meet me on the battlefield (where the blood is crimson on our hands)
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and accept no credit towards it. I am the wonderful J.K. Rowling nor am I in any way affiliated with her.
Warnings for bad language, (minor) character death, and mild descriptions of blood.
Prompts below!
Word Count (without A/N): 938
They met on the battlefield at sunset.
She was bloodied and shaking and only nineteen and he was scared and stubborn and had just seen his friend die in front of his eyes.
They collided with each other as they ran from opposite directions, her dodging a bullet aiming for her head and him desperate to find help for his dead friend's cold, lifeless corpse.
"Fuck- fuck- fuck-" and she couldn't stop swearing and he couldn't stop crying and somehow they just couldn't let go of each other - two soldiers together on a battlefield, afraid and alone and clinging to the faint hope of each other.
"Down!" She yelled and threw them both behind a rock as a grenade smashed into the warehouse they'd been sheltering against. "Are you okay? Are you bleeding?" She took his face in her hands, trembling fingers scrabbling for injury, and green eyes met brown and, in far off space, two stars exploded into each other, breaking and shattering together.
Gunshots cracked over their heads and he was still crying but he tried to be brave, tried to protect the shivering redhead next to him, but the tears wouldn't stop falling and soon he was clinging to her arm, yelling and shouting in to her ear,
"We need to go back- we need to go back- we have to help him- I can't leave him there-"
She turned to him, frighteningly intense green eyes alight with worry.
"What is it? Whose still back there? Is he injured?"
"I- tried to save him-" and the man named James was weeping and the woman named Lily seemed to understand as she pulled him into her arms as the shrapnel rained over the remnants of the warehouse and together they both tried to survive the nightmare their lives had become.
"There was- so much blood - so much blood- and he just lay there-"
A vision entered James' mind - Remus jerking and convulsing as the blood seeped liquid through James' fingers, staining his skin, his hair, his teeth as he leant his head to his friend's and tried to feel for a heartbeat.
"Ssh," Lily soothed, clasping James' hand close to hers and it was only in battle that a girl and a guy could meet and make a silent agreement to hold one another close. "It's gonna be okay, we'll be okay, we're gonna get back - someone'll come look for us."
But it was a lie and, even as the words left her lips, they both knew it would take a holy miracle for both of them to make it out of this unscathed.
"Your name?" He managed to choke out and was rewarded by a flash of teeth and a whip of red hair as she whispered,
"Lily,"
"James," he whispered back and the hands were clutched tighter as the makings of a love story that could've been so beautiful in another life were smashed and blown to pieces by the blood and carnage of the battlefield.
Images of a girl in a white wedding dress throwing her arms around a dark haired Prince Charming echoed unnoticed throughout the air and perhaps, if they'd met later, loved deeper, and never joined the bloody war to defeat Tom Riddle, their fairytale could've become a legend emblazoned on stone but they were but two soldiers, she with red hair, and him with black and now, nobody would ever know how magnificent they could've become.
Together and spectacular and daring to live.
Her heart wouldn't stop pounding and his head was filled with the thoughts of the friend he couldn't save and they both knew now that the battlefield was a place where innocence and dreams went to die.
"Duck," he said suddenly, drawing his gun and firing a warning shot above Lily's head. She obeyed immediately, flattening herself against the rock and watching with shocked eyes as the bullet ricocheted off the glinting mental of the opposition's armour.
"Together?" Lily said, almost as a question, and he nodded, sealing their fate and their short lived story, and they ran, sprinting under the darkening sky and the shrapnel which rained down upon them like ice and snow.
They fled across the empty landscape, easy targets with their red and gold uniforms sparkling like fire on the early evening horizon.
Gunfire sprayed like deadly confetti around them and they spun and swerved, faces filled with an eerie determination to survive, to go on, to live for all their fallen friends who couldn't.
A bullet whizzed past her ear, skimming dangerously close to flesh but this only spurred them on, hearts thudding, breath gasping, and hands locked together under the thin fabric of their clothing.
Darting into the approaching woods, there was a small moment where they wondered if it might be possible to make it out alive and how they would cope with the memories of all the blood split on the ground but then there was a crack and it urged them forward, pressing for a place to hide, a place to huddle and hold and try not to die.
They raced until they were almost out of breath, until her gasps were short and hysterical and his breathing was unsteady and rapid, and then they collapsed behind a bush, the cries of war echoing far behind them.
They trembled together, clutching each other close under the icy wind and the faint hope of rescue and maybe, if destiny decided to be kind, they would live and they would survive and they would fall in love.
(But fate can be such a cruel thing.)
Written for Hogwarts Assignment 4, Muggle History: Task 1 - Write a Solider!AU
/
Okay, so this has been sitting on my computer for a week and I literally just finished the ending so hopefully it's okay.
Reviews would make my day!
As always, thank you for reading! Xx