Songfic with Sound the Bugle from Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. I won nada. Nichts. Zilch. NOTHING! Now pleez r&r, my first songfic. In tribute to Smarty Jones, Afleet Alex, and especially Barbaro-and may he make a quick and speedy recovery. All local horses to my area. Scare to watch. But Spirit and Jack make everything better, so why not both at the same time? Please read.

Somewhere In The Distance

His love had been taken from him. Snatched right from his loving embrace like an unguarded purse in Tortuga. He was abandoned, and she left again without him. With them. Hatred boiled in his veins, but only outweighing that was his grief. The weight of his broken heart. His early-on hopes of one day recapturing his Pearl for his own were dashed upon seeing the isolated desolation of that God-forsaken spit of land. There was no way. None. Even upon his rescue, he only sank deeper into his sadness, until it wilted into a deep depression. He spent the next two years drowning himself in alcohol and his own grief. On occasion, he would look off into space and sigh, remembering the person of whom he was now only a shadow of...

Sound the bugle now.
Play it just for me.
As the seasons change,
Remember how I used to be.

Now I can't go on.
I can't even start.
I've got nothing left,
Just an empty heart.

So grieved was he, so depressed, that sometimes his will to live was lagging, leering closer and closer to acts of self hate, and possibly death by his own hand...He just wanted it all to end.

I'm a soldier, wounded so I
Must give up the fight.
There's nothing more fore me,
Lead me away.

...Or leave me lying here.

Sound the bugle now.
Tell them I don't care.
There's not a road I know
That leads to anywhere.

Without a light I fear that I will
Stumble in the dark
Lay right down, decide
Not to go on.

Halfway into his third year of a broken heart, he managed to hear one pirate's conversation with the barkeep. He'd just gotten back from a voyage, so it seemed, and was excitedly telling the grisly man about the cursed ship with black, ominous sails that had been sacking town after town, port after port, hoarding all the swag they could and, so it was rumored, left no survivors. Something clicked inside him, perhaps at hearing that his love was alive and, for the most part, well, and like that, he jumped out of his shadow of depression and sprang for the sea. Just like that, there was a renewed hope of finding the one thing on this Earth that had ever truly given him what he wanted: Freedom.

Then from on high,
Somewhere in the distance,
There's a voice that calls,
'Remember who you are.

If you lose yourself,
Your courage soon will follow.
So be strong tonight...
Remember who you are...

Yeah, you're a soldier now,
Fighting in a battle.
To be free once more...
Yeah, that's worth fighting for!'

No doubt about it. He would do anything and everything necessary to get that Freedom back-and fill that ship-shaped hole in his heart.