She had never known such an abomination. She had never seen the terror she saw in his eyes. But still she understood.

It was not as though she was part of it but never-the-less she was not isolated from it. She could never be, like any other it lived with her in an underlying psychosomatic way.

As she lay behind the path of that fateful Warsaw tank, brought for freedom that it did not have the power to give. He knelt down beside her, grief stricken. She was not the most important one in his mind, but if he had, had his peace with the others, he would have not felt so drawn to her. He ran his nails under her chin, just as he had known she liked as she slowly let herself go.

 He thought of what could have been, what had been, how when the others were gone, she had found him and he had found a friend.