A/N: The Feast of Pentecost is (if you were to rank them) the third most important Christian holiday, and is also called the Birthday of the Church. It's descended from and closely related to the Jewish holiday Shavuot (the Festival of Weeks) and celebrates the day the fire of the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles and the New Covenant was completed. It's a very joyful holiday and this story's meant to reflect that; it also incorporates both German and American liturgical traditions, which I probably had more fun reading about then most people would... So, enjoy, and Happy Pentecost!

It wasn't often that Colonel Hogan left Klink's office genuinely confused, but right now that rare occasion had come. His confusion must have shown on his face, because as soon as he opened the barracks door the other Heroes were giving him looks of their own.

"What happened, sir?"

"I just had a very strange conversation with Major Hochstetter," Hogan replied.

"Like you can have a normal one with him?" Newkirk remarked with the verbal equivalent of a raised eyebrow.

"Okay, stranger than usual then," Hogan conceded with a grin. "Apparently someone broke into Klink's quarters last night while the major and his men were sleeping and stole their armbands." Four men blinked up at him owlishly until Kinch broke the silence.

"Come again?"

"Someone stole their swastika armbands. Every single one. Jackets and coats. And they took the little flags off the front of his car too." Newkirk was the first to start chuckling, and once he went it didn't take long before all five of them were in a well-deserved laugh at the Nazis' expense. Once they had gotten themselves back under control Hogan continued. "So of course he called me in demanding to know how I did it. He just about hit the roof when he realized I really had nothing to do with it."

After frothing for a couple more days and being the butt of many under the table jokes, Hochstetter moved on- still without his swastikas. That evening, Carter and Newkirk went out on a bombing run.

"Have you got the charges?" Carter nodded. "And the wires?" Another nod. "And the timers?"

"Newkirk, will you lay off, I got everything! I triple checked before we left." With a defensive huff, Carter scurried off to plant the charges while Newkirk kept watch for any patrols or guards they hadn't managed to knock out. Carter reappeared a few minutes later and four charges lighter. "Okay, they're set. Should go off in just a half a minute." Thirty tense seconds passed before there was a fantastic boom and fire lit up the sky. Carter looked like a kid at Christmas.

When he stood up Newkirk could see something odd about him in the glow of the fire. "Carter, what on earth have you got stuffed down your shirt?" Andrew looked at him saucer eyed.

"Nothing." The lie was so brazen that Peter almost laughed. He was tempted to press the issue, but he also knew that with Carter, there was a very real chance he wouldn't want to know.

"Sure. Let's get back to our hotel before the patrols come running for us." They made it back without a hitch (a truly rare occurrence) and Carter zipped off as soon as he'd said hello to the others, vanishing into his lab. Hogan watched him go and then turned to the Englishman.

"Newkirk... what did Carter have stuffed into his shirt?" The corporal shrugged.

"I wondered about that meself, but he said nothing. It's probably harmless, whatever it is." Hogan grunted in response; when it came to harmlessness Carter and the rest of the world seemed to be on different frequencies. But whatever it was must truly have been harmless, because Carter never mentioned it and nothing ever exploded or came crawling out of his lab. May trundled onward into June and Newkirk found himself at something of a loss.

"Alright," he called out as he swung himself up out of the tunnel, "who's been taking my sewing needles?" All he had to do was glance at Carter and he had found the guilty party. "Okay mate, cough 'em up."

"I dunno what you're talking about Newkirk."

"Right you don't Carter, now where are they at?" Carter spent a moment glancing around, trying to decide whether to lie or come clean. Finally, he settled for a middle ground between the two.

"It's a surprise! You'll get them back, I promise. Good as new. I just need them for a few more days." It was close enough to the truth that the Englishman let it slide. Carter spent all of his free time in the tunnels for the next two weeks, working on some secret project that even Hogan couldn't get out of him, while his barracks-mates just got increasingly confused.

On occasion sharp yelps could be heard when he pricked himself with one of the sewing needles he had wheedled Newkirk into letting him keep until his 'surprise' was finished; other times he would be spotted with paint and picking wood shavings out of his hair. "You know, /mon colonel/," LeBeau remarked one day as he and Hogan watched Carter bandage yet another fingertip, "Langenscheidt's been acting strange as well."

"Oh yeah? How's that?"

"Every time I've see him for the last two days he's been leaving a trail behind." Louis smirked and Hogan raised an eyebrow at him.

"Anything sordid?"

"No, just lots of flower petals."

"So that's where those have been coming from!" Kinch remarked, breaking into the conversation. "They've been blowing around this place all week long. I wonder if he's got a girlfriend." LeBeau snorted.

"Not here, unless he is trying to romance Hilda." Having finally brought his joke to completion, LeBeau dodged the swat his commanding officer sent his way, snickering. "All red, though. Maybe he really is trying for a woman."

"Stolen swastikas and flower petals- someone's got a red theme," Hogan joked.

"'Someone'?" Kinch had the tone of a man who knew that they both knew who had that theme. Hogan glanced at him and shrugged.

"Carter'll tell us what he's up to eventually." As if speaking of the devil himself, the sergeant came rushing up to them excitedly. He cut an even odder sight then usual right now, with his bandaged fingertips, paint-flecked arms, and hair full of sawdust, but he was practically radiating excitement.

"It's finished boy- sir! I think everyone'll really like it."

"Like what, Carter?"

"My surprise, colonel. You know, the one I can't show you yet." Louis laughed and Kinch shook his head in exasperation.

"Carter," he said, with the tone of a teacher helping a third grader through a particularly difficult math problem, "how can we like it if we can't see it?" But he had an answer for that as well.

"You'll see it Sunday! Well, it's not just my surprise, I mean other people helped to, like O'Rourke from Barracks 4 and Jensen's a really good painter and Langenscheidt- it'll be a lot of fun, you'll see. But you gotta be there on Sunday!"

The Sunday in question was the day after tomorrow, July 23rd, and it dawned bright and warm- at least, as warm as it could get to be in Germany- and everyone noticed Carter's enthusiasm during roll call. After they had been dismissed, he turned to the rest of the Heroes. "You should stay for the church- please, this one's gonna be a lot of fun!" he promised, giving them his best set of puppy dog eyes. They were good, and he knew it.

Kinch readily agreed, since he usually attended the rather informal church service himself, and the other three didn't quite have it in them to miss Carter's hard won surprise. Everyone settled down into the open air and waited for Father Michael to arrive. "It's Pentecost, see," Carter whispered while they were waiting. "It's a real big day, and it's a lot of fun."

"Whitsunday?" Newkirk whispered back. "I remember that from when I was a kid. Green George would always run around and hide in the park."

"You're supposed to wear red, y'know, but none of us have anything red so that's okay but Father Michael was talking about how he didn't have any of his vestments and he really wished he could so that's when I got my idea." He patted the package sitting in his lap, which he resolutely refused to show anyone until 'the right time'. "It's mostly a surprise for him, cause me and a couple of the other guys wanted to make him feel better. Well, we wanted to make everyone feel better really-"

"Shush Carter, the service is starting." Kinch's voice put a lid of the torrent of words as everyone shuffled into an attentive position. The priest was just about to start when a gigantic Irishman stood up and waved for silence.

"Right, now," O'Rourke said as he waved Carter and a few other people up to the front, "some of the lads had a little get together and we decided it was about time we pulled off something nice for the father here, who has been so unendingly patient with the sorry lot of us. So, we've done a few things." He picked up something covered in a flight jacket and unwrapped it, handing it carefully to the priest.

"Jensen and I made this for you." It was a thin, circular plank of wood, with a beautifully and carefully carved dove on the front, and painted to look like it was emerging from the midst of a fire. A cross was superimposed above it, painted a vibrant shade of green.

He gestured to the next person and a round of surprised laughter went through the crowd. It was Langenscheidt, looking somewhat timid after having heard nothing but jokes about how he was leaking flowers for the last week. He was clutching a burlap bag, which he set down in front of Father Michael. To no one's surprise, it was filled with flower petals and, oddly enough, birch branches cut into little pieces. "It is Pfingstrosen," he explained, searching for the words. "Flowers. You throw them-" he mimed throwing a handful of petals into the air "-and it is for the fire. It is tradition in Germany, like the branches."

He seemed nervous when he said that, no doubt expecting that a large group of POWs wouldn't appreciate German traditions, but Father Michael just smiled. "Well, we'll have to pass them around for the end of the service then." Langenscheidt nodded, grinning wide enough to hurt his cheeks. Now it was Carter's turn.

"Well I remembered when we were talking you said that you didn't have any of your stuff and you really wished you could have some vestments and well I couldn't make a whole set for you- I mean I would've if I could've but I didn't have the time- so instead I decided I could make you this." By the time he was finished he was almost dizzy from lack of oxygen. He took in a deep breath and calmed down, holding out the blanket he was carrying. "Anyhow, I hope you like it." The blanket was moved away and Father Michael held up the present inside.

The assembled prisoners nearly exploded with laughter once they caught on. It was a full sized chasuble in a bright, vibrant red- the exact same shade of red as a swastika flag. They had found their mysterious armband thief. The watching Heroes shared a look before Hogan shook his head. "Leave it to Carter to steal the flags from the Nazis and turn them into vestments."

"I wondered what he was up to with my sewing needles," Newkirk replied, still chuckling. Once he realized they were laughing for him, not at him, Carter grinned shyly and retreated to his seat. "So, how long did that one take you?"

"A couple three weeks," Carter replied. "And I learned something too- I'm no good at sewing without a thimble."

"Where'd you get that much fabric?" Hogan asked him.

"Well I kinda... borrowed a flag from that bombing run a while back when I was setting the charges. That's what I had stuffed down my shirt. Then I made the big hole smaller with all the little ones and by lemme tell you it took a long time." After more general hubbub, the POWs settled down and the service finally began. When they reached the moment of the Gospel reading, however, Father Michael made a gesture. Carter, O'Rourke, Langenscheidt, and several others rose out of the crowd and made their way to the front.

"This is more of an American tradition than anything else, but it's a fun one so I had to include it." He nodded to the assembled men and began reading the passage. The men read along with him, each in a different language from Gaelic to German and everything in between. The crowd chuckled when they reached the end and everybody stopped at a different time, until Van Rand from Barracks 1 was left all alone speaking Dutch. He finished up with a grin and a shrug.

Near the end the bag full of Langenscheidt's studiously collected peony petals was passed around and everybody grabbed a handful of flowers and a birch stick. At the end, Father Michael lifted his arms and called out something in Latin, indicating for everybody to toss their flowers and then promptly have the breakfast scared out of them by a loud trumpet blast. They whirled around to see Louis, who had snuck away after Communion, standing with the only other Parisian in the camp. Both of them grinned widely, unrepentant.

"That tradition is French!" Recovering from their surprise, the men dispersed back to their barracks and spent the rest of the evening relaxing.

Shutting the barracks door behind him (and blocking out the amusing picture of Newkirk trying to stuff his birch stick down the back of Carter's shirt while the sergeant was aiming for the nose) Hogan stepped out into the sunset before he had to go back in for curfew.

Carter and Kinch, and to some extent LeBeau and even Newkirk, never seemed to give up hope, no matter how dark things got. But sometimes Hogan would look out and see the barbed wire and guard towers and run down shacks everyone lived in, and even though he knew they could leave at any time he would feel more like a prisoner than ever. The world was falling apart around them, and it took everything he had to keep his men safe, and sometimes it weighed on him so heavily he wondered if others could see then curve it put in his spine.

He had been raised in the church, and he had- and read- his Bible, but it was hard to trust and harder to believe when he was where he was. He could scarcely remember the last time he had prayed. He leaned against the barracks wall with a sigh and decided that, well, what better time to try again than on the Church's birthday? Hey God, he thought, unsure of what to do. The father said today that You were always with us, but I can hardly believe that sometimes. It just seems too difficult.

I don't even know where I'm going with this, I just... I guess I want to know. I want to know what to do, how to keep my men safe. I want to know that the father's not wrong when he says You're really here. I want to know that things will be alright in the end. Knowing he didn't have much longer, Hogan reopened his eyes with a sigh and prepared to go back into the barracks. But something struck him oddly, and it took a moment to figure out what it was.

The camp was totally still. Nothing moved, except some birds flying through the air, and the only sounds were the muffled laughter of the men in the barracks. It was, for once, completely and utterly peaceful. Even the barbed wire fences were veiled by the shadows and the light of the setting sun, and the rising moon was shining among the stars.

And the sky was the most beautiful shade of red.