A/N: This title is brought to you by Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. It's a great verse, and used a lot in different places if you look for the references.
(1) To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: (2) A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; (3) A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; (4) A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; (5) A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; (6) A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; (7) A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; (8) A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
The next morning was a godsend to Deidara; it felt like the first time in ages that he had the opportunity to sit down and think, work of his own accord, and be with a nice, pretty girl who catered to his needs most of the time.
Waking up had been uneventful, unfortunately; he had honestly looked forward to her early-morning bitching. The arm incident was brushed over, however, and Sakura had promptly gotten up without a word and pranced downstairs. In no time at all, wonderful smells began to waft up from the stairwell and Deidara changed his clothes in record time.
He dashed downstairs and peered at the girl from the banister. She was at the stove—apparently there was still a small amount of gas supply left in the old thing—and some eggs were frying in a pan on the top burner.
"Where did you find the eggs?"
Sakura started and started wide-eyed at Deidara for a moment before calming. Deidara rolled his eyes. Would she ever get over that? They'd been together for about a week or so now or whatever, and you'd think she'd—wait. He looked down at himself, surprised to see the SA uniform on his body.
"I went out to get some cooking oil from the plane in the barn, and I heard chickens up in the loft. They've been eating the seed supply up there, it seems. There were lots of eggs, and I can cook a hen for us before we leave, whenever that is." She gave him a once-over before tipping the now-scrambled eggs into two plates. "I laid your uniform out by the bed last night. I didn't think you noticed."
"Oh."
"Your collar is crooked."
"Yes. I will fix that now."
A silence settled over the kitchen as Deidara descended the rest of the stairs and sat at the head of the table. Sakura put a plate in front of him and took the seat next to him.
"Oh! I forgot forks. Wait a sec, will you?"
The forks, oddly enough, were under the sink in a jar, pushed up against the wall.
"That's funny," Sakura remarked as she returned to the table. "It's almost like they were trying to hide them. Do you think they're—?"
"Solid silver," Deidara finished, balancing the fork on his finger before starting to eat. He wasn't surprised, really. Jews were rich, all of them. It wasn't out of place for even a farming Jewish family to conceal finds like these, and he wondered what else was hidden.
"Oh, that's really neat. You're right, here's the mark right here. This is an American brand, too. That's cool. I wonder how they got them. What, you're already finished?"
Well, so what if he was done? You got used to scarfing down food in the ranks. This woman obviously got way too much free time on her hands.
"It's because most Jews are rich, Liebchen. My grandmother was one, yes."
"Oh?" The nurse looked up from her food, seemingly curious. "What was she like? I mean, you don't have to talk about her if you don't want to, but…"
"Why would I not want to?"
"Well…the last time I brought it up, before we—well, when the osprey came, I mean…you just didn't want to talk about it, that's all. You seemed really upset. So I just dropped it."
"Well, maybe I was not having good day, Liebchen," Deidara mumbled.
Sakura laughed, even throwing her head back a little. "Do you ever have a good day? You always seem to find trouble wherever you go. And what does that mean, anyway? 'Lib-chin?' "
Deidara hmmphed in response and pushed his plate towards the middle of the table.
"Come on, Deidara," she whined. "You keep calling me that. Is it some sort of ridiculous pet name?"
"I will not say. You do not need to know these things, okay?"
"What? Why?"
"Because they are secret, German people things. My secret, too."
"Oh, that's just immature. Come on, Deidara! Now you're just messing with me."
"Ja. I am messing."
"Deidara! Oh, you're such a jerk!"
He grinned, happy to finally compose himself after shaking free of some unwarranted company back at the tent. And what better way to wind down than play his favorite game, Bother the American Lady?
"I give up. I just give up." She finished up the last bite of eggs and neatly stacked her plate over his, placing the forks at an angle, prongs facing down, a sign for the waiters to whisk the covers off to the kitchen. An empty formality, but probably just a habit.
The sun emerged from behind the barn and illuminated the house in a warm glow, one that Deidara welcomed. He was ready for winter to be over, but hell if he'd ever gotten that wish granted before. As soon as the war was over, he'd move to Egypt. No, to Columbia. Maybe India. Yeah, that sounded good.
There was still something to clear up, though. He'd never really talked to anyone before that really listened, and what he wanted to say was just begging to be told. It sounded pathetic and weak, but the truth was that Deidara really missed being able to converse with anyone at all.
"You asked of my grandmother earlier. Do you want to know about her?"
Suddenly Sakura seemed quieter than before.
"Yes, I do."
"There is not much to say, yes. Do you want to hear anyway?"
"Yeah, it's fine."
"Okay. I already told you she was a Jew. She married my grandfather a long time ago, even though the Jewish people were not wanting her to marry him. They do not exactly support marriage out of their religion. They married, and when my mother died I lived with them on their farm. She worked hard in the field, man's work, and taught me how to sew in the evening. My grandfather did not like that. He thought it was for only the women.
"One day, in the summer of 1934—I was almost nine years old, then—members of the Nazi party came to our house with guns and dogs. I remember them because they looked so strange from my window. One had black hair and a sad face, and the other had red hair and the same sad face. I saw them later when I was forced into service, yes.
"I was in my room playing with my toys when I heard the shots from below. I ran down the stairs to see what was wrong, but when I got there, all I saw was my grandfather crying in his chair, and in the kitchen, blood covered the floor. You see, I did not know, but my grandmother was an avid communist, and word gets out fast. That she was a Jew as well sealed her fate."
Tears hit the table as Sakura began to cry silently.
"Deidara, that's so terrible, I had no idea that—"
"I do no know if they killed her there and took her body to put in a pit somewhere, if the dogs ate her, or if they sent her to Dachau, but I am content not to know. Not a day after the soldiers came, my grandfather sent me to live with my father, who was not a kind man. He always hit me and called me names, but I suppose he was sad that his mother was died, so I bore it.
"I started a business when I was sixteen and moved to a military town. I made military explosives mostly, but sometimes I made fireworks. That was real art. I should like to see some fireworks again. Mine were always the best kind." Tired, he closed his eyes and listened to the woman's sniffing. "Do not cry. It is better that she died then, and did not have to live in this time, yes."
"But you were only a baby when she died! How can someone let that happen?"
A shrug was his only answer. Why did people let things like that happen? It was simple, really.
"Everyone was afraid of the Nazis. When you hear that your neighbors have been taken away to…to Chelmno or some place like this, the only thing that everyone is thinking is that the Nazis will come to their house next, okay? They are only thinking about themselves."
"Oh. That makes sense, I guess."
A breeze rushed in from the demolished west wall and ruffled the maps on the table. Sakura snatched them before they could be blown away and clutched them to her chest until the wind subsided.
"I need to see that, woman. We will fly out right after we bathe ourselves and eat a second time."
Sakura looked at him in disbelief. "So soon?"
"We do not have time to explore. We have to get this letter delivered. Something tells me that old Colonel will know if we do not give it to the resistance. What are you making faces at? There is no choice in the matter."
Scowling at him, Sakura snapped, "You don't know what's in that letter. It could be a damn cookie recipe for all we know. It could be—I don't know, an order to kill all the prisoners in Auschwitz. We should look at it, or find some way to figure out what's inside."
"That is not possible. This Mendelssohn will know a tampered letter, I think."
The chair squeaked when Sakura laid her head on the table, wrapping her arms around her head moodily.
"Fine then," was her muffled reply. "How long to Auschwitz?"
For a short moment, Deidara glanced at the map, marking their position with an ink pen.
"From this house, it will take about two and a half hours with full tanks, which are not available for the moment. We will have to stop once more here, where Kakuzu marked a fuel and food stop. In all, we will get there by sundown, yes. How lovely."
"Hmmph."
Deidara let out a bark of bitter amusement and stood, folding the maps and stuffing them into his officer's front pocket as he leered at the sedentary American. He ruffled her hair good-naturedly and she swiped at him testily, losing her balance and falling out of the chair, and then chased the man up the stairs and back into the quilt room, shouting at him the whole way.
Man, I need a bath really bad.
It was all too true, unfortunately, she could almost smell herself if she stood really still, and she wasn't even on her period. How embarrassing.
If she squinted hard, she could see Deidara's silhouette in the house, waiting for her. Since he was technically still sick, even though any visible symptoms were almost gone, it wasn't good for him to do work he didn't absolutely have to do. The pneumonia scare was over and done with, thank the Lord, but he could damage something if he did any hard work, even if it wasn't noticeable at first. Her fear was that he might break a leg or an arm doing some foolish man thing, and then where would they be? Stuck wherever the plane was, that's where.
She kicked bales of hay here and there, searching for some metal containers that lay beneath most water pumps, which she was sure were around her somewhere. They could make a fire in the stove in the house, then heat melted snow in the container, and Deidara would carry it up the stairs and deposit the water into the tub in the master bedroom. It was a shame there wasn't a tub downstairs (unusual, really) but it was better than nothing was.
A smaller bucket would be more practical, she thought now as she spied several two-gallon buckets propped up against the wall. Now they could have four buckets heating up at once and they could make almost an assembly line, and get it done much faster. Sakura praised herself with a smile, cocky hands on hips, then hauled the buckets into the kitchen where Deidara waited, just standing up from lighting the stove.
"I have the water here," he called over his shoulder. "I melted some in this bucket while you were waiting.
Apparently she'd been gone quite a while, then. There was at least five gallons in the 'bucket,' which looked more like a washing tub than anything. Deidara reached for a separate pail and dipped it into the tub, carefully avoiding excess water to spill out as he put a container of the melted snow on each burner, in quick succession.
Ten minutes later and there was a lovely, steaming bath upstairs just waiting for Sakura to jump in it…if only Deidara hadn't got there first. His argument was that he'd done most of the work, and Sakura was feeling too emotionally put out to argue, so there it was. She sat on the bed and swung her legs back and forth for a quarter of an hour, examining the quilt on the bed.
Like the quilts in the other room, this one had a similarly unorthodox pattern; this one depicted blue herons catching trout (one had a frog) along the wide border and in the center, there were six swans, all looking at a young girl sitting in a chair in the bottom right corner, who was sewing a white shirt. Sakura assumed it was a fairy tale of some sort, and resolved to take the quilt with her when she left.
"I am done now, woman," a heavily accented voice called from the bathroom. "You can come in now."
Sakura huffed and marched towards the bathroom moodily, throwing open the door and waiting for the light mist to clear. And when it did, she sorely wished that she'd waited until he came out, because there Deidara was, stark naked and dripping wet.
For a moment, the two stared at each other, and then Sakura shrieked, throwing her hands up to her face, stingingly embarrassed. Deidara sighed and walked past her, out the door, seemingly unconcerned about the little affair and her carrying-on. Well, of course he wouldn't have any modesty at all. What crassness.
Maybe all Germans were like that. So far, the only ones she'd seen amounted to that. Sakura closed her eyes and tried to breathe regularly, sliding her hands down her face to clasp them over her racing heart.
It wasn't as if she'd never seen a naked man, of course, she was a nurse and all, but with him, it was a little different. Amid growing feelings for the man—Maybe it was Lima Syndrome or something. Yeah, that sounded right.—she had tried to avoid physical conflict, but this certainly was something she hadn't prepared for.
Why is it, when confronting an unclothed male in all his glory, that the first place your eyes go is the penis? This is a mystery most astounding. It will probably never be deciphered.
Shaking her head, Sakura tore off her own clothes and got into the water in record time. To her pleasant surprise, it was still hot. That was nice. Now she could relax and lie back in the water, and—wonder of wonders—wash her hair. Just an arm's length away, under the cabinet, there rested a glorious bottle of shampoo. Never mind that it had strange gunk stuck to the bottom; it was there, and it foamed, so all was well.
She dunked her head under the water, flipped it back up neatly, then stood and wrung out what she could reach of her hair, which was creeping past her shoulders now. She shivered and reached for the towel on the sink counter. Deidara must've put it out for her, because she certainly didn't remember putting it there.
Of course, Deidara chose that very moment to barge in—fancy-schmancy Nazi uniform on this time—and start brushing his teeth in the sink, a cup of water in his hand to do the work the broken waterline couldn't afford to assist. She started and threw her arms around her waist, unsure which part of her was more important to cover.
"Deidara, you—I—what are you—? Get out!" She dropped back into the water and scooted to the far side, back towards the offender. As per usual, he was quite unalarmed.
"I have seen naked women," he consoled, but just succeeded in digging a bigger hole for himself. "They are all the same. I do not understand why you are so afraid."
"I'm not afraid, I'm pissed off. You don't just walk into bathrooms when people are taking baths in there. I'm not your wife or something, you ass."
The swish-swish sound of the toothbrush stopped, followed by the usual rinse-and-spit rigmarole. When Sakura summoned the nerve to turn back around, thinking he'd probably left, there he was, sitting right beside the tub. But not looking at her, just sitting and staring at the ceiling.
"Perhaps eventually, yes?"
Sakura sighed. Might as well take the bait.
"Eventually what?"
"Would you ever marry me, Liebchen?"
And suddenly she felt very shy.
"Well, I don't know," she mumbled, tracing patterns over the water with her fingers. "I don't really know you."
"But if you knew me better?"
"Um."
He waited. Looked like he wasn't leaving anytime soon without a satisfactory reply. Damn him.
"Well, I guess if I knew you better…if you weren't so weird, maybe…if you cut your hair. Not that I don't like it or anything, but it's a bit long. If it were over your eyes it'd be okay." She held her breath and let it out slowly. "Maybe then I would marry you. But why do you want to know? That's a very affronting question, you know. Not polite at all. I mean, I've only known you for…for less than a month. It's hardly time to be considering anything. Besides, I'm an Ally, and you're an Axis. That's a pretty hefty difference there."
But Deidara had turned to look at her, and seemed a little hurt.
"Do you think I am strange?"
She scoffed.
"Well, I most certainly do. All you do all the time is tease me and poke fun, and then when I'm around other people, you don't want them to even look at me. Don't give me excuses, because I know exactly what that means. I've seen it a million times before."
Eventually he laughed, and Sakura felt a bit more relieved, which was immediately halted upon the realization that she'd dropped her arms and had scooted over to where he sat. Well, he hadn't said anything, so it would be okay if she just draped her arm over the tub a little. Nothing provocative or anything of the sort, but probably a little coquettish. A surge of adrenaline sped through her veins at her abject boldness, and she decided she liked that feeling quite a lot. Deidara stopped laughing and shook his head.
"If that is true, you must think all men are strange, ja. Do you? Will you go to the Americas and live in the jungle, where there are no men, only savage women with spears?"
"No, Deidara," she laughed, all too aware that he was dodging the point of the observation. "I don't want to be an Amazon woman. I like where I am just fine."
His fingers drummed against the tub suddenly, and he twisted around to look her in the face with a blank expression. Sakura felt a bit sick in the stomach. That was the way he looked before…
"Do you?"
"Do I…what?"
"Do you like where you are, yes? Here?"
"Deidara, I wasn't talking about the bathroom, or the plane or anything. I meant being a nurse. That's all."
There was the bored expression again. Damn. And here she thought she'd cleansed him of all condescending moods and emotions. He stood and walked away, then, but stopped short at the door with a hand on the frame.
"I will go find some lunch, okay?"
And then he was gone.
About half an hour later, Sakura finally mustered up the non-laziness to get the hell out of the bathtub and put her clothes back on, belatedly cursing herself for not washing them in the tub with her.
Downstairs, two chickens, their necks snapped, waited mournfully by the sink for her to pluck and clean (of course he'd let her do the gross part), while the stolid German sat at the table, tapping a trench knife on the wood repetitively. In front of him, two cans of pineapple sat, lids open, with forks sticking out of the rims, and Deidara silently pointed out a canister of cooking oil on the stove.
Deciding that the reigning silent treatment was well and jolly to uphold, Sakura took out another frying pan from a cabinet and quickly heated the oil while she fumbled around with the chickens' feathers and failed miserably at efficiently extracting the innards. The biggest embarrassment of all was that Deidara came up behind her and berated her for almost throwing away the liver, which you were apparently supposed to cook with the rest of the chicken.
"Hey, I don't know how to cook a chicken," she snapped at the blond, who was busy placing all the edible parts on a separate plate for her. "My family couldn't afford chickens, especially with the depression going on and all. Half a million kids. No work anywhere."
She snatched the plate from Deidara and dumped the contents into the frying pan, holding the plate up when the oil hissed and crackled at her. Oil burns were not fun.
"At my grandparents' farm, we had chickens, and goats, and horses, and cows, and—"
"So you were a rich boy."
"Well, a bit, yes."
A spoon flew at her from his direction and she caught it, prodding the chicken bits around.
"So do you…have any money from them at all?"
"That's a very affronting question, Liebchen."
They couldn't help but smile at each other, then, and Deidara completely forgot about his little silent treatment, for which Sakura was very grateful. Because when their lunch was gone and they piled into the plane, heading for the second stop—swan quilt included, traded in for the other blanket—she realized how terribly awkward it would be to sit one someone's lap who was mad at you, in a situation where there was absolutely no way out.