It wasn’t his fight. At least, it wasn’t his fight any longer. He had toiled in this battle, doing all that he could to help his side advance and possibly break though. For the past eighteen months, all his sweat and labor and body and soul had been poured into this battlefront. He gave all that he had so that something, anything, could come about for the betterment of his world. But the enemy was relentless, matching his unwavering dedication muscle to muscle, brow to brow. It was a complete stalemate.

And so, his tour of duty was up. He was free, command said, to go back home, enjoy the comforts of civilian life, and just kick back and relax and not worry about what had been his complete entire life for the past year and a half. They expected him to simply pack up and relocate and assimilate into a normal life as easily as one would expect a bird to fly.

As one would expect, such a drastic change in lifestyle was not easy to revert back to. Every little thing in his immediate surrounding seemed to come off as a threat to him, something that was so similar to the action he was engaged in when he was mired in the heat of battle. He would jump or squirm whenever something unexpectedly came into his vision. It was just all a result of the natural conditioning he had been required to undergo to prepare himself for whatever he would encounter; except the drilling he endured had not in the slightest left any leeway for him to revert back to how he once lived prior to enlisting.

It’s been a full six months since he was escorted away from the front lines. He should have been able to readjust to being just another normal person, going about the daily routines of his mundane life. But he hasn’t. In the past half year, his wandering mind has constantly led him back to staring across into enemy lines, trying to see the white of their eyes, by which he could identify his targets. His mind has been unable to cast off the inner strategist that lived within him; it has continually been at working, trying to figure out a myriad of ways for alpha team and bravo team to get around enemy lines to cause as much damage possible with as few casualties permissible.

Why has it been so difficult for him? Why hasn’t he been able to lay it all down? Besides the fact that that was the only life he knew out there, that he had undergone intense training to be completely prepared for any and every situation which would face him in battle, there was another nagging issue in the back of his mind which led him to keeping chewing on the subject.

He still had unfinished business in that realm. He had not completed the task that which he had been sent out to do. By not having a concrete resolution to this conflict (even though it was something bigger than him and not necessarily a personal issue of his), he could not live with himself. His leaving of the scene seemed almost sudden and abrupt to him, and he needed to right what was wrong in his eyes. Even though he was technically back at home, or so the army said, he wasn’t home. His true home lay out in the midst of the rage of battle, next to his fellow soldiers, never giving up until the mission was completed.

04.03.09, 11.50pm -12.41am