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liebgotts-lovergirl · 2 years

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Fire On Fire: Chapter 7

(Ch. 6), (Ch. 5), (Ch. 4), (Ch. 3), (Ch. 2), (Ch. 1)

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Summary: In the immediate aftermath of the D-Day jump, Alix navigates confusion + carnage with an unexpected ally and Lewis Nixon confronts the frustrating realities of mentorship. WARNINGS: Death, War stuff, Gentle bullying Dedication: To my dear friend Poet who tirelessly puts up with me & my ramblings. Thank you for believing in my writing when I couldn't even believe in it myself.💖💖💖 Taglist: @latibvles (...)

Contemporary: June 6th, 1944. Normandy, France.

As jump conditions went, it could hardly have been worse. The wind was brutal, howling in Alix’s ears like a banshee as it sent her lurching off-course like a ragdoll being tossed across a playground.

The initial prop-blast as she'd jumped had snapped the chin-strap on her helmet like a twig and she knew it would only be a matter of time until it fell off.

Tracers whizzed past, lighting up the sky as they went, the bright streaks like sparklers missing her by mere inches, and she tensed in a vain effort to avoid them as she drifted precariously earthwards.

All around her, the night sky was dotted with fellow paratroopers and Alix strained her eyes, desperately trying to locate any familiar frames but she couldn't tell who was who in all the chaos.

After what happened to her brother at Pearl Harbor, she'd stopped going to Mass but even still, she mumbled a prayer for the others: for Joe, Skip, and Don, for the rest of Easy, begging whoever was listening to keep them safe.

In the distance, fire and smoke spiraled across the sky as a dark shape hurtled down toward the ground at break-neck speed. It collided with the Earth with a booming noise, sending flames erupting over rows of what she could now see were fields of crops.

Clutching her bag to her body with white knuckles, Alix wondered if that had been one of their planes now engulfed in the inferno below…

No. She pushed the thought out of her mind as quickly as it had entered. She couldn’t afford to think about that. Not now.

The Earth was rushing up at her faster than she'd expected– she hadn't even noticed her chute opening– but as soon as she touched down, Alix knew something was wrong.

Instead of solid ground beneath her, she found herself sinking rapidly into a marsh, her boots already disappearing under the brackish sludge with a squelching noise.

The mud was halfway up her calves now but its pull was so strong and her gear so heavy that she could scarcely lift her legs.

Fighting to keep herself from panicking, Alix began scrambling to remove all unnecessary equipment, starting with her heavy gloves so she'd be able to handle things quicker. Tracers continued to light the sky overhead like nightmarish fireworks, illuminating the marsh in ghostly flashes of white and green.

Thinking quickly, she managed to free her Red Cross satchel and tossed it as far away from the water as she could.

It landed with a thump on a tiny strip of dry land a couple feet in front of her and she breathed a small sigh of relief.

At least the radio and her important documents were safe.

Realizing she'd already lost her helmet somewhere along the way down, she began to struggle with her parachute and reserve next, swearing under her breath as the muddy water surrounding her only continued to rise.

Just above her knees now, it was steadily creeping up her thighs. It would be at waist-height in no time and she would soon be dragged under completely by the weight of her gear.

Reaching down into the brackish swamp-water, she groped desperately for the knife she kept tucked into her boot. Yanking it up out of the mud with all her might, she hurriedly cut herself free from her accidental restraints before sloshing toward the edge of the marsh to grab her bag.

After cleaning her knife off and returning it to its sheath, Alix had almost made it out of the muddy water when she bumped into something solid. As she squinted to inspect it, she felt her stomach drop.

It was the body of a paratrooper, caked in mud and moss, floating face-down in the swamp water, the suspension lines of his parachutes wound around his head and neck like a perverse burial shroud.

His hands were clawed, fingers forever locked around the tangled cords like a vise in his final desperate attempt to loosen their fatal chokehold before the bog water had dragged him under.

Alix felt cold dread seeping into her lungs, chilling her worse than her sopping wet clothes.

What if it was Joe? Her Joe?

He had jumped right before her so locationally, it made sense he would have landed near her and the wind was bad enough to twist up the chutes. The drowned trooper was too tall to be Skip and too lanky to be Don, but he was built like Joe from what she could see-- thin and wiry...

Drawing her lower lip between her teeth as she bit back the twisting nausea in her stomach, Alix steeled herself to actually touch the corpse.

She needed to check.

She needed to know.

Taking a deep breath, she seized the dead man by the back of the collar and hauled him to one side with a grunt so that she could see his shoulder patch, bracing herself to see the Screaming Eagle that would identify him as 101st.

But it wasn’t there. Instead, clear as day, was a patch of twin A’s on a field of red, marking him as 82nd Airborne.

Alix exhaled, a sick sense of relief filling her.

It wasn’t Joe.

Leaving the corpse behind, the young agent grabbed her bag quickly and trudged onward, out of the marsh and into the darkness of the forest surrounding it.

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

Despite the roaring of plane engines above and the scattered pops of machine-gun fire in the distance, the forest itself was eerily silent.

No birds singing or rabbits racing around the forest floor, not even a solitary deer passing through— everything lay virtually undisturbed, save for the soft crunching sounds of pine needles bending under Alix’s boots as she walked.

Her eyes darted from tree to tree, searching each shape and shadow for potential danger, and her fingers hesitated just above the flap of her bag, where her loaded handgun was hidden.

She knew she technically wasn’t supposed to carry it openly– nurses didn’t carry firearms so it was a dead giveaway– but walking around empty-handed when there could be Krauts lurking behind every branch made her feel like a sitting duck and she hated it.

Oh what the hell, she thought, dipping into her bag to grab her handgun. This is war after all.

A sudden rustling in the bushes behind her made her glad she had and she whirled around, gun at the ready, just in time to see a tall figure tramp into view.

“Flash,” she hissed, gun barrel still pointed straight at him until she was sure he wasn’t a Kraut in disguise.

“Thund- Oh Christ, not you.”

It was Lewis Nixon or at least, it was supposed to be. The combination of leaves and pine needles clinging sporadically to his sleeves gave him the appearance of a giant, disgruntled vulture carrying a gun.

“Pleasure to see you too, Lieutenant,” Alix remarked sarcastically as she lowered her weapon and tried to stifle a smirk. "Aren't you supposed to be at headquarters?"

"I'm working on it," Nixon huffed, the cloud of his breath hanging in the frosty air. "My compass got pretty banged up on the way down when—" he began brushing off the assorted foliage attached to his person. "— I landed in a damn tree."

Alix nodded, pursing her lips to keep from laughing out loud.

"Well, lucky for you…"

She paused and dug around in her bag for a second before coming up with a tiny compass disguised as a shirt button, holding it up for Nixon to see. "I have this."

Now Alix wasn't expecting praise from her case officer, not by any means, but she certainly wasn't expecting him to snap at her like he did.

"I don’t need your help, Martinelli,” he responded tersely, his jaw clenched so tightly that it looked painful. "I know where I'm headed."

Alix put her hands on her hips.

What the hell did he have to be irritated about? She was trying to help.

"Sir, it'll be quicker this way," she maintained, waving the compass for emphasis. "So just use it and we can get going."

Nixon jerked his head back, brows snapping together.

"Who the hell is 'We'," he demanded. "There is no 'We'. I signed up to be a case officer, not a babysitter.”

God, did he always have to be this obstinate?

Alix fought to keep her tone level.

"The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we complete our objective," she said, forcing a smile through gritted teeth. "So will you please just use the damn compass?"

"I don't remember asking for your input, Agent."

Now he was actively trying to piss her off and Alix could feel it working.

The agent took a deep breath as she tried to restrain herself.

"Permission to speak freely, sir?" she asked, her emphasis on the last word deliberately caustic, matching his tone.

"Permission denied."

But it was too late.

Before she could stop herself, Alix blurted out, "What the hell is your problem?"

Nixon’s expression darkened.

“Watch yourself, Martinelli," he warned.

But Alix was too fired up to stop now.

If looks could kill, Lewis Nixon would've been dead on the spot.

“Lieutenant, you've been trying to force me to quit for two fucking years now," she all but snarled. "Trying to break me mentally and physically so I couldn't get in the field. But guess what–" She gave a sarcastic sweeping gesture. "Here I am. I made it anyway.”

Nixon's intelligence training had served him well because her case officer had one hell of a poker-face. Despite his crossed arms, he was impossible to read which just infuriated Alix even more.

“Santa Maria," she swore, still gesticulating wildly with her hands. "You have had two whole years to be an asshole! Would it kill you to take tonight off so we can at least get where we need to be going?”

“For the last time, I know where we’re going,” he asserted with an exasperated groan. “And I can get us there without your help!”

“Sir, I don’t know why you hate me so much but we both have our orders, so whatever it is, you’re going to have to —"

The sound of boots crashing through brush behind them interrupted her and the pair both whipped around to see a man in a gray uniform and cloth cap charging through the bushes toward them.

A lone Nazi. He wasn’t heavily armed, by any means– no gun in sight– but the knife he was gripping sure didn’t bode well.

Nixon dropped to one knee, finger paused just above the trigger, waiting for a clean shot from his angle, but Alix was not in a patient mood.

Instead, she ran towards the approaching soldier, her heart pounding in her ears as she allowed him to get within five or six feet of her before squeezing the trigger–

Pow! Pow! Pow!

Blood spattered the nearby leaves like a fine mist and the German crumpled to the dirt with a dull thud, the knife clattering harmlessly out of his hand.

Just steps away from the body, Alix froze, the color draining from her own face as she watched the deep red liquid slowly blooming from under the soldier’s head and body like a morbid carnation.

The grotesque image of the bullets colliding with his skull played over and over in the agent’s mind like a macabre film reel. As the gunshots echoed in her memory, she had an epiphany.

One of the shots had been hers, she realized, but the other two weren’t.

So it must've been...

She looked back at her handler, Lieutenant Nixon, who had already shouldered his rifle and was stalking off in the opposite direction.

Pushing aside a branch, Alix followed him, jogging slightly to catch up with his much longer strides, but he didn't slow down at all.

"Hey," she said, about to thank him for backing her up when he abruptly whirled around to face her, cutting her off.

"Blanche, what the hell were you thinking!?" he hissed, dark eyes blazing with barely-suppressed rage. "Running towards a Kraut like that with a fucking handgun, have you lost your mind?!"

Leave it to Lewis Nixon to turn a moment of gratitude into an argument.

“I got him didn’t I?” Alix snapped defensively. “A shot between the eyes on a moving target and all you’ve got for me is chastisement?"

"That's not the point," he hissed again, his fervent stage-whisper the only viable substitute for yelling in the field. "You could've been killed! What if he'd had a rifle?! What if there had been a sniper waiting nearby?! You're not even wearing a helmet, for Christ's sake!"

Nixon turned on his heel angrily, forging ahead once again when a thought came to Alix's mind.

"Wait, who the hell is Blanche?”

Nixon’s pace faltered and for a split second, he looked like an animal trapped in the path of a speeding car.

"What?”

“You just called me Blanche, I heard you.”

A myriad of emotions flickered across Nixon’s features but then it was back to his usual, inscrutable poker-face.

“Bullshit.”

Alix gave him a look.

"No, I definitely heard you say Blanche," she insisted. "And that better not be your wife because I refuse to be associated with anyone crazy enough to marry you."

Nixon made a face.

"Christ, no, Kathy is my wife. Blanche is my sister."

The spy cocked her head as she put two and two together.

"Wait…Is that why you've been trying to get me to quit the program all this time: because I remind you of your sister?!"

The corner of Nixon's mouth twitched like he was fighting a smile.

"You remind me of her, alright," he replied as he ducked under a spiderweb. "You’re just as insufferable."

Alix rolled her eyes.

"You could've just told me, y'know, instead of being an emotionally-stunted asshole about it."

Nixon snorted derisively.

"Right, because that's what I'm best at: communication and emotional regulation."

Stepping over a rock, he muttered bitterly, "both of which are staples in the Nixon family household."

"Hey I'm just saying," Alix replied with a shrug. "I would've understood. My older brother–"

She cut herself off as the words caught in her throat but Nixon was courteous enough to pretend he hadn’t noticed.

“Don’t take it so personally,” he said nonchalantly as he ducked under a low-hanging branch. “I shut everyone out. It’s what I do best.”

“Not Lieutenant Winters,” Alix pointed out and she swore she almost saw a look of fondness cross Nixon’s face but he said nothing.

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As the pair continued their walk, their eyes roved their respective sides of the forest, scanning for potential enemies. Every shadow, every tree, every crack of a twig or shifting of underbrush needed to be carefully investigated.

Lieutenant Nixon, easily the more heavily armed of the two, took the lead while Alix followed just behind him like a shadow.

She had expected there to be more Germans where the one earlier had come from but there weren't. Thinking back on it, she wondered why he had no rifle, no helmet. Why he was running in what should have been the opposite direction of Nazi troops?

Then it came to her: He had been a deserter, not part of the larger group. He probably wouldn't have hurt them.

Guilt swirled in her stomach but a crackling of leaves above them interrupted her thoughts. Nixon's hand shot up, immediately signaling for Alix to freeze which she did.

"Flash," Nix whispered, lowering himself to the ground with his rifle trained at the noise, which was coming from a large Sessile oak tree.

He exchanged a worried glance with Alix before signaling, both of them thinking the same thing: Enemy sniper.

Wordlessly, the young agent shifted slightly to cover her handler's back in case another foe should appear from behind them and for what felt like an eternity, the only audible sounds were the distant rumblings of artillery from far beyond and the fearful thump-thump-thumping of her heart as she awaited the appearance of the expected Nazi sniper.

But it never came. Instead, from the tree's forked, top-most branch, emerged a small but extremely fluffy squirrel with flame-red fur and long, elfin ears that pointed heavenward. For a moment, it quietly regarded the two strangers below with its button-black eyes and twitching tail before scampering away again into the depths of the tree.

Relieved, Alix relaxed the tension in her shoulders and Nixon huffed as they continued their trek.

"Some sniper," the spy remarked with a nervous laugh. "But better safe than sorry, I guess."

"Well considering I'm responsible for you, whether I like it or not," Nixon snarked over his shoulder as they walked. "Forgive me if I'd rather not have your death on my conscience."

Realizing he'd said something almost vulnerable, he added quickly, "Besides, I've got enough paperwork to deal with without your death notification adding to it."

But he wasn't done.

"And speaking of your fucking death notification--" he deftly removed his helmet and thrust it into her hands. "Put this on. You never know when someone's going to try a pot-shot."

Alix cocked an eyebrow skeptically.

"Why? I haven't needed it so far. I didn't even notice mine was missing for awhile."

"Why? Because I care about you, you little shit. Now put the helmet on, that's an order."

Alix sighed but reluctantly put the helmet on.

"But what about you?" she asked. "Will you be okay?"

Her handler shrugged.

"I'll be fine. I can always grab another one when we get where we're going."

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The forest seemed to stretch for miles ahead of them, a never-ending sea of leaves and winding branches reaching out to them like arms as they passed.

And the deeper they plunged into the thick woods, the more terrifying the sights became. Dangling precariously from the treetops were the mangled corpses of several paratroopers, some swaying somberly as the breeze battered them back and forth in a morbid dance.

Nixon gave her a boost on his shoulders so she could climb a branch or two up to check their patches and dog tags.

"82nd again," she called down to him.

"Jesus," he panted as he helped her back down. "Not a single trooper from 101. Where the hell are we?"

As soon as she reached the ground, Alix fished the compass out of her pocket and instantly swore in Italian.

The needle had shifted in another direction.

They had gone too far.

From what she remembered of Welsh's navigation lectures, they would have needed to deviate from the path and change direction a good thirty paces ago.

She followed the compass’ instruction, beginning to backtrack as she waited patiently for the compass to correct itself.

"Where are you going now?" Nixon groaned, stopping in his tracks.

“We were getting off-course,” Alix informed him, holding up the compass again. “We needed to turn back there.”

"Bullshit," Nixon responded with a shake of his head. "According to our drop zone, we should've been right on track."

"Well we're not," Alix prodded, waving the compass. "We're off."

"How could we be off?" Lieutenant Nixon was indignant. "I plotted the maps myself! Don't be a backseat driver, Martinelli."

"I wouldn't have to be a backseat driver if you would just drive us correctly from the front," Alix griped.

"My calculations were on-point with the maps," her handler maintained defensively. "I should know, I helped plot them."

"Well your memory can be faulty, sir," Alix pushed just as stubbornly. "But the compass definitely isn't."

The pair faced off for a moment, each sizing the other up. Despite being at least six inches shorter than him, Alix glared up at her handler like a bull about to charge but he glared right back down at her.

There was a tense silence while both sides leveraged their options before Nixon pulled the metaphorical ace from his sleeve.

"I have seniority,” he stated with a smug finality, looking far too triumphant for Alix’s taste.

The younger agent put a hand on her hip.

"Are you seriously pulling rank right now?” She narrowed her eyes. “I swear to God, I should strangle you.”

“Oh please,” Nixon deadpanned. “You can’t even reach my neck.”

“You just pulled rank to win an argument,” Alix reminded him with an arched eyebrow. “You’ve sunk low enough for me to reach.”

“I’m quaking in my boots, Martinelli, truly,” was the dry reply and Alix was forced to concede.

Like it or not, he was her handler and even though they were a team, he did have seniority.

"Fine,” she grumbled, crossing her arms like a petulant child. “We’ll go your way. But if we end up waltzing into a trap because of your fucking hubris, I swear to God, I'll come back from the grave to haunt you myself."

With a small noise of satisfaction, Nixon turned and the pair returned back to their original path.

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Two hours later and there was still no sign of civilization, no sign of their comrades, and virtually no moonlight. Alix found herself squinting in the ink-like darkness, desperately searching for landmarks in the cold but there were none. Every tree looked the same as the tree before it and she shivered, her clothes still frigid from the bog but at least they were no longer dripping water everywhere.

For the millionth time, she pictured the recon photos and sand tables she’d studied back in Aldbourne, praying for an epiphany but none came.

The only new developments were some stinging blisters on her left heel that grew more raw with every step and an ache in her right shoulder from the weight of the radio hidden in her Red Cross bag.

“'I plotted the map, Alix,' she mimicked sourly. “'I don't need your compass. I know where we're going.' Lieutenant, I told you we were going the wrong way before but noooo, somebody needed to be right.”

"If you don't shut up, I am going to leave you here," Nixon snapped, stopping his pacing long enough to give her an irritated look. "Once I figure out where the hell 'here' even is."

Alix pursed her lips but acquiesced, staring up at the sky in silent frustration as though the answers were written in the clouds somewhere.

“I don’t understand it,” Nixon muttered more to himself than to her, as he resumed his pacing. “We were right on track.”

“Here’s a bright idea,” Alix snapped in response. “Maybe next time, listen to the person with the fucking compass.”

"I don’t remember giving you permission to speak freely,” was the peevish reply and Alix gritted her teeth.

Even though he trained her, in the field, an agent and their handler should function as a two-man team. Nixon damn well knew that.

He was trying to push her buttons again.

She’d played this game with Giovanni when they were kids: who could irritate the other first?

As the younger sister, she usually lost.

One could only be poked and prodded and have their hair yanked so many times. But one day, taking pity on the baby sister he so mercilessly teased, Gio had told her the secret to winning:

If she couldn’t control her temper (and she never could), then the only way to win was not to play at all.

So making up her mind to ignore Nixon’s subtle dig at her, Alix just continued walking on, double-checking their progress against her compass all the while.

She made it all of two minutes before she broke.

“Look, can we dispense with the formalities already,” she burst out finally. “Seeing as we’re technically supposed to be a team?”

“Nah, I like the formalities,” Nixon replied easily, all the practiced pettiness of his Ivy League humor shining through. “I prefer an established hierarchy.”

“Of course you do,” Alix snarked with an eye roll. “Because you're the one at the top.”

Her case officer just shrugged.

“Touché.”

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Another hour of walking passed uneventfully and Alix was beginning to feel like she was losing her mind.

Lieutenant Nixon had searched in vain for some basic topic of conversation at first to pass the time, but they were both too tired to make it past the weather and neither one wanted to delve into their complicated family lives.

"Can we not do small talk?" Alix winced. It reminded her of being dragged to teas and society events with her mother's social circle where she had to pretend to care about gardening and crocheting and other pointless activities while her brother got to go to the racetrack with her father. "I hate small talk."

Nixon shrugged idly.

"That's fair."

There was a silence and in a brief moment of delusion, Alix thought he might restrain himself from taking another crack at her but the slight hop in his step predicted otherwise.

Not even a minute later, true to her prediction, Nixon spoke, still keeping his eyes fixed on the path ahead despite the teasing smile tugging at his mouth.

"So you and Liebgott, huh? It’s about time.”

Alix felt her face heating up even in the dark at the suggestion.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said lamely, still clinging to the thinnest possible veil of plausible deniability that she could.

“Don’t insult my intelligence, kid,” Nixon chuckled. “I’m paid to know things.”

Alix eyed her handler suspiciously.

Was he bluffing?

“How long have you known then?”

“How long have I known about what part?” he asked. “You’re gonna have to be more specific. Because I’ve known a lot for a long time.”

“Like what?

“Well," her case officer replied jovially with the same nonchalance that her mother used when gossiping with other society wives.

"I have it on good authority that you wouldn’t stop making eyes at each other during lectures about six months back so I kind of figured something was going to happen, especially when I heard about the both of you buttoning your collars up sky-high to hide hickeys. And then later, I heard that you two got walked in on having some…shall we say, extracurricular fun,” he snickered.

“Dick, myself, and Harry even had a bet going on when you'd actually go steady officially. Loser pays for poor Shifty’s shrink.”

Shit.

The mention of that night made Alix want to crawl into a hole and die. She didn't know anybody else knew about it, let alone her handler and superior officers, and she made a mental note to apologize to Shifty another thousand times whenever she saw him next for the mental scarring she and Joe had accidentally inflicted upon him months earlier by forgetting to lock the door.

“Need I say more?"

"No, I get the picture, thanks," Alix replied, wishing fervently that the ground might swallow her up before they reached their destination. "But how did you find out? Who told you?"

Neither Skip nor Don would have said anything, of that she was sure. She would stake her life on their loyalty.

And Shifty was still too deeply embarrassed about his role to utter a word about it to anyone either, so he was out.

That only left…the entire rest of the company.

Damn it.

“A good operative never compromises his assets,” Nixon responded sanctimoniously, with a grin so smug that it made Alix want to punch him. "Just know I have my sources and they're extremely reliable."

Alix flipped him off in response which only made him laugh harder.

We better find our way out of here soon, Alix thought in exasperation as she busied herself with the compass again. Before I commit a second unplanned homicide.

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