Disclaimer: I do not own Band of Brothers, nor do I intend any disrespect towards the real men. This is a work of fiction, taking the mini series as a starting point. Having said that, while this story is fiction, I have endeavoured to stay as true to history as possible.

Credit to Michelle Magorian's Back Home for the train scene.

Lewis Nixon had never slept soundly. As a baby he had cried constantly throughout the night, the tears perhaps intensifying when it was the nurse who came for him and not the mother he so longed for. As a young man he had kept careless sleep patterns, often dozing at school after staying up into the early hours of the morning, consuming book after book and worrying that he'd run out of time before he could read all of thme. in the library. The war ended any chance of a restful night, and now, in New Jersey 1950, war long gone, he would still jerk awake gasping for air every morning, between 3am and 3.30am. "Shell shock," his mother whispered to her society friends when one of them would comment on how tired Lewis was looking lately, a code which he knew meant "Why has he not shaved and put on a tie?" Which, to be honest, he made a point of doing, when he met her friends, just to piss her off. Dick would always just shrug when he complained about her to him. "You could do with a shave sometimes, you know."

"I've always slept funny. And you know I shave. I just have dark hair. And I think I'd know if I were shell shocked."

But that wasn't strictly true. He supposed he must have dreams of France, Holland, Belgium, Germany, dreams of the never ending noise, the feeling of stepping into nothing, the twisted face of youth, which caused him to jolt blindly awake. But he never remembered anything when he woke up, only the feeling of panic subsiding in his chest as he reached for a shot of Vat 69 – for medicinal purposes, obviously.

But then. Summer. He had been pulled from his slumber, as usual, not even bothering to check the time. a sheen of sweat covering his body, sheets twisted, curtains twitching in the whisper of a breeze fighting its way through the New Jersey summer heat. He closed his eyes briefly and saw it all again, flashing across his lids. Red berets, the din of a battle won, a small upturned mouth, a flash of eyes darker than his own. And then that one thought was in his mind, crystal clear. Not that he hadn't thought about it before. It had clouded his thoughts for, oh God, years, but always on the fringes – until, suddenly, it became crystal clear in his mind, jarringly so. So obvious he wondered why it had taken him so long.

Dick, in that oh-so-infuriating way, seemed to know what he was going to say long before he said it. Entering his office, Dick had nodded almost imperceptibly, his collar still fastened, tie still right up despite the beads of sweat forming on his forehead, and tipped his head back slightly to catch the fan's breeze as it whirred away in the corner.

"What can I do for you Nix?" he said, shuffling papers. The nickname had stuck even though all other traces of war had been erased, both from him and from the country's memory. "I'm a very busy man you know." Nix thought he saw a smirk flash across his face, but as always with Dick, it was gone before he even had time to register it property. Nix waved his hand in the air and sat down opposite him, swinging his feet up on the desk.

"Relax. I know…"

"The owner." Dick finished the oft-repeated joke.

"Right. Look, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to be an even busier man. Just for a while. I need to take off."

Dick lent back in his chair and bit the end of his eraser tipped pencil. "I know."

Lewis fingered the hat in his lap, almost nervously, Dick would say, if he didn't know him better. The room was silent apart from the hum of insects outside the window.

Dick waved his hand in the air, shooing him in an exasperated manner. "Come on, go, Nix. To be honest, this is long overdue."

"You sure? I mean, I could stay if you don't think you can handle this all by yourself."

Dick gave another fleeting smirk. "Remember my Oak Leaves? I didn't get them for nothing you know. Besides. I happen to know the owner."

Nix grinned and got up to leave as Dick picked up his papers again. He paused at the door fiddling with the brim of the hat in his hands.

"Thank you."

The corners of Dick's mouth moved in a small smile but he didn't look up from the papers. "Go. This is important."

Nix didn't know whether he was talking about him or his papers.

***

Transatlantic flight was still something of a novelty, he realised that as he swilled his whisky (VAT 69 went out of fashion long ago) round the plastic cup. Wife Number 2 insisted on taking the train everywhere, refusing to fly as she didn't trust the technology. "Besides, my baby's been through quite enough on planes," she would always coo, clutching his arm. "He was in air force," she would add for the benefit of any company, who would nod knowingly.

"The airborne." Lewis would hiss.

"Isn't that what I said?" she would smile brightly. And then afterwards, when they were alone, she would berate him for correcting her in front of all their friends.

It hardly surprised Lewis when she left him in '48 for a man from Union Railroad.

"Sir."

He looked up to find a tightly coiffed air hostess smiling at him, her white gloved hand resting lightly on his shoulder.

"We've arrived."

He jerked out of his daze, realising he was the only one left on the plane. He stood hurriedly, banging his head and gathered his hat and coat, embarrassed as he realised that deep down, he had been waiting to see a green light.

***

The train he took from London to Portsmouth seemed to him to date from about 1901. A peeling poster warned him ominously that "Loose lips might sink ships." He took a seat in a compartment where his only company was a young woman with red hair and bare legs, a reminder of the shortages England still faced.

"Excuse me Miss."

She looked up from her book and he smiled at her.

"What happens if you want to go to the bathroom?"

"The bathroom? Oh, you mean the lavatory."

He smiled again. "Oh sure, I always forget it's like a different language here."

"You get out at a station and ask the station master to make the train wait."

They lapsed into silence again, but Lewis could feel her eyes on him. He wondered if she had noticed the poster and was wondering whether she had just divulged vital information regarding lavatories and public transport to this man with an unfamiliar accent.

"It's been a while since I heard that accent around here." She spoke again.

Lewis laughed. "Yeah. It feels like forever since I was last here. I was in the airborne. Spent quite a bit of time in good old England."

She nodded. "I was twelve when you came over. It was amazing. You had so much chocolate! And," She blushed realising she had just been far too forthcoming. So bloody English, thought Lewis.

"And," she repeated "This sounds stupid, but I though every American accent I heard was Clark Gable."

Lewis laughed. "I'm certainly not him." He paused. "This will sound equally stupid, but I thought you thought I was maybe a spy right then."

The woman looked at him blankly. "The war's over." She stood to leave as the train pulled into the station.

"Not yet."

His voice reverberated round the empty compartment.

***

The crossing from Portsmouth to Cherbourg made him feel slightly queasy, and he felt a vague notion of thankfulness that he had joined the airborne and had gone to France a different way first time round. As he walked to the railway station in the middle of the town he could hear the cries of children playing drifting up from the beaches. He knew from the occasional letters that one or two Easy men had made the pilgrimage here to see the beaches and the vast cemeteries. But that wasn't what he was here for. Another time maybe.

The train he was on looked far more pathetic than the one he had taken in England, if that was even possible. But he was on his way. He realised suddenly that he had absolutely no plan, he had no idea where exactly he was going, what he was going to do when he got there. But as soon as the thought of giving up danced across his mind, he knew he had to keep going, he had to do this. He leant his head against the window, watching the European countryside smudge into an indistinguishable blur of grey and green, willing the train to go faster faster faster. He closed his eyes and reopened them, and it took him a moment before he noticed that the reflection on the train window staring back at him was not Lewis Nixon, but her.

Her.