DATE: June 21, 2018 & June 22, 2018
ATTENTION: @peridotfairburn, @jasperxrebel ( I figure you two should see this. )
NOTE: So this is long (surprise, surprise). The first three parts are Fidchell related, the last two rebellion. If you’re only interested in reading from rebellion consideration on skip to the section entitled ‘IV. THE END OF THE END.’ and read from there. If you just want to read the part in which Lacha addresses the entire Unseelie Court and discusses Fidchell & the rebellion, skip to the section entitled ‘V. THE BEGINNING, REDUX.’
There are days that Lacha out and out loves the Unseelie court for everything it is and has become and the day of An Fidchell is always one of them. This year it’s hard, this year it hurts, this year her heart feels like it’s cracking and mending all at once, because the game’s always a reminder that there’s animosity between her and Adare, between her court and his, and with that reminder comes a remembrance of what the costs are when they let things get out of hand.
( “Not a day goes by, Caora. Not a single, solitary day.” )
Except even so, this year, it’s the same as ever: the stave, the entrance, the affirmation of her end of the wager.
Of course, there’s pride in Lark’s performance, in showing off a thing that’s hers for nothing other than Adare’s small-mindedness. Oh, she knows she has her sins, but she likes to throw his in his face, and there’s pleasure in doing so publicly.
( “Look Adare, look. She ought to be yours, but instead she’s mine because you didn’t even want her.” )
But truthfully, she could do without the performance; she knows it serves a purpose, but her heart catches in her throat when she thinks about what’s on the line, and she’s eager to get on with it. To that end, she only pays the performance and ( moreso ) the Seelie introductions minimal attention.
Still, she can’t ignore her own court, nor does she want to. She leans forward, just slightly at Ivy’s entrance and if the Seelie are loud at Forrest’s call, her Unseelie are triple as such at Ivy’s and Lacha isn’t surprised; they want a win badly and so does she because ignoring the issue of the wager, she is tired of losing.
The court’s loud, and she lets it go on and on, much longer than strictly necessary, amusement and pleasure playing in the corners of her mouth, because the wild, unfettered enthusiasm her court has makes her genuinely love them. Fuck Adare and the Seelie with their polite, respectful, perhaps even classy reaction. She wants the chaos, wants the reflection of the bloodlust and the eagerness for the fight.
Yet, it’s not just the chaos she adores. It’s the fact that she has the power to silence them all, too. Only, it’s not the power she likes in that, not really. The power’s nice, but what pleases her is the way it serves as an affirmation of what she’s done for the Unseelie Court, of the way she’s made the crown mean something again and brought stability back to the court in doing so.
( “Dad, I don’t care if they love me. I just want to know that when I speak they’ll listen, when I command, they’ll obey. I will make this court exceptional if it is the last thing I do and if the price is in blood, so be it.” )
When the moment feels right, when she thinks they’ve gone on long enough, she simply holds up a hand, palm open, in a request for quiet, rather than an enforcement, something that shows in a hand kept open, in fingers left splayed. Her court knows her power, they aren’t strangers to the way she can force them to quiet should she so choose with little more than fingers tightening to a fist and a whisper of will, of magic. But they know too that on a day like An Fidchell, on a day where it’s bloodlust and battle, only one rule remains, with an understanding that punishment will be viciously given for disobedience: However we might act when we’re amongst ourselves, do not make the mistake of making me look the fool in front of Adare and the Seelie.
They quiet at her behest and she revels in the affirmation inherent within that: I am the one thing that will hold amidst the chaos.
II. THE BEGINNING OF THE END.
The moment it comes down to Davey and Elise, Lacha’s stomach flips and she knows what comes next is bound to be unpleasant for her one way or the other. She has endured much unpleasantness over the years, she’s no stranger to bearing it with a brand of cool stoicism that betrays nothing of her own heart or her own hurt, but that does little to make it easy. After all, this time, it’s worse for the fact that no matter what happens next it’s a mess of her own making.
Elise had been her choice, not Ivy’s recommendation, made for the sake of Hyacinth.
( “You deserve a fair chance at salvation, my love; my heart was yours first, a piece of it is yours always, though that alone cannot save you.” )
And she, more than anyone else, knows there’s absolutely no one to blame for a wager equal parts foolish and real but herself.
( “I should have said, ‘no’, told him to fuck off. We’d have settled elsewhere, we always do.” )
And so, the only question really is, which version of Hell does she prefer? There are two options:
There’s the one where she endures whispers about her and the Knight she broke her traditional inflexibility for and saved once upon a time, about how she’s now being forced to spare him a second time.
( ‘Always thought she must have been fucking him; why else reveal a secret unprompted and save him then, why else try to tithe him now that he’s got another girl?’ )
And there’s the other where her heart is flayed open with little more than one sentence leaving her—them—vulnerable to pressures she’s long been disinterested in giving a name and a face to focus upon.
( ‘You can’t have him, under any circumstance. He’s unsuited, he’s unsuitable.’
‘You have to have someone, it needs to be him; he’s already given you both child and heir.’ )
She doesn’t know which is worse, both can’t and won’t choose; it’s out of her hands anyway and how much does it really matter when she can forgive neither Gale his idiocy and the way he’s managed the one thing she fears above all else nor Hyacinth the fact that he knows her so well that she has no secrets?
The only thing left for her is to wait and see.
Lacha watches as Davey kills Elise with an expression like stone ( placid & immovable ). She’s seen death before, she’ll see more before her time as Queen finishes. It isn’t that which makes her expression shift for a moment afterward, but rather the thought of what inevitably must follow, what she’s sworn an essentially unbreakable vow to do.
Now more than ever, she’s grateful she believes in hope for the best plan for the worst, because all she has to do is glance briefly to Rowan and nod slightly before she efficiently slips away as they discussed the night before. Gaze tracks her as she cuts through their side of the arena and its crowd, watches as she seeks and finds Gale, watches as she tugs him away, as all the while Adare makes his way down to Davey’s side and starts to acknowledge his victory. A gentle brush of her hand against her father’s, too, easily done as he sits next to her, waiting in the silence, and without her saying a word, he does as she’s asked of him; she watches him draw Camellia away. Gale doesn’t deserve this, not anymore, but a promise is a promise and truthfully, she isn’t doing it for him; she’s doing it for Camellia because she doesn’t want her—their—daughter to pay for what is—or perhaps more accurately now, isn’t—between her and Gale more than necessary.
( “I’m sorry, Camellia, that you won’t get the happy ending you might want. He’ll give you the truth, but there’s nothing that will follow. Love, there’s no such thing as happy endings or perfect families and right now I’m so angry I don’t know how to forgive.” )
Reassured that things are as she wants them, reassured she’s making the best of a bad situation, she sits coldly uncompromising through what follows. Adare gloats further, Davey asks to forget, but she can barely hear it over the sound of her own heartbeat; it sounds like drums, the almost consuming mix of fear and anger that’s begging to be released, to be used to create an out or a delay because she’s scared, she’s scared, she’s so fucking scared. Except, she hates that, hates her own fear. All she has to do is tell the truth, and she’s very good at that, but there’ll be questions and speculation and she hates too that she knows there’s nothing she can do to stop it.
( “All I’ve ever wanted is something good that belongs just to me, that isn’t for everyone’s eyes the way everything else I do is. All I’ve ever tried to do is protect him from the court, from being used to hurt me.” )
Davey disappears through a portal except, just as she’s getting ready to stand and make good on her side of things, there’s a flash of green fire. It takes her by surprise, this answer to her silent desire for an out or a delay, and she quickly stops being scared; there’s no fear for her in an emergency, only a well ingrained reflex to take control of the situation. She notes the banner in passing, as her gaze flicks about the arena and she takes in the whole of the situation. It’s simple message makes an impression, but she doesn’t stop to consider it; there’ll be time enough for that later. Instead, she reacts, moments after Adare does, once she’s taken stock of things as they are; she doesn’t like to play secondary to anyone, but he takes command of the fire quickly; he’s closer. She quiets the chaos, momentarily, long enough for him to give rapid orders without panic, long enough for her to instruct those who can leave up and out of the arena by virtue of flight to do it so that everyone else can get out the doors, but as he continues, she notes that something is stopping people from leaving at all.
And so, while he fights the fire, she takes her own advice, flies up and out, only to land outside and change back at the sight of a field of grass that doesn’t belong. She doesn’t consult Adare. Instead, she simply decides to leave him to the fire and tackle the grass as best as she’s able.
Later, she wishes she could say she’d found a way to get rid of the problem, but the best she does is create several workarounds for those who haven’t found one of their own or decided to brave the grass themselves.
It isn’t nearly enough, and she’s annoyed by the whole situation, but she can’t help the small part of herself that is simply awash in a profound sense of relief. She’ll have to tell, eventually; a vow is a vow. But she’s living on borrowed time and she’ll take it gladly.
When Lacha thinks about Fidchell the next day, everything is startlingly clear; there’s a technicolor crispness to the day that seems to be the primary effect and benefit of hindsight, and she wonders how she missed the signs that something was bound to happen soon.
After all, she’s never half so unaware as her critics like to believe; she rules with an iron fist and keeps a very good pulse on the satisfaction of the court because she knows there’s no other choice. The court, as a whole entity, doesn’t love her and never will, so the best she can do is make sure its majority is content, and make it her business to know when there are murmurings that betray it might not be like so, even as she doesn’t care to have the source of them unless it grows more serious than mere complaining.
( “Oh for fuck’s sake, everyone’s so quick to try and tell me who’s said what. Don’t start naming names; I don’t care who complains about me, I don’t care who disagrees. If complaining makes them feel better then let them. So long as they don’t act on it and do as I say anyway, there’s no harm. It’s their obedience I’m after. Nothing more, nothing less.” )
The banner and the feyry fire are far more serious than just complaints though. There’s an off-chance, of course, that neither have anything to do with the Unseelie Court or its whispers of dissatisfaction, because she’s sure Adare has his fair share of the same with an unborn child of his own and no proven solution to the fertility problem for everyone else, but it doesn’t strike her as particularly likely. The Seelie are a sly bunch, slick and terribly concerned with appearances. Flash and feyry fire, a weapon as wild as her own court strikes her as inherently Unseelie, along with the maybe careless, maybe not-so consideration that it could have easily been her down there when the fire erupted instead of Adare.
She doesn’t take kindly to the idea that this could have been an assassination attempt. It’s not even the fact that such a thing betrays a level of hate she hadn’t been aware of embedded into this cycle of dissatisfaction. It’s the presumption that everything would be fine following her death that angers her.
( “How dare they? Don’t they understand Camellia’s not ready? Don’t they see the style of my ascension isn’t something to be repeated? She’d be ruined by it and everyone will suffer. I don’t understand, I don’t understand at all. It’s like they want a return to dark days I’ve sworn we’ll never see again.” )
And so, it leaves her with little choice but to decide how she wants to address their trite statement regarding change. She’s put down more than one burgeoning or full rebellion in her time and she knows her options fairly well, knows that it boils down to choosing one of three paths.
One: Ignore the problem, hope it goes away.
Except, that isn’t an option here. The words, attempted assassination, whether true or simply her perception of events, have already branded themselves into her skull. She can't afford to do nothing, she won’t stand to do nothing. It’s not even for her own sake, but Camellia’s. If unknown individuals want her dead, they’ll get their way eventually if she does nothing to counter. And Camellia’s not ready for what would follow.
This isn’t going away, much as her heart might ache and she might wish it would because she’s only trying to do what’s best.
It isn’t a hard thing, necessarily, to round up the usual suspects, to subject them to the brutally effective combination of Rowan, Raven and The Modest Blade. She’s done it before, and she always gets what she wants out of it eventually; pain inevitably births a willingness to say something, The Modest Blade and their inherent inability to lie ensure it’s the truth.
Only, leading with that kind of force is more effective when she has a name she is certain of and uses it to compel the rest.
Starting from scratch isn’t to her favor, because it gives too much time, too much warning to those involved who aren’t of suspect. When action comes in the form of words printed upon a page or public outcry, she doesn’t mind the warning because there’s less risk that her force would earn retaliation in kind.
But this time, the promise of rebellion is led off with feyry fire. Lacha has a feeling resorting to some widely-directed violence of her own that doesn’t have near enough guarantee of success will only lead to another demonstration of reciprocal force.
She isn’t overeager to push this to out and out civil war.
Three: Start with diplomacy.
She hates this game. There’s a part of her, the vindictively angry part, that wants to reject this option outright.
( “If they want battle, I will give them war.” )
After all, she isn’t much for curbing her tongue or biding her time. But even so, she has played the game before, she’s knows the moves well: find the players that matter on both sides, rally her support, prove that she’s not without means to fight the fight should she need to, get them to tip their hand, meet somewhere in the middle and end this with compromise.
The last is a challenge in its own right because Lacha’s track record speaks for itself. She’s put rebellions down both ways, with violence, with words, but when she does it the latter way, what she promises more often than not gradually lapses; no one ever thinks to make her explicitly promise in terms of perpetuity rather than implied, perhaps because she never offers it as an option.
She rules as she pleases and forced change does not often suit her.
Still, she resigns herself to starting here, not because she wants to; if she can end this without ever having to pick up a weapon, she is morally and ethically obligated to do so because such a thing is always what’s best for the court. And even if diplomacy doesn’t work, at least she can use it to buy herself time, to collect names and information, to figure out who she’s fighting this time.
With diplomacy in mind, she calls for the court to assemble in the throne room at 2130, figuring twenty-four hours since the fire began is a fairly appropriate turn around time.
The sound inside the room is deafening, even for the ceiling open to the stars; she could hear it from the other end of a corridor that leads to a room off to the back of the throne room where she now sits and keeps her peace, waiting for the clock to strike the time she’s called for, refusing to start any earlier. A summoning is an obligation, one she’s not fool enough to believe will go completely heeded, but she’ll wait to make sure everyone who wants to be there is, so that she only has to say things once.
The clock strikes 2130. Lacha stands, but before she walks in, she takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders, the same way she always has since she was twelve-years-old and faced the court as newly made Queen—in theory, not practice—at her mother’s wake. There’s something about the thirty second ritual of setting herself just so that soothes her, that reminds her she can and will do this just as she always has.
The moment she steps into the room, the roar softens just slightly, anticipatory quiet beginning to drop over a room in gradations as she makes quick work of walking across the front of the room to the throne and settling comfortably into it. She makes a gesture for quiet, same as yesterday, without trying to talk over the din.
She could silence the room by force, but the tactic of the day is diplomacy, so she waits, and waits, and waits until the room is silent but for a few scattered conversations, which don’t seem to want to die. After reminding herself there’s only so far diplomacy can go, at random, she then picks one of the few people who are still talking, and singles them out.
“River, do tell what’s so important.” They stare at her, cheeks heating as all eyes turn on them, but they say nothing. “It is important, isn’t it? After all, you’ve continued to talk despite my call for silence.”
“No?” she asks then, voice still dangerously soft, “Then I suggest you hold your tongue before I do it for you.”
The silence in the room is now deafening. She comfortably sits in it for a very long minute because the silence doesn’t bother her. It has never bothered her.
“To put it mildly, yesterday was not a good day,” she then says, breaking silence.
The pronouncement hangs in the air, a promise that more will follow clinging to it, as Lacha studies the room, looks for agreement and finds it, looks for neutrality and finds it, looks for anger and finds it, emotions playing across various faces.
“A third loss in a row is not the outcome I was hoping for, least of all when prior to this we managed a string of four wins. However, what concerns me more is what followed. Feyry fire is not an appropriate weapon for making a point.” A pause to underscore her chastisement, before she continued. “Now I could play the fool, I could say, not my court, I could refuse to take ownership of the promise that change is coming because of the ambiguity as to whom the message was intended, but I think that would be a mistake. I’ve ruled this court one-hundred and sixty-seven years, I know when a message is meant for me.”
A low tide of murmurs rises and falls quickly. She waits it out, her gaze playing across the entire room, her expression a cold mask that doesn’t betray any measure of her emotions.
“I’d do this quieter, but then, brash action gets a return in it’s fashion, and I haven’t the slightest idea which of you I’m actually talking to, so I’ll simply say this. Change is coming? Fine. But we do it my way. No more feyry fire, no more stupid, brazen gestures that have the potential to kill.” She says it like an order; it is an order, one that comes with the subtext that she will ensure there is hell to pay if she’s disobeyed. She leans back in her seat. “If the goal was having my attention, believe me, it’s had.” She sighs then, “Owing to that, within the next fortnight, I’ll take one list and one list only of demands or changes meant to be considered. I don’t care how it makes it’s way to me any more than I care in what fashion it’s written, but I swear to you, here and now, should I get more than one, especially if they have conflicting demands, I’ll consider none and deem the matter closed.”
A rising tide of response comes into being once again, this one louder than the one previous. It’s not her typical tactic, and she has a feeling everyone’s struggling to recall the last time she played at being so reasonable; the last rebellion she quietly ended with an “accident” before everyone even entirely knew what was brewing and the one before that was put down with weapons and blood and force. But then, she hasn’t been quite this disadvantaged for a long time.
“Should there be any concerns regarding this arrangement, I’m afraid I’ll only hear those in person,” she adds, speaking over the noise rather than waiting for quiet, a hint of sharp amusement playing across her face; they can do things her way, but if they don’t like it, she means to make them give her a name and a face with whom to start the association earlier than she’ll get it otherwise, leaving her room to do more with it. The part of her that lives for tactics prays they both have concerns and are stupid enough to play this her way rather than work harder to force her hand. Right now she has so much room to turn this if not entirely to her favor, than certainly to her benefit and she’d like it to remain that way.
Still, she’s not quite finished. She calls for quiet, this time with not a gesture but with a singular word, issued with force above the noise: “Enough.” She gives thirty seconds, before she runs out of patience; hand tightens to a fist, and she taps into her magic, muting the room.
“One last thing, on a peripherally related note. For those of you who might be wondering or are concerned: I will be making good on my wager, as soon as Adare and I can settle on a date to call both courts together. I fully expect that those of you in similar circumstance do the same. Chaos preventing the normal way in which we do things does not give justification for failing to meet our obligations.”
It’s one last pronouncement and she lets this one hang for a moment too, before she opens her hand and waves it in a lazy gesture, releasing her hold and carelessly dismissing everyone all at one. “You all may go.”
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