*Rated "pW" for Previous Wielder. Deals with past lives. Based largely on conjecture, historical fact, and previous same-author fanfiction.
"No one worth possessing can be quite possessed." - Sara Teasdale
October 3, 1942 - Berlin, Germany - Elizabeth Bronte entered the cathedral with the late morning sun to her back, and her five-year-old daughter Mabel's gloved hand in her own. Obediently, the pair bent at the knee to genuflect to the altar that stood at the opposite end of the long center aisle stretching out before them.
Even as Elizabeth straightened from the quick curtsey she could feel her cervix stretching--as she had felt it stretch over the past weeks--pulling taut, as it made ready to open in preparation for the event her swollen belly heralded. Such movements--and such reminders--were no longer a surprise or point of fascination for her. It could be any day now, at any time. She was not afraid, but she was very aware.
Turning her gaze from the view of the altar, she passed Mabel's hand into that of the hired nanny Major Stretzer had found for her. Looking barely older than a girl, but professing herself to be eighteen (with papers--possibly forged--that backed her claim), Dominique Goudder was all eyes; no amount of healthy diet had yet been able to change her edging-on-gaunt frame. In this age of war hers was not an uncommon appearance. Even in the heart of Berlin. Only time would tell how handy (eighteen years to her credit, or not) she might prove to be with the coming baby.
"Stay here," Bronte instructed the two girls in a quiet voice, directing them to seats. "Help Mabel with her Rosary," she told Dominique. "I won't be long."
Both girls complied from habit, knowing that once Bronte returned from the Confessional, Dominique would enter and Bronte take her place with Mabel until all had been absolved and they could stop at a nearby bakery for bread and sweets to enjoy on the journey back to the flat. Such days were, by now, an accepted tradition.
Removing her elaborate hat and replacing it with a simpler, more sedate scarf, Elizabeth Bronte walked softly toward the unoccupied Confessional and entered. In her condition unable to kneel with any degree of grace or comfort, she instead took a seat on the hard wooden bench, and turned her head to the screened window, which, presently, remained closed.
Of late an impatient exhaustion had come over her; she found it very hard to center herself even for the duration of the brief wait for a Confessor to take his place in the stall next to her.
The bold strokes of the organist in the balcony beyond pumped the grand strains of Martin Luther's "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" into the reverberating stone of the cathedral, and it sent her mind back to England, and to Scott--one of her few British Intelligence contacts. Of course, she smiled to herself, Scott would rather protest, as the Scot he was, at being heaped in among the British. He rather preferred, in his buoyant moments, to be known as 'Scottish Intelligence'--though there were those in the department that would regularly take issue with what they saw (some not as playfully as others) as an oxymoron.
And God bless you, Hamilton Angus Scott, Elizabeth thought to herself in a half-prayer. It was Scott who had first introduced her to code-breaking, Scott with whom she had shared her first attempt at a code of her own--one whose codex was to be found in the very notes of this ancient song. A perfect little masterpiece it had been, transposing it as she had. At the time, the best and most exciting work she had done in years. And about the only thing that had saved her from the emotional abyss that was Jack's death. She had lost so many other things when she had lost her RAF flyer of a husband (and Mabel's father) to blitzkrieg. But now was hardly the time to think about that, she warned herself sternly, wary of her easy emotions of late, and how the slightest melancholy could play utter havoc with them.
She mused instead on the notes of the hymn, charted them in her mind, found places for them on her mental treble and bass clefs, decoded what the message this organist would be sending had he understood the code, playing in this particular key, this phrase of the melody.
Ah, she heard it; the certain performer's timbre and technique clear to her as a bell being rung in a silent room. It was Old Franz, the organist from the Lutheran church. Things indeed were tight for Berliners--indeed for all Germany--when the Great Reformer's hymn was finding its way into Catholic cathedrals by virtue of the fact all the organists were gone to fight, leaving only Old Franz to take up the slack.
The Witchblade warmed on Bronte's arm, like a cold stove beginning to heat for baking. Take, it told her, urging her to offer herself in Old Franz's place as organist.
"Settle down," she crooned to the bracelet, always so eager to push its wielder toward almost anything she desired. This was no time for willfulness, Bronte counseled the sentient jewelry, its amber talisman stone dark in the half-light of the Confessional. In her condition she wasn't good for much, and these last few months she'd begun a descent into feeling useless, her mission retreating farther and farther ahead of her ever-expanding figure. Frustration and loneliness had been running high.
It was pointless, though, to regret Paris. Pointless and mis-guided. She did not regret it, but had come to resent the situation (though not the unborn child) it had gifted her with--this 'delicate condition'--this entire lack of all utility.
Take her place as organist? She could not successfully assay the steps to the organ balcony as a viable contender for Old Franz's position; could not play the piano (the keys now obscured--and kept beyond her reach--by her belly) in her own flat. How, then, could she aspire to anything at all like nation and world-altering espionage?
Interrupting her self-doubt, the hymn's powerful notes sang to her, over-covering her own thoughts of inadequacy; "His king-dom is for-ev-er".
A kingdom not Third Reich-born. Ha! Take that, Adolf, Bronte thought venomously--and the Witchblade, gurgling, concurred.
Even the best Yankees pitchers, she consoled herself (ignoring the Witchblade's continued prickings), got injured, benched from time to time. So she'd police the dugout. For now. The baby would arrive any day--any moment--and she'd be back on the mound throwing strikes before you could say, 'knife'. Until then, she, ankles bloated, breathing constricted, heartburn ever-present, Witchblade pouty as a child wanting out on a rainy day--she would wait.
DISCLAIMERS: Elizabeth Bronte and the Witchblade (and other characters that will make appearances in other chapters to come) are property of Top Cow and Warner Bros. I mean no disrespect, and am not making any money or profit out of their use here.
Any inaccuracies please chalk up to deliberate anachronism. It's just a happier, more criticism-free world that way.
What happened to Elizabeth Bronte before Possession? Check out Occupation, posted here at fanfiction.net.
Neftzer 2003(c)
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