FicWad

No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be 'enemy', for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.

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"Well, shit."

"Private, be quiet."

"Hawkeye, we're screwed. Face it. We're snug up here, but sooner or later they'll starve us out. A few K-rations each isn't going to cut it for more than four days, five max if we get really lucky."

"Havoc!"

"What?"

"Instead of bemoaning our position, help me think of a way to get out of here!"

Cool blue eyes met irritated hazel. "I'm not bemoaning anything, Lieutenant. I'm just saying that we're screwed. No biggie."

Liza groaned, dropping her head down onto her knees. Great. The best rifleman in her company had to be a fatalist. She was too young for this.

A shift at her side, a grunt, the click of a gun being cocked. She winced at the retort of Havoc's rifle, frowned at the shatter of stone. Squeals and yells of outrage followed.

"Private, what did you /do/?"

"Shot down a creaky piece of masonry. It took out about twenty-some-odd people."

"Killed."

"I didn't shoot to kill, lieutenant." The taller blonde dropped down next to her, drawing his legs up. "Right now, it's not a kill-or-be-killed situation."

"You should have killed them anyway. They'll just come back and cause trouble."

"Look, missy, unlike you, I didn't volunteer for this goddamned war. I was conscripted because I had a good eye and a steady hand. Period. I don't want to kill people."

"What, and I do?"

"I have no idea. I don't really care. I'm just not going to kill someone who's not trying to actively kill me right now."

She gaped at him, openmouthed. "My god," she breathed. "You really are an idiot."

Blue eyes shading faintly to green glanced apathetically at her. "Do tell."

"Private, this is a war! We don't have the luxury of being able to distinguish our kills like that."

"Boy," he remarked, lighting up a cigarette. "I wish I could think like you. Life must be real simple, with everything divided into 'kill' or 'don't kill'. Every human being with dark skin and red eyes is automatically a target, every human being with pale skin is a friend. Almost makes me forget that some of my worst enemies have pale skin."

"Private-!"

"I'm not an alchemist or a philosopher, but some things stink as dead wrong to my farm-boy nose and common sense, and this is one of them." He glanced at her again, those blue-green eyes laced with scorn. "Lieutenant, this war amounts to all-out genocide. It makes me sick to hear educated city kids go on about how it's right to kill every moving thing with dark skin and weird eyes because it's a war. Killing people isn't right, no matter what the situation is."

"Just because it's not right doesn't mean that we don't have to do it!"

"Now I can see why we got into this war in the first place. With people like you mucking around in the government, I'm surprised that we haven't been fighting race wars with the rest of the world." He casually flicked the ash from the tip of his cigarette. "You really need to stop reading the propaganda, Lieutenant, ma'am."

In a fit of temper, she knocked the cigarette out of his hand. "I understand your point of view. Really, I do. But right here, right now, I can't afford you to think that way. We need to stay alive and come back to the Major like we said we would."

He grinned at her. "I can stay alive without killing, promise."