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areyougameTitle: Hate You Too
Author:lythdan
Rating: M for sexual situations
Warnings: incest (which is a given, considering the pairing)
Word count: 1859
Prompt: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, Dahlia/Mia: abduction - a new variation on your old tricks
Summary: There's more than one way too punish someone who's already dead. Having exhausted the first avenue, Dahlia attempts the other.
A/N: A bit of a weird one. There's still a couple of parts I'd like to come back to in future, but deadlines are deadlines and metaphorical/metaphysical sex is difficult to write!
It started as it ended: with a secret. The twins laid on their bellies in the dusty manor room, palms joined: they were playing a clapping game. Dahlia called Mia over, a sly smile on her face, fingers intertwined with her sister's.
Nothing had prepared Mia for the question that came next. “Have you ever kissed a boy?” the red-haired twin asked, her face all innocence and grace except for her eyes. There was something in her cousin's inquisitive stare that haunted Mia, but she wouldn't have a word for it until many years later.
Mia shook her head fervently in response, baulking at the very thought. “No!” The refusal came out as a squawk; Mia couldn't remember the last time she'd seen a boy, let alone spoken to one: men never stayed in the village very long. Aunt Morgan, the twin's mother, was married, but her husband, Mr. Hawthorne, was always away on business trips.
Her own question only occurred to her several moments later, once she was composed enough to be curious. “Why do you ask?”
“I overheard mommy saying that a new man's come to live with Auntie Heather.” Dahlia paused thoughtfully, head tilted to the side as though trying to remember the man's name, or how, indeed, Auntie Heather was distantly related to them at all. “He has a son.”
Iris had been mostly silent as Dahlia talked, which was not odd within itself because that was the way the twins had always been. Dahlia was the leader; Iris was the follower. So whenever she piped up, her thoughts were always worth listening to. Mia would never forget what Iris said that day. “We're practising kissing!” she exclaimed, as though the words were bursting at her walls.
Mia's reaction was overshadowed by Dahlia's. Suddenly her grip on her twin's hand grew painfully tight; Iris let out a yelp of surprise. “Didn't I tell you not to tell anyone?” Dahlia scolded, her expression scarily dangerous for an eight-year-old. But before her sister could even stutter out an apology, Dahlia was smiling again, stroking her thumb against Iris's skin. “It's okay, though, we can trust Mia.” She threw Mia a look. “Can't we?”
“Of course!” Mia said it with a grin, glad to be trusted even if it was in something like this. It seemed pretty harmless. “Who would I even tell?” Her mother had been so busy lately, and her own sister, little baby Maya, was barely two.
Dahlia seemed to be thinking things over again, the same look of consideration she'd had on her face when talking about Auntie Heather. “Would you like to try?” Iris said nothing, as was the norm, but her eyes seemed to repeat her twin's question.
Once Mia realized what Dahlia was suggesting, her first reaction was to gag-retch. Which she did. “Ugh! Kiss you? No way.” She mimed wiping at her mouth. There were only four years between Mia and her cousins but sometimes it felt like a lifetime. It had been a long while since Mia herself had been curious about that kind of stuff.
Dahlia seemed to take Mia's reaction in good stead. “Alright then,” she replied softly, “What about Billy?”
“Billy?”
“The boy, silly!” Dahlia laughed, a tinkling sound. “Wouldn't you like to meet him?”
Mia shrugged her shoulders half-heartedly. “Not really. I'm not that interested.”
“Well,” Dahlia said, finally getting to her feet and pulling Iris up along with her, “I am.” Her twin nodded along, as though they had been her own words. It was a given, or so Mia thought, that Iris would be going along to meet him too. That was why when Iris later raised the alarm about Dahlia's disappearance, Mia wondered if she should've said something.
But she had found herself bound by the last words she had spoken to her cousin that day. As Dahlia walked away, she gently touched a finger to the side of her nose and said, “This is our little secret, isn't it?”
And Mia promised.
It was December 2001.
–
Dahlia came back, but only briefly.
Billy and his father disappeared from the village.
Mr. Hawthorne returned to take the twins away.
Mia's mother vanished into thin air.
Ten years later, Mia left too.
–
If there had been a clear division between Hell and Heaven, then perhaps they would never have met again. Yet, the spirit world was far more complex than that. After the results of her mother's murder trial at Eagle Mountain, Mia didn't expect that Dahlia would ever be channelled into the living world again.
But not even that could stymie Dahlia's pathological obsession with revenge. She had already exhausted one possible avenue of punishing the dead, but that did not mean that there were not others. In the nexus, Dahlia sought Mia out, her face nothing but fury, the good girl facade she loved so much now entirely gone. “Don't think this is over, Mia Fey,” she spat, “because it's not.”
And then there was a tug on her hands and she could feel her cousin dragging her. It was an odd sensation, to feel dragged down in the absence of a corporeal body, but sometimes the consciousness filled in the details so things could make sense. Mia could feel Dahlia direct her towards the living world, but she knew that Dahlia would have no hope of breaking the barrier without a medium. Even Mia, with more spiritual power, could not do such a thing.
As they drew closer, Mia recognized their destination. It was a place that she had not been to for a very long time.
It was Kurain. But it was not the Kurain of the living, but rather of their past: the way it had been the last time they had spoken as children. Dahlia brought Mia to the room they'd been in that fateful day and Mia could make out the fuzzy outlines of the children they had been, the imprint of their memories.
It was here that Dahlia pushed Mia down, hard, with a shove against the shoulder. Mia hadn't been expecting to be let go of so soon and went tumbling to the ground. Dahlia loomed over her. Whatever her cousin's intentions were, Mia would not go without a fight. She looked up at Dahlia, rather unable to move, and scoffed. “What is this, another fake kidnapping? Shouldn't you know by now that your attempts always fail?”
Dahlia did not look remotely abashed; here in the spirit world she had no need for the airs and graces that had served her so well in the land of the living. She kneeled over Mia, straddling her, but then grabbed her by the sides of the face and screamed for a very long time. When she was done, panting, she snarled, “This time it's real.”
Mia bore it all stoically.
“I could rip off your face, Mia Fey! I could gouge out your eyes!”
Mia looked to the side, ignoring the burning sensation in her cheeks. The pain was not real, but Dahlia's incredible hatred was. “But you won't, will you, because it won't change anything. You'll still be you and I'll still be me.”
Dahlia's eyes darkened and it was only then that Mia could describe the look she had seen all those years ago. It was hunger: hunger for recognition, for approval. But it was buried, hidden away deep underneath the overwhelming anger. “If I can't be you, then I'll have you. I'll consume you. I'll take your soul!”
It was hard to describe what happened next: it wasn't sex, not in the way it had been back when she'd been alive, although it certainly felt similar; she could feel Dahlia's fingers pushing inside her, probing her. But as her cousin explored her body she could also feel Dahlia exploring her mind. Unbidden, memories that were not her own came to mind; Aunt Morgan and her husband arguing in dark corners, her mother cradling Maya in her arms, and then a vision of Dahlia and a boy, who could only be Billy. He was older than she had originally imagined, about ten. The hazy shape of Dahlia's memory approached the older boy, and at first they just talked.
Dahlia told him that she wanted to escape. The tale she told was an interesting sob story, Mia thought; sophisticated, for an eight-year-old. And Billy nodded, understanding; he hated Kurain too. The plans, then, were set; they would run away together. They were hiding in an abandoned building overnight when Dahlia's father returned and saw the children practising their kissing. Dahlia was forced to make up a lie on the spot, sacrificing Billy to the wrath of her father. She felt terror, intermingled with rage. Then again, it was no secret to either of them that Dahlia hated him.
Then Dahlia spoke, as if she were inside Mia's own mind. “You're wrong, you're so wrong. I just wanted him to like me, but he wouldn't go along with my story. That's when I learnt that I always had to look out for myself. No-one ever paid any attention to me, did the things I wanted to...”
Iris. The thought came to Mia automatically, and Dahlia could sense it.
“Her? Please. She only did what she has to do because she lacks a spine and personality. No. Back then, I wanted you.” Something about the way that Dahlia manoeuvred her hold on Mia caused her consciousness to explode in clarity, a climax followed by a denouement. “You were the one that everyone adored, the one that was in line to inherit it all, and then you left. I. Just. Don't. Understand. You.”
Mia had hated Dahlia for most of her adult life for simple, straight-forward reasons: she was a murderer. She had tried to kill people that Mia had loved. Mia had never thought about the why, had never considered the motive anything deeper than some perverse sense of self-preservation. She'd always thought that if she was Dahlia, she would hate everything about herself. But she wasn't Dahlia, and she would never truly understand. Perhaps she could given time and inclination, but neither of those were qualities she possessed in great amounts: Dahlia's hold on her spirit was growing uncomfortable. Mia's consciousness was fading at the edges.
It was time to put this at rest. “And I you, Dahlia.” It was the first time she'd used her cousin's name in their entire encounter. “Now, get out of my head!” With a rush of pure energy, Mia could feel Dahlia's spirit exit her own.
When Dahlia withdrew, her fingers were inexplicably sticky. She looked down at Mia with disdain. “I always hated you.”
Mia didn't miss a beat.
“I hate you too.”
Dahlia never bothered Mia again.
–-
It was in the spirit world that Mia and her mother had their first conversation in seventeen years. Misty Fey offered no excuses, only the beginnings of an explanation. “Don't tell anyone this, but your aunt had more spiritual power than she knew, but I never allowed her to believe it...”
And Mia promised.
Because who did she have to tell?
Author:
lythdanRating: M for sexual situations
Warnings: incest (which is a given, considering the pairing)
Word count: 1859
Prompt: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, Dahlia/Mia: abduction - a new variation on your old tricks
Summary: There's more than one way too punish someone who's already dead. Having exhausted the first avenue, Dahlia attempts the other.
A/N: A bit of a weird one. There's still a couple of parts I'd like to come back to in future, but deadlines are deadlines and metaphorical/metaphysical sex is difficult to write!
It started as it ended: with a secret. The twins laid on their bellies in the dusty manor room, palms joined: they were playing a clapping game. Dahlia called Mia over, a sly smile on her face, fingers intertwined with her sister's.
Nothing had prepared Mia for the question that came next. “Have you ever kissed a boy?” the red-haired twin asked, her face all innocence and grace except for her eyes. There was something in her cousin's inquisitive stare that haunted Mia, but she wouldn't have a word for it until many years later.
Mia shook her head fervently in response, baulking at the very thought. “No!” The refusal came out as a squawk; Mia couldn't remember the last time she'd seen a boy, let alone spoken to one: men never stayed in the village very long. Aunt Morgan, the twin's mother, was married, but her husband, Mr. Hawthorne, was always away on business trips.
Her own question only occurred to her several moments later, once she was composed enough to be curious. “Why do you ask?”
“I overheard mommy saying that a new man's come to live with Auntie Heather.” Dahlia paused thoughtfully, head tilted to the side as though trying to remember the man's name, or how, indeed, Auntie Heather was distantly related to them at all. “He has a son.”
Iris had been mostly silent as Dahlia talked, which was not odd within itself because that was the way the twins had always been. Dahlia was the leader; Iris was the follower. So whenever she piped up, her thoughts were always worth listening to. Mia would never forget what Iris said that day. “We're practising kissing!” she exclaimed, as though the words were bursting at her walls.
Mia's reaction was overshadowed by Dahlia's. Suddenly her grip on her twin's hand grew painfully tight; Iris let out a yelp of surprise. “Didn't I tell you not to tell anyone?” Dahlia scolded, her expression scarily dangerous for an eight-year-old. But before her sister could even stutter out an apology, Dahlia was smiling again, stroking her thumb against Iris's skin. “It's okay, though, we can trust Mia.” She threw Mia a look. “Can't we?”
“Of course!” Mia said it with a grin, glad to be trusted even if it was in something like this. It seemed pretty harmless. “Who would I even tell?” Her mother had been so busy lately, and her own sister, little baby Maya, was barely two.
Dahlia seemed to be thinking things over again, the same look of consideration she'd had on her face when talking about Auntie Heather. “Would you like to try?” Iris said nothing, as was the norm, but her eyes seemed to repeat her twin's question.
Once Mia realized what Dahlia was suggesting, her first reaction was to gag-retch. Which she did. “Ugh! Kiss you? No way.” She mimed wiping at her mouth. There were only four years between Mia and her cousins but sometimes it felt like a lifetime. It had been a long while since Mia herself had been curious about that kind of stuff.
Dahlia seemed to take Mia's reaction in good stead. “Alright then,” she replied softly, “What about Billy?”
“Billy?”
“The boy, silly!” Dahlia laughed, a tinkling sound. “Wouldn't you like to meet him?”
Mia shrugged her shoulders half-heartedly. “Not really. I'm not that interested.”
“Well,” Dahlia said, finally getting to her feet and pulling Iris up along with her, “I am.” Her twin nodded along, as though they had been her own words. It was a given, or so Mia thought, that Iris would be going along to meet him too. That was why when Iris later raised the alarm about Dahlia's disappearance, Mia wondered if she should've said something.
But she had found herself bound by the last words she had spoken to her cousin that day. As Dahlia walked away, she gently touched a finger to the side of her nose and said, “This is our little secret, isn't it?”
And Mia promised.
It was December 2001.
–
Dahlia came back, but only briefly.
Billy and his father disappeared from the village.
Mr. Hawthorne returned to take the twins away.
Mia's mother vanished into thin air.
Ten years later, Mia left too.
–
If there had been a clear division between Hell and Heaven, then perhaps they would never have met again. Yet, the spirit world was far more complex than that. After the results of her mother's murder trial at Eagle Mountain, Mia didn't expect that Dahlia would ever be channelled into the living world again.
But not even that could stymie Dahlia's pathological obsession with revenge. She had already exhausted one possible avenue of punishing the dead, but that did not mean that there were not others. In the nexus, Dahlia sought Mia out, her face nothing but fury, the good girl facade she loved so much now entirely gone. “Don't think this is over, Mia Fey,” she spat, “because it's not.”
And then there was a tug on her hands and she could feel her cousin dragging her. It was an odd sensation, to feel dragged down in the absence of a corporeal body, but sometimes the consciousness filled in the details so things could make sense. Mia could feel Dahlia direct her towards the living world, but she knew that Dahlia would have no hope of breaking the barrier without a medium. Even Mia, with more spiritual power, could not do such a thing.
As they drew closer, Mia recognized their destination. It was a place that she had not been to for a very long time.
It was Kurain. But it was not the Kurain of the living, but rather of their past: the way it had been the last time they had spoken as children. Dahlia brought Mia to the room they'd been in that fateful day and Mia could make out the fuzzy outlines of the children they had been, the imprint of their memories.
It was here that Dahlia pushed Mia down, hard, with a shove against the shoulder. Mia hadn't been expecting to be let go of so soon and went tumbling to the ground. Dahlia loomed over her. Whatever her cousin's intentions were, Mia would not go without a fight. She looked up at Dahlia, rather unable to move, and scoffed. “What is this, another fake kidnapping? Shouldn't you know by now that your attempts always fail?”
Dahlia did not look remotely abashed; here in the spirit world she had no need for the airs and graces that had served her so well in the land of the living. She kneeled over Mia, straddling her, but then grabbed her by the sides of the face and screamed for a very long time. When she was done, panting, she snarled, “This time it's real.”
Mia bore it all stoically.
“I could rip off your face, Mia Fey! I could gouge out your eyes!”
Mia looked to the side, ignoring the burning sensation in her cheeks. The pain was not real, but Dahlia's incredible hatred was. “But you won't, will you, because it won't change anything. You'll still be you and I'll still be me.”
Dahlia's eyes darkened and it was only then that Mia could describe the look she had seen all those years ago. It was hunger: hunger for recognition, for approval. But it was buried, hidden away deep underneath the overwhelming anger. “If I can't be you, then I'll have you. I'll consume you. I'll take your soul!”
It was hard to describe what happened next: it wasn't sex, not in the way it had been back when she'd been alive, although it certainly felt similar; she could feel Dahlia's fingers pushing inside her, probing her. But as her cousin explored her body she could also feel Dahlia exploring her mind. Unbidden, memories that were not her own came to mind; Aunt Morgan and her husband arguing in dark corners, her mother cradling Maya in her arms, and then a vision of Dahlia and a boy, who could only be Billy. He was older than she had originally imagined, about ten. The hazy shape of Dahlia's memory approached the older boy, and at first they just talked.
Dahlia told him that she wanted to escape. The tale she told was an interesting sob story, Mia thought; sophisticated, for an eight-year-old. And Billy nodded, understanding; he hated Kurain too. The plans, then, were set; they would run away together. They were hiding in an abandoned building overnight when Dahlia's father returned and saw the children practising their kissing. Dahlia was forced to make up a lie on the spot, sacrificing Billy to the wrath of her father. She felt terror, intermingled with rage. Then again, it was no secret to either of them that Dahlia hated him.
Then Dahlia spoke, as if she were inside Mia's own mind. “You're wrong, you're so wrong. I just wanted him to like me, but he wouldn't go along with my story. That's when I learnt that I always had to look out for myself. No-one ever paid any attention to me, did the things I wanted to...”
Iris. The thought came to Mia automatically, and Dahlia could sense it.
“Her? Please. She only did what she has to do because she lacks a spine and personality. No. Back then, I wanted you.” Something about the way that Dahlia manoeuvred her hold on Mia caused her consciousness to explode in clarity, a climax followed by a denouement. “You were the one that everyone adored, the one that was in line to inherit it all, and then you left. I. Just. Don't. Understand. You.”
Mia had hated Dahlia for most of her adult life for simple, straight-forward reasons: she was a murderer. She had tried to kill people that Mia had loved. Mia had never thought about the why, had never considered the motive anything deeper than some perverse sense of self-preservation. She'd always thought that if she was Dahlia, she would hate everything about herself. But she wasn't Dahlia, and she would never truly understand. Perhaps she could given time and inclination, but neither of those were qualities she possessed in great amounts: Dahlia's hold on her spirit was growing uncomfortable. Mia's consciousness was fading at the edges.
It was time to put this at rest. “And I you, Dahlia.” It was the first time she'd used her cousin's name in their entire encounter. “Now, get out of my head!” With a rush of pure energy, Mia could feel Dahlia's spirit exit her own.
When Dahlia withdrew, her fingers were inexplicably sticky. She looked down at Mia with disdain. “I always hated you.”
Mia didn't miss a beat.
“I hate you too.”
Dahlia never bothered Mia again.
–-
It was in the spirit world that Mia and her mother had their first conversation in seventeen years. Misty Fey offered no excuses, only the beginnings of an explanation. “Don't tell anyone this, but your aunt had more spiritual power than she knew, but I never allowed her to believe it...”
And Mia promised.
Because who did she have to tell?