If you looked upon this street a few hours ago, you would've seen citizens smiling and heroes being cheered by the public for their courage and honor. But now?
It's a bloodbath.
Our troops were ill equipped for the speed at which the Canadian army encroached on our capitol city. They made due with what they had, and I can report that all citizens were cleared before the actual fighting began. But these people, these strangers in a crowd, they honestly mean nothing to me. They're just people. I honestly never thought about this seemingly minor detail before I joined the army: people die every day whether you knew them or not. Bad people, good people... it doesn't really matter, does it? To their families back home, the enemies we face are brothers, husbands, fathers, friends. It's not black and white, death. It just is what it is, asking nothing more or less from all of us than our lives in the end. Sometimes the end is quick, sometimes the end is a long time coming, but it always comes. I almost died. The soldiers around me as I cower in this stolen car are nearing death with every round that is fired from enemy guns. The people of my country may die too, if all doesn't go as we hope.
Blaine is out there somewhere, facing death like you face an icy wind when you walk in the snow: you just narrow your eyes and take it. Maybe that's why I don't care if these people die. The Canadian soldiers wouldn't care if I died, my fellow soldiers wanted me dead, and these civilians are happy to use people like me as a human shield for their own safety. But Blaine saved me. Blaine would care if I died.
I look up from the floor of the backseat where I am hiding. Puck's eyes are flickering back and forth as he watched the carnage, safely camouflaged in his compacted form. He's trying to protect me; he would care if I died too. That's not enough, though. Puck was sent to protect me, it's his duty to bring me home alive. Blaine protected me by choice. Now, as the cool steel of my concealed blade weighs heavy at my side, I know I have to choose to protect him too.
"Kurt? Kurt! Get back here!" I can hear Puck calling after me, but it won't make me turn around. I dive between and under cars abandoned before the attack, listening to the sound of gunfire mix with the violent beating of my heart. The persistent ache in my side from my old wound suddenly numbs as the adrenaline kicks in. Puck easily catches me by scurrying under cars without pause. "What the hell are you doing?"
"It's not worth living in a world that he's not in." Puck jumps in front of me, but he's easy to push aside.
"He left you for dead!"
"I've been dead!" We were moving fast, but this makes Puck pause, still and silent. "If you asked me before all this when the last time I was happy could've been, I wouldn't be able to answer you. But now..." The bloody battle rages on maybe a few hundred yards from us, but in our own little world there's nothing but a battle of wills. "He gave me something. He gave me my life. I owe him my life. And I refuse to feel dead before I'm actually dead ever again."
Puck looks me square in the eyes. I can feel him begging me to change my mind, but that's not going to happen. "Fine," he finally says, his voice quiet. "But you're not going to do much good with that tiny little knife. Let's find you a real weapon."
We watch the battle together, now more up close and personal than I had ever wished I would be to such carnage. Puck found a soldier lying lifeless on the outskirts of the street, and the gun in his belt had a full round. He dragged it back to me, and now I'm armed. Now it's just a matter of finding Blaine.
He wouldn't be stupid enough to be on horseback, visible over the barricade his troops hastily established, and for that I'm simultaneously grateful and annoyed. Captain Anderson is suddenly very hard to find. It's not until the Canadians have inched their way closer and pushed the Americans back more than a few comfortable feet that I spot him. He yells commands to his troops before taking a select group of comrads – Wes, David, and a few of my old friends among them – and running toward the White House, creating a protective sphere around our head of government.
If that's where Blaine is, that's where I need to be too.