Blood bloomed in the syringe, those many years ago. A vein found, morphine administered. He had sighed into it, let go, floated along in a fog of dulled pain and softened sounds of suffering.
Sometimes in dreams, waking or slumbering he sees it still. Hears it. The guns. The shouting. Deafening booms of mortar fire. Remembers agony afterwards.
Now it is not the bloom of blood that marks his coming comfort but the beacon of her face, shining up at him in the weak light of dawn or the flickering cast of the lamp. It is the soft slip of her body tucked to him throughout the darkest and coldest part of the night. She is the peace he never thought he would find. She is everything he never knew he needed.
She knew, though.
She sowed seeds into his heart-soil, and tended them with a secret smile, until they burst forth and bloomed.