PnF_Soldiers 8

“Fishing?” Eli asked.  Though he’d done his fair amount of (poor) fishing in the past, Eli couldn’t—“you mean for food?” he asked, finally catching on.  He wished he could just hit his head with the base of his palm.  But such a show of failure wasn’t an option for him.  So he did it mentally.

“Why else?” Miguel returned.  He grinned at the raft.  “We’ve got a boat to fish from and I’m pretty sure Phineas is pretty good with fish and fire.”  Upon the compliment, Phineas grinned and shrugged.

“Biology was a good subject to take…” he murmured, waving off the compliment.  He dug in his pocket and pulled out his pocket knife.  Checking the battery for the laser, his smile shrank.  “The laser doesn’t have enough power to make a good fishing rod.  I forgot to switch out the batteries before the plane ride…”

“Your laser runs on batteries?” Eli scoffed, for once genuinely disappointed with the fiery-haired engineer.  “I thought you would have been able to use solar panels or something…”

“We couldn’t fit them that small,” Phineas shrugged, looking at the knife again.  Upon closer inspection, though the batteries wouldn’t hold out for an entire fishing rod, it could start a quick fire.  That much he was thankful for.

“Well, it’s a good thing I took a wood-carving class my senior year of high school,” Eli said, pulling out his own army Swiss knife.  Grabbing the plank of wood he’d used as a surf board not too long ago, the pilot sat down and began to whittle away the wood, making good progress in a mere matter of minutes. As he did that, Miguel eased Phineas off the raft.  The engineer did all he could to keep from crying out in pain.  Miguel was doing his best to keep the man’s mind occupied.

“When I get home, I’m gonna get to the nearest buffet I can,” Miguel grinned as he gingerly lifted his friend onto a makeshift mat.  He’d put it together swiftly to keep Phineas’ leg from getting any more infections that it probably already did.  To keep both of their minds off of it, he continued to rant.  “Then I’m gonna call my brother.  He’s in his junior year of high school now.  He wants to be a fisherman, though…  I don’t know how the idea got into his head…”

“Well,” Phineas replied as he got situated next to the lump of wood that would eventually become fire.  The pile of wood stood between him and the lake.  “He’s a relative of the quick-thinking Miguel Seta, survivor extraordinaire.  I’m sure he picked up the idea from somewhere."  Phineas grinned weakly.  Though he found it fun to talk to the others about what was waiting from them at home, his thoughts had constantly been plagued with the thought that his family and friends had thought him dead and moved on.

He worried about his parents—how they’d taken the news.  Were they still in grief, or had they decided that Phineas wouldn’t want them to grieve—which he wouldn’t!—and tried to move on?  He fretted for Candace, who still hadn’t gotten over her urge to “bust” both him and Ferb.  By now, it had been almost friendly tradition between the three siblings.  How had she dealt with the loss of one of her brothers?  And Ferb!  How on earth was he coping with all of this?  The “man of action” had always been with Phineas, and vice versa.  Though the man was grown and they didn’t hang around each other twenty four seven like they used to, they’d still been extremely close.  How had he taken the loss of his brother?  Phineas hoped he hadn’t done anything drastic.

Then there was Isabella.  Months before he’d actually proposed to her, he’d gone out and tried to choose a ring.  It had been extremely difficult, and it had taken almost two whole months to find the perfect ring.  He’d decided on something simple for a number of reasons that would take too long to go into at the moment.  He’d chosen the diamond because—if you want to put it cheesily—she was the gem of his world.  How her eyes lit up whenever she saw him, how her long raven hair was beautiful just the way it was, the way she looked when she got excited, the way she talked… everything about her had brightened up his day when he was around her.  Now he wasn’t sure if he’d ever see her again…

“…and that’s why he doesn’t want to be a neurologist.” Miguel finished up as Eli handed him a finished wooden fishing pole.  Phineas snapped out of his train of thought and pretended like he’d been listening.  It seemed that a few hours had passed since Miguel had started talking, seeing as the sun was waning in the sky.  However, Phineas quickly realized that Miguel didn’t have a fishing line, so he reached into his nano transformer and withdrew some twine.

“Miguel!” Phineas called, gaining the man’s attention as he was trying to place the raft back in the water.  The twine was flung through the air and landed in Miguel’s outstretched palms.  Both men grinned.

“Yeah, might need this, huh?” the survivor laughed.  Phineas laughed along with him.  Eli cracked a smile and rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, you might,” Phineas agreed.  He turned his attention to Eli.  “And I saw the sarcasm in that eye roll.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Eli asked as he helped Miguel push the raft into the water.  As soon as it was in, he placed a foot on top of the raft and withdrew a bent piece of metal.  It was barely sharp enough to make a halfway decent hook.  “We only need a few fish, don’t try to go after the big ones.  We don’t need them yet.”

“Like there are any big ones here to get,” Miguel laughed as he snatched the hook from Eli’s hand.  Yanking the raft from under the pilot’s foot, the survivor mounted aboard and used his hands to paddle away.  When the man became little more than a speck on the lake he stopped and cast his line.  Phineas had just finished the teepee of wood and had found some dry leaves that would make excellent fire starters.  He stuffed them into the center of the teepee.  Several hours went by in complete silence.  After a few false starts—scratch that—several false starts, Phineas was finally able to manage a halfway decent flame.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Eli observed as he sat across Phineas.  The engineer looked up, surprised that Eli would be the one to notice his behavior.  It wasn’t that he was trying to be quiet, it was just that he had a lot of things on his mind.  That was all.

“Just thinking about stuff,” Phineas said truthfully, hoping his vagueness would be enough to get Eli off his back.  Regrettably, it wasn’t.

“On the way to the village you talked about anything and everything,” Eli pointed out.  Phineas soon found the leaves in the middle of the teepee extremely interesting.  They burned in such a way that they didn’t just burn.  They twisted and shriveled under the heat of the fire, then decided to give into the flames.  They stayed quiet for a few moments longer.  “Is it your girl back home?” Eli finally asked, being none too gentle and completely blunt.  By now, Phineas was used to this, even if he did find it a little annoying at times.  He didn’t look up.

“I don’t think she’s still my girl anymore…” Phineas finally murmured.  Devoid of emotion, the single sentence didn’t sound like the ten year old inventor that the red head once was.  It sounded like an empty, sorrowful statement.  The finality of it could almost break your heart.  Eli offered no sympathy.

“She could move on, that’s true,” Eli stated.  His voice held no emotion at this point, just simple fact.  A few moments of heavy realistic silence passed between the two men.  Eli was letting Phineas process this fact before continuing in a somewhat gentler voice.  “But if she’s moved on, are you willing to let her go?”

“What?” Phineas asked, blindsided by this question.  He stayed looking at the ground, eyes frozen while his mind’s gears worked at high speed.  Let go of Isabella?  After he’d spent so long with her?  Never mind the fact that he’d only spent the vast majority of his life with her around, but he’d also just asked her to marry him!  Their lives together were supposed to be beginning!  Now he was supposed to let her go before it all began!?

“If she’s moved on, how do you think she’ll react to find you back?  She thinks you’re dead!  What if she’s found someone else and is happy?” Eli asked, his hand subconsciously darting to his picture in his pocket.  It was a real thing that happened to people.  They moved on.  Their lives continued even when they thought yours hadn’t.  His face showed the pain he felt when he’d first found out the love of his life had found happiness with some other man.  Yet, he’d asked himself the same question back then as he was asking Phineas now.  “Could you take away that happiness?”

Phineas’ brain was working in overdrive.  The answer was so simple, yet his mind didn’t want to accept it.  Eli was talking truth.  If Isabella really thought he was dead, then what could stop her from moving on?  From finding happiness like he’d wanted her to in the first place?  He’d asked her to move on if he didn’t come back.  But now that the time had come, did he really want her to move on?  Did he really want to be that boyfriend who’d gone to serve his country and not come home?  Or did he want to be the man who’d gone missing for too long, come back, and shattered his girlfriend’s life again?  The thought of doing that to her hurt him.  He never wanted to hurt Isabella.  But what if he did just by coming home?  Slowly, he looked the other man in the eyes.

“I—” Phineas’ attention was stolen by a flash of movement behind Eli.  It wasn’t something huge, but it was big enough to distract the Flynn.  Leaning to the side, the man tried to pinpoint exactly what it was that he’d seen.  He scanned the lake’s surface.  All was natural and quite still.  Except for that empty raft on the lake’s surface.

Wait—WHAT!?!?

“Where’s Miguel?” Phineas’ voice was filled with curiosity, bordering on fear.  The raft shook violently, as if something was happening nearby, but the fisher wasn’t on board.  From far away, the men could make out a hand shoot out of the water.  Something was clasped in the man’s hand.  The hand grappled to stay on the raft, then pulled Miguel out of the water.  Yet something was wrong.  Very wrong.

“What happened to his leg?” Eli asked, his quiet voice filled with horror.  Even from a distance, the two men could make out the mangled mess that was Miguel’s leg.  If the blood didn’t give it away, the grotesque angle of it could have given you a clue.  His leg wasn’t just broken, it was halfway ripped off!  And the man was loosing blood!

Looking around for </i>something</i> useful, Phineas searched for a method to get out to Miguel, or to get him back to shore.  He dug through his nano transformer and found several items, the most useful being rope.  Quickly, the red headed man withdrew at least one hundred yards of rope and his parachute back from before.  Checking the juice this thing still had, it had enough to fly over to Miguel.  Not wasting a second, Phineas attached the rope to the back and chucked it in the air to get it going.

Wavering in the air for a fraction of a second, the lifeline zipped straight to Miguel out on the water.  Now lying on his back on the raft, his feet dangerously dangling in the water, it seemed the man didn’t have the strength to grab a hold of the bag for a moment.  Then, in what seemed to be a last ditch effort, Miguel flopped his arm and managed to catch the bag under his arm.  Without hesitation, Phineas began to pull on the rope.  A split-second later, Eli joined his efforts.

As Miguel was pulled to shore, both of his feet continued to dangle in the water.  While his untouched foot dangled in the water and floated along with as much resistance as the water gave it, his injured leg seemed not only to be partially submerged, but also meeting with more resistance.  Something was pulling or being pulled on his leg.  The injured fisher cried out in pain as he was pulled into the more shallow water.  His leg began to jerk around unnaturally, and Miguel could not hold back the screams of pain.

Suddenly, a fearsome shriek escaped the man when he reached the truly shallow water.  Both of the other men on shore could see a large mass darting away.  The creature had to be almost seven foot long from what they could tell.  But that wasn’t the only thing to escape into the water.

“Oh God!” Eli gasped as he made his way to Miguel’s side.  The man’s sweat mingled with the freshwater that he’d come out of.  As well as his blood.  Unable to see much of anything, or move quickly for that matter, Phineas strained to see as Eli reached inside the parachute bag for the remnants of the gauze.  As the man finally found what he was looking for, he set the gauze between his shoulder and his cheek and ripped the bottom of the injured man’s pant leg open.  The amount of blood that spilled onto the brown sand was not a comforting sight.  While Phineas turned his head to vomit, Eli began to tightly wrap Miguel’s new leg stub.  Miguel’s foot hadn’t been bitten off, but rather, torn off.

When he’d finished his sick spell, Phineas wrapped his own leg firmly and made his way to his friend.  As soon as he made his way to Miguel’s side, the man with all the survival tactics smiled grimly.  “So much for…” Miguel was thrown into a fit of coughing, which triggered immense pain.  A few yells later, he managed in a hoarse voice, “survivor extraordinaire.”

“You’re still the survivor of the group,” Phineas said as he began to hand more gauze to Eli to wrap around Miguel’s new stub.  But it seemed that the more it was wrapped, the more the injury bled.  It was frightening, and they didn’t have the proper equipment to deal with the excessive loss of blood.  Despite the signs, Phineas refused to cave to reality.  Not this time.  This time, “impossible” was something he wanted to attempt once again.

With as much nerve as he could muster, Phineas made his way next to his friend.  After three minutes of pain, he finally made it.  Miguel was clutching something in his hand while his face drained of color.  Reaching into his nano transformer, the engineer pulled out some more gauze.  They were reserves in case they were needed.  He handed them over to Eli, who had run out of gauze.  Nodding in gratitude, Eli continued to wrap the ever-bleeding stump.  The flow had barely slowed, but was still going.

With every minute, Miguel was slipping away.  Eli kept wrapping the stump and applying pressure.  Phineas kept Miguel talking.  Talking about his brother.  Talking about his parents.  Talking about the food he was going to eat when he got home.  Talking about anything. Just as long as he was talking.  After about forty five minutes, Miguel’s hand began to shift.  Phineas barely noticed. What he had noticed was that Miguel had stopped talking for a moment.

“Miguel, how old is your brother?” Phineas asked, knowing that the man loved to rant about how obnoxious his little brother was, but how he loved the little snot anyways.  Though the Flynn had heard it before, he wanted Miguel to say it again.  But Miguel didn’t respond.  He simply moved his hand more noticeably.  This time, Phineas saw and placed his hand under Miguel’s.  He placed something in the head’s hand.

“Caleb…  make sure he gets it…” Miguel’s voice began to diminish, all life ebbing away from it.  Phineas wanted to yell.  To tell Miguel that he’d be able to give it to his little brother himself.  That he shouldn’t talk like he’d given up.  But by the time Miguel had pressed the gift in his friend’s hand, his life had extinguished.

Miguel Seta had died.  No one could stop the tears that flowed.

…/…/…/…/

Phineas set another rock on top of the body.  Eli set another one on the other side.  Neither talked.  Nothing needed to be said.  Five had survived the plane crash.  Only two were still alive at this point.  Neither had taken charge, both were grieving.  Any word to describe the hurt felt too shallow once more.

Phineas grabbed a nearby rock and began to chip at it with his pocket knife.  The only sound heard around the lake for a while was the sound of metal hitting rock.  For an hour or two, that was the only thing that was happening.  Eli occasionally stirred the fire to life when it got too low, but other than that, nothing happened.

After two hours, Phineas reached over and placed the marker at the head of the mound of rocks that covered their friend.

Miguel Seta

For another half an hour, Phineas sat there, not doing anything.  He thought about his entire team, now gone because of an airplane malfunction.  Alex had a family back home that was waiting for a man who’d never come home.  Miguel had a little brother who would never see him again.  Even Brandon had had a quartet to return to.  He didn’t talk about it much, but it was almost expected every time he had talked.  Now they were all gone, and they could never return to the lives that had waited for them back home.

The scent of cooked fish wafted through Phineas’ nose and he was jerked out of his thoughts.  He looked over to Eli to see that he was cooking the fish that Miguel had caught just hours before.  Yet an appetite was something that eluded the man.  He turned to the mound and clenched his fist.  His fingers met with resistance that was most certainly not his hand.

Opening his fingers, Phineas stared in the object that Miguel had insisted on giving to his brother.  It was a small amount of twine, laced through five of the hard scales of the fish.  Miguel must have pried them off to make this.  And used the small screwdriver appliance on his pocket knife to make a decent hole to fit the twine through.  When moved, the scales tapped together gently, clinking softly.

“He wants to be a fisherman, though…  I don’t know how the idea got into his head…” Miguel’s words rang through Phineas’ head as he looked at the small necklace.  So many feelings washed through the man at once.  Small bits of humor shot through him that Miguel would make a necklace for his brother for a job he couldn’t fathom having.  Responsibility to deliver the necklace to Miguel’s brother, and the dog tags to the remaining families.  Sorrow at the loss of another good man.  Anger and frustration for not having done anything useful to get his men back home.  A sense of uselessness fell upon the Flynn, and he wondered why on Earth he was even here.

“You have to keep your strength up,” Eli said as he handed the engineer a fish on a stick.  It had been cooked almost to the point of burning, but at least that meant the meat wouldn’t be infected.  Phineas took the stick, but did nothing with it.  Simply held it.  Eli looked out onto the lake.  “There have been times where I’ve seen good men die and lived to tell the tale,” Eli began.

Phineas, unsure of where this was going, did nothing.  He simply sat and listened to the experienced pilot.  After all, the man had a knack for saying smart things, even if they did sting.

“I’ve had to tell wives their husbands aren’t coming home, mothers that their sons are gone, heck, I’ve had to tell children that their mothers weren’t coming back,” Eli said, his voice not quite as emotionless as usual.  Pangs of sadness overwhelmed the man’s voice, and both men knew that he was crying.  “But that’s why we have to survive.  To tell those people what happened.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if—” Phineas started a statement, but let it drift away.  He couldn’t rationalize it, even to himself.

“If what?” Eli asked, picking up where Phineas had left off.  “If they never knew?  If they go on every day hoping that their family or friend is going to come home safely, even though they’re gone?” Eli’s question hit Phineas broadside, and he couldn’t respond.  “It hurts to tell them, and the look on their faces had made me want to quit more than once, but they need to know.”

“Why?” Phineas asked, looking at Miguel’s grave once more.  If it caused people to hurt, then why should they hurt?  All the red head ever wanted was to make people happy.  If living was only going to hurt people, then why?

“Because it starts the healing,” Eli said softly.  “Telling them and giving them the proof is giving them reality.  It frees them to move on.  A lot of people choose not to forget, but they do move on.”

Phineas sat there for a moment.  He looked at Eli.  “So, who told her that you were dead?” Phineas asked.  Eli stopped for a moment and pulled out the picture.  He looked at it for a solid five minutes before answering.

“No one,” Eli finally said.  He tucked the picture away. “But she moved on anyways.  And I’m happy for that.  It’s better if she moved on.”

That ended the conversation and both men looked skyward.  Phineas took a little nibble of the fish.  If nothing else, he would live to tell about how great his crew had been, and give the dog tags and necklaces to their families and friends.