Love and War Aren't a Game

HELP

The sun was beginning to set when we arrived and Steve ushered us into our positions, fearing that night would make our task more difficult than necessary. Our target was a simple farmhouse resting in a serene countryside, but its barn allegedly housed some of Hydra’s dark secrets. Barnes and I had been left at one of the other nearby houses after Steve had cleared its occupants for safety reasons, Gabe directing the family towards the location of our jeep to wait until the job was finished.

We decided to take a window in the living area each, ensuring we had a clear view of the target barn but also putting us within earshot of each other to call out our number of kills. I could tell that Barnes had taken my challenge seriously by his hardened expression of determination as he stared down his scope. In a way I sort of wanted to hurt his feelings so he wouldn’t be at his best and I could defeat him with ease and prove to everyone that I deserved to be here, but I guessed that Barnes wouldn’t give up his position as the resident sniper without a good fight.

“There’s Steve, going in from the left,” Barnes commented and I swung my scope to the side, easily spotting the blue uniform amongst the green grass. I shifted my focus back to the barn, waiting for a Hydra agent to show their face so I could help my team’s leader out.

“You were friends with Steve before the war, weren’t you?” I asked, wanting to confirm a tidbit of information I had overheard Jim mention earlier.

“He’s been my friend since we were kids,” Barnes replied with obvious disinterest in having a conversation with me.

“Is that why you’re second in command?” I asked, giving him a prod to get another frustrated reaction out of him. At this point I was willing to do almost anything to throw him off his game so I could have another sliver of an advantage.

“I’m second in command because I deserve to be,” Barnes said. A glance to my left proved that he was remaining focused on checking the area around Steve instead of becoming disgruntled. “Why do you deserve to be here?” He asked the question that made my heart sink just as Steve ducked inside the barn.

“Because I’m a useful soldier,” I retorted, my grip on the rifle tightening. My list of reasons was too long and personal to share with him, but at least that point was valid and didn’t scratch the surface of my motivations.

It was around hitting puberty, when society had tried to fit me into the typical mould for a woman, that I had become fiercely determined to prove people wrong and to do what I wanted to do. My father had hoped that using his leverage to give me a position in the army was going to silence me, but it had only made the fire within me grow.

Annoyed that Barnes had reversed my tactics on me and I had instead lost my focus, I fell quiet and waited for the chaos to ensue. A loud bang resonated from my left and I could practically hear the smirk forming on Barnes’ lips.

“One,” he stated before flinging the empty shell from his gun, a metallic clatter on the floor that only motivated me more to win this contest. With a grimace I swept the area and spotted a fleeing man, undeniably panicked and clearly not one of ours. I pulled the trigger and my bullet connected with its target.

“One,” I informed Barnes just before he fired again.

“Two,” he called out and I inhaled slowly, searching the area through my scope for another man working for the enemy.

“Hail Hydra!” a woman shouted from behind me and I gasped, flinging my head around to spot the farmer’s wife we had evacuated earlier entering the room with a knife and heading straight for me.

“Shit,” I muttered while letting go of my sniper rifle, aware that the gun was no use in such close proximity. I had only just spun around, spotting Barnes also reacting to the intruder out of the corner of my eye, when another figure came into the doorway yelling in a foreign tongue.

The woman demanded my attention and I flung my arm up to block the incoming blade, knocking her wrist and causing her to fumble. I sent my knee upwards, making contact with her abdomen in hopes that that would distract her enough for me to disarm her.

A shot was fired from elsewhere and another followed a second later. The woman before me gasped and then crumbled to the floor. I whirled around and saw Barnes with a pistol raised, and that the second assailant was also bleeding out on the floor.

“Looks like that family wasn’t innocent after all,” Barnes remarked. On closer inspection, I noticed that the man was the evacuated husband and that he had been holding an automatic gun. I could only hope that the children were elsewhere and safe, left out of their parents’ mess. “You all right?” After Barnes spoke, I realised that I had been frozen to the spot, just looking back and forth between the dead bodies.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I answered before striding back over to my post. “I didn’t need your help, I was about to disarm her.” Barnes holstered his pistol before lifting his rifle as well.

“Sure you were,” he responded with an insincere smile. I gave a glare and was about to return to focusing on increasing my count for the competition when a loud explosion rattled the house.

After steadying myself, I looked out the window and saw that the barn was in flames, thanks to Jacques, and I could see a small group of men running back to our location lead by a man in blue with a shield. The mission was already completed, and the barn was going to burn well into the night and leave a message for any Hydra agents nearby.

Barnes and I exchanged a frustrated glance with each other before strapping our rifles to our backs and leaving the building to meet with the others.

“Next time,” I promised Barnes, adamant about defeating him.
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Thank you acid_rain88 for commenting! Has anyone got any thoughts on their interactions in this chapter?