Title: Green Fields of France
Rating: PG-13- sensitive topics, mild language.
Summary: After the first World War, Spot Conlon finds his world torn apart. All his friends, family, they're all gone. But most of all, the one who never knew, who never could have known, was gone. In a letter, Spot tells his dearest friend about how it has changed, how it is different, how it will never be the same. Fluff-filled, slashy. SpRace. Songfic.
Author's Note: This song was one I have been dying to use in a fic for… a really long time. I started plotting the general theme sometime last April. It really came together when I wrote a bunch of drabbles with a common theme; I had to tweak 'em, so they're a bit longer then 100 words per section, but since they're together, does it really matter? I was depressed when I wrote this too, so it's kind of depressing. Oh, well. Song credits to Dropkick Murphys- Green Fields of France.
Green Fields of France
How do you do, young Willie McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun.
I've been walking all day and now I'm nearly done.
Race,
You're gone. I've said it, the very thing I've been denying to myself for the last few months. Every morning I look up from my breakfast,and expect to see you sitting across from me. It seems like there's a gaping hole where I think something is going to be, something that's missing. It took me days to figure out it was you.Even after they came home without you, I waited for some miracle to happen, for you to come through the front door, wearing that cocky smile. Back then, I found it a symbol of your arrogance and bastardedness, but nowit's the thing I remember you by.
And I see by your gravestone that you were only 19
When you joined the great calling in 1916.
Well I hope you died quick.
And I hope you died clean.
Oh. Willie McBride was it slow and obscene?
For a while, I wondered how it was that you had died. Obviously, it wasn't pretty, but I would just lay there in bed, trying to imagine how I wanted you to go. Not that I wanted you to leave me, leave the world- we're not even twenty yet are we? I realized that I wanted you to have some sort of hero's death, for someone else, maybe, because that would reflect the person you really are. Not the bastard so many, and even myself for awhile, thought you were, but a kind and caring person who was always ready to help others.
Did they beat the drums slowly,
Did they play the fife lowly,
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play the last post and chorus?
Did the pipes lay the flowers of the forest?
I wish I'd been there when they buried you. If they even did. I hate thinking of you out there, cold and lonely, never having been paid the proper respects. I even think it's kind of weird for me to sit here, writing like this. It's not how I talk is it? These days, nothing seems to be the way I talk. I hardly talk at all, not even to people like Jack, or David. I feel weird around them now, because I didn't go. I didn't risk my life like you guys, so I feel cowardly; I hate it.
And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined.
And though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal you're forever 19.
Yet what bothers me the most is that you never knew. All those nights when you came home, elated, talking about this girl or that one. I knew, I guess, that you didn't see me as I saw you. You never saw the side of me whose feelings for you ran deeper then the fucking Pacific Ocean. I thought maybe later, after the war, when we were picking our lives back up, that there'd be a chance I could persuade you- and that faintest chance was what kept me from openly admitting it. Now, I wish I hadn't been so damn proud.
Or are you a stranger without even a name?
Forever enshrined behind some old glass pane
In an old photograph torn, tattered, and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown moldy frame?
And when they told me you weren't coming back, oddly enough, I didn't think of you. I thought of those girls, the ones lucky enough for your attention. And I thought about how, years from now, they won't remember who you were. They won't remember your smile, your laugh, the way you always found something amazingly sarcastic to say at the wrong time. If they see a picture of you, they probably wouldn't remember your name; they wouldn't even know if you'd come back from the war. They wouldn't think of you as Racetrack Higgins. But I would. I will.
Did they beat the drums slowly,
Did they play the fife lowly,
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play the last post and chorus?
Did the pipes lay the flowers of the forest?
It's ironic, isn't it? That when we were in school, all of us would swear up and down that I'd be the first to die. The group of us, then best friends, who always said that you and Blink, you and Mush, that you'd be the last to die. Now, there are barely five of us left alive, and ironically, none of you three are left. The ones who we said would be the first to go, the last. And I wonder, why? Why is it that the best of us left the world too early to live life to the fullest, before he was able to discover all the great things it has to offer?
The sun's shining down on these green fields of France
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance
The trenches have vanished long under the down
No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
I guess you could say it's weird for someone like me to sit by a gravestone and write a letter to someone who can't read it. Hell, I think it's weird for someone like me to be in a graveyard at all. But all these graves on the rolling field, they make me wonder. Wonder what it was like to actually fight, to see people die next to you and not know if you'll be the next to go. It's changed now, of course. There's no more of the war left in these fields. None, that is, except for the graves.
But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow men
And a whole generation were butchered and damned.
I'm the only one who comes to this place, where all the marks of death sink into a person's very core. Jack, David, Crutchy, Specs… none of them come. They think it's a disgrace to your memory to cry over your absence, since you weren't a very weepy person. But when they think I'm not looking, I can see them cry as they come across pictures of you, of Skittery or Blink or Snipe, of pretty much anyone. And part of me thinks that the reason they think it's disgraceful is because I'm crying.
Did they beat the drums slowly,
Did they play the fife lowly,
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play the last post and chorus?
Did the pipes lay the flowers of the forest?
It'd be different if you'd lived. I'd never have dipped into smoking, or drugs, or any of the shit that messes people up way more then you could ever imagine. I knew what it was doing to me, and I knew that I was going to be in trouble if I didn't stop. But when I was high, or when I was drunk, or whenever I did shit, I didn't miss you. I stopped thinking of the possibilities of what we could have done. So I did it. But one day I thought, what if Race saw me now? That alone made me quit. That alone was enough.
And I can't help wonder oh Willie McBride
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause?
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
It's stupid, really. That you all had to go fight. And for what? Because you thought it'd make the world a better place. I wish I could say it had. I wish I could say that since you died, no one goes hungry, everyone is rich, and that drugs disappeared off the face of this planet. But in case you missed the bit above, it didn't. The flowers aren't prettier, the sun isn't brighter, the sugar isn't sweeter. The world seems the same as it was before, except that we're missing our friends, who were more like our family. And sometimes, wishing we could join them.
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain
Well Willie McBride, it all happened again
And again, and again, and again
Even as I write this, I can sense another war coming on. The fucking idiots who run our country don't see what the last one did to us; they haven't been to see the row upon row of graves.Even if they had, they don't see the names, the personalities of the people those graves represent. If they saw yours, they wouldn't know who you were, Race. You'd be one of the ones who died for the good of our cause, who gave up his life for their needs. They wouldn't see your name the way I do. They wouldn't love you.
Did they beat the drums slowly,
Did they play the fife lowly,
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play the last post and chorus?
Did the pipes lay the flowers of the forest?
It's getting dark now, and I can barely read the page. Usually, I would take this home with me, so that no one would know of its existence. I would carry it with me until the next one was written, like I have been for four months now. Four months, sixteen letters. All inside this envelope. I picked it out myself, because I thought you would want it to be special. I figured you'd want something different than all of the others lying here under the hill with you. I hoped you'd see it as a mark of how I felt about you, and that you'd realize that we haven't forgotten you. Mostly, I just hope that you read it, and understand.
Forever love,
Spot
Spot Conlon left the envelope lying on the plain patch of dirt in front of Race's gravestone. Turning away from the white reminder marking his sorrows, he let Race's face slide from his thoughts for the time being.Always missed, sometimes allowed to leave his mind. But never forgotten.