Chapter Text
The sun had set again by the time the two had gotten up, a side effect of time becoming a suggestion with immortality and isolation. The two crept out to the ruins of the bridge faintly illuminated by the pearlescent moon. The bridge was beautiful even in its decrepit state. Although, it wasn’t quite practical to bat across it every time or to delicately balance along the temporary rope bridges. If they were going to rebuild Oakhurst this was definitely top of the agenda.
“Cleo, we will need to rebuild the bridge.”
“Yeah, this definitely needs work.”
Anything coming in and out of the castle would pass along the bridge, so making a sturdy design was also in their books for the next while. Although to make any design at all, Pearl would need to know what resources they were working with.
“Does the castle have a quarry or something we could use to get the stone?”
“Oh, I should've definitely given you a tour earlier, now that you're living here. There’s a quarry in the catacombs.”
“Thank you love,” Pearl’s face filled with a faint smile at the words.
Cleo grabbed Pearl's hand, carefully guiding her down into the caves that lay buried under the fortress. Pearl looked at the crypt with awe. It was older than she could imagine, filled with a history that she had no way of learning. A thought glimmered in her mind; one day she will hold as many memories as this crypt. She would outlive the family she had left behind. She would walk through millennia, decades becoming blips.
But Cleo would be right beside her; they would walk through those millennia hand in hand as they did now. They would see empires rise and fall. They would build Oakhurst into a place they could be proud of, but first they needed a working bridge.
The caves were gargantuan, and made with little mind paid to movement through them. It was clear that they were used by vampires who never had to worry about human limits of movement. There was next to no flat ground; instead there were sharp walls that looked impossible to balance on. In those slants Pearl saw a place that could never be her home again. Every carved out wall felt like the mountains she once knew, created by the ocean crashing against them.
The mine looked like a painting designed to dredge up all of those mournful memories. Vampires relied on their gift for so much, but back home most of it was second nature without the magic. Flat cliff faces were treated as if ladders. It had been her haven until she had to leave—her home.
It was beautiful; Sunnyside cliffs sat right next to the coast and was filled with steep inclines that overlooked the glowing ocean. Almost every kid was taught to swim and rock climb for their safety. It was basically a right of passage to climb the tallest peak. The climb was almost vertical for hundreds of feet with few spots to rest. On the day Pearl had first made the climb, it was the hardest thing she had ever done.
But the view at the top was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen before Cleo. The wind flowed freely through the blades of grass and wild flowers grew with the strength of all those who had climbed up here before her. Part of the tradition was to plant a seed at that peak. She vividly remembered burying that rose seed as the sea turned into shades of pink and red. The feeling of accomplishment as the night settled in and the moon rose to praise her.
She remembered the last day she was able to climb that peak—she was leaving home, maybe forever, and she wanted to etch the sight into her mind one last time. That night the sky was the brightest she had ever seen; stars danced across her vision, whispering a future she couldn’t hear. The rose seed she had planted all those years ago had grown into vines cascading down the cliff face, each petal gently reflecting the moon and ocean. She was petrified as she stared out at the sea she would soon sail. She would leave everything behind for her family—it was her job as the eldest to do what her parents couldn’t.
She would take their revenge for them.
When she left she wasn’t allowed to look back—but she kept those roses in her hair. She kept her siblings' memories in her heart. Now it was their job to take care of mom and dad while she hunted down the one who had turned them. Even if she could never change them back at least she would kill the one who made them monsters.
Her first kill was messy. It was a thing filled with the rage of what had been done to her parents mixed with a lack of knowing how to properly kill a werewolf. If she just kept stabbing and bludgeoning, then eventually it had to die. She was there for what seemed like hours until the cruel thing finally stopped moving and regrowing. She didn’t even realize how tired she was until she collapsed next to the corpse.
That was supposed to be it. It should’ve ended there, but then the wind whispered a tale like hers and she picked back up her sword. As time passed her hunting gained a sort of elegance. She was efficient and had learned how to properly kill a werewolf. She went from town to town, killing those who had killed others, never really having a town to call home. She came to Oakhurst tired of a life she never wanted to live.
Now she lived in Oakhurst with the life she never knew she wanted. With a family she never knew she could find.
“Pearl are you okay?” Suddenly Pearl was snapped out of her spiral down memory lane. Cleo was a few paces ahead of her looking back with the most perfect soft look.
“Oh sorry, I got a little distracted,” Pearl stumbled slightly to catch up to Cleo but Cleo’s face still ebbed with worry.
“Pearl, you're crying.”
“Oh,” blood dripped down her face leaving the faint taste of iron on her lips. It wasn’t the tears that terrified her but the mark that her cruelty finally erased her humanity. Maybe that made her cry all that bit more because who could ever love a monster?
And even though she knew a name, a face, had seen that woman meet the monster who was once her husband with love, that changed nothing; all it meant was that she was broken, a failure of a daughter.
“Cleo,” She brought her face up to meet Cleo’s—there was so much undeserved worry in those eyes, so much she could never give back. She fixed her face into a slight smile, “Did you know there’s a way to turn a werewolf back?”
Cleo paused searching every line in Pearl’s face for an answer as horror grew on theirs.
Pearl continued with a rehearsed apathy, “they say if someone truly loves a werewolf and throws their human clothes on them, then they will return to humanity.”
Pearl's voice broke as she begged, but she wasn’t begging Cleo, no. She was begging the ghost of the girl. She was begging the person she could never be again but was just as much of a monster as the ones she would grow to kill.
“It sounds so fake,” as her words continued Pearl wore the smile of someone whose pain had driven them to madness “But I saw it work, I saw that wolf shift back into a groom and hug his new wife, and I saw it! I saw the love in their eyes!” At that Pearl broke, the memory so vivid.
She was only there to kill him after his wife would inevitably fail. After all, who could love a monster that had taken so much? She couldn’t.
But it had worked. They smiled, basking in their fairytale end, as Pearl stood limply. How? Not how did it work but why couldn’t she? Why couldn’t she love her parents enough to bring them back? Why? Why was she always a failure? The only thing she was good for was sharpening her claws and killing worse monsters than herself.
She didn’t need to know Cleo’s story to know that she was a worse monster than them. She saw the light leave so many eyes and met their mourning families the next day pretending to carry the same level of grief just to collect measly commissions to keep herself alive. She saw her face in those oldest daughters who sought her out. She saw her siblings in the crying faces that could never understand the decisions of the adults.
She knew they had a curable curse.
She knew they could love a monster.
And she knew she couldn’t.
She knew that it was the blood which soaked her hands that now dyed her hair and tears.
She knew that she would never return to sunny side cliffs again to heal her siblings' sorrows.
And as the years went on, she kept repeating those words: who could love a monster? A question repeated like a mantra with an answer the stars held close to their chest. In between each word lay thousands of smaller questions, hidden. The biggest one: why couldn’t she? Sometimes she asked if she ever loved them at all; maybe it was better that she left them, then.
Every time she begged the stars and winds for some kind of answer, she only felt the pull of another tragedy. Maybe it was that, that broke her, because every kill made her more of a monster.
It hadn't even occurred to Pearl the amount of her thoughts that were vocalized until her eyes settled on Cleo. It looked like Cleo couldn’t stand to watch her break herself apart any longer. She hurried over and immediately pushed Pearl's head down into her shoulder, giving her a literal shoulder to cry on. “Please don’t talk if you’re only going to rip yourself apart,” now it was Cleo who was begging—with a voice laced in pain.
Pearl let herself fall into the touch. Cleo’s hold lacked any tangible warmth but was filled with the metaphysical. Though she had died, she felt alive for the first time since she left her home. Pearl turned her face into Cleo’s neck, giving her voice the extra space to be heard—but even then it was barely audible as her sobs broke it up.
“How… How do you love a monster?” Pearl paused before quickly amending, “how do I love myself—when I’ve covered my hands in so much blood that all I can see is the monster I’ve become reflected through them?” As Pearl spoke her grip tightened on Cleo’s back and even though she knew there was no real blood on her hands, she felt Cleo’s bodice grow slick with the blood that gripped it.
Cleo stilled before finally producing an answer, “I don’t know. You would think with all the years I’ve lived I would, but I don’t.” Cleo’s voice had a nostalgic tone to it, but Pearl could feel the cracks within that façade even as Cleo continued, “I don’t even know how to make a choice for myself yet. I wish I could hug you and say everything you need to hear but I can’t.”
It was then that Cleo’s tears soaked Pearl's shoulder just as much as Pearl’s did Cleo’s Pearl didn’t respond, just held Cleo back tighter. She didn’t need a magical answer that would explain everything; it was enough that Cleo was there. If Cleo could love her, then maybe in some place in her heart she could learn to do the same someday.
Pearl didn’t need to be perfectly okay, and maybe it was only now that she was realizing that. But as long as Cleo held her in this moment she believed that one day she could be.
After all, for the first time in their lives they had a person who understood them without all the words. Just wet shoulders from each other’s tears. They had all of eternity to heal, and they would do it together. After all, what else was eternity for?
Even if they didn’t know how to heal, build a bridge, or rebuild a town, they had time to learn. For the first time in their lives they had time to figure out everything, even if that came with staining each other's clothes with bloody tears. And maybe one day they would look at their hands and wouldn't see all the old blood that gave a faint stain of red but all the love those hands helped build. Many years in the future red could mean the love they brought to the world and not the blood they filled it with long ago.