The kid looked like Hanley; all dark hair and watchful green eyes. And smile, too: million dollar player’s one hidden beneath a wary face. Except the kid was all angles and long limbs, uncoordinated in a way that Hanley hadn’t been in a long time, although he thought that he could imagine him being like that as a kid. Just angles. Wrong. Uncomfortable in his own skin. Weren’t all kids like that though?

Which was the problem, really. Yes, all kids were like that. So he was just a kid. Too young for a war. Not that there was an ideal age for a man to go to war. Still he thought that even by their blurred standards this kid was too young.

And it was like looking at a younger version of Hanley, and it worried at him so much that the first time he got the kid alone he asked, “Have any brothers?”

“No sir,” the kid said. “Why?”

“No reason,” he shrugged, and he lit the end of the cigarette dangling in his mouth thoughtfully. No need for him to go get Hanley’s kid brother killed or something.

The kid frowned. He frowned in a kind of...concentrated way, like he was thinking very carefully about what he was frowning over. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?” the kid added, face creased and serious. “If I have a brother, I mean.”

He eyed him speculatively and realised that it meant that the others had seen it in him too. Nobody had said a word, though. Seemed a stupid thing to say out loud.

“Just getting to know you,” he lied. “Don’t call me sir, either.”

“Okay...” the kid trailed off, not sure what to say.

He shook his head because it wasn’t the army that taught him to say sir like that; it was school. He was fresh out of it, he was certain.

Kid held the gun all wrong, too. Too awkward, too young. Too easy to teach him how to hold it properly, to pull the trigger fast-

Shouldn’t be this easy, he thought, watching the grip change in a week.

“Kid learns fast,” Kirby said approvingly. “Look at him, a regular killing machine.”

Shouldn’t be this easy. But it was.

*

Caje said: “He learns fast.”

He didn’t look up from the cheese he was eating, he just murmured, “You have to, here.”

“I know,” Caje agreed.

He got the feeling that Caje was dancing around something, but he didn’t hurry him along. What was the point? If Caje wanted to dance then he would dance, never mind anything he said or did.

“We were thinking,” Caje finally came out with, “the rest of the squad- the kid, he looks like-”

Then he looked up, and wondered if he was wrong in thinking that it was stupid to say it out loud. “Like?” he prompted.

But Caje evidently thought that it was, because he shook his head. “Never mind.”

Then they both paused. Caje filled in the silence, started talking like they had been halfway through a conversation:

“It is strange, though, don’t you think, Sarge? Makes you wonder, if someone was here instead, if you were there... what might have been, you know? Makes you wonder where everyone else is- and why-”

He broke off, looking slightly embarrassed.

He looked at Caje thoughtfully, wondering how someone with any bit of poet in them could be what they were; then he wondered how anybody could be what they were full stop.

“Yeah,” he agreed, wiping his hands clean, “makes you wonder.”

*

It did make him wonder, though. He wondered where the kid was from, and why he had joined up. Supposed he had a mother and a brother someplace, thought that kids were all so stupid when they were young. Stupid and patriotic, but then they had never had a chance to be anything else yet.

Mostly he kept wondering why he hadn’t sent him back. He guessed he had thought, just give him a week, see how he likes war then.

Didn’t realise he’d be dead within that time, but he should have known. Should have known. He didn’t want to imagine the kid’s mother opening the letter: shrieking: he was supposed to be in school, he was too young, too young-

Shit.

So when the barrage they were retreating from was over he went back to find the kid. Maybe he wasn’t dead, even if the rest of the squad were there and his absence screamed gone gone gone like an air raid siren.

“Go on ahead,” he told the squad, “I’ll see.”

“But Sarge,” Kirby said, “if he’s not here- that barrage was a mess- the Lieutenant already sent the rest forward, out of there-”

“Go on,” he ordered, gruff. “Go.”

They went, reluctantly. The fuss had died down, now; mostly just a few stray shells, thundering into the ground. Kid could be alive. Someone could be.

He went to find the kid but he couldn’t. He found bodies strewn on the ground, anointing the mud- or the mud anointing them- and looked for dark hair young face but it was all just faces and who could tell one from the other?

He hit the ground as something whistled overhead. It smashed into the world and threw him sideways. He rolled over and saw the kid a few metres away.

He crawled over and looked. The kid looked back, but his eyes were unseeing. Hadn’t been seeing in a while, either, he’d guessed. He imagined the mother and the letter.

“Shit.”

Stupid kid still looked like Hanley at that angle. He pushed the stiff shoulder and the kid rolled onto his back properly. Didn’t look so much like Hanley anymore, at least if he didn’t look too long. Or maybe he hadn’t looked long enough.

“Saunders!”

He looked, and Hanley was coming towards him. Which was strange, he was just thinking-

“I thought I said to pull out.”

“We did. What were you doing?”

Hanley didn’t say, but his face was all set in that way that told him anyway.

Another whistling noise; another shell hit the ground. The world exploded. Hanley got thrown to the side.

He watched the kid’s hand turn over, like a pale butterfly amongst the mud. Still dead, though. He looked for Hanley, who looked okay. Still alive, anyway.

He sat by the dead kid and waited for Hanley to pick himself up. He watched him hold his hands to the side of his suddenly helmetless head like he was trying to keep it together, and blink dust and grit from his eyes. And then he looked at him, dropping the hands. Officers’ ears don’t ring after a barrage.

“Who’s that?” he asked, getting to his feet. Or trying to. He was all shook up still and staggered to close the distance between them. Stumbled like a newborn lamb does still blind and he was rapidly blinking so maybe he was blind; dazed, at least.

“Who’s that?” he asked again, voice too loud. His ears were bleeding.

“Replacement,” he told Hanley. “Green. Had him a week.”

He stopped, because he thought that all the bitter words were going to spill out from between the clipped sentences. Like, had him a week and what’s a week? And where do they all come from, and when does it stop? Do they run out? Do we make a million kids into machines? What the fuck is the point-

But he just looked back down to the kid all splayed broken like on the ground. Muddy. Endless rain. It was a mess, all of it. The whole world.

Hanley was looking at the kid and it was strange because he half expected something to happen. Like for Hanley to fall to his knees beside him and gasp, breathless with shock and hurt. Or punch him; you let him stay here? My brother? He’s too young, why didn’t you send him back?

Maybe just a bit of recognition, anything. Say, I knew him, he was-

None of it happened, though; Hanley just looked at the kid and blinked. His nose was bleeding along with his ears now. He wiped it, smeared it across his face and looked at the bright blood staining his hand with surprise.

Ears and nose bleeding. Like something had been shaken loose inside his head and wasn’t fitting back right. He grimaced unhappily watching Hanley stand there bleeding with the kid dead at his feet; wondered why they hadn’t moved.

“A week?” Hanley said finally, voice still too loud. And he frowned in a way that was eerily reminiscent of the dead kid; concentrated, focused.

“Yes,” he agreed. “A week.”

He had the idea that Hanley had lost the thread of the conversation, had forgotten why they were talking about a week when everyone else was dead around them and there was his carbon copy lying shattered at his feet. But he hadn’t noticed, he saw, that that was his carbon copy; didn’t see the likeness that screamed doppelganger or maybe just that could have been your brother- but did Hanley even have a brother?

Actually he didn’t know shit about Hanley, not really; knew that he was a good guy and a good officer and a good soldier and he chased girls and got jealous and all that jazz but not if he had a brother. Not if he had a sister or a family or even where exactly he was from, and what did he do before the war? Never mentioned any of these things.

Of course it didn’t matter. How does it matter if you have a million siblings in a war? Well you’re going to die anyway and that’s just facts. How many siblings you have or if you have a family doesn’t make a difference if you die or not, doesn’t make it any less of a tragedy and nobody’s going to pause for longer than a second and think that’s sad because it’s always sad but in the end it’s just so goddamn sad that they spend forever sad and they’ll never be happy again. And that’s just facts too.

His head hurt but he was surprised when Hanley said, “Your ears are bleeding.”

“I know,” he returned, even if he didn’t. He thought that he was supposed to know.

“- kid meant something to you?”

Yes, he looks like you. Could have been you. “No. I think that’s the problem.” Even if it was you, it wouldn’t matter in the end. Have to keep going. Better than this. Have to be better than grief.

“He’s too young to be here,” Hanley observed.

“Aren’t we all.” Which was a trite statement and it didn’t mean a thing. It hadn’t for a long time. He thought that some words were like that, some sayings. Just said so much and with so little meaning or comprehension that time just wore them down, made them raw and hollow and pointless. An echo of war which meant as little as the words in the end.

Hanley looked like he wanted to say something, but the blood was still running from his nose and ears and the words weren’t coming. Couldn’t find any words right enough even if he wanted to, not in all that brokenness inside his head, he thought.

“Let’s go,” Hanley said instead. No words to say. Maybe there never were any.

He nodded and started walking. Was thinking of the kid with the wary face, afraid they were going to send him back home. He should have been home. They all should have been home. Except they weren’t.

He walked for a good few metres, stumbling steps. He pressed a hand to his ear. It was ringing fiercely. He was used to the ringing though. Then he realised Hanley wasn’t following; turned, saw him still standing over the kid.

He worried, suddenly; felt that bad tight feeling, the one that spoke of something bad about to happen, something people don’t get back from. Maybe he did recognise the kid, now that the haze was clearing from his eyes. Dead kid brother, happened to find him across miles and miles of Europe, between years and years of war. Stranger things had happened. Like Kilroy walking across France with them.

He walked back, boots making a sucking noise against the mud. Squelch squelch squuuuu-

Stopped a few steps away from the dead kid and the Lieutenant, wondered what was going on.

He looked back to the kid; hair was still dark and ruffled, eyes still green, but dulled now. Not watchful anymore, like his face wasn’t wary. Just empty, like he hadn’t seen it coming and hadn’t had the time to school his features. But wasn’t that the point? In the end they’d all just be empty, if that’s what they were inside.

God that can’t be it.

But it never meant a thing in the end. Not even for a moment. It was just bits in the end, bits that didn’t belong anywhere. Spare parts. They were all spare parts. If you don’t need it anymore? It can be scrapped. It can be replaced.

The kid’s limbs were still everywhere. Still clumsy. Didn’t mean a thing. Didn’t mean shit-

“It’s not stopping,” Hanley noted, meaning his bleeding nose.

“Should be by now,” he told him. Maybe something had been shaken loose. Things you don’t get back from-

“Just leave him,” he added. “Nothing we can do now. Have to go before the krauts catch up.”

Don’t have time to bury him. Not under the dirt. We buried him already when we gave him a gun-

“Yes,” Hanley said, but he didn’t think that Hanley knew what he was agreeing with. “We don’t have time.”

Hanley looked at the kid for another long moment. Like he was memorising every second. Like he was seeing himself in the kid and not liking what he saw. Or liking it too much, thinking: God I just want to sleep or could have been me or should have been me or I wish it were me.

The kid looked like Hanley, he thought, but the kid was dead and it didn’t mean a thing.

It was just bits and it didn’t mean anything, and he knew it and Hanley knew it and the kid probably would have known eventually too. If he had lived longer. But he hadn’t.

Could have been you, he thought, from the corner of his eye looking at Hanley wiping the blood from his face. Could have been you, but it wasn’t. Not this time. Wasn’t you. It’s one more day. One more day.

It wasn’t him, but he really wished that Hanley would stop looking like he half wished that it was.

But then, didn’t they all?

Just bits, he thought. Pieces. Fragments. Doesn’t mean a thing.

They kept walking.

No, it didn’t mean a thing. But then in war it never did anyway.