Lance Doesn't Lower The Rifle.

Lance doesn't lower the rifle.

Maybe it's because he joined the army late that he tries to think it a yet – doesn't lower it yet.

The soldier is crouched by the sandbag mount, on their side of the mount, the exposed side. Lance was alarmed at first sight; thought a scatter of things at once: theft attempt, attack? Desperation, dying? Lance has become micro-attuned to helmet colours. He saw the alarm of bronze. The soldier removes his face clothing. Breathes through the mouth. His arm slips from his knee to the ground. His other arm is missing.

''I don't feel so good,'' the soldier says. He sounds somewhat apologetic. Is this war conduct, Lance thinks. The soldier seems impossible, like stygian blue. The red around his missing arm seems self-luminous.

Lance has his hands adjusting his grip. It's so quiet around them. Snowflakes drift lightly onto the barrel of his rifle. The sky is white and slow and soft. It's so quiet.

''I don't know,'' the soldier says. He's blinking rapidly at the ground. Shifts his weight like he wants to sit down. Lance likes how his German sounds.

''Aren't you—'' scared, Lance despairs. Of me? Of war?  ''Scared,'' he finishes.

''Yeah,'' the soldier says. Like it's an allowed simplicity, to say it like that. ''I don't feel so hot.''

''Is this wordplay,'' Lance asks, horrified, ''do you think you're funny? You look like shit. Soldier.''

''Yeah,'' he says, to something. ''Shiro.''

It takes Lance time to realise this is a name. But now he can't unname the soldier. Now all the circumstantial parts are named; hair clumped to his forehead under the helmet frozen white: Shiro; the knot of the tied sleeve where an arm is missing, hitting Lance's stomach wrongly: Shiro.

The air inside Lance is whirling. The air in his tiny air sacs has been whirling lately, and  it is now, but differently, Lance knows. More breezily. It has been somewhat abstract, but now he is winded. Now it is personal. Lately, he has been dreaming he hates himself, and he has been waking up, thinking: but I don't.

Sometimes his chest blooms, or turns into something with a low boiling point, or turns into octopus ink; and he thinks he is grieving himself.

Which must be self-absorbed. He is on the side of alive, and has both arms. Maybe it's because he joined the army late, but he doesn't know how he could offset the death of something with a name.

''Don't just give me your name,'' he says. The soldier moves his legs from under himself, instead folding into something seated, leaning back on the sandbags. He has seated his momentum. He moves his jaw. Like something relaxing, or something in pain, or something defunct.

''I don’t think it matters now,'' the soldier says.

''It matters,'' Lance says. Says immediately; he feels very immediately.

''Want to see my picture, too?'' The soldier fumbles through his jacket. All right, Lance realises, then re-realises: wait. This might be too much to know. Lance shakes his head. Lance shakes his head but goes despite himself, thinking, you don't feel like a target? You feel like a human shield.

The soldier pulls a photo from an inside pocket. On the photo, the soldier isn't dressed like a soldier, and looks very clean, standing by someone shorter, wilder, messier, their arms thrown over each other's shoulders. The image is blurry, but the soldier's eyes seem strangely defined. They seem strangely defined now, too.

''Love the blur of you,'' Lance says.

''Thanks.''

Lance feels himself nodding at the picture, like a body on a spring. Maybe he is nodding to stall, to drag out his indecision. He needs to think. If Lance doesn't shoot, that's Shiro winning rightfully, isn't it? It's survival by selection, successful.

''Did you treat it?'' he asks, and the soldier looks confused, so Lance nods in the direction of his arm. He realises his rifle is waist-high and lowers it to treat the dissonance.

The soldier falls into a coughing fit, which turns into a thing with no sound, just spasming. Snowflakes are drifting. It's so quiet. The soldier lifts his hand towards the missing arm, then halts the motion with the back of his hand to his mouth. Lance imagines they swallow simultaneously.

''Like this. But I think it would extend my shelf life. If it were better.''

Lance is afraid he won't say anything. Lance has been not knowing what to say, leaving him with the spice of depersonalisation. Sometimes he still hates the human silences in which he is forced to live. Them make him feel spindly. Now they are less miserable, less of a crisis. He handcrafts a lack of a self, and now he's handcrafting a silence.

''My hand. Fingers. I can't f—'' the soldier starts coughing again. Leans his head back. It's quiet again. It's been quiet for days. It's even quieter tonight. This is the first time in the month Lance has been in the barren Isonzo highlands without a snowstorm's loudness. He has gotten used to them. To all the noise. He has been falling asleep over cannon shots. He recognises missiles by sound: calibre 152 whistles; calibre 75 creaks; calibre 305 howls.

''Where's your base? Unit?'' Lance wonders if the soldier could be a spy. He is so undefensive, though. His face shapes into something knowing and tender and seeing Lance. Lance sees it: the soldier won't tell. Lance imagines  a hostage situation, then unscrews it from himself like something rusty and illness-causing.

''What's with—'' the soldier starts, but trails off, and Lance interrupts with the same wording, on some strange but fierce and untamed instinct.

''What's with your shelf life? Freezing won't increase it.''

''No. Maybe I'm recyclable?'' the soldier says. Now it's evident that moving his face is difficult, some orchestration undercooled.  Lance doesn't really see the relevance. The soldier says this with no grief. Some grief? What does grief look like? Lance imagines himself on a timeline. He imagines that in a hundred years someone will be swimming in the lowland river under an arch of rocks and see his helmet, washed with rain and time from the highlands, then caught in between two rocks, in between something unmovable under the force of things that move slowly but ferally.

But he is in the now. He rests his rifle against the sandbag wall, feeling the soldier's eyes track him. He pulls the glove off his left hand, and throws it, aiming for lightly, at the soldier. The soldier's face furrows, a little, but Lance is delicately attuned. The soldier is trying to pull his wet glove off with his teeth. It's slow and looks uncomfortable. Suddenly, Lance is angry at discomfort. He sinks to his knees and crawls to the soldier. He holds the soldier's arm, while the soldier is out of breath. It feels like giving in, like a decision making itself; he's pulling the soldier's glove of, finger by finger, the way it goes; he's pulling the soldier's glove of worrying: am I doing this too slowly?

Peripherally, he sees the soldier watching his face. One time, Lance's sister said to him: you are in my emotional space. Now Lance thinks: you are up my aorta!

I know you don't know what to do, the soldier's eyes say. I know you know that, Lance's say back.

This silence doesn't feel miserable. It feels a little unreal, like windless snow, like the faraway quiet. It feels a little awkward. Lance backs away, maybe out of the soldier's emotional space, and crouches, hands on the ground. His left hand is painfully cold. Good. This isn't awkward, the soldier is ferociously unwell.

The soldier has looked away. Into nothing, squinting strangely. Time passes, and Lance lets it. Lance watches it. He starts squinting at the soldier, until he notices, blinking like head-clearing.

''Do you ever look at afterimages?'' the soldier asks, hazedly, obscured with a veil of dreaminess. Or maybe this is terminal tranquillity.

Lance's bughotel mind is lagging. ''What?''

''Spots,'' the soldier says. ''After.''

''After what,'' Lance asks.

''Images. Colours. Something dark in the snow.''

Images; Lance recalls the pocket photo. The blur of Shiro. Images, colours, something dark in the snow. Lance likes this. He likes triads, he thinks. Stone, mist, hair undoing. Salt, ferocity. Something.

''Shiro. Shiro?'' Lance calls. Shiro pulls his legs closer to himself. Snowflakes are drifting, the dusk is white and light with snow. A film of snow is covering Shiro's shoulders.

Freezing unthinking; unworded observations; undoings. Lance decides, then, with determination he doesn't have, or maybe, after all, the determination he has: he knows the next step, and it's undoing the freezing unthinking. His cavern is his, too, after all. He can go inside. He will bring Shiro inside.

This is how they go: Lance is holding his rifle in one hand, relaxed at his side, a just-in-case, a warning, the other arm in the air and open. Shiro is breathing behind him. Lance opens the door, slowly, tactically. Like an ambush?

''Alright, now,'' Lance starts.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27092113