[The name of my OC is Lydia Romanoff and is made up by me.]
Must you have battle in your heart forever?
The bloody toil of combat?
Old contender, will you not yield to the immortal Gods?
That nightmare cannot die, being eternal evil itself.
Horror, and pain, and chaos.
There is no fighting her, no power can fight her, all that avails is flight.
- Odysseus
Our uniforms were different. One represented the clothes of a hero, or the clothes of a killer, it depends on how you see it. Whilst the other uniform was made for sitting still and sipping tea. The garment that clothed my body took its form in the last mentioned uniform, with a piece of light blue ribbon to put in my hair to match the school uniform emblem.
The other uniform clothed Pip Bernadotte's body, and the only thing he had to match his uniform with was a gun and a hat. The red scarf around his neck stood out by itself, and was perhaps the only thing that made him appear like a normal person.
Our principal was met with a large degree of skepticism from parents regarding his proposal for distance requirements when he was aware of grouping students and soldiers into the same housing. Yet, we lived under the same roof for two long years. Folks in hair ribbons and gun holder belst shared their existence inside a boarding house outside of London. The dorm in our private school for young females needed to be renewed, and The Wild Geese mercenaries had their own reason for staying. And whilst they did, some of them assumed they could treat us however they liked, and some of my friends were living proofs of that fact.
I have my very own story to tell, and it started one morning during breakfast.
Behind the boarding house there was a large grass field that the soldiers sometimes used for their training. It looked just like any other grass field and it was large enough for a circus tent, but there was one curious thing with it. In the middle of the field, someone had put a garden furniture. A black iron garden bench with infinity cirkles on the sides and traditional wooden planks in the middle. It stood abondoned with its back facing the boarding house so that the person sitting on it was forced to look on the forest straight ahead, and at the treetops and the sky.
The lonely bench never really attracted anyone. One was not encouraged to go sit on it because it was so far away. It was located in such an odd place, in fact, that you almost became a little suspicious. But for some reason, I couldn't stay away. I saw the bench for the first time the very same day we came here, about fourteen days ago, and already then I knew that I couldn't leave our temporary home without having taken a look at it. This was just the right morning for such a thing.
My friend Dorothy was not to be reckoned with, since she wasn't a morning person like myself, so I simply went alone with my porcelain cup and assette in hand. It was a late summer morning, and I saw no man anywhere on my way out.
Sitting on the bench with my troubles behind my back after having goubled up my breakfast felt like one of the greatest ideas I've come up with ever since we had arrived two weeks ago. It was chilly, but silent and peaceful and that was enough for me to forget all of my troubles. Sometimes, I heard a bird sing or something rattle in the forest, but it wasn't until I saw someone coming out of the forest that I realized that I was sharing the world with other people, and it wasn't until I discover that this man was coming towards me that I began minding my own existence again. Reality hit me like a train, and I realized just how freezing the outside air was and that the hot water in my cup had already turned lukewarm, and I felt like an idiot sitting out here all by myself.
He was aiming for me, this man. He had his target on the garden furniture as well, as he walked in a steady and determined way towards it, towards me. When he was close enough, I could see what he was. He was wearing the uniform that was the antithesis to my very own. To make matters worse, he appeared to be younger than the other mercenaries, and as far as I knew, he looked handsome, despite missing an eye. The same unseeing eye, which was his left eye, was covered with a patch of some kind, that oddly enough didn't make him look abnormal. He would blend in perfectly well in any crowd. But to me, that face would become unforgetable.
After a moment of nervous waiting, he slummed down next to me with a loud groan that striked fear in my heart. I clutched my teacup for dear life, surprised that the liquid hadn't spilled over. What came later was another kind of surprise.
"Good morning mademoiselle."
His gentle voice didn't match that previous monstrous sound that had left him at all. I was too nervous to say anything so I only nodded my head once, daring to glance at him for only a few seconds before my gaze returned to the trees before us. All that went through my mind was why he had been in the forest all by himself.
When he laughed, my gaze had to return to him. It was a young and carefree laugh. His teeth were straight and appeared healthy. He smelled like iron tools. I spotted his eye glancing down my school uniform, to where my knee long skirt was gathered in a pile around my thighs. At first, I assumed that he was laughing at my clothes, later on my teacup, but it wasn't any of those things.
"You're straight as a pine, love." he said to me just as gently as before, his large hand floated in-between the invisible space behind my back and the backrest.
It was my posture he was laughing at, but I couldn't tell if it was a mean or kind laugh. His arm later on decided to stretch over the backrest, and in that moment, I could see how daring it must've looked from the behind view and it wasn't good.
The students weren't supposed to interact with the men from the force and that was flat. And here I sat being courted by a young, one-eyed soldier with an accent.
I didn't know what to answer. What does one say about such a thing?
The very reason my posture appeared great must've surely been because I was a tiny bit scared stiff by his sudden presence. He appeared so mysterious and anonymous somehow, with all his gemics, including a large hat, and a long red scarf wrapped nonchalantly around him.
But the most remarkable thing about him was his hair. I've never seen such hair before in my life. Not on a man. Not on a woman. It was like a thick rope hanging from the nape of his neck, and I couldn't see the end of it. He might be sitting on his own hair that was done in a flawless, thick braid. And the only thing remarkable with me was my posture.
"Like some say in the army: 'It all starts off with a good poise.'" he quoted, and I wondered if he was this talkative with everyone, or if he actually was interested in having a proper conversation with me. But nothing of that mattered there.
"I'm not allowed to speak with you, sir." I told him as kindly as I could with my gaze straight forward.
The man wouldn't answer me until I looked at him, which I did after a brief moment.
"Yet, you did." he said, and I felt his arm drop from the armrest.
He searched his pockets until he found a lighter and a package of cigarettes.
"I didn't want to be unkind." I said in defence, daring to look at him much longer than I've previously had.
I felt offended somehow, but I didn't know why. His focus was all on his cigarettes then, as he picked out one and put it on fire with his refill lighter that looked very old fashioned. I watched him that whole time, waiting for him to say something.
Putting back all the equipment in his pockets, he breathed out a portion of smoke whilst still biting onto the cigarette with his fine teeth.
"It's pathetic." he said, giving me a lump in my stomach.
"You can call them rules, but there is no larger risk to break them. People make rules just to keep their existence from chaos, but it doesn't undo the chaos born inside minds."
Surprisingly, I laughed at his words, earning a glance from him.
"Oh, but my mind is not chaotic." I told him, no longer interested in looking at him.
"Isn't it?" he asked me seriously and my head snapped back at his gleaming blue eye.
He removed the cigarette from his mouth and smirked.
"You called me 'sir' just now. But you do realize what I am, don't you?" he asked.
I didn't dare to answer his question. I looked at the trees instead. I feel the cold porcelain in my fingers.
"You don't know me either." I said.
Oh, how I hated those words.
I hated them so much that I wanted to leave them there with him.
In fact, I hated them so much that I actually stood up, replaced my seat with the tea cup and walked back to the boarding house.