Her Voice

She is my wife.

The words hang heavy in my heart, just like the weight of the gun in my hands. The cold metal, the trembling breath, the space between us shrinking into nothing-yet feeling like an abyss.

Her eyes, once filled with unspoken promises, now hold something else. Resignation. Acceptance. Love? I don't know anymore.

We stand, guns pointed at each other, hearts racing to a rhythm only we can hear.

And then-

We both pull the trigger.

-

It had been a standard mission. Or so I thought. Another deployment, another valley wrapped in mist and secrets. Another war that had nothing to do with me-until it did.

Until her.

She wasn't supposed to be there. But she was. A silent whisper in the storm, a presence too soft for a battlefield, yet too strong to be erased by it.

I should have looked away. I should have followed orders.

But love doesn't follow orders.

It finds you in the moments between duty and doubt. In the way her eyes carried a thousand unsaid words. In the way her hands lifted in quiet prayer while my fingers were stained with war. In stolen glances over saffron-scented Kahwa, in the way her silence spoke louder than my battlefield shouts.

I never meant to love her.

But I did.

And now, with the barrels aimed, the distance between us reduced to a single breath, I realize-

Some wars aren't fought on battlefields.

Some wars are fought in the heart.

And this war, the one between love and loyalty, between what we were and what we became-

And maybe it ends tonight.