015. returns instead of ruin

After what went down in Biko, the entire unit received a commendation. The chow hall had been transformed into a place more formal overnight—the usual set up was shoved back and closer together to make room for a small, hastily constructed stage and podium and the long room was lined in narrow tables hosting a bevy of buffet items. The colonel overseeing the brigade saw fit to make that award ceremony a spectacle, so impressed by the wherewithal of the units involved in the siege. This meant PFCs Sejan and Toriet were delayed in their new assignment for another week—healing had been slow for the man in charge of leading their small team those three weeks ago, and their superior officer insisted that all men involved (and not lost) be present.

The colonel’s speech was long and bloviated, packed with personal anecdotes and the usual patriotic flimflammery interjected to keep morale up. He was a good speaker; it was just immensely boring listening to someone who was allowed the luxury of an air conditioned room reminisce about days gone, about how rewarding it used to be in his subordinate’s boots.

Eventually the formality of the ceremony drew to a close and the working men were permitted to mill about and relax for the remainder of the evening. Each applauded soldier was given a bar for their dress uniforms, but three soldiers out of the eleven sent were given another. They were marked for their bravery, their distinguished service in the face of catastrophe.

Lingering close to his friend, Eoran shoved the brightly colored pins into his service uniform’s pocket. He had already decided to dump his into the envelope of letters he’d written to his family the next time he got to the APO. The two boys were encircled by a small circle of soldiers from their company, each chattering alongside and over one another. Noise carried so far down the hall that when the private directly in front of them was laughing at his own stupid joke, it felt like a shockwave that shook them each by the bones.

Wide-eyed and looking for an escape route, Eoran turned his head aside to see the long look of their temporary CO. He nudged Kasse’s shoulder with his own.

Kasse had followed Eoran’s lead through the ceremony, chin held high with his honed features stoic. Even now, the taller PFC had seemingly tuned the world out—at least until Eoran’s shoulder snapped him out of his trance. 

Since their tryst at the ruins, Kasse kept a specter of his fondness at the corner of his mouth whenever he regarded the other wright. The look on Eoran’s face, however, wasn’t a clandestine thing shared between them like a secret. The coy curl of his surreptitious grin unraveled as he followed the direction of his best friend’s black eyes.

Across the room stood Sergeant Brint, propped up with a pair of crutches that prolonged his newly acquired hobble. Lingering near the exit, he waited to catch the grey-eyed ghost’s gaze, then inclined his chin to the door, seemingly not asking, but telling.

When Brint caught him, the ghost seemed incapable of looking away. 

“…I guess Brint wants to talk.” Kasse finally looked back to Eoran, giving a sheepish grin to the raucous group surrounding him and his navigator. Looking back to Brint, the ghost tilted his head toward his companion and squinted, trying to determine if he was meant to excuse himself alone.

Brint shook his head once and turned to the door.

“Yeah, looks like it,” Eo replied, eyes affixed to the sergeant. His subdued voice was easily carried in his proximity to the other boy. “Go ahead. I’ll stick around here for a little while, or find you later.”

“Okay. Okay yeah—I’ll be right back. I kinda needed a cigarette anyways.” Kasse was real good at wearing that reassuring grin unfurling across his features but there was a chill in his gut that threatened to wring him out. Despite the camaraderie he felt in Brint’s presence, the sergeant was still a human and Kasse was still a wright.

Trust would come in time. He was sure. 

Cigarettes already in hand, Kasse followed Brint out the door and into the dark.

As soon as the boy stepped past the threshold he was seeking the comforting hiss of the lighter, the low glow of the flame, ember caught dancing on the ashes of his iris. Fingers nervously flicking at the filter, Kasse followed after Brint, inquisitive but careful. “Sir,” he greeted, tilting his chin up. “It’s good to see you walking.”

“It’s called hopping, Sejan,” the older man replied, smirk belying how much his incapacitation truly bothered him. The doctors were sure that Brint’s stride would never fully recover, but the career solder was tenacious—he’d be failing himself if he didn’t push himself to exhaustion in his physical therapy sessions or drive his nurses crazy with all his strenuous extracurricular stumbling. “And none of that sir shit.”

“Sorry, sorry. It’s been weird tonight,” the PFC replied, hands halfway up in a mockery of surrender. 

A few feet away from the mess hall’s door, there was a small assemblage of camp-style tables, the wood worn by infrequent weather and seared silver from the sun. The area was cordoned off by a low wall built of cinder blocks swept red with clay dust. Brint sat at the first table. The base kept quiet around them; apparently the rest of the brigade was hesitant to come anywhere near where their colonel was reported to be, even with the promise of free food.

“How’re you doing?” Brint asked, motioning for Kasse to sit. “Looking forward to getting back out there?”

The boy dawdled walking up to the CO, kicking at a stone or two before he clambered up onto the old pile of wood, cross legged on the table top a couple feet off from Brint’s position at the end. This probably wasn’t where Brint intended him to sit but Kasse found he rarely sat in seats as they were intended given a choice. “The leisure time has been good but I’m getting a little restless. I’mma get written up if they don’t gimme something to do soon, so it’ll be good to get back out there. Me and Eo, we’re mostly healed up now. They didn’t get us like they got you.”

Shifting, Kasse looked around to see who was in earshot, nervously taking a long drag of his cigarette.

“Yeah, that girl was insane.” The sergeant pushed the long sleeves of his uniform up his arms and laid them flat on the table in front of him, leaning forward to rest his upper body’s weight. “Really had my number. When I felt myself losing consciousness, I was sure that was it… then I woke up. But you were there, you know that already.”

Green eyes attached to a truck shifting on the far side of the MOB soon drifted back and found the wright next to him.

“So look, I’ve been doing my after action paperwork in bed this week and I wanted to talk to you about some things. Think your shadow can survive without you for a bit?” Another smirk insinuated that boy left inside. The Ossan-looking pair clearly had more in common with each other than their paler compatriots.

“He’s not my shadow.” Kasse uttered the words with a breathy, incredulous laugh, like Brint’s assumptions were completely unfounded—but that boy, smooth as he always played, had his tells. He sucked down another hard drag of his cigarette to distract from the implication, studying his knuckles splayed over both pack and lighter. He looked up at the sergeant before he pushed the pack over, eyes bright. He didn’t know if Brint smoked but it was rude not to offer. “What do you need to know? I’ll answer as best I can, but it was… it was a lot. And there’s… um—there’s variables that are difficult to… describe accurately.”

“I really just want to know,” Brint said, absent-mindedly tapping the smoking set on the old table’s top, “What are your goals out here? I’ve been around so many soldiers in my career and a lot of them suck at doing the most basic things; it’s rare that any one man stick out from the rest of the pack. From what I’ve seen so far, you’re really gifted at this war stuff—you have good instincts, are quick, efficient, ruthless. But what are you out here to accomplish?” Sliding a cigarette from the pack, the sergeant tucked it between his lips and lit the end.

“Are you just trying to coast by until you can get out of here and go home or do you want to make something of yourself? Do you want to do more, rise up through the ranks?” A cloud peppered the older man’s words as he slid the boy’s accoutrements back to him.

Lips pressed together in earnest thought, the PFC considered the paths set before him. There were an array of risks, of rewards. He saw discovery down some paths, death down others, both down in the thicket of some timelines he knew he shouldn’t pursue. But always before the death, before the revelation of his adjunct status, there was a fork that he could’ve missed if he wasn’t looking hard for it—if he didn’t pull himself hard to the right at the exact moment that would save himself from disaster, at the exact moment that would gain him returns instead of ruin.

“If I’m honest, Brint,” the boy started carefully on his nicotine exhale. “I don’t really have a home to go back to. I’m not great at long term planning. The way I grew up was day to day outrunning Trenchants, trying not to get rounded up in Port Haven for… you know. I got forced into the military ‘cause I got caught stealing and I was the right age and there wasn’t enough room at the detention center, so I don’t really know what my goals are. I don’t ever think about what I want.”

There it was again: Want. Why did so many people suddenly care about what he wanted?

“Well, I think you’re wasting your time with this low-level grunt shit. I think you could be part of more advanced operations and be a real asset to squads that don’t spend their time standing around picking their asses, waiting to be told what to do.” Brint spoke bluntly, innate intensity of his gaze focused sharp on Kasse. “So I want to write you up for a promotion and I want to personally take it up the chain that you be transferred to special operations. It’s more dangerous and the training is really tough, but when you come out on the other side, you’ll be making more money. You can use what you’ve learned to continue your army career or have some concrete skills to leverage other than ‘was shot at a whole lot’ when you go back to Amstead.” He paused to let the sales pitch sink in, close attention paid to how outwardly receptive the PFC was to his suggestion.

“To clarify,” Brint continued, “I’m asking because I didn’t want to waste my time if it wasn’t something you wanted. Tell me your thoughts.”

“If Toriet goes with me.” The response was immediate. Hadn’t Eoran wanted to push for engineering sergeant, 18C spec ops? Wasn’t this Kasse’s chance to get that for him and better himself in the process?

Wasn’t that what this was?

“He’s not like me,” the boy clarified, cigarette back between his teeth. “He’s just… the only one who knows. And it helps—having someone who knows, especially if they’ve grown up around people kinda like me. Plus his Ossan’s real good.”

Kasse was hopeful, free of the pessimism his expression so often carried and redressed in something more fitting of a boy his age.

Brint sighed, head leaning back in an exaggeration of his negligible frustration. “Fuck, Sejan, come on. You want to put him through that? Just because he knows? They don’t need interpreters out there, they have plenty of people who speak the language. Sometimes all that needs to be said is in the movement of your rifle.”

“I didn’t fire a single shot in Biko,” Kasse said low, even. “But every single body in that building was my kill: including the ones you didn’t find. I don’t know a lot about how it works, just what I’ve managed to put together hiding out in Cenhaven libraries, Stokkram bookstores—reading physics textbooks I was too young to understand so I could try to get a handle on my shit before I killed myself. I read so much, studied even though I didn’t go to school. I’m shit at math but I’m real good at anatomy, I know a weird amount of science shit for a street kid, and I’ve got a pretty good handle on my… tactics. But you know that. You were there.” Another drag of his cigarette and the boy looked down, considering the filter pinched between his thumb and his index finger. He squinted imperceptibly before he pushed the stub and the fingers that held it into the dry rotting wood like there wasn’t a barrier there at all, smoke continuing to plume up from where it shouldn’t have been able to pass. It almost looked like the table was smoldering in that one, tiny spot. “See it’s not necessarily me that ghosts. It just seems that way. When I was in you I was solid—I had to be to get that shit out. This right now? It’s a hole in the table, it’s not me.  You can go through it if you want. It’s like that until I fix it. If I leave something open, another person can go through.” Kasse looked up at Brint and canted his head, pulling his cigarette back above the space he’d left in the table. “That’s the benefit of having someone who knows. You get it, right?”

Kasse leaned forward, mischievous vulpine smirk uneven in quiet clarity. “There’s someone else who can use the shortcuts.”

There were few things these days that surprised the well-seen sergeant. A wright’s ability was somewhere near the top of that list. As an ungifted human, Brint found it difficult to put himself in a wright’s shoes. He could sympathize, but the empathy was a little lacking. He would never truly know what it was like to put oneself out there like Kasse did—just now, or back in Biko—but Brint surely respected him for it. His green eyes widened at the smoke show, then moved to study the dark; to cast unseen stones in shades of positives and negatives, to try and rationalize putting his name behind two instead of just one. On paper, PFC Toriet was a fine candidate: his ASVAB scores said he was smart, he took orders well, was mostly bereft of backtalk, and Kasse was right—Amstead’s army didn’t get very many chances to have a natural Ossan-appearing soldier among their ranks, let alone two. So was it worth it to risk the liability of one to have the benefit of the other? Better yet, could training beat that potential liability out of him and mold it into something else?

There was only one way to find out.

Beneath closed lips, Brint’s tongue traced over his teeth. He turned back to the boy he was trying to sway.

“…Fine. Alright. You’ve convinced me. I’ll put in for Toriet too—but this is real shit, Sejan. If he fucks up, or gets fucked up, that’s not on me.”

The grey eyed boy nodded his understanding, cool in the obfuscation of his relief—though the sudden ease of his posture was enough to signal his respite. 

“So what do you get out of putting us through?” Kasse’s query still carried a guarded lilt despite the significant burden Brint had lifted from his shoulders. In his experience, everything had its cost. Even after saving the sergeant’s life on the battlefield, this offer was, at best, mutually beneficial or, at worst, exploitative. “Are they moving you to command an ODA or something?”

“Oh, you think I’m getting something out of this?” Brint’s eyes sharpened, narrowed in an audacious glare. “My doctors don’t even know if I’m gonna be able to walk straight when I drop these crutches. My future is a big fat question mark right now.” He shook his head, drawing a long breath through the dissipating cigarette held between his fingers. “Don’t misunderstand me, I said put in not put through. I can talk you two up all the way up to the General until I’m blue in the face, but that doesn’t mean you’re not going to have to work for it. At the end of the day, it’s not my decision whether you get in or not, but I can stack the deck in your favor.”

The sergeant sat up, shifting his weight with a barely discernible grimace. “Here’s the thing—and this is the honest to whatever fucking deities you believe in truth—I’ve been up and down Ossa for the last couple years. This war is slow and stagnant, the tactics I see out there are old and stale. I think you are such an asset that you’ll be able to tilt the scales in Amstead’s favor, and maybe some of these guys that don’t know what they’re doing, who don’t want to be here serving their country in the first place, can go home and live their lives instead of waking up in sweats every morning, fearful that they’re gonna die later that day knowing they couldn’t tell their moms or kids or wives or dogs or whatever that they love them before it all fades to black. I’m not heartless, Sejan. I want to see Amstead succeed. I think you’re key to its success.”

Kasse didn’t falter under Brint’s unwavering glare—but he wasn’t caught in it, either. Not like in Biko where he couldn’t look away spellbound by some mixture of fear, adrenaline, and an overpowering visceral connection that still plagued his mind. He regarded Brint, up and down gaze a somatic flensing knife cutting this body he already knew into separate pieces, mapped the sergeant in grids in his electromagnetic mind. 

“…I can get what they left behind.” Kasse finally said, looking down at his cigarette’s diaphanous trail. “Maybe your question mark will get a little smaller. Help get you back in the field.” The younger man canted his head to the side, observing Brint sidelong—like a deflected glance might help him see inside a little better. “You just… don’t really seem like you’d do great behind a desk..”

“I’m pretty sure they got it all,” the older man said. “That’s what all those surgeries were for. Now, it’s just a matter of healing and growing back what all was taken out with it. I appreciate it, though.” Brint stubbed the rest of his cigarette on the table and held it out to the young soldier. “Hold onto that for me, will you? Before they send you off, come find me and I’ll finish it.”

“If you say so,” the boy replied, taking the half smoked cigarette and dropping it into his open pack. He rose smoothly from his cross legged position, standing on the table before he let himself down to the ground using the bench as a step. “But if it grinds when you start moving your leg more, like in the cartilage and stuff, tell the doctor. It’s not a part of the healing process.”

One last drag had that mudblood boy dropping his cigarette into the dirt, where it effectively disappeared, assimilated into the atoms of the packed earth beneath their feet. 

“And um. Thanks. For thinking I’m good enough to put in for promotion. And for not selling me out.”

“Yeah. You’re welcome, Sejan,” Brint replied, “Thanks, again, for saving my life.”