Love You Till The End (Robert Zussman x Reader)

47 - Y/N L/N

"Hey! Stop!" I heard Daniels yell before he smacked the prisoner with his rifle, sending him straight to the ground.

Just as I was about to reach them, I watched as Daniels bent down to grab the prisoner and was hit in the face. The prisoner attempted to crawl away, but Daniels was quick and roughly placed his foot on the prisoner's chest, pinning him to the ground. I ran up to see Daniels with his rifle pointed at the prisoner's face. The prisoner began saying something and it sounded like he was begging Daniels not to hurt him.

"He's not worth it!" Zussman finally arrived, nearly running into me. "Daniels."

"Dumb Kraut," Daniels said after spitting some blood in the snow. "Why'd you run? Must be hidin' somethin'."

As Zuss and I pointed our guns at the German, Daniels began patting him down and searching his coat pockets. I could hear Pierson's heavy breathing as he finally caught up just as Daniels pulled out a folded piece of paper from one of the German's pockets.

"Son of a bitch was holdin' out on us." Daniels handed the paper to Zussman who unfolded it.

As soon as he reached us, Pierson gave the prisoner a hard kick in his side, most likely as payback for hitting him in the head.

"Gimme that." Pierson grabbed the paper from Zussman. He looked at it for a few seconds before handing it back to him. "The fuck's this say?"

"These are orders to plant explosives on the bridge in Remagen*. Ordnance* is gonna be loaded onto trucks five miles north of here," Zussman said. "If I'm reading this right, it's the last bridge standing across the Rhine."

"Well, ain't that somethin', Fritz." Pierson looked down at the wide-eyed prisoner before giving him a kick in the face.

* * *

Night of December 26, 1944
The Ardennes, Belgium, Luxembourg

"Alright, Zuss, can you count to ten in German?" Stiles asked.

"Yeah, no problem," Zuss said confidently. "Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn."

"Fünf? If I followed along correctly, that's number five, right?" I asked.

"Correct, miss."

"Fünf, fünf, fünf. That's fun to say," I said, making Zuss laugh.

"I'm not so bad with French pronunciations, but-" Stiles began.

"Ha! That's what you think!" Aiello interrupted.

"But! These German ones got me stumped. I mean, how the hell do you say this?" Stiles placed the German-English dictionary we had found in Aachen on Zussman's lap and pointed at the German word across from the English translation that said "candy."

"Die Süßigkeiten, the candy," Zussman said without any sign of struggling to pronounce it.

"I'm not even gonna attempt to say that." Stiles took the dictionary off Zussman's lap. "Wait, why does it have the letter B in it?"

"That's not a B, College. It's a letter in the German alphabet called eszett or scharfes S. It basically means Sharp S; looks like a B, pronounced like an S."

"Interesting."

"There you go, you learned somethin' new. Now, is the interrogation over? 'Cause I'm feelin' pretty damn tired." Zussman yawned.

"Yup, you're free to go." I joked.

"Why the hell you still got that dictionary anyways, College? I thought I told you to get rid of it," Aiello said.