Landa had seen many people 'faint' in his time in the SS. It was a good way to avoid questions. Usually, it was easy to tell when someone had 'fainted'. The movement would be slow, almost graceful, eyes closing as they floated down to the earth in a running river of limbs like people do in the movies. Particularly women. A beautiful lolling head, face obscured by a curtain of shining hair, body lying across the floor like a Grecian statue at the Louvre.
Audrey had not 'fainted'.
She had collapsed.
Her eyes had rolled back into her head and her body had fallen as though her bones were all of a sudden disconnected from one another. Dropping straight into the earth, dragged down by gravity.
Her head had met the corner of a nearby table with such an atrocious crack the woman sat at the table had screamed. Blood had poured from the gash on Audrey's hairline, matting against her hair and her skin, working its way into the carpet. She had been a mess of limbs on the floor, her spine curved to an unnatural arch, as though someone had dropped a marionette.
Audrey had not flinched or gasped or showed a flicker of consciousness.
Zoller had rolled her over with panic, the young woman grotesquely limp as she bled against the floor, her blonde hair suddenly holding a ghastly stroke of red. Landa glanced her face, the red and angry marks all precursor to some nasty bruising. Her split lip looked particularly painful.
Most of all he noticed the thick red line around her neck.
Approximately 1.2 inches wide. The same measurements as a standard-issue SS officer's belt.
A stray doctor had announced loudly 'i am a Doctor!' before he threw himself away from his dinner companions, snatched a nearby pristine white napkin and pressed it against Audrey's bloody forehead, ordering Zoller to maintain pressure. The doctor was checking her pulse, her mouth, pulling at her eyelids, slapping her face.
Landa had interrupted the scene with a swift wave of his hand, putting his gloves on with a flourish as he demanded the car to be brought around.
"I'll take her to a hospital," he had scolded the nearby man. The doctor had let go anxiously, eyes focusing still on the shattered young woman lay below his hands. Landa felt a twitch of a smile that his reputation outweighed the Hippocratic oath.
Landa instructed Zoller to pick her up, her body limp in Zoller's arms, head lolling, blood dribbling from the corner of her mouth. Zoller had looked horrified at the sight which amused Landa immensely. This 'killing machine' looked ill at the sight of blood on a pretty blonde face. No wonder Audrey had so easily evaded his men for so long.
She had been lain down in the back of the car, her head in Landa's lap. He'd examined her wounds with gloved hands. Noting the blooming bruises, the scrapes over her arms, her hands. The tiny cuts on her cheeks, no doubt caused by the rings on Klutch's hands. Her breathing was shallow, her body utterly yielding beneath his administrations. He tutted aloud, fingers on her chin, his thumb pulling down her lip to see blood coating her teeth.
When he had told Klutch last week that he was very taken with the wonderful Madmoiselle Audrey Loewe from Luxembourg, he did not think the man would react in such a fashion. Landa hadn't really thought too much of what would happen next. He had seen the lightening moment of recognition behind Klutch's eyes, the old drunk finally realising where he had seen the blonde beauty before. Klutch hadn't let on that he knew, he had simply said that Hans Landa would do well to not bother with pretty young women. Landa had smiled with cat-like glee, agreeing but arguing he doubted he'd be able to resist. The panic had ignited behind Klutch's eyes and Landa had felt sadistic joy. Landa just wished for something to happen. Something exciting. Something to frighten her. He thought perhaps Klutch would hurt her, maybe even defile her, but he was not expecting him to strangle her close to death.
He had just grown so frustrated in his desperation to know what she was hiding. He had gone off of his suspicion of the red cross doctor, and now he was assured that it was something much more serious. Much more important. It had made him feel frenzied, which he was equally thankful and hateful towards Audrey for.
He thought Klutch would fluster her, cause her to drop her guard. Perhaps he'd get her wide-eyed and terrified like the first time he had met her. Startled and flustered, leaving herself vulnerable.
Instead, he looked down at the unconscious woman in his lap and he grimaced.
Landa had handed her back to Zoller when they arrived at the American Hospital and the young man had carefully carried her inside the hospital. He felt humour that this war hero was so terrified at a little blood on a young woman. He was ginger with her, flinching when Hans Landa tossed forward her limp body from the back of the car.
"Excusez-moi!" Landa yelled when they arrived inside the building. "Some help, S'il vous plaît!"
A flurry of medical staff had rushed forward, pulling Audrey on to a gurney and whisking her away from them. She looked puppet-like, so utterly debilitated, her body under the whim of gravity.
Landa had specifically chosen the hospital because he knew that a certain young man worked there. A certain young man who had also been captured by Audrey Loewe.
A certain Doctor Oscar Clément.
Doctor Clément loved his role as a Red Cross doctor.
A role where not only was he doing the right thing, he was gaining valuable experience and garnering respect from every part of society. He hadn't initially even wanted to be a doctor, but his father who was an accomplished physician had pushed and urged until he had finally given in. Oscar hadn't wanted to play the guitar and take lovers across Paris. If he was honest he was still doing both of those things, and being a doctor certainly helped with the later.
Oscar Clément was exactly the archetype of a womaniser. He was handsome and tall, devastatingly charming and uproariously funny. He knew where all the best bars and cafe in Paris were, the perfect mixture of a bad boy due to his association with Free France and the breeding and work of a man perfect to bring home to mama and papa, and he knew exactly where to kiss beneath a girl's ear to make her melt.
Making women want him was not hard. It wasn't something he even particularly thought about.
But he was thinking about her an awful lot.
Earlier that day before his nightshift at the American Hospital he had loitered around Notre Dame in hope that he would run into her. She had blinked in surprise when he called out her name before giving him a small but devastatingly charming smile and wave. He'd taken her out for breakfast at a fancy cafe, insisted on paying, and taken her for a walk around the fourth arrondissement. He'd presented her a present while they stood against the River Seine, a small book wrapped in brown paper. She had laughed aloud when she tore the paper to see Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer. She had glanced up at him with a soft smile, her blonde hair dishevelled from the gentle fall wind. He had tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and she had looked up at him with an easy, friendly smile.
He wanted to know all of her so badly and she barely let him see an inch.
He had grown enamoured with her over the past few weeks. He took any excuse to see her and any excuse to think of her. She was the exact kind of woman he wanted to marry. One that was smart and clever and fiercely independent. One that didn't need him, but would choose him.
So as he took a small break during his night shift he had felt a thrust of physical illness when he saw her bloody and unconscious on the gurney, rushed past him with a flurry of shouts from doctors and nurses, all pulling at her, feeling for a pulse and a breath. Any sign of life.
Oscar had turned to run after her, but he heard his name shouted and had become frozen in place.
"Ah, Doctor Clément!" Landa called, waving the young man to him. Oscar looked torn for a moment, turning his head between the terrifying and infamous Jew Hunter, and the bloody and limp woman. He carefully walked towards Landa, the anxiety not a good fit to his usually confident form.
"What happened?" Oscar asked, his voice tight and eyes wide.
"We don't know," Landa said with a frown, sounding disrespectfully familiar. "My officer found her. She collapsed before we could ask."
Oscar's head swivelled back again, but Audrey had already disappeared into the labyrinth of the hospital.
Landa glanced over Oscar once more, the young man unthinking bringing his thumb to his mouth to worry on the nail as his eyes sat unseeing, glancing back again down the now empty corridor. Oscar let a dizzying array of horrifying scenarios in which Audrey would be so brutalised. They all lead in one way or another back to Hans Landa. He felt his stomach turn once more, trying to suppress the violent words and images rushing forward, making him feel faint.
"Can you think of anyone suspicious Doctor?" Landa asked. Oscar glanced back, looking even more confused and worried at the new question.
"Excusez-moi Colonel?" Oscar asked, feeling unnerved by the calmness that Landa presented. He could see speaks of her blood on the Nazi, a bloody smear against the young soldier's jacket from where he had most-likely held Audrey. At least the young private looked distressed by the bloody and twisted form that Audrey was now inhabiting.
"Do you know anyone who has been bothering her?" Landa restated, leaning forward ever so slightly.
Oscar felt the word 'you' form on his tongue, before bitterly swallowing it and instead shook his head, eyes darting to the ground.
"She looks beaten," Oscar uttered, his voice sounding choked. He was trying to stay calm but he could feel himself becoming more and more upset.
"Yes," Landa agreed casually. "Shame."
Oscar looked offended at the flippancy of Landa's reply, brows twitching into a furrow before he forced his face back to a state of flickering between emotionless and troubled.
"She is usually very pretty," Landa called back to his unnamed officer. Oscar glanced over at the blonde, blue-eyed private. The young man looked surprised, glancing between the doctor and Landa for a moment. "She is isn't she, Doctor Clément, you think she is very pretty?"
Oscar stayed silent for a long moment, rage flickering his features for the briefest of a second.
"Oui," Oscar murmured bitterly.
"Ah," Landa smiled, taking in Zoller's confusion. "You don't think she is pretty because you have only seen her face swollen and bloody. She is very pretty, she looks a lot like Gene Tierney."
"Oh," Zoller said, blinking in surprise as he tried to morph the battered woman he had seen with the iconic actress, finding the pictures difficult to overlap.
"Doesn't she look like Gene Tierney?" Landa asked Oscar.
Oscar stared at him, finding the entire conversation astonishingly distasteful.
"I think she looks like Audrey," Oscar said quietly, feeling his jaw begin to tense. "I hadn't noticed"
"Doctor Clément is quite taken by her," Landa continued easily. "Isn't that right Doctor Clément?"
Oscar said nothing.
"Ah, I understand though Doctor," Landa said amiably, smiling coolly at the young man. "Smart, tough, beautiful, it would be hard not to be! You are only human after all."
Doctor Clément said nothing.
"You can go if you wish," Landa said, flicking his hand at him. Oscar hesitated for only a moment before quickly rushing to be by Audrey Loewe's side. Landa watched the quick footsteps of Oscar Clément and smiled quietly to himself.
This was a good development. Men like Oscar were some of Hans Landa's favourite. Men whose greatest weakness was their belief in their own brilliance. Oscar Clément was this to a tee. His intelligence and handsome face made him vulnerable to somebody like Audrey. Someone who had seen too much and therefore were not as impressed by seeing someone like him. He understood Oscar's need to be witnessed by the young woman. A beautiful face with a deep, dark soul. Someone like her would be a once in a lifetime acquaintance for someone like Oscar, so of course, he wished to know her fully.
"Zoller," Landa called. Zoller stood to attention, watching Landa with a blind loyalty which made a smile twitch at Landa's lips. "Wait with her, call me when she wakes up."
"Ja Sir," Zoller barked, walking swiftly into the twisting corridors of the hospital to find the bloody blonde beauty.
Landa grinned darkly to himself.
He was sure he'd get some good use out of Oscar Clément.
