For Letty

[bleak_midwinter]

Comments

[bleak_midwinter]

After Schwaben Hohe, they're brought to a medical tent-- they dug themselves out, but Tommy has dust in his lungs and a wound on the back of his shoulder that won't stop bleeding; Freddie still has the bullet lodged inside of him and breaks out into a fever the moment they're above ground; Danny has stab wounds that keep him moaning throughout the night.

Tommy can't stop coughing. His voice is perpetually rough and his eyes are dull when he wakes up at night. He feels the absence of his brothers, who are still in the trenches, and he feels the guilt for letting his friends, his buddies be hurt.

(He receives a commendation in the mail. Bravery. Medal to be collected upon release from hospital. Somehow he doesn't feel like it.)

It's within this strange sense of homesickness for people that he sees the nurse. She's much darker than any of the other nurses, her curls tied back underneath her cap. He looks at her and sees something familiar, and when everyone is asleep and she's on duty he coughs, once, raises his hand, and asks in quiet Romani:

"Some water, sister?"

[leavetreadmarks]

Letty is not an emotional woman. Not that she doesn't have them, of course, and not that she's afraid to tell those closest to her exactly how much they mean to her, nothing like that. But she firmly believes that there are some burdens that must be carried alone, not the least because this particular burden is one shared by so many. Those closest to her now have their own grief and their own loss to shoulder. She can carry her own.

So she doesn't talk about it, doesn't let anyone else into this one closed off, barbed wire wreathed part of her heart, the one where she packs all her guilt and all her anger where her brothers should be, where she hides the hurt when she remembers what their laughter sounded like and the way they smiled at her. She carries it with her and most days, is not diminished for it, knows full well she has gained at least as much if not more than she lost, and more than enough to be genuinely happy.

But tonight, for all that she's used to Tommy's nightmares by now, for all that she has her share of startling awake in the dark at loud noises and distant voices, she wakes up choking on it and immediately separates herself from Tommy. Tonight she rolls out of the bed and on silent feet flees to the room down the hall, the first empty one she can find, and this is where she lets it have her as she folds down into the well-used cushions of the sofa, biting her knuckle hard enough to bruise to keep the sound of the crying she can't explain and can't stop from waking anyone else, if she hasn't already.

Cheltenham

[leavetreadmarks]

Letty looks good in red.

To match his handkerchief, Tommy had said, but she also stands out like a bonfire in a paper house and she's pretty sure that's no coincidence. The women at this level of society have a second sense about these kinds of things, take one look at her and how she's wearing that dress and that hat and her hair slicked down and wavy and glossy with oil and know she doesn't belong here. The men, though, see something new and maybe even exciting and that's enough to overlook the color of her skin when she's wearing this dress and standing in this room - which means that somehow, some way, she must belong, right?

The way the man - Kimber - is looking at her is making her skin crawl and it's everything she can do to keep from glaring back at him. She taps into her teenage days, before the war, when it was her job to smile prettily and distract the gadje from whatever tomfoolery her brothers were at this time. She doesn't smile now but she manages a cool detachment rather than outright hostility, smoking her cigarette and sipping her drink, and wishing like mad she could hear what the men are on about with their furtive glances at the side of her face.