Hmm.. Okay, so I was given the prompt of Jo being sent back to the front...
You do need to have read Home Is Miles Away for this to make sense... So read that first if you haven't already :)
My friends have all said they hate me for this... So... Enjoy! (And IM SORRY!)
..
24th October 1918, 1200 hrs.
Miles
Jo looked at the word she'd written before scribbling it out and starting again.
Captain Hesketh-Thorne
It's funny, I don't even know how to address a letter to you. I suppose I never thought I'd be apart from you long enough for there to be a need.
A sad smile pulled at the creases of her mouth as Jo continued writing.
Now that I've started this letter I don't know what I wanted to write; I wanted to say that I miss you, but somehow now I've come to put it in a letter it all seems so superficial. Of course I miss you, you know that.
We've been told we'll be making another big push in twelve hours – even though that was nearly five hours ago now, I'm going to insist I have twelve hours left until the last second before that whistle blows.
We could hear them singing this morning, the wind carriedtheir voices straight across to us. Plain as day. John joked that he was glad that their voices was all it was carrying. He's fine by the way – we all are, just dandy. Though if he points out one more spelling mistake, I'm going to be the one killing him.
Jo stopped writing, her hand hovering the pen above the paper as the silence stretched around her.
Luke just told me to make sure you weren't pining after us. I'll punch him for that when the sergeant isn't looking.
The lies flowed freely from the nib of the pen.
Our Captain's saying the Germans are close to surrender and some of the boys actually believe him this time. I think I almost believe him this time. It has to be over soon, doesn't it?
Jo stared at the letter as one escaped tear dropped onto the paper before tracking its way down through the writing, pulling the ink with it. She didn't move; she watched it gather in a crease in the paper and spread along the thin line leaving a wash of pale ink as it dried.
She closed her eyes for a second, composing herself before she lifted her head to the line of unfamiliar faces packed into the trench. No one was talking, there wasn't the patriotic forced cheeriness that there had been before – when she was with her family – now it was scared strangers, all far too wrapped up in their own self-pity to notice anyone else.
"Look lively you lazy bastards!" The shout was followed by the heavy footsteps pounding across the duck boards as Captain Stewart strode towards where they were huddled. Jo jumped at his voice, the pen sliding from her fingers into the mud.
"Henderson, Carter – you're with me!"
The two men scrambled to their feet, with shaking limbs and pale faces as they hurriedly followed the man. He wasn't even their Captain, but an order was an order – they couldn't disobey.
Jo watched them leave, and she couldn't help but feel glad it wasn't her who had been chosen. She knew well enough now that they were being taken for tunnelling. The only thing she could think of that would be worse than dying filled with machine-gun fire caught on barbed wire, would be dying in a dark tunnel underneath no man's land, suffocating slowly in the pitch blackness.
No, she couldn't think like that. Melancholic thoughts weren't going to help her now. She picked up her pen, and pushed everything out of her mind.
I guess I'm just writing for something to do while I'm waiting for the whistle.
She was writing because she missed him, and writing to him made him feel closer, and because by writing the lies into the letter she was able to convince herself – just for a moment – that they were true.
So absorbed was she in her own mind that Jo never heard the rattles, nor noticed the commotion as panic travelled along the line of men, followed by the heavy-coloured vapour which poured relentlessly into the trench. It was only when the sweet-smelling stuff tickled her nostrils that with inconceivable rapidity the gas spread and a blind paniccoursed through her. She fought for her gas hood but the gas was working, burning at her eyes and ears, and there was nothing left that she could do other than climb up out of it. The body of a man fell across the berm – the small shelf carved into the side of the trench – she had been writing at, covering the half-finished letter, but she found she couldn't care. With no thoughts but self-preservation she found herself scrambling over him trying to reach above the gas. Dizzy with the need for air and convulsing with the bitterness of the gas she rolled herself over the parapet, choking on her own breath. She threw up. The scars in her stomach ripped with the violent movement but she was barely aware of the pain that it caused. She retched again as dark figures around her sought the refugeof no man's land over the trench – staggering, falling, lurchingon.
A hail of rifle fire and shrapnel mowed them down. Jo rolled over on her side, barely conscious, all the energy she possessed drained in her efforts to rip the invisible constraints around her neck. She retched again, coughing and choking as she tried to crawl away – from what exactly she didn't know, even less where she was crawling to.
The frenzy of yells had quietened now as the men died where they lay, with frothing bubbles gurgling in their throats and the foul liquid welling up in their lungs. With blackened faces and twisted limbs, one by one, they drowned – only that which drowned them came from inside and not from out.
Jo was barely conscious as she crawled on; she had no thoughts but that she needed to keep going. She dug her elbows into the dirt, dragging herself forwards, not caring that every movement pulled harder on her side. Neither did she care how the world was steadily growing darker – not in theway that day fades to night, this was much harsher. Her eyes just stopped seeing. But she didn't care, and she didn't care when she felt the ground beneath her elbows give and she was falling, rolling into a deep crater. Consciousness left her before she reached the bottom of the pit and the dark, silent world took over.
.
1500 hrs.
A gentle pattering hit her face, like the first drops of rain gently cascading from the sky. Then the rain grew harder,until it became hail, and still it grew harder.
Her eyes snapped open and Jo found herself gasping as if she hadn't taken a breath in days. More rain was flung at her face, only now she realised it wasn't rain. It was dirt – thrown up from the shelling. So she was still alive.
She coughed as another spray of gravely mud coated her, the movement sending waves of pain through her side. So muchpain, and it only increased with every breath. She tried to push herself to her elbows but agony surged from her stomach,making her retch again. A thick black bile emptied itself from her lungs as she choked on the pain; there was so much. It consumed her, every part of her transfixed with the terrible agony. The more it hurt, the more violently she threw up, and with every retch she could feel the long healed stitches tugging the weaker tissue.
Somehow she managed to move herself away from where she'd fallen, using the sloping sides of the crater as support – anything to take the pressure of the muscles convulsing in her stomach. Her breaths were shallow and fast, afraid of adding to the pain as she collapsed back against the side.
Voices were approaching. She could just make them out through the deafening commotion, though whether that was from inside or outside her head she wasn't confident. She couldn't find it in herself to feel hope as the voices grew nearer, so she felt nothing when she made out the German tones among them.
She tried to lift her head, but she couldn't. It was like her body wasn't her own anymore.
A sound like falling sand told Jo she was no longer alone. Almost reflexively her head fell to the side, her bleary eyes catching sight of the grey uniform. Only it wasn't grey anymore, the bright red stain of blood covered what little of him was left. There was a hole in his uniform – in the chest –so deep that his ribs could be seen, shining white over where Jo could see his heart, pumping uselessly in his open chest. He wasn't dead.
His eyes swivelled uselessly in his skull, until they rested on Jo. She felt her own heart stop as his eyes burned into her flesh.
"Bitter," the man stretched out a shaking arm towards her. "Bitter." His voice was no more than a breath, but there was no mistaking his cry.
Jo heard footsteps resounding on the ground as more men approached. The Fritz in the crater was pointing her out to the men; he was asking them to shoot her.
"Bitter!" Despite everything his quavering voice raised in volume.
There was no way that the Germans would be able to walk past her now; she didn't understand his words but she knew he was telling them to kill her. She wished he would just die, then he would fall silent and the Germans would leave. But he didn't die; his unprotected heart beat furiously in his chest, the pool of blood visibly vibrating around it.
She heard a shout of German from above her followed by the soft clicks of a rifle being loaded, and she closed her eyes. This wasn't how she was supposed to go – it wasn't supposed to be like this. Alone, and in a crater, she hadn't seen a single person she knew since the day she'd been sent back to the front. Miles thought she was with John, because that's what she'd told Tom to tell him, and John thought she was still with Miles – neither of them knew. She didn't know if that made it better or worse and it wasn't like she had the luxury of time to decide.
She heard the snap of the gun being cocked, and they dying man's strangled pleas. Couldn't he even let her die in peace?
No, she wasn't going to die thinking about a German – she wasn't going to give him the honour.
Instead she let Miles' face swim into her vision: the creases at the corners of his eyes when he smiled and the way his eyes sparkled as he flirted his way through life, they were to be her last thoughts. She could control that at least. Miles would be the last name on her lips. Miles, Miles…
She wasn't aware that her lips were moving silently, speaking his name with whatever breath she had left.
'Miles.'
Her heart was beating wildly, so loudly that she could hear every stutter rushing past her ears.
'Miles.'
The German's fist clenched around the barrel of his gun.
'Miles.'
Finger touched trigger and the shot rang, muffled by the sound of the shells falling around them, and in the crater the frantically beating heart juddered once more before it finally stopped.
..
I suppose all that's left really is for me to say sorry... Especially to you Jiles shippers... Umm... Yeah... Sorry :p
As I've said I'm going to China on Tuesday (and I still need to pack) so it probably wont be finished till I'm back.
something I apologise for muchly.
Reviews are always welcome, however much you now hate me ;) and I'm sorry!
