No Bravery | dunkirk au

The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of

3rd October, 1943.

Pia's voice was the best sound Alex had ever heard. 

All they had done, since he had gathered the courage to talk to her, without making her run for the hills, was playing their game everytime they were in the same room. Alongside Tommy, of course. After all, it was Tommy and Pia's game. But Alex had fitted in pretty nicely. 

When Tommy was too slow at repeating a word, Alex would quickly say it, earning the sweetest smile from Pia - sometimes, if he was lucky enough, even a little nose scrunch and a little round of applause. So, of couse, he tried to steal Tommy's scene a lot. But Tommy didn't seem to mind. 

He'd just stare at him, the softest and proudest smile plastered onto his lips. He'd sometimes shake his head and look down at the ground, but it was definitely in a playful way. 

That morning - it was a Sunday, Alex was almost sure of that - Pia was out in the back garden, picking vegetables and herbs, and - of course - the two boys had followed her outside. But she didn't seem to mind at all. She liked the company. And the company was useful as well. 

Both Alex and Tommy had offered to help her carry the various baskets she was filling with vegetables - that would've most likely been used to prepare the soup they would've consumed at lunch, that day: pumpkin, cabbage, carrots, eggplants. The baskets weren't that heavy, but Alex and Tommy offered to carry them anyway. 

And so, there they were, out in the back garden, holding a basket each, following Pia at a short distance, while she kneeled down next to the small plants, to get whatever was good enough. 

The weather was warm, despite it being October. It was the warmest October Alex had ever experienced, but it wasn't an unpleasant one - nothing like the one he had experienced back in Sicily, before getting there. 

He looked around himself: absolute silence, absolute nothingness. It was almost as if that place was secluded from everything and everyone. If Alex allowed himself to not think about how he had got there, it really felt as if the world wasn't at war, that his fellow countrymen weren't dying under the German's bombs and machine guns, as if that was exactly where he was supposed to be. And it was easy to forget it, especially when he was enjoying the peace and the quietness and the delicate beauty of a morning spent like that, helping Pia pick up vegetables, and strolling in that secret garden with his best friend, Tommy. 

But things weren't that simple: they were still wearing their uniforms, their rifles were still in their rooms, next to their beds, as a reminder of what was going on not so far away from them; him and Tommy had met on the battlefield, and had developed their friendship on the battlefield. And sometimes they could still hear planes flying in the distance, headed to bring some more destruction somewhere. 

Objectively speaking, Alex knew that his life in that little peaceful bubble couldn't last long, and he feared the moment it would've all stopped being a safe heaven. He prayed every night that that moment wasn't meant to arrive anytime soon. 

But as soon as his eyes met Pia's, and she gave him a little smile, while handing him a small carrot, every single one of his worries evaporated into thin air, and for as reckless as it was - he knew that - Alex was good like that. Smiling back at Pia, he took the carrot, his fingertips slightly brushing hers, and a small jolt of electricity ran through his body, starting from his fingertips and quickly spreading in every corner it could reach, making him smile wider. 

In that exact moment, life was being good to him. 

He knew it wouldn't have lasted forever, he wasn't stupid, but for that moment, Pia's smile was everything that existed, and everything that mattered.