V-Day. The Axis powers have officially surrendered. Adolf Hitler is dead. The brutal War is finally over after six years of merciless fighting, losing loved ones and widespread cultural devastation to civilisation.

You stand, waiting for your husband's arrival anxiously. Hoping, praying to whatever god would listen to you that his handsome face would walk down that dock instead of someone holding a condolence letter.

You had been working as a hospice worker throughout the war while your husband, Gerard, had been drafted early on alongside his brother Mikey. Every day, you had heard tales from the battlefield of fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, daughters, mothers, husbands and wives dying in ditches, bodies left to rot for fear of dead weight.

Yet the letters he had written to you week after week kept your spirits high. Cryptic ballads about your spirit dancing in his dreams. He always was a poet. Those letters were collected neatly in your shared bedroom that had been mostly unaffected by the bombings, save for the plaster crumbling, held together with a white ribbon in the hopes that one day he would come home to wear that ribbon around his wrist for you.

As sun poured down upon the celebrations in the streets, lighting the bright smiles of pure relief that the grief has come to an end, your eyes were solely trained on the figures filing out of the boat in tattered uniforms. It's almost obscene how they hug their loved ones with the blood of those dead still staining their shirts. You knew, at least, that's what Gerard would've whispered in your ear whilst watching them if he had been at your side.

Instead, you were forced to endure the sounds of cheering and joyful tears that were digging a pit deeper and deeper in your stomach.

Just as all hope was about to drain from your eyes, you saw him. Gerard. A far cry from his prior self of whom had immaculate hair and a smile so bright it made the sun green with envy, but alive.

Before he can even step off the dock entirely, you've bundled him into your arms as if he'll slip through your fingers if you hold on any more loosely. You could see it in his eyes and by his lone journey that Mikey hadn't made it back.