Shadows of the World » Band of Brothers

42: We are Half Awake

She frowned. "Don't tell me to stay out of it." She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows at the audacity of his words. "This concerns me just as much as it does him. Why aren't you accusing me of being too slow? It's not his fault."

"As our CO he needs to take responsibility -"

"Yes, and as our CO he's the one who analyses the situations and calculates who's at fault, not you."

"There's nothing to analyse! It's his fault and if he doesn't know that -"

"Please don't argue," Will mumbled, resting his head in his hands from his position on the sofa.

"I take full responsibility, alright? Is that what you wanted to hear? Can we leave it alone now, Martin?" Tom demanded from his position near the window, looking thoroughly exhausted.

Martin's scowl didn't falter. "Are you saying that to appease me, or because you recognise that it's true?" His eyes bore a challenge.

Will shifted in his seat, looking up at them all. "Does it matter?"

"Yes, of course it matters!" Martin shouted in exasperation.

Jules shot him a sharp glare. "Who do you think you are to raise your voice at everyone like that?"

"Who do you think you are to go around trying to protect people all the time? You constantly get yourself into situations where you have to be rescued, but you always try to play the hero. Stop pretending, Juliette!"

He'd hit a nerve there, and he knew it. One of Martin's greatest strengths in his job was knowing where people were weakest, and striking there with full force. Apparently, he could use this as an emotional weapon, too.

"Hey, that's enough!" Tom interjected. He took a step closer to where Jules and Martin stood as if preparing to physically intervene.

Martin turned on him. "So now you want to be the CO?"

Will stood up suddenly. "You know, you're not the only one who lost him, Martin." He paused, letting his words sink in, seemingly also mildly surprised at himself for having said them. "We all did," he added quietly, before sitting back down again.

"This isn't about Alex," Martin replied coldly.

"No," Juliette told him in turn, levelling him with her own icy glare, "it's about you and your vexation about not being picked for CO." She watched his scowl fall and heard him suck in a breath. She could hit nerves, too. "You know, you're the oldest on this team but sometimes I think it'd be rather nice if you could just grow up."

"Brave words coming from you," he retorted harshly.

She rolled her eyes. "And there's that characteristic maturity."

"He wouldn't want us to argue," Will muttered.

Martin tore his gaze from Juliette to look to him. "Why do you keep bringing him up?!"

"Because you keep acting like he was never here!" Will cried, jumping to his feet again.

"Maybe it's easier that way, Will," Tom mumbled, and Jules sighed.

Will shook his head. "Just because it's easier that doesn't make it right."

"Well, you can go on being so preoccupied with the past you forget you've still got a job to do, and you can go and get yourself killed for all I care. But don't drag us all down with you in the process," Martin told him coldly.

Jules gasped. "What a horrible thing to say!" she exclaimed, rounding on him once more.

"Face reality, Juliette!"

"Face how fucking vile you've let yourself become now that Alex isn't here to keep you in check," she told him, staring him boldly in the face before turning and leaving. Martin had said some nasty things in his time, but she'd never seen him be so cruel, especially to Will. He didn't deserve it.

She wished she could've been brave enough to stay down there and defend him, because Will hated conflict so much he was oftentimes too anxious about causing fights to stand up for himself. But she feared that she'd have said yet more things she might come to regret had she stayed. She had to resign herself to trusting that Tom would handle it.

Juliette wished, now more than ever, that she could leave that infernal house that had come to contain more bad memories than good ones. She wanted more than anything to go and find that field she used to sit in with Gene and just stare into the trees. She wanted to soak up the sunlight and pretend for a little while that that field was all there was to the world, that it was infinite.

Instead, she walked straight past her bedroom and decisively pushed open the door to what had once been Alex's room. She hadn't set a foot inside it since coming back, but she needed him, and this was the closest she could get.

Juliette shut the door behind her and crossed to the window, looking carefully at the view outside. She had never seen the view from his window before, but she'd seen him looking out of it many a time. It almost felt like he was with her, in that moment, as she gazed out at the fields and distant houses scattered about. He had looked at this same view everyday, once  upon a time. She wondered what he had thought of it, what he had liked to look at the most. Was it the variation of houses dotted about the large expanses of land, or the daisies littering the fields like snow? Was it the expanse of trees crowded together as far as the eye could see to the left of her, huddled together as if they were sharing a secret, or the masses of sheep dwindling about to the right?

As she stood there, contemplating and theorising, she let her mind search through everything she could remember about him. There were so many small things she missed about him. How he would wander down the stairs half-awake well into the day and bid them good morning, even though it was already afternoon. How he would read a newspaper almost constantly and report back to them the things they needed to know, reading it all, even the boring parts, so that they didn't have to. How he would always, always, check on her when he knew she'd been having a rough time, but never force her to talk.

Most of all, she just missed hearing his thoughts. He didn't often offer them up without prompting, but whenever she asked he would willingly spill out his internal monologue to her. And hidden in amongst it was always something insightful, something beautiful. She longed so badly to hear him tell her what he loved the most about the view from his bedroom window that it was almost difficult to breathe.

She didn't dare to disturb his carefully set bed sheets, but she did settle herself into the chair that sat snugly against the wardrobe facing the bed. She simply stared into space for a while, sometimes pretending he was there and sometimes letting herself consciously feel his absence. Both things hurt just as much as each other, for there was an end to pretending he was there, and no end to knowing that he wasn't.