An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
I have done it! I'm back!
No, not a podfic (yet?) but my first fandom content since the pandemic started🥳
Whipstaff Manor hasn’t seen the last of the Harveys!
With an unknown amount of time left on the property, Kat’s search for the Lazarus Elixir unearths new memories, while James prepares to help the McFaddens in his own way. With an additional ghost in the house, things promise to get complicated.
And one question remains:
“Kat, what if I had another unfinished business, one I have forgotten?”
Her sacrifice in black little dots, marking a path that will no longer exist once she fades away. Her decision to save the city she loved, balanced by her life cut short. --> A hauntingly beautiful f
“Her sacrifice in black little dots, marking a path that will no longer exist once she fades away. Her decision to save the city she loved, balanced by her life cut short.”
-> A hauntingly beautiful fanfiction from the beginning of the fandom that no fan should miss out on!
36:46 minutes
Reader: Podfic-Chicklet
Beta: @rhythmelia (a wonderfully spontaneous human being with an eye… ehm… ear for details…)
Authors: @gigiree @kryallaorchid , and @princessofharte
The words always lingered in the back of her mind, haunting her. Oh, she had believed, believed in him with all her heart. A belief whose birth and death had been only precious moments apart.
*
When her cousin had lost a baby girl only a few months ago, hardly a word of condolence had been offered. Since half the children never reached their second summer those things were considered part of their everyday living. And a girl’s life was considered even more dispensable. True sympathy was preserved for deaths of strong, healthy children who had (against all odds) survived past the age of twelve, and strong sons who were close to provide for their own families.
Jack had been both.
It is my fault.
Her brother's death had pushed their family in a situation even direr than her father's passing the year prior, forcing her mother to surrender herself to a man more deserving of a wild boar than a righteous woman such as her.
It should have been me, not him.
She knew this, as the words were another constant resident in her mind. And the villagers never missed a chance to remind her of this despite their courteous words. Day after day, year after year.
Three graves were all she had left of her family. Two bodies, for her hero’s had never been found, robbing them all of a proper closure. She stares at the newest headstone, wishing to feel the loss appropriate for her mother's death. The feeling evades her, as it has for months.
She leaves.
*
It is past midnight when she hears the door slam open. Her mother's widower has returned.
Drunk.
Again.
He had never been a decent man but had pulled himself together. Especially so when he'd learned of the unborn child growing inside his wife. A child who had sealed his mother's fate and lived with another family now in need of milk and care.
She does not hate her newest sibling, for he was innocent. But there was no love for the infant either.
She does not fight when the man she'd never called 'father' intrudes her privacy, fueling his rage with indifference. He promises to make her pay. She doesn't know for what but does not mind the pain. Pain is a solid proof of life. He rolls off afterward and she gets up.
No one sees her, as she closes the door behind her, wearing nothing but her night grown.
She welcomes the cold and dark of the moonless winter night. Her bare feet are numb by the time she reaches the pond. She has come on her own, but she isn't alone any longer. His presence is undeniable; she feels his movements more than she sees them.
She knows him that well.
He had tormented her in her childhood, until the very moment she had let go of her fears. They had taken her dreams and hopes with them, leaving a hollow emptiness in their absence. He had left the empty shell she'd made herself be, only to return frequently to her to see if he had truly lost his victim.
The Shadow will not stop her, it is the only certainty she has. And yet his voice rings out to her the moment her weight leaves the save shoreline.
“What an ungrateful act in the face of the sacrifice made at this very place.”
“Heroism and commonsense rarely mate.”
He is amused by her reply, his dark chuckles breaking the silence of the night. But he still does not stop her.
The ice groans beneath her, sending an electrifying jerk up her spine.
Not fear...
Anticipation.
She has to walk all the way to the water's center until the first cracks web underneath her pale feet.
She is ready.
“This is just me being curious: Is there nothing left to fight for, anything? Anyone?” his tone is casual, almost bored.
She'd rather be alone.
He is right next to her, studying her like a child watching ants burn under a magnifying glass. He had witnessed the events, which had spared her life so many years ago. She knows this because he possessed a fondness of repeating every detail to her in her sleep.
But not tonight. Never again.
The ice groans another warning.
“There is nothing left!” she almost cries, but therefore she would have to feel the emotions behind it, which she doesn't. Her voice sounds nasal from the cold.
The ice shifts slightly, when a sudden wind tries to push her towards the shore. Towards safety, towards life. She can't wait to trade it for the water's smothering embrace.
“Well, then...” his oily voice dripping with an emotion she cannot name, ”I am sure you no longer have use for the knowledge I came to deliver.”
Her patience wears thin. With her companion as well as the ice. Why wouldn't it break under her already, as it had done so easily under her child-weight?
Her silence elates his mood further, bordering on ecstasy. “For I have come to know your brother is still out there... Lonely and… oh, so confused.”
Their eyes lock, the flood of her questions temporally blocked by the onslaught of emotions.
Her companion smiles, knowing something she does not.
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