Chapter Text
You wake up in the mud, cold and numb from the slow falling rain. Your nose is bleeding and it hurts. There’s not much life in this part of the forest. No sound of birds, no bright flowers – just rain. You can hear the tolling of the bell in the distance as the clock tower hits the hour.
Novosk is a hateful town. The streets are too narrow for bitter people to live together without causing tumult, like swarming insects trying to navigate their own path but without the same grace. Going anywhere means being shoved through the crowd, getting hit by flaying arms and prodding elbows. Above the streets the housewives hang laundry from the windows and empty buckets of filthy water, not caring where it lands, and yell insults at each other over the short distance between houses.
It’s gloomy and dusty and poor. The only thing that had united the people for a brief moment was the hate they felt for you. Perhaps it was fear, or aversion to whatever you remind them of. Either way, all you could feel was their hatred. They broke your nose, you think, and something is uncomfortably pressing against your rib cage. Breathing hurts. You want to cough, to get the blood out of your mouth, but you’re too afraid of the pain it will cause.
The bell on the clock tower finally stops. You didn’t count the tolls, but it’s late evening and dusk is setting in. You should move before the wolves come out. No doubt they could smell you, like a bloody meal served to them on a silver platter.
Your legs feel broken but they hold your weight as you stand up, groaning at the stabbing pain in your side. The first step is the hardest; after that you fall into a numb rhythm.
And you walk north, as it seems the only way you can go.
//
There’s a certain point when you don’t know where you’re going in the broadest sense. You don’t even know why you’re bothering to move at all. You’re lost and hollow and there’s nothing waiting for you on the other side of these woods – but something keeps you from resting.
The moon is bright in the sky, illuminating a thin layer of snow higher up on the mountains. You’d forgotten what a beautiful country this is. If only you were in a state to appreciate it. You cough accidentally once and the pain is so bad you almost pass out.
The wolves start howling in the distance, the sound echoing through the cold air. You’ve been walking for hours, judging by the movement of the stars. At one point you thought you heard the sound of water in the distance and you’d been following it ever since. Now you think it might have been the rushing in your own ears. Your vision’s gotten blurry and you stopped paying attention to your surroundings some time ago.
You trip over an exposed tree root, catching yourself on broken knees and dirty hands. The ground seems rather soft and you contemplate just lying down for a second, the moss cushioning and inviting. But a crow screeches above you, suddenly loud in the quiet, cold night. It makes you look up and only then do you see the lone cabin. Dark wood, tiled roof, a single lantern flickering on the front porch.
It looks like a place someone would call home, inviting you to make your way up to the door, and surely there’s a warm meal inside and water to drink and walls to shelter you from the icy wind-
You don’t realize you’ve entered through the creaky wooden door until you’re standing in the dimly lit room, dust particles floating around. It’s warm. You feel your cheeks flush and your fingers tingle from the sudden change in temperature. A few candles flicker on a shelf near the wall, small shadows still dancing in disorderly panic by the gust of wind through the front door. The air inside makes your eyes heavy and burning, and for the first time you realize how tired you are.
Your broken skin aches, insisting on your attention. You look around the room and with your last bit of strength rummage through a nearby wooden cabinet, its doors barely holding together, until you find a piece of cloth to cover the wound on your side. It’s not much of a bandage but you press it against your ribs as best as you can.
When your second instinct is to find water, you notice the kettle in front of the fireplace. It’s still hot, the water steaming.
You curse under your breath.
“What are you doing here?”
Behind you, a woman leans against the doorframe, head tilted to the side and a hot beverage in her hand. She seems oddly calm, and for some reason that unsettles you more.
You meekly show her the ragged linen already covered in blood, too tired to make up a lie.
“Sorry.” You’re conscious enough to at least apologize for the intrusion in her home, but not lucid enough to know what to do next. Your legs are wobbly and part of you wants to leave, but you mostly don’t want to go back outside.
The woman hums. She looks you up and down. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” you answer out of habit, and it’s all too casual for the situation. “Just… a fight.”
“With what?” She moves into the room. “A bear?”
You laugh. A bear you would’ve been able to handle. “Something like that.”
Her eyes narrow. She pretends to be amused. “I’ll ask again. What happened?”
It hurts when you remember. You swallow away the lump in your throat. You avoid her eyes and tell her you’ve had trouble breathing, and that you don’t know what you’re supposed to do.
And then you black out.
//
You wake up on a counter near the wall, surrounded by cupboards and bottles and books on the windowsill. The sun behind the clouds falls through the window and basks the woman sitting next to you in a soft light, the curve of her jaw and the slope of her lips the only thing you can focus on for a second.
You’re shirtless, a fresh bandage wrapped around the wound on your chest. Something smells like mint.
“There you are,” she mumbles. “I suppose that’s one way to avoid the question.”
The cabin feels too warm. Next to you, the woman sits on a wooden stool, studying a book with words in a language you don’t understand and hand-drawn pictures of leaves on the cover. Her eyes shift from the page to your collarbone. Then down, past your chest, to the curve of your hipbones above your waistline.
You feel more naked than you are.
Struggling to sit up, she lets you. Halfway sliding off the counter, arms out behind you to hold yourself up. You’re out of breath by then. She makes no comment and dabs a cloth against the cut near your eyebrow.
You should thank her. Excuse yourself for barging in the way you did. But she studies you as if you’re something intriguing, something vulnerable, and you can’t find the words. You don’t think anyone’s ever looked at you like this before. It feels nice. Your cheeks are warm.
“Why are you out here?” you ask, an attempt to distract yourself. A diversion before she can ask what you’re doing out here.
She hums. Presses a salve against your open skin that burns. “No one comes here. They think the forest haunted.”
“By what?”
“By me.” The woman smiles. She has a few years on you, probably. Pretty. Not very scary.
“Is it?” you ask.
Your host chooses not to answer that question and moves to get something from a drawer. Your ragged breathing stands out in the stillness of the room.
“The people of Novosk are cowards anyway,” you say to fill the silence. A peace offering, a thanks for her care. Half an answer to the question she’s asked you, the same way she only half-answers yours. You try to sound bitter, but it just sounds broken. “They swear the devil is out to get them ‘cause they saw the sky turn red. Look at them the wrong way and they’ll accuse you of being in on it.”
She freezes for a moment, her back towards you. You wonder if you said something wrong. But then she’s back in front of you, her brow furrowed.
“I know what it’s like to lose your home,” she says softly. The wariness you felt when you first got here ebbs away, soothed by the tenderness in her words. Careful hands wrap another bandage tightly around your ribs. You shiver when her knuckles brush your skin. “Or to be feared by the people around you.”
You think back to the kicks against your stomach after you stopped moving. “They think I’m dead.”
And for all that matters, you feel like you’re dead. You shouldn’t be alive. They left you in the forest to rot because you didn’t deserve to be in their cemetery – or perhaps they were afraid you’d haunt them there, for the rest of their meager lives. You would have.
“Well, you’re not dead,” the woman says plainly. “Bruised and filthy, yes. And not very well-mannered.”
You scoff.
“But not dead.” She fixes you with a suspicious look. “Why are you not dead?”
Your head falls back against the wall, gaze landing on the wooden support beams that hold up the ceiling. “I don’t know.”
It’s so quiet in the hut that you think she has resumed to inspecting your wounds, or organizing her salves or doing whatever else – but when your eyes shift down again, she’s still looking at you.
Red wisps flow from her fingers and her eyes glow scarlet.
You jump back, but don’t get far with your broken ribs against the wall.
“Don’t struggle,” she says. There’s a fear of everything becoming much, much worse if you do, so you hold still and clench your teeth and suddenly understand why they say the forest is haunted. She raises her hands closer to your head and with a shallow breath you ready yourself for whatever is about to come.
The woman falters for a moment, as if taken aback by something, but then she advances all the same.
It’s warm. The red clouds your vision a little and it’s hard to tear your eyes away from the woman’s gaze. You might be drowning, but at least you’re kind of comfortable. And it tastes like… cherries? You think the witch smiles a little.
“It’s your eyes,” she says, accent heavy. Her voice is like a beacon underwater. “They betrayed you.”
You hear the toll of a bell tower somewhere in the distance. There’s a pressure against your temples. You watch her search your eyes, as if she’s discovering your soul, your memories. It’s overwhelming. Intoxicating.
You lose track of everything else.
You want to drown here.
The next moment she pulls her hands back and you feel cold, abandoned. Your chest is hollow. You almost beg her to come back, to make everything quiet again, but catch yourself before the words leave your mouth.
“What was that?” you ask her, trying your best to keep your voice from shaking. She dabs a cloth against your nose, wiping away the blood you hadn’t noticed appear. You recall the way her voice sounded, dampened in scarlet liquid, not understanding any of it. Breathlessly, stuttering, you add, “Why’d you say that?”
She ignores you, again, the way she’s been doing: carefully, not hostile, but as if a verbal answer isn’t what you seek.
There’s a makeshift vanity in a corner of the cabin. A mirror propped against the wall, a small desk with locked drawers.
“Come here,” she tells you, beckoning towards that side of the room. “Sit.”
So you push yourself off the counter and move on unstable legs to sit on the small bench in front of the mirror.
A time when you could’ve struggled or fled is long past and you’re too tired, too confused; you’ve accepted your fate lies in the hands of an oddly alluring stranger living in the woods and dealing in dark magic.
Still, the fear trembles quietly under your skin. It feels like a fever dream.
“Do you trust me?” She stands behind you, hands on your shoulders, watching you in the mirror.
“No,” you answer quietly, truthfully.
“Good.”
Dark red smoke envelops her and you watch with baited breath as her hands move from your shoulders around your neck. She squeezes, suddenly – not enough to hurt but enough to feel powerless, and you can’t move your arms to do anything about it. Her eyes glow bright and for a moment you think this is how you’ll find your demise, broken and confused, stupidly and too easily at the hands of a witch choking you with magic-
She uses her hands to steer your vision at your own reflection in the mirror. A pair of fully black eyes stare back at you. Simmering, like deep pools of oil. Her grip eases around you.
Your breath catches. You don’t recognize yourself.
“What have you done?”
Her smile is sad. “It’s not me, detka.”
Her hands fall away but the darkness in your eyes stares back unwavering, unchanging. Panic settles in your chest, in your arms. You understand now why your neighbors feared you. You look like you’re cursed.
Her thumb brushes against your neck, against your jawline. Soothing away the hold she had on you before. You don’t notice her soft expression.
Then she’s gone, off to the other side of the room. Leaving you to stare at yourself, cheeks flushed and eyes wide. It’s all too overwhelming and you take at least a full minute, breathing too fast and searching your own eyes for an explanation.
Has it always been this way? How often do you look like this?
What is wrong with you?
You’re pulled out of your spiraling thoughts by a warm hand on your shoulder. You look up to find your host holding out a steaming mug for you. You accept it with trembling hands and she moves to sit next to you on the padded bench. Her thigh rests against yours. It’s warm, steadying.
“Breathe,” she says, looking at you in the mirror.
The red smoke is gone from the room, gone from her eyes. Almost as if you imagined it. Her hands rest nearby on her lap, holding her own cup of tea.
Nothing about this woman makes sense to you; the opposing display of overwhelming yet controlled power, and then warmth, composure, leaving you windblown and confused. The feeling of her thumb brushing against your cheek still lingers, and you wonder if you were ever really in danger.
“Who are you?” you ask when you find your voice.
She looks too gentle to have been choking you only minutes ago. Your throat still feels warm, your chest tight.
“Wanda.” It sounds almost painful, as if she hasn’t said her own name in a while. She nods to the cup in your hands. “Drink.”
So you do. The tea smells of chamomile, lavender. It’s too hot and burns your tongue, but soothes your throat.
“You’re not scared of me,” you say. It comes out hoarsely, and not a question.
“Should I be?”
Your eyes flicker to your own in the mirror. You look disheveled, broken. There’s a lingering sense of anger. But it’s not violent, you think. Not like the crowd that jumped you.
So why do you look like a murderer?
“What’s wrong with me?” you wonder out loud, barely above a whisper. The edges of your eyes have slowly started regaining their color, black fading to silver.
“You’re asking the wrong questions.” Wanda’s brow furrows as she looks at the cut on your lip, the broken skin near you eyebrow. “How do you feel?”
Afraid of yourself.
Lost.
You meet her eyes in the mirror, defeated. “Tired.”
//
You fall asleep on your good side, the one that doesn’t hurt. The blanket is thin but soft and the couch feels like a luxury you don’t deserve. But when Wanda tells you to rest, you take it anyway, greedily.
Your sleep is restless, like a half-awake dream. Your chest aches and you dream of being chased, of stones being thrown at you, of monsters chasing until you stumble and fall. The bell of the clock tower tolls and the earth feels like it’s shaking below you. There are hands around your neck and scarlet eyes above you. Panic turns to surrender and you feel warmth in your belly-
You awake drenched in sweat, the thin blanket too suffocating. The cabin is quiet except for your heavy breathing. All that’s left in the fireplace are smoldering embers. There’s a dull ache between your legs that feels out of place and you choose to ignore. Instead your fingers brush your side, where the bandages cover your wound. It’s numb.
Wanda is nowhere to be seen and you contemplate going back to sleep. In the morning things will make sense, you tell yourself. In the morning you’ll know what to do. In the morning you’ll understand what parts of last night your feverish mind has made up and what parts were actually real. You’re inclined to believe that all of it has been a bad dream. If you go back to sleep, maybe you’ll wake up.
But a shadow passes by the window, soft footsteps on the porch outside. Within seconds you’re off the couch and against the wall, hiding in the dark, holding your breath. The fear from your nightmare still lingers and you prepare yourself to run, to flee back into the forest.
There’s voices outside. They talk intimately, almost casual.
You release your breath shakily, quietly.
“Wanda, no,” someone says. “This is the last thing we need. That you need. Taking in strays to make yourself feel better won’t help.”
“We’re calling unregistered enhanced ones strays now?” Wanda says. Her voice is languid, unhurried.
“You don’t know that,” the other woman responds. “You have no way of knowing that.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“Someone’s eyes always change when you’re inside their head. Doesn’t count.”
Your breath hitches.
“You think I don’t know the effects of my own power, Natasha?”
The other woman’s voices softens then. “I think you want her to stay more than you should.”
“Like the way I want you to stay?”
You leave your spot then, heart pounding in your ears. You’ll go back to sleep, like nothing happened. And tomorrow morning you’ll be gone before they can notice. Before whoever this Natasha is, can tell you that you should go. Before Wanda can get into your head again and decide you don’t belong here, either.
The blinding pain of earlier that day is still fresh in your mind and you feel shame, disgust, an understanding why the town wanted you gone. And this is how you’ve always dealt with the feeling of your existence being wrong: quietly, solitarily. As small as you could possibly make yourself, to find a sense of comfort in a corner no one bothered to look. And you’ve found it, over the years. Not happily, not proudly. But it’s familiar, it’s safe.
You’re content with yourself when you’re alone. The world makes more sense when you’re alone.
Back in Novosk you found a quiet place hidden behind the hay bales in a shed full of spiderwebs. The owner didn’t bother to know where you slept at night as long as the pig pen was cleaned in the morning. It was an unspoken agreement. The dust-covered walls were yours in that corner, they had been for months, until the owner too chased you away with a pitchfork, fear in his eyes.
Before that it had been behind the kegs in the cellar of the brewery, where it smelled of cleaning supplies and stale, malty beer. The floors were cold there.
(Before that it was underwater, in the lake where it was quiet, and before that it was underneath your blanket on the too small cot in your bedroom but you haven’t thought about that in years.)
You’ve been in this situation before; the small comfort you take in familiarity, the only steady thing you know, ripped away. It’s a weakness if there ever was one: depending on your surroundings not to change. It’s the thing you always fear the most and the thing that inevitably, always happens. It’s a disruption. You don’t know how to start making sense of things without a familiar place to settle, like your brain puts processing things on hold. Instead it pushes all your fears underneath your bones, too intimidating and ugly to deal with at once.
But you’ll figure everything out, you tell yourself with eyes squeezed shut. You just need to find a quiet place, to be alone. Somewhere no one is bothered by you. Somewhere you’re safe. Somewhere you’re not constantly waiting for someone to chase you away. The restless thought of being chased from here, too, tugs at the edges of your tired mind throughout the remainder of the night.
//
Morning comes with shaky hands and white sunlight through the window. Your body doesn’t ache when you sit up. You fold the blanket neatly over the couch and put your shoes on. The cabin is quiet, as if the wooden walls are still asleep.
The floor creaks as you walk towards the door. For a moment you feel an overwhelming sense of guilt for disappearing without saying goodbye, without leaving something behind to show appreciation for the warmth that was offered, the care you didn’t deserve. But you have nothing, nothing of value; nothing except a longing to drown in Wanda’s gaze again, where you can’t feel or think of anything else, and that scares you almost as much as your own eyes in the mirror did. Really, you think the best thing you can give her, is the gift of being gone.
When you step outside onto the porch, you’re startled by the sight of a jet, imposing and shiny. It has landed at a small clearing near the water, looking out of place amongst the surrounding dark trees.
The sun beams off its silver wings, blinding you for a moment.
“Leaving so soon?”
It’s the voice you heard last night. Colder now, reserved. A red haired woman sits in a chair on the porch next to you, nursing a cup of coffee. Natasha, you remember. Her legs are crossed. She looks like she belongs here.
“Yeah,” you breathe shakily. You mumble a halfhearted apology and avoid her gaze, remembering the words you heard last night, hoping to slip away before she can ask more questions. She didn’t want you here, and you’d rather leave before she tells you to.
You’re halfway down the steps of the porch when she says, “What happened to your injuries?”
Freezing, you look over your shoulder. Natasha gets up from her seat and moves towards you, eyes narrowed. You’re a little intimidated by the sharpness of her features.
“What?” you ask, breathless.
“Wanda told me you were injured.” She nods at the bandages peeking through underneath your torn clothes. “Show me.”
She’s in front of you now. Not threatening, but stern.
It makes your mouth dry.
Behind her, Wanda is leaning against the doorframe of the cabin, watching the interaction.
You shake your head. “No, no, I’m fine.”
Your torso still feels numb but there’s panic clawing at your chest. You feel your heartbeat rise without your consent.
“It’s just- it was just a scratch,” you say, and you believe yourself.
“Three broken ribs and a crushed lung,” Wanda corrects you. The words sound nonsensical. “She shouldn’t be able to walk, you know.”
Something changes in Natasha’s gaze. Suspicion turns to realization, or something softer. She reaches out for your chin, slowly, and turns your head sideways. You let her, though unsure what she is looking for. But the way she guides you is steadying, relieving you of the burden of your own thoughts for a moment.
Her eyes trace over your jaw, your bottom lip that’s no longer broken, the cut near your eyebrow that’s no longer there.
“Who are you?” she asks quietly.
It feels like an unimportant question, with an unimportant answer. Your name feels foreign, like a curse on your own tongue.
Natasha takes a step back, squares her shoulders. The sunlight catches in her eyes. “Maybe Wanda was right, then.”
“Of course I was.” Wanda appears next to her. She looks at you with the same sad smile as yesterday, an unfamiliar warmth you’re afraid of becoming addicted to. “If you want to run, you should go.”
“No,” Natasha interrupts her, “you should stay.”
A knowing smirk appears on Wanda’s lips. Natasha ignores it.
You don’t understand why they would want you to stay. The only times you’ve been told to stay somewhere before, they were clipped words and harsh looks meant to stop you from wandering where you shouldn’t. This feels different; it feels like a request.
Your fight-or-flight response kicks in and tells you to run, to not embarrass yourself as an unwanted presence, to find isolation so you can breathe again. But soft fingers wrap around your wrist, your skin pulsing under Wanda’s touch.
“You can stay,” she says. “I’ll make breakfast.”
Your cheeks feel warm under their gaze. You feel small, an urge to be compliant. There’s a pit in your stomach and you don’t know if it’s hunger.
“Okay,” you catch yourself saying and you swear there’s relief in their eyes, a sense of pride as if you gave the right answer.
“Good,” Natasha says. The praise tugs at your belly with an insistence. You want to agree to whatever else they want, just so you can hear it again.
You stop struggling against it, if only for a moment. Follow them back up the porch towards the open door. A few drops of rain fall on your shoulders before you head inside and the shelter of the cabin feels welcoming, as if it was waiting for you to come back. And honestly, where were you planning to go, anyway?