Double Bluff: Interlude 1 (Chapter 7a?)
You're all going to hate me. So much. Sorry! Try to remember this was written months before all your speculations, okay? I didn't do this on purpose. I made it an interlude by the way, because it could also have been a prologue, but timing wise I wanted it to come now, but it's sort of so separate from the current story setting that I didn't think I should number it the same way. But you should read it, because it is necessary information for the current story, even though I'm numbering it in a different system. Also, I'll put up chapter 8 soon so you're not hanging forever with this, promise.
Fair warning, there will also be some surgery related bitching soon, because my follow up appointment... did not go well. It wasn't so much a follow up as a "Hey, you need to have MORE surgery... how's next week?" But you all make life happy, so I figured I'd give you more fic instead of dwelling on that.
<----Chapter 7
Interlude 1: A Million Miles Away From Home and Walking Backward
The soldier isn’t happy about the intel they were given. He isn’t happy about most of this op. It’s badly planned, and thrown together at the last minute. It has none of the hallmarks of a successful op, and all of those of an op that’s going to go straight to hell at the earliest opportunity. But he’s not in charge.
He boards the plane fearing, knowing, that the chances he’s going to come back are not nearly as high as he’d like them to be. But he gets on it anyway, as do all of his brethren. They are Marines, dammit. They will prevail. They will stand by each other, they will succeed at their mission, and they will all come home. There are no other options that they will consider possible right now.
The sand stretches out forever beside the concrete runway; the plane rushes forward towards the soldier’s destiny. He will remember the feel of the hot, dry desert for years. The whole of his memories of this place will be overlaid with the feeling of crumpled brittle paper. Like they could be destroyed and discarded if he could just find the right match, but he’s stuck, endlessly trying to grind them into dust. Dust that matches the sand that haunts his mind.
This moment right before the plane finally leaps into the air will haunt his mind more than most. He will think of it as the instant that started it all, even as he knows it was all put into motion years before when he signed the paper that enlisted him in the Marine Corps. Or perhaps the true beginning was when he sat next to a beautiful red-haired girl at a train station. But this moment, the endless second of sand going on forever, poised right before flight, is the one he’ll know created the outcome he regrets, even as he lives and loves with it.
This is the memory that he will never forget, even when he forgets almost all the others. It will wake him from dreams, almost nightmares, eyes popping wide open, the knowledge that he has forgotten something, perhaps all the things, that come before and after this moment, written large by the beat of his pounding heart. Tears will flow from his eyes as he mourns forgotten pains, his whole body clenched in that moment before take-off, waiting to embrace that which he has lost.
He will function in this place of foreboding, lack of information, and painful longing for something he hasn’t seen in far too long. He will learn to use it, to hone it, and finally to break free of it. He stares at his reflection in the plane’s window and his thoughts turn to the little girl whose face he has not seen outside of photographs in years, and the woman who he knows takes care of her. This little girl, this woman, they hold his heart for him while he marches on. And he knows that they will always do so.
The plane wheels part company with the ground, and he and his fellows are in flight. They will spend several hours flying cautiously to a hidden point where they will land. They will disembark and continue their journey deeper into unknown enemy territory. They will undertake their mission and they will succeed. There are no other options. And he will come home to his heart. He must; he would be lost without it.
Chapter 8---->
Fair warning, there will also be some surgery related bitching soon, because my follow up appointment... did not go well. It wasn't so much a follow up as a "Hey, you need to have MORE surgery... how's next week?" But you all make life happy, so I figured I'd give you more fic instead of dwelling on that.
<----Chapter 7
Interlude 1: A Million Miles Away From Home and Walking Backward
The soldier isn’t happy about the intel they were given. He isn’t happy about most of this op. It’s badly planned, and thrown together at the last minute. It has none of the hallmarks of a successful op, and all of those of an op that’s going to go straight to hell at the earliest opportunity. But he’s not in charge.
He boards the plane fearing, knowing, that the chances he’s going to come back are not nearly as high as he’d like them to be. But he gets on it anyway, as do all of his brethren. They are Marines, dammit. They will prevail. They will stand by each other, they will succeed at their mission, and they will all come home. There are no other options that they will consider possible right now.
The sand stretches out forever beside the concrete runway; the plane rushes forward towards the soldier’s destiny. He will remember the feel of the hot, dry desert for years. The whole of his memories of this place will be overlaid with the feeling of crumpled brittle paper. Like they could be destroyed and discarded if he could just find the right match, but he’s stuck, endlessly trying to grind them into dust. Dust that matches the sand that haunts his mind.
This moment right before the plane finally leaps into the air will haunt his mind more than most. He will think of it as the instant that started it all, even as he knows it was all put into motion years before when he signed the paper that enlisted him in the Marine Corps. Or perhaps the true beginning was when he sat next to a beautiful red-haired girl at a train station. But this moment, the endless second of sand going on forever, poised right before flight, is the one he’ll know created the outcome he regrets, even as he lives and loves with it.
This is the memory that he will never forget, even when he forgets almost all the others. It will wake him from dreams, almost nightmares, eyes popping wide open, the knowledge that he has forgotten something, perhaps all the things, that come before and after this moment, written large by the beat of his pounding heart. Tears will flow from his eyes as he mourns forgotten pains, his whole body clenched in that moment before take-off, waiting to embrace that which he has lost.
He will function in this place of foreboding, lack of information, and painful longing for something he hasn’t seen in far too long. He will learn to use it, to hone it, and finally to break free of it. He stares at his reflection in the plane’s window and his thoughts turn to the little girl whose face he has not seen outside of photographs in years, and the woman who he knows takes care of her. This little girl, this woman, they hold his heart for him while he marches on. And he knows that they will always do so.
The plane wheels part company with the ground, and he and his fellows are in flight. They will spend several hours flying cautiously to a hidden point where they will land. They will disembark and continue their journey deeper into unknown enemy territory. They will undertake their mission and they will succeed. There are no other options. And he will come home to his heart. He must; he would be lost without it.
Chapter 8---->