June, 1972

The trip home had been hard. Something in Marigold had unlocked in violent resistance in that little village. Since then, Marigold had found a horrible shift in awareness.

Spencer had sent her to a woman who hadn't thought twice about killing her to send a message. Miranda had plainly admitted as much when it had become clear that she was no paper doll. Since that brush with death, her body seemed to be in a state of overdrive.

Maybe some activation threshold had been reached. Those last few days in Brasov had been trying. Marigold had all but barricaded herself in her hotel room as a strange sort of fever began to overtake her. Poor, sweet Luca had been visiting daily to check in with her; it had taken all her restraint not to drag him in and lock the doors. To do what, she refused to consider. After what had happened to Maxwell after…no. He'd been a sweet young man trying to help. But she had come so close to doing something terrible.

Something she wouldn't be able to take back.

In a fit of anger, she'd dumped her rinses down the drain in the hotel bathroom. Her hair had slowly been losing its rich golden colour over the last few years, to settle at something so close to white that it gave her a distinctly Scandinavian look. At least she had a reason Spencer would readily accept for it now.

After all, Miranda was a frightful woman to behold.

A driver from the company had met her at Heathrow. She had caught them in the middle of trying to send away her own driver. When she'd pinned them with a glare, they'd mumbled something about Lord Spencer inviting her to discuss the meeting at his estate up north.

She'd sent the driver away- honestly, more of a thug, who had been a little shocked at the stones on his quarry. The flight had been hard, and while the fever had burnt out, sharp cramps had begun to set in at a leisurely pace. All she wanted was to go home. In this state, she wouldn't be able to hold her temper in front of Spencer. Face to face, one of them wouldn't leave the room alive.

Poppy stood by the kitchen window, looking out at the moors. Not that there was much to see. The rains of that spring had been exceptionally bad, and the deep fog wrapped the world in a fine grey blanket. From her window, the world ceased to exist twenty feet beyond the house.

Ketleby paused at the kitchen door. "She's still out there?"

Poppy turned her head to look back. "She is. Anyone else, and I'd worry about them getting lost." She sighed. "Best let her get it out of her system. We all saw how out of sorts she was when she came back from her trip."

Kettleby stepped into the room. The woman had taken on a timidity that bothered Poppy, but hadn't changed much otherwise in the last two years. "Wasn't there to be a big to-do at the end of this trip? A promotion and all that? Lord Spencer's people have been leaving messages all week since she got back since she refused that meeting. They're getting quite insistent." Kettleby paused. "Not the main office, though. It's strange."

Poppy pursed her lips, looking back to the window. "Something frightened her, I think. It's hard to explain. She doesn't want anyone near her right now, so something has certainly gone wrong." Was she sick again? She certainly wasn't any weaker. The girl's roughhousing had built up a high tolerance for pain, but the few glimpses of her rigid, drawn face had concerned her. Something in the Lady had finally snapped.

She glanced at the table again, where she had laid out a spread early that morning. Sometime in the quiet, fog-consumed early hours, Marigold had slipped in, eaten, and collected a basket full of food, along with her mail.

Poppy knew that there had been some work done out there over the last few years. Luther had brought two strapping young lads to construct a small camp shelter within the walls of the ruins, and had marveled to her later at how the roses had been thriving- and so quickly, too!

So, the Lady at least had somewhere moderately dry to hunker down. It still didn't explain the half-feral look in her eyes when she had come home, or why she was behaving like a stray cat now. Some of the staff were bringing back rumours of eerie wails carrying out over the moors. Luther himself wasn't saying anything, not yet- but every time he caught her eye now, it was to convey a silent anxiety that had crept over all.

Something had come over the young Lady, and it was in everyone's best interest to stay out of her way. The best they could do was make sure she didn't starve, maintain a watch and keep screening her calls.

No. No, that wasn't all they could do. She'd never had to activate this particular protocol, but Poppy didn't think Lady Marigold would think less of her, all things considered. "Keep watch for me for a moment," She said to Kettleby. "I need to get Lord Alexander's telephone number out of the Lady's office."

Marigold slowed to a jog on the muddy path, finally coming to stand in front of the priory ruin. From the outside it seemed more overgrown than ever. Thick moss climbed the stone on the side overshadowed by the ancient wood at its back. When she stepped inside, it was another world, in miniature.

The roses, red and coral blooms, had grown swiftly. when she spent enough time in this place, Marigold realized that the vines had begun to ever so slowly drift towards her, curling protectively around the shelter. It was unnerving, at first. Still, the virus had originated in a flower, and was cultivated in a place that had drawn great reverence in its day.

Alexander had asked her to document its development when she had mentioned it. He'd been almost gleeful at the prospect. The slightly acidic nature of the moors coupled with the slightly elevated ground of the priory helped to prevent the vines from spreading on their own. That was good; if they contained the virus, cultivated almost naturally where teams of experts had failed to do the same…

It was a very, very good thing to keep the garden to its little island in the moors.

Before Romania, this place had been a growing weight on her mind to finally tell 'Uncle' Spencer the truth. Now, she would rather raze the entire estate to the ground before letting it fall into his hands.

If she were going to be spending so much time out here, she ought to really make better use of the space. Marigold had been beginning to wonder about setting up a range nearby. She'd been a terror with a fencing saber back in school, enough to put her at the head of the school's team. Quarantine protocol had done its level best to sap that energy, but now it was bursting out of her with a vengeance.

That would have been fine - she knew these paths blind by now, and she had no fear of getting lost. She could hear the town in the distance, gauge the distance to local farms with their herds. It would be fine. It would have been fine.

Except for the pain. Sharp, cramping pain, that ripped through her at a regular rhythm. In a fit of anger, she'd stumbled into the priory and closed her fists around the twisting branches of the rose vines.

Had they twisted around her hands, drawing out blood, or had she imagined that in her delirium, to complement her pain? Her hands healed too fast, and the rain washed any evidence from her skin, had there been any.

The accumulated pain fuelled her mania, and she wandered deeper.

Was it due to the hemlock, with lingering aftereffects? Was the virus awakened, and doing something horrible inside of her?

If the locals hadn't thought some wild fae creature, or some sort of demon inhabited these fields, they surely would now, given the noises she had been making. Her cries had carried across the fog farther than they normally might.

The staff at the house wisely kept their distance. They laid out food for her like they might a pet cat, and set her mail next to it to remind her that she was in fact a human woman with ties to the world. It was a kindness on their part and a cruel twist of fate that she'd been twisted so, just as she had resolved to step deeper into Umbrella's inner circle.

She had tucked the bundle of mail into her inner coat pocket. Spencer has couriered a letter expressing his congratulations…and his concern. He'd clearly been surprised when she'd rebuffed the 'invitation' to see him at the Spencer estate in the north. In the letter, he'd made pains to offer to visit the Ashford estate in the south to her elevation within the company.

You sent me there to die. How could she trust his word now? Both her father's and Alexander's cryptic warnings to mind suddenly held a horrid clarity. Romania should have been a victory, but she only felt hollow, a shadow of her former self.

Had she been the only one not to know?

Umbrella headquarters in London - her office, her team - had sent a card wishing her good health. The office had been buzzing all year with rumours of a big department expansion. Those rumours held an entirely new light for her now. Spencer had learned at Miranda's feet, and Miranda had said that he'd had the disposition for sacrifices.

Her father had wanted to use the virus to benefit humanity. Marigold's own expression of the virus had certainly backed up that claim. In the meantime, Alexander, much closer to the research himself, had become incredibly cagey about Spencer since the cascade of accidents five years earlier. He was working on something.

Another letter had made its way to the bottom of the stack, from Rockfort Island. Alexander was reaching out, finally. She tore open the paper, pausing to wince and wait for another cramp to pass.

This one…held a card. A birth announcement, dead several months earlier. Her brother had included a tiny envelope with two tiny curls of blond hair tucked inside. An oblique apology was scrawled at the bottom. She blinked at the handwriting, the meaning slowly working its way into her fever-drained mind.

sorry for the long wait - this was more than I expected. Come visit soon!

She sat there for over an hour in that little shelter, unmoving as the rain continued its torrent.

The world was moving on. Evolving.

She'd have to evolve along with it.

For about two hours, late in the afternoon, the rains lifted to a light mist. Poppy remained at her post by the kitchen window. On the table was a folded piece of paper. Harman, the new butler at Rockfort Island, had taken a carefully edited message from her, at what she had presumed was the middle of the night. Alexander had now been apprised that there was a matter of concern arising. Hopefully, the man - barely twenty, now - would have to sense to be ready to assist.

The young man had broken in on the line at some point, clearly listening in on Harman's side of the conversation. "There was always a chance something would start to go haywire. The chemist in the village has a standing emergency prescription just in case." He'd paused, then, "Father worked it out with them himself when she first…fell ill. They shouldn't fight it."

Poppy had made the call to the village just as soon as she'd hung up. The chemist had sounded wary, but Edward Ashford had been a well-respected if distant sort of man in his day. The order would be filled just as soon as they opened tomorrow.

A figure emerged from the fog. Marigold stood, twenty feet away from the door, looking grim. Her time out on the moors had subtly transformed the young woman into something just on the wrong side of feral, from the wild sorrow in her eyes.

Poppy shifted uneasily at the window. Had the Lady's condition progressed? What would it mean, were that the case?

The movement caught Marigold's eye, and their eyes met a long moment through the window. She seemed to visibly collect herself before moving the last small distance to mount the back steps, stepping soft through the door. Her mouth worked, but no words were to be found.

Poppy broke through the tension. "I think we'll draw you a hot bath, first," she started. "And we'll get a tray started to bring up for you. Soup, to start, I think."

Marigold's eyes cast downwards. Her clothes were fair ruined from the mud and the exertion. Something about the dark brown stains around the cuffs… something about it chilled Poppy to the bone. The jacket held the letters dry within, but all else was soaked and muddy as all hell. She nodded, slowly. "Yes. That's…that would be a good idea." She looked to Poppy. "And after…I need to speak with Alexander."

Poppy nodded, relieved that she'd made the connection ahead of time. "Will you be wanting to rest a bit first?"

"No, I…I think not. The longer I put off this conversation, the less likely it is to happen at all." Marigold withdrew the letters from her jacket and set them on the table before beginning to strip away the soaked garment. "Let's get this over with before I lose my nerve."

An hour later, Poppy paused by the door of the study, about to ask the Lady if she wanted a pot of tea brought up. The door had been left open a few inches, to allow the warm summer air to flow through the stuffy room.

Marigold's voice floated through. "I'm sorry, I know. I actually thought we could trust him. I would have died, Alex." Her voice cracked on the last word. The smell of cigarette smoke wafted into the hall. Marigold hadn't smoked at all since she'd come home from school.

A pause, and a sniff came from inside the room. "It feels more and more like I may as well have, anyhow. Am I even human anymore? The looks on their faces when I came in the door…

Very quietly, Poppy backed away from the door. Another maid was walking towards her with fresh sheets for the Lady's room, with a clear question in her eyes. Poppy glared daggers at the newcomer - really, she hadn't been working here for more than a few months, and it was going to cause problems - and stopped the young woman in her tracks, who eyed her with wary confusion. Poppy took the other woman firmly by the arm and hauled her down the hall, towards the stairs. The abruptness of the act shocked the other woman into silence.

They traveled down the stairs a ways before Poppy rounded on her. "The Lady is not to be disturbed for the rest of the evening. Are we clear?" The new maid nodded, partly out of shock and a growing sense of fright.

Two hours passed before Poppy allowed anyone else near the upstairs rooms.

The next morning, Poppy pushed into Marigold's room with a tray of coffee. Marigold sat in her dressing gown by the window, glancing at her. "I'm still not sure it's completely safe for you to be this close." Her eyes looked somewhat bloodshot from what Poppy could only assume was fatigue. Marigold always made little comments like this when she overexerted herself. She never took it too deeply to heart…but she always kept back when it happened.

Poppy paused, setting the tray down on the table before Marigold before stepping away. "Were you hurt? On your trip?"

"Yes. Uncle Spencer left out some details about how her left things with the woman I was to meet there." Marigold winced as another cramp bolted through her body. "Augh, it's…aggravated something." She looked up at Poppy with hollow eyes. "I've hardly slept. I might be a danger to you."

"Mrs. Kettleby is headed down to the chemist to pick up your pills. We figured that she'd be quite fierce enough for the chemist to relinquish what was needed without problems. I…hope I didn't overstep, calling your brother." Poopy said quietly. "You gave us a fright, these last few days."

Marigold seemed to rouse at that. "I know. this was supposed to be a much easier trip than it turned out to be." Her brow creased. "What problems?"

Poppy gave her a little smile. The Lady was sharp, but they lived in different worlds most of the time. "It can be…difficult for an unmarried woman to get that particular script, and the chemist in the village likes to ask a lot of uncomfortable questions. Mrs. Kettleby's just scary enough to shut him down."

Marigold hmmm'ed at that, dismissing it after a moment's thought. "I'm not angry, Poppy. You did the right thing." Marigold turned back to the window. "I've complicated everyone's lives since I came back home, haven't I?"

Poppy blinked, thinking back to the jacket Marigold had deposited on the kitchen floor the previous evening. The suspicious stains on the cuffs. Marigold's hands were plainly visible, and she hadn't seemed to have sustained any injury…but with the Lady, that was hardly telling. "What?" She said bluntly, forgetting herself. Then, almost reproachfully. "Your family's always been complicated, Lady Marigold. Do you think Mrs. Kettleby's heart would be in any better shape had you married and had little terrors running around the place?"

Marigold blinked. "Excuse me?" She said almost in shock. Almost. The melancholy was cracking.

"Terrors." Poppy continued, nodding with confidence. "Absolutely. Do you have any doubt? Your hair looks nice like that, by the way. Did you stop dyeing it, finally?"

Marigold's mouth thinned to a firm line. "Well, I finally have a good reason for Spencer for it to suddenly turn white." She looked out the window again, avoiding Poppy's eye.

Poppy, in her turn, frowned. Marigold always called Lord Spencer "Uncle", especially since the death of her father. Somehow, the circle of lords that Lord Ashford had involved himself with decades ago had crossed the line.

Marigold shifted in her seat, looking back to Poppy once again. "By the way, did Alex tell you his news when you spoke to him?" The look in her eyes seemed forced, but it seemed that Marigold was truly determined to step around the matter for now.

Poppy let out a small sigh and shook her head. "He didn't mention anything to me." She paused. "He sounded awfully tired on the telephone."

Marigold pulled a letter out from the stack of mail that she'd been going through on the table. "He's a father."

Poppy blinked. "He's a what?" She started to say more than paused. Marigold may have picked on him without mercy when they had been children, but she never allowed anyone else to speak ill of her little brother.

Marigold, crowed at the look on Poppy's face. "I know. I know! I've never even seen him talk to a girl! I can't even imagine it." She held up the letter. "Twins, even!"

The conversation was over, then. Poppy let herself be drawn into the easy flow of gossiping over the two new additions to the Ashford line. Only when she returned back downstairs half an hour later, did her eye fall upon the stained cuffs of the jacket by the door.

Lady Marigold's mask of happy congeniality was back on. Even so, something terrible had clearly happened. The worried phone calls and letters to the manor - not angry, just polite with an increasingly desperate edge - backed that theory. Whether Lord Spencer knew it or not, whatever he'd done had opened a rift between the two houses.

Marigold remained where she sat long after Poppy left. She'd managed to sleep last night, finally, but only just. If she intended to continue to pass as normal, she'd have to take care not to let events like this happen again.

She thought on Poppy's words. The chemist in the village had always stood almost at attention whenever her father had taken her down there for a visit. The man had virtually salivated at the thought of knowing the future head of a research pharmaceutical company, although that had been more of a dream back then.

Alexander himself had turned cagey at the mention of Romania on the telephone last night. He had told her outright to stop telling the story over the phone, and given her a list of symptoms. When she mentioned that it was poisonous to the Mold, she could almost feel her brother sag with relief on the other side of the world. He'd known something was lurking in those mountains, from old stories.

He'd hesitated, but finally asked the question that had been plaguing her mind for days. "What are you going to do, now that you know what they're like?"

Marigold had gone silent. Finally, "I'm not sure. That woman was…horrible. Spencer worships her, but he's terrified of her too." Miranda, who had chosen to regale Marigold with little anecdotes of Spencer's outsized ambition, how he had up and disappeared in the night one day. "At the end of the day, all I have are secrets." She paused. "This…virus. Has anything else survived it?"

Alexander snorted in derision. "No. That's years away, if it ever happens. They can't even reproduce it outside of the original site." Her brother had sounded confident, and happy. Somehow the two were connected…"but, I'm also too far removed from the main action now."

Marigold he let go of the thread of that last though to pursue this new one. "You are. And…I don't think that Spencer intended for me to return. And now…he has to follow through on his promise."

Alexander had tumbled after her in the flow of the plot. "Influence, you mean."

"My own department. Internationally scoped. I…I might have an idea."

Now, in the pale morning sun, that idea was starting to slowly crystallize. It was a fragile, treacherous thing. It would take time, and a good deal of patience to implement: one person, one office at a time.

If there was one thing she excelled at it was building…influence.

Spencer had designed Umbrella around a mad scientist, a near-universally deadly virus, and, according to his former mentor, a desire to change the way the world worked. Even Miranda herself had balked at the scale of the idea, preferring to leave Marigold to be the 'counterweight' to that ambition.

That woman in her little village had been a living nightmare, but she'd been insightful in that much. Someone has to keep this mob of fools from destroying the world.

Marigold looked to the tray, the food and coffee growing cold. She sighed, then rose to her feet. She strode out the door towards the study.

The postman would be by that afternoon, and she had quite a few letters to write before then.

"Sir?" Patrick, the butler of the Spencer estate, called from the door of the expansive study. "You requested that I alert you if the young Lady Ashford reached out."

Lord Spencer turned from the cliffside view to face his retainer. Finally, he thought. Sending the girl to Miranda had been a calculated risk. She'd been a wild little thing growing up - her father had been blind to it - but the dual shocks of '68 seemed to have tamed her enough to be a competent vassal of his burgeoning pharmaceutical empire.

He'd wanted to secure Miranda's confidence before the true work began to see competition. Project W was barely beginning to bloom, but there were very few from the inner circle who were both expendable to the work itself but trusted enough to keep a secret.

Little Marigold had been almost sweetly eager to take on the challenge. Really, it had almost been a shame that she'd been born a decade too early to be brought into Project W itself, but the task would be instructive in how those subjects could be shaped in the coming years. At the outset of her trip, he had estimated that there was a thirty-five percent chance of ever seeing her again - and only so high because the government was involved.

In spite of the odds, she'd returned. She'd refused the escort to meet him at his manor in the north, but returned nonetheless. Anger was inevitable.

The days upon days of silence were more concerning. Any calls made to the house were met with excuses and bland statements that the Lady had had a difficult journey that required recovery.

Miranda had done something. The girl likely would not have survived Cadou implantation, but the Mold was an insidious thing. He wasn't near fool enough to actively challenge his old mentor.

Still, the thought gnawed at him. Patrick strode forward with a letter in hand, addressed in Marigold's spidery handwriting. Spender eyed it as one would a striking snake, then gingerly accepted it. "Thank you Patrick. That will be all." With a nod - the butler had only been in service a few years, but had the sense to make himself quite scarce - Patrick bowed his head and left.

Spencer opened the drawer of his desk and extracted a pair of medical gloves. With a silver letter opener, he slit the envelope open to extract the single folded leaf of paper. Getting to the point, then.

Dear Uncle Spencer,

Apologies for the delay, my health took a brief turn on the way home. Brasov was lovely for this time of year. The village elder was sorry to hear that you would not be making the journey this time but is partial to the proposal as given. Miranda was a bit odd - I can't quite put my finger on it - but hospitable nonetheless.

She had a few restrictions to add, but I'm told they're workable from a logistical standpoint. The attaché suppered a rather bad case of food poisoning; that aside, it was a success! I'll forward the details to your office later this week.

Let my office know when you'd like to set the meeting for getting the department expansion started. I should be back in London early next month.

-Best,

Marigold

Spencer's brow furrowed. So she'd gotten sick again. The girl's constitution was notoriously fickle since her little incident in Africa. Very briefly, he'd wondered…but no. Marcus was diligent and committed to the cause, but he wasn't lucky. And Miranda wasn't sentimental to let frailty blunt the edge of her cruelty. He'd seen that firsthand.

And an initial Mold infection had a suppressing effect on the immune system…

Spencer smirked. Well, if Miranda wanted to send back a little sleeper sentry to ensure that he leave her be, she was asking for very little. Marigold was competent enough to handle the work promised to her. If anything, this would keep her loyal without having to tell her anything.

Setting the letter down with great satisfaction, he picked up the telephone receiver and began to dial the London office. After all, the new era for his world order was now firmly in hand.