A/N: Thank you to those who are following along, and to those who reviewed. It really helped me push this chapter out much more quickly than I originally figured it'd be written. I had figured it'd take me a month, so your feedback really does make a difference.
"It's yours."
As the final syllable of Bridget von Hammersmark's declaration silenced itself on her lips, Hans Landa's eyes widened, mouth slightly opening in the process. Once he was aware that he had reacted to her statement in such a way, Landa attempted to disguise it by grimacing. With all the countless women he had slept with over the years, he had used condoms, which were certainly not in short supply to all German military personnel. In assuming that she'd be dead shortly after his lust was satiated, he had not bothered to employ one with Bridget von Hammersmark.
Him, a father? In his career-minded life, he had not considered the possibility. Sex for him was for the power-induced pleasure and nothing more. Why had he failed to kill her that night in the cinema? Life had just become much more complicated for him—but only if he accepted this new fact. Otherwise, this declaration was merely a ruse to prevent him from exacting his revenge. It was plausible. This was an actress in front of him, a double agent no less, claiming to be carrying his child.
But then again, even if she was pregnant, how could she be certain it was his? She definitely got around, and it would be no surprise if she'd slept with several men in the last couple of months. What if the new thickness of her waistline was due to a cleverly stowed pillow? Based on her penchant for telling bad lies, anything was possible. The odds were against his being the father--yet it was a definite possibility.
"Do you take me for a fool, Fraulein?" he questioned in a strained voice, retaining his hold on her neck. His grip tightened for a moment, hazel eyes briefly taking on a madness that frightened her. When he spoke again his voice was a menacing growl. "Answer my question."
"It's yours," she repeated assuredly. "You didn't use a condom, remember?"
Looking at her face, her pale blue eyes hidden behind the sunglasses but her perfectly straight nose still visible, her high cheekbones, slightly sunburned cheeks, and her thin upper lip untouched by lipstick. Oddly enough, his thoughts strayed to considerations of what her child might look like. Would it inherit her cheekbones? A daughter would be far more appropriate for her to have, for if a son were to inherit her particular features, he'd be far too pretty.
He shook his head dumbly, attempting to clear his thoughts of such schmaltzy garbage, instead reverting to remembering that evening. Such fluffy thoughts as the child's appearance were not becoming of any man, let alone a former Nazi Colonel. He had a reputation to uphold, if only in his mind.
He thought of that impromptu encounter in the cinema office, her attempts to escape thwarted again and again until at last he had flung her up against the desk and shoved himself against her protruding backside, yanking her evening gown up over her back and letting her have it. Had he been more welcomed, he would have liked to have admired that creamy derriere, its supple skin marred only by the presence of red palm prints, his palm prints from where he had spanked her over his knee. He would have held his hands upon her backside, feeling the heat emanating from it, the gooseflesh that would appear as his cool palms moved over the hot flesh, squeezing it between his fingers. Even though he had not been able to focus his attention on her perfect derriere that evening, he was able for the first time to stare unabashedly into Bridget von Hammersmark's eyes and to admire her features without her averting her eyes as she did in every previous encounter—moreover, to see parts of her he had always wanted to look upon.
His hunger for her had been insatiable that evening, a feeling that had overcome him in a way he had never experienced. As never before, the lust racing between his brain and loins verged on animalistic and so he fittingly planned on taking her on all fours, but it ended up being over the desk. Oh, I could never forget the view of Fraulein von Hammersmark, bent over to receive—
"Please remove your hands from my neck," she suddenly commanded, her voice louder and more forceful. She had been watching his subtle changes in expression, his strange head-shaking and naughty little ghost of a grin playing across his lips as he stood before her in silence. His steady hold on her neck was beginning to unnerve her, her confession not eliciting the expected effect. Perhaps he needed to be snapped back to reality before he would reconsider any rash action. To strangle someone was so very gut wrenching—such a gruesome thought for one's own hands to be the sole cause of death.
Her mouth again closing after her statement was made, she did not bother to pull Landa's hands off of her; rather, she dropped her hand off her pregnant belly, the other hand still clutching her sunglasses with a death grip. She hoped he couldn't feel her uneasiness at the moment, not having considered the possibility of him killing her after knowing this information, but then again, he did have fewer morals than the average man, if his career and his rape of her were any indications of it. How presumptuous she had been!
Suddenly Landa had been shocked back to reality, and he wasn't too happy about it. Oh yes, Bridget von Hammersmark was claiming to be carrying his child. But… why?
"Why didn't you rid yourself of it?" Landa spoke, his voice a harsh whisper. She stared at him incredulously, noticing his wrinkled brow, the deep creases around his mouth. Landa knew full well that abortions were both illegal and dangerous and yet was curious as to why she didn't have one anyway. Why should she be willing to carry his child for nine months if she could find some money-hungry doctor who'd end its existence professionally?
"As you can certainly relate, Mister Landa," she said bitterly, adding a pause, "I will do anything to avoid death—which would have been a very real possibly if I chose to rid myself of it," she replied matter-of-factly. "It's not what you would call a safe procedure."
Landa half-frowned at her, obviously unsatisfied with her statement and her intentional drop of his official title of Colonel with such a commonplace, American address. And what nerve it took for her to accuse him of doing anything to avoid death!—not that it wasn't true, of course. Noticing his irritability, she continued to explain, though with much less confidence.
"Besides, if you were to seek me out, my carrying your child should—"
"Tsk tsk, Fraulein," he interrupted. She promptly shut her mouth, feeling a shadow of a cloud settling over her, enveloping her in cool shadow, though Landa remained in the sunlight. Landa paused a moment, looking completely satisfied with the situation as he thoughtfully bit his smiling lower lip, before continuing. "Based on that assumption, you really don't know me very well at all…."
His smile instantly disappeared, an indentation in his jaw emerging as he gritted his teeth. The colored part of his eyes turned black. Her breath caught in her throat independently of his steady grip on her neck. He leaned towards her smilingly, his mouth in his characteristic lopsided smirk.
"I offer my condolences for your ill-conceived pregnancy," he murmured, his lips almost grazing her face. "But that doesn't pardon you. Farewell, Bridget." The hair on his forehead close enough that it tickled her skin, he glanced downwards at what was presumably her bump, his face positively glowing. "Bye bye baby. A shame you have to suffer for the sins of your mother."
He looked up at Bridget, his smile taking on a new level of devilishness when paired with his earlier sentiments, and spoke again to his victim.
"You're only a step from being Catholic; would you say I'm saving your baby from original sin, is it?"
The look falling upon Bridget's face was that of pure horror. Oh, why hadn't she thought to bring her 0.38 special outside with her as she sunbathed? She could have ended this encounter before it had even begun. She had figured if Landa had ever chosen to track her down, that he'd allow her to live once he discovered she was carrying his child. Instead, he was actually mocking the fact that he was going to kill his own progeny!—which of course meant she would die as well.
Without giving her any time to answer—not that he was expecting an answer anyhow—Landa leaned away from the shadows that had settled over her, the smirk remaining, his eyes glittering in the restored sunlight of his position. There was a moment of thick silence in which Bridget felt her heart stop for what seemed like ten seconds, an absolute absence of air between them.
She was soon aware that his thumbs were digging into her throat, completely obstructing her air supply. His hands tightened around her neck like a noose, the coarseness of his hands like sandpaper as he gripped the flesh tighter and tighter. She cursed herself for not having taken one last deep breath. Her jaw dropped, eyes going wide with sheer terror, as she stared into his glittering eyes, noticing his bared teeth as he squeezed tighter and tighter. How could she have been so foolish as to assume that this man had any kind of morality about him? Her pregnancy had made her complacent, had made her presume she'd be safe from the unspeakable evils that lie within Landa's eyes. She never in a million years thought she'd be fighting for her life, but here she was, helpless at the hands of Hans Landa.
He had triumphed. He had gotten the last word. She had underestimated his ruthlessness and now she would pay. Forgetting her pride now, she wished she could surrender to him, give him time to reconsider, but it was so very hard to speak, to breathe….
His face reddening, the veins of his forehead protruding from exertion, Landa continued to crush Bridget von Hammersmark's throat, feeling the rigid bulges of her windpipe, the deep red thumbprints he left in her skin. She was bug-eyed, her pupils like pinpricks, eyebrows as high as they could possibly go as she attempted to escape, to make herself fall to the ground, both to no avail. All she could hear was her own heartbeat, ever-increasing in volume and speed, until she was certain her brain would explode from the pressure.
Moments of her life rapidly swept through her brain, appearing for an instant and then disappearing. Her parents at Christmas, handing her a soft oddly shaped package--a blonde doll that had quickly become her favorite. Her brother, pulling her braid out of her knitted cap as they played in the snow. Her first kiss, at age 14--the neighbor boy with the crooked teeth and the chapped lips. A blissfully romantic dinner with her first love--she couldn't recognize the face, though, the face surrounded by a halo of dark curls—in Paris, she thought; wasn't that the Eiffel Tower in the distance? Oh, God, what was happening to her? Strutting down the red carpet arm in arm with—was that her father? The face was blurred. Time was running out; the colors were fading fast. Faces became smeared; a fog settled over her mind's eye of her life; her memories were being taken from her, one by one. She was dying.
As her memories spun about her dimming mind, she opened and closed her mouth like a fish out of water, jamming her plastic sunglasses into Landa's hand as she struggled to make him remove his hands from her throat. He was too close for her to attempt to knee him in the groin, and her mercilessly stomps onto his feet were met with mere throaty chuckles from the strangler. It was as if nothing fazed him—he could feel no pain.
When the sunglasses broke into tiny plastic pieces on the grass, she reverted to mindlessly clawing at his hands, digging her nails into his knuckles. Though she was successfully attacking his knuckles, now bleeding thick crimson drops both onto the sleeves of his shirt and onto the neck of her sundress, he could not feel any pain, for he was too far-gone by this point. Pain could not stop him from exacting his revenge—besides, these varied weak attempts at fighting him off were like brushes of a feather compared to the torturous procedure Aldo Raine had performed on his forehead in the forest. Nothing would stop him from silencing her for good.
He held fast as he kept his eyes on her bluing face, noticing a spot of hemorrhaging around the pale blue of her eyes; it would soon be over. With her final store of strength in her dying body she shoved herself into him, her belly pushed against his own, eyes rolling back into her head.
He felt Bridget's firm flesh press into his abdomen, and with her belly shoved flush against him, he felt an independent nudge from within the bulge of her abdomen—a shove as if from a tiny flailing foot. That's not a pillow. The baby was dying as well, flailing about as it suffocated in its own way. His only progeny. A boy or a girl nestled in the confines of this woman's womb, a potential son or a daughter growing inside of her. A thought suddenly struck him, his hairs standing on end: he had let the Jewish girl live, but not his own child?!
Landa's hands immediately went slack on his victim's neck, but Bridget von Hammersmark had since fallen unconscious and began to topple backward, her eyes open and unblinking. His heart thudding in his chest from the rush of adrenaline in his system, Landa shot out his hands, this time grabbing her shoulders and pulling her towards him. She fell into him like a sack of potatoes, limp and devoid of life.
A couple more adjustments followed of his handle on the cargo, and in less than a minute Landa was carrying Bridget von Hammersmark in his arms as he tromped toward her house, a modest redbrick ranch-style home. She was rather heavy, a dead weight in his arms, and so was difficult to position correctly. During his trek he stumbled several times, cursing his inappropriate footwear each time. Her footwear, on the other hand, was missing. He had left her polka dot heels behind in the grass. All anger had left Hans Landa's face, replaced with a tight-lipped grimace of concern.
He crossed the threshold with his limp cargo, stepping into her living room. In any other situation he would have taken in the sights and smells of a home to detect minute clues of any hidden guests or merely to learn about its inhabitants, but he was in a hurry and had to ignore his instincts. He did happen to notice that the rug covering a large percentage of the wood floor was a deep burgundy and completely devoid of any pattern, a plain rug he could have seen himself buying. The furniture was also quite simple: a black vinyl sofa and recliner, a cheap-looking end table with a cheap-looking coffee table to match. Certainly not the lifestyle of the rich and famous. A pack of cigarettes and a newspaper sat on the coffee table. There was a rather beautiful radio cabinet crafted of mahogany against the wall, the dials polished and shining like gold, its glass panels smudge-free and practically transparent. From it the relaxed jazz chords of Stardust floated, the bass rich and treble devoid of tinnyness. She certainly took pride in this possession. Evidently she listened to this radio a lot, to splurge on such an expensive item. He wondered if she listened to the news; perhaps she'd heard of his being awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. With half a smirk on his lips at the thought of her fuming over the news, he glanced down at her. However, at the sight of her, the smirk quickly faded into a grimace.
For all intents and purposes, Bridget von Hammersmark looked dead. Her skin was an unnatural shade of gray, trumping any tan she had acquired since moving to California. Her chest did not rise and fall, and he could not see a pulse in her neck, which he suspected should be quite fast at this point—if she had survived the attack. Most telling was her eyes, wide open with surprise and rolled back in her head, the only color visible a sliver of pale blue marred with angry red tendrils of hemorrhaging.
Hans Landa moved quickly through the living room and down a narrow carpeted hallway, pushing his way into the final door he encountered: the bedroom, he had presumed. He was correct. With great care he lowered Bridget von Hammersmark's body onto her sprawling mattress, and then immediately turned on his heel and left the room.
Within moments he returned with a handful of water, which he poured over her forehead. She didn't stir. He slapped her face. No response; not so much as a blink. Frowning, he put his ear down onto her chest. Silence. He peered down at her, at her gray skin, her lifeless eyes and blue lips, the look of horror on her face. Suddenly, a cold sweat seemed to be gushing out of his every pore, streaming down his face, down his throat as he observed her lifeless state. Not taking his eyes off her, he used a clammy hand to wipe off his face, his fingers inadvertently brushing over the hidden scar on his forehead. An unfamiliar sensation overcame him and he swallowed several times as he stared off into space, pondering what this sensation could mean.
He had traveled here for the sole purpose of killing Bridget von Hammersmark, the traitorous German actress who had dared humiliate him. He had accomplished his goal, doing so with minimal effort and while retaining the element of surprise—so why did he suddenly feel sick to his stomach?
A/N: Please leave me feedback so I have the encouragement to write, and write more quickly at that! I apologize for the lack of steaminess in this chapter, but you can be assured it will be set up properly before I delve into it! Anyway, I did change the rating to M for the violence. If you are watching out for this fic, it won't be in the default view, as you already realize... Thanks again!