Carnifex

5/5/468 AC, Cruz Residence, Ciudad Balboa

He's been this way for the last three and a half weeks, thought Cara, unhappily, as she did the evening dishes by hand.

Her husband, with a smile on his bruised and battered face, sat on the living room floor playing with the children. He seemed content with the world, as he had most definitely not been content since he'd left the regulars.

And I know why he's this way, too. He got to fight. He got to be a man among men. He was able to test himself and rise above the normal human plane . . . if only for a few minutes. Oh, Ricardo, what have I done to you?

Putting the last of the plates on a rack to drip dry, Cara went and sat on the couch overlooking the rest of her family. She sat there, in inner turmoil, for about a quarter of an hour before saying, "Children, go out and play until it's dark. I need to talk to your father."

Cruz looked at her curiously until the kids were out the door and she began to speak.

Cara wasted no time. "I'm sorry, Ricardo. I didn't know what I was doing when I made you leave the regulars. I didn't understand how much you need it. So . . . if you want to go back, I won't interfere and I'll do my best to put up with the separation and the fear."

"What brings this on?" Cruz asked, raising one very suspicious eyebrow.

Cara sighed. "I'd hoped I could be enough for you. But you were miserable. And then I saw you fight, and you were happy, and you've been happy for weeks. But how long can that last, Ricardo? You need the fight, the struggle. You need it in your memory; you need it in your present; and you need the anticipation of it in your future. I see that now. I should have seen it then. I should have known it since we first met and you saved me from those rabiblanco assholes. You were meant to be a soldier first and a husband second. The man I love is meant to be a soldier first and a husband second. And . . . I'm going to have to learn to live with that."

"Can you learn to live with that?" Cruz asked.

"I don't know. I can try."

"Fair enough," her husband answered. Then he went silent for a while, apparently thinking. "You know," he said, "I've fought with and shed blood with the men of my reserve cohort, too, now. There's a good chance that fighting will break out here, come the next election. They'll need me then, if it happens. There aren't that many senior centurions in the reserves. How about if I stay with them, in the seventh cohort of the tercio, until this term of school is over? That will be after the election and we'll know what the future holds a little more clearly. If it looks best to go back, I'll go back. If it looks like it's best to stay with the seventh cohort, I can do that instead."

"It's only a reprieve for me," Cara pointed out. "One way or the other you're going where the fighting is going to be."

"Yes . . . but I promise to try really hard not to get killed."