Demons 3/3
Title: Demons (3/3)
Author: Alsike
Pairing: Emma Frost/Emily Prentiss, some Emily/Pietro Maximoff
Rating: NC-17 - Not just for sex.
Warnings: War, violence, threat of rape.
Fandom: X-Men/Criminal Minds
Disclaimer: Not my girls.
Word Count: 4572
Summary: Part 3 of Emily is a spy in WWI story. There is no actually historical accuracy intended in this.
There may be a bit of an epilogue after this. But hey, the plot it is finished! Since it's been over a year since I started this, I apologize. I hope you enjoy it!
Part 1
Part 2a
Part 2b
Part 3
“I didn’t lie, you know,” Emily said casually, glancing up at the stars, so still and cold, unmoved, above their heads, as they walked through the fields back towards the convent. “I’ve been with whores.”
“In Paris?”
Emily laughed. “Yes.” She had friends in some of the men’s colleges at Cambridge, and they would take her along on their raucous trips to the city. John and Matthew and Michael, getting drunk in Montmartre together. There had been dancers and whores, too much food and too much liquor, and she didn’t regret a moment of it. She had known their class was going to get called up, known that she couldn’t be called with them. Perhaps more than her mother’s commands, it was that which made her accept the offer. Both Matthew and Michael were dead now. John was in hospital back in England, and she was in a ditch, in fucking Alsace.
“You enjoy it?”
Emily shook her head, amused by the dry delivery of the question. “They always laughed at me. They said, you’re rich and you like to be fucked. Go find yourself a man who will do it for free.” She shook her head. “But a pretty girl…”
Emma was watching her, her gaze unreadable.
Emily tensed. “I don’t regret it.” She would never regret any moment she had with her friends.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been to Paris.”
“Are you from there?”
“I grew up there. But my family’s from Surrey.”
Emily stared. “English?”
“To some extent.”
“How the hell did you get here?”
“How do you think? I left.” She shook her head. “The best thing about joining a convent is that you leave your family behind when you step through that door. I would have sold my soul to the devil for that. Give myself to god? It was a bargain.”
Emily sank back. “You can blame me, if you want, for corrupting you.”
“I take responsibility for my own sin, darling.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence.
xXx
The fallen church was dead silent as they approached. Then suddenly a figure stepped out from behind a broken wall and leveled a gun at them.
“Halt!”
“Kurt?”
The gun fell, the boy’s dark eyes widened. “Sister.” He threw himself at Emma, embracing her. Emily stood back and watched the desperate way he crushed himself against her.
The echoes of bombs from the front thundered in the distance.
She had failed.
And yet, as the children giddily surrounded the nun, their relief that she had returned safely wiping away any lingering anguish from Robert’s death, Emily could not help but wonder, at what cost, victory?
They hadn’t died. They had escaped. And yet her mother would have found that the largest failure she could make. She should have run the other direction. Plunged into no-man’s land, fallen. Perhaps they would have found the documents on her dead body in the field of battle. Perhaps not. But saving her own life, saving this woman’s life, was nothing in the larger view. Every act was selfish.
But stealing these children’s only hope?
Better their hope than their world, her mother would have said. But would that save their lives? She clenched her fists and shut her eyes. No, there was no guarantee for any of them. If she had made it, they might well have starved. If she never made it, that was no guarantee of their deaths. If she had lost Emma….
“I’m sorry you didn’t make it through the lines, miss,” said Kurt.
Emily looked at him. She shook her head. She could not speak.
In the catacomb, Jennifer brought out the last of the catmeat stew. Kitty fetched water to wash the mud from their skin. Rebecca just fell happily into the nun’s lap, clinging to her neck, and telling her everything that had happened while they were away.
“What happened to you?” she asked, bright and curious.
Emma’s eyes slipped over, catching Emily’s and holding. Somehow, Emily knew what it meant.
“There were German soldiers all along the line,” Emily said. “We couldn’t get through.” She could take any number of white lies on her own sullied soul. She watched the children. They were loyal to a fault. They would die for their teacher, their protector. And they would be horrified to know anything more about what had nearly happened to her.
The one candle was too precious to waste. They blew it out, and Emma, still smelling of earth and sweat and sex, curled up next to her under the heap of habits.
“What would they think if they knew what you did to me?” Emily whispered, unaccusingly.
The nun stilled. “What would you think of yourself, I wonder,” she said softly, her breath a brush against Emily’s face, “if you tried to tell them of it.”
xXx
The spy looked pale and ill, like she hadn’t slept well. Emma watched her with narrowed eyes. She hadn’t eaten more than a bite of the stew the night before. Would she give up?
Emma tossed her a rifle. She caught it, looking up wide-eyed and stricken. “We have to hunt.”
“What for?” Emily said, her voice weak and broken.
“For today. They may bomb tonight, but we need to eat today.”
The spy slowly staggered to her feet. Emma wondered if she had ever thought about the world in those terms. Had everything always been part of some grand plan? Had she never merely focused on getting through the day? There was no guarantee. They could be bombed tonight and all die. Or they could survive. The war could never end, and yet they could continue to survive, as long as they ate. As long as they lied to themselves about the prospect of stability. The easiest lie was routine. Routine gave you confidence, something to rely on, to let you see the future just enough to believe in it, even if it was all worthless in the end.
But with her words, the spy’s eyes had changed. Her jaw set. She took the sack that Kitty proffered and started toward the opening. The look made Emma’s stomach turn. Those cold eyes were killer’s eyes. She knew them well, in puddles and broken mirrors. That was why this woman was a spy. She could take an assignment and devote herself to it, as if there was nothing else important, not even the state of her own soul.
xXx
There were edible mushrooms in the field near the forest. Emily crouched to pick all those she could find. For the moment the front was silent, no buzz of airplanes, no boom of bombing. All she could hear was birds and insects, and Rebecca’s cries of happiness as she played with Jennifer in the outskirts of the forest. Kurt sat at the top of the hill, the rifle in his lap, keeping watch. Kitty dug for tubers and grubs. Emma was behind her, but she could feel her eyes.
“Yip!”
Emily looked up. A dog, a skinny matted thing, popped out of the forest, spotted the gathered humans, and performed an ecstatic gambol. He ran toward each of them, curving away quickly before he came within grabbing distance. He ran toward Emily, who crouched, and he reached her, hopping up and putting his paws on her knees. He looked at her, looking happy, his tongue lolling from his mouth as he panted.
The laugh bubbled up involuntarily. He was some sort of mix, but there was definitely a little spaniel in there, and a good deal of terrier.
In the corner of her eye, she saw Emma freeze at the laugh, staring at her.
Emily dropped to her knees and cuddled the dog to her chest. He licked her face.
The nun stalked over. “You’ll get fleas.”
Emily looked up at her. “I had spaniels once,” she said. “My family had them for hunting.” She let the dog go. “And in Berlin there was a bitch…”
The dog ran off to chase rabbits. Emily’s throat felt thick. The little bitch.
“We’re not going to eat it then?”
Of course. Emily squeezed her eyes shut. Why wasn’t she thinking? Why couldn’t she keep her mind on the task? She straightened up and set her jaw. “We should. He’s skinny, but there’s some meat-“
Emma slapped her. “What is wrong with you?”
Emily stood frozen and blank. “But… you said-”
“Yes, we need food. And I wouldn’t have hesitated, but I don’t care about dogs. You, though, you care, and you just shove that down and do what you think you need to do, even if it’s pointless, even if it’s just a momentary benefit that won’t even half match up to the amount of guilt it gives you.”
“Even if it will keep us from starving?”
“There are other options! You’re not a martyr. Scourging yourself does not scour you of sin! Sometimes you have to let yourself love and make sacrifices for the things that you care about, even if they’re not what you ought to care about!”
How could she even say that? How could she… Emily stared at her. She couldn’t know. “I murdered a man I cared for, for the good of my country,” she said. “He was kind. And he gave me confidences about how he wished his father wasn’t pushing him into the military, that he wasn’t sure about this war. He was a good person. But I murdered him because it wasn’t my job to let him live. Why should something as worthless as a flea-ridden mutt be any different? Why should I let myself be weak?”
Emma’s eyes, grey as stone, were fixed on her. She looked as if she had been split in two, split in two by pity and anger. “Because it will give you less pain.”
“I don’t deserve less pain!”
Emily’s eyes stung with dried up tears. Her chest ached. She wanted to run, run as far and fast as she could, run far and fast enough to run away from herself.
Emma reached out and cupped her arm. The touch turned her to stone. The cracks in her soul creaked. The fingers squeezed, and it was too much. She shattered.
There was a bark. The dog was sitting at their feet, wagging its tail through the grass, a dead rabbit in front of it.
Emma’s lips tightened into something that wasn’t exactly a smile. “Destroying those who give you kindness means that the act of kindness will never be repeated.”
Emily stared at her for a long moment. Could she let herself believe that? She dropped to her knees and cut open the rabbit. She fed the belly and entrails, still steaming, to the dog. He licked the blood off her fingers. She cut off the head, and the dog ran off with it, disappearing into the trees.
xXx
They ate well, for once, but as the afternoon shadows lengthened, Emily kept glancing up at the sky.
“You said three days,” Emma murmured softly.
“I hoped I had that long.” Emily shook her head. “Even if I do, any route through is blocked. The Americans will start their offensive, and they will head right into a trap. The Germans will roll right over them.”
Kurt was staring at them, his eyes wide, face horrified. “They’re coming right through here, aren’t they?”
Emily looked at him, wishing she could say otherwise. They were so close to the front, any push or pull and they could be overrun. “The catacomb will probably hold up.”
“But if they don’t get this information…”
“People will die. They’ll die either way. I was just hoping that with my information we could lose fewer.”
“It’s just information? Couldn’t you radio it out? You have the codes, don’t you?”
Emily smiled. “If I had a radio.”
Emma’s face whitened. She was staring at Kurt. Kurt was staring straight back at her, determined and noble. “There’s one in the church.”
“The German-occupied church,” Emma snapped. “It’s an army radio tower. It’s well guarded.”
Kurt set his jaw. “I’d fight for you.”
“What?” Emma’s voice was half fury half horror.
And Emily knew that she shouldn’t even consider this. Emma would never forgive her for using her children for her own ends. But for a brief flash of hope, it felt possible. It might actually be possible.
xXx
“You can’t do this to me. You can’t do this to my children.”
Emma was desperate, so desperate. But Emily needed to think. She spread the notes out in front of her, carefully organizing the most crucial pieces of information and translating them into the code.
It was a radio tower. How many guards would they actually have on a relay tower? How many could they spare? What sort of ammunition was stored in the catacomb? What were their resources?
“Miss,” it was Jennifer, behind her Kurt, Kitty and Rachel. “Kurt told us what’s going on. We want to help if we can.”
The betrayal in Emma’s eyes was like a knife.
“Thank you,” Emily said. “I need to work out a plan. I’ll let you know.”
“I don't want them to become soldiers!” Emma hissed.
“They already are, you know. They’d do anything for you.”
“Except listen when I tell them to not be stupid!” Emma pressed her hands to her face. “I don't want them to have to be killers yet.”
“Not like us.” And Emily felt that she was finally beginning to understand. There were other options. There were important things, things that were more important than the task, because sometimes you survived, and then you had to live with yourself.
Emma looked up at her. “They shouldn’t have to.”
“We shouldn’t have had to either!” It came out louder and more vehement than Emily had expected. “But we did. My friends became soldiers and pilots and I became this. You became someone who could stomp on a man’s neck until he stopped breathing.” Emma looked venomous. “And if this keeps going, they won’t have a choice, just like we didn’t have a choice.”
“So you’ll jump the gun then?”
“I want Jennifer as a lookout. I want Kurt and Kitty to set up a distraction. And I want you at my back. I know you can kill. And I need someone who's tested and who can get in and out with me. I won’t risk the children in the church. But you…”
“You’ll risk me.”
“I trust you.”
“Why?”
“You didn’t leave me for the Germans.”
“I’m not on your side.”
“You’re the closest thing I’ve got.”
xXx
There was only one road leading up to the old church on the hill. Jennifer and Rebecca were left at the foot of it with a rifle and a pile of flares. If the attack was noticed and assistance was summoned, they would be the first to know. Any flare meant get out quick and disappear into the woods.
Kurt and Kitty were in charge of the distraction. They had a few grenades. They were not to get caught and they were not to get injured. Those were their only rules.
Emma had a brace of pistols. Emily had her derringer and a knife. Emma wore her uniform again, the filthy greys, the cap on her head, her eyes like chips of ice. She had scrounged up a uniform for Emily too. It did not fit her as well, she thought, but perhaps it did.
They were all soldiers in the end. Perhaps that was all anyone could ever be.
“If they die,” Emma hissed softly into her ear. She didn’t have to finish. If they died, succeed or fail, Emma would fall apart. And if she were gone... Emily had to focus. She had to stay on task. It had been so easy once, so impossibly easy, before she had let herself hope, for just one moment, that this war could truly end, and that when it did, she might still have something to hold onto.
When the boom came, and the guards looked up, eyes wide at an attack so close, they ran the wrong direction. One ducked inside. The other stayed put. Goddamn it.
And then Emma stepped up in front of him. “Hey, Arschgeischt.”
Emily slit his throat.
“Hurry.”
They might already be radioing for help. They may have no time left.
The nave was like an empty cavern, any seating long since chopped for firewood, any metal fixings melted down for planes and bullets. One window had been left, muted in the darkness, Christ and his mother winking down on them, smiling slightly, as if this was funny, as if there was anything funny in this world.
And yet, there always was, wasn’t there? So close to death, to annihilation, she could still see the nun scowl at the muddy footprints leading up the altar steps, and have to hold back a smile. She could still look at her and wish to see her stripped bare, warm and clean and dripping as she emerged from a bath like an artist’s model, meet her narrowed eyes, and take her - and have her want to be taken - the greatest fantasy of all.
But that was the cosmic joke, wasn’t it? Even the little things, the things that had once been easy and natural, like a bath or a full meal, they were no different from truth and justice or any impossible thing. One day you had them, and the next they were stolen away from you, never to return.
They caught the second guard coming back down the stairs. Emma grabbed his leg and he tripped, then fell, tumbling the last few steps of the spiral staircase, then hitting the straight stair up to the balcony, bouncing over the edge and plummeting, smashing his head open on the floor. Emma breathed in stiffly through her nose. Emily caught her hand, threading their fingers together, and started up the spiral staircase into the bell tower.
The radio man had his headphones on. He didn’t hear them coming in.
He had just finished coding and opening the line up to start tapping out a message. Emily walked up behind him and pressed the derringer to the back of his head. He froze.
Emma carefully extracted the tapper from his fingers and pulled off his headphones. He looked up at them, eyes wide and horrified. Emily turned his chair until he wad facing away from the equipment. Then she shot him.
No spatter on the machines.
There was a gasp from the corner and footsteps plunging down the stairs. Emma caught her eyes. Nothing do be done. Quickly, Emily dropped into the seat. She reset the frequency, and started signalling.
xXx
Jennifer watched the road. Rebecca huddled in a blanket in a small hollow between a rock and two trees. She watched the skies as well. After the bang of the grenade there had been nothing but silence.
Then she heard it, footsteps, running down the road from the church. She squinted, a soldier, German uniform, but short and squat, not like either of her companions. He was running for help.
Carefully and slowly she brought the rifle to her shoulder and aimed, just a hair ahead of him. Matching her draw to her breathing, she relaxed and pulled the trigger.
The man fell.
His head had exploded.
Very carefully, Jennifer put down the gun, and she smiled.
xXx
No one had come after them. Kurt and Kitty hurried through the woods. It was dark and cold and they kept tripping and tumbling over roots and into ditches. They were trying to double back to where Jennifer was. Then there was a yip and a small figure emerged from the trees and tugged on Kurt’s pantleg.
The dog.
They froze, silenced, and heard soft voices and the crackle of a campfire through the trees. A soldier outpost. As silently as possible the two children and the dog turned around and headed away from the soldiers.
Don’t get caught, Emma had said. And don’t get hurt.
xXx
The buzz of airplanes over head and the scream of a falling bomb froze Emily in her tenth repeat of the message.
“They know you’re here. They’re going to bomb the church,” hissed Emma.
“Go,” snapped Emily. “I need to keep sending this. I don’t know if it got through.”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
Emily froze, her finger no longer moving on the tapper. She turned and stared at her. “You have to,” she said. “They’re more important than me.”
“No,” Emma said softly. “You’re just as important as any one of them.”
Emily let herself smile, and for once it felt like a smile, it felt like happiness. But she shook her head. “Just once more,” she said. “On a different frequency. You get out. You find them. Get them to safety. You know soldiers follow the bombs.”
Emma slipped out the door and down the stairs, and Emily turned back to her radio, switching the frequency, and beginning to tap out her message, one last time.
“We’re here,” it ended with, “Taken the radio tower. Can’t hold it for long. Bombers.”
Emily was halfway down the stairs when a bomb hit the church.
xXx
It was a patrol.
They found the dead soldier’s body.
Jennifer held Rebecca to her chest and huddled as low as she could in the tiny hollow.
“Flashlights out!” the leader grunted in German. “If they haven’t shot us now we need to find them.”
The lights lit the forest. Shining like speckled fairy lanterns through the trees. Jennifer swallowed. She knew what they had done the last time they had found her, and that time she hadn’t killed one of their own. As silently as she could she brought the rifle up and then hesitated. She wanted to point it at herself. She couldn’t live through that again. But Rebecca, a warm, frightened form against her chest, how could she leave her? She raised the rifle to her shoulder.
She would not go down without a fight.
xXx
The stupid spy was not going to leave. But she was an adult, and if she wanted to die it was her business. Emma burst out of the church and looked around. Lights, down near where they had left Jennifer.
Goddamn it.
xXx
They were coming closer. Jennifer closed her eyes and swallowed. Then she breathed out. One of the soldiers was coming into sight. She aimed. The soldier looked up.
“Hey!”
And then there were gunshots.
The soldiers started turning toward the gunshots, raking the brush with gunfire. Jennifer stepped out and shot. Fire coming from two directions made the soldiers turn and panic. A bullet whipped by, stinging her arm, and she dropped down.
Then the sound of explosions came from the sky.
A dogfight?
xXx
Kitty and Kurt watched the German plane fall from the sky. The other plane circled twice and then skidded to a landing on the field by the bombed church.
They ran to it.
The pilot and gunner emerged.
“Shit,” said the pilot, an American, looking at the ruined church. “We’re too late.”
“No!” shouted Kurt, figuring out what was said. “We’re here! We’re here!”
xXx
Emily groaned as she came to consciousness. Her arm screamed, her body ached, her lungs felt dry and scratched. Around her was a pile of stone, but above her was the night sky, black as velvet and speckled with diamonds.
Inch by inch she gathered her body under her. Her arm was broken, but she still had to climb. Halfway up a fit of coughing seized her, and it jostled her arm. Tears leaked from her eyes, but slowly she pushed herself out of the rubble.
“Look there!” someone shouted, and then there were people around her in uniforms she didn’t know.
“Hands up!” someone accosted her in German. She looked at him, a tall skinny boy in Sergeant's stripes.
“It’s broken,” she said, in English, pointing to her arm.
He gaped at her. “You- you were on the radio.”
She nodded.
“Medic!” he yelled.
Emily shook her head and reached out with her good arm, catching his shoulder. “Just be a gentleman and help me down, all right Sergeant?”
Kurt and Kitty were being chatted with by a black man in a pilot’s cap, the dog chewing on a bone at their feet. Jennifer and Rebecca were with the medic, a graze on Jennifer’s arm getting patched up.
“Where’s Emma?” she asked.
Jennifer met her eyes. “I don’t know. There was someone shooting, helping me, when the patrol came by.”
Emily glared at the Sergeant. “Did you pick up any Germans?”
His eyes were wide. “You need to get treated.”
“I need to see your prisoners!”
There was a medic with the prisoners as well. Many of the soldiers looking sheepish and exhausted and almost relieved at being captured. But one sat silent and hard, lips tight, eyes narrow, the bloodstained bandage around her leg looking filthy in the shadows.
“Emma.”
She looked up.
“They’re all here. They’re all fine.”
And the tension faded from her frame like snow melting on a warm day. She slowly, painfully, stood, and the Sergeant quickly offered her an arm. She took the crutch the medic offered instead.
“Take me there,” she said, softly. Emily reached out and slid a supporting arm around her waist. Emma glared at her. “Your arm is disgusting. Don’t try and help me. Get it fixed.”
“Can I just... not let you go for a minute?”
xXx
They didn’t get to find out the outcome of the battle until they were installed in the military hospital in Sougy. It had been a mess, as they all were, but the information had come soon enough, and the tide had turned. The Americans were chasing the German forces back towards Berlin.
And now the hospital was trying to decide what to do with them.
Emma’s room was entirely white, and she stood in the window in the white hospital robe and gown, leaning only slightly on the windowframe.
“Hey.”
Emma turned. She looked lost.
“What’s wrong?”
“Besides me?”
That was what was hard. She was here now, torn out of the place where she had succeeded against all odds to protect those she cared for.
“They’re trying to get me to tell them where I want to go. They want to try to reunite me with my family.”
Emily almost laughed. Were they idiots? Then she ducked her head. “Actually. I have an offer.”
Emma’s eyes were sharp as she waited.
“I have an estate. I’m quitting my job, and... I don’t want to go back alone. It’s an estate. I have room, so much room, and if you want, you can come with me. The kids too. I’m not asking for anything else. I’m not even saying that you should stay forever. But if you want somewhere that isn’t a convent and isn’t your family’s home, and isn’t a crowded rooming house, you could stay with me.”
Emma’s expression didn’t shift. “You’re offering your home.”
Emily laughed helplessly. “My house. It’s just a house.” But it could be more. It could be.
Slowly, and ever so formally, Emma inclined her head. “I accept.”
Epilogue
Author: Alsike
Pairing: Emma Frost/Emily Prentiss, some Emily/Pietro Maximoff
Rating: NC-17 - Not just for sex.
Warnings: War, violence, threat of rape.
Fandom: X-Men/Criminal Minds
Disclaimer: Not my girls.
Word Count: 4572
Summary: Part 3 of Emily is a spy in WWI story. There is no actually historical accuracy intended in this.
There may be a bit of an epilogue after this. But hey, the plot it is finished! Since it's been over a year since I started this, I apologize. I hope you enjoy it!
Part 1
Part 2a
Part 2b
Part 3
“I didn’t lie, you know,” Emily said casually, glancing up at the stars, so still and cold, unmoved, above their heads, as they walked through the fields back towards the convent. “I’ve been with whores.”
“In Paris?”
Emily laughed. “Yes.” She had friends in some of the men’s colleges at Cambridge, and they would take her along on their raucous trips to the city. John and Matthew and Michael, getting drunk in Montmartre together. There had been dancers and whores, too much food and too much liquor, and she didn’t regret a moment of it. She had known their class was going to get called up, known that she couldn’t be called with them. Perhaps more than her mother’s commands, it was that which made her accept the offer. Both Matthew and Michael were dead now. John was in hospital back in England, and she was in a ditch, in fucking Alsace.
“You enjoy it?”
Emily shook her head, amused by the dry delivery of the question. “They always laughed at me. They said, you’re rich and you like to be fucked. Go find yourself a man who will do it for free.” She shook her head. “But a pretty girl…”
Emma was watching her, her gaze unreadable.
Emily tensed. “I don’t regret it.” She would never regret any moment she had with her friends.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been to Paris.”
“Are you from there?”
“I grew up there. But my family’s from Surrey.”
Emily stared. “English?”
“To some extent.”
“How the hell did you get here?”
“How do you think? I left.” She shook her head. “The best thing about joining a convent is that you leave your family behind when you step through that door. I would have sold my soul to the devil for that. Give myself to god? It was a bargain.”
Emily sank back. “You can blame me, if you want, for corrupting you.”
“I take responsibility for my own sin, darling.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence.
xXx
The fallen church was dead silent as they approached. Then suddenly a figure stepped out from behind a broken wall and leveled a gun at them.
“Halt!”
“Kurt?”
The gun fell, the boy’s dark eyes widened. “Sister.” He threw himself at Emma, embracing her. Emily stood back and watched the desperate way he crushed himself against her.
The echoes of bombs from the front thundered in the distance.
She had failed.
And yet, as the children giddily surrounded the nun, their relief that she had returned safely wiping away any lingering anguish from Robert’s death, Emily could not help but wonder, at what cost, victory?
They hadn’t died. They had escaped. And yet her mother would have found that the largest failure she could make. She should have run the other direction. Plunged into no-man’s land, fallen. Perhaps they would have found the documents on her dead body in the field of battle. Perhaps not. But saving her own life, saving this woman’s life, was nothing in the larger view. Every act was selfish.
But stealing these children’s only hope?
Better their hope than their world, her mother would have said. But would that save their lives? She clenched her fists and shut her eyes. No, there was no guarantee for any of them. If she had made it, they might well have starved. If she never made it, that was no guarantee of their deaths. If she had lost Emma….
“I’m sorry you didn’t make it through the lines, miss,” said Kurt.
Emily looked at him. She shook her head. She could not speak.
In the catacomb, Jennifer brought out the last of the catmeat stew. Kitty fetched water to wash the mud from their skin. Rebecca just fell happily into the nun’s lap, clinging to her neck, and telling her everything that had happened while they were away.
“What happened to you?” she asked, bright and curious.
Emma’s eyes slipped over, catching Emily’s and holding. Somehow, Emily knew what it meant.
“There were German soldiers all along the line,” Emily said. “We couldn’t get through.” She could take any number of white lies on her own sullied soul. She watched the children. They were loyal to a fault. They would die for their teacher, their protector. And they would be horrified to know anything more about what had nearly happened to her.
The one candle was too precious to waste. They blew it out, and Emma, still smelling of earth and sweat and sex, curled up next to her under the heap of habits.
“What would they think if they knew what you did to me?” Emily whispered, unaccusingly.
The nun stilled. “What would you think of yourself, I wonder,” she said softly, her breath a brush against Emily’s face, “if you tried to tell them of it.”
xXx
The spy looked pale and ill, like she hadn’t slept well. Emma watched her with narrowed eyes. She hadn’t eaten more than a bite of the stew the night before. Would she give up?
Emma tossed her a rifle. She caught it, looking up wide-eyed and stricken. “We have to hunt.”
“What for?” Emily said, her voice weak and broken.
“For today. They may bomb tonight, but we need to eat today.”
The spy slowly staggered to her feet. Emma wondered if she had ever thought about the world in those terms. Had everything always been part of some grand plan? Had she never merely focused on getting through the day? There was no guarantee. They could be bombed tonight and all die. Or they could survive. The war could never end, and yet they could continue to survive, as long as they ate. As long as they lied to themselves about the prospect of stability. The easiest lie was routine. Routine gave you confidence, something to rely on, to let you see the future just enough to believe in it, even if it was all worthless in the end.
But with her words, the spy’s eyes had changed. Her jaw set. She took the sack that Kitty proffered and started toward the opening. The look made Emma’s stomach turn. Those cold eyes were killer’s eyes. She knew them well, in puddles and broken mirrors. That was why this woman was a spy. She could take an assignment and devote herself to it, as if there was nothing else important, not even the state of her own soul.
xXx
There were edible mushrooms in the field near the forest. Emily crouched to pick all those she could find. For the moment the front was silent, no buzz of airplanes, no boom of bombing. All she could hear was birds and insects, and Rebecca’s cries of happiness as she played with Jennifer in the outskirts of the forest. Kurt sat at the top of the hill, the rifle in his lap, keeping watch. Kitty dug for tubers and grubs. Emma was behind her, but she could feel her eyes.
“Yip!”
Emily looked up. A dog, a skinny matted thing, popped out of the forest, spotted the gathered humans, and performed an ecstatic gambol. He ran toward each of them, curving away quickly before he came within grabbing distance. He ran toward Emily, who crouched, and he reached her, hopping up and putting his paws on her knees. He looked at her, looking happy, his tongue lolling from his mouth as he panted.
The laugh bubbled up involuntarily. He was some sort of mix, but there was definitely a little spaniel in there, and a good deal of terrier.
In the corner of her eye, she saw Emma freeze at the laugh, staring at her.
Emily dropped to her knees and cuddled the dog to her chest. He licked her face.
The nun stalked over. “You’ll get fleas.”
Emily looked up at her. “I had spaniels once,” she said. “My family had them for hunting.” She let the dog go. “And in Berlin there was a bitch…”
The dog ran off to chase rabbits. Emily’s throat felt thick. The little bitch.
“We’re not going to eat it then?”
Of course. Emily squeezed her eyes shut. Why wasn’t she thinking? Why couldn’t she keep her mind on the task? She straightened up and set her jaw. “We should. He’s skinny, but there’s some meat-“
Emma slapped her. “What is wrong with you?”
Emily stood frozen and blank. “But… you said-”
“Yes, we need food. And I wouldn’t have hesitated, but I don’t care about dogs. You, though, you care, and you just shove that down and do what you think you need to do, even if it’s pointless, even if it’s just a momentary benefit that won’t even half match up to the amount of guilt it gives you.”
“Even if it will keep us from starving?”
“There are other options! You’re not a martyr. Scourging yourself does not scour you of sin! Sometimes you have to let yourself love and make sacrifices for the things that you care about, even if they’re not what you ought to care about!”
How could she even say that? How could she… Emily stared at her. She couldn’t know. “I murdered a man I cared for, for the good of my country,” she said. “He was kind. And he gave me confidences about how he wished his father wasn’t pushing him into the military, that he wasn’t sure about this war. He was a good person. But I murdered him because it wasn’t my job to let him live. Why should something as worthless as a flea-ridden mutt be any different? Why should I let myself be weak?”
Emma’s eyes, grey as stone, were fixed on her. She looked as if she had been split in two, split in two by pity and anger. “Because it will give you less pain.”
“I don’t deserve less pain!”
Emily’s eyes stung with dried up tears. Her chest ached. She wanted to run, run as far and fast as she could, run far and fast enough to run away from herself.
Emma reached out and cupped her arm. The touch turned her to stone. The cracks in her soul creaked. The fingers squeezed, and it was too much. She shattered.
There was a bark. The dog was sitting at their feet, wagging its tail through the grass, a dead rabbit in front of it.
Emma’s lips tightened into something that wasn’t exactly a smile. “Destroying those who give you kindness means that the act of kindness will never be repeated.”
Emily stared at her for a long moment. Could she let herself believe that? She dropped to her knees and cut open the rabbit. She fed the belly and entrails, still steaming, to the dog. He licked the blood off her fingers. She cut off the head, and the dog ran off with it, disappearing into the trees.
xXx
They ate well, for once, but as the afternoon shadows lengthened, Emily kept glancing up at the sky.
“You said three days,” Emma murmured softly.
“I hoped I had that long.” Emily shook her head. “Even if I do, any route through is blocked. The Americans will start their offensive, and they will head right into a trap. The Germans will roll right over them.”
Kurt was staring at them, his eyes wide, face horrified. “They’re coming right through here, aren’t they?”
Emily looked at him, wishing she could say otherwise. They were so close to the front, any push or pull and they could be overrun. “The catacomb will probably hold up.”
“But if they don’t get this information…”
“People will die. They’ll die either way. I was just hoping that with my information we could lose fewer.”
“It’s just information? Couldn’t you radio it out? You have the codes, don’t you?”
Emily smiled. “If I had a radio.”
Emma’s face whitened. She was staring at Kurt. Kurt was staring straight back at her, determined and noble. “There’s one in the church.”
“The German-occupied church,” Emma snapped. “It’s an army radio tower. It’s well guarded.”
Kurt set his jaw. “I’d fight for you.”
“What?” Emma’s voice was half fury half horror.
And Emily knew that she shouldn’t even consider this. Emma would never forgive her for using her children for her own ends. But for a brief flash of hope, it felt possible. It might actually be possible.
xXx
“You can’t do this to me. You can’t do this to my children.”
Emma was desperate, so desperate. But Emily needed to think. She spread the notes out in front of her, carefully organizing the most crucial pieces of information and translating them into the code.
It was a radio tower. How many guards would they actually have on a relay tower? How many could they spare? What sort of ammunition was stored in the catacomb? What were their resources?
“Miss,” it was Jennifer, behind her Kurt, Kitty and Rachel. “Kurt told us what’s going on. We want to help if we can.”
The betrayal in Emma’s eyes was like a knife.
“Thank you,” Emily said. “I need to work out a plan. I’ll let you know.”
“I don't want them to become soldiers!” Emma hissed.
“They already are, you know. They’d do anything for you.”
“Except listen when I tell them to not be stupid!” Emma pressed her hands to her face. “I don't want them to have to be killers yet.”
“Not like us.” And Emily felt that she was finally beginning to understand. There were other options. There were important things, things that were more important than the task, because sometimes you survived, and then you had to live with yourself.
Emma looked up at her. “They shouldn’t have to.”
“We shouldn’t have had to either!” It came out louder and more vehement than Emily had expected. “But we did. My friends became soldiers and pilots and I became this. You became someone who could stomp on a man’s neck until he stopped breathing.” Emma looked venomous. “And if this keeps going, they won’t have a choice, just like we didn’t have a choice.”
“So you’ll jump the gun then?”
“I want Jennifer as a lookout. I want Kurt and Kitty to set up a distraction. And I want you at my back. I know you can kill. And I need someone who's tested and who can get in and out with me. I won’t risk the children in the church. But you…”
“You’ll risk me.”
“I trust you.”
“Why?”
“You didn’t leave me for the Germans.”
“I’m not on your side.”
“You’re the closest thing I’ve got.”
xXx
There was only one road leading up to the old church on the hill. Jennifer and Rebecca were left at the foot of it with a rifle and a pile of flares. If the attack was noticed and assistance was summoned, they would be the first to know. Any flare meant get out quick and disappear into the woods.
Kurt and Kitty were in charge of the distraction. They had a few grenades. They were not to get caught and they were not to get injured. Those were their only rules.
Emma had a brace of pistols. Emily had her derringer and a knife. Emma wore her uniform again, the filthy greys, the cap on her head, her eyes like chips of ice. She had scrounged up a uniform for Emily too. It did not fit her as well, she thought, but perhaps it did.
They were all soldiers in the end. Perhaps that was all anyone could ever be.
“If they die,” Emma hissed softly into her ear. She didn’t have to finish. If they died, succeed or fail, Emma would fall apart. And if she were gone... Emily had to focus. She had to stay on task. It had been so easy once, so impossibly easy, before she had let herself hope, for just one moment, that this war could truly end, and that when it did, she might still have something to hold onto.
When the boom came, and the guards looked up, eyes wide at an attack so close, they ran the wrong direction. One ducked inside. The other stayed put. Goddamn it.
And then Emma stepped up in front of him. “Hey, Arschgeischt.”
Emily slit his throat.
“Hurry.”
They might already be radioing for help. They may have no time left.
The nave was like an empty cavern, any seating long since chopped for firewood, any metal fixings melted down for planes and bullets. One window had been left, muted in the darkness, Christ and his mother winking down on them, smiling slightly, as if this was funny, as if there was anything funny in this world.
And yet, there always was, wasn’t there? So close to death, to annihilation, she could still see the nun scowl at the muddy footprints leading up the altar steps, and have to hold back a smile. She could still look at her and wish to see her stripped bare, warm and clean and dripping as she emerged from a bath like an artist’s model, meet her narrowed eyes, and take her - and have her want to be taken - the greatest fantasy of all.
But that was the cosmic joke, wasn’t it? Even the little things, the things that had once been easy and natural, like a bath or a full meal, they were no different from truth and justice or any impossible thing. One day you had them, and the next they were stolen away from you, never to return.
They caught the second guard coming back down the stairs. Emma grabbed his leg and he tripped, then fell, tumbling the last few steps of the spiral staircase, then hitting the straight stair up to the balcony, bouncing over the edge and plummeting, smashing his head open on the floor. Emma breathed in stiffly through her nose. Emily caught her hand, threading their fingers together, and started up the spiral staircase into the bell tower.
The radio man had his headphones on. He didn’t hear them coming in.
He had just finished coding and opening the line up to start tapping out a message. Emily walked up behind him and pressed the derringer to the back of his head. He froze.
Emma carefully extracted the tapper from his fingers and pulled off his headphones. He looked up at them, eyes wide and horrified. Emily turned his chair until he wad facing away from the equipment. Then she shot him.
No spatter on the machines.
There was a gasp from the corner and footsteps plunging down the stairs. Emma caught her eyes. Nothing do be done. Quickly, Emily dropped into the seat. She reset the frequency, and started signalling.
xXx
Jennifer watched the road. Rebecca huddled in a blanket in a small hollow between a rock and two trees. She watched the skies as well. After the bang of the grenade there had been nothing but silence.
Then she heard it, footsteps, running down the road from the church. She squinted, a soldier, German uniform, but short and squat, not like either of her companions. He was running for help.
Carefully and slowly she brought the rifle to her shoulder and aimed, just a hair ahead of him. Matching her draw to her breathing, she relaxed and pulled the trigger.
The man fell.
His head had exploded.
Very carefully, Jennifer put down the gun, and she smiled.
xXx
No one had come after them. Kurt and Kitty hurried through the woods. It was dark and cold and they kept tripping and tumbling over roots and into ditches. They were trying to double back to where Jennifer was. Then there was a yip and a small figure emerged from the trees and tugged on Kurt’s pantleg.
The dog.
They froze, silenced, and heard soft voices and the crackle of a campfire through the trees. A soldier outpost. As silently as possible the two children and the dog turned around and headed away from the soldiers.
Don’t get caught, Emma had said. And don’t get hurt.
xXx
The buzz of airplanes over head and the scream of a falling bomb froze Emily in her tenth repeat of the message.
“They know you’re here. They’re going to bomb the church,” hissed Emma.
“Go,” snapped Emily. “I need to keep sending this. I don’t know if it got through.”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
Emily froze, her finger no longer moving on the tapper. She turned and stared at her. “You have to,” she said. “They’re more important than me.”
“No,” Emma said softly. “You’re just as important as any one of them.”
Emily let herself smile, and for once it felt like a smile, it felt like happiness. But she shook her head. “Just once more,” she said. “On a different frequency. You get out. You find them. Get them to safety. You know soldiers follow the bombs.”
Emma slipped out the door and down the stairs, and Emily turned back to her radio, switching the frequency, and beginning to tap out her message, one last time.
“We’re here,” it ended with, “Taken the radio tower. Can’t hold it for long. Bombers.”
Emily was halfway down the stairs when a bomb hit the church.
xXx
It was a patrol.
They found the dead soldier’s body.
Jennifer held Rebecca to her chest and huddled as low as she could in the tiny hollow.
“Flashlights out!” the leader grunted in German. “If they haven’t shot us now we need to find them.”
The lights lit the forest. Shining like speckled fairy lanterns through the trees. Jennifer swallowed. She knew what they had done the last time they had found her, and that time she hadn’t killed one of their own. As silently as she could she brought the rifle up and then hesitated. She wanted to point it at herself. She couldn’t live through that again. But Rebecca, a warm, frightened form against her chest, how could she leave her? She raised the rifle to her shoulder.
She would not go down without a fight.
xXx
The stupid spy was not going to leave. But she was an adult, and if she wanted to die it was her business. Emma burst out of the church and looked around. Lights, down near where they had left Jennifer.
Goddamn it.
xXx
They were coming closer. Jennifer closed her eyes and swallowed. Then she breathed out. One of the soldiers was coming into sight. She aimed. The soldier looked up.
“Hey!”
And then there were gunshots.
The soldiers started turning toward the gunshots, raking the brush with gunfire. Jennifer stepped out and shot. Fire coming from two directions made the soldiers turn and panic. A bullet whipped by, stinging her arm, and she dropped down.
Then the sound of explosions came from the sky.
A dogfight?
xXx
Kitty and Kurt watched the German plane fall from the sky. The other plane circled twice and then skidded to a landing on the field by the bombed church.
They ran to it.
The pilot and gunner emerged.
“Shit,” said the pilot, an American, looking at the ruined church. “We’re too late.”
“No!” shouted Kurt, figuring out what was said. “We’re here! We’re here!”
xXx
Emily groaned as she came to consciousness. Her arm screamed, her body ached, her lungs felt dry and scratched. Around her was a pile of stone, but above her was the night sky, black as velvet and speckled with diamonds.
Inch by inch she gathered her body under her. Her arm was broken, but she still had to climb. Halfway up a fit of coughing seized her, and it jostled her arm. Tears leaked from her eyes, but slowly she pushed herself out of the rubble.
“Look there!” someone shouted, and then there were people around her in uniforms she didn’t know.
“Hands up!” someone accosted her in German. She looked at him, a tall skinny boy in Sergeant's stripes.
“It’s broken,” she said, in English, pointing to her arm.
He gaped at her. “You- you were on the radio.”
She nodded.
“Medic!” he yelled.
Emily shook her head and reached out with her good arm, catching his shoulder. “Just be a gentleman and help me down, all right Sergeant?”
Kurt and Kitty were being chatted with by a black man in a pilot’s cap, the dog chewing on a bone at their feet. Jennifer and Rebecca were with the medic, a graze on Jennifer’s arm getting patched up.
“Where’s Emma?” she asked.
Jennifer met her eyes. “I don’t know. There was someone shooting, helping me, when the patrol came by.”
Emily glared at the Sergeant. “Did you pick up any Germans?”
His eyes were wide. “You need to get treated.”
“I need to see your prisoners!”
There was a medic with the prisoners as well. Many of the soldiers looking sheepish and exhausted and almost relieved at being captured. But one sat silent and hard, lips tight, eyes narrow, the bloodstained bandage around her leg looking filthy in the shadows.
“Emma.”
She looked up.
“They’re all here. They’re all fine.”
And the tension faded from her frame like snow melting on a warm day. She slowly, painfully, stood, and the Sergeant quickly offered her an arm. She took the crutch the medic offered instead.
“Take me there,” she said, softly. Emily reached out and slid a supporting arm around her waist. Emma glared at her. “Your arm is disgusting. Don’t try and help me. Get it fixed.”
“Can I just... not let you go for a minute?”
xXx
They didn’t get to find out the outcome of the battle until they were installed in the military hospital in Sougy. It had been a mess, as they all were, but the information had come soon enough, and the tide had turned. The Americans were chasing the German forces back towards Berlin.
And now the hospital was trying to decide what to do with them.
Emma’s room was entirely white, and she stood in the window in the white hospital robe and gown, leaning only slightly on the windowframe.
“Hey.”
Emma turned. She looked lost.
“What’s wrong?”
“Besides me?”
That was what was hard. She was here now, torn out of the place where she had succeeded against all odds to protect those she cared for.
“They’re trying to get me to tell them where I want to go. They want to try to reunite me with my family.”
Emily almost laughed. Were they idiots? Then she ducked her head. “Actually. I have an offer.”
Emma’s eyes were sharp as she waited.
“I have an estate. I’m quitting my job, and... I don’t want to go back alone. It’s an estate. I have room, so much room, and if you want, you can come with me. The kids too. I’m not asking for anything else. I’m not even saying that you should stay forever. But if you want somewhere that isn’t a convent and isn’t your family’s home, and isn’t a crowded rooming house, you could stay with me.”
Emma’s expression didn’t shift. “You’re offering your home.”
Emily laughed helplessly. “My house. It’s just a house.” But it could be more. It could be.
Slowly, and ever so formally, Emma inclined her head. “I accept.”
Epilogue