The Final Act [Cillian]

Eyes. There were always eyes on Dela for the last year give or take and she'd had not a single clue. If she ever found out just how long she'd been watched without her knowledge, her head would explode. It was her job to know things, have the drop on people, and basically sense when there was a plot moving against her, but as usual, things concerning the cursed crystal and its maker seemed to live and thrive in her blindspot. No matter how many and widely placed her contacts were or how good her hearing was, not a peep about the curse's mastermind or her twin. Not even a whisper about cursed crystals and magical girls, let alone how it might be loopholed or stopped. For a man who had circused his way into town with so much pomp and circumstance, no one outside of their old village in Minstrel had ever heard of him or his supposedly famous performance. It was as if after she signed her contract intending to save Elle, the man vanished into the wind.

But the magical girl had become more and more distracted lately despite the urgency of her situation and the panic over her twin's fate. Vera had disappeared, presumed dead at this point given the lack of information she could find on her, and that combined with her stifled feelings for her remaining best friend began this most recent saga. The world was a mess, there was a war, and Dela was in the middle of it. Willingly, which was an odd twist. As much as she'd never admit it, she was extremely discouraged about her lack of progress with the curse, especially lately, and had shifted her attention to a situation she might realistically be able to make a difference in. It was in this state of confusion, both for her and the world, that she missed the signs of what was to come.


It seemed that Aberneel, the villain in Dela's long and arduous tale, was getting a bit impatient. Hungry. He was a lion pacing its cage gate waiting for the keeper to toss in meat, but the keeper was stubborn. Dela, or Millicent as he knew her, was taking too long to ripen the darkness within the crystal that he fed on, longer than any other contract he'd made. See, he was, in a sense, just as cursed as the girls he preyed on. Being an elf from Seven who betrayed the natural oaths in exchange for dark power, his druid magic had warped and twisted back on him, intending to curse him with eternal punishment, but not before he cast a curse of his own that countered it and staved off his damnation. With conditional immortality, Aberneel was forced to feed on the collected suffering of others to survive while trading their souls in place of his own within the Forest of the Damned, but through that, he could live on indefinitely with virtual freedom. Cursed or not, Aberneel was not to be pitied. Despite this unfortunate consequence, he adapted quite well and enjoyed his work. Or rather, he had up until this point.

Bringing the more compliant twin back from the Forest of the Damned was merely a bandaid and quite the gamble at that. Her crystal had already been fed on, but he found that he could still snack on it in desperate moments as long as she kept using her magic to cause suffering. Plus, in her, he had a will-less doll that could expend the energy his starving body lacked. It was through her that he'd expedite this process. But the trade-off was her soul had already taken his place, so pulling it back so she could once more walk the mortal realm doubled the pull on his own toward his fate. It was approximately every one hundred years he had to sacrifice a soul for his own to remain free, and with retrieving hers, he was nearly twice over his limit given Dela's dalliance.

Initially, the plan had been for the twin to facilitate opportunities for Millie's crystal to mature. Much more deaths. More magic use. Her hesitance to call on her magic at all was vexing, and merely dying once in a while wasn't enough to speed up the maturation. She needed to rely on it body and soul. Use it like breathing. But she wouldn't since she'd figured out a loophole to delay the inevitable. Aberneel always knew the crafty girl would be a thorn in his side, but this was more than he'd ever accounted for. And now she had an undead friend that fought at her side, which was apparently the last straw. He was tired of waiting.

He'd be putting the soul back and adding a new one soon enough.

Elizabeth would go fetch Millicent.


Elle might not have control of her own will, but she still had control of her face, and her face said she was disgusted and grieving. Her soul was bound to a devil beyond salvation, consumed by him, and she was utterly at his mercy and command. Aberneel had no consideration for how it would make her feel, watching her twin day in and day out struggle through life, knowing she was actively working against her on every front. How many times had she secretly caused her sister's death and had to stay to watch? Millie, oh, Millie... what a mess this was. Everything that happened to Millie was a direct consequence of Elle's naivety and subsequent mistakes, no matter how good-intentioned. And still, she was to cause still more suffering. The last suffering before they'd both spend eternity petrified within the Forest of the Damned in Aberneel's place. A fate she'd already endured for around a century that she wouldn't wish on anyone except Aberneel.

The orders for today were steeped in anger and desperation. The man they were both bound to sent her to forcibly take her. Elle was to kill Millie and keep doing so until she returned to the lair.

No amount of dread or mental resistance would keep her from acting on these orders. She stalked her twin until that no-good undead man was gone and she was alone. Creeping up behind her, she raised her dagger to ram it through her heart, tears already streaming down her face, but one of her metal arms made a very quiet squeak. Dela whirled just as the blade came down, raising her arm in shock to protect herself. Blood spattered the ground and even as Dela stumbled back, recognition dawned in the blue eyes they shared.

"Elle?" Dela breathed, her face running the full spectrum of emotions. "Elle!!" She was okay? Was she okay? She was here! She was trying to kill her? Metal arms and tears and a dagger. So much had changed and so much didn't make sense, yet Dela was quick on her feet... at least in her brain. Her actual feet not so much.

As Dela rapidly came to the correct conclusion-- that Elle was under Aberneel's control and the implications of this revelation both physically and theoretically-- Elle lacked the ability to give her the seconds to do that and then act. "I'm sorry, Millie," she whispered, lunging forward with swift and accurate force. Elle had always been the more capable of the two. Modest brawn and wild brains had been their dynamic from childhood. Before Dela could even gather herself enough to cast a spell, the dagger plunged deep into her chest and pierced her heart.

As Dela crumpled, a sob escaped Elle. Catching her twin in her prosthetic arms, she paused just long enough to watch the life leave her mirror. However, there was no time to wallow. Hoisting her up, Elle walked off into the shadows with the body for a long journey back to Seven.


As if being stabbed to death by her identical (or formerly identical, given the automail arms) wasn't bad enough, Dela was vaguely aware that she'd been shoved into a traveling trunk between re-stabbings. She stewed in the magical girl's purgatory each time, cursing Aberneel and fretting over Elle. It was clear her sibling hadn't turned evil. She was simply being controlled and therefore blameless. It seemed silly, but she was oddly relieved on that front. Over a year of panicking since finding Elle's petrifying remains missing from their twisted afterlife had her all but convinced that Elle was truly gone and beyond saving, but seeing her alive and, well, very much not half-comprised of dead tree bark was... hope. She had hope. Half the work was done for her already! Elle was back and even if her will or soul or whatever was under Aberneel's control, there was a possibility she could fix this.

But... Dela stamped her foot in irritation. That Aberneel! How dare he control Elle and make her do such a thing. How dare he make this move! Kidnapping? After all the searching for him, a century of it and nothing, he just busts out of hiding to set up a meet and greet? For what? Oh, poor baby, was she taking too long to become his food? Well, too bad! Once she was alive again, she was gonna throttle him. Or make Chester do it--

Oh wait, that's right, her traitorous magical companion was loyal to the dickhead. All of her magic was. It was powerless against him since he'd basically made it! This was the problem she could never really get past, no matter how much she strategized and planned for this moment. Her body was weak and she had very little magic of her own. Dela wasn't a threat and she knew it. And being kidnapped before she could even call for help or have an elaborate plan in place was not ideal. What was he going to do with her?


The next time she revived, she wasn't in darkness anymore. It was quite the opposite. A blinding light came from overhead. Her body was stripped down to her underwear so she could feel the cold metal beneath her coiled frame. Leaning up and forward to get to her feet, she bonked into something. Something glass by the sound of it. Squinting, she reached out to touch the cold, flat surface. It was thick, and it was all around her at just about an arm’s length. Like a large fish tank, but tall enough for a single human. She more carefully got up, mindful of the cramped space, and banged on it in hopes of busting it. No such luck. All she had on her was the crystal gripped in her hand, and even though she had it, Dela could draw no power from it nor would it even chip the glass. Beyond her tank was nothing but darkness, offering no clues as to where they were or how she could escape.

Theatrically, a spotlight clicked on overhead about a dozen feet away, revealing a man in a fancy high-backed chair. He took off his large tophat with a flourish as her eyes landed on him, his free hand curled around a pink cellphone that was aimed at the tank.

"EW!" she cringed, recoiling back against the glass.

Aberneel seemed genuinely taken aback by this response. Disgust, but not fear? What? "Ew?" he asked, then glanced at the girl standing stoically at his side. "Did she just say 'ew'?" He received no response.

Elle was even more peeved with him than usual for some reason, though her feet were cemented at his side. She’d been ordered to watch but not converse.

"I knew you were a nasty bridge troll, but a perverted one?" Dela quipped, gesturing to the device.

"I'M AN ELF!" bristled Aberneel before composing himself. He didn't lower the phone though. This whole event was too juicy to let pass. He could either sell the footage to some unsavory types or just enjoy it over the dinner of her long-awaited crystal and a nice bottle of prosecco.

"Elves are supposed to be pretty," she muttered, leaning off of the back of the tank to stand tall. "So is this where you monologue and tell me your villainous plan to... whatever you plan to do to me?"

As she stalled, her eyes carefully flickered around. They were inside a circus tent of baby pink and blue, probably one from the very collection he’d brought to her town so long ago. By the looks of this particular one, it was the magic trick exhibition. The tank made sense, then. Escaping from a “sealed” tank filled with water before drowning was a common trick. There was always a secret hatch. With a subtle sweep of her foot, she felt the hinges and latch, but it had been welded. Given that there were empty trunks and cages nearby, his choice of confinement wasn’t from a lack of options. This was purposeful.

Meanwhile, Aberneel was elated. "Oh ho ho ho?" the elf hooted, slapping his knee with his hat. "Something the great Millicent Magdelana Hodgins doesn't already know? A rare thing indeed, like a falling star throttling a swan!" he gloated, much to Dela's dismay. He didn't have to rub it in, but then again, he was the villain. “In fact, I believe I can say I bested you, my dear girl.”

Dela stood prepared for what sounded like a rousing evil-dude monologue, but instead, she heard a muffled beeping noise, the giddy giggling of a madman, and the rush of water. Jerking her head up, she narrowly flinched over enough to avoid the cold water from pouring right in her face, but it was ultimately a futile movement. From the sheer force of water coming in through the opening too small for her to fit through, it was obvious he aimed to drown her. That’s when it truly dawned on her what his intentions were.

He was going to force her into a death loop… by drowning in an aquarium like some twisted circus act. And record it while he and her twin watched. Nice! This was very bad!

No one even knew she was missing!

Faced with a very real fear of what was to come next and no means of escape, Dela stood in silence for once. As the cold water rose to her knees and then to her waist, it wasn’t the chill that made her body shake. This was it. She’d lost. The hope she’d felt upon seeing Elle, even if she was actively being stabbed by her, died on the spot. A century wasted. Their souls would be sent to that creepy petrified forest for all eternity. That creepy dumb elf beat her as if she’d even ever had a piece on the board.

Cillian. She never got to say goodbye, or tell him how much he meant to her. Dela started to cry at this point. Even if it was never returned at the depth she felt it, it would’ve been better if she’d spoken up. Dela wasn’t one to hold back, but with him, she had. He’d been the first in a very long time she’d been afraid to lose, and even as she faced this inhumane torture scenario, her thoughts were only consumed with him and his big, dumb dopey, handsome, lovable face. Infuriatingly dense but her best friend. It was agony to say a silent, one-sided goodbye knowing he would be left wondering where she’d gone. Would he be sad? After losing Vera so recently, this would surely be difficult even for someone like him. Maybe he’d blame her, resent her. That was fine, she just hoped he didn’t let it get him down too long and maybe remembered her fondly here and there once the wound healed.

The water was so deep that it lifted her off of her feet now. She treaded it, putting off the inevitable while Aberneel continued to chortle. Way before she was ready, the air was gone. The tank was entirely filled to the brim, and her last breath burned in her lungs. Why she was even trying something so futile was a mystery, but then again, could anyone, even immortals, willingly inhale water?

’Cillian!’

Willingly or not, the time came and the trapped blonde involuntarily spasmed, water flooding her nose, mouth, and lungs. Oh god, it hurt. She’d drowned before. It was her least favorite way to go. It felt like it took an eternity to actually die this way, somewhat like burning alive. It was just all panic and pain until finally the suffocation set in and darkness took her. Away her soul went to the place Aberneel’s soul belonged, facing her with eons of girls suckered into this hell. But this was different. It wasn’t just the awkward waiting period between respawns, impatient to get back and continue on where she left off. No, she stood frozen, knowing what awaited her when she regained life and consciousness. The tank. Suffocation. The giggles were muffled by water until the burning and convulsing brought her back here. How many times would it take for him to get what he wanted?

’Cillian, please help!’

By the tenth time, she was thinking it was just a bad dream and that she’d wake up somewhere stupid, like the Rune Knight’s mess hall where she fell asleep after a heavy meal. Maybe she was in her bed, too full on pizza and mind-numbed by a long videogame tournament. It was a strange, almost frenzied hope that any second her eyes would open to Val banging on her door to make her work.

’I know you don’t know where I am…!’

By the twentieth, she was furious, taking to demolishing what was left of Elle’s old stump and screaming at the miserable but alert eyes of the magical girl before the twins’ encounter with Aberneel. If this dumb whore had just figured out that this was all a scam and stopped him, starved him, took the crystal and hid away in some crypt… anything to starve this psychotic elf to death…

’How could you? I don’t even know where I am…’

By the thirtieth, she was begging Aberneel to stop, though he probably couldn’t hear her. She didn’t know that! Maybe he had a connection here to be able to send souls in his place. If he’d just let her out of the tank, she’d do it properly this time. She’d use the magic! Please! She’d take more dangerous missions, she’d become a strong mage, just let her out!!!

’But you’re the only one.. who…’

By the fortieth, she was sobbing in the decayed dust of the forest floor. This was it, it would go on possibly for months before her crystal was black as onyx and ready to be eaten. She’d never get to say goodbye to her friends. She wanted to hug Cillian, thank him, and tell him he was a bright spot in her long life. She’d die a virgin! Most of her life had been trying to break this curse, so there was so much she’d wanted to experience after she’d won. None of that would happen!

’Please, Cillian!’

By the fiftieth, she simply sat against the bark of the girl she’d yelled at a while back, staring into the unending void ahead of her. Pretty features were utterly blank, accepting that it was what it was. Hoping and wishing it had been something different wouldn’t change it. Freaking out about the torture and misery wouldn’t change anything. It was going to keep happening until she was here forever, so… it was fine.

’It doesn’t matter, does it?’


“Oh, gross, what is that?!”

Each time she revived, there was a random period of time where she was truly undead, which was not part of his curse. Zombification. That was new. He didn’t even know his curse could be altered like this. Her skin was gray and showed scars that Aberneel guessed were from previous deaths? Sometimes she’d just float, mindlessly staring at him. Ominous, but amusing, like a haunted house! He laughed. In those moments she was like a mirror. Their hungry gazes lingered and he feared for his brain as if she could ever get out. Even more interesting were the times when she bubbled and screamed and thrashed about, banging on the glass and trying to get to him.

“This is quite the show…” he marveled, munching popcorn as if he was watching some sort of stream on the Lacrinet. “I should add zombies to one of my acts…”

Millicent was undead for a few seconds up to a couple of hours each time, an unanticipated setback to his plan. Of course, she found a way to be annoying and prolong the inevitable even now. But no, he’d win. Even if it took a little longer, it’d be all the more worth it. Besides, seeing her return back to her usual, conscious self only to freshly drown anew really tingled the pickle. He got off on it. It was that defeated, wide-eyed misery and the cute little fruitless struggles that she couldn’t help. Before now she’d always acted confident like she was better than the others. But now, she was nothing more than a victim. Powerless. An ungrateful magical girl that was even worse off than those that had just played by the contract, the good girls like Elle.

Even though the prelude to this had been agony for him, this… this he liked. It changed him. If he’d known there was a better way to enjoy his food, likening this to a more active hunt than simply observing and waiting… well, he should’ve been quickening the pace this way all along! Faster meals and entertainment?

And so it was there, on the edge of Seven’s border in a circus tent among the trees, that Dela died over and over again for an audience of two, inching closer to death she couldn’t come back from.


[wc: 3677]

At first Dela was unaware of any changes. Her eyes squeezed shut against the water as she floated there, waterlogged and writhing with every watery inhale. She'd lost count of how many times she'd died. It was a torturous blur that never seemed to end. But then, it did? Suddenly, a muffled crash raced through the water and into her ears. It seemed unreal. Dreamlike. Then she felt her body moving, simultaneously lowering with the water level and drawing toward the hole it gushed from. Something caught her before she could touch the ground.

He felt like fire against her frigid skin, and he looked like a god. Her oxygen deprived brain wondered if maybe her understanding of the forest was wrong, and while their bodies were trapped, maybe their consciousnesses could move on to some semblance of an afterlife. It'd be nice if this was hers, because this reminded her of Cillian. His warmth and voice were achingly familiar though she dared not trust her perception as reality. Cerulean eyes were just barely focused enough to catch a couple of glimpses of him in all of his glory, though the rest of her body was limp in his arms as if the heaviness of reintroduced air on her weak limbs was crushing her. And then just like the dream she thought he was, the warmth was gone from her cheek and she felt only cool moss and dirt. And she was still drowning.

While her mind lagged over the sensations and whether they were real or not, her body seized the opportunity to save itself. But there was too much water. No room for air in her aching lungs. So her chest convulsed, weakly heaving a mouthful of water from her nose and mouth, and then another as she began writhing and struggling. Someone was there, helping her turn her head and body so gravity could help. She tried to see. Virgo? No, just focus. Then, though it hurt in a completely different way, air. Air rushed into her nostrils and down her agitated throat and into the small void that had cleared. Exhale, more loud choking and coughing and retching and water. Inhale, more glorious, stabbing air. It made her dizzy as it rushed to circulate into her deoxygenated blood and body. It was an arduous process, recovering from drowning, but she was somehow putting in the work to purge her system of all the fluid.

It was pitiful, but as she slowly started to stabilize, she started to realize that this might not be a dream after all. A shaky arm slowly raised so she could see the crystal still grasped tightly in her fist. Some sort of noise escaped her as she saw it, some sort of gasp or soundless sob, but whatever it was, it was the smallest glimmer of hope. The crystal wasn't entirely corrupted. It still retained some purity, splotched and marbled, and that meant she still had time.


It took Aberneel a long, silent moment to process the events taking place. Who... Did someone summon a celestial spirit? But who? Elle was under his control and Dela was too busy, right? So... someone had just materialized in his tent hidden in the leafy depths of Seven, broke his tank, and took his sacrificial dinner! His mouth hung open as he blinked, looking between this intruder and his armless doll as if to ask if she was seeing this, too. Predictably, Elle didn't react.

Soon enough, though, he turned quite sour. In Elle's reports, she'd mentioned his little magical girl had had a friend or two, but he hadn't paid the detail much mind since he thought it would never pertain to him and his plans. One of little Millie's friends? Unexpected, yet totally cliché. Regardless of who this guy was, there was no time for this. The timing really couldn't be worse! "Your woman?" he scoffed, stopping his recording and putting the phone away. He looked the man up and down, tutting at the edgy scythe and threats. "She's been my woman since she signed my contract a century ago," Aberneel sneered, leaning back into his chair, "Don't worry about my gods. I'm my own these days, but I don't think I'll be going anywhere."

He was a weakened god, though. The cursed elf was starving and his grip on his soul was loosening by the day. This was no time for him to fight. Strong as he might be at full strength, there was a reason he relied more on cons and tricks than being an overpowered overload that forced what he wanted and needed from people. Partly because he was an imp that wanted to enjoy his time with elaborate mind games, but also simply because he didn't get the strength he'd risked becoming cursed for.

"Elle, take out this grim reaper wannabe trash, would you? He's messing up the vibe of my tent."


Elle had never been so glad to see Cillian. Normally he irritated her, from a protective sibling point of view, but she'd always held at least a small amount of appreciation for him being there for Millie when she needed someone. She'd had no one for so long, and losing Vera had been hard.

Even though Cillian saving Millie meant her own defeat, she would gladly meet 'death' again for her twin. Though she wanted to defy Aberneel with everything within her, her feet still moved without her permission. Stepping forward, a staff similar to Dela's appeared in her hand, a though there was a rose instead of a heart at the top housing a pitch black crystal.

In all the ways Dela sucked at using her magic, Elle excelled. With a skilled swish and twirl, shimmery powder coalesced into a unicorn, though this one was more sophisticated and feminine. Its mane was a soft green and braided with roses while its horn and hooves were made of pure gold. "Geneviève," Elle spoke softly, her accent heavily Minstrelian and her tone more reserved and measured than Dela's ever was. For all their similarities, Cillian would only find more differences between the twins. Even as her conservative button-up shirt and long green skirt were replaced by shimmery thread and ribbons, the silvery evening gown that formed covered all of her skin from the chest down, and a sheer cape hugged her shoulders. With her arms bare, the horrible scars on her upper arms where the metal of her prosthetics attached peeked out now and then as she moved her staff. Her golden ponytail drew up into a beautiful braided crown. Despite the brutality of her dismemberment, the look was pure elegance. What a sight it must have been before the loss of her arms in her final battle.

"C'est là que ça se termine (This is where it ends)," she said, voice soft again, but determined. Perhaps it had a double meaning, if anyone could understand it. Though her delicate brows were drawn low, her eyes were wide and glossy. Tears bubbled at the cusps of her lower lids, barely restrained by pale lashes. Please, let this be the end of it. Cillian had to win. But she had no choice but to give stopping him all she had. Geneviève began firing off her horn like twisted homing thorns while the ground rumbled. Long vines full of thorns and roses erupted from the ground beneath the pale-haired man, whipping and trying to tangle him and his scythe from below while she unleashed ribbons from her staff to do the same. Which each flick of a ribbon, more glitter filled the air.


Aberneel wasn't just sitting idly by and watching. No, he had retreated into a second, smaller tent attached to the rear that served as his personal quarters. He reached into his seemingly bottomless pockets and brought out a whole army of small, nearly voodoo-like dolls. They came in every shape and size, though most were circus themed. Tigers, bears, lions, elephants, clowns, acrobats, bearded ladies, werewolf men, every act one could think of from a circus and freak show. There were also ones that looked like bandits and thieves, general ruffians and raiders he used to bully towns and make them desperate for help. He lined them all up, with one large, demonic creature at the back closest to him. Having his hands as if performing a magic trick, a wheel of needles appeared and floated around in a magic circle. With the snap of his fingers, each needle aimed and shot right into the back of each of the little dolls. All at once, they began to levitate and shake, glowing pink as they grew and grew until they reached their real-life appropriate size. They moved to fill most of the large tent, becoming more and indistinguishable from real people and animals until they were all basically standing there, living and breathing, waiting for their orders.

"Go, bring me the drowned girl. And kill that guy!" he ordered, and the group split. A little less than half joined Elle in battle, while the rest rushed at Virgo and Dela. The large demon, one so gigantic and horned that it ripped a holes in the tent overhead, remained behind to keep Aberneel safe.

[wc: 1550 || total: 9136]

Dela had just started to look away from the crystal and around through the disturbing amount of approaching circus freaks for Cillian when poof, she was somewhere else. It wasn't the petrified forest, so she hadn't died again. This was a new place. She might have been scared of this development once upon a time. Within seconds there were new faces. Zombies. Even if in light of her own occasional zombification she wasn't fond of them, but between the immense trauma she'd just experienced and the perfectly sentient and caring nature of current undead company, her despondent gaze remained just that. Tense, but eerily calm.

For a few more moments she continued to cough up water, knowing she was safe and could take her time to recover. After the shudders truly subsided and her lungs and stomach were officially empty of anything but air, a particular sense of dread and defeat hung heavily on her weak and sore shoulders, but she took the bizarrely pretty zombie's advice and tried to relax and breathe for a little bit. Despite being assured she'd be fine, Dela couldn't say she felt like she'd ever be fine again. Even so, after a little bit, she slowly rose with some help to sit hunched over her crisscrossed legs. Taking the gross-looking hot drink from the thin rotting priest, Klaus, she nodded a thanks and didn't even question the liquid before drinking it. No witty banter, no sassy comments. Just some rapid, magical physical recovery while she struggled to come to mental terms with it all.

If anything, she wasn't sure what to make of the place she was at the moment. Who were these people? She only recognized Virgo. Their clear deadness nearly convinced her that she in some sort of afterlife after all. Or maybe some dying fever dream. Perhaps this was the last fleeting sparks of her consciousness as she solidified into sickly gray bark for all eternity. These two were unfamiliar, but... it didn't explain Virgo's presence.

There was another option, of course, one she didn't have all the information for, but still made sense. It stood to reason that since Cillian had Virgo and those ghost-like people from Felidae as summons that these zombies were summons, too. He had been able to talk to those zombies on the day they first met, so maybe this made more sense than she originally worked through. Dela knew at least a little about a lot of things, but admittedly her knowledge about magical things were her weakest point. She knew that summons resided in another realm of some sort, though. There were still secrets she and Cillian hadn't revealed to each other yet, so it stood to reason that she hadn't seen all of his summons. Looking around, she noted the celestial nature of the planets in the sky, though it didn't explain how she was allowed in such a place or how it was hastening her recovery.

Well, when you didn't know something, ask, right? Dela didn't feel like talking, but the distraction would be nice. "You are all Cillian's summons?" she asked, her voice more raspy than she'd ever heard it. The magical girl blinked in shock, but quickly settled. Her gaze fell on the pretty 'mama bear' and Klaus more curiously than before, deciding they were ultimately good zombies even if she had many questions as to how they were acquired. Aoide and Azahl didn't seem to be around, which begged the question of if they were summons like she thought. "This is your realm?"

***

"Je vous en prie...! (I beg of you...!)" Elle said desperately, again a vague statement that could mean anything from "please, just die!" to "please, kill me!" to "please, save us both!" to "please, I don't want to hurt you!" as far as anyone could tell. Vagueness in her native tongue was the only loophole she had to communicate her true desires. Truthfully it was more of the latter two's sentiments. It seemed Cillian was capable, after all. Though she couldn't stop drawing his blood, a fact that was more disturbing to her than him, she seed of hope was growing. Maybe he really could not only save Millie, but win her freedom, too. Despite taking all of her attacks as easy as breathing with gentle understanding, he was making short work of the puppets. Oh, how she wished she could stop fighting him and fight with him, a thought that would have never happened before today. To say that the brute had won some points with her would be an understatement. A rescue and he spoke fluent Minstrelian? Perhaps she'd judged him too harshly as a dumb oaf. Cillian was certainly more than capable now.

Regardless of her own thoughts, though, until she was either released from Aberneel's control or rendered unconscious, she had no choice but to follow him around and keep attacking. If, perhaps, her attacks happened to take a couple puppets within her spells' ranges, well, that couldn't be helped, now could it?

Control or no control, Elle paused when things turned more serious. Perhaps it was her order of self-preservation in effect so she could remain to protect Aberneel, but she sensed the tremendous power and impending doom before she saw the large green shadow or heard the bell toll. The floral unicorn beneath her retreated them both to a safe distance as she watched a mass of puppets be swallowed up by what felt like death itself. Frightening. Her gaze turned to their dark savior, but she didn't move.

***

Peeking around the absurdly large monster bodyguard he had, he watched the ensuing fight with a deepening frown. He was still stewing on being called a pedophile, but had let his minions do the talking for him. Or, that's what he'd intended. Really, he was just watching them bumble about, confused when the girl they were demanded to get disappeared, while the other half were hacked down. "YOU IDIOTS! Kill him, too, then!" he redirected the lost crowd as they turned to blink dumbly at him, but that only sent them to a massacre, which he watched with a slack jaw. Then he had a verbal fit. His playthings were turning back into their small, lifeless dolls by the dozens, and a large chunk were sucked into oblivion right before his very eyes! Did this cretin have any idea how much effort it had taken to make or otherwise acquire that many dolls? Not even a stitch remained of the ones swallowed by the big green whatever that was!

Even worse was Dela's disappearance. Where had he put her? How dare he move her out of his grasp when they were so close to what he needed. Though he was a performer at his very core, his mask was starting to slip. Overly dramatic expressions aside, desperation was growing. If this didn't work out, this was it for him, and that was not a possibility. He would not meet his fate this way. He wouldn't meet his fate ever.

"Elle, stop being so useless! Kill him even if it kills you!" he demanded, gesturing at the intruder he was still unaware was immortal. The importance of not being cocky, ladies and gentlemen. If he was going to refuse to fight her for whatever chivalrous reason, then it was time for even more dirty plays on the board. He suspended her self-preservation order. If he was going to do his best to avoid her, then he'd use her as an interruption to his attacks and a human shield for himself. Did he know what would happen if she were to disappear in that death cloud instead of returning to the forest in his place? No, but he'd cross the bridge when he came to it.

He watched as Elle, with dread in her pretty features, ran back into battle with reckless abandon to place herself in his way at every opportunity.

[wc: 1331] || total: 7123]

Dela did, in fact, remember Moxie's name. A nod of greeting was issued to all concerned which was the best she could do in these aptly called strenuous circumstances. Though still curious, her inquisitive nature was muted by the trauma of what she'd just gone through. The apathy still lingered even though it seemed she really had been saved. It was hard to feel relieved or joyful in her numbed state, as if it was forming a protective shell around her withering psyche. She wasn't even angry with Aberneel at the moment, though she knew she should be, irrationally so. The blonde just sat there, taking in Moxie and Klaus and the Celestial Realm that Virgo seemed excited for her to see. World of the undead, huh? Not terribly unlike the Forest of the Damned. And Virgo was from the bigger one across the way. That made sense. Dela slowly nodded, not nearly as interested as she should have been in the implications.

That all changed once Moxie's cigarette smoke looking-glass thing popped up. Initially, Dela was uninterested in that as well, until she realized who they were talking about. She perked up slightly, looking toward the window into Earthland. Come to think of it, she'd never really seen Cillian angry either, and she'd been too out of it before to notice. Her curiosity blazed. He was tearing through circus folk she hadn't seen in a hundred years with such chilling ferocity and effortless skill that she both understood Virgo's comical jealousy and wondered how he could possibly be the same big dope she knew. She'd never seen him fight like this. Big blue eyes only flickered away from his face when Moxie started explaining things she'd never heard before, and even then it was just a glance of acknowledgment before they re-glued to the image floating in the air. "Special?" she repeated quietly, watching the man with the scythe who seemed so familiar and yet like a complete stranger. Like a child creeping close to their favorite show on Lacrivision, Dela inched closer to the scene being shown to her.

The protective shell keeping her together started to crack as she watched Cillian, looking every bit as god-like handsome as she thought she'd mistaken earlier, take so many hits from Elle without returning a single one. It was a complicated feeling she wasn't ready to digest yet, seeing them fight. Hurting for the pain Cillian apparently couldn't feel, seeing him take those hits with such kindness and mindfulness of her twin, said twin hurting him but being unable to help it... it was hard to watch but she couldn't look away.

The last thing she should be concerned about after her torturous kidnapping and the war between Aberneel and Cillian was her doomed and choked-back feelings of love, and yet, that's what finally shattered her.

"Cillian said that?" she asked as she turned to see Moxie's wink and grin. There was a strange, devastating hope in her eyes as Klaus touched her and voiced his/her? own feelings on the matter, which she couldn't say she disagreed with. The thought of Cillian being possessive of her was... something else. "Did he really call me ‘his woman’?"

She knew better than to expect much, but it was as if her heart hadn't started truly beating again until that moment. Not 'his best friend', which had been good enough, but 'his woman'? Cillian was dense. Frustratingly, impossibly so, especially given all the lapses in judgment she'd had. It could be just a slip of the tongue. But even so... tears had bubbled up on her lower lashes, though she forbade them from falling by looking back to the smoke screen. Only Cillian had seen her vulnerable enough to cry, and she'd like to keep it that way.

No matter how silly the timing of her fanned romantic embers was, seriousness was destined to reclaim her reverie. Aberneel's ringing voice felt like the stab of a glowing-hot fireplace poker into her gut. Dela had always hated him, but this feeling transcended hate. It was pure rage, but also unadulterated fear. Before now she'd feared her fate, feared her situation, feared losing her sister forever, but never had she directly feared Aberneel. The conman had been little more than a harlequin putting on acts that tricked people into horrible consequences. Even now she knew this new fear of him was irrational and trauma-induced. He hadn't appeared before her and stabbed her, or directly hurt her in any way. None of this was his show of overt power. But he did control Elle. He set all of this in motion. This wicked scenario was born in his twisted brain and carried out without a second thought. He sat and watched her die like it was some long-awaited blockbuster. He enjoyed it. Dela could still see his distorted face grinning at her through the water and glass as he awaited his meal.

More importantly, though, how dare he demand Cillian be killed, even if he couldn't stay dead. How dare he make Elle do it at the risk of her own potentially temporarily regained life. Just... how dare he! She bristled at the thought of it, even if it was all futile. Elle elegantly obliged with her orders and Cillian took a death break. A very short one.

Listening as Aberneel let off a peel of prematurely victorious laughter, a cruel smirk tugged at Dela's pink pout. That idiot. It was clear he knew nothing of his foe, a testament to his inferiority. Always know your enemy, especially if you've had as much time to research as he'd had. As he continued to cackle while Cillian's bloody "corpse" went slack, the magical girl seemed nothing but brimming with excitement. This is where it would all change. Aberneel would realize his mistake and how screwed he was. "Get him, Cillian," Dela whispered, and sure enough, he rose back up, dusted himself off, and set a toe-curling gaze on her long-time nemesis. Indeed, as Klaus had said, her lady bits shivered. She was smacked with the most intense urge to go to him, even if it meant being in the same room as her abuser. If only she could climb through that smoke screen...

On cue, as Klaus so perfectly mentioned, it was time for his summons to come out and play and after a brief conversation, they disappeared just as she was wishing she could do the same. The jealousy that overtook her nearly knocked her over, but Dela wouldn't have to suffer long. Virgo seemed to be reading her page. Good ol' dependable Virgo! As she whirled on the Celestial summon with more intensity than she'd possibly ever had, quick instructions of how the magical girl could essentially summon herself followed, and again she ignored the implications and took the info without much deep thought. She could go to him, and that's all that mattered. The rest could wait.

Closing her eyes as Virgo had instructed, and even though channeling magic wasn't her forte, it took the blonde no time at all to home in on a thread that radiated the familiar warmth and safety she felt with Cillian. Somehow she knew all she had to do was grab it and she'd be gone. Opening her eyes, she grinned at the summon. "Thanks, Virgo. I'll make sure this is the end," she assured the woman. Just before she disappeared, she added one more thing. "I'll make sure to come back and tie you up later, okay?"

A strange note to travel realms on, but those who know Virgo get it.


Elle didn't have much to say to that. Make it worth her while sounded oddly shady, but still, she could put her distaste for him aside and appreciate him and his immortality in this moment. Though she couldn't respond if she wanted to, her eyes flashed in agreement. Aberneel's shrieks of terror and frustration were music to her ears, and she didn't hesitate to shoot across the tent after him.


Oh, the elation Aberneel had felt when he watched his unwanted interruption perish right before his very eyes by the hands of his little magical doll. Just as Cillian had planned, he thought it was over and all he'd have to do was find Dela again to finally get to eat! But then, oh, but then...

The horror. His foe rose up from an unmistakable death and Aberneel's blood turned to slush in his veins. It was in this moment that he knew he'd f***ed up. He'd been bamboozled. Only he was allowed to have toys that came back to life! Having an immortal as an enemy was just not something he'd planned for! But he was ever the optimist, so once his terrified shrieking stopped, he somehow thought he still had a chance to win this and get what he wanted.

"YOU WERE DEAD AND I WON!!! WHAT THE HECK, MAN?!"

The cry was childish, little more than a bratty whine, but there were some very real anger and fear in there bubbling beneath the surface. The conman's mind raced, looking for a way to contain Cillian since he couldn't be killed. Trapping him in a water tank would be ideal, but how would he get him there? Also, how could they reinforce it to keep him from breaking out? This was no weakling like Millicent. He abandoned that thought for now, given how unlikely it was.

His 'oh crap' moment only intensified as this death-commanding man called for reinforcements. Why couldn't he stop making this harder? Creepy undead stuff started rising up from the dirt floors. More summons?

And then a woman's voice came from right behind him.

"GAAAH!"

Okay, the two ghosts behind him had nearly scared him out of his pants.

Yeah, well, he could do that, too.

The terror quickly turned into rage and action as his large bodyguard was led away and this ugly maimed dog 'fetched' him, quickly followed by Cillian with Elle right on his heels. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Much like he'd recalled Elle from the Forest of the Damned, with great effort to his starving body, he took an even greater risk and pulled other magical girls back into the realm of the living. The tug of his prison intensified to an agonizing degree, but somehow he still resisted. He had a window of opportunity to put all of this to rest before his punishment came for him, and by then he planned to put all of these girls, Dela included, back in their places. Back in his place.

They popped into existence as a group and he stepped forward to be encircled by them. He thought there'd be more, but it seemed he didn't have enough power to restore more than the last one hundred of his victims. The thousands that remained were either too desiccated or he simply lacked the ability. And the ones he did have weren't in the best shape, to be honest. They were glimpses into times in Earthland's yesteryears with how they were dressed and how their hair was styled. The oldest ones of the group screamed unceasingly, their eyes rolled back in their heads like broken baby dolls and bodies stiff like they were still made of dead bark. Their minds were shattered by an untold amount of time passing left to idle, but that didn't mean Aberneel couldn't control them. Their souls resided within him, and thus, they were his dolls just like the others. The ones reasonably conscious were missing limbs like Elle was, but they didn't enjoy the luxury of prosthetics. Even if they had to crawl along the floor, they remained ready for action with their black jewels gleaming.


A familiar rainbow unicorn literally barrelled at top speed through the front of the sparkly horror film meat shield Aberneel had constructed, effectively clearing the way for what was coming for the evil clown within.

Since the magic was unfamiliar, it had taken her a few extra moments to make her way back to the elf's tent. Coincidentally, she appeared near enough to Aberneel that she popped in at the exact same time as the other past magical girls and went unnoticed. Finally, some good luck! Though she immediately wanted to run to Cillian, now wasn't the time. Dressed in full pastel magical girl costume instead of her pitiful soaked underwear, she quickly took in the situation and jolted into action, summoning Chester and setting him and his rainbow farting butt loose. A zombie dog, Cillian, and Elle were all closing the gap to Aberneel, who had called in more poor devoured souls. She recognized some of them. As weakened and fractured as they may be, they still had their full powers like Elle did, and that meant he had a hundred bodies worth of magical spells at his disposal plus the remaining circus dolls he had occupying most of Cillian's summons. Suddenly it was a chaotic flurry of different styles of unicorns, explosions of glitter and flowers and beams of color. Elle was doing a great job of "missing" her attacks on Cillian and clearing a few girls away herself as she made her way to the target.

All of this was information Dela should've been taking in for planning some sort of distraction, but as soon as she saw Aberneel's face hidden amongst the girls, something snapped. She couldn't think. She felt like she couldn't breathe, or maybe she was breathing too much.

Switching to her ball bat full of rusty nails, Dela mounted a sneak attack from the rear, intent on exacting extreme violence on Aberneel even if she felt more and more sick the closer she got to the man. Her vision had gone red and all the fighting in the tent had muted into a dull roar. For now she moved among the magical girls unnoticed. She was one of them, after all. Her steps picked up speed until she was running at him, face contorted in rage. Though her weapon shook in her hands, once she was upon him, she didn't even hesitate to swing at him with a scream of effort.

Due to her short stature, she unfortunately couldn't reach his head, but she did gouge her bat's nails deep into his back before she kicked him forward to dislodge him. Dela readied the weapon again, but Aberneel, caught off guard and now pained, didn't stick around. In a panic, the circus leader lurched forward to get away from her. No time for snappy comebacks now. The scorned magical girl relentlessly chased him toward Cillian and the others, keeping him too busy to issue new commands or summon more enemies. He may have defeated her, but she was going to defeat him back.

[wc: 2475 || total: 10,418]

To say Aberneel was just entirely and woefully uninformed about his attacker would be putting it lightly. Though he may still be operating under his delusion of grandeur, he realized he may not have the upper hand anymore, as if he'd ever had it. It seemed like no matter what he threw at these people, more and more came back on him. He howled and howled after that nasty bat dug into his flesh, unused to any discomfort other than weakness and hunger and the occasional bedframe-stubbed toe. Physical pain of such intensity after so long was a shock to his system and he could barely stay on his feet, let alone counter it. His only choice was reaction, which was howling and trying to keep it from happening again.

On top of Millicent at his back, he had this horrific dog thing chomping at him now, which he could barely evade. What good were all of these devoured souls he summoned if they couldn't keep this exact thing from happening? There was no time to pull in his big doll to help or command anyone or anything. He ducked another swing from that bat then jerked his leg from between the dog's dripping jowls at barely the right moment to hear them clack together.

However, it had been a truly long time since Aberneel's survival had relied upon his own physical prowess and now could not have been a worse time for it. Even more frayed from summoning all of those girls, any gas he'd had left in the tank was essentially gone. All he had in him was lashing out with a surprise dagger at Dela when she prepared a swing, slicing into her left eye, which barely even made her pause. No time for spells and adrenaline could only take him so far. The bat didn't get him again, but the dog certainly did. And as he paused to frantically jerk his arm from the undead beast, he found himself even more caught.

For a second he mistook the hand for the feminine grip of Death herself, a vice-like embrace he'd been evading for quite a while now, but it was too big. He would have shrieked, even opening his wide mouth to do so, but no breath could even hiss through the pressure in his throat, and soon there would be no air left in his lungs to use once he was unceremoniously powdriven into the dirt floor of his own tent.

What took place then was highly unpleasant. He was left to writhe and try to gasp in air, eyes as big as saucers as they glared up at Cillian. Bracing for the presumed attack was beyond his capabilities, but it would've been useless anyway. There was no attack. Not to his physical body. In yet another unforeseen twist, this reaper's hand sunk through his chest without drawing a single drop of blood. It was a supernatural thing, but nevertheless, Aberneel found his voice, though he could only groan and whimper as the man dug around in his very soul.


Hazarding a tense smile in Cillian's momentarily bewildered direction, Dela had pressed Aberneel closer and closer to the man and had taken a nasty wound to one of her eyes, but that hadn't really been her plan. There was no plan. She was just so frenetic from some unhinged combo of rage and fear that all she could see was red and all she could do was, well, violence. She did take a pause, finally, when Cillian popped up from among the sea of her peers and snatched Aberneel up as if he was nothing more than a common thief caught with a hand in the till. Though antsy, she seemed content to watch whatever was about to happen, but no such luxury was in her cards.

Elle was approaching rapidly, knocking away any magical girls that might try to intervene while set on a course to intervene herself. With a frown, Dela turned and intercepted her duty-bound sister so Cillian could finish what he started. She grabbed the more elegant twin by the metallic wrists, angling herself and planting her feet in a way to provide resistance to her approach. She essentially became a failing emergency brake for her sister, buying her friend some time. But not too much time, since Dela was quite obviously inferior in both magic and strength. The soles of her shoes ground into the dirt as she was slowly shoved backward.

"Hurry," she grunted through gritted teeth while the twins' eyes were locked on each other. Both were pleading, apologetic, happy, sad. This was not the reunion either of them had likely imagined.


Elle didn't want to save Aberneel. Not at all. Yet here she stood, pushing against an injured Millie, her body forced to try and fight Cillian off even if it was the last thing she wanted to do. One thing she wasn't forced to do at the moment, however, was fight her sister. Pushing with all of her might was one thing, but there were easier ways to get through Millie and to Aberneel's side, yet she wasn't compelled directly to do so. She was stalling this way, not able to disobey but able to find small loopholes. Her gaze was tense and loaded. So happy to see Millie alive, but gutted that she'd been the one to stab her, kidnap her, and bring her to this place. Sick that she'd had to watch as she suffered in her drowning loop, sorry that she couldn't help, that she'd started all of this. There was a lot to say between the two, yet no words came. So she only pushed. Pushed and pushed, sliding ever closer to Cillian and Aberneel despite her sister's efforts.

And then suddenly, the pushing stopped. It was just for a moment, maybe a second or two, but the realization was bright in her gaze. Elle gasped and glanced toward Cillian, whose hand was still deep in Aberneel's spirit. After all these months, it was the first time she'd felt the shackles of forced obedience waver and for just a second. Her will's fire ignited like a backdraft. She pushed once more, but the effort was halved. And then she saw what was resting in her savior's retracted hand.

Time froze as her eyes dropped to the orb, dingy and trembling in his palm. Her soul. Her breath quivered with it, and as the violet butterflies came and kissed it with their wings, Elle started to cry. Making not a sound, tears bubbled and streamed from her eyes seemingly without end. The sensation was indescribable. Somehow purified, her sister released her wrists and moved to the side as it was brought to her, returned to her gently with a smile. Having one's soul touched was invasive, it felt like fire and ice and electricity when it passed from his hand and back to the desiccated cage it had been long missing from. If Millie hadn't had an arm around her shoulders, she most likely would have fallen.

Just like that, she was whole again. Her mind, body, and will were her own and she was complete for the first time in over one hundred years. It felt like a first breath.

"Merci, Cillian. Thank you..."


Dela was happy that her sister was finally saved, she really was. Aberneel aside, figuring out how to bring Elle back and retrieve her soul had been her goal for so long that it almost seemed unreal that it had finally reached its conclusion and, assuming she even believed it, she should've been crying and jumping for joy. She could have never guessed that Cillian would have such a big part in it but she was glad he had. She was happy and grateful, but... her smile at him was odd. Hollow. Distracted. Her eye looked past them both to the elf laying in the crater, locked on him with an expression that didn't really belong on Dela's face. Her mind wasn't really absorbing anything to do with Cillian or Elle. It was still in the water, filled with screaming static, urgency, and an uncontrollable compulsion that moved her away from the two without a word.

Whoever descended upon Aberneel could hardly be called Dela, Millie, Millicent, whatever you wished to call the other half of the Hodgins pair. She stood at the lip of the shallow indention in the dirt, peering down her nose at the source of all of her troubles and trauma. He looked so weak, unable to stand, wheezing out air, his body shriveling as if he hadn't eaten in months. How could this thing have ever been her nemesis, her constant looming foe who seemed taller than any mountain? He was incapacitated, yet she felt no pity. Dela only saw a monster, a persistent threat, and easy pickin's. Some don't kick people when they're down, and though Dela had never played fair, normally this would be where she'd leave it to someone else.

Not today.

Her bat reappeared in her hands and she stepped into the recess and over Aberneel, her white-knuckled hands wringing the bat's narrowed base. The conman dared to utter her name as if to beg for his wretched life. Something had truly snapped. She wound up her swing and let it fly straight at his face. While she didn't possess much strength to speak of, skin and blood would yield easily to the momentum of the nails raking by. And then she did it again. And again.

And again.


Freshly recovered, Elle grabbed her sister's waist and tugged her back, not out of sympathy for the brutalized man, but out of worry for Millie's well-being. Her twin had always been the crass and lazy one of the pair, but she couldn't even kill a chicken for dinner. What would killing a man, no matter the extraordinary circumstances, do to her already traumatized twin? Her Minstrellian pleas went unacknowledged, so she switched to Fiorian now that she could. "Millie, stop! That's enough!" she cried, struggling to keep a grip on the berserk woman and avoid the flailing bat at the same time. "Let me, let me do it!" she begged, desperately wanting to protect her sister from the pain of taking a life. After all that happened, this was the least she could do! Aberneel deserved death, but it didn't have to be Millie who did it.

But it seemed Millie had other plans.

They squabbled and wrestled over Aberneel's mangled body in some macabre display of sisterhood. It wasn't until Millie, panting and furious, screamed "I NEED TO DO THIS! THIS WAS MY WHOLE LIFE!" with such intensity that Elle realized this was the closure her sister might need to heal. It might cause more problems, but maybe it'd solve more than it caused in the end.

Elle let her go and stood back to watch, no matter how gruesome.


Oh, that had been bad. Very bad. How had this whackjob known how to do something like that? He didn't even know it was possible! Summoning the bodies of those whose souls he'd already consumed took enough energy as it was since he had to share a little of his power with them, but to have a whole soul that he'd already absorbed removed when he already needed to feed on a whole new one? Aberneel didn't even have the power to call the girls to him. They continued to fight Cillian and his zombies instead of paying him a single mind. Energy flooded out of him like water from an unplugged bathtub. His curse was rounding the corner of coming back to finally bite him, but as he moved his eyes to behold the woman standing at the edge of his little hole, he knew. He knew. It wouldn't be the curse that got him, it would only bring the long avoided consequences. Weakly, he spoke her name, having the nerve to look for mercy when he knew she had none. Not for him.

The pain was agonizing. White hot. He felt his flesh snag and rip. Blood coated his face and splattered the area as the blows came one after another. His skull rattled. Even though he wanted to close his eyes and hide from the brutality, he couldn't help but gaze up into Millicent's face as she attacked him, screamed at her sister, then returned to finish the job. Though little more than food and fun up until now, he couldn't deny that the expression she wore was exquisite. Intoxicating. To watch someone lose everything they were to fear and rage you caused... it was... beautiful. He'd made this doll. This was his final masterpiece. A gurgling laugh pushed its way from his ripped throat. Maybe this was the end, but as he tried to comfort himself, he told himself he'd won. A small victory was a victory all the same, and though she may claim the day, Aberneel knew he claimed her life. He'd linger on long after he was dragged off to his cursed resting place.

As she continued to beat the life out of him with her bat of rusty nails until she was slicked in him, he laughed and laughed until there was no more air to push through his twisted and gaping grin.


Dela had never taken a life before until now. How did you know when someone was dead? Up until now the magical girl had been incapable of this level of brutality, but she didn't trust him to die, it was like he just kept moving and grinning, so she kept going long after she realized he'd stopped laughing. The sound her bat made against the lump of skin and bone was a squelch she'd never unhear, but she couldn't stop. When her guttural screams and curses had turned into sobs was a mystery to her, but as Elle pulled her off of Aberneel and told her it was over, she realized it was hard to breathe through the tears. "It's over, it's over," her sister kept saying with her thick accent, petting the side of her blood-soaked head, and yet it didn't feel over. Even as she continued to glare down at the body of her enemy, unmoving and certainly dead, she was shocked by the lack of relief from all her symptoms. Maybe it hadn't been enough. Unleashing on her singular reason for living as long as she had wasn't enough? Killing him wasn't enough? "I win..." she spoke meekly through the sobs, but it was a defeated and miserable sound instead of the victory she'd anticipated. She'd defeated him back, gotten her revenge, so then why did she feel so sick?


When the dolls started to fall on their own, Elle knew Aberneel was gone. All the magic he'd wrought was unraveling, one by one. She'd been keeping an eye on the action surrounding them while Dela did what she had to do. They were all fighting against Cillian and his summons. First, all the circus freaks that were left, then the giant demon that had been wreaking havoc and had shredded the tent trying to get at the scythe-wielding man, then the magical girls started to collapse into the dirt. Perhaps she should have worried about the fate of her peers, but she was far more worried about her sister. Once she realized Millie wasn't going to stop, she pulled her away and attempted to comfort her as she cried, like she had when they were young.

Suddenly, it was silent. The whole tent, what was left of it, was nearly quiet enough to hear the sunlight beaming through the thick forest leaves. The silence was more deafening than all the chaos had been. Elle's eyes drifted to where the last achingly familiar magical girl, the one that had stood beside her in the forest for about a century, had fallen still. It was eerie. So many soulless bodies all around, no one breathing except for herself and Cillian.

Herself and Cillian...

With a jerk, her face angled down to the likewise still and now mostly-naked body she was holding. When had Millie gone quiet? A tense moment passed as she waited for her sister's chest to rise, and it did, but not fully. The uninjured eye staring up at her was dimming and fluttering. There was a small thud at her feet. Peering down, she noticed that the bat was gone and Millie's tainted crystal was laying there beneath them, its glow balefully flickering along with the life of her sister.

It was then she understood.

Millie's soul was still trapped in that crystal. The magic linking the external soul to body had been broken with Aberneel's death. Elle immediately tried to break the crystal with her heel, hoping that would release her soul back into her body where it belonged, but it didn't work. As she knew from her own experience as an active magical girl, the crystals were unbreakable. It was then that Elle truly started to panic.

What happened next was nothing more than panicked instinct. Laying Millie down, Elle clawed up the crystal and started banging on it with her own purified one, trying magic and force and a combination of the two to free the light within, but nothing worked. Millie was fading, possibly already gone. A death Millie couldn't come back from. Truly dead. If the soul just needed to be back inside of Millie, then... Elle jammed the tainted crystal into her twin's ruined eye, using her own magic to regenerate the cells around it as if healing the crystal inside of Millie would be the same as returning her soul. "Please, Millie! Don't go! No, no no no," she begged, in both of her spoken languages on repeat. This had to work. Cillian might be able to reach into Aberneel's soul and could even retrieve consumed souls, but there was no way he could do the same to this crystal. Elle had tried something similar at some point.

There was nothing left to do but wait. Elle tearfully looked from her twin to Cillian, at a loss for words. If Millie died here, after all of this, she wasn't sure what she'd do.

After a few tense moments, Millie's body jerked as if electrocuted. Her eyes flew open and she inhaled to scream. Her left eye, now healed, turned gold and the pupil swirled with light and darkness before a beam shot out of it and destroyed what was left of the top of the canopy. This lasted only a heartbeat or two before the magic dimmed and she was left panting in the dirt, softly sobbing once more.

[wc: 3140 || total: 12986]

The two had just remained where they were on the mossy forest floor, crying and hugging in a long-awaited but bittersweet reunion. This was nothing like what either of them had imagined.

Elle hadn't imagined such a thing at all and had resigned to her fate with the hope that Millie would escape it. Though it horrified her when her sister started appearing in the forest of the Damned, implications and worries aside, it'd been more than she could ever hope for to spend a little time with her all of these years, even if she lost the ability to speak about halfway through. Those reunions were enough, and while she loved them, she hoped they would stop. Staying apart meant Millie was still alive, that maybe she'd been successful in breaking her own curse and stopping Aberneel from preying on any more girls. She'd never thought she'd be sent to stab and kidnap her beloved sister. Never once had she imagined that she'd be amongst the living again, in possession of her soul again, hugging her sister as hard as she could safely do with her prosthetic arms and telling her how sorry she was. Sorry for taking the contract to start with and setting them on this path, and sorry for the pain she'd had no choice but to cause Millie these last couple of days.

Dela had had all the erroneous confidence in the world that she'd suss out the wicked harlequin, armed with the knowledge of how to end him and free her twin. Perhaps, way deep down, she'd been keenly aware that she never had nor ever would have the skill and power to actually defeat the man if she managed to find him, but the goal itself had kept her going. She always held onto hope that if she found the right secrets and the right hidden truths, surrounding her magic, Aberneel's magic, and the purgatory that there would be a single thread, a magic loophole, that she could exploit to unravel the whole thing without fighting and killing. How stupid could she be? In a hundred years, she'd accomplished none of that. Not even a whisper about Aberneel, and only a hint about Elle. She hadn't saved Elle from the petrified forest, Aberneel had. She hadn't found him, he found her. She hadn't gotten Elle's soul back or even saved her own life, Cillian had. The only things she'd managed to do was be the bait that brought a deathly monster calling and be the one who put the half-dead dog served to her on a silver platter down. And why had she been allowed the last licks? Pity? Because at least she did something to help, even if it was beating a fightless, hysterical madman to death, right? It was just a selfish bandaid to her pride and an unearned final slam of a back book cover. It was over, but she didn't win. Dela and Aberneel both knew that.

And yet, despite all the devastating heaviness in her heart, she grasped the spoils in her hands. Dela hugged Elle as if for the first and last time. Even if she'd been a complete and utter failure at everything in her life, the fact that Elle was alive and safe and free was a happy thing. She'd take all the identity-shattering defeats in the world if it meant Elle was sitting here crying with her after all this time. They both grieved that their family couldn't see it. Their mother and father had died half a century ago thinking both of the twins were lost.

Finally, despite all the water Dela had taken on inside the tank, her tears ran dry. They both eased ito some sort of silence, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, as if to try and process everything that had happened. They thought it was all over but they were wrong.

Both stared in wide-eyed alarm as Cillian began the true closing act of this twisted play. This was the most staggering display of magic yet. Its rotten corruption hung in the air even thicker than before, its pressure beating down on their shoulders hard enough to form dreadful pits in their stomachs.

Dela could get a good look at him now. As wrong as what she saw seemed, Cillian was a heart-racing sight to behold. Even with her eye throbbing painfully in its socket, nothing could make her look away from his gloriously unholy visage. He frightened her. That expression, this sickening magic, they were unfamiliar to her. She thought back to how she'd mistaken him for some sort of god when he first arrived and released her from her watery prison. At the time she'd imagined it was a good god, shimmering and golden, but perhaps it was an evil one in reality. It frightened her that she wasn't more frightened. This wasn't her Cillian, but he was alluring all the same, sneering in the eerie green glow.

A book appeared and her breath caught. She might not have gleaned a blessed thing about any of the things she'd needed concerning the current situation, but in the meantime, she'd amassed knowledge of just about everything else. While looking into all sorts of magic searching for a thread to pull for her own she'd heard of the Necronomicon, which was exactly what that was. Never had she thought he'd have it. Had he always had it?

So her suspicions were confirmed. A necromancer. Seeing him with the book reanimating Aberneel made all the pieces fall perfectly into place, providing a little satisfaction that she'd been right, yet she didn't get much joy out of it at the moment. No, seeing the freshly killed man whose blood she still wore moving again almost made her stomach move as well. All of her twisted admiration for Cillian was replaced with a cacophony of unwanted emotions, such as fear and rage and confusion, mostly directed at Cillian. Why was he bringing back the person she'd just killed?

The question answered itself soon enough and Dela wasn't sure how she felt about it. Given the way Elle looked away and closed her eyes, her twin disapproved, but Dela was undecided. In a way, it stole the finality and limited catharsis of ending his life herself, even if it was given to her out of pity. That stung. But also, there was no one in the world that could say he'd gotten what he truly deserved. A bat full of rusty nails was a rough way to go, but given the sins he'd committed for god know's how long, having your skull bashed in for a few minutes wasn't enough. As it dawned on her that Cillian was going to make sure he reaped what he'd sown, the rage and confusion ebbed.

As evil as he'd seemed just moments ago, or even in his words now, Cillian seemed more like a god of vengeance. Perhaps, like most things, he wasn't black and white, good and evil. Both. Neutral. A gray god that dealt in death as well as salvation. Elle might not be able to watch, but Dela took in the sight somberly. A thousand souls, a thousand butterflies. No, more than that. The tent was overrun with them, some corporeal, some mere shades. It was sad and beautiful. All these lives that Aberneel had violated crowded around him now for judgment day.

If Aberneel had been trembling and screaming before in the face of the long-avoided Death herself, he wasn't going to stop now. His victims descended upon the elf to bring him hell on Earthland for as long as they were allowed. He definitely wasn't laughing now. He'd never laugh again.

In the meantime, Dela finally rose from her sister's side and walked to Cillian's. Her body was still trembling, but her face was dry and her expression was calm. There was still way too much to process for now, so she'd save it for later. Right now, she just wanted to talk to the man who came to save her. Even if this part of him was new, she wanted to be near him. It was still comforting. Placing her hand on his arm, she turned from the gratuitous violence taking place under the mob of ex-dolls and gazed up at the tall man with the scythe. It wouldn't be the same eyes he was used to looking into, though. Since the crystal was healed into her eye, it had now turned a golden hue. Her other eye was no longer cerulean blue like it used to be, but seemed to slowly shift through the colors of the rainbows she commanded. Who knew what else had changed?

"What will you do to him?" she asked, her voice weak from all the strain. However, despite how frail she seemed, her curiosity was still intact. Dela wanted every gory detail. Perhaps something had twisted inside of her, too.

[wc: 1493 || total: 16474]

“Oh, okay,” she said quietly, accepting his answer with nothing more than numb consideration. As far as she was concerned, this fate was worth Aberneel being resurrected for, even Cillian’s more direct part in it. Somehow it didn’t seem like enough, though it was definitely more fitting than her paltry bludgeoning. She was content to stand and watch her villain’s torture beside Cillian, as if in a trance herself, until he turned and spoke to her more directly. Only then did she meet his eyes. Though it was highly unusual for Dela to be at a loss for words, perhaps in this extreme situation, it was understandable that she couldn’t find anything worth saying.

Next thing she was aware of, he was squeezing her hand and talking of leaving. Leaving. Yeah, that sounded good. The broken tank nearby was becoming harder and harder to ignore, no matter how much internal chatter told her it wasn’t worth fearing. That was the funny thing about surviving with some of your wits intact. You could be aware that something wasn’t rational and still have to deal with your brain being unreasonable about it. Maybe she’d feel better once the shredded pieces of carnival tent and the deafening shrieks of a very bad man were miles behind her.

Not that she had the wherewithal to offer any suggestions for how they’d leave— as far as she was concerned she could run out into the forest in her underwear— but any helpful thought she’d attempted to form was interrupted by a feeling that had Dela scooting closer to Cillian and holding onto his arm just a bit tighter. Death. She didn’t seem as objectively terrifying as before, but Dela’d be lying if she said her stomach didn’t do a little flip at first. So far, both times that she’d seen Death, she’d been in acute distress beforehand so it wasn’t like she could get an accurate gage of how much of the feeling was from her and how much was from the traumatic event just prior. Or maybe they always came hand in hand?

Elle, on the other hand, was experiencing Death-Lite for the first time and looked incredibly uncomfortable. However, Elle wasn’t as cowardly as Dela, so she didn’t feel the need to look away or cower. Like usual, she simply observed in silence, though taking pains not to watch the carnage happening beyond Cillian, Dela, and Death.

Then Death turned into a beautiful woman and both ruminated on the implications, no matter how dark. Perhaps it was long forgotten twin powers, but they both thought that, given their undying status and the grim afterlife that had been their fate until just a few minutes ago, true Death looked just as appealing and desirable as they’d always thought it would be, even if it was in the form of a person. Something to be embraced instead of feared when the time came. Even now, freshly freed from their curses, they both considered running into her calming arms, if only for just a moment. If Aberneel had never come along, both would have died by natural causes by now. Maybe she was here to claim them, too?

But no, she just came for her scythe and for a helpful little bit of transport that was so instant that Dela felt like she’d awoken from some sort of nightmare. They were in Laverne’s house. It seemed like a lifetime ago when she’d come here the first couple of times, which actually meant she woke up hungover as heck… with Vera. Somehow, despite all the hell she’d just been through, that managed to still sting in a completely different part of her psyche.

Again, most of the explanation and instruction was met with a tired nod. At least her cats were okay. Dela wandered off to find a phone to call into the Rune Knights, and though they wanted more information, all she could initially offer was a simple “I’m fine now, I’ll make a report when I get back” before she headed straight up the stairs. Elle audibly thanked Cillian, polite as ever, and followed.

It turned out, much to their mutual dismay, that the century the twins had spent apart had done its damage. Beyond their initial reunion and Dela’s rundown of her life in more detail than she could give during their meetings in the forest, the two almost felt like strangers that shared a face, except they weren’t even identical anymore. Elle’s arms were fully metal from the upper arm down, and Dela’s eyes were no longer a steady blue, but it was more than just meaningless aesthetics. Death had left its mark on them— the condition, not the woman. They both anticipated that Aberneel’s death and their reunion, no matter how unlikely, would gift them relief and happiness at last. And yet neither of them were rewarded with either. Elle was consumed by guilt that she’d started all of this and Dela couldn’t move on from how futile her efforts had been to even begin to come to terms with the phantom image of blood she could still see on her hands. Make no mistake, there was some measure of satisfaction that it was over and they both made it out alive, and they still very much loved each other, but the brightness of the good was hiding behind the thick clouds of the bad. They didn’t know how to talk to each other, or what their futures looked like now. Dela felt more alone than she ever had.

Nothing was what she thought it would be. Nothing was the same. Everything felt hollow. Perhaps it was just disillusion from the trauma.

Elle, operating at a more functional level than her twin, retrieved the food Cillian left and encouraged Dela to eat some with her with limited success. Though upset, she ate her fill of the delicious and comforting food, the first and only food she’d had since her contract completed. She was the first to shower and crawl into bed for the first real sleep she’d had since then as well, though she tried to keep her eyes open to watch Dela.

Once Elle was asleep, Dela finally moved within the comfort of privacy. Stealing one of Cillian’s shirts from a dresser, she made her way to the bathroom with a towel to also shower, but it ended up being a whole ordeal. Feeling sick from the food she ate to make Elle feel better and the images of bashing Aberneel’s skull in, she hovered and paced around before deciding to go ahead and get in the shower. However, as soon as the water hit her skin, she flew out of the shower and threw up in the awaiting toilet. She laughed, she sobbed, she emptied herself both body and soul in the cold, hard privacy of Laverne’s bathroom. Once it seemed it was all out for now, she rose and opted for a quick cleaning of her face and mouth in the sink. Still unpleasant but doable. She scrubbed her hands so hard that she was left panting by the time the damp girl emerged in his shirt that hung off her like a dress.

She didn’t need a shower anyway, Dela thought. Soaking for days in the tank was surely enough to say she was clean for a while, right? Dark humor was a coping mechanism she was familiar with, and she had to say between it and her bathroom battle, she felt a bit better. But she was nowhere near ready for sleep and what that would bring.

Quietly making her way down the stairs, she decided to see where Cillian would be bedding down, since Elle had his room. As bad as it sounded, Cillian was much more familiar to her than her own sibling right now. There he was, sitting on the couch. Steeling herself, she walked around him and the couch and plopped down near him, doing her very best to seem back to normal. Flippant. Not traumatized beyond all rational belief.

“So… are you okay? I know that was… a lot.”

[wc: 1357]

Clearly, he wasn’t okay. But that was fine because neither was she. They could sit in silence. But then--

Her heart stopped.

Her eyes widened.

The kiss— the act itself let alone its abruptness and ferocity— caught her completely off guard. So much passion and emotion... coming from Cillian? How could it not leave her in shock? Over the course of their friendship, she’d agonizingly pined for him, grieved the impossibility of having him, and accepted simple and reliable companionship with rubbing cold feet and comforting hugs as additional terms. Either he was too dense to notice her apparent feelings for him or he was ignoring it because he didn't feel the same. So why now? It wasn’t until a few hours ago while in the celestial realm that she’d even had a hint that something might have changed— that whole “his woman” thing— but that also solely hinged on her accepting that he hadn't meant that she was a woman and his friend in the dense, literal sense. And that she'd even had time to really process what it may or may not have meant, since she was a little occupied with the apex of a long-waged personal war that very nearly culminated in utter and complete defeat. It was only by some big, silvery-haired miracle that it was able to end in victorious revenge.

Now was not the time for thoughts, though, so the shock disappeared in a fiery flash. Her heart started banging with excitement. Dela wasn’t about to waste a single second of this overthinking. A very selfish need was finally being met at a moment when she very much needed it. Getting what she had wanted for so long was probably the only thing that could remotely distract her from what had happened. She wasted no time throwing herself into his affection with just as much ardor, eagerly meeting his mouth and pressing in with her eyes falling shut.

It hurt, like finally warming frostbitten fingers and toes in front of a fire. A good hurt. She wanted to tangle in him and melt away all of the bad. As his hand pulled her tightly against his chest, she easily went with it, though she was far from a passive participant. Pushing him back a little without their lips breaking contact, she swung a leg over both of his. Once Dela was seated comfortably on his lap, she wrapped her arms around his neck, one hand gripping his hair and the other twisted in his shirt. Within each other's arms, she felt safe for the first time in a few days.

He filled her senses so completely. It was just as she dreamed it would be, somehow. His rhythmic caresses were met perfectly in time, sometimes with light pressure and gliding lips, sometimes with teeth gently coaxing the captured lip to stay. The immortal man was delicious. His taste alone had her head spinning and fuzzy in a familiar way as if the spirit of Vera was blessing this long-awaited kiss. The way he trapped her against him was the only thing keeping her steady.

Eventually, Dela had to come up for a proper breath of air. After a few lingering kisses, she reluctantly pulled her lips away to put just a small space between their faces, though she otherwise remained where she was. For a moment, all she could do was try to catch her breath and look at him and his absurdly handsome face. Cillian had left her breathless— and even rarer, speechless— but that same man was also crying and she just noticed. Her hands came around and gently wiped at his cheeks while she gathered up her shattered thoughts. Dela was crying, too, but that discovery eluded her even in the short silence that followed.

"Well, now I'm really worried, Cillian," she panted at last with a breathless laugh, though there was a nugget of truth buried in her deflective tease. Even as she felt magnetized by his mouth and could hardly resist it, her concern over the reason for his tearful and wordless answer kept her at bay. Her hands rested on his cheeks as her rainbow eyes searched his. She was more somber when she spoke again. "Did I scare you?"

[wc: 712]

Cillian confirmed her hunch was true and she frowned. This insane scenario that nearly took her out for real was the catalyst for this sudden development. While she was sad he had to endure such a thing, she was also happy that he cared enough to be scared. It was nice to have that kind of confirmation, not that she hadn’t trusted that he cared about her as a friend before. But was this new thing born of legitimate attraction or fear? Fear could cause a person to do some radical and impulsive things. It probably wasn’t time to worry about the motivations of their post-trauma make-out session on the couch, but who could blame Dela for doubting what seemed too good to be true. He had no idea how long she’d ached for this and how confusing it was to finally get it. Was it a fluke? Would asking that make it stop? She didn’t want it to stop.

Mentioning their lost friend caused her own chest to squeeze, though she knew it had a hand in it before he said it. Dela’s hands remained on his cheeks, caressing them as he struggled with emotion. Both of them were still raw and bleeding over Vera, and it tinted everything they did together from that painful point on. It had glued them together in a way that had been impossible before then. Though she’d rather have Vera back more than anything, she couldn’t help but think this could be the missing girl’s gift to them. Of all the talks she and the older woman had had, no one was more supportive of her affections for the big, clueless lunk. Vera was probably stupidly and selflessly happy that her fate had at least a few not-so-bad consequences.

His explanation of the events leading up to his arrival in that twisted circus tent were on brand. “Kicked out,” she echoed, snorting. As awful as it all was, her lips lifted into a wry smirk. Imagining Cillian, blasting into RKHQ with proverbial guns blazing, pissing off Valorie (again) and kicking up dust about her fat cats lack of food meaning she was missing was hilarious as it was endearing. To think that dense brain of his managed to know her so well as to see something so small for the danger that it was. He was more aware than either of them thought. More work for her to probably convince HQ to let him back in, but surely her report and a little creative convincing would get him back on the visitor’s list.

The moment of levity passed and the blonde was gifted with a rare glimpse into his worried thoughts. It was easy to have perfect hindsight, but it did no one any good (hypocrite!). “Shh, shh, you got there just in time. It wasn’t up to you to come at all, though I’m happy you did. I wouldn’t want you to lose me,” Dela smiled, her tease bittersweet. She gazed into his eyes as he returned them to her. “And you didn’t. That’s what matters.”

Dela paused after his last question, much like he had when she asked the same. The answer wasn't as clear as it should have been. “You didn't scare me as much as you should have. I liked it, I think. At least, at the time,” she answered finally, audibly a little conflicted about it. Not in the sense that changed how she felt about him, but how she felt about herself. Dela knew she should have been terrified, repulsed, something negative about seeing the dark and sinister secret he'd been keeping all of this time. Even if she’d had her suspicions before she realized he and Death herself had some kind of terrifying relationship, it’d only been unprocessed suspicions and a little dread. And yet, she distinctly remembered reveling in his twisted snarl and the oppressive terror it wrought as he took pleasure in torturing a very bad man with very dead people. One step further, considering her own status and magical situation, could she even have an opinion on necromancers? She was one of his summons now, for crying out loud! Was that why she wasn’t very scared of this revelation and the countless complicated implications?

She wanted to tell herself it was just because of Aberneel, the anomaly in her life that had always thrown every single thing into chaos. But what if it wasn't? Sure, she was an authoritative peacekeeper for justice now, but she hadn't always been. Once she'd been a dark mage, if only by guild definition, and watched her guild mates do some horrific things. Dela hadn’t done anything too bad, but she hadn’t tried to stop her guild mates from doing dark crap. One could argue she still wasn't entirely walking the light side of things, considering her lofty position in the Rune Knights' more covert operations. Dela had always walked a gray line, but she'd never taken a step on the other side of it like she had tonight. Was it a valid exception? Sure. But it didn't feel like an exception. Maybe that was just the trauma talking. Time would tell.

“Elle was more scared of you than I could ever be. She always had more convictions than I did, or at least she did. I don’t think we know each other anymore.” The last part had been an involuntary blurt of an innermost thought and fear. “Er… but we’re fine. It’ll be fine.”

Cillian was right. Aberneel of the distant past and not-so-distant past had put the sisters in an unimaginable hell that had done catastrophic damage to both of them as individuals and siblings. Elle was saved. Dela was saved. But what was left of the twins that had lived on a humble farm in Minstrel over a century ago? A lifetime ago. Perhaps their old selves had died and they only just realized it. They’d been reborn thousands of times as strangers with a past in common. It tried to take her breath away.

Suddenly eager to move on from that whole subject before she had a meltdown, Dela once more did what the trauma demanded in this moment. Distract and deflect. Wiggling her butt in his perky lap just a smidgen, an almost evil smile curled onto her lips. Yes, of course, she noticed. Dela had been eyeing and fantasizing over this mystery package for years, and though her movement was definitely a teasing one, she wasn’t much better off. It just wasn’t as obvious as it was for a man. But she would be good. She did nothing else to push the engorged envelope and stilled again, content to be kissed or just held tight. That wouldn't stop her mouth from mischief, though. “So, this is certainly new,” she started, referring to the elephant trunk in the room as well as the kissing itself. “You’re not gonna take all of this back tomorrow, right? Because that would be especially cruel to me in my delicate condition. You better speak up now if this-” she broke off to give him a peck on the lips- “isn’t what you want from now on.”

[wc: 1200]

Oh, ho, ho, she did enjoy that look. Blushing. Embarrassment. Her evil grin waned into more of a pleased expression, delighted with the giggles, but still being remarkably well-behaved given the temptation. His discomfort wasn't lost on her, and since she wasn't drunk or high, she wouldn't press it. She planned to be rewarded one day for this, though.

Dela hadn't expected to get a full explanation, but here it was. She settled back and listened as he cleared up some things, watching his face intently. Finally getting the full story felt good. They'd always kept so much from each other for two people who didn't find trust between them difficult. Their stories were similar at the foundation. Cursed with immortality and afraid to love people who they'd outlive. The blonde had always related to that. But unlike him, her emotions, though sometimes jaded, had never muted. That was why she'd thrown herself at him so hard. He was the only person she felt safe to really love that could always be there, but he hadn't seemed to feel the same.

Also, he revealed he was a virgin and she actually gaped in surprise. At his big age? With that body? Even before the undeath he'd never gotten lucky? Dela had always had this headcanon that he was, since he seemed so dense and uninterested in sex (and her in general in that way), but that had only been to soften the blow of being unattractive to the man she wanted. Unrequited feeling were hard to swallow sometimes. But what was she supposed to do with the knowledge that they, two actual immortals, were both virgins? She giggled again. At least she didn't have to worry about being inexperienced... It was kinda sweet to think they might figure it out together, when the time was right.

He continued on and she absolutely basked in the verbal confirmation that he liked her as more than a friend-- god, she felt like she was in middle school again-- but there was more to it, it seemed. He took her hands in his.

Her face fell, but not for the reason he probably initially assumed.

"... That was the reason?" she asked after he was finished. Her voice was a bit quiet, but only for a second before she started outright laughing. "You were worried about that? That's been it this whole time?!"

Maybe she'd snapped. She'd get around to the point sooner than later, thankfully.

"Oooh, Cillian," she sighed, sobering herself. "I've wanted to hear that from you for so long. Us. Of course, I wanna give us a chance!" she grinned, bringing his hands around hers to her lips that kept moving. Hopefully he took what she was about to say just as well. "That's mostly all I ever wanted, except I am far more selfish than you are. I wanted you both. You and Vera. At the same time. You saw me kiss her that one time under the mistletoe," the magical girl reminded him, unabashed. It was sweet that he was so considerate, as if she wouldn't have accepted being his consolation prize. Too bad she was the scumbag that didn't care how it would look to the outside world.

"I just never got the chance to build on it because, so soon after that, she was gone before I could get the timing right. And honestly, I'd been rejected by you so many times, I thought it was hopeless. But still, I dreamed of the thruple we could've been. I really wanted that. I cared so much for you both," she told him, the former amusement turning into wistfulness as she confessed. Her eyes got misty again even though she was smiling. "So don't worry about it. I don't feel like the last resort, and we'll endure the same forever-regret together. But I think she knew, even if we didn't tell her. I... think it's why she disappeared. She knew how much we cared and didn't want her secrets to hurt us when they caught up to her. I always felt like she was running, and then she stopped."

Dela sniffled and fought a lump in her throat for a few moments. It was hard to drop the tough girl act, even in vulnerable moments like these. When she spoke again, it was hard to push her voice through the pain in the back of her throat. "Heh, Vera knew how I felt about you years ago. She'd be happy for us. Probably explode into cocaine dust or something."

Those words sat in the air for a moment or two, but soon a small smile returned and she focused more on the two of them once more. "I'm gonna mess up, too, you know? It may go great, it may get rough, but we'll do our best for each other [i]and]/i] for her. I think you and I have earned this. We'd better f***ing take it and run, don't you think?"

[wc: 842]