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theboredwritertm · 4 years

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Turn Into the Noise - Nixon

Summary: In 1942, a female soldier, Alice Crowley, joined the ranks of Easy Company at Camp Toccoa. Nixon tries to cope with his growing feelings for the woman throughout the war, but is forced to deal with her budding relationship with Spiers.

Warnings: brief mentions of assault, descriptions of a concentration camp, alcohol abuse.

A/N: This is part of a series I’ve been writing on and off for about...geez, maybe 4 or 5 years now. I had planned on waiting until I was finished writing all of the chapters to post them, since I wanted them read in a specific order (they’re written by character, rather than in chronological order, with each chapter being about the relationship between the chosen character and my OC). I realized I might never get a chance to finish it all the way I want, but I’ve always been happy with this chapter - it’s also the only one I’ve managed to finish. This is the first time I’ve posted any writing on tumblr, too! There are some jokes/references that will make more sense once the other chapters are posted.

Words: 16 820 (it’s a long one)

Pairing: Speirs x OFC, Nixon x OFC

***

I was three days in on a drunken sin

I didn’t much care how long I lived

But I swear I thought I dreamed her

She never asked me once about the wrong I did

- (The Work Song, Hozier)

7th May, 1945

Berchtesgaden, Germany _________________

They sat out on the terrace with bottles of expensive champagne, celebrating a victory that had been a long-time in the making, and after spending the better part of three years playing their own parts in achieving it, the spoils they now reaped were all the sweeter.

Nixon lay back on one of the chaise lounges, his arms resting behind his head as he took in the stunning views around them. On the next chaise over, Harry Welsh grinned as he chugged from his bottle of champagne, embracing the joy of the moment, thoroughly drunk. He glanced over at the man seated at the end of the lounge by his feet. Speirs had barely taken his eyes off Alice since Winters had announced the German army’s surrender. The lieutenant herself was staring out across the vast, mountainous landscape, deep in thought.

“You two set a date yet?” Harry asked them, hiccuping as he glanced between the pair. He thought of the girl waiting for him back home and set his bottle down on the table beside him. He hadn’t thought he could feel any happier than he already did, but recalling the glowing face of his beautiful fiancee the last time he had made love to her gave him a surge of joy he had forgotten was possible.

“Yeah, June 6th,” Alice deadpanned, turning back to them, glancing first at Nixon. He stared ahead with a grin, shaking his head.

Laughing more than the joke merited in his drunken state, Harry reached once more for his alcohol and sent the bottle crashing to the marble below. “Oops,” he said, laughing all the more.

From his position by the balustrade, Winters tried his best to throw the man a disapproving look, but his small, signature smile gave him away. This was one of the happiest days of their young lives – knowing that the long years of training and fighting – the pain they had endured, the friends they had lost – it was all somehow worth it.

Harry reached for the bottle in Speirs’s hand and the captain held it out of his reach. “Get your own.” He looked up as he felt the bottle pulled from his grip regardless, and watched his bride-to-be take a long drink of the golden liquid. She smirked as she drank, and tipped him wink, reveling in the smile that her small rebellion had managed to draw from him; his wild, brown eyes still filled with a lust they had yet to sate.

Though even the privates had managed to find time to bed the local women, fortune had never smiled on the two officers. They had either been too busy leading the men, planning and executing orders, or simply finding time somewhere in between for the most basic of needs, like eating, showering and sleeping. Not to mention keeping their relationship under tight wraps – fraternization was a punishable offence, and there was no question that either one of them, or both, would have been sent home if anything had gotten back to the colonel.

It hadn’t been too hard to hide – Lieutenant Crowley treated all the men the same, never showing favoritism, even when rank was involved. She had always held onto the belief that respect was something to be earned, not forcibly given, and her time at Toccoa with Captain Sobel had only strengthened that belief. She cared for every single one of the men she had served with – Speirs just happened to be the one she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

She frowned to herself now as she found her beverage depleted, upending the bottle just to be sure. Catching the original owner’s look of annoyance, she placed a hand on his shoulder and grinned.

“There’s plenty more,” she reassured him. Her fingers brushed against his neck briefly as she passed by and he smiled once more. “Anyone else while I’m up?” She looked to Winters, who shook his head.

“I- Um, me. Please,” Harry requested, but she shot him a look.

“I think you’ve had enough, Welshy.”

“What?” he attempted to argue.

She glanced down at the shattered remains of his last bottle. “You’ll thank me in the morning.”

“I don’t think I’ll be the one thanking you in the morning,” he chuckled to himself, seemingly proud of his little joke. He looked over at Speirs and the laughter died from his face as he caught the dark glint in the captain’s eyes. He had to be drunk to make a comment so suggestive. Hiccupping again, he looked back at Alice and found she wore an almost identical expression.

“I’m gonna let that one slide, given the circumstances,” she told him, and he seemed grateful for the gesture, knowing her reputation well, “But thank-you for proving my point.” She stopped by the last person in line. “Nix?”

He shielded his eyes and squinted up at her. “Mm?”

“You want anything?”

He caught the little crease that appeared between her brows as he stared at her, taking too long to answer.

“You know what? I think I’ll come take a look with you,” he smiled, getting to his feet. “You always did make volunteering for things look like fun.”

Speirs turned to shoot her a subtle look and Alice gave a reassuring little smile. He was worried. She didn’t blame him after what had happened the last time she and Lewis Nixon had found themselves alone together.

“Where we headin’, Crow?”

Alice turned to give her helper an odd look as they walked through the living room of Hitler’s favorite retreat. Nixon had never once called her by her company nickname. It was the only sign he had given that he was even remotely drunk.

“What?” he asked with a playful grin, but she just shook her head.

“Kitchen. I think I saw some bottles in there.”

“God, I wish I’d taken you to see Goering’s wine cellar.”

“Why’s that?”

“I could have used the extra pair of hands.”

She chuckled. “I never took you for the looting type.

“I wasn’t looting,” he replied, with a teasing frown, “I was liberating the bottles from their shelves.”

She threw him a disapproving look for his choice of words, and paused to survey the surrounding cabinets and the pantry at the rear. Most of it had been picked clean by the other soldiers as they had made themselves at home in the place; but the alcohol was making her hungry, and the effect of the beverage was hitting her much harder than usual for the same reason.

“You hungry?” she asked.

“Why? You gonna whip me something up?”

“Yeah, well now that the war’s over, I thought I’d better put myself back in my place.”

He laughed and watched her pull open a cupboard door.

“Goddammit. Beans! I’m sick to death of fucking beans!”

She slammed the cupboard door closed.

“You know, I heard someone say Hitler was a vegetarian,” Nixon told her.

“No shit?”

“Yeah. He didn’t smoke or drink, either.”

“Christ, no wonder he started a war. Too much time on his hands.”

He chuckled. “Explains how I keep so busy.”

While Alice continued her search, Nixon grabbed a few of the bottles that sat grouped on the counter. When he turned back, he found her leaning against the opposite counter looking thoughtful.

“Hey, Nix?”

His eyebrow quirked up as he approached her.

“Yeah?”

“Say you were to get a certain…invitation. In the mail.”

“Mm?” he teased, knowing exactly where she was going before she even asked. He leaned back on the counter beside her and watched with a small smile as she struggled to find the right way to ask.

“Would you come to the wedding?”

“Depends whose it is,” he joked, his smile widening to a grin when she rolled her eyes. “Sounds mighty mysterious to me.” Then she turned her gaze back to him and he felt the same uncomfortable flip in his stomach he had gotten the night he had landed himself in trouble with her. He had thought the feeling had gone away – but it was proving to be like a cancer; coming back just as it seemed to be cured. He caught her eyebrow twitch and realized she was still waiting for an answer. “Of course I would come.”

She smiled, looking almost relieved. “Good. That’s…that’s good. I’m glad.”

And he knew it wasn’t just about the wedding. It was her relief in knowing things were okay between them. He had been one of the first people to welcome her at Toccoa; the first to make her feel welcome. He had been the one stupid enough to put that friendship on the line, yet here she was making the effort to make things right.

“You might have some trouble during the ‘Speak now, or forever hold your peace’ part, though,” he joked, wondering just how much he actually meant it. “Are you sure you want me there?”

“No, I just thought I’d send out a bunch of invitations to people I don’t want there. You, Sobel, Dike…”

He let out a good laugh at that and she screwed up her face.

“God, it doesn’t feel right putting you on a list with those men.”

They smiled at each other, then her gaze shot to the doorway where Speirs was standing, and some of the humor died from her face. Every time he looked at her when she was in Lewis Nixon’s company, she felt as if she had been caught with her hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

“Get what you need?” he asked her, glancing briefly at Nixon.

“We were just on our way back.” She plucked a bottle of champagne from Nixon’s hand and tossed it to him. Even in his semi-drunken state, the captain managed to catch it – just. “I believe I owed you half a bottle.”

“This is a full bottle,” Speirs pointed out, with a smile Nixon found odd, but Alice had come to find endearing; it was just another of the man’s many quirks that she had grown to love.

“So just drink half,” she replied with a crooked grin.

Smiling to himself, his mind swallowed up with thoughts like crashing waves, Nixon suddenly realized why Speirs had come to check on them. He had always found it amusing how possessive the man became when Alice was around him – and it was only ever when she was around him; Nixon had never seen the captain act that way when she was around the other men of Easy Company. To him it almost suggested that there really was something dangerous between them. Maybe Speirs sensed some competition. But there really was no competition – Alice had made that very clear to him on that fateful night. He hated to think about what he had done to her, almost as much as he hated to think back to what he still considered to be the single worst week of his life. He had made it through D-Day, had shivered his way through the snowy forests of Bastogne; still, nothing compared to that one day back in Landsberg, when all the events of that week had culminated into one stupid decision that had nearly cost him the friendship of a good woman.

***

25th April ,1945

Heidelberg, Germany _________

“Hey, you’re back!”

Normally, hearing her voice and seeing that sly grin would have lifted his spirits; but as he stepped out of the building Winters had designated Battalion HQ, Nixon couldn’t even muster up a smile. She climbed the stairs, pausing on the step just below him to take a seat on the slanting concrete balustrade, arms folded across her chest.

“How was the jump?” she asked, her voice a little softer now as her piercing green eyes searched his, sensing his mood.

He was silent for a moment, then shook his head. She nodded, reading his answer loud and clear.

“You want coffee?”

He gave a soft snort and finally a small smile appeared. “Yeah. Coffee sounds good.” The words felt forced. He would have loved even more to get blind drunk and pass out in his bed, but just couldn’t find it in him to turn down a drink in her company.

Moments later, he was seated out the front of the building that was serving as the company supply store, staring at the surrounding ruins of bombed-out buildings. He heard the distinct voices of George Luz and Alice as they argued over something trivial, the dispute peppered with occasional bouts of laughter. When she finally returned, Alice was smiling and shaking her head, a steaming metal cup in each hand. She passed one to him and sat down beside him. Taking a sip, he glanced down at the contents as an odd taste hit his tongue.

“What’s in this?”

She glanced over, fighting back a smirk. “A pinch of love, a dash of devotion...”

“Ah, that’s why I didn’t recognize it. Two ingredients my wife’s never used.”

“I’ll pass on the recipe.”

He chuckled and met her gaze, holding it for a moment as all thoughts of the woman back home melted away.

“I made yours Irish,” she finally explained, “You look like hell, Nix. What happened?”

His smile fell away and he stared out at the rubble once more. He looked as if he had aged years, despite having only been in combat for several months; his once handsome face now pale and drawn, a stark contrast against his dark hair and brows. Alice recognized the signs of battle fatigue when she saw them, having witnessed it many times in the freezing cold Hell of Bastogne: the listlessness, the irritability, the vacant stares, and the dark circles around once playful eyes.

“Plane went down. I made it out with two other men. That’s it. Now, it’s up to me to write letters to all mothers of the men who didn’t make it off. Make it sound like their deaths were worth it, somehow.”

“Isn’t that their CO’s job?”

He simply shook his head. The CO hadn’t made it either.

“Shit.”

“Yeah. Pretty much. Oh, plus I’ve just been told I’ve been demoted, so there’s that.”

He took a long sip of his coffee, not caring that it scalded his throat on the way down, desperate to work the added alcohol into his system.

She had a pretty good idea why he had received such a harsh penalty, and suddenly felt guilty for adding the whiskey to his drink. “Shit, I’m sorry, Lew.”

He glanced over at her and managed a small smile. It was oddly refreshing to hear a woman cuss the way she did. He had become so accustomed to the ‘proper’ women his mother and father invited around for their dinner parties, and their high teas, and their little meetings for whichever new club or association they happened to have joined. The women who wore their hair in the latest styles, dressed in the finest clothes with their little matching purses and shoes. Women who gossiped about women who dressed the same way they did and went to the same meetings and events they did, but somehow managed to find themselves ostracized for one imagined faux pas or another. And then there was Katherine. He felt the bile rise in his throat as he thought of the woman he had married. Straight out of college, they had fallen into bed and then quickly into what they had believed was a loving relationship. Looking back, he wasn’t sure if love had ever been there to begin with.

“Really hasn’t been your week.”

“No,” he replied bitterly, “That it has not.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Alice had never been good at knowing the right thing to say, and though she held a lot of love for the man beside her, she couldn’t think of an appropriate way to voice it. It had taken her a long time to work out her feelings towards him, mistaking them at first for genuine adoration; she enjoyed his company, she cared about him immensely, and she knew if it came down to it, she would take a bullet for him – but then that went for every man in her company. The biggest difference, as she had come to find, was the attraction. Even now, sitting next to him, knowing what he had been through, knowing that he was married, she felt the urge to comfort him in a more physical way. She drove the thought from her mind.

It wasn’t until the following day, when Nixon received his long-expected ‘Dear John’ letter, that Alice witnessed him let loose an unbridled tirade of frustration. She had never seen such a raw display of emotion from the man, and the look of concern from his best friend – Major Winters – only drove home just how deep Nixon’s problems went.

It wasn’t long after that they bundled into their jeeps and troop carriers, and drove on to their next destination along the Rhine. Alice stood at the rear of her own vehicle, half-tuned in to the conversations going on between the men behind her, the other half of her focused on the car behind them that carried Winters, Nixon and Speirs. Speirs had offered her the seat next to him, but she had declined, opting to travel with the rest of the troops, where she had always felt most comfortable. Looking back at them now, she noticed Nixon’s gaze was unfocused, his expression blank. She glanced over at Speirs and he smiled at her. She returned the gesture as best she could and then turned away, running her fingers back through her hair with a sigh before replacing her helmet.

“I’m gonna find me a nice Jewish girl,” Liebgott was saying, “with great big, soft titties and a smile to die for, marry her, then I’m gonna buy a house. A big house with lots of bedrooms for all the little Liebgott’s we’re gonna be making. She oughta like that. Hey, lieutenant, it’s a shame you’re not Jewish.”

“Yeah, I’m missin’ out big time,” Alice joked absentmindedly, her brow still marked with a troubled frown. A few of the men chuckled, Liebgott included, but having known her since Camp Toccoa, he knew when something was awry.

“Hey, Al,” came Luz’s voice now, full of mischief, “Get this, right? Janovec here’s readin’ an article says the Germans are bad. Can you believe that?” He grinned at her expectantly, waiting for the witty retort she never failed to provide.

The lieutenant threw them a look of mock-concern. “Gee, Janovec, I think you oughta tell Eisenhower. You might be onto something there.”

Luz laughed and gave the private beside him and playful whack, but seated across from him, Liebgott still hadn’t lost his look of unease.

“Whatta you got planned for when you get back, lieutenant?” he asked her, hoping to distract her from whatever thoughts were bogging her down.

Her eyes flicked over to him and she considered the question. “You mean if I make it back.”

“That’s just Speirs talking,” Webster remarked with a grin. She looked to him, smirked, and cocked an eyebrow, before considering Liebgott’s question some more. Of course, she knew very well what she would be doing, but she wasn’t in a place to reveal that information just yet.

“You know me, Lieb, I never have a plan. I make it up as I go.”

He smiled at the reply, but others weren’t so satisfied with the response.

“You mean you’re not gonna marry– ”

“Who, Janovec?” she cut him off quickly, her expression suddenly severe. One look at her sharp eyes and the private swallowed the rest of the question and dropped his gaze.

“No one, ma’am.”

The men who knew her best exchanged looks, struggling to hold back smirks, and she looked around at them, her look of warning softening. She turned back to the jeep. Speirs was observing the surrounding landscape and Winters was reading through some papers with his usual look of steady focus, but Nixon had finally managed to shift his gaze to meet hers. It still held that vacant quality from earlier, but underneath that she could see the turmoil he was going through, and the contrast from his usual jovial self was painful to witness.

She found him later, in a rare moment of free time as the division settled into the town of Buchloe for the night, not far from their intended destination.

“You can always get another dog, Nix.”

He chuckled, but it was tinged with a hollow bitterness. Sitting beside him, allowing him a minute to gather his thoughts, Alice put a hand on the back of his neck and massaged gently – an instinctual gesture to comfort someone in pain. As she rolled her thumb in small circles, working her way into his tight tendons, Nixon dropped his head forward and hummed.

“This is the worst it’s gonna feel, the day you receive the news. It’ll get better from here. I promise.”

She spoke as if from experience, and since he knew she had never been married or divorced – as the intelligence officer, he was privy to a lot of information, especially when he sought it out directly – he wondered what pain she had gone through that could allow her to relate. Then he remembered: her baby brother. God, he couldn’t believe he had forgotten about that – he had even been the one to summon her to Winters’ office. He didn’t think he had ever admired her more than when he had read that letter from her mother; knowing that she had been sitting on that loss for such a long time without ever saying a word.

“Until I have to go back home to the bitch,” he replied now, pushing the thought from his mind.

He watched her stick two cigarettes in her mouth and light them.

“So, don’t go back,” she suggested, holding one of the smokes out to Speirs as he passed by on his way into the building behind them, where Winters had made himself at home. The captain took it as if he had been expecting it, then kept walking without saying a word. She held out the second one to the man beside her, but he shook his head. He had noticed the way her hand had fallen to his shoulder as the other man approached, reducing the gesture to something less intimate.

“Germany’s not so bad,” she went on, “You know, once you get used to the fascism.”

She felt his body vibrate with laughter and he turned to give her the first genuine smile she’d seen from him in a while.

“Yeah, you’re right. It is a pretty little place. I guess I could stay. But only if you stay with me.”

She met his gaze and the humor-disguised proposition hung awkwardly between them. His smile fell away, and for the first time she felt the true extent of the feelings that had been forming between them over the past two years. Just as she opened her mouth to reply, Speirs returned. She looked up at him. He gave the slightest jerk of his head and the lieutenant was on her feet.

“Well, duty calls,” she said, “Look after yourself, okay?”

Nixon didn’t answer, staring blankly ahead and only came out of his trance when she clapped him lightly on the shoulder. He looked up, gave a very unconvincing nod, and then watched her walk away with the man he knew she was in love with. What hurt more was knowing Speirs felt the same way about her.

28th April, 1945

Landsberg, Germany ____________

“Alright, two bucks.”

Alice watched as her captain tossed a couple of notes into the middle of the table. Frowning at his optimism, she attempted to sneak a peek at his cards and couldn’t help but laugh as he jerked them away and threw her a disapproving look.

“Are you in or what?” Speirs asked her, gesturing to the pot, “Or too busy cheating?”

“Christ,” she laughed at his harsh words, “Here.” She smacked two bills down and leaned back in her chair, taking a long drag of her cigarette. It was a cozy little setting, drinks served all around and a fire crackling merrily just behind them. It was the most comfortable they had been since they’d left Aldbourne, what felt like another lifetime ago. Somehow, out of all the countries they had been to, it was the homeland of their enemy that felt the most hospitable.

To her left, she watched as Nixon made to pour himself a new glass of his beloved Vat 69 only to find the bottle empty. To his left sat Carwood Lipton, then their final player, Harry Welsh. The men stared at the boozy captain, waiting for his bet. He sighed and tossed down his cards.

“I’m out.”

Whether he meant out of the game, or out of his favorite beverage, Alice wasn’t sure. Nixon rose noisily from his seat and looked around for another bottle, wandering into the adjoining room when he failed to locate one. Alice watched Speirs’s face turn stony at his fellow captain’s behavior. Unlike the three other men, he and Alice had opted for coffee on the off chance they were suddenly called back into combat. It seemed highly unlikely at this point, but it was in the man’s nature to be practical like that, and she had followed his example. He caught her gaze but didn’t say a word.

“Alright,” Lipton said, tossing in his own money, “I’ll call your two and raise you another two.”

“Geez, get a little alcohol into this guy and he takes no prisoners,” Alice joked, “Kinda like you, Ron.”

“Are we still talking about that?” Speirs replied.

She threw him a smirk and he stared back, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards.

Lipton smiled at the reference in that good-natured way of his, but the moment was interrupted as a loud clang sounded from next door. They turned their heads, but were quickly drawn back into the conversation, trying their best to ignore their friend’s frantic behavior as he continued his hunt for more alcohol.

“I can’t believe we’re not jumping into Berlin,” Harry mused, with a cigarette hanging from his mouth.

“No shit,” came Lipton’s reply.

Tuning out for a moment, Alice turned in her seat to check on Nixon, hearing a strained ‘Goddamn it’ as he crouched in front of Major Winters’ trunk. Her expression grew heavy with concern. They had all ignored his habit at first. They were in the middle of a war, witnessing and playing hand to horrific things on a daily basis – it seemed like a reasonable way to take the edge off the day. Then it became so that she rarely saw him without that familiar silver flask in his hand. More recently, after his third jump into occupied territory, the toll his addiction was taking on him had become all too obvious. As the battalion’s intelligence officer, it went without saying that he needed a clear mind to relay the important information and any new orders they were given; a single incorrect piece of information could mean the difference between life and death for hundreds of men.

“This war’s not about fighting anymore,” she heard Speirs saying, “It’s about who gets what.”

“Like finders keepers?” she said as she turned back, recalling the brazen way he had stripped almost every house of its valuables from the moment they had stepped into Germany.

He smiled and looked at her with the dangerous glint in his eye that the men seemed to find terrifying, but that she found alluring. “Yeah. Like finders keepers.”

Nixon appeared from the bedroom and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair, looking forlorn.

“Deal me out of the next hand,” he said before walking towards the front door. Alice stared after him, frowning, then lapsed into thought.

“What about your money?” Harry called after him, but the only reply he received was the sound of the door slamming as the captain stepped out into the cold, wet night. Harry sighed. “Are we waiting on him again?”

Lipton nodded, answering in the affirmative, when Alice was struck by a sudden recollection.

“Oh, shit!”

The three men looked at her, slightly taken aback by the outburst. They still hadn’t gotten used to the sound of a woman cursing, though Speirs knew he’d likely have a lifetime to do so.

“I just remembered something,” she told them, pushing back her seat and tossing her cards face-down on the table, “I’ll be back in a sec.”

“Now we’re waiting on her, too. Great,” Harry sighed, “Anyone else have somewhere they need to be?”

“Patience is a virtue, Harry,” they heard her call back as she moved down the hall towards the exit, and the two remaining lieutenants laughed. Speirs’ face was still, however, as he silently watched her exit the building.

It was pouring rain outside, and the sudden burst of cold brought back memories of the hell that was Bastogne. Alice paused at the top of the steps, allowing a moment to bring herself back to the present, then turned onto the street below. She caught sight of a familiar figure.

“Nix! Hey, Nix!” she called, in a voice that had the ability to reach across an active battlefield.

He turned towards her, drenched from head to toe, looking utterly lost.

“What the hell are you doing out here?” he asked her, catching the way she shivered. He strode over to her and led her over to an undercover area.

“I’ve got something for you,” she explained, voice raised to compete against the torrential weather.

“What do you- ” he began to ask. She gestured for him to follow, and they came to the building he knew she was staying in. The confused frown he had worn since she had first appeared on the street only deepened as they stepped into her room. In his drunken state, he was having trouble thinking of anything other than where he hoped this odd encounter was going. He glanced over at her bed, thoughtfully.

With a swipe of her hand, Alice shoved the discarded items of clothing and small stack of books off the top of her trunk, and opened the lid with a loud creak that brought Nixon back to reality. He heard her make a pleased sound and she got back to her feet.

“Here.” She held out a new bottle of his beloved drink. He just stared at it.

“How did you…?”

“I talked Winters into letting me take one. I thought something like this would happen one day.”

“Something like what?”

“That you’d run out.” She cocked an eyebrow and he couldn’t help but wonder just how badly he’d been behaving in the absence of his booze.

“You did that for me?”

“Well, more for the benefit of everyone else, really.”

He chuckled and stepped towards her, completely ignoring the bottle he had been so desperate to find.

“God, I think I love you.”

The smile seemed to melt from her face, replaced with confusion as he wrapped his arms around her waist and mashed his lips against hers. There was a split second of indecision where she almost considered giving in to her long-growing attraction – to risk the love of a good man for a moment of self-indulgence with another; then the odor of the alcohol and the stale smell of his sweat hit her and she was brought back to her senses, struggling to free herself from his grip.

But he wouldn’t let go.

It was only when her fist connected with his jaw and he was stumbling backwards that he realized what he had done. The look on her face, the mix of confusion, betrayal and regret, was something he had never forgotten. He looked down at her hand as she flexed her fingers and tested the pain in her knuckles. She was probably going to bruise. Rubbing the spot on his jaw, he thought that he probably would too, but he didn’t care. Nothing in that moment hurt more than knowing she might never look at him the same way ever again.

“Ron and I are engaged.”

The statement was a rude slap that shocked him awake better than a cold shower ever could have.

“When the hell did that happen?”

Trying her best to ignore the sharp edge in his voice, she said, “He asked a couple of days ago, and I-”

“And you said ‘yes’,” he finished for her, with a bitterness that made her blood boil. “So you’ve been engaged this whole time? Comforting me, telling me things are going to be okay, meanwhile you’ve promised yourself to that fucking lunatic?”

When he glanced up to meet her gaze, all resentment and anger fell away. He had never understood how the other men could fear this woman – she was always so quick to smile, easy to laugh and one of the most selfless people he had ever come across. But as she stood before him now, he saw not the warm and accepting Alice he had come to love, but Lieutenant Crowley of Easy Company; the cold, ruthless battlefield commander. And all at once he understood that fear.

“I’m sorry your wife’s divorcing you. I’m sorry you got demoted. And I’m sorry you lost all those men on your last jump. But if you ever lay your hands on me like that again, I will knock your fucking teeth out. Do you understand me?” She spoke in a hushed tone that only managed to intensify everything she said.

A flush crept into his cheeks as her words unlocked a deep shame that the alcohol had been doing well to keep contained. He swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded, croaking out, “Yeah, I got it.”

Then all at once the other Alice seemed to reappear. She glanced at his jaw, lifted her hand towards it, hesitated, and then rested it awkwardly on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Nix.”

And he knew it wasn’t just for the punch.

When they finally made it back to the poker game, walking in a heavy silence, their waiting buddies looked up. They were a miserable sight, drenched from head to toe, expressions downcast. Spotting the bottle in Nixon’s hand, completely missing the mood between the two in his own semi-inebriated state, Harry smiled.

“Hey, look at that! You found one!”

Nixon stared at him, before he realized what he was talking about.

“Oh, yeah. Pays to have friends, I guess.” He glanced over at Alice as they both returned to their seats, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. Lipton and Harry exchanged the briefest of looks, but said nothing.

As Alice moved to pick up her cards, Speirs spotted the bruises forming on her knuckles and glanced up to see the other captain rubbing gingerly at his jaw as he poured himself a fresh glass. Speirs tensed, but the second he moved to get up, Alice placed a hand on his thigh to still him. She didn’t look at him, but in the light of the fire he could see the mix of emotions glistening in her eyes.

“So, I hear congratulations are in order,” Nixon began, attempting to sound conversational, but failing to hide his bitterness. That seemed to do it for Lieutenant Crowley. She tossed her cards onto the table and pushed back her chair, caring little for the amount of attention she drew to herself in the process.

“You know what? I’m out. Keep the money. I really don’t care.”

Everyone but Nixon watched her leave, and when he felt their eyes burning into him, wanting some answers for her sudden change in temperament, he stared down into his glass.

Speirs waited for the slam of the front door, then folded his cards, stating casually, “I think I’m going to call this one, too.”

Harry sighed and downed the last of his drink. He checked his watch and saw it was well past midnight. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Might be the last decent night’s sleep we get.”

Lipton glanced from Nixon to Speirs, and caught his commanding officer throw the other captain a dark look as he got to his feet. Like most of the men of Easy Company, Lipton was well aware of the relationship that had formed between the CO and his first lieutenant; but as for her and Captain Nixon – Lipton had only ever seen the two talking and joking around since they had first met back in Toccoa, though it had always appeared the same as the friendship she shared with him and the other men. Catching the bruise as it now formed on the disgraced man’s cheek, Lipton fought the urge to go and check on her.

Nixon emptied his glass in one gulp, quickly setting to pour another, ignoring the scrapes of chairs as the others got up. He caught Harry’s gaze as the lieutenant grabbed his winnings, and watched the man force a smile.

“See you in the morning, Nix.”

Nixon stared down at the liquid in his cup as if deciding whether or not to drink it, and gave a sad, empty chuckle. “Yeah. Sure.” Then without any further hesitation, he drained the glass.

29th April, 1945

Landsberg, Germany ______________

He tried to find her the next morning, to at least catch sight of her, but she was either avoiding him, or keeping busy elsewhere. He was standing beside Winters, who had already twice questioned the dark bruise along his jawline, when he was caught off guard by the familiar face as Lieutenant Crowley approached them. Ignoring him completely, she stopped in front of the major.

“Sir, do you mind if I tag along on that patrol this morning?”

“You like volunteering for patrols, Al?”

She gave a light chuckle, though she didn’t like to think back on the one she’d led in Haguenau.

“Just feeling a little homesick. Thought a stroll through the woods might help.”

“Might not be a stroll,” Winters reminded her. Though it was unlikely they would come across any trouble, word had come down from battalion that there had been instances of German soldiers retreating into the forest and forming a kind of guerrilla resistance.

“Honestly, sir, I could use the distraction.”

Hearing those words, Nixon finally looked away from her as his stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch; a feeling he knew well – guilt.

“That’s fine. I’m sure the men would be glad to have you along.”

Offering a final smile, he gave a nod to dismiss her and turned his gaze immediately to the officer beside him once she had left.

“What happened, Nix?”

He took in the bruise on his friend’s cheek and pieced it together with the lieutenant’s unusually cold behavior towards him, disliking what it added up to.

“A misunderstanding,” Nixon replied with a sigh.

“Do I need to ask her?”

“What? Jesus, no. If you did, she’d tell you the same thing, anyway.”

“I need this resolved. She’s one of my best officers. We’ve come too far to let something personal cloud decisions that could get people killed.”

“It’s fine. I’ve got it under control, alright? And it’s not…it’s not personal.”

Winters stared at him, expression firm, eyes searching his face in that uncomfortable way that made him feel almost naked.

“Nix?”

He fought the urge to roll his eyes and looked up with a begrudging, “Yeah?”

“Stop lying to me.”

“So, can you or can you not teach me the best way to find a beehive?”

“Luz, I swear to God.”

Stepping through the trees of the forest on the outskirts of Landsberg, Alice felt herself smile for the first time since the incident the night before. She looked at the men around her: Luz, Perconte, Randleman, Powers, Christenson, Vest and O’Keefe, and felt herself relax as they made their way through their designated area.

Perconte scrunched up his face, “Whatta ya talkin’ about, a beehive?”

Luz just grinned, holding his lieutenant’s irritated look, then shook his head, “Never mind.”

“Say, Al,” Perconte went on, and she knew just from his tone that he was about to say something she wasn’t going to like, “I heard you got into it with Cap’n Nixon, last night.”

Luz whacked him on the arm to shut him up, but the gesture came too late. Perconte looked back at him, shrugging him off, and George just rolled his eyes. Turning back to see if he would receive an response, he found Lieutenant Crowley gazing at him in a way that made him stop in his tracks.

“You heard what?” she asked. Her voice was casual, but one look at her eyes and he knew better than to make the same mistake twice.

“Nothing,” came his nervous reply. He heard Luz give a chuckle as he passed by. “Shut up,” he told him, but it only made his friend laugh more.

“Why’d you want to come along, lieutenant?” Christenson asked now, caution to his tone after witnessing the exchange with Perconte. He had always found Alice to be quite amicable – it was Speirs that terrified him – but it had always made him uneasy that she seemed so comfortable in that man’s presence, even from the very beginning when the rumors about him had been most prevalent.

He recalled one incident in particular, back in the woods in Bastogne. He had been one of a handful of men who had been left behind to hold the line while the others moved out to take Foy. He had been sitting in his foxhole with Perconte and Sisk, listening to the story of the executed German prisoners for the first time, when the rumored killer himself had made an appearance. Obviously having heard the retelling on the infamous story, Speirs had offered them each a cigarette, which, alarmed, they had politely declined. Then up sauntered Lieutenant Crowley with a casual, “Mind if I bum one of those?” She had pulled one from the pack, pausing to let him light it for her before asking, “Going my way?” He had replied with an odd smile and a simple, “That I am,” and then the pair had walked off together, leaving the three soldiers gaping after them.

“Don’t you know? She loves to volunteer for patrols,” Bull replied now, through a mouthful of cigar.

Alice chuckled, thinking back to Winters’ similar response. “I had no idea that was a running joke with you guys.”

“Ain’t no joke,” Bull told her, “Only you’d be crazy enough to keep volunteerin’ for shit that’d get ya killed.”

“I dunno, this doesn’t seem so dangerous to me,” Shifty said in his gentle Southern drawl, surveying the quiet forest around them.

“Exactly,” Alice nodded, “Shifty the sharp one, as always.”

“Kinda reminds me of Bastogne,” Perconte interjected with a frown, glancing around at the others, “Doesn’t it remind you of Bastogne?”

“Yeah, now that you mention it,” Luz replied, “Except of course there’s no snow, we got warm grub in our bellies, and the trees aren’t fucking exploding from kraut artillery. But yeah, Frank, other than that, it’s a lot like Bastogne.”

The others grinned, but as usual the sarcasm went over Perconte’s head.

“Right?” he agreed.

“Bull, smack him for me, will you?” Luz said. “Thank you.”

They had a good chuckle as Randleman clouted the soldier in the back of his helmet, then continued on in a comfortable silence. Alice fell into step next to Luz, feeling the weight of her uncertainty gradually falling away. She had been in desperate need of a distraction, between dodging an apologetic Nixon, and a concerned Speirs. She almost felt like she was a sergeant again; back amongst the men without the worry of managing an entire company. It was the breather she had needed, and it was only then that she realized she had been spending too much time among the fellow officers. She hated that feeling of isolation from the rest of the men.

“How ya been, Al? You doin’ okay?” Luz asked her, in a voice low enough that the other men wouldn’t hear. As she considered her answer, she flexed her fingers, testing the damage from the night before.

“Yeah,” she assured him, “Gettin’ there.”

He smiled and clapped her on the back, stepping passed her as they continued on. Alice lapsed into thought, keeping her ears pricked for any unusual sounds, but the further she walked, the more she seemed to notice that something wasn’t right. She glanced to Shifty, who had taken point, and caught his eye, noting the crease that formed in his brow.

“George,” she called in a hoarse whisper, signaling for them to stop. Luz turned back to look at her, a frown crossing his face when he caught her expression.

“What is it?” Christenson asked.

“It’s quiet,” Shifty answered for her.

“Yeah, cause Perconte stopped yammerin’,” said Luz.

“Hey, Luz, you know what- ” Perconte began, but was quickly cut off.

“Shut it, you two,” their lieutenant ordered, taking a few steps forward. All around them, the forest was still. Not so much as a birdcall cut through the unnatural silence. She had only ever seen something like this once before, back when a fire had broken out a few hundred miles from her home. The mere smell of the smoke had driven all surrounding wildlife to safer ground. Testing the air now, she caught a different scent. “You guys smell that?”

“Again, Frank,” Luz joked, but Alice held up a hand to shut him up. The humor fell away from his face and he sniffed the air. There was a bad odor, now that she mentioned it. He hadn’t noticed it much before, happy to simply be among friends on a relatively safe patrol for once. Plus, they’d experienced their fair share of bad smells throughout the campaign; body odor, vomit, excrement – both animal and human – blood, spoiled food and the ever-present smoke as buildings went up in flames. But this one hit closer to home. This one they knew all too well.

Bull stepped forward. “Smells like–”

“Death,” Alice finished for him.

It was then that she spotted the thin tendrils of smoke wafting through the tree line up ahead. Without a word, she took off towards it. The men quickly followed.

They stepped out of the forest and spotted the source of the smell and the smoke. At first, they were unable to comprehend what they were looking at. One by one they looked to Lieutenant Crowley for orders, but for the first time she appeared just as lost as they were.

“Frank,” she said, “How’s your ass feeling?”

Perconte looked over at her with a frown. “My ass?”

“Reckon you can make it back to base?”

Realizing what she was saying, he nodded, but she didn’t take her eyes off the barbed wire.

“Yeah. I can manage.”

“Get Speirs,” she ordered, her mind going instantly to the person she trusted most in her moment of uncertainty. He would know what to do, she told herself. Perconte turned to move, slinging his rifle across his back when she said, “No, wait. Get Winters. Just get an officer. Any officer. And medics. I think we’re going to need ‘em.”

“You are an officer,” he said stupidly, as if she had somehow forgotten, but she just shook her head.

“I think we’re going to need someone higher up for this.” Her mind whirred as she considered someone who might at least have some insight into what they had found. “And bring Captain Nixon.”

When they first pulled into view of the camp, Nixon spotted Alice beside Sergeant Randleman. Easily one of the biggest, toughest men in the company, Bull was now crouched on the ground with a broken look on his face. The lieutenant was speaking softly to him, resting a comforting hand on his shoulder, trying hard to hold herself together in the process. Each member of the small patrol held the same expression, as if it had become their new squad insignia; a telling mark of their recent discovery.

Hearing the crunch of tires on gravel, Alice looked up with a blank kind of confusion. As the officers jumped out of the jeep, Winters came towards her first. Nixon began to do the same, but faltered for a moment until she met his gaze for the first time that day.

“Lieutenant Crowley?” Winters said gently, as she stared off, then when she didn’t answer, “Al?”

She looked at him and he caught the lost look behind the eyes that were usually so confident and focused.

“Sir?” she blinked. He stared at her a moment before she realized what he wanted, but at first she struggled to find the words. “Uh, we were travelling north through the forest, Shifty on point. The smell hit us first. Then we followed the smoke. I had Luz, Christenson, and Vest scout the perimeter while Powers and Randleman did a sweep of the surrounding woods. I remained on watch with O’Keefe at the front gate. We attempted to make contact with the, the people, the, uh, prisoners. None of them speak any English. We found no guards, no enemy soldiers. I have no idea how long these people have been alone for, sir. As far as I can tell, they’ve been without food and water for a while.”

“The fires are fresh,” Speirs noted, looking up at the rising smoke as he stepped up beside her, and she nodded, feeling a little better with him by her side. “Guards can’t be long gone.”

“That’s fine,” Winters told her. Then, sensing her distress at her inability to find some way to help the people behind the wire, added softly, “You did good, Al.”

“You haven’t heard of this sort of thing back at headquarters, Captain Nixon?” Alice asked, turning to the other officer.

He didn’t respond for a moment, not used to being addressed by her in such formal manner. “Uh, no. Nothing like this.” He couldn’t help but stare, completely thrown by her behavior. He had only ever seen her like this once before; back in Haguenau, the morning after she had lost a man on patrol. She had blamed herself his death, somehow concluding that it was a reflection of her abilities as an officer. Even now she almost looked as though it was somehow her fault that the people behind the fences had met such a horrific fate, as if she could have prevented it from happening had she done something differently.

“I didn’t have any way to get it open. I just thought…”

It was the first time they had seen her at a loss for what to do. Winters nodded, understanding, and they turned to look back at the dozens of emaciated figures. Behind them, more men from Easy climbed off of a truck, each of them coming to a halt the moment they caught sight of the living skeletons, a few of them covering their noses as the smell washed over them.

Acquiring bolt-cutters from the truck, Christenson stepped forward and opened the perimeter gate. Alice and Winters stepped through, then exchanged an uncertain look.

“Open it up,” Winters ordered.

As Christenson cut the chain on the final gate, urging the starving prisoners away from the entrance with some help from Perconte, Alice felt someone step up beside her. She looked at Nixon, then turned to the group of medics behind her, ushering them in first to evaluate the condition of the men in the filthy, striped clothing.

“Do you speak any German?” Winters asked Christenson, but the man shook his head. He turned to Alice and she did the same.

“Is Liebgott with you?” she asked him, “I’ll go find Liebgott.”

She moved quickly, glad to finally be of use again, creating as much distance as she could between herself and the camp, finding it difficult to breathe. She paused for a second, took a deep breath, and then pushed through the group of Easy company men who were filtering in, passing Speirs along the way. He paused to say something to her, but she barely seemed to notice him.

“Liebgott?”

“Yeah?” came a voice from the back group. She spotted him holding the perimeter with a couple of others.

She jerked her head for him to follow her, her expression saying enough.

“What the hell is this place?” he asked her, another one to note the worrying change in her usually self-assured demeanor. After spotting the telltale patches on the prisoners’ chests, Speirs had been quick to place Liebgott on the perimeter to create some distance between him and the camp. The Jewish-born soldier hadn’t questioned it; he hadn’t seen much of what they had found, but with the smell coming off it he was only happy to oblige.

“That’s what you’re going to find out for us,” Alice replied, fighting to hold back the bile in her throat as the breeze blew the rancid smell of decay into their faces.

“Alright, boys,” she heard Lipton instructing as they walked passed, “These people need care. Give them water, any rations you might have. Grab some blankets.”

Hearing the clear, logical orders, Lieutenant Crowley seemed to snap out of her daze, walking with more purpose as she led the translator back to Major Winters.

She stood beside him, with Nixon to her left, and Speirs behind her as Liebgott questioned the healthiest of the men – and considering the condition of some of the others, that really wasn’t saying much. His clothes were filthy, draped over his emaciated frame. His skin had a waxy, yellow pallor to it as it stretched across his bones, and his eyes were two sunken pits. The stench coming off of him was not unlike that of the camp itself.

The guards had left that morning, he told them, running from an enemy that they knew was closing in. In a last ditch effort to hide their atrocities, they had shot as many prisoners as they could, before burning down a few of the huts with the men still inside. Any prisoners who had tried to stop them had also been shot. Without time to destroy all of the evidence, and running short on ammunition, they had locked those remaining inside and left them to die of starvation and disease that many were already well on the way to succumbing to.

Winters listened carefully, then asked the most pressing question: how was it that these men had come to find themselves treated with such cruelty? There was no reason in his mind that could compel men to treat fellow human beings with such brutality, but perhaps the minds of the Germans worked differently. He recalled the treatment of the women back in Eindhoven who had been accused of sleeping with German soldiers; the way they had screamed and begged as they were beaten on the streets, their shaved heads still bleeding from the townspeople’s vicious conduct. Humans always found a way to justify their violence.

“Can you ask him what kind of camp this is? Why are they here?”

Liebgott relayed the question and they waited, watching the gaunt man consider his words before he replied.

“He says it’s a work camp. There was a word he used, but I’m not familiar. ‘Unwanted’, maybe?”

“Criminals?” Winters guessed.

Liebgott tried that, but the prisoner frowned at him, clearly offended, and gave a very clear ‘no’.

“Doctors, musicians,” Liebgott translated, “Tailors, clerks, farmers, intellectuals.” He shook his head, not quite understanding how these things related to their imprisonment. Then the man spoke a word that resonated deeply with the soldier. He asked him again, just to be sure, and the man nodded. Like Speirs, he too had noticed the stars stitched onto their soiled clothes as he first entered the camp, but hadn’t made any correlation between the symbol and the men’s incarceration. It was beyond his reasoning that something as simple someone’s religious faith could have them wind up in conditions like this.

Winters stared, waiting for the reply.

“They’re Jews,” Liebgott said. The prisoner continued on, then seemed to become deeply distressed, gesturing up the road, voice breaking with emotion as tears welled in his eyes.

“Liebgott?” Nixon asked, brows knitting together as the prisoner began to cry.

“The women’s camp is up the road.”

Alice broke from the circle then, hands on hips, overcome and finding it difficult to breathe. It wasn’t just the smell; it was knowing that no matter how hard they had fought, they hadn’t been able to stop the suffering of these people. Maybe if they had made it sooner… She walked in a daze towards the front gates and came to a stop when she felt it was far enough. Taking a few deep, even breaths, she gazed down the road and considered her next move. A hand found her shoulder and she jumped.

“You’re not going,” Speirs said evenly, reading her mind. Though he somehow managed to maintain his usual stoic expression, she could see just from his eyes how much he had been affected, too.

“They’re out there, just like these people were. They’re locked up in there, waiting for help to come.”

“You’re not going,” he repeated in the same tone. “They’ve got someone on the radio to send another company over there. You don’t need to see that.”

Her breath became uneven again and she asked with a tight voice, “Ron…what if there’s children?”

He considered the horrific possibility, looking away from her and into the forest, then realized the more likely truth. He sighed as he considered whether or not to voice his thoughts. “I don’t think there would be.”

It took her a moment to process his response, and when she realized what it meant – how the men in this camp had barely managed to survive – she gave a quick nod and took a few steps further out with her head bowed. She came to rest beside the troop truck and in a moment of violent release, drove her fist into the side of it. She felt the already-bruised skin split, but didn’t care. The pain grounded her. She looked at the smear of blood she had left on the vehicle, then turned stare out into the forest for a moment. Speirs watched her take a deep breath and turn back, walking with purpose, her expression suddenly focused and determined.

“Stop,” he said, blocking her path. She watched him with a curious frown as he patted down a number of his pockets, finally coming across the object he was after. He took her hand gently in his own and wrapped it in the small bandage he had kept from his field kit. “I’m not having you catch something in there,” he frowned, clearly disapproving of her sudden outburst. “And you need to give that fist a break.”

She glanced up at him, finding an unusual softness to his usually sharp eyes. “That’s why God gave me two, Ron.”

He threw her a look of warning, but that too had a strange gentleness to it. It was the same way he had been looking at her that morning, as they’d briefed the men about the patrol. That presumption of vulnerability from a man who had once witnessed her beat a man to a bloody pulp – who had seen her take out a kraut-infested building on her own with a gunshot wound to the arm – had quickly begun to drive her insane.

He followed her back through the gates. The rest of Easy Company had fanned out, helping whoever they could and exploring the rest of the camp, which stretched out much further than they had first imagined.

Seeing more prisoners pouring out of the surrounding huts, Alice turned to Speirs. “What are we going to do with all of them? We can’t leave them here.”

“Where are we going to take them?” he replied, as if that were the better question, his face drawn as they passed shriveled corpses by the roadside. “I don’t even know if they’d survive the trip.”

“Not back to the town. For all we know, they’re the ones who put them here.”

He nodded. “Sink’s on his way with the regimental surgeon. They’ll figure it out. For now, we do what we can.”

They came to a stop behind Captain Nixon and Major Winters, and stared up at the looming train cart as the door was pulled back. The stench hit them immediately. Bodies were stacked inside, each in various stages of decomposition, some with their mouths open, frozen in their final death rattles.

Alice turned away, covering her nose and mouth with the back of her hand. She spotted Bull and Luz coming out of one of the huts looking troubled, and moved to approach them. Catching her questioning look, they shook their heads, but she misread the gesture.

“More dead?” she asked, voice solemn.

“Some are,” Bull replied in a similar manner, “Most o’ them are alive. We need to get some more doctors out here.”

“They’re on their way.”

“Christ, what the hell is this place, Al?” Luz asked, and together they looked around, taking in the horror they had stumbled upon.

“This?” Alice replied, barely able to comprehend it herself, “This is why we fight.”

“Winters wants us to find some food,” Nixon relayed to the two officers in front of him. He looked like hell. He had made it halfway through the bottle of Vat 69 Alice had given him, before passing out on his bed, waking up that morning in a puddle of his own piss. He had accepted it as his lowest point. But now, seeing the starving, dying men imprisoned in the Nazi work camp, the piles of corpses scattered around the yard, his own problems had quickly been thrown into perspective. He felt a deep shame work its way inside of him, and as he glanced between Captain Speirs and Lieutenant Crowley that feeling of self-loathing only intensified.

“We don’t have a lot of rations,” Speirs thought aloud.

“We’re going to have to loot the townsfolk. There you go, Ron. Something you’re familiar with,” Alice joked absently, retaining her solemn expression.

His mouth twitched in a grim smile, “What did we have there? A bakery?”

“Yeah, a couple of cafes, too, I think. Maybe a general store. Want me to tell the men?”

Speirs glanced up, biting his lip in thought and gave a nod.

“Tell Winters we’re on it,” Alice said to Nixon, and he, too, gave a nod of approval.

On the orders of Lieutenant Crowley, second platoon returned to the town of Landsberg and took any food they could find, most of it coming from the storerooms of German businesses. Ignoring the complaints of the owners, who had somehow managed to go about life as usual while innocent men and women were dying just outside their gates, the soldiers obeyed her one rule; no unwarranted bloodshed. But that didn’t mean things didn’t, at times, get violent. Still haunted by the smell and the sights of the camp, the soldiers took out their disgust on the German villagers.

By the time they made it back to the camp and began handing out the food to the crowd of desperate prisoners, Colonel Sink had arrived with the regimental surgeon, Major Louis Kent.

“We need to stop giving these men food,” Major Kent explained to them, “These men are starving. If we give them too much, too fast, they will eat themselves to death. Also, we need to keep them in the camp until we can find a place for them in town.”

“You want us to lock these people back up?” Nixon asked.

“We’ve got no choice,” Sink assured him, not liking the idea any more than they did.

“Otherwise they might scatter,” the surgeon added, “We need to keep them centralized so we can supervise their food intake and medical treatment. So, until we find some place better…”

“Lieutenant Crowley!” Winters called, keeping it formal in front of the colonel, but Sink was quickly dragged away to a radio call.

Alice glanced over from where she was supervising the distribution of the food with Lieutenant Welsh, and made her way over.

“We need to put them back inside until we find a better place for them,” Winters explained.

She narrowed her eyes, as if unsure that she had heard right.

“Al, we’re gonna need to lock them back up,” Nixon told her.

“Come again? You want us to put them back in there? With the dead?” she asked, the emotional toll of the day growing evident by the edge in her voice, “These people think they’ve just been liberated.”

“They have been liberated,” Winters assured her.

She nodded, “A little hard to tell someone that while they’re looking at you from behind a barbed-wire fence.”

The two men dropped their gazes.

“We need to get this done,” Winters said softly.

“Who’s gonna tell ‘em?”

He looked back at her and she already knew the answer. Her hand moved to her face as she rubbed her eyes and drew in a steady breath. She sighed, willing this nightmare to be over; for the prisoners, for the soldiers, and for herself.

“Alright. Christ. Liebgott!” Spotting the soldier among the prisoners, she waved him over for the second time that day.

“You want me to what?” he said, after she had relayed the orders. “I can’t tell them that.”

“You have to, Joe,” Winters replied.

There was a quiet moment when the guilt of those instructions hung heavily on all of them, and Alice found herself wishing she could speak the language, if only to relieve Joe of the painful task. This one hit too close to home for him, they knew. Just as she was considered having Webster carry it out instead, Liebgott finally answered, “Yes, sir.”

Alice walked with him and stood by the back of the truck as he climbed up and spoke the dreaded words. The relief and happiness drained from the faces of the starving men as they stared up at him. All at once they began to panic and, just as Major Kent had predicted, the prisoners made an attempt to scatter; after their fleeting moment of freedom, they were once again under someone else’s control. The men of Easy herded them back through the gates as gently as they possibly could, sending the crying, begging men back to face the bloated, fly-blown faces of their friends and loved ones who hadn’t made it. The mood was grim as they watched the tortured souls milling around the fence in a desperate frenzy, their frightened moans stirring some of the most battle-hardened men to their own silent tears.

Standing in a daze, the day’s events weighing on his mind, Nixon looked back at Liebgott. He watched as Alice climbed up beside him in the truck and put an arm around his shoulders, pulling him to her as his body began to shake with silent sobs. She didn’t seem to notice the glistening streaks that fell along her own face.

That evening, after getting a head start on his drinking for the night, Nixon found Winters in his office going over papers and constructing his report of the day’s events. The captain looked pale and lacking in decent sleep as he looked through the liquor cabinet to his friend’s left, attempting to read the foreign labels on the unfamiliar bottles.

“Thought you weren’t drinking the local,” Winters commented, pausing from his work.

“I’m just…browsing.”

Winters threw him an unconvinced look, then went on, “I heard from Division. Been finding camps like this all over the place. Seems the Russians liberated one a lot worse.”

“Worse?” Nixon narrowed his eyes. He couldn’t imagine anything worse than what they had witnessed behind those barbed-wire fences.

“Yeah,” the major sighed, weary at the thought, “Apparently. Ten times as big. Execution chambers. Ovens.”

Nixon cocked his head and waited for him to elaborate on the last part.

“For cremating all the bodies.”

“Jesus,” Nixon said, at a loss for any other words to express the disgust that sat like a heavy stone in the pit of his stomach.

Winters nodded. As he spoke the words, he almost understood why his friend drank as much as he did; it was enough to make any man turn to alcohol. Almost any man. Winters preferred to use those thoughts as a means of keeping sober.

“Locals claim they never heard of the camp,” Nixon told him, “They say we exaggerate.”

He recalled the trip back into the village to collect food for the prisoners. Speirs had been right to send Alice to lead the mission; she was just the right balance of commanding and compassionate, and when it came time to forcibly remove the food from the citizens, she had maintained a surprising level of civility. He had even seen her break up a few violent confrontations started by the traumatized men of her platoon, despite her own obvious desire to lay into the people who had allowed such suffering to go on right under their noses.

“Well, they’re gonna have a hell of an education tomorrow,” Winters said, looking somewhat pleased by the turn of events, sharing the attitude of the other soldiers of Easy in terms of the civilians. “General Taylor declared martial law about an hour ago. Ordered every able-bodied German in town aged fourteen to eighty to start burying the bodies, and they’ll begin tomorrow. Tenth armored are going to supervise clean-up.”

“And what about us?”

Glancing up at his friend, Winters couldn’t help but feel pity for the man. Usually Nixon would be the one telling him these things; but that was before he had been demoted. Now he was out of the loop and, it seemed, simply out of luck.

“We head for Thalem, tomorrow. Twelve-hundred hours.”

Nixon nodded, and another thought came to him. He considered the best way to word it without sounding suspicious, so instead of asking after the person directly, went for the next best thing – the less obvious thing.

“You seen Speirs?”

When Winters looked over at him again, he realized he hadn’t been as subtle as he had thought in his semi-intoxicated state.

“I think he’s with Al. Why? You need to talk to him?”

Nixon chuckled, aware that Winters was only teasing now, though the major’s expression remained stern. He recalled her confession from the night before, the one bit of information he was certain only he was privy to, and in a burst of alcohol-fueled impulsivity, said to the major, “You know they’re together, right?”

Winters went back to his papers, answering casually, “I’m aware.”

“You know that they’re engaged?”

Hoping to catch him off-guard with this bit of information, too drunk to care that it could get both officers in question booted out of the company, he was surprised again to see the man nod.

“Yeah, Ron told me this morning. It’s not impacting their performance on the field. I don’t have any issue with it. Plus, I think it’s a good match.”

“You do, huh?” He wondered what had compelled the man to inform Winters of the pending union, then recalled his thoughtless offer of ‘congratulations’ the night before. So, Speirs had thought he would be so petty as to try and get them reprimanded out of pure jealousy. Maybe he was right. After all, he was certain that Alice hadn’t shared the secret with him out of faith in his character. It had almost sounded liked she was trying to remind herself why she couldn’t give in to whatever urge she had been feeling. He had felt it in the kiss; a moment of indecision when she had started to kiss him back. He had gone to bed with that thought still playing in his mind, even with the dull ache of his bruised jaw reminding him what a stupid idea it would be to pursue it any further.

Nixon stared down at the floor, focusing on the frayed edges of the rug as he found himself caught off guard again. Realizing the risk he had just taken in divulging a secret that wasn’t his, he considered the outcome had he not been speaking to such a reasonable and considerate superior officer. On one hand, Speirs could have been transferred, even kicked out, losing Easy Company the best CO it’d had since Winters, and leaving a gap in Alice’s life for Nixon to try and edge his way into. On the other hand, they could have lost Alice, the next best officer they had; a woman who had worked hard to prove herself good enough for the paratroopers, and one who had not once hesitated in the battlefield to protect her fellow comrades, even when it meant putting her own life on the line. Still, with her gone, he would have had one less distraction, one less reason to want to drink himself into a stupor every day.

The sheer selfishness of those drunken truths made him sick to the stomach, and he left to find something to sober himself up; hoping a cup of coffee and a conversation with the lieutenant herself would do the trick.

He ran into Speirs as he stepped outside holding two empty canteen mugs. Though there were plenty of fine china cups inside the house, he knew Alice hated them after once witnessing her being served coffee in one. She had lifted the delicate item awkwardly between her calloused fingers and joked, “If you see my pinky sticking out, do me a favor and cut it off.”

Ever observant, Speirs glanced down at the two aluminum items then back up to meet his gaze.

“For Winters and I,” Nixon lied, annoyed that he felt he even had to explain himself.

Speirs gave a nod, but the glint in his eye told Nixon that he had caught the fib. As the demoted officer moved down the stairs, Speirs called, “I take mine black, no sugar.”

Nixon looked up in time to catch his disconcerting smirk, and muttered some colorful words as he trudged away.

He hadn’t expected to catch Alice in her room, since she wasn’t one to sit around in once place for too long, so when he ducked his head in to check, he didn’t notice her straight away. She was seated on the floor on the opposite side of the bed, her back resting up against the frame. For a second he thought that he had caught her at a vulnerable moment, but when she turned her head, catching the scent of the hot coffee, she offered him a gentle though somewhat unsure smile. He gestured with one of the cups, hoping it made a good enough excuse for his presence, and she nodded for him to come in.

Stopping in front of her, he passed her one of the mugs before considering the best place to sit. There was up on the bed beside her, but he felt like that was an invasion of her personal space – and for all he knew, she was already sharing that space with another man. He glanced around for a chair, feeling at a loss for appropriate options, when his gaze came to rest on Alice. Holding back an amused chuckle, a playful smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, she patted the ground beside her.

“I just…I wasn’t sure if-”

“Just take a fucking seat, will you,” she chuckled softly and shook her head. He laughed with her and did as she suggested. They sat in silence for a moment, coffees steaming between their hands as they replayed the events of the day, the silence quickening into a soundless grief.

“Do we need to talk about last night?” he finally asked her, forcing himself to look at her.

“Christ, that’s what you came here to talk about?” There was an edge of disbelief to her voice that he didn’t like. “I was about to ask you what you’d heard about the prisoners, what Sink’s plan is with them. How we’re going to help them. I think that’s a little more important than whatever happened last night, don’t you?”

Her sharp reasoning cut deeply as he was reminded yet again of his inadequacies as an officer. He had never felt the contrast between them more than he did at that moment: her, selfless and focused on the task at hand; him, selfish and increasingly preoccupied with his own personal dramas. He saw then why it would never work between them.

“Yeah, you’re right. As usual,” he said, attempting to make her smile again. It worked. He considered telling her about the larger camp Winters had spoken of, but saw the redness of her eyes and the distant look that often came into them as they sat there; images of the sick, dead and dying flashing back into her mind against her will. He doubted any of the soldiers from Easy would be getting any sleep tonight. Finally, he settled on one piece of information he thought couldn’t hurt.

“General Taylor’s ordered all able-bodied townsfolk to bury the dead tomorrow. Tenth armored is overseeing it.”

“Oh.”

He glanced at her and saw an almost disappointed look grace her features. “You don’t want to be there to see that,” he told her.

She recalled Speirs saying the same to her only hours earlier, and shook her head, but it wasn’t to agree with the statement. “I thought we should see it through.”

His thick eyebrows pulled down into a curious frown as he stared at her.

“I wanna be there to see their faces when they’re forced to confront the things they’ve allowed to go on,” she explained, “I wanna see that.”

It was a twisted confession, but one he found he could relate to. Not one of the citizens had believed him when he had asked them about the camp up the road, yet he was certain the death camp contained former residents of the town.

“We could go, if you want? Drive out in the morning? Honestly, I’m curious to see how they take it, too.”

She looked at him for a moment, then nodded.

“How the fuck could they let them just take them like that? I wonder if they knew what they were going to do to them…”

“I can’t imagine they had a lot of choice,” Nixon replied, “A lot of what the Gestapo and the SS get up to tends to be by force. Guns to heads, all that.”

“There’s always a choice.”

Nixon glanced over at her, somewhat skeptical considering the scenario. A dark look came over her and the battle-hardened face of Lieutenant Crowley was suddenly looking back at him. “If someone came up to me, put a gun to my head, and said ‘We’re taking Liebgott, and there’s nothing you can do about it’, I’d do my darndest to prove them wrong. Hell, even Sobel doesn’t deserve a fate like that.”

“No one does,” Nixon agreed. She ran her hand back through her hair, and he caught sight of the bandage. Knowing she hadn’t done nearly enough damage the night before to warrant a wrap, he asked, “What happened there?”

She sighed. “I punched a truck.”

His eyebrows shot up. “You punched a truck?”

“Yeah,” she sighed, sounding disappointed by her impulsive outburst, “I punched a truck.”

“What did the truck ever do to you?”

“It tried to kiss me.”

He laughed for what felt like the first time in days. “Okay, I deserved that.” They lapsed into a thoughtful silence, the incident weighing heavily on both their minds. “Did I ever actually apologize?”

“No, you didn’t,” she replied, her tone suggesting how uncomfortable the whole topic still made her. “In fact, I’m pretty sure I did.”

He chuckled again and nodded. “Yeah, that you did.”

“I guess I figured that, after that punch, you were well and truly sorry anyway.”

“Yeah, you’re not wrong.”

She turned to look at the mark she had left on his jaw, fingers moving up to touch the purple discoloration.

“How’s it feel?”

When her eyes flicked back to meet his and she saw the way he was looking at her, she withdrew her hand immediately.

“Fuck. Sorry.”

“For what? Christ, I’m the one with the problem, here. You’ve never done anything wrong by me. I mean that, Al. I mean, what the hell was I thinking?”

“You were drunk.”

“When am I not?”

He joined her as she chuckled, but his sounded empty, almost bitter. As they lapsed back into a more comfortable silence, a thought came back to Nixon.

“So, how’d he ask?”

“Hm? Oh. Um, he just said ‘We should get married after this’ and I said ‘Sure’.”

“You said ‘Sure’?”

She chuckled, a playful grin on her face, “Yeah, you know Ron and I, we’re not big on theatrics. We like to keep it simple.”

“Already with the ‘we’?”

“Yeah, well. It’s been ‘we’ for a long time. How are we going to take out those German guns? What are we going to do with these German prisoners? Not that we were always on the same page with that stuff.”

“Did you ever talk to him back in Toccoa?”

She smiled to herself as she thought back to those days. “I ran into him a few times. You know that story about me beating up that guy from Able?”

“Yeah?”

“He was there.”

Nixon’s eyebrows shot up again. “That actually happened?”

She gave him a sheepish look, forgetting that it had always been treated as a rumor.

“Who was it?”

Thinking back to D-Day, where she had watched the life drain from the young man’s eyes as he bled out under her hands, Alice just shook her head and said, “It doesn’t matter.”

“So, are you really going to marry him?” Nixon asked her after a moment.

The content smile that appeared on her lips told him all he needed to know, but she still replied, “Yeah, I am. I love that fucking lunatic.” She turned her gaze to him with a playful scowl and he recalled his words from the night before. Her expression turned a little more serious and she said softly, “You know it would never have worked between us, right?”

The comment hit him hard. It was something he had considered so many times before, something he had used to ground himself whenever he caught her in a rare moment of vulnerability and felt his stomach flip as he was hit with a rush of adoration for her.

The first time he had felt it was way back on D-Day. She had approached the officers on her way out of the town she had just helped secure for use as Battalion HQ. Her uniform and hands had been stained with someone else’s blood, some of it smeared across her forehead; her stripy, black paint mixing with sweat as it ran down her face. He had watched as she’d removed her helmet and swept her hand back through wet strands of pale-blonde hair, forgetting about the blood and leaving a crimson streak in her wake. She had just made it back from taking a third building, and the motley group of soldiers she had collected after landing still tagged along after her like a mother duck. He had listened to the respectful words of appreciation she had spoken to them before telling them to disband and track down their original units. Then she had stalked over to him with a grin, a greeting of ‘Hey, Nix!’, and a smack on the shoulder that had sent the first shock-wave of affection through his body.

“Why do you say that?” he finally asked, aware of the tightness in his voice.

“One of us wouldn’t have been happy.”

“Well, that’s the foundation of every good marriage, Al.”

She threw him a look and he realized she wasn’t kidding around.

“Besides, I usually feel pretty good when I’m with you.” The words slipped out before he could stop them and he waited for her reaction.

“We’re from very different worlds,” she began, acutely aware of the overriding melodrama in the words.

“You never read ‘Romeo and Juliet’?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, must have been exclusive to you Ivy Leaguers. Maybe Webster can give me the rundown.”

He laughed again and took a sip of his forgotten coffee, testing the temperature. It had cooled down enough to take a hearty gulp.

“I mean, can you imagine taking me to meet your parents? The esteemed Nixons of New York City meeting Alice Crowley of the Appalachian Valley. ‘Well, howdy, Mr and Mrs. Nixon, real fuckin’ nice to meet you. Your son’s a helluva guy. Sure was nice servin’ with him, especially when it came to those debriefin’s…”

Nixon snorted into his cup, sending up a spray of coffee that splashed them both.

“So, you see my point?” Alice grinned, as he cleaned himself up.

“You’re putting that accent on.”

“How could you tell?”

They gazed at each other, smirking at the playful exchange they had grown accustomed to when in each other’s’ company. Alice could see exactly where he was coming from. It didn’t matter that their backgrounds weren’t the same, or that his parents might not approve. There was enough there to lay the foundation for a genuinely happy relationship. But she would never be able to look past the alcoholism, and deep down she knew it was the seed that would take root in her heart and grow into a destructive bitterness that would eventually drive them apart. He was not the man she was supposed to be with, even if, in that moment, she felt a familiar nagging doubt in the back of her mind, urging her to reconsider.

She broke the gaze and finally took a sip of her warm coffee, frowning as an unfamiliar taste hit her tongue.

“What did you put in this? Not love and devotion, I’m assuming.”

“Didn’t think you’d drink it if I did,” he replied, grinning, “I made yours Irish. You look like hell, kid. What happened?”

***

June 6th, 1946

Boston, Massachusetts ____________

Lewis Nixon was not at all surprised by the amount of familiar faces inside the church, and suspected that every single member of Easy Company had made the effort to show up; they were not about to miss the union of two of the most feared and respected officers that the company had ever seen. He was certain he had even caught a glimpse of Colonel Sink as he’d found his seat in the pews. He had received his invitation about a month earlier, and could only shake his head when he saw the proposed date. True to her word, it was something only Alice Crowley would do.

Ronald Speirs stood at the altar, staring expectantly down the aisle, a look of marked determination on his handsome features. The captain looked particularly dashing in his dress uniform, but when the music started and the bride stepped in, the husband-to-be was completely forgotten. All eyes turned to Alice. She looked stunning in her white silk gown; her pale, blonde hair hung down her back in glossy waves against the snowy tulle of her veil, and her red lips brought out the healthy glow in her cheeks as she smiled. She looked so happy.

Escorting her down the aisle, Dick Winters looked the part of the proud father, having accepted her request for him to stand in Elliot Crowley’s place, since the man himself had been killed in an accident many years before. Viewing Winters as a sort of father-figure all throughout their European campaign – despite there being the smallest of age gaps between the two – he had been her first choice for the role. Exchanging a glance with him now, her grin grew wider and he gave her arm an affectionate squeeze. As they passed Lewis in the pews, they both turned their heads to look at him and he simply smiled back, ignoring the way his breath caught in his throat at the sight of Alice in her attire.

Somewhere nearby, Nixon heard Bill Guarnere whisper loudly, “Fuck me dead,” and caught the woman next to him jab him in the side with her elbow. Alice had to press her hand to her mouth to keep from laughing.

As they reached the altar, Dick gave her away with a nod to his old captain, who returned the gesture, unable to hide his joy at the sight of his beautiful bride.

When the time came for them to exchange their vows, Nixon couldn’t help but think back to his comment in Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest all those many months ago, pushing the thought from his mind as the priest began to speak.

“Repeat after me,” he said to Alice, “’I, Alice Martha Crowley.’”

“I, Alice Martha Crowley.”

“Take you, Ronald Charles Spiers.”

“Take you, Sparky.”

The church erupted in laughter as the groom stared at the woman before him, fighting back a grin. She stared right back, challenging him to keep a straight face as their friends called ‘Sparky!’ from the rows in front of them. Nixon joined in the merriment, but his own laughter felt hollow in his chest. Finally, after the laughter and catcalling had died down, they reached the part he had been dreading. The priest turned to the congregation as the happy couple stared into each other’s eyes, the entire world falling away around them in their moment of bliss.

“If anyone here has any reasons as to why these two individuals should not be joined in holy matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Nixon took a deep breath…then breathed it out in a heavy sigh. He caught Winters’ eyes flick over to him and suddenly felt ashamed of himself. Dick knew him better than any man or woman in that building. He had actually been considering speaking up – that thought had actually crossed his mind. Thankfully, he was not nearly drunk enough to act on it.

“I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

Over a hundred heads craned forward to witness the act they had long imagined happening in secret on the battlefront, and knowing this, Speirs did his best to add a touch of showmanship. With one hand behind her neck and the other on the small of her back, he leaned her back and kissed her with the same amount of passion he had the first time, back in Germany after their victory had been announced at the Eagle’s Nest. The scene was met with the kind of whooping and hollering only men of the US military could provide, and when Alice was lifted upright again, they cheered all the more for her pink, glowing face as tears of happiness rolled down her cheeks.

“You finally did it, huh?”

“Hey, Nix!”

Catching her alone after the ceremony, he allowed himself to be pulled into a friendly embrace. The other guests milled around outside the church; Speirs caught in the middle of a mini Dog Company reunion as his old squad mates shared their congratulations.

“I said I would, didn’t I?” Alice said, stepping back.

“You always were a woman of your word.”

He took her in from the closer proximity. He hadn’t thought she could look any more beautiful, but outside, under the churchyard’s big oak tree, with the sunlight dappled across her skin, she was a far cry from the sweat and dirt encrusted lieutenant he had seen fighting back in Europe.

“What?” she asked, and he realized he had been staring. Dropping his gaze, his eyes came to rest on the shape of her belly. The dress was doing a good job of covering it, but from this range the bump was undeniable. Catching his expression, Alice winced. “We got started a little early.”

“You’re pregnant?” he asked, his thick eyebrows jumping up.

“Yeah. We were hoping no one would notice,” she chuckled. “Especially the priest.”

“Wow. God, that’s…. I can’t imagine you as a mom.”

“What are you talking about? I raised a whole goddamn company of kids. I think I’ll be alright.”

He laughed. “Yeah, you might actually have something there.”

“So, what’s her name?”

“Who?” He looked up at her, momentarily confused by the question, distracted by the brightness of her eyes. “Oh, her. That’s Laura. She didn’t want to come.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Well, she found the invitation, asked how I knew you, and somehow ‘we served together in the airborne’ wasn’t a good enough answer.”

“So, what, she thinks I’m an old girlfriend or something?”

He chuckled and replied, “Yeah, I guess so.”

Alice gazed at him for a moment, sensing his apathetic mood.

“You don’t like her,” she realized.

“Well, I better. Since I’m marrying her.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. It was kind of sudden. Sorry I didn’t get the chance to return the invitation. But, hey, maybe you can make it to the next one.”

“Geez, Nix.”

She frowned at the joke and watched as he reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out his old, familiar flask. He unscrewed the cap and took a swig, and then, catching her concerned look, he held it out to her. She looked around and spotted Speirs still surrounded by his old comrades.

“I really shouldn’t,” she said, then with a mischievous smirk she grabbed the container and took a sip.

“This is a new low,” Nixon told her, “Giving whiskey to a pregnant lady.”

“Hey, I could have said no.” She passed him back the silver flask and gave a little sigh.

He watched her for a moment, and simply seeing the content look on her face ate away at his long-harbored bitterness. Finally, he smiled. “Congratulations, Al. I’m really glad you’re happy.”

She looked back at him and realized that he genuinely meant it. With a small smile of her own, she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

“Thanks for coming, Lew.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Even if that meant leaving Laura at home. Oh, that reminds me, I should probably go find her, before she remembers how much she doesn’t want to be here.”

Chuckling, Alice watched him go with the painful realization that she might never see him again. Her heart ached at the thought of not being able to enjoy the company of these men every day, as she had for the better part of the last three years, but seeing them all with their family, their girlfriends and their wives, she couldn’t help but feel excited for the next chapters of their lives. Glancing over at her new husband, she caught his gaze and smiled, looking forward to the next chapter of her own.

Lewis found his fiancée chatting with Dick and the man’s long-time love, Ethel. Laura smiled brightly as he approached, and he quickly put on his own most convincing smile in return. As he listened in to the conversation, his arm draped around his bride-to-be, he looked around at the crowd of guests, glancing back every now and then to assure his interest in what was being said, laughing when the conversation called for it. He finally spotted Alice talking to Bill Guarnere, George Luz, Donald Malarkey and Buck Compton, the bride holding their rapt attention as she smoked a cigarette and grinned as she retold some story from their time in Europe. Even in her wedding dress, made up like a Hollywood starlet, she still managed to stand like an officer addressing their troops, and that was how he decided he wanted to remember her; not as the blushing bride of Ronald Speirs, but as the woman who had managed to capture a town with only a handful of men on D-Day; the woman who always managed to have a smile just for him.

#band of brothers #bob #band of brothers fanfiction #lewis nixon #ronald speirs #hbo war

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howling-harpy · 4 years

Note

Outsider pov: since it's his birthday when I write this ask, Allen Vest? He must have stumbled upon some *backstage* situations delivering mail from the beginning.

Word count: 728

A/N: Ooh, interesting! I’ve never really thought of Vest before. I had to think about this one a bit, but eventually I got the ball rolling. Enjoy~

Allen Vest learned quickly that lingering by with the mail was a bad idea. Mail could be a wonderful thing, and it wasn’t like Vest read any of what wasn’t addressed to him, but he had figured out fast that not everyone’s mother wrote about the comings and goings of home twice a month with her sweet regards.

Back at Toccoa Vest hated a certain someone of the officer roster along with everyone else, and during evening hours joined in the chorus of venting about this and that stupid and over the top training exercise. Vest laughed along the others, but also lived with the quiet knowledge that he delivered Sobel his mail. Every week he received a large, brown envelope thick like a prayer pamphlet with the sender’s address in Chicago. Sobel always looked at those letters with a mixture of pain and resolution, and Vest couldn’t help but feel bad for the man.

At first Vest had been cheered up by the letters from girls. It was easy to tell from the cute envelopes and the beautiful cursive, and it was always endearing when the hometown girls wrote to their fellas, and funny when several girls wrote to the same fella. Sometimes Vest carried Sergeant Talbert an entire stack of pretty, scented letters and suffered the cocky smirk from a guy who got too much of a good thing.

But that too had its flipside that Vest learned to remove himself from.

Naturally he never noticed when an individual girl stopped writing, but the fella in question sure did. Then they would rush to Vest’s office and demand to know about their Mary, Betty, or Debbie, and every time it was just as awkward to pretend to look and then turn to tell him that there was nothing.

Sometimes he delivered the last letter to come. Once in England he took a letter to a replacement, and just when Vest was about to follow his own protocol and leave, Bill Guarnere struck up a conversation with him. Next to them, the replacement called Heffron tore his letter open and began to read, clearly excited.

Vest and Guarnere chatted away about gambling and betting about others gambling, when they were interrupted by a broken-hearted cry that made them both jump.

They turned to see Heffron with his face scrunched up, head bowed low and his arms hanging limply at his sides with the letter drooping in one hand.

“Babe?” Guarnere tried carefully.

“It’s… It’s Doris,” Heffron explained, sniffling. “She’s… There’s… someone else. She’s not gonna wait after all.”

“Oh, shit… Oh, no,” Guarnere said through his grimace, inching closer to his new buddy.

“She promised!” Heffron cried out and lifted the letter to read it again as if hoping he had somehow misunderstood the content. “She promised…” he added, brokenly.

“Oh, Babe. C’mere, buddy,” Guarnere sighed and caught Heffron into a hug, letting him rest his head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, buddy. It just wasn’t meant to be, ya know? But maybe that’s good because she’s a fickle liar and you really dodged a bullet there. You deserve better, Babe.”

He swayed them slowly from side to side when Heffron started to cry, and Vest made himself scarce.

By Germany Vest had learned to never let anyone read their letters at his office, to never question anyone of the package they were sending, to run supplies off the books through the post office, and to hoard stamps for himself.

He wondered if the discretion he had learned would come in handy on whatever job he’d get back at the States, but he hoped so. He had learned to keep his mouth shut about so many things, such as fellas sending letters to several girls at the same time, packages full of loot, packages delivering condoms or penicillin for intimate use (sometimes in the same delivery), and unpleasant legal documents that needed to be signed and sent back.

He never made a notion about their C.O. switching the mailing address from England to a small town in West Virginia, nor about Major Winters who showed up at his office sometimes several times in one day to ask for a letter from the States clearly never thinking himself as obviously lovesick as dozens of other fools.

Vest didn’t comment. He just delivered the mail.

#band of brothers #band of brothers fanfic #Vest #Lyselkatz #mun ficci

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eugenesmorphine · 4 years

Text

A Bet // Joe Toye Imagine

Taglist: @alienoresimagines

Ah, England. Where the Paratroopers of Easy Company had been stationed. The individuals had just gotten out of Camp Toccoa within Georgia and now moving on to the bigger pictures in the war. Now they were getting ready for the big jump into Normandy, France. Though, it was now the weekend. Meaning that all the men, and one woman, got a break from all the training and finally got some time to themselves.

Most of the company met up with a bar nearby to start the Saturday night. It was the beginning of an awesome night. Men like Toye, Luz, Liebgott and Randleman had been playing darts and gambling with one another. While the rest were pretty much just drinking and chatting with each other. And this is where Miss L/N walked in. Her black heels along with her army issued skirt making her stick out quickly among the small sea of men. She removed her Garrison cap and held it in her small hands. She pushed through the men, smiling and greeting some. But still focusing on her mission to find her closest friend fro within the company.

"Joey!" she called over to the group of men playing darts. Both of of the Joe Toye and Liebgott turned rather quickly towards the female. She laughed and pushed her way through. "Sorry Lieb, I'm here for Toye," she joked, patting Liebgott's shoulder as she walked over to the other Joe who smiled down at her. "Did I miss anything?" the female Paratrooper flattened out her jacket.

"No, nothing important. Except if you count Liebgott over here at being shitty at darts as missing something," Toye joked as eyeing Lieb. Who just shot him a glare while he sipped on his beer. Y/N giggled as she leaned against the bar, watching the men shoot darts. "What took you so long to get here? I had been waiting for you," Joe popped up an eyebrow, leaning besides the woman.

"Sorry Joe, I got caught up talking with Martin and Guarnere," she sighed, sipping out of the pint of beer that had just been placed in front of her. Joe felt a tinge of jealousy course through his veins as he heard the mention of the names. Though, Joe knew he couldn't act on his feelings or emotions. Y/N L/N wasn't his to get jealous over. They had just been best friends, which he wished they were more.

///

The duo didn't exactly like each other when Paratrooper training first began. They completely despised each other none the least. Always bickering while getting ready for PT or when doing group activities. It wasn't until one night when their bickering got them running up Currahee together. It was dead silent as both of them were just too angry at each other to speak. That was until the two Paratroopers-in-training reached the top. Panting slightly. Taking a break to breathe. In this time, Joe was cursing over Sobel's name. And, after a while, Y/N laughed. A smile coming to her lips as she placed a hand on his shoulder.

"You know Joseph Toye, when you aren't being an ass, you aren't all that bad," was all she said before running back down the mountain trail. Joe just stood there for a second, a small smirk on his lips. He shook his head and then took off behind her. And it was from there that the friendship between the two blossomed. Slowly, but in the end it became amazing. And now Joe Toye had fallen completely for the female Paratrooper. And what he didn't know, was that Y/N had fallen just as in love with him.

///

"So Joey, what is the plan tonight?" Y/N pulled Joe right out of his thoughts. A smile on her lips as she looked up at the man in front of her. Joe heard a song come on. The music that filled his ears was a song he knew oh so well. A smile coming to his lips as joy filled his body. He looked at Y/N with confidence.

"I think the plan is to have some fun. Wanna dance?" she smiled as he held a hand out for her. She took his hand and walked out onto the dance floor that was filled with other Paratroopers who had random Brits to dance with. The two danced to everything, and to everyone's surprise, Joe was one hell of a dancer. Spinning Miss Y/N around, dipping her, they moved perfectly in sync.

"When do you think they'll tell each other their feelings?" George said to Bull. His eyes fixated on the pair dancing up a storm. Huge smiles on both their faces. Their eyes filled with love.

"I don't know, but I'll give you a dollar if it happens tonight," the larger man responded. George looked at him and scoffed slightly.

"Deal," shaking Bull's hand, the two looked back at the pair dancing. Y/N's hands wrapped around his neck, pulling herself up close to Joe. Joe's hand wrapped around her waist, their noses touching. Their eyes shut and toothy smiles on their faces. You could've sworn they were a young military couple in love. But alas, they were just best friends. For now.

Y/N felt a pair of hands on the back of her waist, pulling her out of Joe's arms. I guess there had been a partner switch. But instead it was just some drunk Paratrooper from Dog Company that wanted a piece of the young Y/N. Which didn't end very well for that Paratrooper.

He pulled Y/N into him, his right hand tightly on her waist, and his left traveling down to firmly grab her bottom. Hard enough to make Y/N yelp and try to shove away from the unknown Paratrooper. When Joe realized where his best friend ended up, he fumed with anger. His grip on Y/N tightened. Y/N struggled, pushing at him. Joe marched right over and pulled the woman away, pushing her behind him. Now everyone's eyes had traveled onto the commotion on the dance floor.

George and Bull jumped up, knowing the angry look within their fellow soldier's eyes was no good. Joe had already cocked his fist back and slugged the drunk member of Dog Company square in the face. "Don't you ever touch her again motherfucker!" he hissed, going to hit him again, but Y/N was quick to guide him out of the bar. With him shouting curses and ranting back and forth.

Now with Joe outside the bar and pulled into a side ally, Y/N had to deal with the struggles of trying to calm him down. When Joe got angry, it was hard to snap him out of it. "That motherfucker put his hands on you. He grabbed your ass! That fucking pig, he is lucky I'm not in there, I would've killed him!" He paced, and that wasn't even the worst of what he was saying.

"Joe, relax. Joe he isn't here anymore you can calm down now. Joseph!" Y/N just couldn't get him to relax. He was fueled with anger. She swore she could see steam shooting out of the man's ears. She huffed, stomping her foot. Then an idea popping into her mind. It would be perfect. A small smile came to her lips as she marched herself right up to the pacing man in front of her. She grabbed hi face, cupping his cheeks. Forcing him to stop pacing and look at her. His mouth continued moving and curses kept shooting out. She pressed her lips into a thin line and did something she shocked herself with. She pulled his head down and pressed her lips hard against his. Which got him to go quiet real fast. In which, he melted against the feeling of her lips. Kissing back almost instantly and sliding his hands down to snake around her waist. Pulling her closer to him filling in any gap of space that was left.

Joe pulled away slowly and looked down at the female who was still held close against his body. His face filled with shock and he was at a loss for words. She smiled up at him. "You have no idea how long I have been wanting to do that," Joe breathed out. Y/N giggled, looking down for a moment before looking back up at him. She didn't say anything but pushing herself up on her tip toes and meeting lips with his once more.

Bull and George stood from a distance, Bull was chuckling, while Luz's mouth dropped. "Looks like you owe me a dollar my friend," Bull spoke, looking down to Luz. Who just looked up at him and dug his hand into his pocket and pulling out a dollar. Placing it his friends hand and looking back at the soon to be new couple.

"How much you wanna bet that they're going to get married?"

#band of brothers imagine #band of brothers #HBO Series #hbo war #hbo #the pacific imagine #bob imagine #imagines #imagine #joe toye #joe liebgott #richard winters #eugene roe

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indigosandviolets · 4 years

Text

Lucky Son of a Bitch

Pairing: Joseph Liebgott x OC x George Luz

Word Count: 2068

Summary: Andrew Marin has a nightmare. Joseph Liebgott helps. Tea spilt. George Luz, Andrew and Liebgott all make discoveries. Someone’s a lucky bastard.

TW: F slur, period typical homophobia

Thanks to @whatwouldidowithoutgeorgeluz for the BoB script again! Every time I need to do some fact checking, I go to the script first!

Part Two of We Happy Few

Aldborne, England

Andrew’s breath caught in his throat as he lurched awake in his cot. He looked around frantically, trying to find the source of him being woken up. It revealed itself to be Joseph Liebgott, with his hands pulled away from Andrew.

“Shit, Lieb,” Andrew said, rubbing his eyes. “Don’t scare me like that. I was havin’ a damn nightmare.”

“I could tell,” Liebgott replied. “You looked like you were having a damn seizure.”

Andrew sighed. “It fuckin’ felt like it.”

“What was it about?”

“Sobel,” Andrew said, cracking a smile. “I had a nightmare over Sobel.” It’s funny.

“Why in God’s name would you have a nightmare over Captain Herbert Sobel?”

“So, we’re all up in the planes, it’s you and me and Luz and Guarnere and Spiers and Sobel in this plane, and instead of Winters being in front ‘cause he’s CO, it’s me in front.”

“The guy with the lowest rank?”

“Low blow, Lieb.”

“It’s higher than Webster.”

“Anyway, I’m one, and Sobel’s two. He fucks up. He says I’m ready when I’m not. The light goes green, and instead of me being able to jump out, he pushes me out. Bombs are goin’ off and this guy fuckin’ pushes me out of the damn plane. My chute doesn’t deploy properly, so I’m just falling, and falling, and falling, and I just don’t stop. But then...splat. I hit the ground. Flat. I can’t see anything and my chute is all tangled up around me and I can’t see a damn thing. All I can here is Sobel yelling at me ‘sick men do not make paratroopers’ over and over again while I lie there because I can’t get up or see a damn thing.”

Liebgott pats Andrew on the back. “It’s just nerves. You’re gonna be fine, Drew. Plus, Sobel’s still on training duty way back in Toccoa. You ain’t got shit to worry about.”

“I know, I know. It’s just…” Andrew couldn’t think of the words. It would be so easy to tell Lieb the real reason why he was so damn nervous if it didn’t put both of their lives at stake, so he just decided to keep his mouth shut and come up with a bullshit excuse. “Bad nerves kinda run in the family. My mother worried, my father worried, my brother worries, everyone worries in my family.”

Liebgott, instead of telling Andrew the usual response of ‘get over it’ (a response he heard too damn often from other men), pulled the smaller man up and out of the cot. Andrew stumbled a bit, but Liebgott held tight with one hand on his shoulder and the other hand in Andrews. It was almost like a slow dance.

“What are you doing?”

“Get your boots on,” Liebgott says, letting go of Andrew when he knows the younger man is steady.

“What’re we doing?”

“We’re gonna go for a walk and a smoke.”

A walk and smoke in Upottery mean that you’ve got nowhere else to go and you want to be alone. Andrew frequently went for walks and smokes, sometimes with Liebgott, sometimes with Luz, but mostly by himself.

As the cigarette smoke entered his nostrils, Andrew let out the drag and sighed. “What do you want to talk about, Lieb?”

“I wanna ask you something, Drew.”

“Go for it.”

“Say, well, I’ve got this dream after the war.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I wanna go back to San Francisco, get my job back with the cab company, maybe become a barber, I don’t know. Get a nice house and marry a pretty Jewish girl and get a bunch of little Liebgotts running around, right?”

“Yeah?”

“That sounds like every guy’s dream after the war, right?”

“Yep.”

“What if that plan changes, Drew?”

“It’s your life, Lieb,” Andrew tells him. “I don’t see why it would matter, it’s what you want to do.”

“What if… there’s certain circumstances around it.”

“Like you don’t make it out of the war?”

“Other than that one.”

“The woman you’re in love with rejects you?”

“No, no, not that.”

“Well, then like what?”

“I’ve - I think I-”

Before Liebgott could tell Andrew another word, the man himself, Wild Bill Guarnere made himself present and known to the pair.

“Marin!” The Italian called out as he walked over. “Hey, can I bum a smoke?”

“Yeah, sure thing,” Andrew said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his pack of Lucky Strikes and handing it to Guarnere.

“What the hell you two fags talkin’ ‘bout anyway?”

Fags. Fags. It was noticeable. Fuck. “What we’re gonna do after the war,” Andrew said, swallowing thickly.

“Ah, nice,” Guarnere said, lighting up his cigarette and handing the pack back to Andrew. “I think I’m gonna marry this girl Ruth.”

“Who’s she?” Liebgott asks. “You’ve never mentioned having a girlfriend before.”

“Met her in a bar when we were back in New York, the night before we shipped off,” Guarnere informs them. “She’s beautiful, smart, and a good fuck.”

“So you’re gonna marry a girl who you’re gonna forget in six months?” Andrew asks, laughing.

“Alright, Mr. No-Sex-Before-Marriage, what are you gonna do after the war?”

Andrew paused for a moment. “I think… I think I’m gonna go back to school. I wanted to go for museology before the war, but I was working so I could save up enough money to go,” he tells them. “It’d be interesting, working with all those artifacts, y’ know? Holding pieces of history.”

“So, no women for your foreseeable future?” Guarnere asks.

No women in general, Andrew thinks. Instead, he says, “No, not yet.”

It hurt. It really hurt not being able to tell the truth, but he had to lie. He couldn’t risk anything. Not now. Not when they were so close to everything.

As more men were waking up, Guarnere finally wandered off, leaving Liebgott and Andrew alone again. The air had gone stiff, but without Guarnere, it eased. It felt like they were both playing a role when they were around Guarnere, but now that he was gone, it was over. They could breathe.

“What were we talking about before?” Andrew asked, turning to Liebgott. He dropped his cigarette, stamping it out with his boot. “It sounded pretty important.”

Liebgott shrugged. “I forget.”

“Oh, c’mon. Lieb,” Andrew said. “Don’t give me that.”

“If I remember, I’ll tell you, how about that?”

“Alright.”

Andrew knew that there was something more, that there was something there. Liebgott wouldn’t have woken him up if he was just gonna forget what he was gonna say. That’s just not how Liebgott works. He had to be hiding something, but Andrew knew he shouldn’t pry, so he kept his mouth shut.

Mr.No-Sex-Before-Marriage, Andrew thought. I better be able to shake that off.

Andrew was back to his book. It wasn’t often that the men got downtime during the day, but it was rainy and cold and the movie hadn’t started up yet, so he figured why not? It wasn’t like anyone was gonna stop him from enjoying the peace and quiet of his cot.

Unless that ‘anyone’ happened to be George Luz.

“Private Marin!” Luz said in his Horton voice. “Why in God’s name are you alone when you could be spending time with your best friend, Private Luz?”

Andrew laughed, looking up from his book. “Oh, knock it off, Luz. Don’t use that voice with me, I’m not gullible like Sobel.”

“I know, I know, but it’s fun! I bet if you could do it, you’d do it all the time,” Luz says, walking over to his cot. “Why are you all alone anyway? The movie’s about to start.”

“Wanted to catch up on my book,” Andrew says, handing it over to Luz, who was now sitting on Andrew’s cot. “I was too tired last night to pick it up, and I really wanted to finish the chapter I was on. I knew I had a few minutes to spare before it started anyway.”

“All Quiet on the Western Front,” Luz reads out, holding up the book. “Isn’t this the one about the Great War?”

“Yeah,” Andrew replies. “My uncle was in it, and I figured since I’m named after the guy, I might as well read it, y’ know?”

“I’ve never heard you talk about anyone other than your brother.”

“I,” Andrew starts, his mouth suddenly dry. “My parents aren’t exactly happy with me.”

“About becoming a paratrooper?”

Andrew shook his head. “No, no, it’s not that.”

Luz’s eyes were soft, trusting, respecting, understanding. Andrew could tell Luz, right? He knew he could.

“Is it what I think it is?” Luz asks in a quiet voice. He knows.

“Well, what do you think it is?”

“Depends,” Luz says, “Can I do something?” He knows, Andrew.

Andrew takes in a deep breath and nods.

Luz moves his hand up, placing it on Andrew’s cheek. He cups it and pulls him in. It’s perfect. It’s sweet. It’s a beautiful moment. The kiss is soft, it’s loving and calm and steady. It’s George Luz.

Andrew pulls away first. Luz has that loopy, silly lopsided grin on his face. The signature one. Andrew loved that grin. “Yeah, it’s that.” No, there’s more to it, damnit.

Luz looked down and checked his watch. “Movie’s about to start.”

“You sure you wanna go?”

“Not at all, but I don’t think either of us wants to get court-martialed.”

“Since when have you cared about getting court-martialed?”

“Since I learned that I could do this.”

Another kiss. It’s more passionate this time, less timid. No one's gonna catch them. Not now, they’re all getting ready for the movie to start.

Luz pulls away first this time. “C’mon, we gotta go before Guanere and Toye get all the popcorn.”

“Alright, fine,” Andrew says. “But first-”

Andrew couldn’t help himself and Luz sure as hell wanted another one, so the third kiss was deeper, more loving, more...everything. They both knew it was illegal and if they got caught they’d be sent straight home and publicly shamed and humiliated, but damn, if they didn’t care.

Andrew pulls away. “Alright, let’s go catch that movie.”

It’s Liebgott who pulls Andrew out of the movie. He and Luz sat away from each other so that there wouldn’t be any suspicions, so it was only easier for Liebgott to pick him out of the crowd.

“You remember what you were gonna ask me?” Andrew asks.

Liebgott smiles. “I never forgot.”

“So, you lied to me, is what I’m hearing.”

“Not lying, per se, I just avoided the truth.”

“Ah,” Andrew says with a smile. “How delightful.” It was always fun to add sarcasm on top of Liebgott’s sass.

“It is actually, uh, really important,” Liebgott says looking around to make sure that no one was watching or listening. There were a few MPs across the way, so Liebgott pulled Andrew around the corner of where the movie was being shown.

“Lieb, what the hell are you-”

Andrew was cut off by a quick kiss. He froze up for a moment before returning it. It tasted like chocolate and cigarettes, it was chaste but firm and welcoming, it had that tinge of attitude that just made it Joseph Liebgott.

When Liebgott pulled away, Andrew looked up at him, concerned. It was nice, he had to admit, but this was much bigger for Liebgott than either of them would have anticipated.

Andrew opened his mouth, but no words came out. He couldn’t begin to even comprehend what Liebgott must’ve been going through. Sure, this went against Andrew’s family’s beliefs, but this went against Liebgott’s entire faith.

Words couldn’t fill that gap, so Andrew and Liebgott went in for another. This time Andrew was able to feel the little cuts on Liebgott’s chapped lips, his calloused hands running against the back of his neck. The tobacco flavor was back, cutting through the saltiness of the popcorn that lingered. It was passionate, hungry, like neither of them could get enough of each other. Andrew’s pretty sure he let out a soft sound, no, no, he’s very sure he did.

“Fuck, Andrew, I…” Liebgott says, pulling away. “I think I’m a fag, Drew.”

“You think?”

“No, no, I know.”

“I figured.”

“You cheeky little bitch.”

“You’ve got no idea.”

Two men kissed before Jump Day, Andrew thought. Damn, you’re a lucky son of a bitch.

Tag list: @alienoresimagines

if you want to be added, please let me know! if you have any questions or feedback on the story, my ask box is open!

#band of brothers imagine #band of brothers fandom #band of brothers fanfic #band of brothers fanfiction #joseph liebgott #george luz #bill guarnere #joseph liebgott x oc #george luz x oc #my writing #oc fic #andrew marin #tw: f slur

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marvelmymarvel · 5 years

Text

Old Memories, Same Crush

Part 2/3

George Luz x Medic!Reader

Synopsis: You knew George Luz from Rhode Island where you both went to high school. You had a major crush on him, but being the nerd and him being the class clown made it seem impossible. You got over your crush once you joined the Airborne, but then you run into him again. Something blooms.

Warning: Sexual Harassment. Slight PTSD? My brother has it from the war so I’m familiar with it and its symptoms, but if you feel like its wrong please let me know. Her PTSD is more like bullying/harassment. If that makes you uncomfortable than I apologize. If you wish to read and this bothers you because of past experiences, please remember this: You are worthy and you did not deserve that harassment, there was no reason for it and no matter what people around you may think, you are the victim. Please speak up and never go silent. You’re worth more than silence.

IMPORTANT A/N (PLEASE READ FIRST): Some characters will be portrayed as worse than they were in real life, these versions are not supposed to match the real-life people in the show so PLEASE imagine them as different people. I mean no disrespect.

Story 1: Old Memories, Same Crush (1, 2, 3)

Story 2: Tomorrow Is Another Day (1, 2, 3)

Story 3: TBD

September 5th, 1943; Train to Brooklyn Naval Shipyard: 20 Years Old

The train rumbled and you leaned your head against Eugene's shoulder as Nixon passed by, going straight to Winters. “I hope our friendship gets to be that strong Genie” you cooed out as you turned and nuzzled into his warm neck.

This was you.

Cuddly, warm, happy, and you... You didn't like the ‘Scarlet O’Hara’ show that you put on for the men. After all, it made you feel worthless and easy, two things you were certainly not. Eugene stuck by you, but George didn't.

Your eyes traveled to a seat adjacent from you both to the brunette who silently read a book. You watched him as his eyes traveled across the page, his brain taking him to another world as he read about dragons and knights. He wished to be a knight, but he didn't know that he was your knight in shining armor. Sighing you looked back up at Eugene who looked at you knowingly before nodding over to the man, encouraging you to man up and talk to him. “No” you stated firmly before sitting up straight and crossing your arms like a child. “If you don't go Y/n I will drag you there” his normally sweet cajun accent threatened you causing your face to go pale. You knew not to mess with him, but you also knew you couldn't face George again. “Y/n” he growled lowly in your ear, causing your cheeks to heat up knowing there was no way out of this. “One”

“No” you whispered out shakily as you looked at Eugene in fear.

“Two”

“Genie please” you begged as you braced yourself.

“Three” his arms looped around your waist as he pulled you up with him before hauling you over and into the empty seat next to George. Your eyes went wide at your best friend but he turned around and laid down both seats so you couldn't return...

Bastard.

Turning back, your face was close to George’s making you inhale sharply and pull back. “Sorry” you muttered out sheepishly as you rubbed your bright red neck. The last time he had talked to you was in the bar when you and Babe made out. He had seen you at your worst and you didn't blame him for hating it, you hated it too. But when you tried to talk to him he would run out or ignore you. You didn't really know why he was so upset, but you didn't care.

“You’re sitting next to me now?? I thought Babe’s seat was open for you... Or any other man for that matter” he muttered out before turning his attention back to his book. Your heart shattered and you recoiled back into yourself, feeling ashamed for your behavior. George expected a witty comeback or a simple ‘Fuck you’, but neither came. He looked up from his book and saw you staring at your hands. Your face was blank but your eyes screamed sadness. “I’m sorry Y/n” he whispered out as he closed his book “I shouldn't have-” but your sniffle cut him off, “Save it... I know I’m nothing but a whore to you�� you whimpered out before standing up and swiftly moving to the back of the train where Malarkey was. Eugene had moved his legs and looked at you softly but you just walked past him, not in the mood for these stupid games. Eugene’s eyes trailed to George who looked back at him in despair. Eugene stood and menacingly hovered over George who was still sitting. “I’m gonna talk... And you’re gonna listen... Is that understood?” Eugene snarled out as his fingers gripped the back of the seats. George nodded sheepishly before Eugene plopped down angrily. If George wouldn’t listen to you.

He’d have to listen to the Cajun.

September 6th, 1943; Brooklyn Naval Shipyard: 20 Years Old

You were walking through the ship, looking for an open bed by Easy Company when a hand grabbed you and pulled you to sit down. You let out a yelp but two strong arms caught you, allowing your body to make a soft landing on the bed and the person. “Hi babe, we can share a bed” the strange man purred out as he bopped your nose with his dirty finger. The men around him, who you soon realized where from Dog company, laughed and catcalled the man as he grabbed your butt roughly. “Ugh” you groaned out disgustedly as you tried to push from him but he only grabbed harder. “Come on baby, you gotta help a man out, I haven't seen tits in 2 years.” He joked out as he grabbed the top of your shirt, trying to rip it open with his one hand. “LET ME GO YOU PRICK” you screamed out as you pushed with both hands against his chest but it was no use. At this point, some of the men in Easy a couple rows down heard the commotion causing them to stir as no one touched their girl.

A strong arm wrapped around you and hauled you off the man. Just from the tight hold and the scent of the man, you knew who it was. “Hey, why don't you get your nasty paws off her before I slam a fist down your throat” Don snarled out as he held you tightly to his side, fearful that you were gonna vanish if not. Your cheeks heated up as some of Dog company laughed at the fact that part of your shirt was open. You ducked your reddened face and began to button up the shirt before hiding your face in Don’s shoulder. “Sorry man didn't think she was yours” the man joked as he reached out to pinch your cheek. Don slapped his hand away before pushing you towards some Easy men who had come as backup. The force of the shove caused you to go flying as you tripped on a pair of shoes. Lieb caught you and helped you straighten up as he smoothed your hair down and pushed you towards the safety of the Easy men area. Like an assembly line, you were passed from one man to another as they wanted to help Don beat up the man that harassed you.

You were finally placed on a bed beside Muck as you heard the fight begin breaking up thanks to the Lieutenants. Don came back with a bloody nose and you scrambled up to asses him as he looked at you with a big smile. You shoved him down on the bed you were just sitting on and lifted his chin to examine the broken bones, “You didn't have to fight him Don” you muttered out as you opened your bag, searching for something to help set it in place. Raising your head back up he was suddenly closer to you. Muck had left and the men went back to their respective bunks, all feeling proud that they beat the twerp to a pulp. “No one touches you” he whispered out as his finger ran down your face, his knuckles were bloody but you knew it wasn't his. You gulped as your heart skipped a beat but you nodded and grabbed his chin to help his nose. What he did for you as a friend meant so much... But it felt more than as a friend.

And you kinda liked it.

May 18th, 1943; Aldbourne, England: 20 Years Old

Sobel came storming into the barracks, screaming for everyone to get ready for PT, everyone except for you. “Y/n!” he screamed out, causing you to freeze up in fear. Flashbacks of your past experiences with bullying have taught you to just take it, take the harassment and pray that it's over soon. Now that you were in the Airborne, you had to learn to stand up for yourself yet you always found out that it was easier said than done. “Yes sir” you stated firmly as you turned on your heels and straightened up in front of him, the fear was hidden well. Something you learned in training.

He stayed silent as the door closed, leaving you two alone in the quiet barrack. You didn't think anything of it until Sobel came to you in two long strides, making you stumble back into the wall behind you. The shock was written on your face as he grabbed your braid before inhaling it deeply through his nose. Goosebumps raised along your arms and you froze, not sure what to do in this situation. “I’ve seen you eyeing me Private... Did you really think I wouldn’t notice your wants?” he purred in your ear as his lips traveled to your neck before kissing it softly. Your breathing had stopped altogether at this point and you were sure he would get the hint.

But he didn't.

His hands traveled down your sides before resting on your hips as his lips attacked your throat. “Please stop” you finally mustered out as his hands gripped your hips tightly before he ripped them up towards his. “I know you want this Private... Wanted it for a very long time” he muttered out as he pulled his head up to lean against yours. You cringed back a little, hoping to put some distance, any distance, between you two. You shook your head violently as tears fell, “No, Captain, I-I never wanted this” you whimpered out but he just shushed you by slamming his lips against yours. His hands traveled up under your jacket and you just stood there, eyes wide open as he felt you up. After seconds of this, your fight or flight finally kicked in. Shoving your knee up, they slammed into his groin causing him to groan and stumble back. You grabbed his face before slamming the knee into it, knocking him out fully.

You stood there looking down at him shakily as tears flowed from your eyes. You had to tell someone, Sobel had always made passes at you, but never this. Your feet carried you to the one person you knew you could trust.

The Colonel.

“Did he hurt you?” The Sink started right after you got done crying. The poor secretaries had to scramble to find you more tissues, considering you couldn't stop crying from the fear. Your eyes lifted to him, silently pleading with him to believe you. “He didn't get the chance Colonel” you whimpered out as a hiccup escaped your throat. The secretary flew in with some more tissues and you thanked him with a weak smile before he flew out again. “I’m proud of you Y/n...” he stated before nodding his head as he grabbed his cigar and stood up fully. The chair that you sat in felt welcoming and for once, you felt safe. You didn't know if that was thanks to the Colonel being nothing but a father to you, or that he was listening and obviously cared about the situation. But you were wrong. He didn't just care about the situation.

He cared about you as well.

Ever since he got word of the incident on the ship to England, he kept a close eye on you, praying that nothing else would harm you. You signed up for war. Not harassment and he was very disappointed in his men. Which is why the man who harassed you on the boat was sent back to America, and why he was going to do his next couple of actions. He squatted down in front of you before grabbing your trembling hand in his large, old ones. The wrinkles and warmth made you feel at home and his soft face made you calm down almost immediately. You weren't sure if he would take you seriously, but you reminded him so much of his own daughters that were safe at home.

“I’ll take care of him Y/n... You will not have to worry about him anymore and if anything like this happens again, you promise you will come to me? I will not tolerate harassment...” he trailed off as he rubbed a loving circle on the back of your hand. You nodded as you fought back tears once more, thankfully the tears were happy instead of fear. “Now I want you to go find Winters or Nixon and stick by one of them... By morning Sobel will be gone, but I need you to be safe until then... Understood?” he continued and you nodded once more. He stood up and helped you stand as well. He grabbed your shoulder and gave it a tight squeeze.

“You’re strong... Don't let some idiotic man change that” he stated finally before motioning to the man at the door who then opened it for you. “Go with her and place her with Nixon or Winters and make sure they know she is not to leave their sights... Then go find Sobel and bring him here...” Sink instructed as the secretary grabbed you softly around the arm. “Yes sir” he started before he turned back to you and encouraged you to come with him. You didn't know what Sink was going to do to Sobel.

But you didn't care.

You and the secretary found Nixon who was going over plans in his office. Knocking on the door, you could see Nixon pouring a glass of whiskey before he called out for you two to come in. His eyes flicked up and he set his whiskey down swiftly the second he saw your bloodshot eyes. “My God... What the hell happened to you? Are you hurt? Who hurt you??” Nix muttered out as he rounded the desk and cupped your cheeks in his hands, observing you for any wounds or bruises that could answer his question. The secretary cleared his throat, causing Nix to stop and look at him as he motioned with his head to the hallway. Nixon nodded before wrapping an arm around you and guiding you to a seat “Alright sweets, I’m gonna be right back but you just stay right here alright? I’ll be right outside if you need me” he whispered before squeezing your shoulder as you sat down. The door closed behind you softly, signaling that they were both out in the hallway and that Nix was about to hear the story for hopefully the last time.

You just wanted it to be over.

‘Soon’ you reminded yourself. Soon you’d be free from that man.

May 19th, 1943; Aldbourne, England: 20 Years Old

You watched Sobel leave from where you and Nix sat on the grass. Having to spend the day with the grumpy Lieutenant was actually quite enjoyable. Not only did he make you feel safe, but he made you feel okay. He took a drag of his cigarette as he watched Sobel intently while your attention was fully on the Lieutenant beside you. His lips wrapped around the cigarette and your mouth began to water, you didn't know if it was the cigarette or his lips that made you hungry.

But you wanted to find out.

Reaching up, you grabbed the cigarette from his pink lips. “Hey princess that's mine” he grumbled but didn't make a move to stop you as you took a drag from it. Smoke filled your lungs as you laid back onto the grass, an airy giggle rising up and out of your throat as you looked at the white puffy clouds above you. Letting the smoke come out, you turned your head to look at Lew who was smiling softly down at you. You should be sad and scared still, but he made you feel so safe. Sure he could be hard to get along with, but through this whole thing, he was nothing but kind and understanding. Your eyes looked at his lips while his eyes stayed strictly on yours. He didn't want you to feel like a piece of meat, something a man could take without asking. You were more than that.

He wondered if he could show you that.

“You know you’re a special girl right?” he whispered out as he grabbed the cigarette from your lips, letting his fingers brush against the skin of your face made your body ignite. “I’ve been told” you stated simply as you sat back up, watching him take a drag from the now red-stained cigarette. “Are you wearing lipstick??” He grumbled out as he pulled it back and exhaled the smoke. You cackled at his bright red lips before shoving him and grabbing it again. “Guess its mine” you whispered out playfully as you stood up and began sprinting away from him.

He chased after your giggling form but his face froze as he noticed where you were running. “Y/N!” he screamed out but you just giggled and turned back to face where you were going. You inhaled sharply as your body collided with Sobel’s, causing you two to slam onto the ground. The cigarette flew across the gravel and your courage went with it. You scrambled to your feet and your heart began to beat faster at the glare he shot you, “You better watch yourself...” he snarled out before standing up and straightening his hat that was knocked partially off of his head from the impact.

“She won't have to” You heard a deep voice call out from behind you as you were grabbed by the wrist and pulled behind the person. You expected Lew, but turning you saw that he was stopped in his tracks, not expecting this side of...

“Lieutenant Winters” you started as you grabbed his arm softly but you saw his head shake, signaling for you to be silent. “You will not harm anyone in my company again... Seeing you leave is a relief, not only for me but for my company. Have a great rest of your life” Dick snarled out before saluting him and turning towards you, grabbing your bicep he pulled you back over to Lew who was in total shock of the situation. He had never seen his best friend lose his cool before, but when it came down to you and your safety, any saint lost their cool. “You were supposed to keep watch of her Lew” Dick snarled out as he let you go. There wasn't a word for how upset he was at the whole situation so you being that close to Sobel made the anger 10x worse. “It was my fault Lieutenant... I ran away from him, please do not blame him” you pleaded as you grabbed Dicks arm once again before stepping in between the men as a sort of shield. You had grown to like Lew...

But he didn't hold your heart like another did.

Granted, the two men you were in between both took your breath away. They were both gorgeous, tall, and protective... But they were missing something. Your eyes landed on someone across the way and you looked back at Winters, “May I be excused, sir? Sobel is gone and I wish to speak to someone...” you muttered out before stepping back and giving you space from the two men. You were foolish, trying to fall for these two men when you knew only one had your heart.

And it was neither of them.

It wasn't Malarkey who saved you from Dog company, it wasn't Liebgott who caught you before you fell, it wasn’t Muck who made you feel safe, it wasn't Nixon who made sure you slept soundly beside him and it wasn’t Winters who protected you from an upset Sobel.

It was Luz. George Luz.

“Permission granted Private. You know where to find me or Nixon if something comes up... Please be safe” Winters muttered out before squeezing your bicep and pushing you away from the two men who were about to argue it out like children. You weren’t going to stay for it though, you thought as your strides got longer and faster as you ran towards the one person who was on your mind. The one you loved.

The only one you loved.

“Luz” you exclaimed out breathlessly as you grabbed his wrist, causing him to stop in the group of men who now looked at you both expectantly. Eugene gave you a smile when you looked at him, encouraging you to finally do this. Looking back at the brunette, you took a deep breath.

“I lied...” you whispered out before looking around at the other men who hadn’t gotten the hint that you two needed privacy. Luz looked at you blankly, he had heard what had happened to you and he was trying very hard not to punch somebody. You looked back at him before shaking your head and lurching forward. Cupping his cheeks in your hands, you slammed your lips against his. The men got the hint and swiftly moved away from the situation as Luz grabbed you firmly by the waist. Kissing you harder, he felt the anger melt away, finally understanding everything...

Or so he thought.

Pulling back you rested your head against his, building up the new courage to tell him the truth once and for all.

“I’m her... I’m Y/n”

And just like that, he was lost again.

End A/N: The final part will be posted tonight as well as Mama and Her Babies

Tags:

@hell-itwasyou @desired-love- @privatebullshit506 @whatwouldidowithoutgeorgeluz @etainlord @longing-for-the-past-times @themostunstableunicorn @joonflu @its-a-polyglot @liebthots @liebgoth @xjustmenobodyelse @bandofbrothers-marvel-movies @higgles123 @uwurunicornuwur @heartbeats-wildly @daddyspeirs0 @roger-bang-the-drum @bandofmarvels @decaffeinatedtachycardia @junojelli @curraheev @cutthroatss @glxssysam

#george luz imagines #george luz imagine #george luz #george luz x reader #band of brothers #band of brothers fanfic #band of brothers imagine #band of brothers imagines #Old Memories Same Crush

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n3rdybird · 5 years

Text

Death Has a Smile Ch 2

Authors note: So this has spiraled way out of control, haha. Chapter 2 is up and has a mind of its own. Tagging @warmommy @liegbott @lovebodymindstuff @band-of-silver and @higgles123 . Hope everyone enjoys.

Rating: T

Warnings: Some talk of death, Easy Company being a bunch of rowdy hooligans with no social graces whatsoever.

Pairing: Reaper!Reader x Eugene Roe

The slow pace of Aldbourne was welcome to the soldiers of the 101st. After the hellish operation in Normandy and the month of skirmishes afterward, the men were enjoying their vacation as it were. Even though Winters still had the men run drills and PT, it was still much easier than being on the front line in France. No shells were flying overhead, hot food was definitely better than whatever they could scrounge or K-rations, and weekend passes were handed out left and right. Eugene found himself with plenty of extra time on his hands. He wasn’t much for drinking, preferring quiet nights in. He occasionally took in a movie, but even then some of the men got rowdy, and he’d take his leave. Much of his time was spent reading or volunteering at the Red Cross station. Most of the men in need of medical help just suffered from bumps and bruises from training or the occasional fight. Nothing terribly exciting, but it was better than sitting on his hands. Even as much as he kept himself busy, he couldn’t help that nagging thought at the back of his mind. Who was that woman? Was she real? She felt real when he touched her arm. Or was the doctor right? Was it just exhaustion and his mind made it all up. If it could all be reduced to a figment of his imagination, then fine. He d write it off. But if she was real? Who was she? Why did she look like that soldier’s sweetheart back home? Those questions were another reason he frequented the halls of the hospital.

Roe would often volunteer to drive injured men to the larger army hospital in London. While there, he’d brush up on his skills, learning more first aid techniques than just dumping sulfa and bandaging wounds. Colonel Sink heartily approved of the medic’s plan. After all, if Eugene was busy learning and volunteering on his weekends, he wasn’t getting drunk and into trouble. (Unlike some of the other Airborne men who frequently had their weekend passes revoked.) But there was another reason he lingered in the larger hospital. There were more critically wounded patients there, coming straight from the front. And maybe, just maybe, he’d see her again. And be able to put those questions to rest. He was sitting just outside the critical patient wing, the afternoon sun warming his body through the window. He had finished helping some nurses with moving patients and was slightly dozing in his chair. A throat clearing next to him caused him to perk up, but the sight of his commanding officer Captain Winters had him on his feet in no time. “Captain Winters, sir,” he greeted, giving him a salute. “At ease Roe,” Richard motioned for the medic to sit back down. The younger man nodded and complied. Richard ‘Dick’ Winters was a good leader, only pulling rank when absolutely necessary. The blood and sweat shared between the men of Easy made it easy to be comfortable with each other regardless of rank. “I was just visiting some of the men when I heard you were here as well. Are you angling for a promotion?” “No sir, I was just helping out.” Richard nodded and smiled wryly. “So I’ve heard. Not that I’m not proud of your initiative, but why are you spending your free time working? Wouldn’t you rather have some downtime? Spend time with the men. Just don’t play darts with Buck, he cheats.” Eugene looked down briefly. While he was friendly with the men, he kept a professional distance. “Just want to prepared as well as I can be when we get sent back to the front.” It wasn’t quite a lie, but it wasn’t the full truth either. Richard nodded. He couldn’t begrudge the young man for his work ethic. The front was a different beast altogether than training. “Normandy was something else, wasn’t it? I don’t think I was as mentally ready as I thought I’d be. None of us were.” “It was,” Eugene agreed. “But you were great sir. I don’t think Easy would have made it without you. Especially if we were stuck with Sobel.” That got a chuckle out of the commander of Easy. “Well at the least I’ll agree with you about Sobel. We might have ended up in the English Channel. Hi-ho Silver.” “Hi-ho Silver,” Eugene parroted before the two broke into laughter. Richard clapped the younger man on the shoulder. “Many men owe you their thanks as well, you know.” Eugene’s normally pale face colored a bit at the praise, but he nodded his thanks from his superior. The two were quiet for a few moments, their minds on Normandy before Eugene cleared his throat. “Sir, have you ever seen anything you couldn’t explain?” Richard stroked his chin as he tried to formulate an answer to Roe’s question. “Well the amount of alcohol Nix puts away is more than I thought humanly possible,” he joked. Eugene snorted. “I have caught him sleeping it off in the aid station more often than I can count, but that’s not what I meant.” Richard regarded him carefully before asking him to clarify. The medic went to open his mouth but stopped. How could he explain to his Captain what he saw and without seeming completely mad? “Eugene?” Richard prodded gently. The medic rubbed the back of his head and took a deep breath. “In Carentan, one night…” As he told his story to Richard, the captain did not laugh or express disbelief. He just listened, as any good leader or a good friend would. When he finished his story, Richard leaned back in his chair and collected his thoughts. His silence worried Eugene, who was half expecting to get hit with a recommendation for discharge due to mental instability. “I know it sounds crazy, but I know what I saw,” he sighed, dropping his head. “Eugene, I don’t think you are crazy.” The younger man looked up, disbelief evident on his face. “You believe me, sir?” Richard steepled his fingers. “I do. When I was a boy, my uncle was very sick. I was helping my cousin who was by this time exhausted from his constant care. We all knew his time was coming, and I had just convinced Celia, my cousin, to sleep. I sat by his side when he called out for his wife, who had died years previously.” Eugene listened to the story eagerly, hoping it might shed some light on his own encounter. “Of course she wasn’t there physically. The doctor blamed it on his fever, hallucinations. He passed later on that night. But from the smile I saw on his face before his death, I knew he had seen her.” “So you see, I believe that there are all manner of things around us, that we may or may not see or believe. But that doesn’t make what we experience for ourselves crazy. It’s just one of the world’s many unknowns.” “Thank you, sir,” Eugene breathed. “But what do you think I saw? I promise you, she looked just like the picture. And she talked to him and then he was gone. Do you think…” Richard waiting for Eugene to continue. “Do you think she was some kind of I dunno, an angel of death? He looked so peaceful, like the story of your uncle.” Richard mulled over his thoughts, trying to figure out what he wanted to say. He put his hands on his knees and stood with a smile. “I think, whatever you saw, it wasn’t anything malicious. I think we could all hope to go out in peace. Just like him.” “Thank you, Captain.” “Now, I’ll see you back in Aldbourne. And you better take next weekend off. Captain’s orders. We don’t know when we’ll have to go back to the front. You hear me?” Eugene nodded. “Yes sir, and thank you.” -------------------------------------------------------- While Eugene Roe was trying to figure out the mystery surrounding you; you were watching him. He wasn’t the only one having a somewhat existential crisis. After your encounter with the dark-eyed medic, he had scarcely left your mind. It was strange for you to be fixated on a single mortal. It was the first time you had interacted with one in a long time, at least not one at death’s door. It wasn’t smart to do so. Curiosity led to attachment. Eventually, every mortal died and you were left alone again. So you focused on ferrying as many souls as you could. There were scores of men, women, and children dying every day, so it left you very little time to get to know anyone, dying or otherwise. But in the off chance of a quiet moment, you thought of him. And apparently, he was thinking of you as well. He lurked around the hospitals and aid stations. He was a medic, so it was normal that he would frequent those places. But more than once you saw him staring at the picture he had pocketed from the soldier in Carentan, the one of the woman you had mimicked. It wasn’t your face, of course, but all the same that’s how he met you. Usually, when a mortal saw a glimpse of you, they brushed it off, believing they had imagined it. After all, most people were panicky around death and the dying. But not him. You watched him while he worked, quick and efficient with a steady hand. If anyone could understand or believe, it might be him. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Eugene nursed his beer while watching his fell Easy company men raucously enjoyed their night off. Per Captain Winter’s orders, he took the night off and joined the men in their revelry, much to their surprise. In fact, they were making their mission to get their ‘Doc’ absolutely hammered. A mission that was so far not as successful as they wanted. “Come on Doc, you’ve been sipping that beer for over an hour. We’ve all lapped you several times over,” Malark said, tapping his glass to Eugene’s. “And I’m sure I’ll be the only one without a hangover during PT in the morning,” he said dryly, taking a measured sip. “Was that a jab? Are ya making jokes Doc? Doc is making jokes everyone!” the man from Oregon cheered, catching the rest of the men’s attention. Guarnere came to the table, arms laden with shots of whiskey. “Well shit, that’s cause

for celebration.” The whiskey sloshed out of the overfilled shot glasses as Bill passed them out. Eugene stared at the shot apprehension evident in his eyes. "Come on Doc, it's medicinal," Bill goaded as the rest of Easy crowded around the table to claim their own shots. "Doc ain't gonna drink that, are ya? I don't mind taking one from the team," Luz piped up, reaching for the drink designated for the medic. Bill smacked his hand and shook his finger in the loud mouth's face. "Now now Georgie-boy, don't be greedy," he chided. Luz pulled a face and rubbed his hand. "That's just mean Gonorrhea. You know he's not gonna drink it. Just like you know he's gonna sit in the corner all night. I'm just making sure it doesn't go to waste. There is a war on ya know. Rationing." Luz reached for it again, but Eugene snatched it up. The men watched as he drained it in one go, flabbergasted at his blank face as he swallowed the cheap whiskey like it was water. "You were saying, Luz?" The men broke into cheers as the followed suit, drinking their shots and slamming the glasses onto the wood table. "Now that Eugene has joined the land of the living and taken a shot, now we gotta get him a dance,” Bill said, wiping his mouth. “No really, that’s fine-” Eugene started. “What about her?” Malark called out, nodding at a redhead across the dance floor. “Nah, she’s a bit too forward for our poor medic. Besides, she went on a ‘walk’ with Perconte a few weekends ago. Did ya wrap it up?” Bill joked, earning a slap from the aforementioned soldier. “You mad she chose me and not you Gonorrhea?” “Nah, red-heads aren’t my type. Besides, I’m sure Eugene doesn’t want to be your belly cousin.” The men cheered as Perconte put Bill in a headlock. Suddenly Malarkey spat out his beer, causing the men to laugh in disgust. “Jesus Malark, what were you raised in a barn?” “What’s the matter with you?” Don couldn’t speak, trying to clear out the beer from his lungs so he just pointed his pint glass towards the door. A pretty young woman was standing near the door, fiddling with the drape of her skirt. When her eyes glided over the men of Easy Company, the men paused before scrambling to look a bit more presentable. A napkin was tossed at Malarkey, who still had beer dripping down his chin, and Bill took the chance to untangle himself from Perconte and fix his hair. The rest of the men followed suit, making sure they looked a little less like a bunch of rabble-rousers. “She looks a little like Rita, doesn’t she?” “No no, Veronica Lake. Look at that smile.” “You’re both wrong, those legs are giving Betty Grable a run for her money.” The men gossiped back and forth, eyeing the new woman with extreme interest. It wasn’t that there weren’t more beautiful woman looking for a dance partner that night, but she was someone no one had seen yet, and thus was new blood. And for young soldiers away from home and stuck with men 99.9% of the time, they were the sharks. When she made her way over to the table, the men elbowed each other subtly. Bill stood to greet her when Lieb cut in front of him, flashing a charming smile at the girl. “Hello ma’am, I’m Joseph Liebgott, though you can call me Liebe. It means ‘love’,” he introduced himself and held out his hand. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The way the men were staring at you, you wondered if you overdid your face. The theater posters gave you the idea of blending some of the starlets’ features into one unrecognizable face. When the weekend came and there was no sign of the medic at the hospital, you decided to seek him out. Which brought you to the dance hall where it seemed half of Easy Company was spending their evening. It was a bit nerve-wracking, but you were here. And so was Eugene. You realized you hadn’t taken Liebgott’s hand, and you took it gingerly, hoping to limit the skin to skin contact. You could do without the rush of memories in the crowded room. Smiling demurely through the memories flitting across your eyes, you tried not to seem relieved when he dropped your hand after kissing your knuckles. “What’s your name doll?” another asked. You blanked. Out of all your preparation, you hadn’t thought of one. So you blurted out the first name you could think of. Your own. “(Y/N),” you said simply. “(Y/N), that’s a pretty name,” Liebgott complimented. “Are you lookin’ for a dance partner? I’d be happy to oblige,” he offered. While you were flattered, it was Eugene you wanted to talk to. As you tried to stammer out a reply, another dark-haired soldier cut in. “Lay off the charm Joe, you’re embarrassing her and me.” He turned to you. “Bill Guarnere ma’am. To stop all these fools from drooling all over ya, was there someone that you wanted a dance with?” You were grateful for his intervention and you cast your eyes over Eugene, who was watching the scene with thinly veiled interest. Bill zeroed in on your line of sight, lighting up when he saw you looking at Roe. He nudged Roe’s shoulder, whispering for him to stand up. “This here is our Doc Roe. We were just talking about how he needed a dance partner. You feel up to it?” When Eugene held out his hand, after a bit of good-natured prodding from his brothers, you took it softly. “I’d love to.” The men banged on the table, cheering goodnaturedly as Eugene led you to the dance floor set up in the middle of the room. “I’m sorry about them, you’d think they’d never see a lady before,” Eugene said chuckling at his brother’s antics. “They are quite lively, it’s refreshing actually,” you giggled. When you reached the dance floor, Eugene took your hand in his and led you in a simple foxtrot around the room. As you two spun around to the big band music, the smell of peppermint flooded his nose. When he scrunched his face in confusion, you tilted your head. “Are you alright?” Eugene chewed his lip. “Are you the one I met in Carentan?” he blurted out. You wanted to feign confusion, but the fact that he figured you out made you smile. “What gave it away?” Eugene nearly sagged in relief at your answer. He flexed his fingers around your shoulder as if making sure you were real. “You smell like peppermint,” he answered truthfully. “A lot of people can smell like peppermint,” you pointed out. “Unless you just ask all the ladies that,” you said with a coy smile. “I don’t know which ladies you are talking about. I don’t… socialize much,” he said, a blush creeping up his neck. It was endearing, how expressive he was when he wasn’t keeping a tight lid on his emotions. “And, I dunno.. you just seem… otherworldly. Like you don’t belong,” he explained. Even though it was true, his words hurt you a bit. You didn’t belong here, you weren’t sure what you were thinking. “You’re right,” you said with a sad smile. “I don’t belong here. Just forget me, okay?”

You pulled yourself from his arms and made your way to the door, leaving a gobsmacked Eugene Roe alone on the dance floor. Eugene looked back to the tables holding the Easy Company Men, who were looking at Eugene in disbelief. “What did you do?” “Why did you scare her off?” Strangely enough, it was Luz, who actually gave him advice. “Go after her ya meatball, Christ,” he said throwing his hands up when he saw Eugene’s confused face. The medic nodded, and followed you outside, hoping you hadn’t disappeared into the night. The cooler night air was refreshing after being inside the smoky dance hall. As his eyes adjusted, he caught sight of you down the road. “(Y/N), wait. I didn’t mean-” he paused to collect his words and not blurt out something stupid again. “I mean, you are… I don’t want you to go. I don’t know who you are or why you came into my life, but I think it was for a reason. I don’t know what that reason is but… just don’t go,” he rambled in an attempt to keep you from leaving. You were silent, still facing away from him when he was explaining himself. If you were going to stay, get to know him, get attached, you wanted to start fresh. You spun on your heel, and your fake patchwork face transformed to show your actual facial features. He watched with wonder as you changed, no longer stealing bits and pieces from other people. He reached up to touch your skin, sliding his knuckle across your cheek and the scar that was silvery with age. “I believe we have some things to talk about Eugene Roe,” you said softly.

#band of brothers #eugene roe #eugene roe x reader #band of brothers fanfic #band of brothers x reader #eugene roe fanfic

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easyimagines · 5 years

Note

Could I get a one shot with Eugene Roe? I love him SO much and I think it would be a nice fluffy one shot, maybe a reunion from the war or the writing of letters :)

Eugene here. All of my classes were pretty slow yesterday, so I took the chance to write this one. I combined the idea of sending letters and a reunion after the war. Thanks for the request!

One thing the men noticed about their medic was that he was always holding folded pieces of paper and trying to his smiles as he read them. Any man that saw him could tell he was reading a letter from home.

“Whatcha reading, Doc?” Malarkey asked. The company had just gotten back from running Currahee and Sobel had been particularly hard on the half-Cajun. Every run Sobel ripped on someone more than the rest and this time it was Eugene’s tern. Whoever it was that got it worse always got pats on the back and shoulders from the men around him.

“A letter from home.”

“How’s… Y/N doing?” Muck chimed in have caught the name off the address.

“Pretty good. Says studies are goin’ well.”

Y/N got letters back home too. Not as constant as they were sent, but Y/N knew Gene was replying as often as he was able. With each reply, the paper was little beat up and the pencil lead or ink would be a little smudged but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the letter.

Sometimes the letters were a number of pages long and talked about the other men. These three pranksters called Skip, Malark, and Penk. How these two louder men- Guarnere and Liebgott- were always at each other’s throats. About George Luz and all of his impressions; how some were spot on and others were a crude mockery at best.

Even in the letters from basic training Y/N could see how the relations between the men affected him. A few of the men were sent home and from that point on everyone was referred to by their last name or last name and rank if a name repeated.

Come early June the letters were almost non-existent on both sides. Y/N was writing and sending them as usual but Easy wasn’t in a place where they could easily deliver mail to the men. Gene was so busy keeping wounded men help together long enough to send them to an aid station that he didn’t have time to write.

A couple of days after the men took the city of Carentan, the mail was finally delivered. Gene had a handful of a stack that he was excited to read. Cleaning up Winter’s leg, Spina tapped him on the shoulder and told him he could handle getting the wounded shipped off.

Gene sighed as he finally sat and started reading his letters. He had a notepad and would reply to each letter as he read them. His plan was to send them out in bulk before it was too late.

Getting the think mass of letters was like a God send. Knowing that he was still alive and well… Y/N wept reading them. The first letter of the reply was expressing Y/N’s love, relief, and excitement at getting the letters. It also included a promise and reassurance that Eugene was being waiting for. No secret affairs or seeing a man still in the States on the side.

Y/N was honest in mentioning, however, that a dog had been adopted. “I needed something to cuddle at night. A dog- a small one at that- isn’t nearly the same as my Eugene but he helps.”

Eugene had laughed aloud when he read about the dog. Skipper was his name.

“What’re you laughing at Doc?” Lieb asked.

Eugene held up his letter. “I got a letter from Y/N. Mentioned a dog we now own. I think Y/N named him after Muck.”

“Yeah?” Muck grinned. “What’s the dog’s name?”

“Skipper. He’s got three legs so ‘e walks funny.” Gene explained. The men around them burst into laughter. Warren “Skip” Muck still skipped more than he walked when he wasn’t wasn’t marching or sprinting.

“Tell, Y/N I’m honored,” Muck laughed. “I like dogs. If it was a cat, I might have had a different reaction.”

Y/N’s worry increased as days went by. Then weeks. Then months. Finally a bundle of letters came in. Most of them seemed to be streams of consciousness. He’d explained why most of the papers were filled with anything he could think of.

The cold of Bastogne was mind numbing. If you stayed still for too long your joints became hard to move. The same for your hands but twice as quickly. So writing: moving the pencil and papers, having to change how you moved your hands. It worked well for keeping the medic’s hands moving.

He talked about all of the men that has lost their lives. Muck, Penkala, a young man- just barely a man- Julian, Jackson. A man named Compton had been taken off the front lines. A friend of his, Renne, was killed when the aid station she worked in was bombed. How Guarnere and Toye were shipped home.

He talked a lot about a replacement. It took a little bit to keep up with this “smiley ginger”. Gene referred to him first as Heffron. Edward followed next. Lastly was Babe. It was Eugene calling him Babe Heffron that tied it all together. Y/N was little surprised to get a letter from Heffron.

“Gene fell asleep next to me on the truck, I was bored, he had a letter open on his lap from you. I swiped the address. I told him so I ain’t going behind his back or nothing.”

Babe was excited when he got a letter back when Eugene did. Eugene relaxed when the “mailman” handed him the bundle of letters.

“Babe,” Gene reached for the Phili man’s attention. “Y/N was surprised by your letter.”

“I get to meet Y/N after the war, right?” Babe had to ask.

“We’ll set it up.” Gene nodded with a small smile.

“I’m writin’ ‘er another letter.” Babe grinned. The man’s excitement got a chuckle from Gene.

The last letter from Gene said that the Germans had surrendered and that the Japanese in the Pacific had not long after. He gave an estimated week of when he would be getting home but promised to phone from a train station as soon as possible.

So when the day same, Y/N was crowded around the train station with all the other anxious parents, siblings, and partners waiting for their loved ones to come home.

The train stopped and all sorts of uniforms came piling out. Navy, Marines, Infantry, a handful of Paratroopers. But none of the Paratroopers were Y/N’s.

“Where the hell is he?” Y/N whispered.

There was a gentle tap on the shoulder as “Behind ya” was whispered. Turning around faster than seemed possible, Y/N captured Eugene in a tight hug. Eugene had already dropped his rucksack on the ground by his feet. He held Y/N close, just basking in the feeling of holding them again.

“God am I glad to see you,” Y/N gushed. “Oh God. Y-You can meet Skipped- we have new neighbors- I can’t understand a word of what they say- I think they’re Polish maybe?” Y/N took in a gasp of air. “I can show you-”

Gene kissed Y/N to calm them down. “I’m home now, Amour. We have all the time in the world.” Gene kissed them again. “Also, that friend o’ mine, Babe? He wants to meet ya.”

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shiftyskip · 6 years

Text

Ronald “Ron” Speirs

The Real Ronald Speirs

Ronald Charles Speirs was born April 20, 1920 in Edinburg, Scotland to Robert and Martha Speirs. Hitler was also born on April 20, a few years earlier. Speirs knew this fact and he liked to joke about it later in life. His father was a Scottish Engineer. Speirs and his family moved to the United States during the Great Depression. According to Ancestry, he had an older sister Dorothy and an older brother Robert.

He grew up in Boston, attended high school there, took drill during school and Citizens Military Training Camps during the summers. He graduated in 1938. Not much is known about his childhood.

He was originally drafted but was given two months to finish extension courses. He was on active duty at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. He volunteered for the Airborne. Speirs was one of the original Toccoa men under Sobel.

When Easy traveled to England, Speirs traveled to Winchester to set up a camp for another Infantry division. There he met a British widow serving with the British Army’s Auxiliary Territorial Service division. They were married and had a son, Robert, soon after.

The woman’s husband had been presumed dead after disappearance. He was actually being held as a POW. He showed up towards the end of the war. It was eventually decided that she and Speirs would split up and she would return to her former husband. During the HBO, Speirs is seen rummaging through loot to send back to his wife and son. This seems to be accurate, according to other veterans. Speirs kept contact with his son throughout his life. His son would eventually become a major in the Royal Green Jackets Regiment. Speirs would visit his son and his three grandchildren in England later on in life.

Speirs jumped into Normandy with D Company on D-Day. His company would serve heavy losses. Speirs was injured in the face and knee by a grenade. He was taken back to England to recover from his injuries before returning to his unit before they jumped into Holland.

In Holland, Speirs was the Intelligence officer for Colonel Robert Strayer and his battalion. One night, Speirs had the Neder Rhine by himself to locate where the enemy was. He was spotted and the Germans opened fire on him. He dove into the water but had been struck by a bullet in his butt (what would become known as the million-dollar wound). He swam back to shore and was later found, wounded and too exhausted to move from the shore. He brought back critical information and was given the Silver Star for his mission.

He was sent to recover once again and later rejoined Easy in France before Battle of the Bulge. He wrote a letter to Stephen Ambrose about his experience in Bastogne. “There had been an attack through the trees before we arrived and they caught a number of Germans. The bodies were frozen, so there was no stench. I turned one over, an artillery forward observer, and found an excellent pair of binoculars around his neck.......We had one firefight where a platoon sergeant was killed next to me.....He fell into my arms, but was dead. There was nothing I could do for him.” In another letter to Winters, Speirs writes: “He fell in my arms without a word, probably feeling nothing. Those are the guys I think about 50 years later- why them and not me?”

In Foy, Easy company was under the command of Captain Dike Dike was considered to be similar to Sobel, but not as tough. He had reportedly “scurried off like a scared rabbit” after the blasts that took Guarnere and Toye started. Dike was the man to be leading the assault across an open field to face the Germans. Winters went through all of his instructions once more and Easy moved out under a covering fire that left them covered in heavy smoke.

Their attack was soon dissolving into chaos. Dike froze behind haystacks and was refusing to lead. Winters, aware of the risk of putting Dike in charge, had decided to watch their assault. Speirs was next to him for an unknown reason, watching this all go to chaos. Winters, angrily grabbed his gun, and declared “I’m going!” to seize control of Easy once more. He had barely moved when he whirled around and instead told Speirs to “take over that company and relieve Dike and take that attack on in.”

Winters had not prepared to pick Speirs, he just happened to be at the right place at the right time. Winters later recalled he was glad it was Speirs, who he respected as a combat leader. Winters had heard the rumors of Speirs and his killer instincts but Dike needed to be removed.

Speirs raced off to aid Easy Company. He reached the haystack, shouted at Dike, and took command of Easy. Speirs then raced across open area to locate Easy’s other flank and reorganize them. Germans opened fire on him as he crossed there lines. Once he arranged the company, he raced back through the German lines.

Regarding his personality, many rumors flew about Speirs and his violence. Winters regarded him as a killer, Malarkey didn’t like him much because of how violent he could get, and he soon developed a nickname “Killer”.

Most of the Easy Vets respected him as a combat leader. Many of the men feared Speirs. Although he was respected, it is said some men didn’t like his strict rules and discipline He was dedicated to doing the right thing and was often fearless in the heat of battle. Speirs wrote in a letter to Winters in 1992 that he didn’t expect to survive the war, so that might have fueled his actions as well.

The stories of Speirs’ and his violent streak toward his own men. It was rumored he shot a sergeant because he was drunk. While Speirs did not deny shooting the man, Winters later wrote that the shooting went beyond being drunk. The sergeant had ignored a command from Speirs to halt twice. The men were under heavy fire near Saint Côme-du-Mont. Orders were to halt due an artillery attack planned on the city where German were. The men were to follow up the artillery attack. When the sergeant didn’t stop, he was risking the lives of the men. Speirs took out his gun and shot the man. Some veterans told that the sergeant had even threatened Speirs with his gun drawn.The man died the the next day in battle so no official report could be carried out.

One of the most famous stories following his name, there was the incident of Speirs and the POWs on D-Day. There were no eyewitnesses that would confirm the story. Many stories like this have been recorded but it is not sure if Speirs was a part of these numbers for certain.

After the battle of Foy, “Sparky” Speirs remained in command of Easy until the end of the war. He was the longest commanding officer of Easy. One of the memories from Winters was of Speirs in Berchtesgaden, taking one of Hitler’s staff cars with the bullet-proof windows for a joy ride.

When the war ended, Speirs continued to serve with the Airborne, just not the 101st. He was placed with 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team during his service in Korea. He commanded a rifle company during a jump in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.

After the Korean War ended, Speirs served at Fort Bragg, North Carolina as a military secretary for the 18th Airborne Corps Commander Major General Joseph Cleland.

In 1956, Speirs learned Russian in California before being assigned to Potsdam, East Germany to work as a liaison officer with the Soviet Army. He later became the US governor of Spandau Prison in Berlin in 1958. Spandau held many Nazi war criminals, including Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy. Hess and Speirs would meet almost daily, seemingly gaining a respect for each other. Not much was said about his duties in the Korean War, with the Soviets, or in Spandau. Speirs would never talk much about these experiences.

In 1962, Speirs was a training officer in Laos, Southeast Asia, with a government mission with the Royal Lao Army. Finally, Speirs worked in the Pentagon as a plans officer until he retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1964.

Around 1984, Speirs met a lady named Eloise. She had recently been widowed and her three children lived far away from her home California. She met Speirs at a singles square dance and in November 1987, they were married. Her son, Marv, did not know Speirs well at first but grew to love his step-father after the couple started spending more time in Montana, where he lived. Marv’s brother and sister had children, along with six children with his wife, leaving Speirs to become a grandfather and great-grandfather eventually. His grandchildren would take him on walks, attack him with hugs, and he would do whatever they wanted.

His family did not know the details of his long military career and he would blame it on his failing memory. It was said that while his later actions blurred together, World War 2 would forever last in his mind.

Speirs traveled to the premiere of Band of Brothers in France with his wife in 2001. Speirs wasn’t planning on going but his wife told him she was going with or without him, and he chose to go. When reading about how his actions would be displayed in the show and if he was worried, Speirs replied, “I’m eighty-one years old, what can they do to me now?”

This photo was the first time Winters and Speirs had seen each other in fifty-five years.

After the event, Speirs started opening up more about his wartime experiences. He even met his granddaughter’s husband, a cadet at West Point who had taken an interest in Speirs. Within their one hour talk, Speirs opened up more about his experiences than he ever had. Perhaps it was to share the experience with someone who was just starting a military career, we may not know why he shared so much but Speirs was able to recall a lot more than his memory knew he had.

Sadly, even legends come to an end. Speirs last years were rough and he struggled with health issues. He was not officially diagnosed but it is believed he died of Alzheimer’s. His last months were painful to everyone and the family was on call 24/7 to care for him.

Speirs died April 11, 2007. He was almost eighty-seven years old.

#profiles #ronald speirs #speirs #ron speirs #band of brothers #Real Life Band of Brothers #real band of brothers

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Dear Heart - Chapter 3

Dick Winters x Melanie Davis

Summary: Melanie Davis is a nurse from North Carolina who has lived a sheltered life since her father died. Her father’s best friend, Colonel Sink, invites her to experience more as a regimental nurse for the 506th PIR of the 101st Airborne. She embarks on the adventure of a lifetime.

Tag list: @easy-company-tradition If you’d like to be added, let me know!

Word Count: 4.2k

A/N: Hope y’all enjoy the update!

Warning(s): None :)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

Chapter 3 here we go!

England was unlike anything Melanie had ever seen. Of course, she had never been out of the country before. It was cloudier than she was used to, but she oddly enjoyed it. Aldbourne was quaint, like Toccoa, only with a much richer history. Camp Toccoa was new and fresh. Aldbourne was old and lived in.

The best part of Aldbourne for her was the weather. It was refreshing to experience the cool English autumn after years in the humidity of the American South. She had even teased Dick once for his aversion to the heat. So Aldbourne would be pleasant for them both.

The paratroopers had a ton of training they had to complete while in Aldbourne to prepare for the invasion of German occupied France. In the evenings, Melanie had dinner with Dick. Nixon joined them fairly often, but sometimes he was busy up at battalion. Those were her favorite nights, where it was just her and Dick, talking together. She relished these precious moments with him. She didn’t know when they might come to an end.

She didn’t even mind that he usually had something to say about Sobel. She appreciated Dick being so honest with her. It was rare for him to speak so frankly, especially when it was something unpleasant.

“It makes me nervous,” Dick said. “His combat inability is harmless now, but we could be faced with the real thing any time. He could get a lot of men killed.”

“Is there anything you can do?” she asked. “I know he’s not an easy man to be reasoned with.”

“It’s not just difficult, it’s impossible,” he returned. “He’s too stubborn to take someone else’s advice when he’s in the field and unsure. And there’s no talking to him outside of training when he has the most control.”

“Have you thought about going to Colonel Sink?” she wondered.

“If I go over his head, it’s not a good look for Easy or for me,” he explained. “Not to mention, Easy’s so well trained, it’d be hard to convince Colonel Sink that anything is wrong.”

“It just seems brutally unfair for you all to have to go to combat with someone incompetent,” she said. “Because you’re right, it could mean life or death for you all.”

“It is unfair,” he agreed. “But I guess all we can do is rely on our platoon leaders and NCOs. They’re who’s really keeping Easy together anyway.”

She considered all this as she chewed and then swallowed.

“Would you like me to speak to Colonel Sink?” she offered.

She had done it once before but wondered if he’d change his mind since the stakes were higher now.

He smiled. “That’s kind of you, Melanie, but it feels too sneaky. Like I’m still going over his head, just in a roundabout, less ethical way.”

“I understand,” she said. “I just wish I could help somehow.”

“I appreciate the sentiment,” he said. “But you are helping. Just by listening.”

“You can talk to me any time,” she assured him. “About anything.”

“I know,” he said. “It’s one of the things I like most about you.”

She felt heat rise to her cheeks, and she looked down at her plate to hide it. Dick actually liked when she blushed. It always struck him in those moments how beautiful she was to him. A thought which gave him both a rush and a jolt of nerves.

He was being honest, though. He trusted her almost as much as he trusted Nixon. In fact, the only thing he confided in Nix that he didn’t say to her was his feelings for her.

“Can I walk you home?” he asked.

“Of course.”

Dick always walked her home. They were quartered with families who were neighbors, so it was convenient, but she had the impression he would have walked her home even if she was staying on the other side of the village. She just soaked it all in as extra time with the man who was quickly becoming her favorite person.

Autumn turned to winter, and then spring. Things with Sobel were not improving, and Melanie could sense Dick’s frustration growing. Every day it seemed there was something else that went wrong and the company’s morale was affected now.

One afternoon, she had a rare moment of down time with Dick. He and Nix were standing outside while Nix smoked a cigarette, so she joined them. After exchanging greetings, a jeep pulled up, disrupting the basketball game going on in the street. Sergeant Evans emerged from it and walked up to the trio off to the side. He looked grimly serious.

“Lieutenant Winters,” Evans said, and they all exchanged salutes. Then he held out a letter. “With Captain Sobel’s compliments, sir.”

Dick glanced between Evans and the letter before taking it. They saluted again before Evans stalked back over to the jeep. He climbed back into the passenger seat and they pulled off. Melanie, Dick, and Nixon watched him go.

“Well, what does it say?” she asked, nodding toward the piece of paper.

Dick opened it and she and Nix leaned over his shoulders to see. She was shocked by what she read, but Nix released a small chuckle.

“Oh, for cryin’ out loud,” Dick muttered.

“Misspelled court martial,” Nix pointed out.

Dick crumpled the paper and she gazed up at him, mouth agape with disbelief.

He left to confront Sobel about the incident with latrine duty, and she just stared at Nixon.

“This can’t be real,” she said. “That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s Sobel,” Nix said. “Anything is possible.”

“I should go with him,” she said hesitantly. “I’ve got a feeling this is going to be...dramatic.”

“He’ll want you close by then,” he returned with a smile.

She nodded, said a quick goodbye, and then followed Dick to battalion HQ. Sobel’s voice echoed from the stairs, so she followed it. She spotted Dick’s frame disappearing to the second floor. She continued after them, keeping a safe distance. She stopped outside the office, to the left of the doorway, and listened.

“My endorsement, sir,” she heard Dick say. “I request trial by court martial.”

She bit back a gasp. Dick was a man of principle, though, and she admired him for standing up to Sobel at this injustice. Dick halted outside the office when he spotted Melanie there. He almost smiled since she was just the person he was going to see.

“Did you hear?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’m sorry. Are you worried?”

He glanced around the hallway before nodding slowly. She held his gaze and they just shared a look for a long moment. Then, they both sighed and embraced each other. They stood there, wrapped up in each other’s arms and held on tight. What was coming next didn’t seem so bad from where they were standing now.

Dick was transferred to battalion mess while the court martial proceedings went on. Melanie knew it was killing him because the invasion was so close, and if things continued this way, he could miss it. Which left the company only in the hands of Sobel. Dangerous was the only word for it. She couldn’t take it anymore, so she decided to go to Colonel Sink herself. Even though Dick didn’t like the idea, she couldn’t allow this.

She had known Colonel Sink her whole life, and now as she stood outside his office door, she felt her stomach twist with nerves. It wasn’t really her place to have an opinion on the management of Easy Company, and he could chew her out for speaking out of turn. But she had to do this. For Dick and the rest of the men. After all, she was the battalion nurse, and this was in the best interest for an important part of the battalion.

She knocked softly on the door.

“Come in,” said the familiar voice on the other side of it.

She took a deep breath and pushed it open. He looked up from his paperwork and grinned at her.

“Melanie, how are you?” he asked.

“Very well, sir,” she said. “But there is something I wanted to discuss with you.”

“What is it?” he wondered.

“Well, it’s about Di - I mean, Lieutenant Winters’ court martial,” she said, and she watched his smile flip upside down. “I know it isn’t really my business, but -”

“You’re right, it’s not,” he cut across her.

She bit her lip and looked at the floor, regretting her decision already. She opened her mouth to apologize and dismiss herself, but he continued.

“As it is, though, I value your opinion. So tell me what’s on your mind.”

“Really?” she gasped.

He nodded. “Yes, really.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said excitedly. “First, I want you to know how serious this is. From what I understand after my talks with Di - I mean, Lieutenant Winters - is that Captain Sobel’s strength is not combat strategy.”

“Winters has spoken to you about this?” he questioned, brow furrowing.

“Here and there,” she said, grossly underplaying how much Dick had confided in her. “I hear some things from the NCOs as well.”

“I see,” he said. “And what have you derived from all this?”

“They don’t want to go to war with Captain Sobel, sir,” she said. “They’re afraid his lack of ability will get many of them killed, and put unnecessary stress on the platoon leaders, especially without Lieutenant Winters.”

Sink leaned back into his chair and scratched his chin.

“This isn’t to say that Captain Sobel is a poor leader,” she went on, fearing she had lost Sink’s interest in the matter. “He’s trained Easy Company to be the best in the regiment. So, I think - from what I’ve been told - his strength lies in that training.”

“I know Sobel has had his moments,” Sink said. “But to take his company away from him...it seems drastic. The men can’t be so opposed to him that -”

At that moment, there was another knock at the door.

“Hold that thought, sweetheart,” Sink said. “Come in!”

The door creaked open and all the NCOs from Easy Company entered the office. Each held in his hand, a written note. Melanie looked between them and the colonel, anxious.

“What’s all this?” Sink asked.

Sergeant Lipton stepped forward, collected the notes, and placed them on the desk. She caught a glimpse of what they said.

“Our resignations, sir,” Lipton said.

Sink’s eyes went wide. Melanie clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp. Sink looked down at the papers then back up at the men. She looked on with bated breath. He glanced this way several times, as if to confirm he was not imagining what was in front of him.

“Melanie, am I dreaming or is this really happening?” he asked.

“I’m afraid it’s really happening, sir,” she said. “But I hope you realize now just how important drastic action is.”

His face hardened and he scowled.

“I ought to have you all shot,” he snapped. “This is nothing less than an act of mutiny while we prepare for the goddamn invasion of Europe.”

She observed, astounded, as he dismissed Sergeant Harris from the regiment. He busted Ranney down to private, and proceeded to shame the remaining sergeants as disgraces to the Airborne, and reminded them that if the invasion of Europe was not imminent, they’d be facing a lot worse than this.

“Now, get out of my office and out of my sight,” he demanded.

They saluted, which he did not acknowledge.

“Get!”

They filed out of the office and she caught Lipton’s eye. He offered a short nod, and she understood that they had risked it all for Dick. When they were all gone and the door was closed again, Sink heaved a sigh.

“This really is bad, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“I need some time to think about this,” he said, standing up. He went and opened the door. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“Of course,” she agreed, and started to leave.

He stopped her right at the door and she faced him with an inquiring expression. He only smiled half heartedly and gave her cheek a paternal pinch. She smiled gently.

With that, she left him. She felt silly now for going there at all. If she’d known that NCOs were planning such a statement, she would have just let them make it. But she hoped that it was her and the men who had swayed Colonel Sink. She walked outside and saw the NCOs cutting a salute to Dick as they passed him.

He spotted her and smiled, which she returned. She approached him.

“What’s all that about?” he asked.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” she told him.

The following evening, Sink asked that Melanie come and have dinner with him. As she headed up to his office, she saw Sobel storming down the corridor. He glared fiercely at her and halted. She did the same, facing him.

“You had something to do with this, didn’t you?” he demanded.

“With what?” she wondered.

He scoffed and rolled his eyes.

“You wanna play innocent, that’s fine,” he spat. “But congratulations, you and your precious Dick are getting exactly what you wanted.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she returned levelly.

He stepped closer to her, towering over her, but she didn’t shrink away.

“You lost me my company,” he hissed.

“You don’t frighten me, Captain Sobel,” she said, hoping he believed her. “As for your company, you did a perfectly fine job of losing it yourself.”

She sounded braver than she felt. Her heart was pounding, and she could feel beads of sweat forming on the back of her neck. To speak that way to a man was unprecedented for her.

“It won’t make him love you, you know,” he sneered.

“You’re wrong again,” she said, knowing exactly who he meant. “Nothing I do is with the intention of earning the love of Richard Winters. He’s a man I could never even hope to deserve.”

He blinked, taken aback by the statement. But she meant every word.

“Good evening, Captain,” she said coolly, and then swept away.

Despite the tension with Sobel, she had a pleasant dinner with Colonel Sink. He asked if she had heard from her mother, and she said she hadn’t yet, and the colonel admitted she was shunning him too. They shared a melancholy sort of laugh about it. After the meal, there was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Sink said.

“Good evening, sir,” said Dick as he entered, offering a salute.

Sink returned it.

“How can I help you, Dick?” he asked.

“Actually, I was wondering if I could walk Melanie home,” he said. “I’d hate to disturb our routine anymore.”

She beamed. “Thank you, I’d like that.”

“Well, we’re all finished here, if you’re ready to go,” Sink said. “Thanks for looking out for her, Dick, it means a lot.”

“I’m happy to do it, sir,” Dick replied.

“Good night, Colonel,” she said to Sink. “I hope we can sit down together again soon.”

“Me too,” Sink said.

He pecked her on the cheek and said good night, and then she left with Dick. As they headed out into the cool night, she looked up at her companion and smiled again.

“So, I guess you heard about Sobel,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “You did too?”

“Yep,” he said. “I think the company’s having a party if you’d like to join.”

She chuckled. “No thank you. I much prefer where I am.”

He smiled that bashful smile of his, which always melted her heart so much she was shocked she didn’t just turn into a puddle and soak into the earth.

“Sink didn’t happen to share with you who’ll be taking Sobel’s place did he?” he asked.

“As a matter of fact, he did,” she said. “Lieutenant Meehan from Baker Company, I believe.”

“I don’t know much about him,” he said with a slight frown.

“Well, it can’t get any worse than Sobel, can it?” she returned, but immediately felt guilty. “Oh, that’s a nasty thing to say, I -”

“No, don’t apologize,” he said. “This whole business has been pretty nasty.”

“Have you been reinstated as Easy’s XO?” she asked.

“I have,” he said. “And I suppose I partly have you to thank.”

“Oh, Dick, how you do run on,” she said. “I did speak to Colonel Sink about my own concerns, but it was the actions of the noncoms that sealed the deal. Turns out they are absolutely loyal to you.”

“Or they just really hate Sobel,” he joked.

She chuckled again. “That could also be the case.”

She shivered as a chilly breeze rolled through, and she subconsciously moved closer to him. He offered his arm, which she took. Just holding onto him, bodies pressed together, helped with warmth. But she always felt a bit warm around him.

As they walked together, they chatted some more, eventually reaching subjects other than Sobel. They shared a few laughs and even some peaceful quiet as they reached the house. They came to a slow stop in front of her door.

“Well, goodnight, Dick,” she said.

“Goodnight,” he returned.

This time, there was no hesitation before she hugged him. He seemed a little surprised, but soon eased into her and wrapped his arms around her waist. It was so safe there, she hated to let go.

They grinned at each other as they both pulled away, and said goodnight again. Then, to her dismay, she went into the house to head to bed.

Dick remained on the street and watched her bedroom window until the light flicked on. He saw her silhouette flit back and forth across the room as she changed and let her hair down. He stayed there until her light went off again, and he pictured her crawling comfortably into her bed. Only then, knowing she was safe and secure, did he go in.

***

Upottery was fairly similar to Aldbourne, only with fewer buildings. The Army set up a camp there, with tents scattered throughout the main field to house everyone. Luckily, the weather was warm enough.

The invasion was so close now. Melanie had no idea when it would actually take place, but she had heard the plan several times already. The paratroopers would jump behind enemy lines and then have to clear the way for the Navy who would be landing on the two beaches - Utah and Omaha. It made her incredibly nervous because she would be separated from the regiment during the invasion. Her job was to go in with the rest of the Army Nurse Corps and set up aid stations.

One morning, she had her coffee by the sand tables and looked over them for what had to be the millionth time. She knew her part, but she wanted to remember exactly where Dick and the rest of the 506th would be. Dick found her there by herself.

“Hey,” he said. “Are you really studying before breakfast?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t really eat anyway. I just keep thinking about this and how...big it all seems.”

“Nervous?” he asked.

“Of course, I’d be a fool not to be,” she said. “But it’s you all I’m worried about most.”

“We all have our part to play,” he said. “Just focus on your task at hand and -”

“Don’t, please,” she cut across him. “You’re entirely too logical for me just now.”

He chuckled, but it stung him a little. Did she really think him unemotional? He tried to maintain his composure for the men, and for her, but he never wanted to give the impression that he didn’t care.

“What would you like me to do?” he wondered.

“Lie to me,” she said, and he appreciated her honesty. “Just once, lie to me and tell me everything is going to be alright.”

He stepped closer to her and she rested her head against his shoulder. He put an arm around her waist and gave her a gentle squeeze.

“Everything’s gonna be alright,” he said.

She hummed happily. “Thank you.”

She finally got the news that the big day was to be June 5th. On that day, she went to the field before she was scheduled to join the other nurses. She walked among the men and offered hugs and words of encouragement, especially to the ones she was particularly close to. Most of it was Easy Company.

“If you’re looking for Winters, he’s up with first platoon,” Guarnere told her as she wrapped up with him. “I’m sure he’d love to see ya.”

“Thanks, Bill,” she returned. “Take care of yourself.”

“You know I will, sweetheart,” he assured her, patting her arm.

She found first platoon quickly and spoke to each of the men. Finally, she spotted Dick. He offered a kind smile as she approached him.

“Dick, I…” she trailed off.

She had no words to express what he meant to her, so she threw herself into his arms. He caught her and held her, stroking her hair tenderly. She swallowed the lump in her throat as her heart began to sink. What if this was the last time?

Dick was thinking the thing. So he held her as long as he could, committing to memory the feeling of her, the way she smelled, and the sound of her voice.

She sniffled as she pulled away.

“I, uh, brought something for you,” she said.

“You did?”

“Yes,” she said, reaching into her pocket. She retrieved a small, velvet box, which she opened and held out to him.

“A pocket watch?” he questioned, taking it carefully out and holding it up in front of him.

It was a fine, old fashioned, gold one. The initials JFD were engraved on the front, for Jesse Franklin Davis.

“It was my father’s,” she explained. “It always brought him luck. The only day he didn’t have it was the day he...well, you know.”

A softness came over his eyes that might have made her burst into tears if she wasn’t already trying so hard to keep it together.

“Thank you,” he said earnestly. “I can’t take it, though, it’s too valuable.”

He tried to hand it back, but she only took his hand and curled his fingers around it.

“Please,” she said. “Consider it a loan. You may give it back only when we have found each other again.”

He looked happily at where her hand was atop his and then back up at her face.

“I’ll cherish it,” he said.

She nodded, biting her bottom lip so he wouldn’t see it trembling. He pulled her into one more embrace. When they parted, she swore she felt her heart cracking.

“Good luck, Dick,” she choked out.

He cupped her cheek in his free hand. She closed her eyes to his touch. A tear leaked out of her eye and he wiped it away with his thumb.

“Melanie,” he said, and she opened her eyes to meet his gaze. “I will return it to you.”

She attempted a watery smile. “I know you will.”

Several yards away, most of the company had gathered to watch, though they couldn’t hear what Melanie or Dick were saying.

“He’s gonna kiss her,” Buck said. “He’s got to. Look at that.”

“Nah, he won’t,” Guarnere added. “He ain’t that kind of man.”

“I dunno, Guarno,” Toye said. “I’m with Buck, it’s looking like he might finally get the balls.”

“Oh, shit, guys!” Malarkey gasped. “His hand is on her cheek. The hand. Is on. The cheek.”

“He’s not even leanin’ in though, look,” Guarnere argued. “He ain’t gonna kiss her.”

“Five bucks says he kisses her,” Buck said.

“You’re on,” Guarnere replied, and they shook on it.

Lipton approached looking concerned.

“What are all of you doing over here?” he wondered.

“We’re waiting to see if Winters is finally gonna kiss Melanie,” Skip explained. “Buck and Bill have placed bets.”

Lipton glanced over at her and Dick and then back at the men.

“He’s not gonna kiss her, Winters isn’t that kind of guy,” he said.

“Wanna get in on the bet, Lip?” Guarnere offered.

Lip sighed and shook his head.

“Does it count if he kisses her cheek or something?” Malarkey wondered.

“No, we’re talking a full on lip kiss,” Buck said. “Oh, look!”

They all turned eyes on Melanie and Dick and watched. He was leaning toward her, and for a moment, even she thought he might kiss her, but then he leaned back on his heels. They whispered their final goodbyes. And then, chest tightening, she turned away from him and walked toward the jeep that was waiting for her.

“Damn,” Buck sighed.

“Told you, fellas,” Guarnere gloated as he collected his winnings. “Winters ain’t the kissing kind.”

Dick watched the jeep disappear into the countryside, doubting himself for the first time. He tucked the pocket watch away inside his jacket. Right next to his heart.

That night, after the jump was cancelled, and he stood outside with Nix, he pressed his hand over it and thought of Melanie. He was carrying her with him, no matter when or where he jumped.

#dick winters #richard winters imagine #dick winters x ofc #band of brothers #melanie jo davis #dear heart series

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brownslouchhat · 7 years

Text

Floyd Talbert Imagine

The first time he ever saw her, he was running laps in training. He had ended up tripping over his own feet, bringing down several of the other men with him when he hit the ground, each one cursing his name. Sobel had ripped him a new one for that and suspended his weekend pass yet again, but Tab found he couldn’t bring himself to care.

He spent his weekend at the base, trying to find her again. His search turned up no results at the beginning, and he found himself growing increasingly frustrated with every minute that passed him , knowing it was time wasted that he wouldn’t get back. It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that Tab finally found her. He half wished he didn’t.

She was talking to Chuck Grant, laughing at something that he said. Her nurse’s cap was tucked into her side pocket this time, and he had to admit, she was even prettier without it on. He lingered there for a moment longer, before he finally turned and walked away.

The next time he saw her was after he had gotten himself into a brawl at the bar. She had been the nurse on duty when he had come in, and for the briefest moment, he thought he should probably just walk out now. But she had seen him before he got the chance, leaving him with no choice but to go in.

So he had plastered on his self-assured smile and sauntered into the room, as if nothing at all fazed him, rather relieved she couldn’t hear his heart beating or notice that his palms wee sweating. He took a seat on one of the uncomfortable chairs where she indicated, keeping his smirk in place.

“You doing anything later tonight?” he had asked her while her back was turned, causing her to glance over her shoulder at him, with one eyebrow raised, as if shocked by his directness. He wasn’t sure what had possessed him to ask, but he figured he had nothing to lose.

“That depends on how many more soldiers come in here with bar fight injuries,” she replied to him, making him feel slightly guilty that he had gotten himself into a fight in the first place. A fight that probably could have been avoided. It all seemed so foolish now, looking back on it.

It had all started because of a girl. A girl that hadn’t been worth it, now that he thought about it. He had gone out, in hopes of getting drunk and finding someone in order to forget the pretty nurse in front of him. He had, but he hadn’t counted on her boyfriend either. The evening had started out alright, but it hadn’t ended that way.

Now here he was, getting patched up by the woman he was supposed to be forgetting. Tab shook his head, unable to believe his luck. The situation was ironic, to say the least. And as she wiped the blood from his head away with the cloth, he couldn’t help but let himself get lost in her touch.

“I never got your name,” he said, allowing his previous attitude to slip away, to be replaced by something far more sincere. It surprised him. But it took him less than a minute to realise he actually wanted to know her.

“Y/N Y/L/N,” she replied shyly, taping the last of the bandages across his head and taking a small step back, checking to see if she had missed anything. Satisfied that she hadn’t, she dropped her gaze back to cleaning up the mess. “You’re Floyd Talbert.”

He found himself blinking, caught off guard when she mentioned his name. He hadn’t expected that she would have known who he was, didn’t realise she had even noticed him to begin with. A faint blush had crossed her cheeks as she hastily tried to backtrack.

“I mean, that’s what Grant said,” she rambled, and he couldn’t help but find it was one of the sweetest things he had ever seen. “I saw you that day, when you… uh… when you tripped. I wanted to meet you but….”

But she had been too nervous to do so, he thought to himself. She was quite possibly the most adorable woman he had ever met. The faint flush had flared up even further as she came to an understanding that she was rambling and she half hid her face in her hands, obviously embarrassed.

He caught her hands in his then, gently pulling them away from her face. The sudden contact caused her to gasp, and her head snapped up to meet his eyes. This time Tab gave her a real smile, and she rewarded him with a hesitant one of her own.

“If you’re not doing anything later, Y/N, I’d like to take you dancing,” he said, hoping that she wouldn’t turn him down this time. But as her hesitant smile grew wider, and she gave him a slight nod in return, he understood than that he had absolutely nothing to worry about.

#Floyd Talbert #Band of Brothers #hbo war #reader insert #imagine

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justthinkingofwaystoavoidbusses · 7 years

Text

You're Crazy

Hello! I was wondering if you could write a story where the reader is a part of Easy and she isn’t afraid of Speirs like some of the other men? they all think she’s crazy when she always accepts a cigarette when he offers them and they don’t know that behind closed doors or whenever they’re alone they’re actually really good friends? Thank ya💕 - anon

A/N- wow so I know I’ve been super duper inactive lately and I don’t have an excuse except that I’ve had zero motivation to write and when I do I focus it on my own stuff that isn’t imagines, I do plan on getting round to the rest eventually though ♡

A/N2- idk why or how reader is allowed in easy but sshhhhhh

A/N3- also gifs still wont work on my mobile app (they show up but not where I want, so I refuse to add them) so i apologise for the lack of gif, just picture a fluffy speirs EDIT: gif now added —

You’d been with Easy since the beginning, despite your fear of heights and falling to your death you had decided to be a paratrooper. It was the best decision of your life. The guys in easy were like no other, even the other paratrooper companies - maybe it was Sobel’s training, respect for Winters or sheer dumb luck that they matched up to form the toughest team in the airborne. Either way there was no other group of guys you would rather fight with.

The drop into Normandy was exhilarating and terrifying, you had landed with your rifle, and handful of ammo and a day’s worth of K rations; the rest had been lost with your leg bag. You made it to the assembly area with minimal enemy contact, you had been alone so it was easy to stay under the radar of the Germans. It also meant you moved quicker, you had been the first to arrive from easy company. A few other soldiers from other companies were dotted around but none that you recognised, until you came across Lieutenant Speirs. “Sir?” you approached him as he leaned against a haystack, “Would it be alright if I stuck with you for a while? I don’t know anyone else.”

Speirs looked you over, his face betraying nothing, “Alright, private,” he nodded.

You breathed a small sigh of relief and moved to relax against the haystack next to him. “How was your jump, sir?”

“Short,” he replied, puffing on his cigarette. He frowned a little in thought then pulled out the pack and held it out, “Smoke?”

You didn’t smoke much, but Speirs didn’t seem like the kind of guy you say no to. “Thanks,” you plucked one from the pack and lit it up, well aware that smokes would quickly become a precious commodity out here. You tried to ignore the taste and focus on the warming sensation in your lungs that soothed your nerves somewhat, the other guys would be fine.

“And your jump?” he asked.

“Short,” you parroted with a smirk, noting the upturn in the corner of his lips. The C-47s had been so low and so fast you barely had enough time to register the prop blast before your feet were touching the ground. “Come across any Germans?”

“A few.” He didn’t elaborate. “Command’s got about 5 or 6 POW’s down the road.”

You frowned, “We were told not to take any prisoners.”

Speirs nodded, “Mhm.”

The two of you smoked the rest of your cigarettes in silence, the first calm since you got word of the jump. The calm before the storm.

Before long Compton drifted into camp then soon after Liebgott, it was a great relief to see that at least some of your guys had made it. They sought you out quickly and Speirs drifted away into the barn serving as HQ, you watched him go with mild interest, Speirs seemed like someone you could trust and from what you could tell you had just formed something resembling companionship.

The landings could be heard overhead and more guys drifted in. A few more from easy but most from other companies, everyone was itching for a fight and to see some real action. After that Winters found camp with more familiar faces, Guarnere, Lipton, Toye and Malarkey. You were beyond glad that these would be the men by your side.

Winters led you all on an assault team to take out the German guns firing on the beach, you followed behind Winters through the trenches. Your heart lept into your throat when Malarkey ran out to try and get a luger. Toye almost lost his life to a grenade twice. Popeye got shot. Nothing could have prepared you for the constant spike of adrenaline but you pushed that to the back of your mind and focused on shooting your gun at the enemy.

Halfway through Speirs arrived with some dog company men and a resupply of ammo. “Mind if dog takes a shot at that next gun?” he asked Winters.

“Go ahead,” Winters gave his consent. Speirs nodded, flicking his eyes and noticing you there, he gave you a small nod as well before bounding out of the trenches as his men followed. You and easy watched with awe and horror as they ran, exposed, to the next gun as bullets licked their heels and only lost two men. Within minutes the next gun was down.

Soon their objective was complete and you were on your way back, adrenaline coursing through you and your spirits high as you remained unscathed from your first combat battle.

Back at camp, safe behind the lines, you were working off the high. Your stomach was empty and your hands were shaking, not from fear but from the comedown of all the stress in the past 24 hours. The other guys were walking round trying to dig up some food supplies and any ammo they could find, they would be moving into town soon.

Speirs walked over you and it took you a moment to notice his presence, “Smoke?” he held out his pack and you gratefully took one and lit it up. This seemed like it would become a bad habit rather quickly.

He lit his own and watched you inhale the first lungful of smoke, “Watch out for yourself,” was all he said before he turned around and disappeared into the crowd.

You turned your head and caught sight of Malarkey looking at you with horror, “What?” you frowned.

“Are you crazy?”

“What?”

“Taking a smoke from Speirs?” he hissed.

“Yeah?” you still didn’t see the issue.

He pulled you to the side, eyes wide as he looked to make sure you were out of earshot, “When we were coming in we past a bunch of POW’s, I was walking away and walked last Speirs on his way in. I didn’t see it, but I heard the gunshots.”

You looked at him incredulously, “You’re saying Speirs shot the POW’s?”

Malarkey nodded eagerly, “I heard from some private that he handed out smokes first.” You took this with a pinch of salt, the boys were the biggest gossips you knew but you did remember Speirs mentioning the POW’s. It didn’t seem likely but it was possible, whether he did it or not didn’t matter - they weren’t allowed to take prisoners, they had to do something with them.

“Maybe,” you settled on which seemed to please him.

“C’mon, the guys are scrounging up something for me to cook for dinner,” he slung an arm around your shoulders as you walked to meet the others.

“God help us all,” you teased.

—

By now most of the company was back together. You were layed back with your hands behind your head and your eyes closed listening to the guys complain about the food and enjoy the downtime after taking Carentan.

“Berlin by Christmas that’s how I see it,” More said with confidence.

“Yeah, you’re full of it,” Malarkey countered.

It was a nice dream but the army’s plans rarely went well.

“Oh god this kraut cheese- it stinks!” Muck struggled to find an adequate word for how bad it tasted.

“So don’t eat the cheese,” you cut in without opening your eyes.

“Bread’s stale too,” Penkala added mournfully, the bread you had been able to stomach but the cheese had been a step too far.

Muck reached over you, “Gimme that.” You opened your eyes and squinted in the sun that beat down across the courtyard.

“Yessir, the way we came into town and took over?” More continued as if the others hadn’t gone off on one, “You know it don’t seem like Jerry got much fight left in ‘em.”

“Hey More, don’t get hit in the face when Jerry throws in the sponge, alright?” Malarkey teased. You noticed Blithe had been silent for the whole ordeal, he was in some state of shock it was clear to see and you just hoped it didn’t get him killed.

More shook his head, “You mark my words, Mal; Berlin by Christmas,” he insisted.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Speirs appeared out of nowhere, startling even you. “We’ll be moving out soon.”

“Out of town, lieutenant? Already?” More asked and you slumped your shoulders, it had been constant movement for days.

Speirs nodded, “That’s right,” he replied flatly, giving you a small nod as he moved.

“Don’t they know we’re just getting settled here?” More grouched, Speirs turned back to look but said nothing and soon walked away again.

Muck threw his bread at More, “Nice going, groucho.”

“What?”

“Real smart. You know, you’re taking your life in your own hands. Ain’t that right?” Muck nudged Don.

“I told you, I didn’t actually see it.”

You rolled your eyes, back to the POW story.

“What, Speirs shooting those prisoners or the sergeant in his own platoon?” Penkala asked, grabbing everyone’s attention. Even you sat upright at this new piece of gossip.

“Sergeant!?”

“What! I didn’t hear that!”

“Wait, wait, shot one of his own guys?”

Penkala nodded, “Well, supposedly this guy was drunk and refused to go on a patrol. Who knows if it’s true..”

It probably wasn’t. You didn’t know Speirs well, had only shared a few smokes, but you didn’t think he would shoot his own guy (at least not without good reason).

“Well I know a guy, who said an eyewitness told him Speirs hosed those prisoners.”

“Why? What for?” Blithe asked, startling you a little.

“On D-Day. Speirs comes across this group of kraut prisoners, digging a hole or some such, under guard and all,” Muck dived in, even if you didn’t believe the hype you could admit he was one he was one hell of a story teller. “He breaks out a pack of smokes, passes them out. He even gives them a light. Then, all of a sudden, he swings up his Thomson and,” Muck made a noise of a gun being fired rapidly, “He hoses them. I mean, goddamn he gives them smokes first!?” he cried.

“You see that’s why I don’t believe he did it,” Muck settled back, you were inclined to agree.

Malarkey shot him a look, “Oh you don’t believe it?”

“I heard he didn’t do it,” Penkala offered.

“No, no, it was him alright,” More countered, “But it was more than eight guys. More like 20.”

You knew that tidbit of information was wrong, Speirs had said himself before this all apparently took place that there were 5 to 6 POWs. You didn’t speak up, you let the guys have their fun gossiping.

“Hell of a shot.”

“All except one guy, who he left alone.”

At this you snorted, “Yeah. Sure.”

“What you don’t think he did it?” More asked.

“Course she doesn’t,” Malarkey piped up, “She’s taken smokes from Speirs before.”

The guys rounded on you, firing question after question over each other. “He offered his smokes, I’m hardly gonna turn that down,” you defended. “Look, I don’t know what the rumours say but he doesn’t seem all that bad.”

They looked at you like you’d sprouted a second head.

“Well all I know, he took that last 105 on D-Day all by himself, running through MG fire like a maniac.”

“Now that I did see,” Malarkey clarified and you nodded in agreement.

They kept talking but you tuned them out, trying to rest your eyes as much as possible before you got called out. Your eyes were shut barely a minute when you got the call to assemble, you were on the move again.

—

You didn’t see Speirs much after that, the different companies and difference in rank kept the two of you apart most of the time.

When you were eventually pulled off the line and back to England you had almost forgotten the smokes you had shared amongst the chaos of battle. You were promoted to sergeant which made you feel elated, it was more responsibility and you’d have to deal with replacements when they arrived but you didn’t care.

You were billeted with an older couple back in England, the street was small and quaint but what was shocking was that Speirs was billeted in the house next door. Now you ran into each other frequently, it became a kind of ritual to go outside and share a smoke in the evenings. You had been right, smoking had become a bad habit of yours.

The first few nights neither of you said much but soon you began to divulge more. Talk of home, letters, the battles you had taken part in so far, where you thought you would be sent next. It was odd friendship but you got on with Speirs spectacularly, it was a shame he wasn’t in easy company.

Word of your friendship didn’t get loose, it wasn’t forbidden but as the rumours about Speirs escalated, and you realised he privately enjoyed such things, you realised that letting on that he had something akin to a soft side wouldn’t win you any favours.

—

Bastogne was the coldest place you had been. Thick snow covered the ground and thick fog made it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of you. You had seen more friends did here than in the whole war so far.

You, Perconte, Christenson and a replacement named Webb had been ordered to stay in this position for another day before you caught up with the rest of the company. Behind you the guys were gossiping again, there was little else to do round here, you steadily ignored them and focused on organising the supplies you had been left with. The rest of the guys were walking past you to occupy their new position.

“Good luck ladies,” Guarnere taunted, winking at you.

“Been nice knowing you,” Toye chipped in.

“Wouldn’t drink too much if I were you.”

“Hey be careful if he offers you a cigarette.” You resisted the urge to roll your eyes, you had heard this story a thousand times in a thousand different ways.

“Who?” Webb asked in confusion.

“Lieutenant Speirs,” Christenson clarified. “The stories about Speirs are probably bullshit anyway.”

You hummed in agreement.

“What stories?” Webb asked looking between you all like a dog with a bone. “What stories?”

“Well, supposedly Speirs shot one of his own men for being drunk,” Perconte supplied.

That was partially true, but having heard that story straight from Speirs you knew it had been in self defence. He had also sworn you to secrecy on that. He definitely enjoyed the guys shitting their pants when he spoke to them.

“You’re kidding, that’s unbelievable!”

“It’s true,” you piped up quietly with a small smirk, not glancing up from your supplies, it was always a bit of fun to add fuel to this fire.

“Yeah and there’s another story about him giving cigarettes to 20 German POW’s, before killing them,” Christensen told the other story.

“He shot 20 POW’s!?”

Perconte nodded, “Actually, I heard it was more like thirty.”

You barely contained an eye roll at that.

“Christensen.” A voice called put from the fog as Speirs emerged, his voice flat and his face blank but he had no doubt heard the whole conversation.

“Lieutenant Speirs,” Christenson greeted, his whole body rigid.

Speirs crouched at the edge of their foxhole almost casually, “I got the name right, didn’t I? Christenson?”

“Yes, sir,” Christenson gulped.

You turned round to watch, the three men in front of you tense with fear. None of them were looking at you so you let an amused smirk slip onto your face as you watched, Speirs met your eyes for a split second and you were sure you were the only one who could see the amusement in them.

“What are you men doing out here?” Speirs asked, eyes boring back into Christenson.

“We’re watching the line, sir.”

Speirs nodded, pretending to mull this information over to prolong the torture. “Keep up the good work. While you’re at it you might want to reinforce your cover.”

“Told you,” you muttered under your breath but the guys paid no attention.

“Oh, actually sir, Lieutenant Dike said not to bother. That we’re only gonna be here one day,” Perconte jumped in.

You rolled your eyes at the mention of Dike, one day was enough for the Germans to shell the area and without reinforcements the risk of getting hit was even higher.

“Lieutenant Dike said that, huh?” he briefly met your gaze again, you had spent many a night complaining about Dike’s leadership when he first became CO and had you all marching textbook drills each day. “Then forget what I said. Carry on,” he stood up and the boys relaxed a bit.

“Oh,” he turned back like he had forgotten something and they tensed again, “Anyone care for a smoke?”

Their eyes widened and you could barely choke back your laughter. “You?” he asked Webb who looked scared shitless. He had definitely overheard them earlier.

“Don’t mind if I do, sir,” you replied casually, reaching past Perconte who was furiously brushing his teeth to pluck a smoke from the pack. “Thanks,” you nodded at him as you lit it up, sharing an unnoticeable smile with him before he walked off into the fog.

Christenson was staring at you wide eyed. “What?” you asked around your smoke.

“You- you just took it,” he spluttered.

“You’re crazy,” Perconte shook his head.

Webb said nothing, still quaking in his boots a little from his first interaction with the infamous Speirs.

“Hell, I knew you had a death wish signing up for this but Speirs?” Christenson shook his head in disbelief, “Something is definately loose in your head.”

Perconte nodded in agreement.

You smirked, “This is coming from the men who have jumped out of two perfectly good airplanes?” You shrugged, “Whatever you say boys.”

—

Never had you been more thankful than when Speirs came sprinting across that field to relieve Dike. Usually you were terrified when your friends nearly died but when Speirs ran across Foy you could only feel awe, something in your gut told you he would make it out alive. Which he did.

You didn’t have any time to talk to your new CO when you took Noville and Rachamps. The church pews were the comfiest bed you’d had in over a month, with the soft singing of the choir you were soon on your way to sleep.

Vaguely you were aware of Speirs sitting next to you, his presence a familiar feeling after all those nights in Aldbourne. You were too tired to open your eyes and actually engage in conversation with your friend.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Lipton replied.

“Well, I better get these back to battalion before they disappear,” Speirs stood up and you mourned the loss of warmth from your side. “You wanna ask me, don’t you.”

Ah, so it would seem even First Sergeant Lipton wasn’t even immune to speculation on certain officers.

“Ask you what, sir?” Lipton played dumb.

“You want to know if the stories are true or not. You ever notice with those stories that everyone says they heard it from someone who was there but if you were to ask that person then they heard it from someone who was there.” Speirs began talking about Romans and your mind was too tired to make sense of it but understood the sentiment - people have always loved to gossip.

“Well maybe they kept talking about it because they never heard Tertius deny it.”

“Maybe that’s because Tertius knew there was some value in having the men think he was the meanest, toughest son of a bitch in the entire Roman legion.” This confirmed your theory that he definitely did enjoy those rumours spreading.

“Sir? These men really aren’t concerned about those stories. I don’t think Y/N ever was,” Lipton chuckled quietly.

You could feel the gaze of both men but your eyes remained firmly shut.

Speirs gave a small smile, “Of course not. She knows I’d never kill a friend.”

It warmed your heart to hear Speirs admit you were friends out loud.

Lipton wasn’t shocked at the news, he’d guessed as much, though he was shocked to hear Speirs say it.

“What I’m trying to say sir, is these men are just glad to have you as our CO. They’re glad to have a good leader again.”

Exhaustion took you over and you fell asleep to Speirs’ soft voice as he spoke of everything Lip did for you all in Bastogne. The last thing you heard was he was being promoted to Lieutenant, you made a mental note to congratulate him when he woke up.

—

After Speirs became CO it was easier to see each other but it was hard to catch him at a time he wasn’t busy as captain or you weren’t busy with your squad.

Still, whenever you both had free time you took it to share some smokes. The guys still thought you were risking your life but the fear of Speirs had settled somewhat since he became your CO. They just thought you were a thrill seeker rather than just friends with the Captain, that worked just as well for you as a captain and sergeant weren’t exactly supposed to be friends.

—

The war was over. VE day.

There was still Japan which you would most likely get roped into, you had 80 points. But for now you were content to enjoy these celebratory days in Germany interspersed with basic training as you pushed an upcoming drop from your mind.

“Smoking without me?”

You looked over your shoulder and found Speirs coming out of the hotel he was staying in. Wordlessly you held out your pack for him to pluck one from. “When do you think we’ll make a jump on Japan?”

“I don’t know. 13th airborne are going straight away. Winters applied for a transfer, Nixon too.”

Your eyes widened, “Did it go through?” Winters may be a major now but easy company still needed him.

“I don’t think so,” Speirs shook his head and you sighed a little in relief.

You took a long drag of your smoke, “I have 80 points. Looks like I’ll be jumping in on Japan with all the replacements we’ve got in.”

Speirs nodded, “I have enough to go home.”

You froze.

You couldn’t imagine Speirs not going with you. It was entirely selfish and while the reasonable part of your brain told you to be happy that he could get away from it all the other half of you knew that the future looked grim if you, if the company, lost Speirs as its CO.

“I’ll be staying.”

Your entire body sagged in relief and you inhaled another lungful of smoke. “I’m glad.”

—

You were off to the sidelines watching the game, you had been batted out pretty soon in the game but you were more than happy to watch. Compton had returned to see you all, the distant look gone from his eyes, the boys were smiles all round. You were elated to see everyone so happy, particularly after Bastogne, you only hoped it last.

“Easy company! School circle!”

You ran over to join the men as they gathered in front of Major Winters who told you that the war in Japan was over. There would be no drop on Japan. No more death. No more battles. It was all officially over and you could all go home, points be damned.

The news shocked everyone into silence until laughs of joy began to break out, you were swept into hugs and handshakes. You even hugged Speirs but you didn’t think anyone noticed in all the commotion.

You were going home.

—

Speirs continued in the army to go career, that wasn’t something you ever wanted to do but you supported his decision. He was your best friend after all.

You kept in contact through letters, he fought in Korea and in 1958 he returned to Germany to be a governor of a prison. Though you didn’t see each other as often as you would have liked that bond still remained, you were ever grateful that you had asked to stick with him and shared a smoke all that time ago on D-Day.

***

A/N- this was pretty fun to write but I didn’t really know how to end it soooo. Anyway, hoped you enjoyed it, requests are still closed for the time being, sorry ♡

#band of brothers #ronald speirs #ronald speirs imagine #ronald speirs x reader #ron speirs imagine #ron speirs x reader #speirs imagine #speirs x reader #band of brothers imagine #platonic #fic:youre crazy #justthinkingofwaystoavoidbusses #matthew settle

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