At the sight of Willy running after his brother as the wagon carried Peter off to a work camp, Thomas bolted. He ran for blocks, not knowing exactly what it was he was running from. Was it the look on Willy's face or was it himself---the self he had become since joining the HJs? Who or what had he become? He had nearly killed his best friend. In truth he might have. Even if he didn't do it with his own hands, Thomas had seen what the work camps did to previously strong and healthy people. They became robotic skeletons, working day and night like slaves for a cause that they didn't even belive in. And he had just condemed Peter to that Hell.

Thomas ran until he could run no further and he then collapsed in a dark, damp alley, letting his head fall against the cold, rough brick wall, taking deep gulps of the evening air. Where did he go from here? How could he go on home and go on the next day, as if nothing that had just transpired had even happened. He was without family since turning his father over to the Nazis; his mother wouldn't speak to him. He was without friends. The only people he conversed with now were the other HJs, the very same people whom he had loathed not so long ago. Arvid was gone, and most of the blame was on his shoulders. Now he might have Peter's death to carry on his mind for the rest of his life. What kind of life did he even have?

"Marie."

Thomas looked up and whirled around, looking for the source of the voice, but there was no one there. Then it came again, soft as a whisper in the wind.

"Marie."

"Who's there?" he shouted into the silent darkness. He waited and then, again, "Who's there? Who are you?"

But still there was no reply.

"Marie!"

The voice was insistant now and all at once Thomas realized that the voice was not around him, but within him.

"Marie who?" he asked the voice aloud.

The voice didn't answer, but a picture---a memory---flashed before his eyes. Of a girl he had known from school. She was beautiful, with deep brown eyes, so dark they sometimes looked as though they had no pupils. As though brown and black had faded and blended into one. Sometimes they even seemed to be gray. Her hair was more definately ebony and she always wore it in soft curls that reached to her shoulders and never further. He had taken her to the swing clubs twice, but each time they, along with his other friends and their dates, were chased for blocks by intruding HJs and finally she had said that she didn't feel safe enough when she was with him. That she had sibling and parents to support and couldn't risk being sent to a work camp any longer. She wasn't a swing kid in the sense that he had once been one. She loved the music and the dancing, but it was not her top priority, it was not her life. Thomas wondered when it had stopped being his.

After joining the HJs, he had no longer gone to school and had no longer seen her. He had heard once that she had finished early and moved to an apartment of her own and was working in a garment factory down near the river. He had never inquired about her again and that was the last time anyone had offered information. Now Thomas could only wonder why he was being told her name so insistantly.

"Go to her."

There was the voice again.

"I don't even know where she lives!" he shouted back to the voice that only he could hear. Later he would wonder why he did not feel even the slightest bit strange, talking to a voice that was echoing in his own head.

Thomas picked himself up off of the alley floor and his feet began to move, propelling him forward to a destination unknown to him, though he had his suspicions. Soon enough he began to run, taking turns and shortcuts as though he had walked this way a thousand and one times, though he was in a section of town that he was completely unfamiliar with.

Rain began to fall and the sidewalks grew slick. Somehow, though, Thomas was able to keep up the same pace and the same speed, as though the rain only fell around him, and not directly on his path.

"Why?" he shouted as rain streaked down his face in rivers. "Why Marie?"

"To learn," the voice responded immediately. "To change."

"Change WHAT?" he shouted, frustrated.

"Views. Ideas."

Suddenly the voice cut off, as though a radio had been on and someone had switched it silent. Thomas abruptly stopped and looked straight ahead. He had stopped in front of an apartment building and as he watched, he found that he knew what number door to knock on. Falling against a warped wooden door, where a flaking golden number 16 hung crookedly, Thomas pounded on it.

Marie was reading in the dim light of her apartment when a loud knocking began on her front door. Nazis. It was her first thought in everything she did. Would there be Nazis at the market when she did her shopping? What about on her walk to work? They both frightened and disgusted her. So many of her former friends had been pulled into the HJs and daily she wondered who would go next. Once they went in, they never emerged the same---brainwashing always took its effects.

After standing and straightening her skirt, she opened the door cautiously and then could only stare in shocked silence. Thomas Berger. She had adored him, but couldn't follow him in all his wild ways. She had responsibilities and the threat of being sent to a work camp if she continued to go to the swing clubs with he and his friends had been too great. She hadn't seen him since he and Peter, another friend of both her's and his, had joined the HJs. At the time, she held nothing against them, for they had been forced to join, and to this day, she didn't feel any resentment towards Peter. She had heard from others that being an HJ hadn't kept him from his swinging. Thomas, on the other hand, had been one of the many that became a product of the Nazi's way of thinking and teaching. He stood for everything she hated, and yet the more she tried to push him out of her mind, the more he kept resurfacing. In fact, she had been thinking of him only an hour or so before.

But he was a Nazi. It was the plain and simple truth. He had eagerly swallowed every twisted idea and every bit of prejudice that they had fed to him.

"I don't want any of what you're selling. I don't patron Nazis," she said harshly, bitterness towards him---and all that his uniform stood for---evident in her every word and her every mark of puncuation.

She started to shut the door, but Thomas moved more quickly and stuck his foot in between the door and doorframe. Marie stopped and looked down, knowing that he wouldn't give up. The Thomas Berger that she knew wouldn't give in, no matter how tough things got. But would he be the same, still? Hitler, though only an image and a voice on the radio waves, had changed them all, in one way or the other.

"Please, Marie, don't lock me out," Thomas begged, his breathing still labored from his run, his uniform dripping water all over the scuffed hallway floor. "Please."

Marie took a closer look, not able to force his foot from its place in her doorway. Once she was able to draw her eyes up from the swastika on the armband he wore, she looked to his face. Underneath the flush that had come from the run as well as the rain, he was pale. His eyes implored her to let him in, and a bruise cut a severe line across his cheek. All the Nazis and HJs she had ever seen had stood tall and sickeningly proud in their tan uniforms, wearing their marks of hatred---swastikas---with pride. And no one had ever given her reason to doubt that Thomas Berger was any different. Yet now he stood in front of her, wet, shivering, and looking beaten, both in body and spirit.

Marie closed her eyes long enough to sigh, then she opened them again and released the pressure she had been applying to the door. Thomas stumbled in, letting Marie close the door once again as he leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths, much as he had in the alley almost an hour earlier.

"What do you want from me?"

Thomas turned and looked at her, his breathing slowly returning to normal, his shivering slowing somewhat. She was just as pretty as she had been a year before. She wore a knee length tweed skirt and an ivory blouse that drew attention to her hair and most of all, to her eyes. However, they were not warm and inviting, as he had remembered. Rather she regarded him coldly, her gaze steely and Thomas once again wondered why he had been told to come here.

"I don't know," he answered finally.

One of Marie's eyebrows raised, almost cynically. "You don't know?" she echoed. He shook his head. "I don't understand you, Thomas Berger, and frankly I don't want to."

She turned on one heeled shoe and moved into the kitchen, as though his presense did not keep her from going about her normal routine. Perhaps if she were cold enough, long enough, he would go away.

Thomas stood in her entryway, watching as she began boiling water for tea. "You've changed, Marie," he said after a long silence. She paused, her back still to him, for a moment, before moving on.

"I'VE changed?" she asked. "You're the one who's changed. You're the one who's become a Nazi. I haven't changed. You have."

Thomas regretted his words---they seemed to have only made her angrier---but he felt as though he had no control over what came out of his mouth. "Maybe you're right."

Marie turned at his words, but he was not watching her any longer and was peering out the window from behind the curtains he had pulled back. The rain still fell in sheets. Torrents. "I know I'm right," she said.

He only nodded shortly. He knew it too.

"How did you find out where I lived?" she asked. "I never told you."

"I know you didn't. I don't know. Somehow I knew the way, and I ended up knocking on your door," he answered honestly.

"More like knocking DOWN my door," she said. "You scared me to death. You still do."

At that, Thomas turned and their gazes locked for an instant before they both looked away. "Why do I scare you?" he asked.

"You're a Nazi, that's why," she answered and she could have sworn she saw him flinch. "You and your kind scared me every day and night of my life. If I didn't remember you the way that you used to be, I wouldn't have let you in at all. I let you in because I remembered when you used to be kind and when you used to be fun. When DID you change, Thomas?"

He didn't answer. He had been asking himself the very same question earlier, but had not yet found an answer.

"Never mind," she said, nearly immediately. "I know when you changed. It was when you started believing all the lies that they told you as soon as you stepped into that uniform and wrapped that wretched armband around your sleeve!" Her voice had crept slightly higher, but her eyes remained cold and emotionless. "You all change. All of you! The people whom I thought that I once knew, I now only find that I didn't know at all. There are exceptions, I suppose," she said and Thomas got the feeling that she was speaking to herself as much as she was speaking to him. "You aren't one of those exceptions, though, Thomas Berger. You used to hate Emil, or do you even remember that? You used to stand up for what you believed in---swing---instead of what some dictator that you've never even met wanted you to believe in. The thing is, Thomas, all he wants you to believe in---it's all lies."

"Not all, there are---"

"Yes! All!" she interrupted. "But they've filled your mind with so many prejudices and so many lies that you can't distinguish from what's the truth and what's not, any longer. Tell me, Thomas, before you joined the HJs, and started listening to the hot air they preach, did you know what it was like to hate?"

Thomas remained silent, staring at her. Their gazes had met again, only this time neither was able to look away.

"Dislike, yes, but never hate. Would your family have liked to see you now?"

"Leave my family out of this!" Thomas exclaimed, loud enough to cause Marie to jump. He ran his fingers through his wet hair as he paced to the other side of the room and then stopped.

"Fine, then, what about your friends? Your old friends. The ones you had when you were still human. Before the Nazis took you and turned you into a machine, just like they do with everyone. What would those friends say now? Otto?" she asked. Thomas waved it off with his hand. "Arvid?" Then she paused. "But he's dead, isn't he? I envy him."

Thomas turned to look at Marie, surprised. "Why? He killed himself, Marie!"

"Did he? He may have picked up the record, but someone else put its jagged edge to his wrist. I'll admit---he was always different and he was always troubled, but he could gotten over all of that, had he not been driven to such drastic a measure."

"Look, you don't think I blame myself too? You think that I don't wake up every morning, wondering what I could have done differently?" Thomas asked. "Fine! Blame me---everyone else does---but don't envy him."

"I envy because he doesn't have to see what you and the rest of Germany has become!" she retorted. "I wish to God that I couldn't see it either!"

"You can't ignore it forever!"

"But I can try. What about Peter? He's the only one of you HJs that hasn't changed. I hear about him every now and then, in whispered tones, of course. He's still a swing kid, Thomas, like you used to be. He still knows right from wrong and dislike from hate!"

At Peter's name, Thomas became more agitated than he had been before and before Marie could ask him what was wrong, her tea kettle whistled and she moved it off the stove, then abandoned it as she stepped into the living room, where he was.

"What was it about Peter's name?" she asked. "If you tell me that he's become like the rest of you then I won't believe it."

"God, why did he have to be there tonight?" Thomas said to himself, not even facing Marie. She felt her blood run cold, however.

"Where? Thomas, what's happened? Where was Peter not supposed to be tonight?"

He turned towards her and she saw that he was breaking down slowly, becoming again what he had been when she had opened her door. "The Bismark," he said.

She formed the words, but no sound came out as her lips moved. She swallowed hard. "He was there as---as a swing kid?" she asked. Thomas nodded. She went on. "And you---you came in as---as an HJ." He nodded again. Her face blanced white. "What did you do?" she asked, barely able to say the words.

Thomas took a shuddering breath, trying unsuccessfully to pull himself together. "I did just what I was supposed to do," he said quietly, his voice shaky. Marie closed her eyes for a moment.

"You mean that you beat innocent people and had them hauled off to work camps," she said flatly.

"Don't say it like that!" he exclaimed harshly. "Don't!"

"Then how should I say it?" she replied, her voice shrill. "You signed their death warrents, you did! Peter's too? Or did you just go ahead and kill him with your own hands and your own club? Answer me!"

"I---" Thomas broke off and collapsed into the chair that he had been standing by. He buried his face in his hands and Marie saw his shoulders shake once. Then again.

Marie sank slowly down onto the sofa, across from the chair that Thomas occupied, her chin trembling, but her eyes dry. She was more in shock than anything. Then anger once again overcame her stunned mind. She watched Thomas and her heart hardened again.

"Don't you think that it's too late to be feeling guilty?" she asked sarcastically. "Don't you think you should have thought about what you were doing before you did it?"

Thomas didn't reply nor did he move an inch.

"Did you even realize what you were doing?" Marie asked, her voice slightly softer. Slightly.

"I-I came through those doors like I'd never been there before," Thomas said after a long silence. His voice shook and Marie strained to hear his muffled voice from behind his hands. "I didn't see those people---the same ones that had been there when I had. I just rushed in and---and swung my fist at anyone in my way. When I came face to face with Peter...it was like having to see the way I used to be, right next to what I am now. He stood for everything I'd given up---lost---and I couldn't stand to see it."

"So you---what? What did you do to him?"

"We fought, he fought back more than anyone else did. We ended up outside and I was winning. All it would have taken was---just a little more---and then I couldn't move my arm another inch. I told---I told him how they weren't going to let this go. He'd done too much wrong for them to let this one go. They threw him in---in one of the wagons...Willy was there."

"Oh God." Marie's hand flew over her mouth, tears filling her eyes as she recalled Peter's adorable younger brother. "He saw---"

"Everything," Thomas finished. He looked up at Marie and she saw his pain expression, his red-rimmed eyes, and the way he tried to keep his voice as steady as possible. As she stared into his eyes, she saw a vision of who Thomas Berger used to be. It was his soul, wanting to break out from the prison the Nazis had put it in. True souls were good and could never change to evil, but the Nazis couldn't have this. If they couldn't change something, then they would bar it up---hide it---as though it had never existed. All too soon it would die.

"Willy saw---everything," Thomas said and at the last word, his voice---and the little composure he had left---cracked.

As Marie watched, shocked by the man who sat in front of her now and horrified at what he had done, Thomas fell to his knees in front of her, burying his face in her skirt. Marie felt tears soak the hem, but she couldn't move. Her hands refused to reach out and comfort him.

"What have I done, Marie?" he asked, not raising his head. "I've as good as killed Peter and Willy knows it all---oh God, how did I---who am I? Help me." The last sentence was almost inaudible, but Marie heard it and she took a deep breath, pushing her tears back and finding that her hands were now mobile. She smoothed his hair back while he sobbed against her knees.

"You have to want to change, Thomas," she said, her voice gradually steadying.

"Change what?" he asked her as he had asked the voice that had led him to this moment.

"The way you see things! The way you think!" she said.

Views. Ideas. The words came back to haunt him. She was saying exactly the same thing, only in different words. But it hadn't been her voice that he had heard. In fact, upon remembering, Thomas couldn't seem to distinguish whether the voice had been male or female. He realized that it hadn't really been either one.

"I'll do whatever you say, but help me!" he exclaimed, beating one fist against the sofa cushion.

Quick as a flash, Thomas felt her hand cover his fist and he slowly relaxed and uncurled his fingers, letting her hold his hand gently, rather than cover it.

"First of all, you're going to die of cold if you don't stop shivering like that," she said. She stood carefully and left him to seat himself on the sofa. The water in the kettle was still mildly hot and Marie poured it into two cups, placing tea bags in them to steep. "I'll be right back," she said to the unmoving figure on the sofa and he nodded in reply, still gathering himself together.

She returned a moment later with two knitted blankets and she draped them over his shoulders as she stood behind the sofa. Thomas pulled them tightly around him and Marie returned, handing him one of the cups of steaming tea.

As she watched him sip it carefully, she thought equally as carefully. With the armband and most of his uniform covered by blankets, it was easier for Marie to imagine him as the fun and handsome schoolmate that had caught her attention more than a year ago. She had admired him from afar for nearly two months and had been elated when he had asked her to go dancing with he, Peter, and some others. She knew that when he said 'dancing', he meant 'swinging'. To him they were one in the same.

Then had come the plague known to all of Germany as Nazis. Marie's gaze had softened as she was imagining Thomas as the person he used to be, but now that same gaze iced over slightly. "He COULD have objected," she thought silently. "He COULD have been like Peter, and the other few exceptions, and only pretended to be the model HJ. But yet...he came here and asked for help. Pleaded."

"Thomas," she said.

His head jerked up and he looked at her. "What?"

"Is there anything you can do to---to help Peter? Is there any way that you can get him out of the work camp? Any at all?" she asked.

Thomas looked down into his tea for a long moment. "I don't know," he said at last. "I could try---there are several things I could try---but I don't know if they would work. And if anyone found out---" he broke off.

"Then you could be in as much trouble as he," she finished for him and he nodded. "You have to try. You wanted me to help you...and the only way I can see it is if you help get Peter out of there. What would be ideal is to get him and yourself out of the country, but that's only a dream. No one comes in and no one goes out. That's Germany these days, isn't it?"

"I'll try. As soon as I can, I'll try to get him out of the camp."

"Tomorrow."

"I'm supposed to work in the main office the day after tomorrow. That would be the only time I could try some of my ideas," he said.

"The day after tomorrow, then," she said. He nodded again.

"You---you care about him...don't you?" Thomas asked quietly, not even glancing up at her.

Marie looked surprised. "Of course I care about him. He's trying to stand up for what he believes in," she answered. "I admire that."

"No, I-I mean that you care about him as more than a friend. Am I right?"

Marie paused and watched Thomas, who kept his gaze lowered away from hers. "No, Thomas, you aren't right."

His head snapped up and he looked at her closely. "I'm not?"

Marie smiled a trifle and shook her head. "No, you're not. I've never liked Peter as anything but a friend."

"Oh." He looked thoughtful. Then he looked at her again. "What about...me?" he asked. "When we went to The Bismark those times, I thought that maybe---perhaps we were more---but then you wouldn't see me anymore."

Marie sat back in her chair and set her empty cup aside, staring at it for a long time, as though her answer to Thomas' question was spelled out in the flowers that were painted along the rim. "I had my parents and siblings to help support, Thomas. What would they have done if I had been sent to a work camp? What would have become of them then?" She still kept her gaze on the pink roses.

"I know about that, Marie, you explained it to me then and I understood, but it doesn't answer my question tonight."

Marie sighed impatiently, turning the teacup around and around on the end table. "What do you want to hear, Thomas?" she asked at last, halting the spinning cup with one deft movement, then looking up at him, her eyes more gray now as they regarded him coldly. "If you're waiting for me to say that I sobbed myself to sleep every night, only to dream of you, then I'm sorry to disappoint you. It isn't true."

But some of it is. The voice in Marie's mind was as disagreeing as ever. She remembered that she had cried the day she told him that she could no longer see him. She had gone home, closed herself up in her bedroom and let the tears flow freely. Not only for him, but for everything that she, her family, and her country were becoming. Then she had nearly given herself up to tears again when she had heard of what the Nazis' effect on him had been.

"That's not what I meant," Thomas said, looking the slightest bit flustered. "I only meant, do you---ever even think about me? Wonder?"

A quiet pause. "Yes," she answered. "Yes, I do. I could ask the same question of you."

"I would answer that I haven't thought of anyone in a long time. Months. But I did think of you, Marie. Before all this, I couldn't help but think of you."

Marie stood and moved quickly to the bookshelves on the wall opposite the sofa. As though if she had her back to him and if she couldn't see him, she wouldn't have to tell him the truth. It didn't help, though, and before she knew she had spoken aloud, she was responding.

"I heard about what the Nazis had done to you and---and to everyone else, but it seemed as though I only paid attention when I caught your name in a conversation. I couldn't believe---I didn't WANT to believe that you were the same person I had once---I went to Arvid's funeral," she stated, changing her course abruptly.

Thomas watched her, still not facing him as she spoke, but he reacted with visible surprise anyway. "You---I didn't see you there," he said.

"But I saw you," she said. "I had never been a good friend of his. Not like Peter and Otto had. I didn't want to intrude and so I stood yards away, behind a tree---out of sight," Marie explained. "I saw that you weren't there and I-I was so angry at you."

Her voice was trembling now. Thomas couldn't watch her any longer and he dropped his head into his hands once more.

"Then as they left, I saw them pass you. You there in your uniform---I've never been so angry at anyone or anything in my life, as I was at you then. I saw your expression and thought for a brief moment that perhaps you did care and that perhaps you were truly sorry. But then that moment passed and I realized that the uniform had put you above any caring and any regret and I hated you again. More than before. I wanted to run right up to you and---and shake you, plead with you to change, anything! I held myself back only because I didn't want the others to know that I had been there. As much as I wanted to hurt you, my desire to NOT hurt them was greater."

"I wanted---to be there with them, but I couldn't!" Thomas said, staring intensely at the design on Marie's throw rug. "I knew that they blamed me, as much as I blamed myself and I was afraid that if I went, and stood beside them at his grave, that they would think I was there only to poke fun and only to think how glad I was that he was gone and none of that was true!"

Marie turned and crossed the room, kneeling beside him in order to meet his lowered gaze. "Why didn't you ever explain to them what you were feeling about everything?" she asked, holding tightly to his upper arms, forcing him to look into her eyes. "Why didn't you tell Peter that you never meant to hurt him or Arvid? Why didn't you explain to someone? Evie or Otto, if you couldn't face Peter! Why, Thomas?"

"I'm here, aren't I?" he asked, calm in contrast to her frantic questioning. "I'm telling you, aren't I?"

He looked right into her eyes as he said this and Marie once again saw that vision of who he had been. It was now closer to being free. It had moved forward. There was more of the old Thomas in his gaze. Slowly her hands released his arms. Her hands fell limply to the sofa as Thomas brushed his hand over her pale cheek and leaned closer.

"No!" In one quick movement, Marie was on her feet and stepping across the room, stumbling over her chair as she did so. Thomas watched her as she tried to collect herself beside the window. Her hands shook as they tucked her hair nervously behind her ears and fingered the pearl strand that was fastened around her throat.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, but he wasn't. He was sorry for making her react this way, but he wasn't sorry about wanting to kiss her.

"I-I've spent nearly a year trying to hate you and just when I've nearly succeeded---I can't go back to loving you so quickly!" she exclaimed, frustrated and jittery. "You're for everything that I'm against and I won't forget my beliefs as quickly as you forgot your's. I won't back down and let someone else tell me what to love and what to hate, what to do and how to live! I won't!"

Thomas stood and let the blankets fall back onto the sofa. He started to move towards Marie, then paused, glancing down at his arm. Without another moment of hesitation, he removed the red and black armband, tossing it on top of the blankets. Then he stepped across the room to where Marie still stood, trembling as she stared at the curtains.

"Do you believe in angels, Marie?" he asked gently, as he stood at her elbow.

She half-turned towards him. "What?" Her shaking had ceased, and she glanced at him once from the corner of her eye before looking back at the drapes.

"Angels," he said. "Do you believe in them?" As though this were a most normal change of conversation.

"Well, I---yes, but---but why, are you---where---?"

He silenced her stumbling sentence as he put a hand to her arm and rotated her to face him. Not wanting to look up at his face, she stared fixedly at his shirt buttons. Just before he spoke again, she noticed his missing armband. Her mouth opened in surprise, but he didn't give her the opportunity to ask about it.

"I never believed in them until tonight," he said, putting his hand under her chin and tilting her face up, so that she had no choice but to look at him directly.

"What point are you getting to, Thomas?" she asked warily. Was this an act---a compliment---intended to make her drop her pretenses?

"It isn't what you're thinking," he said, with an impatient shake of his head and Marie wondered if she were truly transparent.

"What, then?"

"As that wagon carried Peter off and when I saw Willy's face---God, Marie, I couldn't stand to see another minute of it and I ran away. Very gutless of me, I suppose, but I couldn't stand to see what I had done," he explained slowly, each word clearly audible, though quiet. "I didn't want to be forced to see more. I ended up in some alley, blocks, perhaps miles from The Bismark, I don't know. I found that I couldn't run any further and used the brick wall to support myself while I tried to catch my breath---and my mind, I suppose. It was reeling. I didn't know whether I was coming or going or even who I truly was."

"You said...angels," Marie said, shaking her head slightly and dropping her head. Once again he lifted it up.

"I'm coming to that," he told her. "As I was nearly collapsed there, trying to sort everything, I heard a voice say your name." Marie's gaze flew to meet his and he could see the shock and disbelief as she opened her mouth to interrupt. "Please!" he said quickly. "Let me finish." She nodded and he continued. "It was so soft and so quiet that I nearly missed hearing it. But hear it I did and I turned, expecting to see someone behind me. That alley and that street was completely deserted. There were no open windows. It was so eerie and still and dark. Then I heard it again, just as softly as before. I demanded, quite loudly, for the person who was speaking to show himself or herself. Then the voice repeated your name, more persistent than before. That's when I realized that the voice wasn't around me, but in my own mind. Later I also realized that it wasn't distinctly male or female. It was neither, if that's possible."

"You're crazy, Thomas Berger," Marie said quickly as he paused for breath.

"No!" he exclaimed softly, putting his hands on her shoulders. He hesitated. "I thought I was, though. I asked, 'Marie, who?', but it didn't answer with more words, but with an image. Of you. Sitting right there in Algebra, two rows and a desk in front of me, chewing on the eraser of your pencil as you tried to think of the correct answer. You always did that."

"Mama used to say I would ruin my teeth," Marie murmured, unable to look away.

Thomas nodded and smiled slightly. "I saw you turn to me, because earlier that day was when I had first asked you to go to The Bismark with Peter and I that night. You smiled and mouthed across the room, asking if I knew what the answer to number seven was. I told you what I had---I was wrong, as usual---but we didn't know that then. That's what I saw, Marie, and not only was it a vision of you but it was a vision of who I used to be, too."

"You came here---why? I still don't know."

Thomas shook his head. "I don't either. My feet started moving, but I didn't know where I was going. I had no idea where you lived now that you were on your own. Somehow I ended up here---something else was guiding me. It started to rain, but I didn't even have to slow down. I asked why and it said to change. 'Change what?' I asked and it responded, 'Views. Ideas.' then it cut off. I haven't heard it since then. You said something earlier when I asked you the same question. You said---"

"The way you see things, the way you think," she repeated. Echoed.

"Yes!" Thomas whispered, clutching her arms. "Yes."

"And that voice---an angel?" She looked slightly less puzzled. Her expression was now one of bewilderment.

"I don't know that either, but what else? What else could have made you open that door enough to let me in. You said you had almost succeeded in hating me, but yet you let me in. I only had to ask once. Haven't you wondered why?"

Marie nodded mutely, then swallowed with difficulty. "I HAVE wondered. I haven't waited long enough to hear the answer. I-I was so busy trying to hate you, still, that I didn't listen or---or even WANT to listen."

"Do you hate me now, Marie?" Thomas asked, releasing the pressure he had on her arms and instead putting his hands on either side of her jaw, dimly aware of how soft her hair was under his palms. "If you say that you do, I'll leave," he went on. "You can lock the door behind me and pretend that I was never here, but you have to say it now."

His voice was insistant, yet Marie couldn't voice an answer. Her mouth had gone dry and she bit into her lower lip until the metallic taste of blood stung her taste buds. The apartment was deathly silent and it bore down on her as she searched Thomas' eyes for her answer. How would she know? He seemed so truthful---so changed---but could it be that he was simply a very good actor? He was a Nazi, he stood before her in his uniform, yet his hands were not the slightest bit rough or unkind and she wondered if he could feel her pulse racing. His hands were so near to that place in her neck. Or was her heart thudding against her ribs so audible that he could hear it? She tried to appear collected and composed but she couldn't pull it off. She knew that he could read her every thought and see her every misgiving.

"No," she said, her voice cracking slightly on the last syllable. "I CAN'T."

It was not that she simply didn't, it was that she couldn't convince herself enough. Thomas felt tremendous relief and he let out a shaky breath that he had been holding.

"I don't know why I was meant to come here," he said. His voice was quiet by all normal standards, but to her ears it was blaring. Marie closed her eyes tightly for only a moment before opening them again. "I don't know why," Thomas repeated, "but there has to be a reason."

"Does there?" she asked, feeling as though she had just run miles and now couldn't catch her breath. He sounded as though he were feeling the same.

"Maybe we're not supposed to know."

Before she could either agree or disagree, his lips were on hers in a kiss that was meant to make up for every one they had missed in the past year. Marie closed her eyes, wanting the apartment to disappear. If only they could be in a place where there were no Nazis waiting to reclaim him when dawn broke and where she wouldn't have to slave away in a hot and cramped garment factory, dreaming dreams that might very well never come true. Everything was uncertain now. Certainty had fleeted when Hitler made his first move to conquer and no one even wondered about it anymore. It was as though it had never existed. So many things no longer did.

Thomas broke away gently and paused only briefly before pulling her close and wrapping his arms around her. He closed his eyes again and buried his face deep in her ebony curls, catching a hint of lilac in the silky tendrils. Then he heard her whisper something under her breath that made his blood run cold.

"Mishigas, all of it." Her voice was laughing as she said the words, then he felt her tense as she realized the word that she had let slip past her lips. He slowly stepped back, dropping his arms from around her, letting them fall slowly to his sides.

"What did you say?" he asked, wanting to be sure that he had heard her right.

Marie looked up at him slowly, but as she met his gaze, she immediately dropped her's again, not wanting him to see her tears. He had just kissed her and then held her, so tenderly, but now his eyes were void of the warmth they had held only a moment before. Marie took a deep breath and closed her eyes tightly until she was sure the tears were gone. Then she looked back up at Thomas.

"You heard me," she said. "It means 'craziness', you know." Slowly her initial hurt shock was being replaced with anger. He was slipping into his Nazi mode. At the sound of her single uttered word, he had forgotten about any feelings of love. Any feelings of kindness were retreating slowly. Before her eyes he was becoming what he had been earlier that night at The Bismark and it angered her more than anything.

"But that language---" he was still trying to talk himself out of it. "It was---"

"Yiddish?" she asked. His nod was barely detectable. To his further surprise, he saw her slowly grin. Relief washed over him. So it had all been a joke. A prank. But no, the grin was not one of amusement, but one of bitterness. The relief was gone in an instant and once again he felt cold.

"So now I suppose you're knowledgeable of our family secret," she said cynically. Her antagonistic smile nearly made him nauseous. "What have they drilled into your head about Jews?" she asked. "No, don't tell me. I've changed my mind, and I don't wish to know. I've figured enough of it out by myself over the past months."

"You're---you're Jewish?" he asked. His mind was reeling again. It was swimming with all sorts of things and thoughts and views. He had been trained to despise Jews, yet he had known her for more than a year---he had kissed her---without knowing. She COULD be different----but weren't they all alike? Isn't that why Hitler's plan was going to take care of the lot of them and solve everyone's problems?

"A quarter Jewish," she answered. "Oh, I've never practiced the religion---I've been raised Catholic, you know---but my grandmother...she speaks using Yiddish all the time. I suppose I was bound to pick up a few phrases here and there." Marie paused and tilted her head to the side slightly. "You look at differently than you did a moment ago," she observed. The bitter smile was gone and now her eyes had iced over with hate. Contempt. "But whether I'm a quarter Jewish or completely Jewish---it doesn't matter to you Nazis, does it? To you it's all the same."

Thomas couldn't reply. He was in a state of shock, but had managed to realize that Marie was one of the people whom he had been ordered to hate. One of the people he DID hate---didn't he?

Marie stepped back farther and shook her head slowly. "So you're just the same as all the rest of them. All that before, all the things you said, they were only an act. An act designed to gain my trust. Like a fool, I didn't see past the facade you had put up. I should have known. Change?" She laughed again and the sound sent chills down his spine. "You never intended to change, did you? You've known all along, I suppose and now you've come to throw me away in one of your concentration camps, am I right? Your kind---Nazis---they've already taken my grandmother. If they don't murder her, she'll die anyway! She's eighty-five, for God's sake! Do you honestly think she'll survive that torture? They would have taken my grandfather too---for marrying a Jew---if he hadn't already been dead!"

Marie's voice had risen steadily and was now shrill. Thomas wanted to do something, say something, anything to stop her, but he was frozen. Half of him wanted to put his arms around her and reassure her that it didn't matter to him, that he wasn't like that anymore. The other half, however, screamed at him to drag her down to the nearest camp, where she could be put with all the others like her and where he wouldn't have to ever see her again.

"Do whatever you came to do---do anything---but don't just stand there looking at me like that!"

Thomas WANTED to do something. He didn't know what but he wanted to do something. He was still frozen, though, and couldn't move a muscle. He wanted to explain that he hadn't come to arrest her. He didn't want to arrest her or see her be locked away behind razor-wire fences. All he wanted to do was walk out and forget that her grandmother was Jewish. If she had never uttered that single word, he might never have known. But he couldn't walk out. He had been instructed and trained and told over and over what kind of problems the Jews caused for Germany. He should be loyal to his country and arrest Marie before she went from being mildly hysterical to completely mad. She was one of the Jews he had been ordered to hate. But he couldn't move.

Marie said nothing as she stared at him. The silence in the room was weighted and they both felt the pressure.

"When they took my grandmother my parents instructed us to make sure that no one knew we had ever been related to her. She was a total stranger to us now," Marie said, her voice no longer hysterical. Somehow the deadly calm of it frightened Thomas more. "We were supposed to forget that we had ever known her. If we let it be known that she was our grandmother, we might be sent away too. I've kept those instructions in mind until tonight. I've been so careful and of all people to let the secret slip to! A Nazi. What did they expect me to do? Was I supposed to forget all of the times that she had sung me to sleep? Was I supposed to forget what it was like to have her hug me and what her homemade challah tasted like? Would you be able to forget those things, Thomas, if you were me? But you can't even put yourself in my place. You can't pretend to be part Jewish or have a Jewish grandmother. I'll say this for the Nazis, they've trained you well."

Marie paused to take a much needed breath of air and she regarded him coldly, a wild look in her eyes. Then she moved suddenly and Thomas nearly jumped. She thrust her arms out towards him, the pale underside of her wrists facing upward. He could plainly see the blue viens that crisscrossed just below the soft skin, she was that close to him. "Go ahead!" she demanded. "Go ahead and arrest me! I'm not going to fight you. Don't you see, Thomas, we're not the ones who are fighting. My grandmother went calmly, knowing she was going to her death. We aren't the ones who are fighting! This isn't a war, not really. To have a war, you have to have two opposing sides battling. Remember government class? But you Nazis don't have an opposing side. Killing may be justified in a war, but this isn't a war and nothing you're doing can EVER be justified by anyone! So please! Arrest me, but don't let me ramble on like this!"

He couldn't move his arms to take her's nor could he move his gaze away from her tear-filled eyes. Slowly her arms dropped to her sides once again and she blinked, attempting to push the tears away. Her chin trembled, then she steadied it again.

"Aren't you glad to know?" she asked, her voice not even above a whisper, but still cold, angry, and hurt. All those emotions were audible in her first word. "Who knows what could have happened," she went on, "aren't you glad to find out after only one kiss? It should easier to put behind you. It shouldn't take you more than a moment or two, for you Nazis are so efficient about killing things, even memories. I wouldn't have wanted to tarnish your reputation as the model HJ. I wouldn't even THINK of such a horrendous thing!" She clucked her tongue in sarcastic disapproval. "It would cost the Nazis one of their best, after all."

Thomas flinced at her last words. It was the first movement he had made in a long while and Marie was quick to catch it.

"I suppose that you're too cowardly to arrest me yourself. You'd rather someone else be blamed," she said. "Well, I can see why. Leave. Send someone else tomorrow to arrest me and cart me off. I won't fight them either. I wouldn't fight anyone. Go, please! I can't stand the sight of you!"

Marie turned and walked the few small steps to the kitchen. Her arms were crossed tightly across her chest and her head was bent low, her shoulders tense as she tried to keep them from disclosing the fact that tears ran in rivers down her cheeks. She felt Thomas' hand touch her right arm and she whirled around, not knowing what to expect of him. Would he not be satisfied with just arresting her? Was humiliation what he was after? Violent retaliation? Then she took a moment to look into his eyes and saw that the shock and despite was gone. He looked at her the same way as he had before she had let that tell-tale word slip. Now she knitted her brow in confusion, for she couldn't read him as she had before. She couldn't tell what he was thinking nor did she know what he was about to say.

"Please, Marie, I can't change instantly. I wish I could but I can't," he said, his voice quiet and gentle. "I DO want you to help me. Please? I'm sorry that---that I reacted the way I did, I---it was just the way I'd been told and---the way I've been taught to react. Please, help me see it differently."

Now it was Marie that couldn't find her voice, but her eyes continued to search his for any signs that this was a trick.

"I don't want to arrest you, Marie. I didn't know any of that before you told me. That isn't why I came and I don't want to just walk away. I want to understand things the way you do---I want to love you."

Marie felt her breath catch in her throat and fresh tears began to fall from her eyes. Thomas raised his hand slowly and brushed them away.

"Will you help me, Marie?" he asked. "Can you?"

There was a long moment of hesitation. She wondered if he could truly be trusted or if the entire night had been one big act. When he had kissed her, she HAD gone from hating him to loving him again, in that one instant. When she had felt his arms stiffen as he heard her repeat her grandmother's word and as he had pulled away, looking at her so horrified, she had felt her heart slowly crumble into millions of pieces, leaving behind a dull ache. Could she risk all of that happening again? But what did she have to lose? If he wasn't being truthful, then he would still find someway to have her arrested and taken away, but if he was being honest, she had so much to gain.

She nodded. "I'll help you," she whispered.

Thomas was visibly relieved. "How---how do I start?" he asked and Marie couldn't help but smile at the sound of the question. As though he was a little boy, learning something new for the first time. In some respects, this was true. This time, however, he had to relearn something that he had first learned long ago. It was so long ago, in fact, that he had forgotten that he had ever known it. But all she had to do was remind him.

"You start by holding me, the way you did before," she began. "You don't forget any of what I've said, but you have to remind yourself that it doesn't matter. I'm the same person I was before."

She stepped closer and Thomas put his arms around her slowly. It was difficult for him and Marie could feel his struggle, but he succeeded and she heard his sigh of relief. She closed her eyes as she lay her head against his chest and as she felt him rest his chin lightly on her head.

"You've already done the hardest part of it," she said. "It shouldn't be so difficult from here."

Thomas felt his tense muscles loosen and he felt more like himself again. He even laughed a little, very quietly. It was music to Marie's ears. "You'll still help me?" he asked.

"Always," she replied, her doubts and apprehensions ebbing away. "I'll always help you."

Epilogue:

It was two days later that Thomas knocked loudly on Marie's door. When she opened it a minute later, she looked at him, amused.

"Are you trying to knock down my door again?" she asked, laughter in her voice.

Thomas, however, didn't crack even the slightest smile and she quickly grew serious.

"Thomas, what is it? What's wrong?" she asked.

"Let me in and I'll tell you."

Marie closed the door behind him and he took her hand, seated them both on the sofa. Marie's eyes searched his frantically, a million thoughts running through her head. Was it Peter? Or himself? Had they discovered about her grandmother? But how could they have?

"Please, Thomas, I'm driving myself crazy with all these horrible thoughts!" she finally exclaimed. "What is it?"

"I've figured out a way to get Peter and I out of Germany," he said. No beating around the bush. His words and tone were straight-forward and dead serious.

The blood drained from Marie's face and her eyes seemed enormous. "Is it dangerous?" she asked, her voice below even the softest whisper.

A shadow passed over Thomas' face. He took her hands in his and held them tightly. "That's the only drawback," he answered.

Marie went even paler, if such a thing was possible, and she felt her heart stop for a beat or two before it restarted. Her eyes filled with luminous tears and Thomas wished desperately that she would't cry. He felt guilty enough over everything as it was.

"What if---what if they caught you---" Marie broke off, her voice cracking. "Oh God, Thomas, an HJ helping a prisoner out of the country!" Her voice was a strained whisper that cut Thomas deeply. "You could be shot!"

"It's not going to happen, Marie!" he said harshly. "It's not!"

"I'll never know one way or the other!" she exclaimed. "I'll never know what's become of you!"

Feeling her tears beginning to spill down her cheeks, she fell against him and felt his arms circle around her, holding her tightly. So tightly that it was almost hard to breathe. It felt so right and so meant to be and Marie's heart ached to think that it could very well be the last time.

"No, Marie, don't cry," Thomas asked, tilting her chin up and wiping her tears away with a quick motion of his hand. "Please don't, I---I want you to come with me."

Marie's eyes widened again. "Go with---but where?"

"Switzerland to start. Maybe someday we'll make it all the way to England!" he exclaimed and Marie saw the excitement shining in his eyes. Then he grew serious again. "I wish I could tell you to think about it and take your time, but we aren't running on our time, we're running on Peter's."

"Thomas---"

"I'll understand if you say no. I love you and I'd never put you in danger, it's only that I want you with me so badly!"

"I'll go."

"If you don't come, it'll---" he broke off as what she had said suddenly sunk in. "You'll go?" he asked, looking amazed.

Marie smiled softly, biting her lower lip. "I'll go with you, Thomas Berger. Anywhere you asked, anywhere you wanted to go."

Thomas crushed her to him briefly, then took her hands again. "I can't be gone long or they'll start to wonder and possibly ask questions. You need to call Evie, though. I'm planning on her coming with us, for Peter, but she won't listen to me. Word will have gotten around about what I did at The Bismark the other night and she won't want to hear anything I have to say."

"What plan do we have? I don't know any of what we're doing!" Marie cried quietly, now pausing to wonder what she had agreed to so quickly.

For the next ten minutes they spoke in only whispers as Thomas explained every part of his plan to Marie. Then he kissed her once more before letting himself out the front door as she called up Evie.

It took a long while before Evie finally gave her trust to Marie. Bewildered, but determined for Peter's sake, she showed up on Marie's doorstep in less than an hour, a suitcase at her side as she gripped the handle tightly.

Marie hurried Evie into the apartment then hugged her, more to comfort and calm the both of them than anything else. Then Evie watched as Marie finished packing her own suitcase.

"How can you be sure Thomas isn't tricking all of us?" Evie asked, trying to find a way to occupy her nervous hands. She resorted to folding Marie's clothes that were strewn across the bed. Marie paused momentarily and took Evie by her shoulders.

"Listen, Evie," she said. "I know what Thomas has done and especially the way you must feel about him after what he did to Peter the other night, but he didn't stumble into your apartment looking to beaten and desperate for help. He didn't collapse to your floor and sob into your skirt as he begged for help. I was so cold and hateful until he did that and even then I was wary---even then I was still angry. He had no way of knowing where I lived, yet he found me somehow. Angel or inner conscience, I don't know, but I trust him. I'd trust him with anything---my life---absolutely anything."

Evie held Marie's gaze for a long moment. "I'm coming because I trust you and because I love Peter and I want him out of that camp desperately. As for Thomas, I'll follow this plan of his because I have no better one of my own. But I can't trust him yet. I CAN'T. Not after all that he's done recently. Please try to understand my point of view," Evie pleaded.

Marie paused, then sighed, turning from Evie and closing her suitcase. "All right," she agreed at last. "We have to leave as soon as Thomas arrives. We don't have much time to carry all of this out."

"Your family---" Evie began.

"I called Mama and told her I had to leave the country immediately and that I would write when I was safe. I didn't have time to explain, though. She's trying not to be too worried," Marie explained. "Your family?"

"Forget them," Evie said. "They as good as disowned me when I left home for the city."

"Then you're ready?"

"As ready as I'm ever going to be."

It was dusk when Thomas stopped the car that he had 'borrowed' from the headquarters. Two small swastika flags snapped around on the front of the car in the breeze that rushed down the narrow street. Marie let him in the door, then closed it behind him. He pulled her close long enough to kiss her forehead, then he looked to Evie.

"Hello, Evie," he said nervously.

"Thomas," she replied with forced politeness and a short nod.

He glanced at Marie and she tried to smile convincingly. He could see the sympathy in her eyes. "It takes time," she whispered to him and he nodded.

"Are you ready?" he asked her.

"We've been ready."

"Then play along from here on out." He grinned slightly, to put them all at ease as much as was possible, then led Marie and Evie to the door, each of them holding their suitcases.

He opened the back door of the car and stood at it with a trained and schooled look of indifference on his face as they climbed hurridly in. Then he slammed and locked it behind them before sliding behind the wheel.

The partition was up between the front and back seats. In the near darkness, Evie's hand searched across the leather upholstery for Marie's, at last finding it. She squeezed it tightly and through it, Marie could feel trembles that matched her own.

"I'm so frightened!" Evie whispered. "My heart's beating so loudly!"

"So's mine," Marie whispered back. "Are we crazy to be doing this?"

Evie didn't answer. She didn't know how to.

The car stopped at the work camp and Evie scooted more to the right, closer to Marie, who was by the right window, behind Thomas' seat. Their hands still clutched together, they strained to hear the conversation outside. Only a few indistinct mumbles made it through to their ears, however.

It took quite a bit of convincing on Thomas' part before the guards accepted his explanation of taking Peter to a different camp and before they accepted the papers he had carefully and cleverly forged.

Peter was brought out, pushed roughly in front of the two guards who were holding tight to him, lest he break away and try to run. He was unaware of where he was being taken, or who was supposedly taking him there until Thomas stepped from the shadows into the circle of light that beamed from the guards' flashlights. When he saw Thomas' 'Nazi look', the one of complete unconcern of others and utter loyalty to the Third Reich, Peter's eyes narrowed and he started to say something. Thomas beat him to it.

"In the back!" he barked. "And no conversing with the other prisoners!"

As though he had no idea who Peter was. As if they were total strangers.

The guards shoved Peter into the back of the car, and Thomas locked the door behind him, saluted the guards with a quick "Heil Hitler", before climbing behind the wheel again and passing through the camp's gates.

Peter saw that the partition remained up and so as soon as they were out of the gates and on the main road, he turned to Evie, who sat between him and Marie.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, incredulous.

"Never mind," she replied. "I've never been so happy to see anyone in my entire life!"

She threw her arms around his neck and he returned her secure embrace. Suddenly she pulled back.

"Oh God," she said. "Are you hurt?" Her fingers flitted across his face, searching for wounds in the dim light.

Peter caught her hands and kissed them. "No, I'm fine," he said. "They couldn't do anything to me that HE hadn't already done." Peter glared through the partition at Thomas and Marie couldn't help but visibly flinch. Peter's eyes were filled with absolute hate. Was this what I looked like? she wondered.

Peter turned his gaze away from the front and seemed to notice Marie for the first time. He squinted in the dimness then his eyes widened.

"Marie Weir?" he asked. "You were in school with us, right? You and Thomas were once---" Peter suddenly broke off and swore under his breath. "He's sending you to a work camp as well? Good God, has he NO conscience left?"

They were on a tiny deserted road by now and suddenly Thomas pulled the car to the side and stopped it, getting out.

Peter glanced away from Marie and looked toward the front where Thomas had been a moment ago. "What's he doing now?" He reached for Evie's hand, holding it tightly.

"Peter there's---" Marie broke off when her door swung open and Thomas found enough room on the edge of the seat for himself. She threw herself into his arms, to the shock and amazement of Peter.

"Wha---? Are you both in on---? What kind of plot is this---?" Peter couldn't finish sentences. He hugged Evie close and protectively.

"I can't believe they accepted those forged papers!" Marie gasped, half laughing and half crying.

"Forged---papers?" Peter asked, then noticed Evie grinning as well. "What is going on?" he asked to no one in particular.

Marie turned away from Thomas, as though just now recalling that they were not alone. She looked at Peter with shining eyes and an animated face. "Switzerland!" she exclaimed, as though that one word would explain everything. It didn't explain anything.

"Switz..." Peter trailed off, more confused than before. "I think I'd be better off in the camp..."

"We're hardly to Switzerland yet," Thomas cautioned Marie. "We've hardly started." One of his arms was wrapped around her waist and he used the other hand to brush across her cheek, seeming to have forgotten about Peter and Evie for the briefest of moments.

"We're close enough," Marie whispered back to him.

Evie, feeling as though Peter deserved an explanation, turned to him. "Thomas has a plan that will get us to Switzerland," she told him. "There aren't work camps there." Still looking concerned, she gently touched the angry bruise that was only partially hidden by his hair. Peter flinched slightly and reached up to take her hand away from the offending mark.

"There aren't Nazis either," Thomas added.

"At---The Bismark," Peter started. "You certainly weren't acting like someone with an escape plan. You were one of those Nazis, out to kill like all the rest of them."

Thomas' expression changed and Marie recognized it as one of the many troubled ones he had worn that night in her apartment and she entwined her fingers with his and lay her head against his chest.

"I didn't understand," he said slowly. "I HAD become like the rest of them and I was just beginning to see that. I didn't know who I was anymore." Thomas paused and looked down on Marie's dark curls. He smiled somewhat and gave them a quick kiss. "I went to Marie---I don't know why, I hadn't seen her in nearly a year, but I found her apartment...She wasn't very trusting either---It took a lot of time and a lot of yelling." He said this with a chuckle. "And it's going to take more."

"It was all mishigas, remember?" Marie asked him with a sly smile even visible to Peter in the near darkness. He was visibly startled by her word, for he recognized it as Yiddish, and he looked toward Thomas, not knowing what to expect.

He was surprised, to say the very least, when Thomas only smiled and nodded, giving her a quick kiss before looking back up at Peter.

"So are you coming?" he asked.

Peter held his gaze for a long moment, as though he was searching. Searching, perhaps, for a sign of the Thomas Berger who had once been his best friend. Finally he nodded, though Marie and Evie were unable to tell if he had seen something that had convinced him to agree, or whether he just knew that anything would be better than a work camp.

"Good, then let's get out of here," Thomas said, standing once again. He bent down to give Marie one last kiss. "Put the partition down, if you want to," he told her, tucking her hair behind her ear tenderly before going to the front of the car and starting it up.

They had been both riding and driving tensely for nearly thirty minutes without a sound from anyone, when someone began humming a strangely familiar tune. The three in the back all glanced around at each other, before realizing that it was coming from the front. Just as they all looked toward him, Thomas began to sing, words and all.

"It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing..."

Slowly the others joined in and Marie leaned through the partition to kiss Thomas' cheek. He smiled, then spoke. "So what do you think, love, is it all going to work out?"

Marie's breath had caught in her throat as he called her 'love' and she cleared it quickly.

"Of course," she said. "We have angels on our side, remember?"

"You're my angel, Marie," he said seriously. "You were the other night and you always will be."

******************

All four crossed the border into Switzerland and managed to obtain clearance to stay in the country. Peter and Thomas found work out in the rural areas on farms. They all wrote to their families, but only Marie received a response. Of the other three, only Peter was upset. Thomas and Evie had expected the cold brush off, but he had not and was genuinely hurt. Then he had turned to Evie and announced that she was the only family he needed, provided she would marry him. Gasping, she accepted while Thomas and Marie laughed, then congratulated.

There was a porch swing on the cottage they were all four sharing and later that same night, Thomas and Marie had left Peter and Evie inside while they sat upon it, listened to the creaking of the old chains, and watched the stars.

Thomas took his hand from his jacket pocket and slipped it around her shoulders, pulling her closer for warmth on the chilly spring night. Slowly he unfolded his hand under her nose and Marie saw something sparkle in his palm. Sitting up suddenly to face him, she seized his hand and saw what she had expected---a diamond ring.

Unable to speak, she gaped at him as she held his hand in hers, palm and ring facing up.

"It's only a fourth of a carat," he said, almost apologetically. "I wanted something bigger, but this was as much as I could afford."

"Oh no, Thomas!" she breathed. "No, no, no! What do I need something bigger for? It would only get in my way! I love it, it's beautiful!"

Thomas chuckled slightly. "So does this mean that you're accepting?"

"Did you ever dream I would not?"

Thomas took her left hand in his and looked up into her eyes, that he could barely see in the quickly dimming light. "This is for everything, from the time you let me into your apartment until tonight," he said. "I was sent to you somehow because you were supposed to help me. You did then and you have ever since. I love you, Marie."

Marie used her right hand to wipe tears away as he slipped the ring over her finger. "I love you too," she managed to say.

"I think I'm pretty lucky, you know," he said, winking at her. "I think I'm probably the only man on earth who's ever gotten to actually marry his angel!"