A/N: Probably not one of my best chapters, but it'll be better next time (which should be in a few weeks or sooner). Thank you so much to everyone who reviews and has reviewed in the past. You are fabulous. Enjoy!
www . youtube . com/watch?v=vHt72jJ_1t0

Inspired by Damien Rice and too many energy drinks.

XIV. 9 Crimes
leave me out with the waste
this is not what i do

March 1945

The men had said that Germany was the closest thing to home that any of them had experienced since actually leaving three years ago. Between the warm food, the soft beds, and the fair fraulines, it was practically perfect. For the first time since their stint in Aldbourne in September of the previous year, they could breathe. Well, except for Lewis Nixon.

"Oh, well, wasn't me," he told Dick upon recalling his hazardous, tragic morning.

He was too deep in a trance, too obsessed with his VAT 69 to care how he sounded. The horror on his best friend's face should have been enough to snap him out of it, but really, who gave a fuck anymore? The scotch hit the back of his throat without any hint of a sensation. Was he honestly being demoted for something he didn't really feel anymore? That was another thing that should have stopped his self-destructive behavior, the lack of feeling, but, a little while later, the buzz came over him and lines that were once sharp, softened and all seemed right with the world for a second or two.

He wasn't the only one who was lost and consumed with indifference towards the world. Lorena wandered through Sturzelburg like something from a monster movie. Her eyes weren't even cold or hard anymore, they were empty. Her father was dead, her brother was missing in action (which often meant dead), and her mother had been dead for ages. Every relative of hers was gone. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents… they were all dead (or wanted nothing to do with the daughter of the immigrant whore) and Lorena wasn't far from joining them.

Ron, on the other hand, appeared as though he was full of energy since Lorena had pushed him as far away as possible (though not as far as she had pushed another man, he supposed). Instead of fixating on Lorena, he focused everything into returning to his wife and son when the war ended. He tore through the German towns like Sherman did through the South, "collecting" everything in his path that wasn't nailed down. He packed up platters, jewelry, silverware, and fountain pens, and sent them back to England. He went about it as though it was a mission, but he wasn't nearly as thrilled as he led on. He would have rather spent his days in Sturzelburg wrapped up in Lorena's arms, listening to her speak, in English, Italian, or French. In fact, a few times he stopped short and pretended to be doing something else, like retying his boots, just to listen as she conversed with Doc Roe. Non, je ne le savais pas, mais franchement, ça ne me surprend pas. He was pained by the sound of her voice in a way that he never imagined he would be; not by her, not by anyone. But there he was, heartbroken. He was a pathetic excuse for a man. For the sake of his dignity, Ron vowed to avoid her at all costs.

Lorena watched Lewis Nixon, safely from her third-floor window, as he shattered the glass of a store front in his desperate search for alcohol. His drinking had gone beyond the point of social acceptability and everyone noticed. It was like being in the country club again, except in their current circle, the talk consisted of military slang and casual swearing. Also, the gossip wasn't nearly as juicy. Minutes later, Nixon stumbled out of the mess, grumbling. Above him, a German man - the owner, for sure - shouted and flailed his arms about. Lorena wished that Webster were there, so he could translate, but, knowing the Ivy Leaguer's proclivity for chitchat and scandal, it was probably best for Nixon's reputation that he wasn't.

Of course, Lorena had other things on her mind. For one, the new non-fraternization policy that Ron Speirs had enacted between the two of them. In general, she didn't care very much that he was keeping away from her as though she were suffering from leprosy or the bubonic plague. She had become too dependent on his company anyway and if there was one thing she had learned from her past, it was that men were useless and she didn't need them in her life.

Another thing was the dead father situation. She should have returned to Boston upon Eugene Griffith's request. It was perfectly logical for her to do so. Jacob Bentley, the Vice President of LC Glass Co. would carry on as he had the many months - no, years - that Lorenzo was on the front, so that was of no concern. The trouble was the public relations work, which made her the symbolic figure head of the company, and the wills that had to be read, which would name Lorena heir to the Carlyle family fortune. It was a fact she couldn't bear to face. She didn't want to be the sole heir. She wanted to split the money and property with Lorenzo as they had been told that they would have to as teenagers. She wanted to be able to hold her older brother's hand at their father's funeral as they did at their mother's. Above all, she wanted her father back. She wanted to know that he was sitting comfortably behind his desk in his study or enjoying the view from the house in Martha's Vineyard. Lorena wiped away a tear that had formed in the corner of her eye. She had spent too much time wanting.

Lorena pulled the curtains together and crossed the small room to the twin-sized bed in the corner. She slid beneath the bare thread blankets and clutched her pillow for dear life. The German man shouted into the night and a cold stream of air passed under the damaged wooden door. She closed her eyes tight and pressed her body into the mattress in an attempt to shut out the noise. After all, she thought, tomorrow is another day.

Sunlight filled the mailroom, creating an atmosphere that was almost heart-warming. Lorena leaned, most unladylike, against the counter, waiting for Vest to sort through the letters and packages. There was always something for her after the date of Charles Carlyle's funeral passed: letters from concerned friends of her father's, business associates, lawyers, her boss… it was a never-ending parade of condolence cards and angry letters expressing disappointment. Lorena would read them, tear them up, and carry on with her life. She only replied once, when Eugene corresponded with her again. It had been a long letter and an even longer response, but Lorena wrote as she always did: with an unruffled flourish that mixed northern forthrightness and southern charm.

You must understand my dilemma: I am across an ocean and in the middle of a war. I am at the mercy of the United States Army, not the elite of Boston, and thus could not return, even if I wanted to. Of course, I have no desperation to grieve openly in front of strangers and acquaintances. I prefer to grieve in my own way: alone. I love my father dearly (love, not loved), just as I love my brother, but my absence is merely one of the consequences of war… I am terribly apologetic if I have caused you any emotional distress. Pass along my condolences and regrets those that expressed discontent. God willing, I will see you soon. Sincerely, Lorena

As her thoughts drifted to her father's funeral (whether it was an open or closed casket, whether they dressed him in the blue suit or the black suit), the door opened, allowing a gentle breeze to blow through and ruffle the papers on the walls. Lorena turned just in time to watch Ron saunter in, his arms full. Without so much as glancing at her, he slid his loot onto the counter and threw three packs of Camel cigarettes down as a tip for Vest.

"You got a box all this stuff will fit into?" he asked, chewing a stick of gum. Lorena was close enough to smell it.

"Yes, sir, I think so. Same destination?" Vest said, looking up from his mail sorting.

"Yup," Ron answered before turning sharply. The last thing he wanted to do was see her face, because if he did, he'd hate himself.

"I'll make sure it goes out first thing in the morning. Boy, your folks are sure gonna have quite a collection by the time you get…" Vest paused to gauge the expression on the CO's face. "Home, sir."

Ron smiled. Lorena felt a fluttering deep within her, a tightness in her core. It wasn't even a smile that he flashed, more of a grin, one that showcased his white picket fence teeth. His eyes sparked with a devilish joy that she had seen before, privately, and seeing them out in public like that made her blush. At that moment, she was willing to forsake everything to feel his soft lips on hers.

"Finders keepers," he said. Then he looked at Lorena directly. On the inside, she was melting and boiling and screaming and dying. On the outside, she was an ice cube and immobile as a statue. But Ron could only see the outside. Instead of attempting to decode what she was really thinking by the tiny details (the way her jaw was set, the wrinkles in her forehead, the position of her hands), he took it for what it was. He was too tired to carry on the way that they had been. He left just as quickly as he came and Lorena bit the inside of her cheek hard to keep the pounding in her head and chest at bay.

"That was screwy, wasn't it?" Vest asked after he was sure that the captain wasn't around any longer.

"Oh, please," she said, "he's always screwy."

Vest went back to his sorting and Lorena watched as he slipped letter after letter into the pile for second battalion. Finally, he looked up with a smile and handed her a small white envelope, which she took without a word. She tore the flap back quickly and pulled out a tiny slip of stationary.

You damn writers. I don't even have the choice of being angry. -Eugene

Lorena laughed before tearing up the paper and tossing the pieces in the wooden wastepaper basket. The door flew open again and Nixon, his eyes bloodshot from a severe hangover, rushed up to the counter where Vest was still standing, staring, confused, at the journalist.

"Hello, Lewis," she said, trying to keep her voice just loud enough that he could hear her, but not loud enough to made his headache worse.

"Hey," Nixon answered with a nondescript wave. "I need some help finding some whiskey, a very specific brand of whiskey."

"Vat 69?" Vest asked, as though he even had to. "That's gonna be hard to find here in Germany, sir. And even if I can find it, it won't be cheap."

"Don't worry about the cost, just get it to me," Nixon said.

Lorena had heard that desperation a thousand times before. It was easily one of her biggest pet peeves. She had heard it from Parker. Come on, baby, I need you tonight. I've been thinking' 'bout you all day, baby. She had heard it from her father. Lorena, be reasonable, please. From her friends. It's for world peace, Lorena. And it won't even cost you that much money because now you only have to buy one plate. From Ron. What about me? From herself. No, I'm sorry. You're right, Parker. Please, let's not fight. I'm so tired of fighting. Anything to make you happy, Parker. The tone was like nails on a chalkboard, a dreadful screeching noise that made her grind her teeth together. In fact, she had been so caught up in the sound that she hadn't noticed the young, fresh-faced Private Janovec until after he had made his big announcement.

"300,000 Krauts just surrendered," he said. "We're heading out in an hour."

"One hour?" Lorena gasped in unison with Nixon. They each rushed for the door, one barely reaching it before the other.

"Captain Nixon, your mail, sir," Vest called, forcing the officer to turn around and grab the letter from out of the man's hands.

"Keep looking," Nixon said as he headed outside, following behind Lorena. "Where are you headed in such a hurry?"

"What do you care?" Lorena asked.

"I don't," he said. "It's just something you ask a friend, isn't it?"

Lorena shook her head with a vague smile. "Do you really think I would know?"

An hour later, Lorena found herself pushing through a crowd of rowdy men toward the trucks that were bound for other places. She gave a few nods to the faces she recognized and a cold shoulder to the face that she knew. She pushed past Ron rudely, bumping into him and forcing him out of the way as she moved. He watched her walk, a lit cigarette dangling out of his mouth. How stupid, she thought bitterly. He looks so stupid. It was childish, the game they were playing; even Ron had the same opinion of the whole thing. In spite of everything, he was still wildly infatuated with Lorena Giovanna. Too often, he wondered if Bea would notice how he had changed since the last time she saw him; if she would think it was a consequence of war and death and destruction. He wondered if he would call out Lorena's name in bed or picture her silky raven hair twisted in his hands instead of the plain nondescript blonde color of his wife's. He wondered if he would resent the child that he would have to raise, knowing that the boy wasn't his own, or if Bea would want to have a baby with him at all. And if they did have their own child, he wondered if he would imagine what it would look like if it had that Italian blood running through its veins instead of British. He spent too much time wondering… The night they met, he was sure that she was a witch. Now, he would have bet his life on it. And she wasn't a sweet type of witch that gave out caramel apples on Halloween, but an evil, bubbling-cauldron kind who knew how to take a perfectly sensible man and turn him into an All-American chump.

Lorena, though, only knew half of the power that she had over him, so she was unaware of Ron's calculating eyes as Webster helped her onto the back of the truck. "Thanks," she said as she placed her helmet on the ground and pushed a stray piece of hair out of her face. "Where are we heading again?"

"Bavaria," Webster said.

"Ah, the Alps… lovely. The birthplace of national socialism, correct?"

"Absolutely," Webster said, pulling a book out of his canvas bag.

The men began to sing just as the vehicles' engines started. Lorena knew the lyrics well, as she had heard them enough times amongst the men, and as the morbid words echoed loudly around her, she found an odd sort of comfort in them. Gory, gory, what a hellava way to die. As the men sang, she thought about Lorenzo. Her chest tightened painfully. Gory, gory, what a hellava way to die. She wondered if there was anyone to write about it as she had written about Hoobler, Muck, Penkala, Webb, Jackson, and the others who had perished since she joined the ranks. If he was dead, she hoped that another correspondent had had the decency to give him a proper obituary and mention all the good he had done in his short life. Gory, gory what a hellava way to die. "So the fuck what?" Webster said to Liebgott. He ain't gonna jump no more.

So the fuck everything…

Lorena looked at the Germans without any guilt in her eyes. As they exited the building, single-file down the dark hallway, she felt no remorse. She hadn't explained the feeling in her column the same way she had explained it to Nixon later that night, but if she had, she would have been fired on the spot. "It was like shooting someone who has beaten you down for years. It was that beautiful sort of gratification that you only see in the movies or in novels. It was brilliant." Lorena might not even have gone to talk to Nixon if it weren't for the fact that where she had been quartered was across the hall from Ron, who was doing pushups well into the night. As though she were in college, she snuck out of the tiny apartment and down the hall to where Lewis Nixon was awake and draining a bottle of whiskey that he had found hidden in Winters' footlocker. She knocked lightly twice and listened carefully as the footfalls got louder. He reeked of alcohol, but it didn't turn Lorena's stomach as she thought it might.

"You wanna help me get fucked up?" he asked, his words slurred.

Without hesitation, she nodded and stepped past him through the doorway. They talked and talked and drank and drank as the night wore on and the morning came. Nixon talked about his divorce, about everything, and Lorena mused in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way. Once the bottle was finished, they began to stew in their drunken thoughts, producing a conversation that was darker and more morbid than either of them ever imagined.

"We should just kill ourselves, you know. Just end this whole stupid thing," Nixon said, stifling a laugh.

"No, no. We're far too self-absorbed for that. Besides, don't you think I've tried? It's harder than it looks," Lorena said from the sofa, across which she had draped herself leisurely.

"What do you mean?"

"You think anyone can commit suicide? Well, pal, you're wrong. You have to really want to do it. I had always thought of myself as very strong-minded, determined person, but if attempting suicide five times taught me anything, it was that I'm as weak as they come. I can't commit. Ha! Commit! Oh, what a joke."

Nixon sat forward in his chair to look at her. "You tried to kill yourself five times?"

"Does that surprise you, Lewis? It shouldn't. I tried four times while Parker was alive and once after he was dead. It took me so long to realize the solution to the problem was to kill him, not myself. Afterwards, though, when I was sure that I was going to jail, all those beautiful knives that Parker had collected over the hat Parker had collected over the years were starting to look very friendly." Lorena brought her arm up to rest her head on it and curled up sideways on the sofa. "I'm not a well woman, Lewis. Not at all."

Nixon nodded in agreement. "I still think we should kill ourselves."

"You haven't listened to a word I've said, have you?"

"What? I should kill the wife instead of myself?"

"Exactly."

"That wouldn't be too bad actually. Hell, I'd give anything to shoot Kathy in the face right now. I mean, who takes a man's dog?"

Lorena cocked an eyebrow. "Didn't she take your child too?"

"Yeah. And?" Nixon asked, sounding blasé.

She stared blankly for a moment and then laughed hysterically. "Poor little thing!"

"Yeah, his mother's a bitch and his father's a drunk. What a life."

Nixon let his head slip into his hands, his body trembling with sobs. Lorena stood and grasped the edge of the end table for balance. She stumbled over to him and collapsed clumsily at his feet. She took his face in her hands and gave him a sloppy, drunk smile. "He'll get over it and if he doesn't, don't worry. You'll die before he gets a chance to really express his resentment."

Nixon looked up at her and nodded weakly. Lorena leaned in to kiss his cheek, but in his drunk haze, Nixon mistook her movement and leaned his head just enough to brush his lips against hers. She was sure that if she had been sober, she would have pulled back. She wouldn't have let her mind, so consumed with thoughts of Ron glistening with sweat, allow her lips to move against her friend's in a way that was dangerous.

But Lorena was nowhere near sober and neither was Nixon. Their tongues intertwined in a messy fashion and he pulled her onto his lap, forcing her to straddle his hips awkwardly. At that moment, guilt, heavy and strong, flooded Lorena's every thought. She fell backwards onto the floor and scrambled away from Nixon. With the back of her hand, she wiped her mouth and grimaced at her own stupidity.

Lorena stood quickly and yanked on her clothes to set them straight. Although the room was spinning, she let it carry her toward the door. "Not a word about this, Lewis. Not a single word."

Nixon was wincing. He was at an all-time low. "Never. I swear."

She nodded and rushed out of the door, down the hall, and back into her own apartment. Lorena slumped against the door as a thick bubble of cries rose in her throat. But then, the door across the hall opened. Lorena froze and listened to the Ron's footsteps as he padded, barefoot, up and down the hall. The door clicked to announce its closure and Lorena let out a whine. Inhale. The tears poured down in a tragic flood, soaking her shirt and the dirty floor. Exhale. Lorena cried herself to sleep that night and woke up a few hours later in a heap on the ground. Inhale…

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