the victim and executioner

clementine lahiri / 24 / wishbone fighter

[lily-grl]

mdhvre​:

There’s an animal inside, coiled dormant somewhere between his third and fourth ribs and hibernating for too long now, an awakening long overdue. It crawls up his throat and turns his head, a mechanical rotate and click precisely 90 degrees to the side, directing his gaze to follow her as she trails closer.

Precocious child, too assured in her own ability to fight her way out again to know better than to gravitate too close to a satellite verging on collapse. The rope of scar tissue wrapped ‘round his neck tightens at the reminder that his is a mind tearing at the seams, and she has grown accustomed to a stability he cannot afford her at the moment. Even an incomplete noose like his is still enough to hang a man. “Nothing, it doesn’t mean anything.”

Perhaps it would have been better if Willie were here tonight after all, at least to act as a buffer between the tide of his moods and whoever is unfortunate enough to seek him out at these crossroads. He moves away as she moves closer, retreating further still into the kitchen, but the kettle remains untouched—another deviance from normalcy best not to dwell on.

“Do you need something, Clementine?” the eyes that find hers are frosted glass, the usual clarity there exchanged for a murky obscurity not unlike the clouded depths of a corpse’s stare. “What are you doing here tonight?”

An animal, quick to run—to burrow its way from hands that look to hold it—this is no more than the image of domesticity. She is cautious enough to sense that there is something uneasy about him—it does her well, this feeling, this anticipation though it hardly is a clear image. Rather a hazy prickling on the back of her neck, a tingling where the bones of her skull meets her jaw.

He—or whoever this is who lives in the skin of Ashley, inhabiting his bones and controlling his muscles like a hand in glove—brushes away Clementine’s questioning swiftly. “Doesn’t sound like it means nothing,” her voice trails off, her curiosity doing its small part to press despite the strange circumstances before easing off, “… but I won’t twist your arm or anything. Just a weird thing to say—a bit ominous even for you, Ashley.”

Without a word, she moves away from him, around the counter and goes to find the kettle, walking across the room to turn on the faucet. Even this normalcy—this sound of water running—strikes an unnatural chord. She hardly works here or does much in regards to work despite the occasionally box of bag carried.

(Prove that you belong—that you are more than a passing guest.)

“Well, I didn’t really want to stick around at the Wishbone and I thought I could come here—to stay for the night.” A point of clarification, though one she adds on as an afterthought, validation of her own motions and motives. “I did think Theo would be around but,” The faucet runs, nearly spilling over the kettle, she looks over her shoulder only to see a glassy, faraway stare, “what’s going on? Guess it’s been crazy between everything last month and now this fire but really, what’s new?”

[lily-grl]

killtherabbits​:

he is no stranger to fingers being pointed in his direction; familiar with the taste of salted skin along the rim of front teeth as he bites down hard enough to break bone. flesh comes apart too easily for it to be something uneaten and blood makes accusations so sweet. 

this is different. 

she comes in like a thunderstorm unannounced, boy whipping his head at her entrance as she pelts him with words that lodges themselves inside a part of him he had thought he had run far enough away from. 

“‘m not from the asylum, technically. only stayed there for a bit, y’know  —  kinda like a hotel typa deal, ‘cept their amenities are a bit more… customized.” he looks and sounds just like the boy you thought you knew, lighthearted with voices lilting. peer a little closer, my dear lily. is this the first time he has eyes flickering with something too heavy, mouth-corners a touch too split, fingers curling with some sort of deliberate intention  —  or is it just the first time you’re noticing it? 

this is your own fault, you know. you were so busy looking for a place to piece yourself into that you never noticed those around you that you chose to keep as company. how selfish. 

“why’s it such a big deal, ‘nyways? so what if i never was gonna tell you  —  ‘s just a place ‘ve been ‘nd ‘m not there anymore. ‘m here, with you. why’s it change anything?” a childish confusion, an edged questioning. he blinks like a thing innocent and you could have all the reason to believe it to be real, to believe it a falsity. 

“c’mon, clemmie. don’t be like that, ‘s gonna ruin the whole mood! let’s do somethin’ fun instead, how ‘bout it? i’ll even let ya pick the game to play tonight ‘nd i won’t complain ‘bout it!”

Everyone stalls on the cutting room floor—this she knows intimately—the look in their eyes as their life slipping before them, as if they could clutch it back from her hands, red, dripping, a slippery feeling—but he does so with a practice that boils her blood. It crawls through her skin, pushing, pumping through her, racing back towards itself.

An executioner must not be moved by tears, nor the lilting voice of one who calls himself a friend when all he aims to do is avoid the inevitable fall of the blade.

(Though an executioner you are not, too involved, an indecisive rush of feelings from belief to rage, rage—fueled by his dismissal of you, both your anger and your care for a man you thought you could claim to know.)

(You don’t know him, not the curve of his mouth, the deliberate innocence, feigned, a thing you watched die many years ago.)  

“Don’t—“ step closer, a small shadow casts large in the dim light, “it is a big deal. You see these,” she brings her fists close to his face, all red and aching, blood beginning to harden on her skin, an armor she has made all herself, “I stood up for you and all you can do is say is who cares?”

Does her voice rise? It does, to the Heavens, to the ground that separates Under and Over, it shakes the the earth, a havoc.

The weight of her body becomes clear, the grit of her teeth against bone: “I don’t want to play a game! You want to know what they said? They said you killed your mother,” ah, there it is, a heavy, dark thing that snakes forth from her mouth before she bites down, as if not wanting it to escape.

(What will you do if you find out? Where will you go?)

A pregnant pause, a truth she hardly wants to hear—she shatters her own dreams in her hands, it cracks easily, a thin, translucent glass that has always distorted them both though she is only beginning to see through its cracks: “Well, did you— did you fucking do it?”

[lily-grl]

CLOSED: to @killtherabbits​ LOCATION: the White Rabbit DATE & TIME: 9/22 @ 1:30AM

She bursts into the room, breath heavy from running—a force not unlike that of a great storm that carries itself from one place to the next, aching and dark, bringing more than a crack of thunder. You see, her eyes are just as dark, the sea simmering over, its depths roiling.

(You see that kid that’s always hangin’ on to Clem’s coat-tails? Looks exactly like that kid they’ve been looking for from Rutledge…

Didn’t he fucking kill his ‘ma or something? Only a fucking animal does that shit…

… watch her be the next. You’ll finally have a shot at top spot, ass hole.)

Her fists ache already—bruised and weeping—knuckles nearly showing through her skin which cracks from making itself over, too quick to scar well. In her wake, more bodies left slumped against the locker room wall, a banquet of blood, hers, theirs, she no longer knows.

“What the fuck, Theo,” words ground down in her mouth until it is no more than ash on her tongue. From her fist drips her anger, viscous red against the floor.

Upon her lips an accusation that is spoken more truth than question—an ancient, earthen thing—though neither are innocent. They are both dyed red even if now he looks the part, eyes wide, confusion rampant, “Did you think I’d never find out that you’re actually from that asylum? How could you not tell me?”

A hurt animal is liable to lash out, to bite without thinking. It reacts before the killing blow, acting only on preservation, survival.

What is it that she protects? Is it any more than a dream—a dim reflection of the light? A split pattern she sees of him, a sinister shifting thing she only sees in parts.

[lily-grl]

mocktvrtle​:

tools are meant to be used. so he smiles, tipping his head as he sets her down onto the sand, little grains of the world dusting against their thighs. “if i didn’t carry bandages,” almost wry, “then you’d bleed out before i could even write your obituary.” he waves a hand. “cerisse can be funny,” again, dryly, “and if i learned my sense of humor from her, then could she be called my mother?” there it is. that word. 

there used to be attachment—entangled and gone dark with time—to the way that particular word liked to trip off his tongue; nowadays, the way he says it is bland. 

he settles in beside her, shoes discarded. his toes curl into the sand as he brings his legs up to his chest, pressing his cheek against the rise of his knee. “do you like fighting?” he asks, a flickering curiosity lingering in golden-amber irises. “is it the blood?” 

see, he is a means to an end: a pinprick point in the darkness, overwhelming force be damned. there’s no enjoyment to the way he fights—dirty, bloody, and terrible—to the way he views each job as an obligation he must fulfill, simply for one more chance at seeing dawn. 

so he palms the bandages in his pocket and motions for her to come closer. “where does it hurt?” 

She brushes him off, settling heavy into the sand—“Yeah, yeah, bodies make blood though so I’ve got a little to spare at least.” Wincing, she gestures to her left ankle, everything bruised and swelling, moving towards him hardly an option.

It is a wonder they exist so easily, tied by a common thread. Where she is jagged and hardened, he is soft, rounded in sentiment, a gentle creature living inside of him that can bee seen through the cracks; a necessary defense against the Under and the lives they must carve there. It brings her a happiness she can’t quite name to sit like this with him, bouncing quips off each other—simple questions, skirting more difficult answers.

Immediately her face twists, soured, before breaking into too-loud laughter, “she’d skin you if you called her mother and as much as I’d love you as a brother, you’re not much use dead to me.”

She doesn’t need say it—(I don’t want to die if I haven’t lived)—it reads in her eyes, their watery shine, the water lapping at the shore nothing more than a mirror.

These are the rules of she has learned; righteous death doesn’t exist. Sacrifice given willingly the most foolish of acts—one she cannot comprehend instead blotted out by disfigured faces, their broken teeth and garbled noises. She hums, a mockery of contemplation, slowly, the answer unravels cautiously knowing its own implications, “… I don’t actually like it. One day someones going to get the better of me and then what? Not really fond of the idea that one day it’ll be me instead of them.”

(It begs the question: will you continue to?)

What kind of life will she lead then? Will he continue to be there—carrying her when those dreams fail too?

“Keep it between us, okay? I’d rather not deal with the blowback just yet.” She lets K touch the tender bone of her ankle, the ligaments tight, always on edge.

[lily-grl]

queeninwhite​:

For a long moment she merely watches her little sister sit, breathe, move softly when stirred by the breeze or a passing thought - searching for anything they might share, even the smallest mannerism. They look alike, yet they don’t. They each move with grace, but where Cerisse possesses the practiced elegance of someone born to be royalty, Clementine moves like a panther, powerful, lean, entirely unaware that this is how she looks to everyone who sees. 

If Cerisse paused to think about it, she wouldn’t be all that surprised by Clementine’s lack of self-awareness. How could she see herself as she truly is when no one else seems to see her at all, save when she’s in the ring?

But she doesn’t make that connection then. “I certainly hope you weren’t anticipating some warm reunion.” What is this, a Hallmark movie? Their conversation, if it could be called that, is at least as stilted. 

She wishes she had been as clever as her sister to bring her glass with her. Or her steak knife. Either would be a comfort. Humming in the back of her throat, she leans her shoulder against the door frame, looks out into the garden. “We just play the little game of pretend and then our lives move on tomorrow, all four of us. If only we could speed things up, it might even be easy.” Instead Time moved with an even more excruciating lethargy than it did beneath the city. This house is stifling, this party a careless laugh. She itches to be in her throne, where she knows exactly who she is and what the extents of her control are. How to stretch them further, too.

Instead she is here, trying (though not very hard) to make small talk with her own flesh and blood. “At least with dinner done, we can rely on Mother retiring to bed early to nurse her two-glass hangover. Oh, pardon me.” There’s a wicked knowingness to her voice, the sort that teen girls use to cut one another up. “I meant to say, because she’s oh-so committed to her beauty sleep.”

“Well it’s not my birthday,” she doesn’t need to look to know it’s Cerisse, the nearly silent way she stays out of view while making her presence known—felt, the very skin dressing her bones and flesh aware that it is watched, seen.

She brings her glass to her lips, bolstering her pre-existing buzz. “You’re the one that should be disappointed—if I were you, I’d be spending my thirtieth differently,” but she isn’t her, not in the slightest, and hardly can claim to understand why her sister does anything, “but here we are. You almost did it to yourself.”

Clementine laughter barks out across the garden the rolls out before them, smaller now than it used to be so that the sound almost bounces back at them. It is a measure of years made in comparative size, though as usual the blooms are perfect, as if outside the reach of time itself. The truth is hardly masked: “And Father will be right there after pouring over a few more hours of work,” another long sip, mouth tinged red, “He might as well sleep in a separate room at this point.”

It’s too pointed but she isn’t careful anymore about preserving the delicate picture of familial perfection.

(Why was she there? What had drawn her back too—nostalgia perhaps her greatest foe. It distorts her memory of a lonely childhood too busy chasing her parent’s love, her sister’s shadow, hardly better than a forgotten toy left out in the sun.)

Despite this, they were here together, years later—back in the place where they had grown together or at least side-by-side. Intertwined by the fates—in some unknown and deliberate way; a mystery yet revealed.

Setting her glass down beside her, she looks back over her shoulder towards Cerisse, a shadow cast over her face. “Are you going to keep standing there in the doorway? He’ll will mention the draft tomorrow.”

[lily-grl]

rcdqueen​:

At Clementine’s answer, laughter previously carried in her expression floats out of Mina light and bright and easy. It’s not funny, not strictly so in that if either of the Lahiri parents heard Clementine’s answer, Mina can’t imagine that they’d find it even remotely amusing, but Mina sees the duality of Wishbone-Clementine and party-Clementine and it’s that which makes her laugh.

Or, well, that and the reversal of them.

See, Mina wants—and has to a limited degree—everything that Clementine is desperate to be rid of. The glitz, the glamour, the unquestioned wealth, the inherent sense of belonging. Were any or all of it transferrable qualities, she suspects Clementine would shed them willingly for her—though if she weren’t, Mina might not be opposed to taking them—but while Wonderland is topsy-turvy and not-quite-right or upside down, it isn’t so wrong that this might be possible.

A pity really, though perhaps not. Would Mina really be Mina if she came from somewhere else, someplace like the home that shaped Cerisse and Clementine? She knows what it means to have anger, to hold it in your veins and feel like it’s burning you inside out, so maybe she’d be just like them and fit badly into this world if it was what she was born to rather than fitting well because it’s the pinancle, the heart’s dream, the aspiration.

She’s relaxed, but not so much that these things spill out of her. Instead, it’s just the amusement and a—thankfully—cogent answer that can carry the conversation.

“Of course I’m enjoying myself,” Mina asserts, just a little bit dismissive of the question. It’s not a question; this evening is exactly as she wants it. Yet, she’s in a good mood so the attitude doesn’t carry; she offers Clementine a bit of kindness because she’s in the right state for it—though really, given the champagne, there doesn’t really have to be a reason—and a sunny smile. “Chin up,” Mina says and nods at the champagne, “Drink more of that, since you’re right it really is the best part of the evening, and tell me something about Wishbone, since I imagine you’d rather talk about that. Has your sister made a schedule for the week?”

She doesn’t expect laughter out of Mina—though there is no real basis for this, nor the surprise Clementine has when she is greeted by the warm smile that the other woman gives her, almost generously.

It is likely the result of a long held association between Cerisse and the woman now before her—a childlike connection that hasn’t allowed the space for her to form her own opinions of Mina. It is to be expected, this type of thinking—forming the most convenient connections, thinking only as far as the next few moments. These are the types of pathways—by now, well-trodden paths—the mind must take when the body is in constant danger.

“Well at least one of us is having fun.” Shrugging, her voice drops, though not necessarily a whisper—one would only need to look at her face to read it plainly, “personally, these bozos are so boring this might be how I die.”  She returns a sharp grin to Mina, who even she sees as someone not quite fitting in—one of them by choice, the other by birth.

(Side-by-side they look not much different but then, image can only ever tell so much of the story.)

“Good idea, maybe the best yet,” Taking the advice, she tips the glass back, deeper than perhaps she should in such polite company, showing the strong column of her neck, the golden chain around it even daintier against the muscle. Coming back up with a satisfied exhale, only to be followed with a haphazard shrug—the world becomes more bearable, warning signals turn from yellow to green, “don’t know how you used to get along with my sister.”

“Don’t know why everyone things I only want to talk about the Wishbone, just because I’m number one.” She tilts the champagne flute between her fingers, a dangerous movement that could quickly become broken glass, “there’s no new news and just as predictably there is a schedule.” Looking through her glass like a kaleidoscope though it makes no more than a blurred image, “What’d you expect of Cerisse?”

[lily-grl]

thedollmaker​:

wonderland is nothing more than a transaction of games, and he has familiarized himself with the ruleless way the city likes to play; has had years of trial and error and blood on his hands in trying. in perfecting. in breaking. she is still very much a girl, very much nothing but a chesspiece that her sister moves despite her stubbornness in pretending autonomy exists in her fate. 

“you’re too smart to be playin’ stupid, clementine. don’t sell yourself short like that. lies reap no rewards to anyone down here, you know that.” an arch of eyebrows, more amused than anything. “you and i both know what bullshit’s been going on here whenever you visit. i might not be as well versed with family as you are when it comes to cerisse, but you’re foolin’ nobody  —  you’re hardly suited for the wishbone and all of Under knows when somethin’ is best suited for Over than here.” 

for all that he is, he is no liar. he would like to blame the unfortunate connection shared with a certain Cat for habits turned lifestyle, the truth always serrated as soon as he speaks it. this time, it is no different  —  one look at clementine and anyone could see how the shadows do not curl around her like they do the rest of them. she still Dreams, and that is almost everything. 

“not worried. just bein’ a dutiful owner. got some policies ‘round here, you see. wouldn’t want to break more than i have to just because you couldn’t fuck with your mouth shut.” vin smiles, wolf-teeth lining mouths. “it’d be unfortunate that these dolls end up payin’ for your mistakes, but i guess that’s just business, huh?”

She has to laugh—as if he can tell her how the Under works, how it likes to  tear the meat off the bone before swallowing with hardly a gulp. As if it were more than an animal with rules and logic and patterns that made it predictable rather than ravenous, confused.

Perhaps it did. Clementine claims no deed or titles to it, instead ripping it off as it clings to her, tossing it into the night as her steps echo up the stairways to Over. Her laughter, heavy with youth and dripping with inevitable scorn, is at the thought that Vin knew better than anyone to tell her these things—he, like her sister, had created worlds upon worlds within the belly of Under, places for girls like her to waste away. The Dollhouse is his domain just as the Wishbone is Cerisse’s. Their walls are walls nonetheless, keeping the Under at bay—a sea of hungry mouths and tired eyes—as much as it asserted their own power.

“You’re so full of shit, Vin, as if you knew a thing about me.” She is not made of venom but rather blood and splintered bone. Stepping closer, she places her palms flat on his desk, “You act like you know about everyone and everything like lord of the Under but you’re not even one percent of that.”

It is a tragedy if you look too closely: for her to come to these dolls, trapped by circumstance or debt, too alike—mere bodies, muscle and skin and flesh, the softness of which is only meant to be spoiled.

But as quickly as she has struck out, she recoils at the glint of his smile, the implication of responsibility. Dumbstruck, she leans back as if to hide the look of anger—of disgust—that blooms across her face, nails scratching at the desk as her palms closes tightly. “You—“

(He would, you know that.)

“I shouldn’t expect better from you. Damage your own property to make sure it stays yours, right?”

(What use is it telling him those ideas could’ve been their own—you are guilty and he is a tyrant, these are the only truths.) “Just take my money and let’s get on with this, I’m not paying for this conversation.”

[lily-grl]

mdhvre​:

He knows when she arrives, hears her knock and approach with the same detached acknowledgement he’s wielded against the rest of the world these past few days, but does not move from where he stands in back. The jars this far into the shop are larger than a small child, their contents shifting under the lights and rustling against the glass, as though disturbed by the shop-owner’s aura.

“Nothing.” That in itself is highly unusual, to find him with idle hands, neither creating nor deconstructing. Even the rabbits seem to be subdued, wary in a way they rarely are in the safety of their four walls. He still doesn’t turn to face her.

“I’m not good company at the moment.” It’s only fair he at least give her warning, leave her with the option to leave before she sees something she shouldn’t come out of him. “If you’re looking for Theo, he’s with his Cat, I doubt he’ll be back until late tomorrow. Willie is off until whenever it’s safe for her to come back.”

This shop was only ever barely a home for the wayward souls that gather here, in the loosest of definitions, and now it is not even that anymore.

A lack of motion, a body burdened and weighed down from its usual movement around the shop as time continues to tick, in opposition to the scene Ashley is surrounded by—or rather, that encroaches upon him. An almost claustrophobic feeling with the many jars and packages that clutter the back of the shop of which he is but another perfectly still piece.

“You’re fine—I’ve been over so much you don’t really need to tell me where things are more or don’t touch that anymore,” she gestures carelessly at a whole host of items, an ambiguous motion that doesn’t suit her. “I wasn’t really looking for Theo. It just made sense to come here—wait,” approaching the back counter, she rests her jacket on the edge of the table before turning to look at him, eyes sharp and alert in the light that filters down from shaded lamp above.

A curious thing: “What do you mean whenever it’s safe for her to come back?”

(He doesn’t make sense, a side she’s never seen; it is weak in the light.) 

The White Rabbit was perhaps her only bastion. A place safeguarded from the world she had grown from as well as the one she had been planted in, now overgrown. What had become of it now? What had breaches its walls or perhaps, its keeper—shaken and pale.

[lily-grl]

odessa-lee​:

For a moment, she is so captivated by the figure in front of her, a coiled spring already twisted to breaking point, that reality blurs at the edges. The network of pale scars and marks, the body of a woman who didn’t want to die, who was damaged until she started damaging. 

In another existence, Odessa would have hardly paid credence to her, indifferent to survivors who tried to fight against a world made to be random and cruel. No matter how much blood Clementine had spilled, there was no profitability in blackened eyes and broken bones, not in a world where audiences longed for images of hapless victims torn to pieces by clawing fingers and gnashing teeth, where there was no interest in the living staying living.

Perhaps in this world, boredom had a way of amplifying novelty, or perhaps, she had seen potential. Hadn’t the crack of the girl’s knuckles against her flesh sounded like a guillotine? Hadn’t the blood that had filled her mouth tasted like a promise unfulfilled? Didn’t she look into Clementine’s eyes and see something sharp, something marketable?

She’s smiling now, an unrepentant disciple in the face of a would-be God, front teeth jutting out. A challenge; punishment is my mother tongue, you’ll have to sharpen your teeth to get rid of me.

“My, my, Clementine. Awfully defensive for an ‘innocent’ bystander.” All teeth, lips stretched wide across her features, camera steady in her hands. “I’m just doing my job, hardly my fault any time there’s chum in the water you come swimming along.”

In Odessa’s world the consumer is the product, her words of caustic venom said with a saccharine grin script that eternally ends up on the cutting room floor. Her world, for how raw and bloody it is, is at its core a product, as polished and hollow as any. 

She moves closer to Clementine, the wounds from her previous encounter with the woman - and others in some half-obscured past that questioned her commitment - highlighted by the flashing lights, the oldest faded to nothing, the newest raw and red. 

“All I need you to do is explain why you got here as early as you did. Easy enough question if you’ve got nothing to hide, isn’t it?” 

“I come swimming along any time there’s chum in the water?” It’s laughable, the sound coming out her derisive, dry and smoke-filled. She pivots back around, staring past the camera, and into the face behind it—all teeth, distorted by more than way the flames lick hungrily towards them, devouring what’s left of the building, tearing meat from bones. “Think you have us mixed up. The second there’s a siren, even a whiff of blood, you’re always there. Don’t think I don’t notice the way you perk up.”

(Causation and correlation are hardly the same thing.)

She isn’t phased by the blood, the screaming that lurches up when the body forgets what to do, not the whimpering when it realizes the position it is in—pinned, all exits cut off.

What is the accusation? Even an executioner must tire of the slaughterhouse floor.

She balks at having to explain that all she wants is a life outside of the one that has made her; confessions made to a sky she sees in pieces. Life extinguishes itself in the background, she hardly cares to look, instead, standing squarely in front of Odessa, jaw clenching, the camera lens, focusing in, an image hard to capture, “This is just a story to you, isn’t it?”

This is the main point. Pay attention: hers is a life, not a story.

Destroy the image, destroy the machine that captures you not as you are but as you you appear—her hand reaches out, the tough center of her palm coming in contact with the camera before it goes plummeting to the ground, her heel bearing down on it. It crunches beneath her, the lens cracks, everything in pieces.

“It is, isn’t it?” Rhetorical, it doesn’t matter what words come out of her mouth in reply.

From her blooms something seething. It lashes out, grasping for life. Clementine grabs her by the shirt, pulling her up until she is almost floating, a radiant, hell-touched thing in her grasp. “I’ll tell you why I’m here—because I can be.”

[lily-grl]

CLOSED: to @mdhvre for event 02 LOCATION: the White Rabbit DATE & TIME: 9/17 @ 12:52AM

A home has history—it is erected on a foundation, built out of sourced materials, its insides decorated with heirlooms. Even gutted, renovated, wearing a new face, there is an underneath, a necessary before. Nothing is a blank slate, tabula rasa. This place, like all things is no different, the man before you, no different though he appears to her as nearly that. 

A placid facade, a single wall seen through an open window. Ashley is like that—opaque, a fog that settles around you, cool and comfortable.

She can’t help but wonder as she steps through the threshold tonight with hardly a quick knock. She is bandaged in places, all patchwork, the skin underneath healing around the remains of the fire that sleep beneath her skin. They will become but a few of the marks that grace her skin, near-misses, a dormant, sleeping memory. 

Towards the back, Clementine spots him like a part of the shop itself, and walks towards him, pulling her jacket off and carrying it in her arms, “It’s quiet so no Theo tonight, huh?” Something uncharacteristic about the place; frame uneven on the wall, chairs askew. She can’t quite place it; it is barely her home, not even in name. “What’re you working on?” 

[lily-grl]

odessa-lee​:

 DATE & TIME: September 12th, 7 AM 

LOCATION: Houndstitch Church (or what’s left of it)

STATUS: closed with @lily-grl

TW: Fire, gore, death

The first thing one notices is the smell. Alarmingly sweet at first, with undertones of sweat and unwashed skin, burning bones and fetid coals. As she traverses amongst the still burning remnants of sacristy, it follows her, lunging forward to swallow her again and again, a fantasy made real in the form of burning flesh. 

She’s seen enough burnt out remains to know the difference between a burn victim and a charred ghost is a few twitches, her movements from afar almost those of indifference; side-stepping around moaning near-corpses who had yet to bask in the flashing lights of the paramedics, toeing through ash with the dispassionate glee of a child trying to find an anthill to destroy. 

(There’s a nun wailing in front of her, and from afar, it looks as though Odessa kneels down to pray with her. Are you paying attention? The camcorder in her right hand flashes red, and she mouths words of damnation as easily as thumbing through a rosary 

“Don’t stop screaming, you have to let the fire out.”)

She rises from the woman’s side, sunglasses balanced on the bridge of her nose, fingers absent-minded and reaching for the pack of cigarettes in her pocket, more reflexive than deliberate, equally as cruel. 

She’s disinterested in the scene, despite its promise of gore. Well, almost. 

She’s used to seeing the girl’s arms covered in blood, instead of ash. Wonders if they’ve ever truly been clean, if she’s ever been clean. For a moment Odessa watches the Wishbone fighter turned medic with fists un-clenched into open palms like a fallen angel receiving communion. A beautiful scene in the way unsullied humanity tends to be; until disrupted by pestilence. 

“Odd, I didn’t think you frequented this part of town, Clementine.” A chuckle, misplaced in the inferno, it almost sounds like a match sparking. The camcorder light flicks on, and from Odessa’s words, she sounds as perturbed as the chorus of screams surrounding her. Look closer. Her words are hollow and reek of iron and red, her features distorted by the flames lapping the extremities of the church, crooked smile and eyes melting down her cheeks.

“Can you explain how you arrived on the scene of this tragedy so quickly, and more importantly, any involvement you may have had with the blaze?”

Instead of white, she is draped in black, ash covered skin, red and raw where she is fire-touched. It is a different sensation from the snap of bone, of blood pooled beneath skin. It is sharp before it lingers, jealous, marking you as if you will never be without it. 

By now, there is no one left in the church though it burns behind her, coughing up what remains of its insides into the early morning sky. The scene transitioning from hectic to somber. She is tired and her eyes red with strain; it is not what she had imagined would happen on her excursion out of the Under. She leaves one scene or horror to enter another through a door unseen. 

(When does the night end? Does the morning stay hidden knowing there is more to come? How she wishes for sunlight, softer and more gentle than the harsh heat of the burning building behind her.)

Still wound, an ache just barely creeping into her muscles, a camcorder emerges before her, the red light too sharp. 

“What the fuck, Odessa—” exhaustion seeps through her, a slow leak growing larger each day. Her hand goes to shield her face, instinctual with so many delicate bones just beneath the skin. “Cut the bullshit,” she is already half-turned, one leg extended forward looking for an exit. 

“Do you have to do this every time? One, I’m not answering your questions and two, I told you last time to stay out of my face otherwise you’ll be swallowing your own teeth.” She hates the look on her face—expectant, ravenous, the faces she sees every night, to them, pain is nothing; secondhand.  

What can you expect but flies on rotting meat?

[lily-grl]

mocktvrtle​:

he laughs, again—it’s a slight thing, almost as flitting as the amusement that flickers through golden-amber irises—as he shifts her in his arms; she is a slender thing that isn’t hard to carry, despite the space she commands as someone alive, as someone who isn’t more ghost than gone.

“i caught a glimpse of your fight,” he comments—the corner of his mouth twitching upwards, a glint of canine hidden behind the lopsided grin, ( and it’s almost boyish, see, the way he tips his head to the side and glances at her—almost like they’re talking about something other than broken bones and bruises. ) he shifts once more, pressing the door closed behind them; the docks are more familiar a haunting to him than his own home, and he entertains the thought of dumping them both into the waters, but she needs him to be more here than there right now, and for her, he will try his best to remain. so he glances forward and back, lashes draping across the slant of his eyes as he sidesteps a second wave of the crowd. “they’ll find our bodies buried in the sand,” he notes dryly, “and the headlines’ll be horrible.” he can picture it now—the white queen losing them—and he waves it away, even as he traverses the steps that lead Up.

“do you need bandages?” they’re close, now.

They circle around violence, carnage like flies—the heavy gravity drags them in, binding them like an ill fitting skin. It is with the air, a subtle wisp of a thing, that they are freed, made light, the chains loosened.

“Just a glimpse? I thought I would’ve done better than that,” deflection, it eases the pain. “You know, if you keep playing coy I’m going to get offended, K.” She grins; they are like children, existing for mere moments at a time. 

She is quiet for intervals as he carries her towards the water, cradling. And perhaps, she had just wanted to be held like this. For now, there is no fear; street lamps hang over head, phasing out as they leave the main streets, the sky a backdrop of clouds, a dark blanket over the city; an equally gentle caress. 

(You point to the water; a land unknown; a future unseen.) 

“Wow, someone’s getting funny now. Where’d you learn that?” There are moments when he is gone and she is there; then she is there and he is elsewhere. They are always passing each other, two sides of the same coin, watching from a distance. But tonight they have crossed paths, awake, “I’m not ready to die and neither are you.” 

(For a moment, everything is real before it is obscured; a misty night descending on the shoreline.)

“Plus what would Cerisse do without you? That’s right, she can’t; she has no idea where the pens in the office even are and you’re saying you’re even carrying bandages? What would we do without you?” Beneath them, the pavement turns to sand; their bodies shift in unison as the earth bears their weight. 

(Does she mean I?)

[lily-grl]

mdhvre​:

killtherabbits​:

something faded, something forgotten. he visibly deflates. 

“will she come ‘nd get you one day? keep you from us for good? what if you’re the next bit to be found all chewed up?” fingers start to dig into each other, nervous. “she wouldn’t come here, right, ashley? ‘m sure we can keep her safe, i mean  —  nothin’ has hurt us yet. right?”  

“It does for now, yes, but your sister will only stay compliant for so much longer. Particularly with all that’s happening, I imagine she’d want to keep you even closer to her side.” Times like this he does wonder if his tendency towards undisguised truths might be more harmful than beneficial. Perhaps a few misplaced words here and there, specifically designed to soften the edges of a reality neither of the pair at his feet appear too willing to embrace, would be better than what he has to offer, but it’s a skill he does not have.

No, far better to leave the white lies to Henrik.

“She would and she could,” he refutes quietly, gray eyes looking up to meet Theo’s anxious gaze with the same calm steadiness he always wears. “Nothing has hurt us only because so far, we have been careful, and the city has remained undisturbed for the past decade or so. Things are changing now. I will do what I can, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep you safe here.“

Comfort, care—it comes in small gestures, barely packaged; it comes with hardly a thought, it’s almost automatic and she stops questioning it. Conditionality, it relaxes in the confines of these for walls, made soft in Ashley’s hands. 

For a moment, she sheds the childish defiance she comes wrapped in; defended, cocooned. For once, she realizes she may not have the most to lose; not a body but a life—a home where one had been constructed out of spare parts—Theo deflates and she curls her arm around him, putting down her tea cup, still half-full. “If I keep fighting there’s no reason for her to come here,” she is used to this, sacrifice, body tender for the taking, “so she’s not going to come here.”

(How many times does she trade her dreams for someone else’s? How many homes does she make in the wreckage she creates?)

“I’ll do my best too,” even here, you are not home. “You should go to sleep, I’m beat too.” 

She smiles at Theo and then at Ashley; inevitable, her battles are her own. A silly thought, for her to escape the Under, the cheering of the crowd, to come here—there is no use running in-between.

[lily-grl]

queeninwhite​:

Clementine’s outburst gets little more than a second glance from Cerisse. As usual she is willful and refuses to be led to water, but then, if she was obedient she would be neither the spare nor the prized fighter.

Her questions are more irritating in their predictability. She doesn’t remember this from their childhood - though, back then even Cerisse was quiet, doing what she was told to the letter and then some. Now she sits atop a throne built on the spines of those Clementine has beaten into nothingness for her. Of course getting her arms ripped off would be an issue.

Few people are capable of getting a rise out of Cerisse, and this is coming dangerously close. Her fuse is long, at least. “Janet probably had it in her to handle herself against any regular attacker on the streets,” she replies coolly. Recklessness is not a useful trait. Perhaps it serves Clementine well in the ring - her focus constantly on the next few seconds, on sidestepping blows that could very nearly mean an end to her - but out in the world, Under or Over, it’s trouble not to keep ten moves ahead.

Clementine losing an arm was… equivalent to Cerisse losing an arm. Without question.

She’s entirely still as her not-quite-reflection takes over the room with incessant movement. Cerisse sighs, a short hissing of breath that speaks to their shared frustration better than any expression on her face can. “Hearts is the obvious scapegoat, which means it’s wise to look into other possibilities. We’re gathering information for the moment. Keeping the Wishbone running without a hitch is the best way to signal that our strength is intact.”

And if this incident was a threat meant to signal more on the horizon, well. Targeting both Red and White was a fatal mistake. 

“For the moment, we continue forging new loyalties and protecting our assets. Once we have an idea whose grand plan this was, we crush them and move forward stronger than ever.” So simply put, like it would be just another day on the schedule. “And before you ask, no, I am not concerned about this. We will make it happen.”

“My concern does lie with the details.” She learns forward, gaze leveled on Clementine. “Which fighters are in the open and which are not. I will not leave gaps open for outsiders to take advantage of while they puff themselves up thinking they can threaten this. Exposing a powerful piece just because you have it does not mean you know how to use it.”

It is a double-edged sword she knows—to be referred to as simply an asset, a piece to be used. It is particularly cruel to wrap these words in soft silken feeling—for anything of this to be ours; a family where she is only a member partly. She isn’t surprised by the choice of words, but somehow it has never stopped stinging; as if a weeping wound. Confusion builds, unknown, unbidden, as she slows her pace around the room, eyes tracking towards the door. 

Who is Cerisse without the Wishbone? In fact, who is she without it as well? 

(What she doesn’t ask: What am I to you?)

In truth, she couldn’t care less to what happened to her sister’s empire—all it had ever done was to provide structure to the already unstable, crumbling relationship between them; old bones; a house built on uneven ground, always shifting. 

Cerisse doesn’t answer her question directly and Clementine doesn’t push for a response. 

“Sounds like you have this all figured out then,” detachment. “Guess you and K will handle it and I’ll just stay here,” she gestures vaguely around her, at nothing in particular. There is no need for her to pretend to care about or understand these things. She is not concerned about the inner workings of it all. All she cares for are the directions in which her life can move, which for someone like her only ever seems to be forward, slowly, one tile at a time. 

(Fight or flight? The answer is obvious.)

She taps her leg, beckoning Priscilla over as she leans onto the wall beside her. “If you don’t need me for any of this now, call me when you do.”

[mdhvre]

♧ - [ PANTONE ] March Hare & Lily | @lily-grl

[lily-grl]

queeninwhite​:

i wasn’t born without a heart / i wasn’t always like this september 1st, 7pm, lahiri household closed to @lily-grl 

They were to ‘celebrate’ her birthday, apparently. Even Cerisse found the statement hollow. Lahiris didn’t celebrate things for merely being what they were. Their praises were saved only for accomplishments and successfully crushing opposition under their heels; merely making it three entire decades of life wasn’t much of an achievement by their standards.

The true twist of the knife was standing on the doorstep she had once lived behind knowing without a doubt that she had accomplished more in her measly thirty-years-to-date than either of her parents had - did her father believe that being afforded CEO status by a slim vote was akin to a crown and throne? - but being unable to speak a word of it. Sitting straight-backed at the mahogany dining table, third course on the way, while her mother chirped about someone else’s child’s success like it was a personal slight against her. Looking her father right in the eyes while he told her she had let profits flatline, that’s no way to keep a business growing, investors will balk if you don’t get your act together, and not lodging her steak knife dead between them. 

Such was the price of staking out her empire in the underground. She knew what she had done. Knew that every wager on any fight that mattered even a little, that garnered any sort of real audience at all, went through her. That she ruled the city’s organized violence with the precision and ease of a born queen. That the evidence was in her territory, her rule, being targeted by still-mysterious violence. But they could never know.

Every so often she looked away from her father and winced, seeing Clementine there as well. It was as stark a reminder as the universe could offer that they shared blood. Even if Cerisse ordered her to spill it and Clementine jumped at the chance.

They were both out of place here, it seemed. Cerisse was used to Clementine voicing her thoughts without being asked, a nuisance more often than not, but… ultimately helpful for calculating what might placate her and what was a necessary change. But then, Cerisse was usually in control. In this house she was more ornamental than anything else.

She had control over what to do with each moment, at least, so she chose just the right one to slip through the door to the garden and finally let her breath loose. Might even have relaxed, had she been alone.

“Lively party we’re having,” she said to Clementine, a pale shade of sardonicism in the words. Thinking on it now, she couldn’t ever recall where her sister had been on a birthday she’d celebrated while still living under this roof. 

It’s like old times—they see right through her sitting at the dining table, as if she isn’t there at all. It has her wondering why she is even there in the first place. The pretense of Cerisse’s birthday but it doesn’t feel much different, nothing particularly celebratory about it. Her fingers twirl the stem of the glass in front of her, fidgeting quietly, as Father talks as if from on high, Mother a barely harmonious voice in the background. 

What hasn’t changed is her sister’s demeanor here: quiet, accepting, a placid surface that she knows boils beneath. She was no longer seated upon her throne, instead forced to sit beside that of her family’s, an heiress not a Queen; the difference a gaping chasm.

(Clementine doesn’t try to speak at dinner, unsure where she fits into the picture now—not quite standing on her own, not quite with Cerisse nor with her Father and Mother.)

Home: white walls, white pillars, empty hallways, too big, expanding and building on top of itself, every hallway dividing into two more until she is lost in a place she thought she used to know. No matter how much times passes, nothing shrinks. She recognizes the general layout as she wanders after dinner but they’ve switched sculptures, where the benches in the hallways are, door fixtures; small changes, nothing holds in her memories. Exits, entrances—finally one she recognizes that leads her outside to a courtyard, probably one of the few places that she remembers fondly here. A warm breeze floats through despite being penned in by the larger estate. 

Knees curled to her chest and seated on the steps leading further down into the garden, she toys with her drink—glass rim pressed into her fingertip, running in circles—until the sound of a flat cutting voice reaches her, erupting into the soft silence, “... yeah, real fun.” 

She doesn’t turn to face Cerisse, doesn’t force an interaction that had barely happened even when they had lived here despite her childhood efforts. “Must be a great birthday for you, huh? I guess some things don’t change.” Instead, she lifts her glass to the sky, to the night, perhaps even to her sister, “Well, they haven’t at least but then why would they?”

[lily-grl]

rcdqueen​:

FOR: @lily-grl​ DATE/TIME: 08/24, 8:39 PM LOCATION: Where do rich people have parties?

The evening’s all sparkle and no substance. A decade ago—and frankly, less than that too, though Mina’s mythologized herself and her crowning so well that it almost seems impossible that might be the case—Mina would never have done more than dare dream about attending this kind of party and only then probably because Cerisse would have mentioned it by way of complaining that she had to go herself.

Perhaps that explains the tremendously bored—or maybe it’s unhappy and she’s simply misreading it—air clinging to Cerisse, despite the—what Mina thinks to be—forced on pleasant expression she’s drifting though the evening with, something that genuinely baffles Mina. Then again, not only was Mina not born with a silver spoon in her mouth, she wasn’t born with one anywhere in sight. Wealth wasn’t a given, it’s an earned quality she’s attached to herself and learned how to wear; the right words, the right clothes, the right attitude, a taste for indulgence… those have all come with practice, as has the art of making people forget she wasn’t born to this world and hiding how she sometimes feels like an interloper.

She doesn’t quite understand it, but, somehow, tonight she’s more at home here than Cerisse or Cerisse’s little sister, which is no less strange with the latter as compared to the former. Despite the significant differences between Cerisse and Clementine, there is no denying they both have always belonged to this world in a way Mina doesn’t. 

It’s not necessarily polite to comment on it and normally she wouldn’t, except by the time Mina catches sight of Clementine, her tongue—as well as her general demeanor—has been loosened just a little by several glasses of champagne. As such, when she finds herself near her—who hasn’t changed at all in the interval between first observance and the present one—she doesn’t do what’s wise and ignore her or the situation. Instead, there’s laughter in her eyes and something that betrays genuine amusement as she comments, “How is it both you and your sister look like you’re being tortured simply by being here?”

She is used to being dressed in blood and sweat and spit—slick and ragged breathing—but tonight is nothing like that. It is a mere specter of the past, made real and tangible in the expansive ballroom sprawled out before her: a glimmer of crystal chandeliers, jeweled hands, and champagne flutes. Tonight, she blends in well. Instead of red-splattered and brutal, she has been made to fit the part; wrapped gently in silk, a clean, linen-white, delicate golden adornments resting against her neck, all arranged to betray the muscle underneath. Instead of survival, opulence, excess, a life suspended above it all. 

(Her least favorite part, to be dressed like a set piece. A Lahiri in both name and looks.) 

Admittedly, it is a sphere she has grown more and more distant from, a world she had once floated around without purpose or desire—a world that she had wanted in her youth but left willingly. Now it is all too much and so instead she floats the perimeter, past familiar faces with a glass in hand, nodding along in something that just barely passes for pleasant. 

“That’s right, they’re doing well. That’s mother and father for you but can you excuse me?” A narrow escape, she deposits her empty glass onto the tray that passes by her, immediately picking up another and bringing it to her lips without breaking her stride. 

(The whole ordeal is ridiculous, exhausting. Leaving her wondering if this was a place she had ever belonged.) 

She had barely noticed her at first—too absorbed in her desire to retreat whether that be through the front door or into her drink—but the her way her voice curls in a sly sort of joy has Clementine turning to face Mina directly, a similar figure to her sister’s though there is something about the way she carries herself, not entirely bored by all of it, “I am being tortured being here and she can’t be doing any better.” A deeper drink, tapping her heel against the marbled floor, “But what, are you enjoying yourself? Rubbing elbows with Wonderland’s finest?” Biting back a laugh, too sharp, threatening to puncture the soft glow around them, “If you ask me, the only good thing about this party is the champagne.”