She woke up gasping. Images of blood staining her hands filled her mind. She couldn't tell whose it was: hers, Robert's, Marc's, or Bernadette's. Her baby sister had mostly stayed out of her dreams. Alice sometimes wondered if she had managed to block it out somehow. But not that night.

They were fleeing someone. It was Paris in the summer, but all the streets were empty. Alice climbed up onto a balcony. She reached down. Bernadette's rosy face looked up. Blue eyes widened in terror. Alice had screamed for her to grab her hand. Just grab my hand.

A crack sounded. A bullet had been shot between Bernadette's eyes, right above the ridge of her nose. From a hole the size of a dime, red blood poured into the Champs-Élysées, body falling limp. Her eyes hadn't even had a chance to close. She'd just screamed Adélaïde over and over and over, and then fallen completely silent.

Alice scrambled to sit up. The wound on her side screamed in pain at the rapid movement. But she didn't care. She forced herself up, out of bed. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Biting her cheek, Alice steadied herself and tried not to scream in pain or anger or fear.

She took a step forward. Stumbling, she gasped again and fell sideways into George's cot. She couldn't move.

"What the hell?" 

She heard George sit up. Her breaths came quickly, despite trying to calm herself down. She had to get out. The room threatened to crush her.

"What the? Alice? God, you shouldn't be out of bed." He scuttled out from under the scratching sheets. With his pillow, he threw it across the room where they'd set up a cot for Gene. "Gene!" he hissed in a whisper.

With a smack, the pillow hit the medic. He grunted. George had no idea what to do as Alice tried to stand again. He could see the tears on her face. Gene, finally awake enough to see what had happened, ran over.

"Calmez-vous. Calmez-vous." He grabbed her and steadied her.

"Ils l'ont tuée. Ils l'ont tuée… non, je l'ai tuée."

"Qui?"

By now some of the others had started to stir. As Gene coaxed Alice back down, someone groaned. Guarnere barked a complaint in his half-woken state as the lights were flipped on.

"Shut up," George snapped. He looked genuinely scared as he watched the scene. The others picked up on his tone and quieted their complaints.

"Ils l'ont tuée!"

Gene got her to sit down. The room had fallen completely silent except for their French. Most of the boys sat watching them in concern. None of them knew what they said. 

"Qui, Alice?"

"Bernadette, ma sœur."

"Pourquoi?"

"Parce que… parce que nous sommes juifs."

He looked at her in amazement. Putting an arm around her, he pulled her into a hug. She melted at the touch. After a moment, he whispered her a question in French. At first she didn't respond. Finally she nodded into his shoulder. With pained effort, they got her to lay back down. She covered her face with her arms, leaning towards the wall. Gene checked the bandage. To his relief, it was clear. Without speaking, he went to the small pack the doctor had made for him. He fished out a morphine syrette and injected her. She was out in a matter of moments.

"Holy shit." Liebgott, sitting in his cot, glanced from her to Gene. "What the fuck was that? What was she saying?"

"She panicked over her sister. Said that they'd killed her?" Gene looked confused. He frowned. 

"Nazis," explained Bull. He told Gene about the letter she'd gotten a month ago. 

"Did they kill 'er family because they're Jews?" No one had an answer. He frowned. "In the span of a single day, your tellin' me she lost her entire family?" Again, no response. Gene signed. "The Morphine'll keep her knocked out for awhile. She didn't do any harm to her stitches. She'll be fine."

George looked over at her. "She just fell into my bed."

"Isn't that what you wanted?" Guarnere muttered.

George snapped back at him. "Shut the fuck up, Gonorrhea."

Joe Toye threw a pair of socks at Guarnere's face. The man grunted and went to snap back. But Johnny Martin had had enough.

"You all need to shut the fuck up." They fell quiet as his order. "Roe, what do you need from us?"

"Well, don't antagonize 'er. She hates lookin' weak in front of ya. She's told me she misses her brothers. Maybe ya could ask about 'em? Get her to talk more? She needs to process this."

As Bull Randleman turned the lights back off, the group tried to settle. Neither George nor Gene slept well. They couldn't get her fear out of their heads. For a brief moment, they both found themselves doubting their resolve to go to war.

When the sun came up that Sunday morning, the men in the barracks tumbled out of bed crankier than usual. Gene offered to stay behind while they got breakfast. George stayed with him.

"She awake yet?" he asked.

Gene shook his head. "Soon probably."

"Jesus. I tell yah, Maria would love her." He sighed. "It's annoying as hell that we can't write home about her. Maria'd be so excited there's a girl at my job."

"It's for her own good."

"Yeah, I know." With a quick movement, he hoisted himself over the end of his cot and sifted through his footlocker. Finally be pulled out a new pack of cigarettes. "Gene?"

"Yeah, thanks."

"Can I have one?"

They both turned around to look at Alice. Her eyes were droopy as she tried to push herself into a sitting position. 

"Non, chérie." Gene moved over and they got her sitting up. He noticed the movement wasn't as harsh as the night before. "Pain less?"

"Yes." 

"Good."

"Jesus Christ, Alice!" George stood with his arms over his chest. The unlit cigarette hung from his mouth. 

"Sorry."

"If you wanted to get into bed, you could've just asked me the normal way."

Gene shot George a look that if looks could kill, would've ended him on the spot. But after a brief moment, Alice just smiled and shook her head. Tears filled her eyes, but the smile barely faded.

"What, no witty response?"

Alice shrugged. She refused to let the tears fall. But they didn't budge from her bedside and she groaned, taking her own pillow and covering her face. Gene was having none of it. He pulled the pillow away from her.

"Hey! Give it back!"

"You need to talk to someone, chérie."

But she snapped. "Yes? Like who? You? George? Lieb? Toye? Guarnere? You would all love that I'm sure. Alice crying her eyes out into the strong men. Fucking hell. In case you couldn't tell, my family is gone, my brothers, my sister, my parents. My home is gone. My country is gone. I don't even get to speak my own language!" With a grunt, she lapsed into German. "Fick dich."

Now Alice sat at the receiving end of Gene's death stare. She held his gaze for a moment before tears blurred her vision. She turned away. "Can I have my pillow back?"

"You been sitting on the loss of your family for over a month."

"What do you want me to say, Gene?" She sighed, releasing some of the tension in her muscles. "My brothers were my life. I didn't even get to be there when the Nazis murdered them. And Bernadette…" She blinked away tears. "I wanted to free France for her, for her friends."

George hesitated. "What were your brothers like?"

With a shuddering sigh, Alice forced herself to sit up. Gene still held her pillow out of reach, but she forced herself to sit with her legs dangling off the bed. Finally, through a few tears, she forced a smile. She looked at George. "You remind me of Marc."

"I'll take that as a compliment," George joked after a moment of hesitation. When he saw Alice grin, he winked.

"Marc and Bernadette. They were the best of us." She wiped her face of tears. Taking the pillow Gene offered back, she dried her tears. "Bernadette she… she was beautiful. She danced. She sang. She had this golden hair braided perfectly down to her waist." Closing her eyes, Alice sighed. "We agreed never to carry her photo, in case we were ever found. We couldn't risk it. Marc though… he was so funny. He could make anyone laugh, and he cared so much about us. And now they're dead."

George didn't know what to do. He could only imagine Alice as Victoria, his oldest sister, born a few years after him. Fully convinced she would punch him for it, he braved her wrath and sat down on the cot next to her. The prospect of dying in the war and leaving his siblings behind wrecked him. He put an arm around Alice. To his surprise, she leaned into the embrace and cried silent tears.

After a few minutes, George looked at Gene. Her breathing had slowed. He looked at her in amazement. "Is she asleep?"

"Prob'ly the morphine. It's still in 'er system." 

"Did she just fall asleep on me?"

Gene cracked a smile. "Don't go braggin' about it. You lucked out from the morphine, Luz."

"Right, Doc." George smirked at the nickname. "I like that. Doc."

With a roll of his eyes Gene stood up from where he'd crouched to check her wound again. He shook his head. "Just don't go sayin' it around the real docs."

"Private Roe! What are you doing impersonating a Doctor!" With his best Sobel impression, George made himself laugh. "That'd be pretty funny actually."

"For you."

George grinned at him, lopsided. He didn't move though, as Alice had rest her head on his shoulder. She'd fallen completely asleep. Gene lit his and George's cigarettes with his own lighter. As the smoke swirling around the room, they stayed put. Gene laid down. He read through a comic George pointed him towards. Alice just slept.