Go Easy On Me, Band of Brothers, TA, Doc/OC (4/7)
Title: Go Easy On Me
Subject: Band of Brothers
Rating: TA
Pairing: Doc/OC
Word Count: 1417
Disclaimer: I don’t own Band of Brothers or anything relating to them and I base my fiction entirely on the actors and their portrayals. No disrespect intended. Emilie Ramos does, however, belong to me.
Author's Notes: So, this one's a bit of a cliff hanger. Also, this one's the only one with a chapter title that I couldn't really pick...
Summary: There was some rumor that Easy Company was her favorite, and though she wants to retort, she never can.
Four - Dick
It’s mass chaos when Hoobler accidentally shoots himself. She’d been talking to Buck, because she really didn’t know Dike all that well and that unnerved her because knowing the officers was her business. He’d turned to ask Lip about him and then there were shots and all hell broke loose. She’d jumped right in, because technically it was also her job, like she’d done by the farmhouse back before everything had changed.
This time, with everyone crowding around Gene hadn’t been quite so livid, but he still spoke with the authority that she’d always told him he had. She hadn’t noticed, but he’d eyed her hands, both trying to get closer to the wound, both working properly if somewhat awkwardly fumbling. He’d brushed her left hand away gently even as he hurried to see the problem and fix it. But he couldn’t see anything. And that panicked him.
“Gene,” she’d said softly, not expecting him to hear as they loaded Hoob onto the jeep. She’d go with them, anyway. It was the only job she could do. But Gene turned back to her for a moment.
“Stay here,” he stated, and let his fingers graze hers before getting in the jeep and disappearing into the haze.
--
She joined Nix and Dick at CP to write it up. Hoob’s dead and they’re down another and the numbers just weren’t large enough to do what they were being ordered to do and even sparing a glance at a map made her depressed in ways that she never knew she could be.
She happened to still be hanging around when a runner came with a letter for Nix and she couldn’t have been any more irritated because that was what she was supposed to be doing, but instead she was sitting in the middle of who knew where with papers scattered about her that didn’t really mean anything because they all said what they all knew - they had no supplies, they didn’t have enough numbers, and there was no foreseeable respite.
“Hey, Ramos,” Nix offers her a grin, though, “want to run up to HQ?”
“I could kiss you,” she states, taking the paper offered to her. And the echo of Nixon’s grin follows her all the way to town.
--
She was surprised to find HQ even more chaotic than the foxholes she’d left behind because it was hard to believe they were actually doing anything, being that Easy had just been sitting in the woods and she’d been there with them and had felt utterly useless so surely they had, too.
“Ramos.” There’s a growl in her ear, and she recognizes the Colonel’s voice instantly but she can’t help but roll her eyes when he adds, “Where the hell you been?”
“I had orders to stay put with Easy, sir,” she replies, not trying to cover her displeasure but simultaneously hoping he didn’t see. But he gives a humph in response, and she thinks maybe he didn’t realize and was as irritated as she was and that thought lets her lips quirk upward ever so slightly.
“Well, here,” he’s wandered back toward a desk, which she assumes is serving as his for the time being, and gives her a stack of papers and she purses her lips slightly at realizing that she was about to be serving as the mail call. It wasn’t that mail call couldn’t be a great thing; it was just that sometimes it just made everything and everyone all the worse for wear. She trades him the papers Nix handed over, though, and he looks it over with a nod, adding two sheets for Dick and Nix before sending her on her way.
--
She quickly quits the conversation between Sink, Dick, and Nix when Sink comes for a visit with a cameraman. She’d take information anywhere, but she typically wasn’t privy to it, regardless. So, she’s sitting with Doc, silently, as the boys meander through the grub line and Muck begins to point everyone out to one of the new faces, Webb, she thinks, though the name brings another face to her mind, and runs down the list in her mind with Muck’s voice, eyes closed, lips moving to create an echo with no sound.
But her eyes snap open when Bill and Lip have a joke of a conversation and she wants to smile, really smile for the first time since she’d been in England, but before it can even begin to grace her face she looks at Gene, sees him staring blankly ahead, and gives a sigh.
When he doesn’t even respond to the subtle touch of her hand on his, she inexplicably feels like crying, like she had on D-Day, and she doesn’t quite know what to do about it.
--
She doesn’t really know what to do with herself anymore, because Gene’s blanked out and she can hardly find Babe, and she’s losing good men faster than she gained them. So she spends most of her days running back and forth between Sink, and Dick and Nix, and the front line, always running down the list. That’s why, when Muck and Penkala get hit, it’s that much worse. Because she’d started to hear his voice, running down the list with the addition of wounds sustained, and no matter how hard she tries to have her own overpower it, it’s always there.
And so she stays away from all the boys when she runs down the list, because she’s tired of the voices and the faces that follow her everywhere and she doesn’t want to add any more to a different list that’s settled itself in the back of her mind that she technically wasn’t responsible for because she wrote it down and handed it in as it came, but more than that she is responsible and she jumps from name to name on a daily basis, every time she sees their face or hears their voice.
--
She has the unhappy misfortune of sitting with Dick when Lip gives his opinion of Dike. The thing is, everyone is in agreement, but there’s still nothing anyone can do about it. When Lipton’s left, she stands up to follow him out and thinks maybe she’ll head back to HQ and catch a ride with the Colonel on the way back.
“Em,” Dick calls her back, though, and she turns to lock her eyes with his. In his she sees a desperation, because he just wants to be with his company and he doesn’t want them to get hurt over the incompetence of an officer that no one wanted. But in hers he just sees an overwhelming, crippling sadness that takes him aback, like the list of the dead and missing was already growing longer, though nothing had happened yet. “Why don’t you check on Spina and Roe? See how they are on supplies.”
She knows how they are on supplies, and she doesn’t want to find either of them because it was too much to talk to anyone besides those she was certain enough would be safe, but she nods anyway because she does anything Dick asks. And she always will.
“Oh, and Em?” He draws her back one last time, only this time his eyes are soft and she can begin to see a bit of the sadness that she carries in hers reflected back in his. “Get some sleep.”
“Sir,” she whispers on an exhale, and turns out into the frigid night.
--
There’s something off about Speirs, when she sees him just before things get organized and Easy makes her way down into Foy. Something in his eyes and maybe even something in his voice when he tells her that she might’ve mixed up some mail and hands the letters back lets her know that whatever it is it can’t be good.
That’s why, after she’s read it and she’s watching the miniscule town, she can’t even feel the usual anxiety of what might happen to her boys and which lists might lengthen or shorten. She’s only aware of a fraction of Speirs’s attention being focused on her and it makes her unbelievably uncomfortable and she gets that feeling of not being able to breathe because he’s looking at her and so she’s immensely relieved when Dick calls him to replace the worthless officer down below and feels his focus stepping fully into being the leader that he was.
But she can’t yet breathe any easier, because she knows she has to ask.
Subject: Band of Brothers
Rating: TA
Pairing: Doc/OC
Word Count: 1417
Disclaimer: I don’t own Band of Brothers or anything relating to them and I base my fiction entirely on the actors and their portrayals. No disrespect intended. Emilie Ramos does, however, belong to me.
Author's Notes: So, this one's a bit of a cliff hanger. Also, this one's the only one with a chapter title that I couldn't really pick...
Summary: There was some rumor that Easy Company was her favorite, and though she wants to retort, she never can.
Four - Dick
It’s mass chaos when Hoobler accidentally shoots himself. She’d been talking to Buck, because she really didn’t know Dike all that well and that unnerved her because knowing the officers was her business. He’d turned to ask Lip about him and then there were shots and all hell broke loose. She’d jumped right in, because technically it was also her job, like she’d done by the farmhouse back before everything had changed.
This time, with everyone crowding around Gene hadn’t been quite so livid, but he still spoke with the authority that she’d always told him he had. She hadn’t noticed, but he’d eyed her hands, both trying to get closer to the wound, both working properly if somewhat awkwardly fumbling. He’d brushed her left hand away gently even as he hurried to see the problem and fix it. But he couldn’t see anything. And that panicked him.
“Gene,” she’d said softly, not expecting him to hear as they loaded Hoob onto the jeep. She’d go with them, anyway. It was the only job she could do. But Gene turned back to her for a moment.
“Stay here,” he stated, and let his fingers graze hers before getting in the jeep and disappearing into the haze.
--
She joined Nix and Dick at CP to write it up. Hoob’s dead and they’re down another and the numbers just weren’t large enough to do what they were being ordered to do and even sparing a glance at a map made her depressed in ways that she never knew she could be.
She happened to still be hanging around when a runner came with a letter for Nix and she couldn’t have been any more irritated because that was what she was supposed to be doing, but instead she was sitting in the middle of who knew where with papers scattered about her that didn’t really mean anything because they all said what they all knew - they had no supplies, they didn’t have enough numbers, and there was no foreseeable respite.
“Hey, Ramos,” Nix offers her a grin, though, “want to run up to HQ?”
“I could kiss you,” she states, taking the paper offered to her. And the echo of Nixon’s grin follows her all the way to town.
--
She was surprised to find HQ even more chaotic than the foxholes she’d left behind because it was hard to believe they were actually doing anything, being that Easy had just been sitting in the woods and she’d been there with them and had felt utterly useless so surely they had, too.
“Ramos.” There’s a growl in her ear, and she recognizes the Colonel’s voice instantly but she can’t help but roll her eyes when he adds, “Where the hell you been?”
“I had orders to stay put with Easy, sir,” she replies, not trying to cover her displeasure but simultaneously hoping he didn’t see. But he gives a humph in response, and she thinks maybe he didn’t realize and was as irritated as she was and that thought lets her lips quirk upward ever so slightly.
“Well, here,” he’s wandered back toward a desk, which she assumes is serving as his for the time being, and gives her a stack of papers and she purses her lips slightly at realizing that she was about to be serving as the mail call. It wasn’t that mail call couldn’t be a great thing; it was just that sometimes it just made everything and everyone all the worse for wear. She trades him the papers Nix handed over, though, and he looks it over with a nod, adding two sheets for Dick and Nix before sending her on her way.
--
She quickly quits the conversation between Sink, Dick, and Nix when Sink comes for a visit with a cameraman. She’d take information anywhere, but she typically wasn’t privy to it, regardless. So, she’s sitting with Doc, silently, as the boys meander through the grub line and Muck begins to point everyone out to one of the new faces, Webb, she thinks, though the name brings another face to her mind, and runs down the list in her mind with Muck’s voice, eyes closed, lips moving to create an echo with no sound.
But her eyes snap open when Bill and Lip have a joke of a conversation and she wants to smile, really smile for the first time since she’d been in England, but before it can even begin to grace her face she looks at Gene, sees him staring blankly ahead, and gives a sigh.
When he doesn’t even respond to the subtle touch of her hand on his, she inexplicably feels like crying, like she had on D-Day, and she doesn’t quite know what to do about it.
--
She doesn’t really know what to do with herself anymore, because Gene’s blanked out and she can hardly find Babe, and she’s losing good men faster than she gained them. So she spends most of her days running back and forth between Sink, and Dick and Nix, and the front line, always running down the list. That’s why, when Muck and Penkala get hit, it’s that much worse. Because she’d started to hear his voice, running down the list with the addition of wounds sustained, and no matter how hard she tries to have her own overpower it, it’s always there.
And so she stays away from all the boys when she runs down the list, because she’s tired of the voices and the faces that follow her everywhere and she doesn’t want to add any more to a different list that’s settled itself in the back of her mind that she technically wasn’t responsible for because she wrote it down and handed it in as it came, but more than that she is responsible and she jumps from name to name on a daily basis, every time she sees their face or hears their voice.
--
She has the unhappy misfortune of sitting with Dick when Lip gives his opinion of Dike. The thing is, everyone is in agreement, but there’s still nothing anyone can do about it. When Lipton’s left, she stands up to follow him out and thinks maybe she’ll head back to HQ and catch a ride with the Colonel on the way back.
“Em,” Dick calls her back, though, and she turns to lock her eyes with his. In his she sees a desperation, because he just wants to be with his company and he doesn’t want them to get hurt over the incompetence of an officer that no one wanted. But in hers he just sees an overwhelming, crippling sadness that takes him aback, like the list of the dead and missing was already growing longer, though nothing had happened yet. “Why don’t you check on Spina and Roe? See how they are on supplies.”
She knows how they are on supplies, and she doesn’t want to find either of them because it was too much to talk to anyone besides those she was certain enough would be safe, but she nods anyway because she does anything Dick asks. And she always will.
“Oh, and Em?” He draws her back one last time, only this time his eyes are soft and she can begin to see a bit of the sadness that she carries in hers reflected back in his. “Get some sleep.”
“Sir,” she whispers on an exhale, and turns out into the frigid night.
--
There’s something off about Speirs, when she sees him just before things get organized and Easy makes her way down into Foy. Something in his eyes and maybe even something in his voice when he tells her that she might’ve mixed up some mail and hands the letters back lets her know that whatever it is it can’t be good.
That’s why, after she’s read it and she’s watching the miniscule town, she can’t even feel the usual anxiety of what might happen to her boys and which lists might lengthen or shorten. She’s only aware of a fraction of Speirs’s attention being focused on her and it makes her unbelievably uncomfortable and she gets that feeling of not being able to breathe because he’s looking at her and so she’s immensely relieved when Dick calls him to replace the worthless officer down below and feels his focus stepping fully into being the leader that he was.
But she can’t yet breathe any easier, because she knows she has to ask.