The sun was high in the sky, shining bright despite a frame of gray skies over the small settlement.  People walked through the streets, carrying on about their business as any other day, groceries piled in arms, children dragging on mothers' skirts, men smoking on the street corners in groups of two or three.  None acknowledged the presence of the soldiers at every door, marching along the roads, eying the groceries, women, and children with unwarranted humor or blatant disgust.  Patrolling past the men, the groups silenced and dispersed.  Stepping out from behind a corner, a mother pulled her children tight and ushered them to walk a little faster with a firm hand on their shoulders.  Two moved into the way of the girl carrying the groceries so she could not ignore them like the others.<br/><br/>"Excuse me, please," she offered, trying to adjust her path around the men, to no avail.<br/><br/>The taller of the two lifted his chin to her.  "Where did you get so much foodstuff, girl?"<br/><br/>"Where do you think you're taking it?" The stockier one added.<br/><br/>Silence fell unnaturally upon the street as attention drew itself to the small scene that started.  They stared in sympathy, fear, sadistic interest, and withheld anger from all points in view of the girl and the officers.  Such things were a common occurrence, and equally common was the lack of action from the watching bystanders, who tried to keep their responses to themselves, unnoticed.  This was the way now.  This was home.<br/><br/>"To the clinic.  I was instructed to bring all that I could, sir, please," she begged.<br/><br/>It was like the bell for Pavlov's dog, only they did more than salivate.  The soldiers grabbed at her arms and coat despite her protests, laughing the more she struggled to maintain her collection and back away from the men at once.  She cried out as her things fell and they continued in on her, irritation and determination contorting their features as they stepped on the additional obstacle of the goods now at their feet.  Some of the men on the street corners dropped their cigarettes to stop this situation.  They were, in turn, stopped by the officers on patrol, and the girl continued to scream.<br/><br/>"Halt, że wystarczy!  Was denken Sie?!  Huh?"<br/><br/>The officers stopped, looking up at the woman who approached them with long, commanding strides, her back ever straight.  Yvonne Wójcik, commanding officer of the Women's Battalion in Poland was a face to recognize and fear, and it was currently set in a grimace that spoke more to the harrying men than any of the words in any language she could've shouted, whether it was her native Polish or their Deutsch.  She was on them before they could step back and get their hands to their foreheads, stuttering apologies.<br/><br/>"Sorry?!  You say this to<span style="font-style: italic">me</span>?  What about the madchen here, unh?"  She barked, their eyes trying to find any place that wasn't her glare or the mess that caused it.  "Well?!"<br/><br/>The first officer immediately looked down at the girl, clearly as uncomfortable with the development as its precession.  He wasn't much older than her, emphasized by the clean-shaven features just finding a shape squarer than childhood roundness, neither quite an adult, but certainly not children.  He whispered his sympathies, but his partner gave her an expression foul enough to compare with the air in which they all breathed.  Officer Wójcik was unimpressed.  Calm came over her form and automatically took the mans attention back with regret washing away with his palor, which he tried to cover with bringing the glare around to fall on her.<br/><br/>"What do you care of this filth?"  He spat.  "Jewish sympathizer," he accused, literally spitting at her feet.  "You do not belong in Munich, in the Fatherland at all!  You do not belong on the path of the<span style="font-style: italic">great</span>Fuhrer, but in his wake with the filth."<br/><br/>His words slipped through the street, heavy, as if the wind new better than to pick them up.  The silence was flat, waiting.  The individuals around waiting with it, feeding into the quiet with anticipation.  There was only one way this could end, and it was not in favor of the speaker who broke the silence or the law of subordination.<br/><br/>"I will beat you," she told him plainly, anger not tainting the inflection of the words, but clear behind them.  "Before this girl, these onlookers, the<span style="font-style: italic">filth</span>you are so ready to dirty your hands and yourself with.  I give you the same opportunity I give to them, klein tier<span style="font-style: italic">[little bug]</span>: Repent."<br/><br/>His upper lip came up in a sneer as he looked up at the woman towering over him from three feet away.  "Küss mein Arsch."<br/><br/>He had been leaning in, throwing his weight forward in an attempt to intimidate.  The man was clearly inclined to getting his way, and being able to use his girth in compensation for his height, ever the bully.  Being talked to by a woman in such a way was not acceptable, whether or not - maybe especially not if said woman outranked him and pulled that rank over him.  She stared down at the little bug without change in her expression for a steady count of five seconds that could have been taken as defeat if not for her rigid posture billowing controlled rage.<br/><br/>"They will be saved," she told him.  She leaned forward slowly now, with much less effort, their faces juxtaposed so she could whisper, "You will not be."<br/><br/>Her fist came up under his ribcage, forcing mass behind the bones.  He doubled over with a gasp, eyes bulging, and the veins there doing the same.  Drool fell off his tongue, landing on her boot with the spittle he'd expelled earlier, before his face followed into unconsciousness there.  Wójcik returned to her standing position, pivoting on her toes left and right before sliding them out from under the doormat of his mustache, and frowning at them unsatisfactorily. "Clean him up off the street," she ordered the younger officer.  "Then you can fetch the frau's reparations and take them to the clinic for her."<br/><br/>She set a mark in his hand and he went to work.  He should've been able to move the fallen soldier on his own with youth and a healthy regimen of exercise, but he called over another for help. She raised an indignant brow.  The ever so helpful soldier slipped something into her hand, distracting her from her next words as she opened the note with two fingers, giving it an immediate glance like something so small required.  Satisfied again, she rolled it back and into her pocket.  Absently fixing the bun hovering at the back of her neck, unmussed by the recent events it was so accustomed to, she remembered the girl standing behind her yet.<br/><br/>Yvonne turned her head toward the young girl.  She was darker in complexion and eyes than the woman standing above her, with her hair covered entirely by a black scarf so it was impossible to see the color, but guessing was of little challenge.  A yellow star hung off kilter on the sweater that barely covered her freezing flesh, a jacket of the poor who needed to be shown the light.  Her eyes would not meet the Officer, and she held very still.  Yvonne did not like this reaction, so she kneeled down, a smile reaching from either studded ear to the other, teeth shining only a shade lighter than her fair skin.  Her hands were covered by black gloves she used to take the girls bare ones in, wrapping them with the warmth she had to offer in their thick leather, finally getting the girls eyes onto her own.<br/><br/>"You are a good woman, and I see you do God's work for your people," she praised, eyes shining like a spring leaf when the snow melts.  "Please, let me make this up to you.  Your clinic will receive its rations, the food and other necessities you were required to bring, but I would like you to come to the church with me.  I would like to pray for your salvation.  It is warm, and you could get cleaned up before you return to your family."<br/><br/>The girl stared, completely taken aback by this offer.  Her eyes were wide with disbelief, but Yvonne was patient.  She let the girl sort out her emotions and let logic run the course of her thoughts as she recalled each word the woman said to her, or in the conversation in its entirety.  Saved.  Warm.  Clean.  Family.  The desire grew like a flame behind her eyes, emphasized by the bloodlight of the setting sun, and Yvonne watched the girl bring herself to the decision, toward righteousness, and His light.<br/><br/>"Okay," she told Yvonne, and the woman stood, taking the younger's hand like a friend and led her to her salvation, the promised heat burning from a chimney in a thick smoke that covered what light the clouds could not.<br/><br/>~~~<br/><br/>Dressed in a black uniform, pressed to anal perfection, Officer Wójcik walked through the night without any hesitation, glistening boots crunching along the hard-packed street.  She had finally seen the party she awaited and crossed the street to the stoop lit by the machine they arrived in as it cast a dark shadow across the doorway.  It was likely meant to blind the host to their features, and better yet the dark street around its halo, and put her in an instant state of apprehension to aid them in their... conversation.  The woman slipped through the dark mostly unnoticed while the two started to converse before everyone was present.<br/><br/>"Name of the suspect?" Asked the blonde officer who stood greater than a foot above his companion.  His voice was more irritated than interested as he distracted himself with a view of the windows, something in it belying something underneath the sound that caught her attention for just a moment.<br/><br/>The man beside him looked at the blackened glass as well.  His features were as opposite as imaginable to the other, dark haired and built heavily across the shoulders, reminding Wójcik of the man she'd damned just a few hours before only less round.  He might have had some actual dignity about him.  "Isolde... Isolde Devereaux"<br/><br/>"Who should be treated with care," the officer said as she stepped up to meet them, of equal height with the second man from a stair lower, asserting her place among them with the utmost of ease.  Her smile was as brilliant as it had been with the girl she saved, but her eyes were serious and dark.  "My benefactors have interest in this woman and I am here to make sure those interests are<span style="font-style: italic">treated with care</span>."<br/><br/>She let this sit in the air for a pause before asking, "Which of you is Oberstleutnant Köhler?"<br/><br/>The blonde man inclined his head slightly, more a curious tilt matching that he gave Frau Devereaux's windows.  His eyes were a shocking shade of blue that gave her greater pause than she was prepared for, though she could not be sure why.  Kohler stared intently at her.  Ever the lady, Wójcik found her manners and offered her hand, removing the leathers first as his were, and introduced herself simply.  "I am Yvonne Wójcik, commanding officer of the Polish Women's Battalion, under office to the Fuhrer."