That night, they were awoken by screaming.

Leonard McCoy almost fell out of bed, only realising after a second of disorientation that his roommates were all right.

The screams carried on, though, anguished cries piercing the calm of the night from some rooms over.

Without a word, Leonard scrambled out of bed as Jim and Spock did the same, and he stumbled after them out of the door. They met Christine and Pavel in the hallway, looking similarly ruffled and perplexed, and followed the screams to investigate.

"Can't a man have one good night's sleep around here?" Leonard grumbled and promptly walked into Spock, as he had stopped in front of the door leading to the room Lieutenant Thompson and Sergeant Merriweather shared. The screams were coming from inside, interrupted by sobs.

Spock exchanged a look with Jim standing on the other side of the door who shrugged and turned the doorknob to enter.

The others followed, but they all stopped in the doorway.

The screams were emanating from Merriweather who, entangled in his bedsheets, was tossing and turning, his hands clamped over his ears.

Edwin Thompson was kneeling at his bedside, frantically trying to calm him down. But Merriweather did not let himself be restrained by Edwin's hands grasping at his shoulders, nor did he seem to hear his desperate pleas.

McCoy pushed past the others to kneel next to the Lieutenant.

"Please help!" Thompson burst out, directing his pleas at Leonard, registering the others only from the corner of his eye.

Merriweather suddenly shot up in bed and grabbed Thompson by the shoulders. "Tell my mother I love her!" he cried.

"You can tell her yourself," Edwin answered desperately, "next time you're home."

Clark Merriweather only shook his head and fell back onto the bed. "No," he whimpered, clawing at the bedsheets and at Thompson. "No, I can't." His dilated eyes fixed on Thompson. "Help me," he sobbed. "Please. I'm sorry."

Edwin Thompson looked on baffled, and the others could see he had no idea what to do. "You're not making sense, Clark," he murmured.

Clark, to the shock of all present, laughed. It was a cold, lifeless laugh and his eyes were unfocused, staring into empty air. They remained that way when the fit ended, and he did not seem to notice any of them as he lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, breathing hard.

"I'm sorry," Leonard whispered. "I can't do anything."

Edwin nodded, staring down at Merriweather. "I know." He raised his head to look at the others standing in the doorway. "Not a word of this to the men," he said.

After giving him their word, they left him there, kneeling on the floor next to Merriweather, and went to bed again themselves but, shaken as they were from the event, did not sleep well.

When Clark Merriweather passed their table in the morning, exiting from the back room where he had taken his breakfast with Thompson, he seemed even more out of sorts than usual. He wasn't wearing his cap, and his thin hair fell on his forehead in unkempt strands, making him appear like some sort of exotic bird.

"Sergeant!" Jim greeted him. "Everything all right?"

"Splendid, boys. Splendid," he mumbled and hurried on. "You just be good, you hear me? Everything's fine."

They looked after him as he left the inn with quick, hectic steps.

"Shell shock," McCoy grumbled as the Sergeant was out of sight.

A sombre silence settled as they realised the implications of that word—an antiquated name for post-traumatic stress disorder—and remembered the pictures of the afflicted soldiers in the history files, the dead stares in the sunken faces of the living not much different from the stares of the dead.

For most of the day, they were kept busy with drills and exercises. Merriweather was notably absent. And when Eli Jones asked where he was, Thompson said he wasn't feeling well and that they should mind their own business.

After the drills, Pavel promptly left with Marie-Claire, while the others met Lance Corporal Franklin Jones and coerced him to walk around with them. He seemed hesitant at first but was all too eager to come when Chris promised they would stop by the library.

Apart from yesterday, they had barely seen him for the past few days, and Jim asked what he had been up to, to which he merely replied that he had been reading.

Then he turned to Spock who was walking next to him and said, "I have heard you got into trouble with Marie-Claire, Jack," confirming Jim's hunch that the two had barely spoken if at all after he had left them yesterday.

"I would call it miscommunication," Spock said. "She was interested in a romantic relationship of sorts; I was not, but she thought I was. The rest is history."

"Ah yes. Well, all's well that ends well," Franklin said and fell silent.

"Aren't you interested in the details?" McCoy asked as he caught up with them.

Franklin shook his head. "Most certainly not."

Chris chuckled. "Huh, you're not one for gossip, are you?"

"No," he said calmly, "I'd rather talk to people upfront than speculate about them."

Spock did not say anything but nodded slowly, feeling validated again that he liked this man. If he was an illusion, it was remarkable. If they had travelled back in time, which was the possibility Spock currently preferred, he would have to look him up once they were back in the future.

On the way to the library, they stopped by the barber. Chris went inside to follow up on Thompson's advice. And when she came back a while later, Spock had to acknowledge that even though her haircut had barely changed, the barber had done a better job than he and had managed to make her look positively tidy and put-together.

"How do I look?" she asked Spock as they walked on.

"Exceptionally normal," he said and raised an eyebrow, evoking a small smirk from her. "You are feeling better?"

"I am. For the moment," she said, with a cautious glance towards Jones who was immersed in a discussion with Jim ahead. "Thanks. You?"

"Fine."

Chris narrowed her eyes. "Really?"

Spock nodded briefly. "As far as the situation allows, yes."

From behind them came a small snickering. McCoy had listened in to their conversation. "Compared to otherwise, you're in a positively jolly mood. What did you do yesterday?"

Spock raised an eyebrow. "I am not jolly," he protested and followed Jim and Franklin into the library.

They spent some time browsing the books, soon losing themselves in the small labyrinth of shelves. After a while, Spock looked around to find he was alone in the aisle and put the book he had been flicking through, a second edition of Descartes's Discours de la Méthode, back on the shelf to look for some of the others to share his findings. Not so much his findings on Descartes—though his metaphysical meditations on the trustworthiness of reality seemed strangely fitting—but the sobering realisation that nothing seemed out of place. Not a single book dated from the future or contained some inventions or phenomena that would be known only after 1916, which would have been a strong indication of a faulty simulation. No, down to the composition of the paper and the bindings, everything seemed perfectly normal.

Spock found Christine two aisles over, kneeling on the floor, her head tilted towards the shelf. From the other side, they could hear muffled voices.

"You have questionable habits," he whispered and knelt next to her.

"That's me," she whispered back, winked at him and put her finger against her lips to tell him to be quiet.

He sighed, complied, and then tilted his head closer to the shelf to hear what she was hearing. At first, he could not hear anything, which was even less than before, and with a small sigh, he realised that this mission of eavesdropping was doomed to fail as long as he was trying to listen with his deaf ear. He tilted his head the other way and could hear the voices of William Ryder and Henry Forester.

It appeared that William had just finished reading something to Henry as there was a long yawn from the latter, and he grumbled, "Spare me the rest. I don't care for it."

"You like it that little?" William asked, and Spock could imagine him looking down at his stocky companion as he put a book back on the top shelf.

There was a snort of disgust from Henry. "I even prefer your horrid love poems."

William's tone was unchanged, used as he was to his friend's snarky mannerisms. "So you do like them."

"I called them horrid, didn't I?" Henry grumbled. "You write like a lovesick virgin."

There was a dull sound that sounded suspiciously like someone being whacked over the head with a book, followed by Henry's laughter.

"This is history, Harry," they heard William say after the laughter had stopped. "People long dead wrote these lines, expressed their feelings into verse, and we're holding their legacy."

"That's just why I don't like it. I don't want to hear the legacy of some dead person I never knew," the stubborn Henry answered. "I'd rather hear something meaningful."

Now it was William's turn to laugh. "Such as my 'horrid love poems'."

"Well, at least they're by someone I know and not a dead nobody."

"If the one reason you listen to my writing is that you can criticize the author, I should just leave it be," William answered with some exasperation. "Why do I even do that? Why don't you read yourself?"

"Well, 'cause I can't read, Billy."

"And why can't you read?" William retorted. "Right, because you won't learn."

"If I learned, you wouldn't read to me anymore," Henry protested.

They did not hear William's reply as the two moved away, and Spock motioned for Christine to get up from her incriminating position before they were found out.

"I like this," she said as they moved down the aisle.

Spock raised an eyebrow. "Eavesdropping?"

"No, dummy," she said and smirked at his expression of mock affront. "Spending time with you. You're good company. Even for eavesdropping."

Spock nodded gravely. "You seem to take some satisfaction from having involved me in such a frivolous activity."

"No worries," she shot back with a darling smile. "I won't tell the Captain I managed to deprave you." She rounded the corner and came to an abrupt stop when she collided with the person standing there. "Ow!"

"Chris!" Jim exclaimed, rubbing his arm where she had walked into him and then, before she could apologise, asked, "You did what?"

"Depraved him," she said, shrugging innocently back at him and at Leonard who had just joined them from behind the other corner. "Spoiled him. Led him down the path of moral corruption."

Jim turned to the Vulcan who had stopped next to her and smiled. "Did she really, Spock?"

"All too gladly," Spock answered curtly and turned to go in the direction of the exit.

"Don't give me too much credit," Chris grumbled as she followed, "you joined willingly."

Left behind, Jim turned to McCoy. "Did you understand that?"

The doctor shook his head as he looked after them. "No, and at this point, I'm afraid to ask."

The four of them met Franklin Jones on the way to the exit and left together with him. He seemed to have been much too absorbed in a book of his to have noticed anything suspicious regarding his fellow soldiers. Maybe he did wonder what Chris was smirking about, but like so often, Franklin Jones did not ask and seemed little bothered by what was going on around him.

When they arrived back at the inn, Lieutenant Thompson was just exiting.

"Hello, boys," he greeted them, "enjoy the evening. We're leaving tonight."

Leonard shuddered, and it was because of Thompson's words, not because he was cold. The late afternoon was warm and pleasant, and until now, little had reminded them of the battlefields some miles away. But there was no question about where they would be leaving to. The trenches were awaiting them.

They spent the remainder of the evening in the public room of the inn, mingling with the other soldiers, interrupted only by Chris being sent by Thompson to get him some new stationery for mapping, strategic planning, and writing letters.

Notably absent from the inn were Clark Merriweather as well as Marie-Claire and Pavel. When he met them in the big room that evening, he was smiling wistfully, making it all too clear that the two had spent the day together.

"Pavel Chekov!" Jim exclaimed as the younger man stepped through the door, his hands behind his back. "Had a nice day?"

"Yes, sir," Pavel answered, blushing lightly.

"What have you got there?" McCoy asked, pointing at his hands, still hidden behind his back.

"Oh, this is just a little present for Christine." He revealed what looked like a white, rolled-up piece of fabric. But then he held it out to Chris, and they recognised it. "It's a brassiere," he said after some seconds of stunned silence.

"I…" Chris stretched out her arm and took the garment from him. "Why, thank you."

"I thought that as antiquated as this design is, it will be more comfortable than the bandages," Pavel explained.

"Good thinking, Mr Chekov," Spock added. "And it should not adversely influence the disguise as this era seemed more intent on disguising than accentuating anyway. If I am not mistaken, at this time, this was also called a bust confiner."

"Certainly looks like it," Chris mumbled, eying the garment suspiciously.

At first glance, it seemed more like a short vest or tank top, with its neutral design and wide straps. There was a row of little buttons down the front, though, and two stripes of a hard, thick stick-like material that seemed to be fishbone sewn in parallel to it on either side. The back was similar, with the fishbone inserts, diagonally this time, and lacing down the middle.

"Where did you get this?" she asked, suddenly looking at him suspiciously.

Jim straightened up in his chair. "Pavel. You didn't steal it?"
Chekov fidgeted around but managed to look affronted. "No, I did not, sir!"

"Where'd you get it from, then?" McCoy prodded, grinning.

Pavel blushed again. "Well, from Marie-Claire, of course."

Spock raised an eyebrow. "You took Marie-Claire's brassiere?"

"She gave it to me!" Pavel frowned indignantly at his superior officer. "I would never resort to theft, not even for Chris." He lowered his gaze and mumbled, "She gave it to me to have something to remember her by."

"Thanks, Pavel," Chris said, throwing Leonard and Jim, who were doing a very bad job of hiding their amusement a stern look. "I appreciate it, I really do."

"I am glad you do." Pavel sank down on one of the chairs and started to chuckle himself. "It was a crazy plan. We were sitting by a field, and she asked if she could give me anything to remember her by. And I, well, asked for the brassiere."

"And that worked?" Jim asked, slightly astonished.

"Well, yes." Pavel indicated the garment Chris was holding. "It almost didn't. Not because she was unwilling but because we were interrupted just as she was preparing to take it off."
"Interrupted?" Spock raised his eyebrow again.

"Yes, by a man who suddenly burst out of the bushes." Pavel frowned and continued in a quiet, thoughtful tone. "He did not even look at us, even though we were right next to him. And then, without a word, he took off and ran straight into the field, out of sight." He raised his head and added, "I am sure I recognised Sergeant Merriweather. But I am also sure he did not recognise me. He had this glazed look and did not react when I called after him."

"Did you tell anyone?" McCoy asked.

Chekov nodded. "Yes, I told Lieutenant Thompson as soon as I got back. He said not to tell anyone else apart from you, and that was it."

It was a sobering end to their stay in the rear, a herald of the desperation still to come. They left for the trenches that night, with much-needed replacements in equipment and personnel, especially medics. Some new soldiers were assigned to their platoon as well but not so much to make up all the losses, and the section the Starfleet officers served in remained one man down.

Another notable absence was Merriweather. No one said it, but everyone knew that they would not see him again. In whatever way, he was gone. And if Fate was kind to him, if he made it somewhere where he could be at peace, they would not hear of him, either.

They marched for hours, first across the French countryside, then past the artillery line and into the trenches. They left the reserve line behind as well, zig-zagging their way ever forward, nearing the ominous front step by step, mile by mile. And when they reached it two hours before dawn, some of them were immediately sent to lookout duty while most of the others tried to catch some minutes if not perhaps a blissful hour of sleep.

In the bunker, Lieutenant Thompson was poring over maps and strategies, the theory for the battles to come. On a crate nearby, by the flickering light of the Lieutenant's oil lamp, Franklin was reading, while Jim and Spock were standing on either side of Thompson, listening to his plans and supplying as much as they could and dared. Outside, in a hollow in the wall, Leonard and Chris had fallen asleep, their arms wrapped around each other for fear this would be the last time they could do so. And in the fire trench up front, Pavel Chekov was on the lookout with Cooper, their gazes fixed up ahead towards No Man's Land, waiting for the things to come now that they were back in the trenches, back six feet under.