Besieged and Beset

by deedeebef

Summary:

After the events of Ready or Not 2: Here I come, Grace and Faith MacCaullay inherit a mansion in the New England countryside (they suspect Mr La Bael is at work). They decide to move in to figure out their trauma and hopefully get their mental health under control.

That's when Titus Danforth reappears, back from the dead.

Grace and Faith have to decide what to do with him (do they kill him again and again? Do they keep him around? He's kind of a psychopath), and how to keep themselves safe from outside threats. Again.

Notes:

I did my best to edit/rewrite and ensure that the inconsistencies were as minimal as possible. Please forgive anything that remains.

I'm planning on posting two chapters per week until I'm finished with posting. Some chapters are long, some are very short (apologies for the short ones!)

I will have two final chapters - this is a choose your own adventure. The first is a HEA, the second contains main character death. Your choice :)

I will add a chapter at the end that has deleted scenes that didn't fit in this story at the very end.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it :)

UPDATE: I realized that if I post three chapters per week instead of two, I have the opportunity to do a really fun thing for myself and post my final chapters on my birth week. So I'm going to do that instead :D

update update: I post on Thursdays.

Recommended listening:
This is Not American (Ahn Trio)
Arrival of the Birds (The Cinematic Orchestra, London Metropolitan Orchestra)
Rue des trois freres (Fabrizio Paterlini)

Chapter 1: Prologue

After they survived being hunted like animals for sport by the uber wealthy, the sisters MacCaullay tried to make a life in New York again.

They moved in together, not necessarily because they wanted to live with each other, but out of necessity.

They were the only ones who understood what had happened to them. They worried that any day the cops would show up on their doorstep.

They prepared to run, just in case.

But the city wasn’t a kind or soft place to live. Especially for two women who had been through what these two had been through.

The city was loud, abrupt, and full of shadows that could seem like threats when glimpsed from the corner of one’s eye.

Faith was better off than Grace, but not  at all normal.

Grace was flinching at shadows, not sleeping, and soon developed a panic disorder.

They couldn’t tell the therapists WHAT they had been through, but they got enough therapy and did enough online research that they learned how to help Grace.

First step: move somewhere quieter. Calmer. Less of a constant threat to her nervous system.

Next step: grounding exercises.

And, wouldn’t you know it? As soon as Grace got her diagnosis, she inherited not only a substantial sum of money and assets, but a mansion in the New York countryside, with enough land to count as a small town.

And the mansion couldn’t be sold.

So Grace and Faith talked it through, decided that to get Grace better and to help Faith too, they would move to this mansion and live quiet lives and figure their mental health issues out.

They had enough money to live their entire lives without working, if they decided to.

Tempting.

But they knew better than to depend on Mr La Bael’s benevolence.

Good way to get damned for all eternity.

So they decided on rehab in the country for a year, and then they could figure their shit out from there.

They decided to learn things while they were at it too: that could be therapeutic, right??

Grace wanted to learn to cook. It seemed useful: and if you help the body, you help the mind. She also wanted to learn how to patch people up: that could be useful, always.

Faith decided she wanted to kick ass. So she started learning how to shoot anything that could be shot. 

And that is where we find our ladies at the beginning of this story. Trying to lead quiet, unassuming lives.

And maybe they’re losing their minds because they’re used to the city? It’s an adjustment, that’s for sure.

Fate (or Mr La Bael) has a different plan for them. Half a year into their little mental health experiment, they discovered what, exactly, that plan entailed.