My Soldier, Brittany Pierce

Summary: After a horrible break up, Brittany enlists in the army. An injury brings her back to Lima where she meets the girl who broke her heart. Santana Lopez. Will they get back together? Will Brittany be able to forgive Santana after 4 years or is she going to end up getting her heart broken again? G! P Brittany

Prologue

Life didn't go to plan, well not for me anyway. If you told me that I would be in the U.S Army I would have laughed and wrapped my arms around my girlfriend. Ha yeah that's another thing that didn't go to plan. Me and my girlfriend breaking up. Now I know a lot of couples break up, you know it's just a high school fling and all that bullshit, but I didn't believe that. What makes my relationship different to any others? Well did… I loved her with all my heart, honestly it hurt to be away from her. I could be myself around her and every time I looked at her my heart skipped a beat. No words could describe the way I loved her, her smile, her laugh, her eyes… Just everything about her.

I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with her but I was wrong.

The only problem was she was in the closet, big time, me being me thought that she would come out and we'd be together in public... Happy. She cared too much about her reputation and what other people would think about her than being with me, I know right? Ridiculous. She broke up with me in my senior year and then everything went downhill. I pulled away from the friends I'd always known. They were breaking into cliques, based primarily on what movies they were going to see or the latest shirts they bought from the mall, and I found myself on the outside looking in. Screw them, I thought. In high school, there's always a place for everyone, and I began falling in with the wrong sort of crowd, a crowd that didn't give a damn about anything, which left me not giving a damn, either.

I began to cut classes and smoke and was suspended for fighting on more than three occasions. I gave up sports, too. I'd played football but it's not like my pop would know, he never asked and he was too busy working. I became rebellious and my grades slipped, barely passing classes. My pa sensed that something was changing, but he was at a loss as to what to do with me. I suspect the school let me graduate simply because they wanted me out of there. I know my dad was worried, and he would sometimes mention college, but by then I'd made up my mind not to go. Growing up, I'd never considered entering the military. I mean pop had a good job owning his own building business and my ma, well have you noticed that I haven't even mentioned her? She left me and my pop when I was 11, said something about moving on, but really she cheated on my dad and moved away to live with the man and no doubt start a new family.

Most of the kids who'd been good students headed off to the University of North-Western Ohio or Ohio State University, Lima Campus. While the kids who hadn't been good students stayed behind, bumming around from one lousy job to the next, drinking beer and hanging out, and pretty much avoiding anything that might require a shred of responsibility. I fell into the latter category. In the couple of years after graduation, I went through a succession of jobs, working as a waitress at Outback Steakhouse, tearing ticket stubs at the local movie theatre, loading and unloading boxes at Staples, cooking pancakes at Waffle House, and working as a cashier at a couple of tourist places that sold crap to the out-of-towners.

I spent every dollar I earned, had zero illusions about eventually working my way up the ladder to management, and ended up getting fired from every job I had. For a while, I didn't care. I was living my life. I was big into boxing and sleeping in, and since I was still living at home, none of my income was needed for things like rent, food, insurance or preparing for a future. Besides, none of my friends was doing any better than I was. I don't remember being particularly unhappy, but after a while I just got tired of my life. I began to realize that every night was the same. I'd be drinking beers and bump into someone I'd known from high school, and they'd ask what I was doing and I'd tell them, and they'd tell me what they were doing, and it didn't take a genius to figure out we were both on the fast track to nowhere.

I dated dozens of women during that period. Most were forgettable relationships. I used women and allowed myself to be used and always kept my feelings to myself. There was only one person who I had a stable and loving relationship with and that was long gone. I didn't know what to do until I saw a commercial on TV about soldiers and the army. That's when it hit me. I mulled it over for a couple of day, and in the end, my pop had something to do with my decision. Not that I talked to him about it, of course-we weren't talking at all by then. I was walking toward the kitchen one night and saw him sitting at his desk, as always drawing a multiple plans for buildings. I was struck by the notion that I had no right to keep letting him down after all he'd done for me. So I joined the military.

My first thought was that I'd join the marines, since they were the guys I was most familiar with. Lima Beach was always packed with jarheads from Camp Lejeune or Cherry Point, but when the time came, I picked the army. I figured I'd be handed a rifle either way, but what really closed the deal was that the marines recruiter was having lunch when I swung by and wasn't immediately available, while the army recruiter-whose office was right across the street-was. In the end, the decision felt more spontaneous than planned, but I signed on the dotted line for a four-year enlistment, and when the recruiter slapped my back and congratulated me as I went out the door, I wondered what I had gotten myself into. I done my BCT in a boot camp in Fort Benning Columbus, Georgia and it wasn't half as bad as I thought it would be.

Red phase 1 was when I got issued my army uniform and men got given haircuts and rules were given. I had to be immunized which meant I had to have a shit load of shots, more than I expected. Red phase 2 I started Basic tactical training followed by Nuclear Biological and Chemical Defence, Landmine Defence and rappelling at the confidence tower. I had to learn about Army heritage and the Seven Army Core Values, which I didn't enjoy. What I loved was the army physical test. This helped the drill sergeants to know what level we were physically. White phase 1 was where it got a little more advanced. I had to go through marksmanship and combat training and learn to rappel at the Warrior Tower. The best part of white phase was when I got to use the pugil sticks. I was up against this guy, named Aaron jones and I whipped his ass. The drill sergeant who was observing the match lifted my arm up in the air like I'd just one a boxing match. We went to multiple target ranges and I was given a basic rifle to practise with. I got awarded with the highest marks on the shooting range. That was when things started looking up and I realised that I really wanted to be there. 6 weeks into the training I started the blue phase, after becoming familiar with the use of automatic weapons and hand grenades in U.S. Weapons Training, I had to put my training to the test as I and some other soldiers had to negotiate the Night Infiltration Course. It was my first mission and I was scared but somehow excited. I passed the course and the training and I was surprised when the drill sergeants and the first sergeants said they were impressed with my scores.

After I got through the training I had to choose a career branch that I would like to pursue in, I chose infantry. As part of OSUT I spent the next few months doing a lot of simulations in places like Louisiana and good old Fort Bragg, where we basically learned the best ways to kill people and break things; and after a while, my unit, was deployed to Germany. It wasn't easy at first, then army life set in. I spent seven lousy months in the Balkans-first in Macedonia, then in Kosovo, where I stayed until the late spring. I spent my first leave at home completely bored out of my mind. I spent my second leave in Las Vegas. One of my buddies had grown up there, and three of us crashed at her parents' place. Active duty soldiers such as myself were allowed 30 days a year of leave (1 to 2 days a month) but me not being too close to my pop and having nothing to go back to didn't have that many days. My friends thought I was crazy always extending my permission to stay but what they didn't know was whilst they were back home visiting their loved ones I was undergoing more and more training giving me a better chance to rank up. It's not like I didn't keep in touch with my pop, I wrote to him and he wrote to me. They weren't like the ones my buddies got from their families, girlfriend or boyfriend, nothing too mushy or personal. He'd write about the neighbourhood and work, I'd write about the guns I held or that time I'd been in a gnarly fire. He'd write back saying how glad he was that I was safe but that was all. In the end I stopped telling him about the pretty heavy stuff that went on, I wrote about guard duty, or how hot it was. My pop ended every letter with the promise that he would write again soon, and once again, the man didn't let me down.

I'd grown up in the previous four years. But everyone in the army is forced to grow up, especially if you're in the infantry like me. You're entrusted with equipment that can kill a man, others put their trust in you, and if you screw up, the penalty is a lot more serious than being sent to bed without supper. Sure, there's too much paperwork and the weather sometimes is unbearable, and everyone smokes and can't complete a sentence without cursing and has boxes of dirty magazines under their bed, but you're forced to learn the most important lesson in life, and that's the fact that you have to live up to your responsibilities, and you'd better do it right. When given an order, you can't say no. It's no exaggeration to say that lives are on the line. One wrong decision, and your buddy might die. It's this fact that makes the army work. I've worked with soldiers on all sides of the political spectrum; I've met some who hated the army and others who wanted to make it a career.

I've met geniuses and idiots, but when all is said and done, we do what we do for one another. For friendship. Not for country, not for patriotism, not because we're programmed killing machines, but because of the person next to you. You fight for your friend, to keep them alive, and they fight for you, and everything about the army is built on this simple premise. But like I said, I had changed. I went into the army as a smoker and almost coughed up a lung during boot camp, but unlike practically everyone else in my unit, I quit and hadn't touched the things in over two years. I moderated my drinking to the point that one or two beers a week was sufficient, and I might go a month without having any at all.

My record was spotless.

I'd been promoted from private to corporal and then, six months later, to sergeant, and I learned that I had an ability to lead. I'd led soldiers in firefights, and my squad was involved in capturing one of the most notorious war criminals in the Balkans. My commanding officer recommended me for Officer Candidate School (OCS), and I was debating whether or not to become an officer, but that sometimes meant a desk job and even more paperwork, and I wasn't sure I wanted that. I hadn't exercised in years before I joined the service; by the time I took my third leave, I'd put on twenty pounds of muscle and cut the flab from my belly. I spent most of my free time running, boxing, and weight lifting with Joe, a muscle head from New York who always shouted when he talked, swore that tequila was an aphrodisiac, and was far and away my best friend in the unit. He talked me into getting tattoos on both arms just like him, and with every passing day, the memory of who I once had been became more and more distant. I read a lot, too. In the army, you have a lot of time to read, and people trade books back and forth or sign them out from the library until the covers are practically worn away. I read mainly mysteries and thrillers and books by Stephen King, and I took a particular liking to J.K Rowling because by damn those Harry Potter books are amazing. If schools had assigned these books in English class, we'd have a lot more readers in the world.

Unlike my buddies, I was quite popular within the females but never really felt the need to go off with one to release some built up frustration from not getting laid. The military was hard on relationships in general I'd seen enough divorces to know that and while I wouldn't have minded the company of someone special, it just never happened. After the high school break up I don't think I'd ever have a girlfriend again. I don't have time for a girlfriend, I've got bigger things to worry about for example surviving in the war.