Disclaimer: I don't own Terra Nova
Written for the November Prompt Post on the Terra Nova LJ community.
Read, Review, and Enjoy!
Mark Reynolds was bored.
He was so bored, in fact, he was regretting letting Wash force him into doing midnight perimeter duty by the West Gate. There was absolutely nothing by the West Gate. It bordered one of the denser parts of the jungle, and was near the ocean, where many dangerous, unknown creatures lurked at night. He glanced around; no one was there, the silence was starting to get on his nerves. All he heard were distant sounds of dinosaurs hunting for their dinner. There wasn't much need to even patrol this area of the settlement, but Commander Taylor insisted, in case the Sixers found a way to beat the thick bush.
Sighing, he sat down on a small boulder, and ran his hands through his short, chocolate brown hair. His other hand fiddled with the data stick that hung around his neck. He had done what every soldier had done, and hacked the network that stored all the information, so that he could add pictures onto his tags.
He turned on the tags, and his picture immediately popped up, along with his basic information. He waved his hand across the holographic screen, and it immediately changed to a picture of him as a boy, back in 2138. He sat under his family's dining room table, his grandfather's re-breather hanging loosely off his face, as he pretended he was a superhero, particularly Superman, who he had read digital comic books about. His grandfather sat beside him, laughing heartedly.
Mark smiled sadly; his grandfather had passed away from Lung Cancer only eight months after the picture had been taken. It had been a hard time for his family. It was the first and only time he had seen his father cry.
Mark flipped to the next picture. It was of his mother and father, taken during happier times. His mother smiled at the camera, she looked more content, and less aged and tired. He looked into his father's, Daniel, eyes, the same tri-coloured gaze that he had stared back at him, twinkling happily. He didn't remember much of his father, who had died when he was nine, the same way his own father had, of lung cancer.
Mark sighed again, blinking away wetness that began to form in his eyes. He flicked his fingers across the screen one last time, to the newest addition to his tiny picture library, which he had added the day before.
It was a picture of his girlfriend of one month, Madelyn Shannon.
In the picture, she was sitting on a picnic blanket, in a field of flora that she seemed to adore. She was smiling at the camera; her smile brightened his mood.
He had taken the picture on their first date, in the sea of flowers, shortly before the meteor had hit the settlement, and taken out all forms of power. It had left them stuck in the harsh wilderness for the night, but had also given them their first kiss together.
He had meant it when he had said that she was perfect, because she was in every way. The way her eyes sparkled when she was happy, or learned something new, the way she bit her bottom lip when she was nervous, or afraid to say something. Maddy was absolutely perfect in his eyes, though she couldn't see it.
Mark heard a distant sound of a bird, which brought back to reality. He switched off his data stick, and glanced briefly at the time. It was 1AM, which meant that he had six more hours of perimeter duty behind; six more hours of eerie silence; six more hours of boredom, six more hours of not seeing the only person he loved.