Upon the encouragement of my dear reader Churchlady63, this chapter is put forth for your enjoyment. Now it's late, I can't find the previous chapter for reference, and I have had way too much sugar (again, I know) today. Pray for me…. In a few minutes, there may be a hole in my ceiling the size of me. I'm practically bounding off the walls. Also, too much Studio C is a very bad thing. Give me a shout-out if you watch that show, it's awesome. Yay Matt!

Anyway, enjoy, comment, fav, follow… you know the spiel, and I love it when you do these things! It literally gives me tears of joy…

Also, for this story, if I mention a episode that doesn't seem to fit in with the whole time thing, the is sort of AU, so that's that.

Disclaimer: After these last few months, I am easily tricked into thinking I own them…. But now I wake to the nightmare my life has become, void of these people…. Aka, I really, truly, honestly, and unfortunately do not own them. If I did, there would be a Combat!, The Next Generation. Trust me.

Days began to pass with slow succession. As his home town began to grow on him once again, though he still battled the horrific nightmares, and days when he didn't want to get up and live, there was so much to be seen that had changed since the war. Ladies now gathered at the train station to give out food to the soldiers with each passing transport; the papers held no small-talk anymore. Nowadays it was the latest news of the war, with the occasional obituary of some kind soul who'd passed on, which nobody but perhaps the soul itself would or could ever read without bursting into tears. One week there was even an article about him, with a picture of himself standing tall in his uniform. The headline read, HERO RETURNS HOME, ST. LOUIE WELCOMES BACK WILLIAM NELSON. Charlie had shown him that paper, and slapped him on the back. He left Billy forever thinking, 'Now we're even.'

It was the second time he'd been featured in a story, and probably the last time in his life….his body a living diary, bearing intelligible entries till the end of his days…. 'At Tros Anges I fought. I suffered - I nearly died.'

Yes, St. Louie was just as he'd left it, only now through a shade that would darken his days forever. War. It still ate at him, his guilt flowing in unnatural patterns that hung in delicate balance between unbearable longing, and strange, detached grief. He recalled that night so long ago he was telling Littlejohn how he'd do anything for a Purple Heart and a one way ticked stateside… now he was guilty for leaving them behind.

For all he knew, any, God forbid all, of them could be dead. Captured. Tortured. And here he lived on- or tried to- in his hometown, safe from the terrible cruelty of a real world.

He was still healing, mind you. Being shot, anywhere, is no small thing. The torso is perhaps the most serious, and by far the most painful. But the guilt lay heavy on the shoulders of Billy, who never would shake it for anything.

One evening, about a week after Billy had kissed Evelyn, the young ex-soldier sat on the roof of the porch, which jutted out beneath his window, watching the sun give its last bows of the day.

In one hand, he held an apple, and in the other a small knife. He notched off bits of the fruit with the knife, and promptly pulled them off with his teeth.

His curtains rustled behind him from the window through which he'd clambered to get the roof in the first place. "Ryan?"

"Yeah, it's me." Billy's younger brother pretty much fell out the window. He landed on his nose, and quickly pushed himself up, settling next to his brother. "Will?"

"Yeah?" Billy, or 'Will', hacked off another chunk of apple and tossed it to Ryan, who deftly caught it. Billy smiled quietly. "What do you see out there?" The thirteen-year-old was getting lanky, and Billy had to resist teasing him about it.

"I see…. Trees. The sky. The horizon…."

"Yeah, but what's out there?"

"…..a war."

"What was it like, Will?" Ryan asked after a moment's hesitation.

Billy glanced down at his little brother. He lowered the apple and knife into his lap to think. "It was like… every bad thing, spread over a beautiful place. It was horrific sometimes…"

"But you seem okay…?" Ryan said cautiously.

"I am." He replied honestly, "Outside. I might never lose what I saw out there, kid. But it's what I'm seeing now, that is what I have to remember."

"It changed you."

"Huh?"

"You used to talk about baseball, and Evelyn. And we used to sit out here at night. Gee, remember that on time, when I was seven, and you brought out the radio, and we listened to the shows all night…" his words wandered so that he was soon not speaking at all. His eyes were fixed on the point straight ahead. East. If you just kept going straight in that direction, all across the ocean…. You'd eventually come into the scariest thing the world knew right now. Billy didn't want to keep inside what he felt the need to. For the safety of his family. His mother knew he'd never be "all right."

His father…. Well he liked to imagine he knew.

But Ryan. Oh, God, Ryan was so innocent. He had ambitions, and interests. He could name any star in the heavens- he could calculate better and faster than Billy ever could, or ever would. No, Ryan couldn't be one of them. One of those who was expected to do great things. The pressures he felt about being his mother's only son while her other was away fighting someone else's war, well, it had taught him a thing or two about growing up, Billy could see that. And those gifts shouldn't, and wouldn't be destroyed by war, not even tales of it.

To add to all ironies, Ryan spoke again, "Tell me what happened."

Billy felt his eyes sharpen as he focused on the dipping sun. The noises became low and mumbling as he honed in on that sound. What a precious sound. His brother's voice.

"How did it happen?" he asked again.

The older of the two tilted his head back and leaned against the outside of the house.

"Just exactly like anything happens. You dread it. It happens, it's over… and pretty soon you're trying to stand up again."

"Have you?"

"Have I what?"

"Stood up again," Ryan stopped looking to the east. "Have you?"

For a very long time there was silence. The sun forgot its purpose and began to slip into sleep which dragged it behind the horizon. The world turned softened grey, and crickets gave their tributes to a lovely St. Louis night. The air, just like he'd imagined it, like breathing in a mountain snow, only warm, and thick with the lilacs growing below on the back of mother-earth. Someone was playing the sax in the near-distance, and he listened with all of his human worth for a tune he could not understand. He finally spoke.

"I don't think I can, Ryan." He closed his eyes, unaware of the soft, innocent pair that now tracked his weary progress towards a deep, untouched sleep. Before he fell completely to the soft ashes of his mind, Billy mumbled, "I don't know if I ever will."

Once again, thanks for reading, and please, please, please, tell me what you think! I do this for you, people, for you! And it is now 1:22 in the morning, so, yeah… make this worth it, please! (not that you guys aren't worth it in general, it's just….)