#*rating: pg

Victoria thinks she is safe in her room, watching all the commotion on the ground far below. A safe place where nothing can hurt her, where the fires can't come near her, and the gun on the officer's hip isn't loaded with her in mind. But she can make out Liz's voice downstairs, though not the words themselves, and the safeness drains and is replaced by guilt.

The Collinses have been kind to her. The Collinses have not busied themselves with questions about her, likely due to their own secrets. The Collinses have fed her and paid her and relied on her, and, in that moment, she is no longer Maggie Evans nor Victoria Winters: she is a Collins. She is one of them.

She should be down there, defending what has been given to her. And with her newfound resolve, she turns to do just that, but there Josette hovers, right in front of the door.

“Help me.”

Victoria closes her eyes and opens them. Josette is still there. An old trick her parents had suggested, and one that had never worked, she remembered insisting. Of course it would hold true now. She braces herself and steps through the specter, shaking off the icy chill and the feeling of dampness. It returns all too quickly when Josette covers Victoria's hand on the doorknob.

“Help me.”

Victoria apologetically replies, “I can't,” and Josette's blank gaze shifts to the door. There's a small, yet audible click, and Josette simply floats through the wall. Victoria shakes her head and twists the doorknob to no avail: it's locked.

She pounds on the door, tugs on the doorknob, anything she can think of. Somebody has to be out there. Somebody has to hear her, but then three gunshots ring out and practically startle Victoria out of her skin. In an instant, she's back over to the window, flinging the curtains back and letting them fall behind her. She watches as Barnabas has a woman – Angie, was it? - pressed to him. A crowd has gathered, but they're recoiling as he leaves her. She stays limp for a moment before her neck twists grotesquely, and though Victoria cannot see every detail, she feels the fire burn up her spine and through her head when Angie's crazed eyes land directly on her, accompanied with a wide, sickening red grin.

Victoria loses control of herself and stumbles away from the window, falling back onto the floor and suddenly, she can feel nothing but fire. Invisible flames course down her arms and body and she shuts her eyes. Squints them together, block it out, Maggie, they can't hurt her if her mind is elsewhere, but behind her eyelids are the blinding red and oranges that seem to be missing on the outside. Time is lost to her as she is curled up on the floor until suddenly -

A cliff. Wind. And the icy water below.

Widows' Hill, she realizes immediately, though she'd never been there – Barnabas had made her promise, but now it seems like heaven and she scrambles to her feet and turns.

“Help me.” Josette has returned.

“Widows' Hill,” Victoria states – almost questions, though it's unintentional how her voice wavers. Josette hovers for a moment before rising to the ceiling. Her arms spread wide and she lets herself fall, sinking through the floor of Victoria's room.

She waits, whether for an approval or a reappearance or, dare she think it, a chance to say goodbye, but the fire surges up again, this time through her right shoulder, and she nearly dives for the door again. This time, it flies open, and she is greeted with the curious, wide eyes of David.

He says nothing, only peering at her, and she tells herself to embrace him and assure him that everything would be fine, but she can't control her movements, she finds. Her legs move deliberately, she can't even twist her head to look at him, and she brushes past him, simply intoning, “Widows' Hill.”

It's when Victoria is halfway across the grounds of the estate that she realizes she is watching her body continue the journey. Her dress floats in the wind and she walks with the same resolve, but Victoria herself hovers nearby, precisely as Josette had done moments ago. Then, she slows. Victoria notices herself look down and examine her hands, turning them over as though they were new. But the fire still stings Victoria; there is no release. She takes advantage of the slowness of her body to speed toward it, and then she is marching again. She feels the grass under her feet and her hair whipping at her face and knows for certain that she is back. She can see the cliff, she can hear the waves – not much more now, and then she can see the rocks and the waves crashing against them, welcoming her. Victoria closes her eyes and takes the sight in and the wind seems to lift her -

Until two arms drag her back down and hold her tightly.

There's a tight twisting in Victoria's stomach and the flames ignite on the back of her head.

He wants to save her. She doesn't want to be saved, she wants to be free and away from the fires and from him. She feels burns and blisters from his arms around her, though Victoria cannot be sure what is real anymore. She tells him they are opposites, that she belongs in the light, anything to make him concede, but it fails, and then Victoria is over the cliff – hovering, once more, watching herself proclaim to Barnabas that “there is only one way.”

Victoria screams, feels her neck catch fire, but the sound is carried away by the crashing waves. For a fraction of a second, she sees Josette in front of her, but then she is grounded again and she steps back and lets herself plummet from the cliff. She does not scream, simply reveling in the feeling of the flames leaving her, of the cool wind stinging. Josette falls with her, she notices, but so does Barnabas. He catches her and she attempts to shove him away, but once more, Victoria has no control of her motions.  

And then Josette is no longer next to her, but Victoria is next to Victoria, all the way down the cliff to the rocks below. She watches her own body grow paler, all sense of humanity disappearing. She looks to the left, to the right, anywhere but directly at herself and what she cannot be sure that she is seeing. But her old friend is nowhere to be found until, amidst Barnabas' cries, she – Victoria – the body opens her eyes and proclaims herself to be Josette. The one she always trusted. The one who persisted, despite claims of “overactive imagination,” or downright insanity.

Now, Josette does not even look at Victoria.