A/N: Buongiorno, everyone. Welcome to my first Inglourious Basterds fic. My knowledge of French and German are minimal, so if you see mistakes, please please tell me :) Feedback/critique is always welcome.

Also, this will not be a Landa/OC romance. As much as I love reading those, this won't be one. That doesn't mean things won't get kinda/sorta/oh-my-Lord steamy in time...

EDIT: As of March 1, 2011, I have re-uploaded chapters 1-3 with small edits. Enjoy!

The Germans had found them. He did not know how, but the Germans had found them.

"Go… Go… Go!"

Four pairs of grimy feet hit the dirt in a blind frenzy. Run, run, run… The suffocating cold whipped their faces, forming tears in their trembling eyes. We have to keep going… We must keep going…

Panting. Whimpering. Crying.

"Mama?"

"Keep up, Eulie."

The little girl had no time to cry as she was dragged through the field by her mother. The high grass gave them some cover, so they crouched down as they ran. How beautiful this place was during the day. Below the sun, the grass glowed softly in golden waves in the wind. The smell of it was enough to ease a person into a dream.

How ugly and foreboding it was now.

Guy glanced back at his family, his wife and daughter, who formed a short, clumsy chain behind him. The trees were only a hundred meters off now. They would be safe there. It was so close...

"Lydie, faster. We're almost there," he whispered to his wife. Their legs carried them even faster across the cold, damp ground. The evening chill bit at their lungs each time they breathed. The ground was soft, making it hard to support their bare feet - they hadn't had enough time to grab their shoes. In an hour, the sun would rise, then they would be caught for sure. Mother Nature was working against them tonight, but the fear drove the small family faster and faster toward the shelter of the dark forest. There, the soldiers would not find them. There, no one would find them.

The forest… eighty meters…

The Bassets did not stop. They could not afford to stop. They needed to run. For the sake of their only child, they needed to escape. The soldiers were closing in on them. The father could feel the men circling them, but he only ran faster, pulling his wife by the wrist.

"Lydie, Eulie, keep up!" He hissed back at them, fear and resolve lining the grey corners around his eyes. His wife and child were tired, but they had to keep moving. "We are almost there!"

The forest… fifty meters…

They left a clear, flattened trail of grass behind them. Anyone could easily follow it to them, but once they reached the forest, that wouldn't matter. The small shed deep in the forest would protect them. They would be safe…

Guy could almost smell the old, familiar woods as he ran, his lungs and legs burning with a maddening flame. He could smell the freedom of the fathering trees and could almost feel the soft, damp bark against his palm. Even in his mad dash, he dreamt of the future, of a brighter day ahead. No longer would the world hate them. No longer would the Germans hunt them. They would finally be free.

Eulie stumbled and Guy lost his grip of Lydie's wrist. He nearly tripped over the grass as he turned to see them. Lydie quickly picked the little one up, who was too tired to run anymore. He ran over to her and lifted his little girl to his chest. Her light golden hair was so soft and her body was so warm against his. Guy could have stayed there, crouched in the grass, holding his precious daughter in his arms, like he had when had first held her 9 years ago. But the Germans were approaching, threatening to destroy everything they had. Guy clutched his daughter close to his chest. Without another word, he darted for the forest, his little jewel in his arms. "Sh, we are almost- "

A deafening shot shattered the night.

Lydie screamed.

The forest… thirteen meters…

The eastern sky spread an ashen glow over the quiet Norman farmlands, its dim light swiftly skimming across the tall, bronze grass. The trees lightly shook off their drowsiness and rustled quietly in the light wind, arousing the surrounding life gently and quietly. A sleepy herd of cows lowed lazily in the distance, unaware of the gruesome events of only a few minutes past. Five uniformed soldiers emerged from the shadows and walked into the field. The grass cried silently beneath their boots. Their guns drawn, they gathered in a loose circle near the edge of the forest. A sixth man came in slowly behind them, boots polished, uniform pressed, and an exhausted smile playing dangerously along his jaw as he casually hummed a children's song:

1, 2,
Police.
3, 4,
Officer.
5, 6,
Old Witch
7, 8,
Good night!
9, 10,
Captain–

He stopped humming and came up behind the soldiers. The men kept their guns trained on the center.

"Move." The colonel waved the men aside and approached the singular mass in the center of the circle of Whermacht soldiers. The wounded man groaned. He had caught the bullet in his back, against the right shoulder blade and was now lying on his left side, twitching and writhing. But he made little noise. Out of pride, perhaps, the colonel mused.

"The Jewish rat is still alive, Standartenführer," said one of the soldiers. The colonel closed his eyes and smiled at the young man's childish perceptiveness.

"Danke, Private Borscht."

The colonel walked around to the man's head and knelt down in front of him.

"Bonjour, monsieur Guy Basset." He grinned and put both of his hands together, placing them comfortably on his knee. "I assure you that, had you cooperated with us earlier, you would not now find a bullet lodged into your back, which is not at all comfortable, I presume."

Guy looked up at the man, which sent a spark of pain up his right side. He clenched his eyes shut and bared down on his teeth. The colonel looked down at him, a professional smile plastered impossibly across his clean-shaven features. Guy opened his eyes again, long enough to meet the gaze of the German above him. There was a self-satisfied gleam in the older man's dark brown eyes, which gazed back at him unwaveringly. They shone brightly in the twilight as the dawn cast shadows across his angular face. Guy let his head fall to the ground. It hurt too much to hold it up for very long. He gritted his teeth and fought a loud cry as the colonel continued.

"Now, I promise you, monsieur Basset, that if you tell us where your wife and child have gone, we will spare your life – what little of it you have left, that is. Simply tell us where your family has retreated to and you shall be reunited with them."

Guy breathed heavily and unevenly through his nose, keeping his mouth and eyes tightly closed. The sight of the German uniforms made him sick. It angered him, but he could do nothing about it. The pain spread across his body, like a venomous disease in his veins. He thought of his wife, his strong, beautiful Lydie, and his daughter Eulie, so much like her mother in appearance and vigor. If only he could see them and hold them one more time and tell them he loved them, he could die completely happy, even surrounded by these uniformed German swine.

"Allez en enfers."

"I'm sorry," the colonel said smoothly, "could you repeat that, s'il vous plaît?"

Guy breathed in and spat on the colonel's shoes, groaning at the effort.

"Allez en enfers!"

The soldiers laughed. It wasn't the first time a Jew or French insubordinate had told them to go to hell. The colonel did not laugh and his smile faded as he looked down at the obstinate figure suffering in the grass before him.

"I see. Well," he stood up and straightened his dark, leather uniform jacket, "I understand perfectly your resentment of us, but I am sorry to tell you that, because of this, you will never see your family again. Pity. I shall have to tell them 'au revoir'for you, monsieur Basset, especially to your beautiful daughter… Eulalie."

In a surge of energy, Guy lunged toward the colonel with an animalistic cry, grabbing the edge of his jacket. A loud, resounding shot disturbed the surrounding peace. The colonel blinked. There was a short rustle of birds in the woods behind them as Guy's lifeless body slumped to the ground.

The colonel sighed with displeasure and pressed his lips together. These mindless military drones. The only tasks they were good for were marching in a straight line and pulling the trigger when told – or when not told, as in this case.

He gingerly slid the dead man from his boot and straightened his jacket, scowling. Two bloody hand prints were smeared in an erratic pattern down the front of his black trousers and on his once gleaming boots, surrounded by a rounded pattern of spattered blood. He frowned at the scarlet mess.

"Private Borscht, how am I to get information from a dead man, hm? Think before you pull that trigger again," he snapped. "Now clean this up. And get me a cloth." With a flick of his hand, the colonel stepped back and gestured to the dead body. His men quickly moved to the corpse and fired one cautionary shot into it before picking up the body and making their way back to the car.

As they quickly worked, the colonel put his black leather gloves back over his fingers, tiredly whistling the children's song again.

One, two,
Police.
Three, four,
Officer.
Five, Six,
Old Witch
Seven, Eight,
Good night!
Nine, Ten,
Captain–

The morning's events had reminded him of the song, which he had heard some time ago in a Parisian school yard. The children were jumping rope, leaping to the beat of the short tune. They weren't even old enough to know what they were singing. Its innocent morbidity had made him chuckle. With a solemn readjustment of his hat, he continued to whistle quietly as he made his way back to the car, sliding his gloves over his hands:

Eleven, Twelve,
The Wolves howl,
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty,
The Frenchman moved to Gdansk.

The colonel closed his eyes and relished the damp morning air in his lungs, as his little song finally came to its end:

Gdansk began to burn,
The French began to run;
Without a sock and without shoes
They ran to France
They ran to France