Fic: 16 Proofs of Love, #10 Stumbling - take me in your arms
Title: Ghost Moon Sails Among the Clouds (Turns the Rifles Into Silver)
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: T
Genres: het
Summary: On the way to Teruel, former US Army Major turned International Brigades fighter Evan Lorne has an unexpected encounter on the road.
A/N: Err, I have no idea how this happened (alright, I do, and it's all Al Stewart's fault!) but suddenly there was this Spanish Civil War bunny and it wanted to be written. And I really wanted to make it something else than Lorne/Cadman but they wouldn't let me. It's got very, very minor background implied Sheppard/Weir, though :)
I also realized that I might have been inspired for this by Condor's Flight by freifraufischer. If you haven't read this, do. It's one of the best SGA historical AUs I have ever read and I can only recommend it :)
PS.: I might have taken some creative licence with the Browning HP, M1911 and Lee-Enfield mentioned in the story. I tried to research handguns used in the Spanish Civil war but it was almost impossible. Wikipedia doesn't state anything about any of them having been used but from their service dates I gleaned that they might have been used anyway (and I figured that since both Evan and Sheppard are former Army in this, they might have found ways to get ahold of the then used standard sidearm of the US Armed Forces).
Ghost Moon Sails Among the Clouds (Turns the Rifles Into Silver)
“The fishing boats go out across the evening water
Smuggling guns and arms across the Spanish border
The wind whips up the waves so loud
The ghost moon sails among the clouds
Turns the rifles into silver on the border.”
Al Stewart, “On the Border”
Come to Spain, his superior officer had said to him. Fight for the Republic, his superior officer had said to him. Do the right thing, his superior officer had said to him.
And here he is, trudging through the light dusting of snow - snow, in fucking Spain - on the road to Teruel that’s not more than a dirt path, freezing his ass off in the rags he swathed himself in and wondering why the everloving hell he listened to Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard and followed him to a Spain ravaged by civil war.
It’s time like this when he’s questioning his sanity for following Sheppard through hell and back without a blink and the stares he sends at Sheppard’s back would probably have put several holes in him, were they bullets. He just hopes Dr. Weir doesn’t see them because for some reason the good doctor seems to have some incurable obsession with getting people to make peace with each other.
Also, she clearly has something going on with Sheppard and he suspects it probably started on the ship that brought all three of them plus a couple other American volunteers for the International brigades to France in late 1936. They’re discreet, he’s got to give them that but the three of them have been on the road for over a week now with only each other as company and it’s not like he’s blind. Or deaf, for that matter.
Then again, the reason that they’re lagging behind the Lincoln-Washington Battalion, their main unit, is that they’d been detached to pick Weir up from an aid station of those Falangistas that she’d been forced to work for after having been captured a few weeks before in a raid they’d made on Weir’s last assignment. He’d have been thoroughly alarmed if Sheppard and Weir hadn’t shown any attachment whatsoever after that.
And anyway… “Ditch,” he hears Sheppard suddenly hiss and in the twilight he can see the silhouette of something big on the road. He wastes no time and scrambles down into the ditch next to the dirt road and only his years as an officer of the United States Army prevent him from swearing very loudly. There’s nothing so asqueroso* as suddenly having your ice cold feet surrounded by ice cold water.
There’s a warning look from Sheppard that he just answers with rolling his eyes and jerking his head toward the structure on the road they saw ahead. After Sheppard throws Weir a short look that she just confirms with a nod, they make their way forward, careful not to make any noise. Inch by inch… until they hear someone swearing in an impressive array of languages. Very, very loudly.
They’re about two yards behind the structure - a positively ancient ambulance car, probably left over from the Great War or something - when Sheppard gestures to Weir to stay here and to him to take the car’s right sight. Slowly they climb out of the ditch and he lightly presses his back against the car’s right side and inches forward.
Just before he’s about to reach for the door, he slowly moves to chamber a round in his M1911 handgun and almost winces at the too audibly loud click. Hoping Sheppard does the same on the other side, he moves to open the car’s door with his left hand, his gun ready to level into whoever’s face… and suddenly he’s seeing stars and pain explodes in his eye and…
La puta madre.*
For a moment, the only thing he notices is that his world just turned upside down and that he’s looking up at the darkening sky. Until he realizes that something weighs him down and there’s… hair whipping into his face and… someone pummeling his fucking chest.
Still having no idea what the fuck just happened he moves the M1911 his right hand still miraculously grips up to bring it down on the furious face staring at him and spitting insults at him to just make it stop but for some reason he will probably never be able to fathom, he sometimes has his arms around his assailant and since he’s lucky enough to realize what’s going on, he moves to tighten them, keeping his attacker close and rolling him around on the ground on his back…
It’s a girl.
It’s a fucking chica he’s got under him and who’s staring daggers at him and wriggling around, obviously trying to get rid of him. Her face is smudged all over with dirt and her hair is all tangled up but it’s unmistakably a girl he’s got pinned to the ground. She keeps trying to shake him off and he’s got to admire her endurance if nothing at all.
Then he suddenly gets her fist to his temple and honestly, that’s enough. He forces her arms above her face, leaning down until his face is only a few inches away from hers and growls, “Basta ya, brujita.”* And then he notices that her eyes are brown, hazel really, and the distraction of thinking how odd that is for a ginger nearly gets him knocked out by the ginger he neatly pinned to the ground a moment ago.
In the end, though… it’s Dr. Weir who saves him by saying, “Evan… I think she’s American.” It makes both him and the girl pause.
He blinks and stares at the girl that stares back at him in a way no American girl ever stared at him in his 35 years; defiant, fierce, even with a feral edge. It’s so prominent that it nearly overshadows a glimmer in her eyes, or maybe rather a shadow, something that makes them look old and in his bewilderment, he lets go of her arms.
Lethal mistake.
In a matter of seconds, she did something to flip him off her, jumped up and… finds a TT-33 squarely pointed at her face. And here Weir had refused to wear a gun for several months after coming into the country, claiming she was a pacifist. He throws Sheppard a short look from his position on the ground but Sheppard just gives him a minute shake of the head, continuing to point his M1911 at the girl. If this weren’t so damn serious, he’d laugh his ass off about that parody of a Western-ish standoff.
As it is… he gets a nice view of the girl’s backside… and a leather holster on her right hip with the butt of a semi-automatic sticking out of it. Jesus H. Christ, he could have been dead by now. He could be…
Dr. Weir obviously decided to take the lead again, loosening one hand from the grip around her gun and stretching it out in a pacifying gesture, palm out, “Listen, Miss, I don’t want to…”
“Give me back that notebook.” If anything, that girl’s no coward. Ordering around the woman who’s pointing a gun at her certainly took guts. Or a very special brand of insanity. Remembering what he saw in her eyes just a moment ago… well.
For a moment, he wondered what she meant when Weir carefully moves her free hand to grab behind her, towards the seat inside the car and he realizes that during his struggle with the girl, she and Sheppard must have used to the time to secure the car. He half expects the girl to jump forward and tackle Weir but for some reason, she stays where she is, her whole stature almost frozen.
Weir pulls her hand forward again, with a tattered little book in it and holds it out to the girl, taking down her gun a notch that he thinks is pretty much unwise. “Listen, we don’t want you anything bad. We’re on our way to Teruel, just passing through and we were just being cautious.”
“How do I know you’re not going there to support the fascists?” Because they’re deep enough into Republican territory that they’d have to be very suicidal fascists, he nearly reminds the girl but a warning look from Sheppard tells him to let Weir handle this.
The good doctor, in turn nods. “You’re right, you can’t.” Oh great, why don’t you just handle her the ammunition she… “You’ll have to trust us.” It’s just getting better and better.
“Why aren’t you with the Lincoln-Washington in Aragon if you aren’t part of the bad guys?” Good question, actually.
“We had business to attend to before we could go to Teruel.” Ah, and now Sheppard decided to join into the conversation. He wishes he wouldn’t have.
Because that just seemed to have made the girl more distrustful. “What kind of business?”
“Ours.” Typical Sheppard answer and before he knows it, a snort escaped him and… yeah, of course now everyone is looking at him and he takes that moment of broken tension to pick up his ass from the frozen ground.
Everyone is still looking at him and he wonders what’s so interesting about him. Anyway, now that they’re all looking at him, maybe they’ll also listen to him. “How about we just agree not to shoot each other for a moment so we can solve this like civilized people, huh?”
That seems to amuse Weir because she obviously can’t hide a smile. The girl - God, it’s high time to do an introduction since he possible can’t go on calling her “the girl” any longer - looks at him like she thinks he lost his mind and Sheppard seems ready to groan… but then the ginger brujita says, “I’m pretty sure civilized people is the one thing you won’t be able to find here.”
He’s pretty sure it was supposed to sound flippant or maybe joking but it came out with a hint of cynicism, an edge of something someone her age - he thinks her to be around her mid-twenties - shouldn’t know about. He wonders where she’s been with her ambulance car in this war to sound like that.
It is, however, Weir again who surprises him. “Two years ago I was a doctor in a hospital in the Philippines.” Huh, what… “I’m Dr. Elizabeth Weir. This here is John Sheppard. He used to command a US Army unit in Guam, with Evan Lorne over there as his second in command. We came here because we wanted to help the Republicans against Franco. John and Evan were on their way to Teruel when they received the message that… they needed to take care of something else first.”
“That business you mentioned?” The girl still looks wary of all of them but he thinks some of the tension in her body has gone.
Weir nods. “Yes. Now… who did we have the honor to meet?”
There’s an interesting transformation in the girl from wary over hesitant to an obvious attempt at some higher level civility when she extends her hand to Weir and says, “Laura Cadman. I was supposed to ferry that piece of… that car over to Teruel from Albacete but it broke down a few minutes before you came around.”
He does notice that she never told them what she did before she came here but then again, everyone’s entitled to their secrets. As long as they don’t kill him, that is. But somehow he has a feeling that her secrets are rather killing her.
“So you’re an ambulance driver?” Weir asks and it really is amazing how the girl… Miss Cadman seems to react to her.
“Yes, ma’am.” Interesting response. Then she looks closely at them. “But if you were hoping to hitch a ride…”
“No, we’d understand if you…”
“…you’ll all have to give me a hand with that man-of-war behind me.” Sheppard, Weir and he must have all have the same idea since he sees the confusion he feels. Miss Cadman must have seen it, too. “What? I could use a hand and if anyone wants to try something, I know how to handle a Browning HP.”
There probably was supposed to be levity and a bit of sarcasm and there was… almost burying a hardness that tells him she didn’t came here yesterday. He’s starting to be very, very glad that Weir and Sheppard are handling this because something about this Miss Cadman doesn’t sit right with him.
It’s not that he doesn’t trust her, it’s just that… she’s young and American and her accent sounds like she’s from somewhere around the D.C. area. She shouldn’t look older than she most probably is and sound harder than the usual young American woman from the D.C. area. For some reason, that’s more than he can deal with right now, right here. Something in him he hasn’t felt for a long time - since his divorce five years ago, to be precise - stirs when he looks at her. He chooses not to think about that too closely.
“Lorne?” Huh? “When you’re done gathering wool, how about you start helping Miss Cadman there with seeing what exactly’s wrong with her car?” Err… what? “Your dad owns a garage. I’m sure you picked up a thing or two from him. Now get moving.”
Oh of course. His father owns a garage in a San Francisco suburb, so he must be an experienced car mechanic and… and there’s no way he’ll get out of this now, judging from Sheppard’s look. He nods, glad that the twilight and the beret he’s wearing help to conceal what he’s thinking right now. “Yes, sir.”
So he trudges over to the car’s now open hood, registering that the car is a British model by glancing into the cab. Just fucking great. British, ancient and… “I don’t need your help.” Even better. He glares at her.
“You don’t even know if I’m here to help…”
“Didn’t you listen to what I just said? I. Don’t. Need. Your. Help.” Of course she’d say that. And of course she’d keep saying that. She’s a young woman on her way from Albacete to Teruel, all on her own, with only a Browning HP and a Lee-Enfield he’d seen lying on the passenger seat as protection. She probably needs to tell herself she’s got everything under control constantly.
“Look, I’m here because my superior officer just ordered me to…”
“Are you being deliberately stupid, Sunshine Boy? I just said I don’t need your help,” yes, he heard that and… “And if you’d let me finish my line, I could tell you that I don’t need your help because this car officially surrendered to the cold. There’s nothing we can do to get it running again before nightfall and trust me, you don’t want to be sitting in that thing when I’m driving it over a dirt road in the dark.”
Good God. That’s probably the longest speech he ever heard from a woman he just met. He tries to say something but his throat feels strangely dry and he finds himself clearing his throat for a second attempt but before he can get his tongue to obey him, Sheppard’s back, looking first at him, then at the motor and then at Miss Cadman. “So, no chance we’ll get anywhere right now, Miss Cadman?”
He’s pretty sure Miss Cadman just rolls her eyes at that, then she turns around to Sheppard and tells him with a kind of tried patience in her voice, “No, sir, we won’t. I’ve got two cots and a couple blankets in the back so we shouldn’t freeze to death tonight. I can’t give you a ride right now, but I could manage shelter.” Why is it, he wonders, that Sheppard gets tried patience and he gets hostility?
Sheppard nods at that and appoints him as first watch. They decide to put the guard into the driver’s cabin and agree on a regular intervals of getting out and checking for anything unusual. Since for some reason he has the strong desire for some quiet and peace but just knows he won’t be able to sleep anyway, he volunteers for first watch and after some fussing around with cots and blankets, he’s left with nothing to do but stare into the night that has finally fallen and try to stay warm in his layers of ragtag uniform and sodden boots.
Unfortunately for him, it’s a silent night, so he’s left with only himself for company for several hours which is never a good thing. In fact, by the end of his watch, he’s ready to admit that he’s terrible company and being allowed in the back and able to change out of his boots and socks isn’t the only reason he’s mighty relieved when he hears Sheppard tap against the window next to him.
Wordlessly, they change stations and he trudges around the ambulance’s back. He climbs in and the first thing he does when he closed the door behind him is the aforementioned getting out of the blasted boots and socks and it’s such a relief to be wearing something dry again that at first he doesn’t realize that Miss Cadman isn’t lying on one of the cots and that a strange sound is filling the room.
He blinks and in the light of the two candles they must have found somewhere and stuck to the floor, he sees her sitting with her back to the wall on the far side, her legs drawn up to her chest, her head on her knees and a blanket around her shoulders and over her head… shaking. And he realizes that the sound he heard is the chattering of her teeth. He sighs silently as he sits down on the cot opposite a sleeping Dr. Weir.
“Miss Cadman?”
No answer for a few seconds, then muffled from beneath the blanket, “Don’t call me that.”
Oh come on. He can’t believe this is happening. “What else do you want me to call you then?”
She’s silent again and he suspects it’s more to compose herself and not let him hear her teeth chattering through speaking than actually having to think about her answer. Then, “Camarada Paloma.” Really? Her nom de guerre is “Dove”? Is that supposed to be some kind of joke? “Or Laura.”
Alright. Fine. “Okay, Laura,” because he sure as hell ain’t calling anyone a comrade, no offense to the commies or anything, it just isn’t his thing, “why don’t you get up and take the cot? I don’t mind sleeping on the floor and…”
“I’m not tired.” Oh right, uh-huh, sure.
He can’t help but snort. “I seriously doubt that.”
“Don’t you dare condescend me.” What… he thinks he never heard anyone sound so… pissed off in a very low and calm voice. Again he wonders what she must have seen to get so angry so fast over something decidedly trivial.
Then again, he’s pretty sure he sure as hell doesn’t want to know what it was.
He takes a deep breath. “Sorry, I just… Look, you must be freezing to death down there. Why don’t you…”
“Come up to you for a cozy little “snuggle”? You bet your life I won’t.” Jesus H. Christ what did he do to her?
Or…
Or rather… what did someone do to her? Suddenly, the fact that she’s a woman among so many men at Albacete and other Republican posts and that war is terrible and that it makes terrible person out of a lot of people hits him like a slap in the face. If anyone… He swallows. “Look, Laura, I wasn’t trying to… to insinuate anything, I just don’t want a fellow soldier freeze to death. Just get up there and take my place here, I promise I’ll be off the cot before you touch it.”
She doesn’t say anything and he thinks that this time it is because she’s thinking about his offer. If he were honest, he’d have to admit that he’s dying to know who made her so afraid of men that she’d rather freeze on the floor than get on a cot as soon as a man is present but he knows asking her would be a very bad idea.
“Alright.” For the first time during their exchange she looks up and even in the candlelight he can see her frown as soon as she looks at him. He wonders… “And before you ask: no, I haven’t been attacked by anyone. I just had one too many stupid offers yesterday.”
Slowly, he nods, ridiculously relieved that no one harmed her that way - or any other, really - and starts to get up when he sees her frowning again and then purse her lips several times before she says, “Actually… I think it’s pretty stupid of you to want to freeze down here, too.” Uh-huh. So…? “So… if you don’t mind, you can stay on the cot.”
Yeah, well. For a moment, he wonders how much of this will have made it to Sheppard once he and Weir change stations because he got to know Weir as a very light sleeper. But then again… Sheppard knows not to stick in his nose into affairs that aren’t his own and he doesn’t think Weir’s that much different, so he just nods at Miss Cadman… Laura and she gets up, pads over to him and sits down next to him… surprisingly close, actually.
She doesn’t waste time, immediately adopts the same stance as before on the floor and pulls her blanket around herself as tightly as possible. He can still hear her teeth chattering, anyway. He sighs. “Laura… I don’t think that blanket’s going to do anything good. I’d rather you had mine than you sitting here and… you know.”
His sister once told him that the reason why he always got himself attached to the wrong girls is his chivalry. She said it when he found his first girlfriend sharing her apple with a boy from a year higher up and she said it when he caught his ex-wife kissing one of the Lieutenants in his company and she said it about basically every other girl he’d had in between. She said he needed to become wary of all those girls that accepted it without qualms and with a sweet smile and fluttering their eyelashes.
She never said anything about the girls that would say, “Sounds like a pretty stupid idea to me, Sunshine Boy.”
He can’t help but grin and he hopes to God she didn’t see that because that would probably just result in another black eye or something. “My teeth are not chattering, Laura.” She just shrugs and… that’s it. Alright. He shrugs, too and leans back and closes his eyes and tries to fall asleep.
And after about ten minutes it turns out that she’s not only freezing but also having nightmares because little groans and whimpers are starting to mix with the chattering and shaking and he feels his chest rise in a long drawn silent sigh. Oh good heavens. “Laura?” he whispers but she doesn’t react so he tries it a bit louder. “Laura?” It takes him another three attempts until she wakes up. No jerking or gasping, just opening her eyes and looking too old, too hard, too tired to be anywhere near the ages he estimates her to be.
There’s an urge in him, an idea, something he feels he just has to do even though he knows he shouldn’t be doing it. The thing that convinces him to do it anyway is the fact that Laura puts her forehead on his shoulder, as if she’s too tired of holding up her head.
Gently, he pries the blanket loose from her fingers and scoots close to her. He moves to cover her with half his blanket and pulls part of hers over himself. Then he mimics her earlier move, drawing his legs up on the cot. All throughout his move, she stays silent, almost but not quite frozen, so he attempts the last part of his idea with care, precision and even more gentleness than before as he puts his arm around her shoulder.
It takes her a moment - in which he half expects her to get back to her belligerent violent tactics from their first encounter - but then he suddenly feels her relaxing against his side and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel himself relax, either.
She doesn’t say anything, just puts her head on his shoulder and he draws her a little closer to him and when he feels her breathing grow regular and deep next to him, he realizes the most startling, strangest thing.
He realizes that this moment here in Spain, on a dirt road to probably another bloody battle with a wild little ambulance driver he hadn’t even known until a few hours ago by his side is the first time since setting foot on European soil, maybe since years ago, that he feels like everything’s going to be alright in the end. Even if their first meeting wasn’t exactly auspicious. Even if she gave him a real nice shiner. Even if this is war and they’re heading into a battle that might get even worse than the Jarama.
If he can just manage not to lose her before he even really got to know her, he knows things will be alright in the end. He just knows they will.
*asqueroso - disgusting
*La puta madre - fucking shit
*Basta ya, brujita. - That’s enough, little witch.
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: T
Genres: het
Summary: On the way to Teruel, former US Army Major turned International Brigades fighter Evan Lorne has an unexpected encounter on the road.
A/N: Err, I have no idea how this happened (alright, I do, and it's all Al Stewart's fault!) but suddenly there was this Spanish Civil War bunny and it wanted to be written. And I really wanted to make it something else than Lorne/Cadman but they wouldn't let me. It's got very, very minor background implied Sheppard/Weir, though :)
I also realized that I might have been inspired for this by Condor's Flight by freifraufischer. If you haven't read this, do. It's one of the best SGA historical AUs I have ever read and I can only recommend it :)
PS.: I might have taken some creative licence with the Browning HP, M1911 and Lee-Enfield mentioned in the story. I tried to research handguns used in the Spanish Civil war but it was almost impossible. Wikipedia doesn't state anything about any of them having been used but from their service dates I gleaned that they might have been used anyway (and I figured that since both Evan and Sheppard are former Army in this, they might have found ways to get ahold of the then used standard sidearm of the US Armed Forces).
Ghost Moon Sails Among the Clouds (Turns the Rifles Into Silver)
“The fishing boats go out across the evening water
Smuggling guns and arms across the Spanish border
The wind whips up the waves so loud
The ghost moon sails among the clouds
Turns the rifles into silver on the border.”
Al Stewart, “On the Border”
Come to Spain, his superior officer had said to him. Fight for the Republic, his superior officer had said to him. Do the right thing, his superior officer had said to him.
And here he is, trudging through the light dusting of snow - snow, in fucking Spain - on the road to Teruel that’s not more than a dirt path, freezing his ass off in the rags he swathed himself in and wondering why the everloving hell he listened to Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard and followed him to a Spain ravaged by civil war.
It’s time like this when he’s questioning his sanity for following Sheppard through hell and back without a blink and the stares he sends at Sheppard’s back would probably have put several holes in him, were they bullets. He just hopes Dr. Weir doesn’t see them because for some reason the good doctor seems to have some incurable obsession with getting people to make peace with each other.
Also, she clearly has something going on with Sheppard and he suspects it probably started on the ship that brought all three of them plus a couple other American volunteers for the International brigades to France in late 1936. They’re discreet, he’s got to give them that but the three of them have been on the road for over a week now with only each other as company and it’s not like he’s blind. Or deaf, for that matter.
Then again, the reason that they’re lagging behind the Lincoln-Washington Battalion, their main unit, is that they’d been detached to pick Weir up from an aid station of those Falangistas that she’d been forced to work for after having been captured a few weeks before in a raid they’d made on Weir’s last assignment. He’d have been thoroughly alarmed if Sheppard and Weir hadn’t shown any attachment whatsoever after that.
And anyway… “Ditch,” he hears Sheppard suddenly hiss and in the twilight he can see the silhouette of something big on the road. He wastes no time and scrambles down into the ditch next to the dirt road and only his years as an officer of the United States Army prevent him from swearing very loudly. There’s nothing so asqueroso* as suddenly having your ice cold feet surrounded by ice cold water.
There’s a warning look from Sheppard that he just answers with rolling his eyes and jerking his head toward the structure on the road they saw ahead. After Sheppard throws Weir a short look that she just confirms with a nod, they make their way forward, careful not to make any noise. Inch by inch… until they hear someone swearing in an impressive array of languages. Very, very loudly.
They’re about two yards behind the structure - a positively ancient ambulance car, probably left over from the Great War or something - when Sheppard gestures to Weir to stay here and to him to take the car’s right sight. Slowly they climb out of the ditch and he lightly presses his back against the car’s right side and inches forward.
Just before he’s about to reach for the door, he slowly moves to chamber a round in his M1911 handgun and almost winces at the too audibly loud click. Hoping Sheppard does the same on the other side, he moves to open the car’s door with his left hand, his gun ready to level into whoever’s face… and suddenly he’s seeing stars and pain explodes in his eye and…
La puta madre.*
For a moment, the only thing he notices is that his world just turned upside down and that he’s looking up at the darkening sky. Until he realizes that something weighs him down and there’s… hair whipping into his face and… someone pummeling his fucking chest.
Still having no idea what the fuck just happened he moves the M1911 his right hand still miraculously grips up to bring it down on the furious face staring at him and spitting insults at him to just make it stop but for some reason he will probably never be able to fathom, he sometimes has his arms around his assailant and since he’s lucky enough to realize what’s going on, he moves to tighten them, keeping his attacker close and rolling him around on the ground on his back…
It’s a girl.
It’s a fucking chica he’s got under him and who’s staring daggers at him and wriggling around, obviously trying to get rid of him. Her face is smudged all over with dirt and her hair is all tangled up but it’s unmistakably a girl he’s got pinned to the ground. She keeps trying to shake him off and he’s got to admire her endurance if nothing at all.
Then he suddenly gets her fist to his temple and honestly, that’s enough. He forces her arms above her face, leaning down until his face is only a few inches away from hers and growls, “Basta ya, brujita.”* And then he notices that her eyes are brown, hazel really, and the distraction of thinking how odd that is for a ginger nearly gets him knocked out by the ginger he neatly pinned to the ground a moment ago.
In the end, though… it’s Dr. Weir who saves him by saying, “Evan… I think she’s American.” It makes both him and the girl pause.
He blinks and stares at the girl that stares back at him in a way no American girl ever stared at him in his 35 years; defiant, fierce, even with a feral edge. It’s so prominent that it nearly overshadows a glimmer in her eyes, or maybe rather a shadow, something that makes them look old and in his bewilderment, he lets go of her arms.
Lethal mistake.
In a matter of seconds, she did something to flip him off her, jumped up and… finds a TT-33 squarely pointed at her face. And here Weir had refused to wear a gun for several months after coming into the country, claiming she was a pacifist. He throws Sheppard a short look from his position on the ground but Sheppard just gives him a minute shake of the head, continuing to point his M1911 at the girl. If this weren’t so damn serious, he’d laugh his ass off about that parody of a Western-ish standoff.
As it is… he gets a nice view of the girl’s backside… and a leather holster on her right hip with the butt of a semi-automatic sticking out of it. Jesus H. Christ, he could have been dead by now. He could be…
Dr. Weir obviously decided to take the lead again, loosening one hand from the grip around her gun and stretching it out in a pacifying gesture, palm out, “Listen, Miss, I don’t want to…”
“Give me back that notebook.” If anything, that girl’s no coward. Ordering around the woman who’s pointing a gun at her certainly took guts. Or a very special brand of insanity. Remembering what he saw in her eyes just a moment ago… well.
For a moment, he wondered what she meant when Weir carefully moves her free hand to grab behind her, towards the seat inside the car and he realizes that during his struggle with the girl, she and Sheppard must have used to the time to secure the car. He half expects the girl to jump forward and tackle Weir but for some reason, she stays where she is, her whole stature almost frozen.
Weir pulls her hand forward again, with a tattered little book in it and holds it out to the girl, taking down her gun a notch that he thinks is pretty much unwise. “Listen, we don’t want you anything bad. We’re on our way to Teruel, just passing through and we were just being cautious.”
“How do I know you’re not going there to support the fascists?” Because they’re deep enough into Republican territory that they’d have to be very suicidal fascists, he nearly reminds the girl but a warning look from Sheppard tells him to let Weir handle this.
The good doctor, in turn nods. “You’re right, you can’t.” Oh great, why don’t you just handle her the ammunition she… “You’ll have to trust us.” It’s just getting better and better.
“Why aren’t you with the Lincoln-Washington in Aragon if you aren’t part of the bad guys?” Good question, actually.
“We had business to attend to before we could go to Teruel.” Ah, and now Sheppard decided to join into the conversation. He wishes he wouldn’t have.
Because that just seemed to have made the girl more distrustful. “What kind of business?”
“Ours.” Typical Sheppard answer and before he knows it, a snort escaped him and… yeah, of course now everyone is looking at him and he takes that moment of broken tension to pick up his ass from the frozen ground.
Everyone is still looking at him and he wonders what’s so interesting about him. Anyway, now that they’re all looking at him, maybe they’ll also listen to him. “How about we just agree not to shoot each other for a moment so we can solve this like civilized people, huh?”
That seems to amuse Weir because she obviously can’t hide a smile. The girl - God, it’s high time to do an introduction since he possible can’t go on calling her “the girl” any longer - looks at him like she thinks he lost his mind and Sheppard seems ready to groan… but then the ginger brujita says, “I’m pretty sure civilized people is the one thing you won’t be able to find here.”
He’s pretty sure it was supposed to sound flippant or maybe joking but it came out with a hint of cynicism, an edge of something someone her age - he thinks her to be around her mid-twenties - shouldn’t know about. He wonders where she’s been with her ambulance car in this war to sound like that.
It is, however, Weir again who surprises him. “Two years ago I was a doctor in a hospital in the Philippines.” Huh, what… “I’m Dr. Elizabeth Weir. This here is John Sheppard. He used to command a US Army unit in Guam, with Evan Lorne over there as his second in command. We came here because we wanted to help the Republicans against Franco. John and Evan were on their way to Teruel when they received the message that… they needed to take care of something else first.”
“That business you mentioned?” The girl still looks wary of all of them but he thinks some of the tension in her body has gone.
Weir nods. “Yes. Now… who did we have the honor to meet?”
There’s an interesting transformation in the girl from wary over hesitant to an obvious attempt at some higher level civility when she extends her hand to Weir and says, “Laura Cadman. I was supposed to ferry that piece of… that car over to Teruel from Albacete but it broke down a few minutes before you came around.”
He does notice that she never told them what she did before she came here but then again, everyone’s entitled to their secrets. As long as they don’t kill him, that is. But somehow he has a feeling that her secrets are rather killing her.
“So you’re an ambulance driver?” Weir asks and it really is amazing how the girl… Miss Cadman seems to react to her.
“Yes, ma’am.” Interesting response. Then she looks closely at them. “But if you were hoping to hitch a ride…”
“No, we’d understand if you…”
“…you’ll all have to give me a hand with that man-of-war behind me.” Sheppard, Weir and he must have all have the same idea since he sees the confusion he feels. Miss Cadman must have seen it, too. “What? I could use a hand and if anyone wants to try something, I know how to handle a Browning HP.”
There probably was supposed to be levity and a bit of sarcasm and there was… almost burying a hardness that tells him she didn’t came here yesterday. He’s starting to be very, very glad that Weir and Sheppard are handling this because something about this Miss Cadman doesn’t sit right with him.
It’s not that he doesn’t trust her, it’s just that… she’s young and American and her accent sounds like she’s from somewhere around the D.C. area. She shouldn’t look older than she most probably is and sound harder than the usual young American woman from the D.C. area. For some reason, that’s more than he can deal with right now, right here. Something in him he hasn’t felt for a long time - since his divorce five years ago, to be precise - stirs when he looks at her. He chooses not to think about that too closely.
“Lorne?” Huh? “When you’re done gathering wool, how about you start helping Miss Cadman there with seeing what exactly’s wrong with her car?” Err… what? “Your dad owns a garage. I’m sure you picked up a thing or two from him. Now get moving.”
Oh of course. His father owns a garage in a San Francisco suburb, so he must be an experienced car mechanic and… and there’s no way he’ll get out of this now, judging from Sheppard’s look. He nods, glad that the twilight and the beret he’s wearing help to conceal what he’s thinking right now. “Yes, sir.”
So he trudges over to the car’s now open hood, registering that the car is a British model by glancing into the cab. Just fucking great. British, ancient and… “I don’t need your help.” Even better. He glares at her.
“You don’t even know if I’m here to help…”
“Didn’t you listen to what I just said? I. Don’t. Need. Your. Help.” Of course she’d say that. And of course she’d keep saying that. She’s a young woman on her way from Albacete to Teruel, all on her own, with only a Browning HP and a Lee-Enfield he’d seen lying on the passenger seat as protection. She probably needs to tell herself she’s got everything under control constantly.
“Look, I’m here because my superior officer just ordered me to…”
“Are you being deliberately stupid, Sunshine Boy? I just said I don’t need your help,” yes, he heard that and… “And if you’d let me finish my line, I could tell you that I don’t need your help because this car officially surrendered to the cold. There’s nothing we can do to get it running again before nightfall and trust me, you don’t want to be sitting in that thing when I’m driving it over a dirt road in the dark.”
Good God. That’s probably the longest speech he ever heard from a woman he just met. He tries to say something but his throat feels strangely dry and he finds himself clearing his throat for a second attempt but before he can get his tongue to obey him, Sheppard’s back, looking first at him, then at the motor and then at Miss Cadman. “So, no chance we’ll get anywhere right now, Miss Cadman?”
He’s pretty sure Miss Cadman just rolls her eyes at that, then she turns around to Sheppard and tells him with a kind of tried patience in her voice, “No, sir, we won’t. I’ve got two cots and a couple blankets in the back so we shouldn’t freeze to death tonight. I can’t give you a ride right now, but I could manage shelter.” Why is it, he wonders, that Sheppard gets tried patience and he gets hostility?
Sheppard nods at that and appoints him as first watch. They decide to put the guard into the driver’s cabin and agree on a regular intervals of getting out and checking for anything unusual. Since for some reason he has the strong desire for some quiet and peace but just knows he won’t be able to sleep anyway, he volunteers for first watch and after some fussing around with cots and blankets, he’s left with nothing to do but stare into the night that has finally fallen and try to stay warm in his layers of ragtag uniform and sodden boots.
Unfortunately for him, it’s a silent night, so he’s left with only himself for company for several hours which is never a good thing. In fact, by the end of his watch, he’s ready to admit that he’s terrible company and being allowed in the back and able to change out of his boots and socks isn’t the only reason he’s mighty relieved when he hears Sheppard tap against the window next to him.
Wordlessly, they change stations and he trudges around the ambulance’s back. He climbs in and the first thing he does when he closed the door behind him is the aforementioned getting out of the blasted boots and socks and it’s such a relief to be wearing something dry again that at first he doesn’t realize that Miss Cadman isn’t lying on one of the cots and that a strange sound is filling the room.
He blinks and in the light of the two candles they must have found somewhere and stuck to the floor, he sees her sitting with her back to the wall on the far side, her legs drawn up to her chest, her head on her knees and a blanket around her shoulders and over her head… shaking. And he realizes that the sound he heard is the chattering of her teeth. He sighs silently as he sits down on the cot opposite a sleeping Dr. Weir.
“Miss Cadman?”
No answer for a few seconds, then muffled from beneath the blanket, “Don’t call me that.”
Oh come on. He can’t believe this is happening. “What else do you want me to call you then?”
She’s silent again and he suspects it’s more to compose herself and not let him hear her teeth chattering through speaking than actually having to think about her answer. Then, “Camarada Paloma.” Really? Her nom de guerre is “Dove”? Is that supposed to be some kind of joke? “Or Laura.”
Alright. Fine. “Okay, Laura,” because he sure as hell ain’t calling anyone a comrade, no offense to the commies or anything, it just isn’t his thing, “why don’t you get up and take the cot? I don’t mind sleeping on the floor and…”
“I’m not tired.” Oh right, uh-huh, sure.
He can’t help but snort. “I seriously doubt that.”
“Don’t you dare condescend me.” What… he thinks he never heard anyone sound so… pissed off in a very low and calm voice. Again he wonders what she must have seen to get so angry so fast over something decidedly trivial.
Then again, he’s pretty sure he sure as hell doesn’t want to know what it was.
He takes a deep breath. “Sorry, I just… Look, you must be freezing to death down there. Why don’t you…”
“Come up to you for a cozy little “snuggle”? You bet your life I won’t.” Jesus H. Christ what did he do to her?
Or…
Or rather… what did someone do to her? Suddenly, the fact that she’s a woman among so many men at Albacete and other Republican posts and that war is terrible and that it makes terrible person out of a lot of people hits him like a slap in the face. If anyone… He swallows. “Look, Laura, I wasn’t trying to… to insinuate anything, I just don’t want a fellow soldier freeze to death. Just get up there and take my place here, I promise I’ll be off the cot before you touch it.”
She doesn’t say anything and he thinks that this time it is because she’s thinking about his offer. If he were honest, he’d have to admit that he’s dying to know who made her so afraid of men that she’d rather freeze on the floor than get on a cot as soon as a man is present but he knows asking her would be a very bad idea.
“Alright.” For the first time during their exchange she looks up and even in the candlelight he can see her frown as soon as she looks at him. He wonders… “And before you ask: no, I haven’t been attacked by anyone. I just had one too many stupid offers yesterday.”
Slowly, he nods, ridiculously relieved that no one harmed her that way - or any other, really - and starts to get up when he sees her frowning again and then purse her lips several times before she says, “Actually… I think it’s pretty stupid of you to want to freeze down here, too.” Uh-huh. So…? “So… if you don’t mind, you can stay on the cot.”
Yeah, well. For a moment, he wonders how much of this will have made it to Sheppard once he and Weir change stations because he got to know Weir as a very light sleeper. But then again… Sheppard knows not to stick in his nose into affairs that aren’t his own and he doesn’t think Weir’s that much different, so he just nods at Miss Cadman… Laura and she gets up, pads over to him and sits down next to him… surprisingly close, actually.
She doesn’t waste time, immediately adopts the same stance as before on the floor and pulls her blanket around herself as tightly as possible. He can still hear her teeth chattering, anyway. He sighs. “Laura… I don’t think that blanket’s going to do anything good. I’d rather you had mine than you sitting here and… you know.”
His sister once told him that the reason why he always got himself attached to the wrong girls is his chivalry. She said it when he found his first girlfriend sharing her apple with a boy from a year higher up and she said it when he caught his ex-wife kissing one of the Lieutenants in his company and she said it about basically every other girl he’d had in between. She said he needed to become wary of all those girls that accepted it without qualms and with a sweet smile and fluttering their eyelashes.
She never said anything about the girls that would say, “Sounds like a pretty stupid idea to me, Sunshine Boy.”
He can’t help but grin and he hopes to God she didn’t see that because that would probably just result in another black eye or something. “My teeth are not chattering, Laura.” She just shrugs and… that’s it. Alright. He shrugs, too and leans back and closes his eyes and tries to fall asleep.
And after about ten minutes it turns out that she’s not only freezing but also having nightmares because little groans and whimpers are starting to mix with the chattering and shaking and he feels his chest rise in a long drawn silent sigh. Oh good heavens. “Laura?” he whispers but she doesn’t react so he tries it a bit louder. “Laura?” It takes him another three attempts until she wakes up. No jerking or gasping, just opening her eyes and looking too old, too hard, too tired to be anywhere near the ages he estimates her to be.
There’s an urge in him, an idea, something he feels he just has to do even though he knows he shouldn’t be doing it. The thing that convinces him to do it anyway is the fact that Laura puts her forehead on his shoulder, as if she’s too tired of holding up her head.
Gently, he pries the blanket loose from her fingers and scoots close to her. He moves to cover her with half his blanket and pulls part of hers over himself. Then he mimics her earlier move, drawing his legs up on the cot. All throughout his move, she stays silent, almost but not quite frozen, so he attempts the last part of his idea with care, precision and even more gentleness than before as he puts his arm around her shoulder.
It takes her a moment - in which he half expects her to get back to her belligerent violent tactics from their first encounter - but then he suddenly feels her relaxing against his side and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel himself relax, either.
She doesn’t say anything, just puts her head on his shoulder and he draws her a little closer to him and when he feels her breathing grow regular and deep next to him, he realizes the most startling, strangest thing.
He realizes that this moment here in Spain, on a dirt road to probably another bloody battle with a wild little ambulance driver he hadn’t even known until a few hours ago by his side is the first time since setting foot on European soil, maybe since years ago, that he feels like everything’s going to be alright in the end. Even if their first meeting wasn’t exactly auspicious. Even if she gave him a real nice shiner. Even if this is war and they’re heading into a battle that might get even worse than the Jarama.
If he can just manage not to lose her before he even really got to know her, he knows things will be alright in the end. He just knows they will.
*asqueroso - disgusting
*La puta madre - fucking shit
*Basta ya, brujita. - That’s enough, little witch.