Viennese Waltz: Disguises

Back in the Hub, Alpha Universe, before Reich Rose's mission:

"WHOA! Wait one minute!" Alpha Rose cut Jared and Reich Rose off. "Won't that bring down the Reapers? Just like my saving my Dad's life did? – In fact, I don't understand why they haven't been gathering already, in all these timeline splits."

"Reapers?" Reich Rose put in, her voice cracking. She was still absorbing Jared's astounding pronouncement.

"No, it won't," Jared answered his fiance, not bothering to explain to the other woman. "No, listen to me," he added quickly as she began to protest. "It's a different scenario altogether." He took a deep breath. "First of all, remember I told you back then that Reapers are like bandages? They're attracted to rips in time, like little cuts. They're actually like clotting agents in blood. Make a cut on your arm, bring one man to life when he shouldn't have been – one man who won't by himself change history – and the Reapers try to clot the blood and mend the rip. But if you make a big change, that big boulder in the river, it's more like cutting off an arm than making a cut. Blood clotting Reapers can't fix that, so the timestream splits instead. That's why they haven't been a problem for us."

"Are you telling me my Mum is going to change history?" Reich Rose asked, her voice cracking again, this time in disbelief. They didn't exactly blame her.

"No, she's not," Jared said kindly. "But saving her life isn't a problem anyway. Because... Rose... she didn't die." He shook his head to forestall her protest. "I know, you thought she did. But she didn't. The other day – well, the other day for us," he added ruefully, acknowledging that day was actually fifty years in the past and in another parallel, "I was looking through the cannon at your world – the Cornish Rift in your world is beginning to open up again, did you know that? – and I was looking to see if I could pinpoint the split, as I'd done for the others. And I looked for your timeline, and your Dad's. And... I saw your Mum's. There was a gap, between the time of that raid, and the current time – when were you kidnapped by Corvantes?"

She told him the date she'd been snatched, and he nodded again. "That's about when we were, too. And your Mum's timeline had reappeared. You're going to go back and rescue her, and bring her forward. She didn't die. She never died back then. And no Reapers, for that reason."

Reich Rose buried her head in her hands and sobbed.

^..^

Home again, Reich World:

Pete's jaw dropped as his daughter explained what they were going to do. "You're sure about this time travel business?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. I've been in the past already," she replied, but didn't elaborate. There would be loads of time in their future to tell the whole story. After they'd done this one little job.

Pete's long years running a Resistance cell immediately came to the fore, and he sat at the table and began planning the mission. Rose grabbed a soda from the fridge and joined him, and they came up with the basics in just a few minutes. There wasn't all that much to plan.

"We'd better wear the SS uniforms they made for us last year," Pete said thoughtfully. Rose grimaced; she'd hated the idea of wearing hers, and had sighed in relief when that particular mission was scrapped before it began. Nevertheless, the replicas, perfect in every detail, still hung in their closets accusingly. She nodded reluctant agreement; it made sense this time.

A few minutes later, she walked back out of her bedroom wearing the hated garment, buttoning up the coat. "Are you sure this fits right?" she asked, calling out to where she had heard him in the kitchen. She walked around the corner, and stopped dead at his loud gasp, looking up to see such an expression of haunted, horrified recognition that it froze her blood.

"Dad?" she whispered.

Pete began hyperventilating, sagging against the wall beside him, slowly crumpling over as if he'd been shot in the stomach. Maybe a few inches higher. "Oh my god," he repeated, over and over, his voice racked with pain and horror.

"Dad!" Rose stepped over beside him, worried he was having a heart attack.

He wasn't, quite. He looked up at her with tortured eyes. "I'm sorry, baby," he croaked out. "I'm so sorry."

She shook her head, bewildered, and he groaned, managing to push himself upright again. It took another minute for him to get it out. "I saw you. That night. The night I was arrested, and your Mum... The night we're going to. I saw you." She still didn't understand. "I saw this you, in this uniform. And I thought... oh, god... all these years, I thought you had become one of them. A Nazi. And I blamed you for what had happened, for your Mum's death. All these years... I've never been able to forgive you. But I was wrong. It wasn't you, was it? It wasn't your fault. Oh, baby..."

Tears were streaming down her face. She shook her head. "Dad," she whispered hoarsely. "You weren't wrong. It was my fault. I did inform on you."

He shook his head, hard, denying that at once. "But you said you were drunk, that Stones had gotten you drunk, and you didn't know what you were doing, right? You didn't know we were involved?"

She nodded. That was true.

"And you didn't... you weren't ever a Nazi?"

"No, Dad. I was never a Nazi. Ever."

He broke completely then, sobbing, and reached out to pull her into his arms. "I'm sorry, baby. Oh, god, I'm so, so sorry."

Sobbing along with her father, she put her arms around him and held him tightly; at long, long last, truly forgiven, the barrier between them that she'd never understood finally dissolved into mist.

^..^

Rose used Google Earth to get the exact GPS coordinates of the little park near their old apartment, and they flashed into it after midnight the night of that long-ago raid, crept cautiously into the alleyway across the court from their front door, then finally flashed back a few hours to just before the raid. Hiding behind the dumpster, they watched as the three unmarked SS cars pulled silently up and discharged their occupants, who flowed up the two flights of stairs like a malevolent black tide. Into the flat they burst without knocking, engendering a short scuffle with screams and shouts, and then ominous silence. A few minutes later, a bedraggled, roughed-up, still-struggling Pete was frogmarched down the steps in handcuffs, yelling for Jackie until he was punched hard in the mouth to shut him up.

The older Pete turned and looked at his daughter. "You need to step out of the shadows, baby. You have to let me see you. The old me."

"Dad, no..." she whimpered.

"You have to, baby."

Heart breaking, she did as he said, and stepped into the dim glow of the street lamps. The younger man stopped dead as he was being put into the back of one of the cars, staring at her in total disbelief, then the SS man beside him punched him hard in the stomach to make him fold up, and shoved him through the door. As the others piled into two of the cars and left, Rose stepped back into her father's arms again.

"It's OK, baby," he told her over and over. "It's OK. I know the truth now."

A minute later, though, he gently pushed her back. "We need to get upstairs and in there NOW," he said, steely determination glinting.

"Shouldn't we wait till they bring her out?" Rose asked worriedly, and he shot her a grim look.

"No. They aren't going to bring her out until..." he couldn't say the words. "The neighbors said later that they heard her screaming after I was taken away."

The idea shocked her into instant motion. Her Mum was about to be raped, right now. They flew together across the court and up the steps, and Pete burst through the door with Rose on his heels in unconscious imitation of the SS men minutes before - just as a familiar female voice screamed from the back room. Jackie.

Nobody was in the front room. Pete stormed across to their bedroom door and crashed through it as well, causing the two men to jump before they looked at him sourly.

"Vas ist das?" began the one with his pants undone, getting the words out of his mouth just before Pete reached him and dropped him to the floor with one solid punch to the jaw. Then he rounded on the other, who had been holding Jackie's hands above her head, grabbed him by the collar and threw him across the room.

Rose ran to her Mum, sprawled across the bed, her clothes in disarray but not yet removed. "Mum! MUM! It's OK, Mum, it's me, Rose!" She reached up and took off her uniform cap, letting her blonde hair tumble down around her shoulders. Jackie finally recognized her daughter and fell into her arms, holding her so tightly Rose thought her back might crack. Not that she cared.

Her Mum was safe. Safe and unharmed.

Pete was still taking care of the two Nazis. When Rose looked around a minute later, one of them was already motionless on the floor, and Pete was kneeling on the other, the one who had his pants undone, grinding his knee into the man's throat as he pounded his fists into his face and head, over and over.

Rose disentangled herself swiftly from Jackie's arms and tore across the room, grabbing her Dad's arm and arresting its forward motion. "Dad! DAD! It's done. He's dead!"

He was. So was the other one, from the looks of it.

Pete got slowly to his feet, panting heavily. He slowly turned and looked at his wife, missing from his arms for all those years, his heart on his face.

"Pete!" she moaned. She'd gotten her clothes back in order, and slowly stood on shaking feet. She took a couple of steps towards him, then stopped again, peering into his face, disconcerted and bewildered.

"You look like you've aged ten years in the past ten minutes!"