/AN: There's more to be posted next week, but this was written for tumblr user agent-jagwa/
Bitters was apathetic. Bitters was lazy. Bitters was a lot of things, including pessimistic.
And why shouldn't he be? There was no bright side to look on in his situation. He was balls deep in a war between the Rebels and the Federal Army, and he wasn't going to pretend that the side he stood on had a chance. They were outmanned, outgunned, untrained and inexperienced. Hell, Jensen was young enough to have braces- she couldn't be more than what, seventeen years old? Yeah, lots of good a bunch of scared teenagers would do.
Bitters learned a long time ago that this was more like an extermination than a war, and he and his fellow troops were the pests that needed to be destroyed.
Sometimes he found himself wondering why he was still even in this shit hole of an army. 'Because someone has to keep Palomo from getting his stupid ass in trouble all the time,' he'd decide.
It wasn't like he had anyone back home whose freedom he was fighting for- unlike Smith, who'd left behind a precious wife along with two beautiful children. There was no one to make proud, since it was made clear years ago that anyone worth looking up to wasn't guaranteed to stick around long in these conditions.
But then there was Grif.
It was weird, but for the first time in a long while, Bitters felt like he could connect with someone, look up to him even. If Grif could survive all that he'd been through with that laid back attitude, then why couldn't Bitters? Granted, after all the stories he'd heard, the lieutenant had expected more from the orange clad soldier, but that didn't matter. Grif wasn't some perfect hero- none of the Reds and Blues were- but he still did some heroic shit, and well, that gave Bitters hope.
Hope that maybe, just maybe, the rebels really could stand a chance now that these four were fighting with them. Yeah, they were idiots, but they were idiots who apparently knew what they were doing. That, or they were extremely lucky. Bitters may be a pessimist, but in this case, he preferred to go with the former.
With Grif put in charge of him, Bitters finally had someone he actually wanted to look at him with... pride? Okay, pride would be a bit out of character for Grif, but just to be seen as something more than a good for nothing kid would work for the lieutenant.
So he worked hard and with time, earned the trust of his leading captain. He actually made an effort during the Gold Team's raids to the kitchen, and when the five of them sat hiding and gorging themselves with their prizes, Bitters decided that he was actually having fun. He joked around more with his teammates, and was less harsh in the way he spoke with them. Grif would clap a hand on his shoulder and congratulate him on the sweets he'd snagged.
He still couldn't bring himself to care about his place in the war.
Maybe that was why he was listening to Felix tell Kimball about the godawful death of his new squad's four captains. If he had tried a little harder, made an effort to begin with, then maybe those assholes wouldn't be dead. Maybe Grif, the one asshole he looked up to, would be alive, and giving him a reason to fight, to make someone proud for once.
But no, instead, he'd fucked up and of course someone had to pay. If he hadn't been wasting his time stealing jelly fucking cream pies that ultimately landed his head in a toilet, he could have been training, being productive like he should have been.
Now there'd be no hearty pat on the back, or encouraging grin flashed his way. He was apathetic. He was lazy. Who else but Grif would think he deserved anything like him that?
God damnit. How the hell does a guy like Grif- or any of those guys for that matter- just go and get themselves killed like that? Bitters couldn't tell who made him angrier-the Reds and Blues, for abandoning them for this fucking failure of a rescue; or at himself, for not even trying to live up to expectations so he could join them.
Against the Feds, there probably wasn't much he could have done, that was a given, but the fact that he wasn't even there to try, but could have been, just really made Bitters want to ram his head into a wall. Repeatedly.
Instead he stood by his teammates' sides, hands balled into tight fists, and a string of profanities rising in his throat like bile while Felix spoke.
The mercenary voice was hushed and low, and he paused often with a shuddering breath as he recounted what had happened. Bitters didn't think the guy was even capable of feeling torn apart by a soldier's death- he was kind of a dick like that.
"Oh my god," Jensen was the only one of them to speak. Her voice was quiet, fragile, broken, "They're really...?"
No one came to answer her, but her own shoulder shaking sobs.
Bitters wanted to say something, searched for comforting words, but nothing came. Yeah, Jensen was now openly wailing in Smith's arms, who hung his head low and let out a few tearful sounds of his own; and Palomo was looking like he'd dropped his ass on a sick puppy, but Bitters was just so filled with such unholy anger! He opened his mouth once, twice, three times before deciding things would be better if he kept his rude remarks to himself this time.
Bitters walked out then. He didn't want to belong there, or in this army, or in this godforsaken war. He'd been stripped of his home, his family and friends, absolutely everything, and now even Grif, the guy who'd managed to throw a beast of a man over a cliff, was gone too. And who was to say that Bitters couldn't have helped if he'd been there?
The past few weeks he'd been practically a kid looking up to their idol, wanting to grow up enough to fill the latter's shoes. Now his idol was dead and he was once again left with nothing, and it was entirely his fucking fault.
He didn't belong in this war. He was still practically a kid after all.