Chris straightened her back, her lips pursing and chin tilting slightly upwards as it set. Anger and an ice cold pain where all that was left to her. "You needn't worry, Victor," she said, her voice carrying a note of resignation. "The Daphnels will be rid of me soon enough." She wanted to say more, say something to make him feel as she did, to inflict pain on him as his words had wounded her, but it was clear that he didn't hold her in high enough regard for her words to carry the intended weight.

Even so she took a step towards him and poked him squarely in the chest 'but you might have done be the courtesy of telling me all of this ten months ago - or better yet before you married me.' She said her voice little more than a pained hiss. 'I knew then you did not love me, but level of disdain I could not have imagined.' She turnd on her heel gliding back towards the bedroom and her body.

The sight of her 'corpse' laying prone on the bed caused her to shudder, but she sat on the edge of the bed, glancing one last time at her husband, before laying out on top of her body, her ghostly limbs passing through it, settling into it like a warm bath.

There was a second of silence and then a rattling gasping breath as her breathing switched to deep manuel breaths, following by hacking coughs. Her head swamp and her eyes hurt, leaving them open had been a terrible mistake as everything was blurry and she tried to blink it away.

  

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I am my mother's savage daughter, The one who runs barefoot cursing sharp stones

I am my mother's savage daughter, I will not cut my hair, I will not lower my voice
MJ made glory

There was a lot to take in from her words, which competed in his mind against the sensation of her poking him in the chest. It had clearly not been intended to be a pleasant gesture, but it had been so long since he had touched anything that he could not help but be struck by the novelty of the experience. What would it change to have someone with him who could actually interact with him the way living humans did? Presumably he'd never know, as she had made it clear now that she intended to leave, but she'd clearly misunderstood him somewhere. He couldn't have told her ten months ago what he'd only realized gradually over that time. Up until today he had never looked his feelings in the face enough to put it into words at all, and he'd only done it today because of the shock of seeing her like this. Certainly he could not have warned her before they married that the notion of lingering forever as a ghost would give him such a existential dread. She had misunderstood him, which meant he could clarify something and smooth this over. If not now, then soon — they had eternity together now to figure it out.

Except then his deceased wife came back to life.

Victor had been following her into the bedroom, the word wait on the tip of his tongue, and he saw the whole thing. "What the hell?" he couldn't keep from saying — meanwhile recoiling on instinct from the unexpected and unnatural turn of events, and in the process accidentally falling back through the wall of the room and out of the space.

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Fabulous set by Lady!

As Christabel returned to her own body, the sensation of reanimation was disorienting. Her surroundings blurred and shifted before gradually coming back into focus. She looked around her, but Victor was nowhere to be seen. Sadness and anger welled up within her. The realization that he had left her, or at the very least, hadn't waited for her, settled in, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth.

She felt sick, not only with the nausea of her sudden return but also with the overwhelming sense of what was lost. The room seemed to close in on her, and the weight of her husband's absence was suffocating.

She couldn't stay here. She couldn't bear the solitude and isolation any longer. She reached for her wand, lying on her bedside table, and jabbed it a little too forcefully at her dress. The dusty lavender fabric transformed into a rich forest green. It was a small -perhaps petty act of defiance.

With determination, she approached the fireplace, throwing a handful of Floo powder into the grate. She stepped into the flames, her family home's name on her lips, away from the pain and rejection that had haunted her in this place more than her husband's ghost ever had.

  

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I am my mother's savage daughter, The one who runs barefoot cursing sharp stones

I am my mother's savage daughter, I will not cut my hair, I will not lower my voice
MJ made glory

Victor couldn't have been out of the room for more than a second or so, but by the time he'd regained his balance and emerged back through the wall his wife was already one foot in the fireplace.

"Christabel!" he yelled, but the flames lit up green and she was already gone. He wasn't close enough to catch up before the fireplace returned to its usual orange. He would have followed hot on her heels — he could very well imagine she would be going to the Dempsey estate — if only he could work the floo powder himself.

"Damnit," he swore, and ran his hands through his hair again. He needed to talk to her, to try and explain himself, but also to get an explanation from her — he still had no idea what the hell had just happened.

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Fabulous set by Lady!