Apologies

Marie bade Werner to follow her to kitchen to 'quickly help with the chicken', but the second they'd reached the kitchen she admit there was nothing wrong with the bird in the oven. "I'm terribly sorry about my grandfather..." She said. She'd gotten on her tip-toes to whisper this into his ear. Marie wasn't short, but Werner was tall, he was a good head taller than her. "I didn't think he'd be this rude."

"It's alright Marie. I'm still glad I'm here." Werner replied with a reassuring smile. He pulled her close to his chest, hugging her against Nikolai's coat. 

"Are these your clothes?" She asked after a second of silence. 

"No," he admitted, "they're a friend of mines. I didn't have any expect for my work clothes, and I couldn't show up here dressed like a soldier."

"Opa might have liked it."

"Ha, you're right." He kissed the top of her head and let her out of his arms. "Do you want to check on the chicken cause we're here already?"

She nodded and bustled over to the oven. Werner watched her scurry around the kitchen. When he'd met her he'd initially thought she looked a bit Ukrainian, but now he realized he might have mistaked it for polish. Her grandfather came from here, she had some polish roots. Her blonde hair was braided and pinned up to the back of her head. He couldn't guess how long it would be when left untouched. She glanced over her shoulder at him, as if she'd felt his eyes on her. She shot him a look that said; don't stare at me. He shrugged and smiled. She rolled her eyes but her expression was happy. 

Marie had thought about Werner a lot. She was happy, if not a bit frusturated with her grandfather and at home that was a whole different story, there she felt neither seen nor heard. Her mother was a strong woman but her father was a dictatorial man, and he was prone to violence. He allegedly beat his wife on a regular basis, but Marie had never seen him raise his arm and she'd never seen the bruises on her mother. But then again, her mother always wore long clothes and never revealed even the skin of her neck. So Marie had been gratefull to think about someone else, and something else. She was long done with school, and before the war she'd taken english classes by a british professor but as 1939 arrived he'd fled back to England and her english class had abruptly stopped. She'd headed to the house it was held in one morning and there was simply a note of apology; Scared a war might break out soon, need to leave Germany now, best regards, Prof. Whittle. 

Werner was unaware of what exactly his pretty friend was thinking about. He could tell that there was more on her mind than the food she was preparing but he had no idea what. He was much better at guessing what other men were thinking, probabaly because he was almost never in the company of women. 

"If you want to go back and talk with Hans you can." She said, throwing a glance over her shoulder. 

"I'd rather help you, if there's any way I can?" 

"I can't allow a guest to help." She answered sternly, "go back to the living room, Killian." So she shooed him out of the kitchen, causing him to laugh. She couldn't supress a giggle. 

Werner made his way back to the living room where he found Hans still seated, smoking the cigar. 

"So, ich bin wieder da. (I'm back.)" He said, smiling polietely at Maries grandfather. 

"Come sit next to me...Killian, was it?" 

"Yes, sir." He stood up and marched up to the sofa, sitting next to the old man with an arms length of space between them. 

"There's something I want to show you, but don't tell Marie, she'll hate me for it."

"Alright." 

Hans reached under the sofa, painfully, and dragged out an old book. It only took seconds for Killian to realize that it was a photo album. "No matter how angry and old I may seem, I really do love Marie. And you seem like a good fit. The last two boys she brought home were disasterous, the first was a communist, and the second was another soldier, like yourself but he died within minutes of the war." At the first part of his sentence he'd seemed like the sweet old man Marie had promised he could be, but afterwards he returned to his hateful alter ego. "But anyway, there are some nice pictures of Marie in there, when she was young. Such a cute girl." Werner opened the photo album. When he was a kid he'd liked the albums, up until he'd gotten cancer, because when you show someone and album and there's cancer in it, they switch from thinking it's cute to feeling pity. 

But the old nazi was right. Marie was an adorable six-year-old. She had blonde pigtails in the first picture, and she was holding on the arm of a tall and handsome man, he had to be her father. Werner paged through. She had seemed so carefree back then and now she seemed troubled, but he expected that most in Germany had had the same fate. 

"This is my favourite picture." Hans said, pointing at a picture of him with little Marie on his lap. She was holding his cigar, beaming. "I was a photographer in my youth, it wasn't so easy to take pictures back then, now it's so much easier." He explained. Werner had to smile. The photos in the album weren't even half as many as he took in one single year back in his time, and these were all the photos ever taken of Marie until her eighteenth birthday. 

"There's still quite a lot of pictures." He remarked. It was true, for the average family, there were a lot of pictures of Marie in her childhood. Probably because Hans was a photographer.

"Yes, I agree. Her mother was angry with me for taking so many, she said I was spending too much money on it. But when Marie's brother died from illness a few years ago, she was ever so grateful to have this photo album of her children." Werner hadn't known that one of Marie's brothers had passed away. So he just nodded. 

Speaking of the devil herself, Marie popped around the corner and called for them to come in for lunch. She'd made sandwiches and - why were they looking at old photos of her, it was embarrasing! So she bustled over and snatched the book away, returning it to its place under the couch. "Now hurry up, it's almost twelve." 

Neither Werner nor Marie was allowed to assist Hans on his way to the kitchen.