"We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?" - Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
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Stranded in France behind enemy lines was most certainly not how Juliette wanted to be spending her Christmas, though she could hardly say it was the first time she'd celebrated the holiday this way. She tried to be grateful for the company she was in, but to be quite honest, they were starting to get on her nerves, just as she was sure she was getting on theirs.
The team of five had been stuck in France for four weeks. With no radio after Will had had to turn it into a bomb to get a truck full of SS off of their tail, and no resources beyond what they carried, they were stuck in a sort of never ending nightmare. One, incidentally, that Juliette had thought she'd woken up from when they had been told they'd be spending their off-duty time in Aldbourne. Just as though they had never been pulled off of the line at all, they were back to 24/7 duty, though this time without the added luxury of safe houses or Resistance contacts. They couldn't trust anyone outside of themselves after what had happened with that female spy and her interrogation. And that wasn't to mention Brigitte, the Resistance contact who had betrayed them. Juliette thrust that particular memory violently away.
At least, she thought, in the field it was easier to forget. Spending so much time in the tranquillity of Aldbourne meant she had been left alone with her thoughts far too often for her liking. This way, she had to be permanently on guard, looking twice over each shoulder and keeping a hand on her weapon (which had been generously stolen for her by Alex).
She wondered whether they'd ever return to Aldbourne, and suddenly missed the time when her primary worry had been the rotten headache she was bound to end up with the next morning if she allowed Tom to drag her into another drinking competition. She felt the ache of nostalgia like a punch to the gut. How easy it always was to take things for granted, even when she knew better.
Oh, to be sat in an infinite field with Eugene Roe, talking about nature like it was art.
She wondered what the Americans thought of their absence. She hoped George's date with Mary-the-barmaid had gone okay, and that Gene was trying to allow himself to make a friend or two among the men he was due to serve with. She hoped Malarkey had finally won himself a drinking competition now that her and Tom were absent, and smiled to herself because she knew he wouldn't have. She hoped Bill and Toye were still as thick as thieves, and that Skip and Penkala were still causing trouble.
When had she come to like them enough to miss them as she did? Jules shook her head at herself. Somewhere along the line she had grown too fond. Perhaps this was the universe's way of telling her that that was a problem. How silly of her to let herself believe she was anything other than a weapon for the war machine. Now, more than ever, she understood that it wasn't just a life after the war that was forbidden for her, but a life outside of it at all, and how cruel a thought that was.
They had been alternating between walking on foot and stealing cars to get as far away from Bordeaux as they could. After all, to be a spy in Bordeaux after what they had done was to be standing with both feet planted firmly in the grave. They were bound for La Rochelle, a city somewhat close to Bordeaux which Juliette had visited as a child; her paternal grandparents had lived there once upon a time, though they were long since dead and buried. Really, they just sought civilisation so they could blend in, and as it happened La Rochelle was a city not completely overrun by Nazis, but busy enough that they could steal a radio without arising too much suspicion. It was still on the coast, as well, so they held out hope that after getting a message back to their headquarters they might be able to be picked up.
After four weeks of radio silence on their end, however, Jules thought that HQ must have written them off as KIA.
The streets would be quiet for Christmas day, and thus they couldn't risk being stopped and questioned as one of the only cars on the road, or some of the only pedestrians. They had had to seek refuge in another forest for the time being.
Jules saw in the Christmas of 1943 in complete silence, staring into the unforgiving void of darkness and listening intently for potential approaching footsteps. She was on watch for the first few hours of Christmas Day, and she tried to think of the silence as peaceful instead of foreboding. When she saw Alexis stir in her periphery she looked to him, and watched as he sat up, rubbing his eyes.
"Merry Christmas," she whispered to him through the darkness.
He smiled slightly, still a bit groggy. "Merry Christmas, Juliette."
Alex offered to take over on the watch but Jules shook her head. "I don't think I could go to sleep even if I wanted to." She shot him a whisper of a grin. "It's all that Christmas morning excitement, you know?"
Alex chuckled under his breath and shook his head, taking a seat on the ground beside her where she sat a little ways away from the group, leaning against the trunk of a tree. He huffed out a small sigh into the silence. Jules watched him in profile.
"How would you be spending Christmas if there wasn't a war on?" she wondered, and the makings of a smile hovered over his lips. As a rule the team didn't discuss civilian life, more for their own sanity than because of any orders, but sometimes it was nice to remember a time before war was their sole purpose in life.
"Well, right now I would be asleep in a warm bed, not even dreaming of waking up before eleven." The both of them laughed here. "But then I'd go downstairs and make breakfast for my mother and bring it up to her - she's a late riser, too - and I'd sit on the end of her bed whilst she ate and discuss mindless things with her. We'd always wait until after dinner to exchange gifts. She'd likely get me something terribly ugly with my initial printed across it, but I'd love it anyway. I'd get her perfume, because that's what she loves to receive as a gift the best. And we'd spend the evening around the Christmas tree together."
Juliette smiled softly. "That sounds nice. Your mum sounds lovely."
Alex nodded, one of his rare, earnest smiles on his lips. "She is. You'd have loved her. And she'd adore you."
"Really?"
"Definitely," Alex replied, finally meeting her eyes. He wore an uncharacteristically open expression, wide-eyed and smiling softly. He looked much younger this way. More boyish. "How would you be spending it?"
Jules laughed a little bit, smiling to herself. "Well, contrary to you, my brother and I would be up probably within a couple of hours. No matter how old we got we always used to discuss before we went to bed on Christmas Eve what time we were going to wake up. Generally it would be around six, much to our parents' apparent frustration, though I'm certain they loved it really. We'd rush downstairs and wait for them there, sitting on the floor by the tree, and they'd traipse down a few minutes later, my mum making tea for them both first before coming to sit on the sofa. They'd both watch us open our gifts. My mum would put in comments every now and then to explain why she'd chosen one thing or another. My papa wasn't much involved in the gift-picking process - well, actually, he wasn't involved at all, so it was as much a surprise for him to see what we'd gotten as it was for us.
"Then my brother and I would give them their gifts. My mum would always make sure we knew how much she loved them, irregardless of what they were, though papa was always more reserved. He'd give a nod of approval, perhaps, but little more. That was just his way. We'd have dinner early and spend the rest of the evening just doing whatever. Oftentimes my mum would play the piano and force my brother and I to sing carols with her, which we always pretended to hate but actually loved. Papa would have gone to bed by this point. Mum would stay up with us, though; we never wanted Christmas Day to end."
A nostalgic warmth had filled her even just thinking about it. Jules pushed back the tears that had formed in her eyes and shot Alex a watery smile. He was smiling similarly back at her.
"Can you play the piano?" he asked.
Jules laughed lightly. "A bit. My mum taught me, and though she was a beautiful musician I didn't have even half of her natural talent. My artistic inclination leant more towards drawing and painting, so she would often buy me art supplies. She was my biggest fan, I swear." Jules giggled to herself. "She said they'd put up my paintings in the Louvre one day, and then maybe papa would finally take us to Paris." She smiled sadly. "I hope one day, after the war, she gets to go to Paris."
Alex didn't reply for a while. There was no point insinuating that Juliette could take her there or go with her; the survival rate of spies was 50%, and they all had the feeling that they'd outstayed their welcome where the Nazis were concerned. It was only a matter of time.
"You miss your mother terribly," Alex resolved to say instead, more of an observation than a question.
Jules nodded. "She was my idol. My favourite person in the world. She was always, always, kind, even to people who didn't deserve it. Always selfless. And she was so beautiful; really elegant, and she had these incredible blue eyes. They were so bright and so blue it was like looking at the sky." She sighed. "I inherited my father's brown ones, unfortunately, but my brother got the blue. His are darker, though. I've never seen eyes as bright as hers."
"Is your brother in the military?"
Juliette shrugged, glancing at Alex once before staring resolutely ahead of her into the darkness. "I don't know. He was seventeen when I left to become a code-breaker, which was in '38, so I suppose he must be. He would've been eighteen right on time for the outbreak of war. I can't see that he wouldn't have enlisted, though I bet mum would've begged him not to." She paused and then smiled suddenly. "I bet he's a pilot. We used to always play at pilots when we were younger, so I bet he's in the RAF. Sometimes I wonder whether he might be the pilot of one of the planes we jump out of, but that's a stupid thought." She quickly brushed the idea aside, trying to appear nonchalant. That was something personal she hadn't meant to reveal.
"He'd doubtless get a great shock if he was," Alex commented. Jules smiled, relieved he wasn't trying to lecture her on not being too preoccupied by the past. He was, after all, still her CO.
"Certainly," she replied. "They think I'm dead, after all."
It was a fact both of them had known - indeed, Alexis' family all thought he was dead, too, as it was customary for spies' families to be told as much so they didn't wonder why they never came home, or try to send out letters. Still, however, a sort of melancholy silence fell over the pair, both of them silently reflecting on all they'd said about home.
Juliette smiled slightly, in spite of herself. Though she had taken a lot of things for granted in her pre-war years, and indeed still many during wartime, she was confident, at least, that she had never taken her Christmases as such.
In the darkness of the forest with the barest hints of light beginning to filter in through the trees, beams of orange and scarlet gliding across the muddy floor, she sent up a little prayer for her family. She prayed that their Christmas 1943 would be spent together, and that they would be as content as they had been when Jules was with them (which seemed to her like a century ago, now). And, though she'd never admit it again, even to herself, she also sent up a little prayer that Christmas 1944 would be spent in peacetime, and that her and her team would all be alive, safe, and well. She wanted that for them more than anything else.