A/N: Binged this in a day. Yeah, I know, I have no life. It made me more sad than scared tbh.
Spoilers: For the whole show, just to be sure.
Disclaimer: Me and my nightmares don't own the rights to The Haunting of Hill House.
Life might be raindrop moments and not a straight line, but still fate seemed to be unchangeable. She had been seeing the bend-neck lady ever since she was 6, but only now did she really understand how and why.
Long since had the house claimed her soul; bound her to it for eternity, both in life and in death.
As she slipped off the ledge and felt the air rushing past her, seeing the floor getting closer, only to be caught by the snap of the robe tied around her neck, she knew then, she understood.
She was transported back, dropped into all the times she had encountered the bend-neck lady. All the times she'd had a glimpse of her future.
The future was grim.
If time wasn't fixed could she somehow warn her younger self, or was that impossible? Wouldn't that create a paradox, by warning her, making sure she didn't become the bend-neck lady, she would effectively have erased this version of herself, and wouldn't be able to warn her in the first place.
You can't break a circle.
She had literally been her own worst nightmare.
Fate was inescapable.
You can't run from yourself any more than you can run from fate.
The house had predicted a path for her, and she had followed it. Stepped right into the trap unknowingly.
She had been the bend-neck lady all along.
Now she was awake, free from frozen night terrors. Instead she was one of them now, living in the shadows, existing in the space between night and day, darkness and light.
She had accepted her fate, no matter how cruel; this was what she had been dealt in life, and in death.
The one thing she could do was to help what was left of her family.
We need to listen to what is speaking, but just because we can hear what they're saying, doesn't mean we have to follow their paths. Ghosts, be they from the past or the future, shouldn't guide you.
…Or you might just end up being your own worst nightmare.
A/N: I so predicted that the bend-neck lady was gonna be Nell herself.