And so it went.
In the beginning, any words he found to speak were either derisive or painful plea for death. His speech got better with time, but his words remained limited. Eirikr having ever been the articulate type, Rosen knew this was just another form of torture for him.
They had all the time in the world.
The hovel was so remote, even when the random wayward hiker would stumble upon them, what did they find? Some goats and a half crazy women who said nothing but who's cold gaze promised dreadful things. Soon enough, any beaten track there had ever been up those slopes was lost as routes were retraced as avoidance by any usual trekkers became an established routine.
Before long, Rosen could wonder off for whole days, leaving Eiríkr to stew in misery.
Time worked, for good or ill, as it always does. Rosen would come back in the late gloaming to find him sitting up. Much later, it would be to find him actually standing at a window.
The terrible wound in Eirikr skull became a craggy, seeping mass that spanned from his forehead in an arch to near the top of his spine. The burns he'd acquired over his arms and back healed into the same craggy patchwork of twisted scar tissue as his face.
Seasons passed. Rosen spent as much time as possible on the slopes and left Eiríkr to silent, stupid suffering. Winters often trapped them together in the small space and she would sit and watch him for hours trying to recover some dexterity by wielding a small paring knife against a potato, carving as many deep channels into his palms and fingers as the tuber. Rosen used a primitive pipe to smoke the tiny bit of weed she was able to grow, observing silently as his grip became slick with blood and the small space filled with the ragged sound of curses that were akin to sobbing.
If Rosen began to feel any stir of pity, she just had to remember the murders.
He'd not only killed dozens of his clients, but even roamed abroad on malicious errands. There would be gruesome packages that she would find herself the addressee of; packages containing body parts for his experiments which often included an intact head for her to carve the face off of and preserve for future use.
Three centuries she'd had of being his minion, of caring for the eternally slow growing Hannah and watching his experiments, binding his wounds and hiding his atrocities. She'd even turned a blind eye when he married and prepared to rape his own daughter.
Why?
Hate.
She had let it happen because she was building a sickness of hate both for him and herself. A time would come when everything would fall and she wanted to be there to complete the destruction. An avenging angel standing on a mountain of skulls.
Letting him live to die in agony was part of the plan. Eiríkr hated weakness with a passion, and to have no control of his own existence was beyond the pale. If he had to live, he would attempt to rise above what made him want to die. For now, it was her job to make sure that every step he took forward, she was there to loom over it and quell any hope that might just rise.
Rosen's mere presence also served as a constant reminder that he himself had not been strong enough to resist the temptation of his own sexual urges. As much as he postured as divine in his own right, Rosen served to prove that he was just as low as any other man rutting in the dirt.
When the winters became their most bitter cold, she physically tied him down because it forced him to let her close as she threw quilts over them to conserve body heat. No matter that she had been instrumental to everything he had built, he could not stand that one of the only two progeny he had produced was this specimen of rough mountain stock. If he thought she would stoop to anything as base as he had attempted with Hannah, all the better to let that idea torment him too.
So they existed.
Over time, the remains of the institute cooled; Volmer's associates slowly drifted away as the search for his catch of elixir, or a way to access the aquifer, or even himself became less important than living out the life they had left. Without the kind of overreaching effect of drawing in people and money that the estate, then the institute, had on the region, the village became a hamlet, then unincorporated, then empty. The area succumbed to time and nature, easing into a quiet wilderness populated only by endurance enthusiasts and treasure seekers. The rapid pace that concerned the modern world swept them and their history aside and they were forgotten as easily as a mediocre movie.
Except by Hannah.
She appeared one day as if she'd walked right from the sky all in pales blues, the wind sweeping her light hair into a veritable cloud. Rosen was working in the rocky film of earth she called a garden. She'd seen Hannah appear from a long way off and merely finished her chore, then sat down on the rough stone stoop to wait.
By bits and pieces, she saw how the years had changed her half-sister from a never-ageing sprite of a girl into an admirable specimen of mature womanhood. Hannah's face was now careworn, but still almost as smooth and sweet, if not as empty-eyed, as the girl Rosen remembered. Her stride up the craggy, brush strewn slope was strong and confident, the worn hiking boots flashing beneath the blue skirt exemplified her experience with the heights. She actually paused for a moment and smiled at Rosen before her gaze drifted past here sister to the grassy meadow that flattened out around them.
Eiríkr was a dark, slouched figure seated on a boulder some yards distant idly watching the young goats frolic. He turned a small stone anxiously in his hands as if he were examining for something hidden, a deeper truth. He'd taken to wearing a heavy hood draped over his head as even the slightest breeze or too much sun caused him great discomfort. His initial injuries had become like a cancer. Though staying much the same in outward appearance, he seemed to be coming apart on the inside as his body reacted to sustaining life long past what it was naturally capable of. Even just this morning, Rosen had to take him outside and dump him on the ground so that he wouldn't inadvertently tear apart what little furniture there was when a fit of uncontrollable thrashing had taken hold of him, only subsiding when blood began to leak out of his ears. She assumed it had something to do with pressure on the brain and could only hope it came with skull crushing pain.
Trailing her fingers lightly over Rosen's shoulder, Hannah went on to see her father.
Time seemed to finally stop for just those few moments.
Rosen saw Hannah come to Eirikr and still his restless hands with her own. He blinked up at her from the shadow of the hood and looked up into the bright son and the face of his daughter. She slid into his arms, cradling his head against the warmth of her body. They stayed like that for a while, Eirikr's hands clenching the fabric of her dress as if he'd never let go. But after a time, she pulled his hands free and went to sit behind him, letting his body recline against her. Then, leaning close as if to whisper a secret, she lifted his chin with a touch and slit his throat with a swift, deep cut.
Shuffling nimbly out of the way, she let his head fall back as an overwhelming rush of blood painted the boulder crimson, the gore shimmering in a sudden waterfall to pool in the deep green grass.
Hannah watched Eirikr spasm for a few moments before she moved around the body, careful not to step in the congealing blood surrounding the boulder. She leaned across him as if to study her handiwork, then pulled a longer blade from wherever it had been concealed and plunged it into his chest. In a few swift strokes, she set about cutting out his heart, bloodying her arms to the elbow before finally holding the engorged muscle in her hands. Taking a pace or two from the body, she unceremoniously dropped it to the ground and trampled it into the bright meadow grass until it was just a stain of scarlet tissue.
A small creek tumbled down the hill and Hannah bent over its rills to wash the blood from her hands and arms. Then, she calmly walked past Eiríkr's corpse and came back to Rosen.
"Promise me that this time, you'll leave him for the carrion eaters," she said, handing the knives over as if for a keepsake.
Pressing a sisterly kiss against her cheek, Hannah smiled at Rosen again and started her long trek back down the mountain.