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[sub][color=Silver][i]The Siege of Amone, September 9th - [b]Ceasefire[/b][/i][/color][/sub]
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[color=Silver]	The spectres watched him. He could feel their glare barrel down upon him and slash against his throat coarsely. There was no notion of the deceased being within the room, but Jean could feel their presence. A pair of lovers, they were...terribly torn apart by the shards of glass and bullets spat from his barrelled firearm. Tears rolled down his cheeks, Jean propped up only himself against the corner of the wall, his legs stretched out across the floor and his arms loosely by his flaccid side. Their blood began to sink into the splintered floorboards aggressively and conceive a rash storm of crimson substance. A thick, oozing scent filled the room and began to stink out the area, smelling only of bloody murder. All it was was[/color] [color=red]bloody,[/color] [color=9e0b0f]bloody[/color] [color=black]murder[/color][color=Silver]. All Jean felt was remorse for the dead. It terrified him of what he was capable of, of being a judge of life and death in one fell swoop. Having separated life after life, taking out those who were too weak or morally superior to strike him down first, Jean was filled with fury and agony. What if he were to do the same to another couple? How many families had he torn apart with every gunshot, with every stab and with every crush of the helmet? What...what if someone did that to him? What if he fully embraced a life, perhaps with Kalisa or Reyna if his nerves would ever begone themselves, of romance only to have it ruthlessly ripped from his hands by a similar victim of the conflict, driven by an innate will to survive, to carry on. Life was no longer fair, nor was it ever fair. Jean was realising this now, and it scared him. It scared him a lot.

	Every sniffle that he made was mixed in with the blood staining his cheeks, face and shirts, creating another red mist to brood upon his body. His back had wooden splinters and glass poking out of it, though only in small fragmentations. There wasn't anything of any major injury, despite the rough, maroon scar that had formed upon his left hand, with its fleshy composition. It stung, heavily. Every second it continued to spill his precious, innocent blood, he felt his eyes and ears fade only slightly. Jean wasn't bleeding out, per se, but he was still under the impression of shock and awe, brooding within his stomach and heart from the extreme confrontation he'd obliged with. His eyes were moisturised by the endless sorrow he faced, dribbling with such a shallow volume of happiness still left inside. He'd become the grim reaper, the one who'd reap the souls of those who were also trying to make their way through life. Were the people he killed good people? Perhaps, and perhaps they weren't. Jean didn't know that though, and all he knew was that they were in love. Their blood continued to spill upon their wedding rings, sinking into their structural platforms and staining the walls.

	Footsteps started to approach the doorway that would be used to entering the graveyard that was this bedroom. Before they approached, there were sounds of gunshots from the other squad members resonating throughout the hallway. He couldn't tell if it was his own people getting shot or the retaliation of the Federation Squad composing themselves a hard-earned victory, yet the sound of the heavy boot-steps started to make him hold his breath. He closed his eyes and imagined that it was perhaps a friend of the couple he'd just killed. Jean couldn't find the strength to stand up, grab another weapon and fight once more. He was expended. The rush was gone. The ferrous adrenaline was nowhere to be seen. Jean let his head drop, his helmet fall off of his head and the splintered glass remain in his back. Was this his time? Was this his redemption? Was this the bullet that would finally stop this Francian devil from descending any further into the very depths of the Imperial hell?[/color]

[color=6A47FE][b]"Jean?"[/b][/color] [color=Silver]Much like the time before, Jean listened to the angelic voice and raised his head, instantly recognising it from the weeks of conversation he managed to uphold. Even with the obscurity of the tears flowing from his very eyes, he could clearly make out the radiance from the doorway. In her drastic flow of equal perfection, she took a knee and placed a rifle by his side, hesitant to make physical contact with him. Jean was a broken man, laid to waist pits of death he caused.

	Her mouth moved for a bit, but she was unable to speak, it seemed. He wasn't surprised. How could she react when someone she knew had committed such an atrocity that could never be redeemed? Why was it that the fateful nature of this very barbaric gutting had to be seen by one of the two individuals he cared about the most? She stared at him, trying to formulate some sort of sentence or response, but she couldn't. Jean knew she couldn't. Her silence spoke more words than she could've ever imagined, yet he simply brushed it aside and wiped his eyes, the enemy's blood instead replacing the stream on his cheek.

	For a moment, Jean simply stared at her, broken as he was, with nothing to say. Even in the dimness of the coarse world, she looked as pretty as ever, still kicking with her almost abrasive comparison to Jean. It hurt him to think that he had fallen for two different women, but seeing Kalisa there in the moment just made him think about her, just for that second. He couldn't tell if it was disgust, worry or sadness in her eyes, but it glimmered; and to Jean that was all that mattered. Around her neck, though blended in with her new uniform, Jean still saw the scarf he gave her. It was the scarf...The Darcsen pattern. A symbol of racial partnership and a pledge, if you could call it that, of brotherhood and sisterhood. Or was it more? Jean's eyes flourished with tears once more, and suddenly, he made his move. With a weak lunge, Jean wrapped grabbed the arm and hand that was hesitant to reach out for him, before pulling both her and himself in for a embracing hug. He didn't know what he was doing, or rather why he was doing it, but he did. Once again, he buried his face into the scarf she wore around her neck. A small amount of blood, both his and from the previous ownership of the Imperial's dead nearby, slowly soaked into it, and he remained there, sobbing away silently again as he held the trembling embrace. And with that, he began to speak in a twisted tongue of sorrowful regrets.[/color]

[color=Aqua][b]"I...I'm sorry...I didn't want to...They...They were together, a...loved ones of a family far from home. Torn by the recognisable demons that now string themselves upon my shoulders, like puppet masters. I'm their...their experiment, the one that they toy with until I do nothing more than the evil I bestow. I can't...I can't bless this world anymore. I can't bless anyone anymore. I can't...be...human."[/b][/color]

[color=Silver]	For once, and for once only, there was silence. Outside, there was no more gunfire. There wasn't a single trace of a gunshot to be heard. The engines of the armoured car had quickly revved up again before escaping, perhaps running out of ammunition from the final fight that had adapted. A few shouts from the Imperials calling to their withdrawal. It was time for them to leave. They'd done as much damage as they could. Jean still didn't know what the damage was, who'd died and who'd lived. Perhaps there was still a wild chance that everyone had survived unscathed, but he knew that possibility had passed when Jean and Michael had clearly been injured. But what of Reyna? What of Lucia, and Franz? What of the group who'd gone into the other building? Gwyn, Ines, Britta and Isaac? What had happened to the group on the other side of the street? The road across that damaged paving felt like another island, or another nation, sitting along the adjacent banks of the channel. They were so close, yet so far all in one go. Without the gunners, Jean honestly felt unsafe. Ever since he had orchestrated them during the Battle of Hill 58, he'd become dependent on having that edge of automatic fire over the enemy, but now he didn't want to kill the enemy so ruthlessly. Instead, as the truck drove off and the silence fell upon the streets, the Imperials having pulled out of the area, Jean kept his hands tightly wrapped around Kalisa, independently moving each finger around to softly hold onto.

	Eventually, Jean began to speak again. His voice was hoarse and painful to listen to, but he had to speak. It was only a matter of time before he had to represent himself once more as a leading NCO, and this was one of the few times he had to open up to one of the two angels he truly believed in. Jean slowly moved his face from the scarf, but kept his face close to hers, speaking quietly in order to ensure no one heard his confession of anxiety and irresponsibility to the role.[/color]

[color=Aqua][b]"I...I am not allowed to be a proper...a real...human. Not anymore. I'm...They want me to be nothing more than a Darcsen soldier, someone who can just tell them what to do. It's hard. It's...impossible. But...For you, Reyna and everyone else's sake, I must suppress myself, I must...hide. I..."[/b][/color] [color=Silver]Jean stood up, hesitantly looking at her straight in the eyes before weakly letting off a smile. It had been a while since he'd shown a genuine smile to Kalisa, as the previous hours had him show a similar one to Reyna.[/color] [color=Aqua][b]"Thanks for keeping the s-scarf, Kalisa."[/b][/color]

[color=Silver]	Jean rose to his feet, blood still trickling from his left hand. With his right, he began to unpack a field dressing and wrapped it tightly around the wound, clenching in pain at the act. It was tricky to do with one hand, but he managed as much as he could, eventually getting it on. The blood soaked into the bandage quite quickly, but the look of a padded, whitely wrapped hand sort of gave him a more veteran-esc look, especially with his rifle and weapon by his side. Jean kept his helmet tightened once more, walking into the corridor where everyone else was emerging. In the back room, he could see Lucia and Michael, alongside Diana, in the open room, still waiting for the chance to fully be stabilised and safe. Jean looked to them with uneasy quaint, clearly having a disturbed thousand-yard stare in his wording. Blood of the enemy's and his own still laid waste to his face, ruining that cleaning operation that Ines clearly had done a while back before they entered. At the very least, the rain outside would be able to [i]wash[/i] it off. And so, he needed to make the order.[/color]

[color=Aqua][b]"The...uhh...the car's gone. Someone signal Isaac's group to...to come back. We'll move out in around 10."[/b][/color] [color=Silver]Once he gave his uneasy order, still plagued with the stare of a man who'd seen the world of torture, he pulled a small piece of glass out of his uniform and shoulder, tossing it aside as he saw someone tending to another body slumped against the wall.[/color]

[color=5D7CFF][b]"I told you, Frey', I'm alright."[/b][/color] [color=Silver]Thomas had taken a nasty bullet just on his shoulder, clearly of a higher calibre like a rifle of the sorts. There were also a few stab sounds in his right arm, which would've been rather awkward for his shooting. Freya attended to his wounds with field dressing after field dressing, ensuring that there were no points in which blood could escape from. By his tone of voice, Jean inferred that he'd been through this injury more than once, and that this wasn't the first time Marathon had been close to death.[/color] [color=5D7CFF][b]"Go make yourself useful and help out that midget Sapper or som'ng. Damn bastard only grazed me."[/b][/color]

[color=FF0202][b]"You fucking idiot, you got shot and stabbed. Or do you want me to put another one in your skull to finish the job, cunt?"[/b][/color] [color=silver]Even with their derogatory, over-the-top culture and dialect, Jean still couldn't muster the smile he wanted to smile. It was futile to even try. Even so, Freya gave Jean a sort of look, one that indicated slight frustration to the dismissal of a life-threatening shot, or at least a potential one. Jean slowly wandered over, before crouching beside him.[/color] [color=FF0202][b]"How do you expect to cop a bullet to the Imperials if you can't move you shoulder that well enough to hod the rifle? Want someone else to bolt the gun for you, little baby Marathon?"[/b][/color]

[color=5D7CFF][b]"Put a sock in it, yah daft-cunt. I'll just use my han-"[/b][/color]

[color=Silver]	Jean drew the revolver, quickly putting it on Thomas' lap. It felt weird for the nervous man to act in such a silent yet authoritative way, but he continued to lay it in his shoulder, detaching the ammunition pouch for the revolver. Thomas looked towards him in slight confusion, and annoyance, but Jean kept his deadpan glare that stretched for thousands of yards ahead, nodding to him that he no longer needed it.[/color]

[color=Aqua][b]"Use this. I don't...I don't want it anymore. You might find more use for it t-too, Corporal."[/b][/color] [color=Silver]Jean walked over to the wall that was unoccupied and leaned against it, resting his head against his elbow with great fatigue stopping his every move. They had around ten minutes before they left, moving to somewhere either more dangerous or safer. He wanted to be alone, but he was open to being approached. He hoped that Michael and the others were okay, putting little thought into himself anymore. After all, Jean was now a certified murderer...[/color]

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