★ @burification - Tumblr Blog

dulce et decorum est

lmanbur x reader - 19.1k - AO3

warnings: violence, heavily implied sexual content, major character death, erm war, animal death

notes: this is my lmanbur love letter, i love him, i think i could have done a better job but it is what it is,,,,,, please read this I'm begging on my hands and knees i promise it is good and worth your time i promise

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

taglist: @your-shifting-gurl @lillylvjy @toiletwipes @lotusmisc @mosslovestherain @burification @sweet-soot

It is cold and quiet. The air settles in your body and whittles a wordless warning into your bones of the coming numbness of your limbs. You sit patiently in the snow as flakes still lazily fall down, find themselves in your hair, melting on your gloves, and joining the millions of snowflakes scattered upon the ground. You take in a deep breath and let it sit as you pull back your hand holding an arrow carefully. The string whines in your ear, begs to be let go, unleash pointed violence, calculated pain. Your stomach growls horribly, that deer of big black eyes raising its head, meeting your gaze. No one has eaten a meal in days, people picking on bones, sucking on the white pieces of former life. You will ask for forgiveness later. The deer watches you, not daring to move, and when you clench your eyes shut you know the arrow will meet its mark. It whistles by your head and finds itself lodged in the heart of now-fallen prey.

People celebrate when you return with the animal poorly tied on the back of a horse, you smile, act polite, and try and find who you wanted to impress. He isn’t there, off doing better things, like planning a war soon to be fought again and not entertaining your childish infatuation. You are alone when you are pouring water over your hands, freezing water that runs pink and stains the snow behind your tent riddled with moth holes, imperfections that sing when the wind howls. The blood reminds you of the guilt that killing brings, this blood, for once, is pure and unarmed. You shiver, sigh with breath that catches in the horrible freezing air, and reminds you that you still can in fact breathe.

When you return, new gloves on your hands, a stew has been made. He’s standing there, facing away from you, the perfect uniform unspeckled by dirt or melting snow. He is as impressive as ever, a commanding presence that leaves your fingertips buzzing. He turns at the sound of your crunching footsteps and you meet his gaze the same way the deer had met yours. There is brief recognition, just enough to make your heart race, to feel the tip of your nose as warm instead of cold. He nods his head with a small smile.

“Everyone thank, y/n, for the deer,” his hand raises to point, a lazy extension of his arm to you. “Enjoy a warm meal for once,” and his words are that soaring arrow, the turn of his heel without any of the steaming food in his hand is the action of ripping it out. Voices cheer, creating a steady static of sound as you watch him walk away to his own pitched tent. A warm bowl is placed in your grasp as your eyes stay in that place he used to be, lingering there until the smell of the food tempts you more than that afterimage of him.

You eat slowly, venison earthy in your mouth paired with potatoes that warn of those last measly bits of rations. It’s good, better than good. For a moment, you feel like everything may be fine, survivable, this winter something that will pass us by and this paused war something that will be swallowed all the same as this food. You sigh out and feel lighter. It’s getting dark when it begins to snow again, you wonder if he’s eaten anything? If not the stew what would he have? Wasn’t he starving like the rest of you?

It eats at you, worry that aches more than the cold in your joints. You think of gaunt cheekbones during a speech, hands shaking with notes, and that man destroying himself for others. It settles with the snow on your unmoving limbs. You shouldn’t care this much. You shouldn’t be filling a bowl, shouldn’t be walking towards his tent, and you shouldn’t be pulling that flap open with a shakey hand, and yet, you find yourself facing him and his shocked expression as your sudden intrusion.

“President?” The honorific left you in an awkward way, it got stuck in your mouth on the way out. You choked when you met the sight of him, him standing looking down at a map spread out in the middle of the room on a makeshift table, a few buttons on that uniform undone yet not shed to conserve warmth. His gaze when it met yours was that of a honeyed summer, sunsets that stretch out across the sky. He is warm, sickeningly so. His eyes on you feel akin to basking in the sun, and in the dead of winter, you are all too content to soak it in.

“Yes?” he says, a word that leaves him softly and yet sobers you all the same to your disruption and to the warm stew still in your hand.

“I-” you start, stuttering again with a wince. “You didn’t get any food at dinner, So I, I brought you some,” You give a sheepish smile and set down the bowl beside that map marked in red, scribbled on, and crossed out. You shiver, allow the cold to bite until you meet his face again, the puppy-dog look he’s giving you making your stomach turn.

“I didn’t want to take food from the people who needed it,” he says, his eyes half-lidded, dark, flickering in that lantern light.

“You can’t lead if you aren’t eating,” you look away from him “and we all need you, so you need this,” you whisper the last part before escaping from the small space with your face hot. The cold is quick to make this clear to you, tease you with windchill and a bout of dizziness. You take a few steps, fighting back against those gusts.

“Y/n, wait,” he calls, his head peaking out, wind whistling as you turn. This moment is that horrible letting go of the arrow repeated again, it's the finality from brushing shoulders to knowing each other's names, it’s your arrow that strikes his heart unbeknownst to you. He ushers you back and you obey, follow him into that tent with your head held low. When you turn, find him fastening that door shut to keep whatever warmth he can from being stolen, you flush. He turns, a perfect sight of wind-chaffed cheeks and parted pink lips.

“I, uhm, I should have thanked you, I mean personally, before” he gestures between himself and you. It was then that your heart first ached for him, really ached. He laughed lightly and retracted back to his place on the other side of the table. He laughed again, a quiet rawness that left his mouth, his lips cracked from the dry cold, and yet the sound still soothed you. It told you to press on, warmth across your body. A part of you begged to cull distance, to tuck yourself into him if only to seek out his body heat. You think his arms wrapped around you would erase all thoughts of casualties, of war-torn faces, and of that deer. It’s indulgently delusional.

“It was nothing,” you say, knowing that the deer was anything but. He looks hesitant as you realize the food is now being held in his large hands, that he’s eating, and something about it stirs you. His eyes look up through his hair only to meet your own. You couldn’t help the way you moved in turn, averting your gaze to become glued to the ground instead of his face.

“Thank you,” he says again and finally you retreat successfully, darting through the storm to your tent to curl yourself up with the butterflies in your stomach.

You dream of fields full of wildflowers, a picnic with Wilbur across from you, his head tilted up to the sun. You wake to the unfortunate numbness in your toes, a familiar feeling that has you groan, and curl tighter around yourself. You dress quickly, rubbing away at dried mud and not bothering to look at the state of your hair. There wasn’t enough time for wishes of beauty and yet you still let yourself entertain the worry its absence brought you.

You are sent to hunt again, given that same bow, and a kiss on the forehead from a soldier that begs you kill again. You nod, crease your brow, and tromp back out into the snow. You can’t make yourself pretend you aren’t also seeking more of that general’s attention. It’s days of the same routine with moments of a friendly nod from the man who somehow always catches you coming back to camp empty-handed. It’s a week until you succeed again. It’s another deer. This one is a buck, you think, as it stands larger up on a hill. He looks out, ears twitching, and you realize your time is as limited as it always is, the atmosphere volatile.

You pull back with two fingers and you look up at pride, that deer that stood tall with the imagined weight of antlers atop his head, of beauty. When you let go you close your eyes as you always do, and when you snap them open you find him dead, shot through the eye. It takes you far too long to drag it back, and when you do you are met with cheers, that soldier from before pressing a kiss now to your cheek. You find Wilbur leaving his tent to investigate the commotion. He stands tall, concerned for a brief moment as he scans those faces so strangely adorned with smiles. He finds you in the middle of it all, dripping with wet snow, hair frozen in icicles at the end, mud and blood smeared on your face and you are only looking at him, not at the crowd of people or the deer being pulled from your hands to be made into food.

And maybe it’s embarrassing, maybe it’s like being caught red-handed, or just maybe this is the start of something, a stir that you can’t ignore.

He asks you to join him in his tent, two chairs found somewhere set around that table, two more bowls of stew made with fresh meat, and no more blood on your face. You allow yourself to look in that small pocket mirror you’ve kept stowed away, allow yourself vanity for right now if only to make the heaviness of his gaze feel less critical. You smooth down your hair, wipe your face with a rag, and you feel pretty.

He looks prettier than you never the less, as his hands bring that spoon to his lips. It feels strange to be here, intimate in the way there is a candle lit between you two, an uncovered flame that dances the same steps of trepidation in the cold air that you are carrying out in conversation.

“Do you worry of the war?” you ask, implore, because there are no better questions than that of the looming threat. Your mind must be as heavy as your heart, always.

“Every moment,” he says and it suffices as an answer in the way it crawls from his mouth as a plead he doesn’t want help with. You flutter your eyelashes, blink away any fear you harbor in your body, and still his hand finds yours. He reaches out across that table that has seen the plans of battles passed and yet to come and grazes his calloused fingertips across your own hand like it's the simplest thing in the world. “We will win this, you can leave the worrying to me,”

“Must you do everything alone?” you ask and his thumb grazes across your skin, his own hand warm. A grin finds its way to his face, something that betrayed the thickness of the air.

“Do you trust me?” he asks, letting the words crystalize as a cloud of water vapor in the still-freezing air despite the flush on your cheeks.

“To lead? Yes. To take care of yourself? Absolutely not,” you lock eyes with him and he tilts his head.

“I’d say one of those is more important,” he says.

“And I’d say you are weighing the wrong one over the other,” you challenge and it’s strangely tense as you pause, bite your tongue, and are quick to look down at your food that is growing cold. “I’m glad you are eating,” you say and at that moment he is mortal, human, looking at you with soft eyes, unspoken affection that you would not allow yourself to name. He is no longer the leader, the president, a name that weighs too heavily on his shoulders. He is so suddenly the image you’d admired from afar now so suffocatingly close. He is Wilbur, someone who must be reminded to eat, who hasn’t yet let go of your hand, and who, in this dying light, looks small.

The night lapses into itself until you are without him again, curled up in your own sleeping bag shivering, and replaying a night of conversations that have gone past. It’s then you wish for his warmth, for bodies pressed against bodies. It’s a desire you do not allow yourself to fuel, and yet the next day he hovers near you. He seeks you out himself, pulls you to the woods to practice shooting, and you think you must be ablaze with the heat in your cheeks.

He sets up a bottle, retreats to press himself against your back, and steadies you with large gloved hands. It’s less the actions and more the feeling of his hot breath fanning the shell of your ear as he directs you to raise that gun. He reaches with you, bodies overlaid.

“Fire,” he whispers as snowflakes gather in the curls of his hair out of the corner of your eye. The end of his nose was red and his glasses were fogged up with the hot breath that was escaping past the scarf you had wrapped around his neck. You were quick to pull the trigger of that heavy gun, obey his orders and sublimate yourself to the air of authority in that familiar voice. The sound rang in your ears for a moment then fell away to him looking down at you with a grin.

Bullseye. A broken glass bottle.

“Are you impressed?” you joke, prod, your desire for praise outweighing any rational thought or action. He untwists himself from you, steps back, and looks down again just to face you.

“Quite, maybe you don’t need training?” he offered, no such desired praise crawling from his lips.

“Thought my proficiency with a bow would have told you enough,” you say softly, leaning into the levity of the moment, the warm sight of the upturn of his lips as it contrasted with the wind nipping at the tips of your ears. You shuffle, the snow crunching your boots.

“Guess I didn’t really think this through, hm?” and you want to say something dangerous, reply, tease, and draw out a reaction at the expense of your better judgment. A branch breaks far away and Wilbur lifts his head to stare out like a startled animal. You keep your gaze on him, the bob of his Adam’s apple, the angle of his nose, and still those snowflakes gathering in his brown curls.

“Maybe you just wanted me alone,” you say and his attention rears back to you, snaps to you the same it had that broken branch, surprise clear across his features that so quickly bloom with a blush. You are terrified as he opens his mouth and struggles to find the right words. He is speechless, that leader of a nation stricken silent by just an utterance from your lips. He leans down, gets so impossibly close, and shares your oxygen, a feeling so intimately warm when it is this cold.

“What would you say, if that is, the reason for this,” he implores and you want to scream as a shiver runs down your spine that is, for once, not caused by the temperature.

“I would hope you would kiss me,” and yet he doesn’t kiss your lips. He instead presses them to the apples of your cheeks, to your forehead, to the tip of your nose, and then, finally, to your lips. Its soft wordless worship, it’s suffocatingly intimate, the shuttering inhales as he catches his breath. You bare your heart as he had his own, and you can’t stop yourself from being terrified of what will come after. His hands trail up, cradle your face, and hold you like something has never been more precious.

“I am being selfish to have you like this so soon, my darling,” you kiss him instead of replying, instead of fueling his own self-doubt. You drink him in, move your lips in a way that speaks of pining returned, of months of staring now unwasted. You keep him, allow yourself this, and attempt to absolve him of his own guilt.

“We can be selfish together,” you breathe, “I think we deserve that, I think you deserve that,” and you resist the urge to beg.

“And yet don’t you deserve something proper?” he ponders, his hand brushing down your face, wiping at the droplets of melted snow “Once we have food, I will take you on a proper date,” and you laugh. You don’t tell him you would let him ruin you, that you are scared you already are even when it’s just this. His lips meet yours again nevertheless and this time it states of new beginnings and waning control.

The two of you find yourselves connected. A relationship that terrifies you both being kindled by that very same fear. Passion swallows that carefully kept peace, burns and engulfs you both into this intertwining of souls that lacks a steady footing.

It’s fast to when you find yourself attached to his hip, him much the same, never complaining about the proximity. You are warm and he’s been cold for so long. You indulge each other in late-night conversations and feed each other's insatiable desire for intimacy, shared oxygen and ever-present skin-to-skin contact. He never prods for more than you are willing to give and after a month you can’t imagine a night spent alone, a day spent without his company.

So you spend most nights in his tent, overlaying each other on two cots pushed together, though it doesn’t work very well it’s enough to rest. He savors the weight of you on top of him, finds it grounding, your head rested on his chest or your leg laid atop his own. He pulls you there now, straddling him in an awkward way. It’s late and the camp is silent as you lean down to whisper in his ear but he speaks first.

“Thank you,” he breathes out, his mouth finding its way to your neck, to creating bruises just below where he knew they would be hidden by your clothing. The phrase confuses you even as the action of unwinding like this is familiar. He leans back again and you resituate, resting your head on his chest, listening idly to the beating of his heart. “I’m sorry if I ever feel like a burden,” he says quietly.

“You never do,” you whisper, pulling more blankets over the pair of you and settling yourself into his side. “I wanted you before you probably knew I existed,” you confess and he chuckles. You wish you could see the smile on his lips but your eyes have yet to adjust to the dark, leaving you with the outline of him.

“Then I’m glad I found you before you changed your mind,” he says and you kiss at his jaw, stubble brushing against your skin. All of him feels like an indulgence, a vice you will never earn.

“I don’t think you realize how much people adore you,” you say and he huffs.

“Until they realize I’m a mess a-” You cut him off with your finger to his lips and a gentle shush. He is frequently critical of himself even as he hands out compliments to others so passively, he can’t extend that kindness to his own talents nor his mistakes.

“Don’t talk like that, s’not productive, Wil” and you can feel the soreness of your limbs calling to sleep, the slow shutting down of your body. You ignore it, for now, push past your own exhaustion. “I’ve never met someone like you, someone with so much passion, so much to bring to this world.” you pause and find his head tilted to see you as much as he can in the darkness of the tent where your face is obscured from where it is still half laid upon his chest, rising and falling slowly with the pace of his breathing. “Wilbur, people surround themselves around you because they can see what you can’t,”

It’s still winter when Wilbur asks you to teach him how to hunt and you don’t have the strength to say no when he flashes his perfectly poised puppy dog eyes. It wasn’t a skill you thought he needed nor one you thought you were especially qualified to teach, and yet, here you were following the tracks of a bunny. Wilbur is not the quietest, his footfalls heavy even after you’ve urged him multiple times that this matter is delicate. He is also not the best with a bow and arrow but he tries in an attempt to entertain you.

“Steady,” you say as he pulls back, a shaky hand attempting to aim at a blissfully unaware rabbit. “Breathe, Wil,” you say and you can watch as he relaxes just slightly, one of his eyes shuts to get a better look. When he lets go the arrow misses by only a few inches. The rabbit scurries away, the white of its fur conceling it back into the snow. You can’t suppress your giggle.

“Am I hopeless, darling?” he asks and you smile at him, his cheeks flushed as he looks away embarrassed.

“I wouldn’t say you are hopeless,” you drag out and he rolls his eyes. You blink, suddenly stunned by how mundane the moment feels. His brown eyes fall back to you and the adoration you find there shocks you further, though you do your best to conceal it. “Just need some practice,”

“At least I have the best to teach me,” he praises, leaning to you and pressing a chaste kiss to your lips. It makes your face feel hot. It’s only been two months and yet your head has not stopped spinning, every action of his still making your heart race. Maybe it’s unhealthy, the bond so quickly foraged, the way the two of you so desperately leaned on one another, but it was making this winter survivable.

“The three rabbits we have should be okay, if you are cold?” you ask and he hums, arranging the bow out of his hand to free it so it can hold yours. You squeeze his hand as soon as it’s intertwined with yours and the chuckle that leaves him is music to your ears. A part of you still can’t believe he holds you like this, like love is something so easily found in this situation. “It’s no deer but it’s food,” you tease.

“They won’t complain,” he says and you know he is right.

“I know, I think some of them worship me for the deer,” you joke and he nods. His gaze falls down on you, memorizing every complexity of your face.

“They should worship you if my poor attempt to hunt is anything to go on,” he says and you roll your eyes. He had gotten one of the rabbits, albeit poorly, it was still impressive for his first time hunting.

“Can’t be good at everything, Mr. President,” you say, giving him a wry smile.

“Seems like it,” he replies and you can’t help but laugh, bump your shoulder into his as the both of you trek back. “I’ll get the hang of it if we keep practicing,” he mumbles and you giggle again as both of you walk into camp, passing off those rabbits to people waiting to begin cooking. It wasn’t every day you caught something, it wasn’t every day you hunted, and yet they believed in you the same, always assuming you would come with prey. You give a bashful smile and Wilbur pulls you to sit near a fire, to wait for that food even if it will be a while. The moving flames warm your numb face.

In the end, it’s a common dish, more stew. You both don’t complain. You force yourself to eat there by the fire, listening to the idle conversation, but not adding anything. It’s a gentle silence from you that is occasionally observed by Wilbur shifting his attention but never making you speak.

The first day it is warm again, the unthawing of your skin brings nothing but settling dread of a war effort relit. The camp bustles with the cleaning of rifles, the counting of ammunition, and the organizing of medical supplies. When you see Wilbur’s worried brow, you can tell he feels the same. It’s in the way his hand finds yours in every moment he can, squeezes tight, and then only lets go as he stands to speak, breathing that fight back into them with words so carefully crafted. He has spoken these same words to you in the last days of snow, whispered them with his hand slung across your waist, spoke them to a growing audience of you and singing birds, and now he shared them with all those soldiers they were written for.

You don’t listen, not in the same way everyone else is. No, you nod as he hits those beats he was so worried about, be attentive to the changes in his tone, and you notice as his hands begin to shake, the moment of realization when the speech went past careful words and became what is was, another declaration for war and violence no matter how much he detested it. He smiles all the same as people cheer, he takes your hand and you sheepishly stand beside him, though you know it’s nothing concrete.

“Don’t hate me for this,” he leans down and whispers in your ear. You cock your head to the side, confusion clear on your face as he smiles. He squeezes your hand again, you look at him, are forced to look at him as he practically vibrates with the adrenaline from a speech now slowly passing him by. When he kisses you your eyes are wide because as much as the two of you were not trying to hide your relationship it was never like this. It's a short firm press of his lips against yours, another declaration, this one to you alone, it is wordlessly ‘I love you’, words that would remain unsaid even when acted out a million times over.

When you follow him back to his tent, you want to yell for reasons you can’t place, a hot ball of stress wadded up in your chest, but when he turns and faces you it lapses, that anger swallowed by adoration because he’s still blushing.

“Will you fight with us? Will you stand beside me?” and it is a rush out of his mouth, its mixed syllables and stumbling.

“Yes,” you say and it feels like informal enlistment, the draft is his will of who he wishes would fight beside him. You would never have been able to say no, wouldn’t have been able to muster the strength to shake your head when he was giddy like this, high on attention and brighter horizons you still weren’t sure would come. You had seen this war, had been in this war already, and yet he invited you again.

He kisses you, clinking teeth and excitement, he doesn’t let himself think of what the war really means.

The threat looms, as it always has. In a week you would learn war again from wherever Wilbur would let you, even if you were sure you had enough of war from before winter. When he bounds up to you with a bouquet of wildflowers one afternoon as the spring day begins to heat up you can’t help the tilt of your head. He looks like an excited puppy as he hands you the small assortment with a grin. Your heart flutters as he presses a quick kiss to your cheek. It’s affection that violently contrasts with the coming battle and yet you lean into it, bask in the gesture longer than you should.

“These are so pretty,” you say as you look at the fresh blooms, some not all the way open, picked hastily out of excitement that now seems to radiate off the man. You take them carefully into your hand and try and think of something you could use as a vase.

“I promised you a real date,” he starts and your eyes widen as you are quick to shake your head, whine out his name. “Love, please,”

“Wil,” you drag out.

“It’s already set up, please just indulge me,” and he’s flashing those brown eyes, pouting his lip. You can’t help but groan knowing you already have no choice but to agree.

“But you didn’t-” you start and he finishes the sentence before you can.

“You’re right, I didn’t have to, darling, I wanted to,” and with a sigh you take his hand, let him lead you to a small picnic, a mostly untattered blanket laid out on freshly green grass. You can’t help but look at him with tears in your eyes. This was not something awarded to you, this kind of care that sunk into your bones, ate at you from the inside out. He ushers you to sit with a goofy smile and when you do you are wiping stray tears to keep them from falling down your cheeks.

“Thank you,” you say quietly and he’s quick to replace your hands, ease those tears himself with calloused fingertips.

“Why are you crying?” he asks gently, words that fall from his lips out of worry.

“It’s just-” you take in a deep breath, composing yourself “It’s too nice, I-” and he shushes you, asks you not to pretend like this kindness isn’t everything you deserve. Your heart flutters and you can’t help but kiss him. You kiss him knowing what is coming but wanting, desiring selfishly to stay here, at this picnic, where nothing yet has been ruined except for you. He returns the affection eagerly.

He takes out food from a basket that you don’t know how he found. It’s things he's prepared, foraged food and fresh bread. It's the bottle of wine that he pulls out that makes you widen your eyes. It’s a luxury you haven’t known for so long and so when he passes you a glass of that maroon liquid you take it and stare. He smiles at you, something soft as the sun warms his skin.

“You can enjoy yourself,” he says and your gaze falls to him, bewildered by all of this. He sips from his own glass of the alcoholic liquid. You follow in kind, feel as the liquid warms your throat on the way down, it’s bitter and just almost sweet. You crave his closeness and so you move until your head is laid in his lap, his shadow blocking out the sun. His hands push hair from your face, trace the line of your jaw. You don’t know what to say and you wish you were content enough with the silence.

“Will you still want me?” you say because your brain is quick to doubt. He creases his brow.

“What are you talking about?” he says and you resist the urge to whine. You close your eyes, unable to face him as you speak.

“When everything starts again,” it’s a topic you’ve both been grazing by, hiding from the soreness of what is to come. “I know you said you wanted me there but I- I’m just a distraction, I don’t wanna be that,” and you are facing him as leader instead of as lover.

“I need you here,” he’s quick to speak, to overcome your own words with his own. “I need you here beside me, I wouldn’t have asked otherwise,” and you nod, shaking away the fear he’s lying with your clenched shut eyes. When you open them he’s still there, your head still in his lap, and your heart now beating in your throat. You both won’t say it, not yet, terrified it would scare the other away with just those three words.

That night he pulls you closer than usual, not able to stand the distance between skin, and the proximity is as suffocating as it usually is. On his table is that wine bottle filled with the flowers gifted now flaunted.

The next afternoon you find him in your new uniform, the one ordered to be made by Wilbur due to the one hole in the collar of your former uniform, it feels stiff, unearned. He smiles when he sees you in it and beams in a way you hadn’t expected. It’s all warm, heat that is stored under the layers of professionalism and the guise of being a soldier. He smiles when you walk into his tent and stands to greet you.

“They did a good job,” he hums, his hands cupping your cheek, always so adamant for his hands to be on you in some way, for touch, the present comfort of skin-to-skin contact.

“Do you think so?” you tease, poking his nose with a small giggle. He shakes his head, running his hands up your face before letting go of you completely. You bask in his attention, soak in the warmth across your cheeks and the uneasiness of the affection in your stomach, it doesn’t settle like it should.

“You know I do, darling,” he says and you try to not melt because there are more important things to do. You croon your head up to him, eye contact that feels smothering. Tomorrow is when that call back to fighting must be answered, tomorrow is a day of battlefields and bullet shells, tomorrow is making you feel sick even though it has yet to come. He sees the words begging to leave your mouth, the way you seem to lean forward in anticipation for something still hours away.

“Tomorrow,” you begin. You feel the word slip past you to only reduce to that simple utterance of the future even though it was such an insurmountable thing.

“Tomorrow,” he repeats it back because of course he knows what your fear feels like, it’s the same taste plaguing his mouth echoed back. You don’t know what to say, find it to hard to speak, to recognize the grief forming in your gut for people not yet lost, for peace still yet to be broken.

“I’m scared,” you state the obvious.

“Everyone is, even me, maybe me most of all,” he says the words softly, not ones that are made to ease your terror but to bring it company. You nod, solemn.

“It’s just, I’ve done this, I’ve done this” you repeat yourself, tamping down the memories of this. You shake with them, tremble in the presence of the idea. Your stomach burns, a gash, a scar unseen that talks to that terror, makes it so painfully real. “but-” you stop and he nods.

“I know,” is his response, care that feels so strangely muddled by his own fear, his own worries. Time passes between you two until his hand is reaching down, a familiar action that finds your own hand, he squeezes. “I think we are going to win, darling, and I promise I won’t let you get hurt, not when I know what I have to lose,” and you know he can’t protect you, not in the way he is claiming he can, but again, you nod. You sublimate yourself to that fantasy of untouchable. Your hand releases his and reaches out nervously, flattening down his own uniform whose colors match yours. He lets out an exhale, a breath he’s been holding this whole time. There is more to say but you can’t find it within you to open your mouth.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he says.

The gun weighs heavier in your hands now than it ever did, dark metal made hot by the sun. Spring is slowly cresting into summer, and the war effort is not slowing but ramping up with the temperature. You sigh out, wipe at your brow, as you look across a wide field waiting for the enemy. They have remained intangible to you, always at an arm's distance, a safety net created by Wilbur that made you leave before you could be injured. It was frustrating, to march back with men and women who had fought, who were injured, while you were untouched. It was unlike before winter when you sustained injuries you would not speak about.

There was a night of shed clothes and Wilbur’s fingertips gracing your body, tracing over a scar still so sore, angry, and jagged. He didn’t ask and so you hadn’t answered. You hadn’t offered up information of days spent in the medical tent shaking with fever and of whispers from the nurse that you would not make it through the night. You didn’t tell him how it felt to have a knife lodged into your side. You had shuttered as his hands grazed over the uneven skin and kissed him as if it would ease the memory, make him forget.

You wish that pain made you feel strong but all it did was make you feel small. Somehow the distance from the action, from the chances of that same wound being repeated, made you feel worse.

Now you look again across the field to see rising smoke and small figures walking closer. It’s watching a storm roll in knowing that casualties will surely come as a consequence. People just like you, alive now soon to be still and cold later. Wilbur comes up behind you, you know it’s him by the heavy sound of his footsteps, the way they drag across the dirt. You look at him, your view of his uneasy expression and a head framed by the blue sky, he bites at his lip.

“Is everyone prepared?” you ask, eyeing the fidgeting of his hands. His gaze finds yours, irises pools of brown and honey where the sunlight reaches down to lighten them.

“As much as they can be,” he leans down, and presses his face into the crown of your head, breathing you in, his hands placed steadily on your shoulders. You know he is going to tell you to leave before he says it because as much as he wants to be close to you he also would crumble if you were ever hurt. He would blame himself. These are things that you know. He steps back slowly and you are compelled to speak.

“Let me stay this time, all the way back here, please,” you say and you see the way he stiffens, a knee-jerk reaction of no almost slipping past him. “I want to help, I’m a good shot,”

“I know you are,” he supplies but you watch as his eyes run over you. “If you stay here,” he offers and you are quick to nod. He leans forward, kisses your forehead, then your eyelids as you laugh, then he quickly kisses your lips. It’s a routine, the love that he litters across your face. You smile at him all the same, laugh lightly at his antics, and then your eyes find his dark circles, cuts across his face, and the wrapped state of his hands.

“Do you need to go now? Do your job, Mr., President?” you tease him and his smile is gold.

“I do, but,” he chews at his bottom lip again “I need you to promise me you will stay here. That you will leave if we get pushed back,” his expression is serious, severe in a way that you've only ever seen when it’s about this horrible war.

“Please,” the word is quiet from his mouth. You nod and lie through your teeth. He kisses you anyway, presses his lips against yours in a way that he allows to be slow, to take the time that he doesn’t have to spare. He squeezes your hand, the one not holding a gun, and then he turns to leave you alone with the heavy guilt of your lie on your chest. You would fight today, fight for everything he was a beating image for, and you would see him again when it was over. You watch him walk until you can’t see him any longer, him disappearing into the crowd of untrained soldiers, faces of friends obscured by distance swallowing him.

When it all comes down to it, sweat beading down your face, hair plastered to your forehead, and looking down the sight of that gun. The sounds echo to you across the field, yells and gunshots and metal crashing. Screams are what make your body run cold, your hands shake, and you thank god you are not close enough to see the blood that you don’t know how you were ever accustomed to. You aim carefully, pull the trigger, and allow the distance to strike you apathetic to where that bullet lodges itself. A body falls all the same, a limp and unmoving shape painted into that scene of bloodshed. With each shot from your rifle, the pit in your stomach grows. You see the innocence of that deer, that died so long ago now, and the pride of the buck that was flaunted to no one until it was spilled into the snow. When you see them fall back, blue, red, and white uniforms move closer, and deaths become more concrete.

You run, do as you were told even though you said you would stay, keep fighting. You run back to the camp and find yourself with shaky hands and a gun still hot from firing. Your heart is racing as you search for anyone left waiting. You find yourself in the medical tent, almost able to ignore the ache of the memories from the last time you were there. When your wild eyes meet the familiar nurse, she pales.

“They are losing, w-what do we do, th-they are losing,” you say, a rush of words that leave you in gasping breaths. You see the way the nurse’s brow furrows, she walks closer slowly. Her eyes check you for injuries, linger at your side, then at the absence of a head wound causing your pure panic.

“We wait for them to come back, sweetheart,” she says softly, her hand finding its place rubbing at your back.

“B-but wh-what if,” you stutter.

“They will come back when they need us. You have to trust the President. Help me set up more beds, okay?” and you nod instead of speaking, instead of asking more questions. You follow directions, set up cots and medical supplies until you hear them outside, hear the stomps of heavy feet, groaning, and shouts of names that are never yours. The nurse looks to you, a silent plea for help as the injured find themselves piling up, laying in cots to wait or to die in pain. You stare wide-eyed at a woman your age, bleeding, blood on her hands, uniform cut open, a knife still sticking out of your side. You can’t move, can only see your face on hers until the nurse is brushing your shoulder, startling that sight back into obscurity.

You bustle around alongside the nurse, clean cuts and do your best to stitch up wounds that are too deep to close themselves. You don’t let the blood bother you even as your hands smell metallic and begin to be stained pink. You don’t stop even as you become lightheaded, dehydrated, and starving you push on because you did not keep your silent promise, You fled, ran away instead of having the nerves that would have allowed you to stay put, you followed Wilbur’s orders.

You didn’t think of how your presence here would mean your absence would be felt elsewhere.

When he finds you, Wilbur has tears running down his face. You see him for a flash of a moment, standing from your place beside a cot where you have placed a cool towel on a woman’s forehead. He wraps you in his arms before you can process his sudden appearance and you can hear his labored breathing as he holds you tighter than he ever has. Guilt finds you as its victim again.

“I couldn’t find you, I thought, I thought you had- you had- or they had taken you or-” he panics quietly, worries spoken in a hush as he refuses to let go of you. You look anxiously around at the beds full of the injured, at the nurse still wandering between patients. You should have found him first, it’s a horribly selfish thought.

“I-” you start though you don’t have the words to defend yourself, to explain. “I- I was helping with-”

“I know, I know, I just- I thought you were dead, my love,” he finally pulls away from you, studying your face as you study his own. The tear tracks break up the layer of dirt on his skin. There is blood splattered across his face, speckled on his uniform that is no longer left pristine. You reach up hesitantly, brush your fingers lightly across his face. You try and ignore the blood seeping out from him from a cut in his shoulder, a wound exposed through a hole in the thick fabric of his jacket.

“I’m okay, see, I’m okay, I ran just like you told me,” and he nods, pushing his forehead against your own, and sighs out the tension in his body. “Let’s go to your tent, Wilbur. I’ll bring something to clean you up?” he nods again, but he doesn’t move to leave, his eyes still running up and down you, his hand still grasping yours. He reassures himself over and over that you are fine, that you are in front of him, that you are breathing not dead in the grass with all those other familiar faces, but he can not shake it. He can not forget every time he saw someone like you and thought that you were dead, thought that it had been his fault, thought that he had let you slip right through his fingers.

“Wil?” you whisper and he looks at you, really looks at you. His face falls then as his breathing evens slightly.

You hum and grab his hand lightly before getting enough supplies to treat his wounds, he follows you without complaint. You lead him slowly to his tent, pulling open the flap for him. It’s as good as it can be, mud tracked on the tarp of a floor and other messes littered through the space. He sits on the edge of his cot silently as you pull up a chair to sit across from him. He flinches when you press a cool washcloth to his face, begin wiping away the dirt and blood with languid drags of your hand.

“Just me, you’re okay,” you breathe out as you run that rag featherlight across his skin, applying pressure where it is needed. When you are carefully undoing the buttons of his uniform, peeling back bloodied clothing to reveal a wound so much worse than he let on you try and not to show surprise on your face. You try and be professional, in a sense, as you clean and dress it, the same work you’ve been doing all day.

“You should have gone to the medic tent sooner, Wil, this is,” he winces as you dab antiseptic over the cut.

“Needed to find you,” he whines lowly “Couldn’t think about anything else but you dead or you-” he begins to panic again, fear bubbling over into rushing words and more uneven breathing.

“Shhh, s’okay,” you coo, leaning forward, kissing at the now clean skin of his forehead before again resting your head against his. You take in a deep breath and listen as he follows suit without the direction to do so. “Everything’s okay right now,” you repeat, your voice steady and another slow inhale and exhale. He leans back with you, though you keep your eyes closed, and keep taking steady breaths. You feel his hands reach out, trail up your arms, and fingertips then trace your collarbones before again his hands find your face. You meet his eyes. He holds you, feels as you move with life under his touch, and he relaxes. You have questions on the tip of your tongue, a bombardment of them begging to leave your mouth, but it’s not the time, not when he’s like this.

“I need you to stay still while I give you stitches, Wil” you mumble, unentangling yourself from him, your hands guiding his own back to his lap.

“I’m sorry,” he starts, resigns himself.

“Don’t be,” you are quick to say as you pull the knot tight in the thread with your teeth. You begin slowly, creating sutures with the precision of a day's practice. You listen to his sharp inhales, and glance as he winces but remains still. Seven stitches later and you are carefully tying off the wound and wrapping it.

Your hands smooth over the bandages unstained, fingertips brushing over the rough fabric, and a beat allows you peace of mind. Your actions mirror his own, a craving for the reassurance of the survival of the other, shaking hands hovering over warm skin. It’s a different kind of intimacy not derived from pleasure but from contact to seek out the other as clean and well and alive. It’s unique to the situation, sustained by mutual dread and the circumstances of war. You retreat your touch all the same.

“All done,” you say and he hums, something low in his throat that resists becoming a whine, becoming desperation that doesn’t have an answer. You flounder as you lose what is clear to do in this situation. So you busy yourself, repacking up the supplies instead of facing the aftermath of a battle you didn’t see. When you finish, you stand from the chair and place it back by the table along with that medical kit and various bloodied rags. You consider leaving, darting away from this emotional burden instead of facing it, and you shouldn’t. You know you shouldn’t.

“It was horrid,” he says, his voice small, barely a whisper. You look at him over your shoulder and his eyes are glued to the ground. For a split second, you morbidly consider your own absence, and then you peak outside. It’s dark now, the camp having fallen silent and still. “I don’t know if we can keep fighting like this, keep losing people to this magnitude,” his words sit heavy on your chest and you can’t lie, you feel the same. In this small space, it feels hopeless, your eyes tracing his bandages, wounds clear and on the skin.

“But it will be okay, right? I mean we, we aren’t going to lose?” and you meet his gaze, the one of his worried brow, of biting the inside of his cheek, of doubt that leaks out and swallows you. It’s cruel to ask him that.

“It’ll be okay,” he says quietly, and you leave the tent without another word even though it’s unfair. You slink back to what used to be home, a pile of blankets, a bed unmade in a small tent whose littered holes have joined into each other, holes that now show the night sky peeking through, twinkling stars that do nothing to console the tears from your eyes. The rest you find alone is unsatisfying, it lacks warmth not that of the sticky humid night, it lacks the softness of hands up your sides, and it lacks a presence to keep you from the buzzing behind your eyes. You fall asleep only once the crying has made it too hard to stay awake.

The morning comes with dew in the grass and a familiar face saying your name. There have been many faces, many people whose names never stuck. They were friends of Wilbur’s met in winter when survival had been more important to you than camaraderie. Wilbur had been an indulgence ill-advised by your will to survive but tempted by your want to live, by desire that struck you selfish enough to hold him close, a spark that the hunger and cold could not stomp out.

“Y/n?” It’s strange to hear your name spoken by anyone but Wilbur, but you blink away the sleep from your eyes, focusing until the young man becomes more than a messy blur of blonde hair.

“Hello?” you ask hesitantly, sitting up with a sigh.

“Wil, he sent me to get you,” he says, his voice soft, a quality you don’t quite recall it ever having. “He needs to see you for like, President shit,” you exhale as the boy gets more snappy, more like the distant memories you had of the blonde.

“I’ll uhm, I’ll head over there soon, his tent?” you ask and the boy shakes his head, blue eyes closing with the motion that he exaggerates.

“He said the woods, said you would know,” you nod and he hovers for a moment, narrowing his eyes. “Do you know?” he questions and it’s almost more than you can choke down. The woods, the same clearing of poor thought over training and stolen kisses, the same clearing of a date you hadn’t yet repaid, the same clearing of a speech he had repeated endlessly to you there, a speech now losing words in your memory, the same clearing, the same woods, the same expanse of nature that saved you, brought you a deer whose death led to more life, more Wilbur, and a reason to keep pushing.

“Uhm, yes, yes,” you say, shaking your own head to try and dispel your tendency to drift from the present “W-what’s your name again?” you ask him and he tilts his head, and for a second you expect outrage.

“Tommy, Toms, Wife-haver,” he points at his chest, puffing it out in another exaggerated motion. You smile at the boy, relax, at the show of pride and youth and innocence, things lost so quickly still embodied and celebrated by him, Tommy, in front of you. He leaves then, allows the sunlight peaking through the flap to be culled though the light is still littered in torn circles shown down. You let out a heavy sigh before picking up the pieces of yourself, dressing in something comfortable that eases the ache in your heart.

You walk slowly and brush your fingertips on green leaves that are so unlike the dead branches piled with snow imprinted in your memory. When you see him he is looking out into the trees dancing with the gentle breeze that picks up occasionally into gusts that blow his hair and the loose fabric of his white button-up shirt. His boots are untied, laces left to drag in the dirt. He isn’t in uniform, no layers of armor in the form of a title displayed by clothing, of epaulets of gold or high collar. It’s a way you are graced with seeing him often, undershirt and tousled hair, it’s an intimacy he extends to you now extended to the late morning light.

“Wil?” you say his name, let the wind take it further than you are willing to speak it. He turns, eyebags and all, a smile still finding his face as you walk closer. You keep your distance, wrap your arms around your torso as you wait for words to leave his mouth, as you wait for the horrible way you feel to fade, as you wait in fear for what comes next. It’s a sickness in your stomach, a thrum in your heart, and a frown upon your lips.

“Good morning,” he says just as softly, as noncommittal. It pulls you to him, stepping closer to tamp down more green grass under your feet. You stray until you are inches from him, a distance that is bearable but burning nevertheless. It’s now you can see bandages laid by you, a messy job, a wrap now spotting with dark red. It’s weakness peaking out just barely and yet you find it as easily as breathing.

“Yesterday,” you begin.

“Yesterday,” he repeats, an action mirrored from days ago, fear of the future folding into trepidation of the present.

“I needed distance,” he nods as you speak “I’m not like you, I mean, I can’t pretend this doesn’t affect me in front of people, I can’t pretend that all those people I helped aren’t in pain right now, I can’t shut my brain down, and I just couldn’t bare to look at you and see all of it right there in front of me, every bloody wound, cold hand, and fucking shot I took,” it’s everything you couldn’t even bare to think suddenly leaving you as words inflicted upon him. You want to rush out apologies but he’s hugging you, wrapping his arms so tightly around your body it’s uncomfortable, and yet you wouldn’t dare move for fear he would let go.

It’s then the cruelty of your words comes over you, a chill down your back.

“It’s not your fault,” you say, hiding your face in his neck, breathing him in, savoring the warmth of his skin against your face. Your words go against what you’ve just said, pointed blame you placed in his hands with your heart. You can’t deny the tears welling up in your eyes or the croak in your voice; His arms don’t loosen.

“It is,” he says quietly and it’s almost enough to feel held. “You don’t need to be what I am. I am supposed to be strong, darling, you don’t owe that to anyone.”

“I owe it to you.” It’s a hesitant utterance from your mouth then swallowed down as his grip around you waned. “I owed you not leaving the tent, I owe you softness. I owe you being a good soldier. I owe you being a good partner. I ow-” He pulls away and places a large hand over your mouth. The space your voice filled becomes the soft far-away sound of a bird singing as he stares at you, meets your gaze in a serious way. There is no levity to escape to, just the aftermath of something the two of you can’t tiptoe around anymore, and he’s right there in front of you but you miss him. You miss him horribly, he is that ache in your chest that only knows how to intensify. His hand lowers slowly from your face, it finds your hand, and squeezes lightly in a way that is familiar, it’s an action that feels like home, that he has made feel like love.

“This isn’t a transaction,” his other hand runs down your face, and you want to cry. It’s two deeply flawed people entangled in each other, and you don’t know how to make this healthy, how to resolve your own doubts, but what would you do without him? “You don’t owe me anything, you don’t need to feel guilty for taking care of yourself.” and it’s simple reassurance, it’s a softness in his eyes, it’s everything he is laid out in front of you.

“I love you,” he says for the first time out loud no matter how many times he’s said it in his head, no matter how it’s been shown in his actions, it’s said now, heard not felt, confessed. “I really love you, I love you so much it terrifies me,” You cry then, allowing those tears begging to fall to trail down your cheeks slowly. He’s quick to wipe them away and ease you again.

Your hands grip him, pull him closer until you are intertwined in one another for the second time. Your shoulders gently shake as you silently cry and hide your face in the crook of his neck. He presses his nose into the crown of your head, rubs gently at your back, and takes in steady breaths until your own mirror his. It’s desperation, clinging to one another, shedding miscommunication in a way that is physical, that lacks the complexities of speech.

“I love you too,” you say trying to not make that phrase seem like an ending, like the last line that must leave your mouth. It blooms in your chest as he hums in acknowledgment.

“I want-” he begins and it’s already so much, to want, to desire more “I want a life with you,” You let out a shuttering breath thinking of dreams of more picnics and softness that can extend to everything derived from butterflies in your stomach and what was a crush, far away adoration. It’s a phrase you both never would have said in the winter, when this relationship was cradling embers, feeding oxygen until that charcoal glowed enough to burn. Now the both of you were on fire, flames unburdened.

“After we win,” you say, taking a step back to search his face, to memorize again the curve of his cupid’s bow, the eyelashes under his eyes, and moles littered across his skin. You both take in a deep breath, and you watch him nod.

“After we win,” he whispers back, his hand finding the back of your head, digging into your hair. He pulls you closer with his other arm and his lips find yours in the expanse of a gasp. His touch is demanding yet everything you’ve ever craved from the man, it’s the warmth of the sun in the winter and the gentleness of a knife. It’s a promise he’s ruined you, become all-encompassing, and yet you aren’t terrified yet comforted by leaning into him, digging deeper.

The war rages on.

Wilbur can’t keep you as close as he would like, can’t leave you stranded at camp waiting for him to come back, and he couldn’t have you just beside him risking the cold fate of death. You pushed and he collapsed, gave in to your wish to fight again with a rifle from away. For a while it helped, battles were won not lost, and people felt hope again. It was a sick feeling that pushed you all further, that had people begin building on the land, planting flowers in the valley, and beginning to understand that camp as home. It was what you were fighting for, a life that would drain of violence and grow into days spent with your feet in the river.

You told him you would build in that valley, the one that shared so much joy and pain, a small house to share surrounded by trees that brought privacy. He had smiled, something quick and high-strung. You spent the days that you did not hold a gun in your hand sat in that field, looking up at the blue sky and flurries of clouds. You dreamed of the future, a version of you under that very same patch of sky without the fear of the next day being your last. You dreamed of sweet tea on your tongue and Wilbur’s voice in your ear. You dreamed of deer out the window of a cabin, eyes meeting without the anxious thought of an arrow. You found yourself with a sunburn and memories of a life you were not sure you would ever have.

It gets worse before it gets better. Wilbur talks less, silence finding him time to think not worry. His arms hold you closer at night, fingertips that dig into flesh and leave more bruises than the battlefield. It’s quiet desperation that he doesn’t allow to touch you, his own worries sinking back into him, pulling him down into himself. There is no amount of softness to ease it, and you almost always wake alone.

It’s not just silence but frustration that turns to anger. It’s a boiling point mirrored by the growing temperature of the season,

It’s late and the heat has not been broken by the night, sweat still beads on your skin. You can’t sleep, tossing and turning alone on that cot in his tent. You find yourself leaving that place as lonely as it felt, wandering out in thin clothes you usually wore just to sleep. Your bulky boots are left untied on your feet, out of place without the matching uniform.

The camp was dark, littered with dying lights and quiet conversation from tents that flicked with oil lamps. There was the occasional bout of stifled laughter that stirred you as you guided yourself through paths of stampled grass. Above you, there was the wide open sky speckled with stars and twinkling horrible bits of hope. You didn’t mean to find him, you hadn’t left your shared tent with the intent of seeking him out and yet there he was. He was stuck looking down at information received from the other side, things that would not change no matter how long he looked at the scrawled warnings.

You debate saying nothing, turning tail, and hiding back by yourself in that tent that far too often only sees your face. He startles as you accidentally drag your feet, those heavy shoes giving away your location. He doesn’t relax in your presence.

“Sorry,” you begin and he looks back down. It’s tense when you wish it wasn’t, and beyond your better judgment, you gravitate to him as you always do.

“You should be asleep,” he says.

“I could say the same thing, but I know it’d be a waste, Wil.” There is a tension in those words, a craving for something manifesting itself as simmering anger that leaves the air thick. You blink, think again then of words shared and repeated between you too.

“After we win,”

It spoke proudly of a future to be realized, and yet it left you both in limbo, in waiting, in soon not now. He looked at you, narrowed his eyes, and then let out a breath he seemed to have been holding. You watched as his shoulders fell and he seemed to crumble down into a man again. You think he wants to speak, you watch as he moves to do so, and then freezes again. You can only imagine an apology, can only know how much you don’t want to hear one.

“You don’t need to be here,” he says and it stings. “This,” he gestures to those messy notes covering a messier map. “This is my job, darling, it’s not yours, I know I’ve been distant and it’s been on purpose because as much as I need you, I know you don’t need to be sucked into this aspect of war, of planning, of guilt,” the last part comes out quieter, but it’s more than he’s said in a week to you all at once and still it is not enough.

You can’t help but think of the guilt he must be consumed by, remember snapshots of that feeling in the medical tent. It had felt like humid air that could not be sucked down, a heavy horrible growing feeling in your lungs that only grows larger, that consumes and consumes. Is that all he knows? Has he learned how to tame that hungry thing that only knows the desire to ruin you more? You think of the feeling that made you flee from him, turn tail, and run. He didn’t have that option.

“So you have to do all of it alone?” you say.

“What is my other option? To drag you into this further than I already have?” and it snaps from him with that anger back and biting, drowning our all sense of guilt because it will always be easier to burn.

“I’d rather have you drag me in than not talk to me,” you say trying to control your own words, trying to stay level.

“So I can watch you fucking fall apart once you hear about what’s going on when you aren’t looking? Do you want to know how many people die? Do you want to know how little supplies we have left? You want to carry the same weight? What would be the point?” he hisses and it hurts. It hurts more than you would like to admit and yet you stare there, look at him, look at the man that bears the curse of leader, of general, of president. He has not sated any of those consuming emotions, he has not muzzled the guilt that covers his words that only escapes due to the tense sting of irritation. You take in a shuttering breath and the summer night inhales with you, a gust of wind that evaporates that sweat from your skin in a temporary moment of reprieve from the heat.

“That’s not fair,” you say, allowing it to leave you in a lapse of the silence that comes after, he lets that quiet return without complaint. “Wilbur, you can’t make that decision for me, do you think I stand by you because it’s easy?”

“I don’t know why you stand by me.” he says and it rears to the reality, of self-doubt and the root of anger, hurt.

“Because I love you, because I am hopelessly in love with you, and I don’t know how to show you that when you push me away,” and there is still a steady distance between you too, a drawn-out few feet that is almost never there. You bite your tongue, look away and to the distant field moving with the flashing of lightning bugs.

It’d be easier to walk away.

Abandon him again, just like before.

“I’m tired,” he says and it comes as an excuse. “I’m sorry,”

You huff. The moment runs long. You wonder how many hours it is until the sun will rise, will cleanse these bad feelings only to have the dark dig them back up once given the chance. When Wilbur speaks he doesn’t make eye contact with you.

“I’m scared that if I let you involve yourself with this mess of a war I will lose you. I can’t be without you, I can’t stand the idea of being without you and yet I’m terrified of your presence,” he says and it is horribly heard. You cull the gap, wrap your arms around him, and try and ignore the sound of him softly crying. It’s not weakness, you want to tell him that, but all you can muster is the further constriction of your grasp.

“I won’t leave you, I couldn’t,” you say and he is shaking his head against your shoulder. You wouldn’t leave him, couldn’t have walked away even if you begged your body to. You were stuck now, for better or worse.

“We both know that would not be up to you, my love,”

“Like hell it won’t,” you say with a pained laugh. He can’t help but kiss you. It’s a desire that changes its form, no longer wanting pain but touch. It leaves you in the weeds, entangled. You don’t know if it’s right and yet you return that passion because it’s him. Wilbur groans into your mouth because his hands have found your hips, can feel the curve of your body under the thin clothes you wear. You love how it feels, to be his again, refrain. You think the heaviness can be shed, you think you can crawl from this chrysalis, you think it will be okay because soon that’s all you’ll know how to be, because the war will end, because he loves you.

You both stumble to his tent, feeling like teenagers with muddled inhibitions.

“I love you,” he says kissing every newly unveiled part of your skin, he can’t say it enough. It’s love that consumes him and sets flame to every rational thought that begs to come to fruition. His mouth is hot.

“I love you too, more than anything.” you say breathlessly and it doesn’t matter that it’s been said before. It could be confessed a million times and never lose the weight of the words. His tongue is heavy on your skin, it’s pleasure that rises up your spine and makes your chest fall out. You look up through half-lidded eyes and he is a mirage of good. He is intangible love and light and it hurts to look, the same feeling of looking into the sun. You crave him, you despise it. You need him like oxygen and you have no inkling to hold your breath.

It ruins you all over again, cannibalism of your soul, and yet your eyes roll back and it’s the best you’ve ever felt.

You wake and he is still there.

You can feel his chest expand, can feel his breath on the back of your neck, and you know that, in some capacity, it will be okay.

His distance lessens, he tells you of his day, all the good and bad. You learn how to swallow that information, how to hold him in a way that it is adequate to ease the pain of war. He learns your limits, falls silent when the downturn of your lips grows too much. Summer makes your heart ache, the trill of cicadas and the streaks of falling stars on nights you wait too long for him to come to you.

You lay in that clearing, this time at night, the act ever present in your life. You allow the grass to hold you, lick at your skin with wisps of prairie. You listen as frogs croak and bugs buzz hopelessly in the dark. It grounds you, whisks away your mind from spilled blood or carefully taken rifle shots. It makes you feel whole again even in the absence of anyone but yourself. You light your own happiness in solitude, share it with Wilbur and whisper details of the night he does not have the energy to focus on.

The enemy catches your joy and crushes all hope under the dying light of a sunset.

You press your back against a hill. You hold that rifle close to your chest, an extension of every bad part of you. A loud sound rings in your ears, bombs that have gone off, wreaked havoc on the soldiers now splattered across your face, and taken down walls you all built with calloused hands. You think it must be immoral what they’ve done, blow your home to smithereens and spare parts, kill soldiers not in their uniforms. It’s shock that has taken you, left you shaking, and yet still. You wanted to beg your legs to move, to run, to flee finally from the very ground threatening to swallow you, and yet your body will not respond. Your eyes search, dazed, the destroyed land and the uprooted dirt stained with scorched grass. The sky breathes a red setting sun, pink and orange struck above you.

Another explosion sounds off, booms in your chest from the ground shaking with aftershocks, rubble falling down to rain upon your skin. You yelp and cower down further, the sound brings the attention of a nightmare not yet realized. Hands find you, fingerprints of violence pressed into your uniform in drying blood. His touch digs into your ankle and jerks you back towards this assailant.

“Let me go, please, just let me go,” you scramble, blurred vision and panic not letting you see that elusive enemy. The very air is full of smoke, of metallic blood, and you scream. You run your throat dry and push and pull. The whole world rushes up to meet you, hands sinking into dirt, and propelling yourself away from the enemy, crawling desperately. You kick at the still-unseen soldier and when your own hands find your gun you are so quick to turn and aim.

“Don’t fucking move,” you spit as you widen your eyes, take in the sight of a man who almost killed you while you take in labored breaths Your wild gaze traces the sharp edge of a knife in a white-knuckled fist, and when eyes meet eyes it’s horrible because it’s human fear you are met with, the same live feeling stored in your chest merely staring back. His expression is as terrified as yours.

You shouldn’t let him go, you should have some sense of vengeance for the blood on your hands that was not spilled by your violence but an extension of his. You should be furious that he touched you, that the dagger in his hand held an intent that did not come to fruition leaving a weapon that will always crave the taste of your blood. That knife falls to the ground nevertheless and begging becomes folded over this time without words. Your finger finds the trigger without the strength to pull it. When he runs you take no move to aim your gun at his retreating figure, he disappears into that visceral field of death, smoke that swallows him.

You make a pathetic sound, gasping for air that is as disgusting as before. It fills your lungs and reminds you of small victories, of not dead yet. You stumble to your feet to press on. You step over bodies until the faces morph into one mass of loss, names unlearned and voices never heard by you now silenced forever.

There is nowhere to go, only ruins of a home that never got to know peace, land that was supposed to be beautiful, dreams of tomorrow, of soon, of after we win crushed.

This was home, L’manberg.

You walk on footpaths, mud that formerly swallowed shoes in the cold, and you search for movement. You walk until you find his tent now reduced to a smoldering tarp, bullet holes, and ruined maps. He doesn’t crawl out of that wreckage and everything around you remains quiet except for moans of far away pain and cracks of licking flames.

You remember the first time you saw Wilbur, love at first sight, for you. He didn’t notice one soldier among hundreds, and yet, you had looked at him like he had hung the moon. He stood and spoke, in an undamaged uniform, light reflecting off golden accents. His words filled you with unfounded hope, a wild buzzing that fueled your crush.

You remember the first clumsy night spent in his cot together. The way his arms didn’t know where to rest, where you would allow him to touch you. The blush that had fallen across his face when you breathed out everywhere. He had been easy to fluster, to overwhelm, and yet at times that night felt burned in your skin, hickies never quite fading from the expanse of your neck.

You remember him from this morning. Bedhead still a top of his head, a white shirt with a stretched-out collar loosely hanging off his frame. You can see the mug of disgusting coffee beside him as you watch his eyes scan over the same map for the hundredth time looking for a way out, a way in. You coaxed him back to bed with a giggle, a kiss to his ear. He had groaned playfully and for once your chest did not feel heavy.

Home.

The crushed tent blooms into a million memories of fading touches and hunger pains.

“y/n?” your name startles you. You turn and find Tommy, dirt-smudged across his face, part of his blonde hair stained with dried blood. You can’t help the smile of desperation that leaks onto your face. You wrap your arms around him, cling to him like a lifeline as you resist the crawling urge to cry.

“Tommy,” you say his name, the one you’ve finally learned, his arms awkwardly come up to give you a weak embrace. You take a hesitant step back and he gives an equally awkward smile.

“Uhm, I’ve been out here looking for survivors,” he says quietly and you let yourself mourn the things he’s seen, mourn that it was him to see them. You want to whine, be angry, to scream because he is so young. “Everyone, everyone that made it is in a small camp just that way, I can walk you there?” and there is no joking, no usual taunt to his words. You nod anyway, and you don’t ask about Wilbur because you are terrified to hear the answer, so you keep his name in your mouth, a weight ever-present on your tongue.

You two walk in silence though you never stray far, adamant to stay close, steer him away from bodies lying still. He occasionally throws stray jokes into the wind, laughs that never quite have the audacity to bubble up from your throat. It’s dark when you see the flickering light of fire through the trees, and he takes the time to announce himself, throwing on a brave face. You force a timid smile, your eyes glued down on the ground instead of baring to look at all those soldiers now deemed survivors. There is a warmth that meets Tommy’s antics, undesernable love for lightness.

Wilbur’s name stays in your mouth, waits to escape past vice-trap lips, but once you ask it you are convinced it will be true. You stare at dull flames, flicking light of dying hope. There is no one there to promise you it will be okay, no one to stand and speak of a brighter future. You find yourself on your feet in front of all these people, and you want to be Wilbur, to be strong, to be a leader. Then there is a hand on your shoulder, arms that wrap themselves around you tight. It’s panic for a moment that overwhelms you, that reminds you of hands on your ankles and the steadying breath of aiming a rifle. He smells of cigarettes, a nasty habit born of stress that you didn’t have the heart to reprimand him on. The reunion repeats a moment in the medical tent from weeks ago, a wound that is still fresh, but this time you don’t have the strength to keep it together, you are lucky you can force yourself to not cry.

You lean back into him without a word, have hands that come up and grip his arms for dear life. His breath fans across your neck as his forehead is pressed into the back of your hair. The moment runs longer than it needs to in silence, in the distinct absence of words. When Wilbur whispers in your ear it's a croak.

“I knew you would be okay,” he says like it’s a past mantra from the expanse where you were missing. He repeats it quieter and pulls you somehow closer. You can feel eyes on the pair of you that make you stifle slightly, and wince as the president professes worry. You turn until you can face him, resting your eyes on his hollowed-out cheeks and intense gaze. He kisses you as soon as his eyes have the chance to fall down to your lips.

It’s more desperation than he was willing to let on with his words, leaning just almost to something frantic, worry fuels the firm press of his lips to yours that is so quickly devolving into the messy stealing of oxygen, of shared saliva. You squeeze his hand and catch your breath.

“Can we go somewhere more private?” and the request leaves you feeling small, removed. He is quick to nod, to walk until the light of the moon is all that is left. He walks until he is in a prairie, wildflowers faded in the night, and your hands are still interlocked. You listen for the crackling of the fire and only find the sound of wind through leaves. He kisses you again, and crowds in your space until your back hits a tree.

“This isn’t what I meant,” you whimper but don’t move to stop him as his lips attach themselves to your neck.

“I know, sorry,” he says panting, stopping the teasing of his lips but not moving away. He can’t bring himself to pull back, risk that close proximity never gracing him again. You don’t resist when he continues his ministrations, and moves his lips down to your collarbone. “Is this what we need?” and you shake your head.

“I need to breathe for a second,” you say and he stands fully, towers over you. You find his hand, squeeze and he squeezes back, a learned routine grounding you. His hand is warm, he’s alive, and tomorrow is still waiting for you both. “I never want to be without you like that, I thought they must have killed you, and I couldn’t ask, I couldn’t ask” You meet his brown eyes that are so dark like this, that are pools of adoration.

“I know. darling, I know. I wanted to look for you myself,” he presses his nose into your hairline, and you can feel his lips ghosting against your forehead as he speaks. “I’m so happy, I’m so happy I still have you, so proud you got through that,” and his praise makes you hide your own face in his chest.

“Don’t leave me, just let me stay beside you, fight beside you,” you beg and he regretfully finds himself nodding. He could protect you like that, he could keep you safe. He kisses down from your forehead, returns himself to sucking bruises against your neck, and moves his hands to your hips. The night smells of honeysuckle, a sweetness reflected on your skin. You whimper, allowing want to manifest itself in the sounds from your throat and the hitch in your breath.

“I’ll keep you safe, keep you right here where I want you,” and his hands are still holding you, moving up under the hem of your dirtied shirt, the one stained by every nightmare you’ve seen in the day. It’s shed before him, the scar on your stomach silvery as he runs his hands on familiar skin. There is peace in the practice of worshiping the known, the curves of your body that have so often been graced by the palms of his hands. “So perfect, so beautiful,” he mumbles.

You unbutton his shirt carefully with hands that are steady instead of shaking under his watch. You pull it off him, kiss at the scars across his own skin, ones treated by you and whose stories you’ve never heard. He flushes under the attention that is everything he gives to you without a single request.

The summer’s heat beats under your skin as he swallows the sounds from your mouth, it’s quiet and suffocating, it’s needy and horribly dependent.

Tomorrow comes and drags into the next week. You relearn hunger pains caused by the smithereens of rations and the night sky unabashedly above you as you sleep. You don’t leave Wilbur's side, and you learn the frontlines even though your aim only worsens the closer the enemy is, the more you can see the whites of eyes or the smattering of freckles. He is always there before anyone can hurt you though, always pushing you out of harm's way or in some cases taking the pain himself. It hurts after every battle to clean wounds that should have been yours. Patching him up becomes a routine practice, something slow and repeated. It’s comforting to know you can fix him, undo the wounds you blame yourself for. He enjoys the attention, the hovering of featherlight touches. It’s one of the only times you can find the comfort of just his company uninterrupted.

You’ve both built a makeshift tent on the outskirts of the camp, it was a day's effort that now blessed you with shelter, cloth walls that kept the intimacy of mending each other between you both. You look at a particularly deep gash with a whine in your throat, a replaying of that moment, him instead of you. Blood drips down from the cut that grazed the top of his shoulder. You don’t let the sight debase you as much as it wants to.

“You need to let me fight some of my own battles,” you say with levity, a joke that is anything but joking. It’s easier to say it when you don’t let it be serious, an all-consuming conversation.

“I am, I’m just not letting you lose them,” he kisses the tip of your nose with a slight wince due to the movement.

“Shhh, don’t move like that if it hurts you,” you can feel the flush in your cheeks as you speak, somehow still flustered by the man even now with him shirtless in front of you in a clinical way, your hand gently placed near an open wound. Your eyes widen when he moves again, presses his lips now against yours, and kissing him comes as easy as breathing. You pull away after a moment with a furrowed brow, a weak attempt to scold the man when you are anything but angry that he wants you like that, that still something as simple as kissing makes your head spin. “I really wish you wouldn’t defend me like this, in a way that makes you get hurt when I have barely a scratch on me,”

He doesn’t have the will to defend his actions, nor to rehash this conversation when it’s the one you whisper to him every time your hands are delicately patching up the wounds the day litters him with. You let out a sigh as your gaze meets his, you don’t have the strength either. Tomorrow is another day, another argument lost, and another battle to wage. Times like this, of soft flickering candlelight and night uninterrupted by the sounds of gunshots, were precious, and you didn’t want to waste that time dredging something up that he’s already made up his mind on. You hum instead, leaning forward until your forehead is rested against his bare chest.

He takes in a deep breath, you can feel as his lungs expand. His hand finds yours and traces patterns on your palm. It is again, the known, the slow matching of the both of your breathing until there is no doubt to either of you that you are both alive, both well enough.

“I don’t wanna be bad for you,” you say and he shakes his head, you can feel it in the movement of his body.

“You are the best thing I’ve had since the war began, my beloved. Christ, you’ve been the only reason I remember to even eat some days,” and you laugh, a cruel sound because it denies all those heavy feelings the space to breathe. “If protecting you is all I can do to thank you I’d say I’m not doing enough,” You shush him with a groan and yet you don’t lean away from your place pressed against him.

“Just, just don’t die for me okay?” you say and he hums.

“I don’t plan on leaving you anytime soon,” You pull away finally and look into his brown eyes again. He is Wilbur, for you, so presently the man you love not the one you follow into battle.

“Good,” you whisper.

He keeps well on his promise, the intention to not die. You feel like he is taking fewer risks, fewer nasty cuts and bruises for you to dote over each night. Still the routine remains but shapes into something less devastating more so the careful cleaning of grazes and the act of putting food in front of him and on top of that cursed map. It’s something repeated, an action of care that comes easy.

It’s a day when no battle comes to greet the morning air that you drag him to that shaded grove where you want the house to go. You speak excitedly of the future like it’s a promise that it will come, like you can speak it into existence.

“We can have a garden here and a porch to sit on and-” you continue as he laughs at your giddiness. It was your way of making sense of all this, of making the guilt and doubt of war bearable if only you keep your sights on the horizon not the ground. He entertains you all the same, speaking of details of your future home, big wide windows and a study.

“And it will be all ours,” Wilbur says because this is still a matter of land when it all comes down to it. He sits with you in the middle of all those trees, his surroundings just as familiar. He kisses you, soft and slow. It feels like the domesticity you are dreaming of because it lacks any context of haste. He cups your cheek and leans back, eyes fluttering open.

“I love you,” he says, a phrase that still hasn’t become commonplace making it weigh as heavy as lead as it leaves him. His eyes search your face as still you flush under the blue sky of late afternoon.

“I love you too, for all it’s worth in words,” you say and he smiles, crowding you and kissing again until you must gasp for air. This field will be your home, this grass your backyard, and he will be here still, as warm as ever. The sunlight brings a comforting heat to your skin as he seeks to remind you of nothing but that love he professes endlessly.

It’s more weeks of fighting that somehow leaves you unfazed. You wake to the sounds of drums and the absence of a body wrapped around you. It wasn’t unusual, the war so often demanded early mornings and Wilbur never wanted to drag you to those anxious preparations. The night before Wilbur had spoken of peace treaties, of winning, really winning.

“I hear whispers of the enemy giving in, considering a peace treaty,” he says, pulling you back against his bare chest. You craved the proximity like this but you couldn’t help if summer nights made it harder, skin adamant to be as sticky as the air.

“Really?” you had asked and his chest vibrates with a hum.

“You are the only one I’ve told, my love, but I want to believe it's true.” he says.

The memory comes to you and, for once, you rise easy. You button up your uniform and pull on those high boots without the insidious weight of a surefire loss. You felt hope, again, burn in your chest like it had when you first heard Wilbur speak, like it had in all those people before the camp was blown to smoke and ash, like it had every time you allowed yourself to still dream of a simple life in that cabin still unbuilt.

You sling a gun over your shoulder, a dagger in the sheath of your belt, and you go to find him. You think not of coming death but of when this will end. It is easy for you to seek him out, finding him with the ever-present worry across his face looking down at that wretched map you assume is burned into his eyelids by now with overlapping scrawlings of strategy.

“President?” you tease and his rigidness flattens slightly as he looks at you. Wilbur then comes closer and eases his face down until it’s buried in your hair. There are cigarette buds you can see out of the corner of your eye littered on that table. You hum, relax yourself into his grip, and wish silently that he would stop smoking if only so he would stop smelling of it, but he is allowed vices when reality has been so cruel. “Is it still looking good?” you ask him and he pulls away to look back at the map.

“Better than it has in weeks,” he says and you smile, can’t help but smile. “Darling,” he insists but you can’t wipe the expression from your face. It makes you feel dizzy to believe that this could be over soon, that there ever could be a day without spilled blood because as much as you’ve dreamed the day would come, part of you never believed it could. You don’t want to curb your expectations, you want to scream, you want to shake the man in front of you around, and, fuck, you want this war to end.

“I have a good feeling about today,” you say and he shakes his head in a way that is not punitive but reminds you he must focus. “When will we get into formation?” you ask and he waves you away saying to come back in 30 minutes. You wander the camp and note every smiling face as birds sing the songs of the morning and the rising sun. You scrounge up food, enough for both of you as you filter your way back to him sharing more polite upturns of your lips with those people preparing much the same as you are.

He doesn’t have the heart to complain when you place some bread and an apple in front of him, so he eats in contemplative silence.

“I think this will be it,” he says and you reply by knocking on the wood of the table with a cheeky smile. He is thankful today for your desire to keep him from spiraling into the type of doubt that only finds him before they must line up, and make ranks. When he finally finishes eating, you both stand. You gravitate to him, brush off crumbs of that bread, and straighten every bit of his uniform that your eyes deem crooked.

“You should stay back today,” he says and you are quick to glare.

“And miss the end of this fucked up thing? Wil, I can’t” you say and he looks down and away. You tilt his face to you until you make eye contact again. “I have given so much to this country, I need to see it through,” and he understands, you know he does because at times L’manburg feels more like Wilbur’s passion project than a country. You look over him and find no more mistakes, no more things to anxiously straighten or flatten down.

Everyone marches forward in silence until the frontline is formed and found. You all are a crowd of unchained desperation, all buzzing with the idea of this finally being over. You don’t look at the face of the other side, you keep your hand in Wilbur’s, you keep taking steady breaths, and you notice the inklings of panic in your body.

These two sides stare at each other knowing only the sickness of war and a thirst for blood, part of you knows still that this is the final battle, it’s something in the air that feels like the twist of a knife, tension running thinner and thinner. You make a surprised sound when Wilbur pushes you behind him and strangely you find Tommy’s eyes to your side, and feel the palpable fear stored there. It’s so sudden that something shifts in your chest, that hope blown out like a candle, the smoke of dread filling your quivering lungs. Your heart is beating in your throat as you hold that gun close to your chest. You count sensations, you try and come back, the coolness of the metal of the gun, your shoes tied tight, the stray buzzing of a bug past your ear. Wilbur is speaking, you can hear the timber of his voice but your ears betray you or maybe it’s your frazzled nerves not allowing you to focus, to comprehend any of the words leaving his mouth.

“Wilbur,” his name leaves you as an afterthought, a small squeak of wait.

The line swells forward without you, around you they push, and you can’t snap into it. You feel sick and dizzy when Wilbur turns back, sees you frozen, so horribly frozen, and is then swallowed by the crowd, his brown eyes disappearing behind the heads and uniforms of soldiers. Tears well up in your eyes as you try and muster the ability to be strong, to aim that gun, and kill people like they are prey, like they are that deer. The world rushes up to meet you too quickly and maybe it was due time you lost, took some pain that Wilbur could not harbor.

You make a strangled sound as someone finds you, a face you don’t get to see long enough to memorize. All he becomes is the close lean-in of brown eyes as he sinks a knife into your stomach. Your scar acts as a blueprint as that wound seems to be repeated. The pain is searing and familiar, the way he drags it up is a ripping feeling in your abdomen, the action of gutting a live animal. You choke as blood so quickly invades your mouth, metallic and sharp, it sputters out from the corners of your lips. The horrible human presence then fades, and you don’t remember when you found yourself sinking into the grass of the field. All you know is the sounds of gunshots and the warmth gathering on your skin, blood pooling then spilling over.

You whimper, try and move, get up and flee.

You manage to sit up, then fall back as your head spins and the pain fades to a thrum. You are drunk on blood loss, disoriented by the chaos that deems you just a body. People pass your struggle, red, blue, and white uniforms that walk on without a glance. You cry out, choke, and spit out that viscous red as you get to your hands and knees.

It hurts.

It hurts more than before.

The ground begs for your collapse but you dig your hands into the strands of grass, compel yourself forward. You can’t die here, you can’t, you won’t. Tears run steadily down your cheeks and you think of the energy being dispensed to cry to no one. Your arms give out, and you fall forward but scramble again to moving.

It hurts, it burns, it aches more than your heart, that hole ripped into your stomach, and yet you’ve done this before, been injured with the intent of bleeding you dry, so why does it hurt? Why is it so hard to be alone this time where the absence of care had existed then?

Wilbur, Wilbur, Wilbur.

You hope he doesn’t miss you. You hope that they win this. You hope he gets to live in that cabin you both dreamed of. You hope he finds someone else. You hope and hope and hope and you can’t keep up your weight anymore. The hope does nothing to fuel your effort to live, it instead cradles that weakness, and tells you it is okay.

“Wilbur,” his name is now spoken out as you roll over and look up at the sky that is painfully blue, absent of any clouds. The sun beats down and licks at your skin until it offsets the cool feeling running over you. You close your eyes.

He’s there, behind your eyelids, pressing his hands to your stomach and kissing your forehead. He’s there whispering in a panicked tone as his arms scoop under you. You don’t know where the fantasy of being saved meets the reality of bleeding out. You open your eyes to the same blue sky, to the same stillness as the sounds from the rest of the world fade away and you are left in the obscurity of now silent pain. It’s growing duller and maybe you should be terrified of losing it.

Then he is there, really there, and the pain returns because he’s nursing it.

“Hey, hey, hey, love, come on look at me,” he is strung thin, candle burning on both ends, and you must be selfish to be anything but okay right now. You force yourself to look at him, at the curls atop his head, the moles of his face, and the deep brown of his eyes.

“Wil,” you hum, eyes closed then open then closed. Everything feels slow, faded at the edges, and yet he seems so vivid. Your hand reaches up, and you don’t remember finding blood to touch until you are smearing it against his face with stray fingertips that feel the roughness of his 5 o’clock shadow.

“Hi, darling, hi,” he says, his voice wavering as his head looks back and forth, as he looks for a way out, away from this. His hands then press down on that wound and you groan, something that summons itself from your numbed silence. You gasp and wrap your hands around his wrists as he tries to slow the bleeding. “I know, I know, It’s okay,” he says as the words leave him in his own sounds of gasps.

“Hurts, to, h-hurts” you babble because you must speak, must fill his silence to numb that pain again. You whine, blink away more tears until you find his face. A stray smile passes your lips as you stare at him, drink him in. “Wil,” you say.

“We gotta get you up, okay?” you shake your head and still your hallucination seems to repeat itself. He lifts you easily with a care that makes your head spin. You groan as he walks, as the movement causes more blood to leak out of that horrible wound. You think of how it must stain him, ruin his uniform. You wonder how long it has been, how quickly did everything change from the front line to your body in his arms?

“Please, hurts, please, Wil,” you say, words so quiet as they fall from your lips. You peak at him through eyelids that have never felt heavier, rest calls to you as a weight on your chest, a demand to sleep not a request that bubbles out. You whine again, can’t resist the unseemly sound of weakness. You see in blurry backlit the act of him looking down, of his furrowed brow and frowning lips, of haloed hair and dark eyes. “Ju-just tired, wanna go home, and sleep,” you mumble and he’s shaking his head, a bleeding together change of light in your vision.

“No, No, gotta stay awake, remember?” he says, his voice croaking. You nod and yet the desire to fall away grows no less, even as his begs wash down upon you. “We are almost back, almost to the nurse, come on, y/n, just talk to me okay?” he says and you hum, something high-pitched and wrong from your throat.

“I- I w-what do you want me to talk about?” you ask, blinking your eyes in a desperate fleeting attempt to focus.

“Just about you, darling, just talk about you,” and he is walking faster now, even as the jerkier movements burn you. A tear runs down your cheek, and stings as it flushes your skin down.

“I love, I love lilies of the valley, th-they used to be all over the meadow and,” he’s moving quickly and you see tents passing down as you go down paths you don’t remember. It’s all fuzzy, all disjointed shapes and the curve of his face. “There were so many of them in the b-bouquet when you gave me flowers” you choke out and he hums.

“I love autumn, n-never got to spend autumn with you, it’s been so little time,” you say and are surprised as he lets out his own desperate sound. It’s only been a few months, almost a year, milestones neither of you ever got to celebrate because passing time was so often a sentence of either starving or battles to be waged.

“I know, I know, that’s why you gotta stay right here, my love,” he pleads as his eyes flick down the discoloration in your skin. He shakes you, just slightly an action that makes you cry out in pain but, god, he needs to know you are still here. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, darling, tell me about autumn, okay, what are we gonna do together?” and he’s imploring for more because he needs it, he needs you. You smile, something lazy and wavering that tells of no pain because you can’t feel your hands nor your feet.

“S’gonna be cold,” you say and its voices now suddenly talking, one making your chest rumble. Then it’s a familiar place, a cot and roaming hands and lamp light. It hurts to look around, to see in passing the panic still so adamant on Wilbur’s face. So you close your eyes.

You think of Wilbur, of autumn, of pressed and dried lilies of the valley. It's all cold, all removed. You can feel the dryness of the flowers under your fingertips, can imagine the feeling of fall rain across your skin. It makes you feel clean. You imagine the cabin just out of reach, of days spent in flowy clothes and of layers made for nothing but warmth. There isn’t anything left to fight for, you imagine days that are slow and dragging, Your head in Wilbur’s lap as he reads a book, as he does anything but work. You can feel hands on you still but the strength to open your eyes doesn’t come.

“Please,” Wilbur pleads, his hand in yours. His skin is so warm, he is so warm. You squeeze his hand, one last weak extension of I love you.

You can feel a breeze on your skin, you can feel Wilbur’s lips grace your own, and you can tell it’s over. There isn’t anything left to fight for. It doesn’t hurt anymore, all aches and pains eased. You hope you’ve done enough. You hope that tomorrow is a better day. You hope he can live that day without you. You hope and hope and hope.

The war was over as you took a final breath, one last slow rise then a permanent fall of your chest. Wilbur is holding your hand as it grows slowly cold. He sits with the muffled buzz of celebration that lies outside the medic tent and he tries to think of a speech. He tries to think of any words that would leave his mouth that could be fully celebratory.

You look to be resting, an expression so perfectly peaceful and unburdened. He wants to be angry that he let this happen to you. He wants to be irate that the war took even with its dying action. He is inconsolable in every moment that there is no longer the heavy feeling of being watched. When he no longer has to be strong he so quickly resorts to being weak.

Your funeral takes place a week after L’manburg becomes a sovereign nation. Attendance is sparse. It finds itself during the quiet evening on the first day that feels like autumn, a chill in the air. The leaves are just turning orange, warm golden light filtering down on your face making you seem almost alive again, Wilbur spends so much of that ceremony with his gaze glued to your chest, to your hands, to the closed state of your eyes wishing for a sign that you were going to crawl out of that coffin, that fate would grant him you again as an apology. He is, for once, not in his uniform, but instead, he is in a loose sweater to compliment the cooling weather. Before long he is called to speak to that small group of people, faces he recognizes and ones he swears he’s never seen. The walk to the podium, closer to you, is the hardest thing he’s ever done.

There is a long dragging moment where he takes your hand, rubbing against the back of it with his thumb, warming the skin that is now so horribly cold. He counts the flowers in your hands, in your hair, surrounding your body in that haunting mahogany coffin. He places his own among the myriad, a lily of the valley that has yet to droop too much, that looks fresh.

“I think a lot of people will remember them as the person who killed deer in the winter, I think a lot of them will have never learned their name or anything but how their face looked as they threw food in front of us like we weren’t all starving,” he says it all without the strength to really project his words, some people chuckle lightly and more just listen. “I will remember them as warmth,” he choked slightly at the words, wiping at tears that fell from his eyes for the millionth time this week.

“I will remember them as asking me to eat when taking care of myself was the last thing on my list of things to do. They wanted-” he starts but feels sick “They wanted to live, they wanted peace, and they died right before they ever got to have it,” and it’s a truth he’s been struggling with, it’s a painful thing.

“It’s not fair they don’t get to see all of this, and yet we have to keep moving, keep making this place a home again.” he shakes his head, looking to the sky that is being painted pink. “I just ask you don’t forget them even when you are happy or at peace or-” he takes in a shuttering breath “This should have been theirs too,” and he can’t find it within himself to speak more, to hold back the sobs begging to wreck him. His shoulders begin to shake as he sits down and no one else stands to speak. The procession grows so hauntingly silent except for the sounds of Wilbur’s stifled crying, his hand so firmly over his mouth.

He doesn't let them lay you to rest with the flag, and when all that is left is fresh dirt he turns on his heel. He doesn’t look back at the familiar shape of the trees, the familiar way the light floods into that valley, or at the familiar presence of a deer in the tree line.

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