Chapter Text
The American man gives her a horse.
Be careful, Dr. Maru, he says as she snatches the reins from his outstretched hand. She wants to refuse- to accept even more help from him and his mysterious companion is almost more than her waning pride can bear. But he murmurs something about an approaching blizzard, and she knows he is right. She's already shivering from the cold, and she can feel her own weakness in her bones; she will die long before she reaches the German border.
But perhaps that's what she had wanted.
She rides at a steady pace until nightfall, listening between every footfall for a shout, watching the endless stretch of trees for a figure in bright armor. But no one appears. She is alone.
She reaches a village shortly after sunset, and pulls her cloak low over her scarred face as she searches the saddlebags. They had repeatedly taken everything from her- the Germans when they captured her, the villagers when they drove her out one after the other, and the solemn immortals when they rescued her. Isabel suppresses a hiss of rage at the flood of memories, but what had she expected? The war was over, and she had lost.
Her grasping fingers brush against a coin purse, and she mumbles a begrudging thanks to the smuggler for having the foresight to know that she could not travel penniless. But a thrill of amazement runs through her as she draws the heavy purse from the saddlebags. She does not know how the American came by so much money in a war-torn country. And she does not know why he gave it to her.
The innkeeper mistakes her slight figure for a young traveling soldier. But she did spend nearly three years on the run, and she is not an amateur to disguises. She slaps a few grimy coins onto an oaken table, then leads the horse to the stables. She is gone before the sun rises again in the morning.
It takes her four weeks to reach Madrid. The gleaming cathedrals and dirt roads are still the same as when she left for the war. Spain somehow had managed to remain neutral and relatively unscathed throughout the Great War, but she… she had left Madrid with far deeper scars than the war would ever give her. And homecoming is somehow more painful than any moment she experienced during her time in the German army.
Napi’s horse obediently picks its way across the snowy cobblestones. Isabel’s knuckles are white as they grip the reins.
The man looks frightened- either of her scars, or of her blazing eyes, but he has the audacity to beg as he crouches in the doorway of her father’s old house, pleading for mercy, insisting that he had paid his rent.
“Rent? Rent?!” Isabel’s vision quivers, and for a moment she grasps at her pockets, fingering the makeshift poisons she had concocted along her journey- powders found in dusty apothecaries, crude syrups mixed from medicines she had wrangled from poor village pharmacists.
“Por favor… Por favor...”
“Liar! There is no one- pay rent- to who?!” Isabel rages, ignoring the cowering figures of the man’s wife and daughter further up the dark hallway. Ignoring the memories their trembling figures stir up in the back of her mind.
“To Don Maru! Don Pedro Maru! Please-”
“That is a LIE! THAT IS A LIE!”
She leaves the man and his sniveling family unconscious. Killing them would have been too easy, and besides, they give her the address of their so-called landlord. If anyone needs to die, it’s this imposter, and if she can’t find him, she may need to return for more information.
The butler tries to shut the door in her face, but Isabel’s eyes darken and she pushes past without a word. The old man shouts, and uniformed servants rush forward, confused, disorganized. But Isabel Maru was once the most powerful woman in Europe, and the most feared woman in the world. She briefly considers poisoning or at least disarming her so-called brother’s workforce as they hurry forward, but then the master of the house appears, pushing his way out of the dining room, his voice raised in alarm at the ruckus.
His dinner napkin is still in his hand.
She almost doesn’t recognize him.
After all, it had been a child who waved goodbye to her that day at the train station. A child, barely out of boyhood. A child, still too young to feel shame at the tears welling in his eyes.
Pedro…
“Don Maru- this woman, I am so sorry- she claims- your sister-”
But the butler’s halting voice falls to silence at the sight of his master standing paralyzed in the middle of the hallway, amazement and hope springing into his eyes.
He moves forward. The napkin drops from his hand.
“Isabel?”
He is fat.
But then again, she never had been able to feed him as much as a growing boy ought to eat, no matter how much she haggled over scraps at the marketplace.
“No… it is impossible… they told me you had died in prison. In Deutschland.” His voice is strained. Nearly as strained as hers.
“They told me you died at sea.” Her voice is curt. Cold. Accusing.
He stares at her, struggling to speak. She waits.
“But you promised…”
“What did I promise?”
“You promised to never embarrass me.”
And finally she believes. They were the last words they had said to each other when she was seventeen and he was nine, as they stood together on the platform. Her, about to board a train headed to Germany. Him, about to board a ship bound for South America. She had dismissed his childish attempts at affection, and at last they had settled on promising to live fully, to live freely, and to never embarrass each other...
Oh, Pedro.
He reaches out and embraces her like a child.
She doesn't allow herself to weep. But she doesn’t push him away.
The first thing he asks her is what happened with Johanna.
Everything. And nothing.
She had forgotten that the last time they had corresponded, her letters had been full of light and joy and hope. Johanna had still been alive. They had still been happy.
The second thing she does in Madrid after finding her long-lost brother is visit the cemetery where her long-lost beloved was laid to rest. She had seen the pharmacy across from her father’s old home, and it is now a bakery. The owners were unfamiliar. And when she goes in and asks in a cold, rasping voice what had happened, the frightened baker says something about the pharmacist marrying and moving to Barcelona.
She screams in rage, and the baker runs into the street, shouting for the police. She narrowly misses being arrested within a week of returning to her hometown.
Johanna Schröder. That was her name. That was the name that was written on all of their love letters, that was the name written on their publications, that was the name that had been branded onto Isabel’s soul- and that was the name that would be written on her grave. Isabel brings with her a toxic acid and scalpel and scrapes that man’s last name from her Johanna’s gravestone. Legal marriage be damned. They had loved each other relentlessly for ten years, and nothing in the world would convince her that Johanna ever stopped loving her- it had always been Isabel who had been the fearless one, the fighter, the protector- and she had failed. She had failed to protect her wife from the world. She had failed to protect her from their prying eyes and whispering voices... and she had left her alone, to face them.
Oh, Johanna.
The birds are singing.
It should be forbidden for birds to sing in a cemetery.
She stands alone, staring down at the worn gravestone. The cold stillness reminds her of another time and another world, barely a month ago, when she had walked through the trees, the birds chirping to the white sky, the sounds of an immortal warrior dueling with invisible enemies echoing behind her.
You would have liked Diana.
The thought comes from nowhere.
But strong, fearless Diana, and soft, kind Johanna…
And somehow, Isabel, standing there between them. Isabel, with her black heart, and her wretched face, and her grating voice, and her damning, evil science, and evil ambitions, and evil thoughts, and evil desires…
A branch behind Isabel cracks, and she spins around, heart pounding out of her chest, half expecting to see the skeletal ghost of her dead wife gazing mournfully down at her, or the tall figure of a beautiful goddess in gleaming armor…
But there is no one. She is alone.