WARNING: CHARACTER DEATH

(Oh goody, something as happy as the title. XD)
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Jonghyun had been in the trenches for over a year now. He'd seen every horror imaginable. His comrades had had body parts ripped from them right in front of him. He had stared an enemy right in the face and gotten shot. It was a nightmare he wished a thousand times to be over. He felt much older than his 18 years.

But over the course of that year (Time was was a concept Jonghyun could no longer grasp. Days ran together in a blur of chaos, and it became an eternal hell.) Jonghyun had also seen wonders. Black men and white men making friends*, sharing a table. One time, the field medic sent to them had been a woman in disguise. She begged to prove herself, and they simply didn't have the manpower to say no to her. She had turned out to be one of the best soldiers Jonghyun ever had the pleasure of meeting. Taeyeon was one of his right hand people, and a close friend.

In that way, among others, he considered himself very lucky. He had no lost limbs, even though he'd almost lost his arm after an infection set in when he caught a bullet in the shoulder. He hadn't caught trenchfoot (yet) even though the water was up to their knees most of the time. The rats left him alone. And probably most important of all, he was still alive even if he felt he should have died a long time ago.

That was why he was considered the commander of his groups's small section of the trench. He gave orders easily, trying hard not to think about the fact that he was talking about real people. It would only make things worse for him, and cloud his judgement.

Going over the top was not something Jonghyun enjoyed by any means. No Man's Land was full barbed wire, landmines, and enemy soldiers. But he often had no choice. He felt it was his duty to bolster his men's confidence in him. It didn't seem right to not join them on the battlefield, to show them that he was willing to take as much risk as they were.

Oftentimes when he wasn't on the battlefield, Jonghyun longed for the touch of Minho, his significant other. He had not seen the love of his life in close to 2 years and he prayed and hoped against hope that he wasn't dead like pretty much everybody else he'd forged a connection with.

Several times, Jonghyun thought he could see Minho's face amongst dead soldiers on the battlefield. It never failed to shake him up and make him cry when he came back to camp.

And then one day, Jonghyun's worst nightmare came true. He went over the top with his group, and amongst all the dead bodies and landmines he saw his love... in an enemy soldier's uniform (But wait, that didn't make sense. Minho wasn't an enemy, there was no way. It simply wasn't possible.) . Minho's eyes were desperate and wild and showed so much terror that Jonghyun wanted to die right there. His eyes met Minho's and Minho's eyes widened in shock. He looked so full of hope, whereas Jonghyun was rapidly losing his.

Minho immediately headed towards Jonghyun (Jonghyun couldn't help the absentminded thought that Minho was most certainly not an experienced soldier because if he was he would've avoided Jonghyun at all costs), and Jonghyun tried to tell him not to come close. If Minho came any closer... Jonghyun swallowed and let tears run down his face when Minho didn't heed his words. He took aim at Minho's leg. He fired.

The look of shock on Minho's face was going to be burned into Jonghyun's retinas for the rest of his life. He couldn't even rush over to see if Minho was going to be okay. They were enemies now. It didn't matter whether Minho lived or died.

Jonghyun let out an anguished scream and several people (allies and enemies alike) around him looked at him sympathetically. Pain was something they could all understand.

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I'm breaking my own personal rules for this because this is technically what I call a drabble. But it feels.. idk, more complete than a lot of my other drabbles. So I'm posting this with my oneshots. Sue me. :/

(*) As I'm sure you can guess by now, this is set during WW1, before segregation in the US ended. To Jonghyun, a black man and a white man sitting together and eating a meal probably would seem like a miracle.

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Til next time, loves. ^o~ ☺ ♥ ♫