Al didn't understand exactly how he had ended up in this situation. Somehow, while siting reminiscing of old war stories (more like muttering them to himself) in the living room of his ancient Virginia house, soldiers from different eras had appeared in his house. It scared the bageebeezs out of him at first, ghost always did, but slowly, he became accustomed to their presence. His gaze landed on a Confederate soldier.
"We could hear you talking," the old soldier said, "and came to share our stories with you." The other men and women around the room nodded.
"Okay..." Al said, still slightly freaked out, "Well, what is your story?" He asked the young Confederate, and a sad smile came over the man's face.
"I was there in the winter of '64, when we camped in the ice at Nashville's doors. Three hundred miles our trail had led, we barely had time to bury our dead. When the Yankees charged and the colors fell, Overton hill was a living hell. When we called retreat it was almost dark...I died with a grapeshot in my heart.
"Say a prayer for peace, for every fallen son. Set my spirit free, let me lay down my gun. Sweet mother Mary I'm so tired, but I can't come home 'til the last shot's fired." The Civil War solider's voice rang out across the room, and Al was speechless as he thought.
Looking at a young man in a World War II uniform, Al nodded. "Your turn." The Marine smiled sadly, and began to speak.
"In June of 1944, I waited in the blood of Omaha's shores. Twenty-one and scared to death, my heart poundin' in my chest. I almost made the first seawall, when my friends turned and saw me fall. I still smell the smoke, I can taste the mud...As I lay there dying from a loss of blood.
"Say a prayer for peace. For every fallen son. Set my spirit free, let me lay down my gun. Sweet mother Mary I'm so tired, but I can't come home 'til the last shot's fired." Al still could not believe what he was hearing. He had been there himself, to both these battles, and remembered them vividly. Before he could speak again, another soldier spoke up.
"I'm in the fields of Vietnam." One sang, the stories having now taken a more musical quality to them, and an unseen band had begun to play along.
"The mountains of Afghanistan." Said another, "And I'm still hopin', waitin', prayin,' I did not die in vain."
The four soldiers spoke together, using the same words the first two men had ended their stories with. "Say a prayer for peace, for every fallen son. Set our spirits free, let us lay down our guns. Sweet mother Mary we're so tired, but we can't come home 'til the last shot's fired. 'Til the last shot's fired." Each ghost voice chorused together now, and an uneartly choir formed in his home as they sang.
"Say a prayer for peace (for peace), for our daughters and our sons. Set our spirits free (set us free), let us lay down our guns." The young soldier from the Gulf War came out and sang the next line.
"Sweet mother Mary we're so tired, but we can't come home (No we can't come home)..."
Each voice now joined in with Alfred to finish the song. "'Til the last shot's fired..." And as the fallen soldiers spoke this, they each began to fade away, their supernatural voices fading away with them, till Al was left alone in his house again.
The air hung with a deathly chill in the air, and Al snapped back into reality. His face felt wet...Moving his hands to feel his cheeks, he realized he had been crying. He made no move to wipe the traces of tears away from his face. "Thank you." He said out loud, and he swore that Confederate soldier was still watching him. He smiled a sad smile. He understood what they had been through, he himself having been in each war.
Alfred had been feeling very lonely since he had returned from his second deployment to Iraq, the horrors he had witnessed there imprinted in his mid now. Part of him wished he could join his fallen soldiers, but he knew he couldn't. His place was here. He had been excluding and isolating himself lately from the other nations, but now, he felt he could truly come home. His body had been home for weeks, but his mind and spirit were stuck in the desert. Now though, the two were one again.
Jumping up, Al grabbed a sheet of paper and a pencil. He had to write down everything he had just heard. Whenever he felt lonely, sad, resentful, angry, or whatever, he would pull out this paper to remind him. Remind him of who he was, who and what he was fighting for, why, and that sometimes, war isn't always the answer.
A/N: Okay, so yeah...This is a song fic, if you couldn't tell. The words in parentheses are just a different segment of the choir singing, fyi. I think they'd seem kind of out of place just randomly in the refrain...Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed the story! I know I'm supposed to be writing my other story, but I had a really bad week and just didn't get around to it. And I felt I just had to write something using this song. I do hope the story speaks for itself because I feel like I have nothing really to say...Just, I hope you enjoyed the story! I also hope no one takes any offense to any matter in this story! It was just something I had to get out of my system before I could continue my other things.
Song: "Til the Last Shot's Fired" by Trace Adkins.
PLEASE R&R!