X is for Xenophobia

"Fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign"

LeBeau, try as he might, could not get to sleep. Everything that had happened in the past day was weighing heavily on him, and he was not sure how to process it. Usually he could cook and forget everything else for a while, but here, down in the tunnel where he was supposed to be catching up on sleep, there was no chance of that.

Until a few hours ago, he would have scoffed if anyone told him that aliens were real, but clearly they were real. To top it off, Marya, beautiful, angelic Marya, was one of them, and she had been indirectly responsible for what happened to him that night. Not only that, but the Colonel came down into the tunnel earlier and told them that she had run away with both the duplicates, undoubtedly to cause more trouble.

He sighed, realizing that there was no point in trying to sleep right now, and he got up to wander through the tunnels and hopefully find something to keep him busy. To his surprise, he saw that Kinch was gone, though Carter seemed to be sleeping soundly. Curious, he went first to the radio room, where Kinch was meticulously cleaning dust and dirt off some radio parts.

"Is everything all right?" Kinch asked him as he stopped in the doorway.

"No, everything is not all right. The past day makes that very clear."

Kinch sighed. "I suppose that's right." The two men were silent for a few minutes more. "As if everything we've been through already were not enough, now we have to worry about aliens, and how do we deal with that?"

"At least you have your radio down here, and Carter has his lab when he wakes up," LeBeau grumbled, unable to answer Kinch's rhetorical question. "I need to cook something, but I'm stuck down here."

"We have good news about that, actually," Kinch said. "After Schultz brought Newkirk back, the Colonel decided that we can probably reappear in camp one by one as long as we all say we have no idea what happened and don't remember anything after we supposedly disappeared this morning."

"And what happens if Klink comes back with a different story?"

"You know the Colonel. Aliens or not, he can handle Klink. You can wait here to talk with him about when you should reappear, if you want. I don't mind if you show up first, and I'm sure Carter won't either."

LeBeau nodded his thanks and settled in while Kinch stood up and turned to leave. Neither man really felt better about the situation, and neither knew what to say to try to make the other feel better.

Kinch left the room, having cleaned the radio and all its spare parts in the past few hours. He had no more reason to stay in the radio room, and he did not really want to talk with anyone, as good of a friend as LeBeau was. Still, he was no ready to try to sleep again, and despite what he told LeBeau, he did not want to spend a moment longer in the tunnel than necessary. So he did something he had never done before. Without orders or any specific mission, he changed into civilian clothes and left the camp, knowing it was ridiculously dangerous and the risk was inexcusable, but also knowing it was the only way he could find the kind of peace he needed.

Kinch did not wander around aimlessly. He knew exactly where he needed to go, so he set off in that direction, paying as much attention to his surroundings as possible so he would not accidentally cross paths with anyone. After nearly an hour, he reached his destination. It was an old stone church, still in very good repair but no longer used since it was so far outside of town and no one wanted to be seen traipsing through the forest by anyone who might report them for suspicious behavior. As much as it was a shame that people avoided the church, Kinch was glad today that he had this place to be.

He went inside and looked around until he saw a place to pray. There was a candle stand nearby that still had some candles in it, so he pulled some matches out of his pocket and lit them before turning away to kneel and pray. He knew he could not stay long, what with how long it took to get here, but he needed this.

Crittendon was proud of his work. He had successfully blown up the ammo dump. It was hard to believe that the others had wanted to wait, considering how perfectly the sabotage mission had gone. Of course there were a few bumps along the way, but that when did those never happen? As far as Crittendon was concerned, and completed mission was a successful mission, and anyone who argued against that was, quite simply, a grouch.

Still, he supposed that he should leave before anyone came to investigate the field that was no more, so he took one last look at the place, gathered up any evidence that he had been there (though of course it was impossible to gather the entire former ammo dump), and set out back the way he had come. He knew he had promised to head straight back to Stalag XIII after he finished with the ammo dump, and he figured he could get there from here without getting lost (unlike getting here from there, which was a completely different thing), but it was such a pleasant day, and he was sure it would not really matter if he spent a few hours walking around in the fresh air and enjoying it.

And so Crittendon set off in no particular direction, simply enjoying the weather and the feeling of satisfaction that came with a successful mission.

By the time Kinch made it back to the camp, he was feeling much better. Carter was just waking up, and LeBeau had already gone back upstairs. It seemed that no one had missed him while he was gone, and he was thankful. He was not the type of person to go AWOL, but it had been so long since he got to pray in a real church that he could not help but feel it was worth it.

He was a little puzzled by the fact that Crittendon was not back yet, and he was worried the man had been captured or had stumbled on something else to cause them trouble, so he decided he would speak with the Colonel about it when he saw him next. But for now, he just changed back into his regular clothes and filled Carter in on Colonel Hogan's plan to reintroduce them to the camp after their supposed alien abductions

Aliens were still a bit of an issue for him, as he suspected they were for everyone here, but he decided it was best to ignore that for the moment. They could rant about how Marya and her absurd behavior had put them all in danger later. For now, they just had to move forward and try to think of a way to repair an alien star ship.

Author's Note: A quick note about this chapter's word, Xenophobia. For a long time there were absolutely no words of the day that started with the letter X. When I went through the list a while back to find words for this story, there were none, so I planned on using a different word of the day that fit the content of the chapter. But lo and behold, on December 20, they finally used a word starting with X for the first time in probably about two years, and since this story involves space aliens making life hard on the heroes, I decided it fit decently well and could be used. So no, I'm not trying to imply that the heroes are against people from other cultures by using this word. I am just trying to use a word that starts with X.