Author's Notes: Another day, another chapter. Work was hard today, but I am so caught up in writing this story that I wanted, very badly, to write this. So...hopefully it came out okay. Thank you to Eleanor Rigby, booklover1357, Goldsilver02 and britt for the reviews! They are much appreciated! Please do let me know if I have put too much description in here and not enough dialogue. If it's too flowery or embellished, let me know and I will try to fix it or at least be less verbose in the next chapter.

disclaimer - I own nothing of Band of Brothers and no disrespect is intended toward the men of Easy Company. This is merely fiction and is based on the fictional portrayal of Joe Liebgott.

I have not slept.

Still, I have not let the lure of dreams without blood and men born of provocation take me to bed, tuck my haggard body into the shape of its form. Sleep does not call to me, only the presence of mind not to let myself wonder why it is that I find myself on my knees scrubbing away dying brushstrokes of gore.

The dress and stole I have worn since the morning prior aids me in leading away the cold, the shawl climbing down my shoulders and pooling on the floor in wisps of fallen cloth. It mingles with the melting snow that has turned gray in becoming nothing more than chilled water, no longer pieces of silent beauty that falls from an aching sky. The blood is the only source of animation it holds anymore. The only figment of life it clings desperately to as to not become nothing more than marks in old, pitted floorboards.

In fact, as I am now in such close proximity to the floor as to hear its protestations and grievances, it speaks to me of the evidence which surfaces through the medium of a threadbare rag. Evidence of the man dozing away the hours of his day of rest in the company of a tub.

There are old denotations, ones that I have missed in the engagements I have made with the patrons that come and go, silk and wool coats for winter. Carcasses of old ashes are buried in the cracks of the floorboards, in sepulchers of forgotten darkness. Crumbled cakes of mire are lodged into clefts of the decaying wood and they encircle the filth like the rounded embrace of basins. Like bowls.

Mostly, however, the floor imparts to me the traces of yesterday. Of liberated darkness that gives way to manacle the conquered light to its cage of morning. Only guards of shadows remain to make certain that dawn cannot escape its fate. Kismet has decided this passion play, this call to arms, and it cannot loosen its shackles to elude this task to illuminate the world for human eyes, a lantern to shed radiance upon mankind's eternal dance with mortality.

Even in the dull gray of rousing dawn, I can see the blood. There are all forms of it that strain into the body of the floorboards as if through a sieve. Blood mixed with alcohol. Blood mixed with spit that drained from a mouth open with desperation, to take in as much air as it can manage, but finding there is not enough energy to muster for even the simplest act of breathing. There is blood that looks as if it were put there by an ailing painter, blood that looks as if it may have fallen from the sky like a raindrop, blood that rises in the form of Joe's boot soles.

It is everywhere in the miniature foyer, and only the pathway that leads up the stairs is mingled with it. His footprints have turned from their original scarlet to the throttled hue of rust. I keep my pail of steaming hot water close to me, dipping the soiled rag to rinse it quickly and continue the drudgery.

Before long, the once pure water is defiled by human insides. By Joe's terrible vices which manifest in dismantled ashes and his equally atrocious manners in the form of his inability to wipe his shoes at the door, where I have long since placed a mat for his use. It is my belief that he has not even seen it and that if I do not soon acknowledge its existence for him, it shall be doomed to a long, lonely life of futility. Of never being used.

Day moves on without me, forgetting my efforts to evade sleep which prods the back of my skull like insistent fingers. The irritant abandons me to pursue other victims, perhaps the world-weary soldiers that wake and find that dreams have mislead them, giving them no vestiges of rest. I am glad to be rid of her, of tactless weariness, for I wait patiently for the man upstairs to wake.

In the meantime, my task proves useful in distracting me from the questions that plague a troubled mind. Why Joe? Why? This is the most frequent of visitors, the ones that come pounding on the doorstep of my curiosity much like Joe does, like he did on the first day of his arrival. Why have they done this to you? Why have you deserved such bruises, such illustrations of hatred to carve your handsome face?

Why?

At long last, a groan issues from the half-opened door that lies in wait for me to enter it. Usually, the partition is arranged in a very clear image of what he wishes to convey to me. You are unwelcome, it says to me. Keep away.

But as the duty has fallen to me, I am left to keep the door in whatever state of welcome I please. I take it upon myself to place it at half mast so that I may all the better hear what sounds may emit from inside. I am already at the base of the staircase when I hear him and I am quick to discharge the rag from my person, sliding the bucket out of harm's way, before I spring to my feet as if it is a command which summons me to the attic.

I rush to the cupboards to retrieve a glass of water for the poor soul upstairs. Long practice in the art of victory over the effects of too much drinking have left me prepared for not only what symptoms may arise the day after, but also learned in what to give the sufferer. Water and tea have always been able-handed comrades in warding off the results of alcohol sickness; even if they cannot eradicate it completely and immediately, they are capable of easing the illness away as the body cleanses itself naturally.

Of course, medicine is always the first choice to mask the pain, but as I have none, all I am able to present him with is a glass of water and an offer of tea.

When I reach the top of the stairs and wrestle with the door to gain entry into the room, I find Joe making a sort of swan dive into bed. This provokes the illness even further and into the pillow he issues a very long moan of mixed pain and frustration.

"Joe," I call to him from across the room. "Joe, I have some water for you."

"Fuck water," he replies, first lifting his head and turning it toward me so that the full effect of his rejection may be heeded. "I need pills. Or a fuckin' blood transfusion."

"I am hardly practiced enough in medicine to provide you with what will only prove to be an unnecessary treatment," I reply, and hand to him his glass of water. He takes it, only to set it on the end table close by. "And since I am already certain you will ask again, I must inform you that I have no medication for pain."

He scoffs as he attempts to sit up, but the strain is too hard on him, and he over exerts himself. I know better than to risk wounding his pride by helping him, so I merely watch as he reaches for the water with shaking hands and grimaces of pain.

I am ever resigned to my rightful station as an observer of a man at war with himself, with the world, and with the black shroud of death that ever approaches him. It eclipses his every footstep, threatens his stature as a self-proclaimed figment of immortality.

"Of course you don't."

"Perhaps if you did not drink, you would not need the medicine at all. The saints would take pity on you," I gently assure him, and find, all too late, that the proposition I have been so quick to make without imposition of thought is a mistake.

His eyes flash as he slams the cup of water down on the end table. It is my turn to wince now as the sound leaves long, painful gashes in the progress we have been making toward armistice. "Lady, if I fucking wanted to be scolded, I'd write to my mother and tell her about all the nasty things I've said and done since I left her back home, okay?" He pauses, as if ambushed by a firm thread of remembrance, and his dark eyes catch me in their snare. "And saints? I don't believe in no fucking saints."

"Your tags. They say you are Catholic-"

"They also say I am a soldier. That I belong to the service," he replies heatedly, dragging his teeth over his lips like knives over bare flesh. The soft flesh whitens, paling beneath such menaces of pressure, and then recedes into reddened loneliness. "I belong to no one. I stand on my own ground. They might tell me what to do, but they don't fucking tell me how to live my life."

The words infused with the boiled blood of passion recall to me a poem. They resonate the words of Henley. I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.

He abandons the water to stagnancy to spite me but in the end, I know, it will only spite himself. It does me no harm not to drink it. I have no liquid poison coursing through my veins, clouding my mind with an ache that imitates the rhythmic pulse of a heartbeat. I have come to find that Joe sometimes devotes himself to causes that he thinks will prove himself as a man of principle, to establish that pain leaves no mark on his endeavors to go against the grain of society, but they are mostly campaigns executed in vain. They are lost to indifference. He succeeds only in making himself suffer for things that no one but himself may understand.

"If you are not Catholic, then what are you?"

He recites to me his beliefs with unwavering pride. "I'm a Jew."

A flood of comprehension finds me somewhere. It dictates reason. In my head, the pieces are being swept together to make a bigger picture, and finally there is a small flicker of logic behind this bloody mess of a man that sits before me. Why he aches with bruises. Why he has been reduced to a river of blood and rage. Persecution. Rejection. Hatred.

"Joe," I say, seeking him in the depths of his thoughts where I have left him. His eyes flicker toward me, uncertain of my shape that appears formless in the vaporous commotion of reflection, but they are attentive enough. They slide into focus. "Joe, what happened? Why did they beat you?"

"Don't you fucking listen?" He retorts. He does not bother to control his fury, no matter how badly it hurts to summon such fire when he is already covered in the burns of the inferno that raged last night. "I just told you why. Isn't it reason enough?"

"No, it is not reason enough. There must be more to it than your religion. Than your race. And I must make it my business to know if this will be a frequent occurrence. If you are to live here and I must clean up the mess afterward," I insist. I try to take his hand, to break through the guarded walls of his resolve, but it retreats into his own self-induced madness. "Please, I only wish to help you. You are always so quick to dismiss me-"

"You really wanna know the reason they beat me? Why I fought back?" He asks, his brow gathering over the bridge of his nose in the folds of a very distinct glower. "Are you so fucking desperate to know me, to know who I am, that you must know why? Will the world end if you aren't well informed of what goes on in my own fucking private life?"

I swallow hard against tears. It feels as if I am swallowing glass and it cuts through my voice, which comes to him in the form of a frail whisper. "If I were to tell you it were, would it even sway your decision to keep me locked out of your life at all?"

He leans forward. His eyes are rimmed red and one is still swollen, the shadows thrown over the wounded socket deepened by black and blue. "Because I wanted them to."

At the threshold of revelation, he leaves me. Forsakes me in the darkness of half-truths and carefully concocted lies and I am left to wander them, try to delve into what I know, what he has written for me, to find what is missing. He turns, his bone-thin back facing me, and I take this as a very deliberate gesture of goodbye. Of dismissal. All offers have been denied. I am no longer needed, if I ever was, and I take my leave.

The floor is clean when I reach the bottom of the stairs, the door now returned to its forbidden state. Everything is finished. The cup which once housed my morning tea is now drained of all life, a dry bone picked clean of its purpose. The woolen coat lies finished, laid out on my bed, a skeleton waiting to be breathed into life by a little girl made of smiles and ribbons winding through her hair. There is nothing more to do. I am relieved of all distraction.

And the door, it is closed.

I know my place. I know it well.

I keep repeating this to myself, that I am aware, that I am cognizant. It is a mantra that I dictate to myself as I look into the mirror and practice the words, learn them by watching them form on my lips, watching them expand and in their unveiling, perhaps I may find the true meaning behind them. I know my place. I know it well.

But I have never asked myself. What precisely defines this elusive place? This unmarked position that I have been sorted into without my knowing, without my consent? Is it servant? Whipping boy? Scapegoat? Enemy?

However can I know what continues to elude my understanding?

At noon, I am to meet with the little girl from Littlecote with her father. When I leave the house for the meeting, I find myself in a world steeped in fallen clouds. Tufts of white that remain from the winter storm the night before are still melting. They will return, soon, when the chill commits to stay for the remaining season. Until it decides when to pledge to such a visit, the countryside village must do with puddles of slush and thin films of ice covering the lingering puddles.

She is just as I dreamed she would be when the time comes and I find them in the heart of Aldbourne.

She is a beautiful little thing. A cherub with the rouge of life dashed upon her cheeks and lips that shoot an arrow of love through one's heart with every smile from their cupid's bow form. Her eyes are clear like the touch of heaven upon a dying hand. There is nothing clearer in the world than them. And they are fashioned of such forget-me-not blue that would entreat even the most absent of minds to remember their shade.

I kneel before the little angel in her old coat that seems to have borne the brunt of age for some time. The hems billow and snap in the wind like curtains hung upon a lively window, through which a trail of breeze scatters to absorb every angle, every shape, every corner of the room. She halts before me, bright and cheerful, and the wind of motion gathers to leave through the portal from which it came.

Her father is a mere foot soldier. Nothing less, but he boasts no patches of valor upon his cold, distant uniform. Within the shell of military attire, a warm soul is suppressed. He shakes my hand, thanks me for spending such time on the project, and I bid my patron goodbye with a smile and acceptance of his gratitude. The little girl is already wearing her new coat so proudly. The scarlet plays upon the quiet brown of her hair, makes it vibrant, makes it sing.

The little girl does not leave my mind even now, as I make my way through the courtyard of the city sprinkled with stragglers of people here and there. It fades into the background of the bookshop as I enter it, the verve in her eyes which can only be attributed to a life stifled by rationing. A new coat, an early Christmas present before her father must away for God knows how long. Only he knows. Perhaps he will not tell us until it is too late.

The owner of the shop is a quiet old man. His gaze does not inflict judgment, nor does it reflect unwanted pity where sympathy should have been in its stead. He is simply there to spread the joy of reading, preach the wonders of the imagination, and perhaps lead those blind to such vivid words behind the cold spine of a book and what seems nothing more than an empty title of gold-leafed lettering.

I am already privy to the gospel of make believe. He is only called upon to collect my offerings to the church of muses, the congregation of words which hail the glory of tales of old. The saint, he thanks me for my donation to the cause, and his blessing comes to me, humbly, in the form of a thank you. Please, he beseeches me calmly, please, do not waste your savings on books if you do not have the funds for them. One cannot read if he cannot eat!

I smile and pat his hand consolingly. Do not worry. I have enough food for the body. It is the mind that needs nourishment.

This not only pleases him, but sets the concern of his good heart to rest. It may sleep peacefully, I think to myself as I leave the shop.

An hour has not passed since I have left the house. There is nothing more to do. The tasks of the day are over before it has even begun. My mind turns over the possibility of making a stop at the tea room, to bask in the light of normalcy for a little while, if only for such a fleeting moment as an hour. With the books under my arm, the thin collections of Henley and Poe promising a dark, winding entrance into the epicenter of the soul which only their melancholy reflections may uncover, I could pass such an hour without even knowing it has gone.

I have almost been coerced into the idea. The concept is alluring. But as I make to turn down the small, dirt lane that leads to the town tea shop, I find myself stopping before I even know the reasoning behind my halt.

Two young women dressed for winter approach me. I, myself, am not equipped for the sudden breach of frost that nips at my cheeks and numbs the fingers which I stow away into my thin pockets. They cannot escape the cold in such unseasonal attire.

I do not recognize the pair, though they seem to know my face well. Before I came along, before I invaded their destined path for the tea shop, they chattered happily amongst themselves. Birds in the trees which sing their lively songs of spring. And though it is winter, and the call for dreary rumination often haunts the best of us, I am cheered by the advent of such premature springtime bliss. This all changes, however, once they catch sight of me.

The taller of the two, the less lovely face, goes still in the middle of portraying the logic which the mind behind it wishes to communicate. The air between them goes still. No longer tangled with the crusades of battling opinions that will likely lead to nothing but friendly ceasefire between two long-time companions.

She whispers to her friend and calls to attention my presence. The other whispers back, her eyes narrowed, brow digging deep into the sockets of her eyes like shadows of doubt. For a transient moment, I inwardly talk myself into believing it is Joe that I am looking at. That this is not the whimsical passing of a stranger in the street; this is adversity in flesh.

But the moment passes. The two women are upon me. At once, I am reminded of the rumor mill which works tirelessly around me while I cease to remember its existence. The shorter, the more antagonistic of the two, spits at my feet. The hateful gesture only narrowly misses the front of my shoe.

All hopes of venturing into the sheltered normalcy of the tea shop are shattered. There is no normalcy there. Only a reminder of what little I have left of the life I once knew.

When I return home, back to my shabby confinements, I take out my sewing materials. A spool of silver thread. Caskets of buttons. My eye catches on something of a project left for later, the pea coats that need lining stitched into them, and in my desperation, I take it out to the kitchen to be resumed.

I do not stop working until the feeling dissipates. The feeling of being winded. Of running from something I cannot escape, no matter how hard I try as long as I keep running in place. As long as I stay here, I am a captive to their disdain. A prisoner of their hearsay.

When at last I calm my racing heart, my pounding lungs, and I no longer must sink my teeth into my lips to hide the gloss of tears, I set the unfinished pea coat down upon the table.

I disregard the world outside my window. For a moment, a simple notch in time, I remain still.

Late October;;

It is late when I at last find that Joe has not come home at all.

There is a great part of my mind that whirls through the motions, like gears, in very frantic thought once the revelation strikes me. A violent hand upon an unsuspecting cheek. Why has he not come home? It is Thursday. He has training tomorrow, bright and early, with the rising sun. He cannot be at the pub, can he?

My heart halts at the possibility of death. Lying half-frozen and bleeding somewhere in the gutters of Aldbourne. A smashed figurine of rebellion that no longer has the will to fight, so he simply relents, and allows them to break him.

I can imagine the scene.

He is coming apart. The fissures widen as his frame begins to give way beneath the blows. He bleeds and the scarlet flow is like stained glass fleeing from the impact. With every new image that drowns me in horror, in fear of where he might be, what might have happened to him, the seed of decision grows even further. At last, it is no longer a sapling, a young concept, but a great tree bearing the fruits of resolution, and I rush to my room to find a shawl. The most suitable I have for such freezing weather is frayed and as old as time itself, but I am too shaken to care much for the jaws of winter that are to await me outside my door.

I am sprinting through the streets before it can even catch me, gnashing at my heels, an angry dog cheated of its chew toy. It does not draw near enough to scathe my uncovered skin, to tear through my unsuitable clothes, until I find little clusters of uniformed men ambling through the deserted town. I realize I am close to the base, where many of the soldiers are leaving for the night from the nearby pub.

All former perceptions of reserve and modesty that are expected of women are dashed from me in pieces. I phase through them, a ghost searching for its lost grave, unmarked somewhere amongst angels made of stone. Each meeting can be considered, by the standards of etiquette, to be hideously unmannerly. No names are exchanged, no curtsies, not even a hand shake. Just one question. A question is all I have to give.

Do you know a man named Joseph Liebgott?

Sometimes, a name is not enough. A description. Designs of thick hair through which pale, thin fingers run their frustrations. Descriptions of dark eyes, of the thin body that hides beneath ill-fitting clothes. Nothing comes to mind, they always say. Nope, I don't think I know him, but I'll be your Joseph Liebgott if you don't find the schmuck.

At last, I reach a man that walks in silence, that walks alone. From behind, all I can see is dark hair that mingles and dances with the night, the likeness of unity broken only by the flashes of stars where there is only swallowed light in this man's lonely shadow.

I reach him. Reach for him. I do not know why it is that I suffer such concern, such desperation born of worry that seems misplaced for the man that has ruined every familiarity I ever knew in my life. Before him, at least I had routine, I had peace, even if poverty stole what it could of my livelihood. Without him, perhaps everything would return to the way it was, attempt to reclaim its raiment of the old monotony. The fit would be different. It would not feel the same against skin that has been tainted by Joseph Liebgott's conquering of my life. He will stain me forever.

But such thoughts are not present. Only that I find him and make sure he is all right.

"Sir," I call to the retreating figure, the one that thaws like black ice within the darkness as it moves against the heated stars. "Sir, please. I must speak with you for a moment."

In the gloom, I cannot see his face. A shroud of mist drifts over the pallor of the moon. He stops, however, and I can feel him listening for my voice, even if I cannot witness his focus for myself. I must trust the sound of his turning toward me, of his silver-stained breath that floats into the air against the black sky.

"Sir, do you know Joseph Liebgott?"

"Yes," comes the voice, lilting in a very strange, very foreign accent. "Yes, I know Liebgott. He's in my unit."

"Oh," I breathe, clutching my hand to my heart which now thuds harder with relief. "Please, sir. Please tell me where he is if you can? I quarter him, you see, and I have been waiting for him, but he has not come home."

"He collapsed today in training, ma'am," he replies. "It's pneumonia. Not too far along yet, not bad enough for it to kill him, but he'll have to stay in the aid station until I clear him."

"How long might that be, sir?"

"Can't be sure with these sort of things. A week or more."

He waits for me to answer as I let the information slowly digest itself in the fertile plains of thought in my head. It escaped my notice, I realize. I never even knew he was sick. "Can't I see him?"

"I am sorry," he replies, his voice a sympathetic drawl. "But you've got no authorization to be on base. Send for me in a few days and I'll let you know how he's doin'. Don't you worry, now. He'll be just fine. You go home now and rest. Send for me and I'll come as soon as I can."

"Who must I send for?" I ask. "What is your name?"

"Eugene Roe."

This man who I know only as a strange piece of darkness seems to comfort me in a way that no visible face could have done. His anonymity seems almost angelic, as if he is sent here to assuage the guilt and the fear that nestles deep inside my being, grows in me like trees of filth and fragile humanity. God has sent this black shade to me.

Please, do not despair. There will come a time for redemption. It is not now…go home. Sleep. I will come to you when it is time. I will summon you to arms against the rival of serenity.

I wish to see his face. To shed this curtain of darkness which separates me from the giver of peace, of stillness. But the figure merely bows his head gently, as if to pardon himself as humbly as he can, and I know I must wait.

His footsteps disappear into the emptiness of the night just as the moon tears away her mask of cloud. The world is again radiant with silver-blue light.

Footnotes: I suppose I do not have any at this time except to say: thanks for reading! :)