#references to pow camp

[unashamedly-enthusiastic]

Until I watched Chicken Run 2, I didn't realise Chicken Run was set in the 1940's

I just thought farms looked old like that

[therealslimshakespeare]

|| Radio ||

Requested plot points? ☑️

Circa: early February 1944

Immediate previous fic: Favorite Escape

Summary: when your hodge podge radio won’t work, who should ya call? Probably the flight engineer

Warnings: usual universe warnings apply, 18+ but nothing very alarming really happens in this one, references to others are made, some potential slut shaming in the beginning if ya squint? perhaps some queer baiting but it’s the Buckies rolling around on the flooor, they’re one massive queer bait lbr, it’s not me. Also. My shit Crystal Radio making descriptions- don’t come for me I haven’t made one and I spent five hours falling down a rabbit hole as to how the guys made them in the camps and at the end of the day I said: screw it! And went with one of the Brit’s scenarios 🍻

Edited only by my tired little eyes, full warning and have mercy 💋

Also, just a note I feel compelled to make- this fic centers around women in the army, in a war, which they’re spending under dire conditions in a POW camp. Yes there is love here, there is also hierarchy and discipline and the enforcement of that does not make one character or another necessarily callous or less loving. They are their ranks first and foremost as all signed up for.

“They’re forging papers, you know.” Maureen broached the topic to Egan one day, late February and when her cheeks were still bruised from Ida’s book.

Bucky paused his tracing of a map, sooty finger trailing along a river with the same incomprehensible name as its twin running parallel, he didn’t know anything about papers or anyone making them and she knew that. “Who?”

“Good ones. Identification, passports.” She enumerated.

“Who?”

“The Poles. The ones with the-“

“-the liquor.” he finished for her, remembrance and condemnation heavy in his wry tone. “The ones you stayed out all night with.”

“Stayed long enough for them to get drunk enough to show me.”she replied, without heat, which was surprising.

“Some grand plan of yours, huh?” He bit back a laugh, it was a fine way to cover her ass for being insubordinate. It was a way he’d likely try if he was in her place.

“No.” she swore instead. “Just luck, I happened to see them. They got careless. Maybe an answer to all Jack’s prayers.”

“Yeah. Anything to give that rosary a break.”

“Yeah.”

“You asked them?”

“What for?”

Bucky regarded her with thinning patience but something kept him from snapping, the feeling of a riddle still to be solved. “For some papers.” he clarified, measured and intent, she knew how much easier that would make their plans for Ida.

Maureen shook her head, glancing down at her twisting hands, “I didn’t want to-“ her mouth twisted too, “-I wanted to ask a superior first.”

Bucky considered that for a moment, slightly touched at her newfound wisdom, “Why not ask Buck?”

She shook her head again, auburn hair curling under her chin just so, even here in the stalag she had some traces of the old charm. “He’s got too much to worry about for me to be bringing in hypotheticals.” she was so upset by something she would not even meet John’s eye and he felt a slice of remorse for how he hadn’t even noticed the ground down change in her since she got here, his drinking buddy and the soft fleshed rival of merry old English days was a gruff and battered and sullen woman; being a red blooded American male, he regretted that dismal change. “And I'm worried about what to bargain with. What can I promise? We haven’t got much and I don’t have— there’s not much anyway, but what we’ve got I didn’t wanna promise. Not without-“ she still hadn’t met his eye, he tracked hers; a furious roving of pale blue back and forth across the floorboards and it made Bucky itch.

“Who signs these papers?” Bucky asked, thinking the logistics through, knowing she’d perk up if he brought them up.

“Haven’t a clue. Maybe they haven’t figured that part out yet. I don’t know. I just know they’ve got papers.”

“Good ones.”

“Yeah.”

“We haven’t got much.” he agreed, clicking his teeth in thought, “What’d you give them for the liquor?”

“They just invited me.”

“Didn’t have to lend a hand or nothin’?” he balked and Maureen threw him a glare that seemed more hurt than rage, and chastened by a voice inside that sounded much like his mama’s, he amended with sheepish humor, “Hell, feel like lending a hand myself these days, if it’d get me a whisky.”

Her gnarled fist curled white in her lap, she managed hoarsely, “They just wanted to talk about home. To someone who hadn’t heard about it a million times before.”

“They got cigarettes?” he asked.

“As most common payment for their booze -they’ve got enough to insulate their shack three deep.”

“Cigarettes won’t cut it then.”

“I’ve been thinking.”-

“Yeah?”

“The radio. I’m the only one who doesn’t think it’s worth the risk but, I know, it doesn’t matter, it’s happening. Gale’s going to keep trying. And if it works-“ she rubbed at her eyes, tired and unsure, “-that’s quite the bargaining chip.”

Bucky nodded slowly, eyes narrowing as his smile grew a touch broader, “News of the outside world.” he was half in agreement, “Buck asked for a week. Been four days.”

“He’s stumped.” Maureen retorted instantly. “And he’ll stay that way and he’ll go nuts and you’ll go die going over the fence and then he’ll have no reason left not to die too.”

Bucky whistled, low and chiding, “You’re full of rainbows today, Candy.”

“You know who he oughta ask.” she shook off the barb. “But he won’t. And I don’t want him risking it for this thing anymore than anyone else, but you all want it so bad, and they’ll shoot us for it if it works or not. I’m not asking her. But you would. Might as well get shot for it working, right? Isn't that what you said yesterday? You know who he should ask.”

Bucky’s keen eyes showed the moment it dawned on him, his eyebrows shot up and his mouth sagged and he ran a weathered hand over his face, “Awww shit, Candy.” came garbled behind his palm. “Ah shit.” he said again with conviction as he shoved the hand into his pocket, wretched acknowledgment of her point clear on his face.

“I didn’t want to suggest it, told Ida it’s a fucking dangerous thing and I’ll never forgive if— but you all—“

Bucky grounded aloud, “Nah, nah she’s -Lu would solve it.” he muttered, shushing her. “Demarco really pummeled you the other day, huh?” he added, and that got her to meet his eye, she looked spooked and a little incensed, “Saw him fuckin’ you up behind B compound but sheesh, s’like he hollowed you out worse than a jacolantern; yer shifty as hell.”

“He-“ Maureen still felt like blanching at the memory of Benny’s terribly correct opinions, his disappointed eyes and his fist full of her flight jacket asking her what in the living fuck was wrong with her besides a concussion, a sick childhood and an ever nauseating jealousy of Buck Cleven’s paternal time and effort, “-he had some admonitions. After…after the other night.”

Bucky hummed, shitty smirk taking up residence on his face, “How ‘bout that.”

“I’m gonna be better.” she muttered and Bucky felt for her, could almost taste the echo of his identical and hollow determination to climb the mountain of bad habits when weak from spuds and pneumonia. He told himself the same every morning and fell into bed condoning his failure every night, like a ritual.

“You’re gonna get us those papers.” he corrected, shoving off the wall to come near her, give her the full Major treatment and maybe a friendly hand, “And you can promise your drinkin’ buddies news from the radio.”

Maureen nodded in understanding, no joy or animation left in her green eyes. She used to enjoy a bit of subterfuge, now she only felt hollow misery at the thought that she'd dragged Lu into this, too. This risk she hated so much and yet no one cared. Lu would be glad to be dragged in, it’s true, she was itching at the chance to be useful and to make Gale proud, it’s how the girl was wired. It’s how most girls were wired, Maureen supposed, desperate to make Gale Cleven approve. Lu’s enthusiasm wouldn’t make the sight of her being made to kneel in the mud and have a bullet put in her head any easier, wouldn’t make Maureen feel any less responsible for it when her lifeless body thudded to the earth.

All that lovely goodness stamped out.

Over a radio.

Bucky’s hand felt too hard and too big on her shoulder. He had gone before the vision cleared, mud and wire and the freezing main square at Ravensbruck fading back to the musty bunk room. Maureen shook herself and stood up to make herself somehow appealing, reamniante some semblance of the cheerful rashness that had led her to the Polish combine in the first place: she found it hard to inspire. She’d like to count that a victory but she knew better, she wasn’t reformed she was just tired.

A washed face and a fake smile and the promise of news from outside would have to be enough to bank all their risks on, it would have to be.

“Crank,” she greeted the man in the hall, flashing him clean, water brushed teeth and her gentlest, freshly soot lined eyes, “I’ve been tasked by Major Egan with an errand, spare a minute to babysit me?”

__________________________________

Bucky finds Buck Cleven in his own bunkroom, Demarco outside on watch and that’s all Bucky needs to know to guess the radio is out and Buck’s working like a fiend yet again to make it work. Sure enough, he’s hunched over the table with it, mittened hands shaking from cold and exhaustion and a sheen of sweat on his forehead despite the paltry sweater he wears.

Bucky walks in and Gale gives him a soft, acknowledging glance before continuing to his work. Bucky takes up his usual place behind Buck’s left shoulder to watch and Buck, being used to it, goes on.

“My little Kriegie Marconi, huh?” Bucky allows the nagging impulse he has felt for weeks while standing in this position to finally exert itself, and his forefinger lifts and swirls in the curling gold strands of hair at the nape of Gale’s neck, his friend almost bolts away but then seems to choose a prey’s tactic and just stills, goes very still and Bucky scritches the scalp beneath his grab in assurance he don’t meant anything by it. He doesn’t think he does, at least.

Gale, wary and with a voice close to mechanized it’s so stilted, inquires with ever-present politeness, “You alright Bucky?”

It’s better than that whole ‘major’ business; getting called Major as if that meant shit anymore. “Yeah, ‘course I am.” Bucky rakes his fingers through the hairs there at the nape of that dainty neck, scritches the scalp with all four of his main ones, and uncovers a white long scar sliding round once he lifts the hairs there. “Why wouldn’t I be? Gonna be a father soon.”

Buck does jerk then, away from his touch and wheeling his chair around to glare at Bucky; it’s an impressively executed little pirouette and John misses the feel of his warm neck and oil soft hair. “Jesus John.” he reprimands.

“We’re gonna get outta here Buck.” John swears, he’s so sure of it because he cannot in all his thinking and predicting ever imagine a scenario where they don’t, and he chooses to think it’s not delusion but a good omen. “Ida’s gonna have that baby and when it’s safe we’ll all meet up.”

Gale is looking at him like he’s his own father again, Bucky knows that look, it always makes him equal parts ashamed and desperate, “Jus’ like that.” Gale mocks in a husky gust.

It’s devastating, and it’s intended to be, and Bucky could bear that with better humor if he could still touch Gale and his hair. “Just like that.”

Gale hums and it’s a mean sorta vocalization that makes Bucky’s heart thud and his skin prickle hot, it’s the kinda noise you kiss off a person, he thinks, but it’s Buck and so he doesn’t know what to do with it. “It’s gonna get you killed.” Buck is saying instead and Bucky lets him, “I know you all think she’s cracked up and maybe she has but it wouldn’t hurt to listen to Kendeigh sometimes when she’s tellin’ ya shit that a five year old could accurately guess, -goddamn it.”

His voice rose to a strong rage by the end and Bucky takes a chair opposite him, sick of standing there like a dumb dog waiting for his scolding to be over. “So what.” Bucky challenges him, “We just wait around and Brady pops out a child and the krauts let us keep it and it’s our new mascot and we all sing zippidy doo da, huh? Huh, Buck?”

Gale’s hands fell away from his face with a slam to the table, a shocking degree of anger showing for a split second and it gave Bucky an odd degree of gratification. “I jus’ want you to find a plan with better odds.”

Bucky sniffed and leaned forward, went in for the kill and Gale was looking at him like he expected it, like it was his turn to play daddy to everyone here and Gale for once was so beaten down he wouldn’t just allow the changing of the guard, he was close to angry at its lateness. It made Bucky’s heart thud.

“I’ve been listening to Kendeigh.” Bucky refuted briefly, “And we’ve got a plan.” Gale gave him a tired look of encouragement to go on, “How long’s it been since you slept? Huh, well, we got a plan. Practically perfect, or it will be, just need the radio.”

“Ain’t giving this away.” Gale said, “Not for anythin’, even useless.”

Bucky patted the table top in easy assurance, if he could have reached Buck’s thigh, he’d have patted that instead, “No, no, don’t need to give it away, just need it to work. So,” he softened his voice and his eyes tightened, “I’m callin’ Lu in.”

Oddly, Gale does not fight it. Not aloud, at least. There’s an anguished look of hate on his face and Bucky mirrors it. It’s for this place and the fucking awful choices they have to choose from every goddamn day.

“You run this by Ida?” is all he asks.

Bucky pops his flaking lips audibly, “What, need us both gangin’ up on you to agree? She’ll sign off. Smith’s an officer. Gotta remember that sometimes, Buck.”

The way his Buck swallows hard and dry contradicts his words, “I do remember that.”

“Really?” Bucky’s mouth gives a soft smile of doubtful incredulity and Gale’s mimics it, mournful but a smirk all the same, “Feel like she should answer to ‘Gale’s Baby’ these days. Lieutenant Smith who?”

Gale scoffs, “Careful now.”

“No really, she’s an officer and she wants to be treated like one. It’ll do her good to have work. Her kinda work.”

“Could get her killed.”

“Layin’ in her bunk could do that.”

Gale grunts, its sounds like an agreement.

“So I say Lieutenant Smith gets put on radio detail. Like her goddamn job description suggests. Huh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Gale lets out a shaky agreement.

“Aaaaand,” Bucky draws it out as he rises again and saunters over to Buck who is ready for him and loose this time, “how bout I go back to bein’ the one you’re frettin’ ‘bout all the time. Got me almost jealous of the girl. How ‘bout I do. Huh?”

Gale’s scoff is fond as anything as he looks up at John with cheerful derision, “And you ‘bout to be a father? Make me an old man? Fuck no, ya looney.”

“Alright.” Bucky concedes with hands up in surrender before lurching forward and grasping Gale’s rickety chair back by its wobbly spokes and hefting it partially off the ground, beautiful and outraged prude of an occupant still seated in it, “Then I’ll play daddy and put you to bed, how ‘bout that.”

“John Egan for fucks sake-“ Gale’s fists pounded on the meat of his shoulders and his outraged protests wafted against Bucky’s neck and his jabbing knees collided with the meat of his thighs and Bucky hadn’t felt so close to him or so happy to be alive since England.

“Major sir, the hell is goin’ on?” Demarco’s tame inquiry from the safety of the doorway made them both lose their grapple and they collided together onto the floor, bunk bed barely missed by their heads and the hapless chair mixed up between their limbs.

Bucky grinned, hip sore from his fall and kidneys suffering from Buck’s trapped elbow there, “Puttin’ Goldilocks to bed.” he replied.

DeMarco processed that and the scene before him with grave sobriety before saluting lazily and turning to go, “Right on, sir.”

John did his best to rise up without further pinching Gale who was indeed trapped beside him and beneath him, chair legs wound between a lanky human leg in a puzzle that Bucky realized might take some caution to untangle without harm. Strangely, Buck wasn’t moving, he was just looking up at him like a cat would their clumsy master who has done somethin’ stupid which was a surprise to neither. It was so innocuous a look and so nostalgic, it winded Bucky with the realization he hadn’t seen it in ages, just as he hadn’t felt his boney ribs against his own and the feel of his elegant hands yanking him around in a fight. This miserable place really was stomping out the glow in the best people.

“Ya know Buck,” he ventured, clearing his throat for extra casualness, “I’ve missed you.” When Gale only kept looking up at him, perfect porcelain face with its unsettling scars and wary eyes without a lick of storm in them, John Egan grabbed his shovel and dug his own grave a little deeper, drug a finger down his cheek. “Missed all this.”

Bucky didn’t know what he meant by “this” but it felt safer and worse all at once, since he did miss Buck but he and Buck never used to hang out on floors with a chair as chaperone. Mercifully, Buck neither points that out nor moves away, acting very much like he needed to heaped on the floor with Bucky and a stray chair every bit as much as John did. Like it’s doing him good.

“And you couldn’t’ve jus’ said.” Gale murmurs with the softest eye roll of the century and Bucky feels like beaming and it must show in his face so strong and bright after a sunless winter that after a flash Gale’s cheeks flame from it and he averts his eyes.

“I dunno Buck, could I?” Egan asks one blushing cheek and Gale hasn’t got a good reply for that, so they just lay there on the floor.

“Go on now, get off me.” Gale doesn’t shove at him, he presses his hand to John’s forehead like he would a dog and John goes, obedient as one.

———————————————————————-

They found Lu with Murph and Benny and Brady, measuring out what seemed to be lot lines between Love Shack #9 and the next combine, boot scuffed perimeters already visible in the light snow and drawn in a decently tidy rectangle. There were guards loitering nearby, nosey as always with their cigarettes and their antsy dogs anytime someone did something out there besides piss or pace or stare at the fence.

“What’s all this?” Bucky inquired cheerfully, coming up to them with Gale, bundled and shivering behind him.

Benny looked up from tilling a furrow with his boot, right where Lu’s mittened finger pointed out. “It’s for the garden. S’posed to be spring before long.”

“A Chicago man oughta know better, Benny.” Egan snarked.

“Need us?”

Bucky sniffed, a casual set to his body that belied his quest, “Just the little one.”

Smith promptly looked startled, then eager. “All well Majors?”

“Need your advice on the color of my cufflinks with this suit.” Bucky extended his arm and beckoned her, “C’mon back in for a minute. One of you too, need a watch to go with the cufflinks.”

———————————————————————

With Benny on guard, Brady and Kendeigh having excavated the radio’s shell from the floorboard and table leg in which it resided, the Buckies stood over Smith’s small frame as she sat at the table and inspected the simplistic device with keen eyed appreciation for the construct.

“It’s really marvelous.” she assured Cleven, running her fingers over the carefully coiled wire and precarious pin.

Gale didn’t even crack a smile. “What’s wrong with it?” he asked instead.

She shook her head, a frown gathering. “Never made one-“ she cautioned.

“-but you get the idea.”

“Yes sir, I do.”

“So what’s wrong.”

Lu ran her fingers over the wire, again and again, the dusty metal not insulated, just bare copper, likely stripped from somewhere. It reminded her of early days as a cadet when they threw chicken wire mixed with hydraulic lines at herself and her fellow rookie engineers and told them to sort it, testing to see if they knew which was which. It had been so rudimentary she had wanted to laugh until she realized others were being flunked.

This was so basic she was stumped.

“Take your time, Lu.” Bucky spoke up after a burdened pause during which she could almost feel Major Cleven breathing down her neck.

“Candy, can I try with the headphone?” she asked at last, frustrated and out of her element, just a few months out of a plane and she had already lost her touch.

Maureen passed it over and Lu pressed it to her ear, not to discern what was quite obviously radio silence, but to imagine the whole process in reverse, track it down the cord all the way to the base, each possible breakdown of the conduction.

She fingered the ramshackle diode with burgeoning suspicion. “What’s your crystal?”

“That’s just…lead.” Cleven muttered.

“From?”

“Ground pencils.” Bucky supplied cheerfully.

Smith bit her lip, “We need sulfur added. Lead won’t conduct on its own.” She figured Cleven knew that, the grim and unmoving set of his mouth suggested so.

“Just- sulfur?” Maureen asked.

“If I had sulfur we could add it to the lead dust, ignite it and-“ Smith grinned at Kendeigh, knowing that she alone may have shared her enjoyment of a small conflagration from time to time, “burn it down and you’ve got something close enough to Galena. Just need a pinch of it should work.”

Bucky shoved his hands in his pockets and surveyed the mostly morose room. All except for the two girls grinning at each other over the hypothetical of a little chemistry experiment in a highly flammable wooden combine.

“We’ve got sandy soil.” Buck’s contemplative drawl spoke up, “Dunno if we could extract enough pure sulfur.”

Maureen stared back at Egan instead, “Other sectors have gotten portions of kits, chemistry kits, radio kits, they’ve been smuggled in with all sorts of stuff. Inside of a violin, oat bags. Nothing to fully build something. They might have sulfur. I could make inquiries and- well, Jack could pick it up next time the band goes over C compound to entertain the poor Aussie bastards.”

“How do you kno- nevermind, actually. Nevermind.” Bucky broke off, “Alright. Sure, why not. Ya sure that’s it?” he asked Lu once more.

She gave a helpless little shrug. “Gotta be. Or the wire’s dirty. Where’d it come from anyway?”

Gale gave Bucky a long suffering look as Bucky seemed to swell a couple inches and bounce back on his heels at the mention of his scrounging prowess. “The lamp.” he nodded above them all.

Jack Brady scoffed, short, clipped, betrayed, “That why it cuts out all the time? Strobed us so bad last night -thought the room was possessed.”

“Sacrifices Jack, sacrifices.”

———————————————————

Benny had hauled in enough water buckets to elicit some negative attention from the guards, and when the inspection came the inmates of the Love Shack insisted the drenched floors and table of the Majors’ barracks were due to sanitation post regurgitation. At night, with only one stolen torch light from Combine 15 to illuminate the endeavor, a basin of water beneath a smaller bowl in which lay their precious and recently procured ingredients, a science experiment began. The Majors and Ida gathered round, all looking as ghastly and spectral in the light of the flashlight as Brady’s fake ghost. It held the thrill of a bonfire night except for the stakes, which all in the room did their best not to dwell on.

“Zippo, Candy.” Lu gave the word and Maureen, with only the protection of Ida’s bent aviators to keep from a scorched cornea, flicked on her lighter and set the mixed powders ablaze.

It flamed up high and smelly, making Benny gag and mutter something about Meatball’s gas to a tittering Brady, and then died down to a yellow smoking ember.

“We should let it sit.” Lu surmised with a squeeze to Maureen’s only somewhat singed hand, her big dark eyes surveying the burnt bowl and their smoking experiment with glittery excitement at the possibility of success, “Let it cool, settle, maybe strain it. Can you get me a net? Oh Candy come now, get me a strainer?” she begged with a laugh as Maureen rolled her eyes at the idea of yet another trip to the Stalag Market for the most random items imaginable. If they hoped to not be suspicious, they’d need better lies or more money.

“How about cheesecloth?” Kendeigh tried not to grin indulgently- and failed- in the face of Lu and having recently been allowed to set something on fire

Lu kissed her cheek. “Cheesecloth would be perfect.”

In the end, cheesecloth did indeed prove perfect, and amongst the burnt dust of the combined minerals was a gritty little pinch full of the needed crystals. Or so Lu said, Gale agreed but the crease between his brows hadn’t lifted for two days; Bucky’s fingers had begun to twitch in antsy need to manually smooth them out. He imagined Maureen felt the same but she hadn’t said, uncharacteristically forbearant now she had some job to keep her sane. Even if it was playing fetch for Lu.

—————————————————————

“Well, this is it.” Gale muttered when the watch had been set once more, Murph and Hambone on the steps, Crank inside, Brady at the door, Benny at the window. Even Major Clark had joined them in the barracks for this final try and Lu’s cheeks were maroon from the attention even as her deft hands steadily pressed her concoction beneath its intended rod.

“Pass me the pliers, sir?” She asked and for a moment, the teacher became the apprentice and Gale fetched her the stalag forged tool, rudimentary like everything here yet the gripped and pulled and lifted same as the pliers back home. “You could check your look in this wire’s reflection.” She complimented Gale’s buffing of the copper wire.

He shrugged in turn. “Didn't wanna leave anythin’ to chance. That it?” he asked as her hands stalled and she surveyed her work.

Lu nodded solemnly. “Yes sir.”

Gale picked up the headphone from in front of him on the table like it was a gun he was about to bring to his head. “Here.” He extended it to her instead, “S’right, it was your job, you should be the first. Cmon.”

Despite her voiceless protest he pressed the headphones into her hands and Lu, never knowing how to disobey an officer, folded immediately.

For a good ten seconds everyone in the room held their breath as Smith pressed the headphone to her ear and gently wiggled the clothespin along the wire, searching and tuning, her face holding that old peaceful concentration they hadn’t seen since the last mission. She was at home with her mind tuned to another dimension. The pilots in the room knew that look, that was the look of someone at home with something that terrified them all the same, the gut swooping feeling of clearing the take off and sledding along the tops of the clouds. Wrong and strange and utterly incomparable to others, it was the closest to home one’s mind could be. Lu belonged somewhere on those electric currents and searching them out was like finding oneself again.

Then at last, Lu’s eyes sharpened out of their dreamy haze of concentration and she said, gentle as always, “It’s the BBC sir.”

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The Only Truth... | Part Four

The Only Truth I Know Is You Masterlist

John "Bucky" Egan x POW Flight Nurse!Female Reader

The day Stalag VIIA is liberated ought to be one of pure celebration. Unfortunately, fate has other plans in store.

Warnings: Language, Angst, Death, Blood, Brief Battle, Serious Reader Injury [gunshot wound], POW Camp Setting, SS Officers, Mental Health Struggles, References to Christianity, Reader Scars, Hospital Setting, Kissing, Inevitable Historical and Military Inaccuracies, Rating - 18+ ONLY.

Author’s Note: Thank you all ever so much for your patience! At last we come to the end of our tale. This is a work of fiction based off the portrayal by the actors in the Apple TV+ series. I hold nothing but respect for the real life individuals referenced within.

Word Count: 6267

-------------------------

The morning of Sunday, April 29, 1945, dawned cloudy but bright. The chill of early spring still hung in the air, your breath hanging from your lips as you ducked out into the tent to collect the clean yet still-unfolded laundry that had been awaiting your attention throughout the drama of the rainstorm. You had just managed to tuck it away into your room when Fitzgibbons arrived with a new book for you to read, a more recently published fantasy novel called The Hobbit, though you had other priorities before diving into it.

You had almost gotten away with your clandestine chores, rags folded, and three-quarters of the bandages rolled, when your former surgical technician appeared at your door, knocking on the frame with an admonishing look on his face.

“I see you’re taking it easy on your day off, Ma’am.”

Huffing in irritation at being caught, you shook your head. “I’m off my feet, Fitz, can’t we just call a truce?”

He made a non-committal noise before cracking a grin. “Actually came to ask a favor, so I’m thinking we can come to an agreement. Menzies,” his deliberate mispronunciation of the British Captain’s name made you roll your eyes affectionately, “ordered me to flush a wound using your make-shift tools and honestly, I cannot make heads or tails of what you’ve jerry-rigged.”

Biting back a laugh, you nodded quickly, well aware that your cobbled-together system was more than a little unorthodox and not at all surprised Menzies had not taken the time to ensure Fitzgibbons knew how it worked. “Certainly, let me walk you through it.”

Grabbing the laundry you had thus far folded, you made your way down the hall to collect the items from the supply desk and followed him to the bedside of a new patient. Introducing yourself warmly, you learned the man’s name was Michaels and he hailed from the frigid wilds of Canada.

“Fitz and I are going to use this here to flush that wound, alright?” You nodded to the nasty laceration on his calf, your makeshift instruments cradled in your arms.

“Sounds fine, Ma’am.” He nodded patiently, vowels clipped remarkably short in that efficient Canuck way of speaking.

“Alright so if you take this, Fitz.” You held out a funnel with a piece of tubing secured to it, watching the tech take it carefully.

The mundane calm of the morning was shattered by the sudden hum of an airplane engine, your eyes shooting to meet Fitzgibbons’ sharply moments before the eruption of gunfire.

“Everyone get down!” He shouted and you both lurched into motion to begin helping your patients from their cots onto the wooden planks of the tent platform, abandoning your instruments on Michaels’ cot.

Panic rising as you once again found yourself in a wildly unsafe place while under fire, you urged the men from their beds to get low, presenting smaller targets for the errant bullets that were punching holes through the canvas of the tent every so often. The cacophony outside only increased with the rumble of approaching vehicles – tanks quite possible given the depth of sound that carried across the camp – and you nearly tripped over your own feet in an effort to reach the last two patients who simply could not move on their own.

Heaving one, Sidhu from India, out of his cot and depositing him onto the floor, you were just sliding your arms beneath the shoulders of the last, Hernandez from Texas, when searing heat and pain punched into your side. Your arms and legs gave out beneath you instantly, your body collapsing atop the poor boy still on his cot, both of you gasping for breath. With a grunt of annoyance, you flung a hand back to your hip, eyes widening as your fingertips were quickly covered in a warm, slick fluid.

“M…Ma’am?!” Hernandez warbled from beneath you, watching as you lifted your fingers to inspect just what was going on, his face blanching at the unmistakable scarlet of blood. “Doc?! Medic!! Help!!!” He began to shriek all the words he knew to summon assistance, making you wince at the racket as you forced yourself to roll off him, crashing to the floor in a pile of uncooperative limbs.

Taking a moment to try and catch your breath, pulse rocketing at an alarming rate, you began to realize that no matter how long you lay there, things were not improving. In fact the situation was growing a lot more serious as a deep ache was settling into your right side and you could feel your clothes growing damper with blood by the second. Rolling onto your stomach, you had just begun to feebly pull yourself across the floor of the tent when the racket outside subsided momentarily, Hernandez’s cries summoning several sets of boots to run in your direction.

A great, external cheer erupted in the same moment you were lifted by many hands onto one of the recently vacated cots, Chalmers, Menzies and Fitzgibbons all hovering above you as they yanked at your shirt and pants to get at your wound. The striking similarity between your plight and that of Simms set your teeth on edge, tears brimming in your eyes at the sudden thought that this could really be it. You might very well die here in these filthy, mud-covered clothes while the rest of the camp cheered on outside.

“Keep breathing for me, Nurse. You’ve got an entry and an exit wound, you just stay with us now.” Chalmers barked firmly and you managed a brief nod despite the shakes that seemed to want to rattle your bones. “Fitz go find out if they’ve got a Medic with them – we need sulfa and plasma, and she needs an aid station and surgery.”

“Sir!” He replied before you heard his frantic footfalls leave the tent.

Menzies applied a ruthless amount of pressure to the front and back of your hip and it was all you could do not to wail pathetically at the lances of pain that shot through you. “I know, Nurse, I know. For your own good, now. Why’d you have to go and get yourself shot in the middle of our liberation, hm?”

“Libe.r.ation?” It was difficult to form the word, your mouth clumsy and filled with cotton, head buzzing with adrenaline and pain.

Your heart was beginning to lose its rhythm, stuttering and skipping beats every so often. Your medical training offered a whispered explanation of ‘blood loss’ which did nothing for the suffocating feeling of panic in your chest.

“Looks like your American Army showed up to bring you home, so let’s make sure you can get there alright?” Chalmers added firmly and you nodded again, trying to take deep breaths.

You were so close. They were right there.

What had started as a frigid day seemed to be growing colder, your fingers tips positively icy by the time you heard Fitzgibbons return, giving someone a rundown. The familiarity of it made your heart ache for a simpler time when the two of you were the ones saving people, taking them from danger to safety. Now you were the one in peril, finding it remarkably difficult to keep your eyes open. The unfamiliar face of a young man in an Army helmet came into view before you felt the sting of sulfa on your wounds.

Your left sleeve was rolled up, your nonsensical protests going unheeded as the man began to search for a vein, inserting an IV for the bottle of cheery yellow plasma – the bright color anachronistic to the monochromatic color palette that pervaded the Stalag. Bandages were wrapped tightly around your middle once more and they were just about to lift you, cot and all, when another set of heavy footfalls sounded on the floorboards.

“Jesus christ…angelfish…” Bucky’s voice was unmistakable, though anguished, and you rolled your head to the side to look at him with a weak smile.

“Bucky.” You managed to form his nickname at a volume no more than a whisper, vision narrowing in on his pinched, tight features, the normally rosy hue completely drained from his cheeks.

Suddenly everything tilted and whirled as your cot was hoisted onto the shoulders of Chalmers, Menzies, Fitzgibbons, and the Medic.

“Take the plasma, Egan. Hold it up, keep pace.” Chalmers ordered sharply and the ceiling of the tent began to blur as they rushed out into the daylight, your vision going completely white before all was darkness.

------------

The morning had seemed like any other, crowded around a small campfire trying to keep warm, trading suppositions about the end of the war with Jefferson, when the unmistakable sound of an aircraft engine had broken through the din of the camp.

“Hey Macon, that’s a P-51!” Jefferson had shouted and instantly the entire population was on their feet, cheering on the pilot as he took out on of the guard towers.

Their elation was short lived, the abrupt sound of incoming artillery sending all the prisoners into the dirt as every single German soldier seemed to open fire as one, the camp instantly an active battlefield. Bucky’s eyes strayed to the hospital tent, its canvas walls helplessly pinned between the encroaching American tanks and the defending German guards. They needed to put a stop to this from the inside before any more lives were needlessly lost. Even as this thought crossed his mind, men were falling all around him.

“Fellas! Take out the tower!” Bucky shouted as he ran for the tent where the majority of the Americans were sheltering, seeking out the homemade stars and stripes they had carefully crafted and transported from camp to camp, kept hidden from goons, just for such an occasion.

It took a few tries before Jefferson successfully came up with the flag, passing it to him quickly. Dashing through the chaos of prisoners running hither and thither through the camp, some fleeing, some fighting guards, Bucky was boosted onto the roof of the administration building. The flagpole was less than sturdy as he climbed it but as he removed the Nazi war flag and tossed it to the cheering crowd below, the guns fell quiet. Securing the ragtag American flag, watching the breeze immediately catch and fly it high, an immense feeling of relief wash through him and after taking a moment to celebrate, he pressed his forehead to the hand-hewn timber of the pole to soak in his gratitude for making it this far. Though the ragged appearance of his country’s flag undoubtedly mirrored his own.

As he carefully climbed down the rickety pole, his eyes caught on a somewhat familiar figure running frantically through the crowd toward the gate, moving against the flow of those milling around the yard, celebrating. The man’s shouts carried intermittently on the wind across the crowd and Bucky managed to pick out “Medic,” his heartrate picking up at the word “Nurse.” His stomach dropped when the word “shot” reached his ears.

“Angelfish.” He whispered and quickly scrambled his way off the roof, wincing a little at his rough landing, before he began to shove his own way through the oblivious celebrants towards the hospital.

Skidding to a stop on the threshold of the tent, he was startled to find all the patients cowering beneath their cots while you lay on one of their abandoned beds, a bloody mess surrounded by men frantically trying to save you.

“Jesus christ…angelfish…” He choked out, throat clenching painfully as your head lolled to the side, slightly unfocused eyes meeting his.

“Bucky.” Your faint whisper of his name propelled him forward, a frown settling over his features at the state of your clothes, wanting nothing more than to cover up the expanse of your abdomen and the scar on your arm – you surely hated to have that so prominently on display.

Chalmers’ sudden directive for him to manage the plasma grabbed his attention and he quickly grasped the glass bottle, holding it high as they lifted the entire bed to begin carrying you out of there.

“Just hold on, angelfish.” He rasped, heart lurching painfully as your eyes rolled back in your head, your body going slack.

Running alongside you to the gate despite the way his lungs ached, the crowd mercifully parted before their odd little group. A jeep was waiting with a stretcher strapped to the back, and Bucky watched helplessly as your unsettlingly limp form was transferred from the cot, the bottle of plasma wrenched from his fingers by the Medic before he perched atop your legs. As the vehicle took off, the Lieutenant Colonel of the armored division strode over sternly.

“How the devil did a nurse end up as a POW?” He demanded as Lieutenant Colonel Clark came to stand on Bucky’s right.

Chalmer’s sighed deeply before sharing what he knew of your story, of your arrival back in January including the fact that the Red Cross was informed through the usual process, and how you were housed separately in the hospital. As Fitzgibbons, the very same surgical technician you had earned your burns pulling out of your plane, filled in the rest of your service history, Bucky could only reflect on how little he really knew you. How short his time with you had actually amounted to be. Hell, he would not have even known your squadron number if it was not for that conversation right then.

“What a SNAFU.” The man muttered and Bucky could certainly see the resemblance of the man’s commanding officer, Patton, in him. “Well, let’s get this formal surrender over with so we can get these boys home.”

Clark nodded in return and Bucky shuffled back to sit heavily amongst the men of the 100th, waving off Brady’s look of concern. Watching the salutes and handshakes, he was completely numb, his thoughts miles away with wherever they had taken you, only able to hope against hope that their aid station was of the highest calibre.

Bucky had not resorted to prayer often throughout the war. Sure he had worn a crucifix and crossed himself reflexively when flying into a hail of flak, but conversations with higher beings had never been something he had put much stock in. Faced, now, with this gnawing feeling of helplessness, your very survival in the balance, it seemed like the only tool left at his disposal.

Crammed into the tent that night, shoulder-to-shoulder with his neighbors, he felt rusty and self-conscious as he addressed the god of his childhood Sunday school and fairly begged for you to make it. He stopped short of bargaining his own life away, but barely, before sleep overtook his aching body, the exertions of the day overtaking him.

As he found himself jostling in the back of a transport truck on his way to Paris the next day, handpicked by Lieutenant Colonel Clark to be among the first sent back to England, he could not help but feel as though he was being driven further and further away from you. It was near night by the time they pulled into the base and Bucky took his first warm shower in over a year, changing into a fresh uniform and feeling almost human. They were served white bread that might as well have been cake, with steak and eggs that were too rich for him to endure more than a few bites before he crawled into a remarkably clean bed and slept deeply, exhaustion winning out over his continuous concern for your well being.

Climbing into the belly of a B-17 for the first time in over eighteen months felt awkward and painful, the crew from the 100th consisting of unfamiliar replacements, the space feeling more cramped than it ever had as he wedged himself into the cockpit behind the pilot. The deep-seated terror he had desperately been trying to supress, his fear that Buck had not made it to safety despite their planning and the beating he had taken to distract the guards, surged to the fore of his mind. It competed ruthlessly with his anxiety over whether you were still drawing breath, the fact that he may have to face the truth of losing both of you leaving him silent and withdrawn as the plane took flight.

There was no immediate answer awaiting him at Thorpe Abbotts either, no familiar faces lining the tarmac – not even Lemmons was around, which struck him as unsettlingly odd. Making his way to the CO’s hut, his eyes at last landed on a familiar face as Herrmann emerged from one the equipment sheds.

“Hey Winks! Where is everybody? Guy comes back after a year-and-a-half and no one’s around?” He plastered on a playful smirk as the boy’s face broke out into a grin of astonishment, shaking his hand vigorously as he rushed over.

“Buck took Rosie, Douglass, Croz, and Kenny up on one of those mercy missions they’ve been practicing for, they should be back any time now, sir. Gosh it’s great to see you back here.”

Bucky’s attention immediately snagged on the first name Herrmann mentioned, finding it immensely difficult to continue listening as he exhaled half of the tension that had strangled him all the way across the English Chanel. “Good to be back, Winks. Think you can give me a lift?” He raised an eyebrow, desperate for a moment of levity.

With a quick nod, Herrmann was promptly driving him towards the control tower. The most difficult part of getting up there was making it past all the congratulatory pats and handshakes, but Bucky was able to pull off his surprise, the sound of Cleven’s voice over the radio going a long way to mending some of the deep wounds he was still sporting.

More handshakes and pats-on-the-back awaited him at the hardstand and it finally felt like he was back amongst the familiar faces of these men. He did not miss the way Cleven’s eyes were quietly scrutinizing him, however. The gratingly familiar feeling that his friend was looking right through him was undeniable as he joked and smiled with the boys who had never been imprisoned. Who had not endured the things they had. As the crowd around them thinned out, Bucky turned to watch Cleven pull out one of his toothpicks, sliding it between his molars in a familiar yet long-lost motion.

“So what you been up to since I left?” His friend asked.

Bucky swallowed and shrugged a little walking over to the jeep, Cleven immediately sliding into the passenger’s seat out of habit.

“That terrible, huh?” Cleven muttered and Bucky sighed as the vehicle roared to life.

“Ended up in Moosburg.” He started out slow, with simple facts. “Got a little hurt on the way, so Brady and Hambone took me to the hospital. Turns out there was a Nurse there, POW since January.”

The look of shock on his friend’s face registered in the corner of his eye and Bucky did not have the heart to fully face him.

“The German’s held a woman prisoner?” Cleven shook his head with a sigh of dismay.

“She got shot during the liberation, stray bullet. Medics from the armored division took her and I have no idea if she made it.” Now that he had started telling the story it all just came pouring out of him.

“You care about her more than just on moral grounds.” Cleven stated matter-of-factly and Bucky sighed as he pulled up in front of what used to be their hut.

Who knew if it still was.

“Yes.” He begrudgingly admitted, though his admission was addressed to the steering wheel.

There was a long, drawn-out silence, the incessant chirping of sparrows filling in the gap in conversation and Bucky realized he had not really heard a bird his entire time in captivity. His head snapped sharply to look at Cleven as he suddenly spoke again.

“If anyone can find someone in the chain of evacuation it’ll be Smokey.”

Bucky furrowed his brows a moment before it clicked. “Doc Stover? You think?”

Cleven shrugged. “He’s our best shot I guess.”

“Our…”

“Are you going to drive us to the hospital, or should I?”

A grin pulled at Bucky’s lips as he started the jeep back up and took a sharp U-turn, heading for the base hospital. He pretended not to notice the way his friend’s eyes lingered on the stiff movement of his body as he climbed out of the jeep – he was definitely sore but was most certainly not going to admit to it. The wards were just as populated as they had been in 1943, something he found rather infuriating. It was another feeling he tucked into a neat little package and shoved down to be ignored until a more convenient time. Or perhaps never to be acknowledged again.

Stover was easy to find, dressed in his white coat, just finishing his rounds.

“Majors, what can I do for you?” He gestured for them to follow him into his office and Bucky sank down into a chair heavily, once again ignoring another man’s assessing gaze on him.

“Well it’s an odd request really but…” He trailed off, hesitating as he smoothed his too-long hair, reflecting once again that he needed a proper haircut.

“We’re wondering if you might be able to track someone down for us. Someone who was injured at a camp in Moosburg and evacuated to an aid station.

Stover raised an eyebrow curiously. “One of your fellow POWs?”

“Something like…. well yeah, she is.” Bucky corrected himself midway through, watching the doctor’s eyebrows shoot up dramatically. “Flight Nurse from the 802nd MAES, POW at Moosburg since January of ’45, shot during liberation and taken to the aid station of Patton’s 3rd Army – armored division. Which division I don’t know.”

They watched as Stover quickly grabbed a pen and started jotting down the important details, including your name.

“How bad was she hurt?” Stover asked and Bucky swallowed tightly.

“I didn’t see it happen but there was a gunshot to her stomach somewhere. They got her on plasma quickly.” He added hopefully but Stover’s face remained grim.

“I can’t promise you anything Major Egan, it doesn’t sound particularly hopeful either, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks, Doc.” He nodded, leveraging himself out of the chair with a barely concealed wince.

“And what do you have going on?” Stover stayed seated, eyeing him expectantly.

Bucky noticed Cleven had not budged either, the bastard. Emptying his lungs with a heavy exhale, Bucky put his hands on his hips and shrugged.

“Couple of broken ribs, I’ll be alright.” He replied nonchalantly.

“And how old are these broken ribs?” Stover prodded and Bucky ignored Cleven’s pointed look up at him.

“Couple weeks, I’m halfway mended, just overdid it getting in the fort to come back.”

Stover rose from behind his desk and opened a cabinet, fetching a bottle and holding it out to him. “Aspirin, to keep you comfortable. Take two every four hours as long as you need. Come back if you run out.”

Bucky accepted the bottle with a nod of thanks, the memory of you scrounging up two rare pills for him in the Stalag flooding back, furrowing his brows. The things you could have done in a place like this with limitless supply.

“Thanks again, Doc.” Cleven’s expression of gratitude pierced through his reminiscing and Bucky nodded quickly, tucking the pills into his pocket before heading out quietly.

Accommodations were procured and there was not much for him to do around base aside from rest and learn how to eat properly once more. It took several days for any news of your condition to reach him, via Stover’s connections, but when the man pulled him into his office on the morning of the May 5, he was stunned to learn that not only were you alive, but that you had been air evacuated to Redgrave Hospital just thirty minutes away from Thorpe Abbotts.

You were safe. You were close.

“Seems they weren’t quite certain what to do with her, but as she serves under the Army Air Force, they sent her to our main hospital.” Bucky realized Stover was still talking and he shot him a warm grin before grasping his hand to shake firmly.

“Well I really appreciate your help, Doc. I’ve gotta…” Bucky glanced over his shoulder at the door, desperate to make his way to you.

“Yeah, go…” He chuckled and shooed him out of his office.

No longer a squadron commander, Bucky technically did not have a jeep of his own to disappear with off base and so he was in the process of grabbing one of the stray bikes outside the control tower when Crosby emerged into the daylight, eyes squinting in fatigue at the brightness.

“Where are you off to Major?”

“Redgrave Hospital!” He replied brightly, watching the younger man blink.

“Sir that’s a good eleven miles, that’s a terrible idea with your ribs.”

Word seemed to have spread fast…

“Take my jeep, I’m not gonna need it today.”

“Croz, you are a lifesaver.” Bucky dropped the bike he had been wrangling to slap him on the back before diving into the jeep allotted for use by the Group Navigator. “I’ll be back!” He shouted, taking off in a spray of dust and gravel.

Turning onto the two-hundred-acre country estate, Redgrave Hospital, consisting of nearly forty Nissen huts, stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the trees and landscaped green. As he pulled up to the headquarters of the hospital, Bucky quickly realized that the staff there were not nearly as excited to see him. In fact, they were downright reluctant to allow him in to visit you, but assured him that while you were ‘heavily medicated and resting’ you were still ‘on the mend.’

While relief still permeated his system, it was a new agony to have you so very close and yet still out of his reach. If they were not going to permit him as a regular visitor, Bucky realized he was going to have to get a lot more creative in order to lay his eyes on you, and until he did, there would be not real peace.

------------

Moments of clarity punctured through the blackness – a blur of trees, the flurry of activity of an aid station, the masked face of a surgeon speaking to you reassuringly, the heartbreakingly familiar interior of a C-47 – but it was not until you were settled in a bed inside a hospital with four walls, windows, and nurses that true cognizance really returned to you. Casting your eyes around the sterile, white space, you noted you were situated at the end of a row and walled off from other patients with a set of privacy screens. The most striking feature of this hospital was the very stern-faced Bucky parked in a chair to the left of your bed.

As you began to stir, his eyes lifted quickly to meet yours, some of the tension easing from his frame. “Have a good rest, angelfish?” he whispered, and you furrowed your brows up at him, so full of questions. “They got you on the good stuff don’t they.” He chuckled fondly, reaching out to brush his fingertips across your cheek tenderly.

“Kick a girl when she’s down, why don’t you.” You sighed, speech slightly slurred from pain medication and the dryness in your mouth, but still capable of using his own lines against him.

His resulting grin contained all the brilliance of the sun and made you look down with a self-satisfied smirk. Your eyes immediately fell on your exposed arms laying atop the blanket, the scarring along your left forearm lain bare for all to see. Jerking your hands back roughly, you clumsily tried to shove them beneath the covers despite the warmth on the ward. Bucky’s gentle tut before his hand came to rest atop yours halted your attempt.

“Shhh, you’re just fine you brave, beautiful woman. Stay right there.” He murmured as he laced his fingers with yours, pinning your arm to rest above the blanket. “You have nothing to hide or be ashamed of.”

Swallowing thickly, you slowly lifted your gaze to meet his. “I think I’ve acquired a few more…” You sighed, the feeling of thick bandages padding your hip acutely registering as you spoke.

“Probably.” He nodded softly. “You also probably saved that boy Hernandez by taking the bullet, so I’d say they were well earned. Besides, they’ll make an excellent target for my mouth one day.”

Your soft smile transformed into a look of disbelief, your free hand rising to whack his shoulder gently. “John Clarence Egan.” You chided half-heartedly and he pressed his face to the side of your head where it lay propped up against several pillows, his heavy exhale ruffling through your hair. “We are in a hospital, and you are making inappropriate jokes.”

“Mmmm.” He hummed in agreement, stroking his thumb against yours affectionately.

“Which hospital is this, anyway?” You asked curiously, finding its curved roof and white walls lacked distinguishing features.

“Redgrave Hospital, you serve in the Army Air Force after all.” He pulled back slightly to answer.

“Redgrave…” you repeated thoughtfully. “Sounds awfully English.”

“Hit the nail on the head, angelfish. We made it.” Bucky’s lips brushed against your temple, and you smiled softly. “Despite our best efforts.” His teasing made you laugh softly, and you shook your head.

“If we’re in England, where’s the King?” You raised an eyebrow expectantly and he smirked, shaking his head.

“No King, unfortunately, but I did bring you this?” He reached behind him, pulling out a newspaper to lay across your lap.

“Victory in Europe.” You read the headline aloud, pausing a moment as the words sunk in before gasping and looking to him wide-eyed. “Truly?”

A look of solemn earnestness overtook his features and he nodded softly. “Truly. German army surrendered yesterday.”

You gulped roughly and looked back to ready to date of May 8, 1945, on the top of the paper – you had lost nearly nine days. You really had been so close, everyone had. And the fact that you were here, and others were not seemed so very arbitrary. Sighing heavily, you squeezed his hand gently.

“By the skin of our teeth.” You murmured thickly, looking up as a nurse shuffled past with a faint nod of acknowledgement before making a sharp about-face to come and check your vitals.

“How’re you feeling?” She asked you and you nodded slowly.

“I’m alright, thank you. Bit foggy but things are the clearest they’ve been in days.”

“I’m going to fetch the Doctor.” The nurse turned to eye Bucky sharply. “You’d best make yourself scarce.” She commented before continuing on her way.

“How on earth did you get in here?” You raised an eyebrow as you came to realize how unusual his presence was.

“Bought my way in with a few bottles of champagne – your flightless comrades are quite friendly if one knows the price.”

You coughed out a laugh as the comment made Nurses sound like some species of bird and his lips twitched into a smile, your eyes unable to look away from the soft, rosy skin of his mouth.

“Hey before you go…”

“Hmmm?” He turned to you, half risen from his chair.

“I don’t have the mental capacity to think of something self-deprecating right now, so can I just get a kiss?” You murmured before pursing your lips shyly.

His face transformed into a warm smile, eyes crinkling adorably at the corners as the tips of his ears flushed pink. “I always said you just had to ask, angelfish.”

Echoing his smile, you turned your lips up expectantly as he braced his hand on the pillow beside your head, leaning in to gently brush his lips against yours, drawing a contented sigh from deep beneath your breastbone. Bucky’s lips pressed closer, a tender hum rumbling from his throat just as a sharp cough sounded from the end of the bed and he slowly pulled back with a rueful huff.

“Just checking her breathing, Doc.” Bucky grinned wolfishly as the man raised an eyebrow sharply. “She’s doing great.”

“Hn.” The doctor intoned, clearly unimpressed. “And how are your ribs doing, Major Egan?”

Inhaling sharply, you looked him over quickly, the litany of his injuries flooding back to you from your sub-conscious.

“Much better, thank you Doc. Who knew Smokey was such a gossip. Well, angelfish,” he brushed his knuckles down your cheek, “guess that’s my cue.”

Nodding slowly, wondering who on earth Smokey might be, you watched him leave before your Doctor took over, running through numerous checks with you before discussing the extent of your injury and the surgeries that had been performed to save your life. It was nothing short of remarkable, what they had thrown at you to prevent your death, the conversation a very sobering one. It would be a long road to recovery, and one, it turned out, you would mostly be taking back home in the United States.

After a week or so in Redgrave Hospital, you were deemed fit enough for transport back to the Zone of Interior for convalescence and recovery in a domestic hospital. Though the sympathetic nurses had not seen fit to permit Bucky onto the ward again, they had taken a shakily written note, the loss of strength you had suffered in just over a week was startling, and promised to deliver it to him. The trip via Prestwick to Greenland, then Newfoundland, and ultimately Grenier Field in New Hampshire felt luxurious on the much more spacious C-54. You were admitted to the Station Hospital there to continue your recovery and rehabilitation, enjoying phone calls with your family instead of delayed correspondence for a change.

It took two months for you to be fully back on your feet, back to yourself. The same amount of time, it seemed, for the 100th bomb group to be repatriated stateside. Freshly discharged and clad in a brand-new olive drab dress uniform, proudly bearing your silver 1st Lieutenant’s insignia following your promotion and the ribbons from your two purple hearts, you had sweet-talked your way back onto the base. One of the more sympathetic MPs who had heard your story – admittedly there were few in New Hampshire who had not heard your story at this point – had not even protested your request. It seemed that fate saw fit to land Major John Egan in your life a second time, with Grenier Field the destination for his bomb group on their return flight.

Standing in the warm summer breeze, watching the sky for the silhouettes of their planes, it honestly felt odd to be wearing a skirt. The complexity of affixing your stockings to the straps of your garter belt had briefly made you long for the convenience of slacks, but with your properly cut and styled hair and feminine clothing you felt like an entirely new woman as you stood outside on the grass with the ground crew. Would Bucky even recognize you?

At last the distant droning of aircraft engines reached your, and everyone around you’s, ears, the shapes of B-17s multiplying on the horizon before they began to circle in for a landing. Honestly, there were so many of them you briefly doubted you would be able to find him with any manner of efficiency. Clamping a hand over your officer’s cap to hold it in place as a plane taxied onto a nearby hardstand, your eyes began to scan the crowd of men as they filtered past, surely headed for the mess hall or officer’s club. Catch a glimpse of those unmistakable ears, you stepped forward and called out to him.

“John Clarence Egan!”

His head whipped around so fast he nearly took out the man walking beside him.

“Do I really look so different in a skirt that you would walk right by me?” You teased fondly.

“Angelfish!”

His flight bag hit the asphalt with a sickening ‘crunch’ that had you worried for its contents, but the impact of his body against yours drove that thought quickly from your mind. Wrenching his cap from his head he tilted his face to nestle beneath the brim of yours and kiss you soundly. Distantly, you were aware of all manner of cheers and wolf-whistles from his comrades, but you were too busy clutching at his shoulders to truly mind.

“How did you-? What are you-? God, it’s good to see you.” He rambled before pressing his mouth against yours firmly, not even giving you the opportunity to reply.

Laughing brightly into the kiss, you became vaguely aware of the sound of footsteps approaching much nearer and pulled back slowly, smiling fondly as Bucky’s lips made as if to chase yours, but his friend’s question interrupted him.

“You gonna introduce us, John?” A tall blond man with striking blue eyes and a pair of unsettlingly symmetrical facial scars asked sardonically.

Bucky cleared his throat and stepped back, though you noted his arm slid around your waist in a rather proprietary move. You found you did not mind in the least, particularly as your fully healed wound gave no protest of pain whatsoever.

“Angelfish, this Gale Cleven – call him Buck, Robert Rosenthal – Rosie, and Harry Crosby – Croz.” He followed up by introducing you by your full name.

“He give you that nickname, too?” The one he told you to call ‘Buck’ raised an eyebrow and you laughed.

“It’s a long story….”

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The Only Truth I Know Is You Masterlist

Tag list: @gretagerwigsmuse, @luminouslywriting, @softspeirs, @sunny747, @storysimp, @slowsweetlove, @httpsmoon, @buckysegan, @justheretoreadthxxs, @precious-little-scoundrel, @jointherebellion215, @timetowastetime8, @mads-weasley

[elrielffs]

Can you please explain these scenes? When I first read the bonus chapter, i didnt look too much into it because I was enjoying the scene of elain and azriel. that wasnt until i joined this fandom and realized how hated they are.

•Elain sucked in a soft breath that whispered over his skin. His shadows skittered back at the sound. They'd always been prone to vanish when she was around.• Some people make this as something bad, why?

•Azriel ignored the question. "The Cauldron chose three sisters. Tell me how it's possible that my two brothers are with two of those sisters, yet the third was given to another." He had never before dared speak the words aloud.• I heard people say he's entitled to her because his brothers got the other two sisters? again, I never paid attention to this at all and didnt think much of it.

Look, now with the convo with gwyn. it was cute little thing, i didnt think much of it and thought it was whatever (off topic. im just so used to friendships in the boys of tommen series that i didnt think of it as romantic 😭 like joey and lizzie idk) it really shocked me to find out they were one of the most popular ships. but please explain!

Sure anon!

To the first, antis try to make like Azriel's shadows disappearing around Elain is a bad thing, that the shadows are a part of him and shouldn't disappear and this means they don't like Elain ergo Elriel incompatible.

But we've seen in the story where Azriel's shadows when not in a standard normal state do disappear when he is more relaxed and around people he trusts.

The shadows don't hate Elain. They lit up across the room at Elain's laughter. They helped Azriel present the necklace to Elain on solstice, when Nesta and Elain argued, the shadows are described as ready to strike at the thought of someone hurting Elain.

To the second. People taking things out of context or twisting it to be bad. Stating that Azriel feels entitled and refers to Elain as "the third". But in the sentence he is talking to about everyone that way: two brothers, two sisters...the third. Not just Elain. Antis just ignore the sentence structure Azriel was using to refer to everyone and hone in on "the third".

This also makes antis think that Azriel feels entitled to Elain and just wants a mate but they have it backwards imo. Azriel isn't questioning his religion, the cauldron, the mother, a mate bond with another male just because he wants a mate and figures "the third" of the Archeron brood should be his like they are collecting Pokemon.

He's asking these questions because of Elain herself. Remember when the brothers first met the sisters. They both stilled. Remember that Azriel has always been drawn and willing to go out of his way to help and be around Elain, remember that Azriel was willing to die to save Elain from Hybern's camp, remember that Azriel knew what was wrong with Elain before a "supposed mate", remember Azriel can smell the mating bond between Azriel and Lucien when he shouldn't be able to.

Remember most of this happened before anyone knew that Nessian were mates or even together. Azriel is questioning the cauldron not only because he is displaying mate like behavior when Elain already had a supposed mate, that she doesn't like or want but because he wants Elain so badly, he wants her to be his mate. He wants Elain to be his mate not because she's the third Archeron sister but because she's Elain.

And to be fair, with mate bonds already being rare, what are the chances that two of the Archeron sisters are mated to two of the most powerful Illyrians ever but the third is not, especially when he really really really wants her to be. I think it's a fair question to ask and is also something SJM is having us ponder...along with the 6 sided star representing balance.

As for the whole scene with Gwyn, others have broken this down more succinctly but basically: Azriel's powers react to Gwyn much like Nesta's did, I believe Gwyn was put in there to crumb that she has more powers that we don't know about (Lightsinger Theory). Spark has been disproven to mean mates as it has been used between non-mated people, people who aren't even couples, and hasn't been used in every mate bond therefore it's a false equivalency.

And my big take away is...if you took the scene where Azriel and Gwyn actually spoke to each other and replaced Azriel or Gwyn with anyone....it's very very platonic. Antis read too much into it because they don't have many scenes for their ship but really, if you inserted Emerie and Azriel, Feyre and Cassian, Mor and Rhysand you would see that it's just a normal conversation that's been twisted and overblown.

And that's basically what happens anytime there's a scene between Elriel or with Gwyn. Antis twist the narrative and make Elriel scenes bad and ignore canon while with Gwyn, any interaction between the two means they are ready for a full blown romance and are so flirty and into each other when...they just aren't.

So there you go, hope that helped clear some things up for you.

[fangsandfeels]

Maybe I was doing something wrong or missed some dialogue options, but I feel like we lack interactions and insights from one of the most interesting camp residents -- Dame Aylin. Like, not only she is an immortal divine being (and I have so many questions), but she is also a divine being with severe PTSD. Isobel keeps referring to her state of mind and her need for rehabilitation, and I can only imagine how wild can it be when the whole camp is dealing not just with a traumatized POW, but a traumatized POW with godly powers.

And how all the camp is grateful that Isobel is here because whenever Aylin has a nightmare or an episode where she thinks she is back in that place or goes through a vivid memory of Balthazar ripping her wings off, Isobel is the only one who can get through to her, while anyone Aylin doesn't recognize risks getting four-degree moonburns.

Also, it raises an interesting point to explore - an immortal, a transcendent being who was previously unfamiliar with such concepts as time and mortality, now is faced with a whole bunch of burdens (good and bad) mortals have to bear. It all started with loving a mortal woman, then mourning her death -- and then, along with the happiness of getting reunited with her lover, Aylin also deals with pain that doesn't simply go away. She is her mother's warrior, her will was never broken, and she is as strong as ever. But at the same time, she is hurt and scarred, and for some reason, striking down another greedy wizard craving her immortality made her feel tired rather than triumphant. How confusing it must feel to someone like her. Scary even. It's all too complicated for immortal beings -- and, what's interesting, Aylin has no regrets despite it all. She accepts these fragments of mortality, even though they cut her till she bleeds, because it brings her closer to Isobel. Somehow, I imagine she will no longer be taking month-long walks, acutely wary of every minute she spends with her love.

[johnslittlespoon]

summarizing my wips badly!

tagged by @nicijones tysm i'm so late!! <33 p.s. usually i write oneshots inspired by song lyrics or i have a title in mind going into them, but most of my wips are unnamed atm so these placeholders are subject to change :^) also these are all buckbucky and the last one is curtbucky mwah!

You're A Dog (I'm Your Man): When your friend refers to your best friend as "your dog" and now you can't get it out of your head. You Drag, I Light: Fellas, is it gay to shotgun a joint in a field with your best friend on your day off instead of going to town and dancing with the ladies? (maybe a cont. of my last oneshot idk yet) I'll Be Your Watchman: When you're reunited with your not–lover in a POW camp and you're too scared to sleep for fear of opening your eyes and realizing you dreamt the reunion so you keep watch over them while they sleep and heal. I Laid Down My Arms (The Day You Came Along): 5 times one man seeks out his friend for cuddles/physical touch, and 1 time the roles are reversed. I Let You Win (I Love To Lose): It's probably totally 100% normal to get hard while wrestling with your best friend and not at all a sign of underlying feelings. Angel, Baby (Tell Me A Secret): Tfw you offhandedly mention rimming to your totally straight best friend but now they're in your bed and you're showing instead of telling. I've Got A Bad Desire: TIFU: My best friend who I have feelings for refused to punch me when I was having a mental breakdown but we ended up dry humping each other inside a cockpit instead.

ngl i'm pretty sure i have more wips but these are the ones i've actually got mostly fleshed out in my head & i don't need this to turn into a grocery list of fics so (◠‿◠✿)

tagging @curtsbigspoon @mangokittokatsu @magneticghouls @bcolfanfic no pressure!!! i get shy tagging ppl ngl lol <3

[weirdestcountryhumans]

Nazi Germany: What the fuck is happening with this shit.

Before I begin, I'm just going to say that I will not be referring to Nazi Germany as the Third Reich. I feel like that name gets used to distance what people do with the fact that it is the Nazi country, and I think using Nazi Germany in this post will kinda drive home the fact to some people that this is not some cute fun little guy, he's a fucking Nazi, and you need to remember that, because some people here aren't.

This one I am also not going to be playing nice in. I will be pissed off about this all, because this fandom playing nice to the personification of Nazi Germany is something that some of you people should be fucking ashamed of.

ThirdUnion and the reason why this ship makes no fucking sense

This is singlehandedly the worst ship in this entire fandom, and someone decided that Sunshine Harem was a good idea. For some reason, people take the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact as a sign that these two were in love with each other. However, this is the furthest thing from the truth. The Nazis always planned to betray the USSR, and in Nazi ideology, Slavs, the majority ethnic group in the USSR, were considered subhuman. The Nazis also hated socialists and communists, and they were imprisoned and sent to concentration camps. The Nazis hated what one could argue were the two most important/powerful traits of the USSR. They were communists, and they were Slavs. This pact was not made because they "loved each other" or whatever stupid explanation people have for it, but because the Nazis didn't want a two-front war like in WWI, so they signed a back with the USSR so they could wipe out Western Europe before attacking the USSR. It was a matter of politics and trying to achieve the quickest and safest victory they could. The other thing about this ship that is distasteful is that it is often portrayed as a homosexual ship. The Nazis killed queer people during the Holocaust. There is no way on earth that Nazi Germany would be gay or openly/acknowledge that he is gay. Not only that, but if the USSR was openly gay that would only make Nazi Germany hate him more, as not only was he Slavic and therefore inhuman, but queer, a minority group that Nazis hated and declared an "enemy of the state." They wouldn't be in a gay relationship. Nazi Germany would kill him. The USSR hated the Nazis just as much. During the end of WW2, and after WW2, in the Soviet Satellite states and their occupied half of Germany, the Soviets committed many atrocities against the Germans. The German people, whether they lived in Germany or not. There was no love on either side. There never was. Not before the war, not during, and certainly not after.

Guilt Over The Holocaust

There is nothing that makes me more mad with the fandom's characterization of Nazi Germany than this. Nazi Germany is a personification of Nazi Germany. You cannot argue that someone who might have been equal to Hitler in terms of power didn't know about the Holocaust or hated that it was happening. The Nazis created that personification, and in a way, they would have raised Nazi Germany. You think he wasn't indoctrinated into their beliefs? "But they were his people," some might argue. But the victims of the Holocaust might have lived in Germany, but the Nazis stripped away their rights and, in the cases of some, their citizenship. The Holocaust was the genocide of the Jewish people, but prisoners in those death camps included political prisoners, homosexuals, Romani, Freemasons, Slavic peoples (including Poles, USSR citizens, and POWs, Serbs, Slovenes), disabled people, Jehovah's Witnesses, other religious groups and leaders, Spanish Republicans, academics from any of these groups, and many others. It is impossible to put into words the amount of cognitive dissonance it must take to look at the personification of Nazi power and ideology and say he had no knowledge of, or even regretted the Holocaust. The personification of Nazism would support the ideas and goals of Nazism. There is no avoiding that. All the pretending he feels guilt for the Holocaust is a cheap tactic used by writers to include Nazi Germany in stories and include him as a character that is not related to the crimes and history of Nazism and Nazi Germany. It is a cheap tactic to allow someone to write Nazi Germany as sympathetic and deny the consequences of his crimes and ideology.

Nazi Germany living after the dissolution of his government

It is fucking laughable to me that some people seem to think that the Allies wouldn't murder Nazi Germany for all that he did to them, especially France and the USSR. You think they would let him live after the entire point of the Allied Occupation was to de-nazify Germany and rebuild the country. They would absolutely ensure he died, whether they had to do it themselves or not. Wikipedia can tell you this. And if you argue that "Oh, it's just a matter of headcanon, he doesn't have to die after WW2; the Allied powers would never do that," then I need you to take a fucking seat and think about what you are saying. The USSR, as said before, committed war crimes and ethnic cleansing against Germans, not just Nazis, but anyone who was German wouldn't kill Nazi Germany? You are defending a Nazi who would have been complicit in genocide and in causing one of the bloodiest wars in human history. You are defending a Nazi. You are defending a character whose identity is linked to Nazism. You cannot remove this character from the context of Nazism. You cannot sit there with a character whose flag is that of FUCKING NAZI GERMANY and say that they are not linked with Nazi ideology in any way. You cannot say that in a period in which the Allies were removing all traces of Nazism in Germany, that they would let someone like that live. The Nazi Germany will always die because Nazi Germany no longer exists. Fucking deal with it.

The Issues With A Nazi being a popular character

"But Ailbhe," you say, "It's just a few people doing that. It's not that big of a deal." But the problem is, it is a big deal. It is a problem when people on the internet romanticize, water down, or god-forbid glorify Nazism through a character that represents Nazism. Sometimes, that water downed version can be someone's first real introduction to Nazism, or it can make people think that perhaps the Holocaust was not as bad as it was. By trying to make Nazi Germany sympathetic, you are presenting a false portrayal of the true horror and scale of Nazi crimes. I am not trying to accuse anyone of being a Nazi or supporting Nazism. I am simply trying to explain why watering down Nazism is a dangerous thing to do. I know that this is a fiction fandom, and it is not the real world, but by providing a platform for sympathy towards Nazism, one allows dangerous and harmful views to be seen as "not as bad," and those who do call them out on it are said to be "overreacting." I think the fandom, and especially those that feature a watered-down version of Nazi Germany in their content, need to sit back and think through what they are doing and what opinion and portrayal of Nazism they are presenting to the world.

[notaplaceofhonour]

I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes when it first came out, but hadn’t seen the other two movies in the trilogy until just this week (prompting a return to Rise), and this time around the Jewishness of the narrative & references to Moses in the character of Caesar really struck me—especially in War for the Planet of the Apes, where Caesar leads his people as they wander through the wilderness to a better land, attacks a taskmaster for whipping one of his people when he sees them enslaved, and climbs to a high place at the end of the film to look out over the promised land as his people enter, unable to go with them.

I was unsurprised but delighted to find the parallels to Moses were 100% conscious, The Ten Commandments being one of several films they watched for inspiration while writing the screenplay. Matt Reeves even directly talked about War being about Caesar’s journey as he becomes a “biblical” foundational figure, “like Moses”.

Additionally, despite the fact that the camp in War was most directly based on the WWII POW camps in The Great Escape and The Bridge on the River Kwai, and not necessarily Nazi concentration camps, it’s difficult to deny there are still some parallels to Jewish experience, especially given the Alpha-Omega Colonel’s eugenic bent and the sentiments of racial (spec-ial?) superiority that infuses his regime’s cruelty, as well as the kapo-like role of the “donkeys”.

And of course, watching Rise again, the parallels there became evident as well: a baby hidden & sent away to evade an order to kill him, raised by his mother’s captor, who comes into his own as a leader after being exiled for spilling blood, leading his people in an exodus, even crossing a body of water while being pursued by their captors as they escape to freedom in the wilderness.

I wouldn’t want to overextend the Jewish elements of the narrative to suggest Caesar is meant to be Moses or that the movies are equating the apes with Jews (much less, heaven forbid, the other way around); there are plenty of aspects of the stories that would break any attempt to make them a 1-for-1 allegory for any person, group, or conflict. But I know at least a few people on the creative team (including Amanda Silver & Rick Jaffa, who co-wrote Rise & Dawn, & have been producers on every movie in the reboot series) are Jewish or have Jewish family members, and it’s exciting to be able to clock that shining through. It really shows in the Jewish elements of the story not just being there, but having a surprising complexity I wouldn’t expect from most movies, even ones directly about Jews—much less the action blockbuster sequels to a reboot of a sci-fi series from the 60’s/70’s about ape people.

[bucking-mustangs-with-wings]

Hello, LOVE your blog! non native english speaker here: can you explain what he means saying <<My Little Kreigie Marconi>> I know it’s an endearment term but I don’t understand :(((

'Kriegie' is a term used to describe allied prisoners of war, like in a POW camp, and 'Marconi' is in reference to a man named 'Guglielmo Marconi' who was an engineer and inventor. The more you know!

[pianostarinwonderland]

Magic 3 Thoughts

The introduction of magic 3 in Twst’s new gameplay is very interesting because it makes me wonder what is in store for the characters in chapter 7.

Dorm cards in particular tell the characters’ personality and magical ability.

For example, let's take three cards: Dorm Riddle, Dorm Epel, and Dorm Azul.

Dorm Riddle

Dorm Riddle deals two strong hits at Lv.10 of his first spell. It hints at his strong power. The two hits on his first spell also shows how he can summon spells fast. In chapter 6, Idia’s analysis of Riddle is that he can fire spells very fast. Take note that among the dorm SSRs, only he, Dorm Leona, and Dorm Malleus can deal two strong hits. And we all know how powerful and experienced Leona and Malleus are. Even amongst other SSRs, only Birthday Kalim, GM Ace, and Camp Trey can deal two hits on their first spell, with everyone else dealing one hit with an effect, whether buff or debuff.

Furthermore, Riddle has the highest ATK stat in the game (no, Dorm Malleus did Not overthrow him, shocking news right?). This can refer to how Riddle has a high magic pool for his age, which can only be obtained by intensive training from when you’re young. Consequently, he has the lowest HP among all SSRs. This may be in reference to his fast blot accumulation—external factors have a clear impact on his blot.

Dorm Epel

Dorm Epel’s first spell references his UM. His first spell can deal a small ATK Down and heals the team at the same time. His UM, Sleep Kiss, puts people to sleep in glass coffins. In a sense, the protection people gain from the glass coffins will lower the severity of any injuries they sustain, referencing the ATK Down debuff that cuts opponent’s damage on your team. Sleep is also a form of recovery for the body, which references the heal.

Buddies are telling of a character’s relationship with another to an extent. A notable buddy is Epel’s buddy with Vil, as it boosts both his HP and ATK. He’s the only dorm card aside from Malleus with that sort of buddy boost. It references how Vil is trying to build Epel to become the best kind of person that he can be without compromising himself, hence why both HP and ATK are boosted rather than only one stat. Vil looks out for Epel’s growth in many things, whether in beauty or in strength.

Dorm Azul

Dorm Azul’s M1 is absolutely packed with not only a buff, a small ATK UP, but also a heal. It’s rather self serving, and it references to how Azul would steal people’s talent to make himself stronger.

In chapter 6, Idia mentions how Azul is the type to stall or use others as meat shields before attacking due to having a relatively low magic pool compared to other overblotters. He needs time to produce a spell. It makes him fit to be a healer/support.

Azul's buddies are very important here. Most SSRs have a HP M buddy, HP S, and ATK/POW S buddy. His buddies, however, are HP S, HP S, and ATK M. Jade is his ATK M buddy, while Riddle and Idia are the HP buddies. Buddies that give small boost in a stat are the characters who have an effect on the character himself but aren't that involved in his life, whereas buddies that give medium boost in a stat are very involved in a character's life. I find that HP buddies tend to represent how a buddy affects a character's growth (in their character), while ATK buddies tend to represent a buddy making a character stronger.

Riddle and Idia do have an influence on Azul, but it's not a major one. Riddle is a fellow 2nd year dorm leader; the two of them have worked together in their duties as dorm leaders and schoolmates. As for Idia, he and Azul are club mates. Azul has shared in his first birthday story that the board game club has made him more comfortable in taking calculated risks.

The important buddy here is Jade. Jade provides a medium boost to Azul's ATK stat. It can indicate here that Jade affects Azul a lot, particularly in making him stronger. Stronger in the eye of the public, stronger in the sense that he's more confident because at least there is Jade to lean onto in case a sudden change of plans occurs...? A list can be made.

Therefore, because dorm cards show some of the personality of the characters in gameplay format, the introduction of the 3rd magic speaks about something regarding the characters. And in the midst of chapter 7 and getting thrown into this dream world, is the 3rd magic showing us more depth to the character now that we have gone through six full arcs in the main story? Or is it showing that the character will undergo change in the dream world?

For example, Dorm Riddle's first magic is just two strong hits, an offense-oriented spell that would make him more suitable for a Basic test where dealing damage is priority. However, his third magic is a medium ATK DOWN on two opponents, which is a debuff and an ability more suited for a Defense test. Dorm Leona also goes through the same thing, except his medium ATK DOWN is a 3-turn debuff on a single opponent.

Some cards have their first and third spells having similar effects. Dorm Vil is an example of this, having a small ATK DOWN for 1 turn on his first spell and medium ATK DOWN for 3 turns on his 3rd spell. Dorm Ortho's first and third spells are similar in that they are both buffs—his first spell is a 3-turn medium DMG UP on himself while his 3rd spell has a small ATK UP, along with Freeze Immunity, which allows characters' buffs to go through even if Freeze was casted on the character on a specific turn.

Some characters gain heals, particularly Ace, Kalim, Rook, and Sebek. Ace, Rook, And Sebek heal is HP Regen or the 3-turn heal. Kalim's is 1-turn. It's interesting what this means for them and how they would develop.

The original dorm card healers, Trey, Azul, and Epel, gain Curse Immunity and a small ATK UP. What this does is that essentially, if you use their heal and the Curse immunity in one turn, they can heal even if the opponent implements curse on them. It's like they gain their own ability to protect themselves so that they can protect their team better.

Possibly for some cards, it can show more depth to the character's personality, like how Riddle's ATK DOWN on two opponents can be an expression of how he makes people follow his lead.

But Twst has also used gameplay as a way to foreshadow something in the story. Dorm Epel is a prime example of this. His card was released in the midst of Book 5, but his UM was made in Book 6. So the question now is, what is Twst foreshadowing through the 3rd magic?

[celticcrossanon]

"Masters Of The Air" WW2 miniseries vs. H a r r y

I’ve been watching the new miniseries “Masters Of The Air” (produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks and starring Austin Butler) about the US Army Air Force 100th bomb group stationed in the UK during WW2 the past few months while simultaneously reading about Prince Harry and the upcoming 10th anniversary of the Invictus Games this May.

It’s really incredible that American airmen flew in unpressurized bomber planes in minus 60 degree Fahrenheit temperature during WW2. The airmen had to wear special heating suits because if for example they took their gloves off during a fight at high altitudes because their guns jammed, their fingers could painlessly and bloodlessly amputate all the way up to their knuckles. The airmen could literally see their own fingers snap off and fly across the belly of the plane.

23% of all US Army Air crews survived during the WW2 air campaign in Europe with the rest either being shot and/or killed while in the air or their planes were shot down.

Those who survived via parachute after their planes were shot down either escaped back to the UK via resistance groups, were taken to POW camps for the remainder of the war or in some cases were killed by enraged German civilians on the ground.

The first episode started in January with the last episode concluding in mid-March. 

I mention all this because Harry has been in the news for weeks, whining about his lack of taxpayer funded security while not feeling safe to attend the Invictus Games 10th anniversary event in London and tonight another article popped up in the Daily Mail about Harry going to a Better Up conference in San Francisco to lecture people about 'Beyond Burnout: Transforming C-Level Stress Into Strength.’

Harry has no clue about executives in stressful jobs. Nor does he have any clue about serving in combat or what honor and loyalty means. Harry actually endangered troops in Afghanistan during both of his tours overseas because he wanted to play soldier.

It’s incredible to look at genuine heroism and sacrifice from WW2 servicemen and women vs a complete royal fraudster who couldn’t even be accepted into the British Army on his own merits because Harry was reportedly too busy drinking and doing drugs while at Eton. Harry got into Sandhurst because his grandmother was the Head of the Armed Forces.

All of these battle hardened WW2 veterans would scoff at this whiny, treacherous, cowardly ginger prick who reportedly is so afraid to attend a church service for the Invictus Games on his own despite bragging about killing 25 enemy combatants in Afghanistan in his memoirs. 

It’s a damn shame the Royal Family had the British media to help turn Harry’s PR image from a drug using frat boy into a “war hero” as Harry is anything but a genuine war hero– and uses disabled veterans from IG in order to make himself look good.

And BTW, the miniseries “Masters Of The Air” is quite good and is based on the book by the same name. I’m proud and grateful for WW2 veterans while simultaneously shaking my head at the royal disgrace that is Prince Harry.

Hi TeaWithBooks,

The hardships that the soldiers of WWI, WWII and other wars suffered to defend their countries are incredible to read about. They were all courageous at a level that is not brought out by circumstances today (I say this knowing veterans of those wars and having them in my family).

Harry is nothing in comparison. He does not have the courage that those men possessed. His cowardice and entitlement are thrown into relief by the service of true veterans everywhere. The idea of him coping with stress, let alone using it for anything else, is laughable because, as you said, he has no clue about working in a stressful job. 

The palace PR did a brilliant job with “Hero Harry”, but I am glad it has come to an end and we can all see Harry as he really is. I much refer the truth over PR lies.

I have learnt to tune out Harry’s whining. If he is not whining about something he is bragging about how wonderful he is, both of which are very unattractive traits.

I believe you can find military men commenting on Harry’s behaviour on some sites, and what they say is not flattering. The truth always comes out in the end.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"The RCMP tried to place plants among the internees, false prisoners whose mission was to spy on the other internees. Patrick Lenihan reports that it happened twice, although this author has uncovered only one occasion. This involved a man who arrived from Montreal in March, 1942 named Paul-Henri Robert. Some of the French-Canadian internees knew Robert. Jean Bourget and Joseph Duchesne had known him in a Montreal group that defended the unemployed called Ouvriers Unis. His behaviour with this organization, always calling for violent demonstrations and confrontations with the police, led some of the internees to believe that he was an agent provocateur, working for the authorities. If Robert was sent to spy, he was not very effective for he even admitted that he had once been an RCMP officer, who had been mistakenly sent to Hull rather than Petawawa. Robert shared a cell with Jacques Villeneuve and described to his cell-mate the circumstances of his most recent arrest which led him to Hull. Robert claimed he had been arrested for making anti-British remarks while in a tavern. The story sounded strange, at least in the opinion of Bourget, Duchesne, Villeneuve, Rodolphe Majeau, and Roméo Duval, who wrote to Major Green on March 25, 1942, demanding that Green get rid of Robert since they believed he was a stool-pigeon, a spy, a plant. Green refused to acquiesce to the demands, maintaining that he had no idea who Robert was. The internees made life miserable for Robert, isolating him, and threatening to beat him. Was this an instance of the Hull internees being paranoid about someone they did not like from the outside world? Possibly, but when Major Green [camp commandant who liaised with the RCMP to report on internee conduct] was transferred to the POW camp for German soldiers at Bowmanville, near Oshawa, Ontario, on April 15, 1942, the very same day, Robert was transferred to Petawawa. The whole incident is unclear but shows, nevertheless, that the internees, at the very least, were concerned about spies among their ranks.

...

A phenomenon readily detectable was the censorship to which the internees were subjected. Letters from family were intercepted and delivered. Mention of news from the outside world, including actions being taken by lawyers on behalf of internees, was removed from letters. The internees were not allowed to use terms such as ‘anti-fascist’ to describe themselves, nor were they allowed to refer to Hull as a ‘concentration camp’. 

Censorship was a regular part of military life during the war. Soldiers were required to be circumspect in describing their whereabouts or activities, and their communications both to and from were subject to censorship. Applied to the internees, however, censorship was just one more limitation of their civil rights, which provided dubious military benefits, at best. Sometimes, correspondents of internees were objects of investigation; this was especially the case for soldiers who were sons of the internees.

According to a Cabinet order of May, 1940, the federal government was responsible for social assistance provided by municipalities to the families of internees, but this did not mean much if municipalities refused to provide this assistance, or if the amounts were too little. The trust companies working for the Trustee of Enemy Properties froze assets of the internees and their families. The internees were not permitted visits by their families, always an object of contestation by the internees. Nonetheless, Jenny Freed did lead a delegation of wives, who hitchhiked from Montreal to the Hull prison, and caused quite a commotion when the men were able to talk to the women, who were standing outside the prison walls. 

In October, 1941, the authorities began permitting conjugal visits to Hull. John McNeil’s  wife from Winnipeg was the first to visit her husband. In November, 1941, other visits followed, and they soon become typical, even if not too intimate since the visits were limited to thirty minutes in the presence of guards. Visits from others were also controlled, including even one official visit from the Premier of Quebec, Adélard Godbout.

Godbout was allowed to meet Colonel Sherwood, commandant of the Ottawa  region, and Major Green, during a visit in Hull in October, 1941. While Godbout was permitted to inspect the quarters of the guards, the Army did not allow Godbout, accompanied by local politicians from Hull, inside the prison to visit the internees’ quarters. His only contact with the internees that was permitted was listening to a few songs sung by a choral group of the internees."

- Michael Martin, The Red Patch: Political Imprisonment in Hull, Quebec during World War 2. Self-published, 2007. p 159-160

[therealslimshakespeare]

Those Who Can || integrated Female Air Force series

Introductory part 1: Flintenweiber, or “Rifle Broads”.

Summary: The American War Effort had conceded to the enlistment and commissioning of women into the Air Force at semi-integrated status. Deemed a more reliable if not safer combat post, the going rank of officer in the Air Force was intended to secure fair treatment and combatant status for these women, as it had for their male counterparts. Like most things in war -or life if one is a woman- such recognition must be fought for.

Authors Note: this is an Au, obviously, and I intend for the de-segregation in the force to not be entirely full, in fact in some ways they would mirror that of the Tuskegee Red Tails where they were held back from many opportunities and placed at a disadvantage, to say the least. However, as this is primarily a POW fic that aspect only effects their reception into the Stalag and the timeline of their crashes.

Inspo: thanks to all of y’all who contributed with suggestions and advice on this fic. I want to say that I based a great deal of the brutal treatment and indignity heaped on these fictional OC’s on the true and horrific treatment of the Soviet Female Soldiers taken as POWs. Taking into consideration that American ties would give these OC’s some leverage, I have moderated these horrors if anything, however as I intend for these girls to be some of the first of their kind, they in many ways endure the brunt of the cruel initiation. If you’ve got any questions or suggestions about this, have at the inbox.

Warnings: 18+ for disturbing content. War, brutality, cruelty, and references to sexual violence. Specifics: a woman’s head is forcefully shaved, a woman is kicked to death, a dog turned loose, concentration camps, brief infighting between Soviet’s and Americans, past tense illusions to rape which are underplayed and may be consequently more disturbing to some. Quite angsty ok?? It’s women at war. Rampant misogyny by Nazis.

Familiar faces: Gale Cleven, Benny Demarco, John Brady, “Hambone” Hamilton

Original Characters: Lt. Maureen Kendeigh (bombardier), Lt. Colonel Ida Brady, Lt. Tallulah Smith 

If Maureen Kendeigh heard the word “degenerate” used one more time in regards to her profession, her sacrifice and skill, -she just might do something regrettable.

By this point she was ready to get off this cattle car and go back to talk with Interrogator Glasses about stupid and unnerving shit like why the clock in the mess hall at Thorpe Abbots had a broken arm. Her distressed inner monologue of “how did he know that??” at the time was preferred to this newest method of demoralization: death by aspersion and suspense.

It was nice to be back with the girls, ones she knew and ones from other squadrons. But that held a misfortune too, the fact that it was just the girls, still not a single male crew member in sight. Apparently the Gestapo and the Luftwaffe were having a spat over who got to keep them, these Flintenweiber: “Rifle Broads”.

In the meantime Maureen and her fellows got punted back and forth between the two institutions like unwanted stepchildren. First the horrible isolation but humane treatment of the Air Force interrogation cells. Then back to the prison where all bets were off and the hope of safety came from a herd-like defense of each other against the ever more erratic guards. In these holdings, if one of their members hadn’t been executed by a pistol to the temple by end of day, it was considered a successful defense by the whole. All other atrocity, indignity and assault were unbearable’s that required bearing for the time being until the Luftwaffe took them back.

And then handed them back over.

And on and on it went.

It was effective, Maureen gave them that, after each hosting by the Gestapo, the girls were softer, tenderized and more susceptible to any deal that might procure them a shred of honor and safety. Only Ida Brady, the most senior amongst them at the incomprehensible rank of Lt. Colonel, had held ranks together, spine of steel and bearing more terrifying than most men’s, she’d fought for every grueling respect of rank they had been afforded. Even if it landed them in harsher conditions, worse interrogations -anything to ensure that what happened to her girls were considered as war crimes against lawful combatants when the time came for justice.

But they’d been collecting the downed girls and holding them apart like prized anomalies while conflicting orders came in from Berlin, and while the Red Cross fussed regarding combatant status. Now they had a tidy number collected, well over twenty by the time Maureen saw Ida Brady pushed into the cell, having been downed with a significant portion of them after Munich.

But now they hadn’t seen Brady in over a day. Not since they’d been loaded on this rail car headed to god knows where by soldiers with the dreaded lightning bolts on their collars.

The SS.

With Brady missing, Maureen supposed that made her and Lieutenant Smith a leader of sorts. Most of her “leading” currently took the form of not responding to a single vile threat or taunt by the guards mingling amongst them in the ever rocking car. Ida would be proud of her emotionless detachment at one guard’s suggestion to let the dog loose and see who it chose to maul.

Lieutenant Smith -tender hearted Tallulah with the bronzed skin and knack with animals that rivaled Snow White’s- had made the cryptic observation in Maureen’s ear that she’d never known a dog could be trained away from the throat to go for the breasts instead.

As of last Sunday they now knew, and none of them were likely to forget.

“I’ll be faster next time,” Smith had mumbled in a simmering rage, “I’ll be faster. I’ll have my fist down that cur’s throat before they finish slipping the leash.”

It was a nice sentiment, would’ve been made more so if Maureen wasn’t so sure it would land dear Smith with a bullet in her head. Would be made more so if Sergeant Forsyth had lived from her injuries long enough to benefit from it. Lots of things would be made nicer by heavier coats and the presence of drinking water.

One of the new ones, a terrified little replacement who wore her ordeal on her face, made the rookie mistake of asking for a drink. She’d been given the predictable initiation of being pissed on by a guard in answer and now she bore her thirst as doggedly as the veterans.

When the train cars rolled to a halt, and the great door was hauled back, sprawling out before them appeared the most idyllic scenery one could ever hope for. A crystalline blue lake, dotted on its border with charming structures adorned with red tile roofs, a quaint church of the same, lush fields and sparkling water and deep forest for miles. Maureen did not think they would haul them so near a town only to execute them. But then what did she know?

Nothing, not even where she was.

When they had lined the girls up, some in worse shape than others and a motley collective group from various military branches, they hauled off Ida Brady to the head of the pack, her bruised face considerably more busted than when she’d been loaded on. Maureen could see her craning her neck as she was drug past, counting down her flyer girls, looking for any missing from the trip.

They were marched, four abreast and with guns at their backs, down a wide and well traversed road into town, past cottages on its outskirts with little garden plots and clothes blowing on the line. Maureen was reminded of the idyllic countryside she had landed in with her chute before being seized and hauled off. There were women and children in row boats on the lake and the path they took through the woods was more peaceful than ominous. A traitorous sort of hope began to bloom in Maureen’s heart.

That was dashed when the tree line broke and out before them stretched what seemed to be miles of wire. And beside it a sign, welcoming them to Ravensbrück -a concentration camp. A camp for civilians, a camp to never return from.

Their new guards were ready for them, smiles on their faces and whips in their hands. Among them were a few remarkable for their sex, they were women too -if women who enjoyed such craft could still be called that. And for all the horror inflicted on them by their male captors so far, there seemed to be a general presentment amongst the arriving girls that the finer arts of terror had not yet been endured.

Standing for hours in the infamous square inside the compound, roll call and registration took on a form of torture yet unheard of. Round and round it went, repetitions of ranks and serials over and over and each time they were met with two alternatives. Renounce the ranks and be admitted as civilians with no further targeted harassment. Or-

“If you insist on being special, we will be forced to make you special.” as one officer put it to Brady’s stone cold face. “Ask your Soviet compatriots, the ones who wanted to be special like you. They claimed to be officers too, and now they service officers in Buchenwald. They have not left their beds in months. Special, no?”

“I’m not ‘claiming’ a goddamn thing.” Brady would go round and round with them in turn and up and down the line was the echo of ranks and serials.

Nothing but ranks and serials.

The minute they dropped one or the other, they’d be freed from this standing purgatory, and they’d be as good as dead. They might wish it were so anyway, if the threat was carried out but they’d suffer as officers, with honor. Whatever that meant this far from home and any appreciation of it. A fresh batch of guards relieved the first and the banter continued, even through roll call of the general camp where a mass of the most miserable specters of female kind poured out of the huts and were made to await the call of their one single number.

A serial for a serial. Maureen would keep hers. By dawn she had kept it, as had all but one of her group, a navy nurse with a broken leg who’d succumbed to the allure of a chair.

Civilian status for a seat.

Maureen thought a drop of water might be her own undoing were it offered, but one look at Smith's cracked yet unmoving lips cemented her in her own determination. As did Ida Brady’s talk, straight back in front of her, trousers bloodied on the inseam but not a cringe to be discerned in her stance.

By morning roll call for the entire camp, their guards were tiring of them, or else thought a new method of persuasion more likely to bring success. Off they were marched to their new billet to “meet their Allies” and what Smith wouldn’t give to have her brass knuckles back when met with a hut full of Soviet soldiers. Females, if females could have shoulders like that. They were impressive women with murder on their faces at the intrusion of a new gang of American blowhards.

“Did you give up already?” The one with the most English taunted and for the first time since capture, Maureen saw Ida Brady’s spine bow backwards just a fraction -a pacifying gesture in the face of the Russian’s nose to nose staredown.

“Hey, we’re not here to make trouble.” she insisted, cool and stern. “Did you?”

“We’d rather die.”

Brady gave a sharp nod, “Then we’re Allies in that, too.”

“Your precious Red Cross won’t come for you here.” That likely verdict seemed to bring the woman satisfaction, and Maureen wondered how many months, weeks, hours of this grueling place it would take before she too took savage satisfaction in another’s misfortune. How long before all better impulse to be glad for others was stamped out and all that was left was crowing self preservation. “You are not the firsts. There were others, Americans, like you, they are now wearing the ink of field whores- or they are dead.”

“One might assume the same of your predecessors.” Brady pointed out mildy, and both groups shifted behind their leaders, ready and tense.

“Anyone who accepts-“ the Russian warned, “-we kill.”

With that incentive clear, a tentative peace was made, which included a few trying to fraternize, converse and share news. There was little that aligned to create any cohesive figure, despite their shared experiences and sufferings.

When night fell they were hauled out for roll call amongst the masses, and together after hours of waiting to be called upon, they answered with their ranks and serials, each in their own language. The Russian who had confronted Brady was beaten so badly she did not rise again after it. The guard left her lying there and asked Brady herself what her occupation was.

“Lt. Colonel in the United States Air Force.”

The unfortunate rookie who had so ill advisedly asked for water on the train stood beside Brady; and got a bullet to the head for her superior’s answer. What Colonel Brady thought of her judgment being given to another did not show, her face white and her lips sealed, only the speckle of blood on her profile stood in stark relief in the early morning.

“Kneel.” a very shiny Luger barrel was pressed, still smoking to Brady’s temple.

She did so, braced for the inevitable execution. A soldier's death, it’s what they’d signed up for. The Kommandant waved over one of the female guards and spoke to her in German. She took off at a run to one of the buildings with a bright smile, and Ida Brady stayed kneeling, the splattered brains of the unfortunate dripping out of her hair and into the leather of her jacket, a mockery of her own upcoming fate.

The female guard returned with scissors. “Your poor hair, so pretty. Now it is ruined.” the Kommandant bemoaned, gloved fingers sliding though Brady’s wet tresses, “See what happens to beauty when you pervert the order of things? Now it must be sacrificed. Perhaps then you will see how ugly you are become.”

Maureen felt Smith’s restraining arm before she had even registered her impulse to charge forward, caught about the middle she strained against her friend's surprising strength and in the end was forced thusly to keep ranks and watch with the rest as the Nazis fucks scalped the Colonel of her femininity with a pair of sheep shears.

Dribbling blood down her face and shaking with rage, Ida was in better shape than her Russian counterpart. When her ordeal was over, she rose again, even if she swayed dangerously upon doing so.

And when asked, she had her serial at the ready.

Crowded back into the hut, Maureen and Smith watched the Russians hopelessly fuss over their insensible leader, knowing all too well how likely it might be that they could be found doing the same tomorrow, in a week’s time, who knew. For now, Brady sank down against the wall with the rest of them, the scowl of her formidable brows deflecting any potential commiserations for her battery.

When the navy nurse was pushed into their hut next evening, a dead silence greeted her. One of the Soviets, a sniper by her markings, came up to her and unceremoniously tore open her shirt. If the girls had doubted the Russian’s warning about “wearing the ink of field whores” upon their skin as mere hyperbole, such speculation was removed. It was a dreadful tattoo, large and damning as was the reaction it elicited amongst the servicewomen.

By the end of the night there were two dead bodies on the hut floor. And it didn’t seem to matter who had killed which. One had died for honor, the other for giving it up. And in the end? Where was this ephemeral honor? Ida Brady could only find it in the tense faces of her girls, lining the room from their places along the wall, waiting for another roll call or worse.

But in war, as in peace, sometimes the dead sent favors and in this instance it came to them with screams of:“Amerikaner Soldat!” in the middle of the night. They were marched out to the square and stood to attention once more in the sweep of the spotlight, all the while were shouts of “Amerikaner Soldat!”

All they knew was the bitter waiting in the gray dawn chill and the choking anticipation of some sick, final joke, or some methodical mass execution. Maureen wished she could knock her shoulder into Ida’s one last time and tell her she’d been a rock -she was a rock- but Brady stood there in front alone, as was her privilege and her curse. Talullah Smith would not meet Maureen’s side eyed glance for a farewell. Maureen wished she had less of a roar inside her, wished she could step off calmly into whatever was on the other side but the idea was repulsive, even after all she’d endured, and she looked about in vain for some semblance of the same revolt on her fellow’s faces.

What came instead was the dreaded whistles and the order to march. They were marched right out of the gates and down the idyllic lane they’d been marched up days ago, back through town to the railway station. There the soldiers herded them back up into a cattle car that smelled more of death than livestock, and then the train pulled away, hurtling south -perhaps the only one to do so with living cargo.

There were no guards inside the car, only the cramped space to keep them docile and the lack of promise that the great door would ever grind open again.

“The hell do you think happened?” Maureen hissed to Ida, finding her superior propped up in the corner in a suspiciously casual pose that she suspected hid a limp and unfathomable fatigue.

“Haven’t got a clue, Kendeigh.”

“Maybe someone got word out.” Maureen suggested, thinking of their predecessors, thinking of the useful dead.

“Or we’re headed to a nice rural dumping ground.” was all Ida would speculate. “Or brothels.” she added after a long minute.

Maureen chewed her cheek and kept peering out the slats at the beautiful countryside flashing past. “Well, at least they’ve ensured you’ll be least wanted of the bunch at such an establishment.” she joked and watched with the careful precision of a trained bombardier as her mean joke landed and Ida Brady’s legendary eyebrow ticked up in something that might have been amused disbelief, had she any energy left for such a display.

“Pistol whipped in the mouth and still no respect for rank, Kendeigh.” Brady observed and it was so like her brother John’s flat lined humor that Mauren’s heart throbbed with something alarmingly akin to sentimentally. For John Brady -and all the other lucky souls still at Thorpe Abbots, God willing. “I’m not laying on any damn beds for them.” Brady suddenly broke the silence again in a low voice, one Maureen knew was meant between officers only.

She pitched her head closer in agreement. “Me either.”

“I don’t care if they shoot me first,” Ida went on, as if reciting it to herself, “-and I don’t care if they shoot all of you first. I’m not going to.”

“Wouldn’t want you to.” Maureen agreed again, vacillating briefly in her intent before proceeding to say, “That Sergeant -she wasn’t your fault. The nurse either.”

“I know that Lieutenant.”

“I know you know,” Maureen muttured, “but some stuff bears repeating. Places like these, we’re liable to lose our bearings without a little repetition.”

“Mm.”

Maureen shuffled beside her and wracked her brain for pleasant conversation, something besides the Soviet girls they’d abandoned and the skeletons they’d seen at Ravensbrück. “Ya know,” she remarked tiredly, “if someone in here’s hydrated enough to pee, I might be ready to drink it.”

Brady slowly turned from her view out the slats to give Maureen a blank faced stare. “Should I make an announcement or are you hoping to keep that between us?”

“Oh hell, Colonel,” Maureen grinned, mischief bubbling to the surface at the first chance, “I wouldn’t trust anyone else but you, liable to get stds from this lot.”

“Kendeigh.” Ida hissed warningly but there was that disbelieving wobble to her stern mouth, “That’s not funny -not with where we’ve come from.”

“It kinda is.”

“It’s not.”

“It is- a little. Admit it, a little.”

“It’s not.” And still her cheeks were pink with suppressed amusement, just like John’s got when Maureen pressed him on a dig about basic training.

“You sure you’re ok?” she ventured again, eyeing Brady’s extensive injuries visible above her clothes.

“Yeah?” Ida looked nonplussed, “I mean -what’re you ranking as ok, these days, Lt. Kendeigh?

“It’s just,” Maureen bit her own busted tongue briefly as a spur to get it out,

“-you’re bleeding a lot, Ida. Couldn’t help but notice.”

Ida Brady didn’t even glance down at her trousers or make a motion to feel her lacerated scalp, instead she answered in the same, almost bored way she always did, “Yeah, Candy, it’s called being a good Catholic.”

Maureen blinked. “Oh. Oh Shit.”

“You know, maybe some of you girls had the right of it,” Ida actually winced before staring back out the slats, “go off and do it ahead, in peacetime. But here I am, twenty seven and as sacrosanct as the Virgin Mary, dropping into occupied territory. What could go wrong!” To her credit, her snort was wonderfully genuine.

Maureen kept after her, “You signed up to fight, to get fought against. We all did -never this.”

“Mm, well, couldn’t choose a better gang to get put down with.” Brady smiled, begrudgingly raising an imaginary glass of her own to Maureen’s already raised one.

“To bitches who bite back.” Maureen toasted.

“To bitches who bite back.”

——————————————————-

Two cases of MIA troubled John Brady the most: Egan, who he had seen jump first after their dispute, and Maureen Kendeigh who he had learned from Blakely had jumped over Bremman. That’s two flyers who should’ve been here by now, before him even, in the case of Kendeigh, and yet they weren’t.

He went round and round the argument with Cleven and Crank and Hambone, all three downed from separate missions yet here together - proving his point. Cleven held staunchly to the belief they were being kept segregated, as befitted their ranks and sex. They could be one sector apart and not hear of them. It was the only hopeful response, it was a leader’s response. There had been women downed before Kendeigh, not many but a few of the escort fighters, and none of them had showed either. Brady wasn’t sure that was a good sign at all.

“So where’s Egan then?” he’d always hit back with, “They mistake his shoulders’ for a dame’s?”

“I dunno John.” Cleven would reply with that newly blank gaze of his somehow enhanced by the twin cuts on his cheeks.

Demarco took Brady aside when he arrived to tell him that whatever had happened to Cleven in interrogation wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t ethical. Those cheek scars weren’t both due to flack. Like a dog with a bone, Brady took this already suspected information about his stoic superior and ran with it, pointing out hotly to an uninterested Demarco, “if it’s happened to Cleven, what about them?”

“What can we do about it?” Was Cleven’s demand that always wrapped up the little circular arguments as they sat huddled in their hut. “Red Cross knows they’re not here, no colored flyers either. They know where they are. What can we do besides ask after them?”

He was right, there wasn’t anything, but still, like a presentiment hung over him, Brady found himself leaning on the wire each time a new batch was marched in, counting heads and scanning faces.

“Ida hasn’t even been shot down, John.” Crank kindly reminded again and again.

“As of two weeks ago.” John snapped.

As of two weeks, and then as of three, and then it became four and -where the hell was Kendeigh? Gale had stopped arguing when the subject came up, apparent but impotent fury slowly racking his wiry frame, face gone wane already above his grimey fleece collar. Winter wasn’t even here and they were fading.

And then it happened, what John had been waiting by the fence for, and boy was there a crush at the wire to see them marched in when they came up the muddy enclosure through the gates.

“The fuck are they bringing the women here for?”

“They don’t belong in here, bastards!”

“Ar’those Brady’s Banshees?”

“They’re not gonna hold ‘em here are they?”

Like he’d been reanimated by the presence of a cause, Major Cleven cut his way through the rabble to the front, addressing the German officer escorting them.

“Hey, hey you can’t bring them in here. They’re women, they belong in their own section.”

“If they are women,” the Commandant pointed out, not unkindly, “then perhaps your country should have recognized that before enlisting them? They belong here.”

Cleven shook his head, vehement in his conventions and rules, “It’s not right, you know it’s not.”

“Then tell your Lt. Colonel to stop fighting for combatant status.” he jerked his chin towards Ida Brady and Gale’s eyes widened at her injuries and tufted hair, “The SS had them tucked away at our most prestigious female camp. But they would not accept. They want to be men.”

“Combatants!” Gale argued the point Ida had been making since her feet touched occupied soul.

John Brady yanked his arm, whispering urgently in his ear, “She’s makin’ sign to me, torture, she says. Don’t fight it, Buck.”

Cleven searched the battered faces, some he knew like Ida, T.Smith and Maureen, and some from other squadrons, -ones who must’ve been damned unlucky to get captured considering their safer postings.

“If it can happen to you it c-“ John Brady was a bit of a pain in the ass, Cleven had found, but he had never found him to be wrong.

“Roger, loud and clear, captain.” Cleven warned him his point was made with a bite in his own tone.

“Have we come to an understanding?” The Commandant, amused by the fluster his female charges had caused, it was ample proof that women could never be fully integrated, not even by a society so pervertedly equal as the American’s. “Ja? Sehr gut. It wasn’t like you had a choice anyway, was it?

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed. Feedback is a writer’s life blood, let me hear your thoughts and screams, they mean so much to me.

We have so many prompts already thrown around for this AU, I can’t wait to explore them, and I welcome any more if you have them.

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[edutainer2022]

Waves at @janetm74 with the text. I have no idea if it's going anywhere, but the idea haunted me to be put out there. Mentions of murder and torture, because Bereznik. Colonel Casey gets some disturbing news.

COUP DE GRÂCE

Colonel Casey leaned deeper into her office chair, a heavy weight settling in her chest, as a holographic grid of data points, crimescene photos, some more gruesome than others, and interconnected arrows was rotating in the middle of the room. Her branch wasn't even the law enforcement arm of GDF per se, so the fact this has been brought to her attention was alarming in and of itself. More alarming still was the number of murders in the span of several months - 19 in total.

There was frustratingly little in the victims' profiles to suggest a pattern - different ages, genders, nationalities, appearances, different countries of residence, different social backgrounds. Different professions too - some former or serving GDF, some civilians - engineers, medics, computer scientists, independent contractors. The GDF officers could be maybe loosely placed as stationed in Europe at some point, but that covered only half of the sample. Yet the pattern was there. Somebody of the GDF best and brightest in counter terrorism division or special ops, figured it out. That's why Colonel Casey was contacted. The assumption was still slim to the naked eye, but the implications made her blood run cold. She forced her breathing to even out, thinking fondly of her ginger spacebound godson - John wouldn't have taken this long to figure out and calculate the pattern. The boy was a patented genius. She also wished none of Jeff's kids, she loved so dearly, would ever have to know about it - the kind of evil that still walked the earth and lurked in the shadows.

The murders were vicious - the victims were held captive and brutalized before they were allowed to die. The MO clearly spoke of a maniac, unhinged and cruel, and hungry for control. It was deduced with some effort that while none of the victims shared more than a handful of common traits, or crossed paths to generate veryfiable connections, at some point all of them dropped off of social media for different periods of time. When they next reoccured - most looked notably changed, gaunt, as if having undergone an exhausting illness. The interviews with families yielded little - absolutely noone mentioned that gap in social media presence or feigned ignorance when pressed.

The victims among different GDF officers were easier to counter reference against more classified databases. That's where Colonel Casey was brought in. The results had her grip the armrests of her chair till her knuckles popped. There were no traceable records, because the GDF and World Council chose not to keep any mention above counter of a POW gulag smack in the middle of the flourishing European continent for a very diplomatic reason of there officially having never been a war. All those years later, someone was methodically tracking, capturing and brutally murdering the survivors of a liberated prisoner camp in Bereznik.

Val Casey felt her head spin from strain and allowed her eyes to rest for a briefest moment. On the backdrop of memory was her oldest friend Jeff's face, contorted with fury and pain, towering and yelling at a stammering World President for cowardly evasion and hypocrisy. Jeff's face again, a picture of pure agony, as he was clutching a scrawny lifeless figure in tattered bloody fatigues to his chest and weeping. She didn't keep track if all the guards and officers of the compound were ever rounded up. Their mission was as black ops as it got - get in, extract, get out. Fast. Were they caught behind Bereznik border, the World Council would feign ignorance and give them up to be tried by the local authorities for an act of war. She forced herself to look back at the holoscreen again and shuddered - among the pictures of victims who made it out of hell and survived unspeakable atrocities, only to succumb to a cruel and vindictive hand, was clearly slotted a place for one more. The crown jewel of whatever vendetta the vile mind of a psychopath was acting out. Humanity's brightest beacon of Hope. Scott Tracy.

Colonel Casey knew her first order of business should have probably been shutting IR operations down immediately and ordering the boys to stay confined on the island, under Kayo's protection. She wasn't naive enough to hope the maniac, whoever he was, would not resort to the surest way to lure his designated victim out - a captured brother or two. But she also knew her eldest godson enough to know it would be a loosing battle to try and have him stay put for his own safety. It hasn't worked so far on any other occasions. She was also weary to even bring the subject of the imposed grounding up and stir the memories of hell. The profiling team dismissed, she reached for a secure comm unit in a locked drawer and dialed the only viable number there:

- Lord Hugh? I need to meet with you and Kyrano asap. The usual place. Off record.

[thedeviltohisangel]

Ugh the most recent fic of Cass and John 😭 I just know that even when she tells John, he’s going to be so understanding. She went through it alone to get back to him. Also the snippet of her with them in the POW!? I’m so excited

(in reference to Cass telling John about her miscarriage)

When she tells him, it is probably the first time she has ever said it out loud to anyone. And it feels slightly freeing to not have to bear that burden alone anymore.

I can imagine is very understanding that it was never the right time or place for her to tell him. That so much was going on and her health was the last thing on her mind (and don't worry the notion that she was so distraught over him that it impacted her health angers him greatly). But I think this gives them the opportunity to grieve the loss properly because they are together.

I also think John takes a moment alone to think of what could have been and adds it to the list of things the universe took from him. He probably tells Gale next time he sees him.

And yes! Cass in POW camp with John will be so very good. I cannot wait for us all to share in it together!

Send in any camp/blurb asks you guys have or if you have any other q's about Cass and John's journey to parenthood.

[stillunusual]

Meanwhile in American zionist clownland…. Ben Shapiro is a smooth-brained conservative pundit who sounds like Kermit the Frog and has spent his entire life trying to achieve peak stupidity. He's also a fanatical zionist, and justifies his unquestioning support for Israel with profound statements like: "Settlements rock! Israelis like to build - Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage"….

In January 2024, after a high profile visit to the Auschwitz Memorial Museum with Elon Musk, he posted a video in which he said that Jews, Roma, Russian soldiers and homosexuals were killed there, but failed to mention the Polish victims.

Although Auschwitz-Birkenau eventually became an extermination centre in which nearly a million Jews were murdered, the Germans created the camp in 1940 initially for the purpose of interning Polish slavic prisoners, who made up the majority of the inmates until 1942.

According to the Auschwitz Memorial Museum, at least 1.1 million of the 1.3 million people who were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau died there.

900,000 Jews were murdered in the gas chambers immediately on arrival at the camp.

Of the 400,000 people who were registered as inmates, more than 50% did not survive.

They included 100,000 Jews, 70,000 Polish slavs, 21,000 Roma, 14,000 Soviet POWs and more than 10,000 prisoners of other nationalities, who died as a result of executions, medical experiments, starvation, brutality and disease.

Nobody knows how many LGBT people were deported to Auschwitz or died there, but only a tiny number were sent to the camp specifically for being gay. It's known that at least 77 men with pink triangles were imprisoned in Auschwitz and some scholars speak of up to 140 prisoners persecuted for their sexual orientation.

During their visit, Musk and Shapiro laid a wreath at the reconstructed "wall of death" next to Block 11, where SS men shot several thousand people, nearly all of whom were ethnically Polish - both Auschwitz prisoners and people who had been sent to the camp specifically to be executed, mainly for resistance activities.

It's amazing how often the camp's second largest victim group get erased from Western historical memory, but at least Shapiro didn't refer to Auschwitz as a "Polish concentration camp"….