TITLE:  Black Flowers
AUTHOR:  Bonetree
RATING:  G
SPOILERS:  DeadAlive
SUMMARY:  Skinner in 155 words.


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Her face is to my chest, the coffin in the ground at our feet.  My arm is 
around her, her and the child she carries like a scrap of the man lying below 
us.  

I hold her and think:  who is this woman and child to me?  

I'm not her lover, and was never meant to be.  I know my place in this thing 
that spreads between them, even now as it straddles two worlds, both worlds I 
see as nothing but fields of black flowers.

Her tears are silent as this snow when it fell.  

I look down and try to fathom my own heart.  

I am strangely reminded of Vietnam, the way I loved those men on patrol with 
me through the jungles, the way I'd lay down anything for them.  Life was a 
cheap trade then for that kind of love, love born of fear and fire and blood. 
 

Maybe it's always been.  


END