Grey

Author's Note: Sorry for this.

Side note - I'm putting this in loving wives because that's what Andrea is - or used to be.

Disclaimer: I make no money from this.

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Grey

People don't get fairytale endings, and rainbows eventually fade to grey. Sometimes, love doesn't conquer all.

Rain pattered dismally against the panes. The sky was a peculiar shade of grey, drab and dirty as dishwater, and a wind too sharp to be merely cool slithered its way into nearly every inch of the little house that stood at the corner of the street. Only the tiny kitchen held any warmth, radiating from the rather rickety-looking iron stove in the corner.

Flowery wallpaper adorned the walls, peeling in places and so faded that the red roses were barely distinguishable from the creamy background and pale green stems and leaves. A single window overlooked an aged porcelain sink, tattered yellowed lace curtains drawn to the sides in the vain hopes that some scarce rays of sunlight might find their way into the room. A refrigerator hummed quietly in one corner, and a small wooden table and four incongruously large chairs took up what little space remained.

Andea Brown sat in one of the chairs, leaning forward to rest her elbows on the table as she worked out a crossword puzzle and sipped at a cooling cup of Darjeeling. The other three chairs were empty, but that wasn't anything new.

The grey skies grew darker and Andrea eventually had to set down her crossword. Getting up, she made her way across the room and flicked the light switch into the on position. The kitchen was immediately bathed in a comfortable burnt-golden glow. She crossed the room and sat back down again in her chair and picked up the paper. The half solved crossword puzzle stared back at her. She turned to look just in time to see the rain start falling out harder as if the storm had finally decided to weep with shame for what it had done to them.

She glanced at the clock on the wall - the hour hand pointed at 8, the minute hand hung at 6, the second hand moved slowly towards 12. Jake was three hours late.

Nothing new there, either.

She almost wished she could muster more than vague concern for her husband's life, but she didn't feel much of anything other than - other than grey. Tapping her pencil idly against her crossword, she tried to remember the last time she'd seen Jake.

Two weeks, she supposed. Maybe more. Oh, he'd been home every night, and she'd felt him enter their room and silently slip into the bed beside her, but she'd kept her eyes shut and he hadn't ever tried to talk or said anything. He had to know she was awake, of course - it was too awkward, the silence between them, for either of them not to be fully aware of the other.

Andrea couldn't remember the last time they'd actually spoken. After - after it happened, there'd been vicious fights and tears and recriminations. And then... then it'd all gone stale and cold and hard, and conversations between lovers should never be as stilted as hers and Jake's had been the last few months.

Except they weren't really lovers anymore. Just... just husband and wife, strangers sharing a home and a life and a bed.

The worst part of it was that she just couldn't hate him. This wasn't his fault, it wasn't his fault Greta had hunted them down, had...

Maybe... maybe it was just too much to move on from, the deaths. Parents should never outlive their children.

Maybe neither one of them really wanted to move on. Moving on would be leaving their little boys behind, admitting to themselves that two of the empty kitchen chairs would never be filled again, admitting that their sons were lying in graves, not in their beds. Moving on would be admitting that they'd lost - that even though Jake had hunted down the gang, even though Greta had been found afterwards...

Moving on would be admitting that they'd lost everything that mattered because they'd been busy saving the world.

And worst of all, Andrea thought, breathing in time to the ticking of the kitchen clock, moving on would mean leaving the comfortable grey void and letting themselves feel. If there was one thing she'd learned throughout the years, one thing the empty chairs screamed into the heavy silence, one thing that being an officer's - a hero's wife had carved into her heart over and over again, it was that emotion wasn't worth the feeling of it.

Andrea stared empty-eyed at her rumpled, unsolved crossword, blocking out the message on the clock, blocking out the memory of laughter, of bright days and shouting little boys running around the yard, chasing butterflies and pouncing on their father when he came home, shining-eyed, from work each evening.

Her boys were safe in their graves, and she in hers.