Chapter 6 – Boulevard of Broken Dreams

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me

My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating

Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me

'Till then I walk alone

As the last rays of sunlight faded in Barrack 2 of Stalag 13, Newkirk's blue eyes opened, blinking in the dim light, struggling to focus on his surroundings.

The corporal stared blankly at the bunk on top of him, wondering what had woken him up, what time it was, and why the barracks were so quiet. He was about to sit up when a heavy pressure and pulsing ache from his shoulder drew his attention.

Then it all came back to him and he groaned aloud.

It was not a normal day at the barracks. His colonel was still being held by Gestapo and his shoulder was a right mess.

I need to find the fellas, was his first thought and even as he began to attempt to sit up despite the pain, he found himself being pushed down as LeBeau startled him by suddenly appearing in his field of vision,

"Pierre!" The little Frenchman exclaimed, a wide smile spreading across his face as the feeling returned to his numb legs. He had accidentally dropped off to sleep on the floor next to Newkirk during the day, and was just woken by his friend's groan,

"Pierre, how are you feeling?" he asked and Newkirk couldn't stop the smile at the sheer joy that seeing his old friend brought him, after everything he had been through,

"I've never been better, little mate," he mumbled, his voice hoarse but warm, "but me shoulder could do with a little help," he added with a wry smile and LeBeau nearly laughed aloud despite his friend's suffering. Newkirk had retained his humour. The rest of his healing just needed time,

"We know, mon ami," LeBeau replied, sobering, "we are working on that,"

"Well bloody hurry up," the Englishman grumbled, causing LeBeau to lose his battle to stay serious as a large grin broke across the tired face.

The whole day, the men of barracks 2 had taken turns to watch the corporal, while everyone else supervised the building of the trap they were planning for Kessel. The Underground's observation squads and spies had reported that invites for Klink's lecture were already sent out to all district commanders in all arms of the service, with instructions that attendance was compulsory. Their plan was to 'accidentally' reveal to Kessel their underground operation and the four days they had before all the brass arrived at the camp had to be enough to create the fake underground tunnels which they were going to trick Kessel in.

It was a good plan, but it did hinge then on Major Hochstetter, their area Gestapo commander, being the complete arse that he was, and demanding all of Kessel's prisoners released to him after Kessel's demise.

Then, they'd pull their usual snow job over Dusseldorf's Gestapo, and Hogan would be back within a week.

The plan sounded simple, but so much hung on getting the timing of their interventions correct, and so much dangled on chance, that it was sheer desperation that stopped them from sitting down and giving up. This was, however, the only plan they had, so whether they liked it or not, they had to do this if they ever wanted to get their Colonel back.

LeBeau rearranged the cushions around Newkirk and the English corporal sighed. He hated being nursed like he was an invalid, but the last thing he wanted to do was sound ungrateful for the smaller man's help. Then his mind flashed back to the moments he had been lucid in Hogan's care, and all the happiness at being back in their 'home' of sorts vanished. Instead, a sinking fear began to creep through his being as he remembered Hogan being ripped away from their cell roughly, thrown on the floor and then escorted away. He also remembered the warm and comforting grip that Hogan held him in, right through the night. And he missed his commander like he was missing a limb.

"Pierre?" LeBeau shook Newkirk's foot gently, erasing the blank look from Newkirk's face, bringing the corporal out of his dreary thoughts,

"Sorry mate," He replied, his voice subdued, breaking eye contact as he felt his eyes grow moist.

Great, next I'll be asking for a frock and stockings, he thought to himself, ashamed at his tears, ashamed at his fear of losing Hogan,

"I'll get the others!" LeBeau said, but Newkirk heard the change in tone and was sure his best friend had seen his expression and Newkirk felt yet another wave of disgust directed at himself.

He was a British corporal for Christ's sake. He shouldn't go to fucking pieces just because he was injured, or because the only man he ever – Peter stopped that train of thought right there and drew in a sharp breath, wiping his eyes on the blanket.

We'll get him back, your mates will help, he assured himself, and, it turned out, just in time, because the door burst open to chatter as Kinch and Carter walked in with LeBeau, Carter reaching down to hug Newkirk, jarring the shoulder as he did.

Newkirk felt a well of emotion as his team mates chattered at him, their smiles at his recovery like beacons after the darkness of the past few days. So, Newkirk buried the worry for his Colonel and instead enjoyed this reunion, aware of how close he had come to losing all of this, everything he had worked for so far.

He was sure they had a plan, but at least for now, it seems he would have to wait before they let him in on any secrets.

Colonel Hogan came to with warm sunlight streaming onto his face, sleeping on what felt a like a cushion of air. His eyes fluttered open in the morning light and he stared in confusion at the lovely candelabra hanging from the ceiling, one which definitely did not belong in a POW camp.

What…

And then a warm breath ghosted across his cheek and he froze as memories came back to him. A kiss against a wall, pain beyond all reason…two such conflicting pieces of information, yet he had known to experience them. How could they be explained?

The Colonel forced himself to calm down. Employ a technique that they taught recruits in base camp – recount what you know, then figure out what you can learn.

He had been captured by the Gestapo. Newkirk tried to save him and nearly died in the process. Then they were held in a room at gestapo headquarters, before they were separated and he was taken to…the Colonel frowned. He knew there was more after seeing Peter removed from the building but he just couldn't…remember. Hogan shifted slightly, and Newkirk murmured something, his sleep momentarily disturbed as his pillow moved.

They were in bed, both still clothed, thank God, but how did they arrive there? What was he even wearing? Didn't feel like his uniform…Hogan lifted the sheet and his suspicions were confirmed. He was wearing silk pyjamas, like the ones he had back in the states.

Carefully, the senior officer extracted himself from Newkirk's loose embrace, though it pained him to do so, and he forced his galloping heartrate to subside so he could catalogue the room.

Soft green carpet underfoot, expensive furnishings. An ensuite, leading off straight ahead of him, and to his right, a wall to ceiling window, overlooking a lush green forest valley, branches lit in yellow-gold sunlight, waving gently in a breeze, a sparrow fluttering busily by.

Not in the city then, he realised.

Hogan walked out the door and into the hallway, surprised to look up and see the ceiling was a skylight. He remembered waking up in the living room…last night? And as he walked down the hall he found the same living room, connected to the dining room there, now bathed in the early morning light.

0813, Hogan realised, checking the mantel clock as he padded into the kitchen, the clean white tiles cool under his feet, the kitchen large and, as he opened the fridge, apparently well stocked.

Everything about this house out in the middle of nowhere said that it was well lived in. And that it was he and Peter doing the living. The thought itself self a frisson of awareness down his back. They had one bed, in one bedroom. And there was no one here to stop them doing exactly what they liked.

He bit down on that thought hard.

No doing anything until you figure out…that thought trailed away though, as the very object of his rather inappropriate attentions decided to make an appearance. Wearing not his pyjamas, but a bathrobe.

When did he change? Rob frowned, but Peter smiled at him, and then he was hugging him and kissing him a good morning and it was a couple minutes more before Rob could master the power of speech,

"Morning," he managed, his voice still a little more hoarse than he'd like,

"What do you want for breakfast, guvnor?" Peter asked, pulling pots and plates out of various cupboards, turning the kettle on and getting some eggs. Like this was not all of a sudden, all out of the blue.

Hogan put a hand to his head.

None of this domesticity was making any sense.

He looked at the clock and nearly dropped the cup of coffee Pete had pushed into his hand.

1020 the kitchen clock read. That didn't seem possible...

A pain started to build behind his eyes. It seemed to be spreading. He heard the distant sound of a ceramic mug breaking on a tiled floor. But why does it sound far away? I was just there…

And then the agony of a thousand deaths was back and his eyes flew open, and he screamed. Screamed, and screamed. He was alone. There was no one here and he was alone. Alone. If he wasn't so alone then maybe, maybe he could…he could…

"Robert Hogan?"

A voice! Yes, a voice! Maybe it knew where Peter was. Rob tried to voice his question but all that came out was another scream, ripped form his throat, tearing at his vocal chords. God, but he couldn't stand this loneliness.

"Can you tell us your rank?" the voice asked. It wasn't Peter's voice. But Hogan felt a modicum of relief when hearing it.

"Colonel," he replied, hearing his own voice as weak, soft, he couldn't even recognise it,

"Good. Who are you screaming for, Colonel Robert Hogan?"

The answer was simple. Hogan felt a hysterical laugh escape him, along with the name, the life, the soul, the beauty that was his…"Peter…"

"Peter will come back to you,"

A spark of joy in Hogan's chest, and the pain lessened again. Yes, Peter could take this pain away. Peter would make it better,

"Return to him, Robert Hogan,"

And so he did.

Herr Strauss watched from a stiff backed wooden chair, placed in the Colonel's room, next to the bed to allow the visitor as good a view of the prisoner as possible. Hogan's laboured breathing eased as he fell back into the dream, and Strauss adjusted his own stiff uniform collar, while Hogan's agonised cries subsided to sobs and whimpers.

Strauss was a stark contrast of dignity against the colonel, who was pale, drenched in his own sweat and blood from the lucid moments he tried to escape his own pain. He had left gouges up his arm, the bright red blood vivid against the white sheets, his uniform rumpled and stained. His lips were cracked and bleeding and Strauss decided that soon they would need to put him on an intravenous feed if they didn't want him to die.

Strauss made for the door, his goal for today accomplished. He wished to see if the Colonel could be influenced under the drug, talked into giving them information for the promise of return to whatever was happening in his mental prison. It seemed, that the Colonel was one those affected by the absence of someone. His body, the way it angled towards the direction of Strauss' voice was the first indicator, the doctor noted, but also the name, "Peter". A brother, perhaps? Or best friend. Someone for whom the Colonel carried a great love for? It didn't matter. What was important though, was that the Colonel was missing someone terribly. Which meant that they had only wake him from his dream to throw him into a state of panicked awareness, enough to get whatever information they needed from him.

Strauss made his way to his room on the fifth floor, checking his watch. In another twenty minutes they would need to dose Hogan again with the hallucinogen. Strauss sighed as he stepped up onto his floor and turned to make his way to his door. It was a pity he would never truly know what Hogan saw when his eyes closed. But he knew, with great certainty that the man who the local Gestapo called a great planner, with his inability to get caught doing anything illegal, could fall to the trap of every great man – love.

Love, Strauss had come to find, was the greatest evil another human could bestow upon you. Love didn't make the world go round, if you asked him. No, it caused your world to implode on itself, leaving you completely lost and alone, wounded and helpless as a newborn lamb.

LeBeau placed the freshly made food on the stove next to the pot of tea he was boiling for Newkirk, a small smile on his face despite knowing that their Colonel was missing, warmth flooding him, not from the stove but from Peter's voice behind him.

"And then, I said, I did, 'What do you think I'm here for?'" The table erupted in laughter as the corporal finished his joke and sat back lazily, comfortable in his cabin mate's presence despite his ashy pallor and bandaged arm.

His worry he hid behind his favourite Peter-The-Joker mask, not willing the others to see his face or know his pain. But he had a feeling that while the majority of the room bought his story, LeBeau, Carter and Kinch were humouring him. They didn't let him out of their sight and he could see them exchanging looks with each other when they thought he wasn't looking, silently giving each other updates on either him, he was sure, or things he was apparently not strong enough to be bothered with. Peter wasn't sure if it was making him feel more like punching them or punching himself. Either way, the way in which they were tiptoeing around him was going to push him to some form of physical violence. He was angry. Admittedly, the alternative would be sadness, so Peter clung to this anger, uncalled for as it may be, because he knew they were doing it out of concern for him, but he couldn't stand this for much longer. It made him feel even more impotent than he already knew he was.

Kinch, meanwhile, nodded his head in Peter's direction as he got up from the table, indicating to LeBeau that he should be paying more attention to the corporal. The stupid English man was so stubborn. He preferred to think that they would rather he suffered in silence than actually tell them that yes, he was tired and wanted to go to bed.

The sergeant hit the button on the bunk that led to the lower tunnels and lowered himself down the ladder, the noise and smells of the upper room disappearing as he was suddenly shrouded in the damp dimness of the tunnels and the roof slid closed above him as he alighted off the ladder.

As much as he hated this war and he hated the Germans, these tunnels, these dirt and rock tunnels that were barely holding themselves together, were all that kept him sane some days. They were the one thing in the midst of all this stupid that gave him comfort, hope. Made him feel useful.

It was such a pity that the silent tunnels stayed silent though, the red indicator of the radio staying dark as he paused at the comms station, hooping perhaps to find a message coming through from the underground regarding the state of their missing CO. Deciding he was too restless to sit down just yet, the sergeant instead turned away as the sound of dripping water plonking onto soft mud reached him from further in the inky darkness. Picking up a gas lamp and lighting it from the one kept constantly burning at his station, he wandered aimlessly, following the rocky walls, the sound of his footsteps echoing in front of him, encircling him as he carried himself forward.

He lost himself to dreams of home, of the bustling city and women's laughter drifting out from the café's and local bars as he walked past, on his way to the Telecommunications Company where he learnt all his skills. The cars would honk noisily next to him and children would run past, playfully pushing each other, pushing past him, with a 'sorry, mister!' bursting from them, breathless, heady in their excitement.

Would any of that even exist if they lost this war? Their Colonel had done so much for the war effort it was almost as if they were fighting the war all by themselves, London a whole other world away, too detached, too – well not safe, per se, but at least they still had their families with them, at least they still had the constant reminder of their own city in ashes to keep them fighting. What did the American lads have? All they saw was the destruction of land that wasn't theirs. Then the Colonel reminded them of the friendships they had formed. He reminded them every day that if they didn't win here, the Nazi's would come for their families, their homes, a whole other continent away. He reminded them that at the end of the day they must fight together or lose everything they ever loved together. All without saying a single word on the topic.

He was amazing like that. He was their commanding officer, but the way the men had come to regard him, it was almost as if he were their father, their brother, a god walking amongst mere mortals, weaving his spell on everyone who fell within a certain radius. Who hadn't simply melted under the thousand watt power that man exuded? Not a man in this camp hadn't had their own pants charmed right off them.

God help them, but they couldn't fight this war without him.

And if Kinch was being honest with himself, especially now, in the drafty, cold tunnels with no one but him and the moles, he'd seen the way that Peter's whole being lit up when Hogan walked into the room. The way the corporal watched the Colonel's reaction to what he was saying. They were closer than any other men in the camp and Kinch envied that relationship. He knew he wasn't alone in that either. The men here would give an arm and a leg to have their Colonel pay even five minutes of attention to them. Yet Peter could sit with the Colonel for hours at a time and never seemed to feel unwanted. Indeed, the Colonel welcomed him, chased him up with non-mission related conversations.

Kinch felt a stab of pity for the English man. He remembered what Peter was like before the Colonel. Not withdrawn, never that, as the Englishman was born a magnetic attractant for people. But he was abrasive and brash, he got into fights with anyone who let their mouth run away from them, and even Klink couldn't turn a blind eye to that.

Instead of treating Newkirk the way that all the other officers did, which was to try and relate to Newkirk, fail and give him up as a lost hope, Hogan, in his usual way, tried and tried and tried again until that hard exterior of the corporal cracked, broke and completely crumbled into dust, which was then blown away by the winter winds that hounded them. But more than that, Kinch realised with a start, Hogan channelled all that energy, that showmanship, that manic need to stand up to authority into their missions. He gave Peter a purpose and in doing so, he reinvigorated the corporal.

In turn, Peter was a sounding board for the colonel, the realist that he needed to bring him level when he got too carried away with his plans.

It was like the universe had aligned so that these two could be together and do some real good in the world. As if –

Kinch was dragged out of his thoughts as his foot hit something soft and very not tunnel like.

That something let out a yelp of pain and Kinch felt a rush of adrenaline as his fight or flight instincts kicked in, "ARGH!" he yelled as the thing – as the person pushed him out of the way and into the wall,

"Oh no you don't!" he yelled, and with that he was running after the person, the shadow that he had somehow not seen because he was too lost in his own head,

"STOP!" he bellowed, his voice thunderous in the manmade caverns, and he heard a whimper of fear.

A brief flash of a pale face in front of the dodgy electric lights they had installed further down here revealed a young face, painted with terror.

The image brought Kinch up short, allowing his target to gain a little distance from him.

Swearing, Kinch pushed off the wall and took off after the boy, "I'm not going to hurt you!" he yelled, but, he realised, perhaps yelling and running after the boy was not going to convince him of that.

The boy was fast, but Kinch had helped to build these tunnels, he couldn't be outrun when he knew every hole, every crack and turn that could trip up a runner, and more importantly, every route.

He took a shortcut to the right under Barracks 1 and emerged into the same tunnel ahead of the boy, whose blue eyes widened in abject fear.

Kinch tackled him to the ground and felt the weak struggles of the clearly exhausted boy come to a gradual stop as he realised the man on top of him had a good 30 to 40 kilos on him.

Finally, all that could be heard in the dim light of the supplementary corridor was their breathing, Kinch not daring to ease up for fear of the boy running again.

It was then that Kinch thought to take in the appearance of this random visitor and realised that the boy was very young indeed. Especially considering he was SS uniform, had a terrible cut on his left cheek, and there, lying across his chest, collecting the flickering light from the oil lamp above them and shining as if filled with their own energy, relentlessly drawing his eyes, were the dog tags that read HOGAN, ROBERT E., 38976567. U.S. AIRFORCE.

Hey guys I'm back!

After what was...a very long break. But I never forgot this story. Just got caught up in university. Hope you enjoyed that chapter, the new one is already half written. Just have to hang in there with our boys for a little longer!

Aza

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