Archive of Our Own

Werner was one of the luckier ones.

After they cleared the sands of the assigned Bretagne beach, he was moved from the danger of landmines to a cold tent of the Red Cross. Lucky part meant that he wouldn't be closed in a labour camp, working fifteen hours a day and having one meal. That was good. Most of his job was sitting, or walking around.

He was writing down names in the Red Cross register. That was his job. Name, date of birth, address, relatives, how long they're away from home. Except that his task was to document the sick refugees - refugees coming from former labour and concentration camps, oftentimes sick with influenza, syphilis, typhus... He lost count of the number of diseases the doctors informed him about.

He wore a mask, and that was the only form of protection that was offered to him. It was good enough during the Spanish flu, it should be good enough for this, the doctor snapped when Werner dared to object, and with needed submission, he started his job. Many of the refugees hated the fact that he's German, and that he's alive and relatively healthy, wearing the Red Cross now instead of the German one, and many times they purposely coughed, spat or sneezed right at him just for the sake of it. And his only protection was the mask, and his only potential friend was hot water with soap.

He moved when the American soldiers and the Red Cross moved. They made fun of him at times, laughed into his face, telling him things in English that he didn't understand. No one bothered to teach him, no one cared for him to know. It was probably better for him if he didn't know, and for them too. The only few men he could have a normal conversation with were the Canadians. A scientist turned soldier, John, explained that in Canada there is a French region, around Quebec, and that's where John himself is from, even though his father comes from Toronto.

Werner never cared to explain that he has no idea where those cities in Canada are. He knows where Canada is - beyond the Atlantic, just above the United States, but they weren't allowed to learn more in school because their culture was inferior to the German one. Everything he knows about Canada is from Frau Elena, who was there once as a young nun, and talked about the unrightful treatment of the native population that the nuns and monks took part in. After that, she didn't go to Canada anymore, but mentioned the maple syrup quite often.

He was learning a lot about the Americans too. Personally, though, he didn't like the Americans. Their voices were too loud, many seemed to lack discipline. The British and the Canadians were much more bearable. Sometimes they even shared their cigarettes with him.

Other times, when he was in hands of the French Resistance, he wasn't treated well. Some of the soldiers bathed in the superiority among them, and made them watch the pictures and videos they took at the concentration camps, of the dead ones and the sick ones, and they had to watch, repent for their sins. If they turned away or closed their eyes, sometimes they would hold their head towards the screen or they would pinch their eyes open until their eyes would tear up from dryness. Werner watched, and he suffered, and he repented. Wherever he and his unit went, they brought death with them, but at least he didn't have to watch the aftermath anywhere other than in his head.

Even worse, the people from the screen were people in front of him. Starved, beyond recognition, pale, sometimes with smelly blisters all over their skin. He had to talk to them and see how they opened their mouths, and see right into them, past the empty gums and rotted and missing teeth. He stopped looking in their faces directly when one day he got so sick he had to run out of the tent to vomit. He barely took off his mask before the empty content of his stomach spilled out of him.

Not looking at them also helped with their cooperation. If the once so mighty powerful German soldier now has to lower his eyes before them, they feel more keen on giving him their details to write down and getting rid of them faster.

Some of them, though, would remain stubborn even on the verge of death.

In the weeks of writing into the register, Werner almost have gotten the sicknesses remembered. Their symptoms. How serious their sickness is.

The older man that sits down in front of him surely has influenza. Werner can hear it clearly. It won't take long before he dies. There's not much medicine to spare, and there are worse cases of sickness than influenza.

"Sir, my name is Werner Pfennig, my task here is to write your details for the Red Cross refugee register. The purpose of it is to get you home faster and to let any remaining relatives of yours-"

"Werner Pfennig?" the man asks. "Are you German?"

The disgust is palpable in his voice.

Werner nods. "I work with the Red Cross-"

"Your French is flawed. Where'd you learn? From your occupation ?"

He sighs. Nothing offends him more than him thinking he learned a language while occupying the country. As if he had the time and the mental mühe to learn between all the death, stress and fighting. Most importantly, he finds it so offensive towards Frau Elena, who taught them from the young age, and despite the regime, allowed them to listen to the French radio broadcasts even if it meant death to her.

"Would that make you feel better about yourself?" Werner snaps and finally looks at him. He's an older man, with gray hair and wrinkles on his face, obviously starved and exhausted.

"So a German can't say the truth even after losing the war."

"The German doesn't need to say the truth to you. I am here to write down the details to be able to find your family, but if you don't ever want to see them again, then you can go ahead and leave."

That works. The man's mouth closes, and then he shakes her head.

"Are you leaving or not?" Werner asks with a frown.

"I'm not."

He nods. "Then I need your name."

"Daniel LeBlanc."

Werner shakes with the pen in his hand before pressing it to the paper, first writing his name before stopping over his surname. "Is LeBlanc separate or together?"

"Together."

"Date of birth?"

"Why do you need to know that?"

"We don't know how many Daniels LeBlancs exist in Europe."

"If any other than me existed, I bet they were killed by Germans."

"We can only wonder," Werner mutters to himself. "Address?"

“I lived in Paris before I was forced to evacuate. I don’t know if the building is still standing.”

“Have you had another address? We can write both and see.”

Werner writes the Parisian address first, then waits for the man to remember his second one. He coughs as he thinks, and for a moment, Werner wonders if it’s even worth writing down his details, when the man might die in a few days.

“Saint-Malo,” the man chokes out finally, as if he had just remembered. “It was Saint-Malo.”

Werner furrows his eyebrows at the familiar name. He swallows, and rushes the image of Marie-Laure out of his head. She doesn’t belong into this place. She shouldn't be the one walking between the sick and the dead, she shouldn't be the one getting shamed by being on his side. She should be walking on a beach, where her feet would be buried in soft sand, with the ocean's purring accompanying her, where the seagulls would fly over her like watchful guards.

“Saint-Malo?” he asks, anxiety rising in him. He desperately tries to get Marie out of his head, but once he thinks about her, it's impossible to get her out.

“Do you want me to spell it out to you?” Daniel snarls.

Werner looks at the man, and blinks, and for a moment, he sees Marie sitting in front of him instead of the man. Their features fade into one another, and he's not sure whether he's seeing her or him. Still, he leans forward, and braces his hands on the desk, leaning close into the possibility of getting sick with influenza, and says: "I have someone waiting for me there. Perhaps... Perhaps you could get her a message from me. You must know her."

"And why would I do that?"

"Because she must be alone, and I don't want her to think she lost everyone," Werner says. "Please, sir. If you're returning to Saint-Malo, she'll be easy to find. Her name is Marie. Marie-Laure, and she's blind, and-"

"What did you say?"

"She's blind, she can't see, and she's on her own only with-"

"Her name. What did you say?!" the man demands, and grabs him by the collar, pulling him even closer, with a clear threat. "Did you say Marie-Laure?! How dare you?! How dare you to say my daughter's name with your dirty German mouth!" he yells, and Werner is startled with the fact that he's seeing eye to eye with Marie's father, who had been imprisoned in a labour camp for god knows how long. He tries to pull out of his reach, tries to get away from his face, but Daniel holds him tightly, screaming threats at him. "If you even touched her, I will fucking kill you, do you hear me?!"

It's only the others that manage to pull Werner out of Daniel's grasp, two of the former German soldiers that have been accompanying Werner ever since he reached the unstable border of France and the Reich. One holds Daniel down, and one is assisting Werner.

"Alles in Ordnung?" he asks him.

Werner nods. "Ja."

"Wegen wem schreit er?"

"Seiner Tochter," Werner answers curtly.

"Kennst du sie denn?"

"Kenn’ ich sie denn?" Werner repeats. "Ja. Ich kenn’ sie. Ich liebe sie. Ist alles in Ordnung, echt. Mann, lass ihn los."

"Schwiegerväter, hä?"

The two men get back to their place, and he looks at Daniel. "I did nothing to Marie-Laure. You, however, left her in a bombed town!" he exclaims, now rage building in him. They left Marie in Saint-Malo, helping the French Resistance, when they knew very well that the Germans were sweeping the town and Americans bombarding it. "On her own! With a radio, and a fucking stone that nearly got her killed!"

"A stone? What do you know about it?"

"She told me about it. The diamond. It fell out one of the wooden house in the third floor," Werner says. "A German officer went after it for some reason. When he had found her house, he tried to kill her because she didn't know where it was, and I tackled him and we fell down on the wooden town, and then he died and... It lied there. She told me not to touch it."

"Did you touch it?"

"No."

"You're better than me, then."

Werner doesn't say anything on that.

Daniel covers his eyes with his palms, and rubs his face for a long moment before scoffing. He's crying by the time he looks back at Werner, and Werner only shrinks underneath that. He leans into his chair and adjusts the mask on his face.

"Did she make it to safety?" he asks.

Werner nods. "I gave her a white sheet and sent her to the American unit. She's survived."

"Thank God."

"She's helped the Resistance. They'll take care of her."

"She was in the Resistance?"

"She broadcasted the radio so the planes could reach the location more accurately. That's how I found her."

"What did you do in the army again?"

Werner shrugs. "I was a radio specialist."

"A radio specialist," Daniel scoffs. "The same specialist whose unit brutally murdered everyone involved in the radio broadcast? And you're telling me my daughter is alive? Are you lying to me this whole time?"

"By the time we reached Saint-Malo, there were only a handful of us in the unit. And I... I never wanted to kill anyone. All I've ever wanted was-"

"I don't care what you want or have wanted. No one gets what they wanted in war. What I want, however, is a proof that she's still alive and that you're not fucking with me. Do you even have the proof?"

"Shortwave 13.10," Werner says. "I used to listen to it when I was a child. There was a professor broadcasting about science. About the truth. And Marie broadcasted from the same shortwave. I find out that her uncle Etienne - he was the Professor. Is that enough of a proof for you? Why would I want to kill her or him when... When they were the only light in the darkness surrounding me?"

"Because that's what you Germans do."

"It wasn't my choice to join the army. I wasn't old enough to be recruited, even."

"How old are you now?"

"Eighteen."

"Eighteen," Daniel repeats with a shake of his head. "You're only eighteen?"

Werner nods.

Daniel doesn't say anything. All he can think about is Marie, who is now sixteen, barely younger than this man himself, and dreadfully wonders what her encounter with this German went like. Where was Etienne that he allowed this to happen? Madame Manec? Where were they that they allowed a German - not one German, two Germans! - march into the house looking for her?

Werner knows what Daniel is thinking about. Marie-Laure's presence occupies their minds without a permission. Thinking about her still, he grabs back her father's file that was lying on the ground, forgotten after he had pulled him threateningly to him, and wipes the dust off it and grabs a fountain pen.

He writes Marie's name under the printed Relative/Apparenté/Verwandte:.

That's it. That's all. He'll put his file on top of the hundreds of others, and if Daniel is lucky, he'll be picked on the bus headed to Paris next week. The medical state of Marie's father, however, worries him. He might as well never arrive to Paris, or never even be alive to get to see the bus arriving.

"I have everything I need, then," Werner says quietly and puts Daniel LeBlanc's file on top of the others. "We will send letters to your old addresses and to your family, and we will notice you when you're about to leave the camp and go back home."

"Tell me, how many times have you said this, and how many people have survived until the lifts back home arrived?" Daniel asks. "I'm dying. The time I see my daughter again, I'll be in a coffin, if even that. You don't send dead people home, do you? There's no one to bury me. Everyone is too busy doing their own things. If I have luck, I'll be buried on my own and not in a mass grave like the others."

"I'm sorry," Werner says. And this time, he means it. In other cases, he wouldn't care about the man. There were too many like him, and if he were to care about everyone, his heart rupture under the constant grief. Yet... This is Marie's father. There must be something he can do.

"Could I... Could I write a letter to her? Could you ensure it gets to her?" Daniel asks then.

Werner nods. He gives him a piece of paper and a spare fountain pen that's in his pocket before moving on to another person. He sits there the whole day, until the evening when they bring him his dinner, and still he can't get over his exchange with Daniel. Werner's not getting out of here anytime soon. He might be here for years. But Daniel, he'll leave. Dead or alive, but he'll leave.

Werner only has to ensure Daniel leaves alive, and arrives alive too. If anyone has a real chance to get to Marie, it's her father. Werner will be faced with challenges if he wants to escape now. Everyone seems to recognise that he's German, even without him opening his mouth first. In France, they'd send him back. Report him. Perhaps imprison him. In the best case, loathe him so much to the point of not helping him at all. And he has no wealth, no name to help himself.

No, it's going to have to be Daniel.

As he eats his dinner - oats with so little water that without eyes, he'd think he was eating cement - he contemplates the situation. He has three options:

1) Get Daniel on the priority list.

2) Make sure Daniel leaves on the earliest bus back to France.

3) Make sure Daniel has enough medicine to not die before, during, or after the journey.

The first two are easy. The third, however...

He'll have to do a favour to the soldiers. They're the ones taking medicine with them. Influenza is not curable with penicillin, so he's going to have to get something else, and...

Alright , he thinks at night, as he gets up when everyone else falls asleep, and sneaks out of the tent where they're sleeping. It's freezing as it's December already, just before Christmas, but not snowing yet. He heads to the barracks where the allied soldiers are, and waits until the guards go for a piss before getting in. The main hall where they spend most of their time during the day is now empty, and he heads to the radio, kneeling down behind it, taking it as a cover, and takes off the back of it, diving his hands into the cables.

The same morning, just before he has to report on duty, he takes his flask with hot tea and searches through the tents where the former labourers are. He finds Daniel after a long time, in the back of one of the tents, shaking from the cold and his sickness, and he kneels by his side.

"Mr. LeBlanc?" he whispers, and when he doesn't wake up, he shakes with him. "Daniel."

At last, he wakes up. He sits up, with panic, before calming down when he sees him.

"I brought you tea," Werner hands him the flask. "There's honey and lemon in it."

"Where'd you take honey and lemon?"

"It's better to not ask," Werner shakes his head. On top of his crimes, though, stealing from the American supplies is the least grave one, unless someone is too adamant on having their lemons and honey. Honey, that was - as he read from the etiquette - from a German beekeeper in Baden anyway. "Drink all of it. It'll help you."

"I have the letter for Marie-"

"Keep it," Werner says. "You'll read it to her yourself, I promise you."

"Don't promise something you can't do."

Werner leaves him and the letter for Marie. He goes on through his day and does his job, and at lunch, he gets out of the tent to get some fresh air, pulling his mask down to his throat and walking around the area. He stops when he sees the group of soldiers verbally fighting in English, and recognises John who's only standing afar, watching the whole situation with a smirk and a cigarette in his mouth.

"What's the matter?" he asks the Canadian scientist.

"Their radio broke. No one knows how to fix it, and apparently their little president should broadcast an important speech today or something," John shrugs.

"How did it break?"

"Who knows?"

"You're a scientist, though."

"I'm a biologist, mate, not a fucking engineer."

Werner slumps and purses his lips. "Tell them I can fix it."

John raises his eyebrows at him. "You?"

Werner shrugs. "Do they know another radio specialist?"

"Well, I'll tell them, but just so you know, dunno if they let a German anywhere near their goddamn radio..."

Desperation makes them let him near their radio. The exact same radio that he broke just last night. He fixes it, and pretends how difficult it was, cursing in German and French and letting them know that he's doing them a big favour, and assures that they'll hear their president loud and clear, and they give him what he wanted in return.

On his way back to his job, he tucks the six painkillers into his pocket. It is Friday; on Monday, the bus to France arrives. That means that Daniel can take two painkillers today and tomorrow, one on Sunday and one on Monday, and Werner hopes - prays to God - that he makes it to Paris in time.

At three, he sneaks back to Daniel's tent and makes him swallow the pill together with the tea. He recognises how bad his sickness is, and instead of leaving Daniel a pill for the dinner, he takes it with him, worried that someone else might steal it from him as he shifts between wakefulness and dreams in his feverish state.

After dinner, he doesn't get the chance to get to him, as the soldiers order them to do more things, and only shortly before midnight he gets to Daniel and pops the other pill in his mouth before leaving himself to go to sleep. He feels his own temperature rising, and his nose getting stuffed with the inevitable sickness. He might as well be sick with influenza, or something worse, but he grits his teeth and closes his eyes. Not today, Werner, you're not dying any time soon. Jutta and Marie are waiting for you.

He feeds Daniel the pills during the weekend, and when the bus arrives early Monday morning, he makes sure Daniel is sitting inside, with another flask of tea (this time without honey and lemon) in his hands and the letter for Marie in his pocket. Before he says goodbye, Daniel clasps Werner's shoulder with: "Thank you."

"Tell Marie that I'm thinking of her every day," Werner tells him instead. "Tell her that... That I'll get to her as soon as possible."

Daniel only nods. Werner thinks it's unfair; he saved his life, and still he doesn't even promise to convey his message to her. He'd write her a letter, but Daniel might tear it apart or not ever read it to her, and Werner cannot read or write Braille yet. No. The time he says Marie everything he wants to tell her, is the time he sees her personally.

However long it takes.

With a long sigh, he watches the bus leave the camp, and in the bus, Daniel.

It’s unusual to witness the civilisation again. The cars roar underneath him, the wheels wading through the melting snow mixed with mud and gravel, through the streets and onward, on to their urging business with impatient honking; the pedestrians lead joyful and passionate conversations as they walk, passing one another, all in their coats and hats and mittens; the smell of bakeries and restaurants reopening amidst the chaotic end of the war year and the hopeful beginning of a new, warless one.

In fact, Daniel is quite overwhelmed by being back in the capital city. It’s a stark contrast towards everything he’s been through in the last four years. First Saint-Malo, with a roaring sea and the smell of sea wood, then a labour camp where the smell of coal and smoke and dying never left his nostrils, and the a refugee camp where a mix of allied soldiers, refugees and former German soldiers tried to cooperate through a messy period of time filled with the lack of resources for all of them, muddy and rainy days that soon turned freezing and cold.

Paris, in contrast, forever remains as elegant as she’s always been.

He doesn’t hide his own surprise that he’s reached his beloved city once again. He barely remembers the factors that brought him here, memories mix themselves in his head, the times from prison, from the camp, from here, from home, from Saint-Malo, from his childhood, they’re all over the place. He wakes to see little Marie-Laure, just before she got blind, other times he sees her grown up and defiant, with her own head, reprimanding him for things he hasn’t done for years. Etienne, too, as he remembers him from his childhood, and then as an old man, and all the ghosts stand above him and watch him and converse with him.

Converse!

Sometimes a doctor or a nurse joins the conversation. They ask about his daughter and uncle as if they weren’t standing right next to them, and then talk with one another, behind his back, and his hearing is too weak, his sinuses too stuffed with mucus, to properly hear what they’re talking about, it’s as if he was drowning in the cold water of the Atlantic.

The moment he begins realising something is wrong is when his dead wife comes to see him. She’s as bright as ever, with her beautiful smile and positive attitude, and talks with him quite a bit. Every night, she sits on his side and talks, and they talk about the labour camp together, and he talks about his exhaustion, he talks how difficult it was to stay alive, how mentally and physically challenging all that was, and she sits there, and nods to all his words, and sympathises with him, and then-

It must have been all so painful.

It was.

I can get rid of that pain.

He realised she wasn’t there. None of them was. She was offering a death, but he couldn’t die just yet. He had things to do. He had to find their daughter.

His roommates told him that he had woken up the whole floor back then. He was screaming on top of his lungs, screaming at his former wife to go away, and a whole of three doctors had to hold him down to inject a tranquilliser into his neck. The morning after, he woke up and felt fine.

The sickness was gone. The wounds on his soul, however, burned as if someone poured salt into them. His physical condition is nothing in comparison to the pain echoing inside of him. All his fears, his insecurities, worries, as if all of that came into one place and began attacking him, and he had nowhere to run, all he could was to curl in the corner of his mind and scream into the emptiness he felt after so much work, after so much suffering, after so many deaths.

Daniel stubs out his cigarette against the window ledge and closes the window. People on the room with him complain quite a bit about the cold. He returns back to bed, and pours himself a cup of the cold tea, and ponders how long he’ll have to be in the hospital. The doctors said at least another two weeks - you had a kidney infection - unless his family comes for him.

Marie, nor Etienne, have found him yet. The letter has perhaps not reached them yet, or worse, the letter wasn’t ever sent in the first place. The second option terrifies him, and he reaches for the book that he had found on the bookshelf in the hospital hall, and opens it in the middle, right where his letter for Marie is. Reading it again and again, he finds his words more pathetic and choleric than what he feels like right now. Yet, when he wrote it, with a shaking hand and his mind blinded with sickness, he didn’t know any better.

Sometimes, he ponders if the German soldier he had met was even real. He was a young man, he’d still be a boy if he wasn’t forced to become a soldier, barely older than Marie herself, with a timid posture but a feisty spirit, light hair, sharp cheekbones and blue eyes, visuals that would grant him the top spot on the Nazi propaganda. He remembers him writing down his details, yet Daniel is still hesitating.

Because the young man, whose name he had already forgotten, knew Marie. It was her name on his tongue, Saint-Malo’s name on his tongue, and the fact that she was blind. And, of course, the Sea of Flames. How could he really known? How could have he travelled so far from Saint-Malo and Bretagne, whose beaches are occupated by soldiers removing landmines, all the way to the refugee camp where Daniel was? How could he have assured him that she was still alive, and how could he had known about Marie’s favourite radio broadcast?

That didn’t make any sense. The more Daniel thinks about it, the more he comes to the conclusion that the German boy was his mere imagination, someone that his own mind made up to make him feel better, to make him survive until he reaches France, until he reaches the one he holds the dearest - his daughter.

Tell Marie that I’m thinking about her every day. That I’ll get to her as soon as possible.

He might have as well just told himself that. It was the truth. There wasn’t a day where he didn’t think of his daughter, where he didn’t worry about her wellbeing. He wanted to get to her as soon as possible. He wouldn’t have to promise her that if he wasn’t stupid and if he stayed in Saint-Malo. But both of his actions would have different consequences, and if him leaving and being captured meant that Marie-Laure was safe, then he was fine with it. He’d go through a labour camp a hundred times if she would have stayed safe.

He tells the other men in his room about the men. Let’s say after that, they take him less seriously than they ever had.

A German? A good German? Oh, don’t shit us here. We all know what they’re like! The only time a German would go after your daughter, your blind daughter, is for one thing, and you don’t want to be thinking about that-

They must be right. There is no lovable Nazi in the world, and he had spent the last three weeks in a constant state of delirium. He still isn’t thinking straight, his brain could be only described as cloudy. Sometimes, he goes to another place, and then wonders what he wanted to there. Sometimes, he reads books, and all the words begin merging together like a paper ruined by spilled ink. Sometimes, he tries to solve crosswords, but can’t remember the words, no matter how basic they are.

It’s the labour camp effect, one of the nurses tries to comfort him. You’re not the only one. Trust me, everything will come back in a while. You just need to rest.

Resting comes uneasy to him. It feels like he’s been lying on the bed for years, and so it’s not unusual for him to walk through the hallways, walk up and down the stairs as much as his body allows him too, walks so he could be stronger. He finds that the labour camp has changed him in ways that he would never think of; he, an involuntary passionate overthinker, a man that always played with a thought in his mind, finds that nowadays, he can think about nothing. His mind is just like that. Empty. There’s nothing in it. And if there is, it’s either his family, or the camp.

Suddenly, he finds Etienne’s way of coping much more reasonable.

When the news about his arrival reach Marie-Laure and Etienne, it’s already February. They didn’t get the letter - some of the postal service in northern France still hasn’t recovered as many workers have left. It was only when they went to Rennes to see the Red Cross when they had found him.

Their old apartment is full of dust. The handful of clothes left - too big for Daniel’s starved body, too small for Marie’s grown up one. Things stolen, one of the windows broken. Pigeons made a nest in the kitchen. The space too large, almost ominously large, the vastness crashing down upon him as he hasn’t seen such an empty uncrowded space in so long.

It takes them a full week to clean things, and in the week, they wonder what’s going to happen now.

It wasn’t necessary to wonder on their own. Things would always happen.

Marie begins going to school again, to prepare for her dream biology degree in university.

Etienne starts working in the Red Cross in Paris, helping misplaced families back together. He helps former soldiers too, soldiers returning from all fronts, from Africa, from anywhere imaginable, and helps them cope with the grief and trauma.

And Daniel?

He finds it difficult to simply return to living again. He was luckier than most to not lose anyone, except for Madame Manec, but luck only brings him this far. He starts working at the museum once again, helping to put it back together before it can become fully functional again. Many of the pieces are scattered across Europe, where they had been either given to or stolen by others, and yet he doesn’t find the treasure hunting as exciting as in his younger years, and he realises just how much of an old man he had become, wanting to stay home by the fireplace and drink a glass of good red wine.

He talks about his experience with Etienne, as he’s the only one who can understand it as near as possible, but feels that he has no right to complain compared to his uncle as he, after all, wasn’t in the trenches, wasn’t gassed or run over by tanks, but was only a labourer. There’s nothing else that he can do to help himself but talk about it or try to forget it, and as people around him say: Only time will help .

And so the years go by.

The tragedy stained decade turns into a new, more hopeful one. For Western Europe at least. The countries get back on their feet, and the western civilisation has never bloomed as much as it does now. Marie-Laure blooms with it. She turns from a teenager into a young woman, into a young, bright, educated woman that finishes her master’s degree and upon starting her doctoral studies begins working at the museum part-time, alongside her father. Daniel’s heart beats with pride, and he is more than glad to have found her moving on from the bad things towards a better future.

For her, to not drag her down with him, he begins trying too. He works himself up to the deputy of the museum director, and puts on more work to avoid thinking about the previous years. At start, he’s successful. He’s a hard worker, a smart man, and gets into his job right away, running from the pain in his past.

Until his past catches up with him.

It was getting dark in Saint-Malo.

Werner sat on the stairs to the beach and listened to the ocean roar. He was hugging his knees like a little boy that was afraid, his chin sat on top of his arms. He stared at the ocean and realised that he had never gotten the chance to swim in it joyfully. He knew stories from others, about the sea in the south, in Italy and in France and in Spain, all of which had beautiful beaches and warm sea, and he dreamt of it, but he had never had the means to get there and experience it.

When he began shaking with cold, when a wave reached just a little too close, he got up and began skipping up the stairs, back into the unwelcoming city walls of Saint-Malo. The town was nothing like he remembered, some buildings completely changed after being bombarded. The house of Marie-Laure stands there, still, now separated into a number of apartment with many families instead of one. When he asked after her, no one knew who she was.

The people here weren’t entirely helpful either. It was as if they remembered. They had every right to do it, every right to dislike him, yet he wasn’t there to hurt them. He was there to find Marie, but Marie as if she was wiped out of this town’s history, as if he had made her up. For a long moment, as he lied on the bed in the cramped hotel room and stared at the ceiling, he wondered whether he had made her up. Many things had happened here. A bomb had fell right next to him. Perhaps he was searching for a ghost of his own imagination.

The next morning, he had gotten up early, and in defeat, walked to the bakery to get something to eat before his train to Rennes and onward back to Paris departed. He recognised the bakery; it was the one by which he had seen her for the first time, passing by. He walked up the single stair and entered, looking around. The people present went silent at the sight of him.

His lips parted. He headed towards the counter and leaned against it, squinting at the selection of baked goods. He ordered a sandwich and then a croissant, and digged into his pocket for a few francs.

Anything else? The baker asked then, looking him up and down. Werner had the feeling as if they had known each other, and perhaps they had. He doubted there was another radio specialist to ever step into Saint-Malo.

Actually, yes.

He walked out feeling victorious. With his backpack in his hand where he was stuffing the croissant, and the sandwich with which he wanted to satisfy his hunger still in his mouth, he chuckled like a madman and rushed to the train station, as if him walking faster made the train leave earlier so he could get to her.

Now, after so many years! He knew more.

She’s back in Paris, with her father and her uncle.

Where can I find her?

Like hell I know. But her father…

The Museum of Natural History is grand. Werner planned to come here one day, but didn’t think he’d show up so early and even without a tour of it. The moment he steps into the building, he knows how much Jutta would love it here, and he promises her that he’ll take her here when she visits him during Christmas. Jutta’s far from Paris; after the war, she remained in West Berlin and had found a job there, though life in the piece of land surrounded by the East wasn’t easy. She had only found him through letters, and after he was released from his duty, they could only see each other for the first time two years ago, in 1950, after the Berlin blockade had ended.

They had cried and screamed and laughed when they saw one another again. Full of things that they couldn’t convey through letters, full of ideas and full of memories that simply had to be shared. He had stayed with her in West Berlin after, and alongside his job at the electronics shop, he was accepted to the university and he could become what he wanted all along.

An engineer.

Now, he’s in Paris doing an exchange year at the polytechnical university. The exchange year was the only hope he had to get to Marie-Laure, as he had no actual means to leave West Berlin just like that and go look for her. All of the semester, he had worked twice as hard as the others so he could be the chosen one who’d go to France for two semesters.

He finds himself more than grateful for his own resilience. No matter how hard it was, he was here, and now just a staircase from her father, who’d surely relay his message to her, and then she’d see her again, and-

How can I help you? The ticket saleswoman smiles at him politely. One ticket costs-

I’m looking for someone. Daniel LeBlanc. I was told he works here.

What do you need from him?

Werner takes a deep breath. I saved his life when he was dying.

Even the hallways in the staff wing are magnificent. Decorated with numerous specimen, Werner has a hard time keeping up with the bodyguard and getting a look at all of them. The bodyguard throws him suspicious looks, and he even hears him mutter something about his german-ness under his breath, but honestly, he couldn’t care more. Not only he had gotten enough of it throughout the last decade, he is also eager to just see Daniel LeBlanc.

It’s Wednesday. He imagines that for Daniel, it’s an ordinary day like no other, nothing too special happening in the morning. Most probably, he’s sitting in his office and sipping coffee while stamping papers, at least that’s what he imagined after being told that director deputy LeBlanc might be too busy to see him.

When they stop in front of a massive wooden door, with Daniel LeBlanc's name on it, Werner shifts, nervous and full of expectations. Perhaps Marie’s there with him. That’d be too foolish now, wouldn’t it!

The bodyguard knocks and peeks his head in.

They talk quietly before the bodyguard nods at Werner and steps away from the entrance, allowing him to go inside. The office is big, decorated with numerous bookshelves, with a desk standing by the window and an old man behind it. Daniel has truly aged, but not beyond recognition. Werner exhales a breath of relief at seeing a familiar face. At being closer to Marie.

But Daniel, he seems nervous about his presence. First, when their eyes meet, he freezes, and then he averts them, and begins fixing the papers on his desk. Werner takes off his hat and stands there, waiting for him to get finished, and clears his throat, as if to make Daniel notice him again.

“Mr. LeBlanc?” he asks. He’s wondered how this exchange would go, and tried to prepare, but immediately forgets everything he wanted to say. Instead, he improvises. “My name’s Werner Pfennig, you might not remember me, but many years ago, we met in a refugee camp on the border of Germany and France.”

He finally looks at him. “I remember you,” is what he says.

Werner tries to smile.

“You must have saved my life back then. I can’t remember everything properly, I… I was in a delirium.”

“You were sick,” Werner agrees. He still stands by the door, now growing more awkward, and Daniel realises it at last, offering him the chair in front of his desk with a curt wave of the hand. “I wasn’t sure if you made it back to France, but I tried my best.”

Daniel nods. “And… What brings you here, Werner Pfennig?”

Werner straightens. Daniel mustn’t remember much, then. For him, it is way too obvious what brings him here.

“Marie-Laure,” Werner answers softly. “I am looking for Marie, but she wasn’t in Saint-Malo.”

Werner thought about her every day. Every single day. And he tried his best to get to her as soon as possible, but he wasn’t blessed with the best circumstances or big fortunes like many of his peers. Still, after the war, he had found that he was blessed with being still alive, or mentally healthy, as he was reminded by Frederick’s mother whenever he talked about getting to Marie.

“For… for my daughter? Why are you looking for her?”

“Do you not remember?” Werner asks at last.

Daniel leans into his chair without any reaction.

Werner looks away for a moment, then back at Daniel. “When I was a soldier in Saint-Malo, I saved her life. It’s eight years by now, and you might have forgotten that I ever told you that, but surely Marie still remembers. I promised that we’d see each other again one day, and I intent on fulfilling that promise to her.”

“I understand.”

If he understands, then why is he like that? Werner frowns. No, he knows exactly why Daniel LeBlanc is like that. Why all of the French are like that to him. Still, perhaps when he had saved his life, he had thought that Daniel would be more willing. That he’d be grateful at least. It wasn’t why Werner saved his life, for Daniel to be grateful to him, but for Marie to be happy. He also had known, that if he didn’t attempt to at least help her father, then he could never face her with a clean consciousness ever again.

“I’m not sure if Marie still remembers you,” Daniel admits then. “I don't want to bring back painful memories.”

“Painful memories?” Werner repeats quietly. What painful memories was he on about? His stomach tightens with anxiety and hurt, and most importantly - sadness. She never knew. “You never talked with her about me, did you? You never gave her my message.”

Daniel sighs. “Look, Mr. Pfennig, you seem to be a good man. However, Marie-Laure has a life of her own now. She’s moved on from everything, from the events of Saint-Malo and the aftermath, and…”

“I understand that she wanted to move on. We all wanted to. Still, I don’t believe that what we had was something that she’d just forget, sir.”

“What did you have, then?” Daniel asks. His voice had a sharp tone to it, and he narrows his eyes at him.

“A connection,” Werner explains softly, and shakes his head. “All we had was a connection. Through a common radio broadcast. The moment we met, we… That was what we had. It seems to be so little, but back then, it meant more than you can imagine.”

Daniel doesn’t answer. He only clicks his tongue and leans forward to grab his cigarette case, and offers Werner one, which he declines with a shake of a head. He scrunches his hat between his hands before shrugging. He can’t help but be incredibly disappointed by Daniel’s behaviour. That Daniel is trying to middle between them while this had never anything to do with him. This was between him and Marie. Daniel had no business in this. He was only an unfortunate witness.

Still, he’s the only mean he has to get to Marie. Sure, now that he knows where Daniel works, he could follow him home, if Marie still lived with him, or he could wait in front of the museum gates every day for her, but that would be counterproductive with his studies. She already occupies so much space in his mind ever since he had arrived to Paris that he hasn’t been entirely focused on his lectures anyway.

Lectures. That’s a good way to go, he tells himself before clearing his throat. He scrunches his hat between his hands.

“I’m here for the entire year,” he reveals to Daniel. “I’m studying engineering at the polytechnic university,” he says and searches on the desk with his eyes, before he grabs a pen and a piece of paper. He writes his address on it. Unfortunately there isn’t a Braille typewriter anywhere near, and punching dimples into the paper would take him too much time and too much effort. He’ll have to trust Daniel in this.

“She has time to decide whether she wants to see me or not. Don’t get me wrong in this one, though. This is entirely her choice.”

Daniel takes the address from him and raises an eyebrow at it. Yet, he doesn’t say anything. Only the cigarette shifts in his mouth. Werner gets surprised that he actually tucks the piece into the pocket of his suit.

“I can’t promise anything,” Daniel says at last.

“I don’t mind,” Werner lets out a breath of relief. He gets up, and picks his scrunched hat, trying to put it back in its original shape. “If she wants, tell her to write me a letter. I know how to read Braille.”

Dear Werner

Dearest Werner

Lieber Werner

Marie struggles to even start the letter for him suitably. How does she write a letter to a man that she’s been thinking about for the last 8 years?

8 years. That’s how long it has been. An incredible 8 years, almost 8 Christmases, 8 New Years, 8 Easters, 8 summers without him. Every year, she had hoped that perhaps, he’d turn up on her doorstep, or if not that, then that a letter would arrive from him with the promise of that. Nothing. For the first three years, she was heartbroken. Soldiers were released all the way until 1949, and she had hoped that in those five years, he’d show up, or at least she’d get a letter of his death. But none of that happened.

She waited for a long time. She waited longer than the proclaimed widows, and waited for him like he was her lover, her husband, her most treasured person.

And he didn’t come.

Now, in 1952, almost 1953, he shows up. Now, when she’s begun her doctoral studies. Now, when she’s found a boyfriend, or someone that might not be just a boyfriend but something more, perhaps, someone that she let to her side after so many years of waiting.

When her father told her, she was angry. Angry with all those men, men that she knew cared about her, but still just men.

What is this? she asks.

An address of someone you might know. His name’s Werner Pfennig.

What did you say?

She was deafened by anger when he told her. Werner, her Werner, her dearest one, met her father and saved his life, and her father didn’t even possibly think to tell that detail to her?!

I didn’t know what he did to you. Marie, understand me. A German soldier-

How could you keep that from me?! He could have been here, with me, for years!

Understand me, please.

How can I understand that? You decided for me, unrightfully! I am not a child, Papa, I stopped being a child the moment you left Saint-Malo. Where you left me and that stone that nearly got me killed! Killed, you hear that? And if Werner wasn’t there, then I’d be dead.

He saved both their lives, and yet his father acted this way. Hell, Marie thinks, if Werner was truly loyal to his army, he’d tell that it’s her broadcast, whose exposure would mean the exposure of the Resistance in Saint-Malo. He had more credit on this whole thing that people thought.

Frustrated by everyone around her, and mostly frustrated by her own mind that has always produced sufficient words but now left her speechless, she decided to be straightforward. She wrote a date, a time and a place, sealed the paper in the envelope and still that evening delivered it to the nearest mail box.

And god, what an awfully long week that had been. The days trickled incredibly slowly. Every day, she had woken up to find that another day ahead would be the slowest day of her life. She ate, she studied, she lectured, she walked, all as if Chronos himself held a personal grunge against her. She was sleepless, restless, impatient. Incredibly, incredibly frustrated to top it off.

Why couldn’t she choose an earlier date?

Why, Marie, why? What if the letter didn’t arrive on time. This is Paris, after all.

Then, after a long, so long, and so suffocating weekend, Monday came, and she survived the day and woke up into Tuesday; the faithful day. Only one person knows of her intentions. She didn’t tell her father what she’d do with the address, though he might have suspicions of his own. Her friend and her get out of their lectures early to prepare Marie for the meeting.

What about our visiting professor, Marie? Her friend asked. I thought you liked John, and now we’re preparing you for a meeting with someone completely new.

He’s not completely knew. I’ve known him for years.

Funny you’ve never mentioned.

How could she ever mention to anyone? The story of their meeting sounded more surreal than avant-garde poems.

She arrives to the café early. Way too early. She takes up a table for two, right by the window, so perhaps he could see her right away when he arrives. She orders tea for herself, because coffee might make her heart beat even faster than it already is, and waits. Impatience hasn’t left her ever since last week. She distracts herself by folding the paper tissue on her side, over and over again, and then drinks her cup of tea, hugging herself. Then doubts come to her - has the letter arrived? Is he coming? What if he changed his mind?

Surely not. It was him who sought her in the first place! He wouldn’t leave her just like this now, would he? Or is this his revenge that she didn’t look for him the entire time? But how could she? She was blind, and people were suspicious. They picked traitors out of the crowd. And if she, a young girl, said she met a German soldier, they would seek him and beat him for what he’s done.

She swallows. She can’t get rid of the suspense in her body. Her limbs ache with it. Her stomach hurts with it. How long has she been waiting? Should she pay and go?

And then-

"Marie."

Oh.

Her body tenses, and then the tension is released when she realises who this is. She probably wouldn't have recognised him at first. His voice is different, more mature, deeper, but her mind doesn't forget easily - voices are faces for her, and she can still remember it, the beautiful, rich, soft voice of his.

He’s come after all. 

She turns towards him, and stands up from her seat, reaching out to him. She can smell his cologne, a soft smell of mint and citruses that must be hidden in the crease between his neck and his shoulder.

"Werner," she says softly, tasting his name on her tongue. She’s said it aloud only in her dreams, she thinks.

He takes her hands. They're not as small as she remembers. They're bigger than hers, now, and calloused, sculpted after what she assumes years of work and tinkering with radios. She likes the way his hands feel in hers. They fit well. His touch is warm, and his thumb runs over her knuckles, exploring the valleys and hills of the back of her hand.

They stand there in silence, neither suddenly ready to say a word after being unable to for the past years, and hold each other. The café around them is alive with chatter, music and clinking of silverware and cups, but the bubble they stand in is completely silent, one could hear only their ragged, nervous, excited breaths. Marie can feel his eyes on her, it's a tickling feeling that her brain still receives, and she wonders if she's just like he remembers. Her hair is still long, only now she wears it in various braids, and her skin is more textured after spending the last months researching with her university in the Caribbean.

She sees his change through touch, as she lets go of his hands and instead runs her fingers carefully up his forearms, marvelling her fingertips underneath his shirt on the skinny hand with noticeable veins and a number of scars, both small and big, and also moles that made her think where all she'd find them over his body. She doesn't have enough of him only from his hands and forearms, no, she wants to know all of him, she wants to feel and touch his entirety, and she chuckles at her own neediness.

Marie then cups the sides of his neck, and lets herself explore the marvellous mound of his Adam's apple, the dip on his chin, the soft skin of his cheeks, the curve of his lips, the sharpness of his cheekbones. His nose is more prominent than she thought all those years, and it surprises her at the same time as it enchants her, just how much it stands out of his face, how much she likes how grand it is. She can't tell whether his eyelashes are long or not, but she knows they're perfect either way, and his eyebrows sit perfectly on top of his face, right underneath the frowning crease of his forehead.

She smiles. Perhaps he's even better than she remembers - than she dreamt of.

Without more to say, he brings her into his arms, engulfs her in his warm, secure, comfortable embrace, and holds her tightly as if she were to run away from him. The collar of his suit jacket tickles her on the cheek, but she doesn't protest, she doesn't mind, instead she burrows her nose into his neck and wants to remember this moment forever. His hands rest on her back, and his fingers are still caressing her, and she can feel it even through her thick sweater, she can feel how one moment, he clenches his fist into the fabric and then unclenches, and smoothes, and caresses her skin through the wool. His chest rises steadily against hers, but staggers here and there, and she can only mirror him, tears suddenly coming into her eyes and grief streaming out with her deep breaths.

It won't stop amazing her how a person that she met only once in her life leaves a mark on her. Somehow, now in his arms, she sees herself from a different point of you, and as if the mental puzzles with the big question marks suddenly clicked together into a one, perfect piece that made sense.

Werner.

She finds it difficult to pull away, but does it when his tears soak through her sweater and down to her blouse, and she parts only to cup his cheeks once more and wipe his tears, just as a choked chuckle comes out of his throat and it's so beautiful, such a beautiful sound that reassures her that the feeling is on both sides. He produces a handkerchief that he carefully dabs on her face with, probably recognising the effort she and her friend had made with make-up that afternoon, and when he stops, she takes his hand into hers, trapping the piece of cloth between their palms and just holding their hands against their flushed chests.

"I've wanted to do this since forever," he admits to her softly. She adores his French, how imperfect and influenced by his mother tongue it sounds, and she almost doesn't want to answer so she could hear more.

"I've dreamt about this for years," she whispers, sharing his sentiment.

"I have so much to tell you," he then says, and she hears the smile on his lips. In fact, it hasn't left since he first said her name. "Yet now that you're standing in front of me, I can't remember any of it."

"It's alright," she assures him. "Perhaps I can talk, then. Or... Perhaps we don't have to say anything."

"No. Talk to me. I've missed hearing your voice."

And I yours.

Only the waiter interrupts them. He's frustrated with their lack of etiquette and lack of bashfulness, how they've disrupted the perfect sitting order that ruled the café, but Marie and Werner barely hear his complaints other than waving him off with the first choice of a beverage just to get him away from them faster.

"How long are you in Paris for?" she asks him when the waiter leaves, and anxiously squeezes Werner's hand in hers, assuring herself that she's not dreaming, and that he's not going away just yet.

"For a while," he answers softly, and watches her face turn hopeful. He smiles, and reaches out to tug the hair in her eyes behind her ears, so he could see them fully and admire their beauty. "I'm studying at the polytechnical university. I'm here on a full scholarship. They pay me for housing and transportation."

"How did you earn that?"

"I worked as hard as I could," he shrugs. "If I can be honest, Marie, without this scholarship, I would have never had the money to come here. And I didn't have your address, and... The communication between West Berlin and France is complicated."

"You live in West Berlin?" she asks with fascination.

"My sister does."

"Jutta."

"You remember."

"Of course I do."

"Yes, she lives in West Berlin, and I lived there with her for two years before coming here."

And she asks, and he answers. He recounts his life in the past eight years, reveals all the details: his surrender in Saint-Malo, cleaning the beach and getting landmines out of the sand, the teams of soldiers that took him with them whenever he was needed, and how he had gotten to the Red Cross that way and met her father, and then continued almost three more years doing various labour all around France and mostly on the border with Germany, and then being unable to see Jutta due to the Berlin blockade, and so he had found a job in a repair shop in Saarland and made a little money so he could come and see her at last. How Jutta had welcomed him, how they couldn't separate from one another as if they were Siamese twins, and how she had encouraged him to try for university, and how she had helped him plan his journey to France.

"She says hello, by the way," he says. "She's coming for Christmas."

"All the way from Berlin?"

"She promised. And she's been saving money for her journey ever since I applied for the scholarships."

His sister has always had a lot of faith in him, Marie learns, and rightfully so, she thinks. She listens to Werner talk about his subjects, how fascinated he is by all the mechanics and physics that he takes, even though sometimes he struggles with the vocabulary, and tries to soak up every word of his like a sponge. This was his passion, his talent, his everything, and she realised that very well. And then, when he realised how much he had rambled about everything technical, she gets her turn, and talks about biology and oysters and the Caribbean, tells him terms that he hears for the first time in his life, and together they nerd out on their passions, and listen to the other carefully and attentively, because this was their future.

When the café closes, it's already midnight, and Marie and Werner still haven't finished talking yet. He pays, even if she insists otherwise, and then he offers her his arm and walks her home, and she leads him through the most distant, complicated way to her house just so she could spend a second more with him. He talks how complex of a city Paris is to him, how strange and yet exciting it is, and how he has yet to know everything, and that sometimes he still loses his way on the simplest journeys like from his university back home. She explains how she learned to navigate through her neighbourhood, and promises to show him the carved out houses that are still in their flat, now more of a decoration than anything particularly useful.

They stop in front of her house, at one in the morning, their cheeks frozen from the cold of the night, and they talk still while Marie leans against the entrance door, tired from the long day, yet not wanting to let go.

"You should go. You're tired," Werner says softly.

"I don't want to," Marie shakes her head. "I want to stay with you."

"Your father must be worried."

"I'm not a child anymore, I don't have a curfew."

He chuckles. "I don't want to go either."

"Then come upstairs with me."

"I don't find that appropriate," he shakes his head.

"And... if I come to yours?" she teases. "Is that appropriate then?"

He doesn’t answer verbally, but instead starts leading her away, and that’s enough for her. The metro has stopped running by now, and he doesn't know which buses go to his neighbourhood at night, if any. He orientates himself by the stations that they pass, and it's a long journey, on one part along the Seine where they rest against the cold metallic railing, listening to the sound of the river. No one is out this late except for a few spare madmen, no one would want to be out on a random Tuesday when there's school and work waiting ahead in the morning.

Marie rests against his chest and he wraps them both in his coat, warming her up for the rest of the journey. The air around them is cold, and their exhales create little clouds when they exhale. His bounces off her forehead as he holds his lips there, and hers disappears into the fabric of his scarf.

When they at last reach the flat Werner lives in - with two more roommates - Marie is too tired to truly register what's around her. In the morning, she promises herself, and follows Werner into his bedroom, and she knows it's his only from the smell that's so deliberately his. He offers her some of his clothes to sleep in, and she smiles as his shaking hands help her button the shirt over her bare chest. He stays only in his shorts and settles them in bed, tugging them underneath the duvet and the blanket in the cold air of the bedroom. His embrace is warm, she thinks he might as well be a portable fireplace, and she knows she won’t get cold once she falls asleep.

They talk still, softly for his roommates behind the walls to not hear, until tiredness catches up with them and the best solution is to say an imaginary goodbye. She contemplates it for a long moment, and wonders if he does too, but beats him up to it - and kisses him goodnight. She’s always imagined their second first kiss as something grand and passionate, and in a way it is, but right now, it’s also soft and trusting, a breath of relief and belonging. She falls asleep with his lips on hers, and he with hers on his.

Sleeping with him is easier than she anticipated. So far, she found men in bed always fussy, turning from side to side, without regard to her being there with them, even on their first night together, and she disliked it. While Werner flinches once or twice as he sleeps, she can only guess which traumatic memory he’s dreaming off, but other than that, it is peaceful. So peaceful, in fact, that when his alarm clock begins ringing, she feels her own good mood disappearing. Why does this torturous device have to go off just now?

Werner has to let go to climb out of the bed to reach the alarm clock, as it sits on the desk on the other side of the room, saying that he wouldn’t get up otherwise if he placed it anywhere near his reach. She hates how emptiness swallows her without him around, and reaches out when he turns the clock off to make him come back.

“It’s seven,” he tells her, and his voice comes closer. “Do you anywhere to be?”

“Probably, but…” she shrugs, and he finally takes her hands and joins her on the bed, sitting down next to her. She sits up and Werner’s hand rests on her thigh.

“What day is it today, again?”

“Wednesday,” he sounds like he’s smiling. She cups his cheek to confirm her thought, and her heart jumps with happiness.

“I have a lecture at eight, though… Maybe I won’t go.”

“That’s awfully academically irresponsible of you, Doctor LeBlanc.”

“Not a doctor yet,” she reminds him. “What about you?”

“Oh, I have lectures, but my professors might understand the current circumstances,” he whispers before kissing her, gently pushing her back down on the bed before rolling to the side, covering them with the duvet again. Shortly, she wonders if they truly would understand - the society has little understanding of the Germans living in it. She wraps her arms around him, and pulls away from his mouth shortly to ask: “Can we get breakfast together?”

“We can,” he confirms softly before pressing his lips to her jaw. “And lunch,” he continues, kissing her ear. Marie shudders. “And dinner. And all the appetisers, all the aperitifs, all the desserts, whatever you’d want, Marie.”

“You know what I want right now?” she asks.

“Breakfast?” he guesses with a chuckle.

She pushes closer to him with, to her, an obvious idea. Werner doesn’t seem to catch up on yet, and so she kisses the corner of his mouth with: “You.”

Her father isn’t bemused when she comes home later that evening. Though, there’s something in his voice that makes her frown. He never was like this. She understands that he might have been worried about her, and most probably disapproved of her actions, but how could she resist? How could she resist to spend the day with him, to lie all morning in bed and make love to - with - him, quietly as his roommates cleared out of the flat, then without restraints when they were at last alone, for what it seemed to be hours, with the delightful feeling of being together at last, a feeling of relief and belonging and hope.

While she almost forgot about her father and uncle waiting for her, Werner didn’t. As they got up and got lunch, he asked, and she just shrugged. If she could, she wouldn’t return at all, because it felt impossible to leave Werner now. Even he didn’t seem to want to let go, but asked rationally.

Besides, you and I, we’re academics, Marie. If we don’t let go now, I don’t think we’re ever finishing our degrees.

She laughed at that, and had to say - he was right. After he had brought her back home, describing the journey from his house to her house perfectly, telling her all the metro stations, trying his best to depict everything, they stood together in front of the building door.

“You sure you don’t want to go upstairs with me?”

“I’m sure. Your father wasn’t too excited to see me when I showed up in the museum, I doubt his reaction will be different. I’ll see you tomorrow, though,” he promised. “I’ll be waiting for you at the university when your lecture ends.”

“Okay. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Me too.”

She had to hold herself by the railing as she climbed the stairs to her flat up. Her body was shaking with excitement, with disappointment, with love, and she knew that she changed.  

Apparently it’s obvious to all.

“Were you with him?” is her father’s first question.

“Good afternoon to you too, father.”

“Marie.”

She smiles.

“With who?” Etienne asks.

“Werner,” she says at the same time when her father answers: “A German.”

There’s a moment of silence, and from what she guesses, a moment of intense staring. Etienne breaks it; a chair at the dinner table creaks as he moves it, and raises a cup of coffee to his mouth and takes a sip. “A German called Werner,” he says at last. “Marie, I thought you were seeing the Canadian biologist.”

“Seeing,” she scoffs. “We went on a date once, Uncle Etienne. Nothing more than that.”

“You had high hopes for him.”

“Things change.”

“They change fast, then, if you would rather spend your night with a German than a Canadian,” her father says. He sits down as well, and Marie leans against the kitchen counter, crossing her arms on her chest.

“His nationality doesn’t matter to me.”

“It does, Marie, it matters to all of us. He’s a German. A couple years ago, he was murdering people.”

“It wasn’t him giving the orders, was it?”

“He still took part.”

“It wasn’t his choice. He was sixteen. He was a child!”

“You know what’s wrong or not at sixteen!”

“You considered me a child at the time, too! A bit of a double standard, don’t you think? Werner has served his time! He was a prisoner of war for almost four years, for God’s sake. That was longer than he even was a soldier.”

“No, Marie, you’re forgetting what happened. You’re forgetting what the Germans did. To me, to Uncle Etienne-”

“I’m not trying to invalidate your experience here.”

“-you’re forgetting what happened to you. And to our country!”

“I am not forgetting. I was there!” she exclaims. “But we weren’t bombed by Germans in Saint-Malo, but by the Allies! And Werner was there, and he protected me.”

“I know that you feel grateful to him, but-”

“This isn’t about gratefulness, Papa. It really isn’t.”

“What is this about, then?”

“Connection. Understanding,” she shrugs before adding softly: “Love.”

“You can’t love him. You barely know him.”

“Oh, and you know him so much, therefore you can judge him. Get it,” she snaps. “Stop patronising me. I’m not a little girl. I’m not a child. I’m a grown woman. I know what I’m doing.”

“Marie, just think about this. Being with a German might bring you problems. At the university, in your career…”

Marie sighs. She’s heard of the judgement, and the ridicule when a French person had a German spouse. Many times, the couples were so ostracised from society that immigration was a more suitable choice. “I know,” she says. “I’m fine with that.”

She was already strange enough. Many people didn’t know how to accept her difference. She learned to live with it. Not all people took her as an equal, but as a person to take care of, as a baggage; they didn’t understand her, they couldn’t accept her in many ways. As she aged, she stopped minding it - people would be people, and they’d always find flaws within anyone. Her included. 

In this way, she understood Werner. She understood how he must feel in this society, that shies away from him, that complicates things for him, just because he’s not like the rest. And that makes her appreciate him more. He took a day off to be with her, knowing fully well that his professors might not be so kind to him, and that every wrong step he does, they document, they remember, and put it on the list of the wrong things he had already done, and he knows that during the exam season, he might as well just not finish university if he’s not up to their impossible standards.

“Marie, please,” her father says with a sigh. “Think it through.”

“I have, I am, and I will,” Marie shakes her head. “I really like him, though, Papa. And I want you to like him as well. He’s wonderful - he’s smart, and passionate, and considerate. Caring. All you need is to give him a chance.”

Daniel turns to his brother. “Etienne, please, help me out in this.”

Marie waits. Etienne takes a long time to answer, but when he does, in the same logical tone of the Professor, she feels hope.

“Being a soldier is a tough experience, Daniel. You don’t know what the boy has gone through, even if he was on the German side,” he says. “A chance is enough. If he screws it up, I’m sure Marie’s punishment will be much harder for him than yours.”

My dear sister Jutta,

I have so much to tell you. I’m sorry in advance for not writing earlier. Starting a life in Paris and at the university has been quite stressful. The French have a natural bias against me, let it be my landlord, my professors or my classmates. It’s tough, because I have to work twice as hard, try twice as hard, and do twice as much than all of them do. Yet… I have nothing to complain about. Not anymore.

I have found Marie. You’ve heard enough about her in the last couple of years, and I don’t think you’ll stop hearing about her for the rest of your life. I have found her father, who works at the National Museum (an absolutely fabulous one, by the way, I have to take you!), and I could see how hesitant he was when I gave him my address. It hurt, that he barely gave me a chance, but I was lucky that Marie had gotten the address.

Jutta, you won’t even believe what a lucky man I am. Ever since we saw each other for the second first time three weeks ago, I feel like a giddy teenage boy. I still can’t believe my own luck. What did I do to deserve her? God, Jutta… She’s so smart. So beautiful. So amazing. So fascinating. She’s a marine biologist and is in the first semester of her doctoral studies, and honestly, I’m only in awe of her. She’s managed to achieve so much already, and I only know that the future ahead of her is bright.

I see her every day since that day when we met up at the café. We talked for hours, and walked for hours, and then she stayed with me overnight, and in the morning… You don’t wanna hear it, but I’m pretty sure it was the happiest day of my life with her so far. Ever since then, I want to see her every day. Sometimes we see each other in the morning when I get up early to walk with her to her university, sometimes during lunch at one of the fancy Parisian restaurants, sometimes in the afternoon when we study together at the library, on the third floor, taking up a desk and a sofa and two chairs while we talk quietly, accompanied only by the sound of her typewriter, and then in the evening, when we go out, or when she stays with me until the morning.

What concerns me, however, is that I haven’t been to her house yet. Not because I am eager to find out how she lives (though I want to see it, I want to see that part of her), but because her father doesn’t like or approve of me. Reasonably so. She hasn’t said it explicitly, but I can see how much it’s troubling her no matter how good she hides it. While it breaks my heart, I honestly cannot be surprised. With my past, I am lucky to not be rotting in a labour camp mass grave but be in Paris on the side of a girl that I’m going to marry one day. I think. We talked about it, I told you about it, I even have money saved for the ring, but if she chooses to let me go, I will have no choice but to accept and understand. She might be signing up for a life of difficulties by being married to me.

Now. On a brighter note.

I’ve met the Professor. I’ll refer to him as Etienne from now on, as he’s given me the privilege to actually call him by his name. And I haven’t met him only once, but a few more times! First with Marie, when all three of us had lunch together between me and Marie’s lectures, and then once I met him alone, where I visited him at work - he works for the French branch of the Red Cross. He’s helped me find some of the POWs I’ve met at labour camps. Some of them are dead, some are alive. I wrote letters to the families of my dead peers - perhaps to allow them to finally know what’s truly happened to them. If I was dead, I would want you and Marie to gain closure. And, I wrote letters to the ones that are alive still, and I have yet to await answers, as I sent them together with the letter for you.

Anyway, back to the Professor Etienne. He’s a Great War veteran, did you know? He’s helped me a lot so far. Dealing with everything, especially the shell shock, has been more than helpful. It’s even stopped being usual for me to wake up screaming from my nightmares. Not sure if it’s Marie’s or Etienne’s merit, but I’m grateful either way. And he’s a scientist. It’s always interesting to talk about a topic with him. He’s a good man to have around, even if you spend the time in silence. When you come to Paris, I’ll definitely introduce him to you, you will like him a lot. I hope.

And more I hope that you’ll love Marie. Surely you’ll like her, she’s an easily likeable person, but I really want you to adore her. Her and I were talking about your Christmas visit to Paris, and we thought about taking you to Saint-Malo. That is, if you’d like to. I get it, you’ll be in France for the first time and there are better things to see 100 %, so think about it. Marie thinks that you’d like the Louvre, or perhaps some of the castles around Paris. So, be ready for an active Christmas - and an active New Year.

We’ll be celebrating the New Year at my flat, together with the mates and some of the classmates. And you, of course. You’ll fit right in, and honestly, I cannot wait for you to absolutely decimate them. I think some of them deserve a little bit of an ego cut. Don’t tell them I’ve told you.

So. I think that’s about it. I’m eating well, sleeping well, living well. I truly am. Marie keeps spoiling me by taking me to bakeries with delicious pastries that are so good that at times my eyes tear up. And I feel happy. I hope you are too. I can’t wait to see again, and to introduce you to everyone and everything here. I’ll be waiting for you on the platform when your train arrives.

Say my greetings to everyone in Berlin, and to Frau Elena, if you see her. Also, would you mind stopping sometime at Frederick’s house sometime and ask his mother if my letter had come? That’d be lovely of you, and I already see the roll of the eyes of yours. Leave it for Paris.

Love,

Werner

P.S.: Don’t worry about Christmas presents, the biggest gift you’ll give me is that you arrive safe and well!

P.S.S.: Marie says hello.

“Good morning, Daniel! Looking forward the holidays, aren’t you?”

He leans against the counter and smiles at Julia, the ticket’s saleswoman that had been accepted to the museum just a few weeks ago. “I suppose,” he shrugs. “And you? Are you going south with your husband?”

“No, we’re staying in Paris,” she shakes her head. “What do you have in plan? Going to Saint-Malo?”

“I… I actually don’t know.”

“What do you mean? How can you not know? It’s so soon!”

He sighs. “Marie and I don’t really talk at the moment. So, I don’t know how it’s going to look like next week.”

“I don’t understand, you and Marie have always been so close, what happened?”

“A German happened.”

Julia raises her eyebrows. “A German? You mean that handsome one, who had been here a few weeks ago? Short, blonde…”

“That one.”

“Is that her boyfriend?”

“I suppose. She spends more time with him nowadays than with me. She’s at his right now, too, I haven’t seen her for days,” Daniel sighs. It is true - as it’s Monday today, he hasn’t seen her ever since Thursday. She spends many of her weekends there, and most of her days at university or with him too. When she comes home, it’s usually to get a change of clothes or to pick up things for school. And many times, it’s when he’s not home himself, and so their flat had turned into an empty space without her presence, where Daniel and Etienne are living on their own, having to dine by their own, talk by their own without her input.

If Daniel’s honest, he misses her a lot.

She’s taken his caution about the German man as an attack, and it’s clear that she’d rather refuse her own father than him. It makes him angry, disappointed, but most of all - sad. Germans have already split them apart for so long, and now it’s all over again.

Daniel, you can’t compare this at all, Etienne told him last night during dinner. Marie-Laure and Werner are going out. This is her choice entirely. She likes him, and he likes her, it’s as simple as that, this isn’t his attempt to villanise her to her.

You don’t know that.

I do! I do know that. Because unlike you, I was able to have an unbiased, normal conversation with him.

Unbiased conversation with him. How’s Daniel supposed to do that? He’s lost everything because of men like Werner. He lost his home, his job, was forced to flee, and then was captured, tortured, and at last sent to a labour camp. He can’t just forget that. This will haunt him for the rest of his life.

“That’s such a pity,” Julia says.

“What’s a pity? That’s he’s German?”

“No, not that part, I meant that you and Marie haven’t seen each other for days.”

“You don’t think it’s a pity that he’s German?”

“I mean, it’s a double-edged sword, isn’t it? We all know what they did. I suppose he doesn’t need to be reminded all day. However, as long as he cares for her, I think there’s no problem in that. Sure, caution is advised, but he’s not the only German in France. I’ve heard that over half a million POWs stayed at the farms, and that people are actually quite happy with their work…”

Throughout the rest of the day, he thinks about it. He tries to imagine his daughter happy. Living as any other woman. Married, with kids, in a house with her husband. What if she suffers because of her choice? What if she doesn’t even see the possibility?

When he comes home, the flat is empty. He calls out for both Marie and Etienne, but neither is there, and he sits down at the dining table and looks around, feeling increasingly lonely with every passing second. It’s as if the flat, that sometimes had seemed too small for all of them, suddenly gained great vastness, and the vastness comes crashing onto him, all the empty air and empty furniture and empty space begins suffocating him. The feeling is the complete opposite of what he had ever been through - like reverse claustrophobia, when he was squirmed in a mass of people trying to escape, now he’s on his own in the middle of nothing, and his reaction remains the same.

He hugs his own trembling body to shield himself from the expanding loneliness. Breathe. Breathe. Come on, Daniel! Breathe!

With a yelp, he falls off the chair and on the cold floor under the table, staring at the underside of the table. The knots in the old wood begin to blurry to him, and he almost closes his eyes in order to avoid getting sick just from looking, but then the thought of his daughter rapidly attacks his mind, and he gets back on his feet with a rush, grabbing his coat and hat, sparing the empty apartment one last look before heading the direction of her boyfriend’s flat.

He stumbles out of the metro station and up to the street where he lives, sticking his hands into his pockets in order to stop them from shaking. The closer he gets, the more he realises what a bad, ill-conceived idea that was, and he fights his own body with every step as he gets closer and closer, but his body has a mind of its own.

Before he knows it, he’s in front of the flat building, staring at the number he saw on the piece of paper that Werner had given him weeks ago. It’s only his luck that there are two young men just carrying a bed frame through the entrance door, and he catches the door to help them.

They disappear up the staircase, and after them, shrieking him, comes the German man, appearing out of the darkness of the cellar, struggling with a mattress under his arm, and stopping when he sees him standing by the door.

“Mr. LeBlanc?” he asks finally, in confusion, and leans against the staircase on one side so the mattress doesn’t fall to the ground.

Daniel swallows. “I… I’m here to see Marie.”

Werner’s lips part. “Oh,” he says. “But she’s not here. She’s a stand in for her professor in a lecture right now.”

“Oh. And… Is she coming?”

He nods. “Probably. You want to, uh, wait for her?”

“Yeah,” Daniel breathes out. “I’d like that. Wait, let me help you with that.”

They manage to carry out the mattress into the second floor, entering the flat through the open door, and dumping it in a small space that Daniel recognises to be his room, mostly due to the contents scattered across that belong to Marie. But the room itself is a mess, as the second bed in here is taking up lots of the already tiny space.

“Is this for Marie?” Daniel asks as last, pointing at the dusty mattress with a worry, and Werner chuckles. “God, no. What do you think of me, really?”

Now that doesn’t make him feel any better. He looks around the room, and at the unkempt bed which he must share with his daughter, and then at the second bed that barely fits between the desk and the wardrobe. “Who is this for, then?”

“My sister,” Werner says. “She’s coming tomorrow. It’s not ideal, but we’ve been through worse, we can manage.”

“Your… sister.”

“Is it that surprising that I have one?” he asks with a frown, looking him up and down. “Uh, Mr. LeBlanc, are you alright? Is something wrong?”

Daniel shakes his head. “No. Everything’s fine. Or… Well, where is Marie again? I need to talk to her.”

“I told you, at the university, teaching a lecture. Though she might come home soon, it’s supposed to end in like half an hour. Why do you need to talk to her?”

“Just about things,” Daniel says. “She hasn’t been home for a while.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“Considering she’s been here, then yes,” Werner chuckles. “You said you want to wait for her?”

“Yes.”

“Then sit,” he leads him to the modest kitchen and points at the table where three chairs stand. “I’ll make you tea. You’re shaking.”

“It’s cold outside,” Daniel lies softly, and Werner nods while he pours water into the kettle, then settles it on the stove to let it boil. He takes two glass shots and puts them on the table, before reaching into the cabinet for a green bottle. Daniel squints at it in confusion. “What is that?”

“Jägermeister,” Werner says, and Daniel shifts at the name. While the young man notices, it doesn’t stop him, and he pours them each a shot. “It’s an herb liquor. A digestive that grandmas drink. It’ll warm you up, I promise.”

Daniel takes it cautiously, smelling it. It’s not too bad, though he does prefer wine over other alcoholic beverages. Then, without clinking with Werner, he downs it, coughing at the unexpected strength of the beverage. Werner drinks it calmly before getting up to pour the boiled water over the rather sad bag of black tea and setting it in front of Daniel.

They sit there in silence for the first moment, but Daniel can’t resist but ask: “Is your family coming for Christmas, then?”

“I don’t have any family, only my sister Jutta,” Werner shakes his head.

“Did they die during the war?”

Werner sighs before shaking his head again. “Me and my sister were raised as orphans in a town called Zollverein where coal is mined. That’s where our father died too. In the mines,” he says. “I never had anyone else than her, but we were raised by a French protestant nun.”

Daniel nods. He wasn’t aware about his past, Marie nor Etienne have ever said anything about it either. “Is that where you learned French from? The nun?”

“Yes. Frau Elena… Well, she was the best caregiver we could have had. She even allowed us some of the French broadcasts, even if it was forbidden at the time. She was a brave woman.”

“Is she dead?”

“She’s… changed,” Werner shakes his head. “During the war, the orphanage was shut down. The able boys were sent to the fronts, and the girls were misplaced all over the Reich. Some of them, including Jutta and Frau Elena, were sent to work in Berlin. Where… where the Soviets came. You might have heard about the things they did.”

Indeed. It was something that made him sick just from hearing about it. The Soviets, who rampaged, destroyed, raped and stole on their way to free the east of Europe from the Nazis, and when they reached the Reich, they did things unimaginable to the women. It’s what he was the most worried about when it came to Marie and the Nazis, and he never was so glad that Marie had never met the same fate as those millions of girls and women who had the unluck to be there.

“Then they were forced to rebuild Berlin, so,” Werner shrugs. “She’s doing fine now. All of them are. Some of the girls from the orphanages are working now, or studying, or being married, so… Life goes on, I suppose, but it leaves scars.”

“And Jutta still lives in Berlin?”

“Yes, in West Berlin, in Reinickendorf.”

Daniel frowns at the name. “I’m sorry, where?”

Werner smiles. “It’s a part of the French sector. She works as a teacher for the children of the French military. Like the personnel at Tegel airport.”

“Tegel. I’ve heard that name before.”

“Aviation experiments were tested there. Like the zeppelins.”

“Right. Of course.”

“Besides the airport, it’s quite nice there. There’s a beautiful lake where you can swim in summer and cycle around. It’s definitely better than where we grew up, surrounded by coal and smog every day,” Werner says.

Daniel raises his eyebrows. “Do you plan on returning to West Berlin?”

“I don’t know,” Werner admits. “I haven’t figured it out yet. I’m staying in France until summer, and after that, I’ll see what’s waiting for me.”

“People are looking for engineers all the time and anywhere.”

“Not for German ones. You’re not the only one with prejudice towards me, Mr. LeBlanc. It’ll be a miracle if I even finish my studies here.”

“You were a soldier, what treatment are you expecting?”

“I’m not expecting anything, but human decency would be enough. I didn’t join the army voluntarily, I was fast-tracked. People don’t see that, though, that I never wanted to do anything with that. They only see the soldier part. Rightfully, but… It’s not easy when they ignore the rest of you. It creates an identity for me that is difficult to deal with. To overcome.”

Daniel leans into the uncomfortable wooden chair and nods. He partially resonates with this man’s words - he feels that his identity as a forced labourer isn’t easy to overcome either, but unlike Werner himself, people had known what he was like before it. And no one accepts his identity, his years of imprisonment, and feels like he has to hide it; while all they see in Werner is his identity and not anything else from before, and he too has to hide it.

Yet, he wonders, both their identities are very visible through.

“How do you deal with that?” he asks. “With what happened in war? With everything you’ve done, and everything that was done to you?”

Werner takes a deep breath and shrugs. “You don’t deal with it,” he says. “It deals with you. It comes upon you in moment that you expect the least. And you want to close off, or to run away from it, but you’re unable to, because it’s a part of you.”

Daniel crosses his arms over his chest and hugs himself, feeling the uncomfortableness rising in his stomach that clenches and unclenches.

“I’ve spent years with other soldiers. It works differently for everybody. Talking helps a lot, though, taking off your chest. You might cry and scream and shake with the pain, but… It helps. It won’t bring back the lives you took, it won’t make the nightmares go away, but at least you’re not alone for it.”

He stays silent, absorbing his words. Then he glances from the tea mug at the young man, and really realises how young he is - barely older than Marie, but have gone through a lifetime of events already that no person as young as he should go through.

“I don’t think that the things I’ve seen and done will stop haunting me,” Werner shakes his head. “I don’t deserve to not be haunted.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wherever I went, I brought death. I was a radio specialist, you might know that. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I wanted to be an engineer. But at school, they saw my talent and they made me use it in horrible ways, and even worse, I stopped seeing the horrors, and only thought of all of that as numbers. As mathematical equations. Because ultimately, thinking about people as numbers was easier than thinking about them as people.”

Daniel feels dryness in his throat. He tries to swallow, but in vain. “That’s terrible,” he says at last.

“We all had our own ways to cope. Some of the soldier drank. Some had sex. Some used drugs. Some cut themselves, killed themselves. Some thought of the murdered just as numbers,” Werner shakes his head. “It’s difficult when you’ve been fed propaganda about subhumans your whole life only to find out that the people you’re killing are no different than you.”

“Did you ever believe in the Nazi propaganda?”

“I wouldn’t say I believed it, but… All my life, I’ve wanted to belong somewhere. And when I was chosen to study at an elite school, then… It was easier to accept it. That’s the difference between me and Jutta. She’s always had a strong moral compass. She’s always been stronger than me, in all the ways. Nothing has ever broken her down. And then there’s me, who sometimes just want to curl into myself in the corner and cry myself to oblivion. She’d never do that. She’d always hold her chin up and carry on.”

“Marie’s just like her,” Daniel admits.

“I know she is,” Werner nods. “I admire it. I’d like to be more like them, someday.”

“Me too,” he whispers. “Me too, boy, me too.”

Werner tilts his head to the side, watching him, and he shrinks underneath the gaze of his eyes.

“The labour camp,” Werner realises. “It must have been difficult.”

Daniel’s eyes fill with tears. He closes them, and fights the water running into his nose, and sniffles, nodding. “It was.”

“What did you go through?”

How could he even describe it to him? First came the torture, when he was caught in Paris. The torture, the endless waiting, the silence that came with the prison. And then, when he didn’t reveal a thing, they send him off. They spent days on the road, the truck shaking from side to side with every bump on the road, and his limbs hurt from being beaten. Then there was the camp, where they were crowded in a small house, barely fed, lied practically on top of each other, both the healthy and the sick, the able and the unable, and once someone was unable, a guard came in and shot them - and they had to make sure the body gets buried. Sometimes they didn’t even know the man’s name.

And he remembers how much he had to fight his own body for survival, as he worked for hours and hours on end with no feed at the end of the tunnel, how he slept between the sick and prayed that he didn’t get the sickness, because he had someone to return to, someone that needed him, and most importantly - someone that he needed. And he remembers how he had returned, and never seemed to have enough food, how instead of a slice of bread he’d eat the whole loaf and still not have enough, how hungry he had been, how long it had taken his mind and body to realise that he didn’t need to eat like a hungry wolf, that no one would take food away from him.

He describes it to Werner messily, and he’s surprised that Werner even understands the random pieces of memories that come back to Daniel as he dives into the events, and he stutters, and cries, and wants to scream in pain, but he sits there and talks, it’s like a flood happening, a flood that comes and takes everything with it, unstoppable, and Werner is like a tall tree that withstands it all and takes it.

And Daniel realises how desperately this needed to get out, he realises when he runs out of words to describe the monstrosities he’d seen, and is let only with tears, stuffed nose, and an exhausted body, as if he returned back to the labour camp and was forced to work once again, his limbs aching with memory, his heart beating painfully, his skin sweating. He trembles in the little wooden chair and drinks the rest of his cold black tea, feeling the residue on his teeth, and sits there in defeat that he accepted too many years late.

He resonates with Werner, because he too is haunted, and doesn’t think he’ll ever stop being haunted. He dreams about it, just like the young man, and is forced to relive it in moments that are out of his control, when his mind panics and his body reacts, and he is left suffocating in a panic attack in the corner of the room.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally with a trembling voice and a trembling breath at last, fishing for a handkerchief in his pocket to wipe his face. Werner’s hand rests softly on his shoulders, and he squeezes and holds it there.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Werner shakes his head. “It’s good that you let it out. It’s what you needed.”

“It feels unfair to be complaining to you about my problems. You were the soldier here, not me.”

“Soldier or not, it was a terrible time for all of us. My suffering doesn’t make yours any less painful.”

Daniel clenches the wet handkerchief in his hands and then looks at the young man, and realises how awfully young he is. He compares him to what he had been like at his age, how carefree and wild and ambitious he was, how much he had savoured the feeling of being alive and free, and realises that Werner had never gotten the chance and had to grow up quickly, together with a whole generation of young men that were forced to mature or they wouldn’t survive. He realises how unfair he’s treated him in his mind, and in front of Marie, how much bad he had assigned to him and how much good he had discredited him from only because he was German.

“Do you want another shot?” Werner asks at last, and Daniel wonders how terrible he must look, and he nods. He watches him pour them more of the grandma digestive, and then takes his glass, swirling the thick liquid around before raising it in the air. They cheer with an understanding nod and then down the liquid.

Just after the silence that comes after this, arrives Marie-Laure, with a rattle of keys and a bang of the door.

“Werner?” Marie calls into the flat.

“In the kitchen,” Werner answers.

Daniel tries to compose himself. Marie’s here. He smooths back his sweated hair and straightens on the chair, taking a deep breath as he awaits his daughter. She appears swiftly, with a smile on her face, taking off her hat and scarf.

“Hey, love,” she greets Werner.

“Hello,” Werner smiles back, his face and eyes becoming softer at the sight of her. He gets up and helps her out of her coat, saying: “We have a guest, Marie.”

She raises her eyebrows and Daniel sighs. “Hi.”

“Papa, hi,” the surprise is clear in both her voice and on her face. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you.”

“Right, of course. What else would you be here for?”

Daniel smiles weakly at her realisation. Werner lets her sit down before asking if she’s hungry, and she shakes her head that she had already eaten, and turns towards her father. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Well, about Christmas, really,” Daniel shrugs. “Etienne and I were talking, and we weren’t sure if you’d be home for the Christmas day or not. Or for any day, honestly.”

“I see,” Marie nods. “I haven’t figured it out yet. I’m not sure if Werner mentioned, but his sister is coming to Paris.”

“He mentioned.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want you to spend time away from family, especially for Christmas,” Werner shakes his head. “Jutta and I can manage, really, we’ve been on our own for Christmas many times.”

“I don’t want you to be on your own, though,” Marie says.

He reaches out for her hand and squeezes it. “It’s okay, Marie. Don’t feel bad about it.”

Daniel looks between them. For a moment, what he sees, is himself and his late wife, who are planning their first holidays together, but unlike them, they aren’t hindered by a bitter father. He sees the excitement that is trickling away, and all because of him. He decides he doesn’t want that, he doesn’t want to be the parent that obstructs, that destroys the holidays because of his own opinion. His parents were never that way, and his wife’s always welcomed him warmly, whether he was her friend, boyfriend, fianceé or her husband.

“Or, maybe…” Daniel starts slowly. “Maybe you and your sister could spend the Christmas day at ours,” he suggests carefully, and watches Werner’s face change with surprise and Marie tilt her head in the same reaction.

Werner’s mouth opens for a moment, before he shakes his head. “No,” he says. “No, we couldn’t possibly accept that. We don’t have any presents prepared for you, and we wouldn’t want to obstruct.”

“Nonsense!” Daniel and Marie exclaim at the same time.

“You know we don’t care about presents,” Marie shakes her head and pulls their hands towards her chest, caressing his forearm with her other hand. “I’d like that, Werner. If Papa is alright with it, and Etienne as well, then there’s no reason for you to refuse. Besides… What happened to you two?” she asks in bewilderment, as if she just became aware that the three of them are sitting around one table and having a normal conversation. “Most importantly, what happened to you, Papa? You couldn’t even hear Werner’s name, let alone invite him and Jutta for Christmas.”

Daniel makes eye contact with Werner, who smiles softly, his hand still remaining in Marie’s clasp, and he reaches out his other to hold it at the back of her neck, caressing her nape with his thumb. He watches them as a pair for a long moment, and finally smiles back. They seem to be happy together. He’s never seen Marie to be this intimate with anyone. That says a lot.

“I suppose that… That things change,” Daniel says at last.

“Did Werner get you drunk?” she asks. “I can smell the Jägermeister.”

Werner barks with laughter. “Now, what do you think of me? Me and Mr. LeBlanc only made things clear between one another, that’s all.”

“So you’re coming for Christmas, then,” Marie concludes cleverly.

“I suppose I am,” Werner chuckles.

“Good. I’m glad,” Marie-Laure leans towards him, and plants a kiss on his cheek, before he nuzzles his nose into hers and presses their lips together. Daniel now feels like he’s intruded for too long, and he collects his coat and hat and stands up. The young couple pulls away and turns towards him.

“Are you leaving yet?” Marie asks.

“It’s better if I give you the needed privacy.”

“Privacy,” she notes with humour.

He smiles. “Believe it or not, Marie-Laure, your mother and I were young once, too.”

“Almost wouldn’t have believed that. You’ve been an old man since forever.”

He gasps, and she chuckles before getting up. “I’ll come with you, Papa. Werner would be cleaning for Jutta’s arrival anyway, and I’m not much help with that.”

Daniel feels warm again. Werner walks the two of them down to the building exit, and says goodbye to them, watching them walk away in the snowy evening. Marie holds her father’s arm, the cane in her hand, and Daniel has her bag thrown over his shoulder. It’s a funny balance, once that he hasn’t had to live through in a while. She’s always been such an independent woman, and now when she’s leaning against him because she wants to, not because she needs to, makes him feel happy.

“Papa,” she says then.

“Yes, Marie?”

“I’m glad you talked with Werner.”

He hums.

“Do you like him?” she asks.

Daniel shrugs. “He has my sympathies. I think it’s going to take some work still to build a real relationship with him.”

She only smiles. “Good thing you’ll have the rest of your life to do that.”