NOTE: This story begins where Captain James Nicholls's (played by actor Tom Hiddleston) story leaves off in the motion picture War Horse. It is unfinished.

Captain James Nicholls awoke with a start, lying on the ground in a pool of blood and weeds. There was a throbbing in his head, his back, and a sharp pain in his upper right shoulder. He moaned in pain and felt at the wound, drawing his hand back as the pain became more intense. He opened his crusted eyes to the grey sky above him and wondered how he was still alive. He went over the last few moments he remembered from before he had blacked out; seeing the German soldier taking aim at him, feeling Joey tense beneath him, hearing the screams of his comrades. But that was not the last thing he remembered. There was the sound of a shot, a sudden pain, a sickening smell of burnt flesh, and a crash to the ground. He lay there, unmoving, until he had blacked out from the pain.

Now Captain Nicholls heard no more the sounds of battle. He heard no moans or cries. Not even the twittering of birds sounded around him. He let out a soft sound, but in the silence it sounded like a bomb going off. Instinctively he turned his head to see if anyone had heard it, and found, to his horror, that the blood he was lying in was not completely his own.

An ashen faced youth lay next to him with his eyes open and his mouth agape. James recoiled from the awful sight, recovered his composure, and reached out. He touched the youth's face, using his fingers to pull his eyelids over his lifeless eyes. James wished he had known the youth's name, just so that he could have said a few words in his honor, but as he did not, he sent up a silent prayer to God for his family and friends.

James blinked slowly, letting a single tear slide its way from his face, mixing into the blood and mud and weeds and hopes and dreams that had been trampled and shot into the ground. He didn't know what to do. Where to turn. Why a thing like this could have happened. He thought of the men, young and old, whom he had ambushed earlier that day. The shock and fear on their faces as he had stabbed them. James Nicholls had never particularly thought of himself as a good man, but now he felt he could see his true self, and he hated it. He was a killer. A murderer, and it was a sorry job that he had not been finished off.

He struggled to a standing position, leaning slightly to his left, and looked around at the destruction he had been a part of. There were bodies all around him. Horses and men, young and old, German and British. The day seemed like the most horrid day that had ever occurred. James stood and looked for an amount of time that seemed like forever, and yet, felt inappropriately short for the horrible reverence he felt. All he could think was 'I did this.'

No living person was around. No one had come back yet to bury the dead, so James figured that he had not been out long, and that he did not have long until someone, either British or German, would come back to look for survivors. Judging by the looks of the majority of the people lying on the ground, James guessed that Britain had suffered a loss today. He knew the right thing to do was to try to go back and find his comrades, but the defeat today had changed his mind. He no longer thought about the country. He thought about all the men lying dead on this field. He thought of their mothers, sisters, fathers. He was disgusted by the thought of doing anything like this ever again. So he stood for a moment, and came up with a plan.

Firstly, he would return Joey to Albert. The boy loved that horse, and he deserved to have him back, granted the horse had survived the slaughter. And secondly, he would return to his hometown that he had not been back to in almost sixteen years. He would find his mother and brothers and take care of them all. He was, after all, the eldest, and he had shirked his duty in the name of service to his country long enough. He didn't even think to question if they would take him back, he just started stumbling to the north, keeping to the woods, and all the while looking out for Joey. But as the day went on and the cool night began to fall, he found his hope slipping. He knew inside that he would never find the horse, and that he could never face Albert again knowing that he had failed him. The guilt and shame was easily suppressed as he walked in the daylight, but as the darkness fell, there was fewer and fewer things to take his mind off of the things that had happened. When he could see no more, he finally fell onto the leafy forrest bed and fell, almost immediately, into a deep, dark slumber.

James Nicholls awoke from a fitful sleep to the sound of a scream, and the unpleasant wet and cold of morning frost. He looked around for the source of the scream, and just only caught sight of a skirt disappearing behind a tree. He had been found, there was no doubt about it, and he had to move before people with questions arrived. But today his wound was even worse than before, and it looked red and puffy, with a yellowish pus seeping out. He knew enough about medical care to know that if he did not receive proper treatment soon, he could risk the infection from the wound seeping into his blood and poisoning him from the inside out. Even with his very life at stake, he could not sum up the energy to move, even one inch in either direction. He closed his eyes and sighed, resigning himself to God for judgement. He lay there, his body growing hotter and hotter even as the air grew cooler, and soon he was in a fever. His head whipped from side to side as he moaned and cried, but he knew that no one could hear him or even that anyone would help a deserting soldier. He drifted in and out of consciousness, occasionally, in his more awake moments, cursing himself for what he had done. It was over, it was all over.