The attacks came so often it made the Pressure unbearable. Not that it was ever bearable, but typically she could manage it. No more. The constant encroachment of the enemy turned sleep from one of life's true joys into a time of dread. Without sleep, without ever being able to truly relax, every moment became a burden. Never being able to find peace was not a thing she'd known before. And so she fought. Not for any noble reason. Not to save the children, or to protect the weak, or end the bloodshed. She found those thoughts too abstract. All she wanted was one night's sleep where she didn't wake to screams.
She found herself laughing at the paradoxical absurdity of it. She would often wonder why she didn't let herself be killed. No one and nothing would wake her from that. Why keep fighting? She said she wanted it to end, yet her actions said otherwise.
When she did get a chance to catch her breath it almost made things worse. It was the wondering that made the Pressure so bad. If she'd been told a year ago that she could grow accustomed to anything, that any situation could be normalized, she wouldn't have believed it. Now she wondered how it'd been so easy.
It was a horrible position. To both need the constant chaos of war to feel as though things were as they should be and to hate each moment of it.
It been almost twenty minutes since anything had happened. Then a shot rang out. She smiled. This what she knew. This felt right, and she loathed it.