Band of Brothers || To Hell And Back

Chapter Six: Agreement

It had taken hours to run five times up Currahee. The first two time had been quite easy but the third had been horrible. The fourth time had been vicious and the fifth time nearly impossible. Elle had fallen only once, during the fourth time, and for a moment, she thought about just staying here. With mere rage, she pulled herself up and continued running.

When she had accomplished her punishment, hours had passed by. She had been hungry before this all and at this point, she was so hungry that she really was not hungry anymore. Her feet could not carry her weight anymore and she simply collapsed to the ground. Sobel paid no attention to this leaving her there alone in the dark.

With great effort, Elle finally pulled herself up and dragged herself to the barracks. She was sweaty, dirty and sore but she was afraid of not being able to get herself out from the shower so she decided to go straight to bed. Without changing her clothes, she collapsed but did not fall asleep even though she was completely exhausted. Every muscle in her body hurt so bad and the shoulder Sobel had grabbed and squeezed, hurt even more. At some point, she faded away to the dark and slept through the night or what was even left from it.

"Hey, wake up", a soft voice woke her up way too early in the morning. She would have given anything for a chance to sleep more. 

"Yeah", she said but made no effort to actually get up. She knew it was Dick who had been trying to wake her up since Dick was waking up Nixon every single morning since he was a serious sleepyhead.

"The breakfast is about to start", Dick said and patted her shoulder. Elle sighed sharply since it was the shoulder Sobel had squeezed. Her sigh did not go unnoticed by Dick who looked her with a concerned look on his face.

"You hurt?" he asked and Elle burst into a loud laugh which created angry protest from Nixon.

"I ran up Currahee six times in a row yesterday. I'm most likely dying here", she said still laughing. Elle was not even sure why she was laughing but perhaps her exhaustion had something to do with that.

"And you look and smell like it, too", Nixon said grumpily, now sitting on his bed. Elle could not disagree; she should have showered last night because now her bed was too covered in sweat and dirt. 

"Okay, okay! I'm gonna shower now, I'm skipping breakfast", she said even though she was starving. She had not got a chance to eat in ages but at the moment she felt showering was more important than eating. 

"You could shower after the breakfast, you know. You haven't eaten in ages, right?" Dick said and despite of the fact he was trying to help, Elle was annoyed. After breakfast the barracks would be filled with officers and if she wanted to keep her secret, she could not take a shower then. If she did not shower now, the next possibility would not be until lunch.

"I don't think Sobel would appreciate me showing up like this to the breakfast. And anyways, I'm not that hungry", she said decisively and luckily, Dick dropped the subject.

***

Elle had welcomed showering warmly, it felt really good to get rid of the sweat and dirt covering her body. She stretched her limbs carefully and after the shower she noticed she was able to move a little better and only her shoulder was hurting that bad anymore. She had taken a close look of it, Sobel had squeezed it so hard there was a large bruise but since she could move it without significant trouble, Elle figured she could put up with it.

Elle was supposed to supervise shooting practice today but unluckily, she had underestimated the time she took to get to the shooting range with her feet so hurt she could barely walk and she showed up late.

"Lieutenant Aldrin, late again", said a voice behind her when she arrived at the shooting range. If Elle had not been standing in front of a platoon of men, she would have screamed her frustration out loud. Goddamn, she hated Sobel so much.