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The water was as cold as Dani remembered. It soaked through her skin and into her bones as she waded into the lake, steps steady and solid. She had held off for as long as she could, pushed back against the cruel ending written for her, but Dani had always known the moment was coming. She’d never regretted saying those words, even as Flora had forgotten her and Miles had forgotten her and she hadn’t forgotten any of it.
Even as she watched herself slip away, day by day.
Dani had known it was coming. It was more about the when, less about the how.
How long could she last as herself, with one eye blue and one brown, the Lady tucked deep into her body. Each day waking more and more, until the body of Dani was more presently Viola Lloyd than she was Dani Clayton.
And Viola was awake and present, and Dani needed to end it.
It had been obvious to Dani, even thirteen years ago and having just said those fucking words, that she would return to the lake to end it all.
She walked further, ignoring the chill of the water. It wouldn’t matter soon enough. She knew that. The water was up to her shoulders, and all she had to do was let go, just take one more step, to let herself sink completely.
Dani closed one hand over the other, clasping her fingers over the metal band on her left hand.
Her ring was cold even under the water. She rubbed her thumb along the band, thinking back to that day she had come home with a wilting plant and asked if it was enough.
Thought of Jamie’s laugh, Jamie’s voice as she said yes, her hair, her skin, her smile, her.
Dani thought of the moonflowers, of Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, and let go.
—
Jamie woke, and found Dani’s note. Went to Bly, swam down to the bottom of the lake, screamed and cried and begged for Dani to come back.
Said it’s you, it’s me, it’s us. Pleaded, willed it, with everything she had.
Dani didn’t hear any of it. Dani stared blankly ahead in the clear waters of the lake, one eye blue and one eye brown.
Still. Silent. Peaceful.
Forgetting and remembering all at once.
—
But that was the problem with the Lady, wasn’t it? No matter who the Lady was, Viola or Dani or the endless other women who could have taken up the burden, the fate was the same.
Remembering. Forgetting.
Waking. Walking. Sleeping.
Waking. Remembering. Walking. Sleeping. Forgetting.
Over, and over again.
Dani Clayton, as peaceful and harmless as she was, wasn’t exempt from this fate. Wasn’t released from the constant repetition that Viola had constructed for herself. The gravity pulling others in had been broken, but not the gravity of the Lady’s fate.
And so Dani Clayton slept, and began to forget.
And as it went for Viola, Dani woke.
—
The first night Dani woke, she wasn’t aware of how much time had passed since she had stepped foot into the lake. Wasn’t sure of much of anything, really.
She couldn't feel the chill of the water or the mud beneath her feet as she began to walk along the path that Viola had set for her.
The path Viola had walked for three hundred years.
The path Dani would now walk.
She knew that she had begun to slip already. She could feel her memories fading, dying and drooping like wilted flowers. Dani couldn't remember her mother’s name. Couldn’t remember the face of the man who had haunted her behind glowing spectacles. Or why she had come to England, or why she had later left.
But she remembered that last night. Cold fingers around her throat, shouting those fucking words to save a small body with blonde hair, falling into—Jamie.
Dani remembered Jamie. She remembered the flush of Jamie’s cheeks as she slipped a hand down between Jamie’s legs, the press of her voice against her skull when Viola would drown her on the worse days before the end, her hands buried in dirt, her smile and her laughter and her ring.
She remembered the moonflowers and pressing her lips to Jamie’s mouth and Jamie’s cheeks, their arms around each other in their bed in Iowa. Or was it Vermont?
Dani grappled to remember the state of where they had spent close to thirteen years together. She failed to notice she was inside Bly Manor as she considered the two states, tracking mud with bare feet that would have made a housekeeper groan, had she not died at the bottom of a well.
Dani continued up the stairs, deciding silently that it was Vermont, and continued to step forward. She continued to walk until she was in front of a closed door, one she didn’t recognize, despite how hard she tried to.
She pushed the door open, stepping inside and finding nothing. The room was empty. The bed was empty too, and Dani stood at the front of it and wondered who it was she was looking for. A boy, maybe? She wasn’t sure.
But it didn’t matter. The bed was empty.
Dani didn’t swallow, didn’t choke back tears, because she was dead and dead women didn’t cry. She didn’t even know who the tears would have been for, and turned to the left instead of questioning why her chest was tight and her eyes were hot.
Her chest was tight but her heart didn’t beat, and her eyes were hot but she didn’t cry.
Dead women didn’t breathe, nor did they cry.
Her feet took her to the conjoined room, where she stood at the foot of an equally empty bed. Her chest tightened, her eyes grew hotter. But she didn’t cry. Her heart didn’t seize or stutter with grief, even if she felt it all the same, because her heart wasn’t beating.
Dani pivoted and left the empty room.
She didn’t shut the door behind her. A voice inside of her told her it would be useless, that she would be back. She wasn’t sure when. Wasn’t sure why she would return when she had no reason to come back to an empty room, but she kept the door open all the same.
Dani turned and moved back towards the stairs. She didn’t walk towards the master bedroom, even as every part of her body ached and tugged at her. Every cell and particle screamed and begged to stand at the end of the bed in the forbidden wing, hoping for someone or something.
She didn’t know what.
She didn’t care.
Dani turned, and walked down the stairs, leaving another trail of muddy footsteps that no one would ever clean. There was no one around to clean them. The manor was deserted. The housekeeper dead, the cook gone, the gardener gone, the children and uncle gone. The au pair’s both dead.
Dani Clayton knew that. Dani Clayton knew there was no one to clean up the mess of her muddy footprints, no one to groan at the dirt and debris left behind.
The Lady in the Lake didn’t know that.
So she kept walking, feet and mind set on returning to the lake. Her chest hurt. The beds had been empty and her chest hurt, and she wanted to forget. She wanted to go back to the lake.
But Dani stopped in her path, even though the lake was in view and she knew going back would make her chest stop hurting.
She turned, and looked at the greenhouse.
Tilted her head. Considered it. Stepped inside.
There wasn’t much greenery left, not that the remains could be called that. What was left of the plants and flowers were dead, brown and decayed and drooping with the weight of their mortality.
If Jamie were there, Dani thought she would pour all of her care and love into nursing them back to life, even if it took her months.
Jamie would dig her hands into the dirt and smile at Dani and—
And it didn’t really matter what Jamie would or wouldn’t do. Jamie wasn’t at Bly, because Dani was dead and Jamie wasn’t.
Dani blinked and rubbed her thumb over the gold band of her ring. She turned around and left the greenhouse and didn’t look back.
Dani stepped into the lake slowly, letting the water wade up to her knees, her waist, her shoulders. She sunk to the bottom, closed her eyes, and let herself drift.
She slept. She forgot.
She woke.
—
Dani didn’t know how much time had passed. Couldn’t keep track of the days or the amount of time she spent waking, walking, sleeping. The very act of remembering and forgetting each day was difficult enough as it was, and so Dani didn’t bother with trying to keep track of the time.
What she did know, and could keep track of, was very little, if she were honest with herself.
Each day, as time passed, even if she didn’t know how much of it, memories slipped through her fingers as easily as sand. Sometimes she didn’t realize she was missing them and would wake to have details and chunks gone from her head.
Sometimes entire people.
Her mother was gone from her memories, and so was Eddie, but Dani didn’t fret over their loss, because she wasn’t even aware that she had forgotten them.
Jamie stuck. No matter what. Jamie was a presence that didn’t fade or falter, and when she began to, Dani would rub her thumb along her ring and the memories would come flooding back, and she would want to fold over with the weight of what could have happened. Wanted to sob with the shame and grief of having forgotten Jamie, even if only for an hour or a minute or a split second.
Dani Clayton would have. Would have cried and apologized. The Lady in the Lake didn’t. The Lady continued to walk up the stairs of Bly Manor, feet muddy and chest tightening with each step.
She stopped in front of an empty bed before moving to a second one. She turned and walked down the stairs, feet muddy. Chest tight. Heart unmoving. She walked to the greenhouse, stepped inside, and saw only empty walls and dead plants.
Dani didn’t know she had been walking to the greenhouse each night since the first. She didn’t remember it. She didn’t remember the empty beds or the dead plants, and she wouldn't remember them the next night that she walked.
But Dani remembered Jamie. She remembered Jamie. Her laugh. Her smile. Her voice.
Dani turned and walked back to the lake, sunk to the bottom, and slept.
She slept, and forgot, and woke.
When she woke next, the woman named Hannah Grosse was nothing more than a body left in a well. Dani couldn't remember her voice or her face as she walked the same steady path through Bly Manor, and she didn’t miss the memory of her once friend, because she wasn’t even aware that someone was missing from her head.
—
Time passed.
Dani forgot Owen Sharma next. The details of him had disappeared long ago: his smile and the taste of his cooking, the name of his restaurant and his love for the woman from the well. But she had remembered the slight shape of him, at least for a little while, until the day she didn’t.
He slipped from her memories easily, and Dani continued to walk up and down the stairs of the manor, searching for children who couldn’t even remember her name.
—
Time passed. Dani walked. Dani slept. Dani forgot, and remembered less and less each time she woke.
Her steps took her to the greenhouse, some months or years or decades after she had first stepped into the lake, and couldn’t remember why she would ever step foot there. She touched the metal band on her finger, one that was cold and tight against her finger, and couldn’t remember.
The flowers around her were dead. The leaves rotted, the room empty. Her feet were muddy and bare, her hair wet. She didn’t understand why she was in the greenhouse.
She touched the ring again. There was the fleeting thought of brown hair, warm fingers against her wrist and on her cheek, bright eyes meeting her own. But Dani couldn’t quite summon a name from the depths of her mind.
There was nothing.
Dani turned and left the greenhouse, and walked into the lake.
She sunk to the bottom and slept.
—
She was in the greenhouse again. The flowers were still wilting, the leaves still rotted. She still wasn’t sure why she was there. She rubbed her thumb along the ring on her finger and thought of nothing.
She turned, and left, and returned to the water.
—
Time passed, as it naturally did. Dani’s memory continued to slip. There wasn’t much left to slip through like sand grains, but she knew two last things. Two things that she hadn’t forgotten.
One: Her name was Dani.
Two: There was a ring on her finger that she would rub her thumb along.
She didn’t know her last name. Didn’t know anything about a wife named Jamie.
But she did know those two sparingly, fleetingly, small details.
They stuck in her head, glued to the sides of her brain.
Dani. Her ring. Dani. Her ring. Dani. Her ring.
Two details left to hold on to.
—
Something Dani didn’t know about herself: she had one blue eye. One brown eye.
Deep within her was a woman named Viola Lloyd, who she had invited into herself some fourteen years ago.
Something else Dani didn't yet know: Viola Lloyd was waking up.
—
Dani stood in front of an empty bed, searching for someone she couldn’t quite remember. She turned, found another empty bed. Turned further, and left. Walked until she found an empty greenhouse, one just as empty as the beds had been.
—
Dani woke, and walked. Walked, and walked, and wondered what she was doing in front of two beds. Wondered what she was looking for in an empty greenhouse. Wondered what her own name was, and why she wore a golden ring on her finger.
And with Dani having forgotten herself completely, Viola found herself waking.
—
Dani woke, and found herself walking, as she had for the past months, or years, or however long it had been. She walked the same path she always did. Muddy footprints, up the stairs, empty beds, down the stairs, empty greenhouse. She walked until she was in front of the lake, and paused.
A woman stood beside her, watching the water with a tilted head.
Dani did not look at her. She wondered if she knew her. She felt as if she did, but she couldn’t remember her name.
The woman turned to face her, and Dani did the same. The woman had one brown eye and one blue. The same as Dani, but Dani did not know this.
“Who are you?” The woman asked, eyes searching Dani’s for an answer that she did not have.
Dani paused, and thought. She did not rub her thumb along her ring, because she didn’t even know she was wearing it.
“I don’t know,” Dani said after a moment had passed and she realized that was the truth.
The woman sighed, “Yes, you do.” Dani’s brows furrowed. “You’ve just forgotten. But you have to remember.”
“What?” Dani found herself reaching a hand out, to touch the woman or the air or something, but found herself slipping backwards and into the water. She had been standing on the ground, away from the lake, she was sure, but she found herself sinking down to the bed in the middle of the lake, as if she had waded out to it as always.
She didn’t question it. Didn’t care enough to question it.
She slept, and she forgot.
—
Dani woke, and Dani walked. Her path was the same as always. Stairs, beds, stairs, greenhouse.
Empty, empty, empty. Always empty.
She walked to the lake, same steps as always, and paused as she saw a woman. She did not look at the woman, and the woman tilted her head and watched the water. She wondered if she knew her. She thought she did, maybe, but couldn’t quite scrounge up with a name.
The woman turned. One blue eye, one brown.
“Who are you?”
“I don’t know,” Dani answered. She watched as the woman sighed.
“Yes, you do. You’ve just forgotten. But you need to remember.”
Dani’s brows furrowed, unsure of what to say or do. She asked, “What?” and reached her hand out, but found herself sinking into the murky waters before she could touch the nameless woman.
Dani closed her eyes and slept.
—
The clocks turned. Elsewhere, days moved slowly for some and fast for others. Elsewhere, growth and life took place, free of the gravity of a woman who once refused to die. To let go of a child.
The clocks turned. Spun, twisted, moved as always.
At Bly, the Lady walked the same path as always, and met a woman who asked who she was. The Lady couldn’t answer. Didn’t know the answer. She sunk to the bottom of the lake, and the course of actions repeated when she woke.
—
“Who are you?”
“I don’t know.”
The woman sighed, and said, “Yes, you do. You’ve just forgotten. But you need to remember.”
“What?” Dani reached out a hand and touched the woman before she could take a step back. She felt the smooth skin of the woman’s wrist before she felt herself slipping backwards. Dani was sure she would find herself falling into the lake, her body used to it even if she couldn't remember it having happened a hundred times now.
She slipped into a memory instead.
Dani landed on a bed with a huff, and the sound of laughter drew her eyes to the right. Jamie was settled into bed beside her, her book closed on her lap and watching Dani with warm eyes.
“Very graceful.”
Dani giggled but didn’t dignify it with a response, only leaned over to press her head against Jamie’s shoulder. Jamie slipped an arm around her, tucking her against her side and letting her book fall next to her. Dani exhaled gently against her shoulder, breathing in Jamie.
The beast had been quiet lately. There had been more good days than bad lately, and Dani knew it wouldn't last, but she was alright with hoping, at least for a moment. Jamie pressed a featherlight kiss against her head, her hand coming up to her hair.
“Sorry I interrupted your reading,” Dani said, half-muffled with her mouth still pressed to Jamie’s skin. Dani had been in the kitchen, getting herself water, while Jamie had read. It was peaceful, and domestic, more so than Dani had ever thought she could have with anyone. Three years with Jamie and it still surprised her how comfortable she was with it all.
“S’all right. I prefer you, anyways.” Dani smiled against Jamie’s skin, tucking herself further into her arms. Jamie brushed back a lock of Dani’s hair from her forehead, a loose strand that had escaped over her shoulder, making Dani look up and meet her eyes.
It was easy to lean up, to press her lips to Jamie’s and let herself sigh into her mouth. Jamie tilted herself closer, pushing Dani onto her back on the mattress, her thumb on her cheek and legs entangled with her own.
Dani landed not on the mattress, but on the bed of the lake. She gasped and sat upright, water splashing over her legs and hands as she moved to stand. Dani turned, turning to look for the woman as she desperately tried to hold on to the memory.
What was her name? She had already forgotten.
Brown hair, bright eyes, a pretty smile.
But Dani couldn’t remember her name. Not her own nor the other woman’s from the memory.
A hand wrapped around her wrist and twisted her around, and she found herself face to face with the woman from before, with the blue and brown eyes.
“Who are you?” She asked, desperate and begging. Dani didn’t answer. She thought of the woman from the bedroom. Brown hair, blue eyes. Or maybe grey. The memory was slipping away already. The woman pulled at Dani’s wrist, bringing her attention back to her, and spat, “Who are you?”
Dani thought of where she had just been. The woman. She had known the other woman’s name when she was there, but her own name hadn’t been said aloud.
She turned desperate eyes to the woman holding her wrist. Said, “I don’t know.”
The woman’s eyes widened, fury and despair clear as day. Dani didn’t understand why. “You need to remember.”
The woman shoved her back, releasing her wrist, and Dani found herself sinking into the lake.
—
Dani grabbed the woman’s arm the next time she saw her, and the woman started to drag her down the bed of the lake, but Dani found herself dragged into a memory.
She was walking alongside Jamie, outside of Bly with their hands brushing and their eyes barely meeting. Dani turned to look at her and found herself saying, “I’m so glad... you stayed.”
Jamie was watching her as she said, “I am too.”
Dani felt Jamie’s eyes on her and met them. She wasn’t sure what to say. There were a million things she wanted to, but nothing felt quite right. She reached a hand out instead, grabbing onto Jamie’s gently. Jamie looked down at their joined hands as Dani rubbed her thumb along Jamie’s skin, and so Dani did too.
When she looked up, she was holding the hand of the nameless woman and was standing by the lake. She couldn't remember the name or the features of the woman from before, and soon forgot there had been anyone else at all.
The woman with the mismatched eyes asked the same question as always.
Dani answered the same, and slipped into the lake.
—
She was standing in their shop, holding up flowers to arrange for a vase. She looked up as Jamie said she had something for her, placing a moonflower down on the table with a gentle thud.
“Is that a moonflower?” Jamie nodded once, quiet and nervous in a way that she rarely ever was. “They’re really rare, you know.”
“I’ve got a problem,” Dani’s mouth twitched nervously, her hands coming to settle on the table in front of her for balance. “Or rather, we’ve got a problem, Poppins.”
She braced herself for whatever it was that Jamie had to say. She was tired of one day at a time, of waiting for Dani’s beast to come calling and take her. Or she was just tired of Dani.
“You see, I’m not sick of you. At all. I’m actually pretty in love with you, it turns out.”
Oh.
Dani smiled, gentle and soft even as it felt as if the beast had gone quiet completely and her heart thumped. Jamie reached forward, pressing her lips to Dani’s and her arms around her and letting Dani lead them to the backroom. Dani spared one last glance backwards, at the small moonflower that had yet to bloom, and walked through the door.
She found herself with her feet wet and muddy and submerged in water.
“Who are you?”
Dani turned her head. The woman with brown and blue eyes was waiting for her, standing behind her, close enough to touch.
“I don’t know yet.”
The woman nodded slowly. Dani had never answered that way. With a yet. Dani didn’t know that, of course. She couldn’t remember that she had been meeting the woman by the lake for weeks and weeks now and had answered her question a hundred times.
Dani stepped forward into the lake.
—
Dani stepped out of the lake and walked, not knowing her name or where she was going. Her feet carried her to the foot of two empty beds and an empty greenhouse, and then to the bed of a lake. Dani paused and waited.
She didn’t know what she was waiting for, but her feet stopped her all the same.
She waited there for hours, looking out at the lake, watching the wind create gentle ripples. She couldn't feel the chill of the air against her skin or the water as it lapped at her feet.
She waited until she couldn’t anymore, and walked into the lake.
And when she closed her eyes, she slept and she forgot.
—
Dani opened her eyes and looked down at the feel of someone against her, a small pressure against her shoulder. A woman was crying into her shoulder, handkerchief pressed to her mouth to keep her sobs at bay. She clutched at Dani, and Dani could only stare.
Dani turned her eyes in the direction the woman was looking and found a man lying on a bed, dead.
She wasn’t quite sure what to do.
The woman continued to cry, and Dani stroked her hair and dried her tears, her spine straight and eyes dry.
Eventually, when the woman's tears had dried, Dani helped her up and walked out of the room with her arm around the woman's shoulders, rubbing a hand down her back. They crossed the room, moved down a familiar hallway, down a flight of stairs Dani swore she had walked down before. They walked until they were in the kitchen, where Dani reached for a fresh handkerchief from the counter and pressed it into the woman's hand.
She wasn't sure how she knew where it would be.
Dani turned and found herself looking into a mirror.
She had dark, curled hair, and two brown eyes.
“Viola? Are you alright?” The woman, Perdita, she thought to herself, asked from behind her. Dani turned, and found herself, once again, by the lake.
The woman watched her curiously, and asked the same question she always had.
This time, Dani answered, “Viola.”
The woman blinked before her eyes widened. “No. That’s not right.”
Dani nodded slowly. That was the name she had heard, the name she had been called.
“No. Who are you?” The woman demanded, hands clenched.
“Viola.”
When the woman reached forward and tipped Dani into the lake, she let herself fall. And she let herself forget.
—
She spoke the same name the next time the woman asked. She had slipped somewhere else this time, into a church. She had held the hand of a man and said the words of the church to bind them together, but had left out two words deliberately. She had looked back and smiled at Perdita, hand still clasped in the man’s, and when she turned back was staring at the lake.
And when asked, said she was Viola.
The woman had frowned, and shook her head, and tipped her into the lake.
—
The cough kept her up, rattled her lungs and chest and made it hard to breathe. Most of all, it kept her from her daughter. Dani walked into the foyer to see Perdita dancing with her husband, her daughter watching from the sidelines, grinning and clapping, and thought you will not take her from me.
She walked forwards, and instead of finding herself at the lake, found herself in her room, pressing dresses and jewels into a chest. She placed a key into the hand of her husband and told him not to let anyone but their daughter open it, that it shall not be anyone but hers, and he nodded and agreed.
She was kneeling on the floor, looking at the chest, but as she stood and looked up, she was staring at the lake.
“Who are you?”
Dani didn’t turn around. She kept looking at the lake, the water rippling from the wind, and wondered if there had ever been a time when she didn’t have an answer. “Viola Lloyd.”
The woman’s hand was on her back, shoving her, and Dani slipped into the water and sunk to the bottom.
—
She shifted through other memories easily. Perdita killing her. Killing Perdita. Waking in the chest. Walking. Sleeping.
Waking, walking, sleeping. Over and over.
It was something Dani knew and understood, and she did it easily.
Each time she slipped from the memory, the woman asked who she was and she answered, “Viola Lloyd.”
And then she slipped into the lake, because she had answered wrong without knowing it. And she woke each time not knowing the right or wrong answer, and answered the same way when prompted.
Dani walked through the halls of Bly Manor after the chest had been thrown into the lake (after she had been thrown in), searching for something. Stood at the foot of an empty bed, one that was sometimes full, but not with the right body, never the right body.
Answered Viola Lloyd when asked who she was and slipped back into the lake, repeated the process over and over.
The wheel spun around and around, never shifting, never changing. Viola had started it, refusing to die and pulling others in.
Dani forgot, Dani remembered, But Dani remembered the wrong things, the wrong memories.
She remembered memories that were not her own and so she kept on slipping and forgetting, and the wheel kept spinning. The waking. The walking. The sleeping. On and on the wheel spun.
—
Dani found herself walking from the lake towards Bly. But it wasn’t quite right. Her feet were bare and muddy, and her hair was wet, but something was missing.
She must’ve been in a memory. Her own, she thought, because who else’s?
Dani kept walking forward, not seeing or hearing or feeling anything besides the need to move forward. To keep walking until she found the bed, found the body.
She didn’t flinch when she heard screaming from up ahead, or when her hand moved up and grasped someone's neck. They must’ve been in the way, Dani thought.
Dani didn’t look at who it was. She just kept walking.
She walked, even when a woman stepped in front of her and told her to stop. She stepped through her, a pale neck still in her grasp, her feet still bare and muddy, and walked forwards.
The body struggled in her grip, choking and making all sorts of noises, and Dani just moved up the stairs. The room came into view eventually, the one her feet were pulling her towards even if she couldn't quite remember why. The body had gone still in her arms.
She paused in front of the bed. Tilted her head. It was empty.
What had she been waiting for?
A movement, a shift, and she found it.
A small body found its way onto the bed, and it was the child she had been looking for. The girl on the bed tilted her head, and so did the girl from Dani’s other memory. The girl was saying something. Dani couldn't quite make out the words
Dani dropped the body to the floor and grasped the child.
This was what she had been searching for, this child. She had to protect her, take her to the lake so she could be with her and keep her safe. She began the steady walk back to the lake, the one she had learned over the past two centuries.
Dani paid no mind to the others who crossed their path. The man that tried to stop her ended up on the ground, and even as the girl screamed in her arms, Dani kept walking. She was halfway into the lake before she paused.
“It’s you. It’s me. It’s us.”
She turned. The woman standing there. She knew her, didn't she? Couldn’t quite recall her name or make out her face, but knew her all the same. Dani started forward, child quiet and still in her arms. She reached the woman, the one who had said the words, the one who was still muttering them.
“It’s us. It’s us. It’s us.”
Dani reached out her hand and pressed it to the woman's skin. Accepted her invitation, entered her body, and remembered her name.
She found herself standing in the lake, the same place where she had first said those words all those years ago. The woman, Viola, was standing across from her.
“Who are you?”
Dani looked up and met her eyes. She still had one brown eye and one blue. Dani wondered if she did too. She paused, inhaled with breath that wasn’t needed for her to survive, and said, “I—I don’t know.”
Viola tilted her head, but she didn’t look angry like all the times she had before. Dani remembered them in that moment, standing at the lake hundreds of times, answering the question. Never knowing the right answer.
“Are you sure?” Viola asked.
Dani considered it. Then, she turned and started walking. Her thumb rubbed against the ring on her finger, the one she had could suddenly remember she wore. She didn’t know why she wore it, or who it was for, but she rubbed her thumb along the metal and walked up to Bly Manor.
She took the steps she always had, up the stairs and to the familiar rooms with the two empty beds. Something tugged on her heart, on her wrist, her wet hair. Something was pulling her along. So she turned and walked down the stairs and to the greenhouse.
It was empty, as always. Dani looked at the withered plants and wondered why she always returned here. Rubbed her thumb along the ring. Blinked, and then turned.
She started to take the familiar steps back to the lake, and then pivoted, and walked into the woods. Dani didn’t stop even as she lost her footing, slipping and falling into a rock. She stood with a bloody knee and scrapes along her shin and kept walking. Caught her hand on a branch and didn’t wince as it cut into her flesh and drew blood. Tripped with still muddy feet and nearly slammed into a tree in the dark.
She didn’t know where she was going, not really, but at the same time, she knew she did.
Something deep in Dani’s chest was tugging at her, pulling her this way and that, guiding her along a path that she had taken before. So similar and yet so different from the one she had spent years walking in the halls of Bly.
Dani felt a bit like dying all over again when she stepped into the open space, where her heart had tugged her. She froze, and looked around slowly.
White flowers were blooming across the small clearing, winding up and along their vines along trees and bushes and what looked to be an old fence.
Dani wasn’t sure why she had been pulled here. She tilted her head and stepped forward anyway, something in her chest forcing her forward, telling her to move.
She stopped in front of one of the vines, close enough to touch now.
“Who are you?”
Dani turned to see Viola standing next to her, watching her instead of the flowers. She didn’t wait for Dani to answer before she continued on.
“Do you remember?”
Dani tilted her head and looked back at the flowers, pretty and white and blooming despite the absence of anyone on the manor’s grounds. They were alive. They had stayed alive for years, and that wasn’t possible, especially for a flower like this.
Dani wasn’t sure why that was important to her. Why it made her chest tight and her eyes hot.
“I want to remember,” she whispered. She reached out a gentle hand. “I want to remember.”
Her hand reached out, and she touched the flower’s petals.
And Dani remembered.
She saw her mother first, the twisted childhood she had of her absent mom, Judy, and Eddie. Daring Eddie to kiss her, forcing herself to believe it was butterflies when he pressed his lips to hers. Proposing, dying, haunting her.
Moving to England, to Bly.
Hannah, Owen, Miles, Flora.
She saw herself saying those fucking words in that fucking lake, Viola moving toward her with Flora in her grasp, accepting the invitation and turning her eye brown.
Flora falling into her arms, Dani muttering it’s us, it’s us, it’s us, up until Jamie had wrapped herself around Dani.
Jamie, Jamie, Jamie.
Reaching for her hand, kissing her and seeing Eddie, the kiss in the very spot she was now. Years and years together with the shop and the moonflower and Viola always a step behind. Sitting in bed with Jamie, holding her hand, kissing her and loving her.
Jamie’s laugh, Jamie’s voice, her hair, her skin, her smile, her.
Jamie. Jamie. Jamie.
—
Dani pulled her hand away from the petals of the moonflower. She turned to the woman next to her, one with two brown eyes and a delicate smile.
“Who are you?”
She inhaled, exhaled, and said, “Dani Clayton.”
Viola nodded once, and stepped back from her.
“Why did you do all of this?”
Viola tilted her head, considering herself. “I missed my daughter. You saw how angry I was. It wasn’t fair of me, but—”
“No,” Dani interrupted, shaking her head. Viola paused and waited for Dani to continue. “I meant this. Helping me remember myself. You asked me hundreds of times who I was so that I would remember I was Dani Clayton. Why?”
Viola inhaled. She didn’t seem sure of how to respond. Finally, she said, “I pulled you here. And when I did, I remembered myself. My sister, my daughter. All of the things I had done while I waited in the lake. I didn’t want to make another person the Lady in the Lake.”
Dani furrowed her brows. “And so you helped me?”
Viola nodded once, spine as straight as it had been in the first memory Dani had seen of hers. She was still as poised now as she had been two centuries ago. “Yes. I suppose.”
Dani nodded and reached out her hand. She placed it onto Viola’s arm, gentle and warm despite both of them still being cold and wet from the lake.
“Thank you.”
Viola blinked. “After everything I did, you’re thanking me?”
Dani shrugged and then immediately winced at the pain of it. “Yeah, I guess.”
Viola nodded and seemed to accept the answer. Dani turned back to the moonflowers, grazing a gentle finger over the petals, and when she looked back, Viola was gone.
Dani looked back at the moonflowers and thought of Jamie. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed. But she knew she wanted to go home.
—
Dani washed as much of the mud and blood off of herself as she could, then entered Bly Manor. She cleaned up all of the muddy footprints she had left behind, thinking of Hannah, and pulled on a pair of shoes someone had left before the manor had been deserted.
She found cash in the kitchen, which she did feel bad about taking, but she had spent the last few years—Three? Five? She wasn't sure—dead and didn’t have any other way of getting home.
She received a few odd looks on the plane, no luggage and just wearing a slip dress, bruises and cuts up and down her body, a single moonflower in her hand. She paid no attention to the looks, and thought instead of Jamie.
Jamie’s laugh, as she stepped off the plane.
Jamie’s voice, as she called for a taxi.
Jamie’s hair, the ride from the airport to their apartment.
Jamie’s smile, as she walked up the steps, their apartment door coming into view. It was wedged shut with a paperweight, but open nonetheless. Dani wasn’t quite sure what to think of it.
Jamie, as she stepped inside what had been her home for so many years, what still was her home.
Dani found her sleeping in their bed, curled up on what had always been designated Jamie’s side of the bed. She didn’t wake her, just watched for a moment. She still wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but Jamie looked tired, even now as she slept.
Dani stepped out of the bedroom, letting her sleep. She sat down at the island instead, the chairs worn and slightly tattered and so, so familiar. The moonflower was still in her grasp and Dani looked down at it, tracing a finger over the petal and then her thumb over her ring.
She wanted nothing more than to wake Jamie and tell her she was back, but she didn’t want to be selfish. They had time now, Dani supposed. No more one day at a time. Just time.
—
She felt more than heard the moment Jamie woke. Felt the slight shift in the air, the tilting of the Earth righting itself and telling her, it was time.
Dani rubbed her thumb over the flower, over her ring, and waited.
Jamie stepped out of their room, and for a moment didn’t even look her way. She looked tired, and sad, and Dani wanted to sweep her up into her arms and never let go. But she felt a bit frozen.
Especially when Jamie’s gaze fell on her.
Her eyes widened as she took a small step back before freezing, looking torn between running forwards and staying still so as to not startle Dani.
“Hi,” it was Dani who spoke first, softly because she still wasn’t used to speaking without the press of water against her lungs and because anything louder might’ve broken Jamie entirely.
Jamie didn’t move. Didn’t speak either, just kept her gaze locked on Dani’s for a long moment. Eventually, she swallowed, and croaked, “Dani?”
Dani smiled at the sound of her voice. She hadn’t heard it in so long. The sound of it was warm sunshine washing over her, and Dani smiled and nodded.
“How—how are you here?” Jamie took a hesitant step forward and Dani stood from her seat, fighting the urge to sprint towards her. She took slow steps instead, body aching and sore and ignoring every pain it took to walk because it was more important to reach Jamie.
“It’s complicated,” Dani whispered, a breath away from her. Jamie laughed, her face splitting into a grin and Dani’s did too, both of them falling into each other. Jamie’s arms wrapped around Dani, keeping her flush against her chest. Dani clutched at Jamie’s shoulder, her hand winding itself into Jamie’s hair.
She pulled back enough to meet Jamie’s eyes before she pulled Jamie to her, kissing her until she couldn’t breathe in anything but her. Her hand cupped Jamie’s face, thumb moving against her skin. Jamie’s hands moved from her waist to her back, to her arms to her neck to her waist again, touching her and making sure she was solid and real.
Both pulled back eventually, just enough for Dani to press her forehead to Jamie’s, not moving from her space or pulling back completely. She could feel Jamie’s breath against her lips, warm and gentle and proof that she was alive, which was something she hadn’t been able to think about before when she was drowned in a lake, but was so agonizingly important.
Dani felt her chest tighten and her eyes growing hot and wet. But, unlike at Bly, the tears formed and fell steadily down her cheeks. Jamie brushed them away gently with her thumb, forehead still pressed to hers.
“I still don’t understand how this is happening.”
Dani let out a small laugh, kissing Jamie once, twice, before shaking her head. “It’s complicated, like I said. I barely understand half of it.”
Jamie pulled away from her, eyes looking her up and down before landing on her eyes. Her eyes widened and her breath caught. “Both of your eyes are blue.”
She sounded breathless, and raw, as if not daring to believe that the impossible had happened. Dani smiled wetly.
“Yeah, they are. Viola let go.”
Jamie’s eyes widened. She remembered that name, it seemed. Dani had woken up from many dreams with Viola’s name on her lips, having dreamed of her life before and after becoming the lady. She had told it all to Jamie, who had clutched her hand and kissed her and told her one day at a time.
“Are you sure?” Jamie whispered. Dani nodded, and Jamie kissed her, hand in her hair and pushing her back against the counter. She could feel Jamie crying against her, tears running down and brushing against her skin as they kissed, and pulled back to brush them away.
Jamie’s eye caught on something over her shoulder, brows furrowing and a small, hopeful laugh escaping her chest. “Is that a moonflower?
“Yeah,” Dani nodded, breathless and crying and happy.
“Do you wanna tell me why you have a moonflower?”
“Sure, but can we sit? My whole body sort of hurts.” Jamie’s eyes widened and Dani turned to grab the moonflower from the counter before pulling Jamie to their bed.
“Are you alright?” Jamie asked softly. Her eyes landed on the bruises on Dani’s knees and legs, the cut on her hand, the faint markings along her body from spending the last four years moving from a lake to a manor to back.
From spending the last few years as a dead woman.
“It’s okay. I’m okay.” Jamie didn’t look convinced, her fingers hovering above Dani’s body. Dani tugged her down, pulling her arm over her body and tucking her head against Jamie’s chest where she could feel her heartbeat. “I just need to feel you.”
“Okay. Okay.”
Jamie nodded against Dani’s head, pressing a gentle kiss to her hair as Dani inhaled and exhaled. Strange. It felt weird to breathe, which felt even weirder to think to herself. But she hadn’t needed to breathe at Bly, not when she was in the lake and not when she walked the grounds.
She shuddered and then felt Jamie’s head tilt down, trying to look at her from where she was tucked into Jamie’s chest.
“Are you okay?”
Dani wasn’t sure how to answer in a way that wouldn't hurt Jamie. She answered anyway.
“Breathing sort of. Feels weird.”
Jamie pulled back until Dani met her eyes, eyes moving between Dani’s two blue ones. Her eyes settled on the left, just as blue as the right.
“What d’you mean?”
Dani averted her gaze. “I didn’t really need to breathe at Bly. I wasn’t exactly alive. It sort of feels weird to do it now.”
Jamie didn’t say anything, and Dani looked up to find her looking moments away from crumbling apart. She leaned forward and grasped Jamie’s hand, and pressed it to her chest to where her heart was now beating.
“I’m alive, Jamie. I’m here.”
Jamie nodded, eyes wet. She pushed her hand harder against Dani’s chest, listening for Dani’s heartbeat. It was there. It was steady. Dani was alive.
The prospect made Jamie sob outwardly and Dani rushed to throw her arms around Jamie, tugging her forward. Jamie collapsed into her grip, pressing her hands into Dani’s hair, her skin, her chest. Looking for her heartbeat again.
They settled back eventually, legs entwined but facing each other.
“Were you… in the lake? The whole time?” Jamie asked eventually. Dani shook her head.
“I don’t know how long I was in there. For a while, I guess. But eventually, I did what Viola did. I started walking. I walked to Miles and Flora’s room, and I looked for them. But their beds were always empty, obviously.” Jamie looked moments away from crying again. Dani wasn’t sure why that one comment had set her off, but she leaned forward and took Jamie’s hand again. She kept talking, even though the next part wasn’t something she wanted Jamie to know.
“I didn’t even know why I was there though,” she whispered.
“What do you mean? You were looking for them, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, but at the time I didn’t know that. By the time I left the lake and started walking, I had already forgotten them,” Dani said. Her chest felt tight, the way it had all the times she stood at the foot of their empty beds. Jamie was watching her and Dani avoided her gaze.
“Dani,” Dani said nothing, waited instead for Jamie to scold her for forgetting. To tell her that all of people, Miles and Flora shouldn’t have been forgotten. She knew Jamie would say neither of those things. But her heart caught and tears began to drip onto her pillow. “It wasn’t your fault—”
“I forgot them,” she cried, curling inwards.
Jamie scooted towards her, brushing her hair back from her face before moving to wrap her arms around Dani’s back. “It wasn’t—”
“It was. I forgot everything, everyone. Hannah, Owen. I even fucking forgot you.”
Jamie paused. But she didn’t pull back. Didn’t remove her hand from Dani, only pulled her closer. Pressed a kiss to her head and rested her cheek against Dani’s hair.
“Did you want to forget them? And me?”
“What? No. No. Never. I tried to remember all of you, I just couldn’t.”
“Then it wasn’t your fault. It never has been. And you’re here now, and you remember.” Dani nodded gently against Jamie’s chest, trying to believe her words. Her breathing was ragged, a bit unsteady and unchecked. Jamie must’ve heard the uneven breaths and began to rub her hand down Dani’s back. “You okay? What’s happening?”
Dani’s sniffled and inhaled as slowly as she could before murmuring, “Nothing, sorry. Breathing’s weird. Crying’s weird too.”
Jamie’s hand faltered before resuming its path up and down Dani’s back. “Right. Yeah.”
They were silent for a moment before Jamie asked, “Wait? You couldn't cry there?”
Dani shook her head. “No. I was dead, Jamie. Couldn't really produce tears.”
“Jesus, that must’ve been difficult for you.”
Dani shoved her elbow into Jamie’s ribs. She knew Jamie was trying to make a joke so she didn’t have to think about the fact that Dani had been dead, had drowned, so she laughed and pressed a kiss to Jamie’s sternum.
“No, I'm serious! I mean, four years without crying, don’t know what I’d do!” Dani pressed a hand to her mouth to smother her giggles and felt Jamie laughing too. She considered what Jamie had said though, and paused before looking up at her.
“Four years?”
“Yeah. You didn’t know?”
“No. Time was weird there. Everything was blurry. I was wondering how long it was.” Jamie nodded, looking down at her. “I’m sorry it was four years. I wish I had come back sooner.”
Jamie frantically shook her head, leaning forward to brush back Dani’s hair from her face.
“Don’t apologize for that. Ever. I’m happy you came back at all.” Dani nodded. She shifted closer to kiss her and then tilted her head once they had parted. She remembered standing in the greenhouse, gaining flashes of a woman whose name she thought she would never remember. Now she was here, and Jamie was in front of her.
It felt too good to be true.
“I went to the greenhouse too,” Dani whispered, as if it was a scandalous secret to confess and not her overwhelming love for Jamie that had brought her there each night.
“You did?” Jamie looked vulnerable at the idea of it. Dani, cold and wet, with bare, muddy feet, walking to the greenhouse to look for her. And never finding her. Jamie blinked back the sting of tears.
“Yeah. Every night,” Dani said, “The plants were all dead. You would’ve had a meltdown.”
Jamie let out a startled laugh and darted forward to press a quick kiss to Dani’s nose, her cheeks, her lips. Dani giggled and pulled back to look at her.
“Mean, Poppins. I wouldn't've. I would’ve been very classy about it.”
Dani hummed and thought back to the first night back in the greenhouse. Standing and looking at the empty room with the dead plants and wilted flowers, and thinking Jamie would’ve done anything to bring them back.
“You would’ve. You would’ve cared for them and brought them back from the brink of death,” Dani voiced, soft and casual. Jamie blinked. She hadn’t expected that.
“Yeah,” Jamie murmured. She wasn’t sure what to say. She knew there was more to it than just that, and gave Dani a moment to sort it out inside her head.
“That’s what I thought.” Jamie cocked her head and Dani sighed and explained, “When I first walked in there, I mean. I remembered you, the first time I walked there. And I saw those flowers and those plants, dead. And I thought that if you were there you would’ve brought them back and they would’ve flourished under your love.”
Jamie swallowed heavily. She still wasn’t sure what to say. She couldn't think over the onslaught of images of Dani, alone at Bly and waiting for someone to find her. Looking for Miles and Flora. Looking for Jamie. Thinking about Jamie when she saw dead plants and thinking that she would be able to care for them.
And then having to walk back into that lake alone and do it all over again for four years.
Jamie inhaled raggedly. She knew it was no use to try and hold back tears now. It had been an impossible task before today, when she would think of Dani lying alone at the bottom of that lake, cold and decaying.
Knowing that she had wandered around, looking for the people she loved, unable to find them, was so much fucking worse.
Jamie inhaled and felt hot tears spilling down her cheeks. Felt Dani lean forward to cup her cheek, and she leaned into the warmth of her hand, pressing into her skin to remind herself that Dani was right in front of her.
It didn’t make up for the years Dani spent wandering alone.
Jamie sobbed harder and pressed herself further into Dani’s hand until eventually the tears died down as Dani stroked her thumb along her cheek and pressed her forehead to Jamie’s.
“I’m sorry. Dani. I’m sorry. I—I’m sorry,” Jamie said through her tears.
“Don’t—don’t apologize, please.”
“If I had known that you were—I don’t know. Fucking looking for me, I would’ve—”
“No.” Jamie paused at Dani’s tone, forceful and gentle all at once. “Don’t apologize. It wouldn’t have changed anything. I need you to know that.”
“What d’you mean?”
Dani sighed and leaned backwards, unsure how to tell Jamie about the past four years. “I mean, I didn’t remember Flora and Miles. And I forgot Hannah and Owen. I remembered you for as long as I could, you were sort of anchoring me to myself I guess. But eventually, I did forget you. And you showing up wouldn’t have changed anything or made me remember, at least I don’t think it would've.”
“How do you know?” Jamie asked.
“When I forgot you, I forgot myself too. You were the last part of me that was keeping me… present. In a way.” Jamie nodded in understanding, looking overwhelmed at the prospect of Dani losing herself at all. “So when I forgot you, I forgot who I was. And after that, things started to change.”
“Change? How?”
A beat of silence, and then, “I started to see Viola again.”
Jamie inhaled sharply, and Dani pressed on quickly. “Not as the Lady. Just as herself. As the way she was two centuries ago when she was herself. I didn’t know it was her at first, because I couldn’t even remember my own name. She would ask me every night who I was, that question exactly, and I would tell her I didn’t know.
“At one point I started to slip into memories. Do you remember how Flora explained to us about being tucked away into a memory?” Jamie nodded, understanding a bit about where this was going. “That’s what happened. It was always memories with you. And after each one, Viola would ask who I was, but I still didn’t remember. But then one day I remembered the moonflowers.”
Some sort of look broke across Jamie’s face, one of curiosity and love all the same. She didn’t know where the story was going, not really, but she understood the part moonflowers had played for them.
“I remembered when you gave me one and told me you loved me. And when I woke up from the memory, I still didn’t know who I was, but things had changed. After that I started to slip into Viola’s memories. I thought I was Viola.”
Jamie’s nose wrinkled at the prospect. “What? Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because at that point I was fully the Lady in the Lake like she had been, so I had to see her and know her fully. I’m not sure. But I didn’t remember that I was Dani, so I thought that maybe I was Viola. Obviously, I figured out that I’m not.”
“Yeah, thank god for that,” Jamie snorted, then pressed a kiss to Dani’s head.
Dani laughed once before continuing. “I saw the memory of that night. At the lake.”
Jamie swallowed. Both knew which night it was.
“And when we got to the part of me inviting her in, it played out just as it had, but then I sort remembered myself. Bits and pieces, not the full story or my full name, but enough for me to know where to go when I came out of the memory.”
Jamie looked down at her, confused and not yet understanding that it was her that had made Dani remember herself.
“What do you mean? Where did you go?”
“To the moonflowers.”
Jamie’s confusion melted away to pure adoration, love and devotion clear as ever on her face.
“I barely knew where I was going. My body was pulling me along even if I didn’t know where to go. That’s why I have so many bruises and cuts.”
“Yeah,” Jamie uttered. But it was soft, and so were her eyes, lacking any sort of amusement at Dani stumbling around, clumsy as always.
“I found the moonflowers, and I touched one, and I remembered. Miles and Flora, and Hannah, and Owen. I remembered my life, and my name, and most of all you.”
Jamie was still staring at her as if she couldn’t quite believe Dani was real.
“The craziest part of it all was that the moonflowers were even still alive.” Dani reached behind her and found the one that she had taken from Bly, pressing it into Jamie’s hands. “Every single one was blooming. Every one.”
Jamie looked up, gentle hands cupping the moonflower.
“I touched the moonflower, and I remembered. Because of you, Jamie. You saved me,” it’s all Dani can get out before Jamie was reaching for her, crushing her lips to hers, moonflower between them.
Dani’s lips were warm beneath Jamie’s, her skin smooth and soft, her heart beating steadily. The moonflower lay between them, bright and loved and flourishing, just as alive as both of them.