All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

07: Grass

Posey couldn't do it. She could run Currahee and she could sneak out of the barracks and she could fool everyone into believing she was a man but she couldn't do hand to hand combat. She'd tried and tried and tried, but after being thrown on her back for the ninth time in a row she had lost all desire to get back up again. What would be the point? She'd only end up back on the grass in seconds anyway.

"Private Wells, get up!" Sobel called across the training field. She couldn't even find the energy to blush at having been singled out. "You have five seconds or you're out of the Airborne."

With tears pricking her eyes, Posey rolled onto her stomach and secured her arms beneath herself, pushing up onto her knees and then managing to stand. The look she shot at Popeye, her sparring partner, was downright pitiful and she knew it - eyes full of tears, a nasty bruise already beginning to blossom on her left cheek, covered in mud and dirt with shaking hands that she forced into fists. Posey sniffled and then drew her back up as straight as she could get it with the pain wracking her body. She would not cry.

"Again!" Sobel barked. Posey glanced his way only briefly to find his eyes on her and Popeye. She fought the urge to shut her eyes against the hit she knew was imminent.

Popeye looked like he was trying to silently plead with her to get a hit in. And she was trying. No one seemed to ever believe that she failed at things not deliberately but in spite of every standard she held herself to. When she failed she failed entirely against her will.

"Again, Privates Wynn and Wells!"

Posey threw a punch at Popeye with as much energy as she could muster, her face red with the effort and her teeth clenched so tightly she wondered how they hadn't shattered. In one quick movement, Popeye had blocked her and thrown her back onto the ground, albeit reluctantly. This time she wasn't sure whether she would be able to get up, even if Sobel threatened her with washing out again.

"Pitiful, Private Wells," was what Sobel spat instead. He breezed past where she lay crumpled on the floor, his face twisted into a sneer as he glanced down at her. "Your weekend pass is revoked."

Weekend pass be damned. All she wanted to do was sleep anyway.

Popeye offered her an arm up and grunted with the effort it took to get Posey standing again. Once she was up she swayed where she stood and he sighed. "I don't think we should do any more."

Posey shook her head. "No, it's fine. Lets just go again." Maybe one more hit would be what it took to knock her unconscious and she'd be exempt from PT for the rest of the day.

Popeye was grimacing when she glanced his way again. "Are ya sure?"

She tilted her chin up with what she hoped was an air of confident defiance. "Yes."

She let him throw the first punch this time and tried to replicate what they'd been taught about blocking and parrying. With the lack of upper body strength she had to start with and the fact that, even though Popeye was on the shorter side, she was even shorter, she had been set up to fail from the moment they'd started hand to hand that day. Combined with the sweltering heat in the middle of a field in Georgia and the amount of times she'd been thrown on the floor already, Posey knew just as well as anyone that she wasn't going to be able to do it, but she forced herself to try anyway.

Her attempt to throw him down had Popeye stumbling backward not even a full pace. When she huffed out a sigh, she caught a glimpse of the apology on his face and it only made her more upset.

"Not gonna cry," she mumbled under her breath, drawing in a deep breath and letting it out cautiously, overly conscious of the pain in her ribs.

Popeye hadn't made to hit her again so she tried to hit him, and he blocked but didn't parry. She tried to smile at him; he had a good heart.