When Saara saw her for the first time after she woke up, there was something so strikingly different about her. Her hair was shorter, her cheeks hollowed, the bags under her eyes were almost gone. She assumed that was something that happened when you were in a coma for six months.

She looked a lot younger than she already did six months ago when she saw her before the slaughterhouse, but there was this air of uncertainty around her that worried Saara There was definitely something different about Viny, and it was driving her mad.

Not many people knew this, but Saara was a creature of habit. She didn't like necessarily changing, but in times like these she had grown used to adapting quickly. But there were still so many things that Saara hadn't changed.

She was always on time for everything, she always showered at 5 in the afternoon (whenever she wasn't out, which she always was) and she liked her coffee with two sugars and a load of milk. Never black. Saara hated black coffee, which was so heavily contrasting with what she was like now.

Saara wasn't fond of change, so when Viny, one of the only people who had always been constant in her life, changed so much, it drove Saara mad. She would watch Viny run her fingers through her hair and feel so suddenly disconnected when it ended just below her ear instead of dragging on to her chest. And in such times, when Viny was frustrated and couldn't stop touching her hair (and therefore pointing out that it was now way shorter than Saara liked to admit) she couldn't help herself for grabbing her hand and fixing Viny's hair behind her ear, the way she always wore it when it was longer.

There were many things Saara didn't like about change. But she especially hated the way it made her feel so unfamiliar with everything. She hated how it made her feel like everything was starting over. She hated how it signified new beginnings. Because she had become used to the way thing were. Damaged, slightly broken and cracked at places and that's how she had started to like it.

The war did things to you, she knew that just as well as the next person. Probably better and it was ironic, how for the most skilled soldier, she was so unaccustomed to the war life.

Saara hated many things, and poetry was one of them. She hated how things just seemed to flow into strings of words and she hated how everyone made it sound so easy. She hated how despite having so much to say, she just never could write and how her whole poem (if you could even call it that) just ended with one word.

But when Viny wrote, by the small fireplace down in the basement, Saara couldn't stop herself from curling up beside her. Viny may have changed, but her poetry still stayed the same, and that Saara had never been more thankful for.

So when Viny scribbled and scratched away at pieces of paper, and then, hours later, softly read out her masterpiece (Viny wasn't an award winning poet, but Saara couldn't not love the way she wrote) she loved to smile and nod and stare into the heart of the flames.

In that moment, lying in Viny's lap listening to some random poem about love and death and knights and fairies, was the only time she would truly let her guard down and actually close her eyes.

She was always the big sister. She always sang songs and played with Viny's hair until she fell asleep. But now the roles had reversed. It was change. But this was probably the only change that Saara didn't mind.

Usually when she woke up, she would be in the same place, with Viny's writing paper on her head and the pen fallen somewhere to the side Viny would also be asleep right there, where she left her. On other days (when Viny was more composed and was awake enough to put away the paper and pen on the table) Viny would be asleep on the other couch. And there was always a blanket on her and on Viny, sometimes put there By Adi or sometimes by Jeanie. On very rare occasions, Adi would be asleep too, on some other armchair, sometimes even on the floor.

But today was different. Today she woke up to no blanket, no Adi, and no Viny. She had a feeling she knew what was going on, but she ignored the sinking in the pit of her stomach until she heard it first hand from Jeanie and Kenny, who confirmed that both of them were indeed on another operation (something about illegal artillery, but she chose to ignore whatever they said after that).

She wasn't sure how she felt about that, but she sure as hell want happy. She had a feeling something was about to go wrong (and she completely ignored the fact that it was a constant feeling she had. Heck, she even felt it before breakfast. Although, in her defense, cold canned beans for breakfast at five in the morning was indeed wrong and downright disgusting).

Sighing loudly, she stuffed her hands in her cardigan pocket and removed a piece of paper that she found. It was Viny's poem. The one she had gone to sleep before it was finished. Flipping the paper over, Viny had left a note.

It was short, simple and in a very messy scrawl. Although she knew that it was what Adi had told her to write. 'On a mission. Be back by Monday' wasn't something Viny would write on her own.

Saara rolled her eyes and stuffed the paper back into her pocket, deciding to read the poem after Viny got back. It didn't seem right reading it by herself. After all, it was a tradition that she wasn't willing to break. Unless Viny decided to be a smartass and died. Saara forced herself to not think of the endless array of possibilities.

"I'm not sure if you're upset that they didn't take you, or worried that they took Viny."

"Jeanie, she just got out of a coma."

The doctor sighed and looked over at Saara's plate before she started eating again. For a while she said nothing. Dinner was probably the quietest affair in the safe house, and she and Saara usually ate alone together, on the steps of the veranda. Saara was still pushing her food around.

"You know the khichidi is good. I made it myself."

Saara snorted. "Exactly what form of self praise is this?"

"It's called 'will you please eat the food, I feel offended that you would do that to something I've spent an hour making and of course I'm bragging about my great cooking skills'"

Saara chuckled, but nonetheless, ate.

"You should try shortening that, Jeanie. It's inconveniently long for something you say so often."

Jeanie huffed. "Why would you say such a thing!" she exclaimed, but she couldn't stop bursting into giggles every other word later.

"Really. Talk to me Suckerpunch. You haven't in days, anyway."

Saara sighed, contemplating what to tell her, until she decided on the truth.

"I don't think she should be out there right now."

"You don't think she should ever be out there."

"That's one of my more far-fetched 'never gonna happen' dreams," Saara laughed. "It's not that I don't want her out there, I just… I dunno. I'm—"

"You're trying to protect her," Jeanie finished and Saara reluctantly nodded.

"Maybe you should stop."

"I can't," Saara said simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "She's always been the little kid. I can't do that, Jeanie. I've got no strength to do something like that."

Jeanie listened, not wanting to stop her from removing all those pent up feelings. She looked at Saara but she wasn't staring. It was a kind of way that invited her to confess, but demanded nothing.

"We live in a crazy world. Things change. I don't like that. Viny is the only sense of normality that I've got left."

"People like us, Jeanie, that live in safe houses, are the loneliest people in the world. We do our job and then one day a missile explodes or we get shot or a sword plunges through our heart and that's it. Game over. This war life is a video game, you know. Just one click or one accidental eye flicker and that's it."

"I don't want to be like that. I don't just want to be a story. There are only a few people left that I care about and Viny's one of them. If she's gone, swear to god I won't even need a missile or a bullet."

"You've got us," Jeanie said, and even then, her voice was cracking.

"I know."

"But Viny's like you little sister."

Saara slowly looked down. She wasn't sure if she was ready to admit all of these feelings at once, but she did anyway.

"She's the only family I've got left. She's the only person who doesn't think I'm a monster."

In the next few minutes after Saara said that, Jeanie didn't know what to think. Or what to say. So she said nothing. There was something almost… fragile about the way Saara looked now.

She was breathing, but barely, and her eyes were brimming with unshed tears. This was the person Jeanie hadn't seen in four years.

'You're not a monster' seemed like the generic response, but it was too late and too deep into the conversation to have an effect.

"Sometimes your battle scars aren't the cuts and the wounds, but the blood that drips off of you in shower stalls," she said after many more minutes, during which Saara's tears had dried and she had started staring at the ground on the outside veranda.

"What if the blood is of a thousand different men, who had someone to go back home to?"

Jeanie tried to think of a response and it came with an ease that surprised even her.

"But it bleeds from men who slaughter millions of innocent people. We're too far into this god-forsaken war to think that much. Just the fact that you do at all is more than enough."

Saara smiled a sad smile.

"What if there's another Saara out there? Some little girl whose father was killed right in front of her? What is she supposed to become?"

"A warrior," Jeanie replied simply, without second thought. Saara looked up and smiled.

More minutes passed. Desert time and suppertime and more hours into bedtime later;

"I don't know what you've got to prove," Jeanie said later, hours after sitting on the veranda steps, "and I don't know who you've got to prove it to, but I know, and I'll tell you this now, that you can stop."

"I don't know either."

More minutes.

"You know, Saara, sometimes just oxygen isn't enough. You've got to stop and breathe too. Feel the air inside of you. Maybe when you realize that you are actually alive, you start to feel less dead inside."

Saara smiled and looked away.