Chapter 3: A Toast to the Fallen
The cracked concrete of the parade ground burned with a pale, relentless heat, reflecting the sky in a shimmering haze. It was a barren stage, a sun-bleached rectangle where every scuff and stain stood out. The air hummed—a low, constant drone of distant landing craft engines being tested in the harbor, layered with the sporadic, sharp crack-crack-crack of rifle bolts being worked and slapped home. Spring wind did little to cool; it just pushed the smells around—cordite from the rifle range, damp earth from beyond the wire, the oily scent of machinery.
Castiel stood before the platoon, his voice a stripped-gear rasp cutting through the noise. “Again. From the top. Simmons, your sling is loose. It’s not a damn purse.”
They moved in ragged unison, forty men in olive drab, their shadows pooled sharply at their feet. The drill was mechanical, a ballet of muscle memory: present arms, order arms, port arms, shoulder arms. Each slap of palm against walnut stock was meant to be a single report. Instead, it was a stuttering cacophony. Castiel’s eyes tracked every flaw. A trembling barrel here, a slow pivot there. These were medics, clerks, drivers—not infantry. But on the beach, they would need to move as one, to clear a jam, to take a position, to not freeze.
His gaze, sharp and assessing, kept snagging on the periphery.
Sergeant Dean Winchester sat on an empty ammunition crate in the shade of a corrugated iron shed, one boot propped on a rusted drum. He held a chipped enamel mug, steam curling lazily in the hot air. He wasn’t smoking, wasn’t fidgeting. He was just watching. He wore no helmet, his jacket was unbuttoned, and he looked for all the world like a man at a mildly interesting sporting event.
Castiel felt his jaw ache. Medics were non-combatants under the Geneva Convention. They weren’t required to drill with rifles. Winchester had every right to be over there. His very presence, his utter lack of required participation, felt like a critique. A live demonstration of the chaotic exception to every rule Castiel was trying to hammer into these men.
“Column right, march!”
The platoon wheeled, a turning wall of men and metal. Boots scraped and shuffled. Private First Class Dwight, a gangly kid from Iowa who had been a pharmacy clerk, was on the outside of the turn. His focus was entirely on the back of the head of the man in front of him. He didn’t see the uneven seam in the concrete, a legacy of hasty pre-war repair.
His right foot came down on the lip. His ankle buckled outward with a nasty, muffled pop that Castiel heard even over the marching steps. Dwight went down with a choked yelp, his rifle clattering away, the sound horribly loud. The man behind him barely avoided tripping over the heap, breaking the formation into a stumbling, confused halt.
A wave of cold clarity washed over Castiel. Injury. Assess. Act. He was already moving forward. “Hold your positions! Medic!”
But Winchester was already there. He hadn’t sprinted; he’d simply set his mug down and covered the distance in a loose, unhurried lope that ate up the ground. He was kneeling by Dwight before Castiel had taken three full strides.
“Alright, kid, let’s have a look at the landscape,” Winchester said, his voice not loud, but carrying. It was calm, almost conversational. Dwight’s face was pale, screwed up in pain, his breaths coming in sharp hitches. “Yeah, that’s a party. Didn’t like that turn much, did it?”
Winchester’s hands were already moving, gentle but decisive. He didn’t yank the boot off. He carefully loosened the laces, all the way down. “Think you can wiggle your toes for me? Just a little wiggle. Like they’re hearing a jazz band.”
Sniffles from Dwight. A faint, pained movement inside the boot. “Y-yes.”
“Outstanding. Best damn toe-tapping I’ve seen all day.” Winchester glanced up as Castiel arrived, looming over them. His green eyes were clear, focused, the earlier idle observer gone. “It’s not broken. Ligaments decided to take a vacation. A bad one.”
He didn’t ask for supplies. He reached into the deep pockets of his field trousers and pulled out a roll of khaki bandage. It wasn’t fresh from a packet; it was slightly compressed, practical. Then came two long, flat sticks from a different pocket—popsicle sticks, bleached clean. Splints.
“Where did you get those?” Castiel’s voice was tight.
Winchester didn’t look up. He was carefully, expertly sliding the boot off. “Took them from the cook’s trash. Better than nothing.” He positioned the sticks on either side of the ankle. “Alright, Dwight. This is gonna feel real tight, and then it’s gonna feel a whole lot better. You just keep breathing. Tell me about your girl back home. She pretty?”
“She’s… she’s okay,” Dwight gasped as Winchester began wrapping the bandage in a swift, firm figure-eight pattern, immobilizing the ankle and the makeshift splints with shocking efficiency.
“Just okay? Hell, son, you’re about to liberate France. You gotta have a girl who’s more than ‘okay.’ She gotta be a knock-out. A veritable dish.” He tightened a fold, his fingers quick and sure. “You got a picture?”
“In… in my pocket.”
“Good. You keep that right where it is. You’re gonna look at it tonight and think, ‘Glad I didn’t wreck my good leg for that lousy turn.’ This?” He tapped the now neatly, professionally wrapped ankle. “This is a ticket off the first wave. A blessed little hiatus. You’ll be walking on it in a week, running in two. You, my friend, have just won the ankle sprain lottery.”
A weak, wet laugh escaped Dwight. The panic was gone from his eyes, replaced by tears of pain and a dazed sort of gratitude. The men standing rigid in formation were watching, their earlier tension broken by the quiet, competent theater of it.
Castiel saw it all. The swift assessment, the improvised tools, the calm authority that had nothing to do with rank. And the charm. The easy, distracting banter that lifted the injured man out of his shock and pain. It was masterful. It was exactly what a medic should do.
It made Castiel want to put his fist through the corrugated iron shed.
Winchester finished, tying the bandage off with a secure knot. He patted Dwight’s knee. “All set. Don’t go dancing on it.” He looked up at Castiel, his expression neutral now, the performance ended. “He needs a ride to the aid tent. They’ll give him the proper stuff. This’ll hold.”
“Sergeant Gable,” Castiel barked, not taking his eyes off Winchester. “Take PFC Dwight to the battalion aid station. Now.”
As two men helped Dwight up, Winchester stood, brushing dust from his knees. He pulled the roll of bandage and the two remaining popsicle sticks from his pocket and shoved them back in. The whole episode had taken less than three minutes. The platoon was still standing there, the disrupted drill hanging in the air.
“You carry medical supplies in your pockets during routine drills,” Castiel said, his voice low.
Winchester shrugged. “I carry medical supplies in my pockets when I sleep. Habit.”
“You undermined the drill.”
That got a reaction. A flicker of genuine confusion in Winchester’s eyes, then cold understanding. “The drill?” He said the word as if it were in a foreign language. “Lieutenant, the drill ended when his ankle snapped. I responded to the actual problem.”
“The problem was a lapse in discipline! A lack of attention!” Castiel’s control was fraying. He could feel the eyes of the platoon on them. “Your… your loitering over there is a distraction. Your attitude is a distraction. Now this little display—”
“Display?” Winchester interrupted, his voice dropping to a tone that was dangerously flat. “I immobilized a joint. That’s not a display. That’s triage. Would you prefer I’d stood at attention and waited for you to formally request a medic? Maybe filled out a form in triplicate while he went into shock?”
“I would prefer you followed the established protocols for a reason! There is an order to things, Sergeant! A structure that keeps men alive!”
“The structure just broke his ankle,” Winchester shot back, his chin lifting. “The structure put him in a line to march on broken concrete. My popsicle sticks and my bandage are keeping him from making it worse. Your structure, sir, makes the wounds. My job is to patch them up afterward.” He glanced past Castiel at the waiting platoon, then back. “You want to keep drilling them into the ground? Be my guest. I’ll be right over there with my bandages. Seems to be where I’m most useful.”
He didn’t wait for dismissal. He just turned and walked back to his crate in the shade, picked up his mug, and took a long sip. He resumed his watching posture, but it was different now. It was a challenge. A silent, radiating declaration of his own purpose.
Castiel felt a hollow pit open in his stomach. The truth of Winchester’s words echoed, ugly and undeniable. The drill had caused the injury. The protocol, in that moment, had been irrelevant. What mattered was the speed and skill Winchester had shown. The very things that infuriated him.
He turned to face the platoon. Their faces were a mix of apprehension, fatigue, and a new, subtle thing—a flicker of divided loyalty. They had seen efficiency. They had seen care. They had also seen insubordination.
“Re-form ranks!” Castiel’s command sliced the air. It sounded harsher than he intended.
They shuffled back into line. The silence was heavier now, charged. He forced himself to continue. “From the beginning. And watch your footing.”
As the clumsy ballet of arms and rifles started again, the rhythmic slaps feeling hollow and forced, Castiel’s awareness was split. He called corrections, noted flaws, but a part of his mind was locked on the man in the shade.
He remembered the grimy list in his pocket. Chewing gum. For packing wounds if the gauze runs out. Also keeps kids from screaming.
This was the man who wrote that. This smug, infuriating, brilliant creature who saw past the drill to the broken ankle, past the regulation to the popsicle sticks, past the invasion to the screaming that needed silencing.
The sun beat down. The rifles slapped. The engines droned. And Castiel Novak, a man who built his world on order, felt the foundations crack and shift with every measured sip Dean Winchester took from his mug. The beach was coming. And he was beginning to understand, with a cold, sinking certainty, that all his maps and plans would mean nothing. The only thing that might matter was the unapproved contents of a sergeant’s pockets, and the unbearable, chaotic competence of the man who carried them.