Captcha: Nothin reconciled. Indeed, captcha. So originally my plan for the next bit was to delve into Spy's nightmare fuel. I'm a huge sucker for WWII history, and writing Medic's and Spy's nightmares is gonna be such fun. But then I was dorking around online and ended up watching Wall Street protest vids and it got me thinking of Vietnam protests....and then this happened. Enjoy! ~~Scout~~ Normally Scout’s dreams are hot spring days; the smell of grass and leather and the dust of the baseball diamond. Sometimes he dreams that he is back in Little League. Other times he dreams that he is grown up, playing the major leagues on a team with men whose faces he sees on the cards kept under his bunk. He talks to Mickey Mantle like they are old friends. Sandy Koufax and Al Kaline clap him on the shoulders and congratulate him for breaking the world record for Career Home Runs. Sometimes he dreams of that girl from his English class in junior year. Awake, he doesn’t remember her name. But in his dreams she’s Samantha. She is just as he remembers her; blonde and tanned from cheerleading, with big brown eyes and breasts that fill out a sweater damn near perfect. Dream-Samantha thinks he’s amazing, presses up against him, and convinces him to go under the bleachers with her. Not that it takes much convincing. He always wakes up just before the pleasure peaks… not fair not fair… This is neither of those dreams. It is raining. It is raining with big, hard, fat drops of cold that slam into Scout and feel more like hailstones than proper raindrops. It’s dark outside, almost like early evening in the fall, but somehow he knows it isn’t evening. It’s morning. He stands with a huge group of people, and although he cannot see their faces, he knows who they are. Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and friends of the family. His father isn’t there, and it takes Scout some time to remember that his father is dead. The pain slugs into him like a weighted fist, but he squares his shoulders and deals like a man. Wading into the crowd, he pushes through towards the front, and there are two coffins there. At the sides are uniformed members of the US Army, and the closed lids of the coffins are draped with flags. The priest from his church is there, and as Scout almost lazily looks to the side, he can see the big brick and stone structure of the cathedral on the other side of the graveyard. Suddenly it hits; he’s home. He’s at a funeral… a funeral for two soldiers. Oh God oh God. Scout tries in vain to get through the crowd to look at the new headstones crowning two freshly dug graves. Who, who? He can hear his mother crying, but he can’t see her. He struggles through people who might as well be stone gargoyles, for all they move out of his way. “Yo, let me through here!†He snaps, shoving at a black-clad man, and finally he is at the front line of the mourners. He can see the names on the headstones. “Steven…†he whispers, and to his horror he can feel the prick of tears in his eyes. The rain doesn’t even register anymore; his whole body has gone cold. “Mike. Oh no.†Michael was the oldest. He had a wife and twin little girls. And there they are, his nieces Molly and Linda clinging to their mother’s skirt with the kind of anxious shyness only four year old girls can get away with. Steven was only two years older than Scout himself. He’d gone off to New York City to go to college there, but had dropped out when a bunch of his hippie friends had decided to. He hadn’t burned his draft card quite fast enough, because as soon as he left college, the army snapped him up. Now Scout is staring at his tombstone through blurry eyes. He can still hear his mother crying, and he raises his head, trying to find her. Every time he catches a glimpse of the red flower she always wears in her hair, it disappears. “Ma?!†He starts to push through the crowd again, but hits the ground with a startled cry as rifles fire behind him. The priest has finished apparently, and the military men are firing off a salute as others, moving like automatons, move to pick up the coffins and lower them into the ground. Forgetting his mother for a moment, Scout turns to watch in horrified despair. Suddenly he hears other noises; tapping, scratching, muffled, masculine voices straining to be heard over the wails of women and salutary gunshots of the army. But Scout has good ears. Scout hears them, and knows, just fucking knows they are coming from the coffins being lowered into the ground. “Mike!?†He yells back. “Steve?!†He pushes clingy, handsy bystanders away and makes a beeline for the graves. The officers from the army try and intervene. Scout can hear his mother calling him back. The voices from the coffins are louder, desperate, as if they can hear him calling. “Dumbasses, they’re not dead! What the hell are you doing to my brothers?!†He pulls the pall-bearers away, wrestles one coffin to the ground, and rips the flag from it. “Stop it, stop it!!! You’re gonna bury them alive!†He places his hands on the lid of the coffin, of Mike’s coffin, and he can feel his brother pressing back from the other side. He can feel the thumps of his hands beating against the lid, the raking of nails over satin lining. Mike’s voice sounds hoarse from screaming. “Hold on, Mike, hold on! I’m gonna get you out, bro, hold on!†The men are on him again, trying to pull him away. He feels a familiar feminine presence, and his mother’s hand is on his cheek, then his shoulders, tugging at him. “Ma, stop! Can’t you hear?! They’re not dead!†He shrugs her off and tears open the lid of the coffin. The stench of death and blood makes him retch. The unholy scream ripping out of Mike’s throat rings in his ears as arms wrap around him. There is one hand digging into his hair, the other is nothing but a rotten, bloody stump. Half of his face is gone; half of his entire body is nothing but a mass of blood and pulpy, torn, unrecognizable tissue, bone and skin. Mike’s one remaining blue eye rolls in his head as he screams again, pulling Scout closer to rest against what is left of his chest. Scout is paralyzed with terror and shock. No matter how he tries, he cannot move as his brother’s living remains clutch him close, hissing and burbling in his ear. His heart pounds against his ribs. He tries to scream but his mouth is filled with blood and suddenly he is choking on it. It fills his nose and his lungs and he cannot breathe. “You play capture the flag and king of the mountain while the rest of us fight a real war…†the voice, disembodied but so damn familiar, belongs to the wreck of a body drowning him in its own blood. “Step on a bomb, and you come back to life,†the voice hisses. “We die! Why should you get to come back to life, when we are the ones fighting the real war?! If the rest of us have to die, then so do you!†The arms around him tighten, and Scout— --Wakes up to the shrill, harsh sound of his alarm clock with a scream of denial. For a moment, the nightmare is all he can think about, but already the details are fading. The sound of Mike’s voice, the smell of blood and death, the feel of the rain; all are fading into the lazy warmth of a summer morning. With a low moan of grief, Scout covers his face with his hands, trying to push the remaining memories aside. Mike’s not dead. Steve’s not dead. Not yet. He can only hope it stays that way.