A Road To Hope | ls au

VI.

Louis missed the sounds of the sea. The waves crashing against themselves, dying slowly in the pale sand, sizzling away with the tide. He wonders for a moment, what kinds of creatures live down below, if they ever settle battles among themselves.

It's been two months since the war has ended. November is cold, the weather chilly and the breezes are gelid at night, but ironically, it's been the brightest time of Louis' life. It's 1945, six years since Louis got forced into a life of violence and trauma, and a year and a half since he found his beacon of happiness, his path to the light.

"How does it feel?" Louis asks, his voice mending with the beach waves rolling towards the void of a blue-grey sky.

Harry gazes down at him, wiggling his toes in the sand for the first time. His hair is long now, and it flows like butterflies in the summer, in the oceanic air. "A bit dry and itchy. But it's heavenly."

Louis laughs, tightening his grip inside his lover's hand. It's freeing to be like this, holding strong onto the things your love, unafraid. The beach is empty, beside the two little figures running in the sand, close to the line where the sea and the sand meet.

"Hazzy! Lou! Why are you going so slow?" Jack yells, his little voice faded with the songs from the sea. He runs fast for a five-year old, soon to be six. Their dog is running too, happily, like he always is. His dark fur contrasts with the seafoam, and Louis watches with a smile when Jack and the dog, which they named Ocean, play chase by the shore.

The same shore where recruiting ships carved an eternal scar into the Earth, where the humankind hurt itself. Louis tries to not think about it, but it's difficult to escape it. It's the same beach he escaped from before he found the farm. It's the place he made the decision to run, the place where he thought he would never see again, since the war would be the dead-end of his fate.

He felt like he was walking towards his death, back then. He thought of his mother, her love for the beach, her kind eyes frowning in worry.

It's the best decision he's ever made in his entire life, and for that, he glances up at the sky and hopes that his mother can see him now. He's sure that she would love Harry; they share the same spirit of kindness, the same caring and nurturing traits. She would absolutely love him.

"Hey," Harry calls, glancing at Louis. "You alright?"

Louis looks aside and feels tiny sand particles between their laced fingers. "Never been better."

And it's overwhelmingly good to say it because it's true. The words that have been lodged in the back of his teeth for so long, hoping to one day come out in a truthful tone. Now, the beach's salty breeze carries it away, like it's just sand.

Harry smiles, and it's all he needs to see to complete the view.

The world looks endlessly big from the beach, the way that the horizon carries on eternally, how the ocean splits the continents, the people, their wars. Louis feels small, and surprisingly grateful to be alive.

No badge of honor would ever provide him this feeling, this everlasting bliss of existing, of waking up every day to love and to be loved. What matters is now. It doesn't matter if they'll disappear after they pass, if their names stain nothing but a grave in the earth.

They'll live in Jack's memory, a tiny legacy in his mind and in his future, for whatever he decides to do with it.

Maybe he'll tell stories of his kind uncle that took him under his wing when he had no one. How he raised him beautifully in a small farm in the middle of nowhere that was everything to them. He'll tell, with great detail, about the day he found a tired soldier in their barn, the day they took him in and watched him grow out of his broken shell, becoming a part of the family.

He'll tell the story of a lost soldier that escaped war and never went back; a brave man that found a road to hope, a place to call home, and never left.