Shadows of the World » Band of Brothers

08: Hide Your Fires

"Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires." - William Shakespeare, Macbeth

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Juliette knew she had to go about this carefully. The pale gold of her evening dress would be too easy to stain, and it had to be silent - the Grand Foyer was only a few rooms over and likely filled to bursting with high ranking Nazi officers. If she messed up, she was worse than dead, for she had heard of what they did to spies in order to get information out of them. She toed a dangerous line, and to pull this off was more slippery than the actual mission she had been sent to carry out.

As Juliette gazed in the mirror she watched Oberführer Becker turn from where he had locked the bathroom's main entrance. He surveyed the back of her with a primal, animalistic lust before crossing the room to stand behind her in a mere two strides, pressing his front to her back and meeting her eyes in the mirror. Looking at him in the reflection under the brightness of the lights she acknowledged that he must have been at least fifty-five, which made the situation all the more difficult to stomach. Of course, she was used to older men preying on her, but when his hand began to trail up the side of her, tracing its way up from her lower hip, she saw the glint of his wedding ring, too, as it caught the light. Juliette briefly wondered where his wife was and why she hadn't been accompanying him to this fine event, but as he trailed a hand over her breast she acknowledged that it was likely so that he could engage in situations exactly like this one. Her faith in the male species was at an all-time low.

When the Oberführer traced a line from her shoulder and across her collarbone she broke eye contact with him in the mirror and instead closed her eyes and leaned her head back against his shoulder, letting him think she was enjoying it. When he clasped his hand around her neck she gasped, her eyes shooting open, and he smiled malignantly at her through the mirror before trailing his hand down the centre of her chest.

He was enjoying his power.

Juliette lifted a hand to rest on the side of his face and when he grasped it violently around the wrist she spun underneath his arm and slammed him backwards into the tiled wall. She freed her wrist and pushed his arm away with both hands and all of her might. In a flash of dark grey he reached for her. She sent the heel of her shoe straight into the centre of his left foot, smashing the bone to pieces exactly as she'd done a million times before. When he cried out she pushed him back against the wall again with so much fervour his head, which had gone relatively limp with the pain, slammed back against it.

Unfortunately, there would be blood after all.

Just as he had done to her mere seconds before, Juliette clasped a hand around his neck, pinching his windpipe between two fingers and closing it without much difficulty. It was keeping him there that was always the problem.

As his hands grasped at her she grabbed onto one of them and held it firmly against the wall. Not much could be done about the other. His large hand gripped her waist so tightly she had to fight with everything she had inside of her not to scream. He attempted to push her back but with his depleted air supply, cracked open head, and smashed foot his weight was unbalanced. She squeezed his windpipe tighter and released his arm, grasping his hair to send his head back into the tile with another resounding smack.

His eyes began to blur. His grip slackened.

"Who are you?" he uttered, in accented English this time, voice choked and quiet. He slid down the wall and she crouched to follow him, her grip on his neck never faltering. Juliette watched as the life left his eyes, his gaze falling on the ground and staying there, his hand falling from her waist entirely, and his other arm going slack in her hold.

Juliette paused a few moments, making sure she was absolutely certain before she dared let go, eventually sitting back on her heels. "I'm afraid I don't quite know, myself," she whispered sadly, sparing the dead man a final glance before getting to work.

Acting quickly, as she gathered that by now she probably only had about three minutes if she was lucky, perhaps more likely two and a half, she grasped the Oberführer under the arms and dragged him to the stall farthest from the door. She folded him into the corner and locked the door from the outside once she was certain he couldn't be seen.

Juliette carefully wiped the blood off of the wall from where his head had hit it and stood back to look once more in the mirror. After smoothing her brunette hair back into position and straightening her dress, she forced a smile before turning from her reflection, despising the sight of it. She couldn't even look herself in the eyes. How she could appear so unaffected even after watching the life leave a man right before her eyes had always bothered her, but she had a mission to complete, and she couldn't fail.