Half Sick of Shadows » Band of Brothers [2]

16: Nothing Else to Give

"It would not have occurred to her than an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love." - George Orwell, 1984

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Three days after the yanks had returned to Aldbourne there was still no word on Thomas, and the house was eerily quiet as a result. Will spent his days fiddling with whatever he could find, generally taking his radio apart and putting it back together again, which was okay because at least he wasn't obsessively cleaning again. Juliette had worried about him when he'd gotten himself into that habit. Martin, as he tended to do when stressed or anxious, kept himself to himself. And likely because of Tom's absence they didn't receive any further orders for a while, which was good, because being CO when merely helping out a couple of companies of paratroopers was one thing but creating the plan for an undercover mission was an entirely other one.

Juliette was also glad, for it was an incredibly dangerous time to be a spy in France; the Germans were feeling vengeful after having been invaded, and from what she could guess based on the information they'd gotten, they were rounding up Allied spies with increasing fervour, which was very scary indeed.

With Tom's absence, Martin's self-isolation, Will's distractedness, and the fact that she was still trying to avoid Gene, Jules had become most lonely. She really hadn't realised just how often she had interacted with Tom, let alone how much she had depended on him. She found herself taking frequent walks through the village to distract herself, though with the paratrooper population of Aldbourne now settled back in and severely fewer in number than before, the quietness there was jarring, too.

It didn't take very long for replacements for the fallen soldiers to arrive, however.

The replacements were fresh-faced and enthusiastic. There was something bright in their eyes, something excited, which reminded her so much of how the original yanks had been when she'd first met them. These ones, however, also idolised the originals, so they had the additional starry-eyed look to them that made them look a lot younger than they probably were.

Juliette didn't really know what the protocol was with them; the original Americans already knew who they were and what they did, so was it then okay for the replacements to be told, too? Or was that an unnecessary risk? But wasn't it also a risk that any of the originals would slip up at some time or other and perhaps mention one of them in their stories about Normandy and D-Day?

These were questions she had to answer herself, being the commanding officer, and all she wanted was for Tom to be there to tell her what to do. And then she wondered why her first thought had been to look to Tom and not Alex; they were both absent, and both had been commanding officers, but she had thought of Tom first. She didn't even know whether she should feel guilty about that. In all honesty, with the loneliness, and how quiet everything had been, and missing Thomas, and having to make so many difficult decisions, if there was one thing she was truly sick and tired of it was feeling guilty. She seemed to have made a habit of trying to bully herself into feeling guilty about everything. A horrible habit, but she couldn't seem to shake it.

Similar to how fate had had it during her time in Aldbourne previously, it was whilst she was taking a walk, contemplating not for the first time what she was supposed to tell the Americans to say (or not say) to the replacements, that she bumped into Gene. Quite literally, actually, for neither of them had been looking where they were going.

"Sorry!" she squeaked out upon collision, instinctively grabbing onto the arm that had steadied her by the waist. Then she looked up. "Oh! Gene." She let go immediately.