Chapter Text
Did I say Maddie never let go, that night I cried myself to sleep at the Moon Squadron aerodrome? It's hard to remember details when there's a bloody brute of a German guard pressing cigarettes to the back of one's neck. There is, I am sure, one part of the story I haven't told. Very well then, no doubt the Hauptsturmführer will be delighted to have his flute music sheets filled with sensational tales of what friends do in dark hours.
It was just barely dawn when Maddie woke up sobbing. In her dream, it was Hitler himself whose fist was closing around Queenie's throat, with the whole of Occupied France—laid out before them like a map—watching in motionless horror. Maddie herself could see it all from Scotland (dear of her to imagine herself there), and she was certain she could help her friend if only she could reach.
Maddie's arm was trapped under Queenie's weight, but she was straining forwards, ready to claw apart the Führer himself if need be. She kicked and thrashed and yelped, but when she woke, it was to her friend's gentle hand on her cheek, to a whisper of “Maddie, Maddie, you're dreaming.”
That Queenie should be comforting her after all she'd suffered was too much for Maddie to bear. “I'm awake,” she cried, shaking her trembling arm. “Did I hurt you?” she asked, and Queenie, just barely visible in the curtained room, shook her head in answer.
There was a silence between them then, both weary, both afraid, each, in her own way, trying to be brave. And then Queenie, almost absently, swept her hair back over her shoulder and laid open the top button of her WAAF pajamas. Even in the near-dark, Maddie could make out the thumbprints on her neck. Wanting only to soothe her friend, she drew her fingers up and brought them, light as a whisper, to the raw ring of bruises. They were quiet again then, Maddie's callused fingertips feather-light against her friend's tender skin, Queenie's soft breathing the only sound in the whole of the Moon Squadron Cottage.
What Maddie forgot—what she'd only just learned—was that her friend Eva Seiler was a master of seduction. Just that night, she'd made an enemy soldier fall weeping to his knees. What chance had a kind-hearted lady pilot against the interrogator's charm? Queenie's fingers let a second button fall open, and then she covered her friend's hand with her own and brought those careful, callused fingertips to her lips.
Did Maddie think it was her own idea, what came next? Lips against lips, bodies crushed together, fingers roaming and stroking and sliding? She touched her friend with all the gentleness and care she'd have given the throttles and knobs of a pilot's controls. And Queenie was shameless with her purrs of pleasure, her gasps of surprise.
(She was pleased. But she was not surprised. You see, she'd engineered everything.)
Is that enough for you, Hauptsturmführer von Linden? Shall I tell you how we celebrated our reunion the day Maddie picked me up in her Puss Moth? Of our stolen kiss in the air above Mont St. Michel? Shall I tell you how fervently I dreamed of us together at Craig Castle, how I'd read to her in my old bed from Kim until she fell asleep, Maddie in my arms this time?
Oh, I've said too much. As always, I've said too much. But perhaps Engel will see fit to skip this part in her translation. I've told nothing of airfields or wireless codes, after all. I've only written to remember.