Thread: Big Damn Hero.

Below is a FireflySerenity based short story. Hey, cheer up, Jax. Youre the big hero now, right? Youre the Alliances new poster boy, cheer the fuck up already. The words resonated throughout his head even now, just like a shard of forged steel clattering throughout stone halls. Eerie, pointed, and without mercy to ones sensibilities. He was no hero, even if he was named after one. There were lines that werent meant to be crossed, even in war, and yet he crossed them. There were things that were deplorable and wicked and wrought of such a dark and cruel nature that even the evil that lurked in fable and fiction dare not do that he did under the cover of a set of foreign sky, under a foreign set of stars. He was not the hero of the story, though they painted him as one with the pieces of tin and metal they tacked on his chest like the notches carved into the hilt of a warrior of olds weapon, under the pretty ribbons pressed tight to the fabric of his dress uniform that had might as well been washed in the blood that came like the rivers that birthed Mesopotamia, that washed over ancient Syria and Babylon of the Earth-That-Was. He was just another poor bastard that had a rifle pushed in his hands as a way to escape a life he wasnt particularly fond of thinking about. Youre the Alliances new poster boy. Yeah, what a fuckin poster boy he was. The Alliance celebrated those victories because they never crossed into the core worlds, the politicians lauded over how it was a just war because those old bastards never had to scrub the blood and grit from underneath their fucking fingernails that came from the price of drawing out guerilla soldiers and resistance fighters. They didnt know what it felt like to put a fuckin fist sized hole through some poor, dumb, fuckin kids head because he was trying to defend against what he saw as an unlawful occupation. Yeah, Im a hero. Speaking quietly, mostly to himself as that cigarette raped rasp of a voice pulled from his rounded lips, pushed out by the air he didnt even realize hed been holding in his lungs. Im a big gorram hero, Charlie. Speakin with those dark colored eyes flickering towards the man that used to be the boy who was once his best friend. He guessed Charlie still was that boy at heart, the confused look in his eyes said that much as Ajax turned that frame of his around, the aches and pains in his body never makin his face as he put his back to the bar with that glass of piss warm whiskey still held in his hand. Poor Charlie, he didnt know what to say to that. Theyd both been baptized together, but therein lied the problem Charlie was baptized once, Ajax was baptized a second time, and it was by fire and steel. The boy Charlie knew died on his second engagement when he cleared that machine gunners nest in some bumfuck city on Verbena, when he tossed in that fucking pair of grenades through the window he fired from. Command said his actions might have his squad, might have saved the company they linked up to with later. Ajax didnt remember it that way, he remembered rushing to clear the room, trying to take it from bangs to bullets. He remembered seeing the body of the machine gunner alright, torn up and burned by the grenades. He also remembered that poor fucks family that was in the room with him. He remembered the fact that his wife was charred, as was her son. He remembered that the little girl wasnt quite dead yet though, remembered that she was looking up at him, remembered that he screamed for the medic as he tried to save her. He fucking remembered that just a few minutes seemed like hours. Yeah, hed gotten a pretty medal, a shiny fuck-off bronze star for his actions and a private speech about how shit happens from a grizzled captain who knew that the words werent going to sink in no matter how he pounded them into him. They say that you remember who you fight, better than who you fuck, and if that was true then Jaxd remember that little girl long after he forgot the face of his first girlfriend. He didnt even notice that Charlie was talking again, hed went into some ramble about how the boys wanted to give him a welcome home party, about some of them wanted to welcome him back. Jax didnt understand a goddamn word of it, even though he heard every word. He just lifted his glass of whiskey to his lips and let it burn down his fuckin throat until it made contact with his chest and festered like a sucking chest wound, setting it to the side as a reactionary nod came his friends way. Yeah, Chuck. Id enjoy that. A lie given with a forced smile from a man who used to be a boy that couldnt tell a lie to save his life. Then again, he hadnt been that boy a long, long, time. Hed never be him again, if he were to be honest. He wasnt the hero, but then again.. War wasnt a fucking fairytale, either.