arrival; what joy, a perfect holiday

[withoutahammer]

WHO: Neil Mackay
WHERE: Next to the fountain and then throughout the area
WHEN: February 25th
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Possible violence or threats of it, possible discussion of past war-time violence
STATUS: Just so very open

arrival;

The fountain feels like a dream- the water, swimming up through it but feeling the pressure, the need to reach air again... it's a bit more metaphorical than most of his dreams these days, but the theme's the same. Of course, then he breaches the surface and it's all a bit more real than it should be. It's chilly and it's wet and it's definitely not the Polish forests.

Right, then.

He'll be by the fountain for a while, sorting through the contents of his backpack and trying to untangle what the fuck just happened and how he wound up this far separated from the team.

reconnaissance;

Neil's exploration- whenever it ends up taking place- is systematic, thorough, and only slightly hampered by the fact that these boots are still squelching every time he walks. The rest of his clothes are dry, it's just the bloody boots that are getting on his last bloody nerve.

He spends a lot of time on the borders of the canyon, eyeing up the cliffs and wondering how fast it'd take whatever guards this camp's got to react, how fast the guns would fire. Not a test to make in the middle of the day, when anyone can see him. He'll be back once he knows more.

He spends time in the village, too, inspecting the buildings and watching the inhabitants with disguised suspicion. Fellow inmates or something else? It's too early to say.

Comments

[withoutahammer]

Neil's shoulders sag and he nods slowly, letting it sink in. They win. Whatever they do, it works. However this trip to Poland ends, the Nazis will be stopped. It should feel more like relief than it does, but he knows that it doesn't mean the team's safe. It just means that if they die, it won't be for nothing. "I don't even know where to start, ma'am. I don't expect you to know everything- but you were in intelligence? Were you with the SOE or...?"

If she was, she might know something about the fate of his team, but he's not holding out a lot of hope. He knows how things are compartmentalized, and he's pretty sure nobody knows where they are besides their CO and his second in command.

[womanofvalue]

"I began with Bletchley," she admits, given that her codebreaking days are long behind her now, seeing as Phillips rarely asked her to intercede and she had only picked it up again because the idiots in the SSR had overlooked vital information because, well, they thought they knew best and refused to listen to a woman. What else was new?

"I went into the field on recommendations of a lieutenant back at the beginning of '40," she shares. "I was with the SSR and later, often accompanied the 107th on specific missions."

[withoutahammer]

He isn't familiar with the SSR, but there were enough acronymed organizations that he didn't bother keeping up with the ones that he wasn't involved with. He does know Bletchley, though he'd never been assigned there. That kind of work would have driven him up the wall- he prefered the field.

"I was with the infantry at first, but I transferred into SOE in '41. Trained in Canada and then went into France to support the Resistance there in the spring, before... before Dieppe."


He's trained to be cautious about what he shares- the information about the move to Poland is still too dangerous to him, though he knows that she's from well beyond any time when that would have an effect. At least, that's what she says- the little skeptical voice in his mind reminds him that anyone can say anything, but his gut tells him she's on the level.

[womanofvalue]

Peggy had been occupied with Project Rebirth at that time, but it's impossible not to know what had been happening with Dieppe and those forces. "You were able to avoid it, then?" she says, given that it seems lucky for him that he hadn't wound up on the butcher's block during that failed plan. While she takes a great deal of solace in knowing how it led to their victory during Overlord, loss of life is something Peggy will never be used to.

"I worked with infantry and airborne both," she clarifies. "We took a select number of men in for a special project. When that disbanded, I went back into the general service."

[withoutahammer]

"We were... on the edges of it. We provided what support we could." And it hadn't been enough, nowhere near enough- they'd gotten the surviving ships away thanks to Harry, but there had still been so many casualties. He hadn't needed the official numbers to know it was a massacre- he'd seen the bodies on the beach.

He shakes his head sharply, refusing to get lost in the memory. He doesn't need to pull an Alfred and freeze up in the middle of a conversation.

"Was it hard going back? I can't imagine being back with the grunts, someone yelling orders at me all day." If he ever did rejoin the regulars now he'd probably be a sergeant at least, but he'd still get orders tossed at him, and he's found he doesn't like the expectation of following orders without question. At least in the field with the team he's had some independence.

[womanofvalue]

"That's a lucky thing," Peggy says, managing to offer an empathetic smile, even though she often finds herself inured to such sufferings after seeing so many of them. She knows that every one is as painful to each person as it had been to her, when she'd lost Michael and then, again, when she'd thought she lost Steve. When he asks about going back, she lifts her chin a touch and tries to imbue herself with the steel that she sometimes feels she lacks.

"Unfortunately, when all the men returned from the war, with them vanished my purpose," she says, keeping her tone steady and strong. "I had a friend to help me with that, but it's been a trying time."

[withoutahammer]

"We still lost one." Neil's response is clipped, but not out of anger. It just still hurts, thinking about Tom and the stupid, stupid way he died. It should never have happened. Neil should have been the one to take the dive. Tom had been good, but Neil had always been his superior at hand-to-hand. He should have been faster, should have seen the opening to move in more quickly, and then Tom would be around with his lightning brain and his smile.

The complaint about the men draws a snort. "They figured the men could do better than you? People are bloody idiots sometimes. Our sergeant's a woman and she does better than any of us could."

[womanofvalue]

They've all lost someone. It would be impossible not to, but she understands that it doesn't make the grief any easier. Each loss is deeply personal to each person, no matter the fact that they can all share in the experience. "I'm sorry," she offers, over his loss.

"Unfortunately, many of the people who might have gone to bat for me were no longer in the department, after the war," she says, voice restrained. Howard, branded a traitor. Phillips, off with his own work. Steve, gone. Dead, she'd thought, but gone. Even the Howlies had gone off to Russia to continue their missions, not there to defend her. More than that, Peggy doesn't like the notion that she needs defending. "I can hold my own, but it was getting the chance to prove it that was the problem."