“Might help you feel a bit more like yourself again,” I said as I handed it over. Omen’s hand took the small bottle, minus two fingers I’d tried not to glance at. Couldn’t hold back the wince. “Felt like something you’d use.”

  “Sandalwood,” he breathed, holding the cap against his nose, a distant depth in his voice. “I like it. How did you know?”

  I wasn’t gonna tell him how much I remembered the times he’d been applying it to his wrists, talking up some girl across town who he was so sure he’d beguile this evening. Even when he’d been halfway across the hills, the smell reminded me of him. I don’t think it ever wouldn’t. “Just saw it in the shop after my lunch break, and wanted to bring you something nice. You kept saying how awful it is to be stuck here so long, not feeling like yourself. You’re gonna need something to get going again once you’re out of here, right?”

  He chuckled warmly from the bed. Today I’d found him sitting up, a novelty. It stoked a hope in my heart. “Maybe earlier than that. There’s a gal in the walking group from down the valley, telling me about the smell of the sea air, watching her uncles in the fishing boats and wanting to be out there too one day. She’s doing a bit better than me, almost ready to go, and she was…” he strained to lift an arm, pointing at one of the tables just out of his curtained doorway. “There. After the walking group went round. We kept chatting for, like, an entire hundred. I told her plenty of my own stories back. It was so good, Mori. I felt like a real person again for the first time in so damned long.”

  “That’s great. What about seeing your family again? That’ll help, won’t it?”

  “I… Yeah.” He exhaled mightily. “My sisters and parents, I suppose they must miss me. I wanna see them again, talk with them. Show them I’m still strong, tell them… only what they need to know. What they should know of me. Share some time. Share some laughs. With how the war’s going, I’d be lucky if I got more than a few days away,” he added, his voice lighter than I expected. “Expect I’ll be needed back.”

  I glanced across him. “And what if they recalled you earlier than that? Straight from here back to the battlefield?”

  A flash of concern crossed his face. “Well… Yeah, I’d understand. All of us need to do our part and there’s endless honour and glory in it, so of course I’d commit myself from horn to tail. I’m strong enough. I’d be brave.” He spoke grand words, but it felt like he was having to force them out. “We’re all part of the effort, right? We need to work together to succeed and show up for our captain. Oh hey, Mori,” he added, “how come I didn’t see you around up there?”

  “I’m a messenger,” I said quickly. “They thought I’d help better that way. I did say so.”

  “Ah. Yeah. Of course, of course,” he said. “Can always count on Mori to deliver what you need to hear.” A stray thought caught him, took his gaze wandering the curtain walls of his cubicle. “I’d do my part,” he said absently, “but I do want to see my folks again. When I got… hurt, I worried I’d die without getting back to them. Trapped on your back and with your whole head and body wrapped up in bandages, you’re basically straitjacketed inside yourself. Alone with your thoughts. I had no idea how bad things were with me, only they must be bad, and I just… Hands were all over me, feeding me paste, making me drink bitter water, poking around my wounds and my face and my shoulder. At the time, I wished I could have spoken. Told them to stop. To leave me. Put me back on the field and let me bleed out like I should have done. I didn’t want this. I wanted an honourable end, not this exhausted half-life I’m never gonna be able to fix. Not… this,” he said with a derisory gesture across himself. “I wish I could have told them to stop and leave my body alone.”

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  I neared him, crouched down, laid a hand beside him. His words were thick with emotion and they wrapped tight around my heart. Omen had never sounded like this before – he sounded so… real. I would’ve said something but he coughed and choked down something, held up a finger to me. I waited for him. “I was stuck on that for forever,” he croaked. “I’m never gonna be me again. Never the same again. Always worse than what I was. So I’m gonna sound crazy when I say this, but the first time I stood up was…” His eyes wandered the curtains again, finally settling on me. “Euphoric. That’s what they call it, right, Mori? I felt like a hero. Don’t know why. And then a week later, I walked. Same feeling again. Then I walked with you and we only went a hundred paces down some forsaken hall of this forsaken hospital and it felt… beautiful. Like I’d never known how incredible a damned hall could look and sound and – okay, the smell is less than desirable, but who says I can’t go beyond these walls?” He eyed me. “Do I sound crazy?”

  “I don’t think so. Either that or we all are. I think you’ve been through something awful and I’m… I’m so glad you survived, Omen. That’s something. More than you know, I think. Sure it won’t be the same but –”

  He held up a finger again. “It can still be good. That’s what I missed for all those weeks, months, I dunno… Even if it’s not what it was, things can still be good.” He heaved a heavy breath. “I don’t know if I wanted to die, but I sure as the hells didn’t want to live. Not the life I knew I’d have going forward. And now I know I don’t wanna die. I wanna do stuff. Even if it’s small. I wanna be something, even if it’s not what I was gonna be. Fight the battles. Go on walks. Feel like a hero. Wear the fragrance you got me,” he said as he swung an arm towards his bed stand and nearly knocked the bottle over. “I’ve got another chance I might not have had. I wanna take it with everything I’ve got. Or at least everything I’ve got left,” he said with a hearty chuckle.

  “So,” I asked, apprehension twisting my guts, “does that include going back to fight again?”

  I saw a lot of things swimming in his face. I saw a barren and battered field where he didn’t get so lucky the second time around, and I saw a cottage in the forest we could share so far away from it all. Mostly I saw my closest companion for so many years, and all the things that kept driving us apart. “We all have to do our part, Mori. We know that. We can’t mess around like when we were kids. ‘Honour before honours’. Be brave, and keep faith in the captain – he keeps us all close to his heart.”

  My own heart sank, the cottage faded, and the battlefield grew heavier. I couldn’t lose Omen again. My grip tightened on the side of his bed. “Of course you’d say that here: you’ve always been his favourite, his champion. It’s not to do with a lack of bravery or trust. Where’s Oldfield while you’ve been hurt? Not at your side like I’ve been.”

  “Busy, Mori,” he chided. “He’s our town’s commander. He gets an evening off every other week right now. He spends it in a tavern and he deserves it. It’s not a big deal. Not a deal at all. You could do with a little more trust in who leads you.”

  My pulse pounded and I stared Omen square in the face. Saw many, many things. Did I see the Omen from my treasured memories? “Trust me – he loses interest in you real quick if you’re not useful to him.”

  “Doesn’t everyone do that?” he said. He shrugged weakly. “I don’t wanna be mean, Mori, but maybe if you’d actually tried during all his training camps he worked his horns off for, to help improve us and keep the town strong, you’d see the best sides of him, yeah? You’ve always been kinda disrespectful to him.”