Trigger Warnings: dehumanisation, torture, character deaths, casual attitudes to death, blood, grimmification, brainwashing, body modification. Guys, we got Salem and Dark!Grimm!Oscar, dark shit is going to happen. If I've left any triggers out, please let me know in the comments.

Author warning: Yo, guys, we got canon divergence as well coming up. The origin stories of Blake, Adam and Oscar will be changed in this story. A few plot points will be changed as well. There is another figure integral to Oscar's origin story in Salem's domain but they'll be showing up in a later chapter for dramatic effect.

"Protect your family," says the Father to the Son, "for the ties of flesh and bone are the strongest among the stars."

Pain.

That is what he knows first. Pure, unadultered pain. The type of pain that fills the marrow of his bones with thorns, merges his blood with poison, pulls his skull apart, twists him in unimaginable angles and stabs at his brain like vultures picking a corpse apart.

Darkness becomes his home. A black space full of nothing. He drifts in shadows, not quite awake but not quite asleep either.

And then—

He breaks the surface of the water with a roar. He thrashes wildly, flailing in the black pool, until his hands find purchase with something rough. He clambers up, the sharp formation of rocks digging into his skin and drawing black. The air does nothing to help, so thick with humidity it's filling his lungs with fire. He presses his forehead against the rough ground, breathing harshly and clenching his fists. Claws press into the meat of his palm.

He's … angry? Yes, he's angry. He woke up in a pool of who knows what, wet, and has no bearing on the situation.

"Oscar?"

He forces his head up to the voice. A pale woman with long flowing hair, white as the moon, and robes as black as the void he knows as home, looks down at him with blood red eyes. There's a flicker of something in her eyes, he can't make it out.

"Who are you?" His voice comes out as a sonorous growl, shuddering through the air.

The woman's lips pinch together. "Do you really not know who I am?"

He flicks his eyes over to the side, to the pool, its content more tar than liquid, where he must have crawled out of. He levels a glare at the woman.

"The woman who must have given me that oh-so-lovely wake-up call?"

Hands upon hands, barbed with venom and with arms wisping with shadows, lift him like a ragdoll off the ground. They coil around his and slither into his mouth, filling his insides with burning poison.

"I am Salem," the woman announces, pressing a glare into him along with everything else. "It appears I shall have to teach you respect since you appear to have forgotten it, Oscar."

She is Salem. She is pain and hate and everything that lurks in the dark. She lives in a black castle where the sky is red, the ground is barren, a shattered moon lies in the sky and monsters drag themselves out of pools of black. Manners are foremost and she will be spoken to with respect.

That is one lesson Oscar has trouble learning, tongue spitting out venom until Salem rips it out along with his legs and leaves him bleeding black on the cold floor.

"I must say," a girl in red and yellow with hair covering one eye muses, steps clacking imperiously on the stone, "that was highly entertaining."

Another girl, this time dark-skinned and mint-haired, trails behind her. A mouse, Oscar thinks, compared to the lion she cowered behind. "Cinder … We should leave."

"I wonder how long it will take for Salem to break you," Cinder continues with all-too-smug smirk on her face. Something inside Oscar ripples with displeasure.

Oscar comes to know one thing then with absolute certainty. Oscar doesn't break. He does the breaking.

Tails manifest from the darkness he calls home, lunging hungrily at Cinder. He relishes the scream she makes when they pierce through her chest and feeds upon the pure agony that consumes her.

It is the mint-haired mouse who ruins the fun. When her bullets were meaningless and blood bled out of her eyes and nose from the futility of using her semblance on him, she ran to Mother Darkness and begged for her help. It is Salem's version of 'respect' that has him backing away from Cinder, tails reluctantly pulling from her body, as Salem appears in the corridor, utterly furious.

Oscar's legs haven't grown back yet so it's not like he can run and his control with his tails isn't as fine as he would like. His neck snaps when Salem drives a foot into the side of his face.

"That is our future Fall Maiden," Salem spits out. "She's more use alive than dead so I'd advise you to refrain from trying to kill her."

But her screams were delicious, Oscar wants to say. Salem quirks an eyebrow at the want in his eyes.

"Interesting," she says. And plunges her hand through his chest.

Salem patches grimm flesh into Cinder's body with threads of black. Salem also makes Oscar clean up all the gore and blood left in the corridor until nothing is left. She's a perfectionist like that. At one point, as Oscar wrings the blood from the stained cloth into a bucket in need of a water change, a bulky man in green walks in on him.

"What are you doing, kid?" he asks.

"Cleaning," Oscar says gruffly. "I made a mess."

The man sees him, sees the claws and the tails and glowing green eyes on black surrounded by black blood mixing with red, and promptly walks out.

On a happier note, at least Oscar's tongue is back.

Salem guides Oscar outside. Past the training grounds where deep scratches and burn marks are scored into the ground to the gardens. It's a reflection of Salem's need for pristine perfection. Un-bloomed rose bushes are lined up in rows, hedges trimmed to clean lines and the flower beds all neatly arranged to what Oscar thinks is Salem's liking.

It's beautiful. The workmanship is incredible. There's an odd itch in his hand. Does he want to touch? Or something else? What else could there possibly b—

Salem's hands rest on his shoulders, halting his thoughts. A woman works on the ground, tending to a bed, her back turned to them. This is one area of the garden not cultured to beauty like the rest of the grounds. It's still in development. Oscar isn't sure why but the raw earthiness of the scene puts him at ease despite the nails digging into his shoulders.

The woman stands. Her pale hair is long, tied into a loose plait behind her, and she wears only a ragged tank top and shorts with patches of brown on her pale skin, a stark contrast to Salem's fully covered and pristine form.

Oscar is caught by the red rose in full bloom where her right eye should be.

"Oscar," Salem whispers in his ear. "This is Summer, one of my assassins. She's going to teach you how to kill people. Now, go on. Say hi. And remember your manners."

Salem pushes Oscar forwards, surging him into motion. He steps through the muddy earth until he comes to a stop in front of Summer.

"Hello, Miss Summer," Oscar says, holding his hand up.

Summer tilts her head to the side, scrutinising him with narrowed eyes. She nods curtly a second later, taking Oscar's hand and shaking it.

When she removes her hand from Oscar, she whips out a sword from her forearm. Oscar barely has enough time to dodge from the blade that nearly severs his head from his body.

They have better conversations when they battle than they do when they actually talk.

Several slices to his left leg made by Summer's black blades that seem to say 'You're too slow here'.

Oscar grits his teeth. His left leg dragged behind him whenever he moved. It's been like that since he's dragged himself out of that cold pit. Even after Salem cut off his legs and he grew them back, it's still there, holding him back.

Oscar pushes out, whipping his tails through the air. I know.

Summer easily dodges, much to Oscar's frustration. You're too slow over all.

When they're finished, Oscar lies on the ground, bleeding out. The moon hangs in the sky above, its fragments lying in discordant pieces near it. He wonders why it's broken.

"Because everything else is," Summer says, lifting his head gently from the ground and setting it on her soft lap. She gently wipes the hair from his face, the blood flaked on the strands. You need to be stronger, the gesture seems to say.

"You're too nice, Miss Summer," Oscar tells her.

Summer doesn't say anything in return. Oscar closes his eyes, trying to lose himself in the void as his body puts itself back together. It's Summer's hand gently brushing through his hair that stops him, anchoring him to the present.

He's hungry. So very, very hungry.

It started out as an odd pain. But then it grew. Nothing helped. Not the food Salem laid out for him at their weekly mandatory dinner. Not the snacks she kept hidden in the kitchen. Not the fruit that could only grow from her garden.

Nothing.

Salem cradles his hollowing cheeks. "What is wrong with you?" she hisses.

Oscar weakly groans.

Salem flings him to the floor, growling in frustration. "You could be a little bit more helpful," she mutters, rubbing two fingers to her temple. She sighs deeply. "Summer, take him to his room. Make sure his every want is attended to. I have to speak with Merlot. Perhaps he'll have something about Oscar's condition."

"Yes, milady," Summer answers dutifully, picking Oscar off the floor. Oscar hangs off of Summer with one hand looped around her neck. She keeps a steadying hand on his hip.

"I hate myself," Oscar moans once they're finally out of Salem's throne room.

A tightening of fingers around his hips. Oscar isn't sure how to decipher that. He hopes she hates him. He can't really imagine anybody liking him.

That's when he catches it. A wave, absolutely intoxicating and pulling him in. Oscar turns his head in its direction. Despair, agony, loneliness, so much negativity and so thick he could taste it on his tongue. He makes a stilted movement towards it, only to be held back by the hand on his hip.

An inquisitive clench. Oscar?

Oscar doesn't pay Summer much mind. He tries to push past the arm that holds him back, tries to follow that direction of sweet agony. "So … hungry …"

A moment of unreadable silence from Summer.

And then she lets him go.

Oscar finds the source curled up in a corner of a cell. The prisoner was pathetic. Clothes ragged and crawling with small bugs, skin grimy, his hair matted and clinging in parts. His confinement quarters weren't much better, a measly window too high to reach and a chamber-pot in the corner overflowing with piss and shit. Oscar nearly wrinkles his nose in distaste at the stench hanging in the air.

"One of Lady Salem's prisoners?" Oscar rasps to Summer's quiet form, half melding with the shadows.

Summer nods. Her face doesn't say anything, as passive as a rock.

"Disposable?"

Another nod.

A wide grin stretches out on Oscar's face.

The prisoner comes to stand on his shaky knees, wild eyes fixed on him. Fear permeates through the air like freshly baked bread, mixed with a sprinkle of suspicion for extra flavour. "Who are you?"

Oscar shrugs, taking teasing steps inside the cell. "I don't know …" Oscar muses, tails creeping out of the shadows behind him, one by one. The man tries to melt into the cobbled wall, trying to disappear. "I know I'm a grimm. I crawled out of one of those pits."

The man makes a desperate dash for the door, left lying open. One of Oscar's tails lash out, going straight through the man's knees. Oscar smiles at the scream that echoes inside the cell, spilling into the corridor where Summer stands sentinel, her face still remote from emotion.

"My name is Oscar," he continues on, one of his tails coiling around the man's arms and pulling. "Though I'm not sure how I got that name." Oscar makes a non-committal sound as flesh tears from bone, red spilling out onto stone. "Not quite sure what I'm doing here. As in, do I got a purpose or am I just nothing in the grand scheme of things. But—"

Oscar lifts the man off the ground, his hand twisting in time with the tail coiling suffocatingly around the man's neck. "I really like it when you scream."

Oscar digs his claws into the man's stomach and rips.

"Crude," Salem denounces.

It's to Oscar's surprise that she doesn't spend all her time in those drab robes. She has her hair pulled in a ponytail, long, rectangular earrings hanging from her ears. She foregoes her dark robes for a loose blouse and slacks. Her bare feet, spidery with black veins, hovers above the mess.

Oscar dumps the man's body inside a burlap sack, tightening the end with rope. "Absolutely artless," Salem goes on.

Oscar puts his arms up in exasperation behind her. What was she expecting? He sets his frustration aside for cleaning up his mess.

Salem shakes her head, displeased. "No finesse whatsoever."

"Should I bury the body or burn it, Lady Salem?" Oscar asks, keeping his irritation out of his voice.

"Give it to Summer. Dead bodies make good fertiliser. Take care of that—" she points to the chamber pot in the corner with disdain "—as well."

"Yes, Lady Salem."

"You're feeling better now?"

"Yes." Oscar picks the body up with his tails and drops it outside the cell. "Still a little hungry though." He rubs a hand along his stomach. "I felt the same thing when I was dragging Cinder's guts out of her body. That sense of feeding. I don't think my grimm biology lets me sustain myself the same way you do."

"It appears it doesn't,," Salem says, striding on invisible steps to Oscar. She lifts his chin up with her finger, forcing him to look at her. They looked similar: white hair, blackened pupils, cracks on their skin. But whereas Salem's skin was pale, his was an olive, and his eyes glowed green instead of red. "It would appear you need others to suffer for sustenance. How does that make you feel?"

"Honestly, their despair is delicious," Oscar says honestly. "Have you ever tried?"

Salem quirks an eyebrow at him. "Eating people's despair, no. Torturing people, yes, and I had fun."

A smile tilts Oscar's lips up. He isn't sure how to describe what's between them now. If he had to guess, it's solidarity, that sense of not being alone, of sharing a common joy. Salem shares the same smile. A part of Oscar reminds him not to be fooled, that this woman wouldn't hesitate to kill Oscar, that she is still his lady.

"Tell you what, next week, I bring someone else and we both get what we want from them. What do you think, Oscar?"

Oscar considers this, the smile still on his mouth, and nods. "Sounds fun."

Oddly enough, Salem ruffles his hair and leaves with a gaily air to her steps. "I want this cell suitably dirty for our next guest, Oscar!" she calls out as she leaves.

"Yes, Lady Salem!"

"You are not going to believe what just happened," Oscar says, dropping the 'fertiliser' at Summer's feet. "I just saw Salem happy. Not snarky-happy. Not smug-happy. Happy-happy. It was so weird."

Summer picks up the sack, throwing it over her shoulder. She gestures Oscar to follow her. Tell me more.

Salem shows him how to properly hurt people. The groundwork had already been in Oscar's mind. Make it hurt. She refines that knowledge, sanding off the edges and guiding Oscar here and there and soon enough, he coaxes sonatas of pain and crescendos of agony from the unfortunate prisoners who find themselves in Salem's hold.

Oscar feeds well from them.

Training with Summer is a rocky road. He's thrown into multiple surfaces, his limbs are hacked from his body, several parts of him impaled with twisted black blades, bound by thorns biting into his flesh. Suffice to say, he loses more than he wins against Summer when they spar. Actually, he just loses against Summer. But slowly but surely, he reacts that second quicker, pushes back that much harder, dodges that much swiftly.

One night, Summer grabs him by the collar and is about to slam him on the ground when his feet land on the earth, stopping his fall. Spidery cracks bloom from the impact. He twists out of her grip, lashing out with a tail. Summer uses it as a launching pad, jumping out of radius from Oscar.

When Summer stands upright, black bleeds from a slight cut on her cheek. She gathers the blood on one finger, holding it before her for inspection. She levels Oscar with an amused look. Nice job.

Oscar charges towards Summer, ready to strike. I try.

The first time Oscar leaves Salem's castle, Summer takes him to a broken kingdom.

The capital of Mistral.

They wade through the overpopulated slums, rife with disease and poverty and the people growing strong despite it, climbing up the steps. The scenery steadily gets nicer, the streets easier to walk through and cleaner. It's not until the reach the top, where the people know nothing of dirt or having to hang your laundry on fences to dry or standing under corrugated roofs for shelter from the rain that Oscar realises the happiness of these people reap from the suffering of those living on the bottom.

Salem had given them a purpose when they travelled to Mistral. Turn the headmaster of Haven over to our side. Oscar thinks it'd be more efficient for Salem if she had replaced the man with somebody staunchly on her side but, hey, he wasn't going to turn down a free meal and the chance to leave the castle.

They snatch Lionheart off the streets discreetly, the man walking out of a bar with the burn of alcohol on his cheeks, Oscar at first begging the man for help finding his parents and then sliding the syringe under his clothing. Summer comes quickly, she and Oscar appearing to be unfortunate friends picking up their drunk companion from the bar.

Lionheart comes to in one of Salem's safehouses, strapped to a chair by Summer's thorn vines. Oscar puts down the stolen book of fairy tales and saunters towards the frightened man.

"Hello, Mr Lionheart," Oscar says, not forgetting his manners. "Salem has a proposition for you and, I promise you, it's not one you refuse."

"I think I had a family," Summer says suddenly.

Lionheart was a job well done. Oscar had broken Lionheart's mind thoroughly enough that man wouldn't even think of ever saying no to Salem. it had taken a few days much to Oscar's surprise, the man had holding out longer than expected.

He and Summer sit on a rooftop, ice creams melting in hand, watching the top tier citizens of the capital run on with their eyes. Summer's eyes linger on an older woman holding a baby in one arm and the hand of a small child with golden hair with the other.

"Children, maybe …" Summer continues, dazed. "Sometimes, I can hear them, laughing. There are others. They're vague, like shadows."

"Miss Summer." Oscar's voice is ice. Hopefully, it's cold enough to snap Summer out of whatever stupor she found herself in. "We're grimm. We don't have families."

They don't. They don't. They don't.

"Ruby," Summer murmurs. When she turns to him, an inky black tear slips from her eyes. "Her name was Ruby."

"Miss Summer …" Oscar groans, covering his face with his hand. "Stop it. Salem demands absolute loyalty and we're the poor bastards stuck in her command. She finds out about this, she's going to kill you."

"Are you going to tell her?"

Oscar should. There's an instinctual part of him that urges him that he should tell Salem. Summer was starting to become a variable out of control. Sooner or later, Summer was going to go rogue, and Oscar would pay for her betrayal. Salem was somebody he wasn't interested in crossing. Not now. Not ever.

"No."

Why? Why wouldn't he tell Salem when, clearly, he was better off doing so. When Summer draws Oscar close, wrapping loose arms around him, not caring at all for the ice cream staining their clothes, he figures out why.

'Thank you' the embrace says.

They're partners.

"Salem just said she wants red roses," Summer says. Her arms are crossed as she stares out to the latest section of the expansive garden. White roses are in full bloom around them; statues of thorns, vines and hedge grass twisted ornately around the grounds; and lush greenery spanning out around them.

"Well, it'd be nice if she said something earlier," Oscar snipes. "It'd be lovely we had the time."

"But we don't."

"Or the paint."

"But we don't."

"Wait, we still got prisoners down in the dungeons, right?"

"We do."

To their shared relief, Salem accepts the blood splattered roses with pleasant surprise. She takes her tea, silently ordering for Oscar to sit in the seat besides her. The conversations they have are like the sugar in the candy she gives him during those tea parties: artificial. Nothing more than idle words as a means to past the time, watching the red day pass into the black night.

Oscar casts his eyes up to the blazing sun and shattered moon for years as they revolved around the other. Salem's shadows grows, even in the light of day, beheading her foes and poisoning their minds. Soon enough, it's going to swallow the sun itself.

Oscar's going to miss the lushness of Summer's—well, theirs now—garden when it's gone.

"Branwen Tribe … Vernal …" Oscar murmurs, stepping away from the remains of what should have been a faunus behind him. He doesn't bother with burying the body, not when the creatures of the forest would take care of it for him, picking it apart until they was nothing left. He didn't have to worry about witnesses either, not when Summer lured the drunk bandit away with a sinful sway of her body and a come-hither look.

The search for the Spring Maiden was, if Oscar was to be honest, the most difficult information retrieval mission he ever had. All the other missions were linear—find the person, hurt them till they do what you say and be on your merry way. With the Spring Maiden, you went from Point A to point B then had to find Point C only to realise Point C was a waste of time and you really should have been bothering with Point D. A road full of twists, turns and smokescreens. Whoever the Spring Maiden was now, she had been doing her damndest not to be found.

Salem had put considerable time and effort into finding the maidens. She sent her pawns out on jobs and expected results. Everybody knew better than to come back without something to show.

Summer waits for him not too far away, one of her blades—thorns, she had once called them—in her hand. The time Oscar had spent interrogating the bandit, Summer had used it to go through her katas, body twisting and turning with dancer-like grace as her blade sung.

"We're looking for Vernal of the Branwen Tribe," Oscar announces.

Summer draws her blade down, head tilting to the side. Her eyes took that distant glaze which Oscar had become bitterly familiar with. She was lapsing into her delusions again.

"A bandit-mercenary group," Oscar says sharply, hoping his tone would snap Summer out of her fantasies. "They have a camp set up with defences about four miles north of here. They have a considerable amount of people there as well. It should be easy enough for us to slip in and do a little recon."

"Branwen …"

Oscar groans. "Miss Summer, there is a rabbit. You are chasing it. Stop it. It's just going to lead you down a hole you can't get out of."

Summer says nothing in response, not by her words nor by her actions. She merely slides her blade back into her skin.

"Well, at least we have a name now. Vernal," Oscar continues, starting the walk to the camp. It should take a few hours on feet. With the position of the sun where it was, they probably wouldn't make it before sunrise.

"Something's bothering you," Summer points out, stepping over an overgrown tree root.

"Something seems off. This entire time we've looking for the Spring Maiden, we've followed false trail after false trail. It could be that this Vernal girl is another dead end."

The quirk of one of Summer's eyebrows tells him 'You want to tell Salem that?'.

"Of course not. I just don't want to go around running in circles again."

Summer pats his shoulder. We'll be alright.

Oscar can't bring himself to believe her. Not when they inevitably had Salem to give answers. "Hmmm … I wonder how the others are doing. Hey, maybe once we're done with this mission and get an actual signal on our scrolls, we can bother Watts for answers."

There's a slight fond glint on Summer's one eye at that. "Bothering Watts is always fun."

Vernal turns out to be a waste of time. Oscar stands close enough to sense an activated aura, one that reaches out hungrily for more, but the song of the elements Salem spoke of is silent in her veins and she didn't look at all familiar to the young girl in the faded photo Leonardo gave with a shaking hand.

"A smokescreen," Oscar remarks, whistling impressed. He stares down the end of a red blade, its gleam as bright as fire, and matching eyes. "I must say you really left no stone unturned. But then you told the wrong person about who the false Spring Maiden was and now here we are."

"Leave," the bandit queen and apparent Spring Maiden, Raven Branwen, hisses.

"I'm afraid my friend and I don't have the option of going back to Salem without something to show for our efforts," Oscar answers.

The bandits ring around them, weapons at the ready, and murder clear in the language of their bodies. They remind Oscar of beowolves baying for blood. Too bad they didn't know who were clearly the bigger predators here.

"Summer …" Raven murmurs.

"Hush," Oscar hisses sharply. Summer is out of his sight, a few steps behind him. He can tell she's off in her dream world again, the Raven woman aggravating her delusions by spouting off about a shared past. Which, typical, because Oscar needed Summer's agility, speed and combat expertise against Raven's maiden powers.

"You're both chained by Salem," Raven says, coolly. "The only difference between you two is that you don't want to leave and my partner does."

My partner, the bandit queen says, as if the false bond was worth more than the blood spilt he and Summer spilled during training sessions and missions. The only sign of his irritation appears in the tightening of his fist, claws digging into his hardened palms.

Oscar refuses to raise to the bandit queen's bait, instead plastering an overly sugary sweet smile stretching from ear to ear on his face. "Miss Branwen, come quietly or me and my partner will have to resort to force."

When Raven answers, it's not to Oscar. "Summer, you are my greatest regret and my greatest love but I will not set myself on fire to keep you warm."

Oscar is going to take that as a solid 'No' then.

Oscar surges forwards, knocking through the first wave with a wide sweep of one tail and flicking the other above him, taking care of the bandits dropping through the air. The pointed end of his tail rips through their stomach, raining blood upon him.

Oscar sidesteps the slide of barbed ice ripping through the ground and the impending fireball after that. His tails sway to the side, Raven not missing the movement and sweeping her arm to the side, leaving herself wide open. Oscar takes the dart laced with tranquiliser from his pocket, throwing it through the air—

Only for it to hit Summer's blade.

The shock is enough for Oscar to get distracted. The blade that rips through his chest nails him to ground. Oscar isn't sure if he's choking on his own blood or the betrayal. He watches as Summer stands from her defensive position and turns back to Raven with longing. There's something wrong with Summer's stance. She hasn't over-exerted herself yet her knees are shaking and her breaths coming out in pained pants. It takes the bandit queen holding her up to keep Summer upright. Raven traces a hand under the rose in Summer's eye with a tenderness that should not be there.

Oscar lashes out, tails going through bandits. He pulls out by the blade, the sting of Summer's actions making it hurt all the more, and brandishes it.

"Miss Summer!" Oscar howls.

Summer doesn't acknowledge his anger. She heaves with every breath, standing weakly as a gentle smile curves on her lips. It's the first time Oscar has even seen her smile.

Raven shouts behind her, calling for a retreat. She gives Summer one last torn look before disappearing through with the false Spring Maiden trailing behind her. Oscar growls, tearing forwards.

Their blades clang, a scream ringing out through the camp. The bandits back away, fleeing the camp as two monsters rip their home apart. Summer meets him blow for blow with that expert grace Salem loved watching her for. The beauty of Summer's violence is marred by the slow sluggishness of her own body. Despite it all, she fights back, facing Oscar's wrath head-on. Oscar may have had the advantage but Summer was his teacher. She knew every one of his moves like they were pages on a book and played him as if he was a damn fiddle.

When Oscar has one of Summer's discarded blades meeting her in an 'X', black swirling lines, barbed like thorns, creep out from the rose in her eye.

"Miss Summer …?"

Summer pushes, throwing Oscar from her. It steals the rest of her strength from her, her blade clattering to the ground. She drops to her knees, gasping and clutching the rose. The anger leaves. What's left in its place makes his heart beat faster than it ever had and his mind go blank from panic.

He doesn't know what to do.

Oscar takes one unsure step towards her, and another, and keeps moving until he's kneeling in front of her. Hands that have torn flesh and wrought pain carefully tilts her head up and sweep away the pale hair falling over her face.

Patches of Summer turns see-through, joining the thorns spreading all over her body. When Oscar grazes his hands over it, the smooth glide of glass is apparent. Oscar sighs, pressing his forehead against Summer's.

"There was a rabbit …" Oscar murmurs, slowly lifting his head up. "And you chased it. Godsdammit, Summer, I told you not to. What's happening now … it's Salem, isn't it?

Summer merely weakly smiles, resting her head on the hand Oscar curves around her cheek. The glass spreads, petrifying more of Summer's body until she's unable to stand up. "Os—Oscar," she chokes out. "Please … Protect my family."

You don't have a family, Oscar bitterly thinks.

"I …"

Summer never finishes that sentence. Her throat turns to stone. Her eyes says it for her in their place. I love you.

Flesh turns to glass, like day fades into night, and all that left in Oscar's hands is a statue. The thorns take hold, squeezing and choking, until the glass shatters. It scatters everywhere, dusting Oscar's hair, fragments embedding into his skin and spreading across the ground in front of him.

The gasps that escape him are broken. "Su—Summer?"

It's only the whistle of the wind that answers him.

Salem takes a measured sip from her teacup. The porcelain is perfect, green swirling across white. Oscar wonders how hard he would have to press for it to break in his hands. His own tea has turned cold, untouched and unwanted. His hands rest in his lap, utterly still.

The roses are still in bloom around them. Even if Oscar and Summer hadn't tended to the gardens for months, they made sure that the soil had enough nutrients and water to survive. His eyes trail to the irrigation system, almost out of sight, that he and Summer spent three months planning and building to water the grounds in their absence.

They didn't want the plants to die.

But Summer died.

"So Raven Branwen is the Spring Maiden," Salem says after Oscar has finished his brief.

"Yes."

"And she's gone now."

"Yes," Oscar answers. "As I said before, Summer lapsed into a delusion and stopped me from continuing the mission. I apologise for my failure, Miss Salem."

"What failure? I said to find the Spring Maiden and you did. Obtaining her was never the objective." The relieved exhale Oscar gives is slight, through his nose and completely out of Salem's notice. At least she wouldn't punish Oscar.

"I hadn't counted Summer Rose on remembering her memories though," Salem continues. "Oh, well, this is what I had the flower in her eye for. A failsafe to be activated the moment Summer got out of hand. I chose a rose to be poetic, you know. Rose was her family name, and she considered Raven Branwen to be her family, who was her undoing."

"Miss Salem?" Oscar calls out, unsurely.

Salem gives Oscar a smile. It's not fond like Summer's. It's cold and does the equivalent of pouring a bucket of ice-cold water of his head. "Oscar, Summer Rose was never deluded." She stands and crosses over to Oscar, robes trailing fluidly behind her. Oscar doesn't move, not even when Salem places a hand on his shoulder. "Good job, Oscar."

Oscar comes to his feet, numbly, once Salem leaves. He feels faint, the world swaying slightly around him. The roses come into his view, white petals splattered with red. Something breaks inside him, leaving him screaming.

Oscar's tails lashes out, slashing and uprooting the bushes. He screams so hard his throat strains from the force.

The scattered rose petals on the upturned earth reminds Oscar of shattered glass …