wintersday: (Default)
wintersday ([personal profile] wintersday) wrote2020-09-13 09:18 pm

Fic: Five Nightmares And A Choice

Title: Five Nightmares and a Choice
Fandom: The Magnus Archives
Characters/pairings: Melanie, background Georgie/Melanie
Wordcount: 200, not counting titles.
Rating: PG
POV: Third person
Summary: Five fears Melanie survived, and one she succumbed to.



5: The End

A childhood dare: the stairwell everyone avoids. Dead things in darkness, skeletal hands – then a torch’s beam, her father’s footsteps, safety.

4: The Vast

Late night, drunk, feeling like she could fall up – and up – through dizzying snow.

She catches a lamppost, hangs on tight.

3: The Spiral

A hall of mirrors – haunted, supposedly, but these distortions aren’t ghosts. Melanie wraps her jacket around her fist. Easiest way through a mirror maze is to smash it.

2: The Flesh

She answers fear with knives and teeth. These things know hunger? Fine. It‘s good to be the predator for once.

1: The Eye

She’s never been afraid of pain, or of the dark.

0: The Slaughter

She could stay, but Georgie doesn’t need her.

There’s people still alive out there, people who can’t stop dying. They can’t be free anymore, but they can be hers. Maybe it will be better for them that way.

Maybe it won’t, but everyone makes their choices. Whether or not she can be a torch in the dark, she hears an old drum beating, thundering bloody in her ears.

She kisses Georgie one last time, like they do in movies when they know they won’t be coming back, then takes her jacket and her knives, and goes to pay the Piper.


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