Disclaimer: I don't own Band of Brothers or anything relating to them and I base my fiction entirely on the actors and their portrayals.
Mostly, this is some sort of nonsense that likes the words because and but and though and and because Damian Lewis is terrible face wise. Also, it's super long in comparison to anything I normally write, but I haven't written in a year, so.
"You know, sometimes I'm afraid to wake up and find that I've dreamed you up," she says, though she isn't sure why. She imagines it probably has something to do with the fact that she does think she's dreaming and if she is then it doesn't matter much either way anything she says or does. The only thing she is constantly certain of is pain, so she rubs her left hand, willing the cramps away.
"I mean," she back tracks, now, aware of the pain in her hand and knowing she's awake for certain and assured that he doesn't know what to say in response. "That finally there's someone who knows what he's doing. Seen a bastard or two go more than a little crazy before." She looks toward him, his face a curious combination of uncertainty and confusion and she can't help but note that it's a bit like poetry, all bewildered and tangled up, emotions every which way. But only for those who could see it.
"Learn to take a compliment, Dick," she smiles, looking back down at her hand. Because of course she wanted to say more, and she never meant to back track and sometimes all you can do is turn your own discomfort into someone else's.
"Livvy," he starts, looking outward and away from her because her name feels uncomfortable and unfamiliar on his lips. "Why are you here?"
"You can call me Foxy, you know," she intones, instead of answering, "If you'd rather. It's strange, I know. I'll call you Cap, if you'd like. More appropriate, I suppose." Her hands have found a cigarette in the time she's stumbled through her words, mimicking them as they fumbled around her jacket, a lighter coming up seconds later. She inhales and exhales deeply, long and drawn out, and lets the smoke go the way it wishes. Dick watches it swirl up, up, and even when it's long since disappeared he still thinks he sees it, dragging its way slowly, but steadfastly, to the stars and heaven beyond.
"We're moving out in a few hours," he states, when he's watched it long enough. She gives an involuntary shiver because she's barely been there, because she's been waiting for something other than sitting in a ditch while the boys run about, because she's only followed them once and only filled up a book's worth with words that could never fully describe what was happening, because she's getting the chance to be there.
"Shame. It's nearly Christmas," she says instead, suddenly aware that the air is chilly and if she were home she'd be a proper young lady decorating the house and going to church and certainly not smoking outside in a uniform that didn't quite fit with a hand that was all but giving up. But home, home was years away. She wasn't even sure anymore how long it had been, just that she was once twenty and now she wasn't and she'd been to other side of the country before moving to set up camp on a ship and the Pacific and changing her mind and somehow, spectacularly, she'd managed to end up here. In Europe. Where it was nearly Christmas time and Dick Winters was sitting beside her looking up at the French sky. She followed his eyes. "Bet it's nothing compared to Paris."
"It's the same everywhere, Livvy," he replies, instead of telling her about Paris. But she smiles anyway, because his lips have twitched, too, and her name sounds that much less awkward and he's finally answered her question, though she hasn't answered his.
"Still, it's different when you're with different people, Dick," she lets his name out with a sigh at the end, tossing her cig and leaning back on her post, copying his posture exactly. He smiles, shaking his head with a spare glance her direction.
But even when he looks back to the sky he still sees her shallow green eyes and the curves of her cheeks, her nose, her lips, and her black, knotted hair, despite the helmet trying desperately to hide it all. Mostly, he sees the last tendril of smoke, tracing its brother's path to heaven and away from their own hell on earth.
She coughs when she wakes up, because she's disappointed to find that there's still white everywhere and because she's jerked awake at the slightest sound of Dick moving. And she stays where she is, wishing the white away, wishing for a second that she was back in the Pacific before realizing that no, she should be wishing she was back in the South, back under that tall tree in the backyard, or back by the edge of the sea with no one around or back in an absurdly warm bed that belonged to her. She's begun to wonder if the fact that she barely remembers that is an effect of time, or war, or this damn snow all around, unrelenting and unfeeling to the men with hearts of gold and steel just trying to do what's expected, every one of them trying to find a way home. But she's dragged out of all thought entirely except Doc and Dick when she hears Doc's Southern drawl, so much the same and so much entirely different from her own.
She listens, listens but doesn't say anything, trying to decide what she'll begin to write today, if anything will happen, if she'll ever be able to feel her hand again. And with thoughts like that she begins to rub her left hand again, but this time it's not just to will away the cramps, but also to get the blood flowing and even to coax the smallest bit of warmth to reach her fingertips, if only for a moment. But then she hears a noise, and without a weapon her first instinct is to duck, to hide in a foxhole that didn't exist because she wanted to see, but instead she whispers his name and, though it's quiet, it cuts across the short distance between them.
And after things settle, she knows what to write, but also knows that she's not ready yet.
"Hey Doc," she mumbles, because her voice is somewhere back on the ground, underneath the coat she had forgotten to pull back over her. Dick looks up, though, while Doc seems somewhat perplexed, like he didn't realize she was there, that she'd been there the whole time. "You give me an hour or so, I'll get you something." His eyes still read confusion, but Dick shakes his head.
"You're not moving closer to the front," he's not even looking at her, "or away from an officer's sight, for that matter."
"Like yours?" She retorts, her voice catching up with her before she lets out a cough that she tries to cover unsuccessfully. "Look, they didn't call me Foxy for nothing. I'll not stop for longer than it takes to ask and I'll come back as soon as I've been everywhere and I'll do it faster than you could." She gives a smile, which feels foreign on her lips, because he's unwillingly considering. "I'll go anyway; I'm not technically part of this company, or this division, or, hell, this army."
"I expect you back in no more than an hour," he relents. He's irritated and he's cold and she feels strange because it's the first time she's ever seen that expression directed toward her but at the same time she's happy to finally be doing something. She shakes the snow off her coat before pulling it on. The medic is ready to slink off in another direction.
"Doc, really," her fingers struggle for purchase on the zipper, but she spares him a moment of eye contact to let him know she's serious, "I'll find you. And the first thing you'll get from me is a pair of scissors." Finally her zipper's working and it's finding its way up her neck and she feels warmer than she's felt in days and she's ready and she'll write when she gets back.
"Don't worry, Dick," she smiles at him, hoping that expression will falter, but she doesn't wait to find out, as she puts her helmet back over her head and steals silently through the trees and disappears out of his vision and into the white.
"She's not incapable," he hears Nix's voice before he sees him. He lets out half a laugh, continuing on with his objective.
"Have you ever even had a conversation with her?" He knows the answer, but he asks to tease, and because he's frustrated, but Nix does have that way about him.
"Well," Nix shrugs, ready to slip back in his foxhole, "I feel certain that she's a fox."
"Told you I'd come back," she says when she returns, and there's a new flush on her cheeks that's been missing not in the least because the boys called her Foxy, though she'd not managed much and they'd given her a hard time. Mostly, she was ready to write, because she hadn't yet and so much more had happened in the last hours than in the last days and she's suddenly aware of the fact that she's alive.
"Livvy," his voice makes her feel a bit like she's being scolded, even with just her name, but she's pleased that it sounds much more commonplace than it used to, almost like it's supposed to be spoken by him.
"I know, I know," she stops him; "I'll not go anywhere else unless I'm told to. I promise." And she settles back into the snow, her hand already beginning to etch its way across the book, and he vaguely wonders if it's the same or if it's a different one instead of saying anymore, though he desperately wants to. The trouble is he doesn't know how to phrase it and he's not sure even what exactly it is, just that somewhere inside he's feeling incredibly relieved that she's back in his eye sight. So instead he wonders and he shivers.
"Jesus, Dick," she sighs out when she's finished and she's put her book back in the pocket over her heart in the first jacket she's wearing, buried underneath the larger one overtop. She's already massaged her hand and though the pain's not quite gone yet, her desire for a smoke won out and so she's lit one up and she's suddenly realized that he's been watching her the entire time.
"You're interesting when you write," he murmurs, and she's a bit envious of that drawl because she's been thinking as she's written that her throat's gotten drier and if that's really the case she wouldn't be all that surprised if her voice disappeared for awhile to hide out among the snowflakes that still carelessly trickle down.
"You're freezing," she continues, undeterred, because he's shivering more than anyone else she'd seen and she'd visited them all and she thinks how odd it is to see a man like that shaking in just that way. Because it honestly just didn't seem right.
"Would you ever read me anything you write?" he's also undeterred, and she guesses she shouldn't be surprised.
"I'm beginning to think you're a bit delirious," she lets out a mouthful of smoke, and they both watch it sail upward, though it quickly blends with the fog and the unrelenting snow.
"I'm just curious what you put to paper." And this time she expects for her comment to be ignored, but it's true that she's a bit worried because it really is an utterly baffling sight to see Richard Winters looking so entirely frozen.
"You don't need to read any of it, you've got me, and I can tell you just what it says," she gives in, and slips closer toward him, silently asking, and though he doesn't answer she does her best to engulf him anyway, as she's still warmed to her fingertips and it's rather unfair when she's only run the line once and why does she deserve to be warm when everyone else is cold?
Nixon decides, when he passes, that it's certainly time to have a proper conversation with Livvy Fox.
When he wakes up he's certain it was a dream because she's gone, which also unnerves him. But Nixon's there and he's watching him with a smirk written across his face. Dick aims a half hearted kick at him.
"You and Foxy, huh?" he asks, with a lift of his brow. And that's when she slips back into their half of a fox hole, handing him coffee and holding her own. She's tempted to splash it over Nix and let it stain his uniform in an unflattering pattern, but the thought alone is enough to satisfy her.
"Don't be an ass, Lew. We already talked about this." And then she's massaging her hand again, coffee sitting in another spot of snow that's indistinguishable from any other spot of snow.
"Okay," he laughs, and Dick feels like he's never been more confused. "But I get no coffee?"
"Please, you wouldn't drink it anyway," she picks her coffee up again and as it rushes down her throat she gives another involuntary cough, causing some of it to dribble down her chin and in that moment she doesn't think she's ever been more embarrassed with the pair of them. So she drags her arm across her face before closing her eyes and letting her breath float out and up with a quiet whisper of words that neither expected to hear.
The next time she wakes it's to a cold hand running over her forehead and then down to caress her face. She's no desire to open her eyes, unexpectedly finding it that much more difficult to keep them open, so she doesn't know who's leaning over her, just that he's there and she turns her face into his hand because it's cold and it feels like nothing she's ever felt before. And it's in that moment when she realizes her body's numb with the cold, despite the thin layer of perspiration on her brow, and her senses have never felt more dulled.
"Just keep her warm til her fever breaks, sir," she can hear that Southern accent and, strangely, she thinks she can hear his boots in the snow, though she knew he was quieter than silence when he moved and she mumbles something about how his nickname should probably be Foxy rather than hers.
"You're okay, Fox, you'll be fine," Doc's voice is back over her again, and she makes an effort to open her eyes to look at him.
"I'm not worried," she says, letting their eyes linger in each other's stare before letting her obnoxiously heavy eyelids fall shut again. "I've got you." And after a silence in which he didn't know what to say and was about to get up and let Winters have his place, she added, "And call me Livvy. Or Foxy."
"You got it, Livvy," he replies, because that's at least something he can do.
The next Livvy's aware, she's engulfed in a pair of arms and pulled against a chest and her hand can feel his heartbeat and her cheek brushes up against his neck and chin, which she's finds stubbly, despite the fact that he's clean shaven.
"Guess you're not so cold anymore, hm?" She mutters, becoming aware of the fact that she's shaking. She's shaking and she's sweating but she's still so damn cold she almost forgets that she even has a body and she's not just some kind of being, floating, riding the wind like the smoke and the breath from her lips.
"Just returning the favor, Liv," his words dance across her forehead and she dips her head down, finding space just in the top of his coat and scarf where she can block the heat in for both her face and his body.
"I'd still take this over any of those damn islands on the other side of the world," she states, though the words are mostly lost and she thinks the world might have started spinning in double time. The words are true, she knows, but she's just so damn cold.
When the fever breaks, she feels like it's been a century, but for all she knew it'd been an hour. She was still there, her hands buried in the folds of his coat and her face in his chest and his arms keeping her there. He's asleep, but she manages to sit up, only to feel a brush of cold against her exposed skin, as she begins to massage her aching left hand.
It was funny how days of disuse could make it hurt all the more.
But then, had it been days? She thought it had. Then again, it could have all been dreams. Sometimes, she dreamed it wasn't just Dick trying to root her to the ground, to shut out the cold for a little while. Sometimes, it was Nixon, and sometimes, it was Doc, and, once, she even thought she'd seen Lipton's face. That one she was certain was a dream, because Lipton wouldn't leave the line.
She watched her breath swirl away into the too low clouds and thought she'd look for a smoke, once she could no longer feel her bones protesting against her treatment of them. But it didn't take long for her to think better of that, as she searched her pockets and returned with a cig and a light. Winters woke with a cough to a face full of smoke as she sighed it out in her usual way, her eyes falling closed again in her exhaustion.
"Sorry," she mumbles, like mumbling was the only way she knew how to speak anymore. Her voice had finally run away and here she was trying to bring it back to the snow and the ice and the impenetrable cold. And that was a bit rude of her.
"Don't be," he says it so softly she's not sure that he actually did, but she cracks her eyes to see him looking back at her. Bizarrely, she feels salt pricking at the corners of her eyes when hers meet his and that's honestly just ridiculous because she'd done a lot of things in the last however many years but crying certainly wasn't one of them. He pulls her back down and whispers against her hair that she's okay, it's okay, we're okay.
The first time she really feels like kissing him is when he replaces Dike with Speirs. She was glad there were so many people around because not only would it have been embarrassing, it also would have been entirely distracting and unprofessional. But then, she wasn't a professional.
The first time he really feels like kissing her is when she joins them back in Haguenau, though he'd thought about it before. She hits Nix who pulls her against him and buries his nose in her neck because he's on a streak of drunkenness and she rolls her eyes but then she looks at him and in that look he knows that she's thought about it, too, and they share a silent conversation where they're both somewhere else and then they're back and she's shoving Nix away and he's laughing. So Dick looks back across the river.
She thinks it's a stupid idea, and if he's truthful, he does, too, but it's not up to him and it's not up to her and it's not like she's mentioned it anyway, it's just that he's read her eyes which are surprisingly deeper than he'd originally thought. And when they're looking back across the river the next day she sighs out her smoke and it twirls its way up and up and they both watch it before Nixon comes up and after him comes Speirs, but they'd had long enough that her fingers had found his, running along their roughness to the knuckles, and he'd turned his hand out to interlock hers with his and still somehow manage to massage it all the same. But they both kept their eyes on the smoke and the sky and the other side of the river, and let their hands fall apart when Nixon came up, though he had seen and did his best to suppress a smirk.
The first time she does kiss him is when he tells the team from the night before that they're patrolling, but not patrolling, again tonight. And Nix offers to write the report and she tells him to wait for her because, she laughs, feeling lighter, she's not sure he can write. But at that moment she knew what she was going to do and she was shadowing Dick until they got back indoors and when they do she pulls him back from going in and lets her lips dance across his until they're both breathless.
When her knees give way, he lets her pull him to the ground with her because somewhere back in the middle of their souls meeting he'd lost his own legs and it's better she pulls him down than he pulls her. She digs her hands into the folds of his jacket like she'd done in Bastogne and stares down at them with incomprehension because she never really thought she would ever actually kiss him whether she'd planned it or not.
"You asked me once, in another lifetime, why I was here, and I didn't answer," she says, still staring at her hands.
"You don't have to tell me," his voice is a whisper and when she looks up she sees that his eyes are closed and he's leaning closer to her like he's intoxicated which she's certain is something he never has been in the entirety of his life.
"I wanted to learn to be a writer. A proper one. One who could actually do something with words. And when I finally discovered, somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, that a soldier is more than a soldier and a person is more than a person, I realized I could never be that writer." She closes her eyes as she speaks, and she can feel his breath coming toward her, around her, in her. "But I could try."
"Does this mean," he pauses, when their noses are resting against each other and their lungs are sharing the same miniscule bit of air, "that I can read it?" When she pulls him the rest of the way, he takes that as a yes, despite her never giving an answer. Again, they break, and her sigh of an exhale leads to her continuing on.
"And my hand shattered, when I was on one of those islands." She's kept him close to her and he doesn't mind, because he still wants to kiss her just the same as he's wanted since they arrived in this little French town. "Some bastard thought it'd be okay to just toss his weapon on it. And at that I thought surely it was over for me. I'd never be a writer if I physically couldn't write." Here she brings his lips back to hers for a moment, a soft and gentle way to dull the blows and the pain and the ache in her hand and her heart and his.
"Around that time I managed to get shot, but that little black book, that first one, saved my life." His eyes open when she says this, but hers are still closed and her breath on his still speaks of longing and passion and desire rather than the distress and the horror coming out of them. "Bullet's still in it. And I thought, if writing saved my life, surely it was a worthy way to waste my life away." This time he pulls her to him.
"I'd been soaked through to the point that I never thought I'd be dry again. I'd a broken hand. I'd lost all the words I'd saved. And I'd just heard you'd invaded Europe. So my hand healed, enough, and I came. Because anything was better than one of those islands and if anywhere could tell me how to find the meaning behind the words it was here and if anyone could teach me what it meant to be a soldier and a person and more it was you." She opens her eyes when she finishes, wanting one last kiss but unwilling to ask for it herself as she'd just forced her life upon him and she didn't know if that changed anything. She didn't think it would, because she liked to think she knew him, but if there was anything she'd learned from war it was that people could surprise you.
"You were right," he says when he realizes she's done talking and sees the question in her eyes. He wants to give her the answer that she already knows but first he needs her to know. "I don't need to read it. I've got you to tell me."
And he pushes against her this time, forcing her back against the door and she lets him and she sighs the way she always does but this time it's against his lips.
She has a habit of wandering off during the night, he's found, when she thinks he's asleep she slips into the shadow and out to France and Germany and the rest of Easy and the world. Sometimes she sits with any group of the boys and writes for them and lets them say lewd things because she knows they're just tired and she's happy to do anything to ease the pains the depths of which she can't begin to comprehend. She tries, and they like her for it.
Sometimes she sits with individuals, like Doc or Lipton or even Nixon. She asks what Louisiana was like and Doc becomes an artist, splashing colors into the pictures he outlines with his words and she thinks she wouldn't mind at all if her written words came out just like his while in the back recesses of her mind she simultaneously finds it somewhat ironic that she'd been all over the world and had never seen Louisiana. Louisiana was closer to home than she was right now. Louisiana was closer to home than she'd been since the day she left.
She sighs in contentment and whispers to him that one day she'd like to see Louisiana.
And when she's with Carwood, sometimes she thinks she's dreaming again because her dreams are the only places where they seem to interact with one another. But she doesn't mind so much, as she likes the way he talks, smiles, frowns. At first she'd only had some sort of bizarre desire to return the favor that she was nearly positive had never been given and she'd wrapped him up in her to keep the cold out because he was freezing and it wasn't cold anymore. Then she'd discovered everything, or a lesser degree of everything, there was that was beautiful about him and she'd been coming back ever since.
Nixon she mostly wants to keep out of trouble, because he likes to drink and generally be an all around ass. But she's fond of him and if she tilts her head she can just see why he and Dick get along so well and she thinks that maybe she could craft her way into that world without realizing that she already has. Besides, he pulls her to him and somehow the smell of alcohol on his breath is a comfort, so she lights a smoke and the scents blend together until they're indistinguishable in much the same way that they are when they're that close.
And sometimes, sometimes she crawls up next to him when she's been awhile without proper sleep and he has too and she'll put one of his hands on her hip like he'd done that first time when she'd spun him about in every sense of the phrase and he doesn't ask where she's been gone and she runs her fingers over his and he knows what she's saying every time her fingers start again though neither of them say anything at all.
"Hey, Lew," she says, though he's angry and irritated and takes every opportunity to scowl in anyone's direction. "When I get back Stateside the first thing I'm gonna do is buy you a dog that's just like you. No one will want him so you don't have to worry about anyone taking him." She can tell he's ready to bite back with a harsh comment when she realizes what she said because Dick's head has dipped a bit and she knows she still can't quite say whatever she wants whenever she wants like you could with the Marines. "Except me."
"Naturally," he rolls his eyes at her, and she can't help but laugh. She gives Dick's shoulder a tap and adds, "And I'll volunteer Dick to take him, too."
"Why would I want him if no one else does?"
"I do. I thought you'd trust my judgment," she says, keeping her eyes on him though she's behind him and he can't quite turn around. "Besides, I was talking about Nix, not the dog."
With that Nixon joins the boys in their song and she swears that even though Dick's not looking at her that she could see his smile.
And even though he's still a little irritated, when Livvy shivers at the passing line of German troops, Nix pulls her into him. But his thoughts are loud enough and he and she and Dick all know that he's just hanging onto something.
Later, when everyone's quiet and dumbfounded and have a sadness etched so deeply in that they're almost as much victim as the victims, Nixon's found reason. If he's honest, it was a push from Dick. And that's why there's still a question lingering in his mind, as he spins and surveys and watches that sadness that's manifested itself inside.
He doesn't notice, until he's watched it more than long enough, until he's spoken to the officer's wife without speaking a word, that Livvy was there. Just there.
He doesn't move toward her, either, though he knows it'd be perfectly natural to pull her into him, just like he always does. But somehow, he thinks as he watches her, it wouldn't be quiet so simple as it always is, because they've all rather suddenly been forced into new lives in a new world on a new continent, and none of them had seen it coming. So instead he looks at her, as she stares unseeingly forward, with a little black book on her leg and a pencil in her hand that's tip is balanced in longing over the pages.
And just when it seemed certain that they'd be like that forever, and the words would never come, and he would stare at her and she would stare right through him for all the rest of time in this unknown and brave new world, another pair of boots comes up next to her and does what he couldn't do.
In that moment, Nixon knew. He knew what they probably didn't, that somehow they were meant for each other since the world started spinning backwards and when green met blue they were standing still and they didn't even have to try. That somehow they were infinite and that when the world tried to right itself, because it would invariably try to right itself, they'd be the only people left and everything else would crumble to dust and ash like the smoke that they'd sit and watch drift up, up into the sky. Everything would mirror that smoke, and take to the heavens, up, up, always up.
He hoped that their eyes would find him, when he was nothing but a wisp.
She's never delighted so much in all her life to feel the sun kissing her cheeks, no, her bones, dancing through her inky, matted, knotted hair, washing her entire being. And as she basks in it, knowing it's there though her eyes are closed, she thinks what a picky bastard it was, waiting until the world had started anew and they were just learning how to see and feel properly again, and, she sighs, it would want to be the first thing they could all feel with their new found brightness, lightness of feeling.
It was a shame for the sun, then, that it had missed out on her and Dick.
She's not even bothered when the rock and the mountain let the boys' explosions burst but keeps itself shut and out of their reach.
Still, it takes a moment for the temporary blindness to fade back into her vision when she opens her eyes. And when it melts back to normal, it's to find a hand in front of her face. She takes it in hers and feels the spark in the always healing bones, and she thinks, when she sees his face, that he felt it in his, too, though his bones were quite perfect and unbroken. But her broken and his unbroken seem to fit, and ever since they'd crossed the threshold of that fence one last time, they hadn't been afraid to show it and the sun, it seemed, liked it that way, as it angles itself in just the right way that their shadows become shadow and convinces them to leave their hands locked.
She knows when she feels that organ swelling up when she's watching him accept surrender and she's forcing her hand to keep writing strings of words that might not even go together, but she believes they probably do, because even if it doesn't make much sense it'll still explain that moment in so much more perfect a way than she ever could if she really tried.
But she lets him read it this time. Because she wants to know if he understands it. Not that it mattered much since the bottom line was clear as day, like everything she'd ever seen before had been hazy and dark and now the world was vibrant and colorful and alive in every way she never knew it could be.
He knew the first time he'd felt her skin on his, the first time he'd seen that her eyes were labyrinths, not half dug foxholes, the first time he'd said her name and his lips fit perfectly around it to give it its own symphony. So he smiles when he reads it, not understanding entirely but in all actuality understanding completely and when it abruptly cuts off he looks to the bottom of the page to see the words stranded there and waiting for his eyes to see first, before anyone else in all the world has a chance, let alone a choice.
He lets his hand hug hers because he's waiting, like he's been doing all along, for her to break and when she can't stand it anymore she puts her face to his and he responds like he's the one who broke in the first place.
Because somewhere along the way, he did.
"It's almost a shame, it's so heartbreakingly beautiful up here," she says, her arms folded across her chest after she's nodded to Shifty. And it takes her a moment to look back at him and realize he's looking at it but he's not really seeing it because he's too busy twirling his pencil and trying to figure out why he didn't tell her when he decided. But when she does, she squats in front of him and steadies his hand in hers, silently asking, again, if she could write it for him though the air on the mountain makes her hand ache in a way that it hasn't since it happened.
"I put in for a transfer," he answers instead and knows that he's through the worst of everything now, until he's back in the middle of the firefight again. He's still hesitant to look back into the labyrinth but her hand coaxes him in and he's completely unaware of the fact that she's trying her best to navigate his own endless depth because he doesn't know it exists.
"You know, sometimes I'm afraid I'll wake up to find that you were just a dream," she states, and it's like they're back staring up at the sky as it sprawls across France and her smoke goes up, up and they watch it, together. "But if that's all you are, I just want to say, you're easily the one I've loved the most."
"Livvy," he sighs on her name, like he's her and she's him and it's unexpectedly become apparent that they've blended together to the point that neither can tell where they end and the other begins.
"Can I assume Nix did, too?" She asks, quietly, standing up and wishing she hadn't when she melts at the touch of his hand on her hip.
"Of course," he murmurs against her hair because he's pulled her down, somehow aware that she'd lost her legs.
"Of course," she echoes, pretending she's his shadow, the same way she's pretended every time they're in the presence of anyone else until that moment when he'd offered her his hand at the edge of the cliff.
This time he coaxes her labyrinth to his and they leap off the precipice hand in hand.
She can't help but be relieved that she gets extra time when he's turned down, like the army's on her side or something. No matter how much she tries, she can't exactly prepare herself for going back because she'd been to the edge of the world before and she didn't much like it and by all accounts it had gotten worse, much worse, though she hadn't thought that was possible and she takes all of her spare moments to thank God that she's still in the middle of Europe with Richard Winters and they're surrounded by Easy.
If she's honest, she'd be content to stay here the rest of her life, on the edge of the mountain, where she and Dick could grow old together with every friend she's ever cared for nearby. Surely, the ache in her bones would be nothing in comparison to such happiness.
And she honestly doesn't know what's going to happen. When they go back Stateside, her plans haven't moved past buying Nixon a dog. But she does have to admit, just shy of living out her days in the majesty of Austria, she wouldn't mind going home and learning just how old she was and finding a peaceful place that may not compare in its splendor but would let her add the days and she'd be okay.
But abruptly, Dick's glanced up at her and he thinks he may have found the heart of maze and she thinks she may have, too, so she doesn't hesitate when he asks and she revels in the idea that at least if it's uncertain, it's an uncertainty they stand at together.
"Foxy," Lipton offers her a smile, which she returns with the knowledge that he's been promoted which makes the world seem to spin a little straighter on its axis. So when he joins Dick and Malarkey, she looks for other familiar faces, ones that she knows more intimately. In her mind she sees Nixon on another planet, though, and she doesn't imagine that Doc Roe is here.
"Livvy?" That Southern drawl resounds in her ear, and for once she's glad that she has such an awful tendency to be wrong. "Almost didn't recognize you." She blushes, which she finds more than a little awkward, because she's spent a long time with her veins frozen in time and it's a bit of a shock that they'd react that way to the medic and not the major.
"Strange what changing locations can do for you," she replies, looking down at her figure, which is prominent enough in the dress that she's found to take all the lewd comments she'd gotten before and then some, but strangely none of them come. Doc notices her gaze and thinks that to be so observant sometimes she overlooks the most obvious things, but he kind of likes that about her and takes the chance to tell her that if anything it's her hair, not her wardrobe, that makes her different tonight.
So she gives it a shake and asks him to promise to show her Louisiana and Dick watches from a short distance away, thinking that she was beautiful and wishing he could paint her in words on her page like she'd done him.
He waits for her to finish, which she does with a kiss to Doc's face, and he can't help but smile, thinking that it was the most color he'd seen on the medic's face since Livvy'd come along in the first place. When she comes back to him, she grumbles something about wishing she'd a dress uniform, because nothing suited the atmosphere better and she hadn't felt so out of place since the time span that she'd come to think of as a great long year since she wasn't quite sure how many it had been.
"I wouldn't worry about it," he soothes, his hand at her hip making her weight rest against him.
"No, well, you wouldn't, would you?" She poses, a hand starting at his tie and running down the buttons of his shirt.
"Any way I look you're beautiful." His breath caresses her ear and she laughs because she feels like she's at home again and the boy next door just told her he liked her for the first time and now they were awkward, but a good awkward, a wonderful awkward, even. But, then, she's never truly awkward with Dick, because there's something about him that just let's her be completely at ease, and she imagines that when they find a little piece of land that's excluded from the world she'll never be anything but content.
"I was thinking," she mumbles against his shirt, with his coat draped over her exposed shoulders, "that I might try to publish. In England, probably. That seems like a good place."
"Anywhere would be a good place," he answers, and she pulls her face from his chest with a raised brow.
"Except Germany."
"And Japan."
"Why would you suggest it then?"
"It's only fair to offer your artistry to everyone," he answers, running his hand through her hair because he's never done it before and that's truly a wonder and it's never been so simple than it has right then.
"I think I'd rather they didn't burn the first copy, though," she smiles, but he knows it's not completely serious because he knows that somewhere in her words are the souls of the company and him and her and if it could be helped she'd never let anything touch them again if it wasn't for the better.
"No one would ever burn anything with the name Fox on it," he says, just to talk, because the words don't really mean anything. But they both like just talking to hear each other's voices, whether the words mean anything or not. So they do until Nixon shows up.
And he finds it odd to hear them talking because he's never known anyone who could communicate without talking the way they do.
Dick's found another coat, so she's sitting behind him and Nix, with his first coat still trying to hold onto her shoulders, feeling out of place and ill at ease. But Nix had given her a book and a pencil and she knows now why she likes him so, whether she ever sees him again or not.
And after they listen to the address of the German General, she knows how she wants to finish what she's written so she hides away for awhile and only pauses to say that New Jersey doesn't seem like a bad option, but it's up to him and she adds with her eyes that she'd follow him anywhere, like his shadow, because he was her dream and it was a dream she loved more than reality.
"You done with that yet, Foxy?" Nixon asks, squatting down so he's at her level on the dock.
"Never done, Lew, you know that." She doesn't even glance up, just saying things to get on his nerves on purpose now. Her left hand still scratches at that little black book on her lap despite her working through the night in solitude, except when Dick had pretended to sleep and she had, too.
"Ain't that a damn shame," he mutters, standing back up as Dick gets closer. Livvy tilts her head, shutting the book and stuffing it back into the breast pocket of her coat to cover her heart. Though Nix can't see, she closes her eyes and lets her bare feet drift back and forth through the water for a single, quiet, peaceful moment before their voices draw her back.
And when she opens her eyes it's to find them looking right back into a very wet Richard Winters's stare.
She finds a smile there though he's talking to Nix and she doesn't even care to turn her ears toward the conversation for once. No. Some things didn't get written down.
"What about you, Foxy?" Nixon's talking to her again and he's back low on the dock again and she wonders how she'd ever think she could get over not seeing him every day. "Where you headed after?"
"I reckon I'll be in New Jersey," she shrugs, like it doesn't mean anything when it so very obviously means everything in the world.
"No shit?" He lifts a brow at her. She looks back around to Dick standing in the clear blue water and speaks aloud for Nix's benefit.
"Should you tell him or should I?"
"Always knew you were slow on the uptake, Lew, but still, I'm surprised you haven't noticed yet," Dick takes a moment to look Nixon in the eye before stealing a glance back down to Livvy, who's finally broken into a half-sized smile.
"It is a bit obvious, isn't it?" She lifts her left hand to traverse the bridge of her nose, and that's when Nixon sees it. She drops it back into her right, already falling back into old patterns of massaging the ache away, but it's still plain as day on her ring finger.
"Well," he stands again. Livvy offers him an upturned face and a pair of very much alive green eyes. And he knows that when he looks back to Dick he'll know that Nixon is pleased. So instead he looks back at her, "I guess I can't call you Foxy anymore."
"Maybe I'll change my first name," she answers with a shrug, but he's already gone, off the end of the dock and into the water, fully clothed, without a care.
"Thought you'd be happy to be rid of the association with foxholes," Dick states, teasingly. He's waded closer, and she's instinctively leaned in.
"If you're referring to Dike, we all know he was an idiot." She leans further forward the closer he gets because despite his height the dock's a ways above the water and honestly she's never felt taller around him. "Luckily some officer had the balls to remove him."
"You should probably work on your pillow talk, Livvy," Nixon's resurfaced and he's come back to the dock and something about him makes her laugh. But that doesn't distract her for more than a minute, as her hands wind into the towel around Dick's neck and brings him closer. Nix sends water their way.
"It's a wonder you haven't fallen off the dock yet."
"Truth was I never expected to still be alive at the end," she murmurs on an exhale of smoke, her right hand trailing over the edge of her boot which she has managed to carelessly plop against the edge of the publisher's desk. "I wrote everything the way I want it to be written. I'll tell you that."
"Well, you've got a fine selection," the man replies, his fingers tracing the worn and ragged pages. And his hands stop, always in the same place on that same book. The third book, she remembers, with a small selection of barely there pictures of a set of men with faces that look happy but are ragged and tired with the things they know they're about to see. She's always found that ironic.
"You know I'll only let you have it if you publish them all," she brings her left hand back to her lips, paper and tobacco and tiny tendrils of a flame. The man gives her a look, and she's not sure whether it's because she's smoking in his office or because she has the gumption to make such demands.
"The third one on, sure," he finally replies, looking back at the tiny pictures, and running his fingers along the length of them. There was something about those pictures. She couldn't even feel insulted at his obvious interest in them rather than the words.
"I know the first and second aren't worth much," she reasons, giving her boot a smack and watching dirt find a new home on his immaculate floor. "But they're part of it. There was more of a war than just Europe, you know."
She watches him, her smoke having switched hands, slowly fizzling out against that same boot. It still curls around them, though, enveloping the two of them in such a way that she almost felt she could sway him around without saying anything.
"Combine 'em," she says, nothing moving but her lips. "I never wrote so large anymore, anyway." The man considers, his glance easing over the most faded of the selection, before turning back to the black and white images with a yearning in his eyes. She wants to smile because that's not even the half of them and she knows he'd be devastated to learn she was keeping the majority of her words to herself.
"No, no," he closes his eyes and leans back in his seat, the third book finally closing to shut out their already but not yet war torn faces. "Ten is a good number. I'll do all ten. Just the way they are." She looks down, tired. Tired and finally showing it. She just wants to walk back out of these bright white walls into the sun and find Dick and Nix and their forever sad but just enough happy faces and feel his arms around her and maybe his lips could paint pictures on her face and hers on his and they could pretend to be happy for awhile until maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't be pretending anymore.
"What name d'you want on these, then? Livvy Fox?" he asks, noting that he's receiving no response.
"No," she shakes some ash from the almost nonexistent cig, staring at it before switching hands again for once last good drag. "No. Put Winters. Livvy Winters." With that she exhales again and he coughs and she smiles. "Pleasure." She nods, suddenly feeling lighter in a way. Like the weight of those ten books was hundreds of pounds more than they really were.
"Pleasure is all mine, Mrs. Winters." And here she doesn't bother to correct him, because it feels good to hear those words flow off of someone else's lips but her own and his and Nixon's and in that moment she knows she can't wait to hear it rolling off the congregation of accents and dialects and tones that comprised Easy and her men. She'd line them all up afterward and make them say it to her if she had to.
"So are you a writer or not, then?" Nixon asks, as the sun or Dick's ghost of a smile, she's not sure which, blinds her. Nix was asking just to be irritating, because none of the Easy men would ever doubt that Foxy couldn't pull a fast one on some poor old English sop trying to make a living putting words on paper several hundred thousand times. She doesn't need to say it, but when Dick's hand finds her hip she can't bite back her retort.
"Never was, Lew, you know that."
So, there's Livvy. Review if you please, don't if you don't. And I apologize if there's errors, I'm just inherently lazy.
-Piper