to accede to the “request” than to fight her way out of the country. King Tomoru wanted to see the woman his soldiers called “Lioness”. He hired her to train other troops in other parts of the country in the same way she had trained those at the village of Samoru. Heather spent two years moving from camp to camp training soldiers, fighting guerillas and adding to her legend. The King paid her very well and she opened an account in a bank in Switzerland with the help of the financial advisor. When it became time to move on, Heather heard of a group of mercenaries that was training others to fight with the latest equipment. Two years in the bush had put Heather’s knowledge in arrears so, since she had plenty of money, she headed for South America to train. On the way, she stopped in the US to visit her parents’ graves. They had been killed in a hit and run a month after she had joined the marines. Perhaps that had led to her affair with Turner, perhaps not, Heather would never know. But without any family, there had been nothing to keep her in the US.

She spent three months with the mercenaries in a tiny village in the Andes mountains. Then moved on to Colombia with a group of men being sponsored by the US to fight the drug cartel in its home base. The US was willing to pay top dollar to the mercenaries to do what they could to foul up the shipping lines of the drug lords. They had been doing sniper kills from long distances, using grenades and land mines to wipe out truck caravans hauling cocaine and marijuana to the refineries, when Heather was captured along with two of the men. She was held in a small cage on a large ranchero for six weeks. Daily the three of them were tortured and she was raped repeatedly by the Jefe of that area and his men. The torture took its toll on her physically and she bore the scars of the cigars on her legs and inner thighs, the flesh of her back was scarred from the belt buckles that flayed her skin, and her emotions bore the scars of the rapes. It had taken them six weeks to devise an escape plan which called for Heather to use the belt of the Jefe to cut his throat while he raped her. She could still remember the smell of the blood as it gushed over her body. Wiggling out from under his corpulent body, she had managed to wrap her naked body in his shirt uniform and sneak out to the cages with the knife and gun she had stolen from the guard that had been at the door, watching for intruders from the outside, and never expecting when the door opened that the puta had the ability to break his neck.

The three of them had managed to make it into the jungle but their bodies were in such poor shape that it took them almost a month of living off the land to make it back to the mercenaries’ camp. By then Heather was much tougher inside and out. Her intentions were to remain in Colombia until either the drug lords were dead or she was. She really didn’t much care if she lived or died and this made her an even more fierce fighter. Willing to take risks and put herself in jeopardy, her fame as a Lioness grew from legendary to mythological. She was on a routine raid of one of the coca leaf farms when she came running around the corner of a jeep, spraying lead as she ran and almost tripped over Jan Cody.

And the rest as they say was history. Unfortunately, this history was showing signs of following the Fall of the Roman Empire, looking like something that was about to crash and burn.

 

[Jagged]

For the next few days after our fight I kept a low profile and for me that meant going of the radar completely. My cell phone was off and had someone fill in for my lectures. All the preparations were done for the class so I passed off the material to the grad student during morning coffee. I stayed out all day and all night. Ate in delis and showered at the gym and slept at the library as students studied late or fooled around. I had some stress relief in the dojo when I workout with some of the students. I hurt a few not to badly but enough for the sensei to tell me to hit the street and cool off. Heather was looking for me that much I knew by the third day at least through friends. The guys at the gun shop told me to call home. Just like the guys at the gym, deli, and bookstore. She knew my patterns without leaving the house. So I did the only option left to someone with relationship problems.

Continuing being a stubborn jerk seemed like the thing to do though I knew I was going to hear about it when I did return home. The three things you always leave the house with where a fully charged cell phone, a roll off cash, and weapon. The .45 was gone from my nightstand and the phone wasn't in the charger. Wouldn't take much to figure out. I wanted to go home, but not come home to another fight. When I was about two blocks from home I stopped off in the park and turned on my cell. Plenty of messages were left and I listened to them all. The routine stuff like call my parents, call work, and the messages from Heather. First few were angry saying things like, "come home you bastard" and soon changed to sound more like, "honey please come home I love you baby just call." The lioness sounded more like a kitten a side she tried hard to hide. And was about to call until I decided to listen to the last message. it was from an old business associate known as Adar Wolfe. I knew it wasn't his real name, but what I did know was he was an independant contractor would worked out of Israel. He was a cold blooded son of a bitch who liked killing Arabs, drinking whiskey, and American strip clubs. One of the many characters I had met during my underground career.

Adar had seemed pretty secure in his connection because he left a message not his ususal style. The catch was he was having an information packet all about the job being delivered to the house by one of his people. He hinted at hitting some drug operations that were financing terrorism by refering to an article recently published. He said that the package would be hand delivered to the house including notes, files, pictures, maps and contact information if I took the job. Adar as ususal assumed I would take the job. This time though he just wanted me and included a gift for Heather. The one thing he didn't hint at was it was dangerous and he was offering because others had tried and died attempting the operation.

The immediate problem though was that package arrived at the house two days ago and Heather always checked the mail when she got home. She could get side tracked thinking of any possible reason she would change her routine which she never did. While most security experts will tell you routine leaves you venerable. Heather worked to make it her strength. Know the way home and everybody who lived and work along her route. She knew what was out of place and if something was even slightly different about the house, car or the way to work she would be on full alert and ready to go to war.

I got home put my key in the door and turned right and headed into our front office space. We each had a desk with a computer plenty of files then a table in the corner which basically everything got dumped until it was filed or shreaded. That is were I saw Heather who was looking right at me with a pissed off look in her eyes. She was in BDU pants and a black sports bra hair hair up. Looked like she had been up for awhile and had all the mission material spread out on the table.


"So something that is practically sucide for Adar and you weren't even going to tell me were you? What call me from the airport maybe?"

"Honey look we are bored I am bored. We don't talk we don't touch we don't train together. We are dying here and I am going to die with my boots on not watching the darkness close in thinking how great things were."

I sounded pretty confident but the fact was I was looking at Heather and she was so beautiful. I mean handn't really looked at her in awhile. The way a man looks at the love his life. The overwelming feeling that you need to be with this person. I had it now and it seemed at least for a second that I had a reason not to march off to my death.......

 

[sharingfantasies]

The biggest problem I had with Jan was his hot head. He lost his temper quickly and came out swinging. It had led to trouble when we were on a job and was one of the reasons we had had trouble keeping jobs when we came stateside. It had become my role in the marriage to retain the composure and common sense for both of us. I knew he was bored teaching. I was bored being a campus security guard. The boredom was getting worse as were the fights. I loved Jan but I hated it when he got mad and left the house to cool off because I never knew how long it would take for him to cool off and there had been times when his obstinance had kept him from home for more than 24 hours.

I didn't worry at first, what was the point, the man could hold a grudge longer than most teenage girls and that was saying something. I knew he loved me, I just didn't know if it was enough to hold us together. We weren't happy. Of course I had never looked at life in terms of happiness, not since I was in the military any way. Love with Jan had come slow, we had met, stayed together, fought together, loved together, but the love of a marriage, the love strong enough to hold us together, well that I wasn't sure if we had ever found. Perhaps all we felt for each other was a shared past, an understanding of each other that no one else understood. The passion had been there at the beginning, but perhaps what I had ascribed to love had merely been lust. I didn't know. What did I know about love or marriage or anything for that matter. I had spent my life following one person after another into situations that even the most foolhardy would avoid.

When we came back to the states, met up with Jan's parents, settled into a traditional, or as traditional as we were capable of having, lifestyle it had been with the idea of having children, raising a family, becoming respectable citizens for the world we had fought so hard to keep from going to pieces. But instead, we had found ourselves mired in antipathy, not really caring all that much for our jobs, not really caring for our lifestyles, not really caring all that much about us, and although we did try, the babies didn't come.

I never told Jan, I probably never would, but I had gone to a doctor and had myself checked out. We had been trying for eighteen months, and nothing had happened. I read all the books, did the rhythm charts, sat with my hips in the air after sex, tried different foods and teas and herbal remedies. Jan figured it would happen in time, that we were trying to hard, that we needed to back away for awhile, so I agreed to back away. Only we backed so far away, if I conceived it would have had to have been an immaculate conception. I probably wouldn't have let him let us move so far apart if I hadn't gone to see that specialist. Once I knew I couldn't have children because of that time in Colombia, I began to lose a part of me, my womanhood, my vision of who I thought I wanted to be, what I thought I wanted in life. I was never going to bear a child and Jan, who had wanted one so badly at first, had started to drift away physically, mentally, emotionally. If I hadn't been lost in my own physcial shortcomings I might have noticed it more, might have been able to stop it, might have been able to keep us together.

But as the distance grew between us, the desire to accomodate to each other, to understand each other, to care about each other grew apart also. We barely saw each other, seldom talked without fighting, and Jan spent more time sleeping at the university library or his office than at home. I was pretty sure he wasn't having an affair but I couldn't discount it totally, and I knew if things kept up this way, it would only be a matter of time. If I hadn't been going through such a horrible time with coming to terms with my failure as a woman, I might have thought of an affair myself. As it was, my vision was turn inward at my barren body, used up by a devil and worthless to anyone. There were times when I was more lucid, times when I told myself it was no big deal, that other women had it worse, that I was alive and young and had my whole life ahead of me, but those brief flashes of insight were seldom seen and the gloom that filled my heart and soul was hard to reach. Not that Jan seemed to notice, or seemed to care, his life was centered on the university, his dojo, the gun club, the bar. Anywhere but here with me. So my depression continued. I was at the point where I didn't really care if we stayed together or not. Last night's fight had been the worse one ever and when Jan had stormed out of the house, all I could think of was it was over. If he cared, he would have stayed to find out what was wrong with me. But he hadn't cared to find out. And that hurt the most of all.

The next morning he still hadn't returned. Sometime during the night I had come to the realization that if I didn't change my life in some way I was going to become clinically depressed. I had visions of me sitting in a rocker, staring sightlessly out of a hospital window, waiting for the man I married to visit and he never did. That vision scared me. Although, I thought humorously, I wasn't sure if I was more afraid of the rocker than the depression. I needed to make changes.

I went to work, settled into my routine, taught the classes, worked at the security office and tried not to worry about Jan. I called his cell phone a couple of times, but he didn't respond, which made me angry. His neglect of his job and of me was just not acceptable. But the third day I was becoming scared. He had never stayed away that long before so when I called my tones changed from anger to concern. But still nothing. I went home and slept alone, though often waking during the night listening for him to come in, I went to work alone, I kept to myself except for leaving messages for him to call home everywhere I could think of. I felt like a pest but I was getting worried. I called his mother who had friends in all the police and security companies in the county, maybe the state. He was seen here and there about town but he was in a reckless mood, throwing a punch, sometimes drunk, acting stupid, and I was getting more and more worried.

I was trying to hold our lives together, working, keeping up the house, gathering the newspaper and mail, trying to remember to eat, to pay bills. But I was working in a haze, seemingly fine to those around me, but having no real knowledge of what I had done five minutes earlier. My brain on autocruise. Had anyone from our past wanted to get revenge, those days would have been the best time, because mentally I was on another plane than the one my body was on.

On the third day, I was going through the mail when a large brown envelope came for Jan, return address missing. I put it into his pile of personal mail, mostly messages from the university or advertisements from gun companies or martial arts warehouses. But I was curious about the envelope. If it had been a catalog it would have had a return address of some kind. And the fact that it didn't had my suspicious nature running wild. At one point I considered taking it to his mother and having her have the department run it for anthrax or a bomb. I knew that was pretty wild thinking but we both knew that although we weren't hiding, per se, we were always keeping our eyes open for enemies from the past. One didn't fight drug lords and terrorists without becoming known, without creating enemies. One of the reasons we had come back to this town was that his family was large, trained and very protective. We knew that any children we had, would be safest here among their grandparents, uncles and aunts.

Two days later there had been no word from Jan, just sightings that were reported from various relatives or townsfolk that knew them both. She had been studiously ignoring the envelope, but as the hours ticked away, she began to wonder if it was important. If it was, then she should at least let Jan know what it contained. Having used this argument to salve her conscience, she sat down at the round table in the home office we had created. I opened it up carefully, still checking for any bomb or anthrax or any other boobytraps. But the boobytrap wasn't something that had been added to the envelope to destroy us, it was the contents that were dangerous.

Adar Wolfe. Jesus. In a million years she would never have expected to hear from him again. He had been the devil incarnate. The worst kind of mercenary, taking money from both sides, with no real concern for the reasons or actions he committed. Jan had worked with him a couple of times when Wolfe had been involved in protecting innocents. This time it was another drug related job. One so dangerous, that many had died. Wolfe wasn't going to be paid unless he got the job done, burn out the fields and destroy the life of one Jose Baldumez, one of the strongest drug lords in Colombia. And Wolfe didn't care who he put in danger when his eyes were on his target, the money. People had been going after Baldumez for three decades. Name the alphabet for any country and someone from that agency had taken a run at Baldumez. Even Heather had taken a few tries at bringing down the man. Juan Baldumez. Oh God.

She was sitting at the table, her hand covering her mouth as she read the maps, the failed attempts, the plea for Jan's expertise. And she knew that he would go. Knew it in her heart. Knew it in her brain. Juan Baldumez.

So when Jan entered the room, she looked up at him in horror and spit out her fears. "So you werent' going to tell me? What, call from the airport and say so long? You can't go, you know you can't do this. God, not Wolfe. You know you can't trust him. Jan, think, we are talking Baldumez."

And all Jan would say was that he was afraid of dying without his boots on, thinking about the past.

The past. Oh good lord, how did one stop thinking about the past. Juan Baldumez.

With her head down, her body tense with wanting to scream or claw her way out of the life she was living, she said softly, her words broken, despite her attempt to keep herself together. "When will you go? Is this the end for us?"

 

[Jagged]

The past. Oh good lord, how did one stop thinking about the past. Juan Baldumez.

With her head down, her body tense with wanting to scream or claw her way out of the life she was living, she said softly, her words broken, despite her attempt to keep herself together. "When will you go? Is this the end for us?"



I looked at her in a differently more like I looked at her when she first smiled at me and chose to share her tent with me instead of any of ther other dog faces. The girl I loved the girl I fought along side with in so many battles. The woman who screamed from nightmares she would never talk about and won't want me to touch her for days only to make love to me telling me how good of a man I was being.

She turned her back to me going through all the papers tossing them over the table angrly and I walked up behind her and wrapped my arms around her tightly.

"I....I need something. I need what we had to live. This hasn't worked us living here like this Heather?" I squeezed her closer to my body and kissed her neck.

"I think we were good together but not like this. Your a lioness and if you going to be home you need cubs." I pulled back on her hair so our faces were right next to each other.

"So here is what I propose. We go together do the mission live or die. Starting tonight we start trying to make some cubs again. We try while we gear up. We try on the plane down and well god help us we try in the jungle. " I spun her around so we looked at each other eye to eye.

"You interested you say so tonight. Otherwise you have everything you need in the will and I will just take my gear and stay at the motel near the airport. So what is it going to be Heather?"

 

[sharingfantasies]

Oh good Lord, Juan Balmudez, of all the people, why him? Heather's mind was whirling so fast she felt nauseous. What else was Jan saying? Cubs, leaving, will, motel? It was too much, too fast. Her hands went to her face and she bent over at the waist, putting her head between her legs, she felt faint, was breathing too fast, hyperventilating. She was shaking hard, the memories overwhelming her, beating at her brain.

Jan finally realized there was a problem and went to the kitchen for a bag, placing it over Heather's mouth, holding her shoulders as she clasped the bag tightly to her face breathing deeply. She hadn't had a panic attack in years. The first four years that they had been together, she had had panic attacks almost every night. Over time, they came less and less and finally disappeared. When her panic eased some, she stood up, wobbled, then regained her balance and walked over to the French doors leading to the garden. With her arms wrapped around her waist, her eyes unfocused as she gazed through the glass, she said quietly, "I need you to say that again. I don't think I heard everything you said."

Jan repeated what he had said while Heather listened quietly, still shaking but more in control. When he was finished she continued to look out over the garden, holding herself together, sure that if she relaxed her arms she would fly into pieces. She took a deep breath and released it slowly.

"So, if I understand you correctly, you are giving me an ultimatum. I can either accompany you, while you try to get me pregnant, then go into battle with Adar Wolfe against Juan Balmudez," she couldn't say that name without shuddering. "Then while supposedly pregnant with your child, I am to put my life and the baby's life in danger. The baby that has taken five years to conceive, you would now risk because you are bored with your life. My other choice is to stay here and you will set divorce proceedings in motion. Do I have this ultimatum correct? Am I understanding exactly what my specific choices are? I want to make sure I understand them since I am getting an hour, maybe two in which to choose between these options."

Heather remained where she was waiting to hear him end her life with his words.

He didn't say a thing, he just left to go upstairs and start packing. Heather could hear him moving around, drawers opening and closing. Still she stood there, not knowing what to do because the one thing she knew was that her marriage was over. All this time, when they, or she thought, they had given up on having children, and now he wants to do something about that? Good Lord, she thought he was fine with them not having children. He had said he was fine with it, when nothing happened for so long. All this time he had been harboring hopes? She had to tell him. As much as she had longed for the return of intimacy between them, he wasn't talking intimacy, he was talking conception. He wanted children.

Heather could actually feel her heart breaking into small pieces. Now there would be no way to ever repair their marriage. She wouldn't stop him from leaving, wouldn't stop the paperwork he was going to send to her. She owed him. When all was said and done, she owed him. He had brought light into her dark world, taught her how to laugh again, how to feel again, how to accept a man into her world again, and she had no right to keep him tied to a barren woman, when children were, so obviously what he wanted.

She swallowed hard. She reminded herself that she wasn't a young foolish girl, that she should remember the good times. She told herself that this was for the best. He could go off and do this thing, feel alive again, without her dragging him down, making him miserable. He could marry later, have those children with a woman that wasn't a partial woman. She was strong, she was sure she was strong, it was just that at the moment she felt as if she was adrift in the ocean, weightless, lost. She could do this. Of course, she could. It wasn't the first time her life had become worthless. But please God, let it be the last time. As strong as she was, she couldn't go through this again.

Determined to do what was right, what was best, before she broke down and could never rise again, Heather climbed the stairs to the bedroom they had shared for all this time. Standing in the doorway, she saw his tense body moving in hard jerks. Grabbing things and stuffing them into his old duffle bag. She knew that he knew she was there. He continued to pack, obviously having said all he felt he needed to say.

She gripped her hands together tightly in front of her, so tightly the knuckles were white. She would get through this, she would survive. She was a survivor. She stood there watching as he put the last things in his bag, swallowing hard again as she watched him go into the closet and open the gun safe, taking out his favorite gun, pushing it into the duffle bag also. Her body was shaking so hard, she was afraid she would fall down, so on stiff legs she entered the room and sat on the bed. Not looking up at him but at the wall, her voice pitched low, "I need to tell you something before you go. I should have told you this a couple of years ago, but somehow, I got the wrong impression of what you wanted and so I thought maybe I could keep this to myself, but it is clear that I can't."

Heather talked quickly, getting it all out, she knew if she didn't, that she would lose it. "After the third year of trying to get pregnant, I had some tests done. It would seem that the my body was damaged in such a way that children are not something that I will bear. I apologize for not telling you sooner, I didn't know that it was something you were still considering. I..." she stood up before finishing. " I .. hope you will find what you seek in life. I am sorry that it wasn't meant to be.." she swept her hand across the room, "this. Be very careful. We both know that Wolfe cannot be trusted." Heather got to the door, although she didn't remember moving, with her back to him, she added, "I wish the best for you always."

Then she was headed down the hallway and into the smaller bedroom. Closing the door behind her, the final closure of her marriage, of her life, she leaned against the door, her arms tightly wrapped around her, shaking so hard she could hear her heart pounding. It was over, she felt the house door close, heard the car backing away from the house, he was leaving, oh god, Juan Balmudez. She slid to the floor, and sat there frozen, her blank face a contrast to the fire burning her heart, her life, her soul to ashes.

 

[Jagged]

He had to figure it was a lot for her to digest. Leaving on a dangerous mission and still wanting kids. Oh never mind she chose to keep the fact that we couldn't have kids from him all this time. That got a reaction and he headed upstairs and pounded on the door unaware she was just on the other side of the door. Not waiting for a reply much less know whe was there he began to tell her what he thought.



"You want things to work and you stop sharing? We told each other everything. Remember Cambodia? Huh? We were up like 73 hours in a row? We still smiled at each other and talked. Hell I remember you traded a pack of cigaretts so you could have a different guard shift so we could sleep next to each other that one time. I got get where the hell we were but well that isn't the point. I mean.."

He paused and moved back and paced the halway and walked back to the door and leaned against the opposite wall. He could hear her breathing on the other side trying to hold back tears. Trying to suck it up and be strong. Thing was it never worked that way. Always seemed weaker then you were crying.

"You could have told me. I mean I think I even know when you found out. You were trying so hard to be happy for a few weeks but always seemed like you were ready to cry. I...I should have asked what was wrong. Please forgive me but that doesn't cancel out the fact that you couldn't tell me...I would still be here. I mean I want kids but I want them with you....I don't want them if they aren't with you I mean that. I wanted to grow old with you but you don't seem to believe that do you? Could have told me and I would have held your hand. Instead we started shutting down. We don't have to have kids to be happy but we need to talk. Can't do that I will go...don't worry I will sign everything over to you...no fight. You want to file papers it will just be a rubber stamp thing."


With that no romance or parting scene he headed out to the garadge. There he had his personal stash of weapons and equipment in a room under the workshop on the side of the garadge. It was only accessed be a trap door and after a short latter trip he was in a mirror image of the workshop. The key difference was racks of weapons and plenty of supplies. Heather never came down here and seldom made it to the workshop. She used the basement for her stash of gear and weapons and training. There was a time where they wouldn't be farther then a few feet from each other when getting ready. Now well it was like the whole relationship separate and apart was the order of things. He glanced at the clock. A few hours he would be out. He would take all he needed and anything left over he would send a some buddies to pickup. Probably a few of the guys from the surplus place through it in storage. No point leaving it here...nothing to come back too...


About half way through the packing Jan stopped taking a long look at an old photograph on the bulletin board to the left of the latter mounted on the wall. It was the pair at a police department picnic. Was supposed to be a grow shot of everyone on the department. We were both in it since we were working as reserve officers and teaching self defense and shooting at the time to the officers. We started off just holding hands but by the time the picture was clicked we were making out with everyone looking over. They retook the shot but we kept a copy of this one for ourselves. Good memories that Jan wished weren't so distant as a tear rolled down his cheek.

 

[sharingfantasies]

She didn't know how long she had been sitting there, back to the door, frozen in time and space. It could have been ten minutes or ten hours. She shifted to her hands and knees, pushed herself up until she could get to her feet. A motion to the side of her brought her head up, heart pounding but it was only a reflection of her in the mirror. She paused, staring at the stranger's face. White, like a ghost, eyes huge, red-rimmed but not from crying rather than from not crying. Her features were frozen in place, deep grooves cut in her cheeks. Lines of age, lines of her lifestyle, lines of death. She looked dead. Bodies in a casket at the mortuary, dressed up, made up to look somewhat natural, looked more alive than she did. She felt dead inside. As if any life she might have had was gone. It left with Jan. She was nothing now. Not a wife, never a mother, nothing. An empty shell, left behind like the shotgun shells that held nothing but air. She wasn't even sure there was any air left inside her. There was no emotions, no thoughts, no sensations. She was cold inside and out. The cold of death. Colder than she had ever been in her life, even when trapped in that dungeon in Colombia. Colder than when she had dived into that Peruvian river in the dead of winter to rescue that little boy that was floating downriver sitting on a raft, crying for his mother. A mother the guerrillas had shot moments after she had let go of the raft and sent her son far from the murdering marauders that had invaded her small village. She and Jan had gotten the boy to a mission, handed him over to the nuns there. Then found out later that the guerrillas had burned the mission to the ground with all the people still in it.

She opened the door, heard the total emptiness of the house, knew the house would always sound like that, forever. She was a shell, void of any life, fated to wander the empty rooms for the rest of her life. She went down the stairs, into the garage, into the room below, took notice of what was missing, the picture lying on the floor of the two of them wrapped in each other's arms. Jan had pinned it up to the wall right after the picnic, claiming it was the way he would always think of them. She left the picture there, where he had left it, a symbol of the end of them. She shut up the door, locked it, closed the panel over it. Someday she would clean it out, empty it of the few items still there. It wouldn't do for them to get into the wrong hands. She wandered around the garage, looked at the tools hanging on the walls, innocent tools, hammer, wrench, bucket of different sized screwdrivers. So different from the walls under the floor. These tools were meant to build, to form, to construct. The tools below were meant to tear down, destroy, demolish.

She went back into the house, poured a glass of milk. Whenever she needed to think, or was frustrated or hurting, she turned to milk, her comfort food. It soothed her stomach, soothed her nerves, gave her the energy to think. She sat at the table, the carton in front of her as she began to drink. She was halfway through the second glass when she began to feel again. What she felt was anger. How dare he? How dare he throw their marriage away so he could go play shoot 'em up somewhere. How dare he go face Balmudez alone, without her. He would get himself killed or worse captured. And truth be told, she was pretty sure he didn't care.

She sighed deeply once, then twice. Putting the milk away, she guzzled the last of the milk in her glass, then washed it and put it away. Looking around she checked to see what was perishable in the refrigerator. What could be frozen she tossed in the freezer, what couldn't she tossed in the trash. Tying up the bag she took it and the other bag of trash out onto the curb. She left the large can in the back of the house, it wouldn't be needed for awhile if ever. No point leaving it on the street. She gathered up the few bills and looked them over, then sat down in the office and turned on the computer, adding them to the electronic bill pay, scheduling them for pay. She looked over the list, everything else would pay automatically. She sent emails to the university, his parents, a couple of friends, explaining they were out of the country for an undetermined time, that she was sorry for the last minute notice, but something had come up that needed immediate handling. She straightened up the bedroom, put a few of this things away that he had pulled out to pack and then left out.

She pulled out her old duffle bag, filled it with a few necessary items of clothing, toiletries, her handheld computer and gps. She dragged the bag down the stairs and into the office. She added some cash, her passport which she had planned to renew but hadn't gotten around to it so it was still folded and crinkled and shredding at the edges. It wasn't her first passport or even her second or third, but it was the last one she had used before they had settled down. She went down to the basement, opened the special panel at the back of the closet. took out her favorite gun, a smaller one with the holster that fit her thigh, her switchblade knife. and a couple of smaller gas bombs. The last thing she picked up was a toy, someone had given her as an example. It was a radio transmitter tinier than the head of a pin, a tinier camera and an earpiece. She took the tools upstairs and packed them into her bag.

Her body shook with anger as she pushed each item in to the bag. She had seen some terrible things in her lifetime, many of which had made her sad or angry or hurt, but what she was feeling now was an anger so deep it encompassed her very soul. He had no right to throw them away like the picture on the floor. He had no right to throw her love away as if it was worthless. He had no right to throw his life away as if that wouldn't destroy her. He had no right.

She put her things into the duffle bag, and made two phone calls. One for a cab, the other to a motel. He had checked in. The cab picked her up twenty minutes later. As it pulled away. she looked back at the house. Now an empty shell of their lives together. Cold, empty, worthless. just like her.

She knew without asking that he would be in the front corner room, the one that could see the parking lot and the back of the motel alley. She carried her duffle over her shoulder, as if it weighed ten pounds instead of sixty. At the door. she knocked hard twice. When he opened it. she brushed past him, glad to see that the room had two beds. She dumped her bag on the floor next to the bed, tugged back the spread, took off her boots. Digging out her toiletries bag, she went into the bathroom and closed the door. A few minutes later. her teeth brushed. her face washed, she put the bag into her duffle, shed her pants next to her boots and laid down. Pulling the spread up over her shoulder she rolled onto her side, facing away from him where he still stood by the closed door. Moments later she was asleep, mentally, physically and emotionally drained. It had taken her fifteen minutes from the time he opened the door until she was asleep. Not a word had been spoken between them, not once had she looked him in the eyes.