Stacie
Something in Francis Estep's body was keeping him alive when he should be dead and gone. Call it magic, or call it a disease. Perhaps death would have been a greater mercy than the curse he was curled into, urging his traumatized chest to keep rising and falling. 

The man had regained some color since he'd been found beneath the brambles, first having stirred at the shrieking of his mother. 

*"He's dead!"* She'd cheered when she saw him, clapping her hands with a disturbing, manic energy, *"He's dead, oh thank Jesus!"* 

Francis had then fluttered open his bruised eyelids, it seemed, purely to spite her glee. She roiled in response, and fell in a tantrum to the snow. His father was stunned to silence by the whole ordeal, but was allowed to follow the mournful procession to the hospital alongside his daughter and Marianne Wilburn. Barbara remained under the watch of a neighbor, lest she try to finish her son off for herself. The elder Esteps' time in the forest was still entirely mysterious, but perhaps of all people, Marianne might understand the madness that afflicted them, having seen and heard what she had that morning. How a mother could so comfortably celebrate the fall of her son, though, might have proved particularly elusive.

At the doctor's ward, once he was cleaned, warmed, and made comfortable, Francis' death mask was only slightly brightened. He was made to drink some warm broth and only barely regained his voice. He spent his first words asking after his mama, and why she wanted him dead. Dotty assured him she'd just been in shock, that's all. She smoothed his hair back from the side of her brother's bed from where she bookended it against Marianne across from her.
_ _

There were tears on Dorothy's cheeks. She'd kept her eyes dry through Frans' triage, through wringing her hands outside the curtain that had been pulled around the bed, but she'd cried when the doctor told her that her brother was going to die. Of course she'd cried, and only more intensely as Francis' injuries were described; what pain he must have suffered, his blood freezing him to the ground until he was found. 

How many times had she wished him dead in their youth? How many times had she fantasized about pushing him into the Powell? He'd been awful. He'd stolen so much of her childhood from her, replacing wreckless joy with constant overthought. He had manipulated her and twisted her and planted ugly, knotty bulbs of self doubt in her heart, tending them carefully as she grew. He was the reason for so much hate and suspicion in her, and yet, she cried here at his sentencing. The blood they shared meant more to her than history in that moment and as with any situation where Francis was involved, she would question it later. She would roll it around and around and around in her head. She may even feel shame for her sobs, disappointed she hadn't summoned a righteous rage to spit on his chest and storm off to dig him a shallow grave. But now, she felt sad that her brother was dying. Now, she honored what she felt, as she looked her sadness in its eyes. 

The doctor had given him some medicine from a dropper for the pain, and it changed the expression on Francis' twisted face. Unburdened, the freckled man's brow smoothed. He swallowed, and coughed with effort. He whispered again for ma and pa. He whispered the names of each of his siblings. He whispered for Dotty, and she went to him. 
_ _

"Stay outta the woods, Dot, okay? Ain't nothin' for you there." He struggled, and she soothed him quiet again. He seemed to be acting out a dream, his eyes half closed, and his cracked lips barely moving. Overcome with another wave of emotion, Dorothy relinquished her seat to her father, who moved stiffly to claim it but then only hovered there, standing shakily over his son. 

"You're free now, Francis," Marvin told him, offering a string of coherent words- a rarity since his own time in the forest. Free from what, he didn't say, but Francis knew, and he recognized understanding in his father's voice. Frans smiled. 

Of course, he was free from the moon; he was a tide unbound, allowed to flow and ebb as he pleased, though it was undoubtedly his time to ebb. His parents had both recognized his curse with new eyes they'd earned in the woods, though they received the truth with wild differences. They had seen him for what he was, perhaps for the first time in his life: a werewolf. A beastly man. A liar. While Marvin pitied his curse, his mother loathed him as a monster. Dorothy had learned her place in the center, abstaining from questioning his disappearance each full moon and choosing instead to clean up the damage he had wrought in their household, as had always been her role. 

Francis had chosen not to see any of it, opting instead for his typical station of survival at whatever cost. 

Dorothy reached for her father's hand while turning her face away from the bed. As she led Marvin away, her eye caught on Marianne. They hadn't exchanged much more than sodden glances and clasped hands since leaving the orchard for the doctor's, but now, Dotty knelt beside Mari's seat. Reaching up behind the nape of her own neck, Dotty untied a length of string she'd been wearing beneath her sweater. 

A red cotton string was looped through a trio of gold rings. Dotty tied it around Marianne's neck, and the rings settled low on her chest. 
_ _

"Francis's. He loved 'em. Always had 'em on, but not for a while now. They're yours." Dorothy had to keep her words clipped, for it was all the sound her strangled vocal chords would allow. She supposed she was crying for Marianne as much as she was crying for herself. She saw the love in that girl, and saw the true warmth in her brother's eyes when he'd spoken of her. As she left Mari and Francis alone, she couldn't help but mourn the dances they would never share. While she knew Francis didn't deserve her, she mourned the sweet dreams of romance that bloomed like a tangle of roses from the corners of Mari's mouth. She only wished her brother could have been the man that Mari thought he was, but now, through some twisted grace, she supposed he would be just that, after all. 

With Marvin and Dotty gone, and the doctor and his staff hovering on the outskirts of Francis' deathbed, Marianne was alone with him and the gift Dotty had left her. If she picked the rings up and looked real close, she would see where the gold around the insides of each band was worn down to the wrong color. She would see how they weren't really gold at all, but pure silver with a thin shell of yellow. 
_ _
William
Had she been told that tears would save him, Marianne Wilburn would have wept enough to burst the banks of the Powell all alone. 
But Francis would not be salvaged by her cries. She knew, now, that there was no Lord looking down upon Briar Ridge. No prayer she sent to heaven above would be heard. But then, she had learned that a long time ago, in her heart.
What tears she had shed had been silent ones. Absent was the wailing of a Wilburn woman broken. When Dotty and Marvin made their gentle exit, as the curtain around the bed was drawn shut, the only sound out of place was the laboured breathing of a man who would not see morning light. 
His hand lay motionless against the white bedsheet, but it would not be cold, for it remained wrapped in Marianne's two smaller ones. Any scratches she might have sustained from those wicked briars that had entangled his body were forgotten, though they'd sting when she came to wash them, if she could bring herself to wash from her skin the last chance she'd ever have to hold his hand. 

She was quiet, for a long moment, gathering what thoughts she could. She'd refused to allow herself to think it over, clinging to the hope that somehow, he might survive this, until she heard the doctor's grim, resolved words bearing the news that Francis was dying.

It seemed so hard to believe, looking upon his sweet face, What medicine the doctor had given him appeared to have worked a miracle in easing his pain, a fact which she could be nothing but grateful for. How sick it would have been for him to spend his last moments with his lips twisted in agony, crying out for a mama who did not come, for an end that could not come quick enough.
He could rest, like this. With a blanket drawn over his chest, concealing bandages beneath which were wounds that would never get to heal, he looked for all the world as though he were simply walking the line between wakefulness and sleep - tired from a long day out in the orchard among the apple trees, but safely home to her before dark, where she could make him his tea spiked with that sweet-sharp brandy he'd taught her to love, and together by the fireside they could build a life.

*Could have* Built a life.

There was, of course, no future to be shared now. Whether she had minutes or hours with him was at this point uncertain, but weeks, months, years were out of the question. A deadly combination of his wounds, the spilled blood, the stealing snow... All of those had set in stone that the life she had fantasised with her head upon her pillow would not come to be. 

So she would take this moment, long or short as it may be, and make it one to last in her heart until the day it ceased to beat and she would join him in what, if anything, lay beyond this life. 

She rose from her chair only enough to press her lips to his forehead, a lingering kiss holding sentiments she could not yet say aloud.

"I'm still here," She told him, softly, for through his half-lidded eyes she wasn't sure he could see her, and even if he were to open them, could he make her out through the great, long dark that lay ahead? "And I'm sure not going nowhere."
A shaky sigh crawled its way out of her throat. 
"I'm sorry, love." 
If they had been quicker to find him, could he have been saved? Warmed and sewn together and loved enough to live?


Had she been told that *Love* Would save him, why Francis Estep would have lived forever. 

||
Stacie
Francis Estep had never had much interest in fairytales, but now, his mind felt suspended in one. His imagination was wide awake, drawn out from slumber by Marianne's delicate kiss.

He was light and getting lighter, airy on wings of oak and cobwebs above himself. He could see Marianne kiss him, and could map the tangle of their fingers on the bed. How long had she been here, holding him? There was a sense of her that surrounded him– clinging to him from the forest. Had she been here all along? Had she been nested beside him under the brambles? Surely she had been. Surely she would have been, if she could, and that meant just as much. 

"Marianne," He croaked, turning to her. The opium gave him a false sense of strength, and even though his skin may have been tearing further with the effort, he dragged their clasped hands onto his chest. Delirious, he shifted his attention to their skin there, side by side. His eyebrows knit together from the result of his study, and he found her eyes again. 

"You're hurt," He complained, remarking on the scratches she'd earned from her fight with the woods. His eyes were the widest they'd been since she'd found him, though they were only slightly more open than half lidded. 
"Got into trouble without me." 

_ _

For Marianne, Francis would suspend himself in the performance he'd put on for her at the speakeasy, all those weeks ago. When he saw her, his mind defaulted to that station: charming and soft. With time, that mask would have hidden any nature of sins. Lies, adultery, jealousy. He could have lit their house on fire and claimed he'd only done it to keep her warm. Their love would have been poisonous and addictive, just the same as the bitter laudanum that lingered beneath Francis' tongue. His death saved her from so much pain, but her heart would transmute it all, anyway, bringing it to her in the form of grief. Maybe Francis would have been sorry for taking her dancing if he were a better man. The drowse of drugs robbed him of the opportunity for remorse, though it was doubtful that his ego would have permitted it in any case. 
_ _
William
Despite it all, hearing her name on his lips still was just enough to make her smile. She watched as his eyelashes fluttered, fighting against what threatened to drag him down below, all for the sake of spending a moment beneath her touch, and who would she be to deny him? Though on the tip of her tongue lingered a protest that he'd only cause himself more damage by moving, she let him take her hand to his chest, and fancied that beneath the thick layers of dressings that she could feel his heartbeat, thready as it may be as Francis Estep clung hopelessly to life. 

"I'd argue," She began, in a whisper, still leaning forward so that he might see her face in his peripheral vision, if he could coax heavy eyes into laying upon it long enough, "That it's *You* Who got into trouble without *Me*." Her words were punctuated by a sigh, and how she wished she could lean into him all the way, rest her head upon his broad chest and have his voice wash over her, as though he were the vast ocean, and she but a grain of sand upon the beach where his waves crashed. She would have allowed him to sweep her up in the ebb and flow and carry her forever with him, had he wanted to. 

She had been prepared to follow him wherever he might go, only for fate to drag him down the one path on which she could not walk behind. Like all those who went before him, Francis was to travel on alone.

Her gaze joined his on their entwined hands for a moment, but she would not let it linger, for fear of missing something in his expression that she might want to hold with her forevermore. "The only trouble I ever find myself in is by your side, Fran. I thought you'd know that by now." Ever since she was a child muddying her skirts chasing him through the orchard, that had been the way things were. He had always brought out a side of her that didn't exist when they were apart - a side which threatened to wilt and fade entirely when he was gone. "I wouldn't have had it any other way."

She thought of the briars first tearing at her skin, and then, as though tasting their fill of her blood, drawing away and giving up his frozen body to her touch. Had the forest taken pity upon her? Had the icy ground felt guilt for all that it had stolen and was still yet to snatch away, and was that what had led to its withdrawal? It had allowed her a last moment of hope that he might be saved. A piece of her heart still sang out a desperate plea to the heavens that the good doctor might have been wrong, that Francis would defy all odds and have the strength to pull through to dawn's first light and beyond. That he would live to draw her into his arms again and this time, she would not let go when they ended their dance. 

"They don't hurt so bad anyway. I've had worse. I'll have worse again." 

||
Stacie
Marianne's voice became an ocean around Francis. Her words knit into phrases, knit into songs. They echoed and huddled around him, and before long, there was a placid smile on his face, eyes closed. The content of what she was saying was all but eroded away while the sounds remained as pillars. He leaned against them, nearly falling asleep in his comfort. 

But no— it was rude to sleep when visitors were here. Francis slowly turned his head to Mari, and searched her face with drowsy eyes. A cut on his neck split from the pull of misaligned skin, and the blood quietly colored the white of his pillowcase. He didn't notice. 

"You're hurt?" He asked, confused now. He was trying to piece back together what she'd said while he was drifting off, but since he only had the outline, the details were evasive. Quickly, his thoughts jumped, flashes of memory from the last few hours pricking his mind like thorns. 

"Was my mama here?" He asked, his voice small like a child's, "I thought I... I wanted to tell her..." His eyes fluttered closed again. *No,* He fought, *Why was he so tired?* 

"I'm sorry Marianne." Francis pronounced carefully, like a drunk trying to project sobriety through slurred speech, "I don't know why I feel this way," He apologized, trying feebly to squeeze her hand still wrapped in his. His words were agonizingly slow, compared to his coherent speech patterns. He wouldn't have wanted Marianne to remember him this way: duller than a rusted pruning shear. 

"Can we still go dancin' tomorrow?" He was simply amplifying his dreamlike thoughts, trusting in his mind despite the pattern of watery subconscious logic to which it had defaulted. As soon as he'd asked the question, he was certain of these fantasy plans they'd made for another applejack-flavored date at the speakeasy. 
_ _
William
His smile, though fleeting, calmed her, as it always had. For only a moment, she was rewarded for all she had weathered with a little of the Francis she knew, the man she so loved, though it was truly only a shadow of what warmth he had once looked upon her with. She would take what she could get now, for as long as she could take it, as her thumb brushed across his knuckles and she squeezed his hands tight. 

He had forgotten, already, that he'd seen and questioned the cuts on her palms. No matter, for there was no use in troubling him further with that which would not linger, would heal given time. Time that Marianne had. Time that Francis was not blessed with. She would waste no more of what little she had left with him, and so instead of answering his question, she kissed him again where confusion knit his brow into a frown. 

"Your mama stayed home, love," She whispered. "The full-moon night tired her so, Dotty thought it best she remain there." A half-lie, for Barbara's absence had not been for her own good, but for Francis's, unpredictable as her reaction to his return had been, but where was the need to tell him that his mother, the woman who had borne him from her own flesh and blood, had crowed like a harpy upon recognition of his demise?
The Estep matriarch had not been a wicked woman, in Marianne's memories. She had been a haze of Pears'-soap green and powder-puff pink, of apple juice and sweets hot from the oven, and she had been loving. The woods had changed her.
The woods, in the end, had changed all of them. Some beyond repair. 

"You needn't be sorry for a thing," She continued on, wanting nothing more than another of his smiles, another taste of honeyed words and of the charm she had fallen for. It was selfish, she thought, to want more of him, when he'd so little left to give to her - to anyone.

But she could not help but hope for the impossible, for Marianne Wilburn had always, at her core, been nothing more than a helpless little girl, wishing on stars just as diligently as she prayed. 
She prayed no more. And there were no stars brighter than the sparkle that had once been in Francis's eyes. 

To dance with Francis again would be a dream she would not come to achieve, not for all her wishing, not for the fire of a thousand suns that burned in her chest with longing for it.
For as long as she would live, Marianne would wish that she had had one more night to spin and sing and laugh in his arms. 
For as long as *He* Would live, she would let him live in his laudanum-tainted fantasy, in a place where he felt no pain. 

"Of course, darling... Tonight, when you sleep, all you're to do is close your eyes and when you open them again, we'll be able to dance and dance 'til our feet can't hold us no more... It'd be an honour to dance all my nights away with you, if you'll have me."

She would never take another dance partner again. 

||
Stacie
It made sense his mama would have been tired by the full moon. Francis was tired, too. He yawned, but his bruised jaw kept the motion soft, and the medicine kept the pain from registering. *I'll see mama after I sleep,* His warm happy mind reasoned. Maybe she would bring biscuits and apple butter, just how he liked them: brushed on the top with buttermilk to brown, and sprinkled with just a touch of salt. Francis wondered why he wasn't hungry, or thirsty, or anything at all really. The only thing close to any sensation or emotion he could register was exhaustion. And why was exhaustion in such pursuit when the sun was so high in the sky?

 The longer he tried to locate the center of himself, that place where all his feelings grew and tessellated, the more he felt like the seed head of a dandelion: a small, pale bud shrouded in downy, loose-tethered petals. Just one gust, and he could—

*Of course darling...*

Francis had forgotten he'd even spoken, but oh, wasn't someone here, speaking to him? Answering his question? And it was someone familiar. 

He felt warm, post-rain summer mud on the soles of his feet, and laughter at the back of his throat. He tasted the still-warm icing of hickory cakes. He saw an open novel, half buried in blankets as he brushed snow off of his hat. 
_ _

When had they gotten to Marianne's cottage? He needed to give her the cakes Dotty made while they were still cooling! Or wait– didn't he make them himself? And he needed to take off his hat! It was rude not to. But wasn't there some reason he should keep it on? 

"Marianne, I– I'm sorry. I think I need to lie down a while." He opened his eyes again, just a crack. When he saw her sitting there, though, the sunlight at her back casting her as an angel in shadow, he blinked misty-eyed into her brilliance, inspired away from sleep for just a moment longer. 

"Oh," He breathed, a tear carving down his cheek. Delirious in awe, he reached out to touch her, to find that he already held her hand. At this, another tear traced the path that had been laid by the first. And another, and another. His lips, in a blissful smile, began to tremble with the effort of the expression, wet with salt water. 

He was so tired. 

"You're so beautiful." He told her, and his eyes closed. His thumb smoothed up, then down the back of her hand. 
"An angel in the sun," He said, and the corners of his mouth twitched and dropped. As his weakened, fever-hot heart rounded into a final beat, the motion of one last sliding tear rendered the exit of his soul. 

His hand would encircle Marianne's for as long as she would hold it. 
_ _
William
She did not tell him not to cry, for she was sure he didn't even know he was doing it. The tears on his cheeks came not from pain nor distress. She could only brush them away, the hand that wasn't wrapped tight in his brushing over his cheeks, tracing out the constellations in the freckles dusted there, each one a little star in its own right - fitting, though even if each star shone as bright as the sun at her back, they would never quite compare to the light that Francis had brought back into her life. 

*Beautiful*, he said, and shatter did her fragile heart, as his lips formed the shape of *Angel* And she knew, deep in her chest, that soon he would see an angel true. She could only hope that one would come, perhaps was already here, a moment away beyond the curtain to take his hand when it slipped from hers and ensure that he would be safe, wherever he were to be taken next. 

"I love you," Marianne whispered. She only hoped she was not too late for him to hear it. 

A woman who did not believe found no peace in prayer. Someone else would read the last rites, would call upon the heavens to ensure an ascendance to paradise for Francis Estep. All that Marianne could find in herself to do was fall silent, and brush from his cheek the last of those bitter tears, and stay.

She remained where she was until the daylight shifted to a sunset that set the sky aflame, and only then did anyone come. A nurse - a name she could not recall - appeared seemingly from nowhere, placed a hand upon her shoulder, told her *It's time to go, Ms Wilburn*, told her *He's gone, sweetheart*, and Marianne wanted to snap and scream and cry, for she knew he was gone, how could she not, she had watched the final fall of his chest, heard the quiver of a last breath dissipate into still, bleach-scented air?

But wail she did not, in fact, she made no sound as she rose from the chair. 

Around her neck hung the chain that bore Francis's rings, placed upon her by Dotty upon her departure, and as Marianne made a quiet exit of her own, she paused in the doorway to look at them. He had worn them devotedly from the moment he'd purchased them, and made no secret (at least to Marianne) of his pride in his ownership of the jewellery, though it was only now that she considered the absence of them as of late. They had been missing the day he had taken her to the barn to dance... How many times before had he left them behind without her taking notice?
Perhaps he had damaged them somehow, working in the orchard. She studied them for a moment, turning each ring in her hands, looking for signs of misshape or tarnish. If she were quick, she could have them sent to a jeweller in the city, restored to their former glory to be buried with him when he went to rest.

The sun caught the inside of the largest ring, and something about the way it gleamed made Marianne bring it in for closer inspection.
The silver shone bright as day in small patches where the plating of gold had worn away with hour upon hour of daily wear.
And Marianne Wilburn understood *Everything*.

The walk home could have taken hours for all she cared. She walked the well-worn route in a daze, unaware of both her surroundings and her steps. The brook to the south of the garden splashed her all the way up to mid-calf, and she was still dripping as she crossed the threshold. 

A silver cross hung beside the front door, aged but well-polished to avoid the dirt catching in the ornate carvings. 
She took it from its nail, looked upon it for only a brief moment, and turned on her heel to hurl it as hard as she could into the bushes that lined the property. 

To Hell with it. To Hell with it all.