Exhaustion is all that seems to make sense to the sniper as he stumbls towards the barracks.

The squad has finally gotten home and had split up to go get some rest. Though not all of them head straight for bed, Archer does. He wouldn't do anything until he'd slept for a few solid hours. He'd just go to his bunk, ly down and sleep off the post-mission jitters. It was a simple thing to do.

Just roll over and sleep it off. Better than trying to find something else to do and waste the small amounts of energy he has left. It was endearing to know that after all the hard work and strenuous travel was over he could just go and lay down without interupption.

Archer falls asleep the moment his head hits the pillow…

Toad wasn't so eager to be in bed.

After being injured in the fray of the latest mission he was confined to one of the medical cots in the infirmary. That was okay though, Gadget had loaned him her satelite phone for a while.

He calls up his girlfirend, let's the phone connect, let's the line ring once, and then hangs up. A small part of him kept telling him that it's pointless and stupid to keep calling her a month after she's broken up with him, but he trys to convince himself that she just doesn't know it was him calling to let her know he was okay.

He always wants to believe that she still cares.

Even though she never answers the phone when he calls, he just wants to think that she still wants to know he's alive…

Royce leans back in a chair in the rec room, slowly going over each kill in his mine.

The machine has fallen away to the human being with emotions and hopes and dreams and a concious. No matter how hard he tries his mind just wanders back to an enemy hitting the ground, smattered with blood; a frag taking out several foot mobiles; a swift motion with his knife and another enemy fell.

Several times he goes through each kill of that mission. Each presents itself with unsettling clarity. The emotions he'd so carefully locked up during battle were suddenly free. He feels as though he's going to fall apart with pain and guilt of ending another human's life. He covers his face in his hands and closes his eyes.

Then he reminds himself of his family back home, of his country, of his friends, of his team, of all the reasons he killed that day…

And everything comes back together…

Worm takes to the training room.

While everyone else is exhausted from that day's effort he finds himself even jitterier than before. After all that adrenaline and excitement he just can't let himself stop right away.

So, he practices. His time has improved greatly, but it's his accuracy that he is now worried about. The day had brought about some sloppy shots that needed work. Setting up the exercise and loading a 9mm Worm reminds himself that prescision could make or break a shot. Screw speed and ferocity.

A headshot or chest shot could take time to line up, but it was better than spending five bullets to take down one enemy…

Roach taps his pencil against the notepad in front of him.

He'd gone off to a quiet place to think and write home, but all he's doing at the moment is thinking. He can't really tell his parents what happened. They'd freak if they knew he'd gotten shot. Making up a story would work, but Roach had never been a creative person.

To add to his problems, his side continues to throb painfully. He is tired, sore, and a bit irratable from the long trip, not to mention still aghast at being alive.

After all of the near death experiences his parents didn't even know about a single one.

And Roach fully intends on keeping it that way…

Meat flips another page to the newspaper and reads the column on another terrorist strike.

It seems like he's just reading the weather now that they happen every week or so recently. With his mind so occupied, Meat could put off dealing with the emotional strain of the mission until he was ready. No need to rush head-first into facing the issue.

Another turn of the page showed a group of soldiers helping a small Afghanian family get supplies. Lucky buggers. They had the easy job. Smile for the camera and help the locals.

Meat shakes his head and skims over the article, not at all interested.

Just another publicity thing that the government did to cover up for some massacre in Jordan or a bomb threat in Iraq…

Ghost's pencil flies across the paper, writing down notes on the mission.

He's done this a thousad times over. Every time they'd return he'd snatch up his old battered notebook and jot down the high-lights of the mission. Today he wrote three sentences on Gadet's daring rescue.

He never wrote very much, just enough to keep the whole thing in his head. He'd started the notebook back when he first left the SAS for the Task Force. Since then, he'd recorded more missions than he could count and more than he would care to read through. But still, it was nice to put it all down on paper. It was sentimental really, just to prove to himself that it all really did happen.

Ghost reads over the sheet and closes the notebook.

Examining the cover, he recalls how Gadget had saved it for him on her first mission…

Scarecrow stares at the sky.

It's so beautiful…so peaceful. The birds fly overhead, free and without worry for the fighting world beneath them. He wonders if it ever even occurred to them that war was threatening to erupt at any moment. He wonders if they every worry about the humans who fought so hap-hazardly.

What do they think of the way the world works? Do they even care? Why would they care, even if they could? Why would a few free crows give a crap about a dying soldier? They would still fly through the sky the next day. No harm was done to them. No foul was thrown their way.

Sure, nature would take them from the Earth some day, but that didn't change that they didn't have to fear for their lives, their friend's lives, and their country because of a few quarelling commanders from different governments.

It wasn't fair that he had to worry about all of these things and try to deal with it while a robin somewhere was digging up worms…

Gadget's been woken from another nightmare.

They come every night now, like some kind of terrible omen or something. She shrugs off the fear and pulls a hoodie on over her tank top and tugs on a pair of shorts. Leaving the barracks and heading for the roof she keeps herself from breaking down just yet.

The very moment her feet are on the hard concrete of the infirmary roof she let's the emotional walls down. She doesn't cry; that would just be demeaning. She just loses it.

It starts with her fingers as she reaches up to brush her bangs out of her eyes. They shake violently. Then her hands begin to follow suit, then her arms and shoulders and even her lungs begin to shiver. It's not cold at all.

It's not even a little cool yet.

Her legs threaten to give out due to the tremors as Gadget fights the urge to run back to her room and collapse. She recalls the time she did that and Shepherd spotted her walking slowly towards her room, shaking like a leaf.

He'd reported it! That Nancy had written on her file 'Shakey'. As a 'shakey' sniper she was supposedly incompetant and unfit for battle. UNFIT FOR BATTLE! That meant she was supposed to be sent home and given counseling like some kind of screwed up war-loon. She was just lucky that Mactavish had stopped the whole thing before she'd been plucked from the 141.

They did not need a 'shakey' sniper on the elite force…

[FIN]

I AM NOT HAPPY WITH THIS ENDING! D:

I wanted to do something completely different, but then I was attacked by a bunch of new ideas that just had to be used ASAP. While putting them into my idea book, the whole plan I had for this chapter was wiped from my mind.

But I digress.

Thanks for all the reviews, and I still need votes on the whole Ghost vs. Archer one-shot thing. I'll do both, but I need to chose which one to do first.

See you soon

Emily 'Gadget' Robins