Velvet Waltz [An Inglourious Basterds fic]

Lost and Found

She came to in total darkness, and her first panicked thought was of missing curfew. Her second thought was the excruciating pain in her back and leg. Then, she realized she couldn't move her leg, because it was under rubble. She was trapped.

Shit.

The moon was full. She marveled at how brightly it illuminated the blown-out café, then registered that it was coming in through the ceiling. Through the piece of the ceiling that now pinned her back half to the floor.

The waitress who had brought all those rounds to their table lay facedown a few yards away, blood pooled around her torso. Greta's heart clenched.

But what of her comrades? She couldn't see much from where she was but she didn't see any other bodies.

"H...hello?" she ventured weakly. "Anyone there?" No answer.

There was no freeing her legs. And no use wasting energy on it when she might be stuck here for a long time. Just my damn luck, she thought. The only Jewish member, and I'm practically being served to the Gestapo on a platter. Her thoughts drifted to the little capsule tucked in a pocket she'd sewn into her bra. The L-pill, that every agent carried in case of capture. Cyanide.

She had no intention of dying that night, but she also had zero intention of being tortured by Nazis.

What were the chances OSS heard of the blast in time and sent their ops first? She had no choice but to wait and see.

It wasn't a long wait before the sound of tires on cobblestones turned her head back to the blown out wall. Only German officers were allowed to drive after dark. Or had OSS beat them to the punch?

Ah, no. They were definitely speaking German. Oh shit. Oh god. This is it. Captured. Here we go. She gave another cursory attempt at wriggling free. No dice.

The sweeping beam of a flashlight announced the officers' arrival, and Greta went limp. What else was there to do?

"Collect evidence, anything we can use," came a stern voice in Austrian-accented German, which seemed to belong to a trench-coated figure. She didn't recognize him from her café. But the way his men scurried to obey him, he must be important.

The figure approached the waitress, and nudged her corpse with the toe of his boot. "Pity. So young." Greta was next. She quickly shut her eyes and went as limp as possible as his boots approached.

"Ooh, what have we here?" He sounded like a child on Christmas morning. She waited for the toe of the boot, but it didn't come.

The flashlight beam on her face did. And she cringed. Son of a bitch.

A little gasp of delight. "A survivor!" He snapped his fingers, and yet more boots came running. Well, shit, might as well look her captor in the eye.

She knew immediately from the oak leaves on his collar and the death's head on his cap that her fate was in the hands of a Standartenführer of the SS. His eyes glittered.

An animal scream tore through her windpipe and, strangled by sheer willpower, escaped her lips as a pitiful whimper. So much for bravery.

He stooped and turned her head with a leather gloved hand, then traced a line in the air in front of her eyes. It made her dizzy to follow it. "Concussion," the officer clucked. His men now surrounded him, like vultures eyeballing a meal.

"Lift it," the man commanded and the SS officers carefully hoisted the piece of ceiling from her battered legs. With lightning speed, her legs were free, she was rolled onto her stomach, her hands were cuffed behind her back, then the Standartenführer scooped her up in his arms, and started to carry her outside.

Now was her chance. She wrenched her body one way, then the other, flopping like a fish out of water. Bit his arm but only got a mouthful of leather. The officer responded by squeezing her closer to his torso.

"I've got you," he whispered to her, boots crunching frost in a steady rhythm. "Save your strength."

A few curt words to his driver, and she was in the backseat of the officer's sleek black Mercedes. The leather seat was cold and she suddenly aware of how stiff and painful her entire body was as she was laid against the opposite door. Her captor removed his leather gloves and began to manipulate her legs, feeling from the ankles up. She sucked through her teeth at each tender spot.

"Hmm," the officer muttered. "Bruised but not broken."

"At least introduce yourself before copping a feel," she snarled.

He paused. "Oh, forgive me. I get so caught up in the various details. I am Colonel Hans Landa of the SS."

He presented a hand, as if to shake hers. She stared, still cuffed.

"Ah, yes. And what might your name be?"

She glared. Landa nodded, plunged his hand right into the pocket of her coat and fished out her wallet. That bastard!

"Greta Van Horn," he said, squinting at her ID papers. "Hmmph. Unlikely. Twenty-five? Swiss?"

"Yes."

The car began to move. She tried to sit up but immediately recoiled in pain.

Landa placed a firm hand on her knee. "Nothing to fear, Fraulein. We're just going somewhere to have a little talk. I know you have so much to tell me." Did he have to smile at her like that?

If they keep me cuffed, she thought in the somewhat slurred manner of the concussed, I can't take my pill. They're going to torture me. They'll torture everything out of me and leave me to rot in a ditch. She thought of her comrades, her creaky little bed that she would never sleep in again. She thought of the extra-chewy bagels she used to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge for on weekends, smoked salmon and lox. Her small and boring life in New York, the pride she felt after completing her training. Her beloved Manhattan skyline shrinking as the naval ship carried her away, as it turned out, forever. She felt...relatively okay for someone about to be tortured to death.

And still Landa's hand rested on her leg. She kicked it away.