Their eyes met for seconds – maybe it was a minute – as the truck stopped; delayed for those precise moments in time that would change their lives forever.

She, held back by the guards physically, but by fear and the unlimited futility of it. He, unable to escape his captors for fear of being shot.

Deep within the sight they had of each other was an inner connection neither of them would be able to describe, but they would remember for the rest of their lives. One would be fraught with existence through the rest of the war, scraping life from streets that barely had anything to provide. The other, shorter; even less hopeful than hers.

She lived the rest of her days with a family she created in the aftermath and the memories of her experience with him would haunt her, mostly in unguarded moments when she was doing something remarkably normal. He was never forgotten.

His time was different. The solace he made from that stolen fragment they had together was more fundamental than hers, for he recognised and enjoyed even – if that were possible – his retention of control, in that one aspect of his stolen life, of their future life together.

The truck moved on.

She cried on her way home with the meagre rations for the day. She cried the next day too, by which time all evidence of his presence was long gone as another parade of trucks passed through. She thought of him often in those early days. Probably longer then his very life, she surmised, though she never knew, of course. And, over time, she thought of him less and because of that she despised herself for letting him go so easily.

His thoughts of her were much more useful in the days that came. He built a world around her in his mind’s eye and in those final moments he cried too. Not tears of loss, but tears of joy, for the face held tight within him. A vision he would never be able to see again, but which made the last of his days all the better for having seen it, even for that short aside from the horrors of a war he had, in truth, no part in.

They were never together and yet, after that short interlude, they were never apart.