Eric watched as Rosa ran back to her car, shielding herself from the rain as best she could the entire time. He stared idly as she pulled out of his driveway and started heading down the street, only taking his eyes away from the window once she had taken the turn at the corner and disappeared from view.

And once she was gone, he closed his eyes and heaved a tired sigh.

Rosa was putting a lot of trust in him. Thirteen was too, even if she didn't know it. At first, he'd been reluctant to help her at all, but now, knowing what she'd been through… he'd meant every word he'd just told Rosa.

Thirteen deserved his help, if for no other reason than because she'd already given so much to the rest of humanity and asked for absolutely nothing in return for her service. She'd been fully willing to continue serving until she was killed in action, and it was only government bureaucracy that had finally ended her time in the military. Now she had nothing, and as far as he was concerned, that wasn't right. The least he could do was help her adjust to life on the outside.

"Eric?"

At the sound of her voice, Eric opened his eyes and turned towards her. She was standing in the doorway to her room, looking as lost as she always did. He gave her a nod.

"Hey," he greeted. "Rosa and I are done talking, so you're free to wander around as much as you want. Are you hungry? I can fix you something, it's no trouble."

Thirteen shook her head. "Just… wanted to know if it was okay to leave."

His expression softened. "Yeah, it's fine. Here, why don't you come sit next to me?"

She blinked. "...Why?"

He shrugged. "We haven't really talked person-to-person since that day in the car, is all. I don't want you to think I'm some stone-cold asshole who doesn't care."

Thirteen blinked again, but did as she was told, stepping into the kitchen and taking a seat next to him. As she did so, her brow furrowed.

"What's that smell? It smells like something burning."

"Ah… sorry. Rosa and I were having a cigarette in here earlier. Normally, I don't smoke in the house, but sometimes I get a craving, and it's raining too hard for me to go outside."

"I didn't know Rosa smoked."

"Neither did I," he admitted. He shook his head. "Look, that's not the point. I was wondering… did you want to actually do something together?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know, just something to get out of the house when it finally stops raining. We haven't really done anything, you know. There's a whole world out there to experience, and now we both finally have the chance. It doesn't even have to be anything big, either, it'd just be good to not be stuck inside all day, I think."

"What did you have in mind?"

Eric brought a hand up to his chin in thought. Rosa had told him to help Thirteen learn to live, and he fully intended to do so, but the difficulty was finding something she'd enjoy. He suspected she wouldn't like anything too high-octane, but at the same time, he wanted it to be something that would give her a truly human experience.

A thought suddenly came to him, and he couldn't help but smirk.

"I think I have an idea," he offered.

***

"What is this place?"

"It's called a park," Eric said as the two of them walked down the tree-lined asphalt path. It had thankfully stopped raining a short while ago, though clouds were still gathered overhead. The overcast skies contrasted nicely with the seas of green grass and pine trees, and the fresh rainfall coalesced with all the greenery to produce a pleasant aroma throughout the area.

Thirteen looked around. "It's nice," she said, though she was still tense. That realization brought him pause. She was looking around like she suspected to be attacked by something, or otherwise be forced to defend herself.

"Hey," he said softly, getting her attention. "There's nobody out here who would want to hurt you, okay? Anyone you see is just a regular person out enjoying the sights and scents after a fresh rainfall, same as us. You can relax."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Just trust me."

The two of them passed by a wooden bench overlooking a lake. Eric stopped and stared at it for a moment, then motioned for her to follow him. As she came up alongside him, he took off his jacket and laid it on the bench, preventing either of them from getting wet as they took a seat on it.

"So why are we here?" Thirteen asked.

"Because sometimes it's good to just appreciate the beauty of the world around us," Eric told her.

"Hard to do that when you're getting shelled by artillery or attacked by an eight-foot-tall alien trying to rip you apart."

Thirteen pursed her lips. "I suppose."

"Plus, it gives us a good opportunity to do something else."

"It does?"

"Oh, yes. Give it a bit, I'm sure it will begin soon."

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

Thirteen stared at him like he was crazy, but just a few seconds later, it happened – a small boat passed by them on the lake, with a man standing at the front of the bow, a fishing held in his hands. Eric pointed the man out to her.

"Look at this guy," he said.

"What's he doing?"

"Fishing. My father's an outdoorsman – he says that the best fishing often happens right after a storm, for some reason. No idea why, but I trust what he has to say. Guess he's not the only one who believes that."

"But why bother to fish now?" she asked. "He isn't out in the field, and doesn't need to do it to survive."

"Some people just like to do it for fun," Eric insisted. "A lot of them don't even keep the fish, they just catch them, maybe take a picture, and then take them off the hook and let them go back into the wild. For those people, they just like the act of catching the fish, they don't intend to cook or eat it."

"Strange…"

"What's strange about it?"

Thirteen hesitated. "It's just so… frivolous. I suppose a lot of things in civilian life are."

"What do you mean?"

She looked back out to the lake, focusing on the fisherman once more. "In the military, everything we did had a reason behind it. There was nothing wasted, at least not in what we were doing. We didn't have time for recreation, or anything like that."

Eric nodded along. "I understand. But that's something you're going to have to get used to now that you're out. Even if you were to get a job somewhere, just to keep busy, it wouldn't be nearly as busy as the time you spent in the service. Wouldn't be as impactful, either. Not to mention that with the money you've got and whatever pension they're giving you, you'll never need to work a day in your life, so there'd really be no point to getting one unless you just wanted a boss yelling at you for some reason."

"Did you have to make that adjustment when you got out?"

Eric sucked in a breath. "...Yeah. I think we all do, on a certain level. It felt weird, coming from having to do something all the time to just not having anything to do at all."

Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he turned towards it. It was a young man, probably around sixteen years old, skateboarding down a nearby path. Thirteen tracked him with her eyes as he passed by, then turned to Eric.

"What is that thing?"

"Skateboard," he told her. "It's both a form of rudimentary transportation and entertainment."

"Entertainment?"

He nodded. "Yup. Sure, you can ride it from point A to point B and nothing else if you want, but you can also do tricks on it." A thin smile crossed his face as a memory rose to the surface of his mind.

"I'm telling you, man – skateboarding's the thing to do when you're out and about. It's fun and the girls love it."

"You're so full of shit, Martinez."

"Nah, Captain, I mean it – I've picked up my fair shore of ladies by offering to teach them."

"When you were younger, I presume? Because you seem a bit too old to be obsessed with skateboarding now, and it'd look weird for a twenty-one year old man to be picking up teenagers with it."

"Of course, the fuck did you think I meant?"

Eric suddenly shook his head, and the memory faded. He turned back to Thirteen. "Never learned how to ride one, myself, but plenty of guys have, so I'm familiar with it on a surface level."

She nodded, then looked back out over the park, and pointed to two people pushing a stroller. "And them?"

"That's a couple out for a walk with their baby," he said. Another memory flashed through his mind, this one more painful than the last.

"Hey, Captain – check it out."

"What is it?"

"My wife just sent me a video of my daughter trying to walk. Cute, isn't she?"

"And what about them?" Thirteen asked, interrupting his thoughts once more as she motioned towards yet another person, this one a man typing away on a tablet as he sat on a bench on the shore of the lake.

Eric hesitated as yet another memory came flooding back. "He's writing something," he said, his voice coming out choked.

Thirteen turned towards him, her expression showing a bit of concern. "Eric?"

"I'm… I'm fine," he said, sitting upright. His heart hammered in his chest, and he could feel himself beginning to sweat, but he took a few breaths to calm himself. "Just… memories."

"What kind of memories?"

He hesitated, then gave a tired sigh. "...I served with a lot of people," he said. "Commanded plenty of them, too. I tried not to get too attached – casualties were still pretty high back when I was in, before the Angels really came along and started to turn the tide. Most of the men I commanded didn't make it back, so I knew better than to get attached. But despite that, there were still a few."

"And these people remind you of them?"

He nodded. "Some of them, yeah." He sucked in another breath.

She turned back towards the lake. "It never gets any easier, does it?" she asked quietly.

Eric shook his head. "No. But some days are more bearable than others." He gave another tired sigh. "...I take it you've lost a fair few of yours, too?"

She nodded. "There were fifty of us, of course. Half went to the Marines and half went to the Army, not that it mattered, since we were often working jointly. Fifty of us… the records won't reflect every loss, but I know that when I left, there were only twenty-three left in total, myself included."

Eric looked to her in surprise. "Only twenty-three? But the brass always said-"

"Only three were confirmed dead, and the rest were just missing in action." She shook her head. "They're dead, Eric. The rest of us know for sure because we helped look for them, and eventually found their bodies. Not all of them, but enough to know. The few who are truly missing in action are almost certainly dead by now, and we simply couldn't find their bodies."

Eric shifted in his seat, uncomfortable. "I'm sorry. I want to say I know how much it hurts, but I don't. I was very close to the people I lost, but you… they were like your sisters, weren't they?"

She nodded. "They were the only family I had left. We did everything together, up until we ended up in the field. Ten years sent living and training together, caring for one another as best we could… And now more than half of them are gone."

Eric didn't know what to do, or what to say. For several seconds, he just sat there, before finally sighing.

"You remember them, right?"

Next to him, she nodded. "Yes. Though it gets harder with time. I want to remember them, but it gets more difficult trying to recall their faces. Their names, though? I'll never forget those."

"You need to picture them doing something," Eric said.

"Hm?"

"I said, you need to picture them doing something," he repeated. "Makes it easier to remember what they looked like. I don't know why, but it works for me. Maybe it'll work for you."

She blinked, but after a moment, she nodded. "Thank you, Eric."

He said nothing in response, instead pulling out his phone to check the time. "Shit… it's supposed to start raining again soon. We should head back."

She nodded, and the two of them stood up. Eric picked up his jacket off the bench and slung it over his shoulder, and the two of them began to walk back to his car. Both of them were silent the entire time, and yet somehow, he felt as if they'd gotten to know each other just a bit more closely than before.

It was a small step, but a step nonetheless.