In the days that followed it was false alarm after false alarm. They'd be told at the last minute that they were jumping back into occupied Europe and get all the way to Membury - on one occasion they were even all sat in the planes - before being told that everything had been called off. Posey recalled that first time they'd been told they were jumping back into combat with a distant amusement. Their frantic and incredibly illegal trip to see John had been all for nothing, really, because at this rate it seemed they'd be staying in Aldbourne forever.
This, of course, was no issue for Posey. She'd stay in Aldbourne happily for as long as the army asked her to. She thought she'd miss it sorely once she eventually had to leave, and especially miss nights like these in the pub.
Posey squeezed her way past various patrons of the over-packed pub, dodging stray elbows and pushed-out chairs. She'd stayed behind when the others had all left, making the most of the lingering warm water in the shower, and was paying the price for it now; she couldn't seem to find her friends no matter which direction she turned. She turned this way and that, getting up onto her tiptoes in the hopes of spotting a familiar head of hair, and came up blank. Where the hell were they?
She stopped in the midst of the chaos, frustrated rather than resigned, when a voice behind her had her clutching at her thumping heart and whirling around instantly.
"Wells."
"Where have you been?!" she demanded, rounding on Bill. "I've been looking all over for you!"
"For me?"
She rolled her eyes. "For everyone."
"We been watchin' you fuckin' wanderin' in circles," he said. "Got bored after a while, thought I'd put you out of ya misery."
"How thoughtful of you," Posey replied sarcastically.
Bill grinned. "Yeah, yeah, I'm a thoughtful guy." With that, he turned and began to navigate his way back through the crowd, Posey following tightly on his heels.
The pub was louder than usual tonight, bubbling over with chatter and laughter and the clanking of glasses being set down a tad too harshly. Warm lighting spilled over the room, covering everything in an almost dreamlike haze. The air was bright and so was the company, enthusiasm and jollity and revelry dancing from table to table and filling each patron up to the brim. Posey felt a smile working its way onto her face entirely unbidden, prompted solely by the comfort that came from being suddenly surrounded by her friends.
"Duckie!" Luz cheered, holding onto a beer which was clearly not his first. "Where the fuck have you been?"
"Looking for you lot!" Posey shot back, laughing already as she slipped into the seat they'd saved for her.
"Ain't sharpshooters supposed to have good vision?" Johnny piped up from where he was standing leaning against one of the pub's support beams with Bull. Posey found him smirking when she turned to look at him.
"Aren't NCOs supposed to be nice?" she fired back.
"Nice? Who told you that?" Perco commented from the other side of the table. "Nice and Johnny ain't got nothin' to do with each other."
"Fair point," replied Posey, giggling. "Nice doesn't have anything to do with Bill, either."
"I'm fuckin' nice," Bill objected, his eyes narrowing as they stared back at her.
Posey grinned. "About as nice as a punch in the face."
"You'd know."
"Certainly would. Where's Popeye when you need him?"
"Say, Duckie," George cut in, puffing on a cigarette that he didn't bother removing, instead deciding to speak around it, "what d'ya say to darts?"
Posey laughed. "You're challenging a sharpshooter to a game of darts?"
George held his hands up in mock-surrender, the picture of a menace. "Hey, if you're scared of losing just say so."
Posey rolled her eyes, laughing all the while. "Don't try to be clever, George, it doesn't become you."
"George and Buck just got two packs of smokes out of Babe and Toye," Perco explained, shaking his head at George's shamelessness. "Got him all excited."
Posey turned and caught sight of both losing parties, looking disdainful as they listened in. "Now, Heffron I can understand," Posey began, a mischievous glint dancing in her eyes. "But you, Joe? Really?"
"Ought'a be ashamed," George agreed.
"Where'd you get that?"
Posey's eyes were drawn to the table next to theirs by the frostiness in Cobb's voice. She'd not spoken to him much, had tried to keep her distance after some of the rumours she'd heard about him being an aggressive drunk, but the bite to his voice made it difficult to look away. Especially as he was directing the question at a replacement, and one of Heffron's friends, no less.
"It's a Presidential Distinguished Unit Citation," Miller replied, a particularly sweet replacement. Whilst it was true that most of the replacements weren't as harmless as they looked, this once certainly was, which was what made Posey sit up a little bit straighter in her seat. "For, uh, for what the regiment did in Normandy."
"That's right," Cobb replied, all fake enthusiasm. "For what the regiment did. You weren't there."
"Hey, hey, ease up, Cobb. Hm?" Hoobler cut in. Posey's shoulders relaxed a tad. "It's a Unit Citation."
Regardless of Hoobler's interference, Cobb didn't back down. Miller's eyes darted around and his cheeks flushed under the scrutiny. When he reached up for his Unit Citation, Posey frowned and glanced back at her friends, only to find them locked in conversation even though they'd clearly heard the initial challenge. When she turned back to Miller, he was laying the badge on the table.
"You don't need to take it off," Posey spoke up abruptly, unable to help it. Miller glanced over at her, looking thoroughly humiliated, and offered a subtle nod of acknowledgement before rising to his feet and heading for the other side of the pub.
"Shit, Cobb," Bull said, picking up the Unit Citation. "You didn't fight in Normandy neither."
As soon as Bull had turned away, Cobb bent down to address the remaining replacements at the table, Garcia and Hashey. "I got hit in the plane before I got a chance to jump."
"Is that what made you such a bully?" Posey wondered, her eyes burning holes into the side of his face. She felt fire racing through her veins, a certain rage she couldn't push down. She knew what it was like to be an outsider and Miller hadn't deserved that.
"What are you, his fuckin' bodyguard?" Cobb snapped back.
Posey rose to her feet, though she could hardly say why, because for all that Cobb wasn't that much taller than her she knew he could still beat her in hand to hand. Her body seemed to be moving faster than her mind could keep up with, however, fuelled by unbridled anger and defensiveness. Before she could filter her words, they came tumbling out of her mouth. "If you think he needs protection from a pathetic creature like you I think you need to get yourself checked out for narcissism."
Heffron stood from his seat and cut around the back of the table, presumably to follow after Miller. Posey's eyes flicked over to the others behind her, whose attention was suddenly not so hard pressed elsewhere.
Cobb began to retort to her remark but Johnny cut him off. "Back off, Cobb."
Posey rolled her eyes. So now he wanted to get involved.
Before the situation could escalate any further, Smokey's voice shouted above the rest of the noise, "Hey, y'all! Listen up! I got us an announcement to make," and all eyes swept over to him. Where he was standing on a chair by the bar, he guided Lip by the shoulders to stand in front of him. "This here is Carwood Lipton."
"He's already married, Smokey!" Malarkey called back immediately from somewhere on the opposite side of the pub, earning him a round of laughs. Posey was too riled up from the situation from before to find it at all amusing.
"This here is Carwood Lipton," Smokey said again, pressing on as though he'd never been interrupted, "the new Easy Company First Sergeant!"
This earned him the reaction he'd been looking for, evidenced by the toothy grin that broke out across his face as what seemed like the entirety of the pub's inhabitants began to cheer. This, Posey thought, cheering along with them, was a testament to Lip's character. It was impossible not to like him.
"As befitting his position," Smokey went on, "he says he has to make an announcement."
Lip stepped forward wearing a tight smile which disappeared as soon as he opened his mouth to speak. Before she'd even heard what he had to say, Posey knew what was coming. A chill ran down her spine and spread to the tips of her toes.
"Well, hate to break the mood here, boys, but we're moving out again." He sent one last meaningful look out towards the crowd before retreating, heading straight for the door. Posey could hardly blame him; she didn't much feel like drinking anymore, either.
When the door to the club closed behind Lip, the spell was broken. The silence, previously filled with blank stares and nervous glances, was covered by forced laughs and uneasy sips of beer as men tried to resume their conversations. All previous jollity had dissipated, leaving something forced and hollow in its wake.
Posey, still standing from where she'd risen to berate Cobb, stepped out from in front of her chair and tucked it in.
Bill piped up immediately. "Hey, where ya goin'?"
"Back to barracks," was all she said in response, fighting to keep her dwindling irritation at him and the others off of her face.
"What? Why?" George asked, stood beside Bill. "You just got here!"
Posey levelled them both, along with everyone stood around them, with a steely gaze. "Has that been going on all night?" She threw a noncommittal gesture back at where Cobb had previously been standing, though he'd fled at some point during Lip's announcement. "With the replacements," she clarified. "Have you been letting stuff like that happen all night?"
"Wells -" Bill began.
Posey's eyes narrowed. "Have you been doing stuff like that all night?"
"Wells, they're replacements," Johnny said, as though that was any excuse.
Posey looked to Bill. "And you consider Heffron a friend of yours?" A disbelieving laugh tore its way out of her chest and sat unsteadily on the air between them. "Yet you don't speak up for his friends." She was getting herself worked up again and she could feel it, and even worse than before in the wake of the dreadful news. To the group at large, she said, "You should be ashamed of yourselves if you've treated them any differently to how you treat each other," and let that be her final remark. She turned and left before she could say something she'd later regret.
The night air cooled her and returned some semblance of calm to her pounding heart. Her heart which ached to imagine the men she called family treating those who looked up to them with anything other than kindness. She knew what it was like to be an outsider, to want a ticket to the inside circle more than anything else and to have to accept that you'd never get it. Now that she'd gotten it, she refused to allow herself to forget that feeling, to forget sitting curled up beneath a tree at Camp Toccoa sobbing into the night because she'd been the ultimate outsider. She still was, in some ways.
Tears stung her eyes but she pushed them back defiantly, tilting her chin up and stepping away from the door. A subtle flash of movement in her peripheral vision drew her attention away from the way back to the barracks. When she turned, she found Miller.
"If any of them give you any trouble, you come tell me, alright?" she told him, speaking to his back before he turned around.
"It's alright," Miller assured her, attempting to assume an air of nonchalance.
Posey shook her head. "It isn't. And if they treat you with any less respect than you're due, you come and tell me. The same goes for your friends. I don't know why all of them are walking around with a stick stuck so far up their asses they've turned themselves into fucking scarecrows but it's not to happen again. Okay?"
A smile had worked its way onto Miller's face, albeit a tentative one, and at her last comment he'd actually laughed. "Okay," he confirmed, nodding.
"Good." Posey returned his smile. He must have only been the same age as her, perhaps even younger. "And Cobb's a prick, so don't worry about him. Did Bull give you your Unit Citation back?"
"Yeah." He held out his hand to show it to her, where it had previously been clenched in his fist.
"Pin it back on your uniform," she told him. "You got your jump wings just like every other man in there. You may have less experience but you'll be jumping out of the same planes, using the same parachutes, and shooting with the same guns. You're just as much a part of the company as they are. Just as welcome to wear Unit Citations and just as dead if your luck runs out. Don't forget it, okay?"
"Okay."
Posey nodded. "Have a nice night." She turned and began to head on her way, and was halted in place only by Miller's voice calling after her.
"Thank you."
She shot a smile at him over her shoulder. "Don't mention it," she said, and started back up again. The smile she'd worn only moments before faded the moment her back was turned, replaced by a minute frown. These nights in English pubs were numbered now and perhaps even fewer than she thought, and she'd just cut this one short. For good reason, considering she couldn't stand to be in that room a second longer and didn't much feel up to pretending everything was fine anyway, but that was one less night of having all of them together. Whenever they returned to Aldbourne, if they returned, some of them would be absent. Many of them, perhaps. Faces of absent friends who hadn't made it there tonight flashed through her mind's eye: Popeye, Tipper, Blithe, Evans, and so many others. Who would be absent next time? Would she be there to count the survivors herself?
Posey found herself weighed down beneath the onslaught of questions and flashbacks to her time in Normandy. Could she even go through that again?
There was so much to think about and so many worries. The prospect of returning to combat had loomed over her head for weeks but now it was closer than ever. As she lay in bed that night with her heart in her throat, contemplating everything, she had to consciously remember her courage. She would get through it because she had to, until, as she'd said to Miller, her luck ran out. She didn't know how big that pot of luck with her name on it was but she could only hope it was big enough to see her through to the other side of the war.
Not for the first time, she found herself wondering how on earth she'd ended up here. She fell into a restless sleep wondering why she'd ever thought that joining the army was a good idea. She knew herself to be nothing if not full of terrible ideas but that was certainly the worst she'd ever had.