Conversations #1

Disclaimer: Jericho is not mine, never was, and never shall be; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, writing for fun. Don't sue.

Warning: No ship (sorry). No sex, but for more mature audiences, given the nature of the conversation. This is the conversation Johnston & Jake never managed to have about war. The "chore" Johnston & Jake are performing is not an easy one, is not a common one, is technically physically possible, but is something they would need to do with their supplies being so limited. This is not something I know much about, technically, and the people I know who could tell me, well, I didn't ask. I'm not getting into the technicals here (esp. numbers), so those who do know how to do this, let me off easy on this one. Yes, the how-to info is out there, but there are some things that I just won't research & put in for detail for a fic. First Jericho ff, so please be kind.

Post episode #14 (Season 1 of course), want to say it's "Heart of Winter". Either way, the episode before "Semper Fidelis".

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Jake turned and looked at his father. Yes, the old man was still there, carefully measuring the grains of gunpowder for the slightly recycled pistol rounds. Jake was in charge of pouring the hot metal into the molds borrowed from Old Man Adams and popping out the cooled cartridges. If the one making the casings screwed up, it wasn't too horrible. If the one measuring the powder screwed up, the results could be much worse than a simple misfire. Even though Jake had learned to load his own rounds from--who else?--his grandfather, Johnston insisted on taking the heaviest responsibility himself.

In a way, Jake was relieved. It gave him some room to think about what he really wanted to say to his father. That night, less than a week ago, when he'd confessed what he'd done, where he'd been…it was the first time in a long time that he thought his dad really did understand him. There were too many years and more than too many shouting matches between the two stubborn Greens and the time they had been buddies, hunting on weekends and playing football in the yard. And then, five years ago, Jake had hurt everyone he'd ever cared about by simply disappearing. These crazy times had almost reached the point that Jake thought his dad might be able to start forgiving him for the wreck he'd left behind--and then, in the freezing cold, knowing he wasn't going to survive to see help or anything else again, he'd confessed his worst.

Big brown eyes stared at him, always. He could see those big, sweet eyes watching him, just at the edge of his peripheral vision. The weight was crushing. The worst part--the girl had been laughing, chasing her sister across the street. She hadn't known the transport group was coming in for the supplies that had been stolen in an ambush. She probably hadn't known about the ambush. He had barely known that the company--not J&R--had ordered the employees to get those things back before he was involved in the firefight. Jake, with Freddie at his side, had accepted that. Now all he had to do was live with those eyes haunting him. His vision was better than twenty-twenty, and she hadn't been that far away.

Silence only made the feeling of her watching worse.

"I drove transport, Dad. Drove a deuce-and-a-half, sometimes flew. Almost two years in Afghanistan and Iraq together--less in Iraq." Jake's words were disjointed, but his hand was steady as he poured the molten metal into the molds. This was the last set for the night. Knowing that he was going to say something, Jake had turned back to his half of their chore, paying more care to what his hands did than his words. He didn't see Johnston's hands go still, the steady blue eyes flash with pain and close against the things Jake needed so desperately to say.

Johnston's mind flashed back to another conversation, so similar, that he'd had with his own father. Even a 59-year-old father of two and a combat veteran who had, by some miracle, managed to survive 40 years of marriage to one hellcat of a woman sometimes wished he had his own father to turn to. This was one of those times. Jake had paused, needing a response--something--and Johnston did the only thing he could. He asked the right question at the right time for a conversation that was only going to end up hurting more than anything he could remember. Shame the good whiskey was gone.

"How long?" Johnston asked, his voice low and steady, but rough from the prolonged silence of their favourite "recycling" chore. Or was it their least favourite? It was late enough that it didn't particularly matter anymore.

"Fourteen months in Afghanistan, six in Iraq." Jake gave a humourless chuckle. "If I didn't have the passport stamps, I wouldn't bet able to tell you which was first. Everything just ran together after a while--dust and dirt and heat…" His voice trailed off. Those eyes had come back again, as always when he laughed. Did her ghost hate him? He shook off the thought and returned to his confession. "It was a routine run in a place that had calmed down some. I…can't really say where. Hell, I don't even know if there are any troops left in Iraq, much less anywhere else--but I just…" The justification sounded just plain stupid to him, so he stopped speaking.

Johnston understood. "But it's hard to break operational code, even when you know that part's over." He glanced over at Jake, who had put the last mold to the side and was checking the cooling molds. "Yeah. That doesn't really change, even when the war's been over for almost thirty years and you know damn well it doesn't matter anymore to anyone who's listening."

"It was hammered into us. There were pictures, stories…we just didn't talk about where we were going, where we'd been, or what we were hauling." It was a relief not to have to explain that, too. Jake just confirmed what his dad understood. He didn't know if this was going to be easier or harder than the initial confession--and he didn't want to guess.

"Place probably wasn't in the news, ever. Hell, call it Sandtown. Good a name as any." Johnston scraped the powder into the wax paper cone and twisted the ends tight. Another charge. He tipped the box of powder again and watched the scale.

"Right," that fleeting urge to smile--and those eyes. Jake closed his eyes, prayed that this would exorcise his ghosts, and began again. "We were running close to Sandtown when the convoy was hit. We were carrying some basic supplies, but things the tangos could use. They hit hard. I got lucky, but half the guys--they weren't. The tangos took the six lead trucks, I was near the end and managed to turn around. We got a few miles back and they didn't bother to chase us. Whatever was in those lead trucks was enough, I guess. I dunno…"

Jake went silent again, his hands restlessly popping the cooled brass from the first pour of the night--had it really been long enough for these to be cooled? Johnston read the silence again.

"Probably. Since they let you go, I'm sure it wasn't weapons. Food or medical supplies for their own men." It was enough of a prompt to get Jake talking again. He measured out another 40 grains. He didn't ask for the definition of 'tango'. He knew the phonetic alphabet and the way things were shortened in the military, even in support groups. Viet Cong would forever be 'Charlie', if only in his mind. 'Tango' was for the letter t, which would have been short for 'terrorist'--even if they weren't, technically, terrorists. So it went in war.

"Yeah. Freddie--he was the convoy boss after Hans died--called HQ to notify the commanders we wouldn't be on schedule, that there were tangos in the area. Word came back from the company, not the military, to get those supplies back ASAP. There was something in there that was just sensitive enough for us to be handed the job. I still don't know what it was--and I can't bring myself to care. Actual military support was at least three hours away, and it was getting dark. We turned around.

"Company shouldn't have said that--we were all upset, angry. They just gave us the green light, y'know? Just…go ahead. We had official blessings for going after the guys who…" Jake's throat closed. Words were too big to squeeze out. He went silent and the tears pooled in his eyes. He and Freddie had been the only ones to make it out--and now Freddie was gone, too. Lance, with his easy drawl and lazy manner somehow managed to outwork everybody in loading and unloading. Tomkins of the smart mouth and quick joke. Wilkes--hell, all of them. Gone. That one day…

This time, Johnston stayed silent. This time, the words had to come on their own.

"So we turned around. Only half of us left, most of us on two trucks. We loaded up. I drove." Jake's hands were sure and steady, even though his voice was shaky, too quiet, and his vision was blurred. "It wasn't hard to follow them. They weren't even looking back at us. Right back to the village.

"The people didn't know about it--or if they did, obviously didn't think anything would come of it. We parked behind a piece of wall that was still standing, probably knocked over in the Crusades or something. We just ran in--we only had a basic plan. We didn't know what the hell we were doing. It was--we weren't soldiers. Never meant to be. I mean, we weren't trained for this. But there we were…and there were...kids... running in the streets.

"The girl--she was chasing another girl, laughing, when I saw one of the men walking down the street. I took the shot and she…she ran across just when…I couldn't stop it. I saw her turn and look my way. She didn't even have time to stop laughing and look scared. And then…nothing was there but a red mist.

"The round traveled and hit the man in the shoulder. It was an aimed heart-shot…but the girl…" The tears were flowing down his face. He couldn't stop them, any more than he could stop his hands. If he had to stop, he'd go insane. If he wasn't already.

"From there, it's all a blur. Firing, ducking--but all I can see is her face. Her eyes…" He wanted to ask the question: Was he, Jake Green, crazy? Would he end up like Oliver, the town looney? Yeah, the man had been in Vietnam, magnitudes worse than what he'd experienced, but still.

Johnston was quiet for a long time. "I wish I could tell you they'll go away, son, but I can't do that."

"Like you couldn't forget--" The words were sharper than Jake had intended, more bitter.

"Because they never will." Johnston watched Jake as the reached the last cooled set of brasses and started fidgeting, running the empty brass shell halves through his fingers. "Hell, I still have nightmares about what I saw--what I did--and it's been over thirty years." Lost brown eyes, the same shape as his mother's, looked at him. It was worse than when he'd had to tell Jake that Old Sass had died. Jake had cried for weeks after that horse, and looked heartbroken for months. That same look was on his face now, but Jake wasn't five anymore. He was thirty-two, and that look was one that begged Johnston to make it all right again. And he couldn't anymore take this load from Jake than he could bring Old Sass back.

"War is Hell, you've heard that all your life from me and from Dad, and now you know it for yourself. The hard way. There's only two ways of dealing with taking a life, son, and neither one of them's very good. Either you become coldhearted and uncaring, or you open the wound and let it breathe, accept what you did and try to live with the knowledge. Both have a price. The first, well, you've seen 'em. Dead eyes, dead hearts, can't laugh or live anymore. Some of those love the rush--playing God. The second hurts like hell and drives you near to breaking, but you can get through it. You're tough enough. Some don't. They turn to drugs, alcohol, sex, even insanity, just to ease the pain of those first years." The question was unspoken, but Jake knew it was there.

"Not my things, Dad," he said, his heart aching and his hope of some way of dodging this gone.

"Yeah. I know. They never really were." Johnston sighed. "Wish I could give you the magic words for a quick-fix, son, but there isn't one. You have to look at yourself, what you did, and learn to accept it, to ask if it was worth it in the end and live with the answer, no matter what it was. Ask yourself if you could do it again, if you had to. Some can, some can't. It's what the West, our town, was built on, that can-can't difference." Johnston looked Jake in the eyes. His own nightmares coloured his pale blue a darker shade. "Women and children--they're the hardest, Jake."

The agony hadn't lessened, not really, but something much like curiosity showed through the hurt in Jake's eyes. It was time that Johnston tell some of his own experiences, the way his own father had told of his own nightmares. It wasn't like sharing other pains, where the grief lessened with each sharing, but it didn't grow, either. The edges were smoother over time and recountings, but they could still be sharp.

He didn't know what was worse: Knowing that he, Johnston Green, had been to war and done what he'd done, or knowing that one of his boys had gone and found out the same damned thing.

A long silence stretched between them and Jake handed the brass bases over to his father to be filled and carefully packed before they capped the rounds. Finally, Johnston spoke again.

"We were six miles out of VC territory…"

Jake listened to his father's voice telling about a woman who'd thrown her own child, explosives tangled in its blanket, into the hovering chopper his father and the other Rangers were using to get out of the hot zone. Eyes closed in pained empathy when his father recounted doing what had to be done. He'd shot the woman as the chopper rose. The baby had been thrown out only a second before the explosives blew. The concussion from the blast had bucked the chopper hard, but the shrapnel scars were still in Johnston's legs. She'd done her job--wounded six, killed two, and put a chopper down for repair. And Johnston had to live with that. The stories rolled on back and forth between the men, the painful episodes slowly fading and the ability to tell some of the crazy, funny things that no one else would really understand--unless they'd been there.

Jake found that he could still laugh. Night was fading and the rounds had been done for a long time when he realized that his own pain hadn't lessened, but if Johnston could live with this, maybe, just maybe, Jake could find a way to live with his own sins. It wasn't hope, and it certainly wasn't absolution, but maybe it could be a beginning.

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A/N: A "deuce-and-a-half" is a 2 ½ ton truck; other jargon is (hopefully) correctly used and should be easily picked up within context.