#i’ll do cass and dani if yall want me to

[valleynix]

I was looking back at the angsty posts and was reminded of Alcina getting a second chance in chp 8 😭😭 it made me think of if one of the sisters got a second chance instead.

Maybe bela somehow was able to go back right before she was killed and was confused at how normal reader looks and how they don’t know anything.

HMMM >:3

She doesn’t understand.

How could this have happened so quickly? How could they be completely fine during dinner and a beast by moonrise?

She’d found them in the library, wings out, hunched over and stumbling as though they were drunk. She wasn’t aware they even had a mutation - what were they? - but upon seeing it… Perhaps both she and her family had been wrong about this stranger and what they meant.

After urging Daniela to find their mother or someone to help them, the human she was growing attached to focused their attention on her, and the battle was bloody.

She hadn’t wanted to kill them, no. She knew what a frenzy looked like, how someone behaved when they had no control over their body, and part of her thought she could save them. All she needed was a distraction, but she underestimated how rabid of a cornered animal they really were.

Through her best efforts, she’d thrown them against bookshelves, sliced at them, dodged them enough so they stumbled into something else, torn out their eye… And yet, as though their body were nothing more than a machine in her uncle’s factory, they continued after her.

Bela knew her youngest sister wouldn’t want them hurt, not in an unrepairable way, but as the bells chimed in the castle’s highest tower, she knew something had to be done or none of them would make it through the night alive.

She could do nothing, however, except let her eyes drift closed. As she felt her body crumbling around her on the floor and that beast in her home stumble through the library’s door, she could do nothing but wait and beg.

A second chance was all she wanted. She knew she could do something, knew she could help them-

And when she reopened her eyes, she was in that same library, holding open a book in a clean room. The bookshelves were how they’d always been, the books themselves still neatly placed in order of genre, no blood or missing appendages…

“…think so,” the human mumbles, grumbling as they shift in a chair beside her. Their cup clatters as it’s placed against a small plate, and they wince as the sound hits her ears. “You don’t find it odd that the lord would abandon his name like that? All for someone he barely knew?”

What-

This doesn’t make sense. Wasn’t she just-

She was dying. It was no dream, no hallucination. She knows what she saw and what she felt, so how the hell-

“Maybe I just don’t know what that’s like. Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to go through the marriage and keep his name-“

“What are you talking about?”

This was… She remembers this moment, though it was some time ago. She hadn’t meant for her words to come out that harshly, but… What was going on?

The human tilts their head to the side, brows furrowing. “We were… discussing the latest book you’d had me read, weren’t we? I thought…” They lean away from her a little, worry clear in their eyes and features. “Is everything all right?”

How could she lose that much time as if it were nothing? That doesn’t… She was just there-

“You were… Something was wrong.” She’s sure she must sound insane right now. “I was- Wasn’t I?”

Their confusion only grows as they shake their head, glancing all around. “You’re talking to me, aren’t you? I don’t understand.”

They look so… them. No blood on their face or anywhere around them, no wings, no… nothing.

Both golden eyes stare up at her after a moment, a single brow lifted with a question clear on their face. How is it that she lived through something so real, only to continue her life as if nothing had actually happened?

Doesn’t that mean she could prevent it? She could stop it from happening, stop the destruction they caused.

“You would… tell me if you were hiding something about your existence, wouldn’t you?”

Their head tilts to the side. “I would if I knew anything. Should I be worried about where this conversation is going?”

“No, no. I’m sorry, little one. You’ve done nothing wrong.” That doesn’t seem to calm their anxiety any. She tries to smile and pat their leg, but they flinch at her touch. “You’re in no danger, you know. I must have dozed off and had a nightmare, is all.”

But she remembers. She knows their conversations, their intimate moments, their care for one another. She knows their true laugh, the way their eyes glow brighter when they smile, and what to say to really fluster them.

She knows it all, every interaction until the moment she was dying. How did she…

The human raises their hand and places it on her forehead, determined. They hold it there for a moment as Bela’s eyes widen, completely flabbergasted.

They hum and lean back, a mischievous smile pulling on their lips. “Cold, as usual. Your body never gains warmth, does it?” She must have had a stern look on her face, as they avert their gaze and mumble, “Sorry, my lady.”

She snorts and shoves their head, her own worries easing. Despite her suspicions of them after that… They really didn’t know anything, did they? Whatever that was - whatever it meant… Hm.

They continue reading in silence, occasionally humming or gasping quietly, and she chuckles to herself in turn, watching and studying them. She memorizes their face, washing away that terrible image of them bloody and with only one eye left in their head.

After the maids clean up their little messes, she tells them, “You’re safe here. If you know something and you’re unsure what it means, I ask that you come to us and let us help you decipher it.”

They give her a nasty side eye, though she knows they mean it in a lighthearted way. “You’re awfully worried tonight, aren’t you?”

Right. There’s no way they remember any of that, not with how casual they’re speaking with her and acting. The fact they’re not panicking and wondering where their other eye was told her enough.

“I want to ensure you know you have a place here. We mean you no harm, and I hope you mean the same.”

They shrug and go back to their book, though it’s clear they’re not reading any of it. “I don’t think I could harm you if I tried. That sickle you always keep at your waist isn’t there for show.”

“No.” The silence between them rapidly becomes awkward. “But we don’t know what you are. We don’t know what could become of you, what lies within your body we’re unaware of. You could be an immense danger to all of us, kill us with ease.”

Good one.

“I don’t think so.” Their voice is quiet, and she watches as a small smile cause the corner of their lip to tick up. “You take such good care of me, despite hardly knowing me. It’s only fair I return the favor, hm?”

Her brows furrow. “In what way? We have everything we could ever need.”

They glance at her, their eyes drooping as their gaze flicks down her body and slowly back up. She feels her cheeks heat almost immediately as she coughs and turns her head away, some of her flies buzzing around her shoulders.

“Ah. I see your point.”

“I often make good ones.”

As she snorts with them and flicks their temple, that horrible image of them becomes vague in the back of her mind. She could fix things, could help them understand that her family would keep them safe however they could.

They’d gone against Mother Miranda, after all. What were a few more months of caring for this human?

She could simply never realize how quickly things would change for the worst.