Only a Paper Moon [ Band of Brothers ] 3

Chapter Three

December 30, 1945

Whoever said time heals all wounds had never been truly broken. As Alice stood at the window in the living room, watching as gentle flakes floated from grey skies to half-coated grass, she did her best to think of the positives. But the positives always came back to a single, hard truth; the best part of December 1945 was that it wasn't December 1944. And with thoughts of the past December flooding her mind, she felt cold, and she felt pain.

When Alice closed her eyes at night, she could hear the screams. She'd only been on the line for a single artillery barrage like the ones Easy had endured time and again. But that single cascade of firepower had resulted in the deaths of two close friends. In that moment, with trees splintering and cracking around her, with shells lighting up the sky like some sort of cruel version of Bastille Day's fireworks, her understanding of the siege of Bastogne had changed.

In that moment, Alice had felt terror in a way she'd only experienced twice before; the night in Paris, when she'd been cornered and groped and treated like a plaything had been the first. The second had been when the animals from H Company had grabbed her in the body of the Samaria. In Bastogne, she'd become reacquainted with terror.

Artillery shells screamed when they hurled through the air. It didn't sound like human screams. But it was a scream, a shrill whistle that ended in a massive bang, a visceral thud that shattered bones and splintered trees. Instead of white flurries falling around them, they'd had bits of bark, bits of ground, and sometimes bits of the uniforms of their fallen friends.

Alice slammed her eyes shut. Her most vivid final memory of Skip and Alex was of the two of them joking with George, poking fun at the ineptitude of Lieutenant Dike. Skip had rolled his eyes, Alex had scoffed. But smiles had tugged at both of them. Malarkey had laughed hardest of all, more in disbelief than anything else.

Had she known that George's little tease about Dike would be the last moment she saw their faces, Alice might've rebuked Lip for telling him off. But she hadn't known. None of them had.

At least with Bill and Joe, not only had they lived, but for Bill, she'd been able to say goodbye. Skip and Alex had died while she'd cowered away in a foxhole. She'd smashed her nose into the frozen ground in a desperate attempt at self-preservation.

Foxhole Norman hadn't been stupid. He'd been scared.

Opening her eyes, Alice looked outside again. Behind the gray cloud cover, the sun must've been setting. She gripped the porcelain mug in her hands, knuckles turning white. The warmth had faded. She wondered, briefly, how long she'd been standing at the window like some sort of ghost. Too long, probably.

She sighed. Her warm breath fogged the window ever so slightly. For a moment, Alice just stared. She remembered a different fogged-up window, a different time and a different place. That had been on a train, in 1942. Three and a half years ago. Her breath caught. She looked at the fog fading before releasing another breath, and clouding it again.

In a moment of impulse, Alice poked two little dots for eyes, and a curved line for a smile. It took a moment, but soon she felt the corners of her mouth moving upward involuntarily. Her own tiny smile mirrored the foggy face in the window.

But soon the face faded away. The ambient light of twilight faded away, and she was left with her own reflection in the glass. The scar on her cheek had faded, but had never gone away. Nix assured her that it was only noticeable to those who knew to look for it. It wasn't vanity that made her wish it would go away. Not vanity, but memory.

Alice looked at the girl in the window. Blonde hair, weepy blue eyes, face flushed from holding back unshed tears and unbidden emotion. The perfect Aryan. With a gasp, Alice shied away.