Runaway.
She doesn't offer him any words of comfort. She doesn't offer him congratulations at his promotion. She doesn't give him any of the half-heartedly broken smiles that they do.
No, not one of the things that both his and her fellow war survivors offers him does she offer. She doesn't pat him on the back. She doesn't stare at him brokenly with those eyes. Murderer's eyes. Her sharp eyes, the very same eyes that have saved his life countless times. The very same eyes that show her things, in times of peace; things she doesn't want to see. She doesn't say, "Thank God, it's finally finished."
It's been hard on him. It must've been hard on her as well.
But sometimes he wonders whether or not she dies like the rest of them. He never catches her with unfocussed eyes, gazing to the distance, like she can see something the rest of them can see. He knows. There are times when he sits at his desk for hours staring to the distance, wallowing in his self-created pool of guilt. But he has never seen her like this.
There are times when sorrow strikes him so hard, captivating his mind and soul. It tears into him so, so hard, it's all he can do not to lie curled up on the floor and break himself mentally. He has never caught her in that state. Not once has he ever.
There are times he can feel the sorrow emanating from his fellow survivors. It flows from their every word, their every breath, their every movement; nothing but a hopeless, raw and utter desperation, faithless, and choking, breathless suffering. He knows it comes from him too, he can see himself reflected in their eyes. But not once has he ever felt it coming from her. She emanates determination, and strength, and the timeless bravery that always comes from her.
She isn't a runaway like the rest of them.
It's these times, when he's breaking so hard, that she comes in. She wakes him up, a simple "Sir", or a reassuring hand on his should, or at times, a rare, precious, "Roy". The times she's saved him at war, little does she know she's probably saved her a hundred other times in their simple little office.
But it doesn't end his curiosity. He wonders why she doesn't run away like the rest of them. Maybe it's just cause she's that much stronger than the rest of them. He doesn't know.
He recalls himself calling her name. She asks him why.
"Lieutenant. Why do you not run away from the suffering of that time like the rest of us?" His words are fuzzy in his mind. His own body seems slow and sluggish. But her words are clear as a bell.
"Sir, I would never run away. I would never run away from things that I need to protect." she walks away, and he wonders what she means.
He finds himself wandering over to her desk, sitting down on her chair. His hands sift subconsciously over the papers on her desk, brushing here, brushing there. He doesn't know why, but he picks up a sticky note. A bright green sticky note he would now have expected to find on her desk. Just hers.
His eyes pass over the words, them not truly registering until he reads it a few times over.
'steady feet, don't fail me now.' it's scrawled in her neat-but-quick handwriting. The only handwriting in the world that he can recognize just by view. He smiles. They're only six words, but his lieutenant isn't as unbroken as he'd thought she was.
She doesn't offer him words of comfort. She simply walks to him, puts a hand on his shoulder. It means the world to him. She doesn't offer him broken smiles, or pained eyes. She simply offers him the priceless silent loyalty. She offers him words no different from any other day.
"Sir, let's go. You have a country you need to free."
And in a sense, maybe her running away is by giving him the wings to fly. Her running away is calling him back when he runs away.
There's a terrible, excruciating pain, but pulling him back is the only way she knows to run away from that pain.