[With hindsight being unhelpfully sharp, he can usually see where he went wrong with his words. He's gotten better at it. But this time, he scours what he had said, and he can't find the jagged broken edges, can't comprehend the kid's cold shoulder. Maybe it's just that death and war are topics so hard and heavy and serrated that their ugliness cuts through to glint even in the mildest words. That, he can understand. He knows nothing about Red, but he knows it's never easy.]
...Fine. Let's just do what we came here to do. [They've still got a ways to go with this hole. The movements of its creation are pressed into his muscles' memory, and it hardly takes any thought anymore. He doesn't like the familiarity of death, the resigned inevitability of these rows and rows of holes.
It won't be him. He doesn't want it to be him. He doesn't want it to be anybody.]
no subject
...Fine. Let's just do what we came here to do. [They've still got a ways to go with this hole. The movements of its creation are pressed into his muscles' memory, and it hardly takes any thought anymore. He doesn't like the familiarity of death, the resigned inevitability of these rows and rows of holes.
It won't be him. He doesn't want it to be him. He doesn't want it to be anybody.]