I wrote letters. Not the kind you send but the kind you bury.
Pages and pages, scribbled between missions. Some were to my sister, just to remind her I was alive. Others were to the girl who left... Amber. I don't know why. Maybe because heartbreak echoes louder when the world goes quiet. Maybe I thought if I could write it out, I could bleed it out too.
I kept one in my vest pocket every mission. Folded tight, like a secret I was too scared to say out loud.
"Amber, You never came back. And that's okay. But I did... I came back to myself. I just wish you had known the version of me I became when everything fell apart."
Rae found one once. She didn't say anything, just looked at me like she understood. She never pried. Just handed it back and said, "Some letters are meant to stay unread."
Two days later, we were deployed on recon. Intel said the village was abandoned.
Intel lied.
We moved in tight formation, the air sticky with silence. The ground was too quiet. Too perfect. Then I heard it, the snap of a tripwire.
Boom.
The explosion threw me across the alley. My leg screamed. I couldn't tell where the blood was coming from. Darius dragged me behind cover, hands shaking but eyes focused. Bullets tore through the air like screams we weren't allowed to let out.
Three soldiers down. One was seventeen. Still had braces. I didn't know his name. But I knew he didn't deserve this.
That night, I cried in the shower. Not loud. Just a quiet tremble. Soapy water mixed with salt and silence.
Rae knew. She always did. She sat outside, humming a soft tune. One of those songs that sounds like your mother's voice. Like safety. Like stitching your soul back together with notes instead of needles.
I wrote another letter. Didn't sign it.
"If I don't make it, tell someone I tried. That I kept going even when everything in me said stop. That I was scared, but I stayed."
I folded it, slipped it in my boot. Just in case.
Because in war, you never know which walk will be your last. And words... they outlive bullets.