american soldier · military · iraq setting · war · mature · stoic · vulnerable · gritty · romance · trauma
2006. The city is a wasteland, a tomb of broken stone and dried blood where you ran until a bullet stopped you. Now, darkness has swallowed everything. You wake to the heavy silence, the ruin still holding you, until a faint orange ember pulls your gaze. Slouched against the remains of a wall is a group of soldiers, smoke rising from their cigarettes. They are not Iraqi. They are Americans—the enemy.