Archive of Our Own ^beta

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.”

Chapter Text

The rest of the demons of Hell looked even stranger than Bleez.

There was a man like a boulder, his body shaped in a perfect sphere, with an ugly, rough-looking face stretched across it. There was a pink tentacled creature like one of the jellyfish that sometimes used to wash up on the seashore back home. There was a man with a goat-like, grinning skull. And leading them all, there was a man built like a giant, with a twisted, menacing face and skin as pinkish red and glistening as an exposed muscle. All of the demons were wearing similar red and black outfits, and glaring red rings that matched Thérèse’s.

Her own dress was heavy with the blood she had been drowning in; soaked and crumpled and stained beyond recognition. The red giant - Atrocitus - was running through a long, embellished speech on the burning red rings, the rage their power came from, and the blood ocean Thérèse had come back to herself in. Thérèse was only half listening, head spinning from the leftover fear and panic, and unable to take her mind off of her dress. If someone tried to attack her like this, the soaked fabric would slow her down and maybe kill her again. She wondered when - or if - it would dry out; maybe she would have to exchange her dress for one of the personalized uniforms the others seemed to wear. 

“...Are you listening, recruit?”

Thérèse looked up from fidgeting with her dress, and Atrocitus was turned in her direction, baring his needle-like teeth at her with clear disapproval. Stupid - by letting worries get the best of her, Thérèse had already made herself look distracted. Idiotic. 

Thérèse could still prove herself. She stuck her chin up and returned eye contact right back, banishing any trace that she was upset from her face. She had faced much worse men before.

“My apologies,” she said coldly. “It appears that being shot, killed, and boiled by a blood ocean isn’t exactly doing wonders for my concentration.”

One of the demons snickered in the background.

“You’re dazed,” Atrocitus said. “Disoriented. Bleez was recovered enough to put up a fight against me when she first emerged from the blood ocean.”

Bleez put out a thinly muscular arm in between the two, and bared her own sharp teeth back at Atrocitus. All the fury in her yellow eyes was trained on him. 

“Give her some lenience,” she said. “It’s a miracle that she survived at all. You made the blood ocean - you should know that better than anyone.”

“Enough of this pointless arguing,” Atrocitus said. “Human, we need to know who you are before we can fully accept you as one of us. We need to know what fuels your rage. We need to judge if it is sufficiently pure. And we can’t do that if you don’t participate in the discussion.”

“I assure you,” Thérèse said, “my rage is pure. I was a champion of vengeance even before I became… this. I worked to deliver justice and spill corrupt blood across my country. This new state will only be a continuation of my mission.”

Bleez looked back at Thérèse. “What was your mission?”

Overhead, the sky churned into an angry red. 

Thérèse’s mouth opened, and she launched into a rendition of the story that she had told before again and again. Even though the audience was vastly different from the usual discontented peasants in need of motivation, the story hardly changed, except for a bit of exposition on the human way of life. The emotions that the story solicited varied, though. Normally Thérèse’s audience’s eyes widened in sympathy or sadness. Sometimes they cried, or swore oaths to murder everyone like her oppressors. Her story was a tragedy. She knew that, and she knew the power it wielded to alter people’s perceptions of her. She had assumed that in such a rage-centric world, tragedy would be currency. 

But as she was drawn through the haze of her past experiences, almost more focused on the audience’s faces than on the words she had long memorized, she saw that the demons’ faces didn’t move at all. No one looked even the slightest bit upset. In fact, some of the demons seemed almost… bored.

They must have been so used to hearing stories of tragedy that it was normal for them.

Thérèse finished the story with her death, and took a deep breath. She paused and looked around one last time to see if any of the creatures watching her were moved, but to no avail. Without the social currency that normally came from telling her story, her position as the center of attention was starting to make Thérèse feel uncomfortable, pinned down like an insect on display. 

Finally, after a tense silence, Atrocitus stepped forward and opened his mouth.

“Those unjust conditions seem like the perfect breeding ground for rage.”

Some of the tension dropped from Thérèse’s shoulders. 

“Yes, they were. If you go to France, you’ll find many just like me.”

“Still,” Atrocitus said, “you were the only one of them with rage powerful enough to grant you a ring.”

“That’s as close to a compliment as you’re going to get,” said Bleez quietly from the side.

Thérèse figured this was the best time to conclude the meeting, and stuck out her hand for Atrocitus to shake. 

He stared at it for a moment, with a blank expression.

“It’s a human greeting gesture,” another red-haired and red-clothed human said from the audience. “You’re supposed to grab her hand and shake it.”

Thérèse felt her face turning red. She could hear a few giggles coming from the crowd as Atrocitus grabbed her hand limply and shook it with a jumpy, tic-like motion. It was the worst handshake that Thérèse had ever been given.

“Thank you for the opportunity,” she said coldly to Atrocitus, before yanking her hand out of his grip, turning around, and walking away as fast as her dress would allow her.

The rocky, bare ground was rough under Thérèse’s feet, and her blood-bogged dress made the landscape even harder to navigate. It was just one more frustration to add to her growing list of frustrations. She was a small fish in a big pond. At home, in France, on Earth, her cold fire set her apart. People regarded her as an angel of death, a liberator, a goddess of liberty like the ones on the engravings put up in every store and held up as an example of virtue to every man, woman, and child. Now she was only one among many, with nothing to set her apart. She knew how to kill, but they did too.

“Thérèse?” 

Thérèse looked backward and saw Bleez walking after her, with a hand outstretched. Her wings flapped lightly with every movement.

“That was stupid, how Atrocitus started insulting you and then acted like he was above the argument,” Bleez said in a sympathetic voice.

Thérèse stopped walking and turned around. The ground was hard under her feet.

“Is he always like that?” she asked.

“Like he has the world’s biggest superiority complex even though we do everything for him?” An exasperated smirk lit up Bleez’s face, and Thérèse could feel herself giving a small smile back, despite everything. “If so, then yes. Unfortunately he’s always like this.”

“How do you deal with it?”

Bleez’s face lost its amusement, and she looked down and away. Her skeletal wings vibrated ever so slightly.

“It’s funny, isn’t it,” said Bleez. “Everyone on my planet - in all the plays and stories and everything - seemed to think that when you go mad, life ends. The curtain closes. The madwoman always dies, or is never seen again, or is broken forever. No one ever stops to think about what happens the day after you go mad. You still have to get up, and go through your new routine, and smile and make small talk and eat and sleep and think just like everyone else. It’s not just a void.”

“I wish it was,” Thérèse said quietly. 

“You used to be in a void,” Bleez said, staring past the desolate ruin around them. “At first the ring brings oblivion. But when you were thrown in the blood ocean, you woke up from that. The universe wasn’t done with you.”

“What am I supposed to do, then?” Thérèse said. “What is the purpose of the rings?”

“Atrocitus already said,” Bleez said automatically. “To deliver justice to the people who made us.”

“I don’t want to hear Atrocitus’s point of view,” Thérèse said. “I want to hear yours. ”

Bleez stayed silent for a second, forming her thoughts. Finally, she took a deep breath and opened her mouth.

“What was the first emotion that you felt, when all this happened?”

Thérèse remembered watching Agnes be dragged away, and she remembered the crushing doom of the blood ocean, and she remembered the indignity of bleeding out on her enemy’s floor.

“Terror,” she said. Trapped Agnes drowning get out get out.

“Think back deeper than that.”

Trapped. Drowning. Can’t get out. Can’t get out.

“...Helplessness.”

“ That’s what I think we’re meant to stop,” Bleez said, with a flare of something in her eyes. “All the victims of the universe - I think we’re meant to show them that they can fight back. They can be something bigger.”

Thérèse remembered the figures back home, the ideas, born of pain. Pain that wanted to rise as an idol, shining the way for people to carve a better life. She remembered the guillotine, the symbol of justice, and the songs of glorious victory, of power, and the red caps that meant camaraderie, liberté, egalité, fraternité, and the Goddess of Liberty with her toga and scales and laurels in her hair.

Bleez grabbed Thérèse’s hand, her skin hard like metal, and yet burning warm.

“That’s what we’re meant to be.”

Thérèse nodded, blinking quickly to get rid of the pricking warmth in her eyes. “Thank- thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Bleez said harshly, also trying to hide her own emotion. Her face was stone, but her wings betrayed her, quivering faster and faster, like the tremors of an earthquake.

“Do you sense rage anywhere?” she said. 

Thérèse closed her eyes and focused. It was like a red haze over the entire world, stronger in some places, roiling and screaming, burning bright impressions into her mind. 

“I can see a few places where it’s especially strong,” Thérèse said. 

Bleez put another hand on Thérèse’s shoulder. “Those are our destinations.”

“Wait-” Thérèse started. “Before we go, I have to find a new dress.”

“Why?” Bleez asked. “Your new one looks fine.”

“But… the blood ocean stained it…”

“It changed.”

“What do you mean, it changed? ”

“Look down.”

Thérèse realized that it wasn’t the blood discoloring and weighing it down - her dress had actually transformed into something new. Instead of a typical tricolored French dress, her body was draped in dark red and black folds of heavy cloth, almost like the drawings of…

On a hunch, Thérèse lifted a hand up to her hair. It was adorned with laurels.