Work Text:
Belfast, 1969.
A ribbon of smoke twines from the safe house chimney, pushed northwest by erratic October gusts. Two kilometers away, the soldier calculates the difference in crosswinds at the target's location against the eddies of his rooftop sniper's nest. It changes often. He recalculates every few minutes, adjusts the rifle. Recalculates.
This is not the longest shot he has ever made. (Saint Petersburg. 1954. 27 mission days ago.) He knows because he is allowed to retain pertinent information from past operations. Maybe. Sometimes. The soldier does not know what he has been allowed to keep until the knowledge surfaces fully-formed from the smooth black lake of his mind: a different language, a killing blow, coordinates.
For five hours he settles into the hypnotic focus of the stakeout. But. Sometimes images move through him, sensations move through him that are blurry around the edges, and he does not understand how they are relevant to this mission.
When the wind whips the smell of bread over his roof, the soldier thinks someone is baking nearby, but also far away and a long time ago. Stimulus layers over stimulus. No context comes.
He glances again at the nearby lot where a group of young males are kicking a ball. They are not a threat, low likelihood of interference. They play rough. The roughest one is also the smallest; he bounces back hard after every spill, always rising harder than he falls. (Late teens, early twenties. 160 centimeters. 49 kilograms. Scrappy. His hair is the wrong color – too dark.) The soldier blinks.
Pebbles click together under his body: beads on a rosary. No context. This neighborhood's industrious squalor. This crisp autumn air poured over the warmth of afternoon sun. Snatches of conversation. The scent of apples. The boy. In a different moment the soldier is stretched out on a different sunny rooftop, and he's wrestling, but not to the death. In a different moment he's laying on his back and a hand is pressing against his belly. Charcoal and graphite fingerprints dapple his skin like bruises.
The soldier sprawls lower in the gravel to reorient himself, but he can still feel those long fingers heavy against his lower body, sinking into a fist. A stone. Hot and coiling in his gut. Something inside him tightens. He moistens his lips behind the mask and presses harder against the roof.
The fluttering itch doesn't go away. It doesn't hurt. It isn't pain, not exactly. Pain he understands, pain he can ignore. If he could just...
The soldier scrubs his hips down against the tar paper and pebbles. Stimulus, response. A bolt up his spine has his toes curling in his boots, he's huffing in a startled breath. Not pain. Like. When his handlers allow him to empty his bladder after waiting all day in the cargo hold. Or when his lips are cracked and his eyes ache from dehydration, as soon as the canteen is put to his mouth and he swallows the first gulp, he can't stop himself from taking a second, and another, and another before they yank it away from him.
He drags a knee forward until the canvas of his tactical trousers pulls taut across his inner thighs, shifts his hips again. Stutters on the exhale. He wants to reach beneath his body and feel there, at the source of his ailment, but the soldier doesn't dare take his hands off the rifle, so he just rolls his pelvis forward to scratch the itch. Friction blooms with every rhythmic scrape against the tar paper. He sweats and grinds into the rooftop until little noises escape him and he has to chew his lip to keep them in check.
Recalculate, he thinks as he forces his scope back to the twisting threads of smoke. Recalculate the shot now.
But the numbers are all buzzing into static, and he's keening through a bite-swollen mouth and rocking desperately.
The door below the smokestack cracks open. (Visual confirmation of target achieved.) A bullet rips across two two kilometers.
When a corner of the threshold explodes into plaster, the target and her known associate (Acceptable collateral.) have time to duck and scramble back three steps before both their chests dissolve to red mist.
First shot missed. Missed. Missed the first shot. His weak hand shakes. Mind jumbles. He’s keening to a different tune.
Cold white shame burns through him so fiercely that by the time he remembers the needy-tickling distraction, it is long since gone.