Soldiers
By Cybra

A/N: Vague series-end spoilers. Somewhat dark. Written in the second person for writing practice.

Disclaimer: Code Lyoko belongs to the French.

Your family's always been soldiers. Whether it's a war between countries, the war on crime, or any other non-literal war, your family's always fought, often-times died. You accepted it long ago when you fought in the Vietnam War and—somehow—made it out alive.

Because of this, your family's always aged before its time. You're sixty-five years old, and your hair's already white. You survived your stay with the French Battalion in South Korea on luck alone. While you watched buddies die or end up maimed for life, you survived with your hair prematurely gray, a common theme amongst your family. You've never seen anyone beyond forty with their natural hair color surviving or without wrinkles.

You have several grandchildren, but one in particular always sticks out in your mind. This particular grandson wants nothing to do with playing soldier, preferring his machines to combat. You're grateful that one member of your family might grow up without fighting.

Then you catch him listening in on you irritating the rest of your grandchildren with your war stories while he's home on break. (Since you survived all of it, it's your God-given right to annoy the young with these tales and show them just how ugly playing soldier can get.) When you meet his eye, you see he's silently analyzing what you're saying, calculating. It's something you've never seen before, and it chills you.

You find him studying one of your maps of the terrain (you never could just let those battles go). It's while you two are talking that you're stunned to realize the kid isn't simply a master of technology but also a strategic genius. His questions regarding your past orders leave you up late that night, wondering how many of your friends would still be alive had the orders been different.

On his next break, he brought home some girl with him whom he seems quite close to, but he still has that calculating look in his eye as he regards what you're saying when you tell the young ones yet another of your past battles. That night you challenge him to a friendly game of chess, a game you've never lost. He sees through your strategy and beats you in seven moves.

When he's back home for another break, the girl is with him again, but things between them seem uncomfortable. You wonder what happened to that closeness you saw at Christmas, but neither offers up any explanation though you think you hear him apologizing to her about her father when they think there's no one around. It's after that that you notice the lines on his face along with that familiar glimmer in his eye of someone who's seen too much too fast.

And then you realize that his hair's turning gray.