Lupine: Awakened-Chapter 24: Familiar Strangers

*"Leave.

The word tasted wrong—like freedom, shackled in chains.

Each of us carried silence home: through doors that no longer opened easily, into families that had learned to live without us, into ghosts that refused to stay buried.

For the first time in years, we weren’t Alpha.

We were just men.

And sometimes, that was harder to survive."**

The quiet doesn’t follow the boys home.

It waits for them there.

In doorways too narrow.

In kitchens that smell of warmth they don’t know how to touch anymore.

In the eyes of the women who love them, who wait for them, who don’t know how much they’ve already left behind.

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Philip and Isobel

The train screeched to a stop, but the weight inside Philip didn’t.

The air smelled of pine, rain, and something softer—home.

Isobel "Izzy" Flynn-Carver waited, eyes scanning, searching. Her smile met him at the platform, soft and steady, like she believed he was still the man she remembered.

Philip should have felt relief, but the coin in his pocket clinked like a warning—the world outside wasn’t quiet for him.

Not yet.

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Philip

Izzy met me at the train station with the same smile she always wore—soft, open, like the world hadn’t broken me yet.

She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around my waist; her hair smelled of pine and salt, and she laughed into my shoulder. For a second the world tilted like it used to. But her hands trembled when she thought I wouldn’t notice.

"Home, love," she said, pulling back to look at me, her green eyes searching like they always did. "At least for a week."

Her fingers twisted the strap of her bag, knuckles whitening—a tell she’d had since deployment, waiting for me outside the airport, waiting for me now.

I flipped the coin in my pocket — heads, tails. A trick for nerves.

It clinked too loud between us.

Izzy’s lips pressed thin. "Tu fais toujours ça." ("You still do that.")

Not a question. More like a wound she couldn’t stop reopening.

She reached up and hugged me again, shorter this time, as if she needed proof I wasn’t a ghost. Then, softer, prayerful against my shoulder, "Mo ghrá..." ("My love...")

She drew back, looked away as if the coin might answer for me.

I wanted to tell her it kept me steady—that in the desert, in the static, in the screams, that coin was the only thing that made sense.

But instead, I just smiled.

A soldier’s smile—empty at the edges.

She didn’t buy it. She never did.

"Come on, love—let’s go home," she said, looping her arm through mine.

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Dinner was quiet that night.

Izzy had laid out salmon, roasted potatoes, the herbs she always planted in pots near the window. It should have tasted like home.

It didn’t.

The rosemary wilted in the window, leaves curling brown at the tips. I wondered if she watered them whispering my name.

I chewed and swallowed, but the flavor slipped past me like water through a sieve.

Izzy laughed at something she’d read in the paper, her voice catching the way it always did when she got excited. She smoothed the newspaper flat beside her plate, as if headlines could stitch us back together.

I should have laughed too. But the sound of her voice didn’t line up with the memory in my head.

I blinked, and for a second—just a second—it was another woman’s voice I heard. One I wasn’t supposed to remember. The lights flickered; the hum of the fridge warped. Her voice cracked into static for a heartbeat.

The fork froze in my hand.

Izzy noticed. She always noticed.

Her hand brushed mine, soft and grounding. But her smile faltered, almost as if she felt the ghost sitting between us too.

"You’re here, Phil," she whispered, as if reminding herself. "Tá tú abhaile liom anois." ("You’re home with me now.")

I swallowed hard. I wanted to promise her it was enough. But even I didn’t believe it.

So instead, I forced a smile. "C’est bon. The food’s good—still better than anything they served on base."

Her laugh came, softer this time.

"That’s not saying much. I doubt the Bureau trains you boys in anything but reheating rations." She tried to tease, but her eyes stayed sharp, searching. "Tell me something, Phil. Something that’s yours. Not the mission. Not the static. Just... you."

I opened my mouth. Nothing came.

And then—rain on cobblestones. Her laughter outside the library. The taste of ink on my lips.

"Notre premier baiser," I rasped—before it slipped away again. ("Our first kiss.")

Izzy’s eyes glistened. She squeezed my hand like she was holding on to that one fragile memory too.

"Mo chroí," she whispered. ("My heart.")

"I missed this," I said instead.

Izzy’s hand lingered on mine, pressing harder now. "I missed you."

The word lodged in my throat. Because I was here. Sitting across from her. But a part of me was still somewhere else—chained to a ghost I couldn’t name.

And I think she knew.

But when her fingers tightened on mine, I squeezed back.

Not enough... but something.

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Izzy

When he smiled, I saw the crack in it.

Not wide, not gaping—just enough for me to know he wasn’t really here.

He used to smile with his whole face, teeth flashing, eyes crinkling.

Now it was only the mouth. The eyes stayed somewhere else.

I wanted to reach in, to pull him back from wherever his mind had gone. But every time I tried, I felt something pushed back.

A silence, heavy and stubborn...

They told me to be patient, to give him time. But time feels like a thief too. It steals him in ways the war didn’t.

And I wonder—when he looks at me, does he see me?

Or does he see someone else?

So I hold his hand tighter, hoping one day he’ll squeeze back like he used to.

Not out of duty... ach toisc go bhfuil sé fós liom. ("but because he is still with me.")

And maybe—just maybe—time could give me that piece of him back.

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Gabby and Althea

Althea "Thea" Rojas Mendoza kissed Gabby before he could even speak.

Fierce, sharp, grounding.

He wanted to stay here forever, but his hands ached for pencils that drew monsters, memories that didn’t belong.

She sensed it, even if she didn’t say it—knew part of him was still trapped somewhere else.

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Gabby

Thea’s kiss was quick, fierce, like she was making sure I was real.

Her hand lingered on my jaw, thumb brushing the stubble there, and her eyes—brown and burning—looked me over like she expected to find a wound I hadn’t told her about.

"Estás más delgado," she said, soft, in Spanish. ("You’re thinner.")

"And quieter."

She was right.

At home, my sketchbook was the one who took my attention instead of sleep. The pencil moved before I even thought about it. Not guns this time. Not caricatures. Not even my wife’s face.

Claws. Teeth. Shadows.

The pencil cut the page open like it wanted something to crawl out.

Thea tugged the notebook away, slapping it shut.

"Enough," she said, her voice sharp in a way that reminded me why I married her.

She was fire, always fire, even when it scared me.

"You come home for a week and you draw monsters? No, Gabriel. Not here. Not with me." Her voice cracked at the end, and she looked away, blinking too fast.

She’d once stood nose-to-nose with riot police, shouting until her throat bled. But here, against a sketchbook, her voice broke.

I wanted to argue, but instead my hand betrayed me—sketching a jasmine flower on the corner of the page before I shoved the pencil down.

For her. Always for her.

I reached for her hand, but the page between us stayed closed.

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Later that night, she sat beside me on the balcony, legs tucked beneath her, the Manila skyline glowing faint beyond the trees. She leaned into me, her warmth steady, grounding.

For a while, we just listened to the cicadas. Then her voice softened, almost breaking.

"Sometimes," she whispered, "it feels like I’m holding a man who remembers me—" she pressed her hand to my chest, "—but doesn’t feel me."

She then whispered a small Tagalog curse—"Ay naku!"—an exasperated, tender sigh.

The words punched through me harder than any bullet.

Her words carved deep. Because she was right. The memories were there—our church wedding, the jasmine she tucked behind her ear, the first protest she dragged me to when she said silence was its own kind of violence.

They played in my head like someone else’s life I was borrowing.

I tried to speak. "Thea, I—"

Her eyes flicked to mine, sharp even in their shine. "Don’t tell me I’m imagining it, Gabby. I know you. I know when you’re here... and when you’re not."

The truth sat heavy. That sometimes I felt like I was wearing a stranger’s skin. That love lived in my memory but not always in my bones.

Instead I forced a weak grin. "I’ll do better tomorrow. Maybe we could... go to the park? The one with the mural you like. Or to Intramuros? You loved that place."

Her eyes softened at the mention, but the ache didn’t leave.

"Hindi ko kailangan mga pangako mo, Gabriel. Ikaw ang kailangan ko." ("I don’t want your promises, Gabriel. I want you.")

For the first time in months, I felt the fire she always carried flare against my skin—and for one heartbeat, I was here.

Only here.

I kissed her then, desperate, hoping it would be enough.

Her lips were warm, clinging, a tether pulling me into a life I couldn’t always feel.

When she pulled away, her voice was barely a breath.

"Please, Mahal... just stay with me tonight. Not the soldier. Not the mask. You." (My love...)

She knew.

She always knew.

But even kissed like this, the echo of the static—the ghost between worlds—never fully left.

And maybe that was enough to try.

We were home, but not whole.

And neither love nor memory could hide it forever.

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Thea

Gabriel kisses me like he’s trying to remember how.

I kiss him back like I’m trying to make him believe he already does.

But in the quiet, I feel it—the space between us.

The weight of whatever he carries, pressing into the balcony, into my chest, into the silence that even cicadas can’t fill.

He used to kiss me like he was stealing fire, laughing against my mouth.

Now it feels like practice, careful, uncertain.

I tell myself love is enough. That fire and stubbornness will keep him tethered. That he’ll come back fully, not just in pieces.

But some nights, during his leave, when he stares past me, sketchbook shaking in his hand, I wonder if the Bureau didn’t just take him away.

I wonder if they replaced him with someone who only remembers how to be mine.

And the worst part? Some nights, I almost believe it too.

And still—I hold on.

Because letting go would break me faster than the truth ever could.

And if he could still make me smile—even once—I’d wait forever.

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Izzy’s hand slipped into Philip’s, warm and real.

Thea’s eyes burned into Gabby, sharp as ever.

But when night came and silence pressed close, it wasn’t their voices the boys heard.

It was hers—static tangled with a laugh that didn’t belong, a ghost threading itself into the seams of their life.

And no matter how tight the wives held on, they couldn’t keep her out.

But even as the ghost clawed at Philip and Gabby, Izzy’s hand held steady. Thea’s fire refused to dim.

And between the living and the lost, they both still had a choice.

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Chapter 18:

Parker

The door opened.

Light, laughter, the sound of home.

I should have stepped inside and left the war behind. But my hands still trembled for maps and locks, for puzzles no one asked me to solve.

Even here, I was half a soldier/researcher, half a shadow.

Then, the locket...

*********

Author’s Note

Petals—thank you for coming home with the boys tonight. I hope the quiet (and the things beneath it) stayed with you like a slow, stubborn echo. If the Chapter touched you, please leave a like or a comment; each spark helps these pages breathe.

QOTD: When someone you love comes home different, do you cling to what was, or press them gently to tell the truth?

Drop your answers below — I read everything.

*To the ones who feel too much, dream too dark, and love the broken things—welcome, Petals.

You’ve found your place among the shadows.

Stay wild. Stay haunted.*

— M. Poppy