Roleplay: Hela x Lettie

Dated: September 13, 2026

The Farmhouse

Hela had learned precisely two things about Grimwych since leaving the watchtower the night before. Firstly, it was bigger than she had initially hoped...even though small, it was still bigger than her hope. Secondly, inconvenient daylight still occurred. Shortening her window for exploration. Still she believed it would have the same effect of her here as it did back home. Soon she would learn that this world at this time was different, today was not that day. Once dawn had started to threaten the horizon, she abandoned any attempt at finding answers or a way home in order to seek shelter. Sure she could go back to the watchtower, but it was close to the lake where both herself and that Rory person had come from. Something a little more out of the way and less likely to be found was preferable. The farmhouse was the best option, it didnt mean it was a good option, but it was out of the way, not in the middle of the village and the walls were more intact.

Like many of the other buildings, it was easy to get inside. Still the curtains were drawn just as the golden sun started to loom it's ugly head over the horizon to touch the word. A little more darkness in the house meant a little more room to move. However shards of light still cut through the gaps in the material. Eventually, she had claimed a dark corner as her own. Her clothes not thankfully dry, were not as fresh as she had wanted but that would have to wait for another day, so she sat with her jacket folded under her as a poor substitute for a cushion. Legs crossed in front of her while a small pile of letters lay on her lap. She had found them on the desk, remains of whatever life had been here before. Hela turned one envelope over between her fingers, opening it to pull out a rather ordinary bill, eyes scanning intently as if it somehow might hold the answer to the mystery of why she was here.

Lettie had found a world in which she could fit into it without having to do much. Her torn and tattered clothing with dirt stains easily a match for the abandoned world left to wither and crumble without occupants. Black cargo pants sporting numbers holes and an oversized sweater of matching hue with lucky the cat, just an extra hole, and boots too. They'd gone through the wringer coming out of that lake and into the woods, but at least had dried out. The little scarecrow werelynx was back in full stride. She even had a day old gash that ran the length of her collarbone already. A night of exploring had found her wandering a path that led to a town begging to be explored but time was limited for curious play. She needed to search wider out, looking for answers or others. A way out or at least some place safer than the woods to roam. The train station had kept her interest for a bit, the oddities of it eating up most her night. Curiosity had gotten the best of her there and some specter of her imagination, calling itself Rory, appeared.

That scent. The lynx knew it, faint as it was wafting on the tiny breeze of morning. Away from the tracks she followed it to the abandoned house. Interesting. Cautious steps led her up the stairs to the door. Worn black boots hardly made noise with her steps except for those laces undone, making little tap noises as the strings flapped about. Pausing on the porch she gave it another sniff, stronger here. Her dirty hand moved to wiggle the knob. It turned, easily enough and the young woman let herself inside, calmly closing the door behind her. "Past life ghostie Hela? Is that you I smell?"

Hela stopped reading immediately. Gone was the interest about the list of charges of grain deliveries. Up her gaze snapped to the room, to see the source of that voice. She knew that voice, that voice did not belong here. Not her, she was so young, so unlived. That girl had not yet loved, adventured, achieved what she needed to, was meant to. For several seconds Hela did not move at all until she finally looked at the doorway "Lettie?" There were very few circumstances which hearing the were-lynx's voice was unwelcome; this however was one of them, this was number one unwanted reason to not want to hear Lettie's voice. The bill slid forgotten from her fingers.

Hela had spent most of the night considering her reason for being here and only one reason had ever been deemed a possibility. She was dead. Not dead in her usual sense, the undead.But dead dead...purgatory. Now Lettie was here.

Hela pushed herself to her feet immediately stopping when a shard of golden light divided the floor between them. The artist remained on her side, in the dark. Her expression had changed entirely. "What happened to you?" Her eyes traveled over Lettie, narrowed and judging. The torn clothing, dirt and the gash on her collarbone. That just confirmed it to her. "Who killed you?"

Lettie leaned back against the door after she had closed it. Finding Hela of all people here brought a broken sadness upon her dirty freckled face. It wasn't that she wasn't excited for a familiar face to find in this abandoned world, but that just meant she had been killed in one of her nine past lives by the woman she'd come to find as family like. She didn't remember what had happened before she woke up on banks of the strangle brown hued water. Purple, one of them colors that didn't exactly always cross over to her color-blind vision properly, especially the lightest and darkest shades. Had there been a fight between the artist and student? Had the glimpse of whatever she'd seen at the art show chosen her for the next meal for knowing of its existence? What had she done wrong...

This had to be the world stories told about where ones waiting for some judgement went. Purgatory? That was story she'd heard before somewhere, once. She was dead. The ghosts of her past here to determine her fate moving forward. She was going to fail and be trapped here forever. She couldn't hurt Hela, even if she'd killed her, snuffing her last life of her many out.

"You did..." she said softly in the smallest of whispers from her side of the light separating them. It wasn't true, but that was the conclusion she'd just reached upon finding her here too.

Hela blinked once...then twice...then thrice. There were answers she had expected. A name, perhaps one familiar, perhaps one not, an accident or an adventure gone wrong. Hell, something involving one of Solol's many residents. She did not expect it to be herself. "I did?" There was no immediate dismissal; she knew what she was, what she was capable of and she knew control, especially when the monster took over, was not something she had. A frown quickly slipped on her face as she tried to recall what had happened. There was no recollection of an argument with Lettie, no recollection of killing her, even when the monster held control, she was always aware. Nothing. Then again, she did not remember her own death either. "I am so sorry. I don't remember killing you."

Her eyes focused once again on the young woman, narrowing "Does that mean, you killed me?" There was genuine confusion in the question rather than an accusation. Because that would change things. Hela shifted closer to the edge of the shadow but stopped before sunlight could stop her. "I thought Riggs did." Her head tilted to the idea."So either I killed you, you killed me or Riggs killed me..." Her fingers lifted, counting each possibility before falling uselessly back against her side. "I am so confused." For several seconds, Hela simply looked at her. Then she breaks the silence "Do you actually remember me doing it, Lettie?"

Lettie stayed where she was leaning against the door to the house with the beam of light keeping her separated from Hela. She was studying both what she could collect sight wise of the inside of the space they occupied and the appearance of the other woman. Looking her over from head to toe trying to place any lingering marks from the living world into this one to new ones this strange place might have gifted her upon arrival. Her face was scrunching into confusion, trying so hard to remember this version of the woman standing before her. Reasoning she'd look the same or very similar if she'd been the one to take her last life. It had to have been recent enough. Except, there was no memory forming. Nothing. She couldn't even place that particular outfit as one she'd seen her in before, even if it was similar to things she normally wore. "I'm sorry I was bad to need killed by you." she replied softly.

She was confused, so very confused. She was listening as Hela spoke, giving up what she'd gathered about their predicament in the death world. The confusion twisted into more of that same emotion, "I didn't kill you..." she whispered, or if she had there was no memory of it, "I haven't any memory of you killing me..nor of me killing you." She'd blacked out before, when the muzzle was attached, and killed several. The muzzle had been ripped right off her face by Reznor some time ago and no such blackouts since. "Riiigs?" The named came out with a purred notion to the vowel, a question. "I've only met him once, at the bar. We had a drink, but he said he liked me enough to not let his blades have me." That solved that, Hela couldn't be her killer, could she? If neither had memories of murdering the other.

That was it, confusion be damned. The lynx pushed off the door and ran across the gap, barreling past the light keeping them parted. Her arms moving to wrap around that woman in a hug with very little warning. She wasn't crying, she wasn't not crying, "I promise, I didn't kill you, please don't hate me."

Hela did not have time to process that neither of them remembered murdering each other or being murdered by the time barely had time to process the fact that neither of them appeared to remember murdering the other before Lettie launched herself across the room. "Hell....The rest vanished on impact. Instinct took over before she could thing, her arms came around Lettie automatically, one around her shoulders, the other settling against the back of her head. Then she simply stood there. Though the return hug had been automatic, the artist perhaps was not the best versed in them and she remained stiff and rigid for a moment. A deep sigh then escapes her and she relaxes a fraction. Then a "What?" is blurted out. She pulled back enough to look at Lettie, though hands remained firmly and protectively on the girl's shoulders. "No. I absolutely do not hate you." Lips purse into a fine line before she adds "And Lettie, what do you mean by bad enough that I needed...." a shake of her head "...that is not how murder works. Not when I am involved." Maybe that was not so reassuring. Another exhale and she pulled the younger woman back against her before she could wander too far into the pit of confusion that had produced that apology in the first place. "I don't hate you Lettie." she confirmed, certain. "And you didnt kill me." She wasn't certain about that but her tone did not betray her. "Riggs did." That was the only plausible theory. He had been given a very clear oppurtunity, he had declined it. Perhaps he had regretted it, perhaps that opportunity had been too easy and he needed to create another that was a challenge enough to be worth it for him. That man was impossible to read. There was nothing that could be done about it now though. "I know you don't normally feel pain but...you are hurt. Want me to look at it?" Then a slight pull away "And you can tell me if you have bumped into anyone else in this place."

Lettie wrapped those arms tightly around Hela, finding comfort in a familiar presence in a world lost of the life that once ruled it. Her face lost into her as she just held onto her, afraid that if she let go Hela would vanish and she'd be alone again. She'd already lived that life in the forests of where the two of them came from, she'd found that she liked people enough, some of them anyways, to not want to relive that part of her life. She didn't care the hug was stiff, it was still Hela, a solid Hela she could hold onto. Her mismatched gaze slowly lifted up to look at Hela. Those eyes changing color between every blink; blue, feline green, stormy grey mimics of Desiree, black voidless pools that matched Riggs and many others they knew whose eyes held that empty colorless darkness. What didn't appear was that solid demonic green Hela had seen before. "Thats what they do to bad cats...they put them down." She said, as if that was the most common fact known to mankind. She'd clearly heard it enough somewhere that she believed it. There was little tracks of clean flesh down her dirty cheeks, where the few tears had fallen and streaked down her face. "You don't hate me?" She whispered back, almost disbelieving her, "Even if I killed you?" Thought Hela then made her statement clear it had to be Riggs. Had the lynx done something that gave him the reason to kill her? He'd almost implied he would if he had a reason to do it, yet the one night she'd met the man with the blades she'd not earned death. Had he killed the pair of them then? It could be possible, some situation neither could remember so bad that it earned the attention of those blades he wore and ended them both in one fell swoop. "Hurt? No? I don't think so..." Hela was right, she couldn't feel pain still and that gash was unknown to her on her chest. That hadn't changed any. "I meet another ghost of one of my lives...though I have no memory of them ever, so maybe an early life? Tallish, brown hair that falls into the face, jacket...Rory...from London of the Utitty Kitty Eagleland."

Hela let all thoughts of Grimwych, death and Riggs disappear the moment Lettie uttered the sentence about cats being put down. Her hands tightened slightly on Lettie's shoulders. "No." It was quiet but firm. "I might be more of a dog person but no. No one is putting you down or harming you again. You are not bad." Then Lettie asked if Hela would still hate her if she had killed her and she genuinely considered it. "I would be annoyed...extremely annoyed. But no. I don't think I would hate you." Especially if neither of them could remember it. Then an incline of her head towards the gash on Lettie's collarbone "You are hurt. You just dont know it." She was just about to push that point further but then a familiar name came up. ""Rory?" The surprise was full of familiarity. London, jacket, and all of it. "I met him last night. At the watchtower. He came from the lake too."Hela's expression shifted from confusion into concentration. "Purgatory is far more social than I thought it would be..."A thoughtful pause "And if you met Rory separately, then this isn't just something involving you and me." That was true but what it meant, she couldnt tell. Hela looked again toward the cut on Lettie's collarbone. "Sit down." That was a demand, not a request. "You can tell me exactly what happened when you two met while I look at that."

Lettie blinked once...twice, the nodded her head at the firm answer Hela gave that offered no room for any 'buts' from the lynx. A tiny sigh, letting out one of those breaths she had not fully realized she'd been keeping in. Hela wasn't going to kill her, again(?), the first part had yet to truly be confirmed. The present running knowledge was left at Riggs had killed Hela and her. Hela made it make the most sense with the missing memories of dying for the pair. She vowed then to tackle him down the next time, if there was one, she saw him for killing Hela. Twisting her head she glanced down to look at the wound there, "Oh, lookie that..." she remarked at the day old or so injury, reaching over to poke at it with a finger. "Yeah, Rory. I met him down at the building down yonder ways. With the benches outside it and the weird ground bumps." Train tracks, except the lynx didn't know the word for them. She'd never seen a train before to know what one was or the bits and bobs that went with them. Moving she found the window and tugged the curtain that was letting that light beam in more closed carefully, "Curtain!" She did say with some excitement, this time meeting Hela she knew what it was. Then she grabbed one of the chair from around that table and moved it to where the other woman indicated and sat down for her injury to be looked at. "He called me Kid. Hmpft. Then asked who I was, but for being a ghost of my past death he didn't know me. I told him I was Mildred. He said I was lying because that is a grandma name. Whatever one of those is. Then said he was from some made up place. He did ask if I was from Solol too...makes sense now, finding you here.

Hela watched Lettie poke directly at the wound with a frown. "Yes. Look at that. Preferably without putting your finger in it. We might be dead but this is our first time being dead dead so I dont know if you can get infected. So stop it." She reached out to try to catch Lettie' wrist to move the hand away. As Lettie cheekily announced the curtain as if she had invented it herself, she blinked and then smiled "Yes." Once Lettie sat, Hela moved closer and carefully inspected the injury, pushing fabric aside just enough to see the extent of it. Her attention remained divided between the wound and the tale." "The building with benches and strange ground bumps." A shake of her head as she went off to rummage in the cupboards to see if there was anything that would assist. "I have no clue about that." No lie either this time. The description was not detailed enough for her to pinpoint it to the train station, not that she knew what a train was. Then came Mildred. Her hunt for supplies paused and a glance over her shoulder, brows lofted "I told him my name was Emma." A bottle of what looked like vodka had some dregs in it, a few rags that looked clean enough were also soon located. "So there are at least three of us here, that we know. Two from Solol and one from Landon Endland in the United Kingdom of...someplace." The bottle of vodka quickly uncorked and sniffed to make sure it smelt at least like it was meant to. It did and then she adeptly tipped the bottle to pour it upon the wound, hand with the cloth soon following to press against it. "I am not quite sure how long we stay in purgatory for. How many people will come and go. Perhaps though, we try to keep this house for now. It is close enough to the village to get supplies but not in the midst of things if anyone untoward comes through here. How do you feel about that?"

Lettie frowned, but let the other catch her wrist before she could prod the wound some more. Dead-dead as the other said they were she was curious if she could feel it if she poked it enough. She refrained. Sitting down she played with a hole in her pants while watching the other digging through the cupboards for something. She shared her story about the other and was fairly good at sitting still. It was a miracle. The house looked like it had much to get into and be curious about. The wound ran from the center of her chest outward to the shoulder following the length of her collar bone and then some, jagged and torn, not a clean cut. "Possible when I feel down through the floor spot that wasn't as sturdy as it looked...Or the tumble out of the tree when the branch broke. Seems this place is fair dead-dead too." Either action could have explained the wound, the first more likely. No flinching as the wound was cleaned. Some things never change. "I don't know. The stories I once heard you had to face the cause of your death and not fail it a second time to get out. So, well, I guess, that gives me at least nine things to pass. If you didn't kill me that means I didn't fail yet, but if Rory did then I already did and this will be my forever dead-dead life." Looking at Hela she gave a small, but excited smile, "I can stay with you...inside? Not outside, yes?" Though she grew up outside, this new strange land of the dead people didn't seem like one she wanted to stay outside in. Before she couldn't question the why outside, she poked herself, "Cat." As if cats belonged outside, not in.

Hela answers with no hesitation "Yes inside, you can stay wit me." She folded the rag over itself and pressed a cleaner section against the wound, giving it one last look before deciding she had done about as much as she could with no actual medical supplies.They could look for some tonight in the village when it was dark. "And for the record, I do not think you need to die nine separate times correctly in order to leave purgatory." The cloth was handed over for Lettie to hold against her collarbone herself. "If Rory killed you, we will simply have words with Rory." Though by the sounds of it, it was not words she planned to have with Rory if he was the cause of Lettie's death. She straightened then and finally assessed both of them. Lettie was torn, bloodied, dirty and looked as though she had been dragged backwards through several hedges. Hela looked down at herself....she might not be injured but she looked no better. Her nose wrinkled in disgust. "Right, we need clothes and a bath. I refuse to live the rest of my life...live the rest of my death looking and smelling like this. We are both foul and smell bad." Hela moved toward the doorway, stopping long enough to glance back at Lettie. "We keep this place. There perhaps might be clothes upstairs, if not we will find some in the village. We need to find food for you...." They would need to find food for Hela too...perhaps...did her dietary requirements continue here if so how...A shake of her head as she self dismissed that question "...medical supplies and yes, paper and pencils cause lets face it we cant be all go all the time, we will need a bit of down time to relax and do our things." As she dictated a plan she reiterated "You are not sleeping outside." A point of her finger upstairs "Go have a look for some clothes we can wear, then we will wash ourselves, get changed and get read to rob purgatory tonight."

Lettie relaxed a little hearing that she could stay inside the house. A lifetime ago she preferred outside walls. Now, facing the unknown, she was going to believe that inside had a good purpose and she wanted in. Outside promised plenty of adventures when she was ready. Taking the rag from Hela she pressed it against the wound herself. It would be as clean as it was going to get for the moment. "You sure that is how it works? I don't mind if you figure out beating death and getting back to the living side before me if I have to do it nine times..." She'd just hope she didn't figure it out too soon and leave her alone already. "Alright, I can do that," she said, acknowledging the need for clean clothes they might find upstairs. The house here seemed a solid place to live for now. That was the function of houses after all. Some mending and cleaning would get it back into more or less proper working order. "I am not sure if I saw any wild life come to think of it..think I heard a pig though." she added quietly. She wasn't paying much attention to the curious nature of inspecting things left to ruin. "No, outside sleeping, got it. Thanks, Miss Hela," she repeated, making sure the other woman knew she was listening fully. Sliding up from the chair she sat the dirty rag on the table and moved to go run up them stairs, she was given a task to complete after all. If she got distracted by the empty upstairs and took forever to find her way back down, well, that was very possible. It might be awhile before that lynx came down the stairs.

Back to the Roleplays Page

Back to the Wiki Frontpage