This is the penultimate chapter. I hope you had fun reading so far. Soon, things will come to a head and we will find out if things can ever go back to the way they were.

At two o'clock the next morning, Spock returned from his night-time duties to find Henry and Thompson in the bunker. The Lieutenant looked grim.

"The Somme," he grumbled at Spock's raised eyebrow. "Fifty-seven thousand casualties already since yesterday."

Spock pursed his lips. "British or overall?"

Henry shrugged. "Well, British, of course. Why would we count the Germans?"

Thompson smiled sadly. "Because they had mothers waiting for them, too. They lived and loved and were loved, just as we."
Henry awkwardly shuffled around on his chair. "Oh, right. I forgot."

"Seeing as we're fighting them, I'd say that's how the higher powers want it." Thompson looked up at Henry and sighed. "Please forgive my cynicism, Forester. It's the news from the Somme that's putting me in a mood."

"You are forgiven," Henry muttered quickly, appearing to wonder whether he even was in a position to extend forgiveness to a superior officer.

When he left to catch an hour of sleep a while later, Thompson turned to Spock with a sheepish look. "I shouldn't have said that," he muttered. "Not in front of Henry. With you, it doesn't matter. But with most of the boys, I'm careful of voicing criticism. Keeping the morale high and so on, you know?"

"I doubt Henry Forester will hold it against you," Spock said.

"No, I don't think he will. None of them would." Thompson shook his head. "I was forgiven, he said."

"And that bothers you?"

"No. Well, yes. I don't…" Edwin sighed and slumped down on a chair. "I'm sorry, Jack."
Spock raised an eyebrow. "What for?"

"I am sorry I hit you when we thought Jim had died. I overreacted. But not because anything you were saying was wrong but because it was too true. Clark didn't deserve to die, and it was my fault he did."

"That is not at all what I said," Spock protested. "I was merely elaborating that he was not a coward and did not deserve to die. You took that personally and slapped me. It was an emotionally loaded situation." He sat down opposite the Lieutenant. "And I forgive you. I already did."

A smile flitted over Thompson's face at his answer, but it was quickly replaced by a shadow. "Well, I don't feel forgivable. Not with what I'm doing. To people like Henry. And with what I already did." He met Spock's curious but gentle gaze and drew a shaky breath. "Tell me, Jack. If there's a God in Heaven, how shall He forgive me for sending His children off to die?"

Spock cleared his throat. "The same way you shall forgive yourself," he answered after a pause. "We make our choices with the information we have. When you accepted your position, you did not yet know how many would die under your command."

"But what if we continue standing by that choice when it proves unsavoury?" Edwin threw up his hands in a helpless gesture. "Am I not just as guilty as those who made that choice knowing the extent of lives ended under their command?"

Spock tilted his head. "You are committing a logical fallacy. If you were not here, leading these men into battle, there would be someone else, and they would still die. You are not killing them, the bullets do. You are only responsible for the deaths dealt out directly by your hand."

"But do I not condemn my men to die just the same by my position as their leader?" His eyes were burning into Spock's imploringly.

The Vulcan raised an eyebrow. "If you want to see it that way, I suggest you move up the ranks in your search for the person at fault. You can be a part of and a victim of the system at the same time." He shook his head and calmly answered Edwin's look. "You did not start the war, you were sent here just as they were, forced to subscribe to a common cause, rallying to fight the war to end all wars."

"That doesn't exist," Edwin whispered and averted his eyes. "Only if this one never ends. Only then will it be the last one."

"But it will end." Spock pursed his lips and figured that for the purpose of cheering Edwin up he might draw inspiration from what he knew the future was. "England will survive," he continued, "and so, eventually, will Germany, France, and the States. Some borders may shift, some be erased, some others drawn, and no party will escape unscathed. Europe will never be the same. But there will be places her people call home, and there will be peace again."

Edwin's eyes found his again, and he gazed at him with bemused relief. "How do you do that, Jack? How can you see that bright future when we are stuck in living hell?"

"It is a constant of human existence that nothing is constant," Spock replied calmly. "Nothing apart from change. It is a logical consequence that the state we are in will change one day."

"What would I do without you?" Edwin shook his head. "Still. I don't like sending my men to die."

"And that," Spock answered with a solemn nod, "is the very reason you are forgivable. We know, all of us. Clark knew. He never blamed you."

He felt he was talking in vain and that there was nothing he could do to make Thompson's burden lighter. But at the mention of the late Merriweather, he smiled.

"That's what I tell myself. And that he knew I tried to help."

"And you did." Spock nodded back at him. "The fact that it did not save his life does not change that. For as long as you could, you were there for him. And I think his end would have come much sooner and perhaps more gruesome if you had not." He cleared his throat and leaned forward in his chair. "Edwin, you were bemused at my attempt to save Chris Chapel, to try to save people as long as there is a chance. But many a man would have given Clark Merriweather up long ago. You never did. You are anything other than unforgivable."

Thompson only managed to nod stiffly, but this time, his smile remained, and when he left a while later, a spark had returned to his eyes, and Spock thought that maybe it was not the exact words that mattered but the fact there was someone to exchange such words with.

The next two evenings in the bunker, Thompson seemed more positively inclined again. He made tea for Spock, told Cooper off for trying to bribe Elliot into giving him honey, and even shared some of his personal supply of whisky with Franklin Jones.

Where the Lance Corporal had once seemed aloof to Jim, he seemed to have loosened up and even appeared to enjoy cracking a joke now and then with the younger privates, perhaps because it was them who had been closest to his brother.

In the early morning hours of the 4th of July, Jim rolled out of bed to see if there was something to do around the trenches. It was a few hours until they would need to report to the front-line trench, but he knew that if he went back to bed, he would fall asleep again and perhaps oversleep. It had been years since anything like that had happened to him, but he wasn't in the mood to risk experiencing it in an active war zone. And he was expected to sleep little and work much, after all.

Spock was already kneeling in the communication trench, fixing the duckboards, and Jim joined him.

"It's Independence Day," he remarked after a while, sitting back on his heels to catch a breath.

Spock did not look up. "Not for us."

"What's that?" Jim smirked. "For someone who insists on being Vulcan, you've accepted being British pretty fast."

"I was including you in my statement," Spock returned, glancing up at him while hammering a nail into a new board. "The mood around here is far from jubilant. And the Americans will only join the war next year. Us celebrating Independence Day could only lead to confusion."

"I didn't mean I want to celebrate it," Jim countered indignantly. "I was trying to make small talk."

Spock stopped his hammering and straightened up from his bent position, resting his hammer over his knees. A minute smirk darted over his face. "After all these years, Jim, you could know my stance on that."

Jim shrugged. "One can try starting a new habit."

"Hm." Spock pursed his lips. "Very well, one can try." He hammered another nail into the duckboards then looked up again. "What is your favourite food being consumed on Independence Day?"

Jim shook his head. "Minutes to think about it, and you come up with that?"

Spock cocked his eyebrow. "I thought irrelevancy was a central aspect of small talk."

Jim smiled. "Forget it, Spock. You don't need to make small talk."

With a smug look that told Jim he already knew that, the Vulcan returned to fixing the boards, and Jim continued working as well. He would need to ask Spock about Vulcan holidays some day, but for now, he preferred to share his presence in silence.

The night wore on, and the time to stand to came. Thompson had told them that today they would attack again. And sure enough, a moment after stepping in unison onto the fire step, the whistle sounded, and they went over the top, into the morning fog.

Jim and Spock ran forward with the others in their section. On the left of them was Corporal Taylor's section, and on the right was Lance Corporal Barrow's. Corporal Dawson's section had been ordered to enact Spock's tactical proposal, seeking cover in the nearby wood to attack the Germans from behind while they were advancing.

"Does giving military advice not clash with your concept of non-interference?" Jim called over to him, following it up with firing some shots up ahead.

Luckily, Spock was to his right side, otherwise, the intermittent firing noises would have prevented him from even knowing he was being spoken to. "This is not novel enough of an idea to leave serious traces!" he called back.

Jim smirked to himself. "Oh, and you know that how?"

Spock aimed his rifle and fired. "I took an educated guess!"

"You guessed?" Jim turned and grinned. "Why, the last time that happened was when the whales—"

Another volley of shots rang out. Jim's grin morphed into an expression of pained surprise.

"Jim!"

Spock bolted to his side and caught him as he sank to the ground, blood spreading rapidly from the hole in his chest.

For an instant, he was aware of his error, and then it did not matter, as another bullet found its target. He felt a sharp pain shoot through his chest. When the volley ceased, there was a small hole where other people had a heart.

But his eyes were on Jim, and he pressed his hands on his wound as he knelt next to him, feeling his heart flutter underneath.

"Spock," Jim gasped, his hands grabbing his arms. His hazel eyes looked up at him bright with fear but also grim realisation. "Promise me something," he burst out. "Find a way out of here. If anyone can do it alone, it's you."

Spock nodded, his eyes flickering to his hand between the fingers of which red blood was continuously streaming forth. He pushed thoughts of his own injury aside. If Jim had not noticed, it did not matter. Not for a couple of moments. "I will," he said. "I promise." He granted himself this prevarication. He and Jim were on the same way out.

"Can you do something else for me?" the dying man muttered.

"Anything."

"Remember." Jim grabbed his hand and squeezed. "Please, remember this."

"Of course, Jim." Spock squeezed back and nodded gently. "For the rest of my life."

Jim smiled, and with a sigh, he closed his eyes. His hand slackened and slipped to the ground.

Spock released the pressure from his wound, having instinctively tried to staunch the bleeding all this time, despite knowing he would die.

His head swam, and with a sigh of frustration, he sat down in the mud next to the corpse of his last remaining friend. The front of his tunic was wet, and a burning hot sensation was radiating from his middle. Shuddering suddenly, he looked down for the first time since being shot, being presented with the rather disquieting prospect of watching himself bleed out. If he had not been shot—if only he had not been mortally wounded himself—Jim's dying wish might have been granted.

"I'm sorry," Spock whispered.

It was as if the identity tags of their dead friends had saved him just to be able to be there for Jim in his last moments. Spock knew this was idle fancy and wondered if delirium was already setting in if he had such silly thoughts. He wasn't sure. But what he was sure about was that looking down at Jim lying there dead and slowly feeling the loneliness creep in, he did not care much that he had been shot, too. He pressed his hand against his chest as if to stop the pain. Not from the bullet wound but the other pain.

The battle noises had moved further away, and for the moment, it was just him in the fog. He was alone. The world began to feel very empty. He was alone. Far from home and all alone in a world that would not become the one he had known for another three centuries. But there was a small, entirely human comfort. For this, too, Earth, was home, even now. There was a certain irony to it that he, who had always sought to find a balance between being human and Vulcan, had been born on one planet and would die on the other. A balance, indeed, if slightly macabre.

Spock closed Jim's eyes and took both his hands in his, while he still had the power to move his limbs. He could feel the life draining out of him second by second. When he looked down his front, he could see blood continuing to seep through his tunic, colouring the khaki dark green.

He raised his eyes and glanced around him, looking if there was a crater that he could hide in so that his otherness, his alien nature, was never discovered. But there was no crater close enough, no hiding place that he could still reach in this state, and he lowered his gaze again to his dead friend.

From what appeared to be far away, he heard the command to retreat. Nearby, fellow soldiers hurried past, back toward the trenches, but he did not move.

Then, a voice broke through the haze that was beginning to engulf his mind, as someone called out to him.

"Jack! Retreat! Come on!"

He raised his heavy head and saw, some metres in front of him, Lance Corporal Franklin Archibald Jones, standing amid the bodies and craters.

"Get up, and run!" he shouted over the receding noise.

Spock could barely see him, the air made misty by gunpowder and morning fog alike. He shook his head. "No, Archie," he called back weakly. "I'll stay. Farewell. And have a good life."

A moment passed during which the other man's gaze travelled from his face down his blood-stained tunic and up again to meet his eyes. If he thought anything of the unusual colour of his blood, it did not show. Instead, he only nodded solemnly and raised his hand in a silent salute. Then, after one last look, he turned on his heels and ran, leaving Spock to gaze into the mist into which he had vanished.

It seemed strangely fitting to the occasion, how the fog was enveloping him as his strength was waning. After all, had not King Arthur himself, after having been mortally wounded, been taken into the fog, towards an island to recover there and return at a time of need? The once and future king? Spock sighed. His thoughts felt sluggish and his eyelids heavy. He was too tired to think about mythology now. He couldn't even recall the name of the island Arthur had been taken to. In any case, he was sure no magic island was awaiting him.

He looked down at Jim and slumped down next to him, to wait. He coughed as he hit the ground. The pain of his wound was excruciating, but it was strangely bearable. He knew it would be over soon, and he accepted it, no, embraced it.

With another ragged breath, he rested his head on the ground. As he did so, his eyes fell on a red flower growing from the battle-worn earth, just between him and Jim's body. It was a wonder it had not been squished or trampled. He smiled at this little resilient remnant of beauty amid all this suffering. It was a poppy as it was often seen on the Western Front and in the future would be worn on Armistice Day as a symbol of remembrance. The dew was settling on its delicate petals, leaving it glittering in the morning sun and making the flower head droop as if it was bowing in silent tribute to the fallen.

Spock was still smiling. There was no one here to judge, and he could not bring himself to care anymore either. His hand found Jim's wrist, and he closed his fingers around it. No pulse was beating, and the flesh was cold. Spock drew one shaky breath and turned on his back while he still could, as he did not want to die with his face in the mud. Through the fog, he could see specks of the sky—blue morning sky, illuminated by the rising sun and the promises of a new day.

"Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream," he muttered, a soft chuckle escaping him as he remembered a campfire, a mountain, and beans shared with his friends.

Then, just as he wanted to close his eyes to await his end, he felt his head being lifted up and his helmet taken away.

He blinked sluggishly up into Franklin's face. He was bending over him and slowly knelt behind him so that his head came to rest in his lap.

"The fog's thick enough. It's safe enough to stay," he murmured as if he was reading his thoughts and brushed a strand of hair from his forehead.

He still did not mention the colour of his blood nor the fact that he was still, if barely, alive even though he had been shot straight through the chest. And Spock did not mention it either. He was much too weak, and the very fact that Franklin was here told him almost all he needed to know.

"Why?" he rasped. He coughed, and the taste of copper filled his mouth.

"Whyever should I not?" Franklin asked simply and smiled down at him. He reached out to take one of his hands, the one that wasn't holding Jim's wrist, in his. "You're my friend, Jack. And you don't deserve to die alone. No one does."

Spock smiled back up at him, feeling a strange fondness for this man of history all of a sudden and squeezed his hand with the little strength that remained. He noticed then that the guns had stopped. Silence had fallen on the battlefield, silence but for his own laboured breaths. The fog seemed to grow ever thicker, but he knew it was probably just the shadows creeping in as his senses failed him. The throbbing pain of his wound had become almost negligible as unconsciousness began to envelop him.

Franklin's face blurred in front of him as he bent down and put one hand against his cheek. "My dear, dear Jack," he whispered. "I'll never forget you."

Spock took a rattling breath, smiled back at Franklin once more, then closed his eyes and gave himself over to oblivion.

In the bunker that day, Lieutenant Thompson and Lance Corporal Jones swore an oath of silence.

Franklin had scooped Lance Corporal Grayson up in his arms and thrown him over one shoulder, groaning under the dead weight. But Jack had brought Eli back once, and he thought he owed him as much. Twice he had almost fallen, but he had struggled on. He had brought him directly to the bunker, placed him on some crates, and draped his blanket that he had thrown over the chair when he had returned from fixing the duckboards over him.

The fog had still been thick enough so that they could risk recovering their dead. No one would attack them with such poor visibility. Anyone that would was busy collecting their own fallen comrades. And so, Franklin had brought Jim back, too.

When he returned to the bunker, Lieutenant Edwin Thompson was there, looking like he was just recovering from the biggest shock of his life, bent over a figure that lay covered with a linen shroud on his desk.

"Who is it?" Franklin asked, after laying the body of Jim Kirk on the ground near Jack's.

"Chris." Thompson was pale, and his hands were quivering as he held onto the edge of the shroud.

"I am sorry, Edwin. I know you held him in high regard."

Thompson nodded curtly. "There's something else," he muttered.

"What is it, sir?" Franklin stepped next to him, wondering if he should tell him to sit down or offer him tea. The recovery of Chris's corpse seemed to have affected him harder than expected.

"I wanted to prepare the body for the burial myself, thought it was the least I could do." Edwin swallowed hard. "Look for yourself." He pointed a shaking finger at the covered corpse. "I think I can trust you to keep a secret. Just a word of warning." He held up a hand. "It's not a pretty sight after all those days. She's covered for more than one reason."

"She?" Franklin stared at Thompson, who seemed to have lost the ability to speak. And so, he gently took the edge of the linen sheet and pulled it down. He took one look, and suddenly a lot of things that he had never dared to question made sense. He covered her again and slumped down on a crate next to Jack Grayson's body while Thompson remained standing, staring down at the shroud beneath which lay the body of the woman they had known as Christopher Chapel.

"She loved him," Franklin murmured, remembering a conversation in the bunker, shortly before she had died.

"Who? What?" Thompson blinked perplexedly, appearing to have been lost in thoughts of his own.

"She loved Jack. At least they cared a lot for each other."

"Hm. Bring him here, will you?" Thompson said, still not taking his eyes off the shroud. "I have a lot of questions for him."

"He's already here." Franklin shook his head and smiled bitterly. "And he can never answer your questions."

"What do you mean?" Thompson raised his head, looking at him for the first time since he'd entered. Then, he narrowed his eyes. "What's that green stuff on you?"

Franklin bit his lip and, considering Thompson had just trusted him with a secret, decided to share one with him in turn. He shrugged weakly. "Jack's blood."

"What? You're joking." Edwin's eyes flickered to the body that lay covered on the crates. But still, he asked, "Where is he?"

In place of a reply, Franklin threw back the blanket, revealing Jack's corpse.

Edwin Thompson stepped around the table and sunk to his knees next to him. "Good Lord," he whispered. And he didn't know himself if it was because of the green blood or because Jack was dead.

He had half a mind to shake him and tell him to stop this nonsense. But it was a silly thought, wishful thinking. Jack Grayson was, undeniably, dead. Edwin had seen too many corpses to doubt this even for a second. He wished he could, to hold on to that oh-so-beautiful, oh-so-naïve feeling of hope just a little longer. But he couldn't. Gone was the spark from Jack's eyes, that inner light that though it may have flickered had seemed to guide him on his way, a deep wisdom that Edwin had often felt should be forever closed to him, a wisdom that he felt far surpassed his own. And then again, he had seemed heart-achingly innocent and helpless at times. Edwin had felt sympathetic to his position as an outsider, but he had also felt strangely comforted by it. If people as wise as Jack could mistakenly lead on the innkeeper's daughter for a full day, then he, Edwin Thompson, could be a little easier on himself.

Jack's eyes had often looked confused—bewildered—but always with kindness on the goings-on around him. Even in his heaviest criticism, there had never been a hint of dislike or any holier-than-thou judgement. Even then, he had looked on his fellow men with kindness.

But now his eyes were empty, blank, devoid of any sign that this body had once been a living human being but for the memory of the warmth that they had held on Edwin's darkest days.

He let his gaze wander over Jack Grayson's body, once again noting the blood. The front of his tunic was soaked, the green liquid clearly having emanated from a bullet hole in the very centre of his torso. A trickle of blood had run from his mouth, too, pooling at one of his pointy ears. Edwin reached out and gingerly wiped it away with his sleeve.

To Franklin's horror, the Lieutenant then made a strange choking sound and a single tear spilt from his eyes and rolled down his cheek as he bent over Jack. He made no effort to hide it and Franklin averted his eyes.

Even if he hadn't, Edwin likely would not have cared, too absorbed was he in trying to come to terms with this loss that was hurting more than he felt it should. His own words to Jack haunted him. He wouldn't be able to deal with it as long as the world was still falling apart. Something like that he had told Jack when he had said he was dealing with Jim's supposed demise. And coming to terms with it was a whole other story. For now, the pain would stay, and he would carry it around to, someday, make peace with losing Jack, losing his Clark, and losing Jim, Leonard, Chris, Paul, Eli, Henry, Angus, William, and all the others whose life was ended under his command.

"I thought we had more time," Edwin whispered as he took Jack's face between his hands.

He was surprised that he did feel it this keenly, after all these deaths. But he had always assumed Jack would survive. He had already seen him and Chris live with him after the war, for years and years to come. They would have witnessed his and Mary's family grow and would have been a part of the family in their own right. His offer for them to go into service and take up positions at his house had been genuine. He would have given them a place to stay even without working for him, but people had to make their money somehow. And, looking at Jack, taking him on as a servant, would have been his only chance to earn some money, outside of more illicit activities. But all that was gone now, all the prospects, potentials, and possibilities of a lifetime, wiped away by a single bullet.

As he took a deep, albeit shaky, breath, Edwin wondered if Jack had known how much he had liked him. Something told him, though, that he had. Even though Edwin wished that he had told him.

"You'll take over as leader of Kirk's section," Thompson said to Jones, after some long moments of silent contemplation, his voice having returned to his habitual tone of giving orders. But his eyes were still fixed on Jack's cold and lifeless face that he was cradling in his hands. "Consider this your field promotion to corporal. You deserve it. I know you're not supposed to command men you served alongside. Usually, you'd be sent somewhere else or someone to command the section would be brought in, but no one's available or qualified enough, and, as only four of the original section remain, it doesn't matter anyway." He sighed, and when he continued, there seemed to be a hint of hope in his voice. "But on the matter of numbers, I've had a wire that we've got reinforcements coming in tomorrow morning. I want you to pick a second-in-command, and take good care of the new boys, understood?"
Franklin nodded absentmindedly, slowly realising the weight of the secrets he had become privy to.

"Are you listening, Jones?"

"Yes, sir," Franklin said quickly. "And I choose Thomas Cooper."

"That insolent fellow?" Thompson raised his head, looking rather indignant. "Not Henry Forester?"

"Everybody likes him, he keeps up morale, he is a good fighter, and I trust him."

Edwin shrugged. "You might have a point. So be it." His gaze found the dead man's face once more, and he reached out to pull his eyelids down over the unseeing eyes. Then, he got up from the ground and sat next to Franklin, looking very tired all of a sudden.

"So many questions," he said, sighing deeply, "and no answers."

"The five of them, they knew all this about each other. But they never planned to give answers, and they will have had their reasons," Franklin murmured. "We can only honour their wish for secrecy."

Edwin nodded and extended his hand to Corporal Jones. "I can do that," he said. "In fact, I swear to do it. Hers may be a story to tell after the war, but for as long as the conflict lasts, we shall not tell another living soul. Not about her, not about Jack, whatever his story may have been."

Franklin took his hand and shook it. "I swear it," he answered.

He and Edwin Thompson would keep their silence. They would prepare the corpses for burial themselves. That woman on the table would be buried next to her friends and his brother in a battlefield cemetery, joining them in death just as she had stood by them in life.

"She was one of the most remarkable people I've known." Edwin sighed and leaned back on the crate. "And now I'm wondering if I really did."

Franklin gently rested his hand on the Lieutenant's wrist. "We did know her. We knew her and her friends like they wanted us to know them. That must be enough."

"You're a wise man, Archie Jones. What is it?"

Franklin had frowned suddenly, as something had occurred to him, something he had done away with as silly gossip. He let his eyes wander from Jack over Kirk's corpse back to the body on the table. "Her name," he whispered, "was Christine. That's what her friends called her."

Thompson's face went blank, then assumed an expression of pure astonishment. "How on earth do you know that?"

"Eli told me about a conversation he'd been privy to," Franklin began. "About Chris's former sweetheart called Christine."
"Yes, I remember, I was there." Edwin shook his head. "But I never thought anything of it."

"Well, Eli told me that before you joined them," Franklin continued, "Jack had told Paul that Christine wouldn't like getting to know Joséphine, and then Chris said something about a disguise. That's what started the teasing."

"Well, I'll be damned." Edwin stared back at him, and for a moment Franklin thought he would not believe him. But then he blinked slowly and added, "For whatever reason they kept their secrets, they were damn lucky that not all of the boys are so clever as you, and that you despise gossip so much."

Franklin nodded solemnly. He considered it a matter of honour, if not duty, to not engage in idle talk. It could lead to suffering so quickly and so viciously, even if one did not mean to cause harm. But though he was technically profiting from gossip in arriving at this conclusion, he was absolutely sure that he had just discovered the name of their comrade. A name she had hidden from them and that her friends had only called her in secret. He vowed to remember that name. It had meant so much to four people who had loved her. But the name he would etch on the makeshift cross that would adorn her grave was Chris Chapel, with no indication whether Chris stood for Christopher or Christine. It was only right and safe to do so.

He had a fleeting suspicion that Jack used to be known by another name as well, a name he had unwittingly told him when they had first met. But what he had said back then had sounded so close to 'Jack' that he could neither remember what he might have said nor was he sure if his suspicion was justified at all.

That Jack Grayson's blood had been green no one would believe him, not now, not ever. Not that it mattered, for the knowledge of that would not leave the bunker. He, together with Edwin, was the keeper of their secrets now, and he would not posthumously violate their trust.

Thompson had stood up and was pulling a stack of paper and writing utensils from a crate. "They didn't have anyone left, did they?" he asked, frowning down at the paper. "Do you know of any relatives? Anyone to notify?"

"No, sir. They only had each other." Franklin shrugged, then smiled. "Well, they had us."

Edwin put the paper and utensils back into the crate and sat down again. "They should not have been here," he grumbled.

Franklin raised an eyebrow. "Sir?"

"The five of them. Jim Kirk, Jack Grayson, Leonard McCoy, Paul and Christine Chapel. They seemed more out of place in this war than all the boys out there." He sighed for what seemed like the hundredth time that day. "And God knows they're out of place enough."

"Aren't we all, Lieutenant?" Franklin Jones smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. "We shall make our place in the brave new world that follows, once this tempest has set."

"You read too much, Jones," Thompson huffed with a dry chuckle, then added more seriously, "But you're right." He stood up and moved toward the exit. "Well, come on then, Jones. Once more unto the breach."

To be continued...

This is not the end! There are some questions left unanswered, and this cannot be it, right? The conclusion will follow next chapter.