The Lost Generation

[Cicadan]

What was a... chorizo? Bridie was sitting on a box that had apparently contained those, but the word was pretty unfamiliar inside her head and she was quick to forget it.

((Bridie Mossberg continued from Little Bighorn))

Bridie sat, marginally comfortable by the margin of just above miserable, on the hard wooden rock that had faded stickers on it claiming it's contents to be fresh never frozen chorizo. She and Damien were hidden inside one of the little shacks on this long stretch of crumbling road where some parts of it looked more like gravel and rocks than actual road. They were hidden here because of a specific reason. Because, Bridie wouldn't have just said they should hide for the sake of it because that was a waste. Because, she'd heard gunshots awful close. She'd figured they'd needed to hide.

She was awful sure the tactics didn't pan out in their favor if it was someone with a gun versus someone without. Bridie hoped Bishop was doing work with that gun he'd taken, doing something worthy of his status as an American citizen. She also hoped they could even the playing field and find themselves a gun soon. She hoped a lot of things. And, she also tried to do that thing where you think about the future to make stuff like predictions, because she figured that'd be useful in terms of strategy.

It also distracted her, made the vivid feeling of someone's warm throat skin under her hands stop being a feeling. At least for a little bit.

It was crowded in this little stall. Bridie had to tuck her legs to her chest to give Damien room to also sit down and stretch out.

She glanced at him, at an angle. She smiled and her eyes smiled too. She smiled because she knew that keeping up morale was an important part of strategy, and, as far as she knew smiles always made things better as long as they were bright and colorful enough! She spoke through her smile, trying to actually feel it as she smiled it, maybe feeling it a little at least?

"You've been quiet for a while..."

[Primrosette]

((Damien Crossly continued from Little Bighorn))

Damien was getting tired of being here. Not that he could say that to Bridie; she was too hopeful, too positive, too different from him. What had happened to him? He had been so determined to try to survive beforehand. What had made him change his mind? Why did he want to die now? Maybe he just wanted to get out by having someone else kill him. Not Bridie. God, she didn't need more negativity in her life, even if she was smiling at him now and he had no idea what was going though her head.

I want to die....

I want to die....

I want to die....

I WANT TO DIE...!

"I want to die...." He barely whispered loud enough for her to hear.

[Cicadan]

If it was a joke, which things like that seemed to always be, Bridie didn't get it. She never got that sort of joke because it was like... saddening. Most important of all, The General had personally made at least two separate PSAs about how suicide was absolutely dishonorable, was only an absolute last resort when surrounded and with only one bullet left in the gun. But Bridie just didn't like the idea in general, especially now. Death was wrong and gross, especially now.

"Don't say that," Bridie shot back reproachfully.

She squirmed a bit in place, because there really was no room in here. She was trying to tell her body to be stiff and still, as she'd learned by drill upon drill in camp, but her legs were just too recklessly restless. Oh well. She couldn't get on her own case about everything she did wrong, she needed to keep up her spirit. It had gotten her this far.

"I mean, there's nothing wrong with dying..." There really wasn't. Their lives were the collateral of this honor, this American institution.

Bridie was going to keep telling herself that, and moreover keep believing herself and the ghostly echos of almost two decades of waving American flags and cheerful music, of her grandfather proudly recounting how he'd earned his Navy Cross during Bering Strait.

"But we have to keep up the fight while we can!" She didn't stop smiling at him. "We're a good team and we've done good work so far, I think."

She sounded so earnest. In some twisted way, so innocent.

[Primrosette]

Damien just stared at Bridie in disbelief and he started to laugh loudly. He couldn't help it, this whole thing with Bridie was so strange, so odd, so unlikely, so stupidly naïve. He couldn't stop laughing for about ten seconds or so and then the laughter got quieter and quieter. He wanted to just break down and cry and tell Bridie that she was better off without him. But he didn't, he couldn't. She deserved to still be her. He couldn't drag her down with him as much as he wanted to. He really wanted to.

"How can you be so positive all the time? I really don't understand you at all, Bridie." He said honestly with a frown forming on his face and he wrapped his arms around his knees, resting his chin on top of his knees. "I can't see how we're a good team. I failed to help you.... A partner shouldn't be that useless, shouldn't have froze, shouldn't be willing to give up on everything now. ....But I am."

[Cicadan]

Bridie laughed as well. It was a default reaction to laughing, a robotic reaction, because Bridie had learned at some long ago point the importance of laughing with other people, and occasionally at them. Though it was sometimes a bit hard to distinguish between the two scenarios.

What he'd said... she really couldn't imagine an honest response.

The problem was, she was pretty sure, was that she was trying to do the smart thing. This was a group, and group protection was important when facing the unknown. First rule for any soldier trapped deep in possibly hostile territory, buddy up. She'd already cleared that hurdle, she'd already done what she was supposed to do. She didn't want to undo that, because... well, she didn't know what happened if she just took it all back. How could she tell Damien anything like that?

It wasn't like he was a bad ally. But. Bridie wasn't sure if he was a good one either.

Really, he was right. He'd gone blue falcon. Maybe on accident, she didn't know, because that was the hard part really. Knowing these things about others, like why they left you to choke a man to death alone. She didn't know that he really was a good partner, or that he even trusted her.

She still giggled, mirthless, a bit nervous. Damien was already done. Seconds more passed.

Really, she just had to go by the book.

"Look, this is just what has to be done. We're all here for a reason, I don't think it'd be honorable or even, like, smart... to try something else now. I really think you're doing your best."

... Was he...

She extended her arm through the little space left between them, tried to lay her fingers over his knuckles. She wasn't, like, trying to be intimate or anything. Just friendly, and reassuring, and all those important things. "Even if we're not a good team, we still are one. It'd be crazy to just throw it all aside now. Who knows what could happen if we split up."

[Primrosette]

Damien didn't like this one bit. Why? Because he somehow felt guilty for being like this; he really wished that he could have the determination that Bridie had and he was frustrated that he had given up so easily like that. Why? Because he was a coward really. He had been too scared to help Bridie. He had left her to do what he would call dirty work. And that's why he felt he wasn't good enough to be her partner.

Damien glanced at Bridie's face and he shook his head a little. "Are you sure that you want us to stay as a team?" He was about to ask her the obvious question, maybe she knew that one of them was going to have to ask it sooner or later. He still had to do it. "You do know that we have to turn on each other at some point, right?"

[Cicadan]

"I know that," Bridie insisted, slightly pursing her lips. Did Damien think she was that dumb?

"I've thought about this a bit already..."

No, wait.

"A lot, I mean. I talked about it to some of my old friends back when I'd go to camp and it's like, well. It's always important to follow orders because as the one lower in command you don't know what they mean. What if your friend is a threat to the country because they're a spy and that's why you have to help kill them?" Bridie had come up with that metaphor herself when she'd been 16. She'd been proud of it, used it often, because it seemed clever enough. "This is the same case. Killing each other is nothing personal, it's just following orders."

Bridie's gaze did meander into the distance, a little. At least, she stopped looking directly at Damien while her tone dampened into hesitation.

"I'm okay with that, I think. Whoever wins wins, and I think it's important to do your best whether you're the one who lives or not." She glanced back at him. Strictly looking at his eyes, maybe not noticing that she was raising her hands a bit away from her sides, as if to remind that she wasn't armed. "Whatever happens happens. I won't hold anything against you when I become, like..."

The pause lingered.

"A ghost, I guess. If I'm not good enough to take the win." Though not so deep down, she did hope she would be the one worthy.

[Primrosette]

Damien felt himself wondering at Bridie's words. In the past, he always felt scared of following orders for his duty or the country. Not like he could tell her that, even if he wanted to do so. Now he was doing what his parents had wanted him to do in the first place. But still, killing friends? If it was a stranger.... No, it still felt like it would have been wrong.

He stared down at his hands. His hands that had taken a girl's life. Bianca....

"Nothing personal? Following orders? Just doing my duty...?" He murmured the words softly and his eyes shifted their attention to the kama beside him. What would it be like to actually stab someone with that? Would he felt regret? Prideful? Happy? Sad? He didn't have an answer for that. "Heh...."

He glanced back at Bridie with a somewhat sad-looking expression. He didn't know how to deal with any of this. He felt so lost and just more unwilling to move. He just wanted to hide and then.... Then what?

"I've always been afraid of hurting anyone before I ended up here. No, I mean, killing someone that I know. Turning on friends.... I thought that I could never do something like that." He let out a small sigh and he shook his head, feeling more down about everything. "But I did. I strangled Bianca to death because I wanted to live so badly. I wanted to survive and now I can't take it back. She would have killed me but.... I don't know. I don't know if this will get any easier for us, Bridie."

[Cicadan]

Bridie continued to hope, loudly to herself without speaking, that she would be the one who could win. Ah, but. Hoping was the wrong way to go about it. To be the best, she had to act the part.

She was silent. Listening, but also not sure what she was hearing.

"I don't know."

She glanced at Damien's kama. His weapon, should he use it. A weapon that could possibly go unused, if she understood what she was hearing right. She couldn't read too well between the lines, but she wasn't sure she needed to. He'd said it himself. 'He couldn't take it back'.

"That's the thing about doing your duty, you know how they say it. You won't always make a decision you're happy with, but I dunno. That seems weird to me, because if you make a decision that means you chose it. You own it." Really, it was just really hard to even explain it. It just made sense. She didn't see why she had to turn the American Dream into what her teachers sometimes called a persuasive speech.

"I don't think it's something that's supposed to be easy," she murmured, but then her voice strengthened with conviction as she felt it in earnest, "but it's what we're supposed to do." She nodded, crossed her still empty arms over her chest. "I just don't see how there's any other way."

[Primrosette]

"There has always been another choice. To not hurt or kill others. To not do your duty. I could have done that, I should have done that in the first place. I should have just ran like a coward from that girl. But I didn't." Damien sighed softly and he picked up the kama with one hand, feeling the heaviness inside of himself. "I made my choice. The ones who are not killing, they're better people than us. At least that's what I think."

He looked back at Bridie. Still trying to understand her as a human being.

"Do you...? I..... uh...." He couldn't get out the question he wanted to ask her. Why was it so hard to ask?

[Cicadan]

To not do your duty. That wasn't an option, no.

It was frustrating, really. Bridie hadn't realized it until just now, and she felt almost too clever for noticing, but this was exactly what had happened with Bishop. It required some reading between the lines, and Bridie hated it when she had to do that, but she'd pieced together the puzzle. The problem was just really one of discipline. Of letting the little things distract from the big picture, and... no, Bridie wasn't sure she knew what that big picture was with any certainty. But she knew it was flying Stars and Stripes.

She tisked, out loud.

"The only 'better one' is the one who leaves this arena alive. The rest just died for their honor, for their countries honor.."

She somehow thought this particular line of thought sounded familiar, like she'd heard it before. Over trumpets and brisk and quick steps of soldiers.

".. Whether they chose to or not."

It was as simple as that. No further thought needed.

"Do I what? You're acting really weird, Damien." She glared at Damien, at this point, beginning to muse if this was a waste of time. Or rather, something even more dangerous than that. Not like she could think of any alternatives. Didn't need to, really, because: Damien was wrong.

And there was only ever a period on the end of that particular sentence.

[Primrosette]

Damien shook his head. There was no point in asking. There was no way trying to get through to Bridie. He was so different from her. Why was he even trying to change her mind about all of this?

Because you care about her.

"Nevermind...." He said, shaking his head again. "Do you think that we can leave now...? Or should we stay put?"

[Cicadan]

She didn't like it.

She'd never liked it. Situations like this where she didn't know for sure what was happening, because sometimes people were different from her. And that was supposed to be okay, because America was a land of equality, but sometimes it just didn't feel okay. It made Bridie prickly and anxious in that 'itch I can't scratch way'. It made things confusing. And Bridie was always stressed when she was confused.

She considered Damien in silence. She'd thought she could trust him...

She didn't know. She guessed it was alright, for now, but she hated the lack of clarity, the idea that someone by her side wasn't going to be strong enough to carry the fight all the way through.

"Maybe..."

She tried to remember why they were there at all. All she could remember was a whorl of annoyance, a vortex of the odds and ends of Damien that seemed loose.

"Oh, that's right. It's been a while since we've heard gunfire. Maybe we can find somewhere else."

She paused in the wake of her own word's undertow. They were heavy words, parting the air as she spoke, but not literally. They were just too determined. She could have just said they find somewhere else. She could have been in control, instead of giving over control to someone she realized she didn't even really know.

But. No take-backsies. It made more sense that way.

[Primrosette]

Damien tried to give Bridie a reassuring smile and a nod. But he felt like he had just half-assed it. Bridie was so much more different than he first realized. Of course, he had been in a state of wanting to survive. Not that he deserved it, of course. He was feeling the pressure of it now. He wasn't even sure what he wanted anymore. Did he want to live? Did he want to die?

He didn't have an answer for that. He wondered if Bridie thought that he was a waste of her time. He hoped not. He didn't want to lose his only ally. Even if they were on shaky grounds right now. They have to work together for as long as they could.

"Yes. Let's get going, Bridie."

((Damien Crossly continued elsewhere))

[Cicadan]

She also tried to smile. But Bridie had never been too good at making her emotions fake and that smile didn't look too correct on her face. Her bottom lip was a bit too stiff.

"Okay."

She couldn't guess what happened next, she could only hope blithely and as usual. Bridie didn't know what had changed.

((Bride Mossberg continued in Semper Fidelis))