[b]Private Aden Robertson[/b]

It struck Aden as he sketched the profile of a few of his shipmates. He had finished the visage of Arkadios as Aden remembered him from the armory; stern and imposing. The outline of Carter as he helmed the airship; the drawing comparable to that of a captain bracing against raging seas. It was as he outlined the frames of Zoe, face pulled into a grin as she teased Carter, that it came to him. 

'[i] I survived. I survived. I made it back from the mountains.[/i] '

His sketching stopped abruptly. The line becoming misshapen and darker as the sniper pulled back his pencil. His abbreviated two week journal entry was a few pages back; it did little to show the experiences he had went through. 

Aden realized his breathing was becoming shakier as he remembered the first hours of the war. The scramble to the front. His best friend; Lucius, taking a bullet in the initial scramble for cover. The first shot in anger he ever took. How it missed the fresh faced kid who's only crime had been to wear the wrong uniform. Scraping away at rocks and loose dirt with desperation as mortars fell on him as the kid he missed reported the sniper. 

The marks of day still evident on his hands; thin, angry red scars still showing the after effects of his adrenaline fueled panic. They shook still. 

His mind still om that day. The young Calarian soldier picking his head up cautiously and how it filled his crosshair. The distance making it seem so much smaller; the pain of his bleeding fingers as he pulled the trigger again. The distant [i]clang[/i] of metal on metal, a helmet flying off and a brief spurt of red. The face falling out of a view and a cry of grief. Aden had moved on by the point the mortars fell again; but that face stayed in his mind.

Had he killed someone's friend? Brother? Would he remember them all? 

Then he killed his second, third and fourth man two hours later. His fifth and sixth came five hours after that. Aden realized then that it never became easier to do it. Just to forget it. 

He had no idea how many he had by the time he had escaped onto this airship. But here he was now. Sipping coffee and sketching away as he helped steal gold from a nation that he had chosen to fight for. Just so he could go back to fighting for an army that had left him behidn in a doomed city. 

"Gods above I'm a mess." He said aloud to the bridge. Not really caring who heard it.