AN: This chapter is basically all background but it's important for the story and gets most of the explaining out of the way.

But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget.

-Tim O'Brien

Chapter Two:

Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz couldn't take his eyes off the young German girl in front of him, not because she was particularly beautiful or anything special really, but rather just because she was there. For the past nearly two years he had thought she was dead, or as good as dead considering the circumstances under which he had last caught a glimpse of the girl he once knew so well.

They were never involved in that sort of way, just very good friends, despite the seven and a half year age difference. Their friendship wasn't normal, it was forged because he was her brother's best friend and, though not originally, in love with her sister, both of whom were older than her. He has always known the green eyed sister of his best friend to be one of the most interesting kids he had ever met. She was strong, much stronger than her brother who was known for his near constant ill state, independent, she didn't follow the crowd, she made them follow her, and most of all, stubborn as hell.

For as long as he could remember the Cohen's had lived two houses down, in the quaint green house with the white door and flowers surrounding the front porch. Most of his childhood was spent at their house; he really was a fixture there. Originally Mr. and Mrs. Cohen had only Ari and Rebecca. Ari was Hugo's best friend, though one could easily argue that they were complete opposites. Ari was sickly and passive, always acting as a mediator between Hugo and whoever it was he was in conflict with at the time, while Hugo was strong and short tempered, always quick to defend his friends and family. Rebecca was a sweet girl; she looked nothing like her mother or father, with her dirty blonde hair, though she had her father's chocolate brown eyes and her mother's nose. She was always the kind girl who would turn every head in the room when she walked in. But things, and families, are always changing, or rather growing.

He remembered when they first brought the new little baby girl home and he and Ari thought she looked funny and cried a lot. Mrs. Cohen always treated him like her own son and after Ari and Rebecca each had their turn at holding the little pink bundle she asked him if he wanted to hold her. He said sure and then she was in his arms. He noticed that she was sort of pink and her head was kind of pointy, she squirmed a lot in her sleep, she sucked her thumb, and she didn't really look like a person, more like one of Rebecca's dolls.

Two years later the little baby that was complacent just sitting in your arms wasn't happy unless the floor was beneath her feet and someone was chasing after her. He was convinced she learned to run before she learned to walk. Her head wasn't pointy anymore, he thought she looked more like a person now that she had a normal head and some teeth, but her cheeks were still always tinged with pink. As strange as it was for him to admit it, he liked the little girl that was always running around, making a mess of everything she could reach, and charming everyone with that goofy grin of hers.

By the time he was eleven she could talk and had already gotten into her first fight. He could remember the pride in Mr. Cohen's face when she told him about how she punched Frederick, the little boy who lived on the other side of the street a few houses down, because he had called her necklace stupid. Of course, Mrs. Cohen wasn't as thrilled by her youngest daughter's aggressive behavior but Hugo couldn't help but feel pride as the four year old relayed the story to him as Ari and they played checkers in the living room the next day. They had both laughed at the little girl and given her a small high five when they were sure Mrs. Cohen wasn't watching; she wouldn't approve of their encouraging her reckless behavior. Since she could talk now and had all of her teeth, he thought she was more like a person, though still strange, what with those dresses and silly hair ribbons she wore, and her cheeks were still tinged pink.

The next year, he remembered, was the year that he and Ari helped her pull out her first tooth. It had been wiggly for about a month now and nothing she did would make it come loose; apples, door knobs and string, tugging, pulling, none of it worked. So they came up with a plan to get that stupid tooth out. Mrs. Cohen was going grocery shopping and Mr. Cohen was at work that afternoon so it was the perfect time to get the tooth out. They got a pair of pliers from the shed out back and sat her down on the kitchen counter. Ari was going to hold her still while Hugo pulled out the tooth. Rebecca had told them that they were going to get into trouble, they were sure no one would ever know that they had pulled out the tooth instead of just letting it fall out. Well they got the tooth out, just not the right tooth. "That one wasn't wiggly!" he could remember her words, obstructed by the blood pooling in her mouth. Whoops. As soon as they got her mouth to stop bleeding she gave him an earful. Even at five years old she was a force to be reckoned with, all power and intimidation. Once she had calmed down they sat her back down on the counter and pulled out the right tooth. She covered for them both when Mrs. Cohen came home, informing her that they both came out in her apple. She was quite the liar for being so young. He knew that she would be a strong girl when she got older, nothing would bring her down or stop her. Sometimes he thought she was still not quite a person, it had to be those dresses Mrs. Cohen kept buying her and her long lair, or maybe it was that her cheeks still had a pinkish tint to them. Rebecca said that she was lucky; she would never have to worry about putting on blush. Hugo didn't understand why women painted their faces, it seemed weird to him.

When she was six Mr. Cohen took her, Ari, and Hugo to go hunting. They were so excited that they would be allowed to use real guns, being that at thirteen such activities as hunting and fighting and other sometimes violent things were appealing to them. When they reached the lodge Ari was in one of his fits and was having trouble breathing; he insisted that they should go hunting and he would stay at the lodge. Mr. Cohen assured him that they would stay behind if Ari was uncomfortable being alone but he insisted that they go, after all, they didn't come all this way just to sit at the lodge. So they got their guns and headed out into the woods, Hugo didn't kill anything and the little girl, whose gun was almost as big as her, was only allowed to shoot the target. She was a perfect shot, every bullet hit the target, most of them grouped together around the bull's-eye. Mrs. Cohen was horrified when she heard that Mr. Cohen was going to take her little princess hunting again; said princess was ecstatic. She still wore those funny dresses but she didn't wear those weird ribbons in her hair anymore, her hair was curlier than it had been. She seemed more like a person now, but her cheeks were still pink and that was weird.

At sixteen he was a ladies man, though he never paid special attention to Rebecca Cohen. Sure she was two years younger than him but even the other boys notices that she wasn't just another girl, she was far prettier. Rebecca was popular, her room always had at least two friends in it, gossiping with her and fussing over her hair. He could remember countless occasions she would scream and throw a fit because she found her little sister hiding under her bed, she would eventually give up and let her stay in the room because she really had the best puppy dog face he had ever seen; she could make an iceberg melt. Ari used to always complain that the house was always filled with girls so they started hanging out at Hugo's house or down at the theatre, where they would always manage to find dates for whatever film was playing. He didn't see much of the youngest Cohen that year, though he heard of most of her exploits through Ari. She really was quite the trouble maker.

Just one year later and he couldn't get Rebecca off his mind. He had seen her with Wilhelm Muller at the movies and suddenly he couldn't stand the idea of her with any guy. Now he couldn't talk to Ari about this because, well, it was his sister and that was against all best friend rules, so he talked to the only person he could think of. In retrospect, maybe a ten year old might not have been the best choice but she was the only one who could talk to both Ari and Rebecca without looking suspicious. She managed to convince Ari that Rebecca should go out with Hugo, not that 'awful excuse of a boy she's seeing now' and Rebecca that while Wilhelm was nice he wasn't very attractive. He added cupid to the list of things she was good at, though he knew she hadn't worked alone, she had actually made a friend. Some girl named Mina Weis, he didn't know much about her or really care, he just knew that they were in the same class and shared a dislike of Frederick, the boy she had punched when she was four. He pinched her cheeks and thanked her when Rebecca agreed to go on a date with him; he noticed that they were still pink.

Three years later and he and Rebecca were still together. They were planning to move in together once Rebecca graduated, Ari was okay with it, though not entirely excited that his little sister was going to be sharing an apartment with his best friend, Mr. and Mrs. Cohen were as happy as parents of an in love seventeen year old intent on moving in with her boyfriend could be, but the youngest of the Cohen's was not happy. She thought they were all abandoning her, and she didn't like people leaving. The bliss that surrounded the happy couple was soon shattered when, a few days before the once little Cohen was to turn fourteen, Mr. and Mrs. Cohen were killed in a car accident. The driver of the other car survived the crash, though he never left the hospital because four days later he passed away. Their aunt offered them a place to stay with her in France, they really had no other option. And so it was all set, Ari would go with his youngest sister to France and stay with her to make sure she adjusted alright. Rebecca had planned to stay in Germany with Hugo but they both knew when they saw the almost fourteen year old sprawled out over her mother's grave, her body shaking with silent tears, that she would be on the train to France with them. He remembered that he had to carry her home after she cried herself to sleep on her mother's grave; he remembered how pink her cheeks were when the cold combined with her naturally pink cheeks. Rebecca thanked him profusely and let him stay the night. They said goodbye privately that night and the next morning he helped her pack, she promised that they would be together again one day. He kissed her goodbye at the train station and watched as she boarded the train. That would be the last time he would see Rebecca Cohen.

Over the next few years he got himself a decent job and attended university. He had tried to stay in contact with Rebecca but they had both stopped writing years ago. Since she left he had had a few more relationships, though none of them went as far as his with Rebecca did. One day he joined the German Army, he wasn't sure why exactly he did, it was probably the feeling of being a part of something bigger. At first it was just running and push-ups and conditioning and shooting but then things changed. Germany changed. Every day he came home with the blood of those he watched head to the concentration camps dripping from his hands. He knew it was wrong to send them there, to just stand by and let them do it, but he just couldn't force himself to stop.

It had been just over a year that he had been working as a respected member of the German army. He enjoyed the prestige and respect everyone gave him when they saw his uniform. That day was just an ordinary day, a cool wind was blowing the last of the snow off the trees in preparation for Spring, the whether was still cool but not unmanageable. He was working at one of the stops today, it was his job to supervise everyone as they removed the bodies from the cattle cars. As he stood on the platform a flower petal blew across his boot and stayed there, he bent down to remove it. When he stood up again the doors to the carts were open and the one right in front of him captured his attention immediately. She was standing right there. She was taller than she had been five years ago, more filled out, she looked like a woman, not the little girl he had watched grow up. Her green eyes had been blank until they landed on him, the moment they did they became enraged, though he could see the disappointment there too. Unlike most of the occupants of the car her eyes were not bloodshot from crying, her long sleeved blue dress was not wrinkled from sitting, her hands were not bloody from fighting for scraps of bread. She hadn't cried, hadn't sat down, hadn't eaten. He quickly realized that Ari and Rebecca weren't in that car with her, Ari's body was being tossed out of the car haphazardly along with all of the others. How could she not be balling? The little girl he knew would have been crying, because despite her tough exterior she was soft when it came to those closest to her. Of course that was why she wasn't crying, he didn't know the woman before him, he knew the girl she once was. Rebecca was no where to be seen and he could only assume that she had already been removed. He glanced back at her before they closed the doors and saw that she was now looking right through him, as if he wasn't even there. She looked like a changed person, all of her energy gone, but the most shocking change had to be that her cheeks were pale, not a trace of the pink that had lingered there since her birth.

That day they closed the doors and the girl who was practically his little sister was carted off to a concentration camp. When the train was gone and everyone else had left he went over to where Ari's body had been thrown and bent down. Right in front of him was the boy he had grown up with, his best friend, his brother in every sense of the word except blood. They had done everything together, Hugo had always been there to protect him from the guys that were bigger than him. Not this time, he chided himself and closed his eyes. A single tear escaped and fell onto Ari's lifeless body. He couldn't do this anymore, not when this cause, the cause he was a part of, had killed his best friend, the woman he loved, and, more than likely, the little girl he had watched grow up.

He would stop; he would do it for her.

For the little girl with green eyes and pink cheeks; for the little girl that believed in him.