Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Manderley was gone. That much I knew wasn’t a dream. 

It was all ashes. Burnt until even the skeleton of its foundations crumbled, so that all that remained were charred flagstones and a memory of its former splendor.

And I couldn’t bring myself to mourn its loss. For Manderley was never mine, no matter how desperately I, and those around me, attempted to mold myself into an image of its mistress, and now it never would be. 

Manderley was always hers . We were foolish to think otherwise.

I couldn’t bring myself to even think of her name, a name whose syllables haunted me like a discordant, poorly timed melody upon my arrival at the estate. A part of me hoped that she , somehow, would have fractured and disintegrated along with Manderley, just so that all the whispers about her and her greatness and her beauty would come to an end. But it wasn’t so easy to be rid of Rebecca, I don’t know why I thought it would be as simple as that.

What else was Manderley without Rebecca, and what was Rebecca without Manderley? They were practically the same entity, as if Rebecca’s spirit had taken over the house, with every window and every painted eye in the gallery serving as her own multitude of eyes, the corridors her ever-starved intestines, the front door a gaping maw with unseen teeth that gnashed to dust the will of all who crossed her threshold.  If Manderly couldn’t be Rebecca’s — if not her , her spirit — then it couldn’t be anyone's. Mrs Danvers’ inferno made certain of that.

I shuddered upon the thought of Mrs Danvers’ name, too, and all the images it conjured — the housekeeper, clad in her severe black and armed with a severe presence. She haunted me, still, just as she did in the halls of Manderley, like a ghoul skulking about her crypt. And I could still see, in my mind’s eye, how she appeared whilst looming over me as I slept, candlestick in hand, reaching to ignite the upholstery in which I had dozed upon. The candlelight had hollowed her features, her cheeks, her eye sockets, until she wore the skulled face of the grim reaper.

I screamed when I opened my eyes, having been awoken by the chill of her breath against my cheek. With a flailing hand, I knocked the candlestick from her grip, causing Jasper to rouse in my lap with a snarl, and the room flushed in a blinding light as the candle flame caught on the edge of the library’s curtains.

Manderley was hers — it shall never be yours! If Rebecca cannot have it, neither shall you , was what Mrs Danvers had said, teeth bared and eyes glowing with pinpricks of hellfire, as flames consumed the room.

When I had tried to run, with Jasper clutched to my chest, Mrs Danvers’ hand flashed outward with the precision of a poised serpent and snatched my wrist. Despite the heat starting to stifle the room, her hold was cold as death.

“No — stay! Feel her power, her spirit! Give in to her, let her overpower—”

I had cut her off by snapping out of her hold and shoving her back into the chair before turning and fleeing the room, fleeing Manderley.

I didn’t know if she had somehow survived the fire, Mrs Danvers. I didn’t think I cared to know whether or not she still lived. I only wish to remember her as a trapped shadow glimpsed in the west wing moments before its collapse.

Within the hour of Manderley’s fall, everyone who had managed to escape the blaze was brought to a hospital in the nearest town to be treated for shock, burns, and any assortment of injuries.

I hadn’t let go of Jasper since Maxim and I first entered the hospital. The weary spaniel kept trying to squirm free, but I never let him go, even as the nurses treated me for symptoms of shock.

I was shivering as they worked with me, though not from the cold. Every time I blinked, I saw flashes of Mrs Danvers’ skull of a face, the animalistic glint of her eyes as they shone with pure hatred and disdain. The image played over and over again, like a broken piece of film, flickering disorientingly in frames of black and white moments before melting away into something blinding and numb.

Somehow, I ended up in the hospital’s reception room, swaddled in a thick blanket and cupping a thermos of tea. Jasper lay on his side at my feet. The whole place smelled of burnt Manderley; I hadn’t seen anyone else from the fire since our arrival. 

The nurses and doctors twittered amongst one another in pitched tones, and they were whispering about Manderley. They spoke out of shock rather than horror, as they remarked on the soot that marked their clothes. The remains of Manderley painted their uniforms in abstract murals detailing destruction and madness. How impossible it must have seemed to them, to have something as impervious to the ravages of time as Manderley suddenly cease to exist, chewed into oblivion by the teeth of fire. 

Manderley was somehow proven to be mortal, and all anyone could do was whisper in shock and awe.

Maxim sat in the chair beside me, as still as a statue. He rested his face in one hand, and I didn’t think he blinked once, or even took a breath, as he stared ahead with a gaze that saw nothing. When I leaned to rest my brow against my shoulder, he didn’t move, so, after deciding no comfort would be had from or for him, I sat stiffly back in my seat.

His face was drawn and pale. His lips were dried and cracked, and every so often, I would catch him picking at them, a habit he would have admonished me for just as he did whenever I chewed my nails. He had been that way for a while, without his own blanket and tea, and I wondered if he’d fought tooth and nail with the nurses in insisting that he didn’t require any treatment for shock.

If anything, I mused to myself, I suspect that he ought to be treated for guilt. For I suppose he was the one who deemed himself most responsible for the destruction of Manderley — by bringing home and offering to it a bride it failed to accept after he murdered, and denied the murder of, the mistress it truly desired — even though it wasn’t him who stood over me with eyes of evil and armed with fire. No, I would never blame Maxim for the loss of Manderley.

I could have told him such, offering him reassurances, but I was certain that he wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t care. All that I would say to him would fall upon deaf ears. So, I kept my lips occupied by taking another sip of tea.

Besides, what could I have ever possibly said to comfort someone who lost the home of their childhood, a behemoth that had stood proudly upon that land since the era of antiquity? Nothing. 

So, I said nothing, keeping to my tea, beating heart, and the flashing memory of Mrs Danvers’ eyes; every little while, I stooped to pet Jasper’s ears, just to assure myself that he still laid at my feet and that the warmth I felt there wasn’t a sensation conjured by numb hope.

I must have dozed off at some point because the sound of frantic foot traffic and doctors barking orders jolted me awake in my seat.

When I reached for Maxim, I found his seat vacant. Jasper, too, was gone. I was alone. Not even Beatrice or Giles or any staff from Manderley were in the room. Just the commotion of hurriedly bringing in a new patient — and the acrid scent of seared flesh.

I sat there, stupefied for a moment as I had been caught in the daze of having been startled awake. Maxim must have taken Jasper for a walk, so that the both of them may stretch aching legs, leaving me to sleep undisturbed. I suppose the gesture was well-meaning, but still, it stung to think that Maxim wouldn’t think to wake me, too, if not to ensure my wellbeing then at least to offer that I tag along for company.

I stretched in the chair, wincing at the pop of dormant joints, and turned to watch the doctors work.

Nurses clad in virginal white were just clearing the front reception hall to make way for a wheeled stretcher carrying a body. It was all black, and I wrinkled my nose at the sudden smell of burnt clothes, melted flesh, and a ruined Manderley. The body’s torso and face were covered in a white sheet, and I nearly thought it dead if it weren’t for the chest rising and falling, ever so slightly, in an action that mimed labored breathing.

No, that body wasn’t just a body.

That body was her - Mrs Danvers.

It was a preternatural intuition that told me so, along with the “she”s and “hers”s frantically thrown between the doctors and nurses as they rushed past. 

My lips parted with a shaking breath as my hands gripped either side of my chair. Mrs Danvers was alive? But I had watched it, the collapse of the west wing that surely swallowed her whole. Surely, no one could have survived that. She would have — should have — been crushed by a falling rafter, eaten by the licking flames. She should not have been alive.

As soon as it arrived, all the commotion was gone, taken away along with the bed nursing Mrs Danvers. The faint din of everyone rushing into a room at the end of the hall continued, the cacophony of tending to a patient commenced. The silence of the reception area was nearly deafening.

My hands, clammy, itched, and I rubbed them against the thighs of my skirt.

That burnt smell lingered, and I continued to see the image of a body draped in white every time I blinked. Cool nausea clogged in the back of my throat.

How was Mrs Danvers alive?

Is she so horrible that Hell didn’t want her and spit her back out? Or is she so determined that I die by her hand that she refuses to die until that desire is fulfilled?

No matter why or how she survived, I felt ill. My hands shook, and I looked around the room for something to occupy them. I’ve thought about sketching, but deciding I’d only be rude if I approached the front desk for a pen and spare paper, I decided to go in search of Maxim. Perhaps moving my limbs and having blood flowing from exercise would dispel the mounting nausea.

It turned out that he and Jasper were in the hospital’s courtyard.

It was a spacious place, draped in green grasses and shrubs and humble plants of white hydrangeas and petunias. It smelled damp and cool, and the feeling was a blessing in my lungs. There were no blood-red rhododendrons in sight, no statues of fauns playing pan flutes, and for that I was grateful. This space was almost offensive in how simple and modest and sterile it was, at least when compared to the gardens of Manderley, but I didn’t mind. It was soothing, it was understimulating, and it didn’t smell in the least bit burnt.

Maxim was seated on a bench beneath a beech tree growing in the yard’s very center, where he stared at a pair of robins jostling about in an adjacent bird bath. He flinched upon my approach.

The smile he offered me was hollow, failing to reach his eyes, as he held a hand out to me; the other held Jasper’s leash as the spaniel ran back and forth across the yard, chasing birds and rubbing his sagging face through the grass.

Out of need and instinct, I took Maxim’s hand and sat beside him.  I pressed my forehead into his shoulder and squeezed my eyes tightly shut when I thought again of Mrs Danvers’ body on the stretcher, he ran a hand gingerly over my hair — that same stroking motion we gave Jasper’s ears; he smelled of a lost home. I didn’t tell him about Mrs Danvers, a fear of if her name would inspire his temper and my inward anxieties turning my tongue to lead in my mouth.

“About time you woke up, darling,” Maxim whispered before kissing the top of my head, a too-simple peck of his lips. “You looked so peaceful, fast asleep.”

“Why didn’t you wake me? I could have walked with you.”

“No, no, darling. You needed your rest.”

His eyes said otherwise, less caring.

I wish to be alone.

I still wish to be alone.

“Why don’t you find something to occupy yourself? Today has been quite… quite long for you — for all of us — I’m sure,” he said.

Slowly, I scooted away from him. I offered Jasper another glance as he continued to run back and forth, back and forth, across the yard, before I stood. He’d sooner take company with a dog than me. I brushed my palms against my skirt again.

I’d rather not be alone. I’d rather not have thoughts of Mrs Danvers be my sole company, Maxim, dear — please. Can’t we leave? Can’t we go home?

“Yes, I think I’ll do that,” I murmured instead, trying not to let my hurt show. “I think I shall go on a walk of my own, then.”

“Yes, you do that. Enjoy,” he said, almost mindlessly, without ever looking at me. “Don’t wander too far. The Lacys have offered us lodging until we’re ready to… to return to Manderley.”

Return to Manderley.

I shivered at that.

The smile I offered him was tight, contrived. “How nice of them,” I offered. 

Then, without another word, I left the courtyard.

I didn’t quite know where to go, other than I wanted to be in a place where things didn’t smell of ash and soot.

Without even realizing it, I found myself walking up and down the street outside the hospital. Again and again. Without proper control of my limbs. As though I were sleepwalking, or a puppet, controlled by strings and the will of another. I didn’t even pause to look at the displays in shop windows. 

My hands fidgeted with one another. 

Mrs Danvers was alive.

Cool nausea roiled around in my gut like a den of snakes. It seemed impossible, having her survive Manderley’s collapse, but why would I have thought her capable of mortality? That wasn’t how ghouls worked, at least not ones such as Mrs Danvers. They never bent to the whims of mortality, rather, others fractured in the presence of their immortality. Of course, Mrs Danvers would have survived if it meant I remained afraid of her. I was certain she lived out of spite for me. My mouth ran dry, and I choked on the rawness in my throat when I attempted to swallow.

I think the officer patrolling at the street corner saw the soot still staining my clothes, the smell of ash in my hair, the reawakened fear in my lost eyes, and knew me to be one of the unfortunates from Manderley, so he let me be to do my wandering. He’d offer me a sympathetic purse of his lips and inclination of his head every time I passed by him.

After my fourth lap, up and down the block, I sat atop a bench just outside the hospital’s front entrance. My legs had started to shake the more I thought of Mrs Danvers.

The day was gray and cool, though I knew not if it was the smoke from Manderley that blotted out the sun.

A boy at the corner was selling papers, and after I managed to scavenge a quarter, miraculously, out of my pocket, I called him over and bought a paper. He left me with a tip of his cap before returning to his post, where he continued to bark about the demise of Manderley.

As I anticipated, the name “Manderley” was splayed across the front page, its name huge and typed in an intimidating font, as the headline announced its downfall; I could still taste that air, tinged with embers.

Just below the headline was a spanning shot of Manderley ablaze, utterly consumed by flames, so that its edifice was a shadow of its former self; the millions of burst windows were gawking eyes, the doors were screaming mouths. It appeared nearly human to me, then, a face screaming in agony. I hoped Rebecca’s spirit howled — whether in pain or glee, I didn’t think I cared to know. I was afraid to know.

It’d make me curious as to what Rebecca would haunt now. If not Manderley, then what? All of us, I’d assume; her ghost was already a parasite clinging to all of our psyches the way a louse holds onto a fish’s tongue. 

I didn’t know why I kept reading that paper, but I did. Well, not quite reading , but rather skimming my eyes over ink on a page just so that my eyes could do something .

Meanwhile, I wondered where we would go after Manderley. Never mind Rebecca’s spirit, what of Maxim and me? Frith and the rest of the staff? Them, I was certain they’d find work elsewhere. But Maxim and I — I hoped we would become something like nomads, never staying in one place for too long. Perhaps we would take up residence in Monte Carlo until the end of our days. I couldn’t help but find that idea to be quite attractive. I could bear spending the rest of my life in a place like Monte, I’m sure.

At least it wasn’t, and never would be, Manderley.

My vision suddenly focused, and the words on the newspaper in my lap became legible. It was near the article’s end, right where the journalist was stating their theories as to how the state caught fire. 

As I read, I snorted shortly through my nose.

All the theories proposed some tragic accident. An unattended fire sending a stray ember to ignite a rug. A candle falling from its holder to light a bedskirt. The spontaneous combustion of an old oven.

They didn’t know. But I did. I was sure everyone else knew. We knew what and who burned Manderley.

And she lay infirm within the hospital looming against my back, ice-cold with its alabaster face.

Her .

I shifted so I could glare up at the hospital.

Something in my belly began to tug. It was low in my gut, tingling and prickling as though the thinnest of threads was luring me back inside.

Pulling me toward her.

But I didn’t want to go. I didn’t wish to see Mrs Danvers. It would have been so much easier to just ignore her, to return to Maxim and await the Lacys, then never have to think of her again. It would have been so easy, so simple.

But I don’t think I could ever rest again if I didn’t see her, just to see with my own eyes what her destruction had done to her. To prove to me her mortality. To see her ruined by her devotion to Rebecca, to be certain she would never haunt Maxim and me ever again. Just this one time, I didn’t want to be so afraid of her — just this one time, I wanted to wield some semblance of power over her, to dominate her as any mistress ought to be capable of doing with her maids.

I had to see her, I decided as I slapped the newspaper closed in my lap and rose from the bench. I hated myself for wanting — needing — to see her, but something in my mind would forever gnash and claw and bristle like an animal denied its pleasure if I didn’t.

So with the weightlessness of walking in a dream, my heart lodged firmly in my throat, I returned to the hospital, prepared to face Mrs Danvers for a final time.

Chapter Text

The hospital was silent beneath the oncoming evening when I at last gathered the courage to go back inside.

Neither Maxim nor Jasper was found in the courtyard where I left them, and it felt as though everyone within the hospital had simply vanished. It was so quiet that I feared the sounds of my every breath would ricochet off the pale-colored walls, the linoleum tiles, to rouse the souls of the dying. I didn’t care that I couldn’t find Maxim; in fact, I was quite glad, for it wasn’t him that I returned to the hospital for anyway.

Paper still in hand, I approached the reception desk, just outside the waiting room, with small steps.

The nurse stationed behind the counter was young and pretty, with fair hair kept neatly tucked beneath a bonnet, and she smiled sweetly at my approach. She reminded me of the maids of Manderley.

“Is there something I can help you with, ma’am?” She asked in a voice just as sweet, just as eager to serve.

“That woman that they brought in earlier today — the… the one with the burns — do you know what room she is in? She may be registered under the name ‘Danvers.’”

“Danvers?” Her eyes dropped to the ledger opened before her. She traced a small finger down the list, pausing toward its very end. “Ah, yes — here she is, Danvers. Room 140. Treated for severe burns and some broken ribs, a broken hand,” she sucked her teeth under her breath. “They finished with her some time ago, and she is just resting now, but should be able to receive visitors. I don’t see why she shouldn’t. Are you of any relation?”

I bit my lip to tame the sneer that threatened to bend it. “She is one of us to have come from the fire — the one at Manderley,” I said. My hands fidgeted, growing clammy to the point where I was certain that the newspaper’s ink would smear in my palms.

The nurse let out a small, sympathetic click of her tongue, and she placed a hand over her cheek with a sigh that bordered on something wistful. “You know, I’ve heard of Manderley. Dreamt of it, a time or two, when I was a girl. Is it true that the parties there are as grand as people say? Oh! It was quite unfortunate to have heard about the fire! Such a tragic loss, that Manderley.”

“People speak too highly of the parties, in my opinion.” My mouth tightened in what I supposed was a grin. “And — yes, Manderley is quite the tragedy.”

Her smile wavered, and there was a subtle pinch to her brow, as if in a muted disappointment. Not at me spilling the truth of Manderley, but rather because I didn’t dare to share her wonder about the estate.

“140 is down this hall, last door on the left, ma’am.” The nurse pointed down the hall behind her. Her tone had adopted a particular professionalism that was chilled, that wasn’t there previously.

I smiled at her again, or at least tried to. “Thank you.”

The hallway was a long and dark thing, and the sterile gloom of it as the hospital transitioned into a gentle, rain-scented twilight did little to alleviate its uncanny atmosphere. It was like walking deeper into an awaiting throat, one that kept swallowing generations upon generations of the dead, dying, and living. A path into the underworld; Persephone journeying to embrace Hades.

The place smelled sterile, so that this scent of death held the bitter aroma of chemicals that tried, in vain, to scrub away the death which attempted to linger. I curled my nose at it; my heart was throbbing in my throat, making it nearly impossible to swallow.

I held my breath but kept my head poised high as I strode down the corridor. Beads of sweat slithered between my shoulders. My legs shivered, my fingers trembled. The walls started to close in with every step I took closer, closer to that door, labeled 140 in shining metal numbers. As I stepped up to the door, my shoes making a final, obnoxious tap against the linoleum tiles, I admonished myself.

What reason have I to be so afraid? It’s only Mrs Danvers…

I scoffed.

Yes, “only” Mrs Danvers.

For some reason, perhaps out of an instinct of manners and courtesy, I lightly tapped a knuckle against the door before letting myself in.

The smell of burnt human and the tang of antiseptic wafted against my face well before I properly entered the room, which was utterly dark. No lamps were lit and the curtains were drawn, save for only a slight parting in them that sent a sliver of blue evening light to partially illuminate the room’s sole occupant. The hallway light from the open door only reached the very foot of the bed.

I saw little of Mrs Danvers, but the light from the window was enough to show that she was sitting upright in bed, propped up by pillows — and that the whole right side of her face was masked in bandages. The other half of her was drowned in shadows. In the dark, the preternatural gleam of her unobscured eye stared at me, unflinching. Black spilled over her one shoulder, either more shadows or her hair finally let loose.

Otherwise, I saw nothing more of her — nothing but bandages and that one glowing eye —but it was enough to overpower me with a particularly ugly emotion: a wretched smugness. Pride. Elation. 

The woman who had haunted the halls of Manderley and stalked me like a gargoyle of Hell was now a broken figure in the dark. Downed and defeated. Wounded and maimed by her own hand. My initial terror in learning that she survived the blaze dampened into a mounting confidence in seeing her so indisposed, rather than awaiting me to berate me as she once did in Manderley, a tall, still, figure of black armed to the teeth with hatred for me.

Why had I let myself be so afraid? Why did I fear she would be waiting for me, tongue barbed and insults prepared? How could I have forgotten she was mortal, just like me and Maxim?

I bit my lip against a rising grin. I didn’t speak out of fear of that grin revealing itself.

Mrs Danvers remained steadfast in her silence, and not once did she ever blink. That glow of her one eye never wavered, never faltered. It never moved from me.

With trepidation, I dared to take several steps into the room. That smell of antiseptic and ash grew stronger the closer I got to the bed. I stopped a few paces away; far enough to keep her in the shadows, but close enough that I could hear the rasp of her breathing.

I tried to keep myself held high so I looked down my nose at her, just as she had done to me time and time again at Manderley. I didn’t offer her the courtesy of pulling up a chair and sitting by her side. It was my turn to loom and be frightening, dominant, powerful, resilient. She needed to know that I was no longer intent on cowering beneath her gaze — nor the legacy of Rebecca.

I was certain she hated me for that, too — that I hadn’t fallen victim to Rebecca’s spirit in the end. I wasn’t the one burned and injured. I could at least keep my own scars hidden deep within, masked behind a smile and an air of confidence as I grew older, and my days at Manderley would be far, far behind me. 

I hoped that I had proven that the true victim of Rebecca’s spirit was the woman whom I looked down upon now. Damn Maxim, damn his guilt — if I could turn a blind eye to his murder, then I could trick myself into believing who the true victim of Rebecca ought to have been: the woman who loved her mistress and was devoted to her far beyond the duties of a maid. 

Still, now, I vividly recall the tenderness with which Mrs Danvers has displayed Rebecca’s undergarments to me, her hand silhouetted by the sheer negligee that’d once clothed Rebecca’s flesh, and how her cheeks, her jaw, her strong nose were outlined just as tenderly beneath those layers of gauze. I didn’t know whether to be envious or frightened by such reverence.

Mrs Danvers had loved her, and it had ruined her. Broken and charred; a lonesome, obsessive creature.

My confidence wavered, nearly giving way to pity. 

I suppose I ought to have been sympathetic, then. Mrs Danvers lost a woman she loved, and received no justice in her death. 

No — murder . Not a death. 

I knew as such. 

Maxim was a murderer, Rebecca was a victim — a fact I was so swift to overlook in my joy that Maxim never loved her, ever . My own envy twisted me into a creature in my own right, eager to dismiss the sin of murder if it meant being coveted and loved. I could have been sympathetic, perhaps even kind, in offering Mrs Danvers my condolences and apologies. 

Did Rebecca ever look the other way from a murder — or any worser sin — to earn Danny’s unshakeable worship? 

Should I envy that, too?

The lingering pats of Maxim’s fingertips, as he stroked my hair like a dog’s ears, burned at my scalp.

Manderley changed me — they changed me, she changed me, instilling within me a newfound pettiness that failed to scavange up the graciousness to be forgiving and kind; Manderley contorted my maturation, twisting my heart, just as it did Maxim, Rebecca, Mrs Danvers. 

All I was capable of mustering was a bitter, smug contempt, and I scoffed.

In that moment, I was possessed by a sudden hope that those scars would become gnarled beneath Mrs Danvers’ bandages, the skin bubbled and warped like melted wax, exposing bits of bone and every bit of her soul that was wretched to me, just so that she would always bear the reminder of what her hate for me, her devotion to Rebecca, had done. 

She would hate me forever, that much I was certain, and I’d come to a point where such a fact no longer irked me — for I hated her, too.

I rued that Manderley was gone because of me. But a sick satisfaction wormed through me in knowing what Mrs Danvers was reduced to because of me, too.

Who had won, then, to her? Me, or Rebecca?

“Hello, Mrs Danvers,” I said, and damned myself for the waver to my tone.

She didn’t react to my words, not even blinking. Her face, even in the shadows, betrayed no emotion. It never did, I didn’t know why I expected otherwise.

Her lack of a response urged me to raise my chin even higher, then assert, “I am Mrs de Winter, now.”

Rebecca is gone. Manderley is gone. Yet here I remain.

“Congratulations, Madam.”

Mrs Danvers’ voice, laced with venomous derision, was coarse and husky, a snarl held back by the skin of her teeth, and partially muffled by bandages and whatever soot lined her throat.

Of course, she wouldn’t have addressed me as anything other than ‘Madam.’ I would never have been a de Winter to her. I wore the name like a poorly tailored coat, slung heavily from my shoulders, too large, too great, for my frame.

And I was content with that. I never wished to use a proper name for her, either. I didn’t even wish to know her name — no matter if it was or wasn’t simply ‘Danny’ — for a human name held power. A name would offer her a human identity to pity and feel bad for. Hate fizzled away into something more respectable once you knew a person’s name.

“A-And it’s gone. All of it — including her ,” I stuttered, so new to the power and boldness that sought to take control of me entirely. It all made my limbs vibrate, and my hands shook in loose fists at my sides until I threw the newspaper on the bed. It lay face up, so that the screaming face of her burning Manderley stared her right in the eye.

What I said must have struck a chord with her, because that pinprick glow in the evening gloom thinned, as if the eye narrowed. Whatever it was, it was enough to fan that newfound fire in my chest, emboldening me.

“All of that… that madness, all for nothing! As you can see—” I tightened my posture, pulling back my shoulders and puffing my chest outward. “—here I still stand. Alive, whole, unspoiled . Maxim lives. We all live — even you.”

Mrs Danvers said nothing, which only urged me to continue.

“ You ruined Rebecca… It was never me. It was always you ! You burned her, destroyed the sole thing remaining of her legacy and greatness. Only to have it be in vain!”

I dared to take another step closer, until I was close enough for my hands to grip the iron frame of the bed.

“And do you reckon that Rebecca is proud of you, for what you’ve done?” I whispered, as if the walls were leaning in to listen. “Her devoted little avenger? Seeking justice lost? Taking lives for one life?”

I forced my lips to peel back in a sneer, hoping it lent me an intimidating air.

“Or do you think she is laughing? Seeing her failed martyr pining after a phantom? Reduced to a skulking wretch?” My voice dropped even lower. “Between you and me, I hope that she is laughing in Hell and thinks of you a fool. Because without Rebecca, without Manderley, what are you now? A dragon without her maiden, a dragon without her keep. A mere lizard — a snake — left behind to crawl on her belly, alone.”

At that, I huffed out a breath, and the tingling rush of blood to my skull told me that I had forgotten to breathe during my tirade. Eager, I awaited a response, anything I could gnash my teeth back at.

But with every pump of blood in my ears, every breath, the more my vision cleared, and I realized Mrs Danvers hadn’t said anything yet. The burn of adrenaline ebbed away into a numbing clarity.

The shadow that was her wasn’t moving, not breathing. There was nothing.

As I gasped for air, I was disappointed that a sense of triumph failed to make my bones feel lighter or lift tension from between my shoulders. 

Instead, that was all that existed: disappointment. Regret. Pain. Revulsion, toward myself for having the capability of saying such things. I was possessed with an urge to, somehow, reach outward, capture those words, and force them back down my throat.

Mrs Danvers, still, remained silent and visibly still. That eye continued to glow, though it now possessed a new glimmer that made it undulate ever so slightly.

I wondered if I had become like Rebecca to her, in that moment, as I stood at the end of her bed, shoulders hunched like a vengeful animal. Not the remnants ghostly of a lover, but rather a haunting that sought to drive her to ruination.

I suddenly hated that image of myself, more so than I anticipated. Why did I fail to find myself sated in this new power?

I flinched as a new sound reverberated throughout the room. A dry, rattling cough that I realized was Mrs Danvers' sighing. It was a sound that suddenly made me ache.

With another rattling breath, she turned her head to one side, turning those bandages away from me, so that I instead saw that part of her that was human. The sliver of twilight cutting through the curtains highlighted a strong aquiline profile — that I, perhaps, would have found regal, maybe even beautiful, in a different lifetime — and the tears that offered her cheek a silvery sheen.

My heart suddenly tore, and bile rose in the back of my throat.

God — I made her cry.

But wasn’t that what I wanted? To do unto her as she had done unto me?

But what had I to mourn to warrant such cruelty? The loss of my dignity? My pride, if I even had it? Surely, nothing compared to the loss of a mistress, and the justice her murder deserved. After all, I wore the name of a woman she loved like a skin that wasn’t my own, parading it around like a child’s costume.

And I had defended Rebecca’s murder. All because I hated her, her name. Now I bullied Mrs Danvers. Because I hated her.

The burning on my scalp returned.

No. This was never about hate . It was about envy .

Rebecca, Mrs Danvers — while I feared them greatly, I was jealous of them. Their power, their love, everything about them that had made them beautiful or severe, whatever it took to make those around them fall in love or follow her demands. Everything I was not; I was forever that slight, lank girl who swoons over beauty and does as she’s told. And to compensate, I molded myself into their image, an animal intimidating the appearance of its predators in a vain attempt to mimic their magnificence, only to have it be a weapon I lacked the skill to properly wield.

I had become nothing more than a bully, the very creature I feared Mrs Danvers to be. Only, she was wicked out of sorrow. I was wicked out of spite. I had become no better than Mrs Van Hopper, I realized with a nauseated shudder.

An apology danced at the very tip of my tongue, but my throat was too dry, my jaw too locked, my heart lacking the courage to utter it.

I found that my hands shook as they continued gripping the bed’s frame. Slowly, I retracted them, staring at them as though they sprouted into claws.

Mrs Danvers did nothing to wipe those tears away, and she kept her mouth pursed against another sob that shook in the back of her throat.

The pity I feared feeling suddenly made itself known through a tightening of my chest, my throat. But pity soon gave way to self-loathing.

I had done this to her.

And I didn’t even have the decency to whisper an apology.

I didn’t know what compelled me to do so, instead, but I rounded the bed and approached her side, movements slow and cautious as though I were approaching a wild animal. I raised my arm, the end of my sleeve covering my fingertips. 

I hesitated in reaching toward her, afraid that this was all a ruse, that she would reach for me and strike me or bite me or set me on fire or whatever it was Mrs Danvers liked to do. 

But ghouls and gargoyles didn’t weep like this, so genuinely. So, I reached forward until I was gingerly dabbing away at those tears. She went still beneath my touch; her breath hitched. 

But I didn’t stop. Back and forth, my knuckle went, back and forth — gently rubbing, so afraid of breaking the skin, until the tears went dry.

With my bare thumb, I swiped at a particularly fat tear that slithered down her cheek, languid and crystalline. Her skin was cool to the touch, as it always was, but there was the faint, distant thrum of a heartbeat beneath my fingertip.

I don’t think she breathed as I touched her, not even once.

I’m sorry.

Forgive me.

I didn’t mean those cruel things I said—

She turned her face further away from me, my touch. She winced, skewering her eye shut, and bared her teeth in an approximation of a snarl.

“Leave me.”

It was a cold command. A simple one.

And I felt as though I had no choice but to oblige.

I had no reason to stay, and I didn’t wish to. The damage I desperately sought to wreak was done, and I hated it. I hated myself.

So, I did as she told me.

I stepped back from the bed, clutching the damp corner of my sleeve, and slowly turned toward the door.

I kept my head low, posture submissive, like a dog that had been scolded. I may as well have been just that: nothing more than a self-serving mongrel.

I was too ashamed to even glance over my shoulder before I stepped out into the hallway and shut the door behind me.

Chapter Text

After a few weeks, or perhaps it was a month, or only a few days — time was a strange thing to me, then, something that was simultaneously nonexistent and an annoyance dogging at my heels — we finally returned to what was left of Manderley.

We could have returned sooner, but I think Maxim wanted to lick his wounds, good and proper, before prodding at them with ash-tainted fingers.

Staying with Bea and Giles wasn’t so horrible, but it wasn’t a reprieve. Bea was like an excitable dog that had gone too long without proper enrichment, to the point where I wondered if she were aware that Manderley was no more. The closest indication that she offered in acknowledging the fire was when I saw her smoking on the small terrace behind the Lacy’s house, and I asked her, “I’m sorry about Manderley. Are you… do you feel you’ll miss it?”

The only response she gave me, as she looked up at an indigo sky dotted by stars and a crescent moon, her face illuminated by the faint orange flow of her cigarette clutched between her teeth, was a bittersweet smile, a shimmer I thought to be a tear in the corner of her eye, and a small sigh, whether of alleviation or sadness I still don’t know. She said nothing, otherwise, before bidding me a “good night,” flicking her spent cigarette into the lawn, and retiring back inside; Jasper bolted after the cigarette, and snuffled about the freshly clipped grass until I recalled him with a pat on my thigh.

I didn’t bother asking her about it further. That wasn’t my wound to poke around at until it turned gangrenous.

But either way, Bea’s need to be around people who weren’t Giles or their own staff (I’ve never learned their names, regretfully) had grown to be a bit much. It seemed to be nearly every day that Maxim’s temper would flare, and left me seeking excuses to retire to bed early or to excuse myself so that I may run back and forth with Jasper on the lawn, just so that I may have a moment or two to myself.

But eventually, it came to a point where I found no solace in solitude, either. When alone, I often slept, I had daydreams. And when I dreamt, it was always of Mrs Danvers. Without fail. She had become an infection festering within the deepest crevices of my mind, and it frightened me. Intrigued me.

I mostly dreamt of her eyes, no longer severe, but softened, made vulnerable, as they turned crystalline with tears. They were tears I’d felt an urge to capture and covet as my own, perhaps even kiss away, if it meant forgiveness for all that I had said to her.

No forgiveness ever came, neither when I was sleeping or awake.

I dreamt of fire and Manderley; I dreamt of dragons and serpents with scales as dark as pitch that wept the blood-red petals of rhododendrons; I dreamt of Mrs Danvers, of her alone, of her with Rebecca, their bodies intertwined with a passion I couldn’t ever fathom, of her with me as I’d fall to my knees before her with tears in my eyes as I grasped at the hem of her skirt with the madness of a lost animal. No matter what — who — I saw, I awoke clammy and parched, heart racing and aching between my ribs.

No matter what I did, even in my waking hours, all thoughts circled back to Mrs Danvers. Everything made me think of her. The shadows of the Lacy’s house that would otherwise have been occupied by Mrs Danvers at Manderley; the unkempt state of their lawn and gardens brimming with looming hydrangeas, and disorganized vases of lilies and daffodils Mrs Danvers would have ensured the neatness of; the dust upon the guest room armoire Mrs Danvers would have had dusted three times over well before lunch; the lack of eyes burning tinto the back of my shull that told me she was always in my shadow, watching my every movement, holding her breath as she eagerly awaited my every stumble and imperfection.

She had become a haunting. Even the sleeve of my coat I had used to dry her tears was never truly dry. It always smelled of salt and tasted of misery whenever I brought it to my lips. 

And returning to Manderley did little to alleviate the haunting.

As we pulled through that winding drive, beneath the interlacing and steepled beeches, we crossed through a land one would have thought to be covered beneath a blanket of snow. Only it wasn’t snow that muffled the crunch of gravel beneath our tires, but rather ash. The scraps of Manderley.

Ashes painted the lawn, the sky, the trees, the towering rhododendrons, until everything was lifeless and gray. Somehow, Mrs Danvers would have found a way to sweep away and dispose of the mess, all within the span of a day. She would have found a way to dust the remaining flagstones that still stood upon our approach and turned the mere skeleton of Manderley into a home, just as she had once done for Maxim and me’s wedding suite.

It was a shock to see the state of Manderley — pure devastation.

Maxim stopped the car several hundred feet away. His hands shook as they gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white. I pressed my scarf against my nose when the smell of old burning became overpowering.

After all this time, how had rain not washed the ash away? The season had been rather dry, then, I know, but I think that rather some higher, grander power wished to leave Manderley untouched out of respect, so that it may mourn and grieve undisturbed.

A hollow, numbing feeling slithered through me as I looked over the desecrated Manderley. I had eaten there, slept there, wept there, walked through its halls, occupied its rooms a mere month ago; generations upon generations of de Winters have done more there, and for far longer. And now it was just gone . It was almost offensive, how it was simply no more. Things like Manderley were meant to stand tall and proud forever, they weren’t meant to vanish.

It felt wrong to look upon something so beloved as it appeared so broken.

I fought the urge to ask Maxim if we could turn back and leave Manderley behind us forever. But Maxim, without a word, pressed down on the accelerator, drawing us closer and closer to the fallen gray colossus.

All that was left of Manderley were the stones of its frontmost edifice and a half-crumbled east wing. Everything else was only of burnt stone and charred eaves.

No garden, no greenery, no windows, doors, portraits — anything. Everything was gone, leaving behind only a stifling silence. Every now and then, a breeze kicked up flakes of ash that would swirl about the car like snow. Some of it caught in Maxim’s hair, and I clenched my hands together in my lap so as not to reach over and pluck them away.

Maxim pulled the car around the fountain, still stationed before the front door, as if everything were normal and we had a proper standing house to pull up to, and eventually enter.

He remained still, gaze unfocused intently ahead, and I hoped that he would put the car back into drive and speed away. But he gave the steering a final pat, seemingly to solidify his resolve, before exiting the car.

I hesitated in getting out, even when he rounded the car, opened my door, and offered me a hand. But upon realizing that we weren’t about to leave any time soon, I accepted his hand and let him haul me out of my seat.

We entered the ruins through the archway where the front door would be. It seemed rather silly, but I don’t think either of us knew how else to enter Manderley. Surely not through a broken window or one of the missing walls. That would have felt too much like an intrusion; animals coming to scavenge a corpse with its bones already picked clean. We were scavengers, yes, but not so improper of scavengers that we lost the civility of using the front door. 

Upon entering, there were the hollow echoes of everything I knew of Manderley: the grand stair, the stone halls branching every which way, furniture and heirlooms sillhouetted by rubble. I remained in the entryway as Maxim went off his own way, to where I didn’t care. I hesitated in taking steps further into the home, suddenly feeling as though I were being watched, and pausing only when there was an audible crunch of parchment beneath my shoe. I looked down to meet a pair of eyes. Painted ones, burned off a portrait to be abandoned on the ground whilst the rest of it smoldered into oblivion.

I sneered at those eyes. I knew them all too well. They were the eyes of Caroline de Winter. I wore her gown, her likeness, and made a fool of myself. All because of Mrs Danvers.

I crouched low to pick up that piece of canvas. 

The eyes started to morph, then, as I held them, adopting the heavy-lidded, scrutinizing gaze of Mrs Danvers, glistening with tears. I closed my fists over the eyes until I felt the painting disintegrate. Gray dust littered with multi-colored flecks of paint fell to the ground when I unfurled my fingers, one by one. 

I hated being so at war with myself. I couldn’t decide whether to loathe Mrs Danvers, pity her, or be intrigued by her — and the indecision, paired with my mounting self-loathing, infuriated me. I didn’t want her to be any more complex than a black and white picture, something I could easily decide whether I hated or cared for her. I didn’t want my heart to twinge or my gut to drop at the thought of her and her tears.

I rocked back on my heels and ran my fingers through my hair, marking them with the remains of the painting, as I attempted to catch my breath. Each breath tasted of soot.

A strange whispering sound, like that of a breath in the cadence of a gentle “hey,” twisted through my hair, then, and, thinking it was Maxim behind me, I whirled around with a yelp.

But there was no one there.

No Maxim — no Mrs Danvers. Only an open door leading into an empty, gray yard.

Then, there was another breath. Another “hey” that could have very well been the wind playing along the exposed ribs of Manderley’s spent rafters. Ash danced across the yard again, and my heart lodged in my throat, in an ice-cold ball. For there was a figure out there, lurking within the oncoming fog and clouded in ash. It was a person. Though the figure was nothing more than a hazed silhouette that could have very well been an untamed bit of shrubbery, I was certain what I saw was a person.

I was certain that I was looking at the spirit of Manderley herself — Rebecca .

I was certain of it. I’d felt it. I’d known it. No other presence, whether real or imaginary, could have caused a weight to press down upon my shoulders, squeezing my ribs until there was no breath left between them, and flush me with the blunt coolness of standing within a shadow.

Who I was looking at was Rebecca de Winter.

But regardless of who or what the figure was, who the whispering came from, it was enough for me to chase it out the front door. The moment I stepped outside, though, she was gone, blown away by another breeze.

I stood there at the base of the front steps, staring stupidly into the fog that had started to amass around Manderley. Panting, I looked all around me, searching for her, or any sign of Maxim. But there was neither. I was alone, surrounded by ruin.

Then, there was another whisper against my ear as the wind tousled my hair again from beneath my cap. Another soft “hey,” this time drawing my gaze westward, toward the sea. 

I could hear the sea. Faintly. Undulating, in and out, in and out, upon a pulse of its own. The prickle of brine spraying across the shales; the tussle of waves crashing against stone cliffs. It was distant, but it was there. The sea was there, always and forever.

But there was also the west wing. The shell of it. Something mortal.

From a bundle of collapsed rafters billowed a white cloth, a curtain of gossamer. It was fluid and serpentine, a body of water in its own right, one I very vividly recall Mrs Danvers parting with languid ease, greater than Moses parting the Red Sea, as she lured me deeper, deeper into the seduction of Rebecca de Winter’s rooms.

And there that gray figure stood. Between the shades and folds and threads of the curtain as it danced along the wind.

“Hey…” the wind called to me, and I pursued it.

I ran toward that shadow in the curtain until that, too, vanished. I gritted my teeth as I came to a halt in this charred glade. I may have even let out a small squeak of frustration as I slapped at the wind-tossed fabric.

As I looked around to regain my bearings, parts of the west wing became familiar. The broken parts of a vanity, hair brushes, a bed post still adorned with the remnants of a velvet curtain, the framed portrait of Maxim, an embroidered cloth bearing a grand, startling R in its very center, the thread blood-red and blazing as it stared up at me.

I bent over to uncover the letter until I held a handkerchief between my fingers. Its ivory silk was stained with soot, but its lace edges remained, and the red R still shone brilliantly despite the lack of sun. The stitching was immaculate, neat, elegant, threaded with great care.

I remembered Mrs Danvers saying how she had embroidered that cloth for Rebecca, and how that cloth remained upon the very pillow in which Rebecca’s head ought to be resting, and my mouth ran dry. That prickling, red-hot envy returned to burn through me when I became acutely aware of the fact that I would never be this loved, where such a symbol of love for me could survive fire and the elements. Maxim’s affections would be eviscerated beneath a poorly-placed breath, I’m sure.

I wondered how that must have felt, being so loved and so revered that your maid, your companion, stitched remnants of your name into anything possible — from wash cloths to memories.

Slowly, I gripped the cloth in gentle fists.

It was a miracle to have a cloth as delicate as this survive such a fire. It had to be the work of Rebecca’s spirit, somehow. I didn’t know how else to explain it.

And it had to be preserved for some reason, for some purpose.

For Mrs Danvers.

A small piece of Rebecca, left behind for her. A token, perhaps like how a knight would leave behind a token for a maiden before embarking on a dangerous quest in which they will never return. An offering, a totem, a relic. A piece of religion, one worshipped solely by Mrs Danvers.

I decided, then, that I couldn’t leave the embroidered cloth. It belonged with someone who dared to cherish it.

Carefully, I started to fold the cloth, afraid of it disintegrating into dust. Just as I tucked it into my pocket, a voice called from across the yard.

“Find anything, darling?” Maxim stood upon the front steps. His one hand was raised and cupped around his mouth, in the other he held his hat.

The embroidered handkerchief had a cool, burning weight in my pocket.

But all I said, with a tight smile, was, “No, nothing over here.”

I think Maxim said something more after that, something along the lines of returning again at a later date, and with more hands to dig through the ash, and wanting to leave this instant and feeling as though he were being watched and that he didn’t like it, and calling me back to the car with a recall like a dog, but the distant rhythm of the sea and the awareness of the presence of a soul in my pocket drowned him out. Even as I crossed the yard, and let him open my door for me, and took my hand as I got in.

The sea, and the embroidered cloth in my pocket, those were all I could think of as we drove down the drive and away from Manderley.

And Mrs Danvers. I was thinking of her, too — and a need to see her again.

As we drove on, I saw even more gray figures watching us from between the crooks in the beeches; the end of my coat sleeve was suddenly feeling damp once again.