Work Text:
Sleep, blissful yet a dreadful tumor rooted in Ada’s brain. Smudged across the interior of her useless body, beneath all this flowing blood that runs through her veins, and that hopeless, beating heart of hers. Being alive is to breathe and be loved, and to be in love is to feel those silly butterflies in your stomach kicking and fluttering about due to the pressure of excitement. But now, Ada is dying. Wasn’t death supposed to feel like sand slipping through fingers, so fast yet so slow in the process?`Something to fight and fall for? She has died before, but now again, this might be the end for her; all the hopes and dreams will die with her—no one to mourn or forgive her for being selfish.
Yet she's fighting, fighting to live just once again. Pulled against the muck and dirt through and through, she doesn't fucking care anymore if she might live; she’ll die by protecting the people who made this irritable hell a blissful acceptance of death. It hurts, it hurts so fucking bad, but she's pushing through. Her joints ache and burn with death, dragging her further and further into the abyss. Ada grits her teeth and bears it like the dog she is; she won't whimper and whine, she won’t kiss death on its feet and beg. She’s heard people say death greets them like a kiss on the cheek, but it doesn't feel like it.
Fragments of memories flood her head: an axe, a small baby bump. She doesn’t understand and is too far gone to even care.
A queen dragging her subject, that’s what was happening right now. Forced back to the brink of the limbo feels like ice water being thrown on her entire body, and she shudders. Her body bruised and dark, with black streaming down her skin, and she can taste dirt and worms in her throat, but she can't bring herself to care. Even now, perfect Annabel Lee hauls her like cargo, trying to squeeze one last drop to use out of her broken body. Ada coughs, forcing the words out of her throat, stuck and helpless.
“Annabel?” The word rolls out of her mouth like glass bottles shaking on the edge. Ada stares up at Annabel, then her surroundings, at the light blue robe Annabel had hastily put on in the moment of chaos.
Death is staring at her; the stag won't be held for long. She might as well say her last words.
“M’sorry.”
The silence between them is deafening, broken only by Annabel dragging Ada across the floor like a rag doll. Ada is about to give up and shove her away, just to die with a shred of dignity.
“Shut up.”
Oh. That was unexpected.
“What?”
Ada groans as her cracked and blackened ankle slams against the ground— then the rest of her. Annabel Lee had just dropped her like a crumpled piece of paper.
“Can you shut up?” Annabel snarls, and Ada just stares. She’s unraveling. It’d be funny if they weren’t about to die.
Annabel’s pink eyes burn with fury and detachment-the same void that filled them when she chose to save Ada.
“I’ve had it with you. You always pull some reckless stunt and then whine to us like we can fix it.”
Ada doesn’t listen to the rest of Annabel’s rambling; she can’t bring herself to if she wanted to anyway. Everything hurts, and hearing more insults about herself isn't helping.
She can’t; her ears are flooded with ink pouring out slowly, nothing but pain. Ada closes her eyes and just reminisces. Annabel had been a goddess to Ada, beautiful, graceful, and intelligent. She spotted it when Annabel had first arrived at the academy. Without trying, she was elegant in nature, even when she was nervous. The definition of perfection, all in one. Ada didn’t mind the cold that chipped into her skin when Annabel had transformed; she was grotesquely beautiful.
“This is a Lady in White.” Ms. Poppet had said with eerie excitement. Hunger had dug its claws into Ada, and she wanted to know more.
“An entity who died suddenly before she was to be wed.”
Oh
Oh.
Interesting.
Maybe that’s what started her obsession with trying to befriend the queen.
Like the dog she was, she followed.
Wrapped herself around Annabel like a wounded puppy, begging to be let in, not for love.
For warmth.
But it was also envy creeping into her thoughts, the nights she stared at Annabel, perfecting her—already perfect curls —spreading through her faster than her own blood within her body.
It consumes an unknown part within her; she doesn’t understand it, and she wants to be Annabel. The beauty, the brains, and the grace. And how it hurts, but she’ll never have that satisfaction, so she worships her.
Annabel is a goddess, and goddesses do not bleed; they show no mercy with their divinity of nature, and it makes Ada want to crawl on her hands and knees for a taste of that divine nature. She becomes Annabel’s obedient servant, always at her side, no matter the cost or the pain.
Goddesses do not bleed.
“Annabel,” Her trembling hand points towards the tainted blood.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Ah”
The bird had finally been shot from the sky, and Annabel no longer sits on her high pedestal, untouchable in words or service. Just like any human, she is bound to the laws of nature, bound to life and death.
Being stuck in between wasn't going to defy the natural order, so why couldn’t Ada sense that? Was she too stuck up in her own useless head to understand that this goddess is human?
Being human is to bleed, to cry, and to suffer. There is no way out of the suffering or the loneliness, the loneliness that burrows into your bones, seeps into your gums, and coats your teeth so you taste it every time you swallow the silence.
Annabel is human.
She is as lonely and beautiful as a bird trapped in a cage, presented for the songs it can sing.
No matter if the cage is gold, the cage is her home now; there is no turning back.
“It’s kind of a relief, really.” Ada dims in admiration, that angel leaning above her is nothing but flesh and blood.
Their two hands clasp together, and Ada intertwines their fingers so they’re locked in this moment of death and affection. Not minding the burning stare of disgust in those pink eyes.
“To know that even you bleed,”
──── ·𖥸· ────
Ada flickers back into the realm of consciousness, and Annabel is dragging her still. Why couldn’t she let her die? Ada heaves and licks her chapped lips. Why must she be so damned ugly?
Her eyes sting worse than before; all that ink is halting her eyesight, and she can’t find herself to care, not when Annabel is still rambling. Ada has no choice but to tune back into the conversation.
Annabel’s struggling. It shows. She’s too weak to keep this up. With the stag hot on their heels and only a moment's worth of survival instinct to run like hell, they have greeted them at the doors.
It has.
Hell has really greeted them at the front door.
“— and honestly, love. You are too beautiful for such foolishness; it really is a shame.”
Oh?
“You think I’m beautiful?” That was the same question she had asked Montresor, but where’s her prince now? Limping down those many stairs? Instead of flirting and fucking her into the heavens.
“Thank goodness you’re back. I was getting worried.” Annabel lets out a breath. Ada didn’t know she was holding.
Strange girl, indeed.
“Liar” Ada spat. She didn’t enjoy being lied to, and Annabel is no exception.
Annabel doesn’t respond; she thinks about her choice of words carefully before she speaks.
“Hm, yes I was and still am growing tired of carrying you like a sack of meat.” Annabel’s tone was dismissive and edged with disappointment.
“But I suppose that’s what queens do, they lie for the subjects' enjoyment”
Annabel says it like a joke, but her voice lands flat. Hollow. Something is rattling behind her ribs—something not quite rage, not quite grief.
Ada opens her mouth, then closes it again. She doesn’t want to argue, doesn’t want to agree either. The words keep dying before they form.
“You didn’t have to lie.” Her voice is small. Pathetic. “You could’ve just let me die.”
That earns her a sharp look.
“And what?” Annabel snaps. “Drag a corpse behind me like a dog with a chew toy?”
Ada flinches.
“Bloody hell,” Annabel mutters, looking away. “You could be a romantic if you bleed anymore.”
Silence chews at the edges of the moment. The only sound is the wet squelch of footsteps, the huffs of breath.
“Do you hate me?” Ada asks eventually. “Or is this just the exhaustion talking?”
Annabel’s arms falter for a split second.
“Both,” she says. Then, quieter: “Neither.”
She doesn’t look back, but her voice carries like dust.
“If I hated you, I wouldn’t be carrying you at all.”
Ada laughs.
It’s a cracked, broken sound—something pulled from deep in her ribs, all rust and bile. It bubbles up against her will, and when it escapes, it brings the vile with it.
She chokes. Coughs. The taste of iron and blood in her mouth. Her body spasms before her uneven breathing returns.
Annabel startles, tightening her grip before she snaps—
“Stop that, that is improper, Ada.”
Ada wheezes, eyes glassy, teeth stained dark. Her voice is hoarse, drowned beneath the weight in her lungs.
“You…” she coughs again, a gross mess of black spilling down her chin.
“You’re in love with me, aren’t you?”
Annabel freezes.
For a moment, all sound seems to disappear. Even the beat of the Stag’s pursuit behind them feels like it belongs to another world. In this space—just for a breath—there is only Ada. Pale.
Smirking. Dying.
Then her eyes roll back.
Her head lolls forward like a puppet with its strings cut.
“Ada?” Annabel says, shaking her once. “Ada.”
Nothing.
“Don’t you dare—!”
But Ada doesn’t respond. Not to the panic in her voice. Not to the sudden tremor in Annabel’s hands.
“Stupid girl…”