[fanfiction] Toxicity
Challenge Name and Number: #03, Rewrite
Story Title: Toxicity
Word Count: 2338
Warnings (if applicable): Mild horror
Pairings (if applicable): None
Summary: The strongest magic is in blood. There is nothing that powerful blood cannot accomplish. It can construct and deconstruct. You will make such things some day when you are older.” Catherine smiled fondly at her daughter. “I cannot wait for that day.”
Author's Note: Some things I wish we would have seen in episode 1.17, “Love Sick,” as flashbacks; I found it fascinating that Grimm blood could cancel out Hexenbiests’ identities, so I wondered if perhaps the powers could be given in a similar kind of ritual. The quote is from the original Grimm version of Little Snow-White. First-Place Winner of the 3rd Grimm Challenge! I hope you enjoy.
"You specimen of beauty," said the wicked woman, "now you are finished."
Toxicity
When she was born her mother had hastened to grab the screaming infant from the nurse, halting the cries by grabbing her daughter’s tongue and turning it to spy the birthmark on the underside, puckered and dark. It was good, she said, that she had been favored and marked in such a way, and Catherine passed a hand over the top of the infant’s head, where what little bit of hair that had already grown in was downy and so light that it looked silver to her eyes. She was pleased at that much, but the squalling cries and the wrinkled face of her daughter were hardly beautiful, and so she ignored the child as she grew, delegated her to nannies and their extended clan, neighbor women with other girls of the same age who had less demands on their time.
“Adalind, my dear,” Catherine said, “come and help your mother get ready.” And the little girl, now seven, complied, white-blond hair bouncing as she hurried up to the vanity in her mother’s room, spread with foreign cosmetics and even stranger concoctions in rows of glass jars.
“This color, don’t you think?” Her mother held up a dark lipstick. Adalind nodded, watching her mother apply it. Catherine studied her own face in the mirror so intensely, giving so much of her attention towards the simple and inconsequential act of preparing her face for work.
“You too, dear.” Satisfied with her own appearance, she turned and grabbed Adalind’s face with slim, perfect fingers, gliding the lipstick on. It tasted waxy and was altogether too heavy, but when she stood on tiptoes to see in the mirror she looked like her mother. “Beautiful. I have such a beautiful daughter.”
She sounded proud of it.
She was often made-over alongside her mother, watching as she colored her face in the mornings or applied leeches in the evenings. Catherine would beckon her over and comb red-lacquered fingernails through her hair, talking to the vanity mirror before them about what she should do that evening. Minutes later, a green cream was spread over her neck and face, the smell so strong and repellent that it took all of her willpower not to scrape it off with her fingernails and heave the contents of her stomach into a bin in the corner. As she worked, she talked to her daughter, telling her the ingredients in each of her salves and solutions, turning even this into a lesson.
“You will have to do this for yourself one day when you are older,” she said. “You must learn to do it properly. My mother was very strict in my education, and I will not be lax with yours.”
Adalind hovered around her mother in the evenings, watching her work at her tables and her potions, mixing and fashioning different concoctions and disclosing the instructions.
“This one, dear, is a poison, to be injected into a person’s food. I think I’ll put it in an apple. Perfectly concealed, yet toxic only to the target from the way it is brewed. The strongest magic is in blood. There is nothing that powerful blood cannot accomplish. It can construct and deconstruct. You will make such things some day when you are older.” She smiled fondly at her daughter. “I cannot wait for that day.”
“When?” She looked up from the pestle she had been playing with, eager at the thought of pleasing her mother, of gaining the favor that she so infrequently bestowed. “What must I do?”
“It is a secret, my dear,” Catherine said. “You will learn when you are older, when you come into your inheritance. All of the secrets of our order shall be yours on that day. Then you will be able to truly help me serve our royal family.”
For a second, panic and terror seized her heart in an iron grip. “They will like me, won’t they? I won’t disappoint them?”
Her mother reached forward, white powder sticking to the edges of her fingers, and brushed a lock of hair behind Adalind’s ear. A bit of it smudged against her skin, but she refused to wipe it off, enjoying the gritty feel of it; it helped her keep Catherine’s touch in her memory longer.
“How could they not like you when you are so beautiful? One smile, and they will not be able to refuse you. I see big things for your future, my dear.” Her smile turned downwards, and she dismissed Adalind with a wave of a hand. “Now leave me, darling, I must do this next work in private.”
The years went on, and Adalind suffered under her mother’s auspices as she learned more and more of what she referred to as the family craft, making potions that hurt and healed and learning the names of every herb and plant in their stores.
“I remember it myself,” Catherine told her, days before her sixteenth birthday, “when I was given my birthright. We call it that for a reason, you know.” And she winked, as though she was sharing a joke.
“I cannot wait,” Adalind replied. And she couldn’t-after everything she had been told, after everything her mother had promised her, taking the final step seemed like a choice as natural as breathing. “I would like nothing more than to make you proud of me.”
Her birthday came and passed, and she was given nothing. “You will get your gifts,” her mother said in a low whisper. “Soon. I am working on something for you.”
One otherwise ordinary evening her mother came to her and led her to their car, holding the door open as she slid inside the passenger seat. “It is time.” Catherine’s smile was luminous, and she chatted as they drove. “You remember Serena Dunbrook? You will be sharing your initiation with her.” Her expression turned disapproving for only a second, the frown bringing out the wrinkles around her mouth. “I would rather you have the spotlight to yourself, but there isn’t anything I can do about that. As if she could compare to you, anyway.”
The word initiation filled her with trepidation and glee. “How many people will be there?” she asked carefully.
“Our number is smaller than you think. A few families. The one you will serve-the young Mr. Renard will be very taken with you, I think.”
She nodded, and they passed the remainder of their trip in silence; Adalind stared out the window, watching the trees get taller as they headed into more rural lands and the sun dropped closer to the ground, burning red against the horizon.
Catherine pulled the car over in a gravel lot off of a side road, on the edge of the forest. “We walk from here, darling,” she said. “Don’t twist an ankle.”
Her heels were unreliable on the uneven ground, sinking into the dirt and turning on the rocks, but as the two walked, Adalind kept an eye out for anyone or anything out there to give her an idea of what was about to happen. The air had grown chilly, and as they walked the trees seemed to split the low-lying sun. Anticipation hummed through her, heightening her senses, making each step measured.
She recognized a particular tree whose bark would produce a soporific effect when brewed in a tea and a kind of vine whose thorns were a main ingredient in one of her mother’s favorite potions. Before them, the path sloped, and a small wooden building came into view. It seemed as much a part of the landscape as the trees around them, and she raised a questioning eyebrow towards her mother.
“A bathhouse?”
“Come along, dear.” Her mother took her arm, then, and led her towards the bathhouse; the wooden siding was edged with moss, and smoke rose in a thin coil from a spout at the top of the sloped roof. She could hear voices inside, and as Catherine opened the door a strange, pungent smell wafted from inside.
It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light, but when she did she saw a cadre of women, gathered over a circular table upon which rested a large, iron bowl. The room was filled with steam, obscuring the faces of the people there and making her feel slightly dizzy. Her mother pushed her towards Serena Dunbrook and went to sit down at a bench alongside the wall, next to a young man in a dark dress shirt.
“Adalind Shade.” An older woman called her name first, and she stepped forward, into the center of the room. If anything, it seemed to grow darker, and the woman offered her a goblet of whatever was in the cauldron. The liquid was thick and red, and smelled so strongly of iron that she knew it must be from blood.
“Today, you come of age to join the ranks of our order and receive your birthright. Once this passes your tongue, you will be one of us. Do you accept this?”
The strongest magic is in blood, her mother had told her once. As the woman handed her the goblet, she noticed the cut in the woman’s hand. Her blood had gone into the potion, she knew. Glancing around the room, Adalind wondered if each person there would have such a cut.
She hesitated with the cup at her lips, staring at the thin film that had begun to develop on top of the liquid. Her stomach turned, but she kept her voice strong as she murmured an assent and slid her lips over the rim of the cup. She had endured worse than this; she could down this mixture and keep it down. She could do it.
The drink was thicker than she expected, and slid down her throat like syrup. She coughed at the first sip but refused to break, keeping the cup at her lips as she swallowed it all down. Draining it, she returned it to the woman’s waiting arms, coughing again, wiping her lips with the back of one hand and watching with detached horror the streak of red against her pale skin.
Sweat began to prickle along her body, from her arms to her neck, and her limbs felt weak. Her tongue was heavy in her mouth, and her mother was by her side in an instant.
“Show her,” the old woman commanded, and Catherine led her from the room, into one of the baths, another room of aged wooden walls and steam. Basins of water lined one wall, while a freestanding mirror was placed against another.
“I feel…different.” It was a struggle to get the words out. “What…happened to me?”
“I made such a beautiful creature,” Catherine said. “Now, you are at the pinnacle of beauty! Look at yourself-look, dear. I am so proud of you.”
She looked as the mirror was tilted forward, as her face shifted and changed. She felt it beneath her skin, felt the bones waver and shift as the skin sank and tightened around her mouth. Her skin, ash-gray, stood starkly against her dark eyes and brittle hair, lightened to the point of being colorless. She had never seen something more hideous in her life.
“What am I?”
Her lips were pulled back to reveal her teeth, jutted at odd angles, and her mouth ached as she tried to speak. “What is this? What have I-”
“You’ve become beautiful, Adalind. You’ve become powerful. You’ve become a Hexenbiest.” Her mother’s face shifted then, too, and she could see the resemblance between them all the more clearly now that their faces were just bone and tightly stretched skin. “Now come. You must add your blood to the cauldron with the rest of ours. Serena cannot drink without it.”
She allowed herself to be led back, her hand raised, palm up. It was cut with a knife so sharp she barely felt it, and wrapped without concern. Three drops of her blood had trickled into the mix with the rest, and she watched as Serena accepted the goblet and choked it down, gasping and changing as she had.
Adalind watched the other women; now she saw them for how they really looked, like creatures of nightmares. Sweat mixed with the cut in her palm and stung; the taste of blood was still strong in her mouth.
“Welcome, my dear,” Catherine whispered in her ear. “We welcome you.”
::
Nick Burkhardt’s hands gripped hers tightly, pinning her to the ground as he brought his face to hers. With no other way to defend herself she bit. She felt it the moment the skin broke, and went limp as the familiar taste of blood invaded her mouth.
Only this time it was different-instead of her own blood, it was Nick’s she tasted-Nick’s mouth pressed firmly to hers to ensure she received his blood. It passed her tongue and she swallowed almost reflexively, realizing in a sudden, dazed instant just what she’d done.
“You killed me,” she said, her powers gone. “I’m nothing now. You’ve taken everything.”
At least when her mother had done the same, she had gotten something from it. Now, she had only her tears, and her mother’s voice ringing in her ears, “I had such high hopes for you, honey,” even as a door painted a mockingly bright red slams behind her.
When her powers had risen out of her like a spectre, she would have gladly drank a gallon of her kind’s blood to restore them-but the strongest magic was in blood, and there was no blood stronger than a Grimm’s.
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