Albert Benjamin Edwards will die today.

Erik does not know it yet, but he will be spending the night next to an empty cot. The sheets will be left unmade, just as Albert always leaves them, and the necks of a pair of whiskey bottles will stick out from beneath the young man's flat, greasy pillow, just as they always do. In a few nights, a new Albert or Jonathan or Charles will take his place, and Erik will sleep beside a new face.

That is, if he is unlucky enough to survive until then.

That is perhaps what Erik loathes most about war - his uncanny ability to bear it. Sometimes it feels as though the bullets do not see him, as though the bayonets do not dare pierce his flesh. He emerges from every single battle with only a few scratches, like notches on a young man's bedpost, a wound that does not hurt so much as it boasts.

So the night after Erik watches Albert Benjamin Edwards crumple to the ground before him, reaching for an arm that is no longer attached to his body, calling out for a mother who will never see her son again, and crying for a baby girl who won't ever know her father's face, he retreats to his tent. He steals the two bottles of whiskey that the young man thought he'd hidden away so well. He pours the first one over the fresh cuts on his chest, sweet gifts from a rebel's Mississippi rifle, and drinks the second one right down to the bottom of the bottle.

And while he does, he hopes that tomorrow night, he'll be sleeping next to Albert Benjamin Edwards once again.

He can't imagine that any bullet can hurt him any more than she has.