[h3][color=Peru]Kim Marie[/color][/h3]
Kim stood by the graves. Shabby places of rest, but the best that could be arranged in current circumstances. Abel and Drake were murmuring two halves of a psalm, like paired bookends that bracketed a eulogy that evaded words and construction. 

Turning her gaze to the crosses that marked the fallen, Kim wondered what it must feel like beneath layers of packed dirt. She had been present at the raid and attack. Her body could have easily joined the seven that already lay. She considered the prospect of her death - none too strange. How she had thrown her shoulder into the fight and retaliated with military precision and near-suicidal vigour, marching like a soldier into Death's open arms, only to have them rescinded from her.

Juxtaposed besides Drake and Abel, and their wrenching hearts, Kim felt alien, and so she turned away from the graves to leave. The loss of seven lives was a heavy blow to morale and manpower - she would not deny. Yet she could not muster the sorrow to grieve for them. They had fought and died on the battlefield, defending all the Forgotten had left in the world. One day, Kim would traverse the same path.

She came across Kin, huddled in the foetal position in quiet, palpable despair. Kin topped a hundred and eighty centimetres, but standing before the boy, Kim towered over him. She gazed down at him, with a peculiar expression wiped carefully blank. People talked often, and she knew what they thought of her - this curiously strange, grim robot. She was, however, far from blind to some of the nuances of human emotion, sighted enough to say the truth she thought he deserved to hear, in a flattened voice that broached no argument. [color=Peru]"You did the best anyone could have to keep them alive. I hope you know that."[/color]

The boy was tough, hardened and lined, aged beyond his years. He was fearsome to stand against, a dedicated guard who laid down his life for his new community, and who rained hell on any who dared trespass the Forgotten. Of good men, Kim did not know many. But Kin - he was not a bad man. He had the makings of a heart Kim had imagined impossible to find anymore in this new world, encased in a tempered body and mind.

Backing herself up the wall, Kim slid down the texture of brick to sprawl her legs next to Kin. She thought of the foot-soldiers in World War Two - trapped in the runnels and trenches they had dug for themselves; taking their meals and rest together; standing shoulder-to-shoulder crossing fire with a faceless enemy; entertaining promises and fantasies of leaving the war zone behind, so that they may bear with the bloodshed of the present - and clapped Kin on the shoulder, in a show of solidarity.