"All shared a single idea: Out! Out! Out!"

- Corporal Friedrich Bertenrath, 2nd Panzer Division

The Falaise Pocket; August 17, 1944

The low whine of airplane engines turned Tony's blood to ice. Panic tore through his veins and he squinted through the smudged lenses of his gas mask into the dark, forbidding sky, searching for the shape of the oncoming Piper Cubs.

Cubs brought payloads of misery with every sortie they flew over the retreating German Seventh. Looking ahead, Tony could see the craters from a previous hailstorm of bombs. His boots sunk into the blood-slicked mud, the toes of his shoes scuffing against gun barrels and helmets and blown-off limbs. When he first began his trek out of Falaise he had tried to avoid stepping on the bodies. Now he didn't even notice them.

The Allies were bridging the narrowly closing gap between Falaise and Argentan, and the Germans were going to be trapped. Tony was caught up in their same desperation, chilled by their same terror, living their same nightmare. Everywhere was blood and ruin and gore as the enemy advanced every nearer. And still the bombs rained down, every twist in the road revealing another stretch of horror.

Bodies of soldiers and horses lay strewn across the road, some thrown into the muddy trenches where Tony took cover whenever the Cubs swung down for another raid. Many still lay where they fell, mouths open and crawling with insects as they stared up emptily at the same planes that had ended their lives. Tortured screams of beast and master mingled as one. The stench made Tony's eyes water. He had peddled a gas mask from a wide-eyed tanker back on the road and still could hardly dare to take a breath.

The whine rose into a scream as the Piper Cubs wheeled down toward to road, the column of retreating soldiers and machinery an obvious target. Dragging himself to the side, Tony leaped down the short gully into the ditch and covered his head, shrinking beneath the enveloping fabric of his stolen SS uniform. He wished he could take cover under the overcoat, anything to escape the whistling bombs as they plunged through the air. The world hung in suspense, an eerie and peaceful silence as the bombs fell and the world waited to receive their brutality.

Mounds of earth leaped into the air, and Tony pressed his face into the dirt as the ground began to quiver. He was tossed on his side and showered with clods of mud as the world dissolved into darkness and earthquakes and a thousand thunderclaps bursting in his ears. Shrapnel scattered above him, and a sharp blow resounded against his helmet, almost imperceptible in the onslaught of destruction raining down. Drawing his knees to his chest, Tony pulled his body in closer and forced himself to keep it together.

"You just have to think," he whispered, voice too low beneath the deafening explosions to hear the hastily mouthed words, "That's all. The bombs will stop. It all has to end eventually. You are not afraid. You are never afraid."

But it didn't feel like it was ending. The shelling went on and on, every bit of artillery drilling into the earth, aiming for Tony. The world was ending, this was it. He lay in a film of blood in a dead man's uniform with his own countrymen trying to blow him into bits, and he was almost certainly going to die. The facts looked grim.

He only noticed the raid had stopped when the vibrations ceased. Pushing himself up on his elbow, Tony shielded his and brushed a layer of dirt off of his uniform. His joints were stiff and his muscles ached from staying clenched in the fetal position, and his body was battered from the vibrations of the falling bombs. Something warm trickled from his nose and ears, and when he reached up he felt a massive gash torn into the metal of his helmet.

Tears flooded his eyes, blurring the newest scene of carnage for a brief moment of respite. He was alive.

A muffled sound reached his bleeding ears, and knuckles rapped against his helmet. Spinning around, Tony gripped the Luger he kept in his pocket, but his hands were shaking too badly to hold it upright. When he turned he saw another German soldier kneeling beside him, his face smeared with mud and his eyes glinting like shattered glass. His expression was solemn, eyes flicking from the road to the sky and back to Tony again.

"You need to get up. You need to keep moving," he announced in German, distorted as Tony's hearing slowly recovered. "The Americans are coming."

"Good, let them come," Tony groaned, pulling himself to his knees. Every limb screamed in protest, and his body sagged back toward the ground. Why should he repeat the hellish cycle again? Why not just let the Americans take him?

"You're SS, aren't you? They'll shoot you on sight. American dogs," the soldier spat, pulling Tony to his feet by his elbow. "Keep moving. I am Luck, Georg Luck."

"Luck, huh? And where did that get you?" Tony tried for a smile, but he couldn't remember what it felt like anymore. The last two months had worn away that sort of thing.

Luck nodded, donning his gas mask as they stepped back onto the road. The German still guided Tony by the arm, as if he weren't sure the latter could support himself. "Where are you from? You haven't given me your name."

"Stark," Tony replied, and Luck bobbed his head. His eyes still followed their dizzying dance around the road, glancing up at the sky and then meeting Tony's gaze.

"Ah. Like the shells?"

"The shells?"

Shrugging his shoulders, Luck gestured toward a bombed-out tank. Only the treads remained, the rest of the metal peeling away from the center of the machine in a starburst of molten steel. "You know, shells. Artillery. It's all Stark Industries. Nevermind that. Where are you from, Stark?"

"I started in Carentan and I've been on the retreat ever since," Tony admitted, stepping over the shattered remains of an artillery cart. "I was separated from my unit since the beginning... I'm completely lost, Luck."

"Do not worry," the German's eyes glinted from behind the gas mask, a spark of kindness illuminating his features. "You're with me now. You will not be lost again."

-o0o-

Night provided some respite from the constant air assaults. Darkness concealed the worst of the chaos, the grinding of tank treads ceased, and a modicum of peace returned. Tony and Luck continued their marching nonetheless, feet cracked and bleeding and eyes heavy as they squinted to make out obstacles on the road.

"We will stay ahead of them this way," Luck assured Tony, but he agreed to a short break in a bank of apple trees beside the road. The best of the crop had been scavenged by retreating soldiers already, but the two were able to find some edible fruit in the grass. Tony's stomach churned as he tried to force the food down, keeping his eyes off the road and breathing through his mouth. Even the apples had the salty tang of blood on them.

"I haven't seen any of my friends since Carentan," Tony was explaining to Luck. He wasn't sure what was loosening his tongue – sleep deprivation or sheer, pulse-pounding terror, or whatever was in the small flask Luck had shared with him – but for the first time since he had landed in this godforsaken country his limbs were loosening from their tension. "I don't know if I'd even call them friends. I'm pretty sure they both hate me."

"Your comrades hate you? Why?" Luck spun the stem of his apple in a lazy circle. Tony could tell that he was enjoying the pause from their death march, his features silhouetted against a palate of speckled stars.

"One of them thinks I sold his buddies out to the – uh, to the Russians. He thinks I'm a traitor!"

"And are you?" Luck asked simply. Tony was taken aback by the German's bluntness, shock giving way to anger.

"Of course I'm not! He can't even begin to comprehend everything I went through..." Releasing a short breath, Tony rested his head on the grass.

Luck turned to him, one arm resting on the ground and the other supporting his shoulder. His gas mask was off, revealing a drawn frown and furrowed brow. "Why do you speak about your comrades like that?"

"They're not my comrades, okay?" Tony growled, focusing on clearing the dirt from beneath his fingernails. "Just drop it."

"Fine," Leaning back, Luck propped his arms behind his head and stared at the stars. The sky remained undisturbed by the flights of the Jagdbombers. It might have been beautiful if Tony's uniform didn't reek of blood, if he couldn't hear the distant screams of soldiers calling for their mothers and the threat of the approaching Americans looming over him like a shadow of death.

"Luck, are you scared?" Tony whispered, pulling his arms closer around him. Although the summer night was warm, a chill rushed through his body as he stared up at the solitary stars.

"Yes, Stark, I am afraid. I am scared out of my mind! Sometimes I think I am going crazy. Tanks driving over men, dead or alive... I've seen so many things I can't even speak about. Death surrounds me, I breathe it, and yet it still terrifies me." He let out a bitter chuckle, then angled his head back to Tony. "What about you?"

"Not me." Tony forced as much bravado as he could muster into his words, and Luck gave him a sad sort of smile.

"One thing I have learned on this road, Stark, is that war always gets the truth out of you. It will come to you yet."

((We finally catch up to Tony! I'd love to hear your thoughts so far!))