Kill of The Night - Drabble - Daniel
"Lieutenant Colonel, we need you to over look the plans for Afghanistan. B53 is ready and awaiting your command." Strong hands scarred with battles some men had never seen reached to gently rub at seablue orbs, hoping perhaps if he erased the man from his sight then by some magic he might truly be gone. "Lieutenant?" Clearly no such luck - or no new powers - were being granted to the lieutenant that day. Daniel only moved his eyes, swiveling upwards so he could look from under his brow, nose still pointed with broken focus at the stack of documents and plans on his cherry desk. The look was supposed to be threatening, creased forehead and hard eyes, but it merely came off exasperated, gentle crows feet showing nothing but boredom, the laugh lines in his face all but gone, smoothing into hard planes of steel.
"You have less than three seconds to remove yourself from my office."
Not a trace of humor bleeding into his words, Lieutenant Garrison was the poster child for if looks could kill, his patience with the Major having evaporated two tours ago, when the man had promised men and delivered corpses, leaving Daniel with a garden of boys who wouldn't sprout flowers. Wicked game the war, he said. No, wicked was the witch who was after ruby slippers, and even then it certainly wasn't a game to Dorothy. The jack rabbit muscles under his jaw unrelenting, the Major seemed to understand the words for once, leaving without a word and without the documents, Daniels sigh of a weary man the only thing following him out.
The January snowfall of papers on his desk, he couldn't pave his way through, too much in too little time with too much at stake. They told him the weight of the world was on his shoulders, that one day the free world would be his, the army the people and anything in between, but it wasn't true, not in that sense anyway. You've got the whole world in your hands, Lieutenant Dan. Lizzie's voice wormed it's way into his thoughts, the light at the end of the tunnel usually but today nothing more than another rain cloud, waiting to burst forward and drop another set of worries on his lap. She, unlike the others, was right. The world was in his hands - not his shoulders. He held the power to destroy and save it, to send troops and bring them home, to bring peace where it had never existed and start war where it was least needed. But at the end of the day, the end of the mission, he went home. Hung his coat in an empty apartment with a Christmas Tree that never came down and fed a fish that should've been dead three or four tours ago.
The World never remained on his shoulders.
It couldn't. If it did he'd never get out of bed, wilt and die and decompose onto the mattress until another Daniel sprouted up and the cycle continued. Man after man with nothing but responsibility that shouldn't have been his, that would be stripped like cloth if they knew the truth about the mans scarred hands they had placed the world in. Staring at said hands, he could barely look at them, criss crossed with thin lines from horrors he couldn't remember, horrors he'd made himself forget. Those hands caused more life and destruction than God himself, had given and taketh away, had claimed to do so in the name of his country, whispering his apologies as they pulled triggers and threw grenades, slightly trembling as the pressed codes for missiles and bombs. Those hands that could caress a man with nothing but the gentility of a lamb had single handedly leveled small cities, destroyed families, dismantled governments.
Shoving the papers away from him he leaned back in his heavy chair, a gift from his mother during his last promotion, some gaudy awful thing gold buttons and black leather. It looked like it belonged in the Presidents wing not his large office. That's the point, Daniel, she'd replied. Ah, right. He'd almost forgotten he was being groomed for the White House. Once more his hands reached for his eyes, rubbing so hard he'd almost hoped they'd fall back into skull, deprave him of sight for just a few days - maybe then he wouldn't have to look at the fucking paper work. Swiveling a few times, his heel paused his inertia leaving him staring out over the base, the boys who didn't know what they'd gotten themselves into, the boys who might or might not return home for Christmas.
He was one of those boys once. With sparkles in eyes still covered by the gauze of patriotism, ready and willing to do anything for his country. He'd grown up as such, political animals for parents, dreams of Presidency and white house addresses. Daniel was molded for the United States Government. Cut from starred cloth and stitched with spangled threads, the boy knew nothing but military, and nothing but military still (not counting the scarred hands of a man who nothing about military, of course. He knew those and adored those.) His entire world centering in on the papers in front of him and the actions his decisions would cause.
With a giant fuck all he stood, the olive of his uniform turning his normally azure eyes an odd sort of teal, shining badges glinting on his chest like explosions in the sun, medals of honor from lives he'd taken, congratulatory ribbons from positions he'd stolen without a second glance. Walls decorated in awards, they were nothing but shining reminders, reminders of just how much he'd sacrificed, taken, destroyed for his position. Lieutenant Colonel Garrison of the United States Army. The name felt sour on his tongue, rancid when he was doing nothing but planning the demise of foreign countries.
Without a glance back at the plans and documents scattered on his desk he left his office quietly, leaving the Lieutenant behind, shaking him off like a monkey on his back, a ghost that made his flesh rise, an entity cloying to him with claws made of bullets and the fallacy of peace. Digging for the personal phone buried deep inside the breast pocket in his jacket he didn't need to search for a number as he had no contacts, knowing them by memory, fingers moving by sheer recognition and habit, the words flowing by themselves, Daniel's eyes locked with the exit.
He wasn't going to ask to come over. The man would open the door or he wouldn't, and while Daniel did have a preference to which answer he'd want either way he'd end up with half a bottle of wine in his stomach and a crippling loneliness come morning.
