[story] frozen violet
Mar. 29th, 2009 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ib_archiveauthor: ria (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kessie)
email: riaruby [at] gmail.com
artist: llyse (llyse)
email: xanedrian [at] gmail.com
There was no warning when the bank crumpled under his feet and he plunged into the river.
The water immediately swallowed him up; the bend was deeper than he'd thought. He struggled to keep his mouth closed and remain calm as the current swept him downstream.
His feet dragged against the riverbed as he tried to move towards one of the banks, choking and spluttering as water kept splashing against his face. He threw an arm out, his fingers scrabbling against the dirt before closing around a clump of grass - only for the roots to rip free, flinging him back into the current.
His arms and legs grew heavy.
I'm going to die, Aubrey realised. I'm going to die here, and my body will be swept away far enough that my family will never find me.
When he was swept under again, he stopped fighting.
The next thing Aubrey knew, he was suddenly propelled out of the river, dumped back onto the ground. He lay on his back, staring without really seeing anything for a breathless moment, then began to cough and choke up water.
Struggling to his side, Aubrey froze as his gaze landed on the black hem of a cloak. His eyes slowly travelled upward; his breath caught in his throat as he tried to move back, kicking wildly in an attempt to put as much space between him and the thing standing over him.
Do not move, Death said, and Aubrey found himself suddenly unable to move, staring up at Death and shivering.
"I am not dead," Aubrey finally rasped. "I am not."
No, Death said, almost amused. No, you are not dead yet. It's simply a matter of time.
Aubrey tried to move in a quick burst of speed, but then yelped as a dark wolf sprang from the gloomy overgrowth, snapping at him with its hackles raised. Death gripped his face between pale, icy hands as the wolf growled, the beast glaring at him with bright, blue eyes that no wolf should have. Aubrey yelped as Death's right hand burned against his cheek, trying to struggle free but unable to move.
Aubrey stared into the cowl's shadows where Death's face should have been, trembling and silent.
You are not dead - yet, Death said. But you should have died in the river. You are mine now, and we will meet again.
Death reached up to press Aubrey's eyes closed.
When Aubrey opened them again, he remembered nothing.
The years passed in the curious habit that time has. One moment, the days and months seemed to crawl by; other times, it seemed that Aubrey had only to blink and years had passed. He grew older, married a lady with a sweet smile and a soft face. He had children: a boy determined to be as brave as his father and a little girl who shared his colouring and temperament. She was truly the apple of his eye, following him everywhere and demanding to help him with whatever he was doing at the time.
His wife would often trace a fingertip against the white scar shaped like a crescent against his cheek and ask if he remembered how he had received it.
Aubrey would laugh. "If I cannot remember how I received it," he would tell her, "then it is not important."
His brother, a husband and father himself, lived in the next village over the hills and asked for his help one day. They were hunting down a wolf pack that had recently started to terrorise them, slaughtering their game and livestock, singing their eerie songs late into the night so that no one could sleep safely. "You are the best hunter in our family," his brother said. "We need your help."
There was no question of Aubrey ignoring his brother's plea, so he set off immediately, carefully packing the food and supplies his wife gave him. He went on foot, knowing the quickest path to the village well; to use any other means of transportation would simply be a waste. His wife clung to him, trembling, and he kissed her.
"I will return when the last wolf has been killed," he promised, tracing her smooth cheek. "Wait for me. Protect our children." He pretended not to notice the tears that glittered in her eyes.
The wolves had been particularly vicious in the last few years, as game grew scarce and the winters harsher. There were even tales of wolves who, having cast caution completely to the winds in desperation, had crept into unwary homes late at night and stolen babes from their cradles.
But Aubrey did not believe in whispers. He believed only in the truth of a gleaming blade and a steady arm.
He awoke to see Death standing over him.
Do you wish to live? Death asked.
Part of him did not want to believe that this was really happening, yet his cheeks and lips were cold and the crisp winter air burned down his throat with every breath he took. He blinked, a long, slow action as he struggled to come to his senses. A quick thought fluttered through his mind, but disappeared when he tried to focus on it.
"Doesn't everyone?" Aubrey asked at last, forcing his body into a sitting position as he gazed up at Death.
That is not what I asked you, Death said.
It was a struggle to rip his eyes away from Death to focus on the surrounding countryside, all of it covered in a smooth, heavy blanket of white snow. Everything seemed pale and perfect, frozen and silent. It only made him even more tensely aware of the fact that he was completely and utterly lost.
"Do you wish me to say yes?" Aubrey asked after a moment.
It is irrelevant to me, Death replied, and it was precisely the answer that he had expected. Of course Death did not care whether he lived or died at that moment. Even if he survived - which looked increasingly unlikely as time went on and he remained alone in this desolate place - he would meet Death again at some point. Death always caught up with everyone in the end. He almost wanted to ask Death if it was desired of him to die, but he knew the answer would be the same: It is irrelevant to me.
Death, Aubrey realised, was somewhat boring.
He finally answered, when he knew he was simply dragging out time that had already stopped for him: "I don't know." It was as honest as he was ever going to be.
He looked at Death, a tall, dark, hooded figure amid a white, lifeless land. It was all rather stereotypical, really, and not as panicked or frightening as he had expected dying to be. Then, before he could react in any way, Death reached out to press icy palms against his cheeks.
The touch made him scream, a pitched, shrill sound that abruptly died in his throat. Aubrey was left staring up at Death, sheer terror making his throat close and his heart hammer frantically in his chest, as Death slowly traced the curved scar on his cheek. He suspected that if Death were any other sort of person, he would have been laughing, or at least smiling, by now.
Thankfully, Death said, face hidden in the shadows of the hood, it was never your choice to begin with.
Aubrey blinked.
For a moment he could not move, simply lying on his back and gazing up at the pale sky overhead with its washed-out sun. He raised a hand to shield his eyes, and his breath clouded against his dark glove.
His tent was gone. In fact, he realised as he rose looked around, many of his other provisions were also gone.
A soft growl from behind made his breath catch in his throat. Seconds trickled by. He slowly forced himself to turn and meet the eyes of a wolf lurking at the edge of his camp.
His eyes watered as he struggled not to blink, but that discomfort was nothing compared to the realisation that the wolf held his last food packet in its jaws.
Aubrey knew then that his dream of Death was going to come true. If the wolf did not kill him, he was still going to die in this frozen wilderness when the water could no longer sustain him.
The wolf met his eyes one last time while Aubrey desperately thought, Do not run, do not run. Then the wolf bolted, the food packet still clenched tightly in its jaws.
What little remained of Aubrey's self-preservation tendencies finally caught up with him. He lurched to his feet, stumbling and staggering through the densely packed snow as he ran after the fleeing wolf.
He gave chase, able to see little of the beast but the tip of its tail as it zigzagged through the wide, white plains, and several times he felt his heart in his throat whenever he thought he'd lost it. The trees and the few, large rocks visible above the snow failed as landmarks, blurring around him as he ran. He fell more than once when he misjudged the deepness of the snow and what appeared to be solid ground but wasn't.
The wolf suddenly veered right at the base of a hill. Aubrey, thrown off by the abrupt action, could not follow suit. He crashed through a line of thick, fir trees and fell face first into the snow.
He groaned as the cold seeped through his clothes to his skin, sinking into his bones. He finally raised his head and spat out a mouthful of melted ice, shaking snow out of his eyes and sputtering.
His gaze fell on the one spot of colour in the sea of white and he froze. He reached out towards the single red rose, the only thing growing in the snow, his hand trembling as he brushed the soft petals.
The sound of footsteps made him look beyond the rose. Delicate boots stopped before him, peeking out from the folds of an ink-dark, silk dress framed by a heavier black cloak. He looked up further to find a young woman gazing down at him, his own surprise mirrored in her large blue eyes.
Aubrey blinked. Her eyes widened as her cheeks flushed, and he couldn't help himself: his gaze was drawn to her lips, full and as bright as the rose between them.
"Oh," she breathed, before she leaned down and offered him a slim gloved hand. Her eyes lingered on his cheek for a moment, and he knew she had seen the scar. She said nothing else, merely waiting patiently.
Aubrey took her hand and she pulled him up with surprising ease for her slight frame. He topped her only by a few inches standing. A hesitant smile curved her lips as she looked up at him.
"You are a stranger to these parts," she said.
"Yes." He returned her smile. "My name is Aubrey."
She linked her arm through his and started to walk towards the house, as large as a manor, which stood at the top of the large garden. "I am Violetta," she told him, and she said her name like a caress, a promise that he had been waiting for his entire life.
It took him only a handful of days to realise that Violetta, for all her apparent wealth and beauty, was a strange individual. She was kind and gentle one moment, then so fragile the next that he wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her close to protect her from anything and everything.
Yet there was a dreadful aloofness to her, well-suited to one who managed to survive in such a lonely and unforgiving land. Her expression could close and harden within a moment; he could still sense a faint wickedness underneath her icy countenance, one that coaxed and purred to him to simply succumb and cast aside all of his inhibitions and concerns.
Aubrey found her utterly irresistible.
The first time that he broached the topic of his leaving, she immediately refused. When he, baffled, attempted to ask why, she pointed out that the snow was still too heavy and deep to permit safe travel. She would give him the needed aid for travel as soon as the weather improved, she assured him. He reluctantly agreed, having to admit that she spoke sense.
More than once, a thought suddenly bloomed in his mind, a whisper that he had somewhere else to be, a task that he needed to complete, but every time he tried to follow the thought to completion, it eluded his grasp. Finally, he simply decided that if it were important enough then it would come to him.
Aubrey did not question the fact that Violetta was genuinely curious about him; she liked to sit for hours, content simply to watch him reading a book or befriending the wolf-like dogs that acted as her guardians. Whenever he looked up and met her eyes, he was unable to look away, drowning in their depths. He would eventually gasp and blink, looking at the nearest clock to find that hours had passed without his knowing.
Violetta was beautiful, and he found himself falling helplessly in love with her for no reason at all. It was impossible to think clearly, his fears sliding away like rivulets of rain down glass whenever he tried to reason away this obsessive attraction with logic and repeated arguments.
He suspected she could recognise the expression on his face that revealed he was thinking too hard; whenever these worries would encroach upon his mind, she'd suddenly appear before him, kneeling and gripping his hands in hers. She would look at him with her clear, star-bright eyes and smile, and he would be lost.
She was from an old family, he came to understand, noble and respected, with all the duties and responsibilities of nobility thrust upon her narrow, elegant shoulders. Her servants worked in silence with their eyes to the ground. Once, falling victim to his curiosity, Aubrey had asked her why they never said a word.
She had been gazing out of the window at the eternally frozen land surrounding her home when he spoke, and he had watched her shoulders stiffen. Instantly known he had spoken out of turn. She finally turned, part of her cold, majestic face revealed to him, her eyes suddenly as lifeless and as hard as ice.
"I do not like servants who appreciate idle chatter," Violetta said, harsh lines twisting her beauty. Aubrey had never been able to explain the utter terror that caused his stomach to churn at her words.
He had never asked her such a question again.
He found it more and more difficult to remember his life prior to stumbling across her and her home, faces, places and memories disappearing in the mists of the ice, her laugh and her smile. If he'd had a family, a wife, children, before this, he no longer remembered them. If he'd had obligations before now, they no longer mattered.
It was during a perfectly ordinary scene at midday: him standing by a window and watching Violetta wander around her snow-choked gardens. For the first time since he had arrived, he heard the first sound apart from Violetta's voice and his own.
At first, Aubrey thought he imagined the singing and the high, childlike voice stumbling over the notes. When he began to recognise the words, however, his eyes widened as his mouth fell partly open. He whirled around, his heart thumping in his throat and sweat beading upon his temples and upper lip, and found a young girl watching him from the opposite end of the hall.
"I want to kill you" the child sang, her voice shrill and pure, a wide smile upon her lips, "when you least expect it."
Aubrey choked, recoiling from her as she came closer. He could feel his heart hammering in his throat.
She was dressed in what eerily reminded Aubrey of children's fashions from an earlier period, her chestnut hair gleaming in tight ringlets. In her arms, she clutched a battered, world-weary teddy bear.
"I want to kill you," the girl repeated as she walked towards him, her bear still held possessively in her arms, "when you least expect it." Her voice trailed away, the notes lingering and then dying upon the air, as she stopped in front of him. She gazed up at him, her dark eyes solemn and grave, before she giggled. "Silly mister," she chided him softly, the childish lilt of her voice enhancing her smile, "are you really so gullible? I am but a child!"
Her words were a curious mix of youth and age, and she was unable to hide the expression in her eyes that belied her apparent years.
Aubrey did not know what to say or do, and he feared holding her ancient gaze for too long. Lowering his eyes towards the floor, he asked, "What is your name?"
"Does it ever matter?" she asked, taking another step forward. He blanched, his face whitening as he stepped back. He was suddenly aware, with a terrible swooping sensation in his stomach, that they were completely alone.
Her eyes glittered as she peered up at him. Even her teddy bear seemed to hold a wolfish grin as she asked him, "Do you fear Death, sir or mister? Do you fear the unknown, the unexplainable?"
"What?" Aubrey whispered, and then violently jumped as Violetta's voice rang out.
"Her name is Isabelle," Violetta said, her boots tapping against the floor as she walked towards them. Aubrey stepped backwards until she was a warm presence right behind him. Violetta's eyes narrowed as she regarded Isabelle with a faint sneer curling her mouth. "And she is wandering through a part of the house that she knows is forbidden to her." Isabelle glared, open hostility spreading across her round, pale face.
Aubrey glanced at Violetta, his breath catching at the expression on her face. "Violetta," he began, but she shook her head and he immediately fell silent.
"Leave," she ordered, and Isabelle sniffed, her own eyes narrowing. She did not move, and Violetta finally swooped past her, her dark skirts swishing around her. Looking at Isabelle for a moment longer, Aubrey slowly followed Violetta, keeping his back rigidly straight and feeling eyes burning into the space between his shoulder blades.
"Alice wandered into Wonderland, once upon a time," Isabelle said when Aubrey had reached the doorway of an adjoining room. He ground to a halt. "But it all went terribly wrong."
Aubrey blinked and found Violetta standing before him, her arms crossed and her eyes blazing with fury. Despite the stiff set of her shoulders, he found himself asking, "How did it all go wrong for Alice?"
"The queen got her in the end. There was no escape." Isabelle laughed, a trilling sound that made Aubrey shudder. "She wanders still, in a Wonderland hell of her own making."
A flicker of disgust crossed Violetta's face, and she jerked her hand through the air, silently ordering Aubrey to follow her. They walked in silence for several minutes before Aubrey finally plucked up the courage to ask her who Isabelle was.
Violetta snorted. "A ghost," she said, "nothing more."
Aubrey knew better than to question her.
The nightmares began shortly afterwards.
It wasn't that they were frightening things, for nothing particularly terrible or horrifying happened in them. He called them nightmares because of how he he woke from them: shivering, clammy, and close to tears. He clutched the blankets to his chest, cold sweat sticking to his skin, as he tried helplessly to purge the images that lingered in the back of his mind, quiet and persistent.
In the nightmares, he opened his eyes and a woman stood before him, holding the hands of a little boy and girl on either side of her, her face streaked with tears. The boy's expression was somber, almost accusing, while the little girl, smiling and laughing, tried to run towards him.
She never reached him, the lady lunging for her with a sharp cry. The girl shrieked, first in surprise, then in growing anger, struggling against the arms wrapped securely around her. "Papa!" she screamed, beginning to cry. "Papa!"
Just as the sense of horror began to crash over him, the realisation that he was supposed to know these people - know them well - and didn't, Aubrey jerked awake, his heart thumping hard enough that his chest ached, loud enough that his head swam. He pressed his hands against his flushed cheeks, trying to calm himself and failing while his breath gasped harshly in the silence.
Violetta stirred beside him, her eyes flickering open and a frown pulling the corners of her mouth down as she touched his arm, silently appealing to him for answers. He hadn't told her what had awoken him every night for some time, unable to explain why, precisely, he would keep this from her. A horrible sense of shame permeated through the nightmares each time, shame which clung to him when he woke. He wasn't sure, though, if it was due to having kept a secret from Violetta, something practically unthinkable, or from the fact that he had apparently done something ghastly to the people in his nightmares.
He supposed they were real - it would be incredible, indeed, if his mind was under enough strain to invent people he had supposedly wronged - and still he returned to what the little girl had screamed at him: "Papa!" If he had a daughter, a wife, a son... how was it that he had no memory of them, that he recognised nothing from their faces? How was he to mourn people he couldn't remember ever having in his life?
"Who are they?" Aubrey demanded, running his hands through his hair and scowling. "Why do I keep dreaming of them?"
Violetta's fingers tightened on his arm. Her lips were pressed together, her eyes pinched and gleaming with worry when he glanced at her. She took a deep breath, then asked, "You have no memories of them at all?"
He shook his head. "No, nothing." He racked his fingers through his hair again. "But I feel like I should." He paused, and then added, "The little girl... she called me Papa. She looked too like me for it to be coincidence."
Violetta's back stiffened, her nails digging into his skin, but her voice was calm when she spoke again. "You should rest," she said, carefully attempting to smoothen the marks her nails had made. "This is not the right time to worry about such things; wait until morning." She smiled, kissed him lightly on the lips, and curled against his side once more.
Aubrey was sure that he eventually fell asleep after. He dreamed of Violetta whispering, a warm, soft presence beside him, "Promise that you will stay with me forever. Promise me. I cannot think of you not by my side."
He laughed in his dream, kissing her cheeks, her eyes, her lips, her throat, murmuring, "Why do you act like there is a choice involved? There is no choice. I cannot think of being anywhere but at your side."
He didn't have another nightmare that night.
Violetta was already awake when he rose from the bed, smiling broadly at him as he wrapped his arms around her. She kissed him generously and neatly avoided his questions about the nightmares when he mentioned them. Aubrey frowned but shrugged, deciding that she most likely had far more important things to worry about other than his strange dreams.
He never had another nightmare after that, and soon the memories of them faded until he forgot that he'd had any at all.
She offered her body to him on a night with no moon and no stars, a night when the darkness overtook everything and he could see nothing but her. Her dress fell to the ground, and nothing else mattered to him, for nothing compared to her.
She offered herself, and he accepted, falling upon her like a starving man deprived for years. She was warmer than anything else in this frozen land, and he claimed her pale skin, the curve of her breasts, and her lips.
He took and took and took, and still his thirst did not slacken.
He opened his eyes, and Death was waiting for him.
"No," Aubrey said, closing his eyes, but when he opened them again, the cloaked figure was still there, patiently waiting for him to come to his senses - as endlessly patient as a person like Death could be. Death, Aubrey knew, had all the time in the world.
You made your choice, Death said, and Aubrey looked at Death, wishing for once that he could see the person - male, female or thing - underneath the dark hood.
"Yes," Aubrey said, more because he was expected to agree with Death's words than from any belief in his actions. He couldn't remember making any choice.
Death looked at him and finally said, You have made no choice. For the first time, Aubrey heard an actual emotion in Death's voice: contempt.
"Are you implying that I'm a fool?" he demanded, though he felt the words that tried to free themselves from his throat: I'm in love! But then, his mother (his mother?) had always said that those in love were fools. She had never loved his father. He tried to focus on her face, her voice, and the lily of the valley perfume that had always lingered around her, but, try as he might, the memory remained stubbornly blank. For the first time in a very long time, fear trickled down Aubrey's spine like a sliver of melting ice. He shivered before he could help himself.
Now you begin to see the truth, Death said. Follow me. He did not extend a hand, nor offer Aubrey any sympathy, but Aubrey was, for once, intensely grateful; he had never wanted to become indebted to Death for any reason, least of all due to his own foolishness.
They walked through the halls towards a part of the house Aubrey had never been in before. The only sound was Aubrey's own footsteps ringing against the walls. Not that such silence was very unusual - the house often seemed like a graveyard, so quiet was it. Death was silent and did not look back to see if Aubrey followed. Aubrey kept having to pause and glance over his shoulder; more than once he was positive that shadows writhed and trailed slowly after him. There was the scent of old death in the air, a musky, peculiar scent that often permeated the walls for no reason at all and took days to fade.
One moment they stood before a set of faded gilded double doors; the next, the doors suddenly opened to reveal an old-fashioned ballroom. There were faded designs, withered flowers and mirrors along the walls that stretched from floor to ceiling. It was empty, save for one.
Aubrey's heart jolted in his chest, a sort of harsh, yet not-painful reaction that affected him whenever he was around Violetta, though it had been happening so frequently that he almost didn't notice it anymore. A long, slow breath curled from his throat, almost a sigh, and he had to dig his nails into his palms to resist his first impulse to rush over to her, even simply to trail his fingertips over her smooth skin, or have her bright gaze linger upon him.
Obsession, that cruel, nasty voice hissed at the back of his mind, the same voice which tried to recover the memories of his old life, or tried to reason why he had fallen for Violetta so quickly or why he couldn't bring himself to leave. But Aubrey had always been adept at self-denial, so he did not spare a thought for the protests of his inner voice.
Death, whom Aubrey had truly forgotten was beside him, let out a sharp, terrible laugh, a wretched burst of sound which left Aubrey trembling and sweating.
Fool, Death said, fool, fool, fool.
"What?" Aubrey demanded, unsure whether to feel indignant, furious, or appalled, either at himself or at Death - in truth, it did not seem to matter.
The scent of old death began to fill the air, making Aubrey gag, choke and splutter.
Watch her dance, Death said. See the truth from which you have blinded yourself.
Aubrey stared at Death, trying to keep his breathing level, though his hands curled and uncurled at his sides.
This is the only time that I will aid you, Death snapped, voice steeped in a cold anger that made Aubrey shudder. Try and pretend to be grateful at the very least.
Aubrey struggled not to glare and instead looked away, his gaze landing on Violetta.
She wore a black dress, with only the faintest hint of silver embroidery at the hems. She twirled almost silently across the floor in dark slippers, her hair straight and unbound, flowing around her in a smooth arc. It was the plainest that Aubrey had ever seen her dressed, and she almost appeared a different person as a result.
The delight swelling in his chest at the sight of her probably should have frightened him, but it wasn't in him to be afraid. Instead, he simply couldn't take his eyes off her.
See the truth, Death said, and Aubrey looked.
He blinked and there was a subtle difference in her that he wasn't able to immediately recognise. He gazed at her for a long time, watching her twirl with her arms held out wide, frowning and trying to decipher exactly what had changed.
In truth, it took him so long to realise the truth because, initially, he refused to see it.
"No," Aubrey said, shaking his head, as he saw the shadows lingering in her face and the cruel twist to her lips. "No."
She twirled one last time, her hips snapping violently as the line of her body curved and twisted, and her gaze landed upon him for a single moment as she turned. Later, he would wonder if time had truly stalled, or whether this had been a nightmare under Death's control to further unknown intentions, but time seemed to slow and lengthen. Violetta's skirts rose and unfurled like petals of a dark and deadly flower, and her hair caught and held the light like fallen stars. She was magnificent, beautiful and dreadful all at once, and he saw then that she was filled with hatred, bitterness, and little else.
But still he loved her, loved her with everything he had so that when she wasn't around him he felt empty, hollow, and utterly drained.
In that moment, when he met her bright, brilliant eyes and saw them devoid of any and all empathy, he did wonder, for the briefest second, why he couldn't feel it in him to be afraid. In that single instant, he knew he had much to be afraid of.
Aubrey felt coldness upon him, an icy pressure that seeped deep into his bones. He shuddered. He looked up to find that Death had placed a hand upon his shoulder. It looked like a skeleton's hand, in truth, white as snow and long fingers as thin as the bones the skin could hardly conceal. Aubrey looked up at the dark hood and was abruptly relieved that he could not see what the deep shadows hid.
Now you see the truth, Death whispered, voice like the coldest gales of the north, and Aubrey suddenly realised that he hadn't stopped shivering since Death had first touched him. Try to remember it.
Aubrey's eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright in the bed, his chest heaving as he gasped for breath. He glanced down to see sweat glistening upon his skin, his body turned white from the moonlight pooling in through the bare windows, paler than a corpse, or even Death.
"Dearest," a soft voice whispered to his right, "what is it?" and he turned his head to find Violetta peering up at him from her pillow, her face half-cloaked in shadow. But her eyes still glittered as she gazed up at him, a somewhat bemused expression flickering across her face.
He stared at her, trapped by her gaze and unable to look away for several moments, before he finally said, "Nothing. Nothing at all, it was only a dream."
Blinking again, she slowly smiled, the curve of her lips brilliant and luminous, and he could not help it: he smiled back. "Go back to sleep, then," Violetta said, curling against his side, her fingers pressed against his arm and her hair splayed against his chest like spilled ink. "Dawn is still many hours away."
Her hair smelled of jasmine and rose, the scent lingering delicately on the air and making his eyelids heavy. He leaned down and kissed her cheek, and then her lips, again and again until she arched against him, mewling and plaintive. Her skin was smooth and warm, branding his fingertips until he wanted to hiss and yank his hands away, but the need, the desire to touch her was stronger and utterly overwhelming.
"I love you," he whispered against her lips. "I love you, I love you, I love you." The words felt like fire against his lips, writhing and twisting as they rasped from his mouth onto the air.
She opened her eyes, gleaming and slitted, and she laughed, a dark, smoldering chuckle. Her hands trailed down his cheeks, brushed his lips, and she kissed him, opened her mouth, and he felt ready to drown and drown and drown because it would never be enough.
Once, in a dream he didn't remember when he opened his eyes, Death said:
This is where it now ends.
She told him one morning, when the sun was pale and high in the sky, thin layers of ice frozen on the windows, "I am having a party."
He looked up, blinking, and said, "Tonight?"
"Tonight," she confirmed, sipping from a porcelain teacup with belladonna flowers painted on it. "It is expected of me, to have a gathering at this time every year."
"Ah," Aubrey said, for there was nothing else that he could think of to say. He could feel his pulse thudding under his neck.
They dressed him in clothing he had only seen in history books: shoes with buckles and stacked heels, a pair of finely embroidered breeches and a shirt with lace at the sleeves and secured with a silken cravat. The crux of the outfit was a dress coat the colour of night, which fell to his knees and was delicately threaded in gold and silver. He was washed and dried, his hair now long enough to be pulled back with a dark ribbon.
He looked in the mirror and did not know himself.
When Violetta descended the staircase from their rooms, he could not speak. Her dress was unlike anything she had previously worn, the skirt full and her bodice tight at the waist. Her hair was pulled back and looped into a cascade down her back, and her smile was firm and brilliant. She laughed when she reached him, slipping her mask over her face, and linked her arm through his.
"Let us begin," she murmured, abruptly moving away from him. "Tonight, we are not ourselves." She leaned up to kiss him once, before she placed his mask over his face.
It was the strangest gathering that Aubrey had ever attended. The double doors opened wide and the milling crowd swiftly parted as he and Violetta entered the room. Women in similar dresses to Violetta's, though none as beautiful, and men in breeches and fancy coats stood and watched them walk by, peering through masks that were colourful and either elaborate or grotesque. Skulls gazed back at him, along with the faces of deformed men or animals and strange white faces with vivid eyes and lips. There were many masks that Aubrey simply could not describe. Jewels winked and glimmered in the candlelight, feathers of varying hues pinned back gleaming hair, and ladies whispered to each other between unfurled fans.
Aubrey gripped Violetta's arm hard enough to bruise, yet her smile never once faltered.
Her laughter, loud and sharp, broke the uneasy silence. The guests clapped, welcomed them, and started to talk and mingle once more.
Then the dancing began.
Aubrey had become more adept at dancing the more time he spent around Violetta, since she had taken it almost as a personal affront when she had learned he was unable to dance. Now, it seemed like this was his proving ground, watched by silent critics as he led Violetta to the centre of the floor and bowed to her.
He moved like he had never moved before. It felt more exhilarating than his fastest run, galloping on horseback, or speeding down a hill on a handmade sleigh. They spun around the floor, faster and faster as her skirts and his coat began to intertwine. The black opals at her throat caught the light so strongly they were almost blinding, causing him to wince and clench his hands, yet he couldn't bring himself to stop moving.
She smiled at him like he was the center of her world and kissed him as the music ended. They stopped, the crowd cheering as they broke apart and bowed or curtsied to each other.
He struggled through painful introductions and polite, stilted conversation as best he could, aware that he was being judged as Violetta's suitor, and he couldn't help but feel that he was severely lacking in the eyes of many.
Violetta found him in a corner as he watched the people spin and whirl past him and sipped a strange-looking liquid from a crystal glass. She smiled at him, her eyes shining. She slipped her hands into his. "Thank you," she said.
He raised an eyebrow, laughing. "For what?"
"You will stay with me?" she asked instead, ignoring his question. She gazed up at him, her gaze very hard as her expression turned serious.
Aubrey paused for the briefest moment, frowning as something in his mind twinged, as if trying to remind him of something. Unfamiliar faces flickered in his memory as strange voices whispered in his mind, but they quickly faded. He shook his head, frowning as he found himself staring down at Violetta.
He smiled and drew her hand up towards his mouth, brushing his lips over the back of it. "Of course," he told her. "You are all that is important to me."
A chill blew through the ballroom, the crowd parting to reveal a cloaked figure walking towards them. Time seemed to falter and slow as Aubrey watched the figure approach.
It seemed almost like a scene from a nightmare as the crowd suddenly closed around Death like two waves crashing together, swarming over him. Their hands reached for Death as they cried out, those closest grasping and laughing, their faces shining and adoring.
Whispers rolled and rasped throughout the beautiful room, seeming to all say as one: We adore you we are yours never leave us. Catching the reflection of his pale face in the mirror, Aubrey suddenly remembered where he had seen this room before: it was the exact same ballroom as in the dream where Death had shown him Violetta dancing and spinning.
Just a dream, he had told himself. It had just been a dream.
The figure before him, however, was very real.
He turned to look at Violetta and the words he had been about to say died in his throat before his mind had even formed them. The smile on her face terrified him, for it was unlike any other smile he had seen her give anyone, himself included.
"No," he whispered, but she gently shook her hands from his and glided forward, spreading her arms open in welcome.
Death held her hand like it was something fragile, something delicate, and the sight of that cloaked figure with bony hands standing beside the exquisite sight of Violetta made Aubrey's heart drop and bile rise in his throat.
Linking her arm through Death's in much the same way that she had with Aubrey only a little while earlier, Violetta looked at Aubrey through hooded eyes. "You still do not understand," she said, watching him.
"Understand what?" he demanded, his temper rising. "That you have lied to me from the very beginning?" It had been so long since he'd had any reason to feel anger, to relish his temper, that the rage felt wrong in his head, like a taint that had lurked underneath the surface but emained successfully reined and controlled. Now, he could taste it on his tongue, a heavy, sour taste at once familiar and utterly repulsive.
However, Violetta shook her head, a curious, yet genuinely kind expression blossoming upon her face. "No," she said, "there have been no lies. You simply have refused to see what has been before you all this time. There has been no deception."
At once, Aubrey was reminded of all his dreams with Death and the warnings that had been given to him again and again. A trickle of dread churned in his stomach.
He looked at Death and said, somewhat bleakly, "Death."
This is my domain, Death said. I am all that they know and all that they wish to know.
Violetta smiled at her master. "This is all that matters to us," she said. "This is all that is truth." She turned her gaze on Aubrey and said, "You are a part of this also. You always were, ever since we first met."
It had been bitterly cold the night before he had woken and seen the wolf. The night when he had fallen asleep and dreamed of Death for the first time. His blood turned cold in his veins; but then, he realised, it had been cold for some time. When he had stumbled across the manor house and clapped eyes upon Violetta, he had not done it as a man still alive.
Then another memory suddenly unfurled in his mind, of tumbling into the river and almost drowning. He remembered opening his eyes upon the riverbank, gazing up at Death and the snarling blue-eyed wolf.
Violetta's eyes.
He cried out, but this time there was nowhere for him to flee to. This was no dream for him to wake up from.
Violetta stepped forward, flinging her arms open wide, beautiful and wicked and sad and old all at once. "This is all that we have left," she told him softly. "An old manor house filled with half-finished whispers and old memories belonging to a time long gone. This is all that is still ours." She came close enough to him that he expected to feel the warmth radiating from her, but her hands, when she clasped them in his, were cold.
She whispered to him, "The warmth can return as we please. You are ours, now. You are mine. You promised you would never leave."
A bitter, shrill laugh made him look over to see Isabelle standing at the front of the crowd, her battered teddy bear clasped in her small, thin arms. Her eyes, suddenly old, old, old, watched him with more than a hint of mockery, and he saw the reality of that which she had been trying to tell him.
"We are all in a hell of our own making," Isabella told him in a clear, cold voice without any hint of childishness, "in a Wonderland of our own consequences."
Violetta leaned up to kiss his cheek, her lips an icy brand that made him shiver. "She was a daughter once, before the cold came and she wandered lost, and then there was nothing more for her. You know that well."
Aubrey thought, for the briefest moment, of a little girl with his hair and eyes, who laughed and smiled and held up her arms to be caught by him and swung until she shrieked. Then the image faded, for good this time, he knew, forever.
"There is nothing more left for you," Violetta whispered, soft and coaxing, and he ached for her still, ached for her murmured words, purred whispers, and smooth, soft body. The desire raged through him still, even as what he had once been faded and cracked and rotted, leaving behind what little Death could shape him into. The obsession burned with the warmth that was now always denied to him, and all he could think, somewhat deliriously, was that he wanted to slide between her legs and make her scream and writhe and arch.
She laughed and pulled him down so their lips met, and the fire in her mouth was sudden and intoxicating, and he wanted more, and more and more. "I am yours," she said, and he knew it was true, and it was all he wanted, all he could ever want.
Her tongue slid into his mouth and he yanked her to him, tangled his fingers in her glossy curls, and he drowned and drowned and drowned, and it would truly never be enough.
Outside, distorted through the frozen icy whorls on the windows, the pale winter sun slid slowly beneath the horizon, and twilight began to crawl across the sky.
He opened his eyes and found Death standing over him.
You are mine, now, Death said. You always were.
the end
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llyse)email: xanedrian [at] gmail.com
There was no warning when the bank crumpled under his feet and he plunged into the river.
The water immediately swallowed him up; the bend was deeper than he'd thought. He struggled to keep his mouth closed and remain calm as the current swept him downstream.
His feet dragged against the riverbed as he tried to move towards one of the banks, choking and spluttering as water kept splashing against his face. He threw an arm out, his fingers scrabbling against the dirt before closing around a clump of grass - only for the roots to rip free, flinging him back into the current.
His arms and legs grew heavy.
I'm going to die, Aubrey realised. I'm going to die here, and my body will be swept away far enough that my family will never find me.
When he was swept under again, he stopped fighting.
The next thing Aubrey knew, he was suddenly propelled out of the river, dumped back onto the ground. He lay on his back, staring without really seeing anything for a breathless moment, then began to cough and choke up water.
Struggling to his side, Aubrey froze as his gaze landed on the black hem of a cloak. His eyes slowly travelled upward; his breath caught in his throat as he tried to move back, kicking wildly in an attempt to put as much space between him and the thing standing over him.
Do not move, Death said, and Aubrey found himself suddenly unable to move, staring up at Death and shivering.
"I am not dead," Aubrey finally rasped. "I am not."
No, Death said, almost amused. No, you are not dead yet. It's simply a matter of time.
Aubrey tried to move in a quick burst of speed, but then yelped as a dark wolf sprang from the gloomy overgrowth, snapping at him with its hackles raised. Death gripped his face between pale, icy hands as the wolf growled, the beast glaring at him with bright, blue eyes that no wolf should have. Aubrey yelped as Death's right hand burned against his cheek, trying to struggle free but unable to move.
Aubrey stared into the cowl's shadows where Death's face should have been, trembling and silent.
You are not dead - yet, Death said. But you should have died in the river. You are mine now, and we will meet again.
Death reached up to press Aubrey's eyes closed.
When Aubrey opened them again, he remembered nothing.
The years passed in the curious habit that time has. One moment, the days and months seemed to crawl by; other times, it seemed that Aubrey had only to blink and years had passed. He grew older, married a lady with a sweet smile and a soft face. He had children: a boy determined to be as brave as his father and a little girl who shared his colouring and temperament. She was truly the apple of his eye, following him everywhere and demanding to help him with whatever he was doing at the time.
His wife would often trace a fingertip against the white scar shaped like a crescent against his cheek and ask if he remembered how he had received it.
Aubrey would laugh. "If I cannot remember how I received it," he would tell her, "then it is not important."
His brother, a husband and father himself, lived in the next village over the hills and asked for his help one day. They were hunting down a wolf pack that had recently started to terrorise them, slaughtering their game and livestock, singing their eerie songs late into the night so that no one could sleep safely. "You are the best hunter in our family," his brother said. "We need your help."
There was no question of Aubrey ignoring his brother's plea, so he set off immediately, carefully packing the food and supplies his wife gave him. He went on foot, knowing the quickest path to the village well; to use any other means of transportation would simply be a waste. His wife clung to him, trembling, and he kissed her.
"I will return when the last wolf has been killed," he promised, tracing her smooth cheek. "Wait for me. Protect our children." He pretended not to notice the tears that glittered in her eyes.
The wolves had been particularly vicious in the last few years, as game grew scarce and the winters harsher. There were even tales of wolves who, having cast caution completely to the winds in desperation, had crept into unwary homes late at night and stolen babes from their cradles.
But Aubrey did not believe in whispers. He believed only in the truth of a gleaming blade and a steady arm.
He awoke to see Death standing over him.
Do you wish to live? Death asked.
Part of him did not want to believe that this was really happening, yet his cheeks and lips were cold and the crisp winter air burned down his throat with every breath he took. He blinked, a long, slow action as he struggled to come to his senses. A quick thought fluttered through his mind, but disappeared when he tried to focus on it.
"Doesn't everyone?" Aubrey asked at last, forcing his body into a sitting position as he gazed up at Death.
That is not what I asked you, Death said.
It was a struggle to rip his eyes away from Death to focus on the surrounding countryside, all of it covered in a smooth, heavy blanket of white snow. Everything seemed pale and perfect, frozen and silent. It only made him even more tensely aware of the fact that he was completely and utterly lost.
"Do you wish me to say yes?" Aubrey asked after a moment.
It is irrelevant to me, Death replied, and it was precisely the answer that he had expected. Of course Death did not care whether he lived or died at that moment. Even if he survived - which looked increasingly unlikely as time went on and he remained alone in this desolate place - he would meet Death again at some point. Death always caught up with everyone in the end. He almost wanted to ask Death if it was desired of him to die, but he knew the answer would be the same: It is irrelevant to me.
Death, Aubrey realised, was somewhat boring.
He finally answered, when he knew he was simply dragging out time that had already stopped for him: "I don't know." It was as honest as he was ever going to be.
He looked at Death, a tall, dark, hooded figure amid a white, lifeless land. It was all rather stereotypical, really, and not as panicked or frightening as he had expected dying to be. Then, before he could react in any way, Death reached out to press icy palms against his cheeks.
The touch made him scream, a pitched, shrill sound that abruptly died in his throat. Aubrey was left staring up at Death, sheer terror making his throat close and his heart hammer frantically in his chest, as Death slowly traced the curved scar on his cheek. He suspected that if Death were any other sort of person, he would have been laughing, or at least smiling, by now.
Thankfully, Death said, face hidden in the shadows of the hood, it was never your choice to begin with.
Aubrey blinked.
For a moment he could not move, simply lying on his back and gazing up at the pale sky overhead with its washed-out sun. He raised a hand to shield his eyes, and his breath clouded against his dark glove.
His tent was gone. In fact, he realised as he rose looked around, many of his other provisions were also gone.
A soft growl from behind made his breath catch in his throat. Seconds trickled by. He slowly forced himself to turn and meet the eyes of a wolf lurking at the edge of his camp.
His eyes watered as he struggled not to blink, but that discomfort was nothing compared to the realisation that the wolf held his last food packet in its jaws.
Aubrey knew then that his dream of Death was going to come true. If the wolf did not kill him, he was still going to die in this frozen wilderness when the water could no longer sustain him.
The wolf met his eyes one last time while Aubrey desperately thought, Do not run, do not run. Then the wolf bolted, the food packet still clenched tightly in its jaws.
What little remained of Aubrey's self-preservation tendencies finally caught up with him. He lurched to his feet, stumbling and staggering through the densely packed snow as he ran after the fleeing wolf.
He gave chase, able to see little of the beast but the tip of its tail as it zigzagged through the wide, white plains, and several times he felt his heart in his throat whenever he thought he'd lost it. The trees and the few, large rocks visible above the snow failed as landmarks, blurring around him as he ran. He fell more than once when he misjudged the deepness of the snow and what appeared to be solid ground but wasn't.
The wolf suddenly veered right at the base of a hill. Aubrey, thrown off by the abrupt action, could not follow suit. He crashed through a line of thick, fir trees and fell face first into the snow.
He groaned as the cold seeped through his clothes to his skin, sinking into his bones. He finally raised his head and spat out a mouthful of melted ice, shaking snow out of his eyes and sputtering.
His gaze fell on the one spot of colour in the sea of white and he froze. He reached out towards the single red rose, the only thing growing in the snow, his hand trembling as he brushed the soft petals.
The sound of footsteps made him look beyond the rose. Delicate boots stopped before him, peeking out from the folds of an ink-dark, silk dress framed by a heavier black cloak. He looked up further to find a young woman gazing down at him, his own surprise mirrored in her large blue eyes.
Aubrey blinked. Her eyes widened as her cheeks flushed, and he couldn't help himself: his gaze was drawn to her lips, full and as bright as the rose between them.
"Oh," she breathed, before she leaned down and offered him a slim gloved hand. Her eyes lingered on his cheek for a moment, and he knew she had seen the scar. She said nothing else, merely waiting patiently.
Aubrey took her hand and she pulled him up with surprising ease for her slight frame. He topped her only by a few inches standing. A hesitant smile curved her lips as she looked up at him.
"You are a stranger to these parts," she said.
"Yes." He returned her smile. "My name is Aubrey."
She linked her arm through his and started to walk towards the house, as large as a manor, which stood at the top of the large garden. "I am Violetta," she told him, and she said her name like a caress, a promise that he had been waiting for his entire life.
It took him only a handful of days to realise that Violetta, for all her apparent wealth and beauty, was a strange individual. She was kind and gentle one moment, then so fragile the next that he wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her close to protect her from anything and everything.
Yet there was a dreadful aloofness to her, well-suited to one who managed to survive in such a lonely and unforgiving land. Her expression could close and harden within a moment; he could still sense a faint wickedness underneath her icy countenance, one that coaxed and purred to him to simply succumb and cast aside all of his inhibitions and concerns.
Aubrey found her utterly irresistible.
The first time that he broached the topic of his leaving, she immediately refused. When he, baffled, attempted to ask why, she pointed out that the snow was still too heavy and deep to permit safe travel. She would give him the needed aid for travel as soon as the weather improved, she assured him. He reluctantly agreed, having to admit that she spoke sense.
More than once, a thought suddenly bloomed in his mind, a whisper that he had somewhere else to be, a task that he needed to complete, but every time he tried to follow the thought to completion, it eluded his grasp. Finally, he simply decided that if it were important enough then it would come to him.
Aubrey did not question the fact that Violetta was genuinely curious about him; she liked to sit for hours, content simply to watch him reading a book or befriending the wolf-like dogs that acted as her guardians. Whenever he looked up and met her eyes, he was unable to look away, drowning in their depths. He would eventually gasp and blink, looking at the nearest clock to find that hours had passed without his knowing.
Violetta was beautiful, and he found himself falling helplessly in love with her for no reason at all. It was impossible to think clearly, his fears sliding away like rivulets of rain down glass whenever he tried to reason away this obsessive attraction with logic and repeated arguments.
He suspected she could recognise the expression on his face that revealed he was thinking too hard; whenever these worries would encroach upon his mind, she'd suddenly appear before him, kneeling and gripping his hands in hers. She would look at him with her clear, star-bright eyes and smile, and he would be lost.
She was from an old family, he came to understand, noble and respected, with all the duties and responsibilities of nobility thrust upon her narrow, elegant shoulders. Her servants worked in silence with their eyes to the ground. Once, falling victim to his curiosity, Aubrey had asked her why they never said a word.
She had been gazing out of the window at the eternally frozen land surrounding her home when he spoke, and he had watched her shoulders stiffen. Instantly known he had spoken out of turn. She finally turned, part of her cold, majestic face revealed to him, her eyes suddenly as lifeless and as hard as ice.
"I do not like servants who appreciate idle chatter," Violetta said, harsh lines twisting her beauty. Aubrey had never been able to explain the utter terror that caused his stomach to churn at her words.
He had never asked her such a question again.
He found it more and more difficult to remember his life prior to stumbling across her and her home, faces, places and memories disappearing in the mists of the ice, her laugh and her smile. If he'd had a family, a wife, children, before this, he no longer remembered them. If he'd had obligations before now, they no longer mattered.
It was during a perfectly ordinary scene at midday: him standing by a window and watching Violetta wander around her snow-choked gardens. For the first time since he had arrived, he heard the first sound apart from Violetta's voice and his own.
At first, Aubrey thought he imagined the singing and the high, childlike voice stumbling over the notes. When he began to recognise the words, however, his eyes widened as his mouth fell partly open. He whirled around, his heart thumping in his throat and sweat beading upon his temples and upper lip, and found a young girl watching him from the opposite end of the hall.
"I want to kill you" the child sang, her voice shrill and pure, a wide smile upon her lips, "when you least expect it."
Aubrey choked, recoiling from her as she came closer. He could feel his heart hammering in his throat.
She was dressed in what eerily reminded Aubrey of children's fashions from an earlier period, her chestnut hair gleaming in tight ringlets. In her arms, she clutched a battered, world-weary teddy bear.
"I want to kill you," the girl repeated as she walked towards him, her bear still held possessively in her arms, "when you least expect it." Her voice trailed away, the notes lingering and then dying upon the air, as she stopped in front of him. She gazed up at him, her dark eyes solemn and grave, before she giggled. "Silly mister," she chided him softly, the childish lilt of her voice enhancing her smile, "are you really so gullible? I am but a child!"
Her words were a curious mix of youth and age, and she was unable to hide the expression in her eyes that belied her apparent years.
Aubrey did not know what to say or do, and he feared holding her ancient gaze for too long. Lowering his eyes towards the floor, he asked, "What is your name?"
"Does it ever matter?" she asked, taking another step forward. He blanched, his face whitening as he stepped back. He was suddenly aware, with a terrible swooping sensation in his stomach, that they were completely alone.
Her eyes glittered as she peered up at him. Even her teddy bear seemed to hold a wolfish grin as she asked him, "Do you fear Death, sir or mister? Do you fear the unknown, the unexplainable?"
"What?" Aubrey whispered, and then violently jumped as Violetta's voice rang out.
"Her name is Isabelle," Violetta said, her boots tapping against the floor as she walked towards them. Aubrey stepped backwards until she was a warm presence right behind him. Violetta's eyes narrowed as she regarded Isabelle with a faint sneer curling her mouth. "And she is wandering through a part of the house that she knows is forbidden to her." Isabelle glared, open hostility spreading across her round, pale face.
Aubrey glanced at Violetta, his breath catching at the expression on her face. "Violetta," he began, but she shook her head and he immediately fell silent.
"Leave," she ordered, and Isabelle sniffed, her own eyes narrowing. She did not move, and Violetta finally swooped past her, her dark skirts swishing around her. Looking at Isabelle for a moment longer, Aubrey slowly followed Violetta, keeping his back rigidly straight and feeling eyes burning into the space between his shoulder blades.
"Alice wandered into Wonderland, once upon a time," Isabelle said when Aubrey had reached the doorway of an adjoining room. He ground to a halt. "But it all went terribly wrong."
Aubrey blinked and found Violetta standing before him, her arms crossed and her eyes blazing with fury. Despite the stiff set of her shoulders, he found himself asking, "How did it all go wrong for Alice?"
"The queen got her in the end. There was no escape." Isabelle laughed, a trilling sound that made Aubrey shudder. "She wanders still, in a Wonderland hell of her own making."
A flicker of disgust crossed Violetta's face, and she jerked her hand through the air, silently ordering Aubrey to follow her. They walked in silence for several minutes before Aubrey finally plucked up the courage to ask her who Isabelle was.
Violetta snorted. "A ghost," she said, "nothing more."
Aubrey knew better than to question her.
The nightmares began shortly afterwards.
It wasn't that they were frightening things, for nothing particularly terrible or horrifying happened in them. He called them nightmares because of how he he woke from them: shivering, clammy, and close to tears. He clutched the blankets to his chest, cold sweat sticking to his skin, as he tried helplessly to purge the images that lingered in the back of his mind, quiet and persistent.
In the nightmares, he opened his eyes and a woman stood before him, holding the hands of a little boy and girl on either side of her, her face streaked with tears. The boy's expression was somber, almost accusing, while the little girl, smiling and laughing, tried to run towards him.
She never reached him, the lady lunging for her with a sharp cry. The girl shrieked, first in surprise, then in growing anger, struggling against the arms wrapped securely around her. "Papa!" she screamed, beginning to cry. "Papa!"
Just as the sense of horror began to crash over him, the realisation that he was supposed to know these people - know them well - and didn't, Aubrey jerked awake, his heart thumping hard enough that his chest ached, loud enough that his head swam. He pressed his hands against his flushed cheeks, trying to calm himself and failing while his breath gasped harshly in the silence.
Violetta stirred beside him, her eyes flickering open and a frown pulling the corners of her mouth down as she touched his arm, silently appealing to him for answers. He hadn't told her what had awoken him every night for some time, unable to explain why, precisely, he would keep this from her. A horrible sense of shame permeated through the nightmares each time, shame which clung to him when he woke. He wasn't sure, though, if it was due to having kept a secret from Violetta, something practically unthinkable, or from the fact that he had apparently done something ghastly to the people in his nightmares.
He supposed they were real - it would be incredible, indeed, if his mind was under enough strain to invent people he had supposedly wronged - and still he returned to what the little girl had screamed at him: "Papa!" If he had a daughter, a wife, a son... how was it that he had no memory of them, that he recognised nothing from their faces? How was he to mourn people he couldn't remember ever having in his life?
"Who are they?" Aubrey demanded, running his hands through his hair and scowling. "Why do I keep dreaming of them?"
Violetta's fingers tightened on his arm. Her lips were pressed together, her eyes pinched and gleaming with worry when he glanced at her. She took a deep breath, then asked, "You have no memories of them at all?"
He shook his head. "No, nothing." He racked his fingers through his hair again. "But I feel like I should." He paused, and then added, "The little girl... she called me Papa. She looked too like me for it to be coincidence."
Violetta's back stiffened, her nails digging into his skin, but her voice was calm when she spoke again. "You should rest," she said, carefully attempting to smoothen the marks her nails had made. "This is not the right time to worry about such things; wait until morning." She smiled, kissed him lightly on the lips, and curled against his side once more.
Aubrey was sure that he eventually fell asleep after. He dreamed of Violetta whispering, a warm, soft presence beside him, "Promise that you will stay with me forever. Promise me. I cannot think of you not by my side."
He laughed in his dream, kissing her cheeks, her eyes, her lips, her throat, murmuring, "Why do you act like there is a choice involved? There is no choice. I cannot think of being anywhere but at your side."
He didn't have another nightmare that night.
Violetta was already awake when he rose from the bed, smiling broadly at him as he wrapped his arms around her. She kissed him generously and neatly avoided his questions about the nightmares when he mentioned them. Aubrey frowned but shrugged, deciding that she most likely had far more important things to worry about other than his strange dreams.
He never had another nightmare after that, and soon the memories of them faded until he forgot that he'd had any at all.
She offered her body to him on a night with no moon and no stars, a night when the darkness overtook everything and he could see nothing but her. Her dress fell to the ground, and nothing else mattered to him, for nothing compared to her.
She offered herself, and he accepted, falling upon her like a starving man deprived for years. She was warmer than anything else in this frozen land, and he claimed her pale skin, the curve of her breasts, and her lips.
He took and took and took, and still his thirst did not slacken.
He opened his eyes, and Death was waiting for him.
"No," Aubrey said, closing his eyes, but when he opened them again, the cloaked figure was still there, patiently waiting for him to come to his senses - as endlessly patient as a person like Death could be. Death, Aubrey knew, had all the time in the world.
You made your choice, Death said, and Aubrey looked at Death, wishing for once that he could see the person - male, female or thing - underneath the dark hood.
"Yes," Aubrey said, more because he was expected to agree with Death's words than from any belief in his actions. He couldn't remember making any choice.
Death looked at him and finally said, You have made no choice. For the first time, Aubrey heard an actual emotion in Death's voice: contempt.
"Are you implying that I'm a fool?" he demanded, though he felt the words that tried to free themselves from his throat: I'm in love! But then, his mother (his mother?) had always said that those in love were fools. She had never loved his father. He tried to focus on her face, her voice, and the lily of the valley perfume that had always lingered around her, but, try as he might, the memory remained stubbornly blank. For the first time in a very long time, fear trickled down Aubrey's spine like a sliver of melting ice. He shivered before he could help himself.
Now you begin to see the truth, Death said. Follow me. He did not extend a hand, nor offer Aubrey any sympathy, but Aubrey was, for once, intensely grateful; he had never wanted to become indebted to Death for any reason, least of all due to his own foolishness.
They walked through the halls towards a part of the house Aubrey had never been in before. The only sound was Aubrey's own footsteps ringing against the walls. Not that such silence was very unusual - the house often seemed like a graveyard, so quiet was it. Death was silent and did not look back to see if Aubrey followed. Aubrey kept having to pause and glance over his shoulder; more than once he was positive that shadows writhed and trailed slowly after him. There was the scent of old death in the air, a musky, peculiar scent that often permeated the walls for no reason at all and took days to fade.
One moment they stood before a set of faded gilded double doors; the next, the doors suddenly opened to reveal an old-fashioned ballroom. There were faded designs, withered flowers and mirrors along the walls that stretched from floor to ceiling. It was empty, save for one.
Aubrey's heart jolted in his chest, a sort of harsh, yet not-painful reaction that affected him whenever he was around Violetta, though it had been happening so frequently that he almost didn't notice it anymore. A long, slow breath curled from his throat, almost a sigh, and he had to dig his nails into his palms to resist his first impulse to rush over to her, even simply to trail his fingertips over her smooth skin, or have her bright gaze linger upon him.
Obsession, that cruel, nasty voice hissed at the back of his mind, the same voice which tried to recover the memories of his old life, or tried to reason why he had fallen for Violetta so quickly or why he couldn't bring himself to leave. But Aubrey had always been adept at self-denial, so he did not spare a thought for the protests of his inner voice.
Death, whom Aubrey had truly forgotten was beside him, let out a sharp, terrible laugh, a wretched burst of sound which left Aubrey trembling and sweating.
Fool, Death said, fool, fool, fool.
"What?" Aubrey demanded, unsure whether to feel indignant, furious, or appalled, either at himself or at Death - in truth, it did not seem to matter.
The scent of old death began to fill the air, making Aubrey gag, choke and splutter.
Watch her dance, Death said. See the truth from which you have blinded yourself.
Aubrey stared at Death, trying to keep his breathing level, though his hands curled and uncurled at his sides.
This is the only time that I will aid you, Death snapped, voice steeped in a cold anger that made Aubrey shudder. Try and pretend to be grateful at the very least.
Aubrey struggled not to glare and instead looked away, his gaze landing on Violetta.
She wore a black dress, with only the faintest hint of silver embroidery at the hems. She twirled almost silently across the floor in dark slippers, her hair straight and unbound, flowing around her in a smooth arc. It was the plainest that Aubrey had ever seen her dressed, and she almost appeared a different person as a result.
The delight swelling in his chest at the sight of her probably should have frightened him, but it wasn't in him to be afraid. Instead, he simply couldn't take his eyes off her.
See the truth, Death said, and Aubrey looked.
He blinked and there was a subtle difference in her that he wasn't able to immediately recognise. He gazed at her for a long time, watching her twirl with her arms held out wide, frowning and trying to decipher exactly what had changed.
In truth, it took him so long to realise the truth because, initially, he refused to see it.
"No," Aubrey said, shaking his head, as he saw the shadows lingering in her face and the cruel twist to her lips. "No."
She twirled one last time, her hips snapping violently as the line of her body curved and twisted, and her gaze landed upon him for a single moment as she turned. Later, he would wonder if time had truly stalled, or whether this had been a nightmare under Death's control to further unknown intentions, but time seemed to slow and lengthen. Violetta's skirts rose and unfurled like petals of a dark and deadly flower, and her hair caught and held the light like fallen stars. She was magnificent, beautiful and dreadful all at once, and he saw then that she was filled with hatred, bitterness, and little else.
But still he loved her, loved her with everything he had so that when she wasn't around him he felt empty, hollow, and utterly drained.
In that moment, when he met her bright, brilliant eyes and saw them devoid of any and all empathy, he did wonder, for the briefest second, why he couldn't feel it in him to be afraid. In that single instant, he knew he had much to be afraid of.
Aubrey felt coldness upon him, an icy pressure that seeped deep into his bones. He shuddered. He looked up to find that Death had placed a hand upon his shoulder. It looked like a skeleton's hand, in truth, white as snow and long fingers as thin as the bones the skin could hardly conceal. Aubrey looked up at the dark hood and was abruptly relieved that he could not see what the deep shadows hid.
Now you see the truth, Death whispered, voice like the coldest gales of the north, and Aubrey suddenly realised that he hadn't stopped shivering since Death had first touched him. Try to remember it.
Aubrey's eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright in the bed, his chest heaving as he gasped for breath. He glanced down to see sweat glistening upon his skin, his body turned white from the moonlight pooling in through the bare windows, paler than a corpse, or even Death.
"Dearest," a soft voice whispered to his right, "what is it?" and he turned his head to find Violetta peering up at him from her pillow, her face half-cloaked in shadow. But her eyes still glittered as she gazed up at him, a somewhat bemused expression flickering across her face.
He stared at her, trapped by her gaze and unable to look away for several moments, before he finally said, "Nothing. Nothing at all, it was only a dream."
Blinking again, she slowly smiled, the curve of her lips brilliant and luminous, and he could not help it: he smiled back. "Go back to sleep, then," Violetta said, curling against his side, her fingers pressed against his arm and her hair splayed against his chest like spilled ink. "Dawn is still many hours away."
Her hair smelled of jasmine and rose, the scent lingering delicately on the air and making his eyelids heavy. He leaned down and kissed her cheek, and then her lips, again and again until she arched against him, mewling and plaintive. Her skin was smooth and warm, branding his fingertips until he wanted to hiss and yank his hands away, but the need, the desire to touch her was stronger and utterly overwhelming.
"I love you," he whispered against her lips. "I love you, I love you, I love you." The words felt like fire against his lips, writhing and twisting as they rasped from his mouth onto the air.
She opened her eyes, gleaming and slitted, and she laughed, a dark, smoldering chuckle. Her hands trailed down his cheeks, brushed his lips, and she kissed him, opened her mouth, and he felt ready to drown and drown and drown because it would never be enough.
Once, in a dream he didn't remember when he opened his eyes, Death said:
This is where it now ends.
She told him one morning, when the sun was pale and high in the sky, thin layers of ice frozen on the windows, "I am having a party."
He looked up, blinking, and said, "Tonight?"
"Tonight," she confirmed, sipping from a porcelain teacup with belladonna flowers painted on it. "It is expected of me, to have a gathering at this time every year."
"Ah," Aubrey said, for there was nothing else that he could think of to say. He could feel his pulse thudding under his neck.
They dressed him in clothing he had only seen in history books: shoes with buckles and stacked heels, a pair of finely embroidered breeches and a shirt with lace at the sleeves and secured with a silken cravat. The crux of the outfit was a dress coat the colour of night, which fell to his knees and was delicately threaded in gold and silver. He was washed and dried, his hair now long enough to be pulled back with a dark ribbon.
He looked in the mirror and did not know himself.
When Violetta descended the staircase from their rooms, he could not speak. Her dress was unlike anything she had previously worn, the skirt full and her bodice tight at the waist. Her hair was pulled back and looped into a cascade down her back, and her smile was firm and brilliant. She laughed when she reached him, slipping her mask over her face, and linked her arm through his.
"Let us begin," she murmured, abruptly moving away from him. "Tonight, we are not ourselves." She leaned up to kiss him once, before she placed his mask over his face.
It was the strangest gathering that Aubrey had ever attended. The double doors opened wide and the milling crowd swiftly parted as he and Violetta entered the room. Women in similar dresses to Violetta's, though none as beautiful, and men in breeches and fancy coats stood and watched them walk by, peering through masks that were colourful and either elaborate or grotesque. Skulls gazed back at him, along with the faces of deformed men or animals and strange white faces with vivid eyes and lips. There were many masks that Aubrey simply could not describe. Jewels winked and glimmered in the candlelight, feathers of varying hues pinned back gleaming hair, and ladies whispered to each other between unfurled fans.
Aubrey gripped Violetta's arm hard enough to bruise, yet her smile never once faltered.
Her laughter, loud and sharp, broke the uneasy silence. The guests clapped, welcomed them, and started to talk and mingle once more.
Then the dancing began.
Aubrey had become more adept at dancing the more time he spent around Violetta, since she had taken it almost as a personal affront when she had learned he was unable to dance. Now, it seemed like this was his proving ground, watched by silent critics as he led Violetta to the centre of the floor and bowed to her.
He moved like he had never moved before. It felt more exhilarating than his fastest run, galloping on horseback, or speeding down a hill on a handmade sleigh. They spun around the floor, faster and faster as her skirts and his coat began to intertwine. The black opals at her throat caught the light so strongly they were almost blinding, causing him to wince and clench his hands, yet he couldn't bring himself to stop moving.
She smiled at him like he was the center of her world and kissed him as the music ended. They stopped, the crowd cheering as they broke apart and bowed or curtsied to each other.
He struggled through painful introductions and polite, stilted conversation as best he could, aware that he was being judged as Violetta's suitor, and he couldn't help but feel that he was severely lacking in the eyes of many.
Violetta found him in a corner as he watched the people spin and whirl past him and sipped a strange-looking liquid from a crystal glass. She smiled at him, her eyes shining. She slipped her hands into his. "Thank you," she said.
He raised an eyebrow, laughing. "For what?"
"You will stay with me?" she asked instead, ignoring his question. She gazed up at him, her gaze very hard as her expression turned serious.
Aubrey paused for the briefest moment, frowning as something in his mind twinged, as if trying to remind him of something. Unfamiliar faces flickered in his memory as strange voices whispered in his mind, but they quickly faded. He shook his head, frowning as he found himself staring down at Violetta.
He smiled and drew her hand up towards his mouth, brushing his lips over the back of it. "Of course," he told her. "You are all that is important to me."
A chill blew through the ballroom, the crowd parting to reveal a cloaked figure walking towards them. Time seemed to falter and slow as Aubrey watched the figure approach.
It seemed almost like a scene from a nightmare as the crowd suddenly closed around Death like two waves crashing together, swarming over him. Their hands reached for Death as they cried out, those closest grasping and laughing, their faces shining and adoring.
Whispers rolled and rasped throughout the beautiful room, seeming to all say as one: We adore you we are yours never leave us. Catching the reflection of his pale face in the mirror, Aubrey suddenly remembered where he had seen this room before: it was the exact same ballroom as in the dream where Death had shown him Violetta dancing and spinning.
Just a dream, he had told himself. It had just been a dream.
The figure before him, however, was very real.
He turned to look at Violetta and the words he had been about to say died in his throat before his mind had even formed them. The smile on her face terrified him, for it was unlike any other smile he had seen her give anyone, himself included.
"No," he whispered, but she gently shook her hands from his and glided forward, spreading her arms open in welcome.
Death held her hand like it was something fragile, something delicate, and the sight of that cloaked figure with bony hands standing beside the exquisite sight of Violetta made Aubrey's heart drop and bile rise in his throat.
Linking her arm through Death's in much the same way that she had with Aubrey only a little while earlier, Violetta looked at Aubrey through hooded eyes. "You still do not understand," she said, watching him.
"Understand what?" he demanded, his temper rising. "That you have lied to me from the very beginning?" It had been so long since he'd had any reason to feel anger, to relish his temper, that the rage felt wrong in his head, like a taint that had lurked underneath the surface but emained successfully reined and controlled. Now, he could taste it on his tongue, a heavy, sour taste at once familiar and utterly repulsive.
However, Violetta shook her head, a curious, yet genuinely kind expression blossoming upon her face. "No," she said, "there have been no lies. You simply have refused to see what has been before you all this time. There has been no deception."
At once, Aubrey was reminded of all his dreams with Death and the warnings that had been given to him again and again. A trickle of dread churned in his stomach.
He looked at Death and said, somewhat bleakly, "Death."
This is my domain, Death said. I am all that they know and all that they wish to know.
Violetta smiled at her master. "This is all that matters to us," she said. "This is all that is truth." She turned her gaze on Aubrey and said, "You are a part of this also. You always were, ever since we first met."
It had been bitterly cold the night before he had woken and seen the wolf. The night when he had fallen asleep and dreamed of Death for the first time. His blood turned cold in his veins; but then, he realised, it had been cold for some time. When he had stumbled across the manor house and clapped eyes upon Violetta, he had not done it as a man still alive.
Then another memory suddenly unfurled in his mind, of tumbling into the river and almost drowning. He remembered opening his eyes upon the riverbank, gazing up at Death and the snarling blue-eyed wolf.
Violetta's eyes.
He cried out, but this time there was nowhere for him to flee to. This was no dream for him to wake up from.
Violetta stepped forward, flinging her arms open wide, beautiful and wicked and sad and old all at once. "This is all that we have left," she told him softly. "An old manor house filled with half-finished whispers and old memories belonging to a time long gone. This is all that is still ours." She came close enough to him that he expected to feel the warmth radiating from her, but her hands, when she clasped them in his, were cold.
She whispered to him, "The warmth can return as we please. You are ours, now. You are mine. You promised you would never leave."
A bitter, shrill laugh made him look over to see Isabelle standing at the front of the crowd, her battered teddy bear clasped in her small, thin arms. Her eyes, suddenly old, old, old, watched him with more than a hint of mockery, and he saw the reality of that which she had been trying to tell him.
"We are all in a hell of our own making," Isabella told him in a clear, cold voice without any hint of childishness, "in a Wonderland of our own consequences."
Violetta leaned up to kiss his cheek, her lips an icy brand that made him shiver. "She was a daughter once, before the cold came and she wandered lost, and then there was nothing more for her. You know that well."
Aubrey thought, for the briefest moment, of a little girl with his hair and eyes, who laughed and smiled and held up her arms to be caught by him and swung until she shrieked. Then the image faded, for good this time, he knew, forever.
"There is nothing more left for you," Violetta whispered, soft and coaxing, and he ached for her still, ached for her murmured words, purred whispers, and smooth, soft body. The desire raged through him still, even as what he had once been faded and cracked and rotted, leaving behind what little Death could shape him into. The obsession burned with the warmth that was now always denied to him, and all he could think, somewhat deliriously, was that he wanted to slide between her legs and make her scream and writhe and arch.
She laughed and pulled him down so their lips met, and the fire in her mouth was sudden and intoxicating, and he wanted more, and more and more. "I am yours," she said, and he knew it was true, and it was all he wanted, all he could ever want.
Her tongue slid into his mouth and he yanked her to him, tangled his fingers in her glossy curls, and he drowned and drowned and drowned, and it would truly never be enough.
Outside, distorted through the frozen icy whorls on the windows, the pale winter sun slid slowly beneath the horizon, and twilight began to crawl across the sky.
He opened his eyes and found Death standing over him.
You are mine, now, Death said. You always were.
the end
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-03-30 11:26 pm (UTC)Oh my.
Brillant.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-03 11:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-05 05:41 pm (UTC)Also, the art is so pretty. I adore the feel of it, the darkness of Death standing out from the background.
Excellent job, both!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-12 11:07 am (UTC)