Chapter Text
The sun beamed down cruelly. Simon was bleeding out. There was little hope for him, not that he had hope anymore.
He had little to live for, these days, little meaning to life, little joy. He joined the army to be someone, to finally do something in life other than sitting around working a 9-to-5, being miserable, no lover, no family, no warm smiles to greet him when he got home, no food cooked by hands that cared.
Just packaged meals, heated up in a microwave that surely needed fixing, but Simon never got around to do that.
He never would. He was going to die one way or another today.
Do you ever get the feeling when you know when someone is about to die?
It’s not a nice feeling; and Simon knew it all too well. Like an old friend he did not want to see.
There was no physical pain, no clues to point towards such a thought. It was like seeing something that didn’t exist, like seeing the outline of the grim reaper before he even got there.
Simon had found a kitten crying, alone, small and frail, once, many years ago. It was a few weeks after Zane had left. She was going to die, Simon knew that all along. He stupidly thought, maybe, just maybe, if he brought her into his home, he could care for her, feed her, and make her warm.
He just brought it from one shithole to another. She died in the middle of the night when Simon was sleeping. He did not cry. Why would he cry over an outcome he already expected?
He had the same feeling about his mother. She overdosed.
Simon didn’t think he’d care about his mothers death. Looked at her pain meds more times then she’d never look at Simon.
She was a woman in pain, constant, cruel pain. And drugged herself up so often she would be cold out every day Simon got home from school, or club, or from Zane’s house.
She died alone. Simon knew she was going to die a few days before she did. She was taking more medications, not that he saw her ever do it, he just came home to more empty bottles scattered around than usual.
He didn’t know why he cried over her. She was not a bad woman, but she was nowhere close to good.
He didn’t know why he cried over a death he could have prevented. He could have stolen her medication, he could have begged her to stop before she did.
He hadn’t.
And then Simon buried her 6 feet deep.
Only 3 other people attended, not including the very confused ladies who worked at the funeral parlor. Their shoes probably cost more than Simon’s suit.
Maybe he would have gotten a nicer suit if the coffin had cost so much. It ruined his plans of moving out. And it wasn’t like Simon got any payback from his dead mother, she had no money to her name. Simon didn’t get a drop of inheritance, just a bottle of pills.
The landlord kicked him out 2 days after her funeral.
Simon slept in his car most nights after that.
Did any of that matter, though? Because today, he was the one dying. Would anyone attend his funeral? Would a funeral even be held? By the time this was all over, would there even be a body to collect? If there was, who would point him out, who would look at him, still and lifeless, and speak up, say something pathetically sentimental like “That’s Simon, he did things, he was someone!”
Guest, maybe, if he got out of his hell.
But Guest was a man who might as well be wearing a target on his back. He was the last of the last. Every man on the northern side of this field wanted him dead, wanted his head on a barbed fence to be held up for trophies sake like he was some kind of prized bull and not a man.
Even if Guest didn’t have that target, if somehow, some miracle happened and he made it out, Simon didn’t deserve that from him.
Sure, he made amends, he apologized. He became friends - was friends the word? - with his best friend's childhood enemy.
Damn, Guest was a lot nicer than Simon had ever expected him to be, behind that snarky, prideful mask…? Was just a man, whose kind was slowly being killed off one by one, until he was the last.
He was just a man - among many men - who wanted to live for just one moment more, just one breath with his family, one more heartbeat home.
Simon was not among the many men who wanted to live.
Not anymore.
Guest was there, beside him, trying to apply hopeless pressure to Simon’s wounds. Yeah… he was a lot kinder than Simon ever expected. He thought he’d hate him. After bullying him, his friends, his wife, for years, relentlessly…
And he still forgave. And he still tried to save Simon…
Man, Simon was such an asshole in comparison. If he could be a droplet like Guest, maybe things would be different. Maybe he wouldn’t have ended up on a battlefield covered in not only his blood, but others.
Some of his men, some of theirs.
Did it matter who they were? They, too, were dead. And whilst Simon hadn’t closed his eyes, and hadn’t been buried yet, he would soon join them, and instead of being someone, finally doing something, he would just be another body for examination.
Among hundreds of bodies with no names, nor dates of birth, nor people to recognize his face.
Simon’s vision was starting to blur.
Guests' hands were starting to shake. It wasn’t like he wasn’t strong enough to apply pressure, but the wound was big, and deep, and for an injury like that, pressure did little to delay the inevitable.
Did anyone truly want to die? Simon didn’t exactly want to live. But he didn’t want to die either.
He was in the middle of it. He was living, but on the borders of death. And death was cold, and empty, and dark. Did he want to die, or did he want to become a better person? Or both, maybe.
Did he want to die, or did he just expect his own death, because of some stupid feeling. But did some stupid feeling truly predict death? Or was it just a thought, like dozens, hundreds, thousands of other thoughts.
Did Simon want to die?
Death was inevitable. Everyone died eventually, slowly, bodies failed their masters, or quickly, and mean for the unlucky few. Air was their own poison. Their own brains failed to keep them happy all the time.
Did Simon want to die?
No.
He just didn’t think he’d be strong enough to survive this.
He tried thinking of what Guest had said last night. Something about strength, it was slipping his mind all too fast, as blurs of his life flickered past his eyes.
Sorry, Guest.
You weren’t a friend for long, but Simon liked to think of you as one. Even if you never saw him the same way. You were kinder than he ever expected. Maybe too kind.
Maybe too forgiving, too.
Sorry, he couldn’t live by your family's words.
Sorry their tongues fell on deaf ears.
Did he want to die? No.
Was he? Probably.
Simon was choking on air and he didn’t even recognize that fact until he noticed that there was no air at all. He wasn’t breathing, correction, he couldn’t breathe.
Simon didn’t want to die. So he choked out, without air. “I can’t breathe…”
Guest’s eyes moved up, quietly, the hands on Simon’s chest lost a bit of pressure as he scanned the bullets snapping past, like a mean rainstorm above the sea.
“Stay here,” he finally whispered, or maybe it was just so loud his voice compared to everything else sounded like a whisper. Simon was too tired to tell. Guest pulled back a little, with hesitation, like he was questioning his move after he already made it. “Keep pressure on it, I’ll… I’ll go find help.”
Simon was choking. On nothing. Or maybe he was choking on sand?
There was a lot of sand. His mouth was dry, and his throat was closing over, like he was about to cry. But he wasn’t crying.
He was dying.
Simon didn’t want to die.
Or did he?
It went against nature to want to die. No one wanted to die, they just wanted to stop living.
Part of Simon wanted Guest to look back one final time. Part of him, a selfish part, wanted Guest to stay, and say something sweet and poetic like he did last night. But that was selfish.
Because if Guest looked back, he might not have had as fond of a final memory of Simon.
Guest dashed off, despite the bullets roaring, and grenades exploding. And Simon’s thoughts were not saved with honey-like quotes from Guest’s family.
It was quiet. No… no it wasn’t. There were bullets flying, and grenades exploding. It was anything but quiet.
But Simon was too tired to process it. Too weak too.He had always been weak.
Just hit it behind punches and snarky smirks and lies.
He didn’t process the soft crunches of gravel, and the new pair of eyes staring down at him in horror as he bled out. Not until the sun disappeared but a finger moving into view.
Guest? A medic? Pathetic and naïve hopes, no, not hopes, dreams. He crushed them himself like a shell under a shoe. They came from the North, where Bacon's territory lay.
A bacon soldier, he assumed, to finish the job mercifully. By their hair, he thought himself correct. Simon was already putting his hand into his pocket, ready to pull out the last of his grenades.
Because if he was dying, he wouldn’t be so kind to go out easy.
But what he saw, what he heard was worse.
Eyes all too similar.
“Simon?” He said. “That isn’t you, is it?” It was him. No, surely this was just another stupid glimpse of the past. Another flash before his eyes before he died.
But Zane never wore this outfit before. Never wore the clothes of an elite soldier; an assassin.
But there was no flash. This was no sad memory of the past. This was real, and perhaps that was the most tragic thing of all.
“Long time, no see,” he managed. “Nice to see you again.”
Zane had frozen over like a lake in the winter many moments ago. Staring down in horror. Oddly pathetic of him.
He was a soldier, an elite, trained for massacre, trained to kill without hesitation. Judging by that uniform of his, he was high up too. Bacon soldiers didn’t just wear it to look nice. They wore it because they had connections to their general. Meaning Zane had connections to their general.
Meaning Zane was a top tier enemy. A kill on sight, think about your actions - your slaughter - later. Wearing a uniform meant you didn’t think about the family the other person had, you didn’t get time to care if they had a mother, a sister or a father, or even kids. An enemy was an enemy. A killer. A monster.
Not a person.
Because they weren’t allowed to be people. They weren’t allowed to think of them as such.
Simon couldn’t let him kill anyone else. Because that uniform spoke things Zane would never admit to him. He was trained, a professional at manslaughter.
The bacon’s top tier killers, the swiftest, the cruelest, cold, and evil. An assassin. If he did not strike and kill first; would Zane?
How many people would Zane kill? How many more people?
Could Simon really just let that him?
He came here to be someone. To find his place in the world, or at the very least leave some kind of mark on it. He didn’t want to die unknown.
He didn’t want to die, cold, and drugged up like his mother.
Or small and sad like that she-cat.
He couldn’t let himself die that way. He wouldn’t.
Finally, Zane’s eyes caught the egg shaped object in his hand. This time, they weren’t making cookie dough and eating the batter up.
He did not move to remove it from Simon, though. He just spoke.
"Hey," Zane said suddenly, voice tight with fear, like Simon just said he was going to start spinning burn outs in the Builder Brother’s parking lot and see how long it took until they got in trouble. "Don't do anything stupid."
“Stupid,” Simon echoed, even as he felt the weight of the bullet lodged in his chest. The adrenaline was starting to wear thin, and everything, every inch of him, ached. He was so sore he could have even felt it inside of his soul, it was that painful. He was coughing. He didn’t even notice it. “Stupid? Is kil..ling the enemy… is stupid? I know that uni…form. I’ve he…ard of your group. You’re fighting for the wrong side, Zane... And you’ve been fightin’ for it… You’r not gon’na to turn back… Why should I…?”
“Wrong side,” he repeated, eyes narrowing, voice trembling despite his nature. “I’m doing my job! I’m protecting my people!”
“By killing innocent ones?”
Simon's hands lingered for a moment, holding the grenade tight as he could - which, probably wasn’t as tight as he may have liked. He was weak. And he was surely dying. That ghost of a feeling he knew too well, not as a friend, not really a foe either.
Just death.
Death did not see past futures, or promises. It only saw a man bleeding. Or a child with cancer. Or a mother addicted to drugs, or a small kitten who never had a chance to begin with, even if it cried, and cried and wanted to live.
Death was not kind, but it wasn’t unkind either, because at least she was fair in her takings.
Simon was just one man - among dozens of men - who were unkind. Who wanted to be someone. Who wanted to do the most human act of all, by leaving some kind of mark against the soils of death.
He was just one man who was going to die, like hundreds of others on their death beds, breathing in their final breaths. Only their breaths did not take in as much sand, or smoke.
But hey, that’s what you got when you joined the army, right?
So there Simon laid, not anybody, not a title past private, just a man, who was dying, and calling his old best friend evil while reaching for a grenade meant to blow them both apart...
All the blood on Simon’s hands felt too heavy.
Finally, after a long, sharp glare, Zane started to move. Unfortunately for Simon, when you are a dying man, you’re not exactly the type to be able to find strength to fight a healthy man with no bullets inside of him, let alone one trained to be the best of the best.
Zane grabbed Simon’s wrist, not exactly roughly, nor violent, which was very odd compared to everything around them. But it was firm enough that Simon couldn’t pull out the grenade ring without struggle.
It was a struggle. A pathetic one, Simon clawed up for the ring, and Zane clawed his hand to stop him. Scratches formed between them, not the kind that would leave scars, nothing more than paper cuts to soldiers.
But then Zane tugged his arm, a little harder than before. And with Simon’s precious adrenaline gone, there was nothing to protect him from the absolute horrible pain that tore through his system at the movement.
Zane got what he wanted. He caught the grenade, and removed it.
All at the cost of Simon’s screams, of course.
Zane was quick to pull away, horror moving into his face, as if he had never heard a scream before. Bullshit. He would have been killed. The only difference here was Simon was the one in pain.
And unlike other soldiers, Zane knew Simon’s story. He knew his mother, and overall lack of family. He knew the shit Simon saw.
That was the only difference between Simon’s life, and anyone else’s, had it been Matt, or Guest, or anyone else, they would have been dead minutes ago. They wouldn’t have been spared with conversations.
“Shit- Simon?!" Zane dropped Simon's wrist instantly and pressed both hands over the bleeding wound instead—not knowing if that would help or not—but doing something! Anything!
Zane’s eyes moved down to the bullet wound, at the blood soaking Simon’s shirt darker by the second. He was starting to notice the way Simon’s chest barely rose. How every breath looked like torture, because it did, it was torture, just in a different form.
Torture decided to dress in drag and pretend to smile sweetly when she was actually just there to ruin Simon by every millisecond it took for him to die.
He was just a man wishing for death because living was beginning to hurt too much. His vision was fuzzy. So fucking fuzzy, he could barley see Zane’s scar and that took up, like, half of his face.
Zane ripped off his own coat and pressed both hands hard against the bleeding wound on Simon's chest, harder than Guest’s hands. Colder, too. They smelt of something herby. Simon didn’t know, he didn’t know herbs, wasn’t into them.
He didn’t eat anything past whatever army rations he got. They were gross. A stupid silver baggy he had to rehydrate with precious water. It looked like puke, and didn’t taste much different.
Wait, was Simon really thinking about food right now?
He looked down to find his chest stuffed with Zane’s jacket to hold off the bleeding, done so with surprising skill. Better then the lady medic back at camp wrapped his knee after Guest and Matt left Simon to eat his dust. Though he may have been biased because she had been - rather obviously - pathetically in love with Matt, and Simon did not like her for that fact. He also was very annoyed for losing the nonexistent race that had formed between them.
Yeah, no, he was biased.
Maybe a part of him still liked Zane more than he’d ever like to admit.
He shoved that thought away as quick as it arose. His vision was still blurry. He was probably just seeing things funny. Actually he probably wasn’t seeing anything.
He could barely process anything.
He didn’t notice Zane’s hands move to wrap around his back, and the ledge between where his thighs met his calves.
Only when he was starting to get hoisted upwards was he even aware that he was going, well, up.
Bullets zipped past them both.
Explosions shook the earth beneath his feet, and travelled up to the point even Simon could feel the rattles from his cold body.
But Zane ran straight through hell itself, for one man. The only person he’d ever cared about outside duty or honor or country…
Simon’s vision was blurry.
He was just a man. But so was Zane.
The world was cruel and cold. And yet the sun beamed, harsh as ever. It would be a cold night, tonight. Simon could feel it.
But what he could no longer feel was the sense of death lingering to take him. The weird feeling, heavy in his stomach, like a bolder. Or like he had accidentally left his mouth open and ate all the sand that flew in, which, fun fact, sand did not taste nice.
He wasn’t going to die today.
For torture seduced him before death could.
For another day, Simon would have to be someone, something.
It hurts to be something.