The angel looked forlornly at the Vietnamese boy, who had decided to confide in him in the middle of the night when the soldiers were all asleep. Well, most of them, anyways. Finally, he sighed, giving up.

"I don't know if we're going to survive."

Lying was a sin, after all.

- _ - _ - _ -

"I'm hungry."

Aziraphale winced, and then smiled. He rubbed the boy's shoulders and tried to catch his eyes.

"I'll go get something for you then. Okay?" A nod. "That's a dear." He patted him on the shoulder before walking out of sight. He willed a bowl of soup into his hands. It felt like lifting three hundred pounds.

He went back, gave the boy the soup, and then passed out.

- _ - _ - _ -

Aziraphale woke up. There was a light buzzing incessantly in the room. His eyes retracted from the sudden brightness of everything. He wished the walls weren't so white, but they stayed that way, stubbornly.

He groaned, adjusted himself into a more comfortable position, and then closed his eyes.

Then he sat up.

"Where are-"

"They're most likely dead, if yer wonderin' 'bout yer pals," answered a young male voice in the cot next to his. Aziraphale looked over. He was bandaged up on the right side of his face, and from the cast on his leg, it looked like he was just a bit wounded. Another soldier, then.

He was tired of soldiers.

"Yes… I suppose so." Aziraphale sighed.

"Hey," the angel looked up diffidently, "where you from? You ain't from The World."

He gave the man a perplexed look. "The… pardon? The World, dear?"

"Yeah, yanno - back home. The States. The United States of America. Them states."

"Oh. No, not from there."

The soldier snorted. "'Parently not, but I asked you where were you from."

Aziraphale held his tongue from correcting every single grammatical mistake the man was making, but held off. This wasn't a time to be cheeky, and the man was only trying to talk.

He just felt irritated. Worn down. Talking was the last thing Aziraphale felt like doing, and of all people, he didn't think this soldier deserved any of his company.

"I'm from England. Great Britain. The UK. Whatever you feel like calling it. How long have I been here?"

"You definitely sound like one of 'em hoity-toity Brits. You've been here for a week or so. The nurses brought you in. Didn't know what was wrong with you. Apparently you were just passed out, near the outside of a camp. Hey- do they really drink tea all the time there?"

"Well, if they're in the mood, I suppose."

"Ha, ain't gonna get any tea here. It's a wasteland. Piece of shit place – it's hell. Hopefully, if my injuries are bad enough, I can get back to The World."

"Lovely."

The soldier turned to Aziraphale, fixing him with a stare that he was obligated to return. He seemed to study his face for a while until talking again.

"Say, why you here anyway? I mean, you don't seem like no soldier. Is it 'cause of Australia? They're supposed to be fightin' over here too, but I ain't seen none of them yet."

"I'm here to help."

At that the soldier snorted again.

"Help? Help what? This war isn't going nowhere fast."

Aziraphale gritted his teeth.

"Help the Vietnamese people. The people you're slaughtering. And it's: the war isn't going anywhere fast."

The soldier paused. He looked at Aziraphale, frowning, scrunching his face up in a way that made him think that he might throw up. Then he said:

"Yeah. People we're slaughtering all right. And they're slaughtering us right back, with kids, too. A kid ran up to my friend the other day, holding his hand up. My friend was about to get some food to hand him - yanno, just something to make the kid happy and go away. You know what happened when that kid pulled that hand down? "

Aziraphale didn't answer. He had a good idea, but he didn't want to say it. He didn't want to be right.

"He blew up. My friend died, and so did the two other guys next to him. That was a week before I came here. I was lucky. I just got too close to a guy who stepped on a mine."

Aziraphale turned over, away from the soldier in the cot next to him.

"Hey! Don't you be thinkin' that you're all high'n'mighty for being here t'help these poor Vietnamese people. It's not like we chose to be here. We just didn't run away, like everyone else."

He didn't answer. He just thought about how he didn't care. About how he would never go back to America. About how that country didn't deserve to have under God in their pledge.

- _ - _ - _ -

"Look, did something happen? Really, what's with you? It's been over six months. I'm about ready to rip that damn door down and come find you, you stupid angel.

And I…

Nevermind."

Beep.

- _ - _ - _ -

"So, where you from?" the gruff man who probably looked much older than what he really was, asked Aziraphale. He must have been a general of some sort with those stars and badges and strips of color on his crisp uniform. Aziraphale wouldn't be able to tell for sure, though. He never bothered to figure out military rankings or symbols.

"England." The younger man next to the general, even crisper, head shaved, wrote something down a clipboard. Aziraphale felt paranoid.

"And why are you here?"

"To help the Vietnamese."

"You a Cong?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"Positive, dear."

"What was that?"

"I said, positive, dear."

The general turned a shade akin to that of a raspberry. The younger soldier chuckled. Apparently this was motivation enough for the general to keep it all in. Oh, you wouldn't want to lose it in front of him, now would you? he thought to himself.

"Right. Well, we'll need to get you some identification, and then we can ship you on out of here. I know you'd love ta' stay and be a hippy with all that Beatles peace and love crap going on over there, but we can't have you here. You can walk now?"

"Yes. More than I could a few weeks ago."

"Good."

And the general left him. Aziraphale hoped in a bitter, sarcastic way, that he hadn't wasted any of the man's precious time. After all, there were still some Vietnamese people left.

- _ - _ - _ -

It was the rustling of sheets next to him that made Aziraphale get up the next night while the moon was still shining. There was a pause, a pained whisper of fuck, and the rustling started again.

Oh, well, apparently the man's cast was off. That meant that he'd either be going home soon, or going back out.

"Are you okay?" he risked asking. The sheets moved around a bit until the man whipped them off entirely. His leg was bruised, and had a near-blue tint to it. It made Aziraphale scrunch his face in a mix of antipathy and revulsion.

"This damn thing," he hissed, and it wasn't too hard to figure out what he was referring to, "it's not healed yet, damn it, but they took the cast off. I'm leavin' tomorrow."

"Oh, well that's good."

"Fuck, not home, out there, back in hell."

Aziraphale pondered the man's comparison, and then gave up. He had never been Down There before.

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"Psh, sure you are, fruit cake. Have fun sipping tea. I'll probably get blown up, or incinerated, or fall in a ditch filled with spikes."

Despite his mood, he frowned and stretched out a hand, placing it on the soldier's shoulder. The boy's shoulder.

He wished he was able to bless people, but he was sure that even if he could, there was no sort of Heavenly blessing that he could give to a man in these conditions.

The next day Aziraphale was on a flight to London. It was the only British city Americans knew of.