I get my rocks off making young girls suffer apparently

The young girl sat on an emptied ammunition crate, L85A1 held limply in both hands and laid across her lap. Her blue beret marked her out as belonging the Royal Air Force, while her oversized woodland fatigue top bore the distinctive crest of 6 Squadron; a spread-winged eagle preying on a hissing serpent, the Squadron motto “Oculi exercitus” marred by blotches of oil. She was barelegged, though for those of her calling this was hardly unusual, and few spared her much more than a glance.

She had been sat there for a long time now, ignoring the hustle and bustle of the German airbase as the support staff rushed to prepare their steelwing craft for takeoff. It had been scant hours since her last sortie, barely four hours since…

She thought she’d feel worse about it all. She thought she’d feel hatred so hot it would consume her utterly; grant her to strength to smite the Russians from the skies of Europe. She thought she would devolve to a berserker state, so lost in rage that she would be unable to think. Unable to remember.

It would almost certainly be preferable to… whatever /this/ was.

She supposed, thinking detachedly, that she was grieving. It made sense. But she’d seen grief many times. She’d seen it on her mother’s face as a much younger girl when grandmama  had died, seen it on /his/ face when his father had been killed in that car accident, and again two years later when his poor, sick mother finally joined her husband in death. It had always been such an open thing, something to be shared, which was why her current state confused her so much.

She had expected passion of a sort. Instead there was nothing, only a hollow emptiness where she knew her heart should be. “If I cut open my chest will I find it still beating there?” she wondered, looking down at her breast, “or will there just be a hole; a blank, empty space somehow keeping me alive?” A morbid part of her wanted to see. The pain would certainly take her mind off the numbness.

‘Oi, shorty.’

A voice, a startlingly familiar voice, startled her from her thoughts and she felt her spirits soar as she looked up to see the warm, cocksure grin of–

–no one.

As she stared blankly into the space she was so sure that he’d spoken from, the clatter of the frantically operating base, ignored for so long, finally returned in force: the deafening roar of engines, thumping footfalls distinctive of boot-clad feet; and hurried shouts and commands of men and women of all different colours and nationalities clamouring for some semblance of order amidst what sounded like utter chaos. A chill wind suddenly buffeted her and she shivered and cradled her firearm closer to her body. It was cold in Europe, and today was particularly unforgiving; she had heard some joke that the Russians had brought their biting weather with them in their venture to conquer the free world.

The young girl didn’t much care, if she was honest. She was cold and tired, and so miserable it might just have broken her, and she just wanted it all to end. She wanted to go back home, back to the countryside and the lake where she’d met that curious boy casting a line for the first time. She wanted… so many things.

‘-ed? Sioned!’ a voice called to her. It was, again, familiar. This one, however, bore no stigma of heartache, and the girl raised her head and turned it in the direction of the caller to find one Wing Commander Jasmine Stuart, appearing flushed and out of breath.

‘Sioned come on, we’re about to go up again.’ When Sioned did not respond she groaned in exasperation and took her roughly by the arm, hauling her to her feet. ‘Come on, we’ve got no time for this; they’re saying the bloody Reds are everywhere and it’s our job to make sure the skies are clear for our ground-pounders to do their work now /come on/!’

Sioned didn’t say anything, content to be almost dragged along by her unit’s number two while she rattled off about how the situation was utterly desperate and how Berlin was now under siege in what was easily the largest offensive movement the Russians had played. She barely paid attention, tuning the older girl out entirely as she was led by hand to the hangar where the rest of 6 Squadron waited.

‘You!’ a sharp, harsh bark stopped the pair in their tracks.

‘You were meant to be gearing up with the rest of 6 Squadron ten minutes ago!’ Group Captain Chelsea Blake fumed as she stormed towards them, finger pointed squarely at Sioned, the jagged scars running across her face twisting her features into a terrible fleshy mask that Sioned usually found terrifying. Now, however, she found it rather sad. She was once incredibly pretty, she had heard tell; the daughter of a well-to-do businessman with strong ties to the Royal Family, and engaged to a devilishly handsome actor who had featured in some of Britain’s most beloved television programmes. Tragically, however, action in the early stages of the European invasion had painfully and permanently stripped her of any beauty she once laid claim to. “How bitter she must be,” Sioned thought as Blake stopped in front of her at a distance regarded by most people as “uncomfortably close”.

‘Where the fuck were you when I made the call?’ Blake seethed, towering over Sioned. The formidable Group Captain towered over Sioned, though, admittedly, this wasn’t particularly difficult to achieve as many prepubescent children were taller than Sioned was.

‘It’s my fault ma’am,’ Jasmine lied, she was good like that. ‘I sent her over to the–’

‘Don’t you fucking cover for her!’ Blake warned her sharply, jabbing a finger into Jasmine’s chest. ‘Our brave bastards on the frontlines are quite literally up to their arses in commies and there have even been scattered reports that they’re fielding fucking Martian /dreadnaughts/ over Berlin. This is as dire as it has ever been and /our/ support is critical if we want to even /dream/ about keeping the Reds out of Western Europe. A single delay can spell the bloody difference between victory and grim fucking defeat.’

She paused a moment to suck in a deep breath before continuing, ‘If nothing I’m saying is making sense to you, Flying Officer, then by all means plop down and go to sleep knowing that better men and women than you are, right now, bleeding and dying to keep the world free from Stalinist tyranny. If, however, by some miraculous twist of fate, I’m actually getting through to you, then get your flat arse into those strikers and prepare for take-off before I shit-kick you black and blue!’

Sioned said nothing, throwing a quick but loose salute before shaking herself free of Jasmine’s grip and making her way towards her strikers, feeling Blake’s furious gaze burning a hole in the back of her neck all the while.

Sliding into her Tornado strikers brought with it the familiar chill as she channelled her magic and with a muted /pop/ her familiar manifested itself in the form of two fuzzy husky ears and an even fuzzier tail. Normally, and in spite of all the times she’d done it, she had never quite felt comfortable materialising her familiar. Today, though, all she felt was a mild tingling sensation as she flexed parts of herself both strange and yet so achingly familiar at the same time.

In minutes 6 Squadron were granted clearance to take off, a handful of witches blasting themselves into the air first while the surviving Steelwings taxied to the runway in order to join the rest of the squadron. Four hours before there had been eight Tornado GR4s making up 6 Squadron’s Steelwing complement. Now there were two. The witches weren’t faring much better. All of them suffered from varying degrees of exhaustion, but with Ivan throwing seemingly everything he had at Berlin the only response was total, utter defiance with everything NATO had. Anything else would lead to the fall of Berlin, and, perhaps eventually, the rest of Europe.

As they flew toward the front, Sioned felt her mind wandering back to simpler, happier times. She willed herself not to, but it was a token effort at best, and she remembered…

‘Oi, shorty!’ a voice called to the small girl, who found herself at the edge of a lake in the middle of the countryside with no idea where she was.

‘Oi, you deaf?’ the voice called again. Sioned blinked and turned to her right. Standing behind a cluster of reeds was a boy, older than she was by some significant years. His short, fair brown hair was mussed from the wind and he wore a simple navy blue t-shirt and tan shorts. His eyes were a stark, piercing green and, at that moment, appeared none too friendly.

‘Seriously, are you actually deaf?’ he asked her, now looking somewhat irritated at having to repeat himself.

‘N-no I’m not deaf,’ Sioned stuttered softly. The boy craned his head and cupped a hand to one ear.

‘Eh?’

‘I said I’m not deaf!’ Sioned said, louder this time.

‘Well bloody great then,’ the boy said, all trace of ill humour suddenly vanishing from his face as if it had never been there. ‘But would you mind keeping that down a fraction? You’ll scare away my fish.’

‘Fish?’

The boy nodded, ‘Want to come see them? They’re pretty impressive,’ he added, a trace of smugness colouring his tone as he raised a fishing rod before fixing bait to the hook and quickly and elegantly casting the line out into the water.

Sioned paused for a moment, indecisive. She didn’t know the boy at all, but he didn’t seem nasty or horrid like the ones at her primary school. She also had no idea where she was at all, and though she didn’t really want to return home any time soon, it was perfectly possible that this boy was more familiar with the area, and could perhaps set her on the right path.

‘Well? What are you waiting for? These things don’t really get any prettier with age you know,’ the boy hollered.

Sioned decided, with a mental shrug, that there was likely no harm in looking at fish for a while, and tramped over through the long grass. Her eyes widened as she took in the sight of what had to be at least a dozen perch fish lined up neatly on a wide stretch of tin foil.

‘What do you think?’ the boy asked her without turning back to her, concentrating on the lake and his fishing line.

‘Did you catch all these yourself?’ Sioned asked him.

‘Do you see anyone else around?’ the boy snorted.

Sioned squatted down low and, curious, pressed her finger against one of the dead fish. It felt slimy and cold and she pulled her finger back as if she’d been burned. It felt so… icky.

‘Ah-hah!’ the boy suddenly cried, pulling his fishing rod skyward even as he frantically reeled the line back in. Sioned watched him pull yet another perch out of the lake, squirming and in spasm as it attempted to unhook itself from the line. The boy cackled as he held the rod, and his quarry, upright with one hand while reaching for what looked like a chair leg with another. In an instant he struck the fish on the head with a savage blow. The perch fell still, and the boy gingerly removed it from the hook before placing it alongside the others he’d caught.

Sioned watched the boy do this seven more times, finding herself strangely fascinated at his mastery over the lake fish. Eventually, however, the light began to die and he stretched himself out before making a contented sigh. He disassembled his fishing rod, removed and rolled up the line and placed it gently inside an army green duffel bag. He then wrapped up the fish in the tinfoil before placing that too inside the bag. He zipped up the bag and then finally turned to Sioned. He blinked at her, as if surprised to see her there.

‘You’re still here,’ he said.

Sioned narrowed her eyes a fraction, feeling a little put off that this boy had so easily forgotten her. ‘You asked me if I wanted to see your fish.’

‘So I did but I wasn’t expecting you to stay about and watch me finish.’

‘Then why talk to me at all?’ she asked.

‘Why not?’ he replied, before the corner of his lips tugged in a smirk, ‘Besides you looked pretty lost there.’

‘I wasn’t lost!’ Sioned replied indignantly, regretting it even as the words left her mouth.

‘Really?’ the boy’s grin grew wider, ‘then I suppose you can tell me exactly which direction your home’s in.’

Sioned paused to think for a moment before having a sudden revelation. ‘Over there,’ she pointed, trying not to sound too proud that she’d figured it out. It was /so/ obvious. All she needed to do was point the opposite direction that she’d arrived at the lake.

Which was why she was considerably surprised when the boy shook his head.

‘Wrong answer shorty.’

Sioned huffed and stomped a foot on the ground. ‘How do /you/ know that? I bet you don’t know either.’

The boy stared at her before shaking his head. ‘It’s about twenty minutes’ walk right about that-a-way,’ he said, pointing off to her right. ‘I know this because /you/ go to my school. Or, well, the primary part of it anyway.’

‘Liar!’ she said, ‘I’ve never seen you at school before.’

‘No, but I’ve seen you.’

‘Where?’

‘The AstroTurf at around twelve, when you minis have your lunch.’

‘How do you know it’s me?’

‘Kind of hard to misplace the kid always sitting on her own in the corner.’

Oh…

‘It’s okay,’ the boy said, his voice suddenly immeasurably softer and kinder. ‘I know what that’s like.’

Sioned didn’t respond, lowering her head and trying not to let her feelings show. This boy didn’t know anything. She sat there because it was her choice, not because she was lonely. People, especially boys, kept making fun of her for constantly falling over when they played games during lunch and she got sick of it. One day she sat in a corner and found that everyone just left her alone. It was peaceful. Relaxing.

Or so she told herself.

‘You don’t know me,’ she muttered sulkily, looking at the ground.

‘No, but I’d like to,’ he said.

Sioned raised her head. For a while there was nothing, but eventually, she asked, ‘Why?’

‘Because, as I believe I’ve said, I know what’s happening with you. I’ve been there,’ he said. He opened his mouth again but said nothing, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. ‘I just… thought I could help, that’s all,’ he said eventually.

‘Why don’t you go help your brother or something if you’ve got time to help me?’ Sioned grumped.

‘I don’t have one,’ he responded. ‘I don’t have a brother, or a sister. My mother says she can’t have one…’ he scratched his chin, appearing even more uncomfortable. ‘But if I’m honest, I’ve kind of always wanted a younger sibling.’

Sioned blinked. ‘You’re strange,’ she told him.

The boy laughed. ‘Yeah, I know.’

Sioned pondered for more than a minute on what to do. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked him.

The boy blinked at the suddenness of the question before smiling at her. It was a nice smile; Sioned liked it a lot more than she’d ever admit.

‘Tom,’ he said. ‘And yours?’

‘Sioned.’

‘Shawn-ed?’ he repeated, wrestling with the pronunciation.

‘No, /Sioned/.’ She enunciated.

‘Sioned,’ Tom parroted, this time nailing it. He nodded. ‘Nice to meet you Sioned, now let’s get you back home before it gets dark. I doubt your folks will want you wandering about on your own with a stranger at dark.’

‘Stranger?’ Sioned wondered. ‘You’re not a stranger, you’re Tom.’

Tom barked a sharp, loud laugh that almost made Sioned jump. ‘No, I guess I most certainly am not a stranger then. Come on then Shorty, I’ll show you the way back.’

‘My name’s Sioned!’ she complained but she was smiling as she said it.

It was strange at first, getting used to the idea that this boy who was six years her senior was her first real friend. As the years went by however, she grew increasingly fond of him, finding his strange, breezy attitude towards life and alarming passion for fishing charmingly endearing. When her witch powers had manifested, Tom had been the one to encourage her to try for a Witch Academy.

She remembered her entrance ceremony, and how she’d quivered with fright and worry at being thrust on her own in an entirely foreign place; and how Tom’s nickname of Shorty had, annoyingly enough, stuck when she entered, her rate of growth a snail’s crawl compared to the other girls. She remembered summer holidays spent convincing to Tom to finally allow her to use his prized fishing rod to catch her first fish. Perch, just like the fish he’d caught the day they’d met.

She remembered when Tom’s father passed, and the way he’d almost crushed her tiny hand in his at the funeral. She remembered how completely out of her depth she had felt, unsure of what to say or do to make him feel better. She remembered his mother; warm, kind, sickly Alison, who had almost been a second mother to her, and how she had died barely two years after her husband. She remembered Tom telling her that he wanted to fly in the Royal Air Force a year later, and how her heart had leapt and soared at the possibility that they might be able to fly in the same skies together.

She remembered the day when she realised, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she loved Tom as more than a brother. She remembered tough, but fair Matron Wetherby, who had drilled into her and the rest of her class the discipline and professionalism that made the RAF one of the finest fighting forces on the planet. She remembered feeling giddy with happiness finding out that both she and Tom had been assigned to 6 Squadron upon the completion of their respective courses.

She remembered the agonising heartache when Tom had told her, grinning like the idiot he was, that he was engaged, and that he was going to be a father. She remembered smiling for him and lying through her teeth. She remembered trying to hate her; remembered giving up because in the end, hate just wasn’t in her.

She remembered the shock upon all the faces of 6 Squadron when the news of war broke. She remembered Erin taking her to one side on their last day of leave, one hand cradling her increasingly noticeable bump, and asking her with the smile of a saint to take care of him; to “keep the fool doing anything daft”. She remembered nodding, unable to trust herself if she opened her mouth.

She remembered her first taste of real combat. She remembered how she had frozen when her weapon – the unreliable L85A1 – had jammed. She remembered Tom blasting to her rescue, guns flaring and shredding the Flanker that drew a bead on her. She remembered breaking down into a shivering wreck when they were out of sight of the rest of 6 Squadron, and Tom’s soothing, hushed voice telling her that she’d be fine.

She remembered increased sorties against the Russians; fifteen years old and already a veteran. She remembered working through her weakness, fighting alongside all the other brave men and women to make 6 Squadron one of the RAF’s finest combat units.

She remembered the start of Berlin.

She remembered being shocked stupid at the sight of so many Russian planes, the sky ablaze with tracers, missile contrails, and the explosions of dying craft. She remembered running afoul of two flankers, her shields straining to protect her from harm as the craft relentlessly pursued her through the sky, guns chattering and chipping away at her defences.

She remembered Tom coming to her rescue.

And to his own demise.

She remembered watching his burning plane literally disintegrate as it fell to the ground; how she had frantically searched for any sign that he might have survived. She remembered hovering above the crash site, praying for the slightest possibility that he would be alive, bruised, tired, but alive, with a shit-eating grin and a rough head pat for worrying about him.

She remembered peering into the shattered canopy and seeing that tortured, lump of flesh burned black in the pilot’s seat.

She remembered screaming; hands dragging her back to allied lines in order for a brief rest and rearming for the battered 6 Squadron.

She remembered all of this as she and the last flyers of 6 Squadron hurled themselves once more into the hell that was the airspace above Berlin. She picked her target immediately, hearing Tom’s voice guide her as she did some quick calculations in her head and placed her sight over the space the Russian MiG would occupy scant moments before she squeezed the trigger of her weapon and vomited a storm of lead from the barrel.

Only that didn’t happen.

All she heard was a dull /clack/.

Frowning, she checked her weapon…

…and found that it had jammed.

She didn’t curse as so many others did in her situation. She simply thumbed the safety catch on and ejected the magazine. She was bare seconds into her check when a German Tornado almost swatted her from the sky, and in her panic to keep out of the Luftwaffe pilot’s path she dropped her weapon. Sioned watched it fall. She was now in extremely hostile airspace without a weapon. She was, aside from her formidable shields, defenceless.

She had felt she’d wanted to avenge Tom’s death, but now that clearly wasn’t happening. A part of her thought about notifying Group Captain Blake and heading back to get another gun but the rest of her simply didn’t care. What was the point? Nothing she did would ever bring Tom back. The feeling of emptiness expanded within her until she felt she was suffocating in it and she choked, and with it came her first tears.

“I must make such a sight,” she thought to herself dimly as she hovered in mid-air and wept, “crying in the middle of one of the largest air battles ever fought.”

A scream of jet engines and a roar of gunfire brought Sioned out of her anguish. A Flanker raced towards her, cannon hammering shells at her, which she deflected with her shields, barely remembering to put it up in time. The impact of the shots knocked her away and for one chilling moment, she was falling. Then hours of practice kicked in and she righted herself before pumping more magic into her strikers, quickly gaining speed.

The Flanker, however, came back for another go, and stuck to her tail like a limpet, the Russian was dishearteningly good, and her shields bore an increasing amount of punishment as Sioned tried to weave and roll her way out of the Flanker’s warpath, to little avail. Bit by bit her magic dwindled until she barely had enough to sustain her own flight. In desperation, Sioned threw herself into a sharp lift…

…and collided with a Luftwaffe Starfighter.

The impact destroyed her shields entirely and knocked her wide. Dazed but conscious, Sioned tapped into her reserves to keep herself up.

And then sharp, white-hot agony lanced through her leg, breaking her concentration, and, before she knew it, she was dropping.

Sioned gasped and groaned and tried to assess the damage even as she attempted to keep herself airborne. With a horrified gasp she realised that a bullet had punched through one of her strikers and her leg. She was operating on one striker with rapidly dwindling magic reserves and no shields. Trying to fight through the pain, Sioned tried to put her last remaining striker in between her and the ground to at least soften her inevitable landing.

Then a rain of bullets ripped through her last striker, shredding the magic interface as well as her good leg. She screamed and clutched the ruined limb, her own blood soaking her hands. She was in free fall now, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

She started to cry again. This was torture, this was beyond cruel. Sioned was tired and she /hurt/. Her heart felt like it was being torn to rags inside her own chest and her damaged legs burned. More than anything, though, was the awful, c fear. She thought she’d be okay with dying back at that German airbase. Now she was rushing to it, however, she found she was utterly, completely terrified.

‘Please,’ she choked, her breath quickening, panic clutching her in its merciless grip as she plummeted towards a burning suburb, watching the ground shooting up to meet her, ‘I’m afraid. I’m so afraid, please. Help me Tom I don’t want to die, pleaseI’msoscaredI’mscaredI’mscaredI’mscaredI’mscaredI’msca-’

***

‘Hey, Shorty.’

Sioned opened her eyes and immediately regretted doing so. The intense light stung and she groaned, reaching her hands to her eyes and rubbing them before prying them gently open. “That’s better,” she thought and pulled herself into a sitting position.

She blinked once, twice as she took in her surroundings.

She was lying in an endless field; grass, green as only summer could bring, stretched out as far as she could see before her. A gentle breeze played upon her and she basked in it, realising that it was warm here, wherever “here” was. She had vague recollections of some great pain, and the barest memory of some great feeling of terror, but the more breaths she took, the more she wondered what that had all been about.

‘Oi, Shorty, talking to you.’

Sioned turned her head and saw Tom sitting at the edge of a lake that was so, so achingly familiar, his feet were bare; he had his fishing rod held casually in both hands and a playful smirk on his lips and a twinkle in his green eyes. Sioned picked herself up and found that she seemed… taller than she remembered. She was still smaller than Tom, but not by as much as she recalled... and what were these strange clothes she wore? Woodland fatigues, and a blue beret that caused a fleeting stab of pain in her heart when she took it in.

‘Sioned? Are you feeling okay?’ Tom asked, the humour gone from his face as he regarded his old friend with curiosity.

‘I… Yes…’ she replied, unsure of herself and surprised at how different her voice sounded. Had she /always/ sounded like that? ‘I mean… I think so.’ She lowered her hands, letting the beret fall.

‘Well I hope you are because I’m about to teach you how to catch trout today,’ he told her, his grin back in full force. He motioned for her to come closer. Sioned picked herself up from her sitting position, momentarily unsteady, before crawling on all fours through the grass towards him.

‘What about perch?’ she asked as she drew up close to Tom’s larger frame; he scoffed.

‘Come on now Shorty, perch is small time. Now trout… there lies a /real/ challenge. Granted most of it’s because of how big the bastards can get but stick close and prick those ears and I’ll make you into the finest fisherwoman in the British Isles so I will…’ he continued on as he handed her the rod and leaned into her, hand gesticulating as he informed her of the do’s and don’ts of big-game fishing.

Some small, insignificant part of her told her that this was all so strange, but as Tom hunched himself closer to Sioned’s sitting form and she felt the heat from his body through her blouse she felt herself relax, and the worry begin to dissipate. She was certain she was forgetting something, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care. This felt nice, sitting here with Tom by the lakeside, listening to him drone on about his fish and the proper techniques. More than that, it felt /right/.

And that, she thought, was enough for her.