The city smelled of smoke and rust. I could taste it in the back of my throat. Maybe the cigarettes were catching upto my health. Maybe the copious amounts of Whiskey. Wo knows at this point. My boots crunched over broken dirt stained glass and rubble as we advanced, my squad cutting across the broken street. Buildings had been crumpled down to a shadow of their former selves, and the wind still chimed as usual as if nothing ever happened.
"Last block clear.", Sergeant Kane's voice cut through my earpiece, sharp.
I nodded, though he couldn't see it. My rifle rested heavy in my hands, a familiar weight that gave me a deception of control and power. Years of training had taught me how to funnel my anger into the one thing that I loved.
We moved down the avenue, the ruins surrounding around us like spiky teeth. Hostages had been herded into a fortified building. My squad spread out to search for more people in hiding.
"Anything on your side?", I hissed into my comms, scanning the shadowed corridors.
"Nothing," replied my squadmate, Mia. "Just rubble and bodies."
Bodies. They didn't faze me. I'd seen enough. I had become enough.
And then I froze.
It was just a flicker of motion at the corner of my vision. But it was enough.
I shouldn't have felt anything. But my chest constricted, my pulse raced, and my brain screamed at me to react before my eyes even registered it.
My. Fucking. Scarf.
A man, shackled, seated on the floor, his face smeared with dirt and dried blood. My pulse caught on his shape before I could rationalize. My scarf tied cutely around his neck. And then it registered.
It was him.
Him.
I couldn't move. I felt paralyzed. My rifle hung loosely in my hands.
"Find anything?" Kane's voice was crisp, professional, unaware of my internal struggle to open fire.
I swallowed. My voice came out flat and calm.
"No. Nothing here."
The lie was perfect. Cold. Just like I was.
Inside, something screamed. A part of me, buried under years of training, hatred, and coping, had been yanked open. That tiny, fragile girl from high school, the one he had rejected without a thought, clawed her way out.
I stepped closer, silent, my boots careful over shards. I studied his face. The same soft jawline, the same eyes that had once been bright with laughter.
"I oughta kill you right here."
But he didn't recognize me. Not yet.
I allowed myself one thought: power.
I could take him. I could bend him to the rules of this new world. My world. I could hold him, humiliate him, control the boy who had once controlled my heart without even knowing it.
I knelt beside him, masking my emotions behind a mask of efficiency. My hands moved like a robot as I cuffed him. I kept my face neutral, eyes forward, calculating every movement. Inside, my mind raced: every action, every thought, every moment of that day kept replaying in my mind. How his face twitched as I invited him onto the roof of the school. How, at that very same moment, I instantly knew he was going to shatter my heart. But there was something in me, that began to believe that, even if there was even a 1% chance for him to go out with me, I'd readily humiliate myself by asking him out.
He flinched at my touch, confusion spreading across his face as he stirred awake in my arms on the way to the Humvee. Good. Let him feel unsettled. Let him know that his world is going to be fucking rocked.
He looked at me as I dumped him in the backseat like a scared little puppy.
He knew.
He knew that I knew.
I feigned stretching my arms over the top of the vehicle and took a quick look around making sure no-one saw me kidnap my high school crush in broad day-light.
I forced a small, polite smile as I got in. The kind of smile that would normally be on my face on a good day of relaxing after a hard day of grueling field work.
"Everything's fine," I said, voice soft and sweet.
"You're in good hands now."
I wanted him to know, wanted him to feel safe. For the time being, at the very least.
I straightened, brushing dust from my uniform. My squad was finishing the rounds, unaware of my hands shaking violently on the steering wheel. They didn't know that this mission had become far too personal.