The Prophecy

Chapter 2: Toccoa, Georgia

A/N: I am so so so so SO sorry this is out late. This past week was super hectic! I hope that you really enjoy the chapter. I did my best to make it my own and different from other beginnings of BoB that I've seen, so you'll have to let me know what you think! Also, as a side note—I did, in fact, live in Toccoa area for 13 weeks a couple years back, so I actually do love that place!

Chapter Text

Winnie could say that she had never been to Toccoa Georgia for any reason in her short lifetime and would probably have no desire to ever return. Though there wasn't any snow on the ground here, it was just as gloomy as the rest of Georgia was in the winter months. Everywhere she looked, there were men in uniforms and people bustling towards the wartime factories that had popped up.

Her arrival at Camp Toccoa was a rather quiet affair, and so there she sat in a wooden chair inside a small waiting area. Occasionally, Winnie glanced over at the precipitation building on the windows. When she was a kid, she had long periods of waiting like this one—where her father was in jail or at some bar and she would just wait for him to come back home.

It would usually rain—and considering how the weather in Georgia changed as quickly as a summer breeze, Winnie had taken to counting droplets of water as a way to keep her focus on something that she could control.

The simple fact of the matter was that Winnie had precious little control over a lot of the circumstances in her life. But the things that she did have control over, she kept those things close to her chest; clung to them like they were her most precious possessions and no one would ever come close enough to take that freedom of control away from her again.

She clicked her heeled shoes together exactly once, eyes straying to the scuff marks on her simple church shoes. She wondered how her brothers were all faring in their training at the moment. If they were all coping with the reality of what war would be—if they were prepared to go and be on their own.

Richie wasn't the one she was worried about. He was two years younger than her and was always rather serious. He worked harder than anyone else that she knew and wasn't one to get distracted by a pretty face or lofty promises. Any day now, he'd be shipping out to go to the Pacific as a Marine and it made her truthfully want to follow him all the way down there and have his back with a gun herself.

They were Allens. And they trusted themselves and one another. No one else outside of their circle of siblings had proven to be someone that they would trust their lives with. But Winnie knew that they would never allow a doctor—and a female one, at that—to go down to the Pacific and be a part of the carnage and horrors there.

Robbie was in the same boat, proverbially speaking of course, as Richie. Set to go to the Pacific in a few weeks. He was always so quiet and watchful. Winnie hoped that it would serve him well to be on his guard and pick up on the things that the other soldiers wouldn't notice. They had yelled a lot back and forth before he had enlisted—she had told him to finish his degree and go into the JAG-Corp. He had told her to go to hell—which he had tearfully apologized for when she dropped him off at the train station.

Winnie stretched out her fingers over her lap, letting out a breath. It had been nearly thirty minutes of waiting to be allowed to see the Colonel—and this was just for him to review her application to join the Paratroopers as a Doctor and training officer for his medics. She wished that the level of urgency the war truly had would transfer over to her wait time.

Because if she needed to haul everything back to Buford, Winnie would almost certainly rather pick up and move to the Carolinas and try to sign up for a different branch of the military that would, in fact, utilize her. She hated being idle—hated being alone, even more than that.