It seemed the only time Alice had a chance to talk to anyone for more than a brief moment was in the evening. The numbness, the inability to cry she'd experienced after the deaths of Skip and Alex, still hadn't lifted. George, who Alice learned had actually seen them get hit, took most of the day by himself. But he did speak briefly to Malarkey, to check in on his friend. She decided to do the same.

The waiting infuriated her. Foy lay a few hundred yards away across the field. They had to go there. Why the hell they couldn't go there now, Alice couldn't figure out. In her brain, she knew it had to do with support and intel, but the fact remained that the longer Easy and the rest of Second Battalion sat in the treeline, the more people would die from artillery barrages. The Germans had them zeroed, and somehow knowing that made everything ten times worse.

By 2000 hours, Alice figured Malarkey would've finished seeing to Second Platoon and probably gotten himself back to his foxhole. Alice yawned as she went to find him. After a brief coughing bout, she nearly screamed in frustration. Earlier that day, Gene had managed to give her one of two doses of penicillin he had received. They could only hope it would knock out what Gene said was probably a nasty case of pneumonia.

The crunching snow beneath her boots reminded her of how cold she felt with every step. It hadn't snowed in nearly a week which meant the previous layer had now been mixed up with dirt and tree bits, somehow even less appealing than a fresh blanket of snow. Alice sighed. Then she coughed, falling to her knees against a tree.

"Warum ich? Scheisse!" Alice heaved, trying to breathe. Her eyes watered as she continued to rattle off German curses. "Fick dich, Hitler." She sputtered again, trying to breathe. "Ich hoffe du stirbst ängstlich. Und, ich hoffe du stirbst alleine." With half a scream of anger, she grabbed a small but thick fallen branch and hurled it off into the forest.

She meant it, too. As Alice lay her head back against the tree truck, desperately trying to get enough oxygen, she tried to calm down. Anger pulsed through her. Suddenly, though she couldn't cry, she could scream. And she would've, if she knew it wouldn't wake up all of Easy and half the town of Foy.

"Someone pissed you the fuck off," said Liebgott.

Alice opened her eyes. Lieb looked down at her with the stupid smirk he always had plastered on his face. Taking the biggest breath she could manage without starting another fit of coughs, Alice tried to calm herself.

He picked up a stick. For a moment he looked at it before tossing it aside. Then Liebgott turned back to her. "So, who's gonna die scared and alone?"

"The mighty Führer."

Lieb's smirk only grew at her furious sarcasm. He shook his head. "One can only hope, right?" When she nodded, chewing at her lip, his smile dropped a bit. "That cough is fucking ugly. Does Doc have something for it?"

"He gave me some medicine today." Alice sighed. After a brief pause, she heaved herself up with the help of the tree. "Hopefully it works." Then she turned to him. "What are you doing out here?"

He shrugged. "Needed to stretch my legs."

"Well be careful," Alice told him. "Don't take any unnecessary risks."

He let out a sharp laugh. "Says the woman wandering around a frozen battlefield with fuckin' pneumonia."

Alice just sighed. But with a frown she nodded. "Go on then. I'm heading to a foxhole. You should too."

"Yes ma'am," he said with a wink.

Alice half huffed, half laughed at his sass. But when he turned and walked away she just took another breath and steeled herself to keep going. She knew Malarkey's foxhole wasn't too far away. And indeed, after walking another few minutes, she found him sitting quietly alone in his foxhole.

"Hey Malark," she said quietly. When he looked up at her, her heart broke a little. He looked so tired, drawn in ways she hadn't seen him, ever. His eyes were a bit hollow. But she flashed him a small smile regardless. "I need a foxhole buddy. Mind?"

"Course not," he said.

With his permission given, Alice scooted the couple feet down across from him. A few thoughts crossed her mind. First, her chest still ached. She guessed even Malarkey could hear the tight, scratchy wheezing of each breath. Second, how exactly she was going to get Malarkey to feel better had yet to come to mind. Her only thought had been to find him.

"Are you alright? I heard that cough's getting worse." Malarkey asked her, a moment later. He looked over at her in the dark.

The tiniest hint of a smile graced her features. She folded her arms over her chest. "Surviving."

"Hmph," he snorted. "Yeah."

As she sat in silence, her mind played through a dozen ideas of where to start. Men had the unfortunate proclivity for not talking about feelings, and Alice had never been quite able to figure out a way around that particular tendency. Asking wouldn't do. So in the end, she decided on a different tactic.

"Have I ever talked about my cousins?" Alice asked after a few minutes. Even trying her hardest, she couldn't keep the emotion out of her voice.

He looked at her in surprise. "No."

"I-" Alice suddenly found that her capacity for tears had returned. She shut her eyes and paused to collect herself. "I didn't think so. I didn't tell anyone, really. Harry pestered me about that."

"How many cousins?"

"Three," Alice replied. "Tomas, James, and Elsa. Our fathers were brothers. They uh, they lived in Arnhem, in the Netherlands. We visited sometimes." Her voice caught again. She could feel her throat constrict, her eyes sting.

Malarkey took a moment to watch her. She could feel his gaze on her even as she refused to meet his stare. With a frown, he asked her to continue. "What happened to them?"

Though she smiled, she felt nothing but anguish. Her voice came out almost as a whisper. "I don't know." It took a few moments for her to collect herself. She shrugged, turning to look at Malarkey. "In Aldbourne, Vest found a set of letters for me from Elsa. She was younger than Bernadette, just a kid. I hadn't seen her in years. The Germans," she scoffed, correcting herself. "We are Germans. The Nazis came for the Jews of Holland the same way they came for us in France. They took the Jews away to some sort of, some sort of work camp? We think they're being forced to build weapons."

"Jesus Christ," Malarkey breathed.

"The last letter hurt the most, I think," Alice admitted. For a moment, she stopped breathing. Placing her hand in the innermost breast pocket of her fatigues. Her hand shook from both cold and anxiety. Once her fingers grasped the six pieces of paper she kept close to her heart, Alice froze. Then she pulled them out.

He looked at her in surprise. "You've got them with you?"

"Yeah. Always." She took the most wrinkled one and put it to the front. Flipping open her silver lighter, she read the words in English. "Dear Addy."

At the nickname, she and Malarkey looked at each other. She shrugged. He said nothing. Alice turned back to the letter to continue. "'I think this might be it. I'm not really scared any more. Honestly, I'd like to think that in death at least there will be a release from this hiding place. Since the Allies landed in Normandy, the Germans have increased their retaliation against resistance.'"

Alice paused. That part had hurt her more than she ever wanted to admit. A small piece of her blamed herself for the retaliation, as she been in the Normandy Invasion. After a pause, she continued. "'I heard they started executing hundreds of people, some resistance and some not. There's even been talk of the Germans starting to round up non-jews for the camps." Her breath caught, reading the last bit. "'With love, Elsa Klein.'"

They settled into silence. Malarkey watched her, and Alice watched the words on the page. When at last she flicked the lighter closed, her heart constricted. She carefully tucked the letters back into the safety of her pocket. Feeling a bit more under control, she turned back to Malarkey.

"It sounds terrible, but after her letter, part of me is not only glad that my family died two years ago. But, I hope she got a quick death, too, at least." Alice shook her head. "I don't know if I could live knowing Bernadette or my parents, or Elsa and her siblings, lived in constant fear only to be forced to work for the people who hate us."

"I guess that's true."

"Skip and Alex got that too, at least," she added quietly. "I've been telling myself that. It's a small blessing, really." With a quick glance, she added, "No one else knows about that last letter, Don. I'd appreciate it if we kept it that way. For now at least."

He nodded. "Yeah. Yeah of course."

"The rest of us have to keep going for them, though." Alice forced a small smile. "For Elsa, and Bernadette, and for Skip and Alex. If we give up, if we don't end this fucking war... They died for nothing, then. I wouldn't be able to live with that."

"Yeah, you're right. It has to be for something." He played with something between his fingers. In what little light fell around them from the moon and the stars, metal glinted in her direction. He finally showed it to her. It was a rosary, Skip's rosary, that had always been in his breast pocket. He gave her a tiny smile. "Skip compared you to Joan of Arc, sometimes. Said if you'd been Catholic, you'd have given her a run for her money."

Alice started laughing. With a gentle shake of her head, she couldn't suppress her smile. "Of course he did. I'm not worthy of comparison to the great Jeanne d'Arc."

He smirked. "Yeah, well, there you go. That's Skip for you."

"Incorrigible, really," she teased. "Especially with Alex."

Malarkey let out another small laugh. "Yeah. Yeah they were."

Silence fell between them again. She saw him playing with what was left of the rosary. His mind seemed to be working over time, not that it surprised her. Slowly, his smile dropped.

"How long did it take you?" Malarkey asked. "When your brother got killed. How long until you were... well until you moved on?"

She knew he must've heard her breath hitch because he straightened up a bit. Memories flooded in, memories of looking in the window from the streets of Paris, of watching the luger get pressed into her brother's pale forehead. She shivered, somehow able to feel the cold hands of the SS officer trailed up her leg, between her thighs, and his other hand clamped tight over her mouth. She tried to release her breath calmly, but it sputtered out.

"Be honest with me, Malark. Do you feel blame for their deaths?" she asked a moment later.

He paused. Opening his mouth to respond, it shut before he could. His knuckles paled as he gripped the rosary. "Yeah, yeah I guess I do. Why them, instead of me, I suppose."

She nodded. Her mouth dried. After a moment, she decided what to say. "I live with that blame every single day, Malark. For Marc." Her hands trembled, her breathing, already constricted by the pneumonia's grip on her lungs, making it even harder to stay calm. "I'm going to tell you something. Very few people know most of this. Nobody knows all of it, not even Nix," she added.

"Right, okay."

"Four days before Marc was killed, I, uh, did a job for a resistance group who we had contacts with. Usually I'd be a courier for them, helping bring documents to and from their contacts while I distributed the small newspaper me and my friends wrote. This was different though. This was bigger." She paused again. "A German official, Shultz, a man of high rank, he was carrying plans for something big. They didn't know what, but it was big enough that he had been recalled to Germany immediately."

For a moment, Alice felt herself back there: back in front of the hotel where Shultz was staying, back in 1941, back where it started. She shook herself.

"To get the documents, they needed someone who spoke German fluently, and could pass as a German woman. Enter, me." She glanced over at him. "I let him uh, have some fun. Then got him drunk." She bit her lip, squeezing her eyes shut. She didn't want to see Malarkey's expression. With a deep breath, she continued, "Got the documents, and got out. For four days, everything was fine. Until a member of the SS cornered me in a bar and identified me."

"You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you, Miss Klein?"

"He uh, he uh." With a deep breath, Alice ran a hand through her hair, taking off her helmet. For a moment, she just tried to calm down. "Well. I killed him. Just acted on instinct, I guess? It wasn't quiet. Marc and Robert found me, covered in blood, still holding the knife. Robert got me out through the window, but Marc insisted on staying to take the blame and throw them off my tail."

"Jesus," he whispered. "God, Alice, did he-"

Her voice fell. "Almost. You asked how long it takes, Don?" Alice shook her head. "Well, I thought I had managed to move past it, accepted it, moved on. But then on the Samaria..." She glanced up at him. "Either you know this part already and rumors got around, or they actually managed to keep it quiet."

"Someone said you'd been punched breaking up a fight in Third Battalion," Malarkey murmured. "I'm guessing that's not true."

Alice chuckled. But she didn't feel amused. "No. After I punched Bill, I did end up in Third. A few of the men from H Company grabbed me, and I froze. Just, well I completely shut down. I couldn't even remember anything about it beyond getting grabbed for several days. George, Bill, and Joe stepped in though, separated us before anything too uh, graphic, happened."

Malarkey stared at her. "You serious? Who knows?"

"George, Bill, Joe," she said, "Lip, Johnny, Bull, Tab, and uh, Gene. Plus Welsh, Winters, Nixon, and Speirs. And Sink, of course."

A wave of exhaustion crashed over her. With a frown, she glanced over at him. Alice surprised herself when she appreciated the pity in his gaze, not scorning it. "Needless to say, I realized that day that I hadn't gotten over it, any of it. Not the assault, not the mission, and definitely not Marc's death." But then she forced out a tiny smile. "However, I have learned to cope with it. I don't think I'll ever move on in a way where the giant hole in my heart mends itself. But you learn to manage it. And I don't know that I'd want to stop feeling so much when I think about Marc. That would mean I really have lost myself."

Malarkey stayed silent. Both took the silence to think, to consider what she'd talked about. Alice felt oddly better, having told Malarkey what happened. She'd told no one about any of it since the group found out on the Samaria. It wasn't that she didn't trust the men in Easy. She did, the Toccoa men at least. But her words failed her every time she considered explaining her sudden winces after nightmares or flinching away from a pat on the shoulder.

"Alice?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

She smiled at him. Her throat constricted and kept her from forming words. So she decided a simple nod would have to do. The blanket that Malarkey threw her felt as scratchy as all the other pathetic excuses for blankets, but she clutched it close, and laid down for sleep. Her total exhaustion consumed her immediately.