A Desperate, Painful Kind of Love

1

Living in a time when the world was chest deep in one of the worst wars it had ever seen, Doctor John Watson had lost a few men.

Not many, being the best of a large group of nurses and doctors, but on occasion, especially working behind enemy lines, putting themselves directly into danger. John would return from the lines with the tags of a dead soldier to send back to his family. How close they'd been or how well he'd known them never mattered, the tags were always heavy in his hand, heavier still when he was given the abilities to fight for his country, to save them, and still couldn't see every man back home.

It happened. Not everyone was going to make it back, they told you that when you lined up, and kept telling you that every day from dawn to dusk while you learned to handle a rifle and point it at the face of the enemy, to throw a grenade into an unsuspecting group, to crawl under barbed-wire with bombs going off overhead, to patch up a fellow comrade long enough to carry him to safety by the strength of your back alone if you had to. They told you that while they taught you how to make a tourniquet, how to do surgery in under ten minutes, how to break bones and reset them.

But it was alright, because each and every soldier was fighting for his wife, his children and his country, and if he had to lay down his life, then he would, because their lives and their freedom were worth it.

War had changed a bit, since ten or so years ago. It was impossible not to notice. Men and women fought alongside machines now- sometimes, it was just the machines.

Some things about war, though, hadn't changed. A battle field was still a battle field, whether it was in a remote part of Iraq or a dessert in Afghanistan. A soldier still had to be fit and healthy up to regulations, still had to have the heart.

Families still saw off their loved ones. Soldiers still wrote home. Guns still fired bullets. People still died.

Oh yes, even with all the technology- all the drones, wireless signals and "innovations", even with the government taking charge in new ways, making new alliances- that was still one thing that hadn't changed. That wouldn't.

Death.