A/N I usually write romance so this is a change for me. I thought I would write just one scene, but depending on season 2, I may write a selection of 'What If' scenes
01/11 just a couple of small changes. I changed the spelling of Bosch back to the original french Boche. Interesting note: the Austrians called the Germans 'Piefke'. It's just as offensive.
He walked slowly downstairs and tried to justify what he was going to do. It was his duty, and a soldier in uniform, was a soldier, be it man or woman. He couldn't shirk his duty because she was young and attractive.
She'd betrayed him, by keying the extra stroke into the telegraph. He'd trusted her, he'd vouched for her, and she'd betrayed him.
She was tied to a metal pipe in the cellar, her hands behind her back. Her eyes were smudged with black. A huge bruise covered her cheek. She looked exhausted, and forlorn.
'Shit,' he thought to himself, 'I can't do this.'
She spoke quietly, 'I never meant to send that extra code.'
'I don't believe you.'
'So, you are going to kill me?'
He looked down at his feet, and couldn't meet her eyes.
'Fine then. I ask two things of you. First that you have the decency to look me in the eye when you do it, and secondly, that you stay with me until I'm gone. I don't want to die alone.'
Neil looked up again and nodded. She was braver than most men.
'Tell me about your home,' he said. It was a distraction for both of them.
She talked of mountains, and edelweiss, and how she had been a school teacher before the war. Of family killed in airstrikes. Her eyes never left his. He stood barely inches away, his hands low. She knew then it would be an abdominal strike, to her hepatic artery or to the femoral at her thigh. She would be dead in minutes.
She was gambling, and it all hinged on his sang froid. He didn't disappoint her - he shuttered his eyes for a microsecond, and swung the knife. She threw herself sideways, and fisted a brick at his head. She stunned him long enough to bind his hands and feet, and to gag him.
Neil wasn't able to take her life without looking away. The tables were turned and she could kill him. He contemplated his options, but with her knee on his neck, there were few.
She'd been imprisoned in this cellar for hours, staring at the wall, seeing what none of them had noticed: the faint outline of a hidden door. She'd let the water that was sweating off the damp walls soak and stretch the ropes that tied her hands.
She moved her knee to his back, and leaned down to him, 'I am letting you live. You called me a Boche and you don't even understand that I am Austrian, not German. I was taken from my home because I taught mathematics and can break cyphers. I curse the Anschluss and what has been done to my country. I didn't betray you, and I will not turn you and others in. Next time you think of edelweiss, remember it is Austrian. Know that a Boche was a better person than you.'
And with that, she was gone. Neil lifted his head to see how she would manage to get out past his friends but she wasn't on the stairs. She had disappeared.