July Challenge
Title: Don't wait up, or "what happened to the kid Commandos?"
Summary: What happened to the Kid Commandos when they found out about Steve and Bucky's death.
Author's Note: I have no beta and I am currently on a computer that feels like it belongs in the stone age. Would log off, but the library has a no re login within the hour policy and I don't have time. So sorry if this is crap. I'll try and do better for next month.
It was Chopin. The polonaises, she would always remember that, because it was all wrong. If any music should have been playing, it should have Wagner or Mozart. Not Chopin, whose music she had once heard one of the Germans, who’d been a pianist before the war, describe as cannons garlanded with flowers for Polish independence.
But Chopin it was, coming from the wireless in the courtyard through the open window. She hummed along with it, finishing her typing and flirted a little, but not enough to be taken as anything else, with Hans as he brought in the papers for the day.
Bautezen had been recaptured, not that it would make any difference. You could taste it in the wind, the war was almost over. Soon she and James could...
She froze, as her fingers closed around one of the pieces of paper. She scanned through it again; convinced she must have read it wrong.
With barely a glance around, she folded it, fingers fumbling and shoved it into her bra.
Had to stay calm, couldn’t let anyone know.
Knocking on Schrödinger’s door. The typing was done for the day, she was going for lunch. No, No important messages from command.
She knew she must have got her bicycle, and ridden through the streets. Knew she must have fallen off at least twice, because her stockings were torn, and her leg covered with grazes that hadn’t healed by the time she got to the house.
But all she could remember was the black corridor with its taped windows, stretching out for ever.
*
She always hated whisky. Hated the smell, the taste, the way it burned your throat and stomach as it went down.
So when the first thing she can remember after the corridor is it hitting the back of her throat, she cough, splutters and sends most of it over Canada, who by some miracle seems to be her height.
It’s then she realises that she’s in the kitchen, sitting in the big oak chair. She can see everyone looking at her worriedly. Gwenny, Davey, Uli, Phil, even Destroyer standing leaning against the pine table. Her leg hurts, as does her head.
“What happened?” she hears her voice ask, though it doesn’t feel like it’s her speaking.
“Hope you could tell us.” Davey tries to make joke, though his eyes are like saucers in his head. “Uli said you just stepped though the door, yelled something about Cap and Bucky and collapsed.”
She blinked, trying desperately to remember.
“Hans brought the messages for the day.” She says slowly. “They were playing Chopin on the wireless.”
Suddenly the message flashed before her eyes with startling clarity and she nearly fell forward again
“Easy. Easy.” She could feel Canada and Destroyer supporting her.
“We got ya.” Canada was surprised. He knew she’d normally never let him get this close, not with out a battle.
Pulling herself free, she began digging down her front, ignoring the uncomfortable expressions on the faces of most of the men in the room. Fingers trembling, she handed the crumpled piece of paper over to Destroyer.
Roger gazed at the piece of paper, his eyes running over it twice as through praying he was wrong. Then, as though convinced his translation must be wrong, he thrusts at Uli who as a native speaker is the only one who can close to matching Cat’s own skills with the language.
“vom 18. April 1945
Captain America und Bucky getötet Luftbilder Exposion. Stellen nicht wieder, aber es kann kein Zweifel daran, dass der größte Feind des dritten Riech ist tot.” He lifted his eyes to gaze at Cat. “No. They can’t be.”
“what’s the big deal?” Davey asked, seemingly calmer now that the source of the fuss was known. “They’ve reported them dead before.”
Uli turned the paper to face his companions, his face nearly the same colour as it.
“See that? That’s the symbol of the German High command. If they believe it, I’d say there’s a bloody good chance its true.”
His hands were shaking.
“they can’t be.” Gwenny repeated, shaking herself. “it has to be some form of trick or...”
Cat was shaking her head, her eyes fixed on Destroyer. His face told her that he believed it.
“There’s no body.” Peter’s voice was desperate, "so there’s a chance...”
Destroyer had stood up, pulling the mask back over this face. He held out his hand for the piece of paper.
He took it, and slowly held a match to it, watching as the flames grabbed hold of it, before dropping it in an ash tray.
“If anyone asks,” he said his voice heavy with the strength of command. “tell them it is a misreport. That it is a Nazi rumour with no truth in it.”
“We can’t!” for one whose people had suffered so much at American Hands, Gwenny was surprisingly quick to defend their champion. “it wouldn’t be honest! Cap wouldn’t have wanted_”
“Captain America may very well be dead!” Destroyer snapped it out, despite his normally calm demeanour. There was no doubt in any body’s mind where the nickname of Dynamite had come from. “Do you have any idea of the effect that would have upon Morale? We are very close to defeating the Nazi menace once and for all. We can’t let anything stand in our way.”
She wanted to say, Not even a twenty year old child who died fighting for his country?
Wanted to. But then she looked around. Saw Uli and Peter, looking at her with expectant faces. They knew Peter’s family were all dead, but they still had no word of the girl he’d loved, Anne something. Peter needed them to find out what had happened and to bring those responsible for justice.
Uli needed to find his brother, needed to understand why his own brother had handed their father and mother over to the Nazi, knowing what it would mean for them, and then to just abandon Uli.
Needed them to find the Red Skull too, so he would stop waking up, screaming, with the cook’s face plastered on his eyes.
The others needed her too, whether to make sure they were treated right or to help them rescue their family when this was all over or just to hold it together. With Bucky gone and Toro away with the Invaders, she was team leader.
There was no time for tears. This was war. And after all, millions of young men were dying every day.
“Roger’s right.” She said. “we proceed as planned. This changes nothing.” She locked eyes with her team. “we win for them. We don’t let it be in vain.”
Later she would be shocked remembering how normal she sounded.
Some months later.
It had been a bad day.
Actually it had been a bad few months, despite the allied Victory. What was it Churchill had said? “We have won the war. Now we must win the peace which is harder.”
She couldn’t have agreed with him more.
First a lead on Baron Strucker, one that had looked sure to lead to the man’s capture had turned out to be a dead end, literally.
Then she had received the letter.
There was no way to sugar coat it, and she hadn’t tried to, that would have simply insulted Uli.
Hans had died nearly two years previously, barely a year after Uli’s “Death”. The soldier who Nick had questioned, had indicated that he had never got over been told that they had found his baby brother’s clothes neatly folded by the river, and were forced to presume he’d drowned himself. Apparently he had taken to drinking pretty heavily and ultimately had died in a concentration camp. drunk on schnapps and falling off the machine gun platform, but still.
She had spent the rest of the day with him. Trying to help him.
Trying to help him to accept that he would never get the answer he sought.
Uli said that he had always hoped that one day he would be able to ask Hans why. Because he felt that if he knows there had been a reason, he could try to understand the reason. And if he understood the reason, he could try to forgive him.
Cat had nodded, understand this. But she equally knew there was nothing they could do. Nick had asked if there had been any letters, but the soldier he had questioned had denied all knowledge of them. Nick had added a postscript saying he thought the guy was telling the truth.
She leant against the corridor wall, breathing deeply.
It…It wasn’t fair! The childish exclamation ran through her head.
If she ever found out who was responsible for telling Philip that despite the death of his parents and older siblings, his youngest sister Athena was still alive.... She didn’t think she’d ever forget the sound of raw animal pain that had come from Philip as he recognised his sister’s body among the dead on the front page of a paper, while it detailed the Nazi atrocities in Greece.
Phil had gone out that night and hadn’t returned till late. He’d done that every night since then.
Bucky would have known how to reach him.
Cat gasped. Bucky. It felt like a knife was stabbing in her chest. She clenched her eyes shut. She couldn’t cry. She had to hold it together for the others.
When her homosexual German “Fiancé” had died, she had washed her eyes in a public laboratory every night before she returned to the house where she was staying. So that no one would ever know that the crocodile tears she tried for him were really real tears for her family.
That wasn’t an option any more. She doubted there was a working public laboratory in the whole of Germany currently.
She forced her tears down. So it wasn’t fair. So what? She’d figured out life wasn’t fair when she was about two and had been beaten for no reason for the first time.
And it wasn’t like she was the only one. All the kid Commandos had lost someone to this war.
Dimly, she heard Davey calling for her, his voice full of excitement. She checked in the glass on the landing that there was no sign of her weakness, before replying.
Perhaps they had finally got news of Logan, of Canada. As when they had last heard he was near Hishoma, she could only pray it was good.
Davey was standing in the hall, light flooding around him. His eyes were shining.
“you’re never going to believe this.” he said,” but before he could say anything, she picked up their scents. The scents the other invaders and four new ones. Cautiously she moved along the stairs, so she could see over Davey’s head.
She froze.
“Get away from them, Davey.” She said, in German, as her hand reached to her belt. At the same time she called out for the others.
Davey baffled obeyed. Phil was the first, waving slightly, but stopping as soon as he caught sight of the strangers, blocking the kitchen door.
“who the fuck are you?” he demanded, his accent thick with the alcohol. At the same time, she heard Uli cocking his gun above her head.
The kid in Bucky’s costume, standing next to the stranger in Cap’s, blinked.
“I’m Bucky barn_”
“Wrong answer!” Uli said and a bullet streaked over her head, missing the kid by inches.
Union Jack stepped in, putting himself between them and the Kid.
“Captain America. Why don’t you and your…sidekick go into the kitchen? We will try to straighten this out.”
It was a mark of their awareness of their debt to him, that Phil made no attempt to prevent this.
*
“is there anything I can say to convince you that we’re not mind controlled?” Brian asked, as he sat in what once would have been the best parlour, though you could hardly tell that.
Cat simply shook her head.
“for the record,” Brian continued. “we were against this. Command didn’t listen.”
He looked at her, apparently wanting some response. There was none.
“Cat,” he said, softly reaching out for her, but she pulled away. “Cat!” he yelled after her.
“you couldn’t tell me?” the voice belonged to his lover, Roger, who looking almost as hurt as the kids.
“You know what Bucky meant to Cat, I could have warned. Prepared her a bit.”
“would it have made any difference?”
Roger conceded the point, sinking into the chair.
“they’re tough kids.” Jim Hammond, the Human touch voiced his views. “they’ll deal with it”
*
He had expected Toro to take command of the kid commandos in Bucky’s absence.
It had always been the way, that Bucky and Toro led them, with Cat in charge in their absence (or of the more dirty missions).
There had always been a division between Toro and the rest of the Kid Commandos, it was true. At first they had resented his presence. Each of them had worked hard, dammed ably hard in most cases to get where they were, and Torch was the first to admit that Toro hadn’t. His power…it was too useful to the war effort and he was too afraid of being alone.
At first. But then Toro had asked Bucky to teach him to fight. After two (or was it three) weeks of Toro ending up on the floor every five minutes, they had accepted him.
And Jim saw no reason why the death of Bucky meant that was true. They hated Fred Davis, which if he was honest, he could understand. The kid was good, but there had been…something-something terrifying most of the time, but something that set Bucky apart from the crowd. Fred Davis didn’t have it, and they resented pretended that he did. Indeed their resentment was so clear that Roger asked Fred not to go into the kitchen if the others were there. The children kept abandoning their food when he came in, and they were all too thin as it was.
They didn’t especially like the New Captain America either. No that was wrong, they liked Jeff fine, but they didn’t trust him. It was oblivious in the way they looked to Cat to confirm a plan, even ones from Captain America, which had it been Steve Rogers they never would have done.
They were angry with the rest of the Invaders too. They didn’t actively avoid their company, but they didn’t seek it out.
Jim Hammond had convinced himself that the kids just needed a couple of weeks to adjust. Other kids had come and gone in the Kid Commandos and they had always stuck together. But that night, when he saw Toro sitting in the kitchen, looking thoroughly miserable, while the others were gathering in the hall.
“where are you guys off to?” he asked, suspicious. His experience of Cat alone taught him that, while she never forgave or forgot, she also never abandoned a friend.
Cat’s eyes hardened.
“Out.”
“Where to?”
“Just out! Jesus Torch, we’re not kids anymore.”
“I never suggested you were.” He moved slowly, so that he could see them better. All of them were dress in combat clothes, but there were no guns.
Cat sighed, clearly exasperated, “we’re meeting a contact.”
“For?”
“The Russians.” The green eyes hard as marble gazed at him. “that’s all we’re required to tell you.”
He transferred his gaze to Davey. Davey’s head hung, but he repeated. “we’re meeting a Russian Contact. That’s all.”
Gwenny looked like she was about to cry as she added, her eyes fixed on the kitchen. “we’re all SOE. We’ve always shared everything with you guys, but…things are changing.”
“They don’t have to.”
“Yes They do.” Cat’s voice was firm, but calm. “This recent incident has demonstrated that the bonds of trust that once existed have broken down. If your commanders do not feel obliged to inform us of their decision to replace our leader, then we do not feel oblige to allow you access to our contacts. Should the information we receive be relevant to you, we will of course pass it on, but_”
He could feel the flames licking his back. “Dam it, I know you’re hurt about what happened, but that is no reason to take it out on Toro.”
Cat had opened the front door a fraction of an inch. She slammed it shut.
“It has nothing to do with That.” She hissed. “Things are changing. You guys aren’t going to be fighting Nazis forever, there’s new enemies on the horizon. We’re just trying to make sure they don’t get away.”
She pulled the door open. “Don’t wait up.”
As he listened, hidden at the turn of the stairs, Roger would always think it was ironic that the one, who expressed what they were all thinking, would be the only Kid Commando who never joined V Battalion.
Summary: What happened to the Kid Commandos when they found out about Steve and Bucky's death.
Author's Note: I have no beta and I am currently on a computer that feels like it belongs in the stone age. Would log off, but the library has a no re login within the hour policy and I don't have time. So sorry if this is crap. I'll try and do better for next month.
It was Chopin. The polonaises, she would always remember that, because it was all wrong. If any music should have been playing, it should have Wagner or Mozart. Not Chopin, whose music she had once heard one of the Germans, who’d been a pianist before the war, describe as cannons garlanded with flowers for Polish independence.
But Chopin it was, coming from the wireless in the courtyard through the open window. She hummed along with it, finishing her typing and flirted a little, but not enough to be taken as anything else, with Hans as he brought in the papers for the day.
Bautezen had been recaptured, not that it would make any difference. You could taste it in the wind, the war was almost over. Soon she and James could...
She froze, as her fingers closed around one of the pieces of paper. She scanned through it again; convinced she must have read it wrong.
With barely a glance around, she folded it, fingers fumbling and shoved it into her bra.
Had to stay calm, couldn’t let anyone know.
Knocking on Schrödinger’s door. The typing was done for the day, she was going for lunch. No, No important messages from command.
She knew she must have got her bicycle, and ridden through the streets. Knew she must have fallen off at least twice, because her stockings were torn, and her leg covered with grazes that hadn’t healed by the time she got to the house.
But all she could remember was the black corridor with its taped windows, stretching out for ever.
*
She always hated whisky. Hated the smell, the taste, the way it burned your throat and stomach as it went down.
So when the first thing she can remember after the corridor is it hitting the back of her throat, she cough, splutters and sends most of it over Canada, who by some miracle seems to be her height.
It’s then she realises that she’s in the kitchen, sitting in the big oak chair. She can see everyone looking at her worriedly. Gwenny, Davey, Uli, Phil, even Destroyer standing leaning against the pine table. Her leg hurts, as does her head.
“What happened?” she hears her voice ask, though it doesn’t feel like it’s her speaking.
“Hope you could tell us.” Davey tries to make joke, though his eyes are like saucers in his head. “Uli said you just stepped though the door, yelled something about Cap and Bucky and collapsed.”
She blinked, trying desperately to remember.
“Hans brought the messages for the day.” She says slowly. “They were playing Chopin on the wireless.”
Suddenly the message flashed before her eyes with startling clarity and she nearly fell forward again
“Easy. Easy.” She could feel Canada and Destroyer supporting her.
“We got ya.” Canada was surprised. He knew she’d normally never let him get this close, not with out a battle.
Pulling herself free, she began digging down her front, ignoring the uncomfortable expressions on the faces of most of the men in the room. Fingers trembling, she handed the crumpled piece of paper over to Destroyer.
Roger gazed at the piece of paper, his eyes running over it twice as through praying he was wrong. Then, as though convinced his translation must be wrong, he thrusts at Uli who as a native speaker is the only one who can close to matching Cat’s own skills with the language.
“vom 18. April 1945
Captain America und Bucky getötet Luftbilder Exposion. Stellen nicht wieder, aber es kann kein Zweifel daran, dass der größte Feind des dritten Riech ist tot.” He lifted his eyes to gaze at Cat. “No. They can’t be.”
“what’s the big deal?” Davey asked, seemingly calmer now that the source of the fuss was known. “They’ve reported them dead before.”
Uli turned the paper to face his companions, his face nearly the same colour as it.
“See that? That’s the symbol of the German High command. If they believe it, I’d say there’s a bloody good chance its true.”
His hands were shaking.
“they can’t be.” Gwenny repeated, shaking herself. “it has to be some form of trick or...”
Cat was shaking her head, her eyes fixed on Destroyer. His face told her that he believed it.
“There’s no body.” Peter’s voice was desperate, "so there’s a chance...”
Destroyer had stood up, pulling the mask back over this face. He held out his hand for the piece of paper.
He took it, and slowly held a match to it, watching as the flames grabbed hold of it, before dropping it in an ash tray.
“If anyone asks,” he said his voice heavy with the strength of command. “tell them it is a misreport. That it is a Nazi rumour with no truth in it.”
“We can’t!” for one whose people had suffered so much at American Hands, Gwenny was surprisingly quick to defend their champion. “it wouldn’t be honest! Cap wouldn’t have wanted_”
“Captain America may very well be dead!” Destroyer snapped it out, despite his normally calm demeanour. There was no doubt in any body’s mind where the nickname of Dynamite had come from. “Do you have any idea of the effect that would have upon Morale? We are very close to defeating the Nazi menace once and for all. We can’t let anything stand in our way.”
She wanted to say, Not even a twenty year old child who died fighting for his country?
Wanted to. But then she looked around. Saw Uli and Peter, looking at her with expectant faces. They knew Peter’s family were all dead, but they still had no word of the girl he’d loved, Anne something. Peter needed them to find out what had happened and to bring those responsible for justice.
Uli needed to find his brother, needed to understand why his own brother had handed their father and mother over to the Nazi, knowing what it would mean for them, and then to just abandon Uli.
Needed them to find the Red Skull too, so he would stop waking up, screaming, with the cook’s face plastered on his eyes.
The others needed her too, whether to make sure they were treated right or to help them rescue their family when this was all over or just to hold it together. With Bucky gone and Toro away with the Invaders, she was team leader.
There was no time for tears. This was war. And after all, millions of young men were dying every day.
“Roger’s right.” She said. “we proceed as planned. This changes nothing.” She locked eyes with her team. “we win for them. We don’t let it be in vain.”
Later she would be shocked remembering how normal she sounded.
Some months later.
It had been a bad day.
Actually it had been a bad few months, despite the allied Victory. What was it Churchill had said? “We have won the war. Now we must win the peace which is harder.”
She couldn’t have agreed with him more.
First a lead on Baron Strucker, one that had looked sure to lead to the man’s capture had turned out to be a dead end, literally.
Then she had received the letter.
There was no way to sugar coat it, and she hadn’t tried to, that would have simply insulted Uli.
Hans had died nearly two years previously, barely a year after Uli’s “Death”. The soldier who Nick had questioned, had indicated that he had never got over been told that they had found his baby brother’s clothes neatly folded by the river, and were forced to presume he’d drowned himself. Apparently he had taken to drinking pretty heavily and ultimately had died in a concentration camp. drunk on schnapps and falling off the machine gun platform, but still.
She had spent the rest of the day with him. Trying to help him.
Trying to help him to accept that he would never get the answer he sought.
Uli said that he had always hoped that one day he would be able to ask Hans why. Because he felt that if he knows there had been a reason, he could try to understand the reason. And if he understood the reason, he could try to forgive him.
Cat had nodded, understand this. But she equally knew there was nothing they could do. Nick had asked if there had been any letters, but the soldier he had questioned had denied all knowledge of them. Nick had added a postscript saying he thought the guy was telling the truth.
She leant against the corridor wall, breathing deeply.
It…It wasn’t fair! The childish exclamation ran through her head.
If she ever found out who was responsible for telling Philip that despite the death of his parents and older siblings, his youngest sister Athena was still alive.... She didn’t think she’d ever forget the sound of raw animal pain that had come from Philip as he recognised his sister’s body among the dead on the front page of a paper, while it detailed the Nazi atrocities in Greece.
Phil had gone out that night and hadn’t returned till late. He’d done that every night since then.
Bucky would have known how to reach him.
Cat gasped. Bucky. It felt like a knife was stabbing in her chest. She clenched her eyes shut. She couldn’t cry. She had to hold it together for the others.
When her homosexual German “Fiancé” had died, she had washed her eyes in a public laboratory every night before she returned to the house where she was staying. So that no one would ever know that the crocodile tears she tried for him were really real tears for her family.
That wasn’t an option any more. She doubted there was a working public laboratory in the whole of Germany currently.
She forced her tears down. So it wasn’t fair. So what? She’d figured out life wasn’t fair when she was about two and had been beaten for no reason for the first time.
And it wasn’t like she was the only one. All the kid Commandos had lost someone to this war.
Dimly, she heard Davey calling for her, his voice full of excitement. She checked in the glass on the landing that there was no sign of her weakness, before replying.
Perhaps they had finally got news of Logan, of Canada. As when they had last heard he was near Hishoma, she could only pray it was good.
Davey was standing in the hall, light flooding around him. His eyes were shining.
“you’re never going to believe this.” he said,” but before he could say anything, she picked up their scents. The scents the other invaders and four new ones. Cautiously she moved along the stairs, so she could see over Davey’s head.
She froze.
“Get away from them, Davey.” She said, in German, as her hand reached to her belt. At the same time she called out for the others.
Davey baffled obeyed. Phil was the first, waving slightly, but stopping as soon as he caught sight of the strangers, blocking the kitchen door.
“who the fuck are you?” he demanded, his accent thick with the alcohol. At the same time, she heard Uli cocking his gun above her head.
The kid in Bucky’s costume, standing next to the stranger in Cap’s, blinked.
“I’m Bucky barn_”
“Wrong answer!” Uli said and a bullet streaked over her head, missing the kid by inches.
Union Jack stepped in, putting himself between them and the Kid.
“Captain America. Why don’t you and your…sidekick go into the kitchen? We will try to straighten this out.”
It was a mark of their awareness of their debt to him, that Phil made no attempt to prevent this.
*
“is there anything I can say to convince you that we’re not mind controlled?” Brian asked, as he sat in what once would have been the best parlour, though you could hardly tell that.
Cat simply shook her head.
“for the record,” Brian continued. “we were against this. Command didn’t listen.”
He looked at her, apparently wanting some response. There was none.
“Cat,” he said, softly reaching out for her, but she pulled away. “Cat!” he yelled after her.
“you couldn’t tell me?” the voice belonged to his lover, Roger, who looking almost as hurt as the kids.
“You know what Bucky meant to Cat, I could have warned. Prepared her a bit.”
“would it have made any difference?”
Roger conceded the point, sinking into the chair.
“they’re tough kids.” Jim Hammond, the Human touch voiced his views. “they’ll deal with it”
*
He had expected Toro to take command of the kid commandos in Bucky’s absence.
It had always been the way, that Bucky and Toro led them, with Cat in charge in their absence (or of the more dirty missions).
There had always been a division between Toro and the rest of the Kid Commandos, it was true. At first they had resented his presence. Each of them had worked hard, dammed ably hard in most cases to get where they were, and Torch was the first to admit that Toro hadn’t. His power…it was too useful to the war effort and he was too afraid of being alone.
At first. But then Toro had asked Bucky to teach him to fight. After two (or was it three) weeks of Toro ending up on the floor every five minutes, they had accepted him.
And Jim saw no reason why the death of Bucky meant that was true. They hated Fred Davis, which if he was honest, he could understand. The kid was good, but there had been…something-something terrifying most of the time, but something that set Bucky apart from the crowd. Fred Davis didn’t have it, and they resented pretended that he did. Indeed their resentment was so clear that Roger asked Fred not to go into the kitchen if the others were there. The children kept abandoning their food when he came in, and they were all too thin as it was.
They didn’t especially like the New Captain America either. No that was wrong, they liked Jeff fine, but they didn’t trust him. It was oblivious in the way they looked to Cat to confirm a plan, even ones from Captain America, which had it been Steve Rogers they never would have done.
They were angry with the rest of the Invaders too. They didn’t actively avoid their company, but they didn’t seek it out.
Jim Hammond had convinced himself that the kids just needed a couple of weeks to adjust. Other kids had come and gone in the Kid Commandos and they had always stuck together. But that night, when he saw Toro sitting in the kitchen, looking thoroughly miserable, while the others were gathering in the hall.
“where are you guys off to?” he asked, suspicious. His experience of Cat alone taught him that, while she never forgave or forgot, she also never abandoned a friend.
Cat’s eyes hardened.
“Out.”
“Where to?”
“Just out! Jesus Torch, we’re not kids anymore.”
“I never suggested you were.” He moved slowly, so that he could see them better. All of them were dress in combat clothes, but there were no guns.
Cat sighed, clearly exasperated, “we’re meeting a contact.”
“For?”
“The Russians.” The green eyes hard as marble gazed at him. “that’s all we’re required to tell you.”
He transferred his gaze to Davey. Davey’s head hung, but he repeated. “we’re meeting a Russian Contact. That’s all.”
Gwenny looked like she was about to cry as she added, her eyes fixed on the kitchen. “we’re all SOE. We’ve always shared everything with you guys, but…things are changing.”
“They don’t have to.”
“Yes They do.” Cat’s voice was firm, but calm. “This recent incident has demonstrated that the bonds of trust that once existed have broken down. If your commanders do not feel obliged to inform us of their decision to replace our leader, then we do not feel oblige to allow you access to our contacts. Should the information we receive be relevant to you, we will of course pass it on, but_”
He could feel the flames licking his back. “Dam it, I know you’re hurt about what happened, but that is no reason to take it out on Toro.”
Cat had opened the front door a fraction of an inch. She slammed it shut.
“It has nothing to do with That.” She hissed. “Things are changing. You guys aren’t going to be fighting Nazis forever, there’s new enemies on the horizon. We’re just trying to make sure they don’t get away.”
She pulled the door open. “Don’t wait up.”
As he listened, hidden at the turn of the stairs, Roger would always think it was ironic that the one, who expressed what they were all thinking, would be the only Kid Commando who never joined V Battalion.