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The night is quieter than Lee can remember it being in a long time. No raised voices. No persistent gunfire. No rumbling ground and breathless anticipation before a building crumbles. Just quiet. Darkness stretching out like velvet, the wooded perimeter of the property as hidden in shadow as the sky. As above, so below. And Lee, one small figure in the dark, in the quiet, as defenseless as the prey hiding just out of sight. What difference is there between talon and bullet? The sticky humidness of the day has gone, leaving behind a comfortable warmth that is as enveloping as the quiet, as though everything is far removed from the war tearing the rest of the country apart that it feels like a warm embrace, that she feels comfortable and drowsy enough to think in metaphors.
Lee keeps her bare feet firmly on the surface of the porch, unwilling to let the swing move and let out a creak to disturb the silence. The camera she’d been trying to fix lays unattended in her lap for the moment, her fingers curled around familiar buttons and edges, the strap dangling off the edge of the porch swing. Behind her is the rough siding of the cabin, the window half open to let in the coolness of the night, the only reminder that she isn’t alone after all. When she was younger, she used to slip out her window and onto the dormer, back flat against the shingles, eyes tracing patterns out of the stars. A way to quiet her mind, to let herself breathe. Maybe that’s what she’s doing now, here alone in the dark.
Absently, Lee glances down at the camera in her hands, as useless as it had been earlier when she’d come outside, creeping around the sleeping bodies on the living room floor. A few days before they’d been caught in the midst of a firefight that had gone south quickly, not that Lee thinks there’s ever been a time where the exchange of gunfire was anything but chaotic. But this time it had seemed like no one knew who or what they were shooting at, making everything a target, including a trio of journalists who had gotten a little too comfortable in their proximity. In her hurry to run for cover, Lee had dropped the camera, a rookie mistake she hasn’t made in nearly twenty years. The siding had cracked, a piece certainly left behind, the lens looser than it had been. She’s not a miracle worker but she can’t keep herself from fidgeting with it, the only hope that camera has; she can’t imagine there’s a shop still open that could breathe new life into it.
The broken camera and disastrous effort to capture a moment that likely wouldn’t mean victory for either side had been two days before, and in the moments after she and Joel and Jessie had made it back to the car, all of them panting and wide-eyed, it had been easy to decide to go a bit out of their way, to stop following the forward press of the New People’s Army and visit an old friend. Liam Rhodes had been a veteran when Lee was just starting out, a good friend of Sammy’s, the person who would place a fatherly hand on Lee’s shoulder as he complimented her tenacity and asked if she was eating enough in the same breath. He’d been happy to see the three of them, welcoming them into the house like he’d been expecting their arrival, shooing away any of their attempts to assure him that they wouldn’t stay long. The first night, as they’d all sat around the table lit only by candles due to the newly implemented electricity restrictions, they’d toasted to Sammy, reminiscing with stories that made Lee laugh even as she wiped at the tears collecting in the corners of her eyes. In the flickering light of the candles it had been easier to let herself feel the twisting surge of emotions that she had deftly kept at bay for so long, had been easier to let herself miss Sammy for the first time, to let the understanding that she would never see him again settle into her bones and take root there. She feels it still as she sits in the darkness, the air a warm brush against her skin, the world quiet around her. It sits with her like a companion, one she isn’t ignoring necessarily, just sharing that absolute silence with.
Something rustles in the woods, a quick skitter and then silence once more. Lee tips her head back toward the stars overhead, the blanket of glittering pinpricks that always seem brighter in moments like this one. When the night is late and the world is quiet and she’s alone. Though the electricity restrictions probably have something to do with that too.
Lee lets her eyes close, just for a moment, fully submerged now in darkness, listening only to the sounds of her breathing. It’s easy to pretend here. To imagine that everything might be okay. To drift away and-
The sound of someone’s voice coming from behind her immediately causes Lee’s eyes to snap open once more, the hairs at the back of her neck prickling at the intrusion. The voice drifts in through the open window, the low murmur growing more insistent. Pitched higher with a growing panic.
Lee sets the camera aside, quickly getting to her feet and letting herself into the house once more. The time she’s spent outside has helped tune her eyesight to shadows, making it easier to navigate around couch and coffee table, toward the blankets on the floor. Liam’s grandsons had already been staying with him, just another set of refugees driven to find cover after bomb or some other act of war had rendered them without shelter, and a living room floor was honestly far more comfortable than some of the other places Lee has found herself trying to sleep, so it had been easy to turn down Liam’s efforts to have the kids give up their rooms. And it had been comfortable enough, the pallet of quilts and pillows they’d made, nestled close to Jessie while Joel slept a few feet away. That had been how Lee had left them earlier: Jessie, curled on her side and fast asleep, Joel a few feet away snoring loudly. And now, Lee finds Jessie easily once more and it’s easy to recognize the face of someone caught in a nightmare.
Jessie whimpers, lips forming a wordless protest, a plea, and Lee rests gentle fingers against her forehead, brushing them along the curve of her face. “Jessie,” she says softly. “Wake up.”
“Please,” Jessie whispers, turning her face from Lee’s touch. “Don’t.”
How many times has Lee woke with similar words on her tongue, a desperate plea to stop something that has already happened? Her heart tightens, a fist pressing to the center of her stomach, and her touch and tone are both more insistent as she says, “Jessie.”
Jessie jolts awake when Lee says her name, jerking half upright as she says, “Stop!” and even though she’s sitting right there beside her, safe in Liam’s living room that still smells of dinner and the coffee they’d made afterward, the word sends a flash of panic through Lee, spreading through her bones like wildfire.
“Jessie.” The word manages to come out quiet and grounded despite that persistent tightness in her throat.
As Jessie blinks, turning toward her, Joel stirs, rolling over and pushing himself up onto his elbow. “Wha-”
“It’s okay,” Lee says, putting a hand on Jessie’s shoulder, her words for the both of them, maybe. “Go back to sleep, Joel.”
Jessie seems more awake now and this part Lee recognizes too, the look of embarrassment that starts to settle in as the pieces click into place and the nightmare fades. She looks toward Lee, mouth opening to no doubt apologize, but Lee just shakes her head, getting to her feet. “Come on.”
Jessie doesn’t argue, standing and wrapping her arms around herself, a gesture that somehow leaves her looking even smaller in the darkness. Joel watches them for a moment, squinting against sleep, before seeming to decide the moment does not require him after all. He lays back down, pulling a patchwork quilt around his shoulders, his back to them.
Lee opens the door once more, ushering Jessie through before closing it quietly behind them. This time she bypasses the porch swing, sitting on the top stair instead, the uneven boards prickling her bare feet. Jessie sits on the step below, her shoulder brushing Lee’s leg, arms still crossed over her chest.
Jessie stares ahead into the darkness around them, though Lee is certain Jessie can feel her gaze, the unspoken questions between them. She hesitates for a moment, still allowing herself to adjust to a reality where she is welcome to reach out a hand, to offer a touch. Still adjusting to the reality of being the person who can offer someone any sort of comfort at all. But Lee lets her fingers brush lightly against the ends of Jessie’s sleep tangled ponytail, trailing down the back of her neck, settling between her shoulder blades.
“Sorry.” Jessie wipes at the corner of her eye, still seemingly determined to look anywhere but Lee.
“It’s okay,” Lee says softly, watching her hand rise and fall with Jessie’s slowing breaths. “Want to talk about it?”
Jessie scoffs, shaking her head. “What is there to talk about?”
Lee doesn’t say anything, figures she isn’t expected to anyway. She just sits, waiting. She doesn’t know how to ask the right questions to make someone feel comfortable sharing the darkest things they see in their mind. Doesn’t know how to find the words to explain all the things she sees, the nightmares and memories just another one of those unspoken side effects of doing what they do. It’s easier to pretend that the walls she puts around herself work. That all the boxes she so carefully packs up from each place she goes and each horrible thing that she sees are wrapped up tight and stored away. Easier not to ask how someone is, lest they give her an honest answer or ask her for one in return.
She doesn’t know how to press Jessie to talk about it, isn’t sure if she should expect her to. So she just sits, her knee settled against Jessie’s shoulder, and the darkness around them.
“When I was little, I used to dream about forgetting all the words to a play I was in or not studying for tests,” Jessie says with a touch of derision in her voice. “Now I dream about having to climb out of a pit of bodies.”
Lee presses her lips together, wanting to reach out to touch Jessie once more. But what touch would be welcome with a memory like that clinging to your skin?
Jessie finally glances over her shoulder, her eyes finding Lee. “It’s just going to get worse, isn’t it?”
This, Lee wants to say, this is exactly why I never wanted you to come.
It’s the words she would’ve said months ago without a hesitation. With a roll of her eyes. Without an ounce of pity. She would’ve looked at Jessie with something akin to boredom and asked if she still felt like she knew everything.
Now, the words die in her throat, the possibility of saying them aloud never real at all. Now, Jessie’s words, the tightness in her shoulders, the look in her eyes, is enough to make Lee feel like someone has reached inside her chest and started scraping out her insides. The parts of her that she’d worked so hard to keep hidden away feel raw and exposed now, coaxed to life by Jessie. By her smile, her laugh. By the touch of Jessie’s palms against her skin, by the tickle of her eyelashes when she leans in to kiss neck or shoulder. The vulnerability in Jessie’s gaze, the way her voice cracks around the question, the fact that she can’t do anything to shield Jessie from the truth of what they’ve seen, what they will see, all of that makes Lee breathless and aching.
This is exactly why I never wanted you to come. Not just because of what it might do to Jessie, but what it might do to her.
But she doesn’t say that to Jessie. Forces herself to meet her gaze, not to shy away. Not to lose this delicate and wonderful thing that seems to be growing between them. Instead, she just moves closer to Jessie so that Jessie is sitting between her knees on the step below hers, and instead reaches up to pull Jessie’s hair from its messy ponytail. Jessie seems to loosen, leaning back slightly against Lee’s shins, and Lee combs her fingers through her hair.
“It’ll get worse,” Lee says softly, the words without inflection. “You won’t always think about it.”
Both things true. Sometimes all the things she’s seen and photographed twist together in her mind in an amalgamation of all the horrible things humans can do to one another. Sometimes she dreams of her childhood hiking and exploring with the sun on her skin. Sometimes of easy nights spent with friends under a swollen summer sun with the taste of wine and laughter on her tongue. Sometimes, recently now, of Jessie and how it has felt to be with her, to reach and be reached for. And sometimes she dreams of nothing at all.
Jessie nods, but not enough to risk jostling Lee’s fingers from her hair.
“Your hair is getting long,” Lee says softly, absently, and it strikes her as strangely intimate, the knowledge of how someone’s hair has grown. How she’s spent enough time with Jessie to notice.
Jessie leans back, the weight of her against Lee’s legs. “Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to find a stylist.”
Lee laughs, once, dry but sincere, the smile not entirely unwelcome. She portions Jessie’s hair into three sections, fingers fumbling to remember the process of looping them one over the other. Jessie’s hair isn’t quite long enough to braid but she wills herself to move through the process anyway. Lee runs her fingers through Jessie’s hair, undoing the braid and letting her nails brush against Jessie’s scalp, trying not to smile when she earns a shiver in response.
“That feels good,” Jessie says, and for a moment it’s easy to forget. To pretend. Something Lee feels is happening more and more often when she’s alone with Jessie. When she can be with her and let herself forget about the rest of it. Until the rest of it comes back as quickly and sharply as a slap to the face.
“I didn’t wake you up,” Jessie says after a minute, keeping her head straight so Lee’s efforts to create a braid aren’t deterred. “You were already awake.”
Lee nods, trusting Jessie can intuit the answer even if she can’t see it. “I couldn’t sleep. I was trying to fix the camera.”
“Any luck?”
“I think it might be done for,” Lee admits, letting the dread of it settle in her stomach for the first time. “At least until I can have someone else look at it.”
Jessie nods, loosening the already limp braid. “Another casualty.”
Immediately, she winces, the words settling over the both of them, far from the joke she’d clearly intended them to be. “Sorry.”
Lee shrugs, shakes her head.
Jessie exhales and Lee feels the expanse of skin and bone against her bare legs. “I feel like I just can’t stop thinking about it. Like I don’t want to…I want to just forget it…but I can’t stop.” She swallows, voice strained against her words. “I just keep replaying it over and over again in my head. How I thought I was about to die…I couldn’t stop thinking about how it was going to feel to get shot. And then those bodies…all those people…I keep thinking about how they felt under my hands…how soft and…”
Lee’s fingers are still, the rest of her frozen, rooted and listening to Jessie’s words, the only part of her seemingly in motion her heart as it fractures.
“It just plays over and over in my head. Like I can’t stop it.”
Lee closes her eyes, exhaling. “I know,” she says simply.
“Is this how it’s always going to be?” Jessie’s voice is thick with the effort Lee knows she’s expending to hold back tears. “Like when I’m with you, I feel…happy. Normal. Everything is…so good. And then all of the sudden it just slams into me again, how it felt to dig my knees into those people and just…see? I can’t stop.”
Lee leans forward, kissing the top of Jessie’s head. She lets her touch linger, inhaling the familiar earthy smell of her, spice and sandalwood. Jessie relaxes, sagging into her.
“What do I do?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Lee says with a laugh that sounds as strained as it feels, scrapping against the inside of her throat. “I’m not sure I’m the person to ask about something like that.”
Jessie sighs, not so much in disappointment as resignation. “And it doesn’t go away.”
“No,” Lee says simply. “But…” It gets easier. The lie dies before Lee can bring herself to utter it. Because it doesn’t get easier. She just gets better at ignoring it, which only makes feeling anything else even harder.
Lee swallows, resting her cheek against the top of Jessie’s head, closing her eyes against the closeness, the warmth and smell of her. “But if you want to talk about it…I can listen.”
Jessie nods, leaning backward, and Lee parts her knees enough to allow Jessie to lean back fully, her back to Lee’s chest. “I can listen too.”
“I know,” Lee murmurs. “I’m just…not as good at the talking.”
Another nod, a balm of understanding.
They sit like that, letting the silence settle over them, the night growing cooler. Finally, quietly, Jessie says, “I like it here.”
Lee nods, letting her fingers tangle in Jessie’s hair once more, the gesture as much for her as it is for Jessie. “Yeah.”
In a day or two, they’ll leave again. Back on the road, back into the midst of the war and destruction they’ve committed themselves to capturing so that other people can understand what is happening from a safe distance. For now, though, it’s easy to sit there together and pretend that this is all there is.