fic: and chaos is luck (band of brothers)
and chaos is luck
band of brothers. it all rattles and collects in corners, the trick of events and the way things like war will come to be both told and remembered. ensemble. 2642 words. pg-13.
notes: for fated_addiction for being awesome. also! the style of the fic is written in keeping with 1sentence challenges, where 50 prompts are given and for each prompt a sentence is written. all 50 prompts are listed at the end of the fic for the curious. needless to say, this linear storytelling was pretty much thrown to the wayside in this. also, this was super hard to write, lol. and my first go at writing for the fandom. so! that said, read, enjoy, and hopefully i didn't commit any fandom blasphemy in the process.
unraveling heavenward it’s saddled to tiny birds, or other such winged things
either way they are struggling, either way they are miniature
either way they’re invisible
but either way they’re confused as hell would have them
(winged/wicked things; sunset rubdown)
001.
Lest it be forgotten, like most things, this started with pride - the thought of traveling freely through cloud, a graceful fall of a stroll across open space; it was the heat of July and the crunch of gravel underfoot, that stark, initial ascent of Currahee.
002.
“Stay on your toes,” Winters hisses, and Normandy whispers back in haste.
003.
It all starts to scatter, messy and unkind, and maybe as survivors it’s what makes memory and its retelling all the more difficult to accurately achieve (it is perhaps little more than vain, hopeful thinking to imagine order can be prescribed to a game like this, and the stories shall spill at random, choppy little bursts with no clear vision as to how the end can ever be rightfully phrased).
004.
Perconte sets a mortar off, hands clasped over ears, his helmet slightly crooked, the chin straps hanging down, and as his fingers fan farther apart, the space widening between each, he is met by silence, an unreal, unearthly moment of quiet, mouths still running, dirt and dead grass still catching in the air in an undesirable organic confetti against the gray and the waiting; someone smacks him on the arm and he drops another round in - seemingly by instinct - and he thinks of Blithe, briefly, fucking Blithe, and that hysterical blindness of his or whatever the hell he kept falling down with, and he’s curious - another round fires off, his fingers not nearly as tight against the side of his head - if the same can be said of sound, of other senses, but he’s being perfectly rational here - a tree splinters near his head and the straps of his helmet dangle and dance - there’s nothing hysterical about this, and -
“Perconte!” someone screams, and he breathes a momentary sigh of relief (his fingers reach for another round).
005.
It was half a lie to Dike on Lipton’s part - he doesn’t really think of home, but he does think of other things, things that make his throat feel too tight and the fear too rich, things like growing old and wool sweaters or a cold beer and wrap-around porches or a dog in a study somewhere, a broken carburetor to be fixed, a clogged drain, Sundays after church, but out here, out here in the cold and the hell and the jagged jaws of opened tree stumps they each feel too far gone for him to firmly grasp, to remember (to imagine as once warm possibilities).
006.
Before, Holland was little more than wooden shoes and giant, reaching windmills, the random stuff of childhood legend, but now just a glancing thought of it is enough to make Buck want to vomit.
007.
They pass through and as a city, it cuts a cruel, alien landscape, all broken windows and dust-coated cobblestone.
008.
“You know how they refer to this as the European Theatre, of the war, right, like we’re in a goddamn opera house or something, and after intermission, ladies and gentleman! the boys will be gracing the stage, performing their own stunts, and…” the rest trails off as Nixon hiccups and shakes his head.
009.
Bravery can be realized in the strangest of moments, almost as though by accident - the unfurling of a parachute, the endless rat-a-tat-tat from a machine gunner, the snap of a branch in the pale shadows of the moonlight, the exploding shell from behind, the sight of blood, the slip of it, the taste, the blood, yes, the blood, the -
Guarnere’s hands latch beneath Toye’s arms and he pulls, hard.
010.
Germany, maybe, and there is a smudge of a fingerprint on the surface of the silver; it isn’t his (Speirs takes the platter, the candlesticks, a goblet, two, an eight-piece dining room set all the same - he imagines, more accurately he hopes, their original owner is already dead).
011.
The days will come and go, and the years, collect (little candles lit in windows and their inhabitants paste to standing walls to wait).
012.
Doc Roe always did like the color blue; the fabric stays soft, and eventually, gone (see, blood still stains and spreads, and Doc - he still tries).
013.
“Jesus Christ,” and Malarkey marvels, his cigarette almost burnt down to nothing, his fingers stained, “they look like a bunch of fucking kids,” and perhaps they do.
014.
“Ain’t no fucking Kansas anymore,” Toye kids, and on a crackle and a split, a once café caves in upon itself; the crackling and the spit of embers continues in its wake, his brass knuckles catch the light in the rusted orange jump of the flames.
015.
A day comes where Winters receives his oak leaves, and that swift current of undulation is an inescapable fact, within the military no exception: there will always be someone who will rise, and there is always another who shall fall.
016.
Tomorrow already has bullet holes punched into it, still gonna have to step light.
017.
In words like silver polish, Winters can understand it, or at least sliding glances of it: they all want something to return home to, something tangible that makes all of this somehow worth it, in a quantitative fashion they can neatly measure out, that others can compare to (when he tells Speirs this, the other man just snorts and tries hard not to think of Jolly England).
018.
On the same level as a first-year university philosophy course, the men have begun to think along the lines of post hoc ergo propter hoc creating a chronological string of causality that really isn’t there, swelling higher and higher, and blame thrown around with the same fear and urgency as a ripe grenade (Webster is the first one to point this out; “hey, Einstein,” Martin scowls, “shut it”).
019.
“What do you say, Dick?” Nixon greets; Winters doesn’t answer, but squints instead, over and across the river.
020.
Speirs stretches, both arms raised above his head, a stifled yawn, his right cheek pressed against the inside of his right arm, and he can smell his own dried, stale sweat; he folds the map back up again, into quarters, and he is coiled tight, has been for the past two years - “we’ll move at 0100,” he says, eyes unblinking, and he can recognize it: parts of him are beginning to ache.
021.
When they had first arrived (Sobel still there, skirting that sharp knife of combat on long, shaky legs), London had gone dark; they had marched on with the dim glow of flashlights leading, the taste of Georgia, North Carolina, fading fast from tight mouths, the echo of resounding footsteps in unison as company in the night.
022.
“Winters still don’t drink, huh?” Roe asks with a slight turn of his mouth as he watches their aforementioned leader’s shrinking silhouette amidst the trees; amused, Nixon only snorts, his breath forming a soft cloud near his lips, then shrugs.
023.
Liebgott is losing his hold on simple things like patterns, the way time moves in sevens, and his eyes will dart, sure and swift, wait for signs out on the periphery, as he asks, “Monday? no, Tuesday - nah, definitely Sunday, no, fucking Monday, impossible, Tuesday, yesterday? Monday? yes, Monday,” and a branch will bend, dip low in the middle, from the heavy weight of too much snow.
024.
Sharply, there's first a flash of white while he waits; a gun sounds when it falls and the word medic pierces, cold.
025.
It is the boys and a poker game, and Nixon gets shitfaced while Speirs deals, and Harry might be tipsy, definitely horny (Kitty this, Kitty that, and Speirs just scowls while Nixon chuckles at a couple ounces of amber liquid), but then his mouth slips sideways, maybe the liquor turns against him, the windows rattle more than a little, and he throws his cards down and says, “it’s just fucking luck anyway, not a prayer, just luck, fellas.”
026.
That first time, the wind had bit at faces and adrenaline had pooled, then spread, toes kind of numb, jammed into boots, trousers bloused and feet had dangled as the ground had seemed to rise to greet them - the mountain had moved to meet Mohammed.
027.
Luz quacks - no, cracks - at some point in a foxhole with the trees still menacing above, around and everywhere, a lame Donald Duck impression attempted that somehow still earns a laugh, but his hands won’t stop shaking - he tries to hide them - and he blames the cold, the cold, the fucking cold, but that’s not it because sometimes things explode and sometimes they don’t - ask Muck, Penkala, except, see, you can’t - so his hands will shake like this and he’ll quack (crack) like that and maybe if he’s lucky someone there will laugh.
028.
Webster reflects too often on history during his stay in the hospital, the wounds healing, the bend and creaking of joints in rehab, the pretty, docile smiles of the nurses, all the white instead of the green and brown; he wonders if that’s just the projection of history, the ever increasing lack of personalization in war, the shock and grunt of the parry and collision of swords giving way to machines and holes in the ground (irrelevant, it all is, his familiarity of the concept only bred through pen and paper rather than sweat and trembling experience).
029.
At first, with Normandy and then Carentan, Lipton never thought he would be shot; in his mind, it was not a possibility, not the way the war was going to unfold for him, that maybe, just maybe, he was one of the blessed ones, prized by fate (as time wore on, his survival lost the hue of an honor and instead began to color like both trial and tribulation).
030.
Hearts are pounding, and what you have to understand is this: not a single one of them will ever feel more powerful than they do in this moment alone (shells go clip to the ground, dirt slides across chins; Krauts fall, discarded, spent).
031.
Speirs and Dostoevsky make for constant companions in the quiet stretches (one hand poised for the butt of a rifle, the other the broken spine of a book), and at times he leaves certain pages marked; Lipton’s eyes scan the words across, curious, before he pauses, a light smile trying: “ ‘You’re a gentleman,’ they used to say to him, ‘you shouldn’t have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that’s no occupation for a gentleman,’” it reads, a faded cigarette burn next to the start of the first quotation mark.
032.
No one’s really calling each other boy anymore; more often than not, old man or just a surname fits instead, age lined in dirt and slowly fading scars.
033.
Back all those years ago, back to the start, when it was Camp Toccoa and strangers with youth still slack in their faces, before preternatural comfort and ease began to shade, they all had appraised each other the same way: you gonna jump out of this goddamn plane, too?
034.
They walk the length of first one bridge and then another; “hi-dee, hi-dee, Christ Almighty, who the hell are we?” Guarnere offers, lightly, below his breath (the sweat is dripping down the back of his fucking jacket, his neck, soaked); the gravel and the rocks tremble along in song, “rim-ram, goddamn, parachute infantry!”
035.
“Poor bastards,” someone mutters, and it doesn’t really matter who had said it - it ain't true.
036.
They are still men, of course, and when the beer starts to pour or time stretches slow, the conversation takes to curves, and then to tits and ass and fuck and varying combinations of the three, the wistful giving way to the more perverse (perhaps they do not notice, or maybe, instead, it is rooted in a silent and unaware compassion, but no one ever comments when Doc Roe walks away, fingers itching for a closed pocket in the cold).
037.
“Good luck,” Winters breathed once in June, in England.
038.
The gates open with a low creak and shoulders and ribs, elbows, kneecaps, jut out at unnatural angles, paper thin skin pulled taut, and the smell makes his throat constrict, eyes water enough to blur; Winters steps forward, his fingers grazing the metal of the gate and he can’t stop his mind, the rapid course of it, the image of a lone German soldier, a wide expanse of field and the kickback of his rifle with the unloading of each fatal shot.
039.
War lends itself all too easily to both cliché and hyperbole alike; “damn shame,” Nixon mutters and his package of cigarettes is empty and crumpled, his right breast pocket (no one is going to understand this but them, so many secret handshakes Ma and Dad, Lou at the pub, all the Kitties of the world, will never comprehend).
040.
The worst part about the end here, of Austria and the cases of alcohol, the checkpoints, the sun and the weird letdown of being armed but without anything to shoot at is the amount of open, empty time granted - it gives things like loss, lone phrases (I miss you) too much space to grow and collect.
041.
They might have understood it then (later they will claim in absolutes that they had, but that’s later, retrospect and hindsight clipped on as instruments of corrective vision), the isolation of the moment clear through the clouds the nose of their plane was parting as they crossed above the Channel - never again: it’s the rhythm the cadence of history has set.
042.
The gun rests on the table.
043.
Their future selves might find this all different, grown children and the like, and when questions are posed, perhaps they will answer (they would explain with a heavy yes, there is also the title I once was).
044.
Legend and Easy are already beginning to blend rather well, if the men do say so themselves (murmurs of Guarnere and the Germans on D-Day, Speirs at Foy, the bastards of Bastogne, things like casualty rates start to spread through the rumor mill).
045.
“I’m going to stay,” Speirs says, a crack of his lighter and he inhales deeply.
046.
Harry looks to Kitty and Nix looks to bottles more often half-empty than full, and the real catch of it all is this: in the collecting silence, the still beauty of Austria, Winters is unsure where to train his careful eye.
047.
The German general begins, a chin raised and his troops stand, listening; the Jeep is put in park.
048.
They had held on, they each had held on - a rifle, a promise, a grenade, the strap of a parachute, a proffered hand - and that counts for everything, doesn’t it?
049.
Eventually Easy is disbanded, and there is always that hill, Winters thinks (the highways of New Jersey slip past, soft asphalt), the crest and the fall of it, and the comforting knowledge that at some point, yes, you will come back down from there.
050.
There are echoes -
In the quiet and the most damaged of places, the snow still falls in heavy flakes; it catches.
051.
fin.
PROMPTS:
001. WALKING
002. WALTZ
003. WISHES
004. WONDER
005. WORRY
006. WHIMSY
007. WASTE/WASTELAND
008. WHISKEY AND RUM
009. WAR
010. WEDDINGS
011. BIRTHDAY
012. BLESSING
013. BIAS
014. BURNING
015. BREATHING
016. BREAKING
017. BELIEF
018. BALLOON
019. BALCONY
020. BANE
021. QUIET
022. QUIRKS
023. QUESTION
024. QUARREL
025. QUITTING
026. JUMP
027. JESTER
028. JOUSTING
029. JEWEL
030. JUST
031. SMIRK
032. SORROW
033. STUPIDITY
034. SERENADE
035. SARCASM
036. SORDID
037. SOLILOQUY
038. SOJOURN
039. SHARE
040. SOLITARY
041. NOWHERE
042. NEUTRAL
043. NUANCE
044. NEAR
045. NATURAL
046. HORIZON
047. VALIANT
048. VIRTUOUS
049. VICTORY
050. DEFEAT
band of brothers. it all rattles and collects in corners, the trick of events and the way things like war will come to be both told and remembered. ensemble. 2642 words. pg-13.
notes: for fated_addiction for being awesome. also! the style of the fic is written in keeping with 1sentence challenges, where 50 prompts are given and for each prompt a sentence is written. all 50 prompts are listed at the end of the fic for the curious. needless to say, this linear storytelling was pretty much thrown to the wayside in this. also, this was super hard to write, lol. and my first go at writing for the fandom. so! that said, read, enjoy, and hopefully i didn't commit any fandom blasphemy in the process.
unraveling heavenward it’s saddled to tiny birds, or other such winged things
either way they are struggling, either way they are miniature
either way they’re invisible
but either way they’re confused as hell would have them
(winged/wicked things; sunset rubdown)
001.
Lest it be forgotten, like most things, this started with pride - the thought of traveling freely through cloud, a graceful fall of a stroll across open space; it was the heat of July and the crunch of gravel underfoot, that stark, initial ascent of Currahee.
002.
“Stay on your toes,” Winters hisses, and Normandy whispers back in haste.
003.
It all starts to scatter, messy and unkind, and maybe as survivors it’s what makes memory and its retelling all the more difficult to accurately achieve (it is perhaps little more than vain, hopeful thinking to imagine order can be prescribed to a game like this, and the stories shall spill at random, choppy little bursts with no clear vision as to how the end can ever be rightfully phrased).
004.
Perconte sets a mortar off, hands clasped over ears, his helmet slightly crooked, the chin straps hanging down, and as his fingers fan farther apart, the space widening between each, he is met by silence, an unreal, unearthly moment of quiet, mouths still running, dirt and dead grass still catching in the air in an undesirable organic confetti against the gray and the waiting; someone smacks him on the arm and he drops another round in - seemingly by instinct - and he thinks of Blithe, briefly, fucking Blithe, and that hysterical blindness of his or whatever the hell he kept falling down with, and he’s curious - another round fires off, his fingers not nearly as tight against the side of his head - if the same can be said of sound, of other senses, but he’s being perfectly rational here - a tree splinters near his head and the straps of his helmet dangle and dance - there’s nothing hysterical about this, and -
“Perconte!” someone screams, and he breathes a momentary sigh of relief (his fingers reach for another round).
005.
It was half a lie to Dike on Lipton’s part - he doesn’t really think of home, but he does think of other things, things that make his throat feel too tight and the fear too rich, things like growing old and wool sweaters or a cold beer and wrap-around porches or a dog in a study somewhere, a broken carburetor to be fixed, a clogged drain, Sundays after church, but out here, out here in the cold and the hell and the jagged jaws of opened tree stumps they each feel too far gone for him to firmly grasp, to remember (to imagine as once warm possibilities).
006.
Before, Holland was little more than wooden shoes and giant, reaching windmills, the random stuff of childhood legend, but now just a glancing thought of it is enough to make Buck want to vomit.
007.
They pass through and as a city, it cuts a cruel, alien landscape, all broken windows and dust-coated cobblestone.
008.
“You know how they refer to this as the European Theatre, of the war, right, like we’re in a goddamn opera house or something, and after intermission, ladies and gentleman! the boys will be gracing the stage, performing their own stunts, and…” the rest trails off as Nixon hiccups and shakes his head.
009.
Bravery can be realized in the strangest of moments, almost as though by accident - the unfurling of a parachute, the endless rat-a-tat-tat from a machine gunner, the snap of a branch in the pale shadows of the moonlight, the exploding shell from behind, the sight of blood, the slip of it, the taste, the blood, yes, the blood, the -
Guarnere’s hands latch beneath Toye’s arms and he pulls, hard.
010.
Germany, maybe, and there is a smudge of a fingerprint on the surface of the silver; it isn’t his (Speirs takes the platter, the candlesticks, a goblet, two, an eight-piece dining room set all the same - he imagines, more accurately he hopes, their original owner is already dead).
011.
The days will come and go, and the years, collect (little candles lit in windows and their inhabitants paste to standing walls to wait).
012.
Doc Roe always did like the color blue; the fabric stays soft, and eventually, gone (see, blood still stains and spreads, and Doc - he still tries).
013.
“Jesus Christ,” and Malarkey marvels, his cigarette almost burnt down to nothing, his fingers stained, “they look like a bunch of fucking kids,” and perhaps they do.
014.
“Ain’t no fucking Kansas anymore,” Toye kids, and on a crackle and a split, a once café caves in upon itself; the crackling and the spit of embers continues in its wake, his brass knuckles catch the light in the rusted orange jump of the flames.
015.
A day comes where Winters receives his oak leaves, and that swift current of undulation is an inescapable fact, within the military no exception: there will always be someone who will rise, and there is always another who shall fall.
016.
Tomorrow already has bullet holes punched into it, still gonna have to step light.
017.
In words like silver polish, Winters can understand it, or at least sliding glances of it: they all want something to return home to, something tangible that makes all of this somehow worth it, in a quantitative fashion they can neatly measure out, that others can compare to (when he tells Speirs this, the other man just snorts and tries hard not to think of Jolly England).
018.
On the same level as a first-year university philosophy course, the men have begun to think along the lines of post hoc ergo propter hoc creating a chronological string of causality that really isn’t there, swelling higher and higher, and blame thrown around with the same fear and urgency as a ripe grenade (Webster is the first one to point this out; “hey, Einstein,” Martin scowls, “shut it”).
019.
“What do you say, Dick?” Nixon greets; Winters doesn’t answer, but squints instead, over and across the river.
020.
Speirs stretches, both arms raised above his head, a stifled yawn, his right cheek pressed against the inside of his right arm, and he can smell his own dried, stale sweat; he folds the map back up again, into quarters, and he is coiled tight, has been for the past two years - “we’ll move at 0100,” he says, eyes unblinking, and he can recognize it: parts of him are beginning to ache.
021.
When they had first arrived (Sobel still there, skirting that sharp knife of combat on long, shaky legs), London had gone dark; they had marched on with the dim glow of flashlights leading, the taste of Georgia, North Carolina, fading fast from tight mouths, the echo of resounding footsteps in unison as company in the night.
022.
“Winters still don’t drink, huh?” Roe asks with a slight turn of his mouth as he watches their aforementioned leader’s shrinking silhouette amidst the trees; amused, Nixon only snorts, his breath forming a soft cloud near his lips, then shrugs.
023.
Liebgott is losing his hold on simple things like patterns, the way time moves in sevens, and his eyes will dart, sure and swift, wait for signs out on the periphery, as he asks, “Monday? no, Tuesday - nah, definitely Sunday, no, fucking Monday, impossible, Tuesday, yesterday? Monday? yes, Monday,” and a branch will bend, dip low in the middle, from the heavy weight of too much snow.
024.
Sharply, there's first a flash of white while he waits; a gun sounds when it falls and the word medic pierces, cold.
025.
It is the boys and a poker game, and Nixon gets shitfaced while Speirs deals, and Harry might be tipsy, definitely horny (Kitty this, Kitty that, and Speirs just scowls while Nixon chuckles at a couple ounces of amber liquid), but then his mouth slips sideways, maybe the liquor turns against him, the windows rattle more than a little, and he throws his cards down and says, “it’s just fucking luck anyway, not a prayer, just luck, fellas.”
026.
That first time, the wind had bit at faces and adrenaline had pooled, then spread, toes kind of numb, jammed into boots, trousers bloused and feet had dangled as the ground had seemed to rise to greet them - the mountain had moved to meet Mohammed.
027.
Luz quacks - no, cracks - at some point in a foxhole with the trees still menacing above, around and everywhere, a lame Donald Duck impression attempted that somehow still earns a laugh, but his hands won’t stop shaking - he tries to hide them - and he blames the cold, the cold, the fucking cold, but that’s not it because sometimes things explode and sometimes they don’t - ask Muck, Penkala, except, see, you can’t - so his hands will shake like this and he’ll quack (crack) like that and maybe if he’s lucky someone there will laugh.
028.
Webster reflects too often on history during his stay in the hospital, the wounds healing, the bend and creaking of joints in rehab, the pretty, docile smiles of the nurses, all the white instead of the green and brown; he wonders if that’s just the projection of history, the ever increasing lack of personalization in war, the shock and grunt of the parry and collision of swords giving way to machines and holes in the ground (irrelevant, it all is, his familiarity of the concept only bred through pen and paper rather than sweat and trembling experience).
029.
At first, with Normandy and then Carentan, Lipton never thought he would be shot; in his mind, it was not a possibility, not the way the war was going to unfold for him, that maybe, just maybe, he was one of the blessed ones, prized by fate (as time wore on, his survival lost the hue of an honor and instead began to color like both trial and tribulation).
030.
Hearts are pounding, and what you have to understand is this: not a single one of them will ever feel more powerful than they do in this moment alone (shells go clip to the ground, dirt slides across chins; Krauts fall, discarded, spent).
031.
Speirs and Dostoevsky make for constant companions in the quiet stretches (one hand poised for the butt of a rifle, the other the broken spine of a book), and at times he leaves certain pages marked; Lipton’s eyes scan the words across, curious, before he pauses, a light smile trying: “ ‘You’re a gentleman,’ they used to say to him, ‘you shouldn’t have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that’s no occupation for a gentleman,’” it reads, a faded cigarette burn next to the start of the first quotation mark.
032.
No one’s really calling each other boy anymore; more often than not, old man or just a surname fits instead, age lined in dirt and slowly fading scars.
033.
Back all those years ago, back to the start, when it was Camp Toccoa and strangers with youth still slack in their faces, before preternatural comfort and ease began to shade, they all had appraised each other the same way: you gonna jump out of this goddamn plane, too?
034.
They walk the length of first one bridge and then another; “hi-dee, hi-dee, Christ Almighty, who the hell are we?” Guarnere offers, lightly, below his breath (the sweat is dripping down the back of his fucking jacket, his neck, soaked); the gravel and the rocks tremble along in song, “rim-ram, goddamn, parachute infantry!”
035.
“Poor bastards,” someone mutters, and it doesn’t really matter who had said it - it ain't true.
036.
They are still men, of course, and when the beer starts to pour or time stretches slow, the conversation takes to curves, and then to tits and ass and fuck and varying combinations of the three, the wistful giving way to the more perverse (perhaps they do not notice, or maybe, instead, it is rooted in a silent and unaware compassion, but no one ever comments when Doc Roe walks away, fingers itching for a closed pocket in the cold).
037.
“Good luck,” Winters breathed once in June, in England.
038.
The gates open with a low creak and shoulders and ribs, elbows, kneecaps, jut out at unnatural angles, paper thin skin pulled taut, and the smell makes his throat constrict, eyes water enough to blur; Winters steps forward, his fingers grazing the metal of the gate and he can’t stop his mind, the rapid course of it, the image of a lone German soldier, a wide expanse of field and the kickback of his rifle with the unloading of each fatal shot.
039.
War lends itself all too easily to both cliché and hyperbole alike; “damn shame,” Nixon mutters and his package of cigarettes is empty and crumpled, his right breast pocket (no one is going to understand this but them, so many secret handshakes Ma and Dad, Lou at the pub, all the Kitties of the world, will never comprehend).
040.
The worst part about the end here, of Austria and the cases of alcohol, the checkpoints, the sun and the weird letdown of being armed but without anything to shoot at is the amount of open, empty time granted - it gives things like loss, lone phrases (I miss you) too much space to grow and collect.
041.
They might have understood it then (later they will claim in absolutes that they had, but that’s later, retrospect and hindsight clipped on as instruments of corrective vision), the isolation of the moment clear through the clouds the nose of their plane was parting as they crossed above the Channel - never again: it’s the rhythm the cadence of history has set.
042.
The gun rests on the table.
043.
Their future selves might find this all different, grown children and the like, and when questions are posed, perhaps they will answer (they would explain with a heavy yes, there is also the title I once was).
044.
Legend and Easy are already beginning to blend rather well, if the men do say so themselves (murmurs of Guarnere and the Germans on D-Day, Speirs at Foy, the bastards of Bastogne, things like casualty rates start to spread through the rumor mill).
045.
“I’m going to stay,” Speirs says, a crack of his lighter and he inhales deeply.
046.
Harry looks to Kitty and Nix looks to bottles more often half-empty than full, and the real catch of it all is this: in the collecting silence, the still beauty of Austria, Winters is unsure where to train his careful eye.
047.
The German general begins, a chin raised and his troops stand, listening; the Jeep is put in park.
048.
They had held on, they each had held on - a rifle, a promise, a grenade, the strap of a parachute, a proffered hand - and that counts for everything, doesn’t it?
049.
Eventually Easy is disbanded, and there is always that hill, Winters thinks (the highways of New Jersey slip past, soft asphalt), the crest and the fall of it, and the comforting knowledge that at some point, yes, you will come back down from there.
050.
There are echoes -
In the quiet and the most damaged of places, the snow still falls in heavy flakes; it catches.
051.
fin.
PROMPTS:
001. WALKING
002. WALTZ
003. WISHES
004. WONDER
005. WORRY
006. WHIMSY
007. WASTE/WASTELAND
008. WHISKEY AND RUM
009. WAR
010. WEDDINGS
011. BIRTHDAY
012. BLESSING
013. BIAS
014. BURNING
015. BREATHING
016. BREAKING
017. BELIEF
018. BALLOON
019. BALCONY
020. BANE
021. QUIET
022. QUIRKS
023. QUESTION
024. QUARREL
025. QUITTING
026. JUMP
027. JESTER
028. JOUSTING
029. JEWEL
030. JUST
031. SMIRK
032. SORROW
033. STUPIDITY
034. SERENADE
035. SARCASM
036. SORDID
037. SOLILOQUY
038. SOJOURN
039. SHARE
040. SOLITARY
041. NOWHERE
042. NEUTRAL
043. NUANCE
044. NEAR
045. NATURAL
046. HORIZON
047. VALIANT
048. VIRTUOUS
049. VICTORY
050. DEFEAT