Author’s Note: I only really had one part of this song I wanted to do, and I knew who was getting the fic the first time I glanced at the lyrics. This one suggests a marriage that can stand in the face of everything to me, and that is Kate and Fletcher Kennedy. They withstood a lot over the years and are still married and ridiculously in love after more than thirty years.

This, of course, is just a brief look at one of the trials they had to overcome, as it fit with these lyrics:

This old routine will drive you mad
It’s just a mumble never spoken out loud
Sometimes you don’t even know how you’re still standing.
Well she looks at you now, and you see how.
Well you look at her now, and you know how.
~First Aid Kit, “This Old Routine”

He just put his son in the ground.

Nothing made this right. Nothing could.

Fletcher stared on at the grave, ignoring the words from the sermon, not caring what others might say, about hope or consolation or even sympathy. None of them could change the facts, and the fact was that Fletcher had outlived his son. He might even lose both of his brother’s boys. That was unacceptable. All of it was.

Kate’s hand brushed his, and Fletcher took it, instinct overriding the numbness he’d felt since they heard about the crash. He’d struggled to believe it, not wanting any of this as truth, and he knew his Katie girl was aching just as much if not worse than he was, that it wanted to kill her as it did him, but neither of them were the sort that gave in. They were Kennedys. They didn’t break easily, though this…

This was coming damn close.

His eyes met Kate’s, and he yanked his wife into his arms, needing to hold onto her. He was supposed to be the strong one, but he’d always found that she was tougher than him, more able to bear what life threw at her than he was.

“We’ll get through this somehow, Katie girl,” he promised, knowing that as much as neither of them might want it right now, they could. They would.

Together.