Song for this chapter: My Head & My Heart (Acoustic) by Ava Max
(Today is my birthday and this is one of my favorite chapters so I hope you all enjoy!) 

D-Day. +8. June 13th, 1944. Carentan, Normandy.

Befriending one NCO hadn't done much for my integration into Easy Company but making friends with a second NCO, particularly one as liked and respected as Bull had tipped the scales in my favor. He had escorted me back to the town where I was greeted by, I wouldn't call them friendly, but civil paratroopers. My helmet was lost in the mix, they saw me for what I truly was. Not the wayward paratrooper but as a woman.

As we marched towards the bush line of Carentan, leaving the town we had taken only the day before, Easy Company was once again, out in the open. It seemed this was a common occurrence, as I listened to the paratroopers I had been thrown into the ranks with, pondered their luck.

"No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that we're never in the middle," Perconte grumbled. The soldier, whose accent was so familiar in its Illinois tone, was passionate about this injustice, allowing his rifle to rest lazily in his hands. "And we're the fifth of nine companies of this regiment, Able through Item. Think of it."

George Luz, a radioman who was the wisecrack of the platoon, was only half-listening and so was I. WIth my helmet down low out of habit, I was keeping a lookout on the treeline. The treeline concerned me, and I could feel that gut twist again, telling me something wasn't right.

I looked over at Bull, who had welcomed me into the platoon's ranks after taking the town without a second thought, saying. "Look at the treeline,"

"Huh?" He grunted, his cigar hanging in the corner of his mouth inhibiting full speech. He looked down at me and I jerked my head at the tree line

"I don't like it," I said. Maybe I was being paranoid or maybe my instincts were kicking in again.

He looked over and his brow furrowed before humming. "I reckon so," He said around the cigar. Bull didn't tell me I was wrong, that he didn't believe me or to prove it.

He just asked, plainly, simply. "What are you going to do about it?"

I shrugged. I wasn't sure I would be permitted to run ahead of the group and sniff out any potential danger. While my other mission had been a success, my charge into Carentan had been met with less than enthusiasm. I had been berated for my recklessness and had been assigned to stay within the confines of a platoon for the remainder of the invasion. Chaining me to a platoon wouldn't really do much good. I could drag them along with me if it came down to it.

"Where's Welsh?" I asked. Maybe I could play the part of their chain of command.

The red-headed lieutenant had been made aware of my presence among their ranks with the other officers but I hadn't spoken to him until the afternoon previously. He had explained our push to the treeline.

"The Germans left only a company to defend Carentan."

"The rest are pushing south?" I had asked. "Regrouping?"

"They'll have been disturbed by your little explosion," Welsh had said. "And they'll want this town back."

Strategically, the town was valuable. I knew that I didn't have quite enough explosives or freedom to pull a stunt like the outpost again.

Bull jerked his head towards the middle of the group. The soldiers had spread out, creating a mass that seemed to move as one. Platoons merged together and it took me a moment to locate our Platoon Leader, who was marching next to Christenson some hundred feet away.

I turned, his name and rank stalling in my throat as the sky splintered into fragments, incoming fire cutting the quiet like glass.

"Incoming!" Someone shrieked and I hit the ground hard, my breath knocked out of me on the impact. Gasping, I tried to regain the use of my lungs while bullets rained down on all sides.

"Get in the hedgerow!" Welsh shouted and like prey taking flight from predators, Easy Company dove into the shrubbery without grace or tactic.

I looked up and began to crawl, hissing in pain as a bullet pinged off my helmet and clipped my leg. Lifting my head off the ground, I saw Bull waving me into the hedgerow. My movements were frantic and hurried, far from the stealth that my muscles had etched into their memory.

Bull leaned out of the safety of cover, grabbing my hand and I was sent flying forward as he pulled me up and into the hedgerow without need or warning. I crashed against Perconte, who groaned loudly in my ear.

"Damn it, Agent," he said as I rolled away from him. I ignored his protest, instead, whirling around to face Bull.

"I was fine!" I said, freeing my rifle and holding it tight against my chest as machine gunfire continued to rain down around us.

"Is that why you were still slithering through the weeds like a snake?" Bull asked, putting out his cigar on the damp earth and readying his gun.

I leaned into his side to avoid a bullet that whizzed by my head, repeating with self-assured force, "I was fine!"

The incoming fire died away, leaving the ringing silence. Night fell and with it came light rain that flooded the foxholes and turned the freshly churned dirt into mud. I grew bored inside the hole with Perconte and Bull, crushed between the two of them. There was something very unsettling about listening to the Germans across the field sing cheerily as I sat in the mud, cold and wet. The feeling was only perpetuated by Perconte's insistent brushing with a wooden toothbrush, the bristles scraping against teeth and gums. Trying to block out the latter, I focused on the revelry across the field.

Their song was one I had heard often in and around the pubs of Madrid and Sainte-Marie-Du-Mont, Seig Heil Viktoria. It was a victory song, a sort of prayer over our battle that would come in the dawnlight.

They wanted to win.

I wanted to make sure we won.

More importantly, I wanted to save lives any way I could.

The lines were quiet, a few men dozing off in their foxholes. I could slither across the field and get a look at their defenses, a better idea of their positions, giving us an edge in the morning. If I could find Nixon, I could get him to help me propose the idea to Strayer. The Lieutenant-Colonel still seemed apprehensive of my training and skill set, no matter what I had done in Carentan. I was far from his favorite face and most definitely not trusted to scout enemy lines but if Nixon proposed it, maybe it would be more manageable? If I promised to behave?

I got to my feet, whispering to a half-asleep Bull, "I'm going to find Nixon,"

He grunted and I set off down the line.

With quiet footsteps and my dark uniform, I managed to slip by several foxholes without waking or alerting anyone. I caught snippets of conversations. Malarkey was muttering something to Grant about how he was swimming at the bottom of his foxhole. I passed a peacefully sleeping cuddled up next to Christenson, whose dark eyes were staring into empty space. I slowed my pace as I passed the foxhole that Toye and Guarnere occupied, and caught my name among their words.

"Liebgott said she changed, Guarnere," Toye was saying. "Went from a screaming-batshit crazy woman to some sort of angel, I swear to God that's what he said."

"She ain't French, that's for sure," Guarnere shook his head, and I caught a flash of his face in the light of his cigarette as he lit it. "I don't know what the hell she is or what she's doing here. Why is she so important?"

He exhaled a cloud of smoke and I crept closer, waiting to see what else he had to say. My father had always said eavesdroppers never heard anything good about themselves but that was rich coming from an FBI agent who lied for a living.

"Hell, we don't even know her real name. Was it Irene or was it something else? She could be a Kraut for all we know."

My mother's German blood ran through my veins but so did my father's American pride. Slipping into the foxhole, I said. "Good evening,"

My polite greeting was met with raised rifles and fingers hastening for triggers.

"Easy now," I said, raising my hand in surrender. "I come in peace."

"What the hell were you thinking? Sneaking around like that?" Guarnere scolded me.

I smirked, the barrels pointed in my face had been worth it to see his frightened eyes flash in the darkness. Fear was a wonderful opportunity to exploit. Anyone would trust anybody if they were scared enough.

"I wasn't sneaking," I said, pulling my knees to my chest. "I followed the sound of gossip and found your roost."

"We weren't-" Toye was quick to defend but he knew the damage was done

"Why don't you want us to know your real name?" Guarnere asked, keeping his gun nearby as if I was going to try and jump him in his own foxhole. "If you're going to fight with us, surely you can trust us enough with your name?"

"Can I?" I asked, sharply, turning to face him, my voice quiet and even but grave. "If I told you where I was from, who I was outside of this country, this mission, this war, you wouldn't slip up?"

Guarnere didn't speak. I didn't let him have a chance. No one understood the immense pressure I was under to be someone I wasn't all the damn time. I hadn't been myself, Virginia Carroll, in her truest sense for three years. Virginia Carroll was dead and whatever lay beneath was raw and smarting when exposed. It was too fresh for the war it had to fight. Something had been peeled back standing in the puddle of blood, in the rubble of my fake life and Simone's very real one. I knew what all of this cost. The lies and the secrets. It had a cost and I wouldn't be the only one to pay.

"If you were captured and tortured, you wouldn't give up any information you knew? When they tear out all your nails and start on yanking out your teeth, you won't tell them my name?"

Something in his eyes shifted, not so much a fire that wanted to burn me but a curiosity. As if wondering if I was really telling the truth. If I knew that much.

"Are you really that-"

"That valuable?" I said, my eyebrows raising at the half-finished question. "I have a whole company to escort me through this invasion. What do you think?"

"I think you'd better pull your weight," Guarnere said. My blood began to boil but cooled quickly when I saw the smile in his eyes.

"You're an asshole, you know that?" I said.

Guarnere laughed and a rather relieved-looking Toye joined in.

"Agent is rather impersonal, don't ya think?" Guarnere said.

"I think it suits me," I said. "And it's all you'll be getting,"

The Germans started their chorus again, just as offkey and callous as before. It bounced off the empty trees, rattling the leaves and sending droplets of rainwater onto my helmet. The drip, drip, drip of the rain fell into the beat of my breath and heart.

Guarnere shook his head. "Who the hell do they think they are?"

"They think they have the advantage," I muttered. Peering over the edge of the foxhole, the mud brushing my fingertips, I could see the flickering lights of the German line. They were confident in their position and their advantage. They knew where we were. But we had no way of knowing how many of them there were.

"Don't they?"

"You have me," I said, patting my vest where the vials of chemical concoctions were humming, ready to be lit.

"Just how many of those little bottles do you have?" Guarnere asked.

It wasn't an ever replenishing source and something did nag the back of my mind, a constant reminder of what I had at my disposal. If I reached for one in a bind and my hand met empty air...

Well, I didn't want to think like that.

"Only three left," I said. "I'll need to make more if I want-"

I was cut off by a third paratrooper sliding into the foxhole, shoving me into the mud wall and Guarnere's side. It was Alley, a friend of Guarnere's who was known for a sharp tongue and a quick lie.

"Did you hear what happened to Talbert?" He said.

"What the hell happened to Talbert?"

Another paratrooper whose name sounded familiar and yet their face was a mystery. It seemed that the proximity of the Germans had made the others jumpy and Talbert was a victim of one on edge soldier's eager bayonet. While Alley recounted the tale to an intently listening Toye, Guarnere turned to me.

"How the hell did you learn to make those anyway?" Guarnere asked.

I opened my mouth, words failing me at that moment.

I didn't know what I should say or what I should do. I knew what I wanted to do. I liked the friendship I had built with Bull, the teasing and banter with Guarnere. I liked the brotherhood these soldiers had but it would be hard to be a part of it as Eris or whatever French woman I was forced to become. It would be impossible. Spies didn't have brothers in arms and I was just as isolated surrounded by these men as I had been alone in the Normandy forests.

But a part of me wanted to tell these men something, just a small, insignificant fragment of truth. Telling them about this little story was harmless, surely?

"I was known for being an accomplice to my friends and their schemes," I said. "We were nine and had been left in the shed behind my father's church where they kept all the cleaning chemicals. My friend and her brothers were experimenting and someone got a hold of a lighter."

"Holy shit," Guarnere laughed.

"They planted daisies in the crater but needless to say we weren't allowed out of sight of the deacons after that," I said, smiling at the memory.

Miriam hadn't scolded me, instead, taking the time to teach me what chemicals caused a reaction. What made mustard gas and what was the most potent to be lit. While Aunt Mollie had fumed and fussed at Lydia and the boys, I had been given a lighter and glass bottles. That wasn't normal, I knew but it had made sense the way my mother had explained it. Why shouldn't I be taught the safe way to mix and bottle my own little potions?

"Been making them for years now," I said. "It comes in handy though,"

"Years?" Guarnere repeated. "Just how old are you?"

"Don't you know never to ask a lady's age?" I said though I smiled. It faded quickly, replaced with uncertainty. How old was I?

"Nineteen, I think," I said. Or, maybe I was twenty now. The years had felt so short but the days had been long, a twisting eternity that left me dizzy and confused.

What day was it?

These past days had been a whirlwind and France had seemed like another world. I hadn't celebrated a birthday since my seventeenth, with the Whites and my parents, masks firmly affixed, but the birthdays had still come and gone. One was in Camp-X. One was in France. And one was on D-day, I recalled. June 6th. Only a few weeks had passed.

"You've been in France since you were eighteen?" Guarnere asked, his voice was sharp with incredulity. It was crazy and pathetic, even I knew that. I didn't mind that he asked. I didn't care if he knew. I knew I was just as qualified and as capable as any soldier in these foxholes.

Sheepishly, I shook my head. "I was seventeen when this all started,"

"Seventeen?" Guarnere said.

I swallowed hard, nodding, and he cursed. "Jesus, you're just a kid."

"You lied on your enlistment form." Guarnere realized, looking me up and down as if wondering how I hadn't been caught yet.

I nodded. "I'm a good liar. When I was a girl, I got away with everything."

"Bet the teachers loved you,"

"I was an angel, I'll have you know," I said, smiling again.

"So besides blowing up churches and being an angel, you're a mystery?" Guarnere said. It didn't sound like an accusation of distrust or fuel for the fire of uncertainty. It sounded genuine, like a question. How difficult must it be for them to have a tangible person in front of them and yet, be so vaporous and elusive as a cloud?

"Now you're getting the hang of it," I said. "I'm not French. I'm not German. I'm not really Irene. I'm no one."

Guarnere shook his head. "That doesn't really narrow it down,"

"You paratroopers deal in silk chutes and cigarettes. I deal in secrets and lives." I said, standing up to return to the safe quiet of Bull's foxhole.

"So you really can't tell us anything?"

"You'll just have to trust me," I said, smiling as I hoisted myself out of the foxhole, my palms oozing deep into the mud.

"I trust you about as far as I can throw you," Guarnere smirked.

"That's not very far," I mused, trotting off into the darkness. My breathless laugh echoed into the shadows of the trees, ignoring Guarnere's spluttered response as the sound of boots approached me. I froze, my heart hammering as the figure stepped from the treeline, his outline a sharp cutout against the pale moonlight. His rifle gleamed and a cigarette flickered.

"Trooper, what are you doing out of your foxhole?" His voice was soft, almost too soft. It went beyond calming to an almost deathlike peace. He didn't sound scared or anxious. Even Winters couldn't hide the stress in his voice.

I didn't answer, my blood-chilling and the beast inside writhing in my belly. Who was this man?

"Who are you?" He asked. I didn't recognize him or his voice. I knew voices and I knew faces. I had never seen him before.

"I could ask the same thing of you," I asked. His dark eyes burned into me and I knew I had made a mistake.

"Lieutenant Speirs," He said. "And you?"

There was no Speirs in Easy Company. No Speirs that I knew of at least. It wouldn't do to be Irene or Eris or anything other than agent. But even then, what place did an OSS agent have on a battlefield?

Strayer had made it clear that my actions were reckless and endangerment to myself and their mission. My presence had no real importance to the Airborne. I had no name to them, no rank, and no real power.

"No one of any importance, sir," I said and slipped back into the shadows, leaving Speirs and his dark eyes to glower after me. 

A/N: 

While I plan on having a big Part One Historical Notes after the first part of Casus Belli is over, i did want to briefly touch on this chapter in particular. 

Virginia is named after Virginia Hall who has spawned many creative sources such as the book "A Woman of No Importance" that led to my own conception of Ginny's character. 

Virginia Carroll and Virginia Hall share names and a few experiences and THAT IS IT. This story is in NO WAY a real person fic nor do I want it to be. 

I would recommend looking into Virginia Hall as she was a powerful woman in her own right. Thanks for reading!