The Pacific: Against the World (Leckie)
Okay, this took me far, far too long to write. I started it a while ago, but it just sat as a few paragraphs for quite a while. Then I slowly picked it back up, wrote a large chunk of it, and decided tonight that I was just going to finish the darn thing.
FOR THE RECORD: I KNOW THIS HAS NO PLOT. It's just a character piece, kind of meandering here and there, because I wanted to get back into the swing of writing. I haven't really written anything in a while, and I miss it. Also, I wanted to try and get a better feel for Leckie's voice, because it tends to get diluted in an RP where he's not constantly talking about war. So, uh. THERE. Or something. I also have somewhat vague plans to do this sort of thing for a few of the other boys, but no guarantees. We know how I love to make empty promises, these days. >>;
Takes place on Guadalcanal during episode 1-2, though there is one very vague spoiler for episode 10 if you squint. Rated... PG, PG-13, thereabouts. I don't think there are even any f-bombs.
Against the World: Leckie
There are nights he sits awake in their gunpit, with only the stars overhead and the wind in the coconut trees and the snores of his buddies to keep him company. He puts his hands on the machine gun, all cold, rough metal and smelling of gunpowder and smoke, and he feels the weight of his helmet on his head and he thinks, “It’s us against the world.”
Oh, not the whole world, of course - but the whole world is a big place, and right now his world is small - it’s exactly 89 miles long and 35 miles across, and it’s in the middle of a big damn ocean across which lies a home he can barely remember even though he’s only been away from it for less than a year. Right now his world is filled with rain and mud and coconut tress, with night bombings and hoarsely-whispered passwords and the terror of straining ears to hear Nip soldiers moving in the dark. It’s hard to remember what comforts like clean clothes and a bed and his mother’s Irish stew in his stomach feel like anymore in the face of the artillery fire from the Jap armada sitting just off the coast.
The shells are far off tonight, nowhere near his foxhole, and his comrades curled up in the mud by his feet don’t even notice the distant flash-bang lightning-and-thunder of the shells he can see in the distance. It’s like the Fourth of July in gruesome mockery, the Jap artillery lighting up the sky in oranges and reds meant not to celebrate the American way of life, but to destroy it. All the American spirit in the world isn’t going to protect them when those shells cut their way closer, and when shrapnel can cut through pride even more easily than it cuts through flesh and bone. He runs his hands along the gun again, reassuring, feeling the cold, solid weight of it. The metal is cool, even in the heat of the jungle; but only until he pulls the trigger - then its barrel becomes a small, raging fire meant to make the Japs run. It doesn’t. A mockery, indeed.
But for now the bombs are distant, and on a night like tonight he can count the stars. He was never good at picking out the constellations - always better with the stories than the patterns - but he knows that even if he knew them, he wouldn’t see them here. The stars here are unfamiliar, in the wrong configurations like a platoon marching out of synch, and it’s just one more reminder that he’s a man far from home, fighting against a force that he can barely imagine, even with his head stuffed full of stories and histories as it is. It’s never quiet inside of his head, and tonight while he can’t fight, there’s nothing to do but sit, and watch, and wait, and smoke - and think. There is far too much time to think, even with the shells and the sounds of his friends shifting at his feet and the shadows of the sentries patrolling their camp. And when the wind murmurs in the kunai grass and in the distance the waves lap upon the shore, it’s easy to picture that he’s alone, lost in the swallowing blackness and the dim, far-off flashes in the night.
In the dark hours by himself he’s composed countless poems in his head, innumerable letters to Vera or his father and even a few to his dead brother, at times - death is all around him here, and he wonders what someone who’s already crossed that path might think of him now. He never writes any of them down; sure, sometimes he writes, but they’re not the things that come into his mind at night when he’s all but alone for all the men around him. Those words that his mind speaks at night in a quiet, solemn voice into the vaulted chamber of his head remain silent. It’s not their fate to be heard aloud, even as pencil scratches on paper. The letters he does write to Vera are short, concise, sometimes cheery, sometimes brutally honest, but always folded up into a pocket and never to be sent. Why should he bother sending them, when he might never follow them home? Instead he’ll save them, hand them to her in a bundle when he gets back to Rutherford. He’ll stand there on her porch with the mosquitoes buzzing around his head as she reads them aloud, as she sees his soul bared for her, as she drops them and throws her arms around his shoulders, lips warm against his ear as she tells him he’s a hero, he’s her hero, in a voice that’s better than any marching band in any ticker tape parade could ever be.
Or maybe that will never happen; it’s a nice dream, in any case - and a man needs a dream to see him through nights like this. He needs a piece of sanity in all of this insanity around him, something to hold on to that reminds him that he hasn’t always lived in mud and blood and guts and gore. And when a dream isn’t enough, there’s always the letters - the letters from home that crinkle in his pocket like tissue paper when he shifts. The letters smell like home - it’s hard to say exactly what home smells like, but when he slots his dirty, dusty thumb beneath the flap of a new one and tears it open the smell comes tumbling out in a rush of clean paper and fresh air, just for an instant before it’s gone. The words themselves are impersonal, flowing in his father’s clean hand on the paper, but the words don’t matter. It’s the feel of the clean paper in his hands, the fact that a mailman on the other side of the world took this letter from the mailbox he can picture in his head, that stands outside the house he grew up in and always took for granted. Every time he receives one, he looks at it and thinks about how this little piece of home has traveled across a sea to arrive in his foxhole more months after it left than he cares to count. There’s something about it that always makes him pause, even though if anyone asks he’ll say he’s glad to have escaped that house. Maybe it’s simply that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Absence, or desperation - by now it’s hard to tell the difference.
In time he checks his watch, squinting at the scratched dial against the inside of his wrist in the pale star- and shell-light. It’s time to change shifts, for him to lay his own head down in the mud. He checks the gun, then the horizon, and ducks down beneath the walls of earth. He nudges the pile of tattered clothes at his feet; it’s Chuckler, blinking dark eyes up at him in the dim light, and he smiles a little apologetically. “Your turn,” is all he says, rewarded with a groan and the tired wave of a hand.
“Five more minutes, Mom.”
Leckie snorts, toes Chuckler again gently in the ribs. “Nope. Time to get up now, sonny boy. School’s starting soon.”
Chuckler sighs, long-suffering. He crawls to his knees, then to his feet, righting his helmet on his head from where it slipped sideways a little in his sleep. “If only,” he mutters, shouldering Leckie aside personably. “Go on, then, Lucky. Get some sleep.”
Sleep is fleeting - but rest is a little easier to attain. He curls up on his side in the packed dirt - it’s dry, thank God, no rain for a whole two days, they’re sure to be in for it soon - and tries to adjust the angle of his head so the edge of his helmet doesn’t dig into his ear. It’s not much of a pillow, but he doesn’t dare take it off - just because the shells are distant doesn’t mean they won’t venture near, and he learned very quickly that his helmet is his life. His helmet, and his rifle, the pencil stub tucked into his jacket near his heart. His friends. Take these away, and he’s a drowning man without a chance of swimming to shore. But give him these things and they might survive; Lucky, Chuckler, Runner, Hoosier, and Sid - all of them against the world.
FOR THE RECORD: I KNOW THIS HAS NO PLOT. It's just a character piece, kind of meandering here and there, because I wanted to get back into the swing of writing. I haven't really written anything in a while, and I miss it. Also, I wanted to try and get a better feel for Leckie's voice, because it tends to get diluted in an RP where he's not constantly talking about war. So, uh. THERE. Or something. I also have somewhat vague plans to do this sort of thing for a few of the other boys, but no guarantees. We know how I love to make empty promises, these days. >>;
Takes place on Guadalcanal during episode 1-2, though there is one very vague spoiler for episode 10 if you squint. Rated... PG, PG-13, thereabouts. I don't think there are even any f-bombs.
Against the World: Leckie
There are nights he sits awake in their gunpit, with only the stars overhead and the wind in the coconut trees and the snores of his buddies to keep him company. He puts his hands on the machine gun, all cold, rough metal and smelling of gunpowder and smoke, and he feels the weight of his helmet on his head and he thinks, “It’s us against the world.”
Oh, not the whole world, of course - but the whole world is a big place, and right now his world is small - it’s exactly 89 miles long and 35 miles across, and it’s in the middle of a big damn ocean across which lies a home he can barely remember even though he’s only been away from it for less than a year. Right now his world is filled with rain and mud and coconut tress, with night bombings and hoarsely-whispered passwords and the terror of straining ears to hear Nip soldiers moving in the dark. It’s hard to remember what comforts like clean clothes and a bed and his mother’s Irish stew in his stomach feel like anymore in the face of the artillery fire from the Jap armada sitting just off the coast.
The shells are far off tonight, nowhere near his foxhole, and his comrades curled up in the mud by his feet don’t even notice the distant flash-bang lightning-and-thunder of the shells he can see in the distance. It’s like the Fourth of July in gruesome mockery, the Jap artillery lighting up the sky in oranges and reds meant not to celebrate the American way of life, but to destroy it. All the American spirit in the world isn’t going to protect them when those shells cut their way closer, and when shrapnel can cut through pride even more easily than it cuts through flesh and bone. He runs his hands along the gun again, reassuring, feeling the cold, solid weight of it. The metal is cool, even in the heat of the jungle; but only until he pulls the trigger - then its barrel becomes a small, raging fire meant to make the Japs run. It doesn’t. A mockery, indeed.
But for now the bombs are distant, and on a night like tonight he can count the stars. He was never good at picking out the constellations - always better with the stories than the patterns - but he knows that even if he knew them, he wouldn’t see them here. The stars here are unfamiliar, in the wrong configurations like a platoon marching out of synch, and it’s just one more reminder that he’s a man far from home, fighting against a force that he can barely imagine, even with his head stuffed full of stories and histories as it is. It’s never quiet inside of his head, and tonight while he can’t fight, there’s nothing to do but sit, and watch, and wait, and smoke - and think. There is far too much time to think, even with the shells and the sounds of his friends shifting at his feet and the shadows of the sentries patrolling their camp. And when the wind murmurs in the kunai grass and in the distance the waves lap upon the shore, it’s easy to picture that he’s alone, lost in the swallowing blackness and the dim, far-off flashes in the night.
In the dark hours by himself he’s composed countless poems in his head, innumerable letters to Vera or his father and even a few to his dead brother, at times - death is all around him here, and he wonders what someone who’s already crossed that path might think of him now. He never writes any of them down; sure, sometimes he writes, but they’re not the things that come into his mind at night when he’s all but alone for all the men around him. Those words that his mind speaks at night in a quiet, solemn voice into the vaulted chamber of his head remain silent. It’s not their fate to be heard aloud, even as pencil scratches on paper. The letters he does write to Vera are short, concise, sometimes cheery, sometimes brutally honest, but always folded up into a pocket and never to be sent. Why should he bother sending them, when he might never follow them home? Instead he’ll save them, hand them to her in a bundle when he gets back to Rutherford. He’ll stand there on her porch with the mosquitoes buzzing around his head as she reads them aloud, as she sees his soul bared for her, as she drops them and throws her arms around his shoulders, lips warm against his ear as she tells him he’s a hero, he’s her hero, in a voice that’s better than any marching band in any ticker tape parade could ever be.
Or maybe that will never happen; it’s a nice dream, in any case - and a man needs a dream to see him through nights like this. He needs a piece of sanity in all of this insanity around him, something to hold on to that reminds him that he hasn’t always lived in mud and blood and guts and gore. And when a dream isn’t enough, there’s always the letters - the letters from home that crinkle in his pocket like tissue paper when he shifts. The letters smell like home - it’s hard to say exactly what home smells like, but when he slots his dirty, dusty thumb beneath the flap of a new one and tears it open the smell comes tumbling out in a rush of clean paper and fresh air, just for an instant before it’s gone. The words themselves are impersonal, flowing in his father’s clean hand on the paper, but the words don’t matter. It’s the feel of the clean paper in his hands, the fact that a mailman on the other side of the world took this letter from the mailbox he can picture in his head, that stands outside the house he grew up in and always took for granted. Every time he receives one, he looks at it and thinks about how this little piece of home has traveled across a sea to arrive in his foxhole more months after it left than he cares to count. There’s something about it that always makes him pause, even though if anyone asks he’ll say he’s glad to have escaped that house. Maybe it’s simply that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Absence, or desperation - by now it’s hard to tell the difference.
In time he checks his watch, squinting at the scratched dial against the inside of his wrist in the pale star- and shell-light. It’s time to change shifts, for him to lay his own head down in the mud. He checks the gun, then the horizon, and ducks down beneath the walls of earth. He nudges the pile of tattered clothes at his feet; it’s Chuckler, blinking dark eyes up at him in the dim light, and he smiles a little apologetically. “Your turn,” is all he says, rewarded with a groan and the tired wave of a hand.
“Five more minutes, Mom.”
Leckie snorts, toes Chuckler again gently in the ribs. “Nope. Time to get up now, sonny boy. School’s starting soon.”
Chuckler sighs, long-suffering. He crawls to his knees, then to his feet, righting his helmet on his head from where it slipped sideways a little in his sleep. “If only,” he mutters, shouldering Leckie aside personably. “Go on, then, Lucky. Get some sleep.”
Sleep is fleeting - but rest is a little easier to attain. He curls up on his side in the packed dirt - it’s dry, thank God, no rain for a whole two days, they’re sure to be in for it soon - and tries to adjust the angle of his head so the edge of his helmet doesn’t dig into his ear. It’s not much of a pillow, but he doesn’t dare take it off - just because the shells are distant doesn’t mean they won’t venture near, and he learned very quickly that his helmet is his life. His helmet, and his rifle, the pencil stub tucked into his jacket near his heart. His friends. Take these away, and he’s a drowning man without a chance of swimming to shore. But give him these things and they might survive; Lucky, Chuckler, Runner, Hoosier, and Sid - all of them against the world.