A Good Soldier
He didn’t quite know what to think when the boy was gunned down right in front of him.
All he knew was that he lacked the correct rationale and logic to explain an event like
this.
He racked his brain for answers. Who was to blame? An enemy soldier, most
likely - but one that, he realised, looking around, had already taken flight. Revenge and
justice were now out of the picture. What about help? Could the boy’s life possibly be
saved...?
But no. The boy would die. He was sure of it.
Other options. He tried to clear his head. Option A, Option B, C, D, E...
self-destruct, flee the scene, hide evidence report back... they scrolled upwards in his
internal computer. None of them seemed to fit.
The fallen boy was now looking up at him with glassy eyes. They reminded him
of another pair of eyes, among his very first memories, that looked at him with stern
encouragement during the roughest parts of his training. He thought he remembered
feeling something, but he wasn’t sure. His chest would flutter and his palms would
become sweaty at a single glance from the eyes. Nothing emanated from them, nothing
but focus and determination. Anything else had been swept away, and a glassy look
remained. The eyes had certainly been threatening - which was probably why he always
did what they told him to do. There. Do you feel that? You shouldn’t. Pain is nothing
but an obstacle. You are stronger than pain. Such things will not control you. Do you
understand?
Although they held the same lustre, these younger eyes before him now held no
threat. Just a blankness, a void. He was doing his best to ignore them. It didn’t look like
they would do anything too extreme.
The other eyes had. They had been attached to a face with a mouth that issued its
orders like a gumball machine spits out its coloured marbles. He followed the man’s
orders. Taste this. I want you to stay completely calm. Don’t let me see you cry. You
will win against the pain. He swallowed the nails like a good little boy was supposed to.
He just couldn’t think of anything that had ever taught him what to do with this
moment. Something foreign, however, seemed to be creeping into his mind and
spreading to his chest area. He paid no attention to it. Soldiers weren’t supposed to feel;
perfect soldiers were supposed to conquer such distractions.
He considered himself successful at this endeavour up to this point. After he had
served his instructor’s aims, there was nothing. Or rather, he pushed it down so far that
he barely remembered identifying his emotions. Not even when longtime fellow fighters
were killed, not even when he had to shoot them himself. That’s a traitor. He’s
endangered the mission. He’s an obstacle. Kill him. He pulled the trigger like a good
soldier was supposed to.
Now he looked at this boy, cloudy eyed and dying in front of him, and he was
completely at a loss. Of what to do, of what to think... ought he to be feeling something?
The foreign thing in his chest constricted. Push it down. You’re a soldier now, boy.
He thought for a moment about the other boy. He knew the boy considered him
his friend; it had been said many times. He himself had never had any friends. Friends
were supposed to like each other, weren’t they?
Had he ever decided whether he liked the other boy or not? Try as he might, he
hadn’t been able to forget him. Perhaps that was a sign of liking him. No… you don’t…
to like… to love… get in the way…
The dying boy was bleeding out of his mouth and reaching a dusty hand into the
sky.
God dammit, what was his chest trying to TELL him? It felt like an entire nuclear
base had exploded in his bloodstream. What in the hell… what was the name of this war
against his internal organs? What was it?
It doesn’t matter.
But here, now... it does... it was...
Sadness, maybe. Or something - no - grief. That sounded right. Was that the
name of the ache in his chest now? Grief?
He didn’t know, but he knelt down to the boy in the dust, and he held his hand as
he died, like a good friend was supposed to.
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