Author's note: This is my very first fanfic. I hope you enjoy reading this. There are spoilers regarding Daniella's fate in the game and some sexual content.

Disclaimer: I do not own Haunting Ground, unfortunately.

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It has been a year since I left the castle. A year tainted with memories and dreams.

I'm curled up under the bedcovers in the hotel room. Hewie snores by my feet, ears tilted back as though he is listening for something. We are constantly running scared, afraid that we'll be caught if we linger for too long.

Every night my thoughts return to that place. I often wonder about Debilitas and whether he is still alive. I suppose he's muddling along, although he must be quite alone. Riccardo's corpse must be rotted down to bones by now while Lorenzo is nothing but ashes.

I roll over and stare at the cracked mirror hanging on the wall. The bed prods and jabs me, and I find it so hard to shut my eyes and sleep. The evening is still and quiet, yet I know my dreams will be anything but.

As always, it slips in when I think it might leave me at peace for once. Just when I relax. It begins, with the jarring smash of breaking glass, and then the tip-tap of her footsteps.

"Miss..."

I know she is dead. I saw the shards pierce her body and pin her, like a captured moth. However, in the dream I face her once more. I am alone. Hewie is nowhere to be found. I run. Debilitas was right: I am a doll. Wind me up and watch me scream.

Each room in the castle has been seared in my memory. I shall never forget the music room or the carousel horses, which madly spin and shriek out whinnies. I race through them.

She does not chase me. Each step is calm, as she knows I cannot escape her until morning. She always calls out as if she is warning me.

"... filthy princess..."

Then I stumble across a covered mirror and pull the sheet away. Her cry of disgust is terrifying. It makes my heart shudder. I turn away to find somewhere to hide and I can see out of the corner of my eye that she beats her hands against the glass until it cracks and cuts her.

I go to the bedroom, where I first saw her those many nights ago, and crawl beneath the bed. I hold my breath and listen for her footsteps. The door opens, shuts and I hear the turn of the key in the lock. I am trapped.

"Miss, you can come out now."

There is no use pretending. I leave my hiding place and find her sitting on the bed.

Daniella.

She is a shadow painted by the sun at noon, tall and slight, barely there. Her face is expressionless and I want to push her hair away so that I can see the entirety of her face. When she smiles, I feel something roil in my stomach, in the same way a cramp does, but it unwinds and I sigh. I sit down, with my hand atop of hers. It is almost tenderly that she leads me down, down into the hunger which stalks me.

Her kisses burn. My cheeks, mouth, neck and breasts are on fire. The stroke of her fingers is like shards of glass, running high up my legs, the inside of my thighs - ah - I am pierced. My fingers curl in the sheets and I pant prayers. Her fingers move within me and I can feel - I trick myself into feeling - the cold, rough rub of her scars.

My terror is not due to what is happening to me. I do not push her away or scream. I beg. I plead for more: for her kisses, hungry and bruising, for the scratch of her nails on my flesh, for her to never stop. I feel shame at how much I yearn for the touch of a dead woman who once frightened me.

I have never tried to reciprocate, perhaps afraid I would find nothing underneath her clothes, like the statue of a woman that is left half-finished. I want to see her become undone, yet that isn't what the dream wants. I'm a passenger on a sinking ship, watching the sea draw closer.

Her touch is gentle, calculated, but then it quickens and becomes rough and frantic until I am thrown into orgasm. I do not fly to the clouds, to heaven. I cannot hear angel songs. What I see, when I bite my lips and my legs shudder, is the glass impaling Daniella and the look upon her face as she dies.

The bliss rips from me and is replaced with grief. Could things have been different? Debilitas changed after the chandelier fell on him. Was there any way I could have..? I want... I do not know what I want!

I feel kisses flutter across my face and I start to lie to myself: Daniella is not dead, I saw no blood. I left her there, she could have freed herself and... and... And what? If she was still alive then she would have tried to kill me again. She didn't want me but my azoth. She wanted to become a woman, not be with one.

The dream unravels as I look Daniella in the eye and call her the lie of my feverish lust. Her fingers pull out of me and I awake. My lip is bloodied.

Hewie growls. I lift my head.

"Hewie? What's wrong?"

There is silence, and then a footstep. I see her reflection in the cracked mirror.

"Miss Fiona..."