I stand in the courtyard, listening to Whitley in her La Amante persona…..make pronouncements She’d always been high strung, and this persona incorporated parts of her commanding presence as a doctor, but there was something different, something crueler maybe.
I’d tried to talk to her earlier in the morning, to, well, if I am honest with myself anyway, to prove that I was still trying to help Shawna. That was why I had asked the witch Verda about what they had done to Shawna when they captured her. She had been cold and direct, but Verda had answered my questions. Besides, in my experience, all doctors were cold in their “bedside” manner, and I had appreciated her directness.
I shivered in the Argentinian sun as just the hint of how cold they could be broached through the darkness in my mind.
“We thought long and hard on your proposal,” Morgaine was saying. I snorted silently. Whatever she said was going to be the wrong thing, and I watched and listened to the tension and anger emanating from Whitley. This was going to go downhill fast, and I shifted slightly into a position of readiness, really just a slight shift in the weight on my feet, ready to move at a moment’s notice.
As they continued to debate, my mind ruminated on the conversation, well, lashing that Whitley had given when I interrupted her. It was fine, really. That part I could handle, she sounded just like a young officer who hadn’t had their morning coffee yet, but I had spent years handling that kind of idiocy from academy and university graduates.
Her reactions to the news that Titan had declared war on the cartel with the special delivery last night had been surprising. I got the briefest sense that maybe she had been truly going to let the coven go, but that her hand had now been played. I’d been annoyed with Titan, because his need to act at random negated many attempts at any strategic planning. One day, it was going to cost him, or us perhaps. I think that’s what bothered me the most. I liked him, he was actually a pretty good man. But if he cost me anyone I had recovered, I’d be forced to punish him. Probably in ways that the wouldn’t expect.
Bryce believed in the good of people, had hope for the world. Bryan seemed to be trying to purge a darkness from within. I had always wanted to be a good soldier, but the world and the Project had taught me that I couldn’t do that anymore. I wanted to change, to be a good person, to really know my family, all of them. And yet, whatever I decided, I was going to hurt someone. I always did.
Whitley had been right when she yelled at me that I was drowning in my regrets, even if she’d been in denial about having her own. Everybody did. I’d been trying to help Shawna with my questions, and her reaction had been to yell about why no one had told her before. I’d swallowed my response that her attitude expressed that she knew everything, but instead, I had tried to explain, a part that was also true, that she had been there so long, that she was a part of the team, a friend, that I thought she knew. I butchered the explanation, as always.
She’d been right about the pile of regrets, the ocean of regrets. That my daughter didn’t know me. That my fiancé had felt trapped and suffered for years to protect that daughter and my family. That, maybe, if I had just told Mum somehow that Bryce and I were alive that Dad would still be around, that whatever had happened in Port Hedland would have been averted. That I’d been able to protect Shawna as I had sworn to do, but who had been attacked and tortured by this same fucking coven just a few weeks ago, that a couple weeks before that, she’d been physically assaulted in Scotland in our room, and I wasn’t there for that either. That she suffered by being near me, and what was that going to mean for Olivia and Amelia and Mum. I even regretted joining the army all those years ago. Maybe, if I hadn’t, just maybe none of this would have happened to my siblings and Bridgette would still be here.
Of course, then I wouldn’t have met Amelia….and all the good that came from that decision, even with the pain.
Idly, I stroked the sleeve lightly of this ridiculous traditional where, rubbing the skin just below the inside of the elbow, lost in memory.
East Timor, 2005
“هل تريد اسم السير بالكامل؟“
“لا ، أنا فقط أريد الحرف A ، الحرف الأول.”
“Of course, do you want the entire name, my friend?”
“No, I just want the first letter, A.”
“Of course, of course. Forgive me for asking, but….I don’t get many requests from….well, you know.”
He smiled at the old man before answering again in broken Arabic, “This is my third tour here, and, well, I be studying the language. It difficult to speak but more hard to read. But….the…uhm….writing is beautiful. We 
getting married when I return this time.”
“A beautiful tattoo for a beautiful bride then, yes?
“Yes, yes, it will be our secret…..”
What warned him? Animal instinct? Years of combat experience? A good luck charm returned from lost memory?
Guess it didn’t really matter, as he was already moving, yelling “incoming” before the first bullet’s were fired from inside the courtyard.
Last Dreams 