A/N: The ending of Bly Manor just left me a sobbing wreck so I decided to make my own end... or rather sequel? I do apprectiate the canon, tho, so I tried my best to connect my story to it. I also just wanted to let you know that the story is already finished and will be published in three segments + Prologue. It's beta-read but I need to tell you that none of us is a native speaker, so there might be some mistakes. But we tried our best.

Anyways, let me preface this with a few warnings: I'd rate this fanfiction as K+ to F, but if you're very sensitive to topics like depressions or a moderate description of injuries please be warned. Also, I've tried to look up a few things to keep the fic as realistic as possible (as far as this is possible for a ghost story bUt iT's A lOvE stOrY), so the mysterious coincidences I've mentioned in the summary truly took place this year.

Prologue

Red.

It was as if her whole surroundings were tinted in that faded reddish colour. As if a sheer haze lingered over her mind and body. As if she had developed some sort of colour-blindness. Every contrast and every detail were there, but it seemed like some sort of strange, twisted, alternate reality.

Red.

The colour was faded and vibrant at the same time, it was dark like a rose but also bright like the warmth of a chimney fire. It was like a restless dream, like a headache, like a buzz, like a lover's first kiss – a feeling like your knees were about to give in. She looked down to her feet, scrutinizing her body. Placing one hand on the back of her head.

Red.

She herself was dyed in that colour. Her clothes, her skin. And all felt so dull, so empty, so hollow. Her ears rang in a deep pitch, her whole head seemed to vibrate. The other hand raised in front of her face, she looked past her fingers which were slowly moving, trying to wake herself up from this reverie. Was she dreaming? Was this even real?

Red.

She turned, noticing that there was absolutely nothing. Just one instant earlier, she was standing there beside that suburban lane, surrounded by trees painted in those beautiful auburn colours from the onset of autumn. Those gloomy streetlamps just there, about to go to sleep, as the new day had already awoke. She turned again, more hectically this time. And again there was only this colour which seemed to have devoured everything around her.

Red.

Then, suddenly, this strange noise inside her head stopped, shattered like glass as it was interrupted by a voice, unknown yet somehow familiar. She turned again, trying to figure out where the voice had echoed from in all this nothingness. And the red was gone.

"I'm surprised to see you here!"

The wedding had been great. Jamie got this warm feeling inside her chest, a faint smile growing on her face when she reflected on the event. She looked out the small window, her forehead leaned against it, down to the delicate carpeting of clouds beneath. The landscape below them was now too far away to even be recognisable. The fading sunlight reflecting off the cloudy carpet seemed like a notional farewell to the land of opportunity, her former, bygone home, which connected her to so many memories and even more pain.

It felt very odd talking to Flora as if she were a stranger to her, nothing but a distant relative of her father Henry, despite them having so much history together. Flora and her were connected by so much more than just a lousy lie of made up relations. Jamie's attempt to tell her the truth about Bly Manor had been futile and left a rather bittersweet taste, as it was nothing more than a sad tale with a deeper meaning in Flora's eyes it seemed. But maybe it was alright this way, maybe it was meant to be. If the grey-haired woman had learned one thing in her 56 years on this damn planet it was to accept happenings as they come. Most of the time there's simply nothing else to do. And that insight too, was rather bittersweet, she thought.

She checked the time. Two hours twenty until landing. Somehow, the elderly woman felt relief inside her chest to be home again soon. Spending all those years alone had made her even more introvert than before, which was saying something. She had become less tolerant of crowds of people and tried to avoid meaningless conversations. All she needed were her plants and Teddy. Both were great listeners, both were understanding and both seemed to know that silence can be way more healing than a thousand empty words.

Jamie was tired. Her eyes were getting weary and her head heavy. The past few days had been exhausting in a number of ways. Still, her thoughts seemed louder than usual and she felt more unruly and restless. She chalked it up to the upcoming full moon on the weekend. She'd always been influenced by occurrences like this, suffering from headaches when the weather was changing and having trouble finding sleep in the waxing moon. Generally, she was quite sensitive to her surroundings, as if she could sense all those energies within and around everything, and the older she got, the more she realised and also appreciated this connection. She had always assumed there was a deeper meaning behind those perceptions. Maybe it was even more than that, maybe some kind of sign really. Maybe from another world, maybe from Dani. At least she tried to believe in this.

Dani, she thought. For a brief moment she closed her eyes, trying to swallow all the uprising memories down. Not here, not now. Although it was decades ago, every memory and every thought of her beautiful lover still hurt like falling into a needle pit. Of course, in some ways her grief was getting easier over the years, yet in other ways it was getting harder to bear. Though she had already gotten used to this new kind of reality – a reality without Dani – life as she had known it was gone for good.

Over time, the sadness was no longer omnipresent, but instead, it had begun to wash over her in waves, bringing her to the brink of unconsciousness with its ferocity and sorrow, then receding, leaving her feeling gruesomely empty for days. The awareness that she would never be able to see or hear or hug or kiss the blonde woman again was almost too much to bear. In fact, it was unnerving, almost enraging, that life seemed to go on, and all she could do was swallow her feelings and try to live on.

Subconsciously, she twiddled with her engagement ring again while dwelling on all those heavy thoughts. This Claddagh ring – symbolising love, loyalty and friendship – was the only thing left of Dani... the only thing - except of course her corpse at the bottom of the lake at Bly Manor.