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They don't tell you what a soldier's death is like, on the battlefield, when you become a captain. Not everything.
They tell you it's honorable, they tell you it's the ultimate sacrifice. That it's good to die out there, because it means you gave your life so others could live.
They don't tell you what it's like to hold a dying soldier in your arms, watching the medics sit back helpless as their light fades. They don't tell you the sound they make, the pain, the desperation. They don't tell you how they will reach out to grab at anything within reach, anyone, to cling to life for just a few seconds longer. How you'll be confused for someone from their past, sometimes happy memories and sometimes....not.
They don't tell you about fear and death having a smell, an aura that permeates the air. It doesn't matter that the corpse was moved away, taken to receive its last rites and respects (if there was enough left to do so) -- it's still there, hanging around for days, a reminder even if you'd somehow managed to put the sight out of your mind and forge on.
They don't tell you how many die -- not really. They give you the numbers but that's abstract, just data -- they don't tell you what it's like to be the last man standing.
They don't tell you what it's like to be the last man standing, staring down monsters and thinking to yourself it's better they died before they faced this.
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He came back from the front lines that first time, and Serval had seen the change immediately. She'd known it would change him, on some level, but seeing that haunted look in her little brother's eyes nearly broke her. She wanted to cry, to grab him in the fiercest hug she could manage and never let go until he smiled like he had when he was a kid.
But she couldn't, not now. Not while he was still Captain Gepard. He couldn't lose face here.
She wanted so desperately to fight away the shadows she saw in his gaze, but instead all she could do was say "hello," like she was greeting an old friend and not his empty shell.