Fandom: Saving Private Ryan / Vin Diesel

Disclaimer: COPYRIGHT 2001: Adrian Caparzo is not my creation and I can not claim copyright on him or any characters from Saving Private Ryan. All other characters are my creation and I hold rights to them and on the plot of this story.

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With the battlefield left a world away, Adrian Caparzo imagined it had never really happened at all. Imagined there was no beach, no killing, no pain, or lose. He imagined that his life had never really changed from the sun-warmed sidewalks of his neighborhood, from the noise that drifted into his room from the street below. But it was a lie. He had been living a lie for months upon months after his return to his family's cramped Ozone Park apartment. He tried to forget the one person that had made the hell he’d endured worth it, that same face he expected to see when he stepped off the bus. The woman he had expected to wait for him, to wait for their love.

His eyes turned to the rolling green fields beyond the bus window.  It was another ride and another Journey from home, a journey to find answers to the nagging questions that filled his head.

 Adrian closed his eyes and imagined her, imagined his fingers threading through the spun gold of her hair. Memories of peering into her eyes, those deep expressive pools of blue caused the ache inside to swell and expand.

Hours passed like days. As rural town after rural town slid into the rear window of the bus until finally there was a stop, his stop. He took a deep breath of the cool spring air as his feet touched the rich Virginia soil. Virginia. Why had he come here? It was a question he asked himself over and over and the same answer always echoed in his mind. Her. Catherine Elizabeth Merchant had been the one and only love of his life since grade school. But it wasn't until high school that he had approached her, had finally asked her out. Time flies when your having fun, is what he heard on more than one occasion and in those days, of a blossoming relationship, it was certainly true.

Now, here he was shuffling up a long dirt road to a farmhouse in the distance. Her house. Why had she come so far? Why here of all places?
 

Before he knew it, he was raising his hand to knock on the simple wooden door, a sturdy door to keep out the unwanted. He took a deep breath knowing that could very well be him, the unwanted. Within the walls of his chest, his heart hammered against his ribs in anxiety. The door remained closed, the house quite. Turning his gaze to the field of swaying corn, he ambled unsure towards the edge of the shaded porch. He was greeted by stillness, a silence that was only broken by the caw of a nearby crow.

"Hello!" he called, hoping to be met with the sound of another human voice. But for the space of a heartbeat there was nothing, more silence, and then the wind shifted. On it's cooling breeze traveled the strains of a teasing song. Caparzo stood listening for long seconds. Jumping to the ground, he rounded the corner of the house and was met with the sight of white sheets billowing as the breeze whipped them about, drying them in the mid day sun. The notes persisted and sounded of that familiar voice, that voice that not even the horrors he’d endured could erase from his mind.

Silhouetted against the sheet she stood, hands raised above her head, clipping the cotton white sheet in place. She sang a song that was only vaguely familiar to him, old and filled with sorrow. His heart twisted inside his chest, remembering only happiness in her voice before he left her.

"Hey beautiful..." His voice cracked before he could get the words out, moisture forming at the narrowed corners of his eyes.

There was a sharp inhaled gasp from behind the filmy cotton, a moment’s pause in motion. "Adrian?" Came her voice, a voice filled with wonderment and something that sounded like fear. "Yeah...it's me." He replied as the sheet was pushed aside and he got his first glimpse of her since he'd boarded a bus for basic training. Her blonde hair lifted with the breeze, unbound and curling softly with the dew moisture that lay against her skin. Skin that a pallor had obviously claimed below the cast of sun kissed features, her lower lip trembling as the same moisture gathered in her eyes and fell against high round cheeks.

"I thought... The letter? Adrian, I don't understand..." She took a hesitant step towards him.

He advanced just in time to catch her slight form, curves molding to him in an unconscious sort of grace, a remembered familiarity as she pitched forward with eyes rolling in her head.

"Damn!" he hissed, not thinking how his sudden materialization would effect her, not thinking how shocked she would be to see a man that by all rights should be an apparition.
 

He scoped her into his thick arms and strode towards the covered back porch slowly realizing how run down the house seemed, not at all the perfect little farm house he imaged she was living her life out in. The tin covered porch lifted its rusted corner in the wind, slamming back down with a resounding clank. The house wasn't the white washed splendor of his minds eye either. The paint was faded and peeling at the eves, the screens at the window rusted with years upon years of weather. Lifting his eyes to the field, he noticed the corn planted there wasn't the healthy stalks they should have been, instead they were dried brown wisps of plants. He sat at the top of the steps with his love cradled in his arms, stroking the honey richness of her hair from her face. Waiting.

"Mr... Hey, Mr..." came a high voice from behind him, childlike and innocent. "What happened to mamma?" The voice was feminine, he realized. As he turned his head to her, a sticky hand landed on his uniformed shoulder. "Is she okay?"

"Yeah... She's just sleeping, " he replied, looking more closely at the small round face that was shoved close to his, black ringlets hanging in disarray around her.

"What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Her name's Adrianna." Catherine's voice came from his lap, her bright azure eyes staring up at him.

"Dat's right... And I'm three... " the girl chimed in, a smile so familiar floating across her lips and locking in place there.

"She's...?" He didn't even finish the question before the woman he clung to nodded her head, tears running rivulets down her smooth face again.

"What the hell you doin with my wife, son!" The thickly accented southern voice bellowed as a man nearly the size of Caparzo rounded the exterior of the house. His features weathered, leathery, haggard, as he stumbled slightly in his approach.

"Uh oh! It's the bad man!" Adrianna turned and ran for the back door.

"Where you goin you little brat... Ain't you suppose to be...." He never finished the sentence, his words curtailed by the hard impact of a fist against his jaw sending him reeling backwards.

"She's not your wife anymore!" Caparzo shouted as the man recovered. He gave a quick glance over his shoulder to ensure both Catherine and Adrianna were out of harms way, his attention momentarily diverted from his opponent. Mother and child both stood wide-eyed near the back door. He was caught by surprise at the drunken man’s jab to his gut, but he recovered just in time to deliver a blow that would have the other man's eye swelling shut in minutes. The last blow came from a brick that lay discarded, the red clay corner peeking from the short-cropped grass of the yard. Its jagged edge pointing towards the sky, as a heavy head thudded sickly against it.

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Adrianna Caparzo sat on the windowsill overlooking the street below. Ozone Park, New York. Her brows drew together at the sight of so much asphalt, so much brick and mortar. Her thoughts fell back to the openness of Virginia, the deep rich soil, the open wind whipping around her, and the big man that she now knew wasn't her father. Just then thick arms scooped her up and hoisted her to a stable solid shoulder.
 

"What ya thinking about, beautiful?"

"Nothin really, daddy, just dirt." She smiled that same smile that was her father's, waving to her mother over his shoulder as she entered the room.
 

All in all she came to the conclusion she loved New York, loved the family she had, and loved her daddy most of all.

Fini