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precious-little-scoundrel · 1 month

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Job Wanted: Bullshit Detector

Circa: April, 1944

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until he remembered her.

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

But now he thought of her.

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

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

“Sanchez.”

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

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

“Seems to be. She’s in with Smith.”

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

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

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

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

“Good.”

“Smith likes her.”

“Lu likes everyone.”

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

“Most everyone.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ida?”

“The colonel, yeah.”

“Yeah.”

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

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

“What?”

“You told her that?”

“Told her what?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Because you were full of hot air.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“She sick?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes.” he defends.

“Poor job of it.”

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

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

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

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

“You don’t think I’m the rat?”

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

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

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

“Don’t play dumb.”

“Don’t play at insubordination, Lieutenant.”

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

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

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

“You’d have lied to her?”

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

“She’s our colonel-“

“Not mine!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They’ll hate it.”

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

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

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

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

“Yeah?” He asked her to accept.

“Sir.” she nodded.

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

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

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

💋 Hope you enjoyed! Feedback is a writer’s lifeblood, please feel free to scream in comments or the inbox, I love it and wanna hear it all. Trust me, nothing is “too dumb”. Your thoughts mean the world to me.

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precious-little-scoundrel · 7 months

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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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