The Aftermath

Lacking Something

A/N Guys, I've been very occupied with working and a current family issue so I sincerely apologize for this very elongated wait for chapter 8. Luckily enough, I have a few chapters for you guys so I really hope you enjoy.

Also a side note, I'm not perfect in any way.

With that being said, you may criticize my work but just know I am doing my best with the very little I know about the era. Dates aren't going to be correct. Neither will technology and appliances like everyone wants to point out. Bare with me. I'm doing my best and learning as I go, too. Let's all get educated on something different here ^.^

So.... there's that and he's the next step into The Aftermath.

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June 7th, 1940

~Harry's POV~

Someone had brought a pocket radio and I could hear the soft sounds it was making amongst all the commotion. I truly wondered how many issues this was going bring England as a whole. There were plenty of empty seats on our way here. It seemed many had either not relayed the message or they had not answered their phones. I just kept my head down and lead myself and Tommy through the crowd. Loading the first ship was a rare case but we got here soon enough and hadn't started to settle in yet. I look back on occasion to make sure Tommy was still close behind. I sighed and walked aboard the ship and immediately started looking for a place to sit. My feet were truly aching and all I wanted was a minute or so more to sit. Tommy stood next to me shuffling his feet and his hands jammed into his pockets. I pulled from my pocket a piece of paper and flicked it between my fingers from time to time just looking at it. My mom had written my name on it and weighted it with a magnet to keep on me for whatever reason. She was always cautious and worried about everything. She pretty much believed that the world was out to get our family anyway because no one in our family had ever really lived passed their sixties. Our family was a war family. Each generation served and each year, as time went on, it was getting worse. This war had been the worst of them all, being one of the biggest upsets. But somewhere deep down, I knew, I was going to make it out of this alive. Tommy didn't look so sure of the same thing.

I held out the paper for Tommy to see. "My mum is a proper lunatic for making me carry this, don't you think?" I chuckled lightly but he didn't crack even the slightest grin at my joke.

I sat back against the wall and hummed a tune I heard in a pub one night before I was originally shipped out. I tapped my foot to the beat in my head. The band was great. Four members with the oddest fashion sense and haircuts you would ever see but I guess it was new. I preferred to keep my somewhat shaggy, curly locks intact. Submitting myself to the social norms was never something I really cared for. I wanted to just be myself and if that meant standing out and being different, then so be it. I look up and Tommy is shooting me a death glare.

"No offense mate, your humming is charming but how in the hell can you be so positive right now?" He kept the angry mug on his face and all I could do was shrug my shoulders in a response. "What do you mean you don't know? We are literally being sent to our death's and you're over here humming a God-awful tune." I rolled my eyes and grinned up at him.

"Tom, how you look at things is how they'll end up turning out. If you already go into something perceiving it as something terrible, that is all it will amount to. But," I wag my finger at him, "if you keep a smile on your face, no matter the pain beneath and hope for the best and you DO your best, you're almost guaranteed a better outcome than the first." He sighed but I knew I was thinking the same thing he was. There was no positive to such a thing as war. Lives are cast aside, everyone is in an emotional debt that can never be repaid. Even our safety had a hint of sorrow to it. Our innocence was being stolen by the only thing many of us had ever learned how to do and that's fight for our lives.

I looked down at my own hands and my mind wandered off a little farther. I ignored everyone around me shouting, arguing. My mind and my heart were arguing with themselves. My mind was telling me that we were all going to be fine and that war was beneficial. My heart was shouting back telling my brain that it was only the killer instinct in me telling me that war was good. I am far more capable of doing anything that most people think I am. I am in no way the most built but I did the same training everyone else here did. If anyone on this ship is worse off, it's Tommy. He's muscular but, any male he would have to face would just think of him as yet another door they could easily knock down and, in fact, they wouldn't be wrong.

One thing I had already learned about Tommy is that he is too connected to his emotions. A man going to war shouldn't be so emotional. However, Tommy was what you could barely consider a man. Regardless, we're like brothers now and I was going to do everything in my right to protect him from harm.

But the moment he does me wrong is the moment I will turn on him.

My stomach turned at the idea because we had already been through so much together but warm changes a person. You will never, and I do mean never, receive the same person back that you sent to war.

We're all a little lost out here fighting for our lives and no one cared enough to settle things like adults.

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~Tommy's POV~

I couldn't keep my thoughts on one thing to save my life. My mind would bounce back and forth from "when was my last meal and what would be my next?" to things like "I can't wait to get my hands back on a gun." My mind was running wild. I wasn't made for war. I was a lover, not a fighter. Forgive me for not being entirely heartless.

My eyes flickered across every face in the room at least three times. Some looked familiar and didn't but there weren't many of us here. I decided to take a seat next to Harry. He was still humming softly and I just closed my eyes. There was something about him that was welcoming. He was warm, like the first breakthrough of sunshine when the storm rolls away. I crack a half smile. "Somewhere over the rainbow" was the tune he had switched to and I couldn't help but smile. Evangeline used to sing it when it was first released. She looked up to Judy Garland. I feel the tears beginning to form and I shot my eyes open. I can't cry. I've got to push my emotions aside and be a man. I'm a soldier for Christ's sake.

Harry stops humming and chuckles. "You're practically a baby," He says half-jokingly. I shove him and laugh with him. We needed to stay as positive but as tough as we could be right now. He was right after all, how we see things is the outcome we get. We both settle down and take a look around.

"Forty percent," Harry says solemnly.

"What," I asked. It was random and something had made his brain switch channels for a moment.

"Forty percent of us won't make it home to our family's in one piece. It's hard to believe." He motions to three other guys and ourselves sitting on the bench. "Two of us are either going to die or return mauled." I sighed. So much for positive spirits, I guess.