Chapter Text
1941, Chapayevsk
He hated that cat; he watched it sit,
So he took Daddy's stick and he hit the cat.
1942, Hancock
It hissed, black flash, to a hiding place
And he followed the grin on his new-made face
1943, Onville
“Good work men! A fine day’s march!”
And that it was. A whole twenty-four hours of good marching! They were going to give him a medal for this when he got back home, but in the meantime he’d cobbled together one on his own which would serve for now: pinned to his chest and gleaming in the setting sun. Next to it was one for ration eating, another for shotgun cleaning, and of course one for gibbing (that one he had awarded himself after he’d blown up his twentieth Nazi-sonova-bitch in a row, wiping a bit of intestine off his newly commandeered bazooka and deciding this deserved a celebration. He awarded the bazooka a medal too.)
“Now everyone, rest up,” he told his non-existent company. “You’re back on your feet tomorrow.”
No one joined him as sat down on a convenient stump. That was fine, those idiot recruiters were a bunch of shortsighted morons not to let him join up in the first place. He could do it himself, George Washington as his witness! He was a one man army! Once he came back with one hundred Nazi scalps, they would have to posthumously give him a rank.
He paused the polishing of his gun. Posthumously? Was that the right word? Whatever, he shrugged; it didn’t matter. What mattered is that he was fighting, right now, just like he’d always wanted, and he was damn good at it too. That was what made a man a Soldier.
The gun was spotless, cleaned to a satisfying and sparkling shine, and he was about to give it his Proud Grunt of Approval and move on to the bazooka when he heard the now-familiar sound of a battle. It caterwauled from the forest within, echoing up to his resting spot, the horrid sparseness of a close range fight with few combatants. Jane frowned and shouldered his weapon.
The crumbling earth made a soft overhang, a vantage for the scene below. A teenage boy was being beaten senseless, occasionally screaming something in French out into the trees—as though signaling for backup that would never come. What some liver-bellied, white pantaloon waving Frenchie was doing in the middle of the Polish wilderness Jane couldn’t imagine, but considering his captors kept asking him questions in German and boxing his nose when he wouldn’t respond, he wasn’t having a good time of it.
Jane had seen all he’d needed to. He leapt from his perch with a war cry: “SCREAMING EAGLES!!!!”
The two officers stood no chance. Mostly because the first one was immediately crushed to death under Jane’s bodyweight as it landed on him from a two-story drop, and the other one was so shocked to see a whole human appear from seemingly nowhere that he failed to draw his pistol in time. Jane hadn’t wanted to accidentally blow up their prisoner—which he’d done the last time he’d tried to help a civilian—so instead he’d brought his trusty entrenching tool to this gunfight. It cleaved the enemy soldier’s head with ease.
“Oorah,” he told the desecrated corpses. His knees hurt like hell from the drop, but otherwise he was doing well. The kid looked at him in abject horror. “No need to thank me, son. Just doing my American duty.”
“Where did you…?” The kid asked, looking around. He was speaking American, which was good; Jane didn’t have time for any of that hon hon hon nonsense.
“I could ask you the same question, civilian!” Jane barked. “Don’t you know there’s a war on? Shouldn’t you be back home in France quivering with the rest of your useless army?”
Now that the teen had gotten to his feet, he had regained enough of his wherewithal to give Jane a distasteful look. “We are in France, imbecile.”
Jane looked around and the forest, leaves amber with the onset of autumn as well as the dying light. “That can’t be right. Just look! We are obviously hundreds of miles deep into the Polish wilderness!”
“We are not,” the kid replied dourly. “Onville is a kilometer that way.” He gestured vaguely to his left.
Hm. That definitely didn’t sound like a thing the Poles would call a place. “…Huh. Then I better get moving if I want to get back in time! Poland isn’t going to clear itself out of scum.” With that, he marched off in a direction that was probably Poland.
“Wait!” The kid’s skinny little baby-hand clamped around Jane’s forearm. It was also slightly bloody, but that would buff out. “Are you insane? That’s a three-week hike through the entire German army. You’ll be slaughtered before you make it to Stuttgart.”
“War involves risks son.” Jane peeled the hand off him. “And if that risk is my death than let us all pray to God that it will be glorious! And bloody! And painful!”
“…Ah. A death wish. Isn’t that just wonderful.” The kid pinched the bridge of his nose, an obviously practiced habit to make him look older than he was. “I suppose I can’t convince you to not go wandering off into your own grave?”
“Why so clingy, maggot? Wait…” Suddenly, Jane smirked. “Aha! I see what’s going on here: you afraid if I leave, you will be captured again! Well don’t worry son, I’ll escort you back home, no Nazi maggot will get you while I’m around.”
“No!” the younger man groaned. “No, having you follow me around is the exact opposite of what I want.”
Jane held up a hand. “No need for reverse psychology, baguette boy, you’ve got me convinced.”
The kid looked about to say something, but thought better of it, snapping his mouth shut and heading toward the city he had mentioned, of which Jane had already forgotten the name. Jane trotted after. His ward looked over his shoulder and sighed. “Fantastic. My month is going just splendidly, isn’t it? First a crazed German, and now I’ve been accosted by a mad American woman as well.”
“Sounds rough,” Jane said sympathetically. “If either of them bothers you again, you let me know.”
The teen stared back blankly for a few seconds to determine if Jane was joking. He rubbed his face. “Fine. We’ll head back to Paris then. I have a friend who might be willing to take you off my hands.”
That sounded alright to Jane. From what he’d heard, there were plenty of Nazis in Paris too: he could always circle back to do a few more tours of Poland later. War was never-ending, after all! He loped along after the kid with glorious purpose.
1944, Viren
A wide-eyed, frightened snarl of a grin,
And he took the stick and he thrust it in
1945, Paris
There was a knocking at Ludwig’s door, the distinctive and telling rap of ‘shave and a haircut’, which would set his mind at ease even if he hadn’t been expecting someone. However, he still hadn’t quite sopped up all the blood on the front of his shirt, so he asked, “Sergeant Doe? Would you mind getting the door?”
“Affirmative!”
From the other room, the staircase creaked as Jane ascended it, a rickety little thing that was the only exit to their basement ‘apartment’. The women who had once offered it to Ludwig and his mother had not been seen since that day years ago, and honestly it was probably better for everyone that way. If she noticed or cared the strange comings and going from the singular door sunk into the Parisian street on a nondescript corner of the district, she made no mention of it, and Ludwig thought it most likely she was dead. Oh well. Couldn’t be helped.
Jane flung the door wide open. “Marcel! A sight for sore eyes! C’mere!”
Wiping his hands on a towel, Ludwig stepped into the stairway to see Jane firmly embracing a young man. Marcel, although Ludwig was aware that wasn’t his real name (or even the one he used most commonly in this corner of Paris), wheezed and attempted to extract himself from Jane’s clutches.
“Bad luck to linger at the door,” Ludwig reminded. “Also impractical in the current environment. Come, let him inside.”
Jane obliged, shutting the door behind them both, and Marcel huffed several times before regaining enough air to summon a reproachful glare. “I wasn’t aware you had acquired a doorman.”
“You were the one who introduced us,” Ludwig shrugged. “Sergeant Doe, if you would like, I found no need for the severed head. You can have it, if you like.”
Jane’s face, half covered as it was by the overlarge helmet, lit up as best as it did, a smile of pure glee tugging at the right half of his face. “Fantastic! I’ll put it with the others!”
“Metal bucket, left side of the operating table,” Ludwig informed him. “Dismissed, Sergeant.”
At the switch to a military address, Jane snapped to attention, giving a curt salute to both before disappearing into Ludwig’s operating theater.
“…I have never seen that man before in my life,” Marcel said, staring after the American’s back. “You say I introduced you?”
“Yes! I must say, I’m quite proud of my work if even you didn’t recognize him,” Ludwig beamed.
Marcel gawked at the now empty doorway. “…Is that…Jane?” When Ludwig gave a bright nod, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Mon dieu, I cannot believe you are feeding into her delusions. Is there no ethical floor you will not stoop to?”
“I don’t see the problem,” Ludwig shrugged. “He’s happy-”
“You did hear me say delusions, yes?”
“-And I was given a marvelous opportunity to try some things out. Plus, he is good company, very helpful around the operating ward.” Ludwig tapped a finger to his lips, (perfectly sanitary since he’d gotten out most of the dried blood from under his nails.) “Though he does wander off every few months. He says he’s been in Poland but…No matter, it keeps him occupied.”
Marcel sat on the couch that had lived in the damp basement longer than Ludwig had. “And what’s all this ‘Sergeant Doe’ business?”
“Ah, well you know I do like to keep good patient records, and he wouldn’t give me a last name so…” Ludwig was well aware that he was not terribly good at ‘smiling sheepishly’ and his attempts always turned out a little self-satisfied and manic. “A Jane Doe, if you will.”
Marcel groaned. “Yes, yes, you’re very clever. But I’ve had quite enough cleverness for one year: get me a bottle opener would you?”
It was only then that Ludwig noticed Marcel had appeared a bottle of wine onto the table. Where he had been hiding it he had no idea, but Marcel was like that with his litany of pockets and secrets alike. Ludwig found himself intrigued.
“What’s the occasion?” he asked, returning with the opener.
“My birthday,” Marcel said as poured. “And I thought, since I only have one true friend in this entire fucking city, I should spend it with him.”
He passed Ludwig the first glass, whose eyebrow was cocked and waiting for the punch line. Marcel was not the sort of person to give out personal information so easily, but what reason would he have to lie?
“And so,” he continued, filling his own glass with more than was practical for keeping it off Ludwig’s floor, “I have reached the age of majority. Rejoice Docteur, I am now, in the eyes of the Law, an adult.”
He said it so wryly, Ludwig tilted his head. “You have been living an adult’s life, and carrying an adult’s burden, for quite a while before this.”
“It does seem that way, doesn’t it?” Marcel eyed his glass. “However, I can drink now. So, to me: salut.” He downed it like a man who had been doing so for years.
“Salut,” Ludwig agreed. It had been a long time since wine had made it through the cracks in the war to his little basement sanctuary; the flavor dried his tongue. “Though I thought drinking began at sixteen in Spain?”
“I am not Spanish,” Marcel shook his head.
“French then? Forgive me, I’ve always found your accent to be…”
“Muddled? Yes, I get that quite a lot.” He poured himself another glass, this time of reasonable size. “My…mentor…was a Spaniard, trained me a young age, I acquired many of his quirks. But mixed as it is, it is not a terrible thing. In my line of work, it is good if friends and enemies alike cannot determine who you are exactly, cannot read your words and find precisely which insignificant little village you come from.” Marcel grew quiet.
The question was on the tip of Ludwig’s tongue—his bloated, wine-addled tongue—but he refrained at the last moment. He’d already learned more about Marcel during this visit alone than he had during the entire rest of their acquaintanceship.
“Am I truly your only friend?” he asked instead.
Marcel opened his mouth to reply, but they were interrupted by the return of Jane, who needlessly kicked down the door in order to declare, “a fine specimen! It is already getting along with the others fantastically.”
Ludwig raised an eyebrow at Marcel.
After a moment, he sighed, and motioned to the bottle. “Would you care to drink with us, Sergeant?”
Jane looked at the bottle dubiously, then at Ludwig who assured him, “consider yourself off duty. Come, join us!”
“Acknowledged! Celebratory spirits will now commence.”
As Jane sat amongst them, Marcel looked slightly pained, but not as much as Ludwig had feared. The bottle would be gone shortly with the three of them all draining their cups, but as he watched his friends indulge in light conversation, he thought that was perfectly worth it.
1946, Boston
“You alive down there honey?”
A good question. Was he alive? The man currently bleeding out below the fire escape—today he was Louis, though at the rate he was going he wouldn’t be anyone for much longer—pondered that. Certainly he was more alive than the man who’d been tailing him from the airport, but that didn’t make him particularly lively at the moment. He felt quite leaden, like a sack of potatoes left here in this alleyway to slump against the wall until someone remembered to come pick him up.
“Aw jeez. Now what’d they do to you?”
Apparently he’d taken too long in answer the women’s question, since she’d abandoned her apartment window and had gone down all three flights of stairs just to stand in front of him with her hands on her hips. That had all happened in less than a few seconds, how had she done that? Or was he really so gone that whole minutes were slipping away from him?
“A rather presumptuous question, mademoiselle,” he posited. “How do you know I was not the aggressor in this situation?” He gestured at his current state.
“You don’t got the look about you,” she said. Her frown was so unfazed that Louis briefly wondered if his oxygen-deprived mind was conjuring her up. This he dismissed though; there was no possible way he could fabricate that accent. “Alright now, I’m gunna lift ya. Don’t squirm too much.”
“That is quite alright,” he said, holding up a hand—new gloves, black, shiny, bloodstained—in attempt to ward her off.
It was not alright. He was very much aware he needed to seek medical attention, but he was just so tired…he’d go in a few minutes…a little while longer in the cool gap between buildings where he could look up and see the barest sliver of the moon.
“Are you kidding? I gotta take the trash out tomorrow, and I can’t do that with your corpse blocking my dumpsters.” A—surprisingly strong—arm wrapped around his waist. “Now c’mon.”
Physically, he did not resist, and he didn’t have the mental energy to do so either. “Ahg! F-fine. But no hospitals…” That was the first place whoever had sent that tail would check, plus he had some very illegal tools of the trade upon his person at the moment.
“That’s fine honey,” she replied with the nonchalance of someone who did this quite often. “No hospitals.”
She was true to her word. Several cycles of in-and-out consciousness over the next hour found Louis sitting somewhat comfortably in a kitchen chair, wounds disinfected, a mug of hot soup in front of him. He was beyond caring what kind it was, only that with every sip he could feel humanity returning to his toes.
“I thank you for your kindness, mademoiselle,” he told the women as she hummed something over the big pot on the stove. “I wish I had something to repay you with…”
The apartment was small. There were cracks in the drywall and the pipes rattled as he’d walked through the halls. Many children and one woman crammed into a very small space yet she was still offering food and stitches when it was obvious she had very little to spare. He himself wasn’t much better off. Soon, he had promised himself. There was good money for his skills in the post-war world and soon he would have funds for finer things, for niceties, for respectability. Soon his suit wouldn’t be some shabby brown tunic that he’d bought second hand. Soon he could return kindnesses when they were given to him.
“Don’t even worry about it,” she dismissed it all so easily, a hand waving as she continued to interrogate the soup. “Can’t go turning a blind eye to that sort of thing. Maybe that happens in South End, but not up here, no siree. I won’t let this part of the city go like that.”
“Local pride?”
She turned her head, nose scrunching as she smiled. It was quite a charming feature on an already beautiful face. “Guess so. How ‘bout you, Frenchie? Where you from?”
“Paris,” he lied easily. No one cared about some trivial village in eastern France, agrarian and simple while it had existed, and mounds of earth when it no longer had. Americans always wanted to hear about Paris, the city of lights, the place that made his rescuer’s eyes shimmer in excitement.
“Paris!” She abandoned her cooking to the simmer, slipping into the chair across from him. “Oh I’ve always wanted to go. Is it as wonderful as everyone says?”
And hadn’t he heard that exact sentiment from every American woman he’d spoken to? But strangely enough, from her it didn’t sound overused or clichéd; from her, it was a bright fishing line he only wanted to tug on.
“And more,” he said, hoping he wasn’t overdoing it, wasn’t making himself a fool. “At night the whole skyline sings, more individual lights than there are stars in the sky.”
Never mind that for the majority of his life the Eiffel Tower had bore a giant steel swastika, that he’d hardly seen lights from inside basements and bolt holes. She didn’t need to know that. He could spin her something warm, something to bring her comfort in this tiny apartment where her good nature made her rescue useless tramps who didn’t deserve it.
She rested her chin in her palms as he spoke, watching his every movement. The soup left the kitchen warm and fragrant, familiar in its comfort. He could almost feel home seeping in its vapors…
“Ma?” A boy was standing in the hall, one fist clutching a stuffed rabbit and the other rubbing at his eye. “Who you talkin’ to?”
“Lou it’s three in the morning!” she chided the boy who must have been—five? Ten? Louis knew very little of children—and waved him out. “What are you doing up?”
“You were making noise,” the boy complained.
“Just got a friend over. You go back to sleep, alright?”
At the mention, the boy fixed his mother’s ‘friend’ with a serious glare that was far too solemn for his young face. If he didn’t know any better, Louis could have sworn he was being sized up.
The confrontation passed though, with the child heeding his mother’s words and disappearing back into the room packed full of boys.
“Lou?” Louis mused. “Funnily enough, that is my name as well.”
She laughed. She snorted when she laughed. Louis found he quite liked it. “Isn’t that something! I’m glad you told me, that means I don’t have to keep calling you ‘Frenchie’.”
“What a relief that is to hear,” he said, but not without a bit of reflexive regret. Why had he said that? He should have come up with a new name, one he could wear in front of this woman and then discard later, like a second skin, like his cheap suits, like the masks he wore just to slid into another. “I…” Guilt crashed over him suddenly. “I am sorry mademoiselle, in all my talking tonight I may have led you to believe I am someone I am not. I am afraid I am not quite so glamorous a person as I’ve tried to appear.”
“Glamorous?” she laughed. The smile. The scrunch. “Honey I found you half dead in some trash. I know the sorts of trouble people get into—honest to God you can tell me as little or as much as you like about yourself. The important part is that you make good conversation, and you pretend to like my cooking.”
“I do like your cooking,” Louis balked.
“You’re sweet.”
She went back to putting the soup away, closed capped cups so her boys could bring them to school, tucking each one carefully in the fridge, and Louis stole the moment to think. It was nice to be wanted for once. Wanted not for what he knew or what he could do, but because someone found him enjoyable. When was the last time he’d had that?
When she sat back, he let a smile twitch the corner of his mouth.
1947, Bee Cave
The day they put his mother in the ground was the also the last day he saw his granddaddy.
Granted, that was the first time he saw his granddaddy too, and boy howdy did he make an impression. He was at least a foot above the tallest Conagher (well Conagher-Goryl, but most of Mom’s side was up in Kansas and hadn’t been able to make it down to the funeral) and parted through the sea of mourners to reach where Dell was comforting his father. Dad hadn’t stopped crying, not for three days, not even in his sleep when Dell could hear him sniffling in the now half-empty bed. In the morning’s service alone he’d rendered his hankie unusable, and Dell wordlessly handed him his own.
The approach of the giant, everyone-knew-something-had-gone-wrong-with-his-work man was apparently the only thing that could snap Fred Conagher out of his stupor.
“Dad?” he hiccuped, half in awe and half in disbelief. “I mean, I didn’t know you were comin’.”
“I have,” Granddad replied.
Dell pursed his lips, but said nothing. Unconsciously, he’d been moving a hand over his father’s shoulder, a small protective gesture that would do absolutely nothing.
Radigan Conagher was pushing ninety, or so they said, though you wouldn’t know by the sharpness of his physique or the way his gaze tore through the people below him. His habit of disappearing for decades at a time had earned him quite a reputation, that and the disposition of few words meant he was as much of a mystery to his grandson as he was to everyone else. Dad didn’t need mysteries right now.
“Thank you,” Dad said eventually. “Gloria woulda…woulda been glad you…”
Dell thought Mom would’ve kicked the crap out of him if she’d known he was showing up now, but that was neither here nor there.
“Your son,” Granddad nodded toward Dell. He didn’t phrase it like a question. It was more like he was sizing Dell up, measuring him out on a scale, marking just how many centimeters to make the cut on.
“Yeah, yeah my boy,” Dad said anyway, either not noticing or just used to the lack of warmth in any of his father’s words. “Outta high school early, already got a few credits under his belt. Got your smarts, alright.”
His granddaddy was a genius, folks said. His son may have been smart, a good Engineer, but ‘ole Radigan there was brilliant. Had a spark. As Dell watch Dad sputter around his words as his father stood over him and barely said a thing, he wondered if it was worth it.
The other mourners gave them a wide berth. Dad just kept going, chatting, talking away right until the last of the folks left for the wake.
Granddad shattered the thin peace with, “all that true, boy?”
The question was not at Dad but at Dell. He met the ancient, looming man’s gaze with a glare of his own. “I reckon so.”
Dad, now lost as the tension of the conversation skipped over him entirely, looked between the other two generations. Neither of them spoke, just kept looking and looking, until eventually he said, “you comin’ to the wake, Dad?”
“Got somewhere to be,” was all Granddad offered. His eyes finally broke from Dell’s.
There was a hurried goodbye from Dad, but that was that, and suddenly all Dell could see was Granddad’s back as the brown coat moved further into the cemetery. If there had been one good thing about him, it was that he’d distracted Dad for a time, but that was fading like the wind he’d brought with him, and Dell heard his father start to sniff again.
“Alright Dad, ‘nuff a that,” he said, directing them toward the car.
As he did, he couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder, and wonder why the retreating figure’s gait was so off.