Disclaimer: I do not own any COD characters. And this oneshot was inspired by Emily "Gadget" Robins' "The Children Of Tikrit and 'Their' Soldiers", go check it out, it rocks, along with her other stories! ^.^
It was one of those days when you looked over the horizon, finding the world filled only with coarse, beige-colored sand, and you would sigh. It was one of those days when you looked at the sky and find that the life-giving Sun hung so high in the heavens is actually drying up, no, burning up your crops and char-broiling your livestock before they are skinned and slaughtered, and you would sigh again. It was one of those days when a daughter, a son, a cousin, a father, and a mother would die, not out of sickness, but out of the sick interpretations of your religions for their own use, to continue a war that seemed to have no ending. You would most definitely sigh. Army tanks and trucks came and went, because your village is in the Pakistani district that borders Afghanistan and Iran, and you sigh again, knowing that the reason of your previous sigh was true.
The children, they saw things differently. They knew that tanks and trucks came and went, and so did Humvees. Various ones with flags sporting red, white and blue come and go, some of them had colored strips, some of them intricate shields amongst yellow and red… What they were looking for were three black Humvees which did not carry the flags of their nation. What they were looking for was a picture bearing a winged sword beneath a skull and crossbones upon a black Humvee, well, three of them, actually.
Every few weeks, the men in the Humvees would come to their village, just because their village was in the Pakistani district that borders Afghanistan and Iran. The children would count the days until they saw those Humvees, because when they came, their parents would not sigh, and they would laugh and smile with them.
And that day itself, when the roar of the vehicles could be clearly heard, and the five children came into the village shouting, running in glee from the hill that overlooked the village, they knew that those strange soldiers had come again. In droves and droves, the little ones rushed from their shattered homes and huts to meet those soldiers, who all waved to them from the windows of whatever mode of transportation they were in.
They stopped when they got to the front of the village headman's house. This time, they not only brought books for the children and supplies for the adults, they also came to repair their homes, following that horrendous attack upon the district launched by the OpFor. They would be staying for the night, and they were greatly welcomed.
"Thank you," said the headman in stuttered English. It came from his heart, those words. Soldiers came and went, but only these ones ever stopped in their tiny little village, and gave them all the aid they needed. The leader of those men had been a tall Westerner with dark hair and ice-blue eyes. A scar ran down his left eye, and from what the headman had been able to gather, not even his men knew when or how he had gotten it. But no matter how imposing that man seemed, he was of ready smiles, just like the rest of the men that he had brought with him.
And after the formal greetings had been exchanged, all the children surrounded these soldiers, squealing as they started to play with the men that they were familiar with. Stories were told, gifts were given, and sometimes, soldiers cast down their weapons and were chased by the children all across the village.
Only little Sultanah watched them. She did not play with the other children, and she only sat there, wishing that she could be like them. But she could not. Her mother was sick, and needed her to take care of her. Her little brother would play with them on her behalf. It was her duty to stay there and look after her mother.
"Where is Sultanah?" asked the soldier who was always wearing a mask and sunglasses. The children thought that mask to be the coolest thing that they had ever seen although the adults took one look at him and was afraid. Ali, the boy who lived next door to Sultanah told him that she was stuck at home and was caring for her ill mother. Silently, the masked soldier nodded to another soldier, who immediately got into one of the Humvees to retrieve a white box. "Ali, we're gonna make Sultanah's mother well again now. Who's coming with me?"
Children were like that. Even healing the sick seemed like a huge adventure. Thus, they followed the soldiers to Sultanah's house, where the soldier with the white box examined Sultanah's mother carefully. "No harm will come to her," the man said in fluent Urdu, unlike the masked one, who could only speak in English. "She's just got the flu." He took a syringe and injected some clear white liquid into the arm of Sultanah's mother, and was coaxed to sleep a little, so that she could get better.
Sultanah thanked the soldiers profusely. Thanks to them, her mother was going to be better, and most importantly, she could go outside and play while the neighboring aunties took care of her mother.
"Bless their souls," said the woman to the other one, fanning her with a hand-woven fan made from the grass that grew on the riverbank. "They come when they're supposed to be fighting a war… They care for us as if we are their own family."
Sultanah's mother was too drowsy to reply, and only nodded her head. No matter what other people said, that those soldiers had been brutal killers of people from villages far, far away, the people in that village would never believe them. Those soldiers bearing the skull and the winged sword, they were their protectors, and their friends.
And when night fell after dinner, the soldiers made a large bonfire, and as always, the children would gather around them. They would play their strange Western music on the radio, and a few of them would teach them how to dance. And in front of the village headman's house which had been one of the few with electricity, they attached a few of the strangest musical instruments that made the older villagers cringe and furrow their brows to the power outlets, all plugged into even stranger black boxes.
The leader of those soldiers played on one of them, and about four of them altogether sang of a sweet child that was theirs. The children did not understand what that song had meant, that they remembered that the sounds that they had made were the most fun that they had heard. Even the soldiers themselves seemed to enjoy the spectacle.
"Here, try this," said yet another soldier. They knew him well. The other soldiers called him Roach, and the children often giggled at his name. No one at their right mind would be named after a cockroach. He had cleaned a few sticks and was putting some fluffy-looking them. And then, he held those things on the sticks over the fire. And when they were slightly charred, he popped them into his mouth.
There were quite a few of those sticks, all being "cooked" by a few other soldiers as well, and when each of them were ready, the children were given one stick each. Raising their eyebrows, they stared at the goopy white things on the sticks and looked at one another. One of the girls, Fatimah, decided to take the plunge and took a bite out of her top one. At first, she closed her eyes and scrunched up her face, mostly because it was still too hot, but when moments passed, she took a second bite. Her expression immediately brightened and the children followed suit.
"What is this?" ten year-old Ahmad asked Roach, chewing the strange food rather happily, washing it all down with cold water from the ice-box that the soldiers had brought with them. It felt utterly lovely, even if it was already cold outside.
"That, Ahmad, was a marshmallow," Roach replied, placing a few more of those marshmallows on more sticks. And thus, he went on teaching the children on how to pronounce the new word correctly, which proved to be harder than he had expected.
Soon, it was bedtime, and all the little girls went back to their mothers quietly, while the boys, like all boys, kicked up a great fuss about going to sleep when they were told to. In the end, all the parents in the village relented, and decided that their young sons could sleep with the soldiers, and a large canopy was erected to fit them all. "Just this once," their parents told them, and all the boys nodded almost angelically.
However, boys will be boys. They did not sleep a wink at all. Together with the soldiers, they exchanged stories with one another, how best to pull pranks, and the longest they had went without bathing once. In short, they were things that would make their parents shake their heads, and their sisters pull their noses high into the air in the universal form of snobbery against all things that were so comfortably grubby.
"We want new story tonight!" Ali demanded, egged on by his younger brother, Yusuf. The nearest one to him was the scarred leader of the soldiers, who was smoking on a rather thick and stubby cigarette. "You tell… please?"
The leader pondered for a little while and nodded. He knew that with Ali and his brother, they would continue to pester him on and on and on until he relented. Might as well just give in to their wishes. "What do you want to hear about?"
Yusuf, not being able to speak in English whispered something into his brother Ali's ear. "We want animal stories!" And in the end, they got what they wanted. With the help of the soldier who could speak Urdu, the leader told them a story about a lion that went to great lengths to get back the throne that had been stolen for him.
And when the tale ended, the boys had no more excuses to stay up, and obediently went to bed. At dawn, the soldiers would leave their village once more, and they would have to wait until Allah knew when.
"Roach, where are you going this time?" Sultanah asked Roach just before he went into the Humvee, he was the last of them to do so.
"We're gonna go to Fire Base Phoenix in Afghanistan," Roach told her, remembering that it was a no-no to ruffle her hair like the rest of the boys. "We're coming back in a few weeks, hopefully."
"Hopefully?" Sultanah pressed further. She did not know what it meant, but if Roach said it, she'll believe it. Their soldiers never once let them down. She smiled as Roach nodded to her, and went into the Humvee.
May it be an evening star, shines down upon you…
MacTavish pondered on those words, lyrics to a forgotten cheesy Oscar movie, but for that one moment, when he looked back at the children that were still waving them goodbye, he could not help but to just agree that there was still light in those dark times…
They said that the children were the hope of the future. They said that only the children of the world, they were innocent of all the crimes that every single soul committed. They were soldiers, those men that came in the black Humvees. They were soldiers who had seen death, decay and violence more than any other soul upon this good Earth.
So far from their homes, so far from the ones that they loved, these children were what they had left, to remind them that there so long there was a glimmer of hope, so long that there was still a smile that they could look forward to, they would never be far from where their hearts were supposed to return to.
The darkness lives within you now…
And so be it, the soldiers told themselves. As long as they could hold their weapons in their hands, they would be able to aid more people, and not only these children who lived in a village that bordered Afghanistan and Iran, where the air was so dry and the sand was so coarse that you would look towards the horizon and sigh.
HAN: Ah, a COD fic of mine with no OCs. ahahahaha ^.^ Defo a first for me. I hope you liked it!