Chapter Sixty-Six | Amaranth
Feet shuffling across the pavestones, Catherine toed at the cracks between them, looking up at the Dream's workshop with no small amount of trepidation. She knew the answer she wanted to give Melodie but couldn't help feeling that chill of fear that ran its unseemly fingers across her spine.
What would she even say? How would she say it? Was this truly the right decision to make, or would it end the same as her time with Hermione?
Still guilt drummed deep inside her, sloshing and spilling over the edges of her conscience as she remembered the stricken expression her closest friend wore as Catherine tore into Hermione without any mind for mercy. She wanted to hurt her, to turn herself into the villain because hate was so much easier to deal with than affection. Because once she'd disappeared, maybe Hermione would have already found closure before Catherine's last step on familiar shores.
Hermione never deserved that, but it was far too late for apologies.
Far too late, no matter the part of her that tried to whisper calming words in her ear, telling Catherine that there was no need to disappear from Earth and create a home in this backwater world. It tried, and failed, to convince her that she could stay in Britain, find hope and happiness with her first friends and in them, the family she had made.
It was childish, she would admit, to imagine that there was a place for her back in Britain that didn't involve iron bars and hooded Ministry figures trying to figure out what kind of being she really was.
But young love would do that to you.
She did love Hermione. Still did. Still found herself wondering where she was in those moments between when she closed her eyes and opened them to another sky only to remember that it had been months since she'd seen Hogwarts, let alone slept beneath the canopy of its four-poster beds.
It was a strange love, now. Regretful. Still tinged with the confusing tension of a half-decade of friendship and the recent flutter that tainted her perspective and left her wistful.
It was something she needed to forget. Sooner, rather than later.
Her boots clipped against the stones in a quiet rhythm as she wandered up to the workshop, peeking inside to see no one there. Thinking Melodie to be in the gardens, she went around the back only to find the Messengers playing in the tree stump she liked to stand by, mist spilling over the sides of it and curling across the grass in willowy strips that disappeared in an unseen wind.
The squeaking of wheels across dirt caused her to turn her head, not bothering to repress her scowl as Gehrman came into view.
"Still here, ah? Looking for your pet?"
"Still mewling every time you close your eyes? Come to take a nap and whimper for Laurence? For Willem?"
His lips curled, eyes barely peeking out from beneath his hat as he glared at her. "Quiet, girl."
"Did I hurt your feelings? Poor old man, a prisoner until time itself frays. How does it feel to be shackled to one of your Gods?"
Gehrman's legs twitched, the wooden stump of his foot scraping quietly against its rest. "I said quiet. Lest I take your tongue."
"And who are you to threaten me?" Catherine drawled, canting her head as she sneered at him, her arms crossed and one foot kicked out lazily as she leaned against the rear of the workshop. "What a pitiful, wretched thing you are. I'd kill you if I didn't know it was exactly what you wanted. Isn't it? You just want someone to take your place as Her prisoner.
"So that's all you'll do. You'll whinge and you'll make threats, but you don't have it in you to do anything but sit in that little chair of yours and bark." Her hand flickered, and Gehrman barely managed to blink as her wand jutted out of her sleeve, pressed against his throat as she leaned over him. "I can curse you in ways you cannot imagine. I can make you feel pain like you've never felt in your entire life. I could take your very memories, leaving you here as nothing but an empty shell. A man who knows no one and nothing, forever tortured as he chases a life that will always remain just out of reach."
His breathing quickened as he looked down at her wand with unabashed fear. Quickly though, his expression twisted, Gehrman lashing out and batting her hand away. "You think you can frighten me? I've seen things you cannot even imagine, I've-"
"Quiet. I have killed your Gods. Destroyed your Church," Catherine declared, a vicious smile splitting her face. "Everything you once knew lies in ruin. Byrgenwerth is a lakeside grave, host only to the mute beast that was Willem. Laurence's skull has been turned to dust, and Ludwig, once tied to a nightmare like this, has breathed his last. Everyone you have ever known and loved is dead, or consigned to a fate far worse than yours." With that she kneeled, looking Gehrman in the eyes. "Do you know why I've told you this?"
"You hate me," he spat. "Lashing out like the petty child you are."
"No. I hate you because you are vile. Because the abuse you've heaped upon Melodie is enough to make my blood curdle. Because the things that you allowed to take place here, encouraged to me just as you must have to the other hunters who have passed through this Dream, are so sickening I can't put them into words." Her breaths were shallow, and Catherine drank in the air as she slowed herself, quelling the fury that burned so bright and harsh at the first sight of him. "The things I would do to you would sentence me to the deepest pits of hell. I would gladly go knowing that your final moments were more hideous, more painful and frightening than the centuries you've spent in this pit ever were."
Wood creaked as his hands curled around the armrest of his chair, jaw quivering as he looked at Catherine with such contempt, such unbridled hatred, that for a flicker of a moment she thought she'd burst into flames beneath such a bitter gaze.
"You know nothing of me. Nothing of the things I have seen nor what I have done in my very, very long life," he chewed out, lips drawn tight across his teeth in a silent snarl. "All you are is but another spoiled child with a head full of nonsense and whims still too naïve to bear mention, let alone respect."
"Is that all?"
"Damn you, girl!" He slammed his fist down, cracking off the end of the rest and sending it clattering across the stones beneath them. Her gaze followed it, the strength of his fury, and her eyes narrowed as she looked over the man in a whole new light.
No frail thing was he. Not a crippled, decrepit geriatric in a homespun chair.
How clever.
"I could take your mind from you in an instant. Leave you nothing but a babe in the body of a hateful, wrinkled shell of a man. I could make it so that every so often you blink and remember." She kneeled, taking the bit of broken wood and pressing it against the splinters it had fallen from. It was fixed to his wheelchair with a single twitch of her finger, a low crackle emanating between them as it knitted back together.
Catherine held it there, her burning stare never wavering from Gehrman's own, his pupils shot and a twitch in his lip not reminiscent of his anger, but fear.
"For a second, only enough to come to and realize that your babbling is no dream, you would remember. Remember how you sit in your own waste, unable to care for yourself nor think past the infantile mutterings of a man more entranced by small, shining things, than the blessing of thought. And then-" she snapped her fingers, a tiny smirk on her face. "Back to nothingness."
Faster than he could blink, her wand was out again and pointed at the space between his eyes. Gehrman flinched violently, head knocking against the back of his chair and the blood draining from his face.
"Did Tom threaten you like this once? I can see it in your eyes, how scared you are of my magic. What did he do to you, I wonder?" She tilted her head and studied him, lips pursed in amusement. "I'm not the naïve little thing you think I am, Gehrman. You and your God made damn sure of that."
"What do you want from me?" he spat, a sneer still twisting his once grandfatherly features.
"I want you to know that if I so wished I could destroy you. But, unless tested, I won't. Do you know why?"
He did not answer, instead biting his lip hard enough to draw blood.
"Because I'm better than you. Because I have the ability to look at what you've created of me and know I've done wrong in embracing it so wholly. But you… I think- no," she shook her head, words now soft. "I know that you're incapable of feeling guilt for no other reason than how your actions hurt you. Not me, not the countless other hunters who have come to this cursed place, not Melodie who can think and feel and- you never even gave her the chance to learn what it is to live."
With that Catherine rose, back straight, and looked down at Gehrman with such pity that, were she to be subject to her own reflection she would avert her eyes and know that on sleepless nights such a vision would haunt her.
Haunt her the same as how Dumbledore's horrified gaze as he stumbled into the drawing room of Lestrange Manor still did.
But then Gehrman cackled, throwing his head back and laughing so hard he began to wheeze, clutching a frail (not frail, strong as her) hand to his chest as he struggled with himself.
"You don't- you haven't- oh Gods, you don't even know, do you girl?"
She hummed in reply.
"Ha! You haven't a clue!" Gehrman pointed at her, looking to his side as if before an audience. "You're cursed the same as I! Oh, I know you, surely naïve as I've said. When the time comes and you think you've finally found the light… oh I can't wait to hear your screams."
"You're mad."
"And you're not, girl? You're of Yharnam now, not a sane man to be found. It's all blood here, and you're steeped in it."
"You really do want to die, don't you?" She asked, finally recognizing the look in Gehrman's eyes. "I'm afraid I won't be the one to give you your wish."
Catherine turned away, showing him her back as she began walking towards the great tree that loomed over the Dream. She'd hardly made it three steps when another cackle broke out behind her and Gehrman called out.
"You'll have your knife in my throat soon enough!"
She barked out a laugh, steadfastly ignoring the man as she trudged down the path towards a gate she'd never touched in her time here. It stood open, and her hand passed along the dull rails as she looked up to the boughs of the tree, sitting at the top of the hill behind the old workshop.
Melodie stood in its shade surrounded by low white flowers, nocturnal things with their petals open to the moon. Lumenflowers, little ones with golden pistiles that glittered bright with pollen, clinging to their miniature pillars so alike the ones that stretched towards the horizon.
As if she'd sensed Catherine her head turned, a quaint smile on her face in greeting. As always her hands lay perched in her lap, a messenger or two cooing at her feet as she stood and looked over her home.
Past wooden columns Catherine walked as she journeyed up the hill, inverted triangles fixed atop them and reflective of the mark on her brow. A hunter's grave it was, more tombstones surrounding the wide, gnarled trunk of the great tree, sprouting from the earth this way and that in a crooked, crowded row.
With her heart in her throat she stood before Melodie, looking up to meet her gentle gaze with a soft smile of her own. Although it twitched nervously as her sight wavered, tracking over the sharp slope of Melodie's jaw, across the fine stitching of her dress, down to the pearl bearings she called joints. Slender fingers held them, rolling over glass that should somehow be cold, unyielding, yet always felt warm beneath her own flesh. Something impossible that brimmed with so much life she couldn't imagine how, at first glance, she had feared this woman.
"Hello."
"You fought with him again."
It wasn't a question, simply a statement, the workshop to their backs and any shouting quite evident from hardly twenty feet away.
"I did."
Melodie's brow raised just a touch, her lips parting, and her teeth just barely grazed the bottom one as she slowly breathed in.
Breathed. How had she never noticed?
"Why?"
"Because I couldn't help myself. Not after what he's done to you."
"And you."
"And me."
Silence settled across them, Catherine's tongue pressed flush against the roof of her mouth as if to force the words from her throat.
She'd just barely come to terms with her new lot in life, the opportunity to make a home in a world that at first seemed inhospitable but now was the only one she could see herself growing happy in.
"I… don't know what to say."
Brow knitting together, Melodie reached out and took one of Catherine's hands, her thumb rolling over her knuckles with tender refrain. "You need not answer me."
Catherine shook her head and shut her eyes, bowing her chin as she did. She lingered like that for a while, focusing on the warmth that flowed from hand to wrist with each gentle brush of Melodie's thumb.
Gods she may fight, beasts and all manner of horror, but challenges of the heart and mind still remained her one true enemy.
"I'm afraid," Catherine managed, her voice raspy as the words ebbed from her lips. Like molasses they fell, the thickness of them staining her teeth.
"Of?"
"Leaving you behind. Taking… whatever this is and then forsaking it when it's my time to go." Her chin rose and her eyes settled on Melodie's own, plaintive in her every motion. "I've hurt so many people that I care for. I couldn't bare to hurt you too."
Melodie tilted her head and gave Catherine a melancholy look, her other hand raising to brush a lock of ragged black hair back into place, barely tracing over Catherine's temple.
"So I have my answer, then?" was her whispered response, breathy and fleeting.
"I…"
It still seemed the words would not come to her, vision filled with snowy lashes and the pristine white of Melodie's skin. Fear unbound and the knowledge of what could be were what held her, unable to tear her gaze away from that serene view.
"I am not a kind person, nor am I good," she spoke, windy words that belied their true meaning and the feeling held within. "I've done horrible things and still have yet to do more. The argument you heard… the anger in it is a glimpse of what I've become. I can't promise you much more than what little time I have remaining here, and once I've freed Kos and Yharnam's children I'll be gone. That's what I was brought here for, was it not? For the Moon's war on her fellows?"
"On Yharnam's child," Melodie echoed. "A babe in Her own Nightmare, but one that may grow to be Her enemy."
"Then once that Nightmare has ended, both of them, I'll be gone."
A short huff broke from her lips, and Catherine flipped their hands over, running a finger over Melodie's palm. "I wish I could take you from here."
"Alas… I am bound to this Dream just as Gehrman is. It sustains me, and I sustain it in turn."
"There's a whole world out there and… I wish I could show it to you. You deserve more than something temporary, which is all I have to give."
"And have I not asked for it?" Melodie replied, tipping Catherine's gaze to meet her own with a finger that lingered beneath her chin. "Did I not make myself clear in my understanding?"
"You did, I only wish I could give you more."
"But the question remains. Are you willing to spend what little time you have left teaching me more of what it means to be happy? To live?"
She held her hand firmly, so large in her own yet bearing more finesse than Catherine's scarred fingers could hope to muster. Laced through with lightning cracks and the nicks and marks of a thousand battles fought. Melodie's were pristine, unmarred by the warring world her own imitated.
"You're beautiful, you know?"
A soft gasp and Melodie smiled again, unable to hide the way it flowed from cheek to cheek. "You are as well."
"I… I feel like… I feel like I don't deserve this. It's a terrible thing, don't you think, to have a conscience?"
"You are allowed to feel. Haven't you taught me that?"
Catherine snorted. "I guess. I think I need to be taught the same."
"Then… may I?"
"May you…? Oh."
Melodie had leaned down, kneeling almost, so tall she was. Her hand came up to cup Catherine's cheek as it had the last time she'd been here, cradling it like spun glass. "May I?"
Her heart swelled with anxiety, excitement, wonder, and Catherine took a great, shuddering breath before nodding her head. "Please," she uttered, before she could change her mind and run screaming for the hills.
Further Melodie dipped, her breath just barely gusting across Catherine's lips as she shuttered her eyes. "Please, tell me if I've made a mistake," she whispered. "You do want this, don't you?"
Catherine answered by closing the tiny gap between them, though to her it felt insurmountable, a thousand thousand feet of canyon to bridge with one subtle twist of her neck. It was a fragile thing, not unlike the porcelain which made Melodie from head to toe, though she was not at all the cold, harsh thing that others made her to be.
She tasted of frost, of cold days sat beside the warmth of a fire as fractals slowly danced their way across the window panes. That first snow as it glinted on the air, something that stung one's nose with the coming days' comfort and the knowing that it would be spent tired but content in a dark that bid them no ill will.
All Catherine's fears were pushed away by the soft embrace she found herself in, standing on her toes and leaning wholeheartedly into the one bit of life that had found her, once trapped in a smog that left all sanity at its doorstep. Unbidden, she lit up against Melodie, lips curling as she reached around her neck and slowly ran her fingers against the skin that peeked out between her high collar and nape.
They drew apart, eyes shut, and let their quiet gasps echo into the space between them.
The two stayed there like that, taking in the other and holding tight, Catherine doing her best not to let her fingers wrap around Melodie's collar and grip it like a sailor in a storm, to not throw herself at Melodie because god, how long had it been since she'd been held like that?
It couldn't have been long but it felt like she'd been starved of all touch, of anything kind beyond that of pity and attempts to comfort her. Not the reproachful, fleeting thing shared between her and Hermione as she shouldered past her in that park. The fearful grip that held her as Dumbledore found her in Grimmauld caked in blood and spitting ash across the dusty floor, his hand on her shoulder more to remind himself that she was actually there rather than the sake of conveying the weight of his love.
He had hugged her, once. She wondered if that was what a grandfather's love was like.
A quiet laugh broke out of her, and Catherine opened her eyes to meet Melodie's stunned visage, the woman staring unblinkingly and, were she to be made of the same skin and bones as her, she would surely wear a blush.
"Hello there," she murmured, slipping her hand from Melodie's neck to brush the back of it across her jaw, reverent as it swept across the steep plane and landed beneath her chin. "You alright?"
"Ah." Melodie blinked sheepishly, offering her a tiny nod. "Yes, I'm fine. I'm… delighted."
"I'm happy."
"You are?"
"Very much so."
The beam Catherine was met with could topple kings, and she thought that were Eileen to see Melodie now she would eat her words. Unfeeling my arse, she mused, left reeling by the pure, wondrous emotion she could see dancing in those sculpted eyes. Porcelain made flesh, the breath of a God poured into an empty shell, and in turn this incredible woman stood before her.
"I think I'd like to spend some time here before I return to the Nightmare. Spend time with you."
"You would?"
She frowned at the surprise in Melodie's voice, biting her lip. "I want to. There's nothing I'd love more right now than to whittle the days away with you. Reading, talking… enjoying your company as much as I can before my time here is done."
A tear pricked at Melodie's eye and she worked her jaw, opening and closing her mouth as she looked down at Catherine. "I'd adore that. You've already offered me so much, to offer this to me in return…"
"No, no-" Catherine shook her head. "Not like that. This is no offering, this is no gift. This is me seeing in you what I've seen for so long yet never put mind to. Kind and clever and so full of joy, you've brought me to tears in the best of ways, be it with that heart of yours or your quick mind. I'm doing this because I want to, not as any pitying thing or out of any sense of obligation." She stood on her toes and kissed her again, not gentle like the first but full of the passion she felt - the passion stoked in her simply by Melodie's feeble touch, the simple gesture of her hands on her shoulders leaving Catherine breathless.
She tried to pour whatever feeling she could into that kiss. The glee she felt to find… not love, but affection in this mournful place. Hope that she could make a life once she set foot on Yharnam soil for the very last time, never again to touch upon the Dream. Regret, that this too would end and she would not be here to help Melodie, to spend time with someone she'd grown to care so deeply for that her heart stung.
Catherine poured all she could into that kiss, and when she pulled away she caught Melodie's tear on one fingernail, plucking it from her cheek and dropping it into her sleeve. "I care about you. You're my closest friend, the one who's helped care for me and keep me hale in what could have been my tomb. I don't do this because I feel like I must. I do it because you're you, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I want to make you happy. I want to enjoy what days I can the best I can." Taking Melodie's hand, she studied it a moment - the pearl joints and fine lines that ran across her fingers - before pressing it to her heart. "I want you to enjoy those days too, more than anything."
Eyes shining, Melodie nodded again, biting her lip and staring at Catherine with such awe that she thought her heart may break. Her face split into a beaming grin, so ecstatic that Catherine couldn't help but share it.
"I adore you," she uttered, before once more leaning down and kissing Catherine with as much joy as she could convey.