No Bravery | dunkirk au

EPILOGUE (Part II) - Primrose

The beginning of the future:

Tommy left when things had stabilised enough for him to do so.

The news of his departure did not come as a shock to Alex. He still remembered the way Tommy had clung to him, once, what felt like an eternity ago, after Pietro had communicated to the both of them that they were both believed to be dead by their families. He remembered the way Tommy had promised, to him and to himself, that he would've gone back home.

Now, the time had come.

Tommy himself had said so.

He had only stayed that long because he wanted to make sure that Alex would've been alright: healed both physically and emotionally (although the process was nor linear nor easy). He had stayed that long because he did not want to leave Alex and Pia while they hadn't made up, were not talking to each other and weren't getting better together.

No, Tommy leaving hadn't come as a shock to any of them.

Ezio's departure, on the other hand, had come as a shock for them.

Ezio was going to leave them, and he was going away with Tommy.

The official version he gave to everyone, in the living room, as they were having dinner, was that there was nothing left for him in Italy. He had lost his father in the first World War, without ever getting to know him, as he had been born while he was away on the battlefield. His mother had died, little by little, in the twenty years inbetween the two wars, too depressed to look after him after his father had died, too apathetic to do anything else and useful for the Regime - even under the premise of gaining money for it. Ezio had been raised by his grandmother, who had lived with them ever since he could remember: she had taught him everything he knew about the flowers and the vegetables she grew in the small garden behind their property. She had been the one to console him as his mother's depressive episodes got worse as the years went by. She had been the one to encourage him to learn how to write and read, to not waste his life only being a farmer, like his grandfather and father before him (both of them had died). She had died before Ezio had been drafted in the Army, to fight for his country. At least he had gotten to say goodbye to her. And he had cried, once he knew she wouldn't have seen him.

Ezio had nothing to go back to: the house he had lived in his whole life had been abandoned ever since his grandmother had died and he had left for the front.

It was better, for him, to make himself a new life in another country, with the help of his dearest friend. A country where no one knew who he was, where no one would've looked at him and thought 'this is the orphaned child' before they even remembered his name. A country where he wouldn't have been looked at weird because of his love for flowers and plants. A country where he could've been just Ezio, and nothing else. A blank canva to fill out in the years to come. With, of course, one connection.

"Sounds... American." - was all that Peppe had to say about it, before going back to eating his dinner.

The real reason was given to Alex the following night, when he was hanging around the kitchen table, still unsure of the way he walked and held himself using crutches. Usually, as he wasted away his nights like that, with Pia silently keeping an eye on him from their bedroom, to make sure he was real, Tommy would hang out with him, sitting at the table or slowly walking around with him, guiding him and giving him some advice. Surprisingly enough, the advices did not make Alex feel stupid.

Alex had received the news of Tommy's departure with a calm mind. Had it happened some months prior, he knew he wouldn't have taken it very well, because of his altered mind state. However, he had been trying to verbalize what it was he wanted to say to Tommy before he left, but he had come up short with things to say.