The Way Back Home

Chapter Sixteen: My Heart Will Go On

Joseph turned around in his seat, leaning up toward the hatch to catch a glance at Emmy while she was on his mind, not that she hadn't been for the majority of the day and he wasn't about to voice that fact aloud.

"Emmanuelle, are you sure we don't need to stop? We still have a long way to go until we get to the hospital." He was concerned that the constant motion of the vehicle wasn't doing favors for her recovering from illness earlier that morning, having sat vigil at her bedside for reasons he still couldn't bring himself to contemplate.

"No, Joseph. The longer we stay out in the open, the more risk we have of getting caught. You're already risking enough for me by being here. I'm nothing more than an object you need to transport from one place to another, like the message Will had to get to Col. MacKenzie." She reached through the small hatch with her hand as Joseph tentatively took her hand within his.

The lieutenant's touch was gentle and reassuring, reminding her of being in his arms only a couple hours prior departing the camp as he carried her due to her injured leg. And he had volunteered to this mission of his own accord.

"I may not know much about you from your own lips Emmanuelle, but I do know that you were brave enough to get through enemy territory and save your Schofield from dying. That man loves you with all he is. And as for me, when I promise something, I never break that promise." His fingers held her hand, his lips chastely kissing her knuckles where he saw the faint scarring on her pinky and third finger.

"I know Will loves me; he's expressed as much with action than with words.  If I twisted my ankle, he'd tend to it like I'd broken my whole leg. He said that I was brought here for a reason. That I was meant to save him as he did for me when we first met." She reached with her other hand and grasped tightly onto his hand still holding hers. "If I told you everything about myself, you'd throw me out of this car and leave me to fend for myself."

Joseph shook his head, chuckling slightly at her words.

"Emmanuelle, I already swore on my brother's soul that we'll get you there, still breathing and heart beating. As a soldier, I'm honor-bound to protect you as an innocent caught in this hell. And honor is the foundation of God-fearing humanity." He lightly pressed another swift kiss of platonic oath upon her scarred fingers. "And no more talking of such degradation about yourself. That's an order."

His coy smile brought a bright smile to her lips and she opened her mouth to reply.

Before she could, the sudden shattering of the driver's window destroyed their lighthearted banter. A terrified scream erupted from her aching throat, already dry from thirst. Brain matter stained with blood of the now assassinated Private Seymour doused the front of Lt. Blake's uniform and splattered Emmanuelle's pale face. Seymour slumped down against the steering wheel, a bullet lodged through his skull in a quick and painless demise and exiting through his ear.

"Get down, Emmy! Get under the bench and don't move!" Joseph yelled to her, the playful nuance in his voice vanished from only seconds before.

Lt. Blake heard the shrill screams of the petrified woman under his protection echo through his pounding head. The paralyzing sensation of fear threatened to make him freeze in a panic as he ducked down into his seat, struggling to keep one of his shaking hands onto the steering wheel. Only then did he remember that Seymour's now cooling corpse had its foot stuck on the pedal.

The chaos of raining bullet shells around Joseph kept him on hyperactive high alert as he battled both with himself to go instinctive self-preservation mode and with this nightmare of a situation he was trapped in with a dead comrade and a frightened young woman who was the only living link remaining to his little brother.