Returned things*

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Happy Valentine's Day! The glitch is fixed! Thank you for your patience! The rest of the chapters should come out on a weekly basis. I tend to write the whole story first, then polish the chapters before I post them. Although the story follows Coraline (both the book and the movie), I did change quite a few things towards the end, so surprises! Enjoy!

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Late at night, Powder was woken when she heard a sound… almost like scrapping, but different. It creaked faintly, like someone's footsteps walking somewhere outside Vi's bedroom door… somewhere in the house.

Afraid at first, Powder stayed in Vi's bed, hiding under the covers, wanting the darkness in Vi's room to hide her. But after a while, she grew antsy. She steeled herself and got out of bed, wrapping Vi's sweatshirt around herself, and decided to follow the sound into the dark house, clutching her flashlight.

When she opened Vi's door, she found the hairless cat sitting at the top of the steps. Powder crouched beside it, whispering, "How did you get in?"

The cat didn't say anything.

"Did you make those noises?"

The cat looked away like it was bored of her already.

"Do you know where my sister is?"

The cat licked its foreleg then blinked at her slowly.

"Is that a yes?"

The cat blinked again.

Powder decided that was indeed a yes.

"Will you take me to her?"

The cat's ear twitched and it looked down the staircase. But Powder didn't need cat-hearing. Her body tensed as she heard the distant creaking again. Somewhere below her.

Making herself stand, she cautiously followed the cat as it climbed down the staircase. Powder was sure she was heading toward the noise. She didn't want to turn on the house lights. She didn't want whatever it was to know where she was. Instead, she tried turning on her flashlight, but the batteries were dying. She smacked it in her palm, but the light flickered only a tiny bit brighter.

She followed the cat down the first-floor hallway, past the drawing room, and the study, and the kitchen, until the cat stopped and sat on its haunches in front of the large mirror at the end of the hallway.

Powder rubbed her arms, staring at it. It was the same mirror in the other world that had trapped her in that cold place with the ghost children. In the dark hallway with the dim flashlight, Powder could only see herself, scared and alone, but the cat stared straight at the glass.

As she came closer, she realized a figure that wasn't her own appeared in the glass. Powder almost thought it might be the other mother, but this person wasn't as tall. She was far away.

And she had pink hair.

"Vi?!" Powder cried.

Through the mirror, her sister was alone, shivering, hugging herself with her thin sweatshirt – not dissimilar to the one Powder was wearing now. Her clothes were torn in places with cuts and scrapes. Her lips were blue, and her teeth chattered.

Her gaze looked up as she limped along, but she turned her head this way and that, as though she was lost. The place behind her didn't look like the stone-cold broom closet Powder was thrown into. No, this place was different.

Her sister was somewhere dark that looked to Powder like a cave, but the walls were not natural. They were flat, and oblong, and geometrically shaped, like the inside of a black diamond. A dozen reflections of Vi stared back at her, like mirrors, getting her lost down an infinite number of tunnels.

And there was a faint green smoke that seemed to follow her along the floor, at the nip of her heels. It swirled in the air and looked sickening to breathe.

Her sister looked cold and hungry, her skin pale, bags heavy under her eyes. She swayed a bit as though she had been walking nonstop for days.

The air sucked out of Powder's lungs. She wasn't imagining it. Violet was trapped on the other side.

"Vi! Vi!"

By some miracle, Vi's head lifted, and her eyes went wide when they connected with Powder's. But her face wasn't glad. It was terrified.

Vi slid down an incline and ran to meet Powder but slammed into the mirror as though she hadn't seen it. She bounced back and her nose bled, but she ignored it. Looking at Powder, Vi shook her head violently, looking over her shoulder then back at Powder, almost shouting at her, but her words were muffled.

Powder shook her head, lunging forward. "I can't hear you! Where are you?" she cried, then gasped when she touched the mirror in her haste and felt it was stinging with cold, like what she thought dry ice would feel like, how she couldn't decide if it was freezing cold or scalding hot.

Powder stumbled back and cradled her hand, tingling with pain. Vi looked concerned, bending her head to try to see Powder better.

"I'm fine! Where are you?" Powder shouted again.

Vi's eyes scrunched and she tilted her head to the side. It seemed she couldn't hear Powder either.

"Where are you?" Powder repeated, enunciating.

Vi didn't answer. Instead, her eyes scanned around the perimeter of the mirror, and she motioned for Powder to back away. When she did, Vi took a few steps back then charged at the mirror, trying to break the glass herself, but it wouldn't budge. If anything, the more she tried, the more the glass was glazing over with a strange freezing film from the smoke getting thicker.

The green cloud swirled around Vi's ankles, rising higher and higher up her shins, but Vi wouldn't give up. She tried again and again, pounding on the wall between them, harder. Powder couldn't hear her, but she was clearly cursing in frustration. Finally, Vi stopped, and Powder realized her sister's breathing was uneven and contact with the freezing glass affected her as well. Her skin was red in places. Vi looked from her aching shoulder to Powder and slowly shook her head.

They may as well have been on different planets.

Powder did not like the look in her sister's eyes. In another lifetime Powder might have called it 'defeat'.

"Tell me where you are!" Powder called.

Vi shook her sweaty head, grimacing, panting. Her face was pale, her skin clammy. Her whole body shivered, and she leaned a hand against the glass for support, but her legs suddenly gave out from under her. She sank to the floor on her knees, coughing profusely.

Powder ignored the freezing glass and she launched herself at it. "Vi!"

Through narrow, heavy eyes, Vi lifted her head to look in her direction. She weakly lifted a hand to touch the glass. Powder knelt and put her own hand up beside her sister's, fingertips to fingertips.

Powder wouldn't let herself cry.

"I'll find you! Please, tell me where you are!"

Vi pursed her lips, her cheeks fighting to smile, but her eyes were sad. She weakly lifted a finger and wrote in the freezing, filthy film on the glass.

NOT MOM

TRAP

RUN

Then her head rolled on her shoulder as her eyes closed. A dozen reflections of Vi did the same.

"Vi? Vi! Wake up!"

But Vi didn't. And the image suddenly fogged over and faded away. Powder stared in horror at her own reflection for a few seconds.

"No… No! NO!" she screamed, pounding on the glass, harder each time.

With a mighty crash, the mirror suddenly cracked and shattered against her fists. With a gasp, Powder covered her head as the glass rained down. She stayed crouched to the floor, arms above her head, panting, long after the glass stopped falling.

A second or two passed when she finally lifted her head, slowly, letting what little remaining pieces fall off her. Surrounded by the broken pieces, her own reflection was scattered on the floor with dozens of distraught Powders staring back at her. A mix of shock, horror, and disbelief in her blue eyes. But none of them were Vi.

She heard a tiny patter of feet as the cat gingerly hopped over the glass and rubbed against her leg. Her face hot and her eyes red, Powder wiped her nose and eyes on her sister's sweatshirt sleeve. Catching her breath, Powder balled up her fists.

"H-How did this happen?" she asked the cat.

The hairless cat turned and walked back up the staircase, toward Vi's room, disappearing inside. Powder stood up despite the ache in her knees that protested her leaving that spot on the floor. As though if she wanted to, she would be stuck there on the floor forever as if in a tar pit.

But Powder followed.

When she got to her sister's doorway, she saw the cat crawl underneath Vi's bed, melting into the shadows. Then the cat dragged something out. An arm, a leg…

It was the doll.

Powder picked it up but noticed it didn't look the same. One half looked like Powder, but turning it in her hands, Powder saw on the back it was a different person. It had short, pink hair, a burgundy sweatshirt, jeans, and black button eyes.

It was supposed to be Vi.

"She's taken her…" Powder said in disbelief.

She thought of the other mother's smile, and it was unbearable. Yelling, Powder threw the doll to the floor. Her fists shook at her sides.

No. She had a better idea.

…

In the drawing room, Powder took a pocket lighter from Vander's coat and ignited the gray sweater and black velvet pants on the iron grate in the fireplace. She stuffed old newspaper into the fireplace as kindling. When it was burning too slow, Powder tore blank pages from her sketchbook and burned those too. Gradually, the fire caught onto the doll, which was laid on top of the ignitable clothes, like a funeral pyre.

As the flames eventually caught onto it, Powder glared at the crumpling, burning thing. She had no pity for it, watching its limbs curling, its mouth tearing open almost in a silent scream, its button eyes melting from its face.

This thing was not an imitation of herself or her sister. It was a symbol of what the other mother wanted all along. In fact, it was everything Powder did not want to be, now – a possession of the other mother, a creepy extension of her.

Powder hoped the other mother could feel pain, even on the other side of the door. Because her frustration knew no bounds. It burned her inside out.

Powder kept tending the fire, watching until even the sand inside of it poured out on the orange flames, but still somehow caught fire, withering away like burnt sugar.

But afterward, Powder's anger turned into heavy sadness as she sat on the floor, watching the embers dim. Her eyes stung from the heat exposure. She sniffled and wiped her nose with her sleeve, hugging her knees.

"She's not coming back, is she? Not on her own."

The cat blinked.

Powder pursed her lips. She closed her eyelids to cool her eyes. "Only one way to free her."

She turned and looked at the door, glaring. She had the feeling the door was looking at her. Which she knew was silly, yet she knew on a deeper level was somehow true.

…

Powder went back into her bedroom and grabbed her backpack. She grabbed her garden clippers, and some other things she thought might be useful, and shoved them all inside. She slipped on her rainboots, zipped Vi's sweatshirt all the way up to her chin and tucked her gray army hat on her head.

When her flashlight started to flicker, she tapped it in her palm, but the batteries had long since run down and it barely glowed with the faintest straw-colored light. She looked under the sink in the kitchen and found the box with the colorful assortment of "in-case-of-emergency" wax candles. She grabbed a pink candle and thrust it into the candle stick.

She made herself eat an apple in the kitchen, even though she wasn't hungry. She very carefully cleaned up the broken glass in the hallway with a broom and pan and swept the remains into a brown paper bag before throwing it away. Then she picked up the old black key and bit her lip.

She found string and cut off a piece to tie the key around her neck.

Then she went back into her bedroom once more and rummaged in the pocket of her jeans. She found the stone with the hole in it and put it in her bag.

Kneeling by the dimming fireplace in the drawing room, Powder lit the candle wick with the lighter and watched the pink candle sputter and light and squeezed the black key in her fist.

It was cold in her hand.

Lifting the string from her head, she put the key in the keyhole in the door but paused, not turning the key.

"Once, when I was little," said Powder to the cat, "when we lived in our old house with our parents… we did everything together. Played in the garden, played on the tire swing, played hide-and-seek, chased each other around the yard…

At night, I remember Vi and me would play pillow fights and pretend to be scary monsters… After Mom would tuck us in bed, I had a hard time falling asleep. But I didn't tell anybody. I kept having nightmares about our made-up monsters becoming real…"

The cat washed its face and whiskers with a manner of impatience. Powder stroked its head. The cat stood up and moved away before looking at her again.

Powder continued with a sigh, "Vi heard me crying one night. I could tell she felt bad. She just hugged me and said, 'No monster is gonna get you when I'm here.'…"

Powder thought of a million things she could've said or done differently. Anything that would've prevented this.

Powder wanted that hug so badly right now. She wanted it as soon as she climbed into Vi's bed. But all she got was the memory of it. Just an instant of the feeling of her sister's arms around her, before it was gone.

It would have to be enough.

"She needs me, now." Powder said, lifting her head, "I'm taking her home."

With one more breath, Powder turned the key in the door, and it turned with a loud clunk.

The little door swung open.

This time, there was no brick wall on the other side of the door. Only darkness. A cold wind blew through the passageway. It pulled at Powder's clothes and her hair. Powder made no move to crawl through the door. She adjusted her dragonfly hairclip one more time, picked up the pink candle again, then took her first step down the tunnel.

She could smell dust, damp, and mustiness. The cat padded along beside her, almost indistinct from the candle's shadows flickering on the shapeless tunnel walls.

"And you think you can take her back? How is that?" asked the cat, although it sounded barely interested.

"I don't know," Powder said, "But when you're scared and you still do it anyway, that's brave."

The candle cast a huge, strange, flickering shadow along the wall. She heard something moving in the darkness, beside her, or to one side of her, she could not tell, but it seemed it was keeping pace with her, whatever it was.

"And that's why you're going back to her world, then?" said the cat, "Because your sister once saved you from imaginary monsters."

Powder huffed, a little in relief for the distracting conversation, despite the insult.

"Don't be silly," said Powder, "I'm going back for her because she's my sister… You know, you're talking again."

"How fortunate I am," said the cat, the candle flame flickering in his eyes, "in having a traveling companion of such wisdom and intelligence."

"Do you have any advice?" asked Powder.

The cat looked as if it was about to say something else sarcastic, then it flicked its whiskers and said, "Challenge her. There's no guarantee that she'll play fair, but she won't refuse. Her kind of thing loves games and challenges."

"What kind of thing is that?" asked Powder.

But the cat made no answer. It stared forward. Its shoulders were tense, and its tail stuck up straight in the air.

Powder was going to say something like, "Sorry," or "Wasn't it a lot shorter of a distance last time?" when the candle went out, as suddenly as if it had been snuffed by someone's hand…