Fic: Fine Weapons | Kill Bill | Beatrix/Elle | rated R
Title: Fine Weapons
Fandom: Kill Bill
Pairing: Beatrix/Elle
Rating: R
Summary: Could the deadliest woman on earth set aside the world’s most perfect weapon and just… chill? Forever? Heaven forefend.
How come I done this: because somebody told me to. This is my primary femslash06 submission, written for jaybee65.
~
Excerpted from The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, Translated by Tormond Byrn
31. Fine weapons are instruments of evil as soldiers can be: quite ill-omened things, often hated… The durable, even when he conquers, does hardly regard weapons as lovely things. Weapons and soldiers can be bad and evil-doing tools… To hold them dear means to delight in them, and so to delight in slaughter of men… And he who delights in the slaughter of men will never get what he looks for out of those that live and function under heaven.
~
When it was all said and done, after the Death List burned and her fury crumbled to ash, she put the sword away. She didn’t beat it into a plowshare or cast it into the sea. It was precious, immutable, and immortal as any masterwork of art, but the sight (the mere thought) of it sparked temptation. She wished it both safe and safely absent. On a Spanish island, she found a home and near her home she found a bank and the bank had a vault and that was that.
Months have passed, and the Hanzo Lion sleeps tonight in a cage of solid steel. Beatrix Kiddo sleeps under Ibizan moonlight, breathing salty air and the sweet perfume of her daughter’s hair. Little B.B. is curled into her mother’s shielding arms, safe as Athena behind the Aegis. Together, they present a portrait of tranquility, but bodily repose does not guarantee stillness of mind.
Bea’s wide blue eyes flutter and dart beneath tightly shut lids. Long fingers curl around her child’s slim wrist, its diameter roughly matching the tsuka of a borrowed weapon. In her dream, she again stands in the narrow hallway of a grubby trailer outside Barstow, engaged in mortal struggle with the one-eyed harpy who has stolen her sword. Their blades are locked together, each woman pushing the other toward defeat and oblivion.
Her thumb digs into the corded handle wrap, presses to angle the dream blade flat and end the standoff. In her mind, she leans back and lets her opponent’s freed steel rip past her head and burrow into cheap wood paneling. In her mind, she has a clear path to Elle Driver’s throat and she takes it without hesitation. With only the slightest encouragement, Budd’s Hanzo slips through skin and sinew, loosing arterial spray massive enough to shock them both. Elle’s mouth falls open; her hands lose the sword and clutch at her throat. She falls to her knees and looks up at Beatrix, her paling face a mask of disbelief.
It’s over? Just like that? Elle has no voice, but the question rings out loud.
“You’re the last,” Beatrix tells her. “When you go, it really is over.”
In the dream, there is no cursing and thrashing about, no impotent denial. Elle simply glares at her, glares and bleeds her vile, jealous heart out until, at last, she is empty and she is dead. In the dream, Beatrix has a sense of finality, of completion. With this act comes death and rebirth, a dawning horizon of endless peace… and she is horrified.
Beatrix starts awake, starved for oxygen. When she breathes, she scents neither salt nor sweet, but the rotten tang of a fellow Viper’s blood. She is pressed flat against the mattress, pinned beneath a ton of dread. Her daughter slumbers still, and Bea’s fingers form a gentle circle around her wrist. There is no violence here, in her waking life.
It’s only a dream, she reassures herself. They’re not all dead.
There are a few key survivors, Beatrix believes. Sofie Fatale sans left arm. Nikki Bell with her murdered mother. Elle Driver, writhing in blind agony. All maimed by her rage in some fashion, but likely still living. Likely they are still healing and seething and scheming, waiting for the day when strength peaks, stars align, and a fresh reckoning begins. Years may pass, but they will surely come for her, seeking retribution. Then she will have reason to reclaim her peerless blade and test her mettle, to fall backward into the ecstatic embrace of combat. Until then, for B.B.’s sake, she will try to be normal. She will be peaceable and, she suspects, mostly quite happy. Mostly.
She will stop by the bank tomorrow, just to check on it, just to cradle that flesh, bone and steel beauty in her palms for a few moments, in the safety and silence of the vault. She will remind the Lion to remain vigilant because, somewhere in the weeds, jackals are stirring.
~ ~
She is beautiful, winsome and warm, so she makes friends easily. As her daughter is the same, they effortlessly draw companionship. Lourdes works at a café and Alona tends bar in a nearby hotel. One sunny afternoon, Lourdes takes B.B. home to play with her own children and Beatrix takes Alona up to room 313 and reacquaints herself with the concept of pleasure. Guilt is not a factor since she is no one Bea could love, and the girl’s interest has always been disarmingly frank. She is young, firm and blonde, with an easy smile and a tactful lack of curiosity.
These white scars salted across your breasts…the slash spanning your back…your palm covering my eyes, thumb pressing against my throat…
If the girl has concerns, they are dimmed by dusk and memories by nightfall. There is black wisdom written on the foreigner’s golden skin; she runs her fingers and lips over the Braille of violence lightly, without reading. New friends don’t pry, and she wants to remain friends. Afterward, alone on the balcony, Beatrix is staring into the past. She smokes an unfiltered cigarette and lets it burn down to her fingertips. Blisters rise on the pads of thumb and forefinger and later, at home, she smirks as she wraps them in Band-Aids.
~ ~ ~
This is a memory. This is Havana, many moons ago. Elle Driver sits alone on a tiled veranda and stares into the face of the Devil.
Propped carefully against her knee is Bill’s prized possession: his Hanzo sword. The shining blade bears the carved visage of a horned demon. Elle’s focus is so deep that she does not notice Beatrix watching her from the doorway. Neither does she notice her forgotten cigarette cooking her fingers. At the smell of singed flesh, Bea is no longer able to restrain herself.
“Does Bill know you play with his toys when he’s not around?”
She starts at the voice, swings her eyes toward the newcomer. As her reverie breaks, she drops the spent rollie and shakes her fingers. “Piss off,” Elle mutters. “This is not a toy.”
To both women, Bill’s sword is as much an object of desire as Bill himself - seemingly eternal and certainly lethal. To possess it is to wield power, and Bill has told Bea that she is not yet ready for such a burden. Young and bold, Beatrix does not back away from her desires, especially when they start to smolder.
“I’m perfectly aware what that is. I want to hold it.”
“No fucking way. You cut yourself, he’ll blame me.” Elle snorts and tightens her grip on the handle. “Hell, if you cut me, he’d blame me.”
Despite Elle’s faultless beauty, lately Bill seemed weary of her manic intensity and cruel precision. Whether he liked it or not, his attention was increasingly fixed on the more playful and earthy Beatrix. The syntax of Elle’s dismissal confirms the rearranged pecking order has not gone unnoticed. Elle has thus far accepted her defeats with sullen silence, but losing the master’s favor is not the same as losing sparring matches. Resentment will build and retaliation will come, unless preventive measures are taken.
Beatrix runs through her options. Not allowed to kill her. Beating her ass again only delays the inevitable. Friendship is unimaginable. Elle understands a few basic things: power, pain, greed, and respect. Sometimes you don’t know how to win a fight until you’re in it, so Bea decides to risk engagement.
“I won’t cut either of us,” Bea promises. She approaches slowly, holds out her hand. Her wriggling fingers and lopsided smile assure conspiracy. “C’mon. Give.”
Elle realizes that to acquiesce would ensure silence regarding this breach of etiquette, but to give in without hassling the kid is unthinkable. She hoists up the lacquered hardwood sheath and hands it over first. She stands, letting the Devil dangle between her legs, steps to Beatrix and locks their eyes together. She covers the girl’s large hand with her own so they hold the scabbard jointly, and deliberate Elle eases the sword inside, all the way to the hilt. By the time the blade collar clicks into place, she has moved in so tight they touch at the thigh, the hip and breast. The docile Devil lies neutered, trapped between their hard bellies. Bea’s expression is pure stony umbrage, but her pupils are dilated and her breath has all but halted. Elle recognizes the signs.
“Still won’t fuck you, will he?” she guesses.
Beatrix flushes, but returns fire. “And how long has it been since Bill touched you?”
Coy smile, hooded eyes. “Too long. Why do you think I’m out here playing with his toys?”
“Bitch, you’re playing with a deadly weapon,” Beatrix whispers.
Elle’s laugh stutters breath across both their faces. “Oh, honey. I don’t mean the Hanzo.”
Her smile is clean, justified arrogance. “Neither do I.”
Something akin to a hiss emerges from Elle’s curved lips. Lately, there is challenge in their every interaction. Elle welcomes it; challenge brings friction, and from friction comes heat, and the cold-blooded take warmth wherever they can find it. She rocks forward and up, pushing breast to breast in the slow, tense manner of two snakes trading scales.
Beatrix is breathing again, harder now, but she won’t back down. The terrain is new, but she will find her footing. She feels vaguely sick as her nipples stiffen and rise. She gets dizzy as the California Mountain Snake eases back, sways her head hypnotically, licks her lips and prepares to strike. In every duel, there is a superior creature, and this is no different - the Black Mamba, even when dazed, will always strike first.
Single-minded even now, both of Elle’s hands remain on the sword. Bea’s left hand flies to Driver’s throat. Her grip is iron, her thumb jams hard against Elle’s windpipe, fingers groove into bone. The older woman’s eyes widen, instantly trading arousal for fury. Her first move is to try and free the sword, but Beatrix twists their joined hands on the scabbard and thwarts the draw. She presses her thumb in harder to regain Elle’s focus, to remind her that death is but one collapsed trachea away. No fool Elle, she stills and glowers.
Among unscrupulous warriors, advantage and dominance are slippery as mercury. Beatrix knows this and shifts strategy to keep her grip. She tenses her right hand, squeezes the treasured Hanzo with their meshed fingers. “Betcha I get one of these before you do.”
Elle is quiet until she is granted breath, and even then remains defiant. “Dream on, shithead. He’s sending me to train in China -”
“After I get back,” Bea interrupts.
There is a moment of disbelief, then a rapid transitioning to comprehension and indignity. “Motherfucker.”
The word is concentrated venom, and Bea finds it savory as red wine. Elle’s humiliation is rewarding, but the victory is not yet complete. Beatrix lets go the sheath and moves her right hand to the tsuka, pries loose Elle’s coiled fingers and moves them to the fly of her jeans.
At this progression, Driver doesn’t even feign surprise, she just sneers and dutifully pops loose the brass buttons. There’s a queer satisfaction in this particular defeat - the knowledge that she’s getting first crack at tarnishing Bill’s sterling angel, that she will feel this warrior’s strength from the inside before the old master takes his due. Kiddo’s thumb at her neck is still tight, but she’s getting used to it.
“You can still go,” Beatrix graciously allows as she guides Elle’s hand to its place of servitude, “but only after I’m done.”
Elle understands power and knows she has again been routed. She understands pain, and so savagely pushes inside with blistered fingers in a petty effort to hurt them both. She understands respect, and as she twists her hand and stares into Beatrix Kiddo’s steady countenance, she recognizes the woman as her better. In that instant, her icy disdain shatters into razored bits of hatred. A broken mirror of glossy golden hair and fragile blue eyes, needy fingers grasping bloody edges, they reach for the same thing while knowing that - in the long run, after the final sword is sheathed - only one of them will get what they want.
When Beatrix grits her teeth, seizes and comes under Castro’s moon, one hand rides the grip of the finest sword ever made by man, and the other controls the pulsating throat of a poisonous serpent. The moment is dirty perfection, wicked bliss, and she is slightly drunk on her own power. Hidden facets set to shimmering within the sunny girl as she recalls Bill’s raven-shaded voice.
There is nothing in this world, not one fucking thing, quite so addictive as the successful infliction of one’s own will upon an enemy. Get a taste of that, Kiddo, and you’ll never kick the habit.
~ ~ ~ ~
Another year on Ibiza has brought change, most of it good. She has a job teaching French and English at a local school - the Dutch penchant for language paying off again. B.B. is thriving. She has good friends and good marks and, for the most part, behaves herself. She has a vicious, lazy cat named Esteban which she loves beyond all reason. Lourdes still takes her home after school, and has taught the child how to make banana pancakes and churros with hot chocolate. Needless to say, B.B. has put on a few happy pounds. Beatrix has not.
She remains lean and leonine, ever more watchful as time passes. She can’t imagine how long it would take to recover from a severed arm, or to acclimate to complete blindness, but she can gauge how long it takes for a little girl to grow up, how long it will take before Nikki Bell is old enough to think of her mother dead on the kitchen floor and ignite with the need to avenge Jeannie Bell, the loving mother she knew, not Vernita Green, the traitorous cunt Beatrix exterminated.
B.B. and Nikki are nearly the same age. Hopefully, little Nikki is stuffing herself with cookies baked by her doting widower father. Hopefully, with the help of the good Doctor Lawrence Bell, her memories will fade and she will lead a normal life, free from the impulse toward violence. Sofie Fatale will not go so quietly.
Devotion was a rare thing in their world, and Sofie was absolutely devoted to O-Ren Ishii. They were friends, confidantes. Their commitment to each other was plain and elegant as O-Ren’s sword. If there was anything more, if they were lovers, Beatrix does not know. Beatrix Kiddo took Sofie’s arm, and then cleaved off the top of O-Ren’s skull. Sofie, an accountant at heart, will seek to balance the books.
Elle Driver was always blind in her own way, so losing her sight will not lay her low. Her mad disgrace would ferment to vendetta. Her scrabbling hands would land on Budd’s Hanzo sword and she would walk out of the desert in her dusty Prada boots. She would practice in darkness until she finds a way to see with her ears, with her skin. Maybe Sofie Fatale will find her. Maybe they will both find Nikki Bell. Perhaps they will descend on Beatrix en masse, prompting another grand conflagration of carnage.
This fear (this hope) is what keeps her going. This is why when Alona visits, she departs before midnight, why Beatrix leaves B.B.’s arms at dawn to run and lift, to shoot and throw, to take the Hanzo from its new home in the bedroom safe and drill until her knees buckle. She pushes because, in that last lengthy, metaphoric diatribe, Bill’s assessment was correct. She is, above mother and lover and teacher, a killer. A warrior blessed and burdened with a fine weapon - a treasure that cannot be spent, a steel Lion whose hunger cannot be tempered.
In warm Spanish fields, the immigrant lioness lays waiting. Her claws sheathed and sharp teeth worn in a smile, she watches the weeds for jackals and keeps her ears pricked to the wind, listening for the whistled strains of Auld Lang Syne.
END