Fallen

Ryan lay in the cold night grass, staring up at the sky, searching for her star. The one they’d seen that first time he held her, the first time they’d kissed, the first time they’d come together for comfort. The one they’d both watched from the barred window of their six by six cell for 438 days. The one he’d not been able to find in the hundreds of days since she’d volunteered to go.

           “It’s just there,” Lyssa pointed out, “can’t you see it.”

           He rolled his head toward the sound of her voice as his palm swept flat against the manicured lawn, searching for her warmth, and not finding it. “Show me,” he whispered into the darkness.

           “Right there,” she breathed, the way she’d done so many times before, with lips tickling alongside his neck. “See the three stars of Orion’s belt, it’s just to the left and up a bit.”

           Ryan squinted at the sky, searching, and searching. “Maybe I’ve had too much to drink tonight.”

           “Or smoked too much weed,” she teased, “You’re impaired, Sergeant Peck. When command finds out about this, they’ll throw the book at you.”

           “Wouldn’t feel it anyway.”

           “You’ll feel it in the morning.”

           Ryan closed his eyes and let himself remember the reason for his visit, the reason he needed to find what little piece of her remained. “What did you think was going to happen?”

           “I knew what was going to happen. So did you.” Lyssa was resigned, calm, she’d always been able to find acceptance, where he’d been stubborn and combative. “What I don’t understand is why the Army didn’t come to get us. Have they told you?”

           “They didn’t know we’d never gotten back in the truck. Rollins was just coming to get us, remember?” He rolled away from her and rocked into a sitting position. When his head stopped spinning, he reached for a beer and popped the top.

He recalled the hot sandy day, the crowded streets shadowed by the fragmented shells of once-glorious buildings reduced to rubble. He’d gone to one of his sources, a fat squatty man with bushy black eyebrows hovering over puffy eyes. Lyssa crouched next to his hovel, talking to the little girls in flawless Farsi. They’d heard the explosion. People screamed and ran from the flame engulfed truck, creating chaos and disorder.

           Lyssa used her small stature to push through the crowd running toward the danger. He’d been behind her, just a few seconds, his height and bulk, making it challenging to get headway. As they turned onto the main street, he knew—she knew, their team was gone. No one could have survived. The windows of nearby cars and businesses were shattered, smoke and flames climbed out of the blackened corpse of the track. People, crying out for help, with faces bloody, clothes covered in dirt, and mud, wandered aimlessly begging for help.

           “Rollins,” Lyssa sniffled as she spoke the names with reverence, “White, and Stone.”

           “Yeah,” he took a swig of his beer.

           “Just gone. Rollins never thought he’d come home—I think he knew something would happen.” Lyssa was quiet for a moment, and when she next spoke, her voice was clogged, “White, damn I miss her laughter and the way she blushed every time she cursed. That was one girl the military couldn’t take the farm out of…and Stone was a new daddy. Hadn’t even seen his daughter. It breaks my heart.”

           “I saw her and his wife. I went there to apologize. To see if they were okay.”

           “And are they?”

           He rolled his head toward her, “Are we ever? You lose someone you love like that, and you can’t ever let go. She’s trying. Livin’ with his folks, and I think that helps keep her close to him.”

           He once again turned his eyes toward the sky, searching for that familiar speck of light. “I guess that’s why I’m here,” Ryan admitted with the mouth of his beer set against his lips, “To be closer to you.”

           “I know.”

           Ryan finished off his beer and took the last one out of the case. “The military thought we were all in there. It’s why they didn’t come looking for us. We were also about 100 miles away. Do you remember them moving us?”

           “No. I remember pain and darkness.”

           “Me too,” he glanced over his shoulder, “until they put you and me in the same cell. I think they thought we’d talk to each other.”

           “We did.”

           “Just not about what they wanted us too.” Ryan looked up to the heavens. Those first few months as the enemy’s prisoner were the worst, daily beatings, rotted food, mind games, shouting, fear…so much fear. The military trains it’s soldiers to handle themselves, and he did, but it’s not at all what he’d imagine. The depravity and the hatred made for one hell of a nightmare.

           “We were stronger together.”

           “Then why did you volunteer?” Ryan croaked, his eyes stinging from the tight clamp of his jaw, his fists curling around the bottle until he knew just a little more pressure would break it.

           Lyssa said nothing. Just as she did that morning when they’d come and asked for one of them to go with them. He’d started to rise, anything to protect the woman he’d come to love more than the air and the moon and the stars – more than his own life. He didn’t know what happened. One moment she was leaning against the hard, stone wall with him, and the next she was standing, squaring her shoulders, and asking to be the one. There was pride in her voice.

A man, dressed all in black, his head covered with a swatch of fabric shielding all but his eyes, stepped forward. As he turned her around and bound her wrists, he saw the machete strapped to his waist. She held her chin up, her eyes forward, as they put a black bag over her head, and took her away.

“Why, Lyssa?”

“So, they would come find you."

Ryan laid back in the grass and let his hand search the grass for hers. “I’m not sure I wanted to be found. Not like that.” It hurt to say those words aloud. To put a voice to the tornado of emotions warring inside him.

They lay in silence until the sky turned pale, and the new day spread across the earth. He got up. Packed up the empty bottles and pocketed his weed.

He stopped next to the white cross pitched into the ground, and took one final look at the sky with hope, but deep inside, he knew the light would never shine on him again. You can’t find a star once it’s fallen.