*Rated "pW" for Previous Wielder. Deals with past lives. Based largely on conjecture, historical fact, and previous same-author fanfiction.
The pain did not leave Bronte. The visions--as a side effect of the pregnancy, she supposed--had grown in the past months to a level at which they were hard to control. A level at which her present-time reaction to them was difficult to manipulate. She had been reaching a state of benign coexistence with them just prior to Paris, in which she could step in and out, suppress or extract what they had to say as pleased her. No more. Though the talisman-sprung portents came with less frequency, they more than compensated for their scarcity by their intensity.
This one seemed to delight in slowing the beat of her heart--and the baby's heart as well, which, for a long moment she could hear, beating in a sluggish tandem that echoed her own. Yet even her fright at this audibly diminished pace had no pull over quickening it. The two hearts plodded on, laggardly, witnessing what was put before them.
Stretzer's office, early afternoon. He was having a smoke when his attaché, a dapper looking young man, announced a visitor.
"Frau Germer--Hedda!" Stretzer exclaimed, as a sad-eyed--though stylish--woman entered through the doorway and took a seat. "I had not thought to see you here." He quickly covered for his surprise, an expansive smile engulfing his face. "What a charming afternoon you have made it."
"Don't over-flatter me, Helmut," she warned, though without venom. "I've come about Rolf's woman."
"What?" he asked benignly. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean."
Bronte could no longer hear her heart--or that of her child's. Her hands were so damp with sweat they had becomes slippery.
"We can be civilized, Helmut," Hedda assured him. "I won't make a scene. I've known about her for some time now."
Stretzer remained silent, his smile gone, allowing Frau Germer to speak until she reached the reason for her visit. This was to be business.
"It is difficult, after all," Widow Germer's tone was flat and smooth; one would never know what a passion she had flown into when she had first found out about her husband and Elizabeth Bronte, "to conceal entirely an over-long holiday to Paris--"
"Please," Stretzer prompted, magnanimously, "let us not speak ill of the heroic dead."
"Very well," she agreed. "Aline Krugen tells me the woman is with child, and that you, as her new--hmm, benefactor--have engaged one of Aline's maids as nanny."
Stretzer raised an eyebrow, obviously doubtful that she was about to chastise him for his involvement with her dead husband's mistress.
"And she tells me the child is Rolf's."
Bronte's eardrums popped as though she were climbing to a great height--anticipating a great fall.
Stretzer stuck out his lower lip, as though in contemplation. "The timing would seem to make that likely."
"So, you have no claim on this child?" Hedda asked, her eyes narrowing slightly.
"As much as I am enjoying your keen interest in my personal affairs, Frau Germer," Stretzer answered, using her formal title--he had had enough of indulging her, "no, I cannot claim the parentage of this child. But then," he added, "Save for the mother's own assertion, no proof exists that the child is your husband's."
"It is enough that I am convinced," Frau Germer said with a careful tilt of her chin, pulling her hand from her pocketbook, which she had placed on her lap. "I have documents here, just signed, that give me the rights to it, and grant its parentage as Rolf's, adding it to the Germer line."
Bronte began to fall.
"This woman, as I have been told, is a good German, yes? A daughter of the Fatherland?"
"Born and bred," Stretzer affirmed, his tone bored, as though she were insistently discussing a horse on which he had not wagered.
"If I have it from you, Major, then my last worry is laid to rest. The child may not be mine by blood, but it will be Rolf's, and that leaves only the details. Aline has been told the woman might deliver at any time."
"It is possible," Stretzer agreed with a careless shrug. "I know little of such things."
"I will have the child immediately."
There was no end to the precipice from which she had been thrown, only wind--cold and howling--swirling about her, and this hateful vision from which she could not dissociate.
"May I ask," Stretzer spoke, "beyond clearing up the uncertain issue of parentage, what brought you here, Frau? You have the papers, the legal means to accomplish what you wish--"
"I want you to talk to this woman--"
"Yes? And what would you have me say?" a twist of curiosity played at the corner of his mouth.
"Tell her that the life Rolf--and his legacy--can offer the child is beyond anything she could hope to. Tell her that I will pay--a one-time sum--if she agrees to make this simpler. With the papers, you know, I can make it unpleasant for her. I have no wish for that. No wish to see her in prison or sent to a work camp. I would think--" she stuttered a little, "in her line of work--a child could only hamper--" at a cocked eyebrow from Stretzer she cut herself off.
"You have never met this woman," Stretzer answered her, though she had asked no question. "As a courtesy I will, of course, bring your situation to her attention, but as you say, you have the papers. You hardly needed to involve me."
"Yes," Hedda agreed, "I know, but it seems only--right--to try and deal fairly with this woman--on her own terms."
"Her own terms being to sell her child to her lover's widow. Hmmm. Yes, I see," Stretzer's tone was sardonic with SS-perfected disinterest. "As you say, you've had the necessary papers drawn up," and he crossed the room to look them over from where Hedda extended them for his inspection.
The child's heartbeat within her burst to life--as though the Witchblade felt she needed a reminder of the promise she carried. Bronte struggled against the heavy weight of pain to attempt to control the fading vision--to make it show her the paperwork--to extend the vision in order to discern what happened next, but the portent of the office vanished, and she was left with her eyes filling with afternoon sun, as the concerned faces of Dominique and Mabel jockeyed for position in her line of sight.
She forced herself to form her lips into a reassuring smile for their sake. How she wished she could run--grab Mabel up in her arms, yell at Dominique to follow, and run without stopping until the smell and sight Brooklyn--the sounds of Brooklyn--washed over her, eliminating the building hysteria she felt herself now only barely sidestepping.
Looking down at the Witchblade, its stone all but pulsing in jolly time to the continuing painful spasms in her back--unmindful of consequences--Bronte threatened it in Latin. "You got me into this," she told it, her voice huffing in and out with breaths meant to assuage the onslaught of pain, "you can very well get me out."
She allowed three tears to hit her cheek before standing and assuring Dominique and Mabel that she would be all right; she just needed to get home.
It was a more truthful statement than she had uttered in a year--and more accurate than either child could possibly have understood. She just needed to get home.
.
"Vegetable, May," she told her young daughter in French, taking her hand. There had been a sack of potatoes resting--waiting--by the leg of Stretzer's attaché's desk. Bronte forced herself to submerge the pain and put one foot in front of the other. "The Major is bringing us vegetables. We must be sure to thank him." Her own voice sounded dead to her.
"Yes, Mama," Mabel promised, as Dominique began listing--still in French--the menu possibilities potatoes would present. The large, hungry eyes of the doubtfully eighteen-year-old nanny shone with the unexpected gift's potential.
Crossing the straße, American spy Elizabeth Bronte--denied absolution, her unborn child refused baptism, the originally protective lie she had manufactured about its parentage enabling another woman to legally claim it--willed herself not to vomit.
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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