Lamentations and Realizations

by Wesa

Series: War of the Worlds

AU: Forbidden Lust

Disclaimers: Sergeants Coleman, Derriman, and Stavrakos were minor recurring characters in the late 80s series War of the Worlds, and belong to that series' creators and producers. However, they didn't give Coleman a first name, a situation corrected by my list-hermanas and I. The song is 'Twisting by the Pool' by Mark Knopfler as performed by Dire Straits. Copyright credits are given in the liner notes as

1982 Phonogram Ltd., and 1982 Chariscourt Ltd. Adm by Almo Music Corp. ASCAP.

Category: Angst

Rating: PG-13

Plot: Kasey returns from leave to find Stavrakos and Derriman sifting through the ashes of the Cottage.

By Wesa.

Katrina 'Kasey' Coleman sang as she drove, belting out the lyrics along with the CD in her stereo, grinning to herself. When he saw her stereo set-up, Stavrakos had wondered what kind of music she liked; "Beatles or Stones?" he'd asked.

"Santana," she'd replied, enjoying the surprise on his face. She knew she gave an impression of being ultra-conservative, so she liked to push people off-balance by doing the unexpected. The fact of the matter was that she had rather broad tastes in music, everything from traditional country music to acid rock, from show tunes to rap to folk-rock, pop-rock, jazz, and the blues, including, yes, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. All she required from music was that it should make her feel good, whether through emotional lyrics, pounding drums, soaring violins, or intricate guitars or keyboards. This CD had all of those and more.

"We're going on a holiday, gonna take a villa, a small chalet on the Costa del Magnifico where the cost of living is so low." Yeah, she'd love to get Paul away from the others for a couple of days, somewhere they could be together without worrying that they might be seen. "Sitting in a small café now, swing, swing, swinging to the cabaret. You wanna see a movie, take in a show-"

Her voice died as she came within sight of the gates; they were open. Something was wrong. She stared a moment, frightened by what she saw. Or, rather, didn't see; there were no guards at the gate. Seized by panic, she very nearly hit the gas and rushed inside. Her training took over, however, and she pulled her car to the side of the road and turned it off, creeping out and through the gate silently, as the Colonel had taught her.

The guest house was deserted, and with a sinking feeling in her gut, Kasey turned toward the main house. It wasn't there. It wasn't there! Her mind refused to wrap itself around the fact. Her pistol drawn and ready, the safety off, she made her way up the sloping grounds toward the occasional wisp of smoke.

"Over here!"

That voice was Derriman's.

"Did you find someone?"

Stavrakos.

As Kasey got near enough, she could see the two men, digging through the remains of what had once been the main house. They were in the basement, in what had been the computer lab. Stavrakos picked up the twisted but still recognizable skeleton of a wheelchair. He seemed near tears for a moment before his face hardened and he set his jaw in anger. "They killed Norton," he said.

"They may all be dead," Derriman said tautly. "Get a body-bag; let's find him."

"What happened?" Kasey asked in horror, fully accepting that these men were her squad-mates, not aliens in human disguise.

Both men dropped what they were doing and sighted their weapons on her. "What are you doing here?" Derriman demanded.

"My leave's over," Kasey replied, putting her own gun away. "I had to be back by midnight anyway. Where is everyone? What happened?" she repeated. Though she had tried not to let any of her desperate fear for her lover show, though she tried to be professional about it, her voice betrayed her, cracking and breaking with the weight of unshed tears.

"We don't know," Derriman replied. "The Colonel had sent us to the base, for ammunition and medical supplies; now it seems as if he might have been expecting an escalation in hostilities. But this?" He shook his head.

"We got hung up," Stavrakos explained. "Some bureaucrat of a lieutenant wouldn't sign us off on the supplies at the hospital. We told them to contact General Wilson, but they said he was off on leave somewhere and couldn't be reached." He snorted in disbelief. "Yeah, like Wilson's going to go off in the woods or somewhere alone, knowing that the aliens are out there somewhere. He's an officer, but he's not stupid!"

Kasey let her fear reach her eyes. "You think they got Wilson?" she asked. "I heard you say you'd found Norton; what about the doctors? What about the kid? What about-" Her voice caught in a half-sob. "What about the Colonel?"

Derriman shook his head. "We haven't found Debi or either of the doctors," he replied. "It looks like they got out before the explosion. We did find what was left of three - well, they're not human, but I'm not certain that they're 'our' aliens, either. The remains aren't the same."

"And four Omegans bought it, too," Stavrakos added. "We haven't actually found Norton, yet. Just his wheelchair."

"And the Colonel?" Kasey demanded. The men looked at each other. "And Colonel Ironhorse?" she repeated, realizing that her voice was becoming shrill.

Both men looked at the body bags laid out in a neat row on the lawn beyond the foundation of the house, and Kasey saw that one of them had a long knife and a tomahawk, both blackened by the explosion, laid on the midsection. "He's dead, Kasey," Stavrakos told her, so gently that Derriman gave him a curious look.

"No," she whispered.

"He was wearing the Colonel's dogtags," Derriman told her. "No, Kasey, don't." He caught at her shoulder as she started across to open the bag, to find something, anything that would prove that the corpse was not Paul's. "Remember him the way you last saw him, not - " His voice broke. "Not like that."

Kasey shook him off and went anyway, crouching to unzip the bag. The odor of burned flesh assailed her nostrils, but she forced herself to look, forced herself not to cry. "Oh, Paul," she whispered.

"There's one other guy," Stavrakos said. "We don't know who he was; can't have been an alien, though. Someone shot him in the head, right there in the living room. It almost looks self-inflicted. But there's no identifying marks left, if we even knew him."

Kasey zipped Ironhorse's bag closed again, and stood up. "Where?" she asked.

"C'mon, Kase," Derriman objected, still trying to protect her. "There's no need for you to see that."

"Maybe I need to see it!" she flared at him. "Did you ever think that maybe I need to see all of this? Everything?"

Derriman backed off, raising his hands calmingly. "Okay, Kasey, okay. If you really want to."

"We might be able to identify him from dental records, if we had any suspicion who he was," Stavrakos remarked as Kasey unzipped the next bag.

Kasey looked at the corpse and shook her head. "Maybe, but look at this. This guy never had any dental work in his whole life. His teeth are perfect. Why even the Colonel -" She broke off as she came to a realization. She turned back to the other bag and unzipped it quickly. "It's not him," she whispered.

"What?" Stavrakos asked in surprise.

"Of course it's him," Derriman disagreed. "The Colonel wouldn't let anyone take his dogtags, even if they did get his weapons."

"Maybe he didn't have an option," Kasey replied. "Look, you remember the last time we thought he was dead, when he took a header off that cliff into the ocean and knocked himself silly, didn't remember who we were and hid from us when we were looking for him?"

"He had a concussion," Derriman objected. "This is a little different."

"It's a lot different," Kasey agreed. "He cracked a tooth, remember? He had to get it capped." She indicated the burned corpse. "Where is it? This guy has perfect teeth, too."

Stavrakos looked up from his examination of the dead man's teeth. "She's right," he said. "Not a cavity, not a crack, not a filling, not a cap anywhere in either of these guys' mouths. I'm no expert, but isn't that sort of unlikely?"

"I'll bet the medical examiner who does the autopsies decides that these two were identical twins," Kasey said. "And this one was pretending to be Ironhorse; he was even wearing the Colonel's dogtags."

"But to pretend to be the Colonel, he'd have to look like him. A lot. If they're twins ..."

"You heard about what they did to that sheep in Scotland," Stavrakos murmured. "If our scientists could do that to a large mammal like a sheep, then what might happen if the aliens have cloning technology?"

"Did you already call the base?" Kasey asked suddenly.

"As soon as we found the one wearing the Colonel's tags," Derriman replied.

"Damn," Kasey muttered. "They'll be here soon. Okay, here's what we tell them. We got back, the house was gone, everybody was gone, just our dead squad-mates that you found outside and these other guys. We don't know who they are. Let's get the dogtags, I don't want the Army sending this guy to the Colonel's family and telling them it's him. I'll take the tags, you guys can flip for which one of you takes his knife and who takes the tomahawk."

She stood up, grinning foolishly at the other two. "He's alive! We just have to find him."