It’s not just your life that’s on the line.
It’s theirs.
It’s both your hearts ticking like grenades and I swear to God, if something happens to her?—
If I never get to kiss her again.
If I never get to trace her spine with my mouth.
If I never get to fall asleep beside her again, feeling like I finally found home in the middle of this hell?—
I won’t make it back.
Not really.
There’s a phrase they use out here?—
“Dead man walking.”
Most of the new guys think it’s about the body bags. It’s not. It’s the look you get when your soul leaves your chest before your blood does.
When the only thing keeping you upright is the memory of the person waiting for you on the other side of the bullet. When the fear of never seeing her again burns hotter than the sun ripping your skin open.
That’s me now.
I haven’t slept. Not properly. Not since the day I found out she’d be deployed here. Somewhere in this dust-choked, godforsaken pit of hell. They won’t give me her location. “Need to know,” they said.
As if every cell in my body doesn’t fucking need to know.
She’s out there.
Cassandra.
My Butterfly.
My soft girl with chaos in her eyes and a war in her bones.
The woman I should have kept safe and instead, I left her on that table. Left her with syrup on her skin and my name between her lips like a prayer. Left her thinking I could walk away from something like her and now I wake up every morning with bile in my throat and her ghost in my lungs.
“You’re too soft for this, Butterfly…”
“I don’t want your blood on my hands.”
I see it.
Over and over.
Her walking toward the transport unit, hair tied back, spine straight like she doesn’t feel the weight of what’s coming.
She doesn’t know. She doesn’t fucking know what this place does to you. It guts you. Rips you open slow. Turns you into something you don’t recognise in the mirror and I should’ve dragged her out of that medical exam room the second I found out.
But instead?
I let her go because I thought she’d change her mind. I thought it was just another thing to prove she was strong. I didn’t know she’d actually do it.
The sandstorm kicks up hard. You can’t see ten feet in front of you. Wind screaming like the dead. Dust coating your teeth and eyes and every broken part of your past.
I take cover behind the comms truck. Light a cigarette with shaking hands. It’s the third time this week I’ve imagined her name over the radio.
