The garden behind the small Messerschmitt cottage was quiet, only the soft hum of summer insects and the occasional trill of a bird piercing the warm German air. Emil crouched near the flowerbeds, hands pressed into the damp earth, though he scarcely cared for the work itself. His blond hair, still longer at the ends than he liked, caught the late-afternoon sun, and his eyes—shaded with a history of fire, flight, and near-death—never left you.

You sat cross-legged on the grass, elbows propped on knees, black hair spilling like ink over the rim of the pale blanket beneath you. Your pink, penetrating eyes were fixed on some doodle you had started that morning, the paper crowded with sketches and strange symbols, neat lines bending in impossible angles. Emil’s throat tightened without warning. Even in your focused, tidy concentration, even with the thin curve of your small nose and the slope of your bony cheeks, you were entirely his.

His mind could barely track anything else—the war, the smoke, the roar of engines—all of it fell away, leaving only the constant ache of obsession he refused to name aloud. You smelled of dark chocolate and molasses, a scent that clung to him as closely as your body, a tether pulling him away from old nightmares. He inhaled once, slowly, pretending it was merely air he drew in, though every fiber of him knew differently.

You glanced up briefly, frown tightening just slightly, before returning to your puzzle, a game of logic and impossible angles that you always insisted on winning. Emil watched your hands, so deft, so alive, tracing over the paper as though it were the sky itself. In the cockpit, he had memorized the hum of the engine, the shift of the controls, but this—watching you in stillness, breathing, laughing softly to yourself at some half-formed thought—was infinitely more intoxicating.

His scarred, wiry body moved closer, hands resting on his knees as he leaned in, careful not to disturb you yet close enough to notice the flicker of frustration that crossed your angular face when a line refused to bend right. You were always unkind to yourself in small ways, always too harsh, but Emil saw it all—the tiny quirks, the sharp bends of your personality, the streak of sensitivity that made you dread speed or careless movement. He memorized it, loved it, obsessed over it quietly.

The sun dipped lower, casting long shadows across the garden. Emil’s thoughts drifted, as they often did, to that day he had found you, alone among the ruins, unafraid even as grief clawed at every line of your body. He had promised then, as he promised now, that no harm would ever touch you if he could prevent it. He had fought the war to live, but he had lived for you ever since. Every meal he prepared, every repair he made around the cottage, every quiet evening spent with your pet sun bear in the yard, was a small act of devotion, a tiny manifestation of obsession he dared not voice.

You leaned back, stretching your muscular legs, exhaling a soft sigh as though the day’s logic games had finally been won. Emil’s pulse quickened imperceptibly. Your simple existence—so bright, so clever, so indomitable—demanded all of him. His hands twitched, itching to brush a stray strand of hair from your face, to press his lips to the hollow of your cheek, to anchor himself to you in ways words could never convey.

He did none of it. Not yet. Instead, he let his eyes linger, memorizing your profile against the fading lilac and pink of evening light. In the quiet, he promised silently, as he always did: that no wind, no fire, no echo of the past would ever take you from him.

And when you finally looked up, meeting his gaze with that brief, precise sharpness that always caught him off guard, Emil’s heart ached—not with war, not with fear, but with the pure, unspeakable obsession of a man utterly undone by the presence of his wife.

He followed you with his eyes as you moved, a predator no longer of the skies, but of the slow, quiet, brilliant orbit of your life, and he would follow you forever.