AN: From Roxas' point of view, World War Two, inspired by the poem, The Listeners. Read it sometime. Italics are flashbacks.


I lean on the mound of mud inside the trench, cold sweat runs across my brow, bullets scream overhead. Bombs. Shells. Guns. Smashing and whizzing and screeching! I look to my left, men are shooting blindly above the wall. Every few seconds, another lifeless body falls, eyes glazing over, face turning a sickly white. Suddenly, a larger explosion roars behind me, my head is thrown forward from the impact. A familiar body is dropped in front of me. It is Lea, a good friend of mine, his son or daughter was due to be born this week. I think of my own family.

We sit at the dinner table, the atmosphere is light and joyful. The wireless is on, and we are listening to music, my five-year old son, Sora, is chatting happily, I laugh at his antics. For a moment the radio crackles, before the music stops altogether. Sora is confused but decides to continue the music himself, singing away. For a moment I am happy again, until the well practised speech of an Englishman rings through the house. My wife's face contorts into one of concern, then to one of dread. My son looks around, his face screwed up into a frown; even he can feel the growing sense of foreboding.

I snap out of my day-dream. The colonel is yelling at me, his face mere inches from mine, I can feel his spittle on my cheek. Like lightening, I suddenly see a plume of vomit-yellow smoke as it races across the blood-ridden plane. It is silent, a serpent filling every nook and cranny, searching for me, seeking me out. It envelopes everything: men, the trenches, it smothers the screams, before finally pulling the colonel into it's grasp. The gas sits in front of me, taunting me. No! I run like the wind. I promised that I would come back safe!


I am standing out-side of my house now, it is eerily quiet. Everything is still, as if the whole world has been stopped in time, the leaves don't even rustle in the non-existent wind. I knock on the door, some of the old flaky wood comes off in my hand. I wait for a few moments, every second feels like an age, I can hear my horse chomping noisily on the half-dead grass. The trees' silhouettes look menacing, distorted by my imagination. I knock again. Harder.

"Is anybody there?" I call, looking up at the dilapidated remains of my old house. For the first time, I notice the smashed windows, the crumbling brick, the blown off roof. Was there a tornado here? No, it would have been in the papers… a fallen tree? But the forest is all just as I remember it to be. I spot something, a glinting metal structure. A bomb. Realization hits me like a brick wall. I choke back tears, a lump is forming in my throat. I look at my feet. The tears won't stop coming, I give in. My heart is at the mercy of human evil.

I cry out, "Tell them I came! That I kept my word!"


AN: Don't cry now. Plz R&R.

You can find The Listeners at poem/the-listeners/ remove the spaces.