Work Text:
“Mama?” called out a small voice from the doorway, followed by soft sniffles.
A middle aged woman clad in a nightgown lifted up her sleep mask gently. “What is it, my love?” she said.
“I had a bad nightmare,” replied the figure, now standing at the foot of the bed. A little girl with hay-blond hair that could be seen even in the darkness, clutching a striped kitten plush to her chest comfortingly.
“Oh, my Oksana,” said the woman in a low voice, “let’s get you back to bed.” She stood up from the bed gingerly, careful not to wake her ill-tempered husband.
Her mother’s hand completely enveloped her smaller one, Oksana noted. Even in adulthood, she would still remember her mother’s warm hands.
The older woman lifted up her daughter onto the pink bedspread. “There we go,” she said softly. “Now, what’s troubling you, my love?”
Oksana’s brown doe eyes welled up. “Mama, it was awful! You were gone and Papa was gone and I was all alone and--and...there were bad people. They said I had to hurt someone if I ever wanted to see you again,” she sputtered out the last few words through hiccups and tears.
“Shh, shh, Oksana,” said her mother, lifting her up into her own lap and petting her hair. “Remember the song I taught you for when you are afraid?”
She nodded shakily.
“ Let’s go in the garden…. ”
~
Villanelle jolted up in bed in her Paris apartment. Nightmares were par for the course when you killed for a living, of course, but this one was…different. Painfully familiar. Except now, there was no waking from this nightmare.
Her family was gone. Dead. Disappeared. Wiped off the face of the earth without a trace.
Her abusive, alcoholic father. Her gentle, loving mother. Gone.
And what did she have to show for it? A beautiful woman who did not love her back? A father figure who couldn’t even stay to watch a fucking movie with her?
What was there to live for anymore?
Villanelle sighed and rubbed her temples gingerly, humming herself back into restless sleep.
“Let’s go in the garden…”