Work Text:
THE SOLDIER WHO SAW EVERYTHING TWICE
She leaves him in an area
Between a forest and a hard place
While playing a reel in her head
Of all his misdeeds and mutiny
And in her desperate bid to
Keep this fire burning long enough
To finally warm her bones
In a way far gone
She tells herself that she is
Doing everyone else a favour
And that he will be so unmissed that
They won't even make him a grave
(As the embers spur her on
She stamps out the fact that
All those memories have glasses
And that there's a grave back home
That keeps a tyrant's horns)
Busy worrying her lips
She barely flinches and
Only closes her eyes tight
For a couple of seconds
As the explosion misses her
And razes that forest down
To bedrock
(She's a strong woman after all
She has to be
Even when everyone else is sobbing
She can only content herself
With crying in private)
A wave of nausea passes over her
But she pulls her hand up her stomach
To settle it and ready herself
She needs to check it worked
(Needs to not half hope it didn't)
And the soldier forgotten
Forges onward to a
Clearing gone in seconds
Not missing the passing resemblance to
A country gone in the
Same amount of time
There's a weird metallic taste in her mouth
But she ignores it and she
Swallows her saliva and
Pushes forward
Because there's someone dying in front of her
And all of a sudden
She knows who it is
Not the tragic leader
Not the smiling corpse
Not even the friend turned distant turned wrong
But rather a boy in too big clothes
Coughing up blood like the war didn't end
(Or perhaps it only ever finished
For its victors
And god knows there's no victor
In this desolate crater)
His features are smeared with
Fear and calm
And red and red and red
And somewhat detachedly
She wonders when the last time
She cut his hair was
Then she looks down at his failing body
And tries to decide in some manic avoidance
Which flowers she'd leave on his grave
Maybe buttercups like he used to
Put under her chin and
Ask stupid, childish questions
(And to which she would
Give stupid, childish answers)
Or maybe even dandelions;
Invasive and persistent and annoying
(Useful and somewhat beautiful
And even in their resilience
Entirely killable)
Unable to find a satisfying answer
And unable to suture his wounds in a way that
Puts the life back into his body
She crumples up against
The corpse of someone who she
Never really wanted dead
And she pulls and pulls and pulls on her hair
Until clumps start to fall out
THE SOLDIER IN WHITE
This is going to be a great day
He thinks to himself privately
The stage is set for revenge of
The most justified kind
And as he awaits
This inferno of comeuppance
He can almost feel the way the ash
Soars off of his tongue
(Gone the days are
Of immolation
Unnoticed)
Safe in his hazmat belongings
He practically sighs as the button
Is pressed nonchalantly
And the bomb starts to
Rain down thick
It was almost
Upsettingly easy
(Almost less effort
Than shoving skin to lava
And skipping the apology)
As his compatriot now saved
Raves about the beauty of the blast
He fiddles with his communicator
And only begins to worry
When there's no reply from
After the test
Anxiety slowly pooling in stomach
He braves into the place where honour
Goes to burn and break and die
And hope that she has not
Followed suit
(And if she is truly
Dead and gone
He plans to ensure
It does not go
Unnoticed)
When he happens upon her
Deep into the wasteland not esteemed
She sobbing something about how
He's dead, oh god he's dead
And he stands amazed at her solemnity
Her downright apologia
Because that's what they came here to do
Doesn't she remember?
(She better not forget him now)
And besides he looks regrettably
Somewhat somehow
Fine
It's so unfair
And the fact fills the boy with
A fury that threatens to
Flatten the forest again
Until he realises that
Oh god, there's so much blood
One eye blue from the tears
And the other streaming crimson
From the debris lodged firmly in his iris
Or somewhere around there
(Its unclear from the amount of gore
And the way the others' gaze grows
Blurrier each second)
But the blood only seems to
Cover the boy's battered face
And he attempts to solace himself
With the fact that it is
Just an eye, not a life
That has been blindsided today
When this has all blown over
Maybe they can be friends again
Now that the debt is repaid
And with his unseeing stare
He won't notice that his would-be-killer
Is shaking
That is to say
If he survives because he starts
Looking at the burns
That scale his body
And wrap him up warm
He thinks about lava
And slow, agonising deaths
Eye for an eye isn't as fun
When you see the way they're
Rended and ripped and gored
From the body
The plan of the century
And it goes off without a hitch and
Well, that's the problem
Isn't it
Sharing the guilt was not the
Ending he was expecting
He's doing good for the people
Why doesn't it feel that way?
(He's already been to hell
He can't bear to go again)
SNOWDEN
He sees something approach
Rapidly from the sky
A second too late
Too preoccupied with looking for
Wood to make himself useful and
A tour guide vanished
It is in his view one second
And the next half of it is black
From where he is haphazardly splayed
Across the rough and uneven floor
(It hurts more than he thought it would)
Now he is left to ponder why
There is some sort of flak
Dangling from his eye
Or what's leaking from the wound
It probably burst his veins
Or arteries or capillaries or
All the words he never bothered
To learn the meaning of
But he tugs at the stray bomb part
Anyway and finds it unmoving
Stinging
Before letting his hand fall with
Either fatigue or resignation
He already knows what the
Crushing pressure on his
Abdomen means and
Figures there's nothing he can do
That'd help in anyway
(He's going to die here
And he can't even stop being
Useless for that)
Alone as he is
He wonders if he'll die
Not knowing the reason
And so he grasps onto
Cold comforts
And argues in his brain that
Maybe he was just a bit too loud
On the journey over
(And ignores the fact that
The guts pooling from his shirt is
Premeditated and deserved much more
Earlier)
Caught up in the turmoil of
Kicking the bucket
He only notices the girl he was
Looking for previously
Standing over him when she
Collapses against his body
And she jumps back when he
Joins her hand with his
(He didn't know he was that
Repulsive)
And she cries to him that he has
To stay in there
That he has to stay alive for her
But he is finished with
Living for others
No matter how kind she is
And he decides the only favour
He can do for her this moment
Is pretending he doesn't know
How she lead him to his death
And wandered off
Before turning his gaze to the
Trembling boy joining them behind her and
Thinking perhaps he did the same
(Thinks of countries gone and
Friends left behind
And doesn't realise
What he's really done)
Then looks at his murderers
Only to see his benefactors instead
And if he squints hard enough
Maybe even his friends
(He's glad it was them
In the end)
YOSSARIAN
The warning signs go up
Too late for any use
No one sans its maker
Reads it anyway
No one wants to dwell
In such a violent resting place
Or at the very least
Not anywhere someone else would see them do so
Barely anyone wants to consider the crime
That meant that even the maggots
Won't take his body
The maker in question sits
At the top of this man-made terror
And the boy holds his body in his two arms
And laments the absence of two others
Drowning in grief his mind briefly wanders to
The perpetrators of such a dishonest act
And he feels the absence there too
He hasn't talked to them since
Hard to make conversation
With the friends who
Forced his hands to murder
Hard to forget that he
Still cares about them
Still notices the way his former allies
Either smell of cheap alcohol or
Have taken to wearing hats atop
Recently shaved heads
Or hair not cut in weeks
He was so preoccupied with swimming to shore
That once he reached it
He looked behind and only began to realise
That everyone else was either dying or
Dead already
That's the way the story goes
Isn't it, afterall
Yossarian lives
(Snowden dies)