Chapter Text
The river groaned in the dark with an unnatural hunger, the current whipping across braided beds, foaming and salivating as though the mouth of a canine overcome and rabid on its last breath; the sickness gnawing on anything it touched, biting at the chill in the air as if it could destroy the stars.
Tears poured violently down softened flesh. Eyes reddened and raw, vision clouded in grief
“Our Father has called them home.”
Her fingers clawed at her chest, at the earth squelching against her knees, her hands, her feet, as she sank, mud and reeds creeping against her skin, pulling her farther, shrouding her in falsehoods, in the promise of endings as the light from the windows was lost within the fog and the distance.
There was nothing now. Nothing left. Her heart torn from her ribs and left beating against bloodied cloth, now strewn in discarded piles along cold wood.
She grasped at stones, filling her pockets with the weight of her loss, the fractured bedrock smoothed against torrents of time, colliding in and out of sequence with muttered clacking as if mocking her in distorted echoes of her pleading, the path carved of broken steps and stumbling cries across the hillside as God itself turned its face away.
The water snuck up along fraying cotton, the icy chill slicing through the pain with a numbing certainty, her eyes locked onto the distorted silhouette of trees across the bank and the shadows of asters untouched by hateful winds. An unreachable horizon where they awaited her.
There was no witness, no voice screaming into the night, as her lungs filled with black and her body was lost to the silent roar that marked the land.
A death paid in smeared sorrow.
“Nicky, my love, don’t stay out past dark!” Agatha called from the manor as her daughter’s figure fell away past the dip in the meadow.
She moved with an unbridled speed, dresses catching in the rush of tall grass and wildflowers blurred within the movement, the afternoon light warm and radiant across olive skin and dark hair.
Her mother worried, though she pretended not to; her words projecting confidence, while her eyes seemed to hold endless reflections of darkness as though a witness to worlds unseen. Nickola had sought comfort in those eyes, love in those eyes, growing in their gaze despite often feeling like a stranger in their sapphiric depths.
A young woman now, three and twenty, breathing in the wilds of an estranged estate of her grandmother's. A place of crumbling foundations. A home they were now forced to claim.
They had arrived late that morning, ripped from their lives in the city in the wake of Evanora’s passing. Her mother refused to speak of why she had never met her. In truth, she refused to speak of much at all since the executor had delivered their sentences.
She was used to it, the secrets, their presence a defining trait of the woman that was Agatha Harkness.
Of course, there were times when she wondered if her mother had ever been different, less withholding, but it was a fruitless effort. So questions were left unspoken, actions left to interpretation, and Nickola became an observer while her curiosity festered behind the walls.
But now, she was here, drifting across the lost acres of her mother’s childhood; an imposing manor of grey stone, sprawling with veins of dormant ivy and endless grids of latticed windows, looming among rounded hills and snaking waters with a ghastly presence, softened only by the perrineal flowers that painted the grasses in endless clusters of delicate petals.
She let her fingers dance along their stems, the buzz and beating of insects harmonizing with the encroaching rapids of the river and the last traces of summer swirling against the wind.
Her skin prickled at the sensation as it rippled along her spine.
She wasn’t sure whether to smile or to frown, repeating the motion again and again as her mind tried to make sense of it.
The feeling of it.
As if she were not alone.
She shook it off, refusing to linger in the absurdity.
Her steps returned in stride, wandering through the stretches of overgrowth and rock along the river with an indulgent aimlessness as the sun began to lower across the sky and cast the clouds in pink.
She kept to her mother’s wishes, returning to the front hall before the dusk settled.
“There you are. Can you help me with these?”
Agatha approached her with an award gait, her face blocked by an assortment of buckled cases and boxes balanced haphazardly across rolled sleeves.
Nickola reached for them as they split the burden, “Where do you want them?”
“Anywhere I can’t see them.” Agatha huffed under her breath.
“What’s in them?”
But her mother was already halfway down the east hall, her hair falling out of its bun in disorganized waves across her shoulders, her trousers and blouse stained in effort.
Nickola tried to place herself in the space, the tour she was given that morning now feeling like a distant memory as she stared at the seemingly endless corridors of the manor, the stairway climbing up the expansive space in hidden corners and wooded archways.
She picked a direction blindly, walking towards the back of the house along creaking floors and dimming lightbulbs, the smell of mildew and dust flooding her senses with an agitating itch across her nose as she struggled with the disorganized weight threatening to spill from her hands.
The hallway was littered with faded portraits and unrecognizable faces, their eyes glazed with neglect as if they hadn’t borne witness to the living in centuries, but beneath their frames were gilded tags and dates far more recent than their aging.
Nickola stopped at one in particular, a painting of a young woman, her hair tamed in gorgeous sweeping curls, her pale skin blushed, her neck concealed in frilly white lace that cascaded in ruffles along her shoulders. She was ethereal, beautiful, a picture of elegance, but it was the eyes that caught her, those eyes she would recognize anywhere. The ones she didn’t inherit.
“Ah, I see you found her.”
The sound made Nickola jump, the cases tumbling from her hands in a disjointed crash.
Her mother walked towards her, smacking calloused hands along dark pants with an amused look on her face.
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” She questioned casually.
“That you were…” Nickola looked for the words, her mind still fighting to steady her heart from the sudden disruption.
“Prim and proper? A perfect young lady? A blooming rose?” Agatha laughed.
Nickola thought about it, staring between the image and her mother. The woman who walked through life in sharp, tailored silhouettes, thick boots, and masculine rings. It was unsettling, seeing her like that, like a woman trapped.
“Well… yes. ”
“Only in appearances, dear. Trust me.”
Without any other comment, Agatha opened the nearest door in the hallway and, one by one, threw the broken pile into the darkened room, the boxes and cases crashing and shattering with a comical flourish of grunts, before she slammed it closed completely. The sound reverberated across the scene, striking Nickola with the stark reminder of her mother’s avoidance.
“Now, let’s eat.”