Title: Screen Door Author: A.j. Rating: PG Summary: There is a season. *** George remembers Maggie in shades of green. Sun and water and leaves in spring. Hair sparkling, face too perfect in memory. More so than it was in life. But her voice he remembers correctly. Strong and rich and screaming like a drill sergeant at their daughter's friends. He remembers a lot of things about his wife. There are other memories. Darker ones. Hospitals and months on end with no word either way. He won't forget any of those because he'd owed that to her. To their family. But when he thinks of her and smiles, there's always sun and green. Some nights he still wakes up reaching for her, his fingers tangling in the empty cotton sheets she'd loved the feel of. He knew it was unfair the day he stumbled home, three days without sleep from worrying and pushing paper on the positions of a thousand men. A thousand men who had made it back safely because, in small part to a decision he'd made. He'd walked into the kitchen - always a place of comfort - and found her at the table. She'd looked up at him and that had been it. It still makes him short of breath to think on it. The slight smile at his return and the bills spread out in front of her. It had been a Thursday. Maggie'd always paid bills on Thursdays. He still has the scar on his hand, white now with age, from cleaning up the broken coffee cup. His shoulders shaking and hands numb. It had shattered all over the new floor they'd had put in after finally paying Maria's tuition bills off. Three years later, he'd stepped on a piece that had somehow escaped notice. She'd lived a month. Smiling and hurting, but somehow still Maggie. He's sure that he couldn't have survived if it had been longer. He's still not sure how he managed to survive at all. Four a.m. twenty-nine days later, he opened his eyes and had known she was gone. She'd been peaceful beside him. Looking as she'd done always, but less. He'd waited next to her, watching in the dark. Empty. He'd had no idea what he was going to do. What was he without this? Without Maggie? Five days after watching her being lowered into the ground, he'd been informed that he was to become a Major General. And now that's done too. He hates that it has to be this way. It feels like a death, because that's really what it is. Speeding up the elevator shaft one last time, he knows he'll never be back down there. Not with those people, not again. He'll remember closing his eyes, just for a second. Feeling the slightly stale air circle around him and knowing that this thing he'd been part of, this big important thing, was over. So, he's not surprised after he salutes the guards at the gate one last time, and after the sun glare lessens a bit, the trees surrounding the parking lot are a riot of red and yellow. -fin-