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Cigarettes After Sunset

Enter any and all CAS songs here:

Chapter Notes: LMTV stands for Light Medium Tactical Vehicle and is used to transport fuel or water in the Army. For the sake of this story, please pretend the military have small, cool little bikes and the LMTV can be used for small vehicles.

They'd had decent sunrises back at the Stage— of course they had.

To keep the normalcy act up, the aliens had done a pretty damn good job at recreating sunrises and sunsets on those fake-ass walls with the obvious, stiff-ass corners.

As a kid, Till had been captivated by the colors, often sneaking out of his containment unit just to catch them in the early hours of those somber mornings. He didn't really have to think about it. His unassuming, childish mind just kind of fell in love with them all on its own.

But then, as he grew older, Ivan's unique mind and thought processes began to rub off on him, and he noticed a pattern in those sunrises, those bright colors.

One day, the sky would be pink with wispy blanket clouds. The next day, it would be fiery orange and red, no clouds. The next it would be yellow. And then pink, and then blazing red with no clouds, and then a-fucking-gain, that brilliant dandilion yellow.

Of course, Till will never attribute the discovery to Ivan, but Ivan did do his fair share of accompanying him to see them by the time Till realized, so Till supposes he wasn't completely useless.

Till thought that maybe those few colors were the only ones he'd ever see, morning after morning.

But after escaping to the Org., after every morning he's woken up either in the field or in his makeshift bed palette, he's been proven wrong.

Since escaping, he's seen vibrant purples and royal blues, blinding whites and bruising blacks. Till has seen what he learned from Tai-ge to be cumulus clouds, billowing high and puffy into the atmosphere. They aren't restricted to four walls, their color untainted by heavy sorrow.

The horizon is endless all the way out here, in the middle of nowhere, and every morning he is forced to sit and simply take it all in. His chest, normally stiff and weighted, feels light and airy. Free.

He feels free.

And as beautiful a revelation it is, he can't retract the fact that it makes him reckless.

"Seriously, you just HAD to let go of the handles going over 190 miles per hour?!" Hyuna digs, throwing her hands up in indignation.

Till stands before her with his head lowered, rightfully repenting.

It is the first day of their mission to rescue Ivan from the Stage, and they were only half of the way to the arena before they needed to refuel.

Till, distracted and in his head, let go of his handles to feel the wind through his fingers, desperately grappling for that sense of freedom he could just taste on the tip of his tongue.

As expected, it was a terrible idea.

The four of them were riding in a wedge formation (with Taiga manning the LMTV) so when Till veered hard to the right, being right in the middle for protection purposes, he nearly ended Mizi's life along with his own.

Hyuna, acting as squad leader at the point of the wedge, craned her neck at Mizi's exclamation and Luka's cursing, and almost swerved into a ditch herself.

Summed up, it was a stupid ass move on Till's part, and embarrassing as all hell. It also could have resulted in multiple casualties, so there's that.

Hyuna quickly decided that it was time for a short rest, allowing them time to refuel bikes and bodies alike. She gave the signal and the squad pulled over smoothly; they'd practiced driving in formation a time or two, so the confidence was there.