Gretl had gone for blankets, and once having dispensed them, sent the group into her kitchen to warm themselves by her cast-iron stove, not staying herself, but disappearing again to find Bronte some dry street clothes, so that she might make her way on to the hotel where Rolf had taken rooms for them, and to her luggage, more suitably attired.
Gretl's kitchen and Mabel's presence had an odd effect on the tension that hung between herself and Connor, Bronte noted. It was such an everyday setting--old-time, pre-war everyday (she could hardly think of the last time she'd sat down in a full-size, working kitchen--not been served at table, as though her food had simply been wished into being, or heated and stirred over the lone hot plate in the flat Rolf paid for in Berlin--when they weren't staying somewhere more lavish). The sights of it, the smells and even the emotion trapped in the room, so normative, so cozy. She knew the change in setting dropped at least three (if not more) of the barriers she usually had up around herself.
She could see it working on him, too. She had no indication, no idea at all, of how long it had been since he had spent time in a home--not in a tunnel, or cellar, or burnt-out building.
Gretl's home was nothing special, but it was a home, and, even without meaning to, something in them recognized that, and shifted their behavior to match. The immediateness of their troubles only moments before so pressing were momentarily muted, the by turns prickly-then-charged exchanges they had been sharing ceased, falling away from them like a shell from a peanut, forgotten and unnecessary.
Almost drowsily he pulled his rain-soaked sweater over his head, the weight from the water it had retained making the journey over his shoulders and neck more difficult than it should have been. The wall clock ticked, but they paid it no mind. Connor arranged his sweater near the stove's heat, and set to removing his second shirt to join it, obviously hoping to dry out as much as possible before re-entering the downpour.
.
As Bronte sat at the table, trying to get warm, wrapped in a blanket, Mabel on her lap, the young girl grabbed for a nearby knife--among some other stray utensils Gretl kept on the table.
"No, no," Bronte cautioned, her hand closing around the dangerous object before the child's could.
"Yeah?" She heard, in a throatier, panicked version of her own voice. She had thrown a man against a wall. Was demanding something of him. His nose and lips were bleeding, and he looked as scared as any man who believed he was about to die could. The wall smelled of old smoke and damp stone.
"Pez," she heard from beyond her fog of concentration, over her shoulder, "I'm not down with this." For a moment a second man came into view. His eyes look almost as frightened of her as did those of the man against the wall.
"Fine, leave," she demanded. Her anger and panic too focused to even pause long enough to care if he did.
.
"What's this, what's this? What's your mama gone and done, Fraulein Mabel?"
Bronte smelled his bare flesh before she saw clearly again. The salt and tang of it. The warmth the fire had given to him.
Connor was standing over her at the side of the table, but had thrown his blanket off. He had been huddling--much like herself--under a blanket until his sweater and shirt dried enough to put back on.
She tried not to notice his bare chest as she struggled to bring herself up to speed on the now, and bury the vision. Her hand was still around the knife.
It had probably been less than a second or two since she had taken it out of Mabel's path, but in that span (the span of the vision) her right hand had slid down its blade, gripping it tighter and tighter, and now she was bleeding. Hence, the alarm, and the fact that he now had her hand in his, prying it (she tried to relax it) off the knife's blade, and grabbing at a nearby rag to blot away the blood so that he could examine the severity of the cut.
"It's nothing," she said, trying to withdraw her hand. "I'm sure." She didn't even feel any pain beyond a sting, her nerves so filled by the vision's sensations.
He didn't respond verbally, but looked up for a moment, so that she could see his unconvinced expression, and continued to work at it, holding both her, and Mabel's, full attention.
When he finally was satisfied, and had relaxed some of his hold on her hand, looking for something to bind it with, the light cast down from the overhead bulb just so that she saw a scar, just to the left of his sternum, near his heart.
As if of its own accord, her hand floated up, toward the spot, taking one of his (the one cradling hers) with it.
"The Blade did this," she said, though he could not have understood her remark. The Witchblade pinched her happily on the wrist, as though it thought they were sharing some private joke. Not finding it funny, she winced.
"A blade?" he asked. "No," he assured her, giving a half smile, one of his first. "That's an old scar. Lost a dare when I was ten. Nasty fall. You'll not have to worry about a scar. It's only a small cut, just as you said," he comforted her, misunderstanding her interest in the wound's mark.
But she had seen it clearly, had not fallen into the vision, but had witnessed it just the same.
A redhead with the Blade, full-armed, and Connor full-seeing her, and the talisman she wore. And that same Blade, that same deadly bauble, gracing her own wrist just now, sinking slowly and difficultly into him. In just that very spot.
"No, I--" the fingers of her wounded hand climbed over that place on his chest, as though assessing it for damage, the meat of her palm below the thumb pressed into his bare breastbone, and for a moment he let her hand do as it pleased, looking down on her as she tentatively examined the spot, his expression as curious as her own. Then, his hand followed hers, and brought it away from him, out to where he could wrap her palm, bound in a few windings of clean cheesecloth he had found.
As he was tying off the cheesecloth bandage, his fingers rested for a moment on the metal of the Blade, and Bronte saw her vision a second time--this time in reverse, winding backward in on itself, the Blade coming out of him, the redhead, gauntletless.
When she looked up, the re-visitation over, the cast of his eyes showed that he had seen something as well, something that had given him a furrowed brow--if only momentarily.
And, with every bit of the finality of Cinderella's ball at the clock's twelve-stroke, they were no longer simply in a kitchen, warm and protected from the elements, drowsy and aimless. They were, now, again, waiting, with very specific ends in mind and an immediate future to consider. The world existed again, beyond the room, beyond Paris.
"When will you tell her," Connor asked, inclining his head toward Mabel, still happily at play, ignorant of the last moment's shift in priority and exigency.
Bronte respected that he hadn't referenced the explosion of the night before directly, but there was nothing for it, no reason to wait. She had taught Mabel enough about the world. The world they lived in had done its share as well. For the child, death was not unfamiliar. And for the mother, her child's innocence on such matters was not something she could even afford to mourn.
"May," she said, using the girl's pet name. "Herr Rolf has died."
"Sorry, Mama," the child said, turning around to look into her mother's face. Her own eyes showed that, to the best of a four-year-old's comprehension, she understood. Herr Rolf was not coming back.
She turned her attention back to the table, where she was putting the forks to sleep under a dishtowel. "Hush!" she told them, only their tines exposed. "Say, 'Goodnight.'"
Connor pushed back the chair he had been sitting in, its legs grating against the wooden floor, and scowled as he contemplated going to find Gretl and the promised street clothes for Bronte himself.
Elizabeth watched him, wishing she could pace the room herself, wishing she could explain the path she had chosen, the decisions she had made, for herself and her child. Wishing she could do so in a way eloquent enough to make him understand, to share with him the things she knew--the things the Blade had given her to understand--but with so much at risk she could not, even if she were able to do so, and so she said nothing.
.
...to be continued...
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Disclaimer: I do not own Witchblade, nor the rights to its characters. Seek out Warner Bros. and/or Top Cow if you want to talk to people that matter. I'm not in their employ, and I'm not making any money off of their creation. But I am having a good time with it. ;)
by: Neftzer (c)2003
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