Chapter Text
“And there’s nothing like a mad woman
What a shame she went mad
No one likes a mad woman
You made her like that
And you’ll poke that bear till her claws come out
And you find something to wrap your noose around
And there’s nothing like a mad woman”
- mad woman, Taylor Swift
Red.
Burning, pain-
Hurts. All hurts. All red. Can’t think.
Who is. Thérèse. Who is. Drowning. Get out. Fight.
Always fighting. Too proud. Papa said- Agnes- Papa said me and Agnes-
Agnes-
Thérèse saw her own tanned, scarred hands in front of her, clawing frantically at nothing. Red bubbles through the air- no, not air- through the liquid, thick and sticky, that Thérèse was trapped in.
Trapped. Small. Agnes-
She had to get up. Had to get out. The liquid - blood? - boiled, sent red and white tongues of fire across her body, and she had to fight her instincts to swim through the pain. She had to get out. Had to escape, had to get back to… what?
What was her life?
Trapped. Dark wood floor. Going to die. Going to d-
A bullet hole had been punched through Thérèse’s side, crumpling her body to the ground. The damp, dark wooden floor of the Manettes’ house. The foreign woman who had killed her walked away. Left her there. Alone. Trapped.
Agnes-
Had Agnes been afraid? Had she died alone? Therese remembered these questions piercing the fading light of her brain, and the fading light of the room, and she remembered-
Agnes had always been proud, even a little too proud at times. It was a great virtue, she had said, in times like these, to be able to stand strong and tall. Papa had said that Agnes’s pride would bring nothing good. But Marcel and Thérèse had always wanted to be the same-
Papa had said that, combined with her beauty, her pride would draw the Evremondés’ eyes, and he had been right. Thérèse remembered the terror on Agnes’s face as the Evremondés had taken her away. She remembered hearing the news of what had been done to Agnes, and the noise her Papa made as he had collapsed to the floor, dying terrified, dying helpless-
Red. Shining red. Leaking. Red puddle, bigger and bigger.
Thérèse had been killed just like the rest of her family before her. And the rest of the Evremondés were still out there, still living and breathing, still experiencing the joy that they robbed from so many-
Agnes! Papa! Marcel! No! Please, someone, ANYONE-
Thérèse had given herself up, sold her soul in exchange for vengeance. Murdered so many, come so far, waited so long. And in the end, it had all been meaningless.
As she died, the last emotion in Thérèse’s breast was pure, blazing rage.
And the moments after that came back to Thérèse, in startling clearness. Her own blood all out of her body, in a puddle around her. Staining the cold wooden floor. Shimmering dark and wet…
Then another, sharper red pierced the darkness. A harsh red light floated towards Thérèse, illuminating her blood like the sun illuminates the ocean.
With the last of her strength, Thérèse reached out her right hand, drawn towards the blazing light. The object came closer, and Thérèse saw that it was a ring.
She stretched out her fingers. The light illuminated them, grew brighter and lit the entire room, in all the colors of hell.
Then the red ring touched her finger, and burned , and then-
Thérèse’s head broke the surface of the blood ocean, gasping and shrieking. She couldn’t see through the film of sticky red over her eyes - where was she? What had happened to her? No, somewhere in the depths of her brain she knew what had happened to her. She had gone mad.
Her fists scrubbed frantically against her eyes, wiping out some of the blood, enough to see where she was. The sky above her was a dismal, expansive orangish gray color, sluggish clouds moving through. In France, no matter how bad the conditions below got, the sky was always blue and clear.
Where am I?
Thérèse’s legs kicked and her arms flailed, and somehow she ended up on the edge of the blood ocean, where the sticky red lapped onto a dust-colored shore. She dragged her body partially out of the sea of red, and a detached corner of her mind wondered how she would ever get it out of her dress.
Thérèse coughed and coughed. There had to be a dangerous amount of blood in her throat, clogging her lungs, and indeed, there was no end to the burning hot blood coming out of her mouth and dripping onto the ground. It had to stop any moment now. There couldn’t really be this much blood inside her. After a few minutes had passed, she began to think that her body was making the blood on its own.
What have I become?
Soon she figured out how to breathe normally, how to take the strange, stale air of this world into and out of her lungs instead of the stranger blood vomit she could now make. But her face was still stinging with heat. It took her longer than it should to realize it was coming from her eyes.
The tears were clouded with red, diluting the blood smeared over Thérèse’s eyeballs. Sobs tore through what was left of her body, and her vision became clearer by the second. Once her crying had run its course, she rapidly blinked to clean the rest of the blood out.
The world around her was a scorched, dusty ruin, scraggly mountains on the horizon and not a speck of green anywhere, or any color other than washed-out orange and vivid red.
Wait.
She could just make out a figure in the distance, kicking up dust clouds as it moved closer. Thérèse propped her head up on her elbows - noticing for the first time that the red ring was still bound to her hand - and watched the figure, until it was close enough for her to see details.
The first thing Thérèse saw was the wings. It - or she - had glowing, skeletal red wings, the most eerily beautiful things Thérèse had ever seen. They gently flapped as if keeping time with the creature’s breath, making a mesmerizing rhythm. As the strange woman got closer, it was clear that the rest of her appearance matched that strange beauty. Her skin - bright blue - stood out against the rest of the landscape, set on display by strange gaps in her clothing over her hips and thighs. The rest of her body, except for her face, was covered by a tight, thin layer of cloth, colored in eerie black and red. And as the woman approached Therese, she could see that her face matched her wings’ beauty.
“Am…” Thérèse gasped and coughed, her vocal cords still recovering from being clogged with boiling blood. “Am I… in hell?”
The woman laughed. “Close enough.”
“And you are… a fury… a demon?”
Confusion crossed the woman’s face. “I don’t know all of your human concepts. What’s a demon?”
“A… fallen angel.”
The woman looked away from Thérèse, far into the distance.
“I’ve seen a few pictures of angels. They have… they have wings, right?”
“White feathery wings.”
Thérèse saw a glimpse of pain in the woman’s face, and then the woman stiffened, became cold.
“My name is Bleez. Come with me.”