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There's something different in Ralph's eyes when he comes back, clothes torn and bloodied. It's a haunting mirror of the faces you had seen on sooty faces and hardened jaws. It's almost like he was twenty years older, a man in a child's body.
Sometimes he wakes up screaming, his fragile body convulsing and whispering unfamiliar names. He holds onto his mother for dear life, his eyes wide and terrified as he sees what you cannot in the dancing shadows of the night.
He has an adverse reaction to fire in the first few years, as well as a sudden fear of heights. He doesn't say a word from where it's from, but no one needed to ask.
It's like you've never gotten him back. It's almost like he's never there, not fully. His mother cries in the middle of the night.
Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night. He's confused, and scared, and flinches at every sound. But when he sees you, his eyes clear. Lately you've had his mother prepare some cocoa before she retires to the room. The two of you sit, drinking the cocoa before retiring back to bed. You don't tell him why you can't sleep, he doesn't tell you why he keeps waking up.
You think he'll tell you, but not yet. There's a respectable distance between you, always had been, but now it seems like you're talking to one of your soldiers, instead of your son.
But for now, you decided that this was not enough. You quit your job and head for the country. You think of starting a farm with the savings you have left over.
He tells you he doesn't want any pigs.