me: 5 is a nice number, i'll write 3 more chapters and finish this at 5 :)
also me: lmao what if i keep writing and have to split this into 2 parts

thank you for the reviews! excuse me while i feel like the crypt keeper that someone was 9 years old when i first started this fic, rip.

title from "jackie's strength" by tori amos.

so i show you some more, and i learn

july 1920

"Did you have to get married in the summer?" Jem asks, panting, lugging one of the trunks into the hallway. Sweat drips from his red curls, and he shoves them back from his face. "Damn. Is it hotter in Toronto than on the Island?"

"Yes," Shirley says matter-of-factly, dragging another trunk past him. "No sea breeze."

They've made this trip several times this summer, in various configurations of family and friends. The Fords helped Walter find a small house to rent in the outskirts of Toronto, and slowly, in pieces, Walter has begun to move his life across the miles. This is the last trip, he hopes. They've found furniture and brought over some of the bulkier heirlooms, like Mrs. Rachel Lynde's bedspreads and the one Green Gables rug that Mother had been able to bear parting with. The bulk of the trunks are his books, Walter has to admit.

This time only Jem and Shirley have accompanied him, and Ken has come over from his parents' home. Jem and Ken keep up a steady stream of talk about work and this year's Stanley Cup and World Series. Shirley is quiet, as he always is, bringing everything in with silent efficiency. He replies when they directly speak to him and once, unprompted, to correct Ken's recollection of the Ottawa Senators' scores. He's being downright outgoing, for Shirley.

When they're done, Walter walks from room to room, taking in the reality that this will be his home soon, that he'll share this house with Una. They'll share the little table in the kitchen, the space on the bookshelves, and — this thought coils tightly within him — the one bed in the bedroom.

The bed looks different, too, and Walter frowns at it — then realizes that there have been wooden rails bolted to its sides, to help leverage himself in and out. He can walk a fair distance without his cane now, but standing and sitting are still struggles, and likely always will be. The rails are Jem's idea, he's sure, and Ken and Shirley must have helped. He runs a finger over the shiny wood, slightly mismatched to the color of the bedframe, wondering how Jem brought it up to the others. The thought of them discussing his injury is just a little humiliating — but then, with an exhale, his shame escapes and he is only grateful that his brothers thought to do this for him.

Ken nips out and brings them back dinner from his mother, and after they eat, they lay out blankets in the front room and collapse for the night.

"Ah, the floor," Jem says. "Just like old times, eh?"

There's a low rumble of amusement from Ken. Walter chuckles faintly, conceding the joke, but he doesn't say anything. He wishes Jem wouldn't bring up the war. Jem believes in the sacrifice they made, still, believes it all had to be done — to defend Belgium, to turn Canada into a nation of its own, to drive Prussian barbarism from the world. Barbarism. If that is the domain of the enemy, then what is the word for when Walter's compatriots threw grenades into a trench of sleeping men, for when they attacked blindly, killing anything in front of them? For a moment, the ceiling blurs and Walter thinks he can see a hole in a wooden hut, the stars of Flanders above him.

"I'd say you owe us, Walt," Ken says, and Walter takes a slow breath, seeing the light of the electric street lamps on the ceiling once again. "But I'm thinking I'll just hire movers, and Jem here — you're not going very far from the Glen, are you?"

Walter knows Ken is simply deferring to his bad leg and decides to repay the kindness by not calling him out on it.

"I guess Shirley's next, then," Ken says. "You got a girl, Shirley?"

Shirley doesn't say anything, and Walter wonders if he's already asleep. Eventually Jem muses, "I used to think he and Una might've gone together. They're both so quiet. I guess that's not in the cards now, though." After a moment, he chuckles. "Hey, Ken, how about Persis?"

Ken makes a sound of disgust. "She's dead gone on some ass whose father owns…some publishing company or another. I swear, if she marries him and he becomes my brother-in-law…"

They laugh and then go silent when the laughter fades, Jem's even, quiet snoring filling the room. It brings Walter back to when they were just kids, sharing the room under Ingleside's sloping roof, and he swallows hard at hearing the familiar sound once more.

To his left, he hears a rustling, then the sound of Shirley getting up, then the sound of a door creaking open. Anxiety spikes through Walter and he fumbles to his feet. He can't imagine where Shirley would go, but — well, that's Shirley's way, isn't it? Walter wouldn't put it past him to simply walk out, walk all the way to the closest train station in the dark, then take a ferry back to the Glen without a word.

As it turns out, Shirley has only gone out to the back porch, a slab of fenced-in wood just big enough for a bench, jutting into the small garden. A cigarette glows orange between his fingers.

"Susan won't like that," Walter says, more for a lack of anything else to say. Of course Shirley smokes now, just as Jem does, just as Walter sometimes did with the other men in his unit. Shirley isn't the gangly, innocent adolescent Walter left behind in 1915. He is twenty-two years old; he has medals from his service and calluses on his hands and something sarcastic about his face, where once there was only a soft humor.

A wry smile barely touches the corner of Shirley's mouth, before he proceeds to inhale some smoke anyway. "She hasn't caught me yet."

Walter returns the faint smile, limping out to where Shirley is standing at the rail. He braces himself against it and stares out at the garden. It's a little overgrown now, he thinks. He and Una will need to prune it a bit, plant proper flowers. Pansies or violets, maybe.

Shirley doesn't say anything more, but he isn't telling Walter to go away, either. Walter casts about for something to say, but finds himself coming up short. Here in the dark, in the quiet on the edge of the city, it feels wrong to ask about college classes or football.

"Ignore Jem," Walter says, after a moment. "He always jokes like that. He just never had the chance with you until now."

"I know," Shirley says simply.

They lean against the porch rail, Walter facing forwards, Shirley facing back. Walter tips his head up, staring at the night sky. The stars are fainter here in Toronto, as though there's a veil separating them from the world of mere mortals. It stirs a poem in Walter's mind, the thought of passage between this world and the next — souls floating up into the sea of stars, turning small and insignificant and swallowed by something celestial.

"Is that why you wanted to fly?" Walter asks quietly, watching the sky. "Did you want to just…reach the stars and give yourself up to whatever's out there?"

"Naw. I just like planes."

Walter has to laugh just a little. He should've known Shirley would respond like that, although Walter isn't sure if his brother is being honest or merely deflecting. Shirley has always been good at that, always ready with a wry joke or dry comment, never saying what he's really thinking or feeling.

I used to think he and Una might've gone together, Jem's voice comes back to him.

"Shirley," he says slowly, "you're not…you don't wish…you're alright with Una and I marrying, aren't you?"

Shirley chuckles, shaking his head. "'Course I am. It's not that."

"What is it, then?"

A faint breeze in the humid evening stirs the overlong grass in the garden. A dog is barking somewhere in the neighborhood, a few streets away.

Finally Shirley says, "I did have a girl. Not that it matters."

"Why doesn't it matter?"

"Because she's leaving."

"What do you mean, leaving?"

"Her father just got out of prison."

Walter stares. "Why was he in prison?" Good God, was it always this difficult to get a story out of Shirley before? Had he ever tried?

Shirley inhales deeply, stamping out his cigarette. "Her parents are German. They arrested her dad during the war."

"Why? Was he a spy, or — "

"He wasn't anything." Shirley snorts. "He got sick in prison. Can't work. So they're going west to stay with family. Somewhere in Alberta, I think. So — " He shrugs.

So. That's Shirley's way of indicating he's done, but Walter is only just beginning to think, to try and comprehend. So this is yet another fine thing done in the name of king and country. They've torn up the landscape of France, left thousands of bodies sunken in the earth, and arrested fathers and brothers on the other side of the ocean. How grand it all feels.

"You won't follow her?" Walter asks quietly. "If you still care…"

"And then what?" Shirley asks, just as softly. "Bring her to the Island? Do you think they'd welcome her with open arms? Even our parents…" He presses his lips together. "I wouldn't do that to her."

Walter thinks of Una, the brush of her fingers on his burned skin when she told him, I would be happy with you. Do you think I care for — any of this? Their women are stronger than they are given credit for. What if Shirley tries? What if he —

"Shirl," he starts, but Shirley is already turning away, hunching over another cigarette to light it.

"Just forget it."

Walter sighs, knowing that once Shirley is done talking about a thing, he won't speak of it again — he learned this nearly a decade ago, when Shirley mentioned he liked Jules Verne and Walter had futilely attempted to engage him in a longer conversation about 19th-century literature.

Besides, Shirley has a point, puncturing Walter's romantic sensibilities about chivalry and love triumphant. Their parents might eventually accept this girl's origins, but a criminal father is something else entirely — to say nothing of what Susan would think. It doesn't matter whether or not the charges were true. Yes, people know now that the frenzied excitement of 1914 was foolish naïveté — but still, Walter does not think they can ever understand that so much of the last six years were simply lies — bayonetted infants, enemy aliens lurking in their midst, your son's death was instantaneous and without suffering…

"So damn pointless," he mutters, belatedly realizing that it sounds like he's calling Shirley's problems pointless.

To his surprise, though, Shirley understands his meaning. "Maybe," he allows. "But it happened. Can't undo it, Walt."

"Mm." Shirley's not wrong about that, and yet — "You don't ever think about it? If we could've…" He doesn't finish, because he doesn't truly know himself. Saved all those men from death? Saved their own souls? Would it have been enough to sway all those faceless generals and government officials, if men like Walter had simply refused?

"We had to go," Shirley says. "Maybe not for all that rot about honor and glory — but just to end it, one way or another. So the war shouldn't have happened. I don't know how much good it would've done to sit on the sidelines, looking on and thinking about how wrong it is."

It's the most Shirley has ever said in Walter's presence, and Walter is ashamed to admit it takes him off-guard. He'd barely expected Shirley to have an opinion, much less voice it aloud.

He looks down at his hands, wondering if Shirley is right. Walter knows their poems and letters weren't really what ended the war, just as insulting Dan Reese never shut him up until Walter's fists met his face. And some things, too, were true — Walter remembers, still, the chill that had spread over him reading the fate of the Lusitania, the dreams of white faces sinking into the cold, dark Atlantic. Of course they had to stop such things. Of course.

And yet — he thinks of faces sinking into the mud in France; not white, streaked with dirt and blood instead. What horrors did they really stop, in the end?

"Is that how you live with it?" he asks finally.

Shirley blows out some smoke. "I guess it is."

"Look at you," Faith says, beaming. "I can't believe of all of us, you're leaving. For Toronto! Do you remember how you wept when we had to leave Maywater?"

"You never told us that," Di Blythe says.

"She wept buckets," Faith says with a chuckle. "Well, we all did — Mother had just passed, and we were leaving all our friends and the house we were born in. But Una was the most afraid we'd never get along in the Glen — and just think, Una, you never would've met Walter if we hadn't came here! And I would've never met Jem," she adds with a sigh.

Una only smiles at the tale, looking down at her sewing. It has been a whirlwind summer, between the graduations, preparing to move, finishing her trousseau, helping Nan and Mary with theirs, and then finally Nan and Jerry's wedding itself. Ingleside will have seen two weddings by summer's end, although Rilla has staked claim to the House of Dreams for hers — but that will not be until winter. Ken has taken a post in Montreal for the summer, and the Fords want plenty of time to plan what is likely to be the most elaborate wedding seen in Four Winds. He'll be visiting for Walter and Una's wedding, though, of course. Di had murmured that she'll have to avoid him; the sight of her baby sister sweethearting with Ken Ford might cause her to lose her lunch.

Right now, Una is taking the opportunity to do some mending, which had fallen shamefully by the wayside in all the excitement, and Mary Vance and the Blythe girls are all over to help with the rest of the wedding planning.

"It won't be so bad," she says, half to reassure Faith, half to reassure herself. She isn't so afraid of moving to Toronto, not after visiting this summer — once to see the house (their house, the thought still makes her shiver), and the next time to pick out furniture and start on the decorating, so the house won't be so bare when they return from their honeymoon. By the end of her second visit, the neighborhood had started to look familiar, with its low houses in the shadow of a church (a Catholic church, much to Susan's horror; Una will have to take the streetcar to the nearest Presbyterian congregation). It is a quiet, residential neighborhood, with trees planted on the corner of each street, and the sight of it had done much to assuage Una's fears about having to live among the towering apartment buildings and gilded storefronts she'd seen in photos.

"Joe Milgrave took Miranda to Spain for a belated honeymoon," Mary says, needle flashing as she works on a pillowcase. "Miller says he'll take me too if I want to go — he's sick of England and France isn't so nice now, what with the war, but Spain's grand. Better weather, too. But I dunno. I was thinking about New York — see one of them stage shows or films in those big theaters. You're only staying on the Island, aren't you?"

She says only as though there ought to be somewhere else Una would rather be, but there is not. She and Walter will stay ten days at the shore, their last ten days on the Island. Una can't remember the last time she was able to stop and breathe in the Island's beauty, always distracted by her friends or trying to keep up with Bruce. She's grateful to spend one last week drinking it in, saying goodbye to the Island in her own quiet way, just Walter at her side.

Mary and the Blythes take their leave after lunch, and Una takes Bruce's mended shirts up to his room, methodically folding them and leaving them on the foot of his bed to put away.

In the hallway, she pauses. It's silent up here — Rosemary is out visiting, Father is attending someone or other in the village, Bruce is with his playmates. Una slips down the hall, into the spare room. The room is nearly unrecognizable from when the Merediths had first arrived; it is clean and bright and somewhat desolate in its narrow purpose. Once Carl used to sneak in to study the mice that had nested in the feather tick and Faith would hide from Jerry in here, knowing he wouldn't dare follow her into the kingdom of mice and bedbugs. Now, only Una and Rosemary ever come in to clean it before and after the arrival of visitors.

Una hesitates in front of the closet door, listening. But no footsteps come from the hall or the stairs, and after a moment, she opens the door and slides Rosemary's old dresses and Father's spare jackets to the side, revealing the gray silk dress still hanging in the back.

She can't wear her mother's wedding dress, she knows. Years ago, she'd measured it out of curiosity and faint hope, and found that though Una and her mother were similar in height, the dress was too large in the bust and too small in the hip area. It had been a slight but still bitter disappointment to find this difference between herself and Mother, but Una would never desecrate the dress by trying to alter it.

But…someone will have to take care of it, won't they? If it's left here in the spare room closet, forgotten forever, eventually the moths will get it or damp will set in. Selfishly, Una wants to be the one to keep it. Do any of her siblings even know it's there? She's sure they wouldn't notice if she just spirited it away.

But perhaps they are just like her, remembering Mother in secret, making hidden pilgrimages to her dress and jewelry box, all the small remembrances of her presence. It would be cruel to keep it all to herself.

She goes back downstairs and finds Faith in the kitchen, sorting through their box of recipe cards.

"Oh, good, I was just about to look for you," Faith says. "Which of these do you want for your wedding cake? Choose wisely, for I'm likely to wreck it the first time 'round, so we'll need to double the recipe."

Faith has never learned to like baking — or sewing, or packing, or any of the many things she has helped Una do this summer. Una's heart swells with love for her sister.

"I'll think on it," she says. "I actually came to ask…if you…would you mind very much if I were to take Mother's wedding dress with me?"

Faith's brow wrinkles. "Mother's dress?" Then realization dawns. "I didn't realize we still had any of her clothes. Where has it been all these years?"

Silently, Una leads her to the spare room and opens the closet. She stands back and lets Faith look, unsure what to say.

"Oh," Faith breathes, reaching out to touch it. "I never even thought…I always supposed we'd left most of her things in Maywater. But of course Father brought it with him." She turns to look at Una, understanding in her eyes, the look of someone who has known Una all her life. "You aren't going to wear it yourself?"

"It wouldn't fit me," Una admits.

Faith strokes the fabric for a long moment, her eyes glassy. Una winds her arm through her sister's and they lean on each other, a faint breeze stirring the spare room curtains.

"You should take it with you," Faith finally says gently. "You knew it was here, all these years. You'd take care of it best."

"You don't think maybe — Jerry or Carl would want it?"

"What for? Jerry and Nan are already married. And if Carl's wife is anything like him, they'll get married in overalls in a swamp."

Una smiles, though her mouth is trembling. "Thank you."

Faith only pulls her close, resting her golden head atop Una's dark one. The breeze from the window stirs their hair again, and the two sisters let themselves be, in one of the lingering moments they have left.

august 1920

"Let's change and walk on the beach, shall we?" Walter says.

Una nods quickly, relieved he suggested it. They've settled in at the hotel and had supper, but it's really not that late — far too early to go to bed, with all that implies, and sitting around in the hotel room is only going to make Una think about going to bed, and — well.

She only blushes a little as she slips out of her jacket, sees Walter strip off his and put on a lighter shirt out of the corner of her eye. She has three brothers; she's not so unworldly as to be shocked by the sight of Walter in his undershirt, although — yes, it is different when it's your husband, broad-shouldered and handsome, the web of his scars just stretching over his bare upper arm. She'll see how much of him they really cover tonight, she realizes. She will see all of him, and he will see all of her.

The sun is only just beginning to set, its golden light turning everything hazy and surreal. A young family is situated on the beach in front of the hotel, their two children playing in the water, illuminated with a fiery glow. The children of tomorrow, Una thinks, fairly sure Walter has read that to her in a poem. How sweet they are, too young to be conscious of how wildly the world they were born into has changed.

They kick off their shoes and Walter rolls up his trouser legs to wade into the ocean. Una looks around, but the family is quite absorbed in each other, as are the few couples further up the beach and in the water. After only a moment of indecision, she pulls off her stockings, folds her skirt into her waistband, and follows.

"Oh, it's cold," she says, catching his arm, and Walter laughs and pulls her against him, arm around her shoulders. Their bare legs bump against each other under the water.

They wade and Walter recites soft words about breakers and sirens — not mermaids, Una notices, not anymore. Una points at a school of tiny, silvery fish just visible in the light, though they disperse as soon as they're taken notice of. It's quiet, only the hushed, insistent sound of the ocean surrounding them. Far out by the horizon, the waves crest and break, but here they only lap gently around Una's calves.

Walter kisses her, deep and lingering, his fingers finding the small hairs that have escaped her pins, toying with them and brushing the nape of her neck. Una imagines him taking her hair down and goosebumps explode over her skin, and a little sigh escapes her that she doesn't think is entirely decent. Walter pulls back, taking her face in his hands, fingers gentle over her cheekbones.

"Una," he says softly, his eyes searching hers, "are you frightened?"

"A little," she admits.

"So am I," he murmurs, and she smiles.

They linger as the sun disappears, a last brilliant flare over the water before it sinks below the horizon. They kiss again in the blue light, Walter whispering that he loves her, that it's only him, that she never needs to be afraid of him. The lights from the hotel and shore town scatter on the water, catch the dark strands of Walter's hair, and he is so beautiful, and he loves her, and no, Una is not afraid now.

She holds her hand out to him. "Let's go inside."

october 1920

"No!"

The cry jerks Una awake with a start, the mattress squeaking with her movement.

They got home late, from a dinner hosted by one of Walter's work friends. It seems as though every writer and publisher in the city wants to meet the author of "The Piper" and Battle Landscapes, the slim volume of stark poems that shocked the critics' columns upon its release; they're invited to more parties and lunches and teas than anyone ever cared to invite Una to before. Walter doesn't wish to attend all of them, but they must attend at least some, to satisfy the tangled politics of publishers and magazine owners and anthology editors.

Una had even managed to enjoy it, hiding in a corner with a few women who are becoming friends, she hopes. Every now and then, she'd darted glances across the room, catching glimpses of Walter. He'd looked so handsome and dignified, leaning on his cane, surrounded by admirers. Sometimes his gaze searched for her, too, and found her already looking at him, and he'd smile slow and secret before turning back to his scotch.

That is why he's crying out. Una knows this, has learned it over the past months. The nightmares still come on ordinary nights, sometimes — Walter wakes Una with his restless movements, the occasional sharp cry. But it is only when he's been drinking that the words come too, sobs of no and Christ and names Una doesn't recognize, names that are not among the letters Walter receives from his wartime comrades. Walter refuses to speak of the men he remembers in his dreams, who they are and what happened to them, but Una thinks she knows.

Gently, she shakes him awake. "Darling. You're having a nightmare."

He comes to with a final sob, a soft, wounded sound. In the sudden silence, he rolls to his back, staring at the ceiling. Una strokes his arm, waiting for him to speak.

"I'm sorry," Walter murmurs finally, and Una doesn't object. She told him not to be sorry, the first few times, but she knows now that he feels he must say it, doesn't want to accept sympathy as though it's his right.

"It's alright." She settles next to him, folding him into her arms. "What were you dreaming of?"

"Nothing new."

"You can tell me again."

"No, I…" His hand finds her hair, toying with her braid, spreading the strands at the end like a paintbrush. "I'm tired of talking about it tonight. There was a college student at the party tonight — he said he liked my work — so someone took it upon themselves to introduce us. And he wanted to know all about the poems, how much of them were real. He'd been too young to enlist and he looked so…enthralled. Even after everything." He sighs. "Sometimes I wonder if I've done any good, writing about it as I have."

"There have been wars before this one," Una says softly, "and poetry about wars before this one, too. You can't take all the blame yourself."

"I know. I only…" He hesitates. "He said he'd never read anything like the poetry about the war. As though it were a good thing. He said the realism, the 'brutality of language' was impressive. And I know he meant well, but..."

"I know," Una says.

Walter is quiet for a long moment. "Sometimes, I'm afraid," he whispers. "That nobody's really listening."

Una tightens her arms around him, feeling his breathing slowly even out, his heartbeat slow down under her ear.

"You'll stay, won't you?" Walter asks, and Una doesn't know if he means for now, that she won't leave their bed to bring him tea or a book, or if he means forever. But either way, her answer is the same.

"I'm not going anywhere," Una reassures him, and by the time the stars begin to fade in the gray sky, they have both fallen back asleep.

december 1920

"But where are we going?"

"You'll see," Walter says, swinging their hands as though they're children skipping in Rainbow Valley. Toronto is winter-blue with the sun and the first frost; he has his cane in his right hand and Una's hand in his left.

"Don't neglect her," Dad had said on Walter's wedding day, as he straightened Walter's collar — possibly, Walter had thought uncharitably, trying to cover up his burn scars. "That's a mistake almost every man makes — you'll be in the city, trying to establish your career, thinking about making enough money to support her. Women would rather you pay attention to them."

There has been some truth to his words, Walter must admit. He knows he sometimes works long hours at the magazine's office or doesn't go to bed with her when he stays up late, trying to edit a difficult piece. And Una is so patient, weathering the parties, the late nights, Walter's coworkers who look through her as though she's not standing at his side.

And besides — the reasons all lean on one another and fall over like dominoes when Walter thinks about them — it's nearly Christmas, their first Christmas together — Rilla and Ken are to be married in a month and Rilla will come to Toronto — Nan is expecting a baby in the spring and they'll have to visit — and then they'll have to visit the Island regularly after that, to see their expanding clan — he and Una might have a child of their own soon. The cocoon of just the two of them together is coming to an end, and Walter wants to do something while they're still in this sweet, golden haze.

The bell jingles when they enter the music shop. Walter leads Una past the rows of sheet music and the small selection of phonograph records, to a back wall lined with upright pianos under a sign: Pre-Owned, Refurbished — In Most Excellent Condition!

"Choose whichever you'd like."

Una stares. "Can we — can we afford this?" she murmurs to him. Una worries about this kind of thing, he's found, more than he thought she would. She carefully budgets their income and refuses to buy herself frivolities, no matter how often he tells her that they are doing perfectly fine. He supposes it's for the best that his wife isn't a spendthrift, but it hadn't occurred to him that Una might still be living in the days of — what had Faith called it? — ditto and secondhand stockings.

"It's Christmas," he mock-scolds. "Besides, yes, I've just sold two new poems on top of my salary. Now." He gives her a gentle push. "Go enjoy yourself."

Una walks among the pianos for a while, eyes wide and reverent. She pauses at each to play a bit, head bent close to the piano case, listening for something Walter can't hear. Really, this gift is rather selfish of him, he thinks, for he enjoys watching her almost as much as she enjoys playing.

"I like this one," Una announces, and Walter almost laughs, because it is just like Una to choose the most battered piano of the lot, faint scratches in its chestnut wood that the shopkeepers have vainly tried to buff out, and a long, deep gouge on its lid.

"The wood's a bit scratched," she admits, "but the sound is still good. And it looks like it needs a home, don't you think?"

When the piano is situated in their front room, he expects Una to play it straightaway, but she turns as soon as the delivery men leave, using his collar to leverage herself upwards to kiss him.

"This is the nicest gift I've ever received," she whispers, tugging on his collar just a little, stepping back towards the bedroom, and oh, the music will have to wait.

Walter falls on their bed and Una follows, settling in his lap, knees bracketing his hips. Her hair falls all around him when she leans in to kiss him, hands dancing down his shirt and undoing the buttons. He returns the favor, finding the buttons to her blouse under its pleats and tucks, layers falling away and pooling on the floor.

He had been just a little afraid to bare himself to her, the first time. There is the scar from the shell, stretching from knee to inner thigh, twisted and spiked like barbed wire. Then there are the burns that raced over his chest and shoulders, taking freckles and moles and childhood marks with them. The topography of his chest is lopsided and uneven now, sensation blunted by layers of scar tissue — but he can still feel enough, can still feel Una's skin warm against his, her back arching when he traces the length of her spine. Her breath always catches at the end of a sigh or a moan, a quick gasp like she's shocked at herself, and God, he loves it, he loves her. When she draws him into her body, for just this moment Walter can forget, can let himself feel whole again.

notes & fun facts:

- i recently injured my thigh so based walter's injury a little more off personal experience this time (i found out walking was OK once i got going, but i legit made noises like i was being murdered every time i had to stand up and sit down, that shit hurt)

- the german army did commit atrocities when they invaded belgium, but the extreme acts mentioned in rilla of ingleside (e.g. bayonetting babies) are now believed to have been propaganda.

- several countries interned "enemy aliens" during wwi. in canada's case, they mostly interned immigrants from eastern europe (at the time considered suspect because they were part of the austro-hungarian empire). german-born canadians/canadians of german descent were sent to camps in fewer numbers, but were still subject to surveillance and suspicion of spying, as well as general harassment and vandalism. the most obvious legacy of this is ofc kitchener, ontario, which used to be named berlin. (my family was interned in wwii so this is a topic i wanted to touch on; forgive the indulgence.)

- canada did experiment with prohibition, but it never really took off there like it did in the US. ontario had prohibition laws in place until 1927, but i figured a big city like toronto had plenty of access to alcohol regardless.

- "battle landscapes" was taken from the english translation of the movie krajobraz po bitwie ("landscape after the battle") which i just think is a really nice turn of phrase. i made the title a little plainer because people really just published volumes of poetry back then and called them like "poems" and "war poems", i swear.

- re: using the imagery of falling dominoes, weirdly domino toppling, as an Official Way to Play With Dominoes, only dates back to 1976! but i think it's safe to assume people have been knocking over dominoes way longer than that.