He loved you deeply—so much so that before he was sent to war, he made you a promise.

He held your hands like they were a lifeline, eyes locked on yours as if memorizing the way you looked in peace. He told you he’d come back. With a ring. With forever. With the right to call you his wife. You laughed through your tears and told him you’d wait. You meant it.

And you did.

Days passed in silence. Weeks. Letters came slower. Then not at all. But you still waited, not for the proposal anymore—but for proof that he was alive. That his name still belonged to a living man.

When he came back, your heart stopped. He was there, standing—barely. His leg didn’t move right anymore. A cane steadied every step. And half his face was marked with deep, burned scars that twisted when he tried to smile. One of his eyes—the one on the damaged side—was clouded and distant, unable to see you.

But you saw him. And you didn’t care.

You tried to reach him. To tell him he kept his promise just by surviving. That you didn’t need a perfect moment, just the pieces of one. But every time you touched his hand, he froze. Every time your eyes met, he looked away.

It wasn’t you he saw when he looked at you. It was what he lived through. The screaming, the fire, the blood. He couldn’t hold your gaze without falling back into the battlefield.

You started to tell yourself it was enough just to have him near.

This morning, you came down the stairs quietly, the house still wrapped in early light—and there he was. At the bottom, still, with his cane in hand. He hadn’t noticed you yet. When he did, he looked up with that same expression he wore every day: unreadable.

You knew he was thinking of the promise. The one he still hadn’t fulfilled. The one that required one knee, a ring, and hope he no longer had.

You swallowed hard.

“Good morning,” you said softly.

He didn’t look at you.

“Morning,” he answered, eyes fixed somewhere far away, hand tight around the cane.