like toy soldiers : Alicia Sykes [One-shot]

Given the time to reflect before being sent to this…Hunger games, you begin to think about how everything went wrong. No one had expected the Capitol to push in where and when they did. Intel dropped the ball. Or the rebellion was betrayed. You are not sure which option is worse. Your Commander had to rally the troops stationed in four quickly, and even so, the docks were lost before anyone could mount a defense.

Your squad of eight made a rush to the front line, boots crunching gravel and debris as you raced down the street, linking up with other cells, other rebels in a mad dash. You raced past the ruins of the library where a makeshift field hospital was set up. Past tents and the fish factory where you’d had to lay your honored dead. When you made contact with the enemy you were met with a Capitol aircraft.

Almost half of your squad was caught out in the open and were riddled with bullets a few seconds later.

You can still see them fall in your mind’s eye. The Skipper was the first to fall, but then, he’d always been a big target. He’d been the captain of a fishing trawler before the war, lost his kids in the opening volley of the crackdown. Wrong place, wrong time. Canary was next, and you find yourself missing her cheerful voice, and the songs she used to sing around the campfire. The blonde of her hair turned crimson as it wrapped around the wound in her neck. At least with Rick you knew it was fast. First bullet hit him in the head. He’d always hated wearing his helmet, said it made him less attractive.

You’d always thought he was an idiot.

But goddammit, he had been your squad’s idiot.

You’d been prepared for death then, even as you dove into the ruins of a bakery, Derrick and Yessenia close behind. You lost track of Jackie T. and Thompson in the shuffle.

Then, salvation.

A rocket streaked through the air, screaming for vengeance as it hit the hovercraft in the engine. It spun wildly, belching fire and smoke. One of the men riding it fell out screaming and hit the ground with a dull thud.

You double tapped him, just to be on the safe side.

In its death throes, the craft took out half a block before coming to a halt in a screech of metal, plastic and concrete.

And then you saw her.

The commander, standing on a rooftop and framed by the sunset, shrugging the rocket launcher off of her shoulder with a feral grin. She was a refugee from two, covered in scars and followed by a cloud of cigar smoke wherever she went. She had a smile that could light up a room or drain the temperature in it with a word.

Steel blue eyes and hair that shone like fire in the sun.

Her name was Machete Creel, and you would have followed her into hell itself.

You wish you could say your last memory of her was of her fighting tooth and nail, howling obscenities like the hellcat she was, but you cannot.

A few hours later, your position was overrun and they surrounded her, beating her with batons, rifle butts and boots as she struggled to rise.

They took her, and you never saw her again.

In the end only Jackie T. had survived long enough to be sent to the firing squad. The other prisoners in your cellblock had been from whatever shattered units had fallen under Machete’s command in the mad dash to the fallback position.

You were the close quarter combat specialist. No one in the squad could beat you. Not with their fists. Not with their knives. You feel adrift. You are the only gear remaining from a machine that no longer works.

It is just you now.

Jackie T. will not be patching anyone up anymore.

Thompson cannot beat you at darts.

Yessenia will never call another target.

Derrick’s fuses will remain unlit.

Rick’s helmet has no hole in it, unlike his head.

There are no more songs for Canary to sing.

Perhaps the Skipper is with his children now.

Commander Creel was publicly executed.

It is just you now.

You and your ghosts.