No Bravery | dunkirk au

EPILOGUE (Part I) - Epiphany

April - May 1945: 

What happened after, both History wise and history wise, Alex got told in small doses, during the course of many different hours that all felt the same, as he was recovering from his severe, close-to-mortal wounds. 

As it usually happens when a War is nearing its end, things are bound to happen quite frantically: many retellings were fractured, missing some important chunks of informations, but Alex needn't worry about it, because so many things happened everyday, around them all, that some pieces were bound to go missing, just to be refound sometimes later. 

Talking was the only thing he could physically do, without tiring too much, confined to the bed inside of the master bedroom of the place they had mutually decided to occupy and live in, as they sorted out what would've become of them, now that the War was nearing its end, and the world would've needed to begin the slow process of walking towards peace. 

Their major concern, Alex learned when he was lucid enough to bear a conversation that did not consist of curses and laments and anguish caused by his wounds, when he was feeling like dying was - in fact - to make sure he wouldn't have died. 

And Alex had not died. 

He had, however, lost consciousness due to the plentiful amount of blood he had lost from the different wounds Aiello had inflicted on him, before dying himself with a gunshot to the head, fired by Peppe, who was avenging his deceased best friend. 

Alex would've died, if it hadn't been for his three friends: two had done everything in their power to keep him alive and stable, wrapping pieces of cloth really thightly around his wounds, so that they could've slow down the blood loss; Peppe had, instead, gone outside, looking for a doctor, and once he had found him, he had brought him back to Alex, so that the man could've operated him and effectively save his life. 

The details and the specifics of the surgery had been lost on him, and not because his friends hadn't explained them to him in great detail, but rather because he did not care to learn of those. He was alive, great, wonderful even, but the first word he had uttered when he had woken up from his comatose state was not for himself. 

It was not even a word, but a name. Her name. 

"Pia." - Alex's voice had croaked, before he had even been able to open his eyes. 

And he had kept on repeating her name, his voice slowly getting louder as it got stronger. His throat was raw, his head was on fire, his chest felt like someone had pressed down an entire American tank onto it, and his legs felt funny under the covers, but he did not care one bit about any of that. He did not care one tiny bit about himself, because she was alive, and he had felt her, he had heard her and had thought she was an angel, but apparently she was not, because he was there, on Earth, and he had heard her and felt her and she must've been there and he needed to see her! 

Tommy had been in the room there, and he had sprang up from his sitting position at once, kneeling on the bed next to Alex, murmuring nonsense to him to calm him down, but Alex could not hear him, for his mind, his body and his mouth were all chanting one single name. 

He didn't realize it when Tommy pressed a cloth soaked in morphine under his nose. 

Alex was back to sleep in seconds. 

The second time he woke up, he did not speak, for he had been coming from a peaceful dream. His eyes opened to a dimly lit room, and he did not recognize his surroundings, for he was sure he had never been where he was in that moment. 

The room - from what he could see - looked too polished and elegant. The bed under him was soft and the sheets that covered him felt like silk over his skin.