Three
He is dreaming. He knows he is, because she is sitting there on a little patch of grass untouched by the churned up mud on every other side of her. A rich red sun beats down on them, but he can only feel a whisper of the heat he should be feeling. Instead there is only cold, a chill nipping at his lungs and crawling down his spine. He shivers.
"You're late," she says without looking up. In her lap, her hands deftly sort through blades of grass and flowering weeds. Her white apron is already stained, flecked with dried blood and bruised by the pile of greenery.
It's only yet another sign this is a dream, the dirt ingrained into her apron.
He still steps forward, smirking, "Sorry, doll. I got held up."
"Hm," is her only reply, her focus remaining on her task. He takes a couple steps closer, bending over her shoulder. In an instant, the scent of oranges and antiseptic washes over him, muted, but still there. He inhales deeply.
"Watcha doing?"
"Waiting for you."
That doesn't seem right. "What do you mean?"
She looks up then, her eyes narrowing playfully, in that way that usually scares off a lot of the other men, but not him, never him. "You promised me dinner, Sergeant."
He's not sure why, but the words almost knock him on his ass. There's something wrong with them. Dread flickers in his chest, as blood roars in his ears.
-"...She just made me promise one thing."
"What?"
"That I bring you and Carter over for dinner when we get back home."-
"Sergeant?" A small hand presses into his arm, but he remains frozen, his breath shaky as his hands start to tremble. Dinner. Dinner was important, but he's not sure why.
"Sergeant," the sound wraps around him, a soothing balm to the panic threatening to rush over him like a tidal wave. "Breathe."
He exhales, the air leaving his lungs in one almighty rush. Her grip tightens on his arm, a cold band around the skin on his forearm.
"Good," she says. "Again."
He inhales, and then exhales, the cold starting to creep up his arm. The sun starts to dip below the horizon, painting a few lingering clouds in hues of red and gold. The shaking in his hands starts to slow with the timing of his breath. Inhale, exhale.
He turns to look at her, the warm tinge against the blonde in her hair making it more red. The freckles dusted across her nose, like the constellations they used to track in the night sky when they should have been sleeping, the crinkle at the corner of her eyes as her smile tilts up, the special quirk of lips she always used to reserve just for him and there's a heated pang in his chest, almost like-
"Longing."
The word echoes in his ears, thick and guttural, as if the sound didn't quite match to what he was expecting to hear. His brow furrows and he opens his mouth-
"Rusted."
-snow on the grass, his fingers and toes are numb from the cold but he can't feel them, can't focus on anything other than the scream clawing at his throat, paper crumples in his hand, he kicks the closest thing he can reach - a dark box rusted around the edges, pain but nothing he can't handle because she's gone, she's gone, gone, gone-
She is speaking to him, but it's not her voice, it's someone else. Someone else is speaking to him.
"Seventeen. Daybreak." He jolts, it feels like he touched an electric wire. Around him the dream starts to fade into grey; the clouded skies melt into dull walls, the sun into a bright white light overhead, and the fields into cold metal.
But she remains, her hand a vice-like grip on his arm. It is cold. So cold.
"Furnace. Nine."
The scent of oranges overwhelms him, even as the ice slips through his veins and she grasps a hold of his other arm. He can't move. He can't-
"Benign. Homecoming."
-red sunlight, churning mud, cigarette smoke in his lungs the lit end a beacon of light in a dim tent, a warm hand in his, "I think you'll find, Sergeant, I'll be the one taking you to dinner when we get back home"-
"One." The words. He hates the words, the words are thieves in the middle of the night, they are not to be trusted-
-a dull grey field, ash falling from the sky, bright blue eyes and a flash of a smile, "I think she might be the one, Ste-"
She starts to fade, her hands on his arms becoming reinforced straps, the ones that keep it held in place during maintenance. The ones that bound it to the machine.
"Freight Car."
-he's falling, falling, falling-
"Soldat?"
The Soldier looks up, "Ready to comply."