Alfred had been shoved out of a plane that morning, and he was still having trouble walking down a street. The bustle of the village behind them painted his surroundings light brown, which left the taste of cilantro leaves in his mouth. It was as disconcerting as ever. He wondered, not for the first time, what had made him volunteer for this.
She was on his arm now, walking faster than he felt he could. There were too many cobblestones in the street, and they were making his thoughts scattered. His face felt hot, and he had the inexplicable, nervous feeling that passersby were watching him. He felt like a vaudevillian posing as a spy for an act. The act was absurd, of course; a frail anxious man with a beautiful woman on his arm, bound to stumble and trip at any moment. The ground below him had always been an easy thing to focus on in the past, but things were different in France.
He let himself remember Canada as he saw it on their plane ride to France, with wide plains and mountains and lakes he'd never seen before. It had been beautiful, and despite the previous trip the others had taken before him, they had all paused their conversation to stare. Alfred knew, intellectually, that Canada was far away, but he hadn't thought he'd really known that until the black sounds of bullets started and the pilot was shot through the head before he could finish his sentence. He had been shouted at and pushed out, and had frantically closed his fingers around the cords of his parachute. When he had grown used to the sound of the wind in his ears and the white in his vision, he had started to like it. Land with both feet together -
This brisk walk down the street, in step with her, reminded him of the way he had felt then with the yelling in his ear and the dead pilot. He was still waiting for the panic to stop.
The streets weren't familiar here, and it was this small thing that was starting to make him breathe too fast again. He started trying to count the cobblestones to pretend his chest didn't feel tight, first by twos, then threes, fours, fives -
"Hey," she whispered from beside him, bringing him sharply back to himself. Her voice was purple and quietly urgent. "We need to move faster."
Alfred realised how fast she was walking in comparison; her arm linked through his was near to dragging him along. He remembered that they were supposed to be hurrying and took his eyes off the cobblestones. "I'm sorry, it's just - all the - the -"
"Just focus on one thing," she suggested, watching him out of the corner of her eye. She looked concerned, and it might have been for the mission and it might have been for him. Alfred wasn't clearheaded enough to tell which with any accuracy.
He cast his eyes around the street, with its houses passing by too fast for him to focus on and the car they were walking by which smelled strongly of fuel and faintly of leather and some sort of polish or wax. It was behind him too quickly, and he could feel himself getting shaky and panicky again.
"How about me?" she asked, turning her face towards him. "Just focus on me."
Alfred glanced at her and found himself unable to turn back towards the street. He felt uneasy about not looking where he was stepping, but after a moment, he decided to trust her. She had threatened him and shown him how easy it was to die in training because she wanted him to stay alert and alive.
She looked stressed and as though she needed more sleep than she had gotten, but that wasn't out of the ordinary. It looked as though she had used makeup to try to cover it up, or to bring atttention to other aspects of her appearance. She had used some mascara, Alfred thought, and definitely red lipstick. He remembered his mother, a year before everything went wrong, applying her makeup at her mirror and explaining what she was doing to her face and why. The memory, along with the sight of her beside him, calmed him slightly. It had been rumoured that the Führer hated red lipstick, and he wondered briefly why she wore it as part of her cover. It was probably, he realised, a way to assure herself that she hadn't lost herself.
Her skin against his arm was faintly warm, and her dress was white with a red pattern of small dots that almost matched her lips. Her hair was a similar colour to dead grass, though it was much thinner and shinier and the front section had been elegantly twisted behind to join the back of it in a knot. It must have taken much more time and effort than he was used to putting into his own appearance, and in spite of that, a few wispy strands escaped. She smelled of vanilla, sweat and cosmetics.
"We're almost there," she assured him quietly, still looking ahead and stepping quickly. Her eyes were wary, as they usually seemed to be. She rarely allowed herself to be unguarded, even between missions in Whitby.
He traced the curve of her forehead, her nose, her painted lips with his eyes, memorising her profile. Objectively, she was pretty but not remarkably so; the perfect face for a spy. Personally, there was a certain purplish colour that clung to her, and as he watched her and started to let go of the tension in his chest, it gradually lightened to an almost blue colour. She glanced up at him, smiled with her eyes and her mouth, and returned her gaze to the street ahead of them.
Aurora, he thought, and let her lead him.