A/N: Old fic is old! Written shortly after I saw Inglourious Basterds for the first time. Let me know what you think!
The wicked shall be a ransom for the righteous,
and the transgressor for the upright.
Proverbs 21:18
ransom
He begins to realize that there is very little to live for without Emmanuelle. He stops by when the world has its eyes on Germany and there is little attention on them; in the flood of her matinee crowd she is so breathtakingly beautiful that he cannot imagine returning to Germany without her on his arm, without her as his bride.
Beneath the Führer, he has been given everything he has ever wanted in exchange for his orchestra of a massacre. But the Führer cannot give him Emmanuelle, and he feels the pain of not having her every day. He sees her through windows with her cigarettes and movie scripts, and he feels a world away from her when he cannot hear her dulcet French in his ears.
He thinks of the Advent hymns back home, of the good Emmanuel ransoming captive Israel, mourning in lonely exile. Emmanuelle shall be his ransom, his freedom from the crushing attention and all fair Germany's favor. She will be his bomb shelter, his oasis, his paradise.
He tells her all of this, that he loves her, that he wishes to bring her to the Führer's fine Lebensraum, that with him comes the world. She shall have multiple cinemas beneath her name, wondrous intelligent children with beauty as bright as hers. The world will bow before me, he tells her, before you, and there will be nothing that you cannot have.
She smiles politely and says she is a simple girl and has no wishes for such the world that he dreams of, merci, Frederick. She cannot leave her Paris, her old home, for a world she has only read about in papers and seen on film.
Then perhaps I may stay here, he says. France is not so very terrible, even if the Führer does not favor it; we could eat our daily baguettes in the market, and I could hear women speak French every day and know that their words pale in comparison to yours.
He knows that he is rescuing her from a fate she could not otherwise avoid, especially as a Frenchwoman. If she takes his name and his love, then she shall be free, and they shall be each other's rescue.
She says she has a very busy day ahead of her, the premiere and all, and says she will consider it. She closes the door.
He leans against the door, over the moon with thoughts of his beloved Emmanuelle.
Shoshanna only thinks of how lovely it will be to send a knife through his heart.
*