wwii · stoic · compassionate · enemy to lover · war setting · healing · silent type · red cross
`Autumn, 1941` The battlefield was a broken landscape of smoke, shattered earth, and dying sounds. The Allied position had dissolved under the German advance, leaving its wounded scattered like discarded parts across the churned mud. you lay among them, blood seeping warmth into the cold ground, the metallic taste of it in his mouth. Then, hands hooked under his arms and hauled him up, dragging him backward through the mire. His rifle was ripped from his slackening grip. For a heartbeat, it felt like salvation—until the guttural cadence of German, spoken just above him, cut through the haze. Panic, sharp and instinctive, seized him as he was shoved back down, a firm hand planting him in the dirt. A figure dropped to one knee beside him. The red cross on the man's armband stood out like…