The bombers returned to the base before the hospital had even so much as a chance to breathe. There hadn't been many of them, and those injured were few to none, so Marinette assured herself that she was welcome to feel relief upon not seeing Private Agreste among those seeking treatment.

Still, there was a part of her that remained uneasy. At least previously, Marinette could say with good faith that her favorite soldier's situation must be within the British Isle. Now, she wasn't so sure. Reasonably she could only say that Private Agreste had flown the mission to Berlin, and that Private Agreste had not been injured upon returning from the mission to Berlin. There were far too many other possibilities for her to feel any sense of relief.

Instead, she derived her happiness from whence it was most readily available—the young girl had returned from surgery, and had slowly begun to chatter once more. In fact, she seemed far too jovial for her condition, and Marinette wondered what sort of pain medication would illicit such a reaction in a mere child.

"The doctors took my arm, Marinette, see?" Manon asked for the umpteenth time, "See? They took my right arm, see? But they left this one! They LEFT it!"

The girl laughed heartily at her own genius, and Marinette joined in—quicker this time, since she had asked one of her fellow nurses to explain the pun after its fifth repetition.

She still didn't have a satisfactory response, but she had asked the doctor who supplied Manon with the original to craft one for her. She hoped—between the near endless series of emergencies that continued to beg his attention and his own need for a moment's repose—that he would remember to do so.

Unfortunately, while the brunt of her duties focused on keeping the child calm and happy, Marinette was also taxed with another unruly patient. It seemed that Alix—in her infinite dislike of all people and situations which did not benefit her—had chosen to speak and understand only French so long as she remained trapped in the wretched hospital.

This, naturally, left the burden of her care upon Marinette. It wasn't exactly that she minded having a patient of her own, but the former spy seemed determine to re-open every last one of her wounds in an attempt to prove she was well enough to leave. She wasn't proud to admit it, but it had gotten so bad that Marinette had taken to "accidentally" pressing on the girl's broken rib just to get her to cease her forward march. She was gentle, certainly, but she still felt terrible each time a yelp sent her patron back to bed.

She promised it would be little more than days before freedom would be granted, but the hours dripped past like a barely leaking faucet, and there was little that could make the clock tick any faster. In the meantime, there was time aplenty for discussions of all sorts. Marinette learned that they'd grown up not far from one another—one in within the city limits of Paris, and the other just outside it—and that they both had left family behind in occupied France. Not a single letter had reached either since the city had fallen to the Germans, and they shared their anxieties. Alix worried for her father, who she feared might shrivel up and die were he parted from his ancient treasures for too terribly long a time.

She revealed that the Kubdel family had spent many winters studying tombs in Egypt, and thus she had no tolerance for the cold that would be required for a possible stint in Narvik with the rest of Marinette's former company. Both wondered aloud what this meant for Jalil, and Marinette took a moment to secretly hope that perhaps he had been part of the English Company after all. She'd simply assumed he'd gone to Norway with the rest of his unit, but if he spoke as many languages as his sister, he may well be right here on the base.

That being said, the earlier made claim that Italy might be nice turned out to be quite false, as Alix quickly revealed that she didn't speak a word of Italian, and likely wouldn't be much use as a spy there.

Instead, the two passed the hours scheming possible futures. In one plan, Alix would remain in England and assist the general as an official codetalker. In another, she would become a codebreaker, and provide some much-deserved payback to the German front by unraveling their plans before they could be enacted. A third option saw her traveling to America to demand aid from the president there. Alix enjoyed discussing these ideas to an extent, but quickly determined they weren't quite exciting enough.

"I want to sock ol' Adolf myself," she said, with a degree of repetition that likely indicated she was quoting someone. "Kim said he'd do it, but I want to do it first."

Marinette didn't ask who Kim was. The last time she'd tried, Alix had turned sullen for an hour and refused to speak.

"Or Göring," she continued. "Or Goebbels! Rat-bastard's short enough I could probably crack him one in the face without standin' on my toes!"

Marinette wasn't really familiar with the majority of the names that dropped from the girls mouth like globs of spittle, but she assumed they deserved whatever she had planned for them.

She was just about to suggest, perhaps, a more combative position here, with the RAF, when a shriek rang out from another room.

Marinette raced there with lightning on her heels only to find a well-dressed woman holding on to Manon so tightly she feared her tiny body might fall to pieces in the embrace.

"My baby! What did they do to you?" the woman wailed, both relief and disbelief fighting for dominance in her expression.

"We have—" Marinette began, and then wondered if the woman was in any state to hear such a gory explanation. Her tongue, though, failed to deliver anything else. "Her arm, ah, it was…" She struggled to find the right word, "Um, 'burst.'"

The woman's eyes went wide as Marinette struggled to backtrack.

"No, sorry! It was not the word I mean. I should have say, um… that there were, er… rocks, yes? Rocks that came down upon her. So it was to say, you see, that the arm was, uh, in surgery… removed."

She could see questions forming on the woman's lips, and thanked her lucky stars that another nurse had been attracted by the noise and entered the room during Marinette's rambling spiel. She was better equipped to calm the mother, and so Marinette took it upon herself to check that such an overzealous hug had not damaged the small child, who was now sobbing almost as hard as her guardian.

She was relieved to find, after a matter of minutes, that they seemed to be tears of joy—or perhaps tears to signal the end of certain sufferings—rather than tears of pain. The little girl blubbered for a bit and then, in between sobs, motioned to her nurse to lend her her ear.

"I want— *hick*" she choked, "I want to tell Mama my joke."

Marinette couldn't help but laugh aloud. Even in moments of such intense emotion, she was reminded that children were still children. She called over to the mother, and turned over the floor to Britain's youngest comedian.

"The doctors- *hick* The doctors took my arm, Mama. They took my right arm off in surgery, but this one- *hick* This one they LEFT!" She melted into gails of laughter.

Her mother looked completely stunned for a moment, and then slowly a flicker of a smile appeared on her face. It morphed its way through a grimace, then a chuckle, and finally melted into one of the most genuinely loving expressions Marinette had ever had the honor of witnessing.

"I'm glad to see you're all right," she smiled, setting up the pitch. Manon swung at it with utter glee.

"No, Mamma!" she exclaimed, "Weren't you listening? I said I'm all LEFT!"