The usual, "I don't own this material" legal disclaimers. Of course I don't. Only KMM is brilliant enough to come up with a character like Dani. Also, as a caveat, this is probably some of the messiest writing I've ever published, but I'm too overwhelmed by the ending of Burned to not do my own version of it. I'm sure some of the physical logic doesn't make sense, there are typos galore, etc., but I'm jumping the gun, publishing now, cleaning up later. My apologies. Also, I doubt I'll ever be finishing Firsts at this point.
Again, do NOT read if you haven't read Iced and through the very end of Burned, including the glossary. I promise you you'll regret it.
Lyrics / chapter titles from Hozier's "Take Me to Church," which KMM said was the theme song for the couple in Burned.
Redemption always comes at a price. Alt. ending to Burned. (Not a one-parter.)
THAT DEATHLESS DEATH
Chapter 1 (Or Alt chapter 36)
In the madness and soil of that sad earthly scene, only then I am human, only then I am clean.
MAC
Barrons roars, a horrible, gutteral sound, and I cringe to the bottom of my soul because I know without needing to see it that Barrons just got lanced. Doesn't matter that I know he'll be back. It's one less person to protect the Keltar and Jada, and I despise the sound of that man dying. I have no doubt he stepped in the way to protect someone.
"Fuck." Dageus snarls down at us. "Bloody grab the bloody cable."
Then Drustan is behind Dageus and I hear Jada and Ryodan taunting the Hag. Drustan and Dageus begin to pull us up, and we're nearly there when I hear Jada and Ryodan start shouting again.
"Don't you fucking dare, Dani," he yells at her, and I'm not sure why at first. Then the Hag bears down on us.
JADA
Pain is a pointless emotion. It is a weakness, slowing you down at the essential moment. It is why she shuts it down, prefers not to feel it. If Ryodan is right, if it means that without it, she feels no joy, then it is worth it. She must survive. Her other half, that Dani, that child, whom she will envy, loathe, and protect to her dying day, didn't want to feel pain either. Not the physical. They can both withstand the physical. It was the gut, raw, emotional version, that doesn't just rip you up from the inside, but does it again, and again, again, and again. As if you are the one who is immortal and the Crimson Hag has got you by the innards and never plans to let you go. As if you're destined to repeat the same level on a video game and never get past it. That's the pain that Dani couldn't manage, had tucked away deep inside her.
For four years, Dani managed to withstand it, hoping, just hoping, that he would find her, save her. Yell at her, punish her, lock her up, who cares. He'd come for her, like he'd promised. Words weren't necessary. His actions spoke.
But Ryodan didn't. And after those final monsters, not fae, but human, the worst sort of nightmares, she finally lost hope. And it was that absence that made her reach out to Jada. I give up, she said. It's your turn. Help me. Take it away. Before I take it away myself.
And Jada rose, and accepted. And when Dani fought to get back out again (that's not what I meant, I take it back, this is not a life!) Jada refused to let her. Too stupid to live, as always. The logic, faulty. She is breathing. She continues. What is life, beyond that?
Except.
The currency of life is passion, and as with any coin, it has two sides: pleasure, pain, joy, sorry. Impossible to slip a single side of that coin into your pocket. You take all or nothing.
She has always hated listening to that man. But in those five and a half hellish years in faery—a hell she never realized could exist, where she realized the monster the whole time and been herself—she realized he'd been right. His words permeate. Then. Now.
"You are not a bloody. Fucking. Computer." He snarls at her as they toss the whip back and forth between them. The crack of it is not loud enough to drown her out. "Dani is a woman. So are you. Dani wants. She rages. She hurts. So do you. So does the Crimson Hag. Understand her, you beat her." So much disappointment in him. It chafes.
"Emotion slows you. Distracts. Want causes compromise. Rage, collateral damage. Hurt, weakness at a critical moment when you need to be strong. You taught her that, remember?" Jada tosses that back at him, without looking. She tracks the Hag. She does not know where to look, jumping back and forth. "This is not the moment for this conversation," she tells Ryodan. Jada doesn't need to see him to know he's shaking his head. They are moving at high-speed, a blur to everyone else, but to them the same as walking.
"Jesus. Maybe you're right. Maybe Dani is dead."
At that, the woman inside Jada stirs. Never going to—
Jada shuts her down with a quickness. She has been appearing more and more frequently, getting stronger, then retreating again. Dani is paralyzed in indecision, at moments wanting her life back, at moments glad to be distant from it. This is good. Indecision kills. Ryodan is the catalyst of this paralysis. So is Mac. Mac, who has always had what Dani wanted, who has Barrons—
At that moment, as if she caused it with the very thought, she hears a loud, gutteral roar. She does not need to look to know what has happened. Barrons has been lanced; is dead. They have not succeeded in distracting the Hag. Perhaps Ryodan is right. Perhaps without Dani, that other half of her, she is not strong enough.
"Fuck!" Ryodan says. He also knows what happens. Jada feels herself flinch. She should not worry. Barrons will return. He always does.
But her brain whirs through the other outcomes. There are four over there where the Hag is now. One will not die. Jada owes him, has vowed to wipe that ledger clean, but he will survive. Three, however, will not. And one—
"Mac," Jada says, almost at a whisper, and a voice inside her echoes, this one filled with a driving, powerful worry. Ryodan glances up at the word sharply.
He knows her thought before she has finished thinking it. He has always known her. She knows the outcome she has arrived at, the only possible choice. Dani, Jada, it doesn't matter. At this moment, they merge.
Two sides of the same coin, after all. Can't have one without the other, after all.
Unfortunate this realization comes at this moment, Jada muses. Before, it would have served. Doesn't matter. It was inevitable.
Always the way we were going to go out, Dani agrees. Worth it.
"Don't. You. Fucking. Dare," Ryodan yells at Jada, who is Dani, has always been Dani. Was so fecking, fucking, blind.
"Dani!"
It is too late. She is already gone.
Christian
I'm heaving, lying on the edge of the cliff, exhausted, too exhausted to move. The pain is worse, now. Before it was so senseless, so fucking continuous, that I had managed to remove myself from the pain. But now, as I take breaths, it hits me. Not in waves. A fucking tsunami crashes over me.
And because I'm in pain, it happens so fast. Too bloody fucking fast.
The Crimson Hag bears down on Mac, those horrible, needle point, sharp scissor-spears for legs reaching for her. In that moment, all of my hate and rage at her, all the blame, vanishes. Was pointless, misdirected. She never meant to hurt me. All she wanted to do was keep me alive. If I needed proof, it's the fact that she's gasping next to me, about to die.
And I can't do a thing about it.
It all happens so fast.
A woman appears in a whir over us. Beautiful. Tall, lithe, lean, muscled, curved. Long hair in a ponytail down her back, mostly straight, but near her forehead which is covered in a sweaty sheen, it curls.
And immediately I know who it is. I don't know the hows, the whats, the whens. At this moment, it doesn't matter.
I think I sensed her, somehow. I bloody fucking sensed her, and I was too distracted to realize that something to precious to be here, was. Is.
Every bloody fucking thing I did led us to this moment. Every sacrifice, pointless.
Her hair whips around in the blast of air she's shot out from. Red against this surreal sky. Brilliant. Beautiful.
A woman now. With a mind like a diamond...
It doesn't matter anymore how I feel about her, or how I messed up, what could or couldn't have been mine. I know what is about to happen, and I'm too weak to stop it.
"No!" I yell the word, the Unseelie Prince coming to life inside me, the power of his voice overtaking mine until it rattles across the abyss. If it causes an avalanche, I don't care. "Dani!"
"Dani!" My yell is echoed somewhere near me. For once, I feel relief that he is here.
Relief, because he will never let her die.
But I am wrong.
Ryodan
This isn't. Bloody. Fucking. Happening.
Over my dead fucking body.
I move, faster than I ever have before.
Dani
It's funny, the thoughts that hit you when you're about to die. The scenes, moments you remember. Things that you long since forced yourself to forget. I've been trapped for so long, just watching, not acting. I like to pretend that I was trapped by my other half, by Jada, but I've learned enough not to lie to myself.
I was trapped by myself. My need to be numb, to not feel pain, to not be me anymore. Somewhere along the way I lost the optimism that had guided me through everything, the ability to run from who I was. I lost hope, gave up.
Losing hope is a deadly thing. So is ignoring your past.
No longer. I see myself, that day, the worst fecking, fucking, day of my life. She tried to put me back in the cage, and my other, stronger, unfeeling self came alive, and I lost myself, and it was a blur, and when I looked at my hands I was choking her until she turned blue.
"Danielle," my mother gasped. "Sweetheart, stop. Please."
I couldn't hear her, and then she was lifeless in front of me, and then I was an animal, an assassin, a killing machine, mowing down everyone and everything in my sight.
Until he appeared. A man. Large. Fierce. Strong. Confident. Unstoppable. Free. Everything I had ever wanted to be. We fought, that day—well, really, they fought—Jada, stronger than I had ever been before. But the man was stronger, and between his taunting and his mercy and his strength and the pain he threw her way, he brought me back to myself. And then, somehow, he forced me to forget all of it. Not sure how. But I know why.
The scene changes. I stand remote over Alina as she dies, and I can't scream, and I can't feel, and I only know that this is one of the worst things I've ever done, and I know if I let her out again, I'll do worse.
I close my eyes and block my ears so I can't hear her as she pleads with me to save her.
The scene changes again. I'm standing with Mac in the bookstore, and I feel so vulnerable, but I have to ask her the question.
"We're like sisters, aren't we, Mac?" I've never felt so weak in my life, never felt so hopeful.
A shadow passes over her eyes, and I know why it's there, and guilt stabs through me. It's my fault that that guilt is there. I've caused it, and I can't fix it, but I'm determined that I'll never let her feel that way again. I might have killed her sister, but I'll never let Mac die. It's the only way I can atone.
Then Mac echoes me, softly, and even though I can hear the hesitation in her voice, I grab onto her words and refuse to let go.
"Sisters," she says.
And then we are fighting back to back, and then the fae who killed Alina appear, and then I am gone, and I refuse to see her again. The scene changes again, and we are near the bookstore, the last time I saw Mac as me, and we are pulling each other's hair like wussy girls and if there was time right now, I'd laugh, because even then we are too afraid to really fight each other. She wanted to hurt me then. But she loved me then. I was too blind to see it.
The scenes start to blur past me in fast-mo. Playing chess with Dancer, running hand in hand with Christian, never letting Kat hug me. And Ryodan. Always Ryodan. Ryodan yelling at me, Ryodan talking to me. Waking up in bed with Ryodan next to me, Ryodan beating the fecking shit out of me. Ryodan, telling me to look the hell around me, to understand what love is, and who was offering it to me. Ryodan, laughing, when I stand in his office, asking whose comic book I'm living in, his or mine? Neither, it was ours.
I was too young to see it. But I did see him, that look of complete joy on his face, and I realize now that the only reason he could feel so much joy was because at some point in his long life, he'd experienced so much sorrow. And I didn't see that that same joy he felt when he was having sex was the joy he felt when he was around me... was the joy I felt around him.
Fecking damn it all to hell. I see the forest for the trees now, and it's a big, awesome, green as feck forest, beautiful and strange, with monsters and magic, beasts and giants and angels. I had it, and then I lost it, but I'll do anything to protect it.
Ryodan, angry at me, letting me see more emotion than I'd ever seen before. Hurling truths at me I still had refused to hear. Standing oh so still, the only time I ever kissed him, touched him, bodies against each other. All that could've been, that I'm not going to have. But it's okay, because I had that moment, and wherever the hell it is that I'm going, I can cling it to me forever, hold on tight, and not let go.
It's funny. The last time I died, I prayed to god, was bemused that I found faith at the end. I've found it again, but not in some higher fucking being who has no business mucking about in our lives, even if he does exist. No, I find faith, in this moment, in the people around me, in the fact that I am loved. I never knew, somehow.
But it's this faith that's brought me back, and that will make me strong enough to do what I need to do next.
It seems as if this Dani matters to you, Jada says to Ryodan.
Always, he replies.
And then the scenes stop, and I am jumping in front of, above Mac and Christian, shoving them both down before the Hag can get to them.
"Spear!" I shout to Mac, and without thinking she hands it to me. She's in shock, not sure what's happening.
Next to me, Christian is yelling. Somewhere behind me, Ryodan is roaring, and I know that although he'll try, he'll never reach me in time.
Because in that moment, I feel physical pain like I've never felt before as the Crimson Hag lances through me, spilling my guts everywhere.
As she takes off into the air—there's no reason for her take me with her, not like I can come back, would've been damn nice if Ryodan had given me his immortality trick a few years ago—I use the pain to keep me focused. I grab onto my own guts, use them as a rope to hoist myself up her leg, and don't let go.
Mac
It takes me a second to realize what happened, what's happening.
Jada just got lanced through.
Sacrificed herself for me.
I know what that means. She's Dani, again. Jada would never have sacrificed herself for anyone.
But Dani still has Jada's strength, agility, and steeled determination. I can't imagine the kind of pain she must be in right now.
Closing her hands around the Hag's leg with the grace of a circus acrobat, she swings herself up, spear tucked into the waistband of her camo pants. The Hag rears back, violently shaking her leg, trying to dislodge her, but Dani, or Jada, or both, doesn't let go. Instead, she uses her own guts as ropes to vault herself up, grabs the Hag by the hair, yanks back her head and slits her throat from ear to ear. Blood sprays everywhere, and the Hag's head lolls back. Jada shoves the spear deep into the bone and gristle of her corset, expression fierce, savage.
The two of them crash to the ground in a heap. There is blood, so much blood, everywhere. Impossible to tell whose at this moment.
Oh, god. Oh god. Ohgodohgodohgod...
"No," I gasp, barely a whisper, my throat too tight to speak.
The Crimson Hag is dead.
And so is Dani.