This is more about me, than it is about him. He's gone. Truth is, he might even have died back in Afghanistan, when he took the hit, caught the flak, saved my life, all those years ago, and it's just taken the rest of him a little while longer to catch up to that fact. Or maybe he was killed by the slow death of falling through the cracks, a discarded war toy, broken on the sidewalk, like so many other tumbling plastic soldiers left bereft by their government, society, family, ach.... I dunno who's supposed to cradle them upon their return. Nobody is supposed to, that's the point. They're fighters. The war never stops. They battle it till then die. It's not the fact that he's gone. I can take that. It's the fact that he died in such apparently shady circumstances that I can't stomach. You go back for your own, and even if they're dead behind enemy lines, you probably want to retrieve them anyway. At some point, Spence crossed the line, and it's incumbent on me to, at the very least, check the sector for enemy activity. We don't terrorise the locals. We play hearts and minds and sweets and treats and patrol till we clear or slot any baddies that try to jump us. That's how it is done. That's how it will be done. Thy will be done. They will be done in.....