Work Text:
*
With this ring, I ask you to be mine.
Those words sprang from Victoria's lips, honeyed and clear as moonshine.
She wandered the forest, unaccompanied, lost in thought rather than the darkness. In nothing but a thin, corseted gown and a shawl. Poor dear.
Her soon-to-be-husband's ring betwixt Victoria's fingers. Victor left it behind, hurrying for his parents' carriage and without so much as a proper goodbye. She recited Victor's vows to herself, twirling in a fit of romantic whimsy, slipping the golden ring onto a hand-like branch. The branch shed its marrow to reveal cold, pale bone. Victoria fled to the bridge, squealing in terror during the pursuit.
Emily had not prepared for her true love to be a young, heart-faced woman… such beauty… a demure and rebellious Breather…
(However, one cannot choose true love at a whim. It simply is.)
"Ms. Everglot, if I may," she speaks up, resting her blue and slender hand over Victoria's quivering fingers. They sit alone in the empty, stone field of the Land of the Dead. Victoria's face gleams with hot, wet tears. Emily wishes she could feel them, to her lips and cheek, and understand the torment in her heart. "My happiness resides where yours may fall. I wish for nothing else. You have freed me from my curse and shown me mercy. Tell me what I must do to make you happy, my dearest."
Despite her earlier reluctance, Victoria turns her fingers and laces them with Emily's hand, squeezing. A firm, harsh pressure.
"I want to go home…" she murmurs dully. "That's all…"
Emily nods, tutting, brushing a stand of light brown hair out of Victoria's eye.
"I believe I know someone who can help us."
*
Souls of the dead respected the grandfatherly wisdom and spellwork of Elder Gutknecht.
All of them.
That includes herself as Emily begs for a way to return Upstairs. She wishes Victoria to call upon her parents, to know they're alive and well. "If you insist," Elder Gutknecht tells. His skeletal countenance brooding. "You must understand this cannot be undone."
If she had a heart, Emily is sure it would be pounding nervously against her visible rib-cage.
"I do."
*
Maggot and Black Widow agree to remain behind. Victoria stares in mounting, shy bemusement as Elder Gutknecht recites the words, mixing together ingredients such as the hair of a troll, bat excrement, feathers, and a drop of Victoria's warm, red blood.
With a flash of watery, swirling gold — gold as Victor's ring — they're transported to the Land of the Living.
Emily feels.
She gasps, clutching over her bosom. Her mother's wedding dress now pure, white silk and beads. No longer tattered. Her veil as light as air. Emily's curly, brilliantly red hair spills over her face, as she bends over, quivering. Her heart pounds.
Victoria stares, awed. Her little, pretty mouth widens open.
The blood.
Emily realizes what her old friend has done, for her and her love, releasing a high, delighted sound.
She rushes over to Victoria, embracing her, feeling her softness and heat. Smelling her. Graveyard dirt and lilies and sweat. It's intoxicating. Emily can feel herself, dampening between her own thighs, lightheaded by oxygen and arousal and joy. Emily kisses her, laughing, tickling the other woman playfully as Victoria protests softly, wiggling in Emily's arms and smiling.
*