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They don't say, in the books about grief and loss, that a moment can stretch out forever. A few seconds could be spun like endless thread, twining through the very fabric of his life and then tugging, tugging, so that all the sum of his experiences gathered into one blink, the span of a breath.
He replayed those delicate moments in his head over and over, the heat of James's hand on his, the life that animated his body slipping away until all that remained was an empty shell, his body left abandoned on the floor like a discarded doll.
The first thing he remembered was the cold. The front had never been cold. It had been hot, burning hot, an agony of fire in his head, lancing down the side of his face. Death there had been an eventuality, a shadow that nipped at their heels and wrapped itself around their ankles like a tripwire.
He had thought he was done with death. He had been a fool. It still followed him like a curse, his own personal demon. James was supposed to be his home, his anchor. He was supposed to be there forever. He was supposed to be alive.
Hands on his shoulders, pulling him away, hushed, angry whispers that wormed into his head and furrowed into the broken folds of his brain, nestling in with all of the horrors that haunted his dreams.
The medic came too late. Someone guided him to the sofa, ragged with age. He picked at a thread, pulling, pulling, his mind unraveling with the fabric. His skin was too tight, itchy. He watched with blurred eyes as the medic shook his head, as they carried James away like he was nothing, like he wasn't the most important thing that this godforsaken world had ever spat out.
He wanted to scream, to claw at the hands that held him down, to yell and cry and tell James how he felt, to bellow it into the void and hope that wherever he was, he would hear it. He wanted to shriek until his lungs gave out, until he hacked up blood and the darkness inside of him came flooding out to drown all of these men, these pretentious men who didn't know what a hero was.
"Major Havers?"
"I - I -"
"It's alright. He's gone."
He wanted to sob with the wrongness of that statement, to lash out like a wild thing. Of course it wasn't alright. It would never be alright again.
"I - I have to go."
He pushed upright, a lurching, monstrous thing distorted with grief, stumbling downstairs, out, out, bile rising in his throat, gunfire ringing in his ears, the shout of his general, blood trickling into his mouth, light burning his eyes until the world went dark.
He made it out of the house before he collapsed to his knees, dry-heaving into a spindly bush. Stones digging into his knees, something wet running down his face, a whole ocean spilling from his eyes, the weight of the Pacific bursting from the dam inside him and pouring out across the ground, a churning tide of loss and pain and memory that threatened to break him with its furious roar.
He sobbed until all of the air had been forced from his lungs, until he could do nothing but wheeze and shake and sit there as the ringing in his ears faded to silence.
The cold was back. It was the kind of cold that slips under your skin and whispers into your ear with breath as soft as an ending. The kind of cold that christens graves, that kisses the cold lips of the dead and rustles their brittle eyelashes.
His voice was hoarse, barely more than a croak. "James. I'm here. I won't leave you. I won't leave you. I won't, I won't, I won't -"
He rocked back and forth, feeling the light fade from within him, that delicate candle that guttered in the wind, that had blown back and forth for years and was now extinguished as if by two great, remorseless fingers.
"James. If you're listening -" His throat constricted, giving way to another bout of sobs. "I - I wanted to say this. I know you aren't there, but I wish - oh, God, I wish you were.
Every night - every - I - I stared at the sky. Looking for y - you. I named a constellation after you, you know. I thought it was ro - romantic." He hiccuped, scrubbing at his eyes with one shaking hand.
"Goddamn it, James, you were supposed to live. We were supposed to have a - a second chance. I wasn't the one who was - who was - I never wanted to be left behind. I can't do this without you."
And then his words left him entirely, and his hands were full of dirt, under his nails, carved into the grooves of his fingertips. Grave dirt, dark as creeping sorrow; endless as the space between stars.
He was a shadow, a spirit, a wraith. He was the wind that whips at weeping ash trees, the stone of a crypt, the wail of the tide on a moonless night. He was untethered, half-torn, leaking out onto the pebbled driveway.
It was strange. He had not cried on the front, not when he lost the last pieces of himself that he had once held dear, not as he watched his fellow soldiers die, not when he first traced the new topography of his face and realised that he didn't recognise himself.
But now, he wailed like a banshee, like the end of the world had come. He supposed, in a way, it had.
---
Who mourns the forgotten? Who weeps for those who cannot weep for themselves? Who will stand by the grave of a disgraced soldier?
---
He knelt by the dark, freshly-turned earth. He knew how this story ended now. He had known, he thought, for a long time. A flower for James's grave, and for his own, too. He wondered how long it would be before somebody found him. Would it be the night watchman, with his flickering oil lamp, or someone else, someone caught up in their own grief? He hoped he didn't cause them too much pain. Lord knows he had caused enough.
"Strange, isn't it, James? I always thought I would go first. You know, they told me when the war ended that I was a hero. Us heroes, we survived. We won.
But we didn't, not really. We came home, but our scars kept bleeding. They never really close, do they? You can't just shut your eyes and pretend the war didn't happen. I can barely go ten steps here without a reminder of you, of what we went through.
I really thought I could make things better. That this war was the last one; the war to end all wars. That if I just fought hard enough, the world would tilt on its axis enough for them to see that we were people too, that we deserved to live. I was so foolish.
I'm tired, James. It's been so long since I slept a night in my own bed, since I was able to blink without seeing your face."
He fingered the piece of paper in his lap, flipped it open, ran his lips over the words scrawled on the page. It was not his own handwriting, but James's.
"You always loved this part. Macbeth, isn't it? You used to recite it to me in your office. You said it was the truest expression of grief you'd ever heard. I thought it was fitting. After all, this is goodbye. I hope I get to see you again soon. I hope this wasn't all for nothing."
He lifted the bottle from his bag. Two glasses. One for him, one for James. The cyanide pill, too. He knew it would be fast. Only half a second. It would be over before he even knew what was happening. Like falling asleep.
He raised a toast. "To you, James. To us."
It was like sinking. Like leaning back into a warm sea, the bubbles filling his throat until they were all he could taste. Like letting go and floating down, down, down, letting the ocean take him in its arms and kiss him to sleep. Like resting.
Then the light, like daybreak at Button House, and he felt that if he just turned his head he would see James there on the pillow beside him, perfect as an angel tugged from the heavens. The sweet song of a bird from outside the window, light as spring. Flowers growing on the walls lining the property, crocuses and daffodils with their nodding heads. The sun teased his eyes open, gentle as a kiss from a ghost.
It was time to wake up.
---
A piece of paper gusted through an empty graveyard, tossed on a salt-sweet wind. It caught in the branches of a great, weeping tree, barely more than a slip of pale cream among the branches. Words in black ink sprawled across the page, blotted with the occasional hint of something that could have been teardrops, or could have been merely rain.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.