She watched the milk bloom against the amber liquid of the tea with heavy lids, clouding the fine china it sat in, making the liquid opaque is it hid the many intricate details of what she silently considered may be made of actual gold.
"Sugar?"
She weakly shook her head. She couldn't remember a time when she had been more tired. The adrenaline had run out of her the moment they had arrived at the manor house in an upscale part of Paris. She thought she'd be at the hotel Lutetia, perhaps even with a bullet lodged in her brain as she bleeds out on some basement floor. She had also considered as the panic crept back in that Landa had Klutch tied up in some dark corner, and she'd be tossed to him. He could tear her apart like a pack of wild dogs.
But he hadn't. He had spoken absentmindedly with his young driver in the front seat, ignoring her for the rest of the drive. They had driven for what felt like was an entirety until they had turned down a leafy and nondescript Parisian street. She glanced out the window to see the beautiful stone mansion. One of those beautiful houses that belonged to diplomats or politicians or movie stars.
He'd whistled for her to be dragged from the car and she had followed without thought into the beautiful house. It crawled with Nazi's, all pausing to stare at her in shock, Landa's hand firmly on her shoulder, then interviewing her in his office, before he handed her to the maid.
She finally willed herself to look upon him across the grand desk he sat behind. He worked on her tea, his hands making flourishes as he did so. She noted he put sugar in her tea despite her decline. He looked remarkably approachable, smiling softly at her across the table and gesturing easily for her to take a sip. She slowly rose her bound hands, the iron of the handcuffs tinkling against the desk as she lifted the cup, took a taste, hands wrapping to support the fine cup. She did, and he waited patiently for her review, eyes wide and expectant.
"Very good," she agreed, putting the fine cup down. He clapped his hands together loudly and let out a low chuckle when he saw her wince.
"It's from India, directly," he told her, grinning as though she would squeal in delight at such a discovery. She nodded again and sat back in her velvet upholstered chair. Her hands folded in her lap. She noted the smear of blood on the fine china in front of her with absent-mindedness.
"You called me the Jew Hunter twice this week," he said, turning back to the copious notes he had been taking. She nodded weakly once more.
"Everyone does," Audrey said, tired by yet another line of inane questioning that existed only to interest himself. She could feel Eli's blood dry and flake on her skin and hair.
"Do they?" Landa said, a freshly excited grin gracing his face. His eyes, however, stayed unnervingly focused upon her. "I love rumours. Would you care to share what you heard?"
She stared at him, still handcuffed, still drenched in the blood of his latest kill.
"At first," she said coldly. "That you were a brilliant detective… then in years to come after that it was magic perhaps, that you could even smell Jews. Then, by the time you were Standartenführer, I heard a nun say that she felt you may have a direct communiqué with the devil."
Landa laughed aloud.
"You think I can speak to the devil?" Landa queried.
"I don't believe in the devil," she said quietly. "I think we make enough hell for ourselves."
"Very Russian," he chuckled darkly. "What is that infamous joke you all enjoy so much? When you have hit rock bottom..."
"…You hear a knock below," she finished for him. He let out a bark of laughter, almost startling her. She was sure she would have flinched if she wasn't so exhausted. She looked at his pages of well-kept notes. It had either been hours or minutes, but she wasn't sure. He'd made her cycle through what had happened endlessly, and she was sure in the hope she would spill some hidden secret, make a semantic mistake. He wanted the blood in the water. All the blood she had was sprayed all over her face.
He had asked her why she had done it again and again and each time she would say 'because he was a child, Hans'.
Finally, he had called for a maid to take her and clean her up. Audrey had muttered 'merci' when he uncuffed her, feeling nauseous at the way he seemed almost alight with excitement to see the red rings imprinted against her skin, her irritated flesh glowing beneath his hands. He'd noted almost gleefully that it would bruise. She had followed the unnamed woman. Audrey allowed the woman to undress her in the stranger's bathroom, her foreign hands feeling cold but polite. Audrey watched the swirls of pink water run from her body, disturbed once more as the unnamed maid plunged the sponge into the soapy water once more, sopping her hair gently again. She looked up at the woman who calmly worked on her, carefully clearing off the death and decay that Audrey felt as though was tattooed to her.
"Merci," Audrey whispered, her throat sounding tight and dry.
"You should have a drink of sherry," the maid said quietly. "It'll help you warm up."
Audrey shook her head, closing her eyes once more as the woman worked on her. Audrey sat, naked, washed clean by a stranger in the servant's quarters, her brain unable to catch up with what exactly had happened. When the woman decided Audrey was clean, Audrey realised that she could not ever feel clean again.
The woman had dressed her in ill-fitting men's pyjamas, brushed her hair, and lead her barefoot through the house, her hand in Audrey's.
Audrey's numbness was softly punctured by her name being called. She felt the maid tense, her hand wrapping protectively to Audrey's. She didn't even know this woman, but Audrey had considered quietly that she perhaps was not the first young woman Hans had handed over to be cleaned thoroughly of the blood he'd helped spray all over them. The woman had done it with such ease It seemed likely that it was a monthly occurrence.
Zoller stood in the hallway, eyes swelled at the sight of her. A grand mirror stood behind him and Audrey was able to see the scene as though she wasn't in her own body. She looked so small in the over-sized pyjamas. Her wet hair already beginning to set to waves. She noted her face still hadn't healed from Klutch and the red, purple, and yellow marks across her seemed as though they'd scrubbed up even brighter. She looked awfully young, awfully vulnerable, and awfully sad.
'Are you ok?'
She glanced back to see him watching her with genuine concern. She wondered quietly if Hans had told him, called him here without sharing the real reason for doing so. Audrey simply nodded, noting that her hand was returning the firm grip of the maid.
"Ah, Audrey!"
She gulped and closed her eyes momentarily. She'd let herself lie upon the floor to sleep if she could. Exhausted by the whole thing. The game, the charade. She knew she would do anything to survive, but surviving was seeming less and less meaningful to her.
Landa arrived behind Zoller in the luxurious hallway, obscuring her view of herself in the mirror. Zoller saluted, like a dog sitting for a treat, and Landa landed a heavy and warm clasp on his shoulder.
"Nein nein," he scolded with a chuckle. "We're all friends here."
She watched Zoller give an anxious smile in response and she almost twitched a smile. Even other Nazi's were fearful of Hans Landa. Pathetic.
'Much better Audrey," Landa noted. "All cleaned up."
"My face is still battered," Audrey muttered in English. She saw Zoller pull a slight frown at being ignored from the conversation but Landa smiled with wolf-like appreciation of her observation.
"You are worse for wear… did they bruise you up even more?" He responded in English. Audrey shrugged but she caught the maid give an involuntary nod. The woman had more knowledge of Audrey's body that Audrey had in that numb and dread-filled moment.
"Shame, shame," He tutted, switching seamlessly back to German. "The fräulein has been involved in something very dreadful, dear Doctor Oscar Clemént has tricked her into being involved with some free French nonsense."
Zoller blinked at this, unsure on what to say.
"Poor miss Audrey, she thought she was just bringing a child for a walk, but it wasn't a child, nein, it was a Jew," Landa said. Audrey watched Zoller give an involuntary grimace of disgust at the word 'Jew' and she nearly barked a laugh. He'd sink to his knees to fuck her, she knew that. He had envisioned that she could be his wife, but she was as Jewish as Eli. She was just as filthy in his eyes.
"He was still a child," Audrey said in English. Landa let out a smirk.
"Was," he repeated, letting out a small huff of laughter at his own wordplay.
"Are you ok Audrey?" Zoller repeated, once again physically discomforted by the switch to English. She noted he has asked in French. She hated that he spoke French to her.
She shook her head finally, feeling a level of exhaustion only comparable to the one she had felt when she had arrived at Mariam's door all those years ago, covered in blood, too tired to feel anything other than the sweet call of sleep.
"I am trés tired," she whispered, her voice cracking. She watched Landa's eyes flash in delight at her little display of vulnerability. Zoller melted at it, as she knew he would, touched by her soft, feminine moment. Audrey's legs felt weak. Her sides ached, her head thrummed. She wished to be done now. To lay down. To forget it all in sleep if only for a moment.
"Zoller, may you accompany Miss Audrey to her room? I fear she won't be able to stand for much longer. Some of the younger soldiers were a little rough with her during the randevu, you know how they can be, excitable," he said, grinning as he watched Zoller let out a fresh wince of discomfort. She knew Landa was replaying with joy the image of the young men tossing her fragile form around the church, leaving her body bloomed with more injury, more bruising, more violence.
"Of course, Mademoiselle Audrey?" Zoller nodded. She looked to him as he stepped forward, holding out a hand with his posture perfect. "May I?"
She nodded and felt a stab of hurt when the maid's hand left hers. The woman stepped away from Zoller's imposing figure, her polished shoes loud against the hardwood below. Audrey took it and Zoller wrapped his arm carefully to her waist to support her. They began to walk, following the maid whose head was held low in shame or fear, Audrey wasn't sure, guiding them towards what Audrey was sure would become somewhat of a cell for her.
They passed Landa slowly and she felt his gaze drill into her, but she didn't look. She didn't care. She didn't want to play the game tonight. She wanted to be asleep.
They had walked in silence, though the fizzle of the unsaid words and questions in Zoller's mouth were louder than if he had spoken to her. They arrived at the heavy oak door, a flight of stairs away from where they had stood in the hallway. The house was enormous, and Audrey felt a brief stab of panic at realising that she wouldn't know how to find her way out, before the cementing feeling of knowing she had nowhere to go dispelled the fear. The maid hovered nervously for a moment by the open doorway, eyeing Zoller carefully.
"You may go now, Merci," he said with a friendly smile, but Audrey watched the maid wince, knowing there had been a flash of aggression in his eyes as he said it.
She scampered away and Zoller had carefully walked Audrey in, leaving the door open much to her relief.
It was a beautiful bedroom, the fourposter bed set against the far wall, beautiful high and tall windows facing out into the evening light, velvet curtains yet to be pulled. Zoller stepped away from her and Audrey stood alone for a moment, watching the fluttering leaves on the grand trees out of the window. Zoller pulled the covers back before helping her up onto the very tall bed, her tiny body betraying her once more. He was too close to her, she could smell him. She involuntarily winced as he applied the lightest of pressure to her ribs to help up, her hands on his shoulders.
"Désolé," he murmured, noting her pained wince.
"It's fine," she said quietly. "It will heal."
They paused in the position for too long and Audrey watched him stare at her with an intensity that she did not care for.
"You are too kind," he finally said, his hands still on her. She felt her heart speed up, the intimacy of the conversation the last thing she needed. She hoped he couldn't feel it through her ribs.
"Private Zoller-"
"Frederick," he corrected. She willed her face to be still, the feeling of disgust so intense she was shocked she didn't spit. "You are too kind Audrey, you let this doctor take advantage of you because you are kind."
She said nothing, staring at him. She was exhausted. She didn't have it in her to do this with him.
"The world is unkind," Zoller continued, a determination in his gaze. "The world is not good to the kind, and you must remember this. I have read your file, I know you have seen the bad and the good of it all, but you must begin to think more clearly-"
"Private Zoller-" Audrey once again attempted, feeling ill that he had read her file. He knew of her parents, her life, her worst moments. She hated Hans Landa so intently for a moment it burned to her bones.
"There won't always be a Herr Landa to step in, to protect you," he said. Audrey snuffed the burst of nasty laughter she wished to expel at such a ridiculous sentence. The idea of the lamb turning to the wolf for safety. She would deserve to have her throat bitten and torn.
"Private Zoller-"
"Audrey I am trying to tell you something important," he said, sounding irritated at her interruptions. "You must learn to put your faith in powers where it belongs. Not with men like Oscar Clement-"
She knew it was coming, the 'I could protect you' sentiment. Men had done this to her for years. They were harmless, often almost charmingly pathetic. She was soft and sweet and beautiful. She was used to eliciting such emotions of protection in men who did not know her from Adam. But those men were nobodies. They were Aurthur's friends, men whose clothes she had stitched. They weren't the darlings of the Reich. They weren't the lackies of the Jew Hunter and Joseph Goebbels himself.
"Frederick," Audrey said quietly, watching him be thrown off-kilter for a soft second. "I am so so tired, s'il vous plaît."
She let the right amount of emotion bleed into her voice, let tears of pain and anger wet her lashes just enough that he relinquished his sermon, a soft look of pained understanding reaching his expression instead.
"Of course," he said, nodding firmly. "Of course, Audrey."
She let go of him and clambered the rest of the way to the bed, disliking how his hands had lingered on her. She rested in the middle, far from his grip as he pulled the blanket over her, moving softy to draw the curtains.
"Are you comfortable?" He asked gently with the same care a mother would ask a child. She hated him at that moment. Instead, she nodded softly at him snuggled further into the fabric around her.
He watched her for a moment too long before bidding goodnight, softly closing the door behind him. A few moments passed before fresh footsteps arrived. Audrey watched from the bed as she heard the heavy key lock the wooden door at the far side of the room.
Audrey let it sink in before she was pulled under by sleep. She was trapped.
