Genesis: the Beginning and the End | Band of Brothers

【Ｃｈａｐｔｅｒ ９６ － Ｇｈｏｓｔｓ】

Chapter 96 - Ghosts

The first thing she was aware of was it was dark. The second, her throat hurt. The third, shaking. Someone was shaking her and she was shaking herself too.

"Laisse-moi tranquille!"

"Peggy! Are you okay?! You were screaming."

Lewis had put Peggy to bed in his bed and then gone downstairs.

He and Dick had heard the screaming when discussing what would happen tomorrow. Thalem would.

Dick had been up in a flash, racing up the stairs past Lewis who was not far behind him. The former burst into the latter's room and immediately began trying to shake Peggy awake. Which brought them to now.

And then she saw him in the low light of the room, and she heard the rain outside.

"The ghosts! A-A-And they-" Dick shushed her gently and held her to him, rubbing her back to soothe her so she didn't get worked up again. "Where's Lewis?" Was what she finally managed to get out.

He was standing in the door, leaning on the frame as he didn't want to crowd her.

She looked so small in the screwed up sheets, with salt tracks and wet cheeks. Like a child. Because in some aspects she still was, never having been able to grow up properly.

Lewis came round to the other side of the bed, and sat on the edge.

"They were ghosts. You saw them, didn't you?"

Dick looked very confused, even more so when Lewis took her hand and nodded.

"Yeah, I saw them. You want me to go get someone?"

Frantically, Peggy shook her head no because she didn't want him to go.

"Don't go," she whispered, "what if... if they c-come back?"

In the dark she could be vulnerable like this. When they couldn't quite see her, and she couldn't quite see them.

"Dick, you go finish that report. I've got her."

Dick nodded and, after a quick squeeze, left.

In the darkness, Peggy found comfort in Lewis' arms. She told him about what she'd seen.

She'd been back at the camp, stood where she'd been standing. But there was no sea of green. And when the gates opened the ghosts spilled out, coming towards her. Walking, floating just off the ground, crawling and pulling themselves along the ground. They came for her. And she could not move, crying out but making no noise. And the emaciated ghosts clawed at her and begged for help but she couldn't move, only cry and cry. Then in the faceless crowd she saw a face. And another and another. They were all corpses. Ones she'd known in life and she hated herself for not being able to run to them. They stood in the crowd, watching the ghosts tear at her skin. They would not help.

But it was because she hadn't helped them.

And they told her so.

That it was her fault.

She couldn't save her friends.

She couldn't save the ghosts.

And Bill was there.

But not the Bill she knew. This Bill, like her friends, was a corpse, rotting in places, oozing in others. His leg was especially bad.

And it was all her fault. If she hadn't gone for Joe's helmet they'd have been safe in a foxhole and he'd have kept his leg. He'd still be here, by her side.

And the ghosts continued to rip her apart, leaving her bare to the scrutinising gazes of her departed friends. Their hands were cold and almost incorporeal. Sometimes they went through her and chilled her core, killing her slowly slowly.

And there was nothing she could do.

Nothing she would do.

This was what she deserved.

This would probably be her fate after death.

A hand on her face drew her from it all.

It was sweeping away tears, whilst the other was fumbling in the dark to see if it could find a tissue box.

No such luck.

"Come on, let's go get you something to drink."

So Peggy's socked feet followed his booted ones, down the softly creaking stairs that exuded nostalgia. Dick looked up from the desk, and furrowed his brows before going back to whatever paperwork he was filling out. Peggy didn't envy him.

Lewis got her a small glass of water, before pouring two more glasses of a dark liquid, and sneaking past Dick's office and back up the stairs. She trailed after him. He put down the glasses he had on the bedside table, and she copied with hers. Then he took off his boots and put his feet up on the bed.

Once the pair of them were sitting as comfortably as two fully grown adults could on a single bed, Lewis passed her one of the glasses containing what she thought to be whiskey.

She was right.

"To help you sleep. Hopefully it'll keep the ghosts away for tonight."

Peggy nodded and necked the whiskey.

Then she settled into Lewis' side, and tried to sleep as he sipped at his own whiskey. He pressed a delicate kiss to the top of her head and told her it would all be okay in the end.

Her night was still disturbed, but there was no more screaming. Just restless movement, and a little tossing and turning.

The whiskey definitely helped.

When the pair emerged from Lewis' room in the morning, they both looked pretty dead. And Harry and Ron gave them a questioning look.

"It is not what it looks like."

"What does it look like?" Harry and Peggy asked at the same time, the former smirking, the latter not yet awake enough to be able to understand without being spoon-fed.

She looked up at Lewis with her big but haunted blue eyes, and he suddenly felt like he'd let her down just by being near her.

"Nothing, it doesn't look like anything. Go get yourself some breakfast, and show your face to the enlisted, they'll be worried."

After a moment's hesitation, she nodded, and bade them all good morning. Lewis watched her go, and fidgeted a little, before going and making himself some coffee and spiking it with whiskey.

Harry Welsh and Ron Speirs were not about to let this go, and Lewis felt their stares.

"Don't look at me like that," he took a drink and watched them for a minute. "I know I'm a bad person, but I am not scum. Nothing happened, hand on heart. What...what she saw yesterday...it's gonna stay with her forever." It would stay with all of them until the end of days. "She woke up screaming last night, I stayed with her as she fell asleep again so she felt safe. Peggy's fragile right now. She feels so guilty about everything, most of it isn't even her fault and there was nothing she could've done..."

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Translations: French - English

Laisse-moi tranquille - Leave me alone