An Expensive Solitude: A Band of Brothers Fanfiction

Epilogue: Lieutenant Edith Winters

Zell am See, Austria
VJ Day, 1945

As fate would have it, the weather had not held on the day of their wedding.

Edith woke to a rosy dawn blooming outside the open balcony doors. From the nest of sheets and pillows, she could see it was going to be a much lovelier day than they had seen while taking their vows.

Though several weeks had passed, the dress she had worn still hung in the bureau in need of a professional cleaning. The red dye had bled into her slip and underclothes. When Dick had peeled it from her body later that evening, she found it had stained her skin pink. Perhaps it was her own fault.

A bride wearing red? Not that she'd had much of a choice. When she had left for the war in Europe, her mother's wedding dress had been the last thing she would have thought necessary in her trunk.

With Samantha and Lewis as witnesses, the Austrian priest had pronounced them man and wife in broken English. Her father had scrounged up the band that had played at the previous party. Just as the dancing had begun and beer was passed out, the sky was overcome by thunderheads. The party headed inside to play in an alpine banquet hall.

Dick had grasped Edith by the hand. The two of them slipped away, running through the downpour to the hotel where they were quartered.

Edith was certain they didn't step foot from his rooms for at least four days. Perhaps it had been five. The whole time period was a blur.

She blinked, her husband's hand coming into focus. It lay palm up, his wedding band glinting in the weak light. The underside of his elbow was propped beneath her neck, close to her ear. She could almost hear the blood rush in his veins glowing violet beneath his freckled skin. Edith stretched out her left arm, mating the back of her hand to his and locking their fingers together.

She closed her eyes.

Somewhere in the dewy hours of early morning, she could hear a dog kick up a chorus of barks with its neighbors. Dick groaned, waking with the commotion.

"Can't you do anything about that mutt?" he murmured roughly.

"Got a gun?"

Dick snorted. Snaking his free arm up from her hip, he braced it between her breasts, grasping her shoulder as he buried his face in the nape of her neck. Edith's quiet musings came to a tearing halt as his lips found the sensitive space between the back of her ear and hairline.

"I thought you were going swimming?" she breathed, fighting for a last shred of focus.

"Later."

***

"You're glowing." Samantha cocked an eyebrow at her from across the way, her arms folded on the desk.

"I went swimming and got a sunburn."

"You're pregnant." She pressed again with a grin. "I bet you all the chips. You are pregnant."

"Samantha." Edith's brow flattened as she stared at her. "Would you please get back to your work?"

"You know, there's only one surefire way to keep from getting pregnant and I bet that you aren't doing it."

Edith couldn't help herself. "And what method is that?"

"Hold an aspirin between your knees."

Edith threw a piece of crumpled paper at Samantha's head. The girl ducked with a bark of a laugh.

"See! Your hormones are already spiking! You are carrying Winters Junior, aren't you?"

Before Edith could reply, another secretary from across the hall burst into the room. They looked over in surprise as the girl gasped with a smile full of crooked teeth.