“Three years in this field and I haven’t broken down until now.” She took a deep, shaky breath, resting her chin on her fists. “I thought I could handle it.”

“No one can, really.”

She looked up, her watery brown eyes meeting his ethereal silver ones. “How did you last so long? How are you still… well, surviving?”

He let out a soft chuckle. “I don’t sleep before three.”

“A.m.?”

“I’m lucky, I suppose.” He took a sip of the strong-smelling drink in front of him. “The nightmares don’t come for me after then.” He met her eyes again. “That’s what’s bothering you, isn’t it? The nightmares.”

She bit her lower lip, barely noticing the pain. “Every night. I’ll meet him again tonight in my dreams, I suppose.” She let out a bitter laugh. “I don’t know whether my heart is pounding in anticipation or dread.”

“Of course, it’s hard to live with the knowledge that you’ve practically killed someone to protect others.” He tilted his head. “Especially when that someone is your husband, hm?”

“Why—What—” She fumbled a bit more with her words before eventually giving up.

“Don’t worry,” he said with a small shrug, “it was the right thing to do.”

Out of all places, why did he have to say that here? Weren’t the visions enough of a reminder? The field was supposed to be her place of calm, a time to rest, before she was inevitably thrust back into the nightmares again.

He reached across the small oak table she sat across, and cupped her hands in his palms. Two lone hands crossing the gulf of wood paneling. She found it strangely unsettling, although the gesture was anything but. The brown of her coffee placed delicately next to the coarseness of her ring finger (ringless, now), the brown of the table, the brown of his hair, and the brown of her eyes about to spill over. They all seemed to swirl into the same dizzying, muddy hue as she glanced quickly, cautiously, from the palms of their hands and the joints of their interlocked fingers to meet the abyss of his gaze.

But no, they couldn’t do this. It wasn’t right. There was Task 110, Training, and both of them were already on thin ice with the Director in their own ways. Anything more than a friendship would complicate everything exponentially, and he knew this. So why had he made such a foolish and unsolicited first move? She broke his gaze and looked down at the table, a red flush walking its way up her neck and face. Peeling her sweaty fingers away from his, she moved her hands to rest restlessly in her lap. As embarrassed as she was to be the one who made such a passionate moment into something awkward, he didn’t seem to realize his mistake.

A sudden pang hit her in the chest. She couldn’t bear to look up at him again, to inevitably be caught up in the simple grace of his features once more. His eyes were the wrong shade of gray—overly bright and startling, his nose too narrow with no crookedness from that accident when they were seventeen, lips pressed in a smirk more often than not. It was as if she had blindly reached for a spoon to stir her coffee and came up with a pointed dagger instead.

He didn’t say anything for a long while after that, though she glanced up and saw his hand still resting there, neither demanding nor diffident, fingers curled up on themselves.

“Would you like to talk about him?” His voice barely reached her ears, suddenly dim like the lights of a train fading into the distance.

She barked out a laugh and met his eyes, despite herself, cutting through the hazy atmosphere of the afternoon and their mournful reminiscing. “Are you trying to play therapist?”

He tipped his head inquisitively with a slight smile on his face. “It makes the nightmares a little more tolerable, you know. We help each other carry our ghosts.”

“Well, you already know what they told you.” The day of the uprising, the piles of manuscripts uncovered and combed through, his plan laid bare. Though no one knew better than her: the meetings he’d held underground, while she wore the floor out with her pacing and counted the seconds until the police came knocking during their rounds. The way he spoke of freedom, the farce of government, the promises he made that hadn’t meant anything at all in the end. After all, there’s no promise that can be kept if the promiser is dead. His willful creature of a heart, which never came to heel no matter how many years he had spent trying to tame his spirit.

She told him all of that and more, as if bewitched by the prospect of having an audience. It was the first time she’d ever shared such intimate memories with anyone, and it felt a little bit like betrayal. Still, the gentleness of his presence eased into her, comforting her. Reassuring her.

He listened intently, keeping mostly to himself, save for the occasional nod of understanding. His face was like that of a child’s drawing: undecipherable.

When the last words fell from her lips, it wasn’t some great relief she felt; there was no sigh from finally letting go of the memories that had haunted her. No, it was something else—something more settled, something calming, something that felt like this confession had been inevitable, a question of when and not if. It felt right. She hadn’t let go of her past, just put it to rest. Tucked in all of its sharp corners and messy edges and went on her way.

At some point, her hand had lifted itself to sit atop the table. At some point, a single hand had enveloped it, unassuming, but a welcome presence nonetheless. At some point, she would learn to part with her past and hold on to the present and hope for the future. At some point.

But for now, she sat with him in the silence that followed her story, mind still dizzy with scenes of murder and nights spent sobbing in fields, warmth from his hand slowly seeping into her palm.

“That did help, I think.” She said it quietly enough that her voice nearly broke. He had to lean in to hear. “Thank you.”

And though she wished he would pull closer, he leaned back, smiling that knowing smile of his. “Then if your story’s complete, I’ll wish you the best of dreams tonight.”

She nodded, but still frowned, hesitant. “Maybe I’ll be ready to finally tell him goodbye. But I…”

“I’ll be right there with you when you do.”

“No… No, this is… it is something I must do alone.”

She twiddled with her thumb. She noticed him pull out a flask as he finished his drink and she put out her hand. He obliged. The spirit burned, but it was a good distraction for all of five seconds.

She then took another swig, then another and another until the flask was empty. “Sorry.”

Chuckling, he heartily said, “It’s no problem, I always have spares upon spares. Besides, it looks like you really needed that.” He pulled a new flask out of the back of his pants, like it was a concealed weapon.

She, after three whole years, finally smiled. She felt ready to do it. She walked to the very edge of the field and onto the dirt road and spilt the contents of a small tin jar she had.

Her husband’s ashes were swept away by the wind and mixed in with the trampled dirt. It would be easier to make peace, too, with the ashes of her husband’s colleagues now. She would no longer be haunted by them, by any of them. Her husband’s torture beyond the grave finally ended and she finally slept.