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She scales the building with ease, her only target: the large window to a bedroom she knows he's sleeping in.
Why? Because she needs him to know. She needs to see his face when she tells him.
He'll likely be angry that she's come to him without having killed her "sister," but she believes she may have gotten him a slightly more thoughtful gift. Perhaps he'll forgive her enough to maintain their truce.
She's silent as she unlatches the window and slips inside. These movements feel as sickeningly familiar to her as his name did the first time she heard it. How often did she sneak into his apartments in her past?
A candle, almost burned down, flickers its light on his prone form. Sheaves of paper perilously close to absconding from his lax fingers and greeting the flame. She crosses to his bedside to remove the papers. Enver Gortash will die by her hand or Karlach’s, not through his own carelessness, flames, and parchment.
As she eases them from his hand, it flips to grab her wrist. She looks down into his brown eyes, the ones that displayed such warmth for her during his coronation. Now, they only display confusion. He sits up, still holding her wrist.
“What are you doing here? Do you have Orin’s nether stone?” Then his face transforms to anger as he drags her forward so that she has to perch with one knee on the bed or lose her balance. “Or are you here to break our pact and assassinate me?”
“Neither.”
His head cocks to the side, “why then? For old time's sake?”
Her head throbs throbs throbs at the reminder that there's something she has no memory of between herself and this tyrant, and she lifts her other hand to press it to her forehead–futile gesture. She wishes she could push her fingers into her own brain matter and SQUEEZE. Squeeze until she wrings out all her old memories onto the floor so she can understand why she did what she did. But looking into Enver's eyes, she can't not know. She has to know. It's plain as day. Why else would she have been so compelled to do what she did?
Enver’s face softens again, but his grip on her wrist remains. She is allowed to pull away, just slightly, and sit comfortably on the bed facing him.
“It's easy to forget that you don't remember. You seem so the same at times.” His eyes search her face, and she resists the urge to cast her own eyes away.
Sometimes, it feels like if people just looked close enough, they could see what she's constantly fighting. But then, he's already expressed that he doesn't just tolerate her predilections but maybe even enjoyed them once upon a time. But where does that leave her? A broken little girl with daddy issues trying her damnedest not to stick a dagger through the eyeballs of every passerby. It would be so so so so easy to give in and curl up in the comfort of Enver’s approval. A far more comfortable journey than her constant resistance. Oh, speaking of.
“I’ve brought you a gift.”
He raises a single eyebrow in response.
“I'm afraid you won't like it.”
His other eyebrow joins its twin, creating dark slashes above his piercing eyes.
She tilts her head thoughtfully as she considers her words, “I'm also afraid that you will.”
To her surprise, he lets out a brilliant laugh, and she's momentarily stunned by the charisma and authority that drips from it.
“Well, let's not keep me in suspense, my Bhaalspawn. Show me what you've brought me so late at night.”
Feeling much like a cat dragging its latest kill into their master's house, she removes a pouch from her hip and gingerly places it in his lap, leaving him to untie it. When he releases her wrist to undo the pouch’s draws, she slips away from the side of his bed, ready to fling herself to safety should he dislike what he finds.
A weaker man would have flinched upon setting eyes on the contents of that bloody pouch, but Enver Gortash simply lifted one of the hands out and examined it closely. He is shrewd and likely notices the two hands belonged to a male and a female, both older. It's when he examines the wedding ring and band on the female hand that Hedda sees realization dawn on him.
He looks up at her. Face inscrutable. She edges towards the window. Ah, it seems she will be kicked. No matter. She is stealthy and agile. Tumbling out his window will be no bur–.
“Stop.”
Again, the authority in his voice commands her. Her, a raging wild thing, stopping for the likes of him. Perhaps that's why her father forsook her in favor of Orin. The power this Baanite has over her is sacrilegious.
He stood, striding to her and quickly capturing her by gathering the hair on the back of her head and yanking her closer. She is small and slight. Relying on shadows and surprise to give her an upper hand in combat before she gives in to the urge. And so he towers over her, almost a parody of the way someone would angle their lover for a kiss.
“Hedda. Answer me truthfully. Have you brought me my parents’ hands?”
She looks into his eyes and gives a slight nod. His grip on her hair tightens, pulling at her scalp and pinpricking her eyes with tears.
“And is this meant to be a threat?”
She jerkily shook her head. It certainly wasn't.
“Why did you kill my parents, Hedda?”
And wasn't that just the explanation she was afraid to give? The one she had only barely admitted to herself. But it needs to be said aloud. Acknowledged. Dissected . She requires his response like air.
“I spoke to your mother—the real her. The one trapped inside. She told me. She told me everything, Enver. What they did to you. A child.” She bares her teeth, almost snarling with rage, lost in the memory. Hissing, she continued, “She wasn't even sorry. I gave in. I slaughtered them. I pulled off your mother's head with my bare hands. I played with your father's entrails. I terrified my companions.”
Hedda felt the urge rise again as she relished in the memory of mutilating their bodies. If Enver noticed, he did nothing, clearly considering himself safe.
“I told my companions it was necessary. That you had your parents so trapped that death was a mercy. And they… They forgive me my… episodes as long as they are directed “properly.” But that's not why I did it. If I could, I'd kill them again and again and again and again and AGAIN AND AGA–”
Enver shook her, breaking her from the beautiful bloody loop of gore and pain that had begun in her brain.
“Continue.”
She blinked away the glaze in her eyes to refocus on him. “I killed them for you, Enver. Because the thought of their crime was too much to bear.”
She raises her hands and clutches the lapels of his open linen nightshirt, scrunching and wrinkling the fabric between her anxious fingers.
“Tell me, Enver Gortash, why. Why did I make my father proud today? Why did I give in to my urge for you?”
A split second later, his lips came crashing down onto hers. An answer given. And as her breath hitches and lips part allowing him in, an answer received.