Disclaimer:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue.

I don't own twilight,

and that's shity as poo.

This story isn't going to be as detailed as my other one, so be warned.

I know not many people know about the Korean War, and probably what you do know about it you learned from the TV show MASH. Well, this is a story about MASH, mobile army surgical hospital, and it's an Alice/ Jasper story with other things thrown in.

During the war, many men kept dying before the doctors had a chance to see them so a man devised a system of 'tagging'. if a man has a minor wound he would be tagged yellow and be tended to latter. If he was badly hurt, and could be saved he was tagged blue and sent to the OT (operating tent). Though, there were times when a man was too far gone, or it would have taken too long to fix him up, and there were others that could be saved in less time. In these case the man was tagged red. It's quite sad really, but at that time they needed to sacrifice. When a man was tagged red a nurse would come by with a huge dose of morphine and let the man drift off in peace (if he wasn't dead already).

History: a sermon inspierd this.

Happy reading!!

I had never really been a religious person. Nor did it think before I came here that I would ever be one. I went to church like any other person from the street, but I would just as soon back out of it if there was a good sale at the mall. The mall, man that was a word I hadn't heard in a while, and God did I miss it.

To be honest I regret using all of my younger years to goof off or shop and fool around, instead of building a relationship with God. And right now I could have really used it.

I found my self holding onto my mother's rosary more and more and tugging on it, and kissing it here and there, clinging to it sometimes like it was the only anchor I had to reality, to my sanity.

Now, more than ever in my life I prayed, and prayed hard, harder than I ever had, day and night, every waking moment. I rubbed my rosary beads between my fingers and said Hail Mary's and Our Father's over the cots, and some times over the pallets on the floor if we ran out of beds for the men.

Often times if the front lines moved up closer to our border the lights would sputter and the ground shake from the force of the cannon's blows. Men would cry out and moan, for some, tears even sprang to their eyes.

This scared me, rattled me down deep, because when you spend months in an environment where the men around you wail and crawl about like children. Mangled broken children, mind you, and some, through my eyes were but children, young and lithe with so much potential…

Their lives cut short…

Tagged red…

Red – death…

Red- your dead…

It was what I struggled with most out of everything. The rats, the smell of rotting flesh, the blood and screaming at night, it all shook me but not any where near as much as myself. What I did, because I was the killer here, not he gang green, though that took many, nor the disease, nor anything else. It was me. Me and my little glass bottle. I was the sickening angel of death sent upon these men, these poor, pitiful, yet faithful men, who gave their lives to hope for better future in their country, for their family.

America the free…

Home of the brave…

May the body count rise…

"Yellow!" I heard the doctor yell in front of me, and a nurse tagged the man and moved with the doctor to the next patient.

I exhaled, another one spared. I sent up another silent prayer and Father Allam and I moved ahead. I think he seemed happy that he wouldn't be delivering last rights to another man today, because I saw his shoulders relax a little.

"Blue!" I heard another doctor to my left call out. I glanced over just in time to see Emmett and Randall lifting a man onto a makeshift stretcher.

Emmett caught my glance, and before he turned to go he gave me a quick smile and a wink.

God I loved my brother more than anything in the world, he knew, he just knew when I needed a pick-me-up. God bless.

"Alice?" The voice shook me from my daze, and I looked up at Father Allam only to find him a few yard ahead of me. He looked at me expectantly and nodded for me to hurry up.

Three more men were tagged yellow, yellow, blue, and I looked at them as I walked past. The last man has being loaded onto a stretcher in front of me to be taken to the operating tent. Father Allam was talking to the man, who seemed quite frightened.

I heard, "Blue" to my left, then another "Blue! Blue!" Shouted off in quick secession to my right and front. Nurses rushed forward to assist the men and I saw Emmet and Randall shuffle into the wide tent again, load a man, and leave.

I walked forward a few steps and heard the doctor shout a 'blue' in front of me. I rubbed my rosary again.

Dear God no red, not today, please God, not today, not today. Over and over again the words sung in my head.

'Blue"

No red not today.

"Yellow"

My hand was getting tiered, so I switched the bottle to my other hand and began to run my fingers over the rosary again and again, kissing the cross here and there, like maybe, if I paid it enough attention it would stop the men from dying.

"Red"

A rock lodged itself deep in my stomach and I pulled on the rosary harder and harder till I was afraid I would break.

"Alice…" it was Father Allum, he looked up at me from where he was kneeling on the floor. He too had his rosary in hand, and his Bible in the other. "Alice…?" there was a guarded note in his voice. He nodded to the bottle in my hand. I nodded and he seemed to understand, because he went back to murmuring over the man.

I could fell my body starting to shake as I reached for the capped needle in my pocket. It was then that I saw his eyes, and I froze, just like that. Like there was a spell of some sort in the air.

His eyes were blue, a deep, deep, deep, blue that looked almost violet in the dim light of the tent. They were eyes like I had never seen in any other man that had come here, let alone a man that had been labeled 'red'. They were calm, collected, and somehow, content, unbelievably content, like a vast sea of calm that I had fallen into, and the feeling washed over me again and again, until my hands stopped shaking.

The one corner of his mouth turned up in a small, tiered smile, and he took in another aching breath.

The whole one side of his face was swollen up to the point where you could only see a small slit of his eye through the swollen lid. Two deep gashes sliced above his brow and more covered his neck and cheek on that side. Blond, almost white, hair covered his head and flowed over into his brow. It was the longest hair of any man in camp that I had seen and was matted here and there with dirt and blood. His leg was wrapped with what looked like an old military jacket, but it was hard to tell from all of the mud and dried blood that coated it. If those had been his only wounds it would have been almost certain that he would have been labeled blue.

But, those weren't the only ones, and I found the fear creeping back into my body and the tightness back into my chest. My hands moved to my rosary and began to tug again.

On one side an old beater was balled up and fashioned to his stomach with strips of torn cloth. They had probably both been white at some point in time, but now only the strips of cloth used to tie the shirt were white, and only on the opposite side of the wound. All the rest of the material was a dark rusted brown, and when he took a breath you could see the crusted bandages come up a bit and newer fresher scarlet liquid pour from the wound.

On his wrist dangled a Tag as red as the man's blood. I nearly vomited right there, nearly. His eyes were what brought me back to reality, to hell, call it what you may.

I felt the ocean of his near violet eyes wade over me and I welcomed the peace with open arms.

"Alice?" I broke my gaze form the man and looked back to Father Allum, who was now on his feet, apparently done with the man's last rights. He gave me a worried look, "are you alright?" he motioned slightly to the man with a tilt of his head, the man in the cot must has seen the signal and I saw his eyes flicker from me to Father and back again. "Will you be fine with him I if go ahead?"

All I took was one glance at the man, "Y-yes, Father." I gave him a nod and after a few seconds of silence he smiled at me and turned to go.

When I knelt by the man's cot he shifted his head ever so slightly toward me. He smiled one of his weak watered-down kind of smiles and I smiled back ever so slightly.

I would love reviews as per weather to continue this story or not, thanks much!

Also, when I say 'Father Allum', it's really Benjanin from the Egyptian coven. :)