Summary: Coming back from the classroom of her hell was not the end of her suffering, but another beginning of it for Misty Day. Angsty Foxxay.
Based on a prompt given by andib1986 on Tumblr!
Nobody really knew how Misty Day died. Some would say she died during the Seven Wonders, stuck in hell, turning into ashes.
To Cordelia Goode, it was when she regained her sight after ascending the Supremacy and couldn't find her anywhere she looked. There was a blonde curly hair in their shared pillow, there was her favorite shawl in their closet, there was a pile of dead plants in the greenhouse waiting to be resurrected, there was a broken cassette player in her shack at the swamp. There was a mountain of proof of her existence, except for that bright smile. Cordelia loved that smile, especially how giggles spilled out of her mouth like she couldn't control them. That smile was nowhere. It was gone.
But Cordelia didn't want to—couldn't give up on her Cajun queen.
"You know, you can't keep blaming yourself for what happened to her," Zoe said one day.
"But it was my fault, Zoe. It was my fault. She never wanted to be the Supreme. I shouldn't have let her go."
So eventually Cordelia made a deal with Papa Legba. It was a reckless move on the Supreme's part, but nobody dared say whatever Papa stipulated could be more valuable than the pure soul of Misty Day.
"How much are you willing to give for the Cajun rat?" Papa's red eyes flashed in the dark of the winter night.
Cordelia wasted no time to sacrifice her own afterlife. He could have that, even if that deal meant enduring the eternal fire and brimstone, even if it meant gouging her eyes out with gardening shears over and over again, or even if it meant suffocating in a pool of acid and feeling the walls of her lungs melt.
This life, where the light of Misty Day used to illuminate and was now pitch dark, could not be any dire than hell.
"Do you know who you are?" Her voice cracked as she cupped Misty's icy cheeks, searching for some hint of life in the void of her eyes.
Misty nodded sluggishly like a machine whose cogs and chains corroded. "Misty Day."
"Do you know who I am?"
Misty nodded again and inhaled deeply, as though the simple action of moving her head exhausted her. "Miss Cordelia." The name sounded so heavy on the tip of her tongue.
"That's right, Misty. You're here with me, in the coven."
Tears rolled down Cordelia's cheeks as she tucked a strand of the wild mane behind her ear, mesmerized by the brightness that seemed to have never dimmed down. But it wasn't the same for the eyes that the Supreme once called Labradorite, a gemstone that gives iridescence as if aurora is compacted into it. Those eyes, despite being open, saw nothing. Cordelia bit on her quivering lip and took Misty's hand, caressing the back of it with her thumb, a desperate attempt to rekindle the flame under the cold skin.
"Do you understand? You are not in hell anymore. You're safe now. You're alive."
ooOooOoo
Everyone believed Misty Day had been saved from death and the agony of it. They didn't know, Cordelia didn't know, that turning into ashes wasn't how she died.
How she died was not an event that happened in a flash, but a gradual process that happened in the classroom. She tried to fight at first, for her soul and for the poor frog on the metal plate. But fighting was hard. With each sadistic word of mockery of her classmates, with each threat from Mr. Kingery and the feeling of his hands on hers, with each drop of innocent blood on the scalpel, with each scream that ripped her throat apart, her soul died a little.
The last emotion she had left in her was fear, not towards the inescapable death, but towards the black hole that took root inside her chest. Screams, sorrow, despair—the void swallowed all of them, and there was only whiteness left that suffocated her from within.
She died like this, looking in the face of death and feeling it slowly wrap its fingers around her, but having no limbs to carry herself away. Cordelia couldn't be any more wrong when she said Misty was alive. Restoring her physical body couldn't resurrect her.
In fact, this body felt alien to her as though she was residing in someone else's body. Her limbs were shackles and cages. The world around her was dreamlike and foggy. Sometimes, when she was awake from her death-like hypersomnia, she saw herself, the empty vessel she'd learned to recognize as her body, sitting on the edge of the bed from outside the body. She'd look into the hollow eyes curiously and ask, What's wrong? And the body would remain still, like a marionette waiting for Blue Fairy to breathe life into it.
"You need to eat something, Misty." Cordelia's voice sounded muffled in her ears as she sat beside her on the bed. "Please, just one bite." She held a bagel in front of Misty's face, raising it to her eye level. "Look, it's the chocolate-peanut spread you like. I made this last night for you."
Then Misty, observing them from outside the body, heard herself say, "'M not hungry."
"Of course you are. You haven't eaten anything in four days." Cordelia put her hand on the head of wild curls, gently pressing her forehead to Misty's temple. "Please, you need to eat. You're going to starve to—No, I won't have it."
The tears in the Supreme's eyes were an incomprehensible concept to Misty. She couldn't figure out why Cordelia was crying like that, with her quivering lip, creased forehead, squeezed-shut eyes, and occasional hiccups spilling out of her mouth. Humans shed tears because of pain or extreme happiness, and Misty was capable of reading the expression as pain. But in terms of understanding the pain on the emotional level, she was at a loss.
The only thing she understood was that Cordelia's touch pricked her skin. It was the warmth of the body. It was the way she nuzzled into her as if bowing her head before God. It was a sensation just as strange as being inside the body, and the distress of it made Misty pull away.
"'M sleepy," she said.
Then she slept thought the night and day as hypersomnia took over her system.
When she came back from the unconscious world, she found herself standing in the greenhouse. The sky outside the window was dark, some leaves rustling outside. She had no idea how she got there, how long she'd been asleep, or if this was a dream. The winter wind knocked on the stained glass above her head, and she heard some sentimental melody in it.
The greenhouse, the kingdom that once sheltered her from the witch hunters and the cruel girls, blurred before her eyes, like a thick wall of fog blocked her view. But she could still make out the outline of the flower in front of her, sitting on the table along with a mixer and a mortar and other tools.
It was Belladonna, Cordelia's favorite. Some petals were discolored at the edge, some gashed, some lay on the bed of soil.
"Misty?" Cordelia came to stand next to her. "What are you doing? It's six in the morning." Her fingertips touched the wild blonde's bare shoulder. "God, you're freezing." She shuffled out of her cardigan, covering the ice-cold body with it, taking the icicles of fingers in her hands. "How long have you been out here?"
The wild blonde stood like a statue, her eyes on the flower that became more vibrant in the morning sun. "Dying," she said.
"What? What is?"
"She." Misty raised her heavy arm and pointed at the Belladonna. "Dying."
"Um, yes. It was damaged when we performed Vitalum Vitalis in here. But it's healing. It's—she's ok."
"'S your favorite."
"She is."
Silence surrounded them, the chirping of birds outside muffled in Misty's ears. There was a small patch of blood on the borderline between the flower pot and soil, dried and black, like the Belladonna was bleeding.
"If she was your favorite, you should never have let it get hurt," Misty said.
She ate half a bagel that afternoon at last.
ooOooOoo
The neighbor's gray hound, Lucy, had a distaste for people with a mustache. She'd bark at them non-stop until they were out of sight, whereas other people saw nothing but the angelic face of her. The neighbor's patio was entirely visible from the balcony of Cordelia's room, and Misty had spent enough time there to make such observations.
She would sit there still, exactly the same way she sat on the edge of their bed. Although there'd been small changes since the Day of, every second of her waking moment was still shrouded in haze, her soul trapped in whiteness.
"Misty." The Supreme crouched down next to her and pulled the thick blanket off her cold body. "Time for dinner. C'mon, let's go back inside." She put her hand on Misty's, pulling her up and leading her to the bed. After covering the girl with the blanket again, she held a bagel in front of her face, which Misty took it with both of her hands. "Eat," she said, and Misty nibbled on it. "Another bite," she said again, and the girl did as told.
It was their new normal, Misty taking more than thirty minutes to finish one whole bagel, Cordelia reminding her to chew throughout the meal.
"Do you want anything else?" Cordelia asked when the plate was emptied.
Misty moved her weighty head from right to left once, answering the question. Her breathing became labored as her energy quickly ran out, so much that she couldn't keep her eyes open. Cordelia said she had to eat to live, but eating did nothing but exhaust her.
"I have something for you," the Supreme said. The warmth of her body left Misty for a brief moment, and when she came back, she held a small device to her eye level. "This is called an iPod. It plays music. I thought it could be as good as your Stevie." Then she placed the device on the nightstand.
The intro of Kind of Woman flowed out of it, high-quality sound with no dropouts caused by scratches in the film. It was too perfect. Too perfect and there was no resemblance to the human-like imperfection of her Stevie. It was too perfect to be imperfect.
"Is this ok?" Cordelia's warm hands sandwiched hers. "Do you have anything else you want to listen to?"
The raw warmth, with no article of clothing between their skin to be a barrier, turned Misty's stomach. "'M gonna lie down," she said, pulling her hand away.
"Ok." The Supreme tucked her in, brushing the frizzy hair out of Misty's face as she laid down next her. "I love this song. It's the song we listened to when we worked in the greenhouse together for the first time. You told me how Stevie found her tribe in Fleetwood Mac and that you were still looking for yours." Quietly humming to the song, she scooted closer until her ear was pressed against the chest of Misty, who stretched her neck away from her and let out a quiet distressed groan at the weight and touch. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She pulled away and sat up.
Until the last note of the song melted into the stillness of the room, Stevie was the only one making any noises.
When Sara started to play, Cordelia sniffed once. "I'll go to my office to get some stuff done," she said. "Go to sleep, ok? Do you want me to turn the lights off?"
The wild blonde couldn't find any more energy to utter an affirmation or nod, but she was thankful that blackness engulfed her when the door clicked shut.
###
Next day, she had a dream for the first time since the Day of, jerking awake in the ocean of her tears. The blanket on her body was thousands of arms dragging her back into the dark pit, the chirping of birds was the laughter of the demons, the sunlight on her face was the flare licking the inside of her skull.
The tears.
The heat and salt seared the skin as they rolled down her cheeks. As fleeting as it was, there was certainly something other than numbness in her, something not so white, something that shook her from within. Then the white hole sucked it in, like everything else in her that ever had a chance to exist for a millisecond.
"Who are you, miss? What are you doing here?" A little girl said as Misty brushed past her at the foot of the stairs. "You're supposed to wear shoes, you know. Miss Cordelia will scold you."
The world around her was like a terribly edited film, too many transitions and black pictures for the audience to follow the story. From her first step outside the Supreme's bedroom, everything was just bits and pieces. One moment she was looking at a black fiddler in the French Quarters, then the next moment there was a highway above her.
Her bare feet were dirty and full of scratches, but the floor underneath them didn't compare. With pillow feathers added to the carpet of dead bugs and dirt and rodents' bean-like feces, her shelter in the swamp looked more like a bird nest than a human's house. But there was a twin-sized mattress with bullet holes in it, a picture of a white witch, and a broken cassette player on a nightstand.
Someone used to live there. She used to live there.
She stroked a leaf of her plant by the window, dead and boney and crispy, all forgotten in the sun. Just like her. She rubbed it between her thumb and index finger, and it crumbled to pieces, which the wind carried away. Just like her. She tried to think, with her brain that ever clung to the whiteness, what she used to do with dead things.
Raising her arms was something she hadn't done in weeks, and the muscles screamed and trembled as she placed her hands over the leaves. The sound of kids' laughter penetrated the wall of haze and echoed inside her skull. The hair in the back of her head stood.
What if, when you pulled your hands away, there was a frog instead of a plant? a voice inside her said.
For some seconds she froze there, too fearful to pull away, too frightened to keep her hands over it. She closed her eyes and breathed in, and placed her hands to either side of the flower pot, in a flash as though pulling a tooth out.
It was still a plant. Dead, but a plant.
Then she concentrated all of her power on the one pot, straining her eyes to catch any sign of resurrection. The leaves swayed in the wind, but nothing happened. No live green, no pink or yellow. Just brown and deep blackish green.
Stronger intent, the voice of Cordelia echoed inside her head.
Something pricked inside her, lingering a little longer than earlier on the balcony, but it was still a flame too tiny to rekindle anything. So she tried one more time, tightening her grip on the pot, holding her breath, glaring at the plant.
Nothing.
She tried again. Nothing. Once more. Nothing. Intention.
Nothing happened, at least not to the plant. Inside her, something the little flame had grown into was beginning to consume the whiteness. Each failure was a scoop of gasoline, and the tip of the blaze was almost reaching to her throat.
What if I can't do it?
Then you are not the next Supreme.
She lifted the pot off the windowsill and smashed it against the floor. And the ear-piercing sound cleared away the haze momentarily, the clarity enabling her to see what she'd done. She killed it. Just like the frog.
"No no no no no."
She crouched down in the puddle of dried soil and cray pieces, creating a commixture with feathers and dust as she scraped them off the floor. With the muffled sound of her erratic breathing occupying half of her senses, she clutched the plant with naked roots to her chest. But it was too late. She didn't have the power. Her power of resurrection. The plant would stay dead for an eternity, and it was her fault. Hers.
Soil crumbled out of her hands and landed on her lap as she wrapped her arms around her knees. Then her eyes caught a small cut in her palm. It slightly hurt, but the pain was somehow pleasing, the sight of oozing blood ever so soothing. It cut through the haze and reached out to her, holding out its blaze-like hands, telling her to feel it. The pain, even if it didn't fill half of what she'd inflicted on the frog, must be felt, as it was the only way of atonement.
"Misty? Oh god, Misty!" After a short series of clicks of heels, Cordelia knelt down and wrapped her arms around the Cajun. "I was so worried about you. You can't just leave like that, ok?" Her fingers brushed some wild strands out of her face. "What happened? Are you ok? Are you hurt?" A small gasp interrupted her sniffing. "Misty, your knee—"
Misty saw a piece of cray in her knee for the first time. Judging from the long, thick trail of blood that went down her shin, the cut was deeper than the one in her palm, another pain to add to her collection.
"What happed, Misty?" The Supreme took the piece between her thumb and index finger, with the precision of a surgeon removing a bullet fragment near the main artery. Her hand came back to cover the bloodstained knee. It seemed like a simple gesture of comfort to Misty, until warmth seeped through her skin and the pleasant pain fade away.
"No!" She pushed Cordelia away, hard. Hard enough that the Supreme fell on her backside, barely catching herself from falling flat onto the ground. With unintelligible mumbling, she rubbed her wounded palm against the heeled knee, smudging the blood all over, and when it couldn't unheal the skin, she began to scratch.
"Misty—" Cordelia pried her hand away from the knee.
"No! Don't touch me!" The screams enflamed her vocal cord. She clutched her throat and stood up, as if all of the weights on her had been lifted all of a sudden. "Why'd ya do that!?" she screamed again, walking around the shack like a wounded wild animal in a cage. The haze was clearing away, the fire ripping her apart from the inside. "Why'd ya do that!?"
Cordelia's fingers grazed her arm. "Misty, calm down—"
"No!" The wild blonde tore herself away from the touch and picked up the nearby bedside lamp, smashing it against the wall. "Why'd ya do that!?" She threw everything within her reach. Her plants, candle stands, a tin bucket, an armchair. The shattering sound and her own roars drowned out Cordelia's voice.
At last she grabbed her Stevie off the nightstand, momentarily sobering up at the way the spilled films of the cassette tape had been rewound, a clumsy work of someone else.
Follow my voice.
She did, she followed Cordelia's voice, from the moment her dirt-clad hands took Cordelia's in the white hallway of the academy. There had never been a brighter light in her life than the smile of the Supreme, a warmer sound than her voice, a softer touch than those eyes that saw through her and never judged. She loved Cordelia and the way she made Misty proud of who she was. Proud of being the only one who treated the Supreme with respect she deserved. Proud of being her protégé in their greenhouse kingdom.
She put the player back onto the nightstand, keeping her gaze on the blown-up bed. "Why didn't ya tell me?"
"…Misty?"
"Why'd ya let me go? Why'd ya—Ya never told me what could happen. Ya never did." Her breathing became shallower and labored as it felt like a volcano of needles was expanding inside her skull, on the verge of explosion. "If ya'd told me, I—I wouldn't—I'd never—"
"Misty, take a breath," Cordelia's fingertips grazed her cold arm.
"Don't touch me!" Shaking the hand off, she finally locked her eyes with Cordelia's. "Ya promised—promised to protect me! Said you'd shelter me. I trusted ya! Did everythin' ya told me to do, because I didn't have the option to ever doubt ya! I trusted ya blindly, even when my gut told me to run away, even when I never wanted ta be the Supreme. I wanted to make you proud of me. I followed the light, Miss Cordelia! But there was no light! It was just dark and bloody and messy, and I—" Then she took a sharp intake of breath once and stopped screaming altogether, like a toy whose batteries ran out. The heels of her palms, pressed to her eyes, buzzed in the salty heat growing underneath them. "I can't even cry without those images flashin' back, and my throat remembers how long my screams were before my hands covered the frog and brought it back to life. And I can't look at ya without wanting to scream and blame it all on ya."
"Misty…"
"It was all your fault," Misty said. "I'm sorry… I'm so sorry."
Cordelia pulled her hands away from her tear-soaked eyes. And although the wild blonde struggled for a while, she eventually let the Supreme embrace her, tightly as though to squeeze tears out of her.
They cried together, and then went home.
ooOooOoo
"Why does she look so sad?" Little Kate, the pyro girl who told Cordelia about Misty's disappearance, tilted her head at the top of the stairs of the academy, craning her neck to peer into the wild blonde's face two feet above.
Cordelia smiled, swore to explain everything when the time came, and took Misty to their bedroom. The scrawny limbs under her touch were still as cold as ice, the steps were still precarious like a ghost, and those puffy eyes were half-closed after bawling for almost a whole hour. But her soul was coming back to life, a slow process, but Cordelia knew—saw the flame that day, and it was going to be the torch in their darkness.
"You must be exhausted, but I want you to eat before you go to bed." The Supreme wrapped a blanket around the icy body that sat on the edge of their bed, stroking the head of those blonde curls that resembled rays of sunshine. "Can you wait until I come back with a bagel?" Considering their usually one-way interaction, she didn't expect a response, so when those jewel-like eyes met with hers, it stunned her in the best way.
"Can I have it with strawberry cream cheese?"
Cordelia intertwined their fingers, enthralled by the little lights that resided at the bottom of her eyes. "Of course, you can."
She went to the kitchen, which was filled with girls spreading rumors about the woman the Supreme was keeping in the master bedroom. They would sooner or later connect the dots and figure out why a stack of various spreads was occupying the entire top shelf of the fridge lately. With a pink-spread-covered bagel on a plate, Cordelia grabbed another and the jar of chocolate-peanut spread, just in case the appetite of her Cajun witch had increased.
When she walked back into the bedroom, Misty was fiddling with the iPod in her hands, a hint of curiosity Cordelia had missed in her eyes.
"I wanted to listen to Stevie," Misty said, looking up at her. "But I don't know how to work this."
The Supreme put the plate on the nightstand, sat beside her close enough that their shoulders brushed against each other, and taught her where the power button was and how other buttons functioned.
Sometimes the wild blonde did pull away when Cordelia held her hand too long or too tight, sometimes her eyes did lost their sparks completely and become hollow, a couple of times her mouth did stop during the meal, and she did frown at the second bagel. But Cordelia was flying high.
"I think 'm gonna lie down," Misty said, tucking herself in.
"Ok." Cordelia laid next to her, brushing some of the wild strands out of her forehead. She hummed to Landslide for some minutes. "You know," she said. "I'm so proud of you, more than I've ever been proud of anyone. You're a strong person, Misty Day. I know you're still upset, and you may not be able to ever forgive me for letting go of you the way I did. It's ok. I can live with that." Their eyes met. "And even if anger is the only emotion inside you right now, I want you to feel it, express it, tell me, because that's the only way through." Heat grew between her eyes, and she sniffed, scooting closer to press her ear to the chest of Misty, who wiggled underneath her. "Sorr—" The moment Cordelia pulled away, Misty brushed her fingers against her tear-soaked cheek, applying enough pressure for her to look into the Labradorite.
"Your eyes…" The blue eyes had the same glimmer that the iPod had rekindled in them. "They're brown."
Cordelia remembered the first time the Cajun looked into her able eyes, the ones Myrtle gave her. "Yes, they are."
Then the wild blonde stroked her cheek with her thumb, with the fragility of a leaf caressing the body of a bird. "They are beautiful," she said, and gently pressed Cordelia's head back against her chest.
All your life you've never seen a woman taken by the wind
Would you stay if she promised you heaven? Will you ever win?
Cordelia had seen a woman taken by the wind. Yes, she had, in this lifetime, blessed enough to witness it from the seat with her name written on it. And despite the deal with Papa Legba, her life on earth was heaven, a promise which had yet to be made but Cordelia knew was soon to come.
Thank you everyone for reading this and my other work. love y'all!