War was hot, and war was cold. The in-between didn't exist. In the summer, Soul sweated. In the winter, he froze. In the spring and fall, it could go either way, but he was never comfortable. He and the rest of his unit accepted it with the same weariness they had accepted the fact that none of them would be going home any time soon. War wasn't supposed to be comfortable. War was war.

At least Soul hadn't been under any delusions of heroism and grandeur like several of the other young men he fought beside. He had known it wouldn't be fun. He had known it would be gritty and painful and not at all a pleasant experience. He was glad, he thought in the darkened silence as he lay on his bedroll, that Blake had been turned away from the service. If there was one thing Blake Barrett had in spades, it was delusions of grandeur.

The man wouldn't have lasted a minute.

War was hot, and war was cold. There were some days that Soul found himself quivering in his standard-issue boots as he fought for his life. There were days where he could only watch helplessly as yet another man who he considered a friend in this European hellhole got shot down, bleeding out on the cold ground before the medics could arrive. Those days were the worst days, but the days of doing nothing, the days where all they could do was sit and wait, were a close second. When they were fighting, all Soul could think about was getting out alive. When they were sitting around, his thoughts drifted to everything that had happened. Everything that could happen.

Those were the nights he laid awake, unable to sleep.

It was on those nights that he thought of Maka. It had been months since he had left her, months since he had proposed, months since they had spent the night together. He missed her so bad sometimes it hurt; they exchanged letters as often as they could, but that wasn't nearly often enough. Besides, with the both of them in the military – for all intents and purposes, since the WAAC was still technically a civilian corps – they had to be careful about what they wrote. Even when leaving out anything that might be considered sensitive information, they still received their letters marked up with blackout ink.

Soul got letters from Blake and Tsubaki, too. In the months since Maka had left them for the WAAC, they too had gotten engaged and had already moved in together to help pay the bills. Tsubaki had finally found another job, this time as a secretary at some business office, and the two of them were doing well, if worried for their friends.

In his replies, Soul couldn't tell them not to worry, not when he was worried for himself all the time. So he wrote about how pleased he was for them, and how he wished he could be at the wedding, and how wonderful Europe was – when he wasn't wet and cold and hungry, and he when he wasn't under shellfire. He didn't include this last bit, deciding he didn't want to worry them even further.

The one bright spot in this entire mess was his commanding officer. When he had reached his platoon, he had been shocked to be greeted by none other than First Lieutenant Mortimer-don't-call-me-Mortimer Kidd. The two had never really been close back in New York, but he had been one of Maka's best friends, which counted for something. Hell, out here, even just recognizing someone you'd never talked to back home counted for something.

The two became inseparable. After all, they each had the same goal: get the other man home safe.

"Go! Go, go, go!"

Soul dove for cover behind a large boulder, just narrowly missing getting hit by a volley of gunfire from the German soldiers across the clearing. Kidd was seconds behind him, sliding in beside him with a thump.

"How many are there?" Soul asked breathlessly.

"I counted three or four," Kidd replied as he briefly checked over his gun. "We've been spread too thin – there aren't any friendlies close enough to help."

"Right. Well, we'd better show these Kraut bastards what we can do, then."

Soul knelt up behind the boulder and settled his rifle atop it. Beside him, he felt Kidd do the same. Together, they took potshots at the Germans whenever they leaned out from behind the trees while at the same time ducking away from return fire.

The Germans approached slowly, but in quick bursts between trees. Sometimes either Soul or Kidd would get a shot in as they came out into the open, but by the time they were too close for comfort, there were still two of them left.

Soul looked over when a soft thudding noise to his left caught his attention. His eyes caught on the round shell of a grenade, and his heart leapt up into his throat. Time slowed. There wasn't time to run. There was no way he and Kidd would get clear of the blast radius in time. They were dead men standing, and that left him only one option.

He didn't even think about his next actions.

"Duck!" He felt the word leave his throat in warning to Kidd even as he was scooping the ball of death up into his hand. In a single motion, he hurled the explosive back toward the Germans and hit the ground behind the boulder.

The entire encounter lasted mere seconds.

Soul clenched his eyes shut as the grenade exploded mid-air between him and the Germans. He felt the heat from the explosion and the pain of shrapnel embedding itself in his flesh. He thought of Maka's smiling face, and tried not to think about how that smile would fall if she got the letter saying he died here.

He may have feared that he was dying, but he was in pain, and dead men feel no pain. Through the ringing in his ears, there was a voice telling him to get up. Dimly, he recognized that it was Kidd, and he forced himself to his hands and knees. He gritted his teeth against the pain in his back. The blood was already soaking through his uniform, causing it to stick uncomfortably to his skin.

It was funny, he thought deliriously as he and Kidd picked off the last of the German soldiers. Out here, wealth and background meant nothing. He came from a well-to-do family of musicians. Kidd had also been well-off, as the son of the man who owned the Shibusen. But here they were, fighting and bleeding and just as mortal as those who had come from nothing.

Soul lost consciousness just as they stumbled back into camp.

On July 3, 1943, the bill that would turn the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps into the Women's Army Corps was signed into law. While the women were given the choice to return to civilian life, Maka chose to fully enlist in the Army as a member of the WAC. For her, and for many other women who had joined the WAAC, there had never been much of a decision to be made.

Later that month, on July 14, 1943, the first battalion of WACs to reach the European theater arrived in London. Maka Albarn, at the top of her officer candidate class, was among them.

She had been absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to go overseas. Although she would have resigned herself to operating switchboards on the eastern coast of the United States, what she had really wanted this entire time was to be where the action was. She wrote eagerly to Soul the very day she had been informed, although she had yet to receive a reply to the last letter she had sent.

The boat ride across the Atlantic had not been fun. It was crowded, and many of her fellow soldiers got seasick along the way. She had been nauseous for most of the journey as well, although thankfully, she had never actually gotten sick.

Maka was part of the detachment of 300 WACs who served with Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, stationed at Camp Griffiss in Bushy Park, London. In a somewhat ironic turn of events, she ended up doing almost the exact same job she had been doing back in New York: she worked as a legal secretary. It was something she knew, and something she was damn good at, and she didn't feel nearly as stifled working for the military as she had for Stein & Gorgon.

And although she missed Tsubaki, she quickly made new friends in London.

"Hey."

Maka had been eating her lunch and reading the soldier's guide to Britain she and all the other American soldiers had been given before disembarking on British soil. It had been written for men, and read as such, but there was still useful information within its pages. The voice prompted her to look up.

Standing before her were two women, one slightly taller and slimmer than the other, but similar enough that it was easy to tell they were siblings. They were dressed in the same Army-issue green that she was, although she could tell that these women were part of the British forces and not the American ones. Even if she hadn't been able to determine this via the uniforms, their accents would have given them away.

"Yes?"

"You're one of them Yanks who just got here, aren't ya?" the taller one asked.

"I am," Maka said cordially, trying to remember what it was the booklet had told her. Deciding plain old manners were the best option, she stood and held out her hand. "Mary Albarn, Women's Army Corps."

The taller woman took it. "Elizabeth Thompson, Auxiliary Territorial Service, and this is my sister, Patricia, also with the Auxiliary Territorial Service. Please, for the love of all that is holy, call us Liz and Patty."

Maka grinned. "Sure thing," she said easily. "Would you two like to join me?"

"Sure thing," Liz said with a twinkle in her eye. Maka laughed.

"So," she said once the Thompson sisters were seated. "When did you join up?"

"Oh gosh," Patty said. "It was like – what is it now, '43?" She counted back on her fingers. "Four years ago. We joined up in 1939."

Maka was impressed, although she knew that Britain had been at war much longer than the United States had. "Wow," she said. "I only joined up last year, but I would have done so much sooner if I could have."

"It's been a struggle," Liz said. "With the Blitz and all. But while London may be in shambles, its people certainly aren't. We're going to win this war, you mark my words."

"Well," Maka said, "I'm here to help."

Liz snorted. "Americans," she said to Patty. "Always thinking they're the ones to swoop in at the last minute and save the day." Her words were harsh, but there was a twinkle in her eye that suggested she was joking, at least a little bit.

"Have you been around London yet, Mary?" Patty asked eagerly, giggling at her sister's words.

Maka shook her head. "No, I haven't. We got here, and then we just kind of hit the ground running. I'd like to, but most of the girls here are still settling in."

"We're about an hour outside of central London, too, so it's not like you can really just pop over there real quick." Patty hummed thoughtfully. "Would you like to come with us the next time we have time off?"

"Really? That would be great, thank you!"

Liz smiled. "You poor yanks are so far out of your element here. The girls who were already here figured we should probably do what we could to help you lot out, at least until you've got your feet under you."

"I appreciate that," Maka said. "I do have one question, though. Actually, two."

"And what's that?" Liz asked.

"Are there dance halls in London, and do you know where they are?"

Both Liz and Patty laughed, and that was that. The three were fast friends, and Maka didn't find herself as homesick as she once thought she might have been. Eventually, she even told the two women about her true name, and why she had changed it when she enlisted. They were the only ones in the entire country who knew the truth, which was strange to think about.

In turn, she learned that Liz and Patty had lost their parents during the Blitz. Although they had already been working with the ATS by that point, the fight against Hitler had turned even more personal than it already was. Although Maka hadn't yet lost anyone to the war – that she knew of – she empathized with the sisters' misfortune. She swore once again that she'd do anything she could to put an end to the war.

The days passed, the air raid sirens screamed, and the occasional letters arrived from Tsubaki and Soul. She went dancing in London on occasion, although it felt entirely different from the Shibusen back home.

She did what all Londoners did. She kept calm, and she carried on.

June 6, 1944.

D-day.

The WACs at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, had worked around the clock throughout the planning period for the operation in Normandy. Maka had never typed so much so fast in her life as she documented critical changes and alternate plans. For the first time, she'd felt like she was really making a difference.

On February 23rd, an incendiary bomb had hit the WAC area at Bushy Park, causing substantial damage. Maka had gotten a break from the typing then; she had assisted in putting out the fires in the mess hall and company offices. The attack hadn't stalled the WACs for long – as soon as they had the area under control, they'd gone right back to preparing for D-day.

The atmosphere in Camp Griffiss was tense in the days leading up to the attack on Normandy. Maka, Liz, and Patty sat together in silence as they took lunch or spent their free time together. This operation was vital, and none wanted to imagine what would happen if it went south.

Maka had no idea whether Soul would be taking part in the attack. She had no clue where he was at this point – she hadn't received a letter in weeks. All she could do was sit, and wait, and worry.

She was good at that.

The news of victory at Normandy brought much-needed relief to the camp, although it did little to assuage Maka's personal fears. That night was a night of celebration, although the jovial atmosphere wouldn't last long.

After D-day, German V-1 and V-2 missiles hit Bushy Park and London in increasing numbers. The air raid sirens were almost a constant, and as such, Maka lived in a constant state of paranoia and fear. She realized that what she felt couldn't hold a candle to what the men who were actually out in the field felt, and she continued to worry for Soul.

On July 3, 1944, Maka was in her quarters reading a book she had gotten on her last trip to central London when she heard the distinctive buzzing of a V-1 missile overhead. It wasn't an unusual sound – since D-day, German missiles had been hitting Bushy Park and London with increasing frequency. As the buzzing grew louder, Maka set aside her book and made to get to her feet. It sounded like this one was going to hit Bushy Park, and she would be needed to help with the relief effort.

Then the world exploded.

Maka fell to her knees as the ground rumbled beneath her, throwing her hands up to guard against the falling debris of the barracks. She pulled her shirt collar up over her mouth and nose to protect herself from the dust and smoke and began stumbling toward the exit. Around her, her fellow WACs did the same.

She refused to panic. Even as a large piece of debris fell and nailed her in the ankle, she bit her lip and didn't cry out. She had wanted action, she reminded herself. Here was her action. It was hardly comparable to what she knew the men in the field must be going through, and it still wasn't fun.

While Maka hadn't gone into war thinking it would be fun like so many young men who enlisted, it was still even less fun than the not-fun she had thought it would be.

Her ankle was sprained, or quite possibly broken. It threatened to give way every time she put weight on it, sending pain screaming up her leg. Maka grit her teeth against the sensation and forced her way forward. After a couple moments, however, she realized that the screaming was not only coming from her leg – someone nearby was screaming as well.

Squinting through the intensifying smoke, Maka looked on in horror at a woman who was trapped beneath a heavy piece of debris. She glanced back toward the exit longingly before turning around and making her way toward her fellow soldier, her ankle protesting with every step.

"Go!" she shouted at one of the other women who had stopped. "I've got this! Get out!" The woman nodded and fled in terror.

It took her far more time than it should have to reach the woman trapped beneath the beam. Even through her shirt, she was beginning to cough at the smoke in the room. Her ankle wanted nothing more than to give out, but she stubbornly wouldn't let it. Not yet.

The trapped woman wasn't crying, but Maka wouldn't blame her if she was. "Come on," she said. "I'm going to lift the end of this beam, and you're going to crawl out, all right?"

Now that she was close enough, Maka could tell that the woman was Mira Nygus. The dark-skinned woman was older than Maka, but they had enlisted in the WAAC at the same time. Mira was tough, and seeing her helpless like this threw Maka for a loop.

Mira nodded. "All right," she rasped.

Maka wrapped her hands firmly around the beam. "Okay," she said, "on three. One, two, three!"

Every part of her body screamed at her as she held the beam long enough to make sure Mira got out. Once the other woman was clear, she dropped the beam back into place.

"Can you walk?" she asked as she helped Mira to her feet.

"I – I don't know," Mira said.

In response, Maka slung her arm around the older woman, who did the same in return. Together, the two hobbled toward the exit. They would be the last ones out, and not a moment too soon.

She wasn't really aware of what happened after that. She felt someone pull Mira away from her and two new people stepped in to support her weight as she limped over to first-aid. Slowly, she came to realize it was Liz and Patty beside her, and she relaxed infinitesimally.

"We came as quick as we could," Liz said as they set her down gently.

She might have said something in return, but the world around her faded into darkness. When she woke again, she was in the hospital with her ankle set in a clunky plaster cast. Broken, then, she thought wryly. Looking around, she saw that Mira Nygus lay in the bed beside hers, her wounds wrapped in a large number of bandages.

Maka laid back down in the hospital bed. None of this would go into any of her letters home, she decided. She didn't need to worry Tsubaki or Blake with a broken ankle, or Soul for that matter. Her hand drifted to the ring she wore on the chain with her dog tags. As she drifted off to sleep, her last thoughts were of her fiancé and everything she would have to tell him when all this was over.

It was over.

Soul writhed on the ground, the mud left over from last night's rain seeping through his uniform and coating almost every inch of his body. It was unpleasant and wet, but Soul couldn't feel any of it through the pain emanating from the bullet wounds in his thighs.

He'd tried to stand – surely a couple shots to his legs couldn't be what brought him down in the end – but his legs had collapsed beneath him, unable to hold their own weight, let alone the rest of him. Had he only received shots to one of them, perhaps he could have hobbled his way back behind the lines, but such was not the case.

Soul lay in the middle of a battlefield along the French border, coated in foreign mud and unable to do anything but listen to the sounds of the battle around him. Calls to arms, gunshots, screams. The devil's pianos played on in their raucous symphony of death.

He was bleeding out slowly – it didn't take a field medic to know that much. Soul tried to put as much pressure on the wounds as he could, but he only had so many hands and so high a pain tolerance. Blood continued to seep out around his fingers; he knew it was blood without looking, as it was warm and wet instead of the cold and wet of the mud that covered the rest of his body.

The camp wasn't too far away. He needed to get up. He needed to get back to Maka as soon as possible – he couldn't let her down. Not now, not when they still had so much more life to live together. Gritting his teeth, he pushed himself over onto his stomach. If he couldn't walk, then he'd crawl. If he couldn't crawl, then by God, he'd pull himself along with his arms until they too gave way beneath him.

He had only gotten a couple feet when he heard a guttural German cry behind him, closer than any of the others. Seconds later, a hand grabbed his shoulder and wrenched him around so that he was lying on his back once again. The man was sandy-haired and blue-eyed, but Soul looked up and saw only the face of the Grim Reaper; the rifle's bayonet was his scythe.

"Es tut mir Leid," the soldier said.

Soul snorted, then grimaced in pain. "Fuck you," he snarled. "Go to hell."

The soldier must have run out of ammo, because it was the tip of the bayonet – the Reaper's scythe – that came arcing down toward his heart. In a last-ditch effort to live another day – to live for Maka – Soul gathered his practically useless legs beneath him and tried to get out of the way of the blade. He was only partially successful; what would have been a quick and lethal jab to the heart became an agonizingly deep gouge from his heart to his hip.

He couldn't help it. He screamed.

He didn't hear the gunshot – it was just one more in the cacophony that was war.

He was barely aware of the soldier collapsing beside him.

He would not remember Kidd rushing to his side and staunching the flow of blood. He would not remember being dragged back to the field medics before being evacuated to an Army hospital further behind the lines.

When he woke, it was in a hospital bed with clean, white sheets. He had been stripped of his uniform, and there wasn't a speck of mud in sight. Soul might have thought that he'd died and gone to heaven, but then he shifted a tiny bit and every wound shouted its presence. He made a sound of protest before realizing he did so, and one of the nurses came hurrying over.

A miracle, they called it. The gash across his chest had been deep, but had managed to avoid rupturing any vital internal organs. As it was, he had lost so much blood that they hadn't been sure if he would pull through. They had pulled the bullets from his legs, but as he recovered they warned him not to be surprised if he walked with a little bit of a limp even after everything had healed.

Soul didn't care. He was alive, and that was all that mattered.

His stay in the Army hospital wasn't long; however, even after his stitches were removed, he never returned to the front line. In the grand scheme of things, a couple shots to the legs and a gash across the chest weren't all that serious. It wasn't like he had lost a limb, but the stiffness that persisted in his legs and the slight tremor in his hands meant that he was better suited for desk work. He didn't mind.

It was only a few scant months later that the reviled Adolf Hitler committed suicide, and Germany officially surrendered to the Allies. The United States scrambled to demobilize its soldiers, and Soul found himself beside Kidd on a boat back home before the year was out.

It was over.

He'd made it.

Maka had known things would be different when she returned home, but knowing it and experiencing it firsthand were two entirely different animals.

In June, she'd stepped on the ship in England and waved goodbye to the Thompsons, who had quickly become her best friends overseas, and a few nausea-filled days later, she'd stepped off the ship onto the familiar yet unfamiliar soil of New York. Blake and a pregnant Tsubaki had been there to greet her, and one tearfully gleeful reunion later, she was camped out on the couch of their new apartment until she could find a place of her own.

After years of wearing her olive green uniform day in and day out, her new freedom in clothing choice was nearly overwhelming. Tsubaki helped her through it, just as she helped her in every other aspect of readjusting to civilian life. Blake helped as well, talking her down from a panic attack caused by an automobile backfiring. On nights she couldn't sleep, she snuck out of her friends' apartment and went down to the Savoy, where she danced until her feet hurt. If she was avoiding the Shibusen, she didn't admit it to herself.

Slowly, she began to put her life back together. She returned to Stein & Gorgon, and much to her pleasure, she was placed in a position where she actually saw legal work. She rented an apartment as well, despite Tsubaki's protests that she was welcome to stay as long as she liked. She didn't go far; there was an opening in the same building.

So she worked and she waited. She danced and she waited. In her down moments, more often than not she would find herself fiddling with the ring that she had taken off her dog tags and put back on her finger. She realized she was scared. What if Soul wasn't the same person she'd left behind? What if she wasn't the same person she'd left behind? What if they didn't click as well as they had back in August of 1942? They had been writing each other as often as possible, but there was only so much that could be said in a letter.

And so she worried and she waited.

In September, Blake and Tsubaki received a letter from Soul detailing the approximate time and date his ship should be getting in. Maka had received her own letter as well, but hers simply read:

I love you.

She'd nearly cried.

When she saw him a couple weeks later for the first time in three years, his white-blond hair gleaming beneath his uniform cap and walking with a slight limp, she did cry.

"Maka," he said reverently, his voice music to her ears. He opened his mouth to say something more, but nothing came out. Instead, he dropped his bag and wrapped her into a tight embrace as she sobbed into his shoulder. She held onto him just as tightly – she was almost afraid that if she let him go, she'd lose him again.

"Soul," she whispered.

"Maka," he said again. "I'm here. You're here. We made it. It's over. C'est finis."

Maka hugged him even closer before finally letting go and stepping back. She sniffled as he raised a hand to her cheek to wipe away her remaining tears, and gave him a watery smile. "Oh God," she said. "It's so good to see you. I just. It hasn't been the same here without you."

She tilted her head up at the same moment he leaned down. It was hardly their first kiss, but Maka felt her insides doing the same swoopy thing they had done three years before. Soul's lips were soft and slightly chapped against hers, and there was the lingering taste of salt from their combined tears, but Maka wouldn't have it any other way. It was perfect just the way it was.

"Welcome home," she murmured against his lips when she pulled away for air.

"It's good to be back," he said, touching his forehead to hers. "I'll never have to speak another word of French again, Dieu merci!"

Maka couldn't help herself. "You just did," she laughed. Soul looked at her in mock affront, and then he too was laughing. "Come on," Maka said, reluctantly pulling away. "We're due at Blake and Tsubaki's for dinner. We can worry about getting you sorted tomorrow."

Soul reached for the bag he had dropped so unceremoniously. "Uhm," he said, "I need to figure out where I'm staying tonight, first of all …"

"I thought, uh," Maka stammered, "that you could stay with me? I know it isn't proper. Blake and Tsubaki offered to let you stay on their couch, like I did, if you'd prefer …"

Soul stopped her rambling. "Maka," he said. "I'd love nothing more than to stay with you tonight."

Maka flushed and nodded, and that was that.

It wasn't easy, but nothing that matters ever is. Both Maka and Soul had been at war, and while it was often Soul who woke in the middle of the night with nightmares, his screams sometimes sent Maka into a funk as well. His legs were still stiff from the injuries he had received on the battlefield, and the ache let him know when it was about to rain. Maka's ankle, too, felt particularly stiff some mornings.

They returned to the Shibusen, where Soul watched fondly as Maka fell sobbing into Kidd's arms. She had danced while she was in London, and occasionally at the Savoy since her return, but there was something about the Shibusen that was home. She danced with Soul as well, though they took it easy.

Soul picked up piano again, despite being rusty after having not played while he was overseas. It had been rough going at first, but regular practice had helped him with the tremors in his hands as well. Spartoi had all but disbanded with most of its original members drafted into the war effort. It wasn't the same band Soul left, and so he had no desire to return. He found a job with an orchestra for a theatre off-Broadway instead.

They had their ups and downs, but they dealt with it together. They saw Blake and Tsubaki and their newborn on a regular basis, and Kidd was brought into the fold as well, having been so close with Soul during their time overseas. The other man's new sense of near-crippling anxiety when things were out of place was hard to deal with at times, but it was understandable. In war, something out of place could very well mean multiple soldiers dead.

Liz and Patty came over from England to visit Maka, and ultimately ended up staying in New York permanently.

"After all," Liz said breezily at Blake and Tsubaki's now-crowded dinner table, "it's not like we really had anything tying us down over there, did we, Patty?"

Soul never moved out of Maka's apartment after that first night. They discussed finding a new place for him once, and never talked about it again. Conversation turned to the logistics of getting both the Albarns and the Evanses to New York, and they got married instead.

The year was 1946.