Work Text:
The color of the sky is enough of a warning for Matthew to come inside.
The evening sky always makes him uneasy. So does the thorns that creep into his family’s garden. But he tries not to think about how desperately fast they seem to appear as he opens the door and tears off his gloves.
There’s holes in them.
“Hannah?”
“I think the thorns are getting sharper. There’s another tear here near the thumb and-“
He looks up.
A girl is standing with Hannah and Edger near the fire.
Gallant doesn’t get visitors.
“Who are you?” He demands.
“Matthew,” Hannah says carefully. “This is Olivia.”
She hesitates. “Your cousin.”
His body recoils before he can stop it.
“That’s ridiculous! There are no more Priors.”
“Apparently there are,” Edar says gently as if he were giving unfortunate news to a child.
Disgust curdles into anger.
He was supposed to be the last.
“No.” He says shaking his head, trying to banish the idea that this girl was his relative. “No, now that Thom—I’m the last—“
“She is Grace’s” tell’s Hannah quietly
“But the bloodline,” he can’t help but snarl. “My father said— Did you know?”
“No, of course not,”
But he doesn’t care whether she is telling the truth.
Had his father lied to him?
“There must be some mistake. What has she told you?”
He refuses to ask her directly. He didn’t want her here.
Crash
His head snaps towards the sound
The vase from the mantle lies shattered on the floor.
How could she be so careless? She walks into his home, destroys everything he thought he knew, and now she's breaking what little they have left.
She wants his attention.
Fine.
“You. Who are you really? Why did you come here?”
“She cannot speak” Edgar tells him.
“But she was invited” Hannah adds in, holding up a letter to him.
“By whom?” He snatches the thin paper from her.
“Your father”
He barely hears her. His gaze has already fallen to the page.
For one impossible moment, his mind refuses to understand what his eyes are telling him.
He feels sick.
The handwriting.
He knows every uneven stroke, every sharp angle, every careless flourish. He has seen that hand all his life.
No.
His father did not write that letter.
He did
He never wrote this.
Except he did.
Or rather, something had worn his face, held his hand, and written his words.
The thing beyond the wall.
Anger surges through him once again at the realization and he casts the letter into the fire.
Olivia lunges towards the fire.
He catches her first, shoving her back as the paper catches and burns.
“Look at me” he says gripping her by the shoulders. Staring into her eyes for the first time. Seeing his own eyes in hers.
No denying it now.
She is his cousin.
“My father did not send you that letter. He has been dead for more than a year” he says, each word clipped and sharp.
“Matthew,” coaxes Hannah. “Could he have written it before…”
No.
He knew whose handwriting it was.
He would have to tell them eventually. But what would they do with that knowledge?
Lock him in his room?
Bar the door?
Tie him down every night like an animal?
Perhaps they should.
The thought makes his stomach turn.
“No!” He bellows. Squeezing Olivia’s arm as to not fall over. Hoping none of them will see how close he is to falling apart.
“He said I was the last of them. He said there were no more.” His voice splinters in pain as his fingers continue to bite into her.
“You cannot be here”
She twists out of his grip.
Of perhaps he pushes her away, he can’t tell.
Suddenly there was a space between them.
They stare at each other across the gap.
“You should never have come to Gallant.” He points to the door. “Go.”
She was safer hating him.
Much safer than staying.
“It’s too dark now,” Edgar says “She cannot leave tonight”
“Fuck” he mutters under his breath.
The word escapes before he can stop it.
“At first light then” he says as he start to leave the room. Calling back over his shoulder to her. “Get away from this house and never come back”
He doesn’t look at Olivia again
All he could think about was that letter.
If sleep frightened him before, it terrifies him now.
Now that, that thing had reached across the wall and used him.
It knew how.
And if it had done it once...
It would try again.
Next time, it might not stop at writing letters.
He needed a plan. He needed to make sure he could never be used like that again.