A/N: A thousand billion shout-outs to;

Lilmonkey1507; your review made my week. To know that I'm having a kind of impact lets me know that I'm on the right track somehow, and my writing isn't worthless. Thank you so much! (:

cHoCoLaTe-RuM; Yes, well, typical Joe, right? Never let anyone get too close.

ruthie-r89; I'm pretty sure I actually replied to your review, so I just wanted to say thanks again. It means a lot. (:

the everchanging; Joe, tell Lucy? No. But we're starting to get into that issue this chapter. (;

CP2girls; Me, proud of myself? Nah. I'm just trying to get better and better (: and thanks. I'm sorry I didn't ask you for permission, but I hope that you don't mind that I used your name as inspiration. :D

HeadbangGirl; Oh, you know Joe and Lucy too well already. Haha. Not this chapter, though. He's going to end up being a butt sometime, but not particularly this chapter.

So! I hope you like this one, and please, R + R, it will be appreciated to the bottom of my little heart. (:

Chapter 9 - A Child Swimming

If only he could have warned her further, perhaps he would have chosen to. And he had warned her. But how is a child supposed to swim when it has never touched water before?

...

It was a meaningless week for Lucille Vanessa Williams until Thursday afternoon. Thursday morning, she woke up, went downstairs to the den, and found her mother sipping her early morning tea while reading the newspapers. It was a familiar sight; it was this sight that she had woken up to every morning for most of her life, and it was this sight that originally encouraged her to become a journalist. Yes, of all sights, this one was one of the most cherished.

"Mother," she said as she nodded at one of the servants, signaling to go get the usual breakfast of quick eggs and toast. "I think I'm going to go down to the archives today and research. Joe - Mr. Liebgott, I mean - mentioned something about a woman serving with his company. Do you remember reading about anything that mentioned it?"

Mother Dear settled her newspaper in her lap, furrowing her brow in the daintiest of ways, and darting a look over at her daughter while Lucille Darling couldn't notice.

"Yes, I believe so; and what an outrage, too. Completely and utterly inappropriate. I would not be surprised if she is now a pin-up girl or some such," Mother Dear replied primly. "I would not research it, if I were you, Lucille Darling. A complete and total waste of time; all you need to know was she probably threw herself at each and every man in the - what did you call it; company? - yes, company. Let alone the entire unit."

"Now, Mother, I don't think you're being entirely gracious about it but I'm sure that she had a good rea - "

"Lucille. Do not stoop down to her level. You should be concentrating on planning your wedding, not chasing after some strange woman whose morals are far below yours."

"But she's fascinating, Mother! And I have most of the wedding done already. Sydney and I have been engaged for four years, Mother." She simply couldn't take her mind off the concept of ladies jumping out of airplanes, and her voice showed it as it continued to marvel; "But for a woman to join the paratroopers - "

"Lucille."

"Yes, Mother." It was her turn to sneak a glance at the other woman while her mother was not aware. "But in any case, I believe that I shall go in to the office. I have some business that needs taking care of. Wedding invitations."

Falsehoods, falsehoods.

Two months before, Lucille Vanessa Williams would never have questioned her mother; if anything was pronounced 'unworthy' by her mother's voice and her mother's eyes, then she would have gone out of her way to avoid it. But this was not two months before; this was two months after the two months before period, and now Lucy Williams was not satisfied. A woman in the paratroopers!

The archives held copy upon copy of papers from long past, allowing any researcher to go back and find any reports on a subject they were looking up. If the researcher didn't know what date era any information had been published, then it was a long and grueling process of looking through paper upon paper simply to find a few facts.

But Lucy Williams was a determined woman and she knew exactly where to start.

"Important dates," she mused aloud to herself subconciously as she began scanning through the bins labeled by months and years. "What important dates - "

A caption caught her eye from where she was casually shuffling through the bin labeled 'February 1945' - The Battered Bastards of Bastogne, it read. A brilliantly triumphant smile spread across her face.

Victory.

...

It was only when she was done flipping through the article did she notice anything.

She was musing over the information she had found; the girl's name - Dani Shoemaker - had been mentioned because of the irregularity of a woman in combat, but no further information could be expected when the article was over the entire company.

Her fingers continued absently flipping through the papers of the three-year-old newspaper, continuing through the Society section, when a photograph caught her eye.

It couldn't be.

...

Joe Liebgott considered himself to be ontime for once as he strolled into the house, up the stairs, into the room designated. And there she already sat, waiting for him. She did not speak a single word as he came in, nor when he sat down.

Her fingers were shaking, her head pulled down, her shoulders tugged inwards, slumping hopelessly.

Fuck.

His eyes darted around the room to find the source of the problem, but it was nowhere to be found - until he saw the edge of a paper, stuffed underneath a pillow situated right next to where she sat.

"Lucy."

His voice made her jump, and her head flashed up so he could finally see her eyes; they weren't red. She hadn't cried. But there wasn't a light jumping in her iris; there wasn't a single bit of fire left alive for her soul to feed upon, for her soul to live on.

"Fuck, Lucy," he nearly whispered. "What happened?"

"What's her name?"

"Whose name?" He asked, confused.

"Dani Shoemaker. Her real name."

He drew a deep breath through his lungs, sighing into the empty space in front of him when he realized that he had reached his tidal volume and there was no room left in his air passages.

"Delvina. Delvina Argodale." His sharp eyes took in the nodding of her head, the lifeless bouncing of her curls, the sadness in her twisted fingers. "Lucy. What the fuck is going on?"

"I went down to research in the archives."

Leaning forward, his long appendages plucked the outdated newspaper from beneath the cushion it had hidden behind so insecurely. And, in a few short moments, read what she had memorized by heart, agonized over by mind, thought of since the moment she had found it.

At the top of the Society page, there was a photograph. A photograph of a young man holding a stylish young lady's hand. A babyface child who was far too tall for his wisdom level. The same babyface that had kissed her neck on the same couch upon which she was seated this lovely day.

Joe cast his eyes up to her, questioning.

"We've been engaged for four years." She whispered, the incessant twining together and untwining of her fingers becoming more and more frantic. She was trying to escape. "He proposed on June 5, 1944."

And the stylish young lady in the photograph had absolutely no resemblance linked to Lucille Vanessa Williams. Her name, as stated in the announcement, was Lady Charlene Kirk of the family of Lord Percy Kirk from Britain; he had moved to the States only a few years before war broke out and quickly made a place for himself in society.

"He said we could keep it a 'grand old secret.'" She continued softly. "He said no one else needed to know because it was no one else's business."

"Fuck." He stood up and began pacing back and forth across the carpet. "Why didn't you know when the newspaper came out?"

"I don't know."

"Think, Lucy. Think."

Her eyes closed, her mind scrabbled for the memory.

"I had wanted to read the newspaper," she began slowly, "but my mother had been reading it, and insisted that she wasn't done with it. Then I went to work. And when I got back, I'd completely forgotten about it."

"Does she read it from cover to cover?"

Her blood fell out of her cheeks, her eyes widened, her hand snatched the paper out of his hand, and she was gone out of the room. All he could do was follow her down the hallway, down the stairs, around the staircase, into a room on the left of another hallway; a room that was too elegantly draped for his tastes.

"Mother," her voice called innocently. "Mother dear."

"Yes, Lucille, darling?"

Lucille, Darling was not happy.

"Mother, have you ever seen this newspaper before?"

Lucy abruptly thrust it in her mother's face, the newspaper folded to show the exact picture she had scrutinized for the past two days.

Her mother's hand paused from where it held the dainty tea cup to her lips; she looked at the photograph for one second, her eyes showing that, indeed, she had seen it, and then the guilty eyes traveled up to Lucy's face, not bothering to look to see exactly who was standing behind her.

Only one word fell from her lips.

"So?"