I'm... not entirely sure about this.

I've spent this last week editing a longish fic to the point where I was quite ready to just throw the damn thing into the abyss that is the trash folder. I proceeded to take a walk. I had an idea, and now I have fic. Fic that is, in fact, the opposite of what I'd been writing before. (Consistence? Ha, no.)

Title: Now, Then

Summary: Mal is haunted. Polly throws things. Angst angst angst. Mal/Polly, Mal/OCs.

Rating: R. I think it's R. The American rating system puzzles me every time, but I'm pretty convinced this is R and not NC-17. Anyway, things happen.

Warnings: Hints at non-con and self-harm. Slash (surprise, surprise). Het (no, really). Infidelity. Strays quite far from canon, but is not actually impossible.



Now, Then

Mal was human once.

She remembers this: a bedroom, the first of many. Hers. She wasn't Mal then, nor Maladicta, just a girl with a mirror and the ability to look good in a dress. She remembers her reflection. Even then, she looked the part, dark hair framing a face that was white with suppressed fear. Where's the difference? asked the pale woman.

Where's the difference?

She remembers looking into the mirror. She was alone in there, and raised a hand to her lips where she'd been kissed just a moment before. The kiss was elsewhere now, lingered on her neck. The girl held her breath; the woman drew blood.

In the mirror, she saw her skin open up, she saw the blood trickle down, bright red against her skin. Mal remembers asking herself what would have happened if she'd said no.

There's no room in her memory for the pain.

Mal remembers how she felt lighter and lighter, how the reflection faded, how the girl blinked and saw the portrait of the Duke on the wall behind her, right where her head had been. She remembers how the girl collapsed into strong arms, received a kiss, a mouthful of blood. She'd struggled a little; she'd been good afterwards.

This happened a hundred and fifty years ago.

The pale woman had liked the struggling, and after the girl had been good for a while, she adopted her and that was the beginning of Maladicta.

Where's the difference?

-

Mal watches Polly a lot, and the difference is here: in the tiny wrinkles around her eyes that are really only there when she laughs. The difference is in one single long scar on her cheek and several others on her body.

"How I wish I could take that from you," is what Mal had said when she'd been holding Polly up on some battlefield or another, when Polly had been bleeding almost too much for Mal to bear. She'd seen Polly's smile, brave and a little uncoordinated.

She still hates herself for saying that, but oh how she wished she could have taken that from Polly. Mal knows pain all right. People have been sticking stakes into her for a longer time than Polly's been alive. Mal envies Polly's scars.

Lately, it's been more swords and less stakes. It's amazing how little difference that makes, pain-wise.

Polly, now, has reached an age where, when faced with the challenge of crossing a dusty guestroom on her way from the washbasin to the bed, she wraps herself into a towel first. Frequently, it's Mal who's waiting there for her, and she shakes her head and calls her granny, because that makes Polly laugh, and her face is so alive then. It breaks Mal's heart.

Mal remembers her own thirty-eighth birthday. It's significant, in a way, because it marks the point where Mal's been a vampire for longer than she's been human. She remembers opening the window to the sunlight for the first time in nineteen years. She doesn't remember being dust for the hours that passed, but she remembers rising to flickering candlelight and to the face of the woman she won't call mother. She remembers being slapped with a hand on which a gash was already healing, the glint in the woman's eyes. Struggling again.

She'd got better with sunlight, after that.

-

There's this about Mal: she'd be a virgin every time, except in all the ways that count. Just as she'd be nineteen all her life. She feels nineteen, sometimes, because nothing afterwards has mattered, except for Polly maybe. Polly, who makes her miss being human so much.

Something that doesn't matter: the man, the vampire, biting her shoulder right now. Blood trickles. Mal gasps, her back pressed hard into a wall, and she grips his arms in a way that would have caused dark bruises on Polly's skin. The man just smiles, with stained teeth. He isn't nice, but she doesn't want nice at this point.

Polly is nice.

He makes a point of ripping the black ribbon off her shirt before the shirt itself falls to the ground. Mal's free to bite now, she bites and draws blood and keeps it in her mouth for a while. She spits, she always does. She's strong enough for that.

She doesn't know his name, doesn't care, just that he's so very different from Polly. She shifts, and he does, too.

There's this about Mal: she'd be a virgin every time.

The man moves, teeth grazing over her lips, and downwards to her neck, biting again, long and deep enough for him to drink. Mal feels lighter and lighter. As long as the wound's open, she's alive, she's human in a way she's almost forgotten.

And inside her head, the reflection fades. It does every time.

-

That happened a day ago, and Mal stands at a washbasin, in front of a mirror again. It's a picture of the Duke she sees in it, a different one now that a hundred and fifty years have passed. Mal scrubs her body with a washcloth, half wishing it were steel wool. The thought is idle, she knows, the kind of cleanliness she seeks she won't find on the surface of her bones. Besides, she'd only heal again.

In the mirror, she sees Polly stepping behind her. She's wearing slippers, it's necessary. Mal isn't, and glass shards press into the soles of her feet. Polly'd thrown a glass at her when she'd told her. Mal had ducked, if only because she'd known Polly'd been counting on that and wouldn't have thrown anything otherwise.

Mal looks at Polly's face in the mirror and wonders if she should tell her the rest of the story. It feels too much like justifying, and Mal knows that somewhere along the lines she's old enough to be responsible for the things she does, always.

"Is it because he's a guy?" asks Polly.

'It's because he's not you', there's the answer, but it's too hurtful, and not entirely precise. Mal settles for, "No," because that's, technically, the truth. "I'm sorry," she adds, still not lying.

She'd been all right for a long time before she met Polly. Polly's the first human to come this close. Mal watches her age and scar with time, and time is kind to Polly, like rain to a plant. Time, to Mal, is a drought.

"Your feet are bleeding," says Polly.

A hand is almost touching Mal's shoulder. In the mirror, it's just Polly raising her hand. It's easier to watch the mirror, because it shows just one half of the problem. It's incredibly hard to watch the mirror, because it shows her just how much she's hurt Polly. Hurts her even now.

Mal turns around, glass shards cracking beneath her soles. She sees Polly wince. She sees her eyes, pupils dilated in the dim light. For one beat of Polly's heart, Mal sees herself in the blackness. Polly looks down, and the reflection is gone.

"I'll heal," says Mal, and maybe it's true.