She couldn’t remember the last time she stood under the hot showers within the Viper Den, face turned upward into the spray as she prayed for pain to go away. It must have been one of the last time Raceaux sent her back rather than make her stay at his estate. In those days, the Den had been her home and its courtesans her Sisters. Now, the women who lived in those halls were her children. Grown, sexually active, conniving children separating the nobility of Ishgard from their gold.
And her real children were six blocks down the road, blissfully unaware of their mother’s decision to disappear for a little while-- not that she disappeared, really. If anyone bothered to look for she hadn’t so much as left the contiguous city-states. She took a night off to get drunk with two old friends, and now she took the latest shower she had taken in three years. Most of the girls had already sent their clients away.
Morning was much closer than twilight, but she gave no thought to the way the world moved in the Viper Den during those hours. Some of the younger men snuck away before the daylight to return home to wives that expected them much sooner. Some of the girls snuck away to freshen up for their clients that might awaken early. Yet still, she was the only one in that room.
All that time that she spent away from home remained fruitless. The unease in her chest and her everyday discomfort refused to be cleansed no matter what she tried to do. Parties among the nobility, adventures on her own to far distances across the sea-- none of it mattered, really. She always woke up angry, like something in her chest wanted to break. The coil never released. The trap never sprung.
That night, it kept her awake. It was the only reason she showered before the sun rose. No amount of alcohol put her asleep. No thoughts of family or home comforted her. She could have given up and walked home with a bottle of champagne in her system. No one would have minded, probably would have enjoyed it, really. Meziene let herself out of her steaming stall to look at herself in the steamy mirror, and suddenly, she felt a shift in the world.
Something was happening that cleansed the grogginess of drink from her mind. The coil in her chest drew tighter as the door to the showers swung open, and the gasps of fear and alarm alerted her to the arrival of another person. She turned, and there stood the youngest of her Vipers. Gislane, a bright eyed thing that drew many eyes in many courts, but in the low lights of that bathroom, her eyes were dark.
“Gislane? Are you alright?” Meziene forgot herself as she approached the woman while wrapped only in her towel.
Her Vipers knew to go to her for anything. She preached it during many parlor meetings, and over the last three years, no one had troubled her. Meziene saw the trouble before it started-- but this time, she had missed something. As distance closed between the young Viper and her Revered Mother, Meziene saw the hard bruise on the elezen’s bicep, on her neck, and the fresh blood over her collar bone. How had she missed it at any distance?
“Who-- who were you with tonight? Tell me!”
Gislane stumbled closer and steadied herself with two hands on Meziene’s shoulders. She looked at her with dark, fearful eyes. The Black Viper used to see that look in the mirror, when Raceaux was still her benefactor. Gislane saw no way out.
“He-- he isn’t normally like this, Revered Mother. I thought-- I thought just a squeeze of my throat was fun for him but we…” The young woman trailed off as she dropped her head and allowed herself to cry.
The coil in Meziene’s chest continued to tighten. Her jaw tensed as she wrapped both arms around the half dressed apprentice and comforted her as sobs broke out of her throat.
“Is he still here?”
“He was… he was dressing himself when I ran.”
Meziene tightened her fist and pressed her own nails hard into her palm. The anger, the restlessness in her chest finally ready to break. An opportunity presented itself close to home, as part of her expected it would eventually. She could not abandon Gislane no matter how much she wanted to march up the stairs and find the young lord that did this to one of her girls.
But Fate treated her kindly. As Gislane cried, the door to the shared bathroom swung open again. The young girl weeping in her arms startled and tried to fight away, but Meziene refused to let her go. She held her tight and made eye contact with the half dressed noble that presented himself, hot blooded as ever.
“Gislane-- come back,” He held a hand out in their direction as if he did not understand the situation he landed in,” come now.”
“She isn’t going anywhere with you, sir.”
“Fuck you. I paid for her. I’ll take her where I like-- which is right back to bed.”
“Your money gives you her time, not her blood. Not in this building,” The Revered Mother snarled. She felt the bite of her own nails in her skin and knew there would be blood there soon.
“What do I owe for the blood then? Three thousand for a cut? Six?”
That was it. The deep tension Meziene couldn’t shake for months suddenly snapped in her heart, and she unwound her arms from around Gislane. She turned the pale woman’s chin up to her and looked her in the eye while the man behind her drew a knife from his belt.
“Go to Yvaine’s room. He will protect you,” Meziene turned Gislane around and nudged the woman aside.
“I can’t-- I can’t go through him,” Gislane began to explain,” -- what are you going to do--”
She did not finish. Meziene crossed the length of the room in a few long strides before throwing herself at the unnamed noble. The man raised his knife to her, but with both hands out ahead, she wrangled his arm away from position and fought him for purchase of the weapon. They struggled while Meziene nodded toward the doorway for Gislane to flee, and the girl took the hint.
Alone in that bathroom, it didn’t matter what happened to the fool that took a knife to her girls. No one was there to see her snap his wrist. Her guests may have heard him scream a floor up or down from their location, but it didn’t matter. It elated her to make the abuser scream.
Kill him. Make him suffer. A familiar voice whispered in her head. She needed no approval. The man’s knife clattered to the ground as he swung his opposite arm on her. The blow landed squarely in her left side, causing her to grunt in pain, but the woman never let him go. She used her hold on his arm to toss him forward into a porcelain sink. It shattered under the force, and in the mirror, she saw herself enveloped in a dancing red-black shadow.
Briefly, it alarmed her, but the task at hand required her full attention. As the man gathered himself up from the floor, Meziene dove upon him with purpose. There, on the floor of the Den’s shared showers, she took hold of a chunk of porcelain and slammed it into the man’s head over and over and over again.
Every piece of white stone that broke away bloodied and flaking unwound another part of the coil in her sternum. When the first chunk crumbled into nothing, she took up another and continued. Meziene lost track of the time she spent breaking the man’s skull open and spilling his brains onto the floor, but by the time she gathered herself, nothing remained of his face.
The sheer relief in every inch of her body left her feeling as if she just spent the most pleasant evening with her lovers. The dancing shadow she saw in the mirror peaked into her peripheral vision as she looked up at the ceiling and counting the drops of blood that she managed to fling up there in her fury.
She needed another shower.
Meziene turned her head to the right and looked at herself in the wall length mirror at the opposite end of the long row of shower stalls. She saw the shadow properly now, and she had seen it plenty of times enough to know…
“Dal--Dal. I need you. I need all of you at the Den. Please.”
The Amazing Devil, Marbles / Artemisia Gentileschi, Susanna and the Elders (1610), Judith and her Maidservant (1625) and Elisabetta Sirani, Timoclea Uccide il Capitano di Alessandro Magno (1659)
All the bastards applaud when I show that I’m flawed
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