David and Frida were undoubtably tense as fuck as the discussion went on. They were now talking about bribing redcoats, trespassing the law and even multiple omissions as they continued their talk of business.
"Look, I know it might sound like a bunch of ridiculous bullshit but, we just need some kickstarters from the investors and the mine will make us money."
The discussion was dragging on and on as David looked outside on the fields that would be devastated for the new industrial equipment.
Needless to say Frida wasn't super enthusiastic for the changes. She knew what the fields were like but, a coal mine? How would it be better?
She knew they were lucrative but she thought about the possible terrible working conditions both the fabric and the mine had, and how employees would have to work non-stop on that endless machinery cycle.
David was also quite apprehensive about it, worrying about the factory and the mine and the potentiality of it spreading disease to an already unhygienic city.
"Stephen, we'll give you one chance, after all you are quite a fool when it comes to this."
"Excuse me?"
"Remember when you convinced us to give you 20.000 pounds to make that automatic calculator?"
"It was a very isolated incident-"
"Make it work and we'll fund your coal nonsense thing."
He looked worried… then,... Stephen remembered he had Frida, someone with a sizable intelligence… maybe it wouldn't fully work, but as long as it added, it would technically be a calculator in some way.
"Okay then, deal." Stephen said, completing the deal between him and his investors, though he doesn't feel like he got a good deal.
"Deal."
Then as he shook the hands of each and every one of them, they then greeted David goodbye before walking out of the door.
"See that, it's a success!" Stephen exclaimed.
"For the 7th time, that's when it started failing." David joked, knowing his previous business failures as an inventor and a mechanic.
"David, trust me. This is gonna work and even if it doesn't, there's always tomorrow."
David just rolled his eyes at what his father said, knowing that this business operation is gonna be a failure.
While Stephen plans out on what to do with the mine, he soon called Frida over and she looks at David with nervousness, knowing what he wants from her.
"David, should I come to him or not? I'm fearing that he might use me as a cover for his failure if he fails again."
David looks at her with worry. "I know, it's just that...my dad doesn't learn from his mistakes and failures, he keeps leaping into impossible situations and expects it to be the same situation over and over."
Frida was taken aback by his father's stubbornness for profit. "That's horrible, what should I do then?"
David looks down to think about it.
"Well I assume he's gonna ask you to make the calculator he promised and also make you test it out to see if it fails."
Frida gulped in fear as she went over to his office, to find Stephen hopelessly trying to dismantle a typewriter that he made.
"Sir?"
"Ahh, Frida, I really need you right now. As you might know, I promised a mechanical calculator."
"Wait, didn't they say that you're gonna do an automatic calculator?"
"Well yes but a mechanical calculator would sound cheap for the middle class, since they're mostly our customers."
"So maybe if we only focus on the middle class, then what impression do you need of the investors?"
Stephen suddenly gave thought to what Frida said and soon realized that she was right and so had to backtrack in order to get her to help.
"Yeah, so maybe we could make an automatic calculator that will be a prototype and it only works once so that we could have a good impression."
Frida gave it a thought before seeing the point Stephen is trying to reach. "Yeah, and so once you have their approval, then you could do the mine and then you can give us a salary."
"Yeah, that would be a good plan and also, it's not gonna be a salary, it's more like an allowance."
Outside of the office, as David began to try his own doodles on a spare piece of paper, he heard a knock on his door.
Expecting it to be his mother, Mary, he placed the paper aside before getting up to open the door for her.
He opened the door and he met instead Kaisa, the person whom he met back when he and Frida were going to an amphitheater and back when Frida wasn't technically his.
"Oh, have we met before?" Kaisa asks naively, like she has never seen him before.
"I think we do, I remembered your cape." David responded, pointing his index finger to the cape on her back.
"You do? Thanks." Kaisa said, feeling amused that someone remembered.
Then Frida suddenly showed herself to the doorway right next to David and she had also remembered Kaisa from earlier.
"Wait, I think I know you somewhere."
"Yes, I am that woman who asked you for directions one day."
Frida dug to her memory, trying to find any mention or sight of her and she did, before giving off a face of realization.
"Yes, I do know you! What's your name?" Frida inquires loudly, happy to know her and also asked for her name.
"Kaisa."
"Pretty neat name." David compliments, making Kaisa curve an open smile back at him.
Frida nodded along, agreeing with his opinion on her name.
"Thanks but look… so I am kind off, lost… have you known where Hilda is?" Kaisa thanks the two before asking them if they know where Hilda is
David and Frida both backed off a few inches away from Kaisa as a sort of reactionary move when her name is uttered, feeling like why should they know.
"We have no business with her… why?" Frida asked worriedly, concerned about what she wants with this woman they just met again.
"I… kind of need to tell her, her mom died…."
Both Frida and David were hit hard with the announcement, having not known of her sickness and timely death but the thought of bringing Hilda retribution for attacking them without any reason made them feel victorious.
"Oh she is definitely gonna like that." David said with a smirk, making an ironic statement to state Hilda's feelings for her mother's death.
Back at the Haustad estate, Hilda was in the family's library, reading their medicine encyclopedias as a way to help her mom, and while reading through all of its pages, she found a newfound passion, a passion for biology, and as she reads them with interest, she also managed to sneak a few pages out the books by ripping them off so she can get out of the godforsaken house and use them for her mother.
As she reads them one by one and as her small pile of books begin to grow, she then saw Jared and his family again but this time, they have someone over and she can't overhear their conversation because the library is too far from the front yard, she can guess what they're about to do based on their body language.
She sees a man, so well-dressed that she can't identify him or even try but it looks like his mother was desperately giving something to him with some visible rejection from the person and after that, he swept his 4 fingers like a broom and it got them running to the house.
Jared's family are now looking for the files that Hilda stole out of spite, fearful that the legal system or whoever Hilda saw on the front would catch on to them before they can finish it up.
Deciding to take the battle right up to their faces, Hilda, feeling confident, walks out of the library with the papers in hand to expose them of their ensconced and clandestine plot.
Hilda turned over to the same path to their downstair living room and then walks right up to an open door where Jared and his parents are scrambling every cabinet to find the papers that are in her hands.
"In a hurry?" Hilda asked dauntlessly, heckling at their rushed mission.
Jared turns over as he opens a cabinet. "Yes! And we don't have much time for-" Jared shouted, quickly responding to her question before going back to laboriously inspect the cabinet he just opened.
Hilda, feeling overconfident at this point, raised her hand with the two papers in the air before using her other hand to knock on the wooden doorway.
"Looking for this?" Hilda taunted, waving her hand in the air.
Jared looked and gasped loudly at the papers that are in her hands.
"How, how, how did you get that?!" Jared yelled at Hilda, making his parents turn around to see the two and now both are also gasping loudly too about what was in Hilda's hands.
The father stepped forward carefully. "Madam, you don't know what lies within those papers."
"I don't care! I don't want to be a victim of another arranged marriage, just so you guys could fulfil some archaic, superficial and useless economic somethings!"
That's when Hilda saw the desperation in their faces explode as they all raced to her to retrieve the papers but, being able to outrun and to outmaneuver them all, she's able to keep the papers to herself and managed to put them back in her pocket.
But all of that effort to keep it has made a lot of noise in the room, so much so that the well-dressed man went inside to see what's going on.
"What's with this cacophony going on?!"
Then, Hilda recognized that voice, somehow, she can, and as she looked away from the chaos of the room to the man, it dawned on her who they brought to the house.
Then as she wasn't looking, the mother took the papers from her hand and then began to show the now crumpled piece of paper to the man.
"Look, this bride of his here has now figured it out and now we can't hold the wedding!" The mother yelled, shoving the piece of paper at his chest in a fit of anger.
"Look look, madam Haustad, how can I believe that this affair is gonna fix the church?" The man argued back.
Then as he calmed down a bit, he looked to the other people in the room and then as he skimmed over the father and Jared, his eyes started to fixate on Hilda, seemingly recognizing it.
"Hilda?" He asked, wanting to see if that is the same one he saw earlier.
She looked at him with confusion, how can he know her that quickly? Is it because of her hair, her body, her face, what or how does he know her?
Then his attention returned to the mother.
"If you're not gonna host this wedding, I'm gonna send a letter to the Church of England and have them revoke your priesthood, sir Gerald!"
"Because surely you can." he mocks them, unaware of who is in the room.
Hilda was shocked, taken aback by the news, she just met the same guy who was Johanna's co-worker days ago and the same guy who dodged her remark on his interest for her, the same guy who was invited by her mother to date her, is now here, about to hold an arranged wedding between her and Jared without her consent.
Then her shock came to pass only for her unbridled anger and violent tendencies to start to form around her mind, just disgusted that someone who was a pervert to her is now trying to be a priest of the same church she burned down years ago.
While all of that happend, Hilda loudly tore the papers apart in fury and tossed the remaining pieces over to a candle. While the parents were suddenly trying to save the pieces of paper while screams and arguments fly all over the room, the father accidentally dropped the candle on the carpet, trying to quell the fire, and it soon started a small fire but the smoke quickly envelops the room.
As they screamed at it and tried to put it out, everyone was covering their noses and mouths while trying to find some water to quickly burn out the fire. Hilda quickly ran upstairs, with Jared trying tò catch up but got interrupted by a cough due to the smoke, and got all that she wanted in her luggage and ran out the house via the back door, and while on the streets she bumped directly into Kaisa.
"Ow…. Hilda! Look, I need to tell you something!" Kaisa said, quickly getting herself up and dusting her legs before focusing back on Hilda
"Um…. Kind of busy…but look, there is major news in the house and you need to-"
"Your mom… died….." Kaisa hesitantly said, with Kaisa finding it extremely difficult to not make it serious while still conveying the news at the same time.
Hilda's eyes widened as she looked with an expression between horror and sadness. She tensed her fists and her blind eye started to vibrate as it was trying to move but was too damaged to do so. Her emotions felt conflicted as the feeling of horror and anger contrast that of her sadness and worry for her mother, which only brought about her mental state to a grinding halt.
She started to run towards home, ignoring Kaisa who called her to have her read the will.
"The body is already at the,... Nevermind…"
Hilda dashed across town to go back and locked the doors with the key that laid on a desk right next to the door at home, standing completely still, dagger followed her there.
She wasn't in disbelief, that was very real, and she knew it.
She was ashamed.
For now, all she could think about is how she would survive without her. Even though she and her mother had a complicated history with each other recently, she never took the events to heart and only did so when her dignity was threatened.
But now, she was alone, alone in a world where people only judged her based on the assumptions and opinions around her sex.
As Dagger tries to calm her by trying to sit right on her laps, Hilda looks around the house and remembers the chain of events that lead to this quintessential happening. The death of Twig, the arranged marriage with David that failed, her arson attacks and freakouts.
Without any hope, she started to go upstairs to pack her mom's stuff into boxes in the attic and as she placed each item in each box, each thing instills memory lanes she wouldn't want to revisit.
Until a storm came by, and after hearing the soft, calming noise of rainfall, she decided it was best to finally attend the funeral,which was still preparing, as she picked up the last few boxes, shedding tears… and grabbing her knife as a way to keep herself safe in these trying times.
Meanwhile, Frida and David were coming back from the shop, as they just bought some necessary tools to make the automatic calculator, and as they walked right up the road, chatting to each, is when they saw Hilda… and… something went different, as they stood on opposite sides of the river, facing each other's sight on the bridge.
"... Not again…" Frida said "Not... again… I'm done okay!? I don't know…. Why… but… I need to say this. Are you here to beat us up again!?" Frida shouted with anger rising in her voice, tired of the many times Hilda attacked her and David.
Hilda was unresponsive and it was best to keep her anger to herself today and focus on mourning the passing of her mother, Johanna.
"Because you aren't going to… I'm not doing this charade again!" she screamed, carefully placing the box of supplies at the entrance "Because SOMEONE NEEDS TO TEACH YOU A LESSON!"
Then, it clicked. The aggressor flinched and ripped a small wooden stake in the ground.
Hilda was finally facing them on the bridge late in the afternoon, with rain making visibility lower and the rain making fighting on the bridge slippery and clumsy, and the rain was falling as David and Frida held their ground.
Without any warning, she dashed at them with a piece of wood, screaming as the sky roared in a massive thunder.
Frida held the wood miraculously, as the visibility lowered to that around the bridge and it's entrance and exit, and as David proceeded to push the wooden piece off of Frida's hand and hit her hard in the stomach, however she seemed unaffected.
David then blindly pushed her off the bridge, as the visibility quickly plummeted to that of the bridge itself, and as Frida took the wood and threw it on the rushing river, before grabbing Hilda's hair and holding her head down, as David punched her in the back.
The boy took a good grasp on her torso and slammed Hilda's back on the bridge, making her scream in pain and finally take out the golden knife. She took a swing and in a moment of actual desperation in the falling rain, she hit Frida, slashing her abdomen's right side with a deep cut that would surely make it fall off later.
As Frida collapsed, trying to stop the bleeding, whose blood quickly camouflaged with the rain trickling down upon them, David kept his ground at the bridge and held the knife on the ground and repeatedly bashed Hilda's arm, - that is holding the knife - against the stone pavement.
Hilda kept letting muffled groans, trying to free her arm from David's unexpectedly strong grip, until she finally freed herself and tried to flip over David and throw him on the river, which failed due to his unexpected strength, and as Frida regain her strength and pulled her leg, making her lose balance and causing David to fall onto her, as her head impacted the ground.
The rain kept getting worst, the river began to rise but it didn't really touched the bridge itself but it did show the intensifying fight in a climactic manner.
David got up from the pavement and kicked Hilda again and punched her face, making her good eye close…. But… she thankfully wasn't blind.
After years, her eye seemed to have regained a bit of the vision, and through the blurry imagering, she could still get up and try to resist again, to no avail as David punched her again.
The rain lightens up a little but it only changed the visibility around the area, only returning to that of the bridge and its entrance and exit.
The boy looked at her with disdain as he took this opportunity to help Frida get up,get the boxes and just begin to walk home…
Leaving Hilda alone in the - albeit a weaker - storm as her blood mixed with the water and stained the bridge.
She got her knife back and slowly dragged herself across the stone floor until she reached the pillars, where she got herself up.
A few minutes later, she managed to reach the funeral, fully prepared and the corpse was still there, the burial is due tomorrow.
As Hilda took this chance to rest after a long fight, the Doctor arrived and saw Hilda slouching her body from the chair to the ground, trying to sleep.
The Doctor lightly tapped her shoulder. "Wake up, you don't wanna miss the wake."
Hilda quickly woke up, fumbling her words to see who said that and after rubbing her eyes like she just woke up in the morning, looked to her right and saw the Doctor standing right next to her.
Hilda sheds a tear. "Where were you when she died?"
"Look, miss, I tried all I can. I was even at her bedroom when she died, she was ghastly pale and she coughed harder and harder and then...she suddenly stopped responding."
The Doctor tried not to show sadness, because he needs to look comforting in front of her, but he can't resist shedding a tear in his right eye, showing Hilda that he is touched by her death.
Hilda then looked away from him out of remorse and stared at the ground, tapping her foot in a weird rhythm to keep her mind occupied from thinking of her death and it worked as the rhythm kept her mind distracted for long until the Doctor placed a piece of paper on her lap.
She noticed it and took it off from her lap to read what the paper says and as she reads the piece, she slowly begin to sob quietly yet sadly because she knew this handwriting before.
Then she realized that it was her mother's will.
She sobbed at the mere sight of her mother's handwriting, it feels like she made her mark right there and the parts in her will made it show that she did actually care for her and that she indeed felt regret by her actions and hated them as much as she does.
As she read further after wiping away her tears, she saw a part of the will that mentions Jared.
It reads:
Slaughter that son of a bitch with the blood of the one he mocked.
She clearly understood who that "son of a bitch" her mother wrote down in the will and quietly pledged herself to uphold it until Jared died.
She gives it back to the Doctor before walking her way back home.
As she arrived back home, the house felt so emptier and the silence prevailing over all in every room, with the wind and rain being the only noise filling up this big old house.
She felt that her house became so big while she felt so small in a world without her.
"Mom?" Hilda says loudly, trying to get rid of this feeling but it did no good.
She walked right into her mother's bedroom and saw her dead mother already placed in a glass coffin so that the wake occurs in the house now.
Hilda read the will and pulled out the knife, knowing what has to be done.
Hilda eerily approached the glass coffin as her blood dripped on the floor, knife in hand… and one last will.
She then opened the coffin, with her mother's hand neatly tucked with each other inside, she carefully placed them aside as she stabbed Johanna's dead chest with the knife, carefully twisting the knife to reach the areas of the lungs infected by TB, and contaminating it with her infected blood, now staining the knife.
She plunged the weapon out, no expression, she just started to stumble back to her bedroom, ready to cry herself off into a sleep.