Joe stared as flaming pieces of his beloved plane fell back to earth. The fact that there were a dozen or so Nazis mixed up in the mess was little comfort, and when he turned to Dex it was with a look of disbelief on his face. "...You blew up my plane," he said in the voice of a put-out four year old.

Dex lowered his eyes and blushed. "I know. I'm sorry. I had to. Um...don't kill me? Please?"

It was only half a joke. "You're about the only person I'd let get away with doing something like that."

"Yeah, well...don't hate me, then. Like I said, I'll build you another one." A beseeching glance searched Joe's expression. "...Friends?"

Upset as he was, Joe snorted at that. "What a stupid question."

"Sure, but..." Dex shrugged. "I blew up your plane. It seemed prudent to check."

"Dex..." Openness wasn't something that had ever come easily to Joe, but after the events of the last two hours he couldn't hold back the truth. "I could count on one hand the things I would be more upset about losing than my plane. You're one of them. All right?"

A fleeting smile relayed that that was exactly what Dex had hoped to hear. "Good. Here's your watch back."

"And where's the self-destruct button for it?" Joe asked as he strapped it into place. "Only I'd like to know so I have time to take it off my arm before it detonates."

"The plane is the only thing I've ever given you that has a self-destruct button. Honest."

Joe studied his friend's earnest expression for a moment, then shook his head and chuckled. Yes, his plane was gone, and that hurt, but it was a pain that could be gotten over. He still had Dex, and as he'd said a moment before that was what mattered. "All right," he allowed. "You had to blow up my plane to keep it from the Germans. Now we're stuck walking, unless you have a better idea."

Naturally, Dex did have a better idea. "What about the radio in the C-47? We could call for help."

As if on cue, a second blast sounded. Something had finally set off the remaining fuel in the broken airframe behind them, and judging from the magnitude of the explosion there wouldn't be much left when the flames died down. "...No, I don't think that will work, Dex. Just a hunch."

"Probably a pretty good one. So...west, then?"

"We might as well." Joe looked to the sky for directions out of habit, but between the leaves and the clouds there was no telling the sun's direction. "Ah..."

"You have a compass, Cap."

"...Right." Feeling like an idiot, he referred to one of the minuscule insets in his watch. "It's that way," he said, pointing.

"Then let's go. I don't really want to be here when the next group of Nazis comes by."

Before they were more than half a mile into their journey towards safety, Joe forced Dex to stop. "We're out of sight of both clearings," he insisted when the engineer looked quizzical, "and you can't walk all the way back to Paris on a sprained ankle. So sit down on that log and let me see your foot."

"Point taken," Dex sighed, and thumped down into his makeshift seat. He hesitated a moment, then extended his bad leg. "Go for it, I guess."

Joe exposed the damaged limb as gently as he could, but its owner still gave a hiss of pain. The pilot gave a tsk of his own once he could see the bruised and tender flesh. "This looks terrible, Dex." The ankle cradled in his hands was still swelling, and Joe wasn't certain he'd be able to get it back into its boot. "Are you sure it isn't broken?"

"I don't know for sure, no. But I don't think I'd be able to use it at all if it was."

"Hmm..." Sprained or broken, there was nothing they could do besides wrap the joint tightly in bandages and hope it didn't worsen. When that was done Joe turned his attention to the battered fingers of Dex's left hand. He was too afraid of causing further injury to the digits to try and set them, but he felt confident enough in his medical abilities to strap them together atop a tongue depressor. "Anything else?" he asked as he pressed down a final piece of adhesive tape. "I'll know if you lie to me, so don't try."

"Just bumps and bruises, I think. Well, and my ear, but there's nothing you can do about that."

"Is it still ringing?" All Legion air crew members were issued .45 caliber pistols as a matter of course, and Joe had no reason to think that Overmeyer had been carrying something different today. The .45s were painfully loud when fired at arm's length; he could only imagine what having one go off right next to your ear would be like.

"Yeah. It's getting kind of throbby, too. Inside, I mean. It's weird, I can't really explain it."

Grimacing, Joe dug through the depleted first aid kit. "Here. Take this. It's only aspirin, but it might help."

"Thanks." Dex made a face as he swallowed the pills dry. "Ugh. You'd think they could make medicine taste better than it does. It can't be that hard, you know?"

"Are you suggesting we expand into pharmaceuticals once the war's over?" Joe teased.

"Boring. No thanks."

"Good. I can't fly a pill. Now stay here; I'm going to find you a crutch of some sort."

"Cap!"

He turned back. "What is it?"

"...Stay in sight, huh?"

Joe didn't answer, but he was careful to remain where Dex could see at least a glimpse of him while he searched for a solid stick. He would have stuck close even if the engineer hadn't made the request, for the sky was growing ever darker and there was no telling where or when an enemy patrol might come through. Urged on by that thought, Joe snapped a long, sturdy branch from a downed tree and hacked it clean of twigs with his pocket knife. "It's not pretty," he said once he'd carried it back, "but it should be about the right height."

Dex peered at the pole in the dusk and hefted it in his good hand. "Oak," he remarked. "Good choice." Planting one end firmly in the loose forest soil, he leveraged himself up. "Thanks, Cap. This'll work great."

They covered three more miles by Joe's estimate before the last light leached from the world. He made no mention of stopping, but simply reached out to take Dex's elbow so that they wouldn't become separated in the moonless night. With the flashlight turned off they could cross the open fields without fear of being seen, and the going should have been easier. The rain that had started when he'd still had a plane fell steadily, though, and each patch of open ground they encountered was more slippery than the last. Joe thought of this as nothing more than an inconvenience until the man limping at his side collapsed with a faint yelp. "Dex?" he queried, kneeling in the muck and feeling about for him. "Are you all right?"

"...Yeah," a half-groan answered. "I'm fine. I just lost my footing, that's all."

Their hands found one another, and Joe pulled Dex back onto his feet. Only as he gripped his arm more tightly did he discover that his friend was soaked through and shivering. Guilt flooded him. He had been going along uninjured and warm all this time, almost sweating with exertion under the weight of his flier's jacket, while Dex had been catching a chill a mere six inches away. "Bloody hell, man, why didn't you say you were cold?"

"I'm okay. Besides, this way we aren't both handicapped, right?"

"That's ridiculous. Here," he said, and began to undo the fastenings on his jacket.

"No. Keep it on."

There was a hard note in Dex's voice that Joe heard rarely but recognized as nonnegotiable. His hand faltered. As little as he liked to admit it, the engineer was right. Like he was now, healthy and unhurt, he could make good time cross-country, fight off attacks, and even carry his companion if worst came to worst. That would all be much more difficult if he let the weather weaken him. He was the strong one at the moment, and he had to stay that way for both of their sakes.

"...Fine," he relented. "But we're going to find somewhere to stop for the night as soon as we're back in the trees. We can't go on stumbling around in the dark like this." As much as he wanted to put distance between them and the crash site, halting would be for the best. He hadn't been able to check his compass since night had fallen, and there were no stars to guide them either. For all he knew they were backtracking without realizing it.

"I would have made your watch luminescent," Dex said ruefully, seeming to read his thoughts, "but there's new evidence out about radium paint being toxic and I didn't want to risk it. It's bad enough that all the dials in your plane are coated in it. Well…were coated in it."

"And what will you do for the new plane, then, if radium paint is out?" Joe pulled him forward as he asked the question, trying to keep them moving.

"Dunno. I'll have to put some time into that, I guess, and find a safer alternative. You can't fly in the dark without instruments, and I know nothing's going to stop you from flying in the dark, so..."

He trailed off, and they walked on. After a while they found the forest again, and when they had reached its inky heart Joe stopped. The pattering of the storm was still audible high over their heads, but his flashlight showed that the ground was relatively dry. There was plenty of open space between the massive tree trunks for them to stretch out and rest their tired bodies. The single thing wrong with the location was that it lacked any line-of-sight protection. Had there been brambles and bushes to disperse the light Joe would have liked to start a small fire, if only for long enough to warm Dex after their wet traipse. Without knowing how far the flames would be visible, though, he didn't dare.

But the place would have to do for tonight, because he could feel the other man beginning to sag against him. "Sit down," he bade, and helped him scoot back into a cradle of thick roots. That done, Joe occupied himself with wrapping the head of the flashlight in gauze so that he could set it aside without broadcasting their position to anyone who happened to glance through the trees. When he was finished the torch acted like a weak lantern, casting just enough of a glow to let him see exactly how dripping and muddy Dex was. Pursing his lips, he stripped off his jacket. "Not a word," he ordered as he wrapped the warm garment around his engineer's trembling shoulders. "I'm not going to get wet sitting here, so you have no argument to make."

Dex didn't object. What he did do was flinch when Joe reached over to pop up the collar of the jacket and accidentally grazed his ear. "Sorry," Dex apologized. "That's the bad one."

Joe would have just frowned and let the reaction go had the light not caught the back of his hand. A watery streak of crimson had appeared there, and his eyes widened as he deduced its source. "You're bleeding," he ground out. "Did a branch catch you as we walked? Do you remember?"

"I don't think so, but maybe. I was kind of just putting one foot in front of the other by the end there. I must not have felt the blood because of the rain."

"Hold still." Joe lifted their makeshift lantern to see if there was anything he could do for this new damage. As he located the source of the problem, his face paled. "You didn't get hit with a branch," he reported tersely. "The blood's...the blood's coming from inside."

Dex didn't look half as worried about that fact as Joe thought he ought to. "It must be because Overmeyer fired his gun right next to my head. That ear's been bothering me ever since, remember?"

"Yes, but..." But Joe had never seen the aftereffects of auricular trauma before. What he had seen were two separate cases of people walking away from violent events with apparently minor injuries only to begin bleeding from their ears and noses a few hours later. In both of those instances the stricken individuals had grown delirious, experienced seizures, then passed into comas and died. To be fair those cases had shown signs of confusion and emotional instability hours before their cracked skulls had killed them, but Dex's lack of such symptoms didn't lend him much relief. "Is there a chance you might have hit your head during the crash?"

"Well yeah, there's a chance. But I really don't think I did. Not enough to count, anyway." Dex read his expression with a practiced air before giving him a gentle, if slightly exasperated, smile. "Relax, Cap. We've both had our fair share of concussions before, and I don't have any of the usual symptoms."

"Except that your ear is bleeding," Joe countered.

"Which can be explained by Overmeyer's proximity when he fired his gun."

"But-"

"But nothing, Joe," Dex cut him off. "I'm not going to wake up dead in the morning, all right? Deaf, maybe," he said wryly, "but not dead."

"It shouldn't be doing that, though!"

"No, it probably shouldn't be. But it is, and there's nothing we can do about it except shove in some gauze and hope it doesn't get worse. So why worry, huh? You'll just work yourself into another tizzy."

"Another tizzy? What does that mean, exactly?"

Dex's eyes flashed knowingly. "It means that earlier you were more upset about the fact that the C-47 crashed with me in it than you were about your own plane blowing up." He paused then, and when he went on his gaze had softened. "Come on; do you really think I'd have noticed a detail like that if I was fixing to check out permanently?"

"...I think you'll still be noticing things five minutes after you're dead, Dex," Joe answered. "That's just who you are." There was no heat in his words, since Dex had won and they both knew it. Neither of them said anything more on the matter as Joe cut off a small piece of clean bandage and handed it over so that Dex could press it gingerly into his own ear. "Well," he said when the air had cleared, "if you aren't going to die then we'd best get some sleep. I suspect that we have a long way to go tomorrow, and without your machine to help them our side isn't likely to make much progress in this direction in the meantime."

"Yeah...so much for getting the first force fields up and running by the end of the week." The same note of sadness that had tinged Dex's voice when they'd spoken of Tony and Reg was present now, and Joe shot him a curious look. "Two of the greatest things I've ever created were destroyed today," the engineer explained. "The generator, and your plane. When you pour yourself into projects like them – when you help them grow from a vague wisp of an idea into solid, material things – you get attached to them. They become more like people than objects. And it hurts when something bad happens to them." A beat passed. "It hurts a lot, actually. Especially when you end up having to destroy them yourself."

Joe watched him blink rapidly a few times, and wondered if he was holding back tears. "...Dex?"

"Mm-hmm?"

"I know what you mean." Thinking about his plane made his throat thicken with grief. They'd had some good adventures together, him and his old h110d. Virtually every part of her had been replaced or revamped or upgraded at some point, but there had still been a feeling of continuity there that no new fighter would be able to evoke. It was the end of an era, and not even the fact that his girl had taken a squad of Nazis out with her could soothe the sting he felt at her loss.

"...Yeah, you do. If anyone understands what I mean when I say stuff like that, it's you. And that's why we're friends. Because the things that would make everyone else in the world start to think that I actually did have a concussion are exactly the things that let you know I really don't." With that Dex gave him a tired smile, leaned his head back against the tree, and closed his eyes. "G'night, Cap. See you in the morning."

Joe was too moved by the truth of the other man's statement to reply right away. By the time he'd regathered his wits and made to answer, Dex's slow, easy breathing marked him as fast asleep. "...Good night, Dex," he whispered anyway as he settled down beside him and clicked off the flashlight. They were plunged into total darkness, but he was close enough to feel Dex's heat and that was enough to reassure him. "And you'd better."

Author's Note: I will be posting the next chapter of this adventure between now and the end of April. If you're enjoying it, or if you like other pieces of mine across the several fandoms I've written in, I hope you'll consider voting for me in the 2016 Fanatic Fanfics Multi-Fandom Awards. To do so, just visit awards dot fanaticfanfics dot com. Search for paganpunk2 to see the categories I've been nominated in. Voting runs from April 11 2016 to May 2 2016.

Also, you can check out my original (non fan-fiction) fiction as well as my travel writing by visiting www dot jleehazlett dot com. All of my stories are available for free for PDF download, so you can take them with you wherever you go. If you stop by, I hope you'll drop me a line and let me know what you think.

As always, happy reading!