Ethan Cole and Marcus Hale lay shoulder to shoulder in a trench that barely deserved the name, a crooked wound in the earth scraped by hurried shovels and panic. They did not look at each other. They never did if they could avoid it.

Hatred had grown between them like rust on steel from the first morning of enlistment.

Ethan had arrived in clean boots and pressed uniform, son of a small-town schoolteacher, voice calm, eyes steady. Marcus had come in late on a rattling bus from a factory district that smelled of oil and burned sugar, knuckles scarred, temper already coiled tight. A misunderstanding over a bunk, a careless word about discipline, a shove that turned into fists — small sparks that caught dry grass.

By week two they were trading insults instead of names.

“Pretty boy thinks this is summer camp,” Marcus had sneered once.

“Street brawler thinks anger is courage,” Ethan had fired back.

Command noticed the friction and made the worst possible choice: shoved them into the same squad. Maybe they hoped shared danger would burn out the hostility. Maybe they just needed bodies in place.

Now, in 1944, danger was not a lesson — it was a constant, breathing thing.

A shell landed close enough to shower dirt into their helmets. Marcus swore and jammed his chin lower into the trench wall.

“Move your elbow,” he snapped. “You’re hogging space.”

“Maybe if you weren’t built like a barn door—”

Another explosion cut the argument in half. Earth slammed down on their backs. For a second, neither could hear anything but a screaming ring.

When the noise faded, Ethan realized something was wrong.

His leg wouldn’t move.

Pain pulsed like a hot wire from knee to hip. He tried shifting and nearly blacked out. A piece of twisted metal — maybe shrapnel, maybe broken equipment — had pinned his boot to a buried beam.

“I’m stuck,” he said, trying to keep panic out of his voice.

Marcus glanced over despite himself. His eyes narrowed.

“Don’t joke.”

“I’m not joking.”

Marcus reached, brushing dirt away. Blood seeped into the mud around the boot.

“Damn it…” He pulled once. Nothing budged. Another shell boomed closer, the concussion slapping their chests.

If they stayed, the trench would become a grave.

“Get help,” Ethan said. “Leave me.”

Marcus hesitated — only a breath, but long enough for something inside Ethan to crack. He saw calculation, not concern. Old anger flared.

“Go on,” Ethan said bitterly. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Marcus’s jaw tightened.

“Shut up.”

He wedged his shoulder against the beam and pulled again. Muscles trembled. Mud sprayed into his face. The metal shrieked but did not move.

A flare burst overhead, bleaching Marcus’s expression into stark lines: rage, fear, something like stubborn refusal.

“Don’t die on me just to prove a point,” Marcus growled.

“Funny,” Ethan hissed. “I was about to say the same.”

Another blast hit close — too close. The trench wall collapsed inward, burying Marcus’s arm to the elbow. Pain ripped a shout from him.

For one terrifying second, they were both trapped.

Then Marcus ripped free, skin torn, blood streaking his sleeve. He ignored it, planted both boots, and pulled with a sound halfway between a curse and a prayer.

Something gave way.

The beam shifted. Ethan’s boot tore free. He collapsed forward, and Marcus dragged him farther down the trench just as debris buried the spot where they’d been.

They lay gasping, faces inches apart, mud-smeared and shaking.

Neither spoke.

Hatred had nearly killed them both.

•

Night deepened into something thicker than darkness — a heavy, suffocating quiet broken only by distant thunder of guns. The squad regrouped in a shallow crater, orders whispered, numbers counted. They were alive, for now.

Ethan’s leg burned but held weight. Marcus’s arm bled through a makeshift bandage. They sat on opposite sides of the crater, backs turned, silence sharp between them.

Hours crawled.

Cold crept in.

A drizzle began, thin at first, then steady, soaking uniforms and hair. Artillery resumed in uneven bursts — a rain of steel that seemed endless.

At some point, exhaustion dulled the edge of anger. Survival stripped everything else away.

Marcus shifted closer to the crater wall, teeth chattering.

“You’re shaking,” Ethan muttered without thinking.

“Mind your business.”

Ethan hesitated, then shrugged out of his spare scarf and tossed it across.

“Wrap your arm. You’re losing heat.”

Marcus stared at the cloth like it might explode.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I don’t feel like carrying your frozen corpse tomorrow.”

A beat.

Marcus snorted despite himself and wrapped the scarf around his arm. The tension eased a fraction — barely noticeable, but real.

Rain streaked their helmets. Distant explosions lit the low clouds from below, turning them into bruised silver.

Minutes stretched into an hour.

“You could’ve left me back there,” Ethan said quietly. “When my boot was stuck.”

Marcus didn’t answer at first.

“Thought about it,” he admitted. “For half a second. Then I remembered my little brother.”

Ethan glanced over.

“He used to get his bike chain jammed,” Marcus went on, eyes on the dark horizon. “Yell for help like the world was ending. I always complained. Always told him he should fix it himself. One day I didn’t come when he called. He fell into traffic.”

Silence swallowed the words.

“He lived,” Marcus added. “But I never forgot that sound in his voice.”

Ethan swallowed.

“I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t ask.”

Fair enough.

Rain thickened. A nearby shell burst lit their faces again. This time, when the light faded, they were still looking at each other.

“Why do you hate me so much?” Ethan asked.

Marcus laughed bitterly.

“You walk like you’ve always known where you’re going. Like nothing’s ever punched you in the mouth. Makes me want to test it.”

“And you,” Ethan said slowly, “act like the world owes you a fight. Like kindness is a trick.”

Another pause.

“Maybe it is,” Marcus said.

Maybe not, Ethan thought — but he didn’t say it.

A sudden whistle sliced the air. Instinct took over. Both men flattened as a shell screamed overhead and slammed somewhere close enough to send dirt spraying into their crater.

They ended up tangled together, Marcus’s shoulder pressed against Ethan’s chest, Ethan’s hand gripping Marcus’s sleeve.

For a split second, neither moved.

Then another blast hit, closer still.

Without thinking, Marcus rolled partially over Ethan, shielding him from flying debris. Dirt hammered his back. Pain flashed through his wounded arm, but he stayed put until the shockwave passed.

When it was over, they were breathing hard, faces inches apart again.

“Guess we’re even now,” Marcus muttered.

Ethan almost laughed — a shaky, broken sound.

“Guess so.”

•

Dawn came pale and reluctant, bleeding into the clouds like diluted milk. Orders came to advance through a stretch of broken trees and cratered earth.

They moved in staggered lines, rifles tight to shoulders, senses stretched thin.

A sharp crack split the air.

Ethan felt the world jerk sideways. His leg buckled, pain screaming up his spine. He went down hard behind a splintered stump.

“Sniper!” someone shouted.

Panic flared. Vision tunneled. Ethan tried to crawl but his leg refused to cooperate.

Footsteps skidded into the dirt beside him.

Marcus.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ethan hissed. “Get back!”

Marcus ignored him, scanning the treeline.

“You hit?” he asked.

“Leg.”

Marcus slung Ethan’s arm over his shoulder.

“I can’t—”

“You can.”

Another shot snapped past, biting bark inches from Marcus’s head. He dragged Ethan anyway, muscles straining, breath ragged, hauling him into a deeper crater.

They collapsed together.

Marcus pressed a bandage onto the wound with his scarf — the same one Ethan had given him hours earlier.

“Pressure,” Marcus ordered, voice tight.

Ethan obeyed, teeth clenched.

“Why’d you come back?” Ethan asked through pain. “You could’ve made it.”

Marcus met his eyes.

“So could you have last night,” he said simply.

Something unspoken passed between them — not friendship yet, not forgiveness, but a fragile bridge built over shared fear.

The sniper fire shifted away as the squad suppressed the position. Minutes later, medics arrived.

As Ethan was loaded onto a stretcher, his fingers caught Marcus’s sleeve.

“Don’t die,” Ethan said quietly.

Marcus smirked.

“Try not to limp forever, college boy.”

But his grip tightened for a second longer than necessary before letting go.

•

Weeks passed in fragments — hospitals, tents, the smell of antiseptic, letters half-written and never finished. Ethan’s leg healed slowly. Marcus rotated through skirmishes and patrols.

They crossed paths again in a muddy supply line near a ruined village.

Marcus looked thinner. Ethan walked with a faint hitch.

They stared at each other like strangers who recognized a dream.

“Looks like you survived,” Marcus said.

“Unfortunately for you.”

A crooked smile tugged at Marcus’s mouth.

They walked together without needing to say why.

From that day on, they shared rations, cigarettes, quiet jokes traded under breath during long nights. Old insults softened into teasing. Trust grew not in grand speeches, but in small, steady acts: covering each other’s blind side, waking the other for guard shifts, splitting the last piece of bread without argument.

Hatred faded into something harder and stronger.

Brotherhood.

•

Winter crept in early that year.

During a patrol through a shattered village, an explosion rocked the street. Smoke swallowed everything. Screams cut through the dust.

When vision cleared, Ethan saw Marcus sprawled near a collapsed wall, unmoving.

Adrenaline surged. Ethan ran despite the protest of his leg.

“Marcus!”

Marcus stirred, dazed, blood trickling from his temple.

“You look terrible,” Marcus mumbled.

Relief hit Ethan so hard his knees nearly gave out.

“Idiot,” Ethan breathed, gripping Marcus’s collar. “Don’t scare me like that.”

Marcus blinked, confused, then smiled faintly.

“Didn’t know you cared.”

Ethan didn’t let go.

“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

•

War dragged on, chewing days into dust and memory. They survived ambushes, cold nights, hunger, fear. Each time one stumbled, the other reached.

Hatred had once defined them.

Now loyalty did.

On a quiet evening near the end of their campaign, they sat on an overturned crate watching the sky bruise purple with sunset.

“You ever think about what comes after this?” Marcus asked.

“Peace?” Ethan said. “Coffee that doesn’t taste like mud. Sleep without explosions.”

Marcus chuckled.

“I’m opening a garage,” he said. “Fixing engines. Real ones. Not broken men.”

Ethan smiled.

“I’ll come get my car fixed,” he said.

Marcus bumped his shoulder.

“Deal.”

Silence settled — comfortable, earned.

Above them, clouds drifted slowly, untouched by gunfire for once.

Two soldiers who once hated each other sat side by side, bound not by blood or past, but by a night of rain, a shared mistake, and the choice to save instead of abandon.

War had taken many things from them.

It had also, unexpectedly, given them each other.

END