Paint it Another Colour

Chapter 49

Batbayar - 2p Mongolia
Ghazi - 2p Egypt

Arthur peered around a corner and then gestured behind him with his hand, muttering under his breath. Vladimir and Peter followed him as he turned onto another corridor, equally empty as the last, and every other corridor they'd been down. The place was quiet at the moment, but every so often, they'd hear something, anything, and know it wasn't quite void of life. Personally, they hadn't met anyone yet, and didn't really want to, but were aware that various others had. They'd heard the screaming, shouts, gunshots. They knew people were dying. They knew they couldn't do anything about it. They knew that it was probably closer to their fault than anyone else's. Similar thoughts were flying through all of their heads, but no one said anything. They didn't need to.

"What are we actually meant to be doing here?" Peter asked, staring forwards at Arthur. He didn't reply for a moment, and Peter was about to repeat himself.

"Us specifically, or everyone in general?"

"Us specifically" Peter said, glancing behind him, just in case.

Arthur was silent again, thinking the question over. It took him a moment to reply, and even then, he knew it wasn't the answer Peter was looking for. "I don't know" he muttered.

"What do you mean you don't know?" Peter demanded, raising an eyebrow and ignoring Vladimir's sigh from in between them. "I thought you knew what you were doing?"

"I did" Arthur muttered. "Now, I don't know."

"We came here to rescue those we knew or assumed had been captured" Vladimir said. "However, we don't know where they are, if they've already been saved, or anything like that, so it's not like we can really do anything from where we are now is it? We can carry on, assuming they've been captured and slowly regroup later on, but that's all I'd say."

"So that's why we came here" Peter raised an eyebrow again. "I know that. Why are we still here, sneaking around like this, or, whatever we're really doing here. Surely it would have been better to try and stay together, or close together, so that we could... I don't know... get everyone we needed to when we could, possibly stop anyone from being killed, because that's surely happened by now, and then we can all get out at the same time, and everything's okay."

"Things don't exactly ever stick to plan when you actually go into something" Arthur shrugged. "Think of... I don't know... the Somme. Everyone was told they were going to win the war with a single battle, and to just walk across No Man's Land, but it never quite worked out that way, did it? You could compare this to that. We came in attempting to rescue some friends, attempting to stay in groups, but in the heat of the moment, everyone was split up, and suddenly, we're in the Somme all over again."

"So we're all going to die?" Peter sighed.

"No" Arthur glanced behind at him, frowning. "I didn't mean it in that respect, simply with the general idea of it. Not that everyone will die, because... because... if everyone died, then that would mean that..."

"We'd all die" Peter glared at him. "There's no use trying to make it better you know."

Vladimir shook his head.

"Do you want to try taking the reigns for a moment?" Arthur snapped, gesturing to just in front of him. "Because by all means do. It's one thing trying to help a situation, and another having it crumble around you, knowing it's your fault. So by all means, if you think that you have some crazy genius plan to revolutionise this huge failure, which we know it is, then please, step up front and take over. I could do with a rest."

"Maybe I could" Peter drew himself up to his full height and stared up at Arthur challengingly. "Coz you're doing a pretty bad job of this yourself, so why don't you step down for a moment?"