A/N: I do not own the characters to Inglourious Basterds. I do not make money doing this either.

This story is a sequel to "A Punishment for a Traitourous German Actress." It won't make much sense unless you read that one first. For just this chapter only it will be T but then it will switch to M for later chapters. Please review because I need a sense of reader interest in order to get these chapters written! I won't claim to be historically accurate with the dates of historic things but I will attempt to keep the characters in the mindset of 1940s society. My updates won't be as quick as with my first IB fanfic, but I can tell you that reviews will move it along much faster! ;)

A pair of large hands snaked around the slender neck, thumbs and tips of fingers touching as they united to form a snug circle. The hands were sweaty—but certainly it couldn't be due to uneasiness; it was because they were wholly unaccustomed to the warmer climate—yes, that was it. The neck was cool, its pulse shockingly slow and steady beneath its entrapment. As the fingers tightened their grip on the soft, smooth flesh of the woman's neck, she did not so much as flinch.

Hans Landa was taken aback.

From his position behind her, he stared at the dark chestnut hair, the shiny waves of it trapped under his hands.

Tension hung thick in the air, marred only by the distant cries of seagulls and various songbirds and the steady rumble of cars whizzing by, their inhabitants unaware of the scene unfolding behind the hedges that lined the backyard of the woman's home.

Suddenly his victim's voice, calm and melodic, sliced through the silence between them.

"You won't kill me."

Less than three months before this moment, his forehead smarting under the generic U.S. military hat pulled down over his still painful wound, Colonel Hans Landa received his Congressional Medal of Honor as promised him. He stood alongside Lieutenant Aldo Raine and Pvc. Smithson Utivich as the pale blue silk ribbons were placed around their necks, the gold star centered on their chests. Finally he was able to see that the United States military had some kind of formality. He'd never seen Lt. Raine and Pvc. Utivich stand so still, Raine even going without that crooked smirk on his face.

As promised, he received his bit of land on Nantucket Island and had already received his first pension check. This was to be a new life, a new beginning.

His chin up, in proper military posture, Hans Landa saluted a thin, frail old man in a wheelchair, the President of the United States of America. So this was where his allegiance would lie—a country where he'd be hailed as a great military hero, a country that bragged of its freedoms. In a simple radio call, all his sins had been forgiven. And all he had to do on his end was not pick up a phone. He swallowed the chuckle before it could materialize as he watched President Roosevelt salute him back.

Though he had been instantaneously set for life, Hans Landa was not yet ready to settle down in his comfy Nantucket home and spend his days watching seagulls. He had some unfinished business with a certain actress. An actress who had escaped him, who had humiliated him in the process. An actress who had gotten the last word—at least, for the time being.

During the presentation of the Congressional Medal of Honor to Landa and the Basterds, thousands of miles away, Bridget von Hammersmark sat on her bed, tracing the scar of a bullet wound on her left calf. This had certainly not worked out the way she wanted it to. She would not be receiving any credit for her important role in Operation Kino. Worse yet, the Allies found it difficult to believe her story—they were somehow convinced that she was in fact a triple agent. The Basterds themselves had sworn to their superiors that she had kissed Landa in the cinema lobby for no other reason than because she wanted to, because, as they claimed, "she definitely looked like she liked was she was doin'" and that "she an' him knew each other from before." How could she help that she was familiar with the infamous Jew Hunter? France was not a large country, and it was only a matter of time before the two famous individuals – famous, of course, for two completely different reasons – had to meet. It also didn't help her cause knowing that three Allies were killed in the tavern she had chosen for the rendezvous point.

She stood up, walking over to the window. Outside she could see a lone palm tree positioned awkwardly between the two high-rises across the street, the only visible sign of the different climate. It was impossible to know what to do now. Before all the accusations had begun to fly, before she was considered to be a triple agent, she had jumped on a plane and flown to the United States with what money she had earned in her decade-long acting career. The money had been enough to purchase a decent home in the Hollywood Hills, a quite lovely home, save for its lack of a view. Here she planned to restart her career in American cinema, hoping for popularity reminiscent of the silver screen greats: Vivien Leigh, Hedy Lamarr, Greta Garbo, and Marlene Dietrich.

These accusations of treachery to the Allies made her a wanted woman. She would most likely have to return to Germany, a country she had betrayed for good reason. Her money supply was dwindling and she certainly couldn't apply for any acting jobs, lest she be recognized. If she wished to remain in America, she had to change her name, assume a new identity, and begin from square one. And so she did.

It was now October 1944, four months after the war with Germany had ended. The Japanese had surrendered the month before, their cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki now in ruins. World War II was over, and a hum of contentment was in the air throughout the United States. Both Landa and von Hammersmark, on opposite ends of their newly adopted country, could feel the countrywide teeming with satisfaction. Landa, however, would not be content until he had enacted his revenge on the woman who had humiliated him, the woman whose neck he held in an ironclad grip, the woman who had just now made a defiant remark, amazingly keeping her composure all the while.

"You won't kill me."

He blinked indignantly, echoing her words in his head. Had she actually said that?

He had tracked her down rather easily, tracing her papers to Hollywood, California, where she had purchased a house under her name—done before she was accused of triple agency. Though she had changed her looks—dyeing her hair a dark brown and putting on a bit of weight—as well as changing her surname to Haynesworth—sounds quite like Hayworth, as in Rita Hayworth, he had mused—she stupidly had remained in the same house. Perhaps she had been planning to move once she scraped up enough money. If that was her goal, it was a goal that would never be realized.

Retaining his grip on her neck, Landa wrinkled his brow at her single matter-of-fact statement. This was ending tonight, whether or not she believed him capable of doing it. Was she really so presumptuous as to assume that he'd let her live merely because she got off on him forcing himself on her? For all her cleverness in evading his detection for her alleged two years of double agency–he'd never forget the number—she had a lot to learn. Of course, what she would do with this new knowledge would be limited, being as she'd be dead shortly thereafter.

"And what reason do you have to believe that?" he inquired in a silky voice, hands twisting about her neck with the same forceful grip as he moved to the front of her, where she had been half-reclining on a lawn chair, sunglasses reflecting the midday sun. With a quick jerk of his hands, he made her stand up before him, watching her almost trip over the lawn chair in the process. She remained completely silent in the process, not even uttering a gasp or a yelp. He glanced down at her feet, clad in tiny black and white polka dot heels. His own leather loafers were dampened by the well-manicured California grass, dark stains of water lining the outside of his shoes.

She was as tall as he, perhaps even slightly taller at the moment, being as he now wore flat shoes as opposed to the shiny patent leather boots he had been accustomed to wearing in Nazi-occupied France, boots which afforded him an inch and a half or so. Not only was she slightly taller than him at the moment, but she had gained about ten pounds since they had last met. Her skimpy polka-dotted sundress did not flatter her new figure—she had certainly not put the weight on in her bust. She must have been desperate indeed in her attempts to lay low, for her to dare betray her formerly enviable figure.

Her hair, a dark chestnut, hung in shiny waves around her tanned face and neck, her skin exposed in this region of the world to a higher intensity of sunlight than was usual in Europe. He could not see her eyes, hidden behind oversized sunglasses in a plastic tortoiseshell pattern frame.

She regarded him as well from behind the darkness of her sunglasses. Landa's hairstyle had been changed so that a large amount of hair flopped over his forehead, the hair hanging so low it grazed his eyebrows. It was a rather odd, albeit youthful look for him, and she wondered why he had done such a thing, when he had spent all the years she had known him sporting a more flattering, sophisticated hairstyle. And as she looked at him now from her heel-aided vantage point, she realized that Hans Landa was far less intimidating out of his Nazi uniform; that was for certain. At the moment he was wearing a simple blue button-down shirt, a pair of trousers, and leather loafers—looking like any other U.S. civilian. There were no black patent leather boots, no hat with a grinning skull, no swastika to see—he was simply just another man.

She breathed out loudly, its sound like that of a sigh. Landa's eyebrows rose. Was she actually feigning boredom? He could picture her rolling her eyes behind the dark sunglasses, and fumed inside.

He wanted to watch her die, wanted to see the whites of her eyes as her eyes rolled back in her head, wanted tears to involuntarily spill down her cheeks as her air supply remained inaccessible just long enough for her to perish. He wanted to watch the surprise and fear in her eyes gloss over with death. She had dared defy him four months before, going so far as to completely humiliate him. She had gotten the last word, an impossibility where Hans Landa was concerned. And now she was acting as if he was an annoying neighbor catching her at a bad time—all the while his hands encircled her very neck! Yes, he would watch her die. His hands were busy at the moment; she'd have to oblige him.

"Take off your sunglasses," he commanded, no humor in his tone. There was a hesitation. From behind the reflection of her sunglasses, she looked at him. His face held no kindness, his lips drawn into a tight grimace, his eyes squinting in the bright sunlight. He had not even let her reply. Slowly her hand rose from where it had been hanging at her side, languidly making its way upward.

He couldn't help but consider, as Bridget remained ever so calm: was she going to try something else? If nothing else, why hadn't she screamed by now? Someone might be able to hear her, being as they were outside. If anything, she looked completely bored by the encounter; had she expected this to happen?

Her hand continued to raise, her thumb and forefinger finally resting on the juncture of the frame and the hinge of her sunglasses. A grim smile on her face, she removed the sunglasses, lowering them to her side, completely ignoring the grip on her neck all the while. She stared directly at him, her pale eyes boring into his dark eyes, her expression not changing. Why did she believe he would not kill her?

"What is your answer to my earlier question?" he inquired, having switched to German, the first words that had been spoken in their native language during this encounter. She did not so much as flinch.

"You won't kill me because I'm pregnant," she replied in English, her accent impeccable.

A smile crept across his lips, soon blooming into a good-natured grin, a crescent of green able to be seen around the pupils of his amused eyes. So that's why she had put on some weight around her girth; she was pregnant. He glanced at her left hand, immediately noticing the absence of a ring. He looked back at her with the grin remaining, his twinkling eyes instantly judging her. Whore.

"Do you think that's going to stop me?" he replied in perfect English after a pause, the smile never wavering, teeth all out on display. His tone was so amiable, it could have been reserved for a congratulatory statement. "As I'm sure you're aware, I had ordered the executions of just about every helpless, pitiful person you can imagine, from the pregnant to the newborn. I find it incredible that you have actually assumed I won't do the same to you."

"I know what you did," she hissed. "But this is different."

"Ha ha ha!"

Landa couldn't help interrupting her with a short bout of laughter; her words were just too preposterous to him. Maybe she was planning on making him laugh himself into a stupor. She was very good at making him do so, as he recalled being ever so amused by her twice that night—namely, by her claims of mountain climbing and of her being half-Jewish. Rather than fully crack up for a third time in front of her, he forced himself to keep a low profile, an air of foreboding.

"Do you actually believe you're any different from them—merely because we shared a moment?" he asserted, adding a wicked sneer to his last few words. "You should not have put your life at stake for some imagined sentiments you believe will exempt you. It was far too easy to find you, Bridget; you should have made a better attempt at hiding from me."

His grip on her neck tightened for a moment, but her eyes did not react. The grim smile remained plastered on her face.

"I'm not hiding from you," she replied, her eyes cold, her mouth drawn into what appeared to be—a smirk?

He loosened his grip only slightly, a questioning look in his eyes. His smile took on the appearance of a lopsided grin, his teeth disappearing behind his lips.

"If that's so, who are you hiding from?"

"I don't think that's any of your concern, Herr Landa," she retorted with a sneer. She watched his expression change to one a bit more sinister, the sparkle instantaneously disappearing from his eyes. Increased pressure was now being applied to her neck. She took a breath and held it, figuring that he would not travel all the way out here to kill her without finding out why she believed he wouldn't go through with it. He simply had to have the satisfaction of knowing. He opened his mouth to speak, as she barely stifled a knowing smile.

"It probably isn't... Though, even if it was—" He stuck out his bottom lip as he shook his head. "—I couldn't care less. However, there is something I must know: namely, why you believe I'm going to spare you," he prodded, tone ever-so-polite. A neat little smile crossed his face. "Just for curiosity's sake, of course."

She lifted her chin up, looking him straight in the eye. She felt herself grip the sunglasses more tightly, putting her other hand upon her protruding stomach.

"It's yours."

A/N: So take note that this story will 'disappear' from the default page view (you know, the standard K-T rating) once the second chapter goes up! It will be a solid M and will not be for the faint of heart! Please leave me feedback so I have the encouragement to write, and write more quickly at that!