Fighter Pilot

4.

Gunshots rang out across the countryside. Gunshots. They'd come back to kill us all. Simon pushed me towards camp, as if to tell me to run.
Maybe that was our first mistake. Maybe we should have stayed together. Maybe things wouldn't have gone so horribly wrong.
All I really remember was the yelling. It was German, but I couldn't understand. I'd never learned German. I'd never had a reason. I reached around behind me. Simon. Where was Simon?
Maybe looking back was my mistake. Maybe this was all my fault. Silly of me to pin any of it on Simon.
"Vivienne, no!"
A bullet lodged into the dirt next to my feet. Simon was struggling with one of the soldiers, trying to pry a gun from his hands. Another shot went off as they struggled, and the world slowed down.
It felt like everything was moving in slow motion. I could see it coming towards me. I knew I couldn't move out of the way. I didn't know where it was going to hit me. I just knew it would. And I knew it was probably going to kill me.
Simon hadn't realized yet just where that bullet was going. Time hadn't slowed down for him. He was still trying to fight off that soldier.
Pain shattered across my chest. My chest, that's where it would hit me. Where it had with me. The impact threw me backwards. I hit the ground harder than I ever had before. I couldn't move. I couldn't try to run.
Everything that had happened flashed before my eyes. Simon and I fighting, running for our lives the first time, waking up next to him, kissing him... I was never going to get the chance to love Simon Minter. I was never going to see the man who hadn't put up a wall around himself.
I watched his head turn. I watched the realization hit him. Simon let go of the gun and he ran. He ran straight to me. It was all still in slow motion. But the edges of my vision were fading. The sound of his voice was so distant, like we were swimming.
I slowly brought my hand up. My chest didn't hurt anymore. Maybe I'd miraculously been spared a horrible injury and I was just disoriented. Then I felt the warm stickiness on my fingers and I knew that wasn't true. I was going to die on the French countryside. Maybe my brother would survive his time in the navy, maybe our father wouldn't be left alone. And then there was Simon. Beautiful, sweet Simon.
I tried to scream, to call him, but it was like there was a glass case around my lungs.
Simon...Simon...Si

Simon's POV
She was gone by the time I reached her. Her eyes were glassy, her curls falling out of her pins. This was my fault. This was all my fault.
I knelt to the ground, lifting the lifeless body off of the mud. No one came near. The fucking Germans only showed humanity when a girl to their liking was dead. I had said I wouldn't cry while I was at war. Swore to my mum even that I wouldn't shed a tear no matter what happened. But kneeling there, holding Vivienne Churchill's broken body, I cried. I cried without restraint. I held her beautiful head and I cried.
Lucy and Kitty found me in the field, holding Vivi. They knelt before me, to see if she was really gone. But I couldn't bring myself to let them touch her, to hold her. This was supposed to be the night I finally won her over. She was supposed to be mine.
"Minter."
I went rigid at the sound of my commander's voice. I looked up, red eyed and tear streaked. My commander had been my mate before we'd gone to war. Joshua Bradley. He'd wanted to be a ranker and I'd wanted to be a flying ace. Somehow we'd ended up here together.
"Simon..."
"I killed her."
"No, those bloody fucking Germans killed her."
"I had my hands on the gun that put a bullet in her."
"Simon, you're going home."
"I-"
"Pilot Minter, with the recall of your squadron, I charge you with accompanying the body of Miss Vivienne Churchill home for burial."
"Yes, Wing Commander."

Two days later I left France, accompanying Vivienne's body in an ornate casket, a British flag draped to cover the top.
"She'd taken fancy to you I think," Lucy whispered, passing me to find a seat along the wall of our measly ship. The prime minister's great niece was being brought home in a casket and this is the best they could scrounge up? Damn near criminal. Vivienne Churchill deserved the best goddamn ship the British Navy could offer.
Lying on the cot next to her casket that night I realized something. Even as she lay broken on the ground, her lipstick had still been perfect. Not a single smudge on her painted red lips. And every time I closed my eyes, I saw that cherry colored smile and I tried not to cry.