Memento Mori
For ar_drabbles challenge 74: dogtags.
She found it not long after she had moved in. She wasn't snooping, just looking for a place to put her things. The narrow drawer seemed perfect for her pens and pencils.
Chips of metal, small and dull. Dozens of them. Hundreds.
A drawer full of old dog tags.
She wondered how many years he'd been collecting them, how often he sifted through the rubble of his command. She dug through the discs, letting Bill's failures run through her fingers, finding names she recognized stood out:
D. Socinus
H. Cain
D. Saunders
S. Valerii
L. Katraine
Bill never was one to let things go. These tags would have gone to the families, when people still had families, or would have been draped over a grave, when people were still buried. Now, there were too many dead for even mass ceremonies. All that remained were pictures of people -- of her people -- on memorial walls. All he had left was a drawer full of tags, a drawer full of his people.
She pulled the bracelet off her wrist, checking to see if it would fit in the drawer. It was all she had to leave him to remember her by.
She found it not long after she had moved in. She wasn't snooping, just looking for a place to put her things. The narrow drawer seemed perfect for her pens and pencils.
Chips of metal, small and dull. Dozens of them. Hundreds.
A drawer full of old dog tags.
She wondered how many years he'd been collecting them, how often he sifted through the rubble of his command. She dug through the discs, letting Bill's failures run through her fingers, finding names she recognized stood out:
D. Socinus
H. Cain
D. Saunders
S. Valerii
L. Katraine
Bill never was one to let things go. These tags would have gone to the families, when people still had families, or would have been draped over a grave, when people were still buried. Now, there were too many dead for even mass ceremonies. All that remained were pictures of people -- of her people -- on memorial walls. All he had left was a drawer full of tags, a drawer full of his people.
She pulled the bracelet off her wrist, checking to see if it would fit in the drawer. It was all she had to leave him to remember her by.