Chapter Text
Jordan and Zirnheld grow closer in their compatriots' absence; the only remaining Frenchman save for the few soldiers who avoid Paddy with such staunch mistrust - despite his closeness with their leader - that he is yet to even learn their names.
Although Paddy’s latent jealousy prickles behind his eyes when he sees Zirnheld’s hand on Jordan’s skin or hears their voices low and laughing across the camp, he is glad of their friendship and the much-needed warmth it brings to Augustin.
They operate in English nowadays, with so few Free French left. The chatter around the campfire is in English. The only books in the camp that Augustin has not already read dozens of times are in English. Their jollies, with just a few Frenchmen split amongst Paddy and Stirling’s teams, must run entirely in English. Even his dreams, Augustin confides in him late one night, are in English more often than not these days. It makes him feel further from France than the desert could, hearing his native tongue so infrequently, Paddy’s butchering of the language notwithstanding.
Zirnheld helps. He handles Augustin’s fluctuating moods expertly, channelling away his self-hatred when guilt pulls at his strings, and on nights like tonight, staunching his sorrow with a friendly ear and a bottle of rum. In the orange light of the campfire, long limbs side by side and dark mops of hair pressed together, the pair almost look like brothers.
Paddy is achingly reminded of one summer in Ulster, when Eoin’s brother had visited them in a rare break in their training, drinking alongside the men with a mischievous grin and shock of dark hair that was the mirror of the younger McGonigal. Eoin had bloomed in his brother’s presence, bolstered and carefree, and Paddy hopes that Zirnheld will have a similar effect on Augustin, after all he has been through.
Paddy rarely sees Eoin when he looks at Jordan these days - it would be an insult to both men to attempt to use one as a replacement for the other - but he thinks of him often. The aching emptiness and crippling pain are still as present as they ever were, but there is a feeling missing that he had expected would plague him, when this circumstance between himself and Augustin evolved from a fleeting thought to a genuine possibility: guilt.
Paddy knows that he should feel some level of it at betraying Eoin’s memory so soon. To be thinking about taking a man to bed while Eoin still lies somewhere in the wasteland surrounding them, cold and alone; only months separating his smile and laugh from the decaying meat he has been reduced to.
But the guilt doesn’t come. It lingers around most of his memories these days - Eoin, Jock, his mother and father - but when his mind travels to Augustin, he feels nothing but anticipation. Eoin didn’t get a second chance. Eoin didn’t get an opportunity to move on. Paddy, of all people, certainly doesn’t deserve one.
But maybe, he thinks to himself, Maybe I can just have this.
-
He isn’t thinking of Eoin at all as he makes his way out into the desert the next night, having seen the flaps of Augustin’s unoccupied tent swaying in the wind on his way to bed and swiftly changing his course.
Paddy finds him in their usual spot, the outcropping paler than usual under a silvery full moon. As he approaches, he fears that it will be one of those nights that they are both subjected to on occasion - Augustin more than him, these days - where there is nothing to be done but howl at the moon and try not to shake apart. But Jordan’s eyes are clear, his gun and bottle nowhere to be found, and he offers Paddy a gentle smile when the Irishman reaches him.
“You again,” Paddy teases gruffly, as though he had not been specifically seeking the other man out, before folding himself down next to Augustin, who nods amiably in their familiar night-time ritual. After a moment of watching the stars reflect in Jordan’s glasses where his head is tilted up towards the sky, a verse comes to him, and Paddy recites it quietly before he can second-guess himself:
“Where you will next be there's no knowing,
Facing round about me everywhere,
With your nut-coloured hair,
And grey eyes, and rose-flush coming and going.”1
The darkness hides the worst of the sentimentality of the words, and Jordan does nothing but hum in response, but Paddy doesn’t need the moonlight to see the pleased rose-flush paint itself delicately across Jordan’s cheekbones and the smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth.
Something has shifted, Paddy knows, and as Jordan sways a little closer to brush their shoulders together, he thinks:
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.2
-
Two months to the day that Augustin lost his men, Riley comes back alone.
They watch the truck, empty of one of its expected occupants, pull in with bated breath, wrenched from their quiet reading on the deck chairs near the well by Fraser’s shout from the watchtower. In the ensuing silence, Paddy is vividly reminded of Augustin’s own lonesome return, the minutes it took his truck to roll to a stop feeling like years as Paddy feared the worst.
Riley looks shaken, but thankfully uninjured, when he finally exits the vehicle. Kershaw is the first to reach him, patting the other man down frantically looking for injuries, but he is swiftly shaken off.
Once satisfied that he is not about to drop dead, Stirling requests Riley’s mission report, the elephant in the room bearing down on them all.
He dances around the issue of Zirnheld’s whereabouts for as long as he can, clearly fearful of the impact yet another loss will have on Jordan. But eventually - after describing every other detail of the mission in excruciating detail - there is nowhere left to hide.
What was meant to be a simple mission, gone wrong. Bad intelligence, and a patrol where there shouldn’t have been one. A bullet to the back of the head from pursuing Germans.
No hope of survival.
Augustin is silent throughout, running his fingers through his hair and keeping his eyes fixed on the ground while Riley tells his sorry tale, so distant that at first glance, he doesn’t even seem to be paying attention. But when he has finished, Jordan’s response is almost instantaneous and unequivocal.
“Where is his body?”
Riley is, at least, able to give him more than a rough description. He was aware enough of his surroundings when it happened to give him a distance, and coordinates - he can even mark it on a map, though Jordan shows little jollity when he holds the final resting place of Zirnheld in his hands.
“I will go,” Augustin says simply when it is done, and it is not phrased as a question.
It causes a degree of dissent amongst the ranks, to say the least. Stirling’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline while Seekings and Cooper share a look, and Sadler momentarily looks as though he is going to offer to go himself, before he clearly thinks better of it.
Their protocol is clear: leave the body where it lies, and complete the mission at all costs. This… this is not how they do things. No one went for Jock’s body, and though Paddy ventured out to find Eoin, that was both a decision and a journey made in private.
But who has lost more than Jordan? His men, his officer, his country - and now his last close compatriot. For all his loss, the graves marked by crude crosses and French words of mourning lie empty; nothing of Halevy, Essner, Grapes and the others left to bury, and Bergé’s whereabouts unknown.
Time passes, and Augustin waits for a protest that never comes.
Who would tell him no, regardless? With Bergé’s loss, he has no superior officer except Stirling, who treads carefully around him these days so as not to provoke Paddy, and Paddy himself, who has rarely been able to refuse Augustin his desires.
With the decision seemingly ratified, Augustin turns on his heel, disappearing like a mirage behind a wall of tents.
When he returns to his own, Paddy finds his bed empty, save for Augustin’s battered copy of The Waste Land carefully placed on his pillow. Though he would rather not, Paddy respects their mutual signal to give the other some space, and settles down for a night alone.
Unmoored and cold without a body beside him, Paddy tosses and turns until he drifts into a meagre sleep.
-
In the morning, Paddy is waiting by the trucks before Augustin has even stumbled out of his tent.
The man in question does eventually surface, pack slung over one shoulder, and greets no one as he makes a beeline for one of the spare vehicles. As he approaches, it is obvious that Paddy has correctly predicted the truck Augustin would choose. The unreliable, juttering, battered old Jeep that he is standing beside is the one they would miss the least if its occupant was killed and it never returned, and that self-sacrificing foolhardiness defines Augustin like nothing else.
When he sees Paddy, waiting with false nonchalance and a pack and gun of his own, Augustin doesn’t look particularly surprised - in fact, he barely acknowledges him at all.
As expected, the other man looks like he hasn’t slept a wink, eyes red-rimmed and heavy with bags and wrists rubbed raw from a nervous habit Paddy has taken to belaying by taking Augustin’s hands in his own.
When Paddy greets him, throwing his own pack in the backseat alongside Augustin’s own, he is promptly ignored, but he doesn’t take it to heart. It’s better than Augustin trying to talk him out of coming with him, at least. They both know that isn’t going to happen.
The desert seems to pass by them in a blur, whipping past them at a speed that doesn’t seem to fit with what he knows the battered Jeep can achieve. Landmarks are few and far between, but Jordan seems to know exactly where he is going, not even sparing a glance at the map as he drives with singular concentration.
Along the way, they don’t see a single soul. The desert seems empty - not just of Germans or Italians or stray Long Range Desert Group lads, but of everything: antelope, carrion, snakes, even the ever-present mosquitoes that plague them. The abject silence of the wastes, even more prominent than usual, leaves Paddy unsettled, his teeth on edge and skin crawling with a feeling he can’t quite identify.
The feeling of wrongness creeps from a gnawing suspicion to an overwhelming foreboding as the truck begins to slow, their destination closing in on them. Augustin stares blankly ahead, giving little away, but his knee bounces constantly as he drives, a nervous habit so out of character that Paddy knows that he feels it too.
When they exit the truck, Augustin is the first to see the body. His gasp gives him away, although his face has been carefully schooled into a blank mask by the time Paddy looks up at him, following his gaze to a crumpled figure.
Zirnheld is exactly where Riley said he would be. A pool of blood spills out underneath his head where he lies, face down, his legs bent awkwardly underneath him. Sticking close enough to Augustin to be his shadow, Paddy treads cautiously towards the body, the feeling of wrongness intensifying with every step.
The closer they get, the more obvious it becomes that all is not as it seems.
In this light, Zirnheld’s hair seems fairer than Paddy remembered it; not a dark mop like Augustin’s own, but a mousy brown, likely bleached under the burning sun. His skin is ashen and pale, which is to be expected, but seems freckled in a way that Paddy can’t remember Zirnheld ever being. His limbs, too, appear shorter than his lanky stature would indicate, though his hunched posture makes it hard to tell where he ends and begins.
The differences add up, and Paddy knows it’s not Zirnheld. It can’t be. But Augustin seems too preoccupied with his grief to see what’s right in front of him, sinking down to his knees beside the corpse without commenting on the stark inconsistencies.
“Augustin?” Paddy tries tentatively, heart beating in his chest with a fear he can’t quite identify, but it’s as if he hasn’t spoken at all.
Jordan sits beside the body for a long time, silent and forlorn. Around them, the sun dips dangerously low, but Paddy dare not speak or even breathe, scared of shattering the spell that seems to be hanging over them. It takes far too long for him to notice that Augustin is crying, silent but constant, hands shaking violently where they are balled in his lap, just as Paddy’s are.
Slowly, Augustin reaches a shaking hand out to turn the body over, and Paddy knows something is very, very wrong.
“Don’t,” he begs, chest heaving and whole body trembling with fear, but Augustin can’t hear him.
In one smooth motion, the body is turned, and he knows before the sun hits its face what he will see.
When Paddy’s own face is exposed to the desert evening, Augustin lets out a mournful wail, low and pained, his face crumpling with a despair the likes of which Paddy has never seen on him before.
“That’s not me,” Paddy croaks out, confused and terrified all at once, “Augustin -”
Tears stream down Augustin’s face as he cradles the body's head, rocking himself gently as he whispers something in French too low for Paddy to hear. When he reaches out to touch the other man, his hand passes straight through like fog, and there is no indication that Jordan has heard him at all.
His heart shudders to a stop when Augustin suddenly straightens, face a mask of resignation, and fumbles at his side for the gun Paddy had given him months before, before everything went wrong.
“Augustin,” he tries desperately, falling to his knees beside the Frenchman and grabbing at him ineffectually, but Augustin only has eyes for this other, pallid version of him.
“You promised,” He chides Paddy’s corpse, voice a hoarse whisper through his tears as he gestures manically, “You promised me.”
Hands shaking but eyes resolute, Augustin turns the gun upon himself, oblivious to Paddy’s silent screaming, his voice stolen.
He awakens, shaking, before the bullet leaves the chamber.
-
In the morning, Paddy is waiting by the trucks before Augustin has even stumbled out of his tent.
The man in question does eventually surface, pack slung over one shoulder, and greets no one as he makes a beeline for one of the spare vehicles. As he approaches, it is obvious that Paddy has correctly predicted the truck Augustin would choose. The unreliable, juttering, battered old Jeep that he is standing beside is the one they would miss the least if its occupant was killed and it never returned, and that self-sacrificing foolhardiness defines Augustin like nothing else.
When he sees Paddy, waiting with false nonchalance and a pack and gun of his own, Augustin only rolls his eyes, not looking particularly surprised.
“No.” Jordan says frankly as he tosses his bags into the truck, leaving no room for arguments, but Paddy simply ignores him as he throws his own pack into the back seat, feigning ignorance.
“No, what?” Paddy asks innocently, fooling no one, Jordan least of all, “We have a task, don’t we?”
“There is no we,” Augustin snaps automatically, then cringes - at his own wording or Paddy’s imperceptible flinch, he isn’t sure.
“I mean to say,” He tries more gently, “That you’re not coming with me. There’s no need.”
When Paddy opens his mouth to respond, Augustin holds up a hand to silence him, cutting the other man off sharply.
“We are the second and third highest ranking officers here,” Augustin tells him plainly, “There’s no use us both dying in the desert for no reason.”
At that, Paddy’s eyebrows hit his hairline.
“So you think you’re going to die?” He asks incredulously, as Augustin continues tossing bags into the car, “And you don’t think you need any backup at all?”
Having finished loading his supplies, Augustin slams the boot of the truck closed with much more force than is strictly necessary, taking a harsh breath in through his nose and more than likely counting to ten in an effort to calm himself.
“That’s not what I said. I just mean that -“ Abruptly, he cuts himself off with a frustrated noise and gives Paddy a long, assessing look. As Paddy looks back at him, the fight seems to drain out of him, and he acquiesces with a brusque, “Fine. Allons-y.”
With that, he swings himself up into the driver’s seat, clearly not willing to waste any more daylight on a fight he knows he won’t win.
“I’m your superior officer, you know,” Paddy tells him teasingly, always the sore winner, “I could order you not to go altogether.”
Augustin scoffs a little, starting the engine and leaving Paddy scrambling to climb in beside him before the truck departs.
“No,” Augustin replies confidently, looking at him from underneath his eyelashes in a way that sets Paddy’s blood aflame, “You could not.”
-
The trip is long, and feels even longer in the silence that hangs over them. As they pass through long stretches of unoccupied desert, he struggles to engage a distracted Augustin in their usual banter, barely getting any kind of response at all - even when he savages Verlaine. The closer they get to the location marked on Riley’s map, the more agitated Augustin appears, his knee bouncing so uncontrollably that once or twice he accidentally hits the brakes, sending them both momentarily crashing forward onto the dashboard.
When they arrive, pulling up within spitting distance of a dark lump visible in the brush below a rocky outcropping, Augustin sits in the truck with his hands tight on the steering wheel for a long time.
Paddy doesn’t rush him. He doesn’t speak at all, haunted by the remnants of his dream and fearing Augustin may break again if pushed too hard. Instead, he sits beside him, trying to embody the stability of a lighthouse in a storm while he waits for Augustin to find his feet.
Eventually, he does, exiting the truck unsteadily and making his way resolutely to what surely must be the body, not sparing a look at Paddy who is hot on his heels. Augustin only falters when he reaches it, his rapid pace screeching to a halt as if an invisible wall separated him from the corpse.
For a while, he simply stands there, alternating between looking at Zirnheld’s body then looking away at the sky when he can’t bear it any longer, as if searching for answers they both know he won’t find there. After a time, his gaze meets Paddy’s and he blinks owlishly at the other man as if asking for some confirmation - though Paddy is not quite sure of what. That this is really Zirnheld? That he is allowed to touch, to mourn, to bring him home for burial? Whatever he’s asking for, Paddy will grant him, and he nods with enough conviction for Augustin to sink to his knees beside the body like a puppet with its strings cut.
Hands balled into fists in his lap and shoulders shaking, he is silent for a long time.
“It was meant to be a simple patrol,” he says eventually, his lip quivering dangerously, “I didn’t think - I didn’t bother saying goodbye.”
Paddy doesn’t quite know what to say to that, so he says nothing, instead reaching over to squeeze the back of Augustin’s neck in a comforting gesture that normally has him shivering and pressing closer to Paddy, nose to jaw, in the privacy of their tents.
After a moment, Augustin seems to regain his composure and shucks off Paddy’s hand with determination. Steeling himself, he reaches out to the body, first taking his dog tags, and then rifling as gently as possible through his pockets for anything sentimental enough to be returned to Zirnheld’s family or useful enough to be given to the men of the SAS who remain alive.
He finds little more than a couple of bullets and a few melted squares of ration-pack chocolate in Zirnheld’s jacket, but in his shirt pocket, close to his chest, lies a single sheet of paper.
The paper is thick and yellowed, folded and well-worn as though it had been opened and closed frequently. Augustin opens it now, hands moving gently across the fragile parchment, and reads silently to himself while Paddy watches on with morbid curiosity.
Abruptly, Augustin rises to his feet, swiftly folding the paper and depositing it in his own shirt pocket before turning to Paddy.
“Help me,” he orders, tilting his head towards the body, and Paddy complies easily. Fetching a sheet from the truck, they work together to cover Zirnheld’s body and haul it onto the back seat, trying to move him as gently as possible while ignoring the rancid smell of days-old flesh.
When it’s done, Augustin slumps into the passenger seat, exhausted, and Paddy takes the wheel without having to be asked. With a final look at the blood-spattered against the rocks where Zirnheld met his end, Augustin signals for Paddy to drive with a nod, before letting his head sink back against the seat and closing his eyes.
For the first few miles, Paddy thinks he might be asleep, and leaves him to it - from the looks of him, it will be the first sleep that Augustin has gotten in days. As the sun begins to set, and the dunes and valleys around them begin to look more familiar, he notices that Augustin is not asleep at all. Instead, he’s running his fingers gently over the edge of the parchment in his chest pocket absentmindedly, as if he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.
“Explain it to me,” Augustin asks suddenly in little more than a whisper, breaking the silence and staring with unfocused eyes into the wastes ahead, “How love makes you a coward? You said that, once.”
It’s far from what Paddy was expecting him to say, and it throws him a little, forcing him to think back to that night in the mess hall, before it all went to shit. Augustin had intrigued him, even then at the height of his mourning for Eoin: the curiosity and unwillingness to back down that he would grow to adore in Augustin shining through as he defiantly ignored Paddy’s hostility and sat right down beside him when the rest of the men, British and French alike, gave him a wide berth through fear.
“I think of Halévy,” Augustin continues before Paddy can respond, lost in thought, “His love, even the loss of it, made him a hand grenade. Without it - the pain of it - he may have been a coward, I think.”
Paddy remembers saying it, although he’s not sure he believes it anymore – he’s not sure he did then. It was grief, not love, that laid him low and left him weak; howling at the moon and praying for an end to it all before Augustin stepped in to make him strong again. The cowardice, it seems, was all his own: not the fault of love at all.
Augustin doesn’t seem to need an answer, and instead reaches into his breast pocket to pull out the paper, holding it out to Paddy and looking away into the rapidly darkening desert surrounding them.
They’re in the middle of nowhere, but Paddy brings the truck to a stop anyway, removing the keys from the ignition so the idling engine and headlights don’t bring attention to them while they are sitting ducks. Carefully, he takes the paper from Augustin’s shaking hands, holding it as though it were the most valuable thing in the world.
He’s not sure what he’s expecting - what would a dead man keep close to his chest? A letter to Zirnheld’s family, maybe, or a confession of his sins. Unfolding it delicately, Paddy instead reveals a poem, messily handwritten in ink.
Flicking on his lighter so he can read the words, he looks over the poem slowly, trying his best to translate the French in his head while preserving the meaning of the lines.
I'm asking You God, to give me what You have left.
Give me, my God, what remains
Give me what no one ever asks of you.
I want uncertainty and doubt.
I want torment and battle.
And I ask that You give them to me now and forever Lord,
So that I am always sure to have them.
For I will not always have the courage to ask.3
After a few stanzas, Paddy has to stop reading, blinking away unexpected tears.
Zirnheld’s prayers were granted, at least.
When he hands the paper back, Augustin folds it into a tight square, placing it in his shirt pocket, next to his heart. His hand lingers there for a moment before falling away, and Paddy waits, unsure if Augustin - or Paddy himself - will speak. But no sound breaks the silence of the night, so he starts the truck, setting off in what he hopes is the right direction.
For a while, they drive in silence, Augustin hunched over in his seat as though he’s in pain, and Paddy unsure of what to say to make this endless string of losses feel less fatal. But slowly, as the yards turn to miles, he seems to unfurl, raising his head to let the cold desert wind blow the tears from his cheeks.
When Augustin reaches out a hand and rests it, palm to the sky, on the console between them, and Paddy does not hesitate to grip it tightly in his own.
They are silent the whole way home.