Soldier On
Chapter 3 – Breathe
Getting back to sleep was an impossible task, but Dean knew he'd need a few hours or he wouldn't be able to get through the rest of the day. They never knew when they were next going to run across the Japanese. His weapons nearby in case of a late night ambush, he tossed and turned, seeing the dead eyes of his family and the cracks in Castiel's face and the humans he'd murdered simply so that he wouldn't take their place. When a hand suddenly came to rest on his arm, he was awake in an instant, grabbing it and twisting it until he heard Miller shriek.
"It's me! It's me! Friendly!"
He let go and sat up, rubbing his tired eyes against the light of the morning. Miller was rubbing his arm, no more frowning than he was pouting.
"Shit, Winchester, I'm just try'na wake you up in time for breakfast," he caught sight of the dark circles under the older man's eyes and the lines of concern on his forehead deepened. "You look like shit."
"Thanks," he muttered. The conversation ended there.
They were in the final stretch, a few hours' walk from the checkpoint. There, the dog tags and letters could be sent home, the wounded would be extracted, and the reinforcements would join the squad. Dean had a sinking feeling he would be sticking around a while longer. The rations were damp, like everything else, and he didn't have an appetite for it. He ate anyway. With less than three hours of sleep, it wasn't going to be an easy day. They were even on the move earlier than usual. Everyone wanted to get to the camp as soon as possible.
Trudging through the mud and murky waters was the same as the last few days, but he hadn't gotten used to it. No one had and no one could. Dry and clean was something the island just didn't have for them. Before, it had really pissed Dean off—but today he was off his game. The grip on his M1 Garand was loose, and he'd secured his bayonet wrong not once but twice, having to dig through the stream to get it back and replace it on the end of his gun. He was dragging behind. Either Miller was as tired as he was or he was pulling back to keep an eye on the older man. Ridiculous, really; Dean had been trying to watch out for the kid, and now the kid was watching out for him. Hopefully he was one of the boys going home once they reached the base. Dean may not have belonged in the war, but Miller had been right. He didn't belong there either.
The hand signal was given to get down and Dean missed it entirely. A strong hand from his sergeant forced him to his knees before the man followed suit. He said nothing, but the warning glare said enough.
"Eyes on," someone whispered, and he lifted his rifle, scanning ahead. At first, he didn't see anything but trees and vines and an impossible amount of God damn mud—
Then he spotted one. Two. Three and four further to the left. Two of them were heavily camouflaged and holding large barrelled sniper rifles, the other two likely to be their spotters. They were faced the other way. Heading to the American camp, maybe. That made Dean clench his teeth. They were probably heading out to massacre the whole place, including the teams heading that way, their minds already set on getting in a helicopter and going home. Who knew how many fire teams had already fallen at the feet of those four men.
His finger thought faster than his brain. One of the snipers was in his sights and a shot went off, startling him until he'd registered that the shot belonged to him. Hit through the shoulder, the Japanese soldier dropped his gun and clutched at the wound, the rest of his team turning to fire on their attackers. Dean fired again. The wounded man fell.
"Open fire!"
Garands and BARs fired from scattered places of cover, behind rocks and ducked in bushes, too many for the surprised squad of Japanese. One was hit in the jaw and blood poured from the gap below his mouth, soaking the front of his uniform before he was hit three more times, a burst from a BAR catching his neck and chest. He fell with the rest of his teammates. Unlike the other times his group had gone through similar, equally gruesome motions, Dean didn't feel guilty this time.
That scared him.
A quiet fell over the area until the assured soldiers knew it was over and a series of clicks could be heard from each of the men, reloading their weapons in case of a second run-in.
No one spoke; the order to keep going was nothing more than a few shared looks and a grim nod. They had to step over one of the bodies to keep to the path. Dead eyes stared at them, through them, up to the sky where some of the Americans hoped their souls had ended up. Dean wasn't one of them. He hoped those soldiers were burning. Ripped apart like he had been. If he deserved it, so did they.
Soon enough there was a break in the trees and when Dean heaved a sigh of relief it felt as if that had been his first breath in years. It was a small camp; a few tents, the portable kind that could be folded up and mounted on a man's back if it had to be. Comfortably, they fit three at the most. Usually five or six ended up squishing in. But it was better than nothing. Unless the weather was nice. More often than not, dean had been among the few to nut up and sleep outside, where maybe it was a little colder and more exposed, but at least he wasn't inhaling the CO2 of his comrades. Aside from the tents, there was a cleared valley big enough for one of the smaller sized helicopters that dropped off and extracted troops. The transport had already arrived and a group of new soldiers stood scattered about, checking their weapons, chatting with each other, looking anxious.
Around the fire pit that was nothing more than black and ash were logs made into benches. And on one of the logs made into benches was someone Dean could have recognised anywhere. He was checking over his M1, and the trench coat wasn't over top of his uniform like he would have appreciated it to be, but it was him.
"Cas." His gaze lifted from his gun as Dean and his squad broke the tree line, but he hadn't heard. Dean slung his rifle around his back and cupped his hands to his mouth, calling louder this time. "Cas!"
Blue eyes snapped up again, alarmed, almost, meeting the oh so familiar green ones. His mouth dropped open and the bullet slipped from his fingers, ignored in the dirt below as he stood, leaving his rifle to lean against his former seat. Dean broke into a sprint, crossing those final meters in a matter of seconds and crashing into his friend's arms. He was still clean. Castiel was the only thing in weeks to not smell of blood and dirt. Dean, on the other hand, was streaked with both, but neither man seemed to mind. They also didn't care for the opinions of other soldiers as their arms wrapped around each other and squeezed to the point of making breathing a difficult task. Even when they separated, Dean kept a grip on Cas' sleeves, smudging mud on the new uniform without taking any notice.
"Dean." It was more of a sigh than a word.
"Cas." Dean's lips, cracked and swollen at the bottom of one side, turned upwards into a smile, the first one in what felt like years. "What are you- how did you- how long-?" He tripped and stammered, too disbelieving that he was even talking to a familiar face. His grip didn't ease up—in fact, it tightened, fearing that releasing would mean letting go of Castiel and he didn't want that, certainly not now, and really, not ever.
"I was looking for you, Dean." He moved his arms to pry Dean's fingers off of them, glanced around at the other soldiers, some of which were staring at them and most of which were too exhausted to care, and gestured his friend to where he'd been sitting before. Although the log-bench was far from comfortable, Dean had forgotten how good it felt to be off his feet.
"Please tell me you know what's going on here," he said.
Castiel looked tired. Tired, pale, more fragile than Dean had ever seen him before. It was beyond worrying.
"You know what's going on here."
Silence fell between the two. Their eyes met again, both men seeing something so much different from what they remembered. Green had been dulled and hardened, seeing but wishing they couldn't. Blue had lost nearly all of their shine and no longer mirrored the ocean but resembled the sky above; cloudy, streaked with smoke, torn by conflict. Castiel was the one to break the gaze, returning his attention to his rifle, adjusting the blade attached to the end. To anyone else, the bayonet would seem to be oversized, but otherwise normal. Dean recognised it in an instant. He'd attached his angel blade to the Garand. Clever bastard.
"I'm not saying yes," Dean suddenly remarked, voice low. His friend only shook his head.
"I know."
Again came a bout of silence and Dean watched Castiel, too many things to ask. If they were both there, was Sam, too? Was there a way of getting out? Was Cas trapped too, or had he tracked Dean down of his own free will? He opened his mouth to speak when something caught his attention that had slipped his weary mind before. The angel's chest was rising and falling as steadily as his own.
"You're getting good at that," he said, and Cas looked up from his gun, eyebrows creased with confusion. "Breathing, I mean. Very convincing."
"Mm." Again those blue eyes avoided his. There was no more maintenance to be done on the Garand anymore. Castiel was just fidgeting with it so he wouldn't have to look at Dean. "I should hope so. I'm human now."
Dean could feel his heart stop in his chest. Memories from 2014 came flooding back. Castiel being human, Castiel being depressed, useless in comparison to his former self and so drugged up that there was absolutely nothing in him, not even pain. That hurt the most. Dean didn't want to see that again. He shook his head. Say it ain't so.
"How?"
"Zachariah."
No more explanation than that. Dean snatched the weapon away from Castiel, forcing him to meet his eyes like before. "Cas."
"I couldn't find you, Dean. Not on my own." He grabbed his gun back, and though his gaze didn't fall away entirely, it couldn't focus on Dean's eyes. He trailed it along Dean's dirt-smeared face, his cut and swollen lower lip, his ear that was so covered in dried blood that he wasn't sure if it was completely intact anymore. He looked over the uniform, the name barely legible, the insignia the same as his own, and wondered how much of that blood belonged to Dean. Cas sighed and spoke again. Quietly. "Zachariah agreed to send me to you. He neglected to fill me in on the details of the contract."
"You didn't—"
"Have to? I did. You don't belong here."
Dean hung his head, letting his chin rest on his chest. The sight of his boots, once olive green, now crimson with the blood of his friends and foes, made him nauseous and he closed his eyes. He didn't belong there. Neither did Castiel. But according to Miller, neither did anyone else. That was something that hadn't quite left his mind yet.
He glanced up, much to the protest of his exhausted eyes and neck, and found Miller without much trouble, talking to one of the new arrivals. They looked to be about the same age. Miller's smile was the same, but.. there was something else there. Dean couldn't quite put his finger on it.
"What about Sam?" He asked, eyes fixed on the young troops. When part of his squad started getting on the extraction helicopter, Miller didn't look twice. He wasn't going home today.
"Present day," Cas answered. "They're letting Lucifer talk to him alone."
"We have to get back," Dean muttered.
Castiel's lips pressed into a thin line as he watched the helicopter fill.
"I know."
...
Dinner was a fresher set of rations than the latest had been, considering the last few days had consisted of the last of their supplies, which also meant food that had been sitting in a warm, damp pack for much too long. Dean's squad was grateful—Castiel and the new troops, on the other hand, didn't have anything so terrible to compare it to. They didn't enjoy it nearly as much.
The squad had returned to its proper number of twelve men. Four of the original, remaining eight had gone home, leaving only Dean, Miller, Andrews, and their sergeant, Hudson. Dean hadn't caught the names of any of the new guys. He'd get to know them eventually. In the end, he'd ended up squishing into one of the tents, on his side so there would be more room for his teammates. Miller had his back pressed against Dean's, and Castiel's protests had gone ignored when Dean dragged him into the tent to sleep on his other side. In the dark of the night, no sounds outside the thin walls of the tent but bugs and birds, Dean buried his face in Castiel's shoulder. It didn't feel like the trench coat. He had to wonder if he missed it more than Cas did. At least the man still smelled the same.
And despite being as exhausted as every other night, tonight was different, because he didn't seem to dread sleep so much. He breathed in. Out. His fingers clung to Castiel's sleeve like before. It wasn't home, but it was as close to it as he'd felt so far.