This one is angsty folks. I'm sorry... kind of.
She looked like she was sleeping.
That was Joe's first thought. However, the longer he looked at her, the more things he noticed that proved otherwise. Like the way her brow wasn't furrowed or how her lips weren't pursed, nor was her left hand clutching at her blanket.
Lena looked like she was sleeping, but he knew that to be a lie; a desperate fabrication of his already grieving heart and mind. A reality that could never be true.
It didn't even look to be all that substantial, her wound. A single bullet hole in the upper leg, a through and through that had sent her flopping to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut, the virgin white snow beneath her turning as Doc Roe had tried his hardest to find the artery and stem the flow. She had been dead before it had been located; the silence of those who had witnessed her demise deafening, and an insufferable heaviness lingering around the men who called themselves her brother.
But Joe wasn't her brother; hadn't been since that first time his lips had met hers as he pushed her against the side of a building the day after D-Day. The day she had finally found them, covered in blood that wasn't her own and a swollen ankle that Sobel would have taken delight in chewing her out for had he been witness to the clumsy landing that had caused it.
He hadn't been her brother long before that kiss though; not since the first time she had told him to go and fuck himself back in Toccoa, and then gracefully scaled the wall he had told her she could never make.
They had dreams for when they made it back home; dreams they had been discussing only hours before when they were cuddled up in their foxhole, making Popeye pretend to vomit at their clasped hands and sentiments of love.
Dreams of travelling and seeing everything there was to see.
Dreams of a big white wedding to appease their mothers and to celebrate with their friends, followed by a simple exchange of personal vows between themselves afterwards.
Dreams of buying a shabby mess of a house that could fix up and fill with their love and their hope for the future before filling it with children.
Dreams of two boys and a girl at an absolute minimum. A girl with Lena's blue eyes and fearless tenacity for living and loving. Boys with her sensitivity and compassion.
Dreams that would now never be.
"We've gotta take her, Liebgott," Johnny Martin put a hand on his shoulder and the sympathy in his voice alone would have been enough to jolt Joe back to painful reality had he not already unwillingly been there.
"She doesn't like the dark," he murmured, brushing her hair back from her face; her unruly hair that she always complained about. Stroking her cheek, he swallowed down the burning lump in his throat reminding him that this would be the last time his hands would feel any part of her skin beneath them. "She'll be scared in the dark, all alone."
Martin didn't know what to say; didn't know how to tell his friend that Lena wasn't going to be scared of anything anymore.
"If she stays with me, she knows I'll make it better." Joe said the words even though he knew they could never be true. "She was horrified when I discovered her secret; when I worked out her one weakness."
"I remember," Eugene murmured sadly, her blood coating his hands and her death weighing heavily on his conscience. "She said she'd cut off your manhood with a blunt pair of scissors if you told anyone. She had no idea some of us were still awake and heard her."
"Sobel would have busted all our asses if he'd seen a light on after dark," Joe muttered. "And he was desperate for an excuse to have her kicked out of Easy."
"Which is why you moved your bed closer to hers," Roe's lips turned up faintly at the memory. "Held her hand while she slept so that she knew she wasn't alone and didn't have to be scared anymore."
"Who's gonna hold her hand when she's alone in the ground, Doc?" Joe's eyes were squeezed shut in agony.
Eugene caught sight of Captain Winters waiting beside the jeep that was ready to take Lena's body away; ready to take her to where all of the others awaited their new, permanent home in the earth of the foreign land on which they had last breathed and laughed and loved.
"It's time, Joe," the use of Liebgott's first name was intentional by Eugene.
"Not yet," Joe's quiet tone was pitifully desperate.
"You have to let her go," Eugene pushed gently. "Physically at least."
Wiping his streaming nose with the back of his sleeve, he leaned over on his knees and kissed her cold lips softly.
Love was exciting; it was exquisite, in fact, but there were times when love was painful. Now, however, it was an unbearable agony that made him with for death himself; made him unafraid of the pain of being killed by an exploding shell or a hail of bullets, because nothing could hurt him as much as watching Doc cradle Lena's body in his arms as though she was a tiny child.
Nothing could hurt like the pain of watching Winters' and Nixon's faces as she was laid down on the stretcher of the jeep.
Nothing could hurt like the pain of watching Doc shaking his head when Nixon made a move to cover Lena's face with a blanket, murmuring quietly that she wouldn't like it.
And nothing could hurt like the sound of the jeep's engine roaring to life as though crying out for the fallen soldier it carried.
"Wait!" Joe called out; Germans across the field be damned.
Running, he caught up with the jeep before its wheels could begin turning, and as Winters motioned for a few of the men to get ready to hold him back if needed.
"I know she has to go, sir," he croaked, not even feeling that the tears he was crying were freezing like eyes upon his chapped skin. "I just need to give her this; she'll need it. You gotta make sure when they bur-" his voice cracked. "You gotta make sure they keep this with her no matter what."
"We will, Joe," Winters promised, watching Joe slip his flashlight into Lena's jacket pocket.
And then they were gone.
She was gone.
Taking his heart with her.
