Chapter Text
Betty shoved the door to her room open, lugging her bags in and kicking the door shut behind her. She winced at the noise- her new landlord had specifically asked her not to do demonic rituals in his house, so he’d probably be pretty unhappy to find her with the books she had just bought. She had been renting out a room in Mr. Johnson’s house for six weeks now, spending all her time researching.
Magic, curses, rituals… anything that could help. Betty shuddered at the memory of that horrible day, Simon crying out for her, shooting ice into the sky, his tone sharper than she’d ever heard.
It had to be the crown. A mental health episode didn’t give you the power to shoot ice from your hands.
Betty dumped her books onto the bed and locked the door behind her. She pulled out one of the coffee cans she kept under her bed, and grabbed a random book from one of the bags. It’d be another long, sleepless night. Staying up wasn’t too hard, anyways. She had barely been able to shut her eyes these last few weeks.
As she scanned through page after page, the sun dipped outside, darkening the room. She clicked on the lamp, sipping at her coffee whenever her eyes began growing heavy. The stack of discarded books next to her grew. Still, nothing on that crown or ice magic.
Betty only dozed off for a moment. She woke up at the sound of sirens.
It felt unreal for a second. Surely they’d stop and it’d be announced as a test. Tensions had been rising, but surely not enough to turn a cold war hot?
And yet they continued. She could hear Mr. Johnson’s television through the wall.
How long did she have?
Long enough to do something crazy?
Because in all of her research, somewhere in one of these notebooks, she had found something that would keep her alive.
She couldn’t help Simon if she was dead.
Betty always had been known to take risks, after all.
When Betty woke up, she couldn’t even speak. Her throat felt tight and dry, and her entire body felt weak. She shakily sat up, looking around her. In a tight circle around her body, the carpet was in pristine shape.
Everything else was destroyed.
Her entire rental room was crushed by the collapsed ceiling, burying all her notes and books. Her phone and laptop were probably lost under there as well.
She stumbled to her feet, walking over the spot the door once was. The living room was destroyed as well, and she passed near mindlessly through. It took her brain a second to catch up, but Betty realized her feet had carried her to the remains kitchen, somehow still standing alongside the entryway.
Betty tore open the fridge, grabbing a water bottle and downing it all in one go. She gasped as she threw the empty bottle aside, and for a moment thought she was going to throw up. She shut the fridge and pressed her head against the cool surface, taking several slow, deep breaths until she had control of her stomach again.
Now that breathing didn’t feel like gargling gravel, Betty finally took a moment to absorb her surroundings.
The house was in ruins. Only parts of the walls and ceiling remained, and water gushed out of broken pipes in the ground. The sky was an eerie gray-green color, an almost diseased look, patterned with thick clouds of smoke. The air tasted like fire and static, yet left a chill at the back of her throat when she breathed in.
Betty fell back against the fridge and slid to the ground, hugging her knees. Mr. Johnson was probably buried in the rubble somewhere. Dead. Like most of the neighborhood seemingly was. Was Simon even alive? Would that cursed crown protect him, like her own new abilities had saved her?
She shook her head, banishing the doubt trying to take root. Simon would survive. He knew how to take care of himself without civilization, and he had his own strange magic to help him. He would be okay. She just had to find him.
She couldn’t just run off into the city unprepared, though. She’d need to stock up on supplies, get a good backpack and sturdy boots, and she’d need some actual rest. Already, Betty was creating a mental checklist. She could take the water bottles left in the fridge. The pantry had been crushed by a chunk of collapsed ceiling, but she could scour the other houses for canned food, or anything else that wouldn’t go bad quickly. And surely somebody in one of these houses had clothing her size.
Already, the fear was ebbing. A plan made things feel more stable. This was something she could do.
Betty stood shakily. First things first- she needed real sleep. Passing out didn’t count. The beds were certainly gone by now, and she didn’t have the strength to unearth them. If she could just…
She looked down at her hands, stretching her fingers, curling them in, trying to remember that now distant, almost forgotten feeling of creating, changing, ebb and flow and buzzing-
It took her three tries. The first time, she ended up with a rectangular slab of floor tile. The second attempt was closer, a sheet of fabric so thin it was nearly translucent. Maybe if she aimed a little lower… and finally she got a result. A bed would have been nice, but a sleeping bag was fine. Imagine that. Using magic powers to get a sleeping bag.
Betty was sure sleeping would be difficult. She couldn’t trust the ceiling not to collapse, so she just stuck close to a pile of rubble to offer shelter. She might have, with a few more attempts, managed a better shelter with her magic, but exhaustion was burning at the back of her eyes, and she just barely managed to lay down, not even tucked in before she was out like a light.
She didn’t even remember waking up. The next thing she was aware of, she was kneeled on the ground, pushing dirt into a pile.
Betty blinked blearily, trying to guess what time it was. The discolored sky and thick smoky clouds made it impossible to tell, but she was pretty sure, from the sticky, dry feeling in her mouth, that it had been a while. She raised her hands, examining the dirt under her nails and many small cuts and scrapes.
She stood, and when she noticed the shape of the mound, it finally hit her what she had been doing.
It was a grave. She had dug a body out of the rubble and buried it.
No wonder she had blanked out. That was normal, wasn’t it? When something traumatic happens, you lose time. You forget it ever happened, so your mind doesn’t have to deal with the burden.
Betty turned around to face the remains of the house, and… there. She could see the spot where a slab of drywall had been shoved aside. It must have been Mr. Johnson. He hadn’t been a friendly man, but he wasn’t cruel, and he had looked sympathetic when she had told him she was fighting with her fiancé. Of course she would have felt compelled to bury him. Of course seeing his body would have been traumatic. Of course.
Calmed a bit by the explanation, she shoved the last of the dirt onto the mound, and then found a rock in the backyard to place on top. Betty wasn’t a religious person, and she didn’t even know what Mr. Johnson believed in, so she settled on a quiet “I’m Sorry”, before focusing herself on the task at hand.
The hallway closet was still there, and Betty only had to dig through the mess of random objects stuffed in there to turn up a duffel bag. It seemed sturdy enough, and so she decided it would have to do. The first thing she packed were the water bottles in the fridge. It would be enough for about a week if she rationed it out, so she’d have to keep an eye on that, but she was fairly certain she’d be able to either boil rain water or use her magic. She didn’t want to rely on it too much, when she wasn’t very good at it, but she’d rather mess up a dozen times than die of dehydration.
The next necessity was food. Anything non-perishable would do; canned or dried food, granola bars, peanut butter. It’s not like she could afford to be picky right now.
Betty decided to start with the house across the street. She had heard Mr. Johnson grumbling about its owners every now and then, middle class folks with an annoyingly loud dog who renovated often. Apparently, those renovations really helped, because the house was still standing.
She tested the front door first, and was surprised to find it unlocked. She glanced at the adjoined garage, noting that the door was open and there was no car inside. Betty guessed they had packed what they could and fled when the sirens went off. Hopefully they left something useful behind.
Betty swung open the door and stepped inside, shutting it quietly behind her. If she didn’t look at the window, she could almost imagine that everything was normal right now. The home had an open floor plan, so finding the pantry was a complete non-issue, and she sighed with relief as soon as she took a look inside. The home owners had definitely packed some of it, but there was plenty left to choose from.
Betty was placing a can of ravioli in the bag, being careful to make sure it wouldn’t crush the water bottles when she picked it back up, when she heard a snarl and felt a pain in her shoulder.
She blindly smacked at the spot and heard a yipe, the pressure lessening. Another, harder hit and she was released. She scrambled back, hitting the counter as she stared wide-eyed at the family’s apparently abandoned dog. It was snarling at her, long yellow teeth bared. Betty didn’t know her dog breeds well, but whatever it was, it was huge, and she knew if it got its teeth around anything vital, she’d be dead in an instant.
She rolled to the side as it lunged again, letting it smack into the counter, but it didn’t even pause as it whipped around and tackled her, sending her stumbling back into the pantry. The force of their combined weight caused one of the wooden shelves to snap, and she slid down, the splintered edges slicing open her arm.
“Stop! Just…!” Looking back, Betty barely knew what she had been thinking in that moment. All she knew was that she was boiling with fear, anger, frustration. She just wanted the dog gone. As it lunged again, she thrust out her arms to block it, and was met with a grotesque snapping noise.
It was like bones and meat being ripped apart, and she lowered her hands in confusion, only just catching the very end of the violent metamorphosis the dog had experienced, its body warped into a tiny cube of concrete, compressed and morphed from flesh into stone.
Betty sat there for a moment, staring wide-eyed at the cube, now sitting there innocently. Then she hunched over and threw up between her legs.
It took her a few minutes to stop, her now empty stomach clenching and heaving. Her eyes were watering and her mouth and nose stung. She weakly raised her uninjured arm and rubbed her face clean, laying against the pantry wall as she gasped for air.
When she finally felt like she could stand again, she braced herself against the remains of the snapped shelf and used it to lift herself, stumbling around the puddle of mostly bile. She sniffed, rubbing again at her face, and then got back to work, stuffing cans into her bag.
She had just killed a dog. No, she hadn’t just killed it; she had done something truly horrific, torturous to it. And it had been entirely by accident. Could she even turn it back? If she did, it would surely try to kill her again.
Betty felt another spike of pain, and glanced at her cut arm. It hadn’t sliced any major arteries, but it was still bleeding, and now that the adrenaline was wearing off, the pain was horrible. She took a deep breath, and then leaned down, grabbing a water bottle out of her bag.
She left the kitchen and checked each door in the house until she found the bathroom. Unfortunately, the medicine cabinet was lacking, and so she tried the bedroom next, pulling the first white shirt she saw out of the closet and ripping it up for bandages, washing the gash first with the bottle of water.
By the time she had finished wrapping it, and checked her shoulder to make sure the dog’s bite hadn’t penetrated her skin, she had calmed down considerably. Her heart no longer threatened to burst out of her chest, and the fuzziness at the edges of her vision had eased away. She hadn’t even realized how wobbly her legs had been.
Betty had always been more physically capable than Simon, and right now, she was in a better state of mind. If she was this battered already, what about him? He must be terrified right now. He needed her. She couldn’t leave him waiting too long.
She didn’t slow down, but she was more careful as she continued her supply hunt. This house didn’t have anything in her size, so when she had finished packing food, she tried the next one over. This one had a collapsed wall, allowing easy access, and while it was once again a negative on clothes, she did find a basic first-aid kid in the bathroom.
The next few houses were a bust. Two had collapsed, and the third had nothing she needed. The sixth one was locked, and in her current state, she knew she couldn’t risk smashing a window and cutting herself open on glass climbing through. But getting rid of a door should be easy, right? After what she had just done with her magic, getting through a door was child’s play.
Betty just blipped the door out of existence. It took a minute of focus, but it was quicker than creating the sleeping bag. She felt a flash of pride; she was getting better at this magic thing pretty quickly. If she could find somewhere safe to practice, she’d be able to make sure Simon never had to worry about anything for the rest of his life.
This house, finally, had clothes in her size. She changed immediately, getting out of her now torn, bloody, and vomit-stained shirt, picking out a plain black sweater from the closet. She could use the extra padding on her shoulders, to keep the bag from giving her blisters.
Function over form was the obvious priority. Hiking boots, long-sleeved shirts and sturdy-looking pants. She needed clothes that would protect her from the elements and would put in a lot of use before ripping.
By the time she left, the bag was packed with everything she was sure she would need. She felt like she could fall asleep on the spot. It had been a rough day, but after some rest and a good meal, she’d be ready to set out for the city and find Simon.
Betty began the walk back down the street and noticed something strange. Behind the clouds and the green tinge to the sky- if she focused hard- she could just barely make out the bright disc of the sun. For a moment, she thought it had been setting, but based on the actual direction, she realized that it was actually rising.
She had set out early in the day. She hadn’t noticed any indication that night had fallen. No drop in the already chilly temperature or increased darkness. Beyond that, Betty was certain she hadn’t spent that long digging through people’s closets and cabinets.
But as much sense of it as she tried to make, there it was. A rising sun.
She must have lost track of time. There was no other explanation. How long had she sat there after that dog attacked her, trying not to pass out from shock? How long had she spent digging through medicine cabinets, or picking out good clothing? Much longer than she had imagined.
Wasted time was frustrating, but it looked like she’d have to wait until tomorrow. She needed rest, and she didn’t want to set out in the dark.
As soon as she got back to the remains of the house she had made her base, she set to work starting a fire. There was plenty of scrap wood and paper to choose from, and she didn't need a strong blaze. Just enough to use the small pot she’d scavenged to heat up a can of soup.
Betty ate so quickly she nearly choked. She hadn’t even realized how hungry she was, but now that she thought about it, it had been more than 24 hours since she’d last eaten. At least she knew she could go a while without food before she started feeling the effects.
She wiped down the inside of the pot with a cloth, packed it back up, and settled into the sleeping bag to rest. With any luck, she’d sleep through the day and wake up tomorrow as the sun rose. Even the limited light and heat of morning was better than the inky darkness and chill of nighttime.
With even more luck, she would only have to weather a few nights before she found simon.
Betty was waist deep in water, wading her way through pitch darkness. She could barely see three feet in front of her. She could hear something in the distance, a creaking noise, a snapping noise that boomed deep like ice cracking in a glacier.
Around her, the water became colder, thick like slush, and when she looked down, it bubbled and hissed, filling her nose with the scent of electricity. Frost was forming on her hands, and her breath was coming out in thick plumes.
But she had to keep moving. She had to find-
“-Simon!” Betty gasped, and nearly tipped over in surprise.
She wasn’t in her sleeping bag. She was kneeling over her duffel, strapping the rolled up sleeping bag to it.
How had she done that while asleep? She had just been asleep.
This was the third time she had suddenly become disoriented and forgetful. Something was wrong. Was it the area? Intense trauma associated with the site that was causing her to sleepwalk and lose track of time?
Betty took a deep breath, closing her hand, focusing that electricity under her skin, then opened it. A flower had formed there, and she smiled weakly, the sight of the apple blossom soothing her. A touch of normalcy in a turned-gray world.
Something moved in the corner of her eye.
A dark jacket, a flash of olive skin and brown hair.
“Simon!” Betty’s head shot up, but already it was gone. Still, she could hear something, the sound of footsteps. A murmur of her name.
“Simon?” She tried again, taking a few hesitant steps forward, dropping the flower. She nearly jumped out of her skin when her foot hit a rock, sending it skidding across the ground. The second she averted her eyes, there it was again, that hint of movement in the corner.
Why was Simon running from her? What had she done to upset him? Didn’t he recognize her?
“Simon! It’s me, Betty!” She ran forward, turned the corner of the barely-standing wall, and saw an empty yard. The sun was setting, even though it had been rising just minutes ago.
There was nowhere he could have gone. He hadn’t been here in the first place. Betty barely managed to stop herself from throwing up, acid stinging the back of her throat. How much time had she lost? A few hours? A few days? It felt like her stomach was eating itself, and an intense soreness was sinking into her limbs. All she had done was run around the corner, right?
And yet, even as Betty tried to reassure herself, she could almost feel, in the back of her mind, the sensation of crawling over rubble, of chasing down a shadow for hours on end. When she tried to grab at the memory, it sunk back beneath the surface, leaving her clueless, exhausted, and terribly alone.
Was it radiation sickness? But then, where were any other symptoms? All she was doing was losing track of time, forgetting where she had gone and what she had been doing. And reasoning it out brought her to the answer.
It correlated with her magic. Every time she used it, she lost more and more time. She saw things that weren’t there, lost control of her own emotions in ways she never had before.
This magic saved her life just days ago. In a few more months, what was this power going to do to her?