J.M.J.

Author's note: Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the story, though it's rather a downer. It's part of the World War II AU of one-shots that I have going. It takes place before "An Incident in France", so Ned is still a private rather than a sergeant as he is in that story. I hope to write another one-shot or two during December, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to. I've started full-time at work, which is great, but it does mean quite a bit less time for writing. Then, too, I've got to finish White Roses and I have a Nancy Drew story that I will begin posting in January that I need to work on, so we'll have to see what happens with the one-shots. If I don't post again before that, I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Recoil

1942

The line of soldiers was scarcely moving as they made their way through a cover of trees. At least, that was the way it felt to Private Ned Nickerson, who was walking alongside the supply truck. Without a road, the truck couldn't go much faster than a man could walk, anyway, and that only made it feel like they were barely crawling. It probably didn't help Ned that he was expecting German uniforms to appear out of the trees any moment. A bird took flight from a nearby bush and Ned jumped.

The man walking beside him laughed. At once, Ned felt embarrassed for being so jumpy, but in a strange way, the laughter was good to hear. It was such a natural and human sound.

"I don't think that bird was a German scout, if that's what you're worried about," the other soldier said. His name was Roy Mason and he was a few years older than Ned, though no less inexperienced in war.

"Yeah, I guess not," Ned replied. "It surprised me, is all. We've got to keep our eyes open, you know."

Mason nodded and smirked. "Yeah. My wife will kill me if I don't get home alive."

"Um, yeah." Ned wasn't sure how to take the joke. It was rather morbid under any circumstances, but right here and now, he didn't see anything funny about it at all.

"She really will, you know." Mason's voice became a bit more serious. "She doesn't understand at all. Before the U.S. joined the War, she joined up with one of those peace groups that were trying to keep us out of it. She said there was nothing worth me dying for, or killing for, for that matter. She's kind of a pacifist."

"I take it you disagree."

"Yeah. Look, I don't think I'm some big hero or anything like that. I wish we weren't at War, too, but it's just…those peace group people. I don't know if you've ever run into any of them. To a certain extent, they make sense. War really is hell, and no country should rush headlong into it for no reason, or even for a bad reason. But they're not going to convince the Nazis with their petitions and peaceful protests. If everyone who was decent at all was a pacifist, the Nazis would take over the world in no time and we'd all be living in even worse conditions that being at war. Maybe more of us would be alive—maybe—but maybe there's more to life than just not dying." He chuckled hollowly. "I guess I probably don't have to convince you of that."

Ned took in a deep breath. There was nothing surprising for him in this philosophy. Back home—oh, how far away it felt now!—he'd fallen for a girl named Nancy Drew. Nancy wasn't an average girl. She wasn't even twenty yet, and she had made a name for herself as an amateur detective. It wasn't a safe hobby, by any stretch of the imagination. Nancy had gotten herself into mortal danger more than once, and yet her philosophy had always been that some things were worth dying for, and she'd proven more than once how strongly she believed that. Maybe it had rubbed off on Ned a little. It really wasn't the possibility of dying that bothered him about being over here. He'd faced that possibility before on some of the adventures he had had with Nancy. What bothered him was that, this time, he was going to have to be the one holding the gun.

In the midst of Ned's musing, Mason stiffened and held up a hand in warning. Ned was about to tease him about who was jumpy now, but he never got the chance. There was a burst of gunfire and everything happened before Ned could blink. Mason was thrown back against the truck, which had braked abruptly, before he fell to the ground. Several people were shouting, and Ned was a little surprised when he realized he was one of them. He lifted his gun and fired wildly in the direction where the shots were coming from.

Then he saw one of them. A young German soldier was only a few yards away, aiming his gun directly at Ned. There was a long pause, unless it was only a few seconds. Ned noticed everything about that young soldier in that moment when time stood still: his blond hair, a fresh tear near the shoulder of his gray uniform, even the nick on his chin where he must have cut himself shaving not many hours before. Ned wondered why he didn't fire. He had no lack of opportunities to do so.

Ned didn't even think about it, for if he had, he never would have been able to raise his own gun again and fire.

It was all over after that. There weren't many Germans, apparently, and when they saw they didn't stand a chance, all that were left ran. It was a good thing for Ned, for he had forgotten all about the battle. He'd even forgotten about Mason. Dazed, he walked over to the man he had just killed and looked down at him. He just stood there dumbly, unable to think or feel anything at all.

"You all right, Nickerson?"

"Yeah."

"Is that how you address your sergeant?"

Ned blinked and looked up. He wasn't sure how long he had been standing there nor when Sgt. Wesk had approached. Even his response had been completely mechanical.

"I mean, yes, sir." Ned mastered himself for a moment before his eyes strayed back to the body on the ground. "It's just…he's dead."

"That's what happens in a war." The sarcasm in the sergeant's tone rankled Ned.

"I've never killed anyone before." Ned felt the back of his throat tighten and tears come into his eyes, but he was past the point of thinking or caring about his pride.

"Well, congratulations."

Ned bent down and picked up the rifle that the German had dropped. He examined it and found that it was jammed. He let out a long, shaky breath. "No wonder he didn't fire. He couldn't."

Wesk took the gun and looked it over himself. "You were lucky."

Ned's lip trembled and he suddenly felt sick to his stomach. "He couldn't have killed me, even if he was trying to. So I didn't have to kill him."

Wesk gave an annoyed grunted and forced Ned to turn around. He pointed Mason's body, lying where he had fallen. "You see that? That's why you had to kill him."

"But he couldn't have killed anyone. I've as good as killed an innocent man."

"An innocent man? He was a Nazi who just ambushed us and killed one of our men, your brother. You've got a strange idea of innocence." Wesk snorted. "What about Mason? He wasn't actively trying to kill anyone, was he? He never even got a shot off. He just got killed, like that." Wesk snapped his fingers.

"I know, I know. It's…" Ned put his hand up to his face, unable to say what he was thinking.

"It's that this guy…" Wesk used his thumb to point over his shoulder at the German. "…didn't have to die. You'd still be alive if you hadn't killed him, Mason would still be dead. In fact, everything would be exactly the same except for one thing: this guy would be alive, and when you can save a life—or in this case, spare one—you always should, even when it's not the easiest thing to do, right?"

"Right." Ned blinked in confusion that the sergeant actually did understand.

"Well, that's just fine for an armchair moralizer who's never gone anywhere close to a war. But real life doesn't play out that simply. You didn't know this guy's gun was jammed. All you knew was that an enemy soldier was pointing a gun at you and you needed to shoot or be shot. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you'd be right. But this is going to happen a lot more than a hundred times, and a lot of men who have jammed guns or unloaded ones or who lost their gun or any other reason you can think of that they wouldn't have to die will die. It's the way it is, hard as it sounds. You can't worry about whether it's that one out of a hundred times whenever you have to fire that gun. If you do, you'll just get killed and, I guess, hand over the world to tyranny with a clear conscience. You've got to find a way to live with it, or you'll drive yourself crazy."

Ned nodded slowly. "Yes, sir." It didn't change how sick and guilty he felt.

Wesk ordered him to go tend to Mason's body, which Ned did, slowly and mechanically. It wasn't until he reached Mason's side that it really sank in that he was dead. The man whom Ned had been talking to not fifteen minutes before was dead, just like that, with no warning, no chance for a final prayer or thought of home. If anyone had been killed who wouldn't have had to be, who shouldn't have been, it was him. Mason had mentioned he was married, too, and his wife hadn't been favorable of him enlisting. What would she do now that her worst fear had happened?

Ned closed his eyes and tried to sort through all of this, but he couldn't. His thoughts were all jumbled together and confusing. It was like reaching for something solid, but before his fingers could close around it, it would vanish.

It wasn't until much later, after the caravan had reached the company to which they were delivering supplies. They had to sleep outside that night, but Ned didn't do very much sleeping. He lay awake, with his hands folded over his stomach, and stared up at the stars like someone in a trance as he weighed whether he should feel guilty or not, and if he shouldn't, perhaps he should feel guilty for feeling guilty. The man had been an enemy, after all. But if he didn't feel guilty for killing even an enemy who wasn't really posing a risk to him—not really—was he any better? Then again, the sergeant was right that he hadn't known the gun was jammed. He couldn't be blamed for something he didn't know, right? But he did know the soldier hadn't fired when he could have—well, he couldn't have, really, but he could have if his gun hadn't jammed. What if that soldier hadn't known his gun was jammed? What if he hadn't tried to fire it at all? Maybe his heart hadn't really been in it. He could have been drafted and hadn't chosen to fight at all. It was impossible to know. Ned hadn't known when he had killed him. Then, there was another thing: shouldn't he feel sorrier for Mason, a brother-in-arms, who had been fighting for something he believed in, not just duped or forced into fighting for an evil cause? Didn't it make Ned a sorry excuse for an American to feel worse over a Nazi than over a fellow American?

As these thoughts roiled in his mind, not giving him a moment's peace for the sleep that he desperately wished for, he noticed something up in the sky. It was the Little Dipper, with the North Star at the tip of the handle. Tears filled his eyes at the memories that that brought, and he had to sit up as his nose plugged and he couldn't breathe.

"Look. You can just see the North Star through the clouds." Ned was pointing at that very same star, back in River Heights, the night before he'd left.

Nancy stood next to him, She looked up to where he was pointing, and even though it was dark, Ned could practically see her blue eyes, as clear and deep and mysterious and yet transparent as the ocean, fix upon that star.

"You know, the North Star never sets and it's in the same place year round," Ned told her, though he knew she already knew that. "I'll be able to see it wherever I'm sent. It will help, looking at it and knowing that you can see it, too."

Ned wondered if Nancy was looking at the North Star at that moment. No, she couldn't be. It wouldn't be dark yet back in River Heights. She shouldn't look at it anyway. He wasn't worth remembering or waiting for now.

Yet, his thoughts had strayed to home, and they lingered there a little while. He remembered how he and Nancy had met, with that fire that had destroyed some swindler's home. Nancy had stopped to see if she could help anyone trapped inside the house, as had Ned and a dozen other people. He'd gotten caught up in the case then, with that family of immigrants who had come to America because they had a better chance there.

He thought about his parents, and his dad's newspaper that had been in the family for three generations now. He thought of Emerson College, where he had gotten a year of education. He could practically picture the brick buildings and the clock tower and his professors with their array of different ideas and points of view. He thought about football practice and the pageant the college had put on that time, all about the town's history. Walking in the park; rowing on the lake; long, careless summer days with nothing to do; going for drives; reading books and watching movies; going to church; greeting neighbors who would always give him a smile; looking for summer jobs; going to soda shops. Would he ever see or do any of that again?

It occurred to him then that he had always taken all those things for granted, as if they always had been and always would be, or as if they had just happened and it was just the way the world was. He had never really thought of it before now that they had a price, and this was the price. There had always been someone else to pay it before now, but not anymore.

What was it that Mason had said? If everyone who was decent at all was a pacifist, the Nazis would take over the world in no time. Ned could take it one step farther now. If everyone was as cautious as him, the Nazis would take over. This was what it cost to be free: not just life and limb—as real and huge as those sacrifices were—but also making decisions when there was no time to think and a lifetime to rethink.

It didn't ease the guilt or the pain or the horror, but now, for the first time today, he could see a point to it, and that was something worth holding onto.