A/N: I blame this entire premise and story on Tom Hardy, Anastasia-G, sibling incest, trash, my mother and basically everyone who indulges my strange appetites. But enjoy!

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Oh! then a longing like despair

Is to their farthest caverns sent;

For surely once, they feel, we were

Parts of a single continent!

(Matthew Arnold - To Marguerite: Continued)

1: poppies

Here, in this forsaken land, there was an abundance of wet grass which thirsted for sunlight it never received.

In this neck of the woods, every shadow poured forth like a river and engulfed the air, so that as you walked, your body seemed to float.

He remembered the sound of logs being felled, the happy whistles that carried over the chalk-white cliffs, the smell of joyful fires and the shine of fish scales. He remembered the raucous sea, splashing against the rocks, and how he had to shout to be heard when he walked on the shore. His old home had been blues and yellows and softly violet-tinged dreams.

The Falls were, as their name, a descent. Into browns and murky reds and faded greens.

His eyes followed the ground now. Not the sky. Not anymore.

Bonnie was ushered into the room to see her dying grandmother. Sheila Bennett, the matriarch who had survived all of her husbands and uncles and brothers, was going to her final resting place.

Her daughter, Abby, was sitting stiffly at her bedside, already dressed in black chiffon, holding a spoon in her hand. She was trying to convince her mother to take her medicine, bartering with her like you would with a butcher at the market,

"If you swallow this one spoonful, the doctor says you needn't take one for another hour. Just one spoonful, Mama. That's all I need."

"You are already dressed to bury me," Sheila spoke hoarsely, expelling air like a ghost through her white lips. "I'd rather get buried than take that poison."

"It's not poison," Abby replied, clenching one fist against her lap. Bonnie watched her mother's hands. Usually, they told a fuller story than her face. Abigail had always been apt at carrying a mask.

"It tastes like it," Sheila murmured with a weary smile. "Is that the little bumpkin, come to see me off?"

Bonnie directed her gaze at the tufted rug whose imprints had faded with time and now looked like careless smears of thread. Everyone said she had a sociable nature for a child, but her grandmother always made her a little shy. Not because Sheila Bennett was cold or forbidding, but because she was so very knowledgeable about life and, like many old people, seemed to know your whole future before she even spoke to you. Bonnie sometimes saw her future in those warm dark eyes, and she looked away.

Abby raised her head impatiently. "Come kiss your grandmother, Bonnie."

The little girl stepped forward, knowing very well that any hesitation on her part would be scolded severely. She was interrupted, however, by the door parting softly and the maid scurrying inside with a hot tray. Sheila's last supper.

In the commotion and the clinging of cutlery and glasses, Bonnie was stranded somewhere in the middle of the room. Her eyes surveyed the toffee-colored wallpaper and marveled at the heavy rosewood furniture which seemed to turn a darker shade of red each year. She was lost, as children sometimes are, in this visual feast and when her eyes returned to the scene at hand, her mother and grandmother were arguing.

"You know there's nothing worse than disobeying a dying mother's wish," Sheila was saying, clenching the sheets between her fists.

"Please, no more of this foolishness, Mother. No more talk of disobedience, when everything I am doing is for this family –"

"You are marrying him for yourself, child! And yourself alone!" Sheila suddenly cried out, her voice rising higher than Bonnie had ever heard it go. She was frozen between breaths.

"I don't want to hear this. You will make yourself sick," Abby pleaded, shaking her head like a doll whose strings had broken.

"He will bring downfall on us all! No good can come from wedding a man with such a troubled past, such a troubled family! You should be raising your own daughter, not mothering his sons!"

It was at that moment that Abby remembered Bonnie was still in the room. Watching them.

The spoon was shaking in her hand, her mask slightly askew. But she gathered herself enough to tell her daughter to go play outside.

"But –"

"This conversation does not concern you. I shall send Astrid to come fetch you later."

There was no point arguing further, not when her mother was in such a formidable mood.

The Bennett women… a fermented wine…

She remembered hearing these fragments from another conversation she shouldn't have heard. She couldn't remember the speaker, or his face, but it had been a man.

She ran out of the room, away from the women.

She never got to say goodbye to her grandmother. She died that afternoon.

The ceremony was a quiet affair. Most of the town found out about it in the following weeks, the evidence being presented in several dispatches to the Bennett house. Luggage and horses and the habit of men. Servants and masters. All clearly sons of Adam.

The Falls had always looked upon Bennett Hall (as it was called) as a place of women, a gyneceum of history and shadows. They had hardly seen a man step foot in that quiet haven, not since Abby had returned with a full belly on her mother's doorstep nine years before. No one ever managed to extract the precious information of who had wooed and jilted her. For all intents and purposes, an angel had descended upon her shoulders and little Bonnie Bennet's only father was the Lord.

Although, the townsfolk doubted that even He had supremacy in that household.

And now, so many strange men in one fell swoop.

Abigail Bennett had found a suitor. The stain she had carried with her for so many years was going to be starched and ironed out. But how foolish to have married a foreigner of all things - a being of equivocal origins - when there were so many honest and well-reputed men in town who would have forgiven her indelicacy.

They only knew him as Mikael, his last name being a mystery. In scandalous fashion, it was rumored he had taken her last name. The townsfolk assumed that he either came from destitution and had no value attached to his ilk, or that he was perhaps an infamous European baron who was hiding in the "colonies" for reasons of safety. Both interpretations sparked outrage among them. Here, in their very bosom, they were cradling a possible snake. It was well and good to let women be women in their own house, but to allow them to attract emissaries of a different faith and country…

Some said he was, by all accounts, American but he had lived on the Pacific Coast all his life, and had traded with so many Eastern foreigners that they had rubbed off on him and he on them, no doubt. You couldn't really trust someone from the opposite plane of the country.

Some young girls whispered at street corners that he was devilishly handsome, that there was a finesse about him which was both alluring and a little terrifying. Mothers would scold their daughters for such idle prattle, but they were also curious about this new man's look and gait.

When he first came into the town square to speak to a few merchants about procuring some new ploughs, he did not strut or walk with purpose. He did not wear a colorful suit with feathers. He did not tip his hat mischievously. He was a sober, solid block of man. And yet, he seemed to slide through the people, as if he wasn't really there, as if the world recast itself around his movements. He neither gave one impression of the Pacific, nor of French court.

Curious. Unsettling. Unpleasant.

They never saw Abby and Mikael walking or driving together through town, like any new married couple would, as a show of respect to the Falls. No, they had cooped themselves up in the gyneceum, the Bennett Hall, where no doubt, they were indulging in vigorous sin. Yes, they were married, but if he was a secret European baron, no doubt he was teaching her some very unsavory methods of love.

And to think, he had also brought sons with him.

Elijah, the older boy, studious, polite, obliging. He waited for the women to pass him by in the street. He brushed the dust out of his clothes with utmost care. He always asked if he could help. He won the town immediately by voicing his ambition clearly; he was not here to stay for long, nor was he here to disturb. He was preparing, quite arduously, to take up the cassock, to become a man of the Faith. He walked into church like a prisoner stepping out of his fetters. It was here where they saw him smile beatifically at the ceiling. It was here where he seemed to breathe in the rarefied air. He came alive in prayer.

Elsewhere, he was like a somnambulist, walking through life blindly. Whenever he followed his father on duties through town, he looked serious and unhappy. One might say he looked dead. He seemed to disapprove of Mikael, but not in any passionate way. It was more the disgust of youth directed at its feeble predecessors, the elders they did not understand, nor cared to.

But the elders understood Elijah. His name was Biblical enough to guide his destiny. He was only a threat to himself.

The other son, however.

Well, he was a character. A bad one. A very bad one indeed.

She had only lived nine years of this small, uneventful life. She was a child, and she was called a child by many, and she acknowledged in her heart that she was younger than her mind, because her mind kept thinking about her missing father, the father she did not have and would never have. Her mother had told her, in no uncertain terms, that he had died, perished, gone to his grave sooner than expected. Which is how Bonnie knew, instinctively, that he was alive somewhere.

She didn't know how she could tell when older people lied. Her grandmother had once tried to tell her a fib, and Bonnie had answered back, more bravely than intended,

"I don't believe you!"

Sheila had laughed heartily. "This one's got a bit of people magic in her."

People magic.

For days she thought of nothing else but this grainy epithet. People magic. The magic of people, the people of magic. It rumbled in her head like thunder.

Eventually, she gathered up her courage and went to speak to Martha, the oldest servant in the house, whose eyes were white with cataracts.

Martha exposed her broken teeth and whispered softly in her ear,

"The Old Mistress, Emily Bennett. Your mother's great-grandmother. They used to say she could look inside people and see their illness. Predicted more than one death in her day. Every Bennett has a gift, it's told. Mistress Sheila can tell you your future if you look her in the eye. Mistress Abigail…well, don't go telling on me, but she can make any man desire her. Love her? 'Haps not, but they sure want her. And you, well, suppose you can see through deceit. So tell me, how many lies have I told ye?"

Bonnie stared at Martha's doughy, lined face.

"None."

The old woman laughed, harder than Sheila. "You'll be trouble for the missus."

Perhaps she did have a gift, perhaps she could tell. Because when she first saw her stepfather come forward to shake her hand, she knew he was lying.

He told her, "how good it is to meet you, sweet girl. I have some brothers I'd like you to meet."

And somehow, though these words were not supposed to hold either truth or falsehood, they had rung like deception.

She walked down the porch steps with her mother to meet the boys.

Ee-ly-jah.

His name was mythical, important. He smiled politely, like a town clerk, and shook her hand. He was infinitely older than her pitiful nine years. He carried books with him in his small bag. She could see their hard outline through the canvas sack. He was wearing a new suit, and his collar bit into his skin, but he didn't seem to mind. He was looking at the house beyond her, attaching her to this house, to his new life.

"Niklaus. Come here."

The words were spat more than spoken, like pebbles thrown at a wall. Bonnie looked up.

Mikael dragged a young boy by the elbow and pushed him forward, flung him, to be precise, into her line of vision.

This one wasn't older. This one might have lived as much as she had. His face was covered in dust and dirt, but not the warm grind of people working the field or hammering horseshoes. This dirt was a fine sheen of some foreign element, as if his face was coated in the red shadow that her grandmother's rosewood furniture bled with the passage of time.

In a cold flicker, she realized she had seen him before.

That morning, she had run down to the field of poppies again. They were in bloom. She loved to lie prostrate against the coarse ground and let them tickle her toes. There was not a better feeling in the world than falling in a sleepy, opium daze among their fat, red petals.

So much of her life seemed to be governed by red.

This was not a secret place, it was only a few acres away from the house, but it felt like a different world to her. A world which did not have the taint of death. She felt sorry she hadn't said goodbye to her grandmother. She felt sorry she hadn't cried at the funeral. How could she cry when Abby was squeezing her hand like fire? But she wouldn't waste these minutes on regrets. She was here to sleep, but not really sleep, to dream, but only half so. Astrid had told her she was allowed only ten minutes of napping, after which she'd come and pick her up and take her back to the house. She was supposed to have a bath. To look prim and proper for her new father.

The shadows fell, as clockwork, over the poppies and Bonnie raised her head.

She had heard a swish, a sound of tearing. The kind of sound you ran away from him.

Astrid was smoking secretly behind a tall oak. She wasn't watching her.

Bonnie took uncertain steps, through the petals, towards the cutting noise.

She climbed up a raised mound of thistles and she watched from that vantage point as a small dark figure weaved through the field of poppies, cutting them down, one by one. He held a knife in his hand, with which he chopped and ripped the flowers, slowly, methodically. Stem by stem. She couldn't describe it plainly. There was a patience in his muscles. He wanted to graze the earth. His blade shone like teeth in the morning's cool light.

His head shot up all of a sudden. He stared behind him suspiciously.

Bonnie ducked down, her forehead almost kissing the earth. Her breath was like a bird trapped in her throat. Had he heard her? Had he sensed her? She put a hand over her mouth, to stop the sounds from coming out.

She lay there for hours, it seemed, until Astrid called for her.

"Miss Bennett! Bonnie!"

No, no, don't call my name, she cried out in her head. He'll hear it. And know it.

And here he was again. The same boy.

A deep-set scowl crowned his heavy features. He looked like he was carved from clay, and though Astrid had told her that "all of us were once clay, in the hand of God", it seemed to her God had fashioned him a little different.

He did not shake her hand. He did not nod or smile. He stood in front of her like cattle presented at the fair. His hands at his side, his fingers open. He was displayed to her in his ugly glory.

His eyes were filled with disdain. Not just for her, but for this whole world that she inhabited. He stared at her little green dress, the most handsome thing she owned, with its ribbons and lace and frills, and she could see, in his muscles and the way they twitched, the same dark patience. If he could, he would take a knife and sever her, like he'd cut down the poppies.

Bonnie folded her hands against the dress. She suddenly felt she should have worn anything else.

Mikael was waiting behind him expectantly, his eyes scouring him with barely concealed contempt.

She was afraid, suddenly, that if neither of them did anything, her new father would step between them like a flash of lightning and carry away his son in the same violent fashion. Perhaps to punish him.

Bonnie squeezed her little fists in fear and stepped forward.

She had always been good at anticipating needs. The grown-ups around her were easy to read, because they all craved something indeterminate, impossible to fulfill. They were in constant want.

She raised her hand up, her eyes beckoning to her new brother to take hold.

But he fixed her with the same cool hatred that seemed to flatten Bennett Hall itself. There was even the hint of a cruel smile in that loathing.

Bonnie clenched her teeth. She would tell him later. Tell him that he was a brute and that she had done him a favor.

She closed the gap between them and threw her hands quickly, clumsily around his neck. A forceful embrace.

She dipped her chin on his shoulder for a few moments, smelling sweat and iron and something that reminded her of Old Man Saltzman from town, who gave her salted pork rinds to eat as she walked down the promenade. Her fists gripped his thin shirt for dear life, feeling the bones and muscles underneath like unforgiving peaks and valleys.

And then she let go, releasing the gap, letting it grow again between them.

She could feel her mother's gaze on her back. It was likely she did not approve of this sudden display of emotion, warranted by absolutely nothing. But Mikael nodded, satisfied, and turned his eyes away from his son.

Bonnie released a caged breath.

The boy raised his hand to the back of his neck, where she had briefly touched him with her skin. His expression was unreadable. It was not friendly, or in any way grateful. Quite the opposite. His scorn had not been tempered. But it seemed as if he had put his knife away, for now.

"Come, let us go inside," Abby urged behind her.

The new family walked reluctantly towards the house.

Bonnie wished her grandmother were still alive. Not because Sheila Bennett could somehow drive away these strangers, but because she could tell her the future. She wanted to look into her eyes and see what lay ahead. For now, there were only shadows.