There's a knock at the door-Marco said he'd be back any day now-so you rush from the sink stacked with the morning's dishes, wiping your hands clean hurriedly across your aprons, suds clinging to your wrists.
You trip over nothing in the hall, catch yourself, then reach out and wrench open the door: it's been too long since Marco's come home, since his last letter.
His name starts to form in your mouth, except-the salute that greets you is too sharp, too formal, and oh, the badge placed firmly over heart is not crossed blades nor reared unicorn's head. This badge is what Marco called the wings of freedom, feathers of white and blue interlaced as they spread, less reverent in tone but still respectful.
That's not Marco at the door.
Your eyes rise from the badge to the face of this person at your door. There's a part of you that laughs-you know who this is, just like the descriptions in Marco's letters-but it's a part separate from the rest.
You begin to shake, and as one you and Marco's friend take too-sharp of breaths and feel the oxygen knife into your lungs.
"Marco Bott, of the 104th Trainees Squad-" he says, salute sharpening, and suddenly your heartbeat is ringing too loudly in your ears. You clap your hand over your mouth in a desperate attempt to stifle the sob, because you know, you know.
You'd heard about Trost, gossip travelling like plague through your district, and you'd worried. You'd thought Marco safe with every day no news came, but no, your boy is not safe and not okay.
Marco's friend catches you by the shoulders as your legs give way beneath you, tentative and worried. The tremble in his hands is impossible to ignore and-there's something in his hand.
"You're Jean, aren't you?" you say, voice shaking. He's lowered you both to the floor and you sit at the threshold to your home.
He startles, but nods and presses the bundle of cloth into your hands. It was Marco's spare jacket and civilian clothes, Jean says, and you start to weep slowly, clutching at the cloth that doesn't smell like your son, not like you remember him. From his breast pocket Jean produces a silver disc on light chain, Marco's name pressed into it.
It has an unexpected weight to it, this last mark of what Marco had wanted to be and had been. This is the the clue that says that there will be no body to bury. Your face tips into your hands as you weep: your baby, darling Marco has gone where you can't reach him. No more letters, no kisses up to his cheek (oh, he'd only just begun to sprout up when he'd left for training).
Marco's Jean stays while you cry, and when you finally look up you see he's crying too.
"Please," you say, voice quavering and thick. "Take his jacket. He would have wanted you to have it."
Jean looks as if he has been struck when you say this, tears stopping where they well. Their height difference is something Marco had written about, Jean bothered by the difference in height and breadth of shoulder, however minor it was.
This is the person who brought your boy home, what could be brought home to the mother left behind. This is the person who cared enough to do this for your boy, shadows and grief pressing into his face. Maybe he even saw the last of Marco, but you hold that at the back of your tongue; you can't know that, couldn't carry that too.
Marco is back now, but you can only cry and press a kiss to the cheek of someone else's son. Only you and your tears are left and the silence is smothering.