BRAVADO - Larry ✔️

7. What was I if I couldn't write?

"Whatever I lose, is put back by you in a way that you'll never know"

- 'Be There' by Seafret

-*-

Leah and Niall kneel behind a rather large bush a few inches away from the small stream that passed by the rebel camp. Their gazes roaming the horrid facility as their eyes flickered from what they thought were bunkers;holding the rebels all the way to a tower where a guard held watch with his rifle ready.

"Jesus." Niall breathed out. "It's like a concentration camp."

Leah looked at him with confusion, Niall looking at her with a shocked look.

"World War two? Adolf Hitler mean anything to you?" Niall asked in shock horror as Leah only rolled her eyes.

"Unlike you, some people didn't have the privilege to go to school and learn about their ancestors." Leah narrowed her eyes at him and Niall suddenly felt bad.

During the start of the war, many children had no choice but to leave school and train to fight in armies. As the years went on, few and few people were going to school. Boys and girls were joining Barricks at the ages of eight and training to adulthood. Many thought that that generation would be the most skilled in battle and might actually have a chance in winning the war. Leah was part of that generation. Put into a life of fear and blood from the age of six. She was now only sixteen.

Niall was going on twenty. Luckily for him, he had rich parents at the time who paid thousands to get him a decent education up to the age of fourteen until the dark part of the war started affecting his hometown.

Soldiers were coming. Recruiting any children they could find that was of a right age to hold a weapon. Niall was one of these children recruited but also taken from his family, never to be seen again.

He wondered about his parents sometimes, he tries not to because he knows it will start to affect his training but he can't help but wonder if his parents had somehow made it through the war. Were they even still alive? Did they wonder about him as much as he wondered about them?

Leah cursed from beside him, startling Niall out of his thoughts as he turns to look at Leah.

"The electric fence is interfering with the portal. No wonder they picked this place to hold rebels, bastards." Leah cursed as she put the small rock-like object back into her pocket. Niall frowned at her.

"We don't need it anyways. We're not breaking anyone out tonight. You know that." Niall sends her a warning look to which Leah sighs, running a hand over her face.

She was about to argue with Niall for the third time that day when a sound from above her made her stop and look up.

Niall looked up at the storm clouds above them, frowning at the quickly approaching black thunder cloud. A strip of lightning lit up the sky and Niall quickly grabbed Leah's hand, pulling her back into the forest away from the electric fence.

"Come on." Niall said over the thunder to Leah. "We should get back, looks like it's going to rain any minute."

**

I open a blank page in my journal as I take the bookmarked pencil out of the middle of the page shakily, it takes me a few minutes to adjust the pencil in my hands as it didn't sit right. I didn't feel right anymore. I didn't feel the way the pencil would slip into my hand, almost like there was a spot there specially made for the pencil but I couldn't find it. I couldn't find it because it only existed in my mind and my hand didn't register that my brain was trying to tell it where the spot was and-