As a certified rare pair lover, I realized one night that I could create my own rare pair, and smoosh my two of favorite characters from BoB and MOTA together.
Thus, we get, what happens if Ron Speirs stayed in the Army in Germany, worked on the Nuremburg Trials, and runs into our favorite pilot, Rosie.
When the war is done — in the way that only matters to governments and gun manufacturers — The boys of Easy Company, his boys, are packed into a crew ship and sent home.
Wherever that may be.
Ron finds his way to Major Winters command and tells him that he intends to stick around until the army finds a place for him.
Winters is bent over a desk glaring down at a typewriter, “It'll take them a while to figure out what to do with you. If you want to fight with a typewriter in the mean time, then by all means."
The slog of the typewriter seems never ending.
He starts to suspect Winters is running out of menial tasks for him when he tells Ron that he could take a few days, weeks even, to visit Europe (what's left of it) — code for ‘go see your son’ in that well meaning Richard Winters type of way.
“With all due respect sir —” he starts, code in his own way for ‘I don't have a home to go back to.’
Winters sighs before he can finish. Ron suspects he knows him too well to argue.
“I’ll put word out and see if there's anyone who could make use of you."
“ — Thank you sir.”
---
Winters tells him that there's a Colonel that could use him as an MP. Nixon reports that Ron will like him, that Colonel Andrus has a reputation for being a hard ass, and likes that Ron does too.
He doesn't get a chance to defend himself before Winters cuts in. "You are a hard ass."
Ron's brow furrows at that, "I didn't know the word ass was in your vocabulary."
"What can I say, the war's changed me."
---
There's work going on to renovate the Palace of Justice for the trials when Ron meets Colonel Andrus in Nuremberg. The jail is around the rear of the building, and Andrus walks him through it to an office tucked in the back.
In his office, he gestures for Ron to sit down across the desk. His demeanor is relaxed behind the closed door, almost cordial in the way he moves revealing a bottle of rum and two glasses. "Sorry for the show," he says. "I run a tight ship here."
Andrus is taller than Ron, not by much, but stockier, broad shouldered in his perfectly pressed uniform. Older too, Ron can see the age wiriness on his face in the wrinkles around the dated pyramid style of his well kept mustache, but it's not just that. There's a victory medal ribbon on his bar, and a single silver chevron on his sleeve.
He pushes one of the glasses towards Ron, an eyebrow raised.
"Remind me where you're from captain?"
"Boston. Sir," he takes the glass by the rim and swirls it with a twist of his wrist.When he looks back up, Andrus is still staring at him. Unblinking.
"I've never been."
"It's a fine city."
"But not one you want to go back to."
Ron breaks eye contact. Knocks back the glass of rum as a means to hide answer on his face.
When he looks back, he can himself in the other man's shellacked helmet.
---
Andrus takes him up on the transfer.
---
One night near the end Harry had asked him, "You think you'll still be in when we go to war with the Soviets?"
Yes. Was the answer on the tip of his tongue. What else would I be doing?
But Ron was drunk on the biscuity-pear of Nixon's favorite whiskey. Because Harry, already drunk, had convinced Ron to swipe a bottle from Nixon's stash, "Come on I gotta' find out if it's good before the war ends." And then balked hated the strength of it and the way it made his molas ache, and gone back to gulping from the fancy wine bottle he'd taken from Hitler's personal liquor cellar, leaving Ron with a full bottle of Scot whiskey that reminded him a little too much of his father.
He wasn't composed Captain Speirs then. The war was ending. It was just the two of them and the stars, laying a bit too close together, on the tiny balconette.
"I heard the ruskies kiss each other on the mouth," is what he'd said instead.
---
He goes to Nuremburg and fashions himself a glorified security guard.
What else could a soldier without a war even be?
--
Ron wakes up with a start.
Making enough sense of the barracks to change into his PT uniform feels like slogging through electrified gelatin. He's out of breath and sweat prickly before he even makes it outside the barracks, but his bones itch to move, and the only thing that makes his thoughts stop racing is to snuff his brain out.
So he runs.
Pushes his jello-ified muscles until they burn hotter than his lungs. Until his only thoughts are about putting one foot in front of the other.
He runs.
Until he hears it. The crack of a branch, and the sharp intake of breath.
Instinct goes for the weapon he doesn't have, at his hip. There's no holster on his PT shorts. No M4 slung over his shoulder. Habit dictates a trench knife sheathed at his ankle, held in place against the bone there by a canvas strap and the wool of his sock, a paratrooper's sgain-dubh.
There's a nearly full moon, it's reflection on blade shines.
"Flash?" The countersign comes out as a whisper yell through the bush, more of a guess in the dark than anything.
Ron spins on his heel to face the noise.
There's man there, Ron can't make much of his features from this distance, other than the fact that he's tall, and has both hands up in a gesture of innocence. Ron doesn't even get the password out before the man speaks again. "I'm an assistant prosecutor! I'm American I swear."
Ron frowns. Wants to believe him. The incorrect use of the countersigns sticks out to him as more of a training issue than an immitation by a foreigner. He hasn't said much, but there's a distinctly New-York-ian accent to his voice.
On the other hand, he's seen stranger things. A certain American Nazi comes to mind.
"Here look." The man says, moves his hands to his neck to pull out a set of dog tags, a metal glint against his chest when he pulls them out. Against his better instinct, Ron steps closer, hand still tight on the knife until he's close enough to lean in and read the tags. To run his finger over the indented metal.
He takes a breath when he recognizes the English lettering and the American format.
Rosenthal, Robert. NMI.
The tags fall against the man's chest. He puts his hands down.
The collar of the mans shirt is stretched out and sagging from when he'd pulled his tags out, a peak behind the curtain at the smallest bit of collarbone. He smells like paper, not quite like the paper of the work he’d spent weeks doing with Winters, that was a sour metal dusty musk, typewriter oil and ash. Robert smells like paper in a good way, musky with a hint a of sweet. Like a well worn book on a warm spring day.
"Good thing you're not a soldier." Ron says. Ignores the thud and the quick flutter of his heart beat in his chest. He's good at that. Lowers the knife.
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