A/N: Oops. I bring you yet more angst

[ 9 ]

THE WEIGHT OF A NAME

Prompt given by tumblr's jamie506101 from wecomrades' fabulous prompt list.

Number 17, Carwood Lipton + "That's a very long list" + head in the clouds

"How had she gotten here? She'd wanted a husband, a piano, maybe a small white cat with a pink bow to sit on the piano as she played for her kids."

January 9, 1945

Bastogne, Belgium

Alice couldn't breathe. She could heave in some amount of breath, just enough to keep her alive, but she couldn't really breathe. Darkness settled around them. The calm tried to lull them into a false sense of security, the black of the now cloudy night begging them to deny the carnage that had occurred but a few hours ago.

How had she gotten here? Alice heaved another ragged breath of air through her clogged lungs. Sitting in a foxhole, George dead asleep on her side and beyond him, Lipton, had never been the future she'd envisioned. She'd wanted a husband, a piano, maybe a small white cat with a pink bow to sit on the piano as she played for her kids. She'd wanted simplicity.

All she had now was a list of decisions she'd made, events she'd encountered, and dead in her wake that had composed an entirely new person from the one who'd dreamed of a white cat with a pink bow atop a grand piano. And boy, it was a long list. It included some events and some people she never wanted to revisit.

She wheezed in another breath as a gust of wind knocked her off the steady rhythm she'd tried to craft. Then she hacked out a cough. Alice tried, desperately, to suppress the tears that sprung to her eyes as the pain radiated through her chest. Her head fell back against the snow, helmet bouncing to the side. Fucking pneumonia. She couldn't just die a quick death, either. No, the Lord had seen fit to have her drown in her own mucus and blood.

"Alice."

Lipton. He was still awake, or she'd woken him with her cough and small bout of futile tears. She had no more energy left to hold up the mask of denial she'd been even convincing herself she could wear. Though she supposed if she died, at least she'd be with… well, a lot of people. That was a long list.

"Why are you still awake, Lip," she murmured. George had shifted, no longer against her body where he'd all but collapsed after watching Skip and Alex die. Not just die. Explode. "Go to sleep."

"I told you that over an hour ago," he reminded her.

Alice sighed. Lipton could see through the mask. She could just tell. Their conversation earlier where he'd all but ordered her to talk to Gene about the pneumonia had been enough to clue her into that, but she'd tried one last-ditch effort to convince him she was fine.

"Guess you did," she said, trying to keep her voice light.

He sighed, shifting until he faced her in the foxhole. She bit her lip, arms across her chest and knees up. Alice figured she probably looked pretty horrible. Her hair was a disaster, filled with sweat and blood. She tried to rinse it as much as she could but cold hair was never fun. Even in the dark, she could see his frown.

"Lip, I told you. I'll talk to Gene. But there isn't anything to do until we get medicine."

He shook his head. Without a response, he just frowned further, looked from her to George and then the pulverized forest around them, and then back. "So if you've been up for the last hour, what were you thinking about?"

"What?" The question caught her off guard. But she just shrugged when he didn't respond. "You don't want to know."

"Alice, it's probably no worse than things I've been thinking about," he told her.

She glanced up at him. An hour ago, she'd tried to drill through his skull just how valued a member of the company he was. How vital he was not just to their success, but their very survival. He'd flipped it on her, reminded her that she had a humanity that helped the steadily breaking men. How could she let him know that her humanity had already broken?

He sighed. "That bad?"

"I was making a list," she told him. "Mostly of people I'll hopefully see when I die."

"When?" He looked at her closer.

Alice shrugged. "I'm not stupid, Lip. I know this pneumonia could be a death sentence," she reminded him. "My head would be in the clouds if I didn't acknowledge that. It's just… that's… it's a very long list."

"Not just men from Easy?" he surmised.

"No. No, I've lost a lot more than Easy," she muttered.

Neither of them spoke for a while. It struck her again just how fantastic of a leader and a man Carwood Lipton was. Smart, caring, thoughtful, not afraid to get to know people but also aware of the need for some boundaries as the First Sergeant. He and George were close. George always did have a good eye for good people.

"Can I hear the list?"

"You… you want to hear their names?" she asked.

Lip shrugged. "Yeah. Yeah, why not. Maybe if I die, I'll see them too. I can say hi for you."

At the thought, she flashed him a small, unbidden smile. His own was drawn, but he smiled too. "Okay. Alex, Girard, Sylveste, Max, Lucas, Kurt…" Her voice trailed off. "Those were some members of the Maquis that I believe are dead now," she muttered. "My family of course."

"What were your parents' names?" Lip asked her.

"Wilhelm and Hélène. And my brothers, Marc and Robert, and my sister Bernadette." Her throat clenched as she felt like crying again. "Then my cousins. Elsa. James. Tomas. Aunt Fenna and Uncle Frederick." She paused again, closing her eyes to will back the tears. "Dukeman. Hoobler. Skip. Alex. You know the rest."

He nodded. As she coughed, choking up a bit of blood, he sighed. "We'll go find Doc Roe tomorrow. You need penicillin."

"No shit, Lip," she snapped back. Instantly she regretted it. Alice sighed. "Sorry."

He shrugged. "It's fine. Don't wake George though, he may never forgive you."

At his small joke, she had to smile. Alice looked at him. His hair was a mess, all wispy and overgrown. He had two cuts on his face and hadn't shaved in a while. "He's a mess, isn't he. No more than me," she supposed with a bit of a laugh. Some of his hair got stuck on his nose, so she moved it out of his face. "He needs the sleep."

"You need the sleep, too," Lip reminded her.

She rolled her eyes. "And you don't? Lip you've been up here on the line the whole damn time. At least I spent half of it back in the CP."

"I'm not sick."

"You're sick and tired. Sick and tired of Dike," she muttered.

Lip huffed out a small laugh, trying to hide it behind his sleeve. But he'd been caught, as she smirked across the foxhole. Maybe that was a way to keep herself sane. Bitterness.

"I'm not going to die while Dike exists," she decided. Alice didn't want Dike to die, so she figured that was a good way to keep herself alive. "I'd feel ashamed of that."

With another laugh, he shook his head. "Whatever works, yeah?"

"Yeah. Yeah." Alice nodded. A bit quieter, she just sighed. "Yeah."

As a blast of wind hit them across the cheeks, he huddled down further. "Besides. George would be distraught that he'd not be able to quote Casablanca to anyone," he huffed.

"Oh don't tempt me."

"That's true," he said, smirking.

They quieted down again. After another couple of coughs, her energy had left her completely and she sunk back into the snow and frozen dirt. She thought about taking off her helmet. All she wanted was sleep. But she couldn't let Dike outlive her.

"Wake me in the morning, if you get up first," she muttered. "That's an order, First Sergeant."

"Sir, yes sir."

Though her eyes were closed, she could imagine the smirk on his face. Content with that, she let herself relax a bit. She could do this. She had to. Alice sighed. She let her mind drift off. Maybe she should let her head be in the clouds. It was less depressing there.