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Realistic or Modern Phantom Voices | ellarose & Syntra

Clara's wings melted away the moment her boots clicked down on the tiled floor. (And some part of her may or may not have melted at Thea's suggestion of taking her on a coffee date before the cooks and their knives took precedence. Wait. Did she even use the word date, or did she just come up with that on her own? Geez.) Overwhelmed, she stood stock still through the confrontation. She had nothing to say as they were whisked from one place to the next. As far as she was concerned, she had used up all of her remaining words for that day on the story they just told. And for all the effort it took, the reward was barely even worth it. (Still, she wasn't so dazed that she forgot to collect her belongings before they were led to the kitchen. She took her sketchbook from their table and held it protectively to her chest-- as if it were a lost child.) With a small frown, she experimentally opened kitchen cabinets and peered inside them for things they could use. Like what? A bowl? Maybe a-- a rolling pin? She felt lightheaded, because she didn't know the first thing about making pies. Nobody taught her, she never got around to learning on her own, and... she and her brother primarily survived on instant dinners and take out, okay? No one ever told her that her life would depend on whether or not she could make a banging peach pie.

Then Lizzie's voice floated into the room. Clara cautiously approached the pot Thea was peering into to get a glimpse of her as well.

"...Really? We've been asked to jump through hoops for answers all night and so far we've gotten next to nothing." Clara was at her limit, her frustrations tied her up in complicated knots. "I'm sick and tired of talking and trying to-- to reason through this when none of it makes any sense."

"Sorry, Bea. I forgot. Some little girls don't have mommies around to tell them what's right and what's wrong." Lizzie shook her head pityingly and Clara flinched as if she'd been slapped. What the hell? (The nickname, for one, took her off guard. Not that it should, considering that the teacher had known her and Thea's real names the moment they stepped foot inside the school. It wasn't just that, though. The knowledge about her mother cut deep... and the way they registered felt undeniably familiar. Lizzie's face, her voice, the words she spoke... a series of images flashed in her head. An argument breaking out in a room filled with other kids, crying and screaming and shattering under the pressure. Lizzie had yanked hard on one of her braids, shouting about her mother and how she was going to rescue her. How in comparison, with a dead mother and deatbeat father, that no one was even going to even notice that Beatrice Sawyer was missing.)

'Lizzie was a selfish brat. She was cruel to you. Most children are, aren't they dove?' The voice slipped into her mind, smooth as silk. '...And now you're going to try and save her? If you ask me, you should tell her to get lost and fend for herself.'

Clara gave this information time to set in, along with everything else. The detail about herself and Thea being lambs who escaped the same slaughter, the room filled with children that cut through her mind like a knife. Vital details were still missing. How was Lizzie killed-- and-- and why was she killed? That axe-murderer turned zombie said something about a mission. What kind of mission involved kidnapping, torturing and... murdering... children?

'She was just a kid. We were all... kids. Scared out of our minds and...' Clara blinked rapidly and hugged her sketchbook tighter. A searing pain in the back of her head made her ears ring. She could feel her heart breaking, too. Because Lizzie really, truly thought her mother would come for her in time. She lived a sheltered life where her parents were safe, where they were always there for her. So when Clara's know-it-all self insisted that they needed to think instead of wishing that somebody would swoop in and save them, their argument broke out-- there was plenty of blank space in there, blocking out most of the events that followed, but either way. Lizzie was dead now and there was no one who could bring her back. But maybe she and Thea could still do something for her. On and on. She was stuck in some sort of loop, wasn't she? 'No matter what Lizzie said, she didn't deserve to die.'

"...You have a mommy, Thea. You know what it's like. She always had all kinds of good advice for you, didn't she? Did you learn something?" Lizzie continued, ignoring Clara. "Tick, tick, tick. Time is running out. You better hurry!"
 
You know what would have been nice to receive after a series of bullshit trials? Something that, for once, wasn't another bullshit trial! Just, seriously. This was like fighting a fucking dragon in hopes of earning a princess's hand, only to find out your reward was getting to duke it out with a dragon #2. (Great for the dragon-killing industry, Thea guessed, but not really for someone who'd prefer a nice, comfy wedding instead. ...then again, the knight should probably woo his girl in the old-fashioned way instead of expecting she would literally fall into his lap because he happened to be good at swinging his sword. Like??? The fucking entitlement was off the charts! A princess wasn't a trophy to be given away, which... okay, okay, okay, the initial metaphor might have sucked. Still, her complaints were valid, and you could bet your ass she was going to call Lizzie out on her bullshit!)

"You say that now," Thea pointed an accusatory finger at the face floating in the pot, "but how do we know that is what's gonna happen, huh? So far, every single denizen of this bullshit fucking dimension has tried to fuck us over. Can you guarantee that this isn't another trap? Like, I dunno. You could be trying to get us to admit to our insecurities," which she didn't actually have, thank you very much, "so that you could adjust your... your illusions, or whatever they are. Just like youtube ads, you want them to be personalized!"

'That's my crow,' the demon cooed in her head. 'How clever of you, indeed, to not trust everything she tells you. Isn't Lizzie the ruler of this dimension? Everything, everything happens because she wants it to happen! The voice that guided you here belonged to her, too. I'm sure she gets a kick out of watching you wander endlessly, like two rats stuck in a maze, while she... hey. Hey, little crow. What are you doing?'

'Cause, at that point? At that point, Thea put her hand down and bowed to the girl instead. "Sorry, Lizzie. I, uh... I guess I exploded? I dunno, shit's been tense, with us almost getting murdered by squirrels and then becoming the best storytellers in the whole wide world within the span of thirty minutes." And getting possessed, repeatedly, almost drowning to death, being chased by a fucking Resident Evil reject-- just take your pick, really. The night hadn't even ended, either, so Thea assumed the selection would actually grow larger soon!

'What?' she thought with all her mind, hoping the demon would hear. 'Doing the opposite of what you tell me seems like a solid fucking plan, in the light of everything. And, no, don't even think of reverse psychologing me! I know that you know now, so it's not gonna work. Sucker.'

'Have you considered that I know that you know that I know, though?'

'God fucking dammit.'

Anyway, yeah. The stuff she had learned? All of this still seemed like a bad joke, really-- a joke where she was the punchline, too, considering how Lizzie kept dancing around some juicy piece of information she just wouldn't share. You know, info that actually related to her! ...still, the demon had advised her not to cooperate, so naturally, Thea had to be as helpful as possible. "Eh," she scratched the back of her head, "I'm not sure if you want to drag my mother into this. Like, I can see her grand insight being 'don't go to cemeteries at nights,' or something like that. Hmm, hmm. I guess I learned Clara's eyes are pretty?" ...what? To her, that was an important detail. Every girl with pretty eyes made this shit planet slightly more habitable! "Also, that knives are sharp. I guess it doesn't count, though, because I knew beforehand. So, uhhh... 'Don't trust a fucker with no face?' Seems like a motto to live by, honestly." It also didn't seem like the right answer, however, so Thea searched some more. "Schools suck. Peach pies aren't worth it. Don't believe for a second you can escape your trauma. Uhhh... me and Clara are a pretty good team, I guess?" 'Cause, hey, they were still alive, and in the middle of this clusterfuck, that had to count for something! (The blush on her cheeks? Just a side effect of... thinking. Yep, thinking. More blood had to flow into her brain and shit, so don't try to look for ~hidden meanings~ in what was actually completely normal anatomy! Hahaha. Haha. Ha.)

Bizarrely enough, that seemed to please Lizzie. "Yes, yes! You always were, you know. It wasn't nice of me, but I was a little bit jealous. Actually,' she looked away from them, suddenly shy, 'I... I may feel a little jealous now, too. I know it's an ugly feeling to have, and mommy would be sad, but it's just... not fair. Why do you get to live when my body is rotting in the library? Hmm? Explain!'
 
"We... always were." Clara said cautiously, her serious brow furrowing and framing her... 'pretty eyes'? (Okay. There was seriously too much to process about all of this without Thea's-- Thea's observations sprinkled in the mix. There were only so many times she could deny that she ever heard her name and the word 'pretty' in the same sentence! This wasn't exactly subtle and-- and she knew wouldn't have the capacity to deal with this on a normal day, so how could she possibly deal with it right now? So instead of dealing with it, she pretended like she never heard it... but not without furiously blushing against her will first.) Anyways. If they were 'lambs that escaped the same slaughter', then surely she and Thea must have known each other as children. And Lizzie was even going as far as to imply that they were close back then? Blurry snippets rocked through her head. It was dizzying, quite frankly, and impossible to pull any specific moment into focus. That was what happened when you were traumatized, right? Especially as a child. As a defense mechanism, the brain blocked out the memories that hurt the most. Forgotten but not lost-- not necessarily. Flashbacks (and ghosts, apparently) could bring a painful past rushing back with the chaotic force of a tidal wave. Thea did seem familiar to her, and yet-- even when she made a conscious effort to imagine her several years younger, she drew a blank. "...So this isn't the first time we've met."

"Well, yeah. Come on, Bea. You weren't always this slow!" Lizzie rolled her eyes. "Now hurry up and answer my question!"

"I-- I can't." Clara shook her head, her puzzled expression fading with a trifle of regret. Despite any hard feelings they may have had back then, she felt bad for the girl. Of course she did. Still. "I don't remember much. And even if I did... ah." A relentless, bloodcurdling scream pierced through her mind with so much force that she was knocked to her knees. Wincing, she dropped her sketchbook and brought her hands to her head as it began to pound. The library. Musty and dark, men in hoods chanting, screaming-- so much screaming.

The water in the pot began to bubble up a bit, as if reflecting the anger of the expression floating on the surface. Steam curled in the air.

"You can't remember or you don't want to?" Lizzie pushed back. "I'm dead. I've been left behind and neither of you care!"

The kitchens went full on horror movie then. The linoleum lights above their heads flickered, cupboards violently swung open and closed. Adding in the context that this was a ghost child throwing a tantrum over her hand in life, though--

The demon was trying to get through to her. She could tell because she could just barely make out the word 'dove'. But that was it-- there was interference blocking it out. Maybe because a ghost was forcibly feeding lost memories into her brain and it could only take so much at once? Well, at least one good thing came of it.

It hurt. Clara wanted to ask-- even beg-- for her to make it stop. A puddle of blood spread and deepened over floorboards in her mind. And yet she also had the vaguest feeling that she had to absorb it if she and Thea wanted to make it out of here. Lizzie was in pain and wanted them to share in that. Out of jealousy and hurt, which were completely understandable given how it all ended for her. Maybe that explained the whole 'worst fears' bit they were confronted with at the very beginning of all of this. She can't insist how her past self might have felt, witnessing this. (...Surely she must have cared. But claiming that she cared when she honestly couldn't remember how she'd felt would ring hollow, wouldn't it? Lying through her teeth to be spared-- that wouldn't work. The faceless 'teacher' disliked lies, didn't it?)

"I learned earlier that you hate lies. I'm not lying when I say I can't remember." Clara insisted. Suddenly her head felt slightly lighter, the harsh images fading like old photographs... she collected her sketchbook and rose back up to her feet. "I can't. But we're here now. We care now. Right, Thea?"

The water in the pot stilled and Lizzie's frustrated expression lost some of its contortion.

"...You've been stuck in a loop for years now, haven't you?" Clara observed, opening her sketchbook and leafing through the pages to find her list. Thoughtfully, she traced her fingertips over the words that Lizzie had given them up to that point. "You were calling us for help."
 
...oookay. Okay, okay, okay! You know what? Thea was entirely fine with this bitch-ass development, thank you very much. A haunted school seemingly designed by a survival horror enthusiast? Cool, why not! Great for preparing you for the terrors of the real world, she guessed. Once you survived this bullshit, after all, you'd probably be happy to pay your taxes! Demons invading your fucking head? For her, that was just a regular Tuesday. Creepy little girls supposedly knowing A LotTM about your past? Like, way more than Thea herself did? A gross violation of the privacy laws, but again, not exactly groundbreaking. Since everyone and their mother had sold their soul to Google already, it kind of shocked her that the legislation still remained in place! (Like??? Did it not strike them as kinda... useless? Might as well create laws that would forbid people from breathing and shit-- although, now that she thought if it, that might actually be sorta useful. No silly hairless apes = no global warming! An, uh, the crime rate reaching an all time low, along with unemployment, world hunger and all those scary, scary things important people in fancy suits read newspapers for. There were literally no disadvantages to this outcome-- all of her enemies would get wiped out, too, so Thea's soul could rest in peace.)

But, anyway. Lizzie continued to prove that she shouldn't be trusted with any information at all, let alone sensitive fucking data-- being killed was sad and shit, but it still didn't give you the license to act like a jackass. ...or did it? Hmmm. Had she known death came with these swell benefits, Thea would have let herself be killed ages ago! As a spooky, spooky ghost, she would have hunted down all those creepy men in suspicious masks, and... hey, wait a goddamn second. Fucking what? What men? What masks? Where the fuck had that memory emerged from?

(A different scene came to the surface in her mind, then-- her, standing in the living room, and her mother kneeling in front of her. 'Stop making things up, Thea. Don't you know that nobody likes liars?' 'But, but, but!' her younger self shouted, tears streaming down her cheeks. 'It really happened. Listen, mommy, I remember it! There was a forest, and we were trying to hide, and Bea told me we had to run in opposite directions otherwise the bad men would find us, and--' Like a whip, disappointment cracked in her mother's voice. 'Bea? I think I told you to never mention that name again! You're too old for imaginary friends by now, Thea. Why won't you grow up?' 'But Bea was...' The slap that followed made her take a few steps back-- instinctively, she touched her cheek, and it was pulsating with pain, and this... this couldn't be right. Just, couldn't! Mommy had never hit her before, so this clearly had to be some kind of mistake. 'Mommy...?' Thea looked up, with heartbroken astonishment in her eyes. 'Go back to your room,' was the only response she received. Which, wow, some A+ parenting technique! A great fucking recipe to raising a well-adjusted kid, Thea was sure. ...but also, also had that actually happened? Like yeah, coincidence could be a bitch, though you'd need like 4554566 coincidences for her not-memory to match this situation so closely, and mathematically speaking, that was unlikely. Yep, even more unlikely than apparently being hunted as a kid!)

When Lizzie began to channel her inner poltergeist, though? Thea grabbed the table, solely because it looked solid enough. "Ah, fuck! How the hell are we supposed to care when we don't know you at all, huh? I mean, maybe if you fucking told us what your problem is, we might be able to help." (Or kill her, or blackmail her, or anything that would get the job done, really. ...what? Thea had never promised to be her fucking knight in shining armor. Oh no, no, no. Had she not lured them there under false fucking pretenses, she might have earned a greater degree of loyalty than that from her, too. Communication, bitches! It truly made the world go round.)

"Uhh... Yeah, I guess," she agreed easily, though it wasn't like that really meant something. In order to stop her from berserking, Thea would have confirmed just about anything-- including her being, say, a younger, time-traveling version of Elizabeth II who had decided to prevent the USA from seizing their independence and landed in the wrong century. Since, you know, enraged ghosts generally weren't popular company! And while Thea sort of despised the mainstream, she didn't also have to be a contrarian for the sake of being contrarian in literally everything.

Thankfully, her half-hearted exclamations seemed to please Lizzie. "I... I don't know how long I've been stuck here," the girl admitted, her gaze downcast. "It's hard to count the days, with no calendar or anything like that. I'm sure I missed at least one Christmas, however. More of them, probably. Santa can't deliver gifts here, either, so mommy's house must be full of them now. I bet she can't even find a place to sit down! Poor, poor mommy."

Fine, Thea had to admit, this was sorta sad. (Her sympathy for the girl would have been that much greater had she not dragged them into this living fucking nightmare, but you could hardly blame a kid for not acting like an adult, you see? Their brains literally weren't done developing, and not-living here couldn't have resulted in healthy development. In fact, if all of the ghost stories were based on reality, then Lizzie hadn't aged a day! ...Lizzie, whose face she vaguely remembered, Thea realized. Her face, and her spoiled brat mannerisms as well. How could she have forgotten in the first place? It seemed so vivid now!)

"Alright. Alright, my dude, that sucks. Not getting gifts, I mean! Gifts are the best fucking thing about Christmas-- like, after that cleaning and baking frenzy, everyone should get some type of reward. That's what I believe, at least." Suddenly struck by inspiration, Thea reached into her pocket and pulled out a delicate, silver bracelet. "I'm not Santa, obviously, but wanna have this? For being a good little girl. I can give it to you, if you tell us what we need to do to help you." (Because, yeah, with the new context oh so helpfully provided by her brain, she did want to help, sort of. Funny how these things worked, huh? ...in the distance, her demon shouted some nonsense, but she did what she was best at, ie. continued to ghost him. Hehe, ghost him! Truly, she was the uncrowned fucking queen of comedy.)

And, from the first moment the jewellery left her pocket? Lizzie appeared to be straight up mesmerized. "I... wow. Pretty, pretty, pretty! Can I really have it?"

"Yes, but you need to answer my question first."

"Well, I'm... I'm not sure," Lizzie admitted, suddenly looking very lost,"but being buried would be nice, I think."
 
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"Buried." Clara said breathlessly, flipping her sketchbook closed when she realized there was nothing else to puzzle through. (For now, at least. Lizzie had just given them the answer to their immediate problems, hadn't she? In exchange for Thea's bracelet. Hm. It seemed that simple act of kindness was really all it took to persuade her. Well, they were dealing with a child, after all.) Still. She couldn't bring herself to feel too relieved about it or anything. Because if she was understanding this right, in order to get out of here, they would have to find a dead body and... her stomach flopped like a fish out of water. She felt for Lizzie. She genuinely did. But this was-- ugh. And she thought fishing the keys out of a dead man's mouth was bad! (The components for accomplishing this task were all there. They were close enough to a graveyard. A graveyard where Thea found a shovel. Where Thea took the axe and-- whew-- okay. Focus. Technically, they'd have everything they needed to complete this task once they found Lizzie's body in the library.) But... getting to the graveyard meant walking past that freaky decapitated head she'd punted. It meant-- touching-- carrying a body that'd been shut away inside this school for who knows how long. Not only that, but a van full of that axe-murderer's friends may still have been waiting to ambush them outside. "...And you're sure that's what you want?"

Now that she thought about it, this building was set for demolition soon, wasn't it? It was only a matter of time before Lizzie was buried underground with the ruins of the school anyway. Except-- except there was no way was she going to say that to her face. If the girl's corpse went down with the school, was to say that her spirit wouldn't be trapped inside its shell of it for eternity? Clara wasn't sure how the rules of the afterlife worked, exactly, but... it made sense that in order to free Lizzie, they'd have to separate her from this place. That might break the eternal loop she had found herself in-- might free herself and Thea by proxy.

'Rules of the afterlife?' What, don't judge! Clara believed that it must have some sort of structure, no matter how twisted and absurd this haunted school was. The nature of this place must have reflected the ghost who inhabited it. And considering the ghost in question was a child, then of course a trifle of nonsense would make sense. (Gracious. She was too tired for this, wasn't she?) Still, she couldn't help thinking that if ghosts existed, if she could see and hear them in her head, then why hadn't her mother... Well. There was no need to think about that right now. Maybe she had been able to move on a way Lizzie hadn't. Her mother had still been quite young at the time, but she was still an adult by law, and-- and maybe she didn't get to stick around to see her daughter grow up, but who in their right mind would care enough to stick around and watch that train wreck unfold? Her mother must have known better than anyone that she married a complete piece of--

Anyways. Anyways. She and Thea would probably get buried on demolition day, too, if they couldn't break themselves out of this place soon. If burying a body was what it took, then... seemed like they'd just have to suck it up and comply. Just like everything else they'd suffered through since they walked through the door. Complaining about your lot in life never got you anywhere. Papa might've been a piece of you-know-what, but he certainly taught her a lot.

"Where the fireflies dance on graves." Lizzie nodded resolutely then. "I want to see them before I go away."

"...Right. Of course." Clara sighed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Stuffing her sketchbook back inside her satchel, she fished around for a ribbon and slicked her hair back into a ponytail to get it out of the way. It said rather eloquently that she was preparing herself for this admittedly gross task that they were about to take on.

"Are they still as pretty as you said, Bea? The fireflies?"

"I... haven't come to visit in a while. They don't come out as much this time of year." Clara admitted, taken off guard. Oh. Did she talk about it when they were kids? Well, her brother used to take her to visit as often as he could. Raoul said mom was happy there, because she had been a dancer once and the fireflies danced with her. All sorts of romanticized stories to make her feel better, she supposed. (Or, maybe, to make himself feel better. Because he'd been close to their mother in a way she couldn't have been at the age of three.) Realizing this might sound like a let-down to Lizzie, though, she was quick to add, "Lots of stars out tonight, though. They're sparkly. Um, like Thea's bracelet." Or Thea's eyes, you know, which were also rather pre-- no. Focus.

Lizzie seemed to be letting this sit with her for a moment and Clara decided they had more important things to discuss.

"We'll need a plan. Thea and I have to find the library if we're going to find your body. But we're supposed to be in here, making pie." Clara brought her index finger to her chin. "Lizzie, do you think you could distract the cooks for us? Or... are we going to have to send Thea instead?" She shrugged and looked a bit apologetically at Thea. "I'm just saying. You'd be a thousand times better at it than I would." She took in a deep breath. After all, she's signing herself up for something that's the equivalent of fishing keys out of a dead guy's mouth. "What you showed me just now, Lizzie... ah, I think I remember enough to find you. But I'll need time to do that. And, according to you, time is something we're running short on. Correct?"
 
Burial, huh. Who would have fucking thought? Literally everyone, Thea supposed, because this was basically a staple of the genre-- a wandering ghost who happened to be pissed off re: said wandering did count as a cliche at this point, yeah. At the same time, however? She understood, sort of. Just, imagine having to haunt an abandoned school for years on end! Haunting an actual school with actual schoolchildren could be fun, sure, but with nobody else present, coming up with all those creepy scenarios must have felt like a terrible waste of time. Who would appreciate it, hmm? Spiders? Rats? To Thea, this seemed like casting pearls before swine! Since, you know, spiders hardly had the cognitive abilities to be able to appreciate a well-executed prank. No, their entire thoughtscape probably consisted of ruminating over whether the flies they'd caught were juicy enough, and of badmouthing their neighbors' webs for being too sloppy, and of thinking 'whoa, mate' every time a human passed by and their world shook in its foundations. Not very exciting stuff, as far as Thea was concerned! So, yeah, she did get Lizzie's desire to escape from this solitary freak show, really-- perhaps more than she would have liked to admit, given her own experiences with isolation. ('Hurr durr, you'll get BETteR,' her parents had promised, though Thea personally believed they'd fucked up the spelling. Like, if they'd meant bitter instead, then the statement would have made a lot more sense! ...maybe it was just her conspiracy theory, however, and they actually believed their own bullshit. Inexplicably, that option was more scary.)

"Thanks, friend," Thea quipped nonetheless, before stepping closer to the pot. "Exactly what I wanted to hear. Now, Thea Holloway keeps her fucking word, so there you are! Enjoy your belated Christmas present." And with that? With that, she dropped the bracelet into the water. (In hindsight, it was a good thing she hadn't touched the surface-- mostly because, with a terrifying szszsz, the bracelet fucking melted. Which, okay! Thea was pretty sure that water didn't actually have the properties necessary to melt silver, but it wasn't like literally anything in this stupid quasi-hallucination behaved the way it was meant to. Note to self: don't fucking drink anything till you get out of here.) "Uh. Was that... was that supposed to happen?" she blinked, obviously confused. "Did you get the bracelet? I swear I didn't fucking know this would happen. It had never done shit like that before, at least, but if you let us outside, I suppose I can contact the jeweller and demand my refund. Afterwards, I'll buy you like ten different bracelets!"

"No, no, I've got it!" Lizzie beamed, and inwardly, Thea cursed. Such a good plan, and yet it had been thwarted within seconds! (...fine, fine, they'd bury the girl, she guessed. It wasn't exactly her idea of a pleasant night, but it still ranked infinitely higher than being chopped into a pie, so she wasn't about to complain. High standards, in this fucking economy? Thea didn't bloody think so.) "This is the only way I can claim things," the little girl explained. "I cannot keep anything that doesn't exist on the same plane." ...huh, okay. Some useless philosophy professor would have had a goddamn field day with this, she was sure, but the inner workings of the metaphysical world didn't actually interest her a whole lot, thank you very much-- mostly because of the teeny tiny detail of them risking their fucking lives here, and apparently doing so on borrowed time. Clara, too, seemed to have the same idea.

"Yeah, exactly what I was going to... wait, what?" she looked at her companion, betrayal reflected in her eyes. (Betrayal that quickly morphed into something vaguely resembling bashfulness when she, uh, showered her with compliments. Just, damn. Compliments from cute girls were the best, okay? If Clara phrased it right, she could probably get her to wrestle a goddamn crocodile, and... No, no, no, Thea Holloway! You will not let yourself get manipulated for a pair of pretty eyes. And pretty lips. And pretty, um...) "Oh yeah, no. Weren't you the one who literally sprouted wings? That would be a better distraction than whatever I can pull off, and, uh, if you do it, I'll also buy you a desert. You know, when we go get that coffee." ...what? She may have been impulsive, but she wasn't dumb, dammit, and it didn't take a fucking genius to estimate that aerial combat would be safer than facing all those faceless fucks with her trusty axe only. Clara had to see that, too!

"Oh, that won't be necessary. I can help," Lizzie promised. "Now that I know that you'll help me, nothing will be able to stand in your way! Don't worry about the pie. And as for the library..." The girl clapped, which was an oddly joyful sound, and in reaction to that? In reaction to that, one of the walls fucking moved, only to reveal what Thea supposed had to be a secret entrance-- a secret entrance that led to a hallway with no floor. That alone wouldn't have been so bad, probably, had there also not been lava in its place! And it distinctly was there, because duh, the world just kept looking for new ways to fuck them over. (Innocently, it sizzled, and the bubbles that kept appearing and dying its surface reminded Thea of mommy's goulash. Except that, you see, much less tasty!)

"It's a shortcut," Lizzie pointed out, not very helpfully. "I just played 'the floor is lava,' there, so it may be a little messy." Ah, cool. Why not.

'Pffft! Don't even ask me for help this time, little crow,' the demon laughed, ''cause I won't do it. I may assist with killing the pest, though. Wouldn't it be the easier solution? What do you think, little dove?' the entity turned to Clara. 'You've always been the more reasonable one. Not to sow discord among my darling girls, but you definitely are my favorite!'
 
Clara was going to push it all down in favor of focusing on their task. Even if the revelation just now piled itself on top of everything else and began to resemble a tidal wave in height. One that was about to crash over her head and sweep her away... yes, even then, she was resolved to sink her heels in and stand her ground. So what if there was, apparently, some way to legitimately send things to departed loved ones in the afterlife? (Okay, honestly? She was reeling. Who wouldn't be? But she also knew that to escaping this absolute nightmare of an evening also meant burying a body. And she was quite willing to get it over with so that she was free to go home and curl up in bed. That's what she truly needed, right? She would sleep on all of these strange, earth shattering revelations and cope with them in the morning, thank you very much. For all she knew, everything up to a certain point could be chalked up to fatigue-induced hallucinations. Perfectly reasonable explanations that would take the place of the unreasonable ones unfolding before her now. You're telling her with the amount of research and-- and ghost-hunting shows in the world right now that not a single one of them covered all of this? Or maybe one had. Maybe there was genuine, obscure proof out there that most people wrote off as the work of special effects. Or, you know, maybe most people who encountered ghosts didn't live to tell the tale. Considering all the bullets she and Thea dodged throughout the night, and the fact that they weren't necessarily out of the woods yet, that wasn't really an unreasonable thought to have. Gulp.) Thea seemed willing to get to work with her, though, until she wasn't.

"Don't look at me like that. I'm not asking you to throw yourself to the sharks, Thea. I'm asking for a distraction. You can stay perfectly safe by making noise from a distance--" Clara sighed and steepled her fingers, a gesture she exclusively made when she was truly losing her patience. Which was incredibly rare for her, but you know, it's been a long night. "And if I could grow wings on a whim, I would have done it earlier! When we needed to climb that beech tree, for instance? The one, I might add, that appeared after you--" Her head throbbed painfully. Weirdly enough, of all things, it was something about the mention of deserts. Someone had promised her ice cream earlier, right...? And it wasn't Thea, or Lizzie, or the cooks. Who--? "After you..." Perplexed, she lost her words along with her short-lived frustration. She blinked hard and shook her head. "Y-you're not going to bribe me with sweets, okay? That hasn't worked since I was..."

Shoot. They didn't have time for this! But what exactly happened after they climbed the beech tree? They met that horrible giant squirrel, it grabbed her... it dangled her in front of Thea, who had been ripping faceless people to shreds. After that, they were tossed out of her mind and into that horrible institution? So where was she getting ice cream from? No, nobody had mentioned ice cream. And yet there was this nagging in the back of her head...

It was probably for the best that Lizzie intervened with her shortcut. But, of course, nothing could ever be that simple. Clara let out a helpless little gasp that sounded far more exhausted than surprised when she took notice of the burbling lava. The demon then started addressing a crow, which was rather odd considering she had always been a dove until then-- when--

Oh. Was it speaking to them both at once, now? That was... new. Interesting. Had it seen their little disagreement there and thought it could take the chance to turn them against each other? Well, she wasn't going to fall for that. He made his move too fast-- she could see his game plain as day.

'I'm flattered, really.' Clara deadpanned. She wondered if Thea could hear her thoughts now that the demon opened up this... three-way link? 'I had a hunch earlier that your taste in media was outdated. It might surprise you to know that women don't always tear each other apart to win the favor of strange, creepy men.'

'Creepy I will take with pride. But strange? Dove, you wound me.' The demon was smiling, she could hear it in his voice. 'So cold, isn't she crow? That's what I like about her. The way she was willing to sacrifice you as a distraction just now? Ruthless.' Clara felt that itching sensation at the back of her neck again and broke into a cold sweat. The demon was close to her, even if she couldn't see it. Ready to sink his teeth in. 'Ah, we came so close. You nearly destroyed that pest, little dove, and you enjoyed it. You know you--'

'Stop. Stop it.'

'Lizzie was horrible to you. She wanted to be crow's friend so, so badly. But you were in her way, dove. Jealousy turns you humans into monsters. Haven't you figured it out yet, hm? She's the one sent that squirrel to you. It ate one of your happiest memories and now it's gone forever! Are you going to take that lying down, my dove? Don't you want reve--'

"--Lizzie." Clara blatantly ignored the voice by pivoting to Lizzie. "Do you like ice cream?"

'Ice cream? Dove, shall I retract my statement about you being the reasonable one?' The demon sounded a bit upset. Clara felt the slightest twinge of pleasure at that.

"Duh! Who doesn't like ice cream?" Lizzie smiled, completely oblivious to the conversation taking place right in front of her. Her reaction is innocent and childlike and represented all of the reasons why Clara wouldn't help the demon erase her permanently. "I like to eat it with pie."

"...That's great. You know, I just had a really cool thought." Clara knew it was ridiculous. She knew it was, and yet, it was the only solution that presented itself in this situation. Lava was hot enough as it was, so making decisions with a hot head... well, it seemed metaphorical. What they needed right now wasn't more heat. It was... "How fast do you think you could make ice cream snow in the hallway?"

"Ice cream snow? Woah. I never thought of that before." Lizzie looked astounded, bringing a tiny hand to her lips. Thea's bracelet gleamed on her wrist. "...It does feel like Christmas. I got a present and everything! I want to try!"

And with that? A rainbow of flavors whimsically came drifting down from the ceiling like a snowstorm-- dotting and gradually covering up the lava in the hall. It didn't melt on the surface, the way it might have realistically. But there was nothing realistic about this place. They were dealing with a child all this time. A child who was now willing to use her nonsense world to help them. And technically, she had only been willing to reach for the demon's hands when their lives were at stake. So if that wasn't going to be a problem anymore, then...
 
Wholly unimpressed by the theatrics, Thea raised her eyebrow. Just, what kind of golden child vs. scapegoat bullshit was that? And like, not to nitpick, but in order for such things to work, you had to a) actually care about the person scapegoating you, b) be susceptible to bullshit in general. Now, she didn't claim to be some invulnerable super woman who had miraculously managed to escape the confines of socialization, but her self-esteem hadn't shrunk to the point it could be affected by a fucking demon just yet, god dammit! (...plus, the crimes of her parents had forced her to become well-versed in the ancient discipline of bullshitology. What was that, exactly? Why, the art of spotting bullshit!) 'Wow, a fucking entity from hell doesn't like me,' Thea smirked. 'I guess that means my Satanist church membership has been revoked. And just when I finally bought a goat to sacrifice, too! Oh no, whatever shall I do?' Yeah, she wasn't even trying to make it seem believable-- the demon invested next to no effort into his baiting, after all, so Thea was going to repay him in kind. 'Won't you at least come to see my school theatre performance? I'm playing a tree, and I was so hoping to earn some of your sweet, sweet approval with my, uh, riveting portrayal of it.'

'Hilarious, crow. How is that coping mechanism working out for you? Making fun out of everything and pretending not to care, I mean.' ...ouch.

'Coping mechanism? What are you, a demon or some kind of Freud wannabe? Just so you know, pal, his theories have mostly been discredited. He's so last century! Which, I assume, is why he appeals to a fucking dinosaur like yourself.'

'You're dodging the question.'

'Well, and you should be dodging bullets! Just wait till I find a way to fucking shoot you, your formless fucker. I'll pull your non-existent entrails out of your--' Wait. Was the demon actually speaking to both of them at once? The conversation was flowing strangely, with his voice seemingly splitting, and... wow, that truly was some next level multitasking! The advantages of not having a corporeal mouth, she supposed. (Not that he was using it to say something groundbreaking, mind you-- blah blah blah, Clara tried to murder you, blah blah blah, obey the shady demon because that's obviously the better choice. Like, did Thea look as if she had undergone lobotomy? Since, and this might be surprising, she sure as fuck hadn't! A cute girl vs. a literal hellspawn might have been a real dilemma to someone whose brain was no longer functioning properly, but not to her, thank you very much.)

'Get some better fucking methods,' she recommended to the demon, turning up her nose in disgust. 'Will you erase my student loans for the one semester I spent in college? If so, consider it, but this 'hurrr durrr, betray the one person who hasn't tried to kill you yet' shit is getting real fucking old.' ...what? If he truly could do it, then Thea felt justified in exploiting the fuck out of that ability. It only seemed fair, really-- he had destroyed her life by inhabiting her head, more or less, so he might as well make amends via ameliorating the effects of her own shit choices. Balance, baby!

Except that the topic of her ill-fated student loans seemed to fade into the background when Lizzie... uh, summoned an ice cream snow storm? Wow! (Thea hadn't known she needed something like this in her life, but when faced with the phenomenon, the metaphorical light bulb appeared above her head, and all became clear. Ah yes, yes, her entire life had been leading up to this very moment! Zombies, haunted schools, faceless nightmares-- all acceptable trials, indeed, if her reward was to be this fucking sweet. So, ignoring the demon's protests, she straight up ran to the hallway.) "I wonder if there are different flavors," Thea announced, to nobody in particular. The responsible thing to do with a hypothesis was to examine it, of course, so she stuck her tongue out and began catching the snowflakes. (The corpse could wait, right? Like, it couldn't possibly get any fucking deader.) "Strawberry, I think. This one, though... vanilla? Maybe. Eh, vanilla is just so boring! Like, you can barely tell that you've tasted something that isn't your own fucking saliva. Nah, if I wanted to suck on an icicle, I'd just do that. Honestly, I think the very concept of vanilla is just an elaborate hoax-- a way of getting suckers to pay for nothing, essentially. Kinda like taxes. But, man, the chocolate they have here is just exquisite," Thea beamed at Clara, her eyes shining with mischief. Then, however, she got one of her Certified Bad IdeasTM-- you know, the kind of whim that should never be followed unless you'd already written your last will. (...if you were a fucking coward, that was. Thea, though? To her, every single one of them was a golden opportunity, and not giving it a fair chance would have amounted to crime. So, with that in mind? Perhaps shockingly, her smile widened somewhat.) "Wanna taste it?" she pointed to her lips. "To ensure you'll get the same flavor I did, of course." (Yeah, yeah, so Thea wanted to have some fun after like 58 instances of them almost being murdered. Guilty as fucking charged! All of that adrenaline had to be released somehow, you know, and apparently, they couldn't be too picky with their calm moments.)
 
Clara watched on in the doorway with the softest degree of warmth in her gaze as Thea abruptly dashed out and tested ice cream flavors on her tongue. There was something sort of innocent about her unapologetic excitement, honestly, and it tugged harder at her heartstrings than she’d ever care to admit aloud. If she had to pin down the feeling floating in her chest with a single word, the closest one she could find would be nostalgic. (But would they have had any particularly happy memories together as children, considering their grim circumstances? The implications they’ve been given so far was that they had been close, so maybe…) On some other level, there was another part of her firmly insisting that she needed to tell Thea to wear a hat and gloves before playing out in the cold. Ice cream was getting caught in her hair at a rapid pace, dampening strands and sticking them all around her forehead and neck! And— before you go jumping to conclusions— it wasn’t because she was worried about her or anything. No, it was just going to bother her otherwise!

…Geez. Beth was undoubtably laughing at her, wherever she was. With a nose for sniffing out personalities (and bad taste, obscure fashion facts, inconsistencies in cinema, along with just about everything else under the sun) and then giving longwinded reports about her discoveries, she had plenty to tell Clara about herself in their years of (reluctant) friendship. ‘You always deny affection with your words. But you can’t help but show it when you fuss like a mother hen! ‘ Then Raoul had the audacity to agree with her. She was, for all extents and purposes, not a mother hen. And she was going to prove it now, okay? She wasn’t going to say anything about hats or glove so— so take that! Besides, it wasn’t like Clara was going to tell Lizzie to summon them up some proper winter attire just to take a stroll down a measly hallway. That’d be ridiculous! They had no access to hats or gloves and clearly— wait. Why was Thea looking at her like that?

Clara braced herself. Her instincts told her that those playful little sparks in Thea’s eyes meant a storm was coming for her. And those instincts weren’t wrong— not at all— especially not when the other girl proceeded to point to her lips! For a moment, she was stunned into silence by the jolt of electricity that struck her heart and proceeded to careen from her head to the tips of her toes. All manner of subtly in those little signs she’d been reading all night had officially left the building and… and launched themselves into outer space, apparently. Oh no, oh no, oh no. On the bright side, she wouldn’t need the extra winter attire after all. You know, considering her face had just been been lit on fire and everything? What— what was happening right now?

“Ah. W-what?” Clara squeaked. It escaped her so quietly that she genuinely hoped Thea didn’t hear it. (Another strange noise to add to the collection she accumulated tonight. Great.) Unsure if she was more frustrated with herself for being an embarrassment or with Thea for embarrassing her in the first place, she stubbornly averted her eyes. She was finding it hard to breathe. Maybe she was overreacting, but this wasn’t the first time a cool girl has offered her a kiss on a whim. And it didn’t help that the first time had ended… badly, to say the least. Needless to say, she doesn't appreciate having her heart toyed with just for funsies. Just the simple brushing of fingers is enough to make her heart gallop like a racehorse. Why does Thea think she pushed her away earlier when she tried to hug her?

…That was the thing, though. Thea was impulsive. Thea didn’t think. Therefore she genuinely couldn't have meant her any harm, either. Clara knew that much to be true. So there was nothing to get so terribly upset over, was there? She breathed out slowly in attempt to release everything she’d been holding onto. This whole thing was harmless and stupid and it would be better for everyone involved if they just--

‘It’s not too late to take my hand, dove. We can obliterate them both, if it makes you feel better.’

‘Hm.' Clara pretended to consider it before completely shutting him down. 'That’s real tempting… but no.’

“…Stop fooling around, Thea.” Clara said in her firmest no-nonsense manner. Not to mention that having a heartwarming moment in a flurry of ice cream snow right in front of Lizzie could be— er— particularly dangerous? Lizzie and the voice both confirmed that she had been jealous of them. How would it make her feel to see them playing around together after they’d finally agreed to help her after years and years of reliving the same day in a creepy old school? (Clara's fears of the dangers here were justified, too. Apparently, one of her memories were sacrificed because she’d been ‘in the way’! If she played along with Thea's antics, who was to say Lizzie wouldn’t open up a bottomless pit in the ground and make her disappear for good?) “I’m tired… aren’t you? We shouldn’t keep Lizzie waiting, either.”

There. That should've appeased their new ghost friend, right? Clara stepped into the hallway and walked at a relatively cautious pace to make sure she didn’t slip and fall. Ah. It was really cold, wasn’t it? When she reached the other end, she suppressed a shiver and reached for the doorknob. And pushing the door open revealed nothing but... darkness. A darkness that could be hiding anything, really.
 
"Awww," Thea pursed her lips, "but I like fooling around, you know. I mean, what's the point in not doing that? We aren't fucking machines, Clara. Life without fooling around is like a cake without whipped cream, really. And machines may enjoy eating something like that, but... wait, machines don't eat desserts. Unless...?" Unless that was what they wanted them to think, of course! Perhaps the anti-android lobby had joined forces with the whipped cream haters, and together, they had wrought a conspiracy the likes of which had--

'Wow, fascinating. When entering your mind, I didn't expect to get this out of it, you know. Are you sure you don't need professional help?'

'Says the guy who bases his entire fucking personality around Faustian temptations,' Thea rolled her eyes. 'Shut the fuck up, okay? I'll ask for your feedback when I want it.' Did he, like, not get that she was distracting herself from the fact that Clara didn't want to kiss her? Thea thought it pretty fucking obvious, but nooo, he just had to diagnose her with the crazy! Apparently, people just couldn't help themselves around her. (And, no, she wasn't touch-starved enough to devise her fucking wedding speech in the short moment between her proposal and Clara's rejection or something insane like that, but it did sting a bit, you know? Enough for her to pretend it had never even happened, at the very least.)

'Fine, fine,' the demon smirked, 'but don't say I didn't warn you when you manage to alienate those three people who haven't given up on you yet. It's a matter of time, isn't it, crow? Even you must know just how difficult it is for others to exist around you-- kind of like sleeping next to a ticking bomb!'

'...'

Yeah, that remark didn't even deserve a proper response-- especially when he was just riling her up, and in such a fucking obvious way, too. Like, the bastard should at least use a more sophisticated bait! (...and that Thea didn't really know what to say to that? That, somehow, the comment had bypassed all of her defenses, and ended up stuck in her heart? It may have been bleeding all over the place, but if she pretended it was like, ketchup or something, shit would be fine! ...maybe. If nothing else, her ~feels~ getting hurt couldn't possibly be worse than a ghost of a murdered child dragging them to her personal version of purgatory, so she did find some solace in that.)

But, yeah, yeah, the library! No point in fucking around, Thea guessed, so she did follow Clara inside. "Uhhh... maybe I'm a little old-fashioned, but like, shouldn't there be books in a fucking library?" She didn't consider that to be a controversial opinion, but whoever had designed this place sure as well had-- mostly because there wasn't a single book in sight. Not even one of those mysterious tomes that featured heavily in pretty much every bad horror movie! In fact, once her eyes got used to the darkness a little bit, Thea realized that this was... barely a room, actually. (Like, she wasn't a fucking architect, but surely, the mini-sea in the middle of the floor must have been violating some safety regulations, at least? Since the laws were usually pretty consistent when it came to forbidding Fun ThingsTM. The cliff that towered over the water didn't exactly look safe, either, and... shit. Yeah, shit! Lizzie's corpse, which, by the way, happened to be dressed in clown clothes, was hanging from the cliff-- her weight wasn't supported by a rope or anything civilized like that, either, but by a bunch of white roses. Okay, why not! The imagery was edgy, but sorta cool, so Thea's personal score was eight out of then. Those roses were wrapped around the girl's neck, too, so she couldn't tell whether they were helping or whether it was just an elaborate noose, and... and, then, terrifyingly, Lizzie opened her eyes.)

"You've come for me," she announced, without a hint of emotion. (Wow. Was this the kind of gratitude they were about to receive for braving a literal fucking nightmare? Several of them, even? Needless to say, Thea wasn't impressed. "Someone must always be here, though. The throne cannot remain empty. Without me, the pattern will break, and the others will have died in vain. You will die in vain, too, when the time finally comes. With no beginning, there can't be an ending, either. Remember the circle." With her expressionless eyes, Lizzie first looked at Thea, and then at Clara. "Have you come to a decision, then? Who shall take my place? ...or do you want me to pick my successor, perhaps? I can do that for you, if your hearts are wavering."
 
"They sold all the books a long time ago. This place is going to be demolished soon." Clara addressed Thea's observation. After all, how many books did she own as a kid where former library stamps littered the inside covers? She never got crisp new books from the bookstore-- they were always passed down second hand from her brother. (Who would dog-ear all of his books until they resembled lopsided accordions. And, being the former rebel he was, he often graffitied the margins with, er... colorful words that may have gotten her into heaps of trouble with a teacher once or twice. Sometimes you didn't even have to behave a certain way to be labeled as the problem child, you know? When papa often passed out and forgot to walk her to the bus stop when she wasn't old enough to go by herself, she would miss school for days at a time. Then there was the way she dressed, which the other girls never let her live down, her oily hair and how she reeked like she hadn't had a proper bath in days. You know, because she hadn't... up until the day Raoul decided to grow up before papa did and acted like the parent. Either way, nobody wanted to be around that kid. Because that kid was destined to fail in life before she had a fighting chance.) If her books weren't second hand or borrowed, Raoul sometimes scrounged up enough to get her some from the stuffy used bookstore that smelled like dust and cat fur. The sort of place where several old forgotten library books ended up through the years. "Everything here must be... illusionary somehow. Illusionary and real at the same time? I still don't get it, but I wonder if it has something to do with the planes Lizzie was talking about."

Right. Because the, ah, unrealistic aspects of the night were definitely conjured up by Lizzie herself. And yet they could touch and feel the bark on that beech tree, right? The texture under her fingertips was undeniable. For that reason, she was certain if those cooks cut them up with their knives, they would bleed out all over the floor. Could Lizzie only reach them because they were all roped into this mess together, somehow? Hm. Oh, good grief. It still didn't make much sense, no matter what angle she tried looking at it from. This was all just one big, confusing mess. And they had more pressing matters to attend to, right?

The air in the room was downright oppressive. Clara could feel it closing in around her with every step she took, tickling every nerve in her body like leftover electricity from Thea's stunt earlier. Knowing that they were going to find a dead body inside probably didn't help. Knowing prepared her, yes, and yet it didn't at the same time. Because they scene that they came upon just now was no-- no normal crime scene, that was for sure. Bile rose up in her throat and she pressed a hand over her mouth. "Th--this is..." Elaborate didn't even begin to explain it. With the cliff, the water, the noose of roses, the costume... oh, it was horrible. Lizzie looked so small hanging up there, because she was-- she was a child, for god's sake-- and the sight turned her stomach, over and over. So horrible. Pained by the sight, she averted her eyes and noticed bloodstains on the floor. If she peered hard enough in the dark, she wondered... was something written there? Circles and roman numerals again, like the ones in the classroom? There had been white roses in the classroom too, now that she thought about it. Wound around the legs of those desks. She didn't come any closer to examine the symbols, however, when the corpse... spoke? Because of course it did! This wasn't the first time they had seen a corpse reanimate, after what happened in the graveyard, but-- hah-- no, she's not even remotely used to it yet.

Especially not when Lizzie (...But did this voice really belong to Lizzie? It certainly lacked her personality.) insinuated that one of them needed to take her place. Then, as if sensing the reluctance that must be emanating off the both of them at this point, it implied that it would make the decision for them if they couldn't. No. They couldn't have gotten this far only to...

Ever since Lizzie's dead eyes landed on Clara, they haven't left. Haven't trailed back to Thea, in other words. Her heart dropped down to the floor with dread. That meant she was probably going to pick her. "Wait, wait, wait. Isn't there any other way to--"

'I tried to warn you, dove.' The voice filled her mind before she could lose her senses to panic, sounding gravely serious. 'You're a smart girl. You realize what's going to happen now, right? If neither of you say anything, she's going to choose you. That little fool believes she will take your place and escape with crow! That she'll be her friend in your stead and all of her wishes will come true! Isn't that sweet? ...Unless you do something to stop her, that is. You are going to die here.'

"Thea had a point back there. Have you really been living, Beatrice?" The corpse continued to stare unblinkingly at her. "Or Clara. Or whoever you are now. We all will die one day. The circle demands it. But I think you should have died first."

Die, die, die. The stinging in the back of Clara's neck returned with a vengeance. It spread until it choked her and-- and she couldn't say anything. It trapped all her words inside.

"So afraid of taking risks... you won't get anywhere, holding back the way you do. The fool embarks on a journey, unafraid of the unknown!"

'I'll tell you a secret. I've been with you for years. And you are not meant to die here and now.' This time, hands appeared all around her. In... a circle. There was no place she could look to avoid seeing one in the shadows. And as much as she disliked the concept, she knew deep down that he was telling the truth in that he had been with her for years and years. The nightmare creature living in her chest, the one that kept her company when she couldn't speak, the one she tried to recapture in the pages of her sketchbook. 'I protect what's mine, dove. Take my hand. Take it now!'

My hand, my hand, my hand. The world swam before Clara's eyes. Probably from the lack of oxygen. Hounded by the voices in her head, surrounded by the demon's extended hands, even in this state she knew that taking his hand would result in her losing control of herself again. So instead of taking one of his several hands... she panicked and took Thea's hand instead.
 
Aw, shit. Shit, shit, shit! Why the fuck couldn't anything ever go smoothly?! Thea would have liked to think they had dealt with enough bullshit in one day already, thank you very much, but nooo-- Lizzie, or some twisted version of her, simply had to go for the worst case scenario, like, immediately. Where was the fun in holding back, after all? Thea and Clara, the universe's fucking punching bags, were right there, and not taking advantage of that apparently would have been like letting free massage coupons expire! Which, not happening, obviously. (The thing that used to be Lizzie stared at them, too. The depth of her unseeing eyes was staggering-- inside of them, Thea could see her whole life reflected, both her past and her future, along with entire fucking galaxies being born and dying and then rising from their own ashes again. The circle, huh. Was that what it meant? ...too bad, then, that she didn't give a fuck. No, really. Not gonna lie, the whole situation did creep her out, but nothing could make her care about what some dumbass geometrical shape thought!) "The circle demands it?" Thea furrowed her brow. "What's next, will some fucking triangle review my hypothetical master's thesis? And what about squares, hmmm? What do they think about the newest tax reform? Nobody ever thinks of the squares, even if they've been the cornerstone of our civilization all along. Like, can you imagine a more useful shape?" ...and if she sounded unhinged, then that was only true because Lizzie had started it. It took a crazy to know another crazy, after all, and with her Official DiagnosisTM, Thea felt more than qualified to point out that, yes, this demand was, in fact, insane! Hopefully, showing her her own reflection in the mirror would be enough.

"...foolishness," Lizzie said, finally directing her attention back to Thea. "You know that, don't you? Deep inside, you can feel that you belong to the circle. You always have. Its thorns grow deep beneath your skin, connecting you to all of us, and you can sense that pull. You also know that you were supposed to be my friend. Why didn't you like me, Thea? Wasn't I kind enough to you? I even let you have my bubblegum!"

"...uh. You do know that that isn't, like, the key to my heart, right? Or to anyone's heart, unless they are really desperate?" And besides, Thea also remembered it being pretty fucking gross-- this artificial flavor that had the gall to pretend to be strawberry when it had most likely been well-disguised rat poison. Still, she could feel the aftertaste in her mouth, and... wait. Where had that memory emerged from? (Was her brain like a goddamn Pandora's box now, always ready to spew more misfortune into her mind? Oh, joy. Thea couldn't wait to discover all those secret traumas, lurking just under the surface! What could be more exciting than finding out your life was even more of a clusterfuck than you'd previously thought, after all?)

"Besides, I don't know if you've noticed, but you are dead already," Thea continued, with all the tact of the average bulldozer. "Clara's death wouldn't fucking change anything. Like, you are aware that she didn't steal anything from you, right? Your life force is gone, and she doesn't have it. Nobody does. We're here to bury you, not to save you, young lady, so be a good girl and..." Whoops. Judging by the way Lizzie's body rose high into the air, and the faint blue glow that surrounded her? Yep, that had been a wrong thing to say! Because, to Thea's mind, at least, she looked like a fucking angel of vengeance.

'Silly crow,' the demon laughed, 'perhaps you shouldn't speak at all. I mean, crows aren't famous for their pleasant voices, are they? Oh well! When you finally die like you were supposed to all those years ago, the world shall finally enjoy some good, long silence from you.'

Clara grabbed her hand, then, and Thea grasped it with all her might, which... Hmm. They had nothing to lose, did they? Impulsively, she took her companion's other hand as well, and just like that, they formed a circle. (A shabby one, yeah, but the idea was still there! Don't fucking judge.) "There's your goddamn circle," Thea shouted, feeling like the biggest idiot in the entire world. Still, a small tax for their survival, right? Right. "It'll, I dunno, bring you salvation. Maybe. Again, we cannot save you, but we can help you, if you let us. Jump! We'll catch you. Just like..." for some reason, her voice felt funny in her throat, and her eyes stung, "...just like we should have caught you before. We failed you back then, but we won't now, okay?! We can both be your friends."
 
Clara didn't say anything. Her breath was still trapped in her throat as she dangled on the edge of another full-blown panic attack. So she let Thea do the talking. Impulsiveness could be a blessing just as much as it was a curse, right? Though it had caused her grief more than once tonight, Thea's ability to act while she froze solid had saved their lives just as much as it endangered them. When she took her other hand to form a 'circle' of her own, the whole world seemed to shiver and shift around them. Like both of their hands pressed together clicked something into place. Lizzie floated into the air and Clara shivered. This could be it. That death she had seen waiting for her on the horizon with patient, outstretched arms. Friends, friends, friends. The word echoed over and over. And suddenly, suddenly...

She was Beatrice Sawyer again, several years younger, sitting across from a Thea who was also several years younger. Before she could open her mouth to say anything at all, Lizzie skipped into the frame looking just as young as she had in the pot. As young as she was when she died. And if there were any other children present in the room with them, they were all blurry and faceless. The room they're in has this fuzzy quality to it, too, as if their three minds combined couldn't create an exact replica of the room they were in at the time. Or... or maybe all three of them had different interpretations of the room to the point where it couldn't settle on a single shape or form.

"Come on, Thea! Come play with me!" Lizzie sang, her little heels clicking on the floor as she came closer. Her upturned little nose scrunched when she saw Beatrice next to her, though, and the girl made sure to keep a short distance away from them when she stopped. "What are you doing over here?"

"Shhh. Be quiet. Some of us don't want to play right now." Beatrice said matter-of-factly. She was busy examining one of the windows where the lock had come slightly loose. Seemed she was an amateur detective of sorts even back then. And... hm. It seemed that if Clara was still present in her body now, she was just an observer. Watching as the memory replayed exactly the way it had happened. "Some of us are trying to do more important things."

"Don't shhh me! I'm not asking you to play. I don't want to play with you. Nobody does." Lizzie claimed, as if it meant something very severe. Her little clique of faceless girls tittered in agreement from behind, the hierarchy already established in the short time they'd all known each other. Her eyes darted to Thea, as if anticipating a reaction mirroring that of the minions behind her. And she deflated a bit when none came.

"Well, I'm glad we can agree on one thing. I don't wanna play with you, either. You're too obtuse." Beatrice rolled her eyes, experimentally pushing on the window frame to see if it would budge.

"Ob...tuse? I don't know what that word means, but I don't like the way you said it. You're being mean, I just know it!" Lizzie stomped forward and boldly yanked on one of Beatrice's braids. "When we get out of here, I'm telling my mommy!"

"We're locked in here! You might not see your mommy ever again if you don't stop playing around!" Beatrice yelped out, instinctually grasping the other end of her braid to lessen the pain. Then it... basically developed into your standard playground fight. Lizzie yelled that she was lying and shoved Beatrice, Beatrice shoved Lizzie, and they both ended up on the floor. Only difference was that when they pulled away, Beatrice had a bloody nose and Lizzie didn't.

Lizzie stood and brushed herself off with a flourish, probably fancying herself a graceful grown-up despite her behavior. "Hmph. That's what you get." Then she turned to Thea. "Anyway. I'm actually here for Thea. I gave her my bubblegum and now she's my knight! Right Thea?" Suddenly bashful, she twirled one of her ringlets around her finger. "I fixed my hair all pretty so I could be the princess. Did you notice?" She grabbed her hand, then, and pulled insistently. "Come on. Everyone's waiting."
 
Oooh, cool! This school truly was a gift that just fucking kept on giving-- illusions, murderous zombies and magical bullshittery in general weren't exclusive enough, apparently, so now they got to enjoy this fun cocktail of not-so-fake memories. Just, ugh. Did whatever entity that ruled over this fucked up dimension have to shove this shit down their throats? Like, was the concept of 'no means no' so hard to comprehend? Thea didn't really remember what kind of clusterfuck she'd witnessed as a kid, but she still trusted her past self and her decision to suppress it all! And now... now she had to watched, kinda like when a sadistic relative made you acknowledge the existence of photos on which you had puked all over yourself because it was """funny""". (Yeah, maybe to you, aunt Bethany! This had to come across as a great shock, but trying to clean the stains from her very expensive dress really wasn't the kind of memory Thea had hoped to associate with her fucking prom. Like, was it too much to want to dance with a pretty girl and maybe kiss her during some HeartfeltTM moment? One wouldn't have thought so, but nooo, apparently!)

Low expectations consistently not being met seemed to be the entire leitmotif of her life, however, so the brunette just sighed and resigned herself to watching Past!Thea. Past!Thea, really, along with Past!Clara, Past!Lizzie and all the other Past!Children stuck in their private Past!Nightmare. Speaking of nightmares, though? Wow, could children be cruel! (Since forever, it had been Thea's theory that children were born as soulless monsters, and then they either got better or embraced their state-- basically, they got to decide whether they'd listen to the shoulder angel or the shoulder devil. And this bunch of kids? Either they fucking collectively voted for Satan, or the soul-earning quest began much later than Thea had anticipated!)

To her younger self's credit, though? She watched the whole scenery with the unimpressed gaze of a customer service worker who had to explain, for the nth time that day, that no, you couldn't demand your refund after three fucking years of wearing the shoes you were complaining about now. Just, not how warranties worked, mate! And that, whatever it was, wasn't how friendships worked, either. "Why do you both have to be like this?" she complained, her eyes darting from Clara to Lizzie, and then back.

"There's nothing wrong with playing. We're kids! We should be able to play in peace, I think, because adults can't do that. This us our only opportunity," Thea reasoned. (Not even she could deny that their situation was dire, though-- like, all optimism aside, they had been straight up kidnapped. All of them. Now, a million dollar question: what happened to the kids that got kidnapped? Her mom didn't watch her to watch the news whenever a similar case emerged, but judging by the fact that she called it 'too distressing,' Thea sorta doubted they'd get to sample new candy for a living from now on.) "Plus, it's a fun way of making a not fun thing... well, fun. You're trying to get that lock off, right? That can be a game as well. You just gotta think of how to turn it into a competition, and then we will all be able to..."

Ah. Always nice to know that you were fucking listened to, really! It truly warmed one's heart-- just like the sight of the two of them rolling across the floor, and trying to claw their opponent's eyes out. The only flaw to this perfect moment? That Thea didn't have a camera to fucking immortalize it! (And, like, weren't they getting mad at the wrong person here? Lizzie could be annoying, sure, while Clara had all the tact of a wet doorknob, but it was true that they were all similarly... uh, troubled. Why waste their time with this sort of bullshit, then?)

"Clara!" Thea shouted when she noticed her companion's nose was bleeding, and dropped on her knees. "Aw, shit. I should have a handkerchief somewhere around here..." Except that then, of course, Lizzie had to demand her attention. So, you know what? Fine. If that was what she wanted, then she was going to get it! With her lips pursed, Thea turned around. "No, you cannot be a princess," she said, all serious. "Princesses aren't just pretty-- they are kind as well, you see, and so they wouldn't punch my friend for no real reason. If they did, though? They'd apologize. Wanna prove that you are one, Lizzie? Then say sorry to Clara and we can play afterwards."

Lizzie looked at her with her mouth open, apparently scandalized, but... well. If this was going to be Thea's condition, then there was no way around it, right? The girl was famously stubborn. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry. There, happy now?"

"No," Thea shook her head, "now you, Clara. Apologize to Lizzie so that we can all play with the lock. Wouldn't it be better if more people tried? I mean, we'd get it done faster, which..." Which could save their lives, probably, even if she had approximately zero desire to say that aloud. That would make it real, you know?
 
Beatrice dauntlessly cleaned her bloody nose with her sleeve, which caused a little piece of Clara in the present to grimace with disgust. She'd almost forgotten how... different she was back then. Then her serious eyebrows furrowed over her serious eyes when Lizzie apologized and it occurred to her that some things hadn't changed so much, either. That skeptical look on her face, for instance. That desire to push a little harder when there were hidden truths left to be uncovered. (Like that while Lizzie did apologize, the apology itself held maybe a teaspoon's worth of sincerity. It was just an obstacle to getting what she wanted. And she struck her as the kind of girl who usually got what she wanted.) Clara hadn't lost that analytical part of herself, apparently. After everything they'd been through tonight, it seemed it was still well and alive. When Thea suggested she apologize, though, Beatrice's glare shifted over to her.

"I won't apologize for defending myself." Beatrice claimed hotly, dabbing her sleeve over her nose again as it continued to bleed. With an indignant sniff, she bowed her head and pinched her nose. "This isn't all fun and games. If we crowd around the lock, someone's gonna notice or blab to the adults. Then they'll fix it and we won't stand a chance. And... and my name isn't--" Clara. The memory seemed to shiver at the edges there, like snow falling off a tree's branches in the sun. Was the past being warped by the present, somehow? How accurate is this recollection, anyway? Hm. Maybe Thea's most recent memories of Clara being, well, Clara have affected how she's referring to her? Either way, it took some part of tiny Beatrice for a loop. Because Beatrice is distinctly different from Clara. Beatrice was left behind a long time ago.

"See, Thea? At least I apologized. Because I'm nice." Lizzie said in such an angelic tone that it could easily make some poor sucker envision an immaculate golden halo floating above her head. That didn't mean she had the patience of a saint, though, as soon after that she crossed her little arms and tapped her little foot. "Let's go over there instead. I don't even want to play with the stupid lock."

Then the land of memories warped them off to another place. Or rather just another memory, because it seemed like they were still stuck in that same room. Only now a fold-up table had been set up in the center, where all the children sat, and a woman was stacking their finished dinner plates. A man stepped in smiling with a cart full of... pie. Because of course it was pie. Beatrice and Clara both felt a collective chill down their spines. Something about this was very, very bad.

"We have an extra special treat for you all today! It's pie." He began to set them down in front of them. "Make sure to eat it all, children." The man didn't need to tell most of them twice-- especially the ones who were eager to see something sugary and sweet after going for days without it. Beatrice moved her spoon, miming that she was eating, but she didn't dare to taste it. "We have more exciting news, too. Tomorrow we'll be going on a field trip."

Yeah. These horrible kidnappers were trying their hardest to make this seem like some kind of 'surprise camp' their parents had sprung on them out of the blue. It worked for some of the kids... but not the teenagers. Who were so skeptical and outspoken that they were kept in a separate room entirely. And Beatrice wasn't going to eat up their lies any more than she was going to eat up the pie sitting in front of her now. Her papa wasn't the kind of person who would go out of his way to sign her up for camp. They couldn't afford camp. And thinking that he would even bother to lift his hand and sign some kind of permission slip was laughable! Besides, the night she was taken... (Well, back then perhaps she remembered what happened. Right now, though, Clara just couldn't find it.)

"His smile is giving me the creeps. Don't eat the pie, Thea. I... think it might be a trap." She whispered, leaning slightly in towards Thea, who was sitting next to her. She waited until the man was out of the room before she mashed her pie around to make it look like she'd taken a bite.

Them being children, there were understandably incidents all throughout the day where someone cried for their mothers or fathers. (And those tears normally caused a chain reaction-- when one kid panicked, it impacted the others and created something of a domino effect.) It wasn't that unusual. From the tallest boy to the tiniest girl, each and every one of them felt what they were going through and couldn't keep it all bottled up. Beatrice, though. She didn't cry. Maybe she refused to out of spite. A while back she heard from her brother once that she was one of those babies that didn't cry, either. She always slept through the night. And... maybe she felt embarrassed, crying in front of other people. Like if she cried, she'd get embarrassed for crying and then the tears wouldn't stop.

Anyway, the time that these tears were most prevalent were right before bed and then all throughout the night. Now, it seemed after the brief sugar-rush wore off from the pie, several of the children began to grow exceedingly sleepy... which, of course, lead to some of them crawling into their beds and passing out. For some, it lead to crying. And lots of it. One of the children who cried that night was none other than Lizzie. Her tears were large and round and dropped into her plate of half-eaten pie.

"I-it's not fair. You're sharing secrets." Lizzie hiccuped. She pinned Beatrice and Thea with an accusatory stare. "You're saying mean things about me, I just know it!"
 
"I am not asking you to apologize because of that," Thea rolled her eyes. Really, just how dense could Beatrice be? For someone this smart, she really loved jumping to some wild conclusions. "I'm asking you to apologize for being such a party pooper. Like yeah, this is serious and scary, but we know already, you see? So, no point in being Broody McBrooderson." With a smile, her mother had said, everything went smoother! ...well, perhaps not smoother per se, but at least that fist fight could have been avoided. Couldn't they save punches for those creepy men who had kidnapped them instead, hmmm? This was like... like sardines blaming other sardines for their can being too tight, instead of turning their wrath against the fishermen! And Thea was pretty fucking sure that that anger could have accomplished something, alright. The Cthulhu mythos hadn't fucking emerged out of the shared consciousness of mankind for no reason at all-- no, it had done so because the ocean was weird, man, and full of bitch-ass things. So, with their powers combined, the fish could probably unleash an ancient curse on their captors, and... hmm. Should they get into ancient curses? Did they have to take Demonology 101, or did they just need to get, like, an ouija board?

The memory became rough around the edges, though, and also slightly blurry-- Thea had never worn glasses, but she kinda guessed that that was what the world looked like to those unlucky enough to need them and misplace them. What on earth...? Ah, okay. Okay, this made sense! The memory fest didn't end, probably because god or whoever ran this shitshow considered child abuse to be prime fucking entertainment. (No, Thea wasn't entertained, thank you for asking. Curiously enough, though? She also wasn't horrified-- no, she watched the horror unfold with the grim expression of someone who finally got to say 'see, fucker, I fucking told you.' And she had, over and over and over! How old had she been, really, when her parents had unanimously decided she was 'a danger to herself,' and the only solution to that was to traumatize her into forgetting? Early enough, she guessed, for her not to remember anything else.)

Anyway, blah blah blah, pies. How did Beatrice do it that she never cried? Thea was brave as fuck, you know, and yet tears sometimes pricked the corner of her eyes! No, she told herself, I gotta try harder. Beatrice manages to do that, so I have to be better, too. It was her theory that those guys enjoyed listening to them cry, after all, and if she was good at anything, then it had to be not giving the adults what they wanted. And this situation? Oh, this situation seemed like a great opportunity to nurture that talent. "Do you think the pies are made of children?" she asked Bea, her tone completely serious. "Like, that's what villains always seem to do in fairytales, and if they've been kidnapping kids for years, then..." ...then it was probably their turn, sooner or later. Gulp! Needless to say, whatever appetite Thea might have had died the second she took the hypothesis to its natural solution. "What if it's really, really true, Bea?" she leaned closer. "Are there some... dunno, anti-pie measures? Stuff that would ensure we won't end up baked into a pie? Aside from not getting fat enough, I mean."

Except that, of course, Lizzie just had to butt in. (Lately, she'd been doing that a lot, and Thea had to wrestle with the desire to strangle her. Just, how could one girl be so much of a nuisance? She was tiny, for god's sake! One would have said that so much obnoxiousness wouldn't fit inside of her body, but nooo, apparently she had secret pockets inside of her, or some shit.) "Of course not," Thea reassured her. "Why should we even speak about you?"

For some reason, that only seemed to send Lizzie deeper into hysterics. "A-are you saying I'm not interesting enough?"

"Well, what do you want to hear, then? That we are saying bad things about you? Would that make you feel better? We weren't discussing the Bugs Bunny, either, and that doesn't mean he's not interesting," Thea sighed. "What do you want, even?"

"Children," one of the men, the one with long hair and evil eyes, said, and a shiver ran down her spine. Even as an adult, Thea could sense it! "Children, are you arguing? Today, when we get to enjoy our special pie? Tsk, tsk. I see it's Lizzie, Thea and Bea again, too!" he shook his head, as if his disappointment knew no bounds. "You're here for a great purpose, girls, and you aren't doing it any justice with your behavior. Shameful, indeed. That's your third strike this week, Lizzie, and since you started it," the man rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "I believe you ought to be purified. No, no, don't cry, it's for your own good! You'll feel much better when we're done with you, I'm sure. Now, Beatrice, you're always so reasonable. I assume you'll be happy to help?" He revealed a row of teeth in a razor-sharp smile-- a clear hint as to what, exactly, would happen if she didn't participate. (Spoiler fucking alert: nothing too pleasant, unless you enjoyed being hurt.)

The scenery shifted before their eyes once again, and with a jolt, Thea realized they were standing outside-- the moon was hanging high in the sky, surrounded by millions of stars, and its pale light showed them... a garden. A garden, yes, but also a fence of barbed wire. Yup, a totally innocent camp, now Thea had no doubts! More importantly, however, there was also a pond. Its surface was calm, beautiful, but Lizzie was kneeling in front of it, and her tears? Oh, those wouldn't stop. "Do it, Beatrice," the man from before commanded. "Teach her that air is precious, and shouldn't be wasted on speaking. Not if you don't have anything worthwhile to say!"
 
"No way. Real life isn't the same as a fairytale." Beatrice said, a touch bitterly, while shaking her head. Her teachers often had to sit her down and tell her plainly not to 'ruin it' for other kids when she was caught joylessly debunking their theories about the existence of Santa Claus and tooth fairies breaking into their homes to leave presents and money in the middle of the night. (But you can't necessarily blame the kid for refusing to believe in magic if it was never lovingly created for her, right? As one of those kids often forgotten by these seemingly infallible magic beings, it was only natural that she went looking for logical answers to her questions. It was a better alternative to believing she didn't deserve the nice things that other kids got.) And the thing was, she genuinely loved fairytales. And if life were really like that, she'd be over the moon. But even at her age, she knew what was what. However, she tilted her head after giving Thea's comments another moment of thought. "Cannibals exist in the real world, though. So maybe..." It sent a shiver down her spine and she rubbed her hands over the gooseflesh that perked up on her arms. She learned about cannibals from that kid in the back of her math class who always wore a dark hoodie and seemed to know everything there was to know about the edgiest subjects. Shaking her head to perish the thought of cannibals altogether, she steeled herself again. "Sometimes people will hide medicine in a scoop of ice cream to make it go down easier, right? Like... like that Mary Poppins song about a spoon full of sugar making the medicine go down." She swallowed hard and stared down at her pie. "They're giving us something sweet because they know we like it. They want us to eat it all. I don't know why yet, but..." Serious brown eyes glared down at the untouched pie before flitting up to meet Thea's determinedly. "I won't give them what they want."

Of course these thoughts couldn't be explored in any further as Lizzie pushed her way into their conversation. And she continued to push and push until the situation snowballed and caught the attention of one of their creepy captors. Beatrice made a conscious effort to stay out of their way as much as possible. Some of the kids trusted adults simply because they were adults. Beatrice knew to fear them because they were adults. Nobody in the world had more power to hurt you than an adult did. Wasn't their situation proof of that? However, trouble seemed to follow them along with Lizzie. So when her name was said, she stiffened and didn't say a single word while they were led outside to...

The lake. The garden, the barbed wire fence, the moon shining overhead. Clara's head swam with memories and pulsed with the desire to block it all out before she could experience the trauma a second time. I don't want to see this.

Beatrice could only shake her head frightfully in a silent no at the man's prompting. As brave as she prided herself on being, she couldn't hide the fact that she was trembling like a leaf. Lizzie was annoying, sure. But that didn't mean she wanted to hurt her like this! There had to be some other way. How did Thea try to settle this the other day? Maybe there was a mote of meaning in the advice she gave that day. "W-we could just apologize to each other and-- and go to bed." Behaving and staying quiet was how you avoided trouble with adults, right? "We w-won't c-cause anymore trouble."

"Now, now. Lying through your teeth will not get you out of this, Beatrice. Or would you prefer to take her place? Because I could arrange that easily." The man smiled coldly. It was colder than the night air around them, maybe even colder than the water below. Heart pounding, Beatrice continued to shake her head over and over in a silent 'no'. He continued to speak calmly and harmlessly, like a preschool teacher giving their class of wide-eyed innocents a lesson on how to count to ten. "It is rather simple. Just push her down and hold her under."

Then he proceeded to brush the back of Lizzie's head with his hand. And seeing as she wasn't facing them, she probably thought it was Beatrice getting ready to push her under. Which was probably exactly what the manipulative bastard was aiming for all along. Lizzie jolted upright with panic and blurted out-- "There's a window in our room. The lock's wiggly and-- and Beatrice keeps playing with it." She burst into harder sobs, then, "She's the naughty one, not me!"

The man's eyes flashed with interest. He stared at her, studying her expression, before pushing Lizzie's head down into the water anyway. He held her under as she flailed, waited a few seconds in a chillingly calculated manner, as if he'd done it thousands of times before-- and then lifted her out. "If you knew this earlier, Lizzie, then why did you wait to tell me until now?" Lizzie didn't answer. She was dripping wet, coughing, sobbing. "If you see something strange again, you need to tell me right away. Do you understand?" When she didn't answer right away, he tightened his grip as if to push her down again and she nodded quickly.

"As for you, Beatrice." Beatrice felt the world closing in around her as the man shifted his attention over to her. Though it was difficult to breathe when the panic surmounted her, she did her very best to fill her lungs with deep, deep breaths in preparation for what was coming. It occurred to her that she ought to stop wearing her hair in twin braids when the man yanked her forward by one of them and held her under. The water was so, so cold-- pins and needles cold. By the time her breath escaped her mouth in a burst of bubbles, she went numb and got the sensation that she was scorching hot instead. Suddenly she was swallowing water in her futile attempts to breathe. Before she could pass out, she felt herself being yanked back out of the water. The harsh, freezing whip of the air on her wet skin was relentless and... and she cried for the first time since she'd been brought to this place. Even when she made a promise with herself not to cry, especially not in front of Thea. But considering she was soaking wet-- maybe-- maybe she wouldn't notice. This probably shouldn't have been what she worried about in that moment, but for some reason it was. What Thea thought was important to her. Thea cared enough to talk to her when most kids wouldn't even look her way. She wanted to be useful and to be strong for her-- "We told you children it's dangerous outside. You should have known better!"

"It's worse in here. You're-- you're drowning us." Beatrice sputtered out. All things considered, she probably shouldn't have talked back like the pretentious know-it-all she was in her current position.

"We're teaching you children valuable lessons. Preparing you for your destinies." The man corrected. "You must have thought you were so very clever. Did you think you were going to escape, little one?"

This time, he pushed and held both Lizzie and Beatrice down under the water at once. And then, as if he were there tending to a garden instead of drowning children in a lake, he casually turned to Thea. Though they both struggled, he kept them down with horrifying ease. "We can turn any situation into a game, yes? This is one of my favorites, Thea. The decision game!" Could it be that he knew what had happened long before Lizzie even told him? The way he's veering into the subject of games, after all, seems to suggest this may be the case. Which means he may know that Thea knew all along about their hopes to escape as well. Was it a trap? Knowing these creeps, probably so. "If you had the power to save only one of your friends, which one would you choose? Lizzie or Beatrice?"
 
No. No, no, no, no!!! Like, everyone fucking knew these things didn't actually happen, and especially not to little girls. Urban legends with similar topics may have been in circulation, yeah, but those only existed in order to scare children into obedience! They were just fairytales, with the tiny twist that they took place in a modern setting so that they felt more believable to their developing minds. The big bad wolf = the evil man in black, essentially. Right? Right! ...except that, as Thea stood and watched her friends get drowned, she had to admit that there was nothing even remotely fairytale-like about this. 'Horror' seemed much more appropriate, if you wanted to define the experience with a genre! (...had she been really awesome, like one of those superheroes from the comics she'd read, Thea would have done something at that point. Just... anything, you know? This was a fucking garden, which meant that there had to be, like, rocks, at the very least. Rocks pretty much spawned in the soil, so it couldn't be that hard to find one. Now, how much strength would it take to crack his skull open? Could she do it? Back in her days of casual cruelty, Thea had used to murder ants by the thousands, but somehow, she didn't really think that sort of experience would apply here. Like, she wasn't an expert, but murder seemed like a pretty big deal! And... and her hands were shaking, too. She was bathing in her cold sweat, and her heart was beating so wildly she heard nothing else, and, and, and!!! What if the man turned his attention to her, too? If he drowned her as well, then that wouldn't fucking help either Bea or Lizzie. No, Thea had to be smart about this, which translated into laying low! Coward, some voice inside of her head accused her, which... yeah, maybe. So fucking what, though? Heroes usually ended up dead, and while that was a fitting end to their story, Thea did not appreciate the prospect. Like!!! She was way too young, man. Not even old enough to an annoying YA protagonist, and in order to get there, she had to blow birthday candles many, many times yet!

Then, of course, the man noticed her nonetheless. Why the hell was she trying, even? This had been a foregone conclusion, on the level of the sun rising each morning! And what a weird question, too. Evil intentions were lurking behind it, Thea just knew, so each answer was bound to damn her in a different way! ...except that not answering would land her in trouble, too. Damn, damn, damn! Obviously uncomfortable, she looked up. "That... that seems like a bad decision to me, mister. I would, uh, try to figure out how to save both of them. There has to be a way! Mom always said I should think outside the box, and--"

"I'm not your mom," the man reminded her sweetly, "and I don't remember offering you that option. Or are you saying that my memory is this bad, Thea? That I don't know what I'm talking about?"

"No, I would never--"

"Then act like it," he advised her, and then he pushed her head under the water. Bubbles rippled the surface, with Thea thrashing around, but his grip? His grip was so strong, really, that ten men may as well have been holding her in place! "Just look at her," he sighed, as if he watched her trip over some sticks rather than, you know, being the direct cause of her suffering. "This is what happens to little girls who cannot follow rules. They are here to protect you, and only fools don't see it. Still... children are capable of learning, which is why you are here. For you, not all is lost yet. Well, Thea?" the man finally allowed her to raise her head, and she did so, coughing and spitting water. (Ah, the sweet, sweet air! You never noticed how great it was, really, till it felt like your lungs were on fire.)

"If you had to choose, who would you save? Beatrice, or Lizzie?"

"Bea!" she sobbed, tears streaming down her face. (That name, it seemed, had been written in her mind all that time, and saying it? As horrible as it was, it felt right. Like a truth many times swallowed, and finally, finally spat out! ...at least till she spotted Lizzie's face, who, even under the faint light of the moon, was visibly glaring daggers at her. Uh oh.)

Once again, the scenery contorted before her very eyes-- like a low quality video, it became grainy, full of wild colors, and... and morphed into something else entirely.

It had to be their room, Thea guessed? She couldn't see much, given that they were clearly supposed to be asleep and everything was drowning in darkness, but... yeah, she was lying in her bed. Quiet snoring could be heard all around her, too, but then, then! Lizzie materialized above her, and wrapped her hands around her neck. "So you wanted me to die, huh?" she whispered. "Well, maybe you should die! If you don't feel like protecting me, then I... then I don't need a knight," the girl concluded, coldly. "Bye, Thea!"
 
Ah. So Thea was the one who generally kept the peace amongst them, the one who encouraged that they all get along and their captors had seen that. Naturally, they decided to use her to pick a side and create even more division amongst them. There was no softening the sharpness and hurt that afflicted Lizzie's eyes in that moment. Clara knew that her younger self had been far too close to the situation to understand what exactly what was happening back then... but their methods made a scary amount of sense when she looked back at it from a distance. (It was all so horrible. Thinking about it all from the captor's perspective to understand the 'whys' of what they were doing was the only way she could distract herself from it-- watching this back and actively searching for answers to questions was her only means of guarding her heart from the pain. That man had talked nonsense about destinies and purposes-- what was all of this really leading to? For Lizzie, it had been death. But for herself and Thea...) Hm. But it was undeniable that Beatrice, in that moment, felt a twinge in her heart at being chosen. It was nothing against Lizzie, truly. She just wasn't used to people putting her first... and yet Thea had when she said her name in that moment. Maybe that moment solidified something unbreakable between them, maybe it was part of the reason why they managed to make it out alive. They were the lambs that escaped the same slaughter, yes? (So much remains unanswered. How did they escape? Even as the memories flood back into her mind, there are several she still has yet to reach.) It seems this spool of memories hasn't stopped unraveling, though, as the colors change and...

Beatrice was fast asleep. She was having a nightmare. Wading through a shallow stream, pushing her way through flowers in that garden from before as a terrifying shadow creature gave chase. Thea was there next to her, their fingers interlocked. It reached out for them with thousands of arms... Beatrice ducked her head down in time. However, her heart dropped as the creature's tendrils wrapped themselves around Thea's neck and-- and-- coughing in the real world broke through the surreal one in her dreams and roused her immediately. With a soft grunt of confusion, she blinked until her eyes adjusted to the darkness and what she saw was-- "Thea!" She immediately lunged forward and wrapped her hands around Lizzie wrists, tugging hard to pry them off of Thea. "What's wrong with you? Let go of her!"

Lizzie was determined, though, and wouldn't let go. "You're hurting her! Stop!" Beatrice dug her nails into the other girl's skin and she still wouldn't falter. Thea chose Beatrice, so Beatrice would choose Thea back. She would do anything she could to keep her safe. The back of her neck began to itch and a blend of terror and inexplicable anger rose to an unsurmountable height in her-- and-- and she only punched Lizzie because Thea was going to die otherwise!

Beatrice, not looking to see the damage she had wrought, turned to Thea instantly when Lizzie released her. Gently, she tucked some hair out of her face and knelt down closer to inspect her for any injuries. "Thea? Are you okay?"

Blood dripped down from Lizzie's mouth. Beatrice didn't even have time to react before she was tackled to the floor.

Yet another fight escalated between the two, then. Only they fought viciously this time, like they were animals out in the wild fighting for survival instead of two little girls. This development startled many of the children in their room awake. Most of them began to scream and cry while others egged them on. Eventually, their noise level became so disruptive that five adults entered the room-- one attempting to calm the children while the others busied themselves with yanking the brawling girls apart. Once separated, Beatrice and Lizzie both were held at a distance from each other while the adults peered into their faces. At a glance, you'd think they were making sure they weren't hurt. (Lizzie's nose and mouth were bleeding-- probably from the punch. She might have even lost a tooth. Beatrice got away with a purpling cheek and a row of three angry scratches running across her nose.) Only these adults weren't the slightest bit concerned about their well-being. They were far more interested in their irises.

The one in front of Beatrice held either side of her head firmly and peered into her eyes. Her eyes which, in that moment, were as dark as starless skies. "His presence is strong in this one. Look." The man responsible from drowning them earlier wore a slimy smile, as if he knew all along that this would happen. "Children, how much of the pie did Beatrice eat tonight?"

"I saw. She didn't eat any of it." A little boy spoke up from the corner of the room. These adults probably traumatized all of the kids into tattling on each other whenever possible.

"Interesting. Beatrice, dear, you'll have to come with us tonight. We have a very important task for you."

"I... I don't want to." It didn't matter to them that she was afraid, that she shook her head 'no' violently, or that she was making a herculean effort to pull herself free of the grasp of the man who was guiding her out of the room. The last time she was led out of this room, she was lead into that garden and nearly drowned. Even so, regardless of her own wishes, she was dragged out and the door closed behind them.

Lizzie had her injuries tended to and the children were once again left to their own devices. She set her sights immediately back on Thea. "What if they get rid of Bea for breaking all the rules? She played with the lock, s-she didn't eat the pie, she punched me...!" She hiccuped. (Yeah. As if she didn't just try to, uh, strangle Thea?) Tears were welling in her eyes. Maybe she felt slightly guilty for her actions, but it was clear that she wasn't ready to apologize for them. "She's obviously trouble! Do you like trouble, Thea?" She reached for her hands, then. "...I'm not bad. I'm not! I just wanted to be your friend. I wanted you to like me. Why don't you like me?"
 
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Okay, okay, okay. This had to be a fucking nightmare, right? One specifically designed to push her buttons, too, because watching her younger self get choked... well, it did things to her, okay. Nasty things. (Usually, her stomach was a relatively peaceful place-- when it got visitors, they mostly tended to be butterflies, fluttering their colorful wings in an effort to alert her to the presence of a Pretty GirlTM. Now, however? Anger coiled in there, like a snake ready to strike, and... and fuck, did Thea want to wipe that stupid expression off Lizzie's face! Just??? Wanting to have friends was all nice and dandy, and probably a symptom of the human condition, too, but like, the access to her heart was not a basic right. Your freedoms weren't being infringed upon just because people didn't want to swear you fealty, man! It had to be nice, living in a delusional, self-centered Lalaland, but that wasn't where most of the humanity resided, so better change your goddamn address. Plus, a free piece of advice: next time you try to befriend someone, maybe, uhhh... don't fucking try to kill them? Again, she wasn't a psychologist or anything, but the vast majority of people tended to take that kind of thing personally. ...the nurse that she had killed? The chick probably hadn't liked that, either, but the difference between the two situations was that Thea wasn't demanding a friendship bracelet from her ghost, or something similarly ridiculous! The entitlement, really. How the hell did she have any friends at all?)

(Maybe that was the problem, actually. From what she'd heard, Lizzie's mom had been one of those helicopter parents-- you know, the people who constantly orbited around their horrible darlings, and never bothered to teach them what 'no' meant. 'What do you mean that my kid cannot have this thing?' she probably screeched, in the most annoying voice possible, and the world bent over backwards because it was easier than dealing with her fucking temper tantrums. Wouldn't want her to call the manager, right? Except that, you know, Thea wasn't a thing, and she could not have her. Not with this fucking approach, anyway!)

Of course, those thoughts all belonged to the Adult!Thea-- her younger self was too busy gasping for air, and also feeling this immense sense of relief. (Just picture really, really needing to pee, and then finding a public toilet when you were slowly abandoning all hope. Got it? Well, now multiply it by thousands and you'd get at least a little close to how Thea was feeling! ...Bea had saved her, you know. Unlike all those adults with their empty promises, she really had been there for her, and still was, even so many years later. Somehow, for both of them, their first instinct was to protect one another. What did it mean? Did it mean anything at all, actually? Thea couldn't tell, but what she could tell was that the parallels were staggering-- enough to break the very foundations that her world had been built on.)

In hindsight, it was hilarious that Lizzie had asked her to be her knight, too. Like... Bea had claimed that role for herself, hadn't she? Except that she was Thea's knight, fighting to protect her from the monster, and-- and, shit. Shit, shit, shit! As always, those unhinged bastards had to ruin everything. Instead of letting the girls duke it out and like, fostering a healthy sense of independence, they decided to drag Bea away. For what reason? That was unclear at best, since phrases like 'his presence is strong with her' explained absolutely nothing, but somehow, Thea doubted they were about to visit the fucking Disneyland together. (Would they drown her again? That seemed to be their go-to punishment, and she didn't want it to happen to Bea, and, and, and!!! Oh, if only she wasn't stuck in this tiny, useless body. Had she been a grown-up, like all of her favorite superheroes, Thea would have snapped that bastard's legs in half! ...hypothetical scenarios wrapped in their what ifs would not save her friend, though. Fantasies were worthless, worthless, worthless, especially when Bea was suffering for real, and she... dammit, she didn't know what to do. Vaguely, Thea was aware that, as a kid, she shouldn't even need to deal with such problems, but too bad, here they fucking were. The experience was non-refundable, so she had to figure something out! Something other than sitting and twiddling her thumbs, that was.)

And Lizzie? Lizzie, as usual, couldn't read the room at all. "No," Thea hissed, "but do you know what other things I dislike? Being choked!" Perhaps it was all that pent-up stress, perhaps her righteous fury, or maybe just the fear for Bea's well-being-- it could have been the combinations of all of these things, really, but maybe also something completely different. Either way, as for what happened next? Thea raised her hand and slapped Lizzie, hard, across her cheek. "Never do something like that again. Never, do you hear me? If you do, I will not forgive you, and I won't be your friend." Not that she wanted to be her friend now, mind you, but for some reason, the prospect was the only thing that could get her to behave in a remotely civilized way. Speaking of which... hmm. Maybe she could use it to her advantage? "I am only friends with people who don't hurt my old friends, and I was friends with Bea first. So," she pursed her lips, "we are going to make sure she's fine. Those guys think you're a good girl, right? We'll look for her together, and if they catch us, we can... I don't know, say that you were feeling sick and so we were searching for help. They'll trust you. If you do that for me, I'll be your friend! C'mon, they even forgot to lock the door."

'Ahahaha,' a voice chuckled in her head, so familiar it sent chills down her spine, 'how cute. This generation of sacrifices really is hilarious! I'd shed a tear for you, really, if I knew how. But, alright, if you really want to see what they're doing to her, I'll lead you there. Don't say I didn't warn you, though!'
 
Clara's fiery childhood spirit may have been doused with water and frozen to ice over time, but even she struggled with her role of the passive observer through all of this. Having to watch as Thea was strangled in bed, watching in dismay as her younger self was dragged up to the attic. There was no way to change what had already happened, was there? Why was it important for them to see all of this? Her insides tied themselves up in knots, her heart and stomach felt so unbearably heavy in her chest as they dropped with a concoction of dread and fright. She couldn't remember what happened-- what was going to happen next-- but she didn't have to be a freaking fortune teller to tell you that this was yet another memory she didn't want to have unburied. Let alone to relive. Speaking of which... when they arrived in the dark attic, one of the few things she could make out in the candlelight were a set of elaborately decorated cards spread over a silken sheet on the floor. They were beautiful, embroidered with silver designs that sparkled whenever the light danced across them at the right angle. Several adults donned in cloaks filed into the room behind her... one carried a chalice, one brought a dagger that resembled a sword, and another a stick? This-- this felt more like a fairytale than real life. Not in the good way, though. It was more like a rendition of the old Grimm's stories before Disney got their hands on them. One more person entered and closed the door behind them. And they brought a cage with a... squirrel in it?

"W-what do you want with me? What is this?" Beatrice made a valiant effort to keep her voice steady as she asked her questions, deigning to try to glean any valuable information she could from... whatever this was supposed to be. However, the cloaked people were hard at work preparing some kind of ritual and didn't answer or acknowledge her. Their faces were covered up by their hoods, making it impossible for her to see their expressions. She squirmed with panic as they tied her up in ropes and... and despite her better judgement, screamed when she saw one of them unflinchingly slice open the squirrel with the dagger in her peripheral. Her heartbeat roared like thunder in her ears and all she could see was red. The red of the few drops they drained into the chalice, the red that they used to trace... a circle with a star in the center on the floor in front of the cards. A pentagram? (Oh. The cards. They were tarot cards, right? And then the objects represented the minor arcana... cups, swords, pentacles and wands, was it? Clara wouldn't have known it right away back then, but right now the symbolism is glaringly obvious. And what had Lizzie said before, about... about the fool?) "Shut her up! If she wakes the other children--"

"Yes, yes. We shall. But first..." A woman gripped her chin with all her might and forced the chalice to Beatrice's lips. You know, the chalice they just drained some of the squirrel's blood in. Beatrice's stomach turned and she couldn't pull away even if she wanted to-- she was only capable of making fierce noises of protest as they forced... a bitter concoction of blood and who knows what else down her throat. Revolted, she began to cough it up directly afterwards and her mouth was held shut before she could expel it all. Only after she gagged and swallowed was she released. Beatrice, fed up with being treated like an object, decided to scream at the top of her lungs. Maybe if she could wake the others--! But then, all too soon, a rag was stuffed in her mouth to stifle them. "Tsk, tsk. So noisy, Beatrice. We'll have to fix that, now won't we?"

"Look at her eyes. We must make haste if we are to receive his premonition." Whose premonition? Without any further explanation or preamble, Beatrice was pushed into the center of the circle. In spite of the ropes, she would have at least made an effort to run away... if not for the fact that her vision began to swim and swirl. Suddenly, she was so tired. The hooded captors surrounded her, standing in a circle, and began to chant. But she couldn't make out what they were saying. Pain unlike anything she ever experienced careened through her as the feverish pace of their chanting picked up. It felt like a sledgehammer was being brought down repeatedly over her skull and a whole rainbow of vivid colors burst like fireworks behind her closed eyes. She convulsed against the ropes. The frightening shadow creature from her nightmare appeared at the forefront of her mind. She was trapped in the heart of it and... the hooded figures materialized around them. Were they... were they going inside her head for answers?

Meanwhile, Lizzie had reluctantly agreed to Thea's terms. Whether it was the crushing guilt or the fact that she wanted so badly to be her friend... or maybe an accumulation of the two things, she put her reservations aside and agreed. Walking the dark halls of this place at night was scary. Moonlight cast weird shadows everywhere, shadows that looked a whole lot like monsters. Lizzie wished with all her heart that her mother was there to hold her hand. She wished she could hold Thea's hand. But considering what had just happened... she at least wasn't oblivious enough to think she could get away with that. Not until they found Beatrice, anyway. It was bad enough, tensing every time the floorboards squeaked under their tiny feet, before the first scream rang out. It became dreadfully quiet after that.

Lizzie fearfully backed up a few steps and glimpsed Thea. She was very close to opening her mouth and suggesting that they turn around and go back to bed... but something about the expression on Thea's face told her that she wouldn't take very kindly to it. "I... I think it came from over there?" She tried her very best to be helpful and pointed to the right, where the scream came from. (Although even after she said that, it seemed like Thea was walking with a sureness in her steps now. Like she already knew where she was going.) When they turned the corner, there was a long hall leading to a door. A door guarded by none other than one of their hooded captors. The long, oily hair spilling out indicated this was probably the man from before. They one who tried to drown them. And something silver was shining between his teeth. A... key, maybe? To make matters worse, an even louder scream rang out than before. It was definitely coming from behind that door.

"This is bad. This is really, really bad. We can't do this, Thea! We need to go back." Lizzie whispered. She pulled insistently on Thea's wrist. Surely the two of them, a duo of terrified children, couldn't outsmart that guy. And who even knew what atrocities he'd inflict upon them if he discovered they were acting out again?
 
Oh shit, shit, shit! Was her younger self really going to deal with this guy? With the guy who, you know, held a fucking key between his teeth? (The drowning incident almost seemed unimportant in comparison, really-- like, yeah, Thea obviously wasn't a fan, but few people who found themselves threatened by the prospect of ending up in a watery grave would be. Even so, she could... kinda understand his motivations, if she distanced herself from the raw reality of it all. Drowning children = bad, yadda yadda yadda, but once you stopped clutching your pearls? There was a very clear intent behind the act, and one that seemed rather logical, too. A tried and tested move, really! Divide and conquer was a strategy that had once been employed by kings, so surely it was good enough for this unwashed creep as well. So far so good, indeed. Holding a key in your fucking mouth, though? A key that had been touched by countless people, none of which had likely bothered to wash their hands before grabbing it? The man might as well have signed his own death sentence! Like, Thea wasn't a germaphobe in the slightest, but the sight still awakened some deep, primal desire for a bottle of disinfectant in her her heart. (A guy like this, she realized, had nothing to lose. Without a hint of fear, he stared his own doom in the face-- even more jarringly, he had the gall to fucking laugh! And, of course, little Theanator was going to engage him. Wow, okay, Miss Suicide, Thea thought, teetering somewhere between horror and genuine admiration. Just, who knew she had been this awesome in her brat form as well? She had kinda assumed that she had grown into her audacity, but apparently, it was an inborn trait instead. Oh well, maybe Thea had simply been born for swinging axes at zombies, murdering random nurses, and, uh... stealing keys from improbable places.)

"Are you kidding me?" her younger self hissed at Lizzie. "Do you not have ears? Can't you hear?" Obviously, those bastards were doing something bad to Bea! Nobody screamed like that when they were having a good time, after all, and... and Thea didn't want her friend to suffer, dammit. Plenty of people deserved such a fate, she was reasonably sure, but those tended to be, like, war criminals! War criminals and animal abusers and people who cut in lines, not fucking children. (How ridiculously unfair. Wasn't their age supposed to grant them immunity from these things? As far as all those movies Thea had seen were concerned, little girls' only problems should revolve around, uhhh... picking the right dress for their tea party, or fighting over who was whose best friend. Lizzie kinda did follow that plot thread, now that she thought of it, but again-- the choking part made it entirely unsuitable for the demographic. No, really. Had they aired her life on the TV, they would have slapped a PG13 warning on it, meaning she would have been forbidden from watching it! ...too bad that her living it was apparently fine, though. Man, the universe really had the shittiest fucking moral guardians. Zero out of ten!)

"We can't turn back now," Thea said, with confidence much greater than what she was really feeling. (Not that that was difficult, mind you. On some level, she was keenly aware that she had a snowball in hell's chance of succeeding here, you know? 'Brave' didn't necessarily need to equal to 'delusional', thank you very much! ...still, still she knew that she couldn't turn back. Just a few minutes ago, Bea had saved her very life, and you just didn't forget that kind of debt. Had it not been for that incident, her friend would have been asleep by now, too, and while Thea refused to blame herself for Lizzie's fuck up, it was... well, it was hard not to draw the connection.) "Alright, I know what we will do. See that flower pot?" Lizzie nodded. "Break it. Let him come to us."

"But!!!" Lizzie protested, her eyes full of fear. 'Have you lost your mind?' they asked, and hey, maybe that was a valid concern-- mostly because Thea was reaching for a large, large rock. "We have to lure him closer," she explained, as if that could possibly make the statement any less outrageous.

"Thea, I don't like this. You're only going to get us into more trouble."

"Do you want to smash his head, then? 'Cause, like it or not, one of us is going to do it."

When confronted with that part of the plan, though? Needless to say, Lizzie did not like it. She didn't like it so much, in fact, that the volume of her voice... uhh, rose much higher than it should have. "You're crazy!" she shrieked. "I don't know if you noticed, Thea, but this isn't a game. It hasn't been fun for a while. What if they--"

"Ah, if it isn't my favorite duo!" the man smiled. (Just, ugh. Why had she chosen to rely on Lizzie, again? It wasn't like she had many options, but going alone genuinely seemed like the superior option here, and... wait. Wait, wait, wait. He was still here, wasn't he? And, by the looks of it, he hadn't noticed the rock in this dim lighting. Hmm, hmm. Think fast, Thea!) "What are you doing here, girls? Don't you know what happens to children who wander off to forbidden places?"

"I, uh, scraped my knee!" Thea exclaimed, thanking all the known and unknown gods for that idea. "Lizzie meant to guide me to the infirmary, but it's so dark here, and so we got lost. Do you know where I could get a bandage?"

Predictably enough, the man crouched, then-- most likely to inspect her """injury.""" (Okay, okay, okay. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. The fact that her hands were slick with her own sweat? Thea decided to ignore that, and instead gripped the rock tighter. ...not yet. Not yet, not yet, not yet! The timing had to be perfect, you see, otherwise she wouldn't be able to reach his face, aaaand, now. Her heart was beating wildly in her chest, thud thud thud, and when his face collided with the rock? The sound was almost satisfying, much like cracking an egg for an omelette.)

A pretty fucking bloody omelette, though, because yeah, he was drowning in blood now. With his smirk wiped off his face so thoroughly, he howled in pain-- which was the moment Thea used to seize the key. "Quickly, follow me!" Not really bothering to think about her actions, Thea ran to the door, and... and, shit. What were those people doing? Even more importantly, what was happening to Bea? A dark cloud seemed to be hanging over her head, both ominous and familiar, which... um. Was it trying to eat her? Somehow, Thea could sense its hunger, and no, it did not fill her with fuzzy, pleasant feelings. It did the opposite, in fact. So, ignoring the guys in funny dresses, she walked over to Beatrice and hugged her. "Snap out of it, Bea! I liked you more before, dammit."
 
Beatrice was dragged deeper into the creature's limitless void of a heart. Or maybe it was the stomach? It certainly felt like it was trying to absorb her as the hooded captors dissolved and their intense chanting became nothing more than a faraway sound. The shadowy monster drew her into what she perceived as his lair. Wisps like ink strokes on a canvas strung like around her arms like lace and treated like a guest as they guided her into a posh velvet sofa in what looked like a fancy sitting room? Okay, then. A large desk sat before her and behind it lurked a writhing, shadowy thing. And she only called it a thing because it was shapeless, constantly shifting, as if it couldn't decide exactly on which form to take. It kept her waiting in silence for a few moments as a crackly old waltz played from a gramophone in the corner. The existence of this place as well as the addition of the swelling orchestra filling the room was unnerving, to say the least. Beatrice shifted uncomfortably in her seat and brushed an invisible strand of hair from her face, peering into the darkness. "Where..."

"It is time for me to select the first sacrifice." Beatrice jumped when she heard the voice. Sacrifice? The word was cold and yet this voice spoke it with such inviting warmth that the contrast made Beatrice clench her toes in anticipation. Shadows slithered across the table and laid the fool card face up in front of her. "And as my dove, it is your job to communicate my intentions to my henchmen." Before she could open her mouth to tell this voice that she was not, in fact, the bird he sought, an ominous laugh echoed. It evoked her with the feeling of being trapped at the bottom of a very, very deep well. Trapped in the depths of a nightmare with no way out, trapped in a place where no one would even hear her if she screamed. The card in front of her began to glow. "The fool embarks on a journey, unafraid of the unknown!"

Lightning struck and the mist shrouding the ceiling. It swirled around like clouds gathering before a storm and showed her a picture of the outside. A snapshot of Thea and Lizzie sneaking out of their room, to be precise. Beatrice almost lurched to her feet, feeling a familiar twinge in her heart at the sight, but forced herself to stay down. Something told her that this voice had eyes and that he was watching her every move very, very carefully.

"Dorothea rushes to your aid at this very moment without thinking of the consequences. By doing so, she has just proven herself a perfect candidate for the fool." The voice paused, seemingly taking in Beatrice's expression as she assessed what this meant. This thing said that it needed to select a sacrifice. Then it selected a card and deemed that it represented-- "So, my dove. When you return, you must tell my faithful lackeys that little Thea is the fool."

A candidate for the fool and a candidate to be sacrificed. That's what this horrible monster was implying, right? The color drained from her face. No, no, no, no, no. Her hands shook. Mortification and righteous indignation went to war with each other in her chest. The horrible sight of Thea being choked by the shadows in her dream was supposed to stay in her dream, gosh darn it! That wasn't supposed to leak out into reality! (Except it already had, when Lizzie--)

"My, my. You look like you're feeling a bit punchy. Whatever could be the matter?" The voice sounded amused and Beatrice's cheeks heated pink. She was afraid to speak to it. She was afraid the words wouldn't even come. But she spoke.

"I-- I won't do it." The words felt small in comparison to the hulking creature in front of her, but they were there nonetheless. The amount of courage it had taken to say words that ended up sounding so very pitiful was--

"I can't hear you. If you want something, you need to say it with your whole chest."

"I won't! I said you can't have her, you-- you--!" Beatrice snapped to her feet, hands clenched to tight little fists at her sides. Her vast improvement in volume may have been admirable, but unfortunately she fumbled the landing on her comeback. (Thea was always better at coming up with those under pressure, wasn't she? She was always so creative with them.) Ahem, even so! Ignoring the small blunder, she shook her head willfully. "I'm not going to let you hurt Thea!"

"Ah. That's very cute. Very amusing." The shadows slithered towards her and began pulling her down. The room faded to reveal a sea of what Beatrice could only describe as purple goop. It wasn't like water, as it stuck onto her and gradually weighed and dragged her down. She inhaled sharp, panicked breaths as her chin was almost submerged and the voice came dangerously close to her ear. "Mark my words, dove. I am going to end all of you. Every last one of you. And there's nothing you can do to stop me." The voice laughed cruelly, then. "Shall I kill you now to prove my point?" It dunked her head under and she couldn't breathe. Panic embraced her as she thrashed and then, as time went on, she stilled with the calm of acceptance. This might be the end for her after all-- probably served her right for picking a fight with the Mysterious Entity-- but then it dragged her back up to the surface again before she could succumb. "I only bluff! You see, there is a particular way these things must be done. Unfortunately. But unless you want to drown again, you need to promise--" The voice changed in tone. It sounded angrier than ever. "Who breached the cir-- damn that girl! I'm not finished yet!"

Arms, warmer and kinder than those shadows or that murky sea, enfolded her then. Thea? That was Thea's voice, right? It took precedence over that of the monster in her head. And then the creature let out an enraged roar as he and his world were reduced to nothing with the simple power of a hug. This part, Beatrice dazedly thought, was kind of like a fairytale as well. Only in the good way. She almost cried with relief that she was pulled out of that thing's clutches. She wanted to stay there in Thea's arms a moment longer, to catch her breath and stay as close as possible to the best friend she's probably ever had in her short life. Unfortunately, fluttering her eyes open to greet the real world again didn't progress to that part in the films where they ran off into the sunset together while a prettily scripted 'the end' title card splayed over the screen. Happily ever after sounded unattainable, really, considering they were still surrounded by their captors. And oh boy did they look pissed.

Before she could blink, one of their captors tore the rag from her mouth and grabbed her by the shoulders, ripping her from Thea's arms.

"Give us the name, girl! Surely his wisdom was bestowed upon you. Now spit it out!" He was frantic, his eyes wild, and Beatrice stared blankly into them as if she couldn't comprehend his question.

"H-h-he didn't. He t-told me about the fool, but he--" Beatrice lied, bracing herself as the man began to shake her by the shoulders as if that might force her to talk. Her mouth was dry and still vaguely tasted of that ick they made her drink earlier. Shoot. She was lying to save Thea's life here, wasn't she? She flattened her anxiety down until it was the equivalent of a pancake and tried as hard as she could to speak eloquently the second time. "He didn't give me a name!"

This news didn't seem to sit well with the hooded bastards. The man finally stopped shaking her and she slumped tiredly in his arms. It was a challenge to keep her eyes open, she felt like she could pass out at any moment. The adults all whispered amongst themselves, about how his message must have been interrupted by... all eyes in the room finally landed on Thea. They were sharp and accusatory, like daggers.

"Dorothea." One of them said, their voice was a calm that forewarned a storm. It usually was when a full name was used in lieu of a nickname. "Was this little... 'rescue attempt' your idea?"

"--It wasn't!" They all turned with shock to the doorway, where Lizzie stood. She was clearly afraid, the way her lower lip was trembling, but her eyes were determined. If Thea was in trouble, then she had to help! Then maybe... maybe she would actually be her friend, right? (Besides... maybe that guilt she felt spurned her on to believe that, had she not tried to choke her, they wouldn't have found themselves in this situation in the first place.) "It wasn't Thea's idea. It was mine."
 
So, uh. Maybe, just maybe this wasn't the brightest of her ideas? Granted, Thea had a long-ass history with not-so-controlled chaos, ranging from her attempt to sell counterfeit DVDs at her high school (don't ask) to that one time she had tried to conquer the local museum (really, really don't), but disrupting a suspicious ritual performed by men who had proved already that they were fucking dying to hurt her certainly took the cake. And, yes, in the context of everything, that said a lot! (Weirdly enough, though? Thea still didn't regret it. Bea was in her arms, you see, warm and soft and safe, and somehow, that sorta overrode everything else. The power of friendship, she guessed! All the fairytales on the TV revolved around it these days, and everyone knew that getting your fucking morals from the TV was the best thing you could possibly do. Like, smart people controlled what was airing, right? So, via association, you'd become smart as well throughout following all the awesome, awesome advice imparted to you! ...too bad that the TV hadn't taught her how to lie to the people who probably wanted to slit your throat, though. Shit, shit, shit! Would they believe her if she claimed that she'd been, like, sleepwalking? Or that some Mysterious EntityTM had turned her into its puppet, and so Thea had actually been strongarmed into interrupting whatever they'd been doing? 'Hahaha, guys, I'm totally on your side here! I'd be overjoyed to let you commit fucking horror movie-tier atrocities upon my friend, but her guardian angel just went and mind-controlled me. Terrible, right? Happens more often than shitty fantasy books would have you believe! Sooo.... forgive and forget, right?' ...yeah, that didn't even sound convincing to Thea. What was even worse, it felt as if an evil witch had turned her tongue into a stone-- so heavy it was, really, that she couldn't even hope to speak.)

Soundlessly, Thea's eyes darted from Bea to Lizzie, and from Lizzie to the hooded bastards, and shit, she couldn't breathe, couldn't, couldn't, couldn't-- wait. Had Lizzie just absolved her of blame? She could scarcely believe it, but if her brain still could put two and two together, then that was exactly what she had done. Wow, just, wow!

"Elizabeth," one of the men said, shaking his head in disappointment. "And you used to be so obedient, too. Did you really want to find out what happens to naughty children so bad?"

"Wait," his colleague put a hand on his shoulder, before giving the girls a bright smile that Thea liked about as much as dentist visits. "You do realize what that means, don't you? Our master, you see, works in unpredictable ways. If He didn't give us a name, then that means he must have planned to let us know in other ways. Such as, hmmm... sending the first child to us instead! Should we not rejoice for that, brothers? There is no need to ask the stars, no need to read the entrails," what, "for here the first lamb comes, just as He had promised!"

Uh oh. This... this wasn't heading towards a Disney-like ending, was it? Thea didn't know what she had envisioned regarding the outcome of her grand mission, though it sure as fuck hadn't been this-- in her mind, perhaps they would have sprouted wings from their backs and flew far, far away from this world full of suspicious pies, barbed wire and men ready to drown them at a moment's notice. But, surprise, surprise, bitch! If any genre label was applicable here, it was horror, not fairytale, and horrors didn't fuck around. Shock plain on her face, Thea turned to Lizzie. (It wasn't hard to see what exactly she'd done for her, even through a child's eyes. Like, you didn't have to be a fucking rocket scientist to understand that, after a crime, there was a punishment, now did you? And in order to sentence someone, you had to find the perpetrator first. You know, the perpetrator who had fucking offered herself to these bastards, with no regard for her well-being at all! ...why the hell did she even want to be her friend that badly? It wasn't like she'd get, uh, free cinema tickets for that. Mostly, Thea was known for getting others into trouble and being loud and annoying and, and, and!!! 'Not worth it,' some voice whispered inside of her head. 'You're not worth it, but she will die for you nonetheless. Are you happy?')

Like a snake, the memory twisted and coiled, and the Adult!Thea could only observe in horror as the the scenery transformed into... into... what was this, even? They were standing atop a large building, with a dark sea of trees below. An old belfry, maybe? It certainly looked like that, with the large wooden construction in the background-- there was no bell at all presently, but Thea assumed there must have been one at some point. The musings about the missing bell, however, were kinda shoved aside when she noticed all those fucking cages. And, in order for those bastards to meet their daily villain quota? Why, of course that crying children were stuck in them! Children, including Thea and Beatrice, and... and not Lizzie, as she quickly realized.

Lizzie, you see, was standing at the very edge of the building, surrounded by the Suspicious GuysTM. Unlike her her peers, she seemed shell-shocked-- her gaze vacant, almost as if she'd said her 'goodbye' to the world already. (...which, damn. She was so fucking tiny! All of them were, really, though Thea doubted she would have recognized how staggering it really was had she not seen the memory filtered through her current self's eyes. Some fucking heroes they were, man! Like??? Couldn't they at least pick on someone of their own size?)

"The Fool," the long-haired man recited, "walks forward without fear. Never does he waver, for he knows that his journey is sacred. Walk, then! Go, Lizzie, and fulfil your purpose. The paradise is waiting for you to embrace it." Alarmed, the Current!Thea turned to Clara, or Beatrice, or whatever the hell her real name was. "Oh god, this is somehow even wilder than I expected. I guess we have to catch her now? But, dammit, how the hell are we supposed to get down in time? I can't see any fucking pause button around here!"
 
I am going to end all of you. Every last one of you. And there's nothing you can do to stop me. The demon's promise kept echoing in her head, making a mockery of the cage she was standing in now, the iron bars that stood firmly between them and the scene unfolding up above. Nothing you can do. She brushed one of the bars with her fingertips and then clenched it in her hand. It felt real and unbreakable. This couldn't be the end. There had to be some way out! Ah. The back of her neck stung, the way it always did when she ran low on options. With a sharp breath she clapped a hand over the ache and closed her eyes tight. Beatrice-- no, Clara-- swore that she would not entertain the thought of asking him for help. His 'help' was a disguise, his method of moving every piece on the board exactly where he wanted them. They were the lowly pawns, sacrificed to serve the king's purpose. (What was his purpose, anyway? There were plenty of fictional stories that killed children for sport these days, but for some reason she didn't think all of this was a simple matter of boredom. No, their friendly neighborhood demon was holding onto too much pent up anger and drive for that. He was royally pissed that she and Thea lived. There was also the matter of their captors and the way they spoke of purpose with such grand connotations. Sigh. Clearly, this was something she needed to think about later. You know, when, or rather if, they found a way out of this mess?)

"I..." Clara blinked, vaguely astonished. It seemed now they were speaking for themselves again, at least. That was a start. She watched Lizzie approach the edge, rattled by the vigorous pounding of her own heart, and then looked urgently to Thea. "No-- no wait. This isn't real, remember? We're not really in a cage. We just think we're in a cage." Even so, the cold bar pressed against her palm didn't feel any less tangible than it did before. Okay. Technically they were in a cage, but, geez. It was difficult to articulate her thoughts on this strange, topsy turvy world they've found themselves in, okay? Her words and thoughts knocked together and began to spill out clumsily in an anxious rush. "What I mean is that in the real world, we're not in a cage. Obviously. So we need to go back there, I think. But how? Or... or maybe-- we're seeing our memories, we're in our own heads, so... so..."

So? Lizzie made a point of informing her when she was trapped in a world of her own the first time, right? She made a point of saying that in such a place, she was in control. Then Clara made the admittedly questionable choice of manipulating the world with those trippy falling stars and-- that cliff covered in white roses. (Don't blame her! It'd been a weird, long night! Of course her ducks wouldn't all be lined up nice and neat in such a situation--) And after that a gateway opened up directly into Thea's head, which then lead them to Cerberus at the gateway. Cerberus, who insisted that they needed to work together if they wanted to save Lizzie. Everything that happened over the course of the night was linked together in some way. Every nonsensical word or thing thrown in their path had a place. Cerberus guarded the door. The exit. Maybe the story was a practice test, and this was the real one. In which case...

They needed to act, Clara thought, before their memory selves overwrote their present selves again. We're going to end this. And there's nothing you can do to stop us. She pointedly aimed the words at the demon. Her past self may have spent these moments drowning in an accumulation of survivor's guilt and horror, but she needed to move forward before they joined the rest of the kids in the afterlife. No. She and Thea needed to live, if only specifically to spite that bloodthirsty, child-murdering demon and keep him from ever seeing his purpose fulfilled.

"Okay. I--I'd explain this properly if we had more time. It's going to sound a bit farfetched-- but-- ah. Thea, listen. Take my hands and imagine the bars falling." Clara narrowed her eyes determinedly and took both of Thea's hands in hers, to mirror exactly what they were doing in the real world before they got dragged into this hellhole of traumatic memories. "And after that, imagine us right where we need to be to catch Lizzie. I'll do the same, okay? If we do it together, I think it might work."
 
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