Eris

Carentan seemed empty.

Like a ghost town, windows half opened with curtains fluttering like ghosts in the breeze. Half-shelled buildings hung onto life. It seemed empty. Seemed, being the keyword. Underneath the surface, like an undisturbed lake, rippled something just below. Something that prowled in the murky depths, winding and twisting around any exposed limbs. I had always been afraid of water where I couldn't see what lay beneath. The fear of not knowing was worse than seeing the frightful creatures I imagined.

Something far worse than a childhood monster lay beneath Carentan, or rather, inside of it. Those houses only looked empty. Those rooftops only seemed deserted. And those streets masqueraded as barren.

I crouched next to Nixon behind a clump of weeds and peered over the embankment. We, the three platoons of Easy Company, were huddled behind a small slope and tucked into the tall grass that surrounded it, waiting for orders. Something didn't feel right. My gut was telling me something, warning me of something but I knew no one would listen to my instinct.
While my standing with the men had risen, they acknowledged me with a few long stares now thanks to Guarnere's begrudging alliance, I was far from a valued and trusted member of Easy Company. Would that ever be a possibility? Probably not but I could remain optimistic, couldn't I? And what proved your loyalty like throwing flaming explosives into enemy lines?

I turned to Nixon, whispering in his ear. "I have a bad feeling about this."

"Dick knows what he's doing," he said, his dark eyes heavy on the ginger lieutenant's movements among the hidden groups of men, instructing their next movements. The sun was warm on our backs and turned his hair into a kind of spun gold. He looked angelic, which explained why Nixon was looking at him like he had just fallen from heaven.
I wasn't worried about Winters leading them astray. I knew Winters wasn't pulling his own strings.

"Send me first," I said. "I can scout. It'll give us an idea for what we are dealing with and then Lt. Winters can send in his men."

I had already tried this plead with Sink who, while impressed with my work with the outpost, was just amusing me then. I had been handed a toy and told to go play, to pacify me so they could really fulfill their mission. I didn't have a mission, other than return to the OSS alive. And that would be difficult to do if my escort company was shot to pieces. I didn't need to be pacified, I needed to do something.

Nixon looked over at me, his brown eyes studying my face intently. I hoped he realized what I was feeling, the gut feeling that something was going terribly wrong. If he did, he recognized it too late or recognized that he had no power in this situation. The puppetmaster had already wrenched the strings, sending Winters's shout to cut through the air.

"Go!"

I watched as the 1st platoon flooded into the main road that led to the town and almost immediately the firing began. Gone was the illusion of emptiness in those streets. Bullets and I watched as they scattered like field mice, trying to find cover and some failing, falling to the ground.

"Nix, they are going to all die if they don't move," I said, watching as the 1st platoon ran for cover like cowering animals. They would be easy targets.

He needed to send in 2nd and 3rd soon or they would be picked off one by one by the snipers that were sure to be hidden in the buildings.
Strayer's voice rang out over the machine-gun fire and the shouts of the first platoon, shrieking. "Let's go Easy! Get those MGs moving, will you?"

"They're in the open for Pete's sake!" Nixon shouted from beside me. In a matter of seconds, the plan, if there ever was one, had gone to shit. I squinted at the lines of the streets. If the Germans were smart, they would have set machine guns along the parallel street, not just the horizontal. That way, as the men pressed forward they ran right into the line of fire of the second machine gun. I knew that my gut had been correct thus far.

It was a grid tactic, not uncommon in the OSS to clear out towns with multiple agents. It had only ever been instructed to me in theory, though. Here, the tactic was living and breathing. I scanned the buildings, looking for any sign of additional weapons. There was a pile of hay bales to the right, a tarp flapping like a sail in the breeze. With a brick of realization sinking down into my stomach I realized that the loose tarp hid more than just the haybales from the rain. The glimpse of flashing metal sent a shiver down my spine. It was a nest covering.

The men were going to run right into a trap and they had no idea.

I could have stayed a spectator. I could have sat on that hillside and watched them be torn to pieces.

As Winters screamed for Buck and the other men to follow him, I hoisted my rifle into my arms and took off like a shot. I pressed up farther than 2nd and 3rd platoons, ignoring Strayer's scream of "What the hell are you doing?"

I couldn't even answer that question. What was I doing? I wondered, as my boots clipped against the cobblestone streets. As I ran past Winters, I met his gaze, his eyes widening as he realized what I was doing at the same time I did. I had risked my life for mission and myself before. It was almost second nature now, to dodge, duck, and cover to save my own skin. My own skin housed more secrets than I could afford to let fall into enemy hands. Miriam had taught me the importance of self-preservation. She saved herself every chance she got and I had learned quickly to pick myself up while she watched, not a bruise on her. I took care of myself because no one else would do it for me. But Here I was, running into enemy fire with only a rifle when I had been perfectly safe on that hillside. I was risking my life for Easy Company, for a group of men not just myself.
1st platoon was still pressing forward and a few of the soldiers of the 2nd were following me, taking my forward charge as leadership. I didn't have the heart to tell them that by following me they were about to walk into a trap. A trap that I was trying to save them from.

I ran through machine-gun fire, the bullets dancing around me. Before I could question my own sanity for my rashness, I caught a glimpse of metal on the roof of a nearby building. Ducking into temporary cover, I waved a hand to grab Lipton's attention and pointed it out. Realization dawned in his eyes and he nodded, yelling. "Shifty!"
I didn't know a Shifty but didn't have time to find out who or where he was. I slipped back out from under a window and peered around the corner of the building. Two soldiers were setting up a bazooka, ready to destroy the machine gunner to their 12 o'clock. Their shot landed its mark and I ducked behind the corner to avoid the shrapnel flying but they were leaving their sides very open.

"Machine gun!" I shrieked, desperately trying to get their attention but the soldiers -Tipper and Liebgott, two soldiers I did recognize- were otherwise occupied finagling their heavy equipment, their backs wide open to the enemy fire. Was it not second nature to glance over their shoulders or to watch their backs?

Groaning, I saw the machine gunner point them out to his comrade. Perfect targets, almost too easy. Before they could begin to fire, I jumped across the road, grabbing both men by the rough canvas of their webbing, and threw them into an alleyway. Their weight pulled me down with them, and I tumbled onto the cobblestones, landing hard on Liebgott's chest. I gasped for air, pushing the hair out of my face.

I had been introduced to Liebgott once, by Martin on our night trek to Carentan. I hadn't been able to form much of an opinion on him but the spluttered expletives and force he was using to try to shove me off him gave me a good enough idea. I sank my weight onto his torso, using my hand to keep his back pressed to the ground, as I scanned the alley. Just my luck we would have landed in the midst of a German nest.

"Hold still," I said, waving for Tipper to stay low as my eyes darted above and beside us. After determining our new position was safe, I turned my attention back to the man beneath me. His eyes widened, staring at my face.

"Jesus, you're a fucking girl!"

I rolled my eyes, pushing him away from me. My helmet had been lost in the tuck and roll, hair loose and face obviously feminine. How fucking clueless had the men of Easy Company been to not realize that I hadn't been some young, wayward paratrooper?

"Ow!" He snapped, his head rattling in his helmet against the cobblestones. "What the fuck?"

He released me and I rolled onto my knees, reaching for my lost rifle, still alert as the battle surged around us.

"Machine gunner," I said, plucking his helmet off his head and wagging the army issue tin around the corner. Within seconds it was peppered with bullet holes. I plunked it back on his head, the helmet only good for straining pasta now.

"You're welcome," I muttered, using his shoulder as leverage, rising to my feet. "The rest of your platoon will walk straight into them if we don't do something. Do you have more ammo for that thing?"

I gestured to the large gun on Tipper's shoulder, who nodded. I hadn't met him before, only told his name. Here I was, a woman in combat, telling him what to do. He looked scared of me. Had they heard of what I had done on D-day and the months before, I wondered. Did any of them know what I had done? Or was I just some prize to be protected and returned, like any of their other treasures stolen from French homes?

"We'll take that machine gun," I said, cocking my rifle. I hadn't shot it my whole way into town, trying to keep speed as my weapon and not wasting a single precious bullet. Nixon had made a fuss about how much work it had been to get me this rifle, I didn't want a lecture. "I'll provide you some cover. Ready?"

The men nodded, not fighting with me as I would have thought they were warranted to do. I guess my saving their lives had given me some control over them for the time being. Or maybe Guarnere had told them of our adventures? Either way, receiving a nod from Liebgott, I gripped my rifle tighter in my now sweating palms and whipped around the corner.

I didn't wait for a perfect shot, but instead fired like a madwoman, trying to keep them down so that the men could do their job. They didn't waste any time and the air was soon filled with shrapnel. This time, Liebgott was the one to push us back into safety. I waited a moment before peering around the corner again. The machine gun nest was nothing but rubble now.

"Right," I said. "Good work." And I took off.

I didn't wait for orders or follow a plan really. There was no real subterfuge to battle, no darkness to hide in or roost to pick soldiers off one by one. Discretion didn't have a place here so I ran free. I threw grenades and cleared buildings. I danced across the battlefield, slipping into hiding places with soldiers then sliding back out before they had a chance to get a good look at me.
I heard others get orders as I dashed between buildings. Buck was bellowing for a medic, Welsh shouted at Liebgott and Tipper to clear buildings. Winters hollered at men left and right, telling them to move up then fall back. To give fire then hide.

Something inside of me writhed and purred. Was it the beast in my belly that roared for the violence and had dug Virginia's grave? No matter how I hated myself for it, there was something in me that loved the fight. It was chaos and Eris loved it.

I heard Lipton shouting for everyone to scatter. They had gotten a pin on our locations, their bullets now finding their marks. As Easy ran for cover, I glanced around the edge of my bunker and saw a set of gunners wheeling their machine guns across the road.

I exhaled slowly, lining them up in my sights, and squeezed the trigger just as Lawson had instructed me so many times before. One, two, three, four. Their legs gave out from underneath them and their bodies hit the ground. It wasn't like hitting tin cans on fence posts or even the targets that Davis had painted to look like grotesque faces. They fell hard, almost soundless. I ducked back into my hole as a sniper provided return fire. Frozen until the sniper would reload, I watched the men run through the streets.
They didn't have any particular tactic. Just annihilate. It was a strategy I could get behind, I thought. Sergeant Brown would be impressed with their teamwork and ferocity. He had spent months getting the agents in my unit to fight hard and without thought for yourself. To these men working as a team was like second nature. I watched as a platoon sergeant dropped his weapon to pick up a man whose leg was blown to bits, blood oozing around him. He took off at an easy jog with the man across his shoulders as if he weighed nothing.

Reloading my rifle, I waited for a lull in the fire before slipping out of my bunker and firing a few suppressing rounds before dashing down a side street. After weeks of hiding in plain sight, I couldn't stop running. If it wasn't for the retreating Germans, I wasn't sure I would stop.

I skidded to a halt beside Welsh and Leibgott. They stood in the middle of the street, a mangled figure shuffling out of a doorway towards us. With a sickening pang, I realized who the mangled corpse walking was, covered in blood, and, as I stepped closer, bones visible through flesh.

It was Tipper.

Tipper, who I had just seen living not two minutes before. Tipper, his eyes scared as they reflected the hardness of my own. I saw myself in his eyes, the fear wasn't reflected in mine. Something feral and hungry stared back at me. I knew his fear wasn't of me, rather the pain that enveloped his body but I dropped my rifle all the same. What had I let myself become for the love of the fight?

"Sit down buddy," Leibgott said, with such tenderness I hadn't expected from him. Any of the gall or crass that I had begun to assoiciate with him was absent as he muttered. "You'll be alright."

I came closer, dropping my rifle to kneel beside him. Liebgott was already holding him on the other side, the only thing that kept him from slumping over. Tipper, his blood staining the cobblestones, leaned towards me. The fear in his eyes didn't die.

"Oh, Tipper," I muttered under my breath, wiping the blood away from his eyes with the pad of my thumb. Something stirred inside me like fire. I had been placed in the unit to save lives and now I was faced with the harsh reality. I couldn't be everywhere at once, no matter how hard I tried. His right eye was destroyed, blood leaking out of it like tears but I didn't tell him that.
Keeping my voice light, I repeated Liebgott's words.

"It's not that bad," I reassured him. "You'll be fine. The medics will patch you up."

"Here," Liebgott said. "Help me."

I wrapped Tipper's arm around my shoulder and on the count of three, hoisted the man upright. Tipper was bigger than both of us but somehow Liebgott and I managed to hold him between us. With shuffling, uneven steps, we made our way back through town, the sounds of retreating Germans and persistent American fire on their backs all around us. While the sound of fighting filled my ears, I repeated the soft words of reassurance to Tipper, trying to keep him conscious.

"You'll be fixed up in no time, Tip. We'll have you back to blowing up machine gunners in a few months." I murmured. THe words I conjured, however untruthful and shallow they seemed to me, seemed to oust his fear. Lulled into some kind of transe as shock set in, we hobbled farther and farther from the battlefield. I tried to leave that creature, the adder, in those streets and rein my emotions back under control. I had gotten excited, I had forgotten my place.

We got Tipper to the company medic, Doc Roe, Liebgott called him, whose thick Cajun accent was soothing to the dozens of men who were lying in pools of their own blood around him. They had set up a sort of field hospital in the farthest building from the action, tables and the floor scattered with bodies of soldiers, dead and some close to death. It reeked of fear and it seeped into my own skin, my heart hammering in sympathy.

We hoisted Tipper up onto a table and I picked up a bandage, pressing it tight to the blood that was still leaking from under his eyelid.

"I'm sorry, Joe," He reached for Liebgott's hand, his voice cracking. "I'm sorry,"

"No, Tipper." I soothed, scooping up his hand in my own, not caring that this morning I had not spoken two words to this man. I had done many, far more bizarre things since that morning.

"You'll be alright. You don't have anything to be sorry about. You did well." I murmured softly words of encouragement as the morphine was administered and he slipped off to some painless wonderland. Liebgott kept hold of his friend's other hand, long after I let go so a nurse could take my place at his bedside. I couldn't do much more. I had fought my fight, shot my ammunition, and carried my wounded. Where could I go but back to the dying

Once Liebgott was glanced over, Doc Roe bid him go back to the line. While Liebgott gave Tipper's hand one final encouraging squeeze, Doc Roe looked at me for the first time, really looked, and seemed to register that I was a female, not one of the other soldiers.

"Do you need any assistance here?" I asked. "An extra set of hands?"

At one time, I would have thought I'd be one of these nurses, their crosse armbands staining with fresh red. Something inside of me still hoped that would be a possibility. But now? Now, I had to make it back to the OSS so they could send me to whatever corner of the world needed a good set of eyes and ears. That was, unless, I had fucked up my Normandy assignment and I'd be returned home. A branded failure. Would that pre-war dream still be a possibility?
He shook his head, taking in my scarred face and the burns that marched up my arms from less than ideal mixtures of explosives.

"Are you hurt?" Roe asked.

I had, by some miracle, avoided a major injury, just grazes and shrapnel cuts. Nothing I couldn't handle myself and yet, I couldn't ward him off. I was too exhausted to push his concerned hands away, instead, allowing him to force me on a chair and roll up my sleeves. The freshest wounds mixed with day-old scrapes and cuts that I hadn't bothered to clean. The dried blood and dirt were far from hygienic but I hadn't had time to care. Barely a week had gone by since my jaunt in the woods of Normandy and I still bore the bruises and marks.

I had tended my own wounds since childhood, picking myself up and brushing off the dirt. To have someone fussing over me with such a caring spirit was unusual. I closed my eyes, trying to silence my mind while the medic bandaged my arms. The pain that pricked on my skin as the iodine stained my arms was almost soothing. The groans of men who had lost more than I, who were wounded far more severely than I was sent shivers down my spine. With my eyes close and my hearing tuned into the room around me, I caught snatches of complaints from the other medics, bemoaning the limited supplies. The iodine sting seemed sharper after that.

They were using their valuable supplies on me, for my little scrapes from my bids for freedom from my own mind. They needed

"Are you done?" I asked, standing up so Roe couldn't waste any more of his precious medical supplies on me.

"No," He said, but let me go. I rolled down the sleeves of my borrowed uniform, their loose fabric concealing the bandages.

"Thank you," I muttered, not wanting to sound ungrateful. Passing a limping Winters, I smiled easily.

"You alright?" He asked.

"Just spectacular,"

It was strange to be walking through the aisles of stretchers and slumped forms that, if they were German, I would have called a successful day's work. I would have once felt a twinge of sympathy for them and maybe I still did, somewhere. Deep down inside. But if I did feel it, it was so well hidden, I couldn't begin to fathom its effects. Pushing through the door, back into the sunshine and fresh air that reeked of smoke and blood, I let that sympathy die. At least for today.
Randleman, a mountain of a paratrooper that had earned the appropriate if not affectionate nickname of Bull by the men, waited outside the door. Waiting for me? That was unlikely, even if I did crave the comraderie that the men possessed. They laughed, they joked, and they carried each other out of enemy fire. I had been surrounded by people for years but there was no room for joking in enemy-occupied Normandy.

"Waiting to get patched up?" I asked.

"Brought wounded," Randleman said.

I nodded wordlessly, scuffing the toe of my boot in the dirt, digging a grave for that sympathy and regret that had filled me in the med station. I thought that it had been stamped out but something had let it back in, my mind or my heart. Traitor.

"Guarnere said you were fucking crazy on that German outpost," He said.

Just what every girl wanted to hear.

"I didn't expect William to sing my praises to his fellows," I exhaled long and slow, lifting my helmet so I could tuck the straying curls back with the rest.

"I reckon he didn't mean it as a compliment,"

"Of course not," I said, shaking my head in mock despair. "how many believe William's claim of my sanity?"

"I didn't, at first. But then I saw you in action today,"

"So you think I'm crazy too?" I said, pursing my lips into a tight line. I suppose I would have to be insane to willingly do the things I did on a regular basis.

"No ma'am," Randleman grinned. "I think we'd be crazy not to have you around."

I was more flattered than I dared to admit or show.

"Name?" I asked, accepting his extended hand. I had been introduced to Randleman and his fellow NCOs with minimal fanfare and as little explanation as possible. He didn't know who I was, really, and yet, he seemed to have a speck of respect for me. At least he didn't insult me to my face. At least he didn't throw shoes at my face as Guarnere had.

"Randeman. Denver," He supplied after I waited expectantly for the rest.

"A pleasure to meet you, Denver," I said, withdrawing my hand. "Are you meeting up with your platoon?"

"I was heading back that way." Denver's brow furrowed at the sudden familiarity that I had assigned to our conversation. The first name for him but nothing for me. I was void of name, rank, or title. Irene had fallen to only the officers and Guarnere's begrudging reference to my occupation, "agent" was still laced with a kind of sour sarcasm.

I didn't have a name or a face with these soldiers. It shrouded any interaction with uncertainty and uncertainty could grow into fear. They couldn't be afraid of me. Remembering Tipper's horrified eyes and his weak apology, I felt bile rising in my throat. They couldn't fear me and I couldn't do that with Agent or Eris, as Nixon had so kindly pointed out in Sainte-Marie-Du-Monte. But wouldn't that lead to danger on my part? Every ounce of training in my blood, bones, and muscles told me not to share my name, not to give them too much. This was temporary.
But didn't my training demand grasping every opportunity? To seize this opportunity, this temporary assignment, fully Easy Company would have to see Virginia. Even if the OSS wanted her forgotten. Even if I had to bend the rules a little.

I looked up at Randleman, his height casting a shadow over me, saying. "What a coincidence so was I."