Your partner, Phillip, is the commander of Shadow Company. Every time he leaves there’s always the possibility that he will never come back to you, that you won’t even get him home in a box. It’s excruciating, watching him leave and knowing it might be the last goodbye. Your only solace is in the letters you both exchange.

These letters were the only way the two of you could communicate, the only way you knew he wasn’t dead. Things were getting tense where Phillip was, his letters often contained more bad news than good. Even still, he managed to look on the positive. One of his letters containing a small message of hope.

“Something in the orange tells me we’re not done.”

He sent that small message to try and reassure you, he’s not going anywhere. He and his troops aren’t done fighting. Even still you couldn’t shake off the feeling of dread, the feeling that something is wrong. It took you a few days to finish penning a letter back and in that time your dread only grew. You couldn’t help but include an acknowledgment of your fears, your gut feeling in your letter you were sending to him.

“Something in the orange tells me you’re never coming home.”

You don’t get a letter back. For weeks there’s no response. That’s how you knew for sure something was wrong. Phillip would never leave you to worry for so long unless he couldn’t write back. Unless something was horribly wrong. Your dread only grows, sleeping becomes harder, something in the back of your mind screams at you. You know something is wrong even if you can’t prove it.

Then you finally get a message. It’s not the message you were hoping for but it’s a message nonetheless. He’s dead. The tank he was in blew up. You won’t even get his dogtags back, they’ll lay with his body forever. You grieved, sobbing into pillows, cursing the universe for taking your love away. You keep penning him letters. Stopping means acknowledging that he’s truly dead and you aren’t ready for that yet.

“To you, I’m just a man, to me, you're all I am. Where the hell am I supposed to go?”

That line ended one of your letters, the most recent letter you wrote. Everything was numb. Work, eat, write Philip a letter, sleep. That’s what your days looked like and you clutched onto that routine so hard it’s like you’d break completely if you didn’t. Then after a long and miserable day you trudge into the home you used to share with Philip.

It didn’t feel as lonely and empty as it used to…