Threads of Fate Chapter 3

AN: Thanks so much for your support everyone! Let's do this.

Disclaimer: I don't own Coraline: talk to Neil Gaiman/Laika Studios.

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The first thing Coraline noticed was the picture frame on the bedside table; the green mantis had come alive, playfully waggling its antennae at her as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. The photograph it held was also in motion, and she couldn't help but giggle as the image of her two childhood friends from Michigan wrestled and romped, waving their arms and smiling.

Drowsy, she looked over toward the windows--it seemed to be the middle of the night, the moon large and full.

Turning down the thick, soft blanket, Coraline slowly lowered her toes to the floor, bracing herself for the hardwood's chill--but a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers darted out from under the bed and intercepted, sliding themselves over her feet. Their shiny doll's eyes winked up at her, little pink noses twitching. Surprised, she stared for a moment before a humming sound drew her attention to the corner, where her battered old desk was kept. In its place was a beautiful oak shelving unit, drawers adorned with silver handles, supported by clawed feet at each end. Atop this sat a brand-new computer, screen glowing softly in the dim light. Jumping up, she dashed over and touched the monitor reverently, dumbfounded. "Where'd this come from…?"

The smell of bacon and eggs caught her up in its hold, and suddenly she was ravenous. Making her way down the stairs, Coraline hesitated in the doorway at the sight of someone hovering over the stove, singing cheerily as they flipped a golden-brown pancake in a skillet with a deft twist of their wrist. 'What...?'

Seeming to hear her thoughts, the stranger immediately spun around--and that's when Coraline began to feel uneasy.

Staring at her was a face she recognized…and yet, it was not at all familiar.

Bright red lips split into a gleaming grin, teeth so white they were near-blinding.

Black hair perfectly coiffed into a salon-worthy, stylish bob.

Clothing that seemed absurdly dressy for cooking, topped with a spotless, lacy apron.

Lidless black button eyes, fixed on her with unnerving intensity.

"Ah, hello dear! You're finally awake! Just in time for breakfast, too--your punctuality is just one of the many, many things I love about you."

Coraline stepped warily over the threshold, fists clenched at her sides. "Who…are you?"

The woman gasped, a milk-white hand flying to her throat in affront. "Why, don't you know your own mother?"

The not-quite-Mrs.-Jones snatched up a nearby plate and began piling it high with delicious-looking food, far more than any one person could eat, and set it down on the kitchen table with a blissful sigh. "There you are, honey. Come eat, I made all this just for you!"

The girl stared, stunned. "You can't be my mother. She hates cooking, and her hair is always crazy in the morning."

The imposter simply cocked her head, unfazed.

"I don't think she even owns an outfit like that. And she doesn't have…" Here Coraline trailed off, pointing at her own eyes as they blinked in disbelief.

The woman twittered lightly, tapping her plastic eye with a manicured fingertip. "Buttons? Of course not, silly--only people who live here have them. I'm your Other Mother! Please, come and sit before your meal gets cold, won't you?"

Coraline felt like she was walking through molasses, time crawling by as she slowly reached the table and sat down carefully. Her stomach's rumbling threatened to overpower the alarm bells ringing in her head, and she felt herself reaching for the fork beside her plate without meaning to.

The Other Mother pulled out the chair beside her and perched on its edge, a little close for comfort, smile stretching so far across her too-pretty face the skin seemed liable to crack. "Go on, I know you're starving!"

Coraline's fork stopped inches from the sausage she'd been about to spear. "How do you know that?"

The woman steepled her hands beneath her chin, voice a velvet croon. "I love you, silly--of course I know everything about you."

Coraline felt there was something off with that logic, but hunger won out. Digging in, she ate her fill of the scrumptious offering before finally relaxing back with a satisfied murmur, patting her distended belly appreciatively.

The Other Mother whisked away the remains, the clack-clack of her stiletto heels almost musical as she deposited the soiled dishes in the sink. Clapping her hands, she turned sharply. "Oh, I almost forgot--that scratch on your knee. You really should be more careful, sweetie," she scolded gently, crouching down and reaching for the hem of Coraline's pajama leg.

Coraline jerked back, startled. "What are you--?!"

"Now, now," the Other Mother shushed, "I'm going to make it all better. Love can heal anything…" She gripped the struggling girl's ankle with unexpected strength and rolled the pant leg up to the thigh, subtly sneering at the hastily applied bandages covering the injury before stripping them away. Licking her painted lips, she planted a little kiss on the wound, not seeming to mind the scab's bumpy surface.

Coraline felt her breakfast come dangerously close to re-occurring, skin crawling as cold lips pressed to her cut. 'Yuck, how could she…?!'

Feeling somehow violated, she yanked her pajama bottoms back to rights as the Other Mother withdrew, smiling. "There, that should help. Now I think you need a nap--you look a bit unwell, angel!"

'Yeah, who wouldn't, after that?' Coraline thought, avoiding the Other Mother's outstretched hand and standing on her own. "Uh-huh…"

The Other Mother escorted her to the stairs, stopping Coraline's ascent with a cool touch. "Would you like me to tuck you in? I'd be more than--"

"No thanks!" the girl blurted, eager to put some space between herself and the eerie doppelganger. "I'm, uh, totally fine by myself. Really."

"Alright. If you need anything, you know what to say!"

Curiosity piqued, Coraline glanced back. "What's that?"

The Other Mother grinned. "'I Wish…'"

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The preteen lurched up, dragged from her slumber by a stab of pain. "Ye-ow! What--?"

Cat dodged her flailing limbs, tail lashing from side to side. Coraline frowned at him and cradled her injured finger--he had bitten her again, in the same spot as the day before. "Wybie's cat…? What are you doing here?"

Cat ignored her, pawing at the blankets draped over her legs.

Brushing him aside angrily, she stood--and shuddered as the cold from the floorboards seeped through the soles of her feet. 'Huh. What was I expecting…?'

Remembering the cute slippers from her odd dream, the girl gasped. "That's right!" Sitting back on the bed, she tugged up her pajama pants, eyes widening as she pulled them higher and higher and no scrape was revealed. "It's gone…!"

Awed, she paid no mind to Cat, who darted out the open window and disappeared into the mist.

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Mornings in the Jones family household tended to follow a pattern of chaos; Coraline would take the kitchen apart looking for something edible, her father would make unhelpful suggestions ("How about salami and some leftover deviled eggs? Yum!"), and her mother would work on her laptop while nursing a large mug of black coffee and a perpetual headache.

Today was different.

Coraline wandered downstairs, mind in a fog, trying to make sense of the impossible dream. Her knee looked as though she'd never banged it up in the first place. And she wasn't the least bit hungry...

After all, she'd already had a rather large breakfast.

Her mother looked up from her computer screen long enough to notice the blood on her daughter's hand. "Oh, Coraline. What have you done to yourself now?"

Coraline stuck out her tongue at the back of her mother's head. 'Well, this one's definitely the real deal.'

Rinsing her pinky under warm water, she wondered why Wybie's cat suddenly seemed to dislike her so much. He'd been fine before…

Deciding on a cup of soothing English tea, a gift from Misses Forcible and Spink, she carried the steaming drink back up to her room and sipped at it while she dressed for the day. Recalling the pair's love of the occult, especially fortune-telling, Coraline finished all but the dregs and peered at the bottom of the cup.

On the left, a clump of tea leaves had congealed into a ball; on the right, they formed a brackish line that wound its way across the porcelain in a strand.

"Never had much faith in this sort of crap anyway," Coraline muttered, tromping back down the steps toward the front door.

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Dorothea watched from the shade of the porch as Wybie rode off on his motorbike, freezing despite being wrapped in the thickest bathrobe in all of Oregon. She felt sorry for driving off the girl he'd brought over yesterday so cruelly, but it had been for the best. 'Yes, best that no attachments are made. Besides, soon it won't matter…'

Cat's low purring answered her unspoken musings. 'It's far too late for that.'

Dorothea rubbed along his curved spine, feeling older than ever. "Children these days, hmph. Doesn't that girl see that I'm trying to help her…?" Her eyes slid closed, mind drifting back to her youth. 'Don't make the same mistake we did…'

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"Abby, you've got it all wrong…again."

The girl in question threw up her hands, flour sprinkling her shoulders like snowflakes. "Who has time for this, anyway?! Standing around making pie crusts when it's nice out, for a change." Wiping her dusty fingers right on her dress, Abigail abandoned her deformed lump of dough in favor of strapping on her 'outside' shoes--oversized galoshes borrowed from their father, which she had nicknamed the "seven-league boots."

Dorothea continued to knead her own dough ball, dismayed. "I thought this might be something we could do together…"

Abigail glanced up, surprised.

Dorothea coughed and looked away. "A-anyway, you need as much practice as you can get. How are you going to cook for your family someday?"

The younger twin smirked. "Mama says it don't matter--I'm cute enough to get away with plain old anything."

Grimacing at her sister's horrible grammar, Dorothea considered this. 'Mama always did like her best…but I'll show her that I'm just as good. Charm isn't everything.'

"You know," she said aloud, annoyed, "we're twins. That means I am just as cute as you, any day."

But Abigail was already half way out the door, clomping along noisily. "Not-uh! You're the stuffy one, everybody says so!" Laughing, she snatched up her pail of gardening tools and took off full-tilt, stumbling occasionally over the enormous footwear.

Dorothea tried not to feel hurt. 'That's not true…'

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Mama had barely said a word all night; the slice of freshly-baked pie her eldest daughter had served with a proud, expectant smile had gone untouched and unacknowledged. She sat in the parlor, wringing a tattered handkerchief in her hands, listening to the radio.

The volume was too low to hear most of what was said, but Dorothea caught a few things: trouble all over, dangerous and powerful men, faraway places that menaced from across the ocean…

Impending war.

She discussed this one night with her sister, but Abigail hardly seemed worried. "That's a long ways off, if it's even going to happen at all. And we live in America--nothing bad happens here."

Dorothea knew this was far from true, felt it was her duty to open her sibling's eyes to the world around her. "Listen, that's a ridiculous thing to say."

"Is not," Abigail snorted, winding a length of pink yarn through her fingers in a game of cat's cradle. "Superman lives here. What could some Jerkin do against him?"

"German," Dorothea corrected, grudgingly grasping the string and tugging it to form the first set of shapes in the game, "and he's only a comic book character! Look, if America is so great, why's it so hard for us to live here? Remember why we had to move from our last house?"

Abigail immediately pulled away, letting the yarn drop soundlessly to the ground. "The neighbors there were dumb, is all. It's not like that everywhere--"

"Yes, it is. Don't you ever listen to the news? Hear the gossip that goes around? The things they say about families like ours…"

"You shut your mouth!" Abigail cried, startling the black kitten sleeping on their shared bed. "There's nothing wrong with us!"

Dorothea stood, eyes flashing. "We're different! America hates different, and it sure lets you know--why do you think Papa went off and joined the army?! Nobody else would give him work because of us--"

A quick slap shocked her into silence.

Abigail shivered, tears streaming down and dripping off her chin. "It's not like that everywhere. Not everyone thinks that way. It can't be…"

Dorothea rubbed her sore cheek, expression dark. "Life isn't a fairytale. We have to do our best to fit in, to survive. To be normal."

Abigail ran to the window and pressed her forehead to the glass. "I wish it was a fairytale. I wish…"

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Mama had fallen asleep on the couch, her husband's kerchief clutched in her small, brown fist.

Behind the sofa, within the wall, something stirred.

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Dorothea dabbed her eyes and found them moist. She squinted through her glasses at the Pink Palace, looming on the horizon, and spat bitterly on the wooden floor. "Wishes do come true."

Cat silently agreed.

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"What took you so long, Wybourne?"

Said boy scratched the back of his head nervously, dislodging a few leaves in the process. "Eheh…sorry. I slept in pretty late."

Coraline frowned but left it at that, climbing aboard the motorbike. 'I wonder if he still feels weird about what happened at his house…I know I do. His Grandma is so mean…'

But if he was upset, he didn't say as much.

The drive to school was filled with the usual one-sided chatter, Wybie talking about his latest achievements in his workshop or the newest freaky-looking bug Cat had left on his windowsill. Coraline only half heard, waiting for the awkward tone that would herald the apology she was waiting for.

He screeched to a halt in the junior high parking lot, supporting their collective weight with a foot braced on the asphalt. "Hey, Jonesy, listen…"

'Here we go,' she thought, crossing her arms and perking her ears.

Wybie itched at his tilted neck, mask up over his hair, eyes downcast. "T-there's something I've been m-meaning to say to you." He scrubbed harder at his skin, flushing.

Coraline waited a few moments before prompting him: "Yeah…?"

He gulped loudly, pushing his gloved palm against the side of his head and massaging it in tight circles, seemingly to ward off a headache. "Uh, you know what, I'll tell you later. Yep, definitely later," he croaked. Reaching up, he made to swing his mask back down, trying to hide.

Coraline glared and grabbed his arm to stop him; he flinched and turned decidedly pink, but said nothing. "Just tell me, loser. It's not like I don't feel the same way."

He whirled around on his seat and gaped at her. "Y-y-you do?!"

"Sure," she said breezily, flicking a stray lock of blue hair out of her face. "Your Grandma was totally bizarre yesterday. But I don't blame you or anything, so don't worry about it."

His face instantly fell, before a bemused expression swept over it. "Wait, my Grandma? Yesterday? What do you mean?"

Coraline gawked at him. "She totally freaked out. Don't you remember?"

Wybie seemed distracted, unable to meet her eyes. "Well, she does that a lot. I really should get going…"

She hopped off the bike, suddenly apprehensive. "Okay…we're still going out sometime, though, right? We didn't get to yesterday…"

His head shot up again. "G-going out?"

"Yes, exploring! You suggested it…duh," she growled, the strange nausea swirling through her again. Trying to laugh it off, she socked his arm harder than necessary. "Forgetful much?"

He was barely listening, obviously embarrassed and dying to get away. "Haha, sure, alright…later."

Coraline gave him a brisk, military-style salute and ran off toward the cinderblock building.

Wybie watched her go, heart feeling as though it were being abraded by sandpaper with every beat. 'What did I think was gonna happen? How stupid…'

The constant, low-level pounding in his head made itself known; he bit his lip, wincing. "Ouch…"

The besotted boy rode home alone, hurting in more ways than one.

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"April? I can't find my spectacles. Have you seen them?"

Miriam Forcible puttered around the basement apartment, feeling about in vain for her glasses. "April, really, give me a hand. I can't see a blasted thing, and Hamish got into the fruitcake again...terrible, terrible mess in the pantry."

But her pink-haired, portly counterpart didn't respond.

Blinded, Miriam tripped over the edge of the divan and staggered, knocking into the wall. A clattering noise told her that she'd tucked the lenses within her ample cleavage and forgotten about them again, and now they'd fallen to the floor.

"Ah, there we have it. April, you always were nearer to the ground--be a dear and come get them for me, won't you?"

A full minute of silence passed, and finally Miriam bent to retrieve them herself, joints creaking. "Now I've got you, pesky things!" Straightening up, she unfolded the spectacles and looked through them, seeking her flat-mate. "April, honestly, where have you--?"

April Spink was lying slumped over on the couch, motionless.

Miriam drew up to her full height with a gasp. "April?!" Rushing over as fast as she could, the old woman sat next to her best friend and rival, fussing.

The shorter woman was breathing slowly, relaxed, as though she were in a deep sleep.

Her little finger was rubbed raw.

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AN: This is possibly the longest I've gone between updates! Sorry.

I was writer's blocking hardcore, so I wrote an 11pg. one-shot to help myself work through it--and ended up hating it. So it'll never be posted, sadly :P The good news is it cleared up the block and I was finally able to get this chapter out!

Okay, reviewer Q&A time:

Cohen's Chicas: Yup, I wanted Grandma to be pretty old--she's supposed to be 13 in 1940, and 82 in the present (2009).

Siient Forces: Well, I'm a night owl--usually I'm up til around 5-6am, and then I sleep all day (maybe it's more like a vampire... XD ). So I get my rest, no worries!

Lexi: She's got her reasons…muhaha.

Quick note about the setting: I'm trying to keep things as not-confusing as possible, so let me know if I'm failing/succeeding, lol. It's my own fault for making a story that takes place in the past, present, alternate dimensions…sigh.

Also, Abigail--her nickname is spelled 'Abby,' simply because alternate forms like 'Abi' or 'Abbie' irritate me (if your name is Abigail and that's how you spell your nickname, no offense!)

Another thing--World War II & racism were issues during Dorothea's childhood, but I'm not going to go into too much detail about them beyond what's needed. I will say that Hitler was a monster but Germans as a whole are a wonderful people/culture, and racism is horrendous. The End.

Things are only going to get weirder from here on out…

Shout out to you wonderful reviewers! I love you all! :D

Thanks for reading and see you soon!

---258.