Okay... I'm back.
Two days ago I had several hours to do nothing but sit in front of my computer and write. It was beautiful. I kind of wish I could do it every day, but I think then I'd turn into a hermit and never come out of my room. (Maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing, lol.)
So... Thank you so much for the reviews everyone! I was really surprised actually... haha.
jollyp - Actually, it was more like a week since I'd posted the previous chapter, but yeah, it was two days after you reviewed. xD And thanks!
Zaviire - I appreciate the feedback! Thank you! :)
i - Wow. You practically wrote me a chapter yourself. Thank you. :D :D :D Actually, because of your review to the last chapter, I went back and did some revisions, so now I have at least three more chapters than I initially planned on having. (I might add more too.)
These two-thousand-word-chapters were kind of hard for me when I started. Not going to lie. I was used to writing chapters that were even shorter than these, so committing to at least 2K per chapter was a little bit of a stretch. But my most recent chapters are way over that mark, and I'm working on making the story longer as a whole. So yeah.
Chapter Six: My Eyes
"Where've you been all night, Claire?" Fang demanded, ambushing the pink-haired soldier from behind and affectionately ruffling her hair. "We were waiting for you to come back so that you could join our game of truth or dare."
"There are soldiers out there dead, and you're playing truth or dare?" Claire echoed with a sigh.
"Well, yeah. We're still alive, right?" Fang said. "Seriously, though. Where did you go off to? I started to worry you might have been among the casualties."
"Um, actually," Claire began, "General Ballad caught me after the battle. He wanted to talk to me about some things."
"Some things! Like what?" Fang exclaimed.
"Well, first of all, I was the one who ordered the retreat, remember?" Claire said. "He said I shouldn't have done that since it was a training assignment."
"That's a load of bullshit," Fang said. "You were right, there was nobody there. He was letting us run headfirst toward a bunch of machines that wouldn't stop shooting no matter what we did. He was letting our classmates go down!"
Claire nodded. "We got out, and that's all that matters, right?" she said. "Anyway, he, um… He also wanted to talk to me about the headband."
"Oh, God," Fang replied, covering her face with her hands. "It's been days since that round of truth or dare. He can't possibly still care about that!"
"He said that he knows Noel can hack through the passwords on the door, but he forgot about the security cameras. Or something like that. Anyway, he threatened to throw us in solitary again." Claire pressed her lips together.
"No," Fang said.
"That's what he said."
"Well, don't look at me like that! It's Noel's damn fault in the first place." Fang put her hands up in front of her as though in surrender. "I'll wake him up later. Was that all?"
"Yeah, that was all."
"No way that took you two hours."
"It didn't take two hours."
"How do you know? Were you watching the clock when you got the tongue-lashing from Ballad?" Fang said. "Ah, dammit, if he really did give tongue-lashings, I'd get myself in trouble every day."
"Fang!" Claire exclaimed. She couldn't hold back her laughter.
"Sorry," Fang answered unapologetically. "Look, I'm gonna go wake up Noel so you can give him the guilt trip. Be right back."
"Okay," Claire said. She shook her head as she watched Fang disappear, wondering what on earth could make a person so scatterbrained. At least, she thought, Fang hadn't questioned her further. Had two hours really gone by while she walked with Caius and listened to his story? She shuddered as she imagined what the others would think if they knew she had been gone with him for all of those two hours.
Caius, she thought to herself, testing it out silently. It felt like a secret, like something no one else knew. Something just between him and Claire.
She'd crossed a line, and she knew it.
"Claire! I've got Noel!" Fang shouted down the stairs, interrupting Claire's thoughts. Claire looked up to see her dragging a half-asleep Noel down the dormitory stairs. "Noel, don't you wanna hear what General Ballad said to Claire?"
"I don't give a damn," Noel muttered. "Why don't you let everyone else sleep, Fang? Honestly, whoever supplied you with caffeine is a fool." He rubbed his face with his hands.
"Are you sure you didn't wake up the rest of the squad, too?" Claire teased Fang.
"Come on. It's only… what… eleven-thirty? There's practically still daylight left," Fang answered, throwing up her hands.
"Yeah, and curfew was like an hour ago. What do you want?" Noel demanded.
"Well, Fang wanted me to tell you that… um… General Ballad knows you were in his office," Claire said.
Noel's eyes went wide. "What?! Does he have, like, security guards or something?"
"See, now you're awake," Fang said with a grin.
"He… did threaten to put us both in solitary," Claire added.
"God, I said I was sorry, didn't I?" Noel asked, burying his face in his hands again.
"I'm just telling you what he told me," Claire answered. This time she was unable to keep her smile from surfacing on her face.
"I'll never get back to sleep now, thanks to you, Fang," Noel complained. "I'll lie awake wondering if General Ballad is gonna show up in the middle of the night, wanting to get his revenge."
"So… can I leave now?" Claire asked Fang.
Her friend eyed her for a moment. "I guess so. But you can bet I'll have some things to talk to you about tomorrow after training. Good night," she called.
Claire sighed. "Good night, Fang," she answered as she trudged up the stairs toward her dorm room. She wondered briefly if Fang really intended to interrogate her about her night out with Caius. Her thoughts turned to Fang and Noel shortly thereafter while she glanced at them over her shoulder. She paused at the top of the stairs and watched them for a minute, but in the end she turned away.
Fang has an all-consuming obsession with General Ballad, anyway, she thought. Whatever.
She crossed the hall to her dorm room, unlocked the door, and stepped inside, shutting it once again with a click. Alone, she lay down on her bed and stared at the ceiling.
Why had Caius—why had General Ballad—chosen her, of all soldiers? She'd talked back to him on the first day of training; she'd recognized that their first assignment was nothing but a lethal trick of the light. She'd stolen his headband and walked the wrong way to training on purpose.
And yet he'd still told her that he saw in her a capable soldier.
She didn't know what to think.
Training began at the usual time the next morning. Claire walked with Fang to the training area, taking the correct path on the way there this time. When she asked about Noel's whereabouts, Fang said he was probably still asleep.
"Why don't you wake him up?" Claire asked, shooting her a confused look.
"Why should I?" Fang asked. "I don't wanna be late to training."
"You didn't have a problem waking him up in the middle of the night last night," Claire pointed out.
"Oh, for God's sake, Claire, that was at eleven-thirty at night. How can you expect anyone to be rational at eleven-thirty at night?" Fang demanded.
"Whatever you say," Claire muttered.
"Anyway, I never finished asking you what happened. You really got interrogated by General Ballad for two hours?" Fang asked, changing the subject.
Claire pressed her lips together. "Well, no. He made me sit in his office for a while. Then he interrogated me."
"Really? Are you sure you didn't escape the complex, run around for a little while, and come back? Because that seems like a more likely story to me."
"Fang, if you hadn't noticed, General Ballad walked all the way back to the dormitory with me."
"What?!" Fang exclaimed, stopping in the middle of the pathway. "You're kidding me right now, right? Why would you walk all that way with a man like that? How did you live through it?"
"He's not such an awful conversationalist," Claire pointed out.
"Not so awful," Fang mocked. "I don't think he's capable of talking about anything but punishment."
They entered the training area and split from each other, walking to their respective spots in the ranks. Claire stepped into her spot and stared at her boots for a minute before glancing up to see the black-clad man himself standing in front of the ranks, staring off into the distance. General Ballad. Caius.
As if sensing the pressure of her gaze, Caius turned to look at her. Their eyes met for a solid few seconds; Claire wanted to look away but somehow found she couldn't. She watched Caius's expression, wondering if there was some hidden message inside it, but she could only feel his eyes searching her, scanning every aspect of her face. She finally glanced away.
But as training dragged on, Claire found herself coming back to those eyes. They shone with a slightly lavender hue, and occasionally, when she looked to them, they flicked to hers. His expression no longer took on a derisive glare when he saw her.
She was tempted to return to his side to talk to him after training ended, but at that time he no longer cast a glance on her or anyone in the squad, and turned his back. Claire watched him, lost, for a moment, before she felt a hand clamp around her shoulder.
She flinched, and then cursed. "What—Fang, don't come out of nowhere like that," she admonished.
"Did I manage to scare the great Claire Farron? Is that what you're telling me?" Fang teased, nudging Claire in the side with her elbow.
"No, I—" Claire rolled her eyes at the sight of Fang's mocking expression. "Never mind. Let's just go."
Fang didn't budge. She stared off into the distance, where Caius was still disappearing around the corner. "Oh, no, Claire. Did you hear what he said to the back three rows of the squad just now? Don't even look at him. That bastard deserves to die."
"What?" Claire asked, turning to stare at Fang.
"He basically told them their families weren't gonna miss them if somebody shot them," Fang exclaimed. "What kind of jackass says that? And anyway—Claire, you have a really strange look on your face."
"Whatever," Claire answered. "I don't really think he'd say that, Fang."
"He can say whatever the hell he wants, apparently."
"I thought you were obsessed with him for a while there," Claire remarked. "I'm glad we're done with that stage."
Fang glared at her. "You shut up. Okay, fine, I concede. We're going to the cafeteria."
The two of them walked in silence for a while. Claire lost herself in her thoughts again, contemplating what Fang had said. She hadn't heard Caius's comment to the other trainee soldiers, but she couldn't bring herself to be offended. That was what commanding officers did. Insult soldiers. Lock them in small, dark compartments.
But walking a soldier back to her dormitory and telling her about a painful past? That was something they didn't do.
Later that night, Caius called the squad back together. Most of them complained all the way back to the training grounds, upon which dusk had steadily begun to encroach. The darkness crept at the edges of the sky, blending in with Caius's shadow. He stood in front of the lines, his arms crossed and his feet planted firmly on the ground, as the soldiers filed in and took their places.
"Soldiers," he called out, once they had taken their places and stood at attention. "First of all, at ease."
The soldiers relaxed, returning to their normal postures, and Caius began to pace in front of the lines, the same way that he had during their first real day of training. Claire shivered at the memory. What could possibly bring them back to that place of fear and intimidation, at this time of day?
"I have an important announcement for all of you," he said, stopping somewhere to Claire's left, at the end of the row. "We must leave on our second assignment tomorrow morning." He held up a hand as if to silence any protests, but Claire couldn't hear any. "This assignment is classified as reconnaissance, which means that while there will be danger involved, this danger will be significantly less than the last assignment."
Claire heard someone behind her exhale in relief, but she couldn't copy for fear that Caius was lying to ease the minds of the trainees. Wasn't the danger always very real and very present, especially concerning the Pulsian forces?
"Make sure you are here, at the training grounds, early tomorrow morning. If you are not present, you will face… punishment." Claire thought she saw his mouth curve up at the edges when he spoke the final word, and she had to suppress another shiver.
I don't think he's capable of talking about anything but punishment, Fang's voice said in her head again, as the memory of her time in solitary confinement flashed through her thoughts.
She still wasn't sure how the General Ballad who said punishment with a smile on his face was the same as the Caius who had walked her back to her squad's dormitory last night.
"Now that all of that is cleared up," Caius continued, spreading his hands, "you are all dismissed. I will see you early tomorrow."
None of the trainees wasted any time getting out of there.
"Aaahhh… Great," Fang said as she and Claire and Noel started walking back to their dormitory. "So we've got another chance to run around and get ourselves killed before we're even done with training."
"Fang, this is just recon," Noel answered. "If you manage to get yourself killed on this mission, I will applaud you at your funeral, because that would take skill."
"Hey!" Fang protested, smacking him on the arm.
Claire shook her head, smiling. She tried to keep her mind on the conversation at hand, and not the upcoming assignment or the many masks of General Caius Ballad.