Disclaimer: I don't own Band of Brothers or anything relating to them and I base my fiction entirely on the actors and their portrayals.

I wanted a Doc story because I so very passionately despise Shane Taylor and his face and his everything, so. It's seven, or six and an epilogue, chapters (I split it up unlike my Dick story. I have intelligence, homes) and I don't know how I feel about it and I never manage to read over it again before I post because I'm always so tired so keep in mind that it's entirely unbetaed.

Oh, and Emilie Ramos is mine. Enjoy.

One - Emilie

"Can I just-"

"No," he returns before she even has the chance to finish asking, which she finds somewhat rude and rather unfair of him. He was irritated because somewhere, somewhere that was too deeply hidden away, somewhere that he'd never acknowledge, he was terrified and she was asking to check his supplies for the third time in the past twenty minutes.

But then, she was terrified, too.

"Doc, being thorough 's what got me this job, you know," she states, hands on her hips, a pencil laced through the fingers of her right hand and a collection of papers hanging from her left. As he turns back around to look at her fully she thinks that maybe she'd have to get used to checking less than three times, but it was just that she'd always had the time to check at least that many and usually more, and change was difficult and also, somewhere, in the pit of her stomach she feels a little lurch when their eyes finally lock and she blames it on the impending terror but later, much later, thinks that maybe that wasn't it at all.

"Fine, Ramos," he grumbles, his accent thick to further show his agitation. "One more time."

She tries to show her appreciation in his relenting but his eyes have closed as he breathes in to exhale a sigh, so instead she takes to running through her list again, this time forcing her nimble and shaking fingers to do all the work so as not to upset him any further. And when she finishes, finally satisfied and ready to move onto preparing herself, he sighs again, dragging her attention back to his paint stained face, that mirrors hers and everyone's around them and she wonders, for a moment, if anyone would recognize their brothers and their sons or if they could even see past the dirt and the ink and, if they could, would they still be able to when this was over.

And likely, that was the last time she'd ever think that far into the future, because, honestly, it was already a wonder that she was alive in the first place, and she knew it wouldn't be much longer before it was a bona fide miracle. So she takes her tags in her hand to rub together, to hear the sound of metal on metal, the only clear proof that you were still alive. Because if that sound was gone then you were probably dead or you were already lost.

And before she turns to leave she squats back down next to the medic and hands him an unopened pack of cigarettes. He looks at her with a question written in his eyes, not the least of which being that she was technically an officer and he was just a medic and sometimes she was the most curious thing any of the boys had ever seen but she gives him a smile in response and she stands and all he sees, for a moment, are her boots. Three sizes too small.

"Ma'am," he starts, beginning to stand, though she's already turned and is headed for another plane and another pile of soldiers. She pauses and tilts her head, loose strands of hair whipping about for a moment, reveling in the last minutes of their freedom before they're trapped beneath a standard issue helmet for the majority of the next years of their lives, and he thinks, vaguely, that he might always have that imagine in his mind, of the girl with the fly away hair on the brink of disaster, standing at the edge of a canyon with a look that could only be described as happiness though it's ridden through with bullets of sadness and melancholy and perhaps a kind of nostalgia.

"Tell me after we've landed, hm?" She half asks and half states, but doesn't wait for an answer, and he sinks back to the ground watching her retreat, praying to God that he'd survive if only so he could apologize.

"Speirs, you smoke more than a chimney," she coughs as he exhales, letting out the last bit of his last cigarette.

"You got any more or not, Ramos?" He asks, though he's started moving again and isn't even looking at her. She shakes her head slightly anyway, coming to the conclusion that she couldn't simultaneously be anymore lucky and unlucky at the same time as to have landed near him.

Granted, she probably wasn't going to forgive him any time soon for greeting her with an M-1.

"Gave my pack to Doc Roe," she murmurs, and she doesn't have to see his face to know that he's wondering just what she's good for if she doesn't not only not have a weapon, but also doesn't have a pack of smokes.

"You shouldn't play favorites, Em," he drops his voice, and she hears him saying that she shouldn't even be here though he doesn't say it out loud. But he doesn't need to, because she can read any of the officers in the 506 without even trying. After all, that was her job.

"Maybe I'm not playing, Ron," she bites back, suddenly wishing very much that she'd landed with someone else. Anyone else.

"That's right," he turns to look at her and she's rather taken aback by the look in his eyes, like she can't breathe and he's aware of it and maybe she can't read him as well as she thought but maybe she reads him too well because she already knows what he's going to say. "You've already picked Easy."

She wants to say that she didn't pick, because she didn't, she got assigned there. But she realizes that if she could have picked she wouldn't have picked any different and wasn't that exactly what he was saying anyway?

Twenty minutes later, when they've wandered their way to Battalion CP and they've picked up more lost sheep along the way, she murmurs something about being ready for the fun to begin but she really wants to say something about how she hoped he didn't die but in a more normal and not so pessimistic way but he looks at her and gives her a half smile when she actually turns to face him and she thinks that maybe he understood what she wasn't saying. So she scans the list in her mind and sets to checking off the names.

It isn't until sometime later, much later, after she's felt her heart and her stomach doing somersaults and lurches at every face that shows up and everyone that doesn't, and they've finally got a minute to rest and the world isn't trying to run away from them quite so fast anymore, that she stumbles upon him. And she watches him trying to wash his hands for a moment before taking his hands into hers, without warning or preamble, and continues for him. He wants to say so many things, and he wants to make her a little less of an enigma, and he wants, inexplicably, to pull her close to him because her eyes have a sort of permanent gloss to them already, but he doesn't know how to do any of those things, and he feels like he's suffocating on all of his words, which are tangled and jumbled and he doesn't think he could form a coherent sentence even if he tried. She stops him from having to, though, cutting him off after he manages a 'Ma'am.'

"Didn't I tell you that you didn't have to call me that?" She whispers, not looking up at him, but running her fingers along his hands one last time before pulling away. She had told him. Told him that he was a different standard altogether, and, as far as she was concerned, outranked her and everyone else because he was Doc Roe and if anyone was going to see them through this war it was him. But he didn't like to think about that, because all he could remember, vibrantly as though it were only minutes ago, was the way he felt weightless when she'd put herself directly in his path like he'd just made a jump and the ground wasn't coming up fast enough and he'd left his stomach back on the plane. And he didn't know what that meant. So instead he calls her out.

"How long've you been limping?" he asks, because that's something he knows, something he can do. She shakes her head and says that it's nothing, so he says her name, his accent caressing it, like he was meant to say it, and she feels like crying and she's not sure why.

"Really, Gene, it's nothing," she says instead, swallowing the uncomfortable lump in her throat back down. And when he's about to start again, she sighs, "it's just flaring up again is all, nothing I can't handle. Probably should've listened to Nix when he told me to join the party instead of running up that damn mountain again."

"Let me look," he says, but it's more of a question and she gives him a look but relents anyway, though it doesn't take long for him to discover there's nothing for him to do. She couldn't very well keep off her feet. So he looks back up at her, but she won't look back because she'd involuntarily gasped when his fingers had touched her exposed ankle and she wasn't as good at gauging the men because she hadn't been studying them quite so closely for weeks on end, which makes it all that much more of a relief when Nixon finds them because she knows, immediately, what he's there for.

"Ramos," he starts, but stops when he sees Roe at her feet.

"Where to, Nix?" She asks, drawing his attention back to her even as Gene stands back up. He glances back and forth between her face, and the good medic, and her fingers swiftly pulling at the laces on her boot.

"Colonel Sink and Major Strayer would be nice," he states and she nods her head, because she wouldn't have suspected anyone else. He finds the papers in his coat, while she looks back at Roe, who's collected his helmet and hers and is offering it to her and she offers a half smile back, settling it on her head.

"Try to keep off that ankle," he states, though everyone present knows that won't happen. Still, she thinks, it's nice that he tells her, anyway.

"501 has horses," she mutters to herself, shaking her head as she finishes her check of trooper who'd long since passed out. She sighs, giving the order to send him on his way when he wakes up because there's no need and no great urgency to do so now, and collects her helmet.

And there's a moment when she feels like her heart stops, when she glances further in and spots a familiar head of red hair with a certain medic and she doesn't know why. She joins them, dropping her helmet on her knees and drumming in time with her heart's beating, picking up speed to make up for the missed beats, when she realizes it's nothing major.

"Em," Buck sends her a nod as he's finishing his conversation with Dick and she nods back, giving him a smile that falls into pursed lips when he makes his exit. But she still doesn't say anything until Dick leaves, half expecting something from him and though he acknowledges her, he doesn't give her anything new.

"Could I be more useless?" She murmurs when he's left and Gene gives her a look like he can't quite believe that she'd say, much less think, something like that.

"You're plenty useful," he replies, reaching out a hand to pull her back to her feet, and she wants to sink into herself because she still doesn't understand the spark that seems to electrify her very bones when his skin makes contact with hers.

And she thinks, briefly, as they leave the station together, that for two people who were so incredibly awkward and uncomfortable around one another they sure spent a lot of time together.

Those crazy kids. Review, if you please.

-Piper