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She’s walking up the stairs and her hands are resting on the slight swell of her belly. It intrigues her; she’s always been relatively slim and fit and so to see her stomach rise away from her body slightly and feel life beating under her hand is something awfully terrifying and amazing.
She opens the door and there he is, her husband, and she’s just nineteen but she knows that this is the man that she’s going to love for the rest of her life.
And laying beside him is a cheerleader uniform, dropped carelessly on the ground.
And he’s fucking a girl not much younger than her, doggy style on the carpet.
Fucking. That’s the word that comes to mind, harsh and brusque and she wants to take it back, wants to turn around and walk away, so she never saw this and she could go on living blissfully ignorant.
When she miscarries three weeks later, she cries with relief, and then cries with guilt that she was relieved to lose her baby but she didn’t know if she would be able to handle it, a little boy growing up with his face.
The lawyer who authorises her divorce is male, and Libby can barely look at him, but for the hatred that’s burning up her veins, she’s going to die from all this hatred.
That’s the solution; learn how to kill others so she can live. She signs up for the United States Marine Corps.
__
The training is fucking hard, harder than anything she’s ever done in her life. And she’s swearing a lot more, this time without flinching. Her muscles burn and her brain screams for rest, but she keeps pushing through.
When she finally meets the fitness requirement, she doesn’t high five the other recruits. She trains until she’s the top woman of the class.
When she learns how to assemble the gun in the time frame allowed, she doesn’t congratulate herself. She practices until her knuckles are raw and her fingers are calloused and she can do it in the dark, with her eyes closed.
It’s only when she’s finally assigned to Marine Reconnaissance Unit 16 that she allows herself a private smile. The hatred in her veins is slowly burning out and in its place is loyalty that is thicker than blood.
Semper Fi, she tells herself. These men are not him.
__
The air is humid when she climbs off the plane. She’s never been to Hawaii before, she’s almost forgotten about the civilian world after thirteen weeks locked away at Parris Island, and then an even longer stretch of time churning through countless assignments.
She sees her new team, and she gives them a nod as she walks over. One of the marines is flipping patties at the barbeque and most of them are decked out in the most hideous floral shirts.
Staff Sergeant Book Riley, waves her over. Beside him stands a man with an enigmatic smile and silver anti-flash glasses covering his eyes.
“Gant, I’d like you to formally meet your new commanding officer, Lieutenant Shane Schofield.”
He extends his hand and she takes it, and she’s staring at him. This is the Scarecrow. He’s young, not as young as her but still incredibly young in shortened-military-lifespan terms to have done so much.
“Scarecrow, this is Lance Corporal Elizabeth Gant, callsign Fox,” Book tells Scarecrow.
“That’s a nice callsign,” Schofield says easily, and his voice is low and she can already hear the edge of command, the one that would make people follow him to hell and back.
And maybe Libby blushes a little bit at his comment; her callsign is surely one of the most unoriginal he’s heard, it was assigned to her by her training unit during a massive exercise and it was a big step for her to accept the male attention and wear it with pride.
All night, Libby’s eyes rest on the Lieutenant and they chat and he asks her about her family and she asks him about his and he falls quiet and looks away and she’s never seen someone look so sad.
Oh, and she mingles with the rest of the team and she immediately clicks with the only other woman, not out of any gender solidarity because Mother is perhaps the most non-conforming woman she’s ever met, but because her take-no-prisoners attitude is everything Libby aspires to have.
But when the time comes for them to say goodnight, she knows. She knows that she’s attracted to Lieutenant Shane Schofield, and there is absolutely nothing she can do about it.
__
“I don’t want to tell him. I’d rather be close to him, and unable to touch him, than further away and still be unable to touch him,” she tells Book softly, and the words sound stupid, childish even. But Book nods pensively, like he understands, and doesn’t say anything further which is possibly the best thing he could have done.
__
Libby Gant wakes up in hospital and her side is aching and someone is holding her hand. At first she thinks it’s her sister, Denise, but she’s standing on the other side of her bed.
“He’s been here since you were came in and he’s refusing to leave until you wake up,” Denise tells her and Libby blinks, groggy from the pain relief and being out for a couple of days.
“Wha--? Who?” she slurs before she sees a familiar pair of anti-flash sunglasses sitting atop Shane Schofield’s head, and his sleeping face is resting on the edge of her bed, and his eyes are there for all the world to see.
She falls back onto her pillow and she doesn’t try to stop the smile this time.
--
When they officially declare their relationship to the Corps, it’s with a tinge of sadness. She’s no longer going to be serving under Captain Shane Schofield, and that’s a damn shame, considering the Scarecrow is the best man she’s ever served under.
She’s re-assigned to a new unit.
And she’s placed in charge.
First-Lieutenant Elizabeth Gant.
God, how far is she from the training at Parris Island, from the men whistling at her and calling her foxy, from the cheerleader’s uniform lying on the floor of her house.
She’s pretty fucking far from that.
__
Everything has gone to hell in a handbasket and she’s trying to keep control of the situation but it’s really hard. Watching de Villiers die, she felt a part of her rip open. She’s lost team members before, but never when she’s been at the top and somehow, that makes all the difference.
Now she’s trapped in a castle and she can’t see a way out -- she’s not the Scarecrow. Knight is handcuffed to the wall and she’s being dragged towards a guillotine.
That’s when it hits her. She’s going to die. She is going to die. Her parents are going to receive a knock on the door from two well dressed and polite Marines and they’re going to say, “Ma’am, we’re terribly sorry but we have news regarding your daughter Elizabeth.”
There will be a funeral. Mother will cry. Book II will cry.
She blocks Shane’s reaction from her mind because it hurts too much to think about.
__
It’s said that for every action, there’s an opposite and equal reaction, and Libby wants to call bullshit on this.
If her action was to love Schofield more than she knew was possible, it seems grossly unfair that the opposite reaction would be her death.
If her action was to do something useful with her life, find her purpose again when she’d lost it so soon, then it seems unjust that she would die so helplessly.
There are moments in Elizabeth Gant’s life that act as axis points.
“Hey Knight?” she calls, and her voice is steadier than it’s ever been. “Tell him I would have said yes.”