Author's Note: So, as threatened, here is the one-shot that will explain how Sean came to have PTSD. I was rejected from the Army for my poor hearing, so I don't really know that much about current battle formations or tactics. Most of what I know about that kind of stuff is for Civil War era military tactics. So, if there are any mistakes in here, it's my fault. Also, I made a joke with an Othello character in it. I was going to use Lady Mac, but as an amateur thespian, I have issues with The Scottish Play, even when I'm not in a theater.

I don't own or have rights to Flashpoint, Billy Joel's song Goodnight Saigon, Night Rider, Easy Bake Ovens, Stairmaster, Sketcher's Shape-ups, Wool-lite, or The Thin Red Line

Line in the Sand: Sean's Story

The sun glistened off his non-government issued or approved sunglasses as the warm air wrapped him in a blanket, once oppressive, now familiarly comforting.

He smiled to himself.

These were the best of times, and the worst of times, but at least he got to spend his days of war with a squad that he considered a pack of his brothers.

"Why you smiling, O'Brian? Does raiding a terrorist cell amuse you?" His ironic reverie was interrupted by his squad Sargent, Joe Murphy.

"You know I get my kicks where I can," Sean responded with an eyebrows raised, maniacal grin. The heat was definitely starting to fry his brain. This is your brain; this is your brain on war.

"Yeah, Seany-O is kinky like that," Corporal Sean O'Brain's best friend, Corporal Pete Tailor answered. He and Sean had gone to college together and decided to join the Army as enlisted men, rather than take commissions like most college grades. They just wanted to get down and dirty in the thick of things, do the grunt work. Years of cushy living in the school owned apartments at McGill University had left them wanting dirt and grime. Sean supposed they were just gung-ho young men ready to lay down their lives like in the Billy Joel song of '80's yore. So far the action had been all that they had hoped for, with the exception of long stretches of boredom back on base. Even those weren't that bad. The men of the self-proclaimed Night Rider Squad (they shared a collective affinity for the absurdity of the David Hasselhoff show. Plus, there was both a Michael and a Mitch among them) always found interesting ways to entertain themselves.

Their current mission was to rescue a group of Alliance supporting civilians whom had been kidnapped by a group of Taliban supporting terrorist. They were being transported by Humvee to within 1 mile of the insurgent's cell. They would use stealth entry from there, take-out the insurgents, and be evacuated by helicopter transport. All-in-all, this seemed like a pretty routine mission.

Sean smiled to himself again. This may well be the last mission he and the squad would have to make before the end of their tour in a week and a half. He was already starting to plan what he would do on his leave and if he'd sign-up for a third tour.

"You guys think about what you're do'n after the tour? Ya know, after you visit a few discos and roller-rinks, that is Murph," Sean simultaneously started a conversation and razed his Sargent. Murphy was a great superior; he rather enjoyed Sean's wise-ass comments. He had to. Sean, Pete, and Murph had all joined at the same time and were pretty much equals. The extra stripe on Murphy's sleeve was only significant for the lower ranked members of the squad. At least when they weren't in the line of fire, that is. At that point, "Murph" became "Sarge" and all sarcastic banter was put on hold.

"First I'm gonna find some sweet, patriotic ladies to take care of me for a little while, then I'm gonna re-up," Pete replied to Sean's inquiry with a smile on his face. He was already picturing the 'good time' he'd be having with these 'patriotic' women.

"Well, just make sure to not over exert yourself and take plenty of water breaks for that." Sean patted his best friend on the shoulder.

"What about you, O'Brian? You gonna continue to be one of the few and the proud after this dance is over?" Murph asked.

Sean got a contemplative look on his face. "I don't know. Ya know how much I love GI food and living in an Easy Bake Oven where the only women are considered strippers if they show their foreheads, but, I don't know. Maybe it's time for me to get out, see the world. I hear it still snows in Canada. Although that might just be media propaganda. . . Actually, I was thinking of maybe joining a SWAT team or something. I hear they like vets with combat training and boyish good looks."

"Phsssttt," Sean's team-mate Jack Arnold scoffed.

"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. You're just jealous of my May Queen crown," Sean responded.

"You sure you're manly enough for that kind-a work, O'Brian?" Murph wasn't going to let him get away with this proposed career proclamation easily. "Last time I was home on leave, I saw a news story about a chick SWAT member jumping off a tower with only a slim cable to save girl from falling. She'd probably kick your ass!"

"I'd like to see her make a dent." Sean shifted in his seat to pat his rump. "I've been working on the Stairmaster, and boy is my tushy firm."

"Ha, you had to use a Stairmaster?" Pete scuffed at his best friend. "I just used my Sketcher's Shape-ups."

The Humvee convoy began to slow. All the 12 members of the squad team hopped out of their vehicles to get their final marching orders. All joking and banter was halted.

"Okay guys, we're at our drop-off zone," Murph stated the obvious. "Remember the drill. I know you ladies are gonna have trouble not break'n a nail for this mile hump, but put away your tampons and suck it up. –"

"Aw, but I just got a manicure." Sean cut-off his Sargent and held-up his hand. "Don't my cuticles look divine?" His nails looked like he had been digging in a mine for a month while milking a cow and sculpting pots.

"Shut-it O'Brian," Murph commanded, now in his Sargent Murphy role. "Dual line march for the first half mile, then we move in stealth. And men," all eyes burned in attention towards the Sargent at the expression of their manhood. All joking and banter now ceased to exist for the moment. They were in battle mode. "This is probably gonna be the last mission the Night Rider Squad will ride together on this tour, maybe ever." Murphy smiled devilishly. "Let's make this look good." All the men of the squad smiled back, cocky, self-assured, and gleeful at the thought of the end of the tour.

Pete slapped Sean, his best friend, on the shoulder. "If you're really go'n back to The Great White North, this may be our last run together." Pete retained his cocky demeanor. There was no sentimentality in his words.

"Got your back, Bro. Even if this is our last dance," Sean promised. "Which, by the way, you never returned my skirt from the last dance. I hope you didn't wash it in anything but Wool-lite."

Pete frowned and shook his head before smiling. "Always the wise-ass, 'O, always the wise-ass." He looked Sean in the eye with stern, strong, and almost prophetic eyes. "Never lose that," he shook Sean's shoulder.

Sean became stern and thoughtful for a second too, before responding in his usual manner. "Geeze, Pete. Save the melodrama for Desdemona in the thespian festival." Ever the wise-ass.

"Let's move-out," Murphy ordered.

The men of the infantry squad moved into the town stealth and quickly, just as they had in every other mission or training exercise they'd ever done on urban warfare. When they got close, they slowly approached the building in which the insurgent cell was holed-up. They stopped behind the wall of an adjacent house. They had no floor-plans of how the house was configured, so they would have to use their knowledge of how these buildings were usually set-up and of where the insurgents usually held their captives.

While they were in their holding formation, waiting for Murphy to give the order to move-out, a little boy walked-up and stood behind Sean. Sean pushed the boy back behind the wall and put a finger to his lips to signal quiet. He then motioned for the boy to fall back, run in the other direction, go home; this was no place for a pre-adolescent child. The boy ran away.

Sean turned his attention back to Murphy, waiting for his hand signal. Murphy waited for confirmation to begin on his radio, then signaled the men to move forward.

Sean patted Pete's shoulder and followed him in their fire squad's assigned direction.

The squad entered the house.

"Front room's clear," Pete informed in a near whisper. The squad was still attempting to stay as quiet and stealthy as possible.

Sean heard shots being fired from one of the right hand side rooms. He signaled for Pete to join the others for back-up in that room while he checked one of the left hand side rooms. As he cleared the room, taking out one insurgent with one quick rifle blast, he heard more shots being fired, this time from the front of the house in the direction in which the squad had entered.

"Fall back, fall back!" Sean heard Murphy shout. "Gianni, get on the radio for back-up! We're surrounded!"

"Arnold's down. We need a medic!" another of Sean's team-mates shouted. It was clear to Sean that nothing was going according to plan. The squad was being reverse ambushed by insurgents form outside the house.

"Hang on guys! I'm on my way!" Sean called to his team-mates.

"Negative, O'Brian. Clear the rest of the house. Last thing we need is a hidden terrorist with a gun up our asses from the inside! Ahhhh, damn-it!" Murphy cried out in anguished pain at the end of his order, but Sean blocked-out the thought of his struggling team-mates and proceeded to clear the rest of the building.

"How the Hell did they know we were here?" Sean heard Pete exclaim.

Damn-it, Sean thought. That kid. Probably went back to tell another cell. A junior spy. Sean pushed away the guilt of inadvertently sicking a band of insurgents on his squad by letting a child run away without informing his Sargent and continued his assigned mission. A hot piece of metal whizzed by his head. Another insurgent. He rounded the corner for cover, then popped out, took aim, and nailed the enemy man. He could hear more shouts and cries of pain, now coming from behind the house. His squad had apparently sought cover in the courtyard. They were being over-run.

Sean checked the last un-cleared room, finding two last insurgents lying in wait. Filled with rage for what these enemy vermin were doing to his team, he quickly blasted the insurgents to oblivion, not even waiting to see if they surrendered.

"House all clear," he shouted, hoping someone would still be around to hear his cry. He raced out towards the back of the house where he had last heard his team-mates' cries. The air was oddly quiet, as if they had settled into the eye of a hurricane. And, just like the hurricane's eye only promised a brief reprieve from nature's destructive forces, so too did he feel that this cessation of hostilities would only be transient, fleeting, like a snowball on the hot streets of Philadelphia in July.

Before exiting the house, he spotted his team-mate Arnold lying dead in a pool of his own blood. His face was missing, replaced by a gapping bullet hole. Around Arnold's lifeless remains lay the bodies of the civilians they had first entered the house to retrieve. All for nothing. Mission failed. Sean didn't have time to contemplate the philosophical intricacies of what this failure meant, or to mourn or get sick over the dreadful end of his team-mate, and simply continued out on to the courtyard.

And then he saw it. A line in the sand. A line of blood. The Thin Red Line now had new meaning to him. He trailed the line to where he found his team next to a low stone wall, what was left of it.

"Pete!" He saw his best friend lying in a pool of blood of his own. He ran to Pete's side, seeing the bodies of the rest of his squad lying around him like morbid gifts around a deathly Christmas tree.

"Bro," Pete choked out between hacking coughs of his blood.

"Hang on, Pete, hang on buddy! The medevac's are on their way for you and the guys." Sean was caught between reassurance and pleading.

"No," Pete breathed. "All dead."

Shock and dread rose inside Sean's entire being, his soul. He and Pete were the sole survivors of his entire 12 man squad.

Just then, he heard more shots being fired towards them from a distance. He crouched down, than laid down next to Pete, but did not raise his rifle. His hands were occupied with keeping pressure on the baseball sized wound in his best friend's chest. Armor piercing. The insurgents had gotten ahold of cop-killer bullets.

"Just hang on Pete." Sean shook his head, frantically trying to keep his friend's soul in his body by plugging the bullet hole in his chest. He was the boy with his hand in the dyke, but he couldn't hold on for long.

"No." Pete reached out with his last ounce of strength to hold Sean's face between his hands and force him to stare at him, straight in the eye. "Stay a wise. . ." Pete didn't get to finish. He had breathed his last.

The enemy fire was coming more rapidly now. Sean ducked down behind Pete's now lifeless remains. The body that once was Pete now became a shield to protect Sean.

Sean knew that he was outnumbered and that there would be no point in trying to return the enemy fire. He was no Spartan. He couldn't hold off an army of thousands by himself. He kicked himself for his cowardice and lay flat to play dead as he heard the shots getting closer, now footsteps in the sand. He halted his breathing, but still heard a gun cock as a shadow past over him, eclipsing the sun.

"Allah Akbar," was the last thing he heard before one last gun-shot. The blackness of peaceful oblivion took over. He would be with his brothers in arms.

XXXXXX

Or so he thought.

Sean opened his eyes an indeterminable time later to see chopper propellers circling above him.

No, no, please God, No! I should be with them now, he thought before the blackness took over once again.

XXXXXX

Sean awoke three days later in a field hospital back at the base-camp.

He was alive, and alone, except for the demons that stalked his every waking and sleeping moment.

Additional Author's Note: So, that thing about Sean using Pete's body as a shield after Pete had died came from what my favorite Union Civil War soldier, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, had to do to survive a night on the battlefield after the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg. Yes, I have a favorite Civil War soldier. I also have a hierarchy of great men: Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln, Lance Armstrong, Cary Grant, and so on. Yes, I'm a nerd. See, this is what happens when you don't have a college friend to have nerdy conversations with, but a captive audience, which may or may not care about what you have to say. I miss my senior year roommate and our alcohol induced and sober discussions on nerdy topics. We didn't need the alckie for them, it just brought our discussions theatricality, which was appropriate as I was a fan of Acting for Non-majors and she was a Theater Studies major. I digress.

Please leave a review and let me know what you think of this one-shot. I may add something else to it later depending on how much of a graphic description I want to convey for Sean, but for now, this is good. Thanks for reading!

Happy Easter in a couple of days,

Eals