ThreeStarsInLine

Jack once told you that the most beautiful night skies he'd ever seen were those he'd witnessed in Afghanistan.

You'd only been together a few months, but things were pretty serious. Love was a word that passed frequently between your lips, and thoughts of moving in together, marriage even, had started to form.

Sitting on the roof of your apartment building, sharing a beer and searching for the few stars visible above the city’s glow, Jack shared more of his time as a combat medic, adding missing chapters to the story of his past. A tale that, so far, he’d been slow to tell.

During the endless hours he'd spent in perpetual alert patrolling in darkness, he'd found solace in the onyx expanse overhead. A lustrous, glittering blanket, the true Star-Spangled Banner, a black painted canvas pricked with holes for the heavens to shine through.

“I miss it”, he confessed.

“What do you mean?”

“I miss it. Afghanistan, the Army, all of it. I’ve never felt more alive.”

The admission shattered you.

Because how could he possibly still yearn for a time that had taken so much from him? How could he look back fondly on days that were marred by terror and destruction, when he’d finally found a real chance at safety and life?

Even now, he was hell-bent on seeking danger in chaos with SWAT and the night shifts. You tried so hard every day to show him he didn't need to dance with death and crawl through the darkness anymore. But it was no use. There was nothing you could do. Not even the promise of a future you could build together was enough to draw him to the light.

“It's who I am!” Jack bit back when you tried pleading. The usual soft huskiness in his voice gave way to crisp determination. “All the shit from my past you say you hate; it's a part of me. It happened to me. Not to you, not to ‘us’, to me. I’m dealing with it the only way I know how, and it's not something you can just dig out of my chest and heal over, so I need you to stop fucking trying to. And if you can't learn to live with that… then I don't know what we're doing here.”

-

Things weren't easy between you for a while. What once was solid ground had turned into thin ice. But you tried. You bit your tongue and held your nerve because you knew Jack needed you to. You did your best to ask questions without judgment and listen without reproach. Slowly, you found yourself on a path to understanding. Though if you were truly honest with yourself, you didn't fully understand until you witnessed Jack work for the first time. Not at the ED fixing up a broken leg, but taking control in a crisis.

You were on a date one night when a drunk driver lost control of their car and came crashing through the front window of the restaurant. Thankfully, neither of you was hurt, but you were shaken, shell-shocked and dumbstruck amongst the chaos of broken glass and rubble, sirens and screams. But Jack was in his element. He acted immediately, grabbing the restaurant’s first aid kit and treating the wounded with calm, reassuring authority, taking command of the scene around him as if he were the director of a play.

“It's who I am.”

In that moment, you finally saw him clearly. And your love for him became exponential.

-

Now, years later, seeing Jack in his SWAT fatigues made you smile. You would draw him close by the collar and kiss him good luck, be safe. You teased him gently before a night shift, swooning into those big buff arms every evening; “There goes my lover, Captain of the Nightcrawlers. When oh when will he return?” (never had a nugget of gossip from Dr Ellis given you so much joy). And, on the rare but treasured nights when Jack was yours and only yours, the two of you would lie in the hammock you'd set up on the balcony of your shared home and gaze up at the sky.

You couldn’t give him Afghanistan. But you could give him the moon.

“I think this might be my favourite time of day,” you admitted once.

Jack held you tighter and pressed his lips to your forehead.

“I think that makes you a Nightcrawler now, too, Mrs Abbot.”

-