"Letter from home?" Posey asked, watching Bill curiously where he was sat by himself in the mess hall. Dinner had ended hours ago but they generally left the building unlocked, she'd discovered so once when seeking out some peace and quiet. She didn't know how Bill had known but didn't mind so much that he'd been the one to crash her secret hideout.
Bill glanced up once and nodded before returning to the letter. Posey smiled to herself to realise she hadn't made him jump, even with how quietly she'd entered, and even more at the fact he didn't try to hide the letter or try to leave now that she was here.
Ambling over to his table in the corner, she tried not to stare too much. Instead, she turned her eyes on the book in her hands, one of the ones she'd bought from George, and considered it a moment. George hadn't said it was sad - in fact, he'd said it was 'a pretty book', which she distinctly remembered liking as a way to describe a novel - but something about the cover and the title made her sceptical. She didn't know that she was much in the mood for sadness just now. She could do with something happier, something lighter.
She came to sit opposite Bill at the table before opening the book all the same. She didn't have much else to do, anyway, and scrutinising Bill as he tried to read didn't seem like it would be very polite. She ended up reading the first line about forty times before his voice drew her attention away.
"What's that?"
Posey grinned as she flashed him the cover. "A book. Ever heard of them?"
"Very funny."
"I'm here all weekend." She smiled at him a moment, watching him grin reluctantly at her joke, before her eyes fell to the paper in his hands. "How are your family?"
Bill shrugged, trying to assume an air of nonchalance. "Good. They're gettin' by."
"Missing you?" she surmised, gazing up at him with something soft in her eyes, something open.
She watched him falter before he replied, his eyes caught on hers for a moment. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, sure they are."
"You must be missing them lots, too," she added, closing her book to give him her full attention. She lay both hands atop the cover, one on top of the other, and then curled them in on themselves. Even inside, the cold was biting.
"Yeah," Bill replied, somewhat distantly. "What about you? Missin' home?"
Posey knew he regretted the question the moment it processed from the way his face fell. He opened his mouth to speak, perhaps to take it back or perhaps to apologise, before she cut him off. It was an honest mistake to forget, she knew. It wasn't his fault he still had a home to dream of.
"Yeah," she said, fighting to keep her smile from turning sad. "I think I always will. I have a picture of it now, though. John sent me one for my birthday."
"Your birthday?"
Posey laughed. "Yeah. You missed it. Twenty-third of October, the morning we rescued the Brits. We had a party after to celebrate the rescue but it was like a birthday party for me all the same. It was fun. I wish you'd been there."
Bill looked down at the letter in his hands and fought a smile. Posey didn't know that she'd ever seen him look so angelic, smiling softly to himself and blanketed in the dying light of evening as it slipped in through the ajar door.
"Yeah," he said eventually, risking a glance up at her before staring back down at the letter once more. "Wish I'd been there too." After a moment of silence he folded up his letter and pushed it away from him, a little bit to the right of where they were sitting. "You got this picture on you, then? The one your brother sent?"
Posey laughed as she nodded, quickly fumbling to withdraw it from one of her pockets. She slid it across the table to him and watched his face closely for his reaction - this would be the first time he'd ever seen her as a girl, after all, even if she was only a little one in the photograph.
"This you?" he asked, pointing to the younger version of her smiling into the camera.
"Certainly is."
"And that same damn bear." He shook his head, grinning.
"The very same," Posey replied, giggling. She couldn't help it. "We go way back, you see."
Bill rolled his eyes. "Fancy house you got," he said, looking up at her but inclining his head towards the picture. "You're a rich girl, huh?"
"Used to be," she replied with a shrug. "That's how I found myself in America as opposed to the English countryside."
"So, what, fancy dinner parties and strings 'a pearls?" he teased.
Posey laughed. "I was never old enough for pearls - they're a woman's jewellery, and I was never a woman at home. Fancy dinner parties, though, certainly, and lots of them. Finishing schools and dowries and future politicians I was supposed to bat my eyelashes at. Seems a lifetime ago, now."
"You were one of them posh broads, huh?" Bill asked, chuckling to himself.
Posey laughed along with him. "Must be impossible for you to imagine me like that but yes, at one point I was."
"You miss being rich?"
"I miss being happy." The sentence slipped out before she had time to process it. Once the words had settled she sighed and looked away. "I miss being safe, I mean. And I miss... I miss my mum."
Her words forced a heavy silence upon them, which weighty words were wont to do. Eventually, however, Posey got sick of feeling sorry for herself. She straightened up and offered Bill a tiny smile. "Tell me about your family?" she requested. "What are they like?"
"Well, I got nine siblings," he began, then stopped. He cleared his throat, his face suddenly empty of emotion. After a moment, he corrected himself, "I got eight siblings."
Posey shook her head. "You've got nine," she told him, leaving little room for argument. "He's still your brother, always will be."
"I got nine siblings," he started again. Posey smiled and he did, too. "I'm the youngest."
"Ten of you," she said, laughing in mild disbelief. "That's so many! Your Christmases must be so fun."
Bill laughed and shrugged one shoulder. "Yeah, I guess. Don't know any different."
For all he tried to brush the idea aside, Posey wasn't going to let it go for a while. Her eyes were lit up, her smile wide as she envisioned what Christmas morning might look like in a house full up with people. "What's it like? Christmas at your house?"
Bill went to dismiss the idea again but paused when he looked into her face. Perhaps it was the excitement he must have seen there, or perhaps it was so close to Christmas now that he was in the right sort of spirit, but either way he appeased her. "Well," he began, and described his last Christmas at home in as much detail as he was able. Posey hung onto his every word.
"That sounds so magical," she said once he'd finished speaking. She didn't know why her eyes had filled with tears and hoped he wouldn't notice. She opened her mouth to speak again when the sounds of boots on concrete and disgruntled voices turned her attention to the door. "I thought everyone was supposed to be watching that film," she commented, more to herself than to Bill.
She spared a look back at him to find him already looking at her. She didn't need to hear what he was going to say to know what he was going to do, so she spoke before he could. "Back to the barracks, then?"
She followed him out, her eyebrows drawing lower and lower over her eyes as she took in the sheer volume of men making their way back to the barracks across the camp. Either the film had ended much earlier than she'd anticipated or something was happening. With the way Bill sped up and her heart seemed to stumble over a couple of beats she could guess that it was the latter.
Back at the barracks, it was George who filled them in. "We're moving out again," he declared to the room as a whole, somewhere between disgruntled and downright infuriated.
"Now?" Posey asked. Her heart held on for dear life, trying to stop itself from falling.
George shrugged, puffing on a cigarette relentlessly. "Whenever they tell us. Kicked us outta the movie early and told us to head back to barracks, that's all we know."
Posey shared a look with Bill. If they were moving out again, he'd be one of the first to know, surely. So when, exactly, were they planning on telling him?
As it happened, the company's squad leaders were called upon and briefed not five minutes later. When they returned, there was a notable sense of urgency to each of their demeanours.
"We're movin' out," Bill confirmed, striding over to his bunk. "Pack up your stuff and get ready to leave."
"Take every bit of cold weather clothing you have with you," Lip added, calling out over the sudden noise of rapid conversation.
"It's gonna be cold where we're going," Tab agreed, hastening to pack up all of his things, "and it don't look like the army's gonna be giving us anything suitable to wear for a while."
Posey turned and worked to pack up everything she owned. Teddy was her first order of business, wherein she tucked him into her inside breast pocket and made sure he was secure, before emptying her footlocker and shoving the contents into her pack; the chaos of the barracks worked in her favour, here, for she didn't have to worry much about anyone seeing anything they shouldn't.
As soon as she had all of her belongings packed away, her pack on her back, and her rifle slung over her shoulder, she was following the last of Second Platoon out of the door. She met up with Bill outside, who'd likely been waiting for the last of them to leave the barracks to ensure no one was left behind, before heading after the others out of the camp to where the deuce-and-a-half trucks were waiting to take them to the front line. Posey had no idea which line it was that they were going to but didn't care to ask as she was bundled into the back of the closest truck. She was squeezed into the gap on the floor between the benches, their truck having been overloaded, and had to manoeuvre herself carefully to shift from a painful crouch to an only somewhat uncomfortable sit. The only advantage to being packed into the back of a truck like sardines in a can, it seemed, was the body heat she was afforded as a result. Indeed, stuck on the floor as she was and surrounded by so many people she didn't feel the cold nearly as much. She pitied Lieb and Malark where they were sat against the truck's opening, watching them shiver and knowing the cold air must have been blowing right down the backs of their ODs.
Still, even Posey could feel the air getting colder the further away from Mourmelon they went. It seemed to go from nippy to freezing, slapping her cheeks until they were rosy and leaving her nose running. Her ears began to ache with the cold and the pain got so intense she had to lean forwards over her knees to clasp her hands over them. Adorned only in her ODs and the minimal thermal underclothes they'd given them upon their arrival to Mourmelon, she had no idea how she was expected to survive if they went much further north, for the cold was already biting and the trucks showed no signs of stopping anytime soon.
"Alright, Duckie?" Toye asked, jostling her shoulder from where he was sat on the bench behind her.
Posey nodded. She couldn't turn around to look at him so instead she mumbled a, "Yeah," and kept her head down. It was pitch dark by now, so it wasn't as though he would have been able to make out much of her expression anyway.
With her hands covering her ears and clutching tighter at them the further they progressed north she could barely make out the conversations taking place around her. Likely, she thought, they were to do with the cold or wondering where they were headed, neither of which seemed particularly engaging topics of conversation and thus neither of which encouraged her to raise her head and join in. Instead, she shut her eyes and allowed the movement of the truck to sway her about, trying not to move so much that she hurt either of the men beside her but enough that she could take her mind off of the chill.
When the trucks finally pulled up it was damn near sub-zero. Posey was one of the last out, which she didn't mind so much for it allowed her more time to sit scrunched up in a ball conserving as much heat as possible, but when she finally had to disembark the truck Bill was there waiting on the ground to give her a hand down. On any other occasion she knew she'd have scoffed at the attempt at chivalry, for she'd gotten down from these trucks so many times by now that she absolutely did not need his help thank you very much, but with how cold she was she welcomed the help. She placed her hand carefully in his and smiled at the warmth he passed onto her as his fingers closed around hers, before jumping down and using his arm to steady herself.
"Thanks," she said, offering a tiny smile as she moved out of the way for the last few stragglers to get down, too.
Popeye hurried past, exclaiming about how long he'd been holding in his need for the toilet, which reminded Posey that this may just be her last opportunity to relieve herself privately without having to worry about being shot or blown up in the process.
She turned and fled in the opposite direction to Popeye, finding a section of trees and heading in deep until she was sure she'd be undisturbed. Her experience in combat so far had unlocked many a new skill in Posey, but perhaps none so useful as her new ability to go to the toilet so quickly. In under thirty seconds she was making her way back through the trees again, furrowing her eyebrows at the scene she came upon. What looked like a parade of men were making their way down the middle of the road, heading the opposite way to where Easy was going.
As she approached, Posey took care to study the men to gauge whatever information she could about where she herself was about to go, and the information she got didn't bode well; the men were ashen-faced, their eyes glazed over and their hands trembling.
Posey made her way over to where Bill was standing with Heffron and Malarkey, seeming to be taking whatever ammunition they could scrounge off of the men. As soon as he noticed her presence beside him, Bill passed her some ammo. "Get whatever you can," he said, gesturing to the men wandering past them. "They ain't gonna need it."
Posey nodded and slung the ammo he'd given her over her shoulder before reaching to strip the man closest to her of his. Once she was decked out in as much of it as she could carry she sighed quietly.
"This is going to be bad," she said to no one in particular.
She didn't get a reply.