Sherby: Thanks to Narni for the beta-ing! I have never had a beta before and it feels, frankly, a little bit special.
Enjoy chapter four – author's notes appear (like this in fun little italicised brackets), as I decided footnotes were mean.
Drop me a review, please! (Chapter title is taken from T.S Eliot's 'Hollow Men'. There are some references to it throughout the chapter.)
Sherby
ps Hello Sara.
One
Chapter Four – Between the Idea and the Reality
dark
i am dead, lying watching lying beneath lying still cold and the sound of the
a hollow man stuffed with mud
rain upon the wood
dark and wet the rain the sound of the rain upon the wood
i was warm warmer than this but now the wet makes me cold
footfalls above me fall fall no words for this mud
thine is the kingdom
i only slipped i only fell just sank now choke on the brown
i can see them above me, above running over, helmets slung on backward
yellow cloud yellow cloud run through it run through between the essence and the descent falls the shadow between the
because thine is the kingd--
captain do you hear me of course i can't how can i hear through the mud?
how can you hear through the mud? only days ago only days they were all alright dog boy and the idiot and the captain of course captain can you hear me?
that's right you can't hear through the blood falls the shadow
i shall grow up through the fields grow up through the grass in a
million years and there i shall be again no mud to drown my voice you shall see me then
me and my mind me and my
promises
lips form prayer to broken stone
i am far too young to die here i hope you reach in and find me i hope your hand hears me i hope
i hope
i hope
your hand for thine
for thine
i hope
oh god
i
8.07am, 23rd July, 1917, Messines, South East Ypres, Belgium
Shikamaru stifled a yawn by breathing in the damp air around him. He didn't really mind getting up so early; the light of the dawning sun, dulled by the grey smoke that blanketed the entirety of Belgium, it seemed, invaded the safe haven of Skinny as early as six, and so he was usually awake by the time the order came to clamber out of bed (unlike Naruto and Kiba, who, a year younger than himself and the Captain, seemed to enjoy their sleep far more and protested rigorously every single morning as Sasuke attempted to drag them from their beds. Soldiers, indeed!). Today, however, the Lieutenant had found throwing the blanket off particularly difficult due to both the sound and smell of the rain pattering weakly on the duckboards outside the dugout, and the fact that he had gotten very little sleep at all throughout the darkness of night. The words crammed into his head were just too loud; words he'd read on the mission briefing hours before that simply refused to be swept under the black slumber-rug. He hadn't tossed, or turned (that was more his Captain's style, who, Shikamaru had gathered from the near constant shifting and irritated sighing, hadn't seemed to get a wink of sleep either), but had simply lain awake, thoughts and strategies and worries dancing between the sound of the raindrops in his ears as he stared at the planked roof of the dugout. The snatched moments of half-sleep he fell into were plagued with dreams he didn't quite understand, and he was almost glad when another shift of Sasuke's mattress yanked him back out of them and into reality once more. Grey dawn had made its unwelcome appearance, arching through the twisted rain and casting silvery hissing shadows into the dugout, throwing watery patterns onto the walls. If he hadn't been able to taste the hot air of the morning Shikamaru would have guessed that he was underwater.
He had struggled out of bed a little wearily at a quarter to eight, taking note of his Captain's tired appearance as he went through his routine of yanking the covers off and repeatedly kicking the younger two members of his small platoon. He seemed to have a little less patience than normal when dealing with the slumbering soldiers ('not,' thought Shikamaru, 'that he has a lot on a good day…') and quickly resorted to filling his helmet with rainwater from the entrance to the dugout and splashing it over Kiba and Naruto. Shikamaru didn't think he'd ever seen them move so fast.
They'd made their way to the Clearing Station a little later than they should have, and so the small squad of nurses that they were familiar with were busy attending to another, slightly larger platoon of soldiers who had also been called in for a quick check-up before mission start (they were due to begin a march up to Gheluvelt on the twenty-fifth, with the possibility of truck transport if the weather was too bad). Platoon Seven (Second-lieutenant Shino joined them from his own dugout) waited fairly quietly for the nurses to finish with the other platoon, and this is how Shikamaru found himself suppressing a sleepy yawn at ten-past-eight in the morning, his belly empty and his mind full.
'This rain is depressing,' offered Naruto, his words a tad slurry with the remnants of a deep sleep. 'I was dreaming of a hot, sandy beach, and I was lying there, in the sand, and the sun was just falling down on me…'
'Quiet down, Naruto,' Kiba scowled wishfully. 'Keep that sort of talk for darker times.'
Shikamaru snorted to himself and chewed a little harder on his grass stalk. One day he was quite sure Naruto would find a good use for those dreams; those different places in his mind, where he could take a short holiday away from the grey rain of the trenches and enjoy a life of peace and laziness, but until the proper time came there were more important matters to be attended to. Daydreaming was for the man lying on the field, skewered with a bayonet and bleeding into the grass; for the man snipping the barbed wire under cover of mist and darkness; for the man watching a friend drown under a sea of hazy poison (Poison gas was used by enemy forces from the start of the war, although the gases initially used were mainly chlorine and phosgene, with limited effectiveness. Mustard gas attacks were tried and tested on the fields of Belgium in 1917…). In Shikamaru's mind – and in Kiba's too, it seemed – Naruto should save his pleasant daydreams for a time when he really needed them, and not run the risk of using them all up.
He was woken from his musings (hadn't he just told Naruto off for daydreaming?) by Nurse Ino, who beckoned the small, sleepy-looking platoon over to her. Nurse Hinata (Naruto had asked her for her name during the poker night some weeks ago, and she had relinquished it somewhat nervously, blushing) smiled shyly at them as they moved a little further into the medical station.
'You know the routine, boys,' Ino said briskly, brushing down her creamy pinafore. 'Strip.'
With a sigh, and wondering whether Naruto's nice warm beach fantasy was still available for access, Shikamaru reluctantly stripped to his boxers. The weather wasn't particularly cold, but the rain outside made the prospect of stripping to one's underwear a little daunting. Still, it was a necessary evil, and Shikamaru quickly took a seat in a nearby brown wooden chair, hoping to get things over with as swiftly as possible.
Nurse Hinata got to work on Naruto, who, despite the ashen weather, always managed to retain a healthy-looking tan, while Ino began examining Shikamaru. Each of them was armed with a small, fine-toothed comb designed primarily for the searching and chasing out of lice (one of the most common problems amongst men in the trenches). Sasuke, Shino and Kiba waited nearby, feeling slightly undignified, as the two nurses searched the boys all over.
'Found one, Lieutenant Nara!' smiled Ino. Shikamaru scowled as she pulled a fairly substantially-sized louse from his nape. 'Dirty little bastards…' he muttered, still chewing on his stalk.
Nurse Sakura chose that moment to arrive, uniform as smart and pressed as always, eyes bright against the morning dullness. She approached the waiting platoon quietly, watching her younger nurses work.
'Kiba, Shino,' she said with a smile, 'The other nurses will get to you in a moment. Captain,' at this she glanced up at the lanky Sasuke, 'a word.'
Kiba watched as Sasuke, pale skin stretched over his long body, followed the petite nurse to a quiet corner of the station. Content to attempt to lip-read from his current position and quite confident that his ears had returned to their sharp old selves, he settled down to watch as he waited for his own check up.
'You can't be serious.'
Not really in the mood for any of this and particularly irritable due to a lack of sleep, Sasuke grimaced as Sakura's inquisition began. How on earth she knew of the mission his platoon had been assigned he did not know. All that was currently clear to him was that she was just as angry and upset about the new mission as he was, but she was more prepared to voice her opinions about it. He felt vaguely unprepared for a fast-paced discussion with the woman – possibly, he noted, because he was standing there in just his boxers.
'Do I have to do this minus the uniform?'
Sakura growled, eyes flashing, and quickly pulled over a rickety chair. 'Sit, Captain.'
With a sigh, Sasuke took a seat. The downside of the situation was that he was semi naked and mildly self-conscious, in the hands of the woman with the fieriest temper he had ever encountered, being checked for lice and other hygienic malfunctions, with no breakfast in his belly, and his cigarettes lying out of reach in the pocket of his crumpled up jacket on the floor.
The upside was that Sakura had the gentlest hands he had ever felt. Not soft, nor smooth. Just gentle.
He wasn't given much leave to muse over this pleasantry, since Sakura spoke as she searched, her voice eager and a little desperate as her gentle fingers ran through Sasuke's thick, probably very dirty hair.
'Can't you talk them out of it? Surely they'll listen to you!'
'What gave you that idea?' He tried not to pay attention to her calloused fingers as they moved along his scalp in a way she probably didn't realise was relaxing.
'Well, you're a captain, Captain. You have experience, and so does Copycat! How can they afford not to listen to you?' He definitely heard it that time, seeping into her voice; desperation.
'Sakura, the man in charge of this operation is a Brigadier. That's a whole five ranks above myself, and three above Kakashi. He has no obligation to listen to us, no matter how stupid he may be.'
'That can't be true,' her fingers tightened. 'He can't just ignore the wisdom of battle-versed men for the sake of his own medals—'
'Yes he can.' Sasuke reached up and caught her hand – she was gripping his hair too tight and was pulling a little hard on his scalp. He looked up at her from his chair, and to his vision she appeared upside-down. 'He can do whatever the hell he wants. He's a Brigadier, Sakura.'
From his angle, he could see the pretty curve of her jaw as it met her neck. Her face was heart shaped and rosy. He could see the way her eyes glimmered with the desperation that had seeped into her words. Moments like these made him wonder how life would be if they'd met in another time; another world.
'Yamato,' she said, breaking off from chewing on her lip, pulling her hands back into his hair. 'Colonel Yamato. Can't he…?'
'Quiet as your mousey nurse during the mission briefing,' Sasuke said with a bitter half-scowl, recalling the genius that was Yamato and his silent, almost subdued demeanour the night before. 'Even he hasn't got a chance.'
Done with his hair, Sakura moved around to Sasuke's front, kneeling down and checking up and down his leg hair for lice. Now righted in his vision, he watched her as she worked silently, her face deep in concentration and not betraying the fact that her mind was elsewhere.
'There's no point worrying,' he started after the silence became a little too unusual – this was Sakura, for goodness' sake – and he didn't like the way his voice came out. 'We're following orders. You know I'll do my best to bring the boys back.'
Green eyes fixated on his own. She was upset. He could still remember well enough to read unhappiness in a woman's eyes. It shone a little harder than tears did.
'This ankle has healed up well,' she said, eyes falling down to his right foot, where the purplish blue scar of an old wound remained. 'Does it cause you any pain?'
He sighed. 'No.'
'Any other ailments you can think of? Coughs, colds, shivers, fevers, aches?'
'None.'
'How's the hearing?'
'What?'
'How's the-- you're a regular funny man, Captain.'
The joke was out of character for him. She drew out the smiles that he buried – had to bury – deep under the trenches, under the smells and the sights and the sheer greyness of the sky. In his worry about the upcoming days, Sasuke had forgotten he was capable of making a joke.
She smiled at him, a little wonkily, to show her mild displeasure at such a terrible joke. But she meant it. Her eyes slipped into that happy look she wore when she forgot where she was for a moment. He could see the moment that she remembered herself again; the vibrant colour of her eyes seemed to waver or fade in conjunction with the thought that resettled itself in the dust of her mind. Her smile disappeared.
'Look, Captain…'
'You don't have to always call me Captain,'
'Can you make me a promise?'
'Depends what it is.'
She chewed her lip thoughtfully again, still gazing up at him in a manner he wasn't accustomed to. The Sakura he knew was never this serious. Even when he'd limped into the clearing station a few months ago, foot feeling as though it was obliterated with shrapnel from an exploding shell, she'd been all jokes and tellings off and never, not once, had she looked at him with the eyes she looked at him with today. He couldn't quite place it, or describe it, except to say that he felt almost as though he had been shot. Not the pain – her gaze caused him no hurt – but more the feeling of being occupied, invaded; not his own anymore. This Sakura was quite different from the one who confiscated his cigarettes or smacked him lightly on the head for spitting. Sakura before him was a girl – neither nurse nor woman – frightened of losing the familiarity of the world around her. He knew the question before it was asked.
'Can you promise me you'll come back?'
Sasuke stared at her, hard, and she met his eyes as bravely as she could. He had to search for his own courage in order to answer the girl kneeling before him whose nursing pinafore suddenly looked a lot too big for her. How old was she again?
'You know that I can't promise you that, Haruno,'
'Why not?!' her reaction didn't surprise him, but the volume of it did, and he instantly pulled back into the chair, wincing. 'You're going to just die out there, Sasuke? Is that it? Throw your life away because you're too scared to stand up for it?'
He wanted a cigarette. Needed a cigarette.
'I won't think any better of you for trying to be a hero, Captain,' Sakura muttered, tears clearly visible in her eyes now as she glared down at the planked floor. 'The days of heroes are dead. All that's left is pointlessness.'
He hated her, just for a moment. Just as she brought out his smiles moments before, now she was deep in his heart, wrenching out the thoughts he'd never say within earshot of his platoon; he'd probably never say them out loud at all, just for fear he might actually start believing them and then where would he be?
'The days of heroes are dead… pointlessness…heroes are dead…'
He pushed himself up out of the chair, gentle hands quickly forgotten, lost in heated words and the exhumation of memories long ago buried. He marched over to his clothes – nearby, Kiba was just sitting down to be examined and Naruto was complaining at Nurse Hinata finding six ('Y-yes, six, Sir,') lice on his person – and pulled his trousers on quickly, aware that it was increasingly difficult to make an impressive exit when clothed only in boxer shorts. Sakura, having wiped any tears away from her eyes, approached him.
'Where are you going? I'm not done yet!'
'I'm going,' he hissed as he picked up his shirt and jacket in an ungracious bundle, fumbling a little distractedly at his cigarette pocket and ignoring the stares his platoon were shooting at him, 'for a smoke. God knows I need one.'
7.28pm, 24th July, 1917, Messines, South East Ypres, Belgium
Naruto was angsty. And couldn't stop fidgeting. He'd cleaned his boots twice, polished his helmet, played seven rounds of poker with Kiba (who seemed just as fidgety) and played a game of eye-spy with Lieutenant Nara that lasted just over half an hour (the result, which Naruto failed to grasp, was that Shikamaru's 'something beginning with "r"' had been 'rain', and Naruto hadn't realised that things outside the dugout were counted in the game too). The Captain was out at a final pre-mission briefing and so Shikamaru was head of Skinny for now, but an overriding quiet had fallen over the dugout as each of the soldiers contemplated the six o'clock rise in the morning and the events that may follow.
It was times like these, Kiba noted, where a vivid imagination turned out to be a bad thing. Unlike Naruto's fantastical golden beach, lathered with sun and joy and ease, Kiba's fantasies took a different turn the night before a mission – and he was sure he was not dissimilar to most soldiers in that respect. Every wrong move he could make, and every possible consequence of each wrong move, flooded his mind as though eager to hold him back and rein him in – to stop him from going. He knew, by now, that this was a basic survival technique on the part of his own body, and he knew it would all be easier when he was actually on the move, where his body could release a little of the thought-tension that was building up in his stiff muscles. Until then he was destined to be plagued with images of himself prone amongst the grass and mud and others, wound scarlet and bleeding into the night. Sometimes he thought that this was the worst part. Experience told him that the imagination of the reality was not the worst part. The worst part was the reality itself.
But he could face that when it came. What was that saying about crossing bridges?
Sitting on his stiff, uncomfortable bed, Naruto dealt himself another round of Patience (modern day 'Solitaire'). He was never really sure he was playing it right, as he never seemed to be able to reorder the cards like he was supposed to, but it distracted him from the silence in the dugout and the rain outside it. Kiba had told him off for letting his imagination get the better of him and so he decided to focus on a problem, flicking the cards this way and that and watching them with a puzzled look in his bright blue eyes. 'Too hard,' he thought solemnly as the woman on the nine of hearts smiled back at him. 'This is just too hard for me'.
'Here.' A hand reached over and moved the nine onto a black ten that Naruto's gaze had missed. 'The trick is to read each card, and not just gloss over them like you were doing.'
As Naruto watched, Shikamaru went on to complete a suit in around a minute.
'No wonder the Captain relies on you so much, Shikamaru.' Naruto's voice sounded awed. 'I've never seen someone think so quickly.'
'I didn't think any more quickly than you do, kid,' Shikamaru's face looked a little downcast. 'I just focus harder.'
Naruto smiled at him, wondering why the Lieutenant's face had fallen. 'Whatever it is you do, Sir, keep doing it! It's amazing!'
A growl from Kiba interrupted whatever Shikamaru had planned to say next. 'Can you keep it down, Naruto? I'm trying to clean my rifle and I'll be damned if your rambling is helping me concentrate! Do you want me to shoot myself in the foot?'
Naruto looked sheepish, and made to apologise, but Shikamaru spoke quickly, a smirk finding its way across his face. 'Come on, Kiba. Who cleans a loaded gun?'
Private Inuzuka grumbled something about Shikamaru being too smart for his own good, while Naruto chuckled quietly at Shikamaru's rolling eyes.
'He's always like this before a mission,' grinned the Lieutenant, well aware that Kiba could hear him. 'As irritable as the Captain, but just not quite as smart.'
8.45pm, 24th July, 1917, Messines, South East Ypres, Belgium
Another pointless meeting.
Captain Uchiha trudged home wearily once more from the Bluff, where a last minute preparations meeting had been called. Again, Brigadier Hyuga had dominated the meeting in entirety, and while Senior Major Kakashi had (to Sasuke's surprise) attempted to voice some concerns over the feasibility of the mission and the structure of the attack waves, his voiced had been silenced by such words as 'insolence' and 'mutinous'. Sasuke knew that Copycat hadn't been trying to be mutinous. Everybody did – even, it seemed likely, Brigadier Hyuga. But the Brigadier wanted his plan to go ahead and so the voice of reason was plainly drowned out by aristocracy and the jangle of future honours. Sasuke hadn't mentioned to the soldiers in his platoon that Hyuga had been working under Lieutenant-General Haig during the disastrous attack on the Somme a year ago. It lowered his own spirits to even think about it.
And the Yanks still hadn't arrived.
After a quick briefing from weapons master Tenten (Sasuke still had no idea how a woman had managed to rank as anything but a nurse, but she seemed to be good at her job, so who was he to complain?), Sasuke began the long walk home, accompanied for a short way by Kakashi and Neji. They walked in silence, engulfed in the smoke of Sasuke's cigarette. Kakashi did not complain about it.
The S.M and J.M had branched off at their respective trenches with quick sharp salutes, and Sasuke had taken the rest of the walk slowly. Despite the light rain and the conditions growing steadily muddier, he wanted some time away from his platoon to think. The taste of his cigarettes did little to comfort him as it once had, and it certainly was not strong enough to chase away the many worries that troubled his mind. Taking small pleasure in the fact that the muddy trench that he had walked through the other day had been completely cleaned (that soldier had done his job well), Sasuke eventually found a firestep to sit on and rested, elbows digging into his knees.
Sasuke had departed for the front lines four times previously to this, and never had he felt more as though he were walking right into his own doom. It was a feeling that unsettled him not because he was frightened, but because he couldn't forget Sakura's words from yesterday. 'Pointless', she'd called his possible (probable?) death. Un-heroic. A waste. With a sigh, he lowered his face into his hands, careful not to burn himself on his cigarette, and closed his eyes.
'Well don't you look peaceful?'
He opened one eye, but didn't really need to. He knew she would have tracked him down before he left; she was too nice a person to let him walk into battle with their argument on his shoulders. There stood Sakura, hair clipped back into some form of cute bun, wearing her slack off-duty shirt and a calf length skirt. She offered him a smile.
'Why're you out so late? You have a mission in the morning – I thought you'd need an early night.'
He opened his other eye and realised she was getting wet just talking to him. She'd gone to a lot of trouble, even if he thought it wasn't worth it. 'I can never sleep before a mission.'
'Oh, now that's silly,' she smiled even more brightly. 'Budge up! I'd like to sit with you.'
Sasuke couldn't decide if he moved reluctantly or willingly, but before he knew it she was sitting next to him on the firestep, feet planted firmly on the ground. It was a squash, and Sasuke, his bottom half on and half off the step, reached for another cigarette as the rain began to fall a little lighter.
Sakura watched him slip the Lucky Strike into his mouth and fumble around with a match for a moment before lighting the end. He leaned back, breathing in deeply, and closed his eyes.
'May I try one?'
Sasuke scoffed, cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth. 'Girls don't smoke.'
With a smirk, Sakura leaned forward. 'Oh really…'
Before he knew it Sasuke was minus a cigarette – the one in his mouth, to be particular. He snapped up, confused, before he realised that his cigarette was being held hostage in the rose lips of Sakura, who seemed to smoke it like a pro, inhaling when she should and exhaling what she should. A cloud of smoke wrapped around his face.
'I can't see why you like these things. It tastes disgusting!'
Sasuke frowned, the smoke stinging his eyes for a moment. 'Then give it back.'
'I don't think so,' the playful nurse said, the cigarette moving up and down in her lips as she spoke. 'I want to smoke the whole thing. See what it's like.'
Defeated, Sasuke relaxed back again as Sakura breathed in the taste of his cigarette. The rain was light and quite cool in the humid air of the Belgian summer. Sasuke didn't really understand why it was raining so much. Perhaps it was a by-product of all the smoke and rubbish their machines were sending into the sky.
Before he could reach into his pocket and pull out another Lucky Strike, Sakura grabbed his wrist sharply. He frowned as she spoke, throat craving the burn that had been stolen from him.
'Why couldn't you make that promise, Captain?'
Her hair was wet. It clung to her face in reddish pink ribbons. The rain fell into the sea of her eyes.
'Because,' answered Sasuke quietly, not really wanting to look at her heart face, 'I don't like to make promises that I'm not sure I can keep.'
The woman beside him exhaled heavily, smoke billowing from her parted lips. 'I suppose that's fair, but if you made me the promise then you'd be more inclined to keep it.'
It was mildly erotic, he couldn't deny it. There she sat, drenched to the bone, rainwater running down her pale skin (almost as pale as his own) while her lips flared, fitted provocatively around the stick of the Lucky Strike, he beside her, soaked through, pushed together on the tiny firestep as she (albeit somewhat confusingly) confessed that she didn't really want him to leave. Sasuke had never been one for idealistic stories, and life on the field had dissolved any dream or ideas he ever may have harboured for such a notion. Life was no fairytale ('The days of heroes are dead') and he knew now that he had to answer her in a way that would break any romantic illusions she may have of him returning to her as a brave prince in shining armour.
'When you're out there, Sakura, life isn't something that you can control, and neither is death. Fate wouldn't listen to some promise I made to a pretty girl. It would laugh at it.'
Sakura smiled weakly at him, eyes crinkling a little at the corners. She had found, of late, that she could read him like a book, regardless of the fine sheets of rain parting them moment by moment.
'Why is it, Sasuke,' she ventured, 'that you were so angry when I told you I don't believe heroes exist anymore?'
His face blended perfectly with the rain, almost melted into it, a shadow merging into the black of night. And as she watched, he remembered what he had never really tried to forget.
i am far too young to die here i hope you reach in and find me i hope your hand hears me i hope
i hope
i hope
your hand for thine
for thine
i hope
oh god
i
a hand reaches in grasps mine pulls jerks i am coming out i am coming out i came
i will not die here
he is saving me the hope of an empty man
there is air on my tongue
mud on my face air on my tongue sky grey sky in my eyes fumbling hands grass oh god grass and not a lost violent soul
a bullet through his stomach he bleeds into the grass black eyes dying
your hand
i hope
oh god
i
this is the way the world ends
'The days of heroes are not dead and gone,' he answered firmly, eyes cloudy and unfocused. 'No matter what you say. Someone died for me, not all that long ago. It's something I try not to think about too often, but that man's death was not worthless, or pointless, or anything other than heroic. Because he died, I am here. Doesn't that make him a hero?'
Sakura watched him quietly. 'Yes.'
'Then if I die out there, saving one of my men, making sure they can be here too, then what would that make me?'
She didn't respond, and he took her hand roughly, incapable of her gentleness as the memory lingered fresh and wet in his mind.
'If I made that promise to you, then it would make me a liar.'
She nodded now, eyes loaded with more than the reflection of the rain. The firestep was uncomfortable, and darkness began to curl around the edges of the dull horizon.
'What would you have me put first?' he asked her quietly, shifting a little on the step. 'My men, or my promise?'
Her eyes were downcast. She looked ashamed of what she had asked him to do, ashamed that she may have inadvertently pleaded with him to throw away his men's lives in return for his own. She was ashamed she had put her heart before reality.
'I'll promise you one thing, though…'
She glanced at him, a little teary, watching shadows creep up from the floor and stretch onto his white skin. Her voice was soft and trembled with raw tenderness. 'What can you promise me, Captain?'
He smiled – actually smiled, all the way – a childish, white toothed smile that reminded her of Christmas day, better times, souls that were not so crushed by the claustrophobic muddy walls of the world around them. When he spoke, her shoulders seemed a little less tight and the rain a little less damaging.
'I'll try my best.'
Dawn found them too quickly. Platoon Seven awoke early, none having enjoyed very much sleep. Shikamaru had noted the Captain's empty bed, but assumed he'd be sitting in the rain somewhere, thinking, until the mission began. He strode in, fully dressed, as the dull grey light cast its watery shadows on the walls of the dugout once again, and Shikamaru had nothing more to think about it.
The Lieutenant would never imagine that Captain Uchiha had spent the night sat on a wet, uncomfortable firestep, hand in hand with a pretty nurse. And he certainly would never guess that his Captain had been blessed with one of the most blissful nights of sleep he could remember.
Sherby: To be continued…
Yes, I know, a bit of fluffy goodness. You all love it. Next chapter the mission begins for real, and we get back to reality. In a world at war, none of this love stuff can last forever… can it?
Gotta love 'The Hollow Men', by the way. One of my favourite poems, and very appropriate here, I believe.
Drop me a review pals! I shall love you forever if you do! On a serious note, this story has received over one hundred hits, and only four reviews – one of these was from my boyfriend, and one of these was from a housemate who I bribed. So two legitimate reviews, and these are from the same person. Come on guys – this is cruel. Please, all I ask is a little feedback to let me know where YOU would like me to take this thing. Thanks! Sherby
