David Levin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
generaldavideus) wrote2008-03-03 12:28 pm
generaldavideus) wrote2008-03-03 12:28 pm
Entry tags:
Dulce et decorum est [pro patria mori]
[Not part of any comm, just a little bunny that wouldn't let me go.]
The quiet after battle comforted him far more than it should. He would stand in the open field or in the quiet of the woods and just stand there, sword in hand, the quiet seeping in under his skin and calming the roar that often came with charging into battle. Didn’t matter if he was injured, he was always there, standing with his sword and letting his eyes roam over the bodies of the broken and the fallen, searching for the answer in all of this. Searching for something that would answer why he had wanted this so badly to begin with.
Word about them had spread quickly after one of the battles. Christopher had gotten drunk, as usual, but he wasn’t drunk enough to not know what he was doing. He started telling stories—wild, over-exaggerated stories about the great General Davideus, and how he was going to lead the village to victory. Then the battle would come and they would get slaughtered, but the people fought. They fought like hell because they had a leader leading them. Jalil had attributed it to the people’s fatalist natures, and how if they believed they had a winner fighting with them, they would fight all that harder. David didn’t care, so long as the people fought, instead of letting themselves just get run over by the Sennites. And people died. But they died fighting. They died with honor.
But regardless, it wasn’t like he thought it would be. There was supposed to be honor and glory, things that he had read about and always wanted to receive, but now that he actually had them, he was wondering if it was worth the price. If dying for this place, a place that wasn’t home to him, not really, was really worth his life when everyone was just going to die anyway. True, he had a sense of duty, and wasn’t about to abandon his post because of this question, but the fact that he had to ask the question at all troubled him greatly.
He questioned it to himself, never to anyone else. He was the leader after all. If the troops found out that their leader’s heart wasn’t in it, they would never stand a chance of winning. And the great General Davideus—he didn’t falter when it came to battle. He never fell. He fought back until there wasn’t a breath left in him—or at least that’s what the legend said. He was really going to have to thank Christopher for that one later. Now he understood why the legends were so disappointing in person. There’s only so much you can do, so much you can be, but the people didn’t care. They were there for the stories. They were there because of the glory, and they were willing to fight hard.
And at the end of the day, to David, that was all that really mattered.
488 words
The quiet after battle comforted him far more than it should. He would stand in the open field or in the quiet of the woods and just stand there, sword in hand, the quiet seeping in under his skin and calming the roar that often came with charging into battle. Didn’t matter if he was injured, he was always there, standing with his sword and letting his eyes roam over the bodies of the broken and the fallen, searching for the answer in all of this. Searching for something that would answer why he had wanted this so badly to begin with.
Word about them had spread quickly after one of the battles. Christopher had gotten drunk, as usual, but he wasn’t drunk enough to not know what he was doing. He started telling stories—wild, over-exaggerated stories about the great General Davideus, and how he was going to lead the village to victory. Then the battle would come and they would get slaughtered, but the people fought. They fought like hell because they had a leader leading them. Jalil had attributed it to the people’s fatalist natures, and how if they believed they had a winner fighting with them, they would fight all that harder. David didn’t care, so long as the people fought, instead of letting themselves just get run over by the Sennites. And people died. But they died fighting. They died with honor.
But regardless, it wasn’t like he thought it would be. There was supposed to be honor and glory, things that he had read about and always wanted to receive, but now that he actually had them, he was wondering if it was worth the price. If dying for this place, a place that wasn’t home to him, not really, was really worth his life when everyone was just going to die anyway. True, he had a sense of duty, and wasn’t about to abandon his post because of this question, but the fact that he had to ask the question at all troubled him greatly.
He questioned it to himself, never to anyone else. He was the leader after all. If the troops found out that their leader’s heart wasn’t in it, they would never stand a chance of winning. And the great General Davideus—he didn’t falter when it came to battle. He never fell. He fought back until there wasn’t a breath left in him—or at least that’s what the legend said. He was really going to have to thank Christopher for that one later. Now he understood why the legends were so disappointing in person. There’s only so much you can do, so much you can be, but the people didn’t care. They were there for the stories. They were there because of the glory, and they were willing to fight hard.
And at the end of the day, to David, that was all that really mattered.
488 words