Pick up the pieces and go home.

[broken_brushes]

Four and a half years I'd been on the island. I'd lived and loved, I'd built something I was proud of, I'd cried and carried on. But only once had I ever come across a mysterious item from home, and over time, I'd forgotten that I, too, could be the target of anything so explicitly cruel

Comments

[niceofyoutoask]

Lipton approached quietly, coming to stand beside Shari. If the unusual metal table wasn't a key indicator that something was wrong, the look on Shari's face would be. "Hey," He looked at her, noticing vaguely a woman singing from the jukebox. "Everything alright?" She was still Luz's wife to him, and it would go against everything he was made of not to be concerned.

[broken_brushes]

As long as I'd known Lipton, he'd been one of the most unfailingly kind people in my aquaintance, possibly only outdone by his wife. It had been long enough that the mere sight of him didn't remind me of George anymore, but I would be lying if I said I hadn't felt a familiar sting that day when I looked up to him with a weary smile.

"Yeah," I promised, rallying myself. "Just a little bit of a shock, that's all. I'm okay."

[niceofyoutoask]

He nodded, even if he didn't quite believe that last bit. He wouldn't press the the matter, if she didn't want to talk about something. Looking back at the table, he caught site of the toe tag for the first time, and things clicked into place. "Ah," he'd never been in a morgue, but he knew the basics as well as anybody did. "Yeah, I think that'd be a pretty good shock for anybody." Especially one who knew as much about her own mortality as Shari did.

[broken_brushes]

"It's not really the table that's such a shock, just not expecting it," I explained, glancing back to the wadded-up towel. "I think maybe someone is trying to tell me something."

Too readily I'd forgotten the gift of the life I'd been living. Too easily I'd fallen into the arms of mortality.

[niceofyoutoask]

"I would say I hope it's something positive," he said, relieved that she seemed more startled than traumatized, "but it is what it is, isn't it?"

[broken_brushes]

"It is, though," I replied, and offered him a weary smile. It was more for Carwood's benefit than my own, but it wasn't insincere. "This, right here. This is reminding me what a gift it is that I'm alive at all. Sometimes it can be easy to forget."

[niceofyoutoask]

Lipton nodded, understanding. He still wondered, occasionally, whether he had gone mad back in the Ardennes, or if he had been one of those whose names had been crossed off the Easy Company roster, and falling asleep in the convent had been his entering into the limbo-like heaven that was the island. Even if one of those two were true - and even with all the island's magic, it still sometimes seemed more likely than just dropping in randomly - he wouldn't give any of it up, not when the island had brought him Jane, and Lydia, and Richard. Whether he deserved this much happiness, given how many of the boys more deserving then them met their end, well - that was another thing he wondered about late at night

[broken_brushes]

My laugh was abrupt and resigned. "Everyone," I answered, and reached to begin carefully folding the sheet. I needed to do something with my hands. "Since the summer George left," I clarified, and gave a weary shake of my head. "I've lost a lot of people, Carwood. But I'm working on it."

[niceofyoutoask]

He was quiet for a moment, struck by just how absolutely devastated he would be if Jane were to disappear. "There's no rush, huh?" He said, putting a hand on her shoulder. The Luz on the Island may not have remembered the dud shell, or his first cigarette, or the spot-on imitations of Dike that Lipton had been duty-bound to stop, even though he loved them - but Lipton did. He was a good man, George Luz. One of the best.

[broken_brushes]

"No rush," I agreed, stilling with the folded sheet in hand. "But I've been at a standstill- No, I've gone backwards," I admitted with a sigh. "You know how people say, 'he would want you to move on' or whatever? I don't know what George would want, but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't like the idea of me miserable and lonely."

[niceofyoutoask]

"Luz? Are you kidding?" Lipton shook his head, giving a bit of a smile, but not at her expense. "It's the last thing that guy would want. This is the man who sang 'Oklahoma' to brighten the mood during a news brief. I don't think it'd be going to far to say that he'd want you, of all people, to be happy."

[broken_brushes]

"I just don't know how to keep myself from wondering whether he might come back," I admitted, picking idly at the corner of the linen. "Which makes me even more depressed, because he wouldn't know me." When Sam had come back, it had been worse than anything I possibly could have imagined.

"It's past time to let go. I know it is. It just isn't the easiest thing."

[niceofyoutoask]

The Luz on the island wasn't from the early days of 1945 like Lipton was, but from the fall of '44. It had been during that long winter in the Ardennes that Lipton had truly grown close with the guy - the constant shelling and tight-quarters in miserable foxholes had seen to that - and it had been disorienting for Luz to remember none of it. It had been better for the guy, though - the Luz on the island didn't have the same gaunt, dark-eyed look he'd had after the deaths of Muck and Penkala, and after Buck had taken a turn, and Bill and Joe had been sent off the line. It wasn't nearly the same as being married to the guy, hell, far from it, but he had some idea of the difference a few months could have on a man like Luz.

"Yeah. But there's no better place for a fresh start when the time's right, huh?"