Go Easy On Me, Band of Brothers, TA, Doc/OC (5/7)
Title: Go Easy On Me
Subject: Band of Brothers
Rating: TA
Pairing: Doc/OC
Word Count: 1613
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: Speirs. I bet you saw this coming, y'all.
Summary: There was some rumor that Easy Company was her favorite, and though she wants to retort, she never can.
Five - Speirs
Speirs tries to make it easier on her, finding his way to her in the midst of the celebration. He gets her attention easy enough, because she was staring blankly forward at an empty building, but he knew she was really listening intently to everything surrounding her and that’s why she reacts to the sniper before anyone else. There’s a moment, then, of chaos before Lip gets Shifty and they right the world again.
She slips away before he can get back to her.
--
There’s no more avoiding him at Rachamps. He finds her just outside the convent, where she’s looking up at the sky, instead of looking down at her fingers curling into her helmet like she usually would.
“Ramos,” he starts. And here, when she turns her attention back to him and away from the lengthy path her brain was running down, he quirks a brow at her with an offer of a cigarette. She waves him off because she doesn’t drink and she doesn’t smoke and surely he knew that by now. “Walk with me.”
“You know you’re down to sixty three?” she asks, and he’s somewhat surprised to hear the absolute sound of no emotion in her voice, though her words are angry when she adds, “Sixty fucking three.”
“Emilie,” he murmurs, and he would’ve stopped to look at her if he hadn’t been trying to make his way back to Battalion before it moved. “You can go home, you know.”
“It’s just two more to the list,” she says, and that’s answer enough. But she’s still walking beside him when they find Battalion and they both stop simultaneously because she still had a question and he was waiting for her to ask. She silently asks him to answer without her having to speak, but he stares her down because he knew a thing or two about grief and nothing she was doing really followed any pattern and that was reason enough to worry.
“Are you going to tell?” She finally relents, and he thinks she suddenly looks overwhelmingly childlike and innocent and he could understand why sometimes that medic seemed flustered when she was around and why Easy men were ready to throw punches when others made passing comments.
“That’s not up to me,” he replies, though he wants to say yes because he’s not sure where she stands and she’d be one less thing to think about. But, then, he also thinks he’d think about her anyway and at least this way he’d have her under his thumb. She knows, when she looks him in the eye, that he means it’s her choice, which makes sense because he’d asked if she wanted to go home and she’d more or less said no, but she also knows that if she slips up he’ll be sending her home, regardless of her feelings.
Just before they part, her to the typewriter and him to the officers, she manages to conjure a pack of smokes for him.
“Just because you’re a damned gypsy don’t think that changes anything,” he offers as a parting warning and she actually laughs and he doesn’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
But she thinks she can live with that.
--
She does a lot of running around in Haguenau. There’s always somewhere else to be, replacements, supplies, new orders, and she’s always looking for more. More Vat 69 for Nix, more cigarettes for everyone else. She feels like she hasn’t spoken to Gene in years and she feels like she doesn’t know how to anymore and so she takes the cowardly way out and asks Babe to be her go between for the few instances that she needs him.
Which is what she had been doing before she wandered up the street and found the new kid, Jones, wandering around.
“Delivery for you,” she states when she comes upon Speirs and Lip, and gives Speirs some paperwork, which he promptly passes on to Lipton, and Lip some pills. And here she notices Web, the first Web, the one she remembers more clearly. He nods her way and she closes her eyes for a moment to think because all this running around requires rethinking everything she does.
She’s never been more removed.
“Em,” Speirs draws her attention and she finally opens her eyes, which tell her that Dick and Nix were no longer in the room, though she’d sworn she heard their voices because even though she doesn’t look, she listens. “Would you stop for a second and just sleep?”
“What good am I asleep?” She questions, but it’s rhetorical, and soon she’s awkwardly leading Webster and Jones back to second platoon, because Speirs’s first guess, should he need her, would be there. And by the time they make it there, she realizes, that’s where she’d guess she’d be, too.
She’s so far out of the conversation that Babe’s pulling her down the stairs for cover, and when they all make for the showers, he leaves her there with the hope that her eyelids will finally close and she’ll take a moment off her feet.
--
She quite naturally finds herself stiff in the morning or the afternoon or whatever time it was, because she was probably dead wrong, and she limps her way toward the commotion to discover more casualties in her personal night. But before she can even begin to reorganize and rethink for the millionth time, there’s a whisper in her ear.
“Come see me when you can.” And she doesn’t let her breath go until he’s walked out and she looks down at the tags he’d pressed into her hand and for the first time she gives into having a few tearstains on her dirty cheeks.
“Hey, Em,” Babe pulls her against him because he’s happy to be alive, but also because he’s almost feeling like he felt when he left Julian to die alone and he’d seen the few tear drops falling from her eyes and they had this odd way about them when they were together.
“Oh, Babe,” she turns her face into his shoulder and shakes beneath his arm. And though she at least has herself mostly under control, they both find comfort in the embrace.
--
She never makes it to Gene, like he’d asked, or ordered, or told, or whatever. She’d found time to sleep again while they were moving, but she wakes to Web shouting to the passing German troops, blinking the sleep from her eyes and bringing her sleeve to wipe at her face.
“Horses are good,” she murmurs, and notices the small wet spot on Babe’s jacket. “Sorry.” He just smiles at her. And so she lets her head fall back on his shoulder.
--
In hind sight, she could see that this was a bad idea. Falling asleep on Babe, again. She knows, then, when she looks up and sees Gene’s face instead of Babe’s that she shouldn’t be surprised. So she’s not.
But she is somewhat baffled by the fact that she’s no longer moving.
“I told you to come see me,” he growls, and she understands now that that was an order, and he’s taken on that authority just like she’d told him he should. She thinks about giving him an excuse, about how she was busy or she had more important things, and she thinks about telling him the truth about how her heart was going haywire at that exact moment, but instead she tells him something else because she hasn’t told anyone and it was a bit ridiculous that Speirs was the only one who knew.
“My parents are dead,” she states, like it meant nothing. Because here on the other side of the world it did mean nothing. Just two more names to add to the list, she’d said. And she meant it.
“Emilie,” he softens for her, because he can still see her on the airfield, a windswept enigma waiting to unfold.
“I know, Gene, I know,” she says, staring forward, unseeing, but listening to him moving closer. “My ankle’s worse, it’s always worse, I know. I’ve begun to favor my right side more than a right handed person should, I know. And there’s something wrong with me, anyway, because I don’t pay attention anymore and I ignored your orders which I basically told you to give in the first place and I’m fairly certain Speirs is going to send me home before the war’s actually over. I know.”
“I can fix that,” Gene replies after she’s done. She doesn’t know what he means, because there’s no way he can fix all of that, even with his healing hands, until he’s standing in front of her with a fire in his eyes. He has to look into her eyes to be sure, because he’d never gotten as good at reading her as she was at reading everyone else, but that one look tells him all that he needs to know.
So his hands bring her face to his and he pours every ounce of himself and whatever prayers for healing he has left into her. And she quite suddenly responds with an unexpected ferocity just before she breaks.
“God, Gene,” she whispers through the bone rattling pain and he pulls her against him and whispers nothing to her in French. She doesn’t know any language besides English, but she gets the message and she knows that he’s alternating between praying and speaking directly to her and she thinks she should feel like an intruder on this scene but she doesn’t, she realizes, because she’s part of it and she’s a part that belongs.
“I’ll fix it, Em.”
Subject: Band of Brothers
Rating: TA
Pairing: Doc/OC
Word Count: 1613
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: Speirs. I bet you saw this coming, y'all.
Summary: There was some rumor that Easy Company was her favorite, and though she wants to retort, she never can.
Five - Speirs
Speirs tries to make it easier on her, finding his way to her in the midst of the celebration. He gets her attention easy enough, because she was staring blankly forward at an empty building, but he knew she was really listening intently to everything surrounding her and that’s why she reacts to the sniper before anyone else. There’s a moment, then, of chaos before Lip gets Shifty and they right the world again.
She slips away before he can get back to her.
--
There’s no more avoiding him at Rachamps. He finds her just outside the convent, where she’s looking up at the sky, instead of looking down at her fingers curling into her helmet like she usually would.
“Ramos,” he starts. And here, when she turns her attention back to him and away from the lengthy path her brain was running down, he quirks a brow at her with an offer of a cigarette. She waves him off because she doesn’t drink and she doesn’t smoke and surely he knew that by now. “Walk with me.”
“You know you’re down to sixty three?” she asks, and he’s somewhat surprised to hear the absolute sound of no emotion in her voice, though her words are angry when she adds, “Sixty fucking three.”
“Emilie,” he murmurs, and he would’ve stopped to look at her if he hadn’t been trying to make his way back to Battalion before it moved. “You can go home, you know.”
“It’s just two more to the list,” she says, and that’s answer enough. But she’s still walking beside him when they find Battalion and they both stop simultaneously because she still had a question and he was waiting for her to ask. She silently asks him to answer without her having to speak, but he stares her down because he knew a thing or two about grief and nothing she was doing really followed any pattern and that was reason enough to worry.
“Are you going to tell?” She finally relents, and he thinks she suddenly looks overwhelmingly childlike and innocent and he could understand why sometimes that medic seemed flustered when she was around and why Easy men were ready to throw punches when others made passing comments.
“That’s not up to me,” he replies, though he wants to say yes because he’s not sure where she stands and she’d be one less thing to think about. But, then, he also thinks he’d think about her anyway and at least this way he’d have her under his thumb. She knows, when she looks him in the eye, that he means it’s her choice, which makes sense because he’d asked if she wanted to go home and she’d more or less said no, but she also knows that if she slips up he’ll be sending her home, regardless of her feelings.
Just before they part, her to the typewriter and him to the officers, she manages to conjure a pack of smokes for him.
“Just because you’re a damned gypsy don’t think that changes anything,” he offers as a parting warning and she actually laughs and he doesn’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
But she thinks she can live with that.
--
She does a lot of running around in Haguenau. There’s always somewhere else to be, replacements, supplies, new orders, and she’s always looking for more. More Vat 69 for Nix, more cigarettes for everyone else. She feels like she hasn’t spoken to Gene in years and she feels like she doesn’t know how to anymore and so she takes the cowardly way out and asks Babe to be her go between for the few instances that she needs him.
Which is what she had been doing before she wandered up the street and found the new kid, Jones, wandering around.
“Delivery for you,” she states when she comes upon Speirs and Lip, and gives Speirs some paperwork, which he promptly passes on to Lipton, and Lip some pills. And here she notices Web, the first Web, the one she remembers more clearly. He nods her way and she closes her eyes for a moment to think because all this running around requires rethinking everything she does.
She’s never been more removed.
“Em,” Speirs draws her attention and she finally opens her eyes, which tell her that Dick and Nix were no longer in the room, though she’d sworn she heard their voices because even though she doesn’t look, she listens. “Would you stop for a second and just sleep?”
“What good am I asleep?” She questions, but it’s rhetorical, and soon she’s awkwardly leading Webster and Jones back to second platoon, because Speirs’s first guess, should he need her, would be there. And by the time they make it there, she realizes, that’s where she’d guess she’d be, too.
She’s so far out of the conversation that Babe’s pulling her down the stairs for cover, and when they all make for the showers, he leaves her there with the hope that her eyelids will finally close and she’ll take a moment off her feet.
--
She quite naturally finds herself stiff in the morning or the afternoon or whatever time it was, because she was probably dead wrong, and she limps her way toward the commotion to discover more casualties in her personal night. But before she can even begin to reorganize and rethink for the millionth time, there’s a whisper in her ear.
“Come see me when you can.” And she doesn’t let her breath go until he’s walked out and she looks down at the tags he’d pressed into her hand and for the first time she gives into having a few tearstains on her dirty cheeks.
“Hey, Em,” Babe pulls her against him because he’s happy to be alive, but also because he’s almost feeling like he felt when he left Julian to die alone and he’d seen the few tear drops falling from her eyes and they had this odd way about them when they were together.
“Oh, Babe,” she turns her face into his shoulder and shakes beneath his arm. And though she at least has herself mostly under control, they both find comfort in the embrace.
--
She never makes it to Gene, like he’d asked, or ordered, or told, or whatever. She’d found time to sleep again while they were moving, but she wakes to Web shouting to the passing German troops, blinking the sleep from her eyes and bringing her sleeve to wipe at her face.
“Horses are good,” she murmurs, and notices the small wet spot on Babe’s jacket. “Sorry.” He just smiles at her. And so she lets her head fall back on his shoulder.
--
In hind sight, she could see that this was a bad idea. Falling asleep on Babe, again. She knows, then, when she looks up and sees Gene’s face instead of Babe’s that she shouldn’t be surprised. So she’s not.
But she is somewhat baffled by the fact that she’s no longer moving.
“I told you to come see me,” he growls, and she understands now that that was an order, and he’s taken on that authority just like she’d told him he should. She thinks about giving him an excuse, about how she was busy or she had more important things, and she thinks about telling him the truth about how her heart was going haywire at that exact moment, but instead she tells him something else because she hasn’t told anyone and it was a bit ridiculous that Speirs was the only one who knew.
“My parents are dead,” she states, like it meant nothing. Because here on the other side of the world it did mean nothing. Just two more names to add to the list, she’d said. And she meant it.
“Emilie,” he softens for her, because he can still see her on the airfield, a windswept enigma waiting to unfold.
“I know, Gene, I know,” she says, staring forward, unseeing, but listening to him moving closer. “My ankle’s worse, it’s always worse, I know. I’ve begun to favor my right side more than a right handed person should, I know. And there’s something wrong with me, anyway, because I don’t pay attention anymore and I ignored your orders which I basically told you to give in the first place and I’m fairly certain Speirs is going to send me home before the war’s actually over. I know.”
“I can fix that,” Gene replies after she’s done. She doesn’t know what he means, because there’s no way he can fix all of that, even with his healing hands, until he’s standing in front of her with a fire in his eyes. He has to look into her eyes to be sure, because he’d never gotten as good at reading her as she was at reading everyone else, but that one look tells him all that he needs to know.
So his hands bring her face to his and he pours every ounce of himself and whatever prayers for healing he has left into her. And she quite suddenly responds with an unexpected ferocity just before she breaks.
“God, Gene,” she whispers through the bone rattling pain and he pulls her against him and whispers nothing to her in French. She doesn’t know any language besides English, but she gets the message and she knows that he’s alternating between praying and speaking directly to her and she thinks she should feel like an intruder on this scene but she doesn’t, she realizes, because she’s part of it and she’s a part that belongs.
“I’ll fix it, Em.”