theo-chaussard:
The voice modulator made Théo blink for a moment, but he nodded at Thierry’s request. Despite his hopes of just having a day to spend with his daughter, work caught up to him. But it didn’t mean he was going to discuss anything while Maddie was in his arms. It left a bad taste in his mouth, especially with all the work and sacrifices he had made to keep her out of the war in the first place.
“Give me about ten minutes to give Maddie back to her mother and then I’ll be all yours,” Théo stated, “Stay here, though I’m sure you’ll be easy to find in that costume if you don’t.” He joked. And true to his word, he was back a few minutes later. “Come on behind the tent,” he quietly said, figuring that Thierry could hear through the mask, “What’s going on?”
~
Thierry took a long look at the child as Théo took her away. He had advocated for taking her. He had been shot down hard. And yes he was frustrated but... no one understood what he meant. He grew up without his father in his life. Maybe he had met him once or twice when he was this age. But he would never know that. Maybe his father had been a good man. Though he was probably just some gangbanger who had sold his mother the good stuff. This kid deserved someone like Théo in her life. She deserved to know him.
When the commandant came back, Thierry just nodded and followed him behind the tent, crossing his arms as he eventually spoke, his voice entirely unmodulated for this conversation. “We’re dying out there. We’re being slaughtered and it feels like no one wants to do anything about it. I know I’m... extreme in some of my methods but... when you’re losing to someone who doesn’t play by the rules, sticking to the rules only allows us to get hurt more. I don’t know what I’m doing here anymore, man. I’ve watched my friends all get promoted and I’m fucking left behind to play in the dirt and get dismissed as a monster. You’re smart! Do you think we win this thing sticking to the old way to play? These people don’t care about our code, they don’t care about collateral damage and I... I want us to win so fucking badly. And I can’t just sit back and keep watching our people being taken and dying. I asked to do something here tonight in the big meeting and I got shot down. But we need to send messages that we can’t be fucked like this and we won’t just keep taking it...” The choked ending of that last sentence finished any momentum he had. He took a moment to breathe and just regain his composure before looking back at the man he considered his friend. He always hated the way that weakness made his eyes burn. “I don’t want to just be here to bury corpses and pretend we’ll somehow make it better. That our moral superiority means anything in a fucking war.”
His chest felt like he had been pushed beneath the waves and held there. Like the first time he had nearly drowned. Even in the late autumn moonlight he still felt like he was burning at a million degrees. “Am I just insane? Am I just going crazy? Or do I actually have something resembling a point here?”
