Originally posted 1/2/2011 on the kink meme, requesting a Seth/Eirika fic based on the Dixie Chicks' Traveling Soldier. emblanon DOT livejournal DOT com SLASH 2297 DOT html QUESTION MARK thread=893945 HASHTAG t893945

As you can tell, I don't post here anymore. I post on Ao3 these days. But in going through old unposted fics, I decided this fic was better suited to this collection here. There's one more Seth/Eirika piece I'll be uploading, but that'll be on my Ao3 account ( sunaga).

It's a Friday afternoon, and he's walking down the street, fighting the weight of his duffel bag hanging heavy off his left shoulder. The coffee shop he passes looks inviting; warm lights, brown walls, heat seeping out every time the door opens with a jingle. He has nothing else to do but wait for a bus that won't be coming for a good long while; so he goes in.

He takes a seat in a booth by the window. Easy to people watch, easy to watch the customers enter the door and order at the counter. The waitress comes up, young, pretty, just about his age. Her eyes are bright, and a bow on the right side of her hair.

What can I get you? Her smile is just as bright as her eyes, or maybe it's just the nerves in him and the lip gloss on her lips.

Coffee, please. Black.

She chirps back, Coming right up!

She bounces behind the counter, and brings him back a Styrofoam cup. She sets it down in front of him, and sets herself back on her heels, holding her notepad flat to her skirt.

Something moves in him; this is the last person he's going to speak to, before everything from this town falls away and he ventures into that unknowable future. There must be something she can see in him, because she leans forward and spreads her fingers across the tabletop. He struggles to find words, to give meaning to a decision he thought was right.

She gives a smile, her voice is soft. Anything else?

He doesn't know what possesses him to do it, but he does. Do you want to sit? I'm feeling a bit low and wouldn't mind talking to someone.

She takes a close look at him, probably taking in his distinct hair, the obvious choice of profession by his clothing. She nods to herself.

I got an hour lunch break I can call in. Do you like the ocean?

The smell of the ocean is strong, distinct; blown in from a far-off breeze. She leads him here, waiting for him on the edge of the pier. She makes quite a picture; her arms spread wide, her layered skirt in the wind rolls like the waves, her hair alive.

He stands beside her, taking in the gold bracelet on her left wrist. I know you probably got a boyfriend and all, but I don't have anyone to write to. He listens to the waves for a moment, and looks at her profile. Do you mind if I send you a letter?

The waves come in, tipped with foam, and the spray will leave their clothes coated in salt. The crash is loud, and there are birds calling in the distance. She turns to him.

Ok.

The first of the letters come, and no one asks about it. It's when the correspondence becomes weekly that her brother starts ribbing her. He wheedles out it's a boy she's writing to, and then their best friend starts avoiding her, and Tana starts asking if she's got a photo of him.

She's not quite sure what to make of this correspondence. It's strangely intimate, or perhaps it's the intimacy being strangers provides. She finds out he's from a military family on the back of a postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge. That he likes telling tall tales – bullshitting, her brother calls over her shoulder – on ripped out binder paper. He tells her a lot of things that are too soon, too quick for their short acquaintance, and she worries each bit of himself he gives away on paper is born of desperation.

When her brother and Tana start dating, that's the first thing she tells the soldier of her life. Until then, she made small talk about the weather, and her regular customers. And when Lyon decides to ask her out for Spring Fling, she's too embarrassed to tell anyone but her soldier.

Her soldier is sent abroad, and the murmur of worry in her gut is what makes her send her senior photo to him.

I'm scared, he writes. But I remember you on the pier, the ocean, the smell; I close my eyes sometimes and when I think of your smile I –

I'm no good at this.

I think this might be love.

She doesn't have time to write a reply to that one, because she receives another so quickly, it must've been sent right after.

Never mind. I'm sorry. I don't think I'll be able to write for awhile, I want to though. Don't worry.

Wet grass, wet pavement, scent of rain. The leaves are falling. Her brother sits beside her on the sidewalk.

You're acting lovesick, he says.

She looks at him in silence.

He's looking down the street at all the houses, none with a flag out. His elbows rest against the inside of his knees. Everyone says we're too young to be in love, but we know better right?

Yes, she replies, yes, we do.

He's a jerk if he doesn't write back.

I'm afraid, brother.

He looks back at her, mirrors of each other. He touches her hair like he did when he was young and lets his hand fall away. We all are.

War is coming, war is here.

Friday evening, and it's Homecoming. The football game is in its halftime, they're winning, and she's waiting beneath the stands to go on out for the half time show with piccolo in hand.

The announcer's promoting the blanket sale – all proceeds go to the cheer team – and then he asks if there can be a moment of silence as he reads the names of the local dead in the war.

One name is all it takes, one name said – or unsaid, she hopes – and she starts crying without warning. One moment her eyes are dry from the cold, and then there's the distinct tightening and it becomes hard to breathe.

Her cries are unheard over the sea of people, always murmuring, even in silence. And there is no one to see her tears but the people on the rival stands, too far away to see anyway. There's nothing but empty green, chalked up grass in front of her, and a dark sky too bright with standlights to see the stars.

It's not much later that the war comes home. Soldiers come marching in unfamiliar uniforms, and then everyone is trying to flee from the stands, the swarm of bodies crowding the narrow exits. People jump fences, try to push people out of their way.

The bow in her hair is torn out by someone clawing past her, and left behind to be trampled by panicked feet. She trips somehow and the people don't move for her. She's going to die here if she can't get off the ground. It must be fear running in her, because suddenly she's not afraid of being found by the soldiers, or being found by the gunfire loud in her ears. No, she sees a familiar face, no longer hesitant, and it must be the adrenaline, it must, because her soldier is there with his red hair giving her his hand.

And then she takes flight.