The Soldier.

Part II – The Lone Wolf

As he waited, a few ideas began to storm his mind. “Is she ever coming back? Should I leave and
do my best to live with what may have been the worst decision I have ever made?” He couldn’t help but
think that maybe, just maybe this could be it. He could be on his own forever. Lose everything he was
ever there for in the first place. Accepting this fact was beyond difficult to him, he never thought he’d
see the day where he would be on his own. But then things began to clear. “Maybe this is how it’s
meant to be. Maybe my duty falls here, and having to leave behind everything I had ever known is what
I’m destined to do. I don’t understand it, but that’s what it feels like. Like the universe doesn’t want me
to fight with anyone besides myself. To better understand me, take care of me, and live faithful to only
what destiny presents to me.”

The ideas, no matter how well he understood them, tormented him. Dragged him through the
hells that he could only imagine. This little part of him that kept him going, was that chance no matter
how small, that maybe she’ll appear back over the horizon. Where he could run to her, extract her and
finally keep her safe under his wing for that was his duty. No one is ever left behind. So he continued to
wait, perched up in his nest, keeping a close eye out for danger.

This is what he did, this is what he’s always wanted to do, but now it doesn’t seem worth it.
Thinking about all the people he lost under his sole command. “In what kind of sick dream did I ever
want to have people taken from me, people greater than I could ever dream to be, all lost because of
my own lack of just fucking being there. Assigning other to do the work I should have done, and at the
cost of them. Why couldn’t it have been me? Why is it me that has to suffer?” He continues to ask
himself questions all along the same line. He doesn’t know it yet, but this dream of his, was more like a
nightmare. He’d been chasing a nightmare, and based his entire life around it, and now he’s here. This
feeling of loneliness seems to be more of something he wishes upon himself. No matter what he
decides, this is what he ends with- nothing.

Hard to accept, he’s on his own now, with no one else to falter at his hands, no one else to lose.
Everything he does, he does by himself. So what now?

“What the fuck am I doing? Why am I sitting here and waiting? Should I not be down there
tracking them down to find her? What kind of coward just sits here and waits?” He sees that much of
this is his own self doing now. Not all of which can be reversed, but all of which is worth trying for. But
this idea that this is one thing that is not his call. This is not something he can just order to have done,
this is something his orders led to.
 Sitting and waiting as the sun and moon pass over him endlessly. It has come to this. On no
sleep, no nutrition, no real thought, he gets up, packs his bags and begins on his merry way.

As soon as he stands, a lot of things begin to process, of which are these vast obstacles he must
conquer to even make it to her. The first being the cliff he posted up on, nearly 200 feet to the bottom.
His heart sinks into his chest and he weighs the consequences of his actions. To go back and scale the
mountain would take hours, maybe even days, he doesn’t have that luxury of time. So he’s left with only
one option. Jump.

Luckily for him he has enough training in parachuting that he knows how to fall and land with
the least amount of damage to himself, but at 200 feet.. there is no training manual for this.

“Jesus Christ.. this is really how it has to be eh? I’ve been ranged in for an elevation difference of 200
feet, but fuck, might as well be a mile.”

So he goes into his bag and takes out most of the weight, taking only what he needs, and for the
most part only things that won’t break, and he throws the bag off the face of the cliff and counts.
1….2….3….4….5.., to about five and a half seconds. He uses this to try his best to plan just when he’s
going to hit the ground.

You could imagine the fear running through your head as you’re about to jump to your almost
certain death. Well, his thoughts were no different.

On three, he tells himself. Well, about four more times he tells himself the same thing, but when
he decides to jump, it’s as glorious a feat as it is gruesome. He jumps, and all at once every thought on
how to try and live goes through his head: knees bent, head tucked, when I hit, I roll. As he hits the
ground his scream could be heard for miles, it wouldn’t be a surprise if she herself could hear his cries.
The sound of his chins cracking like the sound of lighting rips through the air, sending birds from the
near trees. Compound fractures in both legs. He lays in agony, mortified by what he had done to
himself. All he’s seen and done, and this is what forever scars him.

As shock kicks in he crawls to his bag, just feet from where he landed, looking for anything he
may have left in there to help him in his now obviously struggling state, but there was nothing. Not a
single thing he brought was for himself. Turning to god is hardly an option for him, no matter how much
he were to praise the lord, and ask for any sort of forgiveness, he would do so without any belief. Luck
has it, he was always a thinker. And what did he think up you may ask? Well he never intended to travel
the world to seek her out bare foot now did he? Yes, his boots. Turns out however that just taking off
your own shoes with two shattered legs doesn’t exactly prove to be an easy as a task as when, say your
legs aren’t broken. At this point though, it’s really do or die. Fighting all the pain and conscience telling
him to stop, he eventually gets not one, but both boots off. Without hesitation he takes the laces out of
the boots, and with each lace, he tightly ties off blood flow to both legs just above the knee, not exactly
stopping the pain, but definitely decreasing the odds of bleeding out. Then he throws his boats in his
bag, and begins his crawl.
 Luckily for the soldier he did pack a compass and a map of the general area, so navigation of
where hes going isn’t an issue, the fact that she could be anywhere, and moving much faster than him,
that’s the issue. But he continues on his new mission.

By night fall he couldn’t have gone any more than half a mile, with the pain just screeching at
him. The horizon he could see from the cliff tops was nearly 3 miles, but areas blocked by the mountain
range are as close as just another half mile from him. He began to weigh the odds of surviving the night
if he were to sleep. Open wounds, the scent of decaying flesh just travelling throughout the night sky as
he lays there in a deep sleep, and open invitation to almost all carnivores in the area. But if hes to stay
awake, he still has his pistol. This way he can not only live to see the morning sky, but also make up
some ground in the meantime. That is what he chose; to fight the pain and exhaustion and continue to
crawl ever so slowly through the rough and raged mountain landscape.

Just before the sun began to rise, the found himself at the top of a large hill passing through the
valley between the immense mountains. Here is where he decided to stop. Not because he could not
continue any further, but because there were many things in this world that reminded him of here, and
the one that struck his heart the most was here. So he rested himself up against the base of an
evergreen, and faced east. Without a pencil or paper, he could not write her, so he was left only with his
thoughts.

“Hey You,

There’s this thing I’ve been meaning to tell you. It’s not bad or crazy by any means, but it means
something to me, and I just want you to know. As I sit here, aching and grieving and reminiscing, you
seem to be the only thing I can think about. Now that might seem kind of funny if you could only see me
right now, but it’s the truth. This whole journey, this whole time I’ve been left alone wondering, I’ve
been going through it all in my head. Its worth, and really just if it’s something meant to be at all. But as I
sit here, and watch the sun rise just as it does every morning, I see that the beauty of this moment goes
unnoticed almost every day by all. Sure everybody sees the sunset, but who really takes the time to see
the glory in the sunrise? This moment that takes all we know away from darkness, away from the cold,
and gives us this life, this only life that we have all been given. I know I never really looked too much into
the sunrise, ‘cause who cares right, if it happens today it will happen tomorrow. But that’s where we’re
wrong. You don’t know if the sun will rise tomorrow, we just assume, and that’s where I went wrong
with you. I thought for sure you’d come back. I didn’t think anything of you just walking off. I see the
magnificence of this moment now, and this is what you were to me. The one thing that kept me warm
and brightened up every situation no matter how I felt before I laid eyes on you, and I just assumed you
would always be there. I never took the time to take a step back and think how lucky I was, I missed the
chance to admire what I had, cherish it like if I were to lose it that it would kill me. And you know, I really
fucked that up.

I say that nobody takes the time to appreciate the sunrise, but obviously I’m wrong. Because I know
there’s someone out there that shows you they don’t want to see an end to the sun. That warm and
enlightened feeling. I envy that person, I really do. For they are the keepers of your heart, in a safe that I
cannot crack no matter how much I know and try.
Regardless of how you feel today, I just want you to know that now I appreciate the sunrise.”

As the sun glistens on his now pale, energy drained face, the moment he ends his thoughts for
her, he is lifted into a well needed sleep.

Hours pass and the temperature rises, aggravating his legs and ultimately waking him in again
what you could imagine as excruciating pain. He takes it not as pain from his legs, but more punishment
from something above, something greater than any of us. I guess one could call it will. It was his will
stomping on his legs, telling him to get up and that there’s only one shot at this, and the more you lay
there and bicker and bitch about two measly broken legs, the thinner the opportunity becomes.

He pulls out his map and his compass, and tries to determine what will be his next move, and in
the midst of glancing up to give himself some bearing on where to go, he sees something. Or someone
rather. Although he’s not entirely sure, his gut tells him so. It was this moment that gave him the second
wind he needed, and now he has a general direction in which he knows he should go. But as he looks at
the map, he sees something that at any other time would not be an issue, it’s as if his luck has worn off
completely just as he hit the jackpot.