we're all stories in the end.

his brow furrowed for just a moment at her words, giving a slight shake of his head in disagreements. frank wouldn’t have guessed that it came off as surprising. but he didn’t see himself in the same way that other people did. “you’d think. people are all about ignoring common sense these days,” he remarked, eyes drifting outside the window and watching a couple young adults cross the road without looking up from their phone. “all this shit, it makes me feel old.”

“Agreed. Although I think it’d help if you looked at things a little more optimistically.” Olivia couldn’t help the smile that played on her lips as she brought her tea to her lips, eyes glancing over at Frank fondly from over the lid of the drink. Following his gaze out the window, she laughed softly. “We are old to them, I suppose. Funny how times have changed." 

his shoulders lift and fall in a shrug, giving a quiet grunt as an initial answer as he considered her question. it wasn’t his intention to be unfriendly with the reaction – for once. “wolves don’t attack people unless they’re provoked,” frank finally answered. “s’not hard if you’re smart about it. that’s what they should be tellin’ people. not scare tactics.”

“You’re full of surprises, you know that?” She smiled softly, shaking her head. His knowledge of wild animals and violence came as a slight shock, but she figured it had something to do with his past--a past that could be darker than what she imagined. She also figured that she shouldn’t make assumptions about him, as he would undoubtedly prove her wrong. “Scare tactics don’t work. You’d think they knew that, though.” She smiled, taking another sip from her tea.

why? nell was certain that the rest of her family had asked that same question when they had gotten the call about what happened to her, when they had learned where it had happened. why? there were many moments when she stopped and asked herself that same question. her therapist had pushed her to go back and to confront it, seeing some unimaginable fear as the root of her problems. he had been incapable of understanding how dangerous and real the threats at hill house were. she should have never listened. but she had.

“you gave me your locket.” there was an ache in her throat, fingertips touching the hollow of it lightly as she remembered back to what she saw in the moments before. her mother’s smile had been kind. there had been nothing malicious about the way that her mom had looked at her – no, it just been the consequences and the fall where that came. “we were standing at the top of the staircase and you put it on me.” her throat tightened, tears burning in her eyes. “and then you pushed me off. it was me. my whole life, it was me. the bent neck lady.”

“That wasn’t me. I--” Olivia’s voice broke off. Emotion overwhelming her. “I’m supposed to protect you. I--I don’t understand.” She laughed softly, unsteadily. Her laugh was void of humor, filled with tears as she stared at her youngest daughter. “I thought it was over. I thought I woke up.” She’d woken up, yet there was so much pain. Of course, what was she supposed to expect? She’d ended her own life and broken the hearts of her children. And Nell, her sweet Nellie, was so much like her that she knew being in that house again couldn’t have a good ending. 

And then her daughter said it-- those words that absolutely shattered Olivia’s heart. “No. No, that wasn’t me.” She shook her head, hand still brushing against her collarbone where the locket used to be. Tears threatened to spill, lip quivering as she stared at the girl who reminded her so much of herself. “Did you wake up? Are you free from the pain?” It wasn’t the right question, she knew that. Her death had undoubtedly caused a surplus of pain to the members of her family. She hated that her family had to go through so much, and that she had been a source of that pain.

The bent neck lady. Olivia vividly remembered her. “Oh, honey.” She whispered, unable to hold herself back any more. She took a few steps forward, arms wrapping around her youngest daughter. “You’re safe now. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

“It really is,” Henry said in agreement, a smile playing on his lips as one hand clutched onto the shoulder strap of his bag. Before turning around to face the older brunette with a quick nod of his head. “Course I can. What do you need help with?” He wasn’t one to deny his help to anyone, and would gladly try to help out whenever he can.

“Oh, thank you. I truly appreciate this.” She smiled, holding out one of the lighter bags. The kindness of strangers never failed to impress her. There was so much harshness in this world, even the slightest kind action from an unknown face meant more than she could possibly express. “I’m in room 620.” She gave the young man a kind glance before reaching down for the other bags.

@oliviaxcrain​ - OLIVIA      CRAIN

     pursing his lips together, steve looked out beyond the fire pit he sat in front of. it was hard to sort all thoughts at most given times here considering there was a long list of things to think about that he hadn’t imagined weeks prior. even remembering what he did, he didn’t think he’d be caught up in not being up to date to the others from home that he knew were around here. maybe he really didn’t want to know what happened beyond the time he knew, maybe he did, but he’d have to know it to know for sure.

     and he knew he was a little caught up in thoughts when it came to not hearing whoever approached. shaking his head, he smiled apologetically at her. “sorry, i didn’t hear that,” he said, keeping the same smile. “can i help you?”

It had been a long night. After talking to her children, and finding out what had happened to Nell in the house, she just needed a break. She’d been tempted to just try her shot at the bar, but she’d decided she needed a calmer setting. Which was what had brought her to the fire pits, arms filled with supplies for s’mores, wood and lighter fluid. “I was just wondering if I could join you.” Olivia smiled, setting the supplies down and tucking her hands in her pockets of her coat. 

@oliviaxcrain​ > olivia x frank.

it’s painfully normal to do this, sit across from a woman and nurse a cup of coffee like everything was normal. he should be on the run, he thought, from the trial back and new york and everything that would come. but he’s not. instead, he was just here, taking about all the black coffee that this place could muster up and damn near enjoying himself in the presence of another. he’d never admit that, of course, not to himself or anyone else. “it’s all a bunch of horse shit,” he folded the newspaper in half, tossing it down on the table between them. “animals eat and kill each other. wolves included. that’s nature.”

Olivia genuinely enjoyed moments like this. Mornings with Frank were always pleasant and eventful. Never boring. She brought the cup of tea to her lips, noticing that it was such a contrast to the dark coffee in the man’s cup. A nod to their respective personalities, perhaps. “Do you think the notice was uncalled for? If there are wolves in the woods, maybe it is safer to avoid them.”

      “i think it’d be pretty horrible of me if i didn’t,” ben humored with a smile, after his eyes landed on the familiar face. the two of them had gotten to know each other through their work, being that they were both passionate architects. the man admired olivia’s work. she had a creative mind, full of interesting ideas. he hadn’t gotten to know her much personally, though. “you like the design?” he glanced up again at the building, reaching in the meantime to take her bags. “you might hate me, then. they just hired me to redo this section.” 

As far as work colleagues went, Olivia had to admit that Ben had been one of her favorites. He shared her passion for buildings, and throughout their time working together she found herself enjoying her job even more with his company. She’d even started falling for him, only to get rejected. Which had hurt because he said there was another girl... but when she asked where she was, he didn’t have an answer. The insecure, fragile side of her mind wondered if he was making this girl up just to have an excuse--because she hadn’t been good enough for him. She’d started to convince herself, in the solitude of her own home, that she wasn’t enough for anyone. And then she’d moved to Woodshore, and memories of Hugh and her family came flooding back and she remembered what it felt like to be wanted. And while Ben had made her feel wanted for her talent, he didn’t make her feel wanted in the way that mattered. “I might hold it against you if you say no.” She teased lightly, turning away from the building to look at him. “Did they?” She smiled softly. “I’m sure you’ll do wonders with this place, as long as you don’t try to channel Frank Gehry.”

steve could still remember the last time he saw her. that last day. he kept his eyes closed like his father had instructed, too terrified to open them –– not because of ghosts but because of something much worse. because of reality. he was too young to understand everything, he even understood that then, and whatever he might have seen would only have hurt him. whatever they were running away from that night –– it would have left a scar. unfortunately, closing his eyes didn’t really change that. the events of that night never stopped haunting him.

they never stopped haunting any of them.

what steve understood was that his mother was dead. the circumstances of how that happened got confused and muddled, stories circulating from every corner of the media, each as horrible as the last. it wasn’t until he was older that he was able to accept his own conclusion. of course she was ill. he’d known it back then –– he’d known it the day he gave her the old vanity.

“it’s been a long time,” steve said, his voice quiet and tentative. he felt like he was out of his body, hovering above the scene and looking down at them –– a mother and son, not so far apart in age, and the space between them. he wondered if he would hug her, but his body didn’t move. “i… i thought…” what do you say to someone you loved so deeply and lost so young, in a situation that never made sense? he looked down at his hands, realizing he couldn’t feel them. they looked like someone else’s hands. “i don’t know what to say.”

How did she explain to her son that she hadn’t been in her right mind? That the house had driven her already fragile mind to complete insanity? This was Steven. So logical, so fact driven. She couldn’t explain that the house had tainted her mind. He wouldn’t believe her, but she couldn’t blame him for that. She would never blame him. All he had done was be the best big brother he could, and in turn she had flipped all of their lives around. That hadn’t been fair of her, but she didn’t have a choice. At least, she didn’t feel like she’d had one.

It had been a long time. He wasn’t a little boy anymore, he was a grown man. She had missed so many landmarks in his life that staring at him was almost like staring at a stranger.

“I’m so sorry.” Was all she could say, tears burning her eyes as she reached out for him, placing her hand on his cheek fondly. “I love you so much. I never wanted to hurt any of you.” But she had. She had left all of her kids to grow up with out a mother and that had never been part of her plan. “I thought I would wake up. I was dreaming for so long, I needed to wake up.” Tears fell down her cheeks as she pulled her hand back from his face. As tempted as she was to pull him into a hug, she couldn’t. She didn’t have it in her.

hill house had broken her mind. it had broken her mother’s mind, too. nell had always been just a little bit too much like her mother – everyone had known it from the time that she was a little girl, everyone had seen it, nearly waiting with bated breath to see if her life would become the same disaster. and it had. with the worst advice possible given, she had gone back alone and at night, and the hose had sank its teeth inside of her with one final, monstrous bite, dragging her down inside of it for the rest of eternity. the house had been cruel. the games that it had played, dancing through empty parlors with the vision of arthur who was long gone… the house knew her weakest point and had not hesitated to exploit it in every way possible. it was horrific to think about, triggering, yet every wave of emotion came to the surface as she stared back at her mother.

“do you really?” her voice broke as she continued with the line of questinoing. nell couldn’t even bring herself to answer the questions from her mother. no, life hadn’t been kind. not with what it – she? – had done to arthur. woodshore had been kinder. “do you remember what happened in the house, when i came back? when you gave me the necklace?”

While Olivia had always been a bit paranoid, she had done everything in her power to be a good mother. She had loved her children deeply, had loved Hugh so much, but at the end of the day, the house had got her. It had dug its claws deep into her sanity and torn her apart. It had taken any hopes she had might have had of finally moving into their Forever House and crushed them. And it hurt to think that she never got to see her children grow up. She never got the chance to see them marry. Never got to see them have kids.

“You came back to the house? Why, my love?” Her heart dropped. “Our locket.” She whispered, absentmindedly reaching for her neck. Feeling where it used to be. “What happened when you went back there?” She almost didn’t want to hear the answer. Knowing what that house was capable of doing to a person’s mind--to her mind--frightened her. But she also knew that Nellie, her sweet little girl, was the most like her out of all her children. And after the house had driven her to her breaking point, she feared for Nellie’s safety. 

there was a slight hint of anger inside of nell’s eyes even as they became tearful. she couldn’t move. sometimes, it was a hundred times worse than the many nights that she had spent frozen and incapable of moving, haunted in every which way and terrified. because this wasn’t a ghost. no, she was certain that she would have been able to tell the difference between her breathing mother and the distorted image of her that had been burned into her mind from her own time stuck inside of hill house. she was real. her heart was beating, blood pumping through her. just as real as she herself was. that was terrifying.

“it’s really you.” her voice was just barely loud enough to be heard, mouth too dry to raise her volume. for a moment, she was desperate to have someone else with her: luke, steve, theo. would luke have even recognized their mother? he barely had her. “how are you here?” nell had asked herself the same question and never been able to come up with a real answer. maybe it didn’t really matter. “do you– do you remember?” there was an accusation in the final question from a scared, hurt little girl.

Staring at the young woman her daughter had become, Olivia knew she deserved all of Nell’s anger. It was, after all, Olivia Crain herself who had committed suicide while her five children were... where were they? Olivia had no idea. In the car, maybe, being taken from her. That was what she’d been telling herself. Looking at Nell now, she couldn’t help but be reminded of that conversation she’d had with the twins all those years ago. The conversation that hadn’t even been real, but had shocked her to the core. What if you send us out there into the dark and the dark gets us, until I’m on a silver table with my jaw wired shut and Luke is on the floor with a needle in his arm. And it was you who killed us because you sent us out there, in the night, in the dark. Tears formed in her eyes and she shook her head to clear those thoughts, thinking the same thing she thought all those years ago: I would never. I would never. But she hadn’t been there for them, had she? And that wasn’t their fault.

“I do. I--I remember everything, baby.” Nell and Luke--they had always been her babies. They didn’t deserve to grow up alone, and she hoped they hadn’t. But they had grown up without her, and that broke her heart because she was to blame for hurting her family. Looking up at Nell, taking in everything from her daughter’s eyes, she asked the question that had been eating her up: “Has life been kind to you, my love?”

      hearing a voice behind him, luke was almost tempted to just keep walking and assume she had been speaking to someone else, but there was something about her voice that was undeniably familiar – enough to make him stop and turn back but not quite so much that he could place who she was. “oh… oh yeah, sure. no problem.” her face, too, was familiar. almost as if he had been seeing it in the shadows out of the corner of his eye his entire life, but he tried not to entertain that thought for too long, moving to take her largest suitcase with a courteous smile.

“Thank you so mu--” Olivia turned to meet the man who had spoken to her, her words falling short. Just like that, she was transported back to Hill House. Transported twenty something years in the past, and she was standing in the twin’s bedroom. Talking to her sweet babies, listening to them. What if I dream that you kill us? Deep breath. What if I dream that you send us away, out into the dark and my heart breaks right in half and I can’t feel anything happy for weeks and months and years until I can’t stand it anymore and I have to die. Deep breath. And what if I’m so sad and scared of the dark out there that i put poison in me. i poison myself for years and years until my blood turns into poison my body breaks down. you send us into the dark and the dark gets us-- “Luke?” Olivia gasped, breaking the memory with tears in her eyes. She remembered Steven coming into the room--her sweet Steven, who had made that vanity for her. And then she’d looked into the mirror, so overwhelmed with gratitude for her oldest child, but instead of her own face manifesting on the glass it had been the twins. All grown up, but utterly dead. The same face was staring at her right now, but he was very much alive. “Look at you, my love. You’re all grown up.” It hadn’t been real. The twins were alive. They hadn’t died. 

no. no, this wasn’t right. more than that, it was wrong. seeing nell alive, that had been one thing. after all, her death had never felt… permanent or normal. but their mom’s… that was different. that was true death. the kind that you could never wish away. the kind that you could never take back. but there she was. young and beautiful and alive, the way she was before everything had gone wrong. before she started to slip away, turn into someone that even steven couldn’t recognize. he stared, unable to move as she asked a stranger for help. when finally he spoke, the word stumbled out of his mouth in an uncomfortable whisper. “mom?” his chest was so tight he wondered if he was seizing. 

“Steve?” Her voice was a whisper as she looked up at him. She’d recognize her children anywhere, even as adults. Even all of these years later. No, they didn’t deserve to grow up without a mother. She should have been there, she knew that. She’d known that the whole time. But in the moment, when everything felt so hopeless and she was watching Hugh take her children away from her, she had given in to whatever insanity had gripped her mind. Maybe it was the house, maybe it had been inside her all along. She couldn’t tell. Things had gotten bad after spending some time in the house, and she couldn’t tell where the House’s influence had come in. At this point, maybe she just was crazy. But she was standing here, alive, and she got to see her children again. What else could she ask for? “Steve, my love, look at you.” She exhaled, wanting nothing more than to hug him, while knowing that could very well be overstepping her boundaries. “You’re all grown up.” She tried to smile but couldn't find the willpower to do so, so overwhelmed by the past.

Logan had just come in the resort…tripping flat on his face and crashing to the floor with a bang. He got up with a grumble and glared to the side of him, where a ghost no one could see was giggling at him. That’s what you get, the ghost said to him, before she saw someone tapping him on the shoulder. Logan turned to the woman and nodded. “Of course I can,” he said, breaking out into a huge smile and holding out his hand so he could take her bag. ‘Where to?”

The very first thing Olivia noticed was the man stumbling through the doors. A soft laugh escaped her lips, kind eyes lifting up to meet his reassuringly. “Thank you, I really appreciate it.” She handed over a bag, looking down at the key with the room number on it. “Room six twenty.” She smiled warmly, holding out her hand. "I'm Olivia. Thanks again for helping me out." 

there were few voices she would recognize anywhere. the one that asked for help was one of the few. turning, the obvious question was prompted. “ mom ? ” a ‘how’ or a ‘why’ should have followed, but, if there was anything she had learned, it was that some things simply could not be explained – she had gone through the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ when she saw nell… but there she stood, flesh and blood, and theo was somewhere over two decades younger again, being offered gloves, being told she (olivia) would always be there for her, feeling understood. there were so many things she could say, wanted to say, but all that stumbled out had been ‘mom?’

There was so much Olivia had missed. She had missed all of the milestones in her children’s lives--sixteen, eighteen, twenty one. Thirty. And why? Because a house had driven her to insanity? That was her take on it, yeah. But she had undoubtedly caused an unspeakable amount of pain to everyone in her family, and now she had to deal with it. “Theo.” Her daughter’s name came out of her mouth along with a tsunami of emotions, pain being the most prominent. She hadn't seen her daughter in well over twenty years, and yet she recognized her almost instantly. “Look at you. You’ve grown into such a stunning young woman.” All of her children reminded her so very much of herself, but it had always been Theo who Olivia felt the most connected to. Which was why she expected nothing less than to be scolded, yelled at for her decision. It hadn’t been her decision though, not really. She hadn’t been in her right mind when she climbed to the top of that spiral staircase and plummeted to her death. That’s what she kept telling herself--she hadn’t been right in the head.

as she felt the presence behind her she turned around at the question and took notice of the the girl with her bags. giving her a half-smile piper had to hold back a small sigh. she had more important things to do, she had to find her family and figure out a way to go back home and most of all try to remember the spell’s in the book of shadows when she didn’t have it with her. “yeah sure i don’t mind, where are you headed?”

Glancing up at the other woman, Olivia could sense that she had other things on her mind. Olivia was observant by nature, and she worried about interfering with whatever it was that she had going on. But the moment the brunette seemed to agree to help her out, Olivia exhaled gratefully, handing over one of the smaller bags. "Thank you, I really appreciate it." She looked at the room key in her hand, pausing for a moment before looking up with a smile. "Room 620."