story!
Because zarahemla implied that I should put this in my journal right bloody now.
Confidential to skywaterblue: the version you have on the Clockslayers site has some grammatical errors in it. This is the corrected version. If you want me to e-mail the corrected version to you, let me know.
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers/Continuity: Post-"Chosen."
Summary: There was another war going on.
Disclaimers: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the
intellectual property of Mutant Enemy, Kuzui
Enterprises, Fox Television, and a partridge in a pear
tree. This original work of fan fiction is Copyright
2002 Mosca and trust me, no profit is being made.
Therefore, this story is protected in the USA by the
fair use provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976. All
rights reserved. All wrongs reversed. Everyone
thinks the way that we thought; we looked ahead, and
look what we got.
Notes: Thanks to k for the beta and to The Distraction
for checking authenticity. This is my response to the
Clockslayers Challenge; my assignment was GMT +4.
The title is from "All Along the Watchtower," music
and lyrics by Bob Dylan, classic interpretation by
Jimi Hendrix.
I was on night watch. I slept through the hottest
part of the day and got up at sundown to stand with a
gun outside a run-down palace-y thing that had been
turned into a hospital. We stood in pairs, and they
always put a girl with a guy. They usually put me
with this guy, Rodriguez, who could literally spend
hours talking about his car. He had this Honda that
he'd spent thousands of dollars on, customizing the
engine and the headlights and the stereo. It was in
storage near Fort Riley until they sent us home. He
talked about it like normal people talk about their
kids, or possibly their dogs.
I didn't talk about much. Nobody wants to hear about
dropping out of West Fargo High School, or driving to
St. Paul three different times for three different
abortions of three different guys' babies. Even my
turnaround wasn't all that interesting: found Jesus,
got my GED, joined the Army, lost Jesus, went to
Afghanistan. That's pretty much all anyone needed to
know, and it's more than I told anyone in Kabul. Who
the fuck cared? They were all more interested in
exactly the kind of stuff back home that I didn't have
any of.
So I'd listen to Rodriguez talk about his car for a
couple of hours. He knew everything about that car,
like he had a blueprint of every gear and a chart of
every performance statistic in his head. Then, the
girls would show up. They were women, I guess,
because they were all married or even widowed and most
of them had children, but it was hard to think of them
as women because they were my age. It started out
with just one of them, this girl named Maryam who came
tiptoeing up the street carrying a candle one night
around 23:00. She tapped me on the shoulder and said,
"Hello. English. Thank you."
She kept repeating it and repeating it until I figured
out she wanted me to teach her English. I wanted to
explain to her that it was really dumb to ask me. I
can hardly spell. But I guess I look like what people
think of when they think of Americans: tall and pale
with blonde hair. So I pointed to some things and
said the words, and she repeated them, and the next
night she came back with five of her friends. I
started hoarding the special FPO stationery and
envelopes you were supposed to use to write home so
they could practice writing the alphabet. They
brought clothes and stuff from their houses so I could
tell them the words. I lay in bed every afternoon
while I came up with ways to teach family words or
animal words.
They'd been coming every night except Fridays for,
like, three months. They didn't exactly speak
English, but I could usually understand them, which
was kind of cool. They knew lots of words and even
had kind of figured out some of the grammar. It was
amazing how fast they could memorize stuff. I guess
when you don't have all that shit from TV and music
and school filling your head, there's all this room to
learn whatever you want.
And I think they were also the bravest and smartest
ones, the only ones who were brave enough to sneak out
in the middle of the night and bug a random Army guard
to teach them. They all wore head scarves and long
dresses instead of full burqas when they came for
lessons, which only the most independent women did.
That night, they'd all brought food from home so we
could learn food words. They'd asked the day before
if they could do that. I almost said no because I
knew it would be a really big risk. The Afghani
nationals didn't have much to their names, and the
problem was especially that they were hungry and we
couldn't give them anything. Like, my sergeant was
actually kind of happy when I told him these girls
were coming to learn English, but he gave me a lecture
on how I couldn't bring them any food or all kinds of
people would show up and expect it. I guess English
class would only attract people who were really
serious.
They brought all this weird food that I couldn't
identify, or that I only knew the Pashto names for.
They giggled when I shook my head and said, "We don't
have that in America." But we got a few things-- rice
and bread and egg and garlic-- and they laughed a lot
and let me try things even though I knew I'd have the
runs really bad the next day from it.
We were all wrapped up in the lesson, and Rodriguez
had to yell to get our attention. "Three ANs coming
right at us," he said. "Get up, Lundberg!"
I got up and stood guard like I was supposed to. The
girls looked behind them in the subtle way that
Afghani girls seemed to be able to, turning their
heads just a little and not moving their bodies at
all. "Three brother of Faryal," Maryam said in a
strangely soft voice, pronouncing each word carefully
and separately. "Brother want Faryal now go home."
The ANs marched up close and tried to surround us,
even though there were twice as many of us as them.
One of them grabbed Faryal's arm roughly and pulled
her to her feet. She made what looked like it was
supposed to be a halfhearted struggle, but her brother
yelped in pain and released her. His wrist was
hanging limp. Faryal's eyes were huge, and her mouth
hung open. She was the shyest girl in my class. She
hardly even talked, and she used the tiniest voice
when she did. And now, she'd just gotten so angry
she'd broken her brother's wrist with power she hadn't
known she'd had.
One of the other brothers started shouting things--
not at Faryal, but right at me. I recognized some of
them as the words Afghani men used right before they
spat at the female soldiers. The girls all looked
horrified, and they scattered to hide behind
Rodriguez. We weren't supposed to let any ANs past
the line unless they were sick, but Rodriguez was
smart enough to know he had to make an exception and
protect them.
The brother who'd been swearing at me lunged suddenly
towards me. I had some hand-to-hand training before
they sent me to Kabul, but I never dreamed I'd have to
use it. It was all instinct, but the next thing I
knew, the man was sprawled thirty feet away from me,
not moving. The other two men ran to help him. They
lifted him onto their shoulders and disappeared into
the night.
"Holy shit, Lundberg!" Rodriguez said. "What the fuck
did you do?"
"I was defending myself," I said. "I was defending
myself and these women."
"You just kicked that guy's ass half the way to Iraq,
Lundberg."
I pointed a thumb behind me. "Hate to break it to
you, Hot Rod, but Iraq's that way."
"Still-- Jesus Christ--"
The six girls, like churchmice, assembled in front of
us. "We everybody now go home," Maryam said. "Thank
you."
Faryal lagged behind for a moment. "Tonight I sleep
Maryam house. Maryam no husband. Good house." She
smiled wide. Strength lit up her eyes like torches.
"Thank you, teacher." She took my hands in hers and
shook them. "Thank you, teacher." TShe turned around
and dashed off to join her friends.
When they were almost out of sight, Rodriguez said,
"Lundberg, I think you should arm-wrestle me."
"You've got to be kidding," I said.
"No, serious," he said. "I want to see something."
There were no tables or anything that we could get to
without leaving our post. "We can't do it now," I
said. "We're on duty."
We finished out our shift, and Rodriguez was still
harping on the arm wrestling thing. We found an empty
exam area with a curtain and set up for a showdown. I
was ready to use all my strength just to keep him from
making me look like an idiot, but I pinned his arm
like I was flipping a light switch.
"Something happened last night," Rodriguez said.
"Like magic or something. A gift from Heaven." He
smiled with one side of his mouth, and I thought,
okay, I can admit he's kind of cute when he smiles
like that. But I've been three times a fool for guys
who were kind of cute when they smiled, so I stopped
at daydreaming about kissing him.
I was going to go back to my tent and sleep off the
memory of Faryal's brother's twisted face when he
landed in the sand. "Wait," Rodriguez said. "Could
you, like... pop my shoulder back in?" I hadn't
noticed the pain in his voice when he'd said I'd
gotten a gift from Heaven. It made me feel even more
like I didn't deserve it, like I wasn't responsible
enough or a good enough person.
Two days later, Rodriguez and I were on a plane back
to America. The first thing he did when we got back
to Fort Riley was take his Honda for a spin. He
invited me to go with him, but I told him he ought to
spend some time alone with the love of his life. I
had a feeling it would be a long time before he'd see
his car again. And I was right: a few hours later he
came to tell me that they were sending him to England,
and they wouldn't tell him why.
I went to the weight room and bench pressed my own
weight to prove I could. Then, I took the longest,
hottest shower of my life. I cut myself shaving my
legs and watched the nick heal so fast I could see it
sew itself up, like one of those time-lapse videos
they show in science class. I cut myself again, on
purpose, and I couldn't even feel it.
They were sending me into Ranger training. I wondered
if they were sending all the girls like me, all the
ones in the Army that they could find, and making some
kind of secret Ranger division. If there were already
me and Faryal, there had to be a lot of us.
There had to be a lot of them in Afghanistan, and what
would they do? Before I went there, I might have
thought they would rise up and overthrow the Taliban
and live in peace and democracy, but there's all this
culture telling them to be afraid of everything.
They're afraid of men and even more afraid of Allah.
They could have all the physical power in the world,
but they'd still be afraid. I had a dream one night
of Faryal getting stoned to death, like I heard women
sometimes do when they get pregnant out of wedlock and
stuff. She was too strong, and the stones couldn't
kill her. And I was in fucking Kansas where I
couldn't change anything.
I wanted to change things. It's funny how you start
out changing yourself, in whatever lame way, and you
end up wanting to fix everything. And I could, but I
couldn't. I could have been rescuing kittens out of
trees or putting an end to date rape, but I had orders
to follow. The Army would probably send me to really
dangerous places and tell me to kill people in the
name of freedom. They might have been able to tell a
hundred of us to do that.
I went to my new C.O. wearing my best stupid-girl
smile. "Sir, I'd like to ask permission to decline
Ranger training," I said. "It's not what I signed up
for, and it's outside my specialization."
"You know, it's a big honor to get selected to be a
Ranger," he said.
"Yes, sir," I said. "I understand, sir."
"This is a one-time offer, and you won't be made
eligible again," he said.
"I know, sir. I-- I was hoping to take some classes,
sir, and I wouldn't be able to do that as a Ranger."
I'd never been one of the ones who was only in the
Army to get money for college. I hadn't had those
kind of goals. I'd hoped that I would stay in the
Army forever. I didn't know what I'd do in the real
world.
He frowned and looked through his paperwork like he
was trying to find a solution. He already had one,
though. There's always a Plan B for this stuff, a way
for them to keep their hands clean. I tried my best
to look naive while he chewed the end of his pen.
"How'd you like to go to Washington, Private?" he
said.
"I'd like that fine, sir," I said.
I am the girl at every rally and every reception. If
the President is speaking on the South Lawn, I'm
standing behind a barrier with a sign that says I love
America. If he's serving foie gras and pheasant to
the Premier of Malaysia, I'm in a cocktail dress,
chatting up embassy aides. Last week, I took down two
snipers, a Hefla demon, and a guy who made a bomb
threat on a White House tour. The news cameramen know
to avoid getting me on tape, and I disappear into the
middle of crowds.
If you see my face long enough to remember it, it's
the last face you'll ever see.
Confidential to skywaterblue: the version you have on the Clockslayers site has some grammatical errors in it. This is the corrected version. If you want me to e-mail the corrected version to you, let me know.
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers/Continuity: Post-"Chosen."
Summary: There was another war going on.
Disclaimers: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the
intellectual property of Mutant Enemy, Kuzui
Enterprises, Fox Television, and a partridge in a pear
tree. This original work of fan fiction is Copyright
2002 Mosca and trust me, no profit is being made.
Therefore, this story is protected in the USA by the
fair use provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976. All
rights reserved. All wrongs reversed. Everyone
thinks the way that we thought; we looked ahead, and
look what we got.
Notes: Thanks to k for the beta and to The Distraction
for checking authenticity. This is my response to the
Clockslayers Challenge; my assignment was GMT +4.
The title is from "All Along the Watchtower," music
and lyrics by Bob Dylan, classic interpretation by
Jimi Hendrix.
I was on night watch. I slept through the hottest
part of the day and got up at sundown to stand with a
gun outside a run-down palace-y thing that had been
turned into a hospital. We stood in pairs, and they
always put a girl with a guy. They usually put me
with this guy, Rodriguez, who could literally spend
hours talking about his car. He had this Honda that
he'd spent thousands of dollars on, customizing the
engine and the headlights and the stereo. It was in
storage near Fort Riley until they sent us home. He
talked about it like normal people talk about their
kids, or possibly their dogs.
I didn't talk about much. Nobody wants to hear about
dropping out of West Fargo High School, or driving to
St. Paul three different times for three different
abortions of three different guys' babies. Even my
turnaround wasn't all that interesting: found Jesus,
got my GED, joined the Army, lost Jesus, went to
Afghanistan. That's pretty much all anyone needed to
know, and it's more than I told anyone in Kabul. Who
the fuck cared? They were all more interested in
exactly the kind of stuff back home that I didn't have
any of.
So I'd listen to Rodriguez talk about his car for a
couple of hours. He knew everything about that car,
like he had a blueprint of every gear and a chart of
every performance statistic in his head. Then, the
girls would show up. They were women, I guess,
because they were all married or even widowed and most
of them had children, but it was hard to think of them
as women because they were my age. It started out
with just one of them, this girl named Maryam who came
tiptoeing up the street carrying a candle one night
around 23:00. She tapped me on the shoulder and said,
"Hello. English. Thank you."
She kept repeating it and repeating it until I figured
out she wanted me to teach her English. I wanted to
explain to her that it was really dumb to ask me. I
can hardly spell. But I guess I look like what people
think of when they think of Americans: tall and pale
with blonde hair. So I pointed to some things and
said the words, and she repeated them, and the next
night she came back with five of her friends. I
started hoarding the special FPO stationery and
envelopes you were supposed to use to write home so
they could practice writing the alphabet. They
brought clothes and stuff from their houses so I could
tell them the words. I lay in bed every afternoon
while I came up with ways to teach family words or
animal words.
They'd been coming every night except Fridays for,
like, three months. They didn't exactly speak
English, but I could usually understand them, which
was kind of cool. They knew lots of words and even
had kind of figured out some of the grammar. It was
amazing how fast they could memorize stuff. I guess
when you don't have all that shit from TV and music
and school filling your head, there's all this room to
learn whatever you want.
And I think they were also the bravest and smartest
ones, the only ones who were brave enough to sneak out
in the middle of the night and bug a random Army guard
to teach them. They all wore head scarves and long
dresses instead of full burqas when they came for
lessons, which only the most independent women did.
That night, they'd all brought food from home so we
could learn food words. They'd asked the day before
if they could do that. I almost said no because I
knew it would be a really big risk. The Afghani
nationals didn't have much to their names, and the
problem was especially that they were hungry and we
couldn't give them anything. Like, my sergeant was
actually kind of happy when I told him these girls
were coming to learn English, but he gave me a lecture
on how I couldn't bring them any food or all kinds of
people would show up and expect it. I guess English
class would only attract people who were really
serious.
They brought all this weird food that I couldn't
identify, or that I only knew the Pashto names for.
They giggled when I shook my head and said, "We don't
have that in America." But we got a few things-- rice
and bread and egg and garlic-- and they laughed a lot
and let me try things even though I knew I'd have the
runs really bad the next day from it.
We were all wrapped up in the lesson, and Rodriguez
had to yell to get our attention. "Three ANs coming
right at us," he said. "Get up, Lundberg!"
I got up and stood guard like I was supposed to. The
girls looked behind them in the subtle way that
Afghani girls seemed to be able to, turning their
heads just a little and not moving their bodies at
all. "Three brother of Faryal," Maryam said in a
strangely soft voice, pronouncing each word carefully
and separately. "Brother want Faryal now go home."
The ANs marched up close and tried to surround us,
even though there were twice as many of us as them.
One of them grabbed Faryal's arm roughly and pulled
her to her feet. She made what looked like it was
supposed to be a halfhearted struggle, but her brother
yelped in pain and released her. His wrist was
hanging limp. Faryal's eyes were huge, and her mouth
hung open. She was the shyest girl in my class. She
hardly even talked, and she used the tiniest voice
when she did. And now, she'd just gotten so angry
she'd broken her brother's wrist with power she hadn't
known she'd had.
One of the other brothers started shouting things--
not at Faryal, but right at me. I recognized some of
them as the words Afghani men used right before they
spat at the female soldiers. The girls all looked
horrified, and they scattered to hide behind
Rodriguez. We weren't supposed to let any ANs past
the line unless they were sick, but Rodriguez was
smart enough to know he had to make an exception and
protect them.
The brother who'd been swearing at me lunged suddenly
towards me. I had some hand-to-hand training before
they sent me to Kabul, but I never dreamed I'd have to
use it. It was all instinct, but the next thing I
knew, the man was sprawled thirty feet away from me,
not moving. The other two men ran to help him. They
lifted him onto their shoulders and disappeared into
the night.
"Holy shit, Lundberg!" Rodriguez said. "What the fuck
did you do?"
"I was defending myself," I said. "I was defending
myself and these women."
"You just kicked that guy's ass half the way to Iraq,
Lundberg."
I pointed a thumb behind me. "Hate to break it to
you, Hot Rod, but Iraq's that way."
"Still-- Jesus Christ--"
The six girls, like churchmice, assembled in front of
us. "We everybody now go home," Maryam said. "Thank
you."
Faryal lagged behind for a moment. "Tonight I sleep
Maryam house. Maryam no husband. Good house." She
smiled wide. Strength lit up her eyes like torches.
"Thank you, teacher." She took my hands in hers and
shook them. "Thank you, teacher." TShe turned around
and dashed off to join her friends.
When they were almost out of sight, Rodriguez said,
"Lundberg, I think you should arm-wrestle me."
"You've got to be kidding," I said.
"No, serious," he said. "I want to see something."
There were no tables or anything that we could get to
without leaving our post. "We can't do it now," I
said. "We're on duty."
We finished out our shift, and Rodriguez was still
harping on the arm wrestling thing. We found an empty
exam area with a curtain and set up for a showdown. I
was ready to use all my strength just to keep him from
making me look like an idiot, but I pinned his arm
like I was flipping a light switch.
"Something happened last night," Rodriguez said.
"Like magic or something. A gift from Heaven." He
smiled with one side of his mouth, and I thought,
okay, I can admit he's kind of cute when he smiles
like that. But I've been three times a fool for guys
who were kind of cute when they smiled, so I stopped
at daydreaming about kissing him.
I was going to go back to my tent and sleep off the
memory of Faryal's brother's twisted face when he
landed in the sand. "Wait," Rodriguez said. "Could
you, like... pop my shoulder back in?" I hadn't
noticed the pain in his voice when he'd said I'd
gotten a gift from Heaven. It made me feel even more
like I didn't deserve it, like I wasn't responsible
enough or a good enough person.
Two days later, Rodriguez and I were on a plane back
to America. The first thing he did when we got back
to Fort Riley was take his Honda for a spin. He
invited me to go with him, but I told him he ought to
spend some time alone with the love of his life. I
had a feeling it would be a long time before he'd see
his car again. And I was right: a few hours later he
came to tell me that they were sending him to England,
and they wouldn't tell him why.
I went to the weight room and bench pressed my own
weight to prove I could. Then, I took the longest,
hottest shower of my life. I cut myself shaving my
legs and watched the nick heal so fast I could see it
sew itself up, like one of those time-lapse videos
they show in science class. I cut myself again, on
purpose, and I couldn't even feel it.
They were sending me into Ranger training. I wondered
if they were sending all the girls like me, all the
ones in the Army that they could find, and making some
kind of secret Ranger division. If there were already
me and Faryal, there had to be a lot of us.
There had to be a lot of them in Afghanistan, and what
would they do? Before I went there, I might have
thought they would rise up and overthrow the Taliban
and live in peace and democracy, but there's all this
culture telling them to be afraid of everything.
They're afraid of men and even more afraid of Allah.
They could have all the physical power in the world,
but they'd still be afraid. I had a dream one night
of Faryal getting stoned to death, like I heard women
sometimes do when they get pregnant out of wedlock and
stuff. She was too strong, and the stones couldn't
kill her. And I was in fucking Kansas where I
couldn't change anything.
I wanted to change things. It's funny how you start
out changing yourself, in whatever lame way, and you
end up wanting to fix everything. And I could, but I
couldn't. I could have been rescuing kittens out of
trees or putting an end to date rape, but I had orders
to follow. The Army would probably send me to really
dangerous places and tell me to kill people in the
name of freedom. They might have been able to tell a
hundred of us to do that.
I went to my new C.O. wearing my best stupid-girl
smile. "Sir, I'd like to ask permission to decline
Ranger training," I said. "It's not what I signed up
for, and it's outside my specialization."
"You know, it's a big honor to get selected to be a
Ranger," he said.
"Yes, sir," I said. "I understand, sir."
"This is a one-time offer, and you won't be made
eligible again," he said.
"I know, sir. I-- I was hoping to take some classes,
sir, and I wouldn't be able to do that as a Ranger."
I'd never been one of the ones who was only in the
Army to get money for college. I hadn't had those
kind of goals. I'd hoped that I would stay in the
Army forever. I didn't know what I'd do in the real
world.
He frowned and looked through his paperwork like he
was trying to find a solution. He already had one,
though. There's always a Plan B for this stuff, a way
for them to keep their hands clean. I tried my best
to look naive while he chewed the end of his pen.
"How'd you like to go to Washington, Private?" he
said.
"I'd like that fine, sir," I said.
I am the girl at every rally and every reception. If
the President is speaking on the South Lawn, I'm
standing behind a barrier with a sign that says I love
America. If he's serving foie gras and pheasant to
the Premier of Malaysia, I'm in a cocktail dress,
chatting up embassy aides. Last week, I took down two
snipers, a Hefla demon, and a guy who made a bomb
threat on a White House tour. The news cameramen know
to avoid getting me on tape, and I disappear into the
middle of crowds.
If you see my face long enough to remember it, it's
the last face you'll ever see.