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piracytheorist · 2 months ago

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In Life, And in Death (4/11)

Fandom: Spy x Family Word count: 4.9k for this chapter | 14.9k so far | 32.4k in total Rating: T Warnings: Temporary character death, graphic violence, horror imagery, body horror, mild gore, whump, language Cover art by @buf309

Summary: Anya is kidnapped, and Twilight is thrown into the horrors of a mysterious, deadly village. Forced and then choosing to survive its trials - physical and mental - he’s brought to figure out who he truly is. (A Resident Evil Village fusion)

AO3 Read from the beginning

Chapter 4: Promenons-nous dans les bois

The sun was getting closer to the west, only a few hours of light remaining. A mist was covering the hill he walked over, following the only path on the dirt ground.

It made everything lose its colour, more so than the monotony of the white snow around.

He reached a small clearing with trees, noticing that there were porcelain dolls hanging from the branches.

“Wonderful,” he whispered.

The clearing ended on a small cliff, with a wooden bridge crossing over a river to the other side.

Every instinct of his screamed at him to go back.

He supposed it was duty that made him walk on.

As he crossed the bridge, the metal gate on the other end opened on its own.

And then, the moment his foot stepped on the ground on the other side, a voice was heard.

Singing.

“Beneath their silver shine…”

He froze.

With a small flash of light, a woman was standing at the gate. Long blond hair, her face covered by the mist.

Somehow, he knew she was smiling at him.

“What?” he breathed in shock.

“Come, darling,” she said, turning around. “Come with me.”

Her voice…

Promptly as she appeared, he blinked and she was gone.

The cold in the air seemed to seep into his very bones.

“Mom?” he whispered.

As he took a few tentative steps forward, she appeared again just as quickly, her back at him.

“I didn’t want this life for you, dear,” the voice said. “I wanted you to be happy…”

She disappeared again.

“Mom? Wait!”

He couldn’t run. His legs felt so weak he could barely move them.

She appeared again.

“I would have given everything just to stay with you.”

And gone again.

“What the hell is this?” he gasped, struggling to even walk straight at this point.

Crossing over another small hill, he found himself looking over a small estate, with a graveyard built right in front of it. There was just a single grave in it.

Claudia Beneviento.

She had died twenty years ago, at the age of nine.

A sister of the lady of the house? A daughter?

The grave was decorated with carefully maintained yellow flowers that grew all around it.

It was the only source of colour around, especially with the plain look of the estate on the other side.

There were no monsters around here, and he could only sense silence from inside the house.

There really was no-one around. He let out a shaky breath, looking back at the path he’d come from.

Anya’s mind-reading powers, Dimitrescu drinking blood and standing at three meters tall… was this mold thing giving them such supernatural abilities?

And what was Beneviento’s ability, if so?

If their experiments could reanimate the dead…

He shook his head, facing forward. A hallucination was way more likely.

The main entrance was unlocked. Whoever lived here was probably well equipped enough to not fear intruders.

Was he prepared to be the intruder that got out in the end?

“Hello?” he said. “I don’t want to fight. I just want to get Anya back.”

There was no response. Still, the scales were tipped against him as he was the one trespassing…

It was a simple, spacious estate. It wasn’t as luxurious as the castle, nor as richly decorated and furnished, but it had all the essentials for a comfortable living.

Though, with such surroundings, he was left to wonder what constituted “comfortable” for its owner.

The ground floor had a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen. The upper floor had a bedroom, and another room with a locked door.

It was eerily quiet, but he couldn’t sense anyone’s presence.

Save for ghosts, apparently.

His only option was an elevator that seemed to only go down. As he stepped in and pressed the button, metal bars enclosed him in and he nearly burst them open to flee.

Every single thing was an alarm to him that he should leave. Why was he trudging on?

The basement opened to a small hall, with a study next to it, and down a long corridor with turns that ended on a set of double doors.

Again, every other room was empty, so he found himself walking towards those doors.

Half of him regretted his decision as soon as he opened them.

The room there was pitch dark, except for the light coming in from the corridor.

The only thing visible was a chair. A delicate old doll with thin, movable arms and a white dress was sitting on it, along with another yellow flask.

SUBJECT 007 – TORSO

He shivered.

“Please,” he tried. “I didn’t want any of this. I just want to get her back. No-one has to get hurt.”

There was no response.

He swallowed hard. He would be forced to play their game, after all, wouldn’t he?

He sighed, reaching for the flask.

Immediately, all lights went out.

He tensed, but didn’t turn around quick enough when he heard the doors behind him close.

And then, in the dark, a light, unfamiliar voice was heard, as if it came from a speaker.

“Oh, I’ve been waiting for so long…”

He turned back around, holding his breath.

“I’d make a much better daughter than Anya. I would never lie to you about what I can do! Please, won’t you stay with me? Forever?”

The voice giggled as it disappeared, and the lights went back on.

And he immediately realized he was missing everything on him. His bag, his weapons, everything.

“Wait!” he said, but he was alone in the room.

He finally looked around. It looked like a doctor’s office, with an examining table, a medicine cabinet, a radio, a typewriter…

Only the examining table was covered with a sheet, and a shape with harsh edges seemed to be hidden underneath.

Behind him, on the double doors, there was a lock with a six-digit combination lock. One million possible combinations, or about five minutes of work to break it.

Well, if he was to play their game…

He decided to look around first. A door to the side opened to a small resting area, with a bed and a wardrobe, which was empty. On the wall across was another door, which was locked.

The medicine cabinet only had a few gauze strips and a pair of scissors. He immediately put that in his jacket pocket. It wouldn’t do well as a weapon, but he’d do with what he had.

Then he turned to the examining table, pulled the sheet off, and his throat went dry.

On the table was a model town, or more like, the ruins of it.

The remains of a town decimated by bombs.

He clenched his hands into fists, wanting to rip the sheet apart.

Is this what Beneviento’s power was? To reach into someone’s weak spots?

He threw the sheet away, forcing himself to look at the model town.

It was terrifyingly realistic. There were no bodies visible, but there was blood splattered in various places.

Then, under a building’s rubble, he spotted a familiar shade of blond. He moved the rubble away to reveal a small wooden doll, about five centimeters tall. It was a man with slick blond hair, glasses with rounded rectangular lens, and a familiar dark grey suit.

Robert, the secretary.

Alright. He could see where this was going.

He examined the doll, and although it looked stiff and of one piece, its face could come off. He took it off and behind it, there were the digits 6 and 3 written on the inside of the head.

A bit too on the nose, but he’d play along.

The rubble was sharp, and his fingers actually received a few cuts and got smeared with the fake blood around them, as he searched around. He found a second doll, one with spiky blond hair, a small goatee, round glasses with golden lens, and a golden chain showing under his jacket.

Lawrence, the black market dealer.

As with the other doll, its face came off, revealing two more digits.

05.

The final doll he found was one wearing a military officer’s jacket and hat.

Lionel from the national defense force.

This time, however, the face cracked when he tried to take it off, leaving a piece stuck to the head of the doll, a broken mask covering both digits hidden behind it.

No matter. He had enough to work with to break the lock by now.

Curiosity ate at him, however, and he searched through the rubble more, finding more and more random pieces of broken dolls.

A faceless head with a blonde mohawk, no digits on it.

Another one where only its torso and one arm was left, said arm holding a golf club.

A broken torso and half head wearing a camo jacket over a black shirt.

All of them identities he had assumed over his years.

And now he was smearing blood over them, as the rubble had scraped his fingers a few too many times.

He wiped his fingers clean with gauze from the medicine cabinet before he worked on the lock.

6-3-0-5-1-4, he found out the combination was after a couple of minutes.

It looked eerily like a date. May 14th? What was important about that date?

He put that thought into the back of his mind as he undid the lock and opened the door.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up as the radio abruptly came to life.

He turned to it, his hand instinctively reaching for a gun that wasn’t there anymore. It played static for a few seconds, as if someone was searching for a station, before he could hear a voice humming a song through the white noise.

That lullaby.

From her voice.

The humming faded out, and he listened with a heavy heart as the noise faded out as well.

He looked around the room, and down the corridor. He couldn’t sense anyone’s presence, although he was starting to doubt his own senses by now.

Nothing seemed too different from before as he walked down the hallway, yet the house felt colder now.

It would be getting dark soon. The faster he was out of there and got Anya back together, the better.

His jaw was tight as he arrived at the elevator, only to realize its power was out.

There was a power box right next to it, with a key on its cover. On the same keychain there was another, bigger and older key. He picked it up and checked at the power box, noticing that the main switch was off, but the fuse was missing.

He checked the study in the next room again. The only object worth taking was a flashlight.

Well, he had a key now. And the only door locked so far was in the examining room.

As he turned to the long corridor leading there, he froze at the sight of someone standing there.

The figure was standing far from him, and there wasn’t enough light, so even though he couldn’t see her face he knew it was his mother.

Then, as he blinked, she disappeared again.

He made a quiet growl as he walked on.

No need to tease me with her form from far away. I wouldn’t recognize her face either way.

Would he really not recognize her?

He couldn’t remember her face, true, but if he saw it somehow, even in a wholly different context… would he not recognize it?

Reaching the aforementioned door, his hand raised weakly to unlock it.

It opened with a long, high-pitched creak, and he was greeted with a staircase going down to absolute darkness.

Well, that was what the flashlight was for.

The radio started playing again, and it was all he could do to not gasp as he turned to look at it.

“I’m sorry, dear. I’m so sorry. I wish I could be there for you,” her voice said.

He clenched his jaw, shaking his head.

It was not real. It was not real.

“Stay with me,” the voice was pleading now.

He shook his head again. He turned back and started walking down the stairs. The white noise of the radio faded out again, revealing the sound of water – he supposed – dripping from somewhere.

At the bottom there was an empty, circular room. The plaster on the wall had crumbled in places, leaving the bricks exposed to the mold growing up from the floor.

And yet, the sight of a well of all things was overshadowed by a small object lying on its short stone wall.

A sheep keychain.

His hand shook as he walked to it, the light moving around with it as well.

He picked the keychain up. That was it, 300 dalc worth each, one for her and one for Becky Blackbell.

Right. Anya had just finished doing her homework when their house was invaded. She’d left her schoolbag – which the keychain had been on – next to her as she’d sat down in front of the TV.

So this was it? Their attempt at driving him mad with worry?

He put the keychain in his coat pocket and looked down the well with the flashlight.

He could see the faint form of a big wooden doll’s blond hair coming out of the water, but the water itself was so dark and murky he couldn’t make out anything submerged in it.

There was a ladder going down the well, its bottom steps also submerged in the water.

Grabbing the flashlight so hard he swore he heard a small crack coming from it, he walked around the well and started going down the ladder. He held the flashlight between his teeth when he reached as low as he could without dipping into the water, and he reached and pulled the doll up.

It had the same appearance as the others, but this one was human-sized.

Wide, welcoming eyes, a warm but painfully obvious fake smile, it wore a lab coat over a shirt and a red tie.

Loid Forger.

He grunted through the flashlight and reached for its face, nearly screaming when the doll started moving.

The doll’s arm was raised slowly and stiffly, and he prepared himself to parry an attack, but the doll simply waved in greeting.

Its eyes looked left and right wildly, and then its jaw moved down, as if mimicking a mouth opening.

“The mind can catch a cold, too,” a filtered voice said, and he flinched.

The doll’s jaw-mouth kept moving up and down as the voice, Loid Forger’s voice, continued.

“There are a lot of people who catch colds, but in their minds. I wanted to help people like that.”

Twilight grunted, grabbing the doll’s face again and pulling. He paused when he saw blood start to seep from the crack.

“There are lots of veterans who are still suffering even years after the war ended.”

Blinking rapidly and shaking his head, he decided it was a plain, predictable mind game. The face took a little more effort to come off, and his hands were full of blood by the time it did.

There was a hollow space in the head behind it, and in it was a small electrical system – including a fuse.

“The hardest part is dealing with people's hearts, which we cannot see—”

He took the fuse out, and the electrical system immediately short-circuited. The voice faded off into a low pitch before it cut off, and the doll fell limp as sparks flew from the inside of the head.

He snorted a laugh. They had to do much better than that if they really wanted to scare him off. He dropped the doll back into the murky water and climbed the ladder back up.

Just as he reached the top, a crushing sound was heard from upstairs.

He held the fuse and the flashlight in his left hand, keeping the scissors in his right.

Taking the steps up carefully, his hair stood up when he saw that the lights had gone off in the upper floor.

The only source of light was his flashlight and a red emergency light that wrote “EXIT” over the double doors leading to the hallway.

Something was wheezing down that hallway. He wasn’t sure if it was a living thing.

The radio came to life again.

Within the noise, he could hear his mother’s voice crying.

Why, of all things, was that one of the things he could remember so clearly?

“No, no… Don’t leave… Don’t leave me… ”

His throat went dry as he turned to the hallway. He walked slowly, flashlight raised and scissors at the ready.

Then he turned at the corner.

On the other side of the corridor was the source of the wheezing.

It… he wouldn’t be able to describe it accurately, even if his mind wasn’t messed up by its sight.

It seemed to have the same rotten legs that the creatures at the castle had. Underneath the black dress that fell to its thighs came a tail, whose end was a snake’s head. Its arms were also emaciated and rotting, but the hands looked more like paws. A lion’s paws. Its face was dark grey, and pointy teeth emerged from its mouth. Its eyes were all black, no sign of irises or whites.

And if the white ribbon on the dress collar wasn’t distinguishable enough, its head was covered by messy pink hair. Where the hair ornaments would be there were actual horns now.

And now the creature reached out one arm towards him, as it also took a hobbling step closer.

“Papa…” came a deep, rattling voice from its mouth.

Twilight whimpered, staggering backwards and hitting the wall.

The creature limped closer, wheezing, groaning, calling him papa.

More whimpers left his mouth as he gasped for air.

Another step closer for the creature, and he turned around and ran back to the examining room.

There was no place to hide.

He wasn’t thinking about what that creature could do—his only thought was to get away from it.

He burst open the door to the side room, having half the mind to close it behind him.

There was a bed. Its covering was long enough to reach the floor.

It was his only choice. If the creature found him…

He crawled under it, turning the flashlight off.

He was still gasping as he heard its slow, menacing footsteps.

He pushed his blood-stained hands over his mouth, desperate to hold his breath as the door opened.

He turned his head to the side, seeing only the creature’s feet and the snake head it dragged around at the end of its tail, everything just barely illuminated by the red light in the other room.

Tears were running from his eyes, but frozen in shock as he was, he managed to keep holding his breath.

The creature stalked the room for a minute, still wheezing and calling for “Papa,” but eventually it turned around and walked out.

He stayed there, still as stone, until his lungs burned from lack of oxygen, and he inhaled carefully.

It sounded like the creature was going down the stairs to the basement?

He could still hear faint ‘papa’s as he slid out from under the bed and ran to the hallway. He’d forgotten he had turned the flashlight off until he was met with complete darkness after turning the corner, and he kept running in the dark as he fumbled to turn it on.

“Papa…”

He bit down on his lip, still running. He finally reached the elevator, quickly set the fuse in and turned the switch on, and the elevator made a noise too loud for his liking as it started coming down.

Why was it upstairs in the first place?!

“Papa…”

It was closer now.

He turned around, his breath coming out in broken whimpers. The flashlight shook with his hand as he pointed it at the hallway, and he saw the creature appear in the distance.

The elevator was just reaching the floor.

Come on, come on!

“Papa…”

Shut up, shut up, shut up! Shut up shut up shutupshutupshutup

Halfway through. The creature would reach him in a few seconds.

Ding.

He burst open the metal bars, going inside and closing them just in time the creature tried to push its paws through.

He secured the bars closed, then hit the button going up.

“Papa… papa!”

Breathing hard, he moved to the inner wall of the elevator, unable to shine the light away from the creature as it disappeared on the floor below, still trying to reach for him.

And when it was out of his sight, he dropped his hand and the flashlight with it, closing his eyes and struggling to find his breath.

It was not real. It was not real. Not real, not real, not real.

It was not her…

He opened his eyes as the elevator dinged again, and this time he didn’t care about not breaking the bars as he pushed them open.

As far as he was concerned, this elevator should not be used ever again.

His eyes landed on a mirror on the wall.

His eyes were wet and red, tears having left tracks through the blood stains on the lower half of his face.

He looked at his hands, only then remembering he had the scissors with him.

He sighed wearily and put them back in his pocket.

Was there really no way out than fighting his way through?

He reached the dining area, which was now decorated with an assortment of wooden and porcelain dolls.

At the center of it stood the old white doll that had held the flask. He was surprised he even recognized it. As he took a step towards it, a woman appeared out of thin air behind it.

He gasped, jerking back.

She wore a black dress that covered her from neck to toe, and a black hat with a thick veil over it. The only exposed part of her were her hands, which were crossed in front of her chest.

“Don’t leave,” she said in a breathy voice. “I can’t let you…” She then raised one hand, and the white doll flew from the floor to her.

“Oh, you’re still alive, huh?” said the voice that had taunted him in the dark before, as if it was coming out of a speaker, and with horror he realized it was the doll speaking.

Suddenly, dolls swarmed at his feet, twitching and laughing. Twitching the blades coming out of their hands, feet, and stomachs.

“You better find me quick, before my friends murder you!” the doll-voice said and laughed, as the other dolls flew up and swung at him with their blades.

He fell over on his back, but managed to swat away the dolls, before the white doll flew right at his face. Its eyes were moving wildly, and he spotted a curved crack that ran down its face, which separated it in two parts, one big and bright, one smaller and darker.

The sun and moon crest.

“Tick-tock!” the doll said. “Your life’s on the line.” It hovered away from him and out the door.

“Wait!” he growled at it as he stood up.

“Try and find me,” it said with a laugh. It was too fast, and when he was out into the living room area, he realized it had disappeared, along with the woman who’d held her.

Hide-and-seek, then?

He looked around quickly. There were dolls everywhere, unmoving but their heads twitching to the side at times.

There weren’t many places to hide here, no covered tables or big chairs or cupboards.

Since the doll didn’t have to walk, it held the advantage of not having its steps heard.

Which meant it would put itself as far away from him as possible.

Upstairs.

He ran up and into the only room, and there it was, sitting on the floor innocently as the other dolls in the room twitched and giggled.

He leaned down and grabbed its head, but it moved and bit at his finger. He jerked back as the doll flew at his face, laughing.

“Everything would be better if Anya was never born!” it said.

He tried to push it away, but it kept trying to come for his face.

“Shut up!” he cried, taking out the scissors and burying them in the doll’s head.

The material cracked under the blades and blood spurted out.

Still the doll laughed, pushing him back and flying off.

He still had the scissors in his hand. It was strong enough to push him off but not enough to grab the scissors from his hand?

He didn’t have time for such logistics. He got up, swatting away at a doll that came at him, then slashed the scissors at another.

The doll’s next hiding spot was back in the kitchen area. He bent down and immediately buried the scissors in its head again.

This time the doll screamed, distorted as the sound was, and pushed him back again.

“You do this to Anya too?!” it asked as it flew off once more.

More dolls attacked him, and he slashed and swatted at them, breaking a few of them apart.

As he got up, gasping, he noticed blood stains on the frame of the door leading to the living room. He followed them, and they led to a thick curtain by a window. Pushing it aside, he grabbed the doll again.

“You are never going to get out of here!” it said, pushing against his hand. The force between her and his hand caused the crack in her face to split open, revealing a fleshy, pulsating matter inside its head, with tendrils that it tried to spread toward him.

He stabbed it with the scissors again, right through the crack. The doll let out a yell of pain, but didn’t seem to have enough energy to fight much anymore.

“Stupid idiot!” it said. “What are you doing to my cute friends?!”

He pulled the scissors back, and stabbed again.

The doll screamed, its limbs dropping to the ground, blood splattering everywhere…

Then a flash of light blinded him for a moment.

When he opened his eyes, the doll was lying unharmed, but unmoving, next to the black-clad woman he’d seen before.

Was that Donna Beneviento?

The veil had fallen off her face, revealing a scar across the left half of it. Flesh protruded from the scar like the flesh that had been inside the doll’s head.

However, the woman’s head had been bashed open.

And her blood was on his hands. Just his hands.

He was holding no scissors.

Had he… had he punched her to death?

He stared at her, frozen, until she started crumbling down to dust.

He leaned forward, on the verge of vomiting, and he felt the strap of his bag pull at his shoulder.

He looked at it, completely confounded. He then realized his gun was in its holster, and his shotgun was still over his shoulder.

No scissors. No moving, bleeding doll. His items still on his person.

He shot up to his feet, looking at his faint reflection on the glass of a framed picture.

There were no blood stains on his face, from pushing his hands against his mouth while the monster had stalked him.

There were no cuts on his hands from digging through the destroyed model town.

He patted at his coat pocket. Anya’s sheep keychain wasn’t in there.

Was it all a hallucination, then?

The monster in the basement, too?

He closed his eyes, trying to take a deep breath and failing, only for it to come out shaky.

He couldn’t look away from the blood on his hands. It hadn’t been the first time he’d killed someone with his bare hands, but at least then he’d been fully aware and conscious of what he’d been doing.

The only thing finally catching his attention was a familiar yellow object to the side.

The flask.

It was over, then?

He wiped his hands as much as he could on the carpet next to Beneviento’s remains and stood up, wrapping his hands around the flask.

SUBJECT 007 – TORSO

For a second, time froze, and he was seeing something else.

The living room of the Forgers’ apartment, small arms reaching out from his center of vision.

He could see himself collapsed on the floor.

“Papa!”

And then he blinked, and he was back in the Beneviento estate.

He let out a short, involuntary groan.

“What the hell?” he said, his voice low.

Surprisingly, he didn’t feel physically tired. He felt like he could keep going for hours.

But he was met with a rare mental exhaustion, one that made him yearn for a warm bed to crawl in.

Twilight? Yearning for comfort?

Squinting his eyes closed, he put the flask in his bag and left.

He picked up a bit of snow to clean the blood off his hands with, and a chill ran down his spine when he reached the wooden bridge.

This was where…

It didn’t matter now.

The mist was gone completely now, but the sun was getting closer to the horizon.

He didn’t have a lot of sunlight left, and he had no idea how advanced the lighting technology would be in this village.

He gasped, his hand going for his gun, when he saw the trees from before.

Where there were dolls hanging from them before, now there were human bodies, in various stages of decomposition.

He turned back, looking at the bridge he’d just crossed.

Was everything a hallucination, then? Since the moment he stepped foot on Beneviento’s turf?

He exhaled deeply, shaking his head, and made his way back to the four gates.

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