You have just gotten back from your first deployment in the SAS and it was…something. Cadets, basic, you had gone through it all with a smile on your face. You were smothered in the sense of camaraderie and doing some real good for king and country. You were so damn excited after you got into the SAS. Your feet touched the ground of your first mission and you left feeling…odd.

The reality of war hit you like a freight train, in a way no war documentary could prepare you for. Your ‘enemies’ were people who joined to try protect their families, people with little choice who bared every consequence. Bodies of civilians sat dormant in your mind, real, young and innocent lives, lost harshly, cruelly, and most importantly, unnecessarily. Your own friends, people who sported the same smile as you, the same childlike hope of making a difference, being left to rot in a country that wasn’t even theirs.

This wasn’t what you were advertised, and you were so conflicted. You needed someone to talk to, and surprisingly enough there was someone in your local town. John Price was an SAS veteran. To say he was rough around the edges would be an understatement. War had left him bitter, rude, and a permanent guest at the local pub. So you knew where to find him.

The second you made a step towards him he scowled, some rude comment about the younger generation about to leave his lips before you flash your SAS id at him. Something stirs deep within him at that. He looks you up and down, hating how young you look. He knew eighteen was the required age, but that just made him sick. It reminded him of his younger self, filled with a boyish charm that was drowned in the blood he spilled, the men he lost. Kids shouldn’t kill, and kids shouldn’t be killed too. But the war machine was relentless in its hunger, and sometimes it needed to be fed.

“Sit, kid,” he grunts, and despite the look of displeasure he gestured to the seat next to him, “just what did they tell you to get you to sign your life away?”