Chapter Text
"Why didn't you go hunting today?" An annoyed voice accused me, ripping me from sleep rather harshly, I sat up with a groan.
Only to find that the room I was in wasn’t mine. And that I didn't know the girl in front of my bed. But my bed didn’t have a metal frame and my dresser wasn’t that old. The girl with the dark blonde braid looked at me more annoyed than worried, drilling into my soul with those cold, grey-blue eyes, tapping her foot.
"Hunting? Who are you? And why does this all look so familiar?" Was all I could think to say, looking around again, taking in the room before the dresser caught my attention again. Studying the wooden drawers of the clearly well used furniture I saw flashes of something. A memory of them, painted. The top drawer covered with flames, the middle one with flowers and the one on the bottom with the night sky. I could see it as clearly as if it was real and then it finally set in, the realisation of where I was. Where I knew this room from.
"Are you Nesta Archeron?" Her eyes widened at my question, which had been enough answer for me. I just stared at her, as she frowned and crossed her arms, clearly confused at my behaviour.
"Yes, obviously. Why would you ask me that? Are you sick?" There was no concern in her voice, just annoyance. She was just like I had imagined her, stoic, cold and arrogant. And breathtakingly beautiful.
"No, I'm not sick." I mumbled and looked around once more. If she's Nesta and I was in this bed... and with her reacting like that... and by the question she'd asked... fuck. Suddenly I couldn't breathe, feeling like I was surrounded by jelly or water, like I was slowly suffocating. I needed to get out of here.
Much to Nesta’s surprise, I jumped up and stormed outside into the bright, warm sunny day. We were in the middle of nowhere, only vast nothingness and nature surrounding us. My stomach turned, my throat constricted as did my chest, a panic attack fully taking hold of me. Spots were clouding my vision as I let myself fall on the ground, so I wouldn’t faint and injure myself. As I laid there, shaking violently, eyes closed, fingers digging into the dry grass in a desperate attempt to ground myself, I heard two people behind me. They were talking but I couldn't make out what they're saying. I'm in a book, I thought, almost breaking out into hysterical laughter. A book. How? My thoughts were racing, making my head hurt with their intensity, everything was spinning, my insides were twisting, I felt like my soul was spinning rapidly inside my body.
"Felice? Are you alright?" Elain asked, her voice much kinder and more concerned than Nesta’s. I opened my mouth but no words came out, too stunned at hearing my own name from her lips. Not Feyre. Felice.
"Yes Elain. I'm fine. Just had a bad dream." Her name sounded so strange out of my mouth. Everything about this was just so strange.
"We are running low on food again. Did you get anything today?" Not so concerned anymore. I rolled my eyes and got up. Food. They needed food. And I was their sole provider now. Since apparently, I had replaced their sister. How the hell did I get here? I walked over to the sisters and only now realised how young they looked.
“How old am I?” The question was out of my mouth before the consequences of the possible answer fully set in.
Both sisters looked startled and shared a concerned look between them before Elain answered: “You're fifteen. Are you sure you are alright?” Ignoring her question I staggered back a step, the weight of that fact hitting me. I was only fifteen, this body was only a teenager. When really, I had been twenty-two, still was twenty-two. How had any of this happened? And if I was here what had happened to Feyre? If I was only fifteen, then that meant that the story I had read would not start for another three years. Meaning I had to provide food for this family for three years.
Never had I thought that I'd be this thankful for my father’s interest in survival training. Ever. Or for the hunger games making me want to learn archery. If it wasn't for those influences in my life we would have been screwed. And we would have probably starved.
__________
"You know, it'd be better if you planted vegetables in the garden instead of flowers." If looks could kill, I'd be dead, but I just held Nesta’s stare. I wasn’t scared of her. She needed me, all of them did, so they really should be nicer to me. Their father just sat by the fire, depressed and probably dissociating. And the two of them sat and chatted like nothing was wrong. Like they weren’t on the literal brink of starvation.
"I don't have any seeds for that and they are quite expensive." I shook my head, disappointed and frustrated. Is nobody here thinking logically? How could they be so deluded to hold onto what they had when they were in such a dire situation?
"Really? You all let me go out in the forest no matter the season, fetching food. And you do nothing? I am the youngest here. I mean you could work for somebody, clean or something-" I told Nesta to which she looked at me like I had suggested prostitution "-and you never thought of planting food instead of useless flowers? We are always on the verge of death. And starvation is a slow, painful death, believe me. What is wrong with you? And you. Yes, your wife died and your leg got screwed up, but you have three children, at least parent them. Like honestly!" As my rant ended, they stared at me bewildered.
Feyre wouldn’t have said such things. But I wasn’t Feyre. And I didn’t know these people. Even their father looked at me, eyes bulging out of his head. I would have stormed off but I wasn’t really keen on spending a night in the woods. So l just stared at them, eyes narrowed. Tears were welling up in Elain’s and their father’s eyes. Guilt was tugging at my heart but my anger and frustration drowned it out.
After a long pause, Nesta took in a sharp breath and I braced for impact.
"Well, you might be the youngest, but you're the only one of us who knows how to get food. I never worked; I don't know how. Neither does Elain. She plants flowers to be happy, as a reminder of our old life, we have no money for those other seeds." That wasn't too bad. But definitely frustrating and enraging.
I just scoffed and left. Walking out the front door and in the direction of the forest. Standing on the edge of the woods it finally hit me, hard, right in the stomach and I vomited. Then I cried, wailed and sobbed. Letting the trauma and emotions just roll through me and out of me. Regret, sadness, despair, guilt and hopelessness. I had stolen someone’s life, lost everything I loved and knew, trapped in a world that wasn’t my own. In a book. My family would probably be looking for me, scared for me. I'd never see them again, they would never know what had happened to me. I would never get to say goodbye.
When I finally managed to calm myself a little, I ran into the woods, searching for a pond. A puddle. Anything reflective. As I finally found a body of water, I nearly fell into it. Catching myself just in time, I fell to my knees, my hands gripping the wet grass, holding myself up as I stared into the water until it calmed enough to show me my reflection. The face that stared back was my own, though different.
My eyes had been a rich brown colour, but now one of them was blue-grey. The same colour Nesta’s eyes had, the colour Feyre's eyes would have had. My long hair was still light blonde, lighter than my sisters, my face was similar, though my cheekbones were sharper. And my lips were fuller, though my nose still looked the same, straight, covered in freckles like the rest of my face. My teeth were still white and straight, though I could see the resemblance to the sisters and our parents in my new features. In the way my eyes were slightly tilted upwards and my chin didn’t have its normal dent. I liked it, still I wept. Until I fell asleep under the night sky.
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The Sunset created a weird light within the small bedroom we all slept in. I would sleep here, I realised. With two girls from a book who were supposed to be my sisters, who I didn't know. I pushed the thoughts away and got ready for bed, at least we had toothbrushes and something that resembled toothpaste. And a comb. I just tried to ignore that this wasn’t my toothbrush. I had spent a week in the woods, but when I came home with three rabbits and a deer, they hadn’t questioned it.
As I laid in the huge, worn-out bed my thoughts travelled back to my life. My family, my dog, my siblings, my boyfriend. An unbearable pain formed in my chest and all I wanted to do was scream. But I knew I couldn't. Not here. Not now. Not when I needed to provide for three people now and live on the brink of starvation for three years. Until that winter would come, I needed to keep it together. To keep this family, my new family and myself, alive. Until I could shoot that stupid wolf.
__________
Days started to blend together after the first two weeks. I would get up before the sun rose, set the traps, empty the old ones if I even caught anything, sit in the forest and wait for animals to hunt. At about lunch I would go home to eat, then fish, then hunt. After dinner I would sleep. Sometimes I chopped wood for the winter. I didn't talk much with my 'sisters' and even less with my 'father'. They knew that something had changed, I could tell by the stares they gave me when they thought I wasn’t looking, but they didn't care enough to ask. So I didn't tell them.
As the days passed, more and more memories of my life here intertwined with my real memories. Not just memories from the time I spent here, but memories of a past I never had. A childhood I didn’t experience. And as hard as I tried to ignore it, it scared me. I couldn't even write it all down, since they didn't have paper or pencils. All my attempts to make my own paper had little success. So I would just recite it all before bed, in the forest and whenever I could. Thankfully I remembered the important things, like survival training and archery, very clearly. It seemed like I retained all the information that would help me in this world. The skills seemed to stay. But the really important things, like my family and my experiences, faded. More and more things got replaced. Christmases, Birthdays, Family trips, my first day in school.
__________
As the leaves turned orange, yellow and red and the wind got cooler, I remembered two different childhoods, two sets of parents and two different homes. About the same number of memories for both. But I was scared to wake up every morning because I knew someday, I wouldn't remember my real life at all. Someday I would only know this family. I would still be myself and know things Feyre wouldn’t, I’d still have my skills. But I wouldn't remember my little brother and my two little sisters. Or my mom. Or Christmas, Easter or New Years.
I clutched the pages of paper I managed to make tighter. Good thing I had learned how to make paints from rocks and paper from tree bark when I had been bored one summer. And thankfully Feyre liked painting, so I had already had brushes. My sisters had looked at me like I was insane when I had made the pages of paper and wrote everything down I remembered. But I hadn’t cared about their opinion, even with the new memories. I just couldn’t. Couldn’t let myself stop to think or I would break. And if I broke, we’d all starve.
Only a few more years. Only forty more months. I had gotten here in the middle of august; I'd be turning sixteen in the winter. And the story started in around February of the year Feyre turned nineteen. So only forty more months.
__________
The forest was calm as I sat in the bushes. Waiting for some animal to come along so I could kill it. I had never killed before. I had watched my father hunt, but I had never had the guts to kill anything myself. Much less eat what we caught. But ever since I had woken up in that cursed bed many weeks ago, it's all I'd been doing. Hunt, kill, eat. If I hadn’t done it, we would have starved.
I had forgotten what ice cream tasted like. Or gummi bears. Or even potatoes. Four weeks into this madness I had stopped missing my phone and the technology I knew. All the problems I’d had seemed so stupid now. I didn’t care about my skin or my clothes anymore. My weight was the last thing on my mind except for judging how much of it I'd lost. At first, I had felt the sugar withdrawal slightly, but that was quickly forgotten when I had to skin a cute little bunny for the first time. With my own hands, without gloves and with no soap to clean up. Something landed in my eye, making me snap out of my thoughts.
Looking around me I saw the thing I'd been dreading, ever since I’d realised where I was. The first snowfall of the year. Though this meant even less food, it reminded me that my days in that wooden cottage were numbered. While my memories had faded, I still remembered Tamlin and Amarantha with frightening clarity, as if I was supposed to know exactly what was waiting for me. Certain death and lots of torture.
Even if I knew how to get through the trials and that I would be a Fae by the end of it, the way to get there was long and gruelling. If the story stayed the same, but I couldn't let myself think about that either. It had to. Otherwise all of this is pointless. Stupid Fae. Stupid Tamlin. Stupid Amarantha. Why had I been transported into this of all the books? Better than the hunger games though. At least I would get immortality, or something close enough. And powers. And I’d get to see Rhysand. He was the reason I had liked the book so much in the first place, or more like the second book. Though I hadn’t even read half of it.
__________
“It's snowing.” I stated as we sat at the old dining table, not yet decorated by my paintings. Elain and Nesta stared at me. “You know what that means. Nesta, you need to chop some wood tomorrow.”
“Why don’t you do that? I hate chopping wood. I always get splinters. You're better at it anyways.” She mumbled, picking at her long, nicely trimmed nails.
“Don’t start acting like a princess. You're no better than any of us or any richer. So you can take that attitude and shove it. Because if you don’t, we will freeze. Do you want to freeze to death? Splinters.” I let out a bitter laugh and glared at her. “I risk my life and my limbs out there. And you complain about splinters. Stop acting like an entitled brat and do something for others for once in your life.” Elain looked like a deer in headlights and even our father had stopped dissociating long enough to look at me, eyes wide. Nesta looked like she would bite my head straight off, but I just glared back and before anyone could answer I went to bed.