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Chapter Text

Day One

There are two types of weather in Iraq, from their perspective; the bright, blindingly blue days that burn before the sun’s even fully up, searing and bone dry in a way that makes you feel like you might catch fire if you made the mistake of brushing up against anything, and the red, thick-aired days that settle in your lungs and land on your skin in a heavy layer that feels like it will slow you down, moment by moment, until you come to a stop, incapable. This day is the latter kind, shamal brewing on the horizon, heat a physical blanket, grit in their eyes and mouths and noses and souls.

They don’t form an official farewell committee, but it’s close enough. It’s staged, a handful of them in the motorpool as the team gets into the victor, a handful outside the hangar, a few here, a few there, along the route to the gates, and the rest lounging nonchalantly at the fence line. The whole thing has an air of plausible deniability to it, a lack of organisation that says this is nothing, nothing to see here when what’s actually being said is something Easy Company will not ever, ever, put words to. First Sergeant Floyd Talbert taps his fingers on the wheel as he drives the humvee, armour-plated and open-topped. Sergeant Skip Muck is in the back seat, PFC Alex Penkala is on the roof in the turret, both singing something relatively unintelligible, and in the front seat, insouciant and irreverent, is Captain Lewis Nixon, all ease and effortless grace as if this is a trip to the seaside rather than an intelligence mission. Not a single one of them is holding any tension in his body, and the hundred-odd paratroopers definitely not amassed to see them off, all rifle-slung and kevlared, look equally relaxed. 

There is a muscle twitching in the jaw of Major Richard Winters. Sergeant Donald Malarkey has his hand tight on the strap of his M-19. There is nothing to see. Nothing going on. Just some men out for a drive, hunting insurgents, chasing ghosts, just four of America’s finest paratroopers on the trail of the leadership of the Iraqui insurgency currently decimating the occupation force. Nothing to see here. Nothing to worry about.

Captain Ronald Speirs leans up against Lieutenant Harry Welsh, and pulls a cigarette out of the pack in his top pocket, lighting it with the zippo handed to him by Lieutenant Carwood Lipton on his other side, pre-emptive like they’ve done this all their lives - sometimes it feels like they’ve been doing this all their lives- and looks out the gate at the little trail of dust obscuring the departing victor from view. He inhales, breathes out a little plume of smoke, feels like it’s done nothing to ease the sandpaper feel of his lungs, and looks straight ahead.

“How long this time?”

“Three days,” says Welsh, also straight ahead.

Speirs passes him the cigarette back, dissatisfying, and walks away. Major Winters is standing by the gate still, omnipresent notebook out, brow furrowed. Nothing to see here. Nothing to worry about.

Day Two

The shamal rolls in as predicted in the small hours of the morning and they’re woken by the watch and pealing bells, sergeants shouting strident and sure and the hoot and holler of action, however benign. They resecure the guylines of their failing canvas fortresses, driving steel pegs deep down into the shifting nothingness of the desert, half asleep, half naked, bitching good-naturedly as they operate on autopilot in the dark, stinging dust.

It doesn’t take long to buttress against the incoming storm, and then they’re back inside, packed tightly into the middle of the tents, avoiding straining canvas walls and the potential to be drowned in falling fabric, huddling together in the strange desert cold, pitch black.

George Luz, pressed shoulder to shoulder with Don Malarkey in the middle of what they’d generally refuse to call a combat cuddle, twisted his face to put his mouth up against the other man’s ear.

“How far out do you think they could have got?”

Don shrugs. “They could be a thousand klicks away by now, or they could still be in glassing distance if visibility wasn’t shot to shit. All depends on what Nixon wanted doing, doesn’t it? Fuck knows.”

“How fucked are they if they get hit by a shamal in that victor?”

“Depends on whether they can stop or not. They get hit somewhere they can’t stop they’re pretty fucked, cos they can’t put a tarp over the engine or anything. And Tab won’t be able to see for shit. If they’re hit somewhere they can stop they’ll be fine cos they can just tarp the victor and hunker down.If they get hit at all. Might not.”

Luz nods. In the dark, the gesture is only noticeable by the shift of his body. There’s a long pause.

“Doing alright, Malark?”

Don breathes out. “Yeah. I mean, I’m still pissed. There’s an empty seat in that victor, we’re a fuckin three-man squad, what the fuck’s he doing leaving me back here to play with my bollocks while Skip and Penk are out on a jolly, but what do I know, I’m not an officer. Sure Winters has his reasons.” This last is said with a little bite of sarcasm that gives a lie to the whole speech.

Luz suppresses a snort of laughter. “Well, you can see where he’s coming from. No way Nixon needs four whole paratroopers for his beach trip. And adding you to the victor would make it pretty sergeant-heavy.”

“So leave Tab here and get some PFC fucknuts to drive. Christ, Julian can point a victor north just as well as Tab can, why’d Winters stick our First fuckin Sergeant in there?”

There’s an unsuppressed snort from Malarkey’s other side, and Babe pipes up. “Precious fuckin cargo, yo.”

He probably wouldn’t have said it in daylight, but in the dark the little ripple of laughter vibrates through all of them, the shrill bray of Bill Guarnere stifled against someone else’s arm as they let the pitch black give them cover. For a moment they cackle like they just invented it, curled round their rifles and each other on the thin mats on the floor, and then it leaks out of them, almost like exhaustion. There’s quiet, still, just the staggered hitch of thirty men breathing together, and then someone says it, because someone was always going to say it. They’ll mock and bitch and mock some more, but Easy Company belongs to Dick Winters, and always will.

“There’s no way Winters made the call on that victor based on anything but mission requirements.”

It’s Toye, voice solid and quiet even in the silence.

Liebgott makes a little noise of dissent, could generously be labelled the devil’s advocate but is more likely just stirring shit. “No way? With Nixon in the passenger seat? When was the last time you saw them more than six foot apart? Surprised Winters isn’t driving the humvee himself. Maybe there’s trouble in paradise?”

“Shut the fuck up, Joe,” says Toye, and there’s a sharpness to it. “Fuck nonsense you talking about now?”

The silence simmers for a moment, and then Liebgott huffs an exhale that could be an apology if you were feeling distinctly generous, and shifts on to his side, neatly cutting any further trouble he could cause off at the knees. They take his lead, settling in the dark, and conversation stops for the night.

A hundred metres away, Dick Winters is lying on his cot in the officers tent, hands folded across his chest like a corpse in the dark, as he refuses to allow himself to turn to his left and try to find, even in the dark, the empty bed. 

Day Three

It seems like they’ve reached the inevitable hurry-up-and-wait stage of any tour. They sit around the camp, ostensibly on 25% watch, but there’s nothing to watch for. Speirs sends out patrols who report back that yes sir, there is indeed a great deal of sand in the desert, and everyone else does endless PT and runs endless laps of the camp and does endless maintenance on vehicles beyond saving and cleans endless sand out of their rifles and SAWs and victors and clothes and kevlar and boots and hair and eyes and water bottles and aid packs and ammo crates and everything else. They bitch and moan and fight and bitch some more and wait and wait and wait.

“If I’d known going to war would be this fuckin’ dull,” says Skinny Sisk to whoever is listening, “I’d have stayed home with my ma drinking tea and making nice with the ladies from Church.”

“You've never made nice to a lady a day in your life,” bitches Hashey, and is prudently ignored.

“Nixon will be back tomorrow,” Webster reminds them. “Maybe he’ll bring us something fun to do. You never know.”

Day Four

They wake up at dawn and find themselves gifted finally with a blue sky and no threat of incoming storm. It's unbearably hot by 0700 and they're irritated and discontent in the same way as usual but for a different reason. Dirty, itchy, tired, bored, hungry, too fucking hot, as usual, all layered on top of twin lingering grievances - this sitting around is a waste of their skillsets, and when is their intelligence mission coming back?

Any minute now, has been the answer since an hour past dawn, and the same thin veneer of “nothing to see here” that characterised their departure is waiting for the victor now it's due to return. There's no lounging in the tents today, despite the searing heat they’re all out in the open, clustered in little groups around the perimeter. They do PT with half an eye on the horizon, impatient and unfocused, and Speirs lets it slide because even if he hasn’t been Easy since the very beginning, he’s Easy now, and he knows how this goes. He wasn’t there for the seven hours they didn’t know where Bull Randleman was, but he wasn’t far away and he’s heard the stories, he knows all about how badly Easy deals with the unknown, separation and the discomfort of Dick Winters.

Dick Winters, for his part, is doing his best to set a solid, reassuring tone. He’s worried a small shrapnel wound on the outside of his left thigh to the point of his infection, even through his uniform, pressing and pinching and rolling the little laceration on a semi-constant basis, calling up a little spear of pain at any point in which the narrative in the back of his head rises above a whisper, but no one knows that except Doc Roe, who dealt with it in silence, because what do you say?

It turns out, you say nothing, not to his face, but when rounding up your patient summaries to your Lieutenant, you do let it slip to Harry Welsh, because if you’re Doc Roe you know the hand you’re playing with, and you know how the deck is stacked.

“Three damn days,” Harry says to Lip as they share a cigarette in the dawn. “Do you think the boys have noticed?”

“Do you think he’s noticed?” Lip shoots back, exasperated. “Watching this and trying to work out if anyone else is watching it is more exhausting than listening to Liebgott and Webster attempt a civil conversation.”

Harry makes a frustrated noise and tips his head back, kevlar tipping so that the little pale stripe across the top of his forehead gets the sun, just for a moment. Every line of his body says, very clearly, I need a god damn drink. They’ve been out here such a long time. Nothing feels real anymore. 

“I don’t think Dick has noticed,” Harry says, “But if he doesn’t get it when they get back, there’s no fuckin’ hope for them.”

He doesn’t voice the thought that follows, which is that there’s no fucking hope for them anyway, no hope for any of them. It’s been a long tour.

**

The sun climbs the sky, sits directly above them, threatening combustion and cancer and the despair that comes of knowing there is no relief, and then begins to climb back down, and the victor has not returned. The groups at the perimeter fence have rotated, watch has gone full circle, patrols have been out and back again, and Webster and Liebgott have argued themselves round the issue of WMDs and the military complex for long enough that if you’d been paying attention you’d have noticed they’d switched sides. Dick has come out of his tent every half hour since 1200, excuses wearing thinner and thinner, and now the slightly haunted look on his face is noticeable not just to the officers.

“Did they have a radio, George?” asks Charles Grant, as they’re sitting in the shade of the porch of their tent.

“The victor almost certainly does,” Luz answers, fiddling with the dial on his own receiver. “But I wasn’t given any call signs or channels or anything. They’re not on any of our channels.”

“What about other channels?”

Luz gives him a flat look. “I’m not on the other channels,” he says.

“Yeah like fuck you’re not,” Malarkey cuts in. “Have you heard them on any other channels, George?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Fuck off, Don, if I’d heard anything I’d have told you.”

Malarkey inclines his head just a little, conceding the point, and Grant knocks their shoulders together, robust reassurance. They sit quietly under the awning of their tent, watching Bill Guarnere challenge various passing troopers to hand-to-hand combat and beating them them into the sand in under a minute. He’s needling Bull, trying to get him to step into the circle, and Bull is laughing, not buying it. It’s never happened yet, and there’s a lot of money riding on the outcome when it inevitably does occur.

“Sir,” Luz shouts suddenly, “Major Winters, sir?”

He’s stepped outside his tent again, is standing in the stinging heat, staring at the gates. The sound of his name seems to pull him out of his reverie, and Dick snaps back round to look at them, pulling the slightly lost expression back under control and replacing it instantly with his usual implacable spill of calm.

“How can I help you, Luz?” he says, and there’s a little edge of humour to his voice still.

“Have you heard anything from Captain Nixon’s victor, sir?” Luz asks.

Dick rubs a hand over his face. “No, George. Not yet. They didn’t have a set return time, so no need to worry. As soon as I hear anything, you’ll hear it, I promise.”

Luz nods. Next to him Malarkey shifts uncomfortably, as if he’s trying to work out whether he should say something or not.

“We are expecting them back today though, sir?”

“Yes Sergeant,” Dick says. “That was the plan.”

“Thank you sir.”

Dick walks away, heading towards the spot by the gate where Bill is now wrestling with one of the sergeants from Dog, and Grant looks after him.

“He looks like shit,” he says.

“We all look like shit,” Malarkey shoots back. “We’ve been in the sandbox for six fucking months. We all look like shit. Winters is fine. It’s all fine.”

It’s not fine. The sun sets, and Nixon’s victor doesn’t return.

Chapter Text

Day Five

He doesn't sleep. Dick sits outside the officers’ tent well after dark, staring out beyond the perimeter fence, hands flat on his thighs in an attempt to stop him digging his fingernails into the little shrapnel wound in his leg, the one he’s been forbidden from touching. Beyond the spill of the floodlights in his immediate vicinity, the blackness of the desert stretches indeterminably far, a relentless expanse of nothing, of anything. Anything could be happening out there. He tries not to let himself think about it. He can’t think of anything else.

Dimly, he’s aware that the company is watching him. No number of promotions, oak leaves, or additional responsibilities will ever cure Easy of the belief that they belong to Dick Winters and him to them, it’s a hundred steel cables tying him to men that aren’t his anymore, and he’s never been more grateful to them. The men can count to three just as well as he can, they’re all more than aware that Captain Nixon and his team should have been back by now. They’re watching him to see how worried they should be, and so Dick has to sit, watch the fence, and look calm. He’s glad of the dark. He can only imagine how he looks right now.

There’s something thudding through him, some dark current of something rabid and red that’s stinging every raw spot it touches, staining him inside out. He can’t put a word on it, it’s sharper than fear, it’s somehow urgent and vicious and it feels like it’s going to take a bite out of the next thing it comes up against. It’s not something Dick has ever felt before, it feels like the next stage of evolution of that moment a month ago when he lay peering over a berm next to Nix and heard the sting and ping of a bullet bouncing off his kevlar. That was a split second. This is days of poison pooling in his veins and thinking so hard about what he does with his hands.

It’s all Nix, he acknowledges in the dark. He’s been in the army for years now, seen combat, seen men die, and this feeling is distinct, rare, belongs to one person and one person only. A civilian might call it love, of one kind or another, but it’s got recoil on it like a .50cal and there’s nothing soft about the way it’s settled on his soul. There’s no love out here, romantic or platonic or otherwise, there’s no room for love in this war that has been over on paper for years. There is no Dick Winters without Lewis Nixon out here, that’s the only way it can be rationalised. And there is no Lewis Nixon out here right now.

“It’s 2300,” Harry says, materialising out of the dark just in time to avert the carcrash of Dick’s thoughts, “Get some rack time.”

“I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight,” Dick tells him, knowing Harry won’t either, knowing he’s been watching the fence line they can’t see in the dark.

“Not the point,” Harry tells him. “If you want the boys to get any rest you need to get in your tent and look like a man who can sleep.”

He’s right.

“Are you going to rack out too then?” Dick asks, voice wry. “Set a good example, Lieutenant Welsh?”

Harry makes a soft noise of amusement under his breath. “Got my marching orders from Sparky. He and Lip are on the north gate, they sent me to sleep for a few hours and we’ll swap out at 0300. You’re welcome to join me.”

Dick nods. “They’ll wake us if anything changes?”

“Of course,” Harry says. “And while of course I do not know this at all, Luz and Liebgott are taking shifts scanning the radios. So we’ll hear, no matter what happens.”

“I’m going to Sink at dawn,” Dick tells him. “Get permission to take a team out after them.”

Harry nods, mouth set tight. “I’ll drive.”

He opens the flap of the tent and holds it pointedly, and Dick is aware that Harry is not at all above kicking him in the shin and dragging him through the canvas if he has to. Harry’s in this with him, always has been. It’s been the three of them for a long, long time now. Harry knows where they stand right now. He hasn’t offered him platitudes, hasn’t given him reassurance, because there’s none on offer, hasn’t said “don’t worry, he’ll be alright,” because Harry is a god damn paratrooper. But Harry will drive, if he has to. It’s grimly soothing.

Dick doesn’t sleep, and when 0300 rolls around he makes the executive decision to not wake Harry, and leaves him to rest. If he’s going to be driving, he needs rest. Dick is already planning the mission in his head as he walks across the camp towards the point at the perimeter fence where he can see the twin cherries of Speirs’ and Lipton’s cigarettes. 

Walking past the tents housing the rest of Easy company, he hears the low hum of voices and a dim light. On any other night he’d leave them to it, knows when an officer isn’t wanted, but right now the rules don’t apply. Ducking through the flap of the tent he clears his throat softly, and is greeted with sharp, furtive looks from Luz and Liebgott, both of whom start to get to their feet, shuffling to hide the radio behind them.

“At ease, gents,” he says, voice pitched low. “Anything on the wire, George?”

Luz’s face goes from furtive to flat, and Liebgott assumes a lower stance, even though Dick has obviously already seen the radio.

“Sir?” he says, voice a perfect approximation of innocence. 

Dick makes a quiet noise that is almost a laugh. “Alright, let’s pretend for a minute that I asked you to do whatever it is you’ve been doing, and then you can tell me - is there anything on the wire?”

The flat expression gets flatter. “Fuck all, sir. Nothing on our channels or anything else I can find, and we’ve been flicking for hours. Asked a couple of questions here and there, nothing. No one’s heard a god damn thing.”

This isn’t a surprise. Dick nods. “Get me if that changes. And get some sleep, both of you.”

He leaves the tent with absolute certainty that neither of them will sleep tonight, and crosses to the fence. Lipton is sitting, back to a pile of crates, with Speirs standing next to him, both of them looking off out into the dark. 

“Anything?”

“Tab knows better than driving in the dark,” Lipton says, “They barely had any juice in their NVGs, they’ll have parked up and dug in, they’ll be moving in on us at first light.”

It's a very optimistic narrative, which is exactly what one would expect from Lipton, and Dick feels a little flicker of gratitude in the tightness of his chest. Speirs makes a noise in the back of his throat that’s somewhere between amusement and agreement, and straightens up off the fence.

“Presuming you’re here to relieve us of watch, do you want me to send Welsh over when I get back to the tent?”

Dick shakes his head, and then realises they probably won’t be able to see him. “No,” he says, “Let him rest. Might need him later. If they’re not back after dawn I’m going to Sink and getting permission to go out after them. With your approval, Ron, I’ll send Harry.”

Speirs nods, visible only by the bob of his cigarette. “Alright then. We’ll leave you to it. Yell if you need anything.”

They walk away, and Dick sits in the dark, alone, staring out into the nothingness, until the first little fingers of dawn start creeping up over the horizon. Nothing comes with it.

**

Dawn is hours ago by 0800 and there's still no victor. Dick joins the men in the mess tent for breakfast and they’re very quiet when he walks in. To a man, they’ve looked better. It’s been a while since they saw real combat, a while since they lost a man, so the strained, tired, strung-out expressions are haunting in a whole new way. This isn’t how a company looks when they’ve been sitting round a camp for a fortnight. It’s a mirror to how he must appear that he could do without.

Dick makes his way through the benches and tables, decides he won’t stop to address them right now, decides he’ll see Sink first, and then his eye catches Malarky, red hair almost the same shade as his own, sticking up like he’s had his hands in it for hours, eyes glassy and skin a little grey under the paintspatter of freckles. He’s struck for a moment by one of the ever-present Nixon echoes - did you find two long lost brothers in the sandbox, Dick, or did you always know that Babe and Malarkey were out there? - and then he’s struck again by a fleeting recall of the look of sheer damn outrage painted across Malarkey’s face when Dick had announced that Skip and Penkala were to go in Nixon’s victor without him. He hadn’t bothered moderating his tone as they walked away from the briefing, strident fury - I haven’t let you two morons out of my sight for three fuckin tours and look how well that’s been working, everyone’s got all their limbs and most of their brains left, what the fuck makes him think now’s a good time to bench me? - and, God help him, Dick had laughed. 

He’s not laughing now. He stops next to Malarkey, and puts a hand on his shoulder. Don looks up from the food he hadn’t been even pretending to eat, eyes wide.

“Sir?”

“I’m going to Colonel Sink,” Dick says, deciding on the spot that it won’t wait til after breakfast. “And asking permission to send Lieutenant Welsh out after that victor. I’ll need you in the turret.”

Something much sharper than relief flushes the freckled face. “Yes, Major Winters, sir.”

Sink is in his makeshift office, desk made out of a few planks of wood over a few empty crates piled high with sheaves of paperwork, and the frown he’s wearing when Dick walks in has furrows you could steer a canal-boat through. It gets deeper when he looks up to see who’s in his door.

“Dick,” he says, and the single syllable tells it all.

“Sir,” says Dick, because he has to try, god damn it, he feels like he might rot from the inside out if he doesn’t do something. “Captain Nixon and his team are now a day overdue for their return. Permission to send out a team to retrieve them, sir?”

Sink sighs, he’s starting to look like an old man. This is no place for old men. “Dick, I’m sorry, I know you’re not going to like this, but they’re only a day late. There’s no indication that anything’s gone wrong, sometimes these things just take more time than we expect. There’s just not enough justification to send a team out now. Give it a few more days.”

“A few more days, sir?” Dick says, incredulous, and there’s the requisite respect in his voice by just a hair. 

Sink gives him a sharp look. “Permission denied, Dick.” 

He picks up a file from the stack on his desk and it is a crystal clear dismissal. For the very first time in his career, Dick contemplates insubordination. The thought sings through him, loud and strident, a bell tone in a church choir - it would take basically nothing for me to get the company on my side and go and get him - and then he realises that he’s considering mutiny.

He leaves the room. 

Out in the camp, Harry has a victor out of the motorpool, parked up in the centre of a little cluster of men, with the rest lounging in reaching distance. They’re loading up supplies, Malarkey in the turret checking the big gun, Luz in the passenger seat with the radio. Harry is arguing with a handful of men, presumably about who gets to go in the back seats. Speirs is watching from a distance, Chuck Grant standing beside him. Dick feels a little like he might be sick, walking towards them.

“Permission denied,” he says, as they turn as one to look at him. “Orders are to give them a few more days.”

He walks away as the chorus of disbelieving rage rises up like a shamal from nowhere, choking and stinging and as inevitable as the tide.

Day Six

Harry wakes after an hour, like he does every time he tries to sleep in country, any time he finds himself trying to sleep without the warm, sweet weight of Kitty pressed against him, and listens to the soft sounds of breathing in the tent. To his left, Speirs is definitely asleep, as is Lipton on his other side, slow and even breaths, a little whistling noise from where Carwood still isn’t quite over last year’s ridiculous bout of pneumonia in the Hindu Kush. On his right is an empty bed. He resists the urge to get up and kick it over. Dick is in the cot on the far right, and Harry lies still and listens for the sound of his breathing. It’s steady and even, but the speed and pitch tells him Dick’s not sleeping. He’s forcing himself into combat calm, breathing the way he does before he throws himself up over a berm, rifle in hand. He hasn’t slept in days. That’s going to have to stop.

In the morning, Lipton corners him on his way to the mess.

“I know we’re all worried about Dick,” he says, and his face has that perfect Carwood-concern all over it and Harry wants to kick him over. “But are you alright, Harry?”

There’s a universe in which Harry opens up now. There’s another universe in which he kindly tells Lip that he can’t face talking about it. They’re not in either of those.

In this universe, Harry gives him the RPG-on-the-shoulder-of-a-private feral grin of imminent destruction, and says “Get fucked, Carwood.”

Lip nods, claps him on the shoulder, walks away. Harry hates him.

Dick is in his office, if the shack deserves the name, and he’s not even pretending to be doing his paperwork. Harry shuts the door behind him, and stands in front of the desk.

“Tearoom rules,” he says.

Years ago and lifetimes away, Lewis Nixon sat with them under camo netting in the middle of nowhere, Afghanistan, and said I’d say let’s pretend this conversation is taking place in the pub, but let’s face it, Dick Winters doesn’t go to pubs. So, let’s pretend we’re having this conversation in a nice tearoom back home, and we can forget the UCMJ and speak frankly. Harry can’t even remember what they spoke about then, but tearoom rules hold, have carried them through several tours.

“Tearoom rules,” Dick says, and he looks like he’s so relieved someone suggested it that he might cry. “You go first.”

Harry stares at him. “No,” he says. “Not if you don’t want to have to DD me. If I open my mouth right now someone’s ending up in front of a firing squad. You go.”

Dick scrubs his hands over his face. “I feel like I’m losing my mind. You know, the first thing I thought this morning is that I think it was actually worse the first three days? Before they were late back? Because then, there was no damn reason for me to feel like I was about to shake out of my damn skin. At least now, at least now it’s reasonable for me to feel like this.”

There’s a universe in which Harry takes this as a confession, hoots and hollers and mocks and tells Dick that he’s an oblivious motherfucker and starts planning a wedding at the top of his lungs. There’s another universe in which Harry puts a hand on Dick’s shoulder, tells him it’s OK, offers him compassion and understanding and unrelenting acceptance. In this universe, Harry waits. There’s more. There’s always more.

“I’m compromised,” Dick says, quietly. “That’s the one thing I can’t get away from, with this whole situation. Look at that victor. Look who I put in there. I put Easy’s very best man in the driver’s seat, Harry, I gave him my First Sergeant, I gave him Floyd Talbert, the best soldier any of us have ever met, to drive his victor on an intelligence mission. And I’ve been trying to tell myself that I did that because it was in the best interests of the mission and therefore the company and the army and all of that and it’s a damn lie. It’s a god damn lie, Harry, I put Talbert in that humvee because he’s the best soldier any of us have ever met and I wanted him on Lewis’ nine because I couldn’t be there myself. If they never get back, I spent Floyd Talbert’s life on myself, on my own peace of mind. That’s not why he joined the army. That’s not the man I’m supposed to be. Even if they do make it back, I don’t know how I can face them, knowing that I did that. That was not the action of a man worthy to command this company, Harry.”

The silence that stretches out behind those words is a slinky, deceptive thing, curling round them like it can choke all the other words down, like it can make sure it lives forever. 

“You’re not a fucking god, Dick,” Harry says, in the end. “I know the army has told you that you are, but you’re not a fucking god. You’re a human being, and human beings make mistakes, and human beings get scared, and sometimes when it comes to the people that they love, human beings fuck up. You’re not a fucking god, Dick. Gods aren’t allowed to love mere mortals. You are, damn it. You’re allowed to love him, and you’re allowed to fuck up. For god’s sake.”

Dick nods, a small, precise thing. It’s the first time the words have been spoken out loud between them. Maybe the first time he’s ever let himself think them. Harry doesn’t know, can’t tell how much Dick knows, has never really felt like it was a good idea to give the thing oxygen. Too late for all that now.

“Alright then,” he says. “That’s enough. Tearoom’s closed.”

Chapter Text

Day Seven

No one makes any real attempt to sleep that night, and they’re now running on close to a week of no sleep as the status quo. It shows. At 0100, Speirs puts his very best don’t-fuck-with-your-captain face on, and turns on the inhabitants of the officers’ tent.

“Every single one of you, go the fuck to sleep right now. Carwood, go the fuck to sleep, my god, you look like fucking death. Dick, I know you’re dealing with a tonne of shit right now, but you need to fucking sleep, or we’re all going to hell. If you have to get into bed with Welsh to get an hour or so of proper rest, so fucking be it. Harry, you shut the fuck up. I’m going over to the tents to force the men to get some fucking sleep, and if any of you are awake when I get back I will knock you out myself.”

**

That morning goes mostly like the two before it - underslept and lightly irate, the men make their way to breakfast with most of their attention on the perimeter fence. Bull Randleman stands by the tent for a moment and stares out into the desert, face very still, until Johnny Martin comes up behind him and drives a sharp elbow into the soft part of his side, perfectly placed as always.

“Too good for breakfast, Bull?” Johnny says, and that’s not what he’s said at all.

Bull gives him a slow smile. “Ever told you I’m real damn sorry for those hours after that bridge, Johnny?”

“Nope,” Johnny manages, pitch-perfect bitch, “Dumb hick.”

“Real damn sorry, Johnny,” Bull says, and turns back to look at the fence.

“Damn fucking straight. Don’t do it again.”

**

Speirs has reached the limit of his patience, come right up against the hard line of what he’s willing to let the men get away with. It’s not that he isn’t sympathetic. It’s not that he isn’t worried, or that he doesn’t want to be out there going after them too. It’s that the longer he lets this go on, the further from business as usual the company gets, and with every little slip from the SOP, they get closer to all getting dead. The creeping fingers of dread are starting to stroke around the edges of his consciousness, and he has the horrible suspicion that if he doesn’t get Easy back under control, they’re all fucked. Dick hasn’t said it and Harry looks like he might kill anyone who attempts to say it, but Speirs is pretty sure everyone in that victor is dead, and they need to start getting used to the idea. They’re still at war. 

So he pulls them back to war, gets them lined up for PT and forces them to drill like their lives depend on it, because they fucking do, and any man caught looking anywhere but right at their Captain finds himself face down in the dirt, doing pushups with his pack on. It’s brutal and they bitch and moan and he yells at them and they feel normal for the first time in days. 

It lasts almost two hours, and then their little oasis of verbal abuse and crippling physical exertion is flooded with the thud of footsteps and yelling as a handful of privates from some other company come thundering past them.

“Got a foot-mobile converging on the north gate,” one of them shouts as he goes by, and they’re all hefting rifles.

Every man in the company turns to look at Speirs.

“Go,” he says, and they go. “Lieutenant Welsh, Lieutenant Lipton, stay with the men.”

They take off at a run, Harry and Lip on their heels, and Speirs takes a deep breath and turns in the opposite direction, heading for HQ and Major Winters.

**

This camp is huge. That’s the thought that registers with Don Malarkey as he’s running hell for leather across the sand, his brothers pounding alongside him - this camp is too fucking big and this is taking too fucking long. Foot-mobile at the gate. It’s not going to be anyone hostile, because that would be suicide. It’s not going to be anyone local, because there are no fucking locals. It’s someone from Nixon’s victor, that’s almost certain, but it’s only one. He takes a shuddering breath and misses a step, staggers, bumps into Chuck Grant next to him and is shouldered upright automatically. Chuck’s got his teeth through his lip and Don feels sick to his stomach at the sight of his face. He’s praying it’s Tab, Don thinks, I’m praying it’s not.  

He’s dizzy with fear, because there’s only one foot mobile at the gate, and the rest of his heart is out there in the desert in two separate bodies. Whoever they see when they get round this last cluster of buildings, Don’s lost something he can’t live without. Skip or Alex , he thinks to himself, Skip or Alex, pick one, pick one, Skip or Alex, and can’t, can’t can’t can’t.

Chuck takes him by the arm as they break past the last building, converging on the small crowd at the fence, and his grip on Don’s bicep leaves bruises for a week. Whoever the foot-mobile is, he’s hidden by the men at the gate, but they’re standing in silence, someone presumably trying to talk to him, voice soft and soothing, getting nowhere.

“Get out of the fucking way,” Harry shouts, pushing through the crowd of enlisted men.

They part like the red sea and Easy surges through the gap, Harry and Lip at the front, Chuck and Don just behind them.

“Medic!”

Roe’s already there, coming up on their heels with Babe right next to him, carrying an aid kit, and then they’re finally through the throng of bodies and can see who it is in front of them.

Don makes a noise in the back of his throat, one he’s not ever going to be able to find words for, and hears the same sound echoed around him. He misses his footing again, this time Chuck doesn’t catch him, it’s Bill with his hand tight over the bruises Chuck left, because Chuck is running out across the sand to Floyd Talbert, and Don is… empty.

Even from this distance, it’s clear that Tab’s beyond fucked up. He’s on his feet, swaying slightly, no weapon and no kevlar, covered in blood, but when Roe comes towards him, palms open and empty in the air in the way he always does, Tab steps back, wild.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he yells, and his voice is a shattered, cracked thing, “Don’t need a fucking medic, don’t fucking touch me, I need, I-”

There’s more movement in the crowd and Dick comes up through the masses. His face is set, perfectly composed, he already knows who he’s going to see. Dick breaks out, moves into the open space, and Tab stumbles, steps towards him, and then his knees buckle and he falls, blood spreading slow and sticky across the sand at Dick Winters’ feet.

**

In the end, Grant carries Tab to the aid station. He passes Malarkey, grey and silent in the strong grip of Bill Guarnere, and cannot bring himself to think about how it would feel if the positions were reversed.

Roe wants him to put Tab on a stretcher. He refuses. The physical weight of his best friend in his arms is something viscerally necessary to him right now. Tab's half conscious, eyes tracking Dick over Chuck's shoulder, heartbeat slow and heavy in his chest. He's soaked in blood, unfocused, one hand clenched in the fabric of Chuck's shirt as he staggers under the weight, and he's hazy with grief.

They crowd into the aid tent, Chuck with Tab in his arms, Doc Roe and Babe assisting, Dick watching with a facsimile of calm, Speirs, Harry and Lip behind him. The rest of the company is right outside the door, Don sat in the sand, the men silent and grave around him. Tab's incalcitrant and uncooperative, refusing to lie down on the cot, refusing to let Roe examine him properly, starting sentences and trailing off, drifting in and out of consciousness as the officers ask him questions, and all the while Chuck holds him, half across his lap, hands clenched in the ruined fabric of his uniform. He's shaking.

Eventually, Roe calms him down enough to get an IV in place, to get him hydrated, to get a good enough look and the worst of his wounds, and after almost half an hour Tab starts to look like he's coming back into himself, like he's not just a shell of a body, bloodsmeared and shuddering in the desert like the ultimate sacrifice to a hungry god. 

“Can you tell us what happened, Floyd? Where are the others?”

“Gone,” Tab says, and his voice is hollow. “Dead and gone.”

The words shudder around the tent like a little wave of grief, but they're paratroopers and that's not a full report. He takes a breath, it sounds like it hurts.

“Muck and Penkala are dead,” he says, still with that dreadful hollow tone, “And Captain Nixon is gone.”

His voice carries through the silence. Right outside the open flap of the tent, Don Malarkey, sat in the sand, makes an indescribable noise of resignation, gets to his feet, and walks away. They stare after him, shocked and helpless, all ripped open and torn apart, and inside the tent the conversation continues as if it isn't the end of the world.

“Gone?” Dick echoes, and his voice is a perfect impression of someone calm and in control. It's uncanny.

“Taken,” Tab says.

Speirs sinks down in front of the bed, hands on his knees, eyes as kind as they've ever seen them.

“Alright trooper,” he says. “Start from the beginning.”

Chapter Text

Day One

They drive out of the camp with the whole company arrayed behind them, pretending they're there for no reason. 

“Nice of them to see us off,” Nix scoffs, as Tab accelerates along the non-existent track away from home. “Perfect way to start a little desert jolly.”

In the back seat of the victor Skip Muck lets out a peal of laughter, and starts singing we're all going on a summer holiday. Alex joins in from the turret, perfect harmony, camp as you like, and Tab drums on the wheel, humming along with a satisfied little smile on his face.

Nix looks over his shoulder, one last glimpse of the tall, redheaded figure standing by the gate. Even from this distance, Dick looks out of place all alone.

Day Two

They drive until it's dark and then stop, digging one grave and taking 75% watch, sleeping a few hours each and moving out at the first sign of dawn. The only person in the victor with any idea where they're going is Nixon, and he's not sharing any details, just pointing Tab in the right direction and joining in on the chorus of whatever Muck and Penkala are singing.

“Are you planning on telling us what we're doing out here at any point, sir?” Tab asks, same easy tone of voice he uses for everything, no indication that he's been driving for hours through the desert on mysterious orders.

“Nope,” Nix responds. “But in about forty klicks I'm going to tell you to stop.”

“Solid copy,” Tab says. “And after I've stopped?”

Nix gives him a wide grin that's all teeth. “Then, First Sergeant, you get the luxury of a few hours to yourself, while I do a little bit of sightseeing.”

Tab frowns ever so slightly. “And are you planning on bringing anyone with you on your trip, sir?”

The grin gets wider. “Think I need a babysitter, Talbert?”

Tab shares a look with Skip in the rearview mirror. “You are an officer, sir,” he says, which is an answer in and of itself.

Nixon laughs, his real one, which is if not rare then not usual recently, and seems to concede the point. 

“While that's fair, Tab, no I'm not bringing anyone with me. You three sit pretty, and hopefully I'll be back with you in a handful of hours.”

There's a heavy pause. 

“And if you're not?” This time it's Skip with the interrogative.

The grin with teeth is back, “Then you head back to camp and tell Harry Welsh he gets to keep the hundred dollars he owes me.”

“Oh, like fuck we do, sir!” says Penkala from the roof.

“Respectfully,” adds Skip. “Respectfully, sir, like fuck we do.”

Nix laughs, and drops the subject for the moment.

They reach their objective at dusk. Nixon checks his rifle, his sidearm, his knife, the grenades strapped against his chest, runs his hands over his body armour and tightens the chinstrap of his Kevlar. Tab watches, it's a routine he's completely familiar with, does it himself, sees it done constantly, but the movements look bizarre on Nix, almost backwards, and his face has a strange cast to it as he goes through the motions, as if he's doing something new. It takes a moment and then it clicks. This is backwards, for Nix, because he never checks himself. He checks Dick, and Dick checks him. Heart heavy in his chest for the pair of them, Tab waits until Nix is done and then reaches over his gearstick and rechecks him himself, taking extra care with the helmet. Even men who didn't see it happen heard the story. 

“All good, Captain Nixon, sir,” he says, into the baffled, grateful, slightly shamefaced expression in the passenger seat.

“Thank you, Tab,” Nix says, and then swivels in his seat. “Alright,” he says. “I'll be off. Give me three hours, and then head back.”

They stare at him, completely blank, and the message is absolutely plain as day. Tab gets out of the victor, takes a few steps away, for the pretence of privacy, and Nixon follows.

“Sir,” says the sergeant to the captain. “With all due respect, you cannot possibly expect me to head back without you, stand in front of Dick, and tell him that I left you in the desert.”

Something sharper than the grin with teeth crossed Nixon's face then. “I don't know what the fuck you think you're implying, First Sergeant,” he starts, and Tab cuts him off.

“I don't know what the fuck you think you're hiding, Captain,” he bites back, exasperated. “But you can be sure that I'm not going back there and telling him I left his… telling him that I left you in the desert. Solid negative on that, sir.”

Nix breathes slowly for a moment. “Alright,” he says. “Fine. I anticipate this taking three hours. Wait five, and then advance west. You'll see where I'm heading. There are radio frequencies programmed, you'll be able to access support if you need it.”

Tab nods.

“Any further SNCO mollycoddling to do, or can I go, Talbert?”

“No, sir,” Tab says with a grin. “Godspeed.”

Nixon disappears into the dark. Tab gets back into the victor.

“Got better orders?” Skip asks, from where he's lounging in the back seat. 

“Just about,” Tab says. 

“Good fucking thing,” Penkala bitches from the turret, “Because like fuck was I going back there and telling Winters we left his wife in the devil's sandy asscrack.”

Tab stifles a smirk. “Yeah you watch it with that Alex, I very nearly said it to his face.”

“Jesus fuck,” Skip's gin is audible in his voice. “And you're supposed to be smart.” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Tab says cheerfully. “Watch your sector. I’m gonna get some fucking sleep while I still can, because I have a feeling one way or another I’ll be driving in the dark.”

“God fuckin’ save us,” says Alex. “Go the fuck to sleep.”

He tries, head back in the driving seat, eyes shut, consciously slowing his breathing til his body relaxes, forcing every muscle to let go of the angry, anxious tension of his conversation with Nixon. It’s just not there. He’s not going to be able to sleep while that man’s out there, he’s not going to be able to sleep until he hands Nixon back to Winters, because he’s not blind, and he’s not stupid, and he knows, just like they all know, that there is no Dick Winters without Lewis Nixon out here. No one’s asking and they’d never want to be told, but they know. They all know, have known for years, and each and every man in the company would kill to keep that secret, would take it to their grave. They built this company, a pair of cherry lieutenants, they made it the best company in the whole god damn army, and Tab is not going to be able to sleep until he gives Major Winters back his man. That’s why he’s here. It might not be what he thought he was going to war for, but it’s his fucking job, and he’s not going to sleep til it’s done.

**

Nix is back in three hours and exactly seven minutes. Alex hums return of the man under his breath, and Tab drives in the dark without complaining until Nixon tells him to stop and get some fucking sleep. He does.

Day Three

They drive all day, Tab swapping with Skip for an hour or so through the hottest part of the day, and as the sun starts to sink, Nix makes an unhappy noise in the back of his throat.

“Man, I’m going to be in trouble when we get back,” he says, and he’s joking but there’s a little set to his jaw that gives the lie to the tone. “I told him three days. It’s definitely going to be four.”

Tab whistles. They’re obviously making light of this, but he wouldn’t want to be the man standing next to Dick Winters for the next twenty-four hours.

Day Four

They’re oscar mike half an hour before dawn with several hundred klicks to go. All the tension from before is gone, they’re loose in the victor, arms out the windows, Skip and Nix wearing ridiculous sunglasses and they’re singing, singing blood on the risers, singing take me home, country roads, singing American pie . It’s a bright day, sun’s high, Alex is musing out loud about how long they’ll have to listen to Don bitching about being left behind before he forgives them and shuts the fuck up about it, and they’re heading home, under two hundred klicks left. 

It comes out of fucking nowhere. They wouldn’t even have heard it if they hadn’t just finished a rousing chorus of born in the USA , but it’s there, the sinister whistle of an RPG, and Nixon is yelling “bail” at the top of his lungs even as he hurls himself out of the door. Tab doesn’t brake, rams his elbow against the catch of his door and throws his whole weight against it. He’s only just clear when the victor explodes, he feels the slicing rain of a thousand tiny shards of metal and glass just as his body hits the sand. 

The impact knocks him out for a moment and then the ringing in his ears kicks in before he’s even fully conscious. Tab hauls himself onto his hands and knees, vomits blood, tries to wipe his eyes and drags sand across his face. Someone’s shouting his name. He forces himself to breathe - one two three four out two three four - and then pushes up to his feet, blinking the blood and sand out of his eyes.

The victor is in bits, and there’s blood and body parts all over the sand. Tab vomits again, takes an unsteady step, turns his back on the wreckage. Nix is standing in front of him, feet planted steady to counteract the way the world is still spinning. He’s got an unbearable expression on his face, furious thought process playing over bloody features, lips caught in his teeth. 

“Did they make it out?” Tab asks, voice strange to his own screaming ears.

“No.”

In the distance, behind Nixon, the direction that the RPG came from, there’s a cloud of dust on the horizon. 

“Incoming,” says Tab, and just like every other time he’s been in combat he finds himself amazed by the way he’s gone past calm to perfect focus. 

Nix swears softly under his breath, tilts his head up to the sky, rubs his hand over his bloody face, and then looks straight at Tab, sharp and decisive and impossibly, painfully sad. He reaches into his top pocket and pulls out a sheaf of paper, crosses over to Tab, unbuckles his body armor, tucks it beneath, and then redoes it, checks it once, checks it again, and again, takes a steadying breath, checks it a fourth time, and then steps back.

“Tell Dick I’m sorry,” Nix says, and his voice is very calm. “God, I’m so fucking sorry.” He draws his sidearm. “Stand still, Floyd.”

There’s a split second where Tab knows what’s about to happen, and then the bullet enters his arm, searing heat with pain right on it’s heels, and he doesn’t try to stay standing, lets the impact knock him back into the sand, lies there, staring up at the sky. Nix takes a step or two forward, Tab can hear the sobbing hitch of his breathing even though he can’t see him, and then there are three shots, three bullets punching into the armor plating over his chest. He hears the clatter of Nix’s sidearm hurled into the sand, hears the sound of Nix moving away, and knows what he’s supposed to do, swipes a hand through the blood pouring out of the wound in his arm, smears it over the holes in his chest, and then drops his head back into the sand. He can hear the sound of the hostile victor approaching, it’s seconds away. He wants to stay conscious enough to play dead, tries, can’t.

Day Five

He wakes in the dark and knows he’s alone. For a long, long stretch he lies still, listening, trying desperately to calm the thud of his heart, to find a way to override the throbbing pain in his arm and the way that every single breath aggravates what he’s sure is three cracked ribs. The sky above him is blessedly clear, stars bright and useful, and the moon is almost full. Tab gives a brief glance to the victor, thinks I should go back for their dog tags, Don will want their dog tags , and just can’t. He hauls himself to his feet, doesn’t fight the way his vision whites out with the pain, pinpoints the stars he needs, and starts to walk. 

Day Six

He walks until he knows he’ll die if he keeps going, and then he keeps going.

Day Seven

Nothing hurts anymore. It’s not a good sign. 

The moon’s dipping, slight buzz of pink growing on the far, far distant horizon, and Tab has no idea how far he’s got left, no idea how far off-course he’s got, but feels like there’s a good chance he’s close enough that if he dies now they’ll find him on patrol. He wonders briefly whether he wants Easy to find his body, or if he’d rather it was someone else. He doesn’t know.

Then the sun rises, hauls itself up over the lip of the cradle of civilisation, and he can see the hulking sprawl of the camp on the horizon. He cries, except there’s nothing left in his body to make tears. It’s maybe ten klicks. He can do that, he’s pretty sure.

Almost every face at the fence is a stranger, and Tab feels suddenly like maybe he isn’t back, maybe he’s gone wrong, maybe he died after all, and then he can hear Lieutenant Welsh shouting at the top of his lungs, hears Chuck oh god Chuck, how bad has it been these last few days, shouting for a medic, and then there’s Roe and he’s moving towards him and all of a sudden he knows that if he lets Doc touch him he’s done, and he can’t be done yet, because he hasn’t brought Nixon back to Winters, and that was his fucking job. 

Tab’s yelling, has no idea what it is he’s saying, can barely see the faces in front of him, but then the crowd is shifting again and there’s a figure coming towards him, tall and lean and red-headed. Tab tries to move, takes a step, and it’s a step too far. His knees give out and he crumples, bleeding out onto the sand at Dick Winters’ feet.

Chapter Text

Day Seven, continued

Tab delivers his report and Chuck holds him the whole time, hands gripping tight in the ruins of his uniform blouse as Doc Roe monitors the IV and works his way through the worst of the shrapnel wounds. Tab’s speaking to Speirs, but his eyes flick to Dick every couple of seconds, as if he knows exactly what the words are doing to him. Dick is breathing like combat, standing like parade rest, and his face is a perfect spill of calm. Tab’s got as far as the RPG, he looks hollow and lost and like he doesn’t want to say the rest. He says it anyway.

“And then Captain Nixon came over to me,” he tells them, steady, “And he unstrapped my body armour, put this wad of papers underneath it, did it back up, checked it, checked it again, and again and again, and then he backed up…” Tab pauses here, and looks at Dick, suddenly a little unsure. “He backed up, and said ‘stand still Floyd’, and then he pulled his sidearm and shot me in the arm.”

The room recoils in shock, Harry swearing, Lipton closing his eyes. Dick stands perfectly still. Speirs indicates that Tab should keep going.

“I dropped, and then he came up a little, got the angle and the distance exactly right, and then he shot me three times in the chest, into my body armour. Then he dropped his sidearm in the sand and got the hell away from me, I managed to get the blood from my arm all over my chest and then I heard the hostile victor pulling right up, and that’s about when I passed out. I woke in the dark and I was alone.”

“Nixon shot you?” Roe says, as if confirming the information he’s been given, voice it’s usual soothing drawl.

“Yeah,” Tab says, rests his head back on Chuck’s shoulder. “Yeah, in the arm, so I was bleeding, and in the chest so I looked dead. At least I assume that’s what he was thinking. I guess he thought they were probably only looking for him, and assumed they’d kill me when they picked him up. So he killed me first, I guess. Gave me the intel and killed me, so that I’d live.”

“Fucking sneaky motherfucker,” Harry says, and his hands are shaking. “Surprised he didn’t kill you for real by accident, when’s the last time he even fired his weapon in combat, Dick?”

“Oh four,” Dick says on autopilot, covering for the way he can see the whole set-up in his mind’s eye, the way Nix must have stood there, ears ringing, blown to fuck, the best of his boys in bits, and thought the whole thing through in a matter of seconds, a wild, brutal hail Mary to save a man’s life by shooting him several times. There’s something about Tab, too, that says there’s more he’s not voicing now. 

“Fucking sneaky motherfucker is in his job description, and he’s a god damn paratrooper, he should be able to hit a reasonable-sized man in the arm over a short distance,” says Speirs, and the completely emotionless tone of his voice betrays how emotional he is. “Now pass those papers over. I’m going to take them to Sink and use them to beat him into letting me go out and get that man back. Sit tight, Talbert. Roe, call a casevac.”

“No,” Tab says, and his voice cracks on the word, he looks wild all of a sudden, like a man about to tear the walls down with his hands, “Fuck, no sir, I have to stay.”

Speirs takes the papers and looks at him for a long moment. There had been a moment, when he’d broken through the circle on Dick’s heels, that he’d seen Talbert bleeding in the sand and thought he was probably dead. He looks better than that now, but not by much.

He turns to Dick. “I’ll leave that to you to fight out. I’m going to Sink.”

Dick makes to follow him.

“Respectfully, Major Winters,” Speirs says, hand firm on his chest. “If you go in there right now he’s going to take one look at you, tell you you’re too damn close to this, and make you step down. Let me do this, Dick, it’s the only way it gets done.”

Dick knows he's right. Knows it in his bones, has known for days now that this thing that he thought wasn't an issue, that he thought he had under control, is absolutely, totally, undeniably out of hand. What he told Harry was the truth. He's compromised, irreparably, and Speirs is right. Sink will see it the minute he walks through the door. There's something shrieking and deranged living in his soul right now. Lewis is gone . Not missing. Taken. Gone. He dips his head in Speirs’ direction, acquiescence silent but unmistakable, and Speirs ducks out of the tent. Dick looks back at the rest of them, all of them watching him carefully, and gets a look at Tab, a proper look. There's an extra something living in his gaze, something cautious and sad beyond what he's already told them. There's something he's holding back, and Tab's a good man, a superlative soldier. He's not withholding relevant information, there's simply no way. Which means that Lewis said something to him, before he was taken, means that Lewis gave Tab a message to pass on to Dick, one he doesn't want to share in front of the others. All of a sudden, Dick doesn't want to hear it. He doesn't want to hear what Lewis wanted to tell him when he thought he'd reached the end of the line. 

There's something clawing inside of him, like he just found out that God was a lie, like some incontrovertible fact of the universe has just been disproven, gravity is push not pull, the earth goes round the moon. He doesn't know what he would say to Nix, what message he would send, if he knew he'd never see him again. He doesn't want to hear what Nix wanted to tell him, doesn't want last words. 

He has to hear them, though. Nix gave them to Tab, wanted them said, and he cannot, can't, won't, force Tab to wear them in silence. Not looking at his face.

“Everyone out,” he says. “Lip, Harry, round the men up and tell them what we know. Doc, go see about restocking, we'll need it. Grant…”

“I'm staying right here,” Chuck says, mutinous. “Sir.”

“Grant,” says Dick again, tone soft. “Go and make sure there's someone with Malarkey. Make sure he has whatever he needs. Please.”

“I didn’t go back for their tags,” Tab says, and he sounds out of it, for a moment, like this is something he can’t quite comprehend. “I thought about it, I knew Don would want them, but I… I didn’t go back through the victor to get them. I should have gone and got their tags. Fuck, I should have… Chuck, I…”

“Shut up,” says Chuck and he sounds like he might cry or kill someone. “Shut the fuck up, for god’s sake. I’m gonna go check on Don. You stay right here, don’t you fucking go anywhere, you sit on that cot and wait for your fuckin’ casevac and if you’re not right where I left you when I get back I swear to god I’ll kill you, and at your funeral I’ll tell your mom all about that girl in Holland.”

“Not getting casevaced,” Tab says with a little slur of exhaustion. “Not goin’ anywhere. Not ever lettin’ you talk to my mom.”

Chuck moves Tab out of his lap, settles him on the cot with the sort of care Dick has seen his sisters use with their newborn babies, and leaves, looking a little less like he’s going to stage a sit-in, but the message in his gaze is unmistakable. Do not let him out of your sight. Dick has a creeping suspicion that Tab is going to be the casevac from hell.

“Alright,” he says, when they’re alone. “Tell me the rest of it.”

Tab sits up, even though it looks like it hurts him. He’s staring right at Dick, eyes strangely distant. Dick’s aware that whatever words come out of his mouth, whatever is said next, this is the end to the plausible deniability, this is the end to no telling, this is the end to him being able to tell himself that there’s nothing going on, that this is nothing, that whatever has happened, whatever thing this is that they’ve never even spoken about, this is the end to pretending it isn’t happening. 

Dick’s hands are shaking. Tab rubs a hand through his hair.

“He said, ‘Tell Dick I’m sorry’,” Tab says. “And then he said ‘God, I’m so fucking sorry’, and then he said ‘stand still Floyd’, and he shot me.”

Sorry for what? Sorry for Muck and Penkala, sorry for shooting Talbert? Sorry for not coming back? Sorry for this thing they’ve been not doing, for the way they’ve been for years without being anything, sorry for doing it, sorry for not doing it? Sorry for all the years Dick will now have without him? Sorry for what?

“I don’t know, sir,” says Tab, and Dick can’t bring himself to care about how much of that he must have said out loud. Whatever’s on his face must be dreadful, because Tab says, “I’m sorry too, Dick, god I’m so sorry. I should have…”

There’s nothing he could have done. Nothing. The man on the bed in front of him is the best damn soldier he’s ever met and he walked almost two hundred klicks with broken ribs and a gunshot wound and a thousand shards of metal and glass and bone imbedded in his body, through the desert, with no food and no water. If there was anything that could have been done, he would have done it.

“There was nothing you could have done, Floyd.”

“I should have realised that his plan was to fucking shoot me, and I should have told him not to, and then I should have taken one of the grenades off his chest strap and hurled it at the fucking victor, and got him the hell out of there.”

“Your aim usually any good when you’ve been blown up, First Sergeant?”

Tab glares at him. “I should have done something. I told him I wasn’t going to come back here and tell you I left him in the desert and then I left him in the fucking desert, god I’m so fucking sorry.”

Somehow, Tab’s distress makes Dick feel calmer. “He shot you, Tab, you didn’t leave him anywhere, he shot you four times, and you got up and walked for three days through the desert with no water to tell us what happened.”

“I should have been faster.”

“How? Should you have grown wings? Manifested a jet pack? How in the hell could you have done any better, Floyd? It’s a miracle you didn’t die.”

There’s a long, long silence. “Skip and Alex are dead,” he says. 

There’s nothing Dick can say to that, nothing at all. He sits down on the cot next to Tab, wraps an arm around him, and they sit in silence until Doc Roe comes back.

“I’m not getting casevaced,” Tab says when Roe comes through the tent.

“Like fuck are you combat effective, First Sergeant,” says Roe, “Take the fucking helo, Tab, for god’s sake.”

Tab gives him a look of complete and utter disdain. “It’s a through-and-through to the upper arm and some bruises, Eugene, I have to stay here. Dick, tell him, I’m not leaving, for Christ’s sake, I have to stay here!”

“You’re severely dehydrated, you’ve lost a fucktonne of blood, you’re covered in cuts and shrapnel, there’s a fucking skull fragment in your thigh, Floyd, at least one of those bruises is a cracked rib and if you don’t end up with an infection it’ll be a fucking miracle.”

There’s a skull fragment in his thigh. He’s got a piece of skull in his thigh, one of his friends’ skulls, Skip or Alex, a piece of their skull in his thigh. He thinks he might be sick, if there was anything in his stomach to throw up.

“Transfuse me, put me on an IV. Give me twelve hours, Gene. Dick, give me twelve hours, please. You can’t ship me out, I have to stay here. I have to stay here. For fuck’s sake.”

There’s a long, eloquent look between Major and medic, and then Roe sighs.

“Fucking stubborn paratroopers,” he mutters. “Twelve hours, Tab, and if I’m not happy with you at that point I’m calling a helo and you’re getting the fuck out of here whether you like it or not.”

**

Speirs comes back ten minutes later and his face is a rictus mask of fury.

“What?” Dick says, and he’s reaching for his rifle, it’s a combat face.

“He agreed to send a team out,” Speirs spits, and he’s curling his lip back over his teeth in an expression more commonly associated with end-runs through open fire zones, “But it won’t be us. He’s spoken to the 17th Airborne, Nixon was in contact with their intelligence man, they’re sending him with a team.”

“What?”

“Dick, I swear to god, I fucking begged the man. He wouldn’t budge, he doesn’t want Easy anywhere near this, or any of the rest of the 506. I have no idea what Nix was chasing, but Sink wants none of it. I pushed back as hard as I could. He gave me a count of fuckin’ five, like I was a small child, and told me if I wanted to keep my company I’d fall the fuck in line.”

“So you fell the hell in line,” Dick says, almost under his breath. 

“We’re due to send patrols out,” Speirs says. “I’m pushing the perimeter, we’ll head out towards their last position, see how fast we can go, see if we can get close. I don’t give a fuck what he says, we’re not giving up.”

Dick stares at him. “Ron…”

“We’re not giving up until we have him back, Dick. I swear to fucking God.”

**

Chapter Text

Day Seven, part Three

It’s the longest day of his life before the sun is even high in the sky. Chuck lets go of him and Bill takes hold instead, and Don Malarkey is standing in the dust, staring at Tab, a man who looks like he’s just been spat out by hell, and in the minutes after the dull shock wears off a little, all he can think is this is going to be a long, long day. It’s the first day of his life since he’s had them that he doesn’t have Skip and Alex. All the rest of his days are going to be like that now, he’s pretty sure. What a bizarre thought. 

Bill doesn’t let go of him, even when Tab drops to the ground, he twitches like he wants to grab him, but he keeps his hand tight on Don’s arm and Bill is never going to be Skip and Alex, but jesus fuck is Don grateful for him in that moment. He can’t keep his thoughts straight, it’s like a whirlwind of strands of consciousness hurtling round in his head and he keeps getting caught on the sharp edges of something tangential and inconsequential, the idea that he’ll have to eat the peanut butter MREs instead of giving them to Skip now, the fact that he just bought a new console for their house and will now have no one to play it with.

Chuck picks Tab up like he’s not six foot and pushing 180, and carries him to the aid tent. Don thinks to himself, I could have carried Skip like that, but not Alex. Heavy motherfucker. He wonders dimly if this is what Buck felt like, when he lost his mind. He doesn’t feel like he’s lost his mind. He doesn’t feel much of anything at all. Mainly, he’s confused, because this is the strangest thing that has ever happened to him. And it hasn’t even officially happened yet, has it?

It does happen, though. They trail after Chuck with Tab in his arms and huddle around the door of the aid tent. Don sits, because he can’t remember why he isn’t supposed to, and Bill moves his hand from his wrist to his shoulder and the rest of them are looking at him like they’re trying not to look at him. They’re absolutely silent, listening.

“Muck and Penkala are dead,” Tab says, exactly as Don knew he would.

That’s that, then, he thinks to himself, and gets up off the floor and on with the rest of his life.

He’s stripping his rifle for the third time in a row when Lip finds him. His Lieutenant looks grim, face wearing the grief and compassion that makes him too fucking good for the army, and he doesn’t do anything much, just sits down on the mat next to Don’s, the one that was Alex’s, and double-checks his work.

“We’re all here,” he says, and his voice is soft. “If you need us.”

Not all of you, Don thinks. “I know,” he says. “Thank you. Tab going to be ok?”

Lip rolls a shoulder. “He was walking for three days with a bullet in his arm, broken ribs, a body full of shrapnel and no food or water. When I left he was arguing that he doesn’t need a casevac.”

Don snorts. Fucking typical. “Nothing says ‘combat effective’ like being literally hours away from death.” There’s a little pause, and then Don speaks again. “We’re going to go and get Nixon, right?”

“The Captain is with Sink now,” Lip says. “Want me to stay here with you? Or send someone in?”

He thinks about it. He’s going to be alone a fair bit, from now on, Don reckons. “No I’m good,” he says. “I’ll come back with you. Rifle won’t get any cleaner.”

**

Harry works very hard on focusing on the fact that Nix dealt with this like an utter fucking badass, rather than the fact that he’s gone. He does an alright job, pulls himself the fuck together and goes out to face the men. And then he’s there, standing in front of them, and has no idea what to say. The way they’re looking at him, they know it.

“Let’s not bother pretending you didn’t hear any of that. Speirs has gone to see Sink. We’ll have answers and a plan shortly.”

“Is Tab going to be alright?” Pat Christenson asks.

Harry lets himself laugh. “He’s currently attempting to convince Major Winters that he’s combat effective. He’s beat to hell but he’s going to be fine.”

There's a little ripple of amusement through the company, the sort of tired dark laughter that comes of extended periods of terror. They’ve been in country a long time, no one’s slept in days, and Skip Muck and Alex Penkala are dead. Everyone is going to be wrecked for a while, and they’re god damn paratroopers, they don’t get to be wrecked. So they’ll be weird instead, laughing at the wrong things and kicking the shit out of each other for fun. They’re deranged, devious, deviants, and Harry loves them so fucking much he’d die for each and every one of them. Even Cobb.

Speirs comes back then, and he’s got the look of a man who’s going to fucking kill someone.

“Wait,” he snaps, and goes back into the tent. 

They wait.

He comes back five minutes later and the expression is worse.

“Saddle up, gents. It’s a negative on going after Nixon so we’re doubling up on patrols and we’ll go out further and wider than before.”

“We’re not going after Nixon?!”

Speirs bares his teeth. “Sink’s spoken to the 17th Airborne. Apparently their spook was working with Captain Nixon and they’re sending him out with a team.”

“Cos sending the intelligence man with a team worked so fucking well for us,” says Bill, vicious under his breath. 

Speirs gives him a very particular type of look that says I completely agree now shut the fuck up . “Patrols, gentlemen,” he says, “If it’s not too much damn trouble?”

They scatter.

Watching them go, Speirs stays where he is, standing close enough to Harry to lean over and take a cigarette from his top pocket. There's a moment where he waits, like Lip is going to materialise and light it for him, and then he doesn't and Speirs smiles mockingly at himself. He lights his own smoke, takes a drag and then passes it to Harry.

“Dick looks like he's going to die,” he says, conversationally. “If I ask you how you're doing, how badly will you fuck me up?”

Harry gives him a long, steady look. “We need to find him before I have to write my wife and tell her we lost him.”

Kitty Welsh materialises in the desert then, all dimples and love and terrible, terrible terribleness, and yeah, no one wants her to get that letter.

There are footsteps in the sand behind them - Lip materialising just a little late for the cigarette, and Malarkey on his four, wearing the same strange look of almost mundane acceptance as before. They're both looking at him like they're hopeful he'll say something that makes any of this any better, and he just doesn't have it, so instead he briefly recaps Sink's abysmal excuse for a plan, and then tells Lip he's leading a round of patrols. Malarkey straightens up, pulling his rifle across his chest.

“Not you, Sergeant,” Speirs says automatically.

Malarkey looks like he's going to throw something. “I'm fine, sir. You can't bench me now.”

“You're not benched,” Speirs says. “You're just not going out today.”

There is no way in hell that I'm sending you out to potentially find the dismembered bodies of your best friends unless I can help it, and I can help it, he thinks, and sees the same thought on Lip's face. 

“Stay here and keep an eye on Talbert,” Speirs continues. “He seems to think he's combat effective, so feel free to sit on him if you feel it's necessary to keep him in bed. I'm not willing to cross Doc Roe on this.”

Malarkey nods, resigned. He looks bizarre, like a strange fun-house-mirror version of how you'd expect grief like that to look, and he's functioning, which is not what Speirs had expected to be the case when they got this news. But then again, Don Malarkey is a paratrooper. They're all functioning, somehow.

The patrols go out, lead by Harry and Bill, both wearing expressions of almost feral resolve, and Dick disappears into his tent with his own thoughts. Don stands and looks north for a few minutes, and then goes in to sit with Tab. 

The first glimpse of him had been a mortal wound - even ruined he was unmistakably not either of Don's boys - but the reality of him bruised and battered and blown to fuck is in a way a balm. Tab's thin, even after three days, skin waxy and sallow and stretched tight over his bones, filthy with sweat and blood and grime from the probably countless times he fell and pulled himself back up. 

He’s half asleep, lying on the cot, head tipped back with his filthy hair falling over his face. He looks like a man who's trying to rest, knows he needs to rest and can't quite turn his brain off. Don stands in the doorway for a minute and then walks in, sits himself down on the floor at the foot of the bed and tilts his head back so that it rests against Tab’s shins. He waits, because he can't think of what he wants to say and he doesn't want to say the wrong thing, or anything, doesn't know what he's supposed to say here. What do you say to a man who is a miracle but not the miracle you wanted? He knows that Tab definitely knows he's not the miracle Don wanted. They're still friends though, they've always been friends, they've been friends for years and Tab isn't dead. That is a miracle.

“I'm really sorry Don,” his voice is rough, he sounds exhausted, he sounds like he got blown to fuck. “There wasn't anything I could do for them. I’m really sorry.”

Don sighs. “Can you tell me,” he pauses, hand over his face. “Was it an IED?”

Tab shakes his head and it rocks the bed a little. “No. No it was an RPG, came out of nowhere. Nixon shouted ‘bail’, I got out just in time and they were in the back and they didn't.”

Quick, then, Don thinks to himself. Really, really quick, so quick they might not even have known it was happening.

“What were you doing just before?” he asks, because some strange bit of himself wants to know, wants to know what their last moments were like, the last the last hour in which Skip Muck and Alex Penkhala were alive, what were they doing?

Tab laughs. “We were singing,” he says, “Been singing all morning actually, because we were so damn relieved everything had gone off alright, and we were bringing Winters back his wife, and we were singing. We sang… Shit, I can’t remember. I think, I think when it happened we had just finished singing ‘Born in the USA’.”

Don puts his head in his hands just for a moment, and then lets out a shaky breath. “Well,” he says, “Not a bad note to finish on.” He hasn’t cried yet. He wonders whether he’ll cry at all.

** 

Dick locks himself in his office and spends the day working through all the paperwork that's piled up in the past week; all the tiny inconsequential details, all the forms, the requisitions, the logbooks, medical cases - the things he leaves until they're not in country on any other tour, the things he hands over, the things he lets Nixon ‘lose’ - he sits and works his way through every single piece of paper because he knows deep in his soul that forcing himself to do his job is the only way he's he's going to be able to stop himself doing something that costs him his job.

If he goes near Sink now, he's leaving the army with a dishonourable discharge.

After an hour or so the patrols come back in. They weren't expected back until much closer to the end of the day and the look on every face tells a clear story -  they did not get what they wanted.

“Fucking shamal,” says Liebgott and he looks like if he'd have it his way he’d concrete over the desert. “Couldn't see shit even though we weren't in it. Had to turn around and come back.”

The shamall rolls in towards them and before long they're all in their tents, tucked together, waiting it out, using their jerryrigged exercise equipment, writing letters, trying to sleep, needling at each other in the way that they do when there's no one around they can kill and get away with it. 

“If you were ever going to give in and fight him,” Johnny says quietly to Bull, looking over at where Bill is practicing throwing his knife at a sharpie-bullseye on the side of a crate, “I think now would be a good time.”

Bull hums low in his throat, as if he's thinking about it properly. He wouldn't be, if it had been anyone but Johnny, but it was, so he is.

“Might be that you're right,” he says, slow. “‘Cept Johnny I think if I try it right now there's a good chance I break his neck.”

Johnny huffs a laugh. “Yeah,” he says. “I don't think we need to shut him up that badly.”

**

Dark comes fast under the rolling red sky of the shamal, and for the first night in a week no one seems inclined to fight the end of the day. There's nothing to stay awake for. They're not waiting for anything anymore. 

By the time Dick gets back to the officers’ tent, Lip and Speirs are already asleep. He settles himself down on his cot and forces himself to think of nothing, repeating the word over and over again, a desperate drumbeat. He cannot think about Nix, about what might be happening to him. They took him alive , he thinks despite himself, because they need to know what he knows. It's the thought he's been fighting. There is no good outcome. If Nix tells them what he knows, he compromises the troops on the ground, and the insurgents kill him. If he doesn't tell them what he knows, they torture him until he breaks, or they kill him. Either way he's dead. Could be dead already. Dick thinks if he looked in a mirror he'd look just like Malarkey. 

Muck and Penkala, he thinks, and says a quick prayer.

Harry comes through the door of the tent at that moment, exhaustion written in every single line of his body. He looks over at Dick, very obviously not asleep, and makes a face that's all fury. Harry pushes his cot right up against Dick's, lies down next to him and then reaches over, takes him firmly by the wrist, and drags Dick up against him, wrapping an arm around his waist and tucking his face into the pillow behind Dick's red hair.

“Not a fucking word,” he says, and Dick nods.

Day Eight 

“What do you think the odds are on him still being alive?” 

“Shut the fuck up, Cobb, you absolute psycho. We're not betting on this!”

“Did I ask you to put money on it?”

“I know exactly what you meant, you motherfucker.”

“If he's not dead already he's wishing he was.”

It's what they're all thinking. Cobb tells Speirs he tripped over a crate when he asks what the hell happened to his face.

Day Nine 

“Do you think he knew?”

Harry looks up from the report he's failing to finish, and stares at Dick. “What do you mean?” he asks, even though he already knows.

“Lewis,” Dick says, and the name is like a benediction on his lips. “Do you think he knew?”

Knew I love him. Knew he was going to die. Knew we'd never stop looking for him. Knew this would ruin me. 

“Yes,” Harry says, and bites savagely at the dead skin on the side of his thumbnail. “Yes Dick, he knew.”

**

Chapter Text

Day Ten

Speirs strides into the mess tent at the end of breakfast, fixes his company with a look that could kill, makes a round-up gesture with one finger and strides out again, trailing sergeants and lieutenants in various states of calm.

“His face reminds me some of the time my dog ate a bee,” says Shifty, contemplatively.

Popeye hums agreement. Webster looks over his shoulder to make sure Speirs wasn't in earshot.

Outside the tent, Speirs summons the NCOs into an empty patch of dirt and has them circle up.

“I was called in by Colonel Sink this morning,” he says, and his voice is a vicious thing. “He brought to my attention the fact that our patrols of late have been deviating from designated areas, and taking longer than they ought.”

There's a little shuffle of discomfort through the assembled men. 

“He'd like me to remind you all that each patrol should stick to its assigned sector, and should take no more than three hours, unless engaged or otherwise waylaid. There is to be,” and here his lip curls. “No more dawdling.”

“Dawdling!” scoffs Johnny Martin, at the horrific hilarity of the word being applied to their attempts to make a 400km round trip in under three hours in battered victors, over sand.

“What are we going to do then?” asks Christenson.

“We could leapfrog?” says Guarnere, obviously thinking hard. “Or, we could get Doc Roe to quarantine a couple of us, say he thinks we have measles or some shit, stick us under cammie nets in the back and get us as far out as we can, then we hoof it the rest of the way? Joe and I could probably cover 200 klicks in 24hrs if we had to.”

Speirs gives him an appraising look. “That's a remarkably resourceful strategy, sergeant,” he says. “And while it's tempting, permitting you to carry it out would be tantamount to mutiny.”

“That's a no on paper, then sir?” says Bill, looking like a man ready to go.

“It's a fucking solid no, Guarnere, on paper and carved into your fucking flesh if I think you're not taking me seriously.”

“Solid copy,” says Bill, and spits in the sand.

Luz shifts from foot to foot. “Sir,” he says, cautious. “Obviously I never would, obviously, and you'd never ask me to, but theoretically, what if I could get hold of a radio channel for the Red Devils? Colonel Dobie had a soft spot for Nixon the size of Texas, and the Brits were heading north when we saw them last.”

Speirs hums. “You never would and I'd never ask you to but if it were to happen by accident I wouldn't weep.”

Luz grins. “You know me sir, very accident prone.”

“Indeed,” says Speirs.

**

“You've known them longer than I have,” Speirs says later that day, taking Harry's cigarette out of his hand before he's had a chance to smoke it. “In your expert opinion, how close are we to a mutiny?”

Harry gives him a long, calculating look. “Speaking to my CO, or my friend?”

Speirs makes an expansive gesture that tells him absolutely nothing. 

“In my expert opinion,” Harry says, “If we don't get something concrete by the end of the day I'm leading the mutiny myself.”

It's what he'd expected to hear. Neither of them have been with Easy since the very beginning, but Harry’s been there longer than Speirs himself has, and there’s absolutely no denying that he counts both Winters and Nixon as his closest friends. He’s not like Winters, either, who is wearing his grief and horror relatively close to his chest. Harry is not a cookie-cutter officer, he’s never been circumspect or reserved a day in his life, he’s had the respect of the men from the very first day by being just as much of a feral renegade as the rest of them, and he’s been wearing his rage all over his face. No one is asking him how he’s coping with the loss of Nixon because no one wants to have their nose broken, but he’s not exactly hiding it.

“Harry,” Speirs says, and he’s choosing his words with a lot more care than usual. “Going back to the victor is recovery only. He’s not going to be there, and if he is he’ll be dead.”

Harry spits. “Trust me, I’m well aware.”

The subtext is startlingly clear. When Harry has enough, and leads the mutiny, he’s not going to do it by halves. He’s not going for recovery, he’s going to burn the world down, he’s going for blood. Speirs feels a little cold, a little afraid, in a way he isn’t used to. They’ll follow Harry to the ends of the earth, no matter what it costs them.

“Don’t make me write to Kitty,” he says, instead of Jesus Christ, don’t get yourself killed, because he knows exactly who he’s dealing with.

There’s a long silence. “Kitty would know as well as I do that unless he’s already dead, every single minute we spend not getting him back is a minute he’s being fucking tortured.” Harry’s voice is very steady, his face very still, hands relaxed. He looks like he might kill someone.

“Luz will find the Red Devils,” Speirs says. “Dobie’s a fucking bloodhound, and he likes Nix.”

“Not enough to go AWOL for him though,” Harry points out. “Any intel he gets will still need to be actioned by us.”

This is undeniably true. 

“I’m surprised Dick hasn’t gone already,” Speirs says. 

For a moment, the rage on Harry’s face is superseded by something much more like the grief Lipton has been wearing when it’s just officers, something open and compassionate and steeped in sadness.

“Me too,” Harry says. “I keep waking up in the morning expecting him to have gone in the night. I think the only reason he hasn’t is that Nix loves the boys as much as he does and Dick knows he’d tell him to stay with them.”

I don’t think I know what love is supposed to feel like, Speirs thinks distantly, because I doubt it’s meant to be like this, complete devotion from one man to a hundred. 

“When you reach your limit,” he says to Harry instead of voicing this thought. “Come to me. There’s no going alone.”

They’re silent for a long time after that. Speirs can’t read whatever is on Harry’s face, but hopes it’s not what’s playing on his mind, every video he’s ever seen, blurry and grainy with a man scared out of his mind, everything he’s ever read about insurgency torture tactics, everything he suspects Nix might know about US troop movements and the sheer chaos that knowledge could cause in the wrong hands. 

He shot Tab because he was confident that if they took him he wouldn’t break, Speirs reminds himself. He’s rarely wrong. It’s not really a comforting thought.

**

The afternoon wears on. Lipton takes a round of patrols out and, after a look from his Captain, checks each victor thoroughly at the gate. Bill Guarnere sits behind the wheel of his Humvee with a feral smile on his face as he sees him doing it. The mutiny is right fucking there , so close they can taste it.

Tab’s on his feet, but banned from PT or patrols, sitting around the camp overflowing with frustration. He’s shaky, exhausted, dosing in the sunshine most of the time with a rotating cast of savage nursemaids stalking a wide perimeter around him. 200 klicks through the desert, blown to fuck, bleeding out, broken ribs, no water , someone will mutter to themselves or someone else every now and then, Jesus fuck. He looks like hell. Bull doesn’t get more than ten metres from him at any point in time, even though he’s insisting on walking by himself. 

“Combat effective my sweet arse,” Webster says under his breath to Liebgott, as they sit in the shade of the tent, just out of earshot, working their way through the list of radio channels Luz left when he went on patrol. “He needs to be in a fucking hospital.”

“Less about your sweet arse, more about the fucking radio,” Liebgott hisses back. “Just because you’d call a medevac for a splinter doesn’t mean we’re all pussies.”

There’s a brief and very mature shoving contest. Bull turns round from where he’s stripping his rifle, and Tab’s replacement, and gives them both a look that says, very clearly, I could snap you like a twig, behave. They do.

“Everything feels so god damn normal,” Bull says quietly to Joe Toye. “It’s making me itch.”

**

Luz reaches the Red Devils towards the end of the afternoon. They’ve been shipped out, they’re in a staging area heading for home. Dobie promises to keep an ear out and let them know if he hears anything, but the hollow note to his voice tells them he’s not particularly optimistic.

“Tell Winters I’m sorry to hear it,” he says, crackly down the shitty line. “Nixon was a damn fine soldier.”

Luz puts the receiver down, sits with the past tense for a moment, and then kicks the pole of the tent so hard the side caves in.

**

Dick finds out that Luz contacted the Red Devils at the same time he finds out they can’t be any help, and finds the disappointment all twined up with the sick, slick feeling he gets at recalling that one shared mission, those two dark heads bent together, the soft sound of their laughter and Dobie’s hand skating carelessly low across Nix’s back, as if it belonged there. 

I did nothing, he thinks. For years, I did nothing. I thought we’d have time.

**

The 17th Airborne arrive at the camp just before dusk. There aren’t many of them, not after their disastrous latest mission, and every man jack of them looks like he could lay down in the sand and never move again. 

“Should we ask them?” Grant wonders aloud, into the silent gathering of men watching the slow procession of victors through the gate.

Standing at his shoulder, Lipton shakes his head. “No. Let their CO speak to Captain Speirs. We need to be slick about this, we need all our information in one place, no rumours or miscommunication. One channel only, alright?”

“And just fucking look at them,” Toye says under his breath. “Most of them look as bad as Tab. They look like they need to be left the fuck alone.”

The 17th’s CO finds Speirs only a handful of minutes after they arrive, taking him by the arm and pulling him away from the men. He’s speaking fast, there’s this little thrum of frantic, frenetic energy to the way his hands are moving as he talks as if he’s only got so much left in him and is trying to get this done before he can’t do any more. Speirs’ face is unexpectedly soft, open, and he puts a hand on the man’s arm as he speaks, settling him. They stand there, in silence, for a long moment, and then the 17th’s CO hands Speirs something, and walks away. Speirs holds whatever it is in the palm of his hand for a long moment, tilts his head back up to the sky, dark dropping like a parachute, and then puts it in his pocket and strides back to the men.

“Welsh,” he says, and Harry snaps to. “Go and get Major Winters and meet me at Colonel Sink’s office.”

“Sir,” Harry says smartly, and takes off at speed.

Speirs turns to Lipton. “You’re with me, Carwood,” he says. He walks away from the men, Lipton on his heels, and as they get closer to Sink’s tent he stops. “Whatever happens in there,” he says, “Whatever is said, your job is to make sure that Welsh and Winters walk out of that tent with their military careers intact. Whatever you have to do to make that happen, Carwood, you do it. Understood?”

“Solid copy, sir,” Lip says. “Whatever you need.”

Thank fuck for you, Carwood Lipton. It’s not the first time he’s had that thought.

They meet Harry and Dick outside Sink’s tent. Harry’s bouncing on the balls of his feet, Dick is perfectly still. They’re two extremes of a spectrum, always have been, and the absence of Nixon as the balance between them is suddenly very stark. 

“Gentlemen,” Speirs says, sardonic, and ushers them into the tent.

Sink is starting to look old. He sits back in his chair, watches them with no trepidation, because he’s a soldier through and through, but it’s clear all over his face, he’s not looking forward to this conversation. Speirs pauses for a second, glancing quickly behind him to where Lip is stationed carefully between Dick and Harry, and then starts speaking. He keeps his report brief and perfectly factual, he’s every inch the famously cold captain that the legends paint him as. He tells Sink that he’s had the report from the 17th Airborne. They found Nixon’s victor, almost exactly where Tab said it would be, and two sets of remains they presume were Muck and Penkhala. There’s a little shift behind him, Lipton, or maybe Dick, and then they still, and he continues. The 17th called for body retrieval and waited while it happened, and then picked up the trail of two victors, presumably the insurgents, and tracked them to a small settlement around 150 klicks north. They requested permission to infiltrate and were denied, and instead observed, until pulled back.

“Their CO said they couldn’t be absolutely certain, but that he was pretty sure Nix was there. They wanted to infiltrate but their Battalion wanted to pull them south.”

Harry makes a noise in the back of his throat. Speirs feels rather than hears the way Lip moves a little closer to him. 

“He gave me the location of the village,” Speirs said. “They left only a few hours ago. If we leave at first light there’s a good chance Nixon will still be there. With your permission, sir, I’m going to take the company north at dawn, infiltrate the village and retrieve Captain Nixon.”

There’s a thrumming pause. Sink steeples his fingers.

“Denied, Captain.”

Lip takes Harry by the wrist. Thank fuck for you. Dick’s stopped combat breathing, it’s a shallow little gasp now, a horribly delicate thing. Lip reaches for him too, one hand firm on his shoulder. Speirs squares up.

“Sir?”

“Easy is a specialist airborne unit,” Sink says, and he sounds old too. He didn’t sound that old a week ago. “This is not an appropriate use of the company, Captain.”

The words land like an RPG, Speirs only just manages not to flinch. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Lip with a hand firmly over Harry’s mouth. Lieutenant Welsh looks like he might bite.

“Out,” Speirs snaps, and gives Harry a shove, pushing them out of the tent and dropping back to stand next to Dick, shoulder steady against his. Dick’s breathing shallowly, hands tight against his own arms.

“Not an appropriate use of the company,” Dick echoes, and his voice is a rigid thing.

Speirs wonders if Sink has any idea how close he is to having his throat ripped out.

“No, Major Winters. I’ve spoken to the CO over in the 5th Marines, they’ve got a company not far from the location, they’ll go take a look.”

“Take a look?”

Sink sighs. “Dick, I know you and Captain Nixon have always been close. And you know I like the man, I’ve always had a great deal of respect for him. But we have to be realistic here. Chances of him still being alive are slim, and he’s one man. I can’t justify sending the entire company after him, when odds are he’s been dead for days.”

Dick looks like he might actually fall down at the words, and Speirs has the horrible, creeping realisation of just how bad this is. They’re in serious trouble.

Lip’s back in the tent, he wraps a hand around Dick’s upper arm, tugs.

“Go,” Speirs says, and they go.

Thank fuck for you, Carwood Lipton.

“Sir,” he says, turning back to Sink, and lets all the fury and desperation fall out of his voice. “Respectfully, sir, you have to let me take the men after him. This is his company, god damn it, these are his men, I cannot ask them to sit here and wait while you send in the Marines!”

Sink pushes himself up on his desk. “Captain Speirs, this is my company. You do not ask those men to do anything. You get your orders and you follow them, god damn it. I said, permission denied. I’m sorry it wasn’t what you wanted to hear, but that’s the order.”

“Sir.”

**

All the men are huddled in one tent, a space for 40 fitting 100, and there’s no sign of the officers. Speirs tells them what the 17th’s CO told him, and then he tells them Sink’s response. They sit in silence, staring up at him, every single face the flat blank that comes with bad orders, and he’s sick to his stomach when he realises they knew this was coming. Sink’s going to lose this whole damn outfit , he thinks to himself. If he hasn’t lost them already. Not a single one of these men is going to trust Command ever again.

“5th Marines are a good outfit,” he says, and it feels fucking empty even as the words come out of his mouth.

They nod, grim and quiet, and he hates his job for the first time ever. He dismisses them then, and as they get up and walk out past him, he sees Malarkey.

“Sergeant, a minute?”

Malarkey follows him out of the tent and stands off to one side, face sallow and skeletal under the flood lights.

“What can I do for you, sir?” he asks, sounding so close to normal the difference would be lost on a stranger.

Speirs reaches into his pocket. “The 17th retrieved these from Nixon’s victor,” he says, “I thought you might want to have them.”

Don puts his hand out, on autopilot, and Speirs passes him two bloody tags, and a few inches of rosary beads. He stares at them for a moment, lying in his palm, and then closes his eyes, swallows, takes a deep breath.

“Thank you sir,” he says, and walks away.

**

Chapter Text

Day Two

He walks away from the victor into the gathering dark and tries not to feel utterly impotently furious. He's got a job to do, he's got a mission to work towards, he has things to find out, intelligence to gather, things he needs to do his job. He needs to do his job right now.  He doesn't have time to be thinking about Talbert and his mother-henning and his career-ending implications. Nixon takes a breath, realises he's been walking with purpose and no direction and orients himself. Grounds himself. Takes a moment to feel the frustration, to sit in the inevitable understanding that his personal life is common property, and then gets on with his job. 

It’s seamless, the slide from man to soldier, he shrugs on the mantle like it was made for him, because it was. This is the life he’s built for himself, carved it out from OCS with Dick at his side, course-correcting until they’ve slotted into their perfect positions, two men made for war, one for leading, one for all the things you forget a war needs. Nix moves through the dark like a ghost, two klicks on foot, swift, silent and deadly even though he’d have never even thought of being a Marine. Damn Marines. The objective is close, it’s simple, tiny settlement, one man left behind with the intel he needs, not expecting any trouble. He’s dead before he knows he’s in danger and then Nix is sweeping the papers into a pile, tucking them into his uniform, committing the map on the wall to memory, and then he’s out on the sand again, heart pounding and hands shaking the way they always do when he’s done. He wipes his knife on the sand because he doesn’t want blood on his cammies.

He’s back to the victor a little slower than he thought he might have been, thrown off-course by how long it took him to get his shit stowed when he left. They see him coming, he’s greeted by the barrel of Tab’s rifle and his puppy dog look of sheer relief. It floods off him in waves, and all the animosity he’d felt towards the First Sergeant hours before disappears immediately. Floyd is a mother-hen and a busybody and a pain in the arse, and he’s the best soldier in the company, maybe the whole battalion, and he’s a tremendous SNCO, and he loves Dick Winters like people love God, which is something Nix can relate to. 

Tab puts his foot down and the victor speeds away over the sand. Penkala in the turret is singing return of the man under his breath, and Skip leans forward over the seat and pats him on the shoulder.

“Nice to have you back, sir,” he says, all smile.

“I missed you too, Muck,” Nix tells him. 

They drive through the night until Tab starts looking a little wide-eyed, and then he calls it, pulling them off behind a scrub of trees and brush and declaring 50% watch. He sits up with Penkala, staring out into the dark with NVGs almost out of battery, in companionable silence. He’s got the same heart-pounding, achy feeling that he always does after things like this, buzzing under his skin with a desperate need for some sort of relief, release, anything. Nothing’s enough when he feels like this so he breathes through it, steady and even like Dick always does before action, and then kicks himself for thinking of Dick. Still, it’s not like he’s ever not thinking of Dick. One of those unmistakable, unavoidable facts of life.Death, taxes, sand, conflict, Richard Winters.

“Don’t think I’ve ever seen you this far away from Malarkey,” he says to Penkala, just for something to stop the train of thought. “Going through withdrawals?”

It’s a little mean, but they’ll forgive him.

Penkala snorts. “Glass houses sir, isn’t it? Skip didn’t cry himself to sleep tonight, but it was close, and I’m sure Luz will be full of how irritating Don was without us to distract him from being an aggy nightmare, but honestly sir I think this has gone rather well.”

“It’s strange to see you without your redheaded shadow,” Nix continues, needling, not really sure why.

“I repeat,” says Penkala, tone incredibly dry. “Glass houses, sir.”

Day Three

He’d told Dick three days, but it’s definitely going to be four. 

“Poor Luz,” Skip says, “Don’s gonna be a fuckin’ nightmare.”

The casual way Muck and Penkala talk about Malarkey makes Nix itchy with envy. The dynamic between them has never been in any way clarified to anyone, but the absolute devotion is clear. He wants it. He has it. It’s just not available to him. 

Day Four

He hears the RPG before he sees it and even as he’s shouting for them to bail and hurling himself out of his door, he knows Muck and Penkala aren’t going to make it. It’s always harder to get out the back of the victor in a hurry, and they didn’t have time. He’s mid-air when the hit comes and the blast throws him back, he lands hard. There’s no air left in him, the pealing hum of the explosion still battering around his skull. Nix rolls over in the sand, tries to get himself upright. Everything hurts. Some things hurt worse. He runs it down for himself quickly, head, neck, chest, arms, stomach, legs - one cracked rib and what feels like a broken tailbone. Walking wounded. 

Ears still ringing, he forces himself up. The sand is spattered with fragments of the humvee, pink mist and body parts. He can’t tell how many, knows Muck and Penkala are dead, can’t tell if Talbert is there with them. There’s blood in his eyes. There’s blood in his mouth. 

I told you three days, and today makes it four, he says in his head, and maybe I’m not coming back to you at all, Dick, I’m sorry.

He wipes his face, sand scratching against his skin, but the blood clears, and there’s Tab, on all fours in the sand, heaving up bile and blood, but breathing. Nix tries to say his name, but nothing comes out, a scratchy gasp. He shouts. It’s a little better. Tab hauls himself to his feet and vomits again. Internal bleeding?

“Did they make it out?” Tab’s voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater.

“No.”

Everything feels too close and too far away, whoever launched the RPG at them must be closing by now, he’s got minutes if not seconds to do something, anything.

“Incoming,” says Tab. Steady. Solid. Best soldier he’s ever met.

There’s a victor on the horizon. Nix takes a deep, steadying breath. There has to be some way out of this. There has to be something he can do. This is what he’s good at. This is his whole job, the loophole, the get-out-of-jail-free card. He’s the master of the plot twist. 

“Fuck,” he breathes.

The sky is brilliantly, beautifully blue. Floyd Talbert is alive in front of him, just. He’s got information that the US army desperately needs in his top pocket, and hostiles two minutes out, tops. There has to be a way out of this. There has to be something he can do. He takes another deep breath. Calm. The answer is there.

He moves across the sand, pulling the sheets of intel out of his pocket. Tab’s swaying on his feet but he’s got his eyes fixed on the incoming victor. There’s a way out of this. Nix closes the distance, unbuckles Tab’s chestplate and shoves the papers underneath it, then straps it back on. He pauses, breathes, and then checks the straps, checks the plates, pats them down, checks for any cracks or gaps, smoothes his hands over Tab’s chest again and then one more time, until he’s as sure as he can be…

And then he backs up. This is fucking insane. This is the stupidest plan he’s ever come up with. He cannot seriously be about to do this. The voice of reason in his head, the one that sounds just like Dick, tells him it’s the only way there’s even a chance of saving Talbert’s life. If they’re both taken, it will be the work of a moment for the insurgents to work out who their valuable asset is, and Tab will be dead or leverage. He deserves better. There’s the slimmest chance that Nix can give him better, that Nix can give Tab a future, give him a chance to go back to Dick and…

“Tell Dick I’m sorry,” he says, and Christ, he wishes he had better words. This is going to ruin Dick. “God,” it catches in his throat. “I’m so fucking sorry. Stand still Floyd.”

There’s a split second where he can see that Tab knows what’s about to happen, and then Nix shoots him. He does it without thinking, takes a breath and pulls the trigger, looking straight down the snub nose of his sidearm like he’s on the range. It’s the first time he’s fired his weapon in combat in years, and he’s perfect. The bullet catches Tab in the meat of his right arm, straight through, and Tab lets the impact carry him down into the stand. He doesn’t make any attempt to check the wound, lies flat on his back, still, breathing, as if he knows what’s coming next. 

Trying desperately to keep himself steady, Nix takes a step forward. Close enough so that he can be sure he’s got the angle right. Far enough back that he’s not going to pierce the chest plate. If he gets any closer he’ll be too close. He has to do this right. This has to be perfect. He breathes in, it catches in his throat. The victor is audible in the distance. He wants to say something else, something, anything. He doesn’t have it. He shoots Talbert three times in the chest. Dick’s perfect soldier, Dick’s favourite sergeant, a man with “property of Major Winters” carved on his heart. Tab doesn’t scream. Doesn’t bleed. Reaches over to his arm, swipes a hand through the blood pooling there and smears it over the bulletholes in his chest plate. The relief shuddering through him feels like a physical thing. You can always count on Tab.

The victor is yards away. Nix hurls his sidearm into the sand and staggers forwards, towards the truck, away from the body in the sand in the spreading pool of blood. They were close enough to see him do it. He just has to sell it.

There are four men in the victor and they jump out weapons up. Nix drops to his knees, hands behind his head, surrenders without being asked because he knows it’s his best chance of surviving. It happens exactly as he’d thought it would - a tall man reaches him first and hits him hard across the face with the side of his pistol. It breaks his nose. He topples over into the sand, managing to tip sideways so he can keep his mouth clear of the sand, and doesn’t fight as another man hauls his arms up behind his back, bending so his wrists are pressed together just below his shoulderblades, and zip-ties them there. It’s a vicious angle, deliberate, and if they leave him like this for long he’ll have nerve damage.

Someone else drags him up by his hair, and the first man strips him of his grenades, takes his knife, pats him down. It’s a bizarre mirror image of Tab checking him over before he’d gone off out on his mission, which had been a bizarre mirror image of Dick doing so, and all the conflicting narratives of that so-familiar set of actions makes him dizzy. There’s blood running down the back of his throat from his nose. His ribs ache. 

The fourth man makes his way across the sand to Tab’s body. Please be unconscious, Nix thinks, tracking the motion out of the corner of his eye as the man sinks a vicious kick into Tab’s ribs, please be out, please please please. Tab is motionless and silent.

“You killed him?” asks the man holding him by his hair.

Nix pulls himself together with vicious, vigorous force. “Better me fast than you slow,” he snarls.

The man laughs. Nix closes his eyes for one still, lingering moment, because he can feel it all coming up at him. He knows what happens next. He’s a US military intelligence officer. He’s not going to live much longer, and it’s not going to be pleasant.

Dick I am so sorry, he broadcasts to the universe, and then allows himself to think words he’s never let cross his mind before. I love you so much.

**

They tie his ankles, blindfold him, throw him into the bed of the truck and peal away from the remains of the victor at speed. They leave Tab lying in a pool of his own blood. Nix drifts in and out of consciousness for the majority of the drive, an hour back the way they’d come, and then they drag him out of the victor and hurl him into what feels like a hole in the ground. He lies in the dark and tries to remember the last time he spent a night alone. 

Day Five

It starts at dawn. They strip him naked and tie his hands to a hook in the wall, and then the tall man who’d pistol-whipped him the day before starts on his back with a belt. He’s careful, methodical, laying each stripe just below the one before, starting at the nape of his neck and working all the way down to his thighs, then back up, and then back down again. Nix counts in his head to start with but stops when he passes thirty. The pain is so overwhelming that it almost stops registering, the pressure and the bite a constant thrum of panic through his body. The second pass breaks the skin, he can feel the blood running down his back, and then the man turns the belt around and starts with the buckle. He screams then, can’t help it, and refuses to feel ashamed.

They don’t ask him anything. Eventually he passes out.

Day Six

The tall man comes back the next day, and this time he does ask questions. 

How many troops, where, what are the orders, who’s calling the shots, what level of involvement do the CIA have right now, who’s giving Nixon orders, what are Nixon’s orders, why were they out in the desert, what did they find, what does he know, and on and on and on and on. 

Nix says nothing, says nonsense, says his own name and nothing else, and in between questions the man drips what might be salt water into the wounds on his back. It feels like fire, hurts so badly he can barely breathe. He tells them nothing.

The man speaks perfect English with the sort of clipped British accent that speaks of years of a very expensive education. Awash in the agony, Nix has the vague thought that the voice reminds him of David Dobie, and for a moment it brings him comfort, the memory of the way David had looked at him, the night they rescued the Red Devils. 

“So you’re aware,” he’d said, leaning down so that his mouth was right next to Nix’s ear, “There are no rules against asking or telling in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces.”

“How very interesting,” Nix has replied, laughing softly. “God save the Queen.”

“Indeed,” David responded. “And I’m terribly discrete, with a tent to myself.”

He’d been tempted. “I’m tempted,” he said, “But…”

David had looked at him then, properly looked at him for the first time, and smiled a little rueful thing. “Ah,” he’d said, and clapped him on the shoulder. “I know that one by heart. Bad luck, old chap.”

Damn bad luck.

Day Seven

The man asks and asks and asks and Nix tells him lies and old facts and nothing and nothing and nothing. Sometimes they take pictures. They hurt him so badly he thinks he might never be the same again.

Day Eight

It’s the same every day. He’s alone for an hour or so at a time, and he does his best to rest. To not think about Dick. To not think about Tab, unconscious and bleeding in the desert, alone, two hundred klicks from camp. If he made it he’d be there by now. If he made it, Dick will know what happened by now. God, if I were him, if I were hearing that news…  

He can imagine how it will go. Dick will sit there, in the tent, by himself, at his stupid desk with his mountains of paperwork, and he will think to himself I thought we had more time.  

You weren’t the only one, darling, Nix says out loud in his head.

Day Nine

The man switches out the belt in favour of electrodes and a bucket of water. They don’t put anything in his mouth, and he bites through the tip of his tongue. 

He tells them nothing and wonders how long it will take them to give in and kill him.

Day Ten

Nix wakes hot and dizzy, the tell-tale feeling of a fever building under his skin. There’s an infected shrapnel wound on his thigh. It’s hot, red, oozing - he hears Doc Roe in his head running down the symptoms. Maybe that will do the trick, if the insurgents won’t.

Chapter Text

Day Eleven

The mutiny happens very quietly, and it’s over before it begins. It’s not Harry, either.

Malarky, Randleman, Liebgott, Toye and Luz are in the process of rolling a Humvee out of the motorpool, pitch dark and absolutely silent, when Lipton finds them. It would be almost comic, the way they freeze when they know they’ve been caught, the way each of them turns to look at him, but instead of wide-eyed looks of assumed innocence, each and every face wears unapologetic, determined rage. 

For a moment, Lipton wishes he wasn’t a Lieutenant, wishes he was still their First Sergeant, wishes he was a man who could have been a part of this. Every single man in this company is dying to have Nixon back. For who he is and what he does for them, and for what he means to them. For Dick.

“Just you, or are there others?”

It’s not the censure they were obviously expecting. Don looks up at him, and the shadows under his eyes are visible even in the dark.

“We’re the first of five,” he says, quietly. “One every thirty mikes til an hour before dawn.”

Lipton nods. “Not a bad strategy,” he says, and his tone is as soft as it can be, under the circumstances, “Except you’ve got all your sergeants in the first victor.”

The silence is heavy. Oh, he thinks. This is far from all the sergeants.

“Put the victor away and go back to your tents,” he tells them. “Call the others off. All you’ll do out there is end up getting shot by the Marines by mistake.”

Liebgott looks like he wants to fight back against this suggestion. Joe Toye puts a hand heavy on his shoulder.

“Yes Lieutenant,” says Randleman. 

They look angry and defeated and heartbroken and every bone of him aches with sympathy.

“He'd never have left any of us behind,” says Luz, very quietly.

He never, ever would have. Lip sends them back to their tents and stands breathing hard in the motorpool for just long enough to be sure that he isn’t going to cry. Lewis Nixon. Fuck.

He doesn’t tell Speirs and Dick, but he does tell Harry. They share a cigarette in the dark, the same way they have for years now, passing it between them like teens, and he puts the words out there, quiet in the stillness of the desert.

“I’d have insisted they take me with them,” Harry says, exhaling smoke.

Lipton hums lightly. “I thought about it,” he admits. “But if I were going I’d have to bring you with me.”

“And Speirs told me if I went I’d need to take him,” Harry adds, with a little huff of laughter. “And then we’d have no company. Just Dick sitting in the tent by himself.”

Neither of them feel the need to state that they couldn’t take Dick with them. Not how he is right now.

“Plus,” Harry says, and there’s a little shiver to his voice. “It would be desertion during wartime. We’d probably all be shot when we got back.”

He doesn’t say worth it but he doesn’t need to.

Day Twelve

The Marines arrive an hour or so after breakfast. There’s not many of them, two dozen maybe, and the contrast between K35 and the 17th Airborne is stark. The paratroopers had had the shit kicked out of them, and you could tell - every single one of them looked like he was about to die. The Marines are, to a man, angry motherfuckers. Every single one of them looks like he could kill the next person who looks at him funny.

Harry stands and watches. They’re led by a stereotypical officer type, pretty college boy Captain covered in dirt with a tired face and still hands, and his Lieutenant, a tall, rangy-looking fucker with wild hair and a kind, steady presence. Plus an angry-looking bald old man who every single man in the company seems to defer to. He hears one of them call the old man Pops. Apparently Marines bring their dads to war. Figures.

Speirs is dragged into a briefing with Sink, so when the Marines arrive there’s no Captain Speirs to greet Captain Haldane, and instead he’s pointed towards Major Winters. Unable to contravene this without giving away far too much of what worries them about Dick’s mental state, Lipton corrals the company into helping the Marines get situated, and Lieutenant Welsh stands with Lieutenant Jones and offers him a cigarette.

“Harry Welsh,” he says, pack and lighter out instead of a handshake.

“Hillbilly Jones,” says the rangy fucker, all drawl. “Or Eddie, whatever you like.”

“You didn’t find him, then?”

Eddie takes a cigarette, lights it, shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Lost a man trying, though.”

Harry says nothing, watches his face very carefully.

“A kid, really,” Eddie goes on. “Robert Oswalt. 19, I think, if that. Caught an IED coming back over the sand. He was third from the back, everyone else missed it.”

“Shit,” Harry says. “That’s shitty fucking luck. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Eddie exhales, a thin stream of smoke trickling out the side of his mouth. “Me too. And I’m sorry we didn’t find your man.”

“Did you find anything?” Harry asks. “The 17th were pretty sure he was there.”

“He was there,” Eddie looks grim. “We missed him, but he was there.”

“How do you know?”

Eddie shifts his weight a little, almost entirely hiding his discomfort. “It looked like they cleared out in a hurry,” he says. “They left most of their shit behind. We found pictures.”

Dread settles heavy in the pit of Harry’s stomach. “Pictures?”

“Of your Captain,” Eddie says, sorry. “Of what they’d done to him.”

Do not be sick , Harry tells himself. “Where are they?”

“Skip’s got them,” Eddie says, looking carefully at Harry as if he knows exactly how close he is to losing his shit.

The dread settles heavier. “Your captain? He’s going to give them to Dick?”

Eddie nods.

“Shit,” Harry feels his pulse kick up, dread coalescing into panic, “Shit,” he looks round wildly. “Lip!”

It’s the tone of his voice more than the volume that draws the men’s attention, Lipton coming running with every man from both companies on his heels. Their faces tell Harry everything he needs to know about his own expression in this moment.

“Where’s Dick,” Harry asks Lip, as soon as he’s within shouting distance. 

“Far side of the camp, Battalion HQ,” Lip tells him, brow furrowed.

“Shit!”

Harry takes off over the sand, and in a matter of seconds he’s got most of the men on his heels, Lip and Eddie right behind him.

“What do you need, sir?” yells Randleman, foremost in the pack.

“Easy Co stay where you are, Lip, Jones, you’re with me.”

The men fall back and Harry picks up the pace. He rounds a corner and sees them out the corner of his eye, huddled together, standard simmering fury covered in concern. The Marines are hovering, wary. Lipton and Eddie speed up to keep stride with him.

“Harry!” Lip’s voice has an urgent query in it, and no little fear.

Harry forces himself to breathe deeply enough to speak and run at the same time. “Their captain has photos of Nix being tortured and he’s going to give them to Dick.”

Lipton actually stumbles. “Fuck!”

The camp is too fucking big and they’re too fucking slow, they don’t make it in time. The photos are spread out on the makeshift desk, Haldane the college-boy Marine captain saying something calm and reassuring, eyes soft and sorry as they look down at the images.

Dick is standing very still, hands on the desk, one finger stretched out to brush over Nixon’s face in a photo. There is nothing of Major Winters about him, he’s white, shaking, breath coming quick and shallow and when he looks up as Harry comes crashing into the tent his expression is completely vacant.

“Dick,” says Harry, forcing himself not to look at the photos, forcing himself to be a soldier, a man who hasn’t met Lewis Nixon, a man who does not love Lewis Nixon, “Dick?”

Dick shakes his head, eyes wide and uncomprehending. Lipton moves forward.

“Strayer needs you,” he says, even though Strayer hasn’t been in camp for a week. “Sir, sorry, you need to come with me.”

Dick stares at them. Lip takes him by the arm, and pulls him away, out of the tent. 

The canvas falls shut. Harry steps up to the table, and allows himself to look down at the photos. There are maybe a dozen in total, from all angles, a comprehensive record of the incomprehensible damage done. Most of the shots are from behind. His back has been almost completely stripped of skin, bloody and raw from neck to thigh. Nix is covered in shrapnel wounds, angry ragged little tears in his skin from head to toe. He’s ruined. There won’t be an inch of him without scars if he survives this.

There are two photos of his face, close up. In one, he’s got his eyes screwed shut,tears tracking through the blood and grime on his face, mouth open. The scream is audible just from looking at it. In the second he’s staring right into the camera and the snarl on his face is pure, unadulterated, unmitigated, animalistic fury. It’s a face Harry has never seen on any man before, let alone Nix, and he can’t look away.

“He your friend?” Eddie asks.

Harry nods, swallows, takes a deep breath and then sweeps the photos off the table, bundles them up and puts them in his pocket. “My best friend,” he tells them.

“And Major Winters?” Captain Haldane speaks for the first time, voice very careful. 

“Them too. They went through OCS together,” Harry says. “They built this company together, they’ve done half a dozen tours together. They live together.”

Harry’s busy trying to make sure that the truth stays caged in behind his teeth, so he misses the look that passes from Captain to Lieutenant, something steeped in grief and recognition.

“I’m sorry,” Haldane says. “I didn’t realise.”

“It’s OK,” Harry says, even though it isn’t OK, at all. 

The look on Dick’s face, Lewis in the photos… Nothing is going to be OK again.

**

Eddie watches them very closely as they make their way back to the men. Harry Welsh is pulling himself together with what looks like extreme force, he’s got his jaw set and his hands fisted in his pockets, but he’s breathing steadily and when the other Lieutenant, Lipton, tilts him a look from where he’s standing with his arm wrapped around their silent, grey-faced Major, he manages what looks like a normal expression.

“I’ll see to the men,” he says. “Dick, I…”

Winters looks at him like it’s the first time he’s noticed that he’s there. “Don’t let them see those pictures,” he says. 

“I won’t,” Welsh promises. 

“I can do this,” Winters says, but it doesn’t sound like it. “I just need a minute.”

“Take an hour,” Welsh says. “Take Lip. I’ve got everything under control.”

And he does. He gets back to the men, smoothes over their lingering anxiety, gets them in line and needles them til they’re bitching rather than fretting. It’s masterful. Welsh stands at the mouth of the tent and yells at them about PT and housekeeping and a bunch of petty shit and for a moment it’s like watching Gunny enforce a bogus grooming standard to keep the boys’ minds off the fact that they’re in the middle of hell. 

It works, and then Welsh makes his way over to a tall man leaning against the pole at the side of the tent. Eddie follows.

“Why the fuck are you standing up, Talbert?”

Close up, the man looks like he’s a few ways back from death. He’s got a sling and an IV bag pinned to his collar, tube running down into his arm.

“Because I’ve got two legs and they both work fine?”

“Do you want me to sic Roe on you, First Sergeant? Because I will. Sit the fuck down.”

Eddie watches with amusement as the Sergeant makes his way over to a ragged deckchair, and sits down. 

“Happy, sir?”

“Delighted.”

“And because I made you happy, sir, will you tell me what the fuck just happened?”

Welsh gives him a long look, and then looks briefly at Eddie, as if to ascertain whether or not he’s still there. There’s something calculating and tired on his face, as if trying to work out if Eddie can be trusted, but it doesn’t last.

“The Marines found where Captain Nixon was being held,” Welsh says, voice low. “They missed him by a few hours, but there were photos left behind. Of Nix. And what they’d done to him. Captain Haldane showed them to Major Winters.”

Talbert lets out a long, slow breath. “Bad?”

Welsh smiles, all teeth. “Fuckin’ dreadful, Tab. Dick’s finishing up supply review with Lip, I need to go make sure the Marines aren’t chewing through the fences, can you supervise these morons for me til the patrol gets back?”

“Yes sir,” says Talbert. “That’s what they pay me for.”

“If I hear you got out of that chair I will ship you to Germany so fast you won’t have time to say auf wiedersehen.”

Talbert tips him a lazy salute, and Welsh strides away. Eddie keeps pace, feeling a little bit like a puppy trailing behind the man. 

“What happened to him,” he asks, because it looks like Welsh needs something to talk about.

It was obviously the wrong question. “He was in Captain Nixon’s victor for the mission,” Welsh says, all teeth again. “The other two men in the Humvee didn’t make it out before the RPG hit, but Tab and Nix did, and then when the insurgents started closing in Nix shot Tab a bunch of times in the arm and into his chest plates to make them think he was dead. Which worked. And then once the insurgents had gone, taking Nix with them, Tab got up and walked two hundred klicks through the desert with no food and no water and three cracked ribs and a bullet in his arm to tell Dick what had happened. Took him three days and it damn near killed him, but he did it. And now he’s claiming he’s combat effective.”

“Fucking hell,” says Eddie, impressed despite himself. “Should have been a Marine.”

Welsh turns the smile with the teeth on him. “In the nicest possible way, Lieutenant Jones,” he says. “Get fucked.”

**

Chapter Text

Day Thirteen

It’s zero one hundred by the time Harry manages to get Dick by himself. He pulls him out of the officers' tent, where he'd been pretending to sleep, and drags him to a quiet corner. They sit in the dark, staring out at the desert in silence for a long time. 

“Did you look at the photos?” Dick asks, abruptly.

Harry nods, and then realises Dick probably can't see him. “Yes.”

“How much of that do you think he can survive?”

There's a pause while Harry thinks about it. “Of that? An awful lot. All it will do will hurt. He's not sustaining lasting or life threatening damage from a belt to the back. He won't be pretty by the time we get him back, but I was never under the impression that was a deal breaker for you.”

Dick makes a noise that's almost a laugh. “No,” he says. “Not in the slightest.”

The silence stretches out again, still and lingering over the sand like a physical presence. 

“I can't begin to imagine how hard this is for you,” Harry says, weighing each word, reaching deep into the quiet, sacred place inside himself to think of what Kitty would say. “But you can't go on like this, Dick. This company needs you on the top of your game. Every single man of them would kill and die for you, and if you fall apart now they're going to lose it. We'll lose this whole company. I'm not going to see our men shot at dawn for desertion because they couldn't watch you suffer anymore and went and did something fucking stupid.”

Dick is breathing like combat again. “I don't know how to do this without him,” he says. “I don't know how I'm supposed to do anything without him. I feel like I'm dying.”

“I know.”

“The worst part is that I can’t go myself,” Dick says. “I can see it on their faces, they’re waiting for me to go, and I can’t, because I know for a fact that he would never, ever forgive me if I abandoned our company to go haring off into the desert after him. And there’s every chance they’d all come after me anyway, and he’d never forgive me for that either. So I have to stay here, say yes sir and no sir to Sink, watch the god damn Marines do what we should be doing, and the whole time I just can’t…” He pauses. “I thought we had time,” Dick says, and it sounds pathetic even to his own ears. “I thought there was going to be time.”

Harry sighs. “It pains me to say it, Dick, but we need to trust the Marines. Haldane seems like a decent officer and Hillbilly is far from an idiot. This is their game. They’ll find him. And then you’ll get your time.”

Please believe me, Harry thinks, we’re absolutely fucked if you don’t.

**

Having made the decision that he's going to trust the Marines, based on practically nothing, Harry spends the next day watching them for any sign that this might have been a bad call.

They’re a small outfit, and his initial assessment was correct, every one of them is an angry motherfucker. Haldane is good and they know it, they’ve got an officer they can trust and they know how lucky they are. He and Jones have this bizarre kind of telepathy, they’re in sync and moving together in a way that’s reminiscent of Dick and Nix, but without the pining. Jones is an LT of the Lipton model, that much is apparent from the outset, and Harry asks around - enlisted man promoted combat meritorious. Just like Lip. So the officers are solid. The Gunnery Sergeant seems like a complete and utter lunatic, but the men defer to him without question and keep the mockery behind his back to a bare minimum, so that’s something. Top down, so far so good.

Harry says this to Lip over a cup of coffee that tastes like rocket fuel, and Lip gives him the long-suffering Carwood Lipton face of resignation in the face of what he deems to be nonsense.

The men seem fine too, for Marines. Harry doesn’t bother resisting the urge to analyse them through the lens of his own company. Their youngest are green, painfully, dangerously green, two out of three in particular. One of them looks strangely like Babe, another must be barely eighteen. The third, Leyden, is deeply reminiscent of younger Guarnere and Toye, full of an attitude Johnny Martin once described as fuck-this-fuck-you-fuck-yeah , while the first two are just young. They’re newer to this than John Julian, and there’s a reason they call him Baby J. The rest of the outfit is older, more experienced, more jaded, and they look at Easy with a sort of uneasy sympathy. It’s fucking dreadful.

Their medic, corpsman, is late twenties, Vernis. He’s the same sort of calm in a storm as Roe is, but with none of the reserve and isolation. They’ve got their own Cajun, too, a feral fucker they call Snafu and apart from the accent there is nothing similar between that man and Roe. He’s more than a little terrifying. Harry rather likes him. Reminds him of Liebgott, strangely, all bite. He’s always had a soft spot for the feral ones. Their radio guy, Jay, is just as competent as Luz and similarly ridiculous, and their top TL is excellent. They call him Burgie, and every single one of them seems to be ever so slightly in love with his wife. It doesn’t look like he minds.

“I know they’re Marines,” Harry says, while Lip tries to ignore him. “And I know we’d rather be doing it ourselves. But…”

Lip claps him on the shoulder, takes a cigarette from his top pocket, lights it, takes a drag and then hands it back. He looks like he’s thinking about saying something, and deciding against it.

“Fuck’s sake, Carwood, spit it out.”

“Do you think he’s still alive?”

No. Yes. I hope so. I hope not. 

“Did you see the pictures?”

Lip rolls a shoulder. “Glimpses.”

Harry’s carrying them with him. Couldn’t tell you why. He takes them out of his pocket, rifles through them, and hands Lip the one of Nix looking straight at the camera. Lip stares down at it, at the bared teeth and the furious eyes.

“He’s still alive.”

**

The Marines get the go signal at thirteen hundred hours. Eddie corrals the men, they pile into the humvees. Dick stands at the gate.

“Jay has a channel open with your Sergeant Luz,” Eddie says, leaning out of the passenger side window. “You’ll hear whenever we hear.”

Dick nods, eyes roaming over the assembled force. They look settled, steady, like men who know what they’re doing. They’ve got good intel, they know what they’re doing.

“If he’s there,” Eddie says, “We’ll find him.”

**

He’s not there, and they don’t find him. Jay radios on their way back, and Luz lets the company know. They’d been ranged up around the perimeter fence again, not watching, not waiting, because there’s nothing to see, of course, but when Luz comes away from the radio and tells them what happened, they move away. They give them space. This is nothing any of them would want strangers witnessing.

K35 roll back into the compound, five victors, and the last one in the line has a body strapped to the bonnet. Malarkey brings them a sheet, and then moves away very quickly as they cover their dead.

“Who was it?” Toye asks, voice low.

“One of their kids,” he tells them. “Not the redhead, the real baby.”

“Hamm,” says Julian, their own baby.

“Yeah.”

“And no Nixon?”

“No.”

**

The Marines were angry motherfuckers to start with and this has not made it any better. They’re bristling with violence, all seething grief in the only way you can experience loss in combat. The clear day has merged into something red and heavy and there’s the threat of a shamal on the horizon, the air is thick and uncomfortable and there’s a rumour that Easy’s getting orders south any day now.

The sun’s dropped almost all the way to the horizon by the time they’re leaving the mess after dinner, and the two outfits come up against each other for the first time since K35 got back. Sledge, their young one, the one who looks a little like Babe, has the remnants of blood all over his face, he’s shaky and wide eyed and the rest of them are keeping him close. The Cajun, Snafu, looks like he’s going to tear the world down with his teeth at the very slightest provocation.

“I hope your fucking Captain is worth it,” he spits as he walks past Easy.

The outrage is instant. Bull gets a good handle on Bill Guarnere, Toye is not quite as fast and Liebgott launches himself across the sand. There’s contact, a brief moment where it looks like someone’s going to die, and then Webster takes Joe round the ankles and sits on him.

“For fuck’s sake, Joe,” he hisses. “Stop being so fucking easy.”

Liebgott thrashes for a moment and then drops his head into the sand. A couple of the men from K35 have Snafu pinned with his hands behind his back and Burgie is there, the sergeant with the wife everyone seems to be obsessed with, whispering furiously into his ear. Snafu slumps back against him for a moment, and then nods.

“We’re alright here,” Burgie says, and he sounds exhausted. “Sorry. You alright over there?”

Bill shakes himself loose. “Fine and dandy,” he says, with his patented wild grin. He shambles over to Liebgott, gives Webster a gentle shove, and then pulls the other man up off the floor. “If you wanted the shit knocked out of you, Joe, you only had to ask. It’s been a while since I put you on your arse.” He turns on the spot, playing up to the audience. “Well boys? Any bets?”

It’s a performance Easy is very used to, and the familiar chorus of groans passes through the assembled crowd. Speirs makes his way out of the mess tent, Haldane behind him, and they stand together, watching.

“Oh, are we fighting?” It’s the K35 kid with the attitude, and he’s all wide grin and open palms. “Me first.”

Bill gives him a matching grin. “Alright then kid. I’m Bill Guarnere, nice to meet you.”

“Bill Leyden,” the kid says with a smirk. “Nice to meet you too.”

They square up, and it’s almost civil, almost friendly, almost like watching Bill Guarnere fight someone he knows and likes. Almost. Leyden’s scrappy, and he’s angry, and he’s a Marine, but they’ve been out in the field on one meal a day for a while now, and Guarnere is a paratrooper, and he’s been angry for longer. Leyden gives him a good run, splits his lip and puts him in the sand twice, but in the end Bill’s that bit bigger, that bit more experienced, and he’s a highly trained killing machine who’s been useless for weeks, and he puts Leyden on his arse and keeps him there.

Leyden laughs. “Nice job, Bill,” he says, reaching up for a hand out of the sand.

“You too Bill,” Guarnere replies, and his smile is a little less teeth than it was before. Then he turns. “Anyone else? Bull?”

Bull gives him a big grin. “Told you a thousand times, Wild Bill, we need you in one piece.”

“Yeah, we’d be fuckin’ lost without you Gonhorrea,” says Liebgott, under his breath, and chaos breaks out again.

Day Fourteen

Speirs takes one look at the company at breakfast and said fuck-it to the rota. He strides through the tent, hauling Julian and Babe out of their seats, telling Liebgott he was on radios and sticking Skinny in the back, then in a fit of what could only be described as pique, climbing up into the turret himself. They rolled out of the compound in a cloud of dust, making more noise than the engine, Webster watching with a turned down expression on his face. 

“They look like a god damn heathen raiding party,” one of the Marines mutters under his breath. 

Bill gives him the smile with the teeth. 

**

In the absence of Speirs, Dick leaves his stupid makeshift office for the first time in what feels like weeks, and leads the company in PT. Even years out from being the first line of combat, he hasn’t let himself slip, and he stays out at the front of the company for all five of their laps of the camp, and has enough breath to shout the count at the top of his lungs as he takes them through the callisthenics. Lip, standing next to him at the front, can’t quite keep the look of relief off his face. Harry, at the back, finds himself infuriatingly close to tears. Dick does not look right, by any stretch of the imagination, and there’s something lightly dreadful about watching him do this without Nix lounging in the background laughing at them, but he’s here, he’s with them. 

They do PT, and then Dick gets Roe out to drill them on combat medicine, splitting them into groups and assigning casualties. Alley’s shot in the neck. Bill loses a leg. Lipton, bizarrely, gets pneumonia. Luz makes a face like he’s about to question this, and Roe shuts him down without a word. They deal with their wounded, Lipton gets piled under all the blankets they can find, and Roe declares them just about adequate in case of emergency, just about.

“But y’all better hope I don’t get shot,” he says, half under his breath. 

Dick watches with the beginnings of a smile on his face while Harry stands next to him and smokes, pretending to be dealing with lists or something similar on his shitty, battered clipboard. 

They’re packing up the first aid supplies and offering Lip their sincere consolations for the lingering chest problems that will no doubt plague him for the rest of his life, when there’s the sound of gunshots in the distance. Easy’s strapped and on the move in thirty seconds flat, a handful headed for the motorpool and the others for the fence, and they meet K35 on the way, Haldane and Jones in perfect sync going step for step across the sand. 

In the distance, there’s the cloud of dust that heralds an incoming victor. It’s hurtling towards the perimeter fence at top speed, and as it gets closer it’s immediately obvious that it’s Speirs’ patrol victor, and there’s something wrong. The Humvee is swerving all over the place, up on two wheels, cornering sharply through the sand.

“Gates!” Dick yells, “Malarkey, Toye, covering fire!”

They fall in, and K35 settle in alongside them. Harry brings a handful of victors up to the fence line and starts calling out names, piling men in. The gates are wide open and the victor is heading straight for them, unwieldy and out of control. As soon as they’re within shouting distance, the cry is clear.

“Medic, medic, get us a fucking medic!”

Roe grabs his bag. The K35 Corpsman Vernis comes up behind his shoulder, muttering something low that makes Doc Roe nod. The Humvee gets closer and it becomes apparent what the problem is. 

Speirs, on the turret, is spun all the way round, firing the .50cal out into the desert behind them. Julian was driving when they left, but Liebgott’s got the wheel now, passenger seat empty, driver’s seat tipped far back, and Joe’s standing, balanced over the very still figure of Julian. Babe’s leaning forwards from the back, stretched over the driver’s seat headrest, hands clasped firmly around Julian’s neck and he’s the one screaming for a medic. Skinny’s sweeping the sector out the back windshield, and the victor comes sliding through the open gates.

Roe’s on them before the victor even stops moving.

“What the fuck happened?”

“Johnny got shot in the neck,” Babe says, and he looks barely old enough to drive. He’s holding a pad of gauze under Julian’s jaw, it’s bright red, oozing between his fingers, and his knuckles are white with the strain of keeping the pressure.

Julian is chalky and still, drenched in blood. His eyes are open, glassy, stuck on the middle distance.

“He’s ok,” Babe says, and his voice rings out loud and a little high through the silence. “You’re ok Johnny, Doc’s here, you’re gonna be ok, just hold on.”

Liebgott climbs out of the driver’s seat. He’s drenched in blood. Roe reaches up into the victor, puts a knee either side of Julian’s still, still still still body, and presses his hands over Babe’s on Julian’s ruined neck.

“You can let go now Edward,” he says, very gentle.

“It’s ok Johnny, just hold on, Doc’s here, it’s… Doc?”

Roe reaches for Babe’s hand. “Let go, Edward.”

“No! No, I’ve got him, he’s going to be ok, the bleeding’s slowing down, I’ve got him, Johnny I’ve got you, I’ve…” 

The silence is deafening. Julian is so, so still.

“Cher,” Roe says, dropping the pitch of his voice until it’s something just for the two of them, something small and private. “Cher, you did everything you could, you did everything right, but he’s gone. You can let go now. He’s gone.”

Speirs vaults off the turret and lands in the sand, face something awful. He comes up on the driver’s side and reaches up into the victor, sliding an arm under Julian’s bent knees and reaching for his shoulders.

“C’mon Private,” he says, looking up at Babe. “Pass him down.”

Captain’s orders is all it takes. Babe lets go, the wad of bloody gauze sliding down the seat back as he rubs his hands over his face. Speirs lifts Julian out of the victor and stands there on the sand for a moment, body of their kid in his arms, teeth bared. Babe drops out of the back seat into the sand, going straight down to sitting, and Speirs lowers Julian’s body into his arms with more care than they’d ever seen him use before. Roe climbs down too, settles in next to Babe, and then looks up at the shocked, silent faces in front of him.

“Water,” he says, “And a stretcher.”

Babe, face bloody, drops his head onto Roe’s shoulder.

Speirs shoots a look at Dick, who nods and turns away, presumably to make his report to Sink. The teams from the assembled victors gather round their Captain and then, armed with orders, peal out of the gates and into the desert. Babe, bloody and shocked, stays in the sand with the body of John Julian across his knees, Doc Roe holding him upright. No one says a word.

Day Fifteen

“Who was he?” Leyden asks Guarnere at breakfast, quietly. “The man you lost yesterday?”

Bill resists the urge to keep his eyes down. “John Julian,” he says, looking Leyden straight in the eye. “We called him Baby J, which he hated, because he was the youngest man in the company. Just nineteen last week. And a virgin, if you can believe that! I offered to buy him a girl last time we were on leave, but he turned me down. Told me he promised his mother he'd never pay for it.” Bill does look away then. “Sweet kid. Not bad for a kid, either. Would have been a damn fine paratrooper, if he'd had time.”

**

Dick comes down from Battalion with orders halfway through their morning PT. The 101st are heading south, clearing insurgents out of cities. 

“So that's it.” Tab says to Harry, still confined to his chair. “We're officially leaving him behind.”

**

Chapter Text

Day Eleven

They let him sleep for a handful of hours, maybe a little less, and Nix wakes on the dirt floor aching like he’s not used to sleeping in graves. The wounds on his back are raw and throbbing, he can’t tell for sure but he’d put money on those being infected too. He thinks can feel it, swimming through his blood stream thick and dark, and then he laughs at himself for the sheer, dramatic nonsense of it.

Are you sure you’re supposed to be a paratrooper? asks Richard Winters, aged 22, all serious mouth and mocking eyes, in barracks at OCS, two days in to the rest of his life. Are you sure you wouldn’t be better suited for writing bad poetry in a freezing attic in Paris, a  hundred years ago?

I contain multitudes, Nix had said, and Dick had laughed.

It had pretty much been all over at that point. A marriage on its very last legs, a baby he’d known from the beginning could not have been his, a civilian life boxed up and put somewhere safe to never be touched again, the army, and Dick Winters and his convictions, the start of something brand new.

He can’t tell these motherfuckers anything because there’s nothing in his head except Dick Winters. That thought makes him laugh too, a little breathless and hysterical, and yeah the wounds are definitely infected, he’s feverish and wrong all through.

Nix isn’t fully in his body when they drag him out of the pitch-black room they’d had him in, and the thought that drifts half-formed through his mind is that today marks a week, he’s almost sure. He can’t remember whether that’s a long time for a prisoner to last in this war or not. With no real joined-up leadership it’s basically the luck of the draw. Maybe he’s been taken by insurgents with patience and tactical acumen. He’s not entirely sure if that’s a positive or negative.

He’s trying to find the energy to brace himself for a further onslaught of pain, to dig out something he can tell them to make them stop without completely fucking everything up, and instead he finds himself hogtied and dragged outside. They're obviously in a hurry, sweeping things off tables into bags and running across the sand, this couldn't be a less calculated relocation if it tried, and the obvious air of panic gives him hope.

Nix has refused to let himself even consider the possibility of a rescue. In his terrified half-imaginings, as they break his body and thread his veins with electricity, he has flirted with the idea that Dick might be coming for him, that he's out there looking, that he won't give up until Nix is found. When he's not choking on fear and drowning in agony, he knows that isn't happening, and he's glad. Dick knows him, knows him inside out, knows who he is and what he stands for and what he needs. Dick knows what Easy is to Nix, and he would never, ever risk their company. Not for anything, not for anyone. 

Thank fuck, he thinks, alone in the dark. You're so damn decent it's probably going to kill me, and I'm so fucking grateful.

But just because Dick isn't coming doesn't mean no one is. He's not arrogant enough to assume that he's worth all that much to the military, or that he's got enough favours in his back pocket to get him out of this, but facts are facts, and Lewis Nixon knows a lot of things about a lot of things. It's in many people's best interests that he keeps them to himself, too. Dick isn't coming. The army might well be.

They throw him in the back of one of the trucks, face down, and the sun is barely up. The victors fly over the sand, they’re not wasting any time, and snatches of frantic conversation float back to Nix from the cab of the truck. He’s tied up but not down, and as he bounces around the bed of the truck he manages, excruciatingly, to turn himself over til he’s staring up at the sky, and it's just enough to let him get his bearings. He’d been blindfolded on the journey away from his own victor, from the decimated remains of Muck and Penkala, from Floyd Talbert playing dead in the sand. He’s not blindfolded now. He chooses to believe that this is because his captors were in a hurry, not because they’re no longer concerned that he might know where he is. 

They’re heading south. Nix can’t be certain, but he’s good at his job, and he’s pretty sure they’re going at least vaguely in the same direction as the wreckage of his victor. There’s no way they’ll go anywhere near the camp, not unless the men who have taken him are complete and utter morons, which he imagines based on the educated accent of the one most frequently questioning him they are not, but he’s closer to home than he was. He’s probably back within two hundred klicks of Dick and Harry and his boys by now. It’s a comforting thought. 

It’s so fucking hot. There’s no shade, no water, he hasn’t eaten anything more than a handful of rice in a week and, dimly, he thinks there’s every chance that he gets his wish and the infection kills him. 

I regret that more than I thought I would, he thinks, and then closes his eyes.

Day Twelve

Village to village to village, stopping for a handful of hours here and there. Nix drifts in and out, dragged from the truck bed to a hole in the ground and back again and again. He’s feverish, struggling with a steady grip on reality, struggling to keep a handle on each train of thought, struggling to avoid the inevitable.

He thinks about Dick. The perpetual image of him that lives in his mind, the strange contradiction of the perfect soldier, the unflinching patriot, the straight-laced shining example, with the petty judgemental emotional nightmare. Nix is well aware that hardly anyone gets to see the Dick Winters he sees, the grouch, the pissy bitch, the man who holds grudges and overreacts, who holds deeply unreasonable expectations of almost everyone. No one gets to see that Dick Winters. That’s just his, in the privacy of their house, their home , their little haven of plausible deniability. 

It’s not like they’ve been lying to each other. Or themselves. It’s not like it’s ever been a secret. He knows Dick loves him, has always known, saw it on his face a week in, because Dick is not subtle. And Nix in his turn has had property of Dick Winters carved on his soul like every other man who’s ever served with him, has been Dick’s man completely from the very beginning, has loved him and wanted him, fucking hell has he wanted him, for years now.

But they’re paratroopers, and they’ve periodically been under the other’s command, and there’s fraternization policies and DADT and common fucking sense and their perfect, perfect understanding of each other, and throughout it all there’s been Easy Company, and that’s always come first. Easy continues to come first. That’s why he’s dying in the desert, alone.

Day Fourteen

Ten days. Ten days since he’s seen anyone but his captors, anyone but insurgents. Ten days, including three of travel, without seeing the faintest hint of the US military. We’re supposed to be all over this fucking hell hole , Nix thinks to himself, watching the desert spin by through a gap in the tailgate of the truck. Where the fuck is everyone?

It’s like he summons them out of thin air. He has the thought, and less than half an hour later there it is, on the horizon, a cloud of dust and a hum on the air, a victor moving perpendicular to them. For a moment the sun is at the wrong angle and then one or other of them moves, and it’s very clearly a US Army Humvee. 

Patrol , Nix thinks, delirious with sudden hope. Jesus fuck, come on, come on, you bastards, I’m right here.

He’s in a convoy of three victors. Someone spots the patrol truck barely twenty seconds after he does, and they immediately open fire. The Army victor returns it, and Nix lies with his face pressed desperately to the gap in the metal as the bullets whizz over his head. It feels eternal, but it’s probably only a minute, two at the most. Someone in the cab of his victor yells, the rear windscreen shatters. 

In the distance, but obviously still in range, the Army victor jerks and swerves like the driver just got it in the neck. There’s a last burst of fire from both sides, a man in one of the other victors in the convoy falls out of the window onto the sand, bullet hole in his head, and then they’re out of range. 

They don’t go back for the body. They drive south, for hours and hours, through the night and well into the next day. Nix does his best not to think about the driver of the victor. Hopes they’re close enough to whatever base that it’s not a fatal wound. Hopes its not anyone he knows, and then feels fucking dreadful for it.

Day Fifteen

“You’re never going to tell us anything, are you?”

They’ve been in the same spot for a handful of hours, and this time the man with the impeccable English accent has swapped his belt and his electrodes for a tub of filthy, lukewarm water. Nix can feel it in his lungs, in the back of his throat, stinging his eyes, and he can’t fucking breathe, even now he’s got his head above water.

“I don’t know anything,” he gasps, and it’s the truth. 

Anything he could have told them a week ago will be useless by now, because the army will know he was taken, and will have revised plans accordingly. He fucking hopes.

He says this. Well, paraphrases. The man watches him, a long, slow look full of consideration. Nix tries to breathe, tries to relax into his body, tries to let go of the rage and fear and pain, because that’s not where he wants to be when he dies. He wants peace, or something like it. He tries to find it in himself. It’s there, or something like it. It looks like Dick.

“Alright,” the man says. “Change of plan.”

He crosses to the door, opens it, and shouts something sharp and decisive into the corridor. Within a handful of minutes a new man comes in, wearing a deeply familiar-looking attitude. Its the face of resigned concentration Doc Roe always wears when he's treating the wounded after combat - tired and angry and sad and determined. The man strips him out of his soaking wet bloody filthy uniform, and forces him to stand naked in the room. He treats every single wound, pulls the shards of shrapnel Nix hasn't managed to remove by himself, pours what burns like neat alcohol over each little injury, and then douses his ruined back in it. It hurts worse than the belt did. He passes out, he thinks, and when he comes to he's wrapped in bandages and there's an IV in his arm. 

What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.

Nix pulls out the IV even though he can hear Doc Roe in his head - if you wake up and there's a needle in your arm, don't fucking touch it! He's pretty certain Doc will forgive him this one, pretty sure that rule doesn't apply when you're a prisoner of war. His hands are still bound so he has to use his teeth and it's awkward and messy and painful and it bleeds a lot. The fever has receded a little and he's thinking more clearly than he has for days. The frantic patina of pain that's been his constant companion since the Humvee has faded to a dull, insistent ache. Someone's given him painkillers, antibiotics, fluids.

What the fuck?

This is absolutely not what he thought was coming next. This is not a sensible way to treat an enemy with no information to offer. What the fuck is this? It makes him cold with fear. Nix is a man who knows things, he sees patterns and rhythm in chaos and it gives him the ability to see the future. This doesn’t make any fucking sense, and he’s more scared of that than he is anything else. Things have a god damn pattern to them, even in chaos, there’s a way that things go, and this is not it. What the fuck do they want? What the fuck are they doing?

He doesn’t know, and so he does what he always does when he doesn’t know and wants to. He asks.

The man gives him a long, steady, clear look. Nix remembers the way Dick had clenched his teeth all throughout their liaison with the Red Devils, the way David had looked at him with complete openness and Dick had set his jaw against the whole thing and said nothing, given him a look that said nothing, nothing, and it was permission and forgiveness and he couldn’t use either. The only thing in his head is Dick Winters, then and now and always.

“We’re going to exchange you,” the man says. “You have no useful information, but you’re useful still. We have men being held by your army, and we’ll trade you, to get them back.”

Like fuck , Nix thinks to himself. There’s no fucking way. But if it buys him a few days of no torture, and antibiotics, and space to fucking think, then sure, let them believe whatever they want.

Day Sixteen

They leave the camp first thing. Orders are to leave the Humvees where they are, so they’re piled into troop trucks, all crushed in together, and it feels a little bit like a scene from a World War Two movie. They sing Blood on the Risers, because they’re the goddamn airborne infantry, even though they’ve been dragging their arses around the desert for months and months. 

Jones leans up into the cab of the first truck as they pull out.

“Our orders are to keep looking,” he says, squinting up at Harry. “And so we’re gonna keep looking. Luz and DeL’Eau have a channel open. You’ll know whatever we know.”

They drive south.

**

The camp hadn’t felt particularly luxurious while they were there but it’s a palace compared to the bombed-to-fuck factory remains they’re dug into by the end of the day. The officers have real walls, for what that’s worth, but everyone else is sleeping in the dirt. 

Dick does his rounds, checking in on the men at the end of the day, and it’s the first time he’s done it since they lost Nix. They look up at him, a little uncertain, a little hopeful, and he speaks to them as he always has done, except this time he’s alone. 

“You’ll be out and about before dawn, gents,” he says, “Clearing through a few streets on the edge of the city - powers that be feel it’s likely they’ve been used by insurgents. You’ll be going in, clearing it out, marking your way and then moving on. The intelligence is old so resistance should be minimal, and I expect to see you back here for lunch tomorrow.”

“Sir,” says Bull, and the men nod with him.

Day Seventeen

They’re out when it’s still dark, slinking through the narrow streets in single file, careful, balanced footsteps landing perfectly one on top of the other. It’s been weeks since they’ve been used the way they’re intended, weeks since they’ve been anything other than glorified guard-dogs, and to a man they’re fucking sick of it.

It’s a small neighbourhood, and a quiet one. They go in eight man squads, fast and silent. Grant takes the squad that by rights belongs to Tab, and Tab sits in the troop truck with Speirs and bitches relentlessly. 

Each squad takes a row of houses and they kick down doors. Malarkey takes one group through, hands tight on the stock of his rifle, heart in his throat in a way he hasn’t experienced ever in combat, because even though he’s got Skinny and Popeye on his six they’re not Skip and Alex and he’s never gone into to combat without Skip and Alex on his six. He’s scared, and he hasn’t been scared since he met them. He hates it. Fucking hates it.

Bull’s leading another group, Bill and Joe another, Johnny has the fourth and Grant the last one. They’re vibrating with it, the sheer fucking thrill of doing what they’re made for.

Dick was right - barely any resistance. Bull’s squad takes one out, Grant gets three, and that’s it. They clear the rooms, careful careful, quiet and thorough because they know their business and then they converge back on the trucks. The last one in the line is Liebgott, he’s breathless, red in the face, and he’s got something clutched to his chest as he throws himself up into the cab of the truck.

“Look at this,” he says, shoving an armful of bloody, tattered fabric into Speirs’ lap. “Fucking look, look!”

Speirs gives him the face with the teeth, and shakes it out. It’s a uniform blouse, the identical copy of his own, ripped to shred and drenched in blood. The name on the breast is still readable, just, and it says NIXON.

Chapter Text

Day Seventeen, continued

Speirs halts the convoy, Nixon’s ruined blouse in his hands, and sends a team back out. Liebgott leads, Webster right behind him, Bill and Bull and Babe covering them, and they go straight back to the room where Liebgott found the shirt. There’s a dead man in the corner, one of Grant’s bullets in his head, and there’s a pile of medical supplies on a bed and a small puddle of blood on the floor.

Webster steps in it. It’s still ever so slightly tacky. 

“He was right here,” Bill says, and he looks a little like he might tear the walls down in case Nixon is somehow still there, “He was right fucking here, holy shit.”

“And recently,” Babe says, looking down at the redbrown footprint from Webster's boot. 

They take everything from the room, Webster sketching out the layout in his ever present notebook, they frisk the corpse, and then Speirs sends Tab and Harry back to their camp to report to Dick while Lip scrounges up a handful of more educated locals to act as translators, and they go door to door through the neighbourhood asking every soul they come to about the men in these houses, and their prisoner.

The sun climbs up into the sky, bright and scorching, and it beats down on them, burning the little strips of skin peeking out of their Kevlar as they sweat and suffer, and they are relentless.

Malarkey crouches on the floor of a woman's home, sits across from her hearth and gives her his whole soul in his face, rifle loose across his chest and his hands empty and up in between them.

“Tell her we're looking for a good man,” he says to the interpreter, who can't be more than 14, a girl with big dark eyes that remind him of Nix himself, headscarf the colour of Skip's favourite red t-shirt, and every single thing he sees these days calls back to this. “His name is Lewis, he's got dark hair and dark eyes and he's a good man, a good soldier, he's the man we look to when we want to make sure we're doing the right thing. He was taken, and we need him back.”

Both the women look at him, steady, considering, and Don feels pinned, like he's the one under interrogation, like he's the one with something to prove, and he's never felt so much like an invader. How much has been taken from these women and how much of it has been their fault?

“Please,” he says, and doesn't worry about the way his voice shakes. “Please, if you know anything. Please.”

Nothing is bringing Skip and Alex back. Nothing is going to piece back the absolute fucking wreckage of his life now. But it's not just about him. They've all been watching their officers, watching Lip with his quiet grief and Speirs with his rage and Winters with his heart ripped out and his guts splattered across the sand, bleeding bleeding bleeding til they don't recognise him, and Harry Welsh, to Don the worst one to watch, really, holding his shit together like it's the last fire door in an inferno, the final line between them and total ruin. 

They make their way back to the troop trucks, sharing snippets, piecing it together. 

“He's damn fucking close,” Babe says. “He's got to be.”

“We'll get him,” Bill chimes in, accents stacking together. “We're getting Winters back his wife, I can fucking feel it.”

**

While the rest of Easy are conducting the most cautious, gentle, tentative interrogations of their entire fucking war, Harry Welsh loses a fierce battle to Floyd Talbert over who gets to drive the command victor back to their stupid half-assed camp. To each man, the other has a dangerous look about him, eyes wide and violence close to the surface, and they're swinging wildly between being very careful with each other and being very careful with themselves. 

“Do we tell him?”

Harry looks at Tab. “What the fuck do you mean, of course we tell him.”

“What if he does something stupid?”

Harry spits out the passenger window. “He hasn't done anything stupid yet, what makes you think he'd start now?”

There's a breath where Tab works out what to say to that. “We're so close. He was right there.”

“Fuck,” Harry says, and tips his head back. “He was right fucking there.”

“What the fuck do we say?” Tab asks, and resists the urge to smack his head against the steering wheel. “I’m terribly sorry I left the love of your life in the desert for insurgents, but look, we found a bit of his uniform! Yeah it’s covered in blood, but it’s better than nothing!”

“Fuck off with your ridiculous self-pitying bullshit,” says Harry. “You didn’t leave him in the desert, he shot you four times. For fuck’s sake. And if you use the words “love of your life” to his face, I will fucking bite you, Talbert.”

“Maybe you should tell him, then,” says Tab, and keeps his mouth shut for the rest of the drive. 

In the end, Harry doesn’t say anything much. He takes the tattered blouse, folds it so that the name is obvious, and holds it in front of him like a precious thing as he ducks under the camo netting draped over the side of the truck that’s currently serving as Battalion HQ.

“Harry?” Dick says, looking up from his paperwork on the dash of the victor, face sliding instantly into a mask of concern. “Why are you - what’s happened? Did you run into trouble?”

Harry shakes his head. “No,” he says, and is horrified to find that his voice is unsteady. “No, you were right, there was barely any resistance. Four hostiles total. But…”

The quaver in his voice has Dick standing up, swinging down from the victor and walking over to him. “But? What happened, Harry? Where’s Speirs, where’s Lip?”

Pull it the fuck together, Welsh. Harry takes a breath. “They’re fine. The rest of the company are still out there, they… Well.”

“Harry, Jesus Christ!”

“Liebgott found this,” he says, and passes him the folded, bloody blouse, NIXON clearly legible, facing up.

Dick reaches out for it on instinct before he really sees what it is, and then he stands there, holding it a little away from his body, staring down at it like it’s a sacred thing. He’s very still, the muscles in his throat working like he’s trying to swallow a lump, and when he looks up at Harry there’s something in his face that hasn’t been there for the past ten days.

“He was there?” It’s hope.

“Yes.” Harry says. “Liebgott found the blouse, and we went back to where he found it and took the room apart. There were a few papers, nothing we could understand, and a small pile of medical supplies, antibiotics and used IVs, and some blood. Not very much. It wasn’t completely dry. I think…” Harry takes a breath. “I think we missed him by hours. If that.”

Dick nods, still staring down at the blouse.

“Tab drove me back,” Harry continues, “And we left the rest of the company going door to door, canvassing the neighbourhood, trying to find out who the fuck was there and where they went and if anyone saw him. Speirs and Lip are coordinating, the men rounded up a handful of locals who speak English, Tab is grabbing the Battalion translators now and we’re going back out there. Are you coming with us?”

“Yes,” Dick says, “I’m coming.”

They ditch the victor and go back in a truck, with a handful of Battalion translators. Tab drives, again, and Dick sits shotgun next to him, practically vibrating.

“We’re going to find him, sir,” Tab says, and then turns to look at him properly, eyes off the track in front of him, breaking the habit of a lifetime. “Dick, he’s out there, we’re going to find him. By the time we get there the men will know who took him and where, and we’ll go out there and get him. Swear to fucking god.”

Dick nods.

**

When they get back to the rest of the company, Speirs and the men have identified a handful of locals with useful information, and they’re waiting for reliable translators. The men are jubilant and frustrated, each of them simmering with violence and the need to fucking do something . Tab hops out of the truck and goes over to the rest of the company straight away, sliding in between Grant and Christenson and letting the slow wave of bitching wash over him.

“Sitrep?” Dick says to Speirs and Lipton, a very good impression of his normal manner.

“Four dead,” Speirs tells him. “Intel says there were ten total, they left this morning, about an hour before we got here. They went West, according to witnesses, and they were carrying a man.”

Carrying a man. He takes a breath. “What’s West of here?”

Speirs shrugs. “Maps say basically nothing until the border - hamlets and small settlements. Nowhere to go and plenty of places to hide. We think this group here,” he gestures at the civilians standing nervously behind him, “know more about where they were headed. So we need the translators to work out the details.”

“And then?”

“And then I go to Sink and I tell him we’re going and we fucking go.”

“What if he says no?” Lipton asks.

Dick smirks, almost like he can’t help it. “Then we ask him where we’re supposed to go instead, we say “yes sir, Colonel Sink, sir” and we go and get him anyway.” 

Speirs laughs, it’s a hollow, horrifying noise and Lipton is vaguely alarmed by how reassuring he finds it. 

“Yes sir, Major Winters, sir,” says Speirs.

**

It takes the interpreters two hours to get the information they need. It’s nothing concrete, nothing certain, but it’s more than they had that morning. The men pile back into the trucks and take off for the camp.

“We’re going, right?” Malarkey mutters to Lip on the bench seat.

“Dick will report to Sink and Sink will give us our next orders,” Lipton says, a small quirk to his lip.

“But we’re going, right?” Bill leans across Malarkey. “We are going, right?”

Lipton turns to look at him, and then looks down the line of men, each and every one looking back at him expectantly. “Major Winters is going to report to Colonel Sink, Colonel Sink will give Captain Speirs our next orders, and we will follow them, gentlemen.”

Liebgott snorts. “We’re going,” he says. “He was right fucking there. We’re going.”

They get back to the camp and disperse back to their little holes in the ground. Lip makes his way to Dick’s tent, and tucks himself into the tactical huddle around the maps with Speirs, Dick and Harry.

“If Sink says no,” Lip says, apropos of nothing, “We need to keep it from the men. If we’re disobeying orders and going to get Nix anyway, the men need to be beyond reproach. This can’t come back on them.”

“Agreed,” says Dick. “That’s without question. And if anyone else here feels uncomfortable with this approach, say now, because I won’t hold it against you, and I can put you on the outside right now, give you plausible deniability of all of this. It has to be now. Just say the word.”

No one says a word.

**

Sink gives them what Johnny Martin refers to as the long slow exhale of doom when they lay their report on his desk, metaphorically speaking. 

“Dick,” he says, and the placatory tone gets their hackles up immediately. “I know you’ll want to follow this lead yourself, and I don’t blame you, I would too if I were in your shoes. But we’ve got orders, and I can’t countermand them. I’ll pass this information on to Captain Haldane, finding Nixon is their primary mission right now.

“K35 are at least half a day away from Captain Nixon’s probable location,” Harry says, before Dick can open his mouth. “We’re two hours out, at most. By the time Haldane and Jones get their boys over there, they’ll be long gone. We’re his best shot sir, please!”

Sink gives Harry a firm look. “Lieutenant Welsh,” he says, and nothing else.

Harry bites his tongue. 

“What’re our orders, sir?” Dick asks.

Sink seems almost embarrassingly relieved that he isn’t going to need to fight them further on this. He lays out the maps and points towards a little cluster of towns around sixty klicks from the location where they believe Nixon is being held. So fucking close.

“Here,” he says, “Command believes there is a large stash of ammunition and ordnance being stored here. Guard is currently minimal due to the amount of activity in the north. Orders are to attack and destroy.”

“Sir,” Dick says, “Can I ask why Command is sending paratroopers rather than ordering a drone strike?”

Sink does the long slow exhale of doom again. “The warehouse is between a school and a hospital. Small, controlled detonations, no collateral damage.”

Dick nods. “Understood.”

“I knew I could count on you, Dick,” says Sink, and the relief intensifies. “Get your men together, I need you underway in thirty mikes.”

“Yes sir, Colonel Sink, sir,” Dick says, and they leave him at his desk.

By silent agreement, they get as far away from Sink as they can before they start to discuss it. Speirs has the map, little blue marks lining the way. Dick walks past the men bunched together at one of the trucks and gestures at Luz.

“George,” he says, “Get K35 on the hook for me, I want to hear what Haldane and Jones have on this.”

Luz nods and disappears into the back of the truck to the radios. Dick keeps walking until he’s at the end of the line, and then he takes the map from Speirs and spreads it out on the hood. He puts a hand up into the air, completely on instinct, and then almost laughs at himself when he realises that no, Nixon is not there to hand him a pen whenever he needs one. 

“Pen, Carwood?”

It appears in his hand. He leans over the map, focuses in on Sink’s blue line, and their own position, and then traces back the route. Harry, Lip and Speirs watch, wait, silent.

“Alright,” Dick says, and breathes out, steady and sure. “Alright. That’s Sink’s objective. And that’s where we think Captain Nixon is. This is us right now. So this is what we’re going to do.” He drops his volume, angles himself to make sure he’s properly covered. “We’re giving the men the official orders and nothing else. We tell them nothing, we protect them as far as we can. We tell them our objective, we saddle up, and we head out. We move along this road towards the ammo depo, and then we stop here,” he points at a place on the map, “And unload the men, rearrange the trucks, and send two squads to retrieve Captain Nixon. We tell them at the last possible moment. The rest of the company proceeds to the official objective. The rescue team retrieve Captain Nixon and progress as fast as they can to the official objective, where they meet with the rest of the company, complete the objective, and await further orders.”

“Shit, Dick,” says Harry, whistling under his breath.

“What do we tell Sink when we rock back up with Nix?!” Lipton asks.

Speirs smirks. “We say, well sir, Colonel Sink sir, our intel from the locals must have been dodgy, because we got to the ammo depo just like you said and well gee whizz, what do you know, there he was, Colonel Sink sir! And we smile, and we all pretend that he doesn’t know we’re lying through our teeth, and he takes the win, because he likes Nix and he likes us and he likes to win.”

Dick puts on an identical smirk. “Yes, exactly that.”

**

They give the men their official orders and there is instant, total uproar. Dick gives them precisely sixty seconds to yell and bitch and threaten to go AWOL and then he shuts them down.

“Enough!” It’s his parade ground command roar and they haven’t heard it in months. “Enough! I know this is not what anyone wanted to hear, but these are our orders and this is what we’re going to do. So saddle up, we’re oscar mike in ten.”

He moves away, stopping by Talbert very briefly, to take him by the shoulder and look him straight in the eye. “I need you to trust me, Floyd.”

Tab nods.

“Keep them in line.”

“Yes sir,” Tab says. “And I trust you, Dick, completely. I’ll get them in line.”

He does. Dick makes his way to his truck, and is waylaid briefly by Luz.

“George?”

“Major Winters,” he says, and his voice is a little uncertain. “I got hold of K35. It’s… Well. They were following intel this morning, on Nix, obviously shit intel, about three hundred klicks from here, and they lost Jones.”

“They lost Jones?”

“Yes,” George tells him, and he looks miserable. “About an hour ago. Blown up and then shot by a sniper.”

“Christ,” Dick exhales, and says a brief, silent prayer. “Did you tell the others?”

“No.”

Good old George , Dick thinks. “Thank you,” he says. “Keep it to yourself for now. We’ll get through this and figure it out when we’re done with this mission.”

“Yes sir,” says George, and he looks god damn miserable.

“Are you alright, Luz?” Dick asks, despite knowing better.

George looks up at him, and plasters on a big Luz smile. “Peachy keen, Major Winters,” he says.

They saddle up. They move out. Dick looks at the map, again and again and again, spread out over his knees with Harry pressed against him in the cab of the truck, and he forces himself to think of nothing except the roads and tracks, nothing except the ammo, the best way to destroy or reappropriate the supplies without causing damage to the neighbourhood. He refuses to let himself think of Lewis. He stomps on the hope. He puts the men first. 

“Harry,” he says, voice very, very low. “I need you to lead the retrieval mission.”

Harry turns to look at him, shocked. “What? You don’t want to do it yourself?”

Dick breathes very carefully. “I can’t,” he says. “Harry, I just can’t trust myself. I need you to do it for me. It has to be one of us and it can’t be me.”

Because if he’s dead, I’ll fall apart, and the men will be out in the cold. And if he’s not dead, I’ll give myself away, and him too.

“Alright,” Harry says, and swallows his horror. “Alright, of course, I’ll do it.”

They’ve been driving for forty minutes when Dick radios up to the lead truck and calls a halt. On his orders, the men pile out. They’re in the middle of nowhere, standing around confused and irritated. They come to attention instantly as he steps into the middle of the circle.

“Listen up,” he says, “Because we need to be quick. Lieutenant Welsh, take Grant and Guarnere and their squads in the lead truck, head north west from here approximately thirty klicks.”

There’s a little murmur through the company. “What’s our objective, sir?” Bill asks.

“You’re going to find Captain Nixon,” Dick says.

“Oh yes we fucking are,” Bill says, and whoops. 

The company erupts again, all gleeful relief. Tab clenches his hands into fists, digs them against the still healing shrapnel scars in his sides to stop them shaking.

“Then you’ll progress towards our official objective, as planned, and meet up with the rest of the company,” Dick continues. “Any questions?”

Both Tab and Roe put their hands up.

“Eugene?”

“I need to be in the retrieval truck,” he says.

“The retrieval is off the books,” Dick says. “You need to be with the company, in case anything goes wrong with the actual mission.”

Roe shakes his head. “You’ll have Spina and you’ll be right next door to a god damn hospital. Captain Nixon has been hostage almost a fortnight. He will need medical care. I need to be in the retrieval truck.”

“I can handle it,” Spina chips in. “Send Roe.”

Dick nods. “Alright. Tab?”

“Give me back my squad, sir? Swap me out for Grant. It’s been ten days, I’m recovered, I can shoot straight and carry my pack, I’m combat effective and…” He lowers his voice, moves closer. “Dick, I need to be on that team, sir please.”

Harry inclines his head, speaks quietly. “If you’re not going, and Lip and Speirs aren’t going, Tab’s right. It should be me and him.”

“Alright,” Dick says, raising his voice. “Alright, Tab swap with Grant, Roe get in the truck, let’s get this show on the road.”

**

They split up. Darkness drops on them like a blanket in the way that it only ever really does in the desert and within four minutes the trucks are invisible to each other. Harry refuses to let Tab drive, sticks Babe behind the wheel. There’s a brief, grim moment when Babe tilts to look over his shoulder at Julian, the haha, my turn already written all over his face, and then they’re well into their rhythm. Roe empties, checks, packs and repacks his bag, going man to man with his hand out for anything and everything they might have on them. Bill shuffles up and down the line of each bench, checking each man methodically one by one and when it’s his turn, last in the first line, Tab has to physically prevent himself from flinching away from the memory of checking Nix before his last mission. He sits still, lets Bill run through it, and then forces him down onto the bench and checks him in return. Opposite, Toye smiles at him, big and luminous in the dark, all quiet gratitude and understanding.

They have no radio. They have no air support. No one knows where they are or where they’re going, no one has their six. It’s eighteen men in a truck, two squads, an angry Lieutenant and a medic. It’s so dark they can barely see each other’s faces, but Tab knows every man in this truck and loves him, fiercely, in his bones, in a way that will reverberate through his life from this moment to the last, whether that’s sixty years or six minutes away. They’re breaking the law, they’re breaking every single US Military code, they’re risking death or jail time and their careers, their futures, and they’re doing it without a second thought, without a single doubt or hesitation, because Lewis Nixon is their brother too and he’s right fucking there.

It takes them barely any time to reach their objective. They have little to no intel, but Harry sends Liebgott and Babe out to scope, small and light and silent with two of their very scarce sets of NVGs. They’re gone almost half an hour, while the rest of the team lie behind a berm, shaded from view by the dark and the topography, sights set on the little cluster of huts. Tab focuses on breathing the way Dick does, steady and slow, and he’s got Harry pressed up against him all along one side, solid and furious and dependable.

Babe and Joe slink back into the line, dropping down and crawling til they reach Harry.

“Only one hut with a light on,” Babe says, a little breathless. “No sign of life in any of the others, and there’s no animals or anything growing, and the water tank is dry too. This place is abandoned.”

Liebgott takes over. “There are two men outside the hut, one on each side, but they’re sloppy, smoking, weapons down. There’s another three, maybe four in the hut. It's tiny, looks like one room, two doors, no windows.”

“Any sign of Nixon?” Tab asks.

Babe shrugs. “Didn’t get eyes on him myself,” he says, “But there’s a bit of blood in the sand, and bloody bandages in the bed of the truck parked by the huts. Not a lot, but some.”

Guarnere gives Harry a steady look. “We come at it from the sides, I take one squad round the front, Tab takes the other round the back, subdue the guards silently, take the hut by force, retrieve Captain Nixon, and get the fuck out of here in under twelve mikes - what do you think?”

Harry gives him a smile with teeth, an Easy Company smile. “I think you could do it in ten, Sergeant,” and nods.

The orders are passed down the line, back up, confirmed, and then they’re up on their feet and they’re off, moving more lightly over the sand than any group of men upwards of 180lbs each even without gear have any right to do. They’re silent, invisible, absolutely fucking deadly. It’s less than four hundred metres over the sand from their position to the truck, where they stop for a moment, huddled in the shadows of the vehicle. They scope for a moment, and then move on, leaving Roe behind, safe in position, ready to run as soon as he’s called. Harry’s supposed to stay with him. He does, for all of twenty seconds, and then he slips into the position at the back of Tab’s line, and makes his way across the sand with the rest of them.

Totally silent, they close the distance in under a minute. They come at the hut from opposite sides, lining up against the windowless walls, before moving seamlessly round the corners. Bill takes the man at the front door, hand over his mouth before he even knows he’s in danger, and drives his knife down hard into the juncture of his neck. At the back door, Liebgott slits the throat of the other guard, and both teams move noiselessly into position. There’s a breath, a man at the end of each line passing the signal to the other squad, three, two, one, now and then they’re forcing the doors and hurtling inwards.

It’s over in seconds. There are four men in the room, and just like the guards not a single one of them has a hand on his weapon. They’re dead before they have a chance to reach for their guns, and the room echoes with the crack and clatter of gunfire and shell casings, and then there’s silence. The cordite lingers but the smoke and blood clears within seconds and they move further in, sweeping the room. The light’s been shot out, it’s pitch black, and they go very carefully, slowly, each one of them breathless with hope, until Liebgott yells out.

“Here!”

Toye lights a flare, holds it at arms length, it illuminates the room with a strange, red, fighting light, and there he is, curled on the floor in the corner, arms up over his head to protect himself from the bullets. 

“Sir?” calls Guarnere, at the same time that Harry says “Nix?”

He hauls himself up, almost to sitting, and it is him, it’s Nixon, eyes huge and dark in his filthy, bloody face, hair a tangled mess, lips bitten raw, but it’s Nixon.

“Hello boys,” he says, and passes out.

Chapter Text

Day Seventeen, cont

Between them, Harry and Bill carry him to the truck, the rest of them clearing out the room, sweeping all the papers and maps, frisking the corpses. Nix is just about conscious, but not really, drifting in and out, overwhelmed by the pain and exhaustion and relief, but pinned by the solid presence on either side of him. They lay him on the floor of the truck and Roe gets to work as the rest of them pile in around him. Babe gets behind the wheel and they take off. Harry looks at his watch. 

“Nine minutes, Guarnere,” he says, almost to himself. “Not fucking bad.”

Day Eighteen 

He comes to properly when they’re well underway, lying on the filthy floor of the truck with the constellation of faces looking down at him.

“Aha,” he says, weak with relief, staring up at Harry, crouched on the floor, staring down at him. “The cavalry.”

Harry scoffs. “Yeah fuck you Lewis.”

“Good to see you too, Harry,” Nix says.

Harry gets out of his crouch and onto his knees, puts his head down on Nix’s chest, careful, and shakes. Nix winces but doesn’t make him move, lifting the arm not currently holding an IV and putting his hand very lightly on the back of Harry’s head.

Tab drops down to the floor next to them and stretches out a leg, manoeuvring Nix’s head into his lap. 

“Floyd,” Nix says, tipping his head back to look at him properly. “You made it.” He sounds like this is something he hadn’t dared hope was possible.

Tab resists the urge to lay his head down next to Harry’s and sob into Nix’s chest. “Yeah,” he says instead. “You’re a hell of a shot.” 

“Not just a pretty face,” Nix rasps, and relaxes a little.

There’s a lull then, a settled sort of quiet, as the relief starts to really sink in, sticky and syrup-sweet. They lean back against the side of the truck, someone begins to hum something, someone else joins in, it’s Blood on the Risers and they harmonise, very quietly, almost like a lullaby. Roe passes the IV bag to Toye who holds it up nice and high, and then leans back against Bill and closes his eyes. Harry sits up, breathes deeply. For the first time in a long time, they’re calm.

“Oh shit,” says Nix all of a sudden. “Shit, Harry, are you AWOL right now? Where’s Dick, where’re Sparky and Lip? Are you lot rogue right now?”

Harry smiles, and it’s not the one with the teeth, it’s the big, wide, genuine one that no one’s seen for a fortnight. “No Nix, we’re not rogue, and we’re not AWOL. Officially, we’re ever so slightly lost. The rest of the company is about fifty klicks from here on an actual mission from Sink, and we’re going to join them now, where we’ll assist in taking an ammo depo and disposing of the ordinance, and well what do you know, what a huge coincidence, we’re gonna find you there in one of the back rooms. Guess our intel was off when we heard you were being held in a different town.”

Nix gives him the smile with the teeth in return. “I knew you’d be useless without me,” he says. “Intel in this company isn’t worth shit when I’m gone.”

“We're banking on that as the main incentive for Sink saying good job boys and nothing more,” says Harry. “And, also, it's the truth.”

**

The assault on the ammo depo goes flawlessly. There are guards out the front and in the main room of the warehouse, Shifty and Skinny take the former out from a distance, and Randleman, Martin and Lipton lead squads into the building and dispose of the latter. They take no major casualties - Christenson ends up with a bullet graze to his shin and Alley gets nicked in the upper arm, but Spina binds both wounds easily and they're steady on their feet. Then it’s simply a matter of cataloguing the ordinance, deciding what they can dispose of safely in situ, what they can use, and what they need to take elsewhere to detonate without blowing up a school and a hospital.

Despite the dark, they're drawing a certain amount of interest from the locals. Speirs sets up a perimeter and then sends Lipton next door to the hospital with Spina to assess what they have and see if there's anything they need that can be provided by the US Army.

“Hearts and minds, motherfuckers,” mutters Skinny to Luz, who laughs.

Now their little slice of the action is out of the way and they're just sorting and standing guard, the really trying part of the mission commences. Dick paces the perimeter, eyes on the pitch black of the horizon, knuckles white on his rifle. Lipton returns from the hospital with a wishlist to pass on to Battalion, and stands next to Speirs in the wide open side of the warehouse, watching the figure of the Major in the dark. 

Lipton lingers for a moment, caught between reluctance to jinx it and the complete, inalienable certainty of his safety with Speirs at any point.

“What happens if they come back without him?” He asks. “What happens if they come back with his corpse?”

It's an unutterable possibility and the man next to him is the only person he could ever have voiced it to. 

Speirs looks at him, and in the dim light his face is a thing of pure grief. “If they come back with Lewis Nixon's corpse, I will do everything in my power to get Dick out of this fucking desert, regardless of what it would do to this company, because if I don't we'll be sending him home in a box by the end of the week.”

“You'll hold this company together, sir,” Lip says, because it's the truth. “Easy would follow you into hell, Captain Speirs, and I'd be the first man after you.”

They stand in silence after that, staring out into the dark, and it might feel like an hour but it's only two or three minutes until there's movement on the horizon and a call comes back from the perimeter.

“Captain Speirs, we've got incoming.”

“Form up.”

They do, taking defensive positions in front of the warehouse and holding their rifles at the ready, waiting breathless and desperate with hope. In the deep hungry dark of the desert, the truck isn't visible until it's practically on top of them, and though the rifles are lowered they don't breathe out until Babe hops down from the cab of the truck, a smile a mile wide across his face.

“Anyone lose an intelligence officer around these parts?” He asks, and a great whoop of glee goes up from the men. 

Dick’s moving like a compass drawn to north, like a man possessed, and they get out of his way without question because they know he can’t see them, can’t see anything except the back of the truck being pinned open and the flood of light coming out of the warehouse doors illuminating the men getting down from the victor, Liebgott and his shit-eating grin, Tab all dizzy relief, and then Harry, face red and wet and hands shaking, and finally, finally, propped up between Bill and Joe, with Roe hovering behind him, is Lewis Nixon.

Dick misses a step, and very narrowly avoids ending up in the sand. He stops in the light of the warehouse, heart beating in his mouth and his fingertips and every bit of his soul on fire, and manages to wait for them to get to him, cataloguing as they move, the way he’s cut and scarred, the way he’s got two weeks of beard, the way he’s lost weight, the way he’s pale and exhausted and pained and the smile he’s wearing, a beaming, beautiful thing, something just for them, even though everyone’s watching.

“Hello Dick,” he says, and his voice is light and breezy, the way it is when they’re at home and he’s sitting at their kitchen counter when Dick gets back from his morning run. “You look like shit.”

The idea that I could ever live without you, Dick thinks, a little hysterical, is preposterous, and he knows his voice is going to break even before he speaks. “It’s been a bad few weeks,” he says, and thinks that the men will probably never mention the fact that he’s crying right now.

“Yeah,” Nix says. “Me too.”

He stumbles the scant yard between them, and Dick catches him, pulling him upright against him, arms unyielding and permanent across his back, one hand settled in the filthy mess of his hair, Nix’s face pressed into his neck, body sagging with the sheer relief of this, two men in the dark in the middle of the war like a fucking poem, like a miracle, like an endless gift from a god only one of them believes in.

A little way away from them, Lipton lets out a shaky breath and wipes his eyes on the back of his sleeve. Speirs wraps a firm hand around his wrist, and with his other hand reaches over to Harry and takes a cigarette out of the pack in his pocket. The lighter appears as soon as he has it between his lips, and it’s taken from him before he can manage the second draw.

There’s not much left to do, now, the final bits of ordinance to be taken out into the desert and blown up, Luz and Liebgott hooting like demons as the explosions light the sky, while the rest of what they can use is loaded into the trucks to be taken back to HQ. 

Dick sits in the sand in the light from the warehouse, Nix tucked up against his side. 

“We are never going back to war,” he tells Nix, very quietly. “Once we get out of here, that’s it. We’re not doing this anymore. It’s done.”

Nix sighs, rests his forehead on the crest of Dick’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he says.

**

In the middle of the men crammed into trucks now overfilled with weapons and ammo, in the middle of the raucous joy, Don Malarkey is very, very still. He’s got a look on his face that they haven’t seen since the first moment Tab came through the gates, like he’s holding himself together only by staying exactly where he is, as if any movement could shake something loose and that would be that. He stays like that the whole way back to their camp, and when the men pour out of the trucks and unload their cargo, as the officers cart Nixon off to Sink with their lines well prepared, Don stays where he is, sitting in the middle of the bench of the empty truck, eyes sliding over his surroundings like he’s never seen any of this before and isn’t very interested in it.

They leave him for a few minutes, and then Bill gets up and sits next to him. He waits til the rest of them have cleared out, til it’s quiet and still and just the two of them, and then he puts an arm round him.

“You alright?”

Don shakes his head. “I know it’s stupid,” he says, and his voice sounds very strange to Bill, like all the grief has sat for so long that it’s fermented into something else, something potent, something that might blind you if you drank it. “But I think, deep down, a little part of me was expecting to find them with him. I knew we wouldn’t. I know they’re gone. Or at least, I thought I knew that. But actually I think there was some small sliver of me that thought that maybe Tab had been wrong and the 17th had been wrong and they’d made it out and that when we found Nix they’d be…” he takes a deep, shuddering breath and Bill holds him tighter, wills himself not to cry. “But they weren’t, because they’re both dead. I’m going to have to go back to our house and pack up all of their things and talk to their parents and their families and then I’m going to have to live the rest of my life without them.”

“Don,” Bill says, because he can’t think of anything else.

“What does that even look like?” he asks, and there isn’t an answer to the question.

**

Their return is total chaos. The men unload the ammo and weapons and crow around the camp like the conquering heroes that they are, sheer unbridled triumph because this has been a long, shitty war and they’ve lost so much and done so much and had so much taken from them, but they got to give Dick Winters back his wife and that’s a fucking victory you can sing about decades into the future.

On silent assent, the officers go together to report to Sink, with Nixon standing between Dick and Harry, tired and jubilant and brimming with the hilarity of the situation now that it’s over. Sink looks up as they walk in, the five of them in a row with their lost man in the middle, and he doesn’t hide the smile on his face as fast as perhaps he could have.

“Captain Nixon,” he says, very dry. “Nice to see you.”

“You too sir,” Nix says, and he’s not even trying to hide his smile.

Sink scrubs a hand over his face. “Alright, let’s hear it then gentlemen.”

Speirs gives him the story, just as planned, and Sink looks at them as if to say I don’t believe a word of this and I don’t want to hear another word about this until we’re all retired, and then he says, “Well done, gents. Dismissed.”

And that’s that.

“You can say what you like about that man,” Speirs says, “And I have done, and probably will again, but you can’t say that he doesn’t care about his men.”

It’s practically dawn, a red glow growing in the distance and the dark lightening to grey as the men settle down into their tents, still buzzing with the dual victory of having Nixon back and having defeated the bullshit of Command. There is a brief, silent conversation between Speirs, Lip and Harry, and then Dick and Nix are shepherded towards the hastily-constructed officers’ tent, and left blissfully alone.

It’s the first time they’ve been alone for a long time, long before Nix left on his mission, and for a moment they just sit in the beauty of it, the relief, settled on one of the cots, pressed together thigh to shoulder, breathing in perfect unison. Everything feels simple and clear for the first time ever, everything feels like it’s there for them to have, if they want it, and they do. It’s just a matter of working out how to have the conversation. It’s a conversation they’ve been not having for nearly five years. It’s a conversation they’ve not had a thousand times. 

I’ve had this conversation in my head every day since I met you, thinks Nix, and rests his head on Dick’s shoulder. 

“You start,” he says. 

“I'm in love with you,” Dick says, and there's the beginnings of a smile growing in the corner of his mouth.

“I know that,” Nix replies.

“And you're in love with me,” Dick continues, smile widening.

“I know that too,” Nix says.

“When we get home,” Dick says, and the smile is everything now, “I'd like to take you to dinner.”

Nix rolls his eyes. “Sap. I'll never say no to a free meal, you know that, but really, I think when you get home, you should move your things out of your bedroom and into mine, and then I think we should get a better house, and probably a dog, and a pair of matching rings.”

There's a heartbeat worth of silence and Nix laughs at the look on Dick's face.

“I haven't even kissed you yet,” he says.

“That's true,” Nix allows. “And I want you to kiss me, and fuck me, and everything in between. But be advised, once you kiss me once, I'm going to expect you to do it every single day for the rest of my life.”

There's a lump in his throat. “I can do that,” Dick says, and brushes his lips ever so gently against Nix’s. It's nothing and everything. 

“It's a good start,” Nix says, little sigh of relief. “We've got time.”