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Fire On Fire: Chapter 1

(Chapter 2) Summary: With WWII raging across the European Theatre, OSS agent Alix "Pyro" Martinelli and paratrooper Joe Liebgott are forced to navigate their star-crossed romance at the worst possible time. With the knowledge that one or both of them could end up dead before the war's end, will their secret love survive the horrors that await them or break under the pressure?

Simultaneously, as he prepares to send her into enemy territory, first-time case officer/handler Lewis Nixon struggles to shoulder the ever-present fear that the agent he's come to see as his little sister may not make it back alive.

A/N: Here it is!! Y'all know the drill lol, everything BoB is strictly based on the miniseries & my own headcanons, not the real-life ppl. Also pls be nice to me, this is the first thing I've written since like 2018-2019. It'll get better hopefully lol. (And yes, I'm making y'all wait for that coveted first interaction between Lieb x Alix lol bc I'm evil) 💖

Contemporary: June 3rd, 1944. Aldbourne, England.

The most important ally in a spy's life is their case officer, also known as their handler, and for some reason, Alix’s seemed determined to get her killed before she ever set foot in a war zone.

"It wasn't a suggestion, Martinelli, it was an order. You’ve been sparring with your dominant hand all day. Switch hands."

Alix barely had time to fumble her weapon from her belt before Lieutenant Nixon came at her face with a knife.

"Shit!"

She ducked as it sailed over her head but managed to pop back up just in time to block an incoming punch with her right forearm.

"Christ," Alix griped, swiping at Nixon with the knife in her left hand, grazing his arm with the flat of the blade. "A little warning would've been nice, y'know!"

"Oh I'm sorry," the intelligence officer remarked snidely, stepping out of her reach to avoid another slash. "Did you think the Krauts would send you a personal invitation?"

The younger agent didn’t answer, instead aiming a kick straight at Nixon's stomach. She was shorter than him by a good 6 inches even in boots but her legs were still just long enough to reach him.

The kick was hard enough to connect but gentle enough not to hurt too much, more of a tap than a true kick.

“Weak form,” Nixon called out, although his slight stumble backwards betrayed him.

She knew he was deliberately trying to piss her off so she’d make more mistakes.

He always said “Anger makes you stupid, stupid gets you killed.”

Nixon recovered quickly from the kick, dodging her attempt at a stab and returning one of his own, easily tapping her arm with the dull side of the blade.

“Too slow.”

Yeah? She cocked a perfectly manicured eyebrow. We’ll see about that.

On a whim, Alix faked a punch to Nixon’s left. It was a gamble but it worked. He fell for her ruse just like she’d hoped and as his focus shifted to blocking his left side, she was able to disarm him with a swift kick to the right, knocking the knife out of his hand and into the grass somewhere.

She put her hands on her hips and grinned, panting. That was the quickest disarm she'd done all day and she'd managed it using her non-dominant hand and after hours of non-stop physical training, no less.

Not bad for one of Director Donovan’s “glorious amateurs”, she mused.

Watching her superior fishing around in the pasture for his lost weapon was kind of cathartic, Alix thought to herself with a stifled laugh. Perhaps it was just schadenfreude but it felt nice to see him be the one to struggle for once.

Ever since the first day he’d been assigned as her handler two years ago, Lieutenant Nixon had made it his personal business to make her life a living hell.

She had tried to be cordial to him but he wanted nothing to do with her, even going so far as to only refer to her as “Agent” or “Martinelli”. He had run her ragged during OSS training, ruthlessly drilling her on everything from close-combat and weapon-handling to enduring an interrogation every day for a full three weeks.

Nothing was ever good enough for him; he could always find something to criticize. He expected her to commit written information to memory practically the second she received it and he wasn’t shy about quizzing her at random on everything from poisons to arteries to conversational French.

She thought he might loosen up after her graduation from the OSS program, once he’d seen that she had transformed from a society girl into a capable agent who didn’t need her supervisor breathing down her neck, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

He still saw her as the youngest and smallest trainee that needed constant supervision and strict discipline for even the most minor of infractions.

Getting transferred to England for further training with their Special Operations Executive had been a welcome change of pace. Her handler had gone back to Toccoa, Georgia with the Airborne and she finally felt like she could breathe again.

Life with the SOE wasn’t nearly as stressful because it was a well-established organization and her superior officers there were much more laidback. She felt secure in her training and confident in her skills. But her relaxation was short-lived because after a year, the Airborne had transferred too and with them came her Draconian handler and a host of new trials to complete. Joy.

Despite Alix’s lifelong fear of heights, even completing her jump-training wasn’t as difficult as earning Lewis Nixon’s approval, and that was really saying something.

For whatever reason, the intelligence officer seemed determined to break her but the young OSS agent was even more determined to succeed.

No matter how hard he pushed her, she always pushed right back. The sight of an intimidating-looking officer glaring down at a petite woman 9 years younger and half a foot shorter than him like she was the Devil Incarnate after a particular bout of sass often provided endless entertainment for troopers passing by the training ground and Alix herself would've found it hilarious if she wasn't on the receiving end of said glare.

Digging her red-painted nails into her palms with frustration, Alix marched over to her handler and cleared her throat expectantly.

The Lieutenant looked up from his field notebook and cocked a bushy eyebrow.

“Did you want something, Agent?”

Alix’s dark eyes narrowed. Nixon’s air of deliberate nonchalance was really pushing her buttons and he knew it. The more heated she got, the colder he would get, but she could feel her temper bubbling just under the surface anyway.

“I have a name, you know,” she snapped. “It’s Alix.”

“I don’t care. You’re an assignment, not my friend. Now, what do you want?”

Alright, that’s it.

“Well number one, for you to stop treating me like a fucking child!”

“Then stop acting like one,” was the dismissive reply.

“Excuse me?!”

“You heard me. You’re getting complacent. You’re going to be in extremely close-quarters with highly-skilled German officers, alone. If you make even the slightest mistake, if you're off by even a second, they’re going to eat you alive.”

“I’m a Sparrow,” she shot back. “A trained assassin. I’d like to see them try.”

“You’re also what, 5’4” and a hundred-something pounds soaking wet? Some threat! If they disarm you, it's game over."

Alix seethed, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring daggers at her superior.

“I graduated top of my class. You’ve seen me fight! You know I’m as effective with a weapon as I am without one!”

“With your right hand, maybe, but what if it’s restrained and you have to use your left?"

“You worry too much.”

“You don’t worry enough. You’re not strong enough to be effective against highly-trained soldiers without a weapon. Here, throw a punch with your left, I’ll show you what I mean.”

Alix’s dark eyes narrowed and she gave a sarcastic smile.

“It would be my pleasure, sir.”

She swung a long left-hook. Her knuckles had just grazed his jaw when he grabbed her wrist.

Using her own body’s momentum against her, he stepped in, hooking his arm under her armpit and easily flipping her over his shoulder onto the ground with a hard thud.

“Fuck!” Alix coughed out, the breath forcibly knocked from her lungs due to the sudden impact. Laying on her back, she was winded and her muscles were burning but her mind was racing. She was down but not out.

Catching her breath, she shifted into a crouching position. Now she was seeing red.

Nixon meanwhile, was resting on his laurels.

“See,” he announced from above with a smug, almost irritatingly paternal air. “What did I tell you? You’re not as effective unarmed. You need to train mo-”

THUMP!

Swinging her leg out in one fluid motion, Alix had caught his ankle, using a Tiger-Tail leg sweep to swipe her handler’s legs out from under him, bringing him crashing down next to her with a string of muttered curses.

“Doesn’t look like you’re that effective unarmed either, sir,” she said with a sarcastically-bright smile. “Maybe you should train more.”

The Lieutenant opened his mouth defensively, about to respond, but he was cut off by the sound of tires on the grass behind them.

Glancing up at the noise, Alix felt relief wash over her at the sight of Sergeant Bull Randleman and Lieutenant Winters crossing the field toward them in a Jeep. If anybody could temper Lewis Nixon’s attitude, it was those two.

The dark-haired lieutenant got off the ground, dusting off his uniform. Turning to Alix, he offered her a hand but she gave him a scathing look that clearly said “I don’t want your damn help” so he retracted it with a shrug.

Suit yourself.

Inwardly groaning at her sore muscles, Alix gritted her teeth and silently dragged herself to her feet. She was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing her struggle.

As long as I'm still breathing, I'm fucking fine.

As the two officers approached, both she and Nixon saluted them.

“That was a damn near perfect takedown you just did,” Bull exclaimed with brotherly pride, chomping on the end of his trademark cigar as he and Winters approached. “And some disarm too! We saw when we was passin’ by earlier! You're some kinda killer now, huh, Pyro?”

“After two years of training, I sure hope so!” she chirped, grinning at the nickname. The memory of its origin always made her laugh.

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A year earlier: January 1944. Aldbourne, England.

On her first day training for her cover as a combat nurse with Easy, she’d gotten into an explosive argument with some guy named Cobb over a particularly sexist series of comments he’d made while cornering her outside, after one of Welsh’s riveting lectures on map-reading.

“What’s a pretty thing like you doing here anyway?” he’d asked, looking her up and down with a wolfish smirk. “War's no place for a woman like you, sweetheart.”

“I'm doing my part, same as you," she’d answered coolly. “And just for the record, ‘a woman’s place’ is wherever the hell she wants to be.”

With a bright, "Fuck you" smile, she had just pushed past him to be on her way when she distinctly heard him grumble “Jeez, learn to take a compliment, bitch.”

The shouting match that followed quickly escalated into a physical brawl the moment the phrase “all bust, no brains” came out of his mouth. The fight only ended minutes later when a still-cursing Alix was physically dragged off of a barely-conscious Cobb by Bull, who didn’t want the new girl committing murder on her first day.

“Well ain’t you a little firecracker!” Bull had remarked, shaking his head in amusement.

And thus, the nickname Pyro was born.

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Contemporary: June 3rd, 1944. Aldbourne, England.

“So what are your thoughts, Nix?” Winters inquired. “You’re her handler, after all. Is she ready?”

There was a short silence and Alix held her breath. What if he lies and tells Dick I’m terrible? What if I get kicked off the mission and the whole Sparrow program never gets off the ground because of me? What if-

“It wasn’t a bad session—” Nixon started after a minute of thought and Alix exhaled.

Thank God.

“—But her disarm could’ve been faster. Her shooting is fine with her right hand but she can’t make a left-handed headshot worth a damn, let alone in the time frame she needs to.”

“Well,” Bull drawled matter-of-factly. “considerin’ it’s her left hand she’s workin’ with and ‘s far as we know, she ain’t left-handed, I reckon just bein’ able to hit the target is somethin’. She's somethin' to see shootin' with her right though! Kill-shots every time."

Winters nodded in silent agreement, making some small notations on the clipboard he was carrying before looking over at Nixon, green eyes meeting black.

“Mind if I have a word with you, Lew? In private?” he asked, gesturing for them to take a short walk back to the Jeep and the dark-haired man shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets.

“Sure thing, Dick.”

He gave a curt nod to Alix and a strained smile to Bull before the two men started off.

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“Now, far be it from me to tell you how to run things,” Winters began tentatively once they had arrived at the car. “But don’t you think you’re being just a bit too harsh on her?”

He leaned against the Jeep, giving his friend a scrutinizing look.

“I mean, did you really expect her to be able to make a head-shot with her non-dominant hand? Can you even make that kind of shot with your left hand, Nix, let alone in under 5 seconds?”

"No but I’m also not the one who’s going to be locked in a room every other night, up close and personal, with members of the SS, the Gestapo, or God knows who else,” Nixon countered, beginning to pace. “She needs to be prepared, goddamn it.”

Dick frowned as he watched his best friend. He’d never seen Lew this anxious before. He opened his mouth to respond but before he could get the words out, his friend cut him off.

“There’s no room for mistakes, Dick,” Nixon insisted, his voice rising. “She’s good, really good, but she has to be the best or she's going to get herself killed out there!"

“She is the best or she wouldn’t have been recruited in the first place,” Winters replied evenly.

“We all know that Soviet Swallows are not recruited at random and neither are American Sparrows. She was chosen because she can handle it.”

Nixon shook his head.

“What if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not,” the redhead said bracingly. “She’s been training non-stop for two years, in everything from poison usage to intelligence-gathering, seduction to pickpocketing. Hell Nix, you just flipped her onto the ground and she still managed to take you out too in a matter of seconds! She’s a crack-shot and speaks how many foreign languages now?”

“Three,” the dark-haired man conceded. “Italian, French, and Russian.”

“Exactly. And on top of it, she has the smartest man I know as her handler. Even if I didn’t have faith in her, which I do, I have faith in you and your abilities and so does Bill Donovan or he wouldn’t have personally assigned you to such a new program.”

Nixon rubbed the back of his neck worriedly, his mouth set in a hard line.

A part of him knew that Dick was right— all of the relentless pressure he’d put on her had paid off because Alix really was one of the best to come out of the OSS but still, that nagging fear just wouldn't leave him alone. He had a bad feeling about all this.

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2 Years Earlier: June 1942. Washington DC, USA.

He thought back to his first briefing on agent handling with the OSS two years earlier. He had been among a group of about eight officers called to OSS headquarters for a personal conference with the director, Bill Donovan himself.

Once all of the handshaking and small-talk had died down, everyone spread out and took their seats, an expectant hush falling over the small crowd.

“Gentlemen,” Donovan began, his gravelly voice piercing the thick air. “There are whispers in the intelligence community that the Russians are developing a new program.”

Nixon shifted uncomfortably in his chair, struggling to concentrate. It was stiflingly hot in his uniform and the air conditioner in the office had stopped working, much to everyone’s chagrin. He could feel the sweat dripping down his back and he grimaced. This better be good.

“We have received Intel from our sources in Russia that strongly confirms the use of so-called ‘Soviet Swallows’-”

“Like the bird, sir?” the officer across from Nixon piped up and Donovan let out an exasperated sigh.

“Yes, like the bird, son. These Russian Swallows are part of a new program utilizing female spies who are highly trained and tasked with infiltrating and incapacitating the enemy. They combine the deadliness and discipline of a soldier with the glamour and grace of a movie star. Now, our objective is to get ahead of them. The president has tasked us here at the OSS with creating a similar program, known as the Sparrow Program, and we need capable officers like yourselves to lead it. If all goes well, these young ladies I am assigning you today will be the very future of American espionage.”

The men in the room all began to exchange curious glances. The meeting itself had been scheduled for some time but all of the information about it had been considered Classified, so nobody had known how significant the project actually was. The nervousness and excitement in the room was palpable.

“The files that I am handing out to you now, gentlemen, are our first class of agents. Each of them have been carefully selected from the top schools and families across the country. They are the best and brightest that the United States has to offer. You have all been assigned one agent and as her handler, you will be personally responsible for her from today onward. You will be training her, managing her operations, arranging drops and meetings with Resistance contacts, processing the Intel she brings you so it can be passed up the ladder, and you will be her lifeline if anything, God forbid, goes wrong.”

There was a beat of uncomfortable silence before he added brightly, “But no pressure."

Nixon made a bitter noise in the back of his throat and sipped the cup of black coffee he’d gotten from the lobby.

Oh yeah, he thought cynically. No pressure at all.

"Now when I read off your name, raise your hand and my assistant will present you with the file of your first operative. I will be available to answer any questions, should you have them. First up...Atkins!"

Nixon stared straight ahead, past the officer sitting across from him, out the window, to the treeline as he waited for his name to be called.

Great, the lieutenant mused bitterly. I get to be responsible for someone else's life now too. Because I'm doing so well managing my own.

Once the folders had all been handed out, the director began to circle the room, periodically answering questions as they were asked. Lieutenant Nixon let the file sit closed on the table for a minute, just staring at it, as he mentally prepared himself to look into the face of the person he would be sending into enemy territory.

Steeling himself, he reached for the folder and opened it, glancing inside before immediately slamming it shut.

The girl looked so young in her photo, barely 21, and for a split-second, in her glossy black curls and dark eyes, he saw his baby sister, Blanche smiling back at him. He suddenly felt ill.

"Ah, you got Miss Martinelli," Donovan said, suddenly appearing over his shoulder as if sensing his doubts. "Alix is a charming girl. Quite a rebellious streak no doubt, but one of our most promising recruits. A swan among sparrows, if you will. Educated at St. Mary’s-- one of the finest finishing schools in the country, I might add-- and top of her class in our training facility as well. Her father, Emilio, is a good friend of mine. He's in oil."

Nixon gave a half-smile, hoping he looked convincing and interested. He had no idea who Emilio Martinelli was nor did he care. Rubbing elbows with other rich people was his mother's department, not his.

Casting one more glance at the folder, he took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to rid himself of the violent wave of nausea that hit him relentlessly.

From the moment he saw the photo, it had dawned on him just how easily the girl in the folder could have been his sister and now it wouldn’t leave his mind. She was just like Blanche in almost every way. This was somebody's little sister, no doubt. And how could he send his little sister to die? He couldn’t.

Donovan had just turned to move on to the next officer when at the last minute, Nixon caught him by the sleeve.

“Sir,” he begged, his voice low. "Not her. Anyone but her. Please.”

The director’s brow furrowed.

“Son, I'm afraid everything's already been arranged. There's no backing out now."

The younger man quailed.

What was he supposed to do? Keep pleading? Tell the director he couldn’t take on the recruit because he couldn’t look her in the face without seeing his baby sister? That was exactly what he did.

To his relief, Donovan didn't laugh. Instead, he put a bracing hand on the lieutenant's shoulder.

“You say she reminds you of your sister back home, right Lieutenant?”

“Yes sir.”

“Then protect her like you’d protect your sister. Keep her alive.”

“Yes sir.”

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Contemporary: June 3rd, 1944. Aldbourne, England.

Winters cleared his throat awkwardly, breaking the silence between them as he wracked his brain for how best to broach the delicate subject on his mind.

"Lew…uh…"

"Spit it out, Dick," Nixon intoned from beside him without even looking up.

Winters did his best to oblige.

"Is this..um..Is there some sort of a romance thing going on with you and her or something? You just seem really torn up but I thought she had a thing going with.."

Nixon jerked his head back with a flabbergasted look like he'd just been told Winters was moonlighting as a circus clown.

"What?! Oh God no, Dick, she's like my kid sister! Christ, she's a child!"

"She's twenty-three, isn’t she?"

"Yes, exactly! She's a child!"

Winters laughed and shook his head in amusement.

"You act like being in our thirties makes us ancient. But good, I’m glad we got that cleared up then because I was going to say, if that's your problem, I can't help you. I’m not very good with that sort of thing."

A teasing smile played at the corner of Nixon’s lips.

“Yeah, I’ve noticed. Say, do me a favor, Dick?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“If you ever have any more wildly off-base speculations about my love life, keep ‘em to yourself. In all the years I've known you, I don't think you've been right one time."

They both laughed but the auburn-haired officer sobered quickly.

"In all seriousness, Nix, lighten up a little on Martinelli, okay? She’ll be fine. Letting her have a little fun once in a while won’t hurt, especially since we're due out any day now.”

The intelligence officer cocked an eyebrow slyly.

“Since when are you lecturing me on 'lightening up' and 'having fun'?" he asked, black eyes glittering with barely-contained mirth.

"Who are you and what have you done with my friend Dick?”

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#Joe Liebgott x OC #band of brothers fanfict

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