We are not traitors

He doesn't know any of it's happening.

Everything comes to a head and sometimes you just need to get away. He'd left early in the morning, sun barely up, heading off into the trees. He hadn't told anyone he was going. He hadn't really wanted to be found.

He tells himself he's hunting, but really he doesn't know why he's out here. Part of him keeps sending his hand to his gun, and in those moments everything goes weak and shaky until he remembers her, him, and his girls. He can't. It might seem like the best thing now, but it'd be a betrayal of the worst kind.

But he's so tired.

He's tired of running. He's tired of ghosts. He's tired of nightmares, and he's tired of expecting, at any moment, those nightmares to bleed into the sun. He's tired of guilt. It doesn't fucking matter if there's a God, because no divine forgiveness could do anything now. There's too much, and in his heart he doesn't even want it to happen. Not that way.

If he still felt able he'd make confession, perform an act of contrition, be cleansed.

If.

At the next step he feels a sharp jab of pain in his leg. For an instant he manages to keep his feet and then his leg crumples under him and he goes down on one knee, wincing and clutching at his shin. Maybe Chris hadn't broken it again, but since the fight it's been worse. He doesn't bear him any ill-will. He'd fucking deserved it.

He closes his eyes against the pain, and he's about to try to get to his feet when, at the crack of an eyelid, he sees something pale and thin stretched across the leaf litter in front of him.

No. Not again.

He opens his eyes fully, despite a desperate need to keep them closed, and there they all are, almost familiar now, lying all around him, some stacked in piles and some on their own, spread out like they'd been caught trying to run. Dried and papery and smelling faintly of earth and cinnamon. Empty eye sockets look up at him with blank accusation. You did this. You did this to us. You took our lives and our children's lives and then you went home, ate dinner, slept in a warm bed, shed no tears, because to you we were never even human.

He pulls in breath to scream but there is none. He wants to run but he can't make his legs move. They've been waiting, biding their time, and now... now he's not getting away. Now he's going to have to face them.

And it's then that he realizes, with some tiny, sane part of his mind, that he's relieved. He'd been contemplating death, but maybe this is just as good. He's tired of running. He's tired of guilt. He's tired of all of it.

He stays on his knees and falls forward, fingers sinking into the loose earth. He notices with a kind of odd detachment that the backs of his hands are dappled with sunlight. He raises his head, looks around, pulls in breath and feels his chest loosen.

They're dead. That's all. There but for the grace of God.

"I'm sorry," he says rough and barely audible. "I'm sorry for what I did. There's... there's no excuse. There's nothing I can do now."

The empty eyes stare back at him. Leaning up against one pile are four large men, lined up side by side, all wearing the remains of olive-colored uniforms. Behind them is a woman, three children curled in her lap. Next to her is a man with the remains of a white beard.

Others are obviously soldiers, and some of them wear no uniforms but were once young, strong. They have guns at their sides, some of them still with skeletal fingers gripping them. There are women in rags. More children. The piles go on as far as he can see, on through the trees, hundreds, maybe thousands. He has no idea how many he's killed. He has no idea how many deaths his orders brought about.

So many. Hardly any of them have names, in his mind, and for some reason that strikes him as the worst. But he's not afraid. He's just tired.

"I'm sorry," he whispers again. "Please. I don't want that anymore. I don't want to be that anymore."

Something sighs through the trees, and though the bodies stay, they somehow seem less accusing. They feel less angry. Mike closes his eyes. They're stinging.

"If I could bring you back I would," he says. "I don't know any of your names. I never even cared that much. It was wrong. I had it all wrong. I'm sorry."

Something brushes one of his hands and his eyes slip open, blurred slightly. He looks down. A child's mummified hand is touching the back of his, both of them dappled with the same light. The little body is curled on the ground, and if it weren't for the dried, twisted limbs and the jagged hole in the side of its head, it might have been sleeping.

Without a word he rolls into a sitting position, knees tucked up against his chest, and he takes the dead child's hand in his own. He can't speak. There's something in his throat.

But he's not afraid. Not anymore.