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❛ ᴡᴀsᴛᴇʟᴀɴᴅs ᴏғ ᴛɪᴍᴇ. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚ ▎❛ 𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐄 ❜ ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ᴇᴠᴇʀʏʙᴏᴅʏ ʟᴏᴏᴋ
ᴡʜᴀᴛ's ɢᴏɪɴ' ᴅᴏᴡɴ ꒱
❝ NOBODY COULD MAKE A
SUPERHERO OUT OF ME ❞
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Vietnam was unlike anything Lola had ever experienced— not that she could claim to have experienced much of what life had to offer but still, she knew this wasn't life— this was far, far worse. It wasn't just that Vietnam was a worse version of Florida (more humid, stickier, hotter and wetter and the crocodiles and alligators were grenades and bullets) but the noise of guns and explosions, though muted, was constant.
Thanks to her father, Lola knew a little bit about a lot of history. She knew at least half of the casualties weren't soldiers but Vietnamese citizens. She knew the war lasted almost thirty years and that at the end, both the U.S. and South Vietnamese Presidents would be shot. He'd also read that despite the myth, the U.S. hadn't won every battle but the troops also didn't lose any ground. But what stuck in her head the most, of course, were the numbers: one out of every ten Americans who served was a casualty. 58,148 soldiers were killed. 304,000 were wounded. 2.7 million served. 75,000 veterans were disabled. The list continued, of course, but Lola preferred not to think about it.
In fact, she never could have imagined having to think about it except, perhaps, on a test— certainly never to live it, and it was even worse that her one link back home— Klaus— was a soldier. She didn't know why he didn't leave right away. That's certainly what she wanted to do the second the sound of combat reached her ears when they landed in the soldiers' tent, but she unfortunately hadn't gotten a chance to talk him out of staying before he was whisked off to fight.
Now, she stood in front of a stern, older woman with a firm-set mouth and disapproving expression. Her eyes were hard and unforgiving as she stared down at the younger girl. "How much experience do you have?"
Lola had, at first, worried her age was going to be a problem— she suspected the warfront didn't see very many fifteen-year-old girls— but nobody seemed to care much that she was underage. Instead, she blinked at the steel-haired woman in confusion. "Experience?"
"Nursing," came the short, sharp reply. "I haven't got all day, girl."
"Oh, um," she hesitated, and her stomach was already squeamish at the thought of blood. "None?"
The older woman was not pleased with this answer. "Well, what skills do you have?"
She frowned a moment before her expression relaxed. "I can count. I'm good with keeping track of numbers."
"Right, then. You'll be on inventory. Go see Dottie to get started." The woman pointed into a large, canvas tent where Lola suspected Dottie was.
(Unfortunately, when she got inside, she threw up in the entrance.)
✧✧✧
It seemed to take forever for the first day to end. Lola forced herself to stay focused on the numbers— luckily, the inventory was in terrible shape— and not on the cries of the soldier being tended to in the tent, or the state of them. Many of the wounds they sported were positively gruesome. They were bad enough in fuzzy pictures illuminated on a white board but they were far, far worse in person. As long as she didn't look directly at them, though, most of Lola's stomach contents stayed in its proper place.
When she returned to the soldier's tent she and Klaus first arrived in, she was more than a little relieved to see the man in one piece. He gave her a concerned look the moment he laid eyes on her. "You're not looking too good," he observed.
She gave him a weak smile. "Blood makes me squeamish. Um, when can we leave?"
"Leave?" he echoed.
"Yeah, to go back? We don't have to stay here, y'know."
"Oh, well—" the man start—d in that familiar, airy voice of his.
"Hey, who's your friend?" a new voice interrupted his response.
Before the brunette even turned around, she could see Klaus' face brighten and her hopes sank as he answered, "oh, this my, er— sister. Dol-Lola. Yeah, Lola."
When she finally did face the man, he smiled kindly at her. "It's nice to meet you. You're serving as a nurse?" he added, spotting her uniform.
"Um, pseudo-nurse," she answered without further explanation. She turned back to Klaus. "So, leaving?"
"It wouldn't hurt to stay a few days, would it?"
✧✧✧
Of course, it turned into more than a "few days" and Klaus always seemed deaf when she asked when they were leaving.
It was a great relief to Lola, though, that he didn't go out immediately on missions and spent most of the first month training. In the back of her mind, the statistics her father had read at the breakfast table one morning (before, of course, her mother scolded him for starting the day on such a horrible note) kept repeating themselves in the back of her mind: One out of every ten Americans who served was a casualty. 58,148 soldiers were killed. 304,000 were wounded. 2.7 million served. 75,000 veterans were disabled—
Lola pushed the voice as far away as she could. Instead, she chose to sort out the inventory until it was in tip-top shape. She repeated those numbers over top of the statistics to try and drown them out. When there was no inventory to sort, she was in charge of keeping the aisles between the cots clear and neat for easier passage. She made sure to keep her head down as she worked, refusing to look directly at any of the soldiers. She'd already thrown up more than she would've liked to admit and all of the nurses— Dottie, Beth, Maggie, Peggy and the head nurse (who everyone called Nurse Commander behind her back)— had seen her vomit at least once.
Thankfully, they didn't hold this against her, though their sympathy was also lacking. She guessed it was because kindness had no place on the battlefield and they'd all seen worse than a teenage girl reacting to the horrors of war. (And they were, truly, horrors.) Lola coped as best she could despite the worry that her parents had no idea where she was (she must have been missing for at least three days back home) and that her mind was still having trouble processing everything she was seeing.
✧✧✧
Halfway through their second month, Klaus approached her after their lunch shift with a grim expression on his face— an unusual look for him— and she was immediately concerned. "Klaus?" She thought of the man he usually hung out with. "It's not Dave, is it?"
"No, no. Well, not really," he answered, clearly trying to be reassuring. "It's just. . . we're going out. On a mission."
A heavy, stone-like feeling lodged itself in her stomach. "Oh. When?"
"Tomorrow morning, early," he sounded apologetic despite the circumstances being out of his control. "There's some Vietcongs nearby that we have to take care of. The sergeant major suspects we'll be gone a week, tops. I thought you might want to know." He left the threat of this being a one-way trip unsaid.
"Oh," she repeated, not knowing what else to say. "Um, good luck, then." One out of every ten Americans who served was a casualty. 58,148 soldiers were killed. 304,000 were wounded—
✧✧✧
The following days, Lola tried to bury herself in whatever organizing she could find. She re-sorted the inventory, updated the items logged in, picked up every piece of trash, cleaned the bed pans until her hands were cracked and raw. She didn't miss the slightly-pitying looks the other nurses sent her and did her best to ignore them. They probably thought she wouldn't make it.
Lola herself doubted her perseverance most days, her sheer willpower having never been tested so consistently or tried so hard. Still, in any situation, she would always, always be the type to bend but never break. It didn't have to be an apocalypse— it could be any odds that weren't in her favor, but she would always find a way. While she may not be able to conjure the dead or jump through space and time, she had great control over her own mind.
The important thing was to not let her mind wander while she cleaned. If she kept her attention on the task at hand, it was easier for her to compartmentalize the sights and sounds she experienced every day so that they didn't bother her during normal life. Sleep was always harder, of course, when her mind was more susceptible— there were nights when she would jolt awake from nightmares— but on the whole, she managed as well as the average soldier (or, in her case, nurse.)
It was only on Klaus' third day of absence did her routine change— she looked up. Mistakenly, of course. She'd been cleaning bedpan next to a cot that had been surprisingly silent— most she could hear at least some sound of a soldier occupying it— and so had stood to change the bedclothes, only to find the bed being used. The brunette immediately made to turn away but her mind registered, in her quick glimpse, that there was nothing particularly nauseating about this man's injuries.
Tentatively, she turned to look back at him. His face was still and his eyes were closed, though she could see he had a rather squat nose and square chin. His straw-like hair was plastered down to his forehead either by past or current fever sweats, but other than that there didn't seem to be anything particularly wrong with him. Cautiously, she reached two fingers towards his neck and checked his pulse. While it was true that she didn't know much about nursing, CPR had been a mandatory course in her freshman fall semester.
"He'll be dead by morning." The Nurse Commander's blunt voice made her jump.
Lola turned to look at the older woman with a frown. "I can feel a pulse. What's wrong with him?"
"He got his leg blasted off by a grenade. He's lucky the rest of him didn't follow. Or unlucky, I suppose. He's been fighting an infection since we got him."
"But people survive infections all the time," the girl protested, looking back at the unconscious soldier.
"Not on the warfront. Infections take nearly as many as bullets and grenades do. We've done all we can. We'll notify his family when he passes— that's more than what most get. Get back to work, girl."
Once the older woman left, the brunette turned back to the blond. His expression hadn't changed while they talked about him and now that it had been pointed out, she could see the pastiness of his face in addition to the fever. Lola knew that detachment was the best course of action when they lost so many soldiers daily— it was how the other nurses operated, otherwise they'd most likely go mad— but she was still a naïve, fifteen-year-old girl at heart despite having lived in a warzone for the past five weeks.
Apologizing quietly to the man, she reached underneath his collar slightly and lifted his dog tags up. She turned them over to read the name on the worn metal: James Smith. Private, first class. To anyone else, he would just be another statistic, another letter home, signed by a high-ranking officer. She'd seen enough war movies to know how these things worked. The brunette wondered what he'd been before this, before he was enlisted. Did he have a family? Sisters? Brothers? What had his goals and dreams been? He looked to be in his late twenties so he had years to experience everything life had to offer— or so he'd thought.
Tears pricked at the back of her eyes at the thought of so many lost men and she quickly blinked them away. Sure, not all of them had been good— she wasn't naïve enough to think that— but they'd all had stories and now most of them probably didn't even have bodies left to bury. Lola knew that if she was a soldier, she'd want someone to remember her. She'd want someone to remember the deeds she had performed in service for her country, the friends she had made and lost and to remember them in turn. She knew, too, that war could make people desperate and could make them do terrible things— even if it wasn't something they would have ever chosen before— and that kindness was hard to come by and an even rarer choice to make.
She saw it in the distant, effective way the nurses took care of their patients. None of them learned the names of soldiers— they were always 'sir' or 'mister' and the rare women were 'miss' or 'ma'am'— before they quickly moved on to the next patient. The soldiers that were lost were usually burned away from camp as graves were too much of a hassle and risk to dig for so many men. The soldiers' interactions with each other were slightly more personable, especially those sharing squadrons, but officers only addressed the men by rank.
Turn to the man on the cot, she said, "hi, James. I'm Lola." There was no response, of course, but she liked to think that maybe he appreciated the use of his name.
✧✧✧
When Klaus' squadron returned four days later, Lola was one of the first to run up and meet them. She threw her arms around the dark-haired man without hesitation as she hugged him tightly, her eyes squeezed shut against the rough material of his army vest. The man didn't react at first, looking down at the brunette with wide, shocked eyes before he turned the look to Dave, who stood nearby. The other man gave him a confused look at his slightly panicked expression, so Klaus helpfully clarified: "what do I do?"
It took a moment for the brunet to see that Klaus really had no idea how to respond, so he gave the other man a rather stupefied look and answered, "hug her back, you idiot!" (Idiot, here, of course, was a term of exasperated endearment.)
Tentatively, the Hargreeves wrapped his arms around the girl as he heard her audibly whisper, "I missed you."
He was pretty sure he heard her sniffle against him and the last thing Klaus wanted was to comfort a crying girl— so he hastily said, "hey, Princess, I'm okay," allowing the nickname to slip out without thought. He elected to ignore the strange way her saying "I missed you" affected him— fuzzy, sibling feelings were not his strong suit.
When she pulled away, he noticed her wipe at her eyes and quickly changed the subject. "Do you wanna hear stories about the mission?"
After that, he made sure to check in on the younger girl more often. While it was unusual to him that someone seemed to find his presence something to look forward to, it was a nice change to see the way the girl visibly brightened at the sight of him. She seemed to be dealing with everything fairly well and had even stopped asking when they were going to leave. Instead, she chose to pester him with questions about Dave, which he didn't mind answering in the slightest. Lola was almost the little sister he'd never had, with Allison following along with whatever their father said and Vanya never being part of the group. Normally, he would have hightailed it out of any relationship that required responsibility on his part, but both the obligation he felt towards the teen and his desire to— well, to be better for Dave, made the burden not seem so uncomfortable.
✧✧✧
Their four-month mark came and went with Dave asking Lola to help him look for Klaus. He'd needed the other man for something and the Hargreeves was nowhere to be found, so the brunette agreed to search the camp for him. It wasn't like there were very many places to go, after all. After asking around— she'd made a point to try and remember the soldiers' names— she was finally directed in the right direction. She found the brunet near the latrines, standing away from the outhouses with his back turned, slightly hunched over.
"Klaus?" she asked gently, not wanting to scare him.
The man jumped anyway and whirled around with wide eyes, looking like he'd gotten caught with a hand in the cookie jar. Truthfully, his hands were occupied by a very different substance— his right holding a needle that disappeared into his other arm.
"Princess!" he exclaimed, sounding terribly guilty. He tried to lower his arm out of sight. "What-what d'you want?"
"I was looking for you," she answered slowly as her eyes trailed down to his hands. "Well, Dave was, and he asked me to help. What're you doing?"
"Nothing," the man answered. "You weren't supposed to see this."
The brunette frowned. "Are you diabetic? That's alright, y'know—"
"No-no I'm not. Why don't you go tell Dave I'll be right along?"
"I will, in a minute. Klaus, what—"
"Don't worry about it," he insisted, not meeting the girl's eyes. "Go on."
But Lola didn't want to go on. Klaus' health was her topmost priority— she wouldn't leave Vietnam without him and it was her duty to make sure he didn't become a statistic. Instead, she stepped closer, slowly, as she would a wild animal trapped in a corner. When he didn't react, she moved until she was standing in front of him and gently pried his right hand off the needle. Whatever the substance was that had been in there was gone, so she carefully pulled it out of his arm (this, luckily, caused no blood.)
The brunette studied the equipment. "Did you take this from the inventory?"
"I—" he tried to lie (really, he did) but he found that he couldn't. "Yes."
Lola quickly went through the category of substances that went into needles. There wasn't much; steroids, a select series of drugs— her eyes widened, looking up at the older man. Vanya's autobiography (it seemed like a different lifetime that she'd read it in Griddy's) mentioned her brother's struggles to keep the ghosts at bay and she rightfully assumed that the warfront was rife with them. "Oh, Klaus," she murmured sympathetically.
The man winced as his arm dropped to his side. He bent his head to avoid meeting the girl's eyes. He'd never cared when Reginald or his other siblings had caught him— they'd always looked at him with something close to disdain, anyway— but this was the first time he'd be losing something. It had been expected of him all of the other times, but Lola, with her limited knowledge of his past, had somehow deemed him worthy of respect and they had a strange sort of sibling camaraderie. Surely, now that she'd found out, everything he'd gained would be lost.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
The man's head lifted and he was surprised to see the hurt expression on her face, though it didn't stop the guilt he felt at seeing her hold the needle. "I didn't want to get you involved, Jellybean," he answered, choosing to ignore the more truthful response.
"I could have helped," Lola told him gently, reaching out to grasp his hand. He tried to pull away but she didn't let him. "I have access to this stuff, y'know. It's not like I don't know what drugs are." She paused before she added: "I know why you're using them."
His expression turned confused. "How?"
"Your sister's autobiography," the brunette answered, "I read it and she talked about—"
"I know what she talked about," Klaus interrupted her hurriedly. Eavesdropping was not unheard of in camp.
"Right. Well, I would've understood. I mean, I do."
"I—" he sighed heavily and ran his free hand over his face, uncharacteristically serious as he said, "I'm not the type of role model you want, Princess. Nobody could make a superhero out of me."
"You don't have to be a superhero," Lola told him softly, "and I don't want a role model. I already have one of those. You—" she hesitated, uncertain as to whether she really wanted to voice the idea, but she knew what she needed to make survival in camp easier. "You could be my brother."
Klaus' familiar slightly goofy, slightly self-deprecating smile appeared on his face. "I'd be a pretty shit brother, Jellybean."
"That's alright," she said in a light tone. "I've never had a brother so if you mess up, I'll just assume that's what you're supposed to do." She held up the needle. "And when you need one of these, come tell me. I don't want you getting caught. Now, let's go see why Dave was looking for you."
"Aye-aye, Captain."
✧✧✧
Not every day was remotely close to happy, of course. Most were just muddled through as best as possible with the hope that the next day would be better. On the days Klaus spent in camp, Lola saw more action than he did when soldiers couldn't make it through the afternoon. She relied heavily on her newfound brother, especially after trying to make it a point to use the soldiers' names. Their loss of anonymity made it much harder when they passed, though Lola thought that at least someone should remember them when they left. The nurses told her, of course, that their families would have that duty, but what if they didn't have families?
Sometimes the men were lucky— or unlucky, as Nurse Commander was rather fond of saying— and recovered enough to fight again. Lola would see them in a camp and greet them by name, usually catching their surprised looks, followed by one of confusion as they tried to figure out if they knew her. Lola's constitution had improved over the months and she could now smell and even see blood without the urge to vomit immediately following. It made it easier to talk to the soldiers as she cleaned around their cots since she could focus on what she was saying instead of keeping everything where it was supposed to be.
It was always hard when a cot containing a soldier she'd been talking to the day before was suddenly empty, the man passing in the night without anyone noticing. She'd remember their conversations and hope that they had a family to miss them. Sometimes, it made her think of her own family and she wondered what they thought she was doing.
Having read several time-traveling books, Lola knew that the passage of time could be different in one place than another so while it had been six months for her, it might have only been four days for her parents. Still, she knew her mother would be frantic and her father would be distracted. Her uncle would most likely remain calm and serene, as if he'd expected this to happen and knew how it would turn out— as he always seemed to do when something big was happening (not that things of that magnitude happened often.)
Still, some days when soldiers she knew better than others lost their life, it hit her in ways she didn't expect. Before now, Lola had had very little experience with loss but the war was making her exceptionally well-acquainted with it. It didn't make losing people she knew any easier, especially when they had features that resembled her family members. Sometimes, men had bright blue eyes like her uncle and father. They had the chocolate-brown hair her mother had, or female soldiers had it cut in the bob-and-bangs style her mother always preferred. Sometimes they had her father's nose or her mother's mouth. A few had her uncle's unruffled temperament and intelligence behind their eyes.
It was on the days she lost those look-alikes that she couldn't keep her carefully-held-in-check emotions at bay, and she'd often find a quiet corner of camp to curl up and sob in. When she returned, none of the nurses mentioned her puffy eyes or tear-streaked face, too caught up in their own predicaments to notice (or care) about anyone else's. Lola knew it wasn't necessarily because they were self-centered or cruel, it was just easier to remain unattached— something she couldn't do. Humanity was always a fragile thing, and in war times it was almost more important to hold on to.
Sometimes Lola wished she could turn hers off, but the fear that it couldn't be turned back on again was always there so she willingly endured through it. It was only when she had days that she thought she couldn't make it through did she seek comfort from someone else. Everyone was going through their own problems so she didn't want to seem like she couldn't handle hers, so she tried to keep to herself as best she could, but some days she gave in.
The first day had caught her by force and not even alone time had been enough to sort out her painful feelings, so she— somewhat reluctantly— made her way to Klaus' tent and hoped the man was in there. Klaus and Dave were the only two in there by some stroke of luck and she stumbled towards them to land haphazardly on Klaus, who exclaimed, "whoa, Princess, are you okay?"
She gave a sob and the man looked helplessly at his lover, who sighed. Dave still didn't know how someone could be so. . . perfect could be so shite with emotions. He gently maneuvered the girl so she sat between them, her face both pale and splotchy red from crying. Her eyes were watery and puffy as she looked up at him, seeking comfort that was hard to come by in this place. (Sometimes they both forgot she was only fifteen— though Klaus had never figured out how she'd gone by Dolores one day and Lola the next.)
"Do you like to read?" Dave asked the brunette as an an idea sparked. He was pleased when she almost immediately brightened.
"Yes," she admitted, her voice still quiet.
"Have you ever heard of Dune?"
✧✧✧
Klaus and Dave left for another mission in their tenth month. As always, Lola's mind replayed the statistics, louder now that the two people she was closest two were gone. One out of every ten Americans who served was a casualty. 58,148 soldiers were killed. 304,000 were wounded—
They were supposed to have been gone another week but something had gone wrong. Lola could feel it in the tense air of the camp as the based soldiers listened to the distant gunfire. A truck carrying wounded soldiers trundled into camp early in the morning. The injured men were hollow-eyed and gaunt, some of them having left the week before.
It was only when Klaus stumbled off the back did Lola realize what really went wrong— he was supposed to still be gone, so he must have snuck on to the truck. She could hear his anguished cries, even from a distance and she ran towards him, wrapping her arms around the man's waist. He'd gotten better at hugging since the first time and his arms immediately returned the gesture as he sobbed into her hair. The brunette didn't even need to ask what had happened; her heart was already sinking as she clung tightly to the older man.
She hadn't known Dave nearly as well as Klaus had but from what she'd learned, he was one of the best men she knew. She'd been happy for Klaus, knowing that finding love in such a terrible situation was something precious and needed to be held on to tightly.
"Now." The brunette looked up at the man's hoarse whisper and he continued, staring blankly ahead: "we can go home now."
One out of every ten Americans who served was a casualty—