Roller Skate || Alex Gaskarth a.u.

Chapter 32: Dear Kit

Alex

Dear Kit,

I don't know if my letters are reaching you anymore. Are you okay? I haven't heard from you at all, but rumour has it that the Captains are tampering with our mail. They don't want people at home to find out that this place is an actual Hell hole. Honestly, it's a wasteland out here. And in addition to that, gifts are being confiscated and contraband is being banned. One guy--Timmy--has a secret stash of chocolate hidden under his pillow. He's a nice dude. He's sharing it with the rest of us.

For some reason I'm sort of the 'big shot' around here. It's weird not being hated for once. I just thought you ought to know that I'm not being kicked around anymore.

The reason I'm not a loser, you may very well ask, well, I'm not exactly sure. I mean yes, I do stand up for a lot of people, but if you were here and saw what the Generals and Lieutenants were really like....you wouldn't let them kick the stuffing out of good men. They have it in for me though, those so called 'leaders'. They don't like being told they're wrong by a 'pathetic kid' like me.

But I'm keeping safe, just like you want me to be keeping. It's hard to not fall apart in places like this though. Cam is...well....he's not quite Cam anymore. I'm worried about him, and I know you'd tell me that I shouldn't be, but he's really, really bad. I'm talking about crying hysterically bad. Turns out, he thought this was going to be a walk in the park. I think once he saw one guy in our platoon being shot beside him....actually I'd rather not write about that.

I miss you a lot, Kit. And I miss mom, of course, and everyone else, but out of everyone I guess I miss you the most. Lots of the guys around here know all about you. When we can't sleep at night, we swap stories. It's cheesy, but most of my stories are about you. I think they like hearing about you. I still have the picture of you tucked away safely into my (don't laugh) underwear. I'm afraid I'll lose it if I put it anywhere else!

We're camping out in a forest at the moment. Spying on some enemy soldiers, I think. I'm not entirely sure what we're doing anymore though....

"ALEX!"

Alex jumped and watched as his pen slipped out of his hand and fell to the ground of their tent. He whipped around, but was immediately yanked out of his chair by Stan, one of his younger friends in the platoon.

"Stan! What the--"

"WE'VE BEEN INFILTRATED! THEY'RE FIRING AT RANDOM AND TAKING HOSTAGES! WE NEED TO GET OUT!"

Fear flooded Alex's body as he heard shots being fired all around him. Stan dragged him to his feet and out the tent, straight into the heart of the bloodbath. Alex nearly gagged when his foot stepped on a fallen soldier with his throat sliced open.

"ENEMIES!" roared a mean man with a moustache in a thick accent that Alex didn't know. Bullets sliced through the air as Alex dropped to his hands and knees and started to crawl, Stan scrambling after him.

Sweat dripped off of Alex's forehead as he crawled over bodies and bodies of his comrades. Long gone were the days were you tried to save the bodies from their fate of decay. It was clear that it was every man for himself. It was sick really, that this type of warfare was really happening all over again, but Alex didn't have the time to ponder that, because at that moment, a young guy--the guy had to be only fifteen--blocked their path and aimed a gun between Alex's eyes. The boy was shaking, and his uniform was much too big for him. His eyes were wide and he looked terrified, his hand was clutching the gun too tightly.

"Don't move!" the soldier barked at him, and Alex raised an eyebrow, deciding to remain calm. He raised his hands as Stan whimpered behind him.

"Look--" he started, but the kid screamed and shot at him, but he missed by miles, because the gun jerked up as he shot it. The soldier was so inexperienced that Alex nearly felt sorry for him.

"I have a girl at home. One that will be very sad if you kill me. Is that what you really want?" Alex asked, his voice low as he fixed his eyes on the trembling gun-holding-boy.

"S-Stop that!" the soldier ordered, but Alex didn't feel intimidated one bit. 

"Please." Alex said, actually pleading. He wasn't ready to die yet. Not really. And if his life was riding on a fifteen year old soldier who didn't know how to handle a gun properly, Alex wasn't going to be a smart ass to the guy. Besides, he was unequipped and defenceless .

The soldier scrunched up his face and lowered his gun.

Alex jumped up, taking Stan with him and made a run for it, pushing past the kid and heading for the darker part of the forest, and for once, Alex realised that he wasn't tired. His legs no longer ached from sprinting, his arms could tow Stan with him, his reflexes were better than they ever were, and before he knew it, they were away from the massacre, safe and sound.

"A-Alex." 

Alex froze and turned around, eyes landing on the evident wound in Stan's stomach.

But how? They'd been so careful, they had dodged every bullet like a pro?

No.

He had been careful, he had dodged every bullet like a pro. He had been so focused on himself that Alex had forgotten that Stan had been with him the entire time, that Stan had been the one who had warned him in the first place....

"Go." Stan whispered, placing his hand and falling to the ground on his knees. Alex gritted his teeth. "No. I'm not leaving you out here in the open." he said, marching over to his fallen friend.

"I said go, Gaskarth! That's an order!" he screamed, falling onto his back, moaning and groaning.

"You can make it! Let me help you!" Alex pleaded, but Stan slapped his hands away.

"I'd rather die than go back, Alex. Don't you understand? This place....we're never going to get out of here." he wheezed, now coughing up blood.

"Stan...." Alex whispered, taking his hand.

"You have a life at home. I don't," he said softly. "Please go."

And so he left. He didn't know how he managed to do it, but Alex rose to his feet and sprinted away, leaving Stan behind.

There's a rule in the platoon that if you cry, then you are a sworn coward. That you don't belong in the army. At first, everyone thought it was a joke, but now, everyone cried. But Alex was always good at holding back emotion.

But not now.

Watching someone that you cared about die slowly in front of your eyes was something that Alex didn't want to have experienced at the age of nineteen.

So he cried.

He cried for Stan.

He cried for home.

And most of all, he cried for Kit.

~

a/n: THIS IS NEARLY OVER AND IDK WHAT'S LEFT TO SAY 'CAUSE I'M A GONER.

There's always that moment as an (amateur) writer that you rlly rlly rlly want to keep the story going for the rest of your entire assistance, but you just can't because, well, everything has to end somewhere, right? You can't drag out a story because it won't have the effect that you want it to have in the end.

ooops. I'm late night rambling. soz. 

I FVCKING THOUGH THE APMAS WAS TODAY SO I PREPARED MYSELF. LIKE BC OF THE TIME DIFFERENCE, YEAH? AND I HAD A NAP AND SOME COFFEE, ONLY TO FIND OUT TODAY IS THE 21ST. 

*rams face into door*