A/N: After the delights of #cophinefluffathon, let's get back to cophine in war and danger!
Danielle tried to take her time about letting Delphine participate in Resistance activities. While Delphine's knowledge of the daily habits and movements of the higher ranking officers could prove useful, allowing Delphine to physically participate was a dangerous proposition. For one thing, it was known that both of them had disappeared, and the Nazis were looking for them. It was said that Öberführer von Leekie was so furious about Delphine's escape, in particular, that a number of soldiers and officers were treated to punishments usually reserved for the enemy. Danielle's contacts whispered that Die Klinge had been personally assigned to extract information to find them, but, in response to some other emergency, he was called out of the country, much to von Leekie's rage. Despite his absence, someone like Delphine, who had circulated among the German officers and had even previously been someone known due to her upper-class family and beauty, could be recognized if they weren't careful. Add to that her still not being fully healed and the obvious wounds she was sporting, and Danielle opted to keep her new friend safe within the walls of the Lafranges' house, for a while.
However, she had told Delphine she could help, and neither woman was one to sit on her hands. And so it was that, true to Danielle's prediction, after a short recovery period, the blonde became a brunette with mussed hair, more olive skin, no highlighting makeup and cheap eyeglasses, and the brunette became an ashy blonde, prone to wearing unfashionable clothes and her hair in dully-patterned scarves. Danielle had many friends she trusted, and she conferred with them, both within and outside the Lafranges' house. Despite early talk of moving Delphine or both of the women outside Paris, but the threat of being caught trying to leave was considerable, even with the attention that had been shifted to Normandy since the invasion. The truth was, with Danielle's ties to the city, she could be of much more use to her compatriots there than anywhere else, and Delphine, wanting to stay, insisted on being put to use as a doctor's assistant to Dr. Lafrange, once she had healed enough to be more mobile. Although she did not yet have her doctorate, Paris could use all the medical assistance it could get.
Besides that, Delphine filled in Danielle further on her experience with wireless radio and Allied contact codes. Intrigued, Danielle had both sent out Delphine's message as well as she could and, in relatively short order, been able to procure several broken wireless sets and enough parts that Delphine was almost finished putting together a working receiver and transmitter. The project she was working on on her own was trying to duplicate, or approximate, by memory, Cosima's frequency-hopping device. The original had looked deceptively simple, as many works of genius do, but as much as she had learned from her father sharing his hobby with her, Delphine's attentions had always been more turned to medicine and biology than electrical engineering, and she had never seen the device properly unassembled — only whole or dashed into bits. And so, in time, she found herself needing to leave the house to both visit patients and consult with a wireless operator running a short-range pirate broadcast.
Nonetheless, her exposure still had to be limited. It was thus that she found herself several times a week below the streets of the City of Light, dwarfed by the sheer volume of skulls and bones in the ossuaries of the city of darkness that was the catacombs of Paris.
The Germans had control of some areas of the Empire of the Dead, that was true, but their knowledge could not rival that of the native French.
Delphine became used to travelling in near-complete darkness, and to distinguishing the sounds of settling earth and bones and the scrabble of insects and rodents from the sounds of whispers and footfalls. The cool of the crypts was welcome, even, compared to the temperatures above as the city settled into the true summer heat — both in terms of actual temperature and the desperate fervor of the Germans trying to hold onto their occupied territories.
She had been tending to a young girl with a fever one evening when word came of a sweep, and she had to enter the catacombs from a different point than usual. The maps had been imprinted in her head by her brothers in the Resistance as a matter of course, but the maps weren't always complete or exact as it was, and navigating in person in an area one hadn't visited was a challenge. Delphine kept her fingers molded closely around the lens of her electric torch, allowing only slivers of light beyond the faint, blood-red glow of her illuminated fingers' flesh to penetrate the gloom as needed.
A murmur ahead drew her to a stop. There was a distant flicker of light from a passage before her, and slowly the sound of men's voices talking quietly. She glanced around quickly and backed up to a perpendicular passage. There was a mound of skeletal remains there that might provide cover from sight if not peered at too carefully, and she edged behind it.
The voices were coming closer and it was with some relief that she was able to make out that they were speaking in French. Pieces of their conversation drifted to her.
"… there's nothing wrong with potatoes," said one man. "They are good solid, food, filling and good for you. Let's not forget how poorly the Irish did without them."
"I agree, Bertrand, but he says the plan makes sense," the other man replied. "We don't have enough medicine and we don't have enough food, but at least we get some basic rations to eat. With the way things are going, it's no surprise the Germans are being stingy with what medicine they have. Besides, Jean-Paul says his family has been raising mushrooms for centuries, and they always knew some properties beyond what you could eat."
"Well, I'd like to eat some good mushrooms, too. Not to mention, thicken my soup with bread. Growing fuzzy things on it instead seems criminal."
Fuzzy things? If Delphine was hearing correctly, were they referring to growing mold and other fungi to make medicines… even antibiotics? That was something that required knowledge and precision beyond being able to find and grow the right kinds. Giving someone the wrong or unrefined antibiotics could kill them as surely as not treating an infection at all. She didn't know how they had gotten started on such a project, but she felt she had to give her advice to them on the matter, as long as they weren't collaborationists.
Delphine thought that one of the men's voices sounded familiar. It could be that he was Claude, a farmer and smuggler who had been storing and moving foodstuffs to resistance fighters and people in need via the old mining tunnels and crypts. Danielle had introduced them once, briefly. They were coming closer, and she had to decide whether or not to reveal herself to them. She chewed her lip and listened further.
"Well, you'll have your vote. And I know we're all hungry. But I think more of us are at risk of infection and sickness than starvation, at least while we've got the black market and the initiative to help the needy from the boss, and also that Fournier woman."
That decided it for her. She let out a low whistle, and spoke softly, so as not to startle them too much.
"Brothers, hello. I work with Danielle Fournier and Docteur Lafrange. 'Blessent mon cœur…'"
"'D'une langueur monotone,'" they automatically responded, surprised, but completing the code.
She noticed that they each had old shotguns with them, but their worried expressions revealed that they realized that not only had they been snuck up on, but their old-fashioned guns were even less useful when they didn't have them at the ready. Delphine gave them a soft smile as reassurance.
"I'm sorry to startle you, but I heard you talking about a project to grow fungi," she gently prompted.
"Ah, yes," the one she knew as Claude rubbed the back of his neck. It did him little good, as his hands were filthy with ground-in soil, and the grime formed a dark smear on down to his collar. The other man, Bertrand, the one who preferred his mushrooms as food, looked her up and down.
"Well, Mademoiselle, I haven't seen you around here before," he grumbled, "you should be more careful. You could have gotten yourself shot."
Delphine chose not to reveal that she had a concealed handgun on her person, as well.
"Delphine, is it?" Claude asked. "I hope Madame Fournier and the Lafranges are well. Were you sent with a message for Pascal? He's not here now, but we can bring it to him." He licked his lips. "I know he was going to visit at the Lafranges' house soon and tell her about the project. We've just been so busy…"
Delphine nodded, as if in understanding. She knew the truth was probably more complicated. If she recalled correctly, Pascal was known as a mid-level leader in "Colonel" Rol's communist French resistance faction. Despite all working toward the end of ejecting the Germans from France, resistance members in differing groups often did not see eye-to-eye with others regarding the political future of a free France. This particular group wanted a France liberated from the inside by the workers, and run thereafter with a communist government, probably headed by Rol. They seemed hard-line, perhaps even more committed to their political ends than to a speedy liberation.
Danielle had once mentioned that she had worked with anarchists, communists, Spanish republicans, maquis, Allied spies, refugees, and all sorts of other groups in the resistance, but trusted Rol least, as she felt he cared less about the safety of Parisians than having himself appear to be the liberator of the capital. She was more inclined to work with the factions who supported General de Gaulle, who was working with the British and Americans to access Paris from the West, where his regiments had landed in Normandy earlier in the month. They nominally wanted a democracy, although everybody knew that if de Gaulle succeeded in liberating the capital city, he would immediately become the government leader. Even if he had egotistically implied that he, himself, was the heart and representative of free France, de Gaulle had opposed the French government's armistice with the Germans, and had organized tirelessly to coordinate both the resistance within France and the remnants of the French Army he commanded, which had been fighting in defense and support of French holdings and interests in Africa and Indochina, as well as now advancing from the West with the Allies towards Paris. To Danielle, the greater likelihood of military success and a democratically elected government, whatever party ended up dominating it, made the Gaullists the better bet.
Much of this political maneuvering went right through Delphine's head, not because it was beyond her, but because she hadn't been privy to it during most of her mission inside the Nazi government, and she was, frankly, not up to speed. She took in what she could, particularly from Danielle, but in her fatigue from her torture and recovery, putting one foot in front of the other to physically help the sick and wounded and lend the knowledge of wireless operations was her focus, and what she committed to. In this situation, she didn't know what these two men, at least one a former farmer, rather than a resident of the city, believed in and held as goals, but she knew she had to be careful to put them at ease, despite her obvious friendship with Danielle Fournier. It was important that she find out about this project for possibly creating medicines, and she didn't want any resistance infighting to stop her. So, she put on a sweet smile and shrugged, palms up, as if unknowing and unconcerned about any issues between Pascal and her housemates.
"Actually, I'm in this section because I was treating a sick child nearby, and there was a sweep. I'm not on any further mission. I'm just a medical assistant and a scientist, so the uses of fungi interest me. Could I possibly see what you're doing?"
The two men glanced at each other.
"I would love to think we might be able to help the ill more, and it sounds as though you two are doing such good work for the people," she softened her eyes at them, and saw Bertrand adjust his collar.
"I… suppose we have time for that," Claude finally offered, after a moment. "It may be that you can make more sense of it than we can."
Bertrand nodded tersely. "Yes, but stay close and don't wander off. These tunnels can be dangerous, and we've been sworn to protect our section."
They led her further down the passages, making a few turns that she worked to lodge in her memory. Eventually, they came to a dark archway, and stepped into a cavern.
Claude was moving in the near-blackness, Bernard keeping his lantern aimed at their feet. There was the pop-hiss of a match strike, and a glow grew as Claude lit some larger lanterns hanging from beams further in the room. Delphine took in a breath. The space was large, much larger than she'd expected from the size of the doorway.
She turned her head to take in what the light revealed. There were bins and boxes, some closed, some empty, some filled with supplies like the aforementioned potatoes, as well as onions, beets, carrots, and the inevitable Jerusalem artichokes. It was impressive, seeing the amount of food they had amassed, stored, and were distributing under the Nazis' very noses.
But Claude had walked further, and was motioning for her to follow, while Bertrand stayed, watchful, at the doorway.
When she caught up, he was leading her to an actual door, which opened into a smaller passageway. She could see in his lamplight that it was angled upward, part ramp, part stairs, towards the surface. She turned on her flashlight, adding to the area they could see.
Claude nodded and proceeded upward. As they rose, she began to see cubbies and shelves dug into the walls. They held pots, different kinds of earth and stones, mulch, loam and rotting logs. Many seemed empty, but plants were growing on others — vines, roots, mushrooms and fungi of various types and stages of growth. She felt the air warming as they climbed, and other cubbies revealed their contents: melons, citrus peels, breads, most baring a coating of one type of mold or another. There were thermometers spaced here and there, bags of supplies on the stairs, watering cans and misters. Everything was clearly well-tended and organized. She was biting her lip at the sight of it all.
"Close your eyes," Claude whispered, and suddenly, before she could fully lower her lids, he was pulling an angled door open, and sunlight was flooding her vision. She looked back down the passage to let her eyes adjust, and noted that the cubbies had been carved out at different projections, with more or less overhang to each, to let in varying amounts of light.
"Brilliant," she whispered to herself, but Claude heard her, and looked proud.
"Yes, it's been a lot of work. We were already growing edible mushrooms, but then came those crazy Americans, and suddenly everything was very precise…"
"Americans?" Delphine blurted. "Who are they?"
"Ah, two of them, scientists, a man and a woman. I don't know them well, only seen the lady twice. The fellow, Monsieur Smith, he's also a soldier. Very nice, but very serious about this, especially lately."
"This Monsieur Smith, he oversees this? What does he do with the samples you're growing?"
"He harvests them into, into glass vials and… petri dishes? They have created a small laboratory somewhere. I, myself, have used an ointment they made on a deep cut. It healed so fast, no problems."
Delphine's hand had risen to touch her mouth. American scientists hidden in Paris, actually making antibiotics! It was almost too good to be true.
"What makes them crazy?" she asked, looking closely at a shelf covered in sod that appeared to have tiny, fruiting buds on it. "This is wonderful. Can I meet them?"
"Crazy? Well, Americans, you know…" Claude made the pained face of a person whose judgments were simple trying to explain them. "They're not too bad, just odd, I guess. Their French is not so good. The woman is better, though very intense, very bossy. I haven't seen her around for a while, though." He shrugged.
Delphine caught the undertone indicating that any woman smarter than him giving instructions might be seen as bossy. She had made the right decision in appearing as guileless and nonthreatening as possible when she'd met these men.
"Ah, I see," was all she said. She looked at him hopefully, pleadingly. He cleared his throat.
"Well, you might be able to meet him, but he's gone back to his lab for the day, and I can't take you there. But I can see if he is interested, get a message to him, I guess."
Delphine smiled again, a bit more spontaneously, this time, and thankfully.
"I would very much appreciate that," she told him, and related what she wanted him to say.