Heads or Tails
"Heads, we get married. Tails, we break up."
Eva stared at him.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing," she lied. She looked out at the Sea of Japan from where they stood on the shore – cold, empty, and in the scope of her personal experience, uncharted. Being cold and empty was par for the course out here, except for the few moments she could spend with Commander Carson McKay – hero of the Allies, saviour of the free world, and commander of all Allied forces currently stationed in Japan.
"Eva?"
Moments that he could still ruin.
"What's wrong?"
"What's wrong?" she repeated. "What's wrong?" She picked up a pebble and tossed it out into the sea. "Only that we're out here, occupying enemy territory. That being with you is the one thing that makes it bearable."
He smiled.
"And agony as well."
The smile faded. She tossed in another pebble. "Because not only do I have to duck and weave around every raised eyebrow, not only am I fraternizing with a superior officer, but…" She reached for a third pebble, thought better of it, then punched Carson in the shoulder. "But then you pull twaddle like this!"
She met Carson's gaze; his eyes were a mirror of her own – hard, cold, wounded. The punch, she suspected, had hurt her wrist more than it had hurt him. But it didn't matter. Being hurt, and the risk of it, were the basis of this entire relationship. Made bearable when they had these few moments that made it all worthwhile.
"So what would you do?" he asked.
"What?"
"You won't choose, and you won't leave it to chance," he said. "We've been dancing around like this for years – since the war, since Tatsu's uprising, since, grace permitting, we're permitted to stay on the same base in occupied territory." He paused, and the mirror cracked – for a moment, the hurt was his own. "So what now?"
"I don't know."
"You think I don't get those same glances? Those same whispers?" He held her hand in his – one of those 'moments' that she had thought of earlier. Both of their hands were rough – even desk work took its toll eventually. As did the blood of sending men and women off to die, and to kill other men and women.
And how many of them once had what we're toying with now?
"But I can't do this Eva," Carson continued. "I want to be with you. I'll even resign to do it."
"Carson…"
"But what about you? What do you want?"
"I…" She didn't answer. She knew what she wanted. Had known it from the first time they met. But wanting something didn't mean getting it. And getting what you wanted wasn't always for the best. The USSR had got what they'd wanted when they'd removed that scientist from the timeline, and now they were rebuilding from the ashes of defeat. And this? She shivered in the wind. Dust and ashes. She took her hand out of his.
"Flip the coin." Carson looked at her. "Let's let it decide."
Silently, Carson obliged.
It was a pound sterling. She could imagine Queen Elizabeth laughing at her right now.
Heads, they would embrace what they'd felt for years. Leave the army, head home, drink tea, and try to live as normal a life as possible. Tails, they would return to what the world expected of them. Normality, in a world that hadn't been normal for years, and perhaps stopped being normal in the realm of an entirely separate space-time continuum. A struggle of a similar, yet different kind. One scenario the rock, the other the hard place. And a hundred yard minefield between the two.
The coin was flipped. Gravity stood as witness, with her heart beside it. Waiting. Watching. The passage of years compressed to a second.
And her heart lost patience. She walked forward and kissed him. Gravity called foul as the grass landed on the ground beside her.
"Heads or tails?" Carson asked softly. Even as he kissed her back.
She didn't answer. For they both knew it was never a real question.
Not when they both knew the answer.
A/N
This was based on a writing challenge, to write a short story less than 800 words, and to begin it with the phrase "heads, we get married. Tails, we break up." Somehow came up with this.