Work Text:
I.
Erma shivered, not in cold but in fear. Berengar watched her with those dark eyes, expression hard. The corpse lay cooling behind them. When Berengar spoke at last, his words were simple.
“Who else?”
Erma looked up at him in confusion, so he clarified.
“Who else threatened you?”
Erma gave him the list. It was a long one. His expression grew more thunderous with every addition.
“I’ll have to be careful,” he said. “But I’ll kill them all.”
“You don’t have to,” Erma said.
“Even so. These men are cruel. They must be dealt with.”
“They are that,” Erma agreed. “Awful, all of them. Most soldiers are, ‘course.” Then she startled a little, and added hastily. “Not that you are!”
Berengar simply smiled at her.
Was it not easy to see, then, why the woman who had made herself into Erma and never known a day of protection in her life had chosen to follow the man she knew then as Berengar?
II.
The king was dead, and Bernulf smirked at Bernegilde across the table. They dared not discuss their thoughts aloud, not in public, but after so long spent together they could read it in each other’s faces.
Latterly, Bernulf had become something of a radical. Or, at least, he enjoyed playing at one. He certainly expected tradition in his personal life. He rather resented any power that he was expected to obey, however.
The king’s death was of great satisfaction to both of them. They easily recognised that pleasure in each other. After all, had they not known each other for longer than a mortal lifetime? What they were to each other was beyond words or understanding. He was her Sire, the man who had shaped her into the woman she was today. Long ago, in a life that seemed distant as a dream, he had been her only friend. That was not to say that they were no longer friends. Of course they were, they who shared heart and hearth and home. Only that she had other friends, now, if none like him. They were lovers, when they fancied it. They had no secrets from each other, but were joint guardians of too many to count.
III.
Estella returned to the building which Bernulf had made his and Bernegilde’s own, pushing the door open and stepping through. She shedded her jacket, hat, and the identity of Estella in the hallway. Sharp-eyed Bernegilde continued to walk.
When she met Bernulf, in the shadowed dark corridors of their home, he said without preamble, “Is he dead?”
“Oh, without a doubt.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“No.”
“Good.” He reached out then, placing a hand around her arm, and drew her towards him. It wasn’t a forceful gesture, for she came when called.
“Tell me about it,” he instructed, hand still wrapped loosely around her arm.
She obliged, and told all. A smile crept onto Bernulf’s face as she spoke to him of the man’s death, and grew wider with each bloody detail. When she told Bernulf of the ordered damage her knifework had done to the man’s corpse, rendering him utterly unrecognisable, he looked at her with unmitigated desire.
“Well done, my dear,” he said. “It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving man.”
She laughed, in wry agreement. He set a hand on her shoulder and leant in slowly. She leant towards him in turn, a silent signal of approval, and they shared a kiss.
IV.
It was a rare sight to see Bernulf with clothes as bloodied as those he wore now. The woman became Bernegilde again when she caught sight of him, and Bernegilde smiled her vicious smile. Bernulf returned it.
“It’s done, then,” she said, not a question. No answer was needed, for she knew. “Did you enjoy it?”
“Very much. I wish you could have seen that terrible man on his knees for me.”
“I’ll have to be content with my imaginings,” she said, mild as anything. “Did he beg you?”
“Of course. It was as useless as anything else he’s ever done. He begged and pleaded, but he should have known a man without mercy when he saw one.”
She laughed at his words, cheerful in morbidity. “Men like that never learn.”
“I suppose not.”
V.
The woman and man known to each other in privacy as Bernegilde and Bernulf had killed their target at last. They had been scheming to bring her down for many a month, and were giddy with the success.
“You know,” Bernegilde said idly, “I never understood why so many people thought her so beautiful. Not until she was dying.”
“That, my darling protégée,” Bernulf told her wryly, “Is because you are a wonderfully and brutally macabre kind of woman.”
“Point taken,” she said, laughingly. “There’s nothing so satisfying as a well earned and executed death. And, if I do say so myself, we are very good executioners.”
“We certainly are,” he agreed. “You’re beautiful yourself, when you end a life. My angel of death.”
She turned, and pressed a kiss to his lips in response. One thing led to another, and they stumbled, laughing, towards their bedroom. Half-falling onto the bed, they shedded clothes as fast as they could.
+I.
Bernulf was gone. For all her unlife, he had been by her side. Had Embraced her, brought her into this land of night and darkness. It had ended so suddenly. She was alone.
The woman would never be Bernegilde again. Bernegilde had been one half of a pair. Had existed in private corners and the realm of secrets. She couldn’t exist without Bernulf. Except, in her grief, a part of the woman would forever be Bernegilde. A shadowed corner of her heart, veiled and mourning, turned over forever to memorial.
She could never speak of him openly. He had died because he had become too dangerous and powerful. If someone remembered his shadowy companion, it might spell her doom as well. He wouldn’t wish her to die in his name. Once again, in the name of survival, she would have to transform. Her marriage presented certain difficulties, for she had married in the name of an alliance, and she could hardly vanish into the night. Or, at least, it would be far from wise.
Still, she could separate her legacy from his, as much as she could. Don a new name in the semi-public world of the Kindred. Play the victim, if she must, though she would prefer to avoid it becoming a necessity. Very few deaths had ever been blamed on Bernegilde, Dominilde, or any other name the woman had dressed herself up in. That meant she should be able to make herself seem less dangerous than Bernulf. There was a bitter irony to the fact that it was her greater skill at deception that had meant he was viewed as a monster and killed, while she had hope of slipping out of notice. The student had most certainly bested the teacher. She thought he would have been proud of her, in a funny sort of way.