To Protect, To Defend, To Honor ( Jericho drabble - post-finale)
It's a Tuesday when Beck gets confirmation that his family is gone, part of the countless dead in the initial attacks.
Heather sits with him on the front steps of the courthouse as he grieves, prays. Her hands ache for rosary beads that she's never held, anything so that they could more than sit there and hold on to one another in an exercise in futility. She could pat Edward -- he's Edward now, a face given a name, given a stake in this town and in a new nation or preserving what's left of an old one like the rest of them -- on the back, but she won't. She could take one his hands, large and callused, in hers, but she won't.
Instead, she sits and listens to hours of stories about his life, his life with his family, now no more than the dust scattered through the wind of the Kansas sky. Heather listens to how Beck met his wife, about birthday parties and quiet nights, and things that she's almost probably sure she has no business hearing.
After a time, she mostly tunes him out. He needs to start to get it out, all those things that have been trapped inside during these long, cold months of solitude. Instead, she focuses on the statue of the eagle before her, and then, shielding her eyes from the sun with a hand finally given purpose, she takes in Johnston's flag. A battle cry and symbol both new and old. A symbol of the town that she adopted, that adopted her -- a home she's fought and almost died for.
She'll do it again in a heartbeat. And, she suspects, letting herself fall back into the soft cadence of Edward's voice, that this time, he too will join ranks with Jericho's finest to protect, to defend, to honor.