SWU Fan Fiction

[color=#BF0000:18c1xtts][size=85:18c1xtts]This may or may not turn into a really long story, but as I haven’t really been into LotJ lately, I have been feeling inspired to tell a story in the universe. While this does take place within the confides of LotJ, it doesn’t focus on any specific event. Really it’s about a character of mine, his history. Enjoy at your leisure.[/size:18c1xtts][/color:18c1xtts]

[color=#000000:18c1xtts]::[b:18c1xtts][u:18c1xtts]Prologue[/b:18c1xtts][/u:18c1xtts]::
The sky was dark and he knew he was dying.

Alone and frightened, unable to stand of even move his legs, he lay on his back in the frozen mud of no-man’s-land. Lay there helpless, his body shrouded in darkness, eyes gazing up at the nighttime sky overhead as though trying to read some portent of hist future in the cold distant stars. Tonight, the stars kept their own counsel. Tonight, the bleak and foreboding heavens held no comfort.

[i:18c1xtts]How long has it been now,[/i:18c1xtts] he thought. [i:18c1xtts]How many hours?[/i:18c1xtts]

Finding no answer to his question, he turned his head to look out at the scenery about him – hoping at last to see some sign of rescue but there was nothing: no movement in the darkness, no cause for hope. Around him, the bleak expanses of no-man’s-land lay still and silent. A landscape rendered featureless by the hand of night, painted black with threatening shadows, holding nothing that spoke to his hopes or could even help him to find his bearings. He was lost and alone, abandoned to a world of darkness, with no prospect of help or salvation. For a moment it seemed to him he might as well be the last man left alive in the entire galaxy. Then, the though of it gave him cause for fear and he quickly put it from his mind.

[i:18c1xtts]How long has it been now,[/i:18c1xtts] he thought again. [i:18c1xtts]How many hours?[/i:18c1xtts]

He had felt nothing when the bullet struck him. No pain, no agony, nor even anguish, just a strange and sudden numbness in his legs as he slid toward the ground. At first, not understanding what had happened, he had thought he had had tripped. Until, cursing himself for his clumsiness, he had tried to rise only to find his legs curiously unresponsive. It was then, as he felt the spreading warmth of his own blood seeping across his belly, that he had realized his mistake.

In the hours since, unable to see the extent of his wounds in the darkness, he had used his probing fingers to tell him what his eyes could not. He had been hit at the base of the spine, the bullet leaving a fist-sized hole at the frong of his stomach as it exited his body. Treating his wounds to the best of his medical knowledge, he had stuffed them with gauze to stem the bleeding and placed dressings over them. Though there were phials of pain reliever in his med-pack, he had no need for them. There was no pain from his wounds – even when his probing fingers had slid past the knuckle into the ragged hole in his stomach he had felt no physical discomfort. He did not need to be possessed of any great medical knowledge to know that was not a good sign.

[i:18c1xtts]How long now,[/i:18c1xtts] the question came to his mind again, unbidden. [i:18c1xtts]How many hours?[/i:18c1xtts]

There were other discomforts, though. The chill of the cold night ar biting at the exposed skin of his face and neck, a terrible mind-wearying fatigue that made his thoughts seems dull and leaden: the fear, the loneliness, the isolation. Worst of all, there was the silence. When first he had fallen wounded, the night had thundered with all the cacophony of battle: the high-pitched whine of blaster rifles, the crack of slugthrowers, the roar of explosions, the screams and cries of the wounded and the dying. Sounds that gradually subsided, growing slowly more distant before finally giving way to silence. He would never have thought a man could draw comfort from such sounds. As terrifying as the clamor of battle had been, the quiet that followed was worse. It compounded his isolation, leaving him alone with all his fears. Here, in the darkness, fear had become his constant companion, plaguing his heart without remorse or respite.

[i:18c1xtts]How long now?[/i:18c1xtts] The question would not leave him. [i:18c1xtts]How many hours?[/i:18c1xtts]

At times, the compulsion came over him to cry out. To shout for help, to beg for mercy, to scream, to yell, to pray – anything to break that dreadful silence. Every time it came he fought it with all his strength, biting his lip hard to stop the words from spilling out. He knew that to make even the slightest sound would only be to bring death upon him all the sooner. For though his comrades might hear him, so would the enemy. Somewhere, out there on the other side of no-man’s-land, the enemy waited in their countless legions. Waited, ever eager to fight, to kill. No matter how terrifying it was to be trapped alone and wounded in no-man’s-land, the thought of being found by the enemy was worse. For what seemed like hours now, he had endured the silence. Knowing that, as desperately as he might hope for rescue, he could do nothing to speed it on its way towards him.

[i:18c1xtts]How long now,[/i:18c1xtts] the thought pounded insistently in his head. [i:18c1xtts]How many hours?[/i:18c1xtts]

There was so little left to him now. So little of real substance. All the things that had once meant so much – his family, his homeworld – now seemed dim and distant. Even his memories were insubstantial, as though his past was fading away before his eyes as swiftly as was his future. His inner world, the world of his life which had once seemed so full and bright with promise, had been diminished and reduced by circumstance. He was left with only a few simple choices: to cry out or keep his silence; to bleed to death or take his knife and end it quickly; to stay awake or fall asleep. At the moment, sleep seemed a tempting prospect. He was tired and bone-weary, fatigue pulling at his sluggish mind like an insistent friend, but he would not yield to it. He knew if he fell asleep now, he would likely never awaken. Just as he knew that all these so-called choices were simply illusions. In the end, there was only one stark choice left to him now – to live or to die – and he refused to die.

[i:18c1xtts]How long now,[/i:18c1xtts] the question again, relentless. [i:18c1xtts]How many hours?[/i:18c1xtts]

But there was no answer. Resigning himself to the thought that his fate was now in the hands of others, he waited in the silence of no-man’s-land. Waited, hoping that somewhere out in the night his comrades were already searching for him. Waited, refusing to give in or fall asleep. He waited, caught between life and death. His life a last fitful burning spark lost amid a sea of darkness, his mind wondering how it was he had ever come to be there at all…[/color:18c1xtts]