Right. So when someone tells me to write about a writer…I go off into a completely different direction. With crazy women who need to write to remain sane. And their delusions about objective and subjective reality (doh!)

Couple notes – this story ended up being based around Brecht’s idea of war, and the choices it forces people to make – each of the characters makes deeply unethical decisions that are, to a certain degree, the right choices given the circumstances. Which is sickening, and wrong (i.e: the way Jane chooses to “save” Alexander and Daniel). Please go read “Mother Courag and her Children”.

Writing style is interesting and somewhat…incomprehensible. I blame my inability to write for that one…but I was trying to go for…I don’t even know.

I need to learn how to write comedy…

Sister Courage

By Stormcat

“War is the continuation of business by other means, where virtue is unrewarded and may even be fatal to those who have it.” (Bertolt Brecht)

I: Did you know where they would put the bomb?

S: No, I did not know. They did not tell me. They just order parts. I have family. I need the money.

***

Jane types. She hears the voices, and she types. One syllable, one word, one sentence at a time. Like an automatom. She types.

***

I: Listen to me, you motherfucker! There were children in that park! There were –

S: I did not know, I did not know! Why won’t you leave - (I slaps S)

***

“Sargeant Mitchell,” Lieutenant Fisher says, and she almost types it down too, but this is a new voice, not of the realm of what she must write down. “You should go now.”

Jane casts a confused look at the interrogation room. “It doesn’t look like they’re done,” she says, her voice dull.

Lieutenant Fisher smiles. “They are. You must be tired. Why don’t you go catch some sleep?”

Jane nods. She clicks save, closes the computer, and steps outside. Outside, where she can still hear words, and her fingers ache to write them down, to make them concrete.

She walks down the cold, beige hallway, identical to every other hallway in the Kabul interrogation center. She turns the corner. There is a window, in one of the hallways, she can’t remember which one. Through it, you can sometimes see the city. Sometimes. But mostly not. Because she mostly works during the day. So when she can see the window, it’s at night, or in the early, early morning, when the light from outside is cold, and gray.

Cold and gray. Like her.

In the cafeteria, they serve pizza, and chips, and brownies. Just like high school, Jane thinks. Just like high school. She finds this somehow reassuring. Some things will always stay the same.

***

“What happened to her?” Daniel Fisher asks Alexander Solomon, the interrogator. It is late. Their work is done for the day.

“She was in Iraq,” Solomon says, drinking his beer. “In Fallujah. A staff sargeant. Had twenty people under her command.”

“Her?” Fisher replies, shocked. “You’re kidding. I barely feel safe allowing her around a computer.”

Solomon nods. “Yeah, well. You didn’t know her before”

A long silence. And then: “What was she like before?”

Solomon considered. “Always quiet. That hasn’t changed. But tough. Very tough. And disturbingly ironic.”

Fisher waits. There is more, but Solomon does not speak.

“Ah,” Solomon says finally. “She was indescribable. She was…well, let’s put it this way: if I was the marrying kind, she was the kind of woman I would marry.”

Fisher looks down at his coffee, watching the steam coil up into the cold air of mid-winter Afghanistan. “I see.”

“But she’s clearly not my type,” Solomon hastens to add.

Fisher smiles. “Of course not.”

“Stop being ironical, you know what I mean.”

“Indeed, I think I know what you mean more than you do.”

“For heaven’s sake, Dan – Fisher. I was trying to give an example. And besides, she was engaged.”

Fisher rolls his eyes. “Like that would stop you.” Then the words actually process, and his eyes widen. “Was?”

Solomon makes a face. He takes another drink of his beer. The silence stretches before them like a dark horizon.

Changing the subject, Fisher says: “You lost your temper today.”

Solomon sighs. “I know.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I know.”

***

I: Let’s try this again. You work for Ahmad Shal Abdali, correct?

S: Yes. I worked for Ahmad Shal Abdali. I no longer work for him.

I: When did you stop?

S: When (unintelligible)

I: I’m sorry, can you speak up?

S: I said, when he started working with the Taliban again.

I: Ah.

***

There is a long moment of silence, long enough for Jane to push away from her computer and flex her hands. They are cold. They are always cold. She has bad circulation.

The writing, bland and automatom as it may be, soothes her. In her hands, a conversation, words in the air, vibrations; an invisible, untouchable, somehow unreal entity becomes real. Tangible. Recorded. Air becomes ink. There is no room for improvisation or imagination. It is all concrete, planned, prepared. Every word uttered becomes a word written down. Controllable.

***

I: He did start working for the Taliban again, then.

S: Yes.

***

Six months ago, Jane would have heard the pause, the long, drawn out pause between the interogator’s affirmation and the subject’s reply. The grudging acknowlegment. Grudging: subjective. Subjective doesn’t matter anymore. Subjective is up in the air. It can be changed, it can be interpreted, it can be misunderstood. Objective matters. The subject answered the question. He answered it with the word “yes”. This is the word Jane writes down.

It is the objective, tangible truth.

No intangibles.

Not anymore.

Her fingers continue their journey across the keyboard, inscribing word after word after word. She was always a fast typer. Faster than anyone at home, anyways. At home, there was her, and Dad, who always needed the computer for work and Mom, who took every chance she could to surf the net. They couldn’t afford a second computer. So Jane learned how to type fast in self-defense, so she could make the best use of her time when she did get a chance on the machine.

***

I: I find it hard to believe that you would give up such a good job, just for…

S: The Taliban are dangerous – I have a family to think of! I don’t –

I: I understand. You do have a family to think of. And work is scarce. If such a job came around for me, I’m not sure I would be able to say no. Even if the price was very high. After all, you were not the one working for the Taliban. You had nothing to do with

S: Yes! Yes!

***

The local library was terrible in terms of children’s books. It had C.S Lewis: humorless, and dry. Two Roald Dahls, which quickly became Jane’s favorites: Mathilda and The Witches. A few boxcar children and Nancy Drews.

When Jane had exhausted those, she turned to the more adult books, of which there weren’t many either – except for the paperback romances, which came off the shelf faster than anything else.

But what fascinated Jane were the copies of speeches. The library had a set of so-called “great” speeches, tiny booklets bound in cheap red paper that left stains on your fingers. No one read them, except for the occasional high-schooler in need of a quick quote, or perfunctory research.

They were all in one corner of the library, the one furthest from the front desk, but close to the front door. Which was perfect for Jane’s purposes. Hidden, with quick escape.

She would curl up on the floor with a stack of booklets next to her and start to read. The pages were thin paper, where the words on the back competed with the words on the front, and the font was much too small. But still, there was that magic. A hundred or more years ago someone had actually said this – exactly this. Not like fiction, which was all made up. This was true. This had happened. Real. To have a piece of reality, to experience something which, by the laws of nature and time, she never should have experienced.

“Sergeant Mitchell,” Lieutenant Fisher says. “We’re bringing in someone new.”

Jane looks up, blinks. Someone new. She nods.

“Name is Faisal Sharwi.”

She opens up a blank document, types in: “Faisal Sharwi 01/10/06 Lieutenant Alexander Solomon, assisted by Lieutenant Daniel Fisher. Written by: Sergeant Jane Mitchell”

Someone new.

***

I: Now, I have it on authority from your man – your man, Mr. Sharwi – that you were working with the Taliban.

S: You are stupid if you believe him. He is only trying to save himself.

I: We also have independent evidence –

S: What do I care for your independent evidence? You are American. You make it up. To put me in jail.

I: That’s ridiculous.

S: You think we don’t hear things here? Abu Ghraib? Guantanamo? Where people are in jail for doing nothing?

I: This would be a lot more convincing if you were actually innocent. But, Mr. Sharwi, you were seen...

***

A sudden pause. Jane looks up. Lieutenant Fisher frowns; Lieutenant Solomon is beckoning him forwards.

Ah. A translation. Jane understands. She doesn’t like this: a translation is never as good as the original. It becomes subjective again, uncontrolled. And there is an intermediary. Lieutenant Fisher seems trustworthy enough, but he is still standing between her and the objective, hard truth.

She takes a few deep breaths. Positions her hands again. Makes sure not to see the interrogation table. She doesn’t want to see them, any of them. She only wants to hear. There is only her, and the voice, and the computer.

***

S: It doesn’t matter what you do to me. It doesn’t matter what you think. Afghanistan will be rid of you soon enough. We are the death of empires, we will destroy you and your pathetic -

I: Mr. Sharwi, could we return to the subject at hand? Now, I know that you have been smuggling munitions into Afghanistan, and the Taliban have been using these to create

***

Jane’s hands still. Stop. She breaths. She breaths. She breaths. Three letters. IED. IED. Improvised. Explosive. Device.

Bomb.

A flash of searing white across her eyes. Everyone thinks it will be red, and orange, an explosion. But no. It is white. And black.

IED.

Her fingers shake. She can’t hear anything. Anything. There is nothing for her to write. Except those three letters.

IED

Simple. Easy. A child could do it. Three letters. If she changed the order, it would be so easy. So easy. EID. DIE.

Die.

***

“Sergeant Mitchell?” Fisher asks. She’s not moving. Her hands are still over the keyboard. Her eyes are staring at the screen, but she’s not seeing the screen. Her eyes are wide. Horrified.

He’s never seen her like this. Only with her usual, blank gaze, disturbing, but not frightening. This – this makes him want to jump out of his skin. And run. Far, far away.

“Sergeant Mitchell?”

She’s not breathing. Christ. Jesus H. Christ.

“Jane!” Fisher yells, grabbing her and shaking her.

She screams, throwing herself away from his touch. The scream is horrible, keening, wailing, like the scream of a dying animal, not even human. He tries to still her, to steady her, but she fights, still screaming, her eyes wide with terror.

“Solomon!” Fisher yells. “Solomon! DANIEL!”

Solomon takes one look at her, and understanding floods his face. But instead of coming to help him, instead of calling for help, his face twists into something unrecognizable and he turns back to the subject.

***

Jane is aware of nothing except the fire. And the nothingness. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Die.

Death.

Hands on her, holding her, pinning her down; she fights, she kicks, she screams, all knowledge of self-defense gone from her mind. Years of training. Gone. Nothing except the nothing. The nothingness of death, come to take her.

No. No. No. No.

And then, a voice through the fire. “You see? You see what you did to her? What you’re doing to her? You - ”

New words, words to write down, words to control, replacing the nothing. Jane can breath again, but it is only to feel pain, and to hear horror. Pain which is almost worse than the nothing.

“Daniel!” Lieutenant Fisher yells again. And something is wrong. Jane must write. She needs to write. She needs to get away from the nothing, the pain, and then it fills her again, the nothing, as the hands leave her. “No! Stop!” Fisher screams. How do you write a scream? Dimly, Jane’s mind latches onto the question, and she considers it, before hearing more screams. New ones. New. But familiar. And she starts to scream again, as the flash of white and black crosses her eyes.

“Get out!” Fisher yells, hysterical. He is yelling at her. But she can’t get out. She can’t move. She can’t think. No. He can’t make her leave. He can’t. This is the only place where she is safe, the place with the words –

“GET OUT!” Fisher roars, and she feels hands on her again, and the sensation of being lifted, and then of a door being slammed, and Jane is outside again, in the hallway, and all is light, and white, and there is nothing between her and the nothing.

Jane runs. Dimly, the small part of her brain that is still coherent, still functioning, registers that she is crying. And babbling.

She runs.

Outside, where it is cold and the sun is far too bright. Across the compound to the barracks. Her room. She hits the door at a full run, not slowing down. She registers the pain, but it is nothing. Nothing compared to the fire. Her hands find the knob, she turns, closes the door. Her last sane act.

***

“Take him back to his cell, immediately,” Lieutenant Fisher orders, thankful for small blessings. The subject is not damaged. At least not visibly. And no one would question if he was. Hurrah for American standards of interrogation.

The guard nods.

Fisher returns to the room, ignoring Solomon, who is slumped in a chair. He needs to ignore him; if he pays attention, he will either beat him up bloody or break down himself.

Fisher stills the trembling in his hands, and opens the door to the hallway. Where he threw out the still-screaming girl.

A terrible idea, Fisher knows, but in the hysteria of the moment, with Daniel – with Solomon – Christ, he can’t even bring himself to say it. And her. Screaming. As though death itself had gotten a hold of her. He couldn’t bear her screaming. Her silent judgement. Though she was probably unaware of anything beyond herself.

He expects to see her in the hallway. Crying, maybe. Or sane again. Or – well. He’s not sure.

But she’s gone.

***

No paper. She doesn’t have any paper. No matter.

IED. IED. IED.

She writes it again and again and again. Everywhere.

Now it is nothing but a word. Tangible. Controllable. Erasable. She controls it. It can’t hurt her.

Die. Die. Die. Die.

Bomb. Bomb. Bomb.

Three letters. Four letters. How small. How insignificant. She controls them. She can make them small, or large, or disappear altogether. She can change the course of events: “Bomb. Doesn’t. Go. Off.”

Easy. Simple.

It’s okay. She thinks, as the whiteness of pain overtakes her. It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.

***

“The door’s fucking locked.” Solomon says. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! You idiot!”

Fisher endures the criticism silently. He understands. “I’m sorry,” he says, quietly. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“You didn’t – she was safe! She was doing all right!”

“Well, no, she really wasn’t,” Fisher snaps finally. This quiets Solomon for a moment.

“We have to get in there,” he says.

Fisher extracts something from his pocket. “Let me try,” he says, gently pushing Solomon out of the way. He can feel Solomon’s body tense, protest against the intrusion, but it is necessary. He kneels, and puts his key in the lock. The wrong key, admittedly, but…

The compound is quite safe. So safe that the locks in the barracks aren’t exactly high-tech. One key might well substitute for the other.

“Damn,” Fisher swears, quietly, and looks inside the lock, trying to find the right angle. He twists the key awkwardly, and hears a click. “Bingo.”

Solomon shoves him aside, roughly, and yanks the door open. Fisher hears a sharp intake of breath.

Jesus.

The tiny barracks room is covered – covered, from floor to ceiling, passing through the walls, the lamp, the bedspread, and every other surface in the room – in writing.

IED, Fisher reads. Bomb. Die.

Jesus H. Christ.

And on the floor, holding a ballpoint pen like a drowning creature hanging onto a piece of floating wood, curled up in fetal position, her eyes closed, is Sergeant Mitchell. Surrounded by blood.

Her wrists…

Fisher drops to the floor, turning her over and placing two fingers on her neck. She is limp in his arms, unmoving except for the deathgrip on the pen.

Her pulse is sluggish, but not fatally so. She hasn’t lost a lot of blood. Yet.

“We need to call a doctor,” Fisher says. “Now.”

He searches the room for something he can bind her wrists with. “Solomon? Doctor?”

“We can’t,” Solomon says in a strangled voice. “They’ll send her away.

***

They are in Solomon’s room, both stuffed into the tiny couch. The bed is occupied by the Sergeant, who is sleeping. Her wrists are bound in carefully applied bandages. A small dose of morphine swims in her veins, to calm her down. Fisher doesn’t want to know why Solomon had it in the first place, but it was a godsend.

“Thank you,” Solomon says, handing Fisher a glass of water. “For her.”

“I’m not a doctor,” Fisher says again. “I’m not. A doctor. She needs a doctor.”

Solomon tries a smile. “But you’re going to be a doctor,” he points out. His smile disappears under Fisher’s gaze. “I’m sorry. But you know what’ll happen if we take her to the doctor. They’ll send her home.”

“I fail to see why this is a bad thing,” Fisher pointed out. “I would kill to go home at this point. And she just tried to commit suicide. She needs help.”

“Like she’ll get it at home,” Solomon says bitterly. Fisher turns to him, silent.

“I feel like you owe me an explanation,” he says, finally.

***

The heat is the worst. Jane grew up in Mississippi, under a hot sun. A sun that scorched the tips of leaves, a sun that made their sidewalks death to bare feet. No air conditioning, no pool, no sprinkler could penetrate the wall of fire that surrounded the town.

But Iraq is, if possible, even worse.

Jane pulls off her sweat-soaked shirt and slides a new one on. Black, not white: a lesson learned. She puts on the pieces of her armor one by one, checking straps, pulling the laces tight against her body. The rough fabric hurts her already irritated skin, but there’s nothing for it. She bends over, feeling the weight of the armor on her. Thirty three pounds.

Once she adds the helmet, the weapons and her pack, she’s carrying sixty pounds.

She weighs one twenty herself, and by the end of her third tour in Iraq, it’s pure muscle, no fat. She’s one of the guys now, only remembering that she’s female for a week out of every month. Tampons and Ted: reminders of that she carries ovaries instead of gonads.

The heavily armored vehicle is a sauna. She’s drinking almost twice what’s recommended these days. She’s even started drinking Gatorade, which she hates on principle, but with the amount of water she’s losing, she doesn’t have a choice. Any drink with advertising that annoying should be dumped in a sewer. Then again, Jane would like to avoid passing out in a sewer due to lack of electrolytes.

There are kids playing soccer in a side-street they pass. They yell excitedly as the ball goes through an open door, and race after it. There is even a small girl with them, her pink skirt covered with dust from the road.

Jane smiles.

She’s used to strange gender roles. The town she grew up in, Evansville, was dying. Five thousand residents. Two hundred under the age of twenty. Two thousand over the age of fifty.

Her family lives in a tiny house in the center of town. They’re a step higher than the trailer-folk, but not much higher: the house is rented, and quickly degrading.

With two hundred kids, you get to know the others fast. And those who live the closest to her are Ted and Daniel, the Solomon kids.

Daniel was her age, black haired, tan as all hell, stick-thin with pointed elbows and knees. He was one of those outrageously friendly types, vivacious, full of life, always dragging her and Ted on some adventure. He didn’t care what other people thought of him, only what was fun.

He played equally with barbies and with toy tanks. He knew how to sew – even how to knit. Jane still has the scarf he knit for her in eight grade. He liked to dance, and he liked to fight. He was the best soccer player in all of Evansville, and he baked the best vanilla cake in the tri-county area. Best of all, he didn’t care that Jane was a girl, or unnaturally small, even for her age. He brought her into his strangely genderless circle, and played with her, and fought with her, and talked to her. He taught her how to take a punch, and give one, and she taught him how to ride faster on his two-wheel bike. Soon they were best friends.

Ted was the straight man in the trio (in more ways than one), but he was kind, generous, open-minded, and sure as hell didn’t mind what his brother – or the strange girl who tagged along with him – did, as long as it was safe. Most older brothers would have teased someone like Daniel incessantly, the worst Ted ever did was role his eyes in affectionate annoyance. He often accompanied them on their forages in the forest, or at the creek, or, later, in middle school, on their nightly bike-rides. When Jane and Daniel decided that they wanted to drink alcohol, he found some for them (two six packs of beer), and they had a blast that night, and a bloody bad hangover the next day, and Ted was gracious enough not to say “I told you so”, and to lie to Jane’s mother and say that she’d caught the flu. Kind enough to teach her a homemade hangover recipe.

In middle school, when such things mattered, Ted made it known that Jane and Daniel were with him (even though they were snot-nosed sixth graders, and he was a cool eighth grader), which stopped the teasing some, and when it didn’t, Ted got involved. Especially when the other eighth graders started fights with Daniel, calling him a faggot.

Jane was the brains of the operation. When Ted and Daniel’s father died, Jane knew they wouldn’t care about school for a long time. They wouldn’t care about playing for a long time either, and without the Solomons, she’d have to spend her afternoons at home, watching her mother get progressively more drunk, then fleeing to her room when her father came home, looking for something to hit.

Like she said. Only a step above the trailer parks.

So Jane started to do the Solomon’s homework as well as her own. She set up shop in the library, and made friends with the teachers for when she needed help, but mostly she didn’t. Math and science were easy, even Ted’s. Spanish was tricky, but Jane figured she had a brain to be used, so she used it. Gym and health: no homework. History was simple enough – the library had everything she would ever need. But English, that was the tough one. You wrote essays in English. You had to get at the truth of something. But you had to do it the right way, Jane knew, or else the teachers would start to suspect the cheating.

That’s what she spent her time on. Learning to impersonate Daniel and Ted’s voice, their thinking, their style. Better than they would, of course, and then slightly worse, slipping in deliberate mistakes, errors that would be easily forgiven given what they were going through. Never getting carried away with the flourishes enough to leave behind the truth, the purpose.

So Jane learned the many paths to the truth, she learned the subjectivity of argument. In those days, all was subjective. The Solomons were, she thought, pure subjectivity.

Her crowning triumph was an essay on ‘The Scarlett Letter’. Two copies, one from Daniel, one from her. Her copy argued that Hester had achieved no redemption. Daniel’s had argued that it had. And both, she knew, with a thrill of excitement, were equally true.

In high school, age stopped mattering as much, and Ted officially became the third member of their little operation. Objective reality mattered, and didn’t: Daniel started being viewed with suspicion for his…well, his personality. And Jane started getting hit on by guys, which amused Daniel to no end, and annoyed Ted. And surprised Jane, who had always thought of herself as ugly: too short, too skinny, too athletic.

Daniel bulked up, gained muscle, started going out with girls. Like everything else he tackled, he did it with enthusiasm, passion and talent. Jane started writing for the paper, and began to win writing prizes. She and Ted could see that even though Daniel was happy, he was getting exhausted. The teasing had stopped, though, and Daniel was a teenager. Even Daniel cared what other people thought of him then.

So Jane did what any best friend would do, and when rumors went around the school that Daniel was dating her, she let them go around. In a few weeks, when the lines between rumor and reality started blurring, she let them. They became a couple, dating, laughing, kissing, experimenting. It wasn’t a lie, or a trick. He loved spending time with her, she with him. She was attracted to him, and he to her. The sex, when it came, was great. He loved her, and told her so, and she knew he wasn’t lying. She loved him, and told him so, and he knew she wasn’t lying. They loved each other in that giddy, playful, excited teenager way. It was real, genuine, and beautiful. Though she’d wondered bitterly later if her boyish body had made things easier for Daniel. And then, even later, when she’d grown up a bit, had been glad if it had.

Jane wanted to go to college, to study English, maybe journalism. She’d gotten into colleges, good ones too, but she couldn’t afford them. And she wouldn’t go into debt; enter a trap, either with banks or with her parents. She wouldn’t wait tables either, or be so ladened down with second and third jobs that she didn’t have time to study.

So. The army. Jane was tough, strong, smart, she knew how, and didn’t mind fighting, she’d shot guns before and they didn’t scare her, and twenty years with her parents had immunized her to the slow, creeping stench of death – her mother and father were just walking corpses, so far as she was concerned. Good pay. Respect. A chance to travel, too. And experience.

And if the recruiters or the trainers at the boot camp she attended were surprised by the stamina and power of this quiet, five foot, a hundred pound girl with bellflower blue eyes, they didn’t show it.

It was a week before she shipped out when Ted spoke. He’d been at the local college for the past two years, and in the National Guard; it was he who had given her the idea to join the army. Daniel hadn’t liked it much – it would mean long seperation. But sometimes Jane thought Ted understood her more than Daniel did. He was the only person she’d ever told about her father, about her mother’s suicide attempt, when her first boyfriend cheated on her, she’d gone to Ted, not Daniel, knowing that Daniel would go crazy. And that wasn’t what she needed. Ted was the guy who understood her need for solitude, who was willing to be even quieter than she was, giving her the opportunity to talk. He was the straight man, the one who boxed with a fierceness and competitiveness that matched Jane’s – Daniel was many things, but competitive was not one of them – the one who knew all the news and commented on it in a dry, sardonic way, the one who wore white, starched shirts over black pants, who was as tall as Jane was short. He understood in Jane’s desire to join the army, the same need to prove herself as he had with boxing.

He was the only man who had the ability to make Jane blush when he ran her over with an appraising eye. The only man whose approval was obvious whether she was dressed as her tomboyish self or in a sleek black prom dress. And if his face swam in her mind when she touched herself late at night, if she’d allowed herself a few harmless fantasies when bored in math class, if, occasionally, she pretended it was him, and not Daniel making love to her, she dismissed it, and forgave it, reminding herself that she wasn’t a saint, and had no interest in being one. It was Daniel she loved, of that she was sure.

But then he spoke. They were playing pool, all three of them. Ted was letting them win, which he sometimes did. Later, she realized that he was making a gesture, putting Daniel in the best mood possible. He told them he’d had something on his mind for a long time, that he wanted to say it before Jane left. In case. And that he wouldn’t be saying it if he wasn’t sure – and then he cast a meaningful eye at Daniel – that they weren’t right for each other.

Then he told Jane that he loved her. Was in love with her.

She thought he was joking at first. But she knew Ted too well, knew how to tell his lies from his truths. She tried to escape back into the subjective, to misinterpret him, but objectivity was staring at her straight in the face.

It was the first and only time Daniel and Ted had fought – really fought, like they meant it – over anything. First with words, loud, angry, accusing words, and then with fists. Daniel – mercurial Daniel, Daniel of the temper – completely lost it.

Jane would have joined in, but she had no idea who to yell at, who to hit. Who to protect. But she had never been the type of girl who sat back as two men fought over her. Besides, Jane told herself. They weren’t fighting over her, but over something deeper. She ran to the kitchen, filled a bucket with cold water; inspired, she dumped in all the ice cubes in the freezer, ran back, water slopping over the sides and staining her jeans, and threw the water over them.

Then, because Jane wasn’t the type to take this sort of thing lightly, she punched Ted in the jaw. Considered punching Daniel. But didn’t.

Did, finally, when he tried to hold her. “Don’t touch me!” she yelled.

“Don’t touch me.”

Left. She left.

Without saying goodbye. To either of them.

A decision she later regretted. She was shipped over to Afghanistan, for peacekeeping in Kabul. She wrote to Daniel, but not to Ted. She couldn’t. By then, she was trying to make her peace with the truth of what he was saying. Trying to find some objectivity in this. Something that didn’t hurt. Something that would allow Daniel to be who he was, and to still love her. To still have loved her. And when gunshots rang around her, when she loaded her own weapon, when she was treated for a broken wrist, two faces haunted her, two faces she couldn’t let go of. But Ted’s stood out. She didn’t want to die, Jane realized. Without knowing.

Ted was shipped out to Iraq six months after her own deployment. Daniel joined the army soon after. He sent her a letter that gave her implicit approval for whatever she decided to do. She blushed furiously, realizing that Daniel must have understood by now –

Meanwhile she was moving up in the army. Her ability impressed, so it did her perfect reports – Jane had mastered the art of objective writing that masked some subjective choices. She liked reports. Explaining events. She’d be a good journalist, when she got out of this hellhole.

She made sure her next leave coincided with Ted’s. Instead of going home, she showed up at his apartment. When he opened the door and saw her, he dropped his glass. It shattered with a single, crystalline sound, she felt pieces of it embedding into the soles of her shoes as she crossed the divide between them.

When they returned – together this time, both to Iraq, and, after months of bureaucratic finagaling, in the same squadron - Jane was in love, passionately in love, for the first time in her life. She hadn’t know that it would be like this. The shyness around Ted, a shyness she’d never had around Daniel. The delicacy of their moments together, mixed with a passion that never seemed to run out. The way they smiled at each other, like there was a joke no one else was in on. Everything seemed finally, gloriously right. Even with Daniel, who gave his blessing, jokingly, but honestly.

They were engaged soon enough. Secretly. By then, Jane was Ted’s superior. Illegal, illegal, illegal.

A blast of hot wind woke Jane from her reverie. She kept her eyes on the road, on the cloud of dust their vehicle was creating.

“All right up there, Sergaent?” Ted asked, coming up behind her. She turned and smiled, her face shaded by her helmet.

“Fine, Solomon. Just hot.”

There was a crack in the road; the truck seemed to jump and both Jane and Ted tensed at the same time. Jane’s hands went to her weapon.

Scars. There would be scars. Her hands were shaking, Jane noticed. Crap.

Already, she had nightmares, almost every night. She knew Ted had them too, though they hadn’t slept together in weeks. She’d broken down and cried in the shower three days ago. It wasn’t the first time. Everyone was self-destructing, some faster than others. Sometimes, Jane could only smell blood, could only taste its iron and copper sting on her tongue, filling her senses, drowning her until she rushed to the nearest bathroom and threw up.

She just had to hang on for two more years. Then: home. College. Marriage.

She wondered if she could be a journalist now. If she, after experiencing the war, wanted to subject herself to any kind of reality again. If she was innocent enough to fit in with these journalists, with their white tourist shirts and sneakers, who walked around escorted by armored soldiers. Soldiers like her. Now that she’d been on this side of the fence, could she ever get back over?

Jane sighed. This was when she needed Daniel and his eternal optimism. Or maybe Daniel too had changed, maybe he too saw the darkness and tasted blood. This thought scared her more than anything else. She wasn’t afraid of Ted changing, or of herself changing – they were changing together, after all. They had each other. But Daniel –

“Hey, Sarge, where’s the Gatorade?” Rick Williamson called from the front of the truck.

“I put it under the seat,” Ted said, answering in lieu of Jane. “No – not there. There – no. Here, wait, I’m coming over.”

She felt him leave, and felt an aching pain in her heart as his footsteps receded. She allowed herself a smile. Imagine: Jane Mitchell head over heels in love.

The truck jumped again, Jane rolled her eyes. Another crack. Goddamn, but when were they going to get around to fixing these fucking -

Not this time.

The front of the truck exploded, lifting up and backwards, throwing Jane off her feet as a blast of fire headed straight for her.

***

“Jesus,” Fisher said finally.

“Yeah,” Solomon answered.

“Your brother?”

Solomon shook his head. His hands were shaking, Fisher noticed. “He was right on top of the bomb. Went out quick. It probably didn’t hurt. Jane, on the other hand - ”

Fisher refilled Solomon’s glass.

“The truck flipped over backwards. She was pinned under it for twenty minutes, during the ambush. Funny to say, but that saved her life. She saw the rest of her team, her squadron, get murdered by the insurgents who’d set the bomb. Shot. Ten of her people died in the explosion. Twelve in the ambush. She was the only one who survived. Barely.”

“Sent her back to Walter Reed after that one. She spent six months there, learning to walk again, to function again. I guess she could have gone home, but by that time, her mother was finally dead, and her father – honestly, I can’t say that Iraq is much worse than spending a week with Jane’s dad.”

“She’s got nothing,” Solomon said. His voice cracked, broke. A tear welled up in his eye. “No one. Not family, not friends, not a home, not even her sanity,”

And then, Christ, he was crying, fat drops of water falling down his face, across those lean cheeks and that stubborn chin, sliding into the corners of those full, wide lips –

Fisher took Solomon by the shoulders and pulled him in, pressing him against his chest, feeling the sobs that shook the smaller man. He swallowed, hard, trying to keep the lump in his throat down.

“She – she used to write my essays for me,” Solomon cried. “Used to stay up at night and write news bullitens and funny poems and love letters and – she used to ride her bike faster than anyone in the entire state. And she – had – she had – she had the best night vision – and she could be funny – and she was brilliant – and she was going to be a genius at something, probably – probably writing. And now,” he continued, his body seeming to calm down. “Now. She’s just a shell. Who doesn’t talk. And barely notices I exist. And all that she’s capable of doing is typing out interrogations.”

“Shhhh.”

Fisher wrapped his arms around Solomon tighter.

“I’m all she has left,” Solomon whispered. “I’m all she has left. You can’t ask me to let them take her away. I’m all she has left.”

“I won’t,” Fisher said, the words hard and painful. “I won’t. I promise.”

Finally, Solomon pulled away gently from Fisher. “Thank you.” He said. “Thank you.”

“Besides,” Fishers says, his words a biting condemnation. “It’s not like they’d care if I did. She’s physically fit. More or less. Welcome to the army. When you’re in. You’re in for life.”

Solomon doesn’t say anything. It’s a well-tread argument between the two, Fisher the son of blue collar democrats in Michigan, and Solomon the product of a conservative environment and family. The idealogy doesn’t really fit Solomon’s freedom loving personality, but in these moments of desperation, Fisher knows one clings to idealogy above all else. There’s little else Fisher can cling to.

They talk about something else for a few moments, letting the air come back in the room, until Fisher finally has to say something to ruin it all: “So. You did sleep with her.”

Solomon turns and his glare freezes Fisher to the bones. “I suppose.” He says, bitingly.

“That was a stupid thing to say,” Fisher cuts him off. “I’m sorry. It was mean. It was horrible.”

Solomon puts his drink down, resting his forearms on the table, his head leaning down, almost touching them. Fisher blushes at the familiarity of the pose. “You know what else is mean?” Solomon says. “You know what else is horrible? And wrong? Sometimes I look at that girl, that Jane. Who I used to love. Who I still love. I look at her and think that it would have been better off if she’d died in the fire. With Ted.”

“It’s all ashes now,” Solomon drains his drink, the sound leeched from his voice. “It’s all ashes.”

Suddenly Fisher is angry. He grabs Solomon by the collar and shoves him back against the couch. “Oh, no you don’t,” he says, teeth gritted together. “Jesus Fucking Christ, Daniel!”

Solomon looks up as though struck when Fisher uses his name.

“You cannot let this happen to you,” Fisher says, pacing, trying to control his rage. “You can’t become this. This. The person who – the person who nearly tortured a prisoner - ”

“I didn’t - ”

“I know! I know!” Fisher half-screams. “I fucking know! All right! It’s happening to me too! I wake up at night and I fucking want to kill every person between me and home and then I want to make them regret having ever existed, and I’m sick of hearing about dead friends and family and everything, and I just want to fucking die! So I know! But what you did this morning was wrong.”

Solomon looks away, ashamed. “I know.”

“And what you’re doing to yourself,” Fisher continues, his breathing heavy, and oh, Christ, now he’s crying. Shit. “What you’re doing to yourself. Is wrong. And if you were doing it to anyone else, it would qualify as abuse. You are destroying yourself. You are letting yourself do nothing but hate. You’re giving the fuck up. You’re allowing yourself to lose control. And letting them win. And becoming like them. And if you do – so help me god, if you do – I’m gone. I won’t stay and watch you become that. I won’t stay. I can’t. I’m not strong enough to watch, Daniel, so please, please don’t do this to me, please, decide to live, decide to survive, don’t change like this, because if you do, you might walk around like a normal human being but you’ll be as dead as anyone laying under the ground and I cannot fucking take that Daniel. Even if it’s easier for you to do that than fight. I cannot take that. It will kill me too.”

The sobs are barely under control now, coming from deep within him, below his ribcage, shaking his bones and his chest, his neck taunt with tension, and he cannot, will not lose control. He can’t look at Solomon.

He turns around, heads blindly towards the door, and stumbles out.

***

Jane has a pad of paper now. And is writing.

“5’0” she writes.

Then frowns.

Well, all right.

“4’9 and ¾”.

Accurate.

“Eyes: brown. Hair ” she pauses to consider this. Red or Brown. Have to get it right. One is right, and the other is not right. What if she writes down the wrong one? Will that change the color of her hair? She wonders.

The bed Daniel and Lieutenant Fisher have made up for her in Solomon’s quarters is quite nice, even if it is just a mattress stuffed inside the bathtub. There’s no room for it elsewhere.

Daniel watches her all the time.

All the time.

He’s afraid she’ll hurt herself again.

But she hurts right now, right now, right now, in every bone of her body, in every breath she takes, in every word she says, in every movement and in every moment she remains conscious and alive – and this would almost make Jane laugh – alive. Alive. Very funny. She hurts in everything. And the only thing that makes it stop is to write. Control the situation. Describe something to control it.

But even this is not working now.

Jane wants it to end.

End. Three letters. Ned. A boy’s name. Den. A place with lions.

Ned in a Den brings his End.

She writes this down, amazed that her hand still works, that her brain can still think after everything she’s been through.

Her brain, Jane knows, is slowly turning into mush. Whatever sanity she used to have is slowly disappearing under mountains of pain, and she can’t even manage to care. Because when her consciousness leaves, so will the pain. A perfect existence.

Of nothingness.

Daniel thinks she’s sleeping. Or he’d be here with her. Watching her. With those eyes full of pity and sorrow. Which make her hurt more than ever.

She hears the door open, the door to Daniel’s room. And is surprised. Daniel would never leave the room with her in it.

But no. She hears another voice.

Lieutenant Fisher.

It’s the first time he’s been here since he put in the bed.

***

“You want a drink?” Solomon asks. He’s awkward, clearly nervous and uncomfortable about having Fisher in the room.

A mistake to come here. A mistake.

They’ve been functioning relatively well for the last week. Fisher does the interrogations now. Solomon as witness. Mitchell types. They don’t speak to each other, except when Fisher asks Solomon how Mitchell is. But that’s it.

“No. I’m fine. How’s Jane?”

“She’s fine.”

“Okay.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll have a drink.”

“I should write you up,” Fisher says, trying a joke, but it falls flat. “I don’t. Mind.”

Solomon pours himself something amber. Fisher doesn’t care what it is.

“So. Why are you here?” Solomon asks.

Fisher clears his throat, but the lump there won’t budge. He swallows, again. A reckoning. “Right. Sorry. This shouldn’t take long. I just.”

He breathed. “I was on patrol this afternoon,” he said. “After interrogation.”

Solomon’s eyes widen, and Fisher knows he doesn’t have to say anything else. Everyone knows what happened on patrol. The infirmary’s been working overtime.

“Anyways. Just made me think. I know what I said. Last week. But I just wanted – I just wanted – I know you don’t understand. And I don’t understand. But I would like to be friends. If nothing else.”

The door, Fisher reminds himself. Is right behind him. Turn the knob and go. Red light flashing and all that.

Daniel turns to him, incredulous. “Friends?” he asks, and Fisher immediately knows this is a mistake. “Friends?” he asks again, voice rising. “You bloody idiot! Is that what you think I want?”

Fisher is taller, and stronger, and standing right next to the door, but he is paralyzed, unable to move, unable to think. Daniel closes the distance between them in three steps, and Fisher flinches as his hand comes up.

Then Daniel’s lips are on his.

***

Jane can see them, through the crack in the door between the bedroom and the bathroom. She can see Daniel grabbing Lieutenant Fisher by the neck and yanking him in, then Daniel’s hungry lips on the Lieutenant, tearing at them, and Jane can barely restrain an audible gasp. Fisher seems paralyzed for a moment, then his hands come up around Daniel’s head and waist and he kisses him back, their bodies falling into a passionate, voracious rhythm.

“Alexander,” Daniel whispers, pulling his mouth away. Fisher moans, whether in protest or in agreement, and starts to unbutton Daniel’s shirt as his mouth connects with the smaller man’s collarbone, and then Jane realizes – they have done this before.

The words they are saying now tear a new hole in Jane’s heart, and she is unsurprised to find tears going down her face as she watches this deliberate, exquisite torture. Love. They love each other.

Jane forces herself to watch, refusing to tear her eyes away as the two men shed their clothes and their defenses, as they say things to each other that she shouldn’t even be allowed to hear, as they do things to each other that –

Finally she pushes away from the door and sits in the darkness, ears covered, staring at her pad of paper, and thinking of the words she might write.

Love.

Love.

Love.

Love.

***

On reflection, it is probably Jane’s last sane act. She watches Fisher leave in the morning, his movements reluctant, the kiss he shares with Daniel desperate, their eyes denying the reality that is the truth. Because Jane knows the truth. Either one of them will end up dead, the other trapped under a truck and watching –

Bile rises in her throat.

Or, Jane thinks mercilessly. They’ll become like her. Like the rest of them. Uncaring. And savage.

And she remembers what Daniel did.

And if that happens, Jane thinks. It doesn’t matter if they love each other. It’s over.

Why do I care?

Jane doesn’t know the answer to that one.

She tears a piece of paper off her pad and starts to write.

“Must get out of army” she writes first. This is objective, hard reality. Fisher and Daniel must leave the army. But no one leaves the army –

Jane ponders, letting her tired, desperate mind explore pathways it hasn’t taken in years. If A then B, she thinks. And then add subjective C. A and B are the objective realities, C is the subjective you add to the essay to get the truth. A.B.C. What essay, Jane wonders, would convince the army that they needed to let Fisher and Daniel go?

* **

“A dishonorable discharge?”

Fisher can barely make the words come out of his mouth as he stares at the page. A dishonorable discharge. The Captain in front of him looks grim. No, Fisher realizes. Not grim. Disgusted. And triumphant. Fisher feels his stomach turning over, and realizes what the Captain knows.

“Because of your sexual relationship with Lieutenant Solomon.”

“What are you talking about?” Fisher asks, playing dumb.

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be, Lieutenant Fisher. We have a report, written and signed by Sergaent Mitchell detailing at length the relationship between yourself and Lieutenant Solomon. Either Jane Mitchell is the most convincing liar since FDR hid his polio, or you and Lieutenant Fisher are, in fact, homosexual, which, if you recall…”

“I recall,” Fisher says, remaining under control. But in his head, the question: Why? Why? Why? Why would she do this? Why would she destroy them like this? And how? When she’s barely sane enough to type up an interrogation, much less –

“Lieutenant Fisher left for the States ten hours ago. The next plane leaves in two. You will be on it.”

Fisher nods numbly. His life is in ashes.

And Sargeant Mitchell is all alone now. Which doesn’t bother him in the least, he thinks, rage fizzling under his skin. But it will Solomon.

God. Daniel.

***

“Sargeant Mitchell, turn the car!”

Voices. In her ear. Her hands at the wheel. She sees the road ahead. And the explosion in front of her.

“Turn the fucking car!” the Captain yells.

There is no one else in the car but her.

Now I am alone.

Before Daniel had left, Jane had been able to hold on. Now, no longer. She couldn’t do it any longer.

Now I am alone.

“Turn the car, Jane! Immediately!”

Solomon and Fisher are safe.

And she is alone.

“We will bring to the Iraqi people food,” she whispers. “And medicines. And supplies. And freedom.”

“Turn the car!”

No.

Jane doesn’t close her eyes. She doesn’t tense, or turn away. She pushes her foot down on the accelerator, feeling the car speed up around her, and the heat coming closer as she drives into the heart of the explosion, into where her freedom, and her death lie intertwined, to where her fate, which she has escaped for so long, waits for her.

Freedom.

Freedom.

She writes that word in her head again and again and again.

Freedom.

***

Alexander looks through the fridge, trying to find the six pack of beer that he knows is there. He knows, he bought it, he stuck it there, then he went to class and now’s he’s back and it’s gone. Fuck.

“Looking for something?” Daniel asks, dangling a can above Alexander’s head.

Alex growls. “You realize I hate you?” he asks, grabbing it and popping it open.

“Hmmm…especially last night. You really hated me last night,” Daniel hums, pulling Alex in for a slow, tender kiss that leaves him breathless.

“We should really move to a state where this is legal,” Alex whispers, kissing Daniel again.

Daniel makes a face. “Where, Canada? I like the heat.”

“And I like you with less clothes on, so I suppose I’ll live,” Alex says dryly. “How’s the job search going?”

“Maybe I’ll just go to college like you,” Daniel says. “Live through another four years of class. In this economy, it’s that or dressing up like Pluto at Disneyworld.”

“We should move to France. Civil unions, free health care, great beaches and southern france is almost warmer than it is here.”

“Huge unemployment rate.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Make me.”

After a few minutes of – well, Alex wouldn’t call it “silence”, exactly – Daniel pulls away. “I forgot,” he said. “We have a letter. From Jane.”

Alex stiffens. It’s been three weeks since the Sergeant’s death (by suicide, if you ask Alex, but he won’t say it to Daniel, who would never forgive himself). The wounds are still raw for his lover. And for him. Because, after all, in her disgusting, devastating way, she gave him – she gave them – their freedom. Can’t get out of the army if you’re nearly insane with PTSD, but if you’re fucking a guy –

Daniel retrieves the letter - a thick, manilla envelope - and hands it to Alex. “It’s curious,” he says, quietly. “Anyways. I was thinking takeout for dinner, because we don’t actually have money to cook with.”

“I insist on Thai,” Alex said absentmindedly, knowing he would be overruled for Mexican. Again.

The envelope contains sheets and sheets of paper. Alex starts to look over them and pales. Each interrogation. Each curt conversation with his superior. Cafeteria chatter. His explosion at Daniel. All written down, transcribed perfectly. Everything. Everything Jane had witnessed since her near-death, everything she remembered, all written down. And then the note on top, in spidery handwriting.

Jane’s last words. Not a transcription, but something real. Alex held his breath.