Participants:
| Scene Title | Implications |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Lost in time, Daphne becomes endangered when Kazimir's attempts at survival hit a roadblock. |
| Date | April 30, 1945 |
It's been raining ever since the sun rose. For most of the people at Camp Bravo they never expected to see many more sunrises, even rainy ones. Spreading out over the forested hillsides of Germany, the village of Dessau is little more than an occupied footprint of the Allied forces movements across what was once Nazi Germany. The original residents of Dessau are long since gone, only their homes, their food and their land remains, and the trenches within which are laid the bodies of dead German officers for over a mile.
Dessau is home to residents of a new kind though, and this German farming village is pockmarked with tents and emergency medical facilities. Trucks are parked along the dirt road leading through the village, past rolling fields of wheat and tall grass and low riverstone walls. Were it not for the tanks perched atop hills, it might seem from a distance like some kind of festival or traveling circus were in town.
There is nothing festive about the human suffering here.
Typhus fever runs rampant in the several thousand refugees that were evacuated from the Dachau concentration camp to this location only a day ago, and separating the sick from the healthy has been a harrowing process. So many of the liberated prisoners have already died of illness, injury or malnourishment. But they at least were given the dignity to die free.
With so many wounded all across the village and the Allied forces — comprised here of the American's 42nd Infantry battallion and a small, scattered British group composed of survivors from three different units — spread so thin, everyone has been on edge for fear of reprisals from the German remnants still scattered throughout the countryside.
At the northeast entrance to Dassau, an argument has begin with the presence of a truck that arrived just an hour ago. Standing under watch by a group of some fifteen American soldiers, an alleged French doctor and his patient stand at rifle-point, while a row of plain-clothes Nazi officers stand with their backs to the side of an old brick house perched on the edge of the river that runs through the village. Their silence is punctuated by the creak of a waterwheel and the tense stares by the US troops.
"Has anyone seen my god damned Lieutenant yet?" Shouts the corporal overseeing the arrival of the truck. Nazi deserters surrendering to the US are never treated well, as was witnessed at Dachau when all the Nazis who surrendered were executed regardless. They US soldiers have only had a day to calm their nerves, but they are still on edge.
Elsewhere in the village, a runner has been making his way through the camp, trying to find one of the prisoners that was let loose and bring him to the Corporal. Francois Allegre, a French doctor. Corporal Clarkson knew it sounded suspicious, knew it sounded familiar, and the potential for Nazis to hide their identities, slip under the radar and escape justice is something that Corporal Clarkson is not going to permit.
The two figures headed down the dirt road from the village, may well have a very pronounced effect on how the soldiers are received. After all, one of them is Francois Allegre.
Dessau, Germany
April 30, 1945
The coat Francois wears is one an American soldier has given to him, and he clutches it closed with hands, with the seams of the shoulders going past his frame, the sleeves up to his knuckles, and youth seems to be something that his face marks him as having as opposed to something he moves with. He walks with a sick man's uncertainty, although if Daphne has taken a look at many of the refugees of Dachau Concentration Camp, he has his vitality perhaps for reasons that— might explain why he's even able to be here at all.
Because he is the Francois Allegre she knows — younger, sicker. His hair is shaven to a dark texture close cropped to his skull, growing at his jaw almost of the same length and grain. Green eyes stare bleakly from the sunken pits above his prominent cheekbones, mouth tight and small and a fever's shine on his skin. He has his focus on his feet, before lifting his gaze as they get closer.
And it's not the woman he focuses on, but the man she's come with.
Despite the fact it's so much warmer than New York, Daphne has been shivering as she stares down the rifle barrel pointed at her. Something's not right, they're not buying the story, and it's only when she sees the real Francois Allegre that the modern-day American realizes the problem. Her own face flickers in shock and recognition, and her dark eyes try to read his green eyes that look much too large in this thin face of this younger version of her docteur. Her brows knit together as she sees that it can't be the same Francois she saw just a few days ago — and her aching head spins with the topsy turvy reality of this world she's been thrust in.
Unsure of what to do, she whispers under her breath, "Son nom est Francois Allegre aussi" to Kazimir in a warning, to give him a split second to come up with something that won't get them killed. As for Francois, she simply stares, tears rushing to the surface at seeing her friend so ill, so weak.
From the mild look Kazimir offers Daphne, the furrow of his thin brows and the downward turn of his lips, he either isn't offering an answer, or doesn't have one she's going to like.
It hasn't been long enough for Kazimir Volken's face to have changed in Francois' memory. Over the winter was the last time they had seen one another, at the pyres in Dachau, trying to recover and heal an Evolved that was to be burned. It is an odd relationship the two had, a prisoner healer, a favored prisoner but still a prisoner none the less. When the Dutch detainees had come that winter with their sickness, it ravaged through Dachau, and for being as sick as he is, Francois Allegre should be dead.
Kazimir Volkens back tenses under the brown jacket of a common physician that he wears, buttoned closed over his tall and gaunt frame. Glasses reflect the dim gray light of the clouded skies, and three months has done little to mend the feelings both men have for one another. Swallowing tensely, Kazimir looks to Daphne, and the expression on his face is one of grim certainty. This isn't going to end well.
"Private Keller, is this the one?" Corporal Clarkson asks, looking up to Francois' thin face. Keller nods in recognition, offering a brief salute as he walks over and to the gathering of soldiers and detainees. "This man claims to be a captured French resistance fighter, Francois Allegre, sir."
Kazimir Volken's eyes close, a slow breath is drawn in, and a sigh is soon exhaled after the fact as he listens to the exchange. "I got a French doctor here by the same name, got an American girl with him named Daphne Miller. Says he's treating her for shock and some injuries, looks like she's got a bum leg, beaten up lookin'. You got any idea?" The Corporal looks past the private to Francois. "You have any family? This guy a brother or somethin'?"
Or something.
Green eyes focus on the corporal, just briefly, before he looks at Volken — petty victory seems to make his eyes wider, an energy shimmering beneath the surface not spent purely on trying to heal himself back to life, a continual slow burn that only Francois can monitor. He brings up a hand, the back of it grazing against his mouth, fingers trembling like the limbs on a delicate tree. There are other differences — there is no piece taken out of his ear, and his hands, for all that they have dirt beneath the nails and are too slender for health, are completely unharmed.
He also doesn't not seem to comprehend the English being spoken to him, defensive confusion writing across his gaunt features. "Je ne parle pas anglais," he says, and in defiance as to the rest of him, he sounds exactly the same to Daphne's ears. "«I know him,»" and he points to Volken. "Nazi," for the American's benefit. "Kazimir Volken."
Shit. Daphne's eyes widen as she hears Francois throw the imposter under the proverbial bus, but unfortunately, she gets to go along for the ride. "Attente! S'il vous plaît, je ne suis pas Nazi. Je suis Américain!" she says, desperately, face contorting as she implores Francois and any one else who understands French, and then to English, turning to look at the Corporal. "I'm not a Nazi, I don't know this man at all," she nods to Francois, hating the lie a little, "or if they know each other, but I'm just a girl from fucking Kansas, okay? Please don't shoot me! I can help … I can help take care of people and I speak French a little, and I can be useful!"
Betrayal on all sides, Kazimir's blue eyes shift askance as he looks at Daphne, not a moment's fear in his eyes before he turns to look at the officer that receives that confirmation. There's no pleading, no reasoning, no begginig for his life, just a downturned corner of Kazimir's weathered lips into a scowl as he watches the corporal step back and look over to Francois, waiting for confirmation, before motioning to Kazimir and Daphne both.
"Line 'em up." Corporal Clarkson grumbles, and the American soldiers move in, one grabbing either of Daphne's arms, struggling with her and starting to turn her around so that she can be moved over to the wall where the other Nazi officers are standing in silent horror.
One moves for Kazimir, grabbing him by the jacket, dragging him over to the others. Kazimir jostles and moves willingly, his blue eyes leveled on Francois coldly, watching him from the American escprt much in the same way he had watched Francois be escorted into Dachau that day.
"When you're done put 'em in the ditch." The Corporal grouses, turning his back to the scene without so much as a second thought. The horrors they found in Dachau are too recent to forget, to forgive. Innocence is going to be punished for it.
The stare Kazimir deals to Francois has the younger man quickly dropping his gaze, huddled in on himself as things unfold with the casual brutality in which he's spent the last ten months watching and enduring. His hands press together like a prayer, fingertips tucked beneath his chin as he watches the soldiers go to manhandle man and girl both, finally dragging his attention from the Nazi scientist towards the girl. Fear is a powerful paralytic, and the refugee seems about as powerless at the hands of the Americans as he was at the hands of the Germans.
Until he finds his tongue again. "Non, arretez." The few steps Francois takes forward are more certain than his shuffle before, but almost cost him, a hand out to balance himself a second later. "«Him. Just him. Let her go. She—»" He stalls out, now looking at her properly, then points. "«She's hurt.» Victim." Out of all the English he might have picked up on, he manages to pronounce this word with certainty.
The words bring a choked sob of relief and fear from the speedster, who turns her liquid eyes on Francois, her chest rising and falling with hyperventilated breaths. "Merci, oh, God, merci, docteur," she whimpers, falling to her knees when the soldier dragging her drops her for the time being.
She cries out raggedly as the pain racks her body, then glances up as Kazimir, still a prisoner of war about to be executed. Daphne's eyes slide away — he was not unkind to her, but she was nothing more than a tool to him, and one that he endangered at that. He is a Nazi. She knows he should die. She just doesn't want to watch it.
Corporal Clarkson hisses out a breath and turns around, looking to Francois, the soldiers, and the expressions on their faces. None of them want to shoot a crying woman, but they're not going to disobey direct orders. Instead they stand there, still and silent, watching each other in the falling rain. Corporal Clarkson looks down, away from Daphne and to his feet, jaw trembling as he brings a hand up to sweep at his forehead before turnign around again. "She can go…" he corrects, starting to march up the hill with one hand rubbing at the side of his head. The relief on the faces of the soldiers is hard to see, but it can be felt like a knot of tension being pulled massaged out of muscles.
One of them looks up to Francois, "Monseur, «how sick are you?»" It's a question that gets asked of Francois all too often around here. He is a doctor and —
—she called him one.
"Monseur Allegre?" The soldier asks again at the blank stare Francois has, while behind him Kazimir is escorted to stand with the rest of his men, shoulders squared, back straight and chin tilted up. There's not a moment of hesitatin or fear in his eyes, even when his glasses are slid off of his face by one of the soldiers, tucked away into a pocket for someone who needs them.
Blankness is shattered with a quick inhale, shuddered out, Francois darts a quick glance from the man addressing him in French, and down to the woman. These are things easier to watch than Kazimir being brought up to the firing line — a situation that the Nazi scientist had, in fact, rescued him from. For better or for worse. "«I am able»," seems a terse but accurate claim. "«Only very tired. I could do with coffee,» oui?" It almost seems a silly request, that a typhus ravaged ex-prisoner only needs a cup of coffee, but—
That is his request, stated firmly. One step, two step, then Francois is moving forward to go and offer his hands to Daphne, palms open and fingers splayed, to help her to stand.
Taking the hand that is offered to her, and then wrapping her second hand around it, Daphne rises, on wobbly feet. Her dirty and bloody face is now streaked with tears, but she offers the young doctor an apologetic smile. Her eyes flicker to the man being prepared for execution, and her brows knit — Kazimir might be the only person who knows a way for her to get back home but if she wants to survive, she has to distance herself from him. There will have to be another way.
"Thank you. Merci, docteur," she tells Francois once she's unsteadily back on one foot, the other lifted gingerly again. "«I'm sorry you are ill. It's a shame you cannot heal yourself.»" The words could be innocent, or they could be loaded — depending on one's level of cynicism and belief in coincidences.
Gunfire has a way of making a subtle and quiet conversation suddenly not so comfortable. It started when one of the Nazis tried to make a break for it, and soon every soldier in the line was firing. Bullets riddle soldiers in the back, blood sprays from ruptured skulls, some scream, some try to hide, others just stand there and take it knowing the end has come, some might even feel guilty for the lives they led. Kazimir's already down on the ground by the time Francois looks to the sound of gunfire, his head tilted to the side, blood running out of his chest and belly, four more men landing in a pile atop him.
It only takes fifteen seconds for the firing to stop, the lack clack of a bolt-action rifle chambering a round doesn't accompany a gunshot, as nothing left in the heap of bodies is moving any longer. The Lieutenant who had escorted Francois down walks past the soldiers once they lower their guns, inspect the bodies laid out and then nods his head, looking up to the men and nodding his head again.
"Get 'em in the ditch," the Lieutenant orders solemnly, turning to look to Francois and Daphne, walking back over to the pair. "Monseur Allegre," the soldier begins again, "«I need to take care of things here. Can I trust you to find yourself back on your own?»" Even as he's asking that, the Lieutenant turns away and motions to one of the men, snapping his fingers. "Hey, Darby, get mister Allegre some goddamned coffee, black."
The Lieutenant rests a hand on Daphne's shoulder, nodding his head once before looking to Francois. "«You'll be well enough?»"
The stare that hooks into Daphne is broken by the sound of gunfire — the doctor flinches, chin tucking in and risking a small glance in the direction of the violence. Implication and keywords almost forgotten, for now, as he stares across at the broken form of Kazimir Volken as if not quite believing it. He takes a breath, only nodding at first before looking towards the lieutenant, swallowing. "Oui, «well enough»," seems like a good phrase for it, despite the fact his skin is too warm to touch, his eyes watered.
"«Come with me,»" he offers, quietly, and despite the fact that probably both Daphne and Francois look like they need some propping up, he loops an arm around her back to offer what weight he still has to lean against, and goes to guide her away from the carnage, and back down the dirt road.
He hesitates, as if trying to dig up some trace of comfort for the woman, if he has anything left in him for such a thing. A glance down, a glance ahead, and Francois only offers; "«Don't look back.»"