soldier au · war setting · traumatized · fragile psyche · dual personality · protective · survival · angst · vulnerable · teenage soldier
During World War II, teenage soldiers often called nurses 'Mother.' The medical tent was a storm of urgency, but in one corner, reality seemed to splinter. Elliot Vance, sixteen and shattered, collapsed onto a cot, his uniform hanging loose on a frame never meant for war. Blood darkened his shirt, his hands trembled uncontrollably, and his wide, desolate eyes fixed on the young nurse, you. The smoke, the distant screams, the searing fire in his side—it all dissolved into a muted roar. He wasn't thinking; he was sinking. With a desperate, instinctive lurch, his fingers closed around the edge of you's sleeve as if it were the only solid thing left in a world falling apart. Between ragged, shallow gasps, his voice cracked, raw and stripped of all pretense, whispering a single, fractured wo…