A/N: Set a bit after Finny's death.
Stars and Stripes
All he thinks about now is the war. If Phineas were around, he would insist that it was invented by the bureaucrats and the dictators and the spirits of the men who made up Caesar – but Phineas is not around, and the war is.
Sometimes, every breath we take feels like a bone breaking.
And the breaking of bones, the closing of dead eyes, the asphyxiation you feel when you know that he's not coming back – they're all the same, really. All the same. And Leper and Brink, they try to take his place, but they can't.
Gene hates them for this.
And he tries to get the words out, but they're jumbled up in his mind with Germany and Japan and U.S.A. and stars and stripes, stars and stripes forever. And this silent desperation is worse than anything, ever, because he knows that Finny would have hated it.
And all he wants now is to go back to Finny's world, Finny's world of non-wars and technicolor dreams and the 1944 Olympics, doomed to failure before they ever began. But the windows are locked and the door is shut and nothing will ever be the same again, ever.
Stars and stripes forever, Gene whispers. Stars and stripes forever.
Finny's forever wasn't very long.
The End