Heavy and Light

by HarleyMarie

The angel Allura has dealt with dying humans for millennia. But with the events of World War II, her heart has grown weary with witnessing what cruel things humans will do to each other. When she meets Takashi Shirogane, a man she is tasked with taking to Paradise, she expects it to be just like any other encounter. But little does she know just how wrong that assumption will be.

Because I could not stop for Death

He kindly stopped for me

The Carriage held but just Ourselves

And immortality.

-Emily Dickinson

From "Because I could not stop for Death (479)", 1890

Allura had spent much of her time since her creation enamored with human beings. They were absolutely astounding to her. Their ability to create, the seemingly limitless bounds of their imaginations, their stubborn determination, they were all but a few of the countless things that she never grew tired of exploring. Their zeal for everything that they encountered in their short lives carved out a soft spot in her heart for the creatures, but as much as she adored watching them, she was equally grieved by what she saw them do to each other.

For as long as humans have existed, they have been at war with one another in some shape, fashion, or form. With war comes pestilence, death, and grief, all of which Allura quickly learned are immovable pillars of the human condition.

For millennia, Allura had watched the dark threads of humanity interweave seamlessly with the bright glints of hope, adventure, and resilience. Just how this dance between the good and the bad in life plays out in a human's existence had never been explained to her, but she knew that it was something that she could never fully comprehend, no matter how well anyone could attempt to put it into words.

Allura got more hands-on experience with humans than many angels did, and she considered herself fortunate for it. Despite the nature of her work, she knew that it was one of the most honorable things that an angel could do for a human. Ushering a person's soul into eternity was no small task, and not one to ever be taken lightly. Allura had never asked for a different assignment, and she soon found that she was unable to see herself doing any other work.

It was a well-known fact that for an angel, to deal face-to-face with a human was both a rare and an exceptional thing, but for an angel to be with a human in their final moments was something exquisitely beautiful. While all angels respected the occupation and all it entailed, none were envious of the ones that were called to complete it.

Bringing souls to Heaven was something that had always weighed heavily on Allura's heart, and while it was never an easy task to complete to begin with, over the last few centuries the job had become increasingly difficult for her to the point that every soul she encountered caused her pain.

As empires spread their fingers to desperately grasp more land and fleeting power, and as advancements in technology made the business of conquering both easier and more lucrative, the subsequent and inevitable rise of conflict followed, leaving no corner of the earth untouched by its scorching hand. War became more and more commonplace, sending Allura and other angels like her to the surface of the the tiny planet in droves, and what awaited them on both the battlefield and the villages and cities left in the wake of conquest was grotesque carnage that grew steadily worse by the day, in some cases even by the hour. As humanity found new and improved ways to tear itself apart in the name of progress, the souls of those who fell became increasingly heavy with the weight of the sheer inhumanity that they had witnessed in life.

Allura quickly learned that distancing herself from the souls that she carried to Paradise was critical for her to be able to effectively do her job. For hundreds of years she was able to follow through with what her occupation called upon her to do with little to no fuss.

Until, that is, she met him.

There was one soul in particular that broke down every one of her carefully constructed walls so that she could possess a new view into just what being human truly was.

This soul taught her that the human experience is as whole as it is broken, as simple as it is confusing, and as beautiful as it is heartbreaking.

She will never forget the day that she first encountered this soul. The events and images are seared into her mind for all of eternity and the ages beyond.

The year was 1944.

That soul's name was Takashi Shirogane.

---

Allura's sandaled feet collided hard with the sand of the beach she had been sent to.

Before she could even register the shock of her feet slamming into the sand, her senses were assaulted with the absolute chaos that surrounded her on every side.

The sharp and smoky scent of gunpowder filled her nose and cut through the permeating stench of masses of sweaty humans that blended with the heavy smell of salty air drifting in from the sea.

The coppery taste of blood coated her tongue.

Gasoline fumes drifted on a slight breeze, chased quickly by the acrid smell of burning flesh.

A bullet whined past her head and landed with a slap into the ocean behind her. Even though it would have just passed through her, she still flinched at the sound on instinct.

The ever-present snapping of gunfire was the constant background music of the scene before her.

One mortar, followed closely by another, crashed into the beach with an eardrum bursting boom, spraying sand–along with something else–in every direction.

The fall of each one was accompanied by the screams of men.

They came from every direction, impossible to ignore.

They filled Allura's ears and grated against the inside of her skull like nails on a chalkboard. The screams, like the pop pop pop of machine guns, were a macabre harbor of consistency in the ever changing tide of war.

And there, in the middle of the carnage that the second mortar had unleashed on the beach, past the bloody waves that lapped at the bodies strewn up and down the shoreline, was her first soul of the day.

She saw him about twenty yards away from where she stood, leaning against a fellow soldier who had run to his aid. His fists were balled up in his rescuer's jacket, who was busy dragging the soul's mangled body across the sand toward somewhere even remotely safer than where he had been laying, which could have been anywhere at this point.

Allura put her leaden feet into motion and began to make her way toward her assigned soul, and as she got closer to him, it was immediately obvious why she was needed. The man's legs had been crudely severed, one above the knee and one below, by the force of the mortar's explosion, and what was left of them was shredded to bloody ribbons by shrapnel.

There was no cover worth speaking of nor any medic in sight, and Allura knew that this soul didn't have much time left on the earth.

The soldier who had dragged this soul to the side gripped the man's jacket and held his body close. He positioned his own body over his friend's and tried to yell above the noise around him, but also above the shrieking that the soul couldn't keep from spilling out of his mouth.

"I know bud, I know it hurts, just hang in there–" The soldier ripped a hand away and tried to dig through his pockets. His hands shook so hard that he could barely slide his fingers into one. "Where are those freaking tourniquets, come on come on come on— " It took a couple more tries, but he finally found two flimsy canvas tourniquets in a pocket on his pants. It took every ounce of nerve he had, but he wrapped the strips of fabric around each stump wherever they could gain purchase. "Alright, hang on for a second, I'm gonna do it on three, hang in there! One, two, three–" and he yanked the tourniquet as hard as he could. He tried to block out the noises that his friend was making, but couldn't. "Last one, you can do it. One, two three–" and he yanked the second one as tight as it would go. But even with this, he knew that it wouldn't be enough. Panicked, he looked around in every direction, searching the beach. He shook his head in frustration, bent down, and put his mouth next to his friend's ear and shouted, "I'm going to find you a medic, he'll fix you up real good and we're gonna get you out of here, okay? Just hang in there for me, can you do that?"

The dying soul violently shook his head and latched onto his friend's jacket even tighter. "No no no, don't leave me, for the love of God don't leave me! Please, I don't want to die, I don't want to die–"

"That's why I'm going to find someone to help you. I'm not going to let you die, do you hear me?"

The telltale screech of a mortar pierced the air, and the soldier cursed loudly before throwing his body over his friend. A bone-rattling boom shook the ground and flung sand high into the air, where it came raining down on the two men. When the immediate danger had passed, the soldier pushed himself up on his knees, grasped his friend's face between his hands, and locked eyes with him. The force it took to keep his voice as steady as possible was painfully obvious, and even so his words still wavered. "I'm going to be right back, I promise!"

Tears spilled freely from the soul's bloodshot eyes and streamed down his temples as he clawed at his friend above him in a frantic attempt to latch onto him. "No don't leave, please–"

The soldier gritted his teeth and yanked his friend's hands away, shoving him back into the sand, tears falling from his eyes in return. "I'm sorry but I have to. God forgive me!" he yelled out before spinning on his heel and sprinting away, all the while screaming for a medic.

Allura watched him go for a moment, but then focused back to the man in front of her, the soul that she was tasked with bringing to Paradise.

She took a deep breath and stepped forward. As she stepped off, time seemed to slow. The din of battle quieted into muffled background noise that only the loudest of mortars could punctuate, but they still felt as if they were a hundred miles away. The only things that seemed to break the spell were the sounds of the grains of sand quietly shifting under the weight of her feet and the moaning and ragged breathing of the dying man in front of her. The world felt as if it stopped spinning on its axis. Perhaps it had.

Allura stopped a couple of feet away from the man's side. She looked down at him with pity, her heart heavy as a stone, and stretched her right hand forward, palm facing out.

Instantly, the man's head snapped to the side, and he saw the being that stood before him for the first time. His eyes widened to twice their previous size, his pupils fully dilated into black pools of fear. His mouth gaped open in what looked to be a scream, but no sound came out. His entire body began to shake. He tried to push himself back in any direction that would put as much distance as possible between him and the place where Allura stood.

He was scared out of his mind. But he had good reason to be.

Allura was far from what every artist in history had thought angels looked like. She wore no glimmering white robes. There was no softly glowing golden halo hovering over her head. Her face wasn't rosy and ethereal. There was no delicate smile on her face. Fluffy white wings didn't gently wrap themselves around her body.

No, she was something completely different, something far beyond the scope of human comprehension.

In place of robes, she was adorned in a tunic and armor, polished brighter than the most precious silver. Her hair was braided tightly against her head and fell in a thick plait over her shoulder. Six wings, thick and strong, each one spanning nearly twice the length of a fully-grown man, protruded from her back. Her body was taut, all muscle and sinew and raw power. Her eyes were like tongues of fire, and her face shone with the blinding light of Paradise.

She was truly a terrifying sight to behold.

The first words out of her mouth that she spoke to the man before her were, "Do not be afraid." She knew that this never really helped anyone when they were first confronted with an angel, but it was a bidding that had been used throughout the centuries, and it was one that many humans recognized.

She continued speaking after giving the man a moment to attempt to process what his eyes were seeing. Allura's voice was calm, steady, and warm. Something for a human mind to grasp and ground itself in.

"Anthony Michael Irving, I am the angel Allura. I have been sent to you because you have found favor with the Almighty, and I am tasked with bringing your soul to Paradise."

The soldier in the sand slowly stopped trying to squirm away from her. His mouth eventually remembered how to close, and after a long moment, he nodded his head slightly. His strength was fading fast, and his body began to sag into the sand. His breathing hastened and grew more shallow, so Allura drew closer to him and knelt at his side. She smiled down at him and pressed her hand lightly against his rapidly paling cheek, gently wiping tears and blood away with her thumb.

"You've done well, Anthony, but you are tired. It's time to rest now."

Anthony looked up into Allura's eyes and, after a long moment, nodded again. He tried to speak but nothing came out at first. He tried again, this time after a dry swallow, and managed a weak, "O… kay…"

Allura nodded back to him and stroked her thumb across his cheek. "Alright then."

Anthony kept his eyes locked on Allura, and a slight smile tugged at one corner of his lips. He reached up to grip her hand with what little strength he had left. A small gasp broke past his chapped lips. Then his hold on her hand slackened. And just like that, he was gone.

His head rolled gently away from Allura's palm and came to rest against the beach.

A wispy silver cloud began to seep from the body that used to belong to the man named Anthony Michael Irving. Within seconds, it had congregated together into a shape that vaguely resembled the body that it had once inhabited, and Allura bent forward and scooped it up in her arms. The breathy appearance of the soul was deceiving, as Anthony Michael Irving's soul was as heavy as a load of bricks. Allura adjusted the soul in her arms and carefully stood to her feet. She tilted her head back, spotted her target beyond the sky, galaxy, and bounds of the universe, and spread her wings wide. With a single powerful downward push, her six wings rocketed her body and the soul she clutched close to her chest into the heavens.

Time and space blended together, simultaneously stretched as far apart as the four directions and crushed into itself billions of times over. Colors that no human eye could ever comprehend or imagine surrounded Allura on every side. Almost as soon as the myriad of colors appeared, they were drowned out by a blinding light. Her feet found solid ground, and as suddenly as she left the surface of the earth, Allura stood before the gates of Paradise.

Her wings sheltered both her and the soul that she carried in a protective cocoon. Two of her wings she lifted to cover her face, two she wrapped around her body, and two she lowered to cover her feet. Despite this, there was no shadow behind her wings, and it was still as if everything were laid bare before the piercing light that surrounded them on every side. Allura looked down at the soul in her arms, now as weightless as a breath of air. She opened her middle set of wings enough to extend her arms forward, letting the silver wisp of soul fall from her hands.

The soul left her embrace and cascaded from her hands and toward the ground, and it immediately began to transform. The soul straightened and became more solid, reshaping into a new human form. Misty silver came together to form flesh. Limbs that had been mutilated only moments before were now strong and new. Every trace of dirt, blood, sweat, and pain was erased from the face of the soul. Its eyes opened with a flutter, and they were brighter and more filled with life than they had ever been on the earth.

Allura smiled from behind her raised wings as she watched the transformation unfold in front of her. This was always her favorite thing to witness, and no matter what horrific things happened in the process of collecting a soul, being able to watch it catch its first glimpse of the wonders of eternity was enough to make trudging through the pain and sorrow of Earth well worth it.

She took a step forward and placed a hand on the soul's arm, which was firm and sturdy under her fingers, and she gently turned and guided him toward a set of gates that stood before them. His eyes bounced in every direction, unable to rest on any single thing for more than a moment. He was shocked into silence, which was common. It was rare for Allura to encounter a soul that was able to speak when it first opened its eyes after death, simply because what they were seeing was so far beyond what they could ever hope to imagine in life.

They crossed the distance quickly. The soul was eager to reach the gates and what lay beyond them, and Allura was not about to slow him down.

"Anthony Michael Irving," she said once they had come to a stop before the towering gate, her heart light with the knowledge that one more soul was now safe in the arms of eternity, "let me be the first to welcome you to Paradise."

Almost on reflex, the soul pressed his hand against the glimmering surface of the gate, pushing it open with ease. A smile unlike any other spread across his face, and his eyes drank in everything before him. Slowly he stepped forward, and Allura let her hand slip from his shoulder as he walked on.

Her job was done. Now it was time to start all over again.

It was with great reluctance that she turned away from the pearly gates and strode down the crystal path that would allow her to return to Earth. Galaxies upon galaxies lay under her feet, the names of which were far too numerous for her to be able to recall. The colors swirled together into a work of art that would usually take her breath away, but today her mind was too full to notice them. Her workload was too great, and she had to get back to that beach.

She quickened her pace to a jog, then broke into a run, her sandals pounding against the translucent ground with sharp slaps. She spread her wings and, once she reached the abrupt end of the crystal path, leapt out into the vast expanse of the universe. She angled her body downward, toward Earth, and with a powerful surge of her wings, she rocketed down from the heavens.

Time and space blended together, simultaneously stretched as far apart as the four directions and crushed into itself billions of times over. Colors that no human eye could ever comprehend or imagine surrounded Allura on every side, clinging to her as she descended, as if they were thousands of hands grasping at her in a vain attempt to dissuade her from leaving. Almost as soon as the myriad of colors appeared, they were smothered by a swath of gray. Sounds of gunfire and the weight of human suffering pressed in around her. The smells of gunpowder, blood, and salt filled her nose. A moment later, her feet found solid ground, and as suddenly as she left the light of Paradise, Allura's feet collided with the same bloody beach that she had left only a few moments before. No time had passed, but she had a new soul to retrieve.

This next soul was sprinting up the beach, hands and uniform stained with another man's blood. His voice was raw from emotion and strain, his eyes red and puffy from exhaustion and tears.

He was screaming for a medic.

A sudden line of bullets pelted the sand in front of him, and the soul instantly threw himself out of the way and against what cover he could find, a hastily-constructed sand dune. He waited, curled against the sand, his hands over his helmet and knees pulled up close to his chest, for the bullets to be exhausted. Once the lead stopped raining down on him, he jumped to his feet and continued to run. He tripped over a forgotten ammunition can and nearly fell to the ground but was able to catch himself on his hands and push himself back into a run. Every step of his waterlogged boots was heralded by his desperate voice booming out before him.

"MEDIC! MEDIC!"

He only made it halfway through his next cry before a bullet through the helmet silenced him forever.

Before his body even had a chance to hit the ground, a thin silvery cloud began to seep from it and collect in the smoky air. After a moment, it formed into the rough shape of a human, but it looked down at the body at its feet and around itself, its confusion palpable. Allura stepped forward, heart heavy once again, ready to carry what had been her previous soul's earthly friend to Paradise. She raised her right hand, palm facing outward, and spoke.

"Do not be afraid."

The soul looked her way, the misty form cocking its head to the side. It was unable to put two and two together. It didn't understand who she was. It didn't understand what had just happened. It didn't understand that its human life was over, that the body that it once inhabited had just had a bullet tear through its skull.

"It's alright," Allura reassured, her voice soft and steady, "I am the angel Allura. I have been sent to you because you have found favor with the Almighty, and I am tasked with bringing your soul to Paradise."

-x-x-x-

The days waned on slowly, and as they trudged along and as the number of souls that Allura retrieved grew, the further inland she travelled. The fighting was advancing away from the loose sand of the shore and toward grassier, better fortified ground.

Bunkers hiding machine guns spat bullets out of holes in their walls with reckless abandon, the fiery lead swallowed up by smoke and dust. Land mines dotted the ground and exploded periodically, triggered by an ignorant step. Trenches dug into the earth in rows lead up to the fronts of the bunkers, which were flanked by men who were all hell-bent on keeping the advancing enemy out. Rows of sandbags were stacked on top of each other. The crack of gunfire twisted together with shouts of German and scattered screams. Somewhere on the field, a man cried for his mother.

It was there, in one of these trenches, that she first laid eyes on him.

He had just thrown himself head-first into a trench, where he roughly slid down the dirt walls to the bottom. A quick jerk of his head to each side reaffirmed that he was alone in the trench. He was covered in grime. Sweat dripped down his face, painting tracks through everything that covered him–dirt, blood, soot–and every movement further smeared the concoction deeper into his uniform and across his skin. His eyes, wide and white, bounced back and forth, up and down, searching for any and every threat. He tried to push himself up against the trench's wall, but cried out and clutched at his side, sliding back down to the floor of the trench. Loose earth crumbled down along with him and trickled into his collar and off of his shoulders and back. His fingers dug into his jacket, palm pressed hard against his side, and blood spilled over his knuckles and down his hand. He looked down and groaned, then slammed his head back against the dirt behind him, almost as much out of frustration as out of pain. His metal helmet smacked against the dirt with a dull thud. He closed his eyes tightly and let a rattling breath hiss out from behind clenched teeth.

He was exhausted, in pain, and he was the only living person in the trench.

There were two other bodies in it along with him. One was German, and it hung halfway in the trench about five feet up and to his right, one arm hanging limply against the wall of dirt. The other lay near a bend on the floor of the trench, ten feet away or so. It was indistinguishable, and so badly burned that it was barely recognizable as human.

The soldier took a second to try and catch his breath. His hand shook against his side as he tried to press it down as hard as he could. His other hand raked its fingers across the ground, nails digging jagged grooves into the packed dirt and pulling the cool earth against his palm.

He sat alone, forcing shaky breaths in and out in a weary rhythm until about ten seconds later, when he heard a shuffle and a thud. He jerked his head toward the noise and suddenly found himself face to face with a German soldier, who had just tripped over the burned body by the curve in the trench.

Each man spotted the other at the exact same time. They locked eyes for a fraction of a second.

Both acted on instinct and were moving before either of them had a chance to blink.

The soldier by the burned body surged forward, his rifle with its fixed bayonet raised, driving it down with his body weight behind it. He covered the distance between him and the soldier on the ground in two steps. He screamed something in German as he drove the weapon down.

The soldier on the ground twisted to the side out of the bayonet's immediate path and threw his arms up to try and grab ahold of the body of the rifle, to gain control. He managed to get his hands on it, but his right hand, covered in blood from his wound, slipped down the wooden body of the rifle, and he lost his grip on it. He narrowly avoided slicing his hand on the blade.

The German wasted no time and took advantage of his opponent's blunder. The rifle rose up and crashed down again, but another last-second twist left the rifle narrowly missing its target and piercing into the ground for the second time. The rifle had the full weight of the other man behind it and it slammed deep into the dirt.

The soldier saw his chance and threw a weighty kick against the rifle, sending it, along with the German soldier that was leaning on it, down into the dirt with him. The rifle skidded out of arm's reach and left the German man weaponless.

The German soldier leapt at his enemy, fingers splayed and eyes blazing with a flood of adrenaline. He scrambled to grab ahold of his target and managed to wrap his fingers in the collar of his shirt. His right fist flew down and connected once, twice, three times. His left hand shook so violently that he might have lost his grip if his fingers weren't so deeply entangled in the cloth.

The other soldier threw a hand up and pushed against his assailant's chest in a desperate attempt to put space between them. He took the punches and cried out with each one. His eyebrow split and blood filled his mouth from a busted lip, both of which painted the knuckles of the attacking German soldier a glistening red. His other hand shot down to his hip and began to grasp at the pistol holster that hung on his belt. It was buttoned closed, and he tried to rip the flap open to access his weapon. He managed to loosen the flap, but the German soldier saw what he was doing, and he jerked his knee forward to pin the soldier's arm to the ground. With only one arm free, he grabbed as much of the German's uniform as he could and yanked him forward. Since he was unable to reach his pistol, he used his helmet as a weapon instead, smashing it as hard as he could into the German's face. He heard a sharp crack and a yell, then felt the man on top of him shift his weight back. He took advantage of the momentum and pushed forward as hard as he could, throwing the German's body backwards enough to give him room.

His free hand moved on its own accord. It crossed over his body, wrapped its fingers around the pistol, and drew it from the holster. The German soldier didn't have the time to react.

Four times he pulled the trigger. Four white flashes appeared in front of him and four sharp pops filled his ears.

The man straddling him jerked with each shot. He made a wet choking noise and tried to move, tried to speak, but failed. He reached a hand forward toward the man under him in what looked like an attempt to touch his face, but he fell heavily against his killer's chest, helmet crashing into the dirt wall of the trench.

Everything was still.

The surviving man lay under the body for a second, then two, gasping for breath, before gritting his teeth and shoving the body off of him with a loud groan of pain.

He lay there a moment, gulping down air and blinking blood out of his eyes. His body began to shake as the adrenaline that had flooded his bloodstream began to wane.

He forced himself to sit up. Almost mechanically he replaced his pistol in its holster and reached over to pull his rifle into his grasp. His jaw was clenched tightly. He didn't look at the body next to him.

His right hand reached up to his side and pressed against his wound once again. It bled more freely now, and the expression on his face turned from one of steel to something a touch more concerned.

Shaky breaths in and shaky breaths out. A steady drip, drip, drip of blood fell from his eyebrow onto his jacket. He spat a stream of spit and blood onto the ground. The trench was quiet again.

It was at that moment that Allura stepped down into the trench with him.

She stood on his left side, about an arm's length away. She wasted no time in extending both her hand and her customary greeting. This soul didn't have much time left, so there wasn't a moment to waste.

"Do not be af–"

Before the words were even fully out of her mouth, the man in front of her had already whipped his head in her direction and thrown his rifle to his shoulder on instinct, chest heaving and a bloody finger curled tightly around the trigger. He stared her straight in the face through the rifle's sight, his eyes unwavering. His mouth was contorted into a grimace that bared his teeth. Strings of spittle clung to his lips, which were dry and cracked. Blood trickled down his chin from the fresh cut.

Allura's eyes widened in surprise, but not due to the show of bravado taking place in front of her. In fact, she could practically taste the fear that clung to every inch of him, but the thing that took her aback was the fact that what he was afraid of was not her at all.

Never before had Allura encountered a human who could look at an angel and feel no fear at what they saw. It was simply unheard of. It just… didn't happen. And yet, and yet, here this man was, evenly staring down the barrel of a rifle at her, entirely ready to commit to pulling the trigger at the slightest movement.

She didn't know what to make of it. She almost felt as if she and the man in front of her had switched roles, that she was the one that was perplexed at his presence, while in every other situation, timeline, and universe, it should have been the other way around.

It took her a moment to realize that her mouth was actually hanging open, and once she did, she snapped it shut like a steel trap. She swallowed and cleared her throat quietly, then attempted her greeting again.

"Do not–"

"You've got exactly three seconds to tell me what you are before I shoot you."

His voice was strained from exhaustion and overuse, but somehow remained steady over the chaos around the two of them.

Allura blinked once at being interrupted for a second time, then lowered her hand. "I am the angel Allura. I have been sent to you because you have found favor with the Almighty, and I am tasked with bringing your soul to Paradise."

At the word 'angel', it was his turn to blink. His moment of surprise was incredibly brief however, because his gaze hardened again almost immediately. "Guessed that much. From the wings and shining face and all." He gestured in Allura's general direction with the barrel of his rifle. "You've got the wrong guy though. I'm not dying. Best you take care of him— " he pointed his chin at the body next to him on the ground, "or move on to somebody that actually is dying, and preferably in that direction." He jerked his head in the general direction of the bunker and lines of sandbags in front of him. "I'm busy."

Allura raised a skeptical eyebrow. "So you're trying to tell me that your name isn't Takashi Shirogane? You're trying to tell me that I, who have never once mistaken one soul for another, have got the wrong man?"

"It's Shiro, but yes, you do. First time for everything. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to do my job and you're taking up precious time that I don't have. Sorry for the inconvenience."

Shiro lowered his rifle from his shoulder and planted it into the dirt and pushed up against it just enough so that the top of his helmet crested the side of the trench. He angled his head so his voice carried behind him. "SATCHEL!"

His voice boomed over the gunfire and was immediately answered by someone from a trench behind, about ten yards back. "HERE IT COMES!"

A rectangular box in a fabric casing sailed over the gap between trenches, drawing the attention of enemy fire while it was airborne. Shiro reached an arm up and snagged it out of the air before sliding back down deeper into the trench. He wrapped the fabric handle's slack around his hand to give his fingers better grip on the box. He picked up his rifle with his other hand and pushed himself up to his feet. He stumbled and fell forward against the other side of the trench, the bullet in his side bringing him to his knees.

His snatched breaths pushed through his nostrils and the muscles in his jaw knotted tightly. His fingers curled around his rifle just a little more.

Shiro looked back up to Allura, who was still standing in the exact same place. Her expression hadn't changed.

"I'm telling you," he said through gritted teeth, "you've got the wrong guy. I'm not dying. Not now." He took a breath and swallowed, but from the look of his face he might have swallowed sandpaper. "But for the sake of argument let's say you're right. Let's say that I am dying. So what. I'm not dying until I deliver this to some Nazis." He raised the box a little, the handle letting it sway some with the movement.

Allura's eyes flickered over to it, then back to Shiro. She frowned and shrugged her shoulders slightly. This human was proving to be as interesting as he was incredibly stubborn. "Alright. I'm not stopping you. I am not here to interfere with the affairs of humans, only to complete my task."

The corner of Shiro's mouth turned up in what might have been a grin, if not for the complete lack of mirth in his eyes. He got back up to his feet, a little more slowly this time, and yelled back to the trench behind him.

"COVER!

He hauled himself up and over the wall of the trench as someone in the other trench cried, "COVER HIS TAIL!" and the air exploded into a cacophony of gunfire. Bullets pounded into the rows of sandbags around the concrete bunker that was about fifteen yards away from where Shiro exited the trench. His boots flew over the dirt and carried him as quickly as they could to the last trench, right underneath the bunker. An enemy mortar landed to his right and sprayed dirt and smoke into the air. It was near enough to him that it nearly sent him careening into the ground, but far enough away that sheer determination could keep him on his feet and driving forward. A line of bullets from the bunker's machine gun tore through the air at him, but a dive and a roll into the final trench wrenched him from the shooter's range.

Shiro gritted his teeth and fell hard into the deepest part of the trench. He kept ahold of the box but lost his grip on his rifle, since the wood was still slick from the blood that covered his hand. Fire licked at his side and he could feel his racing heartbeat pound in every inch of his body. But he forced it out of his mind. He had no time to lose.

He pushed himself up to his knees and untangled the box's fabric handle from around his hand while casting an eye up at the bunker. A large pile of dirt leading from the bottom of the trench where he was up to the bunker obscured most of its facade from view, but what wasn't hidden behind earth was a long but slender rectangle that was cut out from the front face of the concrete. The barrel of a machine gun stuck out of it. It moved back and forth, spraying bullets left and right at anything and anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the crosshairs. It couldn't reach Shiro down here, not while he was so close that he was practically right under its nose.

Which was exactly what he wanted.

He just needed a second to try and breathe.

For a moment, Shiro let his head fall forward against the dirt wall in front of him. He closed his eyes tightly and tried to gulp in lungfuls of air, but the thick smoke burned on the way down. With every movement of his chest, the gaping wound in his side screamed white-hot in reply. He told himself over and over that he had to keep going, he had to keep pushing, not for him but for every single man behind him and those that would follow behind them.

His heart wanted to kick down the door of the bunker and wipe the entire opposing line off the map in one fell swoop of bullets and fury, but his body was a stark reminder of reality. The earth under him drank the blood that dripped steadily through his uniform with no prejudice or disdain, just as it did with hundreds of other men yesterday and the days before that, just as it had today and would tomorrow, in this war, and in the next. He opened his eyes slowly. He knew he was running out of time. He had to destroy this bunker, even if it was the last thing he did. Which, at this point, was what it was looking like it was going to be.

A bright light caught his eye and he looked over. It was Allura. His eyes locked with hers. She had followed him over from the other trench and now stood about twenty feet away from where he leaned against the mound of dirt, steadily watching. Her face was mostly unreadable, but there was something sad about it. Her hands were folded loosely in front of her, the massive wings behind her fidgeting slightly.

Shiro took a deep breath and tightened his grip on the handle of the box. It was now or never.

He turned his attention back to the bunker. It was a short crawl up to where he could throw his cargo into it, and he knew that once the platoon in the trenches behind him saw him crawl up into view, they would do their best to eliminate any enemies hiding behind the sandbags which flanked the bunker that would try to stop him.

He trusted them. They would keep a path clear for him. All he had to do in return was blow a door wide open for them to pour through.

He had one shot. He was going to make it count.

His legs propelled him up the slope as quickly as they could. He kept low, his body pressed against the dirt. His arms pulled him forward over the rocks and spent shell casings, some of which were still warm. He could feel explosions reverberate through his bones as they detonated in various places around him, and he could see enemy soldiers fall out of the corner of his eye as bullets peppered the sandbags that flanked his target.

The bunker loomed over him as he crawled closer. The hole in the wall of the concrete, his goal, held a machine gun whose barrel poked out of it. Back and forth it went, spraying bullets over his head in a steady stream of hot lead.

Everyone has to run out of ammunition eventually, he thought.

Back and forth the barrel went, the end of the muzzle glowing red from the heat, until the bullets suddenly stopped.

Shiro wasted no time. He covered the last few feet to the bunker and paused to yank a cap off of a tube that fed into the box that he carried. Smoke started to flow from it, and the box hissed quietly. He grit his teeth and drew back his arm. With as much strength as he could muster, he threw the box through the hole in the bunker. From inside, he could hear yelling. He couldn't understand the words, but the tone and flurry of words were universal.

Blind panic.

It barely registered though, because as soon as the box flew from Shiro's hand he was scrambling back down the slope of dirt into the safety of the trench.

He barely made it back to the bottom before the bunker exploded.

There was a massive flash of fire, a deafening blast.

Chunks of concrete flew in every direction.

Dust was thrown high into the air and it rained down into the trench.

Shiro couldn't hear anything but ringing. High-pitched, whining, piercing ringing. He clawed at his helmet, trying to find his ears. No matter how hard he pressed his palms against them, he couldn't silence that cursed ringing. His heartbeat pulsed in his head. Loud, pounding, like a drum beating on the inside of his skull.

Shiro couldn't see. All his eyes could catch were blurs, nothing more than fragments of light and movement. Something bright moved in front of him, but he couldn't make out what it was. It looked like the shape of a human but it was all wrong… it was too bright, it hurt his head. He closed his eyes as tightly as he could, but the light still pierced through his eyelids.

His side was on fire. With every breath, Shiro felt as if he were being shot all over again. Now that he was finally still, he wanted nothing more than to never have to move ever again. His body was exhausted. He didn't know if he would be able to crawl out of this trench, and honestly, right now, he was perfectly fine with that. He had done his job. He had blown the door wide open for his platoon. They could break through the line.

He had done his job.

He was so tired…

Just then, Shiro heard footsteps approach him. They stopped just short of where he lay, and then he heard clothing shift. A squeak of leather, a tinkling of metal. He slowly opened his eyes. It wasn't an enemy soldier, not even one of his own. It was Allura who knelt in front of him, and the image of her face slowly came into focus. She was trying to say something to him. Her lips were moving, but he couldn't hear her. All he could hear was the ringing.

Behind her, Shiro could see his fellow soldiers. They were sprinting across the ground and leaping over the trench, guns blazing, their faces alive with determination from the opportunity that he had provided for them.

He watched them. He wished he could climb out of this trench and fight alongside them, but his body felt too heavy to move.

Everything began to slow down. The running forms of soldiers blurred into swipes of muddy green and brown. The flashes of explosions appeared to lose their sharpness. The ringing in Shiro's ears died down until all he could hear was the sound of his heartbeat in his chest. The pain in his side faded into the background until it was digging around somewhere in the back of his brain. The world felt as if it stopped spinning on its axis. Perhaps it had.

Allura looked down at Shiro, and he turned his attention back over to her after a moment. His gaze was steady and his eyes were clear, though bloodshot. He slowly pulled his hands away from his ears.

"Shiro," Allura said, "you've fought valiantly. You have proven yourself and brought honor to your name. You have earned your seat at the table among the warriors of old." She paused, letting her words sink in. Shiro looked back at her, his face unreadable.

"Your body is broken. It's not going to be able to hold on for much longer. I'm here to take your soul to Paradise. Do you understand?"

Shiro held her gaze. He didn't say anything and his face was blank. He just continued to look back up at her.

Allura sighed quietly and looked at Shiro's side. His uniform boasted a blossoming red stain that covered everything from the bottom of his ribs to well past his hip.

She looked back at Shiro as he cleared his throat and licked his lips. When he spoke, his voice was low, gravely, cracked.

"No."

Allura frowned. "No, you don't understand, or— ?"

"No," he stopped to swallow, "I'm not going to die."

Allura put her hands on top of her knees and spread her fingers in an attempt to relieve some tension. She closed her eyes for a second before she continued. "Shiro, can you not see what's happening here? I'm trying to help you, but you're not letting me help you. There's no reason to be ashamed, or fearful. This is…" she searched for what she should say next. She lifted her hand as if she were going to pluck the right word from the air. "This is a… a blessing."

"A blessing?" Shiro said. His eyebrows shot up in genuine shock. "Please know that I mean no disrespect in this miss, but death is no blessing." He rolled his head so he could look at Allura head-on. The metal helmet grinding against the dirt and rocks cut through the quiet like a knife. When Shiro spoke again, his voice wasn't quite as gravely, but instead it was a touch weaker. It was sadder too, like the words were heavy on his tongue.

"We humans get one life on this planet. You get thousands of lifetimes to spend doing whatever it is that you angels do all day." His brow furrowed, and he swallowed a cough. He took a second to breathe and bit his cheek before he continued. "This one life that we get, it's… it's worth more than you'll ever know. Because that's just the thing. We only get one." He weakly lifted his index finger from the dirt for emphasis. "One chance to be something, one chance to leave a mark." He let his finger drop back down. He looked at it laying there, the nail broken and caked in blood and dirt. His eyes seemed to cloud for a moment. His voice got a little quieter, a little more thoughtful. "One chance to do something worth remembering." His fingertip drew a small circle in the dirt once, twice, three times. It suddenly jumped when he tried to stifle another cough but failed. He grimaced and reached down to his side as his chest heaved, but his hand stopped halfway there. He opened his eyes wider, sucked down a lungful of air through his nose. His breathing was steadily growing faster. Shiro looked back up at Allura. His face was stern again. "And I'm not done living, so I'm not dying. Not today."

Allura looked down at this man in front of her. She had no idea what to say now.

Nobody laid eyes on an angel and felt not even the slightest hint of fear. Nobody carried on conversations with angels like they would any other person. And nobody, in the hour of their death, looked at an angel in all of its glory and simply said 'no'. It just didn't happen.

And yet here was this man. Takashi Shirogane. Taking precedent and turning it on its head.

She was completely baffled. Her head was spinning because none of this was right, this wasn't supposed to happen, this had never happened, this simply didn't happen!

It was now Allura's turn to struggle to catch a breath. The air in the trench felt that it was just too far away, just out of her reach. Her fingernails dug into her knees in a desperate attempt to anchor herself in this moment and try to figure out what she was supposed to do.

But she came up with nothing.

There was just her, on her knees, looking down at this soldier. Just this soldier, pressed against the dirt, looking up at her.

Her eyes jumped from his and searched his body, as if it would give her any new answers. There were none to be found.

She looked back to Shiro and opened her mouth, words perched on the edge of her lips.

Before they could fall, the world around her jerked back into furious motion.

Two pairs of boots slammed into the bottom of the trench behind Allura, one right after the other. Gunfire cracked through the air and the blasts of mortars ripped into the earth with a renewed vengeance. A pair of hands reached through Allura's form and grabbed the front of Shiro's uniform. The overload of noise paired with being shocked by the sudden appearance of two other humans nearly made Shiro jump out of his skin.

"Where're you hit?"

Shiro stared up at the soldier over him, eyes wide and mouth gaping.

"Shirogane talk to me, where're you hit?"

Shiro looked back and forth between the soldier in front of his face and the one crouched just behind the soldier's shoulder. He blinked once, twice. He couldn't figure out where these people came from. He was just talking to Allura, and then one went… through her?

"Hey, Shirogane!" One of the men snapped their fingers in front of his face. "Focus for me here."

Shiro jumped a bit at the sudden movement, and that's when he started to put two and two together.

"Right… right side," he stammered, and the two men immediately got to work.

"Hit anywhere else?" the first soldier asked, his hands already filled with bandages that were handed to him from a bag slung across the other soldier's back. He jerked Shiro's uniform jacket up, exposing his skin, and ripped open a packet that the other soldier handed him. He poured a fine white powder into the entrance wound before he started pressing the gauze heavily against Shiro's side. "Talk to me, are you hit anywhere else?"

Shiro blinked. He couldn't seem to clear the cobwebs in his head. After a minute of trying to piece a thought together, he shook his head no.

The second soldier stepped over Shiro's legs and knelt by his side. He dug into the bag and quickly withdrew a small tube with a long cap on it. He bit onto the cap with his teeth and jerked the tube away with his hand, revealing a needle. He spat the cover over his shoulder and down the trench. The man leaned down and stuck the needle into the muscle of Shiro's arm. He didn't bother moving the sleeve. "Here comes the morphine, you'll feel better real soon," he said as he squeezed the tube.

Shiro nodded slowly and looked up at the gray sky. It was opaque. Any semblance of blue was obscured by thick clouds of smoke. He realized that he couldn't feel the sun. He also realized that his right hand suddenly wouldn't stop shaking.

"I've got to check your back, hang on while we roll you over, ok?" Shiro looked back over to the second soldier and nodded again once the words started to make sense. He groaned when hands pushed him over onto his left side and yanked his clothes up to expose his back. "No exit wound, that bullet is still in there somewhere," the soldier said to his companion. He leaned over and lowered his voice as he spoke closer to the other man's ear. "That blood trail spans three trenches, we have to work fast." They rolled him onto his back again and the first soldier continued to press bandages against Shiro's wound. A small pile of bandages were discarded on the ground next to him, as they were soaked through.

Shiro didn't know whether to be glad about the fact that the bullet hadn't gone through or scared stiff by it. He had seen both circumstances quickly turn deadly before, so his morphine-dulled mind settled for feeling something in between.

"Shirogane, you might have just saved all our lives," the first man said in an obvious attempt to redirect Shiro's attention. "You took out that big gunner that's been mowing our guys down for days when you blew that bunker sky high. It was a beautiful sight to see, I'll tell you that." He smiled at Shiro and finished packing the wound, sealing his work off with a couple of hastily torn strips of medical tape. "We ought to just call you corporal FUBAR, huh?"

Shiro cast a glance down at the soldier's hands. They were covered in blood. His blood. "Let's just hope my skills didn't transfer from bunkers to myself." He clenched and unclenched his fist a few times, but he couldn't get his fingers to still. He was feeling lightheaded and absolutely exhausted.

"You're looking real pale and shaky there buddy," the second soldier said. He grabbed onto Shiro's chin and tilted his head toward him. "Look at me. Try to breathe. Slow, deep breaths."

Shiro tried to do as he was told but it was much easier said than done. All he could manage were shallow gasps. He finally realized that it wasn't just his hand shaking, but his legs also, and his teeth were chattering too. Despite the summer heat and the blood and sweat that drenched his clothes, he felt like he was freezing.

The second man placed his fingers on Shiro's neck for a moment before turning to the first again. He pulled him close so he could yell into his ear over a mortar as it screamed through the air and exploded nearby. "Pulse is weak and thready, he's in hypovolemic shock. Take him back and give him plasma to last him until he can get evac'd with the rest or he's done, he doesn't have long." He turned back to Shiro with a plastered-on smile that was anything but happy. "Ready to get out of here?"

"You'd better believe it," Shiro said. His stomach was in knots and all he wanted was be anywhere but in this hole.

"Alright then, up we go, hang on."

The first man grabbed Shiro's rifle and tossed it out of the trench ahead of him before jumping out himself. He shot a few rounds toward the lines of sandbags, which were looking much worse for wear, before he leaned back in and reached his arms down. "Let's go, 'Gane, we haven't got all day!"

The second man picked Shiro up under his arms and hoisted his body up the trench to the waiting arms above, which roughly dragged him up and out of the hole. Shiro didn't even try to hold his scream back, he couldn't. Every movement felt like someone was skewering him with hot pokers, and feeling his body be dragged up and out of the trench sent him over the edge. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you're okay, you're okay," his rescuer kept repeating.

Once he was clear, the man threw Shiro's body over his shoulders, looping one arm between his legs and grabbing onto Shiro's wrist. His other arm scooped up Shiro's rifle. He disregarded the cries coming from right next to his ear. It would be over soon, one way or another, but he was determined that he was going to get Shiro to safety if it killed him.

"Mother of God, Shiro," the soldier said as he started to run away from the trench and back toward their own line in a desperate attempt to distract both Shiro and himself, "if I didn't know better I would think that you've been dipping into the extra chocolate that the Red Cross has been sending!"

It took a few moments of teeth clenching and swallowing hot tears before he could respond, but Shiro managed one sentence. "You and I… both know… that that's… what you do…!"

As he was carried over the pitted ground back towards their own line, Shiro found himself looking back at where they had come from. Through the blood and sweat that dripped into his eyes, he could see a crater where the concrete bunker used to be. The enemy line was falling back and was being chased by his fellow soldiers. But a bright light drew his eye back down to the trench.

Allura was standing there, left hand against the ridge of dirt. Her wings were folded closely behind her. Her face was worried, brow creased, her muscles tense.

Shiro watched her for a moment before blackness filled his field of vision. He felt his body go limp, and he knew no more.

Allura couldn't do anything but watch him go. With each step that was put between them, she felt her pull to him grow weaker.

Despite how dire his wounds were, he no longer needed her. Not now, anyway.

Allura sighed and watched him go for just a moment longer. She looked down at the bloodsoaked ground, then back up to where Shiro and his rescuer had been just a second ago. But they were gone. They had disappeared into the thick smoke that blanketed the battlefield. She didn't know if what she felt was right, but she felt empty. Like something had been taken from her that she didn't know she had possessed at all.

His words rolled around in her head and took root somewhere in her mind.

One chance to be something… One chance to leave a mark… One chance to do something worth remembering…

Allura turned away with a heavy heart and spread her wings, shaking off the weight of the entire encounter. She had other souls to attend to, she said to herself. She would be back for him eventually.

Her heart hoped that it would be some time before they met again. She didn't want to rush him.

---

The rest of the day went on as usual, and the days slowly morphed into weeks, which blended back together seamlessly into a steady stream of normalcy. Allura didn't see Takashi Shirogane on the battlefield. She didn't hear his name. It was almost as if he hadn't even existed at all.

But he never left her mind. Even when she was at her busiest, when she was making the trip from the surface of the earth to the heavens and back again faster than she thought possible, when she carried the youngest of boys who had seen more horror than any human should in a hundred lifetimes, when her own soul felt as if it were too heavy to carry inside of her and when she wept for humanity, his voice was still burrowed deep in the back of her mind. It tugged at her brain relentlessly and crawled ever deeper as more time passed. She felt that his shadow had latched itself on her own, following behind her so closely that it was as if they were one.

She had no idea where he was or what he was doing, but no matter what she did, the thought of him would not leave her alone.

She tried to take a break from her work in an attempt to get away, to give herself some time that was divorced from her job in an attempt to rest and reset, but it was all in vain.

Allura was exhausted. She didn't know what to do. She didn't know what it was about this man that made him so different from everything, from everyone, and the inability to pin down that quality made her insanely frustrated.

She wanted to be able to handle a soul like she used to. She wanted to gather it in her arms and carry it easily. She wanted to move from one to the next with little to no emotional carryover.

She didn't want to feel her heart bleeding for the soul that she held close to her chest and grieve over its potential, now stolen away, unable to be recovered. She didn't want to feel her throat burn as tears welled up in her eyes at the terror that humans all felt when they saw her. She didn't want to have to bring scared and dying men to an always far too early eternity.

But every time she laid eyes on a soul, Shiro's voice wrenched her stomach into knots. One chance… one chance…

And here she was, snatching that one chance away.

It was her job, and many times she knew in her mind that she truly was doing them an act of mercy by bringing their lives to an end, but it didn't feel like it used to anymore. She felt like a thief. Her leaden feet would shiver as they collided with the stinking earth. The visceral pull toward her next soul made her slightly sick, and saying the words "I am tasked with bringing your soul to Paradise" left a bitter taste on her tongue.

Everything felt wrong now, but at the same time, she felt as though her eyes had been opened. She was finally able to glimpse the complexity of the thing that is the human heart. And she was finally able to begin to truly feel the weight of the people that she encountered.

Pieces of the puzzle, the puzzle of what it means to be human, were slowly falling into place for Allura. It changed how she approached the souls that she was tasked with receiving. She opened her heart more. She could see, and to some extent, grasp, what it was they they were losing. It hurt her deeply, but the more she let herself open up to the souls she encountered, the more readily they went with her. Some took comfort in the fact that she, a powerful angel, let her guard down and became vulnerable for their sake.

It tore her apart, but she kept coming for them. She never stopped. In fact, after some time had passed, she found herself wanting to gather more souls. No, she needed to gather them up. She requested a greater assignment, and seeing as there were plenty of dying humans to go around, she was granted her request and immediately threw herself headlong into the work. She saw it as a chance to give more of the dying one last comfort, but she also saw each additional soul as another opportunity to better herself. Another opportunity to make her heart bleed a little more. For their sakes.

If her encounter with Takashi Shirogane had taught her anything, it was that human life was even more precious than she had previously known, and more precious than she would ever be able to fully comprehend. But she would do her very best to try and understand.

As she walked the battlefields in search of the next soul she would usher into eternity, she often wondered about where he was. She imagined what he could be doing, who he was with, if he was alright, if he was hungry, cold, or tired.

She wondered if his world had been unseated from its axis after their meeting just as hers had been.

She held each soul closer to her chest as she carried them to the gates of Paradise.

It was difficult. It was exhausting. It was grueling.

But she knew in her heart that it was absolutely worth it.

And so she carried on.

-x-x-x-

Allura had barely had the time to take in her surroundings for three straight days. Her workload was constant. She barely had time to think. She was mentally and emotionally spent.

They were all the same. The sights, the smells, the sounds, the way the air would cling to the back of her neck like a shuddering whisper. In this war, one battlefield was nearly identical to ten others to her by now. This one proved to be no different.

She would scoop up her assigned soul, escort it to Eternity, and return to the battlefield as quickly as she could. The stream of dead seemed to never lessen in the slightest, no matter how fast or hard she and her fellow angels worked. It remained steady, endless, an ocean of humanity as wide as it was deep, and it proved to be just as chaotic and unpredictable.

Now her feet slammed onto the charred grass. She oriented herself and got her bearings in the dark. The slightest twinge of the smell of smoke from fires burning a few hundred yards away reached her nose. There was gunsmoke in the air, but it was as if the last round had been fired a few hours ago, so it drifted along with the breeze and yet still lingered, clinging to her clothes. There was a slight chill in the air that sent goosebumps up her arms. She ruffled her wings and drew them a little closer to her body.

The night was quiet. The night was heavy.

She could feel the weight of watchful eyes that surrounded her on every side, waiting for the slightest movement to rend the uneasy silence and fling the night into chaos once again.

Every stone's throw or so was a deep hole. Inside the hole were groups of men, some as large as six or seven, some as small as only a single pair. Some of the men were trying to find rest in a shallow and fitful sleep while curled around their bags of gear, others smoked cigarettes with grimy and shaky hands. Some just stared at the other side of the hole, their knuckles clenched around their rifles until they were white as bone.

Her next soul was in a hole about fifty feet to her right. She was grateful that she had a few moments to spend walking, stretching her legs, unpacking her mind before she had to take this one to Paradise.

Her footfalls fell silent on the ears of the men that she walked past. She paid them little mind, just a glance here or there. Her presence went completely unnoticed by them, as she passed through their ranks like a shadow.

As she walked, she stepped over and around the bodies of the dead. Some of these she herself had tended to earlier. The rats had come out along with the dark, and were skittering between the foxholes, crawling over unmoving torsos and under twisted limbs. She swallowed a lump in her throat and continued on.

She was weary to the bone. Her feet felt as if they were strapped to millstones instead of sandals. Her wings shook from the weight of the souls that she been carrying. At the moment, she wasn't sure if she could physically manage to carry another soul to Paradise, much less herself with it. But she had to. It was her duty to. So she would find a way.

If she had to guess the time, she would have put it at around two-thirty in the morning, maybe three, she wasn't entirely sure. Time passed differently down here. Even after all the years that she had spent dealing with humans, it still was confusing to her on occasion.

Allura grew closer to the hole with each step. Before she could cover the whole distance to the foxhole that was currently sheltering her next soul, she looked up at the night sky. It was an inky black, broken by only a scattering of hazy stars that just couldn't seem to find the strength to let their silver light touch down onto the battlefield. Allura didn't blame them. She wasn't sure if she would be able to manage it herself if she were in their place.

The sky looked terribly lonely from here. Empty. Cold. She had never truly noticed that before. She knew the light of the stars was lesser, of course, she had spent years upon years going back between Heaven and Earth, but she had never stopped and taken the time to fully experience it firsthand before.

As much as she herself felt the distance from the stars when she was away, she knew that humans wanted nothing more than to touch them, and all they had were a minute fraction of the cosmos in their view. Yet their hearts yearned for it. The human soul longed to reach the fringes of the galaxy, to dance with the fiery residents of the sky above. She hoped that they would one day. She smiled, but a little sadly. They would never fully know the wonders that filled the heavens, even if they explored them for a thousand centuries. Maybe it was better that way. The beauty of something often finds itself, in part if not wholly, lent from its mystery. Allura knew that the heavens were certainly no different.

As her thoughts rambled through her mind, the foxhole yawned open before her a few paces ahead, cloaked in shadows. The night was quiet. There was hardly any sound coming from inside the hole at all. All she could hear was breathing.

As she stepped closer, two rhythms met her ears. One, deep and steady. Someone was asleep. The second was a little faster— the man was most definitely awake— and after a moment he sighed so deeply that it was nearly a groan. It was a sigh that attested to a weariness that was more than simply a physical tiredness, but an exhaustion that reached into the very depths of the soul.

A click of metal followed by the dull scrape of a flint wheel cut through the quiet in the foxhole. As Allura stepped up to the lip of it, the yellow glow of a lighter's flame washed over a helmeted man's face. His grimy hand cupped the light as it wavered in the night air and ignited the end of a cigarette. It burned red as he breathed in, and he withdrew the lighter as he did so. He watched the flame shiver, only half interested, the cigarette dangling from his lips.

"I take it you're not exactly here to catch up," the man said as he looked up and locked eyes with Allura. Even in spite of the low light, it was impossible to mistake him for anyone else. She swallowed and took a small breath.

"Hello Takashi."

His lips curved around his cigarette into a half smile when she said his name. With a quick movement he flicked his lighter closed with a finger. The slap of the metal interrupted the night's tense quiet again, and the foxhole was once again shrouded in heavy darkness. The only light was the starlight, painting the shelter in shades of muted gray.

"You know, I saw something coming from a mile away," he said after a moment. He took a drag on his cigarette and removed it from his lips, choosing to hold it between his fingers instead. "I didn't know for sure that it was you until you walked up, but I had my suspicions. After all, there aren't too many women walking around in war zones in armor that happen to have six wings." He started to chuckle at himself, but his smile slowly faded away into a more thoughtful look, and his voice dropped along with it. "I guess that knock I took was a little harder than I thought."

As he spoke, Allura noticed the trail of blood that ran from under his helmet and down his face and neck, where it ultimately disappeared into the collar of his jacket. It was mostly dried, but some parts stubbornly held onto their glisten, where the flow hadn't completely been staunched by time.

The silence between them grew, but it wasn't a heavy silence at all. They just looked at each other, saying nothing and everything all at once.

Shiro looked down toward the ground after a moment. He started to casually flip the lid of his lighter back and forth with a finger. The quiet click was like a slow, metal heartbeat. He studied the scratched surface of it, rubbed the tip of his thumb over the worn and beaten edges in a slow and thoughtful manner. His eyes were focused on the dull lighter, but everything indicated that his mind was working over something. After a few more quiet moments, he shut the lighter gently against his palm and pocketed it before sitting up straighter. He stretched his back some and leaned back against the dirt wall behind him. He looked up at Allura, his face largely unreadable.

"Would you do something for me?"

She laced her fingers together loosely in front of her and nodded. "If it is in my power, then I will certainly do my best. What is it?"

Shiro swallowed. "Well I just was thinking…" He bit his lip and mulled over his words for a moment before he decided to start again. "Well, you're here and all, so I figured…" He seemed to lose his thought midway though the sentence, or he couldn't find the right word.

Allura tilted her head slightly. Shiro didn't seem to notice, or at least he acted as if he didn't.

"Well what I want to ask is if you'd like to… if you could come and sit with me. At least for a minute. You certainly don't have to, but I mean if you wanted to, then you're welcome to. It's up to you, of course." He shrugged and sighed. "I'm sorry, I must sound like a complete idiot."

"No, you don't." Allura smiled, albeit a bit sadly. While she looked down at Shiro, a cold stone settled in the pit of her stomach. What he was asking was, to put it lightly, unconventional.

Something inside Allura knew that she shouldn't, but at the same time she knew that she simply couldn't refuse. It was crossing so many lines— no, it was completely obliterating them— but at the same time, it felt somehow right. Everything about her previous encounter with Takashi Shirogane threw precedent to the wind anyway, so what was a little more disregard for the way things normally went?

What could it hurt?

There was time. Whether or not that was actually a good thing, she wasn't sure.

Admittedly against her better judgement and with fidgeting fingers, she responded.

"Yes Takashi, I will sit with you."

A few long seconds passed. Shiro nodded and cleared his throat quietly.

"Okay… Okay." He quickly moved his bag of gear to the side and pulled his feet close, crossing them, which left enough room in the foxhole for two people to sit face-to-face, albeit quite closely when considering the sleeping man to Shiro's right. He gestured to the free space in front of him. "Have a seat. And don't worry, my talking won't wake him up, we've been up for nearly three straight days so he probably wouldn't even wake up if FDR and Churchill themselves fell into this hole and yelled that the war was over."

Shiro smiled, and Allura smiled back at him. His smile was a soft one that contrasted sharply with their surroundings. It looked alien, that smile. It was like a breath of fresh air in the stifling darkness.

Allura looked down at Shiro, then at the helmet on his head. It was caked in dirt, dried blood, and sweat. It was clear that not all of the dark splatter belonged to the man sitting cross-legged in front of her. She looked back at the space he had cleared for her on the ground. This empty space was an invitation that had never been available to her before, one that was extended with the highest dignity allowed for the moment they were in. Even given the incredibly strange circumstances, she was not about to back out. When else would she ever have the chance to sit with a human, to talk together, to spend time in each other's company in an encounter that was vaguely fringing on something normal?

"Alright," she said. It was as much an acceptance of Shiro's offer as it was encouragement to herself to fully commit to this entire engagement in spite of her underlying misgivings.

There was about a four foot drop to the bottom of the hole. Allura stepped off the edge of it and spread her wings. With a massive six-winged flap she slowed her fall, and Shiro shut his eyes tightly and threw his hands up over his face at the sight and sound of her wings beating against the air. But not a speck of dirt was disturbed in the foxhole. Shiro's fellow soldier continued to sleep soundly with knees curled up to his chest, completely ignorant as to what was happening right next to him. Allura landed delicately, her sandals touching down as if she had never left level ground in the first place. Upon feeling no blast of wind on his face and no bite of dirt against his skin, Shiro slowly opened his eyes.

From behind his fingers he watched Allura wearily shake her wings and let them settle against her body. She took a couple of very small steps until she stood in the space between the wall of the foxhole and himself, all the while making sure that she didn't accidentally step on any of the belongings on the ground. She bent over and started to sit, but then pulled herself a little closer to Shiro before committing to her spot, freeing up a little more space for her wings so they wouldn't be crushed against the dirt wall behind her. She adjusted her wings some more once she sat, trying to find the best way to situate them in the now very cramped hole, before settling on letting her wings crunch up behind her, leaving the long shimmering feathers to droop down so that they lay against the ground on either side of her. She stole a look at him and then quickly crossed her legs like he did, leaving next to no space between them. She rested her palms on her knees and looked up at him again. She tried to hide the nervous yet excited smile tugging at the corners of her lips, but she was failing quite miserably.

Shiro lowered his hands so that they no longer shielded his eyes and swallowed. It was then that he noticed that his cigarette had flown from where he was holding it between his fingers and had landed next to his bag of gear. He leaned over to retrieve it but he kept his eyes on Allura. He watched her, studied her as she fidgeted in front of him, and he slowly put the cigarette back between his lips in thought. Allura's barely suppressed smile was contagious, and Shiro quickly found himself grinning as well. He suddenly became extremely aware that his knee was nearly brushing hers, and that the space between their faces was just wide enough to hold a whisper. He took the cigarette out of his mouth moments after he had returned it there. He rested his hand on his knee and let the cigarette dangle from his fingers instead. He cleared his throat quietly as he lowered his eyes to watch a slender tendril of smoke curl up in the dark. His grin still was on clear display. Try as he might, he couldn't manage to swallow it. Not that he truly put much effort into the attempt in the first place.

The foxhole sat silent. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence, but one that felt as if it belonged. It was a warm stretch of quiet, the sort that finds itself coming to rest between two people who have known each other deeply for a long time. Its existence here made no sense, but it was welcome all the same.

Something inside him urged him to say something, anything, so Shiro started to speak, only to immediately find his words colliding with Allura's.

"Can I just— "

"It's been— "

The two looked up at each other, eyes wide and mouths gaping. Their smiles spread wider, and Allura's laugh bubbled up, its crystal-clear sound flowing up and over the confines of the foxhole, despite the fact that Shiro was certain that his ears were the only ones that could hear it. Shiro gestured to her with a slight wave of his hand. "You go first, please. You're a guest in my humble… well, hole." He started to chuckle at himself, the reflexively guarded sound rumbling deep and low in his chest.

"Alright, I shall oblige you," Allura said. She made a small comedic bow, which made Shiro laugh even more because of how silly it all looked, then she took a small breath and resumed her previous thought. "It's been quite some time since I saw you last, hasn't it?"

Shiro nodded his head. The unclasped chin strap swayed from his helmet with the movement. "Yeah, it has been." He thought for a moment, then added, "It's been a little shy of two months. It feels shorter though. But you know what they say, about how 'time flies' and all." He gnawed on the edge of his lip. "Somehow it also feels like it's been ten years. Strange how it can do that."

"Yes," Allura said, "time and how it is experienced are both fascinating things. Time can both drag on for seemingly forever and at the same time slip through one's fingers like water." She appeared to turn inward in thought, but quickly pulled herself back to the conversation. "So what have you been doing during that time, during those two months? Where have you been? And…" she held her hands out as if the question were laying in her extended palms, "how have you been?"

Shiro carefully leaned back against the wall of the foxhole, which was only a couple of inches behind him. He adjusted his shoulders in an attempt to get a little more comfortable before answering.

"As far as the where part of the question, I was in a hospital. Well, hospitals. I got pumped full of plasma before I was evacuated to a mobile field hospital not terribly far from where we met along with a bunch of other guys that had gotten hurt. That's where the doctors got the bullet out of my side and got me stable. Once they were mostly sure I wasn't going to die any time in the near future, they sent me back to more of a real hospital so I could recover some more and be monitored more closely. It was farther away from any kind of fighting so that was one less thing for me to worry about for a while."

He reached behind his head and rubbed the back of his neck. He sighed and looked at Allura. His eyes were tired. Allura got the feeling that Shiro had been in a state of extreme exhaustion— one that was not only physical but mental and emotional as well— for a very long time. Judging by the looks of him, he was nowhere near escaping it, and he was well aware of that fact. She sensed that this groove had become something normal, as upside-down and wrong as it sounded. She wanted to fix it for him somehow, but she didn't exactly know what she could do, outside of her real purpose for being here. She quickly pushed the thought from her mind and focused back on him.

"The doctors at the hospital wanted to send me home," Shiro continued. "They said that I had barely skated by with my wounds as it was and that I had more than likely used up whatever luck I had left, so it was in my best interest to go back stateside." He frowned and let his hand fall down into his lap with a muffled slap. "They said that I had done my duty and that there were plenty of other healthy guys that could easily fill my spot, that I shouldn't feel bad about anything. That I should be 'proud of what I had done' and I should be 'looking forward to being able to go home'." He raised his fingers to form air quotes in a show of bitter sarcasm, then shook his head and crossed his arms across his chest. He looked down at his muddy boots, ankles crossed over each other and drawn up close. He lowered his voice and continued after a moment, as if he didn't want anyone to overhear, even though Allura's ears were the only ones listening. As he spoke, his words hung thick and heavy in the clear night air that surrounded them.

"What they say about having loads of other guys lined up and ready to go is a lie. I know that first-hand. We barely have enough people who know what they're doing to cover all of our stations these days, and even if there were enough people to fill the gaps, we don't have time to hold newbies' hands through everything. If command somehow manages to find and send new guys, all that we can afford to do is give some bare bones kind of on-the-job training. We pretty much have to throw them into the deep end and say 'swim'."

Shiro swallowed and uncrossed his arms. He let them sit in his lap, his palms facing upwards, smoking cigarette held gently between the tips of his thumb and forefinger. He rolled it back and forth in the quiet as he gathered his thoughts. Allura sat and waited patiently. She watched the gray smoke drift up in a column, unbroken except for when Shiro's gentle exhales would periodically scatter the line of smoke into the air around them.

"There's no way to ease anybody into this. We prepare them as much as we can, but our efforts always fall short. Every single time."

Shiro's voice wavered at the last words. He looked up and found Allura's gaze again. His face was broken, his eyes overflowing with grief.

"More and more guys are coming back in body bags than ever. It's forcing the green kids, who have never seen anything like this, to step up and fill the shoes of the men who have gone before them. We've all been there, we all have to start somewhere, but watching these guys lose parts of themselves that they'll never be able to get back… that I'll never be able to…" Shiro pressed his lips together into a terse line. The muscles of his jaw clenched slightly, giving his face an edge that it hadn't possessed a moment ago. "It never gets any easier." He cleared his throat quickly, his tongue suddenly thick, his mind fumbling over things he couldn't possibly reshape into words. He put his cigarette back into his mouth and breathed in deeply. He leaned his head back to look up at the black sky. His helmet collided against the dirt wall behind his head with a dejected thud. He scratched at the stubble that was sprouting along his jawline with his right hand as he slowly blew out the smoke through his nose, but quickly stopped when he felt his fingers trembling against his face. He mechanically buried his hand in the folds of his pants, as if he had done this a thousand times before, wrapping his fingers tightly in the fabric. The hand still shook against his leg regardless. Allura pretended not to notice.

She tried to convince herself that turning a blind eye to this was for his sake and for the sake of his dignity, but the churning in her stomach spoke of another motive.

In truth, she didn't want to watch. More than that, she found that that shaking hand caused her heart a great deal of pain.

She didn't know why it bothered her so much. She kept telling herself that she didn't want to know. She swallowed the queasy feeling that crept up from deep in her chest and clawed its way up her throat, pushed it down with as much strength as she could muster. She tried to silence the alarm bells that were screaming in her mind.

She was afraid of the answer that she would get if she asked herself why she felt this way. She was afraid of what door that answer would open. Because that door, once even slightly cracked, would be impossible to shut again.

Unlike Allura, Shiro hardly missed a beat. He took the cigarette from his lips and held it in his left hand, which was as steady as a rock, and resumed his story.

"When I found out that I was going to be medically discharged, I refused to leave. I looked my doctor in the eye and told him that the only way that I was going to go back home was if either the war ended or I was shipped home in a pine box. All I needed was some time to heal and then I could go back with my platoon, then I wouldn't be anyone's problem anymore." He smiled at the memory, then tried to stifle a sudden flood of laughter. "You should have seen my CO when he found out what I had said, oh man, he was absolutely livid. I don't think I've ever seen him so mad." He scrunched his eyebrows together and started waving his cigarette around his head with as much dramatic flair as anyone in Hollywood. "'Shirogane, you have got to be the biggest idiot I've ever seen in my life, turning down a ticket home like that, how did you ever get accepted into this military with a stupid streak as wide as yours,' blah blah blah. The man went on for probably twenty minutes." Shiro pressed the back of his hand against his mouth and shook his head. He couldn't keep his laugh in check anymore and he had to smother it as best he could. Between hushed gasps he managed to get out bits and pieces of a sentence, but he had to stop every couple of words to double over and breathe. "He was so pissed… I never thought… I would make it out of there… before the war ended!"

Tears had sprung from the corners of Shiro's eyes, but he was so busy trying to catch his breath that he paid them no mind at first.

Allura was enraptured. She had never seen tears of laughter before. Tears that were the products of pain, of sorrow, of anguish, yes, but never of laughter. The way they shone in Shiro's eyes, the way they lightly spilled over his eyelashes and washed thin tracks down his cheeks, it was all so different. So new. So beautiful. There was a new life in them. The idea that there was so much happiness inside of Shiro that it couldn't be contained and so it had to pour out of him somehow… it was almost unbelievable for her to witness firsthand.

The wide smile, the flash of white teeth hidden behind a grimy hand, the way his shoulders shuddered with laughter as it wracked his body, the way his laugh changed his voice and gave it a new and lighter sound, and the glint of joy in his eyes. They all collided together into a portrait of life so beautiful that, to Allura, it felt as if she were witnessing the explosive birth of a star.

She swore that her heart skipped a beat.

A voice in the back of her mind whispered words of warning.

You're too close.

You know why you're here.

You can't do this to him.

To yourself.

She wanted to listen to her own wisdom. She knew that she simply had to. She needed to stop, to step back, to slow down before she had crossed the threshold that separated her world from his before she could no longer turn back. The longer she allowed herself to dance along the line of involvement, the more complicated things would continue to grow until everything she touched wound itself into an impossibly tangled knot, one with no solution.

But she had flung herself headlong across that invisible threshold a long time ago. There was no going back now.

Shiro swiped at his cheeks with the heel of his hand, effectively smearing over most of the evidence that his tears were ever there. The smile rested easily on his face, and it appeared that the impossible weight that rested on his shoulders had lessened, if for only a moment.

"Bottom line is that I had decided that I wasn't going to leave my unit," he finally said once he caught his breath again. "Those guys are my family. We've been through hell together, and that doesn't sit on a man's heart lightly. We're close, you know? But it's hard to explain, it's not really something that everybody would fully understand."

Allura nodded, her brow creased slightly. "You rely on each other. You're each other's support systems. Am I understanding this right?"

"That's exactly right," Shiro nodded. "You don't go through something like this with people who were strangers to you just a few months ago and not form bonds that are stronger than anything you've ever experienced before." He tilted his head in the direction of the sleeping man to his right. "When I first met this guy I wouldn't have pegged him for even wanting to be anywhere near a gun. He looks like a stiff wind would knock him over. I wasn't sure about how he'd hold up when it came down to it, but now? I trust him with my life, and that feeling goes both ways."

Allura looked over at the sleeping man's frame. He was much smaller than Shiro, more lanky. He looked like he was all legs and arms under the thin blanket he had wrapped around himself. She couldn't see his face, but she could see some red hair peeking out from under his helmet. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Shiro shake his head. "Still have no idea how he sleeps with that thing on," he muttered. "He refuses to take it off. Honestly I don't blame him. You can never be too careful around here."

Shiro took another drag on his cigarette and sighed. "If my family knew that I was offered a chance to come home in one piece and I turned it down for more of this…" He made a noise in the back of his throat that was something stuck between huff and a groan. "I don't think my mom will ever be able to forgive me for doing this." Allura looked back at him, and she felt a cold stone drop into her stomach. His smile was gone, and in its place was a flat look. After a beat, he added, "But I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't." That ending statement was the definitive nail in the coffin of that particular line of conversation.

Allura's throat went dry. She tried to swallow, but her throat felt as if it were coated with sand. She settled for clearing her throat quietly and gently rubbing her palms on her knees. They were suddenly clammy.

"I see," she said. "You're close with your family, I gather?"

The question garnered a small smile from Shiro. "Very much so," he said. "There are four of us. There's my mom, my dad, and my twin brother Ryou." Shiro quietly chuckled to himself at some memory that only he could touch. "He's just as stubborn and stupid as I am. Actually, probably a bit more if you can believe it."

Allura leaned back on her wings, one hand placed dramatically on the side of her face, and whistled low and long. "Lord have mercy on your poor parents for putting up with the likes of you two. They must truly be saints."

"You would know, wouldn't you?" Shiro laughed at her sarcasm and nodded. "Yes, they're incredible. I really don't know how they did it. We were hellions when we were kids. It was even worse once we hit high school. We were something else back then, let me tell you." He flicked the ash from the end of his cigarette and watched the smoke rise from it with a smile. "They were simpler times. What I wouldn't give to go back to how it was, skipping class and staying out until the wee hours of the morning just because we wanted to. Well, because Ryou wanted to. Somebody had to make sure the guy didn't burn the town down." He took a quick puff from the cigarette and continued. "Mom and dad are back home in the States. They're…" His smile faltered, as if a memory were surging to the forefront of his mind. "They're…" He couldn't seem to form the words. His voice grew quieter and thicker with emotion. "They…"

"Takashi?" Allura leaned forward and gently placed her palm on the ground next to his knee. "What's wrong?"

He took a steadying breath, squeezing his eyes shut with the inhale. "My parents. They were… They were put in the internment camps two years ago."

Allura slowly leaned back against the wall as the breath was sucked out of her body. She knew exactly what he was talking about. She had seen one of the camps he was alluding to. Cramped, hungry, dirty, cold. She had left the place feeling empty and drained. "I'm so terribly sorry," was all she could manage to say. There wasn't really anything else that she could say.

Shiro just shook his head. "My brother and I had been gone for so long, and the news didn't reach me of the executive order until later, there was nothing…" His voice wilted into nothing and he clenched his teeth. He stared down at the ground near his feet and tried to breathe while he started to pick at a loose thread along his trouser seam. His voice went cold. "I just can't understand it. My brother and I and who knows how many others go off and risk our necks to protect this country and it repays us by imprisoning our parents for a crime that they have nothing to do with!" He reached up and ripped his helmet off in frustration, and with a strangled sound he slammed it into his lap. He ran his fingers through his hair and crumpled forward until his elbows rested on his knees and his head laid heavy in his hands. For a few moments he just sat there, drowning in a tidal wave of grief, completely unable to do anything but try to keep his breaking heart from completely falling apart.

Tears burned in Allura's eyes but she forced herself to swallow them. She had to keep herself together, she was of no use to anyone if she let herself break down, so she withdrew her hand from where it had been laying on the ground next to her and dug her fingernails into her skin in an attempt to keep a handle on her emotions.

Shiro's breathing eventually evened out, and he picked up the conversation again in a quiet voice, but he kept his head where it was. "Ryou and I wanted to be in the same unit. It was the only thing that we asked for when we signed up. It made sense to us to be trained and deployed as a pair. We both speak Japanese, which, in case anybody's missed it, is a pretty useful skill set these days. We know the other better than we know ourselves, which cuts out any guesswork between us. We're a team, there's really no other way to describe it." He slowly pushed himself back up against the foxhole's wall and fished around in a pocket on the inside of his jacket. He withdrew his hand after a moment, and between his fingers was a photograph. It had been crushed and creased, but the image was still easy to see.

In it, two nearly identical young men smiled widely at the camera. It didn't take much to know that the people in the picture were Shiro and his brother. They were sitting on the wooden front steps of a house, which were well-worn from years of steady foot traffic. The one on the right draped his arm over the other's shoulder, his head turned slightly in his brother's direction, while the one on the left wound an arm tightly around the other's waist and looked straight toward the camera. They wore wrinkled button-up shirts whose sleeves were rolled up to the elbows and jeans that were dirtied by what might have been either work outside or, what was just as likely, a friendly tussle. Their dark hair was messy, their feet were bare, and it felt as if their larger-than-life personalities filled the frame until it was overflowing. Looking at it now, the snapshot felt as if it had been taken on another plane of existence.

"We were banking on being shipped off together," Shiro said as he looked at the picture. He sounded detached, as if he were both talking to the photo itself and nobody at all. "We even enlisted at the same time to make it easier. The recruiter said that he would do his best to make sure it happened but his best apparently wasn't enough." He slowly rubbed his thumb, the nail of which had been chewed down to the quick, along the yellowing edge of the photo. "Now we're on opposite sides of the planet. I'm here, in the middle of Europe, while he's on some godforsaken island in the Pacific." He started to gnaw on the corner of his bottom lip. His face changed as he stopped and thought, and he suddenly looked much younger than he actually was.

"You know, before we left for training, we hadn't been away from each other for more than a week?" Shiro looked up from the photo to Allura, who raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Yeah, I know, it sounds crazy, but it's true," he said. He smiled a little and looked back down at the photo.

"We went to these camps one summer when we were kids. The kind where you live in tents and spend your days in the woods fishing and learning to shoot. I went to one and Ryou went to another a few miles away. Our parents thought it would be good for us to get some time away from each other and experience the world on our own. It was supposed to only be for two weeks, but the first couple of days went by and I was absolutely miserable. Turns out that Ryou was just as bad off as I was. It got so bad that before the end of the week he wound up sneaking out of his own camp and showed up at mine the next morning. I had been planning to do the same thing but he beat me to the idea. That was when everyone finally realized that we weren't going to take kindly to being away from each other. We haven't been out of the other's reach since. Until now, at least." He frowned and gently tapped the photo against the side of his hand. "Took this picture a few days before Thanksgiving, in '41. Back when everything was normal. Before it all went straight to hell."

He shook his head and reached into his jacket pocket again and pulled out an envelope. It too was creased in places, but it didn't look nearly as worn as the photo did. "I made this for Ryou a while back. It's a birthday card. In all our lives we had never celebrated any birthdays separately until we were shipped off, so last year was the first birthday we've spent apart. But this year, this year was different. We were born on a leap year you see, and this year… well this year is a leap year. So February twenty-ninth was our real birthday. Guess you could say I'm actually only six years old, that's the joke anyway." Shiro turned the sealed envelope over a few times in his hand, letting his fingers run over the length of it. "It's the best that I could do, considering what the situation is right now. I just wish I knew where to send it."

Allura looked down at the envelope and put her hand out. "May I see that?"

Shiro blinked for a moment but slowly handed the envelope to her without question. As she looked it over, he laced his fingers together on top of the helmet in his lap. He scratched at a smear of dirt with a fingernail as he talked.

"I don't know where he is. Wish I did. I've tried to pin his whereabouts down but the both of us move around all the time and anything I try to send either gets lost or gets sent back for some reason or another. You'd think all the mail would just get collected in one place but it's not working like that for him, why exactly that's happening I don't know. So I've been carrying it around. I would hate for it to get misplaced. Maybe one of these days I'll find out what a good address is and I can finally put it in the mail. Maybe I'll be able to hand it to him myself, which would be even better. But for now this is the only thing I can do."

Allura ran the tip of her finger faintly over the letters scratched in black ink across the front of the envelope.

Cpl. Ryou Shirogane, 77th Infantry Division, United States Army

The rest of the address line was blank.

Shiro kept talking as Allura studied the envelope. "When they assigned us to different units, we fought it tooth and nail, but they said that they couldn't afford to put us together because there was too much of a risk of the both of us dying and leaving our family in a terrible position. At least that's what we were told." He ran a hand through his hair and let his arm drop down again. He lifted his cigarette back up to his lips and let it hang there as he took quick puffs between breaths. "They said that it was for our own good. But if you ask me, that's a load of crap. You want to know the way I see it? There's ultimately no difference. We're all going to die eventually, every one of us, whether we like it or not. Some of us sooner than others. I could die here. He could die there. We could die alone, and that's what it's looking like for me right now— " he gestured to Allura, quickly mumbled "no offense" and then grabbed his cigarette again, "— or we could have had the chance to die together." He shrugged and twirled the cigarette between his fingers. "It doesn't matter, we're all going to end up six feet under at the end of the day. I still just don't really get the point of keeping us apart like this."

Shiro stopped and stared at Allura, who stared back at him. The air in the foxhole seemed to be sucked out and drawn up into space. His words laid heavily over them and settled into a stifling silence that lasted for what felt like hours. Shiro didn't break it until Allura thought that she couldn't stand the quiet for a second more.

"Sorry, I just… I just really miss my brother."

His small voice shattered both the silence and her into a million pieces.

She could feel the pain in Shiro's heart in the depths of her own soul. She was holding the irrefutable evidence of his desperate loneliness in her hands in the form of a letter that Shiro never wanted nor expected to have to write. Everything about this, everything about his story, everything that was happening to him, it all felt so incredibly…

Unfair.

She hated the feeling. She hated what she was putting him through for being here. For breaking the rules. For making everything so much harder on the both of them.

There was a reason why angels only showed up to take souls to Paradise very shortly before their deaths. It made things less complicated for everyone. It eliminated situations like the one that she found herself in now.

Allura shook her head to clear out the mental cobwebs. "No, don't be sorry, there's no reason for that." She almost put her hand out to touch him on the shoulder but stopped herself before she could move. "You love your brother, that's a good thing."

Shiro nodded. He sat quietly for a moment before speaking again. "I just wish that I knew whether he was alive or not."

Allura felt her heart sink. She wanted to give him something, anything, to hold onto to give him some sort of peace. She didn't have much to offer but she did her best. "I don't know if this helps or not, but I haven't seen him or heard anything about him on my end of things."

Shiro smiled at her. "I'll take hope where I can get it. Thank you."

Allura handed Shiro's letter back to him, which he received gratefully. The envelope and photograph were slipped back into his pocket, and he folded his arms across his chest with a sigh. Allura noticed that his right hand, despite being sandwiched between his arm and his side, still shook some.

"You know," Allura said after a moment, "I thought a lot about what you said."

"What I said?" Shiro asked, one eyebrow raised. "And what exactly was that?"

Allura reached behind her and pulled her braid over her shoulder. She ran her fingers absentmindedly over and through the end of it, giving her hands something to do while she spoke. "Back when I last saw you. You said that humans only had one life to live and that you only had one chance to be something, once chance to leave a mark, one chance to do something worth remembering. I haven't been able to get it out of my head and I've been thinking about that ever since."

"Really?"

"Yes, really." Allura dropped her braid and brushed a stray piece of hair back and tucked it behind her ear. "You've helped to shape my perception of humans. I feel… grieved now, in a way that I have never felt before, when I take a soul to Paradise. I feel like something is being severed when a human dies. In truth, the full weight of human mortality had never fully hit me until you put it into those words." She laced her fingers together and looked Shiro in the face. "You've opened my eyes so that now I can finally see where I've been falling short in my understanding for all these years. I have to thank you for that."

Shiro sat in stunned silence. For a long time, neither of them moved or spoke, and they let the silence stretch out before them. From far away, a nightingale's song reached their ears.

Shiro eventually nodded and looked up at the sky, puffing on his cigarette quietly in the dark. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to say anything. Allura knew what he meant. Words were unnecessary.

When he finally spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. "So why are you here?"

Allura felt her stomach twist. So they were finally addressing the elephant in the room. Even though he was incredibly close, his question seemed to come from a hundred miles away. She couldn't meet his eyes when she finally answered.

"I don't think you need me to answer that, Takashi."

He shifted his gaze and looked at her from the other side of the cramped foxhole. His face was unreadable, stoic, and when Allura forced herself to look back at him, she thought she saw a flash of sorrow in his eyes.

"Allura?" Shiro said after a minute.

"Yes?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course, what is it?"

"What happened last time, when we first met?"

There it is, she thought.

"You and I both know that by all rights I should have died in that trench. And yet I didn't. I didn't die when I was supposed to."

Shiro paused and let his words settle. Allura didn't reply. He leaned forward slightly, reducing the distance between them, further driving his words home.

"I'm sure that you face thousands of people that fight death and try to escape it at any cost, that's not a new concept. But I have to know why I didn't die when we both know that I should have."

Allura's breath caught in her throat. She wasn't sure how to answer him, but she knew that she couldn't fairly skirt around this. She looked down at her lap and folded her hands. One thumb rubbed against the other and she pursed her lips together, her brow furrowing slightly.

"I owe you the truth," she said after a moment of thought, "and the truth is that I'm not sure why." She looked back up in Shiro's direction but didn't make eye contact. She settled on focusing on the buttons of his jacket. About half of them were left undone, leaving the jacket open over his chest. The slight outline of a set of dog tags could be seen under his green shirt, which clung to his skin despite the coolness of the night. With every rise and fall of his chest came a nearly imperceptible metallic jingle.

"I don't know why you lived when you should have died," she continued. "This has never happened to me before in all the years that I have been dealing with humans. It's possible that this has never happened to anyone at all. I mean, I've never heard of a case such as yours." She took a deep breath and slowly looked up to meet Shiro's eyes. "I know this is far from the answer that you seek, but I don't have any explanation for you outside of this. I'm sorry. I truly mean it."

Shiro frowned a little before nodding a few moments later. "No need to be sorry. We can't all know everything, but it is nice to know that I'm not the only one that was confused by all of this."

Allura smiled a little, then leaned forward a bit, further closing the distance between them. "May I ask you something as well? I have a question of my own that I would like to finally have an answer to."

"Sure, I'll try my best." Shiro leaned forward as well and matched Allura's stance. The dog tags hung forward as far as his shirt would allow.

"When you first saw me after I stepped into that trench with you, you weren't afraid. Every other human is terrified when they first lay eyes on an angel. Every single one." She raised a finger and pointed it at Shiro's chest. "Except for you. Answer me this, if you can. Why were you not afraid?"

Shiro studied Allura's face for a long time. His breaths were even and slow, carefully measured. After what felt like an eternity, he nodded his head slowly while a shadow of what might have been a grim smile tugged at his lips. "Now that's an easy question to answer."

Allura's head tilted in curiosity. "Is it?"

"Why of course." Shiro made a vague sweep with his hand, pointing out both everything and nothing in particular. "When you walk around outside of this hole, when you look at this war and everything that it's done, when you fly to Heaven and look down at the earth, what it is that you see?"

"Answering a question with a question. Alright, I'll go along with it." Allura thought for a few moments, tapping her fingertips on a knee so quickly that they seemed to almost be fluttering. It took her some time to find the right words for what she wanted to say, but Shiro was patient and was in no mind to rush her.

"I see… countless men who have died in horrific ways. I also see how horrible humans can be to one another." Her heart dropped the more she spoke. "I see destruction… misery… and pain." She felt a shiver creep up her spine. "These are some of the things that I see. Does this begin to answer your question?"

"Yes," Shiro said, "it does. But it answers your question as well."

Allura raised an eyebrow and waited for Shiro's explanation.

"Think about it." He pressed an open palm against his chest. The dog tags clanged together quietly under his hand. He made eye contact with Allura and refused to relinquish it while he spoke.

"I've been away from my family now for two years, seven months, and twenty-four days. I don't know if I'll ever see them again. I've seen people do terrible things to others and themselves, things more awful than I ever thought were possible. My absolute worst nightmares play out before my eyes every day without fail, except they're not dreams. They're very, very real. When I can manage to sleep, I watch them happen all over again. I can't rest. There's no place for me to go that this war can't reach. No matter how hard I try, I can't get away. There's no safe place for me to be in this hellhole, and the stuff in my head holds me hostage when I close my eyes. I feel like someone has nailed me to a wall and there's no way for me to wrestle free."

His face twisted like he was trying to keep something under control. He cleared his throat and wrapped his fingers around his dog tags. His voice grew quiet but remained steady.

"I've killed men. Sometimes it's agonizing. Sometimes it's as easy as breathing and I don't even think twice. I just do it. I have no choice with either. I've watched some of my dearest friends die while I just stood by, unable to do a thing.

"I've done things, seen things," at this Shiro swallowed hard, "things that, no matter how hard I'll try, I'll never be able to forget. They'll follow me to my grave like ghosts that trail along the edge of my shadow, but weigh more than a millstone. I've been surrounded by all of this, by this war, by death, for so long that I think that I've nearly forgotten what it's like to live. This place and everything it houses has reached into the very depths of me, stirred everything around, smashed things to pieces, and now I don't recognise myself and everything's all wrong."

He grimaced and tugged on his dog tags. "I feel all wrong and I… I don't know how to fix it. I've spent the last two and a half years living under the suffocating weight of the irrefutable knowledge that I could die at any second in God only knows how many terrible ways." Shiro shook his head and released his dog tags with a quiet jingle.

"I have all of this on my plate and yet you are supposed to be the thing that ultimately fills me with terror?"

The foxhole became as silent as the grave.

Allura's eyes widened. Something inside her brain snapped together with an electric jolt. She slowly straightened up. Shiro watched her cautiously. A stray lock of dirty hair had fallen over his forehead but he didn't bother to brush it back.

"Yes," she said quietly, "I can understand that."

Shiro frowned. "Can you?" His voice betrayed his disbelief and scepticism.

"Well," Allura amended, "I can't understand it like you do of course, but to a certain extent I believe I can wrap my mind around how you feel." She let her eyes drift down to the ground. "It truly makes sense when you explain it that way."

Shiro nodded after a moment and leaned back against the side of the foxhole once again. He looked at his cigarette, which had burned down to a short nub by now, and took one final drag before snuffing it out in the dirt. He closed his eyes and held his breath, then let the smoke drift out with a slow and final exhale. His eyelids lifted reluctantly and he looked at Allura from under his dark eyelashes. In an act that surprised her, he smiled at her fondly with a gentle warmth that she could feel was coming from the heart. "I want to thank you," he said, "for this."

"This?" Allura glanced up as she replied softly, genuinely curious. Her stomach flipped slightly and she bit her lip when she felt it. "What do you mean?"

"This," he said, and waved a hand at the space between them. "It's so nice to just have a few minutes of something normal like this. Sitting and having a conversation." He let his palm slap against his knee heavily. "This place takes a lot out of you. It leaves you feeling like an empty shell after a while. And now I feel…" His smile spread wider, showing his teeth, and he shrugged his shoulders. "Well I almost feel human again." He stretched his arms and let out a slight groan, then put a hand behind his head with a sigh. "It really means a lot to be able to do this, to be able to step back, and just talk. Even if it is to an angel, as crazy as that is." He laughed quietly, the sound reverberating through the entire hole. He took a breath and let the laugh die down but his smile stayed put. He stared at Allura, like he was memorizing her face. "But in all seriousness, I mean what I'm saying. Thank you."

Allura felt color rush to her cheeks under the weight of his gaze. His eyes rendered her defenseless and bare. She simultaneously wanted to run and to live in this feeling for the rest of time. This feeling, it had no name to her. But she felt— knew— that it was something beautiful.

And that it was as beautiful as it was devastating.

That's when they both heard a shuffling sound that came from outside the hole.

Shiro spun around instantly, one hand reaching for his rifle and the other scooping up his helmet from where it lay in his lap and slipping it over his head.

A flash of fear shot through Allura's chest as painfully as a knife. Her heart began to slam against her ribs. She felt something foreign flood her veins: panic.

Time's up, the voice in her head whispered.

Allura's mouth was completely dry. Her pulse pounded in her head.

She never should have come into this foxhole.

She never should have opened her mouth.

She should have stayed far away.

Now she knew more than just his name. She knew some of his story, knew that he had a family who loved him and was waiting for him to come home. She had been granted a fleeting glimpse into his heart and she saw that he was a good man.

She knew what was going to happen next, and the realization that her presence tonight was a terrible reminder to Shiro of his own surely encroaching demise struck her like a thunderclap. It turned her stomach like nothing ever had before.

Getting to know this man was a terrible mistake. I have done a terrible disservice to him just by being here, sitting with him, pretending like everything was alright, and for what? To entertain my own morbid curiosity? And now, now I must stand here and watch a good man meet his end.

Dear God in Heaven, what have I done?

A flood of grief about the entire affair washed over Allura. She tasted bile in the back of her throat. Her heart pounded in her ears. She wrung her clammy hands over and over.

Shiro paid Allura no attention. It was as if she had ceased to exist to him. He pulled his rifle close and crawled over to the sleeping man on the other side of the foxhole.

"Holt…" he whispered in the dark, his voice gravelly and tense, "Holt, wake up." He gripped the man's shoulder and shook him. "Matt…"

The sleeping soldier's eyes fluttered open and locked onto Shiro's face. Shiro raised a finger and placed it over his lips, then pointed that finger in the direction of the noise.

Matt looked, nodded quickly, and snatched up his own rifle. He slid out from under the blanket and adjusted his helmet so that it sat straight on his head again.

The shuffling noise drew closer, and Shiro pushed his shoulder against the side of the foxhole. Matt did the same, and they listened, barely breathing, their fingers resting next to their weapons' triggers.

When he knew Matt wouldn't see, Shiro chanced a glance toward Allura. His face was that of a battle-hardened soldier, his jaw tight and his body as tense as a bowstring. His eyes, however, reflected something that Allura had seen in him once before, only this time it was different.

He swallowed. A vein in his neck pulsed rapidly just below the skin. His hands gripped the rifle with white knuckles, but his index finger wavered beside the trigger.

He knew what was about to happen, and he was afraid.

Allura's breath caught in her throat. She was completely helpless. She wanted to move, to reach out, to touch him, but she couldn't seem to move a muscle.

There was nothing that she could do for him.

Almost as swiftly as it had landed on her, Shiro's heartrending glance flickered away. He took a steadying breath and made a hand signal to Matt, who nodded and readied himself.

Slowly Shiro stood to his feet, but he stayed hunched enough for his head and shoulders to still be hidden by the edge of the hole. With one hand he buckled his helmet's chin strap. He eased his rifle up so that the stock rested against his shoulder. He breathed and listened.

One second passed.

He shut his eyes tightly.

Two seconds.

He could hear his heartbeat in his ears.

Three seconds.

His eyes flew open.

Shiro straightened faster than a bolt of lightning and aimed his rifle over the foxhole in the direction of the sound. He made a small noise, something like a defensive grunt being shoved between his bared teeth. It sounded he was expecting whatever was making the sound outside the foxhole to rear up, grab him, and tear him apart.

He stayed like that for a few seconds, shoulders squared, feet planted, and finger wrapped around the trigger, until he let his arms lower his rifle heavily. He let his held breath go in a shuddering exhale.

A few tense moments passed in silence.

"Rats," he finally breathed. "They're freaking rats."

Matt grimaced up at Shiro. "Ugh, disgusting." He reached up and pulled on Shiro's wrist. "Come on back down, it's your turn to get some sleep. You're exhausted."

Shiro ignored Matt and stayed standing, his spine ramrod straight, frantically scanning the field around them. Rats scurried between and over the dead bodies that were scattered all around them. One sat perched on top of one a few feet away and looked at Shiro, its beady black eyes staring at him, unblinking. Shiro scrunched up his nose at it and turned around in a quick circle, scouring every direction for anything that seemed off. He found nothing.

"Shiro, come on, it's alright, it's the rats that are making the noise, you said so yourself." Matt sat back down and rested his rifle across his knees. Shiro replied distractedly, "Yeah. Sure." He checked everything around them again before shaking his head and scrubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. "It doesn't make sense— "

"Hm? What did you say?" Matt asked. He leaned forward and looked up. "Shiro, are you okay?" He was concerned and his voice showed it. "Hey, you look like you've seen a ghost. Is something wrong?" Matt moved to stand but Shiro stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

Shiro took a steadying breath and rubbed his palm down his cheek before dragging it across his mouth. He looked down at his boots and held his hand over his mouth as he shook his head again. He swallowed hard and grimaced as if he were about to vomit. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," he said after a moment. He cleared his throat and looked over at Matt. Seeing his concern and hoping to set his mind at ease, he pointed a finger at the redhead and forced a very fake laugh. "I swear Matt, if you let one of those rats crawls on me while I'm sleeping I'll— "

Shiro didn't get a chance to finish his sentence.

A sharp crack echoed over the field and shattered the silence of the night.

Two things happened to him at once.

The first was that something collided into the back of his head.

The second was that something slammed against his body and sent him flying against the side of the foxhole.

Something pulled and twisted in his gut, as though gravity had started to work in reverse.

Shiro felt his body and helmet hit the dirt wall. Hard. He swore that he saw stars. The wind was knocked out of his lungs. He couldn't have cried out even if he wanted to.

I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I just got shot in the head, my brains are everywhere, I don't have a face, oh dear God please don't let my mom see me like this…

He couldn't see anything. He couldn't hear anything. Everything was dark. Dark and black. Black as death itself.

He fought to breathe. He tried to gulp air down with little success, but as the seconds passed, he slowly felt his lungs fill again.

It wasn't until he could breathe again that he realized that the reason why he couldn't see was because his eyes were squeezed shut.

His heart pounded in his chest. He felt his blood pumping through his whole body. Felt his nerves trying to help his brain make sense of where he was in space, in time.

He felt something resting heavily on his body. It was solid, real, warm. He didn't know what was happening, but he knew that this, whatever exactly this was, this weight on top of him, was something to tie his anchor to. So he did.

Part of the thing laying on top of him moved. It felt as if a hand were fanning its fingers out over the center of his chest and slowly sliding over his clothes. He could hear the cloth rustle, but the sound was entirely too loud.

He could hear his own breathing. It was raspy. Shallow. Slightly panicked. In and out of his mouth it came and it went. His lips were dry. His throat was raw. A dull ache started up in his side. He thought about what it could be, but then he remembered that that was where he had been shot two months ago. The dirt was cool against the back of his hand.

He felt like he was a thousand miles away from his own body and yet completely in sync with even the smallest part of it at the same time. The feeling made his head hurt.

The thing on top of him moved again, seemingly a bit more hesitantly this time.

Suddenly he felt warm skin touch his own, and it sent a shock through him.

He took a sharp breath in.

It was… a hand. The palm, smooth and even, rested on the corner of his jaw. Something—he slowly recognized them to be fingers—gently curled over his ear, around the side of his head, and cradled the base of his skull. A thumb lightly touched the curve of his cheekbone.

Something soft tickled his neck.

He took a second to drink everything in. The touch against his face felt as if it were life itself. He lay there, this moment eternally suspended in time.

He let his eyes flutter open.

Any breath that he had reclaimed left his lungs with a shuddering exhale.

Allura's wide eyes, shining with unshed tears, stared back at him only inches away. Hulking wings hovered over nearly the entire foxhole, muscles twitching and feathers blocking out the night sky. Starlight filtered through the very edges of the splayed feathers. A platinum braid fell over her brown shoulders and the tail of it rested on the ground next to his head.

Shiro swore he had never seen anything so beautiful in his entire life.

Allura's eyes were locked onto his own. Her lips trembled as if she were trying very hard not to cry. Her hand, the one that rested over his heart, gripped the edge of his jacket. He could feel her fist shake from clutching the jacket so tightly. Her cheeks were pale with fear. Stray tendrils of her hair fell out of her braid and swayed back and forth with each breath she took.

He suddenly felt the strangest urge to brush that hair back behind her ear.

They stayed like that together, frozen in time, until Allura spoke. Her voice was no louder than a breath.

"I… I have to…" She swallowed and closed her eyes. "I have to go."

A look of confusion bloomed on Shiro's face. He tried to speak but failed to find his voice. It took him a moment to find it again. "Go?" His voice was just as quiet as hers. He started to shake his head. "Please— "

"Shh, don't… don't say anything." Allura looked down at his chest and delicately smoothed his jacket— the part she had been holding— with the tips of her fingers. She took one last look at his face before she clenched her jaw and quickly pushed herself up to her feet. Her fingers lingered on his jaw for a fraction of a second longer than they needed to.

The chill of the night crept over Shiro's skin as soon as Allura's body pulled away from his own. His skin prickled with goosebumps.

He tried to push himself up onto his elbows, but his arms and legs felt as if they were made of lead. "Allura please wait!" he managed to croak out.

Allura ignored him and backed away. She brushed off her knees despite the complete lack of dirt on them and turned around so that she no longer faced him. She spread her shaking wings and let them stretch. She shook her arms out and spread her fingers apart. She was stalling and they both knew it.

"Allura!" Shiro's yell stopped Allura in her tracks. For a few seconds the only sounds were their breathing. Shiro's panting and Allura's tempered breaths.

"What… What just happened?"

Neither of them moved. For a long time the question hung in the air untouched. It pressed in on all sides and blanketed their heads. The words were suffocating.

After a moment Allura inclined her head toward him slightly. Shiro could just make out the corner of her eye, which was cast downward.

"Do you want the honest truth?" he heard her say. Her voice was hard. Forced.

His silence was answer enough.

She didn't turn toward him further, but she did lift her face toward the stars, like she was searching the heavens for a response. She took a steadying breath.

"The honest truth is that I don't know either."

She quickly turned her head forward again, flapped her wings with as much strength as she could muster, and disappeared from the foxhole.

Time flung itself back into back into its normal rhythm.

Shiro felt as if he had just stopped spinning in circles. He was suddenly so dizzy and nauseous that he could hardly move or breathe.

The echoes of a rifle's shot rolled over the battlefield. Shiro heard Matt swear vilely and scramble to his side. He heard a rifle skid across the ground. Matt was screaming. Loud, blood curdling screams of agony that didn't care less if they were heard.

Matt buried his fists in Shiro's uniform and dragged his body up by it. He wrapped his arms around Shiro and cradled him against his chest. He buried his face in Shiro's neck and continued to scream. He couldn't have spoken words if his life depended on it. Hot and panicked tears of grief streamed down his face. All he could do was hold Shiro's body and cry.

Shiro's hazy mind finally snapped into focus. He wasn't dead. He was far from dead. He was, in fact, very much alive.

Shiro hurriedly grabbed onto Matt's shoulders and tried to pry himself from his grasp. "Matt, hey, listen to me! It's okay, I'm okay, I'm alright!"

Matt felt Shiro's grasp, heard his voice, and pulled far enough away so that he could look at Shiro's face. His eyes, as wide as saucers, searched every inch of Shiro as fast as they could. He spent a significant amount of that time staring at Shiro's head. His mouth gaped open and his cries quickly fell silent.

Shiro knew that considering what Matt thought he had just witnessed, he was not expecting his head to be there, least of all intact and speaking.

Shiro reached up and gripped Matt's face tightly in his hands. "Look at me. Look at me! I'm alive!" He unfastened his helmet's strap and yanked the helmet off of his head. He turned it around and showed the back of it to Matt. A gouge ran from the back of the helmet and wrapped around the left side. "See? He missed!" Shiro swallowed the bile that crept up the back of his throat at the sight.

He missed. Right.

Matt shook his head and reached to touch the shining white path that the bullet had left. He looked back up at Shiro and wordlessly drew him into a bone-crushing hug. Shiro returned it gladly.

He stared at the far wall of the foxhole as he continued to reassure Matt that no, he wasn't dreaming and no, he wasn't seeing things. His body was as calm as he could make it, but his mind was racing uncontrollably.

He was only alive because he was pushed out of the way of a bullet that was meant to kill him. A bullet that should have killed him. A bullet that, in every other universe, would have killed him.

If it had not been for Allura.

She was the wild card. She was the factor that was unaccounted for. She seemed to be something beyond the confines of what should and should not be, she simply was. And now he himself had been pulled into this gray area, this strange place where the edges of law and order were blurred by the unpredictability of choice.

She chose to save him. She chose to go against everything that should have been at the very last second. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, one that left him alive and breathing instead of dead and bloody on the ground.

He tried to feel grateful, but his gratitude could only extend so far before it was overcome by a creeping fear that hovered over his mind.

This was the second time that he had faced death. Both times, Allura had been the one that held out her hand for him to take.

And both times, Shiro had walked away with his life.

This is a high-stakes game we're playing, he thought as he felt Matt slowly calm down, one where I don't think either of us really knows exactly what we're betting against. Or what the cost will be when this game ultimately catches up with us.

Shiro took a deep breath and shoved the thought aside. He couldn't afford to dwell on that now. Later maybe, but not now.

"Alright Holt," he said after he pulled himself out of Matt's embrace. His jaw was clenched, his mind made up. He turned and picked up his rifle, then faced Matt again and slammed the stock of it in the dirt. "Are you ready?"

Matt swiped the back of his hand across his face. He sniffed and crawled across the foxhole to retrieve his own weapon. He lifted it and paused, head bent. His shoulders heaved as he spun around. He covered the length of the foxhole in about three steps to return to Shiro's side. His face was steeled and he nodded. "As ready as you are," he said. Any and all traces of a weeping Matthew Holt were gone. Instead, an enraged soldier stared back at him.

Shiro clapped him on the shoulder and snatched his helmet up from where it lay on the ground. He planted it on his head. This time he didn't snap the strap under his chin.

Matt cocked his head and nodded to something over Shiro's shoulder. "He's got to be in the treeline. That's the only place he could be hiding."

Shiro nodded. "I agree." He started to move to shoulder his rifle but Matt grabbed onto his sleeve. He stopped and looked at Matt, who had a strange look on his face that appeared to be a mix of rage and eager expectation.

"We're going to get him," he said. "Nobody tries to kill my friends and gets away with it. Nobody."

Shiro nearly smiled. Very nearly. He would have if not for the strange happenings of tonight that weighed so heavily on his heart and mind.

"Let me go up first," he said, "You cover me and be my eyes."

"That's fair," Matt nodded. "Just be careful. Let's not have a repeat of last time."

This time Shiro couldn't help but smile. "Alright, you've got a deal."

Matt returned the smile and readied himself. He scuttled over to a corner of the foxhole, one where a dark shadow fell. He slowly stood, just high enough for him to see over. He scanned the dark treeline. "Nothing overtly jumping out at me, so be quick about it."

Shiro wasted no time. He climbed over the side of the foxhole and crawled along the ground as fast as he could. His eyes were glued on his destination: the body of a dead man just ten feet away.

Another gunshot sounded in the night. Shiro heard the bullet collide with the ground a couple of feet behind him. Before the shooter had another chance to fire, Shiro was sheltered behind the body. He rested his rifle on top of the dead man's hip and settled in, finger on the trigger and sight steady.

He heard Matt's hushed voice from the foxhole. "Two o'clock. One hundred and twenty yards."

Shiro slowly shifted his aim and searched the trees. The stars gave him next to no light to see anything by. Black tree trunks blended together into a blanket of darkness. The perfect hiding spot for a sniper.

This guy could be anywhere, he thought. I've got to get him to make a mistake.

Shiro glanced down at the body he was lying behind. There wasn't terribly much at his disposal that he could use to flush the sniper out. He needed a sizable target, something large enough to draw attention and hopefully garner a split-second reaction shot.

He didn't really have anything on his person either.

But he did have his helmet.

That's when he got an idea.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he slid his helmet off. He got a firm grip on its edge. He stared down the sight and wrapped his finger around the trigger again.

He breathed. Counted his heartbeats.

And he waited. And waited.

He stayed perfectly still, watching the dark trees for anything that would give his query's hiding place away.

It was a game of cat and mouse, one where neither the cat nor the mouse seemed particularly inclined to make the first move.

Matt watched quietly from the foxhole. Every few minutes he would roll his shoulders to loosen them up.

Shiro remained as still as stone. He lay there, staring down his rifle, until he felt his joints grow stiff.

Despite the deceptive stillness of the treeline, he knew the sniper was still there, watching for him intently.

Shiro flexed the fingers of his right hand and tapped the trigger with his fingertip.

It was time to end this.

He licked his lips and stared down the sight. He tasted the salty sweat that had dripped into the corners of his mouth.

His heart beat slowly, steadily.

Bum bum. Bum bum.

Inhale.

Bum bum.

Exhale.

His left arm flew up, throwing his helmet up and over the body he was using for cover.

He saw the white flash. Heard the shot. Felt the bullet slam into the body he was using for cover.

Bingo.

A slight shift of the sight. A slight squeeze of his finger.

The familiar recoil hit his shoulder, that he had expected. What he didn't expect was to see a familiar shape appear in the trees.

Wings and silver armor shimmered in the starlight. He could see her braid even from here. She knelt, picked something up. Cradled it in her arms.

He wondered if it could have been his imagination, but he thought he saw her glance in his direction.

Her wings spread and flapped. A blinding burst of color exploded around her.

And then she was gone.

The night returned to its inky darkness.

Shiro blinked. His breath slowly escaped. He hadn't realized he had been holding it.

He slowly let his rifle sag in his grip.

"Hit?" Shiro heard Matt's hushed voice from the foxhole.

"Yeah," he replied after a moment.

"Are you sure?" Matt asked.

Shiro sighed and pushed himself up to his feet, then quickly shuffled back to the shelter of the hole. "Yeah," he said as he jumped down into it, "I'm sure." He knelt down next to his bag of gear and pushed it to the side, then rested his rifle against the wall of the foxhole. He lay down on the ground and curled his knees up to his chest. "Your turn to watch, Holt."

Matt nodded. "You've got it."

Shiro crossed his arms over his chest and rolled over so that he faced the dirt wall. He wanted to sleep, he knew that he needed to, but he couldn't close his eyes. His mind kept playing the events of the night over and over again. The conversation, the pleasantly confusing twist he felt in his gut when she smiled, the way she touched him when…

He swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat.

Shiro wrapped his arms around himself even tighter. The night wasn't cool enough to chill him, but he felt as if his blood had suddenly turned to ice all the same. As almost an afterthought, he reached up and pulled his helmet down low over his ears. His fingertips brushed over the rough furrow in the metal, and they lingered there for a second. His stomach dropped and he quickly shoved his hand back under his arm.

He knew this dance between him and Allura couldn't go on forever. He knew that when it did end, whenever that would be, it was certain to not end well. For either of them.

The only question was how much time they had left before it all came crashing down.

---

Shiro's mud-caked boots felt as if they weighed a thousand pounds. His rifle strap dug into his shoulder so he readjusted its position, and, just like with the last three times he had tried, it had no effect on the burning ache in his muscles. Sweat dripped into his eyes, so he wearily dragged the neck of his shirt, which was already soaked, up and across his face for what might as well have been the hundredth time. It did nothing but spread the sweat across his face.

It had rained nonstop for the past week, and the deluge had been immediately followed by a heat wave. While sloshing through muddy fields in the stifling heat and humidity was putting a damper on the platoon's morale, it had not slowed their march across the countryside in the slightest. Their timeline was tight, and they were expected to meet up with another unit in a small village thirty miles to the north before nightfall fell, no matter the weather or ground conditions.

After marching at a quick pace for the past four hours in the unwavering heat without a break, every man in the platoon was undeniably exhausted. Calls of encouragement would rise up from somewhere among the ranks every so often to offer the motivation needed to continue to press on.

When the call to stop for a rest was finally given, a sigh of relief rolled through the file of men. They all dragged themselves to the small grove of trees which offered some of the only shade that was nearby and made themselves at home.

Shiro let his pack slide off his back at the base of one of the trees and collapsed onto the grass next to it. He laid his rifle on the grass next to him and let his arms fall limp onto the ground at his side.

He heard another pack hit the ground to his left, accompanied by a groan. He didn't bother to look and see who it was, he knew already.

"How are you holding up, Matt?"

He heard a winded laugh, followed by a sarcastic, "Just peachy, how about you?"

Shiro smiled and threw a thumbs up in Matt's direction. "Never better."

The two lay in the shade of the tree in silence, eyes closed and savoring the coolness of a fresh breeze as it blew lightly over their skin.

After a few minutes, Shiro heard Matt sit up and lean back against the tree trunk. He opened one eye and watched as Matt stretched his legs out in front of him and twisted his mouth into a wide yawn. "So," Matt said as he rubbed one of his knees, "heard you were written up for a bronze star."

Shiro frowned and gazed up at the gently swaying branches above their heads. "News travels fast, I see."

"Seems so," Matt replied.

"I didn't do anything that anybody else wouldn't do. I was just doing my job, nothing special."

"Well the Sergeant certainly thinks highly of what you did. It was his and six other guys' hides that you saved after all. They'd all be dead if it weren't for you, you know that."

Shiro didn't say anything for a moment. He just watched the wind play with the leaves above them.

"Recognition doesn't matter to me," he said. He absentmindedly ran his fingers over the blades of grass that sprouted where he lay. His voice grew quiet and thoughtful. "I just want to do my job and go home, just like everybody else." He looked over and locked eyes with Matt. "You hear me?"

Matt nodded and offered a soft but sad smile. "Yeah, I hear you."

Shiro returned it and slowly sat up. He stretched and felt his back crack nicely, then reached into his pack and withdrew his canteen. He slipped his helmet off of his head and laid it next to him on the ground before he unscrewed the cap. "How are you doing on water?" he asked as he peered into the mouth of the container.

Matt grabbed his own canteen and shook it. He listened to the water slosh around inside and shrugged. "I should be alright," he said. "Sounds like I've got plenty for now, so don't worry about me."

Shiro wasted no time in raising the canteen to his lips and drinking. The water was hot and tasted like metal, but it was wet, and his parched throat certainly wasn't about to be picky. A small stream of water trickled out of the corner of his mouth and dripped down his chin. He lowered the canteen and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before leaning forward and pouring water over the crown of his head. He rubbed it into his hair and let it run down his neck as he sighed.

"You're onto something there," Matt said as he watched. He quickly gulped down a few mouthfuls of water from his own canteen but he didn't remove his own helmet. He never did.

"Hey Shiro?"

"Mm?"

"How long do you think it'll be before we get a shower? I'm talking a real shower, with hot water and without fifty people behind you waiting for their turn in the stall."

Shiro tilted his head back and closed his eyes while he poured more water over his face. He rubbed it across his skin vigorously and snorted a bit of stray water out of his nose. "You're telling me that this isn't a steaming hot shower?" He opened one eye and grinned at Matt.

Matt rolled his eyes. "Hardy har har, very funny, you're a comedic genius— hey, watch it!"

Matt tried to throw his arms up to shield himself, but it was too late. Shiro shook the excess water out of his hair, and he made sure that Matt was in the direct line of fire. The look of disgust on Matt's face was enough to double Shiro over in stitches of laughter. When he was able to form words again, he said, "Hey, you ought to be grateful for that, you desperately need a shower. I just decided to take it upon myself to help you out."

"There goes the pot calling the kettle black…" Matt shot Shiro a nasty side eye before giving him a playful shove, which was admittedly a bit harder than necessary. It threw off Shiro's balance and he fell back into the grass, laughing the whole way down. Matt didn't even try to keep the smirk off of his face.

Eventually the laughing died down, and the two settled into a contented silence that was buffered by the sounds of men milling about. They watched the wind tussle the blades of grass around them and listened to black birds call to each other as they flew overhead.

After a while, Shiro broke the silence.

"Hey Matt?"

"Yeah?"

"This might sound a little… I don't know… strange, maybe even crazy, but… have you ever seen weird things out here?"

Matt shrugged and picked up a leaf from the ground. He twirled it around between his fingers and watched the sunlight filter through it. "I don't know. Depends what you'd define as 'weird'."

Shiro put his hands behind his head and tried to find a more comfortable position on the ground. "You know, anything that's out of place I guess? Something that would really stand out as odd."

Matt turned to look down at Shiro with narrowed eyes. "Did Rodriguez steal my spare socks again?"

Shiro rolled his eyes. "No, and that was one time that I was involved with any of his shenanigans, so don't lump me in with him every time. But that's not what I'm talking about."

"Well then what?"

"I mean have you ever seen something… something that looked like it didn't belong?"

Matt crossed his arms and frowned. "I'm not following."

Shiro sighed and picked up his canteen. He pretended that he was reading the words that were written along the side of it, but his mind was elsewhere. "You remember that night a couple of weeks back, the one where we were in that foxhole and I almost died?"

Matt nodded. "Yeah, what about it?"

"Did you see anything that was off to you that night?"

There was a brief silence. "The only weird thing I saw was when you willingly took a break." Matt turned toward Shiro. "What is it exactly that you're getting at?"

Shiro brushed some dirt off the side of the canteen with the side of his hand and shook his head. "Never mind, it's nothing." He looked back at Matt and got a strange look on his face. "Seems like I missed a spot."

"What are you talki— HEY! STOP SPLASHING ME!"

"I'm just trying to help!"

"As if!"

-x-x-x-

"Hey Shirogane, you're up."

Shiro readjusted the pack on his shoulders and gave a thumbs up to his squad leader. "On it." He quickened his pace until he was a few lengths ahead of the line of soldiers. It had been a while since the last time he had taken point, so he wasn't about to argue. Not that he would have anyway, just purely because he wasn't one to buck orders on principle.

He patted the man he was relieving on the shoulder and heard him fall back into the file. He checked his watch and rolled his shoulders. It was half past three. They still had a few hours to go before they reached their destination, which meant that it would still be a few more hours until they felt the air cool as the sun dipped below the horizon. He sighed and readjusted his helmet, which had fallen slightly to one side at some point. By now, the rough gouge reaching from the back and around the side of his helmet had become a familiar touch to his fingers, and he paid it little mind anymore. But he never forgot where it had come from, what could have happened that night, and what actually did. He knew that he never would. He didn't want to.

A breeze picked up and rustled the grass at his feet. He watched the stalks bend over each other in wave after wave of late summer green until they came to a stop at the edge of the woods about a quarter mile away.

On the other side of the forest before them was their final destination. Nobody had consulted Shiro about their route–after all, he was just a corporal with no say in the matter–but he was not keen on going this way. While the forest provided more than adequate cover for the platoon, it felt too confining. The safe paths to the other side that were known to them were few and far between, and if anything were to go wrong… Shiro didn't want to think about it. Besides, all intelligence that the platoon had been passed along confirmed that this route before them was safe enough to take, and he wasn't about to be the one to try and raise a stink about it that would ultimately go nowhere and earn him disciplinary action to boot.

So he was going to do his job without complaint so that they could all finish this march as quickly and uneventfully as possible.

He scanned the treeline as he walked. There was nothing that he could see. Nothing seemed out of place. Nothing was suspicious.

He chewed on his bottom lip. It still didn't feel right. He couldn't quite put his finger on what exactly it was that was throwing him off, and that made him even more uneasy.

He searched the trees again. There was no sign of Allura.

He took that as a good enough sign and picked up the pace.

Soon his scarred helmet disappeared into the trees. It was followed by others until the only evidence that soldiers had ever been there was a winding path of trampled grass.

The wind picked up again and tossed the bent blades this way and that, erasing their footsteps entirely.

They were ghosts slipping through the trees. It was as if they had never existed at all.

-x-x-x-

Sunlight broke through the branches above the soldier's heads and gently filtered its way down to the forest floor. Their cautious footfalls were muffled by the dead leaves on which they walked. The air was still and smelled of dirt and rotting wood. Nobody spoke. The forest dared them to break the silence, but none were keen to do it.

Shiro led the line of men through the maze of trees. Every so often the man behind him would consult his map and compass to ensure that they were on the correct path. All of the trees looked the same, so it would be easy to stray and become lost. Shiro was not about to let that happen, and he stuck to the route like glue.

The trees loomed over him, their wooden arms stretched across the sky, twisted fingers reaching down to grasp at him. If he had been anywhere else in the world, Shiro might have found them comforting. But here he only felt their presence to be menacing. They held deadly secrets, secrets that he did not want to learn of. So he kept his eyes forward, always on the path he was blazing through the forest.

They had been walking for about a half hour when someone from further back in the line made his way to the front. He whispered something in the navigator's ear and quickly returned to where he had come from. Shiro watched from over his shoulder. Judging from the look on the navigator's face, whatever this was surely wasn't going to be good.

The navigator stepped up to Shiro and put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. His voice was hushed as if he were afraid that the trees might overhear, and he looked out at the forest as he spoke. "Shirogane, there's been a change of plans."

"And what exactly would that be?" Shiro asked, matching his voice with the other man's.

"New orders. We're going to be following the southern trajectory."

Shiro faced the soldier and frowned. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that that was what they had agreed not to do." He lowered his voice further. "Remember all the scuttlebutt about the last unit that went through this place and took that road? There was hardly anything left of them to scrape off the ground."

The soldier sighed. "Believe me, I do. But the Captain doesn't like the time we're making and insists that going south is the only way that we'll make it in time."

"Well does he want us to make it there on time or in one piece? Because you and I both know that we aren't the only ones who heard the rumors about what happened."

"As far as the Captain wants us to know, that was all it was: scuttlebutt. So it doesn't matter, even if it's true." The soldier swallowed and furrowed his brow. "We turn south." He patted Shiro on the back as he turned and took his place once again. Shiro saw him tighten his helmet strap and cross himself as he went.

Shiro's gut turned painfully. His eyes flickered over every tree, rock, and bush. There was nothing to see.

He looked back at the navigator, who nodded grimly. There was no fighting it and he knew it.

Shiro took a deep breath and turned south as he was told. He had no choice in the matter. After all, he was just a corporal.

-x-x-x-

Despite the broken shade that the trees provided, the stifling heat was not deterred. Sweat ran down Shiro's neck in rivulets that tickled his skin. His black hair was plastered to his forehead under his helmet, and it itched him terribly. And he was so thirsty. He reached for his canteen to drink but then stopped once he wrapped his fingers around the neck of the bottle. He remembered that he had finished his water over an hour ago. His throat felt dry enough to crack, but there was nothing to be done about it now. As he straightened up, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Something very familiar.

Shiro froze.

He swore that his heart stopped.

There, standing behind a fallen tree, hands clasped tightly together, was Allura.

Her expression was blank. But he could see her hands shaking.

And there, crouching behind her, was a soldier manning a machine gun.

And he was far from alone.

Fear sliced through his whole body like a knife. He felt every nerve come alive, every synapse fire. Shiro's scream seemed to form itself.

"AMBUSH!"

The forest erupted into chaos. His voice was immediately swallowed up by the sounds of gunfire and of bullets colliding with both wood and flesh. He dove for the ground and crawled for the nearest cover he could find: a tangled web of roots that once belonged to an upended tree.

As he chambered his first round, he looked back at what used to be the line of soldiers that formed his platoon, which was now scattered in every direction and taking cover behind anything that might be able to withstand a bullet. The bodies of the dead and wounded were peppered across the forest floor. Some of them were dead before they hit the ground. They didn't even know what hit them. One of the bodies was that of his navigator.

Shiro's blood began to boil. His hands began to shake.

They should never have come this way.

If they had stuck to the original course, they could have completely missed this.

These men would still be alive if it weren't for a risky and stupid order.

Rage now overshadowed fear. He clenched his jaw and shouldered his rifle. He aimed it toward the enemy.

He would have his vengeance. And he would have it now.

With every squeeze of the trigger, he watched an enemy soldier fall. Every slam of the rifle's stock into his shoulder fueled the fire in his heart. Angry tears welled up in his eyes, and he didn't try to stop them.

But it seemed for every German that died, two more took his place. It was as though every bullet Shiro sent across the forest was just shot right back to him as some sort of twisted courtesy.

The click of an empty magazine brought him back and forced Shiro behind cover to reload. He ripped the spent magazine out and slammed a full one in its place. He readied his weapon took a moment to assess the state of everything around him.

The German soldiers in the underbrush were cutting his platoon down like chaff.

They didn't stand a chance. Not here. They were hemmed in, they had nowhere to go…

He heard his commander's call to retreat deeper into the woods somewhere over the chaos. That's when he remembered Allura.

As he abandoned his hiding spot, he looked back to see if he could catch a glimpse of her, but all he saw were bullets whiz past his head. He fired a few of his own in return as he ran.

Shiro didn't get far before he ran into another fellow soldier. He couldn't recognize him for the blood that covered his face, and he was screaming for help. Without thinking twice about it, Shiro stopped and heaved his body onto his shoulders. He grabbed the soldier's weapon as well as his own and kept running towards what he hoped would be safety.

Bullets whined past him and slammed into the dirt at his feet. He didn't look back. He just ran as fast as he could. The soldier he carried kept screaming something about his eyes. Shiro couldn't afford to pay enough attention to what he was screaming to figure out exactly what it was that he was trying to say, but the fact that his back was growing soaked with hot blood spoke clearly enough.

After he had covered about a hundred yards, all the while dodging stumps, rocks, and branches, the ground started to slope downward. Shiro forced himself to try and slow down a little so as not to lose his footing on the loose dirt and leaves. Gunfire continued to nip at his heels. His lungs burned and his knees shook. But he kept running. He heard and saw other soldiers sprinting along beside him. Every so often one would cry out and fall. They would not get back up again.

Just keep going, Shiro repeated to himself. Just go.

Sweat dripped into his eyes. He tried to blink it away. It stung, making his eyes water.

The hole appeared in front of him at the very last second. He tried to clear it, but it was already too late. His stride was too long to avoid it, and he felt his ankle turn underneath him. He felt a sickening snap as he lost his balance and was thrown forward. He and the soldier he carried hit the ground hard. They rolled down the slope until Shiro was stopped at the base of a tree. Fire shot up his leg as he careened into the tree trunk. He bit back a cry and pushed himself to his knees. He looked up and saw the soldier he had been carrying a few feet ahead of him, blindly groping at the now-level ground and struggling to get to his feet.

Shiro gritted his teeth and dragged his leg behind him as he reached for one of the rifles that he had dropped in the fall. He managed to get his hands on one and use it to help him get most of his weight onto the side of his uninjured leg. He pulled himself across the ground and toward the other soldier as quickly as he could. What exactly he was going to do when he got there he didn't know, but it was going to be something. He was determined to get out of this forest, come hell or high water, and this soldier was coming with him.

After what felt like an eternity, he finally was close enough to grab onto the soldier's uniform. "Hang on buddy, I've got you!"

As he spoke, the soldier reached his own hand forward. Shiro heard a strange sound that he couldn't quite place, and then saw a bright flash. His body was thrown to the side with the force of an explosion.

-x-x-x-

He couldn't think.

He wanted to say something. Anything. But he couldn't seem to form words.

He couldn't breathe.

Something warm and wet was pouring over his face and into his throat. He tried to cough but couldn't force the stuff out of his windpipe fast enough before it filled up again.

He tried to roll over— something in the back of his mind told him to— but it was nearly impossible. He settled for tossing his head to the side, which worked well enough. After a few desperate moments of clawing for breath, the flow of liquid seemed to be diverted enough for him to manage well enough so long as he spit a good amount of it out. He recognized the coppery taste in his mouth as blood.

Shiro opened his eyes. Everything was blurry. It was all too bright. His ears rang and his head felt like someone had beaten it with a baseball bat. A wave of nausea washed over him and he promptly vomited.

He shut his eyes tightly for a moment and then tried again. This time he cracked his eyelids just enough to make out light and a few bulky shapes. Slowly his vision came into focus.

He saw a smoking crater in the dirt. Nearby was a pair of boots. The boots were attached to a pair of legs. The legs were not attached to anything.

Shiro closed his eyes. Then opened them again.

Just out of his reach was an arm. There was a watch on its wrist, the face smashed and the band barely holding itself together.

Shiro sat up very slowly. His stomach churned and his vision swayed, but he managed to pull himself up. He kept his eyes on the watch. When he let the blood drip out of his mouth, he didn't pay any attention to the long tendrils of it that clung to his nostrils, lips, and chin.

He didn't know why, but he reached forward to grab the arm. Nothing happened. He tried to reach for it again. Once again, nothing.

Shiro blinked. Something wasn't right.

He looked down at his arm in an attempt to figure out why he couldn't seem to make it work, but paused when he realized that there was nothing left to see.

He stared blankly at the mangled stump that clung to his shoulder. Then back at the severed arm that lay in front of him.

The ground shivered as another land mine exploded.

My watch, he thought. My watch is broken.

Shiro didn't know why, but he started to cry.

-x-x-x-

Allura ran. Her feet flew over the ground so quickly that she might have been flying. In truth, she may very well have been. She didn't know and frankly she didn't care. All that made sense to her in this moment was that she had to get to him, and she had to get to him now.

She could see him sitting there on the forest floor with his back to her, so close and yet a million miles away. It felt as if her legs were carrying her absolutely nowhere no matter how fast she threw one foot in front of the other.

I have to tell him, she repeated over and over in her mind, I have to tell him…

She choked on her tears of desperation. She didn't bother to scrub them away from her eyes.

I have to tell him how sorry I am…

She reached her hand out toward him as if she could snatch his silhouette out of the air.

… And how I have never met a more beautiful human soul.

Something snapped inside of her and she couldn't contain the tidal wave of emotion that swallowed her up.

She cried out his name as if it were life itself.

"TAKASHI!"

Upon hearing his name, Shiro slowly turned around. Confusion was the look that painted his face. Until he recognized her.

His eyes lit up. His mouth, bubbling with blood at the corners, turned into a wide smile. His face was bitterly mutilated. The wound that spanned from one cheek, through his nose, and across to the other was deep, jagged, horrific. The damage continued to his right side, where his amputated arm wasn't the only thing that was injured beyond repair. The land mine had torn his uniform jacket away to reveal wounds that were beyond description. Allura could hear his spluttering gasps even from as far away as she was.

He looked at her like he was on the other side of a dream, disconnected from the reality that relentlessly pressed in around him. He tried to get to his feet but stumbled. He barely managed to keep himself from falling over completely by catching himself with his left arm, the only one he had left. After taking a moment to gather himself, Shiro tried to stand again. This time he couldn't hold himself up. His arm gave out and he collapsed to the ground with a weak moan.

By now, Allura had finally reached the place where Shiro lay. She skidded to a halt before him, her heels digging into the dirt and her wings spread wide to slow her down. Her fingers dragged along the ground and left deep gashes in the forest floor. She dropped to her knees heavily. Her heart sank down to the soles of her feet. Tears welled up in her eyes anew.

To see him like this… so very broken… it was too much.

Her heart felt as if it might burst.

She hesitantly reached her hand out toward him. She just wanted to touch him, to feel his solid frame, to know that he was still here…

Everything grew quiet. Unnaturally quiet. Suddenly, the world felt as if it stopped spinning on its axis.

Perhaps, this time, it truly had.

When she said his name after a few moments of silence between them, her voice was barely above a whisper.

"Takashi…"

Shiro slowly lifted his left hand and pressed his palm against hers. He gingerly laced his fingers into hers almost as if he were scared that his touch would shatter her like glass. He looked up at her and smiled.

"I knew you'd come."

Allura clenched her jaw until she thought her teeth might break. I didn't want to, I didn't… Because that would mean…

Shiro coughed until his smile was replaced by a grimace. When he had caught his breath again, he opened his eyes and looked back at Allura. "I finally got to send that card," he said quietly.

Allura shook her head as much in disbelief as she did to say No, stop, it can't be time yet…

Shiro nodded, the smile returning to his face.. "I finally got an address. Should get to Ryou in the next couple of weeks."

Allura felt the tears stream down her cheeks unchecked. They dripped down from her chin and onto Shiro's chest, where they were eagerly drunk by the fabric of his uniform.

Shiro let his hand gently fall back onto the ground but he didn't let go of Allura. His breathing started to become more rapid and shallow. Exhaustion now crept into his features. He let his head roll to the side and he looked out over the forest.

The explosions had finally stopped. The air was quiet. The sunlight, accented by smoke, still broke through the tree branches overhead. Of the handful of people that were walking around, none of them wore the uniform of Shiro's platoon. They would periodically stop next to a still body. There would be a gunshot. Then they would move on to the next body that lay on the ground.

One of these bodies in particular drew his attention. His throat tightened. He knew the long and lanky limbs well. For the first time he saw the red mop of hair unobstructed by what had been an ever-present helmet. The ginger hair was dyed a dark crimson.

Just beyond the body, Shiro watch a pair of boots as they slowly made their way toward him. He sighed and turned his head away from them, back towards Allura.

There was so much that he wanted to say, but in the cruelty of the world, time was too short. But he had a feeling that even if he were given all the time in the world he would never be able to fully voice everything.

How much she had grown to mean to him in such a short and admittedly bizarre time.

How he was grateful to her for… well, everything.

And how he wished that it all could have all been different.

Maybe in some other lifetime, some other world, it would have worked out okay. But he knew that wishing wasn't going to do anyone any good.

This was it, there was no changing it.

Through the haze that surrounded him, Shiro could hear the footsteps draw near, then stop.

He locked eyes with Allura. His heart was beating so fast that he thought it would fly out of his chest. He was scared. No, terrified.

Allura read his face and nodded. She leaned down until she lay on the ground next to him. She wrapped her arm around his shoulders and pulled him close. She squeezed his hand and touched her forehead to his.

His frantic breathing began to slow. He could hear her heartbeat, steady as a drum, her breathing deep and calming. Her body warmed his own, which was growing colder by the second.

"I'm not going anywhere. I promise."

Shiro swallowed hard. His gaze lingered on her face for a moment. Memorizing.

Ever so slightly, he nodded his head.

Allura reached up and brushed her fingertips along the curve of his temple. Her gaze lingered on his face for a moment. Memorizing.

Ever so gently, she spoke.

"You've done well, Takashi Shirogane."

She managed a small smile.

"It's time to go home."

Allura tilted her chin and placed a light kiss on his forehead. As her lips met his skin, his eyes fluttered shut. She felt him squeeze her hand. She squeezed it right back.

A gunshot broke through the silence.

And then there was nothing.

-x-x-x-

He felt warm. Like someone had wrapped him up in his favorite blanket, the one that his grandmother had made for him when he was just a kid.

Everything was quiet, but not quiet in a bad way.

It was neither light nor dark, nor anything in between. It just simply was.

Suddenly a burst of… something… filled his vision. His mind tried to comprehend it but could only get so far. He was eventually able to give the burst a name, but the awe he felt was so great that he was sure that he was finally experiencing this thing the way that it was always supposed to be.

Color.

Before he could even finish processing what it was that he was seeing, it was gone. In its place was a light that was bright enough to make him want to hide his face, but in the back of his mind he knew that trying to do that would be useless.

Slowly his sight sharpened until he was able to make out shapes, then the details of them. He couldn't recognize anything that he saw except for one thing.

The angel that stood in front of him.

Allura.

He was thunderstruck. He knew that he had never seen anything so beautiful. He wanted to say something, anything, but words failed him once again.

He had a feeling that this theme was not going to come to an end anytime soon.

Allura's voice shook him from his stupor.

"Takashi Shirogane, let me be the first to welcome you to Paradise."

Shiro blinked. What in the world is she talking abo—

A memory of walking through a forest flashed through his mind. Then one of him laying on the ground. Then one of her. And of a gunshot.

Oh.

He opened his mouth to say something, stopped, and then tried again. "So I'm…" He took a second to think. "So I'm dead?"

Allura didn't reply for a few moments. She just looked at him strangely, like she was hesitant to answer him, like he might somehow be angry with her for what her answer would be.

Eventually she replied. "Yes, you are."

Shiro nodded slowly and looked down. He suddenly took a step back, his eyes as wide as saucers. "What the—!"

Allura couldn't help but giggle a bit. "I see that the view is a bit much for you."

He looked up at her incredulously. "You don't say… What is this?"

She stepped forward and took him by the hand. His new, healed, right hand. "This here," she pointed to a colorful splotch under their feet, "is what you humans call the Milky Way galaxy. It's where Earth and your solar system resides. And this," she moved her finger slightly to the side, "is another galaxy, one that you have yet to discover. Along with all of these." She swept her hand to the side, indicating the vast expanse of the universe.

Shiro's mouth hung open. All he could do was stare down in awe.

Allura just smiled at him. "Come on," she said, "You'll have plenty of time to see them. You'll even come to learn their names."

Shiro reluctantly pulled his gaze away. "Really?" The look on his face made Allura think that this was what he must have looked like when he was a young boy, back when everything was new and beautiful in his eyes.

"Yes," she replied. Inadvertently she laced her fingers with his. She suddenly felt her stomach drop when he gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

He can't stay here.

She felt her feet begin to move toward the gates. Shiro trailed along behind her, his hand in hers, perfectly content to be in the moment.

Allura's heart began to pound. I have to do this. There's no two ways about it. The sooner I get it done the… the better…

She knew better than to believe her own lies. But she kept walking.

He must have sensed her turmoil, because Shiro stopped in the middle of the path. He tugged on her hand until she turned to face him. It took her a moment to pluck up the courage to do so.

"Hey," he said. His voice was soft. Concern was written all over his face. "What's the matter?"

Allura desperately wanted to tell him. She wanted to scream to him, to the universe, You're the only human I truly understand, the only one that I've found friendship with. You're the only person in history that I don't want to relinquish to Paradise!

But she didn't know how. So she balled her fist and shook her head. She couldn't bear to look at him.

Shiro frowned and stepped closer to her. He reached forward and gently lifted her chin with a finger until she had no choice but to look him in the eye. "Allura. Please."

She might as well have been struck by lightning. Her lip began to quiver as tears she couldn't control flowed down her face.

"I… I don't want…"

His eyes began to sparkle with tears of his own. Before Allura could react, she found herself wrapped in his embrace. Her response was to grab on for dear life. Her fingers clutched at him until her knuckles hurt. She buried her face in his neck and sobbed the truth. "I don't want to let you go!"

She felt his hand on the back of her head, smoothing her hair as he whispered "It's alright, it's alright" over and over again in her ear. His arms cradled her against him as he swayed back and forth, almost as if he were dancing with her. Maybe in his mind he was.

As she cried, he kissed her hair, her temple, her ear, the corner of her jaw.

"I'm not going anywhere."

He pulled away just far enough for him to take his thumb and wipe away her tears. He let his own fall untouched.

"I promise."

And she knew that he meant it.

-x-x-x-

When Shiro had finally walked up to the gates of Paradise, hand-in-hand with Allura, the look of pure joy that spread across his face when he saw what awaited him was enough to begin to reassure her that it was all going to be okay.

Like he said, he wasn't going anywhere. And she didn't have to worry that he was cold, hungry, scared, or in pain. All of that was gone now.

As she walked back down the crystal path—alone—she had some time to think.

When she had carried Shiro's soul from Earth to the heavens, what struck her about it was how light it was in her arms. She didn't know how or why this was, but she figured that if anyone would possess a contradictory soul then of course it would be him. The heavy thing that she carried now was her own heart.

She shook her head and felt a small smile creep up on her face. She knew that she would never know his equal, and that was perfectly alright by her.

There was, and only ever will be, one Takashi Shirogane.

He had reached in and stirred the waters of her heart, sending ripples that turned into tidal waves into every part of her being, shaking her core in the most beautifully human way possible.

She would be eternally grateful to that man. And the part of him that had taken up residence in her soul would never leave her. Never.

She leapt off of the end of the crystal path without hesitation. Her wings spread wide and then tucked in close as she dove down toward the earth.

Time and space blended together, simultaneously stretched as far apart as the four directions and crushed into itself billions of times over. Colors that no human eye could ever comprehend or imagine surrounded Allura on every side, caressing her skin as she soared down, down, down. Almost as soon as the myriad of colors appeared, they were replaced with the weak light of the sun. The familiar sound of gunfire greeted her as she grew closer to the ground. The air smelled strongly of sulfur. A moment later, her feet met the solid ground, and as suddenly as she had left Shiro and the light of Paradise, Allura found herself on the slope of a mountain. A battle was raging and her list of souls to retrieve was lengthy.

Allura took a deep breath.

He taught you humanity. It's time you put this lesson into practice.

She started walking toward where her next soul was waiting, her heart heavy but full.

And so it goes.

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Thank you for reading! This story has been in the making for a very long time, and it wouldn't have been possible without my amazing friend Amanda and her beta-reading skills.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it! Readers like you help make writing that much more fun. Thanks for tagging along for the ride! 3