TwiFicMas: Christmas Eve Edition is here!
Today we have an STL AU one-shot (it's complete!) about what would have happened if Mary-Alice had left with the Major.
I'm so sorry that I haven't been able to post many of the requests, but December was a bit of a disaster and I fell way behind. I plan on finding something from every one of those requests in January to make it up to everyone <3
Onwards to FicMasEve ;)
And I never wanted anything from you,
Except everything you had, and what was left after that too.
Florence and the Machine, Dog Days Are Over.
—
How long have they been away from the South? From Maria and the wars?
She’s lost track entirely.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. She never saw any of it coming.
She watched carefully, she planned and practiced, watched and worried, and she still never saw it coming. Not the Major taking her hand and dragging her out of Mexico and Texas in the dust of Charlotte and Peter’s flight. She never even considered that he’d think to take her with them.
So she does her best, her gaze focused on the future, focused on Maria and their desertion to make sure they see the end of the day, the end of the week, the end of the year. Her head feels tight, so full of what could-might-will happen that she’s glad that the Major doesn’t let go of her hand the entire time, just drags her along behind him.
And that’s how they escape the south.
—
They travel with Peter and Charlotte for many years, a little trio and the shadow. He watches her, the blankness of her face and her emotions as they move past the Mason-Dixon line to peace and safety.
She has no strong opinions about anything, never offers thoughts or ideas about their little trek across the country.
He doesn’t know how to help her. Not at all. He makes sure she’s fed, and that she’s decently clothed. He makes sure she’s not left behind, or alone too often (he knows something about the terror of being alone, and he doesn’t want anyone to feel that way.)
So they continue on. He waits, she watches, eyes empty but all-seeing. They part ways from Charlotte and Peter (there are a hundred little tiny reasons why, and Mary-Alice is one of them. She doesn’t feel safe, doesn’t trust Peter or Charlotte and he’d like to know why, but that’s not the kind of question he can ask her. Especially not now.) They wanted into the north, into wet and damp and green and empty, where the emotions of the cities are long behind them and he can finally breathe a little.
Mary-Alice doesn’t breathe, doesn’t relax or doesn’t seem any less broken. She simply is, still - a shadow, a ghost, his personal spectre of the horror of the wars.
This is not how he imagined freedom would be.
—
The little house had been half-swallowed up by the forest, one half of the building having collapsed under the weight of debris from the trees crowding it, and the smell of mould and rotting vegetation was overwhelming.
The rain had continued for two and a half days unabated, and whilst they ran no risk of getting sick or cold from it, but when it was raining this heavily and for this long, it was unpleasant - their clothes were sticking like a second skin, with rivulets of dirt and old blood running from the fabric onto their skin.
Wiping mud off her face with an equally filthy hand, she followed the Major towards the house; they were both covered in a combination of blood, mud, and ash from the fight. Mary-Alice’s dress was in a far worse state than the Major’s pants and shirt, but neither were particularly salvageable.
The house is a little time capsule of the past, having sat untouched for forty or fifty years, just resting and rotting. The dust that covers the floor is more of a sludge thanks to the dampness and the nearby river, with veins of mould and fungus running up the walls, and vivid green vines twisting and blooming up the door frames and around the ceiling. There might have been wallpaper once, but it’s little more than stained, rotten pulp right now.
(Two fat little frogs have nestled in a hole in the wall, luminous green and content. Mary-Alice watches them for a moment, fascinated. He likes that.)
They move through the house slowly; everything has been abandoned - it was not the home of wealthy people, but there is evidence of a few modest creature comforts - some books, discarded embroidery, painting supplies.
It feels like the other side of the Monterrey mansion; like they’ve stepped through the looking glass to another world. No one would argue that Maria’s home was cleaner - more bodies moving around to prevent dust settling - but the air of disrepair, of abandonment, of a liminal space is the same.
For a moment, he thinks he would prefer dirt and sand and the dry heat. But he’d take the rainiest days, the mouldiest shelter, before he’d go back to the hell of being a soldier in an unwinnable war.
—
The little washroom was covered in a thick layer of dust and grime, with lacy spiderwebs strung in the ceiling corners. The tub matches up with his hazy human memories, bringing the smell of castile soap, and the heat of the boiled water sloshing into the the tin tub to the front of his memory.
(It is bittersweet in its simplicity. That once upon a time, he was a boy who washed in a bath like this, with homemade soap and rough rags. That he was a person, a human, a brother and son. A child. Jasper. Those memories sting and feel heavy but at least he has them. There is something amusing but also dreadful at Mary-Alice’s fascination with something as simple as frogs, as folding paper into animals, at how stricken she is out in a brand-new world.)
They are absolutely filthy; it’s been weeks since they washed, in a river somewhere in Virginia. They’ve relied upon the rain, upon the remoteness of their path, but maybe a bath would help. Would make them feel better. Even back with Maria, getting the opportunity to wash, and to claim new clothes made things seem a little less grim.
If nothing else, they’ve both got blood in their hair they need to wash out.
(The first time he had her after their escape, was in the lake somewhere in South Carolina when they stopped to wash the dirt and sand from the south off them. It was rough and hard, because he felt stripped raw, and she had held on to him tightly, her face pressed against him and it wasn’t exactly the cleansing baptism he had hoped for, he realised afterwards. Not for either of them. Maybe this bath will be better.)
—
There’s an old bucket in the corner, rusted tin housing a fascinating colony of something unidentifiable that he takes down to the river when Mary-Alice is exploring the narrow second floor.
It takes a few trips to the river to fill the tub enough for the both of them, and by then, Mary-Alice has crept back downstairs to watch his progress with obvious curiosity.
(A piece of ragged ribbon is clutched in one of her hands, and he wonders why she would want such a thing.)
“Wash yourself,” he says gently, motioning to the bath. The water is off-colour, but it is river water, from an ancient bucket, and it is still cleaner than the two of them.
Mary-Alice nods and strips out of her rag of a dress; there was something utterly pathetic in the wet slap it made when she dropped it on the stone floor amongst the dust and dirt. She’d drag it back on when she was finished in the tub, he knew that - but it looked like nothing. Black and brown and red, the fabric worn thin and frayed. It was barely fit for bandages or as a cleaning rag, let alone as someone’s clothing.
She picks up the dress and rings it out - bloody-muddy water dribbled out of it. And she folds it over the half-broken chair in the corner, as if it is going to be dry or cleaner when she reaches for it again.
The whole thing just feels sad to him. But then, he knows how wrong this is; he vaguely remembers what it was like to have new, clean clothes as a human. Even as a vampire, he got to replace his garments more often than Mary-Alice ever did - so few of their victims were small enough for their clothing to fit her.
He couldn’t remember ever seeing Mary-Alice in clothing that fit her right. Not the ragged hospital gown he found her in, nor any of the dresses she was provided with afterwards. Always swallowing her up, leaving her shoulder bare.
That’s why she had so many scars there, overlapping indiscriminately. It had been like a beacon to others, a vulnerability. Because her clothes never fit right.
(He thinks of homemade sweaters, of crisp afternoon dresses, of pristine petticoats and neat lace. He thinks of rancid dresses and torn hospital gowns and thin, pale limbs unguarded.)
—
It’s been awhile since he saw her bare like this, as she steps towards the tub. (Normally when he does, he doesn’t see her back.)
His fingers have grazed over the narrow plane of her back, but he’s never really just looked at it. At the scars dotting her shoulders and arms, at the long scar that runs from her shoulder blades to her hip raggedly. He wonders how it happened, how old it is.
(Not that old. He knows the small scars under his fingers as well as his own; in comparison, her skin dips into it… how burns on his tongue but he says nothing.)
She turns to him, her head tilted in curiosity some, and she just… stands there. Thin and pale and scarred and completely naked without shame or thought. And that tastes like regret, that she’s been raised up like this, that she doesn’t expect privacy, doesn’t bother with modesty, because she never had a reason to. The Wars take their pound of flesh, and left this girl without the idea that she should-could cover herself. Could turn away, refuse, say no.
Her lack of modesty is something that shames him more than it shames her. It is not enduring, not an ideal. Just another red mark against him.
He turns away and she finally climbs into the bath, a cloud of filth spreading out from her as weeks of dirt and grime and dried blood peel away from her skin. She sits in one end, still watching him as he moves around the little wash room, tugging open cupboard doors and watching the rotten, water-logged door crumple in his hand. Vermin and insects have eaten away at any linens left behind, and water and time finished the job.
They don’t speak as he slips from the room, leaving her in the cold water, waiting for… whatever it is that she’s always waiting for.
—
She sinks into the water when the Major leaves her to wash, and scrubs at her arm with her hand, eyeing the cake of forgotten soap in its dirty little dish. The soap has been left behind and broken down into some mould-riddled pulp that looks almost organic in its curdled decay - it fascinates her, honestly. It’s so innocent, yet so repulsive, a mundane little reminder that nothing last forever. At least, nothing should.
(It’s easy to focus on little things, like rotten soap or the blood dried pink in the Major’s hair, than bigger things. Like her visions. Like the fact that this was never supposed to be their fate. That she hasn’t seen anything in weeks, since they fled. She has no idea what will become of them, truly, and it is ice-cold, hard knowledge that she cannot outrun, that she will not acknowledge.)
Stretching out in the tub, she smiles at the idle thought the she cannot even reach the other end with her toes - unless she submerges herself and stretches right out. Maybe then.
She has to wash her hair, pick out tiny leaves and sticks and crumbs of dirt and matted blood. Will have to wash out her dress, too; it was gingham once. Now it’s just brown. Brown like mud, brown like the bathwater, brown like the dried rivulets of old blood running down her neck. If she ever gets to choose, she thinks she’d like a blue dress. A blue dress with a yellow ribbon around the waist.
(Why can’t she see?)
—
He prowls through the rooms of the house that are still accessible, peeling off things that might be useful - he finds an old wooden comb; a mouldy bedsheet that he rips in half to salvage; and a long-sleeved dress, decades out of style, but perhaps small enough to suit Mary-Alice. It was grey once, and now has water marks and ragged moth holes, but it’s far and away better than what she was wearing.
(He finds himself a cleaner shirt, a little mouldy but certainly wearable. His pants will last until their next hunt - Mary-Alice is a quick study in which human’s clothing will fit him. She might even be convinced into stealing some clothing from a forgotten washing line, so that she finally has something that covers her properly, something that doesn’t leave her vulnerable and exposed.)
Back in the washroom, Mary-Alice looks somewhat cleaner, but not entirely. She straightens up in the bath as he walks back in, curiosity in her eyes at the items that he’s carrying. She always liked getting new clothes back in the South, always inspected each dress she was issued, as if she had to make a choice and didn’t just have to settle for the closest fit, for whatever colour and fabric and style was in the mixed-up pile.
(She always did a little twirl when she tried them on, a little spin as she looked down at her new prize. It was… endearing. Sweet. Hopeful. He didn’t know if she realised that she did it, or that he noticed. He never said anything, but he was always sorry when she came back from a battle with a new tear or stain - she always appreciated her clothes so damn much.)
He nods at her, and she rests her chin on the edge of the tub, her gaze following him as he walked around the room.
The new dress and shirt are folded carefully on top of the bedsheet, so damn obvious in their surroundings like offerings to a pagan god.
(Perhaps prayers for a rebirth, for a revolution and a revelation. New clothes for a new age.
He’s already getting sentimental over a few lengths of moth-eaten fabric.)
When he turns back around, she’s still watching him with that vacant, but half-starved look, grime still streaked on her face.
“Has it helped?” he asks, sitting down by the tub. They are nearly face-to-face this way, neither looking up nor down. Her eyes are darkening, to a deep rose-red. They still have another few days, maybe a week, before they have to hunt again.
“Has what helped?” she asks, confused.
“The bath.” He looks at the stone floor, at the little veins of dirt running through it. “I thought it might help.”
She shifts in the tub, so he can only see the top of her nose and her eyes above the rim, shadows rippling over her face.
“Help?”
He swallows and looks at her. Really looks at her. At the dark circles under her eyes that seem deeper because of the fear. At the way she shrinks back but never breaks her gaze.
(A slim hand gripping his shirt sleeve when the nomads approached them, tucking herself behind him. That had surprised him; he’d never seen Mary-Alice back away from a threat before.)
“I know…” he begins, and he wants to reach out and hold her. But they aren’t there, they don’t casually touch in that way. This was his choice, and he dragged her along for it with little consideration for her, just laser focus on getting them both away.
“I know you didn’t see this coming…” he tries again and he doesn’t finish that sentence before Mary-Alice shudders and folds in on herself, burying her face in her hands.
And crying.
—
He reaches for her, instinctually; her tiny frame shaking as she tries to contain whatever she’s feeling.
(She cries like a little child; little wobbly sobs into her hands with shiny red eyes that will never produce tears but secrete venom down her face, more viscous than the venom from their mouth. It burns white stains on clothing, their faux tears do. Venom from their mouths and limbs eats through most fabrics and papers quickly. But that’s not why he wants to mop up her face and hold her tight.
He wants to because she’s scared and worried and feels like she’s alone. And he never, ever wants anyone else to feel that way, not when he can make a difference.)
The water sloshes in the tub as he climbs in, fully clothed. If the water was cloudy when it was first tipped into the tub, now it’s completely opaque - they would get a better wash, in cleaner water, if they just waded out into the rain-swollen river. She looks up at him with a breath that almost sounds like a gasp, as he sinks into the water, and pulls her into his arms.
“It’s alright,” he murmurs, her thin arms wrapping around his neck, and she pushes her face against the rough, reeking fabric of his shirt and maybe there’s a corner of his mind that is a little embarrassed at the state of him when she’s this close, but she’s naked and looking so very broken that she takes priority, not some half-forgotten lessons on gentlemanly behaviour in the back of his head. It’s not like he’s ever been a particular gentleman to her before.
“I can’t see,” she says, and she shudders with misery and sobs. “I can’t see anything, and I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
Gently rocking her, he ran his hands through her hair, freeing a few small tangles and some debris gently.
“It’s alright,” he says again, because he really is lost at what to say to fix this. To apologise and soothe and heal and repent.
“No. It’s not,” she leans back, and he’s enchanted by her. By her mussed hair, and her big red eyes, and the sheen of venom clinging to the fan of her eyelashes. She really is truly lovely - he thought that the day he found her, with a wide smile and emotions that leapt out at him in their strength and purity. He could have led her anywhere, and she wouldn’t have questioned him. Or rather, she would have, but in excitement and trust. Not in fear or suspicion.
(He aches to go back and make it right. He’s watched her since they left; the blank, cold way she has moved around. Just utterly dull and uncomfortable. Peter had voiced the suspicion that it was him and Charlotte that had been making her so unhappy, that perhaps she hadn’t wanted to leave but had needed to follow the Major’s orders above all else. But even now, weeks after leaving Peter and Charlotte in New York, she was still so miserable, a shadow of all that she had been before - gone was that happy girl he found abandoned in Mississippi; as was the solemn but confident little shadow of the Wars. She was like a marionette with the strings cut away, like an abused animal limping into freedom reluctantly, scared of another set of tests and traumas.
And all of that is his fault.)
“It is. None of us know what’s going to happen next. That’s how it is,” he tries but she scowls.
“We never would have gotten this far if I hadn’t seen,” she murmurs, ducking her head. “I need… it protects all of us.”
It takes him a minute to comprehend what she’s saying - the scope and scale of her gift; of her efforts to protect and guide and manipulate. Of the fact that she was never just looking after herself; that she had stretched and warped herself into the shield that protected him and his.
(‘All of us’ is not just them. It is him, and her, and Peter and Charlotte. And he’s seen the way she and Peter stare at each other, at the way Charlotte inches away from Mary-Alice with varying degrees of subtlety. The only reason for her to have guarded them is because they were his friends. His people. And that is a layer of devotion, of kindness, and of power that he’s not sure how to compute, how to articulate.)
“…You did that for us?” he finally manages, pushing a soggy lock of hair out of her eyes, ignoring the rust-coloured stain it leaves on his fingers. They’ve both been hunting a little more viciously in this part of the country, where easy prey is harder to come by. Bloody hair is hardly their biggest problem.
She blinks and frowns. “Of course. We were meant to…” And she trails off, and for once, he feels something from her. Sadness, disappointment, and grief all tangled up. Something that was lost, then; something that couldn’t be retrieved.
His hand slips to cradle her cheek and he has a million things to say and he doesn’t know what to say first.
(I’m sorry, let me protect you, let me fix this, let me fix you. Let me stay with you, let me touch you, let me make you smile again.)
“How does it work?” he asked. “Your gift?” She’s leaning into his touch and he wonders if she notices. He wonders if it’s just wishful thinking on his part.
“Decisions. The outcomes of choices. Things can change,” she says quietly, “but I’d see that as well.”
(She smells like flowers and salt, even now.)
“Does that mean you haven’t made a choice yet?” he asked, his thumb stroking her cheek.
Mary-Alice shrugged. “I don’t know what choice to make,” she said.
It’s such a simple answer, such an easy problem, and he marvels at it for a moment. The idea that she’s been guided by her visions for so long - a hand pulling her along in the dark - that she can’t bring herself to move forward on an unknown path… it indicates so much power, so much discipline, and such a burden. That, to her, any wrong step on the tight-rope could ruin everything.
“What about a small decision?” he asked, and watched as her hands fell to his shirt, to the few buttons that still clung onto the fabric. “What’s something that you want?”
He can see the thoughts turn over in her head, watches her bite her lip and she looks at him like she can see right through him, see every thought and dream and regret he’s ever had before she breaks her gaze and looks back down at his chest.
“I want…” she begins, and another hint of emotion brushes by him, half gone before he can identify it - embarrassment.
“What do you want?” he asks again, covering her hands with his and she looks at him again with a desperate, starving look.
“I want us to stay together.” Her voice is soft and sad but hopeful. “Please.”
(He wasn’t expecting that.
Not at all.)
“I want that too,” he manages hoarsely.
And she looks at him, her face a portrait of unfiltered surprise. He doesn’t ever want to lose her, to let her go. To let her down. He wants… he wants to find her somewhere safe and peaceful, where her dresses fit properly and she smiles. He’s spent so many years using her as a crutch, as a way to keep himself functioning and alive, with no knowledge that she was already protecting him the very best she could, that he wants to repay her, desperately.
“Okay.” She nods and curls against his shoulder, threading the buttons through each buttonhole of his shirt. Pushing the sides of his shirt aside until he sits up long enough to peel it off and fling it onto the floor, she lies half-sprawled across him, occasionally wiping dirt and blood off him.
(For a moment, he feels her - skin to skin, in the dirty bathwater. They are fragile, her emotions, ephemeral and easily missed. But it is more that he ever felt from her before - little flutters of hope and reassurance, relief and a deep well of devotion; devotion to him.)
They sit there, tangled up in each other, for awhile - until she goes rigid for a few moments and then blinks up at him.
“We’ll be together,” she says, shifting against him, and he wishes they could sleep, just so they could do so curled in each other’s arms. “I can see that.”
He doesn’t know why (or won’t admit it) but he presses his lips to her forehead; despite the amount of times they’ve been together (on his terms, always), this gesture is strangely intimate, oddly binding.
They’ll be together.
That’s a future that will never change.
—
He finally strips off and they sink into the dirty water entangled, sponging off dirt with the use of his shirt, when he insists he found a cleaner one. She drags the comb through his curls so gently; her fingers teasing out each piece of debris, each snarl and knot. He attempts to salvage some of the soap for their hair, but it is a disgusting and futile endeavour.
(And maybe it’s worth it because she almost laughs; the mirth bubbling faintly as they both eye the mess.)
He wants to ask her questions about what she has seen, what was lost, and what comes next. But he doesn’t want to, not yet. There’s something more tangible between them now; soft and almost new, unlike what they’ve had in the past. He already likes this little bubble they’ve found themselves in - the way she wraps her arms around his neck and clings to him like she’s going to be torn away from him. The way she presses her face against his neck, he can feel her inhaling, nuzzling closer. He loves that already, that she wants to get closer, that despite everything, she’s so open about taking her comforts from him.
(He wants to press kisses to her cheeks, and cradle her in his arms properly. He wants to watch her spin in new dresses and memorise every mark and every scar on her skin. He wants this peace, this conviction that they’ve both finally found each other in the right place at the right time - a new certainty that has settled into him out of nowhere - to stay forever.)
Her lips quirk against his skin, and he thinks she might have smiled, and he tightens his arms around her.
(The next kiss he gives her will be one she asks for. He promises himself that.)