If You're Reading This...

Matti's grip tightened painfully on Savannah's hands as her face twisted again, knots of muscle bulging at the corner of her jaw, contorting her face momentarily.

"Matti, you're hurting me, please."

Matti released her and studied the palms of her hands, "I'm sorry Savs, I'm so sorry." Tremors ran through her hands as she turned them over and studied the backs of them. Savannah gently pushed her fingers through Matti's, first inspecting her knuckles, chipped with scar tissue, before sliding her fingers over them and clasping gently. Her eyes pried the soldier's downcast gaze and found it empty. Nothing registered with those eyes, they were eyes trying to forget.

She raised Matti's hands to her lips and kissed them, "Matti, it's ok," She stood, and when Matti's eyes focused again landing on Savannah's fingers intertwined with hers she saw a small glimmer of tension fade from that pale pained face. She mumbled at Savannah's shoes, "Savs...I...I don't want to scare you...I'm a mess...This wasn't meant to come out now."

Savannah pulled herself closer and felt Matti press herself into the wall at the movement, her eyes dropping away to emptiness again. "Matti?" her first call returned the focus to Matti's eyes but she still didn't look up. "Was it ever going to come out? Were you ever going to tell me?"

Matti pulled her hands away and crossed them against her chest, shaking her head. Savannah touched her chin and lifted her face, catching her eyes with hers. Then Matti nodded.

Savannah's mind skittered through her thoughts, trying to distill the jumble of emotion into a sentence Matti could understand. Finally she spoke, "Matts, babes. I don't care what it looks like. It doesn't matter. To me. You're still my Matti." She moved forward, straddling Matti's lap and feeling Matti's legs twitch with tension at the sudden invasion of her space. Savannah settled against her even though it felt like she was resting against a brick wall. Matti's shoulders hunched slightly and her arms remained tightly against her chest as Savannah gently covered her enclosed fists with her hands.

Her mind reeled, casting back to Nikki for a moment, but through her confusion Savannah could only think of how long she had wished for this moment, how many times she had regretted not doing this before Matti left. She had told Matti to come back, but she never gave her something worth coming back to. And then Matti was walking toward the boarding gate and Savannah was still sitting in that booth, watching, waiting for her to turn and look back. Somehow a part of her was still waiting at that airport, waiting for Matti to turn back. Just once.

She had told herself the feeling would fade with time. It hadn't. Every day the thought grew stronger, the regret blossomed. Come back sometime kid. Come home Matti. But I won't be waiting for you. Come back and watch me hold hands with another. Hear me talk about the house her and I may buy soon. See my eyes lust for you even as we discuss mortgages. As we discuss discussions her and I have had about having kids. I'll tell you I love her then I'll ignore the emptiness in your smile if you ignore the emptiness in my eyes.

She gently lifted Matti's chin with one finger and leant forward until her forehead rested on Matti's, the tip of her nose brushed the bent bridge of Matti's and then softly settled. She waited. Matti's eyes were closed but slowly the tension dissipated from her. Her hands reached up around Savannah's neck, stroking the short sandy blond strands of hair she found there and Savannah felt her body melt into Matti's as the soldier's muscles released from their rigid protest at her presence. Matti's hands rippled through her hair then fell still, holding the back of her head and Savannah found herself suddenly at peace. Come home so I can fix this. So I can make it right. Come home so I can try.

Matti broke away first, her eyes searching Savannah's for a moment and then, not finding that shade of doubt any longer, she slowly began to undo the buttons of her shirt. Savannah's heart began to race as she caught the moment of surrender in Matti's eyes and she bent her neck and nuzzled her lips against Matti's, searching for any last trace of hesitation Matti may have.

*

"Captain?"

The tall lanky man spun at the sound of Matti's voice, "Hey Doc, what can I do for you?"



Matti fidgeted with the manila envelope in her hands and the Captain's face frowned, "Matt, you're wasting your time..."

"Please Captain," Matti handed him the envelope, "Her address is in there, please, as my friend and someone who knew my father well, all I ask is you stay with her when she reads it. Just make sure she's okay."

"You've never given me one before." The Captain held the envelope as if it were filled with lead instead of a piece of paper.

"Just last time, when Liam tried to give me his letter for his fiancé. Just, the blood, it ruined the letter. I had to fucking rewrite it...I don't want that. So please."

Her mind shot back to the bloody rag of paper she had unfolded. To the spatters of maroon dried blood where Liam's boots had fallen to the floor as the doctors had cut them off.

The weight of Liam's dog tags around her neck afterwards as she tried to scrub those stains away with whatever she could find, his body cooling on the bed beside her.

The dark purple welts of blood pooling beneath her skin where her fists had smashed against the shower wall as she let the water wash over her. Icy cold. Deep red rivulets washing over her uniform, finally fading to clear liquid and carrying the last touch of Liam she had down the drain.

The coppery tang of fresh blood that filled the air as she tried to dig out the tiny flecks of dried blood and mud still left under her fingernails from that day.

The blot of a tear and the slow tint of red that spread over the dried brown blood on the paper as she re-wrote the letter Liam had written to the woman he loved.

The cloying wash of blood over her taste buds as she bit at her lip, standing motionless, watching. Her eyes seeing nothing but darkness, forcing her to wrestle with the letter she knew she had to write. Minutes turning to hours as the longest night faded and the dawn slowly washed color into the flag draped over Liam's coffin. Blue. White. Red.

The Captain broke her silence, "Roger that. But I'm just going to hand it back to you in a few months. You're wasting my time Sergeant."

Matti smiled. "It'd be my pleasure to waste your time Captain. I just..."

The Captain nodded. He knew how the rest of that sentence went. He had heard it from her father once. His shoulders slumped in defeat and Matti felt the struggle that had raged inside her from that night guarding Liam's coffin begin to ebb.

She turned and made her way out of the control center before she could request the letter back. As she crossed the sand and dust to the waiting helicopters she felt every step that took her further from the letter dragged a little more uncertainty from her. By the time she met Jacob, waiting with their packs under the rotor wash of their helicopter, she felt completely at ease. There was nothing left to do but to get on with it now.

The circles under Jacob's eyes told a different story. He had struggled since the death of Liam. But he had stopped calling her Sergeant in the field and reverted to 'Boss' like everyone else, a few extra magazines had appeared in his webbing, and she had seen him open a package containing an assortment of non-issue combat application tourniquets and blood coagulant granules that had disappeared quietly into his pockets. She smiled ruefully, she was almost sure the extra tourniquet was ordered with her in mind. They had grown close and his every move was almost an echo of her, in another time and place they may have been mistaken for twins. She grabbed her pack from him and leant forward to yell in his ear, "You take point today."

Jacob stared at her, "Really boet?"

Boet, brother, despite being female she still earned the title from this young man. She smiled at his sudden break into the Afrikaans language of his childhood as his excitement caught hold of him and she nodded, imitating his thick accent in her reply, "Ja my brother, you're ready. You've earned it, Boettie."

She paused long enough to watch his face burst into a grin before she hunched down to dash through the dust being kicked up by the rotor wash. He may have signed on as infantry, but she was turning him into a medic. Slowly.

*

Matti never faltered, her lips deepening the kiss with abject certainty. Satisfied, Savannah leant back, her hands cupped Matti's face and she kissed her forehead, then the tip of her nose and finally back to her lips as her hands moved down her neck, across her shoulders, and down over her chest until her hands caught up with Matti's as they fumbled with the stiff buttons. She pushed them away, her stomach lurching, as she broke the last few buttons free of their clasps and dragged Matti's shirt off her shoulders. Excitement? Trepidation? Matti sat up to let her rip the offending material from her arms and her lips found Savannah's again as her shirt clattered to the floor. Beneath a plain white tee shirt clung to Matti's torso and Savannah paused, her eyes probing Matti's, searching for an answer as her fingers fiddled with the plain white cotton.

"I don't have to...I mean it's okay if you want to keep this on..." her eyes strayed to where it rubbed against that scar on her neck.

Matti's eyes focused on hers and she shook her head.

"It's fine Matts, really. I don't need you to take it off..."

Matti shook her head again and reached down, helping Savannah to pull the shirt up over her arms and head. Smooth bronzed skin greeted her but the muscular physique was rent with red raw scars.

*

The choppers dropped them a few clicks south of a village in the last darkness before dawn and they began their patrol. They walked, they crouched, they sat in the rubble and snacked, they dropped to one knee and sucked tepid water through a tube. The sun swung overhead. Villages passed. Deserted. They dashed across shallow rivers. Kicked dust up over open fields. Pushed through waist high poppy plants. The sun descended. The distinct lack of local people put the soldiers on edge but a small sliver of hope approached as the end of the patrol inched closer. To break the growing unease Matti had started to dig into Jacob and, having once been 'the kid' a long time ago, she knew exactly how best to go about it.

"Jacob, so we had a bet how long you would last out here, all that white pasty skin and blond hair and that hot chick you left back home" she grinned as someone wolf whistled, "and Drake here bet the longest at six months. But it's been six months and one day and you've lost me a hundred bucks. So first – fuck you." She paused at the top of a canal embankment and flipped him the bird with her gloved hand as Drake did a little fist pump, "And second, you seem to have earned the right to a nickname. So, after much consultation amongst the lads, we have decided you now answer to Boet and Boettie only. Understand?" Jacob had begun to guffaw when gunfire rang out and the patrol broke, sliding into the waist deep muddy water in an attempt to find cover.

Matti hunched down and followed Drake and Jacob as they made their way along the ditch toward a few buildings and thicker foliage. Jacob had taken the lead and led them closer to the cover of some buildings where he carefully selected a place to climb out of the festering ditch water. Drake began to climb out but he was not moving along the same route out that Jacob had safely traversed.

Matti instinctively began to yell at him, "Drake, no. Get out where Jacob di....". Suddenly Jacob had Drake's hand and had hauled him out of the water and Drake was moving rapidly to the corner of the building to provide cover. Jacob grinned confidently and leant down to help Matti who just shook her head and took the hand he offered her, "Thanks Boet."

He grinned a proud smile at her acknowledgement before she looked down to carefully plant her boots in Drake's deep footprints. She felt him take a step backwards and begin to lean back to haul the weight of her and her gear from the canal. Her ears registered a quiet snap of plastic and she froze, still staring down at her feet.

Later she would be thankful that she was looking down and didn't see the explosion rip out of the wall behind Jacob and cut through him as his body inadvertently shielded her from the worst of the blast.

The explosion lifted her up and threw her across to the other side of the canal. She screamed. There was no pain, it seemed a miracle she was unhurt but her legs would not respond. She rolled over and flicked the safety off her weapon and began to drag herself toward the lip of the canal, afraid Jacob was drowning in the water, or in his own blood. She dragged her broken body forward, feeling an insistent tugging every time she dragged herself forward, a tugging that turned to screaming agony and her eyes blurred red. Red. Blue. White. Sunrise. Not again.

She couldn't watch the sunrise fill another draped flag again. She screamed Jacob's name again and shook the blood away, focusing on the lip of the canal where she would find him, had to find him.

Then there were hands on her, taking her weapon, dragging her out of the spattered water and the mud. Dragging her as she registered the crack of a rifle close by and returned fire in the general direction. An RPG swirled out of the darkness gathering at the edges of her vision and she fired back. Still the hands dragged at her.

Her leg bounced over the ground in an odd way. She looked away. The sun was setting, not rising. Sunset...but the sky still shone red, white and blue.

Another set of hands on her then. Holding her down as she kicked at them and ordered them to help her find Jacob. Faces and voices, sharp but uncertain. The ringing in her ears began to subside and she could hear sporadic muffled radio static and crackling orders from the broken earpiece of her radio set. They made no sense. She fought to stand. To find Jacob. There was blood everywhere. He must be hurt. Drake was there, he was screaming at her over and over, "What do I do Doc? What do I do?".

She yelled at him to bring Jacob to her.

"No Doc, Jacob is... he's gone. What do I do about you?"

She looked down, blood seeped from flesh torn from her body, turning to mud as it mixed with the dust of the Afghan desert. And her leg really didn't seem to be right at all.

The rotors thumped steadily, flashing shadows across her vision as the blurry figures around her struggled with the stretcher. Someone leaned over her, peered at the crumpled paper of notes pinned to her chest and pointed, his lips moving without sound. The ringing was back in her head. Drake spoke with him, shook his head. They both turned to the helicopter. Drake paused, took her hand and looked into her eyes, his lips pressed into a thin grimace. Then he let go and took the black bag the helicopter medic handed to him then the folded flag. Blue. White. Red. Red. Red. Again. It was happening again.

Matti reached for the letter in her pocket and a moment of panic hit her when she realized her shirt had been cut away. Then Savannah was there. Touching her hand the same way she had at the airport, it wasn't a friendly touch, it was a patient touch. How had she not felt the difference? She was waiting. Always waiting. Matti mumbled, "I'm sorry. I didn't know. I denied it. I told myself you were just being polite, friendly. That Nikki made you happy. I didn't want to...to unsettle you...to make you fight...I..."

Savannah smiled and shook her head, "Come home. Just come home."

She reached out for Savannah, "The Captain's got it. He's got your letter. Just so you know..."

Savannah looked down at her, "I don't need your letter Matts, I know and I've always known. I was just waiting for you. Waiting for you to grow older. Then waiting for you to come back to me, to see the way I feel...to tell me you felt the same. I have always been waiting for you to say what I needed to hear to make me fight that fight for you. For us."

Then she was gone and the medic was there, he wiped the blood from her eyes and shone a torch into them. "Your war is over for a while soldier. Just rest now, we'll get you home."

*

Matti's fingernails dug into Savannah's waist as she stared at the scars. Finally she dropped the cotton shirt and moved to touch the welts, hesitating until Matti nodded. Her fingers traced a large slightly hollowed scar from Matti's collarbone to where it disappeared under her sports bra. She pushed her fingers under the elastic chest band and began to follow another scar down her ribs. Thick knots of twisted tissue spotted down her left side and Savannah's fingers followed them down into her waist belt. Matti shifted uncomfortably underneath her and Savannah snapped back from her haze.

"You were there."

Savannah frowned in confusion so Matti continued, "I saw you in the medevac helicopter, telling me..." she floundered then continued, "You were with me."

Savannah ran the backs of her fingers over Matti's cheek, "What was I telling you Matti?" she paused, noting the confused insecurity on Matti's face, "It's okay Matts, you can tell me anything."

Matti drew a deep breath in, "You were telling me how long you waited, in so many ways, for me to...to...be ready for this, for us." Savannah felt a sudden clarity and gripped Matti, bending down to kiss her, "For this?"

Matti nodded and she hesitated for a moment, afraid of hurting her again, but the soldier arched her back up and kissed Savannah fiercely, her hands snaking up under her shirt. Savannah returned the kiss, caressing Matti's bared chest, raking down her neck and across the back of her shoulders. She broke away breathlessly, "Matti, I don't want to hurt you..."

Matti smiled, "Sav, what do you want to do?"

Savannah stared at her for a moment then leant forward and whispered a sweet release, "Right now? Right now I want to fuck you."

Matti grinned cheekily and tugged Savannah's shirt up and over her head, sitting up and kissing her neck as she untangled her arms from the material. The soldier's hands were still rough against her skin and she shuddered as they began to work their way up towards her bra, sliding beneath the fastening as Matti engaged her lips in a deep kiss. She hardly felt the clips come undone, but the next thing her bra hung loosely from her shoulders and Matti leant back to drink in the sight of her breasts, just large enough to hang down slightly as she leant forward. Matti reached up and gently cupped one while the fingertips of her other hand ran over Savannah's collar bone and down the side of the other breast, her fingertips fanning out and feathering the orb, brushing the aureola into a deep flush as it stood erect.

Savannah dropped her arms, letting the bra slide out of the way, suddenly shyly conscious of the hunger in Matti's eyes. She closed her eyes momentarily and reveled in the way Matti's hands felt as they flickered over her breasts, brushing the skin and gently rolling the nipples between her fingers. So right. It feels so right. She opened her eyes and reached for Matti's belt buckle, undoing it and sliding the highly polished leather from the belt loops. Matti leant back against the wall and watched her undo the button and slide her fly open, exposing a pair of plain black cotton underwear.