Epilogue
19 AUG 2024
My sweet Serenity,
I fucked up, baby. I panicked and I ran as far and as fast as I could. I ran back to the only life I thought I was made for. I knew the moment I signed my name on my reenlistment contract that I signed away the remainder of my life. The moment I signed, I knew there was no coming back, not alive at least. The only thing that has kept me calm—kept me sane since signing was the fact this single choice would protect you from the greatest threat you could face: me.
I will forever be hopelessly in love with you my sweet, sweet girl. But this life—being forever bound to a man like me…a man who has more demons and more atrocious deeds carved upon his soul by his own blood-soaked hands is a punishment I refuse to put you through.
You were it for me. You were everything I wanted, and more than I ever deserved.
I have carried each of your letters with me daily, it was never your fault. I need you to know that. I need you to understand everything I have ever done has been for you. I made everyone promise not to tell you what I had done or tell you that I had ran again. I thought letting you believe I just didn’t choose you was the only way you would let me go and if I just disappeared into the night again, you would learn to hate me. It was the only way to believe what I have always known: I do not deserve you or your undying love.
I don’t know if you will ever receive this letter, if it can find you from this far away. I woke up today with this gut feeling—I am not long for this earth. I just want to see your face again. Maybe then I could die with some sort of peace, some serenity in my life once more, even if it wasn’t my Serenity. But the earth is calling to me—the ground beneath my feet whispers at me to find my final peace.
This is everything you need to know my love, my Serenity: I have always known where you were. Not one Godforsaken day passed that me or someone I trusted wasn’t watching over you from the moment I first left a decade ago and that continues to this day. Not coming for you had nothing to do with a missing address, or not knowing what coffee shop you spend a majority of your days at. I have always known those things. I came for you once, months ago. I saw you at the coffee shop.
You were laughing, surrounded by the written words you love so much. Coffee in hand, surrounded by like minds, co-workers, friends. You were in your element. I watched you for a solid thirty minutes through the window while it poured down rain in Nashville’s streets. I came so close to coming in, wrapping you in my arms and never letting go. Instead, I left. I left knowing you were safe, and that you were content despite the war in your heart that was in a losing battle thanks to me. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t questioned if I made the right decision.
I still don’t know.
All I know is that every sober moment my mind, my soul searches for you. It is always you. It will always be you. You own the best parts of me. No number of apologies could fix this, could save me, or save us from whatever tragedy is coming. I sold the beach house. The money has been set aside for you. Wyhtt and Grayson will make sure you are taken care of. I have left it up to them to decide on how to handle anything like that after I am gone. Wyhtt bought the house. He has promised that if you ever want to come home, you will always have a place there with him and the family he is creating.
I don’t have much more time to write, my unit is being called. Just know how much I fucking love you. If I somehow manage to escape this, to shake this feeling, then know I want all those babies. I want to build you the house. I want to grow old. I will fight to become the man you deserve, if it’s not too late. I will master my demons if that’s what it takes to earn you back.
See you soon, my Serenity.
Yours always,
Jensen
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
The prayer is on constant replay, escaping my lips aloud as the thump of my boot hits treacherous foreign soil. The metal clang of the Humvee doors being slammed shut echoes around us all as the unease rears its ugly head.
The air is thick from whatever mass chaos erupted in this town just hours prior. Black smoke slowly turns gray as it spirals from the buildings around us. Our lungs scream for fresh air as we grow closer. The men around me are coughing, gasping for air that isn’t plagued by the aftermath of war. I nod, giving the signal to move forward as every hair on the back of my neck rises and goosebumps break out. My body is warning me of what I have already suspected: we aren’t alone. Whoever is here is watching us.
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” I start my prayer, the irony not lost on me that while I am praying to God, begging that he recognizes me when I am taken from this Godforsaken world, that the fucking words have double meaning. God granted me Serenity not once, but twice. God granted me this prayer. He gave her to me just for me to fuck it all up, and I am not sure he’ll allow me a third chance in this lifetime.
I send up another silent prayer to him. A promise that I will be good if he will only be a merciful and forgiving God, if he will allow me this one last chance in this lifetime to fix all my mistakes. I am pleading with him all while acknowledging I am unworthy of him and unworthy of her. My fingers reach for the letter I had written her only hours before we were sent to the front lines. There’s a small comfort knowing I can still make this right if I can only reach her, or at least attempt to reach her. I want nothing more in this moment than to have taken her hand and leaped into the unknown. We could have had our someday by now if I would have allowed her to love me, if I would have loved myself enough in the moment to just choose us.
The crunching of debris beneath my units’ boots is the only sound as we make our way forward through what was once a small town that had been overrun by a rebel militia. Sweeping each building that remains standing, the stench of rotting bodies burns my nostrils as another soldier and I approach what appears to previously have been a small schoolhouse. We exchange a dreaded nod, an acknowledgment that we are both aware of what we will see once this door opens: the remains of the innocent. A mass grave of the pointless murders that have occurred over a war that these people—these children—had no business in.
I lift my hands to signal to him before I kick in the door, our guns are raised as I start to assess the scene splayed before us. I attempt to focus on anything other than the small bodies littered all around the room or the teacher who had been attempting to use her body to cover the children from the horrendous crimes that were being committed. The room and unfortunate souls who had been locked inside were nothing more than charred remains.
“Clear!” I shout, finishing my sweep of the school and turning when I hear my partner vomiting.
Some of the newer members of this squad had yet to be subjected to war and its mass casualties. For a moment, I allow myself to feel pity for the poor bastard and the innocent souls I hope find peace in Heaven. I place one hand on his shoulder, opting to give him a moment to himself before continuing further into town. I step back through the doorway into the open. Between the rotting bodies and the thick smoke filling the air, two of our senses have been compromised: sight and smell. Which is why it seems my hearing has tried to compensate by allowing me to hear the reverberation of the gunshot just before feeling its impact.
The breath is knocked out of me, I can see nothing but a blinding white light as my body tries to adjust to bullet now launched deep within my stomach, just beneath where my vest ends. I go to scream--to warn my men we’re under attack when the first explosion is set off somewhere to my right, taking out the Humvee we arrived in.
I am thrown to my knees when a second, smaller explosion closer to me goes off. The pain now races through my entire body as the shock from the bullet settles deeper within me. In that moment, I am no longer here in this hell, but in another. A mixture ofPTSD anddéjà vu setting in forces me to bounce between the now raging war going on around me, and the man who held me at gunpoint during my last deployment. Just as I start to picture his face the second bullet knocks me on my back as I fade into unconsciousness.
“Adler! Adler, goddamn it, stay with me!” Carson shakes me while attempting to drag my body weight behind him. He does his best to find us cover before aimlessly shooting back at our hidden enemy. A dark chuckle—almost drowned out by the sounds of the gargling blood filling my lungs—escapes my lips between painful breaths.
This is it.
This is the feeling that would not leave me—the dread had been there for hours, the gut-wrenching fear I would not survive another day. I had no one to blame but myself, not even the man who had chosen me as his next target.
I chose the battle, I chose to reenlist without her knowledge. I knew what the outcome could be, but I never knew how to accept her love. I never felt as if I deserved to have peace, and that is what she represented. I had so many demons following me I might as well already be in hell. While I knew without a doubt she would stand beside me in full armor to help me fight each and every one of my demons, I couldn’t allow that mixture of dark and light.
There are so many things I wish I could tell her, but the pain is disappearing and everything is starting to become cold. I want to kiss her, hold her, make her laugh until she cries just one more time. I want to watch the pure, childlike joy she shows when it’s only the two of us in the moments when she felt safe, as if I was her home. The one place she felt the most like herself she could be her most chaotic, her most vulnerable, her most raw version of herself when it was just us because no matter what side of herself, she showed me I would love her through it all.
I have many regrets in my life but this—this proves to be my greatest one. I can no longer hear the war around me, all I can hear is her voice inside of my mind.
I can hear her with our children. They are playing on the beach, the same beach I fell in love with her on during our childhood. Serena and our children yell for me to join them. When I close my eyes, I see myself walking to the shore and pulling her into a kiss while the kids whine at how “gross” our affection is. The smile that lights up her face is breathtaking just before everything goes dark and the next moment I see her when she is older. I am reading to her. She is tracing the wrinkles of my hands with gentle fingertips. She touches me with such reverence . . . more than I have ever deserved.
Flashes of what we should have been—what we could have been—race through my mind. I feel a single tear slide down my grime and blood covered cheek. Everything begins to slow as my heart starts to give out. I wonder if she can somehow sense this. If whatever this bond is that we have always felt—the soul tie that connected us—will let her know something is wrong with me. Will she have a nagging feeling like she is forgetting something? Would the hollow feeling she kept speaking of increase?
I hope not, I have done my part in ensuring she will never find out if I never make it back. I know no one on my end will inform her since we no longer travel in the same social groups, or even live in the same state. I worry she will search me out, only to discover I am no longer in this world and had broken the last promise I made to her. But there is nothing I can do about that now.
“Fuck, baby, I’m so sorry.” I whisper out into the universe hoping it will find her somehow. “I love you so goddamned much, I always have. I will wait for you in the great beyond, I will wait by those pearly gates. I will not take one step into Heaven until I have you in my arms. There is no Heaven—no peace in the afterlife without you by my side. I have loved you in this life, but I will prove it to you in the next one. Please forgive me, baby! I need you to live, I need you to be happy, I just fucking need you.” I manage to rasp out. “I gotta go for now, baby, I’m getting tired and it’s getting harder to breathe.”
“Just rest, I’ll see you again one day.” I swear her voice whispers to me, but her voice was nothing more than my mind playing tricks on a dying man’s last wishes.
“God, grant him the serenity to accept the things he cannot change, courage to change the things he can, and wisdom to know the difference.” A voice full of sorrow and forced down sobs speaks to me as each breath of mine becomes shallower. He attempts to comfort me by reciting the words I held onto so dearly during the last several months of our deployment. A rough hand grips mine as another sick sense of karma is thrown at me. I will now be this man’s demon—I will be his Averie—haunting him for the rest of his life. While I want nothing more than to apologize for the sleepless nights I know will come, words fail me, only gargled sounds come from me as I lay dying.
I no longer feel pain. I no longer feel anything other than exhaustion. Clutching the letter she will never receive with bloody fingers, I feel my heart give out again. I no longer see the man’s face who is praying for my soul, all I see is them. My chosen family:Grayson,Wyhtt, and my Serenity. I see them all laughing, and I want nothing more than to join in, but I can’t seem to reach them. They all know I am there. They are smiling at me, each taking turns telling me they love me. Then she is there, stroking my cheek while making promises to find me again someday before kissing me and fading into the darkness where I now rest.
As it turns out, our someday never came.