Chapter Text
It takes Olive over two hours to somewhat calm down her baby boy.
She is standing in darkness, her back pressed against the wall, her numb arms still holding the sleeping child. Stress, hunger, and hours of cradling the hysterical toddler have tired her beyond all telling, but the flame that burns inside her chest is enough to keep her upright and vigilant. Although asleep in her loving embrace, Samael still jolts and twitches and whimpers in his sleep with alarming regularity, and Olive wonders whether it will ever pass.
Having focused all her effort on pulling Samael out of danger and consoling him as he sobbed and shrieked uncontrollably, Olive had little time to think about, let alone actually take care of her own needs. Hours have passed since she last took a sip of water, and she hasn’t had the chance to even wash blood off her face or replace her torn clothes. She refuses to acknowledge her own discomfort though. She’d rather die than let go of her child now.
She found him in a dungeon filled with intricate machinery. The baby himself was tied down and hooked to several different devices that beeped and buzzed and blinked to the accompaniment of her son’s laments. Around the room, papers were scattered, many of which she managed to collect and take with.
Memories of that documentation make her sick.
The papers referred to her boy as “Nervous Subject,” as if he were a feral animal, captured in the wild with the use of a high-dose sedative and a weighted net, only to be kept in a cage with cameras pointed at it from all angles at all times, day and night. They described her baby as a “rumored descendant of the spectral entity believed to deliver souls to the afterlife,” and used expressions such as “unproven transcendental parentage” or “the possible involvement of malevolent forces,” claiming that the aim of enslaving and terrorizing her petrified son was acting “for the purpose of potential aid in scientific advancement,” intended to “examine the possible foundation of folklore beliefs pertaining to the phenomenon of death” and “deepen the civilization’s knowledge about the nature of passing from existence.” They implied Samael’s origins were “demonic” and “celestial” at the same time, and stated that the experiments were apparently designed to “determine the existence of supernatural abilities in the subject that could help bridge the gap between the world of the living and the world of the dead.”
Positively revolted, Olive can’t help but revisit over and over in her mind one particular line—part of the study was apparently “testing the subject’s pain endurance and trauma responses when presented with unpleasant stimuli.”
Her baby was taken away from her and abused under the guise of “scientific progress,” and the whole thing was aided by the man she had been so foolish to trust.
Half-consciously, Olive recalls the newspaper article she once read about a missing girl. The mother, deeply distressed, ended up dying of longing, and the father said to the interviewer that he couldn’t imagine living without his wife and daughter. Years ago, Olive couldn’t understand his despair. She didn’t know what it could possibly feel like to have her whole world crumble because someone went missing. Today, she wants to find the girl’s father and apologize for not believing in the genuineness of his sorrow, even though he never knew she doubted the severity of his despair.
She understands now how a person can be missed.
The perfect silence of the house is interrupted by the opening and closing of the front door followed by a series of footsteps stopping right at the threshold of the bedroom. As the floor lamp is turned on and yellowish light floods one corner of the room, Olive sees her current husband with a suitcase in his hand and a baffled expressions that he hasn’t yet managed to hide.
Two seconds of stunned silence appear to be enough for Ichabod to collect himself though. A flash of smile appears on his face, almost immediately replaced by a frown when he sees his beloved wife in a state of dishevelment. Expertly hiding his dismay at Samael’s presence, Ichabod theatrically drops the suitcase to the floor and quickly walks up to Olive, asking, “Are you hurt? What happened?”
He’s about to grab her by the shoulders, but the icy look in her eyes stops him in his tracks. Mechanically, Ichabod takes a step back, asking again, “What’s wrong?”
Her expression is hauntingly unsettling, both exhausted and furious, all of her energy culminated in an effort to support the weight of the sleeping child and in passionate hatred toward the person that conspired to have said child taken away from her for purposes more atrocious than the most violent act of cruelty.
“Olive—”
“Perish,” she says simply, her eyes fixed on Ichabod, as he takes one more step back.
The first sensation that Ichabod recognizes is a lump in his throat, effectively preventing him from talking his way out of any misery caused by Olive’s wrath. Uncomfortable pressure builds up in his chest, followed by discomfort in his jaw, teeth, neck, and back. As he struggles to catch a breath, light-headedness makes him lean against the dresser, clutching his chest. Pain radiates further toward his shoulders and arms, and soon, his body feels on fire—or rather, it feels like there is a ball of fire growing inside his chest, filling it more and more, expanding, until the fullness is unbearable. Drenched in cold sweat, Ichabod finally drops to his knees.
The last thing he sees before his soul leaves his body is his wife, looking at him contemptuously, holding her child, herself being held by the man with open eyes.