Cain & Laurie: Semper Fidelis

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Laurie lets off some steam while cleaning the stables, and finally gets some answers to questions that have been plaguing her.



Cain stabbed the pitchfork into the dirt and looked across the stables. He just shook his head and watched for a while as first dirty straw was mucked out of the stall, then the clean straw followed it, then chunks of dirt being thrown in the air.

Casually, he wandered over and looked over the top of the stall to where Laurie seemed to be working a little *too* hard at manual labor. "Something on your mind, kiddo?"

Laurie paused in her 'mucking out' just in time to not throw a bunch of dirt onto Cain, it had been a close call though. She placed the pitchfork carefully against the wall and only then looked back at him.

"Maybe..." she said, eyeing him uncertainly for a moment before seemingly coming to a decision. "Cain, how do you feel about personal questions? Um, really personal, that is. "

The giant just shrugged again, reaching up to rest his palms against the rafters and lean forward. "Ain't gonna guarantee I'll answer, but ain't no harm in askin'."

Cain was one of the few people she knew who'd been a soldier, if there was anyone that could answer her questions, he could. She just wasn't sure she really wanted to ask them.

"What was it like, being a soldier?" she asked finally, deciding to start off slowly.

Cain chuckled a little under his breath. "First off, I wasn't a soldier, I was a Marine. You'd have to be in the Corps to understand. Second..."

He took a moment to gather his thoughts, then sighed and walked out of the stable to sit on the grass, looking out at the trees. "You gotta understand, when I was your age, we had the war over in Korea. Before that it was World War Two. Then I signed up right before we got involved all heavy in Vietnam. But there was always the enemy out there, that's what we were told. The Reds, the Commies, they were gonna be a threat to our whole way of life. So bein' a soldier, always thought it was going to be some kind of badge o' honor."

Laurie followed him out, sitting beside him on the grass as he talked. He'd been the right person to ask, she could already tell, he'd be able to explain what she still couldn't understand. "Did you have to deal with civilians? When you were in Vietnam?"

"Oh," Cain said, realization spreading across his broad face. "This is about the... thing. Yeah. Hm." He thought for a while, then turned to Laurie. "Bit of history you might not have learned too much about in school. Back inna late fifties, this yellow bastard Ho Chi Minh gets this idea that he's going to start rounding up people in his country that don't fit their idea of good little Communists. Thousands of folks executed, like nothin'. Takes until sixty-one until Kennedy sends a bunch of us over as 'advisors'."

A sharp look of regret crossed Cain's features. "Trouble was, we didn't know who was a VC loyalist and how to tell 'em apart from the people we was supposed to be protecting. I seen kids run up to a GI, poor bastard had no way of knowin' they had a bomb under that little checkered dress. You wanna know what bein' a soldier's like? It's fuckin' horror, kid. No two ways about it."

Laurie thought about that, thinking back to the civilians she'd seen, and then 'The Guard' who'd come. She didn't know if they'd had the same thing happen to some of them that Cain described. She only knew that having to watch them herd civilians into the jungle, knowing that they'd probably kill them had been horrific.

"There were civilians all around the Red Cross camp we were helping at. I guess they must have thought if they stayed as close to Westerners as they could, then it'd be safer somehow. When the 'Guard' came, we couldn't stop them from rounding them up and taking them into the jungle. I don't even know what happened to them. There wasn't time to do anything, we had to help the people who were in the camp. And even those, it was ugly. Cain, I feel like I failed them." Laurie said, almost a whisper.

"What could you have done? Saved one or two, maybe?" Cain asked. He gave a massive shrug and made a grunt of "eh" before continuing. "Sure, and then one of 'em gets a lucky shot in and boom, you're down. And now you ain't saving anyone ever again. Yeah, it's ugly. And yeah, it sucks. But that's why folks like us, we don't make those calls. We follow those who do, and they gotta deal with the heartache after."

"Are we soldiers then?" Laurie asked, looking up at him with a concerned look.

That got a snort out of Cain. "Like hell. I ain't sure what we are, but it ain't soldiers. Soldierin'... it's giving up something of yourself, and you can tell yourself it's for a cause, or for honor, or for your country... but it's bullshit in the end. Ain't nothing but the blood and the mud. I've seen too much of that, ain't no honor or glory in any of it. Us?" He jerked a thumb towards the mansion. "We put on them uniforms, we ain't soldiers. Ain't sure what we are, but we do what needs to be done."

Laurie's shoulders relaxed almost imperceptively but the smile she gave Cain appeared almost radiant. "That's good. That's really, really good. So, you were a Marine? What's that like?"

Snorting again, Cain shook his head. "What is it you kids say today? It was 'teh suck'."

Laurie snickered softly, feeling a little better now then she had for the past few days. She wasn't sure why, but talking to Cain about things, it seemed to ease a tension she'd felt inside. "So, GI Jane levels of suck, or worse? Did they make you get a tattoo?"

Rolling up his sleeve, Cain flexed his arm, showing off the faded blue eagle-globe-anchor tattoo on his bicep. "Semper fi, kiddo," he intoned. "Means 'always faithful'. Something they can't drill into you in any boot camp or firebase. Or Danger Room, for that matter."

"Always faithful." Laurie murmured, almost to herself. Then she smiled again, an almost teasing note now. "Maybe I'll learn it on the job. Someone old and crusty as you can do it, don't see why I can't. "

"You can try learning it while you put more straw in the stables," Cain said with a smile, pulling himself to his feet. "Me, I'm gonna go have myself a beer. You let me know if you get any big life-changing realizations from it."