She was back in the first field, the tallgrass rustling as it shifted aside to reveal the barrel of a gun. She heard a few more words, spoken in a language she could still only gather bits and pieces from, and suddenly the barrel was pressed right up against her forehead.
She raised her hands lethargicly.
And the word began to move once more.
The man greeted her with a scowl. She couldn't find it in her to feel any such way about it. She would greet herself with a scowl as well. Though, their scowls would almost certainly stem from very different misgivings.
His face was unfamiliar. If she had seen it before, in a world long past, she did not recognize him now. Maybe they had been friends. Maybe they had never met at all. Either way, time ticked ever onwards.
His uniform was much more recognizable. This one had yet to be thrown into the mud, its colour untarnished and its seems unspilt. She supposed that this meant this man was intact as well.
He had nothing to do with the western front.
A word. Another. A harsh series, unable, as hard as she tried, to be filtered into anything but nonsense. The barrel of the gun slammed against the front of her skull, and she stumbled a few steps backwards with the force. She couldn't begin to discern whether it had hurt or not before the collar of her garment was in the mans hand, the gun now pressed into the soft of her skull.
As he turned his head to shout back into the grasses, she finally found something worth noticing. Dark, blocky sections of ink, methodically slashing their way into something she could read.
MDLXXIX.
A band of letters that functioned as numbers, wrapping around his neck like a malicious hand, Letters she hadn't seen in years, letters that felt both like a familiar pat on the back and a violent hand around her own neck. The intent of these letters was to harm. To code.
She understood that it may be rude to speak them aloud.
She understood many things.
As soon as she began to speak, his eyes met hers with a look of frantic fury. The gun dug further into the side of her head, so hard that she began to see little specks of white. Flashes of lights in the corners of her vision.
She saw the moment her words became clear, the moment they registered with the man on the other end of the firearm. The fury fell away from his eyes with a blink, nothing left floating within them but horror, anxious confusion.
At first it would seem that her garble was as meaningless to him as the reverse--but, it became obvious as she continued, not so. Recognition flared in those dark irises of his. A recognition that brought with it a visceral reaction.
The gun slipped from the side of her head as he cringed away, opposite hand slipping to his neck. His fingers dug into the skin above the ink, tearing at it almost involuntarily, violently. He stated through her with eyes no longer focused, no longer seeing the sky or the field or the girl or the gun pointed at her head.
She blinked.
"That's not how those come off, you know."
Her voice felt ridiculous between them--tired, raspy, and vaguely patronizing, even through the language barrier. It was painfully out of place in what was clearly meant to be a solemn moment, a hollow caricature of understanding of the human condition.
His gaze snapped back into focus, back into the present moment, and then the gun was against her once more, slotting itself between the bones of her eye socket. She could see the chambered bullet, peering back at her through the metal ring.
Fitting.
Yes, right between the bone, rather snugly indeed.
She stared back at the man, half obscured by his weapon, a smattering of pink lines etched into his neck beginning to weep red where nail had torn skin.
After a long moment of silence, nothing but the wind between the strange pair, she recalled what lay heavy in her pockets--meaningless drivel to her, but perhaps it cold be something of use to this intact soldier.
She fixed him with a mindful stare and watched as he began to slowly shift his weight in discomfort, from one foot to the other.
"Are you the commander?"
Perhaps it was a silly question. Ignoring for a moment that leaders did not tend to have brands on their skin, nor did they tend to send themselves off alone into tallgrass, it suddenly struck her just how little she knew even of the western front. Perhaps she ought to have ruminated further on the possibility of the commander's death.
How many of these men walked through these fields with metals on their lapels? Of the two she had had the opportunity to study, only one had garnered so many metal trinkets. Each uniform was identical, save for the stitching that tailored each piece to the individual.
Save for the tatters and blood stains one might accrue.
There was nothing to tell one man apart from the next--nothing made clear to her eyes, anyhow.
Who had been left there, out on that western front?
What was the purpose of that fatal last stand?
What was she looking for?
When had she began looking for anything at all?
She was almost certain that the only word from her inquiry he might possibly understand was 'commander', but this meant little. It was not a true inquiry anyhow. whether he was the commander or not was, ultimately, irrelevant. She only needed the word itself.
The gun wavered for a moment, almost imperceptibly. Perhaps it was the brush of familiarity that brought about its halting and hesitant lowering from her skull, if only to now have it pointed directly at her foot.
Who gave him a gun to begin with?
She hoped that they had regretted the decision ever since. If only for her own bitter conscience.
He asked another question. At this point, it was clear that he know whatever he might say didn't matter, but perhaps he could still try and get the relevant point across.
He was unable to get the relevant point across.
Whatever he was spitting at you with his clipped, staggering sentences, the verbal stumbling through of a poorly written piece of music, of someone struggling to regain their focus, their upper hand, was unintelligible.
He could, for instance, be gesturing at her to mention something else that he could pick away at. Or, perhaps he was asking her what she knew, where she had come from.
Maybe he was insisting she go drown herself in the field dirt.
Baring all of this in mind--which is to say, ignoring whatever stupid gesture the man had managed to come up with now, she took advantage of his lowered gun to reach into her pocket.
She presented the stolen medals with little ceremony. There was no need for pomp or circumstance--not with anything at all, but certainly not with this. She mangled them together once, to get his attention, before simply tossing them at him.
He dropped the gun onto the dirt.
As busy as she was jumping out of the way of the firearm's barrel, she didn't get the chance to watch his face fall, morphing into something tired, brittle, bone wary, and a good deal afraid. She did get the chance to see if after it had shifted, though, and the sudden change was enough on its own to draw her attention back to him.
His next few words didn't need gestures--not that he was still trying to use them; how drained he looked now, as if moving his hands about would snap them, and it was simply too much of a risk. But, if only with this, his meaning was clear.
"Follow me."
YOU ARE READING
A Martyrs Respite
Historia Corta"We're allowed to love ourselves, and we're allowed to hate us for it."
