Breath Between Battles

The Sky That Burned

The sky was always red now.

Not the romantic, dreamy kind of red. This was ash and fire, smeared across the heavens like the war itself had climbed into the sky and painted its anger there. Everything was scorched. The city, once alive with neon lights and laughter, was now just bones—steel and concrete twisted into broken silhouettes. And in the middle of that shattered world, we found each other.

We didn’t speak at first. Words were a luxury, and trust even more so. I saw her across the rubble-strewn street, crouched behind an overturned transit drone. Her rifle tracked me like a hawk, but her finger never pulled the trigger. That was the first miracle.

The second was when she let me sit beside her fire three nights later, and we didn’t kill each other.

Where Silence Meant Safety

Her name was Rhea. Fierce eyes, a soldier’s posture, but a heart too soft for the world we were left with. Mine? Call me Ash. Fitting, I guess. I’d been surviving alone for months—stealing from the dead, dodging raiders, hiding from the roaming machines. I'd forgotten what it felt like to sit near someone without flinching.

But with her, it was different. We both had the same kind of silence. The kind that didn’t need to be filled with words.

We stayed on the move, always one step ahead of the next firefight. The war hadn’t ended. It had only shifted, splintered into a thousand little battles with no sides left—just survivors, scavengers, and ghosts.

Every day, we ran. Every night, we rested—if you could call it that. Sometimes we shared food. Sometimes we just sat in silence, listening to the fire crackle while the city burned around us. But slowly, something began to grow in those quiet hours. Not love at first, no. That’s too easy. It was trust, then comfort. Then the way she leaned her head on my shoulder one night and didn’t pull away.

We called that night our first “breath between battles.”

The Church of Color and Ash

There was a church in the ruins of Old Town. Half of it had collapsed, the other half stood defiantly, its stained-glass windows cracked but still shimmering with color when the light hit them just right. We made shelter there for three nights—longer than we’d dared stay anywhere.

On the second night, rain fell for the first time in weeks. Real rain, not ash. Clean and cold. We ran outside and let it hit our skin, washing away the soot, the grime, the blood. Rhea laughed—really laughed—and I almost didn’t recognize the sound. It was the kind of laugh that made my chest ache. Not because it was sad, but because it was beautiful.

She turned to me, drenched and radiant under the storm, and said, “This feels like life again.”

And I believed her.

A Song with No Name

We found an old piano in the back of the church, keys yellowed and chipped. She played a melody I didn’t recognize—slow, haunting. Her fingers hesitated on some notes, but the sound that filled the church was soft and alive. I sat beside her, not saying a word, just letting the music breathe into the broken walls.

“This song,” she whispered, “was my mother’s. She used to play it during thunderstorms.”

“What’s it called?”

She smiled faintly. “She never named it. Just called it ours.”

So we did too.

The Fire Finds Us Again

But moments like that never lasted. The world didn’t allow them.

On the fourth morning, gunfire tore through the air.

Raiders.

We had seconds—grab what you can, run. The church erupted in smoke and bullets. We split instinctively, like we always did, planning to meet at the river edge.

I made it.

She didn’t.

Not right away.

I waited, crouched behind a crumbling wall, every second another weight on my chest. Then—finally—I saw her. Limping, blood on her side, but alive. I ran to her, wrapped her arm around my shoulder, and we escaped into the trees.

That night, in a cave by the river, I stitched her up with trembling hands. Her blood stained my fingers, and I was terrified—not of death, but of losing that one thread of light in this endless dark.

“You’re gonna be okay,” I whispered.

She smiled through the pain. “We’ll have another breath. We always do.”

Still Here

It’s been months since then. The fighting hasn’t stopped. The world’s still on fire. But we’re still here. Still running. Still surviving.

But every once in a while, we stop. We find a quiet place. We let the silence settle.

We hold each other.

We breathe.

Because love, real love, isn’t found in grand gestures or perfect days. It’s found in the stolen moments—the breath between battles.