fic: here is the deepest secret nobody knows (5/5)
V. GOTTERDAMMERUNG
(He has loved her for a thousand years, and he will love her for a thousand more, even if she wears a different face.)
Nik leans over the dying girl, the dying girl with hair as gold as his own, and eyes wide and innocent still, and says-
“You can have a thousand more birthdays. All you have to do is ask.”
This time he will let her choose. This time he will do it right. In fifty years he will look at her, and she will be crafted entirely out of gold, entirely out of him.
This time she will not leave. This time she will not betray him. This time he will be a choice.
A voice, the voice of a dead girl with hair like the light of the sun whispers in that single, solitary, elevated moment-Why are you doing this?
But that is not the question. The question is why are you leaving me? The sentiment is, I promised you forever.
The dead girl asks, have I not loved you enough?
The golden child in his arms bites into his skin, digs her teeth in deep and hard, and drinks, and Klaus thinks, sneers, the love of a sister.
(This is not a lie:
“I miss you.” She says.
When he replies, “I’ll be home soon,” she almost hesitates. Almost. She almost tells him everything, almost lets the words spill from her mouth, almost screams, run, run, but she doesn’t, because if it’s one thing he has taught her, he has taught her how to hate, how to let her heart be consumed with fire and light and a hate so dark and deep it is a physical thing-
So she doesn’t. She says nothing. She makes her choice.)
There is a story about a girl and a wolf and a grandmother, swallowed whole.
The girl goes into the forest, they say, and a wolf lurks around the corner, dark and looming with blood on his teeth, tells her to pick some flowers, tells her to linger, and like a fool, the girl listens.
The wolf swallows her grandmother whole, swallows her but leaves a lump of meat behind, baked into a pie, and gets into bed, masked in a cap and a smile and his claws beneath the covers, voice full of endearments, and when the wolf asks the girl to taste the pie-just a bite, dear, just a bite-the girl does, and swallows, and holds within her a part of her grandmother’s murder, a part of the wolf.
When she gets in bed with the wolf, naïve and innocent and stupid, he consumes her whole too.
This is what they don’t tell you:
There is no huntsman to cut him open and set her free.
parts i), ii), iii), and iv)