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They thought they could protect us by giving us neat uniforms and quiet classrooms to spend our days in.  They thought dormitories by the water and a good football team would erase the years of pain that each of us bore.  They thought putting us all in with the little wimps who knew nothing of blood would make us civil and polite.  They thought it all and never once thought of us.  And that was how it always was.

The uniform code was so loose that on most days one had to extrapolate intensely to come close to believing everyones garb had come from the same horrible sewing machine accident.  The buttons and the sweaters and the poorly placed bra straps reminded us all it was summer, that the breeze off the lake would only become warmer and warmer until it would become unbearably hot and we would all take refuge under the dock to smoke and drink and pass the time.
He didn't really have much going for him other than his ubiquitous headphones and the way he never seemed to care what anyone said about him.  And the shock of red hair that made him stand out in a crowd.  It wasn't like he was the only one, it just helped.  And the not caring what people said probably stemmed purely from the intensely loud music that came from the phones anytime he took them off long enough to actually listen to some one speak.  Which was rare.
Today he was out on the dock, book in hand and a coffee mug just beyond reach.  He would look out over the water and for a long stretch of time write until I was certain his hand had reached the point where it might fall off.  Then he would pause and contemplate the water again.  Until he realized he was thirsty, then he would lean over and reach for his coffee, sliding it towards him with his fingertips.  All without taking the pen out of his hand and the notebook off his lap.
“Quite a view isn't it”
I jumped and swore, swiping at Jenner with more force than necessary.  He gave me a mock look of hurt and took the cigarette out of my hand.
“Ow.  Was that really necessary?”
“Yes, you ass.  Don't scare me like that, I'll burn you next time.”
He smiled down at me, taking his place on the step above me.  “You won't.  You're too good a shot to do it on purpose”
I rolled my eyes “Don't remind me”
He took a long drag on my cigarette before I could stop him.  “Honey it wasn't like you were ever going to forget.”
I sighed, watching red head boy for a long moment, “Yea but its nice to imagine that maybe at some point I could get rid of the scar tissue.”

No one said it would be easy.  Hell, I'm pretty sure they told me coming into this it would be hard.  But thats alright, I like a challenge.  The bullet passed my ear with such a high pitch whine it hurt my jaw.  The last magazine weighed heavy in my pocket and I knew the last mile from here to the door was going to be hell.

I was a sniper in my unit. The eye in the sky, Big Brother.  But they didn't fear me, because I protected them.  And they loved me for it.  And they died for me, so that I could get out alive.  The civil war got us all. But Big Brother shouldn't be the one who lives.  He should protect his younger siblings.  And in that I failed.

Jenner's pants were covered in buttons, more than what most boys would be willing to place anywhere close to themselves.  But the one I had given him was most prominent, brightly colored and huge on his right front pocket.  It wasn't like his sexuality was a secret, but it certainly helped that he displayed it on himself like that.  Some days I wondered if it wasn't all the horrible things he had done that made him all the more wonderful to hang out with.
I took the cigarette back from him, scratching at the the now healed scar across my knee.   “Wanna know something sad?”
He nodded vaguely, looking through his bag for his own pack.  I shook my head, laughing under my breath.
“I spent more time on my hair th'smorning then I used to spend cleaning out my rifle.”  The deep throated laugh that came after was so very much un-Jenner that I turned to watch him clutch his sides and try to remain balanced on his step.  He slid down next to me, bringing his arm around my shoulders and reminding me just how much smaller than he I was.
“Oh honey, look who's finally figured out she really is a girl!”
I swatted at his hand twirling my hair and crossed my arms.  “I've always known I was a girl.”  It sounded even more trite outside of my head than in.  He smiled at me, popping me under the chin before I could grab his wrist.
“I know, Matt.  Its just nice to see you've finally given life here a try.”
I snorted.  It wasn't that I had excepted being here.  It was rather that there was painfully little to do here.  And I got bored easily.
Ginger hair had stood and was stretching his back out before gathering his mug and notebook and walking slowly up the dock.  His headphones creased his hair in a strange spot, making it all seem to fall forward into his face or back over the tattoo across his neck.  He shifted his school sweater back into place, pulling the collar of the shirt underneath out and adjusting his tie.
“Matt, hello, earth to Matt.  Matt....Matilda...TILLY!”
“WHAT?”
Jenner smiled and I kicked his shin.  He laughed, clutching it as I gathered my bag.
“Don't go!  I have nothing to do if you go!”
I smiled weakly, his voice a poor pleading thing that made me want to squeeze his cheeks like my grandmother used to.
“I've got class.  See you after for a smoke?”

The end run is always the hardest.  Door to door, down a hallway, stairs on the left, elevator to the right.  I had done this three times a day Monday Wednesday Friday for a year.  Most of those times though I was not being threatened by gun shots and the impending doom of wasting my last rounds on empty class rooms and metal tables.
He was just beyond earshot and I could barely hear him move over the hum of the air conditioning.  Thankfully he was probably a simple infantry man, the poor soul had no idea how loud and obtrusive he was being.  The last year and a half of practice-less living had certainly not helped.
The walkie in my pocket went off and I froze.  His footfalls ceased as well and I tried to silence the thing to no avail.  If this one mistake killed me I was gonna kill Jenner.

Every unit had an insignia, some symbol that they rallied under.  Something untainted by the touch of bureaucratic dictation.  Something everyone knew and could be identified by.  Both sides had them, the only thing we were willing to believe we all had in common.  Because you can't kill someone who knows your name but you can shoot blindly into the night.  Into the mass crush of humanity.
Ours was Chinese, a scribble to most.  It meant peace and it made us all laugh to see it.  But deep down we all knew that was what we were fighting for.  Peace and the people we had left at home.  The child siblings none of us would ever get to see.  Peace and freedom.

The campus itself was simple and rather pretty.  Not that I spent that much time contemplating it.  But when the only view you have is over the quad and your professor is discussing the potential energy of the earth, its something that you contemplate without thought.  It had been bombed out and rebuilt in what I liked to believe was the shortest and most organized move ever made by the Greater Republic.  And the most obnoxiously vile and stupid.  But the first one was open to differing opinions.
This was my least favorite class and every time I sat down and pulled my notebook out I wondered to myself why I even bothered to take it.  I did not need to know the rate at which a body falls.  All I needed to know was that when it did it was because my bullet had gotten there first.
I cringed at my own horribly anti-poetic thought and stared off into space in the vague, general direction of the board.  I sat in the back of class because then I could see it all.  I wanted the bird's eye view but for  now I would settle for the slacker's eye view.  Somehow I had forgotten that red head was a part of the class.  An active part at that.  His headphones rested around his neck, the music completely silent.  I wondered if his ears rung for hours after listening to the horrible noise he thought of as music.  For a long still moment no one spoke as he cleared his throat.  His voice was quiet and subtle but he was a general and I knew it instantly.  It was the kind of voice you would hear over grenade raiding and the man would never need to raise his voice above a whisper.
I wondered for the first time if I would ever lose the battle field candor that defined everything in my life.  The thought hit me hard, square in the chest and I felt the need to lean forward and breath deeply.  I listened, for the first time, letting his voice wash over me.
“...thus it must be B.”
“Thank you Miles”
Miles.  The irony wasn't lost on me.  I snorted and he turned just slightly, the grin on his face almost wolfish and without a doubt directed at me.  I knuckled my forehead and he turned back around quickly.  I knew his weakness, and it was simplistic.
It wasn't that I wanted to be near him.  Or that I needed attention.  At that point I wasn't even sure what drew me to him.
The rest of class passed as slowly as I had expected and if the doodles on the margin on my notebook and the general lack of notes said anything, it was just as boring too.  I gathered my satchel and moved through the desks, craving the warm air and Jenner's smile.  My lighter had slid to the bottom of my bag and I stepped out of the stream of bodies to dig around for it.
“You think you're funny?”
I froze but didn't look up, the music blaring into my ears from the phones on his shoulders.  “Funny?  No.  Bored out of my skull?  Yes.”  I kept walking and he followed me.  “We can't all be physics geniuses, Miles.”
He laughed, keeping stride with me instead of just passing me up.  I lit up as soon as we were out of the building, blowing smoke in his face.  He doesn't seem to mind, cringing only as it all collects beneath his nose and the fresh air suddenly seems less than fresh
“Now you have an advantage over me.  I don't know your name.”
I paused, shifting my cigarette to my left hand and wiped my right on my skirt.  “Matilda Leaner, at your serve sir.”  I saluted and kept walking, hoping he would simply leave me alone.  But apparently I was either more interesting than I thought or I had hit a nerve much harder than I intended because he caught up with me, hands in his pockets and walked me towards the doors.
We turned the corner to enter the main building and I racked my brains for ways to shake him without blowing off Jenner.  I paused and he turned, leaning against the building.  “You can't phase me soldier.”  His voice was low and deep and I wondered if there had been girls in his unit or if it was all older men who wanted him so badly they would have done anything for him.  I didn't respond and he smiled, thinking me beaten.
“Honey, are we staying here or going out to the dock-oh hello there!”  I smiled, Jenner coming up and putting his hand on my shoulder.  The look on Miles face was priceless.
“You joining us for a smoke, doll?”  Miles backed up slightly, trying to move away from the wall without making it look like that.  Jenner's hand twitched on my shoulder and I knew he was trying hard not to laugh.
Miles stopped, smiled winningly and shook his head.  “No but thanks for the offer.”  He nodded to Jenner and turned, making his way down the stairs.  “Oh.”  He paused.  “And I still don't know your name.”

“I can hear you.”  He called and I turned the corner, the doors to the stairs covering my back.  He sent a shot ripping down the hallway and I ducked from the shock.  The rifle in his hand should have been mine and my fingers itched for a semi-auto and a full round.  But I had a pistol and one more magazine.  And a death wish apparently.  I could imagine him smiling sadistically as he whipped around the corner two doors down from my spot.  A run to the stairs was looking more and more like a distinct possibility.  But I never retreat.

The battles were never the hard part.  One is a single discrete unit during battle, a piece on the board until the bullets ceased to fly.  Then you were sucked back into the greater whole of the working unit.  You pulled your dead from the streets and patched up the injured.  You pulled the blood stained cigarettes from the packs and made bad jokes over bitter coffee.  You were whole again because you were not alone.
And that was the hardest part.  Because being alone gave you all the power and all the right to be less than human.  But here at the fire side, where you keep company with other discrete unit animals, you were reminded of your own humanity.  And the humanity of the person that you felled with a single shot to the head.  The humanity of the person that took your friend with a single well placed grenade.  And the madness comes and you down coffee you would have thrown away at home.  And you ask yourself why you're here.
And you remember it isn't all your fault.  But that doesn't make the ache leave.

No one knew what had happened.  No one saw it coming.  It was morning, the sun coming up over the little village and then there was nothing.  Nothing but ash and dust and a few scattered souls that had some how, by the grace of God been spared.  By the curse of God been spared.  There was nothing for us to do but gather what little was not pure ash and leave behind the remains of the fallen.  Of our siblings and friends.  Parents bodies left unburied, baking in the sun of a hot shoreline summer.  No one saw it coming.
But we all saw the next step.  We all dreamed about it at night, sought out the killers and made them pay.  Made them eat the ash of our dead and dying kid brothers, made them wallow in the misery we felt every waking moment.
What we didn’t see was the means to the ends.  We didn’t see the massacres and fully automatics in the hands of teenage students.  Uniforms that didn’t quite fit and boots the could have been worn by our parents.  We were outfitted and sent out to the battle field with death in our eyes and pain in our hearts.
It was the perfect cliché.  A novelist could not have written it better if they had tried.  We mowed down the people who had killed our own and we returned home every night and cried ourselves to sleep.  We were warriors without names, numbers of a list of dead.  Nothing mattered until your body was returned to the state and buried along side the powder of your family.  We were the only family any of us had, we were brothers and sisters, parents of the same age, with as much care as we could muster from our frozen hearts.  No one spoke and no one asked when the meal made you sob.  We just didn’t make it again.  No one questioned the strange prayers and the weird markings on your books.  All we wanted was complete loyalty and the was what we got.
No one was happy to see us, we were the calm before the storm.  But once we arrived we were worshiped liked gods.  But we were not gods, we were angels of death, the Morhigan waiting for the carnage to come sweeping down the river to our position.  Mostly we were the turning point, the pivotal factor in victories.  And we had a perfect track record.  Until that night.
We were snipers by trade, a pack of alpha males that somehow made it work.  I loved them like they were my brothers and they protected my like their younger sister.  It helped that I could kick most of their asses at just about anything but I think they would have loved me anyway.
It was a just a bridge.  At least that was what the read out said.  Just a bridge across a pivotally important river fjord.  To us it was the last remaining bit of forest before the vast sweeping arm of battles and fire bombings.  It was a path of green where all around us there was nothing but lifeless waste.  And to us that was enough to stay up all night creating an elaborate system of pulleys and zip lines to secure the position.
I got crow’s nest, as usual, being the smallest and fastest on my feet.  They hauled the full sized weapon up to my position, draping me with ammo before I made the trek up  the front set of trees until I reached the bed of vines.  The gun was the biggest and even with my superior upper arm strength to most of my age, I was forced to push it into place with the my entire weight.
They shouted up at me and for a few minutes Jim came to visit, pretending that he had simply come to make sure I had the gun in place.  Really I knew he just wanted to see me one last time.  In the end I was happy that he had.  It was the last time I saw any of them.
No one sat down, mulling around the river’s edge and affixing their ammunition to the ranks of vines we had strung across our encampment.  Having the bridge meant we had the vantage point, we would see them coming up the hill before they even knew our plan.
“We have this, darling”
We leaned back against the trunks of the trees, my head against his chest.
“I hope so.”  My voice might have cracked.  I was road weary and emotional with grief.  We had spent the last week crossing the country in the most round about way possible just to protect a bridge.  I would have been highly disappointed if it had not been as truly beautiful here as it was.  But the greenery was the most perfect thing I had seen in years.  In ages.
He ran his fingers through my hair, pulling the braids out so it fell out over my shoulders.  I smiled up at him.  He never kissed me but I didn’t mind.  Not until later.  Not until after the blood.  He smiled down at me and brushed his hands across my forehead, the look in his eyes so different than anything I had ever seen.  On  the field he was ruthless and many nights he had crawled into my tent, tears streaming down his face as he recounted how his brother has vaporized before his eyes as they sat playing out in the yard.  The only thing that had saved him was the cement block he was standing behind.
“We have this, darling.”
“I believe you.”
I wish I hadn’t.

Chapter Two:
I don't know what attracted me to him.  It wasn't like I was looking for a relationship.  And generals were not my type.  Maybe it was the hair.  Or the quiet way he seemed to know he was right even when he was wrong.  And it intrigued me so much I could do nothing but follow the urge to be near him.
It was pathetic really.  You don't suddenly wake up one morning and realize you want to be attracted to the opposite sex the way every other girl on the face of the planet has been since long before you even picked up a gun.  And maybe that was what was different for me.  I knew what a brother felt like, what losing a lover felt like.  And I did not want that here.
He held meetings in his room, invited the tattooed among us to come together.  It was intimidating, I'm sure, to see us all tramp up the six flights of stairs in varying arrays of anti war pins and apparel.  The ink varied from full arm sleeves to little, easily hidden marks.  I took on the habit of rolling my shirt up and skirt down to allow the mark to show in the curve of my hip.  Gave me more attention than I was really ready for.  But then I guess it was the reason Miles took me in and called me his own.
It was the damn infantry men the first few times, huge bastards with no sense of decency.  You would think they had never seen a woman who wasn't going to charge them.  The comments weren't what I would have really considered vulgar.  I had heard worse.  It was simply knowing that if it came down to it I could never over power them.  Fear was a new thing for me.  Not having a sniper rifle strapped to my back and my M-9 at my thigh was disconcerting.
The first time it happened, I flipped them off and walked away, finding a group of old school chemists to drink with.  But feminist military brats are annoying at best and I drifted back into the pack of boys, knowing full well I was putting myself into it.  But I think that was what I wanted, I wanted confrontation and to knock someone's lights out for a good cause.
But this time around they weren't taking the finger for an answer.  And they had hands big enough to cup my entire hip, holding me in place.  I refused to scream but he must have been watching because he was there in an instant, hands on the guy's shoulder and quiet general's voice in his ears.
“I wouldn't do that if I was you.”
The guys turned, toothy grin and bad breath in Miles' face.  “And why not, sarge?”
He smiled, standing upright to his full height.  “Because she's mine.  And thats brigadier general to you soldier.”
Hands should not move as quickly as that poor asshole's did, getting them away from my hips.  I took Miles arm willingly and let him lead me over to the other side of the room.
“Brigadier general?”  I leaned against an wall, taking a long drink to wash the horrid taste of male tongue out of my mouth.
He smiled his wolf smile and sighed.  “Major general really, but I don't like to pull rank.”
I laughed even though it wasn't funny and wondered if Jenner would remind me of all of this tomorrow.  Because I intended to forget.
“I'm yours now, is that how it goes?”
He didn't look up at first and I wondered what his eyes were doing.  A smile crossed his face and he pushed the hair off his forehead.  “If that's how you want it to go.”  It wasn't quiet in a commanding way and I was certain I would have said yes even if I wanted to say no.  And that scared me more than letting him take my hand and kiss my cheek.  “But you have to give me your name, thats the deal.”
“I told you, Matilda Leaner.”
“No,” he grinned foolishly, “your name.”
“Matt.  Just Matt, like all the other guys.”
He nodded, walking away to make his rounds about the room.  And all I could do was watch.

“What do you want Matt?”
The question pulled me back to the conversation and the meal.  Although calling a bad burrito and a can of soda a meal was really stretching it.  Jenner watched me, perched on the edge of his bed, plate between his feet.  The sun peeked out from behind the buildings as it made its way down into the sea.  The light faded and I knew soon enough I would need to return to my own room and complete my homework.  Jenner wiped his mouth with an already soiled napkin.  “What do you want now Matt?”
“For starters, a better burrito.”
He sighed dramatically and rolled his eyes.  I took a bite and wished I hadn't.  “You know that's not what I meant.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“What do you want with the rest of your life.  With school and graduating and...”
I shook my head, trying to talk around a much too big bite.  “Hey, who said anything about graduating?  Who said anything about school?  Must you ruin a perfectly passable burrito with such talk Jenner?”
He smiled, rubbing the mark at the base of his wrist.  It was a single perfect capitol A, stylized and beautiful.  He wasn't aware of his own motions, tracing the letter until I was certain the ink would seep up into his thumb and cause his hands to darken.  It wasn't sign of unity, it was a mark of shame.
“Written in blood, assassin?”
He looked up, the cold calculating look I only saw when he though no one was watching left his eyes.  His hair fell across his face and I regretted my words instantly.
“Jenner, I-”
“No its alright.  You want to know about it?  Fine.”  He slid back onto the bed, pulling the comforter around him until he was nothing more than a pile of blankets with a face.  “Yea, I was an assassin.  But I was part of unit too.  We weren't hired hit men.  We were killing machines that needed food instead of oil.  If you couldn't take them out in battle we took them out at the home, in front of-”
His voice lost its ferocity and I held up my hand to make him stop but he didn't.  Maybe he needed to hear it more than I did, but he kept going.  “In front of their families.  Sometimes we killed them too, because that was what the little slip of paper left in the gun barrel told us to do.  The little slip of paper from God.”
“Jenner, I'm-”
“You think you have it hard Matt?  Because you lost your unit?  The war ended but that didn't stop us from killing.  We were God's angels of death and death never sleeps.  Don't give me that look, I don't want your pity.”
We were silent from a long time, the sounds of the hallway filtering in until neither of us could remember exactly what time it was.
“After I graduate I want to take a boat out over the sea and find out whats on the other side.”
He didn't look up at first but I kept going.  “I want to know if they had it as hard as we did over there.  If there's someplace safe ”
“Oh, honey, don't be melodramatic.”
I laughed and took a long drink.  It was nice to have Jenner, to have someone who was just as broken as me and yet still was live enough to know what broken feels like.
It wasn't that I drifted away from Jenner so much as I gravitated towards Miles.  I was more than willing to be his because it meant I was left alone by the infantry assholes and I got to be near him.  And that was all I wanted.  It was pathetic and self serving but I wanted to be close enough to smell him on my clothes before I fell asleep.  I wanted him to hold me on his arm while he told war stories.  And I listened, even if it made my heart ache to be anywhere but here among people who knew.  People who saw me and knew exactly what had happened.
Every one tells stories.  That was the game, the way of making sure the wound was wide open, the anger just below the surface.  Miles would begin and it would be passed around the circle, a little bit of pain and family for each person to share.  But I never shared.  Not until that night, after it was all over, and it was just the five of us.  The five planners and movers, the people who really wanted something to change.  Who came to the parties for more an just the booze and the comrodory.  We sat around the last few bottles, passing them as each of us spoke.  No one interrupted and you only laughed if the person telling the story did.  It was solemn and almost religious.  And Taylor turned to me, a sweet smile on her face and all I could do was take a long swig and launch into the story I had never told anyone.
“It was a routine hold.  We had the bridge at Dupress, a full battalion, almost four units.  Two were full one artillery laden, one just infantry and us, the special ops.  We were holding up our end of the deal, seven snipers, spread out across the roof tops on either side of the river.  I had center stage on the east bank, and it was my job to pick off the Gattling gunners before they could set up along the bank.  It was a simple plan, no one does anything stupid, no one gets hurt.”
No one moved when I paused to breath.  Miles smiled at me and I nodded, leaning back against the bed.  It was all there, every little pain I had ever felt since then.  The scene lay out before me like it was just this morning, not fifteen months ago.  It was all there, ever moment in still frames and light off of gun barrels.  And here I was, slightly drunk, explaining to these people, these four leaders of children, all of it.
I sighed and shook my head.  “Needless to say, the shit hit the fan pretty quickly.  They came down so fast, you would have though the bridge was made of gold.  The infantry unit we were paired with caved within moments.  Without us, the bridge would have been burnt to a crisp within minutes of the attack.  I managed to keep all the gunners off our side, but we were forced to fall back and regroup.  Thats when the end began.”
I didn't realize my voice had become so much quieter, or that all extraneous noise in the room had ceased altogether.  I listened in to the deep silence for a long moment, wondering why in God's name I was retelling it.  Why I was even allowing myself to retell it.  But they were all leaning in, trying to catch every word, care floating in their eyes.  This was their story as much as mine, what could have been for them.
“The artillery agreed to run coverage for us and we sent up a warning to all surrounding units that the bridge might fall.  We got little solid response but we ran our tactics as if back up was coming.  And I think we all knew it was the end long before we even began.  Three strong volleys of grenades and we were in close enough to our banks to set up strong metal sheeting and gunning posts.  We doubled off and fed each other rounds, rotating out when the other could no longer see past the sweat.  It was hell for a solid half hour.  Then we lost our coverage, the artillery completely run dry.”
The room was silent except for the deep, heaving breathes of crying.  I wondered for a moment who had been so moved by my story.  But it was me.  Miles slid close up next to me, his arm across my shoulders.  But I didn't lean into his chest, didn't crumble into his arms.  This was my story, my brothers who had died.  My Jim.
I breathed deeply and looked down at my tattered shoes.  “The artillery went first, although I think most of them just abandoned their bases.  They didn't get far.  The officer in charge of our squad gave me the last round of ammo that wasn't being fed into a gun and told me to return to my post in the tree line.  They gave me coverage.  I thought I was going to let them retreat, give them all a chance to pull back.  But they didn't.  They didn't retreat.”
“They took the last of their weapons and stood on the bridges until they were mowed down.”
No one spoke for a long time.  No one knew what to say.  I wiped the last of the tears from my eyes and sighed.  There was nothing to say and even I knew that.

It didn't mean anything to anyone that I was a girl.  It helped that it didn't mean anything to me, because then it might have mattered.  All I knew was that I was a good shot and the boys needed someone to protect their back.    And they were just boys, and I was just a girl and we were all soldiers.  And no one remembered what it felt like to love anyone as anything other than family.  Because that was what we were, a family.  We fought side by side and lived in each others shoes and held each others hands as we died.  And that was family.

My scar itched and I shifted to let the air hit me in the face.  He had followed the sound down the stairs.  Now all I had to do was wait.  Ambush him as he came back up.
I shook my head, pushing my hair out of my face.  The cut across my forehead smeared blood across my arm and I smiled vaguely at the horrible state of my uniform.  If only they had contemplated that.  Then maybe the shirts would have been made of flack and the skirts would be better insulated.  But who can be prepared for this?  Certainly not the geniuses who designed this building with no holdable ground.
“Don't get comfortable.  I know where you stand.”

It wasn't an instant thing.  It was a slow growing movement, something even the five of us didn't see happening until it had already happened.  Well, Miles saw it happening, but we didn't.  We saw parties become heated debates and and factions form.  We saw little pockets of distention and expulsion from the group.  We saw a morphing mass of scared children become a beating heart of hatred and we liked what we saw.  And we were not afraid anymore, because everyone was afraid of us.  And that was how we wanted it all along.
It became a movement, not a pathetic excuse for not going out on a Friday night.  We had a purpose and a reason to be angry.  I think Miles hoped we would riled ourselves up enough for him to simply give us the idea and have us run with it.  But we weren't quite ready for that.  We had all done the shoot to kill thing and knew how it always ended up.  We had the scars to prove it.  But he was
willing to wait.  He wanted a response and he would do anything for it.
Weeks after I had finally shared with the Five, as we were now known, he began preaching.  Not up on a soap box preaching.  Quiet simple lines about how we were not getting what we really deserved.  And we were, he wasn't lying to us.  We were getting a crappy education and the short end of the benefits stick.  We had lost our families and friends and they gave us school books and uniforms.  He wasn't lying to us, he just wasn't letting us think of the entire story for ourselves.
And we got angry.  Of course we did.  We knew what true anger felt like, the anger that grows every time you lose a friend and can't remember what the hell you're fighting for anymore.  And we banded together more than ever.  Units become something we used to remember where we came from.  Now we were one, we were the Unit.  The Movement.  And Miles was our general.  Because he told the truth, stated the obvious that everyone was willing to look past.
It didn't become violent right away.  It became something that we shared and that we let sit in our stomachs until it festered into open ulcers.  It burned us until the only thing we could think about was the fresh wound we had created for ourselves.  The wound Miles slowly poured salt over until all was could do was scream and let him pull us in further.  And in the end we all wanted to be pulled in.  We wanted to be part of a group, an amorphous group again.  It was something in our blood now, something we had given up but could not get away from.  They had not seen this coming, had not expected the war to be something so moving and shaking, so very deeply embedded into our souls.  But they should have.
The planning began in meetings that I didn't attend.  Whether Miles kept me out of the loop or not I still don't know but the plans were made and I knew nothing.  The group smiled at me when we would pass in the halls but they no longer stopped, no longer invited me up to their rooms to share stories.  I became a flagship member, someone who represented the group but didn't do anything for it.  And in the end it was a good thing.

Miles and I had been screwing for weeks.  It wasn't a pleasant thing, but it wasn't meant to be.  It was a release of tension, a few short hours spent exerting as much force on each other as possible then dressing and leaving before the other could speak.  It worked in a sad twisted way and I kept going back.  Until the maps showed up.
There were floor plans, red lines and blue dots covering his wall that day.  There were lists of names, dates and schedules.  I'm sure if I had looked in the closet there would have been boxes of ammo.  But I didn't look.  I slapped him across the face and ripped the map off the wall.  He grabbed my wrist so hard it left a bruise but I stood my ground, didn't look away as he screamed at me about how important this all was.  About how there was no other way.  When he finally let go, I took out my lighter and burned the plans, leaving to have a smoke before I burned the entire place down.

He found me out by the dock, stood over me as I smoked cigarette after cigarette.  He paced and fumed and finally exploded.
“I don't care if you don't want me. I don't care if you think I'm an ass. I am an ass.  Thats what I'm good at.  But we belong together, because we both don't belong here.”
“This isn't a we thing, Miles.  This is a you being an ass and me not putting up with it.”
“Its always a we thing, Matt.  Have you forgotten what being in a unit feels like?  Or was that why the rest of them all died.”
“Oh yea thats mature.  Lets poke the wound until the patient screams.  You should have been a torture worker.  No, Miles, I haven't forgotten what a unit feels like.  I just don't need to feel that to feel safe.”
“You should.”

Weeks went by before I saw him again.  I dropped the class we had together and spent every waking moment with Jenner.  It worked for a while, although the dull ache of suddenly losing someone again would wash over me late at night.  There weren't enough cigarettes and I had never been a cutter otherwise my arms would have been covered.  But I lived.  I existed.  I went to class and consumed food and worked on papers that I didn't care about.  And I forgot.

I didn't have class that morning.  Thank God I didn't have class that morning.  I woke with a headache, sitting up slowly and groping for the glass of water on my desk.  Jenner had stayed with me until much too late and I hoped he was having a better morning than I was.
He wasn't.
The shots didn't start until I was already out on the back walk, making my way to meet Jenner for a post first class smoke.  I heard them and knew instantly what they were.  Because you don't lose that sense of waiting, ever.
It was coming from the building, probably the second floor.  Most of the windows were thrown open to let in the sea air.  And let out the horrific screams.
The building boiled over and students spilled out onto the lawn.  I fought up stream towards the entrance, not really sure what I thought I could do.  Thankfully Jenner saw me and caught my arm before I could do something stupid.
“They aren't going to do anything”
“I know”
“We're going to have to”
“I know”
“Go get a set of walkies and the guards guns”
“Always, captain.”

The guards weren't exactly willing to hand over guns to a part of students, but flustered as they were they brought us to people who might.  The administration sat around their oaken table, phone calls going through the people rushing around trying to figure out exactly what was happening.
“We know what's going on.”
The whole room froze, staring at Jenner and I.
“And we know how to fix it.”

For some reason they didn't argue when I told them I would go in.  They mumbled about procedure and me being a student and needing to protect me as I strapped on the holster and gun.  The weight felt good on my hips and for a moment I regretted everything I had ever done in my life.  Someone in the back of the room asked if it was even worth trying to get in the building.
The magazine of bullets hit the table with a much more satisfactory bang than even I had anticipated.
“Those are your students in there.  You won't let me in but you'll let them die?  Yeah this is a great place for all of us to live.”
Jenner put his hands on my shoulders but I flinched away.  “You think you've done us some huge favor, but you've created this.  And since you won't take responsibility for it, I'm going to fix it.”
The walk to the building should have only taken a few minutes, but if I had read the plans correctly, there would be watchmen at each window.  The admins let me into the back breezeway, still mumbling about codes and procedures and bad press.  I slammed the door behind me.
“What's the plan, cap'n?”
“Fan out, pick off the watchers from behind, let the students still alive out this way.”
“This building's not connected well, its two different staircases.”
I smiled, calculating time to take the stairs in my head.  “Good.  We split up.  Meet you in the middle.”
Thankfully, Miles plan was never to kill off students.  There were two causalities in my stretch of hallway, crossfire kills if I had ever seen 'em.  He wanted this clean, wanted to make a statement.  Or so I thought until I found the room he had corralled a class of freshmen.  One of his lacheys had a group of them against the blackboard, slowly picking them off from the back row of desks.  It was sick sight, red on green chalk board.  The girl at the end of the row saw me through the door's window and I put my finger to my mouth.  She was probably a smart kid, straight A's, future doctor.  But with a gun trained on her head she screamed.
“HELP ME! PLE...” Her voice cut off short as the top half of her head was completely removed with semi-auto fire.  I turned away for just a second, busted the door up and took out the pot shot kids with two bullets a piece.  They died before they could even register the shock.

It didn't take long to round the others up.  And as soon as I knew Jenner had it handled, I went after the big kill.  It took a few tries, a couple of wasted bullets and fire fights around hallway corners.  He was a worthy adversary, but I had the advantage of knowing this building better than him.  I cornered him finally, in one of the rooms they had been using to kill of students.  The fresh smell of blood made my stomach turn and a fleeting thought of weakness passed through my mind.
“Not how you expected it to end, was it Miles?”
He laughed, holding the semi at a strange angle.  He was almost empty.  I took out his toes from behind my row of desks.  He winced and crumpled a little but didn't fall.
“Is this what you wanted Miles?  Did you get the pay back you were looking for?”
“This wasn't for me.  This was never for me.”
“Then who was it for Miles?  Who did they rally to?”
“They rallied for you Matt.  They heard the story and the lose and they rallied to you.  For you.  You were our general, Matilda Leaner, a much better one than I ever could be.  Look at the blood Matt, it was spilled for you.  Revenge is sweet and its all for you.”
“But I didn't want this.  I didn't ask for this.”
“You didn't have to.  We did it because we wanted you to be happy.”
I must have smiled because he lowered his weapon and I got one good shot in before I had to duck from his return fire
“We did this for you Matty.  We did it all for you!  All the blood and the lives sacrificed for you!  Don't you understand?  There was no other way Matt.  This was our way out.  Our way to go home.”
“This isn't home Miles.  This is hell.  This is losing my unit and the bridge all over again.  This is me wanting to kill you.”
He threw the gun to the floor and it clattered over to me, hitting the table with an anticlimactic thud.  He laughed.  “Then kill me Matt.  Because that would make it all so much better.”  He voice cracked.  “I did it for you.  But I didn't want this.  I didn't want the pain, Matt.  I don't want to remember what it feels like to take someones live.  I'm too young to be in this much pain Matty!”
“I know.”

They came as the finally shot rang out.  The look on Miles' face would have been priceless if the left side had not been shot to hell.  He hit the floor with a dull thud and I wondered in a vague state of shock if everyone sounded like a sack of potatoes when they died.
“Don't move Matilda.”
I dropped the gun, popping the now empty magazine out of its place.  My hands rose slowly and I turned, never leaving my spot on the center insignia.  There were more than I had expected, more fire power than I imagined was really necessary to subdue a teenage girl.
Jenner stumbled out of the last classroom, clutching his side.  The blood spread across the white shirt in an intricate pattern and I smiled vaguely at him.  He nodded slowly, leaning against the wall to catch his breath.
“You alright honey?”
“Yea, Jenner, I'm fine.”
“Don't move you two.”
He stepped forward, motioning with his fire arm for me to join Jenner by the wall.  I walked slowly, the smirk on my face a force of habit not a sign of devious thought.  But he couldn't have known and I didn't really blame him.
“You certainly caused quite a stir, you two.”
“A stir, sir?”  I turned and his gun arm faltered.  He didn't want to have to shoot a student, not with all the blood already on the floor.  “We caused a stir?  Or we saved lives?”
“Matilda.”
“No,”  my voice was low and I wondered if they could all hear me.  I hoped they could.  Some lowered their weapons, afraid for a moment that I might do something that would require them to shoot.  “No, don't Matilda me.  You know exactly what happened and why.  So don't give me some sob story of trying to make it right for us.”
“Honey, its not worth your breath.”  Jenner's voice was sweet and I shot him a smile.  He was sagging and I wondered if he really have the time to work this stand off with me.  But he turned and spat, shaking his head.  “They don't give a flying flip about us and that's the simple truth.”
“Jenner, I would suggest you calm down and let us help you-”
He laughed, shaking his head and cringing with the movement.  “Help me?  Help ME?  Thats what you think this was gonna do?  Help me?  Yea lets put all the poor little ruined war kids in one place and make sure they know everything they have missed.”
The man lowered his gun even more, a look of frustration the confusion on his face.  “We did this for you.  This is what you should have wanted-”
“We don't want this!” I screamed much louder than necessary but it felt good in my throat.  “We don't want any of this but its all we know.”  My voice cracked and Jenner stepped up to put his hand on my shoulder.  The little blue mark on his wrist wavered with the lost of blood and he placed his weight against me.
“We didn't ever want this.  But you can't fuck us up then make us OK again.  We are weapons now because thats what you made up.  And you can't undo that.  You screwed us.  Now you find some way to make it alright again.  Because we don't want to be like this”
“But you can't stay here.”
“We never wanted to be here!  That was your little self serving plan to keep us in one place until we were normal enough for you to handle us.  How many people have to die at our hands before you realize that we are not children?  We had childhood stolen out from under our feet by sniper rifles and painful tattoo jobs.  Don't tell me this was what you wanted for your children.  And don't fucking tell me you think we can throw it all out.”
Jenner could no longer hold himself up and I helped him sit down.  The shot should not have been fatal.  But neither should have been living here at all.  He smiled at me and I blinked rabidly because I refused to let him see me crying.  “I know honey, it hurts but just think tomorrow you can sleep in.  its Saturday Matt and I think I'm going to spend the entire day thinking of ways to annoy you.”
“You do that Jenner.” I choked and he closed his eyes.  “You spend all of tomorrow thinking for me.”
And he was gone.

A cold sun rose over campus the next day.  But I wasn't there to watch the water lap the shores like nothing had happened.  I was gone.