TWENTY-THREE
CAIDEN
For the last few weeks, my days have split neatly down the middle.
I report where I’m meant to report, sit through briefings, nod in the right places, and carry out whatever dull bit of military nonsense is currently required of me.
Comms scenarios, equipment checks, and paperwork nobody will remember writing five minutes after it’s done.
I do my job well because I always do, and because competence is the best camouflage I’ve got.
People leave you alone if you look competent enough. It’s one of the few genuinely useful things the army ever taught me.
So I keep my head down during the day and my focus narrow.
I speak when spoken to, keep my answers sensible, and don’t linger anywhere long enough to invite conversation I don’t want.
If anyone notices that I’m always a little too aware of the time, that I take my breaks at weird times, or that I’m never far from the route that leads past the barracks and military housing, nobody says anything.
Or if they do, they haven’t said it to my face yet.
When I can, I slip away. I don’t tell anyone where I’m going or make any announcement of being useful. I take routes that look incidental, cut through the bits of base nobody pays attention to unless they’ve got a reason, and by now my body knows the timing without needing much help from my head.
The flat is usually quiet when I let myself in.
Most of the time, Niko’s on the sofa or near enough collapsed on it that the distinction feels academic.
Vladimir is usually with him somehow, sprawled over his chest or tucked into the crook of his arm, both of them asleep in the sort of awkward, shallow way that tells me neither of them meant for it to happen.
“Hey,” I say when he wakes up, keeping my voice low.
Most of the time, he nods, like that’s all he has the energy for.
I don’t ask how he is because there’s no point.
I can see it well enough. So, instead, I start with the practical things.
Dishes, bottles, formula, washing, and quick checks of what’s running low and what isn’t.
It’s easier to take stock of a room than a person, and I’m not stupid enough to think I can fix the second one anyway.
Sometimes Niko watches me as though he’s worried I’ll disappear if he looks away. Sometimes he doesn’t look at me at all, just stares through the wall as if there’s something there he almost understands.
“You need to eat,” I tell him when it’s obvious he hasn’t.
“I will,” he says. Which, translated, means absolutely nothing.
I don’t bother arguing. I just make something later, put it in front of him, and wait until enough guilt kicks in that he takes a bite.
Vladimir cries a little less when I’m here.
I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just that there’s another pair of hands and one more person moving about with a bit of purpose instead of that slow, wrecked uncertainty grief leaves behind.
Maybe toddlers can smell panic. Maybe he’s decided I’m useful enough to keep.
At eleven months, he’s at that age where he’s not really a baby anymore, but not remotely sensible either.
He toddles with the determination of a drunk man trying not to be observed.
He wants anything that isn’t meant for him and loses interest the second you hand it over.
He throws food with real feeling. He’s got enough little words to make demands but not enough to explain himself, which means half his day is spent deeply affronted by the limitations of language.
I like him a lot.
When Niko’s arms start to shake or his patience thins to transparency, I take Vladimir off him and walk slow circuits around the flat until he settles.
Sometimes he goes limp against my shoulder after a minute or two, with his thumb jammed in his mouth, his little hand gripping the back of my shirt as if I’ve been issued to him for the evening.
Other times, he twists round to inspect the room from a better angle and points at things with solemn importance, expecting me to be as interested as he is in the radiator, or a spoon, or even his own sock.
“There’s the kettle,” I tell him because I’ve reached a point in my life where narrating domestic objects to a toddler feels like a perfectly normal use of an evening.
“Thrilling stuff, this.” He pats my cheek and says something that might be “dat” or might just be noise.
“Exactly,” I say. “Couldn’t agree more.”
Niko actually laughs at that. Only a little, and it dies quickly, but it’s there.
I try not to look at him when it happens.
He talks in fragments, when he talks at all. It’s mostly practical questions. Things like if I’ve seen the green blanket, whether the formula tin looked low to me, and whether toddlers can survive entirely on toast and spite.
The first few days, I made myself leave before it got too late.
Not because I want to, but because staying too long started to feel like crossing into something else, something heavier than help.
Niko doesn’t need replacing. He needs to be kept together long enough to start doing some of it himself again, and there’s a line somewhere in all this between supporting him and making it too easy to disappear into being looked after.
Back in my own quarters is usually when it all catches up to me. It’s not while I’m doing things, but when I stop. I sit on the edge of the bunk with my hands braced on my thighs and feel the whole day weigh on me in bits.
Cassie is gone, and Niko is barely holding it together. Vladimir is sleeping in my arms and too young to know why shit has changed. Mason transferred, and everybody pretended that wasn’t what it was. Ari is still away, still out there somewhere, completely unreachable.
I think about him a lot in these moments.
About the way he’d move through the flat, efficient, infuriating and already three steps ahead of the next problem.
The look he’d have on his face if he saw Niko trying to cope through everything, and the fact that I want him here with a force that sits somewhere deep inside me and never really goes away.
I haven’t written to him. Even if I could, I wouldn’t know where to start without making a mess of it. Dear Ari, your brother is falling apart, and your nephew prefers me to the kettle. Also, I miss you enough to find it physically painful. Hope the exercise is going well.
Not ideal, really.
So I sleep instead. Or I try to. And when that fails, I get up and do something else until my body gives in. Then morning comes and I do it all again.
Work. Quiet. Slipping away when I can. Bottles washed. Plates made. Niko reminded, gently, to eat. Vladimir carried round the sitting room while he points at things and tries to steal my watch. All of it, small, necessary jobs repeated often enough that they start to feel like structure.
This, apparently, is what being useful looks like when there’s nothing left to fix.
And until Ari comes back, it’ll have to be enough.