Burden (2)

Leonel's head paused, his fists trembling. He didn't dare to look up. But, just as easily as he had been able to see Normand's face back then, he could just as easily see Rollan's. 

He could see the reddening of Rollan's blue eyes, the tears streaming down his cheeks, the tight grit of his teeth. Leonel could almost see the reflection of Elise in Rollan's eyes, he could feel how heavy the weight of the words he had just spoken were. 

They didn't just represent his willingness to die, they represented a willingness to leave his wife behind to a life of loneliness and pain. It was a weight of a completely different magnitude, it was the kind of weighted words no husband ever wanted to speak… no father ever wanted to say. 

Leonel knew well that Elise had found out that she was pregnant not long ago. He knew well that Rollan knew this truth as well. He even knew that Goggles' had sacrificed himself knowing this about as well as any one of them did.