Conduct Unbecoming

She said nothing. She had a job to do and five people under her who would notice if her hands stopped moving or her voice changed.

She kept her hands moving. She kept her voice level.

The strike happened on a Tuesday night, Sahel time, the early morning in Stuttgart. The compound went dark on every channel her team was monitoring within ninety seconds of the ground element's report of contact. She watched the network traffic die in real time - servers going offline, communications relays cutting out one by one - and understood, in the clinical part of her mind that did this work, that the operation had succeeded.

The other part of her mind was somewhere else entirely, waiting for information that wasn't coming through her channels and had no reason to.

She kept the cell running. She reviewed Kenley's targeting log, caught a discrepancy in Caruso's traffic analysis and had her correct it, signed off on the confirmation package that would go up the chain. She did her job, fully and competently, the way she had always done her job, while a separate part of her stood somewhere outside herself and waited.

At 0146 local time the report came through that the FOB supporting the operation had taken indirect fire.

She felt it before she understood the words - an internal lurch before the mind had finished processing - and then the words arranged themselves and she understood that a secondary hostile element had moved on the forward position in retaliation.

The room's tempo changed. Voices got lower and faster at the same time. Someone called for a casualty report from across the bay.

Kayleigh kept her eyes on her own screens and her hands on her own keyboard. She was not on the personnel reporting chain. She had no operational reason to be told names, and asking would have meant explaining why a cyber lead three echelons removed needed to know who was hurt on a ground element she had no official connection to.

So she didn't ask.

She listened instead.

She caught fragments. A medevac call sign. A grid reference. The word stable, used about someone, at 0207, which told her nothing because she didn't know who it referred to.

At 0241 an Army Major she didn't know walked past her station with a printed casualty list in his hand, talking to someone on a secure line, reading names aloud in the flat administrative voice people used for exactly this purpose.

She heard "Miller, N., Staff Sergeant" between two other names she didn't process at all.

She did not hear what came after it because the room moved and the Major moved with it, away from where she could hear more.

So she stayed in her seat instead of chasing after the Army Major and kept working. There was nothing she could do except her duty and she focused on that, because that was the only thing in the room she had any control over.

Forty minutes later and the all-clear was given by the command element on the ground. All hostiles either captured or neutralized. Transports were being called in for medevac and exfiltration at both sites.

The entire room breathed a sigh of relief. Brig Gen Bannatyne strode past her station and sent her an approving nod, slapping a hand on Kenley's shoulder.

She realized she could leave for a little while.

She told her team she needed a bathroom break and some air, and they stiffened to attention as she walked out with the same sharp controlled pace she walked in uniform. She held that pace through the corridor, past the badge checkpoint, into the women's restroom at the end of the hall.

She went to the stall farthest from the door, sat down on the closed lid of the toilet, and put both hands over her mouth.

She did not make a sound for the first thirty seconds. Then something broke loose in her chest and she made several, all of them muffled behind her hands, her shoulders shaking with the effort of staying silent in a building full of people who could not see this.

She cried without real release, just the body doing something the mind had been refusing to let it do for hours. She thought about a manifest with a name on it and a forward position taking fire in the dark while she sat in a climate-controlled room running a team that had no reason to know any of this mattered to her at all.

She thought about the fact that she had no official standing to be doing this. No rank justification. Nothing she could tell anyone that would explain why a name on a casualty report, a name she wasn't even cleared to have seen, had led to her weeping in a bathroom at a base she had been TDY'd to for a completely separate reason.

She cried for around six minutes. She knew because she had looked at the clock on the wall, and when she was done, she had looked at her phone. She had checked the Pawsition app. The purple dot was at home. The blue dot was in Kirchheimbolanden. Another street.

She left the stall and went to a sink. She ran cold water, pressed it against her eyes with a paper towel, and checked her face in the mirror with the same dispassionate assessment she used for everything that needed assessing.

Presentable. Red-rimmed but explainable as fatigue, which in a joint operations center at 0300 explained itself.

She went back to her team.

________________

The operation closed out over the following thirty-six hours. Tasks were now administrative. After-action reporting. Equipment reconciliation. A debrief she sat through and contributed to competently while holding, underneath all of it, a single unresolved fact she had no way to chase down.

She heard, secondhand and unofficially, that the wounded from the FOB were being evacuated back through Ramstein - standard routing, Landstuhl took nearly everything serious enough to need transport out of theater. That was all she heard. No names. No conditions. No channel she had any right to use to ask for more.

She flew back to Ramstein on a logistics flight two days later, sat through a transition briefing she barely registered, received a welcoming hug from Diane Russo, and went home to an apartment where Leftenant greeted her as usual - with initial indifference, then a solid hour of affection.

Graham was, understandably, not home. The blue dot was at his office at the 405th.

She did not call the Staff Sergeant's phone. She told herself it was operational security. But she knew it was also fear - the fear of calling and getting no answer, or getting an answer that wasn't his.

Graham came in late. He'd made a noise when he saw her, surprised. She had not let him know she was back - not deliberately. Her mind had been too occupied.

She pretended to be asleep and he had gone straight into the shower before slipping into the covers beside her.

But she could still smell Brenda Miller on him.

________________

Landstuhl Regional Medical Center processed thousands of patients a year. Kay had been there exactly twice - once for a duty physical, once eighteen months before for a knee scope after a training injury that had never quite stopped aching in cold weather.

The knee was her way in.

She called the orthopedic clinic the next morning and asked, with complete sincerity, whether they could fit her for a follow-up given the joint had been acting up. They could. That same day, 1400.

She arrived forty minutes early.

She did not go to the orthopedic clinic. She walked the in-patient ward's corridors instead, in her OCPs, pace precise and confident because there was nothing remarkable about an Air Force Major walking through a joint medical facility ahead of a legitimate appointment.

Figuring out where SSG Miller, N, was being held turned out to be fairly easy.

She turned a corner and there stood Brenda Miller in the corridor in a short skirt suit, as if just coming from the office, a vending machine coffee in one hand and her phone in the other.

Kayleigh's stomach dropped and steadied in the same half-second. Then she walked toward her before she could reconsider.

"Brenda? Brenda Miller?"

Brenda looked up, a slight frown of curiosity on her face before recognition. "Oh... Captain Palmer. Hi."

Kay didn't bother to correct her. "Good to see you again." Kayleigh let warmth into it easily, the kind that cost nothing and revealed nothing. "Is everything alright? You look like you've been here a while."

Brenda's expression changed to something sad, inviting sympathy as she glanced at the door she was standing in front of. "Nathan just got back from a deployment. He's fine, a scalp wound and a concussion, but they're keeping him one more night for observation. He should be home tomorrow." Her tone was light, any worry she'd felt for her husband already mostly behind her.

"I'm so glad he's alright," Kayleigh said, and meant every syllable of it more than Brenda could possibly know. She glanced at the door, savagely tamping down a catastrophically desperate need to make sure for herself.

"Thank you." Brenda smiled at her, innocent, friendly. "How's your husband, Colonel Graham? He's such a great dancer, by the way."

"He said the same about you," Kay answered, smiling back. "He's good. He'll be glad to know your husband will be fine."

"Yes, well... tell him I said hello."

"I will," Kay said. "And give my regards to your husband."

They stood for a moment, silent, awkward. Brenda glanced at her phone, then back up.

"Well," she said, "I have to get back to work. He's gone back to sleep." Brenda smiled, again with only her lips. "It's good to see you again, Captain."

Kay corrected her this time. "It's Major now, actually."

"Oh," Brenda said, a surprised expression on her face that didn't quite make it to her eyes. "Congratulations."

"Thank you," Kay answered. She nodded at her husband's lover, and, with every ounce of discipline she had, continued walking - without pushing open the door to see him.

She saw a restroom after she turned the corner and she went in. It was a singular toilet, and she leaned against the door and put both hands over her mouth, and the sobs that came out of her did not come from fear and grief. It arrived from somewhere lower and looser, relief moving through her chest in waves, and she stood against the door with her eyes closed and let it move through her until her breathing evened out.

'Concussion. Scalp wound. Observation. Home tomorrow.'

She went to the sink, splashed water on her face, checked the mirror, winced at her red eyes, and walked out.

________________

She was coming out of the hospital's main entrance when Diane Russo was coming in, in Class B uniform, carrying a small bouquet of flowers wrapped in bright red ribbon.

"Kay?" Diane's eyebrows went up. "What are you doing here?"

"Knee follow-up," Kayleigh said, which was true. The doctor had looked at her knee, prodded and asked questions, and prescribed NSAIDS on a limited basis. She eyed the flowers. "What about you?"

Diane glanced down at the flowers in her hand with something close to embarrassment. "I'm... I'm visiting someone."

"I can see that."

"Don't," Diane said, but she was smiling. "He's an Army guy. Lieutenant Colonel. His name is Mark Haskell. He just came back from a deployment - shrapnel, nothing life-threatening, but... what?"

"I know him," Kayleigh admitted, unfreezing. "We did a joint thing together."

"Oh...?"

"Yeah." She paused. "He's a good guy." It was what Nathan said about him. What she had observed in Romania. "I... I thought he was married."

Diane shifted the flowers slightly. "He's a widower. He has a kid back home. I met him last year, and we've been... just talking."

Kayleigh looked at her for a moment, and grinned. "Major Diane Russo, are you blushing?"

"I am not blushing, Kayleigh."

"Yes, you are, Di."

"Fine," Diane laughed, a little helplessly after her attempt at a glare failed. "I like him. I've liked him for a while and I've decided to stop being an idiot about it. Before some nurse snatches him up." She studied Kayleigh for a second. "What about you? You look..."

She stopped.

"What?" Kayleigh said.

"Your eyes are red," Diane said slowly. "Did you go to see someone too?"

"Still sleep deprived," Kayleigh said, which wasn't a lie.

Diane looked at her for a beat longer. Kayleigh held her gaze and gave her nothing.

"Right," Diane said, head tilted. "Well. I should get up there. Need to beat the nurses."

"Go get him," Kayleigh said. She leaned forward to whisper. "I think he's gonna like the skirt."

Diane laughed - because the skirt was a bit more fitted than regulations specified. "Thanks."

Diane started past her, then paused, glancing back over her shoulder. "Hey - knee good?"

"Yes," Kayleigh said. "Never felt better, actually."

"Good." Then Diane walked on.

________________

The moment the blue dot turned in the wrong direction, away from their house, Kay had run out to the cafe and gotten into a ride share vehicle. She'd gone into the alley beside it and come out in a ginger wig and the plain glasses that altered the lines of her face.

It stopped two blocks from her destination and she had forced herself to walk, not run, to the gasthaus that didn't look too hard at IDs.

He looked fine when he opened the door, unshaven, still on downtime. His hair was very low. She'd heard bits and pieces. He'd slammed his on-field CO out of a grenade's blast radius and gotten concussed when the blast threw him into a wall and a piece of shrapnel tore a gash in his scalp.

She'd hit him when the door closed behind her. She'd cried and sworn at him when he insisted he was fine. Then she'd kissed him.

Then she'd insisted on examining and then kissing every inch of his body - beyond the stitching on his scalp - to confirm for herself.

Every part of him still worked, she pronounced, after she'd ridden him and he'd released a satisfactory amount of liquid inside her.

An hour later, she changed her mind, and proceeded to inspect him for damage again.

"Are you satisfied this time, Major?" Nathan asked, buried inside her again.

She licked over his lips. "No, Sergeant. After this, there's the taste test."

"Taste test?"

She showed him what it meant.

________________

"Do you, Charles Asher Holloway, take Miss Felicity Helena Watson to be your lawful wedded wife? To have and to hold..."

Kay stood third in line behind the bride's sister and her RAF Cranwell roommate, as Squadron Leader Felicity Watson was married to Charles Holloway, who had made the transition from the Royal Marines to medical school and was now most of the way through an emergency medicine residency in Cardiff.

Which was how Felicity - posted briefly to RAF St Athan two years before - had met him. In a hospital, because she'd broken her wrist falling off a borrowed bicycle, and he'd been the doctor who'd set it.

Felicity's voice broke as she said "I do." Then the priest pronounced them man and wife, and they kissed for the first time as man and wife as everyone cheered and clapped.

The guest list ran more heavily military than the chapel in Reading had likely ever seen. Most were RAF, men and women who'd trained and served with her at her various postings. Multiple Royal Navy and Marine officers and noncoms Charles had served alongside occupied their own rows.

There were enough dress uniforms in the chapel that the overall effect was just as much a gathering of people who happened to share a profession, as it was a wedding.

The reception ran long and warm. There were toasts and speeches. The speeches by the groom's brother and the bride's sister had made everyone laugh. The speech by his squadron mate at Lympstone had won applause. The Group Captain she reported to had given one that made her blush.

The speech by the groom's mother, recalling his late cab driver father and how proud he would have been, had made everyone cry.

Charles was a tall and hulking man who visibly adored his new wife, who beamed beside him like she'd won the lottery.

Kay danced with three different RAF officers she hadn't seen in years, drank more than she'd intended, and laughed more continuously than she had in months.

Later, as she watched the bride and groom leaving for their honeymoon suite, she'd thought, unbidden, of her own wedding.

She remembered Graham's hand at the small of her back as he'd led her into their suite, then picked her up and carried her, laughing and utterly aroused, to the bedroom. She remembered thinking, with the complete wonderful certainty of a twenty-five-year-old who had not yet learned what certainty cost, that she had gotten everything right.

Felicity had flown over for the ceremony four years before, had said something short about service and partnership and how lucky Graham was, how lucky they both were.

She knew different now.

She watched the bride and groom kiss, joined the cheering as they entered the chauffeured Bentley taking them away.

"How was it?" Nathan asked, not too long after.

Her bride's maid dress was on the carpet, and his hands were on her body as she laid her head on his shoulder.

"It was wonderful", she said, yawning, tired from a day that started before dawn.

She knew he was hard, and she reached for him, but he held her hand away and kissed her head. "No. Sleep, Major."

She murmured something in response, and obeyed.

________________

She had flown into Heathrow the week before the wedding. She'd applied for the leave within an hour of receiving the email months before.

Felicity had met her at Arrivals with a shriek that had turned three heads and a sweeping hug that nearly took her off her feet.

"You came," Felicity said, holding her at arm's length to look at her properly. "I was genuinely afraid you might not."

"I promised."

"I wear a uniform too, you cow," she scoffed. "We don't decide our fate." She hugged her again. "I'm so glad you're here!"

She saw him then.

He was at the middle part of the Arrivals hall, civilian clothes, a few days of beard he hadn't had when she'd last seen him, clearly having just landed himself. He hadn't seen her yet. He was looking at his phone, a bag over one shoulder.

Her step faltered, and somehow, when he looked up, their eyes met across the Arrivals hall, over the heads of people greeting each other with flowers and cardboard signs.

"Kay," Felicity had asked, looking at her. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she said, quickly looking away from him and smiling brightly at the bride-to-be. "And I'm all yours."

Felicity laughed and hooked her arm through hers and started leading her to the car park.

"I'm still not forgiving you for leaving my sweetheart in Germany," Felicity stated.

"Leftenant doesn't like traveling," Kay said tiredly.

"Bruno travels just fine," Felicity retorted, rolling her eyes at the name. "Same mom, same dad, same litter. They can't be that different. Charles wanted to meet him."

Kay heard the softening in her voice as she said her soon-to-be husband's name.

"I think I'm falling in love," Felicity had told her on the phone a year before. She'd sent a picture - of her on a beach, tucked in against a tall barrel chested man, bald and bearded, sporting a broken nose and a trail of tattoos on his bared arms.

"He looks lovely," Kay had said, sincerely.

He looked nothing like the medical practitioner he was and exactly like what he had been - a Royal Marine - but his smile and the one on Felicity's face said all that mattered.

"He's better than lovely," Felicity had said. "He doesn't flinch when I talk about work. Doesn't try to prove how tough he is because I wear a uniform. Do you know how rare that is?"

"Well," Kayleigh said, in the present, as they got to Felicity's car. "Charles would have to make do with just me."

Felicity laughed.