Dayum. We're already this far, and the (hopefully epic, I'm making up this entire fic as I go along actually) conclusion is finally at hand. Well, not so much the actual conclusion, but an end to the MW2 arc. I just want to thank you guys for the support you have given me. I was actually losing motivation to continue because with the last chapter, views were dropping and I barely got any response at all, but thanks to shephard110 favoriting and Hawk-eye-33 (yes, the author of that SYOS fic I mentioned once) faving and following recently I have the motivation to continue.

And of course thanks to all you other followers, favoriters, and reviewers out there.

Anyway, I still haven't gotten any answers on whether I should write in 3rd person, 3rd person with POV switches, or 1st person yet. I'm assuming that means I just continue the way I'm doing this?

Well enough of this rambling, I'm sure you want to know what's going on with our favorite misfit gals who just so happen to be caught up in the destruction of America's capital.

Whiskey Hotel

August 17, 2016

Pvt. Jenna Moore

1st Bn., 75th Rangers Regiment

Washington D.C., USA

Jenna calmly started walking away from the Russian soldier she just decided to help out. She wasn't exactly sure what got herself to help her out. And she was right, they technically were enemies and were sort of obligated to, you know, try and kill each other.

"I guess I'm not a massive waste of fucking space," she muttered.

As she continued, she began hearing voices behind herself, and they were Russian.

Aw shit, they're already here, gotta pick up my pace! Jenna thought as she began sprinting very ungracefully. Unfortunately, the enemy heard and started firing blindly.

I'm getting to Whiskey Hotel, even if it kills me. I'm going to end this war and bring everyone home already…

Jenna curled up in the corner of her room, a near-endless stream of tears pouring down her face as she sobbed. No matter what, she just kept on crying. Through the haze of the water in her eyes, she could make out the photos of her parents nearby. Her father in his Marine cammies, and her mother in a flight suit in front of an A-10.

And burned into her head, the haunting image of a mushroom cloud on a television screen.

Three days earlier, she heard the intercom ordering the teachers to turn on a news channel. Three days earlier, she saw the news broadcast stating the US lost 40,000 to a nuclear weapon in the Middle East. Three days earlier, she heard the wailing of the other students with military relatives, she tried to fight the anxiety overcoming her. She broke out of the room to try and calm down, and passed a group of freshmen joking about the nuke and mocking the people who died.

"Pfft, why should I care? Not like I'm part of it, and it's nowhere near here."

"Worthless pieces of shit, dude. Not like they ever do anything for us anyway. Probably deserved to die."

Jenna stopped, turned around, and walked straight for the boy, her eye twitching violently. She took his head, shoved it into his open locker, and started slamming the door on him repeatedly, screaming at him incessantly.

"YOU! PIECE! OF! SHIT! WHY DON'T YOU FUCKING KILL YOURSELF!?" she screamed, hitting him with the locker door between words. "Fucking abortion survivor, you leave your extra pair of chromosomes at home!? At least my parents... fucking... LOVED ME!"

She let go of the door, overcome by the crying. The kid was barely moving, lying on the floor groaning in agony. Jenna fell to her knees, watching her tears drop onto the tile floor. She walked away, straight out the doors of the school. And no one was gonna stop her.

That was three days ago. Three hours ago, two well-dressed men from the military had arrived to inform her that her parents really were KIA. Those two flags they gave her would never replace her mom and dad, and they fucking knew it. She couldn't really blame them, though, they were probably the poor bastards who just happened to have orders to tell a sixteen-year old girl that she lost the only family she had. That didn't change anything at all, though. She would have given anything in her life if it meant they would die and her parents would come home instead.

When they were deployed, Jenna would live with her aunt, her mom's sister. She was kind of a loser, too, and spent most of the time out of the house fucking a different guy every other week. Dad didn't have any siblings, and Jenna didn't have any grandparents to speak of. Otherwise, she was always alone, but knowing that her parents were somewhere out there made her feel all right anyway.

Eventually, Jenna started returning to school. The nuke made a giant impact in her life too. Her grades began to drop like a bitch, and she started getting in fights and such more often. She found herself becoming a delinquent through high school. She was rowdy before, but she didn't know she'd be heading down the path to jail.

Now, just because she was a troublemaker doesn't mean she was an asshole. She had a reputation for being the friendliest delinquent ever, but she still distanced herself from others. She didn't have many friends. That being said, her passion made plenty of enemies. Mostly punk-ass wannabe gangbangers who had something against her after she trashed them.

It was nearing the end of the senior year. Everyone was discussing their assorted dreams and such, but Jenna had no plans for her life. Her parents were dead, and she never really decided what she wanted to do. She had a few ideas, but she wasn't sure whether they would approve of them or not. She didn't give a damn anymore. She wanted to just die already.

No one ever asked about what happened to her parents and whatnot. Everyone knew why she was the way she was, and it was a shitty idea to bring it up.

There was this one girl who had the guts to approach her about it, and her name was Brooke. She was the kind of person who you wouldn't dare make cry, the kindest soul anyone ever knew. Not even Jenna couldn't turn her down when she asked.

"What are you going to do after school's out?" she asked, her innocent eyes meeting Jenna's. How the hell could someone be this adorable?

"Uh… I'm not s-sure. I'm not really planning on anything. I'll just go where life takes me," Jenna responded, not revealing a plan she was formulating.

A plan to kill herself.

"You know, everyone tells me not to talk about your past, and that you'll beat me up if I do. But I can tell that you're not the kind of person everyone says you are. You're a human just like the rest of us. If you don't want to, you don't have to… but could you please tell me about your parents?"

Her eyes widened and she inhaled sharply. No one ever brought this up.

Ah, to hell with it, Jenna decided, telling Brooke the whole story.

"Have you ever thought of joining the military, then? If you say you don't have anything to lose, why not?" she questioned, cocking her head slightly.

Jenna pondered on it for some time. She finally decided that she would enlist instead of drinking a bleach cocktail.

As soon as graduation happened, she was going to go right to the recruiting station. On the way out, Brooke tugged on her sleeve and asked me if she could come.

"There's something I never told you. I've had problems with my parents myself. My dad left, and my mom was worthless. She neglected me for years, busy with her dumb gambling addiction. After he was arrested, I was left with my older sister, who can barely keep herself afloat with the income. I need a place to go too, Jenna," she confessed.

So the two of them joined together and ended up as medics in the 3rd Infantry Division. They were separated after Jenna got a request from the brass if she wanted to join the 75th Rangers. She agreed, expecting the war in Afghanistan to wind down soon anyway. They shipped her out immediately before she got a chance to tell any of her friends where she was going.

Sometime during that deployment, Jenna couldn't remember when, but… Brooke said she loved her. She had ever since she met her. She didn't even lean that way either. Jenna figured she'd swing however she wanted. Regardless, Jenna had a crippling regret that Brooke went that far just to be alongside her, and she threw it away.

A while after, Jenna met her again, this time in the bunker underneath the National Mall. She was KIA from the shock of the shelling the Russians were constantly keeping up.

And she couldn't forget the exact moment, either. Another medic had come running in with her cradled in his arms, her hand swinging lifelessly with her sleeve falling halfway down it. Jenna was merely frustrated over having to deal with yet another casualty, until she did a double take and recognized the unmistakable face of her lover. Brooke's dirt-stained strawberry hair fell over her face, and Jenna quickly brushed it aside to find her staring straight up at the ceiling, her blue irises still shining in the darkness. Two red trails streamed from her nose and down her cheeks, and her expression was almost completely neutral, her lips parted as if she hadn't seen it coming. As Jenna desperately tore through her uniform with a pair of trauma shears, the medic informed her that it was pointless and that Brooke couldn't be saved. Her chest was still rising and falling, shallowly and staccato. Jenna ripped off her rubber glove and took Brooke's soft hand in hers, and for a moment before she stopped breathing, she could have sworn she saw a calm smile spread across her face before her eyes drooped half-shut and her arm dropped limp.

And at that moment, Jenna regretted ever leaving her.

Jenna figured the reason she helped that Natalia girl was because something about her reminded her of Brooke. Her eyes were fiery but somewhere in there she saw the glint of innocence that Brooke once had.

She was headed to Whiskey Hotel to see if she could do something to stop the madness. If not, she'd finally get to join all of those she loved.

Later

Lost in thought, Jenna continued, staring at the ground. The sound of explosions grew louder, but she was unfazed. She looked up, and there she was – the lawn in front of the White House. Colonel Marshall was barking orders left and right, and she jogged up to him as explosives went off all over the lawn and soldiers desperately charged toward the front of the building. The incoming fire continuously pounded the dirt, but the Rangers continued to throw themselves into the wall of lead.

"Sir?"

"Moore! Why the hell are you away from your post!? We were under the impression you went AWOL!"

"Sorry, I got the message that we were to regroup here, sir!"

Somebody tapped her on the shoulder, and she was faced with an all-too familiar trio.

"Yo, Jenna. Where you been?"

She couldn't believe it. Foley and Dunn were intact, albeit a bit roughed up. James stood weakly between them, looking like he clawed his way out of a grave. His gloves were torn to shreds, soaked with blood from his hands, and his uniform was stained almost completely gray. His shattered goggles hung loose by a strap from a rail on the side of the MICH sitting on his head.

"JAMES! HOLY SHIT!" Jenna cried out, tackle-hugging him and burying her face into his shoulder. "God, I thought you were dead! I heard everything on comms and just… you guys should have let me come, dammit!"

James winced, his aching body aggravated by her sudden gesture, but he smiled and bopped her on the helmet playfully. His demeanor quickly changed, his expression turning into the most serious one Jenna had ever seen as he looked off towards the White House.

Marshall quickly interrupted, screaming, "It's nice to know the family's together, but we need to take back Whiskey Hotel! I told you to get your squad going up the left flank! MOVE!"

Without a word, the four of them began sprinting the fastest they ever had done in their careers, the impacts of shells leaving craters in the dirt. A mounted machine gunner shifted his sights towards Moore and Ramirez, the light attached to his weapon illuminating them in a circular flood of light. Noticing that she was looking right through the barrel, James tackled Jenna into a nearby crater and jumped in after her, the .50 caliber rounds pounding the earth inches from them.

He nearly crushed Jenna, landing right on top of her. It only took a moment for their eyes to lock and for them to realize what was going on before a major wave of embarrassment hit the two. A nearby explosion blasted next to the crater, its shockwave sending both of them into a world of silence. And yet, they remained trapped in one another's gaze as the raging battle continued outside of their hole of solitude. James rolled off and waited for the fire to cease, the enemy turning his gun to another target.

"WE'RE ALMOST THERE! ON MY GO, WE BOOK IT!"

He climbed out and took hold of Jenna's wrist, swinging her out of the crater and sending a few rounds at the hostile gunner as she scrambled for the nearest cover, the wreckage of a jet fighter.

"EAT SHIT, BITCH!" she taunted, sticking her middle finger out from behind the jet while rounds repeatedly clinked against the other side.

Dunn and Foley flanked the machine guns that were keeping Jenna and James pinned. A volley of fire dispatched the enemy soldiers and gave them an opening to regroup and enter the building. After clearing a straggler waiting by the door, they stumbled into an office.

"The way this day is going, seeing POTUS on the top floor cutting down fuckers with an Uzi would be the most normal thing I've seen…" James sighed, leaning against the wall to take a breather.

"This is probably the closest I'll ever get to earning a medal on the White House lawn," Jenna added.

Dunn noticed a muffled voice coming from behind a painting on the wall. He stepped up and took it off, revealing a speaker broadcasting a looped transmission.

"Hey, you keeping that? If you don't want it, I'll take it. I bet Ebay would pay plenty for that," Jenna commented.

"Shut up, lemme hear… oh. Sarge… you readin' this?" Dunn said, his voice cracking.

"This is Tojo 5-1 to any friendly units in D.C., Hammerdown is in effect. I repeat, Hammerdown is in effect. If you are receiving this transmission, you are in a hardened high-value structure. Deploy green flares on the roof of this structure to indicate that you are still combat effective. We will abort our mission on direct visual contact with this counter-sign."

"Well, let's get moving then!" Foley yelled, running out of the room first.

They made their way through the house, shooting, stabbing, and punching their way through multiple pissed off Ultranationalists. Working into the press room, an RPG whizzed by and slammed into a wall right next to James, and miraculously failed to detonate. Dunn helped him back on his feet, and they continued to press their assault.

"Two minutes to weapons release."

"God dammit! Vodka-drunk sons of bitches! Give us a chance! Assholes!" Jenna snapped.

Foley kicked the door into the kitchen, Jenna entering with her carbine at the ready. She quickly dodged a Russian's knife, transitioned to her M9, and took him down with her entire magazine. James slipped in and engaged an enemy who appeared in a hole in the wall while Dunn took point. They headed up a slope of debris into the White House proper.

Dunn rounded the corner and encountered a hall packed with at least a whole squadron of enemy soldiers. Jenna yanked him back and they tumbled down the ramp, moments before an entire storm of bullets filled the air just beyond the entrance. As James engaged the targets in the hallway, Foley pulled Jenna up and shoved her back up the slope. Dunn popped a flashbang in the middle of the group of enemies, giving them an opening to clear it.

James ran up and kicked a soldier standing on a sandbag fortification by the windows, sending him over the edge. They wiped the room clean, just in time for the sixty-second warning. Jenna glanced at the wall, and found a crude drawing of a mushroom cloud and the words DEATH TO USA scrawled on it. For just a moment, she stepped back into the center of the room and saw the floor littered with corpses, the likeness of the nuke in front of her blending with the mental image of the footage she saw on TV five years ago.

Something squished beneath her foot. She looked down and found her boot pressing into the face of one of the dead Russians. These fuckers had the nerve to mock the whole thing. These were the same kind of people her parents died fighting in the first place. These soldiers were doing the same thing across the city, the whole country.

"Thirty seconds to weapons release."

The bombs were coming. It wasn't going to be as destructive as what that drawing represented, but everything she and her friends had worked for would be gone, along with them too. All of the Americans defending the city would have died for nothing. Brooke would have died for nothing. Tens of thousands of civilians would perish, all at the hands of the US Military to wipe DC clean.

Jenna was speechless. For once, she had absolutely nothing to say. When another team of Russians descended from upstairs, she threw herself to the ground, reached for the dead Russian's LMG, and dumped its drum into the four who tried to face her fireteam. James gawked, watching her continue to shoot into the wall after the enemies were dead.

As the rest of the team departed, Jenna turned around, steam wafting from the barrel of the gun in her hands and leaving a curved trail hanging in the air. She pointed it straight at the drawing and fired what was left of the ammunition, ripping the wall open with bullet holes. She hurled the smoldering, red-barreled remains of the weapon at it and followed the other three Rangers.

Almost to the roof, they began dashing up the stairs, passing other soldiers along the way. There were only a few seconds left before the Air Force would fuck up everything. A Ranger popped his flare, sliding into a corridor and looking up a slope of collapsed roof. Jenna tore off her MBAV plate carrier and threw it aside to gain a bit more speed. Knowing that she wasn't fast enough to make it, she tossed her flare to James, who pushed his way past and climbed the incline.

They all went out onto the roof, waving the green torches at the smoke-filled sky. The jets screamed overhead, pulling away.

James dropped to his knees, a flare in each hand and sweat dripping from his brow. He chucked his flares off the roof, and took off his helmet, revealing his coffee-colored, wavy hair as he placed both hands on the ground. Taking a rag from his vest he wiped his face as Jenna stared at the expanse of Washington DC around them.

Green lights could be seen on buildings everywhere. She couldn't believe it. They made it. The sun filtered through a gap in the clouds, just beyond the Washington Monument. The silhouette of the tattered obelisk in the distance seemed to represent a beacon of hope, that maybe this shit would finally be over.

"So when are we goin' to Moscow?" somebody asked.

"Not soon enough, man," Dunn said coldly, squinting at the landscape and the unspeakable destruction before him. "But I know we're gonna burn it down when we get there."

"When the time's right, Corporal, when the time's right," Foley replied with a sigh.

And I don't blame 'em, Jenna thought.

James stood back up and looked at Jenna, gulping for air, dropping his M4A1 on the ground. She couldn't read his expression in the darkness. She recognized a slash across his cheek, and she stepped towards him, digging in her pouch for some gauze.

"J-James. Your face, let me-!"

He shot forwards and took her by the shoulders. Jenna found herself staring straight into Ramirez's eyes for a split-second right before he squeezed them shut, and she felt their lips meeting. His were rough, dry, yet firm against hers. She jumped as he embraced her on the spot. A few seconds later, James stepped back in embarrassment, averting his eyes, Jenna feeling her cheeks becoming a scorching red. She covered her mouth with her hands, tears filling her eyes, but refusing to release.

"…James?"

"I-I'm sorry. I've been wanting to confess this to you for a while. I nearly died out here. When I was buried inside like a hundred tons of helicopter, I realized that I could have died without you knowing how I feel. I thought this was a perfect time. Or at least, I didn't want to regret never saying anything. I thought, hey, nothin' to lose! Jenna... I... god damn it."

He paused, choking back a sob.

"I love you."

Damn. This was an interesting chapter to write, specifically the ending. Anyway, sorry if this one took a while to put out, I've been working on other things lately. Reviews are appreciated but not necessary. If you liked it, you're free to follow or fav.

*suspenseful music*

Seems like we've finally gotten an element of actual romance. That's right, I took the plunge, folks.

Anyway, hoped you like it!

QUICK UPDATE: All right, schools starting for me on Monday, so I'm not sure what will happen. Depending on the situation, I might update more or less often. My goal for this fic is to get at least 20+ chapters for it before it ends.