Wordcount: 238
Rating/Warnings: PG
Summary: Brian has had enough, but you can’t run away forever.

NOTE: This is a very rough draft with no editing at all (per National Novel Wiriting Month rules) and is presented for amusement value only. Think of it as a periscope into my writing process rather than a coherent story!

There will most likely be spelling and grammatical errors afoot as well as flat out bad writing, info dumps, plot holes, contradictions/retcons, uneven characterization and pacing. These snippits are also posted out of order, so please refer to the Outline to figure out where it’s supposed to fit.

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Scorned And Covered With Scars

It’s hard to tell who is on the right side of wars until they’re over. Long over. But he thinks maybe he’s picked the wrong side.

The war isn’t over, at least not yet, and he’s still got a chance to step out of the fight and maybe do this over. So he puts down his gun and he hangs up his sword and he walks away from a battlefield that has too many ghosts for his own comfort.

They call him a coward and a traitor and claim he defected to the enemy, but he didn’t. He just stepped out of the war and into a life that will make up for the war, he hopes. On the cosmic scales that someone has to be holding somewhere, he’s going to rebalance his life.

So he stops killing and he starts saving, although the lives he’s protecting have nothing to do with the war. He’s done with that, so far done that he’s not going to play either side anymore. He’s off in the countryside saving civilians who don’t even know there’s a war going on.

And maybe it’s not enough and maybe it is, he’s never quite sure on those nights when he wakes up to dreams of all his friends dead; all the ones that he left behind and all the ones that he’s found since.

And he waits for the war to find them again.