I never wanted to admit it but -

I never wanted to admit it but I miss you, now. Now it’s all over. 



Yes, it was terrifying, and most nights I would just lie awake whether it was my watch or not, thinking over all the different possibilities and consequences. Most of them ended horribly. None of them came close to the ending we got. 



And in those moments when we were hiding, lying with our faces pressed into the dirt or the rough bark of a tree, I would scream at myself inside my head. I would scream in my head because if I didn’t I would have screamed out loud, screamed the forest down and brought every patrol within a day’s march down on us too. There were some days when I almost did. God, you could be so, annoying, did you know that? The way you’d agonise for hours over the tiniest decision. All those bloody self-righteous speeches about ‘for the good of the country and the people.’ I could recite that right back at you, you know. Every single word. And none of it came to anything, for you, in the end. Well, you’d say it had, of course – if I could speak to you now, you’d tell me to look at what we achieved, together, and then you’d tell me to look at all the injustice there still is in this world, and go and do something about it, for God’s sake. Not that I’ve ever had a problem with rushing into situations without thinking about the consequences. You made me redirect all my energies, though. Ugh. You made me a good person. Someone who thinks about other people. I hate you for that.  We made a good team in the end, didn’t we, me and you – you’d think the plan through, moralise it, justify it, and then I’d rush in and pull it off perfectly. The brains and the brawn, that’s us. The Beauty and the Beast. Except the last plan, of course. Sorry about that, by the way. 



You know what else really irritated me about you? The way that you would flipping twitch as you went to sleep. I’m telling you, that’s not natural. On those days when we trekked deep into the forest and camped in a cave, or up a tree, or in the middle of a thicket where we could be reasonably sure they wouldn’t find us so we could both get a decent amount of sleep, I’d be lying next to you, stealing away your body heat, just drifting off, and then your leg would spasm and I’d jerk wide awake again. Then I’d nudge you, and you’d make some sort of incoherent groan, and then I’d decide to leave it because it was obvious you were more than half asleep. When you were fully asleep, you’d relax, and stop twitching, and then I could get to sleep, too, because you were relaxed. 



What I’m really trying to say is, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I screwed everything up.  And I do, you know. Miss you, I mean. 



512 words.