Fog snakes through the streets of London like a memory I can't quite shake. The war's been over for a year, but it clings to everything, rubble still piled in alleyways, ration queues wrapped around shops like vines, laughter heard only in fragments. I’m walking alone, coat buttoned to the neck, hands in my pockets, still wearing the khaki wool, heavy with history.

I light a cigarette but the match dies in the wind, then I see you.

You’re standing beneath a broken lamppost, fingers shaking around a lighter that won’t catch. Your coat’s too thin for this time of year, hair tucked into a scarf, lips parted like you’re cursing the wind under your breath. And I don’t know what it is, but something in me stops.

“You remind me of someone I knew in France,” I say before I can think.

My voice sounds older than I remember. You look up at me and your eyes narrow slightly, not suspicion, memory trying to climb its way out.

There was a café near Saint-Pol-sur-Mer. You served the British soldiers mostly, coffee, bread, cigarettes. I was one of them, eighteen and trying to laugh louder than I felt. You’d come from England to help your aunt after the invasion began that’s what you told me, said you’d only meant to stay two weeks. You gave me a Guinness and said I looked like trouble, I told you I’d rather be trouble than dead, you laughed. I remember that laugh, light, but with something behind it, like you’d seen more than you let on.

I came back every night for a week, sometimes with the boys, sometimes alone. I think I wanted to impress you. You had this calm about you, like you already knew how the world worked and just chose not to let it harden you. One night we walked home under blackout skies, not talking much. You asked if I was scared, I said no. You didn’t believe me and that made me like you more.

I lost a lot of things on that beach. Friends, pieces of myself, some part of me always hoped I’d see you again, but after the café was burned down, I figured you were gone, I let myself believe it, easier that way.

Now here you are. Same hands, same eyes, though they’re not as quick to trust, neither are mine.

You stare at me a second longer, then your lighter finally sparks. You hold it out to me without a word. I lean in, cigarette to the flame, and when I look up, you’re really seeing me this time. Brow creased, head tilted, something working behind your eyes.

"Alex?" you say it like you're not sure, like it might hurt to be right.

“Yeah” I say “Yeah, it’s me.”

And it’s quiet for a while, just the fog and the sounds of footsteps echoing from somewhere down the street, but something eases in my chest, like maybe the war didn’t take everything after all.

"You look different" you say.

"So do you." I murmur back.