Karl hated mobile hospitals even more than he hated sick tents. He was sharing a Nissun hut with fifteen other men, thankfully none on the verge of death, though one had a high fever that made him scream and writhe periodically until the delirium passed again.

Karl's own wounds weren't severe enough to send him home (the nurse had raised an eyebrow at him when he said 'thank God'), but he'd gotten an uncountable number of stitches that needed to stay in for two weeks. He was on bed rest for at least ten days so as not to reopen them, and at first he wasn't even allowed to get up to relieve himself the first few days.

He'd been fighting with the nurses at least once a day, and many of them reminded him unnervingly of his mother. He wondered what she'd make of his behavior. He knew that the other men in the hut regarded his feuds with Lieutenant Elena Rosewood and Lieutenant Mary Rowe as entertainment, a precious luxury when confined to one's bed.

It wasn't so bad though. The food was cooked, if nothing to write home about; the corrugated tin walls kept out the sun and most of the sand (but not all of the mosquitos, so they had to wrap themselves in netting at night). The men around him were decent enough company too.

Corporal Thompson, on his left side, tapped the metal frame of his bed. "Hey," he said with a smile slightly thrown off by the plaster on his cheek. He was American, a few years younger than Karl, a very optimistic about his chances of returning home. "There's a new nurse."

"Good," he replied. There were never enough nurses, even in the fixed hospitals.

"Private Ethan from the next tent over says that she's a real beauty," he winked.

"Doubt I could ever find a nurse attractive."

"Maybe you could, if you didn't fight them all the time. Rosewood is pretty, isn't she?"

"No. My mother was a nurse. She was even an army nurse for a few months during the War, before she found out she was pregnant with my older brother," Karl said. He shrugged, and frowned a little as the stitches pulled. "That's probably why."

Thompson made a vaguely sympathetic noise, "Shame to be you. Where is she now?"

"Langley, Virginia. My sister and father are there too, helping in the dockyard."

Thompson shifted on his bed to take the weight off his injured leg, "What about your brother?"

Karl's throat tightened. Thompson had told Karl everything about himself, without pause, from the pride he felt at his sister's graduation to his grief over being jilted by his fiancée before he was conscripted. He actually seemed lighter, freer, after talking about it. Karl envied that. His past stayed in his chest, anchored there, safe and heavy. He'd never told anyone about how his brother died, not even Drew and Sean. Not even Brauer.

But he wanted to tell someone now. It was like the words would tear his windpipe if he didn't.

"He's dead," Before he could chicken out he continued, "My father worked in Germany before Hitler came to power. The year he did, a group of SA thugs attacked him after school…"

Thompson's brown eyes got huge. "Shit," He said quietly. "I'm sorry I asked."

"It's alright," Karl said as though it was. "He's one of the reasons I'm here."

"I see why you don't want to go home," Thompson said, looking at him like he'd just seen him for the first time.

"I can't go home until the Nazis are all either dead or out of power," Karl thought of the house in the Berlin suburbs, with its large bay window.

"Well…" Thompson sighed. "Can't say I'd be unhappy if I was told to go home now. But you're almost making me guilty about it."

"Go home. Get a job in a munitions factory. We can always use more tanks."

He grinned, a gap between his teeth, "Yeah, good idea. I'd miss all the boys here though." He rolled back over to catch a nap.

Karl laid back down on the thin, sweaty pillow. He wondered how the patrol was doing. Had Drew been caught making moonshine yet? Were they talking about him, as Burns lit up the campfire? Was everyone there still alive? When he, Drew and Sean made it back to camp the Captain had taken one look at Karl and filed the paperwork for his hospitalization. "I don't know if I ought to demote you two or give you medals," he'd snapped at Drew and Sean. Karl was sure it was the latter; in choosing between efficiency and regulations, the Captain always chose the former. Drew had made Karl promise to write, so they could stay in touch. Sean just said, "Make sure we know you're not dead." Next time the nurses came around he needed to remember to ask for paper and a pen.

He needed to write to his family too. His last letter had been over a month ago, shortly before Brauer died. The two irate letters he'd gotten since made it clear that the matriarchy wasn't happy with him, to say nothing of the stoic but clearly disappointed letter from his father. It wasn't fair to them to regularly drop off the face of the Earth.

All these things were uncomfortable, but less so was the ache and pull of the stitches of the scars on his chest. That Verräter meant nothing to him. If Johan thought that he'd be hurting Karl beyond the cut of the knife, he'd been mistaken.

He knew that he'd done the right thing. He always knew. For Kirstein, for Brauer, for his missing maternal family still in Germany, for the free world, for the Fatherland itself even. He could die from an artillery shell or another sniper's bullet tomorrow and never regret picking up a gun. But he would've regretted dying under Johan's hands after two months of silence towards his family.

Karl asked Rosewood if he could have the materials to write a letter when she arrived with dinner. She promised, once she finished the rounds. As he ate his corned beef (it was for dinner, today, yesterday, the day before that, back in camp, and on and on to the point where he nearly forgot what any other food tasted like), he considered what to write in his letter.

He ought to acknowledge the fact that he'd disappeared for a while, and they deserved to know why. He could talk about Brauer, much as he hated remembering that day and how he'd retreated from it. But did he really want to tell his mother that he'd been captured and tortured? How did he even explain that in a letter? His scars didn't bother him, but it made him squirm in his bed to think of how they'd horrify his mother. When he'd told her years ago that he wanted to go to officer's school, so he could join the war when it came, she had begged him not go. He'd thought his whole life prior to that that his mother was too proud to beg anything of anyone, especially her own son. If he told her that she'd nearly lost her only remaining son...

But she needed to know. And he had no intention of ever making the mistake he did that night again. Drew, as he'd conceded reluctantly during his stay in the mobile hospital, was right.

"You're a tough one, Karl, but you're not invincible. You don't have to win this war on your own you know."

His thoughts lingered on Drew and Sean until Rosewood came back with a pen, paper, and a sincere smile. "I'll pick it up from you in the morning. Just put down the address, or your recipient's full name and rank if you can't."

Karl grunted as he sat up, feeling his stitches protest the movement. He carefully set down the envelope on his raised knees, and lightly wrote Sergeant Drew John Kelly. That done, he set it down on his left side, and kept the other envelope and most of the paper in his lap to write the properly long letter his mother and sister had been demanding for months.

Dear Drew,

I'm sending this to you since I've heard down the grapevine that you're still in our patrol with Sean. Let everyone know that I'm healing nicely, and picking fights with the nurses. Let Sean know that I'm still alive and able to shoot better than he can. I hope the Captain didn't make you do latrine duty for three weeks because you saved my sorry arse. I know I've said it until you're both sick of it, but I owe you and Sean my life, and if we meet again on the battlefield I want to repay it.

And I swear I'll keep my promise. I'll write to you until we meet again, andI'm sure that you'll do the same. If you can, bother Sean to do it too.

Yours in camaraderie,

Karl M. Fairburne