Dangerous Territory

Yom Kippur Miracle

The lieutenants all headed downstairs and out into the rain. To the south, faintly but still audible, Eren heard the unmistakable sound of bombing and came to a stop.

"Has the battle begun?"

Oliver patted his shoulder. "You really must have been out of it all day! The Allies have been trying to drop bombs on Feste Kronprinz. In this weather, they're completely missing their target."

Greiz quipped, "Maybe they'll miss, hit the Americans, and do our job for us."

The others laughed, and they continued onward.

They went to a beer hall not too far away. It was already filled with soldiers singing and drinking. Eren found himself relaxing after a hearty meal and a few beers. He began to sing with the men, enjoying the camaraderie late into the night. He looked around at the merrymaking and wondered if any of them knew that, for Jews, this was a holiday of solemn prayer and fasting. Probably not, or any who did would never dare admit they knew that much about Jews.

"I heard Colt helped in the questioning," Jean mentioned casually to Eren.

Eren pulled himself out of his thoughts. "Huh? Officer Grice? Yes, he was taking notes for Kriminaldirektor Magath. Do you know him?"

"We're old friends."

Surma muttered into his stein of beer, "Friends with a member of the Gestapo? That's bold."

"More like, I knew him when he was in diapers," Jean elaborated. "Our fathers were childhood best friends."

Eren said, "He told me he was from Stuttgart. Aren't you from Saarbrücken?"

"My father is originally from Stuttgart. He left a job with Mercedes-Benz and moved to Saarbrücken because my mother refused to leave her hometown." He shook his head and grumbled into his beer. "Honestly, I don't think I would do that for a woman. Move somewhere just to be with her? That's crazy."

Move somewhere just to be with someone ... Eren smiled to himself as he thought about Levi's offer, that after the war, rather than just meeting up in New York, he could move there and be near him.

Oliver gave a deep grunt of disapproval. "A woman should move to where the man needs to be, not a man moving because the woman says so. Your father was tied to a leash before he even took vows."

Jean shrugged casually, not refuting that idea. "He always said, no Swabian woman could match my mother's cooking. I have to admit, if a woman cooked as good as my mother and I had nothing else tying me down, I might be tempted to move just so I could eat well."

"It's one of two things women are good for," Daz said with a laugh. "Cooking and fucking."

Ian rolled his eyes at the crudity but stayed quiet.

"Colt and I only really saw each other around midsummer and Christmas. We lost touch after his parents died, so seeing him here was a great stroke of luck. It's funny to see how he turned out. A Gestapo! I guess I can imagine that. We used to play hide-and-seek, and he didn't just run around wildly like most kids. He searched for clues! What five-year-old does that?"

Eren's brow tightened. Hearing that Colt was that intuitive worried him. It really was a miracle he had not noticed Levi was living with him.

Or was Levi that good at avoiding detection? It was like an adventure novel: the Spy versus the Detective.

Samuel had a deep pinch between his brows, and Eren noticed. "Is something wrong?" he asked the young lieutenant.

Ian told him, "If you're going to throw up, do it outside."