Zoe didn't say anything at first. She listened and existed. Her attention wasn't even on the people below or the world outside. The warrior woman was doing her best to find peace or focus or anything that would keep her from ruining something she hadn't known she wanted it until she had it.
"By understanding what I want isn't out there." The Amazon shook her head; she couldn't look at him still. "It doesn't hurt that I'm not with him now. It does because I do love him, but that's not what really hurts. What hurts is knowing that in some reality, somewhere, he zigged instead of zagged, and he wad out of that chair. We have babies, and that little girl is ours. I know this because I'm standing here with a man I love and isn't a pilot but a God with a capital G. I know this because I do work for some corporation, doing the real job of the man who supposedly writes my paycheck." She was saying more than she usually did.
"It hurts because it's a possibility that he and I didn't get. And, it hurts because I want to be selfish and make him not be here. Make him go away so I don't have to think about the possibilities, the could haves, the if onlys." Zoe turned around to look at him. "It hurts because I can't ask you to do it, and you're just and fair - you'd never do something so cruel to so many. And I love you for that. I just always thought that would be my life with him, and it's not. It took a gorram living city to get him a kid and peace with that, and me a man I don't have to worry bout dying and leaving another hollow place inside me."
She grabbed him by the shirt front and pulled him close. "If you ever put on that scarf, I will kill you myself, and find some way to bring you back and do it again." Yes, there was pain, and quite possibly just as much fear. "I will travel all the way to Hell to get you back, and you better be ready for more than an earful, got me?"