And then the hand closes around her ankle, dragging her back into the dissolving Other World.

She screams and grabs at the doorway, fingernails breaking on the frame. The marbles roll out of her pocket and a long, spidery hand swoops down and picks them up. The Other Mother rolls them around in her palm for a few seconds, taunting, and places them in the pocket of her blouse.

Coraline leaps to her feet, grabbing frantically for freedom, but the Other Mother wraps a long pincher-arm around her waist and pulls her close. Globs of black blood roll down her face. She isn't even trying to smile anymore.

"That was a very naughty thing you did just then, Coraline."

There's another sob in Coraline's throat, but again, she manages not to cry. She keeps struggling, keeps fighting, but at the same time she half-collapses with exhaustion and the sheer unfairness of it all.

This close, the Other Mother smells like rot, like something that's been left in a corner somewhere for too long. Her grip feels like wire, tight enough to hurt. With her other hand, she steals the key back from Coraline and shuts the door.

Locking it.

Sealing them into this world, this world that is graying at the edges and only just barely real.

Coraline is alone.

"You didn't play fair," she whispers. She clutches the snow globe in both hands, hugging it to her chest, even as the Other Mother drags her from the last real bits of this world and into the darkening gray beyond. The cat's body disappears with the flooring and carpet. There's so much gray starts to hurt her eyes.

"You promised. I found them all. I found them all!" She starts to fight again, but the Other Mother's grip on her stays strong.

There is no answer to this, of course, because the Other Mother was lying and they both know it and it's so unfair and she wants to cry but she doesn't. She kicks out, but it does nothing against the dark gray. The Other Mother, bone and warping flesh, is the only solid.

She twists her head around as she tries to struggle free, and sees orange and brown up ahead. A hint of floor. A patch of realness. The kitchen table with that pink and white box sitting innocently at the head.

"NO!"

She pushes and shoves and grabs at the Other Mother's fingers, trying to hurt her, trying to make her let go, make it stop, but it does nothing and she's trapped and uselesshelpless and she's crying for real now, nothing but hysterics as she breaks open in a mess of ugly fear.

"You killed them," she sobs out as the Other Mother sets her down in the single chair. "You killed the cat and you killed those kids and you're going to kill me, too-"

"I would never do anything to hurt you, Coraline," the Other Mother says as she picks up the box and opens it to reveal the needle and buttons. "Even when you infuriate me with your disobedience." She has black hollows for eyes, nothing more, but Coraline can feel them watching her, examining her pupils.

The chair warps underneath her, metal ropes twisting from the arm to tie her wrists to the chair. She throws her weight around, bucking, anything to get herself free, but the chair holds tight and she is trapped.

The Other Mother approaches her with the needle. "Hold still, and this won't hurt a bit."

"Don't touch me!" Coraline cries. "Please!" She reaches for any of her pride or bravery but it vanished with the shutting door and the cat's still body. All she has left is the fear and the snow globe in her lap. "Please!" she tries again. Her breath comes in hiccupy gasps, short enough to make her head spin, but she can't stop it, can't focus, can't get a grip, get a grip, Coraline, but she's too goddamn scared. Too sick with the sight of the shiny black needle as the Other Mother approaches her. She screams incoherently, any words she can form.

"I will make good on my word if you make good on yours. We'll have lots of fun, you and your other father and I-"

"YOU KILLED HIM, TOO, YOU KILLED ALL OF THEM-"

"The three of us will plant the most beautiful garden again, and we'll have rats to ride around like horses and take us flying, and toys to entertain forever, and it'll be whatever you want, Coraline, you'll have whatever you could ever want."

Coraline slumps forward, her hair falling into her eyes, staring down at the snow globe. The flakes are swirling around, obscuring the figures.

"I want my parents," she mumbles. "I want my mother."

The Other Mother takes the globe from her, and examine it with her hollow-eyes.

"I am your mother," she says, and drops the globe to the floor.

It breaks open in a splatter of glass. Water gushes to soak through Coraline's slippers. White flecks float on the surface. The couple cracks into pieces, no longer recognizable as anything human.

They said it wouldn't hurt. The ghost children promised, the beldam promised.

It's not supposed to hurt.

In retrospect, maybe she should hold still.

But she can't, can't help but shake and fight and scream as needle stabs into her skin, and the Other Mother is growling curses and Coraline is not going to give up that easily.

But there is no way to fight, because she's trapped.

Trapped as something is sewn in her,

and other things torn out of her,

secret, hidden parts, like every thought she's ever had, like all the air she hasn't breathed yet,

and loosing these hurts the worst.

It's dark for a while. Inside-of-your-eyelids dark, underwhelming.

And then there is color.

Oranges and blues and red, saturated enough to burn, eating into her body until her skin turns technicolor.

There are toys of bursting brightness, toys that spin in different dimensions, flying animals to play with her. She grows wings and flies in the cotton-candy clouds. Gills sketch into her skin and she dives beneath the tunnels of lakes in the garden.

Although she is always hungry, there is always plenty to eat. Cakes and candies and sweet things without names. She sleeps more than usual, too, in beds of lace and gossamer thread.

Sometimes her arms tremble with exhaustion, and her skin is pale where the colors haven't gotten to her, and sometimes she wants to scream with loneliness and she doesn't know why.

But it's beautiful here. It's all she ever wanted.

Sometimes she has nightmares of clawed fingers and dark winged things. Her mother will hold her, whispering that it will be okay. Coraline's button eyes can't close, but she can stop seeing, take a break from the colors, fall asleep in her mother's comforting arms.

A/N:

I don't know if I'll update this. Probably. It doesn't work as a oneshot so I feel like I have to. As a warning, I'm a total cop-out when it comes to updating things. But it's three in the morning so I'm going to bed, maybe.