In Cold Blood
Hell is humid. The renegade freedom fighter (or so he wanted to believe) that would be soon known as Milo was finding out about it right was finally leaving behind the scattered fights in villages and borders and joining the core of the resistance, a group of twelve elite soldiers, thirteen now counting himself, that had have the entire national army on its toes for the last three years. Saga knew about the deeds of Milo´s chaotic group in one of the small villages. God knows how he had heard of Milo particularly from the center of the forest, but he had, and had taken the risk to go out and look for the kid. The young deserted soldier almost did backflips when Saga introduced himself and told him that they needed him. He didn't even listen to the descriptions of the jungle, or the hunger, or the hardness he would have to face if he joined Saga´s men. He had just yelled yes before the comander was done talking. His heart had just jumped straight to the task with burning pride and mighty passion, and now, that comander was leading him through the endless walls of plants, and insects, and vapour, and heat until they got to a lost area in the heart of the rainforest, where they would hide whenever they were not active.
-Welcome to nowhere kid, make yourself at home!
Saga moved his arm graciously, covering a nonexisting camp in a bit of the jungle no different from all others.
There, scattered over the small patches of open grass that the trees left them, where half a dozen men not older than himself. One cooked, others rested, read, polished weapons or played cards. His heart raced in excitement, as Saga pointed at each soldier and introduced them from a distance by nickname and role. Those were heroes whose deeds he had marveled at! They were there! He had met them at least! Better! He was going to be one of them!
Milo looked around, memoricing each face, each minute detail, absorbing information about those living legends like a sponge. They all looked so...human! So similar to himself! All of them, except for one. Milo´s eyes got stuck on that one´s face, and felt, right away, that he wouldn't forget it easily. He had no idea yet of how right he was. Saga´s voice kept playing in the background. He listened carefully, but coudn´t move his eyes away from the oddball of the group.
-...Mu, medic; ; Aiolos, scout; Camus, combat engineer; Shura, marine and frontman; Deathmask, former pilot, is that one playing cards and full of ink; and that one by his side...- Saga remarked those last words, noticing the new rectrite´s vivid interest in that individual- is Aphrodite, our sniper.
Saga pointed at a ravishingly beautiful man in a loose camo jaket, and Milo nodded, still wondering what such a creature had ended up among them. The man was handsome enough to turn heads! With those delicate features, those huge blue eyes, and those sunburn bruises all over his nose and cheekbones that made him look plainly adorable, the man looked like anything but a real soldier. He was resting by a precision rifle and observing his partner's cards game with a relaxed expression. That creature didn't seem to belong in that humid hell, nor near those two tanned beasts, nor in an elite force at war. His sweet lines were better suited to be kept in a museum, away from the sun and the mosquitoes and the bullets, protected by guards and by glass. The new soldier got somehow disappointed with the man for not inhabiting said museum but putting his beauty to waste in that humid shithole. And he got even more disapointed when he learned about the beautiful creature´s occupation. "Aphrodite, sniper". That was the sniper of the group. They ha donly one? Wow! Milo had heard of him and his "deeds" but he had no clue they were all due to one person! Still, he was not impressed, not by the deeds, nor by the man.
-Snipers are cowards. They just sneak attack unsuspecting targets and stay out of harm's way, while others bleed for them. A rat can do that.
Milo sentenced. He despised smooth shooters as weak and no better than rodents. Ans that was what the thin blonde over there had to be, to work in such position so proudly. On the other hand, the Greek thought while looking at the man, with those delicate hands and thin body he had, he probably wasn´t capable of doing anything else besides sneaking around and shooting from a safe distance. That kid coudn´t resist a strong wind, let alone survive in combat. On a second thought, Milo decided, maybe that position was probably the closest thing to being in the vitrine of a museum you could find around there, and that porcelane doll had have the sense of inhabiting it. It made some artistic sense.
Saga smirked, and patted his new subordinate´s shoulder with a paternalistic attitude.
-Have you ever stared of someone for minutes kid? Or for hours? Stared as they hugh their friends, as they talk, as they eat and walk, until you have learned every movement, every human gesture? Maybe you did that if you had a crush, it tends to happen - Milo nodded. That brought memories of his first highschoolçs crush, that seemed utterly out of place in the middle of the jungle- ..You learn what they like, and how they laught almost bu heart, you learn the rhythm at which they bob their head...and then...you put a bullet right in their brain.
An imaginary bullet crossed through the sweet memories, blowing the cherished moments away in a splatter of brains, and freezing his blood. Saga smiled, and patted the child's shoulder again.
-If you ever try it, maybe you'll change your mind about how much courage it takes.
The huge blue eyes, bathed in their own misterious moonlight, looked at him from the distance. Their owner smiled at him, obviously amused. The new recruit realiced that all his words had been heard, and begged Earth to swallow him. He didn´t get much success with Earth, but the snipper seemed to find his praying expression entertaining enought.
He got tired of tormenting the new arrival with his gaze, and looked back to the card´s game.
In their first confrontation the new kid almost lost both arms. He got nicknamed Milo immediately, no consent requested, and became an official member of the group. From then on, he was no longer addressed by "you" or "the newbie" or "nobodie", which were the official filler names of any new arrival until he got a nick of himself.
Nobody knew each other's name there. Nobody knew each other's age, date of birth, or nationality. If it could be helped, nobody knew a damn thing about anybody or anything else besides what was required to do their jobs. They were outlaws, and they knew what would happen if they were captured alive. They joked about it often, while also making sure they always had an extra bullet on them, or a similar "emergency way out," just in case. They always refered to eachothers by the nickname, of course. Aiolia was named after the home of the lord of the winds because he wouldn't shut up and was loud as a drunk elephant on cocaine. Aiolos was just the same as his brother but in a lower pitch. Mu got his name because someone decided that he stared like a lemur when surprised (which he did). Shaka got him for being an active buddhist in the middle of not-the-fucking-moment; really, nobody cares if the butterfly dreams of being a man while being shot at. Camus just sounded french, was really into books, and had made the mistake of mentioning that he hated Alber Camus´s work with all his heart, so, there. About Shura? You didn't want to cross him with a knife, which would explain his nickname, but Milo had overheard that him sitting on one accidentally and not being able to sit again in days had been the actual origin of it. Deathmask´s nickname... well, the guy fucking bombed people from the air and exterminated every living thing from entire areas in his old days, so not much to explain. Aphrodite´s nickname was also self-evident. The list went on for the living and the dead. A long, long list of initiation anecdotes shared around the fire. Stories of humilliation and of objections ignored until everyone had to accept the nick they had been given. They might not be the happiest bunch on the planet, but it was not for lack of trying.
That first combat had been a surprise attack that got them on the run. They had to split chaotically and couldn't recover contact in months. The word "traitor" started to run around, with nobody knowing where to point at. Then, there were six months of fights, of push and pulls, of bleeding scars and fear. The pressure from the "proper military" was becoming too strong, their troops savier and harder to surprise after three years of practice, and Saga´s plans too ambitious due to desperation. During the longest six months of Milo´s life they had shuffled groups, divided, reunited, re divided again, and got almost caught far too many times.
The enemies were upgrading their game, far too much, and it seemed to be due to a change of lider. They had a new, brilliant mind in charge of that area, a former gerrilla fighter that just knew what he was doing, and wa sgetting them gradually cornered. They had to get rid of that guy. Quick. Saga designed a brilliant plan to do that, but it would take a lot of time to prepare, and they needed a second sniper. Right now, and just because of that, they had gone out of their way and almost got killed twice just to reunite with Shura´s group in a relatively safe location. Milo would stay thereand be trained by Aphrodite to play that part.
-He is the best, but he is only one man.
Milo nodded to Saga´s words, clearly disgusted. He wasn't taking his word back. He knew that, since Aiolos had been captured, or maybe had died, he was the most precise shooter they had besides Aphrodite himself. The team needed him to play that part, and he was going to. But it was a humiliating choice to make. This was a sacrifice though, for the sake of the cause, and implied stepping on his own pride and spitting on his principles at least four times. It would be temporary, he reassured himself, it won't define who he was. Plus, it couldn't be so hard.
Aphrodite waited for them on a twisted root, cleaning his weapon with maternal care. He turned to look at them as he heard footsteps, softening his sharp glance the best he could, in honor of the company. Saga nodded at him as a salute, and smiled with comradery.
-Here he is! Do you think you can train him?- Aphrodite stood up, his eyes examined Milo.
-I can't tell.
He hadn't seen Milo since the first battle that got them splitted, almost six months ago. He barely knew the kid and, as Saga, and anyone who had killed in cold blood well knew, his concerns were not regarding Milo´s skills, at all. Skill was trainable. Character and nerve...not so much.
Milo got red with fury under the examining pale glance, something that Aphrodite both noticed and ignored completely.
-Are you sure of this, kid?- The northern asked, getting almost a bark for an answer.
-We need another snippet don't we? We need to double down and get rid of their leader before he gets rid of us; so if I have to play coward for the group, I will.
He prayed to hear back an excuse to punch that pretty face, and see if the sniper still doubted the skills after that! Aphrodite just smiled, and kneeled to pick up the pieces of his weapon, putting it back together in the blink of an eye. There was work to be done.
-I can leave him with you two weeks before you give me a final verdict. The foot troops and I are leaving in three days. he would be usefull but I can leave him with you instead, if you need time to decide if he can learn. We can't sacrifice longer than that for a maybe, though.
- I´ll have your answer in less than two days. Just allow me "the cabin" for that time.
Saga nodded again, and disappeared, secretly uncomfortable. He had a traitor to hunt, but he was leaving the youngest of his soldiers in the hands of whom was rightfully said to be the cruelest of them all. Aphrodite would turn Milo into another murderer like him, because that's what he had been ordered to do. It was necessary, but Saga still felt responsible of tying someone up in an altar for a third person to rip their heart off as a sacrifice to the gods of war.
While Saga lamented, Milo followed the pale ponytail, in voluntary silence first, and in reluctantly forced mutism second. He spent the rest of the morning practicing with some distant targets, trying his best to impress his teacher, whom, by the way, didn't seem to be paying the sightless amount of attention to him. Aphrodite's eyes just wandered through the deep green hell that surrounded them, chasing invisible shadows and fighting gosths in his head.
The traitor, probably, Milo thought. They were all thinking about that lately, so he didn´t take it personally at first. But when his short patience run out he started to get restless. Being ignored while forced to do pointless exercises was bad enough. Being ignored and bossed around by someone who wasn´t a real soldier, since he lacked the guts to put himself in real risk, was even worse. The fact was that he had seen Aphrodite standing his ground by pistol and knife without a shiver during the surprise attack six months ago, but he conveniently ignored that memory. The rumours of him escaping from combat and abandoning Aioros to capture and death came to mind instead, and made his blood boil with stacked indignation as he saw himself shooting at stupid targets without even a loaded gun. That porcelain doll was a coward. With what autority did he even dared to command anybody at all?
The voice of his instructor put a stop to the exercise right before Milo decided to throw the weapon to the floor and confront the stupid blond and his permanently sunburned cheeks about exactly that point.
- Follow me, I have something more important I need you to do.
-Great! Are you gonna make me shoot air in another point of the jungle? - Milo´s hurt pride barked and spitted poison. Aphrodite just smiled.
-No. I just needed you to get in the mood, before starting with the serious tasks.
Milo followed him through the green depths to a improvised closed cabin, made of thick trunks of trees arranged in a triple wall with dry leaves and branches intercalated between them. All made to absorb sound as much as possible. At least some real targets with some real bullets! Milo thought, resigned.
The sniper opened the door´s several precautions, and pushed it open. As he came in first, Milo saw the silhouette of a kneeling man against the opposite wall. He had a cloth bag on his head and his wrist tied up together with his uncles. Milo swallowed hard as the defenseless prisoner, shaked, terrified of the noise of the door and of Aphrodite´s slow steps towards him. Did he have to execute the prisoner? That's when all of Saga´s ranting about killing in cold blood came to play. Very well! He could to that! He´ll show them, he decided, while his hands shaked inside his pockets. It was just a faceless enemy after all, someone who had probably tried to kill them, who was responsible for that war, who was responsible for all injustice in their country, who supported that he had sweared to fight against! It wasn´t a person, it was a faceless monster, or a fool that just brought destruction. And, thanks to those beautiful thoughts, the young greek´s heart hardened, and the man´s shivering stopped bothering him.
Aphrodite was already moving around the room, with that calmed and confusing smile of his, opaque like a mask. He dragged a large box in front of the kneeling prisoner, and took the bag off his head. Milo could see the face of a man about double his age. An imperfect old man with bald spots and a naturally humble expression twisted by fear. The kind of man he would have asked for the time when he was a small child, because he looked safe and kind. One thing was clear, that man was not a professional soldier, and if he was...well...if he was...and he could very well be one...he didn´t look how he usually pictured the blurs of hate that his enemies were in combat. At all.
A respectable amount of valour tried to hide the raw terror that contorted the enemy´s imperfect features. "The features of a person" Milo though. On that face there were some things too big and some things too small, some lines too hard and some lines too round. It was a face he could relate to. He could easily imagine the owner of that face picking his children up from school, shuttering while approaching a woman, scratching his eyes in the morning while sharing a stinky bad breath with the world, sharing a beer at a bar with no further ambition in life than being loved and being happy. By contrast, the glimpse of Aphrodite´s perfect beauty turned repulsive to his eyes. It was a moment of insight, a revelation, like a veil that falls at least. He couldn't relate to that face. He couldn't imagine it taking beer or having kids. It was the face of a statue, of a demon, of a doll. A face so perfect it must have been crafted, not born. So perfect, it was inhuman. His eyes opened. He no longer saw the sniper as a handsome man, but as the aberration he was, and now, he couldn't unsee it anymore. He turned his eyes away from the robotic figure, thin and elegant, flexible in it´s movement, sweet in his gestures, monstruous in it all. His sympathies started to swift alarmingly fast in the wrong direction. He tried to correct himself with moderate success, wondering what that coward and repulsive allien that didn´t care to even look at him was going to do with that poor, enemy fellow human, who glanced at him begging for consolation and mercy.
Said alien turned to Milo and tapped the wooden box with two fingers.
- Come, and sit here. I have an important job for you.
Aphrodite shifted languages suddenly to a hard and rusty greek Milo barely understood.
-I need you to spend the rest of the day with him. Talk to him. Calm him down if you can. Try to get him to talk to you about anything. From the conversation, you may pick up some useful data. I´ll be back before sunset.
Milo grabbed Aphro´s arm to keep him from moving. He felt like he was being toyed with, and he din´t like it. Besides the...situation, the weirdness of it all, made him feel vulnerable, and insulted, none of those were feelings he knew how to tolerate. His fierce stare got absorbed and dissipated by his partner´s calmed glanze.
-Hey. What does this have to do with sniping?
-You´ll need attention to details, memory, and capacity to observe and piece details together. Getting information no violently requires the same skills, that's why I am usually the one in charge of it. We are in a hurry to check your abilities though, and since this will measure all I need to know and needs to be done anyway, I thought I´ll give you a try at it.
-What am I looking for, exactly?
-Nothing specific, just earn his trust for now and get him to talk about himself, when I came back we can keep build up from there.
After a brief staring contest, Milo loosened his grip on the other soldier and accepted the explanation, feeling a little more relaxed. He sat on the wooden box in front of the prisoner, and tried to calm him down, with very limited success. As the evening went by, he found that his task was far more enjoyable than expected. He spent the first hours observing the man, noticing his particular ticks and unique gestures. Since he couldn't get him to talk or stop panicking at his every move, there was not much else to do. Eventually, the poor victim calmed down a little and allowed himself to maintain with his captor a small and superficial conversation that gradually deepened, due to both the need of finding comfort in another human being, and Milo´s natural sympathy. The prisoner, Albiore, was the youngest of three brothers about whom Milo soon learned all posible details, starting with what they did when they were little and how they got caught doing it. He had two adopted sons, a boy, and a girl, that lived beyond the border, in some secret safe place. He also confessed, with eyes glittering of hope and plead, that the dream of his life was to vacation in the mediterranean. He had dreamed of it since he saw a picture of Greece in an old magazine when he was a kid. His eyes sparkled when he allowed himself to dream that he could make it out of this situation alive and see Greece one day. He even confessed that he kept, safe in a small drore by his bed, a traveler´s catalog of the Greek islands from ten years ago, since before the war started. Milo had to fight every fiber in his soul to keep himself from telling the man that he came from Greece, and from pouring out his memories, and desires, and the wild homesickness that the man had awakened in him by talking about white houses and bright blue sea. He suddenly wanted to let the man go, take a plane and a beer with him, not necesarelly in that order, and show him every corner of his beloved land! He would love the food, and the streets, crowded but livelly, and the cloudless sky!
Aphrodite came back in while Albiore was telling Milo about those two street dogs he had been buying food for before he got destined there. He had been afraid of dogs since he was a child and got bitten by his grandma´s Great Dane, but he had managed to overcome that fear out of pity for the state of one of those two lost souls that wander around the garbage cans of the base. The poor thing was obviously suffering some painful skin condition and almost being eaten alive by parasites. He wanted to take the dog to the vet when he got back home, but he had no clue on how to get it there, since there was no way the animal would let anybody approach it, not even him. Aphrodite did not interrupt the talk, for Milo´s happiness, he just closed the door quietly and walked towards them, standing right behind Milo in silence.
The greek had forgotten what his mission was at this point, and was going on and on about some ingenious suggestions on how to capture Albiore´s sick dog and getting him to a veterinary without anybody getting hurt. His instructor let him finish, before, discretely and kindly taking one of Milo´s hand towards his back and leaving a small, cold object in it. Then, he whispered in greek.
-Now, shot him in the head.
Milo felt a shiver and stood up in indignation, or tried to; Aphrodite held his wrist with a painful iron grip Milo didn't think that pretty hands could possibly exert, and twisted his arm while pushing his shoulder down with the other hand, to keep him from turning and Albiore from seeing the gun.
-I am not going to..!
-Don´t change language- the sniper hissed in his ear, cutting him in the middle of the sentence, wishing he could cut him in the middle of the throat- and don´t turn! We are already going to kill him, he doesn't need to enjoy the anticipation of it!
Milo´s heart started racing, while the pain in his wrist helped heat his blood even faster than usual. He wanted both to run away and to turn and beat his partner down to white pulp. He bit his lip instead doing either, and tried to keep his mind clear. He was a soldier, after all. He couldn't just give in to those impulses and attack an ally, he repeated himself, trying to control the fire in his veins. He had killed before and he could do it again. If the man deserved it, of course. Only then.
-What has he done?-he asked in greek, with his heart still racing in revolt- Why do we need to kill him? Who is him anyway?
-I musn't tell you.
-What?
-When you are out there you won't always know, there is no time, or there is no way. You will just have Saga's orders, or the word of whoever transmits his orders to you, and you'll have to trust that blindly. Knowing why you shoot is a comfort blanket we can't depend on. You may even know the reasons and not agree with them but you have to shoot anyway. That is how orders work.
Milo swallowed hard, controlling his nerves with a cold rage that Aphrodite misinterpreted by actual self control. The sniper loosened his grip, inviting disaster. His partner stayed on the box, but not for long. Not at all.
-It was a lie right? The whole thing about noticing details, and getting information by talking to him. This was your plan all along.
-Yes- the box flew away.
-You, sadistic bastard! F***ng tell me what he´ve done!- the sniper didn't move an eyelash, but his glaze was lightened up by a revengefull sparkle.
-I thought...that you said this job was easy. What is the problem?
Milo glared furiously at that inhuman face, and then stormed out, enraged and repulsed from the deepest of his soul, hiding the gun from Albiore in the process, with his teeth pressed tight, cursing the storm of feelings and thoughts that was raging through his head, and cursing the old catalogue of the greek island, tidily kept in it´s drore, covered with the illusion of years, with some corners folded and some lines underlined in color.
Aphrodite was left alone with the soon to be corpse. The scandinavian soldier just kicked the box around without annoyance, to move it to a place more of his liking, and accommodated himself there, with his legs crossed and his back against the wall,. He didn´t know for how long he would have to wait, so better be confortable.
He didn't blame the kid for his reaction. He knew how that felt quite so well, but he didn't blame himself either. Milo had to go through it if a mission was going to depend on him. Killing in a combat, even killing while in hiding but still knowing yourself at risk was really different from killing in cold blood. The adrenaline, the complete dehumanization of the other, the fear, the knowing you need to save your own life at any price, the blurry red vision, the urgency...it all made close combat killing easy, but they didn´t help you when you were hald a mille away, safe, and you knew it. They didn't veil your reason to keep you from knowing that you were playing demigod from a safe cloud and killing an unique human being that you've gotten to know and differentiate from everybody else, because that´s what selective targeting requires you to do. For them there were none of the excuses that foot tropes used to shield their sanity. And, in his view, after long years of doing it and probably after his sanity had taken quite some blows it couldn't handle, he believed that was the way it should be for everyone. If you get into a combat, if you claim by word or by actions that your cause is worth killing for, you must understand that you are killing people,not faceless minions or dehumanized avatars of evilness. You have to understand it, and kill them all the same, or just refuse to kill and go home. Deciding that you cause wasworth killing for, but only under some circunstances in which people didn´t look like people was hipocresy of the worse kind. Aphrodite respected those who refused to kill a fellow human, refused violence at large, and went home. He understood them, and respected them deeply. He also understood and respected those like himself, that chose to kill anyway, and was quite confortable knowing that, one day, he´ll lose his life to one of them; he didn´t resent his future murderer. But everything else was a monstruosity, word games, mirrors and smoke! Everything else wouldn't allow you to breath calmly and understand it when someone else killed you for other a combat or from a distance, killing them "honorably" or by treason, enemies were humans all the same, and death was death all the same.
Milo didn't came back that night. His mind was all chaos and noise, but he did came back at dawn, almost twelve hours before the time limit Aphro had asked Saga for. The sniper heard his partner´s footsteps from the inside and recognized them for their rythm. That he hadn't lied about; memory and attention to detail were an important skill for them. He hadn't lied about him being in charge of almost all peaceful interrogations either, he had just blurred out the details. Milo opened the door without looking at him, walked straight to the prisoner who had dozed out slightly, and that looked full of hope when he saw the young soldier he had shared his dreams with came into the room. Said soldier came to an arms distance of him, with liquid fury in his eyes, pulled a gun out of his pocket, centimeters away from the victim's face, and shot. The triple walls took the bullet and silenced the sound, while the prisoner brains splatter against the wood. Milo turned to look at Aphrodite with burning eyes and trembling lips pressed together. Aphrodite took that piercing glance as he would take a bullet he was expecting; just resigned to the pain, taking it in silence and without struggle. There was nothing he could say, or do, to easy Milo´s anguish, he knew that far too well, so there was no point in worrying about it. The kid just had to go through it.
-Are you sure you want to continue with this?- He paraphrased himself, trying to make his voice sound as comforting as possible. Milo took that thone by mockery. He tightened his fists, rose his chin pridefully, and pressed his lips tighter, trying to keep his watery rage in check. He didn't talk, even though he already knew what he wanted to answer, because he feared that the tremor in his lips could get out of control if he dared to speak. He had admired that serene beauty in front of him for a week. Now he hated it with all his soul.
-We still need a second snippet. Don't we? Then, I´m still in.
An electric sting crossed Aphrodite´s heart, and ramified into a million ant bites that tortured the tips of his nerves, as he saw Milo´s jaw tremble, the struggle in his eyes, contained in place just by raw determination, and the pieces of broken pride falling all over his soul. The pain he saw in those young eyes made his own skin curl, sending shockwaves that twisted his relaxed gesture in an instantaneous rictus of pain before he could get a grip of himself. Bits of his own memories he ahd worked ahrd to burry tried to resurrect, and he almost coudn´t send them all to the grave again.
The pain was great, but the determination holding it back was greater, and that impressed Aphrodite most of all. He felt the impulse to bow in front of Milo, to let him know that, from that instant on, he had earned his unconditional allegiance and his deepest admiration. He wanted to make official that, right then, right there, he was feeling more respect by that man, that child, whatever he was, that was shaking at the very verge of tears and feeling humiliated, than for half his partners combined. But, again, that would only make things worse. He just advised Milo to get some rest, and talked to Saga after taking care of the corpse. The kid was not ideal, he explained, but, if there was nothing better, he could be worked with.