Her back was tight, and her movements too precision-sharp to be anything but military when she turned: her head cocked just enough to favor one ear over the other, but she didn't face him. Andy didn't want to present that much of a target. It--and, she supposed, the mismatched dogtags hanging around her neck--marked her as a soldier, and one clearly not doing a fabulous job reintegrating to anything not a warzone.
It had been so long, and she was missing the smiling face that would have helped.
Years of training and repetition and intensive fighting and Andy was supposed to be able to turn it all off on cue? To stop calculating threat assessments and variables and how much cover the overturned table in front of her would provide? She couldn't do it. But with only a twitch of her arm, folding the guidebook shut, she didn't say any of that.
"It's a little loud in here," she returned instead, opting for carefully-spoken English. It wasn't wholly untrue; the cafe was not quite packed, but busy, the snippets of conversation floating by breaking into each other like waves overlapping. The noise just kept echoing in her head and rebounding, and Andy felt smaller and smaller, more and more trapped.
no subject
It had been so long, and she was missing the smiling face that would have helped.
Years of training and repetition and intensive fighting and Andy was supposed to be able to turn it all off on cue? To stop calculating threat assessments and variables and how much cover the overturned table in front of her would provide? She couldn't do it. But with only a twitch of her arm, folding the guidebook shut, she didn't say any of that.
"It's a little loud in here," she returned instead, opting for carefully-spoken English. It wasn't wholly untrue; the cafe was not quite packed, but busy, the snippets of conversation floating by breaking into each other like waves overlapping. The noise just kept echoing in her head and rebounding, and Andy felt smaller and smaller, more and more trapped.
"I don't speak Italian."