Archive of Our Own

In every life, there came a turning point.

Michael's came on Christmas Eve of their senior year - the moment John got up from the dinner table, his hand clasped in Francesca Bridgerton's, and announced that the two of them were engaged. That he had asked Francesca to marry him. That she had done him the honor of saying yes.

John was young to be proposing marriage, but whenever Michael had teased him about it, all John would do was shrug helplessly and say, "Yes, but I met Francesca," as if that was enough of an explanation. Maybe it was. 

Michael had known John was going to propose, of course. He had been there when Aunt Janet had given John their grandmother's engagement ring and Uncle Jack had heartily clapped his son on the back and Mom had beamed and hugged John. He had been there to watch with amusement as John agonized over every line of his planned proposal speech to Francesca and chip in with commentary on where he thought it could be improved - jokingly calling John "Mr. Bridgerton." 

What he hadn't known was just how much it would hurt - seeing the ring on Francesca's hand, the look on John's face as he bent down to kiss her, the joyful looks and warm congratulations of their family.

Their family.

It shouldn't have hurt. Michael shouldn't have felt jealous. But he did.

He had never been jealous of John before. Not like this. Not before this.

They had sat side by side in class all through elementary and middle and high school, even though they were nearly a year apart. John had been born just days before the September deadline to start kindergarten. Michael just a few weeks too late to start school the year before. And so it was that they grew up together - attending all the same classes, participating in all the same activities, making all the same friends.

"Inseparable," people called them.

"Practically twins," their classmates said.

Their fathers had actually been twins - Uncle Jack born seven minutes the elder to Dad. And so when Dad had been killed in a botched burglary, it had only been natural for Mom to move in with Uncle Jack and Aunt Janet. 

Michael could hardly remember his father anymore, to be honest. He had only been eight when Dad had died. He and John had been having a sleepover that night, building a pillow fort and constructing elaborate fantasies about being knights vanquishing a dragon to rescue the princess while Mom and Aunt Janet knitted the night police officers had knocked on the front door.

John had been there for the funeral, the both of them dressed in too-small black suits, and there for every aching and numb day afterwards as Mom cried so hard that some days, she couldn't leave her new room. It was John who, while technically his cousin, was more of a brother to him than anyone else in the world Michael. It was Uncle Jack had raised him and taught him what it meant to be a man. Everything John had ever had, Michael had been given as well.

Except for this. Except for Francesca.

Michael was the oldest. Despite having never taken a thing seriously in his life, despite never wanting people to take him seriously, he had always felt a vague obligation to watch out for John - who was, after all, nearly a whole year younger. That John was also objectively the more responsible, put-together Stirling was generally something Michael ignored. But it meant Michael had absolutely no business coveting John's girlfriend - no, fiancé. 

He had never envied John anything before this. Uncle Jack and Aunt Janet had lavished the same love and attention on the both of them growing up. Michael had been gifted every possible opportunity, grown up never wanting for anything - other than his father, anyway.

And yes, one day John would be the one to take control of Uncle Jack's investment firm, Kilmartin, John was the one who was thinking about running for Congress one day - but Michael had never envied him that either. Who wanted to become a politician? It was too much work for too little fun.

He had no reason to be envious of John. After all, Michael was due to graduate Columbia alongside John himself in a few month. He had a healthy trust fund of his own from their grandparents. Yeah, he was going to work at Kilmartin after graduating rather than Merill Lynch, where John was set to work - but who cared? A job was a job, and it wasn't like he really needed the money.

Michael Stirling had everything in the world he could ever want or dream of. Except for Francesca Bridgerton. One day - one day soon - she would become Francesca Stirling - but that Stirling would be for John, not Michael. Never Michael.

He couldn't have her, and no amount of recrimination in the world would change that one simple fact.

And that was the one thing he couldn't, or wouldn't, take from John. Not John, who was his brother in everything but blood.

Michael had been there every step of the way for their relationship - from John's nervous stammer the first time he talked about the pretty girl in his marketing class to acting as wingman when John finally got the nerve to ask her out to, on one memorable occasion, buying a bouquet on John's behalf to give to Francesca while John had been stuck in bed with mono. 

Michael had been charmed by Francesca and fond of her for John's sake, loved her blue eyes and clever wit - but had been too occupied getting drinks with the guys and sleeping his way through the every blue-eyed brunette in the cheer-leading team and the women's soccer team and a third of the sororities to realize exactly what he felt for her. Or maybe he had romanced more women than he could count because his subconscious had known what his feelings for his cousin's girlfriend been, even back then. 

But sitting there at the dinner table that Sunday, watching John kiss Francesca and Aunt Janet compliment her on how well she wore Grandma Stirling's ring, felt like being struck by a bolt of lightening. Twice, back to back. And he had no idea what to do about it.

He was going straight to hell for falling in love with John's girlfriend - fiancé, one day wife. That much he knew.

By the end of winter break, Francesca and John - or, more precisely, Aunt Janet and Mom, since John and Francesca still had one last semester to get through - had already dove head-first into wedding planning. Every other word was about dress fittings and venue selections and wedding invitation samples and and bridesmaids and groomsmen and taste-testing for the buffet.

The two of them were already talking about buying a house across the river over in Jersey - full of plans and dreams to fill it up with children and happy memories and even an in-law suite. There would, undoubtedly, be room for Michael as well. Francesca had asked him just the other day which wallpaper sample he would prefer for his room. He would be Uncle Mike to John's children - the fun uncle, the irreverent perpetual-bachelor uncle whose antics John and Francesca would sigh, but smile over.

John had asked Michael to the best man at the wedding. Michael hadn't been able to say no - not to John. He could never have said no to John, not like this.

But he didn't think he could stay in New York City for the rest of his life either. He couldn't watch John and Francesca grow old and happy together with a backyard full of children (one of which would undoubtedly be named John) - not without thinking that it should be him at Francesca's side and not John, even though John was the best man Michael knew. 

Where Michael could go, though, he had no idea - other than straight to hell for falling in love with John's girlfriend. Now John's fiancé, and one day wife.

Even if he turned down a job at Uncle Jack's firm in favor of living off his trust fund or found another job elsewhere (unlikely, given that his degree was in English, even if he did have a minor in Computer Science), John and Francesca would always be a part of his life. Even if he moved across the country to California or took up a career skiing in the Alps, John and Francesca would always be the center of the world for him - New York the place everyone would expect him to return to. New York was home, after all. They would tell him to visit more often, invite him over to Sunday dinners, weekends at the cabin by the lake, baby showers, birthdays. It wasn't as if airfare costs would be an excuse to not attend, not in the Stirling family.

Michael couldn't linger to watch them live their long, happy life together and covet Francesca every day for the rest of his life. He knew that. He owed the both of them better than that.

But he couldn't walk away either. Not like this. Not when it wouldn't work. 

In short, Michael Stirling was in love with his cousin's fiancé, due to start a job in six months which he didn't actually care that much about, and needed to leave but couldn't. 

And he had no idea what to do about it.

That was the first obvious turning point in Michael's life.

The second came three weeks later, so early into the spring semester half of the professors were still reviewing their syllabi. Or maybe it was the third and John's engagement announcement was actually the second? Events were never quite that easily categorized. Life would be so much easier if they were. Or maybe simpler was the better word.

The turning point, whatever the number, came one brisk January afternoon as Michael hurried across Butler Lawn, trying to dodge another of Francesca's earnest attempt to set him up with one of her sisters when he spotted Peter Frazer out of the corner of his eye. Judging from Peter's uniform, he was just coming back from Military Science class.

And that was when the perfect answer to his dilemma struck Michael.

The first (or third) turning point happened in August 2003 - when a gangly, acne-covered eighteen year-old Michael Stirling met a slight less gangly and slightly more acne-covered eighteen year-old Peter Frazer.

Peter had been Michael's freshman-year roommate, chosen by luck of the lottery or however it was Residential Life arranged these things. For once in their lives, John and Michael had decided to give being apart a shot and left their freshman-year roommate selection up to the whim of the gods rather than putting a request to room together. Peter was from Washington, more or less. He had graduated from high school in Washington, anyway - though he had been born in Texas, largely grew up in Germany, Kansas, and then Japan before finishing out high school in Washington. Red-haired and freckled, he was the first in his family to go to college and had two younger brothers. 

What Peter also was was an ROTC cadet. One of eleven, to be precise - out of nearly twenty thousand students at Columbia University.

Michael had learned this fun fact barely twenty-four hours after meeting Peter for the first time, when Peter's alarm clock had woken him up at four o'clock in the god-forsaken morning. His reaction had been to groan and pull his pillow over his head in exhausted protest. Peter had told him the night before that he had to get up early for physical training, of course, because he said it started at six o'clock - itself an unholy hour of the morning. Peter was many things, as Michael would come to learn, but a deliberately inconsiderate ass was generally not one of them.

Michael had assumed that meant Peter would wake up at six o'clock and not some cursed hour long before dawn even considered existing yet. Michael had been wrong.

When he had asked Peter about it later that afternoon, when they saw each other again, Peter had just gotten an apologetic and resigned look on his face. Columbia University didn't have its own ROTC program, he had said - they were officially banned from campus, in fact. And that meant he had to wake up, shave, get dressed, and then take a seventy-five minute subway ride to Fordham University (the nearest campus that had an ROTC program) three days a week. Three days a week, every week of the school year, and sometime additional days if they had a training exercise scheduled.

Peter had apologized and offered to talk to the RA about a room swap, but Michael had waved him off. He could always just get earplugs, after all, and by the time fall midterms had rolled around, Michael had grown so used to Peter's alarm clock that it didn't even wake him up anymore.

He got used to the stack of bricks at the foot of their bunk bed, how once a month the room was covered in camo as Peter practiced packing for some kind of Army camping trip or something, opening and closing their door quietly if he was coming back from or leaving for a party after midnight.

Peter never talked politics though, even when Michael tried to engage him in discussion. Everyone, from the cable news talking heads to middle schoolers, knew that there weren't really weapons of mass destruction hiding behind every sand dune. Even in half of Michael's English classes people talked about the wisdom of arming and sending out troops and the cost of war and people risking their lives for nothing. Peter never responded - just shook his head and changed the subject.

Even when Michael watched as another student called Peter a "conscienceless killer" to his face during class, he never even flinched.

And he carried on, unflinching - commuting an ungodly distance at an unholy hour of the morning without ever a word of complaint without an ounce of assistance from the university. There were times when Michael would be just coming back from a party right as Peter was headed out for PT. One particularly memorable occasion involved Peter having to be at Fordham at half past three in the fucking morning for a twelve-mile "ruck" - whatever that was.

Michael could respect that. "Support the warrior, not the war." Wasn't that what people said?

He could do that.

If nothing else, Michael grew to respect the quiet determination and perseverance with which Peter juggled a busier schedule that almost anyone else Michael knew - John included.

And, in the end, who really cared that much about the finer details of politics anyway? It wasn't like any of it really mattered. 

Michael and Peter had kept up their friendship past their freshman year, even after they were no longer roommates. Michael had moved into one of the Zeta Sigma Alpha houses, and Peter had moved in one with one his ROTC year-mates - but they had kept up. Gone out for coffee every month or two, played the odd game of pick-up soccer, run into each other at Ferris during the dinner rush.

It was certainly the most...unconventional and unique of all the friendships Michael made while at Columbia, but he valued it nonetheless.

Michael had never known anyone in the military before - it just wasn't the done thing anymore. Neither Uncle Jack nor Dad had served. Neither had Grandpa Stirling - who had chortled once with great satisfaction that going to college, then getting his MBA, was what had saved him from Korea.

It was interesting, hearing about Peter's time at Columbia. It felt almost like a different universe from Michael's world - ruled by an unforgiving schedule and a punishing commute for classes and so different from the networking events and mentoring sessions and rushes that was Michael's world. Michael and John's summers were spent at the yacht club, mentoring events set up by Uncle Jack, internships at Kilmartin and other investment firms, flirting with girls on the beach and Martha's Vineyard.

In stark contrast, Peter's summers were full of things like "Air Assault" at places like "Fort Knox" and acronyms like "CTLT" and "CST." Michael had asked Peter if he had gotten a chance to see any of the gold there. Peter had just laughed and said that where he had spent the summer was a long ways off from the vaults - so no.  

And when Michael saw Peter out of the corner of his eye that brisk January afternoon, he knew what he could do.

"Hey Peter, I have a question."

"Sure - what's up?"

"I want to join the Army. How do I do that?"

Peter blinked. And then blinked again. "Say again?"

Michael repeated himself.

"You...want to join the Army. You, Michael Stirling. Want to join the Army." The disbelief was audible in Peter's voice.

Michael nodded. He couldn't stay here in New York and watch as John and Francesca's happy lives unfolded. He just couldn't. And nothing Peter could say would change his mind.

Peter finally seemed to come to the conclusion that Michael wasn't trying to pull some kind of April Fool's prank several months early. He sighed and fixed Michael with a pointed stare. "Before I talk to anyone for you, you're getting a haircut."

A haircut wasn't the least of what Peter wanted - but he also did a lot more than just talking to someone for Michael. 

When Michael had protested against the haircut, Peter had just calmly said that Michael would have to lose the style anyway, once he joined - and if he wasn't willing to start now, then there was no point even talking to a recruiter in the first place. Michael was fairly certain that Peter was testing him, just to see if he would give up there.

So Michael got his hair cut. It wasn't the shorn, one and a half steps away from a buzzcut that Peter himself sported - it was a perfectly normal crew cut like John had. The other guys in the frat ribbed him a little about looking like he had just come out of a Brooks Brother catalogue, and John raised an eyebrow the next time they saw each other, but Michael had just said he lost a bet during a drinking game and a haircut had been a penalty. You know - Samson and Delilah and all that. 

No one had questioned it. Francesca said that the haircut was becoming on him, Uncle Jack just clapped him on the back and said it was a good haircut for a young man, and Mom and Aunt Janet said people would take him more seriously this way.

Peter had also said that Michael was going to start working out at least two days a week, under his supervision. Thankfully, Peter didn't make him get up at four in the morning - small mercies, but that was the only one. He just had to wake up at six in the morning instead.

Michael thought of himself as fairly in shape - after all, he had rarely struck out whenever he flirted with a girl and did just fine playing inner tube water polo - but he was nothing compared to Peter or even the freshman who followed Peter around like a little duckling. Apparently Monday and Saturday mornings had been Peter's time to help give the freshman one-on-one help earlier in the year that tapered off once she didn't need it anymore, but he had brought it back now that Michael apparently was the one who needed the help. 

Some mornings, it was even the freshman who ran Michael through the stretches and led him on a run while Peter was in some kind of meeting they both called "C&S." 

It didn't take long before Michael found himself tapping out of nights with the guys earlier than anyone else - the one time he had showed up to a Saturday workout on three hours of sleep and a hangover while both Peter and the freshman (who was, of all things, called Fish) literally ran circles around him, he swiftly came to regret it.

Peter talked to someone, though. First, some dude called Mr. Ray, who Peter said was one of the battalion cadre. "Mr. Ray will know which recruiters are the good ones, who won't screw you over," Peter had said. 

And then one afternoon, in between classes, Peter led Michael to a small conference room. Two men sat there, both dressed in camouflage uniforms, with folders full of papers sitting on the table in front of them. 

One of them extended a hand to Michael. "Pleased to meet you," he said. "I'm Staff Sergeant Matthew Wilson and this is Corporal Antoine Harris."

The recruiters had had reams and reams of information for him - a blur of numbers and letters and acronym that Peter calmly sat down with him and explained for the second and even third time afterwards.

He was going to apply to be an officer, 09S. There would be a ton of extra work required - and he would need to pass a PT test and something called the OPAT before being accepted - but everyone from the recruiters to Peter to the fabled Mr. Ray had said that Michael wanted to be an officer, so Michael believed them. He guessed Peter had known that from the very first day Michael had asked him for help joining the Army.

So, three weeks after that afternoon on Butler Lawn and a week after talking to the recruiters, Michael found himself in the back of a Toyota Camry not long after lunch on his way to Brooklyn. He hadn't even known there was an Army base in the city - but the recruiter said it had been there since before the Civil War. There was a test that he needed to take, that Sergeant Wilson had said was called the ASVAB.

Of all things, joining the Army meant taking a test.

Michael hadn't expected that, honestly. But how hard could an Army test really be, he thought?

As it turned out, harder than he expected. 

Parts of it were a breeze and reminded him of nothing so much as standardized testing from back in middle and high school. So that was fine, Michael swept through those parts. Other sections, on the other hand...

Michael stared at a picture of an engine and the question asking him where combustion took place - then gave up and randomly guessed. Another question asked him to identify types of clamps. After that, he was asked why the intake valve on a pump opened up when the piston was down. 

He did fine on it, though. Sergeant Wilson had nodded when Michael told him what he had scored, anyway - an 92.

Michael stayed in a hotel that night on the Army's dime. He had asked if he couldn't go back to campus after taking the test, but had been told that day two at MEPS started at 0400, so unless he wanted to wake up before three o'clock tomorrow morning, the hotel it was.

He had missed his classes that afternoon. He would miss most of his classes tomorrow. It wasn't like it really mattered, though. It was his senior year - he was supposed to be partying and enjoying himself. 

Last week, Michael had started typing an email to his professors saying that he would be absent from class due to being at MEPS - but then had stopped. He didn't know how to explain MEPS to his professors - he doubted they had heard of it anymore than he had before talking to Sergeant Wilson and Corporal Harris. In the end, he had just said he had a doctor's appointment and wouldn't be in class.

It was close enough to the truth, anyway.

The dining room that evening was filled with nervous teenagers and a handful of twenty-somethings like Michael, all chattering in anticipation (and anxiety) about the big day tomorrow. They were given a choice between chicken tenders with broccoli and mashed potatoes, spaghetti, or a burrito wrap for dinner. The food itself wasn't really that bad - no worse than college dining hall fare - but it sat oddly in Michael's stomach nonetheless.

There was a lounge that they were allowed to hang out in afterwards, before lights-out at ten. A flag hung on one wall, opposite to the stairwell.

Given...well, everything, Michael chose to go to bed early. His roommate, a lanky eighteen year-old who said he wanted to join the Navy, chattered on about his family. His older brother was a Marine and in Iraq right now, he said. 

Michael was about to ask the kid why not go to college first - but then he stopped. Who was he to ask that, really?

John didn't know where he was right now. Mom and Aunt Janet didn't know. Uncle Jack didn't know either. His fraternity brothers would likely notice him not coming home tonight - but they would assume that he was passed out at some party or another, or at a girl's place for a one-night stand. 

He wasn't lying to them, he didn't want to lie to them - making sure no one knew about his feelings for Francesca was enough deception for Michael. He just...didn't want to tell anyone until everything was certain. 

After all, he could still flame out tomorrow, or change his mind, or a dozen other things could happen. He would never wish for John and Francesca to break up because of him, but there were still a dozen other events that could change everything. 

There was nothing to tell yet.

It was still pitch black when they left the Holiday Inn the next morning. The entire lot of them were herded onto white buses, still blinking groggily and swaying as they clutched their bags. It felt a bit like being cows at a round-up, honestly - or how Michael imagined cows felt, anyway.

That was a fairly good description of how the day went, though.

They filed into the building, were each handed a folder with their name on it, and got herded from one station to another.

Michael watched a video. He filled out multiple questionnaires. He got poked for blood. He pissed in a cup. He breathed into a breathalyzer. He stepped on a scale. He covered one eye and read weird letters off a screen. He sat in a little booth and pressed a button whenever he heard a beep. He stripped and did the duck-walk in a room full of other guys wearing their underwear and doing the duck-walk. There was a lot of waiting. So much waiting.

And then, he was ordered to report to the career center. 

09S, he knew, Everyone had told him to not budge from that, unless he developed an deep, undying desire for a specific job - and even then, the recruiter had said that Michael should just say no to the counselor, not sign anything, and they would talk it over once he was back from MEPS.

The counselor said he wasn't sure if there were slots available for that MOS. 

Michael shrugged nonchalantly. "If there aren't any slots for 09 Sierra, then I'll just go home." 

The counselor checked his computer again and, to Michael's relief, there were slots available.

While the counselor was printing out his contract, Michael got passed off to yet another person and station. Here, he got fingerprinted, asked about his criminal record, and whether he had a history of substance abuse.

When the contract was ready, Michael carefully read over every single line of it. He had been told, in no uncertain terms and ad nauseum, to do exactly that.

"Read the fucking contract before you sign it, Michael," Peter had said.

"If it's not in the contract, it doesn't matter what I or anyone else promise - it doesn't exist," Sergeant Wilson had said. 

So Michael read the contract line-by-line, checking that the MOS was what it was supposed to be and the enlistment bonus was the right amount and that he wouldn't be shipping out next week. Shipping out next week would be pretty bad, since his MOS was contingent on him having a college degree and he wouldn't graduate with his diploma for several more months. 

Also, Mom would freak the fuck out if he dropped out of college to join the Army. She was going to be upset enough that he had joined the Army at all, he knew.

Carefully, making sure his that hand didn't shake, Michael signed on the dotted line.

An hour later, he was standing in front of a flag with a dozen other men and women - they felt different from the nervous eighteen year-old boys and girls scurrying around the dining room just the night before - and raised his right hand.

"I, Michael Stirling, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice."

So help me God.

Joining the Army was harder than Michael had thought it would be. There was paperwork. So much paperwork.

Michael had to get a copy of his transcript and that meant a trip down to the Registrar's Office. One copy for him to hand to Sergeant Wilson to be included in his packet, another copy to be mailed directly from the university to some military address or other - and hadn't the secretary raised and eyebrow when she saw where the transcript would be going.

He had to get three letters of recommendation - and wasn't that an awkward conversation. His favorite CompSci professor had gotten an utterly baffled look on his face at the request and said, "You're too smart for that." Mr. Baines, their chapter advisor had muttered, "What a waste."

He had to get a certified copy of his birth certificate - and the trip down to the DMV took forever.

He had to fill out even more paperwork - answer even more questionnaires and try to think of every single international student he kept "close and continuing" contact with. He had to get fingerprinted. He had to dig up his Social Security card from God knew where. 

He had to take something called the APFT - plus something called the OPAT. And now he knew why Peter had dragged him out of bed to start working out the moment Michael had to him about his desire to join the Army.

Now, in addition to morning workouts, Michael spent his afternoons studying with the freshman girl and a new addition - a sandy-haired lanky sophomore named Todd.

Michael finally got a chance to ask the freshman girl what her name was, because it couldn't actually be Fish. It was Yu, as it turned out - and Michael tried to pronounce it correctly at least four times before she had given him an exasperated look and said, "And that's why I said to call me Fish."

Fish and Todd were preparing to go up before what was apparently called the Contracting Board. Michael was roped into preparations with alongside them, because while his board would be conducted by a different body, it was for the same purpose and he would be asked most of the same questions.

Unlike Fish and Todd, Michael actually had to write an essay. A handwritten, two-page essay on "Why I Want To Be An Officer." He technically didn't have to write it now - that would be done immediately before his interview before the board. But considering that Michael didn't actually know what he wanted to be an officer, Peter had thought that practicing what he was going to write, rather than having to think of his answer on the fly at the table with no preparation, was a good idea.

One evening, before walking back to the frat house but after the two younger cadets had disappeared into the night, Michael snapped. "What the hell is all of this for? Why is this so much work - I thought that the Army was..." then he trailed off, because he wasn't sure what he thought the Army was.

He thought the Army would be easier, he realized. He had, somewhere along the lines, somewhere in the back of his head, mostly assumed that the Army was for the people who couldn't do anything else in life - not something that people actually aspired to.

Peter sighed. "Look, I'd bet my CLIP pay, and possibly my scholarship, that y'all are going to get contracts. I know our two are, and I doubt OCS is any different. They're handing out contracts like Halloween candy these days and..." At Michael's questioning look, Peter shook his head, but continued, casting a long glance at Michael. "We'll make them work for it, but I already know they're committed. But...make sure this is what you want, Michael. Make sure you know why you want this."

So Michael worked on his essay during the evenings, writing and erasing and rewriting and honestly going through a bit of a quarter-life crisis, while Peter and two other ROTC cadets, another senior and a junior named Ben Balfour and Jordan Patcher, quizzed Fish and Todd on tactical scenarios, hypothetical leadership situations, drill and ceremony, military history, the wear and care of their uniforms, even recognizing random-ass unit insignia.

The actual essay that he would submit for consideration to the board would be written under supervision just before his interview - but considering that he had actually no idea why he wanted to join the Army, let alone become an officer, other than that he needed to do something that got him out of the city, away from Francesca and John and the married bliss, the more practice he got, and the more chances he had to come up with an acceptable reason, the better.

He asked Todd and Fish why they had joined ROTC, why they wanted to join the Army.

Fish got a defiant look on her face. "Because I can, and someone has to. Because service matters." Then she said quietly. "Because I'm an American."

Todd just gave a wry smile. "I'll be the fifth generation of infantrymen in my family. I thought about getting away from it for a bit, which is why I came here. But I just couldn't stay away. And yeah, we're needed. So here I am." 

They both then acknowledged that college was expensive. Neither of them could have afforded Columbia on their own - not without taking out nearly a quarter million dollars in private loans. And four or eight years of service was better than spending the next thirty paying back debts. 

So on long lazy Saturday afternoons that were just perfect for nursing a hangover or flirting or paying Frisbee on the lawn, Michael and Fish and Todd holed up in the library, or some ROTC senior's living room, and took turns answering practice questions that their boards would confront them with - sitting ramrod straight, feet shoulder-width apart, hands flat on their thighs.

"Why did you choose Columbia as the school to attend? What other schools did you consider? Would you go somewhere else if you could do it again? Why made you choose your major?"

"What would your considering your most significant accomplishment in school? Why?"

"Give me some examples of situations in which you received little guidance on what to do. How did you handle them?

"Explain how you planned for your final exams last semester."

"What Army Value speaks the most towards your character?"

"Everyone has had something that "fell through the cracks." Describe some situations in which this had happened to you."

"What has been the toughest decision you have made in the last year? Tell me how you went about it. What alternatives did you consider?"

"All of us have had an opportunity to look back and re-examine some decisions we have made. What are some examples of decisions you have had the insight to reconsider?"

Out of absolutely nowhere, "If you're driving a car full of people that are hungry, how do you decide where to get food?"

"Why do you want to join the Army? What were your career goals upon entering college? What are they now? What are you career goals upon joining the Army?"

Michael's friends, his fraternity brothers, noticed his sudden absence, his lack of attendance from activities. It was rush week, pledging season, he was a senior. This was the best time to be in a fraternity - to do nothing but party and drink and binge at eating clubs and flirt with some pretty sorority girls. Instead, he was at the bottom of Lehman, studying with a freshman and a sophomore. 

He told them that he had his own plans going on, and implied that there were girls - more than one - involved, and everyone left him with a wink and a grin.

Then, on one bright April morning, the week before Spring Break, Michael stepped into a conference room. He was wearing his best suit, though not a tux, his tie carefully knotted, shoes shined. He was grateful that he didn't have to wear a uniform, at least.

Two weeks ago had been Todd and Fish's appearances before the contracting board and Michael got to watch them be fussed over like some makeover scene out of a rom-com - though it would be the most anal rom-com ever, since every last inch of them were inspected to perfection and a ruler and protractor was even hauled out.

He knocked politely on the door - the three of them had been told to knock, even though a runner would be sent to inform them it was their turn. The fleshy part of his write palm ached from where he had just finished writing his essay.

"Come on in," a voice said, just muffled enough by the wood that Michael couldn't deduce anything from the tone.

He walked in, turning as crisply as he had ever seen Todd and Fish practicing, then sat. Back straight, feet shoulder-width apart, hands flat on his knees.

And then Michael faced the board.

Three and a half weeks later, with less than a month to go before graduation, the board's verdict came in.

Michael had been selected.

He would ship out on June 5th.

As graduation had gotten closer and closer, then was relegated to the rearview mirror, Uncle Jack prodded at Michael with increasing frequency to go apartment hunting. Michael just kept putting it off, saying whatever vague assurances he needed to go get Uncle Jack off his case.

What was the point? He would be leaving in a matter of weeks anyway. The lease on John's apartment wouldn't be up until August, and by then, Michael would be gone and John would be all ready to move into that lovely house he and Francesca couldn't start talking about. 

A hundred times he had started to tell Uncle Jack why he didn't need to find his own apartment, or even move in with John when he finished buying his house - God forbid, Michael couldn't think of a worse torment in the style of Tantalus for him than living with John and Francesca after they married.

And a hundred times he just...didn't - couldn't - figure out how to say it. It wasn't as if Mom or Aunt Janet objected - they were more than happy for him to continue living at home.

It wasn't as if Uncle Jack had all that much time to hassle him anyway. Just three short weeks between graduation and shipping out. Three weeks - minus a day because graduation had been on a Wednesday and he'd ship out on Tuesday.

Their family held a graduation party for John and Michael - all the neighbors were invited, of course, and family friends and business associates and even a few more-distant relatives came. Francesca's family and their friends had been invited as well, since she was John's fiancé and all.

There was the faint air of embarrassment when someone asked where Michael would be working and Uncle John said that he would be working at Kilmartin. John had a job all lined up at Merrill Lynch, Francesca would be at Deloitte. And here Michael was, reduced to working at the family firm. Except he wouldn't be working at Kilmartin, even if no one but him knew that - not that he had really cared about the embarrassment even before he had made his decision and asked Peter for help.

Every good thing he had in his life was thanks to his family. Except for this - he had gotten this without a single finger lifted, a single phone call made on his behalf by his family.

Michael spent his last morning at home carefully going over the packing list that Sergeant Wilson had given him.

One set of casual clothing - shirt, pants, socks.

Two pairs of underwear. Michael had been informed in no uncertain terms to not bother bringing more, as they would just be taken away.

One travel sized shampoo bottle.

One travel sized soap - bar or liquid, it didn't matter. Peter strongly suggested liquid, though - so that was what Michael got at the CVS.

One toothbrush and one travel sized tube of toothpaste.

One non-electric disposable razor.

One travel sized can of shaving cream.

One combination lock. Michael just dug out his old one from high school and stuffed it in his knapsack. 

One pair of running shoes.

His driver's license. Michael dug out his passport and brought it with him, just in case.

His social security card.

Fifty dollars in cash.

His college transcript.

His high school diploma.

His ATM card.

And a piece of paper with the account and routing number for his bank account. 

Peter had given Michael two notebooks after graduation, before heading back home - a combination graduation and farewell and enlistment present. Both notebooks had odd plasticky covers and read Rite in the Rain on the front. One of them was basically a regular journal, though on the smaller end. The other was like a spiral notebook, except the spirals were on the top, not the side, and it was the size of Michael's hand. He had written his mom's address in the top corner of one of the inside pages - saying that he wouldn't know his mailing address at Fort Rucker until mid-July, since he wasn't due to report to BOLC until then, and that his mom would forward any mail addressed to him that came after he left. Michael tucked those into his pack too. 

That was it. Twenty-two years of his life, fourteen of which had been in this very house, and this was all Michael would be leaving with.

Sergeant Wilson would be picking him up in a few hours, and Michael still hadn't figured out how to tell his family that he was enlisting in the Army. He wasn't trying to keep it a secret from them - he really wasn't. He just...didn't know how to tell him. He didn't know how to bring it up - it just never seemed to be the right time to casually mention over dinner, "Oh, by the way everyone, I'll be moving out because I've joined the Army. I ship out for Basic Training next month/week/tomorrow/today." 

Michael had kept telling himself that he would tell everyone later - and now later was here, on its way to Hastings-on-Hudson in a Toyota Camry, ready to take him down to Fort Hamilton.

It was a Tuesday. Uncle Jack was at work. Mom and Aunt Janet were out getting tea with friends or at some kind of gardening festival or something along those lines. John and Francesca were off supervising the home inspection. He could call then - any one of them, he knew - and they would come rushing over to say their farewells to him. They would also ask him what in the name of God he thought he was doing and did he not have the sense the good Lord gave him?

Well, John wouldn't. John had always been great like that.

In the end, Michael wrote a letter to his mother and carefully tucked it into the mailbox. With any luck, no one would see it before tomorrow - when it was already too late to stop him. Or, well, try to stop him anyway. He was fairly certain that if Mom tried to physically drag him out of Fort Hamilton or even the plane, someone in uniform would intervene.

Dear Mom,

By the time you’re reading this, I'll have already left. I’ve joined the Army and shipped out to Basic Training today. It’s too late to talk me out of it – there’s nothing you can do to stop me. I have to do this. Give everyone my regards for me, will you? We’re supposed to get a quick phone call home once we’ve arrived and gone through Reception, so I guess I’ll talk to you then. 

Love,

Michael

He thought about writing another note to John, or to Francesca, but then gave it up as a lost cause. There was nothing to say to them that he hadn't already said. They were together, they were happy. In a year, they would be getting married. Michael had to start his own life, make his own future - one that didn't involve coveting his cousin's wife.

Or, God forbid, both his cousin's wife and his wife's sister - because at the rate Francesca was trying to set him up with one of her sisters, that would be his future if he stayed here.

Michael was almost certain he was at the same Holiday Inn that he had been put up at last time.

Just like last time, an array of nervous teenagers and twenty-something year-olds filled the dining hall. Unlike last time, he realized that there were actually two categories of people - those going to MEPS for the first time, and those like Michael who would be shipping out tomorrow. The first time he had set foot in Fort Hamilton felt like a lifetime ago. At the same time, somehow it managed to feel like just the other day.

That evening, Michael lay on the bed and thought about calling home. No one would notice he was missing, he knew - well, of course his family would notice. But they wouldn't think anything of it.  They wouldn't call the police, they wouldn't report him missing or kidnapped. Everyone would just assume that he was spending the night at a friend's place or having a night out with the guys when he hadn't shown up for dinner. Sure, it was a little weird that his car was still parked in the driveway - but he could've gotten a cab, or taken the train down into the city, or a friend could've picked him up.

Michael lay on the bed and thought about calling home - except he didn't know what he would say. Mom and Aunt Janet and Uncle Jack would be home by now. John too, unless he had gone out with his friends. They would pick up the phone and he would tell them that he was staying at a cheap hotel on the government's dime about to join the Army - and then what?

What would they say? How would they react?

In the end, he never picked up the phone.

Several hours and a restless sleep later, just like last time, they were woken up at an atrociously early hour of the morning and herded onto a fleet of white buses. Once again, they all filed into the MEPS building. Once again, they went through security and some idiot who had disobeyed his recruiter and brought a pocketknife had it confiscated. 

Once again, Michael breathed into a breathalyzer. Once again, Michael stepped onto a scale and under a yardstick. Once again, Michael had to fill out paperwork. At least this time he didn't have to do the duck-walk though. Silver linings.

And then he was sitting in front of a counselor again - a different one than last time - signing the final and official copy of his contract. This one was the one that mattered. In theory, he could've decided to not show up today and nothing would've happened to him. Sergeant Wilson would've been pissed of course, after all the work he had put into Michael, but the Army didn't bother enforcing the DEP contract, Peter had explained.

This one, though? This one mattered. It was for keeps. No take-backs allowed. There was no turning back from this contract after he signed it. 

It would be final in a way that nothing in his life had ever been before.

Michael carefully read over it again, making sure that his MOS and ship date and enlistment bonus were right. Then he signed on the dotted line again.

This time, when he and the others raised their right hands, people's families were there. Taking pictures. Hugging their loved ones about to ship out. Mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and grandparents taking pictures and hugging and seeing their son or daughter off.

Michael wished his family was there, just a bit - but he was the one who couldn't figure out how to tell them. Besides, enlisting was...well, he didn't have a word for it. More than one of the family members were wearing uniforms themselves - some of them camo, a few in weirdly colored camo, and others resembling neatly pressed suits. He couldn't imagine Uncle Jack clapping him on the back or looking proud of him for joining the Army. 

Then, several videos, a briefing, having an envelope with their travel orders handed to each of them, and some more waiting later, they were boarding a shuttle to the airport.

Even on the bus, everyone was already beginning to self-sort - congregating based on service. Army. Navy. Marines. Air Force. Coast Guard. Michael hadn't even realized that the Coast Guard was actually part of the military.

At the airport, everyone split up. One by one, they separated into travel groups based on destination. Fort Knox. Cape May. Fort Benning. Parris Island. Lackland. Fort Jackson. Great Lakes. Fort Leonard Wood. Fort Sill.

Three hours later, clutching their bags in one hand and their envelopes with the other, Michael and the other members of his travel group boarded the plane - orders and vouchers clutched tightly in their hands.

He wondered if Mom had read his note by now.

Michael had exactly two minutes and there were a line of nearly a dozen people behind him, all waiting to call home.

He picked up the phone receiver, still warm from the hand of the person who had made the call before him. The back of his neck itched - he still wasn't used to the buzzcut every guy had had to get, even if they showed up already sporting a buzzcut. Reception sucked. Michael had no idea how much time had been spent standing in hallways waiting to be told what to do next or for his turn in line, but it was a lot. Possibly more hours than there even existed in a day.

He only had two minutes for this call and he had to make the most of it.

"Please enter the area code and phone number you are calling now. If your call is not connected, you will be offered the option to leave a voicemail."

914-513-2747

Michael carefully dialed in the number for the house, praying like hell that either Mom or Aunt Janet or Uncle Jack would be home. He could leave a message, he knew - but that just didn't feel the same.

"Stirling Residence - who is this?" Aunt Janet's voice, or what Michael thought was Aunt Janet, anyway - the call quality sucked - came over the line.

"It's me, Michael."

"Michael?!" Aunt Janet's voice was sharp with shock and astonishment. "Is this really you? HELEN, HELEN, COME QUICK! IT'S MICHAEL!!" 

"What were you thinking, running off to the Army and just leaving us a note? Oh, what will people think? I can't believe you did something as foolish as -" Aunt Janet was in the middle of scolding him when Mom suddenly came on the line.

"Michael! Oh, Michael - where are you? What are you doing? I saw your note, but I just can't believe-"

"I'm at Basic Training, Mom. Fort Jackson. Look, I don't have long, this is just to let you guys know that I've made it there safely."

"You cannot be serious, honey. I've just barely gotten a chance to talk to you."

"Look, Mom, I gotta go now," Michael tried to say over her. "I'm okay. I'll write as soon as I can, okay?"

"Michael Stuart Stirling, don't you dare ha-" 

Michael hung up.

Before he had even walked ten feet, the guy behind him had picked up the still-warm receiver and was dialing his number to call home.

Basic training was...well, it was something.

One idiotic smartass had tried to make a joke about "Relaxin' Jackson" on their first real day of training, and all the drill sergeants seemed determined to wreak fucking vengeance on their training company for that fucking remark.

Michael had been in a lot of places, many of them fitting the description of relaxing. Fort Jackson, in hotter than fucking hell South Carolina in June? Was not one of those places.

"THIS HERE IS ACTION JACKSON!" The drill sergeants would shout as everyone's arms shook and burned from being in the front-leaning rest position for what felt like an eternity.

Michael had never been this exhausted in his life. He had thought that pledging had been bad enough - but it turned out that that had had been nothing compared to life at Basic.  A few of the other recruits had clearly never really worked out before joining the Army, and in what little free time Michael had to have actual fucking feelings, he felt bad for them and was beyond grateful that he was not in their shoes.

Most of the time, though, he couldn't even work up the energy to worry about his feelings towards Francesca - it was just too exhausting, after a day spent memorizing the Soldier's Creed and Amy Values or learning to assembling or disassemble an M16 or getting fucking tear gassed. 

As soon as Michael got his mailing address, he wrote home.

Dear Mom,

Sorry to have hung up on you. Didn't have a choice since my phone time was up.

Here's my mailing address where you can write to me. 

PVT Stirling, Michael S.
4th PLT Delta CO, 1-13 IN BN, 193rd IN BDE
5482 Jackson Blvd
Fort Jackson, SC 29207

Family will be invited for graduation, more info on that later as we get it. They said they'll mail y'all an envelope with the details. I don't know when I'll be able to come home, but it won't be for a while.

I'm sorry if I worried you, but this is something I have to do.

Your son,

Michael

He hadn't realized that he had needed to inform Mom and Aunt Janet that mailing a care package full of brownies and cake and rice krispies was... an inadvisable idea. Drill Sergeant Jimenez had taken one look at the box, conspicuously looming over the standard letter envelopes that made up the rest of that day's mail call, and ordered Michael to open it in front of everyone. When Drill Sergeant Jimenez saw it was "just" food and not illegal contraband like porn or alcohol, she said - with the scariest smile that Michael had ever seen in his fucking life - that not a single crumb was allowed in the barracks and that Michael would have to eat it all right here.

Here. In the barracks bay. In front of everyone.

She also “suggested” that Michael share his bounty with his platoon.

And that was exactly what Michael did. He was a lot of things, but he liked to think that stupid wasn't one of them. Mostly. The current convoluted chain of events and life choices that led to being in this situation at this moment aside. And refusing a "suggestion" from a drill sergeant was definitely on the list of Stupid Fucking Things To Do - possibly even more stupid than making a smart-aleck comment about Relaxin' Jackson. So he carefully handed out the treats to everyone.

Michael Stirling, actually fucking thinking before he acted - who would've thought? John would laugh himself silly if he knew.

Of course, a single solitary fucking crumb landed on the concrete floor of the fucking barracks. More than one, actually. And into the front-leaning rest position they all went.

Michael had had grand plans to write letters home to his family and friends every day, telling them all about the adventure he was on - the things he learned, the sights he saw, the flavor of the mud.

Those plans quickly fell apart. Very quickly. 

Lights out was at 2100, and everyone immediately collapsed into their bunks. No one had the energy to do anything as mundane as writing letters or talking or reading after lights went out. All anyone wanted was to collapse in bed and sleep for as long as the whims and needs of the Army allowed them. Whatever poor fuckers were caught wandering the barracks by the drill sergeants, if they weren't on fire watch, got an omnidirectional ass-chewing and and roped into a cleaning detail. And then smoked at some more.

Every other night, Michael got the joy of being shaken awake for fire guard duty - where he sat, and occasionally walked around, and every now and then a drill sergeant would appear out of absolutely fucking nowhere and order him to recite the General Orders. And then, as soon as his hour was up, he would shake awake the poor bastard who had fire guard duty next, and collapse back into his own sweet, heavenly bunk.

Only to be awakened at 0400 with the first shining rays of dawn, if Michael was inclined to be poetic - which he didn't have the fucking energy for anymore. Francesca might find it romantic, he thought - assuming she wasn't horrified. Sometimes, they were even lucky enough to be allowed to sleep in until 0500.

Michael had really appreciated before small comforts like warm form and lazing in bed or even something like being woken up by an alarm clock (at a sane hour) rather than the dulcet tones of the shouting of drill sergeants and the sounds of their lockers being rattled and emptied out onto the floor.

He met people, too - more people, different people, than he had met during his entire life up until now. To his surprise, there were people as old as thirty who had decided to enlist. 

Mateo Vasquez, who grew up on the New Mexico side of El Paso and was the third oldest out of seven. His father worked for a landscaping company or harvesting fruit orchards, depending on the season. His mother worked at a meat-packing plant and cleaned houses in what little spare time she had. He was the first in his family to graduate high school, his older brothers had quit to go work with their father, and he wanted to be the first to go to college one day - maybe even become a doctor. Actually, he wanted his little sister who was only sixteen to be the first to go to college one day - go to college with the money that he would be sending home. 68P.

Jesse Harwin, from Moundsville, West Virginia. His old man had died in a mining accident, his older brother had OD'd a few years back, and, as he put it, "It's either the mines, pills, or the uniform where I'm from. At least this way, I can get out, see the world." At least once a month since he was in middle school, Army recruiters - and the Navy, Marines, and Air Force - would drive a truck up to his school and all the kids would be rounded up to listen to them talk about the benefits of enlisting. Health care. Adventure. Education. Travel. Security. 13F.

Santiago Ochoa from Miami agreed. It was either the Army or the gangs in his neighborhood, and he didn't want to live that life. 92G.

Jamal Robinson, born and raised just over the border in Charlotte was here for his fifteen year-old little sister, after "This fucking piece of shit knocked her up and left her high and dry." He was older than most of the eighteen year-olds fresh out of high school, only a year younger than Michael, and had quit community college to enlist because as an Army dependent, his little sister would have health insurance and access to prenatal care. 35N.

Callie Conti, "sort of but not really from Minneapolis," had grown up hopping from military base to military base until three years ago, when her father had been killed in Iraq and his mother had moved him to her hometown. She was the youngest of four, and had three older brothers already in the service - two Army and one Navy. Apparently the annual football game was a very heated event in his family. She joined because, "What else was I going to do?" 15U.

Sameen Kumira was from Los Angeles and would swear in as a citizen on Graduation Day. They had all made Beverly Hills jokes at the beginning, but she put almost everyone else in the dirt with how hard she worked - hell, Michael was just impressed that at five feet two inches on a good day, she could buddy carry even six foot three inches 190 lb Shaw and run laps with him. 09L.

Michael had not said that the reason he joined the Army was so that he didn't have to watch his cousin be married to the woman he was in love with - because that just sounded like something out of a bad romance novel. He had just shrugged and blithely said, "Why not? Not like I had anything better going on," offering the lopsided smile he so frequently affixed to his face. No one ever took him seriously when he smiled like that, which was, of course, the point.

He felt a bit embarrassed, given he really had no real reason to join other than for the hell out it, but that was honestly as good a reason as any. Plenty of other folks joined because what else were they going to do with their lives? At least in the Army, once they got out of the endless hell that was Basic anyway, they'd get three square meals a day, a roof over their head, steady income, health insurance, and a shot at going to college or even graduate school one day.

Granted, he was hadn't really needed the three square meals, a place to live, health insurance, or a job. He could've lived the rest of his life coasting at Kilmartin - never had to wake up at unholy hours, do PT in the rain, clean, work so hard that every day ended in collapsing in his bunk. He could've puttered on working at the marketing job Uncle Jack had all set up for him, kept flirting with pretty girls, went out with friends on the weekends, spent summers at Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard. He hadn't needed anything the Army gave him.

Except to get away. He had needed that. The Army had given it to him. And here he was, with everyone else, stuck in exactly the same drill sergeant boat.

He ignored the twinge his gut made when he said, "It's as good a career as any," because everything he had grown up hearing strenuously opposed that statement. Oh, his family never would have said so out loud, but Michael could practically hear relatives who he hadn't heard from in years, Mom and Aunt Janet's Bridge friends, Uncle Jack's business associates, all inquiring out his well-being and asking what on earth Michael Stirling thought he was doing, where the earning potential was in joining the Army.

Other people weren't his problem, though.

Michael had to put them out of his mind and focus on what was immediately at hand. No matter where each of them were from, no matter why they had joined, they were all united in trying to survive the drill sergeants.

Delta Company, and the battalion as a whole, became a sort of amorphous blob, a collective hive mind.

They buffed the barrack floors.

They assembled and disassembled their weapons until they could do it backwards, forward, inside-out, and blindfolded. And only after knowing every inch of their weapons, were they allowed to hit the range.

They quizzed each other on the Soldier's Creed and Army values.

They policed cigarette butts in the parking lot.

They wolfed their food down at the DFAC in three minutes or less.

They...never actually figured out exactly what "hooah" meant, other than anything and everything but "No."

They, the male soldiers anyway, got their heads shaved - every two weeks on the dot, in that same godawful buzzcut.

They were very quickly broken of whatever assumptions about Basic Training they had got from watching Full Metal Jacket, such as referring to themselves in the third person because, ARE YOU A FUCKING TOOL? NO? THEN FUCKING USE THE WORD "I" BEFORE WE START TO FEED YOU FUCKING CRAYONS!

They assembled and disassembled radios the size of car batteries, and weighed nearly as much as one.

They went splat into the mud on the obstacle course.

They managed not to go splat and die at Victory Tower.

They learned that woe be upon any poor sucker - and the rest of their squad, platoon, and company by extension - who made the horrendous mistake of calling a Drill Sergeant, or any other NCO, "Sir" or "Ma'am." Because they WORKED FOR A FUCKING LIVING AND THIS AIN'T THE FUCKING MARINES.

They shot azimuths and hand-railed the LandNav course - during the day, at night, in the rain, in their sleep. The last was only partly an exaggeration.

They did not walk on the grass except when ordered to as necessary for their duties and training. Especially if it looked like a Sergeant Major was anywhere in the remote vicinity. Or even had the slightest chance of passing in their vicinity. 

They had to ask permission to go to the latrine and God help you if you dared to use the word "restroom" - because then a drill sergeant would start shouting about how THERE'S NO FUCKING PLACE FOR FUCKING RESTING HERE!

They learned not even God could save you if you were enough of a fucking soup sandwich to have misplaced your rifle.

They memorized battle drills in every possible number and letter combination. 

They pointed, posted, then sprawled so hard into the grass that they felt like they were eating it. 

They didn't have permission to put their hands in their pockets. Drill Sergeant Brown had shouted at them, "IF GOD WANTED YOU TO PUT YOUR FUCKING HANDS IN YOUR FUCKING POCKETS, HE WOULD HAVE MADE YOU A FUCKING AIRMAN!"

Michael studiously kept his hands out of his pockets. No one dared put their hands in their pockets for fear of being knife-handed.

Except for Winnie, but he was an idiot like that. And even he only did it twice.

Monday started with a Drill & Ceremony competition. They executed column lefts and column rights, counter columns, colors reverse, and warfield with increasingly exacting (and scrutinized) precision.

By 0300 the next morning, they were all in full battle rattle and rucking ten miles down the road to the FOB that would be their new home for the next ninety-six hours. They secured the local area and the base from threats. They took contact from the enemy - SAPA insurgents fighting against the Atropian coalition. They pulled security and switched off in turns so that everyone got a chance to eat. They got almost no sleep. They received intelligence of a well-known Donovian IED-maker in the vicinity in the AO who was planning imminent future attacks. They executed recon patrols in order to gather intelligence. Three of them were "KIA" when what they had assumed to be the village fool turned that everyone had grown accustomed to turned out to be a suicide bomber plotting his time. They tracked down IED markers and worked to instill a sense of security in the local population.

And then it was Saturday. 

As the sun rose, everyone clustered around a bonfire. This was it. They were done. They had survived. The next few days would just be even more D&C and getting everything in order for Family Day and then Graduation. There would be endless marching and uniform and barracks inspections in their future, but nothing harder or worse than morning PT.

They had survived the hardest part. They wouldn't officially graduate until Thursday, but this was basically it. 

Their training company commander was there, as was the battalion commander and the command sergeant major. Each of them made a speech as the fire crackled in the light grey of the early dawn.

"All of you have joined the Army at a time of war. Many of you will end up in harms way. Every one of you all can achieve high standards. You have to remember the Sergeant Major of the Army stood in a formation just like you are today once. The next Sergeant Major of the Army could be in this formation right now."

One by one, they were each handed a coin. It was big, almost two inches in diameter, and weighed more than any other coin Michael had ever held.

"On the front side is our regimental crest -- on the back is our campaign history -- now you represent that history and our heritage. Monetarily, it's probably not worth a whole lot of money, but to those of us in the regiment will tell you its value is priceless. It represents the blood, sweat and tears of those that have gone before us. We don't give these away lightly."

One by one, they each shook hands with their drill sergeants, the command sergeant major, the captain, the lieutenant colonel.

"As you leave Basic Combat Training your drill sergeants won't be there to guide you anymore. You have to take the self discipline that you have learned here and carry that forward."

Ten long weeks later, Michael had done it. They all had. He had learned a lot about himself, found out what happened when he was at the end of a rope with no choice but to keep on going because this was the Army, because he had battle buddies that depended on him not to quit no matter how much he wanted to collapse in exhaustion. 

He was a soldier now.

It was hot. And humid. Even at 0900, the South Carolina at this time of the year had exactly two fucking humidities - muggy and muggier.

Michael didn't care though - it was Family Day. Nearly three long, exhausting, and sweaty months later, they were finally near the fucking end.

A massive plume of green and white smoke engulfed them, to the point that he couldn't even see the bleachers anymore. Who even knew where the smoke was coming from - probably a smoke machine or smoke flares or maybe even a smoke grenade. Michael honestly would not put it past the Army use to smoke grenades as ceremonial decoration at this point. It felt more than a bit like being in a dramatic movie scene, if Michael was being honest.

"FORWARD, MARCH!"

No one could see where they were going, but it didn't matter. They had marched, and marched, and marched some more so many times now that the drill sergeants could have blindfolded them and stuck them in the middle of fucking Hurricane Katrina and they still probably could've all stayed in perfect formation.

Music blared all around them as they emerged out from the smoke to a wall of noise - a cheering and stomping and waving and roaring crowd of families and friends. It felt like a scene straight out of a movie, if Michael was being honest.

Toby, at the front and right-most position in their company formation, sprinted ahead to the finish line at the end of Hilton Field - and so did every all the other trainees in his position in their respective companies' formations. Their jobs were to act as anchoring guides so that each company formed up neatly-spaced and on line at the end.

Michael turned his head away from all the distractions and focused on the cadence. Left, Left, Left Right. Left, Left, Left Right. He was not going to be the one who got out of step and messed everything up.

One by one, each company came to a halt. Then, it was Delta Company's turn.

"COMPANY, HALT!"

Company, step, Halt, step step.

"PARADE, REST!"

And they all stood, right hand clasped over left, placed against the small of their backs. Don't lock your knees, Stirling. Don't fucking lock your knees. Whatever you do, don't lock your fucking knees.

The music stopped, the crowd cheered, the banners of each company flapped in the wind. 

One by one, each company was introduced, the senior drill sergeants named. When it was Delta Company's turn to be called, everyone snapped to attention. Then, when the introductions were over, on command, went back to parade rest.

The loudspeaker crackled. "At this time, I would like to invite Officer Mitchell from the Immigration and Naturalization Service to come forward and administer the oath of citizenship."

"GROUP, FALL IN!"

Thirty soldiers, coming from every platoon, streamed out of the back ranks and fell into formation at the front, in between the main formation and the stands.

"Raise your right hand and repeat after me. I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."

The crowd broke out into cheering and clapping. Michael would've clapped and cheered too, if he could have. Kumira deserved every bit of the clapping and accolades - she had worked hard for it. 

In the midst of it all that cheering came, "BATTALION, ATTENTION!" cut through the noise like a hot knife through butter.

Michael snapped to attention, his gaze focused straight ahead. He had no idea where the fuck Mom or Aunt Janet were in the stands and the mass of people in that direction - but now was not the time to look for them.

The loudspeakers crackled again. "Family and friends of First Battalion, Thirteenth Infantry Regiment, we thank you for giving us the most precious national resource our country has to offer- your loved ones, who volunteered to be a soldier. We know you'll be proud of the transformation that has taken place in them. Ladies and gentlemen, please join us in the playing of the Army song."

"March along, sing our song, with the Army of the free.
Count the brave, count the true, who have fought to victory.
We're the Army and proud of our name.
We're the Army and proudly proclaim.

First to fight for the right,
And to build the Nation’s might,
And The Army Goes Rolling Along.
Proud of all we have done,
Fighting 'til the battle’s won,
And the Army Goes Rolling Along.

Then it's Hi! Hi! Hey!
The Army's on its way.
Count off the cadence loud and strong,
For where e’er we go,
You will always know
That The Army Goes Rolling Along."

As the last notes of the song died, and everyone stopped holding on the last word, finally - finally - came the announcement everyone has been waiting for for the last ten weeks. "Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our ceremony. Thank you for attending and have a great day. You may now meet your soldier on the field."

Michael was the one who spotted Mom and Aunt Janet first.

They were dressed about three degrees nicer (and more formal) than any other family members in the crowd, which made them stand out like...well, something. Michael couldn't come up with the appropriate metaphor at the moment. He wondered if they hadn't gotten the memo that they were supposed to dress casually for Family Day.

The two of them looked lost, confused, bewildered - stranded in the middle of a stream of humanity enthusiastically embracing their loved ones and confidently navigating their way across the field as the sun beat down on the entire lot of them.

So Michael stepped out of formation, carefully easing his way past several clusters of family and soldier without jostling anyway, and shouted, "Mom! Aunt Janet! Over here!"

Their heads swiveled in confusion, trying in vain to locate the source of that voice. His voice. Their gazes swept right past him - unseeing, unrecognizing. 

Then Michael appeared right in front of them, and Mom and Aunt Janet nearly jumped in astonishment. 

"Michael?" Mom said, her voice quavering. "Is that...you?"

Aunt Janet's eyes were wide, one hand over her mouth as she gasped.

Michael had no idea what he looked like to them. They had gotten another buzz cut just the afternoon before, so his head was neatly shorn. His beret, freshly shaved and fitting, drooped over the right side of his face, just barely touching the tip of his ear. He was darker, he knew - he had spent the first month burning and peeling like a fucking lobster because his skin cells had gotten the message to chill the fuck out and start producing melatonin. He was also thinner, he was fairly certain. He was dressed in ACUs, pants bloused into his boots.

Mom threw herself at Michael, embracing him. Then it was Aunt Janet's turn.

After the two of them had gotten their fill of hugs, more hugs, staring at him with incredulity, and more hugs, Michael finally said, "C'mon, let me show you around! We're not allowed to go off-post today - that'll be tomorrow - but there are lots of cool things on-post. We'll be allowed to hit up the O-club, there's a bowling alley and a movie theatre and everyting! It'll be fucking awesome, getting to see more of Jackson - we only were allowed out of the training area for runs to the PX or the chapel on Sundays. Y'all will like it, I promise!" 

Mom and Aunt Janet blinked at him in bewilderment, Michael wasn't sure at exactly what - but he looked at the maps they had been issued and herded them towards the Basic Combat Training Museum. The drill sergeants, in a rare moment of acting like actual humans, had said that the museum was a good place to check out with their folks on Family Day.

Their eyes were as wide as saucer plates as they got a look of the tanks and howitzers and helicopters displayed outside the museum. Their eyes got even wider after they stepped inside and Michael took off his cover, revealing his haircut that had mostly been concealed by the beret.

About a third of the way through the museum, Michael saw Vasquez just a little ahead of them and called out a greeting.

Vasquez had his arm around an older woman, a bit shorter than him, and what appeared to be a dozen small children thronged around their legs. Okay, that was a lie - Michael knew from his stories that there had to be only four of them. But they moved so fast and blurred around so much that it felt like there had to be more than six of them.

His father hadn't been able to come, Michael knew - he couldn't get the time off work. Couldn't afford it, really. Neither had his two older brothers. Vasquez grinned and waved back at Michael, then introduced his younger siblings - Sofia, Gabriel, Rosalinda, and Carmen. All of them were staring wide-eyed and in awe at the museum displays and exhibits around them.

"Mamá, this is Spoon - Michael Stirling." Vasquez then turned to face Michael. "This is my mom, Sylvia Sandoval Morales."

The older woman looked proud - but also more than a bit nervous and scared to be on base. Michael could hazard a guess as to why, from the bits Vasquez had let drop about his family. Vasquez honestly hadn't been entirely sure his parents could come - or would risk coming - until nearly the last minute. So Michael first shook, then bowed deeply over her hand - copying an old fashioned regency movie he had watched once, with John and Francesca.

Then he donned his best charm act, trying his utmost to put Mrs. Morales at ease. "It's a pleasure to meet you, ma'am. You should be proud of your son - he was my battle buddy and saved my as- butt," Michael quickly edited his language, seeing as there were literally elementary schoolers in the audience, "more than once. He was our honor grad, and he earned that spot with every ounce of work he put into it."

Vasquez blushed and shoved Michael, just a bit, in retaliation. His younger siblings stared up at Michael in curiosity and fascination.

Mom and Aunt Janet gave polite smiles and politely inclined their heads towards her. Mrs. Morales gave a nod back and promptly looked uncomfortable again. Mom always had a nice word to say to Anna, their housekeeper  "She's practically family," was what Michael had grown up hearing. Mom had never had anything but kind words and friendliness towards Anna - after years and years of working for their family, Mom periodically insisted that Anna could just call her Helen. Anna always refused, calling Mom Mrs. Stirling. But right now, faced with Mrs. Morales, if was as if all of all she (or Aunt Janet) could do was smile politely without saying a single wordlod

Michael and Vasquez's gazes met, and they quickly worked to break through the ice - asking Carmen, just seven years old, which of the tanks and helicopters outside she thought was the coolest and wanted her big brother to lift her up onto. 

They parted ways parted eventually, and Michael and Vasquez gave each other a quick one-armed embrace before heading off their own separate ways. They would see each other in a few hours, they both knew, when their on-post pass expired and they were expected back at the barracks. Undoubtedly the drill sergeants would have a fun load of surprises in store when inevitably someone turned up thirty seconds late.

"Spoon?" Mom hesitantly ventured a question.

Michael laughed and rubbed the back of his neck. "It's a nickname. You know - Stirling, silver, silver spoon? It's honestly not bad, as far as nicknames go - definitely better than fucking Pooh Bear. Winston had better fucking hope that no one recreates that thought process when he gets to his unit."

He didn't have high hopes of that not happening though - it was fairly intuitive to go from Winston to Winnie, and from Winnie to Winnie the Pooh, and from there, well...yeah, the dude was probably fucked. At least fifty percent odds of being fucked, anyway.

Mom and Janet just stared at Michael in confusion. It was like he was a stranger - someone completely unrecognizable from the son and nephew they had last seen only a few months before. Except he wasn't, he was still Michael, and it hurt to have his own family look at him like that.

Michael's ASUs itched. He could feel the sun and the heat pressing down against him. The collar felt tight around his neck and the polyester and wool over the pants just fucking itched. 

Wearing fucking dark navy in the hot as fuck South Carolina sun? Not the best fucking idea the Army had ever had. Really, it wasn't. Then again, it wasn't as if he was one to talk about inadvisable ideas. At least they weren't wearing the ASU coats - though since they were wearing white dress shirts, he also wasn't sure whether that was a good or bad thing. Hopefully the armpit sweat stains that they were all undoubtedly accumulating didn't show too badly.

They had gotten another reminder during first formation this morning to not lock their knees because apparently some fucking idiot from Alpha Company had nearly passed out yesterday and only a swift kick from their battle buddy had reminded him to unlock his fucking knees just in the nick of time. 

Someone going keeling over in the middle of graduation, or even "just" Family Day was never a good thing.

The colonel was making his speech, having introduced the each company one by one.

"To the families in the audience, thank you for trusting us with your loved ones and supporting their decision to serve their nation. It is my privilege to officially welcome you both to the Army and the Team Vicksburg family. I am honored to stand before you today and provide remarks about this class of graduates. America is the great nation it is today because of the sacrifices of generations of servicemember who have fought to sustain our freedom. These great men and women, many of whom have made the ultimate sacrifice, volunteered to serve at a time and place in history when their nation needed them the most. The blood, sweat, and tears that they have shed on the battlefield is the reason that we are able to assemble here today and celebrate the accomplishments of the soldiers in the field. On June 11th, four hundred and sixty-five trainees began this journey. Four hundred and fifteen soldiers stand before you today. They come from every state, two US territories, and twenty-five different countries. What unites all of them is that each of them, for their own reasons, answered the call. They raised their right hand and swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies. Ladies and gentlemen, the soldiers standing on the field today represent the very best this nation has to offer. Time and time again throughout some very arduous training, they have demonstrated that they are up to the sacred task of defending this nation. Thank you for joining us today. Hard work, dedication, First at Vicksburg, No Ground to Give. Victory."

"BATTALION, ATTENTION!" 

Everyone snapped to attention, hundreds of heels coming together with an audible, thunderous click.

"To the soldiers on the field, the uniform you wear at this moment is more than a display of your vocational choice. Your uniform is a symbol of a nation and an unspoken assurance to that you are a willing and able protector of the freedom fought so arduously for by all who have gone before, and those who will come after. You have become what you set out to be - a soldier in the United States Army. The Soldier's Creed is your declaration of your unshakable commitment to the ideals this nation was founded upon and will continue to guarantee. Ladies and gentlemen, please stand as Specialist Carvajal leads the soldiers standing before you through the recitation of the Soldier's Creed."

"THE SOLDIER'S CREED!" Carvajal bellowed.

"THE SOLDERI'S CREED!" The rest of the battalion bellowed back in unison.

"I AM AN AMERICAN SOLDIER.
I AM A WARRIOR AND A MEMBER OF A TEAM.
I SERVE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, AND LIVE THE ARMY VALUES.
I WILL ALWAYS PLACE THE MISSION FIRST.
I WILL NEVER ACCEPT DEFEAT.
I WILL NEVER QUIT.
I WILL NEVER LEAVE A FALLEN COMRADE.
I AM DISCIPLINED, PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY TOUGH, TRAINED AND PROFICIENT IN MY WARRIOR TASKS AND DRILLS.
I ALWAYS MAINTAIN MY ARMS, MY EQUIPMENT AND MYSELF.
I AM AN EXPERT AND I AM A PROFESSIONAL.
I STAND READY TO DEPLOY, ENGAGE, AND DESTROY, THE ENEMIES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN CLOSE COMBAT.
I AM A GUARDIAN OF FREEDOM AND THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE.
I AM AN AMERICAN SOLDIER!"

They sounded off in well-practiced unison. Michael had recited the Soldier's Creed so many times through the last fucking weeks, he could've been woken up in the dead of night from the middle of dead fucking sleep and recited it in his sleep. He wasn't sure that he hadn't already done that, to be honest.

And, just like that, he had graduated from Basic Training. They all had graduated.

Michael was a soldier in the US Army.

The rest of Graduation Day felt...strange. Like stepping into a pair of boots, only that the left boot was on your right foot and the right boot was on your left foot.

Michael had thought that taking Mom and Aunt Janet off-post would help - but he was in his dress blues, and that garnered him a warm smile everywhere they went. Even going as far off the beaten path as the botanical gardens, which Michael had thought Mom and Aunt Janet would like and had even gone out of his way to ask the drill sergeants for directions. Even then, everyone saw him and knew who and what he was, and every time, Mom and Aunt Janet would get that uncomfortable look on their faces again.

Columbia was a military town. Everyone knew what it meant when they saw a young man in a buzzcut and dressed up in ASUs escorting relatives dressed in civilian attire. Hell, that was why they all were required to be in uniform today. If any fuzzy, because that was what they were now - fuzzies until they earned their mosquito wings - was stupid enough to go bar crawling or hitting up the local strip clubs, there was over a hundred thousand civilians and some fifteen thousand soldiers and their dependents ready, able, and willing to read them the riot act over their stupidity and conduct unbecoming. Family Day and Graduation just by themselves probably meant enough business for the tourism and hospitality and service industry that Michael wouldn't be surprised if local businesses and hotels blocked off those dates in preparation for the onslaught of family and friends.

Mom and Aunt Janet had still looked startled, though, whenever they passed someone who nodded respectfully and grinned at Michael. Or when they stopped for lunch at a local barbeque place and the waitress said, "Y'all must be so proud of him," and, "Congratulations," as Michael wolfed down ribs like there was no fucking tomorrow.

The ribs were fucking heaven. He hadn't eaten this fucking well since he left home - plus he loved the city and all, but the barbeque down here was definitely the best he had ever tasted. It almost made up for the shitty weather. And technically, there wasn't a tomorrow - since bright and early tomorrow morning, he and the handful of other OCS candidates would be packed onto a bus bound for Fort Benning, Georgia, where they would spend the next three months and change.

Michael was not looking forward to heading even further south. At least it was approaching fall now, though - so hopefully the weather there wouldn't be as horrifically hot and humid.

While he had been eating like a starving person, which he kind of was, Mom and Aunt Janet had smiled and nodded stiffly again at the waitress- then gone back to staring at him in what Michael wasn't sure wasn't horror. 

He had winced, and grabbed for a napkin to wipe his hands and mouth. He had completely forgotten all the lessons on table manners that had been instilled in him from the moment he was old enough to walk. "Sorry, Mom - just hadn't had anything this good to eat in awhile. The DFAC is...alright, but they sure as fuck aren't serving us anything like these ribs. And the less said about MREs, the better - hot food is a crutch and all that hooah high-speed shit."

And later, they had absolutely been dumbfounded when a major had walked pass them and Michael had automatically snapped into the position of attention, rendered a salute, and given him the greeting of the day.

It was in the botanical gardens, surrounded by climbing roses and other colorful blossoms, that Mom finally addressed the elephant in the room and asked him, "What on earth possessed you to do something like this, Michael? It's completely unlike you. Where did this come from?"

Michael shrugged. "Do what - join the Army? Why not? We all know I wasn't going to really do anything useful back home, anyway."

Mom shook her head, just a bit. "But you had a job all lined up with your uncle at Kilmartin! You didn't have to do this - and force yourself to live like this..." she trailed off, uncertain of where to go from there, it seemed.

"We saw you and your...companions last night. You wouldn't- you couldn't- those conditions," Aunt Janet finally said, putting a hand on Mom's shoulder.

Michael blinked. "Last night? What do you even - wait, that? That was barely anything," he laughed. As predicted, Pooh Bear had showed up twenty-seven seconds late to formation at the barracks, and the drill sergeants had lightly smoked everyone with their families in the audience as a consequence - and to give the folks back home and idea of what the last three months had been like.

Michael honestly wasn't sure whether the drill sergeants hadn't told Pooh Bear to be just a tad late just for that exact purpose, actually, now that he thought about it.

It had barely been anything. Really. It was just the prep drills with a little bit of mind-fucking on varying the counts out of fucking nowhere with no warning - they were all used to that and the drill sergeants hadn't even smoked them that hard.

He was certain that he had spotted more than a few family members laughing, actually - and there definitely had been folks taking pictures and video. 

It had been nothing. The drill sergeants hadn't even emptied out their wall lockers or upturned their racks.

Mom and Aunt Janet just stared at him and sighed in unison. "Well, can't you come home?" Mom said. "This has to be enough. We miss you - John misses you too, though of course he's busy with work now." 

He shook his head. "Not how that works, Mom. No one goes home straight after Basic." He paused, because that wasn't strictly true. "Well, not unless you're Reserves or National Guard or seventeen with a split option. Everyone else is going straight to AIT from here. In my case, OCS."

Beside, he didn't have the leave days banked to really go home even if he had been allowed to take leave. Two and a half days a month was the rule, he knew - and at only ten weeks in, he had accumulated less than a week of leave. 

"What about driving you to this...new place? Wherever you're going. The people at the introductory seminars yesterday morning said that we could take our...our soldier to their next location."

Michael hated himself for having to disappoint his mother yet again, but again, he shook his head. "No, that's only for folks heading to AIT - and only the ones held east of the Mississippi. Everyone reporting to OCS from Basic has to travel on Army dime and Army supervision. We board the bus for Benning tomorrow morning and we'll be on lockdown for the next six weeks." 

"What about the wedding?" Aunt Janet asked. "You have to be home for that - you're the best man."

Michael grimaced. "I don't know, Aunt Janice. I don't know what the next year is going to look like for me - we won't even find out what our branches are until halfway through OCS." Mom and Aunt Janet looked completely lost and Michael elaborated. "Our specialties. That'll decide where we go for training after OCS and how long we'll be there."

Peter had branched Aviation, and would spend the next year and a half in Bumfuck Nowhere, Alabama. He'd be learning to fly helicopters though, so that was pretty cool. Ben would actually also be at Fort Benning for the next four months at the minimum, Michael was fairly certain.

As for being the Best Man, Michael had already wrote to John about that, that he was honored, but that asking someone else might be a good idea - considering that it was entirely unknown whether Michael would even be able to attend the wedding at all. He certainly couldn't plan a bachelor party from hundreds of miles away. John had just written back, "I'm keeping the spot for you. Just let me know when you can about whether you can make it."

Mom and Aunt Janet hadn't known what to say after that. So the three of them walked around the botanical gardens, Mom and Aunt Janet admiring the flowers and commenting on which one they wished they could get cuts of for their own gardens.

They spent the rest of the afternoon hitting up the popular tourist sights of Columbia, then stopped by the PX because Michael needed some to get some shit for OCS - new boots, first and foremost, because issued boots fucking sucked. Everyone had already heard the tip from Grayson, whose older brother was a Ranger, that the best way to break in new boots in a hurry was to soak them in hot water, then wear them around all day. Not that the drill sergeants had appreciated the one hotshot who thought to try that with his boots during Basic - but Michael would have at least a few days of hold-over to break in his boots before classes started.

At the barracks, Mom and Aunt Janet hugged Michael one last time before handed him a small bag packed with what he had asked them to bring. It was really just his laptop - he knew they would be issued one for OCS, but also that if he wanted to do anything recreational, even just checking Facebook, that using the government-issued laptop would be...a bad idea.

Mom had tears in her eyes as she pulled away, and Michael tried to come up with something to reassure her. "Look, I'll probably get out in time for Christmas. Maybe I can even come home for a bit then."

He had no idea what getting leave from OCS would be like, or what he would be doing after, or where he would even be come Christmas - but that was all he could offer his mother.

And the next morning, he boarded yet another bus and settled in for the ride ahead of him. He was getting used to that, he thought. Hurry up and waiting and transport from one place to another.

You have a mission to raise a flagpole. The pole must be erected by COB today. You are given one Sergeant, four privates, one twenty-five foot wooden pole, fifty feet of rope, a storm flag, and appropriate hardware, and the pioneer tools issued with your truck. Describe how you would raise the pole.

The correct answer was not to start calculating trigonometry equations. The answer, as Michael and about half his OCS class, learned was to say, "Sergeant, get that pole raised, I’ll check back in with you later," and then leave to do paperwork. 

There were a little less than a hundred and fifty soldiers in their OCS class - a little under two thirds prior enlisted, and the rest freshly grabbed off the streets to commission - all of the prior enlisted in his class hadn't even bothered to answer that question and had just smirked when it had been asked. Michael fell into the latter category. Not that OCS cadre distinguished between them. No one had rank here - in place of chevrons on their uniform where rank normally would have gone, they all wore a patch that was simply marked with O.C.S.

The first six weeks of OCS was almost entirely classroom instruction. Over seven hours a day, with no fucking caffeine or other stimulants allowed (and who the fuck at thought of that rule?) and they traveled everywhere they went either at a run or marching in formation. They also had to wearing fucking ascots. Black ascots. In the Georgia sun. It wouldn't be until their seventh week that they were issued white ascots, marking their status as senior officer candidates.

Weekends were spend studying rather than going out to town. What time wasn't spent studying was entirely filled with cleaning, waxing the floors, more studying, PT, inspection, more inspection, and prep for next week's coursework. Michael had never studied so hard in his life - back in college, with felt like half a galaxy away from Fort Benning, he had been a solid B- student. He had done well enough in his classes, but he had never really cared all that much. After all, college was supposed to be about enjoying your youth, discovering yourself, having fun! What did a few extra percentage points matter compared to having a good time, flirting with pretty girls, or hanging out with friends. John had always disagreed with him, but then again, John had always been the responsible one.

Here, Michael learned to "apply himself" (and hadn't he heard those exact words from Uncle Jack more times than he could count) with a vengeance. Cadre delighted fucking with them at every possible opportunity. They had to write a three page paper on a topic of their choosing regarding military history. The afternoon before the final military history exam, Captain Russo told everyone that their essays had been "complete and utter fucking garbage" and that everyone had to rewrite them and have the papers on his desk NLT than 0600 the following morning. No one had managed any studying for military history that night.

The next six weeks after that were spent doing field training. More land nav. FTXs where they had to conduct an ambush, rescue a downed pilot, assault an objective. It didn't take long before Michael and everyone else could recite TLPs in their sleep and his dreams were filled with OPORDs and FRAGOs. Each officer candidate had to brief their assigned squad or platoon, plan the mission, and conduct the mission for four scenarios. Anyone who failed more than two got cut.

They learned about the different branches, toured the different tables at the branch fair, ruthlessly eviscerated each other in the course of peer evals - and cadre tacked the best (anonymized, thanks God) samples up on the wall for everyone to to read about everyone else. The OML became their world - there were only so many openings for each branch, and OCS got what spots remained after the Academy graduates and then ROTC had made their selections.

Eight Infantry.

Four Armor.

Eight Field Artillery.

One Aviation.

Three Air Defense Artillery.

Six Military Police.

Ten Engineer Corps.

Five Military Intelligence.

Fifteen Signal Corps.

Ten Ordnance Corps.

Six Adjutant General's Corps.

Eleven Quartermaster Corps.

Eight Transportation Corps.

Five Chemical Corps.

Three Finance Corps.

They all had to rank their preferred branches in order from one to fifteen - and then it was up to the not-mercy of the OML. Their grades, their peer evals, their instructor evals, their PT scores, their field evaluations. 

The weeks passed in a blur - and before Michael knew it, they had reached the recovery phase. There was no time for worry about what was happening at home, how the wedding planning was going when he was operating off three hours of sleep and not enough fucking caffeine. Brett Monceaux showed several of them the trick of pouring the instant coffee powder that came with MREs straight into his mouth and washing it down with water. The only thing that existed was the next event, the next eval, getting his five mile run time under forty minutes. 

He made friends here as well - getting to know each other in late-night study sessions, pulling security, fire-watch. OCS was only twelve weeks long - Michael knew that. Basic training had only been ten weeks. Four months each, maybe even a bit less, when all was said and done. Except he knew people here in a way he had never known anyone back home. Better wasn't necessarily the right word. But here, watching Alex Jackson bite his lip and issue a FRAGO at 0200, or Matt Weber yelling about black and gold, telling everyone to run when cadre indicated that their patrol base was taking indirect fire in the middle of the night meant that Michael got to know everyone - how they thought, how they reacted under stress, where they were the strongest and where they were the weakest - in a way that he had never known anyone back home.

Recovery phase of OCS was actually almost enjoyable after field training was completed. There was the endless rounds of cleaning and weapons maintenance, of course. But they also visited the Fort Benning Infantry Museum, hosted an OCS social (and got to meet several very patient spouses of their fellow candidates - except they weren't candidates anymore, or soon they would no longer be candidates), and were even allowed off-post and a little liberty on the weekends. 

That last proved to be fatal (in terms of career if not actual life) for one candidate, Raymond Davis, who made the utter mistake of not only (or not just) drinking, but also getting into his car afterwards. And then getting caught. Five years of active duty in the Army, what could easily have been fifteen more, and all of that gone over one incident of being caught with a DUI. That point was ruthlessly drilled into Michael and the remaining members of their class - they represented the uniform, and driving under the influence was absolutely not tolerated. It didn't matter how sterling your career was, or even if you were eighteen years in - Captain Maligaya talked at length about a master sergeant she had known with an impeccable career who had been separated from service after his second DUI in nearly twenty years.

They had started with a little less than a hundred fifty officer candidates. Four months later, on the dawn of Commissioning Day, there were about ninety left.

"I, Michael Stirling, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

Raising his right hand felt different, this time.

Maybe it was because he knew more about the Army now. Maybe it was because he knew what those words meant now. Maybe it was because he had spent the last three months having the idea drilled into his head that he would be responsible for the lives of other people as an officer. Maybe it was because when he pictured the men and women he would be responsible for, he thought of his friends - Vasquez and Conti and Winston and Harwin and Robbie. Maybe it was all of those things. Maybe it was something else entirely.

But swearing this oath felt different. The weight of the words rested differently on his shoulders - his shoulders which had newly pinned bright orange shoulder boards resting on the epaulets. 

He wasn't going to be the ones following the orders of those appointed above him, anymore. From now on, the orders would be his responsibility. His command, his responsibility. Not that anyone trusted butter bars worth a damn.

Michael had a silver dollar, but no one in his family to salute him. No one from his family had come today to begin with. Even if they had come, none of them could be his first salute, and none of them would've understood the significance of it anyway.

Ben had gotten the morning off to come to the commissioning ceremony - and given Michael a hearty clap on the back before he'd had to return to Big Army business. But Ben was (also now) a lieutenant, so that mean he couldn't be Michael's first salute.

Michael didn't hold it against his family for not coming. Truly, he didn't. He had casually mentioned that Commissioning Day was today and that family members were invited, but he knew OCS wasn't real school that people actually graduated from as far as his family were concerned. And, of course, John and Francesca were busy with their new jobs and couldn't possibly fly all the way down to Georgia to watch something that held all the importance and significance of a poetry slam, to them. Uncle Jack was busy with Kilmartin. Mom or Aunt Janet would've come if he had outright asked her, of course, but-

Well, he didn't know.

Regardless, he didn't have a grandfather who had served in the 82nd Airborne or a Command Sergeant Major uncle to salute him. So Michael decided to make some private's day by strolling into the DFAC and handing the silver dollar over to the first fuzzy who snapped to attention and rendered him a salute.

Six months away from home, first in South Carolina and then Georgia, had nearly been enough to make Michael forget what New York winters were like. Idiot. He had wanted to surprise Mom and Aunt Janet, so hadn't made arrangements for them to pick him up at the airport. That had...likely been a mistake. Stepping out of LaGuardia, after having last been in Columbus, felt like being punched in the chest with a wall of pure ice. 

It was worth it, though, to see the look on Mom's face when he turned up at the front door.

There was all the fuss and hugging and Michael wasn't sure who they wanted to stuff more - him or the Christmas goose.

Being home felt...weird - well, for one, he had fucking forgotten about shit like needing a jacket when going outside. And he had the extra fun of trying to figure out exactly how much clothing was too much when working out outside in the winter. Snow and ice and freezing-proximate weather had never been a problem in South Carolina or Georgia. It had generally been the opposite problem, in fact.

He woke up no later than 0600 now - and usually closer to 0500. Michael was convinced that it was Stockholm Syndrome. He had tried to turn around and go right back to sleep, but something - the universe, whatever god was in charge of circadian rhythms, the fucked-up humor of the fucking Army - wouldn't let him go back to sleep. 

So, his very first morning at home, after about half an hour of tossing and turning and trying to go back to sleep to no avail, Michael got up, dug around for clothes that he could work out in that wasn't his PT uniform, made his rack, and went out for a (frigid) run. He got back, took a wonderfully hot shower, and then wandered into the kitchen to see what he could rustle up for breakfast. 

By the time anyone came down, it was a little past 0700 - and Michael had tidied up his room a bit, washed and dried the dishes he had used, and was sitting on the couch studying in preparation for BOLC. He had made his own rack, even though he was home now and didn't have to. He wiped down the table and put everything away afterward in their proper cabinets.

Anna had always cleaned up after him before without ever voicing a word of complain or even suggesting to Michael that he could benefit from better clean-up habits. This time, though, Michael washed the dirty dishes himself. He made his own rack, even though he was home now and didn't have to. He wiped down the table and put everything away afterward in their proper cabinets.

After what felt like an eternity but only a minute, Mon came out and asked him, "Honey, do you want me to make some breakfast for you?"

Without looking up , Michael said, "Thanks Mom, but I already ate. Let me know if you need any help, though."

There was a long silence and no response. Michael looked up from his book to see Mom and Aunt Janet staring at him in astonishment. After deciding that they weren't going to say anything else to him, he went back to reading about Security+. Signal BOLC was supposed to be like drinking from a fire-hydants and the more of a head start Michael put away into his studies, the better he would be.

The rest of coming home, other than the sheer bliss of creature comforts, was just as awkward. He felt like a bull in a china shop. He didn't know how he was supposed to act anymore. Whenever Mom or Aunt Janet or Uncle Jack asked what he wanted to do, Michael just shrugged uncomfortably and said, "I don't know. Anything's fine, I guess." It was hard to really have a preference about filet mignon vs duck for dinner or whether he wanted to watch the Nutcracker or Swan Lake over at the New York City Ballet anymore.

His old friends were even worse. Michael didn't know what he was the matter with them. He was on his way with Brandon and Kyle to hang out at a party at Connor's place, when he saw the two of them preparing to light up a blunt, and said, "Hey guys, could you just hang on for a minute? Wait till you get to the party instead of smoking in the car?"

Brandon had given him a look that clearly asked Are you stupid? and said, "Dude. Then we'd have to give it out. Since when did you become a killjoy?"

And then they lit right on up.

Michael didn't know why things felt so different, why he got frustrated at things he had never given a fuck about in the past, things about his friends that had never bothered him before. He didn't like it.

He couldn't even make conversation with his family anymore.

At small-talk, over Sunday dinner, Michael had started to tell a story about one of their rucks, the one where he had gotten a blister bigger than a fucking quarter on the back of his heel but marched on through anyway, and Williams had gotten some contraband Kool-Aid smuggled in through the mail and poured it into his Camelback. Then he transitioned right into a story about the utter hilarity of the time they had fucked up a lane so badly carrying out Battle Drill 1a, they had assaulted right through a fucking swamp and into the middle of another fucking lane.

Then he had looked back up at the rest of the the table, only to see everyone staring at him in complete and utter bafflement, consternation, and even the faintest hints of what he thought might've been disapproval.

It was in the middle of all of this that John invited him to his firm's Christmas party. 

Normally John would take Francesca with him, he said, but Deloitte was having their Christmas party that same evening. So Michael might as well come with John. "Besides," John said. "You can meet some people, get to know them, start building your own network - it'll be good for you!"

Michael didn't know why something felt...off, but it was John asking, and it wasn't as if he had anything else better to do with his evening. So even though none of his suits fit right anymore, he drove to John house and got into the car and the two of them drove to downtown Manhattan.

The party was held at the firm, John said - with all the food and drinks catered in-house. Apparently they made a mean pasta. 

As they walked into the expanded conference room, which resembled nothing so much as an upscale restaurant with dimmed lights, John clapped Michael on the shoulder and said, "The firm gives us taxi chits home, so drink!" before peeling off to go talk to a cluster of guys about their age standing around a table.

Another man, who happened to be passing by John right at that moment, muttered, "Pain in the ass to find a cab out of Manhattan though."

Michael approached the bartender near the back of the room. He almost ordered a glass of wine before he paused. He had no fucking idea why he was hesitating. Hell, he had gotten utterly fucking trashed with a bunch of the guys after graduation just the week before. This wasn't some run-down, mildly questionable bar - if there was any place Michael should've felt comfortable drinking at, it was this. Maybe it was just the fact that he was ordering wine. He hadn't had wine since before he left for Basic, all those months back. Yeah, it was probably just that.

"Excuse me, sir," he finally asked. "Do y'all have soda? A coke would be fine."

"Sure thing, boss." The bartender almost seemed a bit surprised at something Michael had said, though Michael hadn't the faintest clue what that could be. "Do you want it in a wine glass?"

Michael did a double-take. "Uh, what? Say again?" 

The bartender looked at him with just a bit of pity. "You must be new to the firm - so no one notices you aren't drinking. It's dark enough in here that coke in a wineglass looks like house red." 

Michael blinked. "No..." he said slowly, trying to keep the confusion out of his voice. "I don't need to pretend to be drinking. A glass is fine, thanks."

He wandered around a bit, skirting the edge of the room and trying to avoid people as much as he could. Damn but he felt as conspicuous as fucking hell in this room. He had lost enough weight in some places and gained enough muscle in other that his suit didn't quite fit him properly anymore. And, as far as Michael could see, he was the only one out of over a hundred people in the room sporting a high and tight. He knew it couldn't actually be the case that everyone was staring at him wondering what on earth this interloper was doing here, but it felt a bit like that was what was happening.

He didn't know what had happened - he and John had practically grown up attending parties and gatherings identical to this one. He should have been able to waltz through this in his sleep, shaking hands and charming people left and right. 

Most people held a drink in one hand, a few had finger foods in place of a drink - gazpacho in shot glasses, cheese and crackers, hor d'oeuvres, deviled eggs. No one had both hands occupied and most people choose a drink over food.

John caught up to Michael, a wine glass in his own hand and grinned. "There you are! Here, I have some people for you to meet." Then he promptly steered Michael through what felt like approximately fifty dozen introductions - though he knew that it really couldn't have been more than one or two dozen. 

After a blur of handshakes and names and conversation that Michael honestly couldn't remember the details of thirty seconds after any given sentence, John led Michael to a small group. Several males, one female, all of them dressed nicer than even John was. "Michael, these are some of the partners - Richard Meyer, David Waldron, Jonathan Schiff, Seth Farrow, and Heather Sanders." 

John pivoted. "I'd like all of you to meet my cousin, Michael Stirling."

A quick round of handshakes followed and Michael had never been so keenly aware of the callouses that had built up on his hands after nearly six months of training - from push-ups, from learning how to fire an M16, from hauling all twenty-seven pounds of a SAW around, from rappelling off Victory Tower, from lifting in the gym - and how unblemished and smooth their hands were.

One of them, Michael thought it was Waldron but honestly couldn't say with any certainty - really, the entire world should adopt the idea of putting name tags on people - said genially, "Well, Mr. Stirling." Then he chuckled, "the other Mr. Stirling, where do you work?"

Somewhere, lurking underneath, Michael managed to hear the assumption. What firm do you work for?

He straightened his back as if he was back in Basic again and a Command Sergeant Major had been conjured up out of fucking nowhere. "I'm in the Army, sir." 

There were a lot of raised eyebrows at that, and a quick round of looks exchanged, before another partner said, his tone of voice...something. Michael wasn't sure what, but it was something. "Well, what are your plans for after?"

"I just graduated from Officer Candidate School last week, sir. I'll be reporting to Signal BOLC right after New Year's. Fort Gordon."

"And after that? Surely you have other plans."

Something in Michael bristled at the certainty of the female partner's tone. "No, ma'am. Not in the way you mean. I'll be moving to my duty station graduating BOLC, at which point I will start my job as a Signals officer in my unit." A pause, and he couldn't resist adding, "I could easily stay in for my full twenty, or even past that, ma'am. It's a good career - work that I'm proud to be doing." He had no idea why he said that - only that he suddenly felt the urge to.

"Of course, of course," came a chorus of murmurs, and the partners quickly lost interest in him.

"What the hell was that about?" John hissed at Michael as they walked away, fetching another glass of wine. "Twenty years? You can't be serious - I thought you enlisted on...on a whim. These are connections that matter, Michael. You'll need them if you ever want to find a proper job and settle down - unless you plan on working for Dad the rest your life." 

Michael shrugged, not wanting to argue about it. He was mostly just grateful that John, despite knowing him the best out of anyone in this world, had yet to notice Michael's feelings for his fiancé. "That's a long way off into the future - who knows what'll happen even just in the next year or two." He tried for his best and most irreverent smile. "Go on, have fun - do some networking for your own self. Don't worry about me."

John gave him a long, assessing glance, but disappeared in the end and Michael spent most of the next two hours lurking on the fringes of thing, trying his best to be invisible. He stepped out for air more than once. He even helped one of the janitorial staff he spotted struggling with an oversized trash bag. He had spent too many hours policing parking lots and sweeping and buffing floors to not have sympathies for anyone in stuck in similar positions.

He almost wished he was back at Benning - and wasn't that the fucking stupidest thought ever?

Finally, the party began to die down. The crowd started dwindling, and John tracked down Michael to inform him they were heading out.

That turned out to be easier said than done, however.

Five conversations with cabbies and five rejections later, John groaned. "It's always like this - damn taxi drivers hate leaving the city. Finding one willing to drive out to Jersey on a Friday or Saturday night is worse than trying to find a needle in a haystack. Driving back it is then."

Michael raised an eyebrow, "Are you sure that's a good idea? You've had a few."

John waved him off. "It's only been four drinks- and it's been over three hours! Relax, we'll be fine. I'm not even drunk, it's no big deal. I'm not spending the night crashing on a couch or at a hotel - I want to go home to Francesca."

Michael was pretty sure it had been closer to five or six drinks, but he wasn't going to argue with John over that. Getting behind the wheel with even one drink was one too too many for his personal comfort. And when had that changed? God knew that Michael had done the same more than once, because designated driver only went so far when you were surrounded by fraternity fellows. 

"Well, I haven't had any tonight, so I'll be driving," Michael said flatly, then swiped the keys out of John's hands before his cousin could protest.

John invited him to stay the night at their house, where Francesca had arrived home just a bit before them, since it was already past 2200 by the time they arrived. "You're always welcome, you know." 

Michael just plastered the most carefully-neutral expression on his face that he could and tried for his most casual laugh. "I can't, sorry - Mom will miss me if I'm not home in the morning. She's already upset enough that I'm only here for a short while."

There were many things that Michael fervently did not want to do - near the top of that list, discounting all the Army-related ones that had a probable chance of maiming or death or just plain-old sucked, was watching John and Francesca make goggle-eyes at each other.

Over an hour's drive away or not, anything was better than enduring that. 

John and Francesca's engagement party - soon to be followed by the wedding tomorrow, was absolute hell for Michael. If someone had asked Satan himself to draw up an OPORD titled "How best to torment Michael Stirling," then this would be it.

By some utter and fucking miracle of Army scheduling and possibly virgin sacrifices, Michael was able to attend the wedding. He had about three weeks of leave between graduating BOLC and when he had to report in to his new unit at Fort Carson, and by a God-ordained miracle, the wedding fell smack in the middle of it. 

It really was a fucking miracle. Three weeks earlier, and Michael wouldn't have been able to make it at all - you didn't get leave from BOLC for things like that.

But here he was. He was even the best man - though mostly in name only. And for the purpose of tomorrow. One of John's other friends had taken over most of the regular best man duties like planning the bachelor party. Michael's job was to stand at John's side tomorrow, walk hand-in-hand with Eloise Bridgerton, Francesca's maid of honor, down the hair, watch as his cousin and brother and best friend vowed to spend the rest of the life with the woman he loved. To love and honor and cherish Francesca, in sickness and in health.

And then he would have to give a speech at the reception afterward, celebrating their love. Michael was happy for them, he truly was. John and Francesca deserved to be happy. 

But it hurt.

He gave the toast at the reception. "Sometimes you can look at two people and know," he said, with his best lopsided smile. He talked about the first time John had come back to his apartment raving about the smart and pretty girl in one of his accounting classes. All the times John had bought flowers for her. The dates. The many occasions where John had asked Michael, and Michael had grinned and rolled his eyes and said, "Of course," before John had worked up the nerve to ask Francesca out on a date. Watching them be perfectly suited for each other. 

Michael didn't talk about the moment that he realized he was in love with her himself. Instead, he wished them a happy future, that they experienced nothing but joy and love for the rest of their days.

The next morning, still hungover, Michael loaded up his car. Mom saw him off - Aunt Janet and Uncle Jack still recovering from having seen their one and only son get married. She hugged him, said that he needed to eat more, and told him, "You've grown up, Michael. I wasn't sure about...well, everything at first. But you've really grown up in the last year. I'm proud of you, and proud of the man you've become."

Michael didn't know what to say to that. So instead, he hugged her back and then drove west. Away from New York. Away from his family. Towards his new life.

Michael knew all the jokes about newly-commissioned lieutenants. Everyone did.

What's the most dangerous thing on the battlefield? A second lieutenant with a map and a compass.

The scariest words in the Army are when a butter bar says, "In my experience." 

You can't spell lost without an L and a T.

What's the difference between a 2LT and a PFC? At least the PFC's been promoted. 

His PCS to Carson was fairly standard, as far as PCSing went. Colorado Springs wasn't a bad place to be posted. Michael had never visited here before - their family had gone skiing in Colorado before, but there wasn't much in the way of good ski slopes in Colorado Springs specifically. They had gone to Denver, Aspen, Beckenridge, but not Colorado Springs.

And of course, they had never set foot on post. Not this one or any other one.

Michael went through inprocessing and filled out what felt like his weight in paperwork and joined his new unit. His new PSG, Sergeant First Class Smith, was tough, but fair, on him. The older man clearly took his responsibility of shaping up brand-new butter bars into semi-competent future captains seriously.

Michael learned the name of every soldier under his command, where they were from, their families. He and Smith instituted a policy saying that junior enlisted were not allowed to buy new cars without first consulting with their squad leader and either Michael or Smith. He learned that all of his soldiers were miles more competent at the actual tech skills than he would ever be, and learned from Smith how best to manage a room full of soldiers with different, if overlapping skills.

He enjoyed the crisp mountain air. He took his BAH and split renting a house with two other new lieutenants in his battalion. He learned where he could buy food on post, even though the options were mostly limited to fast food. He found the pool - three of them, technically - the bowling alley, movie theatre, and outdoor recreation complex. On weekends, he and a few new friends he was slowly making took day trips to go skiing and snowboarding.

He threw himself into the work, his new life now - trying to forget John and Francesca married, on their honeymoon, their emails filled with happy pictures. 

John and Francesca were John and Francesca. She was a Stirling now, and that Stirling wasn't Michael. The that more he had a life of his own, a life separate from the two of them, the better it would be.

For all of them.

They were deploying. Michael knew they were deploying. He had known they would deploy.

Everyone had known they were deploying for at least the last six months, if not longer. It wasn't as if they were the 82nd Airborne or anything, set to deploy on eighteen hours' worth of notice.

This many years into the war, deployments happened on a mostly-set rotation.

Besides, equipment took time to ship overseas - Bradleys and Humvees and Strykers and everything else. On Michael's end, this meant spending hours inventorying and accounting for the WIN-T equipment and CCEs and SNAPs and GRRIPs and all the other comms shit they would need.

And there was even more paperwork, because of course there was fucking paperwork. This was the Army, there was always fucking paperwork. There was no such thing as a war that didn't involve what felt like several million dead trees.

Michael and a few others from Bravo Company lined up against the concrete-block wall waiting for pre-deployment counseling. No one said much of anything, except for the younger joes, who seemed amped up and eager for just about anything. There were more people in line up ahead of them from other units.

One kid, a PFC who couldn't be older than twenty and had pimples and an almost puppy-like excitement was grinning - going from man to man to ask what combat was like, saying that he couldn't wait to kick ass over there, until what Michael assumed was his squad leader finally shot him a look and told the kid to settle the fuck down.

Michael leaned back against the wall, waiting his turn. The door opened and Vance strode out. There were worry lines at the corner of his eyes. He was probably worried about his kid, a twelve year-old boy, and whether his ex-wife would use this deployment against him in their upcoming custody battle or whether he would even be allowed to reschedule it. 

He waited some more. More people went into the room. More people walked out.

Finally, Sandy - short for Sanderson, which was apparently too many syllables for anyone to tolerate - emerged from the room and said, "Your turn, Stirling." 

With a nod, Michael walked into the classroom where a man sat at a long desk with papers spread out in front of him and stood at attention.

"Lieutenant Stirling?" he said, looking up at Michael. "At ease. Have a seat. I’m Captain Donahue."

Michael sat down in a chair facing the captain, who pushed a stack of papers toward him. "You're single with no dependents, so have no need of a family care plan. Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"And your next of kin is your mother? One Helen Caroline Stirling?" 

"Yes, sir." 

Donahue looked up from the papers. “Do you have a will?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good." He  pushed a stack of papers toward Michael. "Sign and date your family care plan, or lack thereof in your case. And the funeral arrangement addendum. I assume you want your mother notified in the case of your death. Anyone else?"

Michael paused for a moment before finally saying, "No, sir." Mom would tell the rest of the family, he knew - and as for everyone he had met in the last two years...well, Facebook would have to do.

"Alright then, Lieutenant. That’ll be all. Dismissed."

Michael stood. "Thank you, sir."

Right before Michael walked out the door, Donahue said, We recommend you write letters to your loved ones. Just in case."

Everyone was so...banal. Routine. Michael had to tell his family that he was being deployed - if nothing else, he wouldn't be coming home for Thanksgiving or Christmas this year. Even the recommendations to write letters, just in case, was delivered with a sense of bland detachment and calm efficiency. 

Mom was going to freak out, Michael knew - never mind that he was Signal Officer, a POG, probable Fobbit, and would likely rarely be exposed to enemy fire. Not that anyone knew that for certain, Michael knew. But as a SigO, he would be a lot safer than some others.

Ben was dead - killed in an IED blast some two months back. He had gone to Benning, finished I-BOLC and Pathfinder, graduated Ranger School true blue, landed in his unit, and deployed less than three months later.

Michael stopped by the commissary on his way home - they were out of milk and he didn't think Johnny or Zach were scheduled to make a grocery run and get some.

As he turned the corner of the cereal aisle, a small screeching humanoid cruise missile rocketed out of nowhere from the cereal aisle and careened straight into him, shouting, "I HATE YOU, DADDY! YOU DON'T LOVE ME ANYMORE!"

Instinctively, he grabbed onto it to steady both it and himself - and discovered that it was a little girl. He was fucking shit at telling ages of kids but if he had to guess, she was no older than ten. Definitely not puberty-aged yet, anyway. Dressed in a t-shirt embroidered with a butterfly, those light-up shoes that were apparently popular with kids these days, and cornrows decorated with an assortment of brightly colored beads, she crossed her arms, pouted, and tried to make another run for it when a man and a woman - the man wearing ACUs - bolted out of the cereal aisle in hot pursuit.

Michael recognized the man - it was one of his guys. Walker from Third Squad. 

Walker clearly recognized Michael as well, and grimaced in embarrassment as what Michael assumed was his wife got a hold of the child. Mrs. Walker was pregnant, Michael knew - even though she wasn't showing yet - and she had a kid about kindergarten-age in one hand as she grabbed onto the older girl with another and started scolding her. The older girl - Michael was fairly certain her name was MacKenzie, Mackie for short - glared at her mother and crossed her arms in defiance, squirming to get away again.

"Apologies, sir. Are you alright?"

Michael waved it off. "I'm fine - though your girl's got a hell of a future in cross-country if she keeps up that sprint."

A faint smile crossed Walker's lips, replaced by a look of worry as he looked over at his wife and children.

"Everything okay there, sergeant?" Michael gently pressed. "I know deployment can be difficult on a marriage and kids."

Walker pressed his lips together, then shook his head. "This'll be my forth deployment in less than eight years, sir. Mackie was barely six months old when I left for my first one, Chelsea not even two months for my third. Coming back from my second, Mackie didn't even recognize me. I'll miss this next one being born, unless I get lucky and my R&R's timed right. By the time we're back, I'll have missed half of my girls' lives."

Michael didn't know what to say to that, other than to reassure Mrs. Walker that it really was fine, that there was nothing to worry about, when she came over, both girls in tow, to apologize to him. Mackie had muttered an apology at her mother's prompting as well, and Michael solemnly said, "You're forgiven, Miss Walker."

Then he tried to lighten up the situation by pulling a sleight-of-hand trick he had learned back in college to impress the girls - pulling a coin out from behind Mackie's ears. That made her giggle enough that she held onto Walker's hand as the family walked away, all upsets forgotten.

For now, anyway.

That evening, Michael sat down at his bedroom desk and started writing his letters.

It took them nearly five days to make it properly in-country.

First from Carson to Manas, Kyrgyzstan on a chartered 747 - with a stopover to refuel at Spangdahlem in Germany.

Then two days later, they boarded a C-17 and arrived in the absolute fucking chaos that was Bagram. The tents were overcrowded and it was impossible to get any sleep with the sounds of all thousands of people and the constant roar of aircraft taking off and landing. Several of the guys had even gotten some kind of weird fucking rash from the fucking mattresses. 

But a day and a wakeup later, they were on their way again. A C-130 this time, and their final destination was FOB Fenty - where Michael would spend nearly all his time over the next year.

Fenty was....well, plywood, plywood, and more fucking plywood. 

Just about everything was fucking made out of plywood - everything that wasn't a tent or a shipping container, anyway. Michael could count with his fingers the number of actual fucking buildings made of actual fucking cinderblock. The PX was plywood, the MWR center was plywood, everything was fucking plywood. There was the constant dull hum of fans and motors and generators and the roar of engines, no matter what time of the day or night it was.

Thankfully, only the fucking generators were going to be his problem.

The temperature here came in three fucking modes: Hot, Awful Hot, and Damn Hot. What AC they fucking had was not meant for mere human comfort and everyone learned right quick to check their boots for fucking scorpions and spiders before donning them.

And the sand and the dust - the fucking dust just got fucking everywhere. It came through under whatever the fuck counted as a fucking door, it came through the fucking walls, it came through from places they had thought were close to fucking airtight. Then again, close only counted in fucking horseshoes and grenades. Michael got used to the crunch of grit under his feet even in his home sweet home shipping container. At least most of the ground outside had been covered in a layer of fucking gravel - not that that stopped the fucking dust from getting fucking everywhere.

Then, of course, there was the fucking indirect fire.

Indirect fire alarms sounded constantly. The first time that had happened, Sandy had grabbed Michael's arm and yanked them out of the fucking tent they had been assigned. The alarm and speakers were perched on a pole and the repeated announcement of, "REPORT TO THE BUNKERS!" was so loud that they couldn’t hear anything else.

There were dozens of cinderblock bunkers positioned around the base and the two of them ducked inside the closest one. They were the only ones inside and they sat on the floor, alone in the dark, while mortar fire exploded all around them. Somewhere close, a rocket hit hard and exploded. The acrid smell of smoke slipped through the cracks in the door.

And then, just like that, it was fucking over. 

When they emerged from the bunker, the sunlight nearly blinded fucking them. Black smoke hung in the air and burned their eyes. And everywhere Michael looked, he saw the the First Infantry folks acting as if nothing had happened. They were riding bikes from one trailer to another, lining up outside of Green Beans for coffee, playing basketball.

The alarm sounded again. Mortar fire erupted to their left, a fucking cement wall exploded off in the distance. Smoke wafted their way.

There were four more fucking alarms that day before he finally hit the fucking sack. 

Welcome to Afghanistan, he supposed.

Afghanistan was...the strangest combination of real and surreal Michael could ever dream of - his work a combination between satisfying and beyond frustrating. There was no other fucking way to fucking describe it, really.

The work he was doing was real, though - real in a way that fucking numbers on a spreadsheet and making sales and shuffling accounts around never had been. Sure, he had too many accountability spreadsheets of his own - tracking which units had which pieces of fucking equipment and keeping all the serial numbers straight - but it still felt different from anything else he had imagined himself doing back in college.

This mattered. What he did mattered. This was something tangible. Michael saw himself what happened when something failed - and the results when they succeeded.

The indirect fire continued. It became as much a part of the daily rhythm of the world as the sun rising, or the heat of the desert. 

Fenty averaged around three or four attacks a day. On bad days, it would be closer to eight. The fucking alarms were the worst part of it all, was the general consensus - the most shrill and obnoxious sound on earth by a fair fucking margin. Sometimes, for extra fucking uselessness, they would sound after the round in question had already detonated. There were bunkers everywhere - around what passed for barracks, by the PX, everywhere as far as the eye could see. No one fucking used them. By Michael's second week, he had stopped blinking at the sound of mortar fire and explosions and those godawful fucking sirens. The attacks came in the middle of the fucking night too, alarms and all - and just about everyone would just roll over, hope your tent or shipping container didn't take a direct hit, and go right back to fucking sleep.

Honestly, the biggest problem the fucking indirect fire actually caused Michael was when a round managed to land close enough to the TOC and fucking detonate - sending shrapnel through the plywood walls like a hot butter through knife. It went straight through the fucking steel connex, the plywood, then the fucking avionics programming and comms equipment housed in the TOC, and the straight out the other fucking wall. 

Replacing all that fucking equipment had been a fucking nightmares - though at least there had been no casualties from that incident. Sometimes there were. Just about every day felt like they were getting fucking news of casualties - if not from Fenty or one of the COPs in their AO, another FOB. Left, right, and center, the fucking casualties kept mounting up.

The motherfucking mortar teams were clever - too fucking clever for the liking of anyone stationed at Fenty or their allies. They would use washing machine parts, dryer timers, and even fucking blocks of ice to launch their mortars. The fucking motherfuckers would fucking freeze the end of a fucking mortar round in a block of ice and hang it with a string down the barrel - and when the ice melted, the round would drop out of the tube and launch. By the time any patrols made it to the location of where the mortar was, the fucking team would be long gone. They could afford to abandon their mortars - there was always more where that came from. Fucking Afghanistan - where fucking weapons were easier to acquire than food.

Every now and then, an aerial patrol would catch teams red-handed and kill the lot of them. That would earn Fenty a day or two a reprieve of lessened attacks - but inevitably, for every death, the T-men would always manage to find fuckers willing to take their places on the fucking mortar teams.

Otherwise, life was life - even in Afghanistan. 

Tuesday nights meant Mongolian barbecue, and the chow line would stretch to the point of almost winding around outside the DFAC. On holidays, they even had fucking butter sculptures - who the fuck came up with that idea, no one had a fucking clue. They were real pretty, though. No one working the serving lines spoke English worth a damn, but everyone figured out how to point and a few even picked up a handful of phrases in Farsi or Pashto.

Every two weeks, Michael got his haircut at the same place damn near everyone in uniform in a hundred mile radius did - the little International "Berber" Shop right next to the PX run by a pair of Afghan brothers. The first time anyone walked inside and saw the straight razor, they'd damn near fucking shit themselves - but damned if those weren't the best haircuts Michael had ever gotten. The brothers only charged three dollars for the usual high and tight, but almost everyone would tip them ten. Folks all the way from Bagram would find an excuse to hop on a bird for a haircut here - though Higher shut that one down pretty quick.

Fenty, and just about ever FOB in existence here and over in the sandbox, had a little place called the Haji Mart - a little outdoor desert flea market, filled with rows and rows of vendors (all staffed by authorized and vetted local friendlies) with goods laid out on improvised tabled lined up side by side, separated by rugs hanging on pieces of rope. Whatever the PX didn't have, the Haji Mart usually did - the latest movies taken on a shaky handheld camera, cell phones (that mostly didn't work), cheap Chinese pocketknives, knock-off Nikes sneakers, old Afghan currency, prayer beads, handmade rugs, and all the jewelry anyone could want. Hell, sometimes the Haji Mart sold goods that the PX did, though where the fuck they got American goods from was anyone's guess - probably some idiot decided to pawn something. It was a fact of life, as certain as death and taxes - wherever American soldiers assembled (the younger and stupider the better), there would be an abundance of opportunists present, ready, and willing to separate them from their money. Stateside, it was tattoo parlors and pawnshops and strip clubs and car dealerships promising that sweet sweet Mustang at the low low price of a 30% APR loan. Over in the Middle East, it was the Haji Marts. But all in all, it was a pretty good way to kill some time, if you happened to be off-duty and were looking for something to send home to the folks.

Michael got two weeks home on R&R in November.

It wasn't quite Thanksgiving - that had been nearly three weeks away when his flight had landed at JFK. But Mom and Aunt Janet had gotten the entire family to sit down together for a "Thanksgiving dinner" anyway. John and Francesca were working crazy hours, both of them having managed to keep their jobs at their firms by a hair. Uncle Jack hadn't had to worry about losing his job in that sense, but it was taking everything he had to keep Kilmartin afloat.

But Mom and Aunt Janet had corralled everyone and the whole family had sat down for dinner and caught up.

Everything felt like it was a half-step displaced from reality, though.

It wasn't the weather - it turned out that New York in November wasn't that much colder than fucking Afghanistan in the winter, when it came down to it. As it turned out, the fucking desert could get colder than anyone fucking expected, if you weren't careful. 

It wasn't that, though.

It was that between getting off the plane and into Mom's car, Michael had been thanked for his fucking service five times by five separate people - but there was almost nothing in the news about the war.

He slept a lot - and found that he almost missed the crack of mortar fire and the dust that got every-fucking-where. It was the kind of missing that came from Stockholm syndrome, of course, but still - not having it felt almost weird.

Mom and Aunt Janet had made it practically their mission in life to "feed him up properly" - breakfast and lunch and dinner too, if they could keep him at home all day. Some days, he stayed at home - catching up on sleep and just staring out all all the green. There was so much green that he had always taken for granted - the lawn, the gardens, the forest. Other days, he went down to the city and wandered around - watched a Broadway show, hit all the tourist sights. 

Michael spent an entire afternoon just staring at the skyscrapers towering all around him.

Marveling at people living their lives, strolling on the sidewalk with their children, eating paninis at cafes - all safe and sound with no idea what was out there. He had only been outside the wire a handful of times, mostly cooperating with the ANA on whatever tech needs they had. One time had been overseeing the systems set-up for a local hospital. Another time had been for a school, installing one single computer that the kids could use to learn how to type and access the internet. The people had had met on that mission were a world away from the men and women walking through Time's Square. There were no IEDs, no land mines, no highway of hell, no food shortages.

No fear. 

The first time a siren from a passing ambulance sounded, he flinched and almost ducked in a way that he hadn't at Fenty past his first week - even though it sounded nothing like those godawful fucking sirens on base.

It felt positively weird to help Mom and Aunt Janet with grocery shopping. Walking through a regular store. Looking at the brands, so many choices. He had gotten so used to commissary brands, commissary prices, that just walking down the aisle of Wegmans felt odd. He couldn't remember the last time he had gone grocery shopping somewhere other than the commissary. Afghanistan didn't have wall to wall shelves with nothing but cereal in brightly colored boxes.

Uncle Jack and a few of the local board members invited Michael to the high school football game that first weekend back - dressed in full uniform, of course. A welcome for a hometown hero, they called it - and Michael got handshakes and thanked for his service by everyone from the local mayor to the cheerleading squad. There had even been reporters from the local newspaper and television network there.

Once upon a time, he would have appreciated the cheerleaders - just aesthetically, of course. Now, they just...looked young. He had soldiers, female soldiers even, who were only a year or two older than those girls - but they just looked completely different. A world apart. 

That five-minute segment on the local news channel and the article on page four of the local paper was the closest thing to news coverage about the war he saw all week. 

Just last month, COP Keating had nearly been overrun by the fucking Taliban. Twelve soldiers died, and dozens more injured.

Michael caught up with a few of his old frat buddies, the one who had stayed in the area after graduation, and they had fun going out for a bar crawl.

Just like old times, it was supposed to be - but it wasn't. Not really.

Logan asked him how many people he had shot over there. Kevin wanted to know if he had brought back any cool souvenirs or loot or trophies. Chet asked with confusion, "Dude, couldn't you just tell them you don't want to go? I didn't even know we still had people there." Dylan said he had no idea how Michael stood it, being bossed around and following orders all day - and all Michael was doing was fighting for oil anyway.

It was on the tip of Michael's tongue tell Dylan that that he was in fucking Afghanistan, not part of Operation Iraqi Liberation, before he closed his mouth again. Nothing he said would change anyone's mind. And if he was being honest with himself, if their orders had said differently, he would've deployed to fucking Iraq just the same. He still didn't know how he felt about the fucking war - either of them. People were dying. Maybe that didn't make everything right, or even some things right, but it was a lot easier to judge the situation while sitting safe in a corner office or going shopping at the fucking mall.

Jackson, Weber, and Monceaux had been killed in action. Michael could still remember them on Commissioning Day, standing there with their stiff new shoulder boards - sky blue for Monceaux and Jackson and yellow for Weber - and proud as hell to receive their first salutes. Conti had been killed when her Blackhawk had taken enemy fire and crashed. There were rules about female soldiers and combat zones. And those rules meant jack fucking shit out there in the real world and not some policy memo. Female soldiers weren't allowed to enlist as combat arms, weren't officially allowed to go on patrol. That didn't stop them from dying. Not when choppers were VIP targets for the enemy. Not when manpower was hard enough to come by that MPs were being sent out on patrols.

It only stopped them from getting medals, from earning promotions.

He could still hear Sandy's voice as they sat against a plywood wall in the FOB and he said, or maybe prayed, "Please, God, don't let there be another fucking kid behind this fucking wall." One of his joes had been given two fucking weeks off combat operations after he had almost broken. Two weeks - that was it before he was sent back outside the wire.

He remembered Weber saying quietly over breakfast one morning, "The Army's a lean, green, fighting machine. It doesn't care about you, me, or any one of us. It takes us in, chews us up, and spits us out." But he had been there anyway. They all had been. And Weber had died for it, when his Stryker had been hit with mortar fire.

He thought about the children at the schools and hospitals he visited while accompanying the Civil Affairs people on KLE missions. Little girls learning how to read, how to use a computer. The hunger in their eyes - not just for food, but for something more. Something better. Anything other than this war and the Taliban.

It was different. Everything was different now. His old friends had changed. Or was it Michael who had changed? He didn't know.

Two weeks later, he watched as the city become smaller and smaller until it was just a speck in the distance - then vanished entirely. This time, he got thanked for his service a dozen times between setting foot in the airport and disembarking from the first leg of his flight.

Back to Afghanistan he went. Back to the routine of equipment and fucking power-point briefs and generators and user-generated errors and indirect fire.

The DFAC hosted a proper fucking feast for Christmas - ham and roast turkey and everything. There was a USO visit to raise morale, the President made some kind of a speech. Endless floods of care packages full of chocolates and presents and handwritten letters from little children and churches filled the post office until it was literally overflowing.

Just before New Year's, Michael got a jubilant email from John and Francesca - she was pregnant. If it was a boy, they were going to name him John Michael, in his honor. A girl would be Janet Viola.

They asked him to be the godfather and said they hoped that he would be home by the time the baby was born. Michael hoped that he would be, too - but one never knew with the Army. Theirs was supposed to be a twelve month rotation, but everyone knew these days that deployments could be extended to fifteen or even eighteen months at the drop of a hat and the needs of the Army.

Michael went down to the Haji Mart and found a little stuffed leopard that he thought a baby might like. He mailed it back home along with a little congratulatory card that he picked up from the PX. 

He was certain then, that he had made the right decision. John and Francesca were happier this way - they were about to start that big family, filling their house up with children that would call him Uncle Mike. Michael himself felt...more content - knowing that he stood no chance, even accidentally, of ruining their happiness.

Yes, this had been the right course of action for him to take.

It was never supposed to be John. 

John.

Safe at home in that big house across on the other side of the Hudson, living his perfect life with Francesca and overjoyed to become a father. John, the banker. John, Michael's brother in all but blood. John, an ocean away. John, the civilian.

John was the one who was supposed to be safe, who was supposed to be fruitful and multiply. No one had expected John to go to war. No one had expected John to die.

It was Michael and everyone around him that were supposed to be in fucking danger. He was the one in fucking Mortaritaville, for Christ's fucking sake. It was John who was supposed to worry about Michael dying.

It was never supposed to be the other fucking way around. 

It had taken over forty-eight hours before Michael saw the fucking email. The last few days had been fucking rough - a storm had wreaked havoc with their satcom equipment, a fucking VBEID had gone off just outside the game, and the Taliban had made another run at a COP. Whenever there were casualties, every last avenue of unsecured communications on base got locked down until the next of kin back home were notified. The fucking media had a history of being vicious like that - and it was better safe than sorry, rather than let a family find out on live camera that their father or mother or brother or sister was dead from some fucking shark of a fucking reporter.

When Michael had finally read the email, he had just stared. In shock. Maybe disbelief. He hadn't known what the fuck he was felling, really.

"An accident."

"Black ice."

"Holiday festivities."

"On his way home with a coworker."

"Collision."

It was still hard to believe. John, steady and responsible John. Civilian John. Dead. John. Fucking dead.

And here Michael was, an ocean and half the world away from home. He wondered, if he had been there, whether John would still be alive.

He stared at the rows and rows of fucking condolence cards lined up neatly inside the PX. Doves and flowers and fucking angel wings and elaborate script decorated the front of dozens of cardstock covers - and none of them felt right. Michael had no words for this, hadn't a single clue what to say. The one phone call he had made home after getting the news had been agonizing. 

He had barely been able to speak, and the sobbing from the other end of the line had been so loud that he wondered if the people in the plywood booths surrounding him could hear Mom and Aunt Janet crying. It sure as fuck had felt like they could.

Mom had begged him to come home for the funeral - so had Aunt Janet. Francesca needed him, they said. His family needed him - surely the Army had to understand that. They had let him come home for Thanksgiving. Surely they had to allow him to come home for John's funeral.

God, John's funeral. Even just thinking the words felt like a hard kick in the fucking balls.

But the Army had to understand no such thing, Michael knew. He had told Mom to send an official message through the Red Cross anyway, but he hadn't held out much hope.

And he had been right. Colonel Winston had given Michael his condolences, but hadn't authorized leave. No matter how many imploring emails and letters Mom sent begging him to come home,  no matter how much she pleaded at him over the phone, there was nothing Michael could do.

The Army just didn't fucking work like that.

He wished he could get drunk, but this was a fucking dry deployment. Not that he couldn't think of at least three people who probably had contraband hidden in their mouthwash - but still, that wasn't how he wanted to go about it. So instead, he prodded Wells from Charlie Company into a game of Case Race - and downed Rip-Its until he felt like he was going to pop.

Michael wondered what the funeral would be like, who would give the eulogy, if Reverend Starling would be presiding over the funeral, how much work had to be done on John's body for an open casket funeral - then wished he hadn't wondered.

He didn't ask.

Michael tried to attend John's funeral via Skype - but as per fucking usual, the bandwidth of the fucking MWR center wi-fi was slower than a fucking inchworm with fucking arthritis. 

He never even managed to get the video feed started on his laptop.

The rest of their deployment simultaneously sped by in a blur and felt like it was dragging through fucking molasses.

One day just felt like another felt like another. He ran on fucking autopilot, mostly - except for the moments when everything was going to hell and giving him a migraine in the process.

No, I can't fix your CPOF because I'm not the S6.

No, I will not be making your coffee. My joes will not be making your coffee either.

No, my team isn't running your cables, that's why the six shop has cable dogs.

All satellite requests need to be submitted a minimum of thirty days out. Sixty days would be great.

No, I can't just "be" the S6.

No, you can't requisition my generator.

How in God's name did y'all manage to break your fucking radios this time?

No, the air conditioner is for the equipment, not your personal comfort.

No, power-balancing the satcom equipment isn't going to make the internet go faster.

No, you can't string multiple CPNs together to get more bandwidth. Turning off everybody else's won't help yours out either.

Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

No, we don't use the honor system for signing out equipment. Do you know how much this shit fucking costs?

No, my team isn't setting up your tent. No, you aren't taking my tent.

One wake-up after another wake-up after another wake-up. Just one fucking foot in front of the other.

He hadn't heard a single word from Francesca since the accident. No calls, no letters, no care packages. Nothing. It was just radio silence. 

Michael tried writing - tried calling, even. Letters and email and phone-calls and even Skype. All he had gotten was radio silence. Not a single letter from her during mail call. Mom and Aunt Janice wrote that Francesca miscarried, that she sold the house on the river she and John once planned to fill with children, that she had moved into a condo in the city. They said that Francesca couldn't stand to stay at the house she and John had shared, with all the memories it held - reminding her of everything she had lost.

Michael hoped Francesca didn't hate him for not being able to come.

And then, one morning, it was their last wake-up.

They were leaving. They were fucking leaving. 

The 101st Airborne were relieving them, and Michael had spend the last he-didn't-even-know-how-many weeks informing his replacement of the lay of the land - everything from the good, bad, shitty, and absolutely fucking untrustworthy local contractors to Top 10 Most Common Equipment Problems to the personalities of their ANA counterparts.

Then, before Michael knew it, they were gone.

Michael watched those beautiful, deadly snow-capped mountains and endless stretches of desert disappear into the distance.

Fenty to Bagram to Manas and then back to Carson again.

At long last, they were going home.

Except not quite. He wasn't quite home yet, anyway.

For Michael, home would always be New York. Home was John, except John wasn't here anymore. They had all gotten off the plane, turned in their weapons and other important gear to the armory, and then were released home for two fucking whole days to collapse into their waiting families' arms.

But Michael couldn't go home, not yet. Home for him was hours away by plane and several days by car - far beyond where their pass would let him go. Mom and Aunt Janet, who had called basically the minute their plane had fucking landed at the tarmac, begged him to come home. But the passes were only for local travel, and the Army just didn't work like that. 

He had lost count of the number of times he told his family that the Army just didn't work like that

He promptly used his pass and got fucking drunk - drinking for all the times he had wanted to be utterly fucking trashed back in Afghanistan, but couldn't because it was a fucking dry deployment. And then he stuffed himself with all the tacos he could eat. 

The next two weeks were spent on de-mobilization. Paperwork, paperwork, and more fucking paperwork.

Michael had to re-update his will - and wasn't it another kick in the fucking balls when he realized that John had no place in his will anymore. He had to sit through classes on "re-integration"  and look at PowerPoints with shitty pictures of tennis balls and eggs. Medics examined him within an inch of his life and poked him full of needles with vaccinations and blood draws. There were endless questionnaires to fill out.

And then finally, fucking finally, they had leave. Everyone filled out their leave chits. Thirty days block leave. 

Everyone immediately scattered to the four winds, Michael included. 

Waiting until the next day of a civvie flight to JFK or La Guardia was one fucking day too many for Michael to wait, so he scanned the Space-A roster of flights, praying that there was something available, and cheered when he saw that there was a flight headed to Fort Dix that very afternoon.

Fort Dix wasn't exactly Penn Station, but that it was the closest any Space A flight could get to the city. And it had the added benefit of getting him there today and not a full day later.

When the flight finally fucking landed, part of Michael itched to borrow a rental car and drive north on 95 as fast as he could. Francesca needed him, Mom and Aunt Janet had said. His family needed him. And at least driving would feel like he was fucking doing something to get there instead of sitting in place waiting for someone else to transport him.

But he wasn't a fucking idiot - fucking Friday evening traffic between New Jersey and New York? He'd be lucky if it only took him two fucking hours to make it. 

So he bought a train ticket and sat there, watching the scenery pass by - a flash of a tree here, the flicker of a power line there. He had felt uncomfortably conspicuous in his fucking ACUs on the plane, and he was sure that every other passenger was fucking staring at him now, but it couldn't be helped. That was the price he paid for getting here the fastest fucking way he could manage.

Then finally, fucking finally, Michael was home. The buzz of the city almost felt like it was too much, but he couldn't let it overwhelm him.

Not right now.

He hailed a cabbie and read off the address of the condo that Aunt Janet had said Francesca had moved to. It was in the Upper West Side, and with the fucking Friday night traffic, took over half an hour to get to.

But after what felt like too long, they were finally pulling up in front of the condo building. Michael barely had time to say thanks to the cabbie, just throwing him the tip, before he rushed out of the taxi.

In the silence of the elevator ride up, Michael wondered if he should have stopped somewhere along the way to get flowers, or a card - something - to give to Francesca to say how sorry he was. He was sorry that John was dead, he was sorry that he hadn't been able to be there, he was sorry for everything.

But then the elevator doors were opening. No fucking point in turning back now, even just to go to a fucking flower shop. He had come this far already. He had no fucking ideas what flowers were even appropriate for, "I'm sorry about our your loss, and I'm sorry I couldn't come to the funeral because I was stuck in the fucking desert."

Anyway, flowers might be sending the wrong message. Francesca wouldn't be his, she would never be his. Francesca was John's wife - his widow now - and Michael wasn't going to stomp all over John's memory like that by making a move on her. He just wanted to be there for her, be with someone who missed John nearly as much as he did.

Michael checked the address written on the paper again before approaching the door.

He knocked.

There was a muffled, "Just one moment," through the wood and metal.

Michael's heart pounded in his fucking chest.

And then. 

The door opened.

There stood Francesca, her hair down - shorter than when Michael had last seen it.

Her eyes widened in shock as she took in the sight of him and she dropped the mug she was holding. It landed on the floor mat with a crash, whatever-the-fuck liquid had been inside splattering all over his boot. Ah, well, his boots had seen fucking worse.

And then she fell against him, sobbing, as he wrapped his arms around her.