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seiberwingTitle: Who You Are In The Dark (Part 1)
Fandom: Hogan’s Heroes
Characters: Wilhelm Klink, assorted Heroes.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, angst.
Summary: In the aftermath of a horrible accident, Klink is forced to confront what kind of man he really is.
Author’s Note: Yes, I am writing serious Klinkfic. Serious Klinkfic long enough to be divided into two parts. Not sure what this says about me.
Dogs, darkness, soldiers, people yelling, this had to be the fifth time this month his sleep had been interrupted by this foolishness. Klink really wished the prisoners would hurry up and realize they had no chance of escaping. This week’s situation was made doubly worse by a surprise Gestapo visit (again) because of underground sabotage activity in the area (again) and suspected involvement with Stalag 13 (you’d think at some point they’d give up that line of argument and realize it was only an innocent prison camp) and insisting upon chasing down the prisoners themselves in case they were arranging meetings with insurgents. Again.
If they were going to do it themselves, Klink really wanted to know why he couldn’t have just stayed in bed.
A rapid staccato of gunshots came from the dim trees. Klink hit the ground, images of Allied platoons storming through his brain, but the few words he could make out of the ensuing shouting were in German. Apparently the good guys were winning. He spit out a piece of dirt and clambered to his feet again, still hunched low in the undergrowth. If he scuttled he might be mistaken for some kind of shrub and less likely to be fired upon.
The scuttling plan worked until Klink ran out of ground to scuttle upon. His next step landed in thin air and he tumbled forward, yelping, into an unseen ditch carved out by recent rains.
“Ow, ow…ow.” Not his night. But then when was it ever his night, if he had to be out of bed later than his own prisoners? Klink tried to stand and hit his head on a protruding tree root, which forced him down to his knees again with a muffled whimper.
“Quiet!” hissed a voice in the darkness, so close it made Klink jump. Not two yards away a large man was hunched over a prone, still figure with his hands pressed firm against the other figure’s leg. With the moon blotted out by the trees the most Klink could make out were their shapes, barely visible against the dark earth of the ditch’s walls. His arm reflexively lifted and his thin flashlight beam revealed that the prone figure was wearing a German officer’s uniform. A rifle lay nearby, and what little he could see of the officer’s attacker was covered in black cloth.
“Be quiet!” the figure hissed again, and only now did Klink have the presence of mind to realize he was speaking English. Klink tilted his flashlight up just enough to catch a dark, familiar face squinting against the glare.
“Sergeant Kinchloe?”
“Get that flashlight off. Do it, now!”
Klink, who’d trained himself to obey anything phrased as an order no matter how flimsy his superior’s position of authority, clicked off the flashlight. “What are you doing to that man?” he asked in a strained whisper.
“I’m trying to save his life.” A soft, whimpering gasp came from the soldier underneath Kinchloe and he repositioned himself, keeping his hands in place. “One of the Gestapo hit him in the thigh with a stray shot. He’s losing a lot of blood, I think they hit an artery.”
Klink leaned closer in morbid curiosity “You’re saving a German soldier?”
“German?” Kinchloe made a soft, disbelieving gasp, almost a laugh. “It’s Carter.”
The body underneath Kinchloe raised one hand to give him a feeble wave. “H-hi, sir,” Sergeant Carter murmured, before Kinchloe made him lie still again.
“If I leave him to get help he’ll bleed to death. And if I stay here and nobody finds us he’ll bleed out eventually anyway.”
“Then I’ll call the Gestapo over—“
“And they’ll just finish the job. They’re not going to give medical treatment to an enemy spy if there’s another healthy one right next to him.”
“I’ll tell them not to,” Klink insisted. That would be pointlessly sadistic, no reasonable man would—oh. Right. Gestapo.
“Since when have they ever listened to you?” Kinchloe shook his head. The tiny motion made his hands shift and Carter whimpered again, his breathing quickening. “They’ll make it fast for him and slow for me. Unless my buddies show up before yours…I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Klink licked his lips, looking to the top of the ditch and then down again to the Americans. It would be the patriotic thing to do to just let the Gestapo have them, and Kinchloe was in no state to stop him if he just yelled for help. With a real Allied agent, maybe, maybe Klink would have done his duty and washed his hands of the matter. But not Carter, not the little sergeant who seemed to have a smile for everyone no matter what happened, who couldn’t possibly be guilty of more than teasing the guards now and then.
“What if you stayed with him and I went for help?” The words were rushed, spilling out before Klink could remember and regret what he was committing himself to do. Helping an enemy dodge the Gestapo net was as treacherous as it got. By all rights he should already be screaming for the guards, not offering to find the underground. What was he doing?
“In your physical condition? It’ll take you at least an hour to make it to town if you didn’t get shot or stopped by someone, and you wouldn’t even know who to contact.” Kinchloe paused and looked down to Carter. In the darkness Klink couldn’t make out his expression but he seemed to be pondering something. The shouts of the Gestapo were getting fainter but were still clear against the stillness of the night, reminding both of them of the impending danger around them.
“…damn. Klink?” Kinchloe asked, even quieter than he had been, as if trying to keep the secret even from Carter. “Can you stay with him? At a run I might just make it before you’re found, but you’d have to stay with him and keep pressure on the wound the entire time. It’s not like me to trust a Kraut but I think it’s the only chance we’ve got.”
Klink hesitated. It was treachery, it was helping the enemy, it was…Carter. It was Carter. And it was his prisoner and he had an obligation to take care of them.
“Yes,” Klink found himself saying. “Of course.” He crawled through the dirt, no doubt staining his military-crisp trousers, and crouched shoulder to shoulder with the American. Everything felt as if some outside entity was controlling him, something beyond scared little Colonel Wilhelm, and he was just along for the ride.
“W-wait. Wait.” Carter was struggling to speak again, grasping weakly at Kinchloe’s pants leg. “Kinch, wait. Don’t leave, Kinch.”
“I’m going to get Colonel Hogan, okay? You’ll be fine. All Klink is going to is hold you still and even he can manage that.” Carter kept protesting with small, breathy little repetitions of Kinchloe’s name but Kinchloe ignored him. “Put your hands over mine, and press down as soon as I move.”
These were new gloves, Klink thought resignedly. He set his hands over Kinchloe’s and winced as Kinchloe slowly eased out from under them, drawing a new whimper from Carter as the pressure was set on him again. New gloves but he wouldn’t have taken them off for a thousand marks if it meant exposing his bare skin to the gaping wound he knew was down there.
“Kinch,” Carter begged one last time. Kinchloe rose to a crouch and touched Carter’s cheek.
“I’ll be right back. Just hang on, Andrew.” Kinchloe grabbed an exposed tree root and hoisted himself out of the ditch, Klink’s flashlight in hand.
Klink was left by himself in the darkness with a man’s life pulsing in his hands. He listened to Carter’s pained, shallow breathing, and the sounds of rustling bushes that indicated the Gestapo were still on the prowl. What would they do if they found him? Could he claim he’d mistaken Carter for a German soldier? There was no way he could appeal to their basic human sense of mercy, the Gestapo weren’t allowed to have those.
“Kl…Klink…” Carter was struggling to talk again. Klink reflexively pressed down harder, as if to smother him into silence, and felt the young sergeant wince under his hands.
“Shh, shh,” he said softly. “It’s all right. Help’s on the way.” He had no idea what one was supposed to say to a wounded soldier, let alone one who wasn’t even on his side. Klink had fought in the Great War as a pilot and been decorated for it, but he’d never actually seen someone die in front of him. That sort of thing changed a man, he’d heard. He might be horribly emotionally scarred and have trouble forming proper relationships. He’d be unable to sleep without seeing blood on his hands or hearing screams, like the front line officers experienced. It wouldn’t be fair if he had to go through all that over someone who was supposed to be his enemy.
And this wasn’t even a battlefield, where death was expected. Carter should have been safe and snug in the barracks, not out here in the cold woods bleeding all over an officer’s uniform. Klink shouldn’t have to be the one on top of him with his arms braced against his thigh, desperately trying to keep his life from leaking out. He hoped Kinchloe made it back in time. The last witness to a man’s passing, the final friend to bid him farewell as he went to the great parade ground in the sky, shouldn’t be his jailer.
“Klink?” Carter said abruptly, startling the distracted colonel so badly he nearly lost his grip.
“What?” Klink hissed back.
“If I die…”
“You won’t die.” Carter needed to think positive. If you thought you’d die, it was inevitable that you would.
“But if I do die…you think I’m gonna go to heaven or the Happy Hunting Grounds? Either one’s kinda…got its benefits.”
That was right, he was part Indian. Leave it to Carter to face death by wondering exactly which afterlife his mixed heritage would slot him into. “I’m sure it will be somewhere very nice?” he offered.
“I hope so. I’d hate to go to hell….I’m not that bad of a person…am I?” A serious contemplation of his past misdeeds seemed to be distracting Carter from the pain of his injury. Personally Klink couldn’t imagine him as anything less than an angel even if he was technically an American soldier. He was so polite, even to the guards. Not like that Englander or the cockroach Frenchman, they should take some lessons on courtesy. Why couldn’t it be them down here? For LeBeau he wasn’t even sure he’d have stayed behind…no, wait, he’d forgotten the crepes. Of course he’d stay.
“One thing. One thing I want to say,” Carter said, with as much feeble force as he could manage. His hand wobbled up and fastened itself around Klink’s wrist.
Was he about to give Klink his last request? Klink didn’t feel like he deserved that heavy a responsibility. “Yes, Carter?” he said, faking a smile that the young sergeant probably couldn’t see, and leaning closer to hear his final words. Perhaps there was a girl back home he’d never kissed farewell, or some heirloom he wanted to pass on to his family, or even just a few words of thanks to Klink for being the best kommandant a POW could hope for.
“Your violin playing…” Carter took a deep, heavy breath and managed to finish the sentence. “It’s horrible. You should stop. Nobody wants to tell you, but it’s real bad. I thought you outta know.”
Obviously blood loss was making him delirious. “Of course, Carter, of course,” he soothed. Let him believe what he wanted, if it made him comfortable. “If you live, I swear I’ll never play it again.” Inspiration struck. “And if you die, I’ll play it at your funeral,” he said, slightly firmer.
“Well. That’s…something to live for. I’d want a funeral…where people actually showed up.” Carter went silent again, exhausted by the effort of criticizing Klink’s musical ability, and Klink strained to hear his breathing before he let himself relax again. Was it softer than it had been before? He couldn’t see what his hands were doing, blood might be pouring over them and he’d never know.
It wasn’t healthy for Carter to talk in his state, but Klink desperately wished he’d try anyway. The silence was far worse. Time seemed to slow down and spiral on itself, and his only chronometer was the slow lowering of Carter’s chest and the terrifying still tension before he breathed in again.
Leaves crunched on the ground above the ditch. Klink flinched and readied his excuses. Start with a nice lambasting of the Gestapo for shooting a German officer, react with shock upon finding out that he’d actually been helping an Allied prisoner, deny all connection to the incident, and then…sit by calmly while they murdered him.
“He’s down here.”
Oh thank god. It was English.
“Is he…” Hogan’s voice.
“He’s here,” Klink called back in a half-whisper. “But I think he’s getting weaker.”
“Right.” Two thuds on the other side of the ditch. Klink didn’t have time to even look up before someone’s hands covered his fingers and he was roughly shoved away.
“You couldn’t even bandage it?” Hogan snapped, presumably to Kinchloe.
“I was short on time!”
There had to be some limit on the number of times a man could have a faceful of dirt in one night. Klink spat out a fragment of leaf and felt around in the dark for his hat. No, let’s not have any respect for the noble commandant risking his life to protect one of his prisoners due to his strong sense of honor; let’s just toss him aside like a used plaster.
“Can’t believe you left one of your people with a man like that. I’m surprised he didn’t call the Gestapo the moment you left.” The third voice was definitely German, and vaguely familiar, but Klink couldn’t quite place it. He didn’t seem to like Klink either.
By the time Klink finally found his hat and got it to stay in his slick fingers, the three shadows had bandaged Carter up and lifted him up out of the ditch, constantly murmuring that it would be all right and that Carter should stay as quiet as possible. Klink hovered around the edges and offered lifting advice, which was met with a completely undeserved order to shut his mouth and keep it that way until the war was over.
“You’re going to take me with you, right?” he whined plaintively, looking up as they climbed out. The pause before they answered was not comforting at all.
“Must we?” French accent. LeBeau. Klink would bet that Newkirk was somewhere up there too.
“We don’t have much of a choice,” Kinchloe pointed out. A pair of hands reached down to Klink and grabbed him by the forearm, hoisting him up as his feet kicked debris away from the ditch wall.
“Blimey, he’s heavy…” And that rounded out the fivesome. The little gang was practically inseparable when it came to troublemaking, where one made a fuss the other four were probably behind it too.
Newkirk clung to Klink’s arm and rushed him through the woods the moment Klink’s feet hit the ground, following the crunching of the other men’s footsteps. The tree branches seemed to be purposefully targeting Klink’s face for attack, and several times he was knocked back by a leafy blow only to have Newkirk grab him by the coat and pull him forward to be smacked in the face a second time.
“We were this close to the road this whole time?” Klink whispered as they broke from the trees, to the flashlight-lit sight of a black van parked with its back to the woods.
“Mhm. Get in.”
The smell from the van hit him even before Newkirk shoved him inside and pulled the door shut behind them. It reeked of wet dog fur and dog food, and more foul dog-related substances. Klink huddled against the door as the car shuddered to a start and accelerated with a squeal of old tires. He held on for dear life to the door handle as the car twisted and swerved down the road to an unknown destination.
“Drive carefully!” Hogan banged on the wall separating them from the driver’s seat. “You’re jostling the patient!”
“I can do careful or I can do fast. Pick one!” the driver yelled back, and Klink finally connected voice with smell to come up with the mystery man’s identity. It was Herr Schnitzer, the dog man who never had a kind word for anyone. How had the prisoners managed to convince him to help them?
This really wasn’t right, Klink thought. He shouldn’t be shoved around by his own prisoners. But he had no orders to give, no clue what to make everyone do…no clue what was even going on. Nobody paid attention to any of his feeble questions and he wound up huddled in silence with his hat crushed and mangled in his nervous hand. It was even darker in the van than it was out in the woods. The small windows let in barely any light, even when the scenery turned from trees to street lamps, and the rumble of the engine covered the sound of Carter’s breathing no matter how much Klink strained to hear it.
He’d spent all that time worrying over Carter and keeping him alive until the cavalry arrived, it wouldn’t be fair if he died so close to safety.
A flash of light from a passing car illuminated the van, giving Klink a brief glimpse at the men across from him. LeBeau was sitting on the floor with his eyes closed, gripping Carter’s hand tightly. Hogan was crouched beside him, looking down at Carter with an almost fatherly concern. Both men were also in Luftwaffe uniforms, though LeBeau’s was a size too big for him. Hogan’s head flicked up as the light crossed his face, and their eyes met a moment before darkness fell across the van again. Klink couldn’t read his expression.
“Almost there,” Schnitzer called out.
“Right. Newkirk, Schnizter, you carry him. Kinchloe and LeBeau, you stay in the van and Schnitzer will get you back to camp, we need someone to run damage control back there and you two are the least German. No offense, Kinch.”
“None taken. And Klink?”
“Stays with us. We might need the backup.” Apparently Klink wasn’t going to get an opinion on that either. At this point it was almost comforting to have the reins of the situation taken away from him. He hardly trusted Hogan but the American knew what to do more fully than Klink and that relieved Klink of any further responsibility for Carter’s life. Following orders was at least something he was good at.
“You’re Corporal Hans Fuhrmann. Hans,” Hogan said as Newkirk helped him lift the injured sergeant again, tenderness and urgency mingling in his voice. “Don’t forget, you’re German. Der Deutsche.”
“Deutsche, Deutsche,” Carter repeated dazedly. “Ja.”
“Gut.”
Klink followed obediently behind his prisoners as they carried Carter through the open hospital doors. “Just let me do the talking,” he said. The costumes were nice but they could never pass for real Germans, let alone officers.
“No, you let me do the talking,” Hogan snapped back. “Just back me up on whatever I say.” They were through the door now, it was far too late. Klink would need to come up with some explanation for a Luftwaffe officer’s American accent and broken German--
“Achtung! What are all of you doing, lazing around like this?” Hogan’s firm hand slammed on the reception desk. “We’ve got an officer injured! I don’t care what you’re doing, drop it and get out here. Faster, faster!” The disguise was flawless. If Klink had his eyes closed he wouldn’t have been able to tell it was even the same person as his laid-back Yankee prisoner. Attendants and nurses poured out, eager to please the uniformed order-barking man as fast as possible.
Carter was immediately lifted onto a gurney and Klink caught him murmuring, “It hurts a lot. Can you be gentle? They worked really hard on that bandage.” The younger soldier’s accent was shakier, though that could easily be attributed to pain, but his German was as flawless as Hogan’s. When had the prisoners had time to learn their captors’ language and to do it so convincingly, to boot?
Hogan kept waving his hands and barking commands, even as Carter disappeared through the hospital doors. “His name is Corporal Hans Fuhrmann. He was accidentally shot by another soldier, that matter’s been handled, just make sure he keeps that leg. Don’t worry if he wakes up speaking English, he spent a few years in America as a child and sometimes he reverts to it in moments of stress.”
“And give him the best treatment possible,” Klink interrupted, desperate to at least put a few good words in for Carter. This was backing him up, right? “Don’t spare any expense! He’s a good soldier.”
“A credit to his country,” Hogan re-interrupted, trying to wrestle back control of the conversation.
“And he’s one of mine,” Klink finished. Not one of his soldiers but…one of his, all the same.
The attendant looked from Hogan to Klink, trying to figure out who the superior officer was in this situation, and settled on the one who’d gotten in the final word. “Of course, sir. We’ll give him the greatest of care.” His gaze wandered down to Klink’s hands and he winced. “Would you like me to take care of your gloves?” he asked, disgust obvious on his face.
“Why, what’s wrong with my…” Klink reflexively looked down at his hands for the first time since he’d come in out of the night. In the van it had been hard to see and in the hospital he had been too frantic to notice that his gloves were coated with thick, congealing, crimson liquid. From the fingertips to the skin of his wrists, Klink was covered in blood.
“Oh,” he said, very faintly. “Yes. I believe I would.” His knees buckled under him and he was unconscious before his limp body hit the floor.
Fandom: Hogan’s Heroes
Characters: Wilhelm Klink, assorted Heroes.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, angst.
Summary: In the aftermath of a horrible accident, Klink is forced to confront what kind of man he really is.
Author’s Note: Yes, I am writing serious Klinkfic. Serious Klinkfic long enough to be divided into two parts. Not sure what this says about me.
Dogs, darkness, soldiers, people yelling, this had to be the fifth time this month his sleep had been interrupted by this foolishness. Klink really wished the prisoners would hurry up and realize they had no chance of escaping. This week’s situation was made doubly worse by a surprise Gestapo visit (again) because of underground sabotage activity in the area (again) and suspected involvement with Stalag 13 (you’d think at some point they’d give up that line of argument and realize it was only an innocent prison camp) and insisting upon chasing down the prisoners themselves in case they were arranging meetings with insurgents. Again.
If they were going to do it themselves, Klink really wanted to know why he couldn’t have just stayed in bed.
A rapid staccato of gunshots came from the dim trees. Klink hit the ground, images of Allied platoons storming through his brain, but the few words he could make out of the ensuing shouting were in German. Apparently the good guys were winning. He spit out a piece of dirt and clambered to his feet again, still hunched low in the undergrowth. If he scuttled he might be mistaken for some kind of shrub and less likely to be fired upon.
The scuttling plan worked until Klink ran out of ground to scuttle upon. His next step landed in thin air and he tumbled forward, yelping, into an unseen ditch carved out by recent rains.
“Ow, ow…ow.” Not his night. But then when was it ever his night, if he had to be out of bed later than his own prisoners? Klink tried to stand and hit his head on a protruding tree root, which forced him down to his knees again with a muffled whimper.
“Quiet!” hissed a voice in the darkness, so close it made Klink jump. Not two yards away a large man was hunched over a prone, still figure with his hands pressed firm against the other figure’s leg. With the moon blotted out by the trees the most Klink could make out were their shapes, barely visible against the dark earth of the ditch’s walls. His arm reflexively lifted and his thin flashlight beam revealed that the prone figure was wearing a German officer’s uniform. A rifle lay nearby, and what little he could see of the officer’s attacker was covered in black cloth.
“Be quiet!” the figure hissed again, and only now did Klink have the presence of mind to realize he was speaking English. Klink tilted his flashlight up just enough to catch a dark, familiar face squinting against the glare.
“Sergeant Kinchloe?”
“Get that flashlight off. Do it, now!”
Klink, who’d trained himself to obey anything phrased as an order no matter how flimsy his superior’s position of authority, clicked off the flashlight. “What are you doing to that man?” he asked in a strained whisper.
“I’m trying to save his life.” A soft, whimpering gasp came from the soldier underneath Kinchloe and he repositioned himself, keeping his hands in place. “One of the Gestapo hit him in the thigh with a stray shot. He’s losing a lot of blood, I think they hit an artery.”
Klink leaned closer in morbid curiosity “You’re saving a German soldier?”
“German?” Kinchloe made a soft, disbelieving gasp, almost a laugh. “It’s Carter.”
The body underneath Kinchloe raised one hand to give him a feeble wave. “H-hi, sir,” Sergeant Carter murmured, before Kinchloe made him lie still again.
“If I leave him to get help he’ll bleed to death. And if I stay here and nobody finds us he’ll bleed out eventually anyway.”
“Then I’ll call the Gestapo over—“
“And they’ll just finish the job. They’re not going to give medical treatment to an enemy spy if there’s another healthy one right next to him.”
“I’ll tell them not to,” Klink insisted. That would be pointlessly sadistic, no reasonable man would—oh. Right. Gestapo.
“Since when have they ever listened to you?” Kinchloe shook his head. The tiny motion made his hands shift and Carter whimpered again, his breathing quickening. “They’ll make it fast for him and slow for me. Unless my buddies show up before yours…I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Klink licked his lips, looking to the top of the ditch and then down again to the Americans. It would be the patriotic thing to do to just let the Gestapo have them, and Kinchloe was in no state to stop him if he just yelled for help. With a real Allied agent, maybe, maybe Klink would have done his duty and washed his hands of the matter. But not Carter, not the little sergeant who seemed to have a smile for everyone no matter what happened, who couldn’t possibly be guilty of more than teasing the guards now and then.
“What if you stayed with him and I went for help?” The words were rushed, spilling out before Klink could remember and regret what he was committing himself to do. Helping an enemy dodge the Gestapo net was as treacherous as it got. By all rights he should already be screaming for the guards, not offering to find the underground. What was he doing?
“In your physical condition? It’ll take you at least an hour to make it to town if you didn’t get shot or stopped by someone, and you wouldn’t even know who to contact.” Kinchloe paused and looked down to Carter. In the darkness Klink couldn’t make out his expression but he seemed to be pondering something. The shouts of the Gestapo were getting fainter but were still clear against the stillness of the night, reminding both of them of the impending danger around them.
“…damn. Klink?” Kinchloe asked, even quieter than he had been, as if trying to keep the secret even from Carter. “Can you stay with him? At a run I might just make it before you’re found, but you’d have to stay with him and keep pressure on the wound the entire time. It’s not like me to trust a Kraut but I think it’s the only chance we’ve got.”
Klink hesitated. It was treachery, it was helping the enemy, it was…Carter. It was Carter. And it was his prisoner and he had an obligation to take care of them.
“Yes,” Klink found himself saying. “Of course.” He crawled through the dirt, no doubt staining his military-crisp trousers, and crouched shoulder to shoulder with the American. Everything felt as if some outside entity was controlling him, something beyond scared little Colonel Wilhelm, and he was just along for the ride.
“W-wait. Wait.” Carter was struggling to speak again, grasping weakly at Kinchloe’s pants leg. “Kinch, wait. Don’t leave, Kinch.”
“I’m going to get Colonel Hogan, okay? You’ll be fine. All Klink is going to is hold you still and even he can manage that.” Carter kept protesting with small, breathy little repetitions of Kinchloe’s name but Kinchloe ignored him. “Put your hands over mine, and press down as soon as I move.”
These were new gloves, Klink thought resignedly. He set his hands over Kinchloe’s and winced as Kinchloe slowly eased out from under them, drawing a new whimper from Carter as the pressure was set on him again. New gloves but he wouldn’t have taken them off for a thousand marks if it meant exposing his bare skin to the gaping wound he knew was down there.
“Kinch,” Carter begged one last time. Kinchloe rose to a crouch and touched Carter’s cheek.
“I’ll be right back. Just hang on, Andrew.” Kinchloe grabbed an exposed tree root and hoisted himself out of the ditch, Klink’s flashlight in hand.
Klink was left by himself in the darkness with a man’s life pulsing in his hands. He listened to Carter’s pained, shallow breathing, and the sounds of rustling bushes that indicated the Gestapo were still on the prowl. What would they do if they found him? Could he claim he’d mistaken Carter for a German soldier? There was no way he could appeal to their basic human sense of mercy, the Gestapo weren’t allowed to have those.
“Kl…Klink…” Carter was struggling to talk again. Klink reflexively pressed down harder, as if to smother him into silence, and felt the young sergeant wince under his hands.
“Shh, shh,” he said softly. “It’s all right. Help’s on the way.” He had no idea what one was supposed to say to a wounded soldier, let alone one who wasn’t even on his side. Klink had fought in the Great War as a pilot and been decorated for it, but he’d never actually seen someone die in front of him. That sort of thing changed a man, he’d heard. He might be horribly emotionally scarred and have trouble forming proper relationships. He’d be unable to sleep without seeing blood on his hands or hearing screams, like the front line officers experienced. It wouldn’t be fair if he had to go through all that over someone who was supposed to be his enemy.
And this wasn’t even a battlefield, where death was expected. Carter should have been safe and snug in the barracks, not out here in the cold woods bleeding all over an officer’s uniform. Klink shouldn’t have to be the one on top of him with his arms braced against his thigh, desperately trying to keep his life from leaking out. He hoped Kinchloe made it back in time. The last witness to a man’s passing, the final friend to bid him farewell as he went to the great parade ground in the sky, shouldn’t be his jailer.
“Klink?” Carter said abruptly, startling the distracted colonel so badly he nearly lost his grip.
“What?” Klink hissed back.
“If I die…”
“You won’t die.” Carter needed to think positive. If you thought you’d die, it was inevitable that you would.
“But if I do die…you think I’m gonna go to heaven or the Happy Hunting Grounds? Either one’s kinda…got its benefits.”
That was right, he was part Indian. Leave it to Carter to face death by wondering exactly which afterlife his mixed heritage would slot him into. “I’m sure it will be somewhere very nice?” he offered.
“I hope so. I’d hate to go to hell….I’m not that bad of a person…am I?” A serious contemplation of his past misdeeds seemed to be distracting Carter from the pain of his injury. Personally Klink couldn’t imagine him as anything less than an angel even if he was technically an American soldier. He was so polite, even to the guards. Not like that Englander or the cockroach Frenchman, they should take some lessons on courtesy. Why couldn’t it be them down here? For LeBeau he wasn’t even sure he’d have stayed behind…no, wait, he’d forgotten the crepes. Of course he’d stay.
“One thing. One thing I want to say,” Carter said, with as much feeble force as he could manage. His hand wobbled up and fastened itself around Klink’s wrist.
Was he about to give Klink his last request? Klink didn’t feel like he deserved that heavy a responsibility. “Yes, Carter?” he said, faking a smile that the young sergeant probably couldn’t see, and leaning closer to hear his final words. Perhaps there was a girl back home he’d never kissed farewell, or some heirloom he wanted to pass on to his family, or even just a few words of thanks to Klink for being the best kommandant a POW could hope for.
“Your violin playing…” Carter took a deep, heavy breath and managed to finish the sentence. “It’s horrible. You should stop. Nobody wants to tell you, but it’s real bad. I thought you outta know.”
Obviously blood loss was making him delirious. “Of course, Carter, of course,” he soothed. Let him believe what he wanted, if it made him comfortable. “If you live, I swear I’ll never play it again.” Inspiration struck. “And if you die, I’ll play it at your funeral,” he said, slightly firmer.
“Well. That’s…something to live for. I’d want a funeral…where people actually showed up.” Carter went silent again, exhausted by the effort of criticizing Klink’s musical ability, and Klink strained to hear his breathing before he let himself relax again. Was it softer than it had been before? He couldn’t see what his hands were doing, blood might be pouring over them and he’d never know.
It wasn’t healthy for Carter to talk in his state, but Klink desperately wished he’d try anyway. The silence was far worse. Time seemed to slow down and spiral on itself, and his only chronometer was the slow lowering of Carter’s chest and the terrifying still tension before he breathed in again.
Leaves crunched on the ground above the ditch. Klink flinched and readied his excuses. Start with a nice lambasting of the Gestapo for shooting a German officer, react with shock upon finding out that he’d actually been helping an Allied prisoner, deny all connection to the incident, and then…sit by calmly while they murdered him.
“He’s down here.”
Oh thank god. It was English.
“Is he…” Hogan’s voice.
“He’s here,” Klink called back in a half-whisper. “But I think he’s getting weaker.”
“Right.” Two thuds on the other side of the ditch. Klink didn’t have time to even look up before someone’s hands covered his fingers and he was roughly shoved away.
“You couldn’t even bandage it?” Hogan snapped, presumably to Kinchloe.
“I was short on time!”
There had to be some limit on the number of times a man could have a faceful of dirt in one night. Klink spat out a fragment of leaf and felt around in the dark for his hat. No, let’s not have any respect for the noble commandant risking his life to protect one of his prisoners due to his strong sense of honor; let’s just toss him aside like a used plaster.
“Can’t believe you left one of your people with a man like that. I’m surprised he didn’t call the Gestapo the moment you left.” The third voice was definitely German, and vaguely familiar, but Klink couldn’t quite place it. He didn’t seem to like Klink either.
By the time Klink finally found his hat and got it to stay in his slick fingers, the three shadows had bandaged Carter up and lifted him up out of the ditch, constantly murmuring that it would be all right and that Carter should stay as quiet as possible. Klink hovered around the edges and offered lifting advice, which was met with a completely undeserved order to shut his mouth and keep it that way until the war was over.
“You’re going to take me with you, right?” he whined plaintively, looking up as they climbed out. The pause before they answered was not comforting at all.
“Must we?” French accent. LeBeau. Klink would bet that Newkirk was somewhere up there too.
“We don’t have much of a choice,” Kinchloe pointed out. A pair of hands reached down to Klink and grabbed him by the forearm, hoisting him up as his feet kicked debris away from the ditch wall.
“Blimey, he’s heavy…” And that rounded out the fivesome. The little gang was practically inseparable when it came to troublemaking, where one made a fuss the other four were probably behind it too.
Newkirk clung to Klink’s arm and rushed him through the woods the moment Klink’s feet hit the ground, following the crunching of the other men’s footsteps. The tree branches seemed to be purposefully targeting Klink’s face for attack, and several times he was knocked back by a leafy blow only to have Newkirk grab him by the coat and pull him forward to be smacked in the face a second time.
“We were this close to the road this whole time?” Klink whispered as they broke from the trees, to the flashlight-lit sight of a black van parked with its back to the woods.
“Mhm. Get in.”
The smell from the van hit him even before Newkirk shoved him inside and pulled the door shut behind them. It reeked of wet dog fur and dog food, and more foul dog-related substances. Klink huddled against the door as the car shuddered to a start and accelerated with a squeal of old tires. He held on for dear life to the door handle as the car twisted and swerved down the road to an unknown destination.
“Drive carefully!” Hogan banged on the wall separating them from the driver’s seat. “You’re jostling the patient!”
“I can do careful or I can do fast. Pick one!” the driver yelled back, and Klink finally connected voice with smell to come up with the mystery man’s identity. It was Herr Schnitzer, the dog man who never had a kind word for anyone. How had the prisoners managed to convince him to help them?
This really wasn’t right, Klink thought. He shouldn’t be shoved around by his own prisoners. But he had no orders to give, no clue what to make everyone do…no clue what was even going on. Nobody paid attention to any of his feeble questions and he wound up huddled in silence with his hat crushed and mangled in his nervous hand. It was even darker in the van than it was out in the woods. The small windows let in barely any light, even when the scenery turned from trees to street lamps, and the rumble of the engine covered the sound of Carter’s breathing no matter how much Klink strained to hear it.
He’d spent all that time worrying over Carter and keeping him alive until the cavalry arrived, it wouldn’t be fair if he died so close to safety.
A flash of light from a passing car illuminated the van, giving Klink a brief glimpse at the men across from him. LeBeau was sitting on the floor with his eyes closed, gripping Carter’s hand tightly. Hogan was crouched beside him, looking down at Carter with an almost fatherly concern. Both men were also in Luftwaffe uniforms, though LeBeau’s was a size too big for him. Hogan’s head flicked up as the light crossed his face, and their eyes met a moment before darkness fell across the van again. Klink couldn’t read his expression.
“Almost there,” Schnitzer called out.
“Right. Newkirk, Schnizter, you carry him. Kinchloe and LeBeau, you stay in the van and Schnitzer will get you back to camp, we need someone to run damage control back there and you two are the least German. No offense, Kinch.”
“None taken. And Klink?”
“Stays with us. We might need the backup.” Apparently Klink wasn’t going to get an opinion on that either. At this point it was almost comforting to have the reins of the situation taken away from him. He hardly trusted Hogan but the American knew what to do more fully than Klink and that relieved Klink of any further responsibility for Carter’s life. Following orders was at least something he was good at.
“You’re Corporal Hans Fuhrmann. Hans,” Hogan said as Newkirk helped him lift the injured sergeant again, tenderness and urgency mingling in his voice. “Don’t forget, you’re German. Der Deutsche.”
“Deutsche, Deutsche,” Carter repeated dazedly. “Ja.”
“Gut.”
Klink followed obediently behind his prisoners as they carried Carter through the open hospital doors. “Just let me do the talking,” he said. The costumes were nice but they could never pass for real Germans, let alone officers.
“No, you let me do the talking,” Hogan snapped back. “Just back me up on whatever I say.” They were through the door now, it was far too late. Klink would need to come up with some explanation for a Luftwaffe officer’s American accent and broken German--
“Achtung! What are all of you doing, lazing around like this?” Hogan’s firm hand slammed on the reception desk. “We’ve got an officer injured! I don’t care what you’re doing, drop it and get out here. Faster, faster!” The disguise was flawless. If Klink had his eyes closed he wouldn’t have been able to tell it was even the same person as his laid-back Yankee prisoner. Attendants and nurses poured out, eager to please the uniformed order-barking man as fast as possible.
Carter was immediately lifted onto a gurney and Klink caught him murmuring, “It hurts a lot. Can you be gentle? They worked really hard on that bandage.” The younger soldier’s accent was shakier, though that could easily be attributed to pain, but his German was as flawless as Hogan’s. When had the prisoners had time to learn their captors’ language and to do it so convincingly, to boot?
Hogan kept waving his hands and barking commands, even as Carter disappeared through the hospital doors. “His name is Corporal Hans Fuhrmann. He was accidentally shot by another soldier, that matter’s been handled, just make sure he keeps that leg. Don’t worry if he wakes up speaking English, he spent a few years in America as a child and sometimes he reverts to it in moments of stress.”
“And give him the best treatment possible,” Klink interrupted, desperate to at least put a few good words in for Carter. This was backing him up, right? “Don’t spare any expense! He’s a good soldier.”
“A credit to his country,” Hogan re-interrupted, trying to wrestle back control of the conversation.
“And he’s one of mine,” Klink finished. Not one of his soldiers but…one of his, all the same.
The attendant looked from Hogan to Klink, trying to figure out who the superior officer was in this situation, and settled on the one who’d gotten in the final word. “Of course, sir. We’ll give him the greatest of care.” His gaze wandered down to Klink’s hands and he winced. “Would you like me to take care of your gloves?” he asked, disgust obvious on his face.
“Why, what’s wrong with my…” Klink reflexively looked down at his hands for the first time since he’d come in out of the night. In the van it had been hard to see and in the hospital he had been too frantic to notice that his gloves were coated with thick, congealing, crimson liquid. From the fingertips to the skin of his wrists, Klink was covered in blood.
“Oh,” he said, very faintly. “Yes. I believe I would.” His knees buckled under him and he was unconscious before his limp body hit the floor.
