The Swan's Song.

Chapter 19

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5tMnwEEB23tft9jjj8jVis?si=1e0ae925badb495d

Here's that spotify playlist. Hope the link works this time. Enjoy!

XXX

Swan stood on the other side of his door unblinking.

The mystery anthro had come and gone, with Swan hearing whoever it was creep up the hall.

His hearing had always been quite keen, his range a fair amount sharper than most other humans he had grown up with.

His hearing was noted much earlier than when he was taken to the ViperStar medical building, and much earlier than when NORAD fell.

Swan remembered how he could hear Benny and Brixley walking up the hall that lead to the cell he had been out in when the General had slapped him.

Swan remembered how he had heard Callie curse as Sako came up on him in the field when they captured him.

Swan remembered how he had foiled several surprise attacks against him and his friends by simply listening from a concealed location.

Swan remembered how loud Jessica Randall screamed.

The man frowned, the only emotion he could feel at the moment being agitation.

Whoever that anthro was, they had no right to come to his door and spy on him and 3:30 in the morning.

No fear. No suspense.

Just anger.

He had half the mind to pull that door open and yank whoever it was in the hall inside of his room to beat the snot out of them.

But he had controlled such thoughts and played the verbal game to diffuse the situation.

People coming to his door at 3:30 in the morning had its own sort of strange context regarding it, and actively attacking people who came there wouldn't help his case.

"Why are they so weird?" Wondered Swan.

The anthros made so many things complicated for him.

Simply living alongside them was a completely new and weird experience. The societal, racial, and social differences between them were vast and wide.

But it wasn't just that.

The anthros mostly had a glimpse at a normal life outside of the military and fighting. Callie had made references to a life before the military and the APG. Brixley and many others had lived before the war.

Swan never had that experience.

From his youngest years, all he ever remembered was NORAD and its subterranean halls, expanding and growing to be more than what it originally was.

Swan didn't see the sun and feel its warmth on his skin until he was nine years old. He still remembered the day he stepped into the outside world at the whim of Chelikov stepping up where his real father faltered, how ever common such an occurrence was.

They had families. They had lives. They were more than their uniforms.

Swan understood a few years ago that he never could be anything more. His whole life was the US Army, whether he wanted it or not.

He was raised in a military structure and everything he had done had been geared towards military service due to the war.

Pilot simulations. Weapons training and familiarization. Ballistic missile maintenance. Nuclear protocols.