***

"Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air."

Pablo Neruda

***

There's a long black train visible in the distance.

Bradley can see it from the front porch of the ranch house.

He woke to an empty bed, has some sleep-drugged awareness of Jake rolling out a few minutes before sunrise.

Bradley hasn't seen him since.

Hasn't seen Javy, Celia, Lily Grace or Dustin either.

There's coffee and note to feed themselves in the kitchen, right next to a huge batch of still-warm biscuits.

Bradley's going to have to up his workout routine while he's here.

Nat's the next one up, though she looks like she found the kitchen out of sheer dumb luck.

***

Brigham Young, callsign Harvard, grew up in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts.

There was no question about where he was going to school.

Not after his father and every other adult in his family went to the same place.

It's a novel experience to sleep in a bunk house on a working ranch in the wilds of Northern Texas. Reminds him of the safari his family went on when he was in high school.

He's pretty sure those Aussies could give the hyenas a run for their money.

They're sitting outside in a half-moon, just watching the bunkhouse door, when he stumbles outside and finds a dozen icy eyes pinned on him.

He's still frozen when Logan comes out yawning a few minutes later.

"What the fuck?"

"Dude...."

"What are they doing?"

"I don't know. They won't stop staring."

"Is it, are we supposed to feed them or something?"

"With what? Our blood?"

"What are you guys-, what are they doing?"

It's nice to know they're not the only ones freaking out.

Halo keeps Harvard and Yale firmly between her and the dogs, and they can't even be mad about it.

***

"I just don't want you to get hurt, Bradley."

"Jake's the one who's hurt, Nat."

"I know. It's horrible, but it's not yours to carry."

"I'm not."

"You are. You always do."

"I'm not going to turn my back on him just because it got hard."

"That's not what I'm saying. You've got your own issues to work through, and now you want to add Jake's on top of that? You're going to drown yourself, and that won't help either of you."

"Jake's not that weak. Neither am I, for that matter. I want to support him, not take it all on myself. I don't think he'd even let me."

"Right. Because Becca didn't let you. Neil didn't let you."

"That's not fair. Those were completely different relationships."

"Where you did the exact same thing you're doing now. You jumped in head first, got real serious real fast, and took it all on yourself, and by the time they left you because you wouldn't open up about yourself, you were exhausted and burned out."

"I didn't do that with you!"

"Because we never got that far! And quite frankly, I don't have the baggage. You haven't even worked through things with Mav and Ice yet, but you're already adding something else you're going to have to deal with. Does Mav even know you're sleeping with him?"

"We haven't talked about it, but we haven't been hiding anything."

"Bullshit."

"Since we got back."

"He has kids. When did you find out about them? At the funeral with the rest of us?"

He can't answer that and she knows it.

"He hid them from you. From all of us."

"They're his kids, he was protecting them. He's not required to tell us anything Nat. No one is."

"He was hiding an entire family!"

"From who? The only person he's actually close to is Javy, and Javy sure as shit knew. You and I have been best friends for years, but I wouldn't say that either of us are that close with the others. I don't know shit about Harvard or Yale or Halo."

"You haven't been sleeping with any of them."

"You don't go into a relationship knowing everything about the other person, Nat. The whole reason for a relationship is to learn about them."

"Yeah, and in a relationship, people are generally supposed to be upfront about major things like children. You've always wanted kids, Bradley. I don't want you to get attached and then hurt when you and Jake realize you can't actually stand each other long-term."

"You don't know it'll end."

"It ended before."

"It didn't even start before. Because of us."

"And we didn't survive either. Despite all the effort and the work."

"And we agreed that wasn't Jake's fault."

"I know. I don't think it was. But I think we were a better match, and we didn't make it. You and Jake are so different in how you handle things, in everything. What if you just fight all the time? You'll be miserable. On paper, you guys don't work."

"I don't care how it looks on paper, Nat. My parents didn't work on paper. Mav and Ice don't work on paper. People are more than that."

"Do you even know if that's what he wants?"

***

Brigham's family has an odd connection with death. A long line of funeral home owners and his father was the first to break from that practice, after the family business couldn't survive the trouble 70s. He went to law school instead and set a record becoming the youngest chief prosecutor in the history of Massachusetts.

They went from helping family's usher their loved ones along to getting justice for those taken before their time and Brigham can remember being barely five years old and listening to his father and mother talk case details after they'd put the kids to bed. They'd loved to sneak out of bed and listen in the dark, though it did give way to nightmares, but only when their mother found out and reacted like any good mother would.

He passed human anatomy in high school without bothering to pay attention, because by that age his father was more comfortable with Brigham overhearing details about the cases so he knew what happened to the human body when a bullet or a bat hit somewhere. Understood the speed with which the heart could pump every drop of blood out of the body through a very small hole. He knew how long the brain could go without oxygen and the cascading affects as those seconds went on.

He knew that someone could be a rock until the second they couldn't. That all the common sense and intelligence in the world went out the window when you lost a loved one.

That sometimes life just sucked and all the hard work and luck in existence weren't enough to change that.

He'd had an advisor in college warn him not to be so at ease with death after a fellow student had died and Brigham hadn't been paralyzed with shock the way his fellow students were. They'd even gotten into a fight about it, the advisor convinced that Brigham was callus and cold because of the lack of reaction and Brigham furious as the insult when he simply reacted differently due to familiarity.

He'd made the mistake of telling his father what the advisor had said and the woman hadn't lasted long at the university after that.

But back to present day.

The others are still struggling to get up and ready, apparently there's been very few funerals between them, so Brigham is the only one who really understands what's actually expected when.

Funerals are like weddings that way, a lot of work for a short ceremony and each one had a cadence all their own. From what little he's seen so far, the Seresins have their own well-practiced procedures.

Brigham has never seen someone dig a grave before, though his grandfather told him it was backbreaking work and the family funeral home had bought a small backhoe as soon as they could afford one.

Six feet by six feet was a lot of earth to move with just a shovel.

But it seemed like Jake and his brother were determined to do just that.

Brigham had spotted the cemetery the night before, a lot of old families had them, even in Boston, although they didn't tend to be in the backyard. Logan had been creeped out. Southern Cali born and bred, he'd only been able to draw reference points from old westerns and horror movies.

Brigham loves his back seater, but sometimes the sheer degree of distance between west coast and east coast, old money and new, blue collar and white collar, is a gaping maw that he's not sure he can cross.

There is such a thing as too different. No one likes admitting it in this day and age, its all about the individual and less about the team, the partnership, but sometimes the gap is too wide to cross and no amount of effort will carry you through thin air.

If nothing else, this whole thing has been a lesson in how little you can know someone, even when you work side by side everyday.

But it kind of made sense, if Brigham dwelled on it, which he didn't do often, Jake was driven and proud and protective and he expected everyone else to be the same and when they weren't....well, Jake could be vicious too. It made sense that he'd keep his personal life separate from his professional.

It didn't bother Brigham, but he wasn't blind. It hurt Rooster and it pissed off Natasha and Reuben.

Brigham wasn't getting involved in that mess.

He was going to show up and show his respect and he could work with Jake in the future just fine.

And he was apparently going to awkwardly watch as they dug Jordan's grave.

Javy was there, off to the side and hovering, along with slightly older men who had to Machado's from how similar they looked.

Jake's daughter was with them, helping shift dirt away.

Brigham was too far away to hear their conversation, and not stupid enough to approach, but he'd bet money Javy and his brothers were trying to convince Jake and Peter to let them help and Hangman was refusing.

It was barely seven in the morning but the back of Jake's neck was already so red it looked like it was blistered and his thin undershirt was soaked through with sweat.

Peter didn't look much better, but he'd forgone a shirt altogether and the sun-inflicted redness made the scars stand out even more.

"Holy shit, are they digging a grave?" Yale.

"Yep."

"What the fuck, man?"

Then there was nothing left to do but watch and eventually, the others stumbled out to join them.

It was uncomfortable, to say the least.

Not between them, you got used to sharing uncomfortable situations with complete strangers when you were in the military, and they were all friends to a point.

Or at least familiar enough not to be strangers.

But grief and loss had a way of making even the most comfortable relationships uncomfortable.

No one ever knew what to do when someone else was grieving so they just watched Jake and Peter dig their brother's grave as the sun rose.

Eventually Nat and Bradley joined them and Brigham and the others did their best to ignore the tense silence between the two best friends.

The rest of the ranch came alive around them, animals and chores taken care of quickly and everyone dressed in black.

Ice and Mav appeared, decked out in dress uniforms, and they both seemed as surprised at the grave-digging as the rest of them.

"It must be a family tradition," Ice murmurs and they all kept their distance.

Ted Warren appeared a few minutes later and the cars started arriving after that. Most of them parked along the road at the direction of Ted and the ranch hands. Lots of civilians in black, soldiers in dress blues and enough rank that Brigham and the others double checked their uniforms.

The Governor and his staff arrived, followed shortly by the SOCOM CDR and his people and they all lined the road leading to the main house. Medals and jewelry glinting in the sun.

"This is a lot of brass," Mickey muttered. He couldn't stop fidgeting with his uniform until Payback started smacking his hands.

"This better happen soon, its starting to get hot. People are going to start falling out." Halo already starting to sweat through her uniform and infected by the US Military's obsession with temperature related injuries. Most of the people lining the road had a decade on her at least.

"I think they finished with the grave," Logan muttered, craning his neck to see around the crowd.

"Knock it off," Bradley warned.

A black Hersh was approaching the end of the road and stopped at the gate.

Jake, Peter, Javy and his brothers, Celia, Ren, and Lily Grace made the long walk down the drive.

Dustin, already crying, remained in Amara's arms in the cemetery.

"Where's the honor guard?" Nat wondered. It looked like most of Jordan's unit had shown, but it was Jake and the others who lifted the casket, with Ren and Javy at the front, his brothers in the middle and Jake and Peter at the back where the casket was heaviest.

Lily Grace held on to her mother's hand and her father's as they made the long, quiet walk back up the drive. Her eyes forward and her face dry under the clear Texas sky.

There were a few murmured goodbyes as the casket made it way, salutes and tears from the crowd.

Instrumental music started, so low it took Bradley a second to recognize Morning Has Broken as the casket approached the cemetery and they carefully made their way to the grave.

Even on a hot Texas day, the wet smell of fresh dirt filled the air as the crowd gathered round, careful not to enter the cemetery itself as Jake and the others kneeled and lowered the casket.

There was no priest, no clergymen, no speech.

A moment of silence.

A white chrysanthemum dropped.

And then Jake and Peter grabbed the shovels and started filling in the dirt.

The crowd dispersed long before Jake and Peter were finished. Everyone seemed to know better than to stick around.

Bradley lingered after the rest of their cohort left, until Javy appeared and pulled him away.

"Let's talk, Bradshaw."

"Now?"

"Yep."

And he didn't let Natasha follow.

***