i come with the breath of the dead (haunting of hill house | nell, theo, hill house)

[fiachairecht]

i come with the breath of the dead. the haunting of hill house - shirley jackson, nell/theo + nell~hill house. eleanor loves theo, so does the house. 380w, rated t. for tigerlily in monthlysupergo's fic or treat 2018.

Hill House is very quiet, when Eleanor has lost her human ears. The others didn't like that she stayed, and in fact left soon after, even though they had been so convinced that it was right for them to stay.

That was the first thing Eleanor had to correct. She needed to remember how to be a house again, and she couldn't do that with all of their noise, all of their new ghosts.

But soon she realises that the quiet is too quiet, that Hill House is only almost complete.

She, she comes to understand, misses Theo with a D for dreadfully.

Theo had loved her with an S for silly, because she had never even noticed she was loving a house, even when Eleanor gave her all the clues. Eleanor loved Theo with an H for hungry — unless that was the house, but it doesn't matter anymore. The house had loved Theo with a W for wrongly, because it had nearly scared her away too soon.

But that doesn't matter anymore. It's the waves that matter, the ripples in the road of leaving and coming back, and they need to move according to plan. And it is time for the tide to come in.

The car outside doesn't surprise Eleanor, doesn't even stop her from running up and down, up and down the halls. Because it is so quiet she can hear Theo's heartbeat.

Skip-hop-thud it goes, heavier than Eleanor's feet but in perfect time nonetheless. She thinks a lot about hearts, now that she is one in all the most important ways. She isn't sure she needs one anymore, but she knows she wants one.

No: she wants Theo's. Theo's heart, the one she promised but tried to take back. The one the picnic almost got, the one Luke wondered about and Theo's friend tried to steal.

The one that's led her back, anyway, and told her it was all her idea, a wish and not a need.

Eleanor's feet are running down the stairs, skip-hop-thud. The door is swinging open on its own for the very first time.

Hill House knew that Eleanor loved Theo with an F for forever, and that was all Eleanor needed to know in order to know it would come true.