Note: This chapter deals with very heavy topics, with discussions revolving around sexual assault.
Chapter Thirty-Two | Poison, and Other Dreams
Fucking Alfred.
That weird, far too polite, far too jovial maniac with a goddamn wheel strapped to his robes was waving at her frantically as she stepped down the path to the Forbidden Woods, a gazebo overlook marking the last bit of Yharnam before a staircase wound from right to left, leading to a small tower that was the entrance to the place.
And in her way was Alfred.
"You."
"Yes, me! I remember you, Hunter! How went your venture into Old Yharnam?"
"I'm not talking to you."
"But we are! I see you've gotten no less rude since last we met. You will not avail me of your story?"
"It was old. It was all on fire. I killed beasts." She let out a pained huff as he leaned against a pillar, standing directly in her way. "Can you please not block the path, I'm trying to get to Byrgenwerth."
"Adventuring into forbidden lands once more I see. Alas, as an outsider I see no real trouble in it, but if you were a Yharnamite…" he tilted his head, something dangerous flickering in his eyes and sending a spike of concern burrowing into Catherine's gut. "That would be another story entirely. But please, all I ask for is a tale. You've come from far away to this fabled city and I wish to hear of your travels. Would you grant me this kindness, Dame Catherine?"
The man was unhinged, that much she could tell.
Oh, he put on a good front, but looking at him now she saw him for what he truly was. A fanatic. She'd seen it in Barty Crouch's eyes when he ranted and raved about the return of his lord. Even then there was a peppy charisma about him, but that didn't change the fact that he was madder than a rabid dog and well deserving of being put down.
But this man, with his patchy beard and kindly demeanor. This man was far more dangerous than he had any right to be, and she had no wish to spark the zealotry she knew to be laying dormant deep inside.
She could kill him, undoubtedly. It would be an effort and an enormous waste of time, but given enough chances Catherine was sure she could whittle him down bit by bit, so long as he didn't choose to flee.
No. Catherine didn't want to spend her time in this city wondering if a madman with a carriage wheel would try and cave her head in because she'd slighted him in some way. Things were already difficult enough without having that bit of concentrated insanity looming over her shoulders.
"You remember my name."
"And you mine! Marvelous, really."
"Great. Now move."
"A story for passage, I'm afraid."
Fingers twitching, Catherine wondered if she could cut his head off and be done with it, before throwing the thought away and metaphorically stomping it into a spongy paste.
"I killed everyone in Hemwick."
"Really? Pray tell."
"I saved a girl a week or so ago, and she mentioned witches. She was scared, more than any kid should be about a nighttime story parents use to keep their children in line, so I thought I'd look into it. The place was an organ factory, full of corpses on corpses, so I decided it best to burn it all to the ground."
Humming and hawing, Alfred nodded his head along to her terse and unimaginative tale as if it were gospel from the mouth of Christ himself.
"Incredible. So that was your pyre I saw burning into the mountainside?"
Catherine grunted.
"Oh, you truly are a hunter of few words. I must thank you for putting an end to those savages and their ritual debauchery. Damned followers of Mensis, all of them." He bowed his head slightly, curls bobbing. "You've saved me quite the trouble. Were Logarius himself still standing alongside us he would be leading the charge upon those heathens."
"Logarius?"
"Ah! The leader of my band of brothers. We are the Executioners!" Alfred proclaimed, proudly gesturing at his robes and the mark emblazoned in silver thread upon his chest. "Master Logarius, though he be a martyr saint, was the one to enforce the will of the gods upon the Vilebloods. Vampires and tawdry aristocrats, tainted with the blood of the unwashed…"
Hardly conscious of her own movements, Catherine took a step back at the look in his eyes, trying not to show her shock at the realization that this man wasn't just a maniac. He was genocidal.
Never show him magic, she told herself. Never.
"...well within the needs of the people, the Church decided to rain down the fury of Oedon upon those sullied souls. May those hapless fools be damned to the coldest of hells for their blasphemy."
"Yes. Definitely. Blasphemers all of them." Catherine pointed past him, towards the staircase. "May I go now?"
"Oh, yes. Of course. Please, forgive my wandering words. Master Logarius was dear to me, and I hold his memory in great respect."
"Completely understanda-" A strange, choking whine crawled from her throat as Alfred took her hand and brushed his lips over her knuckles, her lips curling and blood running cold.
"Till we meet again, my friend. I wish you the best in your endeavors."
All Catherine could do was slam her tongue against the roof of her mouth and let out a strangled groan, revulsion rippling through her like waves across the sea as she strode past him without a second glance.
As soon as she turned the corner out of sight she rubbed the back of her hand across her armour, sighing at the palpable relief that washed over her as the familiar grime of blood and dirt once more lay it's claim upon her burnished skin. Still, an echo of disgust lingered in her spine, making her roll her shoulders in an attempt to push it away and forget the fact that that man's lips touched her knuckles in any manner that didn't resemble her punching him in the mouth.
God, she wished she could turn around that second and break his jaw. But, unfortunately, Catherine had scholars to interrogate and a forest undoubtedly filled to the brim with all manner of horrible creatures, all of which eager to tear her limb from limb.
What really got her curious was why exactly Byrgenwerth had been sanctioned so thoroughly by the Church.
She knew them to have a rocky past, but Gehrman spoke of them - particularly Willem and the once proud student Laurence - with fondness. Speaking of, she hadn't yet put to mind the idea that by touching his skull in the Cathedral, she had been drawn into the memories of a dead man.
Not the memories she drew from the blood, but some spectre of Laurence trapped in bone and the flaking mass of fur and hair, the two blended together such that the line that separated them seemed more metaphorical than physical.
There was no sanity to be found in Yharnam, no tales nor memories that made sense. It was all a light show of blood and iron, of pain before the fall of body or mind.
Reaching the door of the tower, Catherine tried to pull at the handle only to curse at the door as she felt magic at her fingertips, some manner of ward cloaking the entire building.
"The password…" a voice hissed out from behind the door, all brambles and crumbling stones. "The password… got to close the door…"
Something in Catherine pulled away, a tangible sense of wrong emanating from the tower now that she had put any mind to it. It lay stagnant behind the wards, but she could sense how it festered in the very fabric of the magic that clung to the place. It reeked of death, of a long, dark, inescapable cold.
"Who's there? Who's there?" The voice continued calling, frantic yet exhausted. "Don't you wish you could hear them when they are coming? You mustn't… oh, no. No. Bit me. He was bleeding."
Her breath caught, raising her hand to knock on the door and giving it two short raps. Silence echoed after the call of flesh against wood, until it was once more interrupted.
"The password?"
Something deep in her bones reared up, and she spoke. "Fear the Old Blood."
The door swung open with a sense of finality, revealing behind it a stooped corpse garbed in black, its coat patchy and torn at the edges. Naught was left of any flesh, only a barren skeleton slowly being eaten away by the winds that crept through the tower.
Her eyes burned and Catherine ground a single knuckle into her forehead reflexively, feeling as though the horrid pain was thrumming from beneath her scar like the march of a warband. She knew it wasn't, knew it was something else, like that skull she had crushed in her hands during her first few days in this city only to promptly feel something skitter into her very mind.
Throat wet and lips dry, she turned away from the body and continued her trek towards the forest proper. Immediately upon leaving the tower, she found herself following a winding path, turning serpentine down the hillside and flanked by sinister trees and gravestones moulded over with age, slowly being reclaimed by the woods that grew up all around her, forming a broken canopy sparse with leaves and littered instead with tattered spiderwebs or sickly bluish mushrooms.
Out of sight and thusly out of mind of the whispering corpse of the gatekeeper, Catherine finished her wandering down the path to end up standing before an unlit lamp and a heavily gated farmhouse built into the side of a crevasse. After snapping and bringing the ethereal light to life, she tried peeking around the edges of the farmhouse to see another strange elevator shaft running down the mountainside, but not before having to carve her way through a small flock of snapping, barking crows.
Leaving the corpses behind, she decided to follow the path. If worst came to worst, she could simply blow a hole in the side of the farmhouse and follow the chains down. She had become awfully familiar with falling to her death, so the thought of another silent trip down to a sudden painful stop seemed like a bit of efficient cartography rather than suicidal madness.
A tiny bridge took her over the canyon into the forest proper, the road ahead - if it could even be called that - muddy and winding, more of a lack of grass than anything that could resemble a footpath.
She reflexively ducked as a rifle cracked ahead, unflinching as a bullet tore through her shoulder and rocketed out her back. The gunfire was followed by whooping and hollering, a trio of beastmen rushing out from behind the trees and god damnit she really should have noticed that smouldering campfire.
Taking her hammer in one hand, Catherine pulverized the first man to dare run her way, caving in his head with a single swing and burying it in his torso, spine crushed and blood pouring out of his distended jaw like a faucet.
It was almost comical, like a funny paper cartoon, if it wasn't for the fact that he fell to the ground moaning and jerking involuntarily, every synapse in the corpses flattened mind firing at rapid speed as it toppled over.
One man shrieked, holding a pitchfork over his shoulders and rushing at her.
Pressing the hammer to her back and muttering a sticking charm, she drew the short sword out of its holster and ducked, lopping off one of his feet at the ankle and sending him sprawling over the edge of the ravine behind her, screaming to his death.
The last, a woman, threw down her rifle. She looked far closer to turning than the two she had just cut down, face twisted into a half-muzzle and the fur that covered it pasted over with bits of rotten meat, eaten raw, judging by the few flecks of fresh, pinked flesh scattered amongst the rest.
Lazily, Catherine pointed her wand and blew the woman's head off with a silent blasting curse, showering the forest floor with gore. Her face twisted into a grimace as a few chunks of viscera landed on her hat, taking it off and brushing them away with the back of her hand.
"Why is it always so messy?" she asked no one, putting her hat back on and twisting it until it sat firmly, just above her ears.
Paying more attention so as to avoid another embarrassing ambush, Catherine walked forward. Hardly ten paces in her foot pressed against an errant plank, thinking nothing of the way it sank into the muddied ground until she heard a faint click from somewhere above.
Curious, she looked up, only to see a log come screaming at her from the canopy, littered with rusted spikes and was that a saw blade?
"Shi-"
Catherine tried to dodge, but could barely move more than a few inches before the log crashed into her head, one of the spikes firmly spearing through her face, shattering her cheekbone and every tooth along with it.
She was dimly aware of the inertia carrying her up, up, up as the log continued in its path, more spikes lodging themselves in her chest as she curled inward, coughing and spitting blood over the ruin of her face.
Catherine died, broken and swinging above a muddy path.
-::-
A feeble groan echoed out in the Dream, Catherine dragging herself to her feet and feeling more embarrassed than anything to have died from what was a fairly easy to recognize trap.
A trap of all things.
And god, it was so obvious in hindsight. How had she not noticed it? A plank set across a muddy path, perfectly perpendicular and practically screaming 'step on me!' Perhaps her time spent back at Hogwarts was having more of an influence on her than she thought.
Catherine had been… floaty, as of late. It was the word she would use to describe herself, running along on something close to cloud nine, if she tried to forget the fact that Yharnam existed.
Honestly, she had. Her head was still back home, wrapped up in Hermione and so warm she thought she just might burn alive from the sweetness of it all.
But now she was back here, and conflicted didn't even begin to describe how she felt.
Yharnam brought with it a freedom she had never known before. No judgement, no prying eyes, only the constant and unending grapple between life and death. Either she conquered, or she lost - and even losing carried with it little to no consequence. She always came back, after all.
She huffed out a laugh as she realized she'd actually begun to sort of like the place. Not in a 'cottage by the sea' sort of familiar comfort, but in a way she imagined some soldiers never quite felt the same after coming home, always longing for that one little spark of adrenaline to go soaring through their veins and leave them feeling more alive than they ever had before.
Yharnam was freedom. It was a prison of the bold and reckless, the damned and unwanted. It was chaos, captured within the iron fist of a Church with no scruples, dictating to all their will and within that allowing that special brand of madness to bloom like the bright pink petals of an oleander flower. Beautiful, yet so terribly, terribly poisonous.
"Oh god." Fingers pressed against her temples, Catherine stared at the garden with startling realization in her eyes. "I've truly gone mad."
"If you're asking yourself that, you've surely got some scrap of sanity that yet remains."
"Gehrman."
"Girl."
She studied the old man, his peg leg and that solemn frown, permanently etched into his face by wrinkles and the slowly creeping miasma of loneliness. "You know my name," she reminded him.
He barked out a harsh laugh, fingers rattling away at the armrests of his wheelchair. "You'll always be girl to me. Girl."
"Your affections are blinding."
"Seems you've been learning a mite of proper speech as well."
"Fuck me. I'm turning into you."
"Ah. Now that would be a curse, wouldn't it?"
Something in his voice made Catherine pause, before thinking better of asking any questions of the man. "I'd like to speak with the Doll, if you know where she is."
"No time for a relic like myself, eh? You'll find her behind the workshop with the Messengers." His face twisted into something bitter. "The Doll has been strange as of late. Talking and chattering and mucking about. You're to blame for that, I suppose?"
"I gave her a gift."
"A bauble for a puppet. What possessed you to do such a thing?"
"I thought it would suit her."
Gehrman muttered angrily, something low and resentful about womenfolk. "Go then. Make sure the thing isn't getting up to too much trouble."
"Jealous?"
"I've no need of gifts, or whatever trifling fancy you'd believe to qualify as such. Let me rest, girl. Bother me another time."
Sighing to herself, Catherine strode past the man and took the short path that wound around the workshop proper, turning the corner to see the Doll talking happily at the messengers as they bobbed and chittered at her every word.
The Doll truly looked… human, Catherine would say. Her hands clasped together and a smile on her face that shouldn't have been physically possible to achieve, what with her being all clasps and joints and rigid porcelain.
"Hey," she called out, rapping her knuckles on the side of the workshop. "What are you getting up to?"
"Ah, Catherine!" The Doll clapped once, whirling around to face her. "I was just speaking with the little ones, although I'm afraid they're unable to return the gesture." She pointed at them. "Look! I made them hats."
Slowly blinking, Catherine squinted and looked down at the tiny things to see that yes, the Doll had made them hats. Miniature, frumpy top hats made of thin, rigid strips of leather and cloth wrappings tied to their heads with bits of string.
They were adorable.
She couldn't stop herself from grinning at the sight, looking back at the Doll to see her still smiling. "You did that?"
"Yes! You offered me a gift, so I thought I might do the same. It made me feel…" she trailed off, looking slightly lost, yet still almost whimsical if the shine in her eyes was anything to speak of. "It made me feel. I don't believe I've ever felt a thing, except for my love for you hunters, and even that pales in comparison to this- this joy."
"Feels good to do something nice for someone, doesn't it?"
"Yes! Precisely. You've given me much to ponder." The Doll seemed to settle down for a second, hands clasped in front of her waist as they often were and a serene expression on her face. "I've never pondered before."
"I'm happy for you."
"Thank you, Catherine. Thank you for teaching me this."
"You don't need to thank me. It was only a gift."
"I have been around a very long time, a century at least. Not once have I ever received a gift."
It was Catherine's turn to pause, frowning. Were hunters, Dreamers, really so inconsiderate?
Sure, she had her reservations about the Doll the first time they had met, scared out of her wits and trying to wrestle with the idea that she had been transported to another world, a nightmare compared to her own. But, given time, the Doll had grown on her. Become something close to a friend.
No. She was a friend, and Catherine could say that with utmost confidence.
Her mind cast back to her latest conversation with Arianna and the trepidatious way in which she spoke about hunters. The soft awe in every word that slipped from her lips and fluttered across the room to light upon Catherine's ears. She looked at her as an anomaly, something that broke the mould in an insignificant, yet terribly unpredictable way.
She recalled Gehrman's first words to her. How he spoke of the Doll as nothing but a servant, an automaton, a plaything for the hunters that lingered in this place for a moment of refuge.
Oh god.
Catherine shuddered, remembering the exact words. "You are welcome to use whatever you find. Even the Doll, should it please you."
He couldn't be saying what she was thinking he was saying, could he?
Horror in her bones and face chilled like ice, every mete of blood yanked away to fuel the growing sense of dread in her gut, Catherine looked over the Doll and prayed she was not correct.
"Has anyone…"
The words seemed beyond her, the thought alone that that man, a mentor of sorts, would allow such a horrid thing to occur within his own walls, perhaps had even done himself… god. Like liquid fear, those fingers closed around her throat and left her feeling more nauseous than she had ever felt in her entire life, sick bubbling and roiling like the ocean itself.
"Catherine?"
She almost wanted to cry.
"Has anyone ever hurt you? Touched you? The other hunters. Have they- have they…"
Fuck.
"Have they hurt you?"
"Oh? Whatever do you mean by that?"
Catherine prayed she was wrong, but the way he spoke was far too sinister. Too lecherous to be anything else.
"Did they touch you where they shouldn't have? Done things to you they shouldn't have done?" Her heart stuttered, pained in its every motion. "Has Gehrman hurt you?"
"I have been… hurt on a few occasions. Some Dreamers have taken their blade to me, others their fists, raging at the task given unto them," the Doll recited dryly, every bit of humanity that Catherine had just seen infused into the woman like a holy tincture stripped away. "Gehrman has always been distant, but never has he laid a hand upon me."
"Have they ever tried to take more, to-"
"To take as they would an unwilling woman?"
"Y- yes."
"They have."
In an instant, Catherine's fear was replaced by an unbridled, reckless fury. A murderous fervor that she knew would not leave her until she had carved her way through the forest and laid to waste every beggar and monster that called it home. She knew, deep down, that if she came across any other Dreamer she would be asking a single, lonesome question, the answer to which would mean life or a painful death far beyond even her own imagination.
It took her a few moments to realize she was crying. Ugly, messy tears that rippled down her face and left her eyes stained red.
"When I'm gone from the Dream. When I'm- when I'm finally gone, you need to kill anyone who dares do such a thing. Anyone who hurts you in any way. Drive a knife through their gut, slit their throat, choke them with their own innards. Whatever you do, you hurt them and you make it stick."
Her gut lurched as the Doll's expression shifted to that of confusion. "Why would I do such a thing?"
"Because it's- because what they did was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.. It's- it's not- fuck. You can't- it's not okay. It's awful. It's one of the most horrible things you can do to another person. I'm-" She choked on her words, a strangled gasp boiling in her throat. "I'm so sorry."
"But… I am a Doll."
"No!" Catherine smashed her fist against the wall. "You're not! You're not just- you're not a Doll! You're a person, damnit! You're a person, with feelings and wants and- even if you weren't it's still not okay!" Her fingers itched, straying towards her wand. "I'm going to kill him. I'm going to fucking kill him."
"Who?"
"Gehrman! For letting this happen! For encouraging it!"
She went to march but the Doll had grasped her wrist in a single, flickering motion, almost too fast for her to see. Catherine lurched, trying to pry herself away from the woman but finding herself instead caught in a steely, impossibly strong grip.
"Please, don't."
"Let me go," she growled. "He deserves to die."
"I cannot let you do that. The curse upon Gehrman, his tenure in this Dream, it would fall unto you. He is the caretaker of this place, and a caretaker must always occupy these walls, lest the whole of it fall to ruin."
"You would-"
"Be taken with it. I do not fear death, Catherine, but I take joy in guiding hunters. I must thank you for that, for aiding me in realizing that I am more than I once thought myself, but I cannot allow you to do such a thing. I would not let the first to guide me suffer such a fate."
Shoulders heaving, Catherine threw herself into the Doll, wrapping her arms around the woman's waist and squeezing her as tight as she could without hurting her. "I'm so sorry," she murmured, face pressed against her ribs and chest. "I'm so, so sorry."
"Do not cry for me, Catherine. Please."
"You'll never be hurt again, not as long as I still breathe. That's a promise," she said, pulling away to look up at the Doll, having forgotten until then how imposingly tall she was, standing nearly two feet above Catherine's short frame. "Never."
Fingers of porcelain, somehow warm and soft as flesh, ran through her hair. "Thank you."
"If I come across another Dreamer…"
"I cannot stop you from pursuing retribution on my behalf."
Her eyes still brimming with tears, Catherine muttered another curse, this one accompanied by a promise, spoken silently unto herself and herself alone.
Never would she allow such a thing to happen to the Doll once more. If she had to teach her how to fight, then she would do so. If she had to spend the rest of her miserable days lingering in this place… well, perhaps she could stave off any nightmares from coming to this realm for a few centuries.
Gaze flickering back to the garden, Catherine wondered how bright Gehrman's blood would be staining the pearl-white petals of the lumenflowers. Would they come to look like poison? If those flowers, glimmering in the soft moonlight, would themselves taste like freedom?