Hello, everyone! It has been literal years since I first posted Juliet Dies in This, and I am finally posting the parallel fic about Claire! We got Wizards and a movie that won't have any relevance to this wonderful, horrible story that I intend to break everyone's hearts with.

Content/Spoiler warnings for the chapter: implied/referenced dismemberment, temporary POV character death, suicidal thoughts, self harm, flogging

Claire steeled herself. If this went wrong at all, she'd be dead. But if she didn't try, they'd all be dead.

As it was, Jim was already dead. The blast had been meant to kill four of them, so of course he was dead.

"Die, witch!" Claire screamed as she tackled Morgana through a portal into the Shadow Realm.

Disembodied, hollow, see-through, numb –

Claire took hold of the staff and ripped a portal back to the bridge over the canal.

"Break the staff!" Claire shouted, grabbing it from where it was slung across her back and throwing it towards her friends. Golden chains reached for the staff, but they wrapped around Claire's abdomen instead. Blinky grabbed Claire's arms as a second chain wrapped around her torso.

Three more golden chains wrapped themselves around Claire. One chain wrapped itself around her ankles. That one wouldn't do as much harm as the others since Claire wasn't kicking at Morgana in her attempt at escape. One chain wrapped itself around her upper arms and chest, ripping her arms away from Blinky's. The last chain wrapped itself around her neck. It hovered around her, loose, more like a waiting noose than a chokehold.

Blinky was backlit by purple light as Toby destroyed the staff, and he reached towards Claire again. Claire's lips parted, ready to scream, as the portal closed on his outstretched arm.

Her neck snapped before she could scream.

Claire closed her eyes, knowing she had several seconds left from one of Mr. Strickler's history lessons on the French Revolution.

What's here? A cup, closed in my true love's hand? Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end. O churl, drunk all, and left no friendly drop to help me after? I will kiss thy lips.

At least she'd be with Jim.

Haply some poison yet doth hang on them, to make me die with a restorative.

Draal and Vendel, too.

Thy lips are warm. Then I'll be brief. O happy dagger, this is thy sheath. There rust and –

"Did you really think I'd let you die?" Morgana sneered at Claire.

There were chains around Claire's arms and legs, all keeping her flush against the wall. Claire could barely rotate her wrists. She wanted to reach up and touch her neck.

Her neck must have been in better shape than Claire had thought. Whiplash, like Claire had looked behind herself as the car got rear-ended. It couldn't have snapped. She couldn't have died.

She was supposed to have died.

"Now, I was planning on bringing Merlin to the brink of death, over and over again, and only healing him enough so I could torture him again," Morgana said. She floated to Claire, hovering so close that Claire was made fully aware of just how short she was compared to Morgana.

"I'd do that until I could figure out which way I wanted his final death to occur." Morgana's claws closed around the crystal, and she yanked. Gold cracks appeared all over Claire's armor, and then her armor glowed purple as it was sucked into the crystal. A fearful whimper escaped Claire's lips.

"But of course, you and your friends took that away from me." Morgana frowned, and then she smiled. She transferred the crystal from her right hand to her prosthetic. "Now, here's the thing. I had no connection to Merlin's soul. His magic, yes, but not his soul. But you?"

"I… I broke the connection," Claire stammered.

The slap didn't hurt as much as the way Morgana's claws raked across Claire's cheek a moment afterwards.

"You weakened it, but your hubris has been your undoing all along. That connection between us will last for all of time. I don't care if you remember the way it hurt when your neck broke. I will kill you every way I can, and even death will not be your sanctuary, because I can always bring you back."

Claire had lost track of all the ways she had died. Starving, organs being ripped out, hanging from her wrists, getting slammed into large objects…

They all blurred together. Some part of Claire knew that they couldn't have logically all have happened all at once. But, she had no way of remembering the order, or how many times each way had happened. There was Now, there was the infinite and infinitesimal moment where everything that was after losing her armor happened, and there was Before. Before Morgana had taken Claire's armor. Before Claire had died for the first time. Before she had tackled Morgana. Before Claire had been possessed. Before she made the giant portal. Before she ever laid eyes on the Shadow Staff. Before was a million lifetimes ago.

Now was getting her back flayed open. Claire couldn't fully remember if she had been whipped before, or if she just had déjà vu. Or, of course, there was the possibility that five seconds ago was no longer Now and had been tossed into the blur.

It didn't matter. Her back hurt.

Her throat hurt, too. Every time Morgana had broken Claire's neck, she had healed it. But Morgana didn't heal Claire's throat from screaming, because screaming had not yet killed her.

Claire didn't want the pain. She didn't want to scream. And so, she bit her lips together.

Whimpers escaped her bitten-together lips each time Morgana brought down her golden whips onto Claire's back. Claire squeezed her eyes and bit her lips harder. Staying silent caused her to tense. Her muscles were all the more primed to be struck because they hurt more when taught and expecting the blow, but she didn't want to scream. Eventually, Claire fell silent. She continued to bite her lips together. Each time Morgana's whip raked across her back, Claire bit her lips a little tighter. Eventually, the pain on her back got so bad that she sucked her cheeks into her mouth and bit those too. She didn't want to scream, not again.

Claire didn't realize that Morgana had stopped flaying her back open until the Pale Lady was in front of her, grabbing Claire's face between her clawed fingers. Claire stayed silent and glared.

"So, you're going to be like that? Fine."

Morgana walked away from where Claire was being kept, causing the area to go dark.

Claire peeled her lips from her teeth, blood spilling from the wounds and mixing with her saliva. There was a new source of pain, yes, but that wasn't what caused silent tears to form in her eyes.

She hadn't died. She had resisted, and she hadn't died.

Some broken shadow of a smile slowly formed on Claire's face, and with it came a faint purple glow.

Is Jim actually dead, or does Claire just think he is? If you have read Juliet Dies in This, you already know. If you haven't, well, just wait and see 😉 (or go find out for yourself by reading that fic.)

All the italicized paragraphs were written by Shakespeare (except for the four-word flashback).