Liam remembers the war in flashes of color, mostly. The jade green of a woman’s sari as she brushed past him in the market place. The oranges and reds of a sunset, millions of variations laid out over plants and sand and the tents. The blue of the sky on the rare days when they didn’t have to fight, didn’t have to fear, could just lie out under the bright immenseness of uninterrupted desert sky and breathe. The ruby, ruby, ruby of blood, like an accusation, like an explanation, like an answer to the one question none of them could stomach asking. The gold of Zayn’s eyes, not quite chocolate, not plain brown, umber in the dark, and amber when the light hit them right. The black of his eyelashes, flashing down to rest on his caramel cheeks.
So different from the pale, intubated boy lying on the too white hospital bed next to Liam’s flexing hands. For the first few days, he’d been restless, his hands like caged birds, fluttering uselessly around Zayn’s too still frame. Sleeping isn’t easy after a war, and sleeping in a hospital next to the man he loves who might be dead isn’t any easier. Mostly, Liam spends too much time thinking in a place that is already too much: too much bleach, too many people, too little quiet, too horrible to contemplate the death of Zayn, too few nurses who have time to explain what happened.
What it boils down to is that Zayn took a bullet for the small, Afghani girl standing in a doorway. She’d been beautiful: dark hair and piercing, accusatory green eyes, and Liam understands, is the thing. He gets why Zayn did it, but he doesn’t like it any more, but he can be at peace with the decision and what spurred it.
At least, in this place, no one calls Zayn a terrorist or a fag. Liam is thankful for that, at the very least.
