V.

Since there hadn't been plans for new arrivals, all the tents the film crew had brought with them, over 40 all in all, were packed full. Which was why Mitch and Stasi had been placed in the small wooden church, though Mitch was supposed to proceed to Udet's camp the next morning with Leni Riefenstahl, pick up the "Moth" there, Udet's famous plane he'd volunteered to be crashed on an ice berg for the film's most dangerous stunt, and fly back to the coordinates provided for the filming. It probably said something about pilots, Mitch thought, that the part of this which gave him trouble was the idea of destroying a legendary plane for the benefit of a few movie minutes.

He'd thought the barking dogs would keep him from falling asleep, but as it turned out, they didn't. A few minutes after being shown the improvised bed, Mitch drifted away, without bothering to get undressed first; spring in Greenland meant it was still far too cold for that. When he woke up, it was due to battery gunfire filling the air. At least, that was what it sounded like to him when he shot up, heart pumping. For a moment, Mitch was back in the war, every sense alert, and then he smelled Stasi's perfume, felt her warmth, and knew it was 1933, and any war was in the past.

The battery gunfire noise continued, though.

Stasi, who'd woken up a bit more slowly, sat up as well. "What on earth?" she said, then tilted her head. "Ah," she added. "Seems that's what it sounds like when a glacier calves."

"Your ghost tell you that?" Mitch asked, watching her. Her face fell, and inwardly, he sighed. He'd seen her interact with ghosts often enough to know what it looked like from the outside, and he'd have guessed sooner, except that he couldn't think of a good reason why she wouldn't have mentioned it. He could think of a few bad ones, though.

"I can't be without my lighter," he said to Stasi. "Lighting matches won't do. There isn't any real reason for that. I mean, sure, fire is my gift, and the lighter works as a focus, but in theory, it could be any lighter, any cigarette. But I need the one I carried through the war. I always thought the stupid thing kept me safe."

She hummed a little, but said nothing. No matter how little or how much they'd slept, there was daylight outside, and so he could see fine lines around her mouth, and around her dark eyes, which were wide open. The tenderness they evoked threatened to overwhelm him.

"We all have our crutches to survive," Mitch said. "Things we keep back, just in case. Maybe one day you won't feel you need them anymore, with me. Until then, I'll wait." With a grin, he added: "And keep my lighter."

She kissed him then, expertly and thoroughly. The boy he'd been before the war would have responded differently, Mitch knew; he'd have felt betrayed by the idea his girl would keep secrets from him, or even lie, he'd have insisted on knowing the truth immediately and, if it turned out to be trouble, on fixing said trouble. That boy had died, in a way, with so many others, and in his place was a man who'd learned what pain you couldn't share felt like, what humiliation was, and shame.

"You can keep your lighter," Stasi murmured sometime later, when she'd caught her breath, "but I'll tell you all about Max Schirmer, ghost from Berlin. On the way to the beach, because come on - a calving iceberg? This we've got to watch."

It turned out to be a quite a spectacle, too. The tidal waves around the shuddering floating mountain made of ice were at least five metres high, racing towards the beach, and the deafening noise coming from the ice meant no one else heard them despite them nearly shouting into each other's ears. When Stasi had finished her story, Mitch didn't know what to say. On the one hand, he thought that you couldn't possibly hand over another human being to be possessed; that went against everything the Lodge stood for, and was the kind of abuse of psychic powers they fought against. Leaving aside his own missing months, and the way he'd felt the pull of the necklace later, he'd witnessed Henry in the grip of an entity, murdering on its behalf, and it had been terrifying. On the other hand, he also sympathized with a murder victim wanting to see the man ultimately responsible for his death punished, not put in charge of his entire country, and it looked like the legal way to do that had already failed. It was easy to declare "revenge is wrong" if you were an outsider and not the person who'd just been looking for a good time dancing and ended up killed for no reason. It would be good to give Schirmer something to help him find peace. Just not this. But what?

"Hell of a thing," Mitch said, eyes on the ice breaking away.

"There you are," a female voice said behind them in English with a strong German accent. "Well recovered from the journey, I hope? Because Fanck insists we're doing the crash tomorrow. The locals predict the weather will change in two or three days, and he's afraid of losing another week shooting nothing at all. Honestly, I wouldn't mind finishing this, too."

At her first words, Mitch and Stasi had turned around, and he found Leni Riefenstahl much as Stasi had described her.

"Oh, I'm game," Mitch said genially. "But I'm surprised you're in such a hurry to leave - chances are none of us will ever be in this part of the world again, right?"

"Probably not," she replied. "But I've been shooting on glaciers for Fanck for five years now, and frankly, much as I like the mountains back home, I'm ready for a change of scenery. Besides, I think I'm done with acting and being bossed about by some man who thinks he's god."

"It's more fun to do the bossing around yourself," Stasi agreed. "I've heard you've started to direct as well."

Leni Riefenstahl's face lit up. "Did you see The Blue Light? I gave Joe a print and made him promise he'd show it to some US distributors, but I didn't think he'd kept his word."

Stasi, having no idea who "Joe" was supposed to be, shook her head. "Alas no. Paul Kohner told a mutual friend, the one who suggested Mitch for your film here."

The animation went out of the actress' face again, and for a moment, she looked downright sullen. Then she sighed. "Ah well. I guess I should have expected this. The Berlin press did its best to trash it, and after that, there was no chance anyone else would care. But that's going to change. The entire industry will."

"Better chances for female directors?" Stasi asked.

"No more Jews," Leni Riefenstahl retorted. It was said so casually, so self-evidently, that it took Mitch a moment to register just what she'd said. By now, she sounded good humored again, chatting downright breezily, and continuing in the same vein. "They're everywhere, of course, controlling the reviews just like they do film production. But not much longer. We've got a new government now, cleaning out the swamp, on every level. The next film I'll direct won't be trashed by some snooty Berlin Jew, I can tell you that."

Growing up in the South, Mitch was hardly unfamiliar with any of the sentiments the German actress had just voiced. Replace "Berlin" with "New York", cut the part about directing movies, and it could have been his uncle talking. Serving with guys from everywhere, including Jews from New York, trusting them with his life had made Mitch decide such ideas were rubbish, many years before encountering Stasi and falling in love with her. But listening now, he was keenly aware Stasi was standing right beside him, Stasi, who must have heard these kind of sentiments from childhood onwards, only directed at herself.

At first, he didn't know what to do. He would have if Miss Riefenstahl had been Mr. Riefenstahl. A guy insults your wife's people, you tell him to stop, and if he doesn't, you either leave his company or deck him. Leaving was currently not an option.

"What about this movie's producers?" Mitch asked slowly. "The ones paying your salary? Aren't they Jews?
"

"Which is precisely my point," Leni Riefenstahl replied without hesitation. "I mean, Paul Kohner is a nice guy as far as it goes, don't get me wrong, but should that kind of people really have power over true artists? You just can't trust them, not really."

It came to him then, what to say. Mitch was slow to anger, and didn't often act on impulse. There were, however, always exceptions to every rule.

"Well, I'm Jewish," he told her. "And seeing as we're supposed to crash in an air plane together tomorrow, it seems there's certainly going to be a trust problem on someone's part, Ma'am."

For a moment, she looked at him questioningly, as if trying to decide whether or not he was serious. Then she frowned. "There was no need to be rude," she said rebukingly. "You people are just too sensitive. Can't you take a joke?" With that, she turned on her heels, and left the beach.

Stasi grimaced. "Well, that has certainly told us," she muttered.

"I'm sorry," Mitch said, thinking of how wearingly every day such a display must have felt to Stasi, and her mouth curved. "For what, never telling me about your secret Jewish identity?"

"I thought it was obvious," he retorted. "What, you can't see this fine head with a kippah?"

"I could see it in a yarmulke," she said. "Some day. But not here. It's too cold here for either. Come on, Schirmer wants to talk to us, and there are too many people on the beach to do it here."

Mitch wanted to check on the Terrier anyway, to ensure it had been refilled with enough petrol, so they walked towards the hospital, with dogs on their trail again. En route, Stasi translated for the ghost who thought that surely, now that she'd displayed her prejudices, they didn't object to him possessing Leni Riefenstahl anymore.

"It's not that simple," Mitch said. "We've - well, I've sworn oaths. And they didn't have a get-out clause saying abuse of psychic powers is okay if the other party is an asshole. Look at it this way: taking over someone's body against their will, that sure sounds like rape to me, and that's leaving aside you want to use her to kill someone which basically frames her for murder into the bargain. Back in the war, I wouldn't have let someone under my command rape a German. And they were trying their best to kill us then."

"Max says he's not under your command and that I'm not either," Stasi stated. Noting with approval that the Terrier had been cleaned up since they'd arrived, Mitch looked at her.

"And what do you say?" he asked quietly. Stasi had joined their Lodge by now, but she'd come from another tradition. And she most definitely had her own rules.

Suddenly he thought: what if she wants to do it? What if she does help this Max Schirmer to possess that woman? He'd never have tried to keep Stasi from, say, stealing again if that was what she wanted; he'd trust her not to take from anyone who couldn't afford it, and to think the consequences through, balancing whether it was worth the risk with the allure. But while Mitch generally believed in the law, it wasn't sacred to him the way Lodge work and the oaths that came with it was. And there simply was a difference. A difference between indulging in a taste for stolen jewelry and enabling the utter violation possession against someone's will meant. That he loved Stasi didn't alter this fact. If she chose to help Schirmer with this, he'd have to fight her.

He swallowed. The memory of Jeff still burned, Jeff who'd been his dearest friend outside the Lodge and who'd turned into someone killing with joy, screaming hate at him the last time Mitch had seen him, dragged away by police. And Mitch couldn't even blame possession for all that, not after what he'd found out. No, it was Jeff himself. Which tainted all the memories of their time together, too. In a way, he'd lost his friend not just in the present and for the future, but in the past, too.

Falling in love with Stasi had been easy and terrifying at the same time. He'd never expected her to love him back, had been telling himself he'd be content to be her friend, that this was enough of a gift to have, when the war had left him crippled, in a way Jeff had crudely but not inaccurately described as having gotten his balls shot off. But Stasi, fearless Stasi, had not only found out more about his body than he'd ever known himself, she'd also decided to love him, and sometimes the joy of that still left him breathless. Losing her in the way he'd lost Jeff would be unbearable.

And for what, a treacherous voice in him whispered. For a stranger who just spouted casual hate, and for some politician who'd been responsible for violence and death already on his way to power. Why not look the other way there, just this once? Let it happen, if she truly wants to do it. Never talk about it again. Don't lose that happiness, now that it's finally yours. Just don't.

Saving the world is rarely a feel-good business, Gil had once said. But you can't ignore it when it starts to hurt. If we don't do it, then who will?

Stasi didn't smile. She reached out and took his chin in her hands.

"I say we're on our honeymoon. And asking a girl to work on her honeymoon, now that's just rude."