"Who is that?"

Don peered through the glasses perched at the end of his nose and tried to school his face into one of failed recollection and total indifference. His son held out the black and white photograph, urging him to take it in order to better look at it.

But Don didn't want to look at it; hadn't looked at it in years, and the way the paper burned his fingers where he held the edges was nothing compared to the way the memory of her scorched his fragile heart.

The streets were alive with celebration and joy; orange flags waving with smiles and jubilation. None of them had expected a welcome such as this, but they allowed themselves to enjoy it, feeling pride that they were liberators of a place held in captivity for far too long.

After the horror that their jump on D-Day had been, their descent into the lush green fields of Holland was peaceful and enjoyable; a complete oxymoron. Just as was the scene surrounding them now.

Don scoured the busy crowd looking for her and smiling when he saw her with a little boy in her arms, bouncing him up and down on her hip as he tried to keep her helmet on his head. He didn't need to be close to her to hear that breathy laugh and it spread warmth throughout him just like always.

The other guys teased her mercilessly for her laugh. Bill joked that she laughed like she smoked sixty a day, and he knew she was self conscious about the snort that escaped when she least wanted it to. The way it made her nose crinkle and her eyes squint as the action animated her entire face, and the sight of her infectious joy made him feel like he could float right up to heaven. It was a feeling that he knew he could never live without now. Not after two and a bit years of her.

She turned her head as though sensing his gaze and smiled shyly as his feet began to move towards her, weaving through men shaking his hand and women kissing his cheek until he was standing before her, feeling like they were the only two people in the entire world as everything else faded into the background.

"Who's this cutie then?" he asked, grinning when the little boy peered out from beneath the helmet at him with a cautious smile.

"No idea," she laughed. "His mom just shoved him at me and that was that. I think I might keep him."

"I don't think he'd object," Don's eyes followed the way her face softened when the little boy pulled at her dog tags to get her attention back and she tickled his side until he giggled.

"Smile guys!" a voice called out, and without thinking about it for even a second, Don wrapped his arm around her, savouring the moment to be able to hold her in public as they posed for the photo.

"You know I love you, right?" Don murmured into her ear, his grip tightening for a moment before he let go just as the little boy's mother appeared with her arms outstretched for her son. "Maybe we'll have a couple of rugrats when we get back to the states. You looked good with a kid."

"Wow that's the most romantic way anyone's ever asked me to have a baby with them."

"You mean I'm not the first to ask?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," she grinned.

"Her name was Sophie," he answered finally, his voice sounding hoarse. "She was… the military put one woman in each company and she was ours." She was mine.

"You've never spoken about her before," his son frowned. "Is she…"

"Gone?" Don finished for him, clenching his jaw in a bid not to let tears overwhelm him. "Yeah, she's gone."

It all happened so quickly, yet at the same time watching the bullet tear through her helmet played out so slowly that it felt like time almost stopped.

He felt himself moving even as he was frozen to the spot, unaware of the sound of his own strangled scream as she crumpled to the floor in a heap, dead before Shifty had managed to kill the sniper who had taken her life; her blood pouring out onto the snow along with their hopes and dreams of a future together.

"You know, I think we'd better put all of these away before supper," Don sniffed, unable to look at her smiling face for a moment longer.

"We've got ages before supper," his son argued gently, before realisation dawned upon his face. "If this is too much to be looking through all this stuff we can stop."

"I need to go to the bathroom," was Don's only answer, before he stood up and took himself off to bed, knowing that his son would be in the kitchen as quickly as possible to speak to his mother.

Not that Barbara had any idea about the woman who had first owned his heart and would forever keep part of it wherever she was.

No, Sophie was gone. An open wound that had never healed, but one that he had learned to live with over time.

She was gone. Apart from in his heart and in his mind.

And in the black and white photograph hiding in a box of memories that he would sooner forget.