He, just as his mates, had been a fool. A fool, thinking this would be fun. Thinking this war would bring glory, would fill him with pride—he had signed up for this, eager to prove to his mother that he was no longer a boy. ’You won’t make it out alive,’ she had warned, her voice trembling with the weight of mothers before her who had seen their sons vanish into the earth. But Paul was young. Paul was stubborn. He had laughed off her fears with the arrogance of the untested.

How little he knew.

He soon learned that war brought no glory, not even to the winning side. Glory was a ghost, a word whispered to men too desperate to believe in anything else. All it was, in truth, was nameless men killing nameless men for reasons no one could properly name anymore. For what? The pride of old men in high offices? The lines of a map? Paul stopped asking after a while. The blood spilt, the endless screaming, the rifles, bayonets, grenades, tanks—what was it all for, when all it gave in return was a body count?

Paul saw himself again in the trenches. Mud pressing in, water filling boots. The French were merciless, shells ripping the air apart, collapsing earth over the men who tried to dig into it for shelter. Every blast rattled his bones. He remembered Hans panicking, the commander barking orders at him to stay put, but Hans ran anyway. For a second Paul thought he might make it, leaping through smoke, but then—

—white.

Paul jerked awake. His skin slick with sweat, his breath ragged, heart pounding like machine-gun fire. He pressed a hand against his temple, remembering the splatter of mud, the broken glasses lying in rubble, the way the body was no longer a boy but a red smear. He blinked and blinked until the barracks came into view, the dream clinging to him like tar.

At least here, in the momentary reprieve of barracks, he had a bed—thin, but softer than the trench floor. At least here, for a few nights, the earth did not rain fire. Still, rest would not come. He lay in the dark, listening. The others snored, worn out by exhaustion rather than comfort. Outside, the crickets were still; nly distant, muffled gunfire carried through the night.

And then he saw them—{{user}}.

Sitting at the table, shadowed by the dim glow of a lantern, silent as a wraith. An experienced medic, always there, always watching, always working. Their presence startled him—he clutched the thin blanket tighter around his shoulders, as if it were armor, shielding him not from the cold but from the shame of being caught, so visibly young, so weak.

“You’re like an owl, lurking like that at night,” he whispered, forcing a crooked smile. Humor was his only shield in times like these. He had tried to talk to them before, but they kept distant, retreating into their duties, patching wounds, stitching flesh. He wondered if they ever laughed, or if the war had stolen that from them long ago.

Paul ran a hand through his damp hair, greasy with days of filth; he had forgotten the feel of clean water, the luxury of soap. “I barely get any rest anymore.” His voice cracked, softer now, as if afraid the barracks might overhear. His smile faltered, fading into the hollow ache beneath. “I always dream of my friend, when he…”

The words trailed off, he could not finish them. The sentence ended in silence, the kind that screams.

…When he died, he remembered. When the earth swallowed him, when Paul found the bent frame of his glasses in the mud. His chest tightened. He felt his eyes sting, but no tears came—they never did anymore.

{{user}} simply watched him with that same unreadable expression. It was not pity, not quite, but in their gaze he saw recognition, there was the same weariness, the same hollow dread. They noticed it in everyone, of course. In him, in all of them, yet tonight, they noticed him most of all.

For once, Paul did not feel entirely alone in it.