Demons 1/3
May. 30th, 2011 11:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nike_ravusTitle: Demons (1/3)
Author: Alsike
Pairing: Emma Frost/Emily Prentiss, some Emily/Pietro Maximoff
Rating: NC-17 – Not just for sex. Warnings: War, violence, threat of rape.
Fandom: X-Men/Criminal Minds
Disclaimer: Not my girls.
Word Count: 5621
Summary: So this is the story I mentioned ages ago. It’s been taking form in my notebook, and I’ve finally typed up part 1. I make no claim of factual accuracy in any way, but if I’m way off, feel free to let me know. I don’t know how long the next bits will take me, but I hope not too long. Let me know what you think. This is kind of a stretch for me.
Emily's springer spaniel jumped up pressing its paws against the hem of her skirt yapping happily. She bent down, scratching it behind the fluffy ears. Pietro always laughed at her, wondering why she hadn't named it. "You call the bitch 'darling,' or 'baby' all the time. Just give her a name and be sad when you lose her."
Emily just smiled. It was a mistake to make him think too much about what might occur to make Emily lose the spaniel, but not naming her was just considered a quirk. She had thought the spaniel herself had been a mistake, but Pietro loved her too, and called her 'darling' just as often. He would come in from drill and scoop her into his lap, letting her kiss his face and make him laugh.
That had been the turning point for Emily as well, coming in to see him laughing, his light hair disordered by the dog's kisses. And he had looked up at her and smiled, as if he truly liked her, and she wasn't the woman given to him by his father to take to bed and to look presentable at parties. She had moved to him, cupping the spaniel's head, her fingertips brushing against the warm softness of the underside of its ear, and leaned in to kiss him. She pushed the spaniel off, sending her skittering towards her food dish, and took the clip out of her hair, shaking down her French knot, letting her hair fall to her shoulders. Then she had fucked Pietro on the floor, kissing his neck and ear, and riding him until he was gasping and shaking and coming inside of her.
Last night as well, she had spent hours pleasing him, and now he lay on his stomach under the blankets, snoring like the dead. Emily whispered to the dog in German, telling her to be quiet and not wake her papa, before turning back to her letter.
2/1/1918
I can stay no longer. If my work is to be worth anything it must be employed immediately, before Magnus has a chance to alter his preparations. The German advance must be stopped. With the information I have collected it should be possible to destroy the secret locations that they have stored the guns, and intercept and counter their advance. If I do not make it across the lines in three days, assume the worst and use the enclosed information to mount a counterattack. Begin by destroying or taking the radio tower at Amiens. They intend to use it to control the Zeppelin bombers.
God willing, I will see you in three days. Until then, adieu, and if I do not return, please inform my mother that...
Emily's pen hovered over the page, and ink dripped onto it. She took a breath. 'that she loved her'? No. After all she had done she hardly believed she had that ability. The spaniel snuffled against her leg and she smiled tightly, glancing over to where Pietro rolled onto his back, so comfortable and easy with an emotionless war machine in the same room.
...that I did only what she would consider honorable, and to think well of me for that.
She looked out the window into the streets of Berlin, broken by bombing raids, empty, the people having learned to cower in their homes. It mattered so little who was winning, both sides worn down by endless loss. There had never been war like this before. The ground broke into fissures, muddy holes of blood and bodies, and every day Emily wondered why the devil himself did not rise up out of the trenches and claim his domain, claim her.
Whether she died now or later, she would meet her mother in hell.
xXx
It was never safe to be a woman. Emma had known that long before the first soldiers had appeared in the town. Being from a wealthy family didn't protect you from it, being young, being old, being ugly, was no defense. And back then she hadn't known that she could fight. She knew now.
The soldier shoved her against the wall. She hit with her shoulder, prepared for the impact, and as he came for her she flinging a hand against his chest, a futile attempt to push him back. He caught her wrist and pressed it against the brick above her head. His hips were against her stomach, his hard cock pressing into her gut. "Don't fight," he said and smiled, bright and toothy, as he kept her trapped against the wall. His hand, large and rough, moved up her body, pushing up the shirt, and baring her skin to the cold February wind. "Won't you give your protector a little gift?" His French was thick and half incomprehensible, but it didn't matter what he said.
"Don't hurt me," Emma murmured, drooping in his grasp, as if she were ready to submit, tipping her head up to invite his mouth. But the hilt of the knife strapped to her thigh was in her hand. She slid it out, and as his heavy wet mouth closed on hers, she stabbed upwards, driving the knife with all her strength into the soft place where his spine entered his skull.
Her hands were soaked and slippery with blood, but she hurried to get his jacket off before the stains set in. Jacket, trousers, boots, gun. Perfect.
None of the German soldiers had well fitting uniforms, but this one had been close enough to her height and build to make it not absurd. That was why she had chosen him.
He had been young though, but so many of them were. And even the ones who had been in her class, been the charming boys with bright eyes and hope and plans, when they had picked up a gun, they were as good as dead to her.
There were no soldiers on her side.
She struggled into the jacket, pulled the trousers over the scrap of a skirt she had fashioned to make her look like a whore, and palmed the handle of the pistol, then made certain it was loaded. In this she could walk the streets unmolested, and no one would challenge her for looting like a soldier. They needed food, and Emma had long since stopped caring about where it came from. A few cans lay scattered on the floor of what had been the grocer's. She stuffed them in a bag, adding in half rotted potatoes. She broke the window of the next house and climbed in. The family had fled to Paris, what good it may do them, and their storeroom was mostly bare, but there were a few things remaining.
She was about to break into the next abandoned house when she heard the thump and shout from the alley behind her.
"Bitch!" a man cursed in German. She looked just in time to see the soldier slam the woman's head into the wall with an ugly crunch. The second soldier stood a few feet away, frowning.
"Get her on her knees," he said.
The first shoved the woman down, kicking aside a brown leather briefcase, sending it sliding across the cobbles. The woman's head was bent, and blood soaked her dark hair and trickled down her neck.
Emma breathed through her nose, trying to control her response. It was none of her business.
The soldier knocked her forwards onto her hands, and the woman made a weak, pleading noise. The blood kept dripping, from her neck, from the loosening locks of the out of place French knot, making black spots on the stones beneath her. He shoved up her skirt. The other soldier started pulling at his belt.
"Hold her while I go first."
And Emma stepped up quickly behind him, pressing the pistol muzzle to his temple and pulling the trigger. He swayed for a moment, and then dropped like a sack of meat.
"Hey!" The other soldier turned at the sound of the gunshot. His eyes widened. "Brother-" and then a chunk of cement impacted his skull and he collapsed.
The woman was up, on her knees, her eyes wild and unfocused, but there was an ugly desperate look on her face. She dropped the cement block and turned to Emma, a tiny derringer appearing in her hand.
"Don't move." She spoke in German, rushed and unsteady.
"I saved your fucking life," Emma spat back in French.
"So I should just assume your good intentions?" the woman rejoined in the same language. Then she winced and touched the back of her head with her free hand. But she was not afraid. Her eyes flicked to each side, tensely, only relaxing when they fell on the leather briefcase.
"No intentions." Emma ignored her tiny gun and strode towards her, stopping at the unconscious soldier. She stepped on his throat, enjoying the pressure the heavy army boots provided, and ground in her heel. He gagged and convulsed, but she only drove her foot down harder, until a rattle shook in his chest and his eyes opened wide in death.
The woman was staring at her, eyes wide. Emma held out her hand, crispy with dried blood.
"Come with me or wait for another set of boys on holiday." The woman looked at her gory hand. Her eyes flicked up, and then rolled back in her head. She slumped to the pavement unconscious.
"Fuck."
xXx
She had the cloth pressed against the bitch's nose, her wet spaniel eyes looking up, unconscious of the betrayal, unable to even think her mistress could do such a thing. She should just kill her, break her sweet little neck. It would be kinder than this, leaving her to be forgotten, go wild, feast on the corpses in the streets or starve or be shot for meat.
The liquid eyes drooped, and then she was just a lump of fur and flesh on the bathroom floor. Emily breathed out and took the derringer from her waistband.
“Emily?“ Pietro murmured sleepily as she stepped out, framed by the light coming through the bathroom door.
“Go back to sleep,“ she said, her voice soft, but her face would not show the kindness, her voice not inflect the words with the lies she had told so often before. Not now. When it came to this all the pretty lies you told yourself didn't matter anymore.
She knelt on the bed, moving next to him and reaching out to stroke his smooth cheek. He sighed, his impossibly pale eyelashes fluttering on his cheeks. He blinked then, eyes searching for her face. His forehead wrinkled in a frown. He didn't recognize her, and she could not force herself to smile. “Emily?“ he murmured, confused. “Your face...“
She rested the muzzle of the derringer against his temple. She would not lie to him as he died, but she would not apologize, not for this.
She felt the trigger click back under her finger... and nothing. There was nothing. Everything was grey. Pietro's body lay beneath her, but was cool. His head tipped back, two new orifices where there should have been smooth skin. And then there were four, his eyes scorched away from the inside with the crisp line of flame like burning paper, their hollows becoming black holes, his gaping, shocked mouth, endless. The bed, under her hands and knees was consumed, and she fell.
She always knew she would fall.
A hand grasped her wrist, nearly jerking her arm out of its socket, and she looked up. The bloodstained hand that held her, the hollow soulless blue eyes, and the perfect face of her very own Lucifer.
“Come with me.“
His grip burned her, but she could not pull away.
“Come.“
xXx
Emma had had time to examine the woman while hauling her and her stupid briefcase two miles to the ruined convent, and then while scrubbing the blood off her hands after dropping her on the pile of black wool cloth by the narrow staircase out of the catacombs. She was clearly not local. Emma knew them all by sight, and she was nothing like them. She spoke like a Berliner in German, but a Parisian in French. And she dressed like a Parisian, her clothes utterly inappropriate for wartime, too tight, too fashionable, her hair coiffed and well done.
She looked like someone's kept whore. But whores knew better than to fight back.
Five children were waiting in the catacombs, hungry and ill. The eldest, a pretty blonde of fourteen, had flinched back when she saw the soldier's uniform. Even when she recognized who wore it, she still seemed pale and upset. It wasn't unexpected. Emma's eyes ran over her thin figure, too narrow from their poor food. She couldn't be sure if the girl was pregnant, and she wasn't sure she would tell her if she were. They might not survive for long enough for it to matter. Emma tossed the children the bag of scrounged food and stripped off the jacket. It would need a scrubbing to get even some of the blood out. She could soak it in their used wash water, but blood set quickly.
It came off her hands slowly, but it never should come off.
"I am in blood. Stepp'd in so far, that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er."
The boy looked at her, curiously, as if he recognized the words. But then, he might. His family had been circus people before they had died and left him in the care of the convent. He even had a little English. The strange woman on the cloth was moving slightly, a soft desperate whimper emerging involuntarily from her chest.
"Kurt," she spoke to the boy, dropping into Alsatian. They both kept the other's German a secret. "Fetch some water for the lady. I need to bandage her head."
"What happened to her?" Jennifer asked, as she sorted through the vile potatoes, putting the worst ones into a pile to be used first. She was more comfortable now that Emma was in shirtsleeves and recognizable.
Emma glanced over at her, meeting her eyes enough so Jennifer flinched and glanced back to her work. She didn't have to say it. "God help me," she muttered instead. "I can't seem to avoid picking up strays."
And Jennifer smiled, because she thought it was because Emma was kind. But it was habit. Emma had forgotten what kindness felt like.
Kurt hurried back with a pan of rainwater collected from the leaking gutterpipe that dribbled down, filling an empty tomb in the crumbling catacombs.
Emma wet a rag and moved the woman's head into her lap. Her hair was lush and healthy, unexpectedly so, but it was thick with blood. Her skin was smooth, and her ribs not half visible through her skin like the ways theirs were had been for months. Wherever she had been, she had been well-fed. She cleansed the blood from the hair, her fingers moving through it to find the wound. The woman whimpered when Emma touched it, but as she pressed her fingertips in a circle around it the bone seemed firm. She hopefully hadn't had her skull cracked with that blow. Emma unscrewed the lid of her flask and gave the wound a douse of vinegar. The only thing they weren't short of was communion wine and the vinegar it turned into.
The woman flinched, clearly feeling the sting of the vinegar, and turned slightly, blinking up at Emma's face, eyes still foggy and seeing half through her.
"I thought it would be worse," she murmured, eyes flicking from side to side.
Emma stared at her. "It gets worse," she said. "Once you wake up."
"You're a demon, aren't you?" Her eyes shut for a moment, brow furrowing as she tried to think. "How could you be anything else? A beautiful face, soaked in your victim's blood."
The woman was hallucinating.
"Maybe that's what I am."
The woman smiled weakly. "Me too."
Her eyelids fluttered shut and she returned to sleep. Emma finished bandaging the wound and left her. She'd wake up or she wouldn't, no harm either way.
xXx
The briefcase was the first thing Emily looked for. If she had lost it, her own survival was meaningless. But it was there, leaning against the stairs, locks apparently untampered with.
"Are you still hallucinating?" asked a voice, speaking French.
Emily turned too quickly and her head ached with sudden decisive pain. "Lord," she mumbled, finally raising her eyes.
It was the demon. Except, on a more thorough look it was a woman, kneeling over a basin, bloody cloth in her hands, blonde hair cropped short and feathery. Her face was all smooth lines, nothing lush or soft, rather like the stone angels in the graveyards, beautiful, but unmarked for gender.
As a child Emily had imagined angels, the ones with fiery swords, just like their statues, faces of marble and eyes as icy as their stringent morality. As a Roman Catholic, she knew she was a sinner, and knew to fear the creatures who, free of the corruption of free-will, would always be her betters.
But neither angels nor demons tried to scrub the blood out of an army coat with a minimal amount of dirty water.
"Oh! You're awake. Would you like some soup?"
The new voice came from a girl, wrapped in layers of ill-fitting clothes, blonde hair dirty and unkempt. She would be pretty if she weren't bone thin, pale and drawn. She hurried over with a cold bowl of cold gelatinous liquid with occasional hints of grayish green leaf, and flecks of brownish solids.
"Cold cabbage and catmeat stew," said the washer, her voice sharp and amused. "It's disgusting, but we can't often risk a fire, for fear of being found."
Emily hesitated, glancing around the shadowy stone room. It was a catacomb, bones piled on shelves, and scattered across the floor. But there were living people in it. The washer, the blonde girl. A thin dark boy, crouched tensely over his pack, and a small girl, happily building a log cabin out of femurs.
Another girl, perhaps eleven, emerged from a dark hallway, carrying a bowl. "Robert doesn't want his soup."
The washer flinched. "He didn't touch any of it?"
The girl looked down. "He's stopped sweating. His hands are cold. He just wants to sleep."
The washer closed her eyes, regaining control over her features. "Then we let him sleep."
And somehow even Emily knew that there was a second part to that. We let him sleep, and if he doesn't wake, we bury him.
Emily stared at her, and could only see the thing in the bloody soldier's coat, pistol in her hand, choking the life out of a helpless soldier, eyes cold with hate and resignation. She had looked like Emily had thought Lucifer would look, beautiful and proud, even with the sorrow of having been cast down from paradise.
But why were there children here? The girl set down the bowl and went to the child playing in the bones and crouched down to assist. This was no place for them. This whole war was no place for them. They should have left, have evacuated.
Her eyes flicked back to the demon, for that was what she was even if she wore human form. Why was she keeping them here? "Who are you? They're not yours." The slender violence of the woman's body could not be the full-figured womanhood of a mother, not that Emily's own mother could have ever been accused of 'womanhood.'
The little girl giggled at the question. It was a sound Emily hadn't heard in so long that she did not recognize it. Was she ill? she wondered.
The woman shook her head. "I was their teacher once."
xXx
Kurt had been the first. When the convent and school had been burned, she had found him half-unconscious in the dirt, she had shaken him, and at his groan, carried him to shelter. But back then she had been someone else, someone who could care for a child who had no parents nor anywhere to go. She had still cared about the blood on her hands.
Kurt hadn't left when the others had fled. He had no one to go to, no family to take him away. He had helped, scrounging and begging for food. But when the nuns had left, heading for another, safer convent of their sisters, they couldn't take him. And Emma couldn't leave.
She and Kurt had stayed in the church. They had been there when Kitty and her little sister Rebecca had walked up the long steep road, seeking a priest, seeking anyone. Their parents had disappeared. Emma couldn't believe that they were just gone, they had to have been taken, or, she feared, they had fled. She went to see. Food and clothing, supplies were missing. Their mother and stepfather had packed and left like thieves, abandoning their little girls.
Then the soldiers came. They didn't know which soldiers. The Germans were here now, but the sides kept shifting, and this town raped over and over again.
A bomb had landed in a nearby field, providing advance warning, and Emma had taken the children to the ruins of the convent. They had hidden in the catacombs. The soldiers took the church, the steeple and sturdy construction was convenient for a radio post. It had been unbelievable luck, Emma had thought. If they had stayed in the church, they would have been caught and killed. But what was luck? A quick death was all she could desire.
After a few days they were starving. Kurt and Emma left the girls in the tomb, telling them to be quiet and hide, and went in search of food. But everywhere they went, the soldiers had come first. Robert's home had been bombed, and they found him in the rubble, leg half crushed. But they brought him to the catacomb anyway.
They found the Jareau's farm burned, their bodies cold and dead, the father lying alongside the house, a bullet wound in his head, the mother, her arms ripped and bloody, her skirts torn, the fatal wound in her throat.
It was Kurt who found Jennifer, huddled in a barn stall, shivering and bleeding from between her legs. Emma had sent him away, to find anything edible in the remains of the house. She cleaned the girl's injuries and took off her habit, giving the thick black wool to the girl to cover herself.
"My family?" she asked.
Emma couldn't comfort her. She took the rosary from around her neck and pressed it into the girl's hand. Perhaps she was supposed to say they were in a better world now, but their bodies just lay there, exposed to the elements, left to be devoured by rats and maggots. There was no other world. Without rats and maggots and bloody thighs, it couldn't be real.
"Come with us," said Kurt, a sack of cabbages in his arms. "I found a dead pig in the woods. It looks like the soldiers shot it but didn't bother to take it with them."
And just that was almost enough to make Emma boil over in rage. But she couldn't show these children the depths of her hate and the loss of any semblance of faith. She would keep them alive, keep them safe, as long as she could.
xXx
How could she have been such a fool? Getting caught and nearly captured in a stupid town in Alsace. The soldiers had taken her by surprise, or she wouldn't have tried to fight. She was outnumbered. She could have played along, given them favors, or taken them while they were off guard. But she had tried to fight. If that woman hadn't saved her, she would have been raped and killed and her papers in their hands. And that would have been the worst of all. Those papers were too important to lose. She had spent years gathering information, leaving it to couriers. But Magnus had shot their last courier in the street. There was no one else. And this was decisive. If what she had heard was true, that the Americans had finally joined, they could counter this last push, they could finish it.
She just had to make it there. Fucking Alsace.
"You're a Berliner." The woman's voice was quiet, as if she didn't want the children to hear the words. That was understandable. Who would want a German here?
"I'm as much French as I am German," Emily said. She was neither. But outing herself as an English spy was not in her plans. "Who are you?"
The woman looked sullen, and Emily wondered how old she was. The expression was childish, but nothing else seemed so. Still, even the children, tiny of stature, seemed aged in their faces.
"She's Sister Emmaline!" this littlest girl piped up.
"Sister?" Emily looked. "You're a nun?" She glanced down at the wool she was sleeping on, habits, her shorn hair... But the blood the woman had shed, her face when she ground her heel into that man's throat. Emily could not believe it.
"I was," the demon said. "Not anymore."
No, she seemed more like a soldier now, defending her tiny country of four, four children. That was when she wasn't the devil himself.
"I need to leave." Emily struggled to her feet. She lurched towards the briefcase, but her head spun and she gagged as bile rose in her throat.
"You're not going anywhere." The nun turned away, ignoring her futile attempts to escape. "That head injury will stop you before you get three steps."
"I don't have time." Emily dropped to her knees, and then vomited up all the catmeat stew. It looked the same in as out. "This town will be bombed in three days."
The nun's eyes were wide and pale as she looked around. "How do you know that?" Her hand was at Emily's throat, disregarding the vomit still dribbling down her chin. "You're a spy."
Emily stared at her, at the ugly expression, the hate in it. "What are you?" She was a monster, whatever reasons she had for being so.
The nun flinched, as if hearing the accusation, and then she sneered. "God will judge me," she said calmly. "And I will judge him in return."
Emily's eyes flicked past her, to the children, all looking wide-eyed and horror-stricken, except for the boy. He stood straight, a heavy bone clutched to his chest, as if he intended to use it as a weapon. Loyalty, that was what covered him, loyalty to this... thing.
"Why did you help me?" It was a foolish idea. The second soldier could have shot her in moment. The nun winced.
"Because I'm a fool," she said bitterly. Then she met Emily's eyes, letting them shine with the love of violence she had seen before. But there was something else, fire, and pride, as if saving her had been right in some moral code that Emily didn't understand. "And because it gave me pleasure."
Her hand released Emily's throat. Emily swallowed and settled back onto the habits, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. It was the fire in her face that pulled at her gut, that attracted her to this demon. She raged. She would kill and die for a tiny thing, a child's life, a woman's safety, no matter how little it changed this world.
Emily had spent her life doing the exact opposite.
"Thank you," she said. "I was foolish. I made a mistake. We could have lost everything."
"We?" The nun stood, her body unfolding. She was tall, rail thin, her hips narrow, no breasts to speak of. In the loose German uniform she looked like a young recruit, except for her eyes, and the cruel curve of her lips. She picked up the briefcase and dropped it down a hole.
"No!" Emily lunged, and the nausea and vertigo hit like a sledgehammer. She dropped onto the habits, curling up like a child. "No..." Then she blinked. Something cold pressed into her temple. The nun was holding a pistol to her head.
"Who are you? If you bring harm upon myself or my children, god help me, I will send you to hell myself."
Emily gasped and stared into her eyes, blue ice, without restraint, and yet noble. Had Lucifer been noble? Had he intended to save when his only power was to hurt? Two blind hydras were trampling this world in their toothless wrestling for dominance, but so many died beneath their feet. This woman fought her own tiny war, and Emily desired to taste the purity of the venom that poured from her lips, the rawness of her anger. It was so different from the corruption and futile sacrifice that stained Emily's soul.
"Fine, yes, I'm a spy. An English spy. I need to get to their command. We have one chance, a single opportunity to end this was quickly, to win."
"Another army to tramp through here?" the nun spat. "Jennifer cannot remember whether the soldiers who raped her were English or French or German or Russian. They did what all soldiers do. They stole and killed and raped. What do I care who wins this blood war?"
"The Allies will win," Emily said flatly. "They will grind the Germans into dust. They will poison this land and bomb this city. The only question is will they win now or a year from now. This can be over. Isn't that what you want? For this to be over?"
The pistol lifted up and the nun sat back, frowning at her, eyes narrow and untrusting. Emily breathed again. She had been right. This woman was no partisan.
"You can't move without vomiting." The nun slid the pistol into its holster. "Sleep here tonight and I will think on what to do with you."
Emily nodded. It was true. She was ill and useless and could do nothing that night. But she would get her briefcase back or die trying.
xXx
Night fell, and it was freezing in the catacombs. The children huddled together in a pile, buried under a spare habit. Emma went to Robert. He was still and pale. She knelt, touching the side of his throat. He was dead. She blew out the candle and returned to the main room, sinking to the cold stone of the floor.
The spy's teeth were chattering. Even the habits couldn't keep out the cold. Emma moved over to her. "It's cold," she murmured.
Emma touched her forehead. It was clammy. That was bad. She needed the fever, if only to heal. Emma lay down next to her, adjusting the habit to cover them both, and putting an arm over her shoulder to keep her back tight against any warmth she could provide.
"What's your name, Brit?" she asked. "I don't like to sleep with people whose names I don't know."
"Aren't you a nun?" the spy muttered, sounding amused. "How many people have you slept with?"
Emma chuckled. "Why do you think I meant anything other than sleep? Pure of body, pure of mind."
"I never laid claim to purity."
"That's all right. I'm pretty sure I don't have any innocence left to lose."
Eventually their bodies warmed. Emma's breath rebounded from her neck and brushed her face. The woman murmured comfortably. "My name's Emily," she whispered. "Kind of like yours."
"Emma," Emma said quietly. "I can't claim to be a nun anymore, better go back to that."
xXx
They were close to the front. Emily woke in the night to the sound of planes and bombs. One big whoosh resembled a zepplin going up in flame. The nun, Emma, was pressed to her back, breath steady, her body warm. It was surprising. Someone as tormented and furious as her shouldn't sleep so peacefully. But who was Emily to say that she deserved to be wracked with guilt for her sins?
Emily closed her eyes and remembered. Pietro had held her like this sometimes. She had awakened in his arms, his breath touching her ear, and rolled over, looking into his smiling eyes and pleasant face. He kissed her sometimes, warmly, hardness pressing into her. She would thread her fingers through his hair and roll her hips against him. She would let him in, wrap her legs around him, press her mouth against his cheek, against his temple, while he took her.
She had killed him because she had been told to. It was not the righteous rage that this woman, holding her like he had done, had driven her heel into a man's throat with. No, there was no question. Her sins were much worse than the ones of this woman beside her.
And she had so many.
Even now, she could turn, press her lips to the throat of this bride of Christ, hold her down, and take what she knew she shouldn't. That fire in her face, would it be in her hands too? Would she be able to hold herself above Emily, sink her teeth into her lip, her neck, her shoulder? Could she burn her with a touch?
Emily wanted to burn.
Author: Alsike
Pairing: Emma Frost/Emily Prentiss, some Emily/Pietro Maximoff
Rating: NC-17 – Not just for sex. Warnings: War, violence, threat of rape.
Fandom: X-Men/Criminal Minds
Disclaimer: Not my girls.
Word Count: 5621
Summary: So this is the story I mentioned ages ago. It’s been taking form in my notebook, and I’ve finally typed up part 1. I make no claim of factual accuracy in any way, but if I’m way off, feel free to let me know. I don’t know how long the next bits will take me, but I hope not too long. Let me know what you think. This is kind of a stretch for me.
Emily's springer spaniel jumped up pressing its paws against the hem of her skirt yapping happily. She bent down, scratching it behind the fluffy ears. Pietro always laughed at her, wondering why she hadn't named it. "You call the bitch 'darling,' or 'baby' all the time. Just give her a name and be sad when you lose her."
Emily just smiled. It was a mistake to make him think too much about what might occur to make Emily lose the spaniel, but not naming her was just considered a quirk. She had thought the spaniel herself had been a mistake, but Pietro loved her too, and called her 'darling' just as often. He would come in from drill and scoop her into his lap, letting her kiss his face and make him laugh.
That had been the turning point for Emily as well, coming in to see him laughing, his light hair disordered by the dog's kisses. And he had looked up at her and smiled, as if he truly liked her, and she wasn't the woman given to him by his father to take to bed and to look presentable at parties. She had moved to him, cupping the spaniel's head, her fingertips brushing against the warm softness of the underside of its ear, and leaned in to kiss him. She pushed the spaniel off, sending her skittering towards her food dish, and took the clip out of her hair, shaking down her French knot, letting her hair fall to her shoulders. Then she had fucked Pietro on the floor, kissing his neck and ear, and riding him until he was gasping and shaking and coming inside of her.
Last night as well, she had spent hours pleasing him, and now he lay on his stomach under the blankets, snoring like the dead. Emily whispered to the dog in German, telling her to be quiet and not wake her papa, before turning back to her letter.
2/1/1918
I can stay no longer. If my work is to be worth anything it must be employed immediately, before Magnus has a chance to alter his preparations. The German advance must be stopped. With the information I have collected it should be possible to destroy the secret locations that they have stored the guns, and intercept and counter their advance. If I do not make it across the lines in three days, assume the worst and use the enclosed information to mount a counterattack. Begin by destroying or taking the radio tower at Amiens. They intend to use it to control the Zeppelin bombers.
God willing, I will see you in three days. Until then, adieu, and if I do not return, please inform my mother that...
Emily's pen hovered over the page, and ink dripped onto it. She took a breath. 'that she loved her'? No. After all she had done she hardly believed she had that ability. The spaniel snuffled against her leg and she smiled tightly, glancing over to where Pietro rolled onto his back, so comfortable and easy with an emotionless war machine in the same room.
...that I did only what she would consider honorable, and to think well of me for that.
She looked out the window into the streets of Berlin, broken by bombing raids, empty, the people having learned to cower in their homes. It mattered so little who was winning, both sides worn down by endless loss. There had never been war like this before. The ground broke into fissures, muddy holes of blood and bodies, and every day Emily wondered why the devil himself did not rise up out of the trenches and claim his domain, claim her.
Whether she died now or later, she would meet her mother in hell.
xXx
It was never safe to be a woman. Emma had known that long before the first soldiers had appeared in the town. Being from a wealthy family didn't protect you from it, being young, being old, being ugly, was no defense. And back then she hadn't known that she could fight. She knew now.
The soldier shoved her against the wall. She hit with her shoulder, prepared for the impact, and as he came for her she flinging a hand against his chest, a futile attempt to push him back. He caught her wrist and pressed it against the brick above her head. His hips were against her stomach, his hard cock pressing into her gut. "Don't fight," he said and smiled, bright and toothy, as he kept her trapped against the wall. His hand, large and rough, moved up her body, pushing up the shirt, and baring her skin to the cold February wind. "Won't you give your protector a little gift?" His French was thick and half incomprehensible, but it didn't matter what he said.
"Don't hurt me," Emma murmured, drooping in his grasp, as if she were ready to submit, tipping her head up to invite his mouth. But the hilt of the knife strapped to her thigh was in her hand. She slid it out, and as his heavy wet mouth closed on hers, she stabbed upwards, driving the knife with all her strength into the soft place where his spine entered his skull.
Her hands were soaked and slippery with blood, but she hurried to get his jacket off before the stains set in. Jacket, trousers, boots, gun. Perfect.
None of the German soldiers had well fitting uniforms, but this one had been close enough to her height and build to make it not absurd. That was why she had chosen him.
He had been young though, but so many of them were. And even the ones who had been in her class, been the charming boys with bright eyes and hope and plans, when they had picked up a gun, they were as good as dead to her.
There were no soldiers on her side.
She struggled into the jacket, pulled the trousers over the scrap of a skirt she had fashioned to make her look like a whore, and palmed the handle of the pistol, then made certain it was loaded. In this she could walk the streets unmolested, and no one would challenge her for looting like a soldier. They needed food, and Emma had long since stopped caring about where it came from. A few cans lay scattered on the floor of what had been the grocer's. She stuffed them in a bag, adding in half rotted potatoes. She broke the window of the next house and climbed in. The family had fled to Paris, what good it may do them, and their storeroom was mostly bare, but there were a few things remaining.
She was about to break into the next abandoned house when she heard the thump and shout from the alley behind her.
"Bitch!" a man cursed in German. She looked just in time to see the soldier slam the woman's head into the wall with an ugly crunch. The second soldier stood a few feet away, frowning.
"Get her on her knees," he said.
The first shoved the woman down, kicking aside a brown leather briefcase, sending it sliding across the cobbles. The woman's head was bent, and blood soaked her dark hair and trickled down her neck.
Emma breathed through her nose, trying to control her response. It was none of her business.
The soldier knocked her forwards onto her hands, and the woman made a weak, pleading noise. The blood kept dripping, from her neck, from the loosening locks of the out of place French knot, making black spots on the stones beneath her. He shoved up her skirt. The other soldier started pulling at his belt.
"Hold her while I go first."
And Emma stepped up quickly behind him, pressing the pistol muzzle to his temple and pulling the trigger. He swayed for a moment, and then dropped like a sack of meat.
"Hey!" The other soldier turned at the sound of the gunshot. His eyes widened. "Brother-" and then a chunk of cement impacted his skull and he collapsed.
The woman was up, on her knees, her eyes wild and unfocused, but there was an ugly desperate look on her face. She dropped the cement block and turned to Emma, a tiny derringer appearing in her hand.
"Don't move." She spoke in German, rushed and unsteady.
"I saved your fucking life," Emma spat back in French.
"So I should just assume your good intentions?" the woman rejoined in the same language. Then she winced and touched the back of her head with her free hand. But she was not afraid. Her eyes flicked to each side, tensely, only relaxing when they fell on the leather briefcase.
"No intentions." Emma ignored her tiny gun and strode towards her, stopping at the unconscious soldier. She stepped on his throat, enjoying the pressure the heavy army boots provided, and ground in her heel. He gagged and convulsed, but she only drove her foot down harder, until a rattle shook in his chest and his eyes opened wide in death.
The woman was staring at her, eyes wide. Emma held out her hand, crispy with dried blood.
"Come with me or wait for another set of boys on holiday." The woman looked at her gory hand. Her eyes flicked up, and then rolled back in her head. She slumped to the pavement unconscious.
"Fuck."
xXx
She had the cloth pressed against the bitch's nose, her wet spaniel eyes looking up, unconscious of the betrayal, unable to even think her mistress could do such a thing. She should just kill her, break her sweet little neck. It would be kinder than this, leaving her to be forgotten, go wild, feast on the corpses in the streets or starve or be shot for meat.
The liquid eyes drooped, and then she was just a lump of fur and flesh on the bathroom floor. Emily breathed out and took the derringer from her waistband.
“Emily?“ Pietro murmured sleepily as she stepped out, framed by the light coming through the bathroom door.
“Go back to sleep,“ she said, her voice soft, but her face would not show the kindness, her voice not inflect the words with the lies she had told so often before. Not now. When it came to this all the pretty lies you told yourself didn't matter anymore.
She knelt on the bed, moving next to him and reaching out to stroke his smooth cheek. He sighed, his impossibly pale eyelashes fluttering on his cheeks. He blinked then, eyes searching for her face. His forehead wrinkled in a frown. He didn't recognize her, and she could not force herself to smile. “Emily?“ he murmured, confused. “Your face...“
She rested the muzzle of the derringer against his temple. She would not lie to him as he died, but she would not apologize, not for this.
She felt the trigger click back under her finger... and nothing. There was nothing. Everything was grey. Pietro's body lay beneath her, but was cool. His head tipped back, two new orifices where there should have been smooth skin. And then there were four, his eyes scorched away from the inside with the crisp line of flame like burning paper, their hollows becoming black holes, his gaping, shocked mouth, endless. The bed, under her hands and knees was consumed, and she fell.
She always knew she would fall.
A hand grasped her wrist, nearly jerking her arm out of its socket, and she looked up. The bloodstained hand that held her, the hollow soulless blue eyes, and the perfect face of her very own Lucifer.
“Come with me.“
His grip burned her, but she could not pull away.
“Come.“
xXx
Emma had had time to examine the woman while hauling her and her stupid briefcase two miles to the ruined convent, and then while scrubbing the blood off her hands after dropping her on the pile of black wool cloth by the narrow staircase out of the catacombs. She was clearly not local. Emma knew them all by sight, and she was nothing like them. She spoke like a Berliner in German, but a Parisian in French. And she dressed like a Parisian, her clothes utterly inappropriate for wartime, too tight, too fashionable, her hair coiffed and well done.
She looked like someone's kept whore. But whores knew better than to fight back.
Five children were waiting in the catacombs, hungry and ill. The eldest, a pretty blonde of fourteen, had flinched back when she saw the soldier's uniform. Even when she recognized who wore it, she still seemed pale and upset. It wasn't unexpected. Emma's eyes ran over her thin figure, too narrow from their poor food. She couldn't be sure if the girl was pregnant, and she wasn't sure she would tell her if she were. They might not survive for long enough for it to matter. Emma tossed the children the bag of scrounged food and stripped off the jacket. It would need a scrubbing to get even some of the blood out. She could soak it in their used wash water, but blood set quickly.
It came off her hands slowly, but it never should come off.
"I am in blood. Stepp'd in so far, that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er."
The boy looked at her, curiously, as if he recognized the words. But then, he might. His family had been circus people before they had died and left him in the care of the convent. He even had a little English. The strange woman on the cloth was moving slightly, a soft desperate whimper emerging involuntarily from her chest.
"Kurt," she spoke to the boy, dropping into Alsatian. They both kept the other's German a secret. "Fetch some water for the lady. I need to bandage her head."
"What happened to her?" Jennifer asked, as she sorted through the vile potatoes, putting the worst ones into a pile to be used first. She was more comfortable now that Emma was in shirtsleeves and recognizable.
Emma glanced over at her, meeting her eyes enough so Jennifer flinched and glanced back to her work. She didn't have to say it. "God help me," she muttered instead. "I can't seem to avoid picking up strays."
And Jennifer smiled, because she thought it was because Emma was kind. But it was habit. Emma had forgotten what kindness felt like.
Kurt hurried back with a pan of rainwater collected from the leaking gutterpipe that dribbled down, filling an empty tomb in the crumbling catacombs.
Emma wet a rag and moved the woman's head into her lap. Her hair was lush and healthy, unexpectedly so, but it was thick with blood. Her skin was smooth, and her ribs not half visible through her skin like the ways theirs were had been for months. Wherever she had been, she had been well-fed. She cleansed the blood from the hair, her fingers moving through it to find the wound. The woman whimpered when Emma touched it, but as she pressed her fingertips in a circle around it the bone seemed firm. She hopefully hadn't had her skull cracked with that blow. Emma unscrewed the lid of her flask and gave the wound a douse of vinegar. The only thing they weren't short of was communion wine and the vinegar it turned into.
The woman flinched, clearly feeling the sting of the vinegar, and turned slightly, blinking up at Emma's face, eyes still foggy and seeing half through her.
"I thought it would be worse," she murmured, eyes flicking from side to side.
Emma stared at her. "It gets worse," she said. "Once you wake up."
"You're a demon, aren't you?" Her eyes shut for a moment, brow furrowing as she tried to think. "How could you be anything else? A beautiful face, soaked in your victim's blood."
The woman was hallucinating.
"Maybe that's what I am."
The woman smiled weakly. "Me too."
Her eyelids fluttered shut and she returned to sleep. Emma finished bandaging the wound and left her. She'd wake up or she wouldn't, no harm either way.
xXx
The briefcase was the first thing Emily looked for. If she had lost it, her own survival was meaningless. But it was there, leaning against the stairs, locks apparently untampered with.
"Are you still hallucinating?" asked a voice, speaking French.
Emily turned too quickly and her head ached with sudden decisive pain. "Lord," she mumbled, finally raising her eyes.
It was the demon. Except, on a more thorough look it was a woman, kneeling over a basin, bloody cloth in her hands, blonde hair cropped short and feathery. Her face was all smooth lines, nothing lush or soft, rather like the stone angels in the graveyards, beautiful, but unmarked for gender.
As a child Emily had imagined angels, the ones with fiery swords, just like their statues, faces of marble and eyes as icy as their stringent morality. As a Roman Catholic, she knew she was a sinner, and knew to fear the creatures who, free of the corruption of free-will, would always be her betters.
But neither angels nor demons tried to scrub the blood out of an army coat with a minimal amount of dirty water.
"Oh! You're awake. Would you like some soup?"
The new voice came from a girl, wrapped in layers of ill-fitting clothes, blonde hair dirty and unkempt. She would be pretty if she weren't bone thin, pale and drawn. She hurried over with a cold bowl of cold gelatinous liquid with occasional hints of grayish green leaf, and flecks of brownish solids.
"Cold cabbage and catmeat stew," said the washer, her voice sharp and amused. "It's disgusting, but we can't often risk a fire, for fear of being found."
Emily hesitated, glancing around the shadowy stone room. It was a catacomb, bones piled on shelves, and scattered across the floor. But there were living people in it. The washer, the blonde girl. A thin dark boy, crouched tensely over his pack, and a small girl, happily building a log cabin out of femurs.
Another girl, perhaps eleven, emerged from a dark hallway, carrying a bowl. "Robert doesn't want his soup."
The washer flinched. "He didn't touch any of it?"
The girl looked down. "He's stopped sweating. His hands are cold. He just wants to sleep."
The washer closed her eyes, regaining control over her features. "Then we let him sleep."
And somehow even Emily knew that there was a second part to that. We let him sleep, and if he doesn't wake, we bury him.
Emily stared at her, and could only see the thing in the bloody soldier's coat, pistol in her hand, choking the life out of a helpless soldier, eyes cold with hate and resignation. She had looked like Emily had thought Lucifer would look, beautiful and proud, even with the sorrow of having been cast down from paradise.
But why were there children here? The girl set down the bowl and went to the child playing in the bones and crouched down to assist. This was no place for them. This whole war was no place for them. They should have left, have evacuated.
Her eyes flicked back to the demon, for that was what she was even if she wore human form. Why was she keeping them here? "Who are you? They're not yours." The slender violence of the woman's body could not be the full-figured womanhood of a mother, not that Emily's own mother could have ever been accused of 'womanhood.'
The little girl giggled at the question. It was a sound Emily hadn't heard in so long that she did not recognize it. Was she ill? she wondered.
The woman shook her head. "I was their teacher once."
xXx
Kurt had been the first. When the convent and school had been burned, she had found him half-unconscious in the dirt, she had shaken him, and at his groan, carried him to shelter. But back then she had been someone else, someone who could care for a child who had no parents nor anywhere to go. She had still cared about the blood on her hands.
Kurt hadn't left when the others had fled. He had no one to go to, no family to take him away. He had helped, scrounging and begging for food. But when the nuns had left, heading for another, safer convent of their sisters, they couldn't take him. And Emma couldn't leave.
She and Kurt had stayed in the church. They had been there when Kitty and her little sister Rebecca had walked up the long steep road, seeking a priest, seeking anyone. Their parents had disappeared. Emma couldn't believe that they were just gone, they had to have been taken, or, she feared, they had fled. She went to see. Food and clothing, supplies were missing. Their mother and stepfather had packed and left like thieves, abandoning their little girls.
Then the soldiers came. They didn't know which soldiers. The Germans were here now, but the sides kept shifting, and this town raped over and over again.
A bomb had landed in a nearby field, providing advance warning, and Emma had taken the children to the ruins of the convent. They had hidden in the catacombs. The soldiers took the church, the steeple and sturdy construction was convenient for a radio post. It had been unbelievable luck, Emma had thought. If they had stayed in the church, they would have been caught and killed. But what was luck? A quick death was all she could desire.
After a few days they were starving. Kurt and Emma left the girls in the tomb, telling them to be quiet and hide, and went in search of food. But everywhere they went, the soldiers had come first. Robert's home had been bombed, and they found him in the rubble, leg half crushed. But they brought him to the catacomb anyway.
They found the Jareau's farm burned, their bodies cold and dead, the father lying alongside the house, a bullet wound in his head, the mother, her arms ripped and bloody, her skirts torn, the fatal wound in her throat.
It was Kurt who found Jennifer, huddled in a barn stall, shivering and bleeding from between her legs. Emma had sent him away, to find anything edible in the remains of the house. She cleaned the girl's injuries and took off her habit, giving the thick black wool to the girl to cover herself.
"My family?" she asked.
Emma couldn't comfort her. She took the rosary from around her neck and pressed it into the girl's hand. Perhaps she was supposed to say they were in a better world now, but their bodies just lay there, exposed to the elements, left to be devoured by rats and maggots. There was no other world. Without rats and maggots and bloody thighs, it couldn't be real.
"Come with us," said Kurt, a sack of cabbages in his arms. "I found a dead pig in the woods. It looks like the soldiers shot it but didn't bother to take it with them."
And just that was almost enough to make Emma boil over in rage. But she couldn't show these children the depths of her hate and the loss of any semblance of faith. She would keep them alive, keep them safe, as long as she could.
xXx
How could she have been such a fool? Getting caught and nearly captured in a stupid town in Alsace. The soldiers had taken her by surprise, or she wouldn't have tried to fight. She was outnumbered. She could have played along, given them favors, or taken them while they were off guard. But she had tried to fight. If that woman hadn't saved her, she would have been raped and killed and her papers in their hands. And that would have been the worst of all. Those papers were too important to lose. She had spent years gathering information, leaving it to couriers. But Magnus had shot their last courier in the street. There was no one else. And this was decisive. If what she had heard was true, that the Americans had finally joined, they could counter this last push, they could finish it.
She just had to make it there. Fucking Alsace.
"You're a Berliner." The woman's voice was quiet, as if she didn't want the children to hear the words. That was understandable. Who would want a German here?
"I'm as much French as I am German," Emily said. She was neither. But outing herself as an English spy was not in her plans. "Who are you?"
The woman looked sullen, and Emily wondered how old she was. The expression was childish, but nothing else seemed so. Still, even the children, tiny of stature, seemed aged in their faces.
"She's Sister Emmaline!" this littlest girl piped up.
"Sister?" Emily looked. "You're a nun?" She glanced down at the wool she was sleeping on, habits, her shorn hair... But the blood the woman had shed, her face when she ground her heel into that man's throat. Emily could not believe it.
"I was," the demon said. "Not anymore."
No, she seemed more like a soldier now, defending her tiny country of four, four children. That was when she wasn't the devil himself.
"I need to leave." Emily struggled to her feet. She lurched towards the briefcase, but her head spun and she gagged as bile rose in her throat.
"You're not going anywhere." The nun turned away, ignoring her futile attempts to escape. "That head injury will stop you before you get three steps."
"I don't have time." Emily dropped to her knees, and then vomited up all the catmeat stew. It looked the same in as out. "This town will be bombed in three days."
The nun's eyes were wide and pale as she looked around. "How do you know that?" Her hand was at Emily's throat, disregarding the vomit still dribbling down her chin. "You're a spy."
Emily stared at her, at the ugly expression, the hate in it. "What are you?" She was a monster, whatever reasons she had for being so.
The nun flinched, as if hearing the accusation, and then she sneered. "God will judge me," she said calmly. "And I will judge him in return."
Emily's eyes flicked past her, to the children, all looking wide-eyed and horror-stricken, except for the boy. He stood straight, a heavy bone clutched to his chest, as if he intended to use it as a weapon. Loyalty, that was what covered him, loyalty to this... thing.
"Why did you help me?" It was a foolish idea. The second soldier could have shot her in moment. The nun winced.
"Because I'm a fool," she said bitterly. Then she met Emily's eyes, letting them shine with the love of violence she had seen before. But there was something else, fire, and pride, as if saving her had been right in some moral code that Emily didn't understand. "And because it gave me pleasure."
Her hand released Emily's throat. Emily swallowed and settled back onto the habits, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. It was the fire in her face that pulled at her gut, that attracted her to this demon. She raged. She would kill and die for a tiny thing, a child's life, a woman's safety, no matter how little it changed this world.
Emily had spent her life doing the exact opposite.
"Thank you," she said. "I was foolish. I made a mistake. We could have lost everything."
"We?" The nun stood, her body unfolding. She was tall, rail thin, her hips narrow, no breasts to speak of. In the loose German uniform she looked like a young recruit, except for her eyes, and the cruel curve of her lips. She picked up the briefcase and dropped it down a hole.
"No!" Emily lunged, and the nausea and vertigo hit like a sledgehammer. She dropped onto the habits, curling up like a child. "No..." Then she blinked. Something cold pressed into her temple. The nun was holding a pistol to her head.
"Who are you? If you bring harm upon myself or my children, god help me, I will send you to hell myself."
Emily gasped and stared into her eyes, blue ice, without restraint, and yet noble. Had Lucifer been noble? Had he intended to save when his only power was to hurt? Two blind hydras were trampling this world in their toothless wrestling for dominance, but so many died beneath their feet. This woman fought her own tiny war, and Emily desired to taste the purity of the venom that poured from her lips, the rawness of her anger. It was so different from the corruption and futile sacrifice that stained Emily's soul.
"Fine, yes, I'm a spy. An English spy. I need to get to their command. We have one chance, a single opportunity to end this was quickly, to win."
"Another army to tramp through here?" the nun spat. "Jennifer cannot remember whether the soldiers who raped her were English or French or German or Russian. They did what all soldiers do. They stole and killed and raped. What do I care who wins this blood war?"
"The Allies will win," Emily said flatly. "They will grind the Germans into dust. They will poison this land and bomb this city. The only question is will they win now or a year from now. This can be over. Isn't that what you want? For this to be over?"
The pistol lifted up and the nun sat back, frowning at her, eyes narrow and untrusting. Emily breathed again. She had been right. This woman was no partisan.
"You can't move without vomiting." The nun slid the pistol into its holster. "Sleep here tonight and I will think on what to do with you."
Emily nodded. It was true. She was ill and useless and could do nothing that night. But she would get her briefcase back or die trying.
xXx
Night fell, and it was freezing in the catacombs. The children huddled together in a pile, buried under a spare habit. Emma went to Robert. He was still and pale. She knelt, touching the side of his throat. He was dead. She blew out the candle and returned to the main room, sinking to the cold stone of the floor.
The spy's teeth were chattering. Even the habits couldn't keep out the cold. Emma moved over to her. "It's cold," she murmured.
Emma touched her forehead. It was clammy. That was bad. She needed the fever, if only to heal. Emma lay down next to her, adjusting the habit to cover them both, and putting an arm over her shoulder to keep her back tight against any warmth she could provide.
"What's your name, Brit?" she asked. "I don't like to sleep with people whose names I don't know."
"Aren't you a nun?" the spy muttered, sounding amused. "How many people have you slept with?"
Emma chuckled. "Why do you think I meant anything other than sleep? Pure of body, pure of mind."
"I never laid claim to purity."
"That's all right. I'm pretty sure I don't have any innocence left to lose."
Eventually their bodies warmed. Emma's breath rebounded from her neck and brushed her face. The woman murmured comfortably. "My name's Emily," she whispered. "Kind of like yours."
"Emma," Emma said quietly. "I can't claim to be a nun anymore, better go back to that."
xXx
They were close to the front. Emily woke in the night to the sound of planes and bombs. One big whoosh resembled a zepplin going up in flame. The nun, Emma, was pressed to her back, breath steady, her body warm. It was surprising. Someone as tormented and furious as her shouldn't sleep so peacefully. But who was Emily to say that she deserved to be wracked with guilt for her sins?
Emily closed her eyes and remembered. Pietro had held her like this sometimes. She had awakened in his arms, his breath touching her ear, and rolled over, looking into his smiling eyes and pleasant face. He kissed her sometimes, warmly, hardness pressing into her. She would thread her fingers through his hair and roll her hips against him. She would let him in, wrap her legs around him, press her mouth against his cheek, against his temple, while he took her.
She had killed him because she had been told to. It was not the righteous rage that this woman, holding her like he had done, had driven her heel into a man's throat with. No, there was no question. Her sins were much worse than the ones of this woman beside her.
And she had so many.
Even now, she could turn, press her lips to the throat of this bride of Christ, hold her down, and take what she knew she shouldn't. That fire in her face, would it be in her hands too? Would she be able to hold herself above Emily, sink her teeth into her lip, her neck, her shoulder? Could she burn her with a touch?
Emily wanted to burn.
