Part 4 (THE LAST)

Wow, this might be the longest 'imagine' out of all hahaha I hope you'll enjoy the last part!

ENTJ (male) x INFJ (female)

“Shit,” Ben couldn’t help to murmur in shock at the sight before him. 

Being in this war for a long time has desensitized Ben in many ways. From his widespread collection of books in the public library he used to work at to suddenly being thrown to take care of a collection of the bodies of people who died during combat – anything like that could desensitize a person. 

Before, when he was still new in the war effort, he would find himself heaving all his guts out when he would be surrounded by bloody people, all injured in different parts of their bodies. Some are fighting for their lives while others lie peacefully, finally enjoying their eternal rest. 

Now, Ben would not even bat an eyelash when he had to shoot an enemy soldier. Hearing loud cries of anguish from enemies or his wounded men won’t make him want to recoil in a fetus position and cover his ears anymore. Instead, he treats them as white noise. 

But this…this hits him differently. “Mala…”

“B-Ben?” He saw how she struggled to keep her eyes open. She laid on the ground before him, her hair all dirtied and strewn all over the ground and her face, her arms limp in an attempt to wrap them around herself but he could tell that she was in pain. On her exposed skin, Ben instantly notices bruises starting to form in different areas. Even the skin around her left eye is starting to swell and he knows that it’s going to be a black eye in a few hours. 

His heart clenches at the woman who is clearly in pain and it’s something that he thought he would be used to. But no. Perhaps it hits differently because it’s Mala. This is not someone who was merely a passing face. She is someone that he slowly confided in despite how short they knew each other. 

How was he able to show a vulnerable side of him to her? Perhaps because it was brought by the situation at hand or that he knew that she wouldn’t hurt him. Or that she was unapologetically herself. And that, in itself, is enough for him to trust her.

That’s why he could not shake off the guilt that had been haunting him ever since his men captured her. And now he knows that it’s his fault she’s injured. No, wait, how stupid of him to think that she's 'injured'. Mala was tortured and it's all because of him.

"Shit, what did they do to you?" He couldn't help but speak in his native tongue and immediately went to her side. “Mala…w-what…?” His voice trailed off. 

"They…they were desperate." Mala tries to sit up, but Ben instantly stops her. 

"No, God, please don't try to move," the concern and worry in his voice could not be missed. He gently lays his hands on her, one slowly shifts to hold her from the back while the other gingerly raises the right sleeve of her jacket. He winces, finding more bruises forming on her arm. “I’m going to kill those fu-”

 “Ahh!” Mala suddenly lets out a sharp cry in pain, shifting her body to curl up more into a ball. She shouts out loud again then chokes on her breath, fat tears rolling down her face. 

If it were not for her shifting to a different position in his arms, Ben would have not seen the dark and dense wet spot slowly getting bigger through the backside of Mala’s jacket. His eyes widen and all the more he could feel his heart beating fast in his head. “Mala, I’m sorry. I am so so sorry.” 

“It’s…It’s not your fault,” she croaks out as Ben goes to work on trying to stop the open wound by her backside – a wound that was left behind when the enemy soldiers came to torture her. "It's n-not your fault-"

"God dammit, Mala, stop saying that!" He utters incredulously, peering into her eyes. "I'm not the one who's almost beat up to death."

Ben wanted to come and visit her for the past days they kept her as a POW. She wasn’t being treated like any of the POWs they had because she was able to stay alive around Lieutenant Walt for days. It confused them that he never even bothered to hurt her and they wanted to know.

Just not in a civilian manner. 

He was in pain, listening to her heavy and jarred breathing as he tried to stop the bleeding. He knew that she was trying so hard to keep her loud sobs at bay because sharp whimpers only came out of her.

He knew he had to visit her the moment they received the news. His country is losing the war. The rest of his men are trying to keep their base safe, but Ben doesn’t care about that anymore. He feels that in a few moments, they are going to lose this place to the enemies and he’ll have to suffer at their hands. But if it means that Mala will be safe with her soldiers, then he wouldn’t mind any of the suffering at all. 

“This can't continue. I can't let you go through this any longer.” He moves back a bit and proceeds to take off his jacket to feel through its pockets, trying to find if he has an extra piece of cloth he could use to stop the bleeding wound of Mala. His heart dropped to his stomach when he was realizing that there are a lot more that need treating all over her body. “Mala, I know you’re in pain,” he starts in haste, “but I need you to listen to me. Your soldiers are nearing this place at this very moment and I am going to make sure that they will take care of you.”

Her hand flies up to squeeze tightly onto his arm, stopping him from his task at hand. “H-How?” She breathes out in a hoarse whisper, “They would know it’s you. They would know you’re Lieutenant Walt.”

Ben sets his lips into a tight line and stays silent for a few seconds before acknowledging, “...Exactly.”

Mala forced herself to open her eyes even if it felt like scorching pain throughout her face and body. She held on to him tighter, making sure that his gaze was still meeting hers. “They are going to mistreat you–”

“Do I look like I care about that?” He interjects her. He set his mind on making sure that she’s safe; he doesn’t care about himself anymore. 

But Mala hates what he’s planning to do. “But I do,” she softly cried out. “Ben, please, I-I beg of you, please leave me and run.”

“Don't be stupid, Mala. I'm not leaving.”

Oh, God, he’s not listening to me! She grits her teeth and continues to hold her ground. “You're m-more stupider.”

“That's grammatically incorrect.”

“I know!” She shouts at him and bursts into a coughing fit, hurting her chest and her ribs which she thinks are broken due to what she suffered over the past days. But she won’t stop herself from knowing that Ben is about to do something akin to a suicide mission. “I said it so that you'll listen to me!” With her last ounce of strength, she tugs him close to her sharply. With his face a few inches away from hers, she pleads, “You…you need to run. You…” Her voice trailed off towards the end. It wasn’t because she lost her voice, but because of the way Ben was looking at her. His eyes have gone all misty and his brows furrowed together. Not only was he regarding her with concern, but with something along the lines of regret…and longing.

“I can’t run,” he murmurs, his voice shaky. “How can I run away from you?” He continues in a more tender voice. “How will that help with my pride? How can I live knowing you're in such a state while I flee and run away? I am contributing to the war effort of my country but I am not losing my humanity in the process.” He holds her closer to him, scared that if he lets go the life in her will suddenly leave. “You taught me that. And I’m sorry that I’m living up to it only now.” 

A sob escapes Mala’s lips. She moves her hand to cup his cheek. “I’ll forgive you if you run away now,” she cries. 

Ben shakes his head slowly and carefully raises his hand to his cheek and places it on top of hers. “You know that I won’t do that,” he replies in a gentle whisper. 

None of them said it aloud, but the same thought was running through their minds – that if they would have worked if it were during better times as normal people.

“B-Ben–”

“Hands behind your head!” A gruff voice suddenly shouts out loud, breaking Mala and Ben’s gazes on each other. Around four people enter the room, three of them holding their battle rifles all being pointed toward Ben’s direction.

“N-No,” Mala croaks out, it was painful for her to move her hand but she wanted to reach out to him. “Don’t hurt him–”

“I, Lieutenant Walt, surrender!” Ben announces, instantly moving away from Mala and placing his hands behind his head. 

“No, stop!” Mala cried out, but the three men with the rifles roughly pushed Ben to the ground and bent over him, keeping him in place so that he wouldn’t run away. But Ben did not attempt to even push them off him. He accepted his fate the moment he knew that Mala has found a place in his heart. 

The fourth person in the room takes this chance to go to Mala, knowing that they are on the same side due to the patches and the red cross band sewn on her jacket. “Medic!” the person says and looks at her wounds with eyes wide in shock. 

“Don’t let them hurt him!” She uncontrollably sobs at the person. “Please, please, don’t hurt him!”

—---------

A year later…

For the first month, they called her Crazy. ‘Crazy’, ‘brainwashed’, and ‘sympathizer’. They called her all kinds of things the moment she was brought back home and different kinds of doctors wanted to check on her – study her. 

She wouldn’t stop crying for Lieutenant Walt, ‘the man who has kept her captive and tortured her non-stop.’ They wouldn’t listen to her when she would claim that none of those things happened, that they had the whole story twisted to work in their favor. 

The only people who believed her were her family. Her father and brother were constantly patient with her. When she would burst into tears, they were there to sit beside her and offer their comfortable silence as a means of support and a gentle reminder like, “We’re right beside you and we won’t go anywhere.”

“Help me find him,” she whispered to her brother one night as they sat together on their porch, watching the stars littered across the night sky. It was around two months after the war ended. “Help me find Lieutenant Walt.”

There were a lot of things they had to do for Mala to finally find out where they have been keeping Ben. She knows he was not killed, but she didn’t know if he was receiving the same treatment his men did to her. 

Part of the list of things she had to do to know his location was to prove that she was compos mentis; sane. 

And she worked on it, even if she knew that she was never insane in the first place. She volunteered her services to help out with what was left of the war – more on documents, reports, and giving comfort to the grieving. In her way, she has gone through the same kind of grieving and she knew what others (who have lost loved ones) were going through. 

When there were times that she wanted to cry because some places would remind her of Ben, like the public library in the center of her town, she would have to wait until she would get back home. 

Now that a year has passed and she has kept up her good reputation for more than eight months, she was finally able to receive updates on Lieutenant Walt. 

They’ve been keeping him in the prison where some of the POWs from his country are also staying at. 

“It’s around eight days of a drive,” her brother informed her two nights before their planned visit to the prison. “Are you up for that, Mala?”

“Of course,” she answered him. “He needs me.”

The prison looked big in pictures, but now that Mala is standing before its entrance she started to wonder if all the prisoners they keep here could fit. 

She straightened her back and made sure her uniform was still neat-looking with no visible creases on it before she took one deep breath and made her way to the entrance of the prison. Upon entering, some of the people working there would stare at her. They know who she is and even if she did not like how their judgemental or wary looks were on her, she taught herself how to not care. They were not there when she took care of Ben at the dugout, they were not there to listen to their conversations that were not filled with hate, and they were not there when Ben surrendered himself.

Mala was able to speak to one of the guards who held the key to Ben’s prison cell. 

“He doesn’t speak much,” the guard informs her, “He would sometimes say either yes or no, or he wouldn’t say anything at all.”

They continue to walk beside each other down the hall lined with cells. “I know you,” the guard continues, “I read and heard everything that you claimed. It was different from what those doctors or whatever the hell, psychologists were saying.”

Mala squares her jaw. “And?” She mutters tightly. 

“I think that if that man truly tortured you, you wouldn’t be here.”

“It’s…It’s complicated,” she breathes out. 

“War is complicated,” the guard replies and he stops, handing her a single key hanging on a rounded piece of metal string. “I’ll stay here and wait for you. He’s in the second cell to your right, ma’am.”

Mala takes the key from him and the faintest shadow of a smile plays on her lips. “Thank you.” She’s anxious and anticipating at the same time to see him again. Will Ben still look the way he was a year ago? Or will he look like life is drained out of him? 

She’s scared, but she’s worked hard to reach this point. 

She finally stops in front of his prison cell and her breath is caught in her throat when she sees that his back is facing her as he sits before, presumably, a small desk he is writing on. She freezes in place, tears instantly pooling in her eyes but she tries her hardest to keep them at bay. 

He has grown thin over the year. It’s clear that he hasn’t been eating well, but at least it doesn’t show that he was being starved to death. Perhaps it was his own volition to not eat a lot at all. She understands if that is the case since she was like that for the past year as well. 

With her hands shaking, she inserts the key into the cell’s lock. She unlocks it and slides the cell wide open enough for her to enter and close it behind. The man notices someone’s presence behind him, but he does not turn to look at the person who entered and continues with his writing. 

Mala takes this time to look around the cell, noting how the sole lightbulb hanging overheard seems to be softly flickering. A single bed made out of metal and a very thin and worn-out mattress on it is stuck to the wall. At the foot of it are a small metal toilet and a sink on top of it. In the middle of the cell is where Ben is writing. 

“It is not yet meal time,” he suddenly speaks, not tearing his gaze away from what he is working on. Mala notes how his voice sounded tired. 

“But would you accept visitors?”

The pencil he was holding drops on the desk and he turns around in his seat. When he sees her standing there before him he gasps softly in pure disbelief. 

Mala could not hold in her tears anymore. She wanted to smile at him, but she was completely overcome by her tears. “H-How are you, Ben?”

He stands in an instant and without wasting another moment, he goes near her and tightly wraps his arms around her. Mala hugs him back and clutches the back of his prison shirt, afraid that if she lets go, she’ll lose him again. “I’m so sorry,” she apologizes in a cry. She could feel him rub her back in soothing patterns. “They wouldn’t believe me, Ben. I-I had to act for months just so I could see you. I’m so sorry for making you wait all alone.”

He pulls back and cradles her face between his hands. Mala is surprised to see tears falling down his face, but the smile he was showing her was one that completely warmed her heart. “You didn’t make me wait at all.” He then brings his lips to her forehead, “Mala,” he whispered her name tenderly before pressing a light kiss on her nose, “My Mala,” he whispered again and kissed the corner of her mouth. “I could even wait a decade, as long as I’ll get to see you again.” 

Mala’s heart fluttered with his words and she felt the same way. Despite her tears, she managed to loosen the grip of his hands on her cheeks so that she could lean forward and return a kiss on his cheek. “I don’t care what others will say, but I am going to visit you as much as I can and make sure that you’ll stay with me when you’re free.”

A soft chuckle bubbles out of Ben and it surprises him. He hasn’t been able to find anything amusing ever since Mala was taken back by her soldiers a year ago. He, too, has gone through his own internal war whether it be psychological or emotional. But he’s thankful to have survived all that because he has someone like Mala waiting for him. “It might take years for me to be free, Mala.”

“And I don’t care,” she whispers. The corners of her mouth twitch up to form a small smile on her face. “How about we ask for an extra bed to place in here and–”

“No, no, no,” He cuts her off and lovingly kisses her cheek. “I’m not going to let you stay here in this dirty place with me.”

“But we survived the dugout together–”

“This is different now, Mala. We hated each other.”

“No, we were civil with each other.”

Ben then smirks and tugs her close to him again. “And now? What are we?”

Mala did not know what to say. He was kissing her and…she did kiss him back. Just never on the lips! “I-I, uh, well, maybe–”

“You think that I would kiss the cheek of someone I was civil with? Shake their hand, definitely, but a kiss?” He then turns silent. “...I was only reserving that kind of affection for you.”

“R-Really?”

“Wow…” He then embraces her. “A year has passed and you have not changed. I knew I was waiting on the right person.” He pulls away and guides Mala with him since she seemed to have forgotten how to walk or even breathe. “I want you to sit on the chair. I have something for you.”

“You do?” She throws him a confused look after she sits on the chair. Ben fixes the small stack of paper on his desk and places it at the bottom of four more stacks of paper before presenting them to her. 

“It’s not much, but I’ve been making myself busy with translating a certain book for you. I’m now at the 10th chapter.”

Mala feels touched that he remembered that particular conversation in the dugout and to pull his leg, she asks, “Is this the book about the short women?”

Ben breaks off into a huge smile. “Yes, it’s about the short women. You can use this as another reason for you to visit me here.”

He’s right. They are more than ‘civil’ towards each other now, so what is there that Mala needs to be afraid of? She loops an arm around his neck and gently presses her lips against his. After a while, she breaks the kiss to see Ben beaming at her. “About time you did that,” he comments quietly. 

“And I’ll gladly do it again.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is the official ending of this 4-part imagine! I hope you liked it ♡  If I had all the time in the world, I would have made this into a book hahaha

UPDATE: I have turned this into a book already! ♡ Find "Knowing, You" on my profile ♡ happy reading!