Rosalie knew better than to expect much from this Valentine’s Day or any other that was going to follow. Usually she’d spend it either at home with a bottle of wine and chocolate cake or in a bar where she’d get drunk enough until being able to justify her bad decisions. Tonight wasn’t supposed to be much different and when she was told whom she had been coupled up with she knew that she would probably end up alone at the end of the night either way. She reached Claire’s room once her shift was over and smiled warmly as soon as she spotted the blonde even though she assumed she wouldn’t be met with the same gesture. She didn’t mind, being a slave was already difficult enough as it was and Rosalie was hardly sensitive enough to take any of it personal. “Hey, dear. Are you ready to get going?” Rosalie asked, dressed in a short red dress and some heels.
Vincent is lying in a bed. Everything is blissfully normal until he begins to feel the deep set ache that has burrowed itself deep into his bones and the exhaustion that keeps him caged in the confines of his sheets. For a moment, even the heavy feeling of wrongness does not disturb him. Cold and calculating, his eyes shift to the figure that has been beside his bed the whole time. The face that greets him is unnaturally young and familiar. Kaleb. His mentor; now de-aged to his late twenties in contrast to the withered old man that he remembered passing away.
With horrifying clarity he recognizes that charming smirk painted on the young man’s lips. It was the same expression he had left Kaleb with in his dying hour. Now, Vincent was the old man, doomed to succumb to foolish, parental sentiments and to die believing that smirk held the pinnacle of his foster son’s love.
No. His mind screams, fighting for him to move and to tell the tale of the demon that has taken everything with nothing more than a faux smile. His body lies motionless while his mind rages and soon that smirk fades, leaving him blinking up at the ceiling of his real bedroom. His fingers were clenched around the sheets as sweat cascade down his cooling skin.
That nightmare hadn’t been conjured by guilt. To this day he felt no remorse for the gullible old man. His respect for Kaleb had been lost when he surpassed all his teaching and had nothing left to gain from him but money. That nightmare came from the nagging fear that somewhere, someone more cunning with more ambition would turn him into the jester of his own court. That everything would be stolen from him and he would become pathetic enough to thank them as they drained away his being.
Maybe, a long time ago, Aine had thought she was beautiful.
It was hard to comprehend that now, standing in front of the mirror in the stylist’s changing room to admire her body. Without a bra on, and the subsequent inserts to give her that slight boost of self esteem, there was nothing to tell herself that she was, physically, a woman.
Flat chested, pale skin. Her long hair was styled in a woman’s cut and they applied gentle makeup to bring out her features, but if they took that away, she’d be no more woman than Carlos or the Director himself. Aine dropped her gaze, looking away from her reflection when it came to the other obvious distinction that she wasn’t a girl.
She hated it. Not being able to express who she was, trapped in a body that wasn’t her own, using it for things that she didn’t want. Aine’s sense of self had been stripped away since early childhood when she was taken away. They’d beat it into her at first, lashing out every time she cried for her parents, until she stopped mentioning them. Eventually, Aine forgot their faces, because if she thought of them, she’d talk of them, and talking of them would mean more scars.
The blonde’s fingers ghosted down her chest, her abdomen, resting over her core. It hadn’t been long since she’d come to the Sterling House, and in that time, she’d been with very few cruel Masters, compared to what she had experienced before. The pink scars spread like lightning over her skin, some of them more jagged than others. When they’d run out of places to hit her without the skin breaking, they’d beat her on the flats of her feet.
It was strange to be wearing shoes again. Socks, with no holes. Clothes made of fine fabric with dazzling embellishments to bring out her best features. The cuffs were the only sense of normality that Aine could fathom. Coloured to indicate she was well trained, locked to indicate she wasn’t a virgin. Aine was anything but- used far, far too many times to be considered in that category.
She swallowed, wriggling her toes before looking back up in the mirror. Slowly, her gaunt face was filling out, years of starvation had shrunk her. She looked more whole with the makeup and the food. More like a real person, and not property to throw to the ground. That thinking was dangerous. That thinking would get her killed.
Aine looked over her shoulder as the stylist knocked on the door, and Aine unlocked it to allow her in, taking the gentle pink dress and lingerie given to her. She gave herself a bare moment to touch them before dressing in them, feeling whole once more.
