The war was over. Or so they told us. It didn't feel much like over, lying prone in the dust and ashes of dead friends, the salt of old blood and tears etching new grooves across unwashed skin. The tinny rattle of the comms repeating the ceasefire echoing in your ears, to stand down. No more need to fight. We should all be so lucky.

"Hwang Eunbi! I thought I said to stand down! You heard the ceasefire order!”

The comms earpiece crackled with indignant force as the tiny private lowered her rifle.

"He was right there, Sarge. It was me or him." Eunbi shrugged as she stood up from her crouch, patting the sand off her fatigues as she squinted into the distance.

"50 meters out is not right there you little..."

The distinct crack of two shots overlapping each other made Private First Class Hwang Eunbi instantly throw herself back down behind the rock where she had been taking cover earlier.

"Choi Yuna!" The exasperation in the sergeant's voice was very real.

"Yes ma'am he totally shot first ma'am, you're welcome for saving your life by the way, Hwang."

Eunbi laughed out loud, a rumbling, bellyaching laugh that shook her bones as she curled into a ball, her rifle abandoned on the ground beside her. It bordered on hysterical, but she was alive, at least half her squad had survived, and she owed the team sniper a drink. But that was okay. They were alive.

There was another crackle as a different voice cut in.

"Does that mean I don't get to blow this place up anymore?"

Silence.

"JUNG YERIN YOU ARE NOT SETTING OFF THOSE CHARGES."

"Aww."

"Wait I thought the war was over. What’s this about a mission?"

The much reduced squad huddled together in a corner of the bar, contentedly nursing their drinks. All of them had some kind of scars, some visible, some not. One week past the armistice, they had finally been able to withdraw back to Ulsan to regroup and count their losses. Of the original squad of ten, six of them had survived. There were other squads that had fared worse.

All things granted, a 40% attrition rate wasn't too horrible. It was nothing compared to when Seoul burned. A permanent pallor hung over the sky, a grim and constant reminder of the three days the world went mad. Three days of fire and lightning and destruction ripping across several continents. No one was sure who fired the first shot, but retaliation had been swift and terrible.

And then, the fallout. The sun hid itself behind a curtain of ashes, and that was when the real war began, or should it be said, restarted? Everyone had believed that the war would finally be over after decades of armistice, that the shadow of war would no longer hover over them in their lifetimes. Forgotten, in the years of prosperity, that their peace was a fragile construct, easily shattered by modern weapons of war.

Seoul, shattered by a nuclear warhead that didn't have to travel far. The jewel of the Han River oozed like a festering wound, leaking radiation from a weapon no one had thought would ever see light of day again. Not after the first time.

"I heard about it from my brother. Something about there being remaining insurgents not respecting the truce."

The baby of the group confessed, wringing her hands together. Another hand covered hers, and a smiling Yuna squeezed her fingers comfortingly.

"It's gonna be okay, Yewon."

"I mean, it doesn't mean we have to be involved, right? We can go home." A worried voice cut in on Yuna's other side. Jung Eunbi, team medic and spotter, looked deceptively innocent. No one on the team ever underestimated her though. She was as good a sniper as Yuna was, and between them the sniper pair had the highest number of confirmed high value target kills in their deployed areas.

"Most of us don't have a home left, sweetheart." The other Eunbi of the team scoffed, putting her feet up on the table. "Must be nice to even think about it."

"Don't push it, Hwang." Their field team leader and sergeant, Kim Sojung, interrupted quickly. Her gaze swept across the table, where Yuna had already gone pale as a ghost, lips pressed together in a thin line as her free hand tightened into a vise around her mug. Yewon had already reversed the earlier grip and was speaking soothingly to her, while the team medic mirrored her on the other side, one arm wrapped around tense shoulders.

"Hmph." The boots left the table, and the tiny spitfire didn't apologize, but she did pass a stick of gum under the table to Yewon, who raised an eyebrow but didn't expose the peace offering.

"What did I miss?" The voice of Jung Yerin preceded her, much like the explosions from her field of choice. The resident demolitions expert had just won a new round of drinks for her squad after challenging another squad to an arm wrestling match. The ers at this bar had clearly never heard of her reputation.

"Nothing much, just someone being her usual self." Sojung grabbed a beer and downed half of it in one gulp. "Oh and that we might be deployed again."

Yerin frowned as she handed out the drinks. "Really."

"Yewon's brother said so."

"."

"My sentiments exactly."

"Eh, Yuna will feel better after she shoots someone from about a kilometer away, won't she?" The resident spitfire also known as Hwang Eunbi glanced over at the sniper, who was currently staring into her glass like it held the secrets of the universe. No, she wasn't guilty at all. They were all hurt in different ways. Yuna would understand. They'd saved each other too many times. There was a camaraderie forged under fire that civilians would never truly understand.

Besides, Hwang Eunbi knew what Choi Yuna was truly made of. A little PTSD wasn’t going to keep her teammate down forever.

"You still owe me that drink." Yuna finally snapped out of her reverie, a ghost of a smile dancing on her lips. Eunbi grinned and raised her mug in mock salute. Her name twin carefully switched out the beer in front of Yuna for juice. The last time alcohol had been served to Yuna, well, it had been a miracle none of them had been sent to the brig. No one should have been able to function while crying as hard as Yuna had been when she got drunk, but that had been a very educational experience overall for everyone involved. That was also the same incident that cemented the crazy friendship between Hwang Eunbi and Choi Yuna, and it had taken Yewon and her brother every connection they had to prevent the court martial following the event.

As Yerin liked to say, what happens in Daegu stays in Daegu. To this day, no one ever let Yuna get drunk again, much to the disappointment of a certain Private Hwang. She missed having a partner in crime, even a crying one.

“So when do we leave?”

Sojung shot her problematic charge a withering glare, and Eunbi just managed to stop herself from sticking her tongue back out. Barely. The -eating grin really wasn’t much better. Sojung had to physically restrain herself from standing up and smacking the kid upside the head.

“Two days. We’re going to Gyeongju.”

The war was over. We were going to go home. Or make a new home somehow. Things were going to get better. We were alive. We had made it through the fire and flames. Nothing else could hurt us when we were all together. It was just one last mission. We could do this. Right?