A/N: I started this exactly a month ago, and I'm so glad to finally have it done; more thought and fanwanking went into it than I had anticipated. Thanks to moonjat54, whose review motivated me to finally write part five, and special thanks to my history-beta GhostWolf7, without whom this would still be languishing, half-done, in a notebook somewhere, and it wouldn't even be any good. I hope you all enjoy it.
War Stories; Or, Five Times Mick St. John Didn't Die, and One Time He Did
1.
Out there on the battlefields, he knew death. Knew it as he saw men maimed and killed, and was the cause of it because there was nothing else a soldier could do and because it was the nature of war.
Knew it as he knew the terrible fear that, at any moment, it could be his turn. Because he deserved it as much as any of them. Which was to say, not at all.
The propaganda tried to tell you otherwise, and you tried not to think about it, but really, they were just people, on the other side, too.
2.
Claustrophobia there wasn't like the stories he heard, decades later – tunnels where maybe the walls really were closing in.
But it felt like that.
He'd be, say, chatting up a wounded-groggy friend, trying to stop the bleeding, trying to look upbeat – not say, shit, man; not say, he's gonna lose that leg – and the sounds and the smells and the everything would rise up to choke him. He'd wonder if this would be the time it killed him.
It never did. But sometimes he'd look into others' haunted eyes and know he wasn't the only one who knew it could.
3.
All it was was four walls and a roof, abandoned, but it seemed as good a place as any to stop, so they un-abandoned it.
Leaning against the walls, Mick watching the sun set through the window opposite, they rifled through the things that had been left inside.
Then nature called. He left.
When he came back, the little house was three walls and a roof. The eastern wall was gone; in the space where it had been were the wounded and dead.
He ran to help, because it was needed, because he wasn't dead, and because luck wasn't fair.
4.
It was cold, and still snowing, and the ground was hard, but they dug the graves anyway, because what else could they do?
This had been the longest week of his life. Every second felt days longer than the one before. The battle showed no signs of stopping, and the soldiers just kept dying.
The closest things to Christmas trees they had were the little wooden crosses. All they could expect to receive was more death.
At least he wasn't dead. He hated having to be grateful for that, but he was, most of the time.
Some Christmas this was.
5.
Ray's alive. Alive.
He should have been grateful; he should have been thrilled. But then, he should have been a lot of things. A better friend, for a start.
So, instead, when he found out that Ray Fordham was alive, all he felt was guilty.
He was glad the war was over, glad to be alive, and glad Ray was, too. But after he'd left, leaving Lila and Ray to pick up the pieces, no longer able to rationalize what he'd done and wished he hadn't… he couldn't help wondering if any of them had really made it out intact.
6.
If you'd asked Mick St. John, back then, how he thought he'd die, he'd have said, sensibly, In a war.
Pressed, he could've been more specific and detailed a likely scenario, but would probably have told you to shut up and quit being so morbid, because it's understandably not the sort of thing a soldier enjoys dwelling on.
If you'd given him an eternity – or, to be more precise, until you did – he would never have guessed this.
His wife's fangs in his neck, the world growing dark.
He was fighting, but it was an entirely different kind of war.