Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He sprinted from wall to wall, pounding on them like a madman, screaming himself hoarse trying to find him, scrabbling at the walls, at his neck, he couldn’t breathe he wasn’t real he needed to find him find him find Duke.

Pluto gasped awake with tears in his functional eye and dripping sticky from his chin, clutching at his chest with scarred gnarled fingers. He was wedged curled in the crack between the two beds that had been pushed together, Eulalie sleeping on one side with her arm resting loose around his shoulders, grimacing in her sleep. The other side was occupied by nothing more than a cooling space where Berenice had been.

Pluto fell back against Eulalie’s arm with a choked sob, biting his nails frantically to keep from screaming. This was the first time he’d had a flashback of Nevermore. It was certainly a traumatic enough memory, he supposed. Over 30 straight hours without rest, running and searching and clawing at the walls, cursing himself for being too weak to just grab that git Montresor and force him to help find Duke.

Maybe if he was stronger, Duke would still be here. The tears leaked more, sticky and salty from his eye and across his bony cheek. Not soft enough to be a girl, not hardened enough to be a man.

Shell shock had only made him weaker. He stared at the ceiling and not for the first time he wondered what would have happened if Lenore hadn’t convinced them to keep going, back during the maze. If they had died together. He hated to admit it but he wished that was the way it had turned out.

Now Duke was worse than dead, Lenore was on an embittered rampage against everyone, and Pluto could do nothing more than cry. He stared at the cobwebs draping the waterstained ceiling and thought of trains to hell, of hands linked pale, brown, and paler, of clutching the shape of Duke’s shoulders and never letting go.

He rolled off the bed, gently so as not to wake Eulalie, and walked to the window. The pale drip of dawn had hardly begun to cut through the fog of the morning and Pluto pulled his hair over his bad eye and stared unseeing at the thick gray mess of purgatory.

It had been three days since the end.

Berenice sat on the edge of the roof, legs swinging off the ledge over the rocky bluffs below. She leaned back against a gargoyle and drained another bottle of gin, tears like fire against her cheeks and down her throat.

She hadn’t even known the poor bastard well. She would do anything to numb herself to this feeling. She would do anything not to care again. Pluto and Eulalie, especially Eulalie, had wormed their way into her heart and she would do anything to take it back, to get rid of that constant fear that they would meet Duke’s fate.

If this was what it was to love she didn’t want it. She hated being so scared, so often. The only thing that dulled her was alcohol. Her third (fourth? fifth?) bottle crashed empty against the rocks below and she was so, so empty.

Eulalie woke alone in a cold bed. She rolled over and clutched her pillow to her chest in a choking grip. She hadn’t cried. She hadn’t cried and she didn’t think she could. The scars striping her arms itched and burned constantly, and she dragged rough-hewn nails up and down and up and down until she ripped pink scar tissue into angry red lines.

She imagined a hand spinning her around, she remembered dancing and laughing and how happy they had been. Before they realized just how horrible this place was. Eulalie didn’t want to be clingy, she didn’t want to impose, but all she wanted was to clutch Pluto and Berenice to her chest and never let them go. And Lenore, but Lenore had made it clear she didn’t want to be protected.

Eulalie understood the Lady in Red’s rage, she understood the itch for revenge. She felt it so deep in her bones she may as well have been born with a knife for a heart. But she didn’t want to be cruel. Even if it was stupid, even if she was naive, even if there was no point in the end she would choose to be soft. She would help them if it was the last thing she did.

Pluto went down to the cellar for the first time since they found him. He lifted the crowbar from the ground and slammed it against the walls as hard as he could. He screamed at the top of his fragile, smoke-shredded lungs and beat the walls with his fists until his knuckles bled. Collapsing to the floor he sobbed to the ceiling and all he wanted to know was why it had all ended up like this.

“Come on then, ‘son,’” Pluto's father snarled, voice harsh. A cigarette held out in gnarled, callused fingers. “If you are what you say then come prove it.” Pluto took the cigarette in shaking hands and took a hesitant drag. It was acrid, utterly horrid, and tasted like hatred. Coughing he almost missed the mutter of “Weakling bitch.”

Tears welled in his eyes from the smoke and the words and his father slapped him swiftly across the face. “Don’t you fucking cry.” He stared up and willed the tears to stop, willed it all to fade away into the back of his mind. He stared forward and refused to react as he was pulled forward by the hair.

As the butt of the cigarette pressed into his cheek just below his left eye. Only slightly did his blank, glazed eyes water. And when he was thrown to the earth he wished so hard to scream.

Pluto returned to purgatory sobbing, scrabbling at filthy bricks with bleeding fingers and ripping himself to shreds as he clawed towards the closest thing to a human embrace. He lifted Duke’s cold, leaden arm and curled into his chest, clutching his limp form and sobbing into his nightclothes. He hoped Duke wouldn’t mind. Not that his soul was anywhere to be found.

He fell asleep like that, cold seeping into every inch of him and Pluto couldn’t help but hope he would up and die right there. Maybe then he could see Duke again.

Chapter Text

Lenore found them like that. She’d taken to staring listlessly at the corpse of her best friend rather than going to class, though the hopeless emptiness only ever served to make her manifest again. But what else could she do?

Being close to anyone would only serve to hurt them, so Lenore watched Pluto, Berenice, Eulalie, and Morella from afar. She wouldn’t make targets of them, but she certainly wouldn’t let them be ripped from her. She would do anything to keep them safe.

All this to say nothing of Annabel Lee, that thrice-damned vixen. Every moment they were near one another the blonde all but made a beeline towards her, begging with her eyes to speak to her. Lenore wouldn’t allow the devil to make a fool of her again. Not for something so important.

So, she came to the one person that there was no danger for, not anymore. Lenore would never admit it, of course, but she spoke to him sometimes, out of some naive hope that he could still somehow hear her.

But now there, curled with him, was Pluto, and Lenore nearly screamed at the thought that they could both be dead. Pluto was frozen cold, but his heart still beat, and when her panic had alleviated slightly she extricated Duke from his vice grip and lifted the tiny boy to carry him upstairs.

Pluto awoke fevered, with Eulalie laying a damp cloth over his forehead. He stared up at her and felt guilt at finding her lovely. Duke had been lovely, and Duke was gone. How dare Pluto attempt to replace him.

“Hello,” Eulalie greeted him. “There’s soup.” She began to feed it to him before he could protest, and he just swallowed it, compliant.

“How… did I get here?” he asked.

“I… I don’t know, truly,” she admitted. “I think it was Lenore? You were just… here.”

Pluto scowled, against himself. Lenore should’ve just let him die already. She’d prevented it far too many times, and he was sick of it. Sick of her not being there until the very precipice. He loved her, though. Perhaps it was the pain that had bonded them, but he would die for her. Well, he would die for anything, now, so perhaps a more shocking concept was that he would live for her.

He swallowed more soup, staring at Eulalie as he did so. She had dark circles under her eyes, despite that she’d been sleeping more than he had. Worry, maybe. He wished she wouldn’t.

He reached out to her before he could stop himself, traced with his thumbs the darkness under her eyes. Stared into the deep blue-black depths of her eyes. She looked back and neither of them was happy and both of them knew it.

Chapter Text

“C’mon girl, lighten up!” A hand looping around her waist and pulling her to sit on his knee. Berenice pushed at the hand but it tightened and she put on a mask and laughed and flirted but she was stuck, stuck, stuck and the taste of alcohol on his breath made bile rise in her throat.

She wasn’t drunk enough to deal with this not now not ever and as much as she might pretend to take control of it the thought of being touched or viewed that way still made her skin crawl.

Berenice lunged awake and almost leaped off the roof. Her head ached and rang and she wanted to sob and heave and scream but she hadn’t the right. She drained the last bottle, threw it to the rocks, and staggered off to find more.

Eulalie caught her when she collapsed back through the window, limping and slurring her words. Warm hands on her shoulders and Berenice flinched back so violently she fell on her ass.

“-are you alright?” Eulalie’s voice cut through the ringing in her head and Berenice stared dumbly up at her. Her roommate was really pretty.

“Berenice?” Berenice blinked and it felt like dragging her eyelids through thick honey.

She dumbly grasped Eulalie’s offered hand and allowed her to haul her up, falling like a ragdoll onto her roommate. She looked up, searching for more of those deep dark eyes. Eulalie was saying something but she couldn’t make out the words, just a slurry of that gentle voice, deeper than it should’ve been but so, so soft.

Berenice didn’t know what her emotions were. She didn’t know the difference between joy and despair, ecstasy and agony. She only knew the base desires so long-repressed, thick in her mind and impenetrably soft, and with the small amount of control left over her body she lunged upwards and pressed her mouth to Eulalie’s.

It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It could hardly be called a kiss, with how slack Berenice’s mouth was, how frozen Eula’s was. Eulalie kissed back after a moment, and Berenice matched her pace, could do such a thing in her sleep, had “practiced” so much on her coworkers it was more muscle spasm than memory now.

Tangling a hand in Eulalie’s dark hair, Berenice allowed herself to be cradled, though the burn under her skin remained. Eulalie pulled away then, her hold on Berenice’s face gentle yet firm, keeping her still.

“Berenice, you’re not right. We shouldn’t be doing this, you’re drunk.”

“Y-you don’t want to?” Berenice slurred, collapsing against Eulalie.

“No, I- I mean yes, but- Berenice, not now.”

Berenice pushed her off, harsh and head swimming, and staggered off towards the door. Eulalie grasped her wrist firm, stopping her. Berenice pulled at her, irritated but halfhearted, too thick in the head to think. Eulalie scooped her up and the touch crawled under her skin despite its warmth, she kicked and attempted to crawl from the solid arms around her, but she was plopped onto the bed anyway, next to a sleeping Pluto.

She turned to look at him, confused. His face was ashen, a damp cloth on his forehead under his hair, which was still in place over his eye.

“Did you… look at it?” Berenice asked as Eulalie crawled in on the other side and curled gentle arms around her. Her touch didn’t make Berenice’s skin crawl, now. She wondered why that was.

“No. I didn’t think he would want me to.” Eulalie murmured into Berenice’s shoulder. She was so warm.

“Probably you’re right.” Berenice murmured, eyelids drawing closed. Pluto’s eye was a clear-set boundary. One neither wanted to cross.

Pluto crawled out of bed first. There was hardly a taste of sunlight in the sky but he had decided what he needed to do and he could hardly think of how to do it.

He dug in the pile of unwashed clothes for the key to his actual room. He hadn’t returned there since… before. After Duke was doomed by his roommate it was decided that sleeping next to another one of Annabel Lee’s acolytes was a death sentence.

The last thing he expected when he silently eased the door open was Annabel Lee herself sitting in Prospero’s bed. With Prospero. They appeared to have been playing chess through the night, shadows dark under their eyes. All three stared at each other. Prospero recovered first, smoothing his nightshirt and his hair.

“Well, Pluto, this is certainly an unwelcome surprise.”

“Likewise.” He gritted his teeth.

“I was under the impression you’d shared Duke’s fate. I had nearly thrown out all your things. You should be grateful I was too preoccupied with class to do so.”

“Thanks so much,” Pluto muttered, going over to the small pile of his things. He lifted up his briefcase and reached under the bed for the crowbar and Lenore’s gun that he’d stashed there. Flicking the gun open to check, he bemoaned once more the lack of bullets. Ignoring the gasps from Annabel and Prospero, he trudged back towards the door.

“Wh-where are you going with that?” Annabel stuttered. He looked back towards her with filth in his eye.

“It’s not me you should be concerned about, bobby. You're more than spoken for,” he spat, stalking off and letting the door slam closed on Prospero’s indignant sputters.

Pluto returned to Berenice and Eulalie’s room dragging his feet. The time wasn’t right for revenge, he was still weak from the cellar. He pushed the crowbar and gun under the bed and shoved his briefcase under as well.

He crawled back into the bed and curled into Berenice’s chest.

Chapter Text

Berenice woke with two people curled against her, a splitting headache, and an insatiable craving for alcohol. She attempted to wriggle out of the bed, but Pluto groaned and shifted closer, and Eulalie’s arm wrapped tighter around her, trapping her in place.

It was nice, the unexpectant warmth of people around her, but the craving for alcohol made her restless. She screwed her eyes shut and tried to go back to sleep, holding Pluto gently.

“Another pay cut?” she asked, indignant.

“This ain’t the Ritz, sweetheart, if you want more money you’d best go for tips.” Her boss snarked. “And I know where you can start…”

She choked down the bile and kept her head down.

It must’ve been a cruel cosmic joke, for the lighter and the pack of cigarettes to be found in his suitcase. Pluto knew as he stared at them he would’ve never owned such a thing. Not him.

“Come over here, Ashtray!” The voice was husky and rough, and before Pluto could try to find a place in the trench to hide he was grabbed rough by the back of the jacket and pulled towards the man.

He didn’t remember his name, of course he didn’t, they were all the same. But he was restrained and his hair was pulled roughly back and the thick blonde man pressed the burning butt of his cigarette directly into his left eye.

Pluto hadn’t been able to see out of that eye for a very long time, but the burns hurt all the more for it. He bit his tongue into blood to keep from screaming but couldn’t keep from thrashing his feet. And all he could hear was laughing
laughing
laug h i n g…

Eulalie had always been stronger than her peers. Too strong for a queer, too strong for a girl. It took so much screaming and crying to convince people that she was a girl that most of them thought her deranged.

“Susuki, why don’t you just fight back?” Eulalie’s mother asked, carving in the nest of wooden birds that radiated around her bed. She was tired, had always been tired, and being stuck in the camp only exhausted her further.

Eulalie brushed her hair, trying not to poke at her newly missing molar with her tongue. It had been cracked by a group of boys that had held her down and punched her a while ago, and the camp had no dentist other than a mechanic with pliers.

“I don’t want to hurt them, mama,” she replied, pulling fingers and comb through long purple-dark hair. “They’ve been hurt enough.”

“But what about your hurt?” her mother asked. “What about your anger?”

“I can’t, mama. I don’t have space to be angry, that’s what they want.”

“Eulalie… come here, darling.” Eulalie moved to sit closer to her mother on the bed, opening her mouth so she could insert the newly carved wooden tooth. “Wouldn’t it be easier if you weren’t…”

“A girl?” Eulalie asked. Her mother had taken the tooth back to resin it. “Yes, but I won’t go back. I can’t.”

“Alright,” her mother sighed. “I love you.”

“Aishite imasu, mama.”

Eulalie gasped awake clutching Berenice tight enough to bruise. She let go immediately, horrified at herself for squeezing her so hard. Biting a knuckle she checked and cursed through her teeth at the ring of a bruise around Berenice’s arm. She gripped herself instead, clutching her own arm and pressing.

And she still couldn’t fucking cry.

Her teeth dug blood from her knuckle and her fingers coaxed purple from her arm and the pain grounded her. She unclenched her jaw and reached hesitantly back towards her molars to trace the wooden teeth in her jaw. There were at least 4.

She missed her mother.

She wished she remembered what had happened to her.

She wished she wasn’t so strong.

She wished she was a real girl.

Berenice woke again to see Eulalie curled tight into herself, seemingly heaving out invisible tears. She shuffled forward and took the girl’s hands, still half-asleep, where they had been tearing long scratches into her arms.

“Mmn- hey, hey- what’s wrong?” Eulalie wouldn’t look at her, hyperventilating and struggling to free her hands. “Darling- biscuit please, look at me.”

Eulalie looked up with an awful mix of horror and fear in her eyes.

“What’s wrong, biscuit?”

“You- I hurt you…” she muttered. “I was being careful but I- I’m too different, I’ll never be a real girl, not like- not like you.”

“Eulalie, biscuit, what are you talking about?”

“I’m a transvestite, Berenice!” she sobbed out. “I’m a freak and I’m filthy and I’ll never be a real girl no matter what I do. I’m-”

Berenice cut her off with a kiss. “Eulalie, biscuit, I don’t know what you mean, really, but I know that you’re a girl. You’re pretty, you look like a girl, everyone thinks you’re a girl, the stupid Deans put you in the girls’ dorms, of course you’re a girl. Alright?”

“Mmn- okay,” Eulalie stuttered.

“Now can you please explain what a transvestite is, because I don’t understand.”

“Hh- you’re going to hate me.” Eulalie’s eyes were huge, full of terror.

“I could never.” And she meant it.

“I- I was born… a boy. I have… the body of a man.” Eulalie spoke in half-sentences, full of pauses, staring at Berenice for any sign of a reaction. “So I’m… stronger than most girls. And I squeezed you in my nightmare and you have a bruise and I’m so sorry-”

“Hold on, hold on, so… you have a..?”

Eulalie blushed bright red. “Um… if a man has it then, yes..?”

“O-okay, um… I don’t know what kind of things you want from me…”

“NO! No, nothing- nothing like that, I promise.” Eulalie’s face was a burning crimson. “I don’t- I wouldn’t be comfortable with that, in any case.”

“Oh, thank God.” Berenice sighed with relief. “I just- I don’t like… that stuff?”

“That’s okay! I would never want to make you unhappy. Again, I’m so so sorry about bruising you.”

“Hmm?” Berenice looked and noticed the bruises on her arm for the first time. “Oh this? Don’t worry, biscuit, I don’t even feel it.”

“I just really don’t want to hurt you, Berenice, I really love you.” Berenice felt her face heat up. She held Eulalie’s hands gently, turning them over and brushing her thumb over the ridged veins.

“I love you too, Eulalie.”

Eulalie leaned in suddenly, deep blue eyes staring into amber. “May I?”

Berenice nodded and Eulalie was kissing her softly. It was the gentlest caress of her life and she couldn’t imagine this girl ever hurting her. She lifted a hand and cupped her cheek gently, rubbing her cheekbone.

When they parted, Berenice’s gaze drifted down and her eyes blew wide when she noticed the faintly bleeding scrapes and bruises along Eulalie’s arms.

“Biscuit, what did you do?”

Eulalie pinked and pulled her sleeves down hurriedly. “It’s- it’s nothing! Don’t worry about it!”

“We are going to clean that right now. Come on, let’s see if Dolly has some salve.” She took Eulalie’s hand and pulled her off the bed, chuckling at her reluctance.

Chapter Text

Pluto lay in the cold bed for a long while after he woke up. He thought his fever was broken but there was no real way to tell.

What he did know was that he was pissed off. And he was tired of not doing anything about it.

Lenore had made it clear that Annabel Lee was hers to end, and Pluto had no complaints about that. He was intimidated by the blonde and it was clear Lenore held more rage towards her in general. But the others… oh, the other three were fair game. And this was a game he was going to play.

He pulled the briefcase out from under his bed and he grabbed the cigarettes and lit one up before he could listen to reason. He pulled the smoke into his rattling lungs and it felt like coming home.

His father, blowing clouds of smoke into his toddler’s face and muttering drunkenly for a beer.

Shoving the rest into the pocket of a dirty blazer, he grabbed the crowbar and held it jaunty over his shoulder, Berenice’s knife in his pocket and Lenore’s gun hanging at his side. He walked with only the lightest remnant of a limp to Duke’s old room.

The bombs and gunfire and the trench, muddy and always choked with smoke and mud, not a single breath was clean and blowing someone’s head off with a gun led to breathing in the aftershock every bomb filled the air with filth and held breaths were ripped out of you with a punch to the stomach.

He kicked the door open with one boot and it slammed against the wall. Monty looked up, irritated, from where he was dressing.

“Ugh, where’re yer bodyguards? That empty gun ain’t gonna fool me, pussy.”

Pluto slammed the gun into the side of his head with all his might.

“If you really think yourself a boy, you ought to be in the draft, huh?” Alcohol on his breath.

Montresor crumpled and without a lick of hesitation Pluto struck him across the jaw with the crowbar, caving it in so he couldn’t scream. Montresor made a gargled sound somewhere in his throat, and blood bubbled from his lips.

“Oh, come on, you can’t die yet,” Pluto cooed, crouching to stare at him. “We’re just getting started.” Pluto took the cigarette from his lips and blew smoke into Monty’s eyes.

Death is easy to justify, in a war, far too easy. Pluto was knock-kneed and not patriotic but it hardly mattered, he was flown in and stepped over corpses every day to the hole where he was to sleep.

You get used to it.

Pluto swung again at his knees, and with a sickening crack rendered Monty unable to walk.

“No, no, don’t worry, bitch,” Pluto snarled. “You won’t die for a while yet. Not until I get bored of you, at least.”

He flicked a tear off of Monty’s cheek. “Have I mentioned how wonderful those lessons are? Disabling your Spectre for days at a time, it’s just lovely. Makes my job just so much easier.”

Lady Death curled around him at night in the trenches, claiming everyone around him eventually. Those who hated him and those who turned a blind eye, and when nothing got better Pluto hated his country just as much as its enemies.

“Mmn- wh- wee- k- weak-” Monty whined. “c-c-can’t-”

“You think I can’t kill you?” Pluto chuckled, taking a drag of his cigarette. “Baby, I’ve killed more than anyone else here.”

Montresor stared up at him, tears in his eyes, struggling out a “Mmn- wh- hhhmn-”

“Aww, cat got your tongue?” Pluto pried some of the jaw apart and took the pink muscle in one hand. He flicked open Berenice’s knife.

“Mmnnn-!” Slash!

He flicked the bloodied tongue onto the floorboards and wiped the blood on Monty’s shirt.

“Welp, come on then.” He grabbed Monty’s ankle and began to drag the whining mass along the floor. “Can’t risk someone walking in.”

The trail of blood was luckily minimal, and Pluto took a sick satisfaction from the cracking bounce that Monty’s head made against the stairs as he dragged him down to the cellar.

“Cold, innit?” He asked, blowing more smoke at Monty. “Imagine being stuck here.”

Montresor whined so pathetically he sounded like Will. Pluto whacked him across the face with the crowbar again to shut him up. The anger prickling under his skin only rose as he continued slamming crowbar against flesh, again and again and-

again and again and they wouldn’t stop, the cigarette burns on his face numbered in the hundreds, half from his father and the remainder from his so-called men-in-arms and he skirted gunfire and suffered bruises and it was all too much too much too much-

Tears were dripping from his eyes and Montresor was laughing through his crushed jaw and the gargle of blood and Pluto kicked him over and straddled him, pressing with his hands down down down down down

Fastening a belt around his own neck, hanging it to the rafters, teetering on his toes with tears in his eyes and falling and scrabbling and the snap of a neck-

Tears dripped on Montresor’s face as he choked out his last breaths, blood bubbling from his bruised lips and spraying all over Pluto and he was scratching bloody lines down Pluto’s arms and he was thrashing so so pathetically until he

finally

died.

Chapter Text

Blood dripped onto the floor. It wasn’t clear whose. The crowbar fell to the earth and Pluto leaned back against the rubble of the wall behind which Duke had breathed his last.

For once he did not cry. He stood up heavily, pushed back his hair. No need to hide what he was.

Ashtray ashtray ashtray ashtray

He clutched the bloodied gun in a death grip as he walked up to his room.

Everything was a blur, a ringing daze of tinnitus, a thick fog curling around him.

Ashtray ashtray ashtray ashtray

He staggered through the door to Eulalie and Berenice’s room dripping blood on the floor and saw them kissing on the bed. They sprang up and ran towards him and he couldn’t hear their voices through the ringing in his head but he saw the pity and horror in their eyes when they saw him.

He came to in the bathtub. Berenice was guarding the door and Eulalie was trying to talk to him, asking if she could take his clothes off.

“What?” He asked. “Why are you-?”

“Pluto, darling, you’re hurt.”

“But… I’m disgusting.”

Eulalie’s intake of breath was sharp and pained, and she cupped his cheek gently.

“Don’t you dare say that.”

“But- it’s true, Eulalie, just look at me.”

Eulalie hugged him tightly, her sleeves dipping into bloody bathwater but she didn’t care.

“Whatever happened, it’s not your fault.”

“I’ve killed people, Eulalie. I’m a monster.”

“I don’t care.” Her voice was solid. Deep. Strong yet so soft. Her soft, large hands interlacing with his filthy, scarred, callused ones.

Tears welled in Pluto’s eyes and he pulled her into a hug again.

“Now, darling, can I take your clothes off? I didn’t want to do it without your permission.”

“S-sure, but… Eulalie I’m not- I’m not a real boy. I’m- I mean to say I have-”

Her laugh was musical in its soft depth. “I’m the same, Pluto. Don’t worry.”

And she bathed his scarred girl’s body gently, soaped his wounds, and kissed him softly. She gave him clothes from her suitcase, the mens’ clothes she didn’t fit, and Eulalie and Berenice held him soft and he fell asleep with the roots of that weed called hope weaving through his veins and warmth in his bruised lungs.