Ch. 2: Pain is weakness leaving the body

                                    

                                              
On the day Mica is laid to rest, the rain has found a way to seep into the hard-packed earth and the air is dry once more. Amanda stands again with her sisters at her side. This time, she holds her son, dressed in the baby-sized vest and clip-on tie her mother-in-law had insisted he wear. Wyatt stares at the casket as it's lowered in the ground. He hasn't fussed at all, not during the hour-long service, not while half of Naval Base Coronado paid their respects, and not now. His tiny brow is furrowed as though he fully understands the somberness of the occasion.

                          
      Amanda is positive he has inherited this gravitas from his father. Mica always knew when not to make light of an occurrence and when it was acceptable to break the tension with an ill-advised joke. Except towards the end. There were no jokes then. The tension was unbreakable and so Mica himself had broken under its weight. 
                          
      Tension. It is its own character in Mica's story. That's what Amanda believes. Tension is a mysterious being, a shadow figure. It awoke in a country half a world away and popped up again to wreak havoc in Amanda's own home. Now it's a parasite and, having consumed its former host, it has come to reside in Amanda's chest. Her heart continues to beat despite it. She is determined to discover its secrets and then destroy it. 

                          
      Every face at the funeral displays pent up emotions on the verge of release. The most common emotion is sorrow, but it's not the only one. As shitty as it is to have tension leaning in, heart near bursting, it does keep her on guard. It makes her look, makes her observe carefully. There's more than sorrow staring out at her from the frowns of the people standing in their formal clothes around a hole in the ground. One of the people stares back with practiced stoicism. He can't hide from her. The ground beneath her feet is dry and firm and if she wasn't holding onto her son, her hands would be clenched fists at her sides ready to rise up and punch a hole through the sky. Or through him.
                          
      He makes himself look like a placid lake after a summer storm, but Amanda knows, tension has him in its grip too. He looks at Amanda and she doesn't know what he sees, her or some other place, some other time. Just like how Mica looked but didn't see her when she was standing right in front of him.
                          
      Stoicism seems worn by those who have spent a lifetime fighting a ferocious enemy. Each crease around the lips is a battle won... or lost. The eyes are the empty lenses of an old camera with an exposed roll of film waiting to be developed. Scott Talbot's eyes reflect the unknown. 
                          
      Amanda looks, and she sees. But with Talbot, it's anyone's guess—he stares and stares and stares.
                          


                          
#
                          
BUDS training, five years previous
                          
      There's nothing more calming than the ocean on a still night. Tonight isn't still, however. The shoreline is at war with itself. Explosions send sprays of sea water twenty feet into the air. Pockets of beach light up in quick flashes punctuated by the percussive thrum of gunfire. Captain Scott Talbot stands on a hillock overlooking this battle. A battle against man's greatest enemy: himself.
                          
      There are always casualties of war, even a war fought with simulated munitions on the beaches of a Southern California island. It's called Hell Week for a reason and the men scurrying on their bellies across the sand bought an express ticket there. It's not for the weak. Shit, it isn't even for most of the strong.
                          
      Talbot isn't a BUDS trainer; he's there to observe. He can tell who's cut out for this before the first booming hallmarks of warfare drill out into the darkness, before able-bodied men crawl through smoke and grit along a beach lit up like a strobe light. This night is designed to induce a calculated chaos. Even many of the strongest men won't wish to endure such torture.