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Hilda has lost her mind entirely.
There is simply no other explanation for it.
While Zelda had changed for bed, she had assumed Hilda had gone off somewhere in the house to bake or scour her fury away after their latest argument.
She did not expect to look out her window and see her sister digging her own grave in the rain.
Clearly Sabrina gets her histrionics from Hilda.
“Stop this now and come inside!”
This is certainly not how most brides-to-be spend the night before their wedding: yelling into a storm at their crazed sister from their front porch.
Not that she truly thinks of herself in that way, though it is technically accurate.
This time tomorrow, she will be Spellman no more--at least on paper.
She yells again and either Hilda is ignoring her (the likeliest scenario) or she can’t hear her over the wind and the occasional claps of thunder.
She ties the sash of her robe tighter as if it were going to make any difference in this weather.
How small Hilda is.
Sometimes she forgets. Or more likely, is convinced by the loud layers and garish makeup, the constant grin and irritating giggles, that her little sister is larger than she is in reality.
Camouflage--now discarded with the oversized cardigan in a sodden heap, leaving a floral-printed second skin behind.
“Hilda.”
Her fingers graze a shoulder blade only to be shrugged away.
“I won’t be a part of this.”
Hilda tosses a shovelful of mud dangerously close to Zelda’s slippers, which are all but ruined anyways.
“Enough. Give me the shovel, Hilda.”
Tensed shoulders relax at her tone as does Hilda’s death grip on the handle of the shovel.
Its weight is all too familiar to Zelda as she takes it from her sister’s hands.
Hilda closes her eyes and inhales deeply. Zelda follows the deliberately steady rise and fall of her chest.
She is obviously bracing for a blow.
She jumps when the shovel clangs to the ground a few feet from them.
That constant look of betrayal is back in her eyes again as they open and blink against the rain.
“Fine.”
Gritty fingers surround Zelda’s wrists. She can feel a blister worn on the crook of her sister’s thumb. Hilda is usually so careful about wearing gardening gloves.
“Use your hands then.”
She lets Hilda arrange her fingers around her throat but doesn’t oblige by tightening them.
“Please.” Hilda’s fingers press at hers. “Don’t make me watch.”
Hilda never pleads, never begs, not for anything on her own behalf.
But this Hilda’s hair is plastered down to her head, dark blonde and skimming her shoulders. This Hilda’s makeup is a mess that can’t be blamed on the rain. This Hilda’s pulse is rapid fire beneath her fingers.
She wants to indulge her. She often wants to and doesn’t. It would be such a slippery slope.
Instead she sets her thumbs to work at Hilda’s cheeks, mixing the tears and the rain to clear away veins of mascara.
She holds her sister’s face steady even though her fingers are threatening to tremble.
“I’ve told you this arrangement is only temporary--an unfortunate means to a necessary end.”
Hilda is the only one she has told. She had not confided in either Sabrina or Ambrose.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have told Hilda the truth.
Perhaps it would have been best for Hilda if she too had been left in the dark and given the choice to boycott her upcoming union out of righteous indignation the way their niece was obviously going to.
But she was far too selfish for that.
Too selfish and not nearly brave enough.
“I need you to be there.”
She isn’t good at saying what she needs. She deals in wants and desires far easier.
Hilda watches her with such genuine confusion, sounds so utterly baffled when she says, “What possible difference could it make to you?” that Zelda’s eyes sting.
“If you aren’t there, sister.” Her voice breaks on the word. “It will seem far too real.”
“Don’t ask this of me.”
“I have asked. I am asking.”
Hilda pulls away and turns back to the pit slowly filling with rain.
“I can’t watch you—give yourself away--not for some scheme.” She grinds her heel down on the edge of the grave and a small chunk of sod gives way. “A mockery—out of everything I’ve ever wanted and couldn’t have.”
Zelda knows with a sudden certainty that this is how you are supposed to feel in the moment you agree to knit your soul to another’s. You don’t feel bitter revulsion at the back of your throat giving way to the sweeter promise of vengeance as “I should really give it some thought first” slips across your tongue.
“Hilda.”
When she turns, Zelda isn’t sure the route her own mouth intends to take until her lips settle against Hilda’s forehead.
She shivers when Hilda’s hands fall to her waist.
“Be kind for once, Zelds. Just let me sleep the day away here.”
“No.”
Angry hands dig into the fabric of her robe. A tug. A push. A war of urges.
“Then just once--”
She doesn’t need to hear the rest.
It’s always been there between them, the possibility of more, tangible like another presence in the room.
She brushes her cheek along Hilda’s until her words fall close to her ear: “If we finally do this, it will not be only once. We both know that.”
A nod of Hilda’s head and she closes her eyes, adds, “That has always been the problem,” as her open lips brush against Hilda’s.
She prays her sister doesn’t ask her to explain. What would she say? I’m afraid you’ll consume me? No danger of that with Faustus. There are clear edges. But not with you.
There’s no need to worry as Hilda collides with her.
This first isn’t so much a kiss as a mutual gnashing of teeth.
Her knees give way: Hilda intends to do this here and now, to fuck on the muddy ground next to the Cain pit.
They are not a family who do things by halves, after all, and she can’t think of anything she’s ever wanted more than Hilda now in a spring-night’s storm.
Hilda meets her on her knees.
Silk is too heavy to lift.
Hilda’s buttons scatter, are planted like seeds.
They are too impatient to work together.
Eventually she can’t tell if the lightning is in the sky or just behind her eyes.
“The mud doesn’t clog this drain.”
Everything she’d felt and seen in shadows is illuminated by the morgue’s fluorescent lights.
Hilda operates the shower with practiced ease, has warm water sputtering down onto them within seconds.
“Turn around, please.”
“I don’t want to.” Not when Hilda’s skin glows golden, pink in places where her mouth and hands had been too much.
She takes a step forward and is surprised when Hilda doesn’t take a step back.
“You don’t want me to wash the mud out of your hair then?”
She would like that very much actually.
Zelda wakes to find Hilda staring down at her, head propped on her hand.
The half of the sheet she has claimed is tucked primly around her chest.
“Are you going to demand breakfast in bed in honor of the day?”
She could take the opportunity Hilda is offering her, to hide behind familiar banter.
“I’d rather we stay right here for as long as possible.”
“Good.” Hilda flops to her back and speaks to the ceiling: “I might’ve been tempted to whisper a bit of a blood curse into your eggs.”
She laughs and toys with one of the messy waves her sister’s hair has dried into; she doesn’t look forward to combing out the tangles from her own.
“How positively wicked of you, Hildegard.”
Hilda’s face turns towards her again. The curve of her cheek is already turning pink.
“I like that.”
“I noticed last night.”
Hilda turns back on her side and lets the sheet fall where it will.
“What else did you notice, my love?”
She certainly noticed that Hilda easily steals the breath right from her lungs when she uses that endearment.
“It was a most enlightening night,” she offers.
“Really?”
“Yes.” Her hand disappears beneath the sheet. “For instance, I noted that the backs of your knees are still ticklish.” (A comforting universal constant if ever there were one.)
“That’s not my knee.”
“No,” she draws the word out as her fingers squeeze into the flesh of her sister’s surprisingly perfect ass. “But it is lush and sadly hidden beneath those frumpy dresses of yours.”
Hilda looks torn between taking that as a compliment or an insult.
It was given as both, but best not to say that.
Instead she moves to a new subject, fills her grasp with Hilda’s breast.
Her thumb rolls over the darkening peak.
“These are the same color as your lips after we’ve kissed.”
Her mouth replaces her fingers, sucks until Hilda hisses; she kisses her then, worries her lower lip until Hilda tilts her head away.
“This curve is my favorite. I’d know its shape anywhere now.”
Her fingers trail over the shallow valley before waist becomes hip.
She smiles as Hilda anticipates what comes next.
“I learned--confirmed, really--that my fingers were made to fit inside you.”
“Zel-da.”
“Just like that, sister-sweet.”
Hilda writhes against her palm like something conjured out of her best fantasies.
“I learned that you positively weep around them when I talk to you.
“That you laugh after you come.”
Zelda could get drunk on that noise but Hilda is not there yet.
Blue eyes open unexpectedly and fix on hers.
“You cry.”
“I do not.”
“You did last night.”
She crooks her knee to make way for Hilda’s fingers between her thighs.
“Did I? Ahh--”
“I learned that you can’t help touching me when I’m touching you.
“That I can’t stop touching you when you’re touching me.”
When Hilda’s eyes have gone all glassy and her lip is pulled between her teeth, it all becomes too much to keep up.
“This is what I’ll think about.”
“You made it purposefully hideous.”
Zelda cuts her eyes past Hilda to the dress in question. It did err on this side of repulsive.
“I thought you would like it. It’s not dissimilar to dresses you have worn in the past.”
She flinches at a sudden, stinging pain in her hip.
She looks down to see her sister, innocently holding a needle.
“Must’ve slipped.”
Hilda offers no explanation of how it had slipped that far. She was hemming the lace of her veil, after all.
Hilda steps back to assess her work.
“Well, you look as disgustingly beautiful as always.”
She pulls a small pair of scissors from her pocket and stands on tiptoe to clip a tiny thread.
Zelda feels momentarily like a bug on a pin as Hilda's eyes focus on the face behind the veil.
“You had better practice your smile.”
And then Hilda’s face is gone.
She moves the veil out of the way and stumbles down from the stool without Hilda’s hand to guide her.
“I can’t,” she starts, waiting for Hilda to look at her, but Hilda is taking far longer than necessary to put the spool of thread back in its place in her sewing box, is deliberately ignoring her again.
“Just close the damn box!”
She slams the lid closed just as Hilda pulls her fingers out of harm’s way.
Hilda puffs out a breath and glares at her.
This is not how she would have pictured herself making what will be her most heartfelt declaration of the day.
“I obviously cannot make any oaths of fidelity,” she starts again.
Hilda lets her take her hand, stares up at her as she places it palm down against her chest.
“I promise that what matters is yours entirely.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Hilda whispers.
She tugs Zelda’s veil back into place, makes sure it is laying just so, before she steps away.
“I had better get dressed too.”
Hilda hefts the monstrosity of satin down from the rack and over her shoulder.
The grin is fake; the roll of the eyes is not.
“Don’t want to be the reason you’re late to the Church.”
The corner of Zelda’s mouth quirks.
It isn’t a smile, though she does find something morbidly amusing about seeing the rest of her day through a black cloud, even if it is of lace.