I'll Bring A War

I follow him out of the meeting room and he paces towards his room. His eyes are glassy with tears as we make our way into the candle lit room. We sit on the mattress and I wrap my arms tightly around him, “It’ll be okay Ash.”
“No. That’s what we all thought last time,” he says suddenly.
“Last time?” As soon as the words leave my mouth Ashley doubles over sobbing. I hate seeing him so upset and I do what I can to calm him down until he does of his own accord, many minutes later. “Hey,” I say smiling at him, “Please don’t cry, I don’t like seeing you cry.” I pull a childish pouty face which earns me a small laugh from Ashley as he replies cockily with, “Now you know how I feel when you cry all the time.” He rolls his eyes jokingly, which are red and puffy from crying, and I laugh with him. “Ash?” I ask him quietly. “Yeah?” he replies in the same quiet voice, knowing what I am about to ask. I continue carefully, “What happened last time?”
“My little sister, Sky.” My eyes widen in surprise, “I didn’t mention her before because of what happened. I try not to remember it but I fail every day.” He starts to tear up again and I stroke his back soothingly, “It’s okay Ash, take your time.”

“She wanted to be involved with one of the break ins, much like you. In this particular break in she had to connect a device to the intercom system inside the control room, which at the time was on the far side of the city. They moved it inside the Temple because of this break in, because of its success. Anyway, they made it inside the city safely, it was her and another two rebels of the same age; they were all fifteen. I was eighteen; we’d been here for four years.” I recreate the timeline in my head to run alongside my own, which would have been six years ago, half a year before F.E.A.R started to invade the South and my hometown. Ashley’s voice picks up again as he continues, “They did it. We got all into their radio system and we had a quarter of an hour where we talked about The Wild Ones, how we worship not one God in particular but in the freedom to believe and, at the core of it all, the belief in, support, kindness and care of one another. We announced for people to come to the outskirts of the city should they wanted to join the rebellion. And everywhere that was connected to the city’s radio system was told about the corruption of F.E.A.R. Then we got cut off, which we expected but along with the cut off was a message. I still remember their exact words, ‘Please excuse us, regarding the interruption in the system. The trespassers and vandals have been obtained and will be taken care of. Do not listen to the deceptive words that were spoken by these delirious criminals. Anyone caught joining their, so called, rebellion shall face the severe consequences of their decision to betray F.E.A.R.’” Ashley pauses, reliving his memory before continuing, “Initially we were celebrating, all throughout the speech Andy gave, the amount of pride I had for her was immense. Everyone was there, and we all stood by Andy silently cheering and celebrating amongst ourselves. But when that message came through everyone went quiet. All I remember is looking at the guys and my heart beating way too fast for my chest. I ran, I tried running to her from here, I had to keep her safe. But I knew I was too late no matter how much I hoped that I could save her. CC and Jake caught up with me eventually. I was yelling and screaming and crying in the middle of the desert where I had run to for hours before they brought me back.”


Ashley comes back to earth, as he quietly finishes telling me, “We didn’t have time to properly grieve. We had to make a new plan of how we were going to collect the new rebels; the city was surrounded by soldiers because of our message. When our new plan was figured out months had passed and we’d rounded up extra hundred and fifty new rebels. Of course we had to stop then and that was when they started to invade the south and, like I said before, we all split up. We went back to the camp every now and then, collecting things so we could start rebuilding a new camp elsewhere, it was too small and exposed.”

He pauses and takes a few deep breaths, I get the feeling that he is about to tell me something more heartbreaking than everything he has already told me. “One time I went back there with Jinxx and the soldiers had obviously found and tried to attack on the way to the south and Sky hadn’t been killed like we thought. The others were long gone, but they’d dragged her across the desert, starving and we think they were going to kill her in front of us; a warning. Anyway, they’d obviously planned it for a while so it was fortunate that we’d moved everyone to the new camp here. But for Sky… There was no one there and they still wanted to make a statement. So they tied her up, and lit a fire.” He grips onto my hand tightly, “When we got there she was dead, but the fire was still burning. Her legs were all charred. Black. Her waist up was badly burnt but recognisable, that’s how we saw how starved she was. But her face… I’ve never seen a dead person with such a look of pain on their face. Jinxx assured me that I was imagining that part but it stuck with me. For years it was all I could dream about.”


I hold his hands and try to soothe him. “Ashley, it’s not your fault. Anyone would have thought they were already gone, there was nothing you could have done.”
“I should have persuaded the others to let us to break in then and then I could have saved her, instead of them starving her for months and dragging her across the desert in the hope of attacking us and then killing her in front of us all. Or if I’d just walked a bit quicker that day, gotten there sooner. It wouldn’t have happened.” He cries angrily, frustrated at himself still, after five years. I cry myself seeing how sad he is and understanding his pain as well as I can, realising that I’ve been playing the same blame game with Ali. We get into his bed, still crying quietly and comforting each other, eventually falling asleep in an endless hug, sharing the pain.

Notes

Back in business...
So sorry for the long break it was unintentional. I plan to continue with this story and rewrite my other one:)