The footsteps slowly disappear, the grass unfurling and springing the morning dew into the air as dawn spreads her arms over the earth, bringing the news and the smiles to the country. This day of joy after years of toil, comes so swiftly, he muses as the truck pulls away on that August morn. The white fence, the mailbox and lawn, all as he remembered. Lucky he always had the home to fall back to while holding the last foxhole, the same love to remember when he threw himself into the new, the white silk fanning open above the church. 

The things he'd seen, the things he'd heard. The wife he'd barely seen, the son he'd never known. All the maybes and somehows and desperate wishes. All the times where the darkness had swept in only to be driven back by the light of flashes and the grind of boots, and yet... here he stood, at 34 Setter's Avenue, ME. The Summer they had smelt rain and churned earth. The Autumn they had heard the swish of sails and seen the brightness of orange. The Winter they felt flying splinters and falling trees. The spring, they had tasted river water and the bitterness of glory. 

He had travelled, and yet never before seen a more golden dawn, heard a more cheerful bird chorus or smelt fresher grass; as if he had never been able to sense anything before, and yet... there was something missing. One, Two, Three, Four, Five. The cobblestones to the door past under his feet, shrinking from a victor's footsteps, not from fear but pity. And here he stands, pack over his shoulder, hand reverberating from the force of his knock. 

She opens the door, apron still tied tight, hair held long and eyes widening by the second. Her teeth showing a brilliant white as she smiles, tightening her cheeks as her eyelids fold like petals. That smile, the face of an angel bestowing redemption upon a sinning knight, and all the years crumple and fold like the final foe, and he allows himself that same casual grin he hasn't worn for many Decembers. 

“I'm back.”