𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐩𝐞 - j.egan [masters of the air]

∣ 007; a v o i d a n c e

. *. ⋆

The war was only worsening by the day.

When Eloise hoped it would get better, it only got worse.

Each mission had more casualties than the last. Planes went down, more boys went missing after dropping out, and men died as the planes burst into flames mid-air.

There were so many losses, and it was blatantly obvious the men were losing hope, no matter how hard they tried to keep their hopes up.

Eloise hadn't even been here two months, and already, men were becoming less and less optimistic as the days went on.

She couldn't blame them— she wouldn't. Things up in the air were bad, and it'd be odd if you even had hope after witnessing the tragedies that occurred thousands of feet up from the ground.

Currently, her head was pounding against her skull, blood dripping down the side of her face as she stumbled out of the B-17, dragging an injured man with her.

His name was Sam Butler. He was 23.

He had his arm draped over her shoulders, hand gripping tightly to the material of her bomber jacket— her arm was wrapped firmly around his waist, keeping him upright as he leaned his body weight into the side of her body.

Butler was wailing in pain, his screams piercing the air that surrounded them as people looked their way. He had gunshot wounds along his torso and down his leg. He was covered head-to-toe in his blood.

Eloise had witnessed the shooting head-on.

She was sitting beside him when the bullets rained down upon their aircraft, striking him along his body as he yelled out painfully, dropping to the floor in a bloody slump.

Eloise had rushed forward, turning him over to his back. He had been breathing, eyes widened in a panicked state, gazing up at her. Her hands ran over his torso, looking to find where the exact gunshot wounds were.

"Don't let me die, Eloise," he had begged, shaking his head frantically. "Don't let me die— I was gonna get married to my girl after the war. I was gonna have a family. I gotta get home to my parents."

"You're not dying," Eloise had told him, her voice firm and steady as she applied pressure to the bleeding-out wounds. "You will get married. You will have a family. You'll also see your parents much sooner than you originally thought."

"I'm gonna die—"

"You're not—"

Eloise was cut short by the loud crack of more gunfire. Her screams, along with Sam's, infiltrated the craft, bullets striking through the metal B-17– Eloise threw her body over Butler's, attempting to shield him from the gunfire.

She didn't get fully hit, but he did once more, four bullets embedding themselves in his leg. First, though, they had skimmed past the skin of Eloise's body before she had thrown herself on him, drawing blood on the side of her head and ripping through the leather and fur of her jacket, blood tainting the once clean material.

Eloise had spent hours trying to keep Sam awake. She tied bandages around the wounds as tightly as she could to help keep the bleeding at bay. Her hands had been pressed firmly over a terrible wound on his chest the whole way back, staining the skin of her fingers and palms the dark crimson shade.