Chapter Text
The rain beats down on Ian in fat droplets that make a deafening metallic rattling noise as they bounce off his helmet. He’s soaked through and staggering through clinging, foreign mud, and at any moment a sniper’s bullet might catch him unawares and leave him helpless and dying on the ground, the rain washing his blood away. It’s that thought that forces him to keep moving and to seek shelter, and when he turns a corner and sees the abandoned church with its door slightly ajar he groans in relief.
It’s been a long, exhausting campaign littered with failures, and though he hates himself for it, Ian is starting to doubt whether they’re actually winning this war. The Germans seem unstoppable, with fresh waves of soldiers emerging from every corner and their great and terrible tanks prowling the streets. It was one such tank that separated Ian from his unit in a brutal attack, and now he’s alone - lost, with no idea where he is or how many of his fellow British soldiers are still alive.
As eager as he is for shelter, Ian isn’t dumb. He slows down when he reaches the church, and treads cautiously and quietly as he approaches the entrance, raising his rifle and using it to push the heavy wooden door open enough for him to slip inside.
It’s a small Protestant church, not too dissimilar to the church Ian attended at home. Some of the pews have been overturned, and the place has no doubt been looted, but it still feels like somewhere safe - somewhere that Ian can ride out the storm. After peering down his rifle into all the corners, and listening carefully for any sound of movement, Ian concludes that he’s alone and reaches up to slide his helmet off his head, exposing his fiery red hair.
Reaching into the breast pocket of his uniform, Ian pulls out a packet of Lucky Strikes that he bartered from an American soldier and taps loose the very last cigarette - miraculously still dry, despite the rain. He sits down on one of the surviving pews and fumbles in his pack for matches, finally pulling them free with his cold, shaking fingers. Once he’s retrieved a match, though, it stubbornly refuses to light after several strikes, and then breaks in half.
Ian swears around the unlit cigarette in his mouth, and plucks another match from the box. He strikes it once, with no success. Then again, the scrape of it echoing through the church, but no spark forthcoming. Ian huffs out an irritated breath, and sets the head of the match against the striker once more.
There’s the scrape of a match, and a sudden flare of flame. But not in Ian’s hands.
He freezes, just briefly, then grabs his rifle and swings it upwards, the stock braced against his shoulder and the barrel pointing at the man sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall of the church, a mere twenty feet away. Somehow Ian must have missed him during his initial sweep of the building, and he’s already internally cursing his carelessness.
“Hands up!” he yells, in what he hopes is a strong, steady voice and not a panicked squeak.
The soldier fixes him with an utterly withering look and takes a long drag from his cigarette, the flare of it lighting his face briefly with an orange glow. He’s wearing a German uniform and there’s a large bloodstain on his abdomen. His left hand is pressed carefully over it, his fingers dark with blood.
“I said get your fuckin’ hands up,” Ian snarls, tightening his finger on the trigger of his rifle.
The soldier blows out smoke and grins obnoxiously. “Or what?” he challenges. “You going to shoot me? Fucking English pussy.”
His accent isn’t German. Russian maybe? Ian is momentarily wrongfooted, but he takes a step closer and glares at the wounded soldier down the barrel of his gun. “I’m not fuckin’ English,” he corrects shortly.
The soldier raises an eyebrow questioningly. “You are wearing the English uniform.”
“It’s a British uniform, and I’m Irish.”
The soldier shrugs, as if it makes no difference to him, and carries on smoking. He’s still shown no signs of putting his hands up, and it’s really starting to piss Ian off.
“Get those hands in the air, or I’ll put a bullet through your skull,” he warns darkly.
The stranger chuckles, takes the cigarette from his mouth and carefully taps off the ash before securing it between his lips again. “You are going to shoot an unarmed, wounded man? Pussy.”
His command of English is surprisingly fluent, and his accent is still throwing Ian off. Lowering his rifle by just a few degrees, he asks, “What are you, Russian?”
The soldier pulls an ugly face and shakes his head. Holding the cigarette between his teeth, he replies, “Ukrainian," rolling the R smoothly.
Ian frowns, uncertain, trying to remember whose side the Ukrainians are on. He’s never met one before. Honestly, he isn’t even sure where Ukraine is. “So, what, you fight for the Nazis?” he asks, trying to reestablish the higher ground by pouring disgust into the word Nazi.
The soldier shrugs laconically. “They invaded my country. They offered food in my belly and clothes on my back if I joined them, so I joined them.” He takes a drag from his cigarette, smirks. “And what are you doing here, little red?”
Ian grits his teeth. He may have lied about his age when he enlisted, but he’s not a boy any more. “I joined up to protect my country, and my family, and to take down Adolf Hitler.” The words are strong and confident. It’s not the first time that Ian’s said them. He takes another step closer, and lifts his rifle again, mentally steeling himself to shoot. “Now, I’m going to tell you just one more time. Put your fuckin’ hands up.”
The Ukrainian soldier surveys him with clever eyes, smoke curling around his face. “If I put my hands up,” he says. “I will bleed out and die anyway. So shoot me, little soldier boy. I’d rather go quick than slow.”
Ian breathes through his nose angrily, but the idea of shooting this man in the head doesn’t feel good, or brave, or heroic. He’s killed plenty of men since he was shipped over here, but always from a distance, and alway with men around him firing their guns as well, so it’s not always clear whose bullets are actually doing the killing. To slaughter this wounded, unarmed man in God’s own house is not something that Ian is capable of. Reluctantly, he lowers his gun.
“How badly are you hurt?” he inquires.
The soldier looks down at his blood-soaked tunic, presses his fingers down a little more and winces. “I am not a doctor,” he replies. “But this does not feel good.”
Ian chews his lip, then says, “I have a first aid kit, and some medical training. I might be able to help.”
All he gets in response is a surprised twitch of the soldier’s eyebrows, before he looks away, as though he’s already grown bored of the conversation. Ian carefully sets his rifle down on the pew and removes his first aid kit from his belt.
He approaches slowly and kneels down in front of the soldier, finally getting a good look at him. He’s young, probably not much older than Ian himself, but the hardness of his expression indicates that he’s been living as an adult for some time. His skin is very pale and smudged with dirt, and his hair is pure black and cut in the traditional Wehrmacht style - long on top, but shaved down at the sides.
Taking some gauze out of his pack, Ian lays his hand over the soldier’s bloody one and starts to ease it away from his side. “Let me see,” he instructs gently.
The blow to the head seems to come out of nowhere.
Ian staggers and falls. He’s stunned, but still alert enough to know that if he doesn’t fight back, he’s going to die. So when he finds himself on his back with a combat knife swinging down towards his face, Ian gathers up his tattered senses and grabs the Ukrainian’s wrist tightly before it finishes its descent, pulling the tip of the knife away from his face.
Their grunts echo around the church as they struggle - Ian just barely holding the blade away from his chest. The Ukrainian straddles him and leans all of his weight down on the knife, his teeth bared in determination, and Ian howls in pain and fear as the blade pushes down point-first into his chest, easing towards his heart.
In desperation, Ian wraps his legs around the Ukrainian soldier and heaves them over, reversing their positions and dragging the knife messily out of his flesh - leaving a long, ragged, bloody line from the puncture wound in his pectoral to the lower edges of his ribs. Furious, Ian takes advantage of the Ukrainian’s surprise and his own superior position, and slams the hand holding the knife down against the cold stone floor of the church. The soldier yells at the impact and his fingers loosen on the weapon, which skitters away out of both their reaches.
Ian is furious. “You try to kill me after I let you live, ya fuckin’ gobshite!” he yells. “When I was tryin’ to help ya?”
The soldier grins up at him fiercely. “You stupid fucking English bastard,” he sneers. “It is not my blood. I tricked you.”
Ian wraps his hands around the Ukrainian’s throat, then rears back as far as he can when the soldier attempts to return the favor with his newly-freed hands. Ian has longer arms, though, and gravity on his side. Soon, the soldier’s pale face is purpling as he tries and fails to draw breath.
Strangulation is a nasty, exhausting, drawn-out manner of death - nothing like shooting a vague shape and watching it fall. Ian tries to be a man, breathing in and out determinedly through his nose, but then a breeze rolls through the church and something catches his eye.
It’s a Bible, obviously fallen from one of the pews, and the sudden movement of air has turned its pages open to an illustration of Christ on the cross. Ian’s stomach suddenly turns, and his fingers loosen. He can’t do this. Not here. Not with God watching.
Ian stands up abruptly, leaving the Ukrainian coughing harshly on the ground and clutching at his bruised throat. Ian marches over to the knife and kicks it angrily, so that it skids away into the dark. Then he storms back and grabs his rifle away from the Ukrainian’s grasping fingers, deftly unloading it. He hurls the magazine across the church as well, the metallic sound of its landing echoing around the church. Finally, he stomps back to the spot where the two of them fought and sits down heavily, leaning back against the cool stone wall and pressing his hand against the freely bleeding wound on his chest.
“There,” he snaps, as the Ukrainian manages to heave himself into an upright position. “Now I’m wounded and unarmed. So I s’pose if you kill me then you’re the pussy.”
The Ukrainian leans back against a pew. Night has fallen outside, and Ian can’t see the man’s face clearly in the dark. But after a few moments the soldier asks, “Do you have any food, little red?”
His name is Mikhailo Milkovich, and he has to say it quite a few times before Ian can even get close to pronouncing it. He was born in a small town in the east of Ukraine, and was nearly killed by the Wehrmacht before he impressed them with his knowledge of both English and German. He was taken prisoner, and used as a translator by the Nazi officers before eventually being assigned to fight in a unit of his fellow Ukrainians.
“They send us where they need us,” he says, lighting Ian’s last cigarette. “So I ended up here. We were in trouble, cornered, so I abandoned my unit and ran.”
“You’re a deserter?” Ian asks, unable to keep the contempt out of his voice.
Mikhailo chuckles. “But a deserter of Nazis, yes? So I am a hero now.”
They break down one of the pews and build a small fire for warmth. The rain is still falling heavily outside, and Ian can hear distant, echoey drips inside the church where the roof has failed. Ian opens up his rations packet and grudgingly gives some of his food to Mikhailo - hard crackers, dry biscuits, and canned ham.
The Ukrainian opens up the latter ration tin and peers into it skeptically. “What the fuck is this?” he demands.
“Ham,” Ian mumbles, spraying cracker crumbs.
“Does not look like any ham I ever saw,” Mikhailo mutters, but he eats it anyway, and he takes several sly swigs from Ian’s water canteen as well.
The food makes Ian feel a little calmer and stronger, and once he’s done eating he turns his attention to the cut on his chest. He unbuttons his tunic carefully, and hisses as he pulls the material away from his torn skin, the drying blood making it stick. The wound is not serious or life-threatening - at least, not unless it ends up getting infected - but it hurts like hell.
Ian opens his small bottle of iodine and retrieves a pad of cotton. He grits his teeth, screws his eyes shut, and touches the iodine-soaked pad to the still-bleeding wound on his chest.
“Ahhh!” he hisses, biting down on a whole string of curse words and settling for a single exclamation of “Fuck!”
Mikhailo chuckles unsympathetically, watching the display with apparent amusement.
“You think this is funny, ya fuckin’ eejit?” Ian snaps, painstakingly cleaning the wound. “You could at least pretend to be sorry.”
“Ha! My father gave me worse than that for looking at him wrong. You’ll be fine, little boy.”
“You can stop with that an’ all, I’m nineteen,” Ian lies grumpily.
The Ukrainian doesn’t look convinced. “You probably don’t have a single hair on your balls,” he comments, pulling out his own pack of cigarettes and lighting a fresh one.
“Oh aye? You wanna check?” Ian grabs his crotch with his free hand.
Mikhailo smirks. “I would like to know if…” He seems to struggle to find the proper English phrase. “If your ball hair matches your head hair.”
Ian is still irritated, but he laughs despite himself. “Oh, it does,” he replies, carefully pressing a pad of gauze over the cut and bandaging it into place.
Mikhailo laughs too - a friendly sound this time. “I have never seen hair like yours before,” he confesses. “Except on cats. Remind me, where are you from?”
“Ireland.”
“Oy-er-land,” Mikhailo repeats slowly, in a mangled version of Ian’s accent. “You have family in Oy-er-land?”
“Oh yeah, loads. Me ma and me da ain’t around much, but I got loads of brothers and sisters.” He noticed a wedding ring on Mikhailo’s finger. “What about you?”
The soldier nods stiffly, and reaches into the breast pocket of his uniform. He pulls out a photograph - tattered and a little blurry - and hands it to Ian, who inspects it. It shows a severe-looking woman with a baby on her knee, the latter clad in an elaborate frilly white christening dress.
“My wife, Svetlana,” Mikhailo explains shortly. “And my son, Yevgeny.”
“Are they still in Ukraine?”
Mikhailo blows smoke, shakes his head, and passes the cigarette to Ian. “When the Germans invaded, they fled across the border to Russia. My wife has family there.”
“You must be worried about them,” Ian says, sliding the cigarette between his lips.
The soldier shrugs. “Svetlana can take care of herself, and she would slit the throat of any man who tried to harm Yevgeny. I am more worried about myself.” He watches Ian for a few seconds, as Ian continues to examine the photo. “You think she’s pretty?”
“Eh? Oh… I don’t really know.”
Mikhailo raises an eyebrow, taking the photo back from Ian. “Most people, when I show them that picture, they say, ‘Oh, your wife is so pretty.’ Sometimes they say more than that.” He grins nastily. “Sometimes they say too much, and then I have to hurt them.”
Suddenly, Ian is very glad that he didn’t comment on the wife’s looks. “Well, beauty is as beauty does,” he ventures.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“I… don’t know actually. Just something me sister always says.”
Ian suddenly realizes how exhausted he is, now that the rush of energy he got from fighting for his life has faded. He stubs out the burned-down cigarette, picks up the fallen Bible and closes it, then sets it down on the ground so that it can serve as his pillow. Glancing over at Mikhailo warily, he asks, “If I go to sleep, will you kill me?”
The Ukrainian shows off his teeth again in a none-too-comforting smile. “If I decide to kill you, I will wake you up first.”
“Oh thanks, that’s very considerate, that is.”
The morning sunrise seems to arrive far too soon, dappling the floor of the church with colored patterns of light as the sun’s rays pass through the stained glass windows. Ian stirs slowly, and squints across the blackened remains of the fire at Mikhailo, who is dead to the world. Later, it occurs to Ian that he could have killed the Ukrainian right then and there, but even if he had thought of it at the time, he’d never stoop so low as to kill a man while he’s sleeping.
Instead, Ian just looks at the enemy soldier and allows himself to see how good-looking he is, a good deal better-looking (to Ian, at least) than the woman in the photo. Then, chasing such thoughts out of his head, he kicks Mikhailo roughly in the leg.
“Oy, wake up,” he says huskily.
The soldier startles at the rude awakening, immediately sitting up and reaching for his knife. He looks around wildly, his hair flattened where he slept on it. He catches sight of Ian and pauses for a moment, apparently trying to remember who the hell he is.
“Mornin’, sleeping beauty,” Ian says, smiling and silently glad that he kicked the knife away last night.
Any retort that Mikhailo might have been readying is chased away by the distant crackle of gunfire. They both turn to look in the direction of the sound, Ian’s expression sobering immediately.
“Ah, fuck,” he says. “I’d better head back. I should be there.”
“It is your funeral,” Mickey says with a yawn, lying back down. Apparently he has no intention of rejoining the Germans.
Ian checks his bandages, then gathers up his things into his pack. He retrieves his rifle and the magazine and reunites them, noting how Mikhailo watches him warily as he does so. To make his intentions clear, Ian slings the rifle over his back.
“Well,” he says, suddenly at a loss for words. “I’ll be off, then.”
Mikhailo looks up at him from where he’s still lying on the ground. In the daylight, Ian can see that he’s really quite handsome, and his eyes are a striking blue. “I hope you do not die,” he says, in a gentler voice than Ian has ever heard him use before. “I hope you get back to Oy-er-land.”
Ian laughs and ducks his head away. “Yeah. I hope you see your wife and your little one again.”
He leaves, glancing back over his shoulder just once, as he reaches the church door. As he walks back towards the war, he feels suddenly overcome by a wave of sadness, but he writes it off as fear, puts his head down, and keeps marching.