Disclaimer: I don't own Band of Brothers. This is a work of fiction based upon the characters in the miniseries, and I mean no disrespect whatsoever to the real soldiers.

A/N: I've seen a lot of OC stories within this fandom, but I haven't seen anything quite like this. We all know what Easy Company's perspective is during the war, and so I wanted to take a much different perspective on it. I just decided to post it, to see what everyone thought. I'm always worried about posting something new in a category where there's so much amazing talent. Enjoy!

CHAPTER ONE

Noisy booms like fireworks woke me up in the middle of the night. They started off far away and then they got closer and much louder. It reminded me of a thunderstorm almost. I pulled off the quilt Amelie had draped over the blankets while she had tucked me in a little while go and scrambled to the end of the bed. I sat on my knees and pushed the curtains back to get a look, which is when I discovered it wasn't fireworks or thunder at all. There wasn't anything pretty about the bombs and the fire that seemed so high I thought it could reach the stars.

I think there were people screaming outside. I could have mistaken the screaming for that horrible noise the bombs made before they hit the ground and exploded because they sounded the same. I don't think I'll ever forget that sound. It made me cover my ears and squeeze my eyes shut tightly and I didn't like it one bit.

Amelie burst into the room a second later and the look on her face made my stomach twist in that uncomfortable way whenever I got scared or nervous. I wrapped my arms across my belly, wishing it would stop.

"Charlotte," she called with panic, "Hurry up and get your things."

Her voice had a beautiful French accent, although it was a little hard to understand her. I liked the way she said my name. Sometimes I wished I had an accent as pretty as Amelie's. The people in town kept telling me I had an accent but I never heard it and they seemed to think it was the funniest thing ever. Why could I hear their accents but when I listened to myself talk, I sounded just like I always did?

I'd only spent about a month with her so I was still getting used to it and her English wasn't very good, either. She told me she had started learning some before her trip to Chicago, and then when she found me, she wanted to try and get better. She felt bad about how difficult it was for us to talk to each other, but I didn't want her to feel bad because it wasn't her fault.

I still had that queasy feeling as I got up and grabbed my knapsack from the trunk at the foot of the bed. Amelie told me to have one ready in case of an emergency. I never thought about actually having to use it, and I never asked what it was supposed to be for.

She helped me into my coat, kneeling on the floor in front of me. I didn't have time to change out my nightgown, but I had extra clothes packed. She took a hold of my arms and looked at me sadly. I hadn't noticed until then that she had been crying. I'd never seen Amelie acting this way, and I decided I didn't like it. I missed her smile—the one she had when she first met me. The one she had when she told me she was going to give me a proper home. Her smile was the kind that made her eyes sparkle. I wondered if my mother had a smile like Amelie's.

"What's wrong?" I asked. Until that point, I was worried my voice had forgotten how to work.

"I'm so sorry, cherie," she answered. I always forgot what that meant but it sounded nice. She liked to call me it a lot so I figured it couldn't be too bad. "Forgive me. I tried to give you better. And now look where we are."

"It's okay," I told her, although I wasn't sure why she was saying sorry. It just seemed like the right thing to say.

"I promised to take you to Paris," she said. "I'm sorry. So sorry…"

Why was she so sorry? Couldn't we still go to Paris?

A bomb whistled, exploding so close to the house that the entire thing shook like we were caught in the middle of an earthquake. Even though I had never been in an earthquake before, I'd heard stories about what they were supposed to be like. I lost my balance and toppled into Amelie's arms. She hugged me close. She quieted a small cry that managed to escape me by running her fingers through my hair, and then pulled me away to press a kiss onto my cheek.

Then, she pulled out something from her pocket. It was one of the ribbons I liked to wear and it was almost as green as her eyes. She tied it in my hair and tried to smile.

Amelie stood, taking my hand. "You must move quickly," she said, leading me out of the room and into the hallway. The house had one floor so it was easy to get everywhere fast. "Once you have gone out the back door, keep running and do not stop—not for anything. Do you understand, Charlotte?"

I raised one of my eyebrows. "But what about you?"

She didn't look at me. She just kept tugging me along, through the living room and into the kitchen to the back door.

"I want you to get out of here."

I blinked, feeling tears in my eyes. I thought Amelie loved me and she was going to keep me here in France with her so I didn't have to go back to Chicago ever again. I didn't want to go back to Chicago. Even if Amelie wanted me to go away, I would run so far no one from Chicago would be able to find me.

She opened the door as the house shook from another bomb. Further away, I could hear guns. It seemed so fast I thought it would never stop. I turned around and threw myself at her, grabbing the front of her dress.

"I don't wanna go!" I cried. She wrapped her arms around me. I thought of one of the stars in the sky and wished with all my might that she wouldn't let go.

"You must be brave," Amelie replied.

I didn't know how to be brave. How come those bombs kept falling from the sky? Why was Amelie trying to make me go out there in the dark with the fire and the planes? What if one of the bombs dropped right on my head?

"I don't wanna go outside!" I protested. My face was buried in Amelie's dress, too. She smelled like flowers but I didn't know which kind. I hoped I could remember that smell and Amelie's smile that made her eyes twinkle if she was really making me go away.

"I know, cherie," she said. "I'll be right behind you."

I felt a tiny bit better knowing she would be coming with me. At least she wasn't going to make me go back to Chicago.

I looked up at her. "Promise?"

She sniffled. "Yes, I promise."

She gave me a little shove out the door because my feet were almost glued in place. When I stepped outside onto the grass, my legs were shaking. I didn't know if they would be able to hold me up. I peeked past the house and noticed the smoke and flames rising into the air, making the sky glow in a way that made me shiver. Buildings and people's homes were being destroyed all around us. It made my stomach do that uncomfortable flip-flop just wondering if people had been inside those places when they were hit.

A plane flew over my head, its engine roaring. Yet another explosion caused the ground to quake and the house diagonal to Amelie's crumbled. I knew the family who lived there. When Amelie brought me home, they came to visit and brought us dessert to welcome me. I don't remember their last name since it was hard to pronounce, but the mom was a great cook and made these things called crepes which I'd never had before. They had a kid, Julien, who was my age.

I looked at Amelie. She was still in the doorway. Why wasn't she moving?

"Go, Charlotte!" she yelled.

My feet were stuck again and my legs were still shaking but I started running anyway. I didn't want to leave. I wanted to know if the nice lady with the crepes and her husband and Julien had gotten out of their house and I wanted to know why Amelie wasn't following me.

There were fields with grass and bushes that were taller than me behind Amelie's house. It seemed like they could go on forever, but when Amelie and me took walks in them, she told me they didn't, that they had to stop sometime. It was hard to believe.

I could sort of see the house from in between the grass. I stood up on my tip-toes to see it better. The sky was red and the flames were still eating up Julien's house and Amelie kept standing there, watching me. But she said…she said she would be right there. Maybe she was giving me a head start because she was a grown-up and her legs could move a lot better than mine.

"Amelie!" I shouted. There was so much noise everywhere. I don't think she could hear me. I know she told me to run and not look back, but she wasn't leaving. I couldn't guess about how much of a head start she wanted me to take. How could I run when she wasn't? We would get separated in the fields and we wouldn't be able to find each other.

I ran and peeped behind my shoulder as I continued moving. It kind of looked like Amelie was getting ready to leave. Maybe she saw me and decided I was far enough away. The house looked smaller now. Not ant-sized, but small enough that I could hold my hand up and cover the whole thing, like when the Sisters at the orphanage played peek-a-boo with the little babies.

"Come on!" I yelled. I motioned for her to follow, like she'd promised.

But then the house was gone.

One second it was there and the next it looked like Julien's. I had just seen it all in one piece, with its windows and bricks and doors and the little garden in the back under the kitchen window where Amelie let me plant seeds for flowers on my second day staying here. She'd called it "a new beginning." She said the seeds would find a home in the dirt and spring up into new, beautiful flowers just like she knew I would be happy with her in a new place to call home. She said she would enjoy watching me grow like the flowers would.

I suddenly remembered that the flowers Amelie smelled of were the ones I'd planted.

Now there were no more flowers. The house was in tiny pieces all over the place except for a huge chunk of it where the front door was. There was all this smoke and some fire shooting up from the piles of broken house and the entire back of it was missing. I couldn't find Amelie. I got up on my tip-toes and jumped up a few times to see if she was running toward me, but I couldn't find her. Where did she go?

She was right there! Where…

I wanted to run and find her. She couldn't have… She told me to keep going and that she'd be right behind me. She promised! I got up on my tip-toes again even though my legs felt wobbly and my stomach was getting all funny. I searched the smoke and the flames and the broken house and the flowers that were missing. But Amelie was missing, too. She wasn't anywhere that I could see, even when I squinted my eyes and tried to look harder. Where did Amelie…

There was this weird feeling at the back of my throat and in my eyes. I started to cry, and my feet were stuck yet again. I think the planes were going away but the sound of the guns hadn't stopped. Why did the planes want to destroy Julien's house when he was just a kid like me and they were a nice family with a mom would liked to cook? Why did the planes take away Amelie's little garden with the flowers we planted together? Wherever the flowers went, did Amelie go with them?

"Amelie!" I called. My voice sounded strange because I was crying. It felt like I'd never be able to stop. "Amelie!"

She was gone. How could she be standing there one moment and be missing right after I blinked?

I couldn't move, but I had to. Amelie had told me I had to. She said to keep running, so I turned around, picked up my feet, and ran. I could feel the hot tears rolling down my cheeks as I moved. My knapsack kept bouncing and hitting my back. I wanted to take another peek at the house just in case Amelie was there and I didn't see her by accident, but now my feet decided to continue working for once. I was glad they were doing what they were supposed to, and I was glad I didn't try to look back because I knew I would probably cry more.

Suddenly, I went tumbling face-first into the dirt. My feet were running so fast and I wasn't paying attention to where they were going, so I didn't notice there was a rock and a small ditch in the way. I fell on my hands and knees, almost smacking my forehead on a larger rock in front of me. Brushing off my hands, I picked myself up and realized there was a stinging kind of pain coming from both my knees. I knew this kind of pain—I'd felt it before. It was when we were on the playground at the park in Chicago, right after I got pushed down the slide and went down it a little too fast. The dirt and gravel had scraped up my knees. I glanced down and could tell they had brush-burns on them. The wind made them sting really badly, and since I didn't have time to see if I had a band-aid, I had to keep running. I think the running made it worse.

I did what Amelie told me to, though. I couldn't stop…except, I didn't know where to go. Amelie had never explained it. She said keep running…but to where? On our walks, we had never gone out this far and even though she had told me the fields did have an end, walking through them now I did not understand how she could say that. I had gone so far that I had to stop—only for a minute—to catch my breath and remind myself which direction I was supposed to go in. I noticed the fields had a forest to the right. Amelie laughed when she said the forest was what really seemed like it went on forever. But she also warned me not to go into the forest. Not ever. What was I supposed to do?

The forest was dark and scary-looking. I remembered all the fairy tales the Sisters read to us and a lot of them had forests like this one. Most of them were creepy. I didn't know what came after the forest. Where would I end up? I was getting tired and my feet were hurting. I guess I'd been walking for a lot longer than I thought, because I couldn't see the house anymore. That made me a little sad. I could only notice the smoke and the red-black sky.

I decided to go to the forest anyway. I hoped Amelie wouldn't be mad at me, but I was only trying to do what she told me to. I figured the trees were big and scary enough that they would hide me from the planes so a bomb wouldn't drop on my head. I didn't want that to happen. They scared me the most. Their screaming hurt my ears and made my belly hurt.

Maybe the creepy forest would scare the planes away.

I couldn't run anymore so I switched to walking instead. My feet and legs were achy, and the scrapes on my knees felt worse than before. I wished Amelie was here to clean them up and put a bandage over it. I needed her to kiss it to make it better because that's what the Sisters did at the orphanage when I fell last time.

I don't know how long I walked in the forest, but I couldn't see a way out. I couldn't remember where I came from, so I guess I had no choice but to keep going. I think it might have been my imagination, but it was getting darker. When was the sun going to get up? I hoped it would soon. I wondered if the planes had scared the sun so badly it didn't want to come out of its hiding place. I know I wouldn't.

There was that noise again—the booms, the same ones that woke me up. But they sounded a little farther away this time. Were the planes coming back? Worried, I picked up my pace although my legs were burning. I prayed they weren't coming to get me. As I ran, I peeked up at the inky sky through the leaves of the trees. Up ahead past the tops of the branches, the sky was filled with flashes of light. I thought it was actually a thunderstorm. Maybe it was, but I wasn't too sure. It sounded like the bombs and the planes but it looked a little different, so maybe I was getting my sounds mixed up again.

Then I squinted to see better and that's when I noticed that something was falling from the sky where the flashes were. Actually, it was a lot of somethings. They looked like ants with little mushroom-umbrellas attached to them. I don't know what the heck they could be! I didn't think it was the bombs, although some of those were falling, too. When these ants with mushroom-umbrellas that could fly landed on the ground, they didn't cause smoke and fire. I'm sure they didn't ruin Amelie's little garden, either. But what if they were meaner than the planes? What if they found me?

My eyes got all prickly, but I made the tears stay in them. I didn't know about these flying mushroom-umbrella ants, but I couldn't turn around and go back to the house. Amelie had told me to keep going, no matter what. Unfortunately, I had to go right where those things were dropping from the clouds. Maybe if I stayed quiet enough they wouldn't be able to find me. That always worked when we played hide-and-seek. I won a lot.

But then the closer I got the louder everything was. It was hard to be quiet and I couldn't make the tears stay in my eyes anymore.

I just wanted Amelie to come back.