Author's Note: This is my first attempt at a Band of Brothers story. This will be a series of drabbles and one-shots focusing mostly upon a single man. I hope to maintain full respect for the men of Easy Company, for I know that the series is based upon real heroes of World War II. I do not own Band of Brothers. All feedback is appreciated, greatly! Please be kind enough to review!

Picasso Portraits: Volume One

Main: Private Roy Cobb

Chapter One: Whiskey Reflections

It seeps down the depths of my throat as smoothly as bare flesh upon freshly laden bedroom silk. The mud tinted flask of whiskey has been the comforting arm about my shoulders over the latter part of the week, burning my inner body as a match - a chilling contrast to the hazy atmosphere of Haguenau. The damn sun has not shone for the better part of our stay, for it seems to have been permanently captured behind a thick legion of murky clouds. There has been nothing but frosty, steel grey. No colors. No blues or greens, just the various opaque shadows melting between the blasted buildings with splintered doors squeaking upon their rusted hinges and roof shingles scattered variously about the slushy, dingy snow . . . I think even the snow has transformed into a tint of slate.

Melancholy floods every corner of this lifestyle. It makes me wonder how any breath of hope can be caught in a place like this, where the biting air grips my lungs with an iron fist, squeezing tight. Breathing becomes shallow, but maybe that is just a natural reflex to the ritual moments when I pressed my head against the damp soil as obstreperous bullets played tag overhead, or perhaps, during the muted walks through open fields, crouching, barely filling my lungs with oxygen lest I let it out too loudly. Then, the strident shrieks would begin again, and again, one of us would kneel beneath another body whose life was stolen by phantoms hidden beyond sight.

It was always a game, a fucking game with twists of chance and dice of predictability. When would the bullets aim to tear? When would their piercing call resound in our ears as we dived as a single wave to the ground? Yet, we all knew that once they set their yellow eagle eyes upon our panicked hearts thumping out of control, our heads racing with fragmented thoughts, and our backs turned blindly, that their aim was true. And the fields would stain to sanguinary rust as faces became still mid-cry; sometimes, the raven pupils still focused upon the sky, and their faces so eerily pallid and frightened.

Damn these memories! Why won't their faces disappear? Why?

We're in a warm house, now. Hell, we even have beds, complete with comforters and blankets, and showers. Heated showers. I remember the first few seconds the warm water gushed over my body; I closed my eyes for moments of true peace in what seemed like a lifetime. It was heaven.

Perhaps they thought that times of bliss would eradicate the past, the crazy bastards. Even after the steam evaporated from my body and into the bitter dimness of the town's defeated streets and smashed alleys, I still saw his face. It was as if he was laying before me once more . . .

Wailing!

Crying.

Convulsing . . .

Clawing for a familiar hand, a comforting face, seemingly deaf to our protests and words of calm. We were powerless! His legs jerked, his hips twisted, and his hands trembled uncontrollably. I was helpless, feeble; there was nothing left but to watch as his tears whirled with blood and streamed down his youthful face. He was just a fucking kid whose last moments were spent drinking his own life fluid in a room painted in obscurity.

I want to forget; I want to erase it all into a fuzzy mist with each swig of my bittersweet libation. I would die a self-crucifixion to put it all out of the recesses of my brain's remembrances! I am sick of existing in nothing but an adumbration of an uncertain future.

The only colors are ones sensed – the whiskey as it ignites my throat in autumn tones of red and orange - warmly searing - a welcomed discomfort. It spreads through the expanse of my body like a mad-eyed brush fire, the liquid crackling, unlike the pitiful empty fireplace, but it seems none of the others dare to notice. They sit contently together, sharing in yet another moment of action that slipped from my fingertips and into a freezing river of sputtered curses. Damn boats . . . damn them all . . .

The liquid swirls in the filthy flask, and I inhale its disgusting scent. It does not matter, for I am, after all, simply the madcap man that somehow makes a decent soldier. I can kill without sympathy for the Krauts who called us out to fight only to glue us to frozen foxholes with artillery fire as a nightly lullaby. Call me selfish in caring for myself . . . I will toast to that. I'm just the battered bastard with a whiskey bottle, frayed like a spool of yarn. But, I can kill and not regret . . . right? I can fight.

I don't feel . . . I don't want to feel anymore. Numbness is a treasure sought fervently for, but never found to last longer than hours of fuzzy recollections.

So, who is the scruffy mirage in this whiskey mirror? His eyes are swollen with oozing malice grown over hellish days and nights. Insomnia is but a close relative, and paranoia, a half-brother of his. It all pieces together as one, a mass of anguish bred in a man called to act more, or less, than human. I have not figured out the answer to such a riddle. Is it less than human to murder, or more than human to survive? Animals, the lot of us.

We are only surviving, breathing one moment at a time. We walk on tip-toes inwardly, but any bystander will see nothing but an unshaven, stalwart man chapped by the jeers of Mother Nature and scarred by the shrapnel and bullets of our hated nemesis. The abhorrence boils my blood, and I want to spit upon them all for what they have done; for the countless heart-aches and the rapid palpitations of a heart straddling the fine line between sanity and psychosis. How I loathe them!

Thus, this potable is my choice of self-mutilation. Each gulp springs the hope that sweet dreams, merry dreams, will come in the drooping of my eye lids. That the wails of the dying, the familiar moans of aide, will fade, but I know it is so very futile. I will battle with fury, my barbed knuckles white, and choke the enemy . . . make them solicit my mercy! My compassion! I murder them again and again for each time they murdered a part of my soul! They will rot with me one day, whether beneath an engraved tombstone, or a stone-less mound. Either way, there will be vengeance . . . in my hallucinations.

"Whatcha looking at, Webster," I spew in a drunken stupor as the man's piercing oceanic eyes bore into my own. They see, they analyze, and they judge. The man who failed to bare his share of a burden now sits content for a supposed successful mission; he sits so very comfortably as one of us . . . again. His eyes shift and he gently bites the side of his cheek, lost in his own contemplation. Satisfied, I mumble, "Yeah, that's what I thought, college boy." Rich ass!

The world spins in whispers, and their hushed voices mingle into inaudible murmurs. Familiar faces bleed to a collage of torment. So much agony. Such are the memoirs of a soldier. We move and go nowhere, kill and die within, and we survive but fail to live.

We are worn faces trapped within tattered places, with little hope of going anywhere to escape. Escape is just a fool's word. There is no escape in war. There is just release . . . in a dose of morphine, a prostitute's warmth, and a whiskey bottle.

They mourn him, but I don't miss him, yet. I consume another swig, and another.

I can almost swear that it tastes like salty tears. Their faces have no expression. They are as blank and numb as the grey we are all encased within, a world without emotions, just pursed lips, blood-shot eyes, and sweaty brows. There is nothing left for me to do but to conceal my head and drown the sorrows for a moment or two, because what remains is only the present. No tomorrow lingers in my mind. I am not guaranteed a tomorrow, so I never attempt to piece together what the following sunrise may look like. The irony of it all is overwhelming.

The phantasms flash before my eyes, and I remember them all. After all, nightmare is just another word for yesterday's reality. Every time, I see my death. The irony of it all! Those are the greatest moments I've ever experienced! It is so hard to express, so hard to take in, and it so often feels we are puppets running in a circle, lost in the gravity of a world that long ago found itself without logic and reasoning. But, we still run because it is all we know . . . it is all I know. And . . . I am tired. Damn tired. My legs cannot move any longer, my arms are breaking under the weight, and mentally . . . even a shrink could not comprehend my thoughts without losing his own sanity!

The room is quiet, but I know we are silently screaming inside. They weep for him from within, and I gulp deeply the fiery liquid. As long as it stings my veins, I won't miss him. Not yet. No . . . not yet.

And the reflection of myself stares into my eyes with each moment the flask is raised to my mouth. It is amazing how one can love the image, yet despise it passionately, all at once. The monster battle lines created looks nothing like the infamous Grendel or any other of Webster's mythological beasts learned in some Harvard literature class. They don't gobble tiny villagers buying morning eggs or breath bolts of fire. The monster grows in the numbness I've learned to create – the ability to remove emotion – it leaves me so very bare. I'm naked in the cold atmosphere of loneliness.

"Are you drunk, trooper?" Ah, yet another man so akin to Webster.

One with barely any experience in the delicate art of destruction. He saw one man die . . . one man! No, a boy. He saw a boy die. A boy sobbing for his life, pleading to whatever God exists to himself remain a minute part of this forsaken world. He saw the pitiful reality that is war, where boys become petrified corpses while ragged men like me seek the comfort of dirty glass and potent poison to flush the thoughts away. He still sees in color, not accepting that the only tone against the darkness is the rivers of crimson flowing from bodies.

And now, he sits beside Sergeant Martin as if they have been brothers of war for ages. I am the one standing beside the freezing cobblestones of this make-shift home, slightly separated from the collection of men I have known for years more than he.

"Leave me alone." For once, I just want to be alone. Let me be! Allow me these few hours to drown again and again with this bottle. Maybe, the memories will finally die, too. May they be buried six feet deep, deep into the depths of Hell, where I pray they burn! Burn to ashes! Become nonexistent, just ghosts of what once was.

I spit, my stomach drops, and I stare deeply at the whiskey looking glass. The swampy reflection in my cherished bottle of temporary release reveals the creature within me, a hell-bound shell of a man broken somewhere along the lines drawn in scarlet, composed of still hearts and severed arteries.

Those pools of brown were not nearly so hollow long ago . . . and I quaff the last portion in earnest reprieve.

"Answer the question." His voice is stern, just like a fucking officer. A bitter and fleeting smirk tempts my lips. The kid's education precedes him, but he knows nothing. Naïve. Innocent, even. I glance at the blackness of his eyes. My chest clenches and my knuckles whiten upon the bottle. Familiarity, too much, rests in them . . . they are too much alike . . . just versions apart. He's still young, mind and soul. He has hope; maybe, he will not be broken like me. He could live through this war, not survive, but live!

I shake my mind and tilt the empty bottle for any trace of remaining liberation from his face, his gurgles, and the agape angle of his lips as he attempted to solicit aide. Too many faces! Which is which? Does it matter? They haunt me in the solitude of my thoughts!

I won't miss him, yet!

I won't!

"Yes, sir, I am drunk, sir . . ."

No, I won't miss him . . . not yet . . .