I'll tell you my sins, so you can sharpen your knife~
As the sun set on the French Quarter, the air felt warm and thick enough to cut straight through with a butter knife. The Boy who strolled the empty streets could almost taste the precipitation like pepper jelly on the back of his tongue. The weight of something coming hung heavy in the humid air, pressing the city to its knees in the mud—in ritual, in rapture.
Any day now, the storm would come.
The Boy’s frame sagged with effort, his prosthetic leg dragging against the gritty sidewalk, the sound carving into the brick walls of the buildings he passed with the windows shuttered to arouse the curiosity of but a few watchful shadows. Dead Man Walking, the spirits of darkness seemed to hiss to one another with a possessive sort of hunger, and the Boy could only agree; his days among the living were numbered. The rise of each moon saw him giving more blood, and receiving less food, being allowed less sleep.
The Daughters needed the Boy to be weak, to lack the strength to fight his fate. When the time came, they would have the Boy fall into Death’s embrace like the arms of his mother.
Any day now.
He passed right by the famed cemetery without stopping; a tourist trap, the Boy well knew, where white folks would snap photos next to the garish pale marble crypt proclaiming The Final Resting Place of the Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau.
But the place the Boy sought was at the end of the road, nestled safely in anonymous darkness, past where any tourists dared to venture. The sacred grounds were unmarked and unadvertised. The wrought-iron gate gave a ghoulish moan of greeting as Boy LIII entered.
The graves here were not a spectacle; the mausoleum stones were ancient and plain, weathered with time. This land showed respect to the final rest of the dead.
By thoughtful design, no light permeated the cemetery save for some low-burning thick wax candles and the navy-hued light of the moon, shrouded by clouds as if in mourning. But Lee moved through the winding, unlit path with the surety of someone who knew exactly where they were headed.
He stopped at a massive weeping willow, stripped bare of leaves for the winter, its gnarled branches bending so low that it nearly kissed the hallowed dirt ground beneath Lee’s feet, with offerings made from sticks and twine strung up and dangling, pivoting slowly to and fro. Lee crouched down to run his fingers over the flat stone that marked the grave, tracing over the letters that were carved there; Tyoudie Desrouleaux. He held no love for the woman who’d given him life, who had perished before they’d ever met, and perhaps would not even if the spirits had seen it fit for her to live.
But Lee could honor her, nonetheless. He had hoped being stood before his mother’s grave might give him some peace, to hush the notions that had clawed at Lee for these past nights.
Yet here he was, and he still couldn’t shake the wretched idea from his thoughts.
It’s not that Lee was interested in trying to save his own life. He knew he would die by the will of the Daughters, one way or the other. It’s what he’d been born for, and Lee had long since accepted it.
And it wasn’t even that his mouche a mielle might be the one to do it. Boy LIII had not spoken untrue, when he’d told his Queen months ago that to die by Dona's hand, to worship and serve her eternal on the Spiritual Plane, would be his greatest honor.
No—what had Lee questioning everything was the warning Taitu had spoken to him in spite, that Dona might not survive the Ascension. That if she failed, it would be Lee who’d doomed her.
Already she was a shell of her normal light; ever since her meeting with her loa, she would not so much as meet Lee’s eye. She’d not smiled once since that night. She’d even let Christmas, a day Lee knew Dona cherished in her heart, pass by without a hint of acknowledgment.
In all likelihood, it was already too late to change their bloody, star-writ fate. But Lee had to try.
He pulled a crumpled scrap of paper from deep in his pocket, on which he’d hastily scrawled a number spied in desperation from Dona’s phone. He pulled out his cell, his palms clammy with sweat.
The storm that would herald the Lost Daughter’s Ascension was coming any day now. It was now, or never.
Lee swiped open his phone, the artificial light harsh amidst the shadows of death. Hands shaking, he dialed…
Dona tried very hard to hide the relieved sigh her body naturally exhaled when Aran let up- but ultimately she failed, melting against the back of the chair, her head drooping down until her chin hit leather. She smiled weakly at Lee’s greeting, glad he seemed to have at least physically healed from their ordeal, then reached for her coffee eagerly. She had a sip, then wrinkled up her nose, immediately setting the cup down nearby. Sure, it was sugary, and milky, and warm, but… Merlin, American coffee really was atrocious. Was it a betrayal if all she really wanted was a good cup of tea…?
She watched the Boys reunite with a fond smile, then rested her cheek on the edge of the chair. She smirked, flicking her gaze between Lee and Aran, “I’m starting to think your cousin’s a flirt.”
Aran clapped his hand to his chest, as if she’d wounded him, and Dona rolled her eyes, then rubbed under them, stifling a yawn. “Have you heard from Inez? She hasn’t answered her phone, I haven’t seen her ‘round.”
She missed the silent exchange between the Boys, which ended with Aran going back to his tools, then gently asking her if she was ready. Dona sighed, lolling her head up to look at the roof, then back at Lee. She reached for his hand with her free arm, squeezed it. “Yeah,” Dona braced herself, “I’m ready, yeah.”
—
Dona felt luxurious. Her dress was pure white cotton, with a sweetheart neckline, adorned with heavy golden necklaces. Painstaking hours in a wooden chair had left Dona with long braids that danced down to her fingertips, beads and coins weighing the lengths down. Every inch of her body had been washed, buffed and polished- right down to the soles of her feet, which pressed into the damp, cold ground underneath her. If she dug her toes in, she could hear the squelch of mud. The trees in the cemetery rustled, Dona’s dress waved in the wind. She closed her eyes, and gave a contended sigh. No, she had been wrong. She didn’t feel luxurious. She felt at home.
She’d prepared for the evening with a certain amount of trepidation. Sure, everyone around her assured her that the experience of identifying the loa you would primarily serve was empowering, it felt overwhelming. What if none appeared before her? What if they were wrong? But now, as Mambo spread the blood on her cheeks and forehead, Dona simply smiled, raising her chin to look up at the woman’s certain gaze. She was at home. Nothing could possibly go wrong. Mambo’s thumbs traced a symbol over Dona’s neckline, and when her thumb pressed directly onto her sternum, Dona fell back.
Expecting the wet ground beneath her, Dona braced herself, about to utter a cushioning charm, when she instead heard a splash. Dona blinked, confused. She looked down at herself, finding her dress bone dry despite the crystal-clear, ankle-deep pool she seemed to be sitting in. She swallowed, looking around this unfamiliar place. The water blended into the edges of her vision- she couldn’t place where the sky began and the water ended. Both were the same clear, empty shade.
She squinted- from the depths of the water, a figure emerged. Long and scaly, its head came first, followed by the rest of its body, before the entire snake seemed to glide across the water, slithering towards her. Dona panicked immediately, shuffling back with her hands, before she pushed herself up to her knees and ran in the opposite direction. The water splashed as she ran, but she stayed bone-dry as always.
Dona panted as the snake pursued her, she looked back at it, wide eyed and terrified, and had barely turned her head forward when she ran right into another. Smack! Her cheek met a warm, tall person’s chest, whose arms immediately enveloped her, wrapping around her shoulders. Their chin pressed over Dona’s head, and they shushed her, rocking. “You needn’t run, pitit, we mean no harm.”
She steadied her breathing, then looked up, wide eyed. Ayida was beautiful. More beautiful than the paintings had described her. Her face was round and dark, and as she raised her head to pan across the expanse of space, her expression seemed to… Search for something. Another. Someone was missing.
Still embraced by the Loa, Dona truly didn’t know how she found the strength to speak. “It would be my honour to serve you. Please, tell me what you need, I’ll do it.” Her voice was slow and diction sloppy, still stumbling through the pronunciation of proper Haitian Creole.
Ayida looked down at the girl again, then stepped back, her hands moving to rest on Dona’s shoulders. “My sweet winter’s warmth,” She replied, in accented English, “There are things you must know.” Her hand moved to cradle Dona’s cheek. So transfixed by the woman’s gaze, Dona barely noticed the snake sliding over her toes to curl underneath Ayida’s feet.
Dona reached up to touch over Ayida’s hand, nodding, eager to drink up anything she had to say. “The Boy is known by me and ours. Your meeting him was not fate as you believe, nor was it our instruction. He was taught to ensnare and to lie. While you may hold him in your heart, his own is dictated and prescribed.”
She didn’t understand, couldn’t fully comprehend what she was being told. When that was apparent, Ayida rested her other hand on Dona’s cheek, and she knew. Lee. The Deceiver.
Tears filled Dona’s eyes, but she dared not look away from Ayida. She didn’t want to let go, to lose a second of this precious time with her Loa, even while she saw the edges of space drip, drip away, the tide slowly going out…
Ayida tore her gaze from Dona, looking around the space. She seemed concerned by the tide leaving, searching for what was missing… She looked back at Dona, urgently, “There is more, pitit. You will be given a choice, and you must choose-”
All at once, Dona was lurched out of the space, and she felt the cold ground underneath her, fingers seeping into wet mud. She shivered, her breath immediately visible in the evening’s air. Ayida was gone, and she was back where she’d been earlier, only milliseconds after Mambo had touched her. Her head whipped around, confused.
“Did they have a message for you, ti se? For us?” It was Mags who broke the silence and the sacred ritual circle, stepping forward to offer her hand to help Dona to stand. Following her lead, Claire-Marie also helped Dona up, brushing off her shoulders and back.
She remembered the message, tears filling her eyes again. She swallowed, looking from her Sisters to Mambo. Every inch of her tore apart, her voice cracking when she shared: “Lee’s been lying to us. He doesn’t love me. He’s not loyal to me, or to you, she said… She said his heart was dictated.”
Barely able to hold herself upright for a second longer, Dona burst into tears, sobbing into her Sisters’ arms.
PLEASE DO NOT SAVE OR REPOST THESE GIFS FOR ANY REASON, USE THE REBLOG BUTTON INSTEAD. RP USE IS NOT ALLOWED, ALTHOUGH RP BLOGS WHO FOLLOW MY GIF RULES MAY REBLOG THIS POST FOR VISAGE / AESTHETIC / MUSING PURPOSES.
Lee wiped away the sticky sugar on her fingers, while she unburdened herself of her plan. Joulie bit her lip, frowning a little as she struggled to avert her gaze from Lee’s big brown eyes. Since crying in her family was generally not accepted except for ceremonial purposes, Joulie had always resorted to other ways to share her feelings: Stealing treats and special things from people when she wanted attention, throwing rocks at windows when she was angry, staring into space and dreaming she was somewhere else when she was scared. And now, when Jou was grieving, she turned her freshly clean hands over and gripped Lee’s hands tightly.
Goodbye, Boy LII. See you on the Other Side.
—
Dona’s chin wobbled as she let her head drop, pressing her forehead down on her forearms, which were crossed on the back of the chair. She squeezed the leather seat, and sniffed. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes as the needle poked, and poked, and poked again into her shoulder blade.
She remembered getting her septum piercing, remembered poking at it while they stood out on the balcony during their Christmas celebration. Nate blew smoke at her, asked if it hurt. She’d raised her chin and said “no”.
The door opened, and Dona looked up, hopeful- and there he was. She’d been asking after Lee for days now, he was always resting, recovering after their ordeal. She’d been worried sick, and now; Finally! Dona’s face immediately pulled into an expression of relaxation, and she reached for him with the arm that didn’t need to stay still. “I missed you,” She smiled, and then the needle poked again, and she bit her lip, wincing, “You okay? You all… All better?”
Lee shouldered open the door of the old familiar tattoo parlor, smiling lightly with nostalgia at the wooden clacking of the hanging strands of beads that swished to and fro as Lee moved through them. The man who did all of the ritual tattooing for the Daughters here in Louisiana and the surrounding territories—as well as a handful of other odd jobs, as needed—was born into the service of the Daughters, in a similar manner that Lee had been. In fact, this boy had been born of the same Daughter that had birthed Tyoudie Desrouleaux—the woman who’d died giving birth to Boy LIII—which made him Lee’s uncle, biologically speaking.
But the Daughters didn’t think that way, when it came to boys that were born among them—not even those that were pardoned past birth and called to serve the spirits by living (Lee’s uncle was the forty-ninth, while Lee himself was the fifty-third). And besides, they were close enough in age that Lee had grown up considering him something akin to an older cousin.
While it was standard for men in their position to just be called boy when they were privileged enough to be addressed directly by a Daughter, it was also convenient and fairly common when more than one boy was in service to the Daughters in one area to refer to them according to their “number”; senkantwa in Haitian Creole for Lee, and karannèf for the man that was currently tattooing Dona.
Karannèf—or Aran, as Lee had always called him—grinned at the sight of his kin and said in a deep, rich voice, “Hey-ey, what’s crackin’ cuz?”
Lee pecked a kiss to the side of Dona’s hair and handed her a to-go coffee, fixed the way she liked it. “Can’t complain,” he replied to them both, full of warmth even as he stifled a yawn. Lee had been bloodlet extensively over the past few days, in preparation for a ceremonial communing with the spirits that was due to happen any day now, during which each of the Daughters would make an offering to the various loas and deities they were each uniquely aligned with.
Lee set down his own coffee, and Aran put down the tattooing tools long enough for them to clap their forearms and hands together fraternally. “Is Aran bein’ good to ya, soleil?” Lee said to Dona, and Aran gave a vibrant laugh.
“Coo-yon, cousin, don’t do me like that now! ‘Sides, your girl here don’t need no coddlin’—she’s tough and beautiful, huh?”
Joulie swiped her finger over the whipped cream atop her hot chocolate, then licked it clean, humming. “I never wanna see a Costa again.” She replied in agreement, nodding. She bounced her legs, toes pressed against the polished floor of their private space.
Louisiana was Joulie’s home. The coven had raised her here; One woman held the back of her bike while she learned to pedal through the French Quarter, another dropped coins into her purse to buy herbs from the apothecary, another painted thick mud on her cheeks while she sat on the creaky floor of their shack by the swamp. Jou was excited to be back in her home. But still… She opened her mouth to share something with Lee when a skittish-looking waitress dropped the plate of beignets on their table.
The plate had barely clattered against the table before Jou grabbed one from the top of the pile, practically swallowing it whole. She barely suppressed her groan, licking the powdered sugar off her lips and giving another hum. “I forgot how good these are!” Jou exclaimed, which absolutely wasn’t true.
They gouged themselves on pastries and coffee, and soon Joulie was leaning back in her chair, licking her fingers clean. Jou was just sucking her thumb when she remembered what she’d wanted to tell Lee. Her friend. Sometimes, her only friend…
Joulie let her hand drop, “Um- Mambo asked me to read the stars for, um, for when it should happen?” She squinted, cocking her head across at him, and then leaned forward earnestly, her voice dropping to a whisper, “And I was thinkin’- if I just tell her every night the stars ain’t ready, they’re not right, then it’ll never be the day, and you won’t have to…” Jou trailed off, biting her lip.
As Lee sat there in satisfied silence with Joulie, full to bursting on fried dough and powdered sugar, the pressure that had been straining against the web of mental wards that confined him, that had puppeteered his every waking hour for these past months they’d been abroad—it eased, just a little. He felt content in this quiet, uncalculated moment, its fleeting spontaneity. Lee knew his moments like this one were numbered.
His heart ached at Joujou’s suggestion, and Lee worked to keep it from his face; her days of being carefree and innocent, of being this Joulie that he knew and had grown to care about, were numbered, too. He knew her birthright, he’d been conditioned to respect the Spirits’ spinning wheels of destiny that carried Lee and Jou toward the imminent fork in their path—but it was still hard to look into her dark doll’s eyes and envision the Daughter she was soon to become.
The sugar on her hands had smeared when she’d tried to lick it off, and Lee cracked a warm smile before dipping a clean table napkin into his own undrunk iced water and then holding out his hand, expectantly, til Joulie removed her thumb from her mouth and placed her hand palm-up in his. Gently, he wiped the eggshell-colored residue, the evidence of their morning’s unsanctioned companionship, from each of Jou’s fingers, then did the same on the other hand.
All the while Lee was saying, kindly, “You ain’t gotta fib the stars on my account, Jou—we’re both of us headed exactly where we’re s’posed to go. You got royal blood, the magic of our great ancestors, runnin’ through your veins—mambo wouldn’ta given you such an important job, otherwise. So don’t you go worryin’ over me…besides, we all meet again on the Other Side—you know that, don’tcha?”
Dona rolled on her back, yawning and stretching out in bed. She winced, immediately gasping for air when the unconscious movement ached her healing muscles. That was all it took, barely louder than a sigh-
“Are you in pain?” She seemed to materialise at the end of her bed, her chocolate gaze immediately sweeping over Dona’s form. Fafane wasn’t part of the London coven, but she was known to be one of the best Healers in New Orleans, so Taitu had called in a favour.
Dona shook her head, rubbing her eyes. “I just twisted the wrong way,” She said, and tried to hide her wince as she pushed herself up to sit, “I’d love to help today, though. Mambo said when-”
“When you’re at full strength, ti sè, you’ll need all the energy you have for your ascension,” Fafane offered a kind smile when Dona looked disappointed. The voodoo practitioner walked to the side table and twisted her fingers over the pillar candles. They lit immediately, and the scents of sage and lavender immediately wafted through the air. Dona made to protest, having been through at least a few days of this already, but Fafane simply raised a brow, and Dona quietened. “You have use, little sister, but for now, you need to rest.”
The spell that was laid out on the side table had immediate effect: The second Dona’s head laid on the pillow, she fell back asleep.
—
Joulie was sat cross-legged, her elbows on her knees, chin resting in her fists. She sighed heavily, looking across at Boy LII while he slept. Jou pouted, then leaned over to shove his shoulder, “Lee,” She whispered, then shook him again, a little louder: “Lee! C’mon, I wanna get breakfast. Real breakfast, not baked beans. Come on… Powdered sugar… Syrup… Buttery pastry…”
Jou continued rattling off mouthwatering ingredients until Lee turned around to look at her, and her face split into a grin.
@nola-lee
Lee dreamed he was asleep in the old swamp shack where he used to live, its wooden floors propped up on stilts that plunged beneath the moss-covered waters like a pierced heart, lit sepia by candlelight with cicadas humming lullabies in the tall grass that surrounded them.
He curled in on himself when he was shook, not ready to be roused from sleep to do the dark bidding of the hands that grasped him, that owned him.
“Poko…” he mumbled in a whimper, his body tensing. He was shaken again, and the squeaky springs of the old mattress he was laid on chattered as Lee rolled over, rubbing his eyes and blinking up at Joulie. He held up a finger to his lips, listening intently to the house around them for a moment.
But they were still in that early-morning haze, when the world moved slower than a snail in the mud. Convinced they wouldn’t be reprimanded quite yet, Lee gave the young Daughter a half-smile and said under his breath, “Got that envie, huh Jou?” She smiled wide and nodded, black gaps in her mouth where her baby teeth were missing.
Lee took a moment to pantomime thinking it over, but then his stomach growled mutinously; Joujou covered her mouth with her hands and they both laughed silently, which seemed to settle the question.
They could spare half an hour before either of them were needed, anyway.
New Orleans was like a fiddle tuning its strings as it slowly transitioned from dawn to day, shaking out its cellophane wings of morning dew like a dragonfly, stretching the sleep-coiled muscles that made up its winding streets, lined with shotgun houses and crumbling Victorian manors and storefronts with hanging wooden signs; they seemed to glisten in the prismatic rainbows of light that peeked through the heavy morning clouds like a flicker at the edge of your vision, a shadow jumping out of sight when you turn your eyes toward it.
New Orleans was full to the brim with this prickling sensation, like a spectral static on the back of your neck; that sights unseen were lurking just out of view. Only a fool would rely on his eyes alone to see in the Big Easy; not when the smells and the sounds were dancing around you, caressing you, not when spices and perfumes and brine in the air lit up your comatose tastebuds, when the phantoms that played in the shadows brushed past you, stroking with curiosity the strange, living skin that confined the light within you.
Lee and Joulie were seated at Cafe Du Monde, at a special table in the back that was reserved for anyone in association with the Daughters; they’d been ushered graciously back there without a word, once the shopperson had spotted the tattoo on Lee’s arm, like a brand of ownership. The voodoo queens were like true royalty in this town, such that even those who served them were treated with respect.
They ordered a heaping pile of beignets covered in powdered sugar, and Lee got a cafe au lait, the steam of which he inhaled deeply before taking a gratified sip; deep earthy chicory and decadent cream from the half-and-half coated his tongue and his throat, and Lee all but groaned. He’d missed the tastes of home most of all.
“They sure don’t do it like they do here, over there, do they Jou?” he said to the girl, who was practically vibrating in her seat waiting for their beignets to come out.
Dona couldn’t do anything except cry. She did her best to hold it in, at first, her lower lip wobbling through Lee’s lecture. Honestly, she wasn’t sure of the point of no return, but by the time they eventually arrived at their destination, Dona was staring out the window again, tears trailing down her cheeks.
As the cab pulled up to their destination, an old warehouse by Butler’s Wharf, Inez was there to greet them. She went to the driver’s side first, pulling a wad of cash out to hand him through the window. Dona couldn’t bring herself to get out, though. She felt rooted to her seat, not just buckled in but weighed down. She tilted her head to rest her cheek on her shoulder, staring ahead. She should move. Probably.
It was Inez who opened her door, leaning down to unclick her seatbelt and gently bring it back over Dona’s head. Dona couldn’t ever recall thinking of Inez as someone gentle: She was always so hardened, so sure of herself, the world owed her nothing and so she gave nothing in return. But she was like that, now. “Come on, ti sè, let’s get you home.”
Inez helped Dona out of the car, where she stood uncertainly, leaning her back against it. Inez shut the door right after Dona, barely casting a dismissive sneer at the boy seated after her. And then, in a surprising show of tenderness, she cast an arm around Dona’s shoulders and helped her walk, bringing her into the warehouse. Dona couldn’t feel her feet as she walked. She couldn’t feel her legs, for that matter. Or her stomach. Or her chest. Or her arms. Nor the anger that ripped through her only minutes ago: She felt nothing.
Dona scowled at his complete bullshit response, shaking her head and sitting back in her seat. She folded her arms, petulant, and glared out the window. She was quiet for a moment, watching rain drops gather and eventually slide down the glass. But she couldn’t hold it for long.
“You don’t get to just not tell me things,” Dona said, turning to meet his gaze, “Why did they even raid the shop? There’s a raid, and an Auror dies, and then when they question us, you plead the fifth? Something’s not right. What aren’t you telling me?”
Dona huffed, throwing her hands up, “Is it… I dunno, is someone selling some shady shit out of the shop? I’ve told you about my family shit, you don’t have to be embarrassed. I really don’t care.”
Dona kept on pushing, and Lee leaned back against the headrest and sighed heavily, closing his eyes; he parsed mentally through possible avenues to answer her and was halted at roadblock after roadblock after dead end, until his ears were ringing and his head hurt.
It was sheer exhaustion and frustration at the situation, not at Dona, that caused Lee to snap with more harsh bluntness than he normally would have: “If you really think any a what just happened to us was my fault then it’s time for you to wake up, Dona—ya wanna know why the shop got raided? It’s not ‘cause of anything we did. It’s because they hate us—they’ve hated us since they burned your ancestors in Salem, they hate seein’ people like us have power they can’t take for themselves. They get off on putting people like us in our place beneath their feet. I dunno what kinda bubble you’ve been livin’ in, but where I come from, the cops have done a lot worse to people who look like us for a lot less…”
He winced at the sound of his own voice, while the magic that controlled Lee thrummed in delight. He was obeying his orders at long last, pushing the Lost Daughter toward her destiny, strengthening the rift between them. Lee was too tired to care anymore—after all, who was he? One boy, one insignificant speck in the raging river’s current of history and time, of life and death and blood and eternity, to try to change what was meant to be?
Lee took a minute to brood, staring out the car’s window, before finally he turned back to look at Dona and he did what needed to be done: “…look, soleil—I’m not the one you should be askin’ for answers. If what ya really want is to be one of us, then it’s time to make a choice; go to mambo, and tell her what’s in your heart. Shouldn’t be long now, we’re almost there…”
Dona flexed her fingers, the ghost of what had happened only hours ago making her hands tremble. She pulled on her seatbelt and then took out her wand, subtly setting off a few warding charms to the back seat so they could talk comfortably, taxi driver none the wiser.
She shook her head as the car started moving, staring out the window because she couldn’t, couldn’t look at him. Dona thought she could handle giving him the silent treatment the whole way home, it was her usual routine when she was mad at someone. Ignoring their existence was easier than confronting them. But Dona had never felt anger like this before.
“Where were you?” She eventually said, turning to glare at him. “Someone was dying in your dining room, and you just dawdled on out like you didn’t give a fuck. We could’ve saved her, Lee. I just needed another set of hands. I needed you.”
She went to glare back out the window, but the anger rippled through her again and she turned her full body to face him, “And why didn’t you tell them anything? They would’ve stopped!”
Lee stared out the window, watching the city pass by, barely cognizant of the subtle shell of magic like a snake’s second skin that Dona was constructing around them. It sounded so relieving, to sleepwalk on through to the end of his existence; nothing more to do, or to fight for, or to give—aside from that flicker of life that was left within him, that which had been waiting so patiently and tolerantly and for so long, to light that wick of power for the sentinel of his soul’s eternal service, willingly pledged.
The very sentinel who now sat beside Lee, hating him, resenting him, throwing all of her ire upon him. He looked at Dona, submerged in the vast intensity of her glaring eyes like a drop of rain in a muddy pool. “I…” he started to say, but found he was just as unable as ever to will his mouth to form the words that lied still on Lee’s tongue, immobilized; ‘I wanted to,’ ‘I couldn’t,’ ‘I would have done anything, given up everything, to spare you the cruel and inhuman suffering that has prescribed by life. But I was put on this earth not to shield nor to soothe you; mine is but to provide you with something to stand on when it’s your time to Rise…’
Lee’s breath stuttered off in warning, and he lowered his eyes to the vinyl-upholstered seat between them. Cow, bend, submit before the Lost Daughter—that was all he could do, all he was meant to do. Let go, Boy LII; give in. “…I’m sorry, to have let ya down.”
The aurors had collected her wand when she was arrested, which was a genuine surprise to Dona. She’d been trying to work out how she would get home without it. And even now that it was back in her hand, she wasn’t sure she could apparate. Dona felt drained in every conceivable way.
They’d healed her to the degree that she was now in one piece, sure. Gave her enough potions so that she was standing. But apparition took energy and focus that right now, she simply didn’t have. And while potions and magic could heal her, they did nothing for the pain. The bones that had been broken ached with every movement, her skin felt like it was tearing itself apart over, and over, and over again.
She blankly refused the offers from law enforcement to escort them home- over her fucking dead body, would she let them anywhere near her again.
So Dona was left with only one other option: To walk, painfully slow, through the Ministry of Magic, and out to the Muggle exit.
Lee was trailing behind her, purely because she was informed that as a squib, he wasn’t allowed to walk the halls on his own. She couldn’t very well leave him there, but that didn’t mean she had to talk to him.
The second they got outside, Dona took a gaping breath of fresh air. Well, as fresh as London could permit. She trembled, then looked down at her pockets, feeling around for her phone. She was determined not to cry, not to tear up when she saw the dried blood smeared over the screen. Instead, she locked her jaw, wiping it against her shirt before unlocking it and texting Inez: Where do we go?
A pin-drop was texted back almost immediately, and Dona stepped over to the road to hail a cab. While a black car started changing lanes to head towards them, she turned to Lee, deliberately avoiding his gaze. “You can come, or don’t. I don’t care.”
The car pulled up and Dona slid into the back seat, closing the door behind her.
@nola-lee
Lee ambled after Dona, not bothering to try to keep up with her pace; if she was going to leave him behind, she would have done it by now. Physically, he felt rubbed raw, and fragile in the way that something recently broken may have been shoddily glued back together—in a manner that wasn’t meant to hold.
But mentally, emotionally? Lee was unusually…indifferent. Normally he might have been curious about his surroundings in this foreign place, full of strange bureaucratic magic. He might have been incensed about the maltreatment he’d suffered at the hands of an oppressive people, about the intolerance inherent in this world.
Lee might have been heartbroken, at the rift he could feel between him and his mouche a mielle, as clear as a Blood Moon reflected on black water, hung low enough in the night sky to embrace the horizon. But there was always meant to come a day that the path the Daughters had set Dona on would have her choose her power, her birthright borne of vengeance—over something as fleeting and fickle as love. Lee was always only meant to be a stepping stone into the pool of her potential. Her Ascension was imminent.
Which is perhaps why Lee felt this way, now. He’d rubbed shoulders with Death all too often in the span of his ephemeral life, but never quite like this. His own grave, that sunken pit toward which Boy LII had been wandering since birth, always obscured by the enigmatic shadows of the spirits’ will, was now in plain sight.
His time on this Earth was nearly up. Death was coming, and Death seemed to Lee a better friend to him than any he’d ever known. It seemed a relief that they were to at last be reunited.
They walked outside, and Lee felt different. His mental wards were still intact, of course, but they felt—looser, somehow, less constricting of Lee, like thread thinning at the end of a long spool that was readying to be frayed, to snap. The November air was crisp with bite, so unlike the sweltering Louisiana climate that was so heavy and humid it would pull you under ’til you drowned. Lee breathed in the London air as if breathing for the first time.
He raised his brows at Dona’s words; callous and dismissive, sounding much like Inez or Claire-Marie already. The Lady B had never once spoken to Boy LII, but Lee could see a flash of her contempt for him in the way Dona looked at him down the bridge of her glasses-less nose.
None of it phased Lee, who climbed into the car’s other side and shut the door. Belatedly, once the car had started moving, he replied, “Dunno where else ya think I would go…”
(WARNING: The following content contains explicit descriptions of violence, torture, and death. Please read with caution!)
[oh mother, tell your children not to do what I have done;
spend your lives in sin & misery in the house of the rising sun]
@outterridge @aurormax @katiethxrne
Under any other circumstances wherein Dona’s safety was in question, Lee would have stuck by her side like spice on rice. But as it was, mambo had him by the throat against a wall in her quarters.
“You will stick to your instructions this time, Boy…” Taitu commanded in harsh Haitian Creole. She squeezed Lee’s neck, her sharp nails leaving marks on his dark skin. He could hear commotion coming from outside Taitu’s closed door. “…do not let your foolish need to protect the Lost Daughter interfere with our carefully wrought plans again. You have your orders. You will not stray. Everything that is happening is part of a higher directive that is under my control. Disappoint me again, and it will cost you. And know that I will be watching.”
And just when Lee thought he was on the verge of passing out, the Queen disappeared amidst a black cloud of smoke. Lee slumped a half-foot down the wall, rasping for breath. He could hear Dona calling for him, and her voice is the only thing that gave him strength to push himself up and into the chaos of the raid.
Issac was readying her office, an attempt to give their lackey some level of competence in the more delicate aspects of being in I&S. Thus Athena Howell was behind the vanguard that made yet another push into the darker dealings of the wizarding underworld. There were signals the bulk of the fight was completed from her aurors, all hard faced men and women who tucked their chins at the snap of her cape. It was dramatic, but a necessary show of flamboyance; Reese respected her occasional bout of showmanship in the field if only to remind everyone that real power laid in crossing your t’s and dotting your i’s.
The fight was still raging, the world tilting on its axis while glares of spells shot past her ear and whizzed into the idle protection barrier Athena had conjured the moment a toe went across the threshold. Her soldiers were holding their own, and then some, smashing through the Daughters’ little hidey-hole, making a game from how they chased them through the halls. Sending them scurrying like so many rats that oft sniveled in corners before snakes and hawks, Athena snapped her wand out into her palm, sending an electrical current through one, vomit covering the tips of her shoes and she took the time to smear it on the downed person’s cheek before moving onward.
There were screams, yes of course there were screams; Athena had learned to parse through each kind—rage, horror, agony, defeat, and best of all pain. She knew the screams of pain, had made a game of learning what sorts of whimpers and cries could exit a person’s mouth, just how much they could take.
The one that cracked through the house was one of panic, of agony, of someone who’d made a kill for the first time and was watching the lifeforce slip away, completely unprepared for how it could split someone’s soul into so many pieces Humpty Dumpty was unable to fix you. Athena never wondered if fixing a soul was viable, all that mattered was the sanctity of innocence and peace. Her soul was well worth the cost of children happy in Hogwarts.
"The tablecloth. Lee, get me the—Come on, the tablecloth!" Dona's voice became more panicked as she felt the blood seep into her jeans, her knees slipping on the floor.
She could've summoned it herself, if her hands weren't already multitasking. Her wand, slick with blood, was clumsily waving along a deep cut, practicing a stitching spell she'd only ever observed. Her other hand was pouring dittany liberally over the auror's entire body.
"Lee! Get me the tablecloth!" She looked up from her work this time, eyes widening as she took in the situation more broadly.
The secondhand shop that hid Lee’s family’s home was filled with aurors—more than two, was it three or four? Her vision was blurry without her glasses. But Lee was hidden from sight, or had he apparated away? The sounds alone were terrifying, spells shot off walls, shouting, boxes thrown aside.
"Help me..." she begged aloud, shaking hands desperately trying to go back to work. Someone, anyone—she needed help. "...she's not breathing, help me, please.”
Lee clutched the tablecloth inside a shaking fist, and crouched beside his soleil awkwardly. He tried not to focus on the cops in strange robes who were tearing the secondhand shop apart with little regard and certainly no respect for its occupants or their business. He tried not to focus on anything but Dona—her big brown eyes, pleading and scared. Lee glanced helplessly at the raven-haired woman convulsing on the floor and said, “Do ya…do ya know who she is?”
He was moving so slowly, no urgency at all—or was it just because Dona’s own hands were doing so many things at once? Her wand, shifting up and down, desperately trying to coax muscles back together. Throwing aside the empty dittany bottle, then ripping the tablecloth out of Lee’s grasp to press it over the auror’s stomach, wrapping it tight, trying to stop anything else from spilling out. It was the first—the only—time Lee’s presence hadn’t comforted her.
“She’s an auror...” Dona’s voice came out in a gasp as she tied the tablecloth tighter, then went back to her wandwork, “...im-important, I think, her uniform…” But no, Dona didn’t know her personally.
She leaned across the auror’s body and slipped where she knelt, the auror’s warm blood soaking her thigh. It was getting increasingly difficult to see, between her lack of glasses and the hot tears gathering in her eyes, “I—” She gasped, wet hands reaching up to wipe her tears, smearing the red in the creases, “I don’t know what to do—”
Dona looked around, head whipping about, “I-Is anyone here? M-Mags might… She would know, I—” And when Dona turned back around, to try something, anything—as soon as her hand put the slightest touch on the auror—it disintegrated underneath her.
That was what broke her.
Auror. That was the same strange word Lee had heard that friendly white boy boulanje from the witch fruit market use to describe cops who used magic. And Lee absolutely held no love in his heart for law enforcement. But as he heard Dona slipping in blood spilled from the body of a stranger, as he watched that body disintegrate into grey-black soot beneath their hands and their knees, as he heard the light of his life wailing in terror and anguish beside him—Boy LII wished he’d been born for a fate that did not demand such sacrifices, that did not reap such a cost of needless destruction and despair.
He tried to offer words that might calm Dona, but what could he say? That despite her wondering desperately if Mags could have helped, Lee recognized this magic as being woven from the Lady Magdeleine’s own hand—and a merciful annihilation, at that—by Mags’ and all of the Daughters’ own standards? No—Dona’s pure heart was not yet conditioned to the darkness of the magic she was soon to inherit that she would find much comfort in that.
Athena snapped open the door where the wails came from and stopped.
Ashworth was a thorn in Reese’s side, her Commander oft bitched about her comrade and ex-schoolmate. She was a pillar in the Auror Department, a mentor, and a powerful tool in the necessary violence for the protection of the Wizarding World.
But as Athena watched Ashworth slowly morph into a pile of dust, she could only think about three things: 1. Cmdr. Reese was going to become the Auror Department Head 2. They needed a new C&F Division Commander 3. She was about to become very familiar with the ways this girl screamed.
“In the name of the Ministry, put your hands in the air or I will cut them off.”
There was no time for consolatory words. Because before Lee or Dona could even think clearly enough to lift themselves up from the death muck that encompassed and incriminated them, a woman with black eyes that smoldered like brimstone was threatening them if they did not surrender.
Dona was terrified of getting in trouble. She remembered the exact number of times she’d gotten a detention—each of them because the class was being punished as a whole. She remembered each and every time she’d been sent to her room by her Mom, the loneliness in her room made her cry and cry until Catelyn relented.
And now, with a Ministry auror pointing a wand at her, threatening to cut her hands off, Dona was petrified. Her hands visibly shook as she raised them in the air, one hand still clutching her wand.
And despite Taitu’s grave warning, Lee’s protective instincts kicked in; he threw himself in front of Dona, bellowing, “Pa oze manyen li you—!” But before he could finish the statement of defiance and foolish valiance, he felt an electrical current like a bolt of lightning scorch through his body and knock him out cold.
“Lee, no—!” Dona shrieked, but she barely had time to try to stop him from making any sudden moves before he dropped to the ground, muscles seizing up and spasming. She went to move forward to check him over, but put her hands back up, looking at the auror. “I’m—I’m a Healer, I can… Let me… Please, I—”
But before she could do anything, her hands were pulled behind her back, her wand clattering to the ground next to her. She pulled against the sudden bondage instinctively, sending a shock of pain all the way up her arms. And Dona, who cried when she got a paper cut, screamed. Her shoulders hunched up to her ears and she struggled to stay balanced on her knees. Her scream died down to a low wail, tears sliding down her cheeks.
“Oh, shut up,” came a low, male voice from behind her, before a hand was placed on her shoulder, and she was apparated away.
***
[ Interrogation Room, Ministry of Magic ]
They were in the same room. Which was a mercy and a torture, by itself. Her hands were bound behind a chair, and Dona learned very quickly that moving or straining would only mean more pain. But she could move her head, turning to watch over Lee, who was still slumped in his chair.
“He needs a Healer,” Dona sniffed, blinking back more tears, “Please, he’s… He’s recently had surgery, he—”
“Spare me,” the auror spat, and Dona looked up, genuinely puzzled. “We know perfectly well how your kind treat people like him.”
“I—” The statement was so obtuse that Dona was truly lost for words, stretching up her shoulder to wipe her cheek. She sniffed again, genuinely trying to stop snotty crying in front of so many people. “C-Can you take the handcuffs off? We didn’t do anything wrong, I was trying to help.”
Athena had heard that plea before, a dozen or so times. They never meant to hurt anyone, they were only trying to help, they had no idea the backlash that they’d caused, surely this wasn’t against the law. Couldn’t she just let them go? They were kids, they were parents, they were grandparents, they were just following orders. Athena reached out with a hand and grabbed the front of the girl’s shirt, dragging her a short way up.
“You just killed an Auror Commander,” she hissed, “We’ve made meat for less than what you’ve done. You’ll be lucky if we decide to just toss you in Azkaban once her subordinates find out what has happened.” Athena could hear it now, the roars from the basement brats beneath her feet, their lab rats coming out of the pipes and crawling the steps to find Ashworth was simply dust in the wind. Scrambling for new leadership, and all of Ashworth’s little ‘projects’ doubtlessly stalking Athena’s crime scene looking for someplace to put their rage.
Athena disliked Ashworth, but she respected the loyalty the old Slytherin had drawn from her subordinates. She knew where to strike the ground and find oil, digging up potential like a miner, shining them to a polish and kept leashed to the Department. The Commanders were all Beast Masters, and even Athena loved her own. So as she stared at the sniveling girl groveling with reddening cheeks, she smiled.
“I think you’re lucky it’s me. There is going to be blood fertilizing the ground soon, once we find your little rat friends, and it will be all your fault. Their deaths around your neck—a noose, an albatross...”
Dona’s shoulders hunched up as she was lifted, eyes wide and terrified. She shook like a leaf, shaking her head desperately at the accusations, genuinely too afraid to talk, to deny it. The experience had been traumatizing enough; although a healer-in-training, the auror’s death was the first patient she hadn’t been able to save, and she wore the woman’s blood all over her. Dona could feel it drying into her jeans, her skin, her hands still tied behind the chair, straining against the wood as she was lifted. Tears continued to slide down her cheeks at the memory of it, and she sniffed, trying to stop long enough just to explain.
Athena let her grip drop and began to shuck off her peacoat; it was decorated with tools of the trade—knives, hooks, ropes, lighter fluid, especially brewed potions for her skill in these rooms. Janitors were often paid overtime for cleaning up Athena’s space, and Athena tipped them for the citrus scent they sprayed afterwards. She enjoyed it, kept her head clear and focused.
“...But you can stop some of the bloodshed, we can take them quietly. Oh they’ll be harmed, you can’t stop that. But you can stop a massacre.” Athena shucked off her white outershirt, folding it up neatly and laying it upon the equally meticulously folded peacoat. Both left in a far corner box, leaving Athena in her heavy black boots, wool pants and thin black undershirt.
Dona was still shaking her head when she was put back down, still trying to force words out as the auror continued on her spiel, but it was like her sobs were choking her, holding onto her tongue. The best she could manage was a stuttered, “I-I d-didn’t—”
Athena twirled her wand and mindlessly shot a cutting spell at the girl, watching blood ooze from her arm, slicing through layers of fabric. It was a shallow stinging cut. Her cries were stirring the boy, and that wouldn’t do.
Dona gasped at the sudden stinging sensation, crying out and turning to look at her arm. She was in genuine shock that the auror had hurt her, having always been under the impression that the Ministry’s job was to keep her safe. She’d never been in trouble, she voted, she submitted her census papers and carried her work ID in her back pocket. She blinked, shrinking back in her chair as the auror suddenly approached, flinching down into herself, frozen in fear as her pale finger caressed Dona’s cheek.
Like an older sister Athena patted the girl’s head, gentle and soft, shushing her softly, “We don’t want to wake him, do we, pretty girl? He needs his rest, it’s just you and me together…” Athena reached out to drag a single nail down the curve of the girl’s cheek. “...now, will you be a good girl and stay quiet for me? Tell me what I need and make sure he—” She pushed her cheek, still endowed with baby fat to the shallowly breathing boy, “—gets some well needed attention?”
Dona trembled, turning to look at Lee when she was forced to do so. She was immediately worried for him—she’d lost track of time, sure, but she was sure it wasn’t normal or healthy for Lee to be unconscious for so long, especially following his intense period of hospitalization, treatments and surgeries. He was so fragile. So breakable—
But Athena didn’t wait for an answer as she stuck the wand up against the girl’s knee and whispered a breaking charm. The girl’s answered shriek made her tsk.
Dona cried out, letting out a shattering wail at the bursting sensation in her knee. The proximity of the wand tip to her knee split her patella clean in two, and her knee immediately collapsed in on itself, shattered. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she strained against her restraints to lean forward, desperately trying to free herself—to do anything to stop the pain.
“Oh you’re weak, that’s cute. Even our trainees can get through a little breaking charm. C’mon stop crying, we’re just getting started.”
“Why are you doing this?” Dona managed to wail through her cries, shoulders shaking as she begged the auror for help, “I didn’t kill her—I didn’t, I didn’t—I didn’t have enough dittany and I—” That was all she could manage before her sobs won out again.
Athena hummed jauntily as she sat back down on her ass, the picture of relaxation, letting her hands hang over the peaks of her knees. In this way the girl was looking down at her, it was an old trick, such a position usually signaled defeat but instead Athena displayed an arrogant grace.
“Why am I doing this?”
Were she a weaker auror, she might’ve balked, might’ve had some flashbacks to her youth, found err in her ways. She might’ve felt sympathy or even had evoked some guilt. Might’ve cried a bit and stared at her bloodied palms in disgust for the person she had become. Might’ve been horrified and begging for mercy from a benevolent God who’d turn her away at the pearly gates.
Fuck God, and benevolence, and forgiveness too. Hell was on Earth and the aurors were there to keep it tamed. Athena was born to bring justice, by any means necessary.
“Because this is what I am—” Athena gestured to the room around her, “—a peacekeeper, keeping children safe in their beds, their parents from worrying, students safe at Hogwarts and professors snuggly drinking tea in the mornings as they grade.”
Athena was good at grand speeches, had made rousing ones when she was a prefect for Slytherin House, keeping order in her House in the wake of the Second Wizarding War and ending fights before they began. Spilled blood on the stones of Hogwarts still haunted her dreams, the screams of students dying and being torn apart, the inaction of those around her...
It made her sick.
“I am incapable of inaction.” Athena stood, dusting herself off. “So we’re going to try this again, baby Healer—why are you wrapped up with such dark magic that it’s making the veterans of the Wars nervous? Why are you so entrenched in them that you’ve taken one of them as a lover?” Athena reached out to tilt his head to the side, and walked around her, fingers running over her hair, blood flaking off while she tutted. “Merlin this is gross—yeck, blegh…” with a spin of her wand the blood was gone, the viscus and the muck. “…and I can play nice—I just need answers.”
Athena tapped his shoulder, sending a jolt of electricity with the tips of her fingers.
“Wakey wakey, Loverboy! I need to know what you and your lot were up to— quickly, otherwise I’m liable to break every bone in your girl's body. Then I’ll take your ears so you can’t even hear her screams, hmm?”
She watched his eyes slide open, watched his mouth move and open. With the accuracy of a sniper she fired off a curse with her wand. “Tumidus lingua veritatis,” she hissed, watching as his hands jerked to cover his mouth, the girl shrieking, “Oh both of you relax, it’s just a curse. Swelling Truth. The more you lie, your tongue swells, as do your gums and throat. Until eventually you close your own airways and asphyxiate. So let's play a game—I ask you a question boy, and if you don’t answer I break something in her body. If you lie, you get to hang yourself. It’s a win-win! For me! I’m brilliant.”
Athena sat back on the floor, criss-cross applesauce, perching a chin on her fist with a sharklike grin, and regarding the panicking captives. “Tell me nothing but the truth and you get out unscathed, you get Healers and auror protection, then walk your lives along unharmed. Tell me lies and get broken down, then tossed to the wolves of the Forensics & Crime. They’ll have fun with you I’m sure, and they won’t be as nice as me about it.”
***
[ Interrogation Room, some time later ]
All efforts to communicate the catch-22 situation in which Lee was caught to the sadistic woman who held them captive were a fool’s errand. The intricate wards that were rooted into the very core of his mind, his memories, since infancy held strong; they allowed Lee to say nothing that would damn the Daughters, nor give the faintest hint as to any of their secrets, no matter how fiercely he strained against them as Lee was forced to watch the horrors the woman wrought upon Dona, slowly and meticulously draining all the fight and the will from her battered body (not to mention a dangerous amount of blood).
And oh, did she try to turn her wrath on him. What appeared to Athena to be brute determination from Lee in employing his so-called right to remain silent—even as he pleaded through choking sobs for the girl to be spared—only drove the auror to push more brutally, and ruthlessly, and viciously upon the pair of captives.
But it was no use; the Daughters, of course, had ample preparations in place to safeguard their secrets from being extracted via torture. Like magical anesthesia, Lee could feel every bit of physical pain that Athena inflicted upon him, and yet his body doggedly failed to react—aside from coating Lee in a thick sheen of feverish sweat, and the way he trembled head to toe as he wrestled with his will, and all that he was unable to do.
And soon enough, his inability to be forthcoming caused his throat, his tongue, his lips and mouth and cheeks to swell up so much that he could barely move his head, barely breathe but through tiny passageways still available to his nose. Even getting enough air to audibly groan was veering toward impossible. His head slumped to one side and Lee looked at nothing but Dona, beaten and broken and still so beautiful, and his vision started to blur; he was losing Oxygen…
Dona’s reaction to her senseless torture remained consistent: insisting throughout tearful hysterics that she didn’t know anything. Even the curdled screams that she wailed in response to each and every bit of pain took a while to dull—but they did dull, eventually, until she’d been reduced to being unresponsive save for whimpering, her nostrils and lips and chin caked with blood from the broken nose Athena had given her when the interrogation was interrupted by a younger, male auror demanding a routine blood test. It was the restraints, not strength, that were even keeping the girl sitting upright.
And perhaps the Auror Captain never would have admitted defeat—perhaps she would have wrung the young captives body and soul between unrelenting fists until their lives were drained out.
Perhaps, but not today—the male auror who was Athena’s clear inferior hustled back into the room and said, “Christ, Howell—did you bother to check that brat’s background at all? Her blood test came back—she’s pure. Some American family with their noses up some powerful peoples’ asses—Reese is pissed. She’s headed here now so I hope for your sake you have a fuckin’ good excuse—“
His warning was cut short when the Commander—now the acting interim head of the entire Auror Department—threw open the door.
Seren Reese watched with a curled lip as Athena shook in place, there was blood on her cheek, and her hair was matted to her skull from sweat. There was a feverish sheen in the woman’s eyes, and Seren admired how her little monster coiled away from the doorway when it tapped gently against the wall. It was nice to know that her subordinates still feared her.
Her two aurors parted, heads bowed, eyes to the floor, letting her view the damage Howell had wrought. It was impressive, and obvious she needed to let Athena get off in the interrogation rooms more often if this was the result.
“You’re quite sloppy today, Athena...” Seren grabbed the boy's head and turned it side to side, admiring his swollen skin and throat. No doubt he’d been suffering this whole time, his skin and blood stank of wards to high heaven. “...you’ve gone and let your bloodlust cloud you Athena, perhaps you will need supplementary lessons?”
“Yes Commander,” Pierce was grinning beside Howell, always happy to watch someone else get dressed down, seeing as he was the usual thorn in her side when it came to getting wand- or fist-happy. “I apologize.”
“Apologize to her.” She gestured to the pureblooded girl strapped to the chair, blooded and mangled.
Athena’s jaw worked once, then twice. She bowed her head when Seren raised an eyebrow, “I apologize for my heavy-handed... methods....miss.” Each word a grind from her throat.
“Oh that’s not an apology...” Seren held her hand out, and Athena went willingly into her palm, head bowed as Seren studied her favorite little protege, the one she’d trained since exiting Hogwarts in the fickle arts of their station. Her hands glided through sweat matted hair, fingers curling as she gathered the strands into her hair, before slamming Athena forward, yanking her head forward and forcing the girl into a bow. Seren’s nails dug into Athena’s scalp pulling up hair and blood. “Grovel, girl—you have fucked up, haven’t you?”
“Yes.” Athena whimpered, skin on the back of her neck red.
“You ought to just die right here, for failing your station so miserably, right?” She shook Athena like a bad puppy, and the girl nodded.
“Yes ma’am...” Athena cowed as Seren shoved the girl to the ground. Isaac was behind her, lips pulled into a joyful grin. “...I don’t deserve this station, I have failed you miserably.”
“Get out.” Athena stumbled out the door, slamming right into Cadmus, who grabbed the woman by her jaw and dragged her down the hallway. “Pierce—” The boy snapped into place. “—Get me a healer, and the proper legal documents.” With flick of her wand she transfigured one of Athena’s buttons into a metal stool that she perched on, spreading her broad patterned skirts daintily around her knees and tucking her ankles behind.
“Miss Outterridge,” she began with a purr, “I do so apologize for the mauling one of my trigger-happy aurors has given you. I know we likely will not escape the wrath of your family, for good reason, but we must have answers...” Pierce came rushing in with a Healer, who got to work on the damage. “...you have found yourself in a pickle with a terrorist magical cell of insurgents that we’ve been tracking for a long time. Their misdeeds and evil have sunk their claws into this world, and the aurors are tasked with ripping them apart. It’s unfortunate that you’ve come under their sway...” Slowly, the visage of the girl was put back together. “...and now you’ve been cited as an accomplice to one of my colleague’s deaths—a very high ranking member of the Auror Corps, one not so easily replaced and who will be vehemently missed...” Seren kept the emotion out of her voice, though her stomach churned and throat tightened at the thought of Ashworth having escaped this earth before her, and not beside Seren. Were they not meant to die with hands wrapped around each other's necks? “...so you must understand where we are coming from. Our job is dangerous, and you’ve become involved with insurgents with more blood on their hands than you may realize.”
Dona’s eyes were glassy as she stared ahead, her tears long dried, her screams long silenced. She felt like she wasn’t quite inside of her own body, mangled as it was. She didn’t know when it had happened, and it wouldn’t matter anyway; Dona had no sense of time passing as she sat there, staring.
She had no reaction to another auror entering the room, then another. She barely managed to lift her head to listen to the new auror’s spiel, most of it going in one ear and out the other. She spoke of terrorism? This auror didn’t know the fucking meaning of it.
They’d been sitting at home, lounging around on Lee’s bed when it happened. Dona had jumped up and scampered out, wand drawn, to see what the commotion was—and that’s when she had found the cursed Commander. Lee hadn’t followed.
He’d taken his sweet time to help her—time that might have prevented the dark-haired auror from dying, and then when they were arrested, he’d kept his lips shut. He didn’t answer a single question. Not when they broke her legs. Not when curses spasmed down her body, forcing broken limbs to move. Not even when they’d cut off her fucking finger.
Voodoo would always be misunderstood, mambo had taught. As long as colonialists existed, so too would their oppression. They saw the magic that Lee and his family did, and didn’t understand it, so they called it dangerous, called it terrorism. And then they tortured her for it. Terrorists.
Dona was barely aware of her body being healed, muscle and bone knitting itself together. It was easier to breathe when her nose was in one piece.
The decision was made, at some point, to move Dona to a different room where she could be healed easier—somewhere she wasn’t bound to a chair, at least. She tried to mumble a protest, but words didn’t come out, her arms weakly pushed against the Healer before the choice was made for her, and Dona found herself being propped up, stumbling out of the room.
She swallowed the potions they gave her, snatched the salve jars out of their hands to rub it in herself. When they eventually located her wand, which had been confiscated from Lee’s family home, she used it to heal herself, too.
And then she was left sitting there in an Auror Infirmary, glaring at the wall in front of her. She would have walked straight out if the same cocky-looking auror wasn’t standing just outside the door, and if she knew Lee had a reliable way home. Not that Dona particularly wanted to wait for him, she just wanted to be able to look him in the face when she screamed at him for his silence.
[ Meanwhile, in the Interrogation Room... ]
Despite looking well-close to dead where he sat, when the girl was removed from the room, the boy stirred.
Seren studied him, like a cockroach in a jar, and mused, “You’re under some complex spellwork, boy—it’d be impressive if it weren’t so primitive. I’m sure I could break these little wards and curses…” Childsplay, though Ashworth would have done it quicker and painlessly. She’d always been better with curse-breaking, and curse-making, damn her.
But Ashworth wasn’t here, and Seren knew pain came with growth. With a flick of her wand she lifted the curse Athena had put on him, one of the girl’s own creation, and gestured.
“Speak boy, defend your terrorist cell, and perhaps we’ll allow an easier release alongside her.”
Just when Lee was about to surrender to the darkness that was creeping along the edges of his vision, to stop fighting and just let himself be pulled beneath the surface to be buried in the muck by Death’s muddy vines, those sweet ghastly tendrils that had tethered Boy LII to the Depths Below since birth—
Once more, just as before, he was spared; for attestations of some other realm that were not for a worthless boy to know, Death released Lee and he buoyed back to the shoal of life.
His features shrunk back to their proper shape and he gasped air back into his lungs, choking on it as if he’d been drowned. A new woman, with gray hair, was sitting before him. Lee thrashed, his eyes flashing like a spooked horse; where was Dona? What had they done to her?
“Please, ya gotta listen to me—the other one didn’t understand, wouldn’t listen, it’s—Dona doesn’t know anything, you’ve got to let us go, you got no idea what’s comin’ if ya keep…”
He convulsed for a moment, as if some unseen force was passing through his body. Then he sat upright, his back straightening unnaturally given the injuries he’d incurred. He looked straight at the gray-haired woman and his pupils blew all the way out, until his eyes were clouded over entirely with a sinister, unreflective black.
The boy blinked his stygian eyes. Blood trickled slowly down from one nostril and then the other, trailing over the edges of his lips, but he paid it no heed as he spoke in a flat, chilling tone that sounded entirely unlike the voice he’d spoken with but a moment ago: “By Tituba's will, and the Spirit of her Daughters, vengeance will come. She will flood acid rain on your prejudice, burn your lies over the fire with which you burned us, and boil your posterity in blood. This we swear, to be followed through in this world and those to come.”
[ Back in the Infirmary... ]
Eventually, the door to the infirmary swung open, and a blonde woman marched in, looking frantic. Dona averted her gaze, looking to the ground. The woman’s auror-issue boots were grimy, muddy. She’d been at the house when it was raided. Her gaze flicked up to glare at the older woman.
“My name is Major Max Squint. I am so, so sorry for what happened—it was never meant to be like that...” the woman said, pulling up a chair. She sat on it, putting her elbows on her knees, “...this Operation was put in place to help you, and the boy with you. I’ve been looking into the Daughters for years, and we’ve never had the opportunity to help someone before it’s too late. Miss Outterridge—Dona—it’s not too late. Whatever they’ve told you, it’s not true. We can help you.”
Dona’s chin wobbled before she leaned forward to spit at the auror’s face. “Go fuck yourself.”
Max put her hands over her face, wiping away the spit before massaging her temples, wringing her hands down her cheeks. “Please, let me help you—”
“Fuck you.” Dona snapped, exhaling sharply. It took everything, everything she had not to reach for her wand. To hurt this person like she’d been hurt. To blow everything up. To set the world on fire for what it had done.
Max looked especially stressed at this, standing from her chair. “Please—”
“Get the fuck away from me.” Dona’s voice shook, and the woman shook her head, leaving the room and swinging the door shut behind her.
Max was livid as she stormed back down the hallway toward the Interrogation Room; her mission, months if not years of work and preparation and carefully-gathered intel, just for Reese to pull rank and that rabid creature she called a protege to blow it all up in a couple of hours?
Not only had this botched mission gotten Ashworth killed, but Max feared the Daughters had vanished into the wind again. The identity of their mark—the most promising lead Max had gotten in ages—was well and truly lost, turned against working with her and horrifically mistreated for nothing, all on Max’s tip from the Free Traders. But the boy…
Max knew that all boys who were kept in the service of the Daughters eventually became missing persons. She’d written the damn case file herself, in meticulous detail. So although she knew that the damage done by the Nest may have been too much to correct, although she knew it was likely too late to reach him…
Max knew she had to try.
[ Interrogation Room ]
Lee’s eyes fluttered, the white returning to them. He was breathing heavily, sweat shining on his face and neck. He looked empty, and utterly broken—a filthy dishrag that had served its purpose and was all wrung out, waiting to be disposed of. “Please…let us go. Ain’t got…nothin’ else to give ya.”
Seren nodded to herself, tutting. “Well that was enlightening, and rather cute. I’d love to pick apart that type of spell work, must be tied into blood...” The woman fluffed up her skirts as she stood. “Thank you dear boy, you’ve given us plenty.” She reached over to run her nails over his head, dragging along his skull even as Lee flinched from her touch.
“My poor darling did a number on you—my girl is fierce, I’m quite proud of her, you know…” Seren walked around him, studying the set of his shoulders and face. “You’re a walking tomb, boy, like those of pharaohs, warded and cursed into the next world. It wouldn’t take much to break them all down…” She leaned down, “…give you a clean slate, a working body, a tongue and hands that belong only to you and those you’d gift it to…”
The Auror Commander straightened and nodded to the Healer who ushered over, his face white and pinched.
“…You’ll be with your girl soon enough, but if you ever want a free life, do ask. We’ll hand it over, as long as we can charge the cost to the information in your head. Be well, and tell the Healer what your favorite candy is—she’s so very good at finding every flavor. Like an American Baskin Robbins.” Seren didn’t wait for an answer as she shut the door behind her, a few of her loyal henchmen around her.
But Max was waiting there to head her off.
On any other day, Max would not have had the nerve, but she was at the end of her rope enough to snap at Seren, “Do me a favor, Reese—the next time I ask you for backup, would you mind controlling your fucking rabid dog? You’ve got no idea the damage that your squad has done!”
Ignoring the accusations entirely, Seren just smiled at her with a black widow’s venom in the sharp curves of her lips. “I believe congratulations are in order, Major Squint? It appears you’re up for a rather unexpected promotion.”
It took Max a moment too long to understand Seren’s response, her hands on her hips, jaw locked. Reese, now the Head of the Auror Department, was giving her Ashworth’s role. It was a promotion, on paper at least. But Reese knew as well as anyone else in the Department worth their salt that Thorne had been groomed from the beginning to step into those shoes—and that Max had practically grown the Infiltration Unit with her own two hands. Becoming a Commander of Forensics, a role currently ‘reserved’ for her pseudo-girlfriend, was as good as a slap in the face.
The blonde pursed her lips, desperate not to speak further out of turn lest she fuck herself over even more, before stepping around the Commander to have a word with the boy—Max’s asset—that Reese’s cronies were manhandling.
And to her back, Seren added, “And one more thing, Max—at least all of my beasts are on leashes. Are all of Ashworth’s?”
The door closed, and Seren waited a beat before chirping to the henchmen who flanked her, “Well, hop to it then! We don’t have all day to fix Squint’s investigation. Chop chop!” The aurors all turned with a puff of white smoke, dissipating into streaming columns through the corridors, off to execute plans Seren had made when she’d beaten Ashworth for Head Auror position.
It tasted like ash, but Seren popped a lemon candy into her mouth, and walked down the hall whistling as Pierce came from the shadows to her side, a hulking shadow who kept throwing glances at the boy and the Auror Major they had left in the Interrogation Room.
[ Interrogation Room ]
Max let herself in, beyond caring about the insubordination of interrupting a ranking auror’s proceedings. The battered boy struggled against Seren’s loyal subordinates. Max waved them away, trying to dismiss them, but they hovered doggedly nearby even after releasing the boy.
Wasting no time, Max looked at him and begged desperately, “Please, don’t go…I know that my colleagues’ treatment of you has given you no reason to believe that anyone here would be on your side, but I am not like them. I can help you, I want to help you, if you’ll let me—I won’t try to make excuses for how my colleagues handled things today, but let me ask you this: is it any worse than the things that have been done to you at the hand of the Daughters? Can it even compare to what will happen, if you return to them?”
But the threat of his own life, the danger of crawling back to his lifelong abusers, seemed not to phase the boy at all. With deep and unshakeable resignation, he said coldly, “Appreciate the concern, ma’am, but I know my own people and I don’t need some uppity avocat cop with a white savior complex to save me. I know what I’m meant for, I’ve known where my life was goin’ for a long time…ain’t nothing you can do or say that’ll change it. So unless one a you wants to get in a few more lashings…?” Lee spared a hateful glance toward Seren’s goons, who returned to him blank and remorseless stares. “…I’ll find Dona, and we’ll be outta your hair.”
And he didn’t grant Max a reply before shoving his way out the door without looking back.
Max sighed, pressing fingers against the pressure points at her temple. And finally, she thought about what Seren had said; ‘All of my beasts are on leashes…are all of Ashworth’s?’
[ In the Auror Corridors... ]
“Thorne!” Athena strode down the hall as if fiendfyre was after her, Cadmus’s words echoing in her brain: “Tell Ashworth’s pet that she’s dead, make sure to tell her Squint knew, and make sure it hurts.”
“Hey, Thorne!” The woman Athena was addressing turned, a donut half hanging out of her mouth, papers stacked up to her chin, ink stains on her arms and blood around her cuticles. The Killer Case was taking it’s toll; how quaint. “Can we talk?”
Thorne raised a brow over her elfish face, spitting the half eaten donut onto the top papers in her arms. “What about?”
What a disgusting little cretin… Athena looked around, and said, “Not here. In Ashworth’s office. It’s sensitive information.”
Thorne nodded, humming to herself. “Joint mission? Must be, Ashworth’s been quiet last few days or so... but you know how the missions for the Uppers are. Always so secretive. Honestly, she forgot we had a dinner reservation last night…must be important if she’s dragging your Division Mum into it.”
Athena let her prattle on, and together they stepped through the office door and closed it tight.
Axel leaned up to pluck some of the more plain Gaping Grapefruits, Delilah loved them, he made a mean compote from the flesh and the juice was good for cleaning surprisingly. The produce man seemed happy there were more than zero people in front of his stand, people normally avoided it as the fruits were just a little too varied to be legal. Perhaps a secret greenhouse? Though, as he watched another Auror traipse into the crowd (not even bothering to hide her Lichtenburg scarring mauling thin sinewy biceps), they likely had bigger things to fry than some illegal importing of food.
Axel cocked his head to the side, “Your accent… what is that? Surely not French. I know French,” he had some cousins in France he thinks, third or fourth.
“Yeah a bit odd, magical fruits they are. Exotic, mostly from South America and Asia, I always track what days he comes,” Axel turned to flip a sickle to the gentleman behind the counter who flashed a gold coated tooth and made the sickle disappear without so much as a flash of his hands. ‘Fancy’, Axel thought. “No, no, not hor-ror, AUR-or. They’re magical law enforcement…” perhaps a muggleborn, or a hedge? was his accent that bad on foreigner’s ears? “but they can be a horror at times, believe you me.”
Lee scratched the back of his neck, sheepish; he must have stuck out amongst these wixfolk like a trumpet-playing gator on Frenchmen Street. “Prob’ly some cajun twang you’re hearin’ in there, so—not proper French, you right…I’m from New Orleans—the Big Easy—in America…ya ever been?”
He laughed at the young man’s comment about the law enforcement; magical or not, the police were a rotten bunch to deal with. “Had a few unsavory brush-ups with the law, mon zanmi?” Lee said with the slightest air of conspiratorial understanding.
Then he turned his attention back to the selection of produce and wondered allowed, “Well then, if these’re magical fruits I’m guessin’ you gotta be magical to use ‘em? No point in me makin’ groceries ‘round here, then, is there—shame, I was hopin’ to make shrimp brochette with a citrus beurre blanc…”
What is the most scared you’ve ever been in your life?
“I’m havin’ trouble thinkin’ a one, I’m sorry...”
Ya learn to block out the stuff that scares ya, early on. Fear, pain, debasement, all of it—ya gotta find a way to detach yourself from it, otherwise you’ll never make it through...
“What d’ya mean? She’s a real magnificent woman—forthright, compassionate ‘n strong. The sunshine breakin’ through the clouds on the day of a parade, bringin’ everyone around her hope. My love for her goes beyond this world. There’s nothin’—truly, nothin’ I wouldn’t do to see that she shines...”
It was Claire-Marie who’d sat with Dona to explain the spell that evening. She said they were invoking a spirit to provide healing and strength for an extended family member back in Louisiana- and as usual, Dona was eager to help. Claire-Marie had smiled, and then explained each step of the spell.
Diagon Alley was far too bright for Axel’s eyes, he’d popped into existence somewhere behind Ollivanders Wand Shoppe and spent nearly five minutes blinking away sunspots from his eyes. The Den was never this bright, unless it was the flashing neon’s of the various clubs at all times of the day and night. Axel was used to his internal clock going wonky, he’d actually set an alarm so he could come to the Diagon Alley Farmer’s Market on time and not show up at midnight like before.
So he strode into the crowd, chin high and marching for the various booths that boasted jellied electric eels and fresh hippocampus milk, items that he couldn’t get from the grocer in the Den. Axel could see Aurors posted around, wandering around in plainclothes and scoffed. His Father would have never let him set his shoulders like that, or stamp his boots in that manner, they couldn’t have been from the I&I Division or Aunt Zyair would have their heads for fun. It was amateur hour in Diagon Alley, god their Captain must suck.
So lost in thought he didn’t realize someone else was reaching the Bloodied oranges until they hands brushed. “Oh sorry there, here go ahead and grab what you want,” Axel grinned and raised his hands back, “bit lost in thoughts ‘n’ all, not used to see this many Aurors wandering around Diagon Alley.”
Lee didn’t come here to be distracted by all the strange produce—honest. In fact, if mambo found out he’d strayed from his task—which happened to be keeping an eye on Joujou, who had gotten a bit too much attention recently from some nosy local law enforcement—he’d be in for it. But Lee wasn’t too worried about that; Jou was too clever for her own good, and Lee was certain she could look after herself. Besides, they had a sort of mutual understanding where if Lee let her be, she wouldn’t rat him out.
Dona had told Lee about magical neighborhoods like this one. She’d described them in colorful detail, in that cute way she got when she could see a place in her mind and her eyes went kind of starry, and she gestured grandly with her hands, and she’d have to push her glasses back up the arch of her nose several times when they slid down without her noticing.
And Lee loved hearing Dona’s stories about her magical world. But actually seeing it with his own eyes, breathing it in as it hung so heavily in the air that you could nearly taste it on your tongue, like the charged static humidity before a hurricane...that was something else.
It felt dangerous, forbidden. But that was a tempting sort of fruit.
In fact, it was fruit that drew Lee’s attention off course, and he couldn’t help but to wander over to stalls laden with rows and bins and hanging vines of the most peculiar fruits he’d ever seen.
Lee reached out to pick up one that was round and oozing a thick burgundy juice when his hand brushed with a wizard’s. Lee drew his arm back and ducked his head. “Ah, no—beggin’ your pardon, I was just lookin’, ya see…these have gotta be some a the strangest fruits I ever seen…”
Lee cocked his head in confusion, not sure if it was the man’s accent or the word he wasn’t understanding. “…sorry, did ya say there are…horrors wanderin’ round?”
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