For this coming new year, my darling friend Amber has demanded that we give one another weekly writing prompts and roll with them. I don't know that we'll stick to that weekly schedule, but I'm game. My first prompt was "On this day our heroes came home..."
So, here goes:
It was a victory in a sense of the word.
A bloody smirk.
“You should see the other guy.”
When second place is absolute annihilation, any alternative looks rosy by comparison. It’s three months shy of a decade since war was officially declared, almost to the day; and history will round up anyway. Still, maybe we should have dragged our feet another ninety four days just for the novelty of a round number.
Today is the one that will make the books. On this day, our heroes came home.
Home, of course, in a sense of the word.
The quarantine was a part of what they signed on for. They knew what they could expect. At least, they knew how it looked on paper. They will have the chance to watch the recordings of the parades, but in sixty days, the fanfare will have lost much of its momentum. If any of them leave this facility, the world will already have begun to forget, but each and every one will have earned their place in our history books.
Immortality. In a sense of the word.
How many names does anyone really remember from a history book? The truth is, they gave a chunk of their lives, their real lives, and the only way their names will live on is if someday an eighth grade teacher needs another bonus question for some bullshit quiz. Now the brave men and women who led the offensive on foreign soil, who fought and who starved and who suffered, their lives are in the my hands, and I've never held anything more dangerous than this clipboard. The super soldiers were what won the war for us, but the science was mostly borrowed from the enemy themselves. It was still in development when our soldiers took the research facility. They weren't prepared to use the serum on their own men, but they weren't losing yet either. We were.
Desperate times, right?
We were hoping for a Captain America, I suppose.
What we got was considerably more brutal, but brutality was arguably what we needed. The problem we face now is that there is no way to reverse what we have done. We are left with soldiers and no war to send them off to. What we call a quarantine will be used to evaluate the possibility of rehabilitation. Failing that, an honorable discharge of sorts. Honorable and humane.
Today, though, is a day for celebration. Our war is ended. Our heroes are home.
So, here goes:
It was a victory in a sense of the word.
A bloody smirk.
“You should see the other guy.”
When second place is absolute annihilation, any alternative looks rosy by comparison. It’s three months shy of a decade since war was officially declared, almost to the day; and history will round up anyway. Still, maybe we should have dragged our feet another ninety four days just for the novelty of a round number.
Today is the one that will make the books. On this day, our heroes came home.
Home, of course, in a sense of the word.
The quarantine was a part of what they signed on for. They knew what they could expect. At least, they knew how it looked on paper. They will have the chance to watch the recordings of the parades, but in sixty days, the fanfare will have lost much of its momentum. If any of them leave this facility, the world will already have begun to forget, but each and every one will have earned their place in our history books.
Immortality. In a sense of the word.
How many names does anyone really remember from a history book? The truth is, they gave a chunk of their lives, their real lives, and the only way their names will live on is if someday an eighth grade teacher needs another bonus question for some bullshit quiz. Now the brave men and women who led the offensive on foreign soil, who fought and who starved and who suffered, their lives are in the my hands, and I've never held anything more dangerous than this clipboard. The super soldiers were what won the war for us, but the science was mostly borrowed from the enemy themselves. It was still in development when our soldiers took the research facility. They weren't prepared to use the serum on their own men, but they weren't losing yet either. We were.
Desperate times, right?
We were hoping for a Captain America, I suppose.
What we got was considerably more brutal, but brutality was arguably what we needed. The problem we face now is that there is no way to reverse what we have done. We are left with soldiers and no war to send them off to. What we call a quarantine will be used to evaluate the possibility of rehabilitation. Failing that, an honorable discharge of sorts. Honorable and humane.
Today, though, is a day for celebration. Our war is ended. Our heroes are home.
