Author's notes: This is a fic I'm writing with another author; Pughugs. We actually wrote all this out a while back. I just completely forgot about it. It's going to be multiple chapters, but I still have some things to finish up before I try to write another chapter of this with Pughugs… I really need to stop getting off task…

oooooooo

I was playing poker with a few men in my squad at a flimsy card table, resting after intense drills and exercises. It was around 9:00 PM, and I for one was tired. I was in a camp that was built just barely on the Finnish side of the border, stuck in my tent until further notice.

My tent harbored a few men and I whom had been put in a single squad, Squad 277. We were a strong group, but I had to admit; I was the weak link. I hadn't even completed my basic training before they put me to action and stationed me here at Leirin Raaka-piiloutua, or in English- Camp Rawhide. There were only 5 Squads of about 10 men stationed at this small camp, but I was still the new guy. Everyone else had been serving in this war since it started a few months back.

Just as I was about to lose about 50 Euros, some static-laced screams and shouts came over the radio. Everyone in Squad 277 looked to the device sitting on the shelf inside our tent.

"Suomen joukkue kaksi-seitsemän-seitsemän, pyydätte apua heti! Otamme huomioon raskaan tulituksen Pajalan pohjoispuolella!" A young man cried out, bullets and tank rounds cutting through from the background.

The highest ranked man in our squad stood from his bunk and grabbed his gun, looked over those of us still sitting at the table.

"Mitä odotatte? Liikettä, miehet!" He demanded. Upon hearing the stern command, we all rushed to gather our equipment. We had been called out from a squad in the municipality of Pajala in Sweden. We had been called into action, into the fight.

We were lead out of the tent into the frosty winter night by our squad's leader after we had gotten what we needed. He approached a commanding officer and saluted, quickly explaining the call over the radio. The officer nodded his head and pointed towards the helicopter pad. Our leader turned to us and motioned for us to follow. We did so, jogging fast behind him to an awaiting transport helicopter.

I seated myself at the side of the helicopter, my Rk 62 Assault Rifle clutched in both hands. I had a nervous feeling in my gut. It was terrifying, and yet my adrenaline was pumping. I felt I was ready for this. But I knew I wasn't. I had never been engaged in a high-risk area like Pajala. Sure, I'd seen a few skirmishes here and there of Swedish squads trying to get past the border, but Pajala was an area everyone knew about. It had been the location of four major battles already, and a newer one had surfaced within the past month. My heart raced at the thought of being in that municipality.

xxxxxxxxx

As we neared a populated area, a loud fwoosh and a trail of smoke appeared, the smoke hanging in the place where our chopper had been. I had no idea what it was from.

"What the hell was that?" One of the soldiers in my squad shouted frantically. I followed the thick, black smoke trail with my eyes, and located the place it had come from. I went wide eyed when a Swedish Soldier appeared from the window of the building I was looking at, an RPG-7 on his shoulder.

"RPG!" I yelled as the Swede on the ground fired again. They were using Rocket-Propelled Grenades... Where the hell had they gotten them? Last time we were updated on the Swedish weapons, they had no RPG's.

We weren't so lucky this time when the RPG came towards us. It struck the tail of the chopper and soon we were in a deadly spin, spiraling towards the ground. I hung on for dear life. This couldn't be the end, could it? I shut my eyes tight, and with a mighty impact to the ground, I was unconscious.

My hearing was the first thing to come back to me as I awoke. I was alive? I could hear rapid gunshots and the clink of the bullets against the metal wreckage presumably around me.

I opened my eyes, noticing the fact that I was inside the charred, destroyed hull of the helicopter. I used what strength I had and crawled on my stomach from the mass of scrap metal. I was soon laying on the frozen ground, and was about to rest a bit, but a loud shout pierced through the noise around and made me jerk my head up.

"Tino! Get up! Get the fuck up!" The man ordered, I stood on shaky legs and looked to the Finn whom had commanded me. He tossed me a pump-action shotgun and pointed towards a half-demolished building.

"Go inside that building, clear out any of those filthy Swedes you find! Do it now!"

I wasn't about to ignore that order, but what he said to describe the Swedes struck my heart like a personal insult.

The man I loved was a Swede. The man I loved was fighting against me. We had taken opposite sides and split. But I knew that we both loved each other.

I swallowed and looked around. The building was about a block away, and in between where I was and where it stood, there were RPG's flying through the air next to bullets and shrapnel.

I bit my lip, took a deep breath, and then broke out into a sprint. I raced toward the building, and I could hear bullets whizzing by me. I reached the door of the half-demolished building and quickly opened it. I shut it behind me once I was in, and once I turned my head back around I was staring right at a man in a torn up uniform. He had a pistol placed right at my face, and was about to pull the trigger.

Without thinking, I fired a shot right into the man's skull with my shotgun. His head was gone, and so was his threat to me. His body fell to the ground with a dull thud and I took a shaky breath. The room around me was dark, and clear of any other Swedes. In front of me was a flight of stairs, obviously my next destination.

I gripped my shotgun and cautiously made my way up the stairs. At the top there was a door, which I opened slowly. When I peeked onto the second floor there were about three Swedish soldiers firing their weapons out a large hole in the wall. They were so preoccupied that they didn't notice me pull this pin on a grenade and roll it by their feet. I ducked behind the door and shielded myself from the blast. A few seconds after it went off I re-entered the room to find the three men blown to shreds on the ground. I nearly gagged.

I shook my head and looked to the other side of the room, where a single unarmed Swedish soldier was. He was standing up straight, his arms up, looking to me with pleading eyes. He was surrendering.

I aimed my shotgun at him and took a deep breath. I had my orders.

Bang.

I blasted a shot into the man's chest. He fell back, and collapsed to the ground, dead.

I looked around, then noted the fact there was only two stories to this building. I approached the hole in the wall and looked out it. I saw multiple Finnish soldiers behind cover not too far away from the building. I saluted to them to signal that I was on their side, but as I turned around, I was tackled right out the hole in the wall.

I landed with a bone-crushing thump on the concrete, smacking the back of my head on the cold sidewalk. I looked up at my attacker with blurry eyes, and then gasped.

"…. B-Berwald…?"

My love stared down at me; his cerulean-blue eyes were staring right into my violet ones with a scary sort of sadness that I had never seen in him.

He looked up at my comrades then back down to me. Without a word, he stood and rushed off. My fellow Finns shot at him, and I was about to tell them not to, but an intense pain in my back stopped me.

I cried out, rolling over on my stomach and clutching my back. I was most definitely hurt. A medic rushed to me and began to help me up, but the pain was far too much. I collapsed back to the ground, leaving the medic to resort to dragging me to cover.

When the man got me to cover, he laid me down on the sidewalk and told me to stay there until they were able to a get a medical-evacuation chopper to this section of Pajala. I nodded and tried to endure the pain in my upper-back and the back of my head.

Bullets still whizzed by me, even as I lay motionless on the ground. I began to panic as the loyal Finns around me began dropping like flies. The Swedes had gotten reinforcements from what I heard in between the screaming and groaning of injured and dying men.

I was unexpectedly hoisted onto a man's shoulders and carried further down the street to a temporary safety. By far, the pain of being carried was the worse. My back was injured, and the way this guy carried me was just making it worse.

When he set me down against the ruins of what once was a building, and I leaned my head back, gritting my teeth.

While I could, I thought of what had happened.

Berwald, the man I loved, the Swedish man I had always loved, had just tackled me out the wall of a two-story building. He could have killed me then and there. He could have grabbed one of the other men's guns and shot me down. But he chose to risk his own safety and tackle me, and keep me alive.

He did still love me, didn't he?

I smiled a bit, staring up at the smoke-filled sky.

As long as he and I were alive, that was all I needed.