#tuntsa

Machine

Rating: G Characters: Aarne Honkajoki, Urho Hietanen

Remedial marching lessons had been an utter failure. Unfortunately, the end of marching meant the start of target practice instead. The only small consolation, Honkajoki thought, was that it was easier to deliberately botch something he was genuinely bad at.

"You really are a terrible shot," Hietanen said, watching bullets whizzing past the makeshift target. "For a man who carries a bow and arrow, you'd think you'd have better aim."

Honkajoki lowered his rifle.

"A gun is a machine. Leave it and tape down the trigger, and it will shoot on its own. The bow is an extension of the body. I have never felt compelled to develop the so-called skill of killing via machine."

"Sure, but if your finger's on the trigger, you're still the one shooting. It's not as imperonsal as you're making it sound."

"No. It's worse." Honkajoki stood, abandoning his rifle for someone else to pick up. "War destroys even its survivors. It kills the humanity within men by making them kill each other in inhumane ways. Numbing myself to that is not an area I wish to improve in."

Hietanen blinked, shook his head, and laughed. "You know, that's the most sense you've ever made."

Role model

Rating: G Characters: Salo, Yrjö Lahtinen, Vilho Koskela

"If you hate the Germans so much, why fight with them?"

It's a stupid, childish question, meant to irritate, and Lahtinen doesn't dignify it with a proper answer.

"They didn't give me the option to decline when they drafted me."

Salo is annoingly undeterred. "Why not desert? You don't like the politicians in charge; what do you care if the Russians rule us instead?"

"I'm a Finn." Lahtinen bares his teeth in warning and Salo backs down, a young wolf who has playfully challenged his elder and only too late realized his mistake. "Just becuase I abhor the chains of capitalism doesn't mean I'll roll over and let Finland be chained by Russia again. Our land is ours."

"Oh," Salo says. "I didn't think you, uh—that was well-put."

Lahtinen glares after Salo's hastily retreating back. "Someone's gonna shoot that kid for running his mouth one of these days."

"He only asks your opinion because he respects the strength of your convictions. He looks up to you," Koskela says.

Lahtinen scowls. "I never asked to be anyone's role model."

Spitting image

Rating: G Characters: Raili Kotilainen Warnings: Implied/referenced character death, Period-typical homophobia

"She looks like you."

It's well-meaning, and Raili never corrects the women who nod towards little dark-haired, chubby-cheeked Iina, the spitting image—so they think—of her mother. It's too complicated to explain.

And it's nice to pretend, for just a few minutes, that Iina is hers in a way that those same women would accept as valid if they knew the complicated truth: that Iina looks like her father, and that Raili doesn't know how much longer she and Sirkka can get away with the life they've been living under the pretense of Raili helping a widowed mother with infant care. That Iina calls her and Sirkka mama interchangeably, and that Raili wishes desperately the day would never come when she will learn otherwise.

So Raili simply smiles back and allows Iina to play with the women's children while they chat, and she waits until they are alone to scoop Iina up in her arms and say, "are you ready to go home to mama?"

"Mama," Iina says, thrusting a stubby forefinger into Raili's cheek. "Mama home?"

Raili's smile feels brittle enough to shatter. "That's right. Mama is bringing you home to mama, and then we'll all be together."

Vigil

Rating: T Characters: Mielonen, Lammio Warnings: Dubious consent, Non-consensual voyeurism

Mielonen is used to standing around for stupid reasons. He's in the army, after all. But this has got to be the stupidest.

Is it Mielonen's fault? Maybe. He did wake Lammio up unforgiveably early with a message from HQ that, honestly, could have waited until the sun was up, and he had chosen to ruin Lammio's sleep instead out of spite. Lammio is allowed to be pissed.

What most decent people would do in that situation, though, is call Mielonen a dick and go back to sleep. Not make Mielonen stand guard outside in the cold and dark while they jack off.

Mielonen shifts, shaking out his cold-stiff legs, and wonders what Lammio was dreaming about to leave him so turned on that even his ironclad military discipline couldn't will it away. A girl back home? A lotta? His own smug reflection?

More likely Lammio could have ignored it and decided not to just to be cruel. Mielonen fidgets again, flushed face stinging in the cold wind. What kind of man gets off on making another man stand vigil while he masturbates?

Rejected, Revered

Rating: G Characters: Lehto, Lahtinen Warnings: Derogatory language used towards Reds I guess??

As a child, Lehto was big for his age—brawny, stocky, built to endure. Bully-shaped. He looked older than he was.

Maybe that's why people called him that, a grubby child alone on the streets of Tampere, the chip on his shoulder and his defiant silences when asked about his family. Red brat. Everyone thought it. Many people said it aloud.

The truth, of course, is that Lehto's parents are alive and well; they just didn't want him. It was easier to let strangers hate him for what they believed about his family than admit that Lehto was only an orphan because of something wrong with him.

As a teeanger, when he looked like a grown man and people stopped caring where he lived or why, it stopped mattering so much. Until Lahtinen came along.

Lehto doesn't correct Lahtinen, either. He can't bring himself to. When Lahtinen says red orphan with such deference, Lehto could almost believe that there was something noble about his childhood, that his family might actually be dead in reality and not just in Lehto's esteem. Lahtinen makes Lehto proud to have been orphaned. It's still a lie, but this lie is preferable to the truth.

***

I'm the eldest of my brothers

Rating: G Characters: Koskela, Hietanen Warnings: Implied/referenced character death

"Bad news from home?" Hietanen asks.

Vilho folds the letter and places it back in the envelope. "Depends. My mother thinks so."

Hietanen's eyes widen. "Your brother?"

"Juhani's too young still. Kaarina isn't."

He can't blame his sister for volunteering as a lotta. He doesn't know what it's like to feel helpless while his brothers risk their lives in faraway battlefields, but he's listened to Juhani's guilty conscience often enough to have an idea. He just wishes she had chosen any other way to do her part.

"Here?"

Hietanen sounds as though he can't believe it. Vilho doesn't blame him. He can't imagine anyone willingly coming to these dismal woods either.

"Near Vuosalmi."

"Could be worse."

It could be. Vuosalmi is far behind the front lines. Rationally, Vilho knows Kaarina is as safe as anyone in Kannas—safer than Vilho, certainly. And yet.

"Eero died at Vuosalmi."

"Shit." Hietanen is silent for an uncharacteristically long moment. "How much longer for Juhani?"

"Three years."

"Guess we gotta win this war in two, then."

In spite of himself, Vilho can't help but laugh. As if it were just that easy.

What sort of man

Characters: Riitaoja, Lehto, Koskela

Rating: M

Warnings: Suicidal ideation, Murder, War Crimes

"He wasn't that sort of man," Koskela says quietly, and leaves it at that. The enlisted men give Lehto suspicious, sideways looks for the rest of the day, but by morning the incident has been forgotten—by all except one.

Riitaoja is no fool. He knows the Russian soldier didn't try to run. He saw himself in the face of that starving, terrified man, and he knows that a man like that wouldn't have the guts to flee having already given himself up. Lehto shot an unarmed man in the back, with no provocation, and for no reason besides expediency.

And Riitaoja doesn't mind.

Lehto didn't do it to be kind, but that was the outcome all the same. In the dead Russian's position, Riitaoja would hope for the same quick end rather than a slow death by Soviet torture. He doesn't have Lehto's decisive courage, the resolve needed to pull the trigger on a prisoner of war—or, separated from his squad and surrounded by enemies, himself. Someone else would need to do it.