the slappening

a neat little shed…

He never even realised there was a war going on until suddenly his sanctuary was invaded by all these people, and honestly he wishes they’d all just die and leave him in peace.

Christine, for her own part, was suspicious that there may be a thief amongst the staff. She’s noticed little things going missing: food, sometimes bandages (which really annoyed the hell out of her because damn they need this stuff and if someone’s selling it on the black market there’s nothing she can do and it makes her blood boil). She has no real evidence, only a gut feeling and the fact that her calculations aren’t quite adding up, and she knows that that could easily be dismissed as a result of the general chaos of the place.

So she keeps quiet, and watches.

And the night that she finds the strange thin man with the bandaged face and a cut on his arm from having tripped, her first instinct is to say I knew it. And her second is to run for help. It’s her third that she acts on, to help him, and before Erik has time to even realise what’s happening she’s bundling him down a quiet corridor and sitting him down to clean the wound on his arm.

He might be a German spy, but the man’s bleeding and she’s a nurse and instincts are difficult to quell.

Erik, for his part, can only gape at her, unprepared for someone who isn’t screaming or outwardly angry. Before he can stop her she’s reaching for the bandages around his face, and he shies away, but she purses her lips and unwraps them anyway.

And he freezes.

She’s not prepared for it to be a birth deformity and not a wound, but something softens in her heart and as she brushes her fingers against his cheek she thinks she might not turn him in. “Does it hurt?”

“Never.” His voice is softer than she expected, a lilt to it.

And she nods. “You should leave the bandages off. To keep the skin from drying out.” And so you don’t steal them on people who are actually at risk of infections and bleeding to death. “I take it you’re hiding on the draft.”

He half-laughs. “I didn’t even know there was a war until a few weeks ago.”

It’s almost a year since it started. A year of trying to piece broken bodies together in clearing stations and field hospitals, and of helping to bury the ones that couldn’t be saved. She’s not sure whether to believe him or not.

Discretion is the better part of valour. So she tells herself.

“I’ll try to leave some food out for you, but I think it’s best if you stay away from the kitchens.”

They part with nods, with silent agreements to never speak of this again, and Christine goes back to her work, Erik back into hiding.