I don't know how successful I have been, but I wanted to try and write a somewhat more subtle confrontation than my previous efforts, one without words or names. I was trying to make it quite a wistful/intense piece, not about the characters so much as the 'action' Hope you like it.
Shanna :-)
At heart, but secretly of course, a desperate romantic.

ps Crescent, after the challenge is over, I would really appreciate it if you could critique my entries for the challenge. Same goes for everyone, all input very very gratefully accepted.

Goodbye for Now.

When she got home, she knew the phone call had finally come.
She was suddenly full of words that it would serve no purpose to say. His dull green kit bag sat at the bottom of the freshly waxed wooden stairs, beneath his uniform neatly hung beside the door, where until this sparkling frost edged morning his winter coat had resided. She found herself remembering every second of the day he had put up the mismatched coat pegs.
Her now pale face, usually so vivid with expression, and the bloom of new pregnancy, grew still and closed. She yearned to turn time away from the hour so soon to come. She took a deep breath, thinking of how many times she had tried to prepare herself for this day. It had been so different then, it had not been real.
Silence filled their tiny house, as husband and wife sat waiting for the cab that would take him away.
There had been so few opportunities for silence, in the scant months they had been married. This was not the comfortable feeling of home they had expected to indulge in when they had redecorated the nursery just a few weeks before.
He tried to store up memories, studying the tilt of her chin, the curve of her freckled nose, treasuring every loose strand of unruly hair as she sat, enclosed in a world of hurt, hungrily capturing for herself this possibly last look at her brave love, her warrior husband, on the eve of his departure.
So many terrifying words stood between them, darkly momentous and threating, but they could only define the young couples fears, that he might not return, or might not return whole. Of the barely conceived child who might never come to know it's father, the endless years they thought they had to come, the luxuries of time together now cast in doubt nothing was said.
It had come, yet with no words exchanged, the refusal he had never dreamed would be so hard had to be firmly stamped on their relationship. He could not put her first.
Her too focused gaze above a firmly closed mouth betrayed her. She would not beg, would never say those words, would never try to weaken him so. But her traitorous blue eyes sparkled with unshed tears, each withheld diamond drop a desperate plea for him to live, to love, to stay. He looked away, in swift rejection of all her eyes longed for. If he came home, he would never deny her again.
She trembled as she capitulated, moving into his arms, every inch of her body betraying her fear that each shift of coarse cloth against chilled skin, each faceted second in time he felt his warm breath against her honey scented hair might be the last one.
The clock ticked, so very loud in the silence that surrounded them. He had never noticed it before, yet now, it intruded into the heavy atmosphere, each jarring tick a lead footstep on the road away from home. He tried to think of words, to fill the gap between now and goodbye, but was afraid to spoil this last gift she could give him, to shatter her restraint and spill the dam leashed for his sake, he retreated back to silence before he broke the spell.
From outside a sound invaded the tense space, a cab had pulled up in the driveway. It was time to go.
At last she made a noise, so quiet, the choked off beginning of a red raw sob as she disentangled herself reluctantly from their embrace that he almost missed it, He reached out to brush his hand down one softly saddened cheek, their fingers still entwined, but slipping now, with heartbreaking tenderness from his grasp. At any other time he knew she would have turned her back, stormed off to wait for him to gentle her back to happiness, but this time she stiffened her too easily riled temper and came to the door.
One last heartbreakingly sweet kiss, touched with an urgent regret, passion rising too sudden and too late, then he let her go and climbed into the waiting car.
Everything seemed overlaid with a golden glow, the early sunset of his home life capturing at last the image he would take with him into war as he looked back over his shoulder, a forlorn figure waving goodbye from the street. As the car turned the corner, she was lost from view.
He looked forward, noticing only now the tinge of salt upon his lips, a taste of the crying to come.