Bittersweet dreams

Author's note: Well you can have a chapter in which nothing happens or a chapter thats 25 pages long....I chose the former. Besides I need something that turns this away from being purely fluff.
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Agitated pacing seemed like a good way to clear her mind as she waited for her weekly briefing time to arrive. But while the tiny digital clock on her wall insisted on mocking her with its slow passage she was left thinking of Dante and Alexandra and more complicated matters. She only gave up when she felt her legs begin to ache and the promise of a full day of standing still awaiting her. Leaving early seemed like the best thing to do….it seemed that when she wasn’t mercilessly busy she was excruciatingly bored and wiling away time was something she’d become adept at. Clearing her mind of a certain blue haired sorcerer she slipped her feet into her boots by the door and headed out. The cities ant farm of corridors was deserted around mid morning. It seemed virtually everyone in it were soldiers, those who couldn’t fight trained as medics or engineers and those who couldn’t do that either were usually children. Not that that stopped them being taught the basics of combat from an age at which they should still be holding their mothers hands when they crossed their roads…..Sywryn cursed the locusts for forcing them down into these god forsaken steel cans under the earth. It wasn’t fair! She emerged out onto the familiar circular walkway that ran around her level of the city. Other, similar paths lay below her, long catwalks spanning the gaps so people could get from one side to the other. It didn’t make sense to her why there had to be a wide and seemingly endless drop through the centre of her home but she supposed there was some reason for it. The contented hum of machinery was louder out here, if she peered over the edge she could see them whirring away below her doing god knows what. She leaned on the railing, her palm forming a support for her chin as she watched the odd figure come and go from some part of the city. Sywryn always found it strange…the sight of a soldier skating past a technological marvel with a sword strapped to his waist. In a world where technology could keep them alive and relatively protected half a mile underground they seemed like outdated and archaic relics….but their technology hadn’t been worth anything when the locusts had first attacked. Sywryn hadn’t even been born when it happened but she often wondered what it would have been like, to be living your life peacefully one day and surrounded by the corpses and ruins of your home the next. She’d heard Frost’s stories of course, what few of them he told but they did nothing to curb the almost morbid curiosity she had regarding what E-day was really like. Now it seemed like a part of them had been regressed to a simpler time, forced to rely on magic and swords to survive….Maybe it was for the best, she thought. She played idly with a strand of hair that dropped out of her ponytail while she waited. A figure caught her eye as he made his way toward her. Daelan waved, she waved back, grateful for a little pleasant company for once.

“Hey…you look bored as hell.” Daelan was one of those people who could make any conversation seem like a weightless exchange of words. Sywryn often wondered if that was why she had become such quick friends with him…someone who could take her mind off things seemed like a rare luxury.

“I know…..I can’t concentrate enough to work…I wish I had something else to do around here.” Daelan grinned and cracked his knuckles.

“You could come training with me…I could always use a sparring partner.” He asked almost hopefully every time but Sywryn had learnt from her first mistake. Her hand to hand combat skills were…rusty, to say the least and where Daelan found his boundless energy on little sleep and ration packs she’d never know. Hand to hand combat had always seemed somewhat pointless to her, against a locust without a weapon a human’s chances of survival were essentially zero. She’d seen it, it had been gruesome to say the least. The memory of it still made her shudder. She shook her head slowly.

“Um….no thanks Daelan…..I’m sure you need someone a little more experienced than me.” He fell silent, something which for him was virtually unheard of. Sywryn studied his face as the boyishly charming smile slowly faded and knew instantly something was wrong. She patted his hand gently.

“Hey…what’s wrong?” She asked gently. He rubbed the back of his head, never quite meeting her gaze as if he were embarrassed to say what he wanted to.

“Um……actually I’m glad I found you alone you know…..I um….wanted to apologise for yesterday.” Daelan mumbled like a schoolboy asking for his first date but Sywryn only eyed him with a quizzical expression. She had no idea what he was apologising for.

“What for?” She asked.

“You know…yesterday. I was supposed to be looking after you but I got carried away…you almost got killed and Alexandra took a blade for it….I already apologised to her but I guess I owe you one just as much.” The young man sighed, staring out across the gap with an unreadable expression on his face. In truth Sywryn hadn’t thought that much about it until he brought it up, it had been close but she felt it best to let things like that lie. Besides, she didn’t know why he was apologising to her, she hadn’t been able to do anything but hide, even if she’d been ordered to do it. She felt like she should say something although it would probably be trivial. Instead she just hugged him , wrapping her arms gently around his drooped shoulders. She thought it was sweet, so few people seemed to care these days.

“You don’t have to apologise Daelan. People make mistakes and there really wasn’t any harm done….Alex is fine, I’m fine.” She gave him a reassuring smile but he just snorted, folding his arms.

“That’s not what Frost said. He said something like…” Daelan dropped his voice, feigning Frost’s accent. “Battle will always cost lives, whether those of your allies or your enemies. This time your mistake came without a price. You should be grateful you have a chance to learn from your mistake for free and do so……geez he talks like a sage sometimes.” Sywryn couldn’t help but laugh. It probably wouldn’t have sounded funny coming from the man himself but from Daelan it somehow managed it. That and his description of her stoic captain was right on the money. She knew all about Frost’s wisened way of talking and had been on the wrong end of it several times. It was strange…the first time Sywryn had ever laid eyes on the man she pegged him as brute with a sword who got where he was by surviving. It had taken her a long time to rid herself of that image and she wasn’t sure she completely had. It was why comments like that still surprised her.

“Well…he’s a lot older than us so I suppose he knows what he means. Really though that’s just his way of saying everything’s fine….he can just be a little harsh sometimes.”

She wondered how long she’d been standing there but figured it must have been a while, her feet ached. She waved Daelan along with her and the two started to make their way toward the briefing room.

“You’re telling me.” He continued “I’ve never been so scared in my life.” Sywryn wasn’t sure how to react to that. She could never be scared of Frost but she’d been around him a year, compared with Daelan’s month and a half it was a much longer time to get to know him.

The door to briefing room opened politely, admitting Daelan and the slightly more slender and diminutive figure of Sywryn. Frost was already there as usual with Alexandra. The girl had been staring blankly at a photograph in the file folder open on the table in front of her but she looked up when Sywryn entered. From beneath the tips of her bangs she gave Sywryn a strange look, one she’d never seen before. The mahogany haired woman found it hard to place; it was somewhere between simple acknowledgement and…a smile? She swore she’d seen the corners of her lips curl up just a little as she caught sight of her. But Alexandra never smiled, at least not at her. She shrugged it off as a trick of the mind but even as she sat down the look never quite vanished. Her thoughts were quickly forgotten though, driven away by a sudden feeling of uneasiness. There seemed to be an almost palpable air of tension in the briefing room, Sywryn could feel that something was not normal. All it took was a quick look at Frost’s expression, the way he frowned as his mind churned behind that impassive face of his and she could tell. Sywryn knew the look well and it worried her. If something was enough to worry Frost it was cause for concern. Biting her lip Sywryn opened the folder. The images didn’t mean much to her, they never did until she was told what she was looking at so she simply waited for Frost to speak. When he did his tone was far from reassuring.

“Those pictures you’re looking at are the results of the resonator survey a team laid in the tunnels two days ago…..” His introduction seemed even more to the point than usual, he hadn’t even acknowledged they’d all arrived. Not even a nod. Perhaps it was just the light but Sywryn could see the lines age had drawn on his face more clearly when Frost was nervous. He looked…..older.

“Emergence tunnels….” Daelan chimed in. The exits to the tunnels the locusts burrowed to the surface. No-one had ever found a way to stop them doing it, only the steel walls of the city stopped them burrowing straight into their beds at night. It was a scary thought, facing an enemy that could be moving right beneath your feet without you knowing…For Sywryn that ugly piece of knowledge made traversing the wastes all the more nerve wracking. “Shit there’s a lot of them….” Now that Sywryn looked harder she could make out paler streaks on the map, ones that all headed toward the surface and the large white blob that showed the city.

“Indeed. Far more than usual…command thinks this kind of activity is just normal, part of their cycle but I very much doubt that.” Frost’s British accent seemed to come out all the more at times like this. Sywryn thought it made him sound intelligent…for some reason. “It seems too much of a coincidence that we see this a few days before our supply convoy is due to arrive from Scotland…..They’ve run at the same time every month for the past half a year…..they’re learning.” Sywryn could only gulp. Each city ran on basically the same technology but they all needed different parts, different supplies to keep running. For as long as she could remember convoys had been sent between anyone they could reach to try and keep each other alive. If the locusts managed to cut them off from each other….she didn’t want to think about it. But it didn’t seem possible. The beats were basically animals, intelligent or not and the convoys they sent were more like small armies. Tanks, helicopters….anything they had left went alongside them. How could creatures of flesh and blood destroy steel?

“So what do we do?” She asked, breaking the silence that went with her thoughts.

“Our orders are to close them….one by one. Essentially in the time that it will take for the convoy to arrive the locusts won’t have enough time to dig new tunnels….” Frost trailed off, but to discreetly for anyone but Sywryn to tell. She knew there was something he wasn’t telling them. She could feel it. But she didn’t want to be the one to ask. He caught her looking straight at him and returned it in kind, pale blue eyes seemingly frozen over in their sockets. Such a look brought a lump to her throat.

“So it’s search and destroy?” Daelan ventured. He tossed his folder onto the table in obvious irritation. “But hell this could take a while…..hours to get rid of all of these. Do we really wanna be out there that long captain?”

“It seems we have no choice.” Frost folded his hands on the desk. Sywryn looked to Alexandra, completely impassive, emotionless but after her words the night before Sywryn began to wonder if she even cared where she was sent or what they told her to do. Did she even feel fear beneath that smooth expression? Or was she just so good at hiding it even Sywryn couldn’t tell. She looked to Daelan and a pensive yet excited look on his face…and then to Frost, steely eyed and….waiting? Finally she couldn’t keep her mouth shut anymore.

“How many people are coming with us?” She was almost afraid to know the answer. All eyes fell on Frost.

“None…..It seems the four of us are alone. As I said command sees this as a routine…..and there is no reason to risk more than one squad on a routine.” He spoke with such bitterness Sywryn could tell he’d change it if he could. If there was a word to describe the silence that fell across the room it would be overbearing. There was no need to speak because all of them were thinking the same thing….that to do this between the four of them was basically a death warrant. But shock could quickly turn to anger and for Daelan that leap seemed smaller than for the others.

“Bullshit!” He smacked the desk with his fist. “What the fuck are they doing sending four guys on a mission that should be a forty man job!”

“Hold your tongue soldier.” Frost’s sour response was enough to bring a little quiet in the room but not much else. Sywryn could still see the young man seething. “There was little I could do to dissuade them…it seems they have special confidence in all of us.” Sywryn had never heard the silver haired man be sarcastic before and it wasn’t a pleasant sound. Daelan angrily kicked his chair back and started pacing the edge of the room, cursing under his breath. If Sywryn had thought the air had been tense to start with then now it had despondency and anger mixed in. She felt it almost like a palpable weight on top of her. She was already thinking ahead to what the mission might turn out like…it didn’t take much imagination. She could almost feel the dry and dusty air of the wastes on her skin already, feel the chill in the air….Dammit there was a reason why missions outside where kept short, it was only a matter of time before the locusts would find you and only so many of them you could kill. Telling herself she wasn’t going alone, that her comrades would be coming with her didn’t help ease the lump in her throat. Sywryn sighed heavily….they were all exhausted, it felt like they’d been run ragged for weeks and now this?

“But seriously.” Daelan continued. “What are they playing at? If the captain reckons they’ve learned about our convoys or what not why deny it, they could check it out at least? I mean come on! How many times has he been wrong?”

“Why face reality when the lie is easier to deal with?” Alexandra’s voice always reminded Sywryn of a gentle breeze for some reason, like Dante’s reminded her of shadow and Frost’s of steel. It would have been a nice voice if it wasn’t always so laced with bitterness. Sywryn had to agree with her though…it was a morbid thought and she hated to think it but their lives were only four pieces of paperwork if they screwed it up. Only it wouldn’t be her filling them out like usual….

“Can we not talk about it please?” Sywryn said softly. “If we have to do it then let’s just get it over with.” No-one could miss the pessimistic tone in her usually upbeat voice but Frost at least seemed to take the hint.

“It’s a three day mission…if we move quickly. We’ll avoid combat were possible, keep to wide open spaces where possible and move as a group at all times. Sleeping in shifts may help as well.” Frost’s voice remained perfectly level, something Sywryn really envied. She wondered if it would be better or worse to be able to control your emotions like that. Was it like bottling them up and hiding them from view or had he been doing this so long it really didn’t bother him. No…that probably wasn’t true, she could see the nervousness on his face, it was there for someone who looked hard enough. But all she knew was that the very idea scared her to death, hell, the idea of going out there at all scared her to death. But for three days…..For some reason she found her eyes straying to Alexandra. For a woman who had almost been killed by a locust a day ago the prospect of this mission didn’t seem to weigh heavily upon her. Her corn coloured bangs hid most of her face from view but Sywryn could still see one eye, blankly staring at the opposite wall. Sywryn remembered her words well….that everyone she knew had been killed by the locusts…that she fully expected to die herself along with everyone around her. It felt so morbid as they played on a loop through her head but maybe it was why the thought of death didn’t worry her. Sywryn could only think of how wrong that was…how could anyone not be afraid of dying, it didn’t seem right. The pity she felt began to swell up again but not for long, Daelan’s brash voice broke her out of her thoughts.
“Never thought I’d be sleeping in the wastes….damn….I’m telling ya, I’m gonna live just so I can tell that one to my grandkids.” Sywryn ran a hand through her mahogany hair, brushing the stray strands back behind her ears and wondered why his joking didn’t raise her spirits like it usually did. Just not enough she supposed. Still, she was a little envious of him, being able to switch on whatever emotion he seemed to need when he wanted. She sighed…the prospect of a sleepless night now greeting her.

“Very well.” Frost rose in that well muscled way of his. It was strange, the whole thing seemed so simple it had taken him barely a minute to explain it. She was used to these briefings lasting almost an hour…it was the doing it that would be difficult though. “We leave tomorrow morning, we want to have done as much by nightfall as possible…..Dismissed.” He strode out…to do what Sywryn didn’t know but she could imagine it involved his sword. It left her alone with Daelan and Alexandra and an uncomfortable silence. She tried to think of something to keep herself occupied, anything to take her mind off it but she wasn’t due to start her afternoon medical shift for another two hours or so….she was, however, very hungry. She was about to just get up and leave on habit, she usually left with Daelan and they ate lunch together, it was just how it was. Today though she found her mis-matched eyes falling on Alexandra, still unmoving in the corner.

“Alex?” She asked, actually getting her to look at her for once. “Do you want to join Daelan and me for lunch?”

“No thank you.” Came the curt and yet somehow surprised response. Sywryn sighed, she hadn’t expected her to do it but the asking couldn’t hurt could it?

“Your sure?”

“Yes….” Sywryn stopped in the doorway, watching her. She’d always thought the girl looked so gloomy…now she knew why it only seemed to make it worse. She slipped quietly out of the room, knowing that forcing the matter wouldn’t help and joined Daelan in the hallway as the door swished shut behind her.

“She scares the hell out of me you know…” He said quietly…as if his voice might carry through a sound proofed door.

“Well... She’s been through a lot. Don’t think too badly of her…”