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When he cupped her cheeks, touching his nose in hers, he told her he didn’t like it – to see her go. It was a war and he already had lost his brother to it. And she told him
“You’re not gonna lose me for the war, Isaac.” With a certainty that almost shocked him. He believed her and watched her back as she left. Israel, for at least a year. He could only hope she’d come back whole.
…
Isaac wrote to her at least once a week. He told her how her dog was, how her father was in the asylum, how her cousins celebrated someone’s birthday and the promotion he got at his job. Malia answered every week. She asked for pictures of her dog, wondered if everything was okay with the apartment bills, told him about the kids of the city they were in and the skyline painted orange every morning when she wakes up. Sometimes she even took time to write him without having a message with his name in her inbox, just to tell him about something they were forced to do to protect the people or themselves.
It was hard to shake the feeling that he was the one trying harder to reach out for the other, though. But he never wrote about that. He didn’t want to sound needy.
…
Malia was on a mixed troop, only the smartest, she was told. They had access to internet, real showers and relatively comfortable beds (you can’t have your three hundred dollars mattress at war, it seemed). They were strategists and she quickly friended a guy her age, Soldier Stilinski, responsible for the structure of the plans while she cared for the guns.
He didn’t volunteer, but was invited, he told her, while in the police academy, for his brain could be
“Used for greater goods.” He mocked, looking into her eyes with a smile.
Malia, on the other hand, had got into the army because of her mother. Not because her mother was a great General of sorts, but to piss her off. Her mother was a mercenary and it got into Malia’s skin in a bad way, but it seemed that the army wasn’t so different from the dirty work the Desert Wolf did.
“Your mom is the Desert Wolf?” Stilinski asked amazed and Malia nodded.
“No wonder I can kill so easily, huh?”
He shook his head.
“You didn’t come because you can kill.” He pointed out. “You came because you can kill with class.”
And she laughed because he had no clue how classy a mercenary can be.
…
One year came and went and Malia was assigned for another six months. It didn’t make Isaac happy, especially after she insisted on meeting him in England for Christmas instead of going all the way to the US. Isaac hated England, because every single thing in there reminded him of his brother.
“We are good, though, aren’t we?” Malia asked him in their hotel room. She could only stay for twenty four hours and they were trying to make the best of their time together. She didn’t see him nodding, though, for her head was resting on his chest.
“Yeah, we are good.”
“You are not losing me to the war, Isaac.” She repeated and her words seemed accurate. He wasn’t losing her to the war. He was losing her to herself.
“Six more months, that’s all.”
“That’s all.”
…
With two months to the end of Malia’s assignment, an alarm went off. She hardly had time to leave the building before it was hit by a bomb. It hit the north wing and she ran in the opposite direction, trying to find cover. There still was dirty in the air the explosion made her ears ring, people running in every direction, a chaos of screams and bodies. And then, the shots began and she couldn’t remember well anything after that.
…
“Malia?” someone called her. No one ever called her by her first name – and she doubted most of them even knew the other’s first name. There was only one person… “Malia, hang on to me.”
She knew that voice, somewhere deep in her mind. She knew it from laughs and long night conversations, from not making her feel miserable, from coming to her at lunch and telling her that he saved a flan just for her and making her smile. Her heart felt warm, even when she realized that she was being carried and the owner of the voice was limping.
“Hang on, Malia. I’m here.” He said again and she opened her eyes, just a little bit. Every inch of her hurt.
“Hi Stiles.” She said low; she felt there was no need to call him by his last name – probably the same feeling he had – and Malia could feel his smile. “I’m hanging on.” She managed to assure him before closing her eyes again.
…
When she opened her eyes again, she was in a bright room, someone was holding her hand. He was holding her hand and reading a book.
“Where are you from?” Malia asked, her voice coming out stronger than she expected, and his head snapped up at the sound, a smile immediately appearing on his face. He had cuts and bruises and later she knew that he was shot in the left leg, but was able to carry her to the nearest doctors.
“California.” He answered and she smiled.
“Beautiful, sunny Cali.” She said, feeling warmer already and he shook his head.
“Not everywhere is beautiful in there.”
“It’s beautiful where you are.” Malia replied and wow, where did that came from?
Stiles loudly laughed, holding her hand tighter and brushed her hair from her forehead.
“Okay, you’re probably high from pain killers.”
“Probably.” She pointed a finger at him, smiling lazily. “You saved my life.”
“You would’ve done the same.” Stiles said with conviction. He was right, she would’ve. For him. “Where are you from?”
“Philadelphia.” She answered and his mouth gapped in a mocked shock.
“The Desert Wolf was in Phili this whole time?”
This time, Malia was the one to laugh, even though it was quickly cut by an annoying pain in her left side. She was shot, she learned, and the bullet went through her diaphragm. She had lost a lot of blood and was lucky to be an AB+. Three days until she was stable enough to go to a normal room and another two until they let him be by her side. She was always overdosing on pain killers and never kept awake for long.
At that moment, he updated her on everything there was to update. Told her that she got cards from friends and family and the other soldiers who still were alive.
She also realized that she didn’t want anyone else to be by her side but him.
…
“You can walk.” Stiles said, getting up to greet Malia. He was waiting for her in her room at the hospital and she smiled.
“Yeah, I can! They are forcing me to round the corridors at least thirty minutes per day, it’s really boring.” She headed to her bed, sitting on it, her feet hovering above ground. “I also can shower alone now and I gotta tell you, I’m gonna have some cool scars in here.” She pointed generally to her stomach.
“I like scars.” He said, sitting by her side on the bed. “They tell stories.”
Malia smiled, looking into his eyes.
“What about your leg?”
“Oh.” He sighed with false displeasure. “Being slaved at rehab, but doing good.”
“I noticed you don’t need the crutches anymore.”
“Yeah, just a little limping, it’s okay.”
They fell into silence for an instant, just looking into each other’s eyes, feeling the moment. She wanted to touch his face and lace her fingers in his.
“I’m going home.” Malia told him in a quiet tone. Stiles had no idea that home, for her, meant also the fiancée she put in the corner of her mind, the one whose emails and calls she’s been ignoring for at least seven months and doing the least possible to reach out to. The one who still waits for her. At that moment, for Malia, home wasn’t Isaac, but the apartment and the dog she missed so much. Home would be a better place with different people in it. “In two days, they will award me and send me back to Phili.”
His eyes in hers didn’t change, as if he didn’t take her words yet. And then, just a little flicker showed the exact moment of understanding.
“They are keeping me here.” Stiles said, a bit of confusion in his husky voice, his eyes betraying his sudden sadness. “They are going to keep me without you.”
Malia gasped at his words.
Did he feel the same about her? The look in his eyes said so and for so long she thought she was in this place alone – this place of forgetting her boyfriend and falling in love with someone new. She didn’t know his story, to be honest. She just knew this guy who knew he was doing more bad than good, just as herself, this guy with such brave heart who liked to volunteer at the children’s hospital in his spare time and watch late seasons of Wonder Years.
She fell in love with him and that felt dangerous and perfect.
“What am I going to do without you?” he asked and just like that she kissed him.
It was tender and tasted like finally, as if every single moment of them together was building up to this. Stiles was gentle and his lips were soft, moving against hers with care and curiosity. His fingers tangled in her hair pulling Malia closer just as their lips parted, deepening the kiss. If falling in love with him was dangerous, she had just jumped off the cliff.
They laid down the hospital bed, Malia on top of Stiles, taking off clothes with the care injured people have with the body; he wasn’t muscular, but she could feel the definition of years of police academy and military training under his strong skin just by the touch of her fingers. When he had first seen her, she had a beautiful tanned skin, but now she was pale for too much time in her uniform and inside a hospital, her body cold against his touch; she still was beautiful, though, because she had a beautiful soul and that was what made him fall in love with her.
So when she looked into his eyes and whispered
“Say it now.”
he said
“Be mine.”
and as much as it was cliché, it also made complete sense. Malia made herself Stiles’.
…
“Here’s what you’re gonna do without me:” she said, looking into his eyes and tracing the muscles of his chest and stomach with the tip of her fingers. “You’ll survive the next however-long-you-still-have-here and you’ll come home to me. Your home will be me.”
Stiles didn’t question at all.
…
For the first week back in Philadelphia, Malia had to stay at the hospital to some final checkups. She was fine, but what pained the most was Isaac. He loved her and he deserved better. Luckily, he was signed to a job in Chicago and had to leave the day after she was allowed to go home.
Malia kissed her dog Daisy, walked around the huge apartment her father had given to her at her seventeenth birthday and declared herself too tired to leave the bed until it was extremely necessary.
Isaac said it was okay, that he understood, because she had seen war and survived things he could only imagine, but it wasn’t it. She wanted to sleep until he was gone and she didn’t feel the last bit guilty about it (knowing damn well that it probably made her a bad person).
She shared the bed with Daisy and did indeed sleep until it was time for him to go. She woke up with a kiss in her forehead and just said bye.
…
Malia Hale didn’t need to work. She had an American flag on her living room, a five years old Shi-Tzu, a parent who was one of the most wanted mercenary in the US and another parent whose greed crazed him. She was sitting in money and she didn’t even care. She talked to Stiles once a week and they never avoided the other nor gave excuses. She only left the house to exercise, go to the Army checkups and to have girly nights with her cousin.
That if she didn’t fall sick, puking her guts out during the whole day and sleeping on the cold floor of her bathroom.
…
She was asleep in the sofa when Isaac came back from Chicago and she didn’t wake up when he opened the door with his key, nor did Daisy sleeping at her feet. She didn’t see his smile at her absurd cold tea resting at the island, nor heard him putting the kettle to make some real tea. She didn’t hear him carry his bags to the bedroom, nor the weight of his body when he sat at the bed with the papers from her last exam in his hands. But she did hear her phone beep, because she was expecting a call – or text, or email – from Stiles and only then she heard the kettle and Daisy barked trotting to sniff Isaac’s bags.
Malia walked to the bedroom carefully and as soon as she crossed the threshold he stood up, the papers on his hand.
He knew it already. That he didn’t lose her to the war. He lost her to another soldier at the war.
“Hello, Isaac.” She said slowly and he gave two uncertain steps towards her. “How was Chi City?”
“We don’t have sex in a year, seven months and twenty-two days.” He stated as an answer and she stepped back.
“You’ve been counting?”
“The days to be with you ever since you left, yes.”
She said nothing.
He threw the papers on the bed.
“How come you’re pregnant?” Isaac asked and his voice was worrisomely calm.
“I should’ve ended this, I’m sorry.” Malia replied, just as quiet.
“What do you mean by ‘this’? You and whoever you fucked in Israel or us?”
One second.
Two.
“Us.”
And with that, Isaac grabbed his bags, passing by her.
“Thanks for the heads up, Mal.” He barked. She didn’t blame him for being harsh.
“Isaac, hold on! Do you even have where to stay? You can stay here and I’ll live with Cora for a few and-“
“Don’t be ridiculous, this is your apartment.” He already was at the door. “I’ll find me a hotel room.”
He left. At the kitchen, the water boiled.
…
It took exactly two years after Malia got back to America for Stiles to go home. Home, for him, meant the small city at south California, the police department where his father was the sheriff and the laboratory where he would meet his ex-fiancée every day he’d have to work with the CSI.
Home was the woman who sold her million dollars apartment at the east coast just to buy another one worth a couple hundred thousand in the west coast where they could put their hero American flags next to the other to remember what unified them and the little boy they made when they promised to go back to one another.