Let’s get to work.

  It was a good phrase, one Matt had used to motivate entire teams of men into doing overtime or working just that bit harder on a demanding job. It sounded proactive, sounded like he was taking a leadership role, sounded like he had a plan all thought out.

  It did a wonderful job of covering up the fact that he had no idea what he was doing.

  He sat on a rock in the shadow of the Dilligaf’s hull, the dying rays of the evening sun blocked out by the boat and by the foliage overhead as he chewed on his roast beef sandwich and watched his family bolt down roughly their entire bodyweight in coldcuts and chips. It could have been a picnic on a beach.

  Except for the rainbow colors in the plants and trees around them. Except for the giant corpse of the crab a hundred yards down the beach, now attracting small winged scavengers that from here looked like birds but he wasn’t going to make any pronouncements until he got a closer look at them. Except for the way Allie had her rifle slung across her chest and kept one hand on the pistol grip as she slowly walked around and ate her sandwich, eyes scanning everywhere.

  We are on a different world, with no way to get home.

  This was so far outside his own experience, it didn’t even move the needle. What did you do when you found yourself dumped into an utterly alien environment that may or may not be full of things trying to kill you and the rules of the world functioned differently than anything you’d once known?

  He paused at the thought, then glanced at Allie as she walked past. To anyone else, she would have looked calm and collected. But he had lived by her side for years, and he could see the little twitches that said she was on the edge, could see the tightness around her eyes that she got during the bad times when violence wasn’t far away.

  The only thing that wasn’t there, as he looked at his wife, was that almost vibrating control she exerted on herself when she was battling her inner demons. Instead, she looked confident. Alert. Almost at home. The little twitches, the hard set to her eyes… back in Long Beach they had made her stand out and seem dangerous and unpredictable.

  Here, now, suddenly, they seemed natural.

  Stranded in an alien land, everything trying to kill you, trying to understand the way things work while trying to stay alive.

  Oh.

  This probably seemed achingly familiar to his wife, didn’t it?

  Matthew Albright had no idea what to do next. And if it had been just Matthew Albright alone, or just Matthew Albright with the kids, he would have stumbled forward as best as he could, blindly thrashing about searching for the way to keep himself and his family alive. And he’d probably have made a complete hash of it.

  But he wasn’t alone, was he?

  “Allie,” he called to her, and she turned with a fluid sort of grace that left him almost breathless even as he continued; “Can we talk?”

  She blinked at the request, then a wry smirk crossed her lips flitter-fast before vanishing. Okay, yes, he’d asked her that innumerable times before, but those had all been in an attempt to help her deal with her demons.

  This time, he reflected as she strode towards him, was going to be kind of different.

  “What’s up Matty?” she asked as she drew near. She did not sit down when he patted the rock beside himself, instead standing and keeping her eyes tracking back and forth with her rifle still held across her body, the barrel pointed down.

  She looked dangerous, like a sentinel against an unseen threat, ready to commit violence at a moment’s notice.

  And by God it looked good on her.

  He pushed aside his instinct to ask her to sit down again and took a deep breath.

  “I need your help.”

  Her eyes stopped tracking and snapped to him instead, her attention focusing on him laser-like.

  “I don’t know what to do now,” he said, pitching his voice so it wouldn’t carry to the kids and their picnic. “I’m so far out of my depth I can’t even see the bottom. I can’t put a plan together because I don’t know where to start, and I don’t know where to start because I don’t have any idea what I’m doing.”

  The last came out in a harsh whisper, and he felt his chest muscles tense up with anxiety he’d been trying to hold back.

  He looked up to see Allie considering him, then she slung her rifle around and came to sit next to him, their legs almost touching.

  “And you think I have experience with this kind of thing?” she asked, with that same smirk. “Matty, I know I don’t talk about a lot of stuff, but I probably would have mentioned that one time I got teleported to a hostile alien planet at some point or another.”

  “Heh, no, not quite what I meant.” Matt chuckled, and half-hearted as it was it bled off more of the tension he’d been feeling. “Allie, you came back from war. You led men and women into combat. You survived, in a place where a lot of people didn’t.”

  She looked around at the rainbow forest, the black sand of the beach, the simple green grass underfoot, and at the Dilligaf behind them. “Not exactly a one-to-one comparison, Matty.”

  “We need to survive,” he said. “I don’t have the skills we need for that. Not the most important ones anyway. You do, Allie.”

  She went still for a long moment, not saying anything. Then she glanced at him out the side of her eye.

  “You need my skills?”

  “I think we all do,” Matt said.

  “The skills you spent years trying to make me forget and move on from? Those skills?”

  Matt blinked. Her voice hadn’t changed a whit, but suddenly there was something deep behind her words.

  “What?”

  “You spent a long time saying that I was broken, Matty,” she said, and the sudden hurt in her voice was like an arrow to Matt’s chest. “A long time trying to fix me. And now suddenly you want me to take the lead, and use those very same things that you said made me broken?”

  If her words had been a fist, Matty would have been doubled over and vomiting after its impact. Instead he just stared at her, wide-eyed. “I never–”

  “I know you never meant to say it like that, Matty,” she said, still not looking at him. “But what did you think you were saying? All those therapists, all those pills, all that ‘trying to help out your poor broken wife’ side activities?” she uttered a guttural curse in her native Guatemalan Spanish. “Might as well just hold up a sign saying My Wife Is Broken.”

  “Of course I was trying to help you,” Matt said, still reeling. “You were hurting. You came back from the war with so many–”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “Problems?” Allie asked mirthlessly.

  “Yes!” Matt said, leaning forward. “Allie, you were miserable! You were jumping at shadows, you almost shot the Witherstein’s cat, you were having nightmares that practically woke the entire neighborhood! What was I supposed to do, sit back and let the woman I loved–the woman I still love–rip herself apart?”

  “You could have backed off and let me deal with it,” she growled at him.

  “By leaving us? By running from everything that was wrong?” Matt felt himself growing angry now, the frustrations of the past year meeting the fear and uncertainty of the moment and combining to make something ugly and writing in his chest. “I was fighting for us Allie. I threw everything I had into trying to help you. Money, time, everything! But you wouldn’t even talk to me!”

  “Because you couldn’t understand!” she hissed at him, glaring daggers. “What I saw over there? What I did? You could never understand. It was mine to deal with, it was mine to fix. Not yours! Why couldn’t you just accept that I had to deal with it alone?”

  “Because you shouldn't have to!” Matt fought to keep his voice under control so as to not scare the kids. “Damn it Alejandra, I meant what I said at the altar. There is no ‘yours’ and ‘mine’. There’s ‘ours’. I was trying to help!”

  He was breathing heavily by the last word, years worth of frustration and pain he thought he’d gotten over suddenly flaring up and rising to the surface in this moment. Allie glared at him, and for a second he thought she was going to punch him. But instead she just muttered a string of spanish curses and turned her back on him, gripping her rifle and staring out at the alien sea.

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” she said, voice icy and flat.

  And she’s running again. What a shock. The pure bitterness behind the thought shocked him, moreso with how heartfelt it was.

  For a long moment he wanted nothing more than to just stand up and walk away. He was so tired of this. So tired of fighting by himself for his marriage, of trying to help a woman who was determined to not be helped. Of trying to hold together the pieces of a marriage already broken and falling apart.

  The simple gold band on his ring finger glinted in the rays of the setting sun. He hadn’t noticed when it had been removed from his finger by whatever magic had brought them here. And he hadn’t noticed when it had come back. And what did that say about his view of the marriage?

  Slowly, feeling almost robotic, he gripped it between the fingers of his other hand and slowly pulled it off. He sat there staring at it for a pair of heartbeats, the urge to just haul back and pitch the ring away suddenly almost overwhelming.

  Dear God, what do I do now?

  And as if in answer, the old marriage vow came back to his mind again. The last part, specifically; “what god hath joined, let no man put asunder.”

  He looked up from his ring. The world around him was a canvas of bright colors not found in Earthly nature. The sea rolled in and out a bare hundred yards away. The Dilligaf creaked in a soft breeze. And his children, seated a dozen yards away, kept casting glances towards him and Allie as they ate. They knew something was going on, but weren’t willing to intrude.

  Had they been in Hawaii right now, on the Kohala coast or somewhere near South Point, the conversation would have ended here. And with it, his marriage. Again. How many times was he going to wind up here again? He knew that this would have been the breaking point. And this time it wouldn’t have been Allie walking away, it would have been him.

  This would have been where he gave up and walked away. Because he was so tired.

  Two breaking points in one day. That probably wasn’t a record, but it might have been a contender.

  But here? Now? On an alien beach God knew how many light years and planes of existence away from the sands of Hawaii? With hostile wildlife, children who needed protection, and enough brushes with death in the last 24 hours that Matt felt like he’d just been made the star of a Jack Bauer fantasy?

  He closed his fist over his wedding ring and squeezed until the metal dug into the flesh of his palm.

  Leaving wasn’t an option.

  But even as that conclusion solidified itself, something else rose up. Why was it no longer an option? Simple survival? Because together they would be better equipped to stave off the dangers of this world? That… Was a poor excuse to keep a marriage going. For the kids? It was true, but that too felt wrong.

  Everything that flashed through his mind in the next couple seconds didn’t connect. Stay together for safety? For the family? Because there was literally nowhere to go? Those were all things from the outside, factors that could affect a marriage and relationship but that shouldn’t define it. He knew that almost instinctively. But what–

  Oh.

  The answer was so simple. It stared him in the face from the corner where he’d shoved it and covered it up with concerns and problems to be fixed and plans for fixing them.

  “Allie?”

  He said it softly, having to work hard to make it so and to keep the frustration and anger and pain still bubbling in his chest out of his voice. She turned back to him, eyebrows raising and mouth set in a grim line. Like she was ready for battle.

  “What?” she asked flatly.

  “Do you love me?”

  That got a reaction. His wife’s eyes blinked open wide, then a dozen different emotions flashed across her face too quickly for Matt to identify. She settled on ‘annoyed’ and glared at him.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Matty, if you’re trying to guilt-trip me…”

  “I’m not, I swear,” he held up calloused hands and shook his head, not breaking eye contact. “I just… Need to know. Do you love me?”

  She stared at him for what seemed like forever. Then the muscles in her jaw relaxed and she let out a deep sigh.

  “I do,” she said quietly. “I never stopped. But before God Matty, you are so… So…”

  “I love you too,” he said. “Not because of fleeting emotion, but because I choose to. And will always choose to, even through pain and hardship.”

  It had been part of their marriage vows, the ones they had written themselves. Allie closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath through her nose hearing them again. When she opened them, she looked down at Matt’s hand, now extended to her. She hesitated, then sighed and reached out to take it.

  “I love you,” she said to him. “Not because you are always lovely, but because I choose to. Even through misunderstandings and grief.”

  “Because love bears all things,” Matt said, continuing the vow.

  “Love believes all things.”

  “Hopes all things.”

  “Endures all things,” they both finished together. Matt squeezed Alejandra’s hand at the same moment he felt her grip tighten on his.

  “You can be a pain in the ass, mi corazon,” Alejandra whispered through a smile and with tears unshed in her eyes.

  “Right back at you, mi amor,” Matt said, feeling the burn in his own eyes. “I will try to be better. I will try to give you what you need, including space.”

  “I will try to open up more, when I can. But it won’t come easy.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, and that too felt like a vow.

  She huffed a laugh and looked around them. “Good to know, since you have so many options.” She paused, closed her eyes, and took in air through her nose.

  “I am not going anywhere either,” she said quietly, eyes still closed.

  “We’ll make this work,” he said.

  “We will. Or,” she added, opening her eyes that now held a playful sparkle, “you will die trying.”

  “I will die?” Matt snorted. “Not you?”

  “Who here is the combat veteran, dear? You wouldn’t last five minutes against me.”

  “I bet I could give you a run for your money,” he shot back, grinning. “I had a life before you, you know. I’ve cleared out a bar or two in my time.”

  “You think that compares with desert combat?”

  “No, I think it means I know how to fight dirty!”

  They both heard the unspoken words beneath the banter. No problems had been solved. There was still pain on both sides, still unresolved conflicts, and there would still be clashes in the future. But the foundation was laid and set, and they would be able to stand firm on at least that when the storms came.

  “Want to help me figure out how to keep our family alive on an alien world?” Matt asked after a minute, still holding her hand.

  “You do know how to show a girl a good time,” she said, chuckling. “But si. Let’s talk.”

  It was a good start.