Work Text:
The door didn’t open on the first set of knocks. Maybe you should leave. She was probably already asleep and didn’t need you bothering her this late. You unfolded your fingers. The edges of your nails were still dark brown, despite your best efforts to scrape them clean. It just got under your fingernails, where it was even harder to remove. You should have left the blood be.
What could you have done? Act natural. Pretend that it isn’t there, a method which admittedly worked better in some situations than others. But even with your eyes closed, the liquid you’d accidentally dipped your fingers into was warm, warm in a way that told your mind that it was also red and salty, despite not having seen or tasted it.
You could have done something. Instead, you had held the tranquilizer darts with trembling fingers, because hadn’t the beast with its too-many teeth and too-wide mouth just been sitting next to you on his unmade bed? Hadn’t you just sworn to help him, hadn’t you looked forward to sharing the comparatively mundane struggles of flushed cat litter and noisy neighbours with someone else?
You found yourself with your back to the corner as Reese slumped to the floor, fixing his pale yellow eyes on you, and you could do nothing but stare back until he ran away on all fours, the tip of his tail disappearing out the doorway and leaving you alone with the carnage of the choice you had made.
You could scream in agony and press your eyes shut all you wanted, and it didn’t change the fact that you could have saved her.
You left bloody fingerprints all over the floor of the meant-to-be-prison, then the doors and the walls, fleeing from the scene in the absence of other options. That’s fine, though. If they arrested you, you could lie down on one of those thin mattresses you see in movies, safe within the four walls, counting the stains on the floor and the cracks on the ceiling until you were taken somewhere more permanent.
Once you got home, you told yourself, you would throw out all your unopened mail, and spend what little money you had on the comfort of the stale cheese in a TV dinner. Eat it in bed and go to sleep with your clothes still on.
You wouldn’t take a single running step ever again, even as you’d see the bus turn a corner. You would let the tray of coffee slip from your hands and walk all over the shards. You would drive your tank empty and leave the company car on the side of the road. You would find a patch of grass and doze off in its embrace, while knowing the nights to be cold and the ticks more numerous with every passing year; someone was cutting the grass, but they weren’t cutting it enough. Which was worse than not cutting it at all.
You wanted to stop believing in agency and blame it all on something external, and once that failed, blame it on something internal.
But the dirty streets you’d walk on autopilot were hundreds of miles away, the gravel unforgiving beneath your feet. And they had stilled, even as your thoughts took you over hills, across the woods, all the way to your hometown. The wind here smelled of autumn and nature and coal, and it came through your clothes, settling into your bones until shivering felt pointless, and your tense muscles went lax.
So, you went for the second-best option. You knocked on Sybil’s door, and when it didn’t open, you knocked again. Just as you considered curling into a pathetic little ball, you heard the approaching slap of her slippers through the door. You may have been taller than her, but when her glass marble eyes lingered on your bloody, shaking hands before meeting yours, you might as well have been half her height.
“Oh, dear.”
“Yeah,” you said, and it came out sounding more wet than you’d have liked.
Then, you were inside, and then you were before a sink, and there was warm water running over your hands, then, a bar of soap within your palms, which you rubbed at weakly until it was taken from you. Soft warmth against your shoulders, as a pair of arms appeared beside yours, washing off the remainders of the blood, strong, decisive, no questions asked. You stopped moving your hands at all. She could do it for you. She could turn your hands every which way and do what she needed to, you could just feel the water and the rough bristles of a well-used nail brush and the soft towel pressing in on all sides. Her murmuring against your ear as she worked away the last of the dirt, the faint smell of pine needles and incense.
Then, she stepped away. You turned to look at her, and she smiled a little smile that nearly made up for the sudden lack of contact.
You were in a chair, a warm cup of tea pressed into your hands. Something nagged at the back of your head as you let your gaze sweep across the room, across the potted and dried plants, with their sharp leaves and fluffy red berries. Oh, but they were pretty, though.
Speaking of that.
Having poured the water, Sybil was putting her kettle away, opening and closing drawers and doing all manner of things that you do when you have an unexpected guest in the middle of the night, but with none of the urgency. She returned the bags of leaves into unlabelled drawers, opening the correct ones on the first attempt, organized, in her element. Slow and practiced, unbothered. Her silvery hair glowed in the pale moonlight streaming in through the unwashed window and the lace curtain, her curls cascading over her shoulders, obscuring the side of her face that might have otherwise been visible. Sybil had one of those common faces, you thought, which you’d forget as soon as you couldn’t see her anymore. Even now, you struggled to imagine her smile, despite the way it had made your heart flutter earlier.
She glanced back at you. You averted your eyes in a manner which you knew to be too quick.
Don’t stare.
Sybil pulled out a chair and sat opposite to you, folding her hands together and looking at you patiently, just as she had done a lifetime ago. Telling you exactly where to go after you’d spent all day aimlessly wandering around town by yourself. Maybe she could do it now, too.
“I don’t know what to do- Should I have done something? I didn’t do anything, and now Reese is just out there….”
“Oh, no, dear. The situation you were put into was difficult, It should not have been your choice to make, no.” Her words washed over you much like the water had earlier. “Drink your tea.”
You drank her tea. It wasn’t home, but it tasted of rot all the same.
She kept speaking, warm words about how you couldn’t have done anything more, and how you must have felt so scared, and how she understood why you would. You drank them all in, but the words stopped reaching you. The vortex in your head ceased to swirl, going to your arms instead, spinning in time with your increasingly heavy heartbeat, thump, thump, thump. Your fingertips prickled with pins and needles as you lolled your head backwards in a way that might have normally embarrassed you. The wallpaper in the tea room was kind of nice, though it was old and a little stained. One, two, three stains, maybe from moved furniture, maybe from tea spillage, though you couldn’t imagine Sybil ever spilling hers, not with how steady her hands always seemed to be.
There was a light touch at your wrist. You turned to look at her again.
“How are you feeling?”
“M’good,” you said, and to your surprise, you meant it. You nodded, for good measure. “I think I really needed this.” Your tongue felt a little heavy, but she probably understood what you had meant to say. Her eyes wrinkled at the corners, and they really were a wonderful shade of green, reminiscent of the summer sun shining through the leaves, painting everything around in their wonderful hue.
She winked at you – she winked! Woah! – and spoke in her usual soft voice: “That was a blend my grandmother used to make. It soothes the nerves.”
“Thanks, I feel like so great.”
She nodded, then glanced out of your field of vision. You turned to look, and… ah. It was a grandfather clock, and it was indeed getting rather late.
“I’d rather not wake up Miles,” Sybil whispered. “Tabitha is probably missing you, maybe it’s time for you to go sleep in your own bed?”
You furrowed your brows. Honestly? Returning to the estate didn’t seem like such a good idea right now. The table was nice and textured against your cheek, and you could see the ends of her curls from here, close enough that you could reach out your hand and play with them. Which was a fantastic idea, actually, so you did. They were just as soft as you’d thought, woolly between your fingertips, like the freshly washed fur of an expensive little toy breed, and such a nice shade, too!
“I mean. Should I leave tonight? With Reese and the Ditchlings out there, who knows what might happen to me,” you lied, knowing perfectly well that you’d be safe. You lifted your head from the table. “And I thought you said I couldn’t trust Tabitha, so what the hel- I mean, heck, basically.”
Sybil seemed to ponder your words, the folds on her face deepening in the way you liked. You reached your arm a little further, gathering more of her hair into your hand.
“…I suppose you could have the couch.”
“Mmh. Didn’t you have a guest room?”
Her eyes met yours, and for a moment, she almost looked a little sad. Why!!! How could you make her smile again!
“Or like, I could sleep in your bed next to you, if you wanted.”
She did smile, then. “Go to sleep, you.” And-
You pressed your face against a throw pillow, snug under the covers as you reclined on the couch. It was the kind with buttons sown into it, pressing at your ribs underneath. Not that you were in any position to complain. It was warm and it was safe. You looked forward to sleep just as you looked forward to waking up in her living room tomorrow, a time which would come faster the sooner you slept.
You were already nearly unconscious as her hand pressed against your arm, right where your sleeve ended. Your eyelids were too heavy to open, so you didn’t move, just felt the wrinkles of her skin against yours.
… Wrinkles? Yes, Sybil’s hands felt a little rougher than you’d have expected for someone her age. They felt nice, though.
The voice at the back of your head nagged, again.
Oh, but it was probably nothing.