it’s a terrible, dangerous idea, one that has been beneath his skin since he was here the first time --- and it seems like it’s been settled there for a lifetime, now, carried with him through the rest of the war along with his medkit and misery --- and there’s nowhere for it to go. she’s belgian, he’s not. she’s staying here, he’s not. unlike some of the battles eugene’s been through, that have stretched endlessly into a future he’s never been quite sure he’d get to see, there’s an end date to this.

        what, he kisses her now, and then goes back to his unit, goes back home, and never sees her again? how is that fair? it ain’t.

        the shots still seem to echo in his ears, even after they’ve stopped; it’s the kind of ghost nate thinks he’s going to be chased around by for the rest of his life. whether he lives two more weeks or fifty more years, he’s going to be haunted by the sound of bullets, of screams and incoherent yelling. he’s going to forever be able to feel rain on his skin, wet clothes sticking to him, and mud beneath his feet.

        he’s always going to see the faces of the men he’s lost. every single one. he’s going to remember their names, too --- he’s kept a list. it seemed important, somehow. a letter to their parents isn’t enough, especially for the replacements he barely knew. those people are going to haunt him.

        nate thinks perhaps they should.

        he meets sledge’s anger head on, uncowed, unafraid. nate knows anger too---and he knows even more what it feels like to have idealism shattered, to feel nothing but disillusionment twisting inside your belly. eugene might not think he does, but nate understands how he’s feeling. it’s the same thing coiling inside him. nate just has to keep it together for the men. he has to hold himself together with shaking fingers, and let nobody but gunny see how close he is to faltering. he can always blame it on being cold and wet through, can’t he?

        the woman’s voice is quiet,   soothing.    marie-laure finds herself hanging on every note of it.   she’s learned to read emotion in decibels,   learned to predict what someone was attempting to stutter out.   the air smelled of rain.    she breathes in deep,   relishing how it drowned the slight scent of smoke that sometimes she swore she could still smell when she tried to remember how the sea had once filled the air.  most days she misses it.   madame manec’s peach jam that tasted of sunlight,   lazy afternoons spent reading and re-reading twenty-thousand leagues under the sea in her uncle etienne’s lap.   their world had been frozen in time during the war,  consumed with fear and grief,   and yet it had been all she’d ever known,   and beside all the chaos,  it had become home to her,    the tiny model of the town her father had built clutched in her hands,    loaves of bread concealing letters of the resistance warm in her palms.    she remembers every bit of it as though it were yesterday.

    A ROSE BLOOMS AMONGST THE SNOW, the cold cannot keep her shine away for very long, can it? she may very well be frozen to the bone, blood-stained, and so exhausted that it lingers in each step that she takes   —   but she didn’t come knowing that it would be easy. bastogne needed her to be here. her home, her people, these men. there were already so few nurses and medical personnel around, what would they do without her and anna?

    renée doesn’t go around looking for thanks. their small smiles, their steps towards recovery, seeing them walk out of here;  that’s enough of a thanks.  ❝  merci, monsieur.  ❞  renée manages a small smile and brushes the hair off of his forehead, assuring the pillows beneath his head are comfortable enough for him.  ❝  how are you feeling, sergeant?  ❞

light hearted sentence starters  /  accepting  !

     he’d maybe like to say it’s the morphine that’s got him running off at the mouth like this, but... nah. it’s just him. just james barnes, paying completely honest and well-meant compliments to the   ( you won’t get any argument from him )   pretty nurses working themselves into the frozen ground around this place.

     god, they all remind him of steve’s mom, back when he and steve were just dumb kids. tireless. caring. comforting. this one, especially. he hasn’t caught her name yet --- fix that, here in a second --- but he’s noticed, the way all the guys light up whenever she comes by. felt like it deserved remarking on.

     a short, wry chuckle escapes him. it’s a little rough, in his chest, but he tries to ignore that. he knows he’s got a fever --- that’s what has the hair sticking to his skin that she’s sweeping back. it’s probably pneumonia. wouldn’t be the first time. and then of course there’s the little matter of the bullet the docs pulled out of his side a few hours ago...   “ ‘f i say lousy, does that mean you’ll stay a little longer, mademoiselle---? ”

        she looks like a ghost---no, like a dream, because eugene is haunted enough by the ghosts of the dead he couldn’t save, and the sight of renée isn’t dragging him down into misery, isn’t doing anything but making a smile spread across his cheeks. just look at her, when he’d thought she’d still be skeletal beneath a pile of rubble.

        she looks different, sadder and more weary, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t look the same, either. in his dress uniform, for one, and not shivering from the bitter cold, but he’s also older, and bowed beneath the weight of a war that chipped away pieces of him every time he darted across fields or dove into foxholes, until there’s more eugene scattered across europe than there is here, right now.

        ( it was surprisingly easy to get winters to let him come. after everything they've been through...and it seems as though the major’s trying to give all his men something before they leave this godforsaken continent for good. gene’s pretty sure he won’t be coming back, if only ‘cause he’ll never have the money. ) 

        but he looks at her, and it settles something inside him that gene didn’t even know had been twisted into knots since he was here the first time. he wraps his arms around her and holds on as tightly as he dares, not knowing if she’s still hurt.