Freewrite done in about an hour or so. Lengthy. I fucking hate the rich text editor.

WW3-
World War Three started before he was born, and the day he was pulled from the womb of a comatose woman screaming blue murder it still raged and ravaged the world. He grew up understanding two things, war and his future as another bit of meat for the monster war machine there was no question. In another time he might have grown to be a painter, his keen eye for texture and color nurtured and cultivated like roses. Instead he was taught the ways of war.

His distance vision prevented him from learning the gun, at least not any of the distance rifles used by the more elite snipers. Instead his speed and long rangy body was taught hand to hand, killing burned into his muscle memory until with eyes closed he could strike and kill, he was reared to be a machine. Some thought him to be slow, he spoke little, was prone to staring off at nothing. No one minded, as long as he learned his role and learnt it well.

Of course he did. He didn't understand his role, he didn't understand the war. He only knew that it had begun before him and would go .. him. Anything he did really mattered very little. Not that the knowledge of his tiny place in the grand scheme of the slow death of the world would keep him from doing his duty, of course he would he knew little else.

When he came of age he was sent to a place he had never seen before, he had been briefed naturally. He had an academic knowledge of the terrain and dangers there. What he hadn't been prepared for was the hurt of an urban ruin. The place had been a city once, not so long ago that the buildings and feel of the people was gone but long enough to still have the painful echo of emptiness. He was not afraid, he couldn't be afraid.

The battle was not as easy as he'd thought it would be. Many from his regiment died, others ran and he fought. He fought and fought until a man who when they came face to face in the middle of a dead square, they stood still. Both had long lost their side arms and knives and they stood face to face, him holding a found piece of rebar and the other a pipe. The face of the enemy is what finally awakened the fear in him, that face was so like his own.

From his earliest lessons he was taught that the enemy was not human, that the enemy was nothing more than a mongrel savage race and they were to be destroyed and removed from the world at all costs. His arrival in the destroyed city had tickled his fear, could truly savage and idiot people build beautiful things? Could they make art? Some few nights he had snuck out and wandered and found murals on crumbling walls. He could imagine how grand and imposingly beautiful they had been. And now this.

Silence settled around the adversaries, a deep profound and waiting silence that caused the fear to bloom in his chest and cut off his breathing. Neither spoke or moved, the carrion birds that feasted daily were even silent. The second before muscle memory revived itself to cut through the fear the enemy spoke.

"I don't want to kill you."
Each saw movement in the other and they struck, both felt and smelled the blood and parted. The pipe had been sharpened and stuck out of his belly, the rebar was bent and bloodied. The fear had them both and they ran in opposite directions.

As he escaped he knew he would die sooner rather than later but he didn't want to make the effort to find help. He wanted to die where he could see color and something that would make him feel and maybe forget. Senseless and bleeding he staggered, not knowing where he was going barely seeing anything. He fell a few times then simply lay where he had fallen, darkness had narrowed his vision to a small pinprick and he was too tired to go on and find the color he craved.

Sense and awareness returned at some point, dulled and fuzzy around the edges. Dimly first there were hands, small iron fingered hands gripping him at the armpits, a sense of jerky movement and a sound, a strange chugging grunt. For some reason it made him smile, he wanted to laugh and slid back into unconsciousness with the laughter on his lips.

Time when you're so close to death matters very little, though it marches on inexorably his sense of it passing faded to nothing. What did return before full wakefulness was his sense of smell. Mingled with the smell of his own blood was another smell, nothing he could name or place but he wanted to eat it.

Sweet, thick and something he couldn't name. It was that smell that forced him to finally open his eyes. When his eyes focused he held his breath, he could see the side of a face, a woman's face. It was the first time in years since he'd seen a woman who wasn't part of the military machine. A woman who's face hadn't been scarred invisibly by horrors and duty, he made a noise and she turned to face him fully.

"Oh thank God you're awake. Here open your mouth and drink a little water. Swish it around first and spit, you have dirt in your mouth."

The concern and apology in her voice confused him, like every other grunt in service confused him enough so he just did as she said. She leaned so close he could smell her and she was not the source of the other sweet smell, the water wasn't it either though it tasted sweet clean and cool. Better than the stale disgusting water all soldiers were given.

He spoke when he was able.

"Thank you ma'am. What-"

he felt his face blanche slightly, he looked away.

"It's okay don't be afraid. You're safe. I'm sorry I can't do more for you. You have a few more days."

The strangeness of the situation frightened him more than the idea that he was going to die. Death he could accept, her kindness when clearly by her accent and halting speech pattern she was an enemy and yet, yet there she was smiling kindly at him and giving him water.

It took a moment but he accepted it, whatever her reasoning might have been he was beyond being able to do anything about it. After another few drinks of water he spoke slowly.

"Don't tell me your name. It's dangerous."

She nodded and knelt, watching his face. Her expression hovering between concern and fascination. It was not the first time she'd been so close to the enemy but it was the first time one had spoken to her human being to human being, the first time one had not tried to lash out when she'd offered or given help.

There was a naked wonder in the mans eyes, despite the effort it took for him to speak he persisted.

"What is that smell?"

He looked so honestly puzzled and earnest she had to look around, she'd dragged him into a small copse of tattered birch trees with roots wreathed in now feral flowers.

"It's a um, thicket with birch trees and flowers. This used to be a park."

The man was silent for a long moment, his rattling breath slowed and she watched his nostrils flare, then slowly his head lifted and turned. Eyes wide he stared. The bright green of foliage unleashed took his breath and any thought he might have had. In the green lurked violently yellow flowers that looked like pictures of tea cups and saucers turned sideways he'd seen once.

Flowers, he knew dimly what a birch tree should look like, though the ones that surrounded them were tired, half shredded by gun fire and scorched by flames. But flowers, these were not the flowers he knew. The only flowers he knew had been the ones that appeared at night with muzzle flash, these were so lovely. The woman plucked a rose from a nearby bush and showed it to him.

It wasn't beautiful exactly, the petals were pocked with brown spots and slightly wilted but the smell, the heat of the sun had coaxed the rose into releasing a smell so good it brought tears to his eyes. She held it to his face, his eyes closed and his lips pursed instinctively to lightly kiss the flower before he took in the smell.

"That's a rose."

He nodded, eyes still closed his lips on the petals.
"I've never seen flowers. Or roses."

He murmured the word roses over and over again, his low thick voice full of an ecstatic joy that made her smile through tears.

He wished when night fell and he stared up at stars through a veil of leaves that he had more time. He had seen, touched and even tasted beauty when the woman had fed him bits of the edible flowers sprinkled in their hiding place. But he knew, his training had done him the service of knowing when his body was failing.

What it had not done for him however was teach him or even give him a glimmer of humanity at it's finest. He decided on the third night, or at least what he thought was the third night that it was a good time and way to die. Not the hero's death but the death of a content human being.

"Flowers?"

He had taken to calling her flowers because it pleased her, he'd called her that for lack of her name and she'd smiled so brightly, her cheeks flushed.

"Yes? Is the pain bad? Do you want water?"

He smiled, smiling too was a newfound and beloved pleasure. Clumsy with blood loss and death he groped for her small strong hands and held them.

"No Flowers, I am going to die."

He gave her that big open smile again and settled. She had known that but to hear him say it with such peace made her weep. She was gone from him for a few moments then stood above him dropping flower petals on his empty numb body. As his vision grayed, then faded the smile lit up the clearing with light. His filmed eyes reflected joy back at the stars, his breath became ragged with excitement then with labor.

When a deep pink rose thudded against his forehead he let out a small chuckle then inhaled sharply, eyelids fluttering. The woman held his hands to her wet cheeks, he laughed once more then exhaled and breathed no more.

The woman who would weep every time she heard the word Flowers for the rest of her days, sat with his hands against her cheeks until his fingers grew cold and stiff. She was too starved and weak to bury him but she piled wild flowers and garden flowers gone feral upon his body, she tucked a single furled rosebud under his tongue.

World War Three dragged on. More boys like him were born into service, a few of them died the good kind of death as he had more simply died, eaten by the monster military machine. Nothing in the world changed really, except that a man became a human and a woman, became a flower.