Hey folks! Sorry for the long wait but I didn't get around to posting anything last week. I spent several days of mildly panic-fuelled productivity working on the analysis for my bachelor thesis and afterwards, my brain was just mush from juggling all that data.
But as always, thank you so much for your reviews, I really appreciate them :)
Dawn turned the sky a faint grey before the sunrise painted it in a glowing palette of colours. Nuenen lay quiet as the sunrays crawled along the roads and up the facades. The Germans were long gone, had moved out hours before.
The British tank that had burned throughout the night was still smouldering.
Bull had left the barn he'd sought shelter in and walked down the road, intent on getting back to Easy. Even though he had heard the Krauts head out, he kept his rifle ready, just in case that he ran into stragglers or a rear-guard. His shoulder ached, but the pain was manageable. The reminders of yesterday's battle were everywhere.
Houses with gaping holes in them.
Deep groves and dents in the road.
Empty cartridges capturing the morning light.
Dried drops and puddles, their colour a rusty brown.
Bull kept walking.
...
Turning the corner, he froze instinctively when he spotted somebody up ahead. He relaxed his stance again when he recognised the American ODs and the brassard with the stupidly large flag was impossible to miss even at the distance. He couldn't immediately identify the soldier since his back was turned and he was bent over a prone body.
He stepped closer.
The figure sat back on their haunches, head coming up and Bull knew who it was. A flash of white and red on the upper arm. Slight build bordering on skinny with narrow shoulders. Tufts of duck-fluff brown hair that refused to lie flat even after being weighed down by a helmet for hours and days on end. There was only one person in Easy that fit that description.
After the initial wave of relief, a frown took over Bull's features. What was Doc Arricante doing here?
"Doc?", he revealed his presence.
The slim frame stiffened and she turned her head. Blue met blue.
Mia's eyebrows drew together briefly, confusion soon giving way to a weak, sincere smile. "Bull. Are you alright?"
"Fine", he offered, more concerned with how she had ended up here, all alone as it seemed. "What happened?"
Her face - or at least the half he could see - was dusty, smudges of dirt on her chin and forehead. The smile faded and her gaze shifted back to the dead man in front of her.
"I was cut off", she replied softly. "They were everywhere. I had to hide."
Bull crouched down beside her, studied the body she was looking at. A young man in a German uniform. Brown eyes staring unseeingly into the sky. The torso splattered with blood, his jacket riddled with bullet holes. He glanced at Mia and was startled by the intensity of the emotions on her face. He didn't mention the pale streak of cleaner skin on her cheek.
A thought popped into his mind. "Did you know him?"
The young woman's notoriously unreadable expression was painfully easy to read this time. Grief, sadness, pain, thinly veiled by caution.
"Yes", she answered, lips twitching from memories of a life past, "he was one of the neighbours' boys. He had a crush on my sister Letizia." She shook her head, a hint of bitterness seeping into her voice. "Another life senselessly wasted."
The dog tag she was holding in her palm disappeared into one of her countless pockets and they got to their feet.
...
Finally catching a glimpse of her whole face, Bull's concern rocketed back up. "You're hurt."
"What?"
He pointed to the side of her face which had previously been hidden from his view and clarified: "You're bleeding."
From the looks of it, she had made intimate contact with the road surface at one point. Substantial parts of the right side of her face as well as her chin were covered in road rash. Blood dried on her neck.
Small fingers reached up to investigate, revealing torn, dirty and blood-stained sleeves. Mia hissed as her fingertips touched the abraded and raw skin of her cheek. "Huh. It seems so", she said, looking at her bloody fingers with an air of bewilderment. Her eyes caught on something and she peered at the back of her forearms for a moment before carefully rolling back the tattered sleeves.
Bull grimaced in sympathy. The heels of her palms and her forearms were in a similar state as her face, the worst of the painful looking abrasions weeping blood.
"Funny", the medic murmured, absently plucking a piece of gravel from a large cut close to her wrist. "It didn't hurt before." With a shrug, she let her hands drop back down, giving him a reassuring smile.
He considered her for a moment, wondering how she could so easily hide the pain she obviously must be feeling. "Let's go", he then decided, patting her on the shoulder.
As they made their way towards the edge of the town, they swapped stories of how they had ended up stranded in Nuenen and how they had evaded capture.
Bull had been outrunning that burning tank, crawling through the ditch. He had hidden in a drain pipe before relocating to the barn to spend the night.
Mia had been thrown to the ground by an explosion during their retreat. With the Germans coming in from all sides, the medic had had to think on her feet. She had shimmied underneath a hollow raised porch – at least, that was what Bull figured she meant by "wood terrace".
"The Germans picked that house as their staging point", the woman narrated, remembered terror of literally hiding under the enemy's noses haunting her shifty eyes. "They were...talkative? Is that the word?" She shrugged. "Egal, we have to get back, I need to speak with Lt Nixon."
Bull smiled, fairly impressed by her presence of mind. A lesser man would have been too frightened to pay attention to what was being said. "You hear anything useful?"
"I'm sure it will make more sense to Nixon than me", she replied. Her bashful smile turned into a pained grimace before her expression smoothed out again.
...
They came across more bodies and Bull stopped to pluck the dog tag from Miller's chain. The kid's head had been split open by a mortar explosion, the side of his skull one gory mess. He sighed. What a crying shame. Miller had been a good kid, a little on the shy side, but loyal and smart.
Hearing a jeep approach, he raised his rifle in the signal for 'friendly' so the gunner in the back, who was aiming a mounted MG at them, wouldn't open fire. He turned to see Mia straightening, one hand sliding into the pocket of her OD pants. She'd no doubt collected the dog tags of the other casualties.
They approached the jeep. To their credit, neither the driver nor the gunner batted an eyelid at their battered and helmet-less state.
"You fellas are from Easy Company, right?", the driver said.
"That's right", Bull confirmed.
He grinned and gestured for them to sit down. "Well, lucky we found you, then. Word has it half your unit's gone AWOL to look for you guys."
...
As the skinniest of them, Mia sat in the middle, with the driver to her left and Bull in the passenger seat.
The tall Arkansan cast a scanning glance over the messy-haired medic.
She must have surreptitiously wiped her face at some point because the tracks of dried tears on her cheeks were barely visible now, hidden under the smears of dirt and dust that also clung to the front of her ODs. Her head was bowed, gaze focused on the small piece of stencilled metal she held in her small fingers. He could faintly make out the name. Leon F. Dreyer.
His eyes travelled back to Mia's face. Her eyebrows were furrowed just the slightest bit, like she was in deep thought. Even with all the blood and dirt, the road rash marring her features, the sadness and pain in them was glaringly obvious from up close.
What are the odds, Bull mused, facing forwards as the jeep lurched into motion, of coming across your childhood neighbour in the middle of a war?
This begged another question, one that he wasn't sure he should ask. He wasn't afraid of the answer; he just wasn't sure whether satisfying his curiosity was worth the pain he would likely cause by asking.
Putting the thoughts out of his mind for now, he looked at the woman beside him once more. The dog tag had disappeared, stored in one of her numerous pockets. Mia's eyes were on the road, but she must have felt his gaze on her because she turned her head to give him a quizzical look.
"Everything okay?"
Bull nodded. "Don't worry about it."
She clearly didn't buy it, but didn't press the issue. He wasn't surprised. If there was one thing he knew about Mia Arricante- well, apart from what was common knowledge in the company, he didn't actually know much about her.
Silence settled over them as the jeep rumbled along the road.
...
Light pressure on his arm had Bull looking down.
Mia had fallen asleep and her head had come to rest against the side of his shoulder. Poor girl looks dead on her feet. He couldn't blame her. If the dark rings under her eyes were any indication, she hadn't slept a wink. Unsurprising considering that the slightest movement, the tiniest sound could have given her away.
He allowed himself a brief smile. From what he'd seen, the quiet medic wasn't a very tactile person, usually never one to initiate physical contact, instead preferring to keep her own personal space. He felt almost privileged to see her like this, looking young and vulnerable in her sleep. She'd never let her guard down if she didn't trust him enough to watch her back.
Mia's eyes flashed open as soon as the jeep began to slow, momentary disorientation disappearing after a second when she spotted the silhouettes dark against the morning sky up ahead.
One of them signalled that they were Allies.
She shared a smiling look with Bull.
...
"Where the fuck you been?", Hoobler demanded, beaming from ear to ear as he shook Bull's hand.
Bull grinned back. "Glad to see you, boys", he drawled.
Louise strolled up to the jeep, light dancing in her eyes as she squeezed past the replacements. "And what are we, chopped liver?"
"Of course", Frances joked, affecting a haughty, posh tone and turning up her nose, a wry smirk on her lips. "Liver's an expensive delicacy, after all."
"Naturally", the blonde agreed with mock-seriousness. She cocked an eyebrow at the two formerly missing company members, registering the blood and dirt on them, and said: "Alright, lads and ladies, let's get our asses back to Easy."
...
They clambered into the jeep, the six of them balancing precariously in the back.
Frances tousled Mia's already messy hair and gave Bull a pat on the back before climbing in. Once settled, Louise leant forward and squeezed her friend's shoulder as she whispered something in her ear, to which the medic responded with a nod and a small smile.
With a disbelieving shake of his head, the driver got them moving again.
"We still don't know what happened", Webster remarked, raising his voice so Hoobler could hear him over the wind and the growl of the motor.
His friend clapped him on the shoulder, still giddy with relief and joy. "We'll find out later", he told him. "Must be one hell of a story."
The arrival of their rag-tag group at camp didn't go unnoticed.
"Bull!", Johnny shouted, his entire face lighting up as a beaming grin broke out.
Alerted to the return of their missing company members, Easy began to gather around the jeep to welcome them back.
Bull climbed out and shook Johnny's hand, a matching smile on his own face. "Hey Johnny."
"Get a little lost?", he teased.
The tall Arkansan smirked around his cigar. "Something like that."
...
Behind them, Mia had managed to successfully escape the building crowd, slipping away before she could become the focus of their cheerful attention. Using the distraction of more people coming up to greet the returnees, she walked away from the jeep, intent on finding Lieutenant Nixon.
"Planning on disappearing again, are we?"
She barely flinched at the sound of Louise's voice coming from her left. "I have to talk to Nixon", she said.
"You need to get your face checked out."
"That can wait."
Her friend chuckled and gave her a significant look. "Wait until Mom sees you. She'll have you on a truck bound for the aid station before you can say a peep", she predicted, eyeing the angry road rash and the blood creeping down into Mia's collar in tiny rivulets.
Mia shrugged the warning off, insisting softly: "It's very important, Louise."
"Don't worry", the blonde sniper promised with a smile. "I'll hold off Momma-bear for you." She sobered and continued, serious: "But you'll get checked out right afterwards, your face's got like half a street's worth of gravel in it. You can't tell me that that's healthy."
Knowing full well that any form protest was futile, Mia nodded. She was too sore and tired to argue anyways.
...
As they climbed the slope, the call came for Easy Company to get back on the road. "Alright, mount up! Up, up, let's move out", Lipton spurred everyone on, standing atop a tank.
Below them, Louise and Mia heard platoon sergeants Guarnere and Martin repeat the orders. The voices of several squad leaders also chimed in to get their men moving.
The two women shared a look and a chuckle when Maxine's voice rang out, calling: "Look alive now, people, lollygagging doesn't suit you!"
Once on the road, Louise reminded her once more that she had to go to the aid station.
"I'll sit on you if I must", she threatened before heading off to reassure certain people that their missing medic was back with them and not too badly hurt.
Mia chuckled at the image. She had no doubt that her friend would make good on that threat.
Winters and Nixon observed as the men collected their gear and prepared to move out. The operation wasn't exactly going the way the British had planned and as it were, they still had a long way to go before liberating Berlin would become a realistic objective.
"Lieutenant Nixon, sir?"
They turned at the sound of Doc Arricante's voice, quiet as usual but with an urgent undertone. Nixon took one look at the blood and dirt staining the young woman's face and ODs and said: "Jesus, girl, you look like hell."
A tad less blunt, Winters also expressed his concern. "Are you alright, Doc?"
"It's not as bad as it looks", she assured them with a soft quirk of her lips before her expression grew serious once more. "Sir, I need to tell you what I heard the Germans say last night."
The battalion's intelligence officer perked up, his interest piqued. "You eavesdropped on the enemy?"
Mia shrugged, a bashful, fleeting smile crossing her face. "It was coincidence." She quickly explained how it had come to pass.
The officers looked impressed. Winters gave her an approving nod and Nixon's grin reminded her of a cat that had just caught a mouse.
"Tell us everything", the latter requested.
...
And so, as they walked along the road, trucks growling and tanks rattling around them, the smouldering Eindhoven on the horizon, Mia repeated what she'd overheard. The words came haltingly as she recounted every titbit of conversation and information she had caught, all the jokes and grumblings, the orders and speculations.
The officers listened with interest, Nixon occasionally putting in a question here and there to ask for clarification.
Winters noticed how the medic's bloodied hands moved in small, inconspicuous gestures that accompanied and complemented her speech. Despite her tongue tripping over words that were less familiar, he had hardly any trouble following what she saying, her voice a stumbling but constant melody as she tried to articulate the memories in a language that wasn't quite second nature to her yet.
While he listened and his mind was going a mile a minute, Nixon also studied the woman walking between him and Dick. Her situational awareness, quick thinking and mental wherewithal might just have given them a strategic advantage. She was visibly exhausted, though, and he didn't miss the subconscious shivers that travelled down her spine, so he held back a non-vital question or six.
...
"...they were told to grab their stuff and then they left", Mia concluded her report. She looked to her left and saw Nixon's mood vastly improved from when she had first approached him. "That's all I heard sir."
He clapped her on the back. "The brass is going to be very interested in what you've just told me, Doc", he told her with a grin. "Well done."
Her cheeks took on a light pinkish hue underneath the dust and blood. She ducked her head, but smiled shyly at the praise. "Thank you, sir."
Winters dismissed her with a reminder to get her injuries looked at. She promised and left, jogging to catch up to one of the trucks where she was pulled up by Heffron and More.
Nix proclaimed: "I like that girl."
Dick cracked a smile. It wasn't the first time his friend had said that about their youngest medic. And it probably wouldn't be the last. "Yeah."