'"Come to West Berlin. Answer my letters. Where is your father." On they go, tedious and inevitable.' The commandant closed the office door and made his way slowly toward Beth, the expression of dangerous, barely suppressed anger melting away, being replaced with one of thoughtful placidity. He put his hands in his pockets, affecting a casual attitude. But Beth wasn't fooled. She'd seen the look in his eyes a moment ago, and whatever mask he wore now, that was his true face.

Blake shook his head, coming to a stop on the other side of the desk. 'Why couldn't you be satisfied, Beth? I let you see your father. I told you there was nothing to be done for him – and there is nothing you can do. He will die in that prison.'

Beth flinched. The letter shook in Beth's hands but she forced her voice to remain steady. 'Why have we never received any of these letters? My mother thinks we have deserted her.'

The commandant shook his head. 'No, Beth. It is she who has deserted you.'

No, she hadn't. Beth had read enough to see that she was desperate to be united with her family again. Conditions were terrible in East Berlin. If she came back then she'd be trapped just like her daughters. And yet ... part of Beth wished she had come back in any case. They needed their mother.

Beth mentally shook herself. That was something she'd talk to Maggie about, not Blake. 'It is not her fault she was on the wrong side of the Wall when it went up.'

He lifted an eyebrow. 'And did she come back to you like a good East German woman would have done? Or did she stay selfishly in the West?'

'Her family is there,' Beth whispered. Her sisters. Her mother and father. It was sensible for her mother to have stayed in West Berlin and try to get her children out from there. But despite this, there was still a niggle of hurt.

Blake began to walk around the desk toward her. Beth felt a prickle go down her spine. She'd thought the emptiness of the building would work in her favour, but now she saw that it was the opposite. She was alone in Stasi Headquarters with Commandant Blake.

She backed away around the desk, keeping it between them like a shield. Was he going to attack her, hurt her, like Daryl said he would? Daryl, who'd wanted her to leave because she was in danger. Daryl, who'd kissed her and held her close and made her feel that maybe there could be true happiness in this world. She'd fought to stay here to be with him, but that had meant staying on the same side of the Wall as Blake. She didn't have a gun, and now she was alone with Blake. An angry Blake.

'It wouldn't have changed anything if we'd received her letters,' Beth said. 'We might even have been able to persuade my mother to come home.'

He gave her a tight smile. 'Perhaps.'

He was still moving toward her. She was backing away, matching his steps, and now she was closest to the door. Nothing had happened yet. Nothing needed to happen. He was pretending to be a gentleman again. She put down the letters, gave him a brittle smile and said, 'Well, goodnight, commandant.' Then she turned on her heel and walked quickly to the door.

He stopped her with a word. 'Beth.'

She halted, hearing an ominous note in his voice. She turned slowly and looked at him.

'I am a patient man, Beth,' he said, advancing toward her. 'And I am a forgiving man. But you owe me an explanation. What were you doing going through my papers?'

He had to know how threatening he looked, twice her size and with the weight of his power behind him. He had to know how afraid she was becoming. There was no innocent reason for to come into his office after hours and search through his things. Would the truth anger him, or placate him? She didn't know, and took refuge in silence.

He moved around her, placing his back against the door, blocking her exit. 'You're going to tell me. One way or another.'

There was something menacing in his face that told her it was over. His pretence of kindness. Gentleness. This was the real Blake, the one who'd screwed Lori over his desk and looked over Ana's dead body with a dispassionate glance. That other Blake who'd kissed her and told her about losing Hannah to the Nazis, was he even real? Maybe once he had been, but he'd been burned away by anger and hate. The commandant knew what she'd been looking for. Her father's file, to find out what Blake had done to her family. Why had he done it? Why imprison her good-hearted, kind father? There was no good reason. Blake had hurt them all so much. She wanted to lash out and hurt him.

'She probably couldn't believe her luck,' Beth muttered.

Blake frowned, puzzled. 'Who?'

'Hannah. When you were posted abroad.'

A split second before he back-handed her she saw his eyes go black. The blow knocked her sideways and she staggered, eyes screwed shut, her right cheek and lower lip stinging. The blow shocked her, as much for the pain of it as his reaction. She'd picked the first thing that had come into her head to try and hurt him with but hadn't expected to find her mark so swiftly. Blake had talked of Hannah as if he'd truly loved her. But maybe the worry had kept him up late at night: that she hadn't loved him. He'd never know now she was dead.

Or maybe he just resented Beth speaking so familiarly about his dead girlfriend.

'Why must women,' he growled, 'talk themselves dead?' She could barely see him through her watering eyes. 'Hmm?' he asked. 'Women cannot keep secrets, or hold their tongues, or be content with someone who can give them a good life in a cruel world. I have been here for you Beth, and yet you act like a spoiled brat.'

'You have imprisoned my father and denied me my mother,' Beth blinking away tears. 'That is not giving me a good life.'

'I let you see your father,' he yelled, letting his temper off its leash. 'I did what is right for you, and this is what you give me in return.'

You are doing what is right for yourself. Beth took several deep breaths and blinked to clear her eyes. His idea of a good life and hers were very different. What did he want from her? Someone who closed her eyes to everything around her except him? Someone who was blind to the suffering he was causing her family? If she'd been more like Shawn maybe then she could, but she wasn't like her brother. She could think for herself.

Beth lifted her chin. 'What is it you want me to say? I lied to you the very first night we met, and you know that. I wasn't meeting Ana. I was protecting her from you. And yet you wanted me here.'

'You came,' he said, glowering. 'You wanted to get out of that factory. I did that for you.'

Did he truly believe that she'd come of her own free will? That she'd wanted to come? 'I had no choice! You have infinite power. I have none. I cannot say no to you out of fear for my life. Why don't you find someone who doesn't want to say no to you?'

He looked away, and there was grief in his eyes as well as anger.

Beth thought about the photograph of Blake and Hannah in the park. How happy they'd looked together. How eerily similar Beth and the young woman looked. The blow on her cheek was throbbing. It was Hannah Blake was really angry with, not her. 'You blame her for her death, don't you?' Beth said softly, wanting to reason with him, not anger him further. 'And your daughter's death. You think Hannah betrayed her Jewishness to someone and that's how the Nazis found her out. That's what you meant by women talking themselves dead.'

'They found out somehow,' he muttered, his hands clenched by his sides. 'She'd been living as an Aryan for years. She must have given herself away.' The hurt was raw on his face, as if Hannah had only just died. He was still angry, but Beth could sense the current changing as the hurt came to the surface. 'She let my daughter be murdered by those people. I can never forgive her.'

He hated Hannah, and yet he loved her still. Even if he wasn't a Stasi officer, even if he hadn't imprisoned her father and kept her mother's letters from her, he would never be able to make Beth or any other woman happy while he held onto so much blame.

Despite the blow, despite the fact that he'd imprisoned her father and kept her mother's letters from them, she felt pity for him. Pity that he couldn't move on. He didn't see that the Nazis had separated him from his family, and he was doing the same to families for another political cause.

She whispered, 'We can't keep seeing each other and working together. It's not my fault I look like her.'

Blake was looking beyond her, his face softened by memory and grief. A second passed in silence. Then her words seemed to sink in and he looked up at her slowly. That black look flashed in his eyes again, the look she'd seen the split-second before he'd hit her. 'How do you know what she looked like?'

Beth's breath hitched, realising her slip. 'You said. At your apartment. You know, blonde, slender.'

He straightened. Took a step toward her. 'You're lying, Beth. Don't you remember I can tell when people lie? Have you been snooping in more than just your father's file?'

She shook her head, looking at the braid on his uniform, not able to meet his eye. Her heart beat faster as she backed away. You idiot, you little idiot. 'I don't know what you mean.'

'Liar!' He grabbed her and pushed her onto the desk, flat on her back. Her shoulders were pinned by his hands and his body was heavy on hers. 'Stop lying to me, Beth.' His eyes were blazing with fury.

She struggled, unable to get away from him. How could she have been so stupid? She thought she was being clever, showing him the source of his anger, showing him it wasn't her he wanted an explanation from, but Hannah. 'Let go! Let go of me, please.'

He didn't seem to hear her. He spoke through gritted teeth, his blazing eyes boring into hers. 'Every day people lie to me. The man on the street. My own men. I can see it in their shifty eyes. Sometimes they're small lies and sometimes their fat, traitorous lies. People think they can outsmart me, that I won't be able to tell. But I can. Always. Tell.' He slammed her head and shoulders hard against the desk, twice, punctuating his words.

Beth fumbled about for something to hit him with. A phone receiver. A heavy book. There were only papers. Then her hand closed over something thin and metal and she stopped thinking altogether. There was just the object in her hand and Blake's murderous face a few inches from her own. She grasped the object and drove it into his face.

Blake reeled back with a scream. Something hot sprayed over Beth's face. She blinked, clearing her eyes, and saw a long, thin metal object protruding from the commandant's right eye.

Oh, Beth thought. That's what it was. A letter opener, pointy end in.

And then she ran.

…

'What the fuck's goin' on?' Merle wiped sleep from his eyes and struggled toward the door in the dark. Someone was beating on the front door. Someone come to arrest him or Daryl? He almost wouldn't be surprised.

But it wasn't soldiers. It was Beth.

'Daryl,' she said, voice high and strange. 'Where's Daryl?'

'He ain't here girl. What's happened?'

She fell back a step, disappointed. She was shaking. The light from the hallway fell over her face and hands, and Merle saw she was bruised and sprayed with blood. There was more blood on her hands. Was it her blood? He didn't think so. Merle couldn't see any wounds. 'Beth, what the fuck's happened?'

But she turned and ran.

'Fuckin' wait!' he muttered, fumbling for his boots, but giving up when he heard the downstairs door slam.

…

Daryl pounded up the stairs to the Greene's apartment three at a time, adrenalin surging through him. He shouldn't have listened to Beth when she'd insisted on staying. Now something had happened to her and he knew that Blake had something to do with it. If he'd touched her – if he'd hurt her –

Daryl was going to kill him. Simple as that. That scum wouldn't draw another breath if he'd laid a hand on Beth. Blood on her, Merle had said. And frightened.

The door was unlocked. He found Maggie at the kitchen table, weeping. She looked up with a start. Her eyes we bloodshot, like she'd been crying with everything she had.

'Oh, Daryl,' she said, folding in on herself. 'You're too late. They've taken her.'

…

Merry Christmas everyone! I finished this while Christmas dinner was cooking. Sorry that it was such an un-cheery, un-Christmassy chapter. (OK not really sorry :D)

What do you thinks going to happen next? Daryl will rescue Beth? Beth will rescue herself? Blake will let her go?