"The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness."
-Victor Hugo, 1802-1885

Guilt

It was something stirring deep inside of him, burning along his limbs and up his throat like bile. It was something he never talked about, because the second he did, it would be real. It was something he dreamt of every night, so that he woke in a cold sweat yelling for his comrades; comrades who had died. They died because of him.

No woman could bear to be with him for long, as soon as they saw his damaged soul. He spent his time alone, his maps and words his only comfort in a dark age of himself. It didn't make any difference. He was being eaten from the inside out, and it was killing him, but slowly. Sometimes, when he woke in the night after a nightmare, he would wish he had been among the fallen. He would wish he was dead, and that they were not. He would pray for their souls, but never his own; he didn't deserve it.

Sometimes he could feel the blood on his cheek, the rain pouring down on them in buckets; that was the day that Caparzo died.

Sometimes he could hear pained whimpers and shouts, and he could see hands holding blood inside of one of their friends as if they could save him; that was the day Wade died.

Sometimes he would sit on the stairs of his home and press an ear to the wall, just so that he could hear the voices calling, "Upham! Upham, is that you?" Sometimes he could clearly hear the German murdering his friends while he sat on those stairs, and sometimes he could see him walk down the stairs. Their eyes met. He wished the German had killed him.

He always felt as if he had failed. Their goal— to retrieve Private James Francis Ryan and return him to his mother— had been satisfied, and yet, not matter how he looked at it, he had failed. They had trusted him with the ammunition. He had been too terrified to do anything with it. He had been scared. It had cost the lives of his comrades; they now lie beneath white crosses, because he was too afraid— too stupid— to act when the moment arrived. He was a coward.

Not only was he a coward, but a weak coward. The blood of all his friends was on his hands; he could no longer look at the letters written to him by Reiben, no longer look at himself in the mirror, no longer look at photographs of his childhood. The guilt began to ruin his life. It killed him slowly, carefully. It ate at him. It clawed at him. It burned him until he was just a pile of ash, a ruin of a man who once stood tall among his fellow soldiers, prepared to write a book about the bonds made during war. He never wrote that book. He was too weak to write the book.

It was Upham's twenty-seventh birthday. It frightened him sometimes to know how young he was. They had been young too. They had life in their eyes, a spark in their eyes; and now, all that was in them was darkness. He cried that day, so long and so hard that his breath came in short gasps and he thought, perhaps, that the guilt would finally kill him. It didn't.

The knock startled him, and his eyes shifted towards the door, unconsciously weighing the risks. He decided that it was highly unlikely to be a German behind that door, so he hauled himself off the floor, where he had been cowering in his own guilt and sadness and regret, wallowing in it. He looked through the peephole and thought he saw a ghost.

"Upham, open up," a familiar voice called, and the knocking became aggravated pounding. He didn't move. His chest was on fire; he was burning to death. Please, God, he begged, let it stop.

"Please, Upham. Let me in, man."

His fingers felt numb as he slid back the bolt, not even realising that he was doing so. The moment it clicked, he flinched; all he heard was gunfire. The creak of the door was a machine gun's wail, and the sober-looking man in his doorway was Reiben. Except, for once, that it was Reiben.

He looked different, somehow. He looked older. Upham had no sense of time that had passed since his return home; had it been a year? Two? Six? He couldn't remember. His mouth was dry and his chest was heaving. Reiben looked at him, just looked at him, and then walked over the threshold. Suddenly, he was real.

"You're here," Upham stated, having to choke out the words, "In my house."

Reiben didn't say a word as he closed the door behind him, still just looking at him. His eyes seemed warier, and his hair was longer. He was dressed as a civilian, and after never seeing him in anything but a uniform, it was almost surreal. "Yeah, I'm here," he said gruffly, seating himself in one of Upham's armchairs and smirking. "So, I hear you're um... PTSD, I suppose is what the doctor said."

"PT-what?" Upham asked, his brain seeming to not comprehend the idea of one of his squad in his home. The house was usually safe from hallucinations. He stared at Reiben, deciding that perhaps he was dreaming again. He pinched himself. Nothing changed.

"Shell shock, idiot. They're callin' in post traumatic stress disorder now, but it's the same deal. You told your mother that you've been seein' and hearin' things? That's not normal." His voice was hard from his days in battle, but his eyes seemed to care. Upham knew better than to doubt people's eyes. The eyes were the gateway to the soul, after all, and he was pretty sure you couldn't lie deep down in your soul.

"You don't... you don't see them?" Upham whispered, his eyes distant. "You can't hear Captain Miller shouting orders, or the sound of guns and the earth shaking? You can't?" He didn't understand this, either. Reiben had seen the same things, heard the same things, felt the same things; he should be just as damaged.

He doesn't deserve it, a voice in his head whispered, it was you who killed them all. It was your fault, not his.

"Only when I'm sleeping," Reiben confides in him, leaning forward in the chair. Upham inches closer also, his feet barely moving, but they do. "I can see 'em and hear 'em. But not awake, Tim, not awake."

Upham realises it's the first time Reiben has ever called him Tim. Reiben never would use first names. He wasn't Tim anymore; he was Upham. Perhaps he never was Tim; perhaps the Tim he once was never really existed. Tim was just a word that Upham used to describe his childhood, his time before the army.

"Your mother says you don't want her to call you Tim anymore, Tim."

He said it again. He called him Tim.

"Your mother is worried about you."

"She shouldn't be," Upham said dully, his feet inching forward once more. He sat himself down in the chair opposite Reiben, his legs shakier than ever. "I'm doing okay."

"No you're not!" Reiben half-yelled. Upham flinched, his fingers flexing instinctively toward a weapon he no longer has to carry. Reiben stared at him a moment. "You just reached for your gun," he said slowly, and Upham shook his head.

"I don't have a gun." Reiben stood.

"You just reached for one. Can't ya see that you're... broken?"

Broken; that seemed like a good word to describe Upham. Upham nodded slightly. It was a very good word.

"I'm broken," Upham agreed. "I'm fubar. But I'm not going to be fixed anytime soon, so you might as well go home." He raised himself on shaky legs, pointing toward the door. Reiben stood his ground.

"Dammit, Tim, I am not going to let you do this."

He called him Tim again. Upham frowned.

"My name isn't Tim anymore, it's Upham."

"Stop being so Goddamn... unconscious! Wake up, Tim. Your name is Tim; your name is Timothy Upham. You draw maps and write stories. You were going to write a Goddamn book!" Upham turned his head, not wishing for the slightly older man to see how his eyes were watering. He used to be Tim Upham. He wasn't anymore. "What happened to that? What happened to the book?"

"The book died at Ramelle, along with all the others!" Upham yelled, his hands balling into fists. "The book died when I sat on the stairs and listened them screaming as they being stabbed to death! The book died when I couldn't move, because I was too scared! The book died because— because—" A sob escaped him, and Reiben just stood still watched him break. "The book died because I died. I died at Ramelle."

He shut his eyes tightly and wished for that to be true. He prayed for the months and months of suffering to be over, because he died at Ramelle. But his heart kept beating, and suddenly, there was a hand on his shoulder.

"You didn't die at Ramelle," Reiben told him. "We are survivors. We have to breath and live and love because they don't get to. We have to be strong, Tim. We have to be strong for them."

Upham is shaking with sobs. "But I was the one who killed them! I killed them all! I stood by and did nothing and it was my fault!" He leans against a chair for support, no longer trusting his shaking knees to support him. "I killed them all."

"You didn't, Upham. There was nothing you could have done."

The words feel hollow. Even if there was nothing he could have done, he should have done something. He should have tried. He should have killed himself trying to save his brothers, his companions, his friends. He should have done anything but what he did. What he did was stand still.

"I should have saved them."

"You couldn't have." Reiben's voice had softened, and Upham looked at him through tear-veiled eyes. "There was nothing you could have done." Upham shook slightly. "Nothing."

The gate burst and Upham was suddenly clutching Reiben's shirt, unwilling to let go. He cried so hard he thought he'd die from it, shaking so hard his bone rattled. Reiben said nothing, just held him in an awkward hug until, after what seemed like forever, the shaking stopped.

"I'm sorry," Upham murmured, letting go of the man in front of him and stepping back. The shoulder of Reiben's shirt was tear-stained. "I'm sorry."

"Write the book," Reiben said, and Upham stared at him.

"I'll read it. I promise. Even if no one else does." Upham stared blankly at him, as though he were a ghost again. "Tell the real story, Upham. Don't leave anything out. Even the nasty, awful stuff that no one needs to know, that no one wants to hear; write it. Tell the real story, Upham."

Upham felt like he couldn't breathe. He couldn't write the book. He was too weak.

"Even if no one reads it, it needs to be written. Someone has to remember, Upham. Or else it'll all just be forgotten." Sometimes stirred inside Upham, but it wasn't the normal kind of something. He felt it flash across his skin like fire, but it did not burn him. It wasn't guilt. It was... relief.

"Promise me, Upham, that you'll do it. Write the book for us, Upham. For all of us."

"But everything we went through— it's all fubar. It was—" He can't think of the word.

"Then tell them about how fubar it really was." Reiben paused at the doorway. "I promised I'd talk to you, and I did. Now promise me you'll write the damn book so I can go home." Upham looked deep in thought, biting his lip slightly. "Promise me, Upham. Please."

"I promise."

Reiben left.

The space he left was cold and empty.

Upham got out a pencil and paper, and sat down at his desk. He stared at the empty page for a long time, his breathing even and quiet. The whole house was quiet. It hadn't been quiet in a very long time. There was no gunfire, no shouting; just the sound of his own quiet breathing. Upham pressed the pencil to the paper.

Tim wrote the book.

For those of you who didn't know, fubar was a word invented by American soldiers in WW2. It had nothing to do with the Germans, and it wasn't based off a German word. It was simply an acronym for Fucked Up Beyond All Repair. Because, sometimes, life really is just fubar. And sometimes it isn't.