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The last time Belladonna had hoped things would go perfectly had ended up as a muddled mess of fail and amazing. It had been awful at first, but it had mended itself and while the witch was glad for that, she had also learned a valuable lesson: Don't strive for perfect. Perfect was too high, no one could attain perfect. No one person was perfect, all flawed and fallible. Even if something appeared perfect, nothing was. Underneath the unstained veneer, things were all scratched over, dirty and wrong. Absolutely nothing in this life was perfect.
Instead, she would aim for lovely. That was much more achievable, plus the word was something the young woman definitely identified with. Lovely meant things were calm, relaxed, beautiful. And Belladonna liked those quite a lot.
So the fact that the little cake she had made wasn't perfect didn't bother her one bit. So maybe she messed up the icing a bit so that one side had more than the other, and yes, the little brain crumbles on the top were mostly in the middle because she had wanted them out of her hands as quickly as possible, but still! It really was a lovely cake.
And since it had been made for Mort, it was all the more lovely.

Standing in the Home Eek room, proud of herself and trying to wipe some flour from her cheek, Belladonna felt pretty good. She had successfully made a brain flavored cake for her boilfriend (well, hopefully it tasted like brains, she didn't actually try any) and all that needed to be done now was to deliver it. With a great smile and a toss of her apron onto the counter, the witch sent off a text.



Carefully she transferred the cake to a plate that she covered with a plasticware top. So long as she didn't run or bounce or skip or anything, it would be delivered totally intact! She could definitely, absolutely do this.

Already out of the room and down the hall, the little noise of minor chord bells from the witch's phone didn't even register. All she knew was the trek, the kind gesture she was about to make and the happy, if lately tired, grin she could imagine on Mort's face when he received his surprise. Things had been so strained lately, both of them stressed to unreasonable degrees and well... Belladonna just wanted to do something nice and simple and lovely. A cake was such a little thing, but because it was from her, because it had been made for him, it would be infinitely more special.
And since she had nearly forgotten about the text, once Belladonna reached the Undead Dorms, she promptly set the cake down on a bench outside and fished out her skellyphone. Laundry, hm? Well, the witch didn't really want to wait by his room. She knew how long laundry took. One had to separate their lights from their darks, then the delicates from the super-delicates. And corsets couldn't actually be washed, but the ribbons could if one was extremely careful and maybe she didn't actually think that whole thing through as she trekked through the dorms in search of the laundry room.

But the sound of whirring machines wasn't hard to miss, so with a kick of foot against door, the witch burst into the room with a sing-song voice that proclaimed, "Mooooort! I have your surpriseeeee!" And with all the excitement she could muster (which was honestly quite a lot) Belladonna thrust the cake forward.
She hadn't even bothered to make sure Mort was in the room or that, if he were, that he was even looking at her. Eh, it was all about the entrance anyways.

A yelp was not the way this was supposed to start. Yelps were not lovely, nor did they really set the mood for such a surprise. For a moment, Belladonna fixed the boil with a skeptical, if good natured, look before she sashayed happily into the laundry room.
"Well yeah, but you only just got here. I would have been waiting forever. So I figured I'd cut out the time inbetween and bring it to you!" A few quick steps brought her across the room to him, where she once more brandished the cake. "It doesn't have to be a special occasion for me to do something nice for you." She added, a little softly, momentarily stung by the idea that he thought her so petty and ill-natured that she could only do good by him on special occasions. Instead, she pressed the cake into his hands. "Its brain flavored!"

With the cake happily presented to her boilfriend, the witch then bent down to gather up his clothing.
"I do so apologize for startling you, I didn't mean..." Whatever other words she had meant to say died then and there, as pink eyes fell upon the brightest shade of red. It was splashed across a shirt, of which pale finger delicately closed around. Slowly, as though the red were a minipet she might scare off with too quick movements, the witch stood. It was just a normal shirt, darkly colored with a clever, zombie-themed image on the front. But like someone had thrown paint across it was that red color, dry and altogether too bright. Bright enough that Belladonna stared for a long moment, blinking and mesmerized by it.
"Is...This...?" Her mouth couldn't form the words, her brain couldn't catch up. It was like someone had chopped all her hair off, dissolved it into liquid form, amped the contrast and tossed it onto the shirt. Belladonna couldn't explain it, but she couldn't stop looking.

The pad of one finger reached out, touched the dry substance and recoiled quickly at how it felt. Now she was fascinated in a different way, drawn by this substance she had heard of but never seen, yet suddenly horrified by it too. It made her feel sickened like touching the brain crumbles had, but in a totally different, altogether worse way.
"Is this... Human blood?" Thankfully her face was completely neutral of all the confused emotions she was feeling, but it was so startlingly devoid of emotion that it surely looked strange in comparison to her always smiling face.

Unable to fixate on anything else, the witch stared at the marred shirt and watched as it was wrenched from her hands and thrown into the washing machine. When the shirt disappeared over the edge, the spell was not yet broken, but lessened. With a jerk of her head, Belladonna looked at Mort suddenly, face still neutral but edging toward some boiling mixture of betrayal and anger. Not a flutter of eyelash, or bounce or any of her other tell tale signs of being happy were evident and instead she just stared at him, mouth set in a grim line and a wrinkle nearly formed between her brows. Finally she began to speak, but it was in a low, even voice that somewhat surprised the witch as it didn't at all sound like herself.
"You're lying." It felt like a slap to say so, a crack of pain as the witch tried to keep the hurt from her face. "Besides the fact that you would have had to go out of your way to acquire blood, because you and I both know that Human blood is a very difficult substance to acquire, I would like to think by now I know enough about you. And it seems vastly out of your character to do something like this."
Appearances for the sake of appearances had never been something big for Mort. Look nice, yes. Look nice so that others might comment on it, that they might give praise for it, might even question the methods behind it, no. That was Belladonna's domain.
"It smells a jack awful amount, and no blood one can buy from the store does that. Only fresh blood does."
It was strange to speak in such a passionless voice, but the facts were facts and the witch wanted them out. She needed Mort to know where she stood. Just because she played sweetness and nativity certainly didn't mean she didn't know things. And that hurt too. To think that he lied to her because he thought she wouldn't know.

"Why would you lie to me?" Ah, there was the hurt. It wasn't altogether too much, no dripping sentences filled with betrayal here, only a little ribbon that glimmered in her words enough to be seen. Unusually still, Belladonna did not move her hands or her feet or anything. She stayed rooted to her spot, her pink eyes not even flinching from the zombie. His other words were ignored, nearly scoffed at. A salad? In retribution for a cake? Hardly. It wasn't even payment that she wanted, it was his smile, his happiness. That was what she was fighting so hard for.
And all this hurt just piled onto her shoulders in that moment. It bit into her skin, those aches and betrayals. The fact that he would lie to her after all the times she'd been there for him. That after months of being together, of sharing his pain and his burden and trying to lessen his guilt, he would dump all that aside as carelessly as one dumps laundry into a washing machine. It was enough to make her crumble beneath the sheer volume of hurt, but Belladonna liked to think she was a bit stronger than that. Certainly she was beginning to crack, but she wouldn't shatter just yet. Instead, she would give Mort the satisfaction of doing that. Strange how she operated, if she was going to break or be bruised or cut in any way, she'd rather it be done by someone she loved.

Honestly, it had been a great deal of intuition that had lead the witch to accuse him, but the flinch told her it had been in the right. For that, she was oddly grateful, but it also made her stomach drop. He had lied to her, and now he was lying again. It was so strange, but when before the witch had gotten sad at not knowing, had wilted at the secrets he kept, now she got angry. As though she could trap him, Belladonna took a few steps forward, so she could better bore her gaze into him.
"Last time you fought a Hunter, it turned you all funny. You hurt me and felt awful about it. You would never willingly do that again. That other you wanted me, would have done anything to get to me and you would never harm me like that if you could help it." Her voice stayed clear, strong but still contained that little bit of hurt. He was lying to her. How dare he? What gave him the right, the insane thought that this was a good idea? Or that she would so blindly accept it? Maybe when she hadn't known anything about his Knightly Duties, but now that things got more serious with each day, how could he think that she would just toss up her hands at his words? That she wouldn't care, that she couldn't be trusted with the truth?
It was almost enough to make the witch cry, but she clenched her fists and fought it.

And before she could stop herself, she was standing right underneath him, close enough to reach up and kiss, but it was too late for that. They hadn't even had a greeting peck or hug or anything.
"Where is this blood from? And don't you dare keep lying to me. We have been through too much together for you to keep all these secrets."
It was always that. It was always secrets that Mort couldn't, or apparently now wouldn't, share.
But then the witch softened, for a fraction of a moment as she gazed up at him.
"You think I am still upset about things? No... I... Mortimer..."

It was strange to wield such power that the witch could so fully stop a boy taller, wider and much stronger than herself with the sole power of a look. Any other time she might be proud, any other time Belladonna might gloat about it in a good natured way, or make a joke of it and let it go. But not today. Today she kept the power and used it to get answers. It might be the only time she would be able to do it, to get the answers she wanted and had been refused over so many times. It was starting to feel as though he preferred his secrets and pain to her and her light.
"Then you should have said something." She replied only a few ticks louder than him. Just because she had this power didn't mean she was going to abuse it by shouting at him. Already he looked fragile enough to push over with a small poke of something as little as her pinky finger. That slump of shoulders, that defeated face... Belladonna was one breath away from giving up, from letting all this go, from just leaving him with his cake and letting him work this out alone because that apparently was what he wanted.
But she was altogether too stubborn for that.

So when he told her the truth, when he wouldn't look at her when he said it, the tiniest little gasp escaped and Belladonna took a faltering step back.
"You... Was it because of your duties? Why would you have to go to the Human World? Did you hurt someone?"
Why was this worse than a Hunter? Because Hunters wanted to hurt them. Humans were so oblivious to their existence that they weren't even a threat. So the fact that he had potentially harmed a blameless human was so... Vulgar that Belladonna had to press a hand to her chest to keep the angry words from bubbling out of her. For some inexplicable reason she suddenly felt betrayed, more than just the lie. And that was already a deep gash that was beginning to fester, that Belladonna simply didn't know what to do but stare at him.

Worse, worse, worse, it always got worse. This time, Mort wouldn't even grant her the comfort of his voice. Instead Belladonna only received a small nod, along with a face that she couldn't properly read. He looked disgusted, but in pain too. The anger faltered and instead the witch retracted the step back she had taken, one hand reached out to grasp at his arm. At the feel of him shaking under her fingertips, her neutrality broke and Belladonna finally showed the deep concern she felt for him.
"Are you alright? Did they hurt you?" After all her betrayal, it still centered around Mort. He was always her main concern, always her first worry. Which is why it hurt so much when deemed it best to lie to her.
But that smell, that smell of Human blood permeated everything and the witch scrunched up her nose. It was awful, something she didn't really enjoy but also something that made her crave more.

"There was so much... Was it more than one? Are they... Are they dead?"
For the longest time Belladonna had placed all the blame on Medea and her cause, her bloodlust for revenge. But what if Mort was equal parts to blame? Maybe he hadn't known what exactly they were getting themselves into when he and the others agreed to join her cause, but he also seemed more than willing to continue. She just couldn't understand him, not in this.
Why was he always putting himself in danger? Why wouldn't he just stay safe?

For a moment the witch nearly pulled her hand away, eyebrows crumbled in both hurt and worry. Why would he not want her to touch him? Was he so far gone that he was ready to be done with her? Though he didn't fully pull away, Belladonna still lightened her touch. She wanted to let go, to give him what he wanted, which wasn't her, but she just couldn't. There was just no way she could do that, not yet. She wasn't angry enough for that.
But then the story started, broken and stuttering and incomplete. Belladonna had to put the pieces together and they didn't really fit. Why would he need to kill humans? In what scenario would it be beneficial for him to destroy a pitiful, defenseless human?
"I don't... Understand, why would you need to kill a human? Let alone two?"

It would have been easier, sweeter, to ignore that and just hold him close and let this all go away. To pretend nothing bad ever happened when Little Belladonna was around. But that wasn't true, not at all. With her around things were always scary and bad, with Belladonna around everything always went to batshit and sometimes got better. They got a little more rosey, for a while but then always ended up bad again.
Perhaps that was why Mort didn't want her touching him. Then he'd be alright and could move on from all his hurt and start to deal with his pain.
That was when Belladonna finally let go of his arm, with a start, as though he had burned her. She even looked a bit startled, as if she had only just realized that she was causing him so many problems.
"Why were they going to kill you? How did they even see you? Usually there are protective measures against that..."
Nothing was making any sense!