"Hey, David," said a voice. You could hear the grin.

"Hi," he said, sitting down. The inside of the truck was stuffy, dark and hot as all hell. The thick clothing they had to wear and the many weapons they wore did nothing to help out. He pulled off his green beret and ran a hand through his sweaty brown hair.

"You could be a bit more enthusiastic," said the woman across the truck from him. She tilted her beret over her head and leaned back, licking a dirty roll up as she did. David tossed her his Zippo and she let the grin show before lighting her sticky, filthy tobacco. She tossed it back at him and crossed her arms behind her head, looking prepared for a long drive.

Flick.

"I'm not particularly enthusiastic about going out there and nearly having my guts blown out," he said wryly as he put the flame to his own cigarette.

"Hey, you joined up, no one drafted you," came the reply.

"Yeah, but if you'd told me what we'd be fighting for I might not have bothered,"

It was a patent lie. They both knew David would have joined up anyway.

"We're not fighting for anything," the woman said in a monotone.

"We're fighting for politics," sneered David.

"Lies," the woman said dismissively, "All lies. Do you know what the word 'populares' means?"

"Sounds Latin," said David. He had learned to be wary of this woman's particular obsession with the Ancient Romans.

"Bingo. Well, back in Rome, the days of the Senate…"

"Like the American Senate?"

"Think along those terms, only with no dictator and loads and loads of veto, bribes and murder," she puffed her cigarette and smiled wryly. "Then again, maybe they're not all that different. Anyway. In the Senate, all the senators, regardless of which family they came from, which faction they were part of (at least, during the later years), they all fell into two categories…"

"Left wing and right wing?"

"Not really," she said with a sigh. "The terms 'left wing' and 'right wing' imply a basic principal of morality behind them. No, the terms were 'optimates' and 'populares'."

"Optimists and pessimists?"

"Hell no! Nothing that simple. The optimates were a class of Senators, mostly members of the patricii class…"

"The what?"

"The Patricians. Wealthy families. Nobles. All that crap. Think the Kennedys, only with inbreeding, arranged marriages and murder,"

"Not much of a leap of imagination," said David with a slightly twisted smile. It was met with a similar one.

"The optimates were all for power to the noble families, the old, old, old, old times god knows how many families. They had great support, as you would imagine, from the patricii. The populares, however, were all for the power to the plebians, the common people,"

"Sounds like the populares were generally decent," said David, perking up.

"Don't get your hopes up. Both factions had the same motives at the end: political power. The optimates were probably the only faction in Rome that actually believed in what the hell it was talking about. The populares? They didn't give a shit about the plebians; they'd support anything the majority wanted, if it would get them greater political power. To hell with their own beliefs, they wanted to get power in the Senate, and if the plebians gave 'em it, so what. It's where the time 'popular' comes from."

"Just what the doctor ordered," said David.

"Oh, yes,"

"Why do you bring it up?"

"For that reason. The instant you mention someone is supporting what the common people want, you automatically assume they're decent. In reality? It's power games, the whole lot of it. All that matters is getting their own power, regardless of how,"

"You're a right patriot, you are," said David sarcastically, "No Bohemian love for you,"

"Of course not. Patriotism is a lie,"

"Whatever," said David, a little more coldly than he meant to.

"Listen, David, and I'll tell you the only truth in this world,"

David raised an eyebrow at the woman. She ignored it.

"The only truth is that, aside from this one, there is no truth. There is simply belief, and some beliefs are so strong, simply from habit, that they are believed to be, what we, common people, we, plebians, call 'the truth'. It doesn't exist. You can peel back all the layers and layers of lies, and still, you'll think you've found the truth, until you peel back your belief and discover that there is, in fact, nothing there,"

"Then what is there?" asked David.

"Depends on who you are,"

"What is there for you, then," the woman looked at David for a moment as he asked his, and then, picked up her gun, a good old AK-47.

"Just the gun. The gun, the bullets, the heat of this truck, the filthy roll ups I make, the blood, the dust, and, in the end, the gun. It's a weapon of death, David. There is no other thing a gun can do, no other purpose it serves but death. Death. Constant, constant death, David. Nothing else. Nothing more,"

"It serves life," said David without thinking. The woman snorted.

"Yes, by taking the death of a man who I never knew and never hated I am helping to save the lives of politicians who do not know me and would never give me a second thought unless I helped them achieve power. Yes, it really serves life. War is not fun, David. War is hatred, and blood, and guts, and the gun. That is all this is, and that is all I am, David. Don't fool yourself. Ever,"

And David sat there and stared at his own gun, and sighed, and puffed on his cigarette, and stared at his hand, disgusted with himself, and yet he couldn't help not believing her. No matter how many layers he peeled away, always, he would be met with one last truth, and that was his own belief, and his own loyalty, and he looked into those tired, woman's eyes, clouded with grief for comrades and blood, looked at the scars down her hands and long fingers, the scars across her neck, and the cloth that covered where he knew more scars would be, and he knew he didn't believe her, and if he didn't believe her then it was no truth and that day she had died in a spurt of red blood, filthy tobacco, Latin and a lie she believed was a truth to the end…

David never visited her grave, though he wanted to. He wanted to leave a stack of filthy roll ups there so that she could have a puff even after death, he wanted to leave his Zippo there for her so she could laugh and flick it open, he wanted to give her that book of Latin phrases she was always rifling through, he wanted to give her back her laugh, her long, slightly bitter grin, he'd lay his own beret down on the grave, pray that she was comfortable, wonder if she was smiling, but he never visited her grave, never…

David never visited her grave, because David never knew her name.

And that was the last truth David let himself know for a very long time.