Chapter Text
Mia Winters, unluckily for Lady Beneviento, grew from her experience to become the perfect antagonist for the dollmaker. She had dealt with evil, fickle children before, as the cackling doll had proven to act just like one until this point. Hallucinations and tricks of the mind she developed immunity for, by way of her former employer’s modifications to prepare her for her last task with them. Finally, here, in the tight halls of what once was a family home, Mia now simply refused to play the awful game.
The mother and recent widow stepped casually down the halls of the Beneviento estate, black military-grade boots casting a damp echo into its emptiness. Calm, collected, and already disinterested in playing whatever game this lord would have in store for her. This was now Mia’s second trek down the hall. Her first one playing right into Donna’s black nailed hands, coyly following the set path and going down the elevator to another hall. Opening the doors of what seemed to be a workroom and seeing that awful doll seated on a chair with the next part of her daughter to collect.
Maybe Ethan would fall for this, activating a trap or losing fingers to this creepy little bitch or something. But not me. I hope Rose inherited only blonde hair and nothing else. Mia thought to herself, brown eyes examining the scene through strands of her dark hair that framed her face. She turned around with a roll of her eyes at the doll, getting right back on the elevator and returning to the main level without hesitation. Swearing she could have heard a distant high-pitched ‘What!’ as the lift ascended.
She was as stoic now as she had been when she first gained consciousness after the crash. Keeping her mind on her mission every step of the way since she watched her daughter’s abduction by a man she had trusted and she was placed in the back of the convoy he stowed her in without explanation. Luckily for her the convoy was also carrying additional uniforms and gear as well as her stunned body and daughter. Mia couldn’t imagine doing what she just did if she was still in her comfortable before-bed wear.
A smirk at the thought grew on her face as she continued walking around the Beneviento estate as if she were at her own home. If she had shown up to the now crystalline Dimitrescu family castle in her loose blouse, slippers, and cardigan- how entertained the wicked women would have been! They all had their own fun and jest at her expense while she hung from their meathooks and as they chased her down all throughout their castle. Taunting her so with the bore of a husband she chose and how plain Mia’s round face was. All of them, flaunting their lustrous hair and elegant faces as they boasted on and on. Offering to lend the widow lipstick if they could get a taste of the woman in exchange.
“The more unsightly the animal the more delectable the meat: you will be delicious!” One of the sisters derided before her happy taunts morphed to the scream of dying woman as Mia invited the icy winds in through an opening. Mia stood over their remains one by one in her much more practical outfit than the one she was forced to leave the house with.
They were certainly beautiful, so it would be a lie to say Mia wasn’t tempted. Especially with the red haired one offering a kiss to share some lipstick to her bare lips.
Here Mia stood now, confident of her plan in Donna’s dining room. Confident that the dollmaker posed no threat to her as a single entity without so much of a sign of tortures and brutality past, unlike Castle Dimitrescu. This was a home for what had to have been a very lonely woman- and one with inability to properly care for herself. Dust and grime was the primary resident of this household. The few dishes that were out and on the tables looked like they had been left out for days on end- perhaps a week and were ready to mold any moment. Mold. Already there, on the fruits in the baskets and on the table center plate. Castle Dimitrescu stood in stark contrast to everything here.
Mia figured she didn’t have much physically to worry for. After all, the only reason to create what was sure to be a complicated puzzle in the basement would be because one is weak physically. Or at least much closer to human than any of the Dimitrescus were. It was good enough for Mia to afford her the confidence she had now as she continued her exploration of the estate.
She never liked dolls. Rose didn’t have a single one and why would she!- Mia sneered at how utterly creepy the things were. She had picked up one to examine in the dining room, finding no appealing qualities whatsoever. Even if it had been gifted to Rose, something like the stiff porcelain girl she held in her hands now would go straight to donation. No softness in the figure. Only hardened material where there should have been cloth and cotton stuffing and monkey features.
Mia yearned more and more to see her daughter again. With a decisive throw of the doll against the stone of the fireplace she knew she would fulfill her only purpose for being here and get closer to rescuing Rose. The doll shattered to pieces. Little fragments of porcelain splintered out like an explosion, sounding as if a jar of change had been dashed against a rock as what was once the visage of a toy girl was only lips landing in the firepit and both eyes going in opposite directions across the well-lit room.
“That bitch! That stupid bitch!” A shrill wail could be heard even through the floorboards, where she assumed the doll still sat waiting for a fool to take the flask. To fall into the spider’s woven trap.
“Come on out Beneviento, I just want to talk.” Mia called out through a smile. She thought back to her childhood, and how she cheated in a game of hide and seek by doing what she did now at her friend’s home.
Silence.
Mia waited patiently, taking in the sight of the rushing waterfall out the window as it spilled mid-day’s light into the home. It wasn’t a bad place to live at all if one could ameliorate the loneliness that being a lord must entail. She certainly appreciated the electric lights and even wooden floors more than the candles and blinding reflectiveness of Castle Dimitrescu. If Donna had a monstrous form it wasn’t going to fit through the normal sized doors.
She took another wander around the living area in the next room over, finding another highly breakable doll in a cabinet. Mia kept to her plan after looking over the walls and furniture one more time to make sure there weren’t claw marks or any indication the eerie woman who lived here was extraordinary in any physical capacity. This doll, of a little boy this time and made of the same porcelain as the first, went out the window she opened and broke upon hitting the tiles of the patio.
Angie came out not too long after that. Floated out. Seemingly hovering in the air straight towards Mia as the doors to the hallway flew open suddenly.
“Stop it! Stop doing that you idiot!” The bridal doll barked, inches from Mia’s face. Long, spindly arms flailing as Angie began to snap at Mia in her anger. A few bites drawing blood as Mia held up her own hands to stop the flurry of tiny blows.
“Give me back my daughter!” Mia barked back, still blocking rather ineffectual but annoying blows launched at her.
Having had enough Mia then struck back. Flailing her arm out and hoping to send Angie this time into a hard wall or to break against an object. The doll, just as light as she had floated over, was sent back against the opposite wall and a clear distance from Mia. Though she did not shatter, something had certainly taken its effect with the blow back against the doll.
Angie’s head had bounced against the back wall once, but the second bounce and it was as if Mia had been awakened from a dream. In a blink the lighting within the house was now dreary and grimy as the outside of the home, so deep in disrepair. Where there was once light, warm and orange with comforting heat, there was now a gray gloom that lingered in the area. The inviting openness of the rooms now replaced with a choking amount of dolls that littered every corner and stood on every surface.
The biggest dispelling of them all being a black garbed figure now lying where Angie had landed against the wall, slumped over in the same position and unmoving. What she saw before her now was someone the size of an average woman, seated with her thin back against the wall where the doll was supposed to be. A vision of mourning, as every part of her minus her hands and exposed heels were draped in the black of funeral attire. Said hands, strong from years of artistry, rested splayed open against the floor as they fell to Donna’s sides.
Mia immediately drew her knife at the sight of her- this having been the figure she saw sitting beside Mother Miranda during her ‘trial’. Lady Beneviento remained unmoving and with her neck exposed as her head hung down towards her chest. Probably another trick, Mia was convinced. But even so, she wasn’t going to kill an opponent without at least knowing what she looked like.
Careful as she can in case the woman wasn’t truly unconscious, Mia bent down quickly and threw the veil from Lady Beneviento’s head.
What was beneath that was an enthralling beauty. A full, attractive face with smooth porcelain skin much like her dolls that surrounded the fallen Lady Beneviento. One very much unconscious as her single gray eye stayed open and unresponsive. The other eye a mesh of writhing flesh and small tentacles, but seeming to move with the flow of blood vessels beneath it. Mia held the knife to Lady Beneviento’s plush lips as it gaped slightly open in her blacked out state. Condensation began to gather on the blade, retreating with Donna’s inhales and re-wetting the steel with her breaths out.
Still alive, but genuinely out.
Mia sighed as she stood back up, sheathing her knife and not taking her brown eyes off of the fallen figure. Whether this was because she was watching for any sudden moves or danger she wouldn’t say. She didn’t want to admit how bewitching the beauty of the dollmaker had captured her interests. How she wanted to lean in and feel just how soft those plump lips could be against her own thin smile in comparison.
The still awake woman sighed with exhaustion at what she was about to do. Hoping this wasn’t the actual puzzle from Lady Beneviento. Mia’s hands cradled the back of Donna’s head carefully, feeling a bump beneath the soft, silky black.
No, now’s not the time. I’m looking for my daughter and going to kill that bitch Miranda.
But the more of Donna that came into Mia’s arms, the more desirous she found herself. Mia had found an upstairs bedroom upon first stepping into the Beneviento estate and figured that would be the place to put Donna while she was out cold. With a careful sweep of the dollmaker’s thin body into her arms Mia made an attempt to stand.
Mia, being in less than peak physical performance as she tended to her husband and baby for the most recent stretch of her life, couldn’t make it very far. Once or twice she stumbled, not even able to make it to the edge of the living room with Donna in her arms before instead shuffling to the couch a few feet away and carefully letting the woman lay her thin body there.
The graceful tangle of black hair now rested upon a pillow, with the sharp gray eye looking up at the ceiling. Upon that gray eye now leered Mia’s chestnut ones. Drawn through a magnetism Donna probably wasn’t aware that she had- Mia found it almost criminal such a charming visage was hidden away. If not beneath a veil then by the isolation she knew a cruel woman like Miranda would impose. Perhaps it really had been too long since Mia had felt the touch of another woman.
Mia waited patiently, leaning against the window and not taking eyes off of Lady Beneviento as she began to regain consciousness. Unable to, with how alluring the Lady’s delicate face remained even as she struggled back awake. Soon those healthy lips would speak, and soon would Mia get her answers. Perhaps much more from Lady Beneviento, if she was as interested in Mia as she was in her.