Work Text:
The envelope arrives thin, smelling faintly of gunpowder and damp earth. Mickey tears it open with trembling fingers, perched on the splintered edge of his cot in the drafty attic room. Outside, Minneapolis rattles with streetcars; inside, Donald’s looping script bleeds ink where rain had smudged it weeks ago.
Dearest Micks,
The pet name Donald only whispers when he thinks the barracks are asleep. Mickey reads aloud in a choked whisper, tracing each curve of the ‘D’ Donald presses hard into the paper, like armor against the words that follow. Donald describes the mud first—how it sucks at boots near Bastogne, how it tastes metallic when shrapnel hits nearby trees. He sketches the way icicles hang from ruined church steeples, brittle as promises. Mickey’s knuckles whiten.
Midway down the page, Donald’s handwriting spasms.
Saw a kid yesterday. Blonde.
Reminded me of you.
A blotch stains the paper—not rain this time. Mickey imagines Donald’s tears hitting the V-mail form, salt mingling with Flanders clay. The sentence ends abruptly.
He didn’t make it.
Mickey’s breath hitches. He presses the letter to his chest, but the attic’s chill seeps deeper. Below, Mrs. O’Leary shouts about ration coupons; above, sleet ticks against the roof like a failing heart. Donald’s closing words blur.
Don’t wait for me, Mick. Live. Even if—
The signature is a jagged scratch, Duck half-formed.
A sob tears loose. Mickey crumples against the wall, knees drawn up. Seventeen feels like a century. Outside, headlines scream of Allied advances, but here, in the thinning light, Donald’s unsent grief pools in Mickey’s palms. He memorizes the tear-swelled paper fibres—each one a ghost of Donald’s touch, fading with every exhale into the encroaching dark.