Remnants

All Mustache

"So I heard about how your night training exercise worked out," Aly said with a raised eyebrow.

Sheepishly grinning at his wife up from the eggs and sausage on his plate, Jack shrugged his shoulders, "It was just an acorn!"

"And how does that make it any better? What if you had hit her in the eye?" the weary healer, innkeeper, and mother said as she sat in a chair next to her husband at their tucked away kitchen table.

"I can hit a squirrel in the head, on the run, at thirty feet. I think I can avoid her eyes at five feet," Jack said, now matching his wife's exasperated tone.

Aly put her right arm around Jack's left and leaned her face up against his shoulder. Peacefully closing her eyes in the brief moment of rest she sighed. "Just be careful. She's been through a lot."

Jack nodded thoughtfully for a moment. His shoulders relaxed at the calming touch of the woman he so deeply cared for. Although the winter had been long and hard, he had spent more time with his family over the cold months than he had since becoming a Journeyman. The rest had been desperately needed both for him and for his apprentice.

"She has," he replied.

He seemed to worry constantly about the green eyed young woman. Even up until her time as an apprentice Journeyman, Anya Thompson could have easily been described as having been through a lot. Losing her mother when she was only ten to cancer and then her father at sixteen to a bandit raid had left her orphaned. She had then struggled to survive off of her hunting and fishing skills until Jack and his fallen partner had taken her on as an apprentice. On her first mission, one of her masters had been killed in a fiery explosion, she had been betrayed by someone she fell in love with, and she nearly died. To say she had been through a lot almost felt like an understatement.

Jack could tell she did her best to act like none of it bothered her. She had the same sense of humor, still played with the kids around the inn. She still joked with Jack and his brothers when they all got together like the little sister they never had. In her eyes though, the ones that had once been a warm brown color but now had likely been forever changed to vibrant green, was a sadness and a pain. As if the memories of the events in the pecan grove, which she had not yet fully shared, was aching in her soul.

"And so have you," the former nurse said, opening her eyes and looking up at the man who was so deeply lost in thought.

Tears suddenly threatened to fill Jack's eyes as a lump formed in his throat. She was right. Of course she was right. Aly always found a way of seeing through whatever guards he put up. He fought back the tears, forced down the memory of how close he had been to dying, forced down the hurt over the death of his best friend and partner. He couldn't deal with that right now. He had his family to take care of, an apprentice to train, and a looming war to prepare for. There would be time for mourning and worry later if he succeeded in stopping a war that seemed to have been centuries in making.

"Yeah," he said plainly, choking down the sadness.

"Yeah," she replied.

He rested his bearded cheek against the top of her head. His beard had grown long through the winter and he felt it now, scratching against his neck. It felt coarse and itchy in comparison to the softness of Aly's hair on his cheek. He sensed that she was weaponizing the silence as it grew longer, using it to quietly pressure him into speaking further. He knew the trick and had used it many times before but he also could feel it now working on him. The silence stretched, the two combatants in the battle of wills struggling against each other. But Jack knew he would not be the one to win this fight and that knowledge only made the fight more difficult. Finally after what felt like hours but was likely no longer than a few minutes, the stubborn Journeyman spoke.

"I just don't know if I'm doing this right. I wasn't ready for this. Not without Chuck," he said with a slight tremor in his voice, his doubt finally winning over his unwillingness to address it.

Aly lifted her head and looked up at him again, slowly blinking her brown eyes as he looked back at her. She had a soft, kind smile on her lips. "Remember when we brought John home from the hospital?"

Jack smiled. He remembered that time. John, his oldest child, had turned his and Aly's world upside down but in the best way. He came, two weeks before his due date, and Jack immediately understood that he had no idea what he was doing. Before his firstborn, he was never one to hold babies or play with young children. On calls as a deputy with children, he generally found himself being the officer who spoke with the adults, letting others like Chuck who were better with kids deal with the younger witnesses and victims. Entering into parenthood, he had felt more nervous and unprepared than he had felt about anything before.

Within the first few sleepless nights, Jack had proven himself wrong. Hands that could so skillfully field dress and butcher a deer could also change a diaper efficiently and cleanly. Legs and hips that could pack an elk through mountain passes or run down a fleeing suspect could sway and rock, gently putting the small baby that had become the center of his world to sleep with ease. He hadn't been good at being a dad naturally or because he prepared and practiced. He had been a good dad because he needed to be one. For his new son and for his wife.

"I remember," he said with a kiss to Aly's forehead.

"Then remember that you can handle this too. Everything you've done up to this point, everything you've learned, it's going to get you through this. Really, you're doing well. I can tell she's learning. Even if you do keep shooting her in the face with acorns," she said, playfully digging a finger in his side.

Jack jumped to his feet and gritted his teeth at the tickling finger, "Ok, ok, if you say so!"

"I do say so," she said, standing beside Jack looking intently into his eyes. "And I promise you, I'll help however I can. And so will Brian and Henry and anybody else who can. You might be her only master but you are not alone."

Jack took Aly by the hand and tucked a strand of her long strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear. He lifted her chin gently with his hand. "Thank you," he said warmly.

"Any time," she said back with her sweet, soft smile that always seemed to calm his anxious heart.

Jack leaned down and kissed her, moving his hand from under her chin to the back of her head, letting his fingers intertwine with her hair. He felt her kiss back, leaning her body against his as she placed one hand on the small of his back and the other on his chest. They stood together for a moment, wrapped in the sweet intimacy of the embrace. Aly pulled away first and looked up at Jack.

"I love you but please tell me you're going to trim your beard soon. That was all mustache," she said, wrinkling her button nose at him.

Jack let out a short laugh, "I love you too, of course I will."