Belladonna Post Chapter Nine (Patreon)

A/N If you have not read chapter nine yet, this will not make sense. Make sure you read that first before coming here.

There was knowing that a past could be intricately layered with events that shaped culture and universe alike, and then there was seeing it. Belladonna stared at the remains of a woman she didn’t know. Then, at the grieving form of an individual who had been a thorn in the market's side since long before her own time. She looked them both over in a spare breath of time, and she felt sorry for them. It wasn’t just the passing kind of sorry that one felt when seeing someone struggling. It was that bone deep one. The one that was perhaps filled with more understanding than she wanted to admit.

Behind her, she could feel the tearing of the memory. The way that the walls opened back up to welcome them into the liminal space once more, but she couldn’t stop staring at these women. Lucinda Albright. A woman who had been known in her time to try and dismantle the market based on her own views. And Hearth. Someone who was now lost in time. Belladonna wondered if anyone even remembered her. Knowing the Albright's, she wondered if Lucinda had already banished the thoughts of her lost love. Did this tree that housed her body still stand?

“We have to go.”

Night, her dear heart’s hand, slipped into her own, and Belladonna couldn’t help but want to cling to it just a bit more. Nearly a year had passed since she lost the only individual that she had ever loved. A year when Bella had been angry. Had blamed anything that was even slightly in her way. A year without a tether to humanity. She knew the course she had been following after her dear heart's death. Would she have become Lucinda if given enough time?

There was very little doubt in her mind.

She was tugged backwards, once. Twice. Suddenly, she was falling through a watercolor film, the hand still in her own but something different in front of her than familiar eyes and a comforting smile. The gaunt, chilled form of a woman who cared for no one replaced everything. She looked at the world like it was a pest to be stamped out.  

Belladonna. In another life.

This bent and fragile visage of herself was curled in front of a fountain. It was the one from Taliesin's party and the final resting place of a different Night Market. A different path. The fountain had become some sort of shrine. An effigy that Bella could kneel and pray to. Bone walls now surrounded the fountain, blocking out the rest of the world. The lanterns were still dark but they had been replaced with crystal orbs that gave off a cold sort of wind. This future self of hers looked frozen as she draped herself against the fountain edge.

“I’ve done it,” she whispered. Bella wondered if she whispered to her, or to her dead lover. “I finally found a way, dear heart. You will not be alone much longer.”

Outside, the bone walls thrummed like a drum. The staccato boom boom boom would not rest as the ground shook with the steady rhythm of an army marching forward. Screams erupted, just like they had done that night. The skeletal form of herself didn’t seem to care. Her bony fingers drifted up and down the marble basin, the water inside tinged red. Bella could smell blood. It was old, however, and unfamiliar.

“One day,” her skeleton continued. “I think you and I should meet again. Perhaps a different lifetime. A different form all together. I’ll be able to set you free and you can be reborn into something so much more than you are now. Thank you for waiting, my love. Thank you for not giving up.”

Bella frowned, pieces falling into place. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t even call out. The image of her future form simply lying there as the rest of the world tried to barge in was overlaid with Lucinda weeping at the base of her lover's tree. Souls within the Night Market were destined to be torn apart, it seemed. Love did not prevail, despite the many artistic implications that it would always win.

The bone wall crumbled and through the thin crack it made, she could see the flash of bat wings as vampires and beasts alike took their true forms. There were men and women standing ahead of them, trying to make their way inside. They wore clothes sewn together with coarse thread and bent needles, and there was a crazed hunger in their eyes that spoke to desolation.

“Won’t be long now,” the skeleton whispered.

Bella wanted to scream. To shout. Death was knocking at the door and she was doing nothing. She had given up somehow. She knew that the hunger would be her end one day. She was not naive enough to believe she could exist without Night. But this? This was something so much more. Bella had always fought. She had always made her own decisions in the world. Not once had she laid down and let the end come to her in a violent storm.

The last of the walls broke and the beasts that had been protecting her were falling far too quick. They were young fledglings. Suddenly, the blood within the fountain made sense. A ritual of some sort. Something to raise an army.

“Belladonna Malady!”

A man stepped forward in a Warden’s uniform. Not Gabriel. Someone bigger. A face that was far more severe.

“For the crimes against the Night Market, I sentence you to death.”

The skeletal figure on the ground smiled, thin, papery skin stretched across bones and ripping apart. “You sentence me to life, Warden. You sentence yourself to death.”

The Warden didn’t listen. It was with Bella’s experience that they rarely did. He marched forward, a retinue of what was assumed to be Velvet Guards behind him, picking off the last of the stragglers. 

And then…

The sword came down. Bella’s head rolled, falling to the exact spot that Night’s body had once laid.

A bright light began to grow. The fountain began to bubble. The world around began to scream in agony.

The world had taken away the one thing that mattered to Bella. So she would take the world.

She blinked and was back in the liminal space, having never let go of dear hearts hand. Without a word, she stepped forward, enveloping them in her arms. She didn’t say anything. Instead, she held them tight and reminded herself that they were here. With her.

The world wouldn’t have lasted long if she had been in Lucinda’s position. Belladonna had a feeling it still may not.