If the ear-splitting artillery fire wasn't enough to petrify Matthew Williams where he stood, the fact that innocent civilians were starving and dying around him did.
The lives being taken, he couldn't stand it. And he couldn't stop it, either. Not in the state he was in.
He walked with a nasty limp, a product of being shot in the ankle.
As he slumped against the side of a house, he detected a broken rib, most likely from tripping over a tree root, a sprained wrist, thankfully not his dominant hand, and a scraped, bloody arm.
He started to cry.
His father wanted this. He needed to please his father. He had to.
He tried to scream, but his vocal chords were so mutilated from the previous fighting.
He didn't want to think about it.
The lifeless bodies of soldiers. Their glassy eyes, their last look of terror.
Matthew violently shook his head, in an attempt to make the images stop. They weren't stopping. They had to stop.
He choked out a voiceless sob, calling for his little brother.
But Alfred wouldn't respond.
He wouldn't ever respond again.
As an old memory of him and Alfred playing together played out in Matthew's mind, he started to black out.
It was pitiful to look at, really.
Matthew, huddled up on the ground, sobbing for his brother.
And as Matthew faded, a last memory came to mind.
His real papa.
Francis Bonnefoy.
And Matthew blacked out.
Matthew opened his eyes.
Registering everything around him was hard. He had bandages covering his wounds.
And then someone leaned over him.
"Ben je dood?"
"Stil, hij kent waarschijnlijk geen Nederlands. Hij is Canadees."
"Fijn. ARE YOU DEAD?!"
The first voice sounded feminine.
The girl annunciated every word when she spoke in English, and she sounded like she had a French-related accent.
The second voice was high pitched, but Matthew could still tell it belonged to a male.
He could tell they were speaking Dutch, although the two had accents from other countries.
Then a third voice came in.
"Bon, vous êtes réveillé. Pouvez-vous parler français?"
Matthew closed his eyes and answered.
"Oui."
The voice softened.
"What about English?"
"Yes."
The female chimed in again.
"Stom, natuurlijk spreekt hij Engels, hij is Canadees!"
The third voice grumbled and scathingly replied with "Hij zou uit Quebec kunnen komen!"
Matthew couldn't understand anything. He sat up to get a closer look at the bodies the voices belong to.
The higher pitched masculine voice belonged to a short blonde boy. He had green-blue eyes. Or more so eye, as hair was covering the left portion of his face
He wore a tattered, ripped striped dress shirt and dirty navy blue pants.
The girl donned a beaten dress and a green headband that made her dirty blonde hair frizz up on either side of it. Her eyes were like emeralds, shimmering in the faint light from outside.
The last man had scary eyes. A fresh scar slashed across his eyebrow, and he wore a camo army jacket. He had drawstring pants and bandaged feet, wrapping up to his ankles. His face was rather scary. Matthew didn't know if it was the deep-sea green coloured eyes or the stubble that was growing across his face or the fresh scar that still trickled a tiny bit of blood, but for some odd reason, his face was… reassuring. A kindness lingered there, even if his emotionless face didn't show it. And Matthew knew he cared for these other people, whoever they were.
Matt tried to sit up a bit more, but a sharp wave of dizziness struck him, and next thing he knew, he was out cold.
Matthew rarely woke in the next weeks.
When he did, the girl, who he'd started to call 'Dusty' in his head, due to her hair, would feed him. It tasted like dry bread and meat, although he couldn't tell. She'd usually wash it down with water, occasionally milk.
Sometimes, the young boy, or 'Blondie' to him, would come and change his bandages.
And 'Scar'. He would always be beside Matthew. Just... watching him.
He was even there the day Matthew woke for good, sitting beside him, smoking a pipe.
"Hm, you're awake."
Unlike his 'siblings' (Matthew didn't exactly know), he spoke with a Dutch accent. Matt never really noticed how deep his voice was, probably due to the fact that he'd been half asleep the first time he heard it.
In a daze, Matt sat up. He felt an aching in his rib, but for the most part, it felt healed.
He went to test out his ankle, but the tall man stopped him.
"I don't think you should do that quite yet. It's not completely healed. There was a small infection about a week ag-"
Matthew's head snapped towards the man as he cut him off.
"A WEEK?! How long have I been out?!"
The man blew out a ring of smoke, catching Matt in the face.
"Cool it, kid. You've been out for about four weeks. Bad head injury. The others found you outside the storm shelter. You were slumped against our neighbor's wall. So naturally, they took you back inside, and we've been nursing you for the past month."
Matt heard a creak of metal doors, a slam, and that girl's voice.
"Excuse me, Louis and I have been nursing him for the past month. You did squat."
The trio was complete as Dusty and Blondie, or who he assumed was 'Louis', waltzed into the room.
"His eyes are cute when they open all the way."
Louis, the young boy, was holding the hand of the girl. In comparison, Louis looked to be around ten years old. Dusty seemed to be… maybe sixteen? And Scar looked to be in the 18-20 range.
The girl approached him, smiling. She stuck out her hand for Matt to shake.
"Hi! I'm Emma! This is my little brother, Louis."
She gestured at the small blonde attached to her hand.
"The scary guy over there is Abel."
Abel gave a slight nod.
Louis detached himself from his older sister's hand and crouched beside Matthew.
"Hello, Mister. I want to ask your name."
Matt could tell he didn't fluently speak English. His accent was much thicker than his siblings, who he guessed grew up speaking it as a second language. Matthew leaned down, took Louis' hand and gave it a slight shake.
"My name is Matthew. Thank you for changing my bandages, petit."
Louis blushed and clutched his pants. "Not problem, Mister Matthieu."
Emma came over and ruffled his hair.
"NO problem, not NOT problem."
Lou nodded. "Droit, merci."
Emma suddenly perked up.
"Oh! Right! Abel, I managed to steal some fresh meat!"
Matthew snapped his head to look at her. "Stole?!"
She rolled her eyes.
"Yes STOLE. It's a war, soldier boy. A war as well as a famine."
As Matthew tried to protest, she stuck a finger in front of his mouth, gesturing for him to shut up.
"Ah ah ah. You stay with us; you abide our rules. Now I'm gonna go cook this up. Soldier boy-"
"It's Matthew."
"- Yeah yeah whatever. MATTHEW, you stay in here with Louis. Abel, you go out and look for extra blankets. Louis, make sure Matt doesn't do anything stupid. Oh yeah, can I call you Matt? I'm gonna call you Matt."
Before Matthew could reply, Emma ran into the kitchen.
"So... when do you think I can go home?"
Matthew had his arm out, with Louis wrapping fresh bandages around it.
"Once you are heal. Before, no."
Louis finished re-bandaging Matt's arm, and said: "I now go check on others."
Matt's brow furrowed in confusion.
"... Others?"
Louis nodded.
"We take ones that fell asleep. They can not fight on own."
Matthew tilted his head a bit.
"So… ones like me that can't fight on their own? Or that passed out?"
Louis nodded again. "Oui- I mean yes-"
Matthew chuckled.
"Non, c'est bon. Tu peux me parler français. Je peux aussi vous aider avec votre anglais si vous le souhaitez."
Louis brightened up a bit.
"Oui! Merci, Monsieur Matthieu!"
He suddenly grabbed Matthew's hand. "Allons! Allons rencontrer les autres!"
"Mais Abel et Emma ont dit de ne pas-"
"Ils sont juste paranoïaques! Votre cheville va bien tant que vous le prenez lentement."
"Si vous insistez…"
Matthew slowly pushed himself to his feet. Louis took his arm and guided to another part of the storm shelter, or more dungeon. This place was HUGE. Winding halls, rooms full of boxes, secret rooms. There was even a decently sized bathroom.
Louis called down one of the halls. "Elise! Michelle! Come meet new one!"
Doors opened from either side of the hall. From one emerged a little blonde girl.
She wore a pretty pink dress, although it was quite tattered.
She had bright green eyes and a purple ribbon in her hair, and she seemed about 11 years old.
The other girl had very dark skin, and a childish smile, although Matt could tell she was in her teens.
She wore two ponytails, tied by two red ribbons. She had a faded blue dress, and her eyes were hazel with little bits of amber. They reminded Matt of someone; he just didn't know who.
The dark-skinned girl ran up to him and shook his hand.
"HI! I'm Michelle! You must be the new guy!"
She shook his hand vigorously as she explained how they cared for him in the past weeks. Matthew picked up about 5% of her speech, partially because of her French accent, partly because of her rapid-fire remarks, and she only stopped when she saw the pain in Matthew's eyes from practically having his wrist broken.
As Michelle apologized repeatedly, the little blonde girl came up and softly pushed her to the side.
"Michelle, you're scaring him."
Unlike the other girl, this child who he assumed was Elise, spoke very softly, as well as with a German accent.
"My name is Elise. I come from Switzerland. I was on a train back from Portugal to my hometown in Switzerland to see my big brother, but the train shut down. I heard gunfire in the distance, so I ran, and Michelle caught up with me. She said she was on the same train, and as we were heading into town, we found Emma. She took me back to this bunker, and we've been staying here for the past year with her."
Matthew nodded kindly and took her soft hands in his. "
"It's very nice to meet you, Elise. My name is Matthew Williams. I was in the Canadian army when I passed out from blood loss one day. I don't exactly know why I went into that coma b-"
Louis stretched up and whispered something in his ear.
Matthew whispered thanks and turned his attention back to Elise.
"Louis tells me they found me on my side bleeding from my head, so I must have fallen over in my sleep and damaged my head. Anyway, you know the rest of the story."
Elise nodded. "Mmhm. I sometimes helped Louis bandage you up."
Matthew laughed. "Thank you very much, Elise."
"Not a problem."
Dinner that night was interesting, to say the least.
There were five people all screaming in different languages, Michelle running around on a sugar high, Louis and Emma bombarding Abel with stale bread, Abel shouting at his siblings in a mixture of angry Dutch French and English, probably for wasting food, and poor little Elise caught in the middle of it all.
Despite the chaos, Emma was an excellent cook. They each only got a medium-sized ration of food, but it was filling.
The meat tasted like pork, and there were stale bread and raw peas to go along with it.
For most of the meal, Matthew talked with Elise. She was a sweet little girl with a very kind heart, and she cared for her big brother, Vash.
Matthew's gaze was averted from the little blonde when out of the corner of his eye, he saw Emma taking another plate of food.
"Emma, I thought we were only allowed one plate of food…"
She picked up the plate.
"Yeah, this is for the grumpy Italian. Oh yeah, probably should explain. We found this guy being chased by some angry Germans. He won't tell us anything, and we just found out his last name is "Vargas". I don't think you should see him yet, just in case he lashes out or something."
Matthew tilted his head.
"... Lashes out?"
Emma sighed. "Yeah, first day we got him in, he socked Abel. Wasn't pretty."
Matthew shivered.
"Yeah, I'm not ready to meet him quite yet."
After dinner, Matthew went to clean up in the bath. He inspected the bandaging work Louis and Elise had done.
"Not bad." he muttered to himself. He carefully unwrapped them. As they revealed more and more skin, he gasped.
Winding up his spine were whip marks and bruises. Matthew stumbled a bit and knocked over a soap bar. As it clunked to the floor, Abel called from the next room. "You okay in there?"
Matthew didn't respond.
"Soldier boy, you good?"
No response. Abel slowly creaked open the door.
"Matthew, are you okay? I heard a b- oh."
Abel's brows furrowed.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to intrude…"
Matthew gulped.
"I don't remember."
Abel's brows knit even further together.
"What?"
Matthew started to cry.
"Abel, my memory is completely blank. I don't remember where I got these I-"
He choked on his words.
"I can't remember anything."
