Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Running. That was the first thing he heard before meeting him. The Hessian Horseman. His horse, his loyal horse, Daredevil, had been shot and slain by soldiers, now laid dead in the snow as he ran. Dieter would kill those who harmed what was his. He ran into the trees, looking back to make sure he wasn’t found yet, only to turn back to see two young girls.

He may have been a cold blooded killer, but he would never kill children. With his fingers to his lips, he shushed them, hoping for their silence, but one, out of defiance or she just didn't care, snapped a twig, alerting the soldiers hot on his trail. The other sister ran, yet this one moved to watch from safety with morbid fascination.

The Hessian turned, teeth bared, ready to fight. It was then he felt a hand on his shoulder. Dieter turned, sword unsheathed and axe in hand, ready to attack, but this was no soldier. He was a man as pale as the snow they stood on with eyes as black as pitch, hair curled and blonde reaching halfway down his neck. He had not been there moments ago, that Dieter was sure of.

'Come with me.’

The blonde had spoken, pulling at the Hessians arm. He didn't know much English, but it didn't take long for Dieter to understand what the man said. The soldiers were nearing, dodging past thin trees, so he didn't have much time to decide what to do. Kill this man or go with him.

With a grunt the Hessian gave a sharp nod to follow, turning to run with the man, but the soldiers had caught up. They only made it a few feet away when Dieter heard a shot and felt immense pain radiate through his left leg. He let out a scream of pain and rage as he fell to his knee. The blonde man, he could run away, could hide from here and not risk his life for the killer, had turned and wrapped his arms under the Hessians arm, pulling him to his feet to continue their running.

Amongst the next of many shots that missed them, one hit the blonde stranger. Dieter Klein only knew this from the way the other man pushed him forward with a cry before falling to the ground.

Despite his help, the German didn’t get far himself before the soldiers caught up. Even with his wound he fought valiantly, taking down many soldiers by either cutting their heads off or chopping a limb, one soldier managed to stab him in the gut, forcing him to his knees.

‘What about this one, captain?’

The Hessian heard one soldier called out, his sword pointed down to the stranger who lay face down, blood soaking his beige vest and white shirt.

‘Leave him to bleed.’

It was the last thing the Hessian heard before a sword came crashing down, painfully severing his head from his neck. That wasn’t the worst part about it. He could still see, though his vision was blackening, he was still alive for a few more moments. His head having fallen and now faced the bleeding, barely breathing figure in the snow. The stranger who, for one reason or another, tried to help him.

--

Long after the burial of the Hessian horseman, the young Elke came hesitantly back as no sign of her sister or Victor has been seen. With her mother sick, she was afraid of losing them too. Coming back to the now blood soaked land, she first found her sister, Mary, knelt on the ground, observing a patch of tampered soil.

'Mary...'

Her voice, quiet and full of relieved, called out. The other girl simply hummed in reply, her fingers absentmindedly combing through strands of blonde hair.

'Mary, where's Victor?'

That caught her twins attention, the girls hands freezing in place. After a silent beat, Mary's head slowly turned in one direction, staring at a patch of snow Elke couldn't see from her spot. The snow beneath her feet crunched and crumbled as she approached her sister, almost afraid of what she might see.

Victor.

It was Victor. In the snow.

The bloody body of Victor continued to lie, face down, in the crimson, blood soaked snow.

A cry left Elke, though she wouldn't remember if it was a word or just a scream. She didn't take long to reach him, fearing the worse. He wasn't moving, wasn't breathing. His skin was turning a shade unnatural and his lips were already blue from blood loss.

He was dead.

No.

Impossible.

Elke dropped to her knees to shake Victor awake, hoping for him to just be asleep. He had to be. Who would look after them if he was dead? Their mother was too ill, drawing closer to her deathbed every day.

The moment her hands connected with Victors back he jolted to life, like one would when falling in a dream. A gasp of pain left his blue lips, followed with painful coughs that wracked through his chest.

Elke didn't question his life in this day, nor the days to follow. She only thought back to it when she was already in her late twenties. Mary, however, still watching from her spot away from them, already knew something was off. Knew he was supposed to be dead. This was magic unlike her mother had taught them.

Why does this man get to defy death while her father was dead and her mother soon to follow?

'Just what are you?' Mary would mutter under her breath, unheard by either Victor or Elke. Victor was too busy comforting the crying child, holding Elke in his arms all while trying to keep his blood off of her.

'Do not cry, Miss Elke. I'm not leaving for a long while yet.'

Chapter Text

Time passed on as an unforgiving thing, uncaring of who were aging, who were dying. Time would pass on regardless. There had been no funeral for the young girls mother, but they had all shed their fair share of tears.

The snow was up to their knees, the cold substance burned the children's skin. They had been out searching for firewood, knowing that most stick would be wet from the pale snow to use, but they still had to look regardless. If they didn't, they were sure to freeze to death.

Mary was on Viktor's back, carrying as much as her little hands could as Viktor forced his soaked legs through the thick snow, still in his bloodied clothes from when he was shot. No amount of magic could take the stains out and they were too poor to buy more without sacrificing their food. With her arms around Viktor's neck for stability, Mary held her sticks in a way that if she pulled back she would be strangling Viktor. The thought came upon her more than once, but she didn't do it.

Elke, who had let Mary be picked up by Viktor, followed behind the adult, trudging happily through the path Viktor was purposefully making bigger for her.

They had left the 'house', or what should be called ruins of what once was a house, around the first sight of sun after eating breakfast. Their mother was too weak to eat, barely awake to promise to eat while they were all out. By the time they got back it was late afternoon, the sun, hidden behind grey clouds that threatened to rain down on them. Whatever joyous aura that followed them out the door that morning had left, getting squashed by darkness and despair.

Viktor could already tell something was wrong, and told the girls to put their firewood somewhere safe, out of the reach of anything damp, so he could check out the mother.

'Is something the matter, Mr Irving?' Mary asked as Viktor placed her down, her sister already, without question, going to put the firewood in its usual place.

Viktor was quiet for a second, unsure how to reply. He wasn't sure what was wrong, he could just feel it. He could feel death in the air, could taste the staleness on his tongue, could feel it rotting in his bones. He had promised them, as their mother's familiar, not that the children knew that fact, that he would never lie to them, no matter what. He wasn't one for breaking promises, no matter the person's age.

'I am not sure, Mary.' he replied truthfully. He could tell the answer didn't satisfy the young girl, Mary didn't talk back to him and instead chose to follow after her sister.

Viktor's movements to the 'bedroom' of the house were stiff, full of apprehension and hesitation. It was like he knew what was wrong, instinctually, but he didn't want to believe it.

He gently pushed open the door, his eyes immediately falling to the sickly pale woman in the only bed in the house. There was no rising or falling of the blanket over her chest. There were no raspy, gasping breaths or any hellos from the woman in the bed.

The silence, the lack of death rattles echoing throughout the house, was the second sign that something was wrong, the first being the coldness on the other end of Viktor's connection to the witch.

She had passed.

She had died and no one was there with her.

She was alone.

That would be something that Viktor would regret for the rest of his life.

His body moved on autopilot, his mind unaware that he was even moving. Viktor knelt down beside the bed, taking one of the woman's frozen hands into his own.

Natalie. Her name was Natalie.

'Viktor?'

The voice startled Viktor back to reality. His head shot towards the sound, finding Elke peeking from behind the door. Even in the darkness of the room, the young girl could still see the tears streaming down Viktor's face.

'Viktor, what's the matter?' her voice, sweet as the first sign of dawn, called out worriedly to the crying man. Her question brought the attention of Mary, who had been busy trying to light a fire. The twin soon found her placed next to Elke, a curious yet panicked look donned her face, like she knew something was wrong.

Viktor wiped away his tears. He couldn't cry. He had to be strong for the girls. He slowly made his way to the identical girls, kneeling down to talk at their level.

"I know I promised never to lie.' he started off, his voice calm despite the anguish he felt. He had to be strong, he kept telling himself. 'and I do not intend to begin lying now.'

The girls were both filled with unease.

'Your mother... she's gone.'

The silence that followed after he uttered the words was unbearable. It was almost deafening, yet he preferred it to what followed next.

Mary cried out in anger, accusing Viktor of lying. Their mother couldn't be dead, they needed her. She was all they had.

The words cut into Viktor's soul, like he was nothing to the girl, but he let her verbally abused him, even let her hit him. They were children for god's sake, barely even ten years old when their father died and now, at eleven, their mother passed on as well.

Elke was crying as well, brought on by both her sisters words and the fact that her mother was gone.

'I promise,' Viktor started once Mary had stopped her yelling, holding both crying girls in his arms. 'I will look after you both. I am your charge. You are now in my care. I will do all that I can to raise and protect you.'

Natalie Archer was buried that very day, right outside their broken home. Viktor wouldn't let the girls see him carry their mother's corpse to her grave, but he did let them see her one last time before burying her underneath six feet of dirt.

Neither girls or Viktor could get the energy to eat that night, the thought of eating without the older woman took away any appetite they would have had.

Viktor managed to get the girls to sleep in the feeling bed, even though it felt almost uncomfortable to do.

In the middle of that very same night, Viktor had awoken to the sounds of fire crackling and the creaking of floorboards. He didn't even need to sit up to see one of the twins knelt in front of the raging fire in the fireplace. Despite their being no visual difference between the girls, Viktor could tell this was Mary. She had an air to her that made her seem... cold. The feeling only amplified after he was shot, but he couldn't tell why.

'Mary?' Viktor managed to speak, his voice hoarse from silently crying once the girls had been put to bed. There was an unspoken question of why the girl was up, but he hadn't said it since her mother had just died that day.

'What are you?' Mary spoke, an edge of hatred in her voice. The question was followed by confused silence. Viktor didn't approach the girl, almost like he was frozen in place.

The young girl barely turned her head to look upon the older man. 'I asked you a question.'

Viktor's heard hammered in his ears. For a young girl, Mary, in this instance, held an aura that shook Viktor to his core. 'I don't understand... Why are you asking this?'

Mary stared, unblinking as the fire reflected in her cold blue eyes. 'My father died. My mother died. You should be dead. I saw you get shot, I saw your body fall. Why. Aren't. You. Dead?'

'I have magic, just like you, your sister and mother-' he tried to speak, but the young girl, in an eerily monotone voice she had been speaking in this whole conversation cut him off. 'Yet my mother is dead, no amount of magic could save her. Why should you still be alive instead of her?'

Once again, Viktor couldn't help but fall silent. He knew the young girl hadn't taken a liking to him as much as her sister, but he never known how deep her hatred of him was until now.

Before he could answer her question, or even begin to come up with the answer, he sensed something... off with Mary, a darkness within her very being that he had somehow missed earlier. It was evil, and he could feel that very evil stretch around her, trying to grasp at Viktor's soul.

'Mary, what have you done?' He was worried. She was a young girl, a child, messing with things she shouldn't. Things that could hurt her and others.

The young girl could hear the worry in Viktor's voice, and the anger in her eyes faded slightly, revealing a sadness they all felt. Revealing that, if only slightly, she took cared for the man who had been with her and her sister all their lives.

'What I should have done days ago.' Mary replied, the sadness she had let slip seconds ago were immediately replaced by a cold, hateful mask before getting up and walking back into the bedroom.

This would be the last time in years Viktor would see Mary. The day after their conversation, Viktor would ask whilst making stew for breakfast, the only good thing he could make, where Elke's sister was, he would be told that Mary had ran away after their conversation.

Viktor had barely even given the remaining girl food before running out of the house and into the snow, shouting Mary's name. He would continue looking for the girl for the entirety of the day, wearing down his voice until he could no longer shout. When he came back, hours after leaving, empty handed, he wouldn't eat the now cold stew even though he was exhausted and starving. He couldn't think of eating whilst Mary could be out there, starving herself, yet he made sure Elke ate her food.

That night he would pray to whatever God existed for Mary's protection. He was never a religious man to the point of utter devotion, but he did believe in a higher being. He just hoped that being would hear his prayers and protect the young girl.