All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

45: Gold

Between training to use her new rifle and teaching herself to clean it as thoroughly as she'd been able to clean her M1, Posey tried to stick to Shifty like glue. Most days that objective wasn't necessarily very easy to achieve - Shifty was in First Platoon and tended to just generally be quite elusive - but whenever she managed to get ahold of him, Shifty was always willing to have his brain picked on all things sharpshooting. He always made sure to bestow any wisdom he could think of, too, and his wisdom had thus far proven to be worth its weight in gold.

Their sudden abundance of time spent together, where previously they'd only really known each other in passing, formed a nice, if rather unexpected, friendship. Indeed, when Posey was formally presented with her new insignia to sew onto her uniform, Shifty was one of the first to congratulate her.

He sat with her on her bunk afterwards as she began to sew the new insignia on, and took care to scrutinise her rifle with an expert's eye.

"Yeah, you got the same scope as me," he remarked idly, holding it up to his face. "It been foggin' up when you train?"

Posey nodded. "Only when it rains, though, really."

"In rain and heat it'll tend to fog up," Shifty agreed.

Posey stifled a smile. "Lets hope when we go back overseas they send us somewhere perfectly neutral, then - not too hot and not too rainy."

"Maybe it'd work good in the snow," he joked.

She laughed. "Only until the snow melts, I'd have thought."

When Shifty nodded his agreement and returned to analysing her rifle, Posey turned her eyes back on her sewing. Once upon a time she'd been very good at sewing - having been raised a lady, her mother had always insisted upon it - so as a sort of testament to this she tried her best to make her work as neat as possible. Unlike Sobel, she knew Winters wouldn't much care how neat her insignia was sewn on as long as it was in accordance with regulations and didn't fall off, but doing it well felt important. Even though her mother would likely have been ashamed of half of the decisions she'd made since leaving home, Posey was determined to prove to herself that she hadn't forgotten what she'd been taught. She was no lady anymore, but that was out of necessity; maybe one day, though, she could finally do her mother proud. Remembering her needlepoint lessons seemed to be a good way to consolidate that.

"I like your bear," Shifty spoke up, tearing Posey from her reverie.

She looked up at him before following his eyes to Teddy, and smiled. "Thank you," she said. "His name is Teddy. He's for good luck." This tended to be the excuse she gave, even though she'd promised herself at some point during training to stop lying so much. Still, it seemed a good way to explain why a young man would have brought a teddy bear to war with him, knowing of the ridicule he might face from his peers as a result - generally, she found, people could appreciate a good luck charm. Some lies still served a purpose, even if they were all beginning to taste as sour in her mouth as each other.

"Teddy," Shifty repeated, and inclined his head towards the bear as though in greeting. To Posey, he said, "Good name."

She laughed. "I was three! It seemed imaginative at the time."

"You take him to France with you?"

Posey nodded, wondering whether she should feel proud or bashful to admit it. She didn't really feel either; it hadn't been a decision she'd consciously made, to bring him along, because she'd always just assumed he'd be coming. When she was packing up all of her gear ready to jump, it had seemed just as natural to pack Teddy as it had to pack her rifle. He was an essential. How was she supposed to go to France without her best friend?