Work Text:
The field hospital had gone quiet.
Outside, the night hummed with distant artillery, not close enough to shake the tent, but close enough to make the lanterns tremble. The smell of iron and alcohol clung to everything. Rows of cots lined the narrow corridor, half of them empty now, half occupied by soldiers who muttered in fevered dreams.
Yesenia sat at a small wooden desk in the corner, bandages stained gray piled beside her. Her hands were still shaking from the day, not from fear, but rather from exhaustion. She’d spent twelve hours stitching, cleaning, and holding lives together with thread and prayer.
And then there had been her.
Sephtis Mubaz, a soldier with a crooked smile, even as shrapnel tore through their side. The one who had joked, through a haze of morphine, that if death had a face, she hoped it looked half as kind as Yesenia’s. She’d been discharged this morning, limping, laughing, and swearing she’d be fine.
Yesenia hadn’t stopped thinking about her since.
The cot she’d slept on still smelled faintly of smoke. Yesenia had stood by it longer than she should have, folding the blanket with mechanical care. She’d told herself it was because she was thorough, not because she was trying to memorize the ghost of someone who’d already left.
Now, hours later, the quiet felt unbearable. Her hand hovered over a piece of ration paper, the kind they used for medical reports. The ink bottle beside her was nearly empty. There was no reason to write, no address to send to, and no guarantee that it would reach anyone, even if she tried. But she wrote anyway.
Yesenia Vega
March 4th, 1916
To the soldier who still owes me a bandage,
I don’t know if this will find you. The post has been unreliable since the last bombing, and the couriers don’t go as far as the southern line anymore. But writing feels better than silence, and you were the last person I spoke to before the silence started feeling heavy.
You probably don’t remember much from the infirmary. You were feverish, stubborn, and entirely convinced you could walk with fresh stitches in your side. You almost fell twice before I made you stay. You told me I was bossy, and I told you to stop bleeding on my floor.
You smiled, even then.
I hope you’re eating. I hope you’re warm. I hope you still laugh, though I imagine there’s little to laugh about where you are.
I thought of you tonight when the sky flashed red. The others flinched, but I imagined you somewhere out there, cursing up at the thunder. It made me laugh. Quietly, but enough to scare the nurse beside me.
If this finds you, don’t feel obliged to write back. I just needed to know that somewhere, someone I’d helped might still be alive to read this.
— Y. Vega
When she finished, Yesenia stared at the letter for a long time. Her handwriting was neater than usual, too careful. The paper already smelled faintly of antiseptic and candle smoke. She folded it twice, slipped it into an envelope, and sealed it with a drop of melted wax from her lamp.
The nurse across the tent glanced up. “Writing home?”
“Yes,” Yesenia lied. “Something like that.”
She didn’t know what possessed her to send it, maybe the way Sephtis had looked at her, unafraid even in pain. Maybe the sound of her voice, rough and teasing, echoing between explosions. Maybe she just wanted to feel connected to something that wasn’t breaking. She slipped the letter into the outgoing mailbag. Then she blew out the lamp, lay down on the cot, and stared at the ceiling until the next round of shells began to fall.
Sephtis
The front smelled of rain and smoke. Everything always did.
Sephtis sat crouched in a half-collapsed dugout, boots sunk into the mud, rifle balanced across her knees. Around her, the world groaned with the low thud of distant mortars and the soft hiss of rain dripping through what used to be a roof. Her uniform was stiff with dried ash, and her hands were bandaged from when the trench stove had burst earlier that week. She hadn’t felt her fingertips properly in days.
They were waiting for supplies that might never come. Food, letters, and orders, in that order of importance. Then, that morning, a courier trudged through the muck with a sack of envelopes slung over his shoulder.
“Mail call,” he’d grunted. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
She hadn’t. Not until she saw her name. The paper was worn, the corners damp, and the handwriting unfamiliar yet strangely careful. She didn’t know anyone who wrote like that. Certainly no one who dotted their i’s like tiny stars. She opened it with shaking fingers, careful not to tear the edges.
By the time she reached “You smiled, even then,” she’d forgotten about the cold entirely.
Later that night, after the fires were out and the trenches went still, Sephtis found a stub of pencil and a scrap of old map to write on. Her hands were filthy, and her handwriting came out jagged and uneven, but she wrote anyway.
Sephtis Mubaz
March 18th, 1916
To the medic who claims she doesn’t care if I write back (which is a lie),
I got your letter. Don’t ask me how. It’s a miracle anything finds us out here. I think the courier took pity on me because I looked half-dead and told him I was waiting on a love note. Hope that doesn’t scandalize you.
You said I probably don’t remember much from the infirmary. I remember everything. I remember how you told me to sit still like I was a child with scraped knees. I remember the way your hands didn’t shake, even when mine did. And I remember the sound you made when I joked about bleeding on your floor, like you wanted to laugh but wouldn’t let yourself.
I think about that sound sometimes when the shells start.
You told me not to feel obliged to write back, but I do. Because it’s the first thing in weeks that didn’t come with an order attached.
I’m not eating well. The bread tastes like dust. We trade cigarettes for jam when we can. One of the men here, Corbin, snuck in a dog from the nearby village. She’s small, ugly, and missing half an ear. I named her Patch. She sleeps near my boots and growls at thunder.
Sometimes I dream of the hospital. The quiet. The smell of soap instead of smoke. I think I miss the way you bossed everyone around more than I should admit.
If you want to send another letter, I’m at the 2nd Company, 14th Regiment, South Line. Write “Private correspondence” on the front. The officers don’t read those.
Stay safe, Vega.
You saved me once already. Try not to do it again from a distance.
— S. Mubaz
When she finished, Sephtis leaned back against the dirt wall and stared at the paper in her lap. She didn’t know what she was hoping for. Maybe nothing, maybe everything. The night wind tore through the trench, and the candle beside her guttered out. She sat in the dark for a while, listening to the soft snore of Patch at her feet and the distant rumble of guns.
For the first time in months, she didn’t feel completely alone.
Yesenia
It arrived two weeks later, tucked between supply manifests and casualty reports. The envelope was battered, the corners burned, and the paper dirt-stained, but her name was still legible. Y. Vega. The handwriting was hurried and jagged, the ink smudged in places as if it had been written in rain.
Yesenia had just finished an eighteen-hour shift. Her fingers were raw from antiseptic, her uniform stiff with blood. She’d been so tired she could barely lift the cup of tea sitting beside her. When the post-runner dropped the letter onto her desk, she thought it was a mistake.
Then she saw the initials. And for the first time in months, she forgot how to breathe.
The medic station had no clocks anymore, only light and dark, hunger and exhaustion. Dawn meant new patients; dusk meant counting who hadn’t survived the day. The nurses had stopped painting the walls white because no one could tell the difference between clean and stained.
Yesenia had built small rituals to stay sane. Folding her linens perfectly, writing patient names with deliberate care, and watching the steam curl from her tea. But lately, even those rituals felt empty. Every injured face blurred into another. Every voice faded under the drone of war.
Until now.
She ran her thumb along the edge of the letter, feeling the faint grit of sand embedded in the fibers, the kind you only found in the southern trenches. Sephtis’s trenches.
She broke the seal carefully. Her hands were trembling. And then she read.
To the medic who claims she doesn’t care if I write back (which is a lie)...
By the time she reached the end, “You saved me once already. Try not to do it again from a distance,” her throat burned.
Sephtis’s words were messy and uneven but alive. They sounded like her: irreverent and heartbreakingly brave. She could almost hear her voice through the page, that rough humor masking something gentler underneath.
It had been months since anyone had written to her about something other than war or wounds. Months since anyone had made her laugh. When she finally looked up, the nurse on night duty was watching her curiously. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Yesenia shook her head, slipping the letter into her uniform pocket. “No,” she said softly. “Just someone I thought was gone.”
That night, she couldn’t sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Sephtis sitting in the mud somewhere, pencil stub between her fingers, a stray dog curled at her feet. She imagined her laughing after writing something sarcastic, then hesitating, wondering if Yesenia would read it the way she meant.
Yesenia Vega
March 30th, 1916
To the soldier and her one-eared dog,
You were right. I didn’t expect a letter. I thought the world had better things to do than deliver words across miles of mud and fire. But I’m glad it found me. You made the nurses think I’ve gone mad, smiling at paper.
Your handwriting is atrocious. (That’s a compliment. It feels alive.)
Things here are quieter, though I’m starting to hate the quiet. The patients talk less now. Their eyes follow the sound of the guns instead of the sound of my voice. Sometimes, I wish I could tell them a joke like you would.
We lost two men this week. They were from your regiment. I don’t know if you knew them. Kepler and Haines. I probably shouldn’t tell you that, but honesty seems to be all we have left.
I keep a small tin of herbs by my bed. Peppermint, thyme, and lavender. It helps with the smell of blood. I’ll send some in the next parcel, if the mail keeps working.
Take care of Patch. I envy her. She gets to stay beside you.
— Y. Vega
When she finished, Yesenia folded the letter neatly, sealing it with wax from the edge of her candle. She pressed her hand over the cooling mark, eyes half-closed. It was irrational, dangerous even, writing to a soldier whose name she shouldn’t know, in a war that punished compassion. However, the thought of Sephtis out there, reading her words under the same moon, felt like breathing after holding her breath too long.
“Try not to do it again from a distance,” she’d said. Yesenia smiled faintly, slipping the letter into the courier’s satchel. She whispered faintly into the cold air. “Don’t give me a reason to.”
Sephtis
The rain hadn’t stopped in six days.
Everything stank of wet wool, gunpowder, and rot. Even the air felt tired. The trench walls sagged inward, slick with mud, and the sky hung low, a gray weight pressing on everyone’s shoulders.
Sephtis’s regiment had been rotated further north, closer to the line of fire. Every night the sky bloomed red for a few seconds, then went black again. Between bombardments, they lived like ghosts, moving silently, eating in silence, and even laughing like they were afraid to be heard. She’d gotten used to hunger, to cold, to counting the seconds between explosions.
But she hadn’t gotten used to missing Yesenia.
The letter had come three nights ago, smuggled in a tin of rations. Sephtis had read it so many times that the folds were beginning to tear. She knew every word by heart,“Your handwriting is atrocious (that’s a compliment)”—and still, every time she looked at it, her chest ached. She wrote back by the flicker of a match, Patch curled at her feet, tail twitching in restless dreams.
Sephtis Mubaz
April 9th, 1916
To the medic who smells of lavender,
I’ve read your letter so many times that Corbin says he’s going to steal it and burn it before I start reciting it in my sleep. Don’t worry, he’s an idiot. I told him if he touches it, I’ll throw him in the latrine.
You asked if I knew Kepler and Haines. I did. Kepler played the harmonica badly. Haines used to talk about how much he missed his sister. I didn’t get to say goodbye to either of them, so…thank you for that. For remembering their names, someone should.
We moved north this week. The mud’s deeper here, but the stars look closer. I haven’t seen anything so clear since the night I left the infirmary. Funny, I think I’d forgotten how beautiful stillness could be until I met you.
The men tease me for writing. They say I’m wasting paper. But I don’t care. The world’s on fire, and somehow your letters still smell faintly of peppermint. You wrote that it helps with the blood. Here, it helps with everything.
I’ll keep Patch alive for you. She’s a menace, but she’s small enough to curl up in my pack when we move. Yesterday she tried to chase a shell casing. I nearly had a heart attack.
There’s talk we’ll be advancing soon. Don’t worry. I’ve gotten quite good at ducking.
If this letter reaches you, write again. Please. It’s strange, but when I think of you reading this, the sound of the guns doesn’t seem so loud.
— S. Mubaz
When she finished, Sephtis didn’t sign it right away. Her pencil hovered above the page, and for a second she almost wrote Love, Sephtis.
But she didn’t. Not yet.
She blew on the paper to dry the ink, then slipped it into an envelope she’d stolen from a supply crate. The edges were smudged with dirt, but she smoothed them out carefully before sealing it.
That night, as she tried to sleep, the trench shook from distant artillery. A chunk of dirt fell from the ceiling and landed on her shoulder. She brushed it away absently, eyes fixed on the stars through a crack in the tarp above. She imagined Yesenia awake too, somewhere far behind the lines, reading, writing, bandaging someone’s wound with those steady hands.
The thought calmed her. Not hope, not exactly. Just the quiet understanding that she wasn’t alone in the dark anymore.
Yesenia
The snow came early that year.
By the time it reached the medical outpost, it had turned gray with soot, coating everything in a thin, bitter film. Yesenia wrapped her worn scarf tighter as she made her rounds through the camp. The soldiers had taken to calling her “the quiet one,” though she spoke more than she used to. Maybe because of the letters.
Each week she waited for the courier like it was a heartbeat. She tried not to show it, but the nurses noticed. When mail came and she found her name on one of the envelopes, their glances turned knowing.
The newest letter, April 9th, 1916, had arrived folded around a pressed leaf, brown and fragile as ash.
“The world’s on fire, and somehow your letters still smell faintly of peppermint.”
She’d read that line five times the first night, twice more the second. It wasn’t what Sephtis said, it was how she said it. Rough, unpolished, but still so alive. It was like hearing someone laugh through smoke. That evening, when the ward finally quieted, Yesenia sat by the oil stove with a mug of watered-down tea and began to write.
Yesenia Vega
April 20th, 1916
To the soldier who insists on making me worry,
Your last letter arrived wrapped in dirt and rain. I cleaned the corners and pressed it flat between my notebooks, though the ink still smells faintly of smoke.
I’m glad you wrote. I tell myself it’s for your sake, so I know you’re alive, but that isn’t true. I think I write because I need to remember there’s someone out there who still jokes, who still notices the stars.
You said the world’s on fire. Here, it’s frozen. The nights are so cold that the basins crack if we leave water in them. The frost creeps under the tent flaps and paints everything silver by morning. It’s beautiful and cruel, like most things now.
One of my patients asked me today if I’d ever been in love. I told him I was too busy for it. He laughed and said that sounded like a lie. Maybe it was.
Your dog sounds braver than half the officers I’ve met. Keep her close.
There’s talk of a ceasefire soon. Maybe rumor, maybe hope. Either way, write again. It helps, even when it hurts.
— Y.
When she finished, Yesenia stared at the paper for a long time before sealing it. The ink on her fingers looked almost like blood. Outside, snow began to fall again, heavy, silent. She stepped out of the tent, letting a few flakes catch in her hair. In the distance, faint thunder rumbled, not weather, not anymore. She whispered into the wind, “Stay alive for me, please.”
Sephtis
Mail took longer now, sometimes weeks. She’d stopped expecting it, until one morning a courier slid a small envelope into her hand and said, “From the north.”
Sephtis read it by the light of dawn, crouched in the mud with Patch asleep against her leg. She read it twice. The line that stayed with her wasn’t the one about frost or ceasefires, it was, “Maybe it was a lie.”
She folded the letter and tucked it inside her jacket, right over their heart. When Corbin asked what she was smiling about, she said, “Someone called me brave.”
He laughed. “Whoever she is, she’s an idiot.” Sephtis just shook their head, eyes soft.
“Maybe. But she’s my idiot.”
The wind screamed louder than the artillery that morning.
Sephtis had grown used to noise, the kind that numbs you, the kind that replaces thought. But this was different. The sound of incoming shells carried a new kind of certainty. This one could be it. Mud splattered up to her knees as she ran between trenches, shouting orders she barely heard herself speak. The air smelled like cordite and damp wool. She’d stopped keeping count of the wounded. You couldn’t count the screams.
That night, when silence finally settled, she pulled Yesenia’s last letter from her pocket. The edges were torn. The wax seal had long since melted from heat. She read it by the lantern glow, “It helps, even when it hurts.”
That line haunted her.
Sephtis pressed the page to her chest, head bowed. If she knew how bad it’s gotten, she’d tell me to stop writing. She’d want me to live like she’s trying to, quietly, safely.
But she couldn’t stop. She needed Yesenia’s letters like she needed air, steady, measured, and human. So, with trembling hands and a bit of charcoal snapped from the brazier, she wrote.
Sephtis Mubaz
May 7th, 1916
To the woman whose words sound like warmth in a world that forgot what warmth is,
We moved again. I don’t know where. The maps are gone, and the sky looks the same everywhere now. The men say we’re close to something important, but everything looks like mud and death, so I’m not sure I believe them.
They hit us hard last night. The medic tents burned before we could reach them. You’d hate it here. No order, no calm. I tried to help patch one of the boys up, but I don’t have your hands. You’d have known what to do.
I dream about your tent sometimes. The quiet hum, the smell of metal and lavender. The way your brown hair caught the lantern light when you leaned over me. I tell myself I remember wrong, because memory shouldn’t feel that gentle.
I keep your last letter in my pocket. It’s ruined now, sweat, rain, smoke. But it’s still whole enough to read. When I get scared, I press my thumb over your name. I find it helps.
If I don’t make it out of here, don’t you dare feel sorry for me. I’d rather have written to you and died for it than never known you at all.
Stay safe. Please.
— S.
She didn’t even sign her last name this time. Just an initial. Maybe superstition, maybe exhaustion. When the courier came by at dawn, she handed the folded letter over without looking up. “It’s for the north,” she said simply.
The boy hesitated. “You really think they’ll still be there to get it?”
“Yes,” Sephtis said, her voice steady. “She’ll stay.”
Yesenia
The shelling had reached them two nights ago.
They’d been far enough back that only fragments fell, shredded canvas, splintered crates, but the noise had broken something in the camp. No one slept. No one talked above a whisper. Yesenia had lost one of her nurses, Maren, in the blast. The girl had been seventeen. The same age Yesenia had been when she’d first touched a scalpel.
Now, even her hands weren’t steady. They trembled as she stitched, as she cleaned, as she reached for her tea. When the mail arrived three days later, she didn’t expect anything. But then, another envelope. Torn, dirt-streaked, still warm from the courier’s hands.
Sephtis’s handwriting was worse than ever, but it was hers. She read it once, then again. And again. By the end, her vision blurred, half from tears, half from exhaustion.
She whispered the line aloud, unable to stop herself. “I’d rather have written to you and died for it than never known you at all.”
Her knees went weak. She sank onto the cot and pressed the letter to her lips. “I’d rather you live,” she murmured as warm tears flooded her gaze.
That night, when the other nurses finally slept, she found a scrap of unmarked stationery and began her reply.
Yesenia Vega
May 15th, 1916
To the soldier who refuses to let me forget what hope feels like,
You always say I wouldn’t last a day out there. You’re right. I’d hate it. But don’t think that means you’re better suited for it. You shouldn’t have to be.
The tents caught fire last week. We lost half our supplies. I’ve been stitching with fishing thread. It breaks often, and the men curse when I redo it. But they live, so they forgive me.
I found one of your old patients today, the one who swore he’d never walk again. He’s limping, but alive. He asked if the soldier with the scar and the loud mouth was still breathing. I said yes.
Don’t ask how I knew. I just did.
Your last letter frightened me. I won’t pretend it didn’t. I wanted to write back immediately, but it took me three days to stop shaking long enough to hold a pen. Don’t make me do that again.
The peppermint’s nearly gone, but I’ll keep sending it if it keeps you remembering something other than smoke.
If you stop writing, I’ll assume the worst. So don’t stop.
— Y.
She didn’t sign her full name this time either. They were past formality now, reduced to the essentials. Just S. and Y. Two halves of the same impossible conversation. When she handed the letter to the courier, he frowned at her shaking hand. “You sure this one’s worth the trouble, miss?”
Yesenia met his eyes, her voice quiet but unwavering. “More than you’ll ever know.”
…
Yesenia
The mail stopped coming in June.
At first, no one said anything. They all just waited, one day, two, seven, telling themselves the roads were flooded, or the couriers delayed. But soon the whispers began: towns razed, lines collapsed, regiments gone missing.
Yesenia kept her voice steady even when her hands trembled. The nights blurred into one another, endless stitching, boiling water, listening to the groans of men who’d stopped believing in anything but pain.
Still, every morning, she walked to the mail tent. Every morning, she asked. And every morning, the courier said, “Nothing for you, Miss Vega.”
By July, she’d stopped asking.
But she still wrote. Every night. By candlelight. Even when the wax melted to nothing and the smoke burned her eyes.
Unsent Letter
July 1st, 1916
To the soldier who might not be alive to read this,
I still light the stove at night, even though there’s no wood left. Habit, I suppose. Or hope.
The others are starting to talk about peace. I want to believe them. But the air still smells like iron and ash. It doesn’t feel over. Not yet.
I dreamed of you last night. Not the way I remember you, loud and reckless, but quiet, sitting by a river, whittling wood for no reason at all. You looked at peace. I woke up angry at you for that. Isn’t that foolish?
If this reaches you, if any of these do, know that I would have told you yes. To whatever you asked. To whatever you wanted.
I just thought we had more time.
—Y.
She folded the letter and placed it on the corner of her desk beside the others. There were twelve, all unsent, all addressed the same way. Outside, the war groaned and shifted, a beast in its death throes.
She whispered, “You promised you’d duck.”
The only answer was the wind.
Unsent Letter
July 10th, 1916
To the soldier I can’t stop waiting for,
The frost broke today. The river’s finally thawing. I wanted to tell you because you always complained about the cold, said it made your hands ache.
The men are leaving in groups now. The ones who can walk. The ones who can pretend the war didn’t eat them alive. I think I’ll stay a little longer. Someone has to.
There’s a boy here, no older than sixteen, who lost his arm and still insists he’s going to play piano again. He asked me who I write to every night. I told him it’s a friend. That was a lie.
You said once that memory shouldn’t feel this gentle. I’m starting to think it’s the only gentle thing left.
If you’re alive, just breathe, once, somewhere under the same sky. Maybe I’ll feel it.
—Y.
She folded it and placed it in the pile of letters on her cot. There were twenty one now. Twenty one unanswered prayers pressed between envelopes.
Yesenia
The pile of letters had begun to lean, fragile as bone. Yesenia stared at it for a long time, her hands folded in her lap. She’d meant to write another, but the words had stopped coming easily. Lately, everything did. Outside, the rain had started again, soft at first, then harder, an endless rhythm against the canvas. The sound had once comforted her. Now it only reminded her of trenches.
When the courier arrived that evening, his face was gray beneath his cap.
He didn’t look at her when she asked, “Any letters from the southern line?” He shook his head.
“There’s no southern line anymore,” he said quietly. She didn’t ask what that meant. She already knew.
That night, she didn’t write.
She sat beside the stove, its flame barely alive, and unfolded one of Sephtis’s old letters, the one that still smelled faintly of smoke and peppermint. If I don’t make it out of here, don’t you dare feel sorry for me.
Her vision blurred. She read the rest aloud, her voice cracking in places, as if by reading it she could will Sephtis back into being. But when she reached the end—Stay safe. Please.—the words felt like a prayer meant for someone who’d already gone too far to hear it. She cried herself to sleep with the letter pressed against her chest, the candle burning down to nothing.
August 1916
The outpost was abandoned within the month. The ceasefire came and went, but no one cheered. The nurses packed what supplies remained, burned what couldn’t be carried, and left the rest to the wind. Yesenia stayed until the last wagon disappeared down the road. She told them she’d follow in the morning. She didn’t.
She spent the night sorting through her letters, reading them one by one. Her own words sounded foreign now, hopeful, desperate, pathetic, foolish. By dawn, she stopped pretending. She knew she would never hear from Sephtis again.
She gathered the letters in her arms and stepped outside. The sky was gray and low, the world washed in ash and rain. She walked to the river that ran behind the camp, the one she’d once mentioned in a letter, thawing in the spring, and knelt by the bank.
The water was cold, the current slow. She unfolded the first letter, then the next, until all rested in her lap. “I thought we had more time,” she whispered softly. Her breath fogged in the chill. “I would’ve told you yes.”
The wind carried the words away. She pressed the bundle of letters to her lips once, then lowered them into the river. The ink bled instantly, black threads unraveling into the water, words dissolving faster than she could watch. When the last envelope slipped beneath the surface, she whispered, “Stay wherever you are. Don’t come back for me.” And then she stood, turned toward the empty tents, and walked back alone.
Autumn 1916
They found her weeks later, long after the last soldiers had gone home. A supply officer sent to recover leftover medical crates found the tent still standing, the stove cold, a single worn scarf draped over the cot. On the desk lay one final letter, unfinished, the ink blotched, the handwriting trembling:
Unsent Letter
August 28th, 1916
To the soldier who taught me how to keep breathing,
If you’re alive, you won’t read this.
If you’re gone, I hope you knew.
I think I did love you. I just never learned how to say it before the war ended.
— Love, Y.