A/N: First, I want to apologize for not posting faster. College and all that. Secondly, thank you for all of the reviews: WETSU, JumpGirl42, Chelsss, urban-queen41, and Raging Raven. You made my day(s). I do not own Band of Brothers. Song belongs to Marillion. Enjoy chapter 3!

III. Faith

What I have here in my hand
Is like knowing but deeper
It's why I have faith

Each and every tick of the second hand caused Cora some sort of pain; sharp at first, like a fresh paper cut, then it deadened to the slow lull that occurs beneath a bruise. Sobel's name often worsened the wound in the middle of her chest. Both inside and out, she was a wreck. Over and over again, she told herself she hated him, but it was never true. That was the trouble: as much as she wanted to hate the man that had ultimately left her broken, it was impossible for her too.

It took finally the scar on her leg to finally snap Cora out of it. She had gotten it while running in the rain up Currahee on her own. She had slipped downhill in the red mud, scraping her leg and tearing her uniform on a branch that was sticking out. The blood pouring out, she had continued to run, Richard's voice in her head the whole way. Don't stop, Cora. Proving him wrong is worth all of the pain in the world. As she coped in a reality that was now without Sobel, the words had never been truer. Cora dried her eyes with the back of her hand and carried on the best she could. The wound between her breasts began to scab. "The old girl's on a bit of a vacation, but she'll be back." It spread through the company like a wildfire: Cora was back.

"So you're the little woman I've been hearing so much about," Lieutenant Lynn "Buck" Compton said, offering his seat at the table to Cora.

"What have you all been saying about me? Nothing bad, I hope," Cora laughed as the men continued with their crap game.

"Is there anything bad to say about you?" Don Malarkey joked. "I mean, besides the thing-that-can't-be-mentioned-in-this-life-or-the-next."

"It was a fiasco, can we leave it at that please?" Cora sighed, taking a swig of beer from Joe Toye's glass.

"Gladly," they answered in unison.

Buck, pulling up another chair, didn't dare ask. For the most part, he knew what they were talking about and was warned early on by both Winters and Nixon never to speak of the situation or of him. Silently, he lit up a cigarette. He broke her. That's all you need to know. Cora reached out, took it from his mouth, and began to smoke it. Buck looked up at her as she stood, a quizzical expression on his face.

"Call it initiation," she said with a smile.

The others laughed and there was nothing else he could do, but join in. As she walked away, he found himself partly amazed by her. If she had told him to jump off of a cliff onto a bed of pure steel, he probably would have done it. "That's Cora for you," one of the men said. "She could get Satan into Heaven if she really wanted to."

The only thing Cora couldn't manipulate, though, was the war. A strategy was in place, maps were made, and it was clear that the Allied invasion of Europe was getting closer. H-Hour. D-Day. And the day came quickly. As a majority of the Airborne organized their equipment and ate ice cream, a letter came from Colonel Sink.

"Soldiers of the regiment: Tonight is the night of nights. Today, as you read this, you are en route to the great adventure for which you have trained for over two years…"

Cora crumpled up the paper and threw it. Great adventure… that's a laugh. She continued to stare down at the leg bag she was required to wear. She cocked her head to one side like a confused dog, waiting for a bright idea to pop into her head.

"What are you looking at?" Dick asked, looking up at her from where he sat on the tarmac.

"This is ridiculous! Let's strap eighty pounds to our legs and hop down into France! Who's bright idea was that?" Cora said, kicking the bag occasionally as she spoke.

"You sure are cheery," was his only reply. She rolled her eyes and proceeded to shove all of her medical supplies elsewhere. She filled the useless luggage with her extra uniforms and things she felt were generally unimportant.

Cora joined her comrades in their large huddle and smudged the thick black substance over her face like the others. She must have looked like an Indian, the war paint streaked in lines across her cheeks. Before putting the helmet on her head, she tied her curly tresses back and pinned the stray hairs away from her face. As she twisted the last strand, a bobby pin wedged in between her lips, Lieutenant Meehan's voice rang out over the runway.

"Easy Company! Listen up, the Channel coast is socked in with rain and fog. No jump tonight! The invasion has been postponed. We're on a 24-hour stand-down."

The next thing she knew, she was sitting next to George watching yet another Cary Grant film in a smoke-filled room, adding to the pollution by lighting up a cigarette as well. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dick escape out of the side door. Her first thought was to follow him, but her legs felt like lead as she sat in the chair.

"You okay?" Luz asked.

"I'll be better tomorrow."

"Won't we all."

Before the film ended, she finally stood and made her way outside. Dick was pacing back and forth in front of a few tents. She put out the cigarette with the toe of her boot and walked toward him laughing.

"How long have you been doing that?"

"What? Pacing? Since I walked out of there, I guess."

The two of them stared at their shoes, waiting for the other to say anything.

"Are you afraid?" Cora asked, drawing a circle with her foot in the dirt.

"Not really. Are you?"

"A little."

"Well, have faith and hang tough, all right?" he said, placing an unsteady hand on her shoulder.

Her red lips turned up into a smirk as she reached up and touched his hand. Every muscle tensed up beneath her fingertips, but a genuine smile crept across his face. Tomorrow will bring something better. I promise you it will bring something better.