Dayshift 49: Bus 2

[diamondstorm]

Morning hit without warning, with the sheer knowledge hitting the Digimon before anything else that today they were going back to Doyletown. Her feet hit the floor and she rotated her right shoulder experimentally. The skin stretched tight, soreness persevering, but it moved fine. She stretched her fingers then curled them into a fist, staring at the tanned skin that was her right arm. If something happened this time... She would be more useful. Her mind replayed the events of last week, and Renamon stilled, considering.

There wasn't much time left to her as the nurse bustled in with an armful of clothes, the same shade as the weeks before. The woman murmured a cheery complaint that it was too cold for skirts and left Renamon to change. The pants were preferable to the past two weeks, though the other item she was left with gave too much to irony. She frowned at it for a minute, then slid it over her head, reflecting that this motion in days or weeks past would have left her shuddering. It meant she was becoming used to this human body, and that was nothing that boded well. She grabbed her notebook before being led to a bus, and slid into a seat halfway down the aisle, pressing against the window. Again, the previous night had been more than short. Was it just her, or was there something more to it?

[for Haseo!]

Comments

[hat_einen_vogel]

Indiana... Jones?

The name set off warning bells in Prussia's mind. A name was just a name, but those names combined together left him feeling wary. 'Indiana' was the name of one of America's states, wasn't it? And America himself was.....

"Before ending up here? It was the 25th of January," Prussia answered cautiously, "nineteen forty-seven." It had been the day after Old Fritz's birthday when he'd gone to sleep, and then he'd woken up in that room on what had probably been the next evening. "Should be the 28th now, unless I lost count." Or if it really wasn't 1947 any longer, like England had claimed.

He still had suspicions about whether England was telling the truth about anything (other than his own survival), but those suspicions were cast aside now for new, more pressing ones. Maybe it was just idle speculation—as far as he knew, none of their kind existed as America's states, and he certainly didn't get that feeling from Dr. Jones—but maybe there was something to it, too. If he had information to share about how the staff disabled the prisoners, for example, he certainly wasn't sharing it... Assuming, of course, that he really didn't know.

There was one potential way of finding out.

"You don't know an 'Alfred F. Jones', do you?" Prussia found himself asking, watching Dr. Indiana Jones carefully.

[its-the-mileage.livejournal.com]

1947. Indy didn't know what that meant. If Nate could be believed, the war probably started sometime next year, but no one had given him an ending date for it--in fact, he wasn't even entirely sure Germany had lost. What had Pierson said? The political situation in Europe "changed a great deal"? He was still operating under the assumptions that Britain and the United States came out of it all right, but otherwise, that statement could mean anything.

"What would you do if you escaped? I'm not sure America is a particularly comfortable place for Germans at the moment, given the current political situation," Indy said carefully, keeping his tone neutral, bluffing like crazy in a bid for information. He hoped it was a reasonable guess. Even if the U.S. hadn't actually entered the war, he'd like to think they'd at least be quietly opposed to the Third Reich, especially if it was busy rearranging Europe.

It didn't escape him that his statement might be taken as a tacit acknowledgment that this was 1947, but Indy also didn't particularly care. Someone would straighten Beilschmidt out soon enough if he got the wrong idea.

"No, I don't," he added in response to the question about Alfred F. Jones. To clarify, he elaborated, "'Jones' is a very common name here, Mr. Beilschmidt."

[hat_einen_vogel]

In addition to his verbal denial, Dr. Jones showed no outward signs of recognizing the name America used when dealing with humans. Either Prussia had made an honest mistake by jumping to conclusions too quickly, or Dr. Jones was a very good actor. He was inclined to believe the former, but decided to keep a wary eye on him just in case the question about his plan was something more than casual curiosity.

Prussia wasn't about to divulge any particulars of his post-escape plan, but he could see little harm in answering Dr. Jones' question in general terms of what he wanted to do. He had, after all, made a lot of sense; America was not particularly a place he wanted to stay for long right now.

"All the more reason to leave as quickly as possible. I know that I'm not exactly welcome here right now," Prussia responded sullenly. "As for what I'd do... I have a brother in Germany, and I'd like to let him know I'm alive. We haven't seen each other as much since the end of the war, but by now he's probably worrying himself over my disappearance."

If circumstances had been different, disappearing for a few days would have hardly been cause for worry (except for Austria), but as it was... He actually wasn't sure if West even knew he was gone: if he'd been told or if he could somehow feel in the earth and in his bones. But whether or not West knew, he wanted to see his little brother. If England had been lying about anything or everything, there were things he wanted to do before he really disappeared. Maybe together, he and West could even stop the Control Council from erasing the name of Prussia from the map.