#frontlines

He tried to speak, but his mouth was dry as paper. His tongue felt too thick, too numb. The only sound that escaped him was a rasp, almost like a growl. His limbs felt too heavy to lift. Every inch of his body ached—shoulders, legs, chest. His right side burned, not just skin-deep, but inside, like the muscles themselves were torn and blistered.

He opened his eyes as much as he could manage and blinked again, this time slower, and the world came into view in patches.

White walls. A window with blackout curtains barely cracked open. A curtain rail. A clipboard hanging from the foot of the bed.

He tried to sit up but the agony bloomed sharp and immediate across his ribs and down his side. His breath caught in his throat, and a low, involuntary noise rumbled from deep within him. A hand came to rest gently but firmly on his shoulder.

“Easy, Lieutenant,” It was the same woman’s voice this time; it was much closer this time. “Don’t move. You’re safe. You’re back in England.”

England.

The word hit him like diving into a pool of cold water. How long had it been since the crash? He turned his head just enough where he wasn’t in immense, shell-shocking pain.

In his short vision, she was a nurse. Early to mid-twenties, maybe, if he could guess. She had dark hair swept back in a twist, not a strand out of place. Her uniform was crisp, the navy collar straight, and her name tag flashed briefly before his eyes blurred again. She had a narrow face, pale from the overhead light, but steady.

She was in control of the situation as she moved around him now, knowing that he had woken up and may have to deal with questions and situations that were far too upsetting for most. She seemed to be the kind of person who could stare down chaos and not flinch.

“You’ve been sedated, quite heavily,” she told him briefly, checking on the bag of IV. “You were brought in from the field hospital in Calais. Can you tell me your name?”

His mouth worked, his lips were parting, but the words didn’t come easily as he blinked to try and make sense of what he needed to say. His throat burned like he’d swallowed smoke; he coughed then, everything hurt in a way that he hadn’t felt before in his life.

“Plane,” he managed out through the coughing, completely ignoring her question. “Went down. Over France.”

“Yes.” Her expression didn’t shift. Not with sympathy, not with surprise. Only the slightest flicker of her eyes betrayed her listening. “You were ejected midair; your plane went down. Ground team found you a few miles outside the wreckage.”

He let his eyes drift shut again. The memory was fractured with shards of color and sound. The red glow of the warning light. The wrenching scream of the fuselage breaking apart. Dean yelling. Bennett fumbling with the hatch. John screaming at them to eject.

“My crew,” he croaked, opening his eyes to try and get answers. “Where are they? Are they here?”

The nurse’s hands stilled as she tried to come up with a response that wouldn’t send him into a spiral – it happened quite often, upsetting them too quickly after they had woken up. That was the trauma of the war – it was the terrible aspect of life that had disrupted their lives.

“There’s no confirmation yet,” she told him in honesty, “You’re the only one they’ve recovered so far. It-“ She cleared her throat, “There was a lot of planes down, and many men were sent many places. It will take a while to get confirmations.”

He closed his eyes again, not from sleep this time but from something heavier. Something he didn’t want to face because that was how this war was.

Dean had a girl waiting for him in Bristol – he always carried her picture on him. Bennett used to whistle in the hangar like it annoyed everyone, even though they all secretly liked it. John could down beers and laugh with the best of them.

They couldn’t just be—

“They’ll find them,” the nurse reminded him. But there was no promise in her voice, only practice. Harry turned his face away as much as he could physically manage.

Silence settled between them; he didn’t want to be bothered, and she didn’t seem that she was going to give him the answers he was looking for. She moved around the bed, adjusting something at the IV stand. He heard the clink of glass and metal, the rustle of paper.

The movements were efficient, distant—like she was used to handling broken men in quiet rooms. The exhaustion that hit him was overwhelming, but he knew that when he closed his eyes he would just see the nightmare again and again.

“How bad is it?” he asked after a moment. She didn’t answer right away, just scribbled on the paper that was left by his bed.

“Well, you have burns along the right shoulder and ribs,” she told him; her eyes lifted to meet his. “Some deeper muscle damage in the thigh. More than likely a concussion from the fall. Fracture in your wrist. You’ll recover just fine, but you are quite beaten up.”

There wasn’t another beat before his eyes tried to meet hers: “Will I fly again?”

A pause.

“That’s not my call,” she said gently, but professionally. This time, he could tell that her empathy had been tested one too many times. “But you survived.”

As if that was the miracle it sounded to be.

Harry gave a humorless half-smile; it was then that he could feel he had a cut on his lip, probably along his eyebrow, as well. It felt foreign on his face. “Not sure if that’s lucky or not.”

The nurse didn’t answer; she didn’t say a single word.

Instead, she approached with a syringe, her touch brisk but not rough. “I’m giving you something for the pain. You’re shaking a bit. The adrenaline only kicks in every once in a while, but I suspect that you will be feeling it quite shortly.”

“I’m not—” But he was. He hadn’t noticed until her hand touched his forearm, steadying it on the small, bedded cot in the hospital ward. His skin felt too hot and too cold at once, fevered, electric. His breath came in shallow gulps.

She didn’t flinch, just pushed the needle in slowly. It was another thing he just chose not to feel, because it felt better that way. “It’ll ease off in a moment, just give it some time. You’ve had quite a long journey.”

“I don’t even know your name,” he swallowed, a bit of a slur in his voice as he felt the haze of the morphine already curling at the edges of his vision as he tried to focus in on her.

The woman gave him a quick, unabashed smile as she focused in on him. “Clare.”

He tried to hold onto that, Clare, but the drug moved fast, like warmth spreading through frozen limbs. The lights above him swam to create the blurriest lines in the worst way. His head lolled slightly to the side, and through half-lidded eyes, he saw her one last time.

She watched him fade, knowing that she had given him the relief that he was desperately asking for. Without another word, Clare let the air filter out of her lungs as she watched him fall into darkness. She was the only thing that didn’t hurt. For that, she was thankful.

+++

It had only been three days since the crash, though time passed differently in hospital wards.

Harry no longer woke in a blur of pain and morphine. He was more alert now, unfortunately more aware of every ache, every shift in the light, every passing moment that he wasn’t given any answers.

His burns were healing in increments he couldn’t feel, and the torn muscles in his thigh were no longer on fire, just throbbing due to the heavy medications they had him on. Still, he couldn't sit up on his own. His chest tightened every time he breathed too deep, and a nurse had told him – a blonde one with far too much joy, that his ribs were “knitting nicely.”

He’d snapped at her without meaning to. The guilt lingered, but not enough to make him apologize. He hadn’t seen that nurse again. In all certainty, he couldn’t stand the pity and the smile and the happiness that came with being alive.

The ward he was in only had twelve beds, though only seven were filled. It was one of the smaller military hospitals in the area. Most of the other men were in worse shape than he was—one with bandages wrapped around his entire head, another with a leg amputated just below the knee. Some slept all day, others groaned through their nightmares, sometimes waking up the whole ward in fits of screams and cries that were more than upsetting.

A few were like ghosts even while awake, eyes hollow, refusing to speak on what they had seen out there. Harry hated that he wasn’t the worst of them.

He hated the silence in the gaps between coughs and groans and footsteps. He hated the absence of his uniform and the new hospital clothes that they had put on his body while he was unconscious, removing his suit that was covered in blood and tears. Hated the sound of his own heartbeat, which was steady and undeserving, he knew. He hated thinking —

“Tea?”

It was a voice that came from his left – seeing a nurse standing there in her white. The navy collar around her neck, the pinned back dark hair that had felt so familiar to him. He had been startled slightly by the voice, but tried not to show it.

It was the night nurse again - Clare, he remembered. She stood at his bedside with a metal tray, a chipped mug in one hand, a folded cloth in the other. Her hair was pinned back again, and the shadows under her eyes were more pronounced tonight. He wondered if she ever slept, or if she just floated between wards.

“Only if there’s whisky in it,” he muttered, voice raspier than intended. He realized that he hadn’t spoken much, his throat feeling dryer than ever.

Clare didn’t smile, but one corner of her mouth quirked at the small bit of humor, barely there. “Not quite regulation, I’m afraid.”

She set the tray down on the bedside table and pulled a chair closer, settling into it with a sigh that sounded more out of habit than weariness. She didn’t look at him right away, just adjusted the angle of the lamp, the slope of his blanket.

Harry practically hadn't sleep here – he didn’t want to close his eyes. Most of the sleeping was due to medications. These nights were mostly spent sitting awake with his own thoughts, watching as the nurses would go from person to person, waiting for their medications or for something terrible to happen to bring in a bunch of soldiers.

All twelve of the beds hadn’t been completely filled since Harry had gotten there, which was a good thing, he supposed. But that may have just meant that they were dying out in the fields instead.

He could feel her watching him in the way trained people did—without making it obvious. She was checking his color, his alertness. The way his fingers twitched when he thought he was being still.

“Your color’s better,” he said, concluding his assumptions. “Are you sleeping?”

Harry shrugged in a nonchalance like he didn’t know how to respond, though it hurt to do it. “Enough.”

“You’re not feverish anymore,” she told him, nodding a few times. 

“Fantastic.”

That bitterness was back in his voice—he could hear it, taste it, but it still kept slipping out like a reflex.

Clare didn’t flinch at his roughness. She simply picked up a small cloth and dipped it into the water basin that had sat next to his bed, wringing it out over the tray. She was quiet for a while, the kind of quiet that didn’t demand conversation but made Harry guilty for snapping at her too.

Harry stared at the ceiling, trying not to think too much about it.

“Have they heard anything?” he asked, too quickly, too suddenly. “About Majors Rosenthal and Connolly? Or Tupolo?”

She paused; she knew from other nurses that he asked daily, almost multiple times a day, about his colleagues. About the men he had gone up in the plane with and hadn’t come down with.

“There’s been no word yet that I'm aware of.”

Her tone was gentle, but not soft. She didn’t look away. She didn’t coat it in false hope; he was happy that she didn’t lie to his face. That’s what made it worse.

Harry nodded a few times as he stared at the ceiling, feeling the water from the rag press against the cut on his brow. He felt the press of something sharp behind his ribs, too, and not the kind that came from injury.

“They were better than me,” he let out after a long moment. “More experienced. Dean could land a plane blind, and Bennett… Bennett’s the kind of lad who always has a cigarette, even when no one else does. He’s the one people follow,” He paused again, “And John was just a fucking kid.”

Clare didn’t interrupt as he started to talk about the men who he may have shared last minutes with. From the other nurses, they hadn’t heard much out of him, so his time to talk must have been at night rather than during the day.

“And me?” He let out a short, mirthless laugh. “I got ejected like bloody cargo. Popped out the side door and fell into a field while they went down in flames. And now, here I am.”

Clare was quick with her response, “You didn’t choose that.”

“No,” he snapped, eyes moving to look up at her. “But I survived it, didn’t I?”

His voice rose, just a little, enough to make the man in the next bed stir. Harry winced and turned his face away. Clare’s expression didn’t change, but she took the cloth from against his skin and rinse the muslin in the small basin. He exhaled through his nose, trying to push the anger back down.

“I keep thinking maybe if I’d stayed… if I’d tried harder to reach the cockpit, or—hell, if I’d stayed on the radio one second longer—”

“What was your duty station?” Clare’s initial attempt to change the conversation worked for a moment as he cleared his throat to give her an answer.

“Engineer,” Harry nodded, staring at the ceiling for a moment. “The – I mean, the last thing I can remember is we were shot from behind and the wing was damaged. We were falling out of the sky, but Bennett couldn’t – uh, he just couldn’t get the leverage to be able to land it, and – “

“You did everything that you could.” She told him in honesty, that’s what she had to say to these soldiers. There was nothing that could have been done – they were following their orders, they were young men in the world trying to make a difference and to fight for their freedoms.

“Did I?” He turned toward her, frustration lighting his eyes as he practically seethed at the question. “Maybe I would’ve burned with them. And maybe that would’ve made more sense.”

Clare met his gaze and held it; she didn’t shy away from making contact with him because that helped neither of them.

“And maybe it wouldn’t,” she told him, something in her eyes that made Harry close his mouth. “But you’re here. And that’s what we have to work with.”

Harry looked away first. When he did, Clare let go of the breath she held to stay strong.

The anger drained as quickly as it had come, leaving only the echo of it, hollow in his chest. The worst part wasn’t that he didn’t know where his crewmates were - it was that he couldn’t help them. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything but lie in this quiet room surrounded by dying men and pitying nurses and wonder why he’d been spared.

Harry sat and wondered if they were out there laying in a field, dying. If they had someone to hold their hand and recite their last prayers to the almighty God.

Clare stood and placed the cloth gently on his forehead. It was cool, damp, soothing in a way that he wanted to reject, but didn’t.

“Most of the men who come through here,” she said, voice low to keep the other men from awaking around them, “They wake up disoriented, in tremendous pain. Screaming,” she cleared her throat “They don’t remember where they are, sometimes who they are - some don’t know their own names. You’re lucid. You’re angry. That’s not failing.”

Harry’s jaw was tight as he swallowed. “You sound like you’ve said that before.”

“I have.” Clare said, nodding. “It’s a reminder for the ones who lived. Thankfully, many have, but many are taking away the same nightmares.”

She took the mug from the tray and handed it to him. His hands were steadier than they’d been a few days ago, though the left one trembled slightly from the burns. The tea was always a bit of a trick to make sure that they were steady and there hadn’t been anymore shaking. He took the tea, even though it burned a bit.

“I don’t know what to do with myself,” he admitted after a long silence, possibly a bit overwhelmed with the situation. A bit muffed with how everything had turned out. He hadn’t had any information, or any way to get information. He didn’t know if they knew he was alive or dead – he didn’t know anything.

Clare pulled the chair a little closer, crossing her legs as she sat with him for a moment. “You rest. You heal.”

With a quick response, he shook his head, “That’s not enough.”

“For now, it has to be.”

The quick and emotionless duties of her responses were eerie in some ways. Now that Harry could sit here and look at her, he recognized how absolutely stunning she was – dark features, pink lips. Her eyes were cerulean, which popped against her dark hair that was pinned back.

But there was something about her that seemed troubled, almost just as stubborn and hurt as he could have been. Instead of making her night worse, he decided to possibly dive into the company.

As he took a sip of the tea, he looked over at her. “Is it hard?”

“What?” She asked him, checking over his paperwork that was next to his bed.

“This job. Seeing people like this.”

Clare didn’t answer him at first, because there really wasn’t a response to give. Hard was subjective; the job itself was easy because she knew how to handle tough situations, and she knew how to attend to the patients. But was it mentally draining, of course it was.

She glanced around the ward, her gaze briefly landing on the man two beds down who moaned softly in his sleep. That man had been shot in the head; he was barely hanging onto life as he knew it. He was only twenty-one.

“Yes,” she said eventually, giving him an answer. “But it’s harder when they don’t make it. Or when they do, but they give up.”

Harry didn’t reply, he didn’t want to look at her with that response, either. It felt pointed, almost like he was being punished for feeling sad. He sipped the tea—it was bitter and weak, but it grounded him.

The heat of the ceramic, the feel of his own breath fogging the rim, reminded him that he was real. That he was here. Not in the wreckage. Not floating over fields in a parachute. Not burning.

No, he was lying in a warm, hospital ward with a beautiful woman next to him as he had antibiotic medication soothing his burns. He took a deep breath in through his nose and settled against the pillow.

Clare stood again. She checked his chart, made a note, then paused. “Would you like me to bring you a book next time I’m on shift? To pass the time?"

He blinked at her, a bit unsure of where her question had come from.

“What sort of book?” He asked her, blinking a few more times to feel the tiredness in him.

“Hm,” she hummed, “You tell me.”

He thought for a moment, a bit of humor in his tone. “Nothing heroic. No war stories, please.”

She nodded, appreciating the bit of humor that he gave her. It had been nothing but pointed jabs and pessimism from him, but she could handle it. “Understood.”

As she turned to go, Harry called out, quietly, “Clare?”

She looked back at him, carrying the tray with her as she went. The man she was looking at was broken, he was physically and emotionally scarred, and she knew that there was built up anger and resentment. She didn’t hold that against him in the slightest bit; she knew it was just an uphill battle.

So, she gave him a bit of grace. She looked at the broken man giving him the grace and prosperity that he deserved.

“I’m not always like this, you know..”

She gave him a small, tired smile. Taking in a deep breath, she held the metal tray to her chest. “Neither am I.”

Then, without another word, she was gone. Her steps quiet on the polished floor, her silhouette swallowed by the dim light near the ward doors.

Harry lay back slowly, wincing as his side tensed. He stared at the ceiling again, but the pressure in his chest was softer now—less like a vise, more like a hand.

He thought of Bennett’s laugh. Of Dean swearing at the radio. Of the way the clouds looked from above, blinding and soft. Those were the most precious memories that he could hold. It was a euphoric feeling of being high above the cloud, through the clouds, being up that high gave you a sense of purpose.

But then there was the feeling of falling, then waking, and seeing her standing over him like a lighthouse in the smoke. What a way to awaken from the haunted visions.

He hadn’t seen the plane crash to the ground. But he’d survived it. And maybe, somehow, that would have to be enough.

Maybe, somehow, the others would have, as well.

+++

The next evening, Harry had been finishing up some of his supper – some meat, potatoes, cabbage, and carrots cooked in a sort of gravy sauce. It wasn’t the best meal he’s ever eaten, but it satisfied the pain in his stomach. He needed to continue to eat, or the medicine would make him sick to his stomach, he was told by the doctors.

But as he was finishing his meal, Clare returned with a book tucked under one arm. She had practically snuck it into the ward, keeping it away from the other soldiers and nurses, as if to make him feel special.

Harry noticed immediately. Not just the book—but her. The way she carried herself through the ward, less like a nurse and more like someone who belonged there. Someone who moved through pain without absorbing it. He didn’t understand it, not fully, but he was beginning to recognize it.

“Something told me you wouldn’t be one for poetry,” she said by way of greeting. She held out the book, letting the lopsided grin of hers take over her face.

He took it, eyebrows lifting at the cover. The Thirty-Nine Steps.

“Adventure. Espionage. No heroism,” she added, “Just as requested.”

Harry smirked faintly as he took it from her fingers. “I’m very glad you remembered,” he said to her, “I’ve been bored out of my mind.”

She pulled the chair closer again and sat, her posture a little more relaxed this time. It was getting easier to look at her without feeling like he might break.

“Thank you,” he said after a beat.

At this point, Clare looked around at his paperwork next to his bed – checking all the other nurses had properly done his medicines, changed his bandages, bathed him, and done right by him. “For the book?”

“For not treating me like a broken watch.” Harry pushed his tray away; Clare took it from his lap and set it down on another table as she noticed how he may have been in a bit more pain that day.

Clare smiled softly, her attitude may have been giving him the right to smile and feel better. “I wouldn’t know how to fix one of those, either.”

He gave a low laugh, but it turned quickly into a wince. His side still pulled tight if he moved too quickly. The way that his nose scrunched made her look worried, which was the most she had given to him empathetically. Clare breathed out, turning the conversation back to a different topic.

“I read that one when I was sixteen,” Clare continued, “My brother snuck it to me. My mother thought it was much too improper.”

“Because it had spies?”

“Because it had adventure,” she said, grinning now. “My mother was a schoolteacher. Believed anything fast and unrealistic was indecent.”

Harry opened the book with care but didn’t read any of the words yet. He liked the feel of it in his hands. Something to hold onto; it made him realize that his hands may have hurt a bit more than he had recalled from doing nothing with them. Something with a beginning and an end. Something someone else had finished.

He didn’t ask about her brother. Before he could speak again, the ward doors opened suddenly with pace and loud conversation that caught everyone’s attention.

A pair of orderlies wheeled in a stretcher, occupied by a soldier. The man on it was unconscious, his skin pallid, lips chapped, and a deep bandage wrapped around his upper thigh. One arm was splinted and strapped to his chest; his leg was covered in blood through the bandages.

Harry’s heart clenched when he watched the man be placed practically across from him.

“John?” he whispered before he could stop himself.

Clare looked up when she noticed that Harry’s demeanor had changed. “Do you know him, then?”

Harry nodded, stunned and unsure if his medications were playing a trick on him. “That’s- that’s John. Captain Tupolo. H-He was with my unit. He was our bombardier on the plane.”

The orderlies settled John into the bed across from Harry and pulled the curtain halfway; he was unable to see any longer, but his heart beat expeditiously. A nurse followed with a clipboard. There was quiet movement—vitals, tags, whispered instructions.

“Found him in a hedgerow,” one orderly muttered to another. “Alive, somehow. Someone must’ve moved him over there and thought he was a goner.”

Clare stood and crossed the room briefly, speaking in low tones with the nurse at John’s side. Harry tried to listen, but his ears buzzed too much, blood rushing with a new kind of urgency.

When Clare returned, her expression was cautious, but she gave him a smile.

“He’s stable, but in rough shape,” she told him gently, “Dislocated shoulder. His leg is badly infected and cut very deeply. But he’s lucid. He’s here.”

Harry exhaled a breath that he hadn’t been sure he had been holding in until it felt good to release. “Can I—”

“Soon. Let him wake fully.” Clare placed another quilt on the bottom of Harry’s cot, using her hands to make sure that he was comfortable.

She didn't sit again, and didn’t speak further, letting him sit with the information as she moved her way out of his space. Harry didn’t know what to do with the relief and the dread, crashing together like waves. Two men accounted for. Two still missing. He closed his eyes.

An hour passed. Then two. Another could have, but Harry had stopped keeping track. His sleep hadn't come.

Clare’s shift ended the next morning as usual, and another nurse took her place. But she’d left a note tucked into the book’s first page as soon as Harry had opened it when he was eating breakfast the following morning: If it gets too dull, tell me. I won’t take it personally. I’ll bring another one.

He read the first chapter, but his thoughts drifted. It felt silly to be reading about a world where this wasn't happening.

Across the room, John stirred on his own cot. A soft groan and a rustle of sheets made Harry’s eyes move towards the curtain that they had closed around him. Harry had learned that the worse cases got the longest curtain.

The nurse approached and murmured something before he realized that she was pulling the curtain away to let some daylight into the ward from the day, which allowed Harry see John for the first time.

“John,” Harry could see his friend, not far at all, right across from him. The man had been sat up, probably to keep the blood flow moving.

John’s voice came in a hoarse whisper as he really opened his eyes to see Harry sitting across from him; his eyes were swollen and he looked like he had a lot of trauma to the face, scrapes, brusing: “Styles?”

Harry snapped upright, then winced at the pain in such a movement.

“Bloody hell, mate,” he breathed, giving a humorless laugh before shaking his head, “You look like you lost a fight with a train.”

John gave a faint, broken laugh himself. “Takes one to know one.”

His eyes were sunken but sharp, and though pain was etched in every feature, he was unmistakably John. Harry wanted to ask a thousand things at once but didn’t know where to start – he didn’t know if he had any answers, or if he had anything further to discuss.

In some ways, he didn’t want to have John relive through moments that were probably horrifyingly troublesome.

“You’re here,” he said instead.

“Not for lack of trying otherwise.”

Harry stared, hands starting to shake as he had flashes of what had happened. “How the hell did you make it?”

“Got thrown clear when the fuselage split. Landed in a bog.” He paused, breath catching. “Stayed down. Played dead for a while because I couldn't move, could hear them around me. Some farmer found me and helped.”

“Jesus.” Harry breathed out, shaking his head. If that had happened, he had so much more hope for the other two.

After another moment, John cleared his own throat. “Figured you were gone, mate.”

Harry swallowed hard, holding onto the quilt Clare had put at the foot of his bed, but his hands were taped with gauze and he could barely hold anything tightly. “I thought the same about you.”

A heavy silence settled between them, almost like they both knew what the other was about to say. Harry made it there first.

“What about—” Harry started to speak but couldn’t say Dean’s name, Bennett's name was stuck in his throat, too. His throat closed; eyes welling up as he thought about the inevitable truth of possibly losing a friend.

John’s expression shifted but stayed rather bare.

“Bennett made it out. Got burns on his hands, think he had major damage to his skull. They airlifted him to another hospital up north. Some place near Leeds, I think. I heard that when I was being transported here.”

Relief and grief collided again, but Harry felt his mouth go dry. Three survived. “And Dean?”

John didn’t speak for a long time, but when he did, Harry heard the way that his voice broke at the first words.

“I saw it happen,” he said finally. “He tried to get the radio working again. Refused to bail. Last thing I heard was him shouting coordinates at me, but I –“ He paused for a moment, “I was pulled out before the plane exploded.”

Harry stared at the ceiling, blinking hard because crying meant losing. It meant he was giving up the façade the soliders built so hard to be respected for.

“I’m sorry, mate.” John said quietly; he had known that Dean and Harry had made their way through the unit trainings together, flying many trips. They had gone up multiple times in the year that they had been together – so, it hurt to know that one moment took Dean away forever.

Harry nodded slowly with his jaw clenched, thinking of the girl that Dean held with him in his pocket in a photo memory. “He was the best of us. I’m sure Rebecca got word, then”

“I’m sure she did.”

Silence. Thick, heavy, full of memories neither could voice. They didn’t talk again that night.

+++

The next day, Harry woke to find Clare back, sitting in the same chair with a steaming mug of tea and a handful of letters she was sorting through, looking for ones for him. When she didn't find any, she sat them down on the bedside table.

“You’ve got a roommate,” she said, nodding toward the next bed.

“Saw him,” Harry murmured out, a bit dazed. “Didn’t sleep much after.”

Clare studied him for a moment. “Must've been some relief to see him.”

Harry nodded, not knowing if he had much to say about it. It just made him think about other things. “Glad he made it out.”

Her eyes softened. She handed him the tea, watching as his hands still shook when he held it. “That’s something.”

He wanted to thank her again—he wasn’t sure why. Maybe for the way she didn’t ask too much but gave just enough acknowledgement for it to mean something. Maybe for always knowing when to sit in silence, or to let him grieve.

Instead, he said, “Do you always volunteer for the night shifts?”

She lifted her eyes to him, clearing her throat. “I don’t mind them." He could tell that there was something else there

“But?” He questioned.

Clare tilted her head. “But there’s a kind of quiet here at night that feels… honest.”

Harry sipped his tea - stronger today, which was good. “Is that what you look for?”

“Most days," she told him, shrugging with a smirk, "I'm not one for bullshit."

He considered her for a moment. The curve of her shoulders. The quiet steadiness in her eyes. There was something strong in her that had nothing to do with uniforms or rules. Something she carried into the room each time she walked in.

“You’ve seen a lot, haven’t you?” he asked her, feeling chattier the more she sat around him. Something about her made him want to know all of it.

Clare didn’t answer immediately. “I started as a nurse’s aide at seventeen. The men used to joke that I still looked like someone’s little sister.”

Harry's eyes traced her, really looking at her like he couldn't take his eyes off of her. “You don’t now.”

She raised an eyebrow, maybe feeling a bit of flush on her cheeks. “Is that a compliment or a comment on the war?”

“Both.”

She smiled again, but just barely, and stood. “You’ll need rest. The doctor wants you to try standing with assistance by week’s end.”

Harry groaned, feeling his eyes roll gently before he set his tea down. “Are they trying to kill me properly?”

Clare leaned in, adjusting his blanket. “No, Lieutenant. They’re trying to send you home.”

Her touch lingered briefly on his arm before she pulled back.

Harry watched her move to the next bed, speaking softly to John. The two of them exchanged a few words, and he heard Clare laugh—quiet, real. He hadn’t realized until that moment how much he liked that sound.

He lay back, the book still on his lap.

Dean was gone. Bennett was alive. John was here.

And Clare—Clare was becoming something he didn’t know how to name. A tether, maybe. A warmth in a room full of wounds.

He didn’t know what was next. But for the first time since falling from the sky, he wasn’t completely afraid to find out.

+++

It was nearing half-past nine on a grey, sluggish evening when Clare found herself seated at the far end of the nurses’ station, a cup of tea cooling beside her half-finished patient chart. Rain tapped softly against the windowpanes, a rhythmic background to the scratch of pens, murmured updates, and the occasional weary yawn.

The night shift had bled into day like watercolor over damp paper—blurred, endless, quiet in that strange, exhausted way hospitals always were after dawn.

She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, the nape of her neck damp from the heat of the ward and tried to focus on finishing her notes for bed two—an older gentleman with a broken hip and an exceptional fondness for singing hymns at four in the morning.

Across the desk, Nurse Margaret tilted her chair back and fanned herself with a clipboard. “Lord, if I have to change one more dressing soaked through with iodine and self-pity…”

Nurse Ruth, sorting some medical supplies beside her, chuckled. “You mean the charming Mr. Abrams in ward six? He winked at me yesterday, said I’ve got the hands of a pianist and the face of a war bride.”

“You going to write him back when he leaves?” Margaret teased, giving a knowing eye.

“Oh, absolutely,” Ruth deadpanned back, “right after I put some bleach in my eyes.”

The small group of nurses laughed at that. Clare gave a quiet smile but didn’t join in. Her fingers remained poised on her own chart she was to complete for the doctors reference, her expression composed as her eyes fell over the name: Lt. Styles, Harry.

“It’s strange,” Ruth continued, sliding onto a stool as she tucked her ankles together. “Some of them flirt like it’s the only thing keeping them breathing. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I think it helps. Reminds them they’re still human. But it feels… I don’t know.”

“Like a game, maybe?” Clare offered softly to the conversation.

Ruth looked at her, surprised at her joining in. “Exactly. Like they’re playing dress-up in their own tragedy. To step away from the tragedy.”

Clare nodded once, not unkindly, her eyes drifting back to the chart. She didn’t say what she was thinking, that it didn’t always feel like a game to the men.

Sometimes, it was desperation disguised as charm. A last-ditch attempt to feel young, or funny, or alive again because they would leave here to go back to their units or back home to something that didn't matter anymore. Sometimes it was innocent. Sometimes it wasn’t. But always, it left a mark.

Margaret leaned forward, lowering her voice with a conspiratorial grin. “Speaking of inappropriate affections, has anyone noticed how Lieutenant Styles doesn’t respond to anyone except Clare?”

That earned a few lifted brows and a round of curious glances, maybe even a few gawks. Clare blinked slowly but didn’t lift her head as she tried to ignore the conspiracy altogether.

“Oh, come on,” Margaret continued, trying to push Clare, “I gave him his meds yesterday morning and he just nodded. Didn’t even thank me or give me the time of day. But you come near his bed and he sits up straighter than a schoolboy reciting Latin.”

“He’s quiet with everyone else,” Ruth said, more thoughtfully. “But he listens when Clare speaks.”

Clare gave a mild shrug, eyes still on the paperwork. “Perhaps he simply finds comfort in routine.”

“Comfort, sure. But the way he watches you…” Margaret trailed off with a knowing smirk.

“Like a man writing poetry in his head,” Nurse Helen chimed in from the corner. “I saw it myself last week when you leaned in to check his shoulder dressing. His eyes didn’t blink the entire time – it was like he was memorizing you!”

“I think I blushed for you,” Ruth added with a simple giggle; she must have been kicking her feet under the chair.

Clare rolled her eyes, but the flush rising to her cheeks betrayed her from keeping quiet or not saying too much. She closed her chart with deliberate care and sipped her now-cold tea. “You lot spend far too much time crafting romances out of fever dreams, it seems.”

“We’re overworked, underpaid, and in the middle of a war, Clare,” Margaret said breezily, shaking her hand at her. “Let us have our stories.”

“He’s a patient.” Clare defended, trying to brush off the stares and the eyes knowing that they would but placed on them more heavily now.

“Yes,” Ruth said, watching her carefully, tilting her head, “but he’s also a man. And you’re not made of stone, especially with a face like that.”

Clare didn’t answer right away – her facial expression gave it away, surely. Her gaze dropped to her hands, stilling on a faint smear of ink on her palm. She rubbed it absentmindedly against her skirt, then finally looked up.

“It’s not that I don’t see it,” she said, with a calm tone. “The way he watches. I’d have to be blind not to. But don’t mistake that for anything more than what it is.”

“And what’s that?” Helen asked gently – the other girls leaning in to listen to her answer, surely wanting a bit more gossip than there was to give.

“Recognition,” Clare replied. “Of someone who’s walked into the fire and come back. Someone who knows what it costs,” She stood from her spot, shaking her head as she did it. “He’s a hero, and I’m just making sure he feels recognized for what he’s done. Especially when many of them feel like failures.”

The room quieted for a moment at her words; maybe even a bit of guilt from everyone as Clare felt guilty for bringing the mood down, but the girls may have felt a bit guilty for making a joke out of their duties.

Ruth nodded slowly, tucking her hands into her apron. “That’s fair.”

But, Margaret couldn’t resist one more jab, albeit softer this time. “Still, if he asks you to run off with him to the coast, at least let us know so we can throw you a proper goodbye party to relinquish you from your duties.”

Clare smiled faintly at that, shaking her head. “If he ever manages to walk across the ward without tripping over his IV line, I may consider it.”

That earned another round of laughter, and this time Clare let herself join in with it.

Still, when she returned to the ward twenty minutes later, chart tucked under her arm, her gaze wandered to the almost inevitable site where, near the bed corner window, the one screened slightly for privacy, was Harry’s bed.

And, as usual for this time of night, he was awake. Propped up on one elbow, book in hand. He wasn’t reading, though. He was watching her.

Not in the way a soldier watched a nurse, waiting for meds or instructions or for some sort of reaction of feeling needed. Not even in the way a man watched a woman he found pretty. No—it was quieter than that. It was much more present than that – like she was the only thing in the room he didn’t want to miss.

Clare held his gaze for a second longer than she meant to, tilting her chin forward to suggest she had been going to him for a reason. Then she turned and walked toward him, heart tapping a little too hard in her chest, voice steady as ever.

“Lieutenant Styles,” she said lightly with a sigh, quietly to allow the other men to sleep, “don’t tell me you’re pretending to read again.”

He smirked, the edge of it sharp and crooked, just for her. “Not pretending at all. Just distracted for a moment.”

“I wonder by what.” She asked him, quietly moving to fluff the pillow that sat behind his back, making sure that his posture was not taking a beating for the way that he sat.

Harry’s eyes reverted to the book in front of him, nodding a few times as he allowed the smirk to stay present on his face, “I think you know.”

She rolled her eyes again—but this time, she smiled as she did. And he saw it.

+++

The ward was quiet, the kind of quiet that settled only in the deepest stretch of night—when the men who could sleep, did, and the others tossed in silence, chasing ghosts behind their closed eyes.

Harry was somewhere in between those moments – he felt that sleep was to take him, but he struggled with falling.

He’d dozed off around midnight, propped up slightly on the pillows Clare had fluffed for him, her voice still echoing faintly in his head. “Try to get some rest. I’ll be on until morning if you need anything.”

She’d smiled before drawing the curtain halfway shut around his bed, promising safety in that gentle, practiced way of hers. But sleep wasn’t a peaceful place. Not anymore, at least.

He twitched once, then again, face tightening as his breath caught.

There he was back in the sky—cramped in the bomber’s gut, metal rattling all around him. There was smoke… fire. His oxygen mask tight against his face as the machine shook and rattled and adrenaline struck through his veins.

Someone was shouting over the intercom—Styles? Tupolo? He couldn’t tell; his senses were heightened, but the adrenaline and pulse was louder. The plane bucked beneath them like a dying animal, the nose tipping unnaturally downward as he tried to hold onto the side to try and escape from where he sat, gravity pulling against him.

Then—an explosion. Light, hot and blinding, consumed everything.

“Engine two’s out! We’ve got fire! We’ve got fire—Mayday! We need to eject!”

Harry was trying to move – every inch of him was trying to get to Dean who was stuck in the rear, thrown backwards by the explosion. His harness was caught; he couldn’t remove it.

He was screaming.

The heat was everywhere; the sound was everywhere. The fuselage was tearing open above his head. Sparks rained down. Dean’s voice was screaming his name—no, not screaming.

Gurgling. Like something inside him had broken. And it had; a piece of the plane had him pinned to the wall, blood circling around his abdomen as he fought The numbness felt like he couldn't move, but he needed to. He needed to get out, he needed to move.

“Bail out, Styles! Bail out!” John's voice called over the sound of the plane falling from the sky. Falling deeper and moving faster.

His hands fumbled to get himself out of the door. His shoulder screamed in protest. The world tipped again, violently, and his body hit the fuselage wall hard.

Red. Everything was red. And then, nothing. Freefall. He was falling.

Cold air against his face.

A silent, endless drop.

Harry jerked awake with a ragged gasp, his hands clutching the blanket twisted over his chest, heart pounding like it was trying to break through his ribs. His shirt was drenched with sweat, his shoulder seizing up with pain from the way he’d thrashed. He blinked rapidly into the dark, half-lost in the nightmare still clinging to his skin like smoke.

He tried to sit up but couldn’t. His body trembled violently, his breathing sharp and fast and wrong.

“Harry—”

The curtain rustled and Clare appeared in a second, hair pinned up but a few strands loose now, face open with concern. She was still in her uniform, though the collar was unbuttoned at the throat almost like she had been taking a break before hearing his struggling.

She didn’t speak again at first, just came to his bedside and placed a hand gently on his arm.

“You’re alright. It was just a dream. You’re safe.”

Harry squeezed his eyes shut, voice quivering just at the thought of the sounds, the noises, the sounds, the feeling of it – seeing Dean’s face. “I—I saw it – I almost,”

“I know,” she murmured, holding his hand, softly coaxing him to come to a manageable place. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.” His voice cracked, quiet and raw, his throat felt right as he tried to whisper but the feeling of tears releasing from the sides of his eyes only made him want to speak less. “Dean didn’t make it. I saw - I left him in there. I left him, Clare.”

Clare pulled a chair up to the side of his bed and reached for his hand, wrapping her fingers firmly around his. Her touch felt like the burning.

“You didn’t leave him,” she told him flatly, “You were ordered to bail. You survived. That doesn’t make it wrong. That makes you human.”

His hand shook in hers, jaw clenched hard like he was trying to force the rest of it down. His hands hurt, he could practically feel the burn on them from hitting the side of the plane on the way down.

“I hear him sometimes. Even when I’m awake. It’s like—like he’s stuck in the moment I lost him.”

Clare exhaled softly and moved to the supply drawer by his bed, retrieving a small vial and a paper cup with practiced ease. Like she had done this hundreds of times. “This will help calm your nerves. Just enough to let your body rest, okay?”

“I don’t want to forget,” he said as she prepared the dose, watching her with a calmer notion. The feeling of her there was calming, it was helpful to not be alone when he felt so incredibly alone.

“You won’t,” her words were gentle with him, “But you won’t relive it over and over like this either.”

She handed him the cup, the small medications. His fingers were still trembling, so she steadied his hand as he drank.

When he was done, she eased him back against the pillow, brushing the damp curls from his forehead. Her touch was tender, but not fragile—like someone who had learned to be steady because the world wasn’t.

“I used to wait for the telegram,” she said after a while, voice barely above a whisper. “Every day for two years. My brother went straight to Germany. I thought if I stayed busy, if I worked hard enough, it wouldn’t come.”

Harry’s gaze shifted to her face, eyes focusing on the way that she held stoic and cold. Like showing emotion revolving around herself would hurt him more.

“They found his body six months ago,” she said, swallowing hard, nodding – a dry laugh left her as she turned away from him for a moment. “Sometimes I still wake up thinking he’s on leave and just forgot to write. I just get so wrapped up in staying busy that I feel guilty that I forget every once in a while.”

He didn’t speak, just watched her in the pale moonlight spilling through the window, her profile etched in soft blue and silver from the outside.

“You and I,” she shook her head, “we didn’t start this war. But we live in the middle of it, and we carry what it leaves behind.”

She looked back down at him, eyes deep and steady and full of a wisdom he hadn’t been ready to hear. “That’s not weakness, Harry. That’s survival.”

His throat tightened at her words, blinking at her with a mindful watch. “How do you do it? Keep your hands from shaking?”

“I don’t,” she admitted to him gently, showing him the shake in her right hand. “I just have to keep using them, anyways.”

The medication had started to work, dulling the edges of his panic. Harry had started to feel his body ease, though the grief hadn’t left—it just wasn’t screaming quite so loud anymore. There wasn’t a voice anymore, but just a noble reason.

Clare stood and tucked the blanket back around him, tucking it into his legs to keep him warm in the cold ward. “Try to sleep now. I’ll stay until you do.”

“You don’t have to.” He told her, watching as she took another seat next to him. Her eyes looked at the book that sat on his bedside table, dog-eared on the places that he stopped.

“I want to.”

He didn’t argue with that. His eyes drifted closed, and for the first time in days, when he exhaled, it didn’t feel like he was breathing through fire.

Clare sat beside him, her hand resting lightly on the edge of his bed, not holding on, but certainly not letting go either.

+++

There was rain by the midafternoon, pattering gently against the long windows that lined the ward. Outside, the grounds were turning a muddy brown, leaves wet and heavy from the wind. Inside, the heat in the woodstove ticked, and the scent of antiseptic still clung to every linen.

Harry sat upright in bed, legs over the edge, his hands gripping the frame for balance.

Every inch of movement still hurt—just less than it had a week ago. It had been almost two weeks now that Harry was here. His muscles ached, his burns were starting to heal as best as they could in the short time– the ones that were down to the bone were struggling, but there was progress. His hips were starting to get sore the more he sat around, waiting for the muscles to heal

The burns along his ribs itched under the bandages. But the doctors had informed him that he could start to walk now. Stand without help, even if he had to hold the wall. He’d taken six steps that morning, and felt like he could have collapsed. It felt like a bloody marathon.

“I heard you made it to the door and back,” Clare said, appearing beside him with a folded blanket. He hadn’t realized that she was back so soon – the day must have started to really fade from him.

“You forgot to mention how bloody far the door is.”

She grinned at his nonsense. “You can take it up with the nurse who designed the floor plan.”

“I will. Just as soon as I can walk without feeling like a newborn deer.”

He looked at her, and wondered how he hadn’t seen it before. There was something different about Clare today. Her shoulders were drawn in slightly, her smile a little thinner.

“Everything alright?” he asked. He could see that there was a look in her face that may have been more somber than before.

She nodded. “Just tired, I guess.”

Harry watched her for a beat longer, then glanced at the book on his side table. He’d nearly finished it now—stolen chapters late at night, flipping the pages when his thoughts turned too heavy.

“You’re off tonight, yeah?” he asked; Harry was quite chatty in normal conversation, maybe it didn’t seem that way when he was in here. He didn’t really know what to say, but he felt a bit more normal today as he was able to get up and walk around.

Clare paused what she had been doing before nodding back at him with a pressed smile. “I am, for a few days.”

“Going home?” He asked her quietly, watching as she readied his medicines.

A soft exhale. “Um, yes, I’m – going to see my father, I guess,” she bit on her lip softly, “The first time I’m seeing him since George died,” she paused for a moment, “Just the two of us. Mum died of influenza years ago now, so I just imagine it will be difficult.”

He nodded, thinking to himself. Then: “Clare?”

She looked back over at him without another word, as his words had drawn her in.

“You said once your brother gave you that book. The first time you read it. You didn’t have to give it to me, you know.”

Her smile faded. Harry didn’t speak. He didn’t have to.

“We were very close. Closer than most siblings, I guess. We used to sneak up to the roof of our childhood flat and watch the people pass below, pretending we could read their thoughts. He used to say the only thing worse than being ordinary was being forgettable.”

She folded the blanket with slow, deliberate hands.

“I think about him when the ward goes quiet,” she blinks at him before she writes something on his chart, “Reminds me quite a bit of you, actually. He was very cheeky.”

Harry let her talk, watching as she grabbed the stethoscope to listen to his lungs, moving closer to him before her eyes were naturally in front of his, “I see his face in every boy who flinches in his sleep. And every time someone dies, I wonder if he had someone like me with him when -”

Harry swallowed, his voice tight, nodding. “He did.”

She looked at him, startled at his confirmation – the positivity in his voice. It was new, so she blinked at him for a moment almost not catching his new comfort.

“I wasn’t there,” Harry said, “but I know he did. Someone held his hand. Someone stayed with him.”

The silence between them stretched, but it wasn’t empty. It was thick, humming with what neither of them had said aloud yet. He went to stand slowly, muscles protesting as he pushed himself off of the cot and pushed his shoulders back.

“Still hurts like hell,” he muttered, stretching out his back.

Clare stepped toward him on instinct, almost like she was going to catch him if he fell, “Careful—”

But the problem with that was that Harry was quite taller than Clare, not by too much, but she would definitely not be able to lift him if he fell.

He waved her off with a tired smile, shaking his head as his hair fell into his eyes. “I’m alright, love. I just needed to stand while you talked about him. Felt like… like I should.”

She nodded, eyes shining before she studied him for a moment.

“Since you’re up, do you want to sit outside for a bit?” she asked. “The garden’s just through the hall.”

Harry blinked, a bit confused by her question. “You’re allowed to take patients for walks outside?”

“No,” she said, he could tell there was a bit of nonchalance in her voice, maybe a bit of weariness, “But you’re not a patient. You’re a soldier with a limp and poor judgment, and I feel it's the least we can do.”

He smiled back at her. “And you’re clearly a very bad nurse for not following protocol.”

“I’m the worst,” she said, already moving to grab an extra blanket to place around his shoulders in lieu of a jacket.

They made their way slowly through the corridor, Harry bracing himself on the walls when needed, Clare walking beside him like she wasn’t watching every breath he took. When they reached the door to the small, enclosed garden, she opened it gently and helped him step out.

The air was crisp, earthy with rain. The garden wasn’t large—just a few benches, some ivy climbing the walls, a rusted fountain with no water. But it was quiet. And private. Clare moved them over towards where they sat on a bench tucked near the back, out of sight from the windows.

Clare pulled her coat tighter. Harry tilted his face toward the sky; there wasn’t a cloud above them.

“I forgot what clean air smelled like.”

Clare watched him, making sure he was okay to maneuver before she helped him down on the bench. They sat on the wood for a moment, elbow to elbow, while she heard Harry take a few deep breaths. It was enough for him, she thought.

“I thought about writing my parents,” he said after a while. “But I don’t know what I’d say. They sent me off a whole son and I came back a cracked one.”

“You came back,” she said gently; her frustration didn’t lie with him, but with the situation. She knew he didn’t mean anything by it, and she allowed his own frustration to take over when he was obviously thinking of what happened in the sky. “That’s what matters.”

“For what? John’s still stuck in that bed. Dean’s gone. I was supposed to get us back – I was supposed to fix the plane.”

“You think you failed them,” Clare said matter-of-factly.

“I know I did.”

She shook her head. “You can’t keep measuring your worth by who did and didn't survive around you.”

“And how the hell should I measure it, then?” He was quick with his quip, turning his head to look at her and catching a glimmer in her eye.

“By who you still are.”

He looked at her, jaw tight. He noticed that there may have been a tear in her eye, so he backed down a bit quieter. “I can’t be who I was before.”

“Good,” Clare said, nodding, scoffing a bit. “He was probably full of himself.”

Harry gave a surprised laugh, sudden and short at the way she delivered that with such wit.

“I mean it,” she said, serious. Harry’s smile wiped away. “The man sitting here now? He’s still carrying everyone else’s weight. Still angry enough to walk, stubborn enough to argue. Still kind enough to ask about my brother. That sounds like someone I’d trust.”

He looked down at his hands. The backs of them were still healing, one wrapped loosely where the burns hadn’t closed yet. Her eyes looked down at them as he did.

Harry drew in a breath as he kept his voice to a whisper, “Do you ever think about what happens after?”

She didn’t ask what he meant – she didn’t have to.

“All the time,” she said. “And it scares the hell out of me.”

Harry nodded. “I think about being normal again. About laughing and meaning it. About sleeping through the night. But it feels like something only other people get to have.”

They sat in silence, the quiet between them thicker than the fog curling in the cool night air. The sky above was smudged with stars, barely visible behind drifting clouds, and the damp scent of earth and smoke hung in the air. The bench beneath them was cold, but Clare hadn’t moved. Neither had he.

Harry shifted slightly, only then realizing just how close they were. Her shoulder nearly brushed his. Her breath, soft and steady, fogged in the space between them.

“Do you believe in second chances?” he asked, voice low for just her to hear.

Clare didn’t look away. Her eyes, always steady, were darker in the twilight—watchful and unreadable, yet somehow gentle.

“I don’t know if I believe in chances at all,” she said finally, shaking her head. “But I believe in choosing. When something feels right, you choose it. Even if it’s only once.”

His breath caught, barely audible. Their fingers touched. Not by accident - she had reached for him, deliberate but featherlight, the back of her hand brushing his like a secret passage that only they both could see.

“I don’t know where I go from here,” Harry said quietly, eyes fixed on the ground. “I feel like I’m still falling in the sky.”

“You don’t have to know yet,” Clare said to him, honesty laced like honey around her words. “You’re allowed to just… be here.”

“It doesn’t feel like enough.”

Her voice softened, almost a whisper. “Harry.”

It was then that he looked at her. Really looked – it was a look that she had never seen before on someone. Her hair had loosened from its pins in the breeze, strands clinging to her cheek.

There was a smudge of ash near her collarbone from lighting the woodstove, and her coat wasn’t buttoned properly. For once, she didn’t fix it. She didn’t retreat behind the neat uniform, the calm nurse’s mask. Out here, she was only Clare.

It was the only person that she wanted Harry to see. Not the broken nurse who was looking for sympathy, or the girl who was losing everyone in her life at rapid rates.

“What?” he asked, barely above a breath. She could see his breath in the cold fog of the air.

She reached up, her fingers brushing his cheek. Not the raw, healing side—she didn’t flinch or pity. She chose the other, smooth and still familiar, as if to remind him that he hadn’t been erased. Her touch was warm against his cold skin; he noticed the shake in her fingers as she lifted her.

“If you asked me to stay,” she murmured, “I would.”

His throat worked around the lump that rose there. He stared at her, trying not to fall apart from something as simple and devastating as that.

And then he leaned in. Tentative. Careful. Like she was something fragile and holy and he was still learning how to hold anything without breaking it. Their foreheads touched – it was a bare touch, a touch she could have passed off as intimate. A breath passed between them, then another. His hand found her knee, grounding himself.

He didn’t kiss her.

But he could feel it—that pulse beneath the quiet longing that both of them held between them. The terrifying, beautiful possibility of being seen and chosen anyway.

Clare’s eyes drifted closed, only for a second, just a beat. Then she pulled back, slowly, as if severing something delicate.

“We should go in,” she said, voice hushed but with need. She needed to move away, or she would do something she could regret, “Your doctor would have my head if I let you catch cold.”

Harry swallowed, nodding. His chest ached, but not from pain this time. They stood, shoulder to shoulder, and for the first time in weeks, he rose without stumbling.

And Clare didn’t step away from him for a second, holding around his waist to help with movements. His legs and his body just hurt. It was hard to maneuver, but it was good for him to move like this.

They returned to the ward in silence, the corridor dimly lit by amber lamps – most of the soldiers were asleep, they made sure of it. Harry walked more steadily now, the rhythm of his steps echoing off the walls. Clare didn’t offer to hold his arm once they got inside—she didn’t have to. Something between them had already shifted, quiet but undeniable.

When they reached his small space—a small, curtained-off space tucked just past the main ward—he paused at the threshold.

“You can come in,” he said, turning his head to look at her then.

Clare hesitated only a second before following him. The room was quiet, softly lit by the lamp at his bedside. Compared to the ward, it felt warmer. More human. Harry had started to collect a few books from a few of the doctors and nurses, they were stacked neatly on the side table. An extra blanket folded at the foot of the bed, one that Clare had brought the other day. A small radio Harry never touched.

He sat on the edge of the bed, and Clare remained standing as she held her hands in front of her.

“Stay a moment?” he asked.

She nodded, drawing the curtain fully closed behind her.

The corridor had been quiet, the bustle of the hospital dimming quite drastically. Clare had just helped Harry back into bed, his body still stiff with the slow, frustrating ache of healing. She fluffed his pillow with practiced ease, smoothing the blanket over his lap as the ward had started to feel cold since the winter months were upon them.

“Fuck,” Harry cursed under his breath, shaking his head as he winced at the feeling of his leg stretching out. “God – fuck.”

“You’re wincing,” she countered, rolling her eyes at his face, “and you’re too proud to – “

He opened his mouth to retort, but then it happened— the noise was sharp and clear, the rising whine of a siren split the silence, its cry climbing like a scream into the darkening sky.

Harry froze; Clare’s head turned quickly towards the windows with a breath let out. His fingers clenched the edge of the blanket. “Bloody hell…”

Clare snapped towards the window that sat near Harry’s bed, where the thin lavender light of evening had turned grey and dark even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. That should have been their first warning.

Air raids never happened in cloudy conditions.

“That’s the second time this week,” she said, breath catching as she tried to remain calm. “They must be heading toward the docks again.”

“Always the bloody docks,” Harry muttered, but his voice had thinned. He wasn’t there anymore—not really; his brain had started to feel odd, like parts of him were there and other parts weren’t. He was back above the Channel, the smell of smoke in his nose, the thunder of anti-aircraft guns all around, Dean slumped beside him.

The siren wailed louder, and he pressed his palm against his forehead to stop the noise – he needed all of it to stop.

Clare turned quickly, flicking off the bedside lamp to plunge the room into shadows. “Harry— Harry, please, look at me.”

His eyes were glassy, unfocused. Her heart dropped at the way that he looked at her. She stepped closer, taking his hands, grounding him to stare at her for a moment while she spoke to him.

“We’re safe here. The ward is reinforced, and if we must move downstairs, we’ll do it quickly. I promise. We – you, you’re safe.”

Then came a sound he hadn’t realized he feared until it filled the room—the long, low thrum of engines. Dozens of them. Close. The windowpanes began to tremble in their frames.

Harry flinched, his hands beginning to shake as he felt a scream so internal and loud and completely overpowering overwhelming his thoughts. “I can’t— Clare—”

Ruth appeared in the doorway, face pale as Clare turned around to notice that many people had started to gather. “We need you, now. Casualties incoming. Triage staff first – we must move quickly.”

Clare’s grip on his hand tightened. He shook his head, almost like a child. “Please don’t leave me here—”

“I have to go,” she said, heart twisting at the mere promise that she had stated to him just before this – she would stay if he asked her to. But she had to go. “But I’ll be back. As soon as I can. Lie flat and stay away from the windows, alright? I will be back.”

His lips parted to protest, but she’d already gone, sprinting into the dim corridor, her silhouette swallowed by the chaos. The door clicked shut behind her as she walked out of the ward, and silence swept in, heavy and total—except for the rumble of the engines above.

The lights flickered. Harry stared at the ceiling, each second stretching like wire pulled taut. Then, from across the room, a low voice began to speak out into the darkness. Harry laid as flat as he could, pulling the blanket over him to try and silence the monsters that lay beyond him.

“Our Father, who art in heaven…”

Harry turned his head. It was John, in the next bed, voice shaking but steady in its rhythm. “Hallowed be Thy name…”

The floor beneath them gave a subtle tremor, distant, but real.

They were bombing.

Harry squeezed his eyes shut to try and push away the thoughts that were racking in his brain. He could feel it in his chest again—the fire, the fall, the absence of Dean’s voice.

“Thy kingdom come…”

He didn’t pray often, but now, he mouthed the words too. Not for himself. For Clare. For Dean. For Bennett. For the kid in his squad whose name he never learned, only the way he cried for his mother when they dragged him from the wreckage with barely an arm attached to him.

Another boom sounded—closer.

“Deliver us from evil…”

Harry pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and took a shuddering breath. He felt like he was made of glass, every breath threatening to splinter him from the inside. Then he thought of Clare. Of her voice. Her hand on his and the feeling that it left; the burning sensation from her touch rather than from the sheer pain of trauma. Her eyes when she promised she’d be back.

The fear didn’t leave him. But it no longer had full control.

A few hours had passed; he hadn’t been sure of it. Harry laid awake under the covers, eyes heavy as hell, but refusing to shut completely. The bombing and the sirens had shut off; it had ended. They had made it through another night.

Clare returned hours later, past midnight, her apron streaked with soot and blood, her face pale but calm as she approached his bedside. She noticed that he was still underneath, possibly not seeing her approach.

Without a touch that may spook him, she spoke into the universe: “I told you I’d come back.”

And he, without hesitation, pulled the covers away from his eyes to see Clare standing there, and whispered, “You’re the only thing I believe in anymore.”

With tears in her eyes, her evening had been filled with different spectrums of emotions. Her eyes told a terror; Harry could see it from the way that she stood. Someone’s blood on her hands, her own hands still shaking.

Harry bit his lip as he looked at her but knew that words weren’t enough for her right now.

“Go get some rest,” he told her softly, knowing that it was the one thing she’d say to him. “You need to rest.”

Clare let a single tear run down her face, a sniffle followed as she gave him a tight smile, “I will.”

And with that, she turned to leave his small space– one day older, and another day further.

+++

It had been a few nights since Harry had laid eyes on Clare.

Most of the men had drifted into uneasy naps, the hush broken only by the hum of distant footsteps, the occasional clatter of a tray, and the low murmur of birdsong outside the tall windowpanes.

Clare had lingered after her rounds. Not out of duty, though she told herself that was part of it.

Harry had been awake all morning, his wounds no longer fresh enough to draw constant pain but still healing, still temperamental. He’d walked a full circuit of the ward that morning, joking gruffly with one of the orderlies, pushing through the ache in his thigh like it owed him something. He looked less like a patient and more like a man waiting for orders that wouldn’t come.

Now, with the curtains half-drawn and sunlight painting lazy patterns across the floor, Clare pulled a chair to the side of his bed. No chart in hand. No task pending. Just… company.

She didn’t speak at first. She didn’t need to.

Harry sat up slowly, back against the raised bed frame, and looked at her with that same unreadable expression he often wore when he was too tired to be guarded but too proud to ask for kindness.

The air raid had passed, though the ward still trembled with the tension it left behind. There were more men than before, and Harry had noticed that there was a lot more movement around the ward.

Outside, the clouds had begun to thin, but the scent of smoke clung stubbornly to the windowpanes, like something that didn’t want to be forgotten. Inside, the ward was dim again, lit only by a few low bulbs strung across the beams and the occasional flicker of light through the curtains.

Harry sat up in his cot, blanket gathered loosely around his waist, legs bent as he leaned forward over the small wooden crate they’d turned into a makeshift table. Cards lay scattered between them, worn at the edges from too many rounds. Clare sat across from him on a low stool, knees drawn together, her uniform sleeves pushed to her elbows.

Her fingers moved over the cards with quiet precision, shuffling them into a clean stack. He’d already lost two hands in a row.

“You’re ruthless,” Harry muttered, eyeing the cards she had just dealt him.

Clare gave him a half-smile, barely more than a twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Have to be."

But something was off. She wasn’t gloating like usual. Her movements were slower, less sharp. And though her posture remained straight, her eyes weren’t quite focused.

Harry narrowed his gaze. “Everything alright?”

She kept her eyes on her cards, lips parted as if to respond—but didn’t.

The silence grew, coiled between them like a thin thread stretched too tight.

Clare laid her cards down. Not folded. Just… placed, side by side with delicate care. Her hands remained on the table for a long moment before she spoke.

“There was a man,” she said, her voice low, steady. “The night of the raid. In one of the overflow tents.”

Harry didn’t speak, only let her continue.

“Shrapnel in the abdomen,” she added, swallowing deeply. “Deep. There wasn’t anything we could do.”

Her gaze drifted down to her lap, where her fingers had clasped together. White-knuckled as she recalled.

“He kept calling for his wife,” she said, her voice even, measured. As if she’d rehearsed it to try to keep herself composed. “Didn’t know where he was. Just… cried out for her. Like if he said her name enough times, maybe she’d appear.”

Harry swallowed as the images came too easily to him. Too vividly. He knew what that looked like.

“I told him she was on her way,” Clare said, quieter now, staring at her hands. “That she’d gotten his letter. That she was coming to take him home.”

She looked up, then, just a flick of her gaze toward the window, as if she could see that other tent from that morning. That man.

“He smiled,” she said. “Right at the end. He said she made ginger cake on Sundays and always wore a yellow scarf in the spring.” Her mouth twitched, something between a laugh and a breath. “He smelled like blood – I’m not one to get lightheaded, but I felt ill.”

Harry’s chest tightened at her observation, the way she spoke and he let her speak. He didn't interrupt, he looked at her with pity but the kind that made him feel worse for bitching the way he did.

“I don’t cry with patients,” Clare went on, shaking her head. “Not once. Not even when they scream. Not even when they’re alone.”

She paused, but it was then, a single tear traced the curve of her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. Her face remained composed, still.

“But he…” she murmured, her voice wobbly. “He was the same age as my brother.”

Harry reached across the crate slowly, deliberately. His fingers found hers and held them there, gently. No pressure, no urgency—just warmth in the palm of his hand. Contact.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice rough.

Clare didn’t look at him immediately. She was breathing through her nose, quiet and slow, as if trying to pull all the emotion back in before it escaped.

“I didn’t want to upset you,” she said, pushing the tear away, “I– I just needed to talk about it.”

“You didn’t – the war is affecting us all, I –“

She shook her head, almost feeling silly for bringing it up to him, “I just… I didn’t want to forget it happened.”

“You won’t,” Harry told her. “Neither will I.”

Another tear fell, catching on her chin before she pulled in a deep breath, as though that small moment of release had to be enough.

She turned her hand beneath his, palm up now, fingers curling lightly around his. Her eyes met his—tired, honest, but dry again.

Then she let out a shaky exhale and, with a soft sniff, picked up her cards.

“You’re still losing, by the way,” she said, her voice steadier, teasing just enough to make it believable.

Harry grinned faintly, the lopsided grin that she had come to know fondly. “Don’t rub it in.”

“I’d never.” She looked up from under her lashes.

“You bloody would.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Only if I thought you could take it.”

And for a little while longer, they played their quiet game, their fingers occasionally brushing across the table when they would go to pick up a card or set one down, the warmth between them chasing away just enough of the cold that lingered in the corners of the night.

“I didn’t plan on making it back,” he said, voice low. “For a while, I didn’t even want to.”

Clare blinked, then looked at him fully. His face was thinner now, sharper in profile, the hollows beneath his cheekbones dark from restless nights. But his eyes were clearer. Still tired, still storm-swept—but clear.

The color green was undeniable; something she had come to miss when she wasn't on shift. She loved the way the green danced over her when she walked, like his eyes were magnets.

“You’re not alone in that,” she replied softly.

He nodded once, setting down a pair of hearts. “I think about them all the time. The ones who didn’t come back.”

His hand, wrapped lightly in gauze over the knuckles, drifted to the side, where a book she’d lent him sat closed on the nightstand. He tapped it once.

“I write their names down sometimes. When it’s quiet. Not because I’m afraid I’ll forget—but because I already feel like the world has.”

Clare leaned in slightly. “You don’t owe them your silence, Harry.”

He gave a short, dry laugh. “No. But I owe them something.”

He looked away, toward the window, where darkness has started to overcome them, pressed against the glass.

“I’ve got a sister back home. Older than me. Sharp as anything. She’s got two little ones—Alfie and Beth. My niece is five. She sent me a letter written in pink crayon. Told me she thinks soldiers are superheroes. I didn’t have the heart to tell her we’re not.”

Clare’s chest tightened, not just at the way he opened to her but the way that he seemed to love to talk about his loved ones – something in him lighting up just at the thought of them.

“My mum’s been trying to keep herself busy. Sewing circles, church things. My dad’s a quiet man, but he’s proud – I can tell. When he thinks no one’s looking, he’ll keep my letters folded in his shirt pocket like they’re medals. Pull ‘em out and tell his mates all about my travels.”

There was a long pause.

Clare’s voice was barely above a whisper. “They’ll be so glad to have you home.”

Harry didn’t respond right away. His jaw flexed, eyes still fixed on some distant point outside.

“I’m not married,” he said finally. “No sweetheart. No children. And I still made it home. But the others… so many of them had people waiting. Wives. Toddlers. Boys who were just learning to speak themselves, really.”

Clare felt it then—his guilt settling over the room like dust.

“I know it’s not fair,” he continued. “I know it’s war. Goddamn random and cruel. But sometimes I sit up at night and think—why me? What did I do to deserve walking away when they didn’t even get to send a goodbye?”

Clare reached for his hand before she could second-guess it – she missed it between her fingers again, and even though she knew better, she was playing a game she wasn't sure she could win. She didn’t take it fully, just touched her fingers to the edge of his wrist, warm and steady.

“Harry,” she said, firm now. “You didn’t take their place. You didn’t steal their breath. You survived. And surviving doesn’t make you guilty. It makes you human.”

He looked at her. Really looked.

The hurt was there, but so was the gratitude. And something else—soft, unspoken. Like maybe, for the first time in weeks, he didn’t feel quite so hollow.

He breathed in slowly. Let it out, breathing and taking in a breath. She hesitated.

“When my brother was still alive, we'd made plans. Where we’d travel, the books we’d read. The people we’d meet. Then he was gone, and the world felt smaller.”

He said nothing, but his hand turned slightly beneath hers, palm upward. This time, she took it.

“I don’t know if I believe in fate or destiny,” she said, quieter now, continuing. “But I do believe in timing. And in second chances. Maybe that’s what you have now.”

His thumb brushed over her fingers.

“What if I don’t know what to do with it?”

Clare gave a small, half-smile.

“Then maybe you take it one day at a time. Maybe you meet someone for a drink. Maybe you walk your niece to school and help your sister with her garden. Maybe you learn to live without apologizing for it, maybe you stay in London or see a new city," She swallowed, "Maybe you find yourself a sweetheart."

Harry leaned back slightly, as if the weight in his chest had eased just by her giving him choice and permission to move forward. The noise of the ward had returned, faintly—a distant conversation, a nurse laughing two rooms over.

But for a moment, everything else was still.

Clare reached for the book on his nightstand and opened it. Inside the front cover was her note—short, handwritten, her script looping in soft curves.

He looked down at the words, then back at her.

“Wasn't boring, by the way.” He told her, setting his cards down. “Was quite good.”

“Ready for another one, then?” Clare asked, setting the book back down.

Harry nodded with confirmation, giving her a faint smile. “Always ready.”

+++

It was late. The kind of late where the world went still, and the only sound in the ward was the rhythmic ticking of the clock above the supply cabinets and the soft, wheezy breath of a soldier two beds down.

Harry sat propped up in his cot, a dim reading lamp clipped to the shelf beside him. The book Clare had brought him weeks ago lay open on his lap, though his eyes hadn’t touched the words in some time. His thoughts kept drifting—to the war, to home, and mostly, to her.

Clare stepped into the ward quietly, her shoes silent on the polished floor. She wasn’t on shift. Not technically. But her hair was down and there was no clipboard in her hands, just a plain mug of tea and a knowing look.

Harry watched her approach like someone watching a secret arrive.

“You always drink a cup this late?” he asked, voice low so it wouldn’t carry.

“Only when I know someone’s still awake pretending to read, and I can sit with them for a bit.”

She offered the mug, and he took it with a small smile. “What gave me away?”

“You were on the same page when I checked an hour ago.”

He smirked, taking a sip of the tea. “Observant.”

“I’m a nurse. Comes with the territory. It's why you're getting better so quickly.”

Clare sat on the edge of the nearby supply bench, facing him. She didn’t look tired. Just quiet, thoughtful.

“I heard the brass came in today,” she said gently. “Paperwork’s through?”

Harry nodded, trying his best to put on a good face. “Yeah. I’m out in two days. Failed my physical test."

There was a long pause, then, like she was waiting for him to remember how good it would feel to leave, but knew how disappointed he had been in himself. Clare glanced down, twisting the ring on her finger that wasn’t for anyone. “You’ll be glad to get home, I’m sure.”

“Sure,” he said, a little too quickly, almost like he was lying to himself. Then, slower: “Yeah. I mean… it’s home, right?”

But the words hung there like something unfinished.

She looked up at him, keeping her eyes still. “You’ve got people waiting on you to return in one piece.”

“Haven’t seen them in… God, over two years now.” He gave a soft laugh. “They probably won’t even recognize me. Which might be for the best. No need to scare them off with all this.”

Clare frowned, her gaze flicking over the healing burns along his neck, the tension in his shoulders that came with healing.

“They’ll be proud,” she told him, honestly in her voice. He could see that she was trying to keep her hands busy, but didn’t know how to make it not obvious. “You came home, that's all that matters to them.”

Harry looked at her then, and something in his face shifted. That sharp, dry wit gave way to something bare and unsettled.

“Some of them didn’t,” he said, reminding her. “Men with wives. Children. And I’m the one packing my things.”

“Don’t do that,” Clare said softly – he could tell that he may have made a mistake in talking about men who had died, who weren’t there, “Don’t carry the guilt of being alive. You’ve carried enough,” she shook her head. “You don’t have to be brave in here.”

He was quiet for a long time, not knowing if he needed to respond, not knowing what he should say.

Then: “Feels heavier at night.”

She stood slowly, walked the few steps to his bedside, and sat beside him on the edge of the mattress. They didn’t touch. Not yet. But their arms were close enough that the warmth between them was unmistakable.

Harry’s voice was rough when he spoke. “It’s easier when you’re near.”

That silence again—thick and blooming with a charge neither of them could explain.

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” Clare said, but it was barely a whisper.

“Why not?”

“Because I’ll want to believe them.”

His hand shifted slightly on the blanket, like he was fighting the urge to reach for hers. But she leaned in first—just enough that their shoulders brushed, their breaths mingled. Her perfume was faint but familiar by now, notes of soft lavender. Clean linen.

She turned her head and looked at him, mouth parted as if she might say something. But she didn’t. Her eyes stared at his parted lips as if remembering what it would feel like to reach out and touch them. She couldn’t recall the last time she was touched like that.

Harry leaned just slightly closer, to the point where their noses almost touched. Her hand rested on the edge of the blanket, fingers curled loosely, and for a moment he thought—hoped—she might reach for him too.

But she pulled back a heartbeat before anything could happen.

“I should go,” she said quietly, standing without another word as she smoothed down her apron.

“Clare—” he started, voice thick. His hand reached out to grab at her, but he wasn’t quick enough. A sharp pain in his shoulder radiated before he winced quietly.

She looked back at him, something complicated shining in her eyes. It was a goodbye that she wasn’t prepared for, but somehow, knowing it was coming hurt more.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.

And then she was gone, the soft sound of her footsteps fading down the corridor.

Harry stared at the door for a long time, heart pounding like he was still falling from the sky. It was weird how it did that – weird how feeling that way could make him feel like living and dying and loving were all synonymous.

But was glad that his heart could feel, even if his brain struggled.

+++

Five weeks.

That’s how long it had been since Harry was dragged unconscious into the military hospital—burned, broken, half-lucid, and gripping the fading image of a smoking French sky.

Now he could walk without assistance, eat without pain, and sit in the quiet without flinching every time the wind hit the windows wrong. Physically, he’d mended well enough. But the wound that mattered most—the empty space left by Dean, the weight of a crew scattered like ash—was nowhere near healing.

Tomorrow morning, he would be discharged. He would be sent back to Manchester.

The orders sat like a stone in his stomach.

The matron had delivered the final orders that afternoon. He was being sent back home to Manchester—no reassignment, no further duty. His left shoulder was too damaged to meet active service standards, the muscle strain and scar tissue compromising his full range of motion. His service to the Royal Air Force was officially complete.

Honorable discharge, they'd called it. But it didn't feel like honor. It felt like being sent home from a war he hadn’t finished fighting.

He sat at the edge of his bed in his small private space, elbows on knees, listening to the clatter of dishes down the hall, the distant crack of a radio playing swing music somewhere. The curtain was half drawn, the soft light of early evening stretching golden fingers across the tiled floor.

A half-packed satchel sat by his nightstand—just a few changes of clothes, the worn book Clare had lent him, and a letter John had helped him send to Bennett’s hospital.

He turned the book over in his hands now, thumb brushing the corner of the faded cover. A Farewell to Arms. Ironic, really. He'd finished it two days ago and hadn’t stopped thinking about the ending since.

There was a gentle knock on the frame outside the curtain. His heart reacted before his voice did because he knew that someone had come to say their goodbyes.

“Yeah?”

Clare stepped inside, her cap slightly askew, cheeks warm with color. She was out of uniform now—just her soft cardigan and skirt, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows.

“I thought you might still be here,” she said.

“I haven’t been sleeping much.” Harry told her, putting down a few of his items that he had been holding to pack away.

She nodded like she understood, then smiled faintly. Her breath was deep as she tilted her chin up, almost like she was trying to keep it together. “I heard it’s your last night.”

“That’s what they’re telling me.”

She reached into her bag and handed him a parcel wrapped in brown paper and twine. “I brought you something.”

Harry stood then, taking it in his hands. He opened it slowly, careful not to tear it. Inside was a copy of A Farewell to Arms, a different edition than the hospital’s—hardcover, older, with a clothbound spine. He looked up at her.

“Couldn’t keep you reading the ward’s tattered one,” she said, shrugging. “Figured you’d need something to throw across the room when you get angry at the ending again.”

He huffed a laugh, shaking his head. “Still not over it.”

“I know.”

He opened the cover, looking over the edition that she had given him and caught sight of her handwriting on the inside flap. Neat, but a little slanted, like she’d written it quickly.

Harry— Until you find your next story. —Clare

His throat caught around something he couldn’t quite name, eyebrows narrowing at it before he bit the inside of his cheek.

“Thanks,” he said, quieter than he meant.

“I was hoping you might write to me.” She moved to lean against the nearby dresser, arms crossed, but not defensively. More like she didn’t know what else to do with her hands. “I’d like to know how Manchester treats you once you arrive home.”

He glanced up, studying her. There was something deliberately casual in her tone, but her eyes were shining slightly. She was trying not to cry. That alone undid him.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next,” he admitted to her before he let his shoulders settle.

Clare nodded, shrugging with a small smile. “You’re not supposed to know.”

“They gave me this medal,” he said, showing her the item that was tucked into his satchel now. “Told me I’d shown bravery. I think they needed a reason to sign me off and not feel guilty.”

“You were brave.” Clare told him – a reminder she would give him forever, if he let her.

“I was lucky. That’s all.” Harry ran a hand through his hair then, sighing.

“Sometimes,” Clare said, stepping forward as she adjusted the collar of his shirt that he had been given; something different than the hospital wear, “surviving is harder than dying.”

That struck something in him, deep and cold. The kind of truth you only recognize after war has carved a hollow into you, but the way that her near him felt electrifying. Clare gave him a look before going to tuck her skirt beneath her knees, sitting on the edge of his bed. He followed.

He closed the book and set it on his lap, then looked up at her. “I want to take you for a drink sometime.”

That made her smile, slow and uncertain and lovely – not wanting to make it obvious that it was one of the things that she had wished for.

“You’d come to London?” she asked.

“I’ll make the trip,” he said. “Promise I’ll wear a clean shirt and everything.”

“Well,” she teased, “now I’m tempted to see what that looks like.”

He reached for her hand. She didn’t hesitate to give it to him.

Her fingers curled gently between his, and for a while, neither of them said anything. The hospital faded around them—the clatter and coughs, the smell of antiseptic, the ghost sounds of war.

“I don’t want this to be it,” he said finally, ghost of a whisper on his breath as he held her hand on his lap.

“It doesn’t have to be.” Her eyes were filled with tears; knowing that the five weeks together were the ones that kept her the sanest.

“But it might be.”

She didn’t argue. Clare was never the sort to make promises she couldn’t keep.

“This past month…” she began, then stopped. “It’s been different with you here, you know.”

“Better or worse?” The lopsided grin was back; eyes searching hers when they turned to face one another.

“Both,” she said, smiling gently. “But mostly better.”

He wanted to kiss her – he had never wanted to kiss her more than he had right now. But the room felt too still, too full of goodbye.

So instead, he whispered, “Will you write me back?”

Clare let out a dry laugh, shaking her head as she tried to keep her tears behind her eyelids, unsure of how she was doing it up until then, “Of course.”

Then, as if something cracked open inside him, he added, “You’re the only reason I didn’t lose my mind here.”

Clare exhaled, and the breath trembled. “I think you’re the reason I’ve lost mine.”

It was then that she found the utter need for the push and pull to draw her into him. She searched his lips, parted slightly before she allowed her hand to fall on the back of his neck, drawing her lips to his. She kissed him then—slowly, properly, like the space between them had finally closed.

When she pulled away, her hands lingered at his jaw, and her voice was low. “Don’t let this war define you. You get to choose who you are after this.”

Harry nodded, his eyes locked on hers.

“And when you’re ready,” she added, her eyes still laying on his lips as their foreheads pushed together, “come find me.”

With finality, she heard some steps around his room – she moved to her feet to move apart as she smoothed down her skirt. She stepped back, her silhouette framed by the curtain’s edge as she turned around for one last look.

“Goodnight, Harry.”

“Goodnight, Clare.”

She slipped out into the corridor, the curtain fluttering softly behind her. Harry stayed there long after she was gone, the book resting in his hands. He opened it again, rereading her note.

Until you find your next story.

He didn’t know where to start yet. But maybe—just maybe—it began with a letter.

+++

The train to Manchester had felt like it had taken one hundred years.

When Harry stepped off the train, satchel in hand, the air had smelled of coal smoke and cold steel, the same scent he'd known since boyhood. But everything else felt sharper, more fragile—like he was walking through a memory that hadn’t quite settled back into place. This didn’t feel like home anymore, it felt stranger than that.

His mum had cried as soon as she saw him. Not loud or dramatic, just a quiet kind of weeping, her hands wrapped around his face like she couldn’t believe it was real. His dad stood behind her, stiff-backed, his eyes red, though he never said why. When he finally clapped Harry on the shoulder, it was with the strength of a man who’d held back every emotion for four weeks too long.

His sister, Nora, had nearly tackled him, Alfie and Beth tumbling behind her like puppies, shouting “Uncle Harry!” and pulling at his coat like they thought he might vanish if they let go.

He’d sat at the kitchen table that night, the old kettle hissing in the background, and listened to them talk over one another. Every story, every small detail, felt like a lifeline anchoring him back to the living.

But underneath it all was the ache.

Because when Nora kissed her children goodnight, he thought about Dean, who would never see his own grow up. When his father poured him a glass of whisky, hand trembling just slightly, he thought of Bennett and wondered if he’d been able to write home yet. And when Beth handed him a drawing of the two of them standing under a rainbow, he had to turn away for a moment so she wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes.

He was home, he was where he grew up and his family was. But part of him still felt like he hadn’t landed. Not completely. Not until he made his way to London.

Not until Clare.

+++

Three Months Later.

May, 1943. London.

The train rocked gently beneath Clare’s feet, a lull in the evening rhythm that almost matched the flutter in her chest. She sat by the window, a coat in her lap for the chilly evenings, a letter in her gloved hands. She had read it more times than she could count, but tonight—on her way to see him—it felt different.

It felt real.

Clare had been able to take the train back to her flat in London for the weekend, getting a break from the hospital. She didn’t tell the other nurses about this particular meet up – she'd be teased endlessly, but she knew that they had an inkling when she started messing with lipstick in her bag.

London was a few hours away, and somewhere in the maze of its streets, Harry was waiting for her.

She found a compartment with a few older women and a quiet soldier who nodded once in her direction and returned to his paper. The train lurched forward, wheels shrieking against the tracks, and Clare leaned her forehead against the cool windowpane. Fields slipped by, blurred in the bit of drizzle, but her mind was miles ahead, already at the corner of a pub, searching the crowd.

The journey stretched long and winding, as though time itself resisted her reunion with him. The envelope was soft now, its edges creased, and corners worn from being tucked into coat pockets and beside her pillow. His handwriting filled the page in a neat, deliberate scrawl, like he had taken his time, like he wasn’t used to writing anything that wasn’t a flight log or a report.

He was writing something a bit more important to him than those.

- Postmarked - May 5th, 1943 – Manchester Lt. Styles, Harry E.

My dearest Clare,

I’ve been trying to start this letter for days, but nothing felt quite right. Every piece of paper that I started got crumpled and thrown away because I needed this to be perfect. I wrote quite a lot to my friends and family during training, but those didn’t mean as much as this does.

Manchester is colder than I remember. My mum won’t stop feeding me, but my sister and father are very happy to have me home. I can tell that they’re proud of me. Dad has been keeping me busy with putting me to work on fixing things that aren’t broken, but I know he cares and wants me to be better. The people in town stare at me like I came back missing a limb instead of just not going back at all. But you were right. I do get to decide who I am after this.

I’ve decided I’m the sort of man who keeps his promises.

So, I’m writing because I’ll be in London for a few days come next week, Thursday through Sunday. I’ll be at The Red Lion on Argyle Street Thursday evening, around seven.

If you don’t come, I will assume that what we had shared in those difficult weeks was meant to shape me for who I am and was just a small part of the story I’m supposed to be writing for myself. I will make ends with that, and I wish you all the best. You gave me hope, and I will forever be grateful for every conversation we shared. I will move on, and so will you, but I will always think of this chapter.

If you do come, I will know that everything I felt then was real, and that you felt it too. I will recognize that who I am now is stronger than who I thought I was then. I would love to see you again, Clare. I’ll be the one trying not to look like I ironed my shirt just for you.

I hope you’re well, Clare. Truly. I hope your hands are warm and you’ve found ways to sleep through the nights. I hope your laughter still comes easily after everything you’ve seen. You deserve to smile, and the world needs to see it now more than ever.

Yours, always,

H

Clare folded the letter slowly, sliding it back into her bag as the train hissed to a halt. Her breathing was uneven, as she thought of his hands scribbling against the paper, wanting to feel something so badly.

By the time the train hissed into King’s Cross, her limbs were stiff and her mouth dry from nerves. She navigated the narrow corridor and stepped off into the crowded station, swallowed by the shuffle of coats and caps, voices and suitcases thudding along the stone. There was something about London, even in the midst of a terrible war, it hummed with movement, life refusing to be quieted.

The streets outside were still wet from afternoon rain, puddles reflecting the glow of gas lamps and storefronts. She walked with purpose, her heels clicking quietly against cobblestones, heart hammering beneath her navy-blue dress—the one her friend had helped her choose, the one she hadn’t worn since before the war began.

The color matched her eyes, her hair pinned neatly away from her face.

When she reached the pub, warm light spilled from the windows, the sound of music and soft laughter carrying into the street. She hesitated at the door for just a second, smoothing the fabric of her coat, and then stepped inside. The pub was warm and crowded, the floor a scuffed checkerboard of dancing feet and shuffled boots. Men in uniform leaned over pints. Women in soft cardigans and bright lipstick sat in small groups or danced between tables.

Clare scanned the room, her heart suddenly thrumming too loudly to hear the music.

He was already there. At a table near the back, turned slightly toward the door, Harry looked up the moment she walked in.

His uniform was clean, pressed to perfection. His RAF jacket fit perfectly against his broad shoulders as he sat, hands around a pint almost like he was more anxious than her – there was no doubt, he was. His hair was combed back, though it curled a little stubbornly at the nape of his neck.

But then his eyes saw her; he didn’t move at first, almost like he had thought it was a dream. He stood when he saw her, slower than a man without pain but steady on his feet, and smiled—a little unsure, a little shy, but unmistakably him with the dimple creeping into his cheek.

He moved toward her, weaving between people without a word, the pint glass abandoned. Clare met him halfway, her pulse loud in her ears, breath catching just before she said his name.

“Clare,” he said, greeting her softly, saying her name like a prayer. It was the one thing that felt rooted in God.

“Harry.”

For a moment, neither moved. Neither of them could imagine a world where they saw each other outside of the bubble they had created behind the curtains of his hospital bed.

But, here was their moment – here was the moment that Clare had referenced in survival. Every moment that had led to this was a moment that Harry couldn’t have accounted for.

Then she crossed the room, and he pulled her into a careful embrace—his good arm around her waist, the other resting gently at her back. They stood like that longer than was proper, longer than anyone else in the pub noticed, hearts pressed close as if they were still in the silence of that hospital ward.

“I,” He stopped for a moment; the scent of her perfume was overwhelming in a way that he couldn’t have imagined, “I didn’t know you’d come”

Clare held onto his jacket, pressed in the embrace as she took in the smell of tobacco, the smell of soap and warmth of smoke that wafted from the material like he had smoked a full pack before she arrived in anticipation, holding onto him like she didn’t know how to let go.

But for a moment, it was quiet between them. Still. The kind of still that doesn’t feel empty, but full with things unsaid, things still blooming.

She only looked at him, really looked, and saw the faint shadow of the man he’d been in the hospital: pale, exhausted, trying to stitch himself back into something whole. That memory curled beside the man now standing before her, eyes soft, shoulders no longer burdened quite the same. He had color in his cheeks. He had a glint in his eye that hadn’t been there in the ward, when the light had felt too far away.

And she hadn’t realized, until this moment landing between his arms, how much she’d needed this. How much she’d needed him.

Not just the man she missed, but the very act of missing someone. Of longing. Of hoping. Of standing in a room of strangers and seeing one face that made everything feel… rooted again. Like something could begin, even now. Even after everything.

Across from her, Harry couldn’t stop looking at her — like if he blinked, the vision might vanish. His fingers curled tighter around her, grounding himself in the reality of her warmth. In the scent of her hair and the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled up at him like that.

He had been prepared for her not to come. When he had written that letter with equal parts courage and resignation, he realized that there was disappointment in life – he knew that more than anyone. But now, standing here with her hand in his and her breath still on his lips, he felt something collapse inside of him. A tension held too long. A question finally answered.

She came. She was here. She still wanted him — not the airman he used to be, but the man he was now. Scars and all.

They didn’t need to speak again just yet. There would be time for that. For stories. For apologies. For everything they hadn’t said in the soft ache of two months apart. But for now, they just stood — folded into one another like a secret, quiet and whole — while the rest of the world went on, none the wiser.

And Clare thought, as she let her head rest against his shoulder and he pressed a steady kiss to her temple,

So this is what it feels like… to be known, and still wanted. To arrive somewhere, and be seen.

She closed her eyes. She hadn’t known how much she’d needed to be held by someone who had missed her just as much. And she took a deep breath in that feeling, to know that there was something to look forward to.