After seeing George off to take out the building across the river, Alice wound her way back through the streets of Haguenau. Her head had started hurting, a stabbing pain behind her left eye. She groaned to herself. It didn't take her long to spot Lieutenant Jones and Vest still looking for the officers. She trailed behind. Even if they wouldn't let her go on the patrol, she wanted to stay updated on its planning and status.

A red house, littered with holes and torn siding, sat right near the river. Sandbags had been piled up five feet beyond it to create a wall of sorts, and from there, Alice saw what looked to be Ron and Dick. They chatted while staring out across at the German lines. Lieutenant Jones interrupted them. By the time Alice got within earshot, Vest had joined them and asked to go on the patrol.

Dick nodded. "Absolutely."

Alice stood to the side behind Jones and Vest. Dick look at Jones, then made eye contact with her. After a brief moment of hesitation, he leaned in towards Ron. "He's got a point about Sergeant Malarkey."

Ron nodded, gritting his teeth as he looked Jones over again. "Yeah," he told Dick, "a point."

Several beats passed where Dick just looked Jones up and down. Even from behind, Alice could see Jones deflating under the close inspection. She decided she liked the kid, even if he was much too green and knew nothing about the horrible conditions he had walked into.

"Fine, you can go." Dick agreed. "There'll be a briefing, CP, 1700."

"Yes, sir."

Just like that, Jones and Vest turned away. She nodded to both of them as they passed. Once they moved away from the officers, Alice pushed herself off the wall and moved to them. The view over the river was beautiful in an oddly melancholic way. The crumbling houses and dusky sky used a palette of yellows, golds, greys, and browns. The setting sunlight reflected in the river, creating a peaceful stillness of sky above and below the buildings.

"You're not going," Dick said to her.

Ron turned around. When he caught sight of her without a helmet he just shook his head. "She better know that already or she's stupider than I thought."

"Watch your mouth," Alice snapped back. With her arms across her chest, she moved to stand on Dick's other side. "I'm not in the mood."

Dick watched her for a moment. With a rise of his eyebrows, Ron looked her over and then turned back to the river. Neither of them had expected her to snap. Not that they'd never been on the receiving end of her short temper, but usually it had more of a warning than that.

After a few moments of silence, Ron turned to Dick. "If Malarkey's not gonna lead it, who did you have in mind?"

"Martin or Grant, Talbert maybe," Dick said. He sighed and shook his head. "They all need a break."

"Give it to Johnny," Alice said.

Dick and Ron turned to her. For a moment, Alice regretted what she'd said. She knew she was right. Johnny had himself the most under control. His ability to compartmentalize his emotions would be useful, until it hurt him at least.

"That was a quick suggestion," said Dick.

Ron nodded. "Why Martin?"

"The choice isn't going to come down to skill," she pointed out. "They're all good enough, and they all have enough experience. But Johnny is by far the most effective at keeping himself calm and under control right now. Grant's been snippy and far more sarcastic even than usual, and Tab's been almost as tired as Malark. I wouldn't say Johnny's the least affected by Bastogne, but he's the best at controlling what that month did to him. He's just angry, and he's using that to his advantage."

They didn't respond. Dick took a moment to look back over the river. But it only took Ron a few moments of watching her before he nodded. "Right. Sergeant Martin it is, then."

Dick nodded. He glanced down at his watch. 1630 hours. "Speirs, I'll do the briefing. I want you to go get the rest of Easy prepped on what we expect for covering fire."

"Right."

They both moved off. But Alice just stood there, frowning, looking out over the river. A pit formed in her stomach as she eyed the buildings across from them. Somewhere in there, German soldiers waited for them to make a move. Though she wasn't their CO, Alice couldn't help but think that if Johnny got killed or wounded on this mission, Easy would only have her to blame.

As the sun sank further in the sky and darkness began to consume the town, Alice moved away from the outpost. She figured they'd finished up their briefing. So at 1720 hours, she made for OP Two. Along the way, a few stray mortars slowed her down. But at last she reached the outpost.

She found them in the basement. Malarkey wandered about handing out food while the men going on patrol that night fixed up their gear for the stealth op. Her feet stopped a few steps from the bottom as she watched them with a frown. They looked so worn out.

"Smells good, Malark," Alice piped up. She took the last few stairs down. "Better than I heard you managed on D-Day. Didn't you drive Lieb off with that one?"

Malarkey failed to stifle a short laugh. The whole room turned to her, but most didn't react more than quick waves or nods in greeting. She walked through the room over to where she saw Johnny standing. He waited for her.

"Where's Lieb?" Alice asked.

Martin snorted. After taking a sip of coffee he gestured to Webster. "Webster pointed out that we didn't need two translators."

"Wish I was going." Alice sighed and shook her head. Her heart went out to the men gathered.

"Yeah, I know," he said. "Last thing we need is for your cough to wake the Germans, though."

She agreed. "I know."

They fell silent again. Alice watched Shifty rapping his gun with black tape. Across from him, Ramirez and Babe smoked side by side. Skinny chewed at his food near the door. Her heart constricted. A few moments later, as he finished talking to Lieutenant Jones, Malarkey walked over with a cup of coffee in his hands. He handed it to her.

"Thanks," she said. Alice put it to her lips. It pleasantly surprised her, as it was both hot and not half water. "Not bad."

He nodded. Shuffling where he stood, he turned from the men gathered to Johnny and Alice. "Wish I could I say that I wish I was goin' in your place, Johnny."

Johnny just snorted. "Yeah, then I'd know you really were an idiot."

"Yeah." He shook his head. "Still, it's my job. So don't get yourself killed, or I'll yell at you when you get back."

Alice frowned at him. She chewed at her lip. Johnny looked more irritated than tired, but she could still see the exhaustion in his face. And Malarkey, he seemed even worse.

"It's not your fault, Malark," she argued. When he went to object, she shook her head. She let out a deep breath. "I suggested the switch."

Both of them stared at her in surprise. Malarkey's coffee cup hovered half way to his mouth. She frowned and looked between them. Johnny didn't look angry, but he just shook his head.

"I'm sorry, but Johnny you're the best choice for this." She frowned and glanced from him back to Malarkey. "Dick was already planning on pulling you off, Don. I just helped decide who to put in your place. You need a break." She half expected him to argue. The fact that he didn't worried her even more. Alice turned back to Johnny. "They need you on this one. You can yell at me for this all you want once you come back successfully."

With a slight grimace, Johnny nodded. He looked to the floor and then to the other men in the room. They diligently prepared for the mission. "How's the intelligence on this patrol?" he asked, turning back to her.

Alice sighed. "Honestly? I have no idea. The docs have had me on lockdown in the CP every minute possible. I will tell you, this wasn't Nixon's idea. So don't yell at him for it."

"Nixon's too smart to put this through," Malarkey agreed. "Never thought it was him."

Johnny agreed. "His plans are usually pretty spot on. He's not reckless."

"Yeah," said Alice. Then she hissed as another shot of throbbing pain pierced through her head. "Damn it."

"Your breathing?" Malarkey asked.

She shook her head. "No, I have a headache. Can't catch a break," she muttered with a small smile. "It'll go away."

"How's Lip doing?" asked Johnny. "Last I saw him he was up and around outside."

She scoffed. After another sip of coffee, she shook her head. "He needs to be in bed. But he isn't, of course. Gene and Spina were tearing into him earlier about that."

"You're one to talk," Johnny pointed out.

Alice sighed. She shook her head. "Listen, I didn't have other options. Believe it or not, I didn't like being sick in the middle of the Ardennes. By the end of it I was about ready to quit." She frowned. Looking down, she added, "Lieb caught me throwing a fucking temper tantrum at one point, so, that's how that went."

"The docs were pretty tight lipped about how bad it really was," Johnny admitted.

At the obvious question, she frowned. Alice glanced between them. Both Malarkey and Johnny waited for an answer. So she took a deep breath. "It was pretty dangerous by the end," she admitted. "The fever got pretty high and I started coughing up a lot of blood. Gene thinks if it'd gone another week or so without any sort of change, I could've died."

"Jesus," Malarkey muttered. "And now Lip's got it?"

"Yeah, but he's got the benefit of being indoors and having penicillin already. He should be okay," she assured them.

They all nodded to each other. Alice and Malarkey sipped at their coffees while Johnny ate his dinner. It was a comfortable silence. But as time went on, the men went off to rest and Alice left the two sergeants to do the same. She picked her way from OP Two back towards the CP in the darkness. Malarkey had passed her a k ration on her way out, a can of some sort of mystery meat. She grimaced at it while she wandered down the road.

A sharp meow stopped her in her tracks. Alice frowned and looked around. The sharp meow came again, high pitched. Alice moved towards it. It sounded young. As she got closer, the meowing escalated. Alice overturned a few stones from a debris pile and gasped.

A kitten, maybe about eight weeks old, scrambled among the fallen bricks. It had white and brown tabby fur, covered in soot. It shook where it stretched. Alice rushed to take off her scarf and scoop it up.

The kitten wriggled in her arms as she wrapped it up. Alice felt unbidden tears creeping up. As she cradled it to her chest, the kitten gradually calmed. It began to purr in her arms. With the kitten to her chest, Alice hurried on to the CP.

When her boots hit the hardwood floors, she looked around. The electricity didn't work in the broken mansion, but someone had managed to scrounge up a dozen gas lamps and placed them throughout. Alice could hear voices from the main room.

Placing the wriggling cat down on the floor, Alice watched in amusement as it began to sniff the place. She opened the can of meat and showed it to her. It meowed in excitement and Alice placed the can down on the floor. She sat next to it.

The kitten took no time before sticking her face in the food. As Alice watched her in silence, she didn't notice Nixon standing at the end of the hallway. He shook his head.

"I thought I heard a cat." Nixon pushed off from the wall and walked over, taking a drink of his flask. He looked at the kitten. "Where'd you find it?"

"She was stuck under some debris," Alice explained. She accepted Nixon's hand up off the ground. With a smile, she turned from the kitten to him. "I figured she might enjoy some time indoors."

Alice spent a few moments more watching the cat gobble down the food. With a gentle smile, she left her to devour the meal and followed Nixon further into the CP. In the middle room, someone had pulled a table and some chairs in to sit alongside the couch. Ron and Dick both sat at the table, the latter looking over some documents and the former shuffling cards with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

"I wasn't crazy," Nixon announced. "It was a cat."

"You found a cat?" Dick asked her in surprise.

She nodded. "Yeah, it was outside in the cold. I brought it in." Taking a seat at the table, Alice rubbed her face and yawned. Her watch read 1830 hours, but it felt much later. She let her eyes close for just a minute. But when she felt someone poke her, she reopened them and turned left.

"Come on, you're still sick," Nixon insisted. "Go use one of the beds. It's more comfortable than a table."

Alice frowned. But Dick and Ron watched her as well. She couldn't quite figure out if they were amused or disappointed, but frankly she didn't care anymore. So she took a deep breath and nodded. "Fine."

Nixon sent her a sympathetic look as she stood from the table. Leaving them to wait for the patrol to kick off, she moved into the bedrooms in the back. She guessed Lipton had already been sent to bed as well. Even Alice couldn't help but smile when she walked into her bedroom and looked at the real mattress she'd gotten to sleep on. It only took a few minutes once her head hit the pillow for Alice to pass out.

When she woke up, it was to shouts and the roar of machine gun fire. It took her a few moments to orient herself, to remember where she was. At first her thought was Bastogne, but as her hands gripped a blanket, she realized she was in a bedroom. Then she remembered Haguenau, and then the patrol. The patrol.

Alice scrambled out of bed, almost slipping to the ground. She forced her boots onto her feet and grabbed her coat on her way out the door. Dashing past the empty food can in the hallway, Alice fled out into the night towards OP Two. When she reached the entrance level, a shell-shocked Private Vest was being guided out by Gene. The look of agony Gene shot her made her stomach sink. Alice lost no time heading in and down the stairs.

When she reached the bottom, she scanned the faces in the room. Her eyes landed on Johnny first. He met her gaze. It took a moment before they each looked away. She scanned the others. Grant, Shifty, Skinny, Babe, Alley, Ramirez, Popeye, the list went on. Everyone but Jackson. And based on the agony written across everyone in the room, something horrible had happened.

She looked past the main group. In the back she caught sight of the grey uniforms of the Germans. Alice stepped down the last step into the room. She moved past Webster, past Cobb who looked to have downed almost two thirds of a schnapps bottle, and met Johnny back by the prisoners.

"Jackson?" she asked, voice low.

"Dead," he said.

Alice closed her eyes. What a pointless thing to die for: a couple of German privates who probably knew less about the overall operations than the Americans' own intelligence officers. Turning from Johnny towards the silently seated prisoners, she felt herself conflicted. Fury and pity twisted her stomach in knots

"Wie heißen Sie?" Alice demanded.

At her German, they startled. They both looked at her with wide eyes, clearly surprised to see a woman, a German woman no less, in a paratrooper uniform. When neither responded with their names, she turned to the one on the left, a dark haired, dark eyed man who was probably about her own age.

She put her hands on her hips. "Wo kommen Sie her?"

"Wir kommen aus München," he said, gesturing to himself and the other. Then he paused. "Wirst du uns erschießen?"

Alice paused. Both the men looked at her side arm. After a brief moment of hesitation, she took her pistol out and set it on the table behind herself. "Nein." She looked at them closer. "Nein, ich werde dich nicht erschießen. Aber ich schlage vor, wir arbeiten zusammen."

"Keep talking to your Nazi friends."

Alice turned around in surprise at Cobb's words. The whole room went dead silent. Roy Cobb held a half empty schnapps bottle at his side and a blanket around his arms. The glare he sent her and then the German prisoners was half empty too from his drunken state.

Johnny looked at him, livid. "What did you say?"

"You heard what I said," he muttered. "We should just shoot 'em."

"Cobb, shut the fuck up," Johnny snapped.

Alice watched Cobb. The others watched her. She hadn't said anything yet in response to his accusation. To be frank, Alice didn't know what to say. She hadn't been accused of being a Nazi to her face since Toccoa. Sure, whispers had floated behind her back, but Cobb's words stung. "I suggest you retract your previous statement, Private," she said. "Shooting the prisoners would mean another patrol."

"Don' call me private like you're givin' the orders," he snapped.

Johnny stepped forward. "Except she is. And either you're so drunk you can't remember she's an officer, or too fuckin' stupid to censor your thoughts. I don't know which is worse."

"Beware Female Spies," he added. "Bet they knew we were comin' cause of you."

Alice took a step towards him, furious. Her fists clenched and she felt her shoulders tense. But as she walked up to him, he just looked down his nose the three or four inches he had on her. He sneered.

"I suggest you remove yourself from this room, Cobb, before I or one of these men does it for you." Alice seethed. He didn't move. She put her hand on his arm to guide him towards the door.

When the schnapps bottle hit her face, she gasped. Alice stumbled back with a shout as the glass and wine hit her temple. All around her she heard scrambling as a few men went to the prisoners, a couple pulled her back, and most of them jumped Cobb. Alice could feel blood dripping down her left face. Both her eyes still worked, though.

"Scheisse!" Alice hissed in pain as her hand instinctively went to the side where the bottle had shattered. Wet, sticky blood coated her finger tips. "Goddamnit!"

"Someone find a medic," Johnny snapped. He grabbed her by the arm and pushed her towards the stairs. "Alley! Keep Cobb under control and watch the goddamn prisoners. Webster, McClung, Popeye, Ramirez, with him."

By the time they got her up the stairs, someone had managed to track down a first aid kit. Alice used the bandage inside to keep pressure on the main cut near her temple. She sat at the table, eyes closed. The alcohol burned the cuts, but she supposed that at least meant they were probably sterile. Some of the schnapps had gotten down her shirt. Alice wanted nothing more than to shoot Cobb.

Spina burst in alongside Skinny. He looked in surprise from Alice to the others but didn't wait for an explanation. It took only a few moments before he was at her side, peeling away the pressure bandage. "Damn, Alice, you got cut up real good," he muttered. "What the hell happened?"

"A drunk Cobb," snapped Babe. He stood near them, leaning against the bunk, watching in concern. "I'm gonna fuckin' kill him."

"Get in line," Johnny sneered. "How's it look, Doc?"

"Ain't that bad," Spina assured her, and them. "Head wounds bleed a lot. It's mostly superficial. Probably hurt like hell, though, and you're gonna need a handful of stitches for the deeper ones."

"Just get it over with," she said. "I need to change. I've got alcohol all over my clothes now."

Spina sent her a conciliatory smile. Before long he'd set to work on the stitches. Alice gritted her teeth and clenched the table in pain, but at last she'd gotten the larger cuts across her temple and cheek shut.

"I just fuckin' showered, too." Alice bit her cheek and clenched her fists again. As Spina started cleaning her face with a wet bandage, she just shook her head. "I should've shot him."

As it turned out, when Alice eventually brought the court-martial report to Colonel Sink, he'd said much the same. Alice would never forget his angry words: "You could have saved us all a lot of trouble. You should have shot him." Frankly, Alice couldn't have agreed more.

But with her face cleaned and cuts sewn shut, Alice left OP Two. Her heart still beat way too fast, adrenaline up. When she walked with Spina into the CP, she thanked God that none of the other officers were there. All she wanted was to change out of her schnapps-covered clothes and crawl into bed. With Spina's assurance that he'd let the officers know what happened, she did just that.