AWOL down Memory Lane, a pretender fanfic

TITLE: AWOL down Memory Lane

AUTHOR: Wayward Explorer

SUMMARY: Miss Parker and Broots are surprised when Sydney disappears to take a walk down memory lane.

RATING: PG for war references.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own "The Pretender", either characters, settings or properties. I'm just a huge fan with stories to tell. I make no monetary gain from this story, and any copyright infringement is not intended.

===== ===== ~*~ ===== =====

"Miss Parker? Miss Parker?" Broots entered the lab in a hurry, carrying a large manilla envelope.

"What is it, Broots?"

"This just came. For Sydney. I think it's from Jarod."

Miss Parker held her hand out for the envelope and Broots handed it to her. Inspecting the address on the front, she nodded in agreement.

"It certainly looks like Jarod's handwriting."

"Do you know where he is, Miss Parker?"

Miss Parker handed the letter back to Broots and turned to leave. "No idea."

"But but he didn't call you?"

"I'm not his babysitter, Broots." Parker paused at the door. "Maybe he's just decided to call in sick. Call reception and find out." With that, she left the room.

Standing alone in the lab, Broots nodded to himself. "I'll do that," he said aloud, before leaving the lab himself.

In the vents above sat Angelo, who had watched the scene below. Knees to his chest, arms clasped around them, he rocked slightly as he whispered to himself.

"Sydney remembering. Sydney sad."

----- ~*~ -----

Sydney got off the train stiff and tired. He had come 450 miles on the train, and spent 13-odd hours on the trans-atlantic flight into Berlin before that. He was nearly there.

In Munich he got hold of a phone book and exercised his German, calling around the tour guide companies until he found one that took groups out there. He stuttered as he said the name of the place he wanted to go. Dachau. After he had made a booking for the next day, he surrendered the pay phone to another traveller and picked up his bag. He had booked a hotel from Berlin. As the man at the information desk had said it would be, the hotel was only two blocks to the right of the station. He checked in, carried his bag upstairs; and too tired to bother going out again to buy dinner, he feel asleep within minutes.

----- -----

A shadowy shape came into focus. Jakob gripped his hand tightly and they held their ground as the Doctor bent his tall, menacing frame into a crouch so he was on eye-level with the twins.

"Hello, children. I'll be taking care of you for awhile."

----- -----

Sydney awoke with a start.

After a moment he looked around to get his bearings and realised that he wasn't in the infirmary, but neither was he in his familiar bedroom. It took him a moment to remember that he was in a hotel room in Munich.

So close, and yet so far.

The bedside clock told him that it was seven am. He'd slept ten hours. The tour group met in front of the train station at eight-thirty am. Breakfast began at seven-thirty. The facts flickered through his mind with alarming speed. Ignoring his stiff back, Sydney pulled himself out of bed and into the small shower in the en-suite bathroom. Warm water fell on him with fairly decent water-pressure, but it didn't have its normal mind-clearing, refreshing effect. After only a few short minutes, he stepped out of the shower, dried and dressed.

He was the first to arrive at the meeting place next to the bus. A young man wearing a driver's uniform and a young woman dressed neatly but warmly in black pants and a sheepskin jacket with the collar turned up to keep the cool air out stood next to the bus, chatting. He approached them with conviction. They broke off their conversation and the woman turned to him.

"Mr. Nemann?" Sydney paused for a moment before acknowledging the name – the false name he had given the phone operator the day before.

"Nice to have you aboard," she continued in German. "I understand you're from the United States. Would you rather speak English?"

Sydney nodded slightly. "If that's not too much trouble," he replied in English.

The young woman smiled, showing brilliant white teeth. "Not at all. My name's Marie Geizhart, and I'll be your tour guide today." She offered her hand, and Sydney shook it. "Our bus driver is Steffan. If you'd like to get on, you can make yourself comfortable; and everyone else should be arriving soon."

"Danke."

"Bitte."

Sydney climbed the stairs and found a seat near the front of the bus. Steffan had climbed into his seat and moderated the heating, while Marie Geizhart welcomed the steadily arriving group members, who climbed one after the other onto the bus.

Twenty minutes later, they were on the way.

----- -----

"Dachau was one of the first concentration camps set up by the Nazi regime. It was built in 1933 as an extermination camp for people of the Jewish faith, and political prisoners"

Geizhart's voice seemed to fade in and out of Sydney's consciousness as he looked out the bus window at the passing landscape. She was speaking in English after establishing that every passenger on the bus understood it well. Sydney was surrounded by silence except for the sound of her voice reeling off facts and the rumble of the bus – all the passengers had fallen silent the moment she had picked up the microphone and announced that they were approximately five minutes away from their destination.

"We're about to arrive," announced Geizhart. "I'd like to remind all of you that this is a sacred site. Feel free to touch anything that is not signed as forbidden, but please be respectful."

The buss stopped and the other people in the group stood to file off. Sydney remained seated, staring out at the desolate area he could see ahead.

"Mr. Nemann, are you coming?" asked one of the other members, a young woman who had sat behind him on the bus-ride. After a moment, Sydney stirred himself into action.

"Yes yes, I'm coming."

Steffan remained with the bus as Geizhart led the group toward the gates.

"American forces liberated about 32,000 prisoners here on April 29th, 1945," began Geizhart. "They were dismayed by the physical state of the prisoners they were freeing, and later psychologists reported that most people who had come here would suffer extreme post-traumatic stress, not to mention never being able to truly enter society again, due to their experiences here"

Sydney barely listened, simply walked around in a daze as he saw the buildings he had not seen since he was a little boy. Only a few of them stood now, but his mind filled in the blanks. Beside the derelict administration hut, the barracks used to run down that way in straight lines. The infirmary was on the other side of the compound. And and the ovens

"Post-1943, many of the prisoners worked in arms factories that were built here. Many died. Thousands more were executed, and died of starvation and epidemics. Now we go this way

"This was the infirmary and hospital wing. That was what the Nazis called it, but in truth it was where over three and a half thousand people were subjected to brutal medical experiments. There are rumours that many children were taken from their parents to be experimented on, even though the entire family was Catholic. The children would be taken to the infirmary, while the parents were murdered."

Sydney felt the first pinpricks of tears in his eyes, but he held them back as Geizhart led them to the last place on the tour.

"We ask you to take a stone from this collection here, and place it anywhere in the camp that you wish to, as a symbol of your visit here." She checked her watch. "Take your time to walk around and find a place to leave your stone, then please meet back at the bus at 12.30pm."

With that, Marie turned and headed back toward the bus.

Sydney was the first to step forward and take a stone. Without hesitating, he left the group and walked back toward the infirmary. He stood for a moment, thinking, and knelt and set the rock on the ground.

"I'm sorry," he said, half to himself. He wasn't quite sure who he was talking to, but it felt right. "It doesn't seem right that I've come back here, but I needed I needed to lay my ghosts to rest. And now I think I have."

He kissed the tips of his fingers and placed them against the stone.

"For you, Mother and Father. For you, Jacob. For me. For everyone."

He stood unsteadily, then made his way back to the bus. Past the grounds, past the hut, past the young Australian girl throwing up outside the gates, tears running down her face. He sat heavily in his seat and watched as the other group members climbed back onto the bus, their young faces pale and solemn.

The bus ride back to Munich was quiet, only a few people murmuring amongst themselves about what they had seen. On arrival at the station, Sydney disembarked with a tight "thank you" and nod in the direction of the bus driver and guide.

----- -----

Two days later he walked into The Centre as if he had never left. But things had still been happening.
"Syd! Syd, are you okay? Miss Parker and I were a little worried you know, you going AWOL and not let us know."

"I'm fine, Broots. Anything new on Jarod?"

"A letter arrived for you a few days ago" Broots pulled the manilla envelope from a stack of things he was carrying and offered it to the older man. "Here it is."

"Thank you, Broots."

Broots gave Sydney a strange look. "So, uh, Syd; if you don't mind me asking where have you been these last few days?"

Sydney tried to come up with a way of avoiding the question, and couldn't. Finally, he answered. "I I took a little walk down memory lane."

With that, he turned away, headed for his office. Broots stood confused for a moment, then turned his own way.

----- -----

The letter was indeed from Jarod. Sydney slit it open carefully along the top and pulled out a heavy piece of paper. In Jarod's neat script, he read,

So many we couldn't save.

So many we wish we could have.

Too many die each day in pain.

The world is so large.

And so many could be saved.

And though we can't save them all,

We can still help a few.

When we each lay our ghosts to rest,

And return to see our past,

And live to consider it again,

Then we remain the survivors

Those who must not allow history to die.

He read the verse again, then folded the paper back into its envelope and put it in his top drawer. There was no reason why anyone needed to read it. This message had been for him alone.

The phone on his desk rang, startling him slightly. Warily, he reached forward to pick it up.

Back to work.

Cutting the bell off in mid-ring, he picked up the receiver and held it to his ear.

"This is Sydney."

===== ===== ~*~ ===== =====

FIN

A/N: Like it? Loathe it? Love it? Let me know at waywardexplorer@hotmail.com

A/N 2: A friend of mine gave me a brief description of her trip to Dachau, and this was the only way I could think of to put it in context. Forgive me if some details, either factual or physical, are incorrect.