Half Sick of Shadows » Band of Brothers [2]

15: Yet What I Am

"I am - yet what I am none cares or knows." - John Clare, I Am

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Juliette, Will, and Martin were sent back to Aldbourne around five days before the Americans were pulled off of the line. The entire time that they were back, Juliette split her days between worrying about Tom and worrying about the yanks, for there was no way to communicate with either of them and everything was so quiet without them in the small village.

Jules missed Tom terribly. Desperately. This was the first time they'd been apart for longer than a day since training. They had spent every day for five years together and all it took was one stupid French bridge and he was God knows where and she was stuck back in that house in Aldbourne, worrying and worrying and worrying. There was little more to do than worry. Gene had said he'd be fine and she trusted him, but was there ever a way to really know? All she could do was worry.

Martin and Will were much the same, though they wore it better. But being a three had shaken them all. They had been a six once upon a time. A six. That number seemed so astronomically huge right then, when they were a measly three. Six team members. God, what a time that had been. What a lovely and distant time.

As she was still the commanding officer with Thomas not back, Jules ordered Will to go and do grocery duty, so they could restock everything that had long since gone stale during the time they had spent in France. When he came back she helped him unpack, though Martin kept himself to himself and stayed upstairs in his room. He generally did turn in on himself in worry. And grief. But this wasn't grief because Tom was fine, she reminded herself.

After they had unpacked the groceries Will and Jules both sat at the kitchen table. She twiddled her thumbs and he fiddled with his radio, tweaking things that likely didn't need tweaking, though she had next to no idea about fixing radios.

"Do you think he's okay?" Will asked eventually. Juliette had been expecting the question for a while. She knew Will enough by now to notice that he blew air in and out of his nose really loudly when he was considering asking something he wasn't sure he should really ask. It was almost comical sometimes, except she knew what the question was going to be before he asked it, so it wasn't.

Jules nodded without hesitation. "Yes." She offered Will a reassuring smile, as Alex had always done for her when she was worrying about something that was out of her hands. "I'm certain of it. He's a fighter, and he's in the best hands. What better combination to make sure he's okay?"

Will nodded and smiled a little bit, and then returned back to his fiddling.

Jules had always wondered how Alex had done it, reassured everyone so quickly and so easily and with such certainty, even though there was no way he could have possibly known that what he promised was true. She had wondered how Tom had done it, too, after he had taken over. Now, she finally understood. It wasn't some quality you were gifted with along with the title of CO, or a talent you were born with; it was something you did without a second thought just because you had to. You did it because it was your responsibility and people were counting on you, and so you said it with enough certainty that you believed it yourself. Because you had to.

She had never before considered that in order to be the commanding officer you had to be one hell of an optimist. She had never really seen Alex as an optimist, though in hindsight he very well was. He just hid it under the guise of realism to make everyone believe that his hopes were actually promises. It was a brilliant talent, and she knew she didn't do it half as well as he did - even Tom didn't do it half as well as he did - but at least she had calmed Will down, if only a tiny bit.