Just Keep Swimming

[Axton (DELETED 6288)]

Sometime in 2012




“You’ve been a soldier since you were sixteen, Axe.”

His forehead wrinkled at the tone his brother took with him. He knew how old (how young, impossibly young and full of idealism and fresh-faced naiveté) he had been when he enlisted. His father had hugged him the day he had left home and his sister had cried. His brother hadn’t looked him in the eye.

He hardly would even seven years later.

“Yeah, and you should be throwing a ******* party.” He spat, though there was no real venom behind it. He simply kept packing the few possessions he had kept with him.

“Don’t be like that.”

Axton laced up his boots and shouldered his bag, staring at his mirror image. They were twins, identical on the surface, yet so different otherwise they might as well not be brothers. Not even family. Their sister was younger, frail and sickly, and one of the reasons he had gone into the service in the first place.

She had sent him a pressed flower for every month he had been gone. The shelves of his room in every barrack he had ever lived in had been lined with the books of them. Every single one kept and tended to like Aztec gold.

Their mother had died giving birth to her. Axton couldn’t remember her face, just the fuzzy outline, details he had pasted together from photographs. As a child, she became his world, a delicate thing that no one dared even look at wrong, lest her brother come barreling from nowhere to knock them flat.

Her funeral was the day after tomorrow.

The announcement of her death had coincided with the end of his contract with the army and the last thread of love he had for his country.

She had told him to find something to protect, something to love with all the fierceness he had when they were children.

He knew he wouldn’t find it as a soldier in the employ of a nation. Until he did, he would peddle his skills as one to the highest bidder. Being a mercenary was the easiest decision he had made since loving his sister.

“I don’t suppose you’ll be there.” Axton said, finally, voice colder than it was before. Where Axton had loved and cherished his sister, his brother had hated her, blaming her for the death of their mother. That she was sick was the ultimate insult. To carry his mother’s murderer through life was salt in the wounds of a grieving boy.

A hesitation, then a shake of the head. Typical. Axton sneered and pushed him out of the way.

“Good. You won’t cheapen it.”

The last thing she had ever wanted was for them to fight. She would want both of her brothers there. But Axton didn’t think he could stomach her tormenter watching her be put to rest.

“Axton…”

“Sod off.”

With that, he let the door to his room slam shut, cutting the view of his brother off. It occurred to him to flip the barrier the bird, but he couldn’t seem to find the energy for it. The fight had left him now that they weren’t face to face. He needed his wits about him to get from there to the airport and finally back to his hometown.

His sister was waiting.

After he buried her, he would start his new life. He already had offers coming in for jobs; nothing major, nothing too exciting, but it was something. Something instead of nothing to start building his name. Who knew where he would go from here? Certainly not back.

If he stopped moving forward, he knew he would drown.