Chapter Text
When the girl wakes up, she registers only three things.
The first thing that registers is darkness, and a cavernous feeling of loss.
It's a strange thing, for the body to remember what the mind does not. There's a gap between them now, deep and dark. A break in communication. And the keen sense of lacking that blooms in her chest is alien and new— out of place, somehow. An emptiness that once contained… something. An emptiness, her body tells her, that wasn't there before.
(Before what?)
She's not sure. But from the moment her eyes flutter open, her body insists that something is missing. A part of the whole has been taken. But she doesn't know what exactly she's lost. She can't remember.
The second thing that registers is pain.
Screaming down her spine, radiating across all her nerves— a deep, pervasive ache that is somehow both fresh and disturbingly familiar. Everything is heavy and sore and raw in a way that makes movement feel impossible. Legs numb, tail limp, she whimpers softly and shifts where she lays. Her gaze is still blurry and unfocused, and all she can really make out of her own body is the white of her nightclothes, and the thick bandages that wind up her arms in spiraling layers.
(What… happened to her?)
The girl is curled up on something soft but firm, swaddled in the center of a nest of thick, colorful fabrics and cloth. And the room around her is small and frightfully dim, flat dimensions of bare stone illuminated only by the weary glow of a little orb of light. It rests in a single lantern by the door, and beside its lonely silhouette there is absolutely nothing else. Just the girl, and the nest, and…
Where is she?
…Who is she?
The third thing that registers is fear.
It is immediate. Bone deep. Consuming her, the moment those questions whisper themselves beneath her skull. It eats at the edges of the emptiness inside her with a hollow, insatiable sort of hunger. Prickles up her body like insects crawling over her skin, itching from the inside out, and she is breathless with it. It is a deeply instinctual breed of terror, born in that yawning chasm between what her mind has forgotten, and what her body knows. The pain in her bones, the ache in her arms— those things are familiar. Like she's felt them before. But everything else… no, there is nothing else.
Faster than she can blink, the idle thought that something is missing quickly becomes the sickening realization that something is wrong. The girl chokes on her next breath as she lurches upright, ears pinned back against her head. The blankets fall away. Frantically, she scans the room again and again, desperately searching for the smallest hint of context. The panic builds.
(It's so dark.)
(She doesn't know where she is.)
(She doesn't know who she is.)
(Lost. She is lost.)
A shadow moves next to her.
She jerks away from it with a high-pitched yelp of pure distress, cringing violently into the rough wall at her back. Her terror spikes.
(Where is she? Who is she!?)
But there is nothing. She is nothing. A scream rises in her throat.
(WhoIsSheWhoIsSheWhoIsSheWho–)
“Coco!”
It's a whispered shout, fervent and quavering with emotion. Hands cup her face, warm and kind and so, so gentle. The scent that wafts from the stranger's wrists brings the entire world screeching to a halt. Her whole body freezes, wired tight with tension, suspended over the edge of an abyssal drop, and the girl looks up into eyes of melted gold.
Beside her, there is a woman, an omega, crouching on the hard stone ground. Her spine is curled protectively close over where the girl sits, hovering with palpable anxiety, and the dark fur of her tail is bristling with agitation. She's pale and disheveled, shadows blooming like bruises beneath her gleaming gaze, but her ears are swiveled attentively forward, and there is a regality to the set of her jaw that shines even still. She's draped in fine dark robes, rich fabrics of black and indigo and violet threaded delicately with stitched silver swirls and cloth-of-gold stars. Her sleeves, long and tapered, close over the girl like a bird shielding its young with its wings, cradling her face like she is something delicate. Breakable.
The woman, this strange omega– she smells like honey, and bergamot, and linen, sweet and sharp and soothing. She smells like home, safe, safe, and the girl stills where she sits. The tip of her nose instinctively seeks the glands on the woman's wrists, desperate for the comfort of that scent, and she receives a soft, soothing trill in response. A feather-light touch wipes away the frightened tears welling in her eyes.
“Coco, it's okay, sweetheart.” the woman whispers. Her mouth is quivering violently, and her own eyes are full of unshed tears. She heaves in a shuddering breath, frantic in her reassurances. “I-I'm right here, my sweet girl, you're okay.”
Coco.
It feels right, somehow.
(Is that her? Is she… Coco?)
(But who is Coco?)
“I… I-I don't…” The girl (Coco?) croaks out, in a voice that scratches and warbles like brittle, rusted metal. There is so much going on in her head, and simultaneously not enough. “I–”
“I know, I know,” the omega hushes her, and one hand sweeps tenderly over the girl's brow, brushing away a flickering strand of snow-bright hair. She clings to the warmth, that scent, like it's her last lifeline in a raging storm. The only anchor she can identify.
“Wh-who are you?” The girl asks. “Who am I?”
The woman holding her face looks gutted.
She makes a choked little noise in the back of her throat, a scream ruthlessly strangled before it can even bloom. It never leaves her lips. The tears in her aureate eyes spill over at last, cutting glistening trails down her hollowed cheeks, and for a moment the hands on the girl's face tremble and tighten their grip. She watches the woman visibly swallow her sobs.
“You're my Coco,” she says softly, steadily, breathing the girl's name with a reverence that brightens the air around them. Like it had been a treasure to hold in her mouth. “and I'm–... I'm your mother.”
(Mother. Mother.)
(MotherMotherMother—)
“...M-My… Mother?”
This too feels right.
“Yes, yes it's me.” the woman (Mama?) says quaveringly as she finally releases her face. Her shoulders tremble with the effort it takes to hold back the wail rising in her chest, and grief pours off of her in waves, embittering the scent of honey and summer citrus. “It's your mom!”
Coco watches the woman, her mother, sink to her knees, shoulders curling inward– a slow collapse as her legs wobble and give way. A shudder rolls down her spine, and her head bows over the child's lap, like a supplicant at an altar. The scent of the woman’s grief is overwhelming, and behind a curtain of dark, tangled hair, Coco sees her lips moving. Hears the faintest whisper of a litany of desperate apologies, offered like prayers.
“I’m sorry, I'm sorry, my sweet girl, I'm so sorry–”
Coco watches the woman cry, and she doesn't understand. The fear gnaws at her still.
(Why can't she remember anything?)
She flinches when the hands reach out again. The omega woman (Mother? Where are her memories of this woman?) wraps trembling fingers around Coco's arms and grips her tight. Pulls in another sharp, jagged breath as she visibly steadies herself.
“I'm sorry, Coco.” she says again, steadier this time. Direct. “I know– I know you're scared, and confused, and I promise I-I'll– I'm going to explain everything, sweetheart, but right now… right now, we need to leave.”
Even as she speaks, she's already pulling Coco away from the relative safety of the nest, tugging her insistently to her feet. Urgency lines every angle of her body, and the bitter tang of sorrow and regret in her scent sours with anxiety.
Coco wobbles as she rises, swaying under the heavy hand of a sudden surge of vertigo and nausea. Her tail curves anxiously around one leg, and she tries to tug away from the woman with a plaintive, frightened whine. In that moment, she wants nothing more than to sink back into the blankets. To curl beneath their soothing warmth and hide until this awful new reality had somehow reversed itself. But the woman does not release her.
She only grips tighter, and pulls more firmly.
“I know, kit, I know it's scary,” she tries to soothe Coco, agony bright in her eyes as the girl stares up at her with no small amount of fear, “But I need you to trust me, Coco, please! We have to go!”
And Coco– smaller, weaker, trembling with confusion– doesn't have the power to get away. When the omega pulls her to the door she stumbles after her, barefoot and disoriented, out into the corridor.
It's just as dim as the room they leave behind, all dull gray stone lined with similarly guttered lanterns. Their flickering light casts long shadows between jaggedly carved walls, and Coco finds that her eyes are constantly adjusting. A sharp ache blooms at her temple, and she stumbles as her mother leads her down the hall. They twist and turn, but no matter how hard Coco tries, she can't make sense of where they're going. Where they even are to begin with. But her mother (How is she so certain that's who this woman is?) seems plenty familiar with each bend and split in their path, dragging the child behind her as she guides them unerringly through a veritable labyrinth of tunnels.
Their footsteps warp and echo down each long stretch of corridor, punctuating the tense silence with the evidence of their flight, and Coco is struck by the foreboding that climbs steadily up her throat. The innate feeling that they are not alone here— wherever here is. And they are not safe.
(These halls are not safe.)
(Her body knows it, even if her mind has forgotten.)
Her mother clutches something tight in her free hand. Coco struggles for a better glimpse of it as they move.
And then the second stranger appears.
One moment, the corridor ahead of them is empty. Coco blinks and in the next, someone is standing directly in their path. It's as if they'd stepped out of the darkness itself, curling into being amid a spiraling haze of pale smoke in an instant. The woman freezes mid-step, and shoves Coco hastily behind her.
They cut an ominous figure, looming beneath the outstretched shadows that curve between fingers of dull lantern-light. Every inch of them is hidden, draped in finery or shrouded beneath the feather-crested cloak that stretches all the way to the floor. And they are crowned in a tall tasseled hat, and a mask stitched into the likeness of a single, staring eye. From this distance, Coco can still smell that they're an alpha— but whatever natural scent they might have once carried is utterly smothered by the stench of blood. And something inside Coco quails instinctively, like a fawn going limp in the underbrush. Hunkering down in the presence of a predator.
For a short, breathless moment, no one moves.
"I must confess, you've surprised even me." Their voice splits the silence, a smooth tenor rasp like the humming purr of a violin. "Out of all the avenues you might have taken, to think you would resort to something so… drastic."
In front of her, the woman's breath hitches and trembles. She squares her shoulders nonetheless, every tense line of her braced for movement. One hand keeps its vice grip around Coco's wrist, the other holds tight to something the girl still can't quite make out. Coco peeks around the safety of her mother's robes, heart fluttering unsteadily in her chest.
The eye stares back at her.
"She's a child, Iguin," The woman bites back, baring her teeth at the masked stranger, "And this is wrong!"
"Wrong?" The alpha echoes, darkly amused, "My dear, this is our miracle. Our hope! When did you stop believing in that, I wonder…"
The woman remains unbending, the tired lines of her face twisting into the beginnings of a hateful snarl as she glares down her nose at the stranger. Pressed close to her back, Coco is nearly choked by the anger and loathing that suddenly pours from her scent in waves.
"Get out of my way." Her mother demands lowly— a final warning.
But the stranger, Iguin, does not move. The mask over their face tilts eerily as they turn their hidden gaze, instead, to the little girl behind the omega.
Slowly, they stretch out their hand.
(It's calloused, and stained with black smudges.)
(The heart of their palm is bisected by scar tissue.)
"Coco, my dear," They croon softly. Invitingly. "You must be so confused. I doubt she even took a moment to explain anything to you, did she? Do you even realize what she's taken from you? How she has violated your very mind?"
Coco stares at them, frozen. Unblinking. She can't move, can't bring herself to tear her eyes away. A terrible cold seeps through her, a sluggish poison, a cocktail of fear and distress. That chasm in her mind blares with warning— though she has no recollection of this stranger, her body remembers its fear of them, and Coco quakes were she stands, even as every nerve she has shouts at her to flee.
She doesn't even notice her mother slowly releasing her arm.
"I can keep you safe, my little miracle." Iguin promises sweetly, "I can restore what she's taken— but you must come with me now, kit."
The corridor erupts with a brilliant plume of fire. It races towards Iguin as if spat from the mouth of a dragon, scorching across the stone in a dizzying wave of heat.
"Don't you even speak to her!" The woman's voice is a howl of utter fury, soaring over the roar of the flames. Her arms are outstretched as tongues of scarlet and ember pour from the small pad of circular papers clutched in her hands. Coco skitters backwards with a cry of terror, just as Iguin vanishes beneath a wall of fire.
By the time the last of the flames flicker away, nothing remains in their path but blackened scars over stone floors.
"Y-you… They…" Coco gasps, eyes wide and staring as the distance between her mind and her body only grows. Nerveless fingers hang limp at her sides.
(She has no idea what's happening, but part of her knows innately that the strange alpha isn't dead.)
(She doesn't know how she's so certain— or why. Just that she is.)
The woman— mother, Mama— blindly grasps for Coco's wrist, eyes locked on the dark smears burnt into the brickwork ahead. She's moving the moment her fingers find warm skin, hauling the kit behind her as she sprints desperately down the corridor. As they round the next corner, Coco dares to glance back in the direction they'd come… just in time to see Iguin's body reforming in another swirl of smoke. They're staring after them beneath that same lidless mask.
The air around them is decidedly less friendly now.
“Surely you don't think you'll be making it out of this place with my kit, Lilian.” Their voice stretches down the corridor after their retreating figures, bright with a sudden malice. “Even you can't be that naive.”
They vanish from sight once more, and Coco's heart leaps high in her throat. Her ears swivel and strain for every errant noise beneath the sound of her own gasping breaths— the hollow echoes of the stone labyrinth, the slide of grit beneath her feet, a flutter of cloth—
A large hand seizes the back of her nightgown, claws slicing the fragile skin at the nape of her neck, and Coco screams as she is ripped from her mother's grasp. Iguin pulls her back by the collar, the shackle of their hand punishingly tight, but the moment the kit's wrist vanishes from her grip Lilian is whirling around with a frightful snarl on her face. Teeth bared, ears pinned back, tail bristling, she lunges for the alpha, and the sound that rips from the woman's chest is all animal, a seething shriek of primal, protective rage as she forgoes fire and launches herself bodily at Iguin.
It's the one thing they don't seem to be expecting from her, dragging Coco along as they stumble backwards, buckling beneath the force of Lilian colliding against them. Squashed between two struggling bodies, the air is thick with fear and hatred and aggression, and the iron tang of blood as her mother's claws catch viciously on what little of Iguin's skin is exposed. Coco is wrenched free just as the alpha is forced to surrender their grip, dissipating into vapor once more, if only to escape the furor of Lilian's attack. But even then, the omega is not backing off.
Iguin hardly has a chance to reform before Lilian is lunging at them again— and this time, she's not empty-handed. Coco's not sure where she's getting them or how they work, but as she scrambles away from them she watches her mother rip another little slip of paper from the sheaf, and slam it into Iguin's chest.
Like a supernova, light flares between them, surging up from the intricate symbol stamped onto the page, but Coco barely gets a glimpse at it before her mother is turning to flee once more. Lilian spins on her heels and all but snatches Coco up in her arms. The girl keens in fright, caught in the memory of a larger, rougher hand snagging the back of her neck, and she instinctively tries to squirm away with cold, clumsy fingers as she is carried down the corridor in a dead sprint. A soft, breathless croon from beneath her slows her struggles, soothing the surge of panic. Coco can do nothing but hold tight and tuck her face into her mother's shoulder as they flee, but the scent of honey and citrus is not as comforting as it was before. It is poisoned by a frantic fear; the animal panic of a creature pursued. And when her eyes peek through the curtain of her bangs, she watches as an array of vibrantly blue crystals sprout from the place Iguin had been standing.
Coco can't see the alpha at all. Can't smell them either. Behind them, there is only a wall of sinisterly glowing mineral, expanding at an alarming rate as Lilian races down the hall with the kit in tow. It dogs at her mother's heels, pale as ice, crackling and groaning against the stone like a living thing. Gray walls are bathed in electric shades, consuming the candle-glow of the lanterns as the corridors behind them are utterly engulfed in crystals.
If they hit a dead end, there would certainly be no turning around.
But Coco's mother is utterly unfailing in her path. There is no hesitation in any of her footsteps— only heartsick, dogged determination as she traces a route seemingly long-familiar to her. As if she'd charted this course long ago, and had been waiting to take it ever since. Lilian rounds a final corner, and sprints towards a singular door at the end of the hallway. Coco doesn't realize it's even there until her mother dashes through it, and slams it shut behind them. A bar along its other side falls into place, sealing them in just as the wall of light and crystal smashes into its front.
The thick wood immediately buckles and groans. Blue light shines from between the boards.
It won't hold for very long.
Lilian sets Coco down on her feet, and turns to the far wall.
The kit's eyes watch the door, wide and frightened, as fractalline shards start to bloom along the hinges. To creep beneath the gap at the bottom. Her mother is doing something behind her— her ears twitch at the sound of stone grinding on stone, at the heaving breath the woman takes as she maneuvers something weighty and slow. She can't bring herself to turn around, to rip her gaze away from the steadily deteriorating door, until she feels the first ghost of a breeze brush the back of her neck.
"Coco." Her mother's voice is soft once more, breathless with strain and anxiety. Coco cranes her neck to look at her just as the woman grabs her shoulders and turns the kit around herself.
There is a hole in the wall that wasn't there before.
Perfectly round, and big enough for Coco to walk right through. Her mother leads them towards it, until they are standing before the opening together. Another breeze drifts lazily through the gap, stirring the hem of her nightgown, and bringing with it the clean, wild scent of the forest beyond.
It's dark. Late into the night.
Coco's gaze snaps back to her mother's.
Lilian is kneeling at eye level in front of her. The woman is staring back at Coco like it's the last chance she'll ever get to do it. Golden eyes trace every line of her small face with equal wonder and despair. Her hands return to the kit's face, and her thumbs stroke over her cheeks. Then her eyes. Then her ears. Each fleeting touch is its own separate heartbreak.
(Coco… can't picture what her mother is even seeing in this moment.)
(She can't even remember her own face.)
"Mama?" She whispers. Her voice catches in her throat, heavy with uncertainty. Behind them, the door gives another shuddering groan. In that moment, it sounds a million miles away.
Coco's mother takes a very deep breath.
"I need you to… to listen very carefully to me now, okay kit?" She asks, as her hands migrate back to the girl's shoulders. "This is very important, Coco."
Coco nods slowly.
"Good, good girl, thank you," Lilian squeezes her shoulders, and offers her a trembling smile of approval. It is swiftly undercut by the tears that have begun to well over in her eyes. "In just a moment, then… you're going to go through that windowway, alright?"
She nods towards the yawning hole in the wall to their right, and Coco's eyes briefly flicker towards it. Moonlight shines on the other side, a pale face peeking through a canopy of leaves. Unease gathers in her belly. It must effect her own scent, because her mother hushes her gently.
"It's perfectly safe, kit, you'll walk right out into a forest. Nothing to it." She assures the girl.
But she's still crying, and her smile is still strained, and Coco knows there is a catch here somewhere.
"I can't come with you." Her mother says.
Coco freezes.
"Listen to me— listen to me, sweetheart— it's going to be alright. I promise, you'll be alright." The words come faster and faster, spurred by a steadily rising urgency. Coco doesn't know what they're supposed to be racing against.
(The door is holding by a thread.)
(That alpha is still out there.)
"You're going to pass through this windowway, alright Coco? And then you're going to run." Lilian tells her, in a voice that quivers in time with her own fluttering heartbeat. "As far and as fast as you can, Coco, do you understand? Cross through, and run— tell me you understand, kit."
"I-I understand." Coco whimpers pliantly.
(She does not.)
"Don't stop for anyone, don't trust anyone— especially witches, Coco. Brimmed Cap, Pointed Cap, it doesn't matter, none of them will keep you safe!" Her mother's voice becomes stern, frantic, as a timer only she seems to sense winds steadily down. Her fingers dig into Coco's shoulders.
(She doesn't know what any of those words mean.)
And then her mother is yanking her forward. Pulling her in. Her arms wrap tightly around the kit, tucking her over her heartbeat as a powerful shudder runs down her spine. Coco hears her muffle a sob into her hair.
"You must remember," The omega whispers in her ear, "Magic is a miracle that makes this world vibrant. You are a miracle, Coco. And you do not belong to any of them!"
Her mother presses a gentle kiss to the crown of her head.
"Your choices aren't theirs to make. Your path in life is yours to decide… and yours alone."
Several things happen at once.
At the front of the room, the door finally splinters. Thick panels of wood, once hale and sturdy, snap inward like matchsticks against an avalanche, and the whole chamber erupts with cyan light. Glinting shards of glass-like crystal creep over the brickwork, and over her mother's shoulder, Coco watches Iguin reform from vapor and darkness. The staring eye glares down at them with blank, frozen malice.
"Using my own spells against me now, Lilian?" The alpha scolds softly. Menacingly. "And after everything I've taught you… How disappointing."
Iguin reaches out— for Lilian, for Coco, she can't quite tell who, and her mother doesn't give her time to figure it out. The world blurs into motion as the omega surges back to her feet, and all but throws her kit through the windowway. Coco tumbles out of the other side in a tangle of limbs, sprawled over the moss and grass of the forest floor.
The last glimpse she catches of her mother, before the strange doorway shuts behind her, is a flash of golden eyes and bared fangs as Lilian whirls back around to face Iguin.
"Run, Coco!"
The windowway collapses into a circle of flat stone.
Coco runs.