Title: Second chance emotion
Fandom: Ready or Not (2019)
Characters: Grace Le Domas/Alex Le Domas, Le Bail.
Rating: Mature
Length: 1,704 words
Spoilers: For the whole movie.
Content notes: Contains (a LOT of) swearwords, referenced canonical character death, referenced and non-explicit injuries, violent thoughts.
Author notes: Not the fic I was planning to write for this challenge, but that one got a bit... carried away. Also claimed as the next entry for my 100 fandoms challenge
Summary: Grace makes a choice. It doesn't play out the way she expected.


The patio steps are cold, despite the fire raging at her back. Grace can feel the heat twisting into the lace of her dress, drying the blood to leave the fabric stiff and hot against her spine, and she thinks if she sits here much longer, she’ll start to feel the pattern of the brocade searing into her skin. The contrast of cold stone under her ass and digging into her calves is weird, although not unpleasant yet, and Grace takes another long, slow drag on her cigarette, letting the smoky taste flood her mouth and draw deep in her chest.

Fuck it, she doesn’t want to move, so she’s not going to. She’s earned herself fucking five minutes of nothing.

“Ma’am?”

Grace closes her eyes, and her mouth twitches with something that might be trying to be either a smile or a scream, she’s not sure. No rest for the wicked.

Opening her eyes, she drops the cigarette, grinding the glowing butt under her heel, and fixes the young police officer who’s stepped in front of her with a bleary stare. He looks strangely familiar: short brown hair, dark eyes, and a smartly styled beard, and she frowns against the disconcerting edge of déjà vu. “Yes?”

“Are you alright, ma’am? Have you been checked by the paramedics?” He doesn’t sound too concerned, more as though he’s following a script that he knows he needs to run through, and Grace waves him off with a tired hand that doesn’t have a hole in the middle of it.

“I’m fine,” she says, “For a given value of fine, which is breathing and unlikely to stop anytime soon, anyway. What do you need from me, officer…?”

His smile is a quicksilver flash in the early dawn light. “Officer Baille, ma’am, and your name will do for a start.”

“Grace W-“ Grace cuts herself off with a grimace. “Sorry, Grace Le Domas, I guess.”

Officer Baille arches an eyebrow. “You guess?”

“It was my wedding day,” Grace explains, and it’s weird how much that doesn’t bother her. She’s spent so long eating, sleeping and breathing this shitstorm of a wedding that it’s just strange to not care about it anymore and she glances back at the burning house behind her. From somewhere deep inside the inferno, something collapses with a loud crack-crash, and she jumps. “Jesus!”

“Hell of a wedding night,” the officer says quietly, and something bubbles up in Grace’s chest, crazy and reckless and wild, until it bursts out of her as a laugh, just tinged with a hysterical edge. She doubles over, her uninjured hand wrapped across her stomach, and just lets it take her, burning in her chest and aching in her belly, until she’s gasping for air between each peal of laughter.

Poor cop, she thinks, although it’s not enough to curb her amusement. He probably thinks she’s fucking certifiable. She probably is.

“Sorry, just…you have no fucking idea,” she says, once the giggles have subsided enough for her to get the sentence out. Officer Baille doesn’t answer; he just gives her a measured, thoughtful look, tilting his head to one side as he studies her. His eyes prickle over her skin, uncomfortable bordering on creepy, and Grace has had enough creepy tonight to last her a lifetime. It’s more than enough to push down her laughter and she tips her chin up defiantly, making sure to let him see the challenge in her eyes. “Anything else you need from me, officer?”

His smile in response is fucking chilling. “I was just wondering whether you understood the implications of what’s happened here tonight.

The remains of Grace’s laughter shrivel up to nothing in her throat. “What?”

Baille looks past her, toward the inferno raging behind her, and his eyes glitter with the reflected flames. “You said it yourself. You are a Le Domas. In fact, you are the last surviving Le Domas, which means you have inherited that name.” He pauses for a significant second, and his eyes flick back to Grace before he adds, “And everything that goes with it.”

Grace’s mouth goes dry, and she is suddenly, unequivocally certain that this guy isn’t a police officer. She scrambles to her feet, her converse skidding noisily against the rough stone, and he shoots her an amused look.

“Fuck. Off.” she says, emphatically. “I am a Le Domas on a technicality only, and believe me, I’ll be ditching this crazy shit at the first possible chance. I don’t want their money, or their batshittery, or anything else on offer, thanks.”

Baille shrugs, and, even though he’s turned away from the fire, Grace can still see the flames flickering in his eyes. “It’s too late, Grace. You’ve already staked the claim and the chain is unbroken. The debt must be paid.”

Grace’s hands curl into involuntary fists at her side, and she bites back a scream as her fingers dig into the throbbing mess of her left palm. “Listen fuckface,” she bites out. “Let me make myself as clear as I possibly can, because I really don’t want there to be any confusion. I am not fucking one of them. I don’t want their fucking money, and I don’t care about whatever fucking deals they made. I am not playing any more fucking games. I refuse.”

“You refuse?” Baille echoes, thoughtfully, and Grace smiles, bloodstained and cut-glass sharp.

“Did I stutter?” she says, sweetly. “Yes, I fucking refuse. I mean, you can kill me, but then you’ll have no-one to keep your stupid deal, will you?”

“That’s true,” Baille allows, and Grace lets her smile twist viciously, more teeth than humour. It feels good

“Then I choose not to be a Le Domas,” she says. “You can keep their fucking fortune. I choose a shit-ton of therapy. And tequila.”

“Do you?” Baille murmurs, and he’s suddenly there, close enough that Grace can see where the whites of his eyes should be and can feel the brush of his heated breath over her cheek. “How very… human of you to presume that you get a choice.”

Grace shrugs and brings her fists up in an unspoken promise of violence, because fuck him if he thinks she’s going down without a fight. “What are you gonna do, shitstain? I’m. Not. Playing.”

Baille smiles, a humourless stretch of lips over teeth that, despite everything, still sends a shudder crawling down Grace’s spine. “I like you,” he says. “No-one has said no to me in a millennium, and just for that, Grace Le Domas, I will give you a choice. You can go around again.”

“I’m sorry,” Grace says, because there’s no way he just suggested what she thinks he just suggested. “You want me to do what the fuck now?”

Baille’s eyes glitter. “You know the outcome now. You know what will be waiting for you at the end. So, make your choice and we’ll talk again. If you survive this time.”

He snaps his fingers suddenly, loud and in her face, and the world tilts sharply sideways. There’s a rush of air that fills Grace’s ears, drowning out every other sound under its thundering drone, and she blinks uselessly against the wave of darkness that surges across her vision, leaving everything black in its wake. She can feel herself falling, dropping inexorably forward, or backward, she can’t even tell, and she claws uselessly at the empty space around her, trying to regain her balance without any means of doing so.

Fucking fuckity fuck.

Her stomach churns nauseously, and she swallows back the bile that floods across her tongue. She’s tumbling, unstoppably and haphazardly, through nothing and she wonders briefly, hysterically, if she got Baille so terribly, terribly wrong. She doesn’t know what death feels like but, in her worst nightmares, she can imagine that it feels a lot like this.

Despite it all, Grace doesn’t fucking want to die.

Then it all… stops. There’s a dizzying transition from motion into stillness that makes her head swim, and then Grace draws her first breath in what feels like hours. Everything clears, the darkness bleeding out of her eyes and her ears popping to return her hearing in full force. She looks around, pausing for just a second to take in her surroundings, and, when everything snaps into a sharp and disgustingly familiar focus, briefly contemplates punching herself in the face.

She’s in Alex’s room, seated at the dressing table, with her wedding bouquet sitting untouched off to one side. Grace stares at her reflection, at her pristine hair and her perfectly made-up face. She looks down at her dress, pure white and immaculate, without a tear or a bloodstain in sight.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

Behind her she hears the door click open, and Alex appears in the mirror, framed in the doorway and still stupidly handsome in his groom’s outfit despite everything that says she should know better. His eyes crinkle as he smiles at her, but now that she knows it’s there, Grace can see the strain under his easy demeanour.

It’s quite an effort to hold back from smacking the smile straight off his face, the treacherous little snake. That Grace manages it at all is testament to some fucking depth of self-control she didn’t even know she possessed. She stays still, her hands (uninjured now, at least) curling into fists again as Alex steps up behind her, his fingers coming to rest lightly on her shoulders, and he presses a soft, careful kiss against her hair.

“How’re you feeling, honey?” he says, “You ready for this?”

He sounds so genuine that she almost can’t stand it. Forget punching herself, Grace is going to punch him. In the dick.

“You have no fucking idea,” Grace says, shrugging off his touch and pushing herself up out of the stool. Even to her own eyes, her expression in the mirror promises bloody retribution, and Alex’s smile falters in turn as his eyes meet hers. He frowns, clearly confused, and Grace’s smiles, tight and mean. Hell hath no fury, etcetera, etcetera.

Fuck Alex. Fuck his fucking family. And fuck Le Bail. None of them are going to know what fucking hit them.