melwil | (no subject)

Title: Tiny Quick Breath
Author: MelWil
Rating: G
Feedback: lina_wilson@hotmail.com
Summary: Walter says his goodbyes

~*~

He stood, awkwardly still in his khaki uniform that, despite its weeks of wear, felt stiff and oversized and unfamiliar. He stood on the railway platform, a participant in his own strange little goodbye; a story where no one sending him away dared to cry. His mother had held on longer than strictly necessary . . .

He stood in front of Una and wondered why there weren't more girls like her. The world needed more girls like Una and Rilla and yes, even Mary Vance, with their spirit and love and internal loveliness that bubbled over and spilled into other people's lives. Or maybe there were other girls, many other girls, and he just wasn't looking hard enough. Maybe that's what they were really fighting for, who they were really fighting for.

Una looked up at him, her dark blue eyes glittering with shades of sorrow and longing. He took her hand gently, shaking it like he'd done a hundred times before. But something in the warmth of her hand surprised him and, moved by some unnamed spirit, he bent his head and kissed her.

Una drew in a tiny, quick breath – a breath that could have been easily missed, and was easier forgotten. But Walter heard it, storing it in the dark recesses of his mind until a time where he could think on it properly. Surrounded by the cold and the mud and the blood, in the dark times when all you could do was wait, Walter remembered Una's tiny gasp of air and wondered what it might have meant.

He stood, in his uncomfortable khaki uniform, on the rear platform of the train. He watched as Una Meredith stood next to his brave little sister and wondered when he might see them again. He watched them, the girls who loved him, as the train went around the curve of the hill, until he could see them no more.