Arc II, Chapter 51

The basement was coldest in the late afternoon hours. This fact directly defied common sense; the chill should have seeped in during those late twilight hours instead, after the sun had sunk beneath the horizon and only flickering glimpses of the moon could be caught behind the multicolored panes of glass on the upper floors. As if to mock the everyday conventions of life, though, the cold crept across the basement interior during the sunlit afternoons, the very air of it smothered in a darkness few could tread.

Hilde was not among that number. Her every exhale caused a small cloud to leave her mouth, and the chill tingled across her exposed skin - but she walked the lengthy, winding corridors of the basement unbothered. The few servants who breached the depths of the Maxwell estate tended to avoid her in passing while down here, wary of even making the faintest of whispers lest they gain unwanted attention.

Hilde paced through the corridors, around and around, for what felt like hours. This is what all her days amounted to for now: a ceaseless cycle of waiting. In her mind, the steady sound of her footsteps offered some sense of relief to the boy behind the ashen door; it let him know he was not alone down here, because she knew that was the one thing he feared.

More than the lessons, more than the ghosts - Duo feared being left alone the most.

It's during her next circuit that she came across the ashen door left open. She waited a few steps away; she knew she could not immediately run in, no matter how much she wanted to, because false hope had hurt him more than waiting just a little bit longer. Hilde thinks it's unfair of the adults to assume he can handle so much, to assume that he'd be so willing to fight for his own survival; there have been so many times where Hilde had thought the battle had left his eyes because he didn't want to fight it forever.

Forever. That was the worst outcome, that was the haunting aspect - the idea that this would never end. If he hadn't been promised an end, Hilde thought they may very well have lost him. Professor G's lessons served as that waning hope; if Duo could complete them, if he could gain control over the wretchedness he'd been born into - then he could put an end to the misery himself.

Professor G stepped out of the room, waiting under the arch of the door, gaze sweeping the hall until he found her. He didn't say anything, didn't even gesture - just turned around and went back inside, knowing she would follow him. Naturally, Hilde did; she knew her part well by now.

The room was always a little bit different when she steps inside. She knows it's a result of the overall architecture of the estate; the winding halls, the dead ends, the maze-like interior- all of it worked together to confuse both the living and the dead. Generations of servants had walked the halls of the estates, and at will, generations of servants could be called down to the dark sanctuary of the basement.

Hilde understood that many of the servants, as followers of the Harvester, could think of no better end than to pass in this estate. Their bodies were immaterial once their life no longer occupied it, to the point that it wasn't unusual for family members to convert their late loved one's skeletal remains into keepsakes that decorated the home, or tools to be used until they were reduced to dust. It was more common practice back in the Maxwell province, though, as the other territories were so sensitive about human remains.

To followers of the Harvester, the most important part was what happened to their ghosts. To forever walk the pathways of their life, forever crossing paths with those they'd loved until they reached the path towards reincarnation- it was an ideal afterlife. For the servants of the Maxwell estate, many thought idealistically of their ghosts walking through the grandiose halls, allowed to touch upon the splendor of their deity before they reached their next life.

Hilde thought about her next life very rarely. She felt as if she had so many concerns with her current one, and how those fleeting paths of ghosts were not enough to satisfy her. She needed her loved ones here with her now, until the path of life they tread together was so well-worn that her ghost could never get lost. Her parents had been lost to her before she could even remember the feel of their hands as they cradled her, and her aunt soon passed when she was only eight years old.

Even though guardianship fell to the head maid of the Maxwell estate, Hilde could not claim to feel left adrift. The maids treated her fairly and warmly; Nanny Helena coddled her with equal tenderness and grace; Duo regarded her as close as any blood kin. Her life, however short, was still rich with people who loved her.

Love.

That was what prompted her to accept Duke Maxwell's request, that is what had her descending down into the cold basement every afternoon, that is what got her walking into this room every time she was allowed. Love is what made the back of her throat taste like ash, love is what ran through her veins like fragmented glass, love is what made her eyes turn the color beloved by Death itself.

If she asked Duo, he would tell her that this is not love.

Professor G cared little for her movements after she enters the room. He's moved back over to his worktable, gathering together what he'd yielded from today's lesson. Duo was no longer present; either Helena or Master Solo would have taken him back upstairs to rest, the lessons having grown longer in answer to his growing strength - and increasingly deficient lack of control. Duke Maxwell had demanded more progress from her on this account, and Professor G answered this command by increasing the number of doses she would take daily. Her current dose waited for her, sitting atop the stone bench in the center of the room.

A single bowl filled to the cusp with funeral beads, soaked in the blood of the boy she'd volunteered to die for.

---

In a future

once

written...

"Your Highness, don't!"

The words caused Hilde's lips to twist down in the corners, hatred seeping up from the wealth inside her, thick and viscous. It felt like it had been ages since that same title left her own lips, when she'd swallowed so much of her bitter spite down in order to gain just a sliver of a chance. That contempt rose in her throat and spread out through every shaky exhale she could make now, growing exponentially as that familiar face entered her line of sight.

Princess Relena Peacecraft stared back down at her. That clean, pure image she wore to impress the fools that made up her court was nowhere to be seen in the moment, blood and ash caked onto her shredded attire, her face a scattering of cuts and small bruises. It alleviated some small bit of Hilde's ire, to know she'd put that there, but not enough to truly satisfy her.

Hilde hoped with her every last breath that her ghost rotted across the pathways she'd been forced to cross with the woman above her.

"Hilde," Relena croaked out.

The cut on her forehead wept a small trail of blood down the side of her face, one drop falling near the edge Hilde's mouth. With what little energy she could gather, Hilde turned her head to the side and spat out the taste of it. Relena's expression crumbled just a bit, and she crouched down to the ground so that she didn't need to hover directly over the other woman.

Hilde ignored her, hand resting atop the gaping wounds in her abdomen. It may not have been enough to kill her, once upon a time, but after extended use of the Deathscythe, her body could no longer handle such extreme assault. She knew she would die here, in the wilds of the Yuy territory, and it hurt to know that her ghost path would stretch so much over enemy territory.

"Is there some way to save her?" Relena asked, turning around to look at her companion in desperation.

Hilde couldn't see the expression on Lucrezia Noin's face, but the tone of her voice was more than enough. "She tried to kill you, Princess," the older woman snapped back. "Multiple times! Every time you'd been abducted or put in harm's way, it was her who-"

"That doesn't mean I want her to die!"

Considering it had been Noin to stick the sword through her gut multiple times, Hilde doubted the Princess's words would be enough to convince her. Not that Hilde could be saved, even if she had wanted to live; she knew she was going to die here. There was a sense of comfort knowing that she wouldn't have to see them anymore, but more than that, there was a desperate yearning to stay alive because she knew who she was leaving behind.

"He doesn't like to be alone," Hilde murmured, blood dribbling from the corner of her mouth.

Relena's attention turned back to her, at first confused - and then stricken. It would be remiss of her not to understand; Hilde had tried so hard and for so long to kill her, all for one person. To Hilde, Relena was the one who shouldn't exist, the one who had taken up a space and a position she'd had no right over. She may not be the person who was to blame for all this - Heero Yuy held that honor alone - but Relena was still guilty by association.

Tears fell from that horrified expression. "Hilde, you..."

"Princess!"

Relena looked up at Noin's exclamation, body frozen when her gaze identified the reason. It was pale terror in the older woman's voice, matched to the expression that flickered over the Princess's face. Hilde followed her line of sight, the energy required in turning her head once again quickly sapping more of her already-dwindling life from her. Her senses were dulled by her imminent death, and this was the only reason she had not been able to sense what had alerted Noin until the woman had cried out.

Relena's eyes were wide and terrified. "Heero..."

Heero Yuy stood more than a hundred paces away. It wasn't completely surprising to Hilde that he'd shown up here - she'd be running from him, after all. The small fragment of power that she'd used to help her wield the Deathscythe without it automatically killing her was the focus of his pursuit, and the people she'd thrown at him for distraction were as easily slaughtered as flies in a blaze.

He was alone; last Hilde had heard, Quatre Winner and Trowa Barton had passed taking each other out, and Chang Wufei had disappeared the moment Duke Yuy's grief turned to madness. That insanity was clear in every line of the Duke's face now, his skin seeming to faintly glow from his overuse of power, his once-bright eyes dulled to a murky blue. He was revolting in his ease, as likely to kill friends as he was to kill enemies; in his current state, Hilde doubted he could tell the different between them.

Looking at him now, Hilde could see nothing of the man she had once known. She couldn't even glimpse the man Duo had once called beautiful, had once denounced as so taken with his station and position that he had little care for the one he'd been forced to marry.

Instead, looking at him now - all Hilde saw was the monster that had become so obsessed that even Death feared to take him.