Chapter Text
The last light of another countless day in Bastogne bled out against the treetops, streaks of pale pink and bitter cold blue smudging what little sky the Easy Company men could see between the skeleton tree branches. Snow clung in uneven patches to the churned-up mud, blood, and splintered wood.
It had been unusually quiet today — only a couple of artillery barrages from the krauts, weirdly. No losses as well, except for one; a few were wounded in some ways, but all made it to the makeshift hospital in town.
“Ya think the krauts are giving us a break as a gift for Christmas?” Malarkey asks from his shared foxhole with Luz and Perconte, perking up at the sight of Lieutenant Winters outside.
“Yeah, not even in your dreams, Malarkey.” Perconte huffs back, nodding at the L.T. “What's going on, sir?”
“Just checking in before the night.” Winters sighs, crouching next to their foxhole and hiding his hands in his jacket from the biting cold. “Never know what they got us for Christmas, after all.”
“Sure ain’t a nice homemade meal, sir.” Luz butts in, a stupid smile on his face. “We’re all good here, though.”
Winters smiles at that, getting back up and continuing his check up on the rest of the men in their foxholes.
His last stop is Doc Roe’s foxhole, but he finds the man paired up in Babe’s foxhole instead.
“Hey Lieutenant,” The soldier cheers, sitting barely a foot away from Doc, who does not look happy to be there, as per usual. “Dragged in ‘Gene here, since he was all alone in his foxhole anyway.”
“And I was perfectly content there.” Roe grumbles, but looks at peace with the fact that he’s not getting alone time tonight. “How are you doing, sir?” He asks instead.
“Yeah, well, there were direct orders for each foxhole to have at least two men in it, to keep the cold away.” Winters ignores the question at first, earning a tiny smirk from the medic. In the background, a wheezing sound appears — something they don’t notice at first.
“And I’m doing fine, thank—“
A sound of something exploding and tree branches falling cuts him off. Another artillery barrage, his mind supplies automatically as he reacts immediately; pushing Roe’s and Hufferson’s helmets back in the foxhole, and almost yelling out an order to stay low.
Almost.
A stray artillery shell beats him to it. It lands somewhere close — how close, he can’t tell, but enough to physically knock him down. Blown up snow, mud and wood blocks his vision for a moment, littering him with bits and pieces of each. There’s a loud ringing in his ears, one that would make a man go deaf if he wasn’t already.
With air knocked out of his lungs, he drags himself to the nearest half-filled foxhole, arms protecting his head as he tries his best to hide away from any more shells.
There’s only one problem — well, one of many, but it crawls up his spine and settles cold in his gut: it’s quiet.
Not quiet in the way Bastogne sometimes is between barrages, when you can still hear the wind clawing at the dead tree branches, the crackle of frost shifting on canvas, the low murmur of voices. No. This is a void. The kind of silence that feels wrong, as though the world had its breath knocked out of it along with him.
He blinks up at the sky smudged with smoke and streaks of dirty snow, and though he can see the distant flashes, he hears nothing. No boom, no whistle, no shudder in the earth beneath him. Just the shrill, high ringing inside his skull — a soundless scream trapped behind his own eyes.
Something is wrong. It feels as if someone tried making scrambled eggs with his brain — It sure as hell isn’t supposed to be silent right now, when artillery shells are raining down on them.
Right?
Still, besides a shrilling ring, the world remains silent for Winters.
He blinks through the haze, vision blurring in and out. He can see the barrage — the flashes of light, the geysers of snow and dirt — but he can’t hear it. Nothing but the shrill, maddening ring.
His breath claws its way out of his lungs in ragged, visible bursts, each one billowing like smoke in the frigid air. He pushes himself up on one elbow — or tries to. The movement spikes pain through his temple, hot and sharp, and something warm slips down the side of his face. He touches it with trembling fingers, and they come away smeared red, stark against the bone-white snow.
he pulls himself into a half-sitting position anyway, and sees his men peeking out of their foxholes, assessing the damage. Everything around them was blown up to kingdom come, with fried branches and dirt littered everywhere. Some of the men, like Doc Roe and Babe, are already getting out, which is a big mistake; they should wait a few more minutes, just to be sure that the germans aren’t doing a second wave of artillery. He tries to voice that thought, but it comes out muffled — if it even was his voice. Can he not speak? What the hell happened to him? He’s not hit anywhere, is he?
A shape drops beside him, sharp and fast, and a pair of hands — rough, cold, slick with melted snow and dirt — fist in his jacket and haul him upright.
The world tips alarmingly, and Winters’ stomach rolls with it. For a moment he thinks he might pass out, but something keeps him tethered. A face, close to his, blurred around the edges like a photograph held too close to a flame. Familiar. Roe.
The medic’s mouth moves, lips shaping his name — ‘Lieutenant Winters,’ — over and over again, desperation etched into every line of his face. The words don’t land. They dissolve in the air, as useless as smoke.
Winters stares, the shrill ring in his ears sharpening into something needle-thin and cruel, and struggles to make his voice work. He can’t tell if he succeeds. The world stays muffled and distant, like cotton packed in his skull.
“Temporary deafness,” a tiny voice in his mind says, but he can’t focus on it. Another blur — Babe, maybe? — skids to a stop at the edge of the half-foxhole, half-crater, eyes wide. His lips move in a string of panicked words, but Winters catches none of it.
Roe’s grip tightens, shaking him once, sharp and rough — more anchor than threat. His expression is carved from something cold and unyielding, a barely-restrained edge of fury threaded through worry, the kind of look Roe reserved for stubborn soldiers bleeding out with a shrug.
Winters mouths, ‘I’m fine.’
The medic’s jaw clenches. He shakes his head, lips curling around a silent curse, and shoves him back down into the snow, hard enough to make his teeth rattle.
‘Like hell you are!’ Winters reads in the stiff line of his mouth.
Hands move over him, practiced and efficient, pressing against his scalp, along his jaw, across his chest. Winters feels the pressure, the icy bite of snow melting against his skin, but it’s all distant. Like watching it happen to someone else.
Another figure drops in — Guarnere this time, the cocky smirk gone, his face pale beneath the grime. His mouth moves, fast, sharp, eyes darting toward the treeline and then back to him. His hand on Winters’ arm is steady, but his knuckles are white. Behind him, the lieutenant identifies Luz and Bull, both so caked with mud it looks like they'd face-planted into the wet, muddy ground.
Roe doesn’t even look up. He grabs Guarnere by the collar, yells something, and jabs a finger toward Winters’ ear. Bill blanches, his bravado cracking clean open in a way Winters has never seen.
He wants to tell them to stop. Wants to tell them he’s okay, that they need to scatter before the next round hits — but his voice is lost to him.
And it’s too much. It overwhelms him. The faces, the movement, the ghost-words he can’t catch. A distant part of him counts heads. Bull? Luz? Perconte? Christ, where’s Liebgott?
His heart trips over itself, breathing turning thin and sharp. He latches onto Roe’s wrist, blood-slick and cold, and squeezes. It takes three tries to do it properly. But the medic notices. Of course he does.
That sharp gaze drops to his face, and something in it softens.
Winters doesn’t need to say it. Roe’s already moving, already barking a silent order at the gathered men, one sharp gesture and the whole world stills. One by one, the voices cut off. The air feels less jagged.
While the others go quiet, the medic presses a bandage to the cut on his temple.
The silence stretches, thick as fog.
Winters’ chest rises and falls in sharp, uneven pulls, as his gaze drifts. The outline of Guarnere’s helmet, a twitch of movement as Luz crouches lower behind the wreckage of a tree. Snow drifting down in thick, lazy clumps, dusting Roe’s shoulders, clinging to the edges of Winters’ lashes. The world feels… distant. Like he’s fallen into a space between breaths.
“Jesus Christ.” He barely whispers, taking a deep breath. He needs to calm down. He can’t be having a fucking breakdown in front of his men. He’s a lieutenant, for Christ’s sake! He needs to tell them that they cannot stay in one foxhole, because god forbid another shell drops on it — then the entire platoon would be dead, not just him, and he.. he doesn’t think he can afford to lose them all.
“Okay,” he thinks he says — which he probably does, because it catches the attention of everyone else around him. “Is.. is everyone alright? No casualties?” He asks, to which Guarnere gives him a thumbs up and a nod. He relaxes a little bit. Then remembers that he’s fucking deaf.
“My hearing?” He turns to Roe, who points to the watch on his wrist and mouths something akin to ‘temporary’.
“Right.” He clears his throat — he might be hearing his words a little less muffled now, but maybe he’s just delusional. His temple aches painfully, but he ignores it. “Get out of here, go back to your foxholes, and stay there until I fix.. this.”
The men hesitate, exchanging glances — no one wants to be the first to leave. It isn’t every day you see your officer bleeding into the snow with a thousand-yard stare.
“Go,” Winters says again, firmer this time. The world is still muffled, but he can sense the movement as one by one, the men peel away, ducking back into the cover of their foxholes, glancing over their shoulders as they go.
Roe stays, because of course he does, and pulls out a small, battered notepad from his jacket. He scribbles something down with a stub of a pencil, then turns it towards him.
‘You’ll get your hearing back. Concussion. Stay low. Don’t be a hero, sir.’
Winters huffs a breath — a laugh, maybe. It hurts. Roe is still looking at him with clear worry, something that is so unusual it concerns the officer. Then the doc turns the notepad back, scribbles another sentence, and gives it to him.
‘Should I call for a drive to town for you?’
He shakes his head at that, deeming it unnecessary. If his hearing is already clearing up — which it is — and he’s not majorly wounded, then there’s no use leaving his men alone on the front lines.
The medic nods, begins standing up, but is abruptly stopped by Winters grabbing at his arm again.
“Doc,” he says, his voice quiet, but just enough for the man in front of him to hear. “Thank you.”
Eugene Roe smiles at him, something soft and reassuring, and instead of leaving, sits down beside him, shoulder-to-shoulder on the disgustingly wet snow and broken trees.
The silence isn’t quite so crushing now. Somewhere distant, he thinks he can just barely make out the low whump of another shell. A start. Not enough. But a start.
Around them, the snow gleams a pale, sticky blue in the dying light, scattered with soot and branches, pockmarked with half-frozen puddles of blood mixed with snow water. Smoke hangs low between the trees like a ghost.
Doc pats his shoulder, the weight of it steady and grounding. Winters lets out a shuddering breath, the mist curling between them. He presses the bandage tighter against his temple, the ache of it sharp and real, and settles lower in the churned-up snow.
Together, they wait for dawn.