ASHTON

As our bodies are thrown down to the front of the plane as it free falls toward the ground, bullet holes continuing to appear all around us, all I can think is that I wasn't able to say goodbye to Calum. In my mind, my plan was to die from a gun wound, not buried under layers of debris and crushed metal. I wanted to be able to write a goodbye letter to the lonely tan boy on my death bed, so that he can pull it out after I'm six feet under the ground and know that my dying thoughts were of him. Instead, this is happening, and he will never know.

The pilot is screaming a string of profanities as he clutches the wheel, trying (and failing) to set the plane level again. I try and look around, but all I can see are the bodies of the soldiers around me, and the blurred vision of the grey walls. I finally just squeeze my eyes closed, wrapping my left hand around a plush leather seat to attempt at stabilizing myself. My right hand is embraced into another, and I don't know whose it is, but I let it happen, because there is nothing else to do in such a moment like this.

"Where are the parachutes?" a voice screams. I force my eyelids open, staring up at the shaking ceiling of the plane before pushing myself upright, scanning the back of the plane before realizing that it is completely demolished. Whatever had caused the back of the plane to explode had obviously done well, because everything is crushed and destroyed into ashes.

I cough, rolling my eyes back until they land on the lieutenant. He looks slightly scared, but he doesn't allow it to show on his face.

"Destroyed!" I yell back, and the lieutenant curses, throwing his hands over his head to protect it as he ducks slightly. My breath trembles, seeing the strong lieutenant give up and try to protect himself before we hit the ground. We are over. We are done.

The pilot lets go of the steering wheel, covering his head with his arms as he does the same as the lieutenant. I really couldn't be in a worst position, my head towards the front of the plane and my feet to the back, but it is much too late to try and get into a better position. I shut my eyes and clench my jaw, waiting for the hit, waiting for the blow.

The crash doesn't come fast enough to numb my mind, which is spiraling out of control with emotions and thoughts. It was a huge blur and I can't pinpoint any one memory that flashes through my mind, but the only name that stays still in my brain is Calum. My mum, too, but she is strong, she can handle my death when it comes. She can pick herself up and move on like she did when my siblings died, but Calum is already broken. My death will just step on his already fragmented pieces.

It gets to the point where I briefly wonder if I am falling at all, or if this is a dream, or if we have already crashed and I am imagining all this up in my head, when it happens. It happens in a split second of fury, explosions and fire and a huge, blood-curdling noise that could rattle the ghosts in their graves. All I can see is red for a split moment, one tiny moment, and I can feel excruciating pain stab the left side of my head, and then my vision goes black, and I can feel myself sinking into the abyss of insentience as the world obliterates around me.

~*~

"Ashton!"

My eyes fly open, the world fading back into view, and with it comes agonizing pain in the side of my torso. My mouth opens to scream but no sound comes out, stabs of electricity shooting through my veins, and I vaguely wonder what happened. What did happen? All I can make sense of is the piercingly blue sky, free of any clouds, but filled with grey smoke. Smoke. Why would there be smoke?

The plane.

The memories of what had happened floods back to me in clumps of information, and I roll my eyes forward to see that I am lying in the middle of a field of debris, crushed metal and pieces of fabric surrounding me. My head throbs, and I want to scream.

"Ashton Irwin, goddammit, answer us!" I can hear a voice call from a little while away, and I recognize it as the rough voice of Michael. I hear footsteps crushing over bits and pieces of the plane, and I want to answer them, tell them where I am and that I need help, but no noise leaves my throat.

"You don't think he--" I hear the somewhat timid voice of Luke, but it gets cut off almost immediately. My body is drenched in relief when I hear it is getting closer. I shut my eyes, the strikingly bright sky blinding me.

"No." Michael interrupts. "He's--He's stronger than that. He can survive anything." The footsteps continue to get nearer, and the pain in my side continues to increase, growing more and more unbearable as the seconds pass. I begin to pant, my head feeling light.

"Ashton!" Luke's voice exhales, relief drenching his tone. I hear their footsteps hurry towards me, stumbling over the planes debris as they crouch down next to me.

"Ashton, Ashton. Can you hear me?" Michael asks, and I force myself to nod, my head pounding. "Shit, you're really pale. You're never pale. I'm always the pale one."

I coerce my eyelids to open, and I can see Michael's face inches away from mine, his skin covered in sweat and dirt. His lips are cracked and nearly white as his insipid eyes analyze mine. He looks away and his fingers curl around the edge of a piece of large metal, something that must have once belonged to the plane. He pulls it away from where it was covering half my body, and then he sucks in a breath.

The two boys go silent, and I struggle to even my breaths. "What is it?" I ask, rolling my eyes toward where Michael sits. He is staring at my side, his entire body frozen. Luke's face has turned white, backing away a little bit as he trains his eyes on my torso. Neither of them say anything, and I suppress a groan at the pain.

I slowly lift my head, looking down at the rest of my body, and I immediately wish I didn't. Blood coats my entire torso, a scrap of metal lodged into my side, directly over my ribcage. The amount of dark blood that spills from the wound is almost enough to make me pass out already, and it appears that Luke is fighting consciousness just looking at it. I breathe deeper, beginning to panic as I stare at it. The pain increases, and I throw my head back onto the hard concrete under me, letting out a strangled scream.

"Okay, okay, it's going to be alright, Ash, okay?" Michael says, his voice trembling. He gestures over to Luke, and the blonde scoots forward to the other side of me. My chest heaves as they both put an arm around my shoulders. "Come on, we've got to get you up."

They slowly push my back up, trying to sit me upright, but the agony increases insufferably, and I cry out. Michael refuses to put me back down again, repeating over and over again that I have to get up. My chest heaves, hot tears springing into my eyes as I feel the metal shift under my skin, grinding against my ribcage and my vision goes black for a few seconds.

"I can't do this, I can't do this." I grunt, barely coherent.

"Shut up, yes you can." Michael snaps, breathing heavily. "Come on, you can do this."

They both grip my shoulders, pulling me up until I am able to get my feet flat on the ground. The pain is unendurable, and an agonizing scream leaves my throat as the two boys beside me stare worriedly. I feel fresh blood wet the side of my uniform, and for a moment, I wish that I had remained unconscious.

Michael and Luke help me as I move my legs forward, taking one terrible step at a time. Each time I place down my foot, a jolt of electrifying pain travels up my spine, causing me to cry out. I have no idea where we are walking, my eyes trained on my boots instead of the long field of grey ahead of us, and it takes me a good twenty minutes to realize that Michael and Luke don't know where we are headed either.

Thankfully, I hear a pair of running footsteps toward us, and I lift my head to see a lieutenant. Not one I recognize, but his eyes are trained on me, specifically the wound in my side. He stops in front of us and Michael lets me stop walking. I take a shuddering breath and clench my jaw, trying not to let any more sounds leave my mouth.

"You three are from the plane that got shot down?" the man asks, his voice loud and firm.

"Yes sir. Only one severely injured." Michael reports, not bothering with my name considering it is pretty obvious who the one injured is. The lieutenant nods and turns around, making a hand gesture to someone in the near distance.

"Look at me." the lieutenant orders, and I lift my head, my hazel eyes meeting with his grey ones. "We've got a stretcher for you. You have got to hold on, though, alright? We've got an emergency plane that will fly the three of you and the other soldiers that were on that plane to the base camp."

His words fly through one ear and straight out the other, but I can see two soldiers sprinting up to us, holding a stretcher in their arms. They arrive quickly, and the lieutenant helps pick me up and lower me onto the thick fabric. I resist screaming out, biting my tongue until it swells up and bleeds into my mouth. The two soldiers lift the stretcher and start to carry me towards the plane. Michael and Luke both talk hurriedly to the lieutenant, telling him what had happened on and off the plane.

I focus on my racing heartbeat, trying not to let the darkness that corners my vision engulf it completely. It does not take long for us to reach the plane, and they gently slide me into the back, away from where the other soldiers sit. They are marked up, blood smeared across their faces, and their eyes widen when they see my condition. I swallow grimly, avoiding their stares. My face heats up. I hate looking so broken in front of everyone.

The small plane shifts a little as two more bodies step onto the platform, crawling through the gap in the door and sliding over to sit beside me. I look past my blurred vision to see Michael and Luke peering down at me with worried eyes. I grimace unhappily, wishing they would stop. I suppose I would do the same if the situation was reversed and it was one of them that had a bulk of metal penetrating their ribcage, but I hate the attention all the same.

A moment of silence fills the air as the plane door slides closed and the pilot climbs into the front, preparing the plane for emergency take off. Then Luke speaks.

"Does it hurt?"

Michael turns and stares at him. "Of course it fucking hurts, he has a part of a plane in his torso."

"I was just asking." Luke shrugs, avoiding both of our gazes. I stare at the top of the plane, listening to the two of them pick at each other until Michael directs his own question to me.

"How are you feeling?"

"Fantastic." I answer, wincing slightly. "You guys are shit at comforting people." I think Michael says something after that, but I don't really hear it from the intense pain that shoots up my spine when the plane lurches forward, shooting itself into the clouds and causing my muscles to shift around the scrap of metal. I bite my lip and feel the blood pulse from the thin skin, struggling to make out the intricate details of the plane walls.

My head begins to feel light and my vision darkens, like a dark filter has covered up my vision. I try and focus on anything, trying to get the mush that has filled my brain to clear so that I can think again, but it doesn't work.

"Ashton?" I hear Luke say, his voice sounding worried. The name sounds weird leaving his lips, disoriented. I try and blink, try to see Luke correctly, but he is just a smear of green and black. I swallow roughly, screwing my eyes shut.

"Ashton, listen to me. Pay attention, come on." Michael's voice says, suddenly too quiet for me to hear correctly. My chest shudders a bit and I can't quite figure out why Michael and Luke are so panicked.

"Ashton, goddammit, hold on. Don't--Don't lose us." I can't tell whose voice it is, but it doesn't quite matter anymore as my head goes very foggy. My lungs feel filled of bricks and my mind is clouded by fog, no words able to penetrate through. I let my breathing slow a bit, my mind slipping away from consciousness, losing itself in my cataleptic form.

~*~

I wake up to the sound of loud voices and hurried footsteps, machines beeping and low voices whispering. I'm laying down on a flat surface, wires lacing my arms and piercing my wrists and elbows. I am thoroughly surprised to find that I feel nothing of my torso, but that's just it. I can't feel anything. I open my eyes, squinting away from the blinding light of the room and the strikingly white walls. My bare back is cold against the table, and I immediately notice someone prodding at my side.

At my right side stands a nurse, dressed in green scrubs and wearing black tennis shoes. Her brown hair is pulled back into a low ponytail, a few strands falling into her blue eyes as she stares down at my side, which has been covered from my view by a thin blue sheet.

Her eyes flit up when I move my foot, and she breathes out in relief.

"Hey, soldier." The nurse greets, offering me a smile. "You're awake." I don't have the energy to nod or move my head at all, but thankfully I don't have to.

"Lucky for you, you woke up after we've removed the majority of the object. I'm just stitching you up. We've numbed your torso so that you can't feel anything, so that's why you might feel a little numb."

I lean my head back, feeling the slight tug and pull of my skin and trying not to wince. I stare up at the ceiling, which is bland and white, like a graveyard. I let out a tiny sigh as the nurse finishes up the stitches, dreading the moment when I will have to get them removed. The lady pulls away the sheet, revealing my tan torso, toned from running miles without rest. At the right side of my ribcage is a line of stitches, black and catching on the intense lighting inside the room.

"It's a bit sensitive at the moment, so I wouldn't put on your shirt for a few more hours to avoid inflammation." The nurse tells me softly before retreating towards a door at the end of the room, opening it quietly and slipping outside into the busy hallways. I shut my eyes and lay my head against the pillow provided for me, wishing that damn plane hadn't crashed.

I lay there for a few minutes before I hear a clatter outside my door, and a familiar voice speaks out above the others.

"Can we see him?" Michael's voice chimes out, and I sit up slightly.

"He's resting at the moment, but I can assure you that he is fine. We have removed the metal from the plane and stitched his wound, and now he is just recovering from the anesthesia." I recognize the voice as the same nurse who was in here a couple minutes ago.

"So he's okay?" Luke's voice says.

"He's good." The nurse answers, and silence falls for a few minutes. I breathe in and out, still feeling quite drowsy.

"I need to apologize to him." I hear Luke say softly. "For what I said on the plane."

"I'm sure he understands." Michael replies, but Luke just mumbles something I can comprehend, and then I hear the two sets of footsteps dissolve into the rest of the crowd's, and I am left with my own thoughts again.

I do understand, I guess. I understand what he meant, at least. I don't agree, but I can surely forgive him for his own opinion.

I reach into the pockets of my pants and pull out the paper and pen, setting them down on my lap. My hands help to pull my body up as I grunt slightly, trying not to rip the stitches as I straighten myself out. I unfold the pieces of paper and smooth them out on the table, picking up the black pen and removing the cap.

Dear Calum,

The lieutenants gave us more paper to carry around with us, so I will be able to write to you more frequently. That makes me really happy.

We were on our way to base camp today on the plane when people on land began to shoot us down. I suppose we were flying fairly low to the ground, but it's not like we can do anything about it now. We crashed, and I got a piece of the plane stuck by my ribcage. Fuck, that hurt.

I'm okay now, though, so don't worry about me. I'm all stitched up and ready to go. I think we are going somewhere tomorrow, and hopefully my stitches won't tear.

I hope you are doing okay. I really miss you. I think about you all the time, so don't ever think I forget about you. I hope you don't ever forget about me, although it might be easy to, I guess, since I'm never there.

I love you, Calum. I miss you so much. The war seems to be going well, and more people have been being sent out on leave. I don't know if this means the war might be ending soon or if it means were are in a rest period, but both is good.

I hope your parents haven't been bothering you much, aside from their fighting. I hope school is going okay. I hope you are happy. That's all I want, you know that, right? I just want you to be happy.

I'll write again soon. I love you so much.

Love,

Ashton xx

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A/N idk if this chapter turned out good but it seemed kinda scattered. oH well.

when is your spring break bc mine isn't until next week and its making me sad

love you guys! pls vote and comment if you liked it (: bye