Battle Cries

Replay

This day was familiar, the tension in the air was drowning everyone, the feelings strained. The warm air was chilled with a swirling breeze that surrounded their position. It cooled their skin through their desert camouflage uniforms, soaking their bones with icy cold waves of blood. The sun helped very little as it set on their backs from the twenty third floor of a half built building. No more than sixteen hundred feet below on the ground, crouched behind an old car, was their squad leader, Hender, and their best assault man, Chaplain. The two support gunners, Tanner and Hunter, were on the ground floor of the building the farthest to their right. The last of them was the youngest, Callie Donavan, also known by her nickname as Shade.

Tanner was impatient to the point where he would commonly run straight into battle and manage not to be seen or shot. Hunter was the laziest out of all of them, falling asleep during more mission briefings than thought possible. Chaplain was the obedient little puppy that would follow Hender to the end of the Earth if the asshole ordered it. Callie was a bit of a misfit compared to them. She was the most patient of the six of them, even more so than Devan and he was the sniper. Hunter considered her the shadow of a hellish thought. She was the most patient, quiet, stealthy, secretive, and the utmost calm. If people were shooting at them that very moment, she would be the first one to shoot back without blinking. The only time he could recall any enemy spotting her since they had been assigned, was when Hender made Tanner move to the wrong spot before Callie was done with her part of the mission. She was the one that paid for it. The enemy held her in a reinforced cell near the center of their base. When the Devan had finally convinced the rest of them to rescue her, she came up over the hill next to the campsite they had set up carrying all her gear. She said nothing about it afterward, but ever since she has given Hender the cold shoulder and treated Tanner like the dirt under her boots.

Though he would probably never admit it to her, Devan looked up to her. He admired her courage and the way she always pulled through in the most impossible of situations even though she was just a year younger than him. There was that, and somewhere deep down inside beneath his muscular exterior, there was a soft spot that truly cared for her. He loved her but was too weak to tell her. All of his physical strength was brushed away like the sand on his uniform. Even now, as he laid on the cooling concrete and looked up to her as she crouched next to him, he could feel love pushing away the cold and warming his veins.

“Take the shot when he comes out,” she pulled the view finder away to show the rest of her perfect face. Devan had fallen in love with her cool blue eyes and long blond hair that faded in to her dark roots. There were light, near invisible, freckles that were scattered across her cheeks that became more noticeable the more time they spent in the sun. Her face was round until it came to her chin which was about as sharp and smooth as her nose. She was just as strong as the rest of them considering how skinny she was and that was noticeable even when she was still wearing her gear. “From this far away, the bullet may just get stuck in the glass or hit someone else.”

“I don’t miss,” he said jokingly, still refusing to take his eyes away from her. She looked down into his light hazel brown eyes behind the clear lens of his goggles, watching as every emotion passed over them like a leaf being pulled down the slow current of a creek. They were clear and nothing was hidden behind the curtain he usually kept down. His dark hair matched his olive toned skin while the warm redness appearing in his cheeks was hinting slightly at embarrassment. His face was chiseled from a round shape that was still easily seen from just the right angle. Though they probably spent more time together outside of their missions, she still thought of him as a partner, an ally, someone to talk to or to annoy when the other guys were being ass holes. They had no relationship and probably never would in her mind, so she could only think of him as a friend.

“Of course not,” she laughed lightly, it was a sweet and smooth, honey milk chuckle. Laughing was rare for her, something she did when she was just looking for a smile. It always worked to; Devan did smile and let out a small laugh of his own. Callie’s face lit up and she grinned. This was something Devan had held close to him, because after that he couldn’t remember another time she did. It was the last time he could remember her smile.

Devan tried to blink away the feelings he let cross his face, the ones he had kept from her when they talked, but they rose in his throat, nearly choking him. Instead of blinking it all away, he awoke to be staring at the rough white texture of his ceiling. It burned his eyes as the rising sun made it glow a golden white. His alarm wasn’t supposed to go off for another hour or so, but that was one of the bullshit factors of working anywhere. He could probably go into work at three in the morning and everyone could care less. Getting up at five at the end of fall was not on his to do list; neither was having his last mission play like a copyright movie in his head. If only he had pulled the trigger, then maybe she would still be there with him.