a string of black beads

He found it in an old drawer, half-caught beneath the splintering wood. A dogtag. He smoothed it with a fingertip, made out the symbols: military id, minister number. A school he might have attended, had they stayed. Without thinking, he slipped the tarnished chain around his own neck, tucking it beneath his shirt. So long unworn, it was chilled against his skin.

He didn't know just when his fingers began to seek it out, a nervous habit-- fingers worrying at its chipped edge, thumb resting across a name he barely knew... the cross at his throat remaining unspoiled with fingerprints.

She never considered her silence a weakness, until she saw the grieving on his face.

There were days at a time when she simply forgot to speak. (Even if she were to speak, there would be the matter of no one knowing how to listen. When one has so few words, it is more than tragedy when one is misunderstood.)

The words rose and bubbled inside her, only to burst unspoken on her tongue. Fighting to speak was like being held underwater and struggling to surface, burning with the memory of breathing.

(It would be so much easier to drown.)

Their house is a simple one, but there is sweetness in the after-dinner warmth between them. (They move together to clear their table, but decide that the dishes can wait until tomorrow.) Brother sits thoughtful in his favorite chair, mulling over a cup of steaming tea; sister sits between his knees, bare toes rosy in the flickering firelight.

After a while, when his tea has cooled, he might plait her hair, familiar fingers deft and absent-minded in the pale braids. She leans into his touch-- grateful for his silence as he is grateful for the weight of her against him.

He hadn't stopped running since he'd heard about the purge. Too sure he'd find the boy facedown, smears of his own blood on his fingers. (He wondered, to the cadence of his racing heart, if he'd have anything left to fear, if that were so.)

Finally at headquarters, skidding past the bleeding wreckage of false faith, he saw--

The boy. His boy. With his gun still holstered at his hip, his face breathless pale but yet unstained. Greeting him only with familiar disdain: "You! You did this? How could you?"

He threw his head back, laughed until it hurt. Allelujah.