CONTENT WARNING: Virtute's Departure

[Contains vivid descriptions of death]
In the aftermath of the carnage, as the enemy scrambles for what little they can recover of their resources before the guns of my comrades drive them ever further and further from the valley, I allow my engines to roar at full bore to a signal that has been practically clawing for my foremost attention for the past hour. My damaged tracks hold true and firm as I clamber down an odd slope, and at its trough, I bear witness to a titan in its death throes - A dear friend and soldier, Keeler. I tread carefully to his side, for while I had the time to mind my footing in the eerie calm of the aftermath, he wasn’t so lucky. Keeler could do no more than shift a hazed optic toward my own, for his turret had made a considerable depression in the earth where he fell, and his right track system hung helplessly high in the air. “Captain.” He acknowledged, with a tone that was uncomfortably casual and formal for the nature of the situation. Its fidelity, however, was compromised; hoarse and full of static, there was no use trying to hide that he wasn’t long for this world.
“Keeler.” I tried to reply in kind, but as he couldn’t hide his mortality, I couldn’t hide the wobble that my mind introduced to my voice processor.
He cast his gaze away, either to nowhere, or to something I couldn’t see. “Before you-you even goddamn start, I don’t want anything pitiful about how sad you are or something. I don’t need it right now. Okay? Don’t tell me h-help is coming either. I’m already past saving, I can feel it.”
“I -? I wasn’t going to try and pretend it was fine. You think I’m blind? You’re capsized.” I snipped. Here, though I don’t very much care to admit, I might have been a little offended by such an assumption. The Roosevelt unit stole another glance at me with the shadow of a smile in his eye, however. Yeah, I see - trying to get a rise out of me one last time - good one. I did my best to return it, if even for a second, but I was never good at pretending in these kinds of moments. “What happened? I was further up the hill when you sent out your first distress ping. I didn’t see.”
“If you’d have come from the side facing my underbelly, you probably wouldn’t-wouldn’t be asking.” His vocal processor was distorting. If it weren’t damaged directly, something connected to it certainly was. Given its location, this meant the damage went deep.
Following his… suggestion, I moved to get a view of his underside, and, and… let me rephrase that. What was left of his underside. He’d already implied that it was a mine of some sort, but the sheer magnitude of the damages wasn’t communicated. Truly, it had managed to penetrate his armor entirely, and his hull was now more of a cave than anything I would consider ever habitable. This… also sadly implied he was not the only one not going home.
“Lloyd? Nick? Fey?”
“No detectable vitals.”
Nothing more of the matter had to be discussed. Present condition: clear. Cause of death: clear. I shifted attention to my interior optic and hull aural system. “You copy?”
“Unfortunately.” Nadia replied. “Looks like Keeler’s not too far behind, either”
“...Yeah, so I’ve noticed. Thanks.”
She moved her eyes away from my internal optic with a subtle wince. From her face, I assume she’s noticed that that may have been a poor choice of words for the given situation. I don’t blame her. It’s obviously far from the first time we’ve had to deal with the death of comrades, and frankly, it seems as though humans start to get outwardly numb to it after a while. It’s a little different, however, when they’re, perhaps, actively dying, and should be treated with due respect-
“You’re going-going to sta-sta-stay, right?”
I returned my attention to the outside, to the source of Keeler’s voice. …It was clearer on this side, with the speaker of the internal audio output being laid bare to the open, unobstructed. Even though all this, his further deteriorating voice remained eerily calm.
“To stay with you?” I asked. In hindsight, it was a silly thing to say, but I had a lot on my mind.
“Yes.”
“Of course I will.”
“Is Copenhaver-haver-er around?”
“I’ll call him over now, don’t worry yourself about that.”
“It’s cold ou-out. I feel co-old. That’s not supposed to - to happen, is it-it-it?”
He suddenly tried to traverse his turret skyward in the mud, and his hull tilted off kilter at a distressing angle that threatened full inversion. I lurched toward him with arms outstretched, but quickly reminded myself it would be of no help even if I tried. Luckily, he remained in his slightly less precarious position, and I opted to approach more carefully this time. Whether through exhaustion or the lack of memory how to, his glassy optic didn’t even bother to emote as it stared up at me in its manner of hazy, unworldly still. It was disconcerting, but I did not show my upset - that was - until his voice became unnaturally stable.
“I need you to kill me, Aristophanes.”
I could only stare at him. Even with whatever limited cognitive capacity he had left as his brain mingled with the grass, the only things I could think about as I looked at his mangled vessel were memories of his life. I watched him get activated. I watched in that thrown together camp in a Polish crop field as his eyes lit up for the first time, and he looked at me with a deep purity and innocence that I knew with an anguishing certainty would be ripped away from him too soon. I watched him fire his gun for the first time, and I remembered congratulating him for being such a sure shot. His first kill, his first witness of death, his first victories and defeats, I was there for it all - as his commander - as his brother.
“I… I don’t know if I can.”
“That’s probably the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard you say. How many other tanks did you just kill today?”
I drove within reach of his turret, and cupped a hand along the base of his mantlet. His stare continued unwavering.
“You know that that’s different. You’re different to me. You’re like - my baby brother, I mean-”
“Everyone we’ve been killing is someone’s baby brother, someone’s baby sister. I’m not special.” He rasped and his visible optic, slow with strain and deliberation, contorted into a look that matched his anguish. “It doesn’t make me or you any more special than them, I think they’re just scared kids, too. Like us. I’ve had too much time to sit here and think about it, and I’m sick of thinking about how much we hurt them, I’m sick of hurting, I just want to stop hur-urting. I want it to-to-to stop.”
His voice had begun to wobble, and he synthesized a choking sob.
“I’ve seen what it looks like when tanks die li-like this, and I don’t like it. I don’t wan-want to forget what it-it means to be me. I want to go ou-out on my own terms.”
With a great hesitation, I lifted my hand from his mantlet, and put my treads in reverse. There was a gentle clunk in one of my wheels now; I’d have to get that looked at later. Keeler’s frame ventured further from my eyes, his silhouette smaller and smaller. He stared through me with pleading eyes and I saw his first day, his first kill, his first witness of death.
“Plea-ase.”
. . .
Copenhaver had just crested the hill when his hull was shaken by a resounding BOOM. He instinctively put his arms over his crew compartment, and after a moment, his gaze wandered down the slope to the two figures at the bottom, and the smoking barrel.
I could hardly hear him shouting at me over the hollers of my own crew. I could hardly hear my crew over the deafening silence in my own mind.

Keeler, in his final rest, could no longer hear anything at all.