⊹₊˚‧ Am I making you feel sick?‧˚₊⊹
SUMMARY: While stuck in the woods of Bastogne, half-starved and exhausted, Joe Liebgott and the men of Easy Company come to realize that their combat medic, who they like to call an angel for fun, may indeed be more divine than they expected. 8.1k
WARNINGS: joe liebgott x combat medic!reader. canon-typical violence. and some not so canon typical gore. ww2 content. supernatural elements. kinda. inspired by yellowjackets. lottie matthews-inspired reader. fluff (?). some angst, because it's me. attempt at humor. no use of y/n for reader.
This fic is solely inspired by the characters depicted in the HBO show Band of Brothers. In no way was my intention to offend any real life veterans.
Somewhere between their varying levels of madness, the forlornness that’s poisoning half of them while the rest get sick on vengeance, and the immeasurable rage that seems to seize some men more than others, there is one feeling the men of Easy Company all share: They’re all worried sick about Her.
It’s no surprise that Bastogne is hitting the hardest for the medics of their team. There’s plenty of misery to go around, every soldier has something different to complain about, they’re all under the same atrocious, demoralising conditions. No food, no winter clothing, no rest. The few men who manage to get a few hours of sleep mutter about burgers and chocolate in their slumber. Cuddling has become more of a rule than an alternative, soldiers huddling together in the dirt to try and catch any hint of body heat that might remain after more than two weeks in this hellhole. Joe is so sleep deprived that he’s started to hear his mother’s voice sometimes, in the middle of the night, singing some old Austrian lullaby that keeps him from tumbling off the edge of panic.
But the medics—the medics have it worse. Roe has been spacing out more than usual, taking double the time he usually would to reach a wounded man. He’s still as effective and resourceful as always, and if Joe has to be honest, he might be the toughest son of a bitch out here. Nonetheless, he’s been running off to town more and more often, forgetting things just a few hours after they happen, sometimes even freezing at the sight of blood.
But Gene will be fine, Joe and every man in the company is sure of it.
Her… Well, it’s different with Her.
It’s not because She’s a woman. Or maybe it is, for some of the other soldiers. Joe had learned the hard way not to fixate on that detail. After you watch a girl carry a man twice Her size out of an active battleground like Carentan, his full body weight on Her shoulders and his life in Her hands, every idea you had about women being weak is launched out the window.
War has a way of destroying everything you believed to be true. Sometimes, that’s not such a terrible thing.
War also has a way of bonding people together, like a powerful bloodpact. Joe would die for every guy in these frozen woods, he would certainly kill for them too. It’s a privilege to live with the certainty that they feel the same way.
No matter how exhausting and deranging Normandy, Eidenhoven, Bastogne, and even Toccoa have been, Joe will never find it in himself to regret joining the Airborne. They are his family now, the only people who will ever understand the gory mess that lives in his chest in place of a heart.
But every Easy man, and Joe means every, has a soft spot for Her.
Even those that used to spit crude comments Her way back in Toccoa and Normandy, like Guarnere and Cobb, or those who swore She’d cry and beg Her way back to the States by D-Day + 2, like Martin and admittedly Joe himself. Now they’re all, some more secretly than others, wrapped around Her little finger.
It’s just impossible not to be fond of Her. You’re lying on the ground, with blazing pain clouding your judgment and fear clutching you by the throat, the snow being painted crimson under your limp body and a loneliness so terrible you can feel it corroding your bones and puncturing your lungs—and then an angel swoops in from the sky, landing right on your lap like salvation.
It’s just goddamn impossible
Everyone sees something different in that pretty face of Hers. Some men catch a glimpse of their mothers on Her sweet smile that never seems to twist or falter, not even when She’s covered in guts and debris. Some hear their sisters’ voices when She whispers soft reassurances as She patches them up, feel the touch of their grandmothers when Her hands pet the ragged skin around their wounds, find an echo of their sweethearts in the soft curls of Her hair and the pink dust of Her cheeks.
But for most soldiers, She’s a reminder. A vivid memento of all the things that await for them at home: Safety, gentleness, warmth. Love. She's proof that love can survive even in the direst of environments, like the freezing woods of Belgium in the middle of war.
Because damnit, all of Her is fucking lovely. The scrunch of Her nose when She sutures a deep cut, stitches so neat that it's hard to remember She was trained as a medic for only two years in a boot camp instead of some prestigious university. That breathy little giggle that escapes Her when one of the guys makes an extra-funny joke, an accomplishment the men wear like an honor badge, somewhere between their wings and purple hearts. The way She unhesitantly rushes into active fire, dodging bullets and mortars and shells, trying to reach every soldier who screams and wails for Her.
No one will admit it, but if Joe were to be honest, he’d confess that they all kind of hope She’s the one who answers when they call for a medic.
“Not that I’m not glad to see ya, Gene,” Babe said once between wounded hisses, after Doc Roe had called him out for sighing in disappointment when he came to the rescue instead of Her—the rescue being cleaning up a tiny cut on his hand from a sharp rock in his foxhole. “You’re cute and all, but you don’t have, y’know, the blessings.” He pointed toward Gene’s unfortunately flat chest, making every soldier within earshot laugh through their shivers.
All of this to say, She kind of became the heart of Easy Company.
Which is why they’re all so concerned about Her recent shift.
Their sweet girl, who’s serious as a heart attack on the field and sharp as a knife when She needs to be, has become… distant.
“Doc!” Captain Winters called for Her a few days ago, squinting at the fog that transformed Her silhouette into a mystical shadow, like an air nymph. She stayed immobile, staring off at the horizon, the blanket they’ve all decided was Hers wrapped around her shoulders and floating in the wind. The winter sunlight formed a white halo around her, the breeze carrying soft hints of the words She seemed to be murmuring to herself. Winters called Her name again. “Trooper, come back here!”
But it was useless. She was in Her own little world, slipping further and further away from them as the days went by. It’s like the snow has taken hold of Her, infecting Her brain like black mold, leaving Her wild-eyed and a little loony.
Today is another long day of Her going missing.
Joe sits alone in his frozen foxhole, Alley somewhere taking a shit or trying to steal cigarettes from a poor sleeping soul. Joe is down to his last pack of Chelseas, the carton squished from all his plunges to the ground and mushy from melted snowfall. He’s adapted to a half-a-smoke-per-day diet, and he cradles the last half of one between his chapped lips, taking a long drag and holding it in until his chest stings and his surroundings become a little more clear.
“Liebgott!” Someone calls from behind. Joe doesn’t have the strength to turn his head, buried so deep between his shoulders that he wouldn’t be surprised if he’s stuck like this for the rest of his life. Whatever's left of it, anyway. Seconds later, Doc Roe lands at his side, nose rudolph-red against paper-pale skin. “Picking up syrettes. You got any?”
Joe swears his bones crack when he shakes his head, like an engine low on oil. “No, got used in Holland, Doc.”
Gene murmurs something that sounds too French for Joe to understand under his breath, peeking out of the foxhole and looking around frantically in a very meerkat-ish manner. It at least brings a smile to Joe’s lips.
Then he says Her name. “Where the hell is she?”
It melts the joy right out of Joe’s face.
“I don’t know.”
No one knows. She fades into the mist like a ghost and stays there for hours, drifts off to whatever universe She’s living in now and doesn’t come back until a man is hurt. Then She materializes at his side, with a clean bandage, a packet of sulfa powder, and a rare smile ready to go.
But in oddly calm moments like this, it’s as if She’s never even been here. No footprints to follow, no shadow in the horizon, no sign of Her at all
Very much like Lieutenant Dike, but with the difference that the boys actually care about where She might be.
“Damn it,” Roe murmurs, still scanning the periphery with sharp eyes.
It’s almost noon, the sun high on the sky but hidden from view by the tall trees. Lunch time doesn’t mean much in a place where the most they have to eat is tree bark soup cooked in sweaty helmets and lemonade powder snow cones.
Gene would never admit it, but he’s probably hoping for someone to get mildly wounded. It’d allow him a Jeep trip down to town, with a warm meal and pretty nurses waiting for him at the aid station. Joe would volunteer to get a bit of shrapnel on his leg if that didn’t mean having to be in that goddamn church.
Being on the line is one thing, gruesome and bloodsoaked, but bearable. Having to sit in a makeshift cot and watching men fight for their lives while bedridden and helpless is especially excruciating.
But God seems to listen to Roe’s silent prayers anyway. Fire explodes in the sky, as bright as a supernova, and soon shells are raining down on Easy.
“Incoming!” An officer yells, the sound of soldiers scrambling into the earth like feral moles almost swallowing his voice. “Get in your foxholes! Get in your foxholes!”
Eugene and Joe end up pressed together in a tight ball against the narrow walls of frosted dirt, limbs tangled and helmets clanking against each other. The last bit of his cigarette slips off his lips, a knee digs into his ribs, he gets a mouthful of dead leaves, and Gene’s face is close enough to kiss.
It’d be funny, if it wasn’t so absolutely terrifying.
Then, it comes: “Medic! We need a medic!”
Gene jumps to his feet so fast that he almost kicks Joe in the face, the sole of his boot missing his eye by just a few inches.
“Watch it!” Joe screams over his shoulder, but Roe is already too far away to hear. He thinks about throwing a rock at his head, just to be petty, but a shell that bursts a little too close for comfort forces him to curl down on himself again.
It’s become easier and easier to zone out during shellings and mortar attacks. Joe simply buries his face in the mud, covers his head with his hands, and thinks about the big house he’ll live in once the war is over—either in Frisco or the Garden of Eden.
He gets lost in the fantasy until heavy footsteps rush past him, bringing him back to the bitter reality he’s condemned to stand. Slowly, his joints creaky and his vision blurry from screwing his eyes shut too tightly, he pops his head above ground.
He catches Doc Roe and Perconte dragging a wounded soldier toward a waiting Jeep. They quickly leave him draped across the hood before Eugene jumps in the truck, giving Perco one last nod before they speed away from the line and into safety.
Joe waits for any jealousy to appear, but there’s none. He’s just happy for Gene.
He follows the car with his eyes as it vanishes in the distance, catching sight of a very much awaited figure crawling out from the dense woods.
He can’t help but yell Her name, heart leaping in his chest, detail he ignores completely.
Everyone’s enamored by Her. Whatever weird thing fills his thorax and stomach and throat in Her presence is no different.
It takes a few tries, Joe raising his voice enough to risk another kraut attack, but finally Her dazed eyes zero in on him. Once She finds him peering out of his foxhole, it takes no time for Her to bolt to his side.
“Joe!” She gasps, and it’s sweeter than any chocolate bar. She kneels in front of him, Her aid kit already in one trembling hand, the other one making a grab at his shoulder. For a second, She’s her old self again. “Did you call for me? Are you hurt?”
Her free fingers slide up to his cheek, Her touch barely warmer than the snow, tilting his head up until all he can see is Her. She hovers over him like something otherworldly, as if the sky had split in two and sent Her down as an apology for the horrors they’ve made to witness.
Joe’s never seen Her pet another man’s face the way She does his, Her hands mostly sticking to their wounded area, never straying the way they always do over his body. He’s never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth, though, so he doesn’t say anything about it.
The urge to fake being wounded is strong, wanting nothing more than to give Her an excuse to stick around, maybe get Her to fuss over him a little. But a soldier doesn’t lie about being hurt unless it’s to pretend he isn’t.
“No, wasn’t me.” Before She can take off like a crazed fawn, Joe takes a hold of Her wrist. “Doc Roe already took care of it, though. Everyone else’s fine.”
She mulls over the words as she surveys the surroundings with the same acuteness as Gene, surely searching for any hints of pain amongst the company.
“M’kay,” She murmurs a few seconds after, Her shoulders uncoiling and the pool of Her starry irises thawing into those fuzzy little things She’s been wearing lately. Joe can tell, he’s losing Her again. “‘M gonna go, then—”
“No!” he interrupts a little too loudly, causing Buck to angrily shush him from a few foxholes away. Even She looks taken aback by the outburst, and if Joe had any warm blood left in his body, he’s sure it would be rushing up to his cheeks. “I mean—stay.”
“Uhm…” She hesitates, looking back at the deep woods as if they’re calling for Her. That’s okay, Joe can be more convincing than a bunch of trees.
“C’mon,” he says Her name, the same way Captain Winters uses a trooper’s name when they’re a little too drunk on shellshock. His hand slides from Her wrist to Her hand, his pale fingers wrapping over Hers, noticing the blue hue of Her lips and the bits of frost in Her hair. “You gonna freeze out there. You ain’t even got your blanket, what the hell you thinking walking around like that?”
Without waiting for an answer, Joe tugs Her down by the hand, sending Her tumbling down his foxhole like Alice down the rabbit hole. She yelps as she lands in front of him, their legs tangled and their hands still clasped.
“Lieb, what the fuck?!”
By the first year of training, She was already swearing as much as any other man in the company, sometimes even worse. It’ll never not make Joe grin.
Risking sounding like a sentimentalist, he admits to himself that he’s missed Her so greatly, the way a soldier misses his home. He doesn’t know what happened, why She’s been acting so differently, why She’s changed so much. Everyone in Easy’s changed in the last two weeks, and he suspects these changes will be everlasting, but why Her?
Joe wonders, in the depths of night, if it has anything to do with the special packages that were mailed to Her every month. She never opened them in public, but while trying to take a piss somewhere in Holland, Joe saw Her pulling out a bottle of pills and choking one down dry. Once he started looking for it, he noticed Her swallowing one down every day, always at the same hour.
No mail has reached them since Mourmelon, and She ran out of pills a month ago.
Joe wonders.
“Look at you!” He tries to keep Her grounded, keep Her with him for just a little longer. “You’re all blue in the face! You’re so pale, someone's gonna confuse you with a snowman.”
Any other time, he’s sure that would’ve won him a sweet giggle he could add to his collection of prizes. Now, it earns him nothing more than a twitch of lips.
“You’re one to talk,” She huffs, Her breath visible in the air. Her eyes drift off to the sky, but Her hand stays on his. It’s enough for Joe’s insides to start warming up. “The only color in your face is that patchy thing you try to call a beard.”
He kicks Her on the calf, way more gentle than he’d like to admit, biting back his laughter.
“Hey! It’s called a stubble. And I’ll let you know, some girls happen to find it sexy.”
He gets a snort for that one. Small victories.
“Whatever lets you sleep at night, Joey.”
Joe chokes on his next words, a lump getting stuck on the back of his throat and coating the back of his teeth like cheap candy.
Joey. Only Mom and his baby sister have ever called him Joey, and they stopped long before he started to grow a stubble. The name would earn anyone else a fist to the face. When it comes from Her cracked lips, so mellow and balmy, it makes him feel ten years old again—on a hot summer day, sipping on a cold glass of fresh orange juice, watching Mom take care of her garden.
But summer is long gone, the snow has killed all the flowers, and he hasn’t been ten in a long time.
He tugs at Her hand again, this time lightly and almost, maybe in another world, shyly.
“I’m serious, though. You’re bound to get frostbite if you keep wandering around like that.” And then, with the same rush of adrenaline he feels when taking a kraut town or while pinned down in an open field, he lets go of Her, opening his arms instead. He nods his head toward his right side, a silent offering.
Her eyes find him, staring right at the empty spot between his chest and his raised arm, blinking a few times in that way She always does when she’s wrapping Her fascinating mind around something new.
“What?” Her gaze flicker to his, Her fuzzy starlight meeting Joe’s bitter muddy coffee, Her eyebrows raised in surprise. “You want a hug?”
Joe clicks his tongue, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. But for all his act, a hug is exactly what he’s asking for.
“Don’t make it weird. We’re both numb with cold, and body heat is the only viable solution here. Unless you’ve been holding out on me and you got a heater hidden somewhere in this forest” He nods his head again, his arm cramping from being held up in the air for so long. “Just c’mere, doll.”
The few seconds She sits there in eerie stillness are the most terrifying of Joe’s life. But then Her chin dips, some color returning to Her cheeks as She grumbles something under Her breath, and She shuffles closer to Joe.
Once She’s close enough to touch, Joe is unable to stop himself. He’s always been known to be an impulsive man.
His arm wraps tightly around Her shoulders, yanking Her closer until She’s tucked against his side. Only then—with Her bony elbow digging under his ribs and Her knees pulled up against Her chest, just a little ball of sunshine pressed against his hollow body—Joe feels whole.
He joined the airborne with the idea that killing krauts would fill the gaping hole in chest, that maybe that furious parasite that bubbles and expands inside of him could be satiated with bloodshed. Instead, he found that murder only made the infection stronger, and all he needed was warmth.
Warmth in the coldest place on earth.
“Y’know,” Her voice snaps him out of the spiral of his own mind, low and muffled against Joe’s jacket, where Her face ended up smushed against. “I know you like being annoying and calling me ‘doll’ because I hate it, but I’m not actually a ragdoll. If you keep yanking me around like that, I will punch you.”
Joe’s laugh is interrupted by the chattering of his teeth, ending up in a weird mix of chuckles and clanking sounds that, at the very least, makes Her smile.
“There’s that spunk we missed so much!” He hugs Her closer, teasingly shaking her until her helmet slips from her head and She starts to shove him off. Her attempt to escape isn’t very earnest, though, because as soon as Joe stops, Her head returns to his shoulder, cheek pressed right over his wings making Her lips look all pouty. “Where’d it go, huh? It came back for the holidays?”
It’s not the first attempt by the men to figure out where She drifts to, one of them always trying to pull some explanation out of Her when they catch Her amongst the mist. They’re always met with some cryptic bullshit, though.
“It melted in the fire,” She answers in a barely-there whisper, eyes getting lost somewhere too far for Joe to reach. “Beneath the rubble and the flesh, wrapped in blue fabric and chocolate.”
Joe says Her name slowly, trying, pleading, praying for Her to come back. “What are you talking about?”
“The town.” She doesn’t blink, doesn’t move, and if it wasn’t because Joe can feel her ribcage expanding and compressing every few seconds, he’d guess She doesn’t breathe either. “The fire erupted and the town fell. The angels fell as well, too late at night for God to save them.”
“Doll,” Joe shifts in his place, cupping Her chin with his wide palm and tilting Her head back until She’s forced to meet his eyes. Her hair is wild around her face now that She’s without a helmet, her usual braids completely forgotten, and it smells like sweat and mud and gunpowder. Still, Joe feels like he could drown in it. “There were no attacks last night. No mortars, no shells, not even gun-fire. The town…you mean Bastogne? Foy? Neither has ‘fell.’”
“Bastogne…” She chews on the word, like She’s hearing it for the first time, spreading it over Her tongue and the roof of Her mouth. Not like Joe is looking at Her lips, of course. He just notices. “They—they didn’t bomb the city? Last night?”
“No, sweetheart.” She looks so genuinely confused, eyes so lost and lips parted in shock, that Joe sneaks his hand up to Her temple, checking for a fever. “Are you okay?”
A question asked way too often in the battlefield, one that rarely gets answered sincerely.
“Yes. Uhm,” She shakes Her head, curling further into Herself and returning to the crook of Joe’s side, burrowing under his arm and against his chest. She fits so perfectly that, for a second, Joe has the manic thought that his body must have been carved out just for Her. “I’m fine. It must have been a dream, I guess.”
There’s not much to talk about after that.
Even with the phantom shared body heat, they continue to tremble like leaves in the wind. There’s movement all around them—soldiers fortifying the covers of their foxholes in preparation for a new attack, sharpening their knives or brushing their teeth in the rare moment of peace, chatting among themselves and laughing at jokes that wouldn’t be half as funny if they weren’t on the brink of death.
Joe and Her stay there for long minutes, in perfect silence, only the sound of their breaths and the pounding of their hearts filling the icy air. No one bothers them, no one dares to. Luz walks by and has to do a double take at the sight. At Joe’s pointed glare, the radioman gives him nothing more than a suggestive eyebrow wiggle before scurrying away, probably to tell the tale to anyone who will listen.
Serenity, as is usual in war, doesn’t last very long.
The first sign he notices is the twitching. Way harsher than the trembling, like spasms that run up Her spine and down Her arms. For a moment, he thinks She’s just trashing in Her sleep. God knows how much rest She’s getting out there in the wilderness. No stranger to combat nightmares, he prepares to wake Her from the terrors. But one look at Her face tells him She’s awake, eyes wide as ever and pinpointed on something only She can see.
“Do you hear that?” The words leave Her in a rushed sigh, both terrified and relieved. “Joe, do you hear it?”
He tries to, he really does. He closes his eyes and absorbs every sound his ears can catch. There’s the steps of his comrades, the clicking of lighters, the rustling of wind. Nothing new, nothing to make him squirm the way She’s doing.
“No, what are you—?” She scrambles away from him so desperately, he’d think there’s a missile heading their way. Her boots kick dirt that lands on Joe’s lap, his arms feeling empty and worthless without Her frame there to hold, the words stuck between his molars as he watches Her run from him. “Wait, goddamn it!”
But it’s too late, Joe has lost Her again.
“It’s calling!” She murmurs, over and over as She sprints away. “It’s calling, it’s calling me.”
All that’s left of Her are footprints on the snow, which will be brushed away by the wind soon enough. Joe watches Her disappear in the distance, the white hue of fog concealing Her shape until it looks like She never existed at all.
“What the hell, man?” Muck shares a look with Penkala from a few feet away, huddled together over Malarkey’s gas stove. “She’s gone fuckin’ insane, I’m telling ya.”
“Shut up, Muck,” Joe grits out. “She’s not crazy. She’ll be fine.”
“Whatever,” Skip mutters, sloshing around whatever mud water they’re heating up in that helmet-pot. “Who’s ready for more of Joe’s surprise stew—”
The overly familiar sound of explosion makes every man in the vicinity duck their head and crouch on the snow. It’s far away enough that no one bolts for their foxhole, not like they would’ve at the start of the war, not like any sane person would.
“What the fuck are they aiming at?”
It takes one quick glance for Joe to notice the smoke rising between the trees, too far away to be meant for them but too close to be directed at D Company. What are they aiming at?
The realization hits like a ton of bricks.
He whispers Her name, half revelation, half prayer, before taking off into the woods.
“Oh, fuck.”
Distantly, Joe can hear men following him. He doesn’t know how many or how far behind they are, every sound coming muffled, as if he’s underwater. All he can think of is Her, laying somewhere in these godforsaken woods, bleeding out all alone because Joe had been stupid enough to let Her go.
Her name continues to leave his lips in a rampage, like saying Her name out loud would keep Her alive, would bring Her back to him.
The cold dissipates, the weight of his rifle fading into nothing, the ache of his bones inexistent. Joe is a man on a single mission, and nothing—not the branches scratching his skin, nor the rocks that test his balance, nor the grim reaper that clings to the shadows behind the trees—will stop him.
He sees Her right as he feels like he’ll lose whatever’s left of his mind.
She’s standing a little too still, looking away from Joe with Her hair freely blowing in the wind. The smoke floats around Her like it can’t quite touch Her, swooping through the air and swirling close to Her skin like it’s dying to impregnate itself on Her.
At this precise moment, Joe can relate.
His knees buckle, but he forces himself upright and continues making his way forward, Her name threatening to slip off his tongue one last time. That’s when he sees it, and the breath is knocked out of his lungs, his feet planting themselves in the ground on instinct.
“Holy shit.”
Joe feels the rest of the men join him. At least ten well-trained American soldiers, all Toccoa men, who’ve taken everything the krauts and the universe has thrown at them without a flinch—standing in a tight line a few feet away from a young girl, completely paralyzed.
Buck calls for Her before Joe can, his tongue heavy and swollen like he’d just swallowed arsenic.
“Doc, walk over here slowly…”
But She doesn’t even spare them a glance. Instead, in a move Joe will continue to question even decades after this, She takes a step closer to the motherfucking brown bear that’s prowling Her way.
“What the fuck is She doing?” Malarkey grunts, rifle already aimed at the giant beast. But She’s in the way, right between their guns and the animal, and no one is going to risk hurting Her.
At least, Joe hopes they’re not brainless enough to risk it.
He tries again. This time Her name comes out coated in supplication, drenched with Joe’s desolation at being forced to stand there and watch this happen, afraid the bear will feel threatened if any of them move too fast and pounce on Her.
“What the—? Come back here, get away from that thing!”
Everyone continues to whisper-yell similar things—some with more vulgarity than others—but it all bounces off Her skin, Her attention solely focused on the predator’s mouth She’s, quite literally, walking right into. The pace of both woman and animal is deliberate and sluggish, torturous for the useless outlookers that have to witness it.
Muck, crazy son of a bitch that he is, starts to grow restless. He looks about ready to leap on the bear himself, the way he once leaped onto the Niagara river. He even backs up to get a running start, hyping himself up in silence before his efforts get interrupted by a loud thud.
The brown bear, all 500 hairy pounds of it, docilely drops to the ground at Her feet.
Everyone freezes again at the sight, their words vaporizing and their breaths stuttering. Goosebumps wash down Joe’s body, something inherently wrong in watching a colossal beast surrender to a human in such a way, something ethereally astounding in watching a girl take power like that, like a goddess.
Not any girl, though. It’s Her.
She’s the one who—instead of running, or crying, or even kicking the beast when it’s down—gets down on Her knees in front of it, so they’re once more at the same level.
Someone gasps, Joe can’t tell if it’s one of his friends or himself. His heart stops beating for a second too long, making him question if he’s already dead and hasn’t noticed. If the God he’s been praying to ever since he was a babe has taken Her shape to welcome him to the afterlife.
But then the bear growls, sharp bloody teeth in full display, and the thrill that shocks his body like lighting is painful enough for him to know he’s alive. His heart is back in action, pounding against his ribcage as if it’s trying to escape, quivering as Her hand reaches for the bear’s face.
“Doc,” Buck tries again, but his voice is nothing more than a trembling whisper, his icy blue eyes wide with terror. “I don’t think that’s such a good…”
His voice dies down along with, probably, the rest of their sanity. Because She seems to be on a secret mission to cause as many heart attacks as possible.
“What the fuck is she—”
Suddenly, the idea of Her being an actual goddess doesn’t seem as implausible as before. Not when She takes the bear’s head between Her hands, staring right at the fangs waiting to bite her, and lowers Her head to rest against it. Forehead to forehead, snot to nose, brown fur to muddy skin—beast and woman lock eyes like two forces of nature.
“It’s okay.” Her voice is carried by the wind like it belongs there, soft and oh so beautiful. “It’ll be all over soon. I’ll make it better, I swear.”
The bear, against all its instincts, melts into Her touch. If Joe wasn’t freaking out so badly, he’d empathize. It lets out a tiny whine, meant only for Her, and She makes a soft wounded sound in return. They seem to be communicating, in a language too holy for someone like Joe to grasp.
“I know,” She whispers, one of Her hands letting go of the animal and finding Her boot instead, right where Her knife is strapped to. Joe holds his breath, as if one wrong movement would end up with Her head between the bear’s claws. “I know it hurts. I’m sorry.”
“I think Dominguez put mushrooms in that bean soup.”
No one laughs at Skip’s quip this time. No one has the mind to, not when She’s unsheathed the blade, holding it high in the air as She continues to whisper to the bear like it’s a wounded puppy.
“Thank you, we’ll be forever grateful to you.” Just when Joe thinks his mind can’t be blown into smaller pieces, She presses Her lips right between the bear’s eyes, and She starts to lower the knife. “I’m sorry.”
There’s a whoosh in the air, the now familiar sound of flesh being slashed, a pitiful cry—whether from the men, the bear, or Her, Joe can’t be sure—and then the bear’s eyes fall closed, the life bleeding out of it from where She’s stabbed him in the nape.
She does the same, eyes shutting down as a lonely tear rolls down Her pale cheek, Her lips still buried on the beast’s fur.
“You can rest now. Thank you.”
Blood splatters across Her face when She pulls the blade back, hitting Her temple and dripping down Her neck, staining Her uniform and painting the snow red. Her gaze never leaves the now dead animal as She straightens up, the woods falling in absolute silence for the first time since they’ve gotten here, as if mourning along with Her.
“What the hell are you all doing?” Captain Winters’ voice shatters the silence like a grenade, making Joe nearly jump out of his skin. “What in God’s name could be happening here for half of my men to leave the line unattended?”
Winters reaches the group of men and stands right in front of them, not having taken notice of the miracle being performed right over his shoulder. In the back of his mind, Joe knows he should stand at attention, at least attempt to stand straight, but he can’t move. He can barely breathe.
Still mute with shock, Perconte raises a shaky hand, pointing at the dying animal.
Nixon, looking half-asleep and slightly in withdrawal, jogs up to his friend and tries to catch his breath. It’s fruitless, though, since it’s knocked right back out as soon as the captains turn to look behind themselves.
“Where the fuck did a bear come from?” Nixon questions breathlessly. “They’re supposed to be hibernating.”
“Believe me, Cap’n, that’s the least of our worries right now,” Guarnere, who’d been uncharacteristically silent during the whole ordeal, chimes in.
“Did she—” The question seems so ridiculous that Winters chokes on it. But there’s no other explanation, and he has to ask. “Did she kill that thing?”
“Yep,” Guarnere answers again, pressing his lips together and nodding, as if he’s already come to peace with it. “Yes, she did.”
“What the fuck?”
“That’s what I said.”
“That’s what we all said.”
The men turn to chat amongst each other, voices ranging from amazement to horror, disbelief to fascination, mythical to reasonable. But Joe stays there, still looking at Her, at the scarlet dripping down Her face and the sorrow in Her eyes.
Oh, their sweet angel fallen from heaven. What has this place done to you?
As if She’s heard him—and maybe She has, She sure did seem to read the bear’s mind, and Joe guesses his brain must not be much more complicated than a bear’s—She turns to stare right into his soul, pupils blown out and knife still in hand.
“What are you all doing?”
Every soldier turns to face Her in perfect unison. Sobel would be proud. He probably would also burn Her at the stake.
“What are we—” Guarnere repeats, offended. “What are you doing? You nuts? Or a goddamn witch?”
She blinks a few times, scanning every man’s face before returning to look at the bear, now completely drained of all life.
“Stop just standing there. We have to move him, bleed him out, before the meat stains.” She throws the knife to the ground, petting the bear’s head as if it’s something precious. “We probably can’t cook him here, not without a fire. We could take him back to town in pieces, keep the rest frozen in the snow, bring it back cooked enough to heat up in the stoves—”
“Wait,” Buck says Her name, interrupting Her rambling. “What the hell are you talking about? cook him?”
Her face is full of indignation when She faces them again, staring up at the Lieutenant like he just insulted Her whole bloodline. There’s blood still on Her face, and She just killed a fucking bear. The sight is terrifying.
“He sacrificed himself for us,” She barks, like it’s obvious.
“He did?” Malarkey asks Muck, who just shrugs.
“He gave his life to us, I won’t let you dishonor him. We’ll take his meat for food and his pelt for warmth, because that’s what he wanted.” Her voice falters, body trembling with more than just cold. “That’s why he let me take his life.”
A pause, long and heavy.
Then Captain Nixon clears his throat, leaning closer to Winters. “She might be mental, but she’s right, Dick. That’s a shit ton of food, feed-us-for-the-next-whole-month shit ton. And we could use a few extra blankets.”
Captain Winters, for the first time since camp Toccoa, seems at a loss for words.
“We still don’t know where the bear came from.”
“Who gives a fuck? It’s food.”
“What if it was sick?”
“He wasn’t.” She glares at the officers again, and even perpetually-composed Dick Winters squirms under it. “It’s a gift, a sacrifice. He was sent here to help us.”
Sent by who, Joe wants to ask, but instead he yanks out his bayonet and makes his way to the bear.
He kneels by Her side, eyes trained on the beast. He’d hunted only a few times as a kid, back when his dad used to take him in the summers. It didn’t last long, but he picked up enough to manage his way around a deer.
A bear can’t be much different, right?
He starts to turn the animal to lay on its back, his touch a little more careful than he’d want—not because he cared about the thing, but because he had the feeling he’d be the next one bleeding out if he dishonored it.
He guides the tip of his bayonet to the bear’s throat, blade resting just over the skin as he raises his head and faces his comrades.
“You heard the woman. Stop just standing there.”
And without looking back down, he slits its neck cleanly from side to side.
Whether it’s his words or the fresh wave of spluttering blood, the men start moving right after that.
“Guarnere! Go back to the line and send Dominguez up here,” Captain Winters pulls himself together, taking control of the situation again. “Luz, go with him. Radio town and tell 'em we need a utility jeep for a heavy detail. Don't mention the bear—just tell them we need to haul something back to town.”
The rest of the soldiers start to drag the bear toward a tree, slicing its chest open before attempting to hang it from a low but hefty branch. The key word there is attempt, because the carcass weighs more than five of them combined, and Perconte can barely lift a paw by himself. Joe hears them struggle, and knows he should probably go help.
Instead, he stays there, kneeling by the dent in the snow the bear’s left behind, with his hands bloodstained and Her eyes on him.
When he tilts his head toward Her, he finds the starlight in Her irises shining brighter than ever.
“You’re not scared.”
It’s not a question, Joe nods anyway.
“I’m not. Why would I be?”
“The rest of them are." She glances behind his shoulder, something akin to shame flashing on Her pretty face. She frowns, pouty and adorable—if not for the gore all around them. “They don’t understand it, don’t understand me. They fear this.”
She extends Her hands toward him, soaked in so much blood it hasn’t even begun to dry, not like the darkening streaks on Her face.
Joe doesn’t know what it is, but he knows that no matter how much blood covers Her hands, his will always be more stained. So he mirrors Her action, showing Her the crimson coating his skin.
“I’m not easily spooked, doll.”
“Lieb!” Malarkey grits out from behind him. When Joe turns to look at him, he finds him trying to crawl out from under the bear, the rest of the men struggling to hold it up. “Your help would be appreciated.”
“Coming!” He turns to Her one last time, basking in the glow of Her attention for just a second longer, before jumping to his feet. He winks at Her, and maybe the giggle it earns him isn’t quite like the old one—still spacey, still lost, still fundamentally changed—but it’s still good. It’s still Her. “Gonna save the best cut for you, Bear Whisperer.”
“Liebgott, now!”
The next few hours are a mess of guts, sweat, and meat. Joe would’ve never imagined a bear had so many frigging intestines, but when he’s tasked with hollowing out the animal’s innards—punishment for “flirting with the Doc while the bear tried to kill Malarkey”—it feels like he’s digging for ages.
Shifty seems to be the only one who actually knows what he’s doing. He instructs them on how to peel the skin off the carcass without ripping fistfulls of fur off, collects the bear’s teeth with a smooth tug of his fingers, and gives each man one to keep. For protection.
By the time the meat has been cut in transportable pieces and sent back to town to be cooked, all that’s left of the animal is the inedible viscera. Joe walks up to the pile of gore while wiping his hands on an old bandage, trying to get as much goo off as possible.
He thinks of saying a prayer, maybe finding Her and seeing if She wants to say goodbye to Her friend. But once he reaches the guts, he notices something’s missing.
A huge, red, previously-pulsing something.
They decided not to eat the heart. No man in Easy is particularly squeamish, but they all agreed that slicing up the bear’s heart felt a little too… violent. Unethical. Maybe Her whole talk about honor did get stuck in their heads.
But the heart is nowhere to be found, and now that Joe thinks about it, neither is She.
He hasn’t seen Her around since their last exchange of words. Joe thought she’d like to stick around to watch them make its sacrifice justice, or something like that. But She had, once again, melted into the mist.
God-fucking-damnit.
Before he can begin to freak out again, he catches sight of a steady trace of blood that’s been preserved by the snowy ground. She’s usually better at covering Her prints, unless She wanted him to follow Her this once.
Wishful thinking or not, Joe follows.
What he finds seems right out of an Austrian folktale, like the ones his mother used to read him before bed. He hides behind a tree, as quiet as a mouse, watching Her kneel in the middle of a small clearing. The sunlight washes down on Her like holy light, face tilted to the sky and the bear’s heart held sacredly in Her open palms.
“We hear the wilderness, and it hears us,” She whispers. “To you we give our thanks. And to the bear, who sacrificed himself so we can survive. We are grateful, and we will not forget this.”
She lowers the heart into the snow, right in the middle of a bunch of pebbles placed in a circle, murmuring a few last words that are too low for Joe to catch. Then Her head snaps upward, like She’s listening to something.
“I know you’re there, Joey.” She’s still kneeling, facing away from him. “It knows as well.”
Knees feeling weak and reality feeling a little too flimsy, Joe leaves his hiding spot and walks toward Her.
“What is it, doll?”
She rises to Her feet regally, staring up at Joe with an expression so earnest that he’d almost believe anything that leaves Her mouth.
“The wilderness, Joey,” She steps closer, until they’re chest to chest. Her face is just inches away, as beautiful as ever, and Joe so desperately wants to believe She’s still the girl from Toccoa. “It knew we were hungry, it knew you needed strength.” Her eyes are glossy, almost teary. “You can’t fight when you’re weak, when you’re feeding on beans and melted snow. You'd get sick, or killed. But it heard my prayers. I hear the wilderness, and it hears me. Don’t you see it? This is what I was always supposed to be.”
If Joe was a smarter man, he’d take off running.
There’s a part of him that wants to do so. Or at least, it wants to fight back. To grab Her by the shoulders and shake Her hard enough for Her to snap out of it. To bring Her back to what She was, before the wilderness.
But then he thinks about it further.
They have food, they have a pelt, and this is the most she’s spoken to him in days. They’ll be able to have an authentic Christmas meal—actual, real meat, and not cold Spam from a battered can. They’ll be able to get at least three blankets out of the bear, enough to pass around and for no one to die of frostbite. And she’s happy. For the very first time in a long time, she’s actually happy.
So who the fuck cares?
“And is… is the wilderness good to you?”
She beams at the question, and any doubt Joe could’ve foster is immediately forgotten.
“Yes, it is.” Her hands, still smudged with now-dried blood, cup his jaw. Joe forces down a shiver—because it’s been a long damn time since someone’s touched him like this. “It helped me keep you alive.”
The reverence in which the words are drenched in makes Joe feel like the worst and best man on earth. He doesn’t deserve this, and still, he’ll give his life to keep it.
“Then, thank fuck for the wilderness.”
She giggles, still slightly off but sweet enough to make his teeth hurt, and then pulls him down for a kiss.
It’s chaste and a little painful, chaffed skin against chaffed skin. But then Joe licks his lips, his tongue brushing Hers, and it all falls into place. They stay like that for as long as they can, bodies intertwined and mouths devouring each other, before Joe is forced to take a step back and guide them both back to the line.
If all he’s gotta do to keep this is to pray to some woodsy god, he has no trouble doing so, even if he thinks it’s complete insanity.
But then, on Christmas night, the city of Bastogne gets attacked, and Gene comes back with a broken heart and a piece of blue fabric wrapped around his fist.
“The fire erupted, the angels fell,” She murmurs sadly onto his shoulder, where Her face is hidden from view.
Joe, still in shock from the mortar attacks, can only find it in himself to whisper:
“We hear the wilderness, and it hears us.”
“We hear the wilderness, and it hears us,” She echoes.
The next morning, General Patton breaks through the German lines, supplies flow in, and their inferno turns a little more bearable.
All hail the wilderness.
NOTES: I wrote this amidst working on a longer project for Joe Liebgott. Before embarking on that, which would be a longer and more complex story, I wanted to test the waters and see how many people would actually be interested in reading about him. This might've not been the best test, because not even I'm sure what I just wrote, but I thought it was fun and wanted to put it out there.
as i said in another post, I'll be on vacay for the next few days (i'm actually supposed to leave right now) so i won't be posting much. still, thank you for reading and being here!
plsplspls let me know if you'd be interested in more Joe content! I love you all, and may the wilderness be with you. ♡
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