Work Text:
She woke up, and she hated it.
She hated it. She hated it. Being alive was the worst of it.
James had left her alone. He had wandered further into the hospital to do… well, she didn’t know. Did it matter, really? He was gone now. She had been left to her own devices.
Maria was lying on a hospital bed with scratchy sheets and a stiff pillow. Her pills on the bedside table. Her clothes rumpled from sleep. Her hair was probably a mess, and she needed to fix that before James returned and saw her like this.
Hesitantly, Maria poked her head out of the doorway. She couldn’t see or hear any nurses around, so this was her chance. She tiptoed through the darkness, trying not to make too much noise; it was a very difficult thing to do in boots, but she managed to make it to the ladies’ restroom without any issues.
She splashed cold water on her face and looked into the mirror: skin dripping wet, hair framing her face, makeup slightly smudged. She looked tired. She felt tired. She could probably sleep for the rest of her life and her sleep debt would never be paid. Maria absentmindedly reached for the glass and touched it gently with the tips of her fingers; the cool reflection mimicked her movements, pressing equally against the thin, cold membrane.
It always came back to this. That’s why she was with James in the first place, right? He had said that she looked like his late wife. “Twins,” she muttered to herself as she pulled her hand away and brushed it on her clothes, smoothing out the wrinkles.
Maria wandered back out into the hallway, momentarily forgetting about the danger, or perhaps simply not caring. She felt numb. She didn’t want to think about James anymore, didn’t want to think about his wife or his obsession with her. What did this Mary have that she didn’t? “I’m alive,” she whispered, partially to state the truth and partially to convince herself. “I’m alive and she isn’t. But…”
There was this feeling she had. A pull, almost. She started walking, as if she had a purpose. The sound of her boots against the floor echoed loudly, but it didn’t seem like there were any monsters to stop her. The nurses, with their jerky movements and groans of pain, were nowhere to be found. Even the spectres from Ernest’s mansion hadn’t followed her here. She walked, not consulting any maps, not stopping to look around, just walked, looking for one thing. Maria wanted answers.
A wind was blowing from somewhere, but she wasn’t cold. She knew that somewhere inside she could find Mary. That’s who James was looking for, after all; if Mary was dead, or alive, or something in between, then surely a hospital would be the place to find her. And, she knew she could. Maria could hear water dripping from somewhere. She could hear something shifting, as if turning over in bed. Still, she walked, descending staircases and wandering through rooms as if her life depended on it. In a way, it did.
Eventually, she found it. Found her. Maria walked into a hospital room, saw a shadow in the bed. Saw teddy bears, coloring sheets, and crayons littering the floor, as if a child had left in the middle of playtime. Someone was coughing hard enough to make Maria wince in pain. She reached out, her hand trembling, for the partition curtain.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” came a raspy voice. It sounded familiar. It sounded like her.
Maria frowned. “Of course I’m sure,” she snapped, then promptly tore the curtain open.
Mary was there, lying on the bed. She had bald patches from losing clumps of her oily, unwashed hair, and her skin was rough, scaly, and uneven. If James hadn’t told Maria that she looked like Mary, she wouldn’t have recognized her face as her reflection. She was not hooked up to any medical apparatus; she looked frail and weak in the bed without any symbiotic machines to support her.
“You must be the wife,” Maria said, her voice low. “Sorry, the late wife.”
Mary wheezed out a laugh, then coughed. “Is that all I am to him now?” she asked. “Be honest.”
Maria crossed her arms, her boot tapping against the floor. “What’s so special about you?” she asked. “He said we could be twins. I don’t look anything like you.”
Mary’s chest rose and fell with shaky, unsteady breaths. “I could say the same about you,” she said. “You’re beautiful.”
A lump started to form in Maria’s throat. She swallowed hard, clenching her fists with the effort; her carefully manicured nails dug into the skin of her palms, reminding her that she was alive. “Don’t flatter me,” she hissed. Mary didn’t flinch. “I don’t understand why he’s here to find you if you’re already gone.”
The sick woman frowned, and it looked to Maria as if she had aged ten years in one instant. “I don’t know, either,” she admitted softly, her voice a harsh whisper. “I waited for him for so long. I spent countless days thinking about him. I missed him so much. Why does he only miss me now that I can’t see him anymore?” Maria saw her eyes drift over to the bedside table; there were no flowers or gifts other than a single half-crumpled crayon drawing of a mother cat with a single kitten. “Is it because he doesn’t love me? Did he only love the idea of me? I can’t disappoint him now that I’m dead…”
Maria looked Mary dead in the eyes. “What are you saying? You’re all he talks about!” She felt rage bubbling into her chest and refused to dampen her emotions for Mary’s sake. “Every time he looks at me all he can see is you! He looks so disappointed when he realizes that I’m just Maria and not his precious Mary!” She unclenched and clenched her fists again, her body shaking.
A dark shadow fell across Mary’s face. “Why are you so hostile toward me? I’m not the one mistreating you! I didn’t abandon you in the hospital! I didn’t mistake you for someone else! All I did was commit the crime of being sick!” She exploded into a coughing fit at that, her body curling up from the pain.
“I hate you!” Maria shrieked. In one fluid motion, Maria found herself on top of Mary, her hands around Mary’s throat. She didn’t squeeze, did not press; she held her there, feeling the weak ghost of a pulse throbbing with fear under her grip.
Mary’s hands grabbed at Maria, but there was nothing she could do but lie there, so she went limp. Their eyes locked, Maria’s shining with contempt and Mary’s swimming with tears.
“I hate you,” Maria repeated, not bothering to keep quiet anymore. “Why can’t he just move on already? Why am I here if he doesn’t want me? Ernest told me he was bad, but I don’t have any memory of that. I remember him being so sweet…” She felt her throat close with tears, and she choked out her next words. “I remember you. I remember that stupid video tape. I remember Laura and all her toys. The doctors, the hotel, sitting out on the lake, I remember it all! Why do I remember things that never happened to me? Why am I alive if I never existed in the first place?” Her fingers squeezed slightly around Mary’s throat, not enough to hurt but enough to cause her to panic.
“What do you want?” Mary whispered. “Are you going to kill me, too?”
“I want answers!” Maria yelled. “I’m sick of being your replacement! I want to matter to someone! I want to exist! I want to be real!”
“You are real.” Mary breathed heavily, the weight of Maria on her chest restricting her. “You’re just as real as I am. Haven’t you noticed?”
Maria bit her lip, then dissolved into tears. She pulled her hands away from Mary to cover her eyes. Mary struggled to sit up, and Maria accommodated, opting to sit on the bed next to her to allow her to move freely again.
“Listen, Maria. Neither of us can leave this town. We’re just a memory; we’re the wishes of two people who loved and lost and won’t move on. Can’t you see that?”
“I don’t want to be a ghost,” Maria sobbed. “We’ll die when James and Laura leave. Or maybe it’ll be worse and we’ll live forever without them. I don’t want them to go. I don’t want to exist without them.”
“I’m here,” Mary rasped. Maria felt a cold touch on her hands, and when she uncovered her eyes to look she saw that Mary had reached for them with her own gnarled ones. “You don’t have to be alone. Neither of us do. Let’s just stay here.”
Maria sniffled. “Here?” she asked. “In Silent Hill?”
Mary paused to cough. “Here,” she repeated as she struggled to catch her breath. “Together.”
Maria pulled a hand away to wipe her eyes on the sleeves of her red cardigan. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. She could feel a cough lingering in the back of her throat.
Wordlessly, Mary leaned back into the bed, a sigh escaping her lungs as her body settled into the mattress. She slowly and carefully moved over, allowing a space for another person. “Lie down with me,” she said, reaching up for Maria’s face with an outstretched hand. “We can talk more like this. I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere any time soon.”
Maria hesitated, then slowly moved to lie on the bed next to Mary. She did not get under the sheets, instead choosing to lie on top of them. She didn’t feel like she deserved the comfort of bedsheets, especially not after what she did to Mary.
“It’s funny,” Mary said slowly, adjusting herself as Maria settled next to her. “I love James, and I love Laura. But, if I had the chance to see them again, I wouldn’t take it.”
“What? Why not?” Maria bit her lip. “Don’t you miss them?”
“Yes… Of course I do.” Mary paused to cough, her body shaking with the effort. Maria could see tears in her eyes. “I lived my life, and now I’m here. I don’t think… Well. If things had been different, I would’ve loved to stay with them.” She turned to look Maria in the eyes, and Maria’s breath hitched in her throat. She looked beautiful, with her scraggly hair and her peeling skin and her violent cough. “But, being here with you is just as nice. I want to get to know you better. We have so much to talk about.”
Maria wiped her eyes on her sleeves again, then reached for Mary’s hand. She didn’t pull away. “He’s still looking for you, you know. He says he wants to find you, but I don’t think that’s true. I found you.”
Mary closed her eyes. “You found me,” she said. “You came to visit me. After all this time… I think this is for the best.”
They stayed like this for a while, talking gently, asking questions. Time passed, and it didn’t pass. James continued to wander the hospital with a lonely purpose. The two women fell asleep, unsure about their futures and whether they’d remain.
Somewhere else, Maria woke up again.