Archive of Our Own

Heathcliff… hates mirror dungeons. Listen, it’s not that they’re particularly bad; the shorter, easier ones are great, but things always go wrong on the fifth floor. Today is probably one of the worst runs yet.

The floors are drenched in blood, sloshing and catching him with every step. He feels like he’s wading through the deep end of a pool, pushing through the thick vines that some abnormalities produce, or trying to force his way through through the dense storm-soaked mud of Wuthering Heights.

It’s the fuckin’ Cottonhead. Drenched Gossypium, as Dante calls it . He hates this thing, particularly its effect on its surroundings; the floor is drenched in blood that clings to his boots and makes it hard to move, and his arms have long since been punctured and drained. He’s only lucky he’s not dead, like Meursault and a handful of other sinners. He winces as he jumps over Hong Lu’s corpse, feeling the Gossypium’s roots upheave the ground again.

It spins in place, cotton petals falling all around it like snow, as its roots dig into the other Sinners. Don Quixote has managed to avoid them, so far- Heathcliff isn’t entirely sure if that’s because of what she is, or if she’s just agile. He makes a mental note to ask, before immediately forgetting as another root rushes towards him.

He slides to the side, muscles aching with overexertion. The roots slam into the floor, as if lamenting their failure, and then just as quickly turn to coil over his feet.

“Fie! Make haste, Sir Heathcliff, before the Gossypium attacks once more!”

He leans to the side just quick enough to avoid letting even more roots burrow into his skin. He tries to ignore the vividly uncomfortable feeling of the roots slipping into his skin, the intrusion almost unnoticeable compared to the burning pain ringing its way up his arms.

“Do all of your warnings-” Heathcliff watches Ryoshu cut down one of the beast’s roots right before it reaches them both- “have to be so fucking wordy!? ”

Don Quixote jumps forward and impales the body of the Drenched Gossypium with her lance, to little effect. The flowers simply push out of the way, although she does manage to impale one or two petals on the end.

“Thou doth have my sincerest apologies,” she shouts, grinning at him, “but- ack! - we may haveth a bigger issue!”

He laughs back at her, throwing his head back and cackling. It feels like home, and for a moment he thinks of how she must be starving, by now, with the way the blood soaks into every inch of her clothes. He’ll try to get her something to eat later.

“Aye, then-”

Right as Heathcliff goes to speak, the roots grab around his chest. They constrict at his lungs, steal the breath from him. He doesn’t expect them to be strong- he expects them just to dig into his flesh, flimsy as they are, but what they do is embed themselves in his veins and begin to pick him up.

Everything goes, very suddenly, cold. He catches a glimpse of Don’s eyes, wide and terrified, her mouth agape with shock. He thinks that her oddly blunt canines, catching the sun in their perfect white glory, are beautiful, before the Gossypium slams him to the ground with a force unmatched.

Everything goes white. His ears are ringing, and if he focuses he can hear distant shouting, and feel the ground rumble as someone runs to his side. He sees short blonde hair beside him.

Of course it’s her, he thinks, his mind receding inwards like the tide. He might die here, he thinks. Good luck to Dante. His heart is pounding like it hasn’t been trained out of this fear a thousand times over.

“If you’re hungry,” he laughs, exposing his neck to Don Quixote as he feels his body grow cold, “then…”

He hears a laugh, then a half-sob. “ No, ” she says, her voice shaking violently, “ I- Never, never… ”

Everything goes black. He’ll never get used to how his life flashes before his eyes, but it’s even stranger this time.

For he doesn’t see Catherine, this time around. Instead, he recalls how it all happened. A sorrow coils in his chest.

   If I die here, he thinks-

–---

Heathcliff stretches, feels his arm muscles tensing with the weight of an easy fight that took far too fucking long to finish up- swords are always irritating to deal with, even when the metal is flimsy and cheap. His exhaustion is made all the worse by the harsh heat of the morning sun shining down onto him.

He takes a gander at his surroundings. It’s business as usual, really. Rodya and Gregor stand together, Gregor looking as uncomfortable as ever. He hears Rodya giggle and promptly tunes out.

Ryoshu stands over a corpse, poking at it with the sheath of her sword, clearly considering whether or not she can use their body as an ashtray. Clearly she decides the answer is yes, given how he hears the cigarette make an uncomfortable sizzling noise against their now-cold (or maybe lukewarm) flesh.

“F.Y.L.A?”

Heathcliff presses his bat to the back of his neck, feeling the blissfully cool metal against his sweat-soaked skin. “Nothing, bloody hell… Would it kill you to calm down?”

Ryoshu rolls her eyes, lighting another cigarette instead of verbally responding.

… Hang on.

No. This isn’t business as usual- the one person he would argue he quite enjoys talking to ( not that the rest of you gits are all that bad , he’ll admit) is… missing.

He presses his bat against the ground to catch everyone’s attention. Sinclair jumps , audibly, which Heathcliff would find funny in any other situation. 

“Any of yous seen Don, like?”

A small silence falls as the Sinners think. Ishmael shakes her head, her hair bouncing gently with the motion.

“The Executive Manager requested that we all return to the bus,” Outis says, sighing. “I should hope she hasn’t run off to purge our surroundings of evil. ”

Rodya laughs. “Don’t be so harsh, Outie! She might already be back on the bus?”

Heathcliff thinks he’d know if she had returned already, but he checks anyway while the Sinners board the bus. Only she’s not there. 

Heathcliff can feel himself growing- not concerned, he’s not some downtrodden housewife waiting for his husband to return from the war, but it’s never a good sign if Don Quixote goes missing. 

“Mephi can’t vroom-vroom til everyone’s back,” says Charon, not turning around from the driver's seat. None of the Sinners say a word, clearly very content to wait for someone else  to look for her.

“You’re all lazy bastards,” Heathcliff mumbles, standing slowly. He walks towards the door of the bus, golden light staining the familiar red an odd brown colour. It reminds him of dried blood.

 Vergilius doesn’t say anything, but watches him leave. He can feel his eyes on his back- it’s uncomfortable, horribly so, and… reminds him of Hindley.

He tries not to think about it, and steps back out into the light. 

The trees glow in the sunlight, shifting quietly in the gentle winds, something Heathcliff thinks he half-remembers Yi Sang commenting on. All he can think is that it’s a little too fucking bright, and reminds him of things he’d rather forget. The memory of a voice rings in his head, and then it doesn’t.

The road is surrounded by a relatively dense forest, and granted that he can’t see Don Quixote further along the road…

“Quixote,” he shouts as he turns to try and take a guess as to which side of the forest he should enter first, “You wandered off or somethin’…?”

He can’t hear a thing other than the chirping of birds and the echo of his own voice. He can hear his own footsteps, even.

“Quixote, mate, this isn’t the time to be doing this.”

It’s then that he hears it- he can’t really describe the sound other than that it’s the familiar sound of… violence, maybe. Flesh being destroyed. It comes from his far right, the side he was going to check last. Sod’s law, he supposes.

The sound of crushing, maybe? He moves towards the sound, holds his bat tight at his side with how unnerved this has him feeling. It’d be worse if it were dark, he’s sure, but either way he’s not a fucking coward.

“Quixote,” he says, turning across a tree. He sees a branch covered in a few drops of blood- what, is she hurt, or something? Isn’t like her to run off when clockface- Dante, now, he supposes- can just turn back time, though. 

He sees a piece of blonde hair caught on a piece of bark- he’s beginning to grow confused, in honesty. The sun is awfully hot for a man used to the weather of Wuthering Heights, and he can’t be bothered to look for much longer…

He turns to another tree, spinning right, and-

“Ah! Thir Heathclihh ,” Don Quixote says, her voice… strangely muffled, or perhaps slurred, sounding much like a dog eating something it shouldn’t. He meets her eyes; they’re wider than they should be, like she’s just a deer about to be shot. Maybe she is, he thinks, in her own head.

Heathcliff looks down. There’s a corpse in her hands, her eyes wide, and her teeth are still embedded in the body’s neck.

At his stunned silence, Don Quixote rips her teeth out of their throat, moving her hand to stop the bleeding, and begins to mumble. From what he was able to see, the bite mark is huge.

 “Ah! Forsooth, thou must be shocked! ‘Twas- ‘Twas the good bite of Justice, Sir Heathcliff.”

“... Eh?”

“The bite of a most loyal hound, in a sense,” she elaborates, “for I doth thinketh that my Lantern self could be a most illustrious Fixer, nay?”

She’s sweating. He doesn’t blame her- it’s warm, aye, but…

“Right, and you’re out here because…”

 “Because thy- thine shouting scared me, somewhat, of course.”

“Right,” he says, moving his bat behind him again. “Well, we need you back on the bus, so…”

“Ah! I doth grant thee my sincerest apologies- I will be there in but a moment!”

“Aye, right. Should I wait with you?”

Don shakes her head, quick enough that part of her hair batters against the tree she leans against. The corpse is still pale and lifeless in her hands. “I shalt need a second to- er,” she pauses, “partake in the sacred and private act of cleaning my lance!”

From what Heathcliff can see, it’s not even bloodied, but he turns back and leaves either way. He shouldn’t be surprised- of course she doesn’t want to see him. He tries not to get too pissed off about it, although he clearly trudges so miserably into the bus that Rodya notices, given how she leans over to nudge Gregor.

When Don wanders back onto the bus a few minutes later, a scrap of mud is still stuck to her back of her lance, staining the perfect metal. It looks like dried blood, only this time it’s not just in Heathcliff’s eyes.

He doesn’t say a word, but with the way that she looks at him, he knows that she knows.

Still, he’d like to consider her a friend. He doesn’t say a word, just wraps his arm around her the next day and nudges her shoulder a few too many times to make it look like nothing ever happened.

–

Looking back on it, Heathcliff finds it… funny, how long it took him to notice something was up. Don Quixote has always been the strange type, sure, but he should’ve known. The thought comes to him with a little grief. His head is spinning, and for a second his eyes almost focus on the blood-drenched monster in front of him…

His brain fails again. His life replays itself, flashing before his eyes again- 

Run, Heathcliff, run!

The memories slow to a drip, and stop on one he’ll never forget.

Don Quixote grabs at his arm. “Sir Heathcliff, if thou art to fuel the bus by sundown, thy pace should be kept up!”

He sighs. “Aye, lass,” he hums, shaking her grasp off. She spins around, lance still pointing upwards in the air.

He really wishes Vergilius had picked someone else for this, but Don Quixote isn’t the worst partner he could’ve gotten. Their- Don Quixote and Heathcliff’s, that is, since this is apparently the only way to ‘keep them out of trouble’- job is just to feed the bus a few corpses Ryoshu had helpfully gathered on her own. 

(“There is no possible way you two can cause trouble during this,” Vergilius had said, his tone making what he really meant clear: I am not paid nearly enough to deal with both of you right now.) 

As they haul the corpses back, none of the Sinners pay any heed to the mutilation of the corpses, although as Heathcliff helps Don Quixote lift a particularly heavy one, she seems to… stare at it. Her eyes are distant and no longer glimmering in the setting sun.

“‘S it freaking you out?” Heathcliff asks. “I can take it back on my own.”

“Ah- Nay, nay! Thine concerns are most appreciated, but ‘tis fine… I ‘twas merely, er, inspecting the damage.”

“Ryoshu’s got a hell of a way of mutilating these, aye,” Heathcliff admits, sighing. “Haah. Tell you what- I’ll haul this one back for you, and you can bring some of the smaller ones back.”

Don blinks, her eyelashes fluttering.

“Verily, thou art too kind.” She runs off like an excited dog, spinning around only to shout a small thank thee! as she goes.

The corpse isn’t all that heavy compared to some of the weapons he's seen the Sinners sporting, so he carries it back to the bus just fine.

It takes about an hour, but eventually, when he finally runs out of corpses- only one thing remains in the pile.

It’s Don Quixote’s lance. He wonders where she’s run off to this time. He wraps his hand around the lance, lifting it, and-

… He can’t lift it. It must be pure metal, he thinks- it’s huge, far taller than him.

Then, Don Quixote appears from behind the bus, running towards him at a truly terrifying pace.

“Ah! Didst thou find my lance?”

“Yeah,” Heathcliff says. “Fucks it made out of? Proper heavy, innit?”

Don Quixote makes a so-so motion with her hand, leaning close to take it from beside him. “I doth not entirely remember, but it doth never feel heavy in my own hands…”

Heathcliff sighs. He’s never going to get a straight answer out of her. The lance fits into her hands perfectly- she points it upwards to enunciate the word skilled, and it’s then that he realises it’s heavier than any corpse he’s ever lifted.

He doesn’t ask, and when she grins at him he ignores the crimson staining her teeth, even when she snaps her jaw shut as if she’s realised a horrible mistake.

–

The noises of Mephistopheles- Heathcliff thinks that's what it's called, after days of trying to memorise it- is typically… struggling. It sounds like a catfight, only with more guns, more thrashing. Faust assures him, of course, that it’s simply the typical noise of such a large vehicle. And he believes her.

Or at least he does, until the damned thing breaks down.

“The fuck? ” He asks, watching Charon step on the pedal again. Mephistopheles revs up for half a second, then sputters into nothingness once again.

Faust is pacing- Heathcliff is no better, wandering back and forth in the spaces between the sinners' seats. In hushed voices, Rodya, Gregor and Hong Lu discuss what might possibly be happening.

“I’ve never seen a vehicle break down before,” Hong Lu admits, “Is it really all that common?~”

Gregor sighs. “You’ve really got to stop reminding us how rich you are, bud.” 

He looks around the seats. Ryoshu is going through her cigarettes even faster than usual, clearly growing bored of the stillness in her surroundings. She’s like a wound-up stray cat, in that sense.

Yi Sang looks… the same as ever, actually.

“Faust knows every outcome,” Faust says as she slides up to the control panel. Symbols that Heathcliff has little to no hope of ever understanding reflect in the light of her eyes. “This shouldn’t be happening.”

“Ah,” She says. “Something is wrong with the fuel.”

“Eh? You sure it’s not the fuel system, or whatever?”

“ No, ” Faust snaps, quickly reining her tone back into neutrality. “Mephistopheles cannot, and would not, fail like this without major interference.”

She looks, strangely, dishevelled. Her hair falls over her eyes and sticks to her forehead with sweat as she runs her hands over internal parts of the bus that Heathcliff didn’t even know could be accessed from the front. Faust likely left that feature there knowing simply that nobody would ever find it but her .

“V- Verily, the bus is rather well designed,” Don mutters from her seat. “However, what… doth thee mean by something wrong with the fuel? ”

“Faust can’t tell, but various indicators suggest we were lucky to even make it this far...”

Don Quixote jumps up from her seat, stalking forward to circle around Faust.

“I- I shalt investigate, then!”

Then, Vergilius moves to seize the back of her coat. He’s more than strong enough to lift her into the air like a misbehaving cat, leaving her dangling.

“No,” he says, his voice the same deep rumble as ever. “I don’t think you will.”

“E- Eh? Sir Red Gaze, doth thou…”

“I don’t have an issue with you,” he says, then pauses. “ Yet.”

Don Quixote is shaking. Her eyes are wide- a bead of sweat rolls down her cheek.

Heathcliff’s heart begins to race. 

Cathy, your ankle…!

He can’t bear to stand still. His body moves forward of its own accord, his bat feeling more like a death sentence in his own hands.

“Right- Oi, hey.” Heathcliff says. “Fuck off. Hands off, you’re hurting the poor lass.”

Vergilius sighs, dropping her ungracefully to the ground. She crawls before regaining her strength and standing back up, sniffling quietly.

She slips into the space beside him like it’s always been her proper place in the world.

“Faust,” Vergilius says. Faust nods. “You, Ishmael, and Outis will work on repairing and refuelling the bus.”

As the group stalks off, Vergilius follows. The message is clear; there shall be no interference here.

“Right,” Heathcliff says the moment the guide's back is turned. “Somethings up with you.”

“No,” Don says, looking away. “There… is not.”

“Quixote.” Heathcliff's voice is sharp, but not because of his anger to her- his anger towards Vergilius, however, feels boiling and rips at his lungs. He doesn’t like how his voice sounds, at least right now. He hates how Don Quixote recoils, as if struck, and then sighs.

“If- If we must talk,” she mumbles, “t’is best… be left private. Some other day. Not now.”

He looks at her, eyes softening, and she weakly smiles back.

–

The final straw. Don Quixote avoids him for weeks- still smiling, acting as if nothing is wrong- until she simply can’t any longer.

Everyone else has been wiped out. That fucking bull, it’s always the fucking bull. The burns on Heathcliff’s arms still ache, slowly blistering. The feeling of his shirt pressing against the fresh wounds could be more painful than anything else he’s ever endured. Meursault’s blood is still stuck to him.

Now, it’s just him and Don Quixote, and… he doubts they’ll be surviving any longer. But that’s not exactly his priority right now, is it? 

They trudge down an endless path, neither of him glancing towards one another, towards a frozen body with four hands. Each hand points another direction; they’ve seen this corpse before, have long since memorised the paths to take.

“Sir Heathcliff,” she says, as they take the western path. Breaking the silence must be physically painful, granted how Don Quixote winces. “I… am aware that thou… art somewhat suspicious of me.”

“ I have a reason to be, ” he snaps. “You’ve been acting like a fucking freak lately, you know?”

Her eyes flash with hurt for a split second. She frowns and a thick, heavy guilt creeps into Heathcliff’s throat.

“... Sorry, mate."

“Ah! T’is perfectly fine, Sir Heathcliff.”

Blissfully, they reach the flowerbed. The flowers are red, all of them, possibly blood-stained…

 It won’t do them much good to stay here, but he can’t wait to ask any longer.

“I… Thou…” Don is shaking. With fear? He’s not sure, but it must be. She’s looking down at her feet, clearly too afraid to meet his eye. “Thy suspicions must be close to the truth, by now.”

“Don’t overestimate me, lass.”

 “I- Thou-”

She pauses and takes a breath, her hands shaking. Her eyes are already watery.

“Thy sustenance doth not sustain me in the way it would sustain thee,” she finally says.

Heathcliff squints, confused. “What, are you a picky eater?”

She laughs, shaking her head softly, seemingly in an attempt to be gentle. Instead, her laugh comes out dry, scratching at her throat, and turns very quickly into a wet cough.

She keels over onto the ground, gripping a flower in her hand, and gags. It wilts under her grasp, petals falling off to lay on her index finger, as if they could hide her were they all to die.

“It- It hurts ,” she says through a gag, tears gathering in her eyes- Heathcliff can’t tell if they’re from sickness or not. “T'was never- never this bad, in the past.”

“ What was?”

“The thirst,” she admits, "for thine own blood."

There’s tears streaming down her face and everything is terrifyingly familiar.

In Heathcliff's mind, it clicks into place. The blood in her mouth. The reason Mephistopheles had broken down.

“... Oh. You’re…”

“I may- I may be a bloodfiend, Sir Heathcliff, and yet I- I haveth never once wanted to harm thee. Please-”

Her voice is weak and vulnerable and terrifyingly familiar. She sounds like an echo of himself, or of her. 

“Heathcliff.” For a moment, the honorific is dropped. She’s on her knees, shaking on the cold floor, trying and failing to breathe. Heathcliff thinks this might be the only glimpse to her real self that he’ll ever get.

“Please- I… I implore thee, doth-”

She pauses. Hiccups into her palm. “ Doth not leave me. I - There is no-”

She cuts herself off with a sob. The sound is guttural, pressing out of her throat against her will. At some point it mixes with yet another dry heave, turning into terrible noises that wrench her heart clean out of her chest. 

She shivers, leaning to the side. Her hair is sticking to her forehead with sweat that now reminds him of something far closer to a fever . He presses his hand to her forehead.

She’s burning up. Of course she is.

“Sir Heathcliff,” she says, her voice weak. “I am- I am sorry. I am sorry. I’m sorry. ”

“It’s alright, mate,” he says, gently. The tone doesn’t suit a voice like his, he thinks. “‘M not pissed off, you’re alright.” 

She’s shaking, still dry heaving on the cold ground. If she is a bloodfiend, then…

Then everything makes a terrifying amount of sense, Heathcliff thinks. Really, he should’ve noticed… sooner. Should’ve done more. 

The blood in her mouth, the fact that she’s always hiding from him, the fact she can carry that stupid fucking lance- but all Heathcliff thinks of, then, is that…

There’s no way she’s managed to eat since Mephistopheles broke down.

And if he’s right, then it’s her fault the bus broke down broke down- no wonder there wasn’t any fucking fuel, considering most of the corpses wouldn’t have had any blood left. Fuck. Fuck. 

How hadn’t he noticed sooner? Willful ignorance? Is he just fucking stupid? Blind?

None of it matters. Don Quixote is shaking, alone, mumbling words he can barely make out.

“Kill me,” she says, growing more delirious by the second, “I beg of thee.”

She smiles. They’ve done this song and dance before, play-fought knowing their lives were meaningless. It makes him feel sick to his stomach.

“You’re alright, Quixote.” Heathcliff mumbles.

“Sir Heathcliff,” she says, trying to keep herself lucid, her eyes still distant and shaking, “Please.”

The request goes unsaid. Heathcliff knows what she’s trying to say.

We aren’t going to make it out of here anyway.

“I’m sorry, mate.” he says, but he really doesn’t have any other idea. What’s the other option here- to let her die feverishly, shaking on the floor? To make Dante relive that, too?

He picks up his bat. Remember, mocks the engraving on its side.

Her corpse doesn’t bleed the way it should. He feels very, very ill, and then he feels nothing at all.

– 

If I die here, he thinks, she’ll have nobody left.

It’s a silly thought, maybe, since death is reversible. 

But she isn’t, the fear that flashes in her eyes every single time he gets stabbed clean-through isn’t. 

He gasps. “ Fuck. ”

“Sir- Sir Heathcliff,” Don says, still sniffling. Rodya is beside her, a hand on her shoulder to comfort- she looks nonchalant, like everyone should be about this situation.

At most, it’s a shame that they’re losing.

 “Doth- Art thou-”

“‘M fine,” he says, mumbling, “better than before, at least…”

Don’s eyes are still distant. His voice does nothing to soothe it; the Gossypium still isn’t dead. Blood that isn’t her own pours down her arms, and it takes Heathcliff a second to realise it’s his. 

“Don,” he says, softly, knowing full well where her eyes are trying to look. “I’m-”

“Sancho,” Don says, looking him in the eyes, and that’s when he realises nothing can ever go well in these goddamn dungeons.

She takes his hand, her hands as cold as something not quite alive should be.

 “Thou know that my sincerest apologies are all thine, the same with my eternal gratitude, my life in thy hands, and-”

He recalls her nightmares. The times she would wake up, sweating and drooling with hunger, and mumble Sancho’s name over and over until he finally managed to get her to eat something, even if it had to be from his own arm. She never did bite down harder than she had to.

She stands up, lifted like a puppet; her muscles are slack as she paces. The Gossypium, never one to miss an opportunity, lunges for her.

“ Sancho? ” She says, holding the root digging into her veins like it’s a small child. Her eyes look far beyond Heathcliff, and far beyond the sky; they look for something that has long left her. “Thine… Thine voice doth not sound the same as when we were children.”

For a moment, Heathcliff hears Dante’s panicked ticking. As fast it came, it fades- recedes, maybe-, replaced with his own heartbeat.

“They- they art not for me,” she mumbles, shaking her head violently. “They art always for him, his memory, and-”

Thump. Don howls, sobs ripping free from her throat. Thump. Her hand rips the Gossypium’s roots out of her like they were never even embedded halfway through her arteries. Thump. The roots take a good chunk of her skin with them, but she doesn’t notice.

Thump. Don is falling to her knees, and mumbling something he can’t quite make out.

“If I tell him another story,” she says, “then surely…”

She pauses. Everything falls, very suddenly, silent as he watches her flesh simply rend itself in two, as if it was only ever a disguise for what lurked underneath.

“She’s distorting,” Faust says, in lieu of "is she okay?” - Any time where such words would’ve mattered has long since passed, he’s sure.

Don Quixote howls while her flesh contorts, clearly agonised. She does nothing to stop it . Her hands become long and disfigured, bones snapping as her arms coil upwards to shield her vision.

Her words echo as the wolf speaks; paws curling around her face to shield her eyes from the sun that only serves to remind her of her past, or perhaps to shield her from the fact that she killed him and nothing can ever undo it. Her skin looks patchwork, now, fur slipping out from under it when the stitches aren’t enough to hold it back. 

There’s no story that could save her, Heathcliff realises. What story was she meant to tell herself? There’s nothing that could’ve changed what she is and forever will be.

The stitches on her back audibly pop , flying out into the air and hitting the ocean of blood with almost inaudible clunks.

 His heart drops, then rises, then begins to pound with the knowledge that someone has to help her. If he can’t trust the sinners for this, then he can trust nobody.

“Will you…”

Hong Lu readies his weapon, and Rodya her axe. It’s all they ever needed to answer.

Don Quixote- or whatever she is now- howls when they move forward. Her tail is surely… what's the word, prehensile with the way it curls around Hong Lu’s limbs and tries to tear them off.

“I don’t want to see you,” she says, all pretences dropped. It’s not as nice as he thought it would be, seeing her drop the thees and thous- sure, It feels almost intimate, that sudden and violent glance Heathcliff has gotten into her soul, but it also feels as if he’s doing something he shouldn’t.

As if he’s the one that’s taken this from her. The stitches on her back look moments away from bursting entirely, but they hold on and reform themselves as the other Sinners focus on her tail.

He looks at the skin on her back, inspects it closer. Smudged ink lies on it, and it only takes him half of a precious moment to realise.

One of the pages tears under the force of Hong Lu’s guandao, falling to the ground and immediately soaking through with blood. Whatever text was on it is fully illegible, now.

 “I don’t want to look back on that past,” she says, her voice deep and everything Heathcliff wishes he had heard before.

“How the fuck are we meant to deal with her and the Gossypium?” Heathcliff mutters, in lieu of responding. His question quickly becomes useless when Don Quixote’s tail swings .

The Gossypium falls. The cotton simply falls apart, soaked through with blood that couldn’t possibly sustain it. A root that was trying to dig into Don Quixote’s back falls, holding part of a torn page.

…He wonders if she can hear him. He wonders if she had ever heard him before.

He’s not Rodion, but he’ll take the bet. The odds are in his favour, for what must be the first time in his life, so he speaks: 

“Quixote,” he mumbles, looking as far up as he can to what he hopes is her face- it’s hard to tell, but it has something that resembles a muzzle, so he guesses it is.

 As Ryoshu swings her sword and manages to cut through one of the patchwork pages covering her flesh, he reaches his hand up to her fur. It’s almost chunky, stuck together with dried blood and tears.

 “You’re okay. I won’t let you stay like this, mate.”

Her hands lower for the briefest of seconds to push him away. He gets sent flying, of course, hitting his head once more against the ground and worsening the concussion he’s sure he already has.

He feels nauseous. His body aches with exhaustion, but he stands anyway. 

Heathcliff, generally speaking, likes to believe he’s not a kind person. He thinks of Ishmael, of the pallidification that spread over her body and almost consumed her entirely, he thinks of Captain Ahab’s idiotic grin as she watched her succumb to her own revenge, and…

Thought you might suffocate and kick the bucket any second.

His hand twitches as he pushes himself forward, each step through the pool of blood feeling as if it takes a thousand times more effort from him.

Don Quixote's arm lowers, claws so long that they leave scratches in the dirt even while well above Heathcliff’s head, only to grab him. He half-wants to thank her for saving him the rest of the damned walk.

Her long, disfigured nails dig into his flesh almost gently, as if she’s trying her best not to hurt him. The marks still bleed, flesh spilling out around her fingers, but he finds it within himself to appreciate the kindness with which she treats him, even now.

It’s such a philosophical thought, isn’t it? He doesn’t do philosophy, none of that fancy bullshit everyone else was so concerned with.

No, he thinks as Don Quixote lifts him, it’d be a lot fucking easier to say what he means.

I love her.

It clicks in his mind like it’s always been there, and he’s sure that he has, so he welcomes it like an old friend. 

Rodya shouts as Don Quixote prepares to slam him into the ground, her voice something between an excited holler and a concerned yell- Heathcliff’s heart is beating much too fast to properly make it out.

She tightens her grip. The attack is expected, but he knows it’ll still hurt . Her hands shake uncontrollably as she lifts him, and the only thing he can do is…

As she prepares to throw him, he rests his hand over hers. It looks hilariously small in comparison, but he remembers what it felt like. Everything was so cold- the only thing he could do was seek out warmth and then instinctually push it away..

Selfishly enough, he doesn’t want her to go through that.

Hitting the ground hurts- she slams him down with no small amount of force. Whatever concussion he had is already a lot worse.

“Alright, bud,” Gregor says. “Let’s… get this sorted.”

Heathcliff turns to look at him. His eyes are pitiful, like a man who's been close to distorting already, and it inspires no anger at all in Heathcliff. There’s bigger issues to deal with.

Gregor reaches out to him, at first with the bug hand. He recoils, as if shocked, then sighs as he reaches out with human flesh.

His hands are warm, of course. Every Sinner’s hands are, except for Don’s. How is it that now he yearns for the cold, of all things?

“Right,” Heathcliff says. His voice almost, almost cracks with tears, but he reigns it in.

Don Quixote throws her head back, howling, and then every sinner pauses their movements at the same time, a memory that isn’t their own forced into their heads

… Her head hurts. That’s all she can think of. Everything hurts- her stomach is growling, but she’s wasted all the money she has on food and nothing is helping.

Don Quixote looks at her shaking hands. Sancho lays his hand on her shoulder, eyes wide and gentle and everything she doesn’t want to understand.

“You’re sure you’re not…” Sancho trails off, his eyes flickering with pity and affection. She hesitates to call it love, despite knowing what the combination of the two are.

“I’m sure,” she insists, quietly, her eyes flickering out to the endless sea they’ll never get to explore. The beautiful turquoise of the sea feels mocking suddenly, as she skims her eyes along it. It darkens into an ugly cobalt as it moves further into the horizon.

Sancho laughs at her response.

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks," he says, through a grin. 

She lays her head back onto the grass and cackles. The sun is blinding in her eyes but she can’t bear to close them, can’t bear to let this memory go again -

-And then Heathcliff is snapping back to himself, legs shaking. Every Sinner begins to understand what’s happening.

“If everything you’ve ever done was a story,” Heathcliff says, watching as a page bursts free from her skin and falls directly into his hands, “Then… I’ll listen again, alright? Go on, tell me.”

Her tail whips around and knocks him off his feet. Ryoshu, ever the one with a quick reaction time, raises her sword right as it makes impact with him, and as the tail recoils she brings it down like a guillotine.

The noise is something Heathcliff will never forget- not the sound of the sheath of a sword managing to cut through flesh, but instead the sound of Don Quixote screaming. It makes his ears ring.

The amputated part of the tail writhes on the ground, spurting thick and clotted blood that Heathcliff wouldn’t describe as human. He doesn’t recoil from it, lets it coat the bottom part of his leg.

“W.L.L.,” Ryoshu says, pointing at the visible bone of her tail. “Tail’s regenerating already.”

The flesh almost intertwines itself back together, like shards of a mirror being put back together. Don screams as it happens, but not because of the pain. A few more pages fall to the ground, scattering in the wind like petals. Even the fresh fur is blood-soaked and horribly stained.

“I loved him,” she says, as if she hasn’t said it enough. “I love him.”

Even if you are forgotten to this world…

Heathcliff straightens his back, looks down at the paper in his hands. Ryoshu laughs at his stance, her cigarette still lit and blazing in her mouth.

He looks at you like you aren’t a monster, like he might love you, it reads before crumbling in his hands, weakened and fragile. What remains of it falls through his fingers into the pool of blood, soaking through and sinking like they were never there at all.

“I’ll get you back,” Heathcliff says, trying to look her in the eyes. “This won’t be- this won’t be how you live, Don. We’re friends, innit?”

Her claws dig into the grass while she shakes her head, muzzle shaking- he can’t tell if it’s to deny him or to shake free the pages that have begun to stick to her eyes. 

“ Sancho, ” she says, “ my companion in life and death. My best friend. ”

He wants to comfort her. Wants to tell her that loss is natural, so common, but all he can think of is the gap in his heart where she was meant to be.

So instead, he simply lets the next story worm its way into his head as she lifts her head and howls .

There’s blood on her hands. It’s dripping down her arm. She doesn’t know why, but her heart is racing, thumping thickly against her chest. She didn't even know it could still beat; for the first time in months she feels truly alive. The hunger is gone for the first time in months, which surely helps.

Until she looks down, at least. 

Embraced in her shaking arms, Sancho looks up at her. His eyes are glassy, but his muscles can twitch just enough to smile. 

It takes Don Quixote a moment to realise the blood is his. It drips from his neck, flooding the floor in a thick red. 

“D’you think we’ll live together,” he mumbles, laying his head against her, “when we’re adults, if we can afford it?”

He knows there’s no world where they can afford a home, no world where they live anywhere but on the couch of his family.

“No,” she admits, “I…”

She knows there’s no world where he lives. She’s sure of it, suddenly, somehow. And if there is then it doesn’t matter- it’s not her Sancho, not the one that she…

He’s only fifteen, she thinks. How much has she taken from him? He has a family. That’s the one thing Don Quixote has half-hated him for, that loving home he would get to return to at night…

His body is beginning to grow cold. He raises his hand to wipe one small tear from her eye, raises his head to meet her eyes.

“I love you,” he says, and whether it’s platonic or romantic suddenly doesn’t matter. It’s love, either way- the love that she’s killed, buried with her own hands.

“I would give the world for you”, she wants to say, but she’s already failed. So she doesn’t say a word, just sobs.

Sancho closes his eyes for the final time, the same serene smile slipping over his face. It’s the smile he used to wear when she said something a little stupid; something energetically optimistic.

She doesn’t have the money to buy a shovel, so she unearths the clumped dirt with her hands alone, imagining herself a clawed hound.

Heathcliff’s head hurts. He can hear the mumbling as the other Sinner’s realise what Don really is. 

He glances at Gregor, watches his eyes widen as he nudges Rodion. She cuts off part of Don Quixote’s nail, then responds to him with a small what’s up, Gregor babe?

“She’s a… bloodfiend, then?” His voice is shaking, like he’s nervous. Heathcliff wants to hit him/

“Don’t be judgy, Gregor,” she hums, laughing as she briefly inspects her nails, “Aren’t you a bug? You two could be friends, y’know.”

He sighs. Heathcliff cackles , then hops over Don Quixote’s thick tail as it drags across the ground again.

“I miss him, ” she says, almost looking Heathcliff in the eyes. Her claws upheave chunks of the already destroyed earth. “ Yes, I- I’ll tell him another story. As long as it takes.”

 Hearing her not talk in thees and thous is almost unnerving. Heathcliff wants to tell her that he’ll listen to any story she needs to tell him, and wants to tell her that she can make her own story rather than retelling the best possible version of her past. 

He wants to tell her there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, even if it’s one that their beloved will never get the chance to see.

And finally, finally, his voice obeys him.

“Don,” He says, shouting so that she’ll listen to him- “You can’t keep doing this, you know you can’t, damnit!”

Sinclair jumps at the sound of his shout. That’s one thing that won’t change, even through thick and thin. 

“There’s nothing that’ll bring him back,” he says. His throat hurts. “But you- you can’t just do this. ”

She sobs. Slams her claws into the ground a final time, before-

Ryoshu finally, finally gets a good hit on her neck; she drags the sheath of her weapon down her back as if skinning a bear, watching the pages rip themselves off of her and release the murky fur beneath.

Each area of fur twitches with fresh agony, but Ryoshu keeps going, keeps moving her weapon; she knows as well as any that hesitation is what’ll get them killed over and over. Spotting the opening as Don Quixote leans her head back and howls, Rodion embeds her axe deep into the back of her tail.

Heathcliff, still, feels a twinge of pity at the pain she’s in.

“Don, you’ve been alone,” he’s not going to deny it but he finally, finally knows what she needs to hear- what he needed to hear, back then, “but you aren’t anymore.”

He wants to cry. He probably will, soon enough.

“‘M sorry that nobody ever told you, mate.”

Dante nods, ticking enthusiastically. They’ve been speaking this entire time, Heathcliff realises, but… well.

He supposes he can just ask for a recap from them later.

Don lays down. Clotted blood rolls down her neck, into her open mouth.

And for the final time, she howls, so soft it sounds like a eulogy.

The metal file in her hand is more expensive than most of the things she’s ever owned, glimmering in her hand.

She raises it to her mouth. Her fangs are long and sharp and dangerous- every bite mark tells her what she didn’t want to know. That this is permanent. That this is the monster she had no choice in becoming.

Filing them down makes her jaw ache. She endures, as always. 

When she looks in the mirror, the same girl looks back, only this time concealing its claws. The only mercy the Wings have bestowed upon her is that she can still vomit.

Heathcliff lowers himself to his knees, lays his hand over her head. She’s still bloody, but this time human. Her shed fur lays around her like this is her casket. 

Nothing he can say will make this better, but… he wants to tell her something.

He lowers himself further, leans his head closer to his ears. She leans into the warmth of his flesh, instinctually, like she always does. He hopes she will get to do that for as long as they both live.

“Love you,” he mumbles into her ear, cheeks burning, “Quixote."

Whether it’s platonic or romantic no longer matters. Companions in life and death.

She looks up at him, face once again human and so vulnerable that it aches, and smiles. Her eyes are still wet, glossy, enough so that Heathcliff's only response is to pull her into his arms. Neither of them say a word, but she rests her head against him as she slips into a night that will be reversed as many times as it takes to save her.