What— oh. She bites back a slight laugh once she realises what he's picked up on as they start heading down; not because the situation is all that funny, but because you could cut that wary tension with a knife and so anything feels hysterical then, feels like a sudden puncture of pressure bubbling up in her throat. Instead: she tightens her grip on her shield.

They're trying to be light on their feet, but it's impossible to be entirely stealthy when they need that light to move, like a lighthouse necessarily broadcasting their approach. And so once they turn the corner—

Brigitte felt-slash-heard it more than saw it, the rush of a body moving. Pure hardwired reflex: her arm's already instinctively swung up her shield and it takes the first blow with a clang and a clatter, from someone barreling at them in the half-darkness with a blunt club.

Once the light from their devices falls on the first attacker, it takes her a moment to process: Thor, Thor looking rough and disheveled and maddened. She'd just left him back at the smithy. One of the few men in the village big enough to give Maine a run for his money, maybe, and even remembering the warning (They're us but not us), it still throws her off-kilter for a moment as soon as that recognition sinks in; enough for Maine to step in, cover that stutter-stop from her end.