first, if you’re here for disability writing stuff, my masterpost is below!
Disability Writing Guides
please feel free to hit me up with questions, concerns, or comments on the posts above, or about disability in general!
about me - my name is blue, i’m 23, and i’ve been writing whump on tumblr for about two years, but am currently on a hiatus (more info here). the four masterposts below link to all of my whump writing :)
Lost Cause Jude is my lady whump BBU sandbox series, currently on hiatus. please give it a read and feel free to talk to me/send requests, just know i might not be up to writing them
Liam and Delilah is a male whumpee long-term captivity series, and they have my full attention right now so PLEASE read them and request them and talk to me about them!
Close to Human is a male techo whump story about a man(?) that is at least partially mechanical, who forms a connection with the tech assigned to work on him.
What It Takes is a male superhero whump story about a young sidekick being trained by a mentor through less-than-gentle methods.
okay that’s all and also way too much talking congrats if you made it to the end i love u :)
another @summer-of-whump prompt! had an idea and then didn’t get around to it until ELEVEN but managed to scribble something down so here goes. more angst for isabella :)
tagging @shapeshiftersandfire and @killtheprotagonist
CW: lady whump, pet whump, aftermath of conditioning, mentions of noncon touch, intimate whumper, migraines, panic attacks, amnesia
Days pass and Isabella wanders the apartment, examining every piece of Miss Mara’s clothing, staring at the photos on the wall until her eyes stream with tears. The memories come slowly, sporadically, and sometimes, not at all. Some mornings, Isabella wakes with the distinct feeling that she remembered something the night before that melted away in the morning light. Some days, Miss Mara gets irritated, and the boxgirl’s new resolve crumbles under the pressure to be good quiet obedient loving GOOD.
Hardly a week has passed and already, Isabella has made all the progress she thinks she can make. Shaking with adrenaline, she hesitates in front of the desk in the corner of Miss Mara’s apartment.
Isabella knows every inch of the apartment aside from Miss Mara’s desk drawers. Isabella has seen, soaped, and scrubbed every centimeter of wall, floor, and counter. She’s dusted the ceiling. She’s folded clothes and organized spices and sat and watched the empty walls until she thought she’d go cross-eyed. No matter how bored she’d gotten, Isabella had never dreamed of opening the desk drawers. During the first week of owning her, Miss Mara had declared the drawers off-limits.
Now, Isabella stands before them, not breathing.
This is the first rule she’s actually broken. The-the…what Miss Mara called a crush on Jamie – that hadn’t been a rule, just Box Babe programming that was supposed to be unshakable. This would be something else. This would be a direct violation of the owner that bought and paid and takes care of her. Miss Mara ordered Isabella to do one thing, and now Isabella plans to do something else. The idea of it terrifies her, makes her throat thick and her palms sweaty.
Deep down inside, where Isabella keeps her confusion and her questions and her anger, the idea of it makes her a little bit excited, too.
The first hour, Isabella just stands in front of the desk. She sits down, waits nervously for a moment in her owner’s chair, and then stands back up. Isabella isn’t allowed on the furniture without permission, not anymore. Miss Mara prefers her on her knees, looking up adoringly, or else perched on Miss Mara’s lap, where Miss Mara’s hands can move over any part of her pet’s body. Miss Mara would absolutely not want Isabella in her chair, hand trembling on the handle to her drawer. After almost three hours of practice, that’s where Isabella finds herself.
By the time she eases the top drawer open, Isabella’s head thrums with every beat of her heart. Her palms are slick with sweat, and she breathes fast and shallow, like her lungs have shrunk to a quarter of their former size. She’s been hyperventilating so long that her head feels empty and airy, her skin cold. When her arm draws back, bringing the drawer with it, Isabella can almost pretend it’s someone else’s fingers, attached to someone else’s hand.
After all this buildup, the contents of the drawer are underwhelming. Pens and pencils neatly aligned, a few sticky note pads lining the bottom. There’s a checkbook tucked in the corner, a roll of tape that hasn’t been opened yet. The clear order of the drawer soothes Isabella for a moment, relaxes her even as she has to slide the drawer shut again, quickly, quickly, so her absent owner can’t catch her.
The next drawer has paper in it, blank paper of three kinds. One has a grid of blue lines, and another is lined just one way, and the last sort is entirely blank. Looking at the empty pages, Isabella’s fingers twitch. An unspecified longing rises in her. If she put a pencil to paper, what could she do? Could she write? Could she draw? Back in training, Handler Collins broke her fingers for signing something forbidden, signing her old name. The bones creak, sometimes, the hand aches when Isabella works with water that’s too cold, or spends too long on her knees, scrubbing the floor.
Without realizing it, Isabella has taken her right hand in her left, is rubbing her thumb over the back of her hand as if she can heal the damaged bones that Handler Collins broke. If she pretends the problem is her hand, she doesn’t have to admit that the thing that would really keep her from writing is her broken fucking brain.
Slamming the drawer shut harder than she means to, Isabella rips the last one open with all the leftover adrenaline in her, heart slamming hard in her chest. There’s a headache singing in her head, nerves prickling in her fingers, and when the last drawer is packed full of files, the thought of all those pages full of writing makes Isabella want to give in entirely.
Instead, she reaches down tentatively, runs her fingers over the cascade of brown tabs. They didn’t break her of reading, not really. She’s grown so used to the migraines that the pain sparking behind her eyes hardly registers as she scans over the labels on the files.
There, right after Interviews – Handlers, is a tab that makes Isabella swallow hard. It’s her name, written in Miss Mara’s confident hand. Arm trembling so bad she’s afraid she’ll drop the thing altogether, Isabella reaches down and withdraws her file.
It’s thin. Almost empty. There are five documents inside – Isabella counts them before she tries to read a word. The first is a transfer of ownership. Though the words stretch on for one page, two pages, three pages, four, the purpose of the packet is outlined in the very first paragraph that Isabella scans.
It’s a document of sale. It transfers responsibility of Isabella from WRU to Ms. Mara Langford, MS. On the final page, Isabella traces her fingers over Miss Mara’s big, loopy signature, and feels her meager breakfast flip, deep in her stomach.
The next three documents are six pages each. They detail Isabella’s checkups – the questions asked and the answers given. They’re the same questions, over and over, and always, the same answers. In the very back of her mind, Isabella feels a flash of something like fleeting pride. There’s a sentence printed at the bottom of each transcript, a judgment meted out in emotionless capital letters.
MEMORY STATUS: SATISFACTORY
If the handlers knew what Isabella was doing now, she thinks, faintly hysterical, they wouldn’t think her status was satisfactory, no, no, not at all.
If Isabella had stopped there, her life might have turned out very, very differently. If the tidal wave of guilt had dragged her under, she might’ve gone on living as she did for a very long time. As it was, she came close, so incredibly close, to carefully replacing the papers, sliding the folder back in the drawer, and leaving her discontent for another day.
Before she can do that, though, Isabella catches a glimpse of the lone document left on the table. Her eyes catch at the title, the first paragraph, the last paragraph, the signature beneath. Each new realization hits her separately and hits her hard.
It’s an informal document, drafted by someone only relatively familiar with the law. It’s an agreement – a retraining agreement.
Isabella’s glad she’s sitting down, because if she wasn’t, she thinks she’d lose her legs.
On this paper, it says that Handler Collins has permission to retrain Isabella, and that he has permission to use whatever method he sees fit. In the last paragraph, right before the signatures, it says that this procedure may be repeated, whenever the owner deems necessary.
Beneath that, Miss Mara’s signature repeats, big and loopy and dark.
For what feels like an age, Isabella sits there, wanting to vomit, wanting to sob, wanting to cry. Miss Mara had petted her and soothed her and cooed over her, made sad faces over Handler Collins’ cruelty. The whole time, she’d been…she’d been admiring his work. She’d been thinking that if Isabella ever needed another tune up, it would be Handler Collins who would take care of that for them.
With excessive care, Isabella lines the papers up neatly. She places them inside the folder, lining up the edges. The folder slides back into the desk drawer, between Interviews – Handlers and the start of the J files. The drawer she shuts neatly. She stands from the desk, steps back, and slides the chair into place. Everything is aligned, in order, neatly in place. Satisfied with her precision, Isabella retreats numbly away from the desk, away from the drawers and the documents and the dark truths within.
There’s nowhere in the apartment that’s truly safe. There’s nowhere in the apartment that’s hers. The best Isabella can do is retreat into the closet next to the front door, curl up on the floor in the dark, quiet corner where no one ever comes but her.
Legs tucked up tight against her chest, Isabella wraps her arms around herself and sinks her head down between her knees. Finally, her icy numb calm starts to slip. Her breathing is the first to go – the hyperventilation that tightens her chest until it aches. Chills race over her skin, shaking that rattles her audibly against the back of the closet wall. The sobs are almost silent, but ring loud in Isabella’s ears, too loud, much too loud – she’s going to get hurt for that, hurt for this, hurt for anything, for everything –
Her breath comes shorter. Her eyes blur with tears. The sobs heave unevenly out of her, a collection of ragged, desperate, broken sounds. She wants to dig her nails into her arms, wants a grounding kind of pain, but she can’t do that. She’s not allowed to hurt, to touch, to damage. Her body is not her own.
Instead of perfect, soothing pain, Isabella falls apart in the closet, fist stuffed in her mouth so she won’t cry too loud. Her eyes swell and her throat closes and her chest aches – and then, when it’s all too much, when there’s too little air for her to go on gasping, then, thankfully, finally, the closet goes black, and Isabella passes out.
Started this by writing 27/28 prompts for Febuwhump, and will definitely be a lotttt longer because ya girl loves a complicated plot and we are just getting started. Febuwhump prompts will be starred (*) and are almost entirely whump gratification and not plot-relevant hah. Also in this post, writing will be in chronological order even though they were certainly not posted that way.
Summary: Mara is a pet lib worker who is going undercover as WRU company therapist, trying to use a position within the company to uncover some dirt. It’s going pretty well, too, until her new coworkers bring in their latest non-volunteer Box Babe - Mara’s ex-girlfriend, Jude. At the end of training, Mara gets to take home the Box Babe that used to be Jude - because she wants to save the girl she used to love. It’s a shitty situation, but Mara’s intentions are good. Aren’t they?
Themes of pet whump, lady whump, training whump, incompetent caretaker, incompetent whumper, reluctant whumper, caretaker to whumper, aftermath of conditioning, intimate whumper, many more things I am not thinking of....
Picrew of my gals <3
Backstory
(Run. Don’t Look Back *) (I Can’t Take This Anymore *) (Insomnia * ) (Please Come Back *)
In Training
(Mind Control * ) (Betrayal *) (Take Me Instead *) (I’m Sorry, I Didn’t Know *) (Identity Reveal * ) (Who Are You? *) (I Didn’t Mean It *) (I Can’t Lose You, Too *) (Imprisonment *) (Memory Loss *) (Poisoning *) (Hey, Hey, This Is No Time To Sleep *) (Hallucinations *) (Hiding Injury *) (Broken Bones *) (Don’t Try To Pin This On Me *) (Burned *) (Don’t Look *) (Recovery *) (I Wish I Had Never Given You a Chance *) (Hostage Situation *)
tagging @killtheprotagonist and @shapeshiftersandfire
CW: pet whump, lady whump, choking, hitting, dehumanization, aftermath of conditioning,
Miss Mara comes into the apartment with her eyes too bright, and Isabella knows something is wrong. She knows it in her body before her mind even processes what the problem could be - suddenly every muscle is tense, her skin is prickling with adrenaline overload. Miss Mara smells like alcohol, like sweat from the bar, but she’s not drunk. She’s too contained for that, too much in control. Her movements are still sharp and precise but they’re fast enough to mean she’s angry. Isabella’s heart sinks straight through to her toes. The dread in her chest yawns like an abyss, bottomless and sucking. “Isabella,” Miss Mara calls as she slips off her shoes, though she knows that as always, Isabella is waiting right there by the door. “We need to talk. Couch.”
The words fill Isabella with a fear so cold and deep that for a moment she can’t move. The moment passes, though, and she stands, ignoring the static feeling in her legs from kneeling too long. Trying not to show her apprehension on her face, Isabella crosses toward her owner, but Miss Mara shakes her head and points toward the couch. Isabella kneels before it, muscles burning as they’re forced back into the position she’s already held too long. It hurts, but maybe Miss Mara wants to sit on the couch while Isabella kneels on the floor.
No. Miss Mara stays standing, and Isabella has to tip her head up, up, up to keep her eyes on her owner. She doesn’t look Miss Mara in the eye - keeps her gaze soft, unfocused - but Isabella can still see the harsh hard line of Miss Mara’s mouth, the darkness in her eyes. The quiet between them stretches on, and Isabella badly wants to squirm. Her legs sting with blood that’s been forced through her veins and now pressed out again by the weight of her kneeling. Her owner’s gaze is angry. Isabella knows something is coming, and it makes her chest tight, so that she wants to gasp for breath, plead before she knows what she’s pleading for, anything to end the tension here. She’s too well-trained for that, so instead she just waits, statue-still and stone patient.
“I need you to be honest with me about Jamie,” Miss Mara begins, and Isabella’s heart sinks like a stone in her chest. She wonders if she should fake surprise, if she can fool her clever owner. Then she wonders why she’s so bad when Miss Mara’s so good to her, why she wants to lie to skip the punishment, why she even needs to lie at all. Oblivious, her owner keeps talking above her. “She won’t stop fucking texting me and I just need to know, okay? What is it with her? Is she…?”
That mistrustful, calculating look that Miss Mara gives her makes Isabella’s skin crawl, though she keeps the misery off her face. She knows what Miss Mara is asking, and it makes her feel small, disgusting, humiliated. Isabella hates when Miss Mara looks at her like that, like she might be dirty. Besides, it’s not like that, with Jamie. Isabella knows it’s not. So why, when Miss Mara asks her, does she always feel ashamed?
Her owner is looking at her for an answer, and so Isabella clears her throat. “Jamie is a pet-sitter.” She chooses her words carefully. “I…I do not perform any Romantic duties with her.”
She thinks that’s right – she thinks so, but then Miss Mara tips her head, eyes glittering, and Isabella knows she’s stepped wrong in a minefield. “Is that what it is, to you? Romantic duties? Is that what you do for me?”
“N-no,” Isabella stumbles, sensing the weakness in her own voice, the uncertainty that’s going to condemn her. She’s not supposed to be uncertain, Miss Mara’s never uncertain; there’s a right answer here that Isabella doesn’t know. The anxiety makes Isabella’s fingers twitch, the knowledge that she’s doing it wrong, she’s making it worse. When she licks her lips and tries to answer, her voice comes out small. “No…or, yes? Those are Romantic duties, but they aren’t…I’m happy to, to…perform with you, for you, I…” she’s slipping, faltering, failing. “You’re my owner, Miss Mara.” Her words are bare and desperately sincere, and Miss Mara’s eyes are cold, cold, cold on hers. Isabella gives up and lays the words out bald and shaking, desperate for anything that might save her, that might fix this. “You’re my owner, Miss Mara. I love you.”
“Can you love someone, do you think?”
It’s a fair question, so Isabella doesn’t know why it makes her want to flinch. Miss Mara’s voice is cold, cold, icily curious, and the question itself…well, Miss Mara has been past treating her like a person for a long time. That’s good. That’s correct. Isabella herself said that’s what she wanted, and questions like this come with the territory. It doesn’t matter that it winds her, makes tears prickle in the corners of her eyes.
“I don’t know,” she answers honestly. “But I love you.”
It’s true, or as true as it can be. If love is devotion, if love is attention, if love is needing someone’s approval to even feel like they can live, then Isabella can and does love Miss Mara – desperately, with everything in her. If love is something more than that, then maybe they dragged the ability out of her and killed it on the floor of a white-walled room. Either way, Isabella finds herself hanging in the silence before Miss Mara’s next words, wanting nothing more than to be released, absolved, found worthy.
“Do you love Jamie?”
Oh. Isabella’s cheeks go pink without her permission and she can’t regret it, even when she sees Miss Mara’s eyes go flat and angry. There’s a feeling in her stomach – a weird, tentative, hopeful feeling, something that makes her feel squirmy and soft. “No,” she says, far too late, and it’s the truth, but it’s not the whole truth. There’s something there. Something old and stretching and new, that has the potential to grow.
And Isabella’s spoken far too late, with far too little conviction. Lips tightening into a hard, unhappy line, Miss Mara slaps her pet, right across the mouth, hard enough to whip Isabella’s head around. She’s had far worse pain than this but tears still spring to her eyes as she turns her head back and gazes mutely up at her owner, her owner who she loves, her owner who she’s thoroughly betrayed. The promised bad thing, the bad thing that was coming, it’s here, in Miss Mara’s tense towering body and flinty angry eyes. The fear in Isabella is high and gasping. She grits her teeth and keeps looking up at Miss Mara’s shadowed, furious eyes.
“She doesn’t love you.” Miss Mara pronounces it clearly, carefully, not shouting, but loud enough to hurt. Isabella swallows hard and tries to duck her head, but Miss Mara tips her chin insistently up. “She might still love Jude” – Isabella flinches, hard – “but she doesn’t love you. And she’s not going to, okay?” Now there are tears running down Isabella’s face, and she doesn’t know if it’s the words or the fear or the stinging pain across her face, but the sight of it pulls Miss Mara’s face into a frown. She slaps Isabella again, harder. The feel of it jars her teeth in her mouth, sparks hot pain across the skin of her cheeks. “Don’t fucking cry about it. You hear me? Don’t fucking cry! She doesn’t matter! Why does she matter so much to you?”
Isabella’s hand has flown to her mouth, a reflex she couldn’t suppress in time, guarding the spot that Miss Mara keeps hitting. Carefully, Isabella tucks it back down by her side and answers. “It doesn’t,” she says, and they both know she’s lying. “She doesn’t matter, you’re the only one who matters.” She’s trying to convince both of them, and it’s not working.
“Then why’d you fucking leave me?” The blow lands hard on the side of Isabella’s face, knocking her head to the side, clearing her brain of every thought except calm her owner down. “Why’d you fucking leave? Why?”
“I’m sorry,” Isabella manages, flinching hard as another blow lands in her ribs. It’s a kick this time, delivered so sharp and hard that it knocks Isabella’s breath away. Thank god for that, because the pain blooms so big Isabella wants to wail - she can’t wail, she’s a good girl, but the breath escapes her in a huge and heavy gasp.
Miss Mara keeps hitting her. Miss Mara keeps kicking her. Isabella keeps her arms down by her sides like a good pet, good pet, good girl. Her arms shake with the desire to protect herself but Isabella doesn’t. She wants to be good for Miss Mara – she believes, like an idiot, that she can still be good for Miss Mara. “I’m s-s-sorry.” She wants to defend herself, wants to protect herself from the blows, but she’s good, she’s good, and in her head there’s still her training, screaming at her that if she just keeps being good it’ll help.
It doesn’t help. It doesn’t help because Miss Mara keeps asking questions that Isabella can’t answer. “Why’d you leave?” she demands, throat thickening, and as her voice climbs to a shout, the tears pour faster and faster down Isabella’s cheeks. She hates being yelled at, hates it, she’s scared, and Miss Mara keeps hitting her – sharp hard blows to her cheekbones and her jawbones and across her upper body. “Why’d you leave?!” Miss Mara screams it, and Isabella wails her answer over and over again, not knowing any better, not knowing any different, simply not knowing.
“I don’t know! I don’t know! Miss Mara, Miss Mara, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t leave you, it wasn’t me, I don’t know-”
Miss Mara must be tired of hearing Isabella’s voice, because she leans down over Isabella, kneels down over Isabella, hair messy and wild around her head, and she puts her hands around Isabella’s throat and squeezes tight enough to cut off all of Isabella’s air. There’s no more begging now, only choking, gasping, desperate unhinged fighting, the kind that has long been trained out of Isabella and is only brought to the surface by the unconscious need to breathe. She claws at Miss Mara’s hands but her owner can’t be moved; she kicks her legs out but can’t seem to make contact. Miss Mara’s face is the last thing she sees before her vision clouds to black.
_
Isabella wakes up alone on the floor, sucking air raggedly through a bruised throat. It hurts to breathe, and even when she focuses on hauling in air, her lungs feel half-empty, ineffective. For a few long minutes, she just lies there, trying to breathe as her memories come back to her. She’s still draped awkwardly across the floor, limbs in disarray, so Miss Mara must’ve left her where she lay. Speaking of Miss Mara – Isabella pushes herself up with no small effort, glances around frantically, but the room is empty. Dark. Her owner must be sleeping off her anger in bed. Good. That’s good.
Alone on the couch, Isabella’s hands creep up to frame her neck, to stroke the lurid purple bruises she envisions darkening her skin. She imagines she’s covered in bruises, buried in them, after all the blows Miss Mara rained on her face, on her neck, on the softness of her belly. Isabella almost wants it to be true, wants there to be evidence of her owner’s hysterical anger, of the fact that she’s been punished for her disobedience. She’s repented. She’s sorry. She’s sorry.
In the room, all alone, tears spring to Isabella’s eyes. She’s so, so sorry. The bruises will show that, won’t they? She’ll be happy to wear them, grateful to, if only it makes Miss Mara feel better.
And yet the blows weren’t that hard, and Isabella’s weak, weak, weak. Maybe there are no bruises at all. There’s no way to be sure until she gets a mirror and some light on her skin, but to go into the bathroom, to turn on the light…it wouldn’t just be disobedient, it would risk waking Miss Mara, further provoking her wrath. Isabella settles back on the couch, fingers stroking over her own skin in a feeble attempt to soothe her racing heart.
Her eyes are distant, thoughts detached, fingers running repetitively over the forming bruises, even though it’s not making anything better. She wants to sleep, but she doesn’t have permission, so she just sits up on the couch and thinks about the way that each breath rasps in and out of her damaged throat. Her mind drifts from her owner, from her guilt, and her thoughts grow stranger, colder.
It’s hard, choking a person – Isabella knows that personally, from fuzzy distant memories of times she tried to fight off the guards in the facility. She knows it takes more strength and more effort than she ever thought, and Miss Mara had gotten it right, leaning in and using the weight of her whole body to press down with both hands. Her breathing picks up, despite the pain, and her thoughts stutter, as Isabella follows that thread to its logical conclusion. Miss Mara must’ve – Miss Mara must’ve – Miss Mara must’ve done this to someone before.
lil snippet from when mara gets home and as it turns out she isn’t like. thrilled that jamie and isabella are friends
tagging @killtheprotagonist and @shapeshiftersandfire
CW: pet whump, lady whump,
From the moment Miss Mara gets home, all she wants is for Jamie to leave. Isabella can see that, can read it in the stiffness of her owner’s body, the tone of the curt, cold words that leave her mouth. Even if she couldn’t read it in Miss Mara, Isabella sees the way the words hit Jamie – the redhead shrinks, hunches her shoulders, bites her lip. Watching the two of them is like seeing her flashcards brought to life – the Platonic lessons on emotion that Miss Mara wants her to learn.
This is what irritation looks like.
This one is fear.
Isabella knows that when people are afraid, they try to get away from the thing that’s scaring them. The Box Babe isn’t so stupid that she needs training to tell her that. It would be so, so easy for Jamie to leave, to dart out the door away from Miss Mara, away from Miss Mara’s anger, away from whatever it is that’s making her so nervous.
But Jamie won’t leave. She lingers in the doorway, shoes already on, awkward feeling visible on her face, and Miss Mara looks her up and down with undisguised annoyance. “Do you need something?” she finally asks, pointedly, so dismissive she’s almost full-on rude. “Because I’m pretty tired…”
“I…” Jamie’s voice fades like a passing car. She clears her throat and comes back stronger, eyes lifting momentarily to meet Miss Mara’s flat gaze. “I wanted to, um, talk to you. About Isabella.”
There’s a feeling in Isabella’s stomach, like a tornado in her insides. No amount of training in the world could tell her what emotion she’s feeling right now.
“I’m…I’m kind of worried. About you, and, um…about…her.” Jamie finishes in a voice that’s all but a whisper, swallowing when she sees the look in Miss Mara’s eyes.
When Miss Mara tells Isabella to go wait in the other room, Jamie opens her mouth to protest. Before she can get a word out, Miss Mara casts her a furious look. “No. Don’t – don’t talk to her. Just shut up, okay?” Jamie subsides, looking troubled, looking wounded, and Miss Mara fixes her eyes on Isabella, face still full of leftover anger. That furious gaze makes Isabella flinch, and Miss Mara rolls her eyes and repeats herself, voice short and mean. “Go wait in my room.”
Isabella does as she’s told, but there’s not much point. It’s not as if she can’t hear the women arguing, one thin wall away. She can hear them arguing, and the raised voices make her want to cry. Isabella doesn’t know what she wants, can’t name what she’s afraid of. She doesn’t want Miss Mara angry; she knows that much. She wishes Jamie would just leave.
And at the same time, she wishes Jamie wouldn’t.
It’s silent, first, and then Jamie speaks up. Isabella leans against the door, trying to catch every word. “I just think that-”
“See, this is why I hate having you stay with her.” Miss Mara sounds exasperated already. “I know, okay? I know. Whatever it is you’re going to tell me, just…you don’t know everything. You don’t even know her. You can’t come in here and tell me what to do after staying with her for…for like, five days, tops.”
“I just…just, um, Mara, there are some things you could change-”
“Seriously, Jamie. Will you stop?” Miss Mara’s voice is sharp, nasty, deeply irritated. “I didn’t ask you for advice. I asked you for help.” A frustrated groan that’s loud enough to go right through the wall and make Isabella cringe. “Don’t give me that look. I know – I know this is fucked up. I know…but okay, was I supposed to let her go to someone else? Where she would’ve had it worse? Some random stranger?”
“We…look, we don’t know-”
An explosive sigh from Miss Mara. “Jamie, please don’t be so fucking stupid.” A room away, Isabella still flinches at the viciousness of the words. “You know that she’s better off with me than someone else.”
“Yeah,” Jamie agrees after a moment. “Yeah, but Mara, that doesn’t mean it can’t be better than it is.”
“Trust me, I know you think you can do better.” A disgusted huff from Miss Mara. Her tone communicates exactly what she thinks of that idea. “It’s not as easy as you think, okay? I’m working as a fucking double agent here and trying to look out for Isabella and…and you’re not making anything easier.”
“I…I get that this must be hard, but…there are things…” Jamie takes a deep, quick breath. “I know you have to treat her like…like a…a p-pet, but you don’t have to treat her like this.”
“Like what? We’re happy, Jamie, hard as that may be for you to believe.”
A deep, careful breath from Jamie. Maybe Isabella’s imagining things, maybe she can’t actually hear that. She feels like she can. She feels like she can all but hear Jamie’s hands wringing as she talks. “Okay, but, like, she…she shouldn’t have to wear the collar.”
“She likes the collar! I try to take away the collar and she fucking flips out!”
“Well…well you could get her a smaller one, or a necklace – get her used to it and then work your way down so she doesn’t…doesn’t feel like a pet.”
“She is a pet, Jamie.”
“She’s not. And she should know that. And be in, in therapy or something. And you can’t send her back to that place every other week-”
“It’s not every other week, Jamie! And I don’t have a choice, Jamie. I’m responsible for her, and I’m taking that a lot more seriously than you are.”
Behind the bedroom door, Isabella is shaking. She hates that Miss Mara is yelling, hates Miss Mara’s anger, hates the doubt that creeps in as they debate whether or not she’s treated well enough. She hates the tremble in Jamie’s voice. She badly wants Jamie to just give up, because then the two of them will stop fighting. Instead, Jamie draws in an unsteady breath. “I know…I know you’re responsible for her, and that’s…a lot, I guess. And serious, and important, and…I get that. But it’s…Isabella’s a person. She’s a person and she needs help.”
A snort from Miss Mara. “She’s not a person in the eyes of the law.”
“Mara!”
“She’s not, Jamie, and it’s time for you to face facts. I am in charge of her. I am responsible for her. I can’t just…ignore that in favor of living with you in happy sunshine land where she magically turns back into Jude.”
Isabella winces, and she can’t tell, now, if she’s flinching away from the name, or the venom in Miss Mara’s voice.
There’s a pause, and then when Jamie speaks, it sounds like she’s trying to decide between being angry and being wounded. “I’m not…that’s not what I’m saying, Mara, I, I wish you would take me seriously. I just…I know you have a lot going on and it’s a hard situation but…it could still be better.”
“Oh, and you would make it better?” Isabella can almost feel the eyeroll through the wall. “You think you can waltz in here and save her?”
“No. No, but…” Jamie sounds sure of herself, and Isabella’s fleetingly proud. “But I think I can help. There are things I can do to help. And there are things you can do differently that would be…better.”
“Great.” Going by Miss Mara’s tone, she does not actually think it’s great. “Next time, when I want your advice, I’ll ask for it.”
“I just think-”
“Okay, well stop! Stop thinking! It’s not exactly your strong suit.”
“Jesus, Mara. Can you…can you not? I’m trying to help-”
Jamie is finally fighting back, finally standing up for herself, is finally sounding almost frustrated – and then Miss Mara starts speaking, and her voice is low and cold and deadly. Unseen, unheard, paying rapt attention, Isabella swallows at the anger in her owner’s voice.
“I’m not having this conversation with you, Jamie. I don’t want your help. Isabella doesn’t want your help. Neither of us need your help. You’re acting like a fucking freak, you know that?” Miss Mara’s building up steam, and Isabella winces. That’s not good – it’s never good to let Miss Mara build on herself like this, acquire the kind of momentum that pushes her forward harder and faster and meaner. “You moved cities just to follow me and Isabella – what’s wrong with you? Who does that?”
“I-I needed to get out of the city anyway.”
“Sure, you did.”
“My dad-”
“Shut up about your dad, Jamie, Jesus. You’re an adult, you get that, right? A fucking adult woman?”
There’s quiet on the other side of the wall, and then, shakily: “Mara, stop it.”
“You stop it! Stop playing the goddamn victim again! I’m not falling for it over and over every goddamn time. Fucking get out already, Jamie.”
“Mara-”
“Just get out, will you?”
“Mara, please-”
“Just get out! Get out, get out, get out!”
Miss Mara’s yelling is loud, pitched so to keep Jamie from being able to argue. Through her owner’s screaming, there’s no way that either of them hears Isabella, who’s in the other room anyway, when she turns her face against the wall and whispers, “Stay.”
aren’t isabella and miss mara charmingly domestic :) things are fine :) definitely no problems here and especially no jealousy :)
tagging @shapeshiftersandfire and @killtheprotagonist - lmk if you want to be added/removed!!!
CW: lady whump, pet whump, aftermath of conditioning, fucked up power dynamics, intimate whumper
Miss Mara’s in a good mood, Miss Mara’s in a good mood, and that makes Isabella smile. Miss Mara’s laughing, and opening a bottle of wine, and making a mischievous face at Isabella as she pries out the cork. “It doesn’t count as drinking alone if you’re here, right?” she asks, and Isabella can recognize a rhetorical question now, so she just laughs. More good news at work, she surmises, from the phone call that Miss Mara immediately makes to her maybe-girlfriend Violet, wherein her owner pretends to be far more disinterested than she actually is, and says things like yeah, well, it still sucks, and, I guess, it just hardly feels like something to be proud of.
Miss Mara is proud. Isabella can see that. And Violet tells her she should be, on the phone, and Miss Mara drinks the wine straight from the bottle and giggles as she listens. Whatever conversation they’re having devolves and devolves, as Miss Mara slips more into teasing, more into murmuring sweet words down the telephone line. Isabella busies herself with dinner. Miss Mara shouldn’t be drinking on an empty stomach. She’ll make breakfast for dinner, Isabella decides, scanning through the scant supplies left in their fridge. It’s Miss Mara’s favorite.
By the time the food is ready, Miss Mara has hung up the phone, and now all her praise is directed to Isabella, who blushes until the tips of her ears are pink at the words her owner points her way. You’re so good this is so good you’re so smart thank you so much – it all blends together until Isabella isn’t sure when to thank her master, when to blush prettily, when to turn the sweet words aside. A pet can get stuck in a trap like that –
But Miss Mara isn’t in a trapping mood. “You know, wine and pancakes taste kind of okay together,” she giggles, the wine in one hand, her fork in the other. She’s finally acquiesced to using a glass, and she smirks at Isabella over the rim. “Who would’ve thought?”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“I’m glad you made it,” Miss Mara quips back, and Isabella grins again into her pancakes.
“I know you like them,” she tells her owner shyly, and Miss Mara ruffles her hair.
“You’re a good girl, Isabella.” Pleased with the praise, with all the compliments she’s getting, Isabella gazes at her owner almost rapturously, and Miss Mara looks just as happy. “It’s just so much money,” she marvels, stabbing another strawberry and swirling it through syrup. “It’s more money than I’ve…I mean, than I’ve ever had at once…”
“That’s good,” Isabella nods, sticking to small, careful bites. The syrup is sweet, definitely sugary, and Mara likes her on the smaller side. Her owner has never said it, but she has a look she gets when she sees Isabella taking bigger portions. It’s not a happy look. “That’s really good.” She aims a smile at her owner, but Miss Mara isn’t looking at her.
“It is good. It is.” Miss Mara shakes her head, shuts her eyes as if she’s picturing it. “And this is just the beginning. They want me at another meeting, can you believe that? Another meeting at headquarters, with all the, all the people in charge…”
Isabella nods along, pretending a normal amount of interest, but her heartrate has suddenly changed in her chest. “Does that mean I’ll stay here?”
“Yeah, yeah, um, you’re going to have to stay while I’m gone…”
“So, will…will Jamie come stay?”
Immediately, Isabella knows she’s done something wrong. The joy on Miss Mara’s face starts to sour, the sweetness shifts into something rotten. Isabella darts a glance at the wine bottle on the table and sees, with a sinking feeling, how much her owner has had to drink.
Not that it’s Miss Mara’s fault. It’s Isabella’s fault, all Isabella’s fault. Her voice sounded too eager, too excited, too something. Whatever it is, Miss Mara makes a discontented little sound in the back of her throat and scans her pet with a gaze full of something like suspicion. “What are you so obsessed with Jamie for?”
Miss Mara spits the name, and Isabella swallows, backpedals, tries to save herself. “I was just…just curious who would stay with me.”
“What, do you like her?”
“I like her f-fine,” Isabella tries, and hates the awkward way the words fit together, how she’s certain she’s said something wrong. “She’s fine.”
“Well, I hate her.” There’s a certain amount of relish in Miss Mara’s voice as she says it, and a certain amount of expectation. Isabella knows she should hold the same opinions as her owner, so she nods slowly, but that doesn’t satisfy Miss Mara. “She hurt me you know. She broke my heart.”
“Jamie did?” Isabella can’t hide the confusion in her voice, the question that borders on disbelief. Luckily, Miss Mara doesn’t seem to pick up on it.
“Yeah, she did. She lied to me. A lot. We dated for…for a little over three years. And she lied, and she hurt me.”
Isabella nods, fixing her face into something like sadness. On the inside, she feels fine, impervious, and she knows she’s being bad, bad, bad, but can’t bring herself to care. The only thing she feels is relief, for the way she’s deceiving her owner, because she can’t pretend she hates Jamie when she…she doesn’t. Isabella doesn’t know why she likes Jamie, just that her heart jumps when Miss Mara talks about her and sinks when Miss Mara says something mean or angry. The idea of Jamie hurting someone, the idea of Jamie being cruel…it’s so confusing as to be almost funny. Jamie, awkward nervous tentative sweet Jamie, hurting cool and confident Miss Mara? It doesn’t seem possible, doesn’t seem real. The realest thing about the story is Miss Mara’s anger, which she’s more than happy to indulge.
“She’s not, like, very smart, either.” Isabella’s owner says it with satisfaction, dropping her tone in the way people do when they’re revealing a secret. “I mean, she flunked out of undergrad when we went to school together. She’s been working the same minimum wage job for what, four years? Five? So, I mean. It’s not like she has any ambition, either.”
“I didn’t know that.” Miss Mara seems to be expected to say something, so Isabella puts in the blandest thing she can, focusing her gaze downward, on the pancakes she’s now hardly picking at, despite her constant growling hunger.
“Yeah, well. She watches you for free, and that’s nice, but I don’t know, Isabella.” Miss Mara frowns at her pet, eyes assessing. “I don’t trust her. You don’t think you could be on your own for a few days? There’s food in the fridge, and you know how everything in the apartment works…”
Heart racing, Isabella keeps her eyes fixed on her plate, so Miss Mara won’t see how frantic those words make her. “I don’t believe it’s a good idea to leave me alone for several days,” she informs her owner with unnecessary politeness. It’s her fallback, when she starts to panic, and though it turns the corners of Miss Mara’s mouth down, it doesn’t fail her now.
“Probably not,” her owner sighs. “So Jamie it is, then.” Isabella’s heart brightens treacherously. “But I still don’t like her, and I don’t trust her. Especially around you.”
That’s okay, because maybe Miss Mara’s right not to trust Jamie around Isabella. Maybe Miss Mara shouldn’t trust Isabella around Jamie, either. Isabella’s having all these disloyal thoughts, after all. Isabella isn’t hating Jamie when Miss Mara so clearly wants her to hate Jamie.
Trying to atone, Isabella is extra good that night. She does the dishes quickly and then she kneels by Miss Mara’s feet as her owner does her work. Later in the night, as Miss Mara watches TV on her laptop, she puts the computer on the coffee table and pulls Isabella into her lap. She runs her hands down Isabella’s sides, twirls a lock of hair around her finger. Isabella leans into the touch, relaxes into the touch, but it doesn’t feel the way it normally does. It doesn’t feel like she’s doing it because she loves it. Suddenly, for some reason, it feels the way it did in the Facility – like Isabella is doing this not because she wants to, but because there are stakes and strings attached. Miss Mara doesn’t notice, just keeps petting her, stroking her, pulling her back closer and closer, possessively. Isabella tries to focus on the movie. She tries to turn her brain off, tries hard not to think. This is good. This is a reward. She should be thinking about how happy she is, how lucky, how much she loves her owner.
i meant to get to a few of the summer of whump prompts but i’ve been weirdly busy and it got away from me...anyway, this is all i’ve managed so far. it’s a very isabella kind of defiance.
tagging @shapeshiftersandfire and @killtheprotagonist
CW: pet whump, lady whump, aftermath of conditioning, migraines, intimate whumper, mentions of noncon, mentions of physical abuse
After the dinner party, Miss Mara is different. Happier, more relaxed. She touches Isabella more often – fingers on her arm, on her face, tugging her in for kisses as her pet is cooking dinner. It used to be that Isabella couldn’t get enough touch to satisfy, and now it seems that wherever she goes in the tiny little box of an apartment, her owner’s hands are on her. Not that Isabella minds that. Isabella likes that. She likes it. She does.
Isabella is perfect, after all, perfect after her little…retraining incident. Whenever Miss Mara asks her something, whenever Miss Mara reaches for her, she finds her Box Babe pliant and pleased and smiley. Isabella is pliant and pleased, and it’s not hard to be smiley when her owner is so good to her.
Sometimes, when they’re kissing, Jamie’s indistinct face, her scratchy voice, will flash in Isabella’s eyes or echo behind her ears. Then Miss Mara’s hands slide under Isabella’s shirt, or her fingers turn mean, and the image of Jamie’s red hair dissolves. There’s no harm in a mistaken memory, a mistaken image, Isabella tells herself. There’s nothing wrong with not telling her owner that her incorrect impulses haven’t exactly stopped.
If Isabella is honest with herself, it goes deeper than that. It isn’t just that she doesn’t think there’s any harm. It isn’t just that she wants to be good, that she doesn’t want to be hurt. There’s something between her and her owner now, a jagged wrong edge that grates at Isabella’s perfect cheer.
But Miss Mara doesn’t notice that. Days pass and Miss Mara’s good mood continues, bright and unstoppable. She goes out with Miss Violet on a work night, comes home way too late and sparkling drunk. She makes Isabella come so hard she sees stars. She eats Isabella’s dinners and praises them til Isabella is blushing burning pink with pride. She takes her pet to the nursery – their first outing that isn’t straight to the facility – and lets her pick out a few plants to keep on the windowsill, for some color in the apartment, for something else to do while Miss Mara is at work.
Isabella picks yellow flowers like trumpets, and a plant with strange, fat green stalks fringed with spikes, and something small with flowers that are purple and starry and cluster close to its leaves. Miss Mara pays at the counter for three pots and promptly forgets about the little plants, but Isabella doesn’t. Isabella spends hours staring at them – their familiar shapes, the smell of earth, the smooth, living feeling of a petal between her fingers. When she smells their bright blooms, something aches behind her eyes.
Six days after the dinner party, Isabella is cleaning the apartment. Top to bottom, it takes about half an hour, given that she goes through the same motions every day. She waters her row of plants, hand moving in circles so the dirt is soaked evenly. She knows how to do that. In the back of her head somewhere, Isabella already knows how to do that. She knew which flowers to choose and how to repot them and where to place them so they’d get the most sun. Miss Mara doesn’t notice her sure movements, quiet confidence, thinks it’s the same good old training as always.
It’s not. There’s something in Isabella that’s more than training now. There’s a new set to her jaw. The bruises on her body have faded, the vicious welts and lines of scratches. Miss Mara has smacked her around but it’s not enough to get the fear back in her. There’s something in her that’s pushing back against the fear, that might even be stronger. When Isabella’s last chore, the dishes, are finished, she sets them out to dry instead of toweling them off straightaway. For once, she has something else to occupy her time.
Taking a deep breath, Isabella walks around the kitchen counter to the wall opposite the couch, the wall where Miss Mara’s pictures hang. She plants herself in front of them, eyes squeezed shut to brace herself. Then she opens her eyes, and she looks.
The first picture is Miss Mara as a kid, a tiny kid who’s grinning so hard her eyes are squeezed shut. Her black hair is chopped in a straight bowl cut, and a familiar tenderness runs through Isabella, almost makes her lose her resolve. Quickly, before her strength deserts her, Isabella moves on.
The next framed photo is Miss Mara and her parents. She’s wearing a long red robe and holding a piece of paper in front of her. There are flowers. She’s outside, and it’s sunny. She’s a teenager and she’s smiling; she and her parents are smiling. When Isabella looks at them, at the faces of Miss Mara’s parents, the needling pain returns behind her eye. Good. Isabella focuses harder, tracing her eyes over the father’s strong jaw, the mother’s purple glasses. She even scans her eyes over the words on the piece of paper – she was discouraged from reading but they didn’t break her of it, not all the way.
Unbidden, words are coming to her mind. High school graduation. With it come other memories – a green robe, sun beating down, grass underfoot. Not from the photo. Something else, something that hurts. Isabella closes her eyes and tries to chase the feeling, tries to push it. She’s never done this before, but she squeezes her eyes shut and tries hard to want the memory into being. It’s slippery; it’s running from her, but beyond the electricity and the white rooms and the needle in her arm, there’s something else.
A face flashes before her – two faces. A man with a neat gray beard and an easy smile, a woman whose eyes are flashing, busy, looking everywhere at once, mouth ever half open. The pain that comes with the faces is blinding, blinding. Isabella staggers, sits down hard on the floor, tries to hold the images in her mind. They slip through her fingers, slide away from her, and Isabella wants to curse or cry. The only thing that keeps is the beard, the beard and the outline of the woman’s curly brown hair. With one hand, Isabella’s hand comes up to finger her own wavy dark locks.
And she doesn’t stop. Isabella takes breaks, and cleans, and practices signing, but over and over she comes back to those photos, the row of them. Sometimes she makes it through just one or two, sometimes she gets through all five in one long aching row. Miss Mara’s toddler photo never evokes anything, but the longer she stares at high school graduation, the more Isabella thinks she can hear a voice droning names, the smell of new cut grass, the feeling of a hard plastic chair beneath her.
The next photo in the line Isabella’s titled Dog Picture because it’s just Miss Mara with her arms wrapped around a black lab who’s trying to twist around to lick her face. When Isabella looks at the bright eyes, the pink tongue, she can picture a different face around them, a different body, a big lanky golden one with a tail like a waving flag.
Isabella spends a lot of time with Dog Picture.
Fourth in line is nicknamed other graduation picture, and this time it’s not the paper or the people that trigger Isabella, but the building behind Miss Mara. It’s all sharp, imposing white marble edges, stairs leading up to big double doors, and if Isabella pushes past her pain, she thinks she can smell old books, can feel exhaustion tugging at her senses, see a table scattered with papers. Library, her brain tells her. That’s the library. Much fainter, behind the library, there are other things – long tables full of people eating, a room with a hundred chairs or more, sitting at a desk with a sheet of paper, circling numbers on a list of answers. Isabella gets hangovers from this picture, long throbbing headaches that make her feel weak. She looks at it anyway, saves herself up for it. Her head hurts but something about the pain makes her feel more real.
The last picture in the line on the wall isn’t part of Isabella’s memory exercises. The last photo is of Miss Mara and Miss Violet. This, Isabella looks at for different reasons. She examines it up close, from a distance, from one side and then the next. The two women are smiling wide, arms wrapped around each other. They’re both well-dressed and beautiful and there’s water behind them, some big nameless water like a river or maybe a lake. Miss Violet’s looking at the camera, grinning like mad, but Miss Mara’s eyes have slid away from the dark eye of the camera and towards the woman beside her. Miss Mara’s eyes are on Miss Violet, and they’re shining, and Isabella’s owner is beaming as if she’s found something perfect, precious, singular.
Isabella wonders if Miss Mara has ever looked at her like that. If, on the nights she spends with Miss Violet, Miss Mara slaps her girlfriend, holds her by the throat. Lately, Miss Mara’s been dressing Isabella in tank tops and tiny shorts, smiling when Isabella trots around the apartment half-naked. She’s been tugging Isabella toward her with a finger looped through the collar around Isabella’s neck, and she doesn’t care when she does it from the wrong angle and Isabella gags. Some nights, in the middle of a movie, she’ll guide Isabella between her legs without saying a word, without looking away from the screen, and afterwards she’ll just leave her pet there, kneeling on the floor.
Isabella wonders if Miss Violet knows all that. She looks at their picture and thinks probably, Miss Violet doesn’t.
The thought of Miss Violet burns in her head, and so Isabella doesn’t just study photographs. She sniffs every spice in their cabinet and examines every shirt in Miss Mara’s closet. Most of it does nothing, but there’s enough to give her hope. There’s a yellow sweater Miss Mara doesn’t wear very often that makes the pain in Isabella’s head flare, though there’s no memory that comes with it yet. The green tea bags in the pantry make Isabella wince, especially when she dares to steep one and taste what comes. She still drinks every drop.
Oh, and the first time Isabella makes chicken pot pie, the taste of the crust in her mouth makes her weep, right there at the table with Miss Mara. They hadn’t eaten it since, but now Isabella pushes, now she asks, and when she focuses hard, she can almost see the outline of a tall brunette woman with her father’s jaw.
All of this, Isabella practices, repeats over and over, almost obsessively. She can’t write it down, so she signs it to herself in the mirror, trying to imbue each shape, each movement, with memory.
I have a father and a mother and a, a, an older sister. I had a high school graduation. I did. I did. I think I did. My father has a strong jaw and a beard, and my mother has curly brown hair, and my older sister might have both. We have a dog – a yellow dog, and Miss Mara and I went to college together, and someone…someone used to drink green tea.
It’s nothing. It’s nothing, it’s hardly anything, but Isabella can’t stop. Through pain and persistent sickness in her stomach, through fear of Miss Mara and Handler Collins, Isabella digs into her memory, teeth gritted against the ache in her skull. It’s so easy – so easy when she’s surrounded by reminders, by triggers, by remnants of a life that lie like little time bombs all around the apartment. For months, Isabella has been resisting the persistent tug of memory, and now when she leans into it this hard, the results are more than she’d ever hoped for. A life. Isabella had had a life. It’s confusing and terrifying and some days she thinks about abandoning it, but that’s not what she wants. Isabella wants – she wants –
She doesn’t know what she wants, but every time she uncovers some new truth, she feels something close to joy.
None of this she shares with Miss Mara. It’s hard enough convincing Miss Mara to try chicken pot pie again. There’s a suspicious jut to Miss Mara’s chin when Isabella says she’s ready to try again. Her owner knows more than she’s letting on, more about why it hurts so bad to eat, but whatever it is, Miss Mara isn’t sharing. There are things Miss Mara knows that she won’t share and Isabella has a hard time thinking about why, about what that means. It seems big. It seems significant. It seems like another thing that owners aren’t supposed to do that Miss Mara’s doing anyway.
Isabella feels strange, emboldened, newly brave when she thinks about what she’s keeping from Miss Mara. It’s wrong and she knows that, but Isabella can’t bring herself to stop. Not after Miss Mara handed her over to Collins, not after Miss Mara lied to Jamie. Something has snapped. Some line has been crossed. There’s no going back now. She’s already broken. She may as well break all the way.
And most nights Isabella still sleeps with Miss Mara, still cries out Miss Mara’s name in bed. Most nights they talk over dinner, and they laugh together, and when Miss Mara puts her arm around Isabella, Isabella leans into it. There are flowers on the windowsill from Miss Mara. The clothes on her body, the collar on her neck. Miss Mara isn’t bad, she’s not. Isabella smiles into her kisses. Miss Mara’s still her owner. Isabella’s still her pet.
But now she has secrets, real secrets, secrets that have weight. It’s wrong and it’s disobedient and she’s a bad, bad pet – but Isabella can’t stop carving out space in her head that is hers alone. It feels too right, too wrong, too important, too real.
