AN: I hope you like this chapter! Thanks again to Cullenista, whose insight into this chapter is greatly appreciated, and to those who reviewed or PM-ed me :)

The Conscript

BPOV

Within a week, Edward's application had been processed and his paperwork had been accepted, making him an official recruit of the land army. I confessed myself a little shocked at the speed of the proceedings, but he assured me that it was better this way as he was eager to be off to the front and that waiting was doing nobody any good. By the ten-day mark after his joining up, he was packed and ready to leave for Northern France where he would be joining the other American troops already stationed there.

It seemed that the whole town had assembled on the platform of the small Forks railway station, everybody keen to see off our men who were travelling to foreign lands to fight the aggressor. My father and I gathered there with everyone else and I searched the packed platform for Edward, desperate to see him again before he boarded the train for goodness knew how long. Eventually, I caught sight of his bronze hair, a few inches above the heads of the rest of the crowd, and pulled my father towards him, pushing through the packed bodies that left little room for movement.

As we approached, I got the chance to look him over for the first time in his new uniform; I could not deny that it suited him well and that he looked dashing in his smartly polished boots and with the regulation cap perched jauntily on his bronze head. I swelled with pride seeing him looking like a real soldier, ready to fight for his country and an unconscious smile crept to my face.

He saw us approach and went to meet us, leading us towards where his family stood, his mother clutching onto his father's arm for support and his younger sister, Alice, whom I knew a little from our families' extended acquaintance, clinging onto his arm the second he returned.

She began sobbing loudly, tears streaking her face, and buried her face in his chest while his arms enclosed around her. "I'll miss you, Edward," she wailed, and he patted her head soothingly whilst glancing around him to see if anybody else had noticed, embarrassed by the scene she was creating. After a few minutes of almost hysterical sobs, he prised her free and handed her off to his mother so they could lament his parting together, clutching tightly to one another.

Edward's father, Mr Masen, took that opportunity to have a few words with his son before the train departed, and though I couldn't hear what they were saying, I saw Edward nod his head earnestly and his father clap him on the shoulder.

At that moment, there was a call for all passengers to board the train for imminent departure, and Mrs Masen and Alice clung to him, sobbing and he returned their hugs slightly uncomfortably before detaching himself and heading turning to where we stood. My father reached out seriously to shake his hand, saying, "Good luck, my boy. Show them what you're made of."

"Thank you, Mr Swan. I'll do my best, I can promise you that."

My father nodded and paced over to exchange a few words with Mr Masen as the last soldiers joined the train. In a swift motion, Edward bent down and caught me up in a tight hug, squeezing all the breath out of me before releasing me just as quickly. For some reason, I felt slightly off balance and shook my head minutely to clear it.

He lowered his head until he was on a level with me, looking right into my eyes. "Will you write to me?" he whispered quietly, his voice ringing with sincerity and his expression nervous as if he were doubting my reply.

"Of course," I assured him and he beamed at me just as the whistle shrieked through the station. He backed away from me, our eyes never losing contact, then turned and ran off to jump onto the train. I felt bereft, watching him walk away and bit my lip, blinking rapidly to dispel the moisture that had suddenly gathered under my eyelids. I would not cry, would not ruin this moment for him with my tears.

The train door swung closed just before it pulled out of the station, smoke billowing from the funnel and wrapping around us as we watched from the platform. The men all hung out of the windows, waving wildly, and the station was filled with cries of, "Goodbye!" and "See you soon!"

Mothers waved proudly and smiled through their tears while I scoured the ranks for Edward, my eyes finally locking on his face as he leaned dangerously out of the train and waved, a wide grin stretching across his face. I waved back, forcing a smile for the friend that was almost an extension of myself. I kept my eyes on him until the train rounded a bend and I could see him no more, my hand still raised in a half-hearted wave as I watched him go.

EPOV

I waved until I could no longer make out the small station, nestled amidst the trees surrounding my hometown, and the last thing I saw before we rounded a bend was Bella's face, smiling at me as she watched us leave. I felt a pang as I lost sight of her and my next breath caught on a lump in my throat as my home was swept away from me, but I dug my nails into my palm to keep myself composed.

Turning resolutely away from Forks, vanished into the forest behind us, I carefully pulled myself back into the train and picked my way through the sea of men crowding the carriage to find somewhere to sit down. I was lucky; there was a seat free by a smeary window and I pushed through the bodies to reach it, collapsing back and closing my eyes. I suddenly realised that I was exhausted and unusually emotionally drained, and so I let my head loll back against the seat and my thoughts drift back to Forks which, although the train was flying away from, I could not yet leave behind.

The train chugged steadily on through the countryside and my eyelids grew heavy and slipped closed, the constant background noise of the throbbing engine and the muted voices drowning out my thoughts as I floated farther and farther away into sleep.

Before I knew it, someone shook my shoulder and I opened my eyes to see Tyler Crowley grinning at me. "We're here," he announced cheerily and I looked around to see that the train had pulled into a station and the low-level chatter had turned into purposeful bustle as packs were collected and men moved towards the doors to the platform.

Outside, we were shepherded towards the boot camp where we would undergo our training and before I could really process it, I was submerged in the life of a recruit.

The next few weeks sailed past in a dream. I was halfway through my basic training before I had time to process the fact that we were being trained up to fight in an actual war, and that this was no longer a schoolyard exercise.

The first real shock for me came when, the morning after our arrival, we were lined up in the courtyard outside our barracks and ordered to cut our hair. Feeling it being stripped away from my head left me feeling exposed and bare, vulnerable as if my hair was the last link I had with my home. The reddish-gold clumps that fell as the barber worked seemed to represent my childhood falling away from me, lying discarded at my feet. I suddenly realised that there was no going back, no remaining the boy I had been. I had to be a soldier now and I was unsettled that this hadn't occurred to me before.

However, as new recruits, we were filled with an unsuppressible optimism and enthusiasm that no amount of hair cutting, marching round a courtyard or crawling through muddy obstacle courses could dampen.

We learnt how to handle rifles and the correct use of a bayonet, how to charge and how to defeat the enemy in hand-to-hand combat. Each night we fell into our bunks exhausted and weary to the bone but we still managed to enjoy ourselves, reminding each other that soon we would be facing real enemies, a thought that still had me trembling with excitement.

During the months I spent training on the East coast I received several letters from my parents and Bella, but none of them contained much more than accounts of various occurrences back home. I filed each one away, however, and looked at them sometimes in the evenings to remind me of the people I had left behind. It had only been a matter of weeks, but already I felt a million miles away from them.

After a couple of months training by the coast, we boarded a ship that would take us to France and to where the real fighting was going on. We spent the days playing cards and gambling, telling stories about our homes and families, and speculating about what we were heading towards.

During my training I had been irked to find that Michael Newton would be in the same regiment with me, and although I had avoided contact with him as far as possible up to this point, it became impossible to remain distant when we were all trapped on the ship. Consequently, I spent far too much time in his presence, and it seemed almost that he attached himself to me, hardly leaving my side for the duration of the voyage. I harboured a distinct dislike for the vile child but tried my best to ignore him and focus on reaching the front, and on the letters home that I composed in my free time.

To my chagrin, I found these more difficult to write than I had imagined. Forks, my parents, my home felt so distant that I seemed to no longer know how to address them, how to translate my life as a recruit into a language they could understand.

My letters to Bella were even more challenging; I struggled to find things to say to her and, to my utter dismay, almost felt awkward at our stilted correspondence. As a result, my letters were shorter and less frequent than I would have liked, and she seemed to be suffering from the same difficulty as she had only sent me one letter in the months since I had been away. Nevertheless, I cherished it as a great source of comfort and entertainment to me and I felt that it connected me to the person I had been better than anything else.

Following a voyage that seemed to last for years, we disembarked and took another train, reaching our base towards the end of September. We remained in the camp for a further week before finally being moved to the front line for the beginning of October. Over the months since I had joined up, I thought I had been prepared for everything. I was trained, drilled and shouted at until my feet were swollen and I wanted to crawl into bed and never get up. I had stabbed, crawled, shot, dug and ran for miles, but nothing could have prepared me for what lay ahead of me in the trenches.