All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

28: Sunrise

After leaving the hospital, Posey headed straight back to Aldbourne. The journey was long but numbing, in a way. Her head seemed to buzz when she rested it against the window and the sounds of the train trudging on around her were loud enough to silence the fatalistic thoughts. When she set foot back in the quiet countryside village, night was falling.

The silence was unsettling at first. She seemed to acknowledge for the first time that she'd been surrounded by noise for so long she'd almost forgotten what quiet sounded like. Even in the middle of the night she couldn't escape the voices of her platoon, mumbling in their sleep or snoring. When she found her way back to the barracks she found herself missing their chaos. She wondered distantly what Roe would say when he saw her whenever he got back. And what Johnny would say, too. She could only pray they had continued to keep her secret, even expecting her not to return as they were. 

She dreaded having to tell them what had happened.

She went through the motions that evening in a daze, not really registering any of the interactions she had. She looked but didn't see, listened but didn't hear. She had somehow managed to settle herself into a state of numbness, a haze that felt reminiscent of each time she woke up after a night of heavy drinking, memories of conversations echoing around in her head but too distant to recall properly. Everything seemed to have a distance to it. Perhaps it was better that way.

When she woke up in the morning she endured a blissful minute of disorientation. She looked around the near-empty barracks, occupied only by herself and another few stragglers who'd decided not to stay the night in a hotel in London, wondering where she was.

When reality hit her, it hit her hard. 

Yesterday, everything had fallen apart around her. Now she had to pick up the pieces.

She threw her ODs on over her PT gear, resenting the cold of England for the first time since she'd gotten back and longing for the heat of Georgia, and trudged to a nearby field. She had a view of the horizon from where she sat in the grass, the sun's early light painting the sky in brilliant hues of orange and red. Despite the biting chill in the air, it appeared today was going to be beautiful. The fact that the world would dare to shove its beauty in her face when she resented having to see it felt like another punch to the gut. She had never before hated a sunrise.

She didn't know when she began to cry.

Her sobs started off quiet, the force of silent tears dragging them out of her against her will. She stared straight ahead, gaze unwavering, and watched as the sunrise became a blur of warm colours, a sharp contrast to the cold of the wind. She was suddenly conscious of the damp on the grass seeping into her ODs where she sat but resisted all urges to shuffle around to escape it. She dug a hand into the ground and wrenched out a handful of grass and mud, only to let it fall back to the ground. She pressed that same dirty hand to her chest as her sobs became louder, more desperate. Wails that refused to be contained. She dug the other hand into the ground and tore out more of the earth, throwing it back down again immediately afterwards. Her and the world weren't getting on right now. Not now that she didn't have a proper place in it.

She didn't know how long she sat there for, clawing at the ground and throwing what she snatched right back down at it again, sobbing loudly into the chill of the morning breeze and swearing when her breath caught on a lament.

Of all people, it was Bill Guarnere who found her first.

"What the fuck?" were the first words out of his mouth.

For some reason, this only made her cry harder.

When Guarnere next spoke there was a note of wariness to his voice, as though he was attempting to lure a frightened cat down from a tree. "Wells?"