Velvet Waltz [An Inglourious Basterds fic]

The Home Front

Once again, a grenade had been hurled into Sylvia's life, trapping her beneath the fallout: the April 5th issue of Das Megafon. As before, Hans Landa swooped in to rescue her.

And as before, she fought him.

"I can't be engaged to a Nazi!" she spat.

"It's only for the press," Hans replied calmly from the sofa. "Your cover identity is my fiancée. It's make believe."

She shook her head. "It's too dangerous, it's too much, Hans. I don't want to do it."

"I was ordered by the Oberführer. We don't have a choice."

A tortuous pause.

"I'm going to be out in the open, Hans!"

"My dear girl, you're already out in the open. This is damage control."

She paced angrily, like a caged animal. "You don't know what you're asking of me! To be in public with you? It's bad enough I'm already a, a....Nazi whore!"

This stung. Hans blinked. "Is that how you feel, Sylvia?"

"I...don't know how I feel." She stopped pacing and glared at nothing in particular. "I feel exposed. I feel scared."

"Understandable. But she's gone now."

Indeed, when Hans rushed home to fire Marta he found only a cursory "goodbye" note (and a very baffled Sylvia, who hadn't yet heard.) So she was taking her Megafon payoff and returning to Austria. Must be nice.

Hans picked up the offending paper from the coffee table. "Did you read the article? No one suspects the truth about you."

She had recoiled at the photo, and hadn't read the accompanying paragraphs. She skimmed them quickly. Indeed, they speculated she might be an heiress, even royalty, but when it came to her true identity? Ice cold.

But still.

"They're going to look into me. These tabloid journalists are shameless, Hans. What happens when they figure it out?" Sylvia demanded. "It would take months to establish cover that deep."

"It won't matter. They'd never imagine an SS officer would marry a Jew." Hans smirked.

She was absolutely infuriated to realize he was right.

"I'll have papers made for you," he continued. "Backdated documents, birth papers, citizenship. But as my fiancée? Who will ask?"

Sylvia flopped onto the other end of the sofa. "When my command finds out..."

"My girl, I'm sure they already know."

"They're going to think....oh god, they already think..."

Hans touched her arm gingerly. "Sylvia....has our intimacy made you feel dirty or bad?"

She finally met his eyes. He seemed wounded in a way she had never seen. "No, no it hasn't. And I don't want to stop, I just—"

"Which matters more, then? What they think or what you know to be true?"

If only I knew anything to be true, she thought.

Silence. A distant siren somewhere down the boulevard, horns honking. The sounds of outside. The world she would soon be re-joining.

"It's very Hollywood, isn't it?" she snickered. "A fake engagement."

"It will be rather glamorous. Parties, functions, dinners..."

"Nazi parties, Nazi functions, Nazi dinners," she corrected. "On the arm of a Standartenführer."

"Yes," he admitted. "But having read my reports, you have a more accurate picture of my loyalties."