Date: 11/11/99

Notes: This was written because...well, because 11 November was
Veterans' Day in the U.S., and I couldn't get to my grandfather's
gravesite to honor his service, the service that meant so much to him. So I wrote letters and I reminded people of the date and then I sat down and wrote this.

This is for John Leroy Valentine, U.S. Army Captain, who served in
silence.

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I stood alone, looking out over Cascade. I hadn't moved in hours--not because I was zoned, but because I was...alone. Again. I always felt alone, every year, but this year was worse than most.

This year, I knew my men had died for nothing. For one sick son-of-a-bitch's drug pipeline, I was left alone and burying my men in the jungle.

I was left alone.

I was alone.

I've been alone ever since.

I shivered in the night air. November in Cascade was cold, and today had been damp and the water in the air clung to my skin. I could feel the mist beating against my body, as soft and silent as heartbreak.

Simon gave me the day off, as he did every year. This one day, inviolate, set apart from the rest.

Alone, like me.

I remember how their lives felt, slipping from my hands like blood in
rain. I remember not being strong enough to keep them alive, not being able to keep death from anyone but myself.

I remember their bodies, burnt or bloody or torn to pieces. I remember spending the night searching for a severed finger so that I could bury it with its owner.

I remember waking up alone, lying next to seven neat graves, and thinking I was dead, too, and waiting to be buried.

I wanted to be dead. I wanted it more than anything.

Instead, I carried out my mission, and I came home alive--in body, if not in spirit. The man who married Carolyn, the man who called Jack "friend", was not a living man. He was something else, someone different, someone who'd lost his sanity and his soul when a chopper went down in Peru.

Someone who'd learned to pretend he was still alive on the inside.

Lights on, nobody home, Carolyn.

I was alone. As always. As I'd come to expect to be.

I took in a deep breath, feeling the moisture in the air hitting my lungs--and something else. Blair, standing next to me, not saying a word. I didn't know how long he'd been there, but it had obviously been a while, because he was wet from the fog, drops of water clinging to his hair and skin.

"What do you want, Sandburg?"

He looked up at me, his pupils dilated in the darkness. "Nothing, Jim. Just thought you could use some company."

That's all there was, all I could see and hear and taste was his sincerity and his presence and the simple offering of human company.

Just himself.

Just me, not being alone, on the one day a year when I needed companionship the most and could not ask for it.

I looked down into those eyes and I saw it.

Remembrance. He *remembered* what today was, and what it must mean to me.

And then Blair, who knows me best, stepped forward and wrapped his arms around me and held me, his fingers cold through my shirt, his skin damp and chilly.

His heart beating against mine, his breath soft against my neck. "You're not alone, Jim," he said, and I could feel his body vibrating as he spoke. "I'm here."

I held him close, and for the first time since my men died in Peru, I
knew I was alive.



### The End ###