Chapter Text
Vi’s new home–for the next few months, at least–definitely has more than a few stories to tell. It’s old, and drafty, and is stuffed to the rafters with musty old antiques. Vi can see immediately why Babette sent her there, why her agent might hope that surrounding herself in this much history could finally lift the fog that had settled in Vi’s mind. She even allows herself to hope that it might work as she walks slowly through the halls, reaching out to touch a vase, to brush against a rifle mounted to the wall, to hope that one of them might spark a story.
She comes to a stop on the landing, staring up at the large painting hanging there. It’s a portrait, golden with age, of a woman standing with her back to the viewer, only half of her face visible over her shoulder. There is a hunting rifle in her hand, and a proud arch in her spine. There’s something about the woman’s expression that Vi can’t look away from–it’s soft, almost curious, but there’s an undeniable sharpness in her eye, like she’s staring right into Vi’s soul.
She’s also, at least from what Vi can tell by the angle of the portrait, exactly Vi’s type.
“Well, hey there, handsome,” Vi says under her breath.
“Good afternoon.”
The voice that responds is crisp, accented, and completely disembodied from anyone that Vi can see. She jumps about a foot in the air, head whipping wildly from side to side, but none of it changes the facts that 1) she is completely alone, and 2) she absolutely heard someone speaking to her.
She looks back at the painting, and for a moment, she wonders if she is about to be sick, because in addition to hearing voices, she’s apparently seeing double, as well.
The woman from the painting blinks slowly at her, her lips parting just slightly, in a way that eerily mimics the illustrated version behind her.
“Are you alright?”
No, Vi definitely doesn’t think that she is.
—
She spoke to the pink-haired woman out of reflex more than anything, a human instinct that even a hundred years of solitude apparently can’t knock out of her. The last thing she expected was to actually get a reaction.
It has been so long since someone looked at her that when it happens now, when powder blue eyes look not through her but at her, she loses control of herself for the first time in decades.
It’s a sort of tilting sideways sensation. The room they are standing in slides away, but her gaze stays locked on the woman until she disappears into the cold and echoing brightness.
—
“So…you’re dead.”
Caitlyn Kiramman tilts her head. If Vi didn’t know better–if she hadn’t already used the manor’s shitty wifi to discover that the woman standing in front of her had been born in the year 1895, and had been declared dead twenty-three years later after her mysterious disappearance–then she might think that it was a living, breathing human standing there.
It wasn’t until you squinted that you saw the very slight blur around the edges of her.
That, and the fact that she’d both disappeared into and reappeared from thin air right in front of Vi, makes it pretty clear that she’s not dealing with anything normal.
“I don’t…” Caitlyn stops, frowns, and tries again. “I don’t know.”
Vi’s eyebrows rise to her hairline. “Sorry, but…how do you not know if you’re dead?”
Caitlyn flushes, and Vi wonders, too late, if it’s rude to ask that of a ghost. “I just don’t, alright? One moment I was here, alive, and the next, I was…here, still, but…different.”
“Okay. Okay, I’m sorry, I just–this is so weird.” Vi says that last part mostly to herself, but it earns a snort from Caitlyn that shows just how much she agrees with the sentiment. “So, you’ve just been in the manor the whole time?”
“From the moment I woke up. I can go outside, but only about as far as the garden hedge.”
“What do you, like, do every day?”
This question earns another flush, and Caitlyn’s hands move to cup her elbows, protective. Vi notices again just how striking the woman is. The portrait hadn’t done her justice. She has cheekbones as sharp as the glare in her shining blue eyes, and Vi can tell, even in her old-fashioned clothes–a sweater with wide sleeves, tucked into a long split skirt with fabric buttoned across the front to disguise the billowy trousers underneath–that she has legs for days. Vi doesn’t know what passed as attractive in Caitlyn’s time, but today, there is no question that Caitlyn is a catch.
“What do you expect me to say? That I’ve decided to spend eternity rattling chains or…or possessing random passersby?”
“No,” Vi begins cautiously, because it’s clear that she’s hit a sore spot, but Caitlyn continues as if she hadn’t spoken at all.
“Let me make some things clear for you. I can’t fly, or mess with the lights, or open doors. I’m just…stuck here, and I don’t know why, and all I want is to be left in peace.”
Vi frowns, her confusion and her caution both melting away into anger. She’s the one whose entire understanding of the universe is being re-written, so why is Caitlyn the one throwing barbs?
“Hey, I didn’t ask for this. There’s not exactly a manual on how to handle a ghost suddenly showing up and getting all…Piltie on me.”
“I’ll tell you how to handle it,” Caitlyn says, drawing herself up to her full (and, damn it, considerable) height. “Stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours.”
—
Caitlyn stays away for the rest of the day, and most of the next. She paces aimlessly in her bedroom, which is nowhere near the guest room that she knows Vi has claimed as her own. By her second evening in the manor, though, Caitlyn’s curiosity has reached inescapable levels. Vi is by far the most interesting thing to happen to her in…well, Caitlyn doesn’t care to count the years. But in all that time, only a handful of people had given any indication that they’d seen Caitlyn, and not one of them had stayed around long enough to do anything about it. Not until Vi.
The opportunities that that opens up are too enticing to hold onto her anger for any longer.
Still, Caitlyn waits until Vi has left her bedroom before she approaches. She has always respected the privacy of the manor’s guests, even when they couldn’t see whether or not she did. It helps to ground her, to feel more human, when she observes the niceties like that.
Vi has set up camp in the sitting room when Caitlyn goes to find her, shoveling huge forkfuls of spaghetti in her mouth with one hand while some movie or another flickered on the television. She stops chewing when Caitlyn enters the room, cheeks full and lips pursed as she eyes Caitlyn warily.
“May I join you?”
A chew, a swallow, and a nod is her answer.
Caitlyn settles on the loveseat across from Vi’s, and they don’t speak. The movie Vi chose is truly awful, but Caitlyn is no stranger to being forced to deal with the questionable television taste of others for the sake of seizing whatever opportunity for entertainment she can. Normally, she would at least pay mild attention, but today her eyes keep straying towards the woman on the other sofa. She is even more striking up front than Caitlyn had realized in her initial spying. Enough people have wandered through the halls of Kiramman manor in recent years that the bright hair and tattoos no longer shock Caitlyn, but she finds herself unusually fascinated by Vi’s. There are gears on the side of her neck, and the hint of even more ink poking out from her pushed back sleeves. Then of course, there is the small ‘VI’ drawn on her cheek. Caitlyn wonders if it’s meant to be the Roman numeral, or Vi’s own name, or both. She wonders, too, if the splash of color in Vi’s eyes is grey, like it seems, or in fact a powder shade of blue.
Occasionally, she catches those eyes on her as well, but never for long enough to strike up conversation.
The movie is nearly over when Vi finally clears her throat. This time when Caitlyn looks at her, she doesn’t look away. For the first time since their meeting on the landing, their gazes hold.
“I know my being here is probably not ideal for you,” Vi begins, “but I think we need to figure out how to make it at least tolerable, for a while. I can’t leave until my work is finished, and you…”
“Can’t leave at all,” Caitlyn finishes for her, and Vi nods.
“How about we agree to just…try.”
Caitlyn can think of worse things, so she says, simply, “Alright.”
And then, figuring it’s as good a place as any to start, she sticks out a hand, and says, “Caitlyn Kiramman.”
She regrets the gesture immediately. It’s not as though Vi can actually shake her hand, and she knows enough about modern life to know that formal handshakes have mostly fallen out of fashion, anyway. But she figures it would be worse to retract the hand now, before Vi can decide what she wants to do about it. Vi stares at the hand for a beat, then another, before her eyes flick up towards Caitlyn’s face.
Her eyebrow–the scarred one–raises slightly, and a devastating half-smile reveals a flash of straight white teeth.
“Violet Cane.”
Caitlyn knew her first name already, of course. She had heard the property manager call her that when she’d arrived, from where she’d been listening from the top of the stairs, curious about the newcomer, but with no idea of what was about to happen.
“You can just call me Vi, though.”
And then Vi extends her hand, too, leaning forward until the tips of her fingers brush against where Caitlyn’s should be.
Caitlyn shivers, as if she had actually felt the warm touch of skin, instead of just the same nothingness she has felt for over a hundred years.
Vi is still looking at her, her eyes a little wider than they had been before.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Vi,” Caitlyn says automatically. She forces herself to retract her hand slowly, settling it politely in her lap rather than pressing it against her cheek, like she really wants to, to see if any of Vi’s residual heat might linger there.
“Yeah,” Vi replies, curling her fingers into her palm as she pulls her hand back. “Likewise.”
The room falls silent again, but it’s not as awkward as the first time. Caitlyn has spent many, many nights in this exact position, watching mindless television without a single word being spoken, but it feels different with Vi. Maybe because Vi actually knows she’s there and is choosing to spend the time with her, even in silence, but Caitlyn seems an odd sort of charge humming in her bones.
Eventually, though, Vi starts to yawn. Caitlyn offers a goodnight, but then, when Vi’s hand begins to reach for the remote, she surprises herself by adding, “Would you mind leaving it on, actually?”
She surprises herself even more when she responds to Vi’s quizzical look by explaining, “I don’t usually get to watch. Not unless someone happens to leave it on.”
Vi looks at her for just a moment longer before she shrugs, a small smile flickering to life at the corner of her mouth. “Sure.”
Caitlyn feels a flutter in her belly, which she attributes to this unimaginable treat of television on request, and settles back into the sofa to enjoy it when Vi speaks again.
“Do you want to put something else on?”
Caitlyn can only gape at her. The enormity of this opportunity is suddenly washing over her. She feels overwhelmed with choice, awash with memories of all the intriguing-sounding shows she’d watched previous inhabitants of the manor scroll right past, unable to pick just one.
“I don’t–I’m not–”
Vi is watching her with furrowed brows, so Caitlyn forces herself to complete her abbreviated thoughts.
“I’ve never been able to choose before, it was always just whatever they felt like putting on.”
“That sounds frustrating,” Vi says, very genuinely, and Caitlyn surprises herself again by responding with a short laugh.
“It’s not ideal.”
“How about, I scroll until you see something you like?” Vi offers, and Caitlyn feels that funny flutter in her stomach again.
She picks a documentary, something that Vi refers to as ‘true crime’. She makes a face when she says it, but Caitlyn is absolutely fascinated. She is swept up in the mystery of it, enchanted by the process that is solving a case in the twenty-first century. Even Vi stays for the entire thing, despite her earlier plans to retreat to bed, and then for another afterward.
—
It’s surprisingly easy to get used to living with a ghost. Caitlyn’s a pretty considerate roommate, all things considered, and she seems to find Vi at least as fascinating as Vi finds her. She is endlessly curious, peppering Vi with questions at every opportunity, most of which she has to look up to answer properly. And that just leads them down an entirely different rabbit hole, of things Caitlyn never even knew to want to ask, with Vi explaining what exactly a meme is and why people find them funny.
It might have been annoying, but Vi can’t help but feel sympathy for Caitlyn, who had spent over a hundred years unable to speak to anyone, an unfortunate side effect of being invisible.
Vi also notices that she doesn’t generally speak like someone whose education predated either World War. When Vi points this out, Caitlyn informs her that though she couldn’t speak to anyone, she’d listened plenty. The result was a somewhat stilted, but undeniably charming interpretation of twenty-first century dialogue.
“What’s life like in the village these days?” she asks Vi one day. “Is it lit?”
She asks the question a little awkwardly, but with total confidence, and Vi has to put an end to it immediately.
They’re in the sitting room again, watching an old sitcom that Cailyn has wanted to see the finale of for over twenty years. They haven’t bothered with the separate sofas for a few days now, so Vi is able to look right into Caitlyn’s curious eyes as she turns to face her.
“Caitlyn. Please. Never say that again.”
Caitlyn frowns, a gesture that involves furrowed brows as well as a pinched mouth. “Do people not say ‘lit’ anymore?”
“I don’t think people ever said it. At least not in real life.”
She receives a doubtful hum in response, and Vi can only pray that Caitlyn takes her advice to heart as she returns her attention to her laptop screen. She has been at the manor for two weeks, and Babette finally sent her a check-in email that morning, artfully asking if Vi’s insurmountable writer’s block has been surmounted without actually asking.
Vi had replied back with a cheerful assurance that things were going great, actually, nothing to worry about, and had been staring morosely at her laptop ever since. A few lackluster sentences, strung together with only the vaguest hope of plot, are all she has to show for the last two weeks of supposed work. She runs a hand over her face, feeling frustrated and restless, taunted by the image of her cursor blinking at her from a blank page.
She isn’t aware of making the decision to stand until she’s already done it. Caitlyn looks up at her, startled.
“I need some fresh air,” Vi says, a statement and an explanation. Caitlyn nods, already turning back to the television until Vi asks, “Would you like to take a walk with me?”
Caitlyn is clearly surprised by the offer, blinking at Vi for a moment before a slow smile spreads across her face. Vi is sure she sees a flush blooming across her cheeks again, but she decides not to look too closely.
“I’d love to.”
They stay close to the house. Caitlyn has long since memorized the boundaries she is allowed to cross, and she toes the line perfectly, walking along the edge like a trapeze artist on a rope.
“What happens if you try to cross it?”
In answer, Caitlyn takes a step to her right, and winds up pressed against an invisible wall. She lets her weight lean against it for a moment while Vi stares, open-mouthed, and then she rights herself once more.
“I don’t know how it works, I just know the boundary’s never moved. Not an inch in all these years.”
“How have you not lost your mind all this time? Trapped in one place like that?”
Caitlyn’s smile is sad, but her words are straightforward. “I suppose…what’s the point? There’s nothing I can do about it. And it’s not as though I know what I’m missing out on. Even when I was alive, I hardly ever left the estate in any meaningful way. My parents…they meant well.” She says this part quietly, as if reminding herself of the fact just as much as she was explaining it to Vi. “But they were…overprotective, I suppose you could say. They didn’t want anything to happen to their only heir.”
There is a small hint of bitterness in her tone, which surprises Vi. Caitlyn usually seems fairly well-adjusted for a ghost, but she supposes even old wounds can twinge now and again. But then a small smile returns to Caitlyn’s face.
“My friend, Jayce–he used to convince them to let him escort me down to the village whenever he could. We would spend hours just walking up and down the streets.”
“That sounds lit,” Vi teases gently.
Caitlyn grins, ducking her head with a slightly embarrassed laugh, but not before Vi caught a glimpse of her gapped front teeth peeking out from between her lips.
“It was. My mother was Jayce’s patron, she used to invite him to stay at the estate for months at a time so she could show him off whenever we had company, but he always made time for me.”
Vi hesitates for a moment before she asks, “He, ah. He disappeared, too, right? The same night you did?”
That fact had been all over the newspaper articles Vi had read on her first day at the manor. People were convinced that they had run away together, but Caitlyn’s presence here proves that wasn’t true pretty clearly, at least for Vi. What it doesn’t do is explain where exactly Jayce had disappeared to.
Immediately, Caitlyn’s expression shutters. Her spine straightens, and her hands clasp themselves behind her back. For the first time, she actually looks like a woman a century out of time.
“Yes,” she says, voice clipped.
It’s clear that that is all she’ll say about it, so Vi lets the matter drop, both of them walking on in silence. They are at the back of the manor now, approaching the meticulously kept garden. There is a fountain somewhere inside–Vi can hear the trickling water over the sound of her footsteps, but it’s hidden behind tall hedges and vining flowers.
“You know, if I had to pick somewhere to spend eternity in,” Vi says, staring up at the clear blue sky, “this isn’t a bad choice.”
Caitlyn startles a little, but she follows Vi’s gaze, her eyebrows raised slightly as if she is surprised by her surroundings. It’s possible that she hasn’t taken the time to look around herself like this in years, because a small smile pulls at her mouth, the line between her eyebrows lessening just a little.
“You never really said what brought you here,” Caitlyn observes after a few more moments of walking–quiet, still, but not the same kind of silence as before. Vi realizes that she’s right, and isn’t sure that she wants to correct that oversight. But Caitlyn had been vulnerable with her earlier, even if she’d pushed her too far in the end, so she sighs.
“My literary agent sent me here. She knows the people who own it, somehow? Friend of a friend kinda thing, I guess.” Vi is dancing around the issue. She knows it, and she can tell that Caitlyn knows it, too. “She thought it’d be…inspiring for me, to be somewhere new.”
“Do you need inspiration?”
There’s no judgement in Caitlyn’s tone, but there is curiosity, which makes it a little easier for Vi to admit, “Yeah. I was supposed to submit the first draft for my next book a while back, but I’m just…blank.”
Caitlyn takes this in for a moment. “Has it worked, being here?”
Vi holds back a sigh. “Not yet.”
They pass through a gap in the hedges, and the fountain comes into view at last. It’s a relatively standard design, a circular basin with a carved column in the middle spouting water from the top. But as they get closer, Vi can see that the basin is carved, as well. She bends down to run a finger over the stylized keys, interspersed with what she now knows is the Kiramman crest.
“My father had this commissioned for my mother when they were expecting me,” Caitlyn tells her, coming to sit along the narrow ridge of the basin. She dips her fingers into the pool, drawing patterns that do not leave a ripple. “When I was very young, I used to swim in the water. Then when I got older, my mother and I would sit here and talk. It was one of the few places we wouldn’t argue.”
Vi sits beside her, watching a wistful shadow pass over Caitlyn’s face. In the direct sunlight, it’s a little more obvious that there is something other about her. She almost glows, her edges fuzzier than usual. But when she looks at Vi, her gaze is as sharp as it ever is.
“This place is full of stories like that.”
Vi grins. “Funny, that’s exactly what I thought when I first got here.”
Caitlyn returns her smile, giving Vi a real peek at the gap between her front teeth this time. For some reason, Vi can’t tear her gaze away from it, and it takes her a second to realize that Caitlyn is speaking again.
“Well then, maybe you should borrow one of those stories for yourself.”
—
They start the very next day, making their way through the house room by room, Caitlyn pointing out anything she thinks the other woman will find interesting. She talks too much–she knows she’s doing it, but she’s incapable of stopping herself, too wrapped up in the novelty of having things to say and someone there to listen to it all. And Vi is an excellent listener. She pays attention to all of Caitlyn’s tangents with a soft smile on her face that Caitlyn can’t look too closely at without losing her train of thought.
She’s not sure that anything she’s saying is actually helping, but as the days wear on, Vi does seem to be spending more and more time in the sitting room, typing at her computer. Caitlyn is usually right there with her, sneaking glances at her while some movie or television show from the last century rambles on in the background.
Not one of them has turned out to be more interesting than watching the way Vi’s brows furrow in concentration, or how her hands rake through her messy hair while she thinks.
“This is you?”
Caitlyn flushes as Vi gapes at the painted version of her younger self. They’re standing in the library, one of Caitlyn’s favorite rooms in the house, looking up at the larger-than-life portrait taking up the majority of the wall. Caitlyn vividly remembers sitting for the portrait, though she’d been no more than six at the time. Mostly, she remembers the way her father’s hunting dogs–captured in the painting with their eyes set adoringly on their master–had fallen asleep during the long posing process, and that their snuffling snores had made Caitlyn fall out of position with her giggles. None of that, however, had been captured in the serene expressions on their painted faces.
“That rifle is almost taller than you were!” Vi continues.
Caitlyn chuckles. “My mother taught me how to shoot practically before I could walk.”
“That’s…wholesome,” Vi says dryly, and Caitlyn smiles.
“It was a product of the time, I suppose, but I loved it.”
She looks away from her own painted face to see that Vi’s eyes are already on her, warm with something Caitlyn isn’t sure how to read.
Instead, she asks, “Would you like to see something?”
She leads the way back through the room, heading straight for the stairs. Instead of turning left on the landing, towards the guest suites where Vi has been staying, she turns right, towards where the family rooms are.
Behind her, she hears Vi’s footsteps falter in surprise before they follow. Vi hasn’t come this way since her first day at the manor. She’s respected Caitlyn’s privacy as much as Caitlyn has respected hers, but still, Caitlyn can practically feel her curiosity as they walk past door after door, until Caitlyn comes to a stop at one at the very end of the hall.
“This was my bedroom,” she says, gesturing towards the doorknob.
Vi’s eyebrow raises just slightly, but she reaches forward without comment, twisting the knob until the door opens with a quiet click. Caitlyn is perfectly capable of walking through it if she wanted to, but she waits for it to open fully before she steps inside, Vi following close behind.
The bedroom is almost exactly as it had been on the day she’d disappeared. There is a four-poster bed along one wall, a writing desk and bureau in matching, rich mahogany on either side, and a single chair propped under the window. Hunting rifles are mounted above a fireplace, which sits dark and cold. Caitlyn walks past all of this, towards a door on the other side of the room.
“This was always my favorite part of the house.”
This time, she doesn’t wait for Vi to open the door first, stepping neatly through the dark glass.
It takes a moment for Vi to join her. These doors are stickier than the one that led into the bedroom itself. They groan a little when she pushes them open, carefully testing the balcony outside with first one foot, then the other.
Caitlyn stands a few feet away, leaning against the railing and watching Vi’s slow progress with a sly grin.
“It will hold,” she says assuredly. “Come on.”
The metal balcony squawks lightly when Vi puts her full weight on it, but when it makes no further protest, Vi allows herself to trust Caitlyn’s reassurance, coming to join her by the railing. The balcony isn’t enormous–large enough for the two of them to stand comfortably side-by-side, staring out at the view in front of them. They are on the south side of the manor, overlooking the vast woods that Caitlyn had once spent so much time in.
“Some of my happiest memories were spent out here,” she says.
A breeze rustles the trees moments before Vi’s hair shifts with it, and Caitlyn imagines that she can feel it, too, crisp and cool on her cheeks. She is aware of Vi’s gaze on her, but she keeps her eyes forward. Somehow, bringing Vi here, to this spot, feels more intimate than anything else she’s shared with the other woman. She leans forward, elbows braced on the metal, and Vi mimics her, still not taking her gaze off of Caitlyn’s face.
“I used to spend hours just sitting out here. It was one of the few places I felt I could be myself.”
“It seems really peaceful.”
“Mm.” Caitlyn hums in agreement. “I used to sneak girls into my room from here.”
She says it casually, but inside, she is shaken by her own admission. She knows that the subject is not as taboo as it had been in her time, but she’s never actually spoken the words out loud to another person before. She hopes that she has read Vi correctly, that she will accept the news with grace, if not enthusiasm.
What she gets is so much better.
“I used to sneak girls in through our kitchen window.”
Vi’s voice is amused, casual, as if the confession is nothing, that it means nothing more than exactly what she’s said.
Caitlyn finally lets her gaze slide over to her. Vi stares steadily back, and the silence stretches for a moment as Caitlyn sits with what’s just happened. Then, a small smile begins to spread across Vi’s face, one that Caitlyn feels herself returning instinctively, until they’re both just grinning at each other.
“So. Girls, huh?” Vi says, placing a teasing emphasis on the plural. “Sounds like you were a real heartbreaker, Cupcake.”
“Shut up,” Caitlyn laughs.
She stares back down at their hands, still resting on the railing, and for a moment, she’s sure that Vi’s fingers have shifted just a hair closer to her own.