Thinking that it is my eternal duty to advise Gauthier when he should be able to advise himself -- well I suppose it is my eternal duty, but I feel like he can do more to help himself than go directly to me when the answer isn't completely clear -- he has invited me to his tent to discuss something which he told the courier to say was of grave importance. Knowing Gauthier and how dramatic he can be at times, I doubt that it's actually as important as he instructed the courier to make it seem. He probably received a letter in return from his mistress back in France and wants me to review it again to find out exactly what she's implying with each word and to help him write a response equally as precise. Gauthier is a master of war strategy, but he is absolutely worthless when it comes to love strategy, so he employs me to assist him. I don't know whether I should feel honored or surprised with my abilities.

When I arrive at Gauthier's tent, my previous stance of denying how important the matter is falls away a bit once I see the massive amount of stress plaguing Gauthier's body and mind. His head is in his hands, his hair tumbling messily over his forehead, a huge difference from his usually combed and clean hairstyle, and if I were able to see his eyes, I can predict that I would see shadowy rings hollowing out the liveliness of his eyes.

Once he has detected that I am in his tent, he looks up at me, and just as I predicted, I see the dark circles crystal clear. He wastes no time greeting me, only cuts to the chase to save our precious hours needed to solve whatever problem he has called me in for. "Follow me," he orders, rising from his desk and walking around it to stand closer towards me and lead me out of the tent.

"Where are we going?" I ask, struggling to keep up with Gauthier's rapid pace. Now I understand why he gets so much done -- he walks so damn fast.

He doesn't glance back to answer my question, so I am forced to struggle to hear him among the voices chatting away around our camp -- voices, I notice, that have become fewer since yesterday. "The infirmary, if we can even call it that with the shabby state that it's in."

I have passed two months in this army, and almost one month of that has included the combats between France and Russia, yet before a few days ago we had never come into contact with any soldiers from the enemy side. But as I said, that was a few days ago. A terror named the Battle of Smolensk struck first on the sixteenth of August, then again the next day, and one final time yesterday, and it took all that it could fit in its greedy hands. Thousands of troops were stolen away from this earth, and thousands more were accidentally dropped from death's hands into the infirmary, where they now plead with all the might of their vocal cords for death to take them back. Sympathy makes me wish the same thing for them. I can't stand to hear those wails any longer. In all of those two months, I have never visited any type of army infirmary, either, but I should've done it before the battle, when the screams weren't so vivid. Now Gauthier is leading me into a living hell enclosed within a military tent.

I glimpse the first frame of my time in the infirmary, and I already want desperately to leave. A whole lot of men lie on what could be called a cot if we're stretching the limits but in reality is just a blanket filled with holes and blood with weak supports under it. Severed body parts are strewn around the floor encircling the cots, while some lie on the bed exactly where they were amputated. But the physical conditions within the infirmary aren't nearly the worst part. The worst part is the broken soldiers that lie within. Their cries fill the tent and never end. Around them, the nurses' faces are scrunched in both disgust and worry for the soldiers to whom they tend as they frantically rush to cure their ailments.

This is exactly why I protest war. These young men are suffering with no one to care about them except the nurses who don't even know their names. These are the men who always show up in my argument about why war is immoral. All of this mess could have been avoided with a bit of negotiation. Why does Napoleon have to feel as though the entire world is his but currently in the hands of oppressors? It does nothing for the people living in the countries he lusts over. Napoleon himself is the oppressor if there is one. Napoleon is the reason why these men can find no peace.

I am contacted through a short lock of the eyes by one of the soldiers suffering on his cot, a silent prayer that I will help him. If this were any random soldier, I would be thoroughly haunted, but the fact that this man resembles Alexei, whose current state I do not know, makes me wonder if it could be him but in a cot at a Russian hospital somewhere. This fate is plausible, even for people not involved with the war. War steals us all, no matter who you are.

"Why did you bring me here?" I ask, pulling my vision away from this underworld and over towards Gauthier. My face is washed by horror. My eyes are deep with fear.

"I need to ask you what we can do about this."

I don't know why Gauthier assumes that I can mend all that is wrong in these circumstances. He uses me as his advisor, but that doesn't mean that I have all the answers that he doesn't. I am horrified by this whole scene, and part of that horror stems from not being able to do much to fix it completely.

"Well for starters, we could always just end the war," I suggest, shortly letting down my facade of dedication to France and the war effort in front of a man I don't trust.

"You and I both know that Napoleon isn't going to listen to that proposal, and you might want to hold your tongue when speaking ill of your general's plans. You could be in serious trouble if anyone high up in the ranks heard you."

I am aware of the consequences of speaking ill of Napoleon, and that is precisely why I never said anything blatantly against him while in the presence of Gauthier or any of the soldiers. I don't know where their loyalties lie.

"Well what is it that I'm supposed to fix? It's not like I can just magically invent a treatment to treat all wounds."

"That's not what I'm asking you to do," Gauthier clarifies. "I'm asking for a potential solution to other areas that might be able to be helped, like the rampant spread of dysentery and other such diseases that we could avoid by making some changes around here. We're also starving, Renaud. The Russians have taken to burning their own food -- which we all find appalling but above all terribly inconvenient -- and there is little for us to eat. When we go outside at night to hunt for food, we always return with fewer men than before because of reported Slavic citizens finding us, kidnapping us, and killing us, and the Russians have taken some of our soldiers as prisoners of war. We've started to eat our horses as a solution to our hunger, an essential portion of our supplies, and without our horses, we move far slower than before, which in turn puts us at a disadvantage against the Russian army. Because all of those aforementioned things, we are losing men at an alarming rate, and the chances of winning are less and less by the day."

From the very beginning, I knew the war was an unfortunate idea. I knew the risks of disease that occurs during every war. And if everything that Gauthier just listed isn't wretched enough, frigid temperatures will arrive in Russia soon, and our French bodies will not be able to handle it. I pity the souls who shall be doomed under the force of the snow.

"What do you want me to do about it?" I ask, frustrated with how much misplaced faith Gauthier has in me.

"You're my advisor, Renaud. Just...think of something to fix it, and if you can't fix it, at least think of something to soothe my mind. Give me a way to ignore my conscience."

Even if Gauthier can't do a single thing for these soldiers, it is his duty to remember them so that this doesn't happen again. Although I am beyond sickened by this display so typical of war, I am certain that I will make an effort to keep these men in my mind forever. This image cannot be repeated. The human soul should never be stripped down to this state and witnessed writhing within it.

Utterly appalled, my face skews to the color of disbelief derived from offense. "How could you forget these faces in the infirmary? How could you neglect them so selfishly?" My breath is heavy yet agitated, struck by passion.

"There's not much I can do for them, so there's no use weeping over what cannot be repaired."

Gauthier is exactly the kind of complacent figure that Alexei told me not to trust. Luckily for me, I've kept my distance well enough.

I look away from the scene. "I'm not sure I can help you, Gauthier," I lie, and walk as far as it takes to drown out the screams.

~~~~~

A/N: as you can see, war sucks ass

if you're enjoying this story's concept, I highly recommend you watch BBC's War & Peace, which is about the French invasion along with some other topics, and it's very good with an amazing soundtrack so yeah (if you watch it or have seen it, leave a comment telling me how you like it) and also you'll see some songs from the soundtrack at the beginning of chapters (like this one, for example)

~Dakotot