A Witch and a Sniper in Germany

(Well that was embarrassing. For whatever reason I appear to have been signed out when I posted these two. If you've already read this, don't bother reading through it again unless you want to, there's no changes that have been made)

The witch cursed and spun herself back into cover as the tank cannon roared. The shell whipped through the space she previously occupied scant moments later and hit a café, punching through the window before exploding inside; shattering the interior. The witch stared at the damage in horror, a strangled cry dying on her lips.

The shock soon changed, quickly morphing into an expression of exquisite fury.

‘That was my favourite café you Russian schwein!’ the witch bawled as she leaned out of cover and stabilised her own cannon, firing off a quick, un-aimed shot in the general direction of the enemy before another shell from that damned tank forced her back into cover. A great cheer rose from the Russian lines, their spirits no doubt raised from the sight of the mighty German tank witch cowering from their armour.

‘Ura,’ the witch spat hatefully, biting back the tears that threatened to overwhelm her when she took in the ruin that was once her favourite haunt. ‘Ura! Ura! U-fucking-ra!’ Her rage building as she ground out the word.

‘/WHAT THE FUCK DOES URA MEAN?!/’ she screamed, whirling out from behind the wall of the supermarket and unloading a barrage of high-velocity 50mm explosive ordnance at the jeering Reds.

‘I believe it’s a cheer,’ a well-spoken, deceptively calm voice offered as she slid herself back behind cover, temporarily appeased by the sight of all the detonations among the Russian front, regardless of how effective her attack may have been. ‘People do that, you know, when they see something worth cheering about. Seeing you squirm every time that ruddy T-72 pops off a shot might do it.’

The witch turned her head at the source of the voice, offering the speaker a baleful glare, who duly ignored it; far too preoccupied with his scope as he lay prone on the floor, the barrel of his sniper rifle – an L96AW – peering through a small hole blown through the wall at ankle height.

‘You shouldn’t frown so much you know,’ the British sniper advised as he shifted his sights, no doubt to track a moving target. ‘It’ll give you wrinkles before your time. I should know; my mother did it all the time. Looked eighty at fifty-three last I saw her.’

He squeezed the trigger and a sharp crack reverberated throughout the streets of Berlin. The sniper paused to confirm the kill, and then leaned his head back and patted the stock of his gun affectionately.

‘If you’re done fondling your gun I’d like some help killing some damned Soviets,’ the German witch seethed. She’d known the British soldier for almost a week now and she was finding him almost intolerable. The sniper – a youthful looking Corporal named Darren Winters – turned his head towards her, regarding the tank witch with an expression of quaint amusement.

‘I daresay I’ve killed more of Stalin’s finest than you have Kirsten. That display of aggression earlier, for instance; I shot and killed three men in that time, while you appear to have wounded exactly two…’ he paused and looked back down his scope, ‘no, wait. Three. Three wounded. No dead. Lot of confusion though, which is pretty solid for effort.’ He punctuated the end of the discussion with another shot, working the bolt and nodding in satisfaction as he confirmed another kill.

Kirsten Amsel groaned, embarrassment burning within her. It was far from the first time she’d let her emotions get the better of her, and was the primary reason she was only a Stabsgefreighter despite her status as a witch. A not inconsiderable part of her wanted to snap at the Brit, to challenge him on his claim, but she reined it in, just. Insufferable Winters may be but he was no liar.

He was also not trying to kill her, which was a significant step up from the Russians dead set on storming her home. She tried to think of ways to calm herself down, and imagined the Soviet colours flying above the Reichstag and over the Bundeshaus. It didn’t work, only serving to aggravate her further.

Eventually she decided that only mass indiscriminate carnage among the Russian lines would relieve her stress, and, loading more high explosive into the cannon mounted on her strikers, she leaned out of cover to re-engage–

 –and promptly ducked down again as another tank shell whistled towards her. The shell tore through a smashed window and exploded deeper into the supermarket, showering Kirsten and her partner in produce – primarily beans and assorted soups.

‘Well, at least we won’t go hungry,’ the sniper quipped as he unloaded another round through his hole in the wall. Kirsten fixed him with another of her patented death gazes and then breathed a heavy, frustrated breath.

‘They have me buttoned down. Every time I poke my head out that fucking tank opens fire.’

‘Isn’t that a shame,’ Darren remarked as he took another shot and exchanged magazines. ‘And it’s not the same tank.’

‘What?’

‘There’s two of them now; a T-80’s pulled up at a junction a little ways down and it’s got an angle on your firing spot as well.’

Well that settled it then.

‘On your feet,’ Kirsten growled, grabbing the sniper by the scruff of his neck and taking not a small amount of satisfaction in the sudden yelp he made as she lifted him off the ground. Thank the lord for strengthening magic.

‘What the devil are you doing?’ Darren complained as he struggled to release himself from Kirsten’s grip. She noted with approval that he had kept a hold of his rifle. ‘I understand you’ve been struggling to keep your hands off me, but now is hardly–’

‘Shut up, running now,’ Kirsten interrupted, cutting off Darren’s smartass remark and powered through the blown-out supermarket, channelling as much magical energy as she was willing to part with to her shields. She was barely a metre clear when shots began rattling off the barrier.

Then the tanks fired again.

They must have been waiting for her to dash for a better position because the first shot landed barely a footfall away from her as she ran. Her shields held, barely. Her instructor would have been proud.

The next shot, however, blew them out.

She felt a rush of fatigue as all the magic she was routing suddenly had nowhere to go and dissipated like mist on a breeze. Any shrapnel that got past her shield clattered harmlessly off her strikers, but the raw kinetic force behind the blast unbalanced her and Kirsten found herself on a collision course with a barbershop, with no way of stopping.

Thinking remarkably quickly, Kirsten spun on one, armoured leg, realising that if she could manoeuvre herself so that her strikers took the brunt of any impact, she would get through it unhar–

The thought suddenly froze as she remembered she was carrying Darren along with her. If she turned he’d go face first through the glass. Awkwardly, she tried to stop and adjust her tumble mid-fall.

She failed.

Ironically, however, she – and by way of extension, Darren – was saved milliseconds later by the Russians.

Another tank shell slammed into the road. Kirsten felt one of her strikers suddenly slacken, reduced to a dead weight that was latched to her leg like a limpet. The shot had knocked it out, no doubt. The force, however, that lovely force, had spun her around at the angle she needed for the both of them to make it out of what was likely going to be a rather painful crash alive at the very least. She dragged Darren’s body close and held him tight against her, trying to coax some reserve magic for her shield.

She had no idea how successful she had been when they crashed through the window and landed in a pile of tangled limbs in the barbers. There was a gruesome crack, and Darren shrieked in agony as something in his body gave. Kirsten realised with some mounting horror that one of her strikers was crushing one of his legs. She made to move it but nothing happened.

“Of course it’d be the dead striker!” she fumed silently and reached for it with a hasty hand.

Then something dropped into the barbers through the smashed open window. It was small, no larger than the palm of her hand, and Kirsten felt herself grow faint as she realised that she was staring at a grenade.

A primed grenade.

‘Granate!’ she shrieked and kicked at the device with her good leg, throwing every ounce of magic she had left in her body to shields. Her reserves were dwindling, and even if she put all of it out there and completely exhausted herself she still wasn’t sure it’d be enough to stop the grenade killing them both at this distance.

The grenade went off with a loud /thwump/, and covered Kirsten’s world in darkness.

***

When Kirsten Amsel came to, night had fallen.

She was acutely aware that she ached. Everywhere. Even her hardest days at the Academy had been nothing like this. She moaned at the dull throbbing and pushed herself upright.

And hit her head.

She swore, unleashing a torrent of cusses and curses in her native German that would have made her mother blanch and her dear, departed grandmother faint. When the sharp pain began to fade to another dull ache she opened her eyes. It was dark; so dark she doubted she could see her hand in front of her face, but it was the wrong kind of dark. Even in a city at war, Berlin should not be this inky black. There was also the fact that she’d smacked her head against something as she’d tried to rise.

Her shaken, tired brain connected the dots a moment later. She was buried.

Oh god she was buried!

Panic flared up inside her and she began to struggle. Her efforts were fruitless, and she remained stuck as surely as if someone had tied her to the earth with bonds made of steel. She shook, trying in vain to back the scream that was starting to build up in her chest. She wanted to get out. She /needed/ to get out. It was cold and cramped and was she starting to suffocate? Was she completely cut off from the outside air? Oh god let me out, oh godohgodohgodoh–

‘Settle down,’ a wearily hoarse, strangely familiar voice intoned from beyond the darkness. ‘Some of us are trying to suffer in silence here.’

It took her a few moments to identify the voice. ‘Darren?’ she asked tentatively, hoping she wasn’t hallucinating.

‘The one and only,’ he grunted. ‘I don’t suppose you can get this crap off of us can you? You’re much, much heavier than you look, and that’s saying something.’

She bit back an angry retort and realised, quite suddenly, that she was a lot calmer. Sure, she was terrified, but knowing she wasn’t on her own was morbidly relaxing. Two, as they said, was company, even if said company happened to be Darren Winters.

‘How? I’m trapped?’

‘Isn’t that what witch magic’s for?’ Darren asked, and Kirsten realised that his words were slurring.

‘Darren? Are you okay?’ she asked, actually a little worried for the wiry sniper.

‘Jussz’f’ne,’ he garbled. Kirsten took a quick, sharp breath. He didn’t sound like he was even remotely joking about. He was hurt, and probably hurt bad. She had to get her act together; she had to get the both of them out of this.

Kirsten slowed her racing thoughts and took a deep, calming breath before gauging her pool of magic. She was surprised at how much she had. Clearly her enforced rest had done her some significant good. “Something else to thank Ivan for,” she thought to herself, remembering the shockwave that had catapulted them through the barbershop window and into relative safety, or at least, it had been for her. Darren had been–

Oh god his leg!

That settled it then. She had to move and she had to move now. Gathering her not insignificant power, she forced herself upright; pushing off what must have been the collapsed ceiling of the barber. The action raised a cloud of dust and she coughed and hacked and sputtered to clear her airways.

She detached herself from her strikers as she rose to her feet; they would help her none in this confined space, and began to clear sizeable chunks of rubble away with her hands. Anyone looking on would have found the sight most strange; a slender young woman, auburn hair streaked with dust scooping away chunks of rubble even a bodybuilder would have had difficulty moving.

‘You still awake Darren?’ she asked softly. She had to keep him talking. If he was injured as badly as she feared he might be…

‘Unfort’n’tleee,’ he slurred. That was good, now she had to keep the conversation going, but she couldn’t think of anything, so instead she said, ‘I’ll have you out in a moment, then we need to move, the Russians might be all over this part of Berlin.’

‘M’ve?’ Darren seemed more responsive to that thought, or so Kirsten thought, then she heard what sounded almost like laughter. ‘Th’t m’ght b’ bi’ diff’cul f’r me.’

There was just one chunk left and then she could grab him. She could see the leg that had been pinned by one of her strikers, the rest of him would soon follow–

‘Oh,’ she gasped as she uncovered the Brit.

A twisted shard of metal impaled the man through his abdomen, it had likely happened when the ceiling had collapsed. In addition to that, his head was bleeding, and even in the dim light, she could swear one of his pupils seemed dilated.

‘Zzit bad?’ he asked, and started laughing in a broken manner at his own wisecrack.

Kirsten didn’t reply. She reached one arm underneath the prone Corporal and tugged. He almost immediately hissed in pain, the most lucid reaction he’d had so far. The German witch cursed, berating herself for forgetting about the leg pinned by her strikers, fortunately, with magically-enhanced strength, shifting the striker and removing the leg from underneath it was easy. The limb itself looked bad; swollen and red and limp. Kirsten was no healwitch, however, and her knowledge of first aid was basic. The Brit needed professional help, and the only way he was going to get it was if she stopped pussyfooting and started moving. She hauled the Corporal roughly up with both arms, trying to keep her balance as she extricated him from the mess.

‘S’m’thin’s wr’ng heeerre,’ Darren smiled, his head lolling back. Kirsten ignored the comment and picked her way outside the barbers and into the street. It was still and utterly devoid of life. Craters marred the road and collapsed, bombed and shelled-out buildings lined the streets. Kirsten felt a pang of grief stab her as she took in the sorry sight of her city in such a grievous state.

The night wind was chilly and she felt Goosebumps form on her bare legs as she shivered. She ground her teeth and tried to put the cold to the back of her mind. A man’s life was on the line, she had no place to complain about the damn chill. Setting her teeth, she forced all thoughts of discomfort out of her mind and began to jog back to what she fervently hoped were friendly lines. The run was far from easy; even with her enhanced strength, the Corporal was a good head or two taller than her out of her strikers, and her balance was offset by her own fatigue, which piled up with each step she took, as well as her hunger. She wondered briefly how long the pair of them had been spent buried in that barbershop, and then decided it didn’t matter.

She had spent what felt like hours just moving; her feet were scratched and raw from rubbing on the cold, uncaring roads of Berlin. Her toes had gone numb long ago and she couldn’t – wouldn’t – stop to check on them. She’d get this infuriating soldier back to get fixed up and then she was going to chew him out for making her waste so much time worrying about him.

Were she in a calmer state of mind, she might have found it more than a little strange at how concerned she was for the wellbeing of the difficult sniper. Mere minutes after they’d been buddied up she couldn’t wait to be rid of him. Now he lay in her arms, probably dying, and she could scarcely imagine being without him.

Her lungs burned, her legs screamed and the only reason she knew she still had her feet was because she hadn’t tripped over yet, but still she soldiered on. “Where was everyone?” she wondered absently. Were her fears made real? Had NATO been pushed out of Berlin? Where the hell was a damn medic when she needed one! She kept herself up and aware with hundreds of different thoughts.

‘Mum?’ Darren asked suddenly. His eyes were unfocussed, his colour was poor and his lips were turning blue with shock. He was slipping and there wasn’t a damned thing Kirsten could do about it except try to keep him awake and talking.

‘Yes,’ she told him, ‘yes it’s your mother. What is it Darren?’

‘F’ckin’ h’te yu,’ he spat, with as much venom as he could muster, which was pathetically small in his current state. ‘Yu kil’d dad yu knw th’t r’ght? Hope y’re f’ckin’ h’ppy yu gr’dy, s’lfsh bitch. He l’ved yu ‘n yu kil’d him sure’s’sure. I c’ld t’ke th’ n’sults ‘n th’ h’rt b’t dad w’z a gud man… ‘n yu kil’d him. H’pe yu b’rn f’r it. H’pe yu f’ck’n burnnn.’

Okay, that didn’t go so well, Kirsten thought to herself, but on the upside at least he was talking. Indeed, he could hardly stop hurling abuse at what he thought was his mother. Clearly there were some issues there but Kirsten could hardly find a space to inquire and she didn’t fancy trying either. So, instead, she continued to trudge on, concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other and keeping the two of them up.

She continued, one step at a time, for so long that eventually her mind was numb to anything except the overriding directive that she keep walking above all else. She realised numbly after another age had passed that Darren had stopped talking, and hung limp in her arms. She could only barely feel a heartbeat, though how she knew it was a heartbeat was a mystery to her. “Maybe the cold and the fatigue has gotten to me and I’m carrying a corpse through my home,” she wondered. The thought was strangely hilarious and she released a shrill, brittle laugh.

Then she was blind.

Lights exploded in front of her and she stumbled, taken completely by surprise. Voice shouted at her and a dim part of her felt that she should recognise some of them but she found that she could not. Her eyes stung and she squeezed them shut and tried to turn away–

–and finally fell.

Kirsten landed awkwardly on her hip and managed a small, weak grunt of pain. Darren hit the road and spilled away from her. He wasn’t moving. That was important but the dark was closing in on her and did those people know her how did they know her she didn’t know them she was so tired maybe a little nap would be good she’d like mommy to read her one of her bedtime stories where was daddy why did he look so much like this person in front of her was that her hand why was she reaching for him she didn’t know him either nothing made sense anymore…

Her consciousness faded, and her last sight was of a strangely familiar face lying just out of arm’s reach, his eyes glazed over; his body slack and eerily relaxed.

Unmoving.

Unbreathing.

***

Her hair was the colour of autumn leaves, lush and thick. Her face was angular and her cloudy grey eyes were sharp and alert, and let none know precisely what she felt. She wore the uniform of the German Bundeswehr on her upper body, while her legs were completely bare save for a pair of immaculately polished black boots. She was slender, possessed of a modestly pert bust and her legs seemed well used to travelling, but appeared soft enough so as not to diminish her femininity.

The nurse led this young woman through the wards of the hospital. Everywhere she saw there were filled beds; all of them occupied by a fighter of the various NATO militaries operating in Germany. No longer though; with their gambit to take Berlin a failure, the Soviets were in full retreat. Freshly promoted Leutnant Kirsten Amsel was currently enjoying what was technically her first day of a full two weeks’ worth of leave time; however she had spent two days before today searching and pulling whatever strings her new rank let her.

She had started her personal hunt almost reluctantly, but her pride was soon stowed. She was, effectively, the one who had put him in hospital when she had decided to change positions. Kirsten had gone over it in her head a hundred times and it sounded perfectly justifiable on paper: two tanks rolled up coupled with at least a platoon’s worth of Russian soldiery against a tank witch, a sniper and a few scattered allied combat squads? Tall odds in any situation, magic or no. The tanks would surely have reduced their feeble shelter to a smouldering ruin when they decided to stop toying with her, it only made sense to try to relocate.

That still didn’t make her feel any better about what had happened though.

The room the nurse led her to contained a devilishly good looking British soldier who possessed an attitude that Kirsten had thought of as sleazy at first and then simply infuriating. His hair was a fair shade of brown, his eyes were green, and he looked ten years older than she remembered him looking. She could almost swear there was a touch of grey at the sides.

He looked up at his visitor, but didn’t react. Kirsten wasn’t sure how to take that. On her way she had expected a number of reactions; a smart-ass quip, guarded or defensive behaviour, or even flat-out blame, but not silence.

The nurse excused herself and strode briskly away and out of sight, leaving the two alone in the hospital room with the distinctive reek of antiseptics.

‘Hey…’ Darren Winters said after a minute had passed. He sounded so… different. The short time she had known him, Kirsten had found him aggravating to no end; now it almost seemed like that man had gone, and she wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.

‘Hi,’ Kirsten started, unsure of herself. This wasn’t going anything like how she had imagined it would.

‘Took you long enough to come visit,’ Darren said, the ghost of a smirk on his lips, but it was shaky, and it disappeared completely after a few seconds.

‘I was…’ she started but found she couldn’t say anything. It had been two months since she had carried him back from the wreck that was Eastern Berlin; two months since Darren Winters’ heart had stopped; two months since he had been brought back.

‘It’s fine, I get it… I see you got promoted,’ he observed, pointing to the rank born on her shoulder.

‘Yes, finally,’ she smiled; ‘I was bumped up to Stabsunteroffizier for valour shortly after…’ she trailed off. It had happened almost immediately after she was fit enough to walk. She had almost consumed herself with guilt when they had told her; she’d thought the sniper had died. It was only a month ago that she was informed that he yet lived, and the news had lifted a weight she hadn’t been aware she’d carried from her shoulders.

‘I–’ she began, but any words she was about to speak died on her lips when she took in the expression on Darren Winters’ face.

He was crying.

‘My leg’s gone,’ he said, lifting what remained of his left leg up underneath the sheets. ‘Bone was ground up and cracked and there was an infection setting in so they say; had to go. I’d have died otherwise.

‘I’ll walk with a prosthetic, they’re getting that sent up in the next month or so, but I’ll never serve again,’ he sniffed and wiped his eyes.

‘It’s fucking funny you know,’ he told her, but Kirsten wasn’t sure what he was talking about. ‘I fucking hated the army when I signed up. Wake up at five in the morning to some short-arsed ponce in a silly uniform with a silly moustache shouting at you every time you did… well… anything. The food was shite, the weather sucked no matter where you went and it was always “do this, do that, about face and salute!” but I sucked it up because, shit, at least it was better than fucking home.’

‘You said some things that day… night,’ Kirsten corrected herself, opening her mouth before she could clamp down on her curiosity. ‘A lot of them were about your… well, your mother.’

‘I did?’ Darren wondered, and then nodded ever so slightly. ‘I guess so… I don’t remember a whole lot about that night if I’m honest. I remember you falling on top of me, something going off, and this really shitty pain in my gut, and everything after that’s a blur.’

He was quiet for another minute after that, his head leaned back against his pillow, staring up at the spotless, pristine white ceiling of his room. Finally, he bit his lip and nodded again, as if resolving himself to something.

‘I guess I could tell you. Who the fuck are you going to tell? Maybe getting it off my chest will be good for me, what the hell do I know, I’m no bloody therapist.’ His eyes were red and puffy, and his cheeks were flushed with colour. Kirsten was struck once again by how completely different this man was from their first encounter.

‘My life was shit about sums it up. We were dirt poor and lived in a shitty neighbourhood in a shitty town called Northampton. My dad was great but he worked twelve hour shifts every day at a shoe factory and I never saw much of him. Mum…’ Darren scratched his head and sighed heavily, ‘she was… I could never do anything right around her. She called me out on everything I did and said whenever dad wasn’t around, and, when I started getting older, even some times he /was/. I’m almost certain she hated me; pretty sure it was my dad who persuaded her not to give me up when I was born.

‘I could never understand how my dad could ever love a bitch like her, she was grouchy, she drank a lot, she barely did anything except lounge about and watch TV. Dad kept telling me not to mind it, and cause it was him asking I did, even when she started getting violent,’  he paused, glanced at Kirsten, before reaching for the arm of his hospital robe and rolling it up, exposing a jagged pink scar that ran from his elbow to his wrist. ‘First present she ever gave me. I was ten,’ he chuckled humourlessly, ‘girls loved it when they were at the age where this sort of thing gets cool but all it ever did – even when I was milking it for tail – is remind me of bad times and worse people.’

‘That’s…’ Kirsten started, unable to do anything but wonder. It was a far cry from her own childhood, which had been modest but she had never wanted for much, especially not when her familiar manifested. To know someone she knew had suffered such cruelty rankled with her, even if that someone was a man she could hardly stand when they had first met.

‘She started sleeping around too,’ Darren continued, ‘and that was a real fucking mystery; she was an ugly cow, and every time she brought one of her buddies over to play she’d lock me in a cupboard until they were gone. I thought it was just another way of getting to me at first, then I started hearing things… I don’t know why dad never talked to her about it; he had to have known because he was fucking miserable; he started drinking after a while too, even more than mum did. Eventually he lost his job and got so pissed one night he wandered onto a road and got hit by a car.’

‘That’s terrible, I’m so sorry.’

Darren snorted, as if to brush off her condolence, but there was lingering hurt in the Brit’s eyes. ‘If it was bad before… well… I think you get the picture. I left home as soon as I could, before I did, I met my mum on the way out. She looked me dead in the eyes, and said – right to my face – “you were a bloody accident you mongrel.”’

Darren sniffed and looked away. ‘Stupid bitch,’ he muttered bitterly, ‘I figured that out years ago.’

‘What did you do when you left?’ Kirsten asked him.

Darren turned his gaze back towards her, ‘Well I went straight into the army is what I did. My grades were for shit, and even if they weren’t there was no way I could ever afford university or college, there happened to be an armed forces event shortly after I graduated high school and I thought to myself “why not? They’ll board me, feed me, pay me, maybe take me to see somewhere besides fucking Northampton. All I need to do is learn to follow orders right?”’ He chuckled and shook his head, ‘I was wrong, but I’ve gone into that already. Things changed and I kind of grew to like it.’

‘What exactly changed?’ Kirsten inquired, curious now.

Darren scratched the back of his head, wrestling with his vocabulary, ‘I guess it was actually kind of sudden. It was near the end of Phase Two at Warminster; marksman training. I was good at it, naturally, but I didn’t much enjoy it; then later than evening a bunch of the lads got together and told us that there was a great big party going on at the Officers Mess and we were all invited. Anyway, we got there and starting chowing down on the nibbles and pretty much gulping down the alcohol and kept at it until about eleven at night, when suddenly the doors swing open…’

‘What happened?’

Darren snickered and shook his head, ‘Well it turned out that the party was officers only, and they’d all been sat at this really, really long briefing session beforehand. They were tired, and in dire need of a drink and something to eat; only when they opened those doors they found all the food was gone, the alcohol had been gulped down to the last drop, and there were a hundred-odd completely blasted army grunts milling about.

‘When we were woken up the next morning nursing killer hangovers they gave us all shit for it, but none of us really regretted it. Even I didn’t, and what surprised me even more was that, as they herded us out to get some water in us so we’d be up for a ten mile jog at company strength; I actually thought to myself “you know what… this isn’t really all that bad.”’ There was a soft, genuine smile on his face as he relived the memory. Then he looked down at his legs, knowing what lay beneath the sheets, and the smile wavered.

‘All over now,’ he whispered; the forlorn expression returning. Kirsten decided she didn’t much care for that look, and began to think of ways to get it off his face. Unfortunately she came up blank, until…

The German witch cast a glance through the shutters that cut the chamber off from the rest of the ward. A few support staff bustled around, carrying various medical supplies and instruments, but there were no doctors or nurses to be seen. Good. All she needed now was…

Aha, perfect. There was an unoccupied wheelchair sitting idly by the foot of a currently empty bed, Kirsten excused herself and wheeled it inside the Corporal’s room without anyone wise to her. Darren regarded the wheelchair with bemusement.

‘What’s that for?’ he asked.

‘Get on,’ she commanded, ‘I’m taking you out of this place to get some fresh air.’

‘Come again?’

‘There’s no time for this,’ Kirsten muttered in German, locking the wheelchair in place and suddenly lifting Darren out of his bed.

‘What the– put me down you crazy witch!’

‘Very well,’ Kirsten replied simply and dumped the Corporal unceremoniously onto the chair, who glowered balefully up at her.

‘One word and I snap your other leg,’ she warned him, ‘we’re going outside to have some fun.’ Darren opened his mouth to protest, ‘That’s an order, by the way,’ she said with a predatory grin. The Brit shut his mouth and finally raised his arms in surrender.

‘Fine,’ he said dismissively, ‘but any shit I take when the docs find out is coming back to you.’

‘I’ll deal with it,’ Kirsten assured him, turning the chair around and rolling him outside the room.

The impromptu escape took almost ten minutes, but Kirsten made it work, and eventually they were outside enjoying the sights Frankfurt had to offer. The hospital gown Darren wore drew a few curious stares from pedestrians but no one dared approach the German army witch who wheeled the patient about.

The first couple hours of the tour proved uneventful, even a fraction awkward as Kirsten realised rather abruptly that she had no clue what Darren liked. Her first instinct was to take him to a café and get something in him besides horrendous hospital food but she didn’t know Frankfurt like she knew Berlin and the first places they visited were significantly lacking compared to Herzog’s back home. She also discovered that Darren was a boring, fussy eater; his first taste of strudel led to him hacking it back up, something Kirsten had found hilarious until a waitress arrived to clean it up; she had paid the bill and left flushed completely red from embarrassment.

Her next plan went a little better, involving a boat trip up and down the Main River, but Kirsten had forgotten in her efforts to get Darren to enjoy himself that she herself hated boats, and spent the entire trip feeling like she was going to hurl every minute they were on the water. Darren had found that amusing, and Kirsten had engaged in a one-sided shouting match when she took exception to a snide remark from her companion. They had been kicked off, and Kirsten, in a rage, had demanded Darren pay for their dinner to compensate for the cash wasted on only half a trip. Darren had then pointed out that he didn’t have his wallet.

Their last meal of the day had been a silent affair at a decent Italian. Now they sat by the riverbank, at a loss as to what to do while the day began the gradual shift to night, and Kirsten felt miserable. She wanted to cheer the man up but barely anything had gone right and she felt like they’d spent more time arguing than having fun as she intended.

‘Nice job stupid,’ she muttered darkly to herself in German, resting her head in her hands and wondering what else would go wrong before she wheeled Darren back to the hospital. She was certain there would be a confrontation with the staff waiting for her when they returned, something she wasn’t looking forward to. Her actions had been entirely on impulse and she was very much starting to wish she had just checked in to make sure he was doing okay and gone.

The elephant in the room, though, was that he wasn’t doing okay. He had actually almost broken down in front of her he was so torn up about his injuries – injuries that she had given him. He had told his whole life story to her. Her. A stranger he’d barely known longer than a week at most. He would most certainly have died without her, but he’d never have been injured if he’d never met her, surely.

‘Sun’s going down,’ Darren observed.

‘What?’ Kirsten asked, not having paid the slightest attention.

‘What I said; the sun’s going down,’ he repeated, pointing with a finger towards the skyline. Sure enough, the sun had begun its slow, glacial descent, casting a warm, orange glow over Frankfurt. It was the same glow that had lulled her to sleep on lazy summer days in Berlin during her childhood. She found it soothing, as if the fading light washed away all her troubles and doubts away, allowing her a pure, blissful sleep. She found herself wondering if Darren had ever experienced such things in his tumultuous early years. Probably not.

They sat and watched as it dipped below the skyline, sitting for half an hour simply staring as the great, golden sphere dipped lower and lower until, finally, it had receded completely.

‘I think this is probably the first time I’ve done something like this,’ Darren said after a minute. Kirsten looked at him with a curious expression.

‘Just sitting down and taking in the sights I mean. Watching the sunset too, I guess. That’s not something I’ve done before now either.’

Kirsten said nothing at first, and then, when she couldn’t take it any longer…

‘I’m sorry,’ she blurted out.

‘What?’

‘I’m sorry. I pulled you out of your position that day and if I’d been a little faster or a little smarter I wouldn’t have…’

Wouldn’t have crippled you and taken something you love away from you. She couldn’t say it. It bothered and frustrated her to no end that she couldn’t manage it. She was a Leutnant of the German army, she had more kills under her belt than some companies, she could take a tank shell and walk it off like it hadn’t even happened…

And she was completely out of her depth.

Next to her, Darren took in a deep breath and exhaled roughly. Here came the blame, she thought to herself, and she squeezed her eyes shut, unable to even look at the man whose life she had ruined.

‘Okay.’

Silence reigned, and Kirsten almost felt herself stop functioning as she took the totally unexpected reply in.

‘Wha… what?’ she managed.

‘I said okay. I don’t blame you for the actions you took that day. I could but that probably wouldn’t change anything and… well, shit I don’t feel like making you hate me more than you already do so…’

‘But… but you– you were…’

‘Yeah, I’m torn up about it,’ Darren admitted with a heavy sigh, leaning his head back against the headrest of his wheelchair. ‘I’ll probably cry about it too when I get back into bed if I think no one’s looking, and I definitely don’t think I’ll be over it any time soon. Shit, maybe not ever.’

‘Then why–’

‘Look, the thing is that my leg was pretty much paste when they found us back then. They couldn’t save it even with magic. They could have left it attached but all that would have caused me is a lot of pain and I’d still be unfit for duty so… they removed it instead. It sucks something fierce but this…’ he raised the stump, indicating it with a hand, ‘is a fact of life now.’

He turned to her, ‘You know what else is a fact of life?’ Kirsten didn’t answer him, so he explained it to her, ‘The fact that you pulled us both out of a real shitheap and walked barefoot almost half the length of Berlin carrying my dying arse to safety.’

‘You did die,’ she murmured softly. ‘Your heart stopped. Twice so I was told.’

‘And the healwitches brought me back every time, which is more than what would have happened if you hadn’t done what you did.’

‘You were hurt because of me; because I got angry and frustrated. If we’d just never met, you wouldn’t be–’

‘What, crippled? What about alive? Get off the bleeding pity parade Kirst, you know as well as I do that it was bad all along the firing line. I might have gotten away scot free without so much as a scratch on another deployment, yeah. I could also have died. I might have ended up losing an eye instead of a leg; an arm; two legs; more. Shit, we’ll never know. You’re a smart girl, and as much shit as I gave you I know you wouldn’t have pulled me away if you thought it would put the both of us in harms way.’

‘It doesn’t mean–’

‘Fuck you it doesn’t mean anything!’ Darren snapped, and Kirsten looked up at him to see real anger in his emerald eyes. ‘End result is that I’m still sucking air. Yes I’m down a limb, we’ve been over that: it sucks and it’ll continue to suck but again, it’s more than I could say if you hadn’t made your decision to move. You saved me Kirsten. Fact. Of. Life. I don’t blame you or despise you for anything. Get it into your head.’

Another bout of quiet descended upon the two. Darren took a breath, calming himself down. Kirsten retreated into herself. She was strangely glad he didn’t hate her even now, but the modicum of happiness gleamed only served to intensify her self-loathing. Darren would go back home and have to find work in England; his days in the army were over while Kirsten would carry on as if nothing had ever happened. It didn’t feel right to her.

‘Look…’ Darren started again, ‘you came here because you wanted to check up on me, right? Because you wanted to make sure I was doing all right?’

Kirsten nodded.

‘Then wipe that goddamned look off your face. You’re a good person. A shitty person would have forgotten completely about me; a shitty person would be off punching Ivan in his shrivelled ballsack and chasing medals and brownnosing generals and… and shit like that, and if you’d done that without even a thought as to what state I might be in, then I’d argue you deserve to feel what you’re feeling. You didn’t though. You came and you busted me out for a day’s fun–’

‘Some fun,’ Kirsten remarked bitterly, ‘this was a total disaster. Nothing went right. I wanted to show you the city and all I did was piss about and shout at you.’

‘Oi, you ever think maybe that I kind of enjoyed today?’

Kirsten looked at him as if he’d sprouted a third arm.

‘Okay, maybe not the shouting part as much as the rest of it but… hell. You /tried./ No one’s ever gone anything like this far for me before. Not even in the army. Now I’ve made some damn good friends as a part of Her Maj’s finest but I doubt any of them would have done this for me in… ever. Now, I’m going to say something to you that will, hopefully, put this whole thing to rest.’

He raised a hand and rested it on her shoulder, giving it a gentle, supportive squeeze. He fixed her stormy grey eyes with his own, and said, ‘Thank you.’

‘Y-you’re welcome,’ Kirsten replied after a moment’s hesitation. She suddenly felt as if the world had suddenly brightened around her.

‘Great,’ Darren said, ‘now no more sad shit huh?’ and with that, he smiled. It was the most dazzling expression Kirsten had ever seen a person wear. This wasn’t the smarmy smile he wore when he had tossed a snide remark her way in Berlin, nor was it the oily smile he plastered to his face whenever some of the girls of her unit approached the “dashing” foreigner.

No, this smile was all heart.

And it took her breath away.

The walk back to the hospital was spent in silence. Night had fallen, and the streetlights lit up the city like brilliant, gleaming great fireflies of all multitudes of hues. Despite her upbeat mood, Kirsten still felt shards of guilt over what had occurred, but she realised now that, much like Darren, she too was still healing, and in time, these would fade.

‘What will you do when they discharge you?’ Kirsten asked him as they approached the final bend.

‘I dunno,’ Darren replied. ‘I guess I’ll have to start looking for a desk job or something that doesn’t involve walking everywhere. Shit. I’m going to need to search for a house or a flat too; somewhere with disabled access,’ he moaned in frustration. ‘Fucking hell that’s going to be a pain.’

An idea came to her, and the instant it came to mind she almost scrapped it immediately from embarrassment. Then she reasserted herself. This was a day for new things, why not? What did she really have to lose if he said no?

‘Who says you have to go back to England?’

This time it was Darren’s turn to be stumped.

‘I’m sorry?’ he gawked.

‘Why don’t you stay here in Germany? You wouldn’t have to do much travelling and I’m sure there are a lot of things we’ll need doing when the war is finally over.’

‘I… I’m flattered but I don’t think that’d work. I don’t really speak the language.’

‘I could teach you.’

‘I’d have to go through a load of hoops with the Foreign Ministry and Army channels.’

‘Witch privilege.’

‘I’d need to get a work permit or whatever the equivalent here is.’

‘Witch. Privilege.’

‘Does that even apply to things outside the armed forces?’

‘We could find out.’

‘Okay, okay, let’s just back up for a moment here,’ Darren said, shaking his head as if to clear it before staring back up at her. ‘Have you just proposed to me?’

‘Maybe,’ she said, smirking down at him. ‘Would you like to find out?’

Darren stared up at her for a full minute and a half. Eventually he released a breath that was half exasperation, half… something she couldn’t really identify. She liked the sound of it though.

‘Maybe I would…’ he murmured softly. She was only half-certain that she wasn’t meant to catch it, and she smiled at all the things it implied.

They reached the entrance to the hospital, the building looming over them like a castle of old. Just like that, their time together was over. Kirsten felt a dull ache in her heart and was surprised to find that she was unsurprised that she felt as such.

‘Do you think we could do this again sometime? Like tomorrow?’ she asked as she wheeled him to the entrance.

Darren considered her, licking dry lips in a manner that seemed almost nervous. Kirsten found it rather cute. He turned his head up to her. ‘I’m guessing you’re here on leave now?’

She nodded.

‘How long have you got?’

‘Another week and a half,’ she told him, fixing him with a soft smile.

‘Okay,’ he nodded, licking his lips again. ‘Yeah… okay. Tomorrow sounds good.’

‘And the day after that?’

The hesitant expression disappeared from his face, replaced by a warm expression the old Kirsten would never have imagined possible on the face of the old Darren Winters.

‘I’d like that,’ he said as they walked back into the pristine whitewashed hall of the hospital.

As they both expected, Kirsten was greeted by a couple of considerably irritated staff, who gave her an equally considerable lecture on the responsibilities of the patients and the staff regarding the health of said patients and a lot of other things that she pretty much blanked out five minutes in.

When they let her go half an hour later it was well into the night. A chill had settled, permeating throughout the city; the mood was sullen and those few people still out were downcast; war raged on, however distant it might be, and despite some encouraging news the people were well aware that the tide could turn at a moment’s notice. Despite all of this, however, a young German Bundeswehr tank witch smiled as she sauntered breezily through the brightly lit streets of Frankfurt back to her hotel.