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The first thing Elsie registers as she settles back into her own body is the cold. It’s always the cold.
She doesn’t feel cold when she is in that other space. She doesn’t feel heat or pain either, at least not unless they reach a certain extreme.
If she had to describe it, Elsie might say that it feels like a rubber band snapping—the tension in her body keeps on building until she starts sweating and shaking and all the other things that used to be precursors to a run-of-the-mill panic attack. Not pleasant by any means, but Doctor Elsie Roberts is a rational woman, and she knows from professional as well as personal experience that a panic attack is not going to kill you. That means she got used to feeling like they would but knowing that they wouldn’t many, many years ago, got used to wrapping her arms tightly around herself, perhaps locking herself in a separate room if she had the luxury, and waiting until it passed and she felt she could breathe again.
All of that is no longer an option.
Now, when she crosses that threshold, that point of no return, the rubber band snaps, and she is flung out of her own body. One moment, she is gasping for air with her broken glass lungs, weak and trembling like a leaf, her mind and heart both racing…and the next, something breaks out of her that is so solid, so powerful that it has never had to waste a single thought on breathing. It cuts her off from all conscious thought abruptly, from all but the most extreme physical sensations, and, most mercifully of all perhaps, from all real emotion. Whatever it is that scared her badly enough to rip her open and let the creature out, it can no longer touch her when she’s in that space.
There is a sense of bliss to it. A respite.
When she returns, it’s the opposite—it’s shock, a painful crashing back, a sudden assault on all of her senses. First, there’s always the cold biting into her bare skin. This time there’s also a sharp stinging on her knees where she must have fallen and landed on the stone floor, perhaps trying foolishly to move before her limbs or her mind were fully her own again. There’s only half a second’s pause—and then her mind returns, not gently either but all at once, her thoughts in a desperate hurry and uncaring of what they slam into on the way.
They're all screaming Oscar’s name.
Elsie’s senses are not quite there yet, but she blinks furiously against the light, trying to force away the bleariness, pushing herself to her feet blindly, and takes about two steps before she falls again. She can feel him there, and within another moment she can see him too. Someone is speaking to her, but it doesn’t register.
It takes every ounce of her strength to not vomit right then and there as her shaking fingers try to find Oscar’s. They’re still warm to the touch, but they unmistakably belong to a corpse, entirely limp.
“I’m so sorry…” she hears in her own quiet, trembling voice, and she sounds like she might throw up, too, “I’m so sorry, Cosmo, I’m sorry. I’m—” Choking on a sob, she has to pause, and it’s only long enough that it lets her hear footsteps approaching.
Even after all these years, the sound of them is still familiar.
No, she wants to say, Gods no, no, not now, please, turn around, stay away from me.
“Elsie?”
Please, no, not him, anyone but him.
“Rajan, she— she killed him, whatever she was, she—” Madam Glask’s voice sounds oddly thick, like it’s passing through several layers of glass, or deep water.
Elsie’s breath catches again, and try as she might, it won’t come loose. No no no nonono…
It has never happened two times in such quick succession, so she should be safe for the moment, at least for a moment…but the rising panic and the bile make her gag, make her struggle for air, and again she’s shaking, teeth chattering, whether from cold or fear she doesn’t know; this is how it always starts—
Something soft and heavy comes to rest on her shoulders. Elsie jerks away reflexively—don’t touch me, run, get away from me—but the weight gently follows her, and her next inhale makes everything come to a sudden halt. Every conscious thought pauses for just a moment, like tripping on the stairs or a skipped heartbeat, bewildered and disoriented. That is not the smell of here and now, of Bleed and the cold night air and her own blood on her knees and the wet stone underneath.
It’s the smell of a night many years ago, of chattering guests and decadent lights that she couldn’t focus on, of the quiet corner she was led away to by the hand, of being crowded against the wall, of lips travelling down her jaw—entirely inappropriate for someone of her station, someone of his, but there was no one there to tell on them.
And it’s also the smell of the years that followed that night. Of coming home after a long day of work, curling up in a silent plea for comfort after losing a patient she had spent the last several weeks fighting for. Of being held wordlessly because she didn’t need nor want any words, only to not be alone. The smell of shared days and shared nights, of “good morning, my love,” of “sometimes I wonder what I ever did to earn such a blessing.”
It’s a smell she missed so desperately for such a long time that she sometimes wasn’t sure she would survive it—one she occasionally caught a phantom of on an old throw pillow or a rarely used armchair, long after she assumed she had gotten over losing it, only to spend that day thrown right back to the start and feeling that absence just as painfully as she had on the first day. It’s a smell she had long made peace with never knowing again, and one that almost made her choke on thin air when she caught just a whisper of it this morning from halfway across a room.
The fabric is thick and heavy and as well-made as clothing can possibly be, and it shields her from the wind, settling around her on the ground to offer some dignity. Not that she deserves any of it. Despite that thought, though, her clammy fingers grasp at it, pulling the coat tighter around herself.
If only comfort was a thing that is meant for a creature like her.
“I can’t be here,” Elsie manages in a whisper, but that alone won’t do, and so she speaks up, begins to force herself to her feet. “No, I can’t be here…Cosmo, I can’t—”
“Shhh…” Something shifts behind her, beside her, and gently settles her back down. Someone sits down with her.
No, no, no, get away from me.
“I’m here.”
She can’t look at him.
You’ve seen what I do to people who get too close, please, why aren’t you running!
Even more damning than that, though…why isn’t she running? Rajan’s arms wrap around her gently, loosely enough that she could easily shake him off, and she thinks he would let her. Perhaps he wouldn’t let her run off entirely, but the least she could do is put— put some distance—
“I’m here…I’ve got you, little bird.” His voice is the softest murmur by her ear, words spoken in secret only for her. “I’m with you.” (“Against them, if need be,” is what he doesn’t need to say out loud because she hears it anyway in the pause that follows.)
Between the old familiar scent, the soothing whispers he used to help calm her panic attacks back then, and his arms nudging at her gently, inviting her…he is coaxing her back into a mould that was made from and for her alone. It’s the last thing she deserves right now.
But he’s warm, and the air is cold, and he’s alive, and the awful truth that waits for her beyond her closed eyelids is not. Whatever Elsie is now, a vile beast, a monster fit to ruin everything she touches…right here, as Rajan pulls her in to settle against his chest, she’s only human.
She shouldn’t give in, but she does.
For one long, long moment, Elsie leans her weight on him and curls in on herself a little, soaking up his warmth as he holds her close, cradled protectively against him, still trembling, still hyperventilating. She allows herself five seconds.
“There,” says Rajan, muffled against her hair as he presses a kiss to her head. Elsie swallows a sob.
“I’m sorry,” she says. It sounds wet and broken, and probably too quiet for anyone else to hear.
“I know.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says again, like it matters.
“I know, my love. I know.”
She can’t allow him to say that—he shouldn’t call her any of the things he does, but that of all things…and yet she can’t bring herself to protest. Five seconds. She knows she’s counting them all wrong.
Four. Three. With her ear at his chest, there's that faint, almost buzzing sound, a benign murmur that has always accompanied his heartbeat—since childhood, he said. That, too, is comforting in its familiarity. She can't hold on to him, so she holds on to the coat instead, digs her fingers into it as if someone were trying to wrench it from her hands.
Two.
One.
That’s all she gets.
Elsie forcibly dispels the memory, and with a painful, shuddering breath she pushes herself away from him, tries to regain distance before she’s afraid she may not be able to. She opens her eyes.
And two seconds later, so does the man she killed.