Work Text:
when there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire
Whenever Father Hans spoke poorly of Elise, Lebkuchen would be the first to scold him.
It was the only thing she spoke loudly on.
He could tell her to cut her hair all he wanted, Lebkuchen would smile, nod, and come in the next day with every single curl still in place. Do nothing in excess, he would chide when she tried to snack on the extra pretzel Granny Gretel had placed in her bag, and she would beam and tear the bread to pieces and eat it up while humming hymns she knew by heart but no longer believed in. Know this scripture, do this, don’t do that…
“Mark my words, Elise Liedl will be the doom of Kieferberg.”
“She will not. Don’t you think you’re overexaggerating? She’s a part of Kieferberg just like the rest of us. She’s not a monster, she’s not a bad person at all.”
“Sister Lebkuchen, you’re blinded by your… affections. You neither see what I see nor know what I know of that girl. We should be rid of her before she drags us all to hell with her.”
“So you say, but I won’t let you do it.”
She always defended Elise.
She doesn’t think she can defend Elise any longer.
When Elise and Rozenmarine go missing after the Walpurga festival, Lebkuchen felt her intuition burn like a searing cross in the back of her head. “Where did they go?” she’d asked Freya, as if Freya would know.
“On a walk,” Freya had giggled, bumping her shoulder to Lebkuchen’s.
“A walk, I see… a walk?” Lebkuchen felt herself break into a sweat. She stood, turning on heel. Something was wrong, something was wrong here. “Quickly, Freya, we need to go after them!”
“Oh, Lebkuchen, no! No… I’ve accepted it, I know you can too.”
“This isn’t about that.”
“I’m afraid we’ve lost.”
“This isn’t about that.”
“Are you sure?”
“I...”
“Lebkuchen, at least when it comes to this... please believe me when I say I know how you feel.”
She wanted to get up right away, demand to know where and chase after them. Not because I’m jealous and want to wedge myself between them but… There was something else, something else wrong, something very very wrong. With Elise’s behavior throughout the festival, and Rozenmarine’s behavior for the entire week she’d been here, and all the secrets that had been building up. There was something wrong, and she felt like she had to go to Elise and stop her before she made a grave mistake.
But also…
But also Lebkuchen was jealous.
Elise is not a monster. She’s not a bad person at all. And she loves Rozenmarine, and she does not love Lebkuchen.
So she was torn, wavering on her legs as Freya wrapped an arm around hers. “It hurts, I know, but we should accept it and let them sort their feelings out. Oh, Elise is so funny, she should have told us she found herself a little wife rather than lie and pretend that girl was her cousin, it may have hurt less.”
What if the bad feeling was simply something bad for Lebkuchen?
“When they return, we’ll both have to smile and say congratulations, okay, Lebkuchen? Promise you’ll do it with me? Promise you’ll be good?”
“Right, of course, I promise.” She sat down again. She pretended to enjoy the rest of the festival with a tight smile on her face.
She should have listened to her gut.
But, Elise is not a monster. She’s not a bad person at all. And she loves Rozenmarine…
None of that matters.
When they don’t return the next day, it’s assumed that they eloped.
But then, Elise does return... without Rozenmarine, and immediately leaves again on a fancy carriage. Off to her castle, without speaking to Lebkuchen or Freya once. “She caught the eye of the eldest boy of the Die Heilige family,” some whispered, yet Lebkuchen knew better. Elise wouldn't be interested in that, not for all the money in the world.
And so, she lit a lantern and wandered south, further into the woods than she’s ever gone, to where Elise had kept going and going over the course of the last week and came back changed every time. In the dark, the moon through the trees guided her steps, and each turn she took felt like a hand on her back, pushing her this way and that. It was there that Lebkuchen came upon an open area, an altar where the silvery light of her familiar moon seemed to turn blood red.
She peered upon the altar and drew back in disgust. A loaf of bread - if it could be called that - sat there. Torn apart and half eaten, bugs crawling inside, and something like mold and something like hair twisted inside of the hollowing crust.
I’d know that hair anywhere…
But she didn’t choose to believe it then.
She came upon the second altar quicker, upon it a flask knocked to the side, its contents spilled and dried rust red across the pale stone. Leaning in, it had such a specific smell of copper that Lebkuchen felt ill. Something told her… something told her
Upon reaching the third, she was trembling in fear.
Rozenmarine’s Token of Love. Lebkuchen remembered Freya, genuine and kind as she always was, had invited Rozenmarine in one day while Elise was working. She and Lebkuchen had been working on dolls of their own, both agreeing that this Walpurga’s festival would be the one where they confessed to Elise and settled things once and for all. Freya, genuine and kind and one of the few people Lebkuchen let in on little things she simply knew without being told, gave Rozenmarine the materials to create her own.
The girl was odd, and a little foolish for an outsider with the way she spoke. It was clear to Lebkuchen that she didn’t follow God or any Saint - but then, she knew she couldn’t speak, as she’d lost faith in her own religion long ago. But she was polite enough, and helpful, and she apologized far too much, and looking at the three of them sitting there - one who couldn’t say no, one who wouldn’t say no, and one who couldn’t even conceive of the concept of saying no - Lebkuchen thought Elise may have a type. How funny it was, back then.
She picked the doll from the altar, shaking it of leaves and dust
only to drop it in horror when she saw one side dyed the same rust red as the previous altar.
“You’re that foolish Father's fake daughter.”
An old woman stood at the entrance ahead of her, dressed in black, her face concealed by her cloak. Lebkuchen knelt carefully, plucking Rozenmarine’s doll from the ground and took a step backwards. “Father Hans? We’ve never described our relationship as such.”
The two of them were cold, clinical with what they called each other. She said ‘Father’ and meant it to his position within the church and the town, he called her ‘Sister’ and never spoke a word of love. She’d consider herself closer to Granny Gretel but, well… Granny Gretel insisted on being her ‘Granny’.
Admittedly, she knew Father Hans was more fond of her than he was of most people in town, in a similar way to Granny Gretel. And Lebkuchen…
knew for a fact that there were girls who hated their real fathers too, and it wasn’t rare to want a father to just stay out of your life once you’d become an adult. Still.
“Have you come for the truth, Little Sister? Miss Devotee?”
“Did you do something to Elise and Rozenmarine?”
“Did I? Not without trying. But my dear daughter slipped through my fingers and went off to Him again.”
“Him.”
“You know Him.”
Not the Him they spoke about in the Bible, the God in which she no longer believed… but some bastardized version by the way this old woman spat His name.
“If you wish to know the truth of things, you may follow me. But you can’t unknow anything once you’ve already seen, Little Sister.” And Lebkuchen went. Because, “of course you would. Barely even thought about it, did you? Relentless as your False Father when he wants something. Just remember, you may wish you never saw.”
And Lebkuchen wished - for one single second, at least - that she’d never seen.
The corpse is something awful, in such a shape that Lebkuchen doesn’t even register it as a corpse at first. To be fair, it is missing most of what would make it recognizable as such. Mauled, torn to pieces, her head missing and her limbs pulled off, her carcass emptied of most the viscera. Moths picked and fed off the meat on the remaining bones, cracked among a familiar patchwork purple dress, making nests within a familiar woven wide-brim hat.
“Thank me, Little Sister. Usually He would clean up after his meals and would never let you see. But I’ve lost what was mine, and so I’m feeling spiteful enough to show you. And… spiteful enough to tell you…
my dearest daughter, my precious Elise
she watched and did nothing.
If she ever returns, you cannot let her sin go unpunished.”
But, Elise is not a monster. She’s not a bad person at all. And she loves Rozenmarine…
But Lebkuchen felt no lie in the words the old witch had said.
Would she have allowed it to happen to Freya? To me?
But Lebkuchen didn’t want the answer.
She didn’t want any of it.
But what was she to do now that she had it?
***
The years come and go, and Lebkuchen tried to forget. Fate would not let it be so.
She learned new things, more secrets passing her way with Father Hans’s inevitable death - of a stroke or heart attack or something else related to stress. His office holds the key of information to happenings in the week that Elise and Rozenmarine had disappeared… as well as happenings before and after… and in a fit of rage after reading every last book and journal he’d left behind she piled them all on the floor and lit them aflame.
Freya was lucky to have a father like Mayor Gustav - who came in and dragged her from the church before she passed out from the smoke, who helped douse the flames before it took the whole building. A father who truly cared about the people of Kieferberg and not his own delusions.
And with that, Lebkuchen was angry all over again. She knew more of the truth, and it wasn’t better.
“On her deathbed, Old Holle confessed to all her sins.”
It didn’t matter, it wouldn’t have mattered, who cared what Granny Holle did, that should have had nothing to do with who Elise was.
“He granted her wish for a heavy price.”
She thought she could guess the price. She didn’t want to.
She let the villagers band together and fix the church she’d wanted to burn to the ground. She smiled and said thank you. She continued her work, healing, blessing, working even harder to forget, forget, forget. The witch showed up, from time to time in her periphery - understandable, this was a church named after her - but Lebkuchen paid her no mind. She had no intent of picking up where her father left off. She had no intent of doing anything but continue being who she was.
***
Her name was known around the area. Items blessed by the Sister Lebkuchen of Kieferberg became invaluable, the amount she put into them and the number she sent out with the villagers to keep them safe from that which may harm them in the woods. She knew the truths of what surrounded them now, she knew the temptations and she knew the costs, and she wanted no other events like the one from years before when Elise left. It made Kieferberg a place for people to stop in and spend their money on their way to the city, it made them prosper.
Needless to say, fancy city ladies stopping by were not an abnormal sight anymore.
But many of the old members of Kieferberg stopped when they saw this one.
Elise? Elise? Elise?
It really is Elise!
Did you see? Did you see?
She looks miserable.
What does she have to be miserable of? She’s rich enough.
There was such a lurch in Lebkuchen’s stomach when they came face to face among the pews of the church, like back when they were young ladies, before everything changed. She must have had quite an expression on her face, because Elise - this fancy, rich Elise - took a step back the moment their eyes met. Lebkuchen felt like her body was on fire. Was this what you did it for? Was it really just this, Elise?
Rozenmarine’s hollowed out torso, Father’s mad diary rantings, Him, Walpurga, Roman die Heilige...
... his wife Elise, his two children, Henri and Goldia.
Him.
The treasure she’d created but never sold.
“I know why you’ve come to me, Elise.” Did she think she needed to tell her anything anymore? Did she now doubt her? Elise sat on the pews while Lebkuchen returned to the newly renovated room that used to be Father Hans’s office. There was a large, heavy cabinet toppled over the center of the room, blocking the door there. She had to step around it to get to the desk that held what she was looking for.
A little golden pocket mirror.
Whatever Elise did, that should have nothing to do with her child.
Whatever Elise did, Lebkuchen had no intent of following in her father’s footsteps.
She thrust the pocket mirror into Elise’s hands, drew back as if her skin burned. “Take it. Keep it close to you, it will keep you from harm. You or… whomever carries it.”
G… for Goldia. A mirror, so one could always look back and remember who they were. Even without a name, even without everything else you thought made you ‘you’. Lebkuchen rarely prayed properly anymore, but she wanted to pray that the child wouldn’t fall into the same trap as her mother, she wanted to pray the child would not reap the consequences of Elise’s childish greed.
“Lebkuchen, thank you. Thank you so much… you have no idea…”
She was so pathetic and sad, her skin sallow and sagging, poorly hidden with perfectly applied makeup. She looked like she aged ten years for every one Lebkuchen walked. Likely, she didn’t sleep.
This wasn’t the Elise she knew.
She reached out, took Elise’s face in her hands for one final time, and pressed a kiss to her brow.
The Elise she knew had made a choice, and Lebkuchen wanted nothing to do with her ghost. She knew what happened to those who Elise loved, could never forget Rozenmarine’s torso in the woods or her father’s notes in the office. Would never forget those children's names. Goldia, Henri. But she could not allow Freya to come here and think this was the person she should remember, to put her heart in the hands of someone who would certainly shatter it to pieces.
As Elise trembled from her touch, Lebkuchen stepped back.
“I never want to see you again. Leave. And don’t ever come back here, Elise.”