#mother miranda x elena lupu

[rosestarlightkatarina]

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[saintsofwarding]

BURIAL

Epilogue

"Hello, Karl."

"Hey, Donna. A corpse! Is that a present for me?"

"No. She is not a corpse." A pause. "Is that a piece of my front gate embedded in your skull?"

"...Or am I just happy to-"

"Don't be disgusting."

"Heh." He yanked it loose with a wet crackle and tossed the bloody chunk of wrought iron into the snow. "So why are you hauling her around, then, huh? Can't be for the sentiment."

"You're much better at matters of the flesh than I am."

"Oh, I see. So you want me to put her back together, not saw her apart?" He snorted. "Waste of a good body is all I'm saying."

"Can you help me or not?"

"Guess it was you, then?"

"Me?" Donna asked, all innocence.

"Mommy Dearest went up the mountain but she never came down." A long pause. His glasses shone in the first of the dawn light. "Did you do it?"

"Yes."

Heisenberg smiled. There was none of his former gleeful malice in it, no bared teeth or mania edging madness.

"Huh," he said.

He seemed, for a heartbeat, to waver, as if unmoored, as if overcome. Perhaps to compensate, to do something, anything, with his hands, he reached up and hooked his finger over the arm of his spectacles, tugging them down from his face.

Donna lifted her brow. His face. Strange; she'd never taken him in, not really. He was covered in scars, a cross-hatch of them over cheekbones and forehead, glistening white through his beard-scruff, one nearly slicing his face in half. Had she ever seen his eyes before? She didn't remember. They were deeply shadowed, bruised, sockets nicked with scar tissue. And they were pale blue-gray, nearly colorless, clear as water when the light hit them.

"So many goddamn years," he muttered. "Feels strange. Too quiet."

"Yes. I know."

He wouldn't thank her. She didn't know if he was capable of such things. But he looked down at Elena lying still and cold on the rug Donna had used to drag her body from the house. The candlelight from Claudia's grave flickered over her face, her parted lips, her closed eyes. Her hand was curled around the remnants of the yellow flower that had saved them both.

"It's not worth it, you know," Heisenberg told Donna.

"What?"

"Giving yourself over. Surrendering yourself to what you can't control. It'll make you weak. And that'll be what destroys you, in the end."

Donna gave him a look. "Bold words for a man who let himself be thrown off a cliff."

He jabbed a finger at her, dangerously close to her nose. "Mention that ever again and I'll crush your fuckin' skull."

"Are you going to help me or not? She's dying."

"Yeah, yeah..."

"Karl."

"What?"

She set her hand, lightly, on his arm. "Thank you."

He didn't pull away. "...Whatever."

***

Breeze, dawn sky.

The rustle of leaves.

The distant sound of birdsong.

She thought for a moment her eyes were closed, and she was seeing the veins in her eyelids. As her vision focused, she realized they were not veins, but branches.

She lay on the ground, on a nest of blankets and rugs and throw pillows from the house, dusty green velvet incongruous amidst the snowdrifts and fallen branches. And graves. She was in the garden, deep amidst the hedges, and gravestones rose from the snow, candlelight playing over the rime of frost that covered them.

Her mouth tasted of bitter herbs and medicines. Her whole body ached, but it was a good pain, a healing ache, and when she lifted her hands to the light she saw even her palm had been bandaged. She moved her fingers through the light. It felt real.

This felt real.

"You're awake."

Elena looked up. Donna knelt at a nearby grave, a candle cupped in her palms. She'd draped her mother's green velvet dressing-gown over her shoulders, and the earth at her knees was fresh-dug, loamy and dark as the night.

A recent burial. For whom? Elena licked her lips. "Well. I couldn't leave you like that."

"I'm grateful. Do you feel all right?"

"...Compared to what?"

Donna laughed softly. The sound was hoarse, lovely. Elena pushed herself to her knees. The wind stirred her loose hair. Someone had combed it out, had cleaned it, had sponged the blood from her face and hands. It all felt so clean. The air, the wind in her lungs, her mind. Like a great weight had been lifted from it.

"I do," she said. "I feel...lighter."

"He helped," Donna said, nodding toward the treeline. Elena followed her gaze. Heisenberg's familiar broad silhouette stood there, smoke twining from his cigar.

Elena paused. She lifted a hand. A careful, neutral wave.

He didn't approach. He just reached up to touch the brim of his hat, then turned on one heel and sauntered away, soon lost in the mist.

"He made sure your head was all right," Donna went on. "I do hope he didn't dig around too much while he was back there."

"I'll live." She rose, carefully. Her body creaked and protested; she felt ninety years old, full of aches and shooting pains, but she managed the few steps to Donna and settled by her side. "Who are you burying?"

"Violeta, and Angie. They deserve a grave."

Elena swallowed, remembering Angie's scream of anguish. "What you did...I don't know what to say, how to thank you, but-"

"No." Donna put her hand on Elena's knee. "No mourning. It was time. Now it's my turn to be alive."

She set the candle by the gravestone, and together they watched it flicker and dance in the breeze.

"Donna," Elena began. "I...um."

"Yes?"

"I should have said why I was there, back at the beginning. When you first saved my life. I should have told you everything. Maybe then, I could...I don't know, have saved my father. He was the reason for all this. Miranda offered this assignment in exchange for sparing his life."

"Your father?"

Elena nodded. She swiped tears from her eyes. "Now he's gone, and it's all on me. Saints- I'm sorry, I don't mean to..."

"Go ahead and cry. It's all right."

"No. No, it's not."

"What happened to him?"

"She took his memories. Did something to him...inside, I don't know. I don't know."

Donna seemed to consider this for a while.

"Well," she said, "perhaps I could help."

"...What?"

"I am good with matters of the mind. And with Miranda...missing, perhaps her influence might wane. Who knows."

She paused.

"We can all begin to dream again," she said.

Elena tipped her head back. Light had begun to spill into the sky, and it was clear as glass, all watercolor blooms and opalescence, clouds clearing from what would surely be a perfect winter morning.

"What will happen to all of them, down in the village?" she said. "Without her? We've been Miranda's for so long, I'm not sure any of us know how to survive without her."

"I do not know. I suppose...we'll all have to find our own way."

Elena nodded.

"Well," she said, "I know where mine begins."

"...Oh?"

She brushed a strand of Donna's hair, tenderly, behind her ear. "Don't play smart, Beneviento. With you."

"Hush," Donna murmured, smiling as she lifted her hands and pulled Elena's face to her own. "Quiet, now."

"My lady," Elena whispered, and captured her smile with her lips.

***

(Are you happy, out there?)

(Never mind. Don't answer. Let me tell you a story)

(You told me so many of your stories)

Once upon a time, as never before- because if there wasn't, we wouldn't have to say it- there was a mountain valley hidden from the world. The rivers and the wind spoke of crystal cities, and sleeping gods, and saints with wolves' heads, and conquesting heroes from a glittering past. Blood queens, and fish kings, and great sorcerers who sing to metal, and who can heal the dying, too, despite all evidence to the contrary...

(You held me like a sleeping child. My white limbs reassembled, broken and mangled. My gift all crystal in my skull. You gathered my pieces from the deep belly of the house and you took me through the forest, a procession like you once had performed for little lost Claudia. A funeral for a doll. And you buried me in the dark earth and at last there was silence)

...And of warding-saints, carved in stone, guardians of the valley borders for so many centuries, watching all who entered and left these lands. So many had not left for so long. But they were patient, and were content to wait, deep in the Black God's dreams.

A long time this valley had slept. A long time, trapped in amber. A long cold wait for the saints, a long time spent in only the company of their god. But they smelled the bonfires, at last, the smoke rising from the village at the valley's heart to fill the morning sky with the scent of ending.

Of beginning?

Perhaps they're one and the same. A moon sets, and a sun rises. Should you know the rest? Perhaps, perhaps. Though I think you already know the whole story.

(I hope you are happy)

(I miss you)

(But I see now it always had to be this way)

(Nothing lasts forever. Not even us)

(And in the end, you found a way to live, and I can't help but be glad of that. That was all I wanted, really, when it comes down to the meat of the matter.

Besides. I can't be angry. You're a part of me, little mouse, like I was a part of you.

So go on.

Live.

For the two of us)

[thisgirlnamedblusy]

Sry if your busy or just don't wanna do this, you don't have too.

But could I request Donna with lover!reader who's scared easily, and hides under the blankets during the night, but never admit to being scared???

Yesyesyes!!! Don't worry, I'm not quite busy right now. I have enough free time to write your requests :))) Here it is!!! I hope you like it!!! Sorry if it's too long and about the language mistakes!!!

Afraid of being afraid

Pairing: Donna Beneviento x Fem! Reader (Elena Lupu's sister, cause, why not?)

Warnings: Insecurities, fluff, comfort

Word count: 5,338

Summary: You were a coward, or so you think. You can't let Donna to know that scared side of you...

N/A: Sorry about the language mistakes!!! Requests are open!!! I'm waiting yours :))) I love you all!!!

“Oh, come on. Not now...” You mumbled as you were in that elevator.

The small light that illuminated the cabin seemed to want to give you a bad time, blinking and threatening to leave the place in complete darkness.

It wasn't the first time you had walked that path and you were certainly delighted to do it but... It was... Terrifying. At least for you.

Even though you were old enough to stay calm in a situation like that, about to be left in the dark in a terrifying place, you weren't able to do it. Your father and sister always tried to help you overcome your fears, but they never succeeded.

Being a scared person in this village was strange, but hey, you were strange.

You were strange enough to catch one's attention. They said the most dangerous one in the place. Lord of Mother Miranda, Donna Beneviento.

Without really knowing how you had ended up madly in love with her, and, apparently, she with you, it hadn't been long since you had something resembling a relationship. You didn't really know if she was your girlfriend, or just a “special friend”, but you didn't care too much either. You were happy with her.

Like every afternoon for a couple of months, you went to the old estate to pay her a visit. You loved spending time with her, the more the better.

But the bad thing was that to get to your beloved's house you had to overcome a terrifying landscape of unstable bridges, crows hidden to scare you at the best moment, and sinister trees. If you didn't love her so much, you would never have dared to go to that place alone. You thought that maybe thanks to that you would begin to overcome your fears, but quite the opposite.

At least the elevator gave you a respite; stopping at your destination and opening the doors with an ominous creak, making the hair on the back of your neck stand up as you ran out of there.

“Oh, okay, okay,” you said, calming yourself as you walked away from that sinister cave, with Donna's house already in your field of vision.

Shyly, you knocked on the door, replacing fear with the desire to spend time with Donna.

Nothing, no response, just an even more sinister creak as the doors opened.

“Donna?” You asked, playing with your hands, which soon began to sweat.

Silence.

“Boo!” An unexpected screech made you step back, shrinking your chest.

“Ah!” You screamed scared, almost tripping in the process.

A mocking laugh appeared just before you ran back to the elevator. You should have imagined it. The Angie doll came out of her hiding place, laughing in amusement, enjoying your fear.

“Have I scared you? Coward, coward, (Y/N) is a coward…” She crooned in a sinister voice while you tried to catch your breath.

“What? No, you haven’t…” You said, pretending to regain your composure.

“Angie…” A soft voice made your heartbeat relax. Donna's voice. “Oh, tesoro, has she scared you?” She asked tenderly, approaching the door.

You smiled when you saw her. That's why you had come, to spend time with Donna, not to be scared.

“No, no, not at all,” you said, feigning a bravery that was hard to believe as the lady in black removed the veil from her face. She still had a hard time showing her appearance with you, but less and less.

Donna smiled, leaving that horrible black cloth on a table in the entrance and approaching you to place a tender kiss on your lips.

“I've missed you...” She murmured, slowly caressing your cheek, making you blush.

“Me... Me too,” you answered, kissing her again and taking her hands, swinging them, enjoying a silent moment of reunion. “Well… What are we going to do today?”

The lady in black smiled fondly, walking closer to you, leaving the doors behind.

“Well, I had thought that... Well, if you feel like it, of course...” Donna said, with a shy smile. In that you were the same, two shy fools.

“Yes, I feel like it,” you said, jokingly, letting yourself be grabbed by the waist.

“I haven't said anything yet, (Y/N)” she replied, amused, grabbing your body with that delicacy that drove you crazy.

“Well, I'm sure I'll like it... If it's with you,” you said, looking away from her, feeling the heat of your blush on your cheeks.

Donna smiled and caressed your flushed skin before shaking her head.

“I had thought about taking a walk around the grounds, so I'll show you them,” Donna finally said, after that moment so typical of first dates, in which you thanked the Black Gods for having made you meet.

“Oh, I…” You said suddenly, taking a step back. In your mind you were looking for an excuse to reject her offer. The road to her house and the surrounding woods were terrifying. You always shook when you walked around.

“Don't you feel like it? We can do something else, if you want,” Donna said, studying your expression. She knew there was something wrong with her innocent proposal.

“No, no,” you said, putting your hands in front of your body and faking a smile. “I mean… Yes, of course, I would love to, Donna.”

She smiled, kissing you again, pleased by your response.

“Alright. Don't worry, this time Angie will stay home,”  she said amused, looking askance at the doll who opened her mouth in protest.

“No, I want to go with you!” the puppet protested, pulling comically at the black dress of her owner.

“Angie, stop complaining,” the lady in black reprimanded, making Angie release her clothes. “This way you'll learn not to scare (Y/N).”

Donna wasn't stupid. She knew Angie had scared you, but you... You couldn't allow yourself to look like a coward. No, that was the only thing you didn't want her to know.

“Don't worry, Donna, she hasn't scared me, I'm used to it,” you said, making a gesture with your hand to downplay it.

The doll maker looked at you suspiciously but she nodded, closing the door behind her, drowning out the doll's childish protests.

“Let’s go?” she asked, extending her hand towards yours.

A walk with the woman you loved? Even if it was in a terrifying place? It didn't sound so bad after all.

At first it went well, the first two minutes, until you reached the elevator, where that infernal light that threatened to go out finally did.

“Oh, wow. It seems like it is finally...” Donna said, stopping talking when she noticed your arm in hers, squeezing it tightly out of fear. “Broken.”

You didn't say anything, you tried to stay calm even though your body was already speaking for itself, shaking and breathing heavily.

“My love, what's going on? Are you shaking?” She asked, affectionately, grabbing the arm that was clinging to her dress.

“I just tripped,” you lied clumsily, just as the elevator finished its descent.

You couldn't think she believed you, but she just smiled, giving you a soft kiss on the cheek, rubbing your back comfortingly.

The ride was fine as disturbing as those terrains were. There was still light and that made it much more bearable.

Donna explained each and every one of the plants that were in the place. You wish you had paid enough attention. You were more careful that a monster wouldn't come out of the bushes, or that a bloodthirsty crow would attack your neck mercilessly. At least you were next to her.

“Wow... It's impressive,” you said when you reached a small hill from which you could see a large part of the village. The sky was getting darker and darker, but little by little you began to get used to that disturbing place. “I can see almost the entire village.”

“Mmm,” Donna murmured, sitting next to a tree and encouraging you to do the same, in front of her, with your body resting on hers. “You are the most beautiful thing I see,” she whispered romantically, kissing you very close to her ear.

“Oh, I forgot,” you said, searching for something in your bag. “I brought you the cupcakes that you like so much,” you said with a smile, giving her paper bag full of those homemade sweets.

“You know I love them...” She whispered gratefully, taking one of them and offering another to you “Especially because you make them.”

You smiled again, blushing at the compliment.

And so the minutes passed, in silence, contemplating the landscape, enjoying each other company. A wonderful afternoon like the others, but... In a place you didn't like to be.

The crack of a branch distracted you from the erratic play you were doing with her hand in yours, causing you to stand up immediately.

“What was that?” You asked, again with your heart racing, looking around you, looking for the source of that sound.

“What?” Donna asked, standing up as well and putting a hand on your shoulder.

“That, that noise, haven't you heard it? I think, I think there's someone around here...” You said scared, with your legs shaking, threatening to give out.

“There's no one here, tesoro...” Donna whispered, making you look at her face. “You're shaking...” She said, rubbing your arms and looking at you worried.

Time to pretend again. Once again your absurd fear was making you ridiculous.

“Well, I... I'm, I'm cold,” you said, moving away from the woman, who looked at you with a frown.

“Do you want us to go home?” She asked, hugging you around the waist, as if she were trying to comfort you even though she didn't know what exactly was happening to you, even though she didn't know that you were scared to death.

You looked around. That romantic walk would have lasted forever if you had the choice, but a flock of black crows and the sunlight disappearing further and further into the mountains made your fear almost unbearable.

“I... Well, yes,” you said stuttering, searching with your eyes for any source of danger.

“Fine, because... I have something to give you too,” Donna said, whispering softly before kissing you quickly and taking your hand again, a hand that made you feel protected in some way.

“(Y/N) and Donna, kissing under a tree...” Angie hummed as you walked through the door. You were already used to her joking.

“How do you know that?” You asked curiously, while Donna was in charge of turning on the lights. The night threatened to come soon.

“We are connected, silly,” the doll mocked. “Also, even if I didn't know it, you just confirmed it to me.”

“Angie, leave her alone,” Donna said, scolding the puppet again, who crossed her arms, offended. “Come, tesoro…”

You held her hand again as she led you through the house.

You felt comfortable in that place, at least until you went down another terrifying elevator, towards the basement.

“Sorry, (Y/N), it's a bit dark down here,” the lady in black whispered, guiding you through those horrible hallways.

She probably said it because your fear became your main emotion again. The darkness was everything except your friend.

“No, it's okay. I'm, I'm used to it,” you lied, clinging to her arm, perhaps too tightly. You didn't want Donna to realize how terrified you were, but it was almost inevitable.

Donna opened a double door and stepped aside for you to enter first.

You gulped as you took a look at that room. It was the workshop where she made her dolls. The lack of light generated terrifying shadows on the ceiling. Hands, legs, heads... Limbs hanging from the ceiling that seemed to want to catch you. When light became, you calmed down a bit, but just a bit.

“So…” you said, clearing your throat. “This is where you work.”

She nodded, picking up what looked like a necklace from one of the tables, a necklace she left in your hand, closing it over.

“This is for you,” Donna said nervously, probably worried about pleasing you.

“I...” You said, looking at that small gift. It was a silver chain, from which hung a majestic wolf that seemed to be made of ceramic. “It is, it is beautiful.”

“Your last name, Lupu, is a derivative of the Latin lupus, which means wolf...” The lady explained, going around you to help you place the necklace on its place. “I thought it was appropriate.”

“Donna, I... Thank you very much,” you sighed, taking that wolf in your hands. Fear took a backseat. At that moment what you felt was love, pure love.

“Everything just for my precious girl...” Donna whispered, turning you to kiss your lips softly.

“Wait,” you said amused, putting a hand on her chest. “This isn't so I can give you the recipe for my cupcakes, is it?” You asked amused.

She sighed in amusement, shaking her head and burying her head in your neck, kissing it quickly.

“Of course not, tesoro... But hey... If you want to give it to me...” She said amused, biting her lip and diverting her eye from yours.

“No way. If I do it, you will make them better than me,”  you joked, being grateful for that small moment without tremors, without fear preventing you from enjoying that love.

Unfortunately, fate was not kind to you. One of the half-finished dolls, which was resting next to her companions on a nearby shelf, decided to fall against the stone floor, causing you a strong start that made you about to jump into the arms of your beloved.

“Ah!” You screamed in terror, putting your lover as a shield in front of you.

“Calm down, (Y/N),” Donna said, looking for the source of the noise. “It's just a doll that has fallen.”

You peeked over her shoulder, proving that she was right, but that didn't make it any less scary.

“Oh, well, I wasn't that scared,” you said arrogantly, putting a hand on your chest while Donna picked up the doll from the floor. It wasn't the best time to lie. Your actions spoke for themselves.

“Bad doll, you scared (Y/N),” Donna said amused, pretending to talk to that disturbing doll.

“It hasn't scared me. It was just the noise,” you said in your defense as the lady in black approached you with the porcelain object in her arms.

“I'm sorry, (Y/N), I'm very clumsy, I didn't mean to scare you,” the lady said, imitating the doll's voice, showing off her impressive ventriloquism. “I'm not scary, you see? Seriously, do you see? Because I don't, I don’t have eyes.”

That attempt by Donna to make you laugh worked perfectly. She was like that. Even if she believed your words, she always tried to make you feel better. And she got it, she always got it.

“You don't scare me,” you said with a tender smile, pushing Donna gently by her shoulder for that joke.

“Are you staying for dinner?” The lady in black asked, placing that terrifying doll on the shelf again.

“I... Sure,” you said almost without thinking.

It was a plan that you wanted, and the one that you always accepted but... But returning home through that forest at night... That was the worst part. Even so, you always made an effort, even if you died of fear trying to return.

Despite everything, dinner was as always. Romantic, silent. The conversation was calm, without surprises. Even Angie seemed to take a pity on you, which you were grateful for.

After dinner something happened that didn't usually happen. A dance, a romantic one. Your bodies moved to the rhythm of the music; stuck, silent, innocent, in love...

When the music stopped, the slow kisses came, the caresses on the face, on the body. The demonstration of the love you felt.

“I could be kissing you forever...” Donna whispered in your ear, swaying your body as if the music were still playing. “I love you.”

It was the first time she had said it and you had to reciprocate, of course you would.

“I love you too, Donna,” you said, hugging her, feeling the warmth of her hug, an affectionate and tender hug, because of which you even dared to close your eyes.

“I... I, I would like to ask you something,” Donna said, separating herself a bit, nervous, agitated. It wasn't the time for a crisis, but something told you that what she was going to propose to you was something serious.

“Yeah?” You said softly, imagining in your mind a wide range of possibilities, each one the better.

“Yes, I know it's early and... Well, I know that...” She stammered, squeezing your hands tightly, hands that you caressed to reassure her. Now it was your turn to be her comforter.

“Tell me, Donna...” You whispered, encouraging her to speak.

“The time I spend with you is... Wonderful and... Well, I... It hurts me so much to see you walk out the door, I keep thinking about when I can kiss you again and... Well, what I want to say is that maybe you would like...”

Before she could finish that proposition, which you were already prepared to accept, a flash of light illuminated the entire room, followed by a horrible clap of thunder that bounced off the walls of the old house.

“Ah!” You screamed, clinging to the woman in black, who took you into her arms.

But everything was even worse, because, after another lightning strike, the house went completely dark.

“Don't worry, tesoro... It's just a storm,” Donna said, reassuring you, stroking your head, which was clinging to her chest.

“A storm?” You asked with a trembling voice, moving away a bit, embarrassed.

“Well, it's Spring, it's normal, can you hear it? It's already raining,” Donna said, not letting you go.

You, forcing your courage, stopped hugging her, looking for any source of light in the house.

“The fuse must have been blown,” Donna muttered, moving away from you and looking for something in a drawer. “Stay here, I'll see if I can change it.”

“Are you, are you going to leave me here?” You asked scared when the lady in black lit a small candle holder, taking one of them.

“Are you afraid?” She asked kindly. A direct question, right where you were weak. You had no choice, you had to lie.

“No, no,” you said hastily, approaching the candlelight. “It's just… Well, maybe you need some help,” you said with feigned confidence.

Donna looked at you, smiled and shook her head.

“I appreciate it, tesoro, but it's not necessary. You don't know the house and you might stumble. Stay here with Angie. I'll be right back,” she said, kissing you on the lips and disappearing into the shadows.

You, sighing, containing the tremor of your body, sat on a sit near the table, near the glow of the candles, near the security that the light provided you.

“Okay, okay. It's just a storm, it's just...” Your cowardly murmurs were silenced by a flash of lightning and another clap of thunder, this time louder. You had to stop yourself from hiding under the table.

“What are you murmuring, silly?” Angie asked, appearing by surprise on top of the table.

“Nothing,” you said passively, looking away from the puppet.

“This is good, right?” She crooned, sitting on the edge. “Come on, come on, let's tell scary stories,” she said animatedly. To shake your head didn't take you a second.

“No,” you said firmly, suppressing the trembling of your legs.

“Okay, I'll start,” Angie said, completely ignoring you.

“Haven’t you heard me?”

“Then the two of them, brother and sister, went up the stairs to the old attic. It was a stormy night and the lightning illuminated their ghostly faces...” The doll started, making you want to not hear anything or run away.

“Angie, stop,” you said, in a tone that betrayed your fear.

“Someone said there was a ghost up there, the sister said, opening the attic door, illuminated by the storm,” the doll spoke with a dark voice. “Then they looked inside and…”

“And?” You asked scared, tightening the fabric of your dress, moistening it with the sweat of your hands.

“Nothing, there was nothing... Only darkness. The sister seemed confused, she was sure that the footsteps she heard at night came from up there. The boy turned slowly, blowing out the candle. A flash of lightning illuminated his pale, smiling face. The clock had just announced midnight. What are you doing? She asked. The brother approached in silence, whispering a few words in her ear...”

“Enough,” you said with a broken voice, seeing smiling faces on the walls of the house.

“Do you know what he told her? There is no ghost up here…. I’m the ghost!” Angie screeched, bringing her face abruptly closer to you, making it look much scarier in the candlelight.

“Yiahhh!” You screamed, on the verge of a heart attack, falling back in the chair and crashing against the wooden floor.

Just then, the light returned to the house and next to it, the sound of heels running towards you.

“(Y/N), my love, are you okay?” Donna said, bending down to help you up while the Angie doll laughed out loud.

“Damn it,” you growled, letting yourself be helped and rubbing your back.

“Angie, what have you done to her?” Donna asked, brushing the dust off your dress. The doll cowardly fled, still laughing.

“Nothing, nothing, it doesn't matter,” you said, trying to regain your calm, something that seemed impossible, since the old clock in the hall announced midnight. “Ah, shit! Damn…”

“Don't worry, honey,” Donna said, confused, glaring at Angie, who was hiding behind an armchair. “It’s just the clock”

“Yes, I… Yes…” You stammered, running a hand over your sweaty forehead.

“Midnight, Cinderella, go home,” the doll squealed, still not daring to show her face.

“Yes, I...  I'd better go,” you said, getting up from the chair. At least you would suffer all the fears at once.

“Wait. It's raining a lot,” Donna said, gently grabbing your wrist. “You, you should stay the night.”

“The night?” You asked, letting the fear go away for a moment. At least that kind of fear.

“Yes, I... Well...”

“With you?” You asked again, with a light illuminating your face.

-Yes, of course, I… Don't get me wrong, no, I don't mean... That... I just wouldn't want you to get sick,” Donna said bowing her head, shy.

“Oh, well, I…” you said, thinking about your options. You didn't even care that it was some kind of strategy of the woman in black to make love to you. She said that she would wait for you to be ready, as would as she herself. There was no rush, that wasn't her intention, you should know that.

“I don't mean anything, (Y/N), you can, you can stay in the guest room,” she said, afraid that she had hinted at something that she didn't really intend. Or so you thought.

“The guest room?” You asked, a shiver running down your spine. “Alone?”

“Yes, well, if you feel more comfortable...” Donna said, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear.

Before you could respond, another horrible flash of lightning, with its corresponding thunder, threw you back into your lover's arms.

“You know what? Not…. I…” You stammered, embarrassed for hiding your fear in her arms again. “I prefer, I prefer to sleep with you.”

“Are you sure?” She asked, looking for some sign of lying in your eyes.

You nodded.

Unfortunately, Donna's room was in that scary basement. The excitement of spending a night together was laced with fear, with dread, with that stupid Angie story clouding your thoughts.

After Donna lent you some clothes to sleep in, and left you alone so you could change as you pleased, you began to believe that you weren't so bad. At least there were no windows in that room, so the trees couldn't make horrible sinister faces on the wall.

“Are you comfortable?” Your girlfriend asked, yes, your girlfriend, getting into bed next to you. The sight of her hair free of its restraints made you forget your fear for a moment, even if it was just for a moment.

“You look beautiful with your hair down, Donna,” you said, letting the words flow freely through your mouth.

She smiled sheepishly at the compliment, and joined you under the covers. She kissed you slowly, an innocent goodnight kiss, but grateful, grateful to be able to share that night with you.

“Good night, my love...” She whispered in your ear, turning around to reach the light on the nightstand. Okay, you were starting to have problems.

“Wait, what are you going to do?” You asked startled, grabbing her arm so it wouldn't reach its destination.

“What? Well, I’m going to turn off the light, tesoro,” she explained innocently, frowning at your attitude and the tremors in your hands. “You are shaking, are you cold?”

“No, no, I... I'm fine,” you said, with that need to fake a bravery that you didn't have. “Good night, Donna.”

She shrugged and, after another quick kiss, turned off the light.

Your body was shaking. Time passed and you were unable to even close your eyes. The darkness of the room was overwhelming. You felt thousands of smiling faces watching you, waiting for you to get careless, for you to fall asleep so they could possess you.

“Damn it...” You whispered, hearing a creak coming from the floor above. The house was old, the wood creaked, it was normal. That was what your mind should tell you, but it didn't. It only imagined wandering souls that wanted to attack you.

In a gesture of childish cowardice, you raised the blankets until they completely covered your head, creating a fictitious shelter in which you were safe. Even that way you couldn't stop shaking.

The calm breathing of Donna, who had long been fast asleep, was not enough to silence the fear in your body. You snuggled closer to her, the blankets covering you completely.

“Please, day, come quickly...” You said to yourself, on the verge of a panic attack. Your lover's hot body turned around and her arm fell on your cowardly hidden body.

“Mm?” Donna murmured, sleepy, probably surprised by not touching your skin, but a blanket. “(Y/N)?”

You didn't respond until, after a few seconds, the light returned to illuminate the sinister room.

“What are you doing, tesoro?” Donna asked, discovering you, freeing you from your infallible protective shield.

“No, nothing,” you said embarrassed.

Your lover placed a hand on your forehead, looking at you worriedly.

“Oh, Black Gods, you're sweating...” She sighed, making you sit up. “Have you had a nightmare?”

“No... It's just... I'm hot,” you lied again. How funny, you hadn't even been able to sleep. Now you had a new fear, doing it and having nightmares. Brilliant

“You're very nervous, (Y/N)...” Donna said, caressing you reassuringly. “Wait a moment, I'm going to prepare a relaxing infusion for you, okay?”

“No, nothing's wrong with me... Come back, go back to bed,” you said, reaching out your hand towards her wrist so that her warm and protective body wouldn't abandon you.

“It’s just a moment. Whatever scared you, it's gone, honey. Let me help you,” she said, ignoring your poor excuses.

“I'm not scared!” You squealed nervously, causing her to suddenly turn her head towards you, opening her eyes wide.

“Okay, okay, (Y/N) But still, you have to calm down. I'll be right back," Donna said, disappearing from the room.

“Wait, don't leave me alone...” You murmured, in a tone so low that surely she didn't hear you.

Fortunately, it didn't take long for Donna to return.

“Here,” she said kindly, bringing you a steaming cup. “Drink it, it’s good for you.”

You nodded, sorry for your attitude, for the cowardice of admitting that you were a coward.

“I'm sorry for yelling at you,” you said, bringing the liquid to your lips. She shook her head, sitting on your side of the bed and stroking your hand.

“Don't worry,” she said, smiling tenderly. “Talk to me, tesoro, tell me what's happening to you.”

“I...” You said, noticing how your strength was disappearing, how that attitude of wanting to pretend what you weren't was beginning to kill you inside. “I‘m, I’m a coward, Donna.”

She didn't change her sympathetic expression.

“I... Despite being 23 years old, I still sleep with the light on. My sister Elena is sick of me because of that… Everything scares me, even my own shadow…”

“We are all afraid of something, you have nothing to be ashamed of,” she said whispering, controlling her tone of voice.

“It shouldn't be like that, I... I'm not a little girl anymore and... Nor, I can't even be calm in the light of day. Everything scares me, everything terrifies me.”

“Hey, come on, (Y/N). It's okay. You know I would never let anything happen to you,” Donna said, caressing your cheek.

“I know but... Damn, you must think that I'm a coward, that I don't deserve to be with you because I scare easily, because I'm still... I'm still childishly cowardly...” You said, looking down at the blanket, letting the liquid of that infusion will go down your throat.

“No, honey, don't say that. I don't love you less because you're afraid of darkness,” she said, wanting to make it clear to you quickly. “It’s normal to be afraid. There is no problem with it.”

“Are you afraid of something? I don’t think so. You've been walking around the house in the dark and you haven't even flinched,” you said in your defense, removing your hand from hers.

“Well, maybe, maybe I'm not afraid of the dark... But that doesn't mean there aren't things that scare me, you know?” Donna told you with a calm voice, with no sign that for any reason she lost her mind at your abrupt way of speaking.

“Oh, there are? What are you afraid of?” You asked with a bit of irony, leaving the cup on the table and crossing your arms.

“I'm afraid of losing you...” She whispered, without looking at your face. “Of being alone again.”

“What nonsense. I would never leave you, Donna,” you said, huffing and shaking your head.

“Is that nonsense? What about the monsters you imagine in the dark? Isn't that nonsense?” the lady said, with an amused smile. You went blank.

“I... Well, I... Oh, well, I can't contradict that logic of yours,” you said, sighing, tilting your head so that it rested on her chest.

She laughed, kissing your hair softly.

“You see? Fears can be rational or irrational. But we're all afraid of something, (Y/N). The important thing is to overcome it, and have someone by your side to help you. I have you, you have me.”

“Okay,” you said, letting a tear slide down your cheek. “Will you protect me?”

“Of course, tesoro. You'll see how together we can handle it,” she said, cradling you in her arms.

You felt better, safe in her arms, safe next to her. Fear and Angie's stupid stories had made you forget something important, something that was left half-finished.

“Hey, Donna,” you asked, moving away a bit. “Before the blackout… You wanted to ask me something.”

“Oh, yes, well, I...” Donna said, starting to get nervous “I just, I just wanted to know if...”

“If?”

“If you would like to live with me,” she said, lowering her gaze again, tightening her grip on your hand too much.

“Oh…”

“I know it's hasty but...” She said, interrupted by a surprise kiss on her lips, by your hands caressing her face, her scar, making your opinion clear.

“Yes, I want to live with you Donna, but promise me one thing.”

“Whatever you want,” she said excitedly.

“Promise me that your hugs will protect me from the darkness.”

[the-broken-truth]

Hello would u possibly write a ftm reader x the lords+angie where the reader is a new lord that can turn into any animal he wishes and get along with all the lords and the lady’s daughters but likes sal mother miranda and donna+angie more

Broken Truth (Reads the ask): From what I looked up, FTM means Female To Male; I think this is the first story I will write like this but I'll try to make it good for you. Now, let the words weave together.

When [Name] was called by the Head of the Village - Mother Miranda - she knew that she was going to become something more than what she was at that moment in time and she was all for it. She arrived at the chapel to meet with the Village Head and walked into the depths with the Masked Woman, she looked around until they reached Mother Miranda's Lab - bubbling flasks, notes, books, and countless bottles and jars of twitching blobs of flesh were all around. [Name] swallowed at the site of the Cadou in the jar both Mother Miranda's words caused her to calm down and get on the operation table. She watched as Miranda placed the gas mask on her face and the effect was almost instant as she began slipping into a senseless state of mind.

When she opened her eyes again, she was resting on a bed and there was a pain in her chest - that must be where Mother Miranda placed the Cadou, but she knew that the Cadou changed the person entirely and she wanted to know what it did to her - he struggled to get out of bed and limped over to the mirror and what she saw made her jaw drop.

She was a he now.

His jaw was more chisel and he had muscles - the perfect body - and a large stitch over his chest - the insertion mark for the Cadou - did it replace his heart? He placed a hand on his face, not believing what he was seeing but soon the door opened and Mother Miranda walked in without her mask and with a smile on her face.

"Welcome to the world, My Son and Fifth Lord." She smiled as she walked over to the male and placed a hand over the stitch gently, she didn't want to hurt him, "The Cadou took well to you but it changed your gender from female to male, I hope you are okay with that, My Son."

"I...I am fine with that, Mother Miranda." [Name] said as he bowed to Mother Miranda and she smiled at her new son - she knew that this one would be interesting and a perfect vessel for her precious Eva.

[Weeks Later]

Mother Miranda took [Name] to his new station - an abandoned manor between Donna's and Karl's Lands, he had the least amount of land but he was alright with that. He learned that he had the power to change into any animal he wanted to and he would spend most of his time as a wolf while hunting in his lands. He cleaned the house and started gardening, the soil was perfect for it and there was no salt in the ground so the plants grew perfectly. As for the Lords:

[Name] would travel to Castle Dimitrescu to spend time with Alcina and her daughters, sometimes turning into flies so that he could have fun with the girls in their mischief. Alcina didn't like him at first because he was a male but she grew to grow fond of her brother because he was kind to her daughters. The 5th Lord would bring kills from his hints for the daughters to munch on when Alcina would offer him to have a glass of wine with her, normally, Alcina would drink wine alone but there is something about her brother that she wanted to talk about.

"[Name], how have you been doing?" Alcina asked as she poured a glass of wine and handed it to him. "Have you been seeing anyone?"

"Well, actually, yes, I'm seeing a girl in the village with Mother Miranda's Blessing." [Name] said with a blush on his face causing Alcina to nearly spit her wine out of her face and she glared at her brother.

"And what commoner is worthy enough of dating my brother?" Alcina asked as she looked at [Name].

"Her name is Elena Lupu and she's a gem of a person and she's not afraid of me just because I am a Lord." [Name] said as he sat there with his wine before taking a sip.

"A COMMON WOMAN IS NOT WORTHY OF A LORD'S LOVE!" Alcina yelled but [Name] glared at her and retorted.

"It's my decision who I decide to date and love. Please, accept that, Alcina." [Name] said as he finished his wine and placed the glass on the table before getting up and bowing to Alcina before leaving with his cloak flowing behind him.

When it came to his brothers, [Name] was closer to Salvatore and even crafted a potion to keep him from throwing up while getting him different types of cheeses and fish for the 3rd Lord or just sitting and watching movies with him. He wasn't that close to Karl, the 4th Lord was too sketchy for that.

He collected doll parts and fabrics for the Doll Maker, specifically for Donna and Ange. Upon arriving, he knocked on the door and entered. [Name] then proceeded to place the boxes on the table before turning to face Donna and Angie.

"Hey, you two. Is everything alright?" [Name] asked as he smiled at his sister and her doll.

"We're fine, brother." Donna - not Angie - spoke in her low voice as she walked down the stairs and hugged [Name] before breaking the hug and smiling under her veil. [Name] offered to make some desserts and tea for Donna and himself. After a while, [Name] walked over to the table with the tray of the cinnamon bun and tea before sitting in the chair across from Donna.

The 2nd & 5th Lords would talk about their days and tasks of researching the Cadou but Miranda has started she found the perfect host for Eva and no longer needed the research. Donna told [Name] that she heard about him and Elena from Alcina and congratulated him on his relationship.

[logansdollie]

masterlist ୨♡୧

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| resident evil |

ada wong-

dating ada wong would include

alcina dimitrescu-

alex wesker-

ashley graham-

bela dimitrescu-

cassandra dimitrescu-

claire redfield-

daniela dimitrescu-

donna beneviento-

elena lupu-

helena harper-

ingrid hunnigan-

jill valentine-

leon kennedy-

mother miranda-

mia winters-

sheva alomar-

zoe baker-

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚⋆ ˚｡⋆ ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚⋆ ˚｡⋆ ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚⋆ ˚｡⋆ ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚⋆ ˚｡⋆ ⋆ ˚｡⋆

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| mortal kombat |

mileena-

mileena x coquette fem! reader

kitana-

tanya-

jade-

sindel-

skarlet-

cetrion-

nitara-

sonya blade-

cassie cage-

jacqui briggs-

li mei-

queen sheeva-

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚⋆ ˚｡⋆ ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚⋆ ˚｡⋆ ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚⋆ ˚｡⋆ ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚⋆ ˚｡⋆ ⋆ ˚｡⋆

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| James “Logan” Howlett |

[blu3pers]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/38327263/chapters/95947945

My friends are starting to be concerned about my newest fixation and how much I write. Little do they know that this only fuels my powers >:D

[mynameisjag]

A Jewel To Be Won

Chapter: 12

Elena and Ethan make into the castle, make a friend and stumble into trouble.

[rosestarlightkatarina]

I think we start to forget who the real main character is

[not-playable-character]

New Beginnings CH.1

Its the Mirlena fic boiz!  or at least chapter 1. Hope you enjoy!

AO3 link : https://archiveofourown.org/works/32607286/chapters/80885854

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

“And finally, this is where you will be working.” Chris gestured towards a laboratory door before stopping Elena with a hand on her shoulder, “If anything goes wrong, please don’t hesitate to contact me.  Even if you just feel like you can’t handle working with her, I will pull you out and assign you somewhere else.”

Elena nods with a small smile feeling a small amount of comfort from his words.  The duo then make their way into the lab with Chris leading. The room, while not small, was not spacious, it was enough for two people to work comfortably at the chemical hoods lining the left wall and the island type counters in the middle of the room. Miranda doesn’t react to them entering the room, intensely focused on her current work.  Chris waits for her to come to a stopping point before announcing their presence by clearing his throat.  Miranda jumped slightly at the noise before turning towards them.

“Agent Redfield, I told you that I didn’t need an assistant.  I appreciate the gesture, but you know that I am not what you would call popular around here.” Miranda said as she continued working.

“I know you said that, but I feel like you need help.  This is too much work for one person alone, and I need someone closer to keep an eye on what you do.” Chris explained to her in a matter of fact manner.

Miranda sighed and fully gave her attention to Chris and Elena, “Ahh I see what you mean.  A pleasure to officially meet you Ms. Lupu.  Please call me Miranda or Dr. Cel Tradat , I prefer Miranda, but I understand if that makes you uncomfortable.”  She stuck her hand out to Elena.

Elena takes her hand shaking it, “I’m surprised you know who I am Mo-uh Miranda.  I was just a villager.” Miranda winces at Elena’s slip up but ignores it.

“I took pride in knowing all of the people in my- ugh- the villages.  Sadly, it was for less than wholesome matters.  The mycete wanted to keep a record for every possible host though the small presence of my mind wanted to remember all of the victims of my experiments. So, yes, I know who you are, I know pretty much everything about you.  Which sounds very creepy now that I say it aloud.” Miranda says blushing a bit. Elena giggles at her awkwardness welcoming the break in tension between them.

“Well, I won’t ask about the specifics you know.  I’m excited to get to know the real you and not the goddess.  Though I’m going to apologize in advance if I slip up and get a bit cultish.” She says keeping the mood light.

Chris clears his throat again interrupting the two women, “I’m glad you two are getting along so well, but I need to get going.  Elena you are to stay here and just observe for today, you can get started with training tomorrow.  Miranda, you can finish up what you were doing and take an early day.”  Both women nodded and Chris left to go back to his work. The awkward air returned around the women.   Miranda stood in front of her workstation as if she were waiting for permission to continue.

“Oh, uh, don’t mind me. I’ll keep out of your way.  Oh! I forgot to mention earlier but please call me Elena.” Elena said finding a chair and moving it to a corner so she could observe. Miranda simply nodded and continued her work.

After setting everything up to settle over night Miranda decided to end her day, “Did Agent Redfield give you the full tour?”  She asked washing her hands and removing her lab coat putting it in her designated lab laundry bin.

Elena shook her head, “His er…tour, if you would like to call it that, was pretty limited.  He mostly just pointed out what each room was while on the way here.  He seemed to be in a hurry, I don’t blame him, but this place is still like a maze to me.”

Miranda rubbed her forehead in irritation, “Please tell me he at least told you where you would be staying.”

Elena flinched at her tone, “Yes, he said I would be sleeping with you.”

Miranda immediately felt guilty at making Elena flinch, “How presumptuous of him, I’m not the type to put out for strangers.” She joked trying to lighten the mood.

The strange sentence confused Elena for a second before she realized Miranda was joking with her, Elena laughed, “I never took you for a joker.”

Miranda smiled softly at her, “I normally am not, I felt bad about scaring you and wanted to lighten the mood.  You should know that you don’t have to be afraid of me, I am monitored at all times through this collar.  If I act aggressively the watcher on duty will shock me into submission.”

Elena was shocked, “That seems so cruel!  What if you are just defending yourself or if the watcher decides to have a grudge against you?”

Miranda placed a hand on Elena’s shoulder to calm her down, “It is a necessary evil for everyone’s safety. Now let’s get on with a proper tour, please stay close to me I don’t want you getting lost.”

Miranda’s tour was much more in depth than Chris’.  She showed Elena every important room for their work and what they would be used for, after that they explored the relaxation and general use rooms, finally they stopped at the cafeteria to get dinner before going to their room.  Elena was introduced as a new research assistant to the few employees that regarded Miranda with less hatred and just wary indifference.  Most of them enjoyed her presence, many warned her about her new ‘boss’, and some decided she was just as bad as Miranda.  After dinner, they finally retired to their shared room.  Miranda seemed hesitant to open the door.

“I wish that Chris had told me in advance that you would be staying with me.  The room is a bit of a mess, I never imagined anyone would be staying with me.” Miranda said softly with a blush.

Elena chuckled at her, “First jokes now a mess, you really are subverting all my expectations of you today.”  Miranda grimaced at her. “Oh, come on, it can’t be that bad.” Elena said pushing past Miranda and into the room.  The room was in fact that bad, papers were thrown all around the room with seemingly no rhyme or reason.  

Elena gaped at the mess, “Okay then, ummm, I mean it’s bad, but I’m sure the both of us can get this picked up in no time.”  Elena moved out of the doorway to assess the situation and for Miranda to explain what everything is and how it should be organized.

Getting over her initial embarrassment, Miranda got to work explain her system of organization to Elena and working together to put her notes in her filing cabinet.  After about an hour and a half, they finished cleaning up and got ready for bed.  Sleep didn’t come easy for either of them, both uneasy at the prospect of sharing a room due to the issues caused by their traumas.

Soon both of them fell into a fitful sleep.  Elena began to shift and whimper, waking Miranda.  She knew the nightmares well, she faced her own every night.  She got out of bed and moved to crouch next to Elena’s bed.  She watched her for a few seconds worried that waking the other woman up would be worse than leaving her to her dreams, deciding to risk scaring the woman, she shook Elena awake.  Elena did startle when she awoke.

“Shh, shh, you’re okay, it was just a dream.” Miranda whispered soothingly, caressing the other woman’s face. Elena calmed quickly due to Miranda’s actions.

“Thank you, I’m sorry I woke you up.  You need your rest after a busy day.” Elena whispered back taking Mirada’s hand.

Miranda shook her head, “No, it’s okay.  I have trouble sleeping anyway.  I’ll let you get back to bed, please wake me if you need anything.”  She stood up and turned to return to her bed before Elena grabbed the bottom hem of her shirt.

Elena began to blush, “Could you stay with me tonight?  I’m afraid I won’t sleep without someone with me.”

Miranda smiled softly at her honest confession, “Of course, maybe we’ll both sleep better with a partner.” Elena slid towards the wall allowing Miranda to climb into bed.  The women kept their distance from each other as best they could in the small bed.  They both began giggling at their awkwardness, after they calmed down they allowed themselves to be closer to each other and drifted off into sleep.

 Cel Tradat means The betrayed one in romanian

[saintsofwarding]

BURIAL

Chapter 9

Elena laughed.

Donna flinched backward. "Is something wrong?"

"Wrong? Saints, no! It's just- this isn't really dancing music."

"But-" She sounded indignant. "This is Rêverie. Mr. Claude Debussy. He's one of my favorites."

"And it's beautiful, make no mistake. But did you ever hear proper dancing music, fiddles and tambourines and firelight flickering?" Elena clicked her fingers and assumed the first position of her favorite festival reel.

Donna stared.

"...No?"

"No," Donna murmured, a little wistful.

"Well...all right, let's see..." Elena flicked through the stack of records. Classical, mostly, but near the bottom... "We're in luck. Take a look at this."

She held it up. It was a vinyl pressing of local folk tunes, its paper slipcover so worn and faded the writing was almost illegible, but when Elena put it on the turntable and set the needle to its grooves, the music emerged clear and strong: a peasant song, sung in the old-tongue the village elders spoke in, the language learned at grandmothers' knees and almost without effort, as endemic to Elena and her peers as the blood in their veins.

The song spilled forth, filling the dark corners and shadows of the old house, stirring and warming the air to life.

Donna was still shrunk back, her hands laced together, but Elena began to dance, slowly, clicking her fingers and spinning in place, the dusty folds of the velvet robe belling out around her legs.

"You see?" Elena said. "It's easy."

"I- what are the steps?"

"Like this." She showed her, back and forth. "No, your hands like-" She took her hand almost without realizing, savoring the cool, callused feeling of her skin. "-Like that. Yes! Got it. Now..."

She took both Donna's hands in her own, and with a whispered "One, two, three-" swung Donna into the first step of the dance. A whirl of skirts, a gasp from beneath the veil, and they were dancing. Donna fell into the pattern of the steps like she'd grown up with them. She was a quick study. But Elena felt her stiffness, her shoulders held rigid, her movements almost too-quick, too-precise, like she was copying the steps from a book.

"It's okay," Elena told her. "It doesn't have to be perfect."

"But-"

"Nope!" She released her, without warning, spinning her down the length of her arm and out; Donna's fingertips slid along her wrist, her palm, catching her by the hook of her pinky finger, her skirts like a black blossom. Elena glimpsed a flash of patent leather boots, of slender legs in black stockings, and at last when Donna came back to her, grabbing onto her free hand, she felt her shake loose her stiffness and fall into place, and dance, really, truly dance.

She threw herself into the reel, each step confident, letting her skirts spin and flash through the firelight, gleaming with a dark iridescence. She seemed to burn as she danced, all her stillness and poise cast off, and Elena saw what she might have looked like had they grown up together, had they met not under the pretense of threats and lies but as peers, two girls in the light of a bonfire dancing together until the snow turned glassy, until their faces were red from wine and heat and the sheer joy of being alive together.

The record spun on, the crackling music singing out into the night-bound house, its bones warmed by the sound, by the creak of their weight on the floorboards, the song changing to the next. This dance was slower, stately, and Elena stood back to curtsy low to Donna, who dipped into a curtsy in return.

"This one is performed with the dancers closer," Elena told her, softly, and Donna nodded, stepping smoothly to take Elena's hand again.

"Like this?" she said.

"Yes." Elena paused. "You don't need to know the steps as much for this one. Just feel it."

"Feel...it?"

"You know when...something is so beautiful you don't need to think about it, or take it apart, you just need to trust it with you, that it'll do something beautiful to you, in return?"

Donna nodded.

"Like that. Let it in. Let it move you."

"You know so much."

Elena sputtered a laugh. "Do I?"

"I always wanted to go. To join you down in the village, when I was a child. I watched from up here and imagined what it would be like to be with all of you. I imagined it so hard it was almost like it was real."

"Imagining things isn't quite the same thing as it being real." Elena thought of the projector, the resurrected memories. The glimpse of the world beyond the village. She took a short breath. "No matter how much you might want it."

Donna's hand, pressed lightly on her shoulder, slid down over Elena's collarbone, just over the point of her fluttering pulse.

"Do you ever think about it?" Elena asked her. "The world outside?"

"It's forbidden. No one can protect us there. That's what Miranda says."

"Do you ever think Miranda might be wrong?"

She heard the faint hiss of Donna's inhale. Had she said the wrong thing? But Donna didn't pull away. They swayed together, now, heedless of the music. They were very close.

"Yes," Donna whispered.

"You have so much power. All alone up here...so far away from her control..." I suspect she thinks far more than she allows me and the Black God to know, Miranda had said. "You could...I don't know. Break it."

"There's no breaking her control," Donna said quickly. "She...she is absolute."

"We can figure out a way. Together. Get it all back, everything she took from us. I feel stronger here. More myself. If...if I ever even knew myself. I don't know how, but..."

"I might," Donna cut in. "Perhaps the distance from her, something about the flower spores in your brain crowding out Miranda's influence, the repeated nightmares changing your cerebral chemistry..."

She paused. "My brother knows the fleshy pathways of the human brain far more fluently than I do, but I know nightmares well enough."

"So we figure it out. We-" Elena had to stop, take a breath, center herself. Her blood felt like lightning inside her. Impossible, to be talking of this, to even consider it. "We escape. We get away. We can be free."

"I can't," Donna said. "I can't because there's nothing else. Nothing else. I had to go to her. I had to. There was nothing left."

"There was you."

"I'm not...I'm not whole. I'm not right. I- I-" Her voice became high and childlike. "I hurt things, Mother says. I'm a pair of rusty scissors. Dangerous because I'm broken. So I must always always do as Mother says because I could hurt people but she can make me be better, she can make me be right, I must do as Mother says."

"Donna..."

"Quiet. Quiet. You mustn't say, she'll hear."

"She's not here. I'm here. You're here." She reached up. Her heart thudded in her throat. The darkness pressed in, but she didn't notice. Donna smelled of yellow flowers, bittersweet as tears. Elena tasted the faint rime of the scent on her lips, on the backs of her teeth. A monstrous taste, birthing nightmares.

It was in her now, and she should have been scared. She wasn't. In a mad flash of an instant, she was glad of it, that she carried Donna now inside her, a part of her, of this place, of her most precious quintessence, within herself.

Her hand brushed the lace of Donna's veil.

Donna didn't move. Elena lifted her hand, and with it came the edge of the veil. Donna's clothes beneath came into view. A revelation. Jet buttons winked in the light. Then came a neat collar. A triangle of white throat.

The edge of a jaw.

Elena paused. She felt Donna's heartbeat, they were so close, her hipbone pressed to Donna's. The pulse was somehow strange, unsettling, doubled. It didn't frighten her as much as it should have. She didn't stop drawing the veil up.

The corner of her lips. The shadow under her cheekbone. The tuft of brittle black-gray hair escaping the veil.

An eye, black-lashed, bright gray, fastened unblinking on her.

Elena's hand quivered. Her heart pounded like she'd been running. The look in Donna's gaze. The feeling of her, at last warm, and real, not a shadow, not a ghost, but alive. The two of them, alive, so close to being in one another's arms.

And wouldn't it be so good, a relief indescribable, to stay with her like Donna had once begged her in what now felt like a dream? To forget the world, to vanish, to be forgotten in turn, except by one beloved person, except by her, because who else mattered?

But the world would never forget her.

The world had its claws in her mind, its claws in her heart, gripping so tight she'd already begun to bleed.

Miranda knew. Miranda always knew. And she'd already betrayed her. And she'd already betrayed Donna, by being here, by even fucking touching her, by laughing with her and being her friend and listening to her deepest sorrows, because what choice did she have?

Horror rippled through her, sickening and awful. She'd have to make a choice before the end. She'd have to choose between Donna Beneviento and her own father.

She'd have to choose which one to betray.

Elena saw Lord Heisenberg's grim face, again, in her head, heard his bitter words. It's always gotta end this way.

And it would. One way or another Miranda would get what she wanted.

"Elena?" Donna asked, softly.

She tore away from Donna, a sudden spasm of movement, her breath harsh in her throat, her eyes hot. All of her, too hot. She clenched her hands as she backed off, as Donna stood there, hands still lifted, veil settled once again back into place, hiding Elena's one precious glimpse of her face.

"I-" Elena rasped. "I'm- I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-"

She turned and hurried away. Still such a coward. Still such a frightened little thing. She couldn't tell her the truth, because that would mean she'd made her choice and her father would suffer. She went not for her room, full of reminders of Donna and her father and herself, but for the attic, tearing down the ladder and scrambling into the dusty darkness.

She collapsed in Donna's old playhouse, full of dolls and childish things, and there she pressed her hands over her face and she screamed until her throat was raw, until she didn't feel anything, much less guilt, or shame, or fear.

And the worst of it was she knew Donna was down there, confused, abandoned. And she couldn't make the love go away, no matter how much she screamed and cried, how much she wished it would leave. Because Miranda would find it, too.

And when she did, she would take it. Steal it. Just like the rest.

***

When at last she emerged later- a day, she thought, though it was difficult to tell in the attic- the house was silent. She crept through the hallways, eyes aching, hair limp and bedraggled, but found nothing. No Donna, no Angie. A clock ticked in the reading nook, overloud in the silence. Motes of dust drifted in the air.

"I'm so sorry," Elena whispered, to the empty air.

She cleaned herself up, brushed out her hair, dressed in clean clothes. The gramophone and all its records had been put, neatly, away. Everything was neat, in fact, like the house of someone preparing to go away for a long, long time.

Had Donna gone away? Was she not coming back? Elena's whole body ached. She rubbed her hand down her face and groaned. She desperately craved tea, but she didn't think she'd be able to force anything down. She tried to make it anyway and her hands shook so bad she dropped the stupid teacup and shattered it all over the floor. Fumbling up the shards of crockery, she almost didn't notice the bud vase containing a single sprig of yellow flowers on the table, and the envelope set against it.

Her breathing stilled. She rose and took it, slitting it open with a thumbnail. Inside was a pressed flower- a blue gentian, delicate as rice paper.

The mountain garden?

Had Donna retreated there? Feeling ebbed back into her hands, stilling their shake. She was beginning to understand Donna's methods of communication, her inability to state some things directly, to leave clues and puzzles in place of words. If she...if she had left, or was too angry to talk, she wouldn't have left a clue like this, would she?

Elena chewed a loose scrap of skin on her bottom lip. She didn't really deserve such kindness, but saints, she'd take it.

She changed into her boots and buttoned up her coat. Trailing her fingertips over her rifle, she considered bringing it in case of lycans on the mountain path, then decided against it. They didn't seem to intrude past the borders of the estate grounds, and, besides, she was confident Donna would have dealt with them on her way up, if any got cocky.

Mist swirled down from the slopes as she left the house, curtains of fresh snowfall glimmering in the air. She blinked up at the sun, a pale circle glimpsed through cloud. After her hours crying in the dark attic she'd become sensitive to light. Maybe after long enough here she'd become like Donna, colorless and photophobic.

As she began climbing up the long mountain pathway up to the caves, she shook her head, trying to dispel her grogginess. She should have tried to drink some tea after all.

By the time she reached the cave and made her way through the darkness, the flickering lamplight guiding her way, the snow had thickened to a steady fall, already beginning to mound on crags and pine branches. The air thinned, her breath tightening in her lungs.

What do I say?

Sorry really wasn't gonna cut it.

Tell her the truth.

She'd understand. Wouldn't she? She'd get Elena's impossible situation. They could think of a way out, together. That way neither one of them had to be alone. At least if she got angry they could be mad together.

At last, Elena pushed her way through the unlocked upper door and into the garden meadow. Wind rushed her, a freezing gush that left her shivering and icy, the grass swept with endless waves of rippling mist. The colorless day had dimmed the flowers, reduced the ruins to looming, abstract shapes, like wrecked boats cast up against the reservoir shore. Elena squinted through the snow, holding her loose hair out of her face with both hands.

"Donna?" she called. She didn't see any sign of her, no black shape through the snow. She waded forward, damp, frigid stalks of grass slapping at her legs and dragging at her coat like a crowd of dragging hands.

"Donna!" She picked up her speed. Had something happened to her? Oh, saints, had she fallen? Her heart pounded. Had she slipped, and was she now lying broken and hurt? Like her parents, her sister, whatever had happened to Claudia.

"Donna!" Elena screamed. "Please, I just want to know you're okay- Donna-"

Around her, through the blizzard, came the croaking of crows. One dived through the snow, a ragged black tatter; she gasped and stumbled. Another, then another, until the air seemed full of darting, cawing shapes.

They swirled into a column, then into a form, coalescing before her as she turned colder than the next gust of wind.

"Looking for someone?" Miranda said, eyes glowing golden through the mist. She wasn't alone. One taloned hand rested on Andrei's thin shoulder, the boy shivering at her side, his arms wrapped around himself as if he couldn't get warm enough in this desolate, lonely place.

***

"Mother Miranda," Elena whispered.

She fell to her knees. All she could think is I should have brought my rifle.

"Stand," Miranda said. "Greet your friend. He's so excited to see you."

"She showed up at the door to your pa's house," Andrei burst out. "Can you believe it, Elena? She said if I behaved myself she'd let me come down to the sanctum where the priests bring all the offerings to the Black God! Can you imagine?"

"And he's been such a good lad so far." Miranda lifted her hand and stroked his hair, blond curls combed between her talons. "Now, Andrei. We mustn't do anything to change my opinion, must we? None of us should."

"No," Elena said. Her throat was dry. She swallowed and tried again. "I- I received your summons, Mother Miranda. I came straight away."

"Don't lie to me, Elena. You came for Lady Beneviento. My erstwhile daughter. How comforting, that you're so concerned for her safety. Have you been so vigilant with what I asked you?" Her talons went on stroking Andrei's hair, her other hand still gripping his shoulder. A crease appeared between Andrei's brows. How hard was she holding him?

"I've been doing just as you asked, Mother Miranda."

"Have you found what Lady Beneviento has been hiding from me?"

"I- no, Mother Miranda. She holds onto her secrets with all her power."

"All her power?" She cocked her head. "I control her power, child. I gave her her power."

Elena spoke without thinking. "I thought the Black God gave her her power."

Too hard. Red blossomed under the points of her talons, wicking through Andrei's white shirt. Elena heard him gasp; she stepped toward him on reflex, then jolted to a halt. Ice twined through her mind, scraped at her optic nerve.

She shuddered violently in place, tears welling in her eyes.

"Child," Miranda whispered. In reality. In her head. She wanted to claw at her own eyes, get her out, get her out, but she was locked in place, rigid as a statue. "All that time? You must have learned something."

I will hunt it from you if you don't tell me. I will tear into this boy and you will see the color of his blood on the snow. I will rend him limb from limb and stitch him back together and tear him apart again, just to make you talk, I will do this and show you the might of the Black God and you will fall on your knees in wonder and in fear. You know this.

Deeper, deeper. A black tendril, burrowing in.

I will find it and rip it loose. And I will not care what it takes along. Your name, perhaps. Your memories. Your very identity, and leave you empty as one of those dolls my daughter so dotes on.

And then I will move on to your father.

Shall I show you now?

"No," Elena spluttered out. Bloody froth spackled the snow. She lifted a trembling hand to smear it from her mouth. "No. No. She...she's afraid of it. Of her abilities...she can't control it properly but it's strong, it's so strong, it's...it's her memories. They're too traumatic. She can't...she can't make them go away. She can't make them leave her alone. That's it. Now please don't hurt Andrei, let him go, saints, please!"

The icy talons released her and she collapsed to her knees in the snow. Miranda approached her, still leading Andrei like a lamb. He no longer looked enraptured; now his gaze was hollow with fear.

"The thing you're trying to protect," Miranda told her, gently, "is a dream. A mask she wears because- you're right. She can't face herself. She never will. And beneath it...well."

She smiled. "Perhaps you'll find out."

"Tell my father I love him," Elena whispered.

Miranda nodded.

"I love my adoptive daughter," she said, "like I love all of you. What I ask is hard, child, I know. But I do it for those I love. Just like you."

Crows scattered, cast to the winds, taking Andrei with them. Elena knelt there until they were gone. She sniffed, hard, and scrubbed off her nose. It was running bad, snot tinged with blood. Miranda really had torn something loose.

You will fall on your knees in wonder and in fear.

Far away, a lycan began to howl.

***

Something had changed in the air of the house by the time Elena returned. She stood in the entryway, her shadow long across the polished floor. The lights were dimmed, the fire burned down to coals. Somewhere, muffled, she heard music, but it was scratchy and garbled, coming in on a bad signal.

She felt it again. Down, down, deep. Winding passageways. A great darkness, a hole in the world, pulling all things toward it.

"Donna," Elena whispered.

She stepped into the house. The silence didn't break. The music played on. She heard the clock ticking from the kitchen. The faint creak and groan of the old beams settling. The rumble of the falls underfoot, which she'd almost grown used to.

Almost.

She made her rounds, like she usually did. Looked in the kitchen, in the reading nook, peered under the sofas and in cabinets, like a child searching for monsters under her bed so she might sleep at night. She cleared away the tea things she'd gotten out earlier, and closed up all the cabinets for night. She shut doors, pulled curtains. She made the slow trip upstairs, to her room, and slung her rifle over her shoulder, where it pulled at her, the slight rub of its strap over her shoulder granting her something like comfort. She returned to the mezzanine just as the music cut off with a snarl, and the true silence rushed in, the emptiness that felt like a presence.

Bitterness in the back of the throat. Elena knew from hearing the village physicians talk that a sure sign of a head injury was the taste of blood on the tongue. Had she been injured? Had Miranda broken something in her, inside? Had Donna? The walls rippled around her as she descended the stairs, but it might have been her own fear, warping the world just the same as the pollen from the yellow flowers.

She reached for the chain at her neck and tugged it loose of her collar. The two keys jostled each other, silver and brass. She took up the brass one as she turned down the corridor papered in cabbage roses. It might have been her imagination, but the hall seemed darker than before, the wallpaper peeling at the corners, exposing black mold beneath. Her hair moved; a draught of musty air breathed up at her, from the elevator at the end of the hall. It was lit, brass gate gleaming bright as ever. As she approached, the light inside flickered.

Elena stopped before the grate. The music had come from there, she was certain. She stared into the elevator for a long time, psyching herself up.

You already faced your dead exsanguinated mother.

She'd gotten through that. She'd done the worst already. Right?

You can do this. You promised to help her.

Her palm was slick. She didn't move. The key weighed heavy in her hand, heavy down her arm. The same arm Donna had sewn back together. Bitterness filled her mouth.

Coward.

"You ran away."

Elena turned. The doll floated in the dark hallway, white lace glowing in the gloom, seemingly unsupported.

Elena cringed back. No, she wasn't alone. She was being held. A shadow. A specter in silent black silk, veiled and lightless and seeming to swallow all the light with her presence.

Donna.

The doll, Angie, flung up her hands, eyes rolling with the click-click of marbles against porcelain.

"Ohhh, she looks shocked!" Angie cackled. "That's funny, isn't it? You ran, and now you creep back with your tail between your legs and you have the stones to look surprised! I could just scream! I could just die laughing!"

"I- I didn't run away. Donna, please-"

"Donna, pleeeeeease," Angie mocked. The hallway shook. Tendrils of black mold twined from beneath the peeling wallpaper, radiating from behind Donna and Angie, reaching down the walls and toward Elena. Her back hit the elevator grille; it screeched in its track. "You. Ran. Away. You promised you wouldn't and now you broke that promise. You've been naughty! Naughty, naughty girl! I thought I taught you a lesson already."

"I'm a slow learner," Elena managed. "Donna, you can fight it. Fight her. Whatever she's doing to you, making you like this-"

A cascade of screeching laughter burst from the doll as she kicked up her spindly legs. "Making me?" she sputtered. "Oh, that's the funniest joke of all! This isn't the mask, Little 'Lena, this is the real me! Both of us together! Can you fight that?"

Elena's nerve broke. She brought up the rifle, intending to blast Angie into shards, but the gun dissolved in her hands, drifting away into curls of crow feathers. She yelped and spun for the elevator doors. Too late. Before she could so much as move, Donna and Angie rushed her, a patter of feet and billowing black fabric, porcelain hands grabbing and catching at her hair. She was wrenched back round, body moving like a puppet, each joint straining against the force gripping her.

Angie's hands caught her wrist and yanked it upward. Elena stared in horror; the seam down her face was cracking; it split open and tendrils writhed out, wet and pinkish-gray. They went for her hand and latched on, nosing against her for a moment before they burrowed in.

Panic seized her, a gibbering scrabble of terror and disgust. The tendrils turned dark and she realized the horrible doll was feeding on her, drinking her blood, the thing inside Angie's head gorging on her body and on her fear.

"Get off!" Elena yelped. "Saints get it off, get it off me-" Her other hand flailed upward, catching Donna's face. Catching the veil. The force ripped it clean off her head. It fluttered to the floor, revealing, for the first time, Donna's face.

The left side was as she'd seen. Beautiful as the portrait in the attic.

The right was a pulsating, swollen, tumorous mass of flesh. It ruptured from her eye socket, veined and slick, tendons and stretched skin warping the area from jaw to hairline out of shape. Short tentacles wriggled from the mass, the movement like maggots feasting on a dead animal.

Elena's mouth fell open. "Is- is this what you were hiding?" she whispered, somewhere past her terror.

Donna's brow creased. Her single eye blinked. And for an instant, Angie's hold on Elena loosened.

Enough. She ripped away from the doll, tearing the tentacles from her hand. Blood spurted from the punctures and over Donna's face; Elena tasted it in her own mouth. She shoved forward, the world rippling into indistinct smears of colors around her. Her hand collided with Donna's shoulder, and it was like being thrown- the floor lurched, the entire house tipping forward, tipping her not against Donna but through her.

And then sunlight pierced the world like it was no more than a veil. It poured over Elena and consumed her, pulling her, mind and body, into the nightmare.

[silentcrowsilentravens]

Omg that post where Donna's s/o smothers her face in kisses.. could i please get that with the other resident evil 8 ladies? And Jill maybe?

Yes. Absolutely.

Post referenced in the ask can be found here!

Daniela Dimitrescu, Bela Dimitrescu, Cassandra Dimitrescu, Alcina Dimitrescu, Mother Miranda, Mia Winters, Elena Lupu, and Jill Valentine with a s/o that likes to smother their faces in kisses.

(Gender neutral).

Warnings: n/a

Masterlists here!

Daniela Dimitrescu

She's such a sucker for this. You don't understand.

Dani already has a big grin on her face when you give her one (1) kiss on the cheek.

But you want to go back in for more?

You want to cover her whole face in kisses??

You’ve got her giggling like mad and smiling harder than before, which you didn't think possible.

Almost half of her body has dissolved into flies. She can't even properly maintain her form.

Please do that more. She will do it to you just as much as you do it to her.

Bela Dimitrescu

Bela is a noblewoman. She's a cold-blooded killer. She'll maintain her composure, of course. You aren't going to make her—

Oh?

Affection for Bela?? Lots of affection???

Damn it, she can’t maintain her poker face at all. She goes from having an almost smile on her face to a full-on one instantly.

Her cheeks become a tiny bit warm to the touch.

She's literally vibrating. Like a purring cat.

"Feeling affectionate, are we?" Once you're finished, Bela cups your jaw and presses a kiss against your lips in return.

Cassandra Dimitrescu

"What are you doing?"

Much like my cat when I go to kiss him on his little head, Cassandra has this ridiculously grumpy look on her face as you begin to shower her in affection.

She half-heartedly tries to push you away once before giving up. If she’s being honest, she doesn’t actually want you to stop. 

...She likes it. Cassie didn’t think she would. She didn't think she'd even let someone do something like this in the first place, but she likes it. 

Keep going. 

Alcina Dimitrescu

As she does with pretty much any affection you give her, Alcina soaks this stuff up. Just positively relishes it.

"Scumpete..." she says, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips

She fully leans into your touch.

If she's in a particularly good mood, you might get a bit of a chuckle out of her.

Might also just let you know if you left any part of her face tragically unkissed... Because frankly, that's just a crime.

Mother Miranda

Before you came around, receiving affection like this was something Mira was entirely unfamiliar with. Throughout pretty much all of her life, she's been the person everyone is afraid to make direct eye contact with, let alone initiate some form of physical touch.

(This is, of course, because she might rip their head off. Figuratively? Literally? Depends on her mood).

So when you start smothering her face in kisses, she just. Doesn't know what to do with herself. Her brain doesn't know how to process this. You're overwhelming her. In a good way.

"Mira? You alright?" you have to ask after you pull away because she's still as a statue.

She blinks a few times as she reenters this plane of existence.

You are welcome to do that again.

Mia Winters

Mia did not know how much she needed you to do this until you start doing it. It's an instant day improver.

She's fully melting into your touch.

Batteries she didn’t even realize were low are being recharged. 

She has her hands on top of where you have yours on the sides of her face.

For quite a while after, she has a grin on her face.

Elena Lupu

Elena is a tad flustered when you unexpectedly cradle her face in your hands, but then you start covering it in kisses and... hajakashhskshds. 

With every single kiss, her cheeks get a little more flushed. 

She says your name with a laugh lining her voice.

She tells you to stop without any seriousness whatsoever.

You better be prepared to be given the same treatment you gave Elena at some point in the day. 

Jill Valentine

Welp, Jill was kind of tired before you started giving her all these kisses. Not anymore!

She isn't too big on such intense displays of physical affection, but she can appreciate it every now and then.

Like right now.

She just...

Has her eyes closed. And there's a soft smile on her face.

[kurosstuff]

Rules!(finally)

Request: OPEN

So before anything this blog is for female characters! I suck at writing males and have been told so as well- and the reader unless stated female will be gender neutral.

What I will write: platonic, angst. Fluff. SLIGHT SPICY-(to a limit.), character x reader x character, headcanons, songfic, death

Please be as descriptive as possible when requesting as well.

What I will NOT write: non con, smut, character x character(I did once but only once.) Yandere, adult x minor. Male reader, male characters

Also. If the reader has a disability of some sort(EX: deaf. Blind, ect) I will ONLY do headcanons. Short ones so I dont accidentally spread false information from my limited knowledge on some of them.

I can and will refuse a request if I don't know how to write it, it's too uncomfortable, ect.

Please use the emoji "‼" so I know you read the rules please!!(if you cant find the emoji you can do "!!")

Fandom(s)

One Piece

Nami

Nico robin

Boa hancock

Resident Evil

Donna Beneviento

Lady Dimitrescu

Mother Miranda

Elena Lupu *no longer writing for*

Cassandra Dimitrescu

Daniela Dimitrescu

Bela Dimitrescu

Marvel

Hela

Wanda Maximoff

Yelena Belova

Natasha romanoff

So far

Attack on titan

Annie Leonhart

Mikasa Ackerman

Avatar the last airbender NO LONGER WRITING FOR.

Azula

(I'm willing to write for any of the other ladies but azula is the only one I'm confident with writing for)

Genshin impact

Almost any of the female characters ONLY. I only wrote one male(zhongli) as a gift to a friend

Hazbin hotel

Lute(PLEASE)

lilith

Pretty much all

If theres more characters you would like from another fandom please DM/ask about it and I'll check to see if I've seen it/can write it! I don't mind

Masterlist Ao3 NSFW RULES

Non x readers

Encanto: Mirabel fic, angst♡

Genshin: "It's not you-" angst

Taglist(must follow me and have to show your url when asking!!

You can also ask to be tagged in specific fics as well

[saintsofwarding]

BURIAL

Chapter 11

(You know it's gonna hurt. Don't you?)

"It's...it's not true. I know it's not."

(Don't be stupid, Donna. Everyone leaves you except me. Everyone betrays you. And it always hurts)

"Even you?"

(Silly Donna. I'll never betray you. I only want what's best for you)

"No you don't. She's what's best for me. She makes me feel-"

(Don't you dare say whole)

"She makes me feel in control."

(You think control is what you need? The guilt will eat you alive! Your dreams protect you, dummy! You won't be able to handle living when they're gone)

"And neither will you."

(Careful, Donna. I can put you somewhere far away. You know I can. You said it yourself. I'm stronger than you. But-)

A brush of porcelain fingers, cold as a corpse's.

(-we're so much stronger together)

"She's not working for Mother."

(They all work for Mother)

"Not like that! She's not her spy. She can't be, she can't, she helped me, she stayed. She came back-" Her thoughts scrambled and stuttered. She rose and paced back and forth and back and forth. The well yawned before her, its depths endless. It might have gone down forever. "She cares about me. She's not like Violeta- she accepts me. All of me."

(Silly little mouse. Caught in a trap)

"Shut up shut up shut up shut up-" She reached up, grabbing fistfuls of her own hair. Strands broke off between her fingers like wires. The tentacles on her face began to writhe and slap against her own skin, responding to her agitation. The pressure in her head built. She gripped tighter as her voice rose to a scream. "-Stop stop stop stop, I'm not listening, I don't hear you-"

(Yes you do)

"No I don't!"

(Yes you do, yes you doooo)

"No no no!" She slammed her fists into the wall, hard enough she felt her palms split and shear open on the rough stone. Blood trickled down her arms, twisting into her flesh. Her palms grew warm. She knew without looking they'd already begun to heal over. "No! No! No! Bad girl, bad Angie, bad ME!"

She railed and screamed and beat the walls and when she was done, her throat raw and scraped, she turned and collapsed back against the stones, breathing hard, clutching at her upper arms. A strangled keen escaped her, a weird animal sound, echoing through the darkness. The pulse inside her head went on, sickening, comforting.

Angie drifted before her like a small ghost. She nudged Donna, who opened her arms to let the doll settle in them.

(She doesn't know the half of it yet. It'll be just like last time, that ridiculous blonde creature with her stupid little shoes. You can't change the past, Donna. No matter how hard you try. Even if she showed you differently, it's only a dream)

"I can't hurt her," Donna whispered. A warm tear streaked down her face.

Angie leaned forward and licked it from her cheek. She chattered her teeth. (You won't have to. You have me)

Donna hugged the doll to her chest, half-wishing she could drop her down the well and watch the darkness swallow her.

"And what would I do," she whispered. "Without you?"

(You'll see)

(They always betray you)

(And we always have to kill them. Each and every one)

***

Elena heaved aside a heap of old furniture in the attic and found it. It stared back at her, lenses filmed with dust and tinged green. She'd seen a few around the village, left over from a great war that had, a long time ago, raged beyond the valley's borders, a war that Miranda had claimed to have protected the Black God's followers from, keeping the horrors of the outside world at bay.

A gas mask. She'd never worn one, but she knew its function- some of the workers Lord Heisenberg employed at the uppermost levels of his factory, processing the junkyard detritus he unearthed from the land around his domain, were issued the same sort. This one looked to be in much worse repair, its leather strap cracked and peeling, its olive green casing scarred-up. But, examining it, Elena found no holes in it, and when she fit it over her face and inhaled, the air tasted musty, hissing in through its strange elongated filter.

Let's hope it'll be enough.

She removed it and set it in a basket, along with the other things she'd gathered from the shack out in the garden. A set of long chains, and a pair of manacles, secured with a stout padlock.

Elena climbed down the ladder. She descended the stairs. Her shadow crept beside her, silent on the gleaming wood walls.

Donna waited below, Angie in her arms.

"I...I don't know," Donna began.

"It's going to work."

"If it doesn't, she'll kill you," Donna said. She squeezed Angie tighter. "She's told me. She'll hurt you. She'll trap you so deep inside yourself you'll never find a way out."

"So fight her."

"I'm not-"

"You'll have to be. If you want this to end." Elena gripped her hand, tight. "It's okay. We're in this together."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

Donna nodded, her brow creased. She stood aside, showing the curious objects she'd assembled on the small table by the rocking chair. A collection of long taper candles. A lighter engraved with a strange many-headed beast. A black mirror, small as the palm of a hand, and so highly-polished it seemed like a perfect darker double of the world. A sprig of yellow flowers in a vase.

Elena heard her small inhale.

"It was easier," Donna said. "To be dead. To be a part of the dreams, not the dreamer. It was like sleeping forever. I told myself none of it was real. But now I must wake up."

"Some say the whole world is a dream," Elena said. "The Black God's dream. Or that we're all heading toward its dreams when we die."

"So then I really have been dead all these years."

"Then you're even more miraculous than I thought," Elena told her. "It's easy to die. Harder to return from death."

Donna faced her. The look on her face had changed. Still afraid, of course. Still so afraid, that nameless fear that was the undercurrent of all their lives, and yet something in it had settled. For the first time, Elena saw resolve in her single eye.

Donna reached forward, suddenly, and caught her by the hand. "Elena," she said.

"We should get-"

"Hush," Donna whispered, and leaned forward, drawing her hand up Elena's arm, to her cheek. Drawing her face to her lips.

Her mouth brushed Elena's.

Cold, still. Just a touch.

Once, twice.

And then again. Elena's hand came up to hold Donna's face, pulling her to her; the touch of her lips became something harder, became a kiss like falling. Her fingers in Donna's hair; Donna's hands at her face, cupping her jaw, pulling her in.

Her strange cold skin took on Elena's heat as she touched her. Finally, she felt alive. Her mouth tasted bittersweet like her flowers, the faint writhe of her face against Elena's somehow, against all odds, exactly what she wanted to feel.

She wouldn't have it any other way. Wouldn't have Donna any other way than this, now, monstrous and bitter and warm in her arms.

She pulled back, a little. Elena's lips felt bruised, her face flushed; Donna's eye was bright as she looked at her and gave a nod.

"Now we get started," she said.

"Yes, my lady," Elena told her, and at last Donna broke out in the smile she'd been waiting for, full and sweet, nothing held back.

She pressed her hand to Elena's chest, then turned, gathering up the candles. She gave half to Elena, and, together, they traced out a circle on the floor, around the rocking chair. Elena lit them one by one, and soon the darkened hall was full of their light, a sphere of flicker and glow that threw strange shadows on the far walls, made them seem to leap and dance as if they had minds of their own. Elena dropped the lighter in her pocket as Donna took a seat in the rocking chair.

Slowly, methodically, she lay the other objects down at the pointed toes of her boots. The polished black mirror, laying on the rug like a thing cut out of night, and, by its side, the vase with the sprig of yellow flowers.

Pollen drifted in the gloom and underlit Donna's face, throwing harsh shadow over the fine lines of cheekbone and jaw and eye socket. Elena imagined she could see the shape of Donna's skull beneath the skin, and shivered, at once cold.

Donna exhaled, settling Angie in her lap.

The candle flames lengthened, reaching toward the ceiling, long enough to snap.

"Now," Donna whispered.

Elena took up the chains. One manacle went around Donna's wrist; the other went around Angie's midsection. She wound the long chains around and around them both, around the rocking chair.

"Tighter," Donna told her. "I can escape this."

"I don't want-"

"Tighter," Donna hissed. In her lap, Angie's teeth began to chitter, her porcelain fingers clicking against one another.

Elena pulled the chains tighter; their links bit deep into Donna's clothes, leaving smears of rust on the black taffeta. Donna closed her eye; her lips fluttered.

The candle flames spat and flickered.

The padlock clicked in place. Throat tight, Elena knelt before Donna and touched her cheek. "Hey," she said. "You still there?"

"I'm here."

"Good." Elena stood back. "Okay. What now?"

The air pressure dropped. The temperature plunged; her breath became visible in the air, and a high scream sounded in the back of her skull, a buzz-saw through bone. She gasped and flinched, but stayed rigid, stayed where she was.

It's not real. None of it is real.

"You..."

Elena looked down. Donna's voice scraped from her. "You...know this will never work..."

"So prove me wrong. Come on."

"I'm...not strong enough...we...we're stronger together, she tells me so..." A burst of manic laughter escaped her. "She whispers to me at night, all about you, all about the way your skin tastes, the salt off its surface..."

"Come on, Angie, don't be disgusting," Elena said. Her hands tightened into fists at her sides. "Donna, you can fight it. Fight her."

"You don't get it. How can we look in a mirror and not see our whole selves?" Another course of laughter. It echoed around Elena, circling her; she heard pattering footsteps, the scrape of porcelain against wood. A sharp metallic ring, like a chorus of knives drawn.

Whispering.

Little tiny voices.

The dolls are watching.

She saw them staring from the windows of the dollhouse.

Something's inside.

"Break the mirror," Donna-Angie said. "Break the mirror and keep your eyes on what you can see in front of you. Break it and you never have to cry again. Break it all and forget!"

"Don't listen to her, Donna," Elena commanded.

Donna screamed; the sound tore from her, a physical force; it raked through Elena, shaking the foundations of the house. Wood creaked, walls groaning, dust sifting from the ceiling as Donna howled and twisted in her chair. The chain links strained and screeched. In her lap Angie woke, a malevolent light glittering in her eyes, kicking up her limbs as she twisted in turn against the manacle holding her in place.

"Not fair!" she screeched. She slapped at the manacle. "Not! Fair! You don't play nice, Lupu, not nice at all!" "Well, you started it." Elena pushed forward; her limbs shook, joints turned to water. It took effort, like walking against a ferocious wind. Another wave of screams burst from Donna, black liquid spurting down the sides of her mouth, dripping from her eyes and onto the floor. It writhed like worms. The black mirror shone in the candlelight, searing-bright. "Don't make me smash you into bad memories."

"And kill Donna?" The doll lowered her head. "You wouldn't do that, now, would you?"

"It wouldn't-"

"Oh, yes, it would." Her mouth fell open. "Ohhh, poor Elena. Thinking you might be able to...what? Save her from herself? Save that sad severed little piece of Donna Beneviento from the big bad monster made by her mind? Well, tough luck, sweetie! You get the whole deal...or you get nothing! Nothing, nothing, nothing!"

"Donna," Elena called. "Donna, listen to me. She's nothing. You said it yourself, she's just an old doll your father made, and you're all grown up now. You don't need her anymore. Tell her to go! Tell her to go away so far she'll never get out again!"

"Nothing, nothing, nothing." Angie had made a little song out of the word. "Nothing, nothing, nothing at all. Shhh."

Donna slumped backward, suddenly, her face so covered with black liquid Elena couldn't see her skin anymore; her neck was twisted back at a painful angle.

No- Elena stepped forward, heart pounding, but- her hands were still moving, twitching on the chair arms.

She stopped, breathing hard. Don't fall for it. Don't lose control.

Angie tittered. "Baby's sleeping."

"Donna," Elena said, between clenched teeth. "This is...this is just light, it's just memories. Like the projector. It isn't real."

"You're lying."

"I'm not-"

"You are. I know you are. You can't love her. You're going to leave her. Everyone does. You have to understand that I'm the only one she needs." Angie leaned forward as far as the manacle would allow. "You have to get that she's too weak for anything else."

Elena took a sharp breath. It hurt. The walls shimmered around her; on the edges, in the back of her mind, waited golden sunlight.

Donna was retreating. She'd regress again, so far away that Elena couldn't reach her. Reality was agony; that place, that dream, was far easier. Again and again she'd gone there, retreated there, leaving the rest of herself to wreak nightmares on the world beyond the borders of her mind.

She'd killed, Elena understood. She didn't know how many. She'd visited horrors on the innocent, on Violeta. On her. And still she couldn't leave her. Still she stayed, her body shaking with terror, not of Donna but for her, wishing she could go to her again and kiss her face and see if she'd wake up that way.

She wouldn't. Elena had run out of options. Only the truth remained.

I'm sorry.

"It was Miranda," she said.

Angie's mouth snapped shut.

"It was Miranda," Elena said again. Heat welled in her eyes; her throat was so tight she felt like she was being strangled. "Miranda...sent me here to spy on you. Or she would have killed me and my father. I...I could only think of him...too scared for anything else. And, saints, I'm sorry. I'm so, so, sorry, Donna, I told her about you. About you not being able to control your powers. About...what you told me, your secrets, your fears..."

Donna was lifting her head, black liquid streaming from her. Her eye was wide, shining. Angie began to laugh, low and dark.

"You did?" Donna whispered.

Elena couldn't speak. Tears streamed down her face as she nodded.

"It's true?"

She nodded again.

This time, Donna's scream tore through her like knives. The house erupted into darkness, a storm of screams and howls and shattering, the shadows rising in monstrous form, wolves and witches and nameless things with too many claws, too many eyes, crawling toward the ring of light as if they might extinguish it.

But Elena was ready. She was fast. She'd gotten fast.

She slammed the gas mask over her face and tugged the straps tight. It sealed around her face, and her next inhale tasted not of bittersweet flowers but stale air, swirling through her lungs. Nausea rippled through her; she doubled over and retched a mouthful of black slime into the gas mask. It spattered the inside of the glass, but it didn't writhe like before, no, didn't move at all.

Breathing hard, straightening, Elena stared out through the mask. It was already accumulating a rime of yellowish dust. That must have been the pollen. The house wasn't a chamber of nightmares anymore, just a hall with a ring of candles on the floor, and, before her, twisting and tearing at her chains:

Donna.

Her hair had come loose and hung around her shoulders in lank ropes, veins standing out against her pale face as she screamed and shrieked, black tears streaming from her eyes, the doll on her lap yelling abuse at Elena.

"Cheater!" she screeched.

"You shut up," Elena snapped at the doll. She looked at Donna. "I said I wouldn't leave you. I'm not lying. I know you'll get loose from those chains eventually. And when you do..."

She swallowed.

"Whatever you choose to do, I'm still gonna help you," Elena told her. "I trust you. I love you. Hold on."

She turned, already tugging the keys from her bodice, and ran. Down the darkened hallway, straight for the elevator.

Straight for the basement.

***

(You see? You SEE?)

"This isn't funny anymore, Angie!"

(Oh, I'm funny? How flattering)

"Just leave me alone..."

(To mourn? Poor Donna. I know you thought she'd be the answer to your loneliness but your answer was right in front of you all along...)

"I...I don't care."

Angie's eyes sprang wide. She drifted before Donna in the murky darkness, lace veil billowing around her.

(What)

"You can't bully me anymore."

(How dare you talk to me like that. After all I've done for you!)

"I...I know. And I used to need it. I used to want it. But I know now I can survive alone. And I don't care what you say."

They faced one another, now, like they had so many times before. The echoes of Donna's hoarse voice spilled around them, surrounding them. Surrounding her; for the first time in a long time her heartbeat spiked- not from fear, but from anger.

No: rage.

It boiled through her, a white-hot sear through her veins. Rage against Elena, against Miranda, against her parents, against her own weakness and silence and terrors. She wouldn't turn it against herself, not this time. Angie wasn't the issue here. Angie was a part of herself, always had been, a part she'd rather not face. But now here Angie was, looking her in the eye, commanding her body like a puppet. She saw, dully, as if watching a badly tuned television, her own body twisting and screaming in the chair, throwing herself against her chains so hard they'd leave bruises. Felt Angie's righteous hatred against Elena standing before her, dark eyes wide and focused on her with a ferocity Donna hadn't seen for a long time. If she had, ever.

She was so beautiful. She'd become so beautiful to her.

Fight it, Donna, she said. Come on. Fight it. Was it real? It didn't matter.

(No, Donna. She betrayed you. Now do to her what you did to everyone else you loved. Feel nothing. It's safer that way)

"I can't..."

(Let me do it. Let me hurt them. I can dream up tortures that would make even Dimitrescu shudder, just you wait and see! Prisons of nightmares. Endless. Glittering. Full of teeth. You know I can. I'll keep you safe)

"I...I don't need you to protect me."

(Don't do this, Donna!) A note of panic entered the voice. The sound of it changed, becoming more childlike, less sinister, a little girl's voice crying out for her. Claudia's voice. (Please, please don't do this to us-)

"No." Donna grabbed the doll in both hands. She writhed and gnashed her teeth but she hung on as tight as she could.

"I," she said, through grit teeth, "Don't. Need. You. Anymore!"

Angie began to laugh. The sound eclipsed the echoes of Donna's voice, the flare of her defiance burning through her; the darkness pressed in, twining up Donna's skirt and over her skin like tendrils of black mold. The doll's eyes gleamed as she leaned in.

(Little Dolly Donna. Then you leave me no choice)

She realized it an instant too slow. A call. An echo ringing down the mycelial connection that weaved around her, a web across the whole of the village, a web that connected them all. Donna, more so than most. And wasn't Angie a part of her?

"Angie, no," Donna choked, but it was too late.

(Better tidy up, Donna.

Mother's coming)

***

Elena didn't dare remove the gas mask. Tears dripped down her face, salty on her lips. She tried to steady her breathing, slow her heartbeat.

Just stay calm.

The elevator slid downward, downward, the rumble of its mechanism shuddering in Elena's gut.

Just keep going.

The sound of Donna's screams and Angie's cackling had long-since faded, and the silence had rushed in, the loudest noise that of Elena's too-fast heartbeat, thudding in her ears like a ceremony drumbeat.

She'd spat up a couple more mouthfuls of black liquid. It smelled floral. Was that the pollen's effect on her body? She had no doubt spores were deep in her brain, now. Maybe...maybe Donna had retracted her control once she'd put on the gas mask. Maybe a tiny part of her had recognized that Elena wanted to help her, and had relinquished control over her.

It was a small hope, a foolhardy one, but Elena would hang onto it with everything she had. She'd believe it.

Down, and down, and down, into the depths. The weight pressed on her mind, a surface tension easily snapped. The air chilled, like before, and the darkness came up to meet her, and then the light slid up from her feet to her scalp and the elevator was grinding to a halt with the wheeze of gears. Ding, it went.

Elena slid open the gate. Her first step creaked on the dusty floor. She paced ahead, past the door to the study, past the door that was locked. She tried it again, and it creaked open at a push. Inside was a storage room, shelves full of an enviable stock of fabrics, filing boxes, broken furniture, stacks upon stacks of old film reels for the projector. Nothing moved in the shadows; nothing was out of place.

Elena moved on. Her shadow moved alongside her. She felt a faint rumble underfoot- water? Surely not the falls, this far down. How far belowground was she, anyway? She'd tried to count during her descent but lost the numbers after she reached fifty. Deep in the cliffside.

That's where the Black God lives, the priests had said in church, once, reading from Miranda's tomes and treatise. Far, far below us, for the world is its womb, and the divine is birthed in its endless dreams.

These didn't feel like divine realms to Elena. The air was damp, crawling against her skin. Black mold dripped down the walls, infecting the antique furniture, the comfortable chairs, worsening the further down the hall Elena went. Deeper, deeper. She kept track of the hallways, the turns, but it all looked the same, whitewash and wood panels, gloom and flickering lights held within glass sconces on the walls. She passed the phone on its stand. It didn't ring. She hurried by and on, turning a corner, facing a hallway so pitch-black she could not see more than an arm's length ahead, even with the lit sconce behind her.

Her breathing quickened. The darkness seemed to shift before her- movement? Her fear making monsters where there were none? She reached for her flashlight and clicked it on. It illuminated, harshly, the whitewashed corridor, the darkened sconces, the cracked floorboards. Something skittered away from the light. She shone it up and flinched.

It glanced off doors. A pair of them, heavy wood with brass handles.

Elena clenched her teeth. There's nothing here. All your nightmares, they were inside you the whole time. A mirror, remember?

But still she felt it. Like a memory, forgotten. A terrible act, remembered not by her mind but with her body, with her nerves and her breath and the drone of dread in her gut. A weight, deep inside. A weight, warping the world around it out of shape, so heavy it pulled all things toward it.

Somehow, her foot moved. She stepped into the darkness. The sound of her breathing quickened inside the gas mask, the haze of pollen thickening on its lenses. The doors came closer. One was cracked, a gap of light shining from the far side.

She pulled open the doors.

Elena remembered this room. She'd seen it only through a haze of drugs and pain, when she'd first glimpsed Donna without her veil. Arm flayed open, being stitched back together. A low-ceilinged stone room, walls supported with rock arches. An ogre's kitchen from a fairy tale. The table was there, stout wood scarred like a butcher's block. From racks on the ceiling hung not corpse limbs but half-finished dolls, some missing eyes, some limbs, some their clothes, naked and sexless. Others were just heads, their wire armatures dangling below them like viscera. On shelves around the room waited doll parts, a sewing machine, a workbench arranged with paints and colorless glass eyes.

Through a bank of windows to her left Elena saw, lit with a blinding greenish light, what looked like a medical room, brown glass jars of chemicals lined up on counters, syringes and scalpels gleaming hungrily.

Something waited there, on a steel tray, on the countertop. A gleam of gold.

Elena moved closer. She stepped into the greenish light and stopped, staring down at the thing in the tray.

It was hair. A long, braided hank of blonde hair, attached to a scrap of bloody skin. The braid was secured with a red ribbon.

Violeta's hair.

The dread deepened. Elena felt it in her chest, on the back of her throat. Her heart pounded. Her nerves trembled, on the verge of fraying.

No. Don't you dare lose your nerve now. She could still be down here. Somewhere. She could still be alive.

Elena backed from the medical room, turned from the workshop, and stepped down an adjoining corridor. The hallway changed around her, transitioning from whitewashed walls to stout stone, slick with damp. The lights were now naked bulbs on wires, buzzing, releasing a faint wash of amber light that rendered all shadow twice as dark.

Strange objects waited on shelves. Broken dolls and odd little ornaments, music boxes covered in grime as if unearthed from a grave. Primitive statuettes with pits for eyes, carved from wood or crystal.

Elena clicked on her flashlight. It hit a door before her. This was different than the rest of the place. It looked ancient, wood warped and blackened, clinging to dark iron hinges that spiraled like goat's horns. The handle was dark iron, too, and carved into the door's center was the Beneviento moon and sun. It looked, like the statuettes, more primitive than Elena had seen before, as if this place was far older than the rest of the house. It looked older than anything Elena had ever seen before. Was this part of whatever had come before the house? Whatever had rested on this land centuries in the past?

She didn't know. But she recognized the metal of the handle, of the empty lock below. She reached for the keys around her neck and for the first time took up the small iron one, the key Violeta had seen fit to hide away.

It fit and turned. The lock dropped with a heavy thud. Elena felt it in the pit of her stomach. The hinges sang as she pushed the door wide, as it fell open to complete darkness.

She'd thought she'd seen dark before. Nothing like this. Nothing like this emptiness. Away, and away, echoes fanning into the void. She lifted her flashlight before it overtook her. Steps stretched downward, a descent into a black pit. Hand-chiseled, flagstone, slick with damp and years of grime. The dread deepened to a pulse.

You can't do it.

She did. Her foot slid onto the first step, and she kept going. Down, and down, and down. Her flashlight beam flickered; she gave the flashlight a smack and it steadied. Was it dimmer than before? It's your mind playing tricks. She couldn't let the fear win.

On and on through the wending halls.

The heavy mineral smell of the place was thick in her head, even through the gas mask. The smell of a deep world, decomposed.

Soon her hands and feet were numb. She kept going. Water dripped from somewhere ahead. An end to this purgatory of stairs?

Don't look back.

The flashlight beam caught on the jagged arch of an empty doorway and the slimy flagstones of whatever lay beyond. Elena stepped from the last stair and onto flat stone. Dust drifted in the air. Echoes plashed around her. She heard, again, water, and felt the humidity of the air on her bare hands.

The walls curved inward. A circular room? In the middle, something rose from the floor- a low stone wall?

No. A well.

Elena's breath caught. She stepped closer. It opened before her, a mouth, an empty eye. A yawning circle of perfect blackness. Rusty rungs were bolted into its sides. Elena moved to its edge, then stopped. Her flashlight beam had touched something on the far side of the room. Something slumped. A flash of gold.

She lifted the beam.

For a moment she wasn't sure what she was looking at. A mannequin, surely. Its white legs were sprawled, one bare foot twisted to the side. Fine black lines circled its ankles, its knees. Elena's gaze traveled up the legs, past the long skirt embroidered with red silk flowers. The matching bodice, the dangling, boneless arms, the hands curled against the floor. The head, twisted sharply to the side. Long ringlets of blonde hair fell around its face.

Glass eyes stared off into nothing.

"V...Violeta?" Elena whispered.

It was her. But it was a doll, too. Those weren't lines on her limbs, they were joints, as if each part of her body had been disarticulated and put back together. Her skin was glossy like porcelain, two red circles painted on her cheeks. Her hinged mouth hung open, her eyes wide and sightless, one cracked down the middle.

Elena began to shake. No. No. The doll's chest was split open as if with an axe chop. A curled, tentacled shape waited inside. Maybe it had once been fleshy, fetal, but now it was white crystal, glimmering amidst patches of sticky dried gore.

Elena couldn't move. She felt locked in place, unable to so much as breathe. Somewhere, her mind screamed at her to run, get out. But all she could do was stand, locked in place, and stare at the thing slumped there against the wall, half-waiting for it to move.

But it wouldn't, would it? Violeta had said so herself, in her journals. Donna had tried to give her the gift. And the gift had rejected her.

"Poor, poor Violeta."

A lightning-sear. A crack through Elena's whole system. It brought her back to life, broke her paralysis. She whirled. The flashlight beam fell on Angie and Donna, standing in the doorway behind her.

"What did you do to her?" Elena's voice grated from her throat.

"To her? Tried to save her, ungrateful thing. She saw Donna's face and oooh, didn't like that very much. So shallow." Angie chattered her teeth as she raked her hand down the cracked side of her face. "Called us a monster. So I showed her what monsters do. I showed her Claudia. Just to scare her. And it did!"

She let out a cackle. "We thought she was gone for good but she came back. Said she wanted to talk. But talk was not what she wanted, oh, no. She had a knife, smuggled out in her skirts, and she almost got us, too. Nasty, nasty. So we showed her something else scary and in the struggle and the screaming she fell down the stairs and cracked her head right open."

Angie shrugged.

"So...Donna gave her a piece of her gift," she went on. "It didn't work. She didn't come back to life. But look at her now! Isn't she pretty?"

"It-" Elena's mind raced. "It wasn't you, then. It was only a mistake. She wasn't supposed to die, was she?"

She looked at Donna, holding Angie, silent behind her black veil. "None of it was your fault! Not your parents and not Violeta. You wanted to save them all-"

"Not our fault?" Angie's shriek echoed off the walls. "I'll show you what's our fault! I'll show you right now!"

She sprang from Donna's arms and into the air, smacking into Elena and hanging on with hooked porcelain fingers. She was surprisingly heavy; Elena screamed and swung round, but the doll clenched down. She felt her scrabble at the back of Elena's gas mask, felt the gnawing of sharp little teeth-

"Get off me!" She swung round again, for the wall this time, hoping to scrape the little monster off, but-

Oh, saints-

Cold air rushed over her face. She held her breath, but maybe it was too late, maybe breathing it didn't matter. Maybe it had been in her all along.

The dream rippled before her, through her, and she slumped as Angie leapt from her and back to Donna's waiting arms.

Elena panted, breathing lungfuls of the pollen-filled air. What was the difference now? She lifted her eyes to Donna, understanding. A hole in the world. A weight that pulled all things down with it.

"You killed Claudia," she said.

[saintsofwarding]

BURIAL

Chapter 10

She collapsed into deep grass, lush and golden, the air full of the warmth of summertime. She rolled with a gasp; a sky swirled overhead, bright white, tinged with gold. Trees waved in a breeze. Birch trees, she saw, their trunks smooth and pale and scabbed with black markings like eyes. Their yellow leaves whispered, whispered.

Insects droned in the grass. Elena spat out a strand of her hair. It felt real. Everything- the wind, the grass, the sun's warmth on her face- felt as real, more real, than the world she'd left, a scrape of darkness and blood, rapidly retreating. She lay and breathed for a moment, her brow creased, her hand leaking blood from its puncture wounds. Then she shot to her knees and stayed there, staring into the too-real forest around her.

Where am I?

It rippled as the wind blew, a swirl of leaves and sunlight. Yellow flowers grew in abundance, their pollen drifting through the birch trees and around her. It settled on her hands, her shoulders, numbing her skin. In the distance, Elena heard the faint sound of laughter. It rang through the woods, through the pathways of her mind, hazy and warped.

Elena got to her feet, pollen and leaves raining from her and to the ground. She glanced back, but there was nothing, no gateway back to reality.

Nothing but more forest, more flowers.

She followed the laughter. Around the trees, down a short slope, the flowers thickening, the sunlight brightening as the trees thinned and a meadow appeared, spreading on and on before her. It was almost entirely yellow flowers, such profusion that they seemed an ever-shifting, ever-glowing carpet of light. On its far side, a house rose from the woods, abandoned and empty and falling apart, its red door hanging off its hinges. She recognized, as if from a half-forgotten dream, the look of the roof tiles, the shape of its silhouette, though she'd only seen it before from above. The sky above was white, impossible to tell the time of day. Maybe it would never change.

Pressure swelled in her head. Her ears popped, then rang. She shook her head, swaying a little in place.

The air shimmered. Now there were two figures in the meadow, sitting together on a blanket spread over the grass.

Elena's lips parted. She recognized Donna, veiled once more, her knees drawn up to her chest. By her side, her long, wavy hair shining in the strange timeless sunlight, was Violeta. Her round face was alight with a smile; she wore the beautiful clothes from the wardrobe, the intricately-embroidered blouse and skirt.

They spoke, though Elena couldn't hear their words. They were garbled and chopped-up, not words at all but the memories of words, of conversations, maybe dozens, played out over time. She crept closer, all the way to the edge of the meadow.

The air shimmered with prismatic reflections. The birch eyes blinked and quivered around her, their irises slick and shining. She didn't look at them. She didn't want to see what might be reflected in them.

She watched as Donna leaned closer to Violeta, as she lifted a hand. It shone in her palm: the amber clip, a chunk of the honey-colored stone huge as a bird's egg, moth trapped at its heart.

Violeta gasped, then took Donna's hand, clasping it between her own.

Stay with me.

The words rose from the garble of sound, clear and sharp.

Stay with me forever.

Violeta reached out. She took the edge of Donna's veil, and began to draw it up.

Let me tell you everything.

Elena stepped backward. A twig crackled underfoot.

Donna's head snapped round.

"You."

The word hissed to her core. Donna rose; Violeta stayed frozen behind her, trapped in time like that moth within the amber.

Donna stalked forward. The wind picked up, a swirl of pollen and petals; the trees leaned in, the limits of the forest darkening. Elena stepped back again, but the darkness rushed toward her, mist and gloom eating up this beautiful golden place piece by piece.

Cries shuddered from the trees; black tears began to ooze from the birch eyes. They were real eyes, now, gray eyes, bright and beseeching.

"You- ruined- everything!" Donna lunged for her. Elena screamed, but it wasn't her voice. This wasn't her body. The hair falling down her shoulders was golden, her skin paler; she clenched the amber clip in one clammy hand.

"Donna- please-" but as her hands closed around Elena's throat, the darkness rushed in, and the world twisted sideways.

***

Cold plunged through her. She dropped to her knees, choking and gasping for breath, the feeling of Donna's fingers still sharp around her neck. Black fluid spattered the snowy ground. Snow, and stones, and yellow flowers sprouting incongruously from the dead earth. She looked up as blizzard wind swirled past.

The village rose around her. But it was changed. Wrong. Mist drifted through empty windows, past the points of broken glass. Things howled into the darkness, the houses crooked, dilapidated. Torn, fading, like photographs left out in the rain. Something dripped, somewhere, and the wind was full of the sound of creaking metal, the rhythmic thud of an unlatched door, like a heartbeat.

Elena rose. The village looked...ruined. Apocalyptic, subjected to unimaginable calamity. Like the crystal city, from Donna's story. A perfect paradise, destroyed.

She stepped forward. Her boot crunched on something- a sharp brittle snap. She looked down to find her jawbone amulet, broken cleanly in two.

"It was supposed to protect you." She looked up with a gasp. Her father stood before her in the snow, hunched and gray, knotted old hands clutching at his upper arms. His eyes were so deeply shadowed she saw them only as twin points of light.

"No," Elena told him. "I left it to protect you."

"It's all a trick." Her father's hands tightened on his upper arms. "A game, 'Lena. A shadow play, like the animals I used to make for you on the walls. Birds and wolves...you'd laugh but you always looked round to see the shapes my hands made. We cannot be protected. There is no end to this. Only darkness. For all of us."

"I can't beat her, Pa, I can only play her game..."

The howling drew closer, the snarls and tearing sounds of animals fighting over meat. The wind blew cold, and as it swirled around her the mist rose, and her father began to fade into it, to be drawn back into nothingness.

"Wait- no!" Elena scrambled forward, broken necklace falling from her hands. It's only a trick, a game. "Wait, Pa-"

She skidded after him, through the mist, the buildings looming from the fog. Houses and stores, the Maiden of War jutting at an angle from the gray. The world seemed skewed, wrong, things all in disorder. Like a dream. Elena whirled- one way, another. Her breathing echoed back to her, reflected off the fog.

"Pa!" she screamed.

Her voice faded into nothing. She made herself breathe, made herself think. Yellow flowers still grew around her. She bent and touched one, rubbing her pollen-sticky fingers together.

It's only a trick.

She straightened, letting out her breath, and began to walk. The village melted away, and the mist rose like waves, until she walked through a wasteland, a void of snow and mist and endless gloom, nothing but her own breathing and her own footsteps and the yellow flowers to keep her company.

Until she saw it. Dark, rising. It drew nearer as she kept walking, taking on form. Familiar towers, familiar finial. The great empty eye of its attic window staring out over the mountainside, the same blind view it had stared at for so many long years.

The house. She was back at the house. A specter looming through fog. But it was wrong, too, the pieces warped, shuddering as she watched as if through uncertain vision. The windows seemed too large, and at them she glimpsed pale doll faces staring outward with glassy eyes.

A dollhouse.

The rest of the world took shape. Mountains and forest and gardens. The waterfall rushed and rushed, at at the parapet, at the very edge of the world, stood two figures arm in arm.

Great gleaming dolls, she saw in a gutless instant. Porcelain, their jaws hinged, their fingers jointed and lifeless, each one dressed in outdated, childlike style. A boy doll in breeches and tailcoat. A girl one in lacy petticoats, a bow at her neck.

"W...wait-" Elena struggled to rise. As she did, a scream echoed out. A little girl, standing close by, staring at the two dolls in anguish. Pale, she saw, but not like she was now; there was color in her cheeks, her hair not yet brittle but black and braided down her shoulders.

"Don't look," Elena cried.

But the little girl didn't look away, and when the dolls tipped backward she reached out. But black roots twined from the earth, roping her to the ground, and she could only watch as the dolls plummeted off the edge of the cliff and into the nothingness beyond.

Elena ran for them. Too late. They were lost in the mist. A dizzying drop. Her head swam. It opened before her: the drop, the darkness, circling round and round and round again. It yawned, a black circle, the mouth of a well, a hole in the world.

Young Donna was beside her, now, her gray eyes wide, flickering back and forth as she too searched the mists.

Blood on the rocks-

Put them back together. Put them together again. That she couldn't see, no, no, she didn't want to see, didn't want to look. How long had she tried? So long the blood was cold. She couldn't find all the pieces. The teeth were the hardest part. So small, and so many of them.

-so thick I smelled it on my clothes for days on end. Not even washing would do-

"I saw them," Donna whispered.

Elena looked up at her. "What?"

"Leave the house. I saw them. That morning. Hand in hand. Like children walking to school." Still she stared down into that hole, that well. "I knew. Something in me...some instinct. But I didn't go after them. Not until I saw them at the edge."

"You were a child."

"But I knew. And I didn't stop them. That's like I did it. That's like I pushed them."

"Did you?"

"No."

"Then you're not responsible." Will you be responsible if Miranda kills your father? "You didn't kill your parents, Donna. It isn't your fault."

"Maybe." A whisper. "But it never changes. I wake up and they're gone and I can't stop seeing it and thinking what if. What if I had called out. What if I had just been faster..."

What if I had stopped my mother. What if I had gone with her, warned her. We didn't want her to go, me and Pa. If we had just tried, if we had just begged...

"I know," Elena whispered. "Out there...nothing changes. But in here..."

Donna met her eyes. She still had both hers. Even as a child, she'd looked peaky, ill, a strange plant grown up far from the sun.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"In here it's a dream," Elena told her. "In here you can see what you want to see. You already do. Your parents weren't porcelain. They weren't...they weren't dolls. They were people. You made them dolls so you didn't have to look at them. But...you have to now. So that you can do it again. And you can see that it's all a dream. The idea you could have saved them. The idea that it was your fault that you didn't."

Donna's brow creased. She licked her lips and looked down again, over the cliff's edge.

"It won't be different," she said. "Out there."

"It might be. For you."

"You ran away."

"No. I didn't. And I'm so, so sorry it seemed like I did." She took a breath. "Do you need my hand?"

"Yes." She held it out. Young Donna took it. Her grip was cold inside her glove.

"So do it," Elena told her. "Make it all happen again."

"I...I can't control..."

"Don't be scared." She squeezed her hand. "Yes, you can."

The well yawned. It rose. The darkness returned to the world, and cascaded over them, and when it cleared Elena stood by Donna once more. Two ragged figures stood at the cliff's edge. Donna's hand trembled in Elena's. She stood rigid, eyes wide, reflecting the figures.

A tear broke down her cheek.

"Wait!"

Her voice split the silence, ragged and raw. The figures stopped. "Wait," Donna said again. "Please, just wait- please don't fall."

They looked back. They weren't dolls anymore. They weren't Donna's parents, either. One was Donna herself. Older, paler, growth swelling from her eye socket. The other was smaller. A little girl, nine or ten years old, a mirror image of Donna as a child.

The spray from the waterfall whipped her black hair round her shoulders. She smiled back at Elena, far too sunny a look for her situation.

A pulse in the world, in the pit of Elena's gut.

"I'm sorry," Donna whispered.

Claudia turned. The other Donna dissolved, crumbling away into a cascade of yellow petals. Claudia stood alone at the cliff's edge, a sprig of yellow flowers in her hand. She held it up.

"Look, Donna," she said. "Look what I can do."

"Claudia..." Donna whispered.

Her sister laughed. It echoed through the fog. "It always has to be this way," she whispered.

Donna brought up her hands. The sky split open. Sunlight blazed, dense and golden, and consumed them both, devouring the dream whole.

***

Donna stared at her with her single eye. A heartbeat. Another.

Then she crumpled. Angie fell first, clattering to the floor, all limp limbs and hanging mouth. Elena ignored her and dived for Donna, catching her before she went down. She was surprisingly heavy, her limbs cold and dense as cement. Elena gasped for breath, the visions still swirling behind her eyes. Is this real? Is this real?

But the hallway didn't change. Angie didn't move. And the minutes stretched, and nothing happened, and Donna lay slumped in Elena's arms.

At last Elena felt her own limbs again. She couldn't think. She could only do. Up on your feet. Yes, that's it. She dragged herself upright. Her hand dripped blood; she'd deal with that later. She toed Angie aside and heaved Donna down the hallway, into the main hall. There was nowhere good to put her down here so with immense effort she got her upstairs and into her own room and half-shoved, half-dropped her into her bed.

Her head went clunk against the railing- "Shit," Elena hissed, diving to replace it somewhere more comfortable. A pillow, yeah, that would do. She put her feet onto the bed, one by one, then pulled off her boots and set them by the foot of the bed. Her stockings were ancient, full of holes, so much so that one toe poked through. Surprising; Elena would have thought Donna would keep her own things in perfect repair.

Her vision shone white around the edges. Was she about to pass out or something? She didn't. All her strength was gone. She slid to her knees by the bedside and stared at Donna as she lay there unconscious.

Her breathing was deep and even. Nothing looked damaged. Except for her eye growth, of course. Fascinated, slightly repulsed, Elena watched its pulsating movement, the slick translucent gleam of it in the light, the complex tracery of dark veins that connected it to the rest of her face. Did it go all the way down into her skull or was it surface-level? She wanted to get a pencil, gently prod the little tentacles, but she figured that would be pretty rude.

"You loved her, didn't you?" Elena asked. "Violeta."

Donna went on sleeping.

"What happened to her?" She reached up. Her hand shook from exhaustion, but she managed to stroke Donna's hair. It had come loose in the scuffle, and she gently twisted it back into place with its jet clip. "Where did she go? You know, don't you?"

Her face was so still. Almost calm. But there was a line between her brows that did not ease. Elena brushed her thumb over it. It didn't go away.

"Where are you, in there?" Elena murmured.

She ended up sleeping there, slumped at Donna's side, a highly insufficient throw pillow wedged behind her head. She woke, bleary, sometime later. Her view of the sky outside her window told her nothing- it could have been early morning, late evening, afternoon. Snow whispered against the ledge. Her eyes felt like they'd scarred over as she slept, but she knew if she didn't get something to eat and drink she'd probably pass out for real and never wake up again.

So Elena dragged herself to the kitchen and made tea and assembled a kind of crude sandwich from bread and various leftovers and brought it all back upstairs. Her beautiful clothes were covered in blood and black fluid so she changed from them and into her old skirt and blouse, the fabric now roughspun to her hands, but worn and comfortable. She bandaged up her hand between bites of food and slowly began to feel stronger, more centered. But not more herself. She wasn't sure she'd ever feel like herself again.

What had she seen, deep in Donna's mind? She tried to sort it out, tried to get it all straight in her head. Her closeness with Violeta. Her guilt surrounding her parents' deaths. But...Claudia had been there too, and Donna had seemed so frightened of her, so horrified to see her. That didn't go with what she knew about Donna's sister.

She'd loved her, hadn't she? She'd been broken by her death, so broken it had forced her to turn to Miranda.

Saints, this is all so messed up. She couldn't keep it straight. Her thoughts felt like a basket of tangled wool, skeins so snarled there was no hope of picking them loose again. She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead and concentrated on eating. All this turmoil of the mind, it wouldn't do to neglect her body.

She must have dozed again. When she woke, it was to Donna, awake now, sitting in Elena's bed with a blanket over her legs, a cup of tea in her hands.

"Hello," Donna said.

Elena blinked.

"...Hello," she said.

Donna's lips twitched. "You look tired," she said. She was one to talk; she sounded tired. Something else, too. A quality of her voice. Its rasp had deepened, its enunciation slightly softened. She sounded more...real, that was it. Less like she was reciting words, more like she was just saying them.

"Yeah, I feel awful," Elena said.

"Mm. I can imagine."

"You have any herbs for that?"

"I can probably scrounge something up." She paused. "I attacked you."

"You sure did."

"We...attacked you."

"Is there a difference?"

"No."

"All this time," Elena said. "I thought Angie was doing this. That she had you under some kind of...enchantment, or something, that she was keeping you on her string. Now I see. It's the other way round."

Donna gave a faint laugh. "Is it?"

"You tell me!"

"I meant what I said," Donna told her. "She's a part of me. She is me. She always has been. She...we...together...as one..."

She paused.

"She's stronger than me," she said, haltingly, as if trying to explain was difficult. "She's...become stronger than me. And when she's in control she gets mean with her games. I shouldn't be surprised. I made her that way."

"You made her?"

"So that I could live. Otherwise I would be dead. She's the piece of me that's the most alive. That wants to be alive."

Elena blinked. She took a hearty swig of tea, wishing for the first time she had her father's dreadful bottle of homemade whiskey to mix with it. "Well," she said, "she almost murdered me, and succeeded in drinking my blood, so."

Donna's face quivered. "I'm sorry," she said.

"Look, I-"

Donna babbled over her. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't want to lose you. I always ruin it." She pressed her fingertips to her mouth. "Because it's me. I try but it's all me. It all keeps being me. Everything, all torn up."

Her hand slid over her face as if to hide herself from Elena. Elena stayed with her as she sobbed, curled at her bedside, saying nothing. What could she say? What could she do? At last Donna's weeping subsided and the silence came in.

"I'm sorry," she said again.

"You don't need to apologize."

"You probably want to leave."

"See, that's the thing of it," Elena said. "I don't. Does that make me as messed up as you?"

Donna laughed, suddenly, hiding her mouth with one hand. "Yes, probably."

"I think so too."

"And...and this...?" Donna gestured to her facial growth. "What about this? Does this bother you?"

"I...uh. Does it hurt?"

Donna's expression softened.

"No," she said. "It did, when it first came to be. It swelled and grew from my skull, and my eye...I felt it burst like a piece of rotten fruit. I had to snip it, you know. The nerve. With the tip of my scissors. The remnants of my eye crystallized in my hand and I knew it was another piece of myself I would never get back. But it was all right. My vision had long since gone dark, and the dead eye would have festered if I hadn't."

Elena slowly set aside her cup of tea. "Why do you have it?"

"It came with the gift. Mother's gifts always come with a price."

"Even Lord Heisenberg's?" Given what she'd seen he could do, Elena couldn't imagine a downside to his abilities.

"Oh," Donna said, "his very much so. He came here, you know. Many times. After I became Miranda's daughter. I think he came on Miranda's orders."

Elena shifted in place on the floor.

"To watch me," Donna went on. "Spy on me. Perhaps it was for his benefit too. He has a...curious mind. But I...oh, I didn't want visitors. So I did things to him. He did not yet know the form my gifts took so he never saw me coming."

Her eye brightened, the gray of its iris pale in the gloom. The look of her face in the half-light would stay with Elena for a long, long time.

"I trapped him in his nightmares," Donna said. "I showed him horrors that would crack any lesser mind. And at their core, deep, deep down, I found him. The real him. A scared child, stolen and cut open and betrayed. Just like we all were."

Her words sent a shudder of cold through Elena. She thought of the Four Lords in the church, ensconced within candlelight and gold, revered and feared all at once. Demons, and protectors, and monsters in the night.

"The other lords?" she said.

"Yes."

"That isn't..." Elena started. "Even...even Lady Dimitrescu?"

"Once," Donna said. "Yes. She was lured and given her gift by force, yes, but that was not the beginning, no. It's love Mother starts with, once the sinew is snipped and the organ is freed. Love, so that we do not want to run away. And once we realize our mistake, it's too late."

She smiled a little.

"That's the secret of it all," she said, her voice soft. "My true power. I know things. I know far, far too much. All the things they fear. All the things they hide, so deep they can almost pretend they are not there at all. My power isn't a knife, it's a mirror, and I see all that it reflects. And I lock it all away. Here."

She gestured to the house. "And here." She pressed her finger to her temple, then let her hand drop to the blanket, a curled white spider.

"And by the time people get close," Elena murmured, "you've already got them snared with the flowers."

Donna's smile widened, showing a hint of incisor, then fell.

"You face the mirror too."

Donna nodded. "Sometimes I do not know what's real and what's not." A pause. "This is real, right?"

"I'm fairly confident."

A hint of a smile returned to Donna's face. "I faced it," she said. "Didn't I? Inside. I faced my parents."

"You did."

"You helped me face it."

"Uh-huh."

"Thank you."

Elena took her hand and squeezed it, like in the dream. "Sure," she said. "Now will you tell me something?"

"What?"

"Where's Violeta?"

Donna tensed. For a handful of heartbeats, Elena thought she might strike again, might come back with the face she'd used the night before, might send her into another dream. But she simply slid her hand from Elena's and faced forward.

"What happened to her?"

"She's gone." Her voice was tight.

"Did she die, too? Like your parents?"

"I don't want to look. I don't want to."

And Elena didn't want to argue. She hurt too bad, inside and out. "Fine. I'll go...I'll go find an armchair to curl up in or something.."

"Elena."

She looked up.

"You helped me," Donna said, simply. "You risked everything to help me. You didn't have to, and yet you did. I'm so grateful for that, and for you. You are...you are the best thing that has come to me for so long. The best thing."

Elena nodded.

"Are you afraid of me?"

Elena nodded.

"Thank you."

"For being afraid?"

"For not lying."

"You're the best thing that's come to me, too," Elena told her. "And I'm not gonna stop helping you. There's a way, now. Not to change the past but stop it from killing the future. It's not dead. It doesn't have to end- well. The way you think it's gonna end."

"I don't want you to get hurt."

"I've already gotten hurt."

"I don't know if I'll be able to stop- us. Next time."

Her, and Angie. The thing they were together. The thing they were once two were made whole. Elena glanced toward the door, then back to Donna.

"Sleep now," she told her.

"Dream?"

Elena laughed wearily, lifting Donna's hand to press a kiss to her knuckles. "Not if you can help it."

***

She set out into the deep winter evening, heading through fresh snowdrifts, through falling snow, for the glimpse of the ruined house she'd seen from the attic window, and again in Donna's nightmare. Her rifle was slung over her shoulder. This time, it wasn't going anywhere.

She'd almost forgotten it in the deluge of images she'd seen in the dream, but the more she thought about it the stranger it got. Everything else she saw had been significant to Donna, so why had it appeared with her and Violeta? There was little point in speculating. She had to see for herself. She descended through the gatehouse and into the clearing that held Claudia's grave.

The snowfall had extinguished most of the candles, and Elena paused at the grave's foot to give it a moment of inspection. Now the writing on the slab made sense. -a Beneviento. Where was the rest of it? Maybe Donna herself had broken it, so she wouldn't have to remember. Now its epigraph- a Beneviento- became anonymous. Any one of her dead could be buried there.

Even herself.

Elena fished a box of matches from her coat pocket and knelt to relight the candles. Soon they shone again, making the yellow flowers that surrounded them seem to shift and glow. Beautiful, as it always was, even knowing.

She turned away from the grave, facing the gardens, and set off. They sloped upward, a gradual incline, a thickening of trees and falling-away of fences and statuary until the undergrowth became wild, unkempt, the path almost lost underfoot, obscured by snow and briars.

A cold wind winnowed down from higher up; Elena tucked her chin into her scarf and squinted through the mist, looking for the first glimpse of a dark, looming shape. Lycans howled in the distance, but they sounded far-off, all the way back down in the valley, and she didn't think they'd scent her up here.

Still, her fingers curled tighter around the strap of her rifle. She wasn't about to trust everything she heard nowadays.

A creaking sound echoed from the mist. Elena glanced up- a birdcage, hanging from a lower limb of one of the trees. The fence came into view, then, a scrap of old wood and rusty nails clinging to life. The gate hung off it, wrought-iron, the Beneviento moon and sun worked into its design. Elena pushed it wide, then released it, and it thudded back into place, buffeted by the wind.

The house rose beyond. A ghastly old thing, abandoned, wind-haunted. Its brick walls were nearly black with damp and decay, with twining creepers. Briars nearly obscured its lower floor; they twisted through the windows and massed over the ground. Thorns snagged at Elena's skirt as she picked her way up the front path, watching for the first sign of any movement. The warm, sunlit place she'd glimpsed in the dream was gone, if it had ever been real at all. This place was dead.

But not empty. She tasted a hint of bitterness on the wind. Her imagination? Didn't matter. She'd find answers here of one kind or another.

Traces of red paint still clung to the door. Elena tried the handle, braced her shoulder against it and shoved, but it was locked; she stood back, grit her teeth, then aimed for the keyhole. The rifle blast echoed down the mountainside, shattering the lock to shards of metal and wood. Elena gave the door a push with her foot, paused, then stepped over the threshold, keeping within the wedge of light filtering in from the fading day.

Gloom washed over her, thick and grimy. She pushed a brick up against the door to keep it from falling shut and took her flashlight from her pocket, shining the beam over the shambles within, but it made little difference. The darkness here seemed heavy, opaque, the milky beam barely giving her a better sense of the place.

It was a two-story cottage, bigger than most houses in the village but nothing compared to House Beneviento, and yet as she made her way through it the walls seemed to twist and move around her, doorways opening in walls, hallways twining off through shadow, its layout warped by years of decay. Floral wallpaper clung to the walls, and all the furniture was still in place. Elena peered into a front room, armchairs arranged around a low table and a fireplace, statues of saints and a framed image of Miranda in pride of place on the mantelpiece. A pair of carpet slippers still sat by an armchair, as if waiting for their occupant, and coats still hung in the hall closet. Moths fluttered in the gloom, disturbed by Elena's presence, by the unwelcome intrusion of her light. They danced through the beam, wings gray as dust.

Black mold dripped down the walls, and damp squished under Elena's boots, rugs eaten away by the elements. The kitchen was much the same, and the small study, its shelves stocked with illegible books. Dead plants in pots were set along the windowsills. Elena thought she recognized the husks of Donna's yellow flowers. So she'd come here, once, or at least knew this house's occupant. Who could it be?

She found something of an answer in a photograph hung in the corner of the study, over a roll-top desk now encrusted in dust and lichen. A family- a kindly-looking bearded man, a plump woman with red cheeks and a kerchief, a pair of children. She peered closer. The man had a pin on his lapel, and though it was difficult to make out for sure, she was fairly certain it was the Beneviento house crest.

A gardener, then, or groundskeeper? The photograph looked old. Elena turned it over to find a date written in the upper corner. It was some twenty-five years in the past. So...judging from what Donna had said regarding herself and Claudia, it was far before she'd become head of house Beneviento and its sole surviving member alike. Had these people served her parents? Or...

Her skin crawled.

Had they served Donna, too, and died because of it?

When Angie's in control, she gets mean with her games.

Elena replaced the picture. As she did, something thudded against the floor upstairs. She whirled, shining the flashlight toward the ceiling, her nerves at once alight. Eyes wide, she waited, one, two, three. Another thud made her flinch. After it came something like- the rattle of a chain?

She unslung her rifle and cocked it back, a sharp, decisive snap. Enough with chains. With an exhale, Elena headed for the stairs. They wound up, and up, the spine of the house, and spilled her out onto a landing. Wood creaked, the howl of the wind sharper up here, fluting past shards of broken glass still clinging to window frames.

Elena paced forward; a moan rippled through the air, over the sound of the wind. She pressed her hand to a door.

It swung into a dark room, curtains drawn. Elena made out the glint of gilt spines, the glister of rotting wood, before she reached out and before she lost her nerve, whisked the curtain back. The fading daylight illuminated the room, illuminated the old sofa upholstered in deep green velvet, the bookshelves, the storm lantern and the clutter of writing tools on a desk, and the thing chained to the floor in the far corner of the library, almost out of the reach of the light.

Elena's breath caught in her throat, her rifle up, aimed for the thing. The monster. Humanoid, emaciated, its flesh dried and blackened. She thought of a body she'd once seen exhumed from the church graveyard once; the cold, dry dirt hadn't allowed the corpse to rot but had instead preserved it, darkening its flesh to the color of burnt wood, sucking all the moisture from the corpse so it had lain twisted and open-mouthed in its coffin, hands crooked into fleshless claws. This thing looked much the same, but, impossibly, it was moving, curled fetal against the wall. A manacle was clamped around one ankle, chain snaking to a ring bolted deep into the floor. Eyes glistened from its sockets, glimmering green like a lycan's. Rags still clung to its body, the remnants of trousers and waistcoat.

It wheezed as Elena stared across the room at it, a pained, ragged sound.

"Don't you move," Elena told it. "Don't you dare move."

"You..."

She barely registered it as a word. But, no, the thing was speaking, expelling a spray of fine blackish liquid from a mouthful of broken teeth. Her hands clenched down on the rifle.

"Y...you...you're different....different one..."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

It lifted one trembling finger, nail hardened into a curl of filthy keratin. Elena noticed bright scars on its manacle, matching the shape of its vestigial claws. How long had it been trying to scratch its way loose?

"You were...blonde," it rasped. "Last time."

Elena blinked. "I-" she started. "When was I here last time?"

The creature gave a slow shake of its head. "Don't...know." Its hand dropped to the floor with a thunk. "Hungry."

Licking her lips, Elena stepped forward. "Was it before the big snow?"

"Big...storm. Yes. Yes. Long time before."

So Violeta had come here, but she hadn't done so for roughly a month. Probably longer, considering her conspicuous absence from the village. Elena adjusted her grip on her rifle, looking the ghoul over. Something glittered on its lapel. A pin, made with the sun and moon crest.

Oh, saints.

"Did you live here?" she asked. "A long time before?"

The thing's head dropped. It emitted a low moan, the sound shuddering through her, awful and pathetic all at once.

"It's...it's all right," Elena said quickly. "Don't worry about that right now. When I...when I was here last time was there anything I did? Anywhere I went?"

"This room."

"Where in this room?"

The ghoul lifted its head and stared across the room at her. Had its eyes brightened? Maybe it was just the light. "You...always did the same thing."

"Yes?"

"Writing. Writing. I begged...let me go. Hungry...but you never did. You smell like flowers. Pretty flowers. Like Mistress Donna..."

Writing. Elena's eyes fell on the clutter of pens on the desk. It wouldn't be her ideal choice of location for getting some journaling in. How long was the ghoul's chain? Would it reach the desk? It hadn't tried to get her yet. She took a short breath, then edged across the room, rifle still trained on the creature, toward the desk. They were there, in the top drawer. A stack of books. Diaries. She pulled one out, and as she did, an object slid from between the pages and fell with a clunk to the desk's surface. A key, she saw. Small, and simple, and made of iron blackened with age.

She held it up.

"What does this go to?" she asked the ghoul, but it just went on staring at her, still curled in its corner.

Elena turned her attention back to the journals and flipped the first one open. Neat handwriting covered the pages. She skimmed the entries. They were dated several years in the past, and seemed to detail Violeta's life at her home. Her excitement about the tithing-festival. Her elation at having been chosen to go into service. Elena flipped through the book, heart pounding, but the journal ended; she moved on to the next.

Empty house...feel like something's watching me. Where is the Lady, anyway? Maybe there's never been anything up here in this creepy old place after all.

Just the wind.

Elena moved ahead, heart pounding. The darkness settled outside, the light leaching from the sky, and soon the only light left came from her flashlight beam. She hurriedly lit the lantern on the desk. Luckily, there was a little oil left. It guttered to life, filling the room with an amber glow, reducing the ghoul in the corner to a ragged heap and twin points of green.

Elena kept reading. Violeta described her time at House Beneviento. Donna, making herself seen. Donna, and Angie, tormenting her. They'd treated her much worse than they had Elena, if that could be believed. But Violeta, amazingly, had stayed- she was scared of the lycans, according to the journal, and she was certain they'd get her if she bolted down the mountain path.

But she began to see small things. The way Donna sewed, the way she tended her gardens. Her small kindnesses. There's pain there, Violeta wrote. Pain and suffering. Maybe if I show her some kindness in return this will all end?

She told me about Claudia.

Elena's heart seized. She held the journal up to the light.

She told me about her death. She's so sad. How did she die? I asked and she went still, like a rabbit in the woods. I think it still affects her to this day. However it happened, it must have been traumatic. So traumatic it split her mind in two.

She then went on to talk about her baking habits and the next few pages were covered in dessert recipes. Elena flipped forward.

She gave me some of her mother's jewelry today. This was meant to be for me, she told me. But I can't wear it. It would look better on you.

I wonder what she looks like.

I think it might look good on her, too.

She likes me, I think. The way she talks to me. The way she is around me. Like the boys around the well. If I saw her face I'm sure it would be blushing. Does she like me in the human way or is it more in the way a cat toys with a mouse? She makes me see things, in the forest. When I'm with her the world seems to have so many more colors in it. I know it's the flowers. I know it's not real. But I can pretend it is. It makes all of this so much easier.

...I don't want to write this in the house...

...The dolls see everything...

...There's something so wrong here.

Elena's heart pounded. She glanced at the ghoul to make sure it was still in place, then pushed onward, skimming the pages faster and faster.

Had Violeta not returned Donna's affections? Had she felt she had to hide her true thoughts out here, where no one would find them?

The dolls in the basement...all over the house...there's something inside them. I hear her snipping and sewing all through the night. Singing, like you might do for a baby. They watch me...I can hear something moving in their heads...she said she learned a way to make them do as she says, to be her friends, that I'm her friend, too.

And I want to be. I want to be so badly. But I can't...

She cut one open for me.

Elena stopped. She held the journal closer.

A doll. Inside was...it was like an organ, maybe a fetus? I don't know. It started to screech, and she just cooed to it and soothed it, stroking it with a finger. She said she was the one who figured it out. How to put it inside things and make them move.

She can't control when she gets like this but it frightens me.

She told me through Angie that she wants to try it like her brother does, putting the pieces of her gift inside dead people. She said it might bring them back.

I don't want her to. I want Angie to go away.

She showed me, today. Her face. Now I understand why she wears the veil. I ran away in disgust. I couldn't help it. That thing...I couldn't face it. I hid, and waited until she was gone. Angie was out in the hall, in the rocking chair. I bit back my fear and searched her and I found this key, hidden in the lining of her skirt.

I think I know what it goes to.

Elena turned the next page, eyes wide. But there was only one sentence on it, written in a shaking hand.

I know what happened to Claudia.

Elena flipped the page, but the next was blank, and the next. The whole rest of the book. "No-" She flipped through the others but that was it, that was all, she'd written nothing more.

"Damn it," she muttered. The key was still in her hand, small and unassuming. A key Donna had hidden, that Violeta had stolen. Why?

What was it for?

"You were scared."

The ghoul. Elena jumped, then looked at the creature. "I...um. I was?"

"So scared. I tasted it in the air. Mmm...saw it in your eyes. You said you were...going back. Had to...finish things." Its lips stretched back in a rictus grin. "You're scared now."

It flipped onto its hands and knees. Its chain grated across the floor. Elena backed off a step. "I remember," it rasped. "Mistress Donna and Mistress Claudia. Hand in hand...skipping rope. Such pretty flowers...but one grew taller, yes, Mother noticed, Mother wanted, and what Mother wants she always gets..."

"Miranda wanted Claudia. Yes. I know."

"And Mistress Claudia liked it. She liked...being Mother's special girl. Liked it better than...better than Donna's love. So much better..."

Elena stopped. "What?"

"You know what happened," the ghoul said. Its voice turned sly and wheedling. "You wrote it down. Stupid mouse...stupid then and stupid now..."

It was in that instant that Elena saw how close the creature had crawled. How long its chain really was. It had hidden it, she realized, a whole loop of chain hidden under its bony leg, and she'd just run out of room. Her back was almost to the wall.

The creature's eyes brightened, feral with hunger.

"So stupid," it moaned, and lunged, whipcrack-fast. Elena clawed out of the way, nails to wallpaper, half-tripping over an upturned chair; books crashed to the floor as the creature thudded into the shelves behind her, as it turned, jaw hanging wide, black slaver pouring from the depths of its gullet. It moaned again, crawling over the desk, skinny haunches quivering.

Elena grabbed up the lantern and as it leapt for her, she swung it. An arc of fire. It smashed into the creature's cheek and sent it sprawling, a tangle of bony limbs and rags. Smoke billowed; flesh sizzled. The smell of burning meat filled the library, rank and awful, and before the ghoul could recover Elena had scrambled to the door. She heard it rising, heard its moan sharpen to a keen, and in one movement whirled and brought up her rifle and fired.

Its chest exploded in a spray of black blood. Something writhed inside the cavity, something pale and tentacled. The keening sound grew louder. Elena didn't stick around. She slammed the door and turned the latch and bolted, not stopping until she reached Claudia's grave.

A stitch pulled in her side. She slowed to a halt and bent over, hands braced on her knees, breathing hard. She dropped to the graveside, grateful for a chance to sit down; the last few days had done a number on her.

She held up her hand, the black key cold in her palm.

It went with the others around her neck. Violeta had been afraid. She'd tried to run away, in the end, unable to reconcile within herself the truths she'd discovered at House Beneviento. Now, here, draggled and exhausted, Elena could do the same. Run away. Leave Donna behind, accept she was nothing more a monster that could not be saved. Leave with her mind intact and her questions unanswered. Miranda might hunt her down, yes. Would kill her family. And then, in a way, Elena would be free.

Or she could keep her promises.

Or, she could save a life.

Two lives. Sort of. Depending on how she looked at it.

She looked at the grave with a small smile. "Once I got to know her, did I ever really have a choice?" she told it quietly.

Then Elena got up and headed toward the red gatehouse, back to House Beneviento, back to Donna.

It was high time they found a new game to play.

[saintsofwarding]

BURIAL

Chapter 2

Poor rabbit, Elena thought, both eyes open as she centered her shot down the rifle barrel. Never stood a chance.

The gunshot split the clear morning in two. Birds burst from trees, scattering plumes of frost, a squawking, flapping mass taking to the skies; snow scattered the ground in a fine haze of white as blood burst crimson over the frozen field. Elena lowered her gun with an exhale, watched the stillness for a moment as all settled, then slung the battered old hunting rifle over her shoulder and made her way toward the fresh kill.

Blood wicked through the snow as she approached and knelt over the rabbit. Dead. Very, very dead. A shot through the eye, a scattering of skull fragments and brain matter. Good; she didn't want to have to wring its neck, she always hated that kind of suffering.

And she had to eat, didn't she?

"Sorry," she told the dead rabbit, picking it up by its back legs. "If it's any consolation, bunny, you're gonna taste delicious."

It went in the sack. The woods were silent, now, even more so than before, unbroken by the chatter of crows or the rustle of small creatures in the bushes. Usually, this kind of quiet filled her with dread; animals didn't like lycans, the holy wolves of Mother Miranda's command, of the Black God's whispers calling them from the endless dark, and when they were about the forest was ever quiet, untouched creatures shrinking from the bitter scent of the Black God's power.

But this time Elena was the hunter, and it was only thanks to the gunshot that everything had scattered. She made her rounds, checked the snares- empty, save for a spray of viscera and feathers that meant a lycan had likely found the unfortunate victim before she did- then made the turn back homeward, old boots quickly finding the narrow deer path she'd walked so many times before. Pale gold light filled the woods with its faint haze, but the sun not yet shown itself above the mountains and the forest was dense with shadow, deep blue, unbroken.

Elena tipped her head back as she walked, letting her headscarf fall back from her hair, and took a deep breath of the clear, frigid air. Always so clean out here; even the faint scent of blood from her game sack was a part of it, part of the deep loamy scent of the trees, the tang of pine sap and frozen earth, of the coming daylight, gathering and falling through the needles to pool on the fresh snowdrifts. She'd never come out here at night, not for her weight in lei and wool, and saints knew she'd never leave this place-

Even if you could-

But it was so beautiful out here, and so quiet, and sometimes if she spent long enough in the clear air and the trees her dreams seemed clearer, too. But that, she told herself, was blasphemy. She should be glad of the Black God's dreams. There was nothing beyond the mountains, after all, nothing but endless woods and endless monsters, and holy though they were, they were hungry, too.

Starving. Elena's stomach gave a snarl, and day was coming, and there was always, always, so much to be done.

Her pace slowed as she caught sight of it through the trees.

Not far off the path. It loomed from the tangle of trees, built on a rock-ridge that thrust from the snow like the back of some sleeping creature. A statue, crumbling, ancient, hacked of pale rock spotted with lichen and chapped by centuries of wind and rain, listing to the side on its stacked stone plinth. A saint, wolf-headed and snarling, a human heart cupped in its lupine hands. A warding-saint, a wolf-sick holy man, a servant of the Black God. Elena's breath caught, as it always did; she was close to the edge, here, and past the warding-saint was-

Was forbidden. Forbidden. Mother Miranda would find her if she stepped foot past the border, would find her like she'd found so many other faithless over the years, would do worse than wring her neck for her blasphemy.

Nothing there. Nothing but monsters.

Her heart hammered; Elena bowed her head and gripped the goat jawbone at her neck as the wind picked up, as howls rippled through the silent forest, carried long on the cold, clean air. The morning light spilled through the trees as she forced her gaze away from the saint, away from the village border, and picked up her pace toward home. So much to do, and today so important. Today she'd-

-Saints, protect me-

Today, she'd prove useful to Miranda, if the Black God willed it. Today she'd finally be of service.

Today, everything was going to change.

***

The smell of smoke and animals filled the air as she approached the fence, ducking through the loose section of chain link and into the churned, muddy yard; chickens flapped away as she crossed the yard, shaking snow from her old wool skirt, and shouldered her way into the house. Dusty, shabby, patched holes in the walls, mismatched curtains at the windows. Rugs covered the floor, and tapestries nailed to the walls covered up the holes. Charms jangled, hung from rafters alongside bunches of drying herbs, the walls of the old house much-painted with blood red and deep lapis blue, darkened by time and smoke. A fire flickered in the grate, statues of Miranda made of crow-feathers and carved wood set alongside gilt icons on the mantel.

A photograph of Elena's mother as a young bride gazed down from a wall, sepia age-spotted and bloomy. She and Elena were alike as beetle shells, plain-faced and dark-haired, brown eyes set wide, ears a little too prominent. Elena touched the picture, let her fingertips trail over the glass, resolved to bring her flowers when spring came. For now, prayers would have to do.

"Pa!" she shouted, into the gloom of the old house. "It's me! Not a lycan that crept in through a window, don't worry!"

"Is Andrei stealing my swedes again? I'll...I'll kill that little bastard, I swear, I'll shoot him and string him up to bleed out..."

"No, Pa, your garden's untouched." She stoked the fire, then cleared a mess of carving tools and wood shavings from the kitchen table before throwing wide a window. Morning light streamed in; the sun had showed its face above the distant mountain peak, illuminating the snow that veined down its crags. The village spread beyond, the steeple rising from the sea of dark roofs as if to impale the sky. And past it, past everything, Castle Dimitrescu.

Cold filled Elena's gut; she tried to look away, but the castle could not be ignored, could never be ignored, towers and turrets and vast curtain walls, shadowing the village, shadowing the entire valley, turned blue and misty at this distance.

Something winged launched itself from a high spire and glided away, its cry echoing the howls she'd heard deep in the woods.

It was worse at night. It always was.

I'll see you again, 'Lena. Won't I? You'll barely have time to miss me. Candlelight, warm hands. Her mother's scent, rosemary and lemon. She wore her best clothes, her traveling-cloak, all her things in her small, battered suitcase. And the money I'll make! They say the Lady showers her servants with gold and silk. A soft laugh. She should; she wears enough of it.

But...mama, my friends, the other girls, they say-

They tell stories. Don't you believe all of them. Her mother had stroked her cheek, her mouth trembling. Mother Miranda is wise. She's sent me to the castle because she knows I'm ready, don't you understand? It's an honor. It's a gift. It really is.

And when you're ready, Elena...

And when you're ready...

And when it came time for her to come back, to come celebrate Milk Moon, and Elena had made her mother's favorite jam tarts and sour soup and cabbage rolls, the door had remained empty, the chair, empty, and the photograph had smiled down upon her and her father, and the silence then was not a peaceful one.

They'd gotten the suitcase back, eventually. Delivered to them by a pretty young maid dressed in black and white. All her mother's clothes were there; a photograph too, much-creased, of little Elena held in her father's arms. Her prayer-book; her saint's medal. All that was missing were her shoes, and a single slip.

And a body, of course. But they didn't talk about that. And Elena had cried all her tears a long, long time ago.

Mother Miranda was wise, after all. She'd known what was best. And if this was best...

Elena whispered a swift prayer to Mother Miranda and made herself turn back toward the table, toward her game bag. Focus. She concentrated on skinning and gutting the rabbit, flinging its guts out for the crows to squabble over, save for its heart, which she kept. She'd bury it in the garden later. Water, and herbs, rabbit and potatoes, and before long the house filled with the rich smell of cooking meat and baking bread. Her father had long since gone quiet, and, tapping off the wooden spoon, Elena wiped her hands off on her apron and retreated through the doorway into his dark bedroom.

The house had only two rooms; ever since she was a child, Elena had slept in a cot in the kitchen. She preferred it; with the stove and the fire it was never cold, and she liked the glimmer of gilt on the saints' icons, the scuffle of chickens against the door. This was her parents' room, once, and now it was just her father's. He lay in the carved bed, wool blankets drawn up to his chin, white-bearded and older than his years. A red kerchief was knotted at his neck; he stirred as Elena sank down to sit on the edge of the bed.

"So," he grumbled. "You crawled back, I see."

"Hush, you." She gave him a light smack on the shoulder. "You'd be dead without me."

"Hm. Is that rabbit I smell?"

"Yes. Stewing."

"You got a rabbit? Yourself?"

"Don't sound so surprised, Pa. There's stew, and there's bread in the oven, and some of the honey cake's still left. Oh, and cheese, don't forget or it'll go bad. You won't starve today."

"Such treatment. I feel like one of the kings from the old stories, bathed in sugar and butter. What are you doing, a young girl like you taking care of an old man like me? Shouldn't you be married yet?"

"And leave you behind?" Elena tipped her head to the side, leaning on one hand. He had a point; Elena had turned twenty-four that year, and most of the girls she'd gone to school with, had fidgeted alongside in church with, were all married off, on their second or third child, at Miranda's bequest. The more children, the stronger the village, the more they honored the Black God. "Let's see. What can you cook?"

She made a face of mock concern. "Eggs? Maybe?"

"Quiet, girl."

"Can you hunt? I don't think so."

"I can still give you a hiding with my cane."

"Terrifying." She smoothed his hair back from his lined forehead. Leonardo Lupu had an old man's face, so old, so worn and gaunt; she didn't remember him this way when she was a child, strong and blond-bearded, making jokes that elicited groans of disgust from her mother, whittling statues of saints and wolves and whatever Elena fancied, so long as it all looked a little like a donkey. Her rifle was his by rights, like it had been his father's, and his father's, its once-finely carved stock- said to have been made by the great Norshteyn himself- now worn down to smooth satin by decades of touch. He'd used it well, had headed hunting parties and felled wolf-sick stags with two heads and vast, branching antlers. Had showed her how to hold it, how to aim it.

And now...

Well. Whatever he'd been, whoever he was now, he was still her pa. Elena helped him to drink, helped him sit up in bed, helped him open the window so the stuffy room might air out. The faint sound of music and voices echoed in; her father glanced toward the village.

"Tithing-day," he remarked.

Elena busied herself with a heap of his laundry. "Yes."

"You going to wear red?"

"I have to wear red."

"Your mother's red?"

"If it fits."

"Don't you get it dirty."

"Well, I was planning on rolling around in old Anca's pigpen in it..."

"Don't you dare, girl." He shook a gnarled hand at her, clad in a fingerless mitt she'd knitted for him. "It's...after we had to sell the rest, it's all I have left of...of..."

"I thought I was all you had left," Elena teased, gently.

"Suppose so."

"Do you?"

"You're much more useful than a dress."

She gave him a flat look. "Oh, I feel so appreciated. Thank you, thank you, dearest father of mine. Now, I'd better go start getting ready, or your stew will burn and I'll be late and then where would you be?"

He grunted. "Well, fine. See you tonight."

"I might not be back tonight. Not if I'm chosen."

"See you tonight, Elena," he repeated, and his voice was an old grump's, as usual, but his hands clenched the blankets, knuckles white, like bones bleached clean by the sun.

They were cold, and quivered against Elena's skin as she gripped his hands, as they sat, together, hushed like the forest, watching the sunlight strengthen as the sun made its climb toward the peak of the sky.

Later, after she'd made him have a slice of bread slathered with butter, after she'd forced herself to sip at some tea, she went to the chest beneath her cot. She unlocked it, unfolded the tissue paper swathing its contents, sat back on her heels to lift forth the dress.

The red silk glowed in the morning light, bright and unfaded, untouched by dust. Her mother had embroidered flowers all down its skirt, over its waistband, on the short jacket, heavily-appliqued with soutache and beading. A muslin chemise matched it, voluminous sleeves embroidered, too, and a sash completed it, hung with tassels six inches long.

Elena laid it out on her cot; she caught its scent, lemon and rosemary, and lifted the skirts to her nose, letting her eyes drift shut. It fit; it fit beautifully, heavy and cool against her skin, and when she braided up her hair and tied a red kerchief over her head she couldn't help but smile, to think of her mother in these clothes, her mother, chosen, honored.

Your mother, who never came home-

Your mother, whose last remains were an old suitcase and a photograph and a hole in your heart that will never be filled, a bloody wound inside you that will never be healed, will never be made right, never, never, never-

It began, then. The ringing of the castle bell. A great, slow pouring of sound from its bronze throat, pealing out to fill the valley with its voice. Other, lesser bells joined it, the church bell and the shepherds', and Elena felt the ringing, felt it like the pounding of her heart against her ribs, the sweat slick and cold on her hands.

Don't be a coward. Go. Mother went, didn't she?

It was time.

She went to her mother's photograph. She kissed her fingers, then pressed them to the glass. She went to her rifle- she wouldn't bring it, not today- and ran her hands over its familiar smooth stock, only hanging it up on its peg when her hands stopped shaking. She went to the mantel and set coins before the saints, lit the stub of candle at Mother Miranda's feet. A conflicting set of prayers, she knew, confusing to the Black God listening, but today she'd need all the help she could get.

***

Tithe meant sacrifice. It always had. And sacrifice was how you showed your devotion, at least in Mother Miranda's eyes. Whatever she saw, the Black God saw. She was its emissary, its most devoted servant, and to obey her was to obey the divine. There was no resistance. There was no question. It was answered before it was asked.

And the Black God provides for the rest, Elena thought as she joined the stream of villagers moving toward the square, toward the statue of the Maiden of War atop her plinth, sword upthrust toward the great tower of Castle Dimitrescu. Elena remembered the old story, one of the ones her mother used to tell her while they worked at knitting or needlework on nights by the fire. A great demon had threatened the valley, such that all four kings working together couldn't defeat. But a girl rose from the cowering ranks, sword in hand, and struck down the beast with a blow to the heart. Elena could scarcely imagine such- maybe Mother Miranda could do it, but she was all.

One girl against all the monsters. Imagine that. Striking them down once and for all. An impossible task, like Clever Ioachim and his ever-filling chalice.

Still, it made for a good story.

She lowered her eyes to the churned mud of the road, falling in alongside the baker and his wife and their daughters, four girls all younger than Elena and dressed in red like she was. Farmers led goats clad in red flowers and ringing bells; tassel-dressed pigs snuffled and yanked at their leads, heedless of their swineherds. Women carried baskets of bread, jars of milk, slabs of butter golden as the morning sunrise, jars of preserves like clinking jewels.

Mother Miranda's priests walked alongside the villagers, swathed in dark robes and mantles of crow-feathers, the Black God's fetal symbol on chains round their necks, their feet black from walking in the God's presence. Their songs, deep and sonorous as the ringing of the castle bell, filled the air, along with the rhythmic jingle of bells on the ends of their staffs.

Elena didn't miss, either, the knives at their belts, the riflemen posted on the surrounding roofs, cut stark against the sky. No one would get away from the tithe this time. Her father would be all right; only one member from each household had to attend, so long as said attendee was of service. Her pa was too old and too sick to be useful to Mother Miranda; he wouldn't serve as tithe. Elena shoved her hands deep in her skirt pockets, longing for the weight of her rifle at her shoulder. What's useful about you? Your own flesh and bones, Lupu.

She thought of blood wicking into fresh snow.

Just like the rabbit.

"Elena! Hey!"

She looked round as Andrei pelted to her side, flinging mud, inciting shouts and curses. He skidded to a halt, holding his hat to his blond curls.

"Elena," he panted.

Thirteen, freckle-faced, a tooth missing, he was the source of her father's missing vegetables, and a lot more besides. His parents had been taken into the endless dark of the Black God's dreams a few years prior- their skeletal remains found by a forest warden, not much left but gnawed bones cracked open to get at the marrow. Lycans. Wasn't it always? Now, he got by with whatever work he could find, doing odd jobs for farmers and craftsmen, helping haul freight for the jolly merchant that came each spring to hawk his strange wares at the Giant's Chalice.

"What the hell you want?" Elena said, already digging in her pockets for sweets. She found a paper bag of barley sugars and offered him one.

He took two. "Look at 'em," he said, nodding toward the priests. "All stocked with the biggest and baddest. You think they'd cut me?"

"I think they'd turn your skin to leather and give your eyes to the crows if you so much as twitched. Much less stole vegetables."

He plucked another sweet from her hand. She yanked the bag away. "Hey, now, all I took was a rotten cabbage or two," Andrei protested. "Come off it, Elena, I'm hungry."

His voice dropped, conspiratorial. "Hey, did you hear about one of 'em, the priests I mean, not cabbages, I heard he got locked up in one of the old Stronghold cells-"

Elena shuddered.

"-'cause he got wolf-sick, and Mother Miranda got really, really happy-"

"You don't know anything about Mother Miranda. Much less if she's happy about something."

"No! I heard from one of her men, that a lot more were working out, I dunno what that means but..." He shrugged, staring at the procession around them. Elena began to hear the drumbeat- the slow one-two, one-two vibrating deep in the pit of her chest. Tambourines, horns, the brazen clamor of the old-song sung in the old-tongue, the language of this region older than the rocks, older than the village walls, even older than the castle itself.

But not older than the Black God. One, two. One, two. Like a heartbeat. Elena dreamed, sometimes, of a heartbeat, far below, in black tunnels distant from the sun. The heartbeat of the valley, of the village, of the mountains.

We're all part of it. All part of its grand plan, its deep dreams.

That should comfort her. Instead it made her cold, like she'd felt when she stared at the statue of the warding saint in the woods, the border of the whole world.

"It means," Elena made herself say, "that she's thrilled with us. And maybe she's got enough people to spare, so she won't choose us this year. I mean, we've never been chosen before. And that means today's gonna be fun!"

"Fun," Andrei grumbled.

"After the tithe...I'll buy you some more candy."

He perked up. "Really?"

"Yup. We'll eat until we're sick. And then we'll dance until we vomit."

She grabbed him by his shoulders and he shook himself loose with a scoff as the procession, humming with chatter and clamor and anxiety and excitement, spilled into the square and the full force of the music and the heat of a raging, crackling bonfire.

It burned behind the Maiden of War, illuminating her set face, her goat-headed shield, the dais set up before her, as if for her entertainment.

Castle Dimitrescu rose in the background, the perfect backdrop for the stage, Elena had to admit; Andrei's eyes got big, and he elbowed her, chattering as he pointed at the offerings, the food and the handiwork and the medicine, the animals and the game and the great, shining fish, pulled fresh from glacial rivers, their eyes not yet dulled.

More food than any of them had seen for months, and all of it surrounded by a sea of red. Everyone wore it, spilled blood bright in the midmorning light, and Elena's breath caught, heartbeat kicking up a notch. She clenched her hands tight in her skirts as she and Andrei hurried to the side of the square filled not with produce but with people, other young women, other boys pale-faced and wide-eyed, staring at the dais, waiting.

"Where is she?" Andrei stretched his neck, peering above the crowd. Crows circled the square in lazy circles, riding the high winds.

"Shut up," Elena hissed.

"Where's Violeta?" whispered another girl.

"Gone," her friend whispered in turn. "She got called to service, remember?"

"I thought she was supposed to come back for the festival..."

"Do you think Mother Miranda's gonna come in on a chariot pulled by crows?" Andrei said.

"Shut up-"

"Miranda! Miranda!"

The cry filled the air, plaintive, exultant, ringing over the sound of the crowd; a priest fell to his knees, and another, and another, the instruments falling away save for the drumbeat. Elena went to her knees as the crowd began to fall, as the crows swooped and dived and alit on roofs, as the ground quivered below; Elena swallowed, a bitter taste in the back of her throat; her hands clenched tight, so tight they hurt.

Without warning, the ground erupted; a geyser of dirt and snow blasted toward the skies, and shining black chased it, a glistening, ropy mass like the roots of some vast tree. It plunged down, snaking over the cobblestones, twining past Elena's feet to write and pulsate, iridescent, translucent black. The mass boiled from belowground, forming a tumorous growth that arced above the stage, then fell, peeling apart into the form of a woman. Her black robes settled around her, slicking into the form of countless feathers, swathing her face; gold glowed in the firelight, her mask and her talons and her holy symbol, the pinpoints of her eyes.

The Black God's prophet. Its emissary. Its beloved, its chosen. The protector of the village, and the mistress of them all.

Elena gasped, pulse hammering. She grabbed up her jawbone tight and whispered as many prayers as she could remember.

Miranda, the crowd murmured. Mother Miranda. Mother Miranda.

She lifted her arms; her mantle peeled away, becoming wings, dark and glorious, a fan of them unfurling around her. Elena could scarcely breathe. She could only stare, unable to tear her eyes from the living saint before them.

She wasn't alone. Behind her, another silhouette slouched to the base of the dais, crowd shuffling back. Broad shoulders, sturdy build, trench coat. Elena, only a few yards off, smelled the tang of rust and oil, the acerbic richness of cigar smoke as he blew a stream of it over the first few rows of worshippers. Embers glowed hot orange off the round lenses of his glasses; over his shoulder was slung a hammer, massive, scrap metal and cannibalized machine parts welded together into an improbable weapon.

Elena's throat tightened. Lord Heisenberg. She glanced sidelong at Andrei, but he was transfixed. Elena couldn't blame him. Not just Miranda, but one of her Four Lords, too! Elena should have been overcome, but she couldn't suppress a seed of dread, deep inside her. She'd heard the songs about Lord Heisenberg, about what he did to the faithless after he hunted them down like animals in the woods. Seven times we join our hands, seven times fall down...seven heads will turn all red when Lord Heisenberg's in town...

Miranda lifted a hand. All sound dropped, all prayer, all music. Even the drumbeats stilled. The fire crackled; the wind rose, then fell, a glimmer of snow in the air around them. Lord Heisenberg flicked ash onto the snow and grinned with all his teeth.

"My children," Mother Miranda began, voice ringing over the crowd. She lifted her other hand, breeze stirring the long, ragged feathers of her sleeves. "My followers. Faithful, devoted, obedient. How long it has been. How many years I've looked out upon your faces, and those of your fathers, and mothers, and grandparents."

A smile curved her lips, visible beneath the golden beak of her mask. "Nearly a century has passed since I brought to you the power of the Black God, nearly a century of protection, of my sacrifice to you granting you safety from the horrors of the most holy wild. The books tell us the wolf-sickness sets us free, and it does, but only to the most faithful. And you must learn faith before you surrender yourself to it."

She gave a little shake of her head.

"This place was nothing before me," she said. "And before you, it was empty and lifeless. I raised you up to give you the lives you lead. And now, now..."

She lowered her arms, and her wings furled, too, rustling and melting into nothingness as they touched her shoulders. Her mass of roots behind her writhed slickly, a constant, entrancing movement.

"Now," Miranda went on, "you give back. Back to me...back to the Black God. And what a small price it is to pay."

"A small price to pay," chanted the crowd; a beat too late, Elena joined in.

"A small return from whence you came," Miranda said. "A gift."

"A small return," the crowd echoed. "A gift." This time, Elena was right on time.

"Stand," Mother Miranda commanded. "And bring me your gifts."

Elena scrambled to her feet, the crowd already narrowing, pushing forward. First the farmers, as was usual, bringing their goats, their swine, their cages of chickens and geese and pretty, cooing doves with red ribbons round their necks; the cheese, the honey, the bread and meat and vegetables were next, then the fabric, the embroidery, the weaving and metalwork, the medicines and chemicals and strange bottles of spirit.

"What do you suppose she does with those?" Andrei said, his eyes still saucers.

"I don't know. Her rituals. Divining the Black God's ways, I expect." Elena's hands were slick, disgusting. She searched for a handkerchief.

All of these she accepted; all of these were led away by her priests, looked over by the riflemen atop the roofs, guns trained down upon the penitent. All the while, Heisenberg stood at the foot of the dais, hat brim tilted down so all Elena could see of his face was gray scruff and the occasional flare of cigar embers.

He's not going to do anything. No lightning, no thunderous rages, no displays of his terrible, miraculous power, that which was the beating, living heart of the great factory that poured smoke and ash into the sky without ceasing, east of town. With each passing minute, Elena relaxed. He was there for ceremony, she told herself, to honor their Mother and the Black God. A devoted son and lord. Not to quell the crowd, not to hunt anyone down, saints, that would be barbaric!

Elena let her eyes drift shut as the first of the girls stepped forward and into Miranda's gaze, her chin held high, the red ribbons in her hair fluttering.

"Castle Dimitrescu, I think," Miranda said, with a flick of her eyes.

The girl's face colored, and she bowed low, trembling, stammering her thanks. The next joined her, and the next, young women, each no older than eighteen. Not as old as Elena by far.

She won't pick me for that. She'll never pick me for Lady Dimitrescu, I'm not...right.

But her momentary relaxation drained away the closer she got, the more she neared the base of the dais, the reek of cigar smoke burning the back of her throat.

Another, another. A young woman was turned away entirely, not given to service, and her friend, too, the two of them heading with heads bowed to their families on the far side of the square. A young man went to Lord Moreau- "He needs a new...ditch-digger," Miranda said, slowly, thoughtfully- and then there was only one left, an older man Elena recognized as a farmer, and whom she had not seen for several months.

He didn't wear red- just his usual dirty workwear- and when he approached Miranda, he pulled his cap from his head, his eyes shining with tears.

"Mother Miranda," he said. His voice shook. "M...Mother...I beg your forgiveness..."

"You aren't Anna," Miranda said. "Where is your daughter?"

"I...she..." He glanced at the crowd, at the priests, at Lord Heisenberg, who hadn't stopped smoking and had instead kicked back against the Maiden of War's dais with a decidedly irreverent slouch. "She's...at home."

"At home," Miranda echoed, her voice, at once, steel and bitter ice.

Silence. All eyes were on the farmer. He swallowed, then went on, "My wife, she. She's ill. Very ill. She...can't rise from bed, and...the farm, there hasn't been any crop. Anna was meant to make up for it, but...but I need her help, to get the farm running again, to grow crops to bring to you, Mother Miranda, to honor you. Please. I have no tithe now, but I will. I promise you, I will."

"No tithe." Miranda's talons clicked against one another as she tilted her head to the side. "Well, well. This cannot do."

"Give me...a season, three months-"

"Tithing will be over by then. And nothing to show for it but your empty promises." She lowered her head, sorrow in her eyes. Leather creaked as Heisenberg's glove tightened around the grip of his hammer. "You have to pay. The Black God demands it. That is how the village grows. That is how we all thrive."

"Please," the man whispered.

"You have something to give," Miranda said. "You forget. Yourself."

"No. No." He began to back away. "Please, no, my family-"

Glistening black roots burst from the ground at his feet. They wound around him, snaking up his legs, around his waist, around his arms, around his throat; with a yank they wrenched him down, to his knees in the icy slush.

Elena flinched forward, whole body shaking; Andrei had pressed his hands over his eyes. Yelps and prayers filled the air.

"Heisenberg," Miranda said, softly.

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered. "I know the fuckin' drill."

He flicked his cigar into the snow and ground it out with a boot heel, then strode forward. The farmer began to yell, to wail, to beg; someone in the crowd cried out, but the priests had advanced forward, ringing the crowd, pressing them back. Bodies crushed against Elena; she strained to see; she couldn't look away- this wasn't right- but he hadn't paid, had he? Had he?

Her father's face flashed before her. Had he tried to stop them when it was her mother taken, when it was her mother chosen, oh, Black God-

The priests began to chant, slowly at first as Lord Heisenberg advanced on the kneeling, bound, begging man, then faster, higher, harsher, until their songs spiraled around them, mad and frenzied; Heisenberg stopped before the bound man and lifted his hand. Blue light pulsed around his hand, and then- power. A thrumming surge of it that lifted snow from the ground, scattering grit like a storm wind. Elena's ears popped, electricity crackling through her nerves, lightning dancing from barrel to barrel on the riflemen above, sparking blue-white off the tip of the Maiden's sword.

There was a hum, a snap, and he lifted the massive hammer, cataclysmic, into the air, as if it weighed nothing.

"Mother Miranda!" Andrei cried, lifting his hands in prayer.

Elena's pulse hummed. She looked up and saw Miranda staring at the scene, nothing in her eyes, nothing but a kind of dead calm. She had seen this before, Elena realized. She had seen this a hundred times. And Elena knew what would happen. An arc. A swing. Bone would split; brain-matter and blood. She saw the rabbit kicking, cooling in the snow. A shot through the eye. Sorry, bunny, sorry, sorry, sorry-

Heisenberg lifted the hammer, preparing for the blow, preparing to crush the man's head into the dirt, and before she could think, before she could do anything but move, Elena stumbled forward with a strangled cry of "-Papa, no-"

She tripped. She fell. A priest made a grab for her but she was past him and sprawling into the snow, inches from Lord Heisenberg. He paused, hammer still raised, staring down at her with a faintly put-off expression, like she was something he'd found rotting in the woods. She thought he was staring at her, anyway; hard to tell, behind the glasses.

Blood sloshed in Elena's ears; she heard nothing as she stared back up at him, as what she'd done settled into her bones, as she realized that this was going to be the last thing she ever saw. Lord Heisenberg, pissed off, and then his hammer, and then nothing.

His lip curled back from his teeth. "Two in a day," he said. The snarl unfurled into a full-fledged grin. "Better than average."

Shadow fell over Elena. The shadow of wings. She flung her face into the snow in a full-body bow. No, this was how she'd die. On her knees, face in the dirt.

"Child."

The voice was soft, cold, sliding into her. Into her.It was inside her, a foreign object in her mind; Elena choked, wanting to shake her head, to tear at her own hair, excise it like a shard of glass. But this was...this was Miranda's voice, this was the buzz at the edge of her consciousness that she'd always felt, the tug that kept her from crossing beyond the warding saint's line.

The shock of it tore her gaze from the ground. She looked up, right into Mother Miranda's golden eyes.

The Black God's emissary stood over her, wings shadowing them both. She seemed to study her from behind the lattice of her bird mask.

"Do you want to die, child?" she said, in her mind, and in her voice, twofold and echoing.

Elena blinked back tears.

"No," she whispered.

Miranda inclined her head. "Good," she said, "Because I have a far better use for you than death."

She nodded at her priests. They hurried forward, one with a bag; a length of chain snaked from the snow as if flung, crackling with blue sparks, lashing around her wrists and ankles; Elena yelped, but it twanged tight, humming against her skin, binding her in place.

It turned out the last damn thing Elena would ever see was Lord Heisenberg leaning back against the Maiden of War, expression now inscrutable, glasses flashing in the flare of a match flame as he lit another cigar, as he took a deep drag, as he exhaled blue into the clear morning sky.

[saintsofwarding]

BURIAL

Chapter 14

On and on.

A fall through darkness.

Elena didn't let go. She wound her fists into Donna's jacket and held on. Glass rained around them, cold against her face, and then nothing at all, both of them drifting in the dark like it was water, like they were sinking, not falling.

Hours, seconds. Elena couldn't tell how long, just that they had at last reached some kind of bottom. Elena's boots sank into water, calf-deep, cold and dark as ink. They settled, together, wound around another, Donna's hand still clenched around the scissors deep in Elena's shoulder.

Each breath hurt, but it was a real hurt, not a spectral one, red and raw, tearing a little. Elena's eyes filled with tears as she curled to her knees, Donna draped over her, her breathing sharp and ragged.

For a moment- silence.

Then, a thin voice-

"Where am I?"

Elena lifted her hand and cleared the veil from Donna's face. She stared into the dark with her single eye. "I don't know. The bottom, maybe."

"Are you real?"

"I hope so."

She buried her face again in the crook of Elena's shoulder. She felt like a drowned thing saved seconds from death, shaking and shuddering and bony and pale. Elena's hand stroked down the channel of her spine, settled against her waist.

She felt her ribs against her palm, expanding and contracting with each breath. Fragile, but they'd served her this far.

"I stabbed you," Donna said.

"Yep. It really hurts."

"Oh-!" She pulled back and with a single sharp jerk, yanked the scissors free. Elena yelped; blood pulsed from the puncture, but it slowed after a moment. It wasn't as bad as she'd thought, just a gash to the top of her deltoid.

She heard fabric tearing and looked round to see Donna pull her veil from her head and tear a strip off the front panel, antique black lace ripping like paper. Deftly as a trained nurse, Donna rolled up Elena's sleeve and bandaged the wound.

"Better?" she asked, tying off the silk.

"Yes...sure."

Donna pressed her fingertips to her lips, then to the silk, over the wound. "There's nowhere else to go," she whispered.

"Out."

"She's out there. I hear her." She slid her fingers into the matted gray-black tangle of her hair. "Waiting for the right moment. Like a blood clot in the brain. "

"Then..." Elena let out her breath. "We'll just have to go back past her. Together."

"...Together?"

"You're stuck with me, Lady Beneviento," Elena told her. She touched Donna's face, brushing her thumb over her eye growth. Its pulse fluttered at her skin, calming as a lullaby. "Whether you like it or not."

Donna gave a weak little laugh. "Good thing I like it."

"Now think. This is the bottom. The end. The deepest dark. Where do we go from here?"

"We don't," Donna said. "It's safe in here. It's good. She won't bother us in here. Nothing will. We're so far down it's like we don't exist at all."

Light speared the dark. Elena looked up. A beam. It made a circle on the darkness, a circle of white light, and in it: shadows. They were gray, indistinct, blurry as a reflection. Elena watched they sharpened, becoming not shadows but two girls, black-haired and pale, as alike as beetle shells. They played in a sunlit birch forest, laughing and dancing hand in hand, braiding flowers into one another's hair. All in silence, save for the faint click-whisper of the film.

Donna watched it with a soft look in her eye. A smile touched her face.

"I loved her, you know," she murmured.

"I know."

"I wanted only to protect her. Like Mother tried to protect us. But I learned my ways from her, and Mother only knew fear. So she taught me that fear in turn. And in the moment, the last moment before I realized she had stopped struggling, you know what it was I felt?"

"What?"

"Perfect love. Pure and innocent. Because I knew I would do anything to protect her. And I had. I took her from Miranda. I took her far away. And she can never be touched now, can she?"

Elena shook her head. Young Donna and Claudia whirled through the sunlight, a day lost forever, a day that was a memory, an echo. Again, and again. Around, and around. It would never change. It would always be perfect.

"She's dead, Donna," Elena told her, gently.

Donna's mouth quivered.

"She's gone," Elena went on. "You're not. Don't die with her." She took her cold hands in her own. Her fingers were rusty with blood, dark crescents trapped under her nails, her palms a mess of scrapes and scabs.

"I can't do it," Donna said. "It's too much. It's too heavy."

"Not between the two of us."

"Us...? No. No...just leave me here, you can't want-"

"Shut up," Elena said. Donna flinched and looked up at her. "You don't tell me that. You don't get to tell me that. Like you don't know me. You think I'm going to abandon you in this hole?"

She gave Donna a little shake. "Can't you see I want it? All of it? All of you? I want to see you in the sunlight. I want to see you dancing, any way you please." She gripped a handful of Donna's sleeve. "Now listen to me. You think I'm going to decide, now, that I don't want anything more than to drag you out with me even if it kills us both?"

Donna blinked. "...No."

"Good. Because I didn't fight my way up here for the fun of it. I came back for you. For you. Understand?"

"I think I'm beginning to."

"We're getting out of this together, you and me," Elena said. "Or not at all."

Donna blinked. She gave a tiny nod.

"You control this. This is your power. Your dream." Elena looked toward the circle of light, the children playing in it. "So change it."

Donna lifted her eye. The light flickered in it. Her lashes fluttered shut, spiky against her cheek. A wind picked up, warm, not cold. It smelled bittersweet. Like flowers.

The circle of light brightened. It eclipsed the memories of Donna and Claudia; they faded into the brightness. It intensified, carving into Elena's vision, so bright she had to look away, so bright it was like looking into the sun.

"She knows," Donna said. "She'll find us. So hurry."

"Come on, then."

They dragged each other to their feet as the sunlight grew. The edge of the circle bit into Elena's palms; it felt like glass. She clambered over, tumbling down the far side, into the light. Donna fell by her side, a flutter of black fabric, then nothing, her vision reduced to a field of pure white.

They landed ankle-deep in snow. Elena's breath shot from her; she stumbled a little. Donna steadied her.

"Where is this, now?" she asked, her voice prim and puzzled.

Elena looked around as the last of the spectral light vanished, the white void smoothing over into snowy sky, frozen ground. Mist lay heavy over the snow, over the ramshackle fences rising around them, painted in peeling red and blue and deep green. The houses rose beyond, shutters creaking in the wind, bone charms jangling as it soughed past them. Past the low-hanging mist, an impression of Castle Dimitrescu loomed, but it was distant, unreal, more like a child's watercolor painting than the real fortress.

All was bitterly cold, but clumps of yellow flowers still grew at the base of fences, at the corners of houses.

"It's..." Elena's mouth was numb. "It's home, it's the village, it's..."

She trailed away. Donna cast her gaze around. "Is this the village? It's been such a long time since I've seen it. It's..."

She paused.

"This is your dream," she told her.

The world shuddered; snow flurried in the aftershock, the wind picking up. On it, echoing from all around, came Angie's laughter and her taunting little song. Fear jolted Elena and she grabbed for Donna's hand.

"We have to get inside," she hissed.

"Elena-"

She jerked Donna forward before she could say more. Through gaps in fences, under trees, around corners; she ducked and weaved through the maze of the abandoned, misty streets. Her heart raced. She knew what she was looking for, at last. Where was it?

Searching your whole life...

She skidded round the next corner.

...never seemed quite right, did it? The way things happened.

It was there, at once. Firelight lay golden on the snow. The windows were illuminated, and past her glimpse of the familiar lace curtains Elena heard the echo of voices, the smell of cooking. Ciorba and sweets, bacon sizzling in the pan, cabbage rolls and spices and baking dough.

Tears filled her eyes. She ran through the gate, pushing herself along on a fence post, up the front path. The door opened at a touch, and she spilled inside, breathing hard, Donna at her shoulder.

"Elena..." Donna whispered.

"We'll be safe in here." Elena stepped over the threshold and into warmth. Firelight, candle-glow, deep shadows. Her home, familiar in a way that it no longer was. This was her memory of the place, a child's recollection, colors too bright, no grime or cobwebs or disrepair. No poverty here, nor grief. Nor loss. The table stretched before her and it was full of people.

Her mother, alive and smiling, crows' feet crinkling at the corners of her kind brown eyes.

Her father, younger and unbent, a red kerchief knotted at his throat.

Andrei, fidgeting in his chair, and Violeta, her long golden hair shining like beaten metal.

Other people, too, strangers she didn't recognize at first. A man and a woman, dark-haired and pale and smiling, dressed in shabby finery. And a little girl, a reflection of Donna, her long plaited hair swinging as she told a story, using her hands to make shadow puppets on the wall.

"We'll be safe in here," Elena whispered, her mouth quivering. Her eyes were warm. Her mother looked up and beamed, lifting her hands.

"Darling," she called. "Elena. There you are. Come in, come in, you must be freezing."

Elena's feet were already moving. Donna's hands clenched down hard on her wrist, tight as a manacle.

"Elena, no," she urged. "This is a trick, it's all a trick."

"What are you talking about? She'll never find us here."

"Who, darling?" her mother said, brows drawn together.

"No one, Mama," Elena whispered.

But Donna yanked at her, so hard she tottered back a step. "This is another trap-"

Elena wrenched her hand from Donna's grip. "Elena!" she cried, but Elena stepped inside, her voice melting away, her terror and her pounding heart and the ache of all her wounds fading as the firelight enfolded her, as she took her place at the foot of the table. It was spread as if for a midsummer feast, an impossible bounty- all the good things she'd smelled, the porcelain glister of egg wash and the deep caramel tone of perfectly-baked bread, stews and bright crisp vegetables and fruits like she'd never before seen, shining like gemstones on intricately-painted china.

Yellow flowers were arranged in vases, and the air glimmered with their pollen. It winked like small stars.

"I'm so glad you could be here," her mother went on.

"She's a good guest," Claudia said, pausing in her shadow play. "Isn't she, Mother?" The dark-haired woman stroked her head, but did not speak.

"The very best," Elena's father said, with a wink. "The best daughter anyone could ask for. Isn't that right, 'Lena?"

"I try, Pa." Elena reached for his hand, but he sat a little too far away, and her fingertips grasped at nothing. She lowered her hand.

White flickered in the corner of her eye. She glanced over. A curious doll sat on the sideboard, long and spindly, dressed in aged white lace.

"Do we have another guest?" she asked.

"Darling, don't you remember?" her mother said. "Your father made you that doll."

"I...no, he didn't. Did he? I don't...you never made me any dolls." "He made so many dolls," her mother went on.

"One for every day of the year," her father said.

"That's too many dolls," Violeta muttered, plucking a sprig of yellow flowers from one of the vases.

Had he made her dolls? Her memories felt like water in her hands. What did it matter, anyway? Elena smiled.

"Elena, please, listen to me."

"Come," her mother urged. "Have something to eat. Rest here a while. Doesn't that sound good?"

"Yes," Elena admitted.

"You can. We don't have to talk...about the past, about anything. You've done so much talking, so much pleading, bargaining, begging. It's good to be silent, to not say anything and simply allow yourself to be loved. And you are, my sweet girl. You're loved, here. Everything precious is here. Everything that was taken from you, that should have always been yours. Doesn't it feel that way? Like your future was stolen from you before it even had a chance to exist?"

Elena inclined her head. "Like a dream," she murmured. "Like it was waiting for me. Beyond the borders...beyond the...the warding-saints..."

"Hush, now. You don't need to worry about running," her mother said. "About what waits for you beyond. Why would you need to run? It's here, it was always here. Deep down. And now you've arrived, and we're all so pleased to have you, so pleased you've joined with us at last. We can catch up in the morning, and for now..."

"Rest," her father said.

"It's safe here," Claudia told her.

"It's good, here," her mother said.

"Nothing to frighten you in the night," her father said. "Nothing waiting in the dark beyond the door. Only what you know. Isn't that right?"

"This is the way it should be," her mother said. Red shining in the darkness. The drip of heavy liquid against stone. She smiled, softly this time, her face a mirror for Elena's in the candlelight. "This is the way it always should have been."

***

"Let her go."

(Let her go? But this is what she wanted!) Angie gave a derisive snicker. (Look how fast she fell for it)

"No. You tricked her. You didn't play fair."

(Nothing's fair, Donna. She's an interloper. A cuckoo. A traitor. She messed it all up and this is really her just desserts, mark my words)

"This...this isn't what I want!"

(I don't care what you want! You stupid, silly little thing, I care about what's best for you! And I know best!)

Donna paced back and forth, back and forth, tension building in her every nerve. The darkness of the well room shivered as if caught in an earthquake

(The well room? Naive Donna, this has been inside your mind all this time, how you cling to the talismans that make you safe and destroy you all at once)

and all the while, Angie perched on the lip of the old stone well, eyes rolling back and forth, following Donna's movements.

(Come back to me, Donna. We can be together again. You and me hiding away. That was good, right? That was the way it oughta be, really. We don't need anyone else. Anything else. That useless old groundskeeper and his nasty little children, poking and prodding like they could be of any help. Simpering Violeta who couldn't handle a couple parasites. And now this one. E-LAAAAAAY-na. A plain brown mouse caught in a trap. Crush its head under your heel before its squeaking gets too shrill)

Another shudder. The stone walls seemed to writhe and squirm around her, the darkness full of eyes and teeth and horrors beyond imagining, all that she feared. Donna clutched at her own arms, her black nails biting deep into the fabric.

(Let me take care of her)

(Feed her to the flowers after)

(All can be like it was before, Donna)

(All can be like it should be)

Donna lifted her head and looked at Angie, right in the eyes. Like looking in a mirror. She lowered her arms.

"All like it should be," she echoed.

She stepped forward.

***

"Do you remember?" Elena asked quietly.

Candlelight, warm hands. Her mother's scent, rosemary and lemon. All good things, none of the shadows.

At the head of the table, her mother blinked. "What, darling?"

"When you left. You said...you told me I would barely have time to miss you." Elena lifted her head. "But I did. Every day you were gone. And every day since your suitcase came back without you. I looked for you everywhere. Not just...not just searching, I mean, I knew you'd died in the castle. In other ways. In the smell of fresh herbs, cut from the window-box, like all of summer contained in the palm of my hand. Another woman's laugh- not quite right, but almost, so close I might pretend it was yours. The sound of footsteps on the front porch. The peace I felt the moment before I fell asleep. Like you'd just finished telling me a story. Like you had just left the room. I thought nothing could touch me there."

A smile touched her lips.

"And in my own face," she murmured. "I watched it change, and I was glad, because as I grew older I looked more and more like you. And in that small way, I could keep you alive."

She met her mother's eyes. The others, her other beloved ghosts, shifted and whispered alongside her.

They were thin, like painted paper.

Like moth wings, trapped in amber.

Like shadows on the wall.

"But you're not," Elena said. "You're not. And you never will be again. I think I never stopped searching for you. Like I could fix the world if only I could make what happened to you right. But it won't, will it? It's not right. You'll stay dead, and gone. It'll all stay empty. Trapped in that circle of light."

"Elena..." her mother murmured.

The smell of rot and damp. The thick, sweetish fug of decaying organic matter. The dring of thick liquid grew louder, and in the corners, where the light didn't touch-

None of this was right.

None of this was as it should be.

"I miss you so much, Mama," Elena said. Her voice trembled, her eyes warm. A tear broke down her cheek. "I don't want to go. I don't want to leave you."

"Then don't, sweet girl." Her voice was soft, a soothing whisper, the way she'd told Elena stories to lull her to sleep. "It's cold outside. Stay with me. Stay with all of us. You said it yourself. It's safe in here."

"I know," Elena said.

Her fist tightened on the arm of her chair.

"But it isn't real," she said.

Her mother's pale gaze hardened. Had her eyes been that color before? They glittered like glass in the candlelight, and when she smiled, something was wrong with her teeth.

"Wrong move, Elena," she said, and Angie began to laugh.

***

(It's too late, anyway, Donna. She's lost. Buried so deep she'll never get out, no matter how much she digs)

"I know you were trying to help me, Angie."

(...What?)

"All these years. You, taking me far away. You, by my side, in my arms. Whispering to me the right thing to do so I stayed safe. I know I made you this way, Angie, and it's not fair of me to turn on you now."

She shook her head, wistful and wan. "How else could you be? This was the way you were supposed to act. You did everything right. But now it has to end."

Angie cocked her head.

(Don't be stupid)

"I'm not," Donna told her. "I know all you did was out of love."

(Don't do this, Donna)

"I have to."

(You're not brave enough-)

"That's not going to work on me anymore. I am more than enough. And I think you realize now what I'm truly capable of."

(Please Donna please, I'm sorry, I'll let her go. Okay? She can live in your house and I won't bother you again. Oh, please, please, please, you can make her doll clothes and give her flowers and anything you want and I'll be quiet, I'll be good, I promise)

"Oh, Angie, my dearest," Donna told her. "You and I both know that's not true."

She stopped before the doll, hesitated, and reached out. She lifted her, then cradled her to her chest, rocking her back and forth, humming to her under her breath, a slow, sweet lullaby. She felt the pulse of the Cadou in Angie's head, the way it harmonized with its elder sibling implanted deep in her chest cavity, its tentacles twining like strangling vines round her ribs.

It had been there so long it was a part of her, nested deep. How cold the scalpel had been, parting muscle and fat, cracking through bone, carving a place for the gift to take root. But now all she felt was warmth, the soft hum of the tandem pulses, the way Angie's comforted her. In all her monstrousness, in all her mutilation, she would never be alone.

(Donna)

"Yes?"

(Do you love me)

"With all that I am."

(Don't go)

A cold hand traced the line of Donna's cheek.

(Don't leave me to the dark)

Donna bent. She pressed a kiss to Angie's porcelain face. "It's all right," she told her. "You're a part of me. You always will be. And I will never, never, never go away."

And she whirled, and opened her arms, and she flung Angie into the depths of the well.

***

"Elena!"

She stood. The shadows around her rose, too, glittering doll eyes trained on her. The view outside the windows was one of blazing golden light. Underfoot, the house began to shake. Her mother stared back at her, Angie's cackle going on and on and on, ringing deep into her skull.

Elena jerked back, but her father reached out, hand snapping over her wrist; his fingers bit down.

"Stay with us," he said.

"Stay," Claudia said.

"Stay," Violeta echoed, tipping her head to the side.

"No- let me go-" She twisted at her father's grip, but he was strong, too strong for her to break free. She reached for her rifle, but it was gone, too; the cutlery on the table melted under her touch. The walls began to melt, too, the world swirling into haze at the edges of her vision. Only her mother's grin was real, slick and red.

"Elena!"

That voice. It was so familiar. Elena remembered in a burst like a kick to the gut. "Donna!" Her voice broke from her, raw and ragged. "Donna, I'm here."

"Hold on-"

And she was there. Her pale hands on Elena's. The house around them broke apart, Elena's ghosts swirling away into nothingness. Her father's grip vanished, and she stumbled against Donna. She was stronger than she looked; she held Elena up, kept her from falling. Angie's laughter became a shrill scream like a buzz-saw; cracks shot through the house, through the table and floor, bright white light streaming through.

"Are you real?" Elena mumbled.

The whisper came against her face, between kisses to her cheek. "Yes."

The dream broke apart. The light seared over them. A swirl of yellow petals, a swooping wrench in the pit of her stomach. She wasn't standing, she was laying down on something hard. A table? Her arms and legs wouldn't move; something restrained her. A vase of yellow flowers was placed by her head, the smell of their bittersweet perfume sticky on the back of her throat. The light stabbing into her eyes- that wasn't dream-light. It was a lamp, hanging over her face. She recognized it in an instant as the lamp in the doll workshop.

It caught a thread of silver light on the edge of a blade.

Elena took it all in. Angie, standing over her. The doll's mouth open in a gleeful, sinister grin. Her arms raised.

The scissors, clenched in her hands.

Elena gasped. Her eyes sprang wide.

The scissors arced down.

The crack was like thunder, like an old land mine had gone off behind Elena's eyes. The side of Angie's head exploded in a spray of porcelain fragments and pinkish, glutinous flesh. It calcified in midair, shards of crystal raining over Elena as she stared, mouth open, unable to move.

Angie screamed. The sound sheared through Elena's skull, on and on- no, that wasn't just Angie, it was the thing in her head, fetal, curled, pulsating, tentacles whipping free to claw and writhe at the air. The scissors spun and clattered to the table as Angie swayed back and forth, tearing at the hole in her cranium with her fingers, like she could put it all back together.

With a sound like crunching glass, the thing in her head turned cloudy, then gray, then to glittering crystal. The scream sharpened- then died. It trailed off in a wheeze, and Angie shuddered, and stilled.

She collapsed. A marionette with strings cut. She fell to the table with a clunk, nothing more than a heap of old lace and lifeless porcelain.

Elena looked back. Donna stood behind her, Elena's rifle aimed at the place where Angie had just been. A wisp of smoke curled from the barrel.

"Oh," Donna said, her voice small.

Elena made herself speak. "Are you sure this is real?" she managed.

Donna blinked, then tossed the rifle aside and rushed to Elena. She scrabbled at the ropes binding Elena to the table, then went for a knife and sawed her loose. She was crying, Elena saw, tears streaming down her face from her single eye, turning her cheek red. "Sorry, sorry," she kept saying. "This dratted old rope, it's so tough- sorry-"

And then she was free, and Elena grabbed for her, and Donna flung her arms around Elena's neck. She was crying, now, in earnest. The both of them were, and Elena began to laugh when she realized yes, this was real, this was happening, and she felt all at once unable to comprehend the moment, the pure, drowning relief of it.

Elena felt something crunch under her hand, and lifted it to find the remnants of the yellow flowers crushed against her palm. She must have knocked over the vase in the struggle.

"Where is she?" Elena asked, brushing the crushed petals from her skin. They left smears of pollen behind. "Angie?"

"Gone."

"Oh, saints- Donna-"

Donna gave her a shaky smile. "It's all right," she said. "I don't need her anymore."

***

They limped up together, arms over one another's shoulders. A four-legged beast, hunched and haggard and bloodied. Donna's beautiful black mourning clothes were all ruined, a couple buttons torn from her jacket, the skirt in tatters. Her veil was gone, hair hanging loose around her sweaty face. Elena couldn't stop looking at her.

"What?" Donna panted, as they collapsed against the side of the elevator, on their way up from the basement.

"Nothing. You're so beautiful, is all."

"Oh." She picked at her skirt, a little smile playing over her face.

"It's true." Elena took a short breath. It hurt. Her vision was ringed with black, creeping in from the edges. "Don't...don't...tell me I'm..."

She crumpled. Donna swooped to catch her up again. "Shh. Just breathe. I'll fix you up. Make you feel all better."

"Just a minute to sit down."

"Yes, that's right. And a cup of tea."

"That'll fix me right up. Do you have any whiskey to put in it?"

Donna stroked her hair back from her sweaty forehead. "I think I can figure something out."

They limped from the elevator, down the corridor, heading toward the main hall. Elena's body was too cold, too heavy. White danced through her lashes as the hallway whirled around her like she was dancing. She tasted blood on the back of her throat. Little wonder, considering all she'd been through in the last few hours. Her fall down the well, her fight with Heisenberg, her flight through the nightmares. What time was it? Near dawn, surely. The long, long night, nearly spun itself out.

Maybe they could watch the sunrise together.

"It'll look..." she started.

"Hmm?"

"...beautiful, coming over the mountains..."

"Hush. Save your strength."

"Donna. I want you to know-"

"I love you, too."

Elena let out a hiss of a laugh. "How did you..."

"I've been inside your head, Elena," Donna told her. Her smile swam in Elena's vision. "I know all your secrets."

She pushed through the door and into the front hall.

It wasn't empty.

Feathers rustled, and spread, unfurling in a glistening, glorious fan of iridescent black. Eight vast wings, the bitter reek of mold, the glow of gilt in the firelight. She had removed her mask, her face beneath pale, beautiful, composed.

Miranda.

Donna jerked to a halt with a sharp gasp. Elena hung from her grip, arm hooked around her neck. She quivered from the exertion of staying conscious, but inside, calm settled down at the pit of her stomach.

"Child," Miranda said. Her eyes settled on Donna. "I've been waiting. And you've been far more interesting than I could have ever anticipated."

"Mother." Donna's voice sounded small, crushed down to a whisper. "I...I did not expect a visit from..."

"Quiet." Her voice rang through the house; it shuddered, like it was frightened, too. Mold glistened in the corners, snaking over the walls. She faced them, fully, those impossible wings radiating from her back. The Black God's prophet, come to do her holy work.

"Leave, Donna," she commanded. "Wait for me elsewhere. Do not wound yourself by watching as I take your servant's life."

Donna lifted her chin. "No."

"Child." Miranda's eyes brightened. "You've defied me enough. Don't you understand? There are no more of your flowers in here. Nothing for you to fight with. And without your dreams, what are you? Not a monster. Not a god. Not one of the Black God's chosen, no longer. Just a frightened child, her time swiftly running out."

"No," Elena said, softly.

Miranda's head whipped toward her. "What?"

Elena could no longer speak. Her strength was gone. All she could do was lift her hand, dripping with dark sap.

And the golden haze of pollen drifting around it, winking like stars in the gloom.

"Poor Miranda," Donna said, sing-song, a ferine grin curving over her face. "Never stood a chance."

The air turned bittersweet: a sudden flare of floral scent, overpowering in these confines. Pressure dropped. It crackled in Elena's ears, aching in her bones. Miranda snapped rigid; her eyes were wide, staring, darting from side to side. She quivered, drawing in her taloned hands. They gripped at her upper arms. Her lips fluttered. A prayer, maybe. Or a plea.

"Deeper," Donna whispered. "Deeper."

"P...please...child..."

"Hush," Donna breathed. "Further down, Mother. Safe down there. Warm down in the dark. Shhh."

The bittersweet smell of flowers strengthened. Prisms refracted in Elena's eyes. She watched as Miranda shrank back, as she curled in on herself, crumpling down to the floor. Her wings curved over her as if they could shield her, but they melted away like ice in the sunlight, becoming a pool of black mold that squirmed and writhed around her.

Fear shone in her eyes. "I...I'm not done...such a long time, such a long way still to go..."

"Shhh," Donna said. She stepped forward to stroke Miranda's hair. It was blonde, Elena saw, under the ornate black and gold veil. Pale blonde, perfectly ordinary. Strange, to find that out, here at the end. "Rest, now. Oh, I see her. Do you see her?"

"...Yes," Miranda said.

"She's with you?"

"Yes." A hint of a smile touched Miranda's face. Her arms moved, as if to cradle an infant to her heart. "My little Eva."

"Good. Now. Sleep. Dream." Donna let out her breath. "Forever."

Miranda slumped from under Donna's hand. The look in her eyes emptied. The pollen swirled in the stillness, the silence, drifting to settle on Elena's skin.

***

"What..." Elena breathed, at last. "What did you do to her?"

"I put her away. Hid her deep," Donna said. She let out a long breath, the look in her eye bright, far away. So far Elena thought she might not come back.

But she did. Her eye focused, and turned to Elena, full of warmth. "I buried her so far down she will never get out. She won't bother us anymore."

"Oh." Elena nodded. "Good."

"Very clever, with the flowers."

"...Donna."

"Yes?"

"I- I think I'm-"

She never finished. Elena's legs gave out. The last thing she saw was Donna reaching for her, Donna's face, her wide eye, her mouth shaping her name.

And darkness fell.