MARNE LA VALLEE | MV1
an: so everybody look at @luvstappen and BLAME HER FOR THIS PAINFUL ANGST. kidding, this is something that will discuss some very sensitive topics and is based off a film i recently watched called vermiglio. please read the warnings before reading this. i had a lot of fun attempting to write this in the style of a cold film, i hope you guys like this as much as i loved writing it.
PLEASE READ THE WARNINGS: Mentions of war, death, suicide, murder, childloss? please tread with caution when reading.
THE WAR HAD MADE GHOSTS of men long before their bodies were laid to rest. Max knew this well. He had seen it in the trenches, in the hollowed eyes of soldiers who spoke in murmurs of home but carried death in their pockets. He had seen it in the streets of his own country, where hunger and fear clung to the air like fog. He had felt it in himself, that slow erosion of self, until he was no more than a name in a ledger, a rifle in trembling hands.
The border was not easy to cross, but desperation is its own kind of compass. He walked where roads would betray him, hid in barns where the straw was damp and the air thick with rot. He slept little, ate less. It was not death he feared, it was capture, the weight of another man’s orders pressing against his back, the certainty that the next bullet would be his own.
It was small, forgotten, crouched in the hills of Le Grand Est called Marne La Vallee where the war was a distant, bitter echo. There were soldiers, but few. There was hardship, but it had not yet hollowed out the land. Smoke curled from chimneys. Bread still cooled on windowsills. It was a place that had learned to survive, not by fighting, but by waiting.
She found him first. Or perhaps he found her. A moment, a glance, a silent understanding. The village did not ask questions, nor did she.
It was enough. For now, it was enough.
