Only a Paper Moon [ Band of Brothers ] 3

[9] The Weight of a Name

Prompt: given by Tumblr's @jamie506101 from @wecomrades fabulous list. Number 17, Carwood Lipton + "That's a very long list" + head in the clouds

Summary: "How had she gotten here? She'd wanted a husband, a piano, maybe a small white cat with a pink bow to sit on the piano as she played for her kids."

[9]

THE WEIGHT OF A NAME

January 9, 1945

The Bois Jaques, Bastogne, Belgium

Alice couldn't breathe. She could heave in some amount of breath, just enough to keep her alive, but she couldn't really breathe. Darkness settled around them. The calm tried to lull them into a false sense of security, the black of the now cloudy night begging them to deny the carnage that had occurred but a few hours ago.

How had she gotten here? Alice heaved another ragged breath of air through her clogged lungs. Sitting in a foxhole, George dead asleep on her side and beyond him, Lipton, had never been the future she'd envisioned. She'd wanted a husband, a piano, maybe a small white cat with a pink bow to sit on the piano as she played for her kids. She'd wanted simplicity.

All she had now was a list of decisions she'd made, events she'd encountered, and dead in her wake that had composed an entirely new person from the one who'd dreamed of a white cat with a pink bow atop a grand piano. And boy, it was a long list. It included some events and some people she never wanted to revisit.

She wheezed in another breath as a gust of wind knocked her off the steady rhythm she'd tried to craft. Then she hacked out a cough. Alice tried, desperately, to suppress the tears that sprung to her eyes as the pain radiated through her chest. Her head fell back against the snow, helmet bouncing to the side. Fucking pneumonia. She couldn't just die a quick death, either. No, the Lord had seen fit to have her drown in her own mucus and blood.

"Alice."

Lipton. He was still awake, or she'd woken him with her cough and small bout of futile tears. She had no more energy left to hold up the mask of denial she'd been even convincing herself she could wear. Though she supposed if she died, at least she'd be with... well, a lot of people. That was a long list.

"Why are you still awake, Lip," she murmured. George had shifted, no longer against her body where he'd all but collapsed after watching Skip and Alex die. Not just die. Explode. "Go to sleep."

"I told you that over an hour ago," he reminded her.

Alice sighed. Lipton could see through the mask. She could just tell. Their conversation earlier where he'd all but ordered her to talk to Gene about the pneumonia had been enough to clue her into that, but she'd tried one last-ditch effort to convince him she was fine.

"Guess you did," she said, trying to keep her voice light.

He sighed, shifting until he faced her in the foxhole. She bit her lip, arms across her chest and knees up. Alice figured she probably looked pretty horrible. Her hair was a disaster, filled with sweat and blood. She tried to rinse it as much as she could but cold hair was never fun. Even in the dark, she could see his frown.

"Lip, I told you. I'll talk to Gene. But there isn't anything to do until we get medicine."

He shook his head. Without a response, he just frowned further, looked from her to George and then the pulverized forest around them, and then back. "So if you've been up for the last hour, what were you thinking about?"