Work Text:
I.
Velvette hummed a simple tune as she pinned the dress in front of her, fingers deft across the surface of the fabric.
A ping! broke her out of her concentration. Normally she would ignore a social media interruption while she was in the zone on a fashion project like this, but this tone was special. One of the perks of being the Social Media Demon was magically expanded functionality beyond what even Vox and Val had, and this specific notification was for any breaking news she would consider extremely important.
She placed the last pin in her hand on the dress, then swiped up a magical screen in front of her. Her eyes widened as she read the headline.
Overlord Carmilla Carmine missing for over three days, last seen in conflict with angel
“No shot.” Velvette exhaled, stunned expression slowly morphing into an excited, sharp-toothed grin. “The old bitch finally bit the bullet?” Her eyes scanned over the text of the article. A blurry as hell photo of Carmine mid-kick towards a spear-wielding angel, no comment from her daughters, baseless theory and hype-generating speculation.
She pinned the story to the top of her profile, and dropped a heart on it as a reward. That would net that outlet a boost. This would normally be the point where she put the screen away and got back to her fashion industry work, but her mind was still spinning with thoughts and ideas and consequences.
“Carmine was the only one who really gave a shit about this whole ‘Territory’ thing.” Velvette mumbled, eyes staring past the screen, past the dress, into the distance. It was before her time in Hell, but she heard the story more than enough to make it plausible if not outright history.
Hell used to be a madhouse. Strong souls preying on the weak, weak souls preying on the weaker, weaker souls buckling under the unending torment, all while Lucifer sat up on his throne away from it all. Then, one day lost to time, one soul arrived. She took in the scene before her and found it lacking. Rumor has it that within her first 30 seconds in Hell, Carmilla Carmine knew she would bring the chaos to heel. The torment was inescapable, thus is the nature of the Beast, but the madness could be tempered. Refined. Honed.
Like a weapon.
There was certainly no love lost between Velvette and Carmilla, but the doll had to admit that her rival’s force of will was unparalleled. And now that that force was gone…
Velvette’s eyes sparkled with gleeful malice as she returned her gaze to the mannequin in front of her. She could see it now. Things would coast along on momentum for a bit. Maybe that old fart Zestial would try and make some token effort, but everyone knew he didn’t have the same raw presence as Carmine. Then a few skirmishes would pop up, and go un-squashed. Then a few more. And more. And more rogue unclaimed souls would start forming their own small factions, trying to make a name for themselves. Cordial relationships would sour, border lines would dissolve, before being redrawn as battle lines. Shots fired.
“It’s gonna get REAL exciting around here.” Velvette resumed her work on the dress, fingers flitting across the dress like ash in the breeze.
II.
Velvette’s steps faltered as she approached the Carmine estate’s front gate. In a powerplay Velvette couldn’t help but grudgingly respect, the gate itself was always unlocked. Everyone knew that anyone who stepped foot on the property that wasn’t welcome would never make it to the front door of the actual building in one piece. Maybe if you were lucky some of your blood would splatter against the deck. She slowed to a stop, staring through the elegantly hammered wrought iron bars.
Velvette spent a long time staring at that manor. It almost felt wrong, seeing it standing there same as ever. It almost felt like it should have collapsed, crumbled into rubble the second Carmilla…
But then again, that’s not what she would have wanted anyway. The arms dealer’s pride and joy, more than any weapon ever could be, was her family. If she found out that the house she built to keep her daughters safe fell apart just because she was gone, the bitch would probably resurrect herself just to intimidate the building into reforming.
Velvette squinted her eyes as she tried to look into the windows. What was going on, behind those walls? Was that Odette’s head in the window, sitting impossibly still, looking out into the middle distance, or just her imagination? Did Zestial have a hand on Clara’s shoulder, not saying anything but just being there with the sisters?
The gate was unlocked.
Velvette didn’t move.
She couldn’t bring herself to push the gate open. To push past the threshold. To push through the…the…
Her eyes tore away from the manor, down to the sidewalk in front of her. Flowers, pictures, candles, food, charms, notes all littered the ground next to the gate. There was no order to the offers, the pile simply starting and expanding out from there. Carmine had been one of the nicer Overlords (“nice” being a relative concept in Hell of course, but letting your contracted souls take breaks sure wasn’t common practice), and it seemed like her former employees were coming out to repay that kindness, in what little ways they could.
Velvette crouched down and laid the single rose hanging loosely in her hands on the pile, nowhere special. No grand gestures, no big gathering or fancy speech. Velvette thinks that was what Carmilla would have wanted, she was always more of a private person than her. Just the citizens, mourning in their own way.
She straightened back up, looking back up at the manor one last time, before turning away and continuing on her way down the sidewalk. She shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and blinked a call into being in front of her.
“Yes Velvette?” Melissa picked up on the second ring.
“Prep the war room Melissa. Things’re gonna get pretty damn loud soon.” She would have her work cut out for her holding it all together, but she sure wasn’t gonna let that stop her. This was her chance to show that bitch, wherever she was, that she could run this shit herself if she had to. Just like she had always said they could when the pair were out at the bar together, tossing casual barbs back and forth over a glass of whatever they were feeling that burned on the way down. She was pretty good at networking after all.
“Right away Velvette.” Melissa responded, and Velvette hung up without saying goodbye. It was time to get to work.
III.
Doooooooong. The doorbell rang out a deep tone as Velvette pressed it. She waited patiently on the front patio, it made sense that Clara and Odette may not really feel like getting the door right now.
While she waited, she busied herself with a social media feed hovering before her. She swiped through posts far faster than anyone would be expected to read them, her scowl only getting deeper as she did. Eventually, she saw enough. With a snarl, she swiped the screen to the side. She clenched a fist in front of her, and the screen flashed red before disappearing. Fuckin’ bastards, sayin shit they don’t know jack about. Let’s see how they like this. For the foreseeable future, including the words “Carmilla” or “Carmine” in a post would get your account perma-banned. No exceptions.
Her attention was pulled back as the door creaked open in front of her. It was Odette, but not like Velvette had ever seen her. Odette was a woman of few words and deliberate action. She had always had a sort of unflappable composure about her, operating on a cool certainty many aspired for and few ever found.
That composure was gone. Her hair was tangled and unkempt, glasses askew on her face. Her outfit was a rumpled t-shirt and sweatpants, a far cry from the razor sharp white coat she would never let herself be seen without. The skin around her eyes was red, raw from rubbing away tears.
“Velvette?” The surprise in her voice stabbed Velvette in a way she wasn’t expecting. You thought I wouldn’t come? That I wouldn’t be here for you?
“Hey.” Velvette said softly, reaching a hand out, but hesitating. Was this the right choice? She and Odette still weren’t particularly close, would she want a hand on her shoulder?
Odette didn’t comment on the raised hand between them. “Come in.” she said, surprise giving way to a hollowness that hurt Velvette in a new, worse way. “Clara is in the kitchen, and Zestial is in the master living room.” She stepped to the side, holding the door open as Velvette walked through, and shutting it behind her.
She began to walk past, head turned down to the floor, but Velvette’s hand shot out and grabbed her wrist before she could think about it, acting on instinct and nothing else. “And you?” She asked carefully. “Where are you?”
Odette didn’t reply, or even acknowledge the question beyond stopping her walk back into the manor. The pair stood there for a bit, Velvette giving Odette the time she needed to come to an answer.
“I don’t know.” She eventually whispered.
Velvette shifted her hand down from Odette’s wrist, wrapping it around Odette’s closed fist. “Well, why don’t we be there together?”
“...yeah. Ok.” Odette agreed, opening her fist and letting Velvette thread her fingers in with hers. She stepped forward, leading Velvette by the hand to nowhere in particular, but now at least she wasn’t going alone.
IV.
The door barely made a whisper as it opened, not that Velvette really noticed. She walked through the house in a trance, brain stuck in a loop of the five stages of grief. She can’t be…how dare…maybe she could have…how can I even…what now?
Her feet carried her through the manor, along the aimless path of the ghost of a widow. Dipping into and out of rooms for no reason, dragging a hand along the wall, eyes blank and unseeing.
Until they landed on a figure.
Clara took her work for the Carmine company just as serious as her sister, but there was a certain levity to it. Reports were filed perfectly on time, occasionally in pink glitter ink. Meetings were flawlessly committed to memory while she was simultaneously constructing a dragon out of binder clips. While Odette’s focus felt like a nail, a large weight behind a single point, Clara’s style had always been more relaxed. An all-seeing aura that enveloped you while you were in it.
Until now.
The scratching noise of the pen on the form in front of her was fevered, chaotic. Her eyes flicked back and forth between the screen and the paper Velvette was sure that even she, having mastered the art of following multiple screens at once, wouldn’t have been able to retain any information. Otherwise, she was as still as a statue, hunched forward in the uncomfortable kitchen stool over the marble counter. Velvette wasn’t even sure if she was blinking. Velvette wasn’t as familiar with the Carmine business as her own, but being around the boss for so long means some of it leaks out to her anyway, and she was almost certain that there wasn’t a task that required transferring data from a computer to paper.
Velvette felt ashamed of how long she just stood there for, watching the girl mindlessly pull a form off the pile next to her, attack it with her pen like it had killed… and then put it on the pile on her opposite side. Should she interrupt? What could she say? What could she do? She wasn’t their mother, they never thought of her as one and she wouldn’t want them to. But she also couldn’t just leave her here like this. What could she do?
Her feet made the choice for her, carrying her into the room while her mind was still spinning. She was sure Clara was aware of her as she walked up, but she didn’t acknowledge her presence even as she pulled out another stool and sat down beside her.
For a while, no words were exchanged, the pair simply existing in the same vicinity. Clara continued her work, Velvette traced the patterns on the marble countertop while she desperately tried to come up with something, anything to say.
“These forms have to be done.” Clara beat her to it. “They’re important for the next shipping manifest. They need to be ready in…” she trailed off, didn’t finish the thought. Velvette suspected it wasn’t because Clara had forgotten, but rather saying the date out loud would crystalize just how unnecessary it was to be working on them RIGHT NOW.
“Right.” Velvette whispered. “Of course. Can’t let the business fall behind.” She’d climb up out of her grave. The sentence continued in her mind, a traitorous reflex of her inescapable sharp tongue, but even thinking it hurt, so she didn’t say it.
The silence stretched longer, and instead of breaking it herself, Velvette decided to slide her stool slightly closer to Clara’s. There was no reaction, so she did it again. And again. And once more, until she was only an inch or so away. Reaching an unsteady hand out (and slightly up) she laid it across Clara’s shoulders.
The pen sskkrrched loudly as it jerked across the page. “Fuck, dammit!” Clara hissed, crumpling up the paper in a fist and tossing it away, sending it skittering across the floor to stop nowhere near the garbage bin. She reached a hand over to grab a fresh form from the pile, but stopped halfway. Her hand was shaking badly.
Velvette leaned her head on Clara’s shoulder, and after a moment, she felt Clara lean her head down on top of Velvette’s. And the pair sat there in silence, pretending to not feel the jerky motions or hear the quiet gasping sobs that were inescapable parts of trying not to make a sound while coming unraveled.
V.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting on the living room couch. Hours? Days? She couldn’t feel her sense of time over the ringing in her ears. The cruel, inevitable truth had finally caught up with her, and delivered her a killing blow for all the time she had spent running from it.
It had been long. Far, far too long. She had commandeered every drone, put out a more and more eye-watering reward for any information, any REAL information. But it was all for naught.
She was gone.
The phone in her fingers slipped out, clattering to the floor. She ignored it. A choked hiccup ripped out of her before she could contain it. She felt her eyes burning, and closed them in a vain attempt to avoid what was already here, sitting on her chest like an elephant. For a while, she just gasped around the pressure, forcing air into and out of her lungs trying to hold off the fall for just a few more seconds.
Somehow, even with her eyes closed she knew when the pair arrived in the door. Some sort of sense for the people you spend so much time around, an instinct for how they moved, how they existed. She opened her eyes, and Clara and Odette were standing in the doorway, staring at her. She could practically see their hearts dropping like a stone. The three of them had formed an unspoken mutual wall around the truth, all of them working together to deny acknowledging it. But that meant that when one of them crumbled, the whole thing would come down and the avalanche would escape. Velvette from a few years ago would have been mad she broke first.
Clara’s breath hitched in a choked gasp of her own. Odette’s eyes narrowed and her fists clenched. She looked almost mad, like she was about to explode at Velvette for breaking first, for failing her, failing them. It certainly wasn’t the best way to handle your grief, but none of them were really able to cast that first stone.
Velvette held out her open arms, and Clara dove into them like she was being dragged in by an unbreakable rope. Her arms wrapping around Velvette’s back seemed to be the explosive charge that blasted away the wall for her, because the sobs immediately started falling out.
Velvette wrapped one arm around her waist, but left the other one open as she looked at Odette, even as her own vision started to get blurry from her own tears. Odette’s fist clenched tighter, but her eyes had started to leak too. She held on for a few more seconds, then in two quick steps she folded into Velvette’s other side. Velvette slid her arms up the two girl’s backs before bringing them to a stop on the back of their heads. She pulled them further into her shoulders, as if she could squeeze all the sorrow out of them both. Closing her eyes again, she shoved her own head into their two shoulders, and finally started to cry.
∞.
Velvette’s eyes shot open. Her mouth was dry, and her eyes stung. Every muscle flexed simultaneously, ironically meaning she didn’t actually move from her position in bed.
But it was certainly noticeable to someone whose arm was around her. “Mmmh?” Carmilla muttered next to her, eyes blinking open sluggishly. “Velvette? Tu esta bien?”
Velvette couldn’t bring herself to answer, instead rolling to the side to face Carmilla in their bed. Her hand reached out, hesitating for a moment before resting against her stomach. Carmilla raised an eyebrow, but stayed silent as Velvette’s hand roamed across her body. To her hip, up her side, down her back,over her thigh, back up her back, along her arm, between each finger. Mapping as many different curves and contours as she could think to find.
“Have I passed inspection?” Carmilla asked with a smirk. Her eyes narrowed in concern as Velvette didn’t rise to the obvious opening, choosing instead to pull herself into Carmilla’s (clothed) chest.
“Bad dream.” Was the only explanation she muttered into Carmilla’s collarbone, finally going most of the way to calming her pounding heart with a deep breath of Carmilla’s gunpowder and iron scent.
“Ah.” Carmilla didn’t ask what it was, but she certainly wasn’t a fool. She could probably figure out the gist of it. She placed one of her own hands on Velvette’s back, not exerting force or tracing patterns, just there. Present.
But Velvette wasn’t done yet. There were other people she had to check on. It made peeling herself away from Carmilla marginally easier. “I’m going to go grab some water. Alone. If that’s ok?” The insecurity snuck in where the panic had wedged open the door for it.
“Of course, mi amor. I’ll be here when you return.” It was impressive how she always managed to say the right thing, even without the full story.
Velvette hadn’t specifically lied. She was going to go get some water for her parched throat. But from the moment she shut their bedroom door behind them, she knew she was going to be taking the scenic route to get there.
Thankfully Clara and Odette both slept with their doors open, so it wasn’t entirely creepy to peek into their rooms for a quick moment as she passed by. Of course she only saw the pair sleeping soundly in their beds, none the wiser to even an ounce of the mountainous heartbreak they had just felt in Velvette’s nightmares.
Velvette sat there at the kitchen counter, staring down into her glass of water.
…
…
…Odette has that thing on Saturday. What was it? Some kind of event. Sport? No. Concert? Game night? Velvette had been listening when she had been telling them about it, had added to the conversation in a meaningful way, but since the event wasn’t part of her calendar, she had filtered the details out. Now she was kicking her past self, cursing her for not committing it to memory. Now she would have to ask Odette what it was ON TOP OF asking if she wanted some company. That would be awkward.
And there’s that big show at the end of the month. Clara would love that. She could get her a pass. Backstage pass, VIP pass. It was her damn event after all, she could tell the staff to carry Clara around on a palanquin and the team would start building her one.
The Carmine daughters never really rushed to put a label on what Velvette was to them, something Velvette was perfectly fine with letting them decide for themselves. They liked her, and that was so much of an uphill battle she was more than happy to let them decide what she would be to them in their own time.
But maybe that space had morphed into passivity. She could be involved in their lives more, or invite them into hers. She was certain she would never be their mother, but that was ok, she didn’t think she was ready for that either. She didn’t know if she ever would be.
She wasn’t bribing them for their love, or attention. But the more Velvette thought about it, the more she realized she wanted to prove herself to be something more, something more than the woman their mother was with.
Family.