#please excuse and inaccuracies i may have made i am a noob

[fionnlydarling]

a letter from tommy

so i wrote a dunkirk one-shot! please give credit if you reblog and let me know what you think, if you’d like to read more, or if you would like to request your own imagines, drabbles, etc. 

Pairing: TommyxReader

Word Count:  2004 words

Prequel to Tommy Gets Hurt & Tommy Healing

It's been weeks of nothing. Not one letter for ages. You’d been following the news, every morning rising with the sun and being one of the first to buy the day’s paper. Every day your eyes frantically scoured the registry of fallen soldiers, praying that you wouldn’t see his name written in the paper, his name amongst the hundreds listed. Tommy, your Tommy.

You’d heard about Dunkirk. Everyone in England and around the world had heard about Dunkirk. You’d listened to Churchill’s speech, read how civilians had come together to get their boys off the beach. A staggering 338,226 had been saved, lived to fight another day. You were glad for the lives saved. Really you were. But you’d done the math, worked out that there were at least 10,000 soldiers who hadn’t gotten off the beaches. Ten thousand soldiers who had died or been captured by the Germans. You know, you know the majority made it, but you still can’t stamp out that horrible voice deep inside your mind whispering what if? What if he’s one of those 10,000?

The paper didn’t have his name on it after all, thank God, so part of you can breathe now. You can now go spend the rest of the day focusing on your nursing training, pretending that you don’t know that there’s still at least a week’s worth of soldiers the papers haven’t received yet.

Your family and friends had been confused when you’d announced that you were moving to London to study nursing. It had never been your goal to be a nurse. You’d always wanted to be a teacher. But then the war happened and everything changed.

It was a difficult job. You were expected to be at the hospital little after dawn and you didn’t usually get back to the flat you share with two other nurses-in-training until well after the sun has set. The country needed all the trained and knowledgeable nurses and doctors they could spare, and that meant trying to cram what was typically a three year training program into just one year.

But it was rewarding, and you enjoy the sense of satisfaction you get from feeling like you’re doing your part to help with the war, this horrible war. It was difficult work and you felt like you hadn’t gotten any sleep in over six months, but that was alright. It helped distract you from the fear, all the wondering.

You finally get to the flat. Lily is already there and she’s holding up an envelope, her red lips painting a smirk, and you know. You don’t even think about where you drop your bags and snatch the envelope from Lily before going to lock yourself in the bathroom, for privacy and also because you’re not keen on sobbing in front of your flatmates.

It’s a miracle you don’t tear the letter as you rip open the envelope you’ve been waiting weeks for, finally in your hands and your eyes start to well with tears because a quick glance at the date written in the top-right hand corner tells you that Tommy made it out of Dunkirk and he’s alive. You wait until you’ve relaxed enough to stop shaking and you force yourself to take a breath as you see clearly the familiar scrawl of Tommy’s writing and read.

My darling,

I hope you can forgive me for the silence, I know it’s been weeks, but I’ve finally found a moment to sit and write. I’m currently at some camp I can’t be bothered to remember the name of. It’s all been a blur since Dunkirk. I’m sure the papers have given all the details and you’ve probably read Churchill’s speech. I don’t have much more to add other than how hard it is to connect Churchill’s words with what we went through. I wish this war would end.

We’re just waiting now. A few days rest before we get deployed again to God knows where. A bloke I met at the beaches, Alex, reckons we’ll have at least a week, but it’s difficult to say.

But I don’t want to talk about the war any more. How are you? I hope you’re not overworking yourself too much with the program. I’m happy to hear that you enjoy it at least. I knew you would pass the preliminary exams with top scores. You should give yourself a little more credit. Do you like your new flatmate? In the last letter I got from you, you’d said you and Lily were still looking for a third girl to help with the rent. If you go back home some weekend again, will you tell my parents you’ve heard from me?

Home. It’s strange to think of it now sometimes. There are days I think I can still see the meadows and taste the raspberries from my parents’ garden. But there are other days, the harder days, I can hardly remember the faces of our school mates, or the name of the reverend who’s been at our church since before I was born. I get scared sometimes that I’ll forget everything.

Everything feels like such a blur half the time, like none of my memories are even real. The only thing that makes any sense sometimes is you. You are always in my thoughts. I can still feel your hair running through the gaps between my fingers, your smile, the sound of your voice. Sometimes I swear I can almost hear you.

I wish I could write more, but the paper here is scarce and so is time. So, I’ll just end with the only thing that matters: I love you. I miss you so much I can feel it in my bones, an ache that just won’t go away, not until I see you again. All I want is to come back home, come back home to you. I haven’t forgotten our promise.

All my love,

Tommy

You close your eyes, your mind spinning with the words you have just read, words written by Tommy, safe and alive. All the anxiety you’ve been carrying for the past few weeks, trying not to worry that the worst had happened, just melts away.

A part of you wishes the letter had been longer, that you have hours worth of writing to help you get through the coming weeks that will surely be filled with more silence, but you’re grateful.

You try to imagine Tommy wherever he is now. You hope he doesn’t feel too alone, that this Alex bloke he mentioned is a good man and helps watch over him. But you try not to think too hard on it. You’ve learned from experience that thinking about Tommy in his soldier’s uniform for too long makes you start imagining other things: the whoosh of bullets flying past, the pained sounds of injured men, unseeing eyes, hazel eyes.

So you shake your head and instead think of other memories, memories that sometimes feel now like they’re from another lifetime.

You think of the first time you’d seen Tommy, how he was the most beautiful boy you had ever seen and how warm your cheeks had felt when he’d turned around and you’d quickly looked away, hoping he hadn’t caught you staring. You think of how his hand had brushed against yours sometimes those evenings he’d walked you home, and you’d spent all night wondering if it had been intentional. You remember the Williams wedding and how he’d blushed when he’d asked you for a dance.

You think of the first time he’d kissed you, your first kiss. How his fingers had grazed the skin of your cheek, how his lips had moved so seamlessly with yours. How closely he’d held your body against his, like he never wanted to let you go. You had been in that moment that you’d been waiting for after the countless glances exchanged, the shy and awkward but wonderful stolen moments, the accidental touches. Weeks of waiting and wondering if he felt the same or if you were just going mad.

He’d left before they could start a real life together, the life they had talked together about those evenings they’d stolen away together in the meadows near the cliffs. All their plans. The promises.

You think of the last promise you’d both made to each other, the day Tommy had left with all the other young men of their village.

He’d held your hands in his larger ones, forehead pressed against yours as you breathed together, hoping and wishing you could just stay in this moment forever, still together. They’d had to part eventually though. He’d started bringing up The Possibility, the one he’d vaguely brought up before you’d quickly shot it down, a possibility you refused to think about even now. You remember how tentatively he’d brought it up then.

“But...if I shouldn’t come back-”

“Tommy, stop. Don’t.”

“We have to talk about it-”

“No-”

“I don’t want you to be waiting forever if something happens to me-”

You’d put your hands over his and stood straighter, your entire body vibrating with conviction. “I won’t, because you’re coming back. You’re coming back to me Tommy. You do whatever you have to do to come back to me because I don’t intend on starting a life with anyone else but you, you hear me? So promise me,” your voice had cracked at this point, and you’d had to wrap your hands around his coat for a moment to gather yourself, “promise you’ll come back.”

Tommy’s lips had curved into a smile then, and he’d brushed the wetness from your cheek as he’d whispered, “I promise, I’ll come back to you and when I do, we’ll start our lives together.”

A part sob, part laugh had torn from your throat and Tommy had kissed your eyes and the tears off from your cheeks before crashing his lips to yours one last time. There was one last exchange of ‘I love you’s’ and then you were watching him walk away to war, a war neither one of you knew how long would last.

That felt like so long ago, but you can still remember the taste of him, the rough pad of his fingers and the smell of his cologne.

You bring the letter to your chest and in that movement accidentally drop the envelope it had come in. You kneel down to pick it up and that’s when you see there still something peeking out from inside the envelope. He’d sent something else with his letter.

You pull it out and gasp, bubbling with joy. Tommy had sent a picture, a picture of himself.

You smile at the black and white photo, your eyes greedily taking in every detail of his face. Your fingers trace over his eyes, staring in awe at how the photograph managed to capture the characteristic intensity in his gaze that you’d fallen in love with.

It’s a long time before you think that others might want to use the bathroom eventually, so you gather your letter and photograph to your tiny room. You decide you’ll write back tomorrow and see if you can find some time during lunch to find somewhere to get a photograph of yourself to send to Tommy. For tonight, you’ll reread his letter, proof that he’s alive and well and thinking of you, and keep his photograph close to your heart and pray that soon you’ll see him in person again.

Being away from Tommy while he’s at war has been the most difficult thing you’ve ever had to do, walking through life as though you aren’t worried every moment of every day for the safety of the one you’ve fallen in love with. But you’ve kept his promise close to your heart and you know that it will all be real one day.

He will come back to you, you’ll start your lives together. It will happen, because he’d promised and you believe in him.

You’d wait for him, no matter how long it took.