"What?" Guarnere asked, an attempt to cover his tracks.
"What... what?" Luz replied, his face screwing up comically.
Posey grimaced from her place just ahead of them. "We should be getting back to the train station before we get caught."
Luz turned his eyes from her back to Guarnere, scepticism written all over his face. "You said 'we're looking after her'," he said, enunciating his words slowly as though laying a hand of cards in poker which could make or break his chances of winning. "Why'd you say 'her'?"
"Uh..."
"It's an inside joke," Posey explained in one breath, her eyes wild as they flicked between Johnny and Guarnere in the search for backup. "Y'know, because I'm so... effeminate." The lie was weak even to her own ears. Johnny sighed from beside her.
"You're a girl, aren't you?" Luz asked, turning to face Posey fully. She could practically see the gears turning in his head as he pieced everything together. "The teddy bear, the sneaking out - not going to the hospital after you were shot!" Posey knew she'd lost from the sparkle in his eyes; for all he liked to mess around and play the comedian, Luz wasn't at all stupid. "You're a broad!"
"For fuck's sake, Guarnere," Johnny hissed, and turned his back on the conversation entirely. He walked a few paces in the direction of the way out before turning back, too far away to contribute to the conversation but just about close enough that he could hear it.
"Luz, if you tell anyone I'll kick your ass so hard you'll be coughin' up boot polish for weeks, alright?"
And there was Bill, always trying to be her hero.
"I could be shot for doing this, Luz," Posey told him, speaking with her real accent and her real voice. The reaction she got was immediate, though not necessarily the one she'd been expecting: his face lit up like a Christmas tree. "I'm serious!" she added, desperately dragging her smile back down again, because this was serious, even if Luz generally wasn't. "I could actually be shot. You can't tell a single soul."
"You're really a broad," was all he said in response to that. He shook his head as though to clear a daze. "Duckie, you're a fuckin' broad!"
"I know!" she responded, mimicking his enthusiasm. "Now would you listen to me? No one can know. No one. Absolutely not a single person on the planet."
"Right, sure," he replied, nodding rapidly. "Otherwise I'll be coughing up boot polish, I gotcha. My lips are sealed." He mimed the action, fastening an invisible zip across his mouth before throwing away the key. "Who else knows?" He looked almost giddy with excitement.
"Luz, this ain't a fuckin' game," Bill growled, his jaw clenched tight.
"No, I know. Listen, Bill, I know. It's fine. I won't tell anyone. Alright?" Luz held his hands up in mock-surrender, just like he had on the train, and Posey had to work extra hard to wipe the smile off of her face. "So who else knows?"
Posey sighed. "Right now it's you, Bill, Johnny, Roe, and Nixon."
"Nixon?! Captain Nixon?!"
"The very same."
"You told him and not me?!"
"I didn't tell him!" Posey cried indignantly, before clamping her mouth shut and looking around with wide eyes. They needed to continue this conversation elsewhere lest the lot of them get caught. She leaned in towards Luz and lowered her voice. "He worked it out and confronted me about it, of course I didn't tell him. Look, I'll explain everything when we're on the train but we need to go."
For once, Luz didn't put up an argument. Instead, when Posey turned on her heel to head back out, he did the same - and, when she waved at John one final time, she caught him do just that in her periphery, too. She chuckled under her breath and shook her head to herself.
The four of them reached the train station with a little bit of time to spare and waited paitiently for their train to arrive. None of them spoke as they did.
The sky was pitch black by now, though punctuated by stars like the remnants of a shoddily cleaned blackboard. They were lucky that it wasn't raining - it would've been impossible to cover up their excursion had they arrived back at the barracks soaking wet and dripping rainwater all over the floor.
The smell of smoke was strong in the air and so was something incredibly unpleasant, though what exactly that was was a moot point. Posey knew by now, from so long spent in the company of men, not to ask questions to which she didn't really want the answers, and she didn't bother to look around to find one.
When their train pulled up, exactly on time, which was rare for trains in wartime, they were the only people boarding. Once they were on board, they found they were also the only people in the entire compartment. Posey breathed an imperceptible sigh of relief; at least they could have this doubtless uncomfortable conversation in peace.
Luz fidgeted as the train pulled away, clearly trying to pick his moment but also not really patient enough to wait. His eyes flicked all over the place, venturing from face to face and then out of the window, then behind him and back again, until his question practically burst out of him. "What are you doin' here?"
"Well," Posey began, sitting up straighter in her seat so she could meet his eyes where he was sat opposite her, "I went to visit my brother, and -"
"Duckie!"
"Fine!" She shot a smile at Johnny beside her, who didn't look so amused, and then at Bill beside Luz, who didn't either, so she coughed awkwardly and began to explain. "I'm from London originally. I got evacuated to America during the Blitz but they're not sending evacuees back over until after the war. I was worried about my brother - a pilot for the RAF - and my mother - still in London - so I pretended to be a boy to get onto a troopship which would take me home."
"Then why are you -"
"I'm getting to it." This was the part she hated to recall. She breathed in a steadying breath before pressing on, "When I got back I found that my home had been hit in the Blitz. My mum was inside at the time. When I went to see my brother obviously I found that he's wounded - he's lost a hand and all of his toes so the RAF won't let him back in - so the only choice I had was to stay with Easy. I need money and I don't have anywhere else to go." She shrugged and avoided looking into anyone's face at all costs; she hated the sympathy she always found in them, and hated that it always made her want to cry.
"Fuck," said Luz.
Posey laughed lightly. "Yep."
A silence fell upon them. Posey thought of home. When she thought about the future, the war seemed to stretch out into the abyss. If she survived it, she realised, she wouldn't have anywhere to go. The things she'd lost during the war wouldn't suddenly come back again just because the fighting had finished. What had been done could not be undone.
"Well," Luz spoke up abruptly. Posey looked up to find him smiling a small, tentative smile she wasn't sure she'd ever seen from him before. Usually, he was all wide grins and belly laughs; now, he was all sincerity. "I'm sorry about your... situation. And I'm sorry if you thought you couldn't trust me before."
Posey shook her head, a sad little laugh leaving her lips before she could even recognise that it had been bubbling up. "I haven't really told anyone willingly. It wasn't that I didn't trust you, just that -"
"Just that you didn't trust me. It's fine. I get it." He was attempting to joke, as he always did, but there was something hurt lingering behind his eyes now that the initial shock of the realisation had worn off. "I know I got a big mouth but I know when to shut it, so don't worry about me. I won't tell."
"Luz..." Posey began, and sighed. This wasn't at all how she wanted him to find out. Never had she felt so rotten about keeping a secret for the sake of her own wellbeing, but she could see why Luz was upset. They were close - at one point, Posey had considered him her closest friend - and if she'd found out that one of her closest friends had been lying to her for the duration of their relationship, she thought she'd likely feel rather hurt too. For all he was trying to prove that he was trustworthy, she thought she'd likely have to do some work to earn his trust back, too.
"It's fine," Luz said, brushing her aside. "I get it."
"I'm sorry," she said. He nodded and turned his eyes out of the window.
It was a long journey back to Aldbourne after that, changing trains at Kings Cross and then having to walk back to the barracks. As the four of them trekked along the country lanes leading into the village, Posey listened closely to the sounds of their footsteps on cobblestones. She watched her feet walking beneath her, the steps she made as rhythmic and unrelenting as the beat of her heart. The fact that they'd be jumping back into enemy territory tomorrow seemed a million years away yet. Watching Smokey perform 'The Night of the Bayonet' for them seemed a million years in the past.
"Thank you for coming with me," she spoke into the air. Everything seemed louder at night. More earnest.
"Don't worry about it, Wells," Johnny replied. "Glad you got to see your brother again, say goodbye and all that."
"He was nice to me today," she offered quietly, smiling to herself as she remembered his words. Well done. That would be something to keep with her when she was back in France.
"Ain't he always?" Luz asked.
"He struggles," Posey explained, and offered up nothing else. It was purposefully ambiguous; she couldn't try to unpack for them what she didn't fully understand herself, yet. "But thank you for coming."
"You just said that."
She shrugged. "I mean it."
When they arrived back at the barracks, Posey pushed the door open, practised as she was in the art of sneaking in and out of such places. If anyone heard them come in, they didn't comment on it or even make any indication that they were awake. Heffron, however, in the bunk by the door that was opposite Posey's, sat up when they came in, perhaps to prove that he'd been keeping watch for them.
Posey offered him a small smile through the darkness and hoped it made its way to him in the starlight before heading straight over to her bunk. They'd be jumping again tomorrow. She needed to sleep.
Her eyes tracked Luz after she'd lain down, watching him sit atop his bunk and unlace his boots. She chewed on her bottom lip, praying that their friendship wasn't ruined as a result of this huge lie she'd been spinning, even if it was largely against her will.
Rolling onto her back, Posey gazed up at the ceiling for a while after that. Her thoughts seemed to both race and drag their feet behind them, fuelled by energy and devoid of it simultaneously. When she shut her eyes, she saw that lake she'd sat gazing at with John, the same one they'd dropped flowers in to say goodbye to their mother.
Never had she had to say so many goodbyes as since the war had broken out. Goodbye to her mother, goodbye to her brother, goodbye to her home, goodbye to her identity, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. War, it seemed, was good for nothing if not for making a person incredibly good at saying goodbye.
***
a/n:
things with luz are a bit rocky here, but over on my tumblr i wrote a little thing for a valentine's writing challenge with luz and an entirely new oc i created just for the purpose! my tumblr is pxpeyewynn, if you're interested, and you should definitely come say hi <3 all the love!