AN: hey guys. So this story will be short, probably four chapters in length. As you can probably tell, the story was partially inspired by the song Stitches. that may not make any sense at first, but bear with me, the song and the cover art will make sense soon.
anyway, enjoy.
"Gotta feeling that I'm going under, but I know that I'll make it out alive."
War has always been full of uncertainties.
A mixture of the best and most destructive weapons a civilization could create deployed to a contained area, that was all it ever has been. God's own recipe for disaster.
Sergeant Daniel Turner thought about this as he put on his armor, the one line of defense he had between himself and the worst humanity could create, and how futile it was that he wore it. When it came down to it, armor had been outmoded in warfare, and it had been that way for nearly five hundred years. If the enemy really wanted him dead bad enough, he would end up that way, one way or the other, armor or not.
But still he wore it, because he still held onto hope that it might keep him alive long enough to keep a promise to himself he had made a long time ago, although the promise was more to Lieutenant Emily Miller than anyone else.
He stood now, looking on at her nervously, and wondering why he hadn't kept that promise a year ago.
Of course he knew why he hadn't kept it. Just because the UNSC Airforce combat surgeon had stolen his heart long ago didn't mean she was immune to death, and just because she had taken the smart route through life while he had charged head long into the fray wouldn't make it hurt any less if he saw her killed.
When he had met her she had just commissioned as an officer, fresh out of ROTC and deployed to an unfamiliar planet, a brilliant young woman who had a lot to learn. He had enlisted in the Army in high school, coming from a military family it was all but expected of him. Although he had always respected the UNSC, he couldn't help but wonder if he would have chosen another job had his family ever made it seem like a possibility.
When he met her he had just made Corporal. He had been sent to the same godforsaken world where the UNSC had seen fit to take on an insurrectionist insurgency.
He had forged an unlikely friendship with her kindled over many long, but her kind nature, her energetic personality that the war hadn't managed to crush, her radiant smile, and her brilliance all made him wish to be much more than friends with her. He wasn't quite sure when he had fallen in love with her, when he had first met her or some time later, but it really didn't matter. He was in love with her now, and love had no place in a conflict like this one.
"The radiation war" as it was being called, was fought over a desolate, desert world, with little water to speak of, but it was rich in titanium, plutonium, and uranium, the three things the UNSC desperately needed to keep its war machine running, so when the URF had announced a hostile takeover the UNSC had responded in force, deploying all that was left of their dwindling Army to push them back and engage them in a hand-and-hand-and-tooth-and-nail conflict for the planet.
So here he stood, a year later, still just as hopelessly in love, and no closer to wining this war. Her encouragement and kind smiles were just about the only thing holding his almost nonexistent morale together, and even though he knew he shouldn't allow himself to indulge his need to see her, he still did before every mission, and this one would be no different.
Lt. Emily Miller spent most of her time in the field hospital, tending to wounded that had been injured, usually by IED blasts, surprise rocket attacks, or plasma burns from the occasional Covenant weapon, and was nearly always swamped in bloody work, but still she made time for him. Usually it was only two or three minutes of conversation right before a mission, but the gesture meant more to him than she could ever have imagined.
He found her near the side of her trauma tent, and after staring at her for five minutes, he finally built up the courage to run over to her.
When she looked up at him, her normally brilliant, green eyes looked glazed and dead as she stared directly ahead of her. She looked like hell, but when she saw him jogging towards her, helmet tucked under his arm, a small amount of life leaked back into her eyes, and the tiniest of smiles played across her lips.
Hope shot through him and a smile crossed his face as he saw her happiness to see him. It was far from what he felt for her, but it was something, and it gave him a small amount of hope that maybe when this was all over she would be able to find a small place in her heart for him.
She shakily got to her feet, blinking hard and rubbing her eyes. He saluted her snappily, the customary greeting for someone of her rank, but she simply laughed and shook her head, returning the salute halfheartedly.
"Hey Daniel," she said, still chuckling slightly.
"Ma'am," he responded simply, but with a bit of enthusiasm in his tone.
He knew she didn't like him saluting her or calling her ma'am, they were friends after all, but UNSC policy meant that even their close friendship could be construed as fraternization if not conducted properly, putting yet another barrier between them. They knew why the rules existed, but after so long on deployment the both of them had come to care about following them less and less.
"Going outside the wire again?" She asked, her smile souring.
In a way, the fact that she cared for his safety made him feel warm inside. The pain and the worry in her eyes made him far from happy, but the fact that someone cared wether or not he came back from his next trip outside the compound meant the world to him.
"Yeah," he responded simply, "the URF has been laying IEDs along a highway near a civilian settlement, we're gonna escort some EOD guys out there to diffuse them."
Emily visibly shivered at the though of an IED. Improvised explosive devices had been a staple of guerrilla warfare since the twenty first century, used as hit and run weapons to harass and injure.
She saw the full force of what one could do on a daily basis.
She had seen the mangled forms of soldiers coming back from the field missing everything from skin to arms and legs. Being a combat surgeon wasn't what someone would usually think of as the bloodiest job in the UNSC, but she and Daniel both knew otherwise.
"Hey, Daniel," she said, her voice trembling a little bit, "come back okay, please, and don't screw around with those bombs. I don't want to lose you too."
He frowned at the immense pain in her eyes. He knew she was thinking about him, dead on the side of the road, his vehicle mangled by an explosion. He had had the same sort of waking nightmares many times before, the empty feeling he knew he would feel if he lost her racing through his mind like a rocket propelled grenade.
He placed a caring hand on her shoulder, hoping to reassure her slightly. In a way, he was glad she would miss him. Maybe she felt something for him after all, but now was neither the time nor the place for that kind of thought.
"I'll be fine," he said confidently, "I promise."
She smiled at his comment, although Daniel could tell it was forced, the pain in her eyes and the way she nervously ran her hand through her matted auburn hair gave that away loud and clear. He wished he could promise her with certainty that nothing would happen to him, but there were no promises in war.
"You better be," she said, a certain kindness about her stern tone, "I'd have to charge extra to patch you up."
He relaxed and let a full on smile break across his face. This beautiful, lovingly sarcastic, and brilliant woman was the woman he had fallen in love with. He just had to survive to the end of this deployment and maybe, just maybe, he could do something about that.
So he saluted her once more, and prepared his himself to go somewhere few seemed to be coming back from any more.
"Goodbye Emily," he said, indulging her wish for him to call her by name.
She returned the salute, and the haunted expression returned to her face immediately.
"Be safe," she said simply.
Although her tone didn't falter for a second, as those words left her mouth he could have sworn he saw a tear form in her pain racked eyes, but she turned away from him to quickly for him to see anything but a small glimmer of water.
He turned to leave. If he could have spun her around and embraced her, dried her tears and reassured her he would be fine, he would have, but this wasn't the time.
He turned his back and headed head-long into the conflict, just as he had his whole life. This was the path he had chosen. Maybe when he was done with it he could allow himself to be in love with her.
As Emily watched Daniel walk away from her yet again, she couldn't help but worry for him.
She fought off the tears that came at the thought of what he was getting himself into. It wasn't the first time she had thought about how she would feel if he became the next soldier to lay on her operating table, cut wide open and bleeding profusely onto the operating table as she tried to extract as much shrapnel from him as she could, before eventually it was too much, and he flatlined.
The mere thought of his death was something that sickened her. He was a good man, he was her friend, and though she couldn't admit it, she was in love with him.
She knew the reasons why she couldn't, and she knew getting this attached to someone who fought for a living was a recipe for heartbreak, but she had stopped trying to deny how she had felt long ago.
How on earth would she deal with the regret of not telling him how she felt if he did wind up dead?
"And oh, without your kisses, I'll be needing stitches."