Soldier On
Chapter 1 – Trenches
Smoke filled the air. His eyes, his mouth, his lungs, all full of it. It never stopped. It hung over the earth like the rest of the dread, faded as much into the background as the tremors he couldn't feel and the screams he couldn't hear anymore. A Japanese-made gun was heavy in his stained palms, only for the optimistic hope that he could scavenge more ammunition off his fallen foes than friends.
It was difficult to think of how he'd gotten to the point of violating the dead for the sake of his own survival.
Dean had only been there a week.
...
He awoke to the sound of voices. God, these motel walls were getting thinner every day. The last thing in his memory, slowly returning to his conscious mind as he stretched his arms above his head, was settling into a creaky Missouri bed where he could count the mattress' springs by how many indents they were going to leave in his back. Gradually he came to the realisation that there weren't any springs at all. And his outstretched arms weren't met with a headboard, or the wall—or anything else. Dean's green eyes snapped open and he sat up. The cot beneath him squeaked in protest.
"Rise and shine, Winchester," came a voice to his left, and his gaze snapped to a young man in a faded, filthy uniform seated on a cot parallel to his own. The boy couldn't have been older than nineteen. He was even seemingly having trouble lacing up his heavy hiking boots. Either he didn't notice the stunned bewilderment on Dean's face or he simply didn't care.
"You slept in," he said when he spoke again. "Andrews already ate your rations."
Dean rubbed his eyes and looked around. He was in a tent. It was crowded with empty cots, their sheets already neatly made, not one any messier or cleaner than the next. "That bitch," he muttered, and the young soldier laughed. But Dean wasn't talking about Andrews. He had no idea who this 'Andrews' was, and frankly, he had no appetite for whatever rations had evidently been taken from him.
He swung his legs out of the cot, finding them already clothed in disgustingly dirty trousers that matched the other man's in every way except size. A quick glance at his uniform told Dean his name was Miller, but when he lifted his helmet onto his lap, the name 'Scarecrow' was etched into the side. He had no insignia. No rank. The kid was as green as green could be.
"What year is it, Scarecrow?" Dean asked, avoiding the confused stare by pulling a shirt that might have once been white over his head.
"Why?"
The top part of his uniform read similar information as Miller's. 'Winchester' was stitched into the front, though he was missing most of the r. On his arm was only one bar. Apparently he was a Private.
"Because I feel like I was asleep for a month." He wrinkled his nose at the feeling of pulling his socks on. They were cold and damp. "Seriously though, do you know the date?"
"August seventeenth, pretty sure," Miller answered. "I think it's a Monday."
Dean looked expectant.
".. 1942," the boy added.
"That bitch," Dean said again.
...
Keeping his eyes and ears open had proved to be an effective way of piecing together a bit of the puzzle. There weren't many questions Dean could outright ask without seeming insane. Everyone in his squad already knew him better than he knew himself. They were a small group; twelve, including himself. On his second day, he'd discovered a folded and tattered little picture in his helmet. One of Cas, Sam, Bobby, Ellen, Jo and himself.
Andrews had peeked over his shoulder while he looked at it.
"That your girl?" He asked, pointing a blackened fingernail towards Jo.
Dean didn't answer.
"She's cute."
It had to be a dream. He begged himself to wake up. To go home. But he never did. And as the water logged his boots, his socks, his pants and his skin itself, it was starting to seem less and less like a nightmare and more like some kind of textbook-example sick joke. Zachariah had been furious that he refused to be Michael's weapon, but Dean had never imagined anyone could be so cruel.
Seeing the world in ruins in 2014 hadn't broken him. Seeing the world in ruins in 1942 wouldn't break him either.
But he wanted to go home.
The picture remained tucked away in his helmet. It was supposed to have been burned. He had watched Bobby throw it in the fireplace after Ellen and Jo had been killed. Dean was happy to have it back. It kept him grounded to the fact that this wasn't his world and he was going to get back to where he belonged some way or another. It kept him trudging through the cold Makin streams, towards the checkpoint, every step another one closer to the checkpoint. To safety.
The seventh day was the first battle he truly considered a battle. For six days his company had trudged through the mud and the forests, never given a break from the wetness for a second. Occasionally they picked off stragglers and small groups that they came across. But less than an hour after being told they were under a day's walk from the checkpoint, they entered the trenches.
Dean had never been around so much gunfire at once. It thundered out from a million different directions, disorienting him and panicking him. Three men in his group had already fallen before he'd fired a single shot.
"Winchester!" his commanding officer screamed over the noise, snapping him out of his daze. "You're still alive, son! Take out the turret!"
Heart hammering painfully against his ribcage, he lifted his rifle and inched above the sandbags that lined the trench. He kept his head low, hardly more than his helmet peering out of his cover. The turret was at least thirty feet from him, manned by one Japanese soldier and supported by two. He drew in a slow breath, finger coming to rest on his trigger. He aimed. A human face hung in the center of his sights. Just another human, like him. The moment he pulled the trigger, he shut his eyes. Only for a brief moment. The crack rang out and echoed in his ears. When he opened his eyes again, the human face was gone, the turret abandoned and the trenches falling strangely quiet without the chain gun's noise. Dean exhaled a shaking breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding.
"Shit," he whispered, and bit back a yelp when a hand gripped his collar and yanked him back down into the trench. It was Andrews.
"Good shooting, man, but we're not done."
The ringing faded a little from Dean's ears and he discovered that Andrews was shouting. The gunfire hadn't stopped. It had hardly diminished. He swallowed and nodded. They jumped the line together, advancing on the Japanese with their remaining teammates until the enemy disbanded and retreated. A battle no more than twenty minutes long had felt like days. Dean's grip on his rifle was tight enough to make his fingers ache for the rest of the day.
...
He sat by the fire, knife in one hand, helmet in the other. He etched a seventh tally mark alongside the other six on one side. Seven days without Sam. Seven days without Cas. Seven days without even a check-in from the angel bastard that had stuck him in this new form of Hell.
Eight of the original twelve men in his group remained, no longer talking with each other about their girlfriends waiting for them back home. They ate their rations in silence, checked their weapons, rolled out their blankets, and most of them turned in early, wearing the dog tags of their fallen blood brothers around their necks.
Dean took first watch, seated close to Miller, who had written something in his journal and gone to bed without a word. He couldn't sleep anyway and he doubted if his young friend could either. He just wanted to go home.