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therealslimshakespeare · 3 months ago

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Job Wanted: Bullshit Detector

Circa: April, 1944

Summary: In the wake of Ida’s miscarriage and the consequences of it, Gale Cleven is on a mission to catch the Allied serviceman who allegedly turned them all in. To do so he must spare time from his other duties, one of which he is loath to delegate. Until he recalls the perfect candidate.

Cast of Characters include: Gale Cleven, Lt. Kendeigh, Lt. Sanchez, Lt. Lu Smith, Ida Brady (discussed)

Warnings: 18+ with universe typical warnings applying. mild chapter for this universe with only referenced past torture, referenced past assault and referenced past miscarriage. 🙃 some hinted racism along with some general stalag angst and characters misinterpretations of each other, etc.

Author’s Note: this was partly inspired by learning the real Gale Cleven was sorta self appointed spy catcher in the stalag, which is very badass of him and very important

The only thing cutting through the anger for Gale was the immediate need for action. If he could not find the turncoat fucker this instant, he had to insure that he would soon. And to do so, he must spare some time from his other obligations, make up for lost evaluations, coordinate with Bucky, and even let other duties lapse. They had others who could fill in the gaps.

There was truly only one duty that chafed him in the aspect of delegating.

He chewed his cheek raw in contemplation of it, the needing of someone to fill his spot in vetting the new prisoners. While baiting out one spy, it would be unthinkable to let in a passel more. And in his time away, as punishment for Ida’s pregnancy, there had been little done in regard to vetting incoming prisoners.

The fact stood, though, Gale did not trust anyone else to be cantankerous enough, to object without arguing, poke holes without being provocative. To sniff out a fake with pure, cold blooded, bone weary cynicism for humanity.

Until he remembered her.

He tried not to remember her, as a general rule, and when they passed in the hall of the combine or when he would find her in her bunk above Smith’s or working out a detail with Kendeigh, they gave each other only the most professional of nods. An effective show of respect to appease the curiosity of those around them, watching always, and yet, he was sure they had not exchanged a single word.

But now he thought of her.

They are sat out in the mildest blizzard of the early spring, Gale and Maureen, when he chose to finally bring her up. The woman who cut him. “The fighter pilot.” he begins.

Maureen perks in the near death-like stillness around them, it’s late afternoon and miserable and so they are alone. Her Major never makes conversation for the sake of it anymore, never did much to begin with, but if he ever were to, he’d not start off with a name or a person. He’d start off talking about landscapes; all his relayed memories started that way. The color of the river, how much snow on the mountain, cedar pollen in Texas. “Sansheaz? San-, yes?” she supplies in answer to his query.

“Sanchez.”

“Yes, yes that’s right. Sanchez. Pretty name, rolls it off her tongue so fast it’s a skill in itself. Pretty woman. Lieutenant, too. What about her?” he does not make conversation so Maureen makes up for the lack with things she knows, things they both know. He counts on her chatter. They both know that, too.

“She settling in?” he ventures. It’s been months.

“Seems to be. She’s in with Smith.”

“Ah.” he knew that, she knew he knew that.

“They seem to be getting along well enough when I’ve dropped in, to look after the bite.”

“Good.” he hopes she will go on, the swipe of his thumb along her knuckle wills it so.

Maureen does. “Keeps to herself, never offered me her name. Smith and I’ve been calling her ‘Lieutenant’. But she has been helpful with roll call. Other duties. She’s an excellent officer when she bothers.”

“Good.”

“Smith likes her.”

“Lu likes everyone.”

“Not everyone.” Maureen corrects, a sudden and harsh sobriety.

“Most everyone.”

“Most. And that doesn’t make her dumb.”

“No.” Gale concedes, “No it doesn’t. But Lu does like everyone.”

“She’s got good sense about people. I’ve always trusted her on that. Except when it came to me.” Maureen, maybe growing weary of this doleful banter begins to grow wry, sardonic, morose, “No earthly reason for her to like me and it shows a complete lapse of judgment. But most other times, she’s onto something. Sanchez seems alright.”

Gale remains frowning. “Lu knows you’d die for her. Don’t know what other likability is needed around here.”

“Projecting much?” She teased, heartsick over his unwarranted loyalty.

“Maybe.” Gale is dogged, “But I know she feels that way. About you. Why wouldn’t she.”

Maureen’s thumb plays a duel with his over her knuckles, they swipe back and forth, he allows her to crush his briefly before she draws a trembling breath, lets out an anecdote he could almost feel her holding in check, “Lu saved me from a bullet in Ravensburg.”

Gale's thumb begs her to go on. He doesn’t dare meet her eyes, throw her off track. He stares at her playful thumb instead. Slightly flattened and a little off color even now the bruises have gone. The nailbed is a sickening dip of flesh where once there was smooth pink. It took months of swelling to leave before he realized they’d torn them out. Seemed he was always learning something worse.

“They were about to-to shoot Ida.” Maureen told her tale, husky voice gone soft, “ After everything they’d done to her and the scalping and- then they were going to just put her down. I didn’t know I was rushing to stop them till Smith stopped me instead. I just couldn’t imagine it -all this. Without her. Without Ida. Couldn’t just stand there. But it was stupid. Smith knew that.”

“Apparently Lu couldn’t imagine this without you.” He pointed out after a bit.

“It would’ve been awful. Wouldn’t it? All this without her.”

“Ida?”

“The colonel, yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“I know she’s not, she’s not much right now but I-i couldn’t imagine it.”

Gale chewed his lip, knowing what she meant by much, knowing it was true in a terrible sort of way and it ate at Ida worse than any of them. The baby. Then the loss of the baby. All that followed. “You told her that?” he asked quietly.

“What?”

“You told her that?”

“Told her what?”

“What you just told me. That this wouldn’t be bearable without her.”

Maureen blinked away the grit in her eyes, squinting at the hazy white horizon with discomfort. She had said something close to it, then delivered her dead child into the world days later like an act of gory penance. “Must I?” she sounded hoarse, and it was proof of what this place had done to her, stripped her down to, taught her harshly, that she got his buried meaning on the first try. However little she liked his suggestion, she understood it.

“Might be good to say.” he observed. “Don’t think plenty of things need sayin’ in this world that get said. Still, most things folks regret, are the unsaid.”

Ida could die. They all could die. Anyone of them could just bite it and the last inane quibble over socks or the last joke over soup would be the last sentiments ever expressed.

Or there could be a decade of this endless nothingness stretching before them consisting of nothing more notable or significant than said quibbles and jokes.

It made Maureen’s chest ache, and not from the cold. She didn’t know why that grieved her, the thought of all this being so meaningless, it grieved her as much as the thought of Ida dying, both feelings startling in their pain.

“It ain’t the end of the world to admit to someone you like that you -well, that you like them.” Gale was grinning at her, soft and compassionate, a little wicked in acknowledgement of their criminal admissions of the same to each other.

“She did so enjoy cutting me down to size.” Maureen muttured, thick and bitter and confused as flight school memories came up tangy and fresh like the blood in her bitten cheek.

“Because you were full of hot air.”

“She didn’t have to enjoy it so much.”

“Just cuttin’ ya down to somethin’ she could promote to a lieutenant.” Gale retorted, and his logic held a terrible persuasion to it.

“That was -flattering.” Maureen admitted. As confused now at Ida’s vote of confidence as she had been back then. It had first felt like a bribe, then a challenge, maybe even a commendation there near the end before -all this.

“First compliment you ever got that wasn’t given by someone kissin’ your ass, huh?” Gale leaned back against the step, pale throat bare and as white as the snow, “Still haven’t recovered, have ya?” He was snickering, or as close to it as prim and proper Gale Winston Cleven ever got, and if she wasn’t so sure he liked her, Maureen might have been terribly hurt by it. Instead she feared he was right and that was aggravating, but not new. Gale was always right. It’s why she stuck by him closer than ever these days, a harbor light in the soup of not knowing anymore.

“What are you thinking?” she changes the subject, not like how she used to with saucy annoyance or a pawing hand on his thigh. She asks because she knows he does not make small talk about people in this place. “In regards to the Lieutenant.”

“I’m thinking she’d fill in a job for me.” Gale replies, contemplative and still forcing himself to recall some of that night. Or rather, to spin the wheel of memory film from that day until it is no longer dark and burning and cruel but far enough back to when it was drizzling and bumpy and noon day with a fresh batch of prisoners and one scowling at him, casting accusations of him being a spy.

“Which one?” Maureen asks, she was asking about the jobs, not which memory. Gale snipps the tape right there on the memory of that day, just like he always did, right before it got dark and comes back to her and the front step and the blizzard that is dusting green shoots of grass by the steps.

Somewhere along the way Maureen has started to stroke the hair at the nape of his neck, icy fingers twirling a comforting dance there. “Gingerale?” she calls him further to the present. Gale wonders how long he’d been gone in his mind, he’s got to be careful with that. It’s one thing for her to notice, but if he starts with her, he might start lapsing with others, and he cannot. He simply cannot. So he gathers himself, lets the nickname ricochet around his skull until its sweet tease knocks out the ghastly replay of grunts and laughs, thinks about her fingers and the way she still loves to play with his hair while she plays with his heart, the way she encourages him to breathe when she touches him, nothing like the way the others nearly strangled him.

Then he thinks about catching the fucking rat that had the craven gall to turn them all in. That had Bucky beaten like that, had Ida kept to bleed out in the fucking cooler after miscarrying, that had Gale upping his concessions to the doctor, concessions that always somehow cost Captain John Brady more than him. He thinks about finding that rat, asking if the extra smoke or blanket or empty promise of an exchange was worth betraying his friends. He thinks about that, he thinks about snapping the fucker’s neck.

“Spy Master.” he grins back at Maureen in the here and now, genuinely happy to have thought of it for Sanchez, and there is after a moment, a look of such stunned concurrence on her face, he knows she knows it is wise. And he knows she knows why.

It is evening time when he acts, and he’d have rather done this in daylight but the evening chores keep everyone occupied, away from the combine even during the snowstorm.

It offers his only opportunity for real privacy. He intended to find Sanchez in the hall or on one such chore and ask for a moment. But he doesn’t see her, instead he stalls Lu on the steps as she heads for the kitchen, “Where’s Sanchez at?” he asks her as if he commonly inquires after the fighter pilot.

“In bed.” The furrow of Lu’s brows ask all sorts of questions her rank and regulation rule book constrain her from voicing.

“She sick?”

“Happens -cyclically.” Smith provides, and if he were unable to guess at the intended meaning, the blanch in Lu’s cheek’s at the mention of the ailment tells Gale Cleven that Lieutenant Sanchez is abed menstruating.

“Right. Save me a turnip.” he teases as he continues past her, swimming upstream of the men in the hallway leaving for dinner, and working his way towards her room.

She is sat alone at its table, bent over her work which seems to be the hem of a trouser leg, spread out on the table top and being subjected to row upon row of rhythmic stitches. There is a bean sack propped behind her back, he can see it through the slats. He would think it a pillow for support if he couldn’t smell the nauseating aroma of burnt dried lentils. He imagines the damn thing is heated and feels a wave of wistful admiration for the design.

It must not be his footsteps in the quieting combine so much as his looming presence after a moments observance that has her suddenly snapping her head up in appraisal of his company. Her eyes are as hard as he remembers and her scrutiny off putting, he is glad that memory is not warped. It will serve his purpose, it will aid in her new job. He is never sure what about her he remembers or invented or blended into Smith. Not even having Lu present can undo the tangle, he has been too cautious of looking Sanchez in the face to compare the difference.

He looks now. Because she does not move, nod, or rise as befits his rank, all the motions she goes through when others are around. She seems aware of the empty combine as keenly as him and her full concentration is on staring him down. He is glad he didn’t try this sooner, to swing by and exchange urbane pleasantries with someone who must find his very existence a burr in the memory. Just as she is to him. There is nothing to account for, no friendship to patch up, no harm to be forgiven. It is senseless to reconnect as there was no true connection. Even if he feels something heated and horrid thrumming between them even now.

“Spare a minute?” he asks her, and Major Cleven’s voice comes easily to his disposal, and he is glad of it.

He does not wait for her invite, as a major he does not need it. He walks past the threshold like it’s any other day and he’s here to inquire about Lu or make sure the poor drowned girl hasn’t passed. She is still in her bunk but there is no life there despite the heartbeat. They are alone. In Gale’s mind, they are alone.

“Sir.” Sanchez gives it to him right as he pulls out a chair and helps himself to it. Near her, but not too near. Not even he could stomach that. The sight of her hands make his gut twist oddly and he panics at the thought he might shake apart from some unwarranted recollection.

Tilled earth heaping against his face. Furrows cut from her nails.

“Smith said I might find ya here.” he informs, easy, normal. “Not hungry?”

“No.” she looks like she expects something awful. Her eyes are unblinking and still harsh, even this near. Perhaps Maureen is right and she is beautiful but he wants to shudder all the same. He can spot the difference now, between Lu’s eyes and her’s.

“Good work.” he comments on the pant leg, gesturing to it.

It makes her drop her gaze for the first time, a quick glance at the needle under her thumb, the ratty row of hem she is repairing. She looks back up, incredulous almost, he thinks, and at least that guarded expression has finally shifted. He watches some resignation come over her, filtered through annoyance when her full lips tightly peel back from her teeth and she responds as if forced with a: “Cannot let your young captain do all of it.”

Brady, he realizes she means Brady. Lu and Brady, that’s all he’s seen this woman really converse with. And Maureen. As lieutenants. “No we can’t.” he agrees. “Appreciate the help.” he wonders if her time of the month makes her more volatile or just miserable, he wants to laugh at choosing his timing so poorly, not only going into the Lion’s den but doing so when they’re hungry. She does not acknowledge that Gale thanked her, she just dares him to finish this.

He does, and again, Major Cleven finds a small smile to present with his offer, “I’ve got a job for you.”

Whatever she expected, it wasn’t that, apparently. Surprise looks awfully thunderous on her but it is surprise all the same, a chink in the armor. “Sir?”

“I have a particular case of business to attend to.” he entrusts her with this, “It will take me away from other duties. I have excellent deputies, they will fill them with ease.” He lets that hang there, baiting a reply.

“Your lieutenants are perfectly able women.” it is as if she is defending them to him, he wants to smile at the slip of loyalty. She only mentions the women, she must think he is here because she is a surplus female.

“I’ve got a job that doesn't require anything but a bullshit detector.” he replies, puts it out there as if tangibly on the table between them, “Something plenty of lieutenants, male and female, haven’t got for shit.”

“Sir.” it’s the least interested question ever, she is tired of him, unimpressed and unflattered and he doesn’t even think the question would deserve a question mark if in written form. He has never been more soothed at his choice.

“Need you to vet incoming prisoners.” he spells it out, “Spycatcher.” he abbreviates. He told Maureen the whole of his ambition for her skills, but here and now he’ll ease it out to her.

Even so, it cracks the facade, if only briefly, intrigue and perhaps a flicker of want flashes in dark eyes before they squint at him in suspicion. “Have you even taken that precaution before?”

“Yes.” he defends.

“Poor job of it.”

That stings but she’s not wrong. “Yeah. Apparently.”

“So you’re passing the responsibility to someone else?”

“You would be my representative, my deputy, given my authority in the matter.” Gale watches closely and gets little in the way of feedback, “We can’t stop prisoners from coming in, obviously, but we can isolate the ones we know or suspect. Trust the others. What happened with you. We know you’re trustworthy now. And I’m offerin’ you this as it suits your talents.”

A crushing suspicion of humanity’s worst intentions was an odd talent but he considered it such. He hoped she’d not think him facetious.

“You don’t think I’m the rat?”

Gale frowned, surprise creasing his face, “No. Not for a minute. The child is out, it’s dead, it-“ so much has changed, first the miscarriage and now the punishments, it’s a whole new landscape and it’s tedious and awful and if the SS do come and take over as threatened, it will be made horrific. “-the reasons to exclude you are over. I need good men, I need good officers. I need someone to take this job. Someone else takes it and it’s you at stake, too. You want a spy bunking above you?”

Sanchez looks angry again, but it is a passive, sour sort. He braces when her lips begin to move, “If you want someone duplicitous enough to drag information from unwilling individuals -you should offer the post to your lady colonel.”

That's not the post. The post is that of prime bulshit sniffer. But this anger poses another issue and his mind flits over it anxiously. “What’ve you got against Colonel Brady?” he sighs.

“Don’t play dumb.”

“Don’t play at insubordination, Lieutenant.”

“She-“ Sanchez began with venom before suddenly reeling back her voice, her expression, everything, it was eerie in a way, “-I would never have told her.” she began again, “But she made me think she knew, and then she pulled her fucking rank, and I told her. And if you are here to learn the full of it -there. I told her about you. Because she deceived me. Offer this job to her.”

Gale stared at the pants hem, regaining his thoughts. Ida knew. He knew she did but, she’d heard it from the source and he knew she did but— “She’s a colonel. She’s my colonel. She’s got a right to know. You didn’t do nothin’ wrong.”

“Of course I did not. She tricked me.”

“You’d have lied to her?”

“About that? Yes. None of her fucking business.”

“She’s our colonel-“

“Not mine!”

“She is our superior.” that went uncontested and Gale went on having gained that victory, measured and speaking to himself as if he could somehow conduct his reasoning over to Sanchez, “She had a right to know. And no one fuckin’ blames you. Not if you told the truth. Did you? You tell her why you cut me? That you thought I was gonna join in? Was gonna dishonor you?”

Sanchez was at war with herself, and in that terrible conflict she seemed half in want of an ally in Gale, and yet- “You think she believes me? If I were to tell her I thought you were capable of that? You? Who she knows and loves and praises? Jesus Christ in a fucking flight suit? You think she’d take a strangers’ excuse over her knowledge of your character? She wanted a reason to distrust me and she found it.”

Gale thought he saw guilt, well masked by fury but there all the same. Sanchez, he surmised, was sorry now she knew him. Sorry like she hadn’t been when they were being ground into the dirt, sorry like she wasn’t when he was lying on Benny’s thigh in the truck bed after, sorry like she wasn’t when he handed her the penicillin.

“Ida wasn’t mad at you for cuttin’ me.” he knew it, like he knew his own thoughts on it, he was so sure of Ida, “She was mad you didn’t say you knew me. That you knew of me before this place.”

“It’s not her’s to know.” Her voice had gone soft, defensive but burnt out.

“She’s a colonel.” Gale disagreed even as his own pride smarted horribly at the thought of being so known by someone so -Ida. He knew Ida also blamed him for not saying. “And she’s a good one to have on your side.”

Something else seemed to be on her mind, her eyes left his face to contemplate the bunk opposite. “You think your men will like having a brown woman vet them?”

“I don’t give a shit. I’m givin’ the job to the most capable…man…I can find.”

“They’ll hate it.”

Gale’s lips twitched. “You tellin’ me you’d mind that? Gonna ruin some social scene ya got goin’ here?”

Her breath came out harsh and he suspected if she were like Ida or Kendeigh, that would have been a laugh. It seemed to take her by surprise as much as him. “You’d -you would back me.” she pinned him with her gaze, hesitancy only in her words.

“Always. You’d be my deputy, Lieutenant.” she actually nodded when he said that, like she was considering, accepting maybe, he wasn’t sure. He knew she’d like the job. She had to be going nuts in here with only pant legs to hem. “It’s a critical job. And you could sit down for it.” he added right as he decided to stand up; her face looked briefly stunned.

Seemed like a good place to end this, on a high note, even if the high was a tiny ant hill: all in comparison to the morass they were in when he first entered this room.

“Yeah?” He asked her to accept.

“Sir.” she nodded.

“Thank you, for taking the job, Lieutenant.” Gale thumped the table once in adieu, she was still staring him down.

He’d made it back to the door when he heard her, “I really thought you -were.” the last word held such meaning in her tone he knew exactly what she meant, she was remembering too, she was recalling how she’ had sliced him open, furious as a wild cat. She had really thought he was capable of the worst. “Why would you think I’m a good judge.”

Gale stalled, hand grasping the wooden doorframe and looked back at her over his shoulder, Major Cleven managed to give the troops a grin, “Didn't say I needed a good one, just a suspicious one.”

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