31.

~ Ariadne wanted to cry as she watched the land turn into the ocean. The plane making a steady journey to England as she felt her heart was too heavy with thoughts of her husband.

She couldn't bare to be apart from him. Not now. Not after all they had been through together. She briefly thought of taking this same plane on the return trip to Paris. Sneaking back to her hospital and surprising him.

He had wisely made her promise she wouldn't do that, but she enjoyed a happy fantasy where her husband, weary from war, had come to her hospital. His face lighting up at seeing her. He would scoop her up so effortlessly and kiss her. Telling her he never should have let her go. That he needed her too much.

Shouting pulled her free of her day dream.

"Soldier!" The nurse on the plane was crying as a scared infantryman was panicking at waking up on the plane.

"Calm down!" The young nurse was saying.

Ariadne sighed and hobbled out of her seat to help.

~ It was lucky for her she was able to keep busy on the plane and the few days after. She hardly had time to think of her husband as she helped the young nurse on a plane and then helped her at the hospital. The bony, old Matron happy to see her senior nurse again.

"We heard about your injury from Doctor Kikie, of course." The Matron said stiffly.

"How is Doctor Kikie?" Ariadne asked as she hobbled away from a scared soldier who cried for his mother. His face had been burned from some explosion.

"He's fine. Just overworked." The Matron said in her crisp, efficient manner.

She caught sight of the silver wedding band on Ariadne's finger.

"Nurse?" The Matron said. "Have gotten married?"

"I have, Matron. Yes." Ariadne said not wavering to the old maid's steel eyes.

"You know that is against policy." The Matron said curtly.

"Against your policy. Not the Red Cross or this hospital's. This is war time. They take what they can get." Ariadne told the Matron.

"Besides, I'll be leaving soon. My husband wants me with his family in America. I was just helping your nurse on the plane ride over." She said.

"I see." The Matron said fixing her collar. "Well, we are short of nurses at the moment. I would deeply appreciate your staying here until your voyage to your husband's homeland. You can walk I see, and we need the help."

The Matron's bony hands clasped together as she told her the pay would be the same and she could sleep in the nurse's dorm.

"Alright." Ariadne said plainly. The steel in her spine returning.

The two women nodded and turned back to their respective duties without another word.

~ Arthur had watched her plane till it vanished in the sky. He felt empty somehow. Like some part of him was missing. The streets of Paris seemed more hollow and lifeless without her. The people, like ghosts who had no soul behind their eyes.

~ "Good to see you again, Major." Dax said that evening. The Lieutenant in a good mood at seeing the grumpy officer again. "How was the bride today?" He asked.

Arthur didn't answer as he climbed into his solitary bunk in the officer's barracks. He had grown accustomed to the feel of his wife's body next to his. The warmth of her skin and feel of it was something he had become addicted to. Her comfort going through his bones as he would fall asleep breathing in the smell of her.

He pulled out a silver cigarette case he had been keeping in his front pocket for weeks now. His Dad had given it to him just before leaving for basic training. It had been something the older man had carried during the first world war. Arthur didn't really smoke, and cigarettes were hard to get these days. Instead, he kept only a few cigarettes in it along with some letters from Beth.

Front and center was the picture of Ariadne. Her impossibly beautiful face shining back at him as he memorized every feature. His eyes closing as he wanted to dream of her.

~ On her little cot behind the nurse's station. Ariadne tried to get comfortable. She wasn't able to climb the stairs to the dorms and the lift had broken that morning making everything much more complicated. Ariadne procured an Army cot and settled into a quite spot on the ground floor behind the nurses station. The recovery ward was peaceful as men, fresh from surgery waited to live or die.

She covered up and looked towards her night stand she had made from discarded boxes. Her open compact sat there. Her Major's face looking back at her. She doubted she could have fallen asleep is she didn't have him to look at each night.

His words drifted back to her.

"We won't lose each other. I'll see you soon."

She cried softly then. Her pillow muffling the sounds of her sobs as her steel finally broke from his absence. Nights promised to be the worse. How could she sleep without his calloused hands on her? How could she feel safe with her Major in another country? He was so far away now. He might as well be in another world.

She tried to comfort herself by pulling her covers tighter around her. Pretending it was his arms. Tried to dream of their picnic in the field. But it didn't work. She had experienced the real thing. No dream could ever make up for that.

~ Another round of promotions and Cobb was now Arthur's new commanding officer.

"I fought to have you stay in my unit." Colonel Burch told him as they readied to move out again. The weather bracingly cold.

"But, Colonel Cobb is a good man. A good man who had good men under him." The gruff colonel told him.

"Yes, Sir." Arthur said.

For a moment, Arthur thought the older man might hug him. Colonel Burch had always treated Arthur more like a son then anything else.

Colonel Burch simply coughed and told Arthur to take care of himself. That he didn't want to write a condolence letter to that pretty wife of his. Then added that if Arthur was killed, not to worry, that Ariadne would find someone else right away.

Arthur nodded and laughed. Knowing the colonel was telling him, in his own way, to be careful.

"Yes, Sir." He said simply as the Colonel left on the convoy headed to Germany.

~ It was bitter cold as Cobb's unit made their way into deep forests. It was days and days of advance and retreat. They would stumble upon villages after a few days of travel. Railroad tracks had been laid and then ripped up. A tell tell sign the Nazis had constructed something there.

Most of these places were built and then torn down before the Allies had advanced in. The hideous crimes seemingly wiped clean under broken pits of wood, concrete, and brick. Freshly turned earth the only witness to things no man dared to dream of.

Still, there were whispers. Gossip in the villages as Colonel Cobb spoke to the frightened people in his kind teacher's voice.

He had Arthur translate horrible tales of trains bringing human cargo into fenced in compounds. Of the human cargo being sent to work. Of ash falling from the sky at night as the camps incinerators would burn non-stop.

Cobb made Arthur translate everything. Every painful detail the locals were willing to give. Arthur never knew there was such a thing as evil until he heard what these frighted survivors told him.

He would type these reports each night and tell himself it was just exaggeration of locals who wanted to pander to the American forces.

"Please don't let this be true." He whispered as he typed reports to Washington late into the evening.