Disclaimer: nothing anyone recognises is mine.
Desolation
Here, standing on the edge of yet another battlefield, he wondered, not for the first time, if he had done the right thing. Amidst all the devastation and death, he thought back to those days on Serenity. It had all seemed so clean-cut then. Black and white. Let the 'verse know about Miranda, and then his job would be done. But he hadn't thought this far ahead. Hell, none of them had. Excepting maybe River, none of them had expected this to happen. For the newswave to start another war. To be the spark that lit a rebellion.
And sure, maybe he had hoped, somewhere in the back of his mind, way back when, that this could be the straw that broke the camel's back, that this could be what toppled the Alliance. That this could finally cause all those stuck-up, privileged folk on the Core worlds to see just what they supported.
But he hadn't wanted this.
Even if it did destroy the stranglehold the Alliance had over the verse, it wouldn't have worked, wouldn't have been worth it.
This wasn't the way he might have wished it all to happen, not that his cynical, ex-soldier hindbrain had ever really thought otherwise. This wasn't, had never been, how he wanted it all to end. Not like this.
Staring down at the ruins of what had once been a bustling community, he felt stirrings of grief, the remnants of pain on these peoples' behalf. But this had gone on for far too long. No one could cry anymore – they had all used up their tears long ago, and if they started crying again, they wouldn't ever be able to stop again.
Burnt out gun emplacements surrounding a town that should have had no need for them. Crows circling the fields, picking at the rotting, decaying remains of bodies. Arid land though this place had been to begin with, nothing more would ever grow here again. Barren land forevermore, even if there were folk willing to plant here, on a battlefield, even if there were folk left to plant.
The two armies were slowly killing each other, tearing each other to shreds. Each side too stubborn by half to give in, each side fighting for what they saw as survival. Desperate. If it went on for too much longer, there would be no one left to tell the tale.
We would have exterminated each other for our beliefs, he thought. In believing we should be free, and fighting for that belief. Killing for that belief...and dying for that belief.
If they had only known what would happen as a result of their actions, what would be caused...No, gorramit. We would have done exactly the same. We were doing what we thought was right, and whatever happened afterwards, we did what we could to fix things. We did what we could to make things better, and be damned to any other consequences. We thought it was the right thing to do.
And who the hell knows, maybe it even was.
But whatever else they could have done, they didn't, and then this happened, because of other choices made by other people, far away.
Gunfire reached his ears, muted and muffled from distance. Acting purely on instinct, he gripped his own gun tighter, and abandoned his hillside vantage point, framed against the sky as he was, standing on it like a gorram fool. He ran towards the commotion, stubbornly refusing to pray. Just hoping.
It shouldn't have to be like this.
-end-