A/N: This was one of the drafts for my GCSE coursework. We could choose from a few different scenarios and at first this one (a sniper who witnessed his brothers death) appealed to me but after writing it I thought I’d focused too much on the sniper rather than his brother. And it was all too depressing, so I chose a more light hearted one in the end! xD This feels a little unfinished but I didn’t feel like I could change it (this was written a few years ago!) and so here it is exactly the same as it was when I was fifteen! Hahaahaha (:

Arrivederci – until we meet again.

He could see the rain glistening off the cobbles like half-hearted Christmas lights. The terrible onslaught of wind and hail had slowed to a lazy haze of drizzle and he was grateful for it, though the dampness that seeped through his already uncomfortable fatigues had him fidgeting awkwardly, pressed uneasily up against a shattered window. The road was bathed in a sickly shade of yellow, cast off from the streetlights with reckless abandon, distorting the shapes he was watching through a window across the street. It would have been a great deal easier in darkness; easier to locate his target, easier to escape after he had pulled the trigger.

Without a clear view of the unfortunate man whose name had appeared on a slip of paper left rather unceremoniously on his rifle (he was hardly a constant sort of soldier, and as such had no formal orders) he was stuck looking at the distant shapes, light and dark, dark and light, through the scope of his gun. He shuffled backwards slightly, adjusted the sights even though it wasn’t really necessary, and waited.

His memories, distant, fleeting things full of summer sun and lemonade and girls in pink dresses flashed before his eyes, but they were remote, flickering images, as if he wasn’t quite tuned in to the right frequency. Now they would call him a wolf, a silent predator. His brother’s blood had stained his hands, and it is with a cold, numb glance down into the scopes sights, and a ready trigger-finger that a bullet bursts from his rifle, shatters a window with a stark, brilliant tinkle of breaking glass, and settles into some unknown man’s forehead. This man, he might have had a wife, children, someone who was expecting him home; his dinner might be turning cold on the table. But the sniper cannot bring himself to care (though he knows that later that face will return to haunt him in his fretful dreams, along with all the others) and he can only spring to his feet, ignore the sharp ache in his knees and the ripping tingles in his feet and collect his things.

For very soon he will no longer be alone. This district will be crawling with the corrupt, the men who sought to destroy what his brother had worked for and he cannot be caught. The sniper scurries like along dark alleys and scales rutted walls like a rat, with quick fingers and solid legs. His gun is draped lazily over his back, and though of course he can feel the psychical weight of it, pulling down, it is so much heavier than you or I could possibly imagine. It is dragged down by the weight of so many taken lives – and the sniper will never know whether or not he was justified.

But he can remember his brothers torn, ragged voice, as terrible and fragile as ripping silk, he can remember the way the light in his eyes had faded. He can so vividly remember having to leave him lying in the dirt like a dog, just waiting for the enemy to come and ransack his body; to yank him upright, check his tags. The sniper had searched through his brothers pockets, and pulled out a wallet with pictures of his nieces and his nephew, his sister-in-law, a family portrait – a family who could never be whole again. He had crawled to the side of the road, his hands filthy and his knees raw, and vomited into the undergrowth.

The sniper slides easily around a corner, and as he escapes unseen, the sirens begin to wail behind him. There is only one face in his mind, one place he knows he has to go. The streets start to pass quickly, red and blue and black and white doors all blurring into one, the streetlights dimmer, the sun rising. And then there is a door he knows so very well, faded brown paint and an old brass forty-seven. For a minute he thinks that he might not be brave enough, but almost without thinking his knuckles are rapping on the wood. She must have been waiting up – he can imagine her slipping away into unconsciousness at the heavy wooden table in the pantry – as she is at the door within minutes, her blonde hair irrevocably tousled, and the sleep fresh on her face, her eyes swimming with question.

“Arrivederci,” he says, just as he always had, the dark line of his eyebrows furrowed, and he opens his arms. She falls into them lightly, a soft whoosh of air escaping her parted lips and he tries fruitlessly to comfort her. Her delicate body is wracked with sobs, and he can feel the wet sinking into his skin. He manoeuvres her inside with gentle hands – she still buried in his chest, nearly screaming with the agony – and closes the door as quietly as he can. They are so caught up in their own personal grief that they are oblivious to the sound of pattering feet and piqued interest.

“Mummy?” The sound is angelic, and sweet and so innocently questioning that he couldn’t have stopped his head turning if he had wanted to. A little girl stands there, her feet bare, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, a dangling teddy clutched in one hand. “Uncle! Is daddy coming home soon?”