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thelonelylakea path where no one knows. dead by daylight, haddie/taurie. taurie endures her first trial. 2.1k words, rated m. for the femslashfete challenge 'cursed'.
It takes three of the others to pull her off of Haddie the first night they both end up at the Campfire. Taurie doesn't know their names — will never know their names, never should know their names, cowards, sacrifices all — and won't remember their faces, but the rest of it remains etched in her mind as surely as if the Black Talon herself had carved the images on the backs of her eyelids.
Haddie's blood welling up between her fingernails, the gooseflesh-pebbled skin of her muscular arms no match for rage. Haddie's mouth, quirked in an oddly triumphant smile, the only part of her body that moved. Taurie's own voice, pitched unfamiliarly high: it's your fault I'm here, your fault I was pulled from my path into the Bleed—
And Haddie laughed. She remembers that, too: that Haddie laughed, and the Campfire's flames seemed to spill out of the stone circle, and the shadows that danced across her face looked like claws, as if something was saying she is mine, and you are not.
*
The Bleed is cruel. Or perhaps: the Bleed is cruelty, waiting to be inflicted. Taurie has known both since before it swallowed her parents, which is why she isn't surprised that when she is called to her first Trial, Haddie is there as well. Flashlight in hand, unreadable expression fixed on her face, she looks Taurie up and down while the other two do their best to pretend neither of them exist.
"Don't worry," Haddie finally says. "When you die, you'll forget what happened in there."
It sounds like the sort of thing she's said a hundred times before, something to give sacrifices undeserved comfort before their temporary end. Today, to Taurie, it feels like a threat, one she isn't sure is deserving of a response.
She pulls her mask on with steady hands, looks straight ahead. "Don't worry," the words come almost unbidden to her lips. "I'm not the one dying in there."
Haddie's quiet hum of disbelief is lost in the thickening fog.
*
When her vision clears, she's facing Haddie again, the other two nowhere in sight. She can feel her heart, beating faster than it ever had outside the Bleed, adrenaline warm in her veins despite the lingering chill. They're in a room — stone, dark, the air thick with a damp that makes her think underground, but there's voices, too, on the air, a whisper of something she just barely can't make out.
"Ah," Haddie says. "The Temple. You'll feel right at home here, devotee."
It's a title she once bore proudly, but in Haddie's mouth, the word does nothing but spark fury that has her ripping off her mask. For a brief, wonderful moment she imagines slamming Haddie's head into the wall, knocking her just as unconscious as her brother was. Imagines how Haddie would bleed, how she would lick her face clean and cut out her heart.
She could do it this time. She would. Surely, if the goal of the Trials was to kill, surely it wouldn't matter if she—
If she could take her rightful place—
Taurie surges forwards, arms outstretched, and Haddie sidesteps her with a laugh. Her hands hit rough stone, the shock reverberating up her arm dulled but still present.
"Fuck you," she spits. "I killed your brother before I came here. I'll kill you too, before whoever else is here gets the chance."
She expects rage, maybe grief, but Haddie just tilts her head. "I don't believe you."
And she's right not to, maybe — but who can say what the knife did, in the moment when Taurie slipped from her world into the Bleed? Maybe it fell, it must have fallen, Jordan Rois must have died, because if he hadn't — if she deserved this—
Taurie hopes her face is just as impassive as Haddie likes to keep hers, but something must show, because Haddie steps closer, close enough to cradle her face in her palms. "You wouldn't be here if you killed him," she says. "Little girl. Little failure. Cursed just like me."
It's instinct that has Taurie turning her head just enough to sink her teeth into the side of Haddie's hand, but pleasure that keeps them there longer than it takes for Haddie's hiss of pain to stop echoing off the stone, longer than is sensible.
Long enough for Haddie to move, if she wanted to.
Long enough for an unfamiliar voice to drawl "Oh, sorry, am I interrupting something?"
Taurie's head jerks up, every muscle tensing in anticipation as she scans the shadows, looking for the man, the creature that the Black Talon deemed more worthy of killing than her.
Haddie, though just sighs, bitten hand dropping down to rest on the flashlight at her hip. "No, Ji-Woon, it's a fucking tea party, we were just waiting for you."
The man who emerges from the shadows could've stepped out from the pages of a magazine photoshoot, shirtless under a long blue coat with perfectly styled hair. Torchlight glints off the blade in his raised hand, and it's an easy thing for Taurie to blame her elevated heartrate on. It's so loud, when has her heart ever beat so l—
Pain sears through her arm and Taurie realises, too late, that the knife is no longer in Ji-Woon's hand but embedded in her shoulder. It's not a deep wound, she can tell, but the blood is already dampening her robes. Fuck.
"Ah, I do love a party," he says. Taurie steps back as he meets her gaze, less out of fear and more to put Haddie in the direct line of fire of the second blade that's appeared in Ji-Woon's hand. "And this would be the guest of honour?"
And he knows, Taurie knows he does, that awful note of smugness in his voice leaves her with no doubt. She breathes in, focusses in on the rage that it ignites and wills the flames to burn out the shame.
"That's her," Haddie says with a cheerfulness that has Taurie contemplating the unwise idea of pulling the blade from her arm to bury it in Haddie's back instead. "Careful with her, she thinks she can have your job."
"You— I— It's not about—" Taurie splutters, helpless and furious with it, but Ji-Woon just laughs, and, worse, so does Haddie, even as she unclips her flashlight to offer it to Taurie.
"Why don't you go see how the others are getting on?" Warmly condescending, and, good, Taurie lets herself think, adds it to the rage. "I really did want to talk to Ji-Woon."
Ji-Woon tilts his head, considering. "Little old me?" He lowers the blade, eyeing Haddie contemplatively, and — fuck, Taurie might as well not be there. She'll kill him, too, when it's time.
"Cursed little girl," Haddie repeats. When had she gotten so close? "I'll find you later, I promise."
It's stupid, Taurie wants to say, it's all so — so stupid, and for what — but she settles for slapping the flashlight from Haddie's hand. Something flickers across the other woman's face, something almost genuine, but Taurie decides she doesn't have time to dwell. Just puts her mask back on and runs for the stairs.
*
Later is the only meaningful measure of time in the Bleed. Later is after one of the others has died, after Taurie has learned that her hands know how to repair generators that she's never seen in her life. Later is Ji-Woon's bat across the back of her head and a blur of lacerating pain that whirls around her as she stumbles trying to put a wall between them.
Later is Ji-Woon draping her unceremoniously over his shoulder as her mouth fills with blood behind her mask. She kicks uselessly at him, feet and fists battering a body that the Black Talon infused with inhuman power that should have been hers.
On the hook, the whole of her bodyweight suspended on one rusted sliver of metal, Taurie fights for breath through a kind of pain she'd never even imagined. Somewhere by the walls someone is screaming, the other whispering voices fading the longer she hangs. For the first time, she wonders — can I die like this?
Maybe if she dies the Black Talon will understand the enormity of Her mistake. Maybe if she—
But then Haddie's in front of her, materialising out of the mist like the beginnings of the Black Talon's limbs. "You'll be happy to know he got Sable," she says.
"Good," Taurie finds enough breath to say. Sable. She resolves to forget the name as soon as she's down from this fucking hook.
The dread in the pit of her stomach spikes. If she gets down from this fucking hook. If it's just her and Haddie left-
"Leaving me here?"
Haddie blinks, slowly enough that Taurie expects her to say yes. It's the smart thing to do, after all. It's what she'd do, what she did do every time she heard one of the others scream. The Black Talon's limbs are so, so close to solid in the corners of Taurie's vision.
"You fucking idiot." Haddie's hands are warm at her waist, shockingly strong as they lift Taurie from the hook.
Blood is sheeting down her front, and it must be its loss that has her leaning into Haddie's touch, seeking her stability. She just needs a moment to get her feet under her, and then she can push Haddie away, go hunting for an emergency kit in one of the chests she'd seen earlier.
Not that plasters would do much against a gaping hole from a meathook, she thinks, and then, in some distant part of her mind as laughter bubbles up in her throat and she tilts further into Haddie, ah, the hysteria.
"Fucking idiot," Haddie says, and she doesn't, she can't sound fond.
*
Haddie drags her around the corner of the dilapidated shack with a lack of urgency more confusing than distressing, just like everything else she's ever bloody done. Taurie digs her heels into the mud, resistance more for show than anything. She's lost something today, more than just the blood that's pooled thick and unpleasant in her wake, something just as important as whatever fell away when she realised her new role in the Bleed, and it—
She cuts off that line of thought. Unproductive.
"Escape hatch will open over here," Haddie says, pointing at an unremarkable clump of grass, and Taurie's mouth drops open in shock. Surely she doesn't mean — "I suggest you jump in as soon as it does. Ji-Woon and I have an arrangement for today, but he gets bored fast."
"No," Taurie says, horror rising sick and fast in her throat. She's still bleeding, maybe its in her ears, because surely she doesn't mean— "No, you wouldn't—" Make me live while you die. Make me remember while you get to forget.
Haddie's smile is pure glee, practically begging for the knife Taurie used on her brother. "Oh, I absolutely would. Might even do it again next time, since, you know, I'm not going to remember what I just did."
For a moment, it's the worst thing Haddie's ever done to her, and then Haddie's manic smile is kissing her, lips pressed against the metal divot meant to mimic a mouth.
Taurie has never been more grateful for her mask. Never hated it more.
"See you at the Campfire," Haddie says — and then, mercifully, before Taurie can think of something to say in response, she's gone, flitting through the trees with a grace Taurie almost envies.
*
Haddie dies silently. Whether it's bravery or sadism that keeps her mouth shut as her body is gathered up from its hook by the Black Talon Taurie doesn't know. Will never know, she thinks, watching the pinpricks of light swirling through the pieces of the Black Talon's arms that are visible through the clouds. The next time she sees Haddie, this will only have happened to one of them.
True to Haddie's promise, the hatch pops open from nothing at Taurie's feet, droning loud enough to drown out the blood rushing in her ears. Inside is the void, again, another in what Taurie doesn't want to believe is an endless sequence of them stretched out before her.
She thinks about not jumping in. About letting Ji-Woon find her, letting herself wake up by the Campfire as if newly sent to the Bleed.
Taurie leans against the shack wall, presses a hand to her still-bleeding shoulder. Maybe this is the real curse: not the exhaustion, but the ignorance of how long one would have to carry it. She can almost hear the words in Haddie's voice.
Haddie, who had saved and kissed and doomed her all at once. The thought brings the rage back, gives Taurie the strength to push herself up and stand at the lip of the void. I want to remember this, she thinks. The anger. I deserve to know why I hate her.
"Time's up," Ji-Woon's voice echoes in the distance. Now, or you forget.
Taurie jumps, and wonders if one day she'll be made to remember what Haddie's lips feel like on her bare skin.
femslashfete challenge 'cursed'.It takes three of the others to pull her off of Haddie the first night they both end up at the Campfire. Taurie doesn't know their names — will never know their names, never should know their names, cowards, sacrifices all — and won't remember their faces, but the rest of it remains etched in her mind as surely as if the Black Talon herself had carved the images on the backs of her eyelids.
Haddie's blood welling up between her fingernails, the gooseflesh-pebbled skin of her muscular arms no match for rage. Haddie's mouth, quirked in an oddly triumphant smile, the only part of her body that moved. Taurie's own voice, pitched unfamiliarly high: it's your fault I'm here, your fault I was pulled from my path into the Bleed—
And Haddie laughed. She remembers that, too: that Haddie laughed, and the Campfire's flames seemed to spill out of the stone circle, and the shadows that danced across her face looked like claws, as if something was saying she is mine, and you are not.
The Bleed is cruel. Or perhaps: the Bleed is cruelty, waiting to be inflicted. Taurie has known both since before it swallowed her parents, which is why she isn't surprised that when she is called to her first Trial, Haddie is there as well. Flashlight in hand, unreadable expression fixed on her face, she looks Taurie up and down while the other two do their best to pretend neither of them exist.
"Don't worry," Haddie finally says. "When you die, you'll forget what happened in there."
It sounds like the sort of thing she's said a hundred times before, something to give sacrifices undeserved comfort before their temporary end. Today, to Taurie, it feels like a threat, one she isn't sure is deserving of a response.
She pulls her mask on with steady hands, looks straight ahead. "Don't worry," the words come almost unbidden to her lips. "I'm not the one dying in there."
Haddie's quiet hum of disbelief is lost in the thickening fog.
When her vision clears, she's facing Haddie again, the other two nowhere in sight. She can feel her heart, beating faster than it ever had outside the Bleed, adrenaline warm in her veins despite the lingering chill. They're in a room — stone, dark, the air thick with a damp that makes her think underground, but there's voices, too, on the air, a whisper of something she just barely can't make out.
"Ah," Haddie says. "The Temple. You'll feel right at home here, devotee."
It's a title she once bore proudly, but in Haddie's mouth, the word does nothing but spark fury that has her ripping off her mask. For a brief, wonderful moment she imagines slamming Haddie's head into the wall, knocking her just as unconscious as her brother was. Imagines how Haddie would bleed, how she would lick her face clean and cut out her heart.
She could do it this time. She would. Surely, if the goal of the Trials was to kill, surely it wouldn't matter if she—
If she could take her rightful place—
Taurie surges forwards, arms outstretched, and Haddie sidesteps her with a laugh. Her hands hit rough stone, the shock reverberating up her arm dulled but still present.
"Fuck you," she spits. "I killed your brother before I came here. I'll kill you too, before whoever else is here gets the chance."
She expects rage, maybe grief, but Haddie just tilts her head. "I don't believe you."
And she's right not to, maybe — but who can say what the knife did, in the moment when Taurie slipped from her world into the Bleed? Maybe it fell, it must have fallen, Jordan Rois must have died, because if he hadn't — if she deserved this—
Taurie hopes her face is just as impassive as Haddie likes to keep hers, but something must show, because Haddie steps closer, close enough to cradle her face in her palms. "You wouldn't be here if you killed him," she says. "Little girl. Little failure. Cursed just like me."
It's instinct that has Taurie turning her head just enough to sink her teeth into the side of Haddie's hand, but pleasure that keeps them there longer than it takes for Haddie's hiss of pain to stop echoing off the stone, longer than is sensible.
Long enough for Haddie to move, if she wanted to.
Long enough for an unfamiliar voice to drawl "Oh, sorry, am I interrupting something?"
Taurie's head jerks up, every muscle tensing in anticipation as she scans the shadows, looking for the man, the creature that the Black Talon deemed more worthy of killing than her.
Haddie, though just sighs, bitten hand dropping down to rest on the flashlight at her hip. "No, Ji-Woon, it's a fucking tea party, we were just waiting for you."
The man who emerges from the shadows could've stepped out from the pages of a magazine photoshoot, shirtless under a long blue coat with perfectly styled hair. Torchlight glints off the blade in his raised hand, and it's an easy thing for Taurie to blame her elevated heartrate on. It's so loud, when has her heart ever beat so l—
Pain sears through her arm and Taurie realises, too late, that the knife is no longer in Ji-Woon's hand but embedded in her shoulder. It's not a deep wound, she can tell, but the blood is already dampening her robes. Fuck.
"Ah, I do love a party," he says. Taurie steps back as he meets her gaze, less out of fear and more to put Haddie in the direct line of fire of the second blade that's appeared in Ji-Woon's hand. "And this would be the guest of honour?"
And he knows, Taurie knows he does, that awful note of smugness in his voice leaves her with no doubt. She breathes in, focusses in on the rage that it ignites and wills the flames to burn out the shame.
"That's her," Haddie says with a cheerfulness that has Taurie contemplating the unwise idea of pulling the blade from her arm to bury it in Haddie's back instead. "Careful with her, she thinks she can have your job."
"You— I— It's not about—" Taurie splutters, helpless and furious with it, but Ji-Woon just laughs, and, worse, so does Haddie, even as she unclips her flashlight to offer it to Taurie.
"Why don't you go see how the others are getting on?" Warmly condescending, and, good, Taurie lets herself think, adds it to the rage. "I really did want to talk to Ji-Woon."
Ji-Woon tilts his head, considering. "Little old me?" He lowers the blade, eyeing Haddie contemplatively, and — fuck, Taurie might as well not be there. She'll kill him, too, when it's time.
"Cursed little girl," Haddie repeats. When had she gotten so close? "I'll find you later, I promise."
It's stupid, Taurie wants to say, it's all so — so stupid, and for what — but she settles for slapping the flashlight from Haddie's hand. Something flickers across the other woman's face, something almost genuine, but Taurie decides she doesn't have time to dwell. Just puts her mask back on and runs for the stairs.
Later is the only meaningful measure of time in the Bleed. Later is after one of the others has died, after Taurie has learned that her hands know how to repair generators that she's never seen in her life. Later is Ji-Woon's bat across the back of her head and a blur of lacerating pain that whirls around her as she stumbles trying to put a wall between them.
Later is Ji-Woon draping her unceremoniously over his shoulder as her mouth fills with blood behind her mask. She kicks uselessly at him, feet and fists battering a body that the Black Talon infused with inhuman power that should have been hers.
On the hook, the whole of her bodyweight suspended on one rusted sliver of metal, Taurie fights for breath through a kind of pain she'd never even imagined. Somewhere by the walls someone is screaming, the other whispering voices fading the longer she hangs. For the first time, she wonders — can I die like this?
Maybe if she dies the Black Talon will understand the enormity of Her mistake. Maybe if she—
But then Haddie's in front of her, materialising out of the mist like the beginnings of the Black Talon's limbs. "You'll be happy to know he got Sable," she says.
"Good," Taurie finds enough breath to say. Sable. She resolves to forget the name as soon as she's down from this fucking hook.
The dread in the pit of her stomach spikes. If she gets down from this fucking hook. If it's just her and Haddie left-
"Leaving me here?"
Haddie blinks, slowly enough that Taurie expects her to say yes. It's the smart thing to do, after all. It's what she'd do, what she did do every time she heard one of the others scream. The Black Talon's limbs are so, so close to solid in the corners of Taurie's vision.
"You fucking idiot." Haddie's hands are warm at her waist, shockingly strong as they lift Taurie from the hook.
Blood is sheeting down her front, and it must be its loss that has her leaning into Haddie's touch, seeking her stability. She just needs a moment to get her feet under her, and then she can push Haddie away, go hunting for an emergency kit in one of the chests she'd seen earlier.
Not that plasters would do much against a gaping hole from a meathook, she thinks, and then, in some distant part of her mind as laughter bubbles up in her throat and she tilts further into Haddie, ah, the hysteria.
"Fucking idiot," Haddie says, and she doesn't, she can't sound fond.
Haddie drags her around the corner of the dilapidated shack with a lack of urgency more confusing than distressing, just like everything else she's ever bloody done. Taurie digs her heels into the mud, resistance more for show than anything. She's lost something today, more than just the blood that's pooled thick and unpleasant in her wake, something just as important as whatever fell away when she realised her new role in the Bleed, and it—
She cuts off that line of thought. Unproductive.
"Escape hatch will open over here," Haddie says, pointing at an unremarkable clump of grass, and Taurie's mouth drops open in shock. Surely she doesn't mean — "I suggest you jump in as soon as it does. Ji-Woon and I have an arrangement for today, but he gets bored fast."
"No," Taurie says, horror rising sick and fast in her throat. She's still bleeding, maybe its in her ears, because surely she doesn't mean— "No, you wouldn't—" Make me live while you die. Make me remember while you get to forget.
Haddie's smile is pure glee, practically begging for the knife Taurie used on her brother. "Oh, I absolutely would. Might even do it again next time, since, you know, I'm not going to remember what I just did."
For a moment, it's the worst thing Haddie's ever done to her, and then Haddie's manic smile is kissing her, lips pressed against the metal divot meant to mimic a mouth.
Taurie has never been more grateful for her mask. Never hated it more.
"See you at the Campfire," Haddie says — and then, mercifully, before Taurie can think of something to say in response, she's gone, flitting through the trees with a grace Taurie almost envies.
Haddie dies silently. Whether it's bravery or sadism that keeps her mouth shut as her body is gathered up from its hook by the Black Talon Taurie doesn't know. Will never know, she thinks, watching the pinpricks of light swirling through the pieces of the Black Talon's arms that are visible through the clouds. The next time she sees Haddie, this will only have happened to one of them.
True to Haddie's promise, the hatch pops open from nothing at Taurie's feet, droning loud enough to drown out the blood rushing in her ears. Inside is the void, again, another in what Taurie doesn't want to believe is an endless sequence of them stretched out before her.
She thinks about not jumping in. About letting Ji-Woon find her, letting herself wake up by the Campfire as if newly sent to the Bleed.
Taurie leans against the shack wall, presses a hand to her still-bleeding shoulder. Maybe this is the real curse: not the exhaustion, but the ignorance of how long one would have to carry it. She can almost hear the words in Haddie's voice.
Haddie, who had saved and kissed and doomed her all at once. The thought brings the rage back, gives Taurie the strength to push herself up and stand at the lip of the void. I want to remember this, she thinks. The anger. I deserve to know why I hate her.
"Time's up," Ji-Woon's voice echoes in the distance. Now, or you forget.
Taurie jumps, and wonders if one day she'll be made to remember what Haddie's lips feel like on her bare skin.
