Three reflections…(WoD)

Ian, standing alone outside the hospital, glares at the overcast sun overhead, his eyes a clear and lucent green. He grinds out the end of his cigarette in the gravel beneath him and snarls.

“Fuck this.”

Tall, handsome and square, he heads off down the street, ignoring the appreciative glances from young girls, the laughter of running children and the calls of the vendors hawking their wares. He walks, his stride easy and loose, fraught with purpose.

 

 

Hawk yawns and lights a cigarette, his lean face sporting several days growth. The past few days had been long, dusty, and hot. He misses his old squad, his old friends; as good as his new unit was, they were no patch on Mattie and Andy, Ian and JJ, Kitty and Bridget. Kitty…. He shakes his head, disturbed. The whole thing. It felt… wrong.

He stretches his arms over his head and groans softly. And this constant traveling was wearing. This unit wasn’t as well equipped, either. He smiles wryly to himself as his takes a drag off of his cigarette and blows the smoke out in several short puffs. Whine, whine, whine, Alexander Elias Walker. What a pussy.

He leans back and laughs a little, his grey eyes dark in the growing sunlight. The girl lying next to him shifts in her sleep, sooty lashes soft against her freckled cheek. Kody was a delight, really, a pleasant surprise. He smiles down at her, a gentleness coming unbidden to his face. She was little and fun, always smiling, always eager to please and eager to work. She’d fallen into his bedroll with him on his first night with the unit, stating, “You and I both know this is going to happen eventually, and better me than Letty. She’s pretty jaded about men; you’d pay with your pride, if not your balls, sleeping with her.” She’d tugged her tank top over her pigtailed head with a wink. “Trust me, Hawk Walker. It’s better this way.” Half-naked, she’d raised an eyebrow, thrusting her small breasts at him as if in challenge. “Well? You in?”

Things had definitely proceeded predictably from that point on.

Yeah, Kody had been right. Letty would have been a poor choice. The young Latino girl was angry; so very, very angry. She was attached to no one, except maybe Kody. She could fight, shoot, and run with the boys, but Letty wanted no part of them. Hawk didn’t know her story, didn’t ask. It wasn’t his business; it didn’t interfere with unit cohesion or mission objectives. If the girl wanted to talk to him, she would.

Sergeant Alexander was a lifesaver, in every sense of the word. A former Green Beret, Sgt. A was an experienced combat medic and reliable as hell. He was honest and brooked no nonsense from what he considered ‘GDFN’s, and that included Hawk, to some extent. Rather than being insulted, he used it, asking Sgt. A for his opinion and giving him responsibilities above that of just a medic. Sgt. A was now the unit second-in-command, and Hawk could detect a definite thaw in the man’s demeanor towards him. A smart move, if he did say so himself.

Tetsura and Inaki. Now, those two were something; what, Hawk had no idea. He takes another drag and slides an arm around Kody, snuggles her closer against his hip. Those two young men were involved, somehow, on some primal level that he couldn’t really fathom. They projected a strange dynamic, one that, had he seen any outward sign of it, would have made him think they were sleeping together. They were always together, but they always kept their space. Kind of odd, that.

He yawns again, grinds out his cigarette in the dirt next to him and tucks the butt into his pack. If they were fucking, well, as with Letty’s distaste for men it didn’t change anything that pertained to him, so it got classified under ‘Things That Have Nothing to Do With Me’ and then forgotten. There were many things that got shuttled into that mental folder, filed in his brain next to ‘Things That I Have No Control Over So Let It Go’. Kitty’s disappearance had been filed in that one, painfully, over the course of several drunken nights. Her blue eyes and knowing smile had been placed there, along with the silky feel of her skin against his and the funny way she used to let her tongue escape her lips while deep in thought. He’d placed each memory in the thought folder, the pain of it making him bleed with each new sensory image. He couldn’t help her, couldn’t even help himself, really; the King had seen to that. Suddenly angry, he slams his fist into the dirt beside his bedroll, the movement causing the sleeping girl to lift her head for a moment in sleepy response. Hawk strokes her hair with an absent hand, sending her back into dream as he stares towards the horizon. He couldn’t help Kitty, couldn’t help Ian, couldn’t help himself. He was impotent, and this knowledge enrages him, fills him with an emptiness that threatens to unman him, here in front of his soldiers, in front of the world. He pulls in a ragged breath and lets it out, tears standing in his storm grey eyes as his troops sleep on.

 His mother had a saying, one that she used to shrug off the constant worries and trouble that would have crippled a lesser woman, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” He mouths the words repeatedly, a unspoken mantra, as sweat begins to drip down the back of his neck; the sun was rising and the day was heating up fast, at this rate, it would be well above ninety by ten o’clock. He’d better get them up and moving.

Hawk’s eyes are dry as he wakes his men from their bedrolls.

 

 

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It was good to be home.

Sasha surveys her tiny apartment above the clinic, a one-bedroom place with no running water and no icebox. Her clothes would all have to be hand washed in cold water, her baths would all be of the sponge variety unless she went down to the outpost’s bathhouse and paid for a tub or shower. Her food would all be processed, her water boiled. In truth, the outpost was short on amenities compared to Avalon City and despite the lack Sasha was perfectly content to be back.

She shifts the sleeping bulk of her small daughter against her shoulder as she steps carefully down the short hall to her bedroom. Sasha didn’t have a lot; she shared her room with Selina, her own bed a single mattress against the wall and her child’s a crib mattress atop a wooden frame that her brother JJ had made from scrap lumber and painted a soft pink. There was one dresser that they shared and a bookcase that held both Sasha’s medical textbooks and Selina’s Dr. Seuss.

But what the apartment lacked in amenities it made up for in niceties. Festive, hand sewn quilts were tucked neatly on the beds, made from whatever fabrics Sasha could find. The curtains that blew in the summer breeze were a gentle cream color, with flowers embroidered by her own careful hand. The dresser and bookcase were lacquered, with painted vines climbing the legs and wreathing the handles. The hardwood floor was polished and clean, and the lamps on the bedside table were trimmed neatly and well-filled with oil.

The whole apartment had the same feel as the bedroom; the kitchen was well-scrubbed and tidy, curtains that matched the bedroom’s were at each window, and a knitted afgan was thrown over the back of the ancient sofa. Toys stacked in an old rifle crate let visitors know that this was a child-friendly house, and a second bookcase, this one devoted to the classics, adorned the living room wall with easy elegance. Sasha was a firm believer in the idea that just because you didn’t have much was no reason not to take pride in what you had, and her living quarters showed it.

It was good to be home. She lays the sleeping child on her bed, tucking a battered stuffed lamb under her arm before stepping quietly out and closing the door. With a sigh she sits on her sofa and opens the book she’d left on the worn coffee table before she’d journeyed to Avalon for the Festival. Yes, it was good to be home, but why did she feel suddenly lonesome, suddenly alone? She stares at the pages of her book, “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens, with eyes lost in thought. She’d never felt this lonely before. What had changed?

The book falls to the floor as tears fall from her eyes. Jeff, she thinks as she lifts one shaking hand to her cheek. Jeff had changed everything, with just one kiss. With a quiet, forlorn wail, Sasha buries her face in her hands.