Work Text:
Amelie stands on the balcony of the mansion, gazing up at the covered painting in front of her. The white bedsheet cloth hangs over it in folds, and seems to light up with an eerie glow in the otherwise dark hall. It is nighttime, and it is cold, and she is alone.
She needs to see the painting.
Amelie swallows, takes a step forward. Terror roils in her gut as the carpet under her feet muffles the step, and it only produces the tiniest of quiet scuffs in the silent hallway. She does not want to see the painting; but she knows that she has no choice. She reaches out towards the sheet, and when she sees it, she notices her hand is trembling. Still, still, there is nothing she can do. She must see the painting, must unveil what lies beneath. She must, she must, she must.
She feels sick. She feels like she’s watching a stranger pilot her own body, her fingers curling into the sheet against her will. The cloth is cold, and she can feel what must be decades of dust clinging to her fingers. The scent of mildew rises into her nose, from the sheet, from the carpet, from the wood of the walls. It sends another shiver of revulsion down her spine. She doesn’t want this, doesn’t want this, cannot do it.
Amelie tugs at the sheet. It falls away like air, and a cloud of dust rises up from it but she cannot care about that any longer. Not now she can see—she can see—
Paint drips sluggishly down the canvas, clinging to itself like there are dozens of layers on top. Despite how old the sheet seemed, and felt in her hand, the paint looks fresh.
It takes a moment for Amelie to recognise anything at all. Then, though, the image shapes itself, becomes clearer, and she sees a beach, an expanse of grey-brown sand, with a wash of the ocean behind it. Inexplicably, she smells salt, feels the wind on her skin, sand under her shoes. Then, it shifts, and there is a forest, and grass; a small building, a house, nestled on the edge of a large estate. The painting is neither and both at once; and then, in front of the background that is two images and none at all, there are two figures forming.
They are familiar – very familiar. One is short, in a blue jumper, with curly brown hair; the other taller, hair long and wavy and blonde, wearing an off-white apron over a soft green dress.
Their faces, however, are strange. They look to be melting. the paint bubbling and moving; as Amelie looks on, their faces, each a smeared mess of paint, become clearer, form themselves into lines. There is a round nose, freckles, a familiar smile. For a moment, the painting looks normal, like it is a simple depiction of two people she knows, their likenesses familiar as they are terrifying and wrong to see, even though Amelie cannot quite tell why.
Then, however, the paint continues to shift. The likenesses change, morphing into something new. Eyes become wider, smiles distorted into frowns, features exaggerating, becoming blurry and sharp and wrong. A trickle of reddish brown emerges from their eyes, first slow, then faster; the paint for it seems to be emerging directly from the canvas now, and is flowing more freely, as if it is bleeding – they are bleeding, it’s not paint, it’s blood, it’s blood, and she can smell the metallic stench, along with a rising smell of rot, of decay.
Milo and Bárbara stare at her as blood drips from their eyes and noses and mouths, and Amelie cannot look away; and the blood is pouring in earnest now, dripping becoming a torrent, a swell.
The paint shifts once again, and there in Bárbara’s blood-stained hand is the wickedly sharp blade of a knife, silver and glinting and huge, and dripping with blood as well. She is looking at Amelie. And then she moves, and out of the painting, lurches—
Amelie jolts awake with a scream. For a moment, she does not know where she is, or what is happening, or what has happened. She is convinced she is dead, or dying, that the spirits of her dead friends are here to take revenge on her for letting them be killed by that monster in the church.
But Amelie is not dead, and at the latest she becomes aware of it when she, still half tangled in her bedsheets, lands on the ground with a hard thud. It hurts, and a dull pain laces up her side with the impact as she bangs her hip on the floor; but it does jolt her firmly back into reality.
“Amelie?!” And there, there is someone in the door, and oh, thank god, thank god.
“Ollie—” Her voice cracks on her brother’s name, and she becomes aware of the fact that she is hyperventilating, that the sheets still wrapped around her arms and legs are damp with cold sweat where she sits, half curled into herself, on the floor.
“It’s okay, it’s okay.” Olivier rushes to her side, and falls to his knees on the ground, pulling her close in a hug. “It was a dream, Amelie, it’s okay, you’re okay, it wasn’t real, I promise.”
Amelie clings to him, and nods into his shoulder, and tries to breathe. She doesn’t entirely succeed, her breaths shuddering and weak; but she is breathing, and Olivier being here… it helps. Something else to focus on than the memory of the smell of decay in her lungs, the coldness of that hallway, the feeling of their bleeding eyes boring into her soul.
Eventually, though, she manages to get a hold on it. She releases her grip on Olivier, loosens it slightly; and he pulls away, slowly, until he knows that she is letting him break the hug.
“Want to talk about it?” he asks, lowly. He sounds… slightly stilted, unsure, and somewhere in her heart Amelie finds the space for a spark of affection towards her brother, his awkwardness even after all they’ve been through almost endearing.
She shakes her head, though, and shudders. “No. Never thinking about that again.”
He huffs, a quiet breath of laughter. “Yeah, fair.” He sighs, letting his head tip back. “You going back to sleep, then?”
Amelie pulls a face. “No. Not after that.” She’s tried going back to sleep after nightmares before; it’s never gone particularly well.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Figured. Wanna come play Mario Kart with me?”
And, well. She knows she is terrible at Mario Kart, and that no matter how hard he tries to let her win, she will probably not really enjoy it. But she recognises the offer for what it is – a distraction – and for that, she gladly accepts. She nods, and lets him pull her to her feet; and follows him back to his room.