Sam Troy woke in a cold sweat, his breathing coming harder and harder with each passing second, and he glared over at Moffit. The Englishman had the grace to pretend apology with a shrug.

"You're having a nightmare," Moffit said unnecessarily, and Sam glowered that much harder.

"What time is it?"

"Just a little after 0400."

"A little too early for a lesson, isn't it?" Same sat up, shrugging off Moffit's concerned hand.

"I'm not sure you should have one right now."

"I can start translating my dreams," he admitted after a few minutes of total silence. "When I hear them...I know what they're saying...it's worse now."

"I suppose it would be easier when it's just angry noises, not threats you can hear specifically." always sympathetic; Jack handed Sam the canteen of tea. "Troy, you."

"I knew Dietrich saved me," Sam shuddered, "I just didn't know what he saved me from. I...it was….fuck." He sighed and pushed back sweaty bangs and tried to work through the miserable guilt that was eating up his stomach. "I'm not going to be able to sleep."

"It's quite the tragedy with the good captain," Moffit said slowly, watching Troy. "Having been hanged like that."

Sam only glanced over, he didn't have to say anything, and Jack knew that he'd hit something. "Don't try that on me, Jack," he ordered harshly. Soft talking, backwards meaning, stalking wolves who hounded down every word for meaning had gotten him captured in the first place. "It's classified."

"Sorry, old man," Jack said, and Sam nodded. "So, shall we go disturb the third shift?"

"Sure." They both stood, "Gotta say, Jack. I hate the ocean."

#$#$#$#$

Marya stuck around for another two days, and from Dietrich's willfully ignorant and false obliviousness, it was hilarious . He watched while pretending he wasn't watching as Marya ran circles around Hogan. The man was devious and probably clinically insane, and Marya was twice as bad.

The compact case had been the first of it, and since Dietrich had successfully affected the screen of an obvious and somewhat dim man, he had been completely ignored. Pettigrew had often had that effect. Many men had underestimated his intelligence and craftiness because he spoke slowly whenever he chose to speak at all, and he slouched.

Presenting the image of cheerfully washing laundry had been enough to make every single Allied POW and German guards steer clear of him. Marya had seemed disappointed, but he hadn't missed the way she had steered Klink, one of their morning walkabouts, to a point where she could observe him while he was washing.

He ignored her, and he ignored the young secretary.

"Hey!" Halfway through wringing out a pair of socks, Carter ambled around the corner of the barracks with his hands in his pockets and an eternally cheerful look on his face. "Captain!"

"Sergeant?" Dietrich finished wringing out the socks and eyed the younger man. "What is it?"

"Have you got a minute?"

Dietrich glanced at the water and washboard in front of him and then to the young flier. It was all the permission Carter needed.

"Could you draw a picture?"

He eyed him, tipping a shirt belonging to Corporal Davies into the tub. The blue fabric was beginning to wear thin, and the young English flier was already so small that Dietrich genuinely worried that he might not make it through the winter.

"What sort of picture?"

"Well, your sketchbooks are full of some great stuff." Dietrich hadn't expected anyone to look at this sketchbook. He didn't ask Hogan where he'd gotten a new one either. "Well, I was hoping you could spend a night or two in Barracks two and draw Lebeau and Newkirk."

Both of them disliked him on principle, and he couldn't blame either of them.

"You see, we're hosting our own story night, and in Barracks two you can really talk about stuff, and Newkirk and Lebeau are best friends even if they don't say it or tell anyone, but I really...thought it would be nice if they got to see that."

"They are aware they are friends, Sgt. Carter." Carter blinked in confusion. "They are comfortable in their pattern."

"But they say such mean things!"

"And they do not mean them," he continued to scrub the shirt, "and your concern for them is a good sign of an officer, even if they do not treat you like one. However, if they both refuse to acknowledge that they are best friends, they can continue as they are."

"That makes no sense."

"It does not," he agreed, but he had never admitted his own bizarre kinship with Troy. He still refused to think about it. "I will attend story night."

"Have you got a doozy?"

Dietrich paused and wondered which of his bizarre interactions with the Rat Patrol would work best. "Operation Diamond."

"Ohhhhh," Carter bounced on his heels, "that sounds great! Is it classified?"

Considering it had been to arrange baseball teams...Dietrich shook his head. "I will do the picture as well."

"Thanks, Captain!" Carter gave a sloppy salute and bounded away. Dietrich shook his head and returned to his washing.

Parts of prison life were familiar; he had never remained in American or British hands for long. Only long enough to receive medical treatment before hot-footing it out of there. He knew of the fact that the Allies in North Africa was as desperate and intent on capturing or killing him as he was to capture or kill the Rat Patrol.

He'd gotten a bit of a reputation, and he wasn't too coy about admitting to it. He was every bit as notorious to the Allies as the Rat Patrol was to the Germans. Which he guessed Hogan was receiving information on, given by the very surprised and contemplative glances that Hogan would send him every once in a while. He wanted to read the file they had accumulated on him, but whatever had been sent over on the illegal radio was sealed away, and he didn't want to invite the wrath of the still-watchful enemies/allies in camp.

Story night, when he came up through the tunnel entrance in Barracks two after lights-out was a crowded affair. He spotted Colonel Hogan sitting aside looking for all the world like a king surveying his kingdom, and the smells from Lebeau's cookpot were enticing. The cracks were sealed up with clothes and rags, and the lights were low, and so were the voices.

"Aren't you afraid of getting caught?" He asked Corporal Newkirk.

"Shultz is on duty," he replied, passing Dietrich a cigarette. "And we're celebrating the balmy bird finally leaving."

"Marya is pure!" Lebeau hissed and passed Newkirk a bowl of soup. "You are just jealous. She adores me ."

"She doesn't adore anyone but herself," Sergeant Carter piped up, "but that's okay. I had an aunt like that once; she was big on only liking herself and."

" Carter ." Newkirk sighed, "come off it."

"Alright, alright, settle down." Hogan finally cut across the hush of voices. "Alright, Carter takes the first spot tonight." Dietrich listened with half an ear as he began to sketch the young Englander and the chef. "With how he accidentally set fire to his uncle's tool shed."

"That wasn't an accident," Carter said cheerfully, "that was arson !" Dead silence followed; all eyes were upon Carter as he smiled at the cards in his hand. Dietrich thanked God that Carter hadn't accidentally been assigned to North Africa. "But I'll tell you why!" With the cheer of a child explaining how he'd gotten a new toy, Carter weaved a tale that was both endearing, heartbreaking, and horrifying. With happy aplomb, Carter reduced the barracked to complete and total silence as the tale unfolded.

Having once considered himself past the shock, Dietrich was incapable of finding the correct response to Carter's tale. It sounded absurd, and who thought to use household chemicals as explosives ?

"So," Carter finished with a smile that Dietrich no longer trusted, "what about you, Captain Dietrich?" Hearing his own name, even from the mouth of an enemy, was gratifying. Bearing Troy's name was a second skin, an uncomfortable weight he didn't want giving that it belonged to his enemy. "Operation Diamond?"

All eyes of the fliers were upon him, and he wondered if telling this bunch of spies and saboteurs was the right thing to do. "I was ordered to destroy," he let his accent unfurl, feeling his identity clamp tightly around him. "An Allied supply depot, hidden deep within their base to which I had no access to, but I knew four men who did. The Rat Patrol...is a particular nuisance in the desert. Skilled at tactics and evasion as well as a demotion and a nearly complete knowledge and understanding of North Africa and the people who live there. They are a highly unorthodox and with a penchant for alarm and despondency." He smiled faintly. "So I decided to borrow a chapter from Sergeant Troy's book." Removing the bush hat from his head, he ran his finger along the brim and detailed how he had managed to capture the Rat Patrol, steal their dog-tags, and infiltrate the base. It didn't gain him any friends, and going by the glances being exchanged; it was a tactic they had done often enough. Waiting until the last minute to reveal that he had only made off with the plans for inter-company baseball garnered enough laughter that he was slightly vindicated despite Hogan's sharp attention on him.

"Command spent several weeks attempting to decode the plans," he told them, slightly gratified that someone found this funny. "And found nothing. I admit to being finessed at this juncture."

"So they sent you here because you had done impersonations before," Kinch piped up, and Dietrich nodded. "And they would have worked."

"Troy is...was a formidable opponent." He admitted, watching Kinch's curiously soft expression as he glanced back toward the bush cap. "I must admit, I did not expect him to make such an escape, though I should have."

"Lucky for us, he did," Colonel Hogan said. "Alright, who's next?"

"Oh! Me!" Hissed a young voice, Webber who had finally recovered from his illness. He looked as if he'd dropped ten pounds and was swimming in his uniform. "I've got one where my aunt got herself arrested!"

"Really? How'd the bird manage that?"

"She punched a cop!" Webber announced, and an awed silence fell.

Dietrich didn't escape back to his barracks with the cookie of the night, the last coconut macaroon whose origins he didn't want to think about, but he did leave with a faint smile and a lighter step, and when he'd arrived. The sketch was almost finished. He only needed a few more minutes to edit out some of the sloppy lines and refine the lighting before he presented it to Carter.

He had only returned to his cramped quarters for a few minutes when a knock came at the door. Opening the door, he found an unfamiliar Gestapo agent standing just outside. Grim-faced and glaring, he seized Dietrich's arm and yanked him out. He refrained from protesting the motion, considering the weapon jammed into his side.

Several other men were poised around the room, and the prisoners were pale-faced and watchful. The silence didn't last long as the door opened, and Hochstetter swaggered in. Klink was close on his heels, trembling from head to toe and clearly having just been rushed out of bed.

"What is the meaning of this?" He asked the man coolly.

Sergeant Thomas grimaced as Hochstetter stalked toward him and, squinting up at the tall New Yorker, gestured to Dietrich. "You are a smart man, ja?"

Thomas watched his face carefully, correctly sensing the cold-hand of Death lurking somewhere around the room. "Yes, sir."

"You consider spies and traitors to be the worst against your men?"

Dietrich held his breath; Thomas's involuntary reaction would mean his eyes would flick his way...but they didn't. They focused briefly on the Gestapo man by the door and then back to Hochstetter. Hogan wasn't here to talk anyone out of anything, which was probably why the confrontation had taken place in the middle of the night and far from his barracks.

"Yes, sir."

"Then," Hochstetter turned toward Dietrich and smirked. "This man is a German spy." His stomach swooped low, and he tried to think of anything to defend himself, but everyone already knew he was German. The betrayal by his own countryman stung so deeply that he was breathless for a good moment.

"I'm American," Sergeant Thomas said after a pause.

"NOT YOU!" The man screamed and waved a flailing hand at Dietrich. "THIS MAN IS A SPY! IN YOUR OWN CAMP!"

Klink made a garbled noise of horror, and briefly, all eyes turned toward him before every Allied soldier turned toward Dietrich.

"Huh," Thomas looked momentarily frozen. "I am not the senior officer, Major. This is something you'd have to take up with Colonel Hogan."

" What ?" The man's voice rose to an ear-shattering pitch, and even the other Gestapo men grimaced.

"This is above my paygrade," Thomas continued. "If you want to out a spy, you have to go through the proper channels, and those start with Colonel Klink and Colonel Hogan."

" WHAT ?"

"I'm sorry, sir," Thomas was walking a fine line between insubordination, lying, and covering his own ass. "You'd have to talk to Colonel Hogan."

"Shall I fetch Colonel Hogan?" Klink whimpered.

" NO ! You! Explain yourself!"

"Major."

"EXPLAIN YOURSELF !"

"I'm only a sergeant, Major," Thomas shrugged, "but if he really was a spy….why would he get letters and a uniform?"

"What?" Hochstetter shoved past Dietrich and his guard and into his small quarters. Grimacing at the mess he was making, Dietrich listened to his quarters get torn apart. Even Allied officials were more methodical about searching his quarters, and they didn't send his notebook flying around. He'd lost two notebooks to various American officers keen on keeping his art, which was flattering and severely irritating. The man stormed out a moment later, holding his dress uniform out in front of him as if it offended him to his core. " WHAT IS THIS? " He screamed before throwing it to the ground. " WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS ?"

"I just had that dry-cleaned," Dietrich protested before he could really stop himself. Hateful eyes turned toward Dietrich.

"BRING HIM!" He ordered, and Dietrich allowed himself to be dragged out the barracks and across the compound. He caught sight of Hogan's men peeking through the windows and then grimaced as he was dragged toward the commandant's office.

"Major Hochstetter! I must protest! Is this any way to treat an officer!"

"SHUT UP, KLINK!"

"It's not," Dietrich said to the man, who blanched faintly.

"SHUT UP!" The door shut with a snap. "EXPLAIN THE UNIFORM!"

Dietrich, feeling furious and insulted at the treatment as well as desperately wishing that Hochstetter's bulging veins would give way and he would die of a convenient stroke, waited until the ranting and raving had gone down to a more manageable level. In no way was he going to humiliate himself by attempting to shout over another man.

"When I last saw Sergeant Troy," Dietrich said calmly when there was a break in the screaming. "He was bearing a significant head wound and various injuries; it is possible he and his men did not escape back to the Allied lines alive."

"This does not explain your uniform!"

"Paperwork was filed; how could your presence have been leaked ?" He growled the last word.

"I imagine through the paperwork that was filed," Dietrich nodded to the cabinet where the prisoner files were kept, "and through proper channels, the Red Cross notified the necessary people."

"You have received letters ?" Hochstetter fell back, gasping. " Klink! Did you notify the Red Cross ?"

"I...let me check." Klink rushed to the cabinet and began sifting through papers. "Captain Troy...reported as a POW in Stalag 13...due to receive a Red Cross package and a change of uniform." He stared at the paper he probably hadn't filed and a form he hadn't filled out. It was...impressive how Hogan's men worked. "Yes, Major Hochstetter….this is all...reasonable. If the real Sam Troy had survived...then he would not have received anything."

Hochstetter's glower was so hateful that Dietrich wondered how he could have ever thought the man would be a gentleman or an officer.

"Major Hochstetter," Klink rallied with more gumption than Dietrich thought possible. "I do not think the prisoners will believe you."

" Really? "

"You are...an enemy officer," Klink straightened, "furthermore, Hauptmann Dietrich has integrated himself well into the camp."

"You crawl around with prisoners and filth," Hochstetter sneered, stepping away from Dietrich. "Your life is worthless . The moment you tucked tail like a dog to survive, you betrayed Germany!"

The mental loops that the man must have been running through to justify his actions and himself, all while holding Dietrich to a vastly different standard, were so bizarre that the man could only spare him a sorrowful, pitiful stare. Rage and anger would do nothing to a man who luxuriated in both on a daily basis.

"Major," Dietrich said with the attitude of a man visiting the deathbed of an old friend. "An officer must prioritize life over capture, and it would hardly be dignified to die at the hands of prisoners."

Whatever was about to happen, likely violence given by the purpling in the man's face was paused as the entire camp shook from a nearby explosion. Even a sting in a prisoner of war camp wasn't enough to keep Dietrich from reacting accordingly. He ducked behind the desk, upending it with a single shove, and yanked Klink behind the cover.

A second explosion rocked the compound, and Hochstetter was screaming incoherently.

"THE FUEL DEPOT!" Was the first thing that Dietrich heard clearly. He didn't hang around, sprinting out of the office, and was shouting for the Gestapo men to follow.

"What's happening?" Klink whimpered.

"Stay down," Dietrich ordered, having fallen back into the role of commander with ease. "We do not know if this is an attack on the camp or simply sabotage."

"Captain...my desk."

"If bullets had started flying, this would not be a concern," Dietrich reminded him, listening to the Gestapo men shout at each other. "They are leaving to investigate."

"Sabotage," Klink moaned, covering his face with his hands. "He will be back to harass Colonel Hogan. Will this never end?"

"This has happened before?"

"He blames Hogan every time," Klink muttered, sighing and standing to straighten his uniform. "Even after you said it was impossible for him to be the man."

"I see," there had to be a way for them to get rid of Hochstetter. "May I be dismissed?"

"Will it be safe for you to return to your quarters?" Klink actually seemed worried.

"I think you are correct in saying that the prisoners will not believe that I am a spy after Hochstetter's display. In his fury to out me, he has only firmed their resolve."

"Oh...well….that's good." Klink stared at him, "I will...take care of everything."

"Thank you, sir." He was back across the compound and in his barracks in less than a minute with a salute. Thomas and the others all stared at him, and he raised his chin. "Were any of you hurt?"

"Nothing we can't handle." Thomas let out a slow breath. "You, sir?"

"I am fine," he looked around for his uniform.

"Put your uniform back; we can clean it up later."

"Of course," he looked at each of them carefully, and with sudden gratefulness that made his heartache, he nodded a silent thanks.

"I don't think a German spy could look so spiffy in that hat," someone piped up.

"Yeah," Thomas grinned, "I don't think a German officer would wash shirt either."

He let out a slow breath and turned toward his quarters and wondered exactly why London would have gone through the effort to save him. It hadn't occurred to him that perhaps London had thought Sam Troy was dead along with his team. He could have outed himself to Colonel Hogan, who might not have had any real suspicions about him. It didn't occur to him that Troy would die of the injuries that had been inflicted. The man survived just about everything, and the idea that he could have ended up in a shallow grave in the desert made his stomach constrict.

He honestly had no idea if the Rats were alive. The general has insisted that they hadn't been heard from since Troy's abrupt escape and Dietrich's arrest.

No...the letter. Sifting through the papers on his desk, Dietrich came across the first letter he'd received in Sam Troy's own handwriting. The words were a cold comfort but comfort nonetheless.

He wasn't sure why.