(Warning - this is also rather long) Gah. My brain is currently sitting on the bottom of my skull like some sort of sad beached whale. >>101 >>102 Milia and Dove, you both raise some very valid points. I am taking it as a huge compliment that you both think highly enough of my first ever fic project, that you are giving this carefully articulated and incisive crit. Thank you both so much. Milia, the framework I have for Sniper in this piece is of a man who teeters daily on the brink of deep depression, who tells himself that the isolation between himself and his peers is by choice, and who agonises over the rift between his parents (and past) and himself. And the professionalism and tenuous camaraderie of his daily job is all that is keeping him together. Right now I see him as hesitating about acting because he fears losing this family-in-combat, and because he's afraid that it would do no good. However, as you can see in >>99 he has learned that Heavy feels sympathy for Angel as well. He does not yet know that anyone but himself, Spy and Medic are aware of Angel's origin. As for Heavy, I see him as having been "drafted" at a young age (maybe 14-15?) from gulag to shtrafbat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtrafbat), and being deeply scarred with regards to obedience to superiors. Medic's canon militaristic demeanour can be triggering, and I see it as sparking a dimly remembered fear in Heavy. Heavy is a very intelligent man but not necessarily self-analytical, let alone about his PTSD. All that said, I'm sorry to lose you as a reader. I understand when a piece just hits the wrong note when read, and I'm sorry for that. Thank you for your kind words, though! I do appreciate them. Dove-The-Original, you are right in saying that the pieces I have written so far depict the classes as reacting rather than acting. Essentially I strove to set the scene with the interviews and the shifting POVs. Maelgwyn (>>98) is right about plot progression starting to happen. Up 'till this point, the classes haven't really talked to each other about Angel except in the most superficial way (I chose this as a reflection of manly closed-mouth-ness in 1968), but things will change now that Heavy and Sniper are starting to talk. All said and done? The loose plotting here can definitely be chalked up to my amateur writing. It's purely my fault that I haven't managed to flesh out the ideas quite as well as I'd like. :( Angel is basically a distorted reflection of the women used as 'comfort women' by the Japanese, and in the concentration camp brothels (Lagerbordell) in WW2. I'll be working harder on the next bits, I promise.