Metal Birds

Chapter 67: Some Seem Older

St.Lo, France, July 20 1944

Arthur felt like a jumbling bumbling stumbling heap of childish emotion and reaction. He was fighting a war for god's sake, and he had seen death before. He had seen these things before, and yet, he wasn't sure why these things were effecting him so. For some time, a few weeks it felt, he wanted very badly to merely dismiss all that he felt. So that perhaps he could be more helpful, more productive, more supportive to the group of seven that still hung about him.

He could find it hard to contain himself sometimes, caught in a bought of mental misery that left him sitting numb for a few seconds, until something or other snapped him out of it. Sometimes it was a sharp jab on his shoulder from one of his brothers, other times, it was the shout of a companion in the heat of battle.

He focused on his gun, and his duty as a medic, and tried not to allow the faces of the fallen men to be replaced by those he missed.

No, he told himself. He wasn't seeing Franklin, or Thomas. That wasn't William. That wasn't Marie.

In some ways, small victories would draw him from his dreary stupor.

Small French villages were being recovered left and right, from North to South, and they crawled ever closer to Paris. He felt better seeing that Francis did. The welts and blisters of occupation on the man's face had faded considerably, and he smiled more and smoked a little less. But Francis had always smoked, so it was hard to tell anything.

St.Lo was where they were now.

With Francis seeming to chin up, Matthew did as well, and in turn Aarav, then Dylan, then Seamus and finally Alastair.

And when Alastair was in a good mood, Arthur didn't see why he couldn't be as well.

Then again, it was an uphill struggle on a mental mountain with two souls -sometimes many more- seeming to mistakenly drag him down.

In that aspect, he felt that the rest of the group had changed considerably. There wasn't much to be said about Francis or Matthew, he had known their ins and outs for literal centuries, and he could up their downs with ease. They always seemed to be doing the same for him.

But he noted a change in his brothers, for certain.

Most especially Alastair.

For the whole of Arthur's far too long life, Alastair had been young of heart and young of mind. Seamus was similar, though Dylan had always presented himself in a mature manner. It was far easier for Arthur to get in a fight with Alastair, be it political or familial, and in a way it felt as if the whole world had split and people had too choose sides. Arthur knew he had been selfish, very, very selfish, and had allowed horrible things to take place just to make a point.

In the Dark Ages, Arthur had been a royalty smitten fool, though not too many others had been different.

Alastair had sobered, not of drink, but of word. The Scottish rumble of his voice turned from often spitting insult to often spilling wise and comforting word. And while his heart was still youthful, his mind was very, very old. In ways, older than Arthur.

Arthur saw it in everyone. Not just nations, but in everyone. He could see it in their eyes. Their souls were old, wisened and matured. Some elder men in the platoons had it about their faces, how the worry lines there seemed natural. In the commander at the military post office in St.Lo, diligently packing letters to families now broken. He saw it in the medics, as they carried their best friends bleeding and broken bodies back to safety. He saw it in the soldiers who saw far too much far too young, who were youthful at heart but had growing pains in their skulls, who didn't know how to react to most of what was happening around them.