A/N: I wrote this rather quickly after work. I apologize if it seems rushed!

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I had barely heard the air raid sirens of the base in the calamity all around us. We were shoving ourselves into chemical gear and gasmasks, and shoving our way towards the underground bunkers. All of them had filled by the time we'd reached them. I went to the safest place I knew; the basement storage area of the barracks. I held tight to the ones I loved and apologized over and over that I couldn't have done more. I tried my hardest to get my father and step-father to safety. I'd tried so fucking hard, but I wasn't a superhero, no matter how hard I tried to be.

My father was Arthur Kirkland. Still alive, but only a hollow shell of the man he'd once been. The moment his husband, my step-father Francis Bonnefoy fell ill was the moment everything went dark. He had no hope, and I was to blame. If only I'd been quicker. If only I'd been less selfish. If only I'd have given up my life for their safety.

I sat with them in the wreckage of a military barracks. As far as I knew, I'd been the only soldier to survive. Other civilians had left the tattered base to seek out refuge elsewhere in California. Somewhere safer than this irradiated wasteland. I sighed through the confines of my gas mask. I was wearing chemical gear, as issued to every soldier. I'd been able to retrieve mine from my locker with no trouble. I'd found only one other spare in the scrambling for equipment prior to the bombing, and Francis had forced it onto my dad, instead of himself.

My name was, and still is, Alfred Jones. Specialist Jones, for those who knew me as a soldier. I had been a part of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment. We knew we were at war, but we had no idea the bombing capabilities of our enemies. California, as far as I knew, had been ripped to shreds. The largest cities had been decimated, including the one I was currently in; San Francisco. I was lucky, during my service, to be stationed in Camp Parks. I would have been out of there only a day after the bombing, had they not happened. My unit was preparing to deploy to Europe and assist our troops, but we were caught off guard, and thus, defeated. My dad and Francis had only been there to see me of to combat; not live it themselves. Now we all sat against a wall in the wreckage that they had never seen coming.

Francis, since he hadn't put on a chemical suit, had been inflicted with radiation sickness. He was slowly dying, slowly suffering, and no matter how many times he muttered to me how it wasn't my fault I still blamed myself.

The reason we hadn't left with the other civilians was because Francis was far too incapacitated to go anywhere. My dad refused to leave him until his time had come. I went out and scavenged every day for food that was safe to eat, and water that was safe to drink. Every time I returned, Francis still had his head in my dad's lap, blood dripping from his mouth, tears in his blood-shot eyes, and his thin hand in Arthur's own gloved one.

I didn't know what day it was, or what time it was, or what we were going to do once Francis passed. As sad as it was for him to by dying right before my eyes as the days passed, I had to think of where to go from here. This base was a radiated mess. We had no choice but to leave if we wanted to survive.

I placed a hand on my dad's shoulder and he glanced to me. "Do you remember when Francis and I got married, Alfred…?" He asked, his voice thick with a British accent and worry. He'd been born in London, which we could only assume had been destroyed as well. He'd come to the US with his first wife, whom he had me with. I'd taken her surname instead of his; an unusual thing for parents to do, but it was my name and I kept it. Once my mother and father divorced, he found solace in a French coworker, who he later befriended, dated, and got married to when I was eight years old. I didn't really understand what bisexuality was or why my mother was no longer in the picture, but all I'd known at the time was that I had a really quiet and shy step-brother named Matthew Williams, and now my dad was happy with another person, who just happened to be a guy. My life was pretty good up until this war. I was happy. My dad and step-dad were happy. Pretty sure Matthew was happy with whatever he was doing.

When I turned eighteen, I enlisted in the Army. My dad and step-father were fully supportive, and were extremely proud of me for my decisions. My step-brother moved back to Toronto where he was born from Francis' first wife, and from there, I never really kept in contact. I had too much going on. I went through my training and was proficient in everything I did. I'd been deployed once before to the Middle-East for a peace-keeping operation, but it was a short deployment. I didn't really do much of anything. I got a small bit of combat experience, and received my Combat Infantry Badge from it. When I returned home, I was stationed while the unit underwent maintenance and was reorganized. I relaxed for a year on that base before the shitstorm that caused all of these bombings began. I was now twenty-two, and stuck in a nuclear wasteland.

"Yeah, I remember… At least somewhat… It was a great time. I don't think I'd ever seen you so happy." I responded to my parent. Francis let out a quiet and weak laugh.

"… H-He was so handsome…" He muttered.

Arthur chuckled very slightly. "… So I'm not handsome anymore?" He joked, though with a heart heavy enough to weigh down a plane on a runway.

"You always have been handsome and are still today even if I… even if I cannot see your face through your mask… a-and you always will be the most wonderful man I ever m-met, Arthur…" Francis' bloodied lips curled up faintly at the edges. "… I-I love you… I love you so much…"

"I love you too, Francis…" Arthur gently stroked Francis' cheek with his free hand, comforting him as much as he could. He and I both knew Francis was in pain but the stubborn Frenchman refused to show it beyond the visible symptoms. His skin was dotted with a purplish-red rash that I'd learned was called purpura thanks to the training I'd been through. It was caused by the radiation; something happening to the blood vessels. I wasn't too sure. I tried not to think about it too much. As morbid and sorrowful as it was, I wanted Francis to just die already. I hated to watch my father's beloved suffer. I hated to watch one of the men who had loved me like his own son despite not actually being related to me, just… suffer. That's all we were watching was his death, and it was so agonizingly slow. It had been a few weeks, at least. We knew we had to be getting close to the end of his life.

"I'm going to go see what I can find to eat…" I stated as I stood from the floor. Arthur nodded his head slightly, his eyes fixed on the dying man whose head rested in his lap. Many times before I'd seem them like this, watching movies or relaxing. Just never in these conditions. Never like this.

I walked off, stepping over rubble and debris, watching my surroundings carefully. This wasn't the kind of area you'd want to trip and fall. Sharp stones would tear open your chemical suit and leak the poison in the air into your body. Everything was gray with ash that had rained from the sky like toxic snow after the bombs had hit. I couldn't tell you how many explosions I had heard.

I eventually came to what used to be the nearest mess hall. There were no distinguishable roads on the ground anymore, so I had to guess based on the rubble what buildings they had once been. It made me gad I had walked around base so much and seen inside so many of the structures.

I shifted rubble around in the mess hall and after digging for what felt like hours, I salvaged a few cans that had somehow survived, likely tucked away in the back of a freezer in a basement. I wiped away some of the dust on the dented cans and attempted to read what was left of the labels to identify what they were, and found them to be cans of corn. I didn't find any sort of expiration date, nor did I find any openings in the cans that would have spoiled them.

My dad and I didn't eat with Francis, when we ate. Where Francis was, was far too radiated for us to take off our suits and still want to live for a long while. We left the building and went to a nearby bunker to eat, and as soon as we were done, we geared back up and returned to Francis.

I made my way back to the dilapidated barracks, and when I arrived, my heart sank. Arthur was sobbing through his gas mask, clinging tightly to the limp body of Francis. I shoved the cans I'd found in my pockets and rushed over, pulling my right glove tight to my fingers and pressing them to Francis' neck.

It had happened; there was no pulse. He had died.

I reached and wrapped my arms around Arthur, hugging him tight. He gripped my suit tightly and cried out in sorrow. I began to cry as well, not daring to glance to limp body of my stepfather that lay next to my dad.

"His suffering is over, dad… He's in a much better place now… He's not in pain anymore…" I repeated such phrases to try to calm my father but he was inconsolable for quite an amount of time. Once he'd finally regained the ability to do something other than cry, he let go of me and turned to Francis. I stood and walked a few feet away, giving him a private moment to say his goodbyes to his lover. Once I heard his feet shuffling as he stood and walked to me, I turned around and sighed shakily.

"I'll carry him outside… We'll bury him..." I said. My dad nodded his head and went out to the ash and rubble. He waited for me while I carried Francis out of the barracks. I moved some large pieces of rubble to use the crater they'd created in the ground as a grave, then set Francis in. I took smaller pieces of rubble and rocks and whatever dirt there was around to bury him, and then moved one of the larger pieces of rubble to the top of the grave to mark it. My father could only stare in sadness.

"I… I knew this was coming… but somehow… I still can't believe he's gone… I still can't believe that my Francis… i-is dead…" He uttered, voice cracked with emotion from the heavy loss.

"I can't believe it either, dad…" I murmured.

"Like you said earlier though… He's out of his suffering… He told me before he died that he loved me, over and over again… He knew he couldn't stay any longer… He knew he was going to die within the few minutes he had started talking to me… I… wish I could have gone with him… but he told me that he wanted me to live… He wanted me to continue on… and I'll follow those words. It's what he wanted… and as we always did, what he wanted was what I wanted; what I wanted was what he wanted…"

"We need to get off of this base… Find a car or something… Find somewhere less radiated."

"Agreed…" My father sighed heavily. "No use in waiting around any longer… Let's go, Alfred."