A/N: Contains violence and disturbing imagery. May be uncomfortable for some readers.
…When the Lights Went Out
Cold water poured onto her face, choking her and burning her airways. Leah struggled to turn onto her side away from the offending source. Her eyes fluttered open, but as soon as she realized her setting hadn't changed, she shut them.
Ella's sharp heels click-clacked slowly, growing louder until they stopped right in front of Leah's eyes.
"You can't fall asleep," the older woman gently admonished, face wrinkling with maternal concern.
"I didn't."
"You look tired."
The she-wolf's dark eye circles spoke volumes. And her chapped lips, sweating forehead, and shivering muscles said more.
Rebellious in the face of danger, Leah smiled coolly. "Can't you rectify that, fairy godmother? Don't you wish me well?"
"More than you know."
"It's been days." Her voice cracked. It might be over. Everyone might be dead. It might have been too late, but at least it was done.
"Time is hardly anything in here." The queen gazed out into the white space as if she could see through it. She probably could. "I suspect the moon is still up out there."
"Did I do it?"
"Speak up."
"Did I hurt them all?" Leah enunciated.
"I have every confidence they'll be dead by dawn." Those eyes, those once-beautiful pools of madness and the purest evil - they were filled with pride. It wasn't even a guise.
Leah spat onto the queen's glass slippers. Ella's hand snapped out and Leah winced as a spark started a fire in the core of her body, threatening to burn her alive. The shapeshifter curled into a ball, unleashing a spew of insults.
Ella simply backed away, floating above her in that gloating manner. "The more you resist, the worse it feels."
"I'm not letting you -!" Leah schooled her features into a mask of calm. "I'm not letting you destroy me."
"I haven't come to destroy, but to guide. With a loving hand."
Leah forced herself to sit up. "You don't know a damn thing about love, you manipulative, nasty - "
"And you do?" Ella laughed, mouth closed, and the tip of her wand resting against her chin. "You never wanted love, Leah. You couldn't handle it."
Leah pushed herself to rise against the wall. "You don't care about me! You don't care about anyone but yourself. Not even your clan. Not even your family. All you wanted was control and power forever."
"I have persisted when my enemies perished. I have made the tough decisions my descendants and ancestors were too weak to make. This hunger inside me is what keeps me from falling apart. I will survive when and where the others cannot!"
"What a sad life that is!"
The queen grabbed her arm and yanked it behind her. The abyss they faced cleared to reflect their own image. "And that is the same sadness that lies in you!"
The reflection blurred until the queen appeared younger, her silvery hair returning to its flaming-red ringlets, and the wrinkles smoothing out of her skin.
"You were my charity work. Another box to tick, a bullet on a checklist. But I saw something in you!"
The former guardian's reflected dingy yellow sundress swirled and billowed into a shimmering gold gown and her thick dark hair cascaded over her shoulders.
Leah struggled against the fairy woman, clawing at her own flesh, desperate to ensure that fantasy never came to fruition. Ella grabbed Leah's chin and forced her to face her fate.
In the mirror, Leah and Ella were opposites, yet matched in beauty and magnificence. Two sides of the same coin.
"Look here, child! I gave you something stronger and more lasting than love - I gave you your outlet. I saved you! But you refused to heal. You refused to obey. You stirred up strife and clung to your ever-shifting morality." She tossed Leah to the ground as if she weighed nothing. "You have orchestrated this from the start, all because you were too childish to move forward."
"Stop."
"Your codependency with Edward was entertaining, at first. If only he hadn't inspired you to this. It's a shame how easily he affects you. I was wrong to hope you could keep each other in line. Love makes fools of us all."
"I told you to STOP!"
Leah hadn't meant to do anything (she never did, did she?) but the force of her emotions were too much to contain in the In-Between. They crackled like lightning, etching threatening blue lines into the infinite pearly sky. Like hail, shards of the shredded atmosphere broke off and rained down with a vengeance.
She gasped and struggled to lift herself, but the hem of her dress was pinned to the ground immediately. As she lifted an arm to shield her face a jagged piece lodged into her forearm. The pain, on top of a dozen other major and minor injuries, left her dizzy and nauseous.
When the sharp sprinkling of sky-glass came to its abrupt halt, Leah peeked out, and tore the scrap from her bleeding skin.
Ella said nothing.
At first, Leah flinched away, until the woman slowly turned.
A particle had landed in the queen's chest. The front of her dress was the shade her hair had once been - almost crimson.
"You," the monarch stammered, stained hands shaking with anger or fear - maybe both.
By her own account, Leah was angrier.
She tackled the woman and tried to get her hands around her throat. The struggle was longer than their previous ones, but it still ended with Leah dragged by the hair to a standing position.
"That's it! Resist all you want. It won't change your fate." Ella pressed the tip of the wand to Leah's throat.
Leah slouched, eager for any bit of distance she could salvage. "Not like this. Echo wouldn't want -"
"And that's why she'll never rule."
Leah couldn't get through to her with words, she knew, but she still tried to find them. She thought of the way Echo spoke of her father, of the scarred, kind warrior who should've been sitting on the throne. She thought of the honor and duty Echo spoke of, and how the young girl had found their true meanings in these words, not through her grandmother's tutelage.
"What's happening?"
Leah focused her gaze. She and Ella were no longer in the stuffy whiteness. Everything was hazy and blurry, but the rough ground, the sweet night air, the cars rushing by were all present - they were in a city alleyway.
A young girl leaned against the brick wall, brown hair sticking to her blood-spattered neck. She cried out harshly, limbs twisting. At her feet, an older man laid, bleeding steadily into the gravel. He breathed shallowly, hands over his torso and eyes wide as he waited for the afterlife to engulf him.
In the dark, the green-eyed teen looked up at them, unfocused. She was fading fast.
Ella's grip on Leah loosened. "How did you -"
Leah snapped the wand out of her hand and flung her weight to the side. After landing roughly on the gravel, she rolled onto her back and pointed the weapon at Ella.
The queen cautiously approached her, haloed by the streetlights. "Leah, you don't know what you're doing."
"Stay away from me!" Leah shouted.
A shock trickled from the stick to her fingertips and up her arm.
"Ah!"
The street setting whisked away.
Ella looked up at the wind swirling around them, the darkness. She gave Leah one last appraising look. "You're only delaying the inevitable. I may not be able to fix you right away - "
She disappeared, tossed aside by the tornado.
The wind carried the rest of her message. " - But I will always find you…"
"Lend me your power." In the windswirl, she thought she saw the shadow of a woman, of wings. She pressed the wand to her lips. "Lendmeyourpower, lendmeyourpower, lendmeyourpower -"
Leah gasped and winced, watching her veins spark blue under her skin. Of course, there was nothing to pull from, no life but herself.
She needed to get out of here, the sooner she did, the sooner she could end her own destruction in the real world. She was certain she couldn't face down Ella. The very idea was laughable. Her exit would have to be all on her own.
Something was right by the time the dust settled. She wiped her eyes to see…
The in-between was truly heaven now.
Leah stepped onto pillowy clouds and stumbled, then settled into one. For a minute she kneeled, reeling.
What had just happened? The past ten minutes - or hour, day, whatever - had felt like the highlight reel of her nightmares. The thought that some monster lingered out there, hungry for her life and her spirit... How would this end? How could she give even more when she was a shell of a woman, a husk drying out in the sun?
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to force the phasing that had once been natural in times of distress. But as much as she shook, she remained human. Her hands too, shorted out, not that she could do much, wand or not, without harming herself.
All she had was magic she didn't fully understand and a very tired mind. No friend at her side. Just her and the queen.
Leah dusted the stolen wand over her body. The blood dried and healed on her arm. The tattered clothes were replaced with a crisp white shirt and pants. She leaned forward onto her hands and gasped for breath. Rest was all she needed.
"I told you not to run," a voice like a knife's edge cut in to her shaky meditation.
Leah stabbed out the wand and shot.
The shard of glass piercing the queen's heart -
Everything...swayed -
The older fairy gasped, fingers aimlessly reaching for either the wand or Leah.
Blood dripping from her freshly-lacerated palm, the werewolf stumbled away, too stunned to properly run or keep attacking. For a long moment, the silence between them was deafening, leaving a ringing in her ears.
And then the shockwaves. The clouds began to shake and steam. Something like thunder or a steady drum. The brief comfort would be no more.
The queen smeared the blood all over her chest, as if she could undo the damage that way. "This can't be - Oh no!" She bared her teeth and charged.
Leah fell backwards. But the cloud was no soft place to land.
When she fell, she fell hard. Through the cloud… And through the next one… and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that. She flipped over and over, sputtering and choking on the moisture. Faster and faster and faster - until something flat and solid loomed in the distance.
It could kill her, if she wasn't dead already.
There was no wind, no trees, no life or nature in this In-Between. But there was her - a spirit full of so much love and power all on its own. She knew this without knowing it, which is why she made one last desperate plea. She pulled from the wolf inside her and the love they carried in their shared bones.
"You'll kill us both!" Ella screamed. "You'll never escape!"
But Leah thrust out the wand, and next thing she knew the seams holding the world together were bursting open and she was diving into one of those gaping holes - she was running off of a cliff, like those in La Push, and then diving into an ocean and the world became the ocean and the ocean was around her and she felt absolutely nothing.
The cold was seeping into her clothes, into her skin, chilling her bones. But she enjoyed this, being frozen in place and safe from the dangers of her and Ella's shared unreality.
Someone grabbed wrist, urgently. "What are you doing here?"
Slower than someone in her position should, Leah pulled away and opened her eyes and glanced around.
Hundreds of eyes raked over her flesh. She was the odd one out. The only fully formed body staring back at rotting skeletons.
She had run out of heaven, and straight into her grave.