Author: A. R.

Waking up to a blaring alarm while in a war is nothing out of the ordinary; for Atlas, it happens daily, or a couple of times a month. He would have never thought today would be any different.
​
Stationed on a planet controlled by the Terrestrian Coalition, Atlas was used to fights and attempt at revolution. It’s expected. Back home, on Earth—Terra—his biggest concern was finishing chores quickly enough to go to Culebra beach, search for sand dollars, and play in the waves. His mother used to say the military men, who flew through the stars in crisp uniforms and charming smiles—everything Atlas had wanted to be—would protect everyone on Earth; picture-perfect heroes.
​
As Atlas stepped off his ship, unease churned in his stomach. Most would mock him for admitting discomfort—“You? Uneasy? Perish the thought!”—so he kept quiet while his team neutralized the Iriukian rebels. Atlas stared at his Holo-pad, glancing up only when his team approached or something drew his attention. When the first gunshot sounded, he barely registered it. He had ordered only stun weapons for use against civilians and rebels.
​
One, two more shots rang out before Atlas realized what was happening. His head snapped up, eyes darting around to find the source, the civilians and rebels erupting in screams of anguish and terror. One of his men, the one who always seemed to have a dark expression on his face, had fired the shots, three mounds on the ground in motionless piles of blooming red poppies. A noise of shock left Atlas, seeing the blaster, the man holding it, and the flowers.
​
As though some divine force pulled him out of his own body, watching from an outside perspective as he shoved his way to the soldier, shoving the arm that held the gun, the weapon—the life taker—stopping a once-beating heart that craved freedom and peace. A heart that would have kept a body running and thriving. Atlas could see himself shouting in the face of the life-taker, demanding, pleading.
​
The life-taker scoffed, “Taking accountability for your cowardice, Atlas, since you can’t even pull a trigger on a renegade.” Atlas recoiled in shock. Something inside him cracking.

Atlas is a man with blood on his hands and dirt under his nails; he fought the world tooth and nail, believing his actions were true. Now, looking behind his shoulder, he saw what he had left in his wake. blooming marigolds, with a singular black moth beating its wings on the flower nearest to him—A blooming flower field of all the aliens and humans who died under his ordering commands or his own hand seemed to stretch for miles. Years. Forever. Bodies decomposing for the next generation of blooms that grow bigger and brighter.

Atlas believed the corrupt people who had bathed him in the flower petals of death and destruction, telling him he was pure. He had seen unnecessary death and been told it was the natural part of life and order. Had his commands defied by his Unit countless times. But this? Innocent beings who believed they could make a difference in the war, just like Atlas?

His core beliefs seemed to shatter like glass, that one crack sending everything crumbling; shards cutting his hands where blooms pushed through the cuts, purple hyacinths, peonies, black dahlia, writhing through his veins. Suffocating him in his own actions, coughing up withered petals, collapsing to his knees, struggling for air he would never gain.

Atlas never felt like a hero. Even if he did, he certainly never would now.