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Forward, Never Back

Chapter Text

There were many things the soldier did not remember.

He listened to the girl's screams as she was dragged away, and he stared into the fire. Papa, she had called him, and it made his heart hurt, seeing the desperation in her eyes, her need to make him know something he could not possibly grasp. Sara, she had said that her name was, another word that pained him for reasons he might never know.

Maybe he had been who she thought he was, and maybe he had not. Either way, he could be.

They were lost, the two of them, both searching for something – someone – that might never exist again. But together, maybe, they could be more than what they were. They could be something that was not quite whole, but was not as broken as it had been.

"Sara," he repeated aloud to the fire, then louder, turning to the door. "Sara!"

There were things the soldier did not remember. Names, faces, homes that he had known. He might never know if he had seen that small face before, with its bright eyes full of an intensity of hope he had forgotten could exist. But he had seen it now, broken and streaked with mingled rain and tears, and maybe that could be enough.

The rain fell and soaked through his coat as the girl clung to him, and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. This, at least, he knew how to do.

The rest, he would learn with time.