Author's Notes: This one shot is entirely dedicated to Emilie, known as Miluielwen on , who helped me so much in writing this! Thanks Em! You're the best ! Hope you all enjoy!

disclaimer - I own nothing of Band of Brothers and no disrespect is intended toward the men of Easy Company. This is merely fiction and is based on the fictional portrayal of Gene Roe and Babe Heffron.

(songs that I listened to while writing this piece: Cold by Crossfade; Carry on by Burn Season; Breathe into Me by Red; Tourniquet by Evanescence; The Arms of Sorrow by Killswitch Engage; Shattered by Trading Yesterday.)

He is home. He cannot measure into his understanding how much of him is left, but at least his physical being is here. It beats in time with the rush of the city, never stopping, never ceasing to whir like a great machine pushed forward by the oils of vibrant people, music and sounds. A car horn issues from behind him, as he stops to take to memory the visuals of patched black sky above him (scathed orange by the city lights).

And this is where he knows he is not quiet, calm Gene anymore.

Because a car horn, he attempts to reason with himself, is simply a car horn. An unspoken, and rather rude, request to get the hell outta the way or become a flattened pancake of skin and crushed bone on the pavement. It offers no more explanation for his panic, for the universe of question forged into the back of his head, the recesses of his heart, and yet it reveals nothing less than reality. He is here, isn't he? Swathed in the spices and spirit of New Orleans.

He will have to do so himself, shuffle away the irrational fear with words of console that he once saved only for the blood-tapped ones, the bullet-torn bodies and the hub-cap eyes that make saucers look pale against such unabashed white fear. As he skitters out of the street, he feels something inside twinge at the thought of falling prey to his own soothing devices, simply mirrors of himself before. They are now reflective shards lodged in his own ears, making them bleed sympathy into his own system. He had become, for a fleeting moment, a self-induced victim of madness. Short-lived as it was, he cannot shake the reactions of such a brush of contact. Heart pounding against his chest. Eyes wide, too much white and too little blue. His hands shake. His entire world is thrown into chaos with just an instant of colliding back into civilian life.

He sticks to the walks for what remained of his path toward the hub of the city. The places where he knew he could be safe from the hypochondriac fit of losing balance. Losing himself. The gold streetlights overhead feel warm against the back of his neck, swallow him whole in a sort of recollected Austrian trance. It is night in Louisiana, but perhaps there is an abundance of sunlight elsewhere. Austria. Beautiful as it was there, it is still an accomplice to this sense of wandering, like being set adrift in a world made entirely of sea with no breeze to pull him toward the shore, no compass to guide his heart home.

At long last, he reaches sanctuary. All at once he is taken by the omnipresent urge to find his way up to that lonely little room, crawl into bed and never rise up from it again.

Or at least, until tomorrow comes.

He does not leave this room.

In fact, he hardly leaves the bed at all. He will only pull himself out of the roots of the sheets if necessity calls to him. Perhaps he will venture into the bathroom once or twice to splash water on his face when the thoughts become too many, too cruel, and it feels like he could never escape them. But he does not eat, does not drink and hardly blinks for the duration of three long days in that hotel room.

He is not privy to the passing of time. Only that there are breaks in his existence where the sun sets behind the thick curtains, throwing stains of its fire-plagued death upon the backs of his cloth sentinels. Where the moon rises and the dark calls all shadows to it, plunges them even deeper into the depths of blackness. When it grows dark, there is no light in his room. Only whatever light the moon may spare from her silver body.

Before long, however, as the third day begins to crawl into a close, a conclusion, he finds he cannot bear the emptiness anymore and staggers toward the sink. For a moment, he simply observes his movements as if apart from himself. He switches the faucet on and the water runs clear and soft, melting through his fingers only to meet behind the flesh again. They are not his fingers. They cannot be. They are pale, they are white, they are bereft of all scarlet truth. The elegance that they once held is not buried beneath thick layers of lost life. There is no blood, no rusty afterthought, nothing. Just long planes of constant white that might give way to a bone-inflicted shadow, a watery blue vein.

In fact, there is no convincing proof at all that these are his hands. The trembling could be from no food and little water and weakness that does not allay, no matter how many times he prays for strength. These are stolen. He took them from a body somewhere, one that didn't need them anymore, and he could use them to at least look like normalcy again. Draw for himself a place in the grain of civilized society. But his efforts to reenlist as a civilian, shed the soldier's tragedy like a solemn hymn, never to be heard of again. They are in vain.

He fills himself with water until he can stand no more. It is all he's good for now, he knows. There is no more purpose to mask his nothingness. His uselessness. There are no more lives to save, wounds to close, no more rivers of blood to wade through and try to find the heart. No more asking it to stop, only to resort to forcing his hand upon its unending flow.

There is no red cross to hide behind anymore. He is naked of all resolve, all humanity that once carried only superficial wounds, ones that could heal with time; the soldier is the only life that fits him anymore. There is no healing from the wounds of war.

And as he turns off the faucet, he wills his mind to ask of his mangled body one last request – carry me back home.

After the fifth day, he falls.

It is not a descent that can be marked by the body. A physical dent upon the room, upon the earth. This is one that only the mind may clarify, but here it is not present. It is quiet now. No thoughts race within to tempt cognizance. Nothing. Not an echo, not a sound. Everything is silent here. Like a grave that just won't disappear beneath the soil, that pokes out of the ground like a stubborn chrysanthemum willing itself to grow where there is nothing but barren land.

If not for the occasional weary blink from this concave body, the one that lies spread across the bed as if it has sunk into the twine of the sheets, then one might happen upon it and think, at once, that it is dead. But if they look closer, they could see the ebb and flow of the persevering lungs. Taking in, and pushing out what air can be found in this room. If they linger, they may watch the corpse blink, the eyes still going through the mechanics of working, of absorbing sight, but not seeing anything at all. Simply watching for the shade of death that he knows will soon come for him. It is only a matter of time. He does not much care, it does not frighten him anymore; he has seen the face so many times, stealing over a dislodged soul, a shattered figure like glass upon the snow which glints up at the shade, as if to ask him to please spare them. There is no mistaking him when he arrives, but he will not flinch away, will not concede to fear of what lies beyond the veil of life.

He's ready for him. He's just passing time with breathing, blinking, swallowing because it is what subsistence asks of him. Forces him, rather. If it were up to him, he would be still.

The Louisiana heat pours in somehow, through the cracks of the drapes that haven't moved since he arrived. No one has checked in on him, no one cares to disturb the doleful soldier who wears his world on his shoulders in a ratty old knapsack, stained and tattered, cries and memories engraved into the fabric. They will not come out. No matter how many times he washed it, he could still feel the weeping against his ears. He could still find the memoir trails within the stitches, the lining, the very material itself. It would belong to no one soon, and they, perhaps, could cleanse the defiled thing.

And then, just as he thinks he sees Death's shadow slip between the curtains, a voice finds him first. The specter sinks back into a corner, waiting, hungry, but patient enough in his long years of practice to know he has been thwarted by a lure back into vigilance.

Gene?

It's his mind playing with him now. He's nothing but a toy, a marionette to purge its boredom of simply waiting here for death to take the battered soul within. The mind has no use for souls, no proper tools to mend it, and so it lets the entity rot in its cage. No use, it reasons. No use anymore. The foul smell of premature death fills him up and, perhaps, this is why his mind feels so restless – is it today? Is it tomorrow? He can't be certain anymore.

He doesn't move. Perhaps he will sink back into oblivion if he is still enough. No breathing, no blinking, no swallowing. Just for a moment. See what happens. See if it elicits the silence he well deserves.

Oh fuck. Oh, God. Gene? What are you doing? Gene!

Hands are upon him. Shaking him, feeling for a pulse. Is this real? Could this be the end now? It feels like the end, but what does he know of what the edges of eternity should feel like? It is not for him to know, not until the light finds him here. He doesn't move, no breathing, no blinking, no swallowing. Nothing. His eyes are closed. The perfect portrait of ceased life.

Gene! Answer me! Fucking Christ…c'mon, Eugene Roe, I know you're in there somewhere!

Betrayed by the pulse that is just too stubborn to quit. Fucking pulse. Don't you know you're not needed anymore?

The voice relents for a moment. He slips back into what feels like quiet, but something is rustling around in the back of his head.

Then, there is water. Everywhere, water. It fills his nostrils, seeps through his cracked lips and slithers down into his throat. So this is what drowning feels like.

He takes a breath. The first in what feels like forever again.

And as his eyes open, he finds that it is not his loosened sanity goading him from behind the walls of his being.

It is living, breathing. Babe Heffron is looking at him, eyes enlarged by proximity, the callus of his hands spanning the gaunt angles of Gene's cheeks as he struggles to take in every detail through the mess of blur and water.

It is not death at all that has been sent to him.

It is an angel.

When he comes to again, everything is changed.

His stomach is full. Full of what, he doesn't know. More than water? Less? Maybe it's just his mind toying with him again. The empty marionette with no more purpose in the world other than to breathe and to lie twisted in the sheets. Waiting for death to claim him like a mortal prize. The curtains are peeled back, revealing a world that he has not looked upon in God knows how long. Sun filters in through the windowpanes, a pacifist prince of all light. Not the conqueror with an army of unbearable heat in his wake, threatening to break through the barricade of thick curtains and blessed darkness.

Perhaps even God does not know how long he has been here. God has abandoned him. Long ago, spiritual solitude was begotten by the union of secret hatred and despair, a bastard child of his unshed woes. Of finding that there is nothing left for him but to be the witness of life's trials and tribulations - the sentinel at the gates of hell.

The footprints in the snow that were once a pair became only one.

"Hey, you're awake," The voice again. He is weary, bones like roots of exhaustion, but he can see again. There is someone sitting at his bedside, like a sentry at his post. It is close, this voice. He can hear it breathing. "I thought I'd lost you there, buddy. How you feeling?"

He looks over. A disheveled Babe Heffron is blinking wearily at him, his hands wrenched painfully into in his lap, fisting over what looks like a cap. Non-regulation clothing. His entire being is still stuck in the service.

Time has passed since he last spoke. He wonders, vaguely, if he even knows how anymore. But he will try, for Babe's sake. "What are you doin' here?"

"Savin' your ass apparently," he replies, a smile breaking the intensity of his voice into something softer for Gene to handle. But his eyes betray a force to be reckoned with. Part of him is too angry to simply let go. "What you doin', huh Gene? You really think dying was the only way out?"

He swallows hard. He's been doing that a lot lately. A three-part routine that he has had to follow according to the tyrant body which imprisons him. What do you say to such condemning words? Such conviction? He cannot say anything because he knows that even lies are too heavy to stomach. He doesn't even want to ask how he found him here. Does it even matter? No.

Babe is still here. He hasn't left, no abandonment. He reaches over to the end table, where only a bible may be found in the top drawer and a lamp stands dormant, unneeded in the light, on the surface.

In his hands, a water glass. A small offering of peace. "I'll take care of you till you can get back on your feet again. Go home to your family, you know?"

And in the corner of the room, where death lingered on, a shadow lifted from the walls.

Babe is true to his word. He does not leave, he does not falter. He remains steadfast to every promise he ever made.

Why Gene would anything otherwise of such a man as Babe only seems to graze the superficial layer of scar tissue. The tip of the iceberg is that Babe will leave him at the threshold of what feels like only physical recovery.

But beneath surface value, the doubt is that there will be nothing beyond the healing of his body, the existing shell.

As if there will always be open places in him that have no hope of being filled. Not with love, not with trust, not even with contentment. Doomed to coming undone someday, permeable, a soldier's monument that shall slip into decay with the fissures of slow breakdown tearing him asunder. Grasping him by his feet with the fingers of slippery undertow. Pulling him beneath the face of the water like a stifled, errant emotion that was never supposed to be felt. And will never be seen again.

But he does not leave. Upon waking, the words are still there. The face, still there. The soft nuances of red hair rendered the color of flame by the gold-washed light of the lamp, when he wakes to the last vestiges of nightfall. Mostly, when he comes to, he has water forced down his throat. Spoonfuls of soup pressed to his lips. He thinks he does not want to eat, does not want water, but Babe knows better than to listen to a body still clinging to the prospect of letting go, giving in, a sacrificial lamb to the worms.

Somewhere, deep inside and buried by self-loathing and misery, there is a part of him that does not have the will to object to death – but all the same, it wishes. It gently prays to whatever savior may be pressing soup to the lips, water forced down the throat, that he will not allay his efforts to keep the body alive. He thanks him. Gene thanks him too, one morning, when weakness begins to peel away like cracked paint. Old skin.

Babe simply smiles a little, a smile tearing at its sides. "Someone's gotta save your sorry ass."

"C'mon, Gene."

"I can't," comes the voice he hasn't heard in what seems like a century's worth of time, a millennium ago, but was only a week. Seven days of silence. "I-I just can't. You understand, don't you?"

"Hell if I don't. I was there, I saw what happened, I know what you're going through," he says, tugging on Gene's resolute shoulders. "But that doesn't mean I'm gonna coddle you like some fuckin' infant. C'mon now, Cajun, on your feet."

Surfacing from the throes of memory, an image. Deep foxholes filled with loneliness and frozen dirt and old snow turning hard, like ice. He's huddled into himself, curling like a wick in a flame, but there's no heat. No light. There's nothing. Just ice spread out in black. Just snow wreathed in shadows. Just Bastogne and its eternal crown of winter over the Ardennes forest.

"Okay! Okay, get up!"

He tries to lie back down. Sink into cold death. Yes, her fingers are grasping for him, tangled in his coat. It would only be a few more moments. He could drift away on next spell of snowfall. Disappear into the frozen banks. There is already a hole in which they could bury his body; he's lying in it, occupying his own shallow tomb. They wouldn't even bother, he's sure. Just another casualty. Let the snow swallow up this shallow corpse laced with ice and decay. Taste him, the salt of his being, on its wintry tongue.

It would be so very easy.

"Not okay, lie down!"

What? Not okay to lie down? But winter, she tells him to. She wills him to. She says it's okay. He believes her over this desperate voice. But the voice is more forceful. Hands on his shoulders, they catch in the lapels of his coat, tearing him out of the hole.

"Okay, get up! Come on! Move! Jesus Christ!"

That had been him. Babe. His voice, not Winters, not Nixon, not anyone else but him. He had been the one who sacrificed life and limb to force him out of the lull of surrender, literally now that he thinks on it (the hand that carried Renee's headscarf for weeks, and every time he'd look on it his insides would twist, hurt). Repetition of fate. Another form of carried out destiny coming back to haunt him.

Déjà vu.

Babe sinks to eye level, which is low considering Gene's eyes are fixed on the ground. The floor. "Gene, this is how it's gonna be. You ready? I ain't gonna repeat myself," he says it softly, but the words don't feel right, they feel almost cruel. It's his ears turning tricks. Conjuring lies again. Stop it. Stop it now.

"We're going to go outside. It's a nice day. Warm sun, not too hot, perfect weather for a little stroll through the park. I got us here some old bread to feed the ducks with. We're gonna act like civilians, all right? Like everything's fucking dandy. Cause practice makes perfect, Gene. If we practice acting all dandy, maybe…maybe someone up there will take pity on us and make it so, huh?"

Everything lines up perfectly. Sorrow, bitterness, all afterbirth. His eyes lose their focus on the ground as it blurs. Tears? No. Just a shift in meditation. Babe is as clear as the first dawn, the first light, and just as radiant. Just as beautiful.

"Whaddo you say, huh?" He asks, softer now. Softer as to not break him, his fragile gull of white that hovers upon the breakers. Sea-foam spray like deep, dark blue. "Whaddo you say to trying out the whole civilian routine?"

There is no requirement of answers. Babe is going to get his way, whether there's any consent in the equation or not. Because Babe Heffron plus stubbornness of will equals a day in the park, sitting on a bench, watching the ducks that Gene knows he's destined to hold in the green light of envy.

All because they've never had to fire a gun, administer morphine or watch the spirit recede from someone's eyes like the last shifting tide from a lifeless shore.

He is right, at least that much can be said about this whole unnerving situation. The light is gentle, no beating down upon bare necks, bare arms, bare faces that tilt back to embrace the day. Skies are clear, no hopes of cloud now, no threat of rain to be found in the celestial countenance. There is a hum of calm on the air, like an old church hymn whistled on the tune of the wind. A breeze ruffles Genes' shirt collar, enticing him to merge into the stillness.

Everything feels placid, sessile water, but not stagnant. Not like damp rot.

Stable ground.

They are sitting on a park bench, breathing in this beauty, this day, and the lip of the pond is before them. If Gene lifted his foot and stretched out his leg, he could just graze the water's edge with the tip of his boot. The ducks gather as Babe throws morsels of old bread out to them. The pieces float, unable to sink, unable to escape. Simply waiting to be consumed. He closes his eyes for a singular moment as the analogy strikes too close to his stilled heart. Look away, find another tranquil scene to behold.

A few yards away, there is a family. It does not boast a large size, simply a mother, her children and her stout husband bending over a wicker basket (from memory, he recalls picnics on the lake, his favorite gumbo abandoned to play in the water and run wild, run free).

The two little boys play on the grass, ducking behind bushes and trees while laughter blossoms on the air, fragrant and divine. He is almost giving in to the enticing serenity. Almost tamed by the domestic resonance.

The little boy takes out a toy gun from the pocket of his half-hooked overalls.

I can't feel my legs, Gene!

I don't wanna die! Please, I don't wanna die!

Voices. They scream at him. Begging him, beseeching him, translucent fingers grasping in his coat with invisible hands. They tell him, please. Plea with him to spare them from death. As if he had any hand in saving them other than what his own mortality could manage. As if he is some angel. Some shield against bullet-holes and severed veins and cries for mercy. Walking morphine, numbness capable of its own feeling.

He closes his eyes as the harmless, little toy gun made out of wood beings to spout noises. Pew, pew!

Bang, bang!

Oh God, my legs! My legs, Gene!

He's going to lose it. Everything. His insides, his mind, everything that is not stoic skin. That cannot stretch against the plowing emotions rolling through him like a cannonball, a ballistic missile. Eyes closed, fists taut and closed around the throat of the mild air, he's slowly coming apart. Here it is. The verge of everything. His knuckles turn pink, then red, then white as ghosts. As snow. Bastogne.

"Gene?"

Eyes open. Fists retract and breath comes back to him in heavy pants, their labored endeavors to retrieve equilibrium for a shaken body. Then, the tears. He can't stop them. No matter how hard he tries to hold them off, turn away their advances. They fall. Against his wishes, they pool at the corners of his dark, deep eyes and melt like salted icicles. Bruising skin, searing the pallor there, and they stain it a deep, watery shade of no color at all. As if he is disappearing into the air itself.

Babe's hand takes his, softly, slowly. He clamors for it as he becomes nothing more than tears and tremors and an open vault of memories that don't belong in civilian life. On park benches in Louisiana, where the ducks feed on old bread and families picnic in perfect weather. Where there is laughter and contentment and everything beautiful that Gene no longer recognizes because of what he's seen. There's a blindness to him now. He can still feel it, the ease, the soft blows of familiarity, but there's no taking in the face.

There's no push. No demands. Babe is simply there to watch the tears fall, holding his hand even though the grip must be painful cause Gene knows his own fingers are hurting from the force of it.

"You're all right," Babe assures him. "You're okay. We're safe here, huh? No guns, no bullets, nothin'. You can talk if you want to. Cause there's no one here that would understand what you were talkin' about if you did."

"We're different from them now, you know," Babe resumes after a short pause, throwing a piece of bread a little too forcefully for feigned peace of mind. "We look like them, but we're not like them anymore. We don't think the same, walk the same, hell we don't even fuckin' dream the same. They all dream of tomorrow, you know? Of becoming something. All we can dream about is yesterday. Nightmares. Reliving the past. Because it's all we know."

It's quiet for a while and all Babe has seemed capable of doing is reflecting his thoughts off his mute companion. Like a human sound board. A foundation on which to lay his thoughts for him to observe, to examine. He's still throwing that bread too hard, the look on his face unreadable to anyone that isn't a translator of the human soul. Gene recognizes it, though. The bitterness. The resentment. All that pain. He isn't one to cry it's not fair! Not aloud, not to himself. But it doesn't stop him from feeling the repercussions of blame, on fate or life or God (whoever, whatever), that never even came to pass.

"But we'll be okay," Babe attempts, realizing he's made things worse for the man next to him, still sniffling, still trying too late to hide his tears. "You know? We're home now, surrounded by all this-" He gestures to the beautiful surroundings. Gene looks at the little boy with the toy gun, but the child is sitting down now with his family, looking petulant as he is forced from his diversions to eat. "There's gotta be a way to fit back in. So many guys have done it before, you know? Like Bill and Joe. Fuck, they don't got their legs anymore and they're just happy to be alive. Raisin' hell, feelin' the sun on their face, just being content. No more fuckin' Krauts to kill, just live out the rest of what they've got."

Babe doesn't worry about coming off as strange, as too intimate, as overly delicate. With Gene's hand still tucked away into his own, now softened by the sermon of hope that has been derived from the most unexpected source, he's unafraid of imparting comfort. Of saving the life of someone infinitely deserving of being at peace.

"I know it," he says. "You're gonna live a long and happy life, Gene."

The day at the park seems miles away now. A blotch of epiphany on the horizon, on the footprints of the past. Gene doesn't look back, but the words Babe spoke to him are imprinted on his skin, a tattoo of what little hope a man without purpose can give.

They stand before one another, the train station lively all around them. Here and there, a solitary uniform walks by. They recognize the tear of inner darkness amongst all that shining gold wheat. The turmoil radiates off them like body heat. No smiles, no outbursts of laughter, just the trudging on. Marching onward. Toward home, toward a new start. Wherever they are going, their origins are the same – foundations destroyed, rubble in the back of their minds.

"Well, looks like I should be off then, huh?" Babe glances over his shoulder at the locomotive. The crowds around him that are starting to thin, separating the remaining from the departing. Some are waving goodbye from half-cracked windows, to loved ones outside. "Back to Philly. Maybe I'll see Bill there."

Gene smiles. The first of many, he hopes, in the years to come. He rests a hand on Babe's shoulder. "You be careful, all right? Nothing reckless."

"Gene, c'mon," Babe scoffs, his own mirth playing upon his mouth in little sashays of reflected sunlight. "This is Babe Heffron you're talkin' about. I gotta be reckless or I wouldn't be me."

"Promise you'll be careful," he replies, gravity setting in, crushing the jovial moment. He can't let him go home without knowing he'll be safe, but there is no knowing. If he's learned anything from experience, from the war, it's that there is just no mapping out the future. No framing it in words or prophecy, nothing like that. He's just gotta hear it anyway. From Babe especially – his own thoughts won't do. "You gotta promise me, Babe, or I can't let you leave."

"There you go again, tryin' to best old Lip," Babe tries his hand at levity, but it falls flat as he traces the creases of worry, of desperation, in Gene's face. "Stop it, all right? I'll be okay. I'll be just fine, in fact."

"If you ever need me, you know where to find me."

"Good old Bayou Chene."

Gene can't help a smile now. He's got proof. He's got reassurance. "That's it. The very place." He is interrupted by the train whistle, the piercing sound almost tearing him back to fragility. But he stands his ground. He's all right now. Babe's here. Everything's fine.

The both of them have their own reasons for not relenting to an embrace. Gene is too shy. Babe is too wrapped up in his own false sense of masculinity, too strong now from the fresh air and the security of being home to let his guard down again. Their fallen defenses have been erected once more in light of stolen comfort, offers of shared console, and all they may afford, considering such circumstances, is a handshake. It's safe. It's familiar. It's goodbye.

Babe is the one to offer it first. Gene takes it, wrings the hand twice and they let their connection linger for a moment longer than necessary, perhaps than they expected to.

His friend releases him and, without another passing glance, moves onward toward the departing train.

He is strong again. As strong as he may manage under the gravity of knowing there is nothing left for him here, that he has returned to an empty shell and has nothing to fill it with but aftermath. Carnage. Experiences that leave him gaping wide, a hole, fertile ground in which nightmares may grow.

Today, when he wakes, there is no Babe. No sentry at his side, no guardian to keep him safe from the shade. He's gone back home, where he belongs, to be with family that loves him. Perhaps that's where he should go too. Home. The only place that feels natural against scarred skin, broken bones. The world-weary soul that has grown old before its time.

He looks over at the wall, the corner near the curtains that are still parted and let in a heat that feels almost too thick to bear. No pooling miasma, no leering darkness. Nothing out of the ordinary, just shadows that are thrown by the presence of light.

On the end table, there is more than just a lamp. Now, lying on the surface, lies a letter. It is filled, emptied of all blankness, by a messy scrawl that makes Gene laugh a little to himself in honor of fond memory as he picks it up, eyes taking in every last word.

And after reading it, he feels like he's ready now. Ready to brave the streets of New Orleans, alone, to find his way back home.

Sunset. Fire laying down to rest in the paling sky, no longer blue as the earth turns ever onward toward the budding night. Blossoms of darkness unfurl. Stars are like fireflies, blinking back at him through the thickening fog of the Bayou. He's walking down the beaten path now, one he has traveled so many times before, but this time feels different. Because he's not walking away from home now, eyes on the horizon, ready for whatever may come for him in the dawning steps toward fate. He's coming back. The prodigal son's return.

Fauna is the only familiar face that greets him on his arrival. Ferns and indigo bushes that spring forth, ever lush and blushing green, brush past his legs. Milkweed and devil's walking-stick like dark eyes in the descending sheaths of night. At last, the plant life falls away, bowing back into their quietude, their solace, and he is walking beneath the grand old oak tree that he used to swing from and climb all over as a kid. A tire swing still sways softly, like an old woman in her rocker, in the windswept currents of lingering afternoon heat. Almost there. Only a little further.

The porch is rickety, just like he left it. Pa didn't touch one single thing since he'd left, as if to preserve Gene's memory in everything, as if fixing it would remove his influence on this place. A pitcher of ma's sweet tea has been left, abandoned and forgotten, on the end table that pa has set out on the porch for his use. The bereft old rocker is drowsy in its solitude.

All at once, everything hits him. This is it. The first time he's been home since he left for Toccoa. Three years? Has it been so long? He's never written once, not to anyone. Perhaps they think him dead or lost somewhere on the foreign moorlands that span across far-off Europe.

But this isn't what stirs the nervousness in him. It's the fact that he's stepping back into an old life that no longer exists. Knobby-kneed, lanky Eugene Roe is a figment of past musings. A memory, like an old song lost to the ages, or altered to fit something more like tragedy. All he has of that boy is the scars from tripping over legs he never known had grown. Skinned knees and elbows and flattened palms against the scattered earth as he realizes too late that he's changed. No more walking like he used to, because the old ways much be exchanged for the new.

His hand hovers before the door, paused in the midst of a knock. His breath hitches as he swallows hard against a nervous knot in his throat. This is it, Gene. This is where you lay down everything and hope for acceptance. This is where the war ends. Where new life begins.

He recalls Babe's letter in his pocket, the one he found on returning to the hotel from the train station.

It's enough courage to revive his hand. A knock issues against the door. Three raps against the splintered old wood. Every sound from within halts, questioning, and footsteps invade the silence of inquisition.

A deep breath fills him, along with tears and a contradicting smile.

I'm home.

Gene,
Thought I'd leave you this before I go off to Philly on the first train out. I didn't wanna leave you here all by yourself, in that mindset of yours especially, but you know how life goes. You take care of yourself, buddy. You'd better live to be an old man sitting on his rocker somewhere in the Bayou, with grandkiddies sitting at your feet, begging you for stories about when you were young and saved the lives of so many men during the war. Lost more than I saved, you'll say; I lost too many to count. But you won't tell them, will you? You're too modest. It'll be too painful. I understand, kid. Really I do.

But everyone in Easy will remember what you did for us, even if you don't ever speak of it to a living soul. We'll be a living testament to you, our unsung hero. That you saved us all, just as much as Winters, just as much as Lipton and Speirs. Even the ones that looked like they didn't need saving because all their wounds were on the inside. We owe a lot to you, Gene. Don't waste the rest of your life on death.

Babe.

P.S. Now we're even.

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