Day Four: Opportunity

"They asked for soldiers, darlin', not scrawny little girls. The hell are you here for, anyway?"

Riza grit her teeth, a muscle in her jaw twitching furiously, but she remained composed. She was used to this, after all. You couldn't be a woman in the military and not be.

Roy, of course, was a man and was not subject to the daily vitriol Riza was. He snapped his head around, teeth bared in a snarl as his eyes landed on the perpetrator. "What did you say?"

"Wasn't talkin' to you," the man grunted, all ruddy face and squinty eyes. He clutched a flask in a fat hand. Riza wondered if it was the reason behind the flush in his cheeks.

Roy's mouth opened and closed and he sputtered a little, trying to find the right words to defend his fellow soldier. He found none.

Riza shook her head. "Not worth it. They can say what they want about me, I don't care."

"That's not the point!" Roy looked more affronted than he should have, and if they weren't in a war zone, Riza might have smiled at the look on his face.

"What is, then?" she asked him. "Whatever he wants to say, I've heard it before. I knew what I was getting myself into when I enlisted, after all, and if I can't handle a few snide remarks, then I really shouldn't be here."

Roy played with his gloves, running the cloth through his fingers. "I know," he said quietly. "But I hate that you have to go through that. It's hard enough being here without having to watch your back in a friendly camp."

Her shoulders slumped just a little because he was right, it wasn't fair, she shouldn't have had to worry about an attack from her own side. But she did, and every woman there (few as they may have been) had to as well.

"You had to endure that for years in the Academy, I'd bet." His voice was nearly inaudible over the crackle of the fire in front of them.

She nodded. "I did."

"How did you do it?"

She shrugged. "You grow a thick skin. You don't let it become the focus of your life."

"So, what, you just forget them and move on?"

Shaking her head adamantly, she answered, "No. I don't move on. I don't let them bother me so much that it affects my performance, but I let it bother me enough that it keeps me going. On the days that I think I might not be able to take another step, I remember all the people who are expecting me to fail, and I start running."

His gaze was faraway, and she found herself wanting to know what he was seeing in his mind's eye. "Why did you join?" he asked abruptly, and she blinked at the sudden change of topic. "Why the military, if you knew it was going to be like this?"

"There aren't a lot of opportunities for teenage girls with no next of kin," she answered bluntly. "The military was one of the few. And it suited me."

He started to protest, but Riza wouldn't let him. "There was a boy I knew, when I was growing up. He said he was going to join the military so he could change the world and help as many people as he could. I liked that dream. I thought maybe I could help."

Their eyes met for a long moment. "I think maybe that boy is glad you believed in him," he said. "Though he might not be too happy that you're stuck in the same ruined battlefield that he is."

"Maybe she can help him out of it. And maybe he can help her."

"Maybe," he said softly. He looked at his gloves, and the bags under his eyes seemed to darken.

There may not have been many opportunities back then, and there sure weren't a lot now. But Riza couldn't help but hope, as she sat next to a dying fire in the middle of a bloody desert wasteland, that there would be more than this in her future.