Chapter 11 - Muss I' Denn

 

 

There are a few pretty heavy triggers in here. I discuss non-consensual sex in this chapter, and the attitude of a different era peeks through. Twenty-six pictures, hope you enjoy it!

 

The next chapter is going to be huge, at least 15 pages of writing and 61 images, so this may take me a while. 

 

 

Gabriel found her just where he knew he would; sitting quietly on a hay bale in Pepin’s stall, the horse nudging her from time to time as he took bites of hay off of the bale. The horse noticed the intrusion first, turning his head to glare at Gabriel with absolute contempt until he recognized the archangel and deemed him not a threat.

Gabriel still didn’t want to test that theory, however, and leaned against the stall door instead of entering it.

“Hey.” he said softly.

Karena looked up, tears running down her cheeks. “Yeah, I’m sitting on it, and he’s eating it. What, did they send you out to check on me?”




Gabe shook his head. “No, I followed. Told them to stay where the hell they were. Doubt they’ll listen, though. Are you okay?”

Karena’s sarcastic laugh echoed into the rafters of the barn, disturbing the swifts that nested there.

“Never been better. Great luck I have. Then again, I probably deserved it, considering the past life and what I did. Still sucks, though. I thought...Gods, I don’t know what I thought.”

Gabe leaned against the cool iron of the stall’s fencing, his remorse loosening his tongue.

“I feel this is my fault, kind of. I was… distracted back then. Things happened that shouldn’t have.”

Karena looked up at Gabriel, curious. “Hunh? I wasn’t supposed to meet Walter?”



 

Gabriel leaned over the stall door as if he was giving some juicy gossip. Usually, the past life lessons were given after the person had died, as sort of a tallying up and measuring of the soul. He felt, though, that letting Karena know some of the information would be helpful in fixing whatever mistakes Grim had made in not being up front with the goals of this geis.

“Oh no, that was totally part of the plan. Getting you away from your abusive husband was definitely part of the plan. Your prayers were so damn loud that I had to answer that one. Mary insisted.”

Karena raised her eyebrows at the mention of Mary. She knew of only one or two that a French Catholic woman would pray to. She assumed Gabriel meant the Virgin, since there was a history between that Mary and Gabriel, according to the Gospels.

“But our affair?” she interrupted.

Gabe shrugged his shoulders and gave a rueful smile. “Well, the war messed that up. We’re not omnipotent.”





Karena mirrored the smile as she remembered her life as Collette. “That’s not what the Church taught. God knew it all. But Collette suspected He really didn’t care, and that’s why she prayed to the Saints and the Virgin instead, at least in my remembering of it.”

Gabe was surprised at the small details of Collette’s life that Karena remembered. He knew that it happened probably more than he was aware of, though, given how many people weren’t surprised at their soul-weighing. He had his suspicions why and gave voice to one of them.

“Yeah, dear ol’ Dad… he kind of lives for the drama.” he said, rolling his eyes.

Karena looked pensive for a moment.

“So, Walt’s theory back then that life is suffering because God wills it was correct.”




Gabe knew which philosopher had said that, and he had paid for that correct thought with his sanity. He frowned as he remembered how much he hated that sort of destructive coding his Father had put into his little clay creations.

“Indeed. Sorry.”

Karena saw the frown and figured there was more to the words, but did not press. She was more concerned with the current situation and the geis.

“So, this…” she made a vague gesture “… Their doing or His?”

Gabe knew who she had referred to in the first portion of the question. The Old Ones; that exclusive group of deities who came into being from the stuff of the universe, older than his Father in some instances, younger in others – but just as capricious and frustrating as his own Creator was at times.

“Neither. Grim said this is Karma settling out – from both your past life and your ancestral Wyrd. Because of your past life with Walter, both your Orlogs and your Wyrds are intertwined now, and with what’s happening..”

Karena sighed heavily and rested her face in her hands.

“This sounds like the plot to a teenage self-insert fantasy movie. You SURE your Dad isn’t in on this?”

Gabriel chuckled softly at the dig; she was right. Most of the Gods liked to interfere in things down here because for them, this was their entertainment. That and messing with each other’s pantheons, their spouses, or dressing up as completely different beings and starting new cults in new worlds or remote islands.

“Well, if dear ol’ Daddy WAS here, he’d probably be making popcorn and bingeing this like a Netflix series, but no. This is older. This is a geis, my dear, and all of this happening, all of them – they are a part of it. It’s like a web, or like playing six degrees of Kevin Bacon. I don’t know the full story on this geis, Grim won’t tell me, and he says that even the others were not forthcoming with some of it. Probably to prevent you all from messing up the weave.”

Karena picked up a few pieces of hay and began to twine them into a small rope almost reflexively before she spoke again.

“So, the spinners.” 

 

 

Gabe noted the protective amulet Karena was making as a guard against the Fates picking up the conversation and nodded again to the affirmative.

“Definitely. Sorry. There’s also a wrong that needs to be righted here, and it is up to your family line to right it. Like it or not, their interaction with that wrong back in the past is what has branded you now, and the others.”

Karena sighed and pocketed the small twined dried grass amulet before adjusting her seat on the dwindling hay bale.

“Crap. So now what? I gotta accept that Walter lied to me, forgive him, and fix all this shit by midnight tonight or we all turn into pumpkins and it’s over?”

Gabriel shrugged. “I don’t know. Grim needs to fill me in so I can fill you in on the geis. As for forgiving Walter.. Yeshua was all about forgiveness, but he also did flip tables at the temple in anger. So..”

Karena gave a wry smile.

“You know as much as I do, then. Great. That bastard; I was beginning to fall in love with him, to trust him, and then.. this. I don’t know how I’m going to deal with it in a way that doesn’t hurt both of us.”
 

Karena leaned against the wall of the stall and muttered “Fuck.”




Gabriel heard the barn door slide quietly open and raised his head to see Walter tiptoe into the barn, looking left and right, a worried look on his face.

“Might I suggest talking to him?” he said softly to Karena.

Karena rose abruptly to her feet, the motion putting Pepin on alert. The horse swung in front of her and glared in the direction of the man approaching the stall. Yup, someone was gonna get bit, Pepin thought.

Karena ran her hand through Pepin’s mane and leaned into him.

He’s here, isn’t he?

Gabriel saw the murderous look Pepin was giving Walter. Whistling, he turned to meet the man as he approached, looking over his shoulder at Karena.


“I’ll leave you two alone. Don’t kill him. Grim’s not strong enough at the moment to resurrect him a second time.” 

 

Walter looked worried as the archangel came towards him. He winced in pain as Gabriel seized his shoulder with a grip that was stronger than he’d thought the angel could muster.

Gabriel looked through Walter, his eyes glowing a preternatural electric blue. “You are lucky it’s her and not me you’re about to talk to. Still, you are in deep shit, bucko. Best to come clean about what you did.” Gabriel hissed angrily in a supernaturally-charged, multiple-toned voice before releasing Walter’s shoulder and leaving the barn.

Walter froze in place for a moment, processing what he had just experienced. He shuddered when he remembered being 6, sitting with his parents at Sunday service at the Dom; when the pastor had given a fiery speech about the avenging angels of the Revelation.

“Their eyes were like the brightest of lightning flashes, their voices like a multitude of souls, and they walked among men, dispensing the Justice of the Lord…”

 
Walter swallowed heavily. It wasn’t every day one pissed off an Archangel, he thought. He willed himself to move forward to the stall where Karena and her equally-angry-looking horse were currently standing.

Pepin pinned his ears back and lunged at the red-headed man who was approaching the stall, ignoring Karena’s hissed command to stop.

Walter took two quick steps back from the stall door. From the frying pan into the fire, he thought. Horses weren’t an animal he was comfortable with, unlike some of the other pilots he had flown with. He preferred his modes of transportation to not have their own mind.

“Whoa, easy, boy.” he said, trying to calm the angry horse down.

Pepin ignored Karena’s commands to behave and pawed the stall floor, arching his neck, his ears flat against his head, his nostrils tight and his lip curled slightly to show his teeth. He gave a sharp, loud snort through his pinched nostrils when Karena reached around and smacked him in the chest with an open hand.

“I said leave it, Pepin!” Karena barked.

Still glaring, the chestnut gelding backed up a few steps and stood behind his mistress, resting his head over her shoulder.

Walter saw the interaction between Karena and her horse and the clear order she had given him. Still standing away from the stall door, he tried to avoid the horse’s stare.

“He.. really doesn’t like me, does he?” Walter asked finally.

Karena reached up and stroked her horse’s cheek, leaning into his body for comfort.

“He knows what you did. I told him everything. This horse isn’t stupid, you know. None of them are, even Manfred’s two.” she stated matter-of-factly.

Walter recoiled slightly at the accusation. How could a horse know what a human talks about, he thought. He risked a glance at Pepin and saw that the horse still was giving him a guarded look, though it appeared that the animal was more concerned with comforting his mistress at present.

He was curious as to what Karena was referring to; was it something that Lothar had said, or was it...he felt the bile rise in his stomach as he started to get an idea of what this might be about. He had hoped he could have kept it a secret from her, but apparently, that was no longer the case.

“What… what did I do, exactly?”

“I found your early war diary online. I read it. I also found something else, in Spanish, about a woman who says you left her at the altar and took money from her and her family, and that you were a Party member. Weren’t you engaged to Annelise then, Walter? Frig, the diary alone reads like a Dear Playboy letter series.” Karena said sharply.

Walter swallowed hard. The secret was out now. Well, not ALL the secret, he thought. He tried to explain.

“I … um...no, I wasn’t engaged to her yet. That didn’t happen until later. She had turned me down, twice. You know that because you wrote about it, Karena. I was a free agent at the time, and doing what young single men did at that age.”

Karena’s response was dripping with sarcasm.

“So you just liked variety, is that it? She was nothing more than another notch on your belt? Collette resisted your attempts, she really tried to keep a semblance of propriety between you two and then, you confessed your attraction, what you did for her and said it was the first time you’d taken a mistress… I remember those words, Walter. I carried them for YEARS after the reincarnation.”

Walter groaned inwardly. He knew this was going to be difficult, which was why he had tried to keep it secret. Attempting to stave off a shouting match, he raised a palm in a placating gesture.

“It wasn’t my intent to make you feel obligated back then, Karena. Or now.”

Karena’s voice rose in pitch, her emotions high.

“Then why did you allow us to happen now, after all of that? How many more conquests after Collette back then? How can I trust you when you never were open with me –or her- about this from the start? You read my biography, how come you didn’t correct me about your early war service?”

Walter rested his head in his hands, hearing the pain in Karena’s voice. Why hadn’t he corrected her? He could find no reason that would satisfy the question.

“I don’t know. Karena, I don’t know. I…”

Karena started to back up to the corner of the stall, where the hay bale was still sitting. She turned mid-rant, tears starting to flow. She was so angry that she needed space away from Walter at the moment.

“I suspected when I was researching for your biography that Collette was nothing but a wartime fling back then, especially after you left and never contacted her, and that made me both hurt and angry. To find out now that she wasn’t the only one? That cuts me to the bone. Now you return, you show up when my life has hit bottom again, and I thought that maybe, maybe I was wrong about you. Maybe you really did love her and by reasoning, me...”

Walter shrank into himself, the accusatory tone Karena was taking hitting the mark. Hearing her sob out the words in her anguish tore at him in a way he couldn’t comprehend. He didn’t respond, but hung his head lower when he heard her breath hitch.

“I am so, fucking, stupid. You never loved me like I did you -not then, and not now. Did you even have feelings for me back then? Do you now?” Karena sobbed, holding herself tightly.

Walter looked at the woman huddled on the hay bale, her horse turned to comfort her. He took a tentative step towards the stall to respond, but was met with a pinned-ear backwards glare and a waving back hoof, and retreated, saying nothing.

Karena looked up at the man standing at a distance from the stall and wiped her eyes.

“So there’s my answer then. All these past months … nothing but a passing fancy, just like last time. Jesus, fucking, Christ.”

Defeated, Walter turned to leave, but something Karena said about a Spanish website made him turn around again and approach the stall, angry horse be damned.

“Wait a minute. Karena, you mentioned a second Spanish website. What did it say, exactly?”

Karena straightened up on the hay bale, sniffling.

“I told you – a woman accused you of leaving her at the altar and taking her family’s money. What’s your side of this story, if I can believe you?”

Walter rubbed the back of his neck, the tips of his ears turning a bright red. Karena noted the change in body posture and wondered what about the incident was so embarrassing other than being caught in a lie about his past.

Walter sighed. Gabriel did say he had to come clean, but this was possibly the most upsetting thing that had happened to him, and he had wanted to keep it private for the rest of his life. Apparently, that woman did not, and had told her family. He began quietly, looking left and right to make sure they were the only two people in the barn.

“There was an incident that might have been blown out of proportion. There was a gal in Spain I was seeing, the daughter of one of the Spanish Generals, but...she was more interested in me than I her. I was still hurting from Annelise’s rejection. I thought that since she didn’t want me, there’d be plenty of women who would.”

“Typical.” Karena muttered.

Walter coughed, his face going even redder.

“Anyway, the girl was bent on marrying, and I was not and I told her so. It would have required a conversion to the Catholic Faith and that was definitely not something I was about to do. Something.. happened between us and... I avoided the city for a good long time after that. Damn near lost my officer’s commission. On that website… was her name Rosita?”

Karena’s interest was piqued; Walter had offered the name of the woman where she had not mentioned it.

“Yes. She called you by a different first name on the website, or at least the person writing it did. Something about an investment gone wrong and like I said, leaving her at the altar.”

Walter frowned. Now he KNEW that the woman was spreading falsehoods. Had she done it in the past too? Was that why he had had so much trouble with his peers and commander in the beginning of the war? Had she gone on to tell his commander more tales after the initial one?

“Absolutely none of that was true. Did any of it correlate to my diary entries?”

Karena shook her head. She saw the frown cross Walter’s face and was suspicious.

“No, but then again….you can omit things, Walter. As you did about this.”

Walter gave an uneasy laugh.

“My ego was as big as my head back then. I was an overconfident, selfish son-of-a-bitch. There was no way I was going to omit being pursued by someone as high up on the social ladder as her, especially if I was still angry at Annelise’s rejection. Rosita was one of the daughters of one of Franco’s most popular generals and technically would be in the same social class as me if she was in Germany, but Spain’s funny with their cultural and societal norms. Even though I was a young, well-heeled, up and coming Luftwaffe officer, there was no way in HELL was I even close enough in social standing for her father to even consider anything other than closely chaperoned dances. I was the son of an Angestellte, Karena, not Prussian nobility. Rosita was headstrong, though. On one of those social events our commander would throw, she escaped her duenna, plied me with some of the strongest liquor she could find, dragged me to a concealed area, and well… things happened. I am completely sure that she made up that story and told it to keep her father from disowning her for losing her virginity.

Karena raised her eyebrows at the confession. It sounded only half-true.

“So, she came onto you. Unhunh.”

Walter looked down at his shoes, uncomfortable with what he was about to confess.

“True, it’s rare, but it does happen. It’s embarrassing for me to admit it. I was pretty drunk. Every 20 year old guy in the world would rather die than admit they were….I mean, it’s all we would talk about, getting laid. To admit that it happened when you didn’t want it to… and that you didn’t even enjoy it...”

Karena folded her arms, still upset.

“That experience doesn’t excuse the string of mistresses, even after you married Annelise.”

Walter looked up, trying to explain himself better.

“Karena, you researched that era. You knew what it was like back then – maybe better than someone who had no past life ties to it. It was to be expected. You know Europeans think of sex and marriage differently. Plus the whole “conquering armies” thing. The Reich expected us to be terrors of the air and lusty in bed, even if it wasn’t with our wives. We were expected to fuck the new Aryan race into being, and our wives were supposed to turn a blind eye to it. Shit, we had mobile brothels, carnival carts converted into bordellos. Sure, not all of us were into that sort of thing, but some embraced the variety. Plus, we were young conquering ‘heroes of the Reich’ and on this drug…”

Karena saw the look on Walter’s face at the last sentence, a mix of sarcasm and pain. She shook her head.

“Frat boys. Like goddamned frat boys.”

Walter was confused at the reference.

“Hunh?”

Karena rose from the hay bale and leaned on the withers of her horse for comfort.

“Twenty-somethings with a brain and a penis, but only enough blood to run one at a time. College-age boys intent on getting laid and drunk as much as possible, damn the consequences and damn any hurt feelings.” she explained.

Walter nodded sadly. That was definitely spot-on, he thought.

“Pretty much, yes. I’m sorry, Karena. I was not completely open with you about my past, and I should have been.” he said softly.

Karena crossed her arms, more disappointed than upset now.

“No, you weren’t. You’ve broken that trust I had in you, but that’s also partially my fault. Like I said, I loved you then and thought you felt the same. I thought… I thought what we had now was merely a continuation of then, that you really did love me, after all. I’m disappointed, Walter – in both you and myself. If what we have now is built on nothing but false hopes and shattered dreams, I don’t think it’s a good idea to be intimate with each other anymore.”

Walter’s face fell at the last sentence. He had been hoping that this explanation would fix things, and that everything would be all right between them.

“I… understand. Do you want me to go back to my old room?”

Karena nodded. She felt that there was still something Walter wasn’t telling her, but she figured that, too, eventually would come out.

“I think that’s preferable, for now.”

Walter turned to leave, feeling lower than he had in a very long time. He paused halfway to Rosie’s stall, with another question.

“Do… do you still want me to do the finances?”

Karena leaned out of the stall door and gave a wan smile. Still wanting to work, in spite of the changed situation, she thought. Well, at least he was loyal on that front.

“Obviously. You’re the best person for that job. Just… don’t expect any …”

Walter felt a pang of regret, knowing what she was referring to. The office was for business only now.

“I won’t. Karena, for what it is worth, I’m sorry. I truly am.”

Karena watched him turn around and start to leave. “Wait, Walter. There’s something I want to know that I could never get a straight answer to in any of my research...were you a Party member? I mean, like Rudel was. Rosita accused you of that, too.”

Walter gritted his teeth in frustration at that last sentence, but when he turned, he had composed himself. That damn Rosita was a thorn in his side, he thought. My fault, though. I pursued her, I risked my career and everything, and she still haunts my existence. I should have listened to her duenna when she warned me about Rosita’s wrath.

“Goodness, no. I mean, I … no. I partook in things necessary to further my career, but the rest of the Party rhetoric --- some of Father’s friends were Jewish. There was no way I could stomach that. You have to take everything that Rosita woman said, or her relatives, as half-truths. Yes, I should not have pursued her in the first place, but her vengeance at being scorned was over the top. I wonder if that got back to Annelise after I died?”

Karena shook her head. “Not in my research, no. That’s why I was so upset when I read it, too. Walter, imagine if any of your relatives have seen this web page too – is it libel if the person’s dead, but then resurrected?”

Walter paused, his hand on his chin. “I don’t think it is, no. My descendants, from what you said, essentially wrote me off, so it’s a moot point, I would think. But Karena, are you going to be okay?”

Karena sighed sadly. “I wll be, in time. This is something I have to process by myself. You too.”

Walter nodded his head and left the barn, heading straight for the road. He needed to take a long walk by himself, before he could go inside and face the other, possibly angry, residents. Maybe Karena would go in first and explain things, so he’d have at least a small chance at survival.

Karena felt her horse brush up against her, blowing softly as if to ask if she was, indeed, all right.

“I didn’t kill him. Though I wanted to, Pepin. Oh, did I want to.” she said, turning to cry into his mane again.

Pepin tried his best to comfort her and thought that he, too, didn’t kill the fat human and should get possibly a good handful or two of treats for that; but right now, his mistress needed his quiet strength and not a pair of soft, questing lips around her pocket.