Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nancy comes across the hand on accident.

She hadn’t meant to be in that part of the wetlands to begin with, as the bog asphodels she was researching never grew this far in. The expedition rules only allowed her cohort to venture the first few miles, which she has long since passed. Despite the restrictions, Nancy always wandered past the red flags along the boardwalk marking the limits, intent on proving herself with a solo discovery. 

The sun-bleached boardwalk beneath her feet twists and turns through the expansive horizon of water and moss and mud. Balmy air makes it a struggle to breathe properly while lugging her equipment beside her. Her linen shirt clings to her skin beneath her coat, coveralls and wading boots heavy with water. Try as she might to fully dry them, the humidity never allows it. 

Having spent the better part of two years in the wetlands, Nancy has become accustomed to its unique atmosphere. While most despise it, she finds herself deeply enjoying the earthy aroma and the constant hum of skimmers, toads, ravens. 

Beneath the familiar scent of rich soil and drying pine, however, she finds something sickly sweet, like ripe fruits on the cusp of decay. It overpowers everything else and draws her deeper into the marshlands. There is something in the bog that doesn’t belong, and her curiosity drives her further than her research allows.

Three meters beyond the red flags marking their border, Nancy comes across three brown bumps pushing up from beneath the carnation colored carpet of sphagnum moss. She almost walks past them too, if her eyes weren't trained to search for things that didn’t belong. Nancy crouches to examine the strange protrusions, shuffling through her duffel bag to find her peat probe, and prods at the shape. 

They appear mushroom-like in nature, but more solid than the pliable flesh of a normal mycelium, joined together somewhere beneath the murky surface. Something like a shell covers one side of the bumps, growing out in sharp points. They almost look like nails. 

When she realizes what they are, Nancy jerks back, nearly throwing herself off the platform.

They're not mushrooms but fingers, thick like roots and black with earth. They wiggle, as if searching, reaching for something. It has to be a muscle reflex, a trick of the mind. The subtle movement exposes the ridged plain of a palm.

Nancy swallows. She hadn’t thought her day would include unearthing a dead body. Unable to help herself, she tentatively pokes the palm’s center with her probe. To her shock, the fingers twitch in response. It has to be a dead muscle spasm, or a trick of her mind, she’s certain of it. 

Whoever’s in the earth can’t still be alive. 

Nancy knows better than to take anything from the ecosystem she doesn’t need to without proper equipment—all she has with her are her probes and augers to study the soil’s pH—nor to disturb the quiet equilibrium, but she’s overcome with a strong need to help whoever is in the mud. However long this body was here, at least the bog’s environment would preserve it. Anyone silly enough to discard a corpse in the one place it can’t decay deserves to be caught.

She looks around, wondering who, if anyone, could she call. Her radio is in her pickup, which would take her an hour to walk there and back. All of her cohort are scattered around the peatlands, too far to be useful to her. She’s on her own. 

From her vantage point on the boardwalk, Nancy takes hold of the hand and gives it a generous tug. She slowly unearths a forearm, then an elbow, a shoulder. Eventually, she sees the slope of a slender neck, the heart-shaped face of a woman escaping from her mossy prison. 

Her brown skin is blackened from peat, long hair matted and hanging in thick clumps around her head like the gnarled roots of a cypress tree. She looks peaceful, as though she’s sleeping, or more likely dead. To her surprise, however, the woman inhales deeply, nostrils flaring. 

As the weight of the earth and moss grows heavier around her, Nancy lets go of the woman with a yelp. 

It’s not the surprise of finding the body alive that stuns Nancy enough to drop her back into the water, though it’s certainly a factor. No, she lets go at the sight of the plants clinging to the woman’s naked torso. Thick roots from the nearby trees and thinner wires of the blossoming heath flowers wrap up her body as though she belongs there. Vegetation grows in her hair. As if that wasn’t odd enough, thin black roots snake from the green stems and burrow into the woman, running under her skin like veins.

The plants seem to be growing not just around her, but also from her. But that can’t be possible, not if she’s still alive. Not unless she’s been in the marshes much longer than Nancy originally thought. 

Her shock and subsequent release of the woman throws Nancy off balance. Before she can catch herself, she falls backward into the mud. The cold immediately sets in around her. Her presence displaces the earth around her, thick water sloshing about. 

Because of the bog's consistent inconsistency—some spots are solid earth that she can stand on, while other parts are made of unsteady water that stretches for miles—it’s impossible to predict exactly what the bog will be. Nancy is both lucky that the mud is thick enough to stop her from sinking past her waist but thin enough that the water soaking into her clothes drags her further down. Its weight and chill stuns her, but she manages to keep both hands on the boardwalk’s edge.

Her fingers dig into the wood, no doubt forcing splinters into her skin. She wishes there was a ladder for her to climb. Surely she’s not the first to fall in. 

On the opposite side of the boardwalk, the woman has sunk back down into the bog with a quiet slurping sound, her body fitting perfectly into the hole left behind in the thick green, as if she was never disturbed. Only her hand and wrist are left exposed, still reaching. 

Unaccustomed to the new weight of her drenched waders and filled boots, Nancy slips a few times while climbing out. Her hands are slick with mud, feet kicking and hitting nothing to propel herself up. If she had sunk any deeper, or if she were any less determined, she fears the earth would swallow her alive and never let her go. 

A silly, unfounded word flutters in the back of Nancy’s mind as she struggles to pull herself out.

Trap. 

Almost as if it were a hand slacking its grip, the thick soil dragging her down suddenly loosens. Nancy pulls herself back onto the boardwalk with great effort and collapses onto her knees. As soon as she’s back on her feet, she pauses to catch her breath. Mud and water sloshes off her. The heady sunlight warms her cheeks, but she’s still shivering. She picks clumps of rose-colored moss from her hair and drops it back into the bog. 

The hand sticks out like a stem, her index finger crooked, posed in a beckoning motion. There is something wrong with this situation. Nancy’s neck prickles from that uncanny feeling of unseen lookers. Someone is watching her.

She looks around. There’s nobody else around for miles, save for the silent birds and lizards. Her heavy breathing is the only sound she can hear. Nancy realizes then that even the insects have gone quiet. They must be the eyes on her that she can’t see. 

Nancy is less inclined to help the strange bog woman now. Her gut tells her to run, to heed the red flag warnings next time and stay within her comfortable boundaries. But curiosity drove her from her small town to these isolated peatlands, and she’s never been one to deny her own need to know, even if learning the truth means putting herself in harm’s way. She learned that lesson long ago. 

The risk is a calculated one, but still a risk. After gathering her wits, Nancy reaches for the woman once more and pulls with all her might.

She emerges with more ease than the first time, almost willingly now. Even so, it takes all of Nancy’s strength not to fall in again. Her large hand flexes to grip Nancy’s forearm with an inhuman strength. As her head surfaces, the woman doesn’t gasp for air or cough up water like Nancy expected. Mud trickles out from her parted lips in rivelets. She inhales sharply through her nose and simply breathes. As if breathing air is no different than breathing marsh. 

Though Nancy can’t tell from under the mud clinging to her, the woman appears unhurt. Nancy braces her feet on the platform and slowly stands, gripping under the bog woman’s arms and pulling her up. Her body, limp and unmoving, feels as heavy as the earth itself. Roots and stems snap free as Nancy manages to get the bog woman’s torso out of the water. She eventually drags the rest of the large body onto the boardwalk with a squelching splash. 

The woman lies motionless on the oak planks, her bare chest rising in deep, calm breaths. Her eyes are still closed, her mouth a fine line against her face. She appears larger than life.

Breathless from her efforts, Nancy kneels beside her, unsure how to proceed. The woman looks at peace. She almost feels guilty for removing her from the marshes, though it’s quickly shaken by her rationality. If she hadn’t, this woman could have died. 

Now, Nancy is not small for her age, but even looking down at this woman, she feels miniscule. Her head dangles slightly off one side of the boardwalk, her calves hanging from the other end.

Curiosity takes over. Nancy retrieves her pen, having dropped it in her earlier shock, and lifts a clump of the woman’s hair, thicker than normal and heavy with dirt. It first appears black as the fertile earth but shines a pale gold as she holds it to the sunlight. Thinner, paler roots of heather and bog asphodels mingle in her hair, almost indistinguishable from one another. The ends are uneven, like someone trimmed the woman’s hair with a blindfold on. 

“Are you okay?” Nancy asks, still recovering from her efforts. 

When she gets no response, she taps the woman’s cheek. Finally, the woman opens her eyes, and Nancy is once more left breathless. They’re the only splotch of color against her monochrome browns and blacks. One as blue as the sky at noon, the other a bright grass green. Her irises swallow most of her eyes, leaving only a faint yellow ring of her scleras when she looks down. The thin lines of her pupils widen like a cat’s when she meets Nancy’s intense, awed stare.

“Oh, you’re awake,” Nancy says as the woman sits up, relieved that she hadn’t just uncovered a very odd corpse. 

She shuffles back to give the bog woman space to sit up. The woman simply stares at her, unblinking, a thin film flickering over her eyes like the brille of a snake. There is something alluring about the way she looks at Nancy with curiosity rather than the expected fear or confusion. She lifts a hand, poking Nancy’s cheek. Her skin is clay-cold, nails sharp as a bird’s beak.

“Are you hurt?” Nancy asks, unsure if she’ll even understand what she’s saying.  

After a moment of blinkless staring—Nancy can almost see her forming thoughts as the woman dechipers her words—she turns her head side to side in a slow shake.

“Did someone dump you here?”

Another shake of her head. 

Nancy hesitates then. The woman understands her, which is a good sign. But she’s still not… quite right. Despite being safe, Nancy’s heart won’t stop pounding. 

Finally, she asks, “Can you speak?”

When the bog woman opens her mouth, exposing a thin webbing at the corners of her lips, she lets out a birdlike chip as her response. 

That both answers her question and gives her several more. 

The more Nancy examines her, the more inexplicably anxious she comes. The woman’s ears are long and finned. She has no eyebrows, but her golden eyelashes are thick and fan out like the teeth of a venus flytrap. 

It’s not fear that makes Nancy keep her distance but some instinctual release of adrenaline at the sight of danger. There is no visible danger. 

“Okay.” Nancy rubs the space between her eyes, nervously considering her next actions. “Okay.”

It doesn’t take her long to decide whatever risk there is will be worth it. She clasps a hand around the woman’s cool wrist and helps her to stand. The woman’s feet land on the platform, steady and strong. 

Even slouched, she stands a good foot taller than Nancy, every bare inch of her covered in peat and moss and torn out flowers. A nervous blush creeps across her cheeks as she realizes the woman is naked. Nancy shucks off her thick coat, which had been tucked into her waders for warmth, and tosses it over the bog woman’s shoulders.

The loose planks in the boardwalk wobble noisily under Nancy’s feet as they walk, while the bog woman doesn’t make a single sound. She doesn’t speak, if she even can, and makes no effort to pull away from Nancy. There is no distress in her expression, no fear. Only a gentle curiosity as she looks around, absorbing her surroundings, before settling on staring at Nancy’s face again. 

It’s not until the copper green rust bucket of a pickup truck comes into view, and the murky, uneven plateau of moss solidifies into mostly steady ground that Nancy realizes that she’s dragged the woman out of the wetlands without a single question of who—or, rather what —she is.

She glances over her shoulder, locking eyes with the peat-covered woman, and stops. 

“I never introduced myself,” she says. “I’m Nancy. And you are?”

The woman doesn’t speak, staring at Nancy with wide, watery eyes. She still can’t tell if the woman understands her or not; her face gives nothing away. 

Nancy pivots to another question. “Where are you from?”

This time, the woman reacts, looking back where they came, then turns to Nancy like she’s given her an answer.

“You’re from… the bog?”

The woman does something curious then; she smiles at Nancy. Her thin lips part and split from their dryness, revealing neat rows of yellowed teeth, sharp and serrated like arrowheads. There is no humor in her eyes. She is not human, that much is evident now.

Again, Nancy’s mind screams for her to get away, get away, get away. This is not the gaze of a wounded animal, but a cunning predator that has cornered its unaware prey. 

And Nancy finds she’s not afraid, no matter how logical tells her she should be. She looks down the boardwalk to her truck, then at the woman, who is waiting quietly to see what she’ll do next. 

“We should get you cleaned up,” Nancy decides. “Follow me.”

She pulls the woman towards the truck, and she eagerly trots along. 

°•. ✿ .•°

It proves difficult to sneak the bog woman into her housing, as Nancy’s colleagues are bound to be as curious as her. Seeing a woman with plants growing out of her body and trailing mud with every dragged step would definitely draw unwanted attention their way.

Somehow, they manage. Nancy walks ahead swiftly, hiding the woman behind any tree or trash can they come across at the sight of one of her colleagues approaching. They greet her, and she responds stiffly, which is fortunately not unusual behavior for her. She gets her discovery through the parking lot, down the narrow halls of their rented apartment complex, and into her room. 

The research fund granted Nancy the only rented studio apartment on the edge of the marshlands—courtesy of being the only woman on an all-male team—but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily clean. She spends most of her time outside, collecting soil samples and scribbling findings in her dragon hoard of leather bound notebooks. That leaves her studio unlived in and very neglected. 

Hardcover textbooks pile in the corners of her living room, unwashed coffee mugs and takeout containers stacked on every surface of her kitchen from rushed mornings and lonely dinners. Nancy doesn’t have the time to be embarrassed, too focused on getting this woman clean. She sheds her boots, still squelching from her unplanned dive into the bog, and shimmies out of her damp clothes until she’s only in her undergarments.

Muddy footprints mark the woman’s path through the living room as Nancy guides her into the bathroom. There is barely enough room for them to stand shoulder to shoulder. Nancy seats the woman on the toilet and prepares the bath. With the stopper plugged and hot water running, Nancy sits on the cool tile floor and faces the woman. 

Steam plumes from behind the drawn shower curtain. The bog woman watches Nancy with keen eyes, a hawk watching a mouse enter a clearing. 

“You’re not like me, are you?” Nancy asks to pass the time as the tub fills. “You’re not human.”

The woman shakes her head.

Despite asking and getting an answer, she doesn’t know what to do with this information. This isn’t a situation she was trained for. The woman logically can’t exist. 

And yet here she is, sitting politely on the toilet, her hands on her knees and eyes never wavering from Nancy’s face. 

“I’m assuming you don’t have a name, then.” She gets another silent no in response. “Is it alright if I give you one?”

Surprisingly, she gets a nod.

Nancy looks around the bathroom in search of inspiration. “How about Bog? Ugh, that’s stupid. Peat? No, that sounds like Pete.”

The bog woman smiles at her rattling off bad marsh-themed names and tilts her head. Her hair falls to the side, revealing a small patch of golden, star-shaped petals, bright and blooming along her collarbone. She plucks a bog asphodel, flinching a bit as she does, and offers it to Nancy.

At first, Nancy simply holds the flower, confused but touched by the gesture. The woman points to the flower, then taps her chest.

“Erithacus rubecula.” Nancy turns the flower over in her hand. There is no obvious difference between it and the others she studied, besides the fact that it sprouted from the woman. “That’s the scientific name for robin redbreast.”

For the first time, the woman speaks. 

“Erith… acus.”

Her voice is dark and husky, coming from deep in her chest. It sounds more like an earthquake rumble than a woman’s voice. A thrilling shiver runs up Nancy’s back.

“It’s tricky to say, I know. How about we shorten it to Robbie? Or Robin?”

The woman repeats the word meticulously, rolling her new name’s weight around in her mouth like a jawbreaker. “Robin.”

She sounds like a bird parroting what it hears, not quite understanding the words she’s saying but knowing they have some kind of meaning. It reminds Nancy of how the ravens that nest in the peatlands mimic her humming while she works, so human but still not enough to be canny. 

“Robin it is.” Nancy dips her hand into the water to test its temperature. “I need you to step into the tub so I can wash the dirt off. It’s a little hot, so be careful.”

With Nancy’s help, Robin puts one tentative foot in the water, steam curling around her leg. Surprise flashes across her face. Nancy wonders if she’s ever felt this kind of heat before, or if all she’s known is the peatland’s cold embrace. She half expects her to start melting like the witch in Wizard of Oz. 

Robin grips Nancy’s biceps with both hands as she slowly sinks into the tub. Mud plumes from her body like a dissolving bath bomb. Nancy pulls a cloth towel off a hook on the wall and dips it into the water. She pours body wash into it and gently takes a hold of Robin’s hand. 

The dirt puts up a fight, but Nancy manages to wipe it from her arms, stomach, back. Nancy bites her tongue to keep a measured expression, though her hands shake as she cleans Robin’s below where her belly button should be, careful not to touch her there for long, for her own sanity. She is not even cold anymore yet the tremble remains. 

The clear water darkens quickly to the familiar green-brown of the peatlands, as thought a miniature marsh was forming. Even the plants falling loose from her body float and collect on the water’s surface the same way they do in the depths. Robin closes her eyes, shoulders lax, and allows Nancy to do whatever she wants. 

Upon further inspection, Robin is far less human than Nancy initially thought. 

An oddly familiar diamond-shaped pattern runs down her spine, ending at her tailbone. It feels rougher than the rest of her skin, and a few shades lighter than the soft sand around the marsh’s beachline. Dark green fins line her elbows and ankles, thin and sharp. A pale webbing connects her fingers. Nancy runs her hands along an open seam of flaring skin just along Robin’s ribcage. They flex under her touch. Robin shivers.

They’re gills.

Her skin is thick and bark-rough, just as brown under all the layers of mud. Nancy’s fingertips mindlessly trace along the gills under Robin's breasts while wiping down the quivering column of her neck. She can feel the water rushing in and out with each breath.

Wanting to fill the silence, Nancy says, “So. You can talk. I thought you were mute there for a second.”

Robin opens her eyes, and Nancy’s breath catches again their beauty. Blue, green, pinprick pupils. She chirps, which Nancy takes as an affirmation. 

“Can you tell me what you are, exactly?”

Another gentle corvid trill. She looks down at her hands, then up at Nancy and shrugs.

“That… doesn’t help,” Nancy says apologetically. “I don’t even know how I would answer that question if asked, either.”

It’s odd, something like her somehow adapted to look so human. She can breathe water and air, making her amphibious, but that would mean she’s not warm-blooded. And of course there is the similar anatomical aspect—reproductive organs, Nancy tells herself, just to save face—that look the same but only at surface level. It looks like the way moth wings mirror the faces of hawks to keep predators away. Or how cuckoo birds adapted to look indistinguishable from warblers.

She wants to ask Robin why she looks so human, but that would be like asking eagles why they look like hawks. Maybe there is a deeper, ecological reason. Maybe that’s just how nature evolves. 

“Peat,” Robin says in a questioning tone. “What is peat?”

“The dirt I pulled you from. Well, it’s actually decayed vegetation and organic matter, but it looks and acts an awful lot like dirt. It’s what makes up the bog.”

Her head turns towards the shut faucet, watching the steady drip of leaking water. “Bog.”

Nancy smiles. Now they’re making progress. “That's where I found you. I’m here to study it with my team, and the things that grow there. Kind of like you. And here you are. Feels impossible, doesn’t it?”

“Impossible.” Robin matches her smile. As vicious as her grin is, Nancy adores it. 

Then Robin yawns. She opens her mouth wide, wide, wide. When Nancy is sure it can’t open any further, she’s proven wrong. Translucent, cadmium green flaps of scaled skin hold her upper and lower jaws together, like an overstretched labial commissure on a human. They're torn in some parts, letting Nancy see through them. Her long, black tongue flicks over her arrowhead teeth. 

Nancy could probably fit her head in her mouth, be swallowed whole. The thought sends ripples of chicken skin up her arms. 

She finally remembers where she’s seen that diamond-shaped pattern before; she’s encountered many snakes during her expedition, but she has a soft spot for adders. They’re nervous little things, hissing and spitting at danger, but never biting unless they feel threatened. Adders are also the only venomous snakes in the bog, the only warning she took seriously during training. But she has an unfortunate attraction to danger. Besides Eddie, their herpetologist, she was the only one who was brave enough on her team to pick them up, with or without proper equipment.

Robin is not just any creature, but a collection of creatures. Her corvid speech, the vicious teeth that can easily tear through flesh, her snakelike jaw and gills, fins and claws. It’s so clear. 

She’s not just inhuman. She’s the bog incarnate. 

Again, there is that feeling. That logical fear tickling the back of her mind. The need to run.

Trap. 

Nancy pulls away. Robin must feel the shift in her mood, because she looks up.

If she wanted, she could kill Nancy in a moment. Part her lips and devour her whole like an adder swallows a vole. Nobody would know. She probably wouldn’t even scream. This could be some long ploy to eat her, just to return to the bog and wait for the next too-curious soul to dig her up.

Maybe that’s why she looks so human; perhaps the things like her evolved to lure curious people like Nancy out to the peatlands just to eat them. 

“You wouldn’t hurt me, would you, Robbie?” Nancy asks, half-fearing the answer.

A wide grin tugs at her mouth. Robin shakes her head. Nancy actually believes her. 

“But you could. If you wanted to.”

“Could.”

“So, why let me drag you into my home? Why let me bathe you?”

“Calm,” Robin answers.

The first word she isn’t simply echoing back. She pronounces each letter in the word like its own syllable, even the l. 

“This is calming to you?”

She nods.

“Oh. Would you like me to continue?”

“Yes.”

Nancy helplessly wrings out the wash cloth again—all it does is add to the mini math forming in the tub—and gently lifts Robin’s chin. There are gills on her throat, too, though smaller than the ones on her ribs. They’re covered in barblike fins that catch her skin when Nancy touches them. Her nose, pointed like a beak, matches the sharp edge of her jaw. She’s beautiful in a predatory sense. 

Grabbing a wide tooth comb off her sink, Nancy is careful as she tugs it through the roots and plants from Robin’s scalp. She has a suspicion it would hurt to tear them out, like plucking hairs, so she does her best not to pull. Robin's hair looks like it could go on forever, a pale gold-green and arrow-straight all the way down to her waist. Once she untangles it as best as she can, Nancy shampoos her scalp, and Robin hums as she does so.

When she gets the suds out, Nancy cups the water and lets it trickle down Robin’s head, a slow and meticulous process to rid her of soap. Robin is quiet the entire time, watching her unflinchingly, even when water gets into her eyes. Nancy tries not to let it bother her.

The water is so thick with mud that, when Nancy pulls the stopper, it takes almost twice as long to drain. It takes three towels to dry Robin—Nancy’s resigned herself to their muddy deaths—and another for her hair.

She discovers quickly that all her clothes are too small for the mountain of a woman she found. Nancy pulls her largest sizes, measures them against Robin, and finds that they still run small.

Robin doesn’t seem to mind the t-shirt ending at her navel, or the hem of the sweatpants reaching halfway up her calves. It pulls tight around her chest and her thighs, and Nancy feels herself going dizzy just looking at her. Robin sits on the bed as Nancy searches for larger clothes, but finds none.

“Are you sure those are alright?” Nancy asks.

Robin nods. 

“I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

She smiles, shark-sharp. 

“Okay, then.” Nancy’s stomach growls, and she gives up on her search for fitting clothes in favor of lunch. The day’s passed quickly, the sun already dipping low against the earth, and she hasn’t eaten all day. “Do you eat food? Or is this a chlorophyll situation?”

Robin tilts her head to one side, unblinking. 

Nancy decides that watching her photosynthesize would not be the weirdest thing to occur today, but she’d rather save it for a day that isn’t chock full of surprises already. She walks into the kitchen, feeling Robin follow close behind, and stares into her half-empty fridge.

“How do you feel about takeaway?”

Chapter Text

Hello!! im sure there are a total of Three of you excited for this notification so im sorry for this not-update update lol

basically this story has been shortlisted for a book deal (not as a fanfiction, but as a big boy book) and while its not like certain it'll be published or anything, I want to focus on writing it as a real book. I felt kinda bad just deleting it out of nowhere in case people really liked this story so I just thought id update my Two Whole Fans.

so im probably gonna be taking it down :( but if you're interested in seeing updates for this I do have a patreon where Ill be posting updates of this story while I workshop it for the shortlisting deal!! the only differences will be names really lol and some minor edits, but other than 

thanks for reading this if you have!! and I hope this will help me manifest a win bc dear God do I need one right now