Beta's: Atman, FandomlyCroft, and Laura001 are amazing and helped whip this chapter into shape. Plus Aniset, who got this whole section off the ground.

Last Time: Robert Flack is sent to Easy Company to find out why Sergeant Buchanan rejected a pass home and (hopefully) dig up a good story while he's at it.

"I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?" - Nehemiah 6:3

Now: Flack searches out Evelyn's best friend, Eugene Roe to get his opinion on the matter at hand.

-Chapter 36-

When Flack stepped inside the aid station, he wasn't expecting to be nearly flattened by a medic. The guy cussed him out, not even bothering to slow down as he made his way towards a surgeon's cry.

Flack flattened himself against the tent wall, scanning the faces for something, anything, to indicate which one of them was the man he was looking for. It took him a few minutes to realize the folly of this, almost as long as it took him to remember how to breathe around the smell assaulting his nose.

"It could be worse," said a man from his elbow, nearly giving Flack a heart attack. "Thank God it's freezing out here, keeps the dead from decaying. You've never in your life smelled anything worse than a couple hundred dead people rotting."

Flack's face twisted with horror.

The man laughed, eyes flicking disinterestedly over the reporter. "You're not a soldier," he deduced. "You injured or something?"

"I'm looking for someone," said Flack.

"Aren't you all?" the medic said dryly. "Excuse me," he said and then left Flack to go help sop up the blood that was bubbling out of a guy's stomach. The poor kid was still on a stretcher, probably fresh from the line.

Flack decided not to wait around and see if the man would come back when he'd finished – if he finished. He didn't think he could watch a second longer and not vomit.

He'd been a war correspondent long enough to have seen more than a few injuries before, but most of the time they'd been cleaned up at least a little before he'd had to interview them. The constant stream of guys coming into the aid station was nearly as long as the number of guys filing out. Medics ran amongst the bedlam, frantically trying to be in more than one place at a time.

It was chaos, pure and simple.

It took asking three more medics, each seemingly more busy than the last, before someone finally gave him the time of day.

"What's his name again?" the medic asked, moving quickly across the tent.

Flack checked his notes just to make sure. "Eugene Roe."

"I think there's a Roe over there," said the medic, pointing out a row of bunks. "Like the fifth bed in or so."

"Oh, no, he's a medic," said Flack.

"Oh, well in that case, never heard of him," said the guy.

"Are you sure? He's in Easy Company, Airborne, 506th?"

"Eagles right?"

Flack remembered seeing an eagle patch on the guys he'd talked to today. "Yeah."

"He stationed here?" said the medic. At Flack's bewildered look, he tacked on, "at the aid station?"

"I'm not sure," admitted Flack. "His First Sergeant said he'd probably be here."

"If he is here, he might be getting supplies for the line."

"Can you point me in that direction?"

"Outside and take a right. There's a stack of boxes; you should see the jeeps."

"Thanks," said Flack, happy to get out of the aid station.

The medic didn't even hear him as he darted off to help some incoming stretcher bearers.

If inside was chaotic, outside was a zoo. Dozens of medics were rushing around with boxes, stacking and restacking them in different piles as jeeps darted in and out of the area just as fast as they were loaded or unloaded as needed. The jeeps darted around the medics in a haphazard dance that was actually somewhat impressive.

It was nothing less than a mad scramble as the medics tried to get the supplies they needed before they got snatched up by someone else.

Taking a deep breath of the frozen air to fortify himself, he squared his shoulders before snagging one of the medics whose vision was too obscured by the box of supplies to avoid him.

"Do you know where I can find Eugene Roe?"

"Who?" asked the man after he'd cussed the reporter out for holding him up.

"Roe? He's a medic."

The medic rolled his eyes. "No shit," he snarled. "There's a lot of those around." He pulled away to walk off.

Flack wasn't going to give up this time without a fight. He followed the man. "He's in Easy Company, 506?"

The man sped up and hopped up into a jeep, box and all. "Never heard of him."

Flack watched the jeep pull out in dismay, So much for that.

With nothing else for it, Flack tried asking someone else, and then someone else when he didn't know, and then someone else when the next guy didn't know either.

Just as he was about to lose hope, finally someone answered, "The Cajun? Spina's buddy?"

"Yes!" said Flack, privately thinking, Oh, thank God.

The medic pointed to two guys loading up the latest in a long line of jeeps. "He's the lanky one on the left."

"Thank you," Flack said effusively, eyes riveted to the medic, all but ignoring the man who'd finally deigned to help him. He refused to take his eyes off his quarry now that he'd finally found him.

The medic he was ignoring didn't care, taking advantage of the reporter's distraction to hurry back to his tasks.

Flack broke into a jog, desperate to reach them before they finished and drove off in the jeep. He called out, "Eugene Roe?" when he got close enough to be heard.

"Yeah?" came the strangled answer as the lanky man heaved a crate that looked heavy enough to snap him in half onto the back of the jeep.

"You're Eugene Roe from Easy Company?" confirmed Flack. He almost couldn't believe that he'd actually found the man.

"Yep," he said.

Flack watched Roe pull a rope around the crate, lashing it securely to the jeep for travel. It only took him a moment, his hands whipping through knots with a proficiency born of a thousand repetitions.

Roe stood up, flicking sharp brown eyes up and down over the reporter's form.

Checking for injuries, Flack realized.

"What do you need?" asked the Cajun, turning back to the pile of boxes the other medic, presumably Spina, was slowly creating, grabbing another box and popping the lid.

Flack caught sight of blankets before Roe snapped the lid back on the box, catching his breath while Roe worked. "My name's Robert Flack. I'm a reporter for the New York Times."

"Uh huh," said Roe as he shoved the box of blankets into the front seat by the driver. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm here to do an article on Sergeant Buchanan."

Roe shot him a sharp look, assessing now and said, "All right."

The medic grabbed a clipboard off the dash and checked something off the list.

Flack watched this and took note of the other medic approaching the pile of crates with yet another box of supplies in his arms. Looking at the already overfull jeep, Flack wondered how they planned on getting it all on there.

"I was wondering if maybe I could ask you some questions about her. First Sergeant Lipton said you two are close friends."

Flack got a huff of breath in response. He took it as an affirmative and pulled out his notebook.

"How long have you known Sergeant Buchanan?" he asked first.

"Since Toccoa," answered Roe flatly, which was supremely unhelpful, but at least the man was answering.

"And how long have you been friends?"

"Before combat, I guess," said Roe absently, now looking through a box of aid kits, briskly checking that each had a bandage, morphine and sulfa.

It was almost entrancing, watching the medic methodically go through each kit. Flack shook himself out of it and asked another question. "How did the friendship start?"

Roe didn't answer.

Flack watched the two medics go through three more boxes, trying not to show his impatience.

He was loathe to interrupt the men, they obviously had a rhythm going and a lot left to do, but Flack didn't have all day, not if he wanted to interview both Buchanan – if he could ever find the woman – and now this "Bull" Randleman as well, plus whatever else Easy Company decided to throw at him. This was his only chance to speak with Buchanan's best friend. Flack only had the rest of today before he was being shipped back to Paris. He had to get all the interviews done by then, or he'd be stuck writing the most lackluster piece of his career.

If that happened, well, the New York Timeshad two very different options: the first was purchase some other newspaper's article about Buchanan and publish it after paying royalties; the second was replace him with some jumped up junior reporter.

Personally, Flack would wager that they'd do both, and if that happened, well, his days as a civilian would certainly be numbered before his number came up in the draft.

He liked his job. He liked not being shot at.

So if creating the best damn article ever written about Sergeant Buchanan meant interviewing the very surly members of her unit, then that's what he was going to do. And despite the distinct possibility that both of Sergeant Buchanan's friends were aggressive men who would like nothing more than to be left alone, well, he needed to interview them anyway. If this was the guy who knew Buchanan best, then he needed to talk to him, potential Cajun wrath or no.

Roe seemed like he was prepared to go on ignoring him indefinitely, preoccupied with sorting through the boxes and using the physical labor as an excuse to ignore the man questioning him.

Flack was used to this behavior. It generally indicated a difficult interview on the horizon.

His belly clenched in anticipation for the long fight. He vaguely wondered if Roe would be like Jackson, who was tight-lipped while he was snapping answers, or Liebgott who was liberal with his vitriol.

He braced himself as Roe opened his mouth to speak, pen at the ready to record whatever came out.

He didn't get to hear it. Just then the other Easy Company Medic, Spina, came up on them and cut off whatever Roe was about to say. Flack vaguely noted the other soldier trailing behind Spina as he slipped into the driver seat and started the jeep up.

"Hey, Gene," said the man, completely disregarding the reporter. "I'm gonna run this stuff up the line. Why don't you take a break until I bring the next jeep back?"

XxX

Gene turned his displeasure on Spina, losing his train of thought. He could hear the worry in the other medic's tone. If Gene asked to go instead, Spina would stay behind and blow the reporter off. He could tell just by the look in the man's eyes. He'd probably even enjoy it.

He turned to look at the reporter, pen poised and looking so eager to talk to him, and just couldn't find it in himself to turn the man down. No matter how much he didn't want to talk to the man, particularly about Ev.

That said, going involved unloading all the boxes by himself and then coming back, which is why Spina offered to do it. Gene was well aware that the other medic was under strict orders to make him take it easy. Spina was one of very few people that Roe actually listened to when they told him that.

"You sure?" said Gene, double-checking even as he handed Spina the last of the crates – another box of miraculously unpilfered aid-kits. He ducked his eyes to avoid Spina's searching gaze.

After Lieutenant Welsh, he'd promised himself to listen more when Spina and Ev told him to take a breather, even when it usually just irked him. He knew they were only trying to help. He used to know his limits, but that week they'd been surrounded in Bastogne, holding on by their fingernails under constant bombardment had pushed him to his breaking point.

He felt a lot better now, particularly since the Company was in reserve for the moment, letting First Battalion lead the charge for a change. Gene still felt a feeling not unlike hunger or anxiety when he found himself with time on his hands though. He was glad Spina had let him come along to help him here. He knew well enough that Spina would've taken Babe along with him instead since the two were close friends. But the man had taken one look at the lost expression on Roe's face and offered him the job.

Roe was grateful. Idle hands invited self-reflection, and he didn't have any time or use for that.

"Yep, I got this," said Spina hopping into the jeep, settling the crate in his lap. "Go ahead and indulge the reporter. I'll be back in a jiff." He gave a nod to the driver, saying, "Let's go!" rather unnecessarily.

The jeep sped off in a whine of squealing tires, leaving the two men behind awkwardly sizing each other up.

XxX

Flack watched the jeep go, before turning back to look at Roe. Somehow, with nothing to do, the medic looked smaller, more tired, than before.

Roe's shoulders rose and fell with a sigh that fogged the air around his head. As though the curling puff of air reminded him, the medic dug into a pocket and pulled out a cigarette. A quick flick of long fingers and the man took a drag. Flack watched, oddly fascinated as Roe tucked away the lighter. There was something about this man. He couldn't put his finger on it, but just being around him made him feel lighter somehow, less stressed and worried. Perhaps it was because Roe looked like he'd been having a really bad day?

"Let's go over here," said Roe, speaking around the cigarette as though he was born with one in his mouth. He waved a hand in a vague "this way" gesture and walked towards the tent

Flack followed the man, watching as people flowed around them in some sort of deference to Roe. After all the people who claimed not to know him, Flack was expecting a less conspicuous reaction to him from the others, but something about Roe made people, even those rushing around with their vision obscured by boxes of supplies, get out of his way.

It wasn't the same kind of firm command that Winters or Sink had, where the two men entered the room and everyone stood up to take notice. It wasn't even Lipton's quiet competence. Flack wasn't sure what exactly it was, but he watched it with a fair amount of interest.

They seemed to reach their destination. Flack sat on one of the crates across from the one Roe had chosen to perch on. He politely turned his attention to the hullabaloo around them while the man finished his cigarette. There were plenty of interesting characters to watch. Flack was nothing if not an observer of people after all, and it gave him some time to think over the questions he wanted to ask.

Also, after Liebgott, a more cautious approach was probably warranted. He'd almost blown his chance – he knew that – and he didn't want to lose his second one. Besides, Roe didn't seem to be in any particular hurry and Flack had nothing better to do at the moment than wait for him.

He turned over the facts in his mind. So far, he'd gathered that Sergeant Buchanan was a good NCO with no more or less expected of her than of her male counterparts. She was a good leader who inspired a good deal of loyalty in both her peers and her commanding officers. She kept to herself, as evidenced by the fact that nobody here seemed to even know about the pass home, much less that she'd turned it down.

Flack found it all a little hard to believe, though he did find that he did believe it nonetheless.

The reports he'd been hearing about Buchanan were just too good to be true. Sure he knew that the guys were only telling him the good things, but the fact that in all the guys he'd talked to today, not a single one of them had a single negative thing to say, was odd to say the least. There was always somebody, always that one person with a vendetta just waiting to unload all their negative opinions, true or not, to anyone who'd listen.

It was a lot more baffling than her refusal, that's for sure. Every time he thought he had a lead to some juicy anecdote, someone else would just counteract it with more PR bullshit. Every honest answer just left him more confused than the last. Flack was usually good at getting people to open up, but these men had closed ranks like nothing he'd ever seen.

He'd been almost certain he'd be walking in to a fractious unit, with Buchanan and her supporters on one side and the men who wanted her gone on the other as the very best case scenario. But that wasn't the case at all.

How could all the other articles back home be so wrong?

What was the truth?

Flack wasn't sure what he was going to write anymore. He'd somehow lost track of who was spinning a yarn and who was being honest with him. He couldn't think why anyone would lie, though. But no one had given him a straight answer either.

Surely one woman's character couldn't be so hard to pin down?

"You're a reporter?"

The low timbre of Roe's voice jolted Flack out of his thoughts. His body bounced in fright. Somehow he'd completely forgotten about the medic. He pushed down the flush of embarrassment when he noticed that the man was staring at him, dark eyes amused and an eyebrow raised.

Roe flicked away the butt of his cigarette, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

Flack cleared his throat and nodded. "That's right." Something in Roe seemed to tense, so Flack stopped speaking to study the other man once more.

The weariness in Roe's bearing robbed him of anything else to say. The best route, he decided, would be to let Roe take the lead and set the tempo of this interview.

Roe nodded thoughtfully. "And you're here about Ev?"

Flack's eyebrow rose at the easy address and made a note of it.

Roe noticed, and his lips settled into a frown. "Sergeant Buchanan?" the medic amended.

"That's right," agreed Flack. "She's turning into quite the celebrity back home."

"Uh huh," Roe didn't seem surprised. "I've read about her in the papers before. Not a lot of it's good."

"This one isn't shaping up to be like those," Flack said honestly.

He wasn't sure exactly what the article was shaping up to be, but it was certainly going in a different direction than what he'd originally expected it to.

Roe huffed and pulled out another cigarette. The set of his shoulders, the way he leaned away, all subtle nonverbal cues that he didn't believe the reporter at all.

"What do you wanna know?" asked Roe, taking a drag off his fresh cigarette as Flack flipped to a new page.

"Anything."

"What do you mean? Just anything?"

"Sure," agreed Flack. Specific questions hadn't worked so well thus far, so perhaps a new tactic would do better. "Whatever you can tell me, as long as it's true."

Flack hoped he wasn't just being humored. He was still unduly nervous that Roe was just waiting to pounce with the temper Lipton had warned him about. He shook this away, resolved not to let one – albeit rather frightening – interview prevent him from doing his job.

"What's she like?" asked Flack, when Roe didn't answer after a long moment. So much for a different tactic. "I haven't met her yet. Could you describe her for me?"

"She's quiet, I guess," said Roe softly. "Real stubborn. During training, a lotta the guys made bets on when she'd wash out. To be honest, I didn't think she'd last," he gave a laugh that was more a puff of air than a sound. "She sure showed us."

"Because she stuck it out?"

"Because she's still here," said Roe. "All of her."

Flack had absolutely no idea what that was supposed to mean. It must have shown on his face because Roe heaved a sigh and took his helmet off his head to scrub a hand through his shockingly dark hair, making it stand on end.

He set the helmet aside and leaned forward, locking eyes with Flack and holding them.

"You've heard the saying 'War is hell'? It's not. It's worse. When you're out here, you face things you've never in your worst nightmares dreamt up.

"Each foxhole you dig runs the risk of unearthing some poor bastard's frozen corpse, buried under the fresh show. Every day, a truckload of new replacements rolls in to replace your friends who've been killed right in front of you, and every day just as many are hauled out dead, if there's even enough left of them to carry.

"After a while, your mind just goes somewhere else. It hides you from all this for your own protection."

"Shellshock," whispered Flack remembering the man gurgling blood in the tent nearby. Roe nodded, eyes haunted, and suddenly Flack realized a horrible truth: that man was somebody's friend out here, somebody's son back home.

The horror of it all struck him afresh. He couldn't imagine living every day with someone and then suddenly seeing them in pieces. And it must happen over and over, day after day.

This was the grisly truth of combat.

"Ev is special. She actually still makes an effort to get know everybody out here, even the replacements; especially them since they need the most help. You haven't met her? That's probably because she's always moving, checking on everybody. She knows everybody by at least their name and rank, even the replacements. Nobody does that. Not anymore," finished Roe.

He leaned back, breaking the intensity and allowing the reporter to look away and make a few scribbles.

"She sounds like a saint," said Flack, thinking, Here's yet another account of Evelyn Buchanan being too good to be true.

Roe sent him a crooked grin. "Saints can't shoot as well as she can. I would know. I'm Catholic."

It was such a random comment that it startled a burst of laughter from Flack. "So how long have you been friends?" asked he when he'd managed to quell his amusement.

"She got injured in training. Winters sent me to check on her. He was her Platoon leader back then."

Flack's pen, which had been taking notes out of instinct more than any actual command, stilled. It was the first time he'd heard Buchanan portrayed as anything but infallible.

"Hurt how?" he asked, hoping that he wasn't going to be fed yet more PR bullshit. Finally, a real, newsworthy story he could write about.

Roe leaned back to rest more comfortably against the crate behind him and said, "She fractured her shoulder. Couldn't raise her arm more'n to here for a couple of weeks." He lifted his arm to about a 45-degree angle. "I don't know, after that, we were just friends. You'd have to ask her why."

"And this injury happened back at Toccoa?"

Roe nodded.

"How'd it happen?"

Long fingered hands fiddling with a Zippo lighter, Roe thought the question over carefully before answering. "Everybody gets hurt in training. We're doin' things we haven't done before. Sometimes, things just go wrong. Ain't nobody's fault, it just happens."

Flack thought about pushing and maybe Roe could read it on his face because he continued. "And anyways, it was over two years ago. Hardly matters now."

Flack supposed Roe was right and let it go despite it being the only real story about Eve he'd managed to wrangle from anyone all day. But given the way Roe was glaring at him with a tight frown that booked no argument, he dropped the topic, abandoning the "how" for the "why."

"Why'd you help her?"

Roe mulled this question over too. Flack settled in for another long answer.

"I don't rightly know. She needed the help. And Winters asked me to. We could all see that she went down pretty hard, but then she didn't go to the aid station, just got right back up and ran up Mt. Currahee.

"She just seemed like she needed a friend after that, someone to look after her. Make her go to the aid station when she needed to. Next thing I knew, we were friends."

"Makes sense," said Flack. He flipped through his notes, making sure he'd gotten most of that down word for word.

"Mind if I ask you a question?" asked Roe.

Flack looked up from the notebook, surprised. "Sure," he said setting it aside.

"Is there some reason you're doin' this now? Surely there's bigger news somewhere else. Ev's been a soldier for years now. Why the sudden interest?"

"Oh," said Flack. He'd realized that Roe had likely been stuck at the aid station all day, judging by the still heavy chaos around them. It hadn't even occurred to him to tell the medic the reason for the sudden resurgence of interest in Evelyn Buchanan. After all, both Liebgott and Lipton had known about it within only a few moments of his arrival. He supposed there was a limit to the reach gossip had, though it was honestly surprising. "There was a letter campaign to send her home after Bastogne. She turned it down."

There was a beat of silence.

"What?" Roe snarled.

Flack was startled by the hushed warning in the medic's voice. He met Roe's eyes, shocked by his ferocity. He looked deeper than the rage that was on the surface; the man hadn't been angry before, and this anger wasn't directed at him like Liebgott's had been. What was going on?

"Sergeant Buchanan was offered a pass home to go beat the war bond drum. She turned it down."

Roe hissed out a word Flack had never heard before, but he could guess it wasn't friendly. The medic heaved himself off the stack of crates and crushed his cigarette under his boot and started pacing, ranting in a language Flack didn't recognize. He might have picked up on the occasional word in French, but it made no sense strung together the way Roe was doing it, and the accent was off.

This was more than just anger. Could it be fear?

"You okay?" asked Flack as he watched a man who had been thus far unflappable surrender to a rage.

"No, I'm not okay!" he said, dragging the word out in frustration as he whirled on Flack, his anger finding a direction. "You tellin' me Ev coulda gone home? Coulda been home safe right now if she wasn't so damned stubborn?"

Flack was honestly shocked. That's what Roe was angry about? "People are calling her as a hero. The woman who won't leave her men behind in battle."

Roe scoffed. "She should'a gone home! Where she'd be safe!"

Flack surreptitiously pulled out his notebook and started taking notes once more. This was the first genuine reaction he'd seen all day, and what a fascinating reaction it was.

"You got any idea what it's like to hope your friends get injured real bad just so they can have a second off the line to breathe? To hope that they lose an arm or get blinded just so the Army won't want them anymore before they get blown completely to hell? Now you're tellin' me that Eve coulda gone home without a scratch?" Roe started spitting in that strange language again, the words falling rapid fire from his lips. He raked his hands back and forth through his hair in frustration.

Flack watched Roe with growing apprehension. This must be the wrath First Sergeant Lipton had mentioned. He hadn't meant to make the man angry.

"I don't think she did it because she's not scared of dying or because she doesn't want to go home," said Flack, trying to reason with the fuming Cajun.

Roe stopped pacing and whirled around to glare at the reporter. His chest inflated as he took deep lungfuls of the frigid air. His face was still pale, but there was a helplessness in his eyes, a vulnerability there that allowed Flack to see right into the medic's battered soul.

Flack finally saw the man who had held countless lives in his hands and had been forced to watch as a lot of them slipped away. There was a deep love here between the medic and Buchanan, but this wasn't the frantic rage of a lover, it was of a broken man trying to hold on to the person who was reportedly his only friend out here.

Flack had no doubt that Roe loved Buchanan, but the death threats that rolled off his tongue – in English this time – reminded Flack so sharply of his sister doing just the same thing when he'd done a particularly stupid stunt to impress the girls that he couldn't picture their relationship as anything else. He wondered if it was the same for all of the men in Easy Company? If it was really possible for a man and a woman to become so close that a relationship involving sex became a step backwards, a detriment to the relationship rather than an improvement.

Lipton's notion of a symbol was starting to make more sense.

Suddenly, Flack was speaking, though when his mouth decided to mutiny he wasn't quite sure. "After all I've heard about how much she wants to be here, and how much she cares about each and every guy out here, I don't think that Sergeant Buchanan would be able to live with herself if she left without you." He met Roe's eye even though they hid more pain than Flack even wanted to try and comprehend.

"She still shoulda gone home," said Roe.

Flack and Roe stared at each other for a moment at a stalemate before Flack tried again. "Maybe, but it was her choice. I've seen, and interviewed some of the Medal of Honor recipients they plucked from the Pacific to do the war bond song and dance. I gotta tell you, they all look miserable. Most of them tell me that they wouldn't have accepted the Medal if they didn't feel obligated to honor their fallen comrades. Every one of them wanted to get back to their unit on the line.

"From what I've heard, Evelyn Buchanan is that caliber of soldier. I don't think she would've felt differently from those men."

Roe deflated, Flack's reasoning sinking in and his anger abating. The concern was still there, it would probably never really leave the medic, but the man's shoulders fell and he relaxed a bit more.

Flack smiled a bit, pleased with himself. He glanced down at his notebook, but he knew that he'd remember this conversation without having to write it down.

XxX

"Hey, so, we ready?" Ralph Spina interrupted, cutting his way through the chaos to their carefully guarded pile of supplies with the ease of long practice.

Roe was grateful for his return. He needed a minute to think.

He'd left Easy Company with strict instructions to Muck, Malarkey, and Penkala to make sure Ev got a few hours of sleep. They'd been told that if someone woke her up before chow, he'd know why and take it from their hides.

The woman was wearing herself thin looking out for everyone else, and now Roe knew why. The potential for a pass home had probably spooked the woman, making her redouble her efforts, trying to reaffirm the need for her out with the men so they wouldn't insist she leave.

She still hadn't recovered from her illness, despite the penicillin, and it worried Roe. Not enough to pull her off the line – something she wouldn't allow unless under the most dire of circumstances – but certainly enough to enlist the Toccoa guys in forcing her to take it easy.

Roe was half tempted to go try and make her go anyway.

Why the fuck hadn't she gone home when she'd had the chance? Wasn't she sick enough? Hadn't she had enough of death? Roe certainly had. He couldn't bear the thought that Ev might be the next body under his hands, had waking dreams and nightmares of trying to piece her back together with his bare hands. Each cry for a medic filled him with dread for her safety and each time it wasn't her he felt ashamed because he was so relieved.

He didn't know what he'd do if she died.

But he did know that he was going to kill her when he found her for not telling him sooner so he could've convinced her to go.

Of all the idiotic stunts!

There was nothing he could do about it now, and Ev would kill him if he tried. He gave a weary nod, a headache brewing.

Ev had been giving him headaches since Toccoa, so this wasn't new.

"Gene?" prompted Spina.

It was enough to snap him out of it.

Roe gave Spina a nod. He picked up one of the last five crates. This would be the last jeep they had to fill and then they were done.

Roe was actually impressed when Flack tucked away his notepad and picked up a crate of his own, barely straining under the weight as he waited patiently for the medics to lead the way.

Roe didn't say anything, but he shot the reporter an assessing look before looking at Spina and taking in the raised eyebrows. No, he tried to convey with his expression. I don't know what he's doing either. Not that he didn't appreciate the help.

"Jeep's this way," said Roe as he led the reporter out of the tent.

Maybe, thought Roe as he directed Flack in the proper way to tie down the crates, I'll tell the guys to stop running the interference game they're probably running, and let Flack talk to Ev. She deserves the headache for not going home in the first place.

XxX

It took nearly an hour before Malark made it back to the foxhole he'd been sharing with Penk and Muck – who was still out spreading the word about Ev refusing to go home. It was the biggest news since Patton broke through the line, but no one wanted to talk about Patton. The bastard made a big stink about "rescuing" them, which, hello, they were doing just fine.

"Finally," griped Penk when Malark hopped into the hole next to him. "Where the hell've you been?"

"Around. Hey, you know that reporter Jackson brought?"

Penkala rolled his eyes. "The one you guys took on a merry goose chase? Yeah, I might've seen him."

"Yeah, yeah," said Malark, good-natured in the face of Penkala's bitching. "Get this, turns out he's here 'cause Ev turned down a pass home."

Penk took a moment to study Malark's face. The man looked serious, this combined with the fact that he was far less likely to joke around without Muck there for the sell almost convinced him. It was a rather unbelievable story.

"No way," he said. "Pull the other one. No one's that stupid."

Malarkey slapped his arm. "It's not stupid! It's moxie."

"Moxie," said Penkala slowly, tasting how the word felt on his tongue. He shook his head. "Are you kidding? What are you, my mother? No one says moxie anymore."

"One of the replacements dug in with Perconte said it!"

"You're not kidding though, she really did turn down a pass home?" asked Penkala, ignoring the redhead with the ease of long practice. Malarkey nodded seriously and Penk shook his head. "I thought I was an idiot. That's just…" Penk couldn't find the words so switched tracks. "I'd probably give my left nut for a pass home."

"What you don't like your left nut or something?"

It was Penkala's turn to push Malark. It did fuck all to keep the man from laughing. "Shut it, Malark," he growled, unable to keep the intimidating scowl on his face with his buddy cracking up next to him.

They settled down to shivering for a while before Penkala said, "You reckon it's close enough to chow time to wake her?"

"I'll do it," said Malark. "Meet you in the chow line?"

Ev needed to get up and move her feet for a bit anyways. Or they might swell up in a precursor to frost bite and trench foot. They'd had enough guys taken off the line for it that it became habit to keep a vague consciousness while sleeping so you could shake or stomp your feet and get the blood flowing again.

Penk nodded. "You got it."

Malark slung his M1 over his shoulder and made his way to Ev's foxhole.

When he looked inside, he honest-to-God hesitated. Even in her sleep, Ev looked tired. She was quivering like an aspen leaf despite being buried under three blankets. With a sigh, he hopped into the hole with her.

"Ev?" he said, reaching out to shake her awake.

It wasn't necessary, he found, since her eyes popped open at the sound of his voice. "What time is it?" she rasped, wincing.

"Chow time," said Malark. "Come on, let's go."

She took the hand he held out for her, levering herself to her feet and pulling out her canteen. She shook it; the contents were thankfully still liquid.

She took a shallow drink, mindful that they would have to melt snow to get more, and the snowmelt was sometimes black with all the gunpowder and ash it had absorbed on the way down from the clouds.

"You all right?" asked Malark, still staring at her with that worried look on his face that she recognized from the faces of all the other guys.

"Yeah," she said, voice functioning once more. "Let's go."

They slung their guns across their shoulders and made their way to food. At least it would be warm.

"Anything interesting happen while I was out?" asked Ev.

Malark thought it over, and then remembered the last time she'd card sharked him only a few weeks ago and said, "No, just the usual."

He knew his tone was a touch too innocent, and that while Ev must've realized, she didn't bother to call him on it.

She'd find out soon enough.

-End Chapter-

Thanks very much for reading. The response on the last chapter was staggering. Big thanks to everyone who took the time to review - can't say enough how much it means to me, getting to hear what you guys think. I hope this chapter lived up to expectations. Updates every Thursday, so I'll see you next week.