The Hellhound

Ceasefire

 Minutes turned to hours.

Hours to days.

Days to weeks.

Time crawled on blindly, all the while the war above raged on. We remained in the dark for the most part, aside from occasional news updates from the TV's installed in the mess hall. Talk of stalemates, treaties and an armistice circled the news stations, all varying in both story and reliability. Germany retreated, Russia's attacking, America's winning, we're all losing. Different story, different station.

The only truth given to us were body counts; if even that.

Every new week was another flag hung on the wall. Red, white and blue. Thirty stars. One flag turned to two. Two turned into fifty rather quickly. From there, there'd become too many to count. They covered one of the walls in the mess hall, and the amount continued to grow with every passing day. Beneath each flag was a name. I didn't have to ask. No one did. "A memorial," is what Ryan had called them.

An omen, was what I thought. A promise of what the future had become. And with every new flag hung on the wall, the less we all looked at them. They faded into the background until they became just as mundane as everything else. Forgotten, just like everyone else.

"-was that? Two or three?"

There was a quiet thump as I folded up the deck of cards in my hand, jolting as a voice broke the silence. I looked up, finally focusing back on Sage, who was on her knees at the foot of her cot. A sharpie was balanced dangerously between her fingers, looking only seconds away from falling to the white sheets beneath her. "Ro?"

"Uh..." I blinked, eyes flitting to what she'd been scribbling on the wall beside her bed. It was another recipe she'd apparently been writing down, scrawled at an angle amongst the eight others she'd written over the past week. Or longer. I didn't know anymore. I cleared my throat before pushing myself back against the wall behind me. "Two cups?"

It was a half assed guess, but Sage didn't seem to mind. Her brows had furrowed again as her attention returned to the recipe, and my attention was dropped back to the deck of cards in my hands. It wasn't much, but it kept idle hands busy. Didn't do much for idle minds, though. But I supposed it was better than lying around in my own room, soaking up the silence like water until I'd gone mad. Where maybe I hadn't changed the activity so much, I'd at least changed the scenery.

Even if only a little.

I glanced up over the top of my cards as I shuffled them, absentmindedly. The black cap of the Sharpie was pinned between her teeth as she took to writing down the two cups that I'd suggested, though clearly only after much deliberation. Beside it, both one and three had been scribbled out.

"On second thought-" I looked back to the cards, riffling the two halves back together. "-might have only been one cup."

I felt the corners of my lips twitch up a tad as she shot me a perplexed look over her shoulder before reaching out to give my knee a shove. "You're the worst," she griped and I chuckled quietly. When she once again crossed out the two cups, I snorted. "I'm trying to commit these to memory, you know. Sue me for wanting to make my girlfriend a nice meal once we go home."

Home.

The amusement faltered as she spoke, and I thumbed over the edge of the cards. "Right." My gaze dropped to my hands. I'd wanted to say more, but it suddenly felt like too much effort to bother. And the general lack of tension in the air had been nice. While it lasted, at least. So I kept my mouth shut and let the quiet scraping of the marker against the wall fill the silence.