The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

103: Shocked Into Silence

"No."

Charlie had just managed to get the blanket up over her shoulders when Mabs turned the doorknob and burst into the room, then yelped, "Oh!" and promptly backed right back out of it.

Floyd's eyes glinted as he realised what Mabs had assumed.

"We're not having sex!" Charlie shouted in a moment of impulse. As much as she didn't want to talk to Mabs right now, she couldn't have her thinking that she'd lied the other day when she'd gone on her rant about her choice not to sleep with Floyd.

Mabs re-entered the room warily. "Ya sure?" she asked. "'Cause it sure looks like you're naked under there."

Floyd smirked. "She didn't say we were wearing clothes -"

Charlie threw the blanket off and sat up, sending Floyd what had been intended as a glare but turned into a laugh, because he looked so pleased with himself.

"We need to talk," Mabs said once she was assured that Charlie and Floyd were not, in fact, either naked or having sex.

Charlie shut her eyes with a grimace. "Right now?"

"Yeah, right now."

"You're mad," Charlie stated, reopening her eyes.

Mabs scoffed. "You're damn right I'm mad."

"Well, I'm mad too," Charlie volleyed back. "Speirs -"

"This ain't about him," Mabs cut her off. "This is about you and the temper tantrums you keep throwin' every time you lose someone."

"Now, wait a second -" Floyd started, sitting up as well as he leaped to Charlie's defence.

"Shut up, Talbert," Mabs snapped. "Just 'cause you're her boyfriend now don't mean she needs you to speak for her." Her eyes swung back to Charlie. "Explain yourself," she demanded. "I've heard all about it from Ron and now I wanna hear about it from you."

Charlie's face soured as she thought about Speirs and how nonchalant he'd been as he stood over Janovec's body. "Oh, I'm sure Speirs had an awful lot to say about the entire affair."

"I'm not talkin' about him, Charlie," Mabs answered her, still hovering in the doorway. "He's a big boy, he can take a little dressin' down." Her eyes narrowed. "I'm talkin' about you."

"What about me?" Charlie hedged. So what if she threw 'temper tantrums' when she lost yet another one of her friends? She figured she was well within her rights to kick up a bit of a stink when the people around her weren't showing the dead their due respect - especially someone like Janovec, who had been nothing if not a beacon of light ever since he'd been assigned to the company.

Charlie had relied on Janovec for his sunshine more than she'd realised when he was still around. As a result, she not only missed him sorely in his absence, she mourned the fact that he would never know how much she'd cared for him. At least James and Skip and Alex had all known. How was Janovec to have realised he'd been a bright spot in the midst of so much darkness? She'd never told him so.

"When it happened in Bastogne," Mabs said, shutting the door behind her but not taking her eyes off of Charlie, "I gave ya the benefit of the doubt. 'Cause we all knew you were struggling in Bastogne, 'specially after what happened on Christmas Eve, and it was Skip and Alex. And they were both taken at the same time."

Charlie couldn't hold Mabs' gaze. Her eyes sank to the comforter in her lap. Memories of Bastogne were still, even all these months later, so sore. Thinking back on that time, without a doubt the darkest in her whole life, still made her feel so hollow it ached.