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A series of choices. One, springing into another, crawling along a wall, 'til the stream reaches another fork. Another option, lost within the unimaginable possibilities of choices that would have been, had one taken the opposite step. Acted differently, known better. Navigation is not his strong point—that was Nixon's job. The fact lurches up at him, moving, striking, hitting deeper than the first time his breath had flooded Dick's mouth, strangely like a hot meal. And now it's hard to keep sitting, but just as difficult to stand. Through the night, he stands, falls backwards into the seat, kneading his face, rotting in his memories, and smears his face and body with the dry, dark remnants of the blood.
He watches the images return, glorious and hazy. Each is now printed with regrets and words he'd go back and say. They jump, they jar, filmy and ineffective.
Navigation? No, it was Nixon's job to know where in god's green earth they were—and not simply, "Between the gun and the bottle," as was his answer after the battle had been fought and won/lost and alcohol cheerily downed. He bent down on the grass with one eye pressed to the magnifying glass. The paper talked, his nose shoved confidently against the ground, his lip curled in under his brisk teeth. Eyes as smooth as chocolate, chin rougher than his voice. He tortured Dick those days they were lost.
The most navigation he ever really had to do was to steer his men, but then it wasn't navigation. That was survival, that was right—if Lewis Nixon ever belonged to the bottle, then Dick Winters belonged to the battlefield. Neither was good, both would kill them, but damned if they weren't talented in each respective sin. He only navigated when it was the callous of his fingertip up the stepladder of Lew's spine. He only navigated when it was to grab his mouth in the dark when they'd lost touch of the other for too long.
Otherwise it was Nixon.
The first time he'd kissed Nix comes back like a vivid bite. They'd been caged yet by American skies, safe from strafing fire, housed by the neat flaps of canvas. Hunger had been harassing him. It seems timid now compared to the viciousness of a Bastogne welcome, but every sinew and cell of his body had been run, spent, whipped. Sobel days. Training days, in southern sunlight and green, fresh camaraderie. He knew his hair frilled from the wind, hung at odd angles over his brow. Running made his face half-flush, making awkward patches on his skin, clashing with his freckles. Somehow, he saw Nixon liked that, the way his grin was half-grin and half-pant.
For a moment, he thought he'd been comparing heights—comparing, relatively, how high his head stood against Dick's, sizing him up in a harmless fashion—until his lips parted and he breathed nervously. That, and the fact he was a tug away and still not moving. Dick felt it along his lips, nothing like sleeping on hay, biting a September apple, or even a peck on his mother's dry face. It was loaded, fulfilling, and did not yet taste of whiskey.
It was like a Sunday meal before depression had robbed the fertility of his mother's kitchen. Kissing him was simply sitting down to enjoy that meal.
He could have said grace—for Nix eagerly wrapped his mouth around his in response, balancing Dick's thin, tight mouth with a wet, mobile grin. And then, that odd moment. They'd stopped and, without a beat of thought or awkwardness, rested their faces together. And now, Dick can't remember when they'd parted. He does remember a joke at Sobel's expense muttered against his chin, and laughter that had curled around his face, hot like Nix's fingers gripping.
Again, the film jumps. Snow the color of mist and ash fills everything, even Nixon's lashes, dusting his hair with false age. Coffee and soup were gold and silver. Nixon's nose, ruby-red, the rest of him a washed-gray against the black of his brow and jaw. He remembers the half-kisses, half-embraces with a pinch of melding that kept away the blitzing cold, arms straying beneath opposing coats, hands and fingers weaving together, hot silverware and pots pressed between them. Oh, how difficult it'd been to watch Nix watch him shudder and shiver. He felt Nixon's eyes stripping him and warming him properly at the most inopportune times.
Skip. Backwards? Dick's heart aches, knowing he is only steering away from the pain that is now.
Nixon, gladly pressing his mouth into the whooping, joyous lipstick of some Dutch girl who'd just been liberated. Dick remembers only wistfully observing, etching the image of Nixon's lips in their favorite activity (not just kissing whiskey, his other favorite gal) to better enjoy when they return to his.
He commandeered a room and took him that night more possessively than he thought he ever could. Or more than Lew would let him.
They'd rested their faces together, and they joked about Sobel. He'd lost his breath, but still could curl a beautiful note or two to call him "Lewis." In that "Baby," tone Nix sometimes accused him of secretly employing. Oh, but how he'd shuddered like a replacement, eyes pleasantly round, at that sound.
No matter how he says that name this night, Lew is dead. Plane took a hit directly over the drop zone. He'd been in meetings. Goddamn meetings—while shells incinerated twenty of the military's finest and dropped the rest like dolls. Nix had been first, eagerly toeing the edge of the door, worried by the gunfire, the bullets in the night, some bright, some black as night. He'd leapt out, releasing his chute, feeling the world rip and shatter behind him—and no more.
Dick knows he didn't suffer as much as some. But he suffered more than he needed to.
And now, he waits alone over Nixon's body. He stands up, paces a little more. He can look at him, but the pain worsens with a soft stab. He's almost serenely sleeping, but his back is torn away, eaten by fire and metal. His bones are broken—shoulder, pelvis—from his chute catching in the trees. He rubs his own, blood-caked face as he stalks back and forth, moving about the room, but always swinging back to the corpse he'd called Nix and kissed and stroked only days before. Wished him luck, willed him another star to pin over his jump wings. Promised him something vague and eternal, something that is lost now to grief like houses to the dust bowl.
Dick Winters waits for Death to come and claim Nix's soul—he can feel the moment coming, and treads and walks and paces and occasionally stands at the tent flap, staring in to the night.
"Richard Winters?"
The voice draws him away from the night scene, and he steps back inside the tent, letting the flap close silently.
Across the cot with Nixon's body stands a familiar dead German, his chest neatly aerated by a single shot through the heart.
"It was a good shot," Dick mutters to himself. It was the last one he fired. But, in a moment, he's regained himself. He plasters on a fragment of his old, satisfyingly even demeanor to better negotiate the deal he's about to make. Death tilts his head at him, smiling thinly. He already knows. Of course, Dick, thinks to himself. Of course.
But the words pour out anyway. "I want another chance." His shoulders are rigid, not weighted; his mouth is composed, not grieving.
"There's no going back, then." Death's voice is light and empty and crushing all at once. Dick's not sure why he even bothers propping up a deceased human body if he doesn't even mime the words through his mouth. They leak out of his eyes instead, and they wrap fingers around his heart. To speak to Death, it has to stop, even if for the few moments that it will take for their entire conversation to pass. If Dick wins and Death agrees, it will be a sincere death—they will start over. If not—he will wake up days later in an aid station, and Nixon will still be dead.
"I understand." I have to.
"You will not have the same life. You will not be together as you want."
"But we will be together…somehow, right?"
Death tilts his head in the other direction, imposing a half-loopy grin on the young boy's face. Dick sees it all again, feels himself in Nixon, their faces bumping comfortably in sleep, and making jokes into each other's mouths. "That's what would be sacrificed."
Dick feels himself fall to his knees. Even though time is molasses slow and under Death's waiting hand, his heart is weakening. Nix and death are tough on it. His brow draws together tight.
Hey. The name's Lewis, Lewis Nixon.
And then the answer lurches out, it must be said, it must—his heart is dying, he's losing to Death, the deceased hand around Nixon's neck is pulling out a little, white string—and he's almost out of time, no more deliberation, no more navigating in the dark without Lew—
"Yes! Yes, that's what I want!"
---
"Cathy's divorcing me."
Dick Winters replays those words in his head later in the day as he listens to the whiskey in Nixon's flask swirl around, then fly back into his lips. Sometimes, there's a stir in his chest that tells him he should take this chance… it's an opportunity of the greatest value, somehow—but he can't really remember.
He's just glad his best friend's still alive in the morning, every morning when he crawls out of an empty bed.