Half Sick of Shadows » Band of Brothers [2]

12: Of Sinners, Of Sufferers

"If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also." - Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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It wasn't until much later on in the day, until it was almost night, that Juliette spoke to Gene. Her, Tom, Will, and Martin had moved with the paratroopers as they traipsed through Normandy to cover more of the front line. Until they received orders, there was nothing else to do, and Tom needed to stay close to the medics. He couldn't be evacuated with the rest of the casualties because he couldn't risk being sent to a field hospital; the likelihood was that he would have a plane sent for him and be sent back to HQ to recover. It would be a difficult loss, but at least only a temporary one. He had left Juliette in charge in his place, which was terrifying.

Jules only sought Gene out when she was certain all of the injured had left and he would be off-duty, per se - as off-duty as one could get whilst on the front line, that is. He looked exhausted, and likely felt it, too, for the casualties after D-Day had been expansive, and now there was this as well.

He was sat with his knees pulled close to his chest and his back against a tree when she came upon him. He looked up at the sound of her footsteps.

"Hi," she said quietly. She found herself bashful, and almost trying to shrink under his gaze. She looked away so quickly she didn't see his small smile.

"Hi."

When she looked back at him she had begun fiddling with the hat tucked into one of her pockets. "Need some company?"

He chuckled a little bit. "Sure." So she sat beside him, quietly at first, thinking hard on what she wanted to say.

Eventually, she turned to him. "Thank you for earlier. My thanks aren't really enough but my hands are empty. So thank you. Really."

He nodded. "S'alright. 'M glad he's okay."

Jules nodded as well. "Yeah, me too. We're still waiting on orders but the chances are he'll be taken back to England, the jammy bugger." She paused, chewing on her bottom lip for a moment. "He's leaving me in charge until he comes back."

"Yeah?" Gene asked, watching her closely as she avoided his gaze.

"Yeah." She smiled with a sort of regretful irony. "Terrible idea, if you ask me. He should've left Martin in charge - and, incidentally, Martin thinks so too. But undercover specialists are always the ones who get promoted."

"That's what you are?" Gene asked. When she turned to look at him his jaw was hanging just slightly open, and the hint of a smile wanted to wrench it wide. "An undercover specialist?"

Jules laughed lightly. She guessed she never really had told him that. "Yeah. Everyone has a different speciality and a different role. I'm the undercover specialist, so I'm the one who goes in on all the missions, sometimes alone and sometimes with backup." Gene nodded to show he was following what she was saying. "Tom is obviously our CO - he used to be an undercover specialist, too; we trained together, but when we came back to Aldbourne he got promoted. Martin does weapons and hand-to-hand combat - if anyone's going to be my backup it's generally him, set up as a sniper or whatever else. And Will does all of our technology; he's wicked clever, transmits morse code at like a hundred words per minute or something stupid, and can turn literally anything into an explosive. You'd never know from talking to him, because he has literally zero common sense, but he's so bloody smart you wouldn't believe it."

"Why'd Tom get promoted?" He asked it with genuine curiosity, just sincerely unaware. Juliette froze. That was very much still an open wound, especially after what had happened earlier.