Summary: When Bambi’s mother dies, it’s not his father he runs into.
Prompt: “a fawn stumbles around the forest on perpetually new legs. It has several rows of needle sharp teeth, and it is always starving” by @deepwaterwritingprompts aka this post.
Warnings: Canonical Disney mom death (not described), implied body horror.
So… I don’t know where this came from, but. Here it is.
———
It is winter, when his mother becomes lost to him. Winter, when he flees from the loud crack of Man. Winter when he is left alone.
He is destined to starve.
Bambi is still a fawn. Still incapable of finding food in the snow, of surviving alone, of fending for himself. He is still a fawn when he’s running, terrified and fueled by his mother’s “hurry!”, by the echo of Man’s work. Blinded, too, by it all, his fear and all the snow. And in the panic, he wanders to a place he should not be.
There is a part of the forest where the trees grow thicker, where the highest branches are braided so close together that the sun struggles to shine through, even on the brightest days.
There is a part of the forest where magic grows.
That is where Bambi flees to, unknowing, in the blindness of his fear. Darkness clouds over him, as he bounds deeper in, the snow here thinner than everywhere else, until he stops.
In another life, he is told to listen to the forest by his father, the Great Prince. In that life, he never hears words, never holds a conversation with the place that is his home, instead learns the figurative meaning of it. In that life, he learns to be the next Great Prince of the forest.
In this life, the forest speaks.
Lost little fawn, it sighs, branches rustling with wind that doesn’t touch him. All alone in the world.
Bambi jumps, looking around, his legs shaking furiously beneath him. “Mother?” he asks, whimpering, even though the voice sounds little like her, even though it is coming from a place too high to be her, even though it only vaguely sounds like a voice at all.
You have no mother now, the forest says, Man took her.
A tremble sweeps through Bambi, his legs hardly able to keep him upright with the force of it. This is something he knows, distantly. When she tries, she is faster than he is. He remembers her warnings of Man, about how they are dangerous, how they will take him. He was told to fear them.
He was told to fear this part of the forest, too.
He backs up, bumps into a raised tree root that makes him fall into the snow. He curls up, shivering, cold. His mother is dead and he has nowhere to go.
Do not fear, little fawn. The forest lowers a branch from the tree above him, still covered with bark, offering it as either food or shelter. I can help.
“Help?”
Yes. Don’t you want Man to pay?
Bambi lowers his head to the ground, ears flicking back and forth, eyes large and fixed on the branch.
I can help you. I can make you strong, so Man never takes a deer again.
“I’m hungry,” Bambi says, soft. His stomach is heavy in him, but empty. He was just beginning to eat breakfast with his mother when— when— he hasn’t eaten his fill. He’s been hungry all winter, more so the longer it drags on.
The branch breaks, moving closer. Then eat.
Bambi shifts to his hooves.
He bites cautiously at the bark. It crumbles in his mouth, warms his belly, lingers on his tongue.
He doesn’t remember is mother’s warning to never eat anything of magic. “It takes more than it gives, little one,” she had said, curled around him in the dark. “You must never eat anything, no matter how hungry you are. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he had agreed, even as the words went over his head. What could be so awful about food, aside from a bad taste? He nuzzled his head against her neck. “I understand, mother.”
Yet here he was.
The branch is nearly stripped bare before the effects begin to materialize.
It is pain.
He’s never felt it before, not like this — burning heat, an itch, a stabbing sensation in his mouth and an internal rolling and twisting of his stomach. “Mother!” he calls, legs giving out from under him, the only feeling beside the hurt a bone-deep sick.
It lasts too long, another fragmented cry of “mother!” before it pulls him into blackness, into something that is like sleep but far worse because he can still feel the pain.
Things are different when he wakes.
He is different. The first thing he notes — only for the bone-shaking hollowing howl of it — is that he is still hungry. Once he realizes that, he can’t think of anything else. He needs to eat.
He is starving.
———
Taglist: @super-writer-gal @mr-writes
Thanks to Sleepy for telling me to post (sorry for the delay, tumblr didn’t notify me, I swear). Also kudos to past-me for writing an actually short thing.
Summary: Olive ran from her past, years ago. Spent every minute trying to forget it. But it threatens her when a friend admits to giving an old enemy her name, warning that they’re still looking for her.
Warnings: childhood abuse if you squint hard enough, a bit of a mental breakdown/panic attack.
*****
Braden is complimenting her hair, calling her pretty like that undoes the last minute of her life, like that will earn him back the trust he's just crushed in his hands.
He just—
Her ears are roaring with the racing pound of her heart, drowning out his empty, pointless rambling compliments — a nervous habit, like the tick he does with his left hand. He's doing it now, she notes, as she struggles to breathe past the heated clench and frozen tremble of her throat. Her mind buzzes with his earlier words, echoing without diminishing. And beyond the nervousness sitting plain on his face, there's a flickering hope in his eyes. That the paper mache compliments will mend the chasm he's just dug between them.
Olive is harder to impress than that, harder to distract.
Though it doesn't stop her from noting it, from noticing. Trained instinct has her taking in everything and filing it away. She tastes old copper in the back of her mouth. She doesn't want that instinct anymore. Doesn't want to be her mother's daughter. Doesn't want to accept that Braden's given her up.
And the audacity of him to try to sweet talk his way out of this. How dare — sure he doesn't understand the full gravity of this, but — how dare he? This isn't a simple mistake. This isn't something he can talk his way out of.
He could say anything. Call the shit in the sewers beautiful. It would be as relevant, as important, as true as what he’s saying now — something about her coat. It was pointless. His opinion, subjective and changeable and voiced in the worst wrong moment.
That’s not where her focus really is though. All of her that isn’t half-stuck in a memory (sixteen and cold and guilty) is honed on him. What he said. What he did.
To think she thought him a friend — a brother.
She’s hyper vigilant. Noting the tiny details of his mannerisms in case there’s something important hidden there. A deeper, larger betrayal. A trap.
She cocks her hip out, hand gravitating to rest there, knuckles tight against the flight instinct she’s holding back. She swallows around the fear coated in her mouth. And, drawing on years of repression and pretending, composes her vocal cords enough that she can speak without her voice shaking. Confrontations, after all, are pitiful if one (she) breaks down during.
“What?”
She doesn’t have the time anyways. The clock is ticking, whatever answer he holds. She’s been found.
He chokes, mouth stumbling over what sounds like three different sentences as he processes her question. A flash of fear, briefly overtaking the nervousness. "You are!" he insists, not noticing the panic flared in her eyes, pressing on his stupid disjointed point like she was doubting his admiration. Like she has an insecurity issue, like she doesn't believe him. Like calling her pretty is the only thing he's said.
Like that's the only thing she could possibly be questioning.
He's ignoring the truth, she knows. Avoiding the worst, trying to see the mundane in this. Yet not seeing her mindless cast off to his words that she's projecting to cower behind. He should know better, on many counts. To ignore what he admitted, not seeing the truth of her posture, be it in the projected or the real. (Because how can he not see the panic? Her heart is beating in the base of her throat, pounding through her skin, beating at her collarbones, how the fuck can't he see that?). She doesn't care what he thinks. Especially now.
When he's daring to ignore it. What he's done -- given her name to those guard dogs. Fucking ignoring it. Does he think it doesn't matter?
His body language is screaming fear, too, his brown eyes focusing on hers and flying around like the man he spoke of will come back and clobber him. His fear is reassuring.
They're not coming. For the moment, she is safe. Safe to confront him. Safe to efficiently burn the bridge he's trying to rebuild between them.
She falls back into her head, into control. (It's dangerous to get distracted when you're scared, a voice hisses, familiar in ways she's tried to forget).
"What" —she clears her throat, staggering a step forwards to enter his personal space. "Repeat what you said," she strains, voice low, so wary of prying ears.
She needs to hear him say it again.
Ensure that her mind is not playing tricks, hearing betrayal where there was just an innocent compliment (not that she needs it. She doesn’t care what anyone thinks about her appearance. It held no value). She needs to hear that confession clearly, when the drumbeat of her heart doesn’t fuzz out the end of it.
Maybe she’s losing her mind. Let that be the case. Let her be overreacting to a compliment.
She needs to know if he’s really turned her in. If their friendship is truly lost.
If she really has to leave.
Braden sputters.
Olive would laugh if she wasn’t so fucking scared. This was absurd. This was important, how can he just — talk around it like it’s not there? Be able to even pretend to think that complimenting her makes up for shoving a knife in her back? Betraying her. Ruining the life she’s finally settled into.
She stifles it easily, thanks to the crawling feeling trailing up and down her spine.
His shoulders hunch in and forwards. “Olive, I— I didn’t mean to,” he chokes out, almost too breathy for her to decipher but relieving in that he’s finally acknowledging it.
A snort threatens to bubble up her throat at that, harder to bite back than the laugh. Does he really think that’s enough for her to forgive and forget? A wordier oopsie? This is her livelihood on the line. Her life. Her voice strains with the effort of holding in the mistimed amusement.
As if she could forgive or forget this.
(It’s what she gets for making a real friend).
"No," she spits out, low and stony in hopes that the message will beat itself into his skull so he’ll give her a moment to think without the backdrop of his fearful rambling. She just needs a moment. God, what was she going to do? Was he even after forgiveness? He has not asked for it or apologized properly. Is he not sorry? He’d hardly been able to admit his fault in the first place.
Was it no accident? Was he willing?
“How is that a fucking mistake?”
Her tone makes him flinch. It hurts and gives her some sick pleasure. A sinking guilt. She doesn't want to enjoy his fear, even if he should be feeling it.
There's a part of her, though, a part that has always longed to be comfortable that wishes he said nothing. It would damn her, but. She wouldn’t have to deal with this, if he hadn’t. She’d be stuck with demons she’s far more familiar with than him, in this context.
His throat bobs. There’s a bruise, green-blue, poking up out of his collar. Olive had noticed it when he walked up, of course, had been on the cusp of asking about it when– when he admitted what he did.
Then she knew.
He got it from whatever Hero captured and interrogated him. And he just — told him everything about her.
And, well, the part of her brain that’s scrambling to exonerate him thought that he was reluctant, that he had no choice. That it hadn’t been something he chose and there was still something to salvage. Except he hasn’t apologized and she doesn’t see any signs of guilt crushing him to the floor. He looks spooked and beaten but otherwise fine. He’s shaking in his fear but he’s able to look at her. If he felt anything about what he did-- he wouldn’t be able to look at her so easily. The guilt would be too much.
He’s not guilty and her pursuers know more about her than they did before they found him.
Braden made his choice.
“How could you?” she breathes, hurt lingering in the lightness of the question.
Olive backs up, retreating from the shuddering feeling of realization that’s beginning to flutter down around her. She calls it disgust, trying to be rational. To think she’d thought him a friend. Family, even. A tremor slams against her shoulders. She starts to turn, spin a 180 on her toe and get the hell out before her past catches her, but she stops midway, clicking her heel down.
“I can’t forgive that,” she says, unsure if she’s saying it to him or herself. This is no time to be forgiving, she tells herself, the words echoed in her voice and a much harsher one. Forgiveness is weakness. Weakness is getting yourself killed or worse.
She peers at him through narrow-lidded eyes, jaw tight against the hope plummeting down her throat. He does not look guilty, or sorry. Just afraid. Afraid of her and… not of her. If he was that scared to face her, a text would have delivered the message the same. Yet he insisted on doing it personally.
Why is she staying? She should be gone. Not hesitating. Hesitation was a fool’s game.
“Olive…” he stares at her with big, wet eyes.
He came seeking comfort, she realizes, for his fear of her to be unfounded. But he blocked out that chance by saying the one thing that would make her run. Her self-preservation was too strong to risk everything by staying so she could keep him from breaking. He wounded her freedom and came to her to— what? Make amends and pretend he did nothing at all?
“You should,” she says, “never speak of me again. Forget we were ever friends.” She has to look after herself — the first rule. The most important. If he’s a traitor, he’s a traitor.
Nothing to salvage from that.
(Everything to salvage, if she just learns the details. She should. Was it just her name, innocent enough or does he know, somehow? Know everything she’s been running from?)
She’s not one to hold a grudge (liar), but she’s not one to sweep away the past without proper rectification either. If he doesn’t fix the bridge he’s started burning, if he doesn’t convince her that he wasn’t eager to throw down the match, she’ll watch it crumble into the river.
This can become water under the bridge or there can be no bridge for the water to race beneath.
It’s his choice.
It shouldn’t be. He shouldn’t get any more chances. She should leave, but. Aren’t the details important?
“Twenty minutes,” she sighs, with a grumble. She’s gotten too soft. “Come on.”
She completes her turn and lifts her foot to take her first step towards a nearby bench. This is necessary. She needs the details, the who and the why and the what. And if he happens to explain himself, fix things. Well. That’s his matter. It’ll be hopeless if he tries but it’ll speak volumes to his motive whether he does or not.
It’s not a surprise, though, really, that he hasn’t tried yet. She knows him (that’s why this is stinging so much) but it still hurts that he’s not trying to smooth it all over immediately like she might have hoped. They’ve argued before but only over petty matters and misunderstandings they were able to talk out. There are no words, she reminds herself sternly, to make what he did right.
He sold her out.
He didn’t assist in a ploy to capture her (thank god. If he was in on it and smooth enough, she might have fallen for it), but he gave them her name which is a secret she’s kept for years. It was a starting point, them gaining headway on their fucking investigation that had nothing to do with her.
Or, well, it did. Had everything to do with her, in a sense. Not in how they think, though, potentially. Are they looking because of Wisconsin or because of that last job? She has skeletons to hide and some do lie where they are looking but she refuses to be buried for her family. The skeletons buried back then weren’t buried alone and she won’t suffocate for things her family forced her to do, the only thing she knew how to, won’t fall alone to mask their sins. She’s shrugged off everything she can from them, skeletons and memories and a name she does not respond to (but not, her brain snarls, the instincts. She knows better. She’s failing. It’s a miracle she isn’t caged or dead).
She hasn’t associated with them for years (since she was able to escape), longer than she’s been keeping her name private from the people who are desperately searching for a weak link in her family’s bloodline, for a chance to tear them all down. She has what they want. Names and addresses and aliases. But turning them in means doing the same for herself. Meant facing her demons. She won’t go down for her family and she’ll drag Braden down if he tries. She’ll ruin him if he even attempts to ruin her.
She won’t enjoy it. She never has. But she is capable of it, even without the shadow of her family as a threat lurking at her back. She learned from the best and those lessons linger.
“What?” he calls, too loud on the sidewalk.
She can feel his presence behind her, hear him scrambling to chase her. Her nails dig into her palm. She stops to glare at him over her shoulder. Was it not obvious? “You have twenty minutes,” she repeats. “I want everything you’ve said. Cooperate and I’ll call us even. I’ll let you go, just this once.”
She’s gone soft.
Why is she giving him the chance? He betrayed her, gave her name. Names can be traced to places traced to her. Does he not understand that? Does he not understand why she’s doing this? Why she’s threatening him with things she’s not sure she can carry out? Why she’s pulling back from their friendship?
She settles on the bench, the cold biting through her jeans.
His loyalty has a price.
A scuffle and some questions and he spit up everything they wanted to know. Someone like her can’t be close to people whose loyalty can be tarnished. Whose loyalty can be bought. She has secrets and a life she has to struggle to keep. Civilian life was hard. He was a threat to that.
Maybe she’s being a little irrational. Overreacting like her family is known to do because he didn’t tell them anything important, just an alias she can throw out and use to guide them on a wild goose chase, but he was put under pressure and he caved.
If he was willing to give her name over a little scuffle, a few bruises, what would he give over a broken bone? His life?
So no. She wasn’t overreacting. He settles beside her, clumsy and hesitant. He was a threat to her. She was going to leave, for good. Had no choice. It was run or be caught.
Too soft, she mourns. Civilian life is getting you killed. She can’t have friends that know who cave. He can’t– betray her, even if it was minimal, and expect her to welcome him back. She’s forgiving, she knows, with his mistakes but he’s never messed up like this before, putting her in danger.
He’s had the chance (a simple phone call to a hotline available at all times). This is the first time he’s taken it.
“Olive, please,” he begs, fingers twitching to grab at hers. She keeps her face smooth and thanks herself for telling him another alias as her real name even if that is the name she likes best for herself, one she’s particularly fond of. If she’s being honest… she doesn’t have a ‘real name’. But the one her family gave her isn’t the one he knows. If it was, she’d already be behind bars. “They had a gun on me, I didn’t know what else to do!”
Olive’s blood runs cold.
A gun? That– no. That was wrong. Extreme, out of place. There shouldn’t have been a gun, not if…
Heroes don’t threaten lives like that. Not directly, at least. Lord knows they were responsible for their share of injuries and worse but those were always a byproduct of Super Battles, of subduing Villains — easily explained and pardoned. She could see them scuffing Braden up a bit and threatening him, but a gun? That was horribly out of character.
That means—
“Did you see them? Notice anything that stood out?”
She has a sinking feeling.
She knows the culprit behind this, now, and it’s not the one she originally assumed. But it can’t be. But it could and if she’s right, she can’t blame him. She can’t say he’s a liability or a threat if she’s right.
It would change everything. But she prays it isn’t. Let it be that the Heroes or agents are too eager, that someone stepped out of line and Braden betrayed her. That’s easy. She can cope with that. It hurts but the alternative is so much worse.
Please let her not be right.
“I… it’s fuzzy,” he says, frowning at his knees. “My head felt weird. I didn’t… their voice was odd, too.” His brows pinch together. “Echo-y. I don’t know, it was… weird.”
Oh.
Oh, no.
“Were you told to lead me somewhere?” she asks.
He looks at her, eyes damp. “No.” He shakes his head.
Olive pulls the corner of her lip in her teeth. “Did… did he tell you to tell someone something?” She’d say that name, the one he would have said, but. She doesn’t want to out herself unnecessarily. She doesn’t want to wrap her tongue around the acid in those syllables.
She’d die before someone calls her that again.
“Yes.” He hesitates, eyeing her in a new way, pupils blown wide and whites stark. “...how did you know that?”
“Because.” It’s her turn to hesitate now. She glances subtly at her surroundings, at anyone who may be listening, pairing memory and guesswork against the people milling about. What if he’s here? “That was… I know who that was,” she explains, in the vaguest way she can. Then, because the truth is already confirmed and she owes Braden for doubting him. “That was my uncle,” she whispers, like the dark secret it is. It only makes sense.
The fogginess, the voice… She always hated Uncle Felix’s power.
But how did he find her? How did he find him? She ran alone, no one to pull her plans from. She was careful to keep her current self from her past, from the people she shares blood with. Paper trails were easy to follow and hers leads to the east coast, to Florida.
She’s not on the east coast. Not in Florida.
“What?” His eyes, comically, widen further. “Your Uncle?”
She nods. “Probably.” There’s a chance it was his son – they were still waiting to see if he picked up powers and there was a chance he inherited them from his father. She swallows, breath catching. “What were you told to say?”
Braden dips his chin. “I, uh, was told to tell– um.”
Olive’s hands shake. Don’t say it, she pleads. Aloud, she fills in his hesitation. “A Villain?”
“...yes.” He nods.
“And you were told…” she trails off, for him to complete her sentence.
He tugs at his left thumb, his nervous tick popping up again. “To tell… them,” his eyes lower to the concrete, “that they will not be able to stay hidden.”
Olive’s breath shudders out.
She thought they wrote her off. A lost cause.
“And,” he continues, “that they will not stop looking.”
“Oh,” she practically mouths, the word dissolving like medicine tablets in water around her. Her family was still looking. Time has not freed her as much as she hoped it would, has not watered her from their memory or lagged their search. “Oh.”
“That’s not” —Braden clears his throat. “What does it matter?”
She shifts her feet under her, pressing the balls of her feet against the floor. Adjusting her weight as assurance that despite how it feels, the world has not fallen out from under her. “That’s a long story,” she says. Pulls air into her lungs and pushes it out. As long as she is still drawing breath, she can salvage things. Herself. “You should go. It’s…” she stands, shoving her hands into her coat pockets. “I have to leave and… it’s dangerous for you.”
“I–” his hand brushes near her elbow. Ghostly. She is unsure if the touch is meant to be soothing for him or her. “I already know,” he says, an odd sadness to his tone. “Let me help you.”
“We’d have to leave for good,” she tells him. “It wouldn’t be… entirely legal. I don’t know that we’d ever stop.”
He shifts to the edge of the bench, clasping her arm tighter. “But I won’t be left alone,” he says slowly, like a realization, “will I?”
“I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head, stares up at her. “We’re friends, right?” he asks, and she knows that her answer is important. He’s pieced it together. He’s not tossing her aside. She still has a reputation and he can’t ignore it. But he’s not running.
She nods, after a heavy moment. “Yeah. We are.”
“Then let me come with you.”
“You won’t be able to take that back,” she warns.
“I know. You’re family.”
Her breath catches. She holds his gaze. She should leave him behind. It was easier to find a pair than a lone person. But he knows too much. Fragments of the bigger picture, a past she swore when leaving that she’d never share. He was a friend and she trusted him, despite all the reasons she shouldn’t. “Okay,” she whispers. “If you’re sure.”
He grins. It’s lopsided, imperfect, but genuine. “I said I’d follow you anywhere, didn’t I?” He stands. “Us against the world, remember?”
She huffs, half poking-punching him in the side. “I was giving you an out, asshole. This isn’t a joke.”
“On brand, though.” He tips his head back. “Always knew you had a shady past.”
“Too soon,” she says. It was more than shady. Was awful. And they were on a time crunch. She was prepared to disappear, but she wasn’t prepared for him. She had to adapt. “I have a safe space,” she tells him. “It should be okay while I get you figured out.”
“Okay,” he agrees.
She sees how this overwhelms him, how out of his depth he is. It’s to be expected. He’s normal, from a normal family, he grew up living a normal life. He didn’t grow up in a family of Super Villains.
“I’ll keep you safe,” she promises, the words slipping out without her agreement.
It’s something she wants to promise. That means it will be hard for her to have. She’ll have to fight for it to be true. That’s fine. She’s fought before. She can hold her own. She can keep him safe, too, since that’s what he wants and she’s weak not to do what’s best for him. She’s been hungry for a friend like him since she was a little girl, shaking from her mother’s harsh tone.
“Don’t worry,” she tells him.
He clings to her arm, probably bruising her, but she doesn’t care. She’s had far worse. “Okay,” he says. “I trust you.”
Her chest constricts. What did she do to earn him? This fathomless trust?
She’s a criminal. And yes, she’s seen him like a brother, but. Family-like ties have never been sturdier than any other. But Braden… she bonded to him so deeply. Cared so damn much. Her mother would have opinions on that. Bonds are means of destruction, dearest. You must not have any. They’ll ruin you.
Looking at Braden, the person who’s never questioned her, who has become her piece of normal, who has always welcomed her, she amends her mother’s warning into a hope. They can save you, too.
And if she has to run forever to keep that, the normalcy he brings her, so be it.
She’ll do what she has to.
*****
Olive and Braden will be coming back, eventually. How do you like them?
Prompt: “How are they?” -- “The same as before.” He looked up at the woman approaching him. “Their soulmate died, my Lady. They may never make a full recovery.”
*****
Lissy dies when they’re in the middle of a strategy meeting. They’re focused, desperate, because they know that somewhere within their troops (she hadn’t told them where, probably so they couldn’t pull them back) was their love, their life.
Their soulmate.
They’re pushing a figure representing a troop forwards when it happens.
Pain lights in their midsection, hot and furious like someone had placed the sun in their gut. They’re screaming, clawing at themselves as sensation washes away to black.
In the last moment before they fade, they know Lissy is dead.
‘’ ‘’ ‘’
It still aches when they wake again, but duller, empty. A fistful of the night sky after the sun’s implosion gripped within them.
Like a black hole sucking away every little piece and leaving nothing behind, not even empty air.
They don’t notice when their eyes open or that there’s someone sitting at their bedside. Everything is hollow, color sanded away to something grayer, lighter, shallow. They see without processing, and without that, they don’t see anything at all.
It’s all meaningless anyways. Lissy was dead.
“Per?” Their mother speaks softly, hopeful, squeezing her hand over her child’s that they don’t feel.
The effects of a lost soulmate on the other half is largely varied. Some retain their minds enough to slide through the rest of their lives, robotically. Some never step a foot from their bed.
Some lose senses — touch, smell, hearing, sight — or they’re ridden into overdrive, the smell of their other’s cologne heavy in every second, their hand constantly laced in theirs, their hair always shimmering under the sun. Some feel the death with excruciating pain, worse than anything physical, and others feel nothing. Everything falls away in a second to leave them in a horrifying, empty shell.
Per (a shortened version of their name, they don’t go by the full thing anymore) can tell the moment their mother realizes they’re not going to respond. It feels like a weaker second of the moment they realized the truth about Lissy, vision fading out and pain twisting in their body.
They don’t feel the pain now.
“Oh.” Their mother whimpers, hand fluttering to her mouth to physically hold back her sobs.
The sound of their mother’s cry sparks something in Per’s chest, heavy and uncomfortable. She knows, now, that they’re one of the ones who take it hard.
Really, it shouldn’t come as any surprise.
They’d absolutely adored Lissy.
But the shock of learning that her child must live without their soulmate when they were so young — that was a hard blow. She hadn’t even lost her husband yet, both going strong.
Per thinks how Lissy’s death is their fault. If they’d done more to stop her, insisted on knowing which squadron they were enlisted into — maybe she’d be okay.
That’s what they’d like to think at least. In truth, they hadn’t fought her very hard when she told them.
But, than again, they always did have a weakness for her tears. It was something she had to do. Why, they would never understand, but they understood that if they made her stay, it would break her. They didn’t want to be the reason she broke.
Vaguely, distantly, they can feel the physician prodding at them, doing what they can and trying to obey their regent’s order. Fix them. Do whatever you can, they’re your ruler.
It’s some time later — a few seconds, days, they don’t know, time has lost its meaning — when their mother returns, this time with their father at her side.
“How are they?” Their mother inquires, voice light and shaking, fearful of what she already knows.
“The same as before.” The physician looks up at them wearily, apologetic, as she approaches with her arm wrapped toghtly in her husband’s. “Their soulmate died, My Lady. They may never make a full recovery.”
Their mother breaks, turning to find refuge in her soulmate, something Per will never be able to do again, a fact that only breaks her more because she doesn’t know how she would cope without the steadiness of her husband at her side.
“Is there nothing to be done?” Their father rumbles, deep voice rolling through the room like thunder.
He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, my Lord,” he bows slightly, wondering if he was using the wrong terms now. They were leaders again. “But any more recovering is up to our young leader.”
Per, with the little cognitive thought they still hold, wonder how they’re supposed to recover from this.
Summary: Starla moves in with her sister. Things get better. Then she notices her new neighbor and not in a good way.
Based off this prompt/idea by @caffeinewitchcraft
This one has been reworked a bit. Still the same story though, just fixed how Starla notices Duke, basically. That’s the biggest change.
*****
"That would be a literal blessing," her sister says, sighing into the phone with hope that pierces through the static of low reception.
"Well," Starla sighs, hand on her hip, looking at the stacked boxes in her apartment, artfully ignoring the eviction notice laying on the kitchen counter. "I kind of don't have a place to live past Thursday, so I don't have much of a choice."
"Well, you're always welcome to come take the guest room."
Starla rubs the bridge of her nose. "I can't afford any rent, though."
"You don't need to pay rent, " Melissa insists, words garbled by the piercing sound of a crying baby. There's some rustling, sound muffled as she deals with the crying newborn. "You're my sister,” she continues, voice softer as she soothes the baby, practically cooing. "It's no problem and you'd be doing me a huge favor anyways, with the kids."
"Okay," Starla says, nodding to herself, like she has options and a choice. "Let's do it."
So she moves in.
It’s what’s best for both them, what with Starla’s apartment block being torn down to place a strip mall, and with Melissa having two new babies that she was raising solo. This was better for both of them, and it would help restore their bond that had been neglected since they had both reached adulthood and thrown themselves into work and romance.
This was good.
Starla moves in easily, happy to be closer to her sister and niece and nephew, but missing the busyness of city life.
She’s a babysitter now. Glorified, with her lack of rent, and definitely overpaid, but still a babysitter.
It’s exhausting, so maybe not so much overpaid or glorified. Maybe she had underestimated the amount of work and attention two babies took.
Watching one baby is difficult, but two? It’s the only thing that fills her day, and it does a fantastic job of doing so. It takes time, and after only a few days, she’s become adept at holding them both at once and caring for both of their needs.
She’s becoming a good aunt, she thinks. A solid second parent to the tiny babies who will never meet the man tied to them by blood. It’s hard, but she loves them and that makes it worth it.
It doesn’t take long for her to familiarize herself with the neighbors.
Casey from down the block walks her two Shepherd mixes twice a day every day. Mat from across the street brings his sons to the park three days a week. Leslie jogs at six in the morning before work. Jake brought her a welcoming tin of muffins when he noticed that she’d moved in, a joint gift from him and his wife. Kay from the end of the road hosts a weekly hang out that she kindly sent her an invitation to alongside a welcome note.
None of them are who catches her attention, though. It’s Duke, who is her new direct neighbor who catches her eye. She’s never bumped into him or anything, but she’s acutely aware of his existence.
She’s-- she doesn’t mean to spy, but she’s sure that he’s no normal neighbor.
She’s fairly convinced that he’s a Super, actually.
No one in the neighborhood suspects, no idle gossip whispered when she questioned about the new neighbor who hasn’t bothered (or noticed) that someone new has moved into the house next door. He’s fairly secluded among everyone.
He doesn’t go to Kay’s hangouts. He’s just home to sleep, everyone says. He’s not a social guy. He does, though, travel into the city pretty often for hours at a time. Some of it is on a schedule.
Some of it is not.
Starla has... perhaps checked the news when he does, to see how often it lines up with city Super sightings, but it doesn’t enough for obvious eyebrows to be raised. But she knows that Supers don’t always go out in suits when they’re working, so it’s an iffy measurement from the start.
It doesn’t damn or clear him.
Not much would. But she’d find what she had to. If he was low-level, she’d be fine with it. It was the high tiers who couldn’t escape from their work. Who’s work followed them after they shrugged off the suit and the mask and the name.
It was fine if he wasn’t dangerous. She wasn’t planning on outing him. She just needed to know if he was safe.
After she learned that, she’d leave him be.
It’s his fault for being obvious. He comes home bruised and battered from an office job. He has odd hours. He’s left for the city at night a time or two, speeding out of his driveway in a hurry. No one has ever been in his house. No one has said anything more then hello or good morning to him. He was a ghost. A picture of what it looked like when someone was trying to be invisible.
It was suspicious. It had her gut rolling in unease.
Scones are how she decides to start. it’s polite to bake goods for neighbors and scones are bland enough he probably won’t hate them. It’ll open the door of her getting closer.
The twins are napping when she gets the chance to start throwing the batch together. She hopes they sleep for the hour or so it’ll take for her to throw it in the oven because she’s starting it from scratch. They don’t, of course, or more specifically, Cassie doesn’t.
She abandons the bowl of unmixed powders with liquid poured over the top like a faulty volcano to scoop up the crying baby. “Hey baby,” she coos, swiping a finger over a soft, velvet cheek as she bounces softly. “Whatcha crying for, huh?”
She settles fairly quickly, her large eyes drifting down. Carefully, Starla sets her back into the rocker and returns to baking, sacrificing time for silence.
They sleep through the rest of mixing and shaping into triangle-esque blobs. It’s after she sets the timer that they wake again, and she’s quick to go over and give them another feeding, and a diaper change for Benjamin.
Caring for them both had seemed impossible, at the beginning, but now it was as easy as breathing.
Her life is turning around, rising from the bland routine it had fallen into. A brightening comet that lights her night sky.
Things were much less stressful now. She enjoyed her day to day, which she didn’t before. She’d loved the city, but it hadn’t been kind to her and the eviction notice was just the straw that broke her. That sent her away. The suburbs were nice, too, though, and she was close enough to the city to be satisfied.
It was safer, too.
Or, it was statistically. She’d never suspected her apartment floormates or coworkers to be Supers. Now she was determined her neighbor was one. Now she was worried about it.
Back at her apartment, a ripped-up street was just another Thursday. Rubble blocking a road was normal. It hadn’t disturbed her too much. Life was boring.
It wasn’t now. And not just because of the twins. She had a mystery, too.
She likes mysteries. Puzzles and games and books. She likes to guess who the villain is, in thriller stories and in mystery books. She guesses right sometimes and she doesn’t on others, but she likes attempting. At trying to slot together all the little clues and dissecting the truth from a heap of mostly inconsequential evidence.
As a kid, she’d wanted to be a police officer. Her dad had watched a lot of crime shows and she’d liked watching them fit pieces together to bring justice. It looked fun, when it was on TV.
Then she grew up. She learned that police work was a lot more boring and restricting than the shows made it out to be. Cops were just second-rate overlooked heroes. They got all the paperwork. None of the glory. They did the stakeouts and the waiting. All of the parts that were a slog. Heroes got the benefits. Her fire had been snuffed out. but she still loved the idea of it.
She still likes solving mysteries. And even if she didn’t-- she doesn’t like the idea of someone dangerous living next to her family.
What if a fight followed him home and a Super battle broke out? If Supers started fighting that close, there would be nothing she could do.
It was best she figured out what kind of Super her new neighbor was . If she was lucky, he was just a nonpowered, try hard vigilante. Which was kind of illegal, but not particularly dangerous. But that was if she was lucky. If she was unlucky, then they were in danger just because of their proximity to him.
Living in the city, she’d seen too many new reports of mangled office buildings, smoking apartment buildings, has seen too much of the wreckage fighting leaves behind on the streets and the buildings and the people. It had so much impact on people. It was a very destructive thing to happen.
There was a reason why most of city budget goes to upkeep and repair. Super battles break everything and because they’re doing good, they don’t face punishment.
Starla is pretty indifferent to Supers. She knows that they’re expensive and destructive. They’re good too. Now she just doesn’t want that near her sister and the babies.
She was going to figure out just how much danger they were in. Exactly how much.
She was going to figure out Duke’s secret identity.
*****
Done! This one was a struggle to do for some reason. I think it’s a tad better now, though.
In celebration of reaching 30k words, have the first 850-odd words of LAWLB. Meet Hades. Enjoy! Maybe tell me how this is for a beginning?
*****
When the ocean wants something, it takes.
The God of the Dead is never stolen from.
Yet, here they are.
The underworld does not take visitors, cares not for the kind of divinity pounding in their veins. It is a place for the dead and their gods and only they were permitted enter. Hermes is a reluctant exception, one demanded by Zeus himself.
Calypso is a bringer of death but she is not goddess of it and is not welcome in the Dead King's domain whenever she wills to be there. She has been granted a special invitation.
Hades is meant to be terrifying, she thinks idly as he stares at her with his deep set eyes, a rich brown that others call dark but are so bright in comparison to hers. Most keep all the distance they can between themselves and him. but Calypso does not mind his presence. Why should she? She was not of his domain and he had no pull on her. He was just another god. They're both solitary beings who stick close to their domains. They've simply had no reason to meet.
Until now.
"Thanatos tells me that you propositioned him," he sighs, pinching hard at the bridge of his nose, looking weary enough that she almost pities him. It must be tiring, being keeper of all things that do not rest, jailer of things that could try to end life as it known, judging the many shades of mortality and dealing them their eternal fate.
"Is that so?" she asks, words pitched high. She does not, she knows, have the face to look innocent. Even in her maiden form, untouched by the deathliness of her Kraken body, she carries some sign of what she is capable of. Perhaps, though, the God of the Dead will not be so judgy to take her at face value. She was here, after all, to make a deal as both sides of her, not just the beautiful goddess.
He pins her with a look that she thinks is meant to be heavy. She wonders if it's a coincidence that his eyes resemble some of the gems he pulls from the earth. God of the Dead, he is, but God of Wealth, too. How do mortals always forget that? "Yes. He passed on your message. Said it seemed..." Hades' fingers drum a four-beat rhythm against his knee, rapid and repeating thrice. "Interesting. Worth my time to hear."
Calypso smiles. "What an honor that is. It is merely a humble thought."
His look shifts. Suspicion. Calypso's seen it enough to recognize on faces she does not know how to read. "Drop the humbleness, Kraken," he says. Calypso's spine stiffens. He is bold, to call her the name not fitting her current face. Her posture relaxes. She can deal with that. Bluntness was preferable to endless waxing about nothing. "What bargain did you offer the God of Death?"
His directness makes sense, she realizes. He’s a very busy god. No time for games. Boring, but. There was opportunity for other games here.
"I didn't offer it to him," she corrects. "It is not a deal he and I alone could fill." She gnaws the corner of her lip. "I merely asked if he believed it something you might agree to."
"Spit it out, then. Time is finite."
In a way, yes. In others -- they were gods. They had all the time in existence. But she understands that is busy and would rather not have the work pile up. She was not unreasonable. "Thanatos," she begins, "claims many souls from my waters, by means of myself or Charybdis." Or Scylla, she does not say. That name is no longer allowed residence in her mouth, not for a few decades. Scylla claims six souls every time a ship passes. She can claim them all she wishes -- Calypso is the one who taught her, after all, about the virtue of not taking every soul. And how can she judge? Scylla is new, and monstrous and Calypso has been taking souls for decades. Centuries. Finite time indeed.
Hades keeps his eyes on her, unwavering. She wonders if Zeus has the same wise, pensive gaze because Poseidon does not. Or, more fun -- did he get it from his mother or his father?
"Pardon my bluntness, Dead King, but your domain only has so much space." Her mouth quirks to the side. "A finite amount, if you will."
"Indeed."
Calypso considers her next words. She holds his gaze. She is not one to break under something so small. "I told your Death God that I knew of a solution that could ease some burden from you and him both." She tugs at the silk laying over her, black in the Dead King’s color. She does not think it quite suits her. Perhaps it is that it is plain and black is already a plain color. It could fit her if it was embroidered, was anything but slick and simple. Bright simpleness suits her, sits like moonlight on her collarbone, but plain black sits as nice as night sky on dark skin.
*****
Taglist (ask to be added!): @super-writer-gal @notwritinganyflufftoday @mel-writes-with-her-dragons @drippingmoon @afoolandathief
Guess I'm doing Fictober now. Also guess I'm titling these. That's definitely going to come back to bite me in the butt. Original writing. Enjoy!
*****
Masy weeps like tales of goddesses gone. Cheeks glimmering in moonlight, tears sparkling. "I need you," she cries, voice like bells and song. Her desperation only heightens her beauty, which is why Lorilee has to deny her.
She steps back. Warning shivers through the links of her spine. Her heart, spelled and beating, bids her to listen. "I can't stay," she says, voice tight in her battle against her baser instinct to flee.
If it was something that would work, she would. But escaping a siren's grasp was a difficult matter, as complex and delicate as lace.
"You have to." Her eyes, dark like void and hunger and temptation, latch onto hers.
This too, is dangerous. A siren's gaze was near as bad as one's song.
"My father calls for me. Mother is ill," she says in misleading truth, appealing to her sort-of-lover, sort-of-jailer's weakness in thinking the moon is her mother. "If I do not leave now, I shall never lay eyes on her again." That much is true.
She's spent a moon's full cycle here, which is all she needed. Masy's pearl sits stolen in her pocket, safe for her to touch due to the effects of the bite dug into her neck. A siren's result of labor was acid to touch, unless the bearer carried a piece of the siren willingly given with them. A bite given in the height of passion. A lock of the siren's hair personally braided on their wrist. A piece of nail chipped and caught in their bone.
The formermost was the most viable of the three. People died from the third, pierced and bleeding and dead before their fingers ever grazed the pearl. The second option was a token of long friendship years in the making. Impossible without falling completely under their spell. And the first? It was easier to angle for, than the others. Though it was still near impossible.
Taking the lace she's so carefully woven and picking it apart, tearing apart her own fruits of labor.
But Lorilee succeeded. The bite had hurt, excruciating as the pleasure, but it was worth it. Would be, if she managed to leave.
"But you can't!"
Lorilee lowers her eyes. To display guilt and keep Masy's song (not a literal one, as most think) of tears and shame and shaking hands, from pulling her further in. She could keep it at bay, some, but weeks of exposure has worn her defenses thin. The call of it messes with her psyche, sways her heart, makes her think Masy truly alone and lonely. Making her believe in the story.
She mustn't believe in it. If she does, she is lost.
Her voice shakes. Purposeful, or instinct? She does not know. "I do not wish to leave you." And a part of her doesn't. The part that Masy's song reaches begs her to stay. How could she think of abandoning her, as so many have done? How can she think of leaving? Isn't Masy all she's ever wanted?
It's simple, now, to see why so many have failed.
But Lorilee is determined, fueled by her sister's ghost and empty grave. She set out knowing that she'd have to cut off a sliver of her soul and leave it. She knew a part of Masy would latch onto her and make her think the farce was real. That she was loved.
"I'd stay if I could," she adds on. That is... less true. Was only so under a certain frame and perspective. If Masy was human and innocent and wouldn't eventually kill her, she would, probably.
"But..." Masy's lip wobbles. "I need you to stay. Everything is empty without you."
Despite knowing this is a trick, her heart thuds painfully.
"As it will be for me," she says. It already is. It always has been. Auralia lost her life for this, months ago, and it'd broken something unrepairable in her chest. "But I fear it will be emptier to not hear my mother's final words. And I can return." She can, technically. Nothing makes it impossible. But she won't. Can't. For her sanity. For her family. For Auralia.
Masy presses her hands to her chest, as if her still heart felt the same pain Lorilee's did, though it's impossible. "Please." She pries one hand off her chest to reach for her. Beseeching. Waiting. Expecting.
Lorilee takes a step back. Lets her grief show. "I can't." She presses her fingertips to Masy's; gentle, mourning, and pulls away. "I'm sorry."
And she thinks she might be.
She slips her hand into her pocket. "I'm sorry, Masy." She turns. Leaves.
Masy ups the volume and pitch of her cries.
Lorilee keeps walking. Away from the lake. Through the night, her own cheeks wetting.
As the sun starts to brighten the sky, she slips the pearl from her pocket. It sits, ice and guilt, in her palm. A piece of Masy. A piece of Auralia. A piece of so many dead. With her other hand, she grabs the tiny reed flute, presses it to her lips. Ensures that her grip is secure on the pearl. She blows.
A high, light pitch. Wind stirs. Her eyes shut.
When she opens them, she is home.
*****
So... I might come back to this? Write more of this world in future Fictober pieces if I see the opportunity because I like this world now. This is my curse. I need to stop creating cool worlds on what's just supposed to fill a prompt.
Prompt: "That could have gone better" | Fictober Day 7
I've made it through a full week! Yay me!!
*****
Lisa stares at the bakery across and down and clicks her tongue awkwardly. "That could have gone better," she shrugs.
"You think?" Kate asks, a bite in her words, sarcasm sharpening. "I asked you to pretend to be my girlfriend, not my fiancee."
She looks over at her. "Things escalated."
"My mother is going to think it's real. She's going to get all excited."
Lisa frowns. "Your mother? Why your mother hear about you from your ex?" She glances at the bakery again, like the answer is going to be printed on the windowfront. It's not, of course, so she looks back to her with cautious confusion.
Kate groans. "They live on the same street." She runs a hand up her face, jaw tensing. "God, she’s going to get all excited. She’s going to get heartbroken. I’m never going to live this down.”
“That sucks. Maybe she’ll just think you’re crazy, though? That it was a weird prank or something?”
Kate lowers her hand and glares. “The point of this was so I didn’t look insane.”
“Mark missed, then. Fake dating is insane.” She hooks a thumb in the loop of her jeans and offers a small, consoling smile. “Better luck next time.” She turns on her heel and takes a step away, from Kate and the bakery both. “See you never, fake-fiancée.”
Kate lunges and grabs her wrist. “Oh no. You can’t just casually upheave my life and then walk away all casual.”
“Why not?” A brow lifts, out of her volition. “The point of this—
Kate hushes her. “Can we talk somewhere else?” Her eyes dart, quick but noticeable, to the bakery, and around the semi busy street.
Lisa considers it, decides she doesn’t have anything better to do. “Where?”
“My car?” She points at a navy blue BMW of some sort, parked just a few car lengths down. Lisa shrugs, a silent sure.
They get in. Lisa eyes the ignition warily, perched awkwardly on the seat and continues what she was saying. “The point of this was I don’t know you. You don’t know me. I pretend to know you well while you brag about me to the ex you’re still hopelessly in love with and then we go our separate ways.” She tugs her arm back. “It doesn’t work as well if we stay in touch.”
Kate stares balefully. “You said we were engaged.”
“I…” she rolls her wrist a few times, “improvised. You were about to break. I saved us.”
“You ruined me.”
“I saved us.”
A brief battle of wills. Lisa’s hand drifts towards the door.
The locks click. “Don’t you dare. I’m not letting you go.”
Her hand settles back in her hand. She traces the seam of her jeans with her knuckles. “Do I need to call the cops? Are you kidnapping me?”
“No. You need to fix this.”
“I did. You were on the verge of a breakdown in there, so I gave you a reason to look a little teary.”
She glares, eyes very dry now. No hint of the breakdown she’d been hurtling towards in the bakery anywhere to be seen, though it must be boiling. “Fix it again. Do it right this time.”
“What do you want me to do? Go back in there and tell your ex that I was just kidding? Go back and hit on him? Call my uncle to kill him? Actually marry you? What?”
“Call your uncle to—” she shakes her head. “No. None of the above. Just…” she pushes a loose strand of blond hair behind her ear, “keep this up a bit longer? Let my mom know and meet you and then break up in a couple weeks?”
Lisa’s eyes widen. “Oh no.” She shimmies away, pressing her shoulder against the door. She points an accusing finger. “No. I refuse. I am not starring in a rom com. No.”
“Just for a couple weeks.”
“No. I’ve seen these movies and I’m not playing a part in it. I deserve better. Go find another random person to play your fiancée. I’m not doing it.”
“You’re the one that proposed!”
“I… mentioned we were engaged. And besides, you were the one who started tearing up at the mention of a pregnancy! What’s it matter to you if your ex has moved on and is about to have a kid? You go move on. Find another fish. One that is not me." She grabs the handle. "Now unlock the car. Goodbye. Nice knowing you. Hope I never see you again. I'm not going to marry you, fake or otherwise. Have a nice life."
She tugs on the handle. The door doesn't budge.
Kate's arm reaches across the center console, a plea of some sort hanging from her lips.
"Hell. No," she says emphasizing the words. "Not fake-not-marrying you. I'm not gonna do it. I'm sorry. But I'm not. Goodbye. Unlock the car."
"Lisa," she says, the name segmented in half like she overfilled it with care. Why did she tell her her name? She could have come up with something fun. "Please. I need this."
She blinks, face bland. "That's what you said about dating. Now we're engaged. I'm too young to be married."
"You're like... twenty six," Kate says, waving a hand over her.
"Excuse you, I am twenty four."
"Oh, pardon me. Will you marry-not-marry me now?"
She widens her eyes. "You'll break my mother's heart."
"I don't care."
"You are cruel."
"Thank you. I know. Unlock the car."
"Not yet."
Lisa narrows her eyes. "You can't keep harassing me."
Kate squints back. Lisa cringes at the fiery determination in the other's gaze. What did she get herself into? She was a psycho. She knew that. Why did she agree to fake date a psycho? "I can," she tells her.
"You're a psycho," she informs Kate. "And I have a rule. No fake-dating-marrying-not-marrying psychos. It never ends well."
"How convenient for you."
"Oh, it's really not." She raises a hand, wiggles her fingers between them. "This actually happens, like, all the time. You wouldn't believe it. It's this condition I have. Ask-Me-To-Fake-Date-You Syndrome. It's very deliberating. I can hardly leave the house. I need to get a guard slash emotional support dog. I get harassed all the time. It's awful."
"Well, if this happens all the time, then shouldn't you be better at not screwing it up?"
Lisa holds up a finger. "About that. You see, usually, I say no. Clobber the guy over the head and run while he’s dizzy. But you looked like you were on the verge of a heart attack and I was afraid the blow might kill you so I said yes, but you basically forced me to—”
“You just shrugged and said sure! That it sounded like fun.”
“Oh wow. That heart attack is really getting to you, huh? I never did that. I think you need to see a doctor. Like, now. So you don’t die.” She pulls her phone from her pocket, hovers her thumb over the screen mockingly. "I can call an ambulance, if you're not well enough to drive?"
"I'm not dying!"
“Shame." She sets her phone on her thigh. "Maybe I would’ve married you then. Are you rich? You look like you might be rich. I could be persuaded to marry you if you’re dying and rich.”
She stares at her. At a loss of words, it seems. "...no."
“Pity. Good luck finding someone else, then. Or not. I could care less. Now, if you would..." she gestures at the door.
Saying yes to pretending to date her while she buys danishes at the bakery her ex works at was a terrible idea. And she’d known that, she just… thought it might be entertaining to watch? It was a trainwreck about to happen. She had to watch it play out.
"Why is the front door locked anyways," she asks, trying the handle, uselessly, again.
"It's a BMW," Kate says, the words stiff and cold, automatic. Like this is something she's rehearsed. "And my niece rides in the front."
Of all the luck. If she'd known she'd be locked in, she wouldn't have gotten in the car. She would have argued on the street and not cared about the people overhearing. She didn't live here, the consequences wouldn't touch her.
"Please stay," she asks. "I'll-- make it worth your time, somehow."
"I can't." Lisa rubs at her temple. "I'm not going to be in town that long. I have a flight in a couple days."
"But..."
"I really can't help you. The bakery was fun but I can't do anything more. I have a plane, and a job. You can spin whatever story to your mother, say that I got a new job opportunity and dumped you when you wouldn't move, or whatever, but I can't do anything more."
Kate sighs. "Can I have your number, at least?"
Lisa covers her phone protectively. "Why?"
"So we can... call and stage a fight, or something. Do something to salvage this. Can you do that, at least?"
She sighs. She shouldn't.
She unlocks her phone with her thumbprint. "One phone call," she says, "and then I'm blocking you."
"Fine."
Lisa passes her phone over, open and waiting for a number to be imputed.
"We'll have to text to figure out the story."
"That's fine." She takes her phone back, adds the contact and changes the name to 'fake not-wife'. "Now if you won't mind..."
The car unlocks. Lisa hurries out, hesitates in closing the door. "I am sorry about the ex, for what it's worth. He seemed like a jerk."
Kate laughs. It seems tired. "He could be one, sometimes."
Lisa shrugs. "Have fun puzzling this out. Maybe don't set up fake dates unless you've got it planned out."
Rissa squints at her chalice, swirling her wine around and staring intently like the secret of the universe is coded within.
"Your Majesty? Are you... alright?"
As if he doesn't know.
"I feel strange," she declares. "I think my wine was poisoned. Again." Her nose wrinkles and she sets the chalice down. Sourness tingles on her tongue. She stares at Captain Numin balefully. "Why," she asks, dramatics in her words, "do they think that poisoning the wine will work?"
He winces. "Wishful thinking?"
Skill. Warning. Mind games. Poisoning her wine in a way that slips past her taster -- meaning it took time to activate. A rare poison. High market. Expensive and hard to find.
"As if I'd ascend the throne as the first solo empress and not have safeguards for assassination attempts. This is the fourth poisoning. They're ruining all my wine."
"That's... not the important part? We need to stop whoever's doing this. They're trying to kill you."
"I can live a little poison," she shrugs. "I just wish it wasn't always in my wine." Why not her morning tea? Why not her dinner? She glares at the chalice, turns her gaze to his. Softens it after a moment. "Do you think yours is, too?"
He pushes it away, disgust filtering across the face like he's appalled by the thought. "If you want to try--"
She snatches it up and takes a big gulp. No sour tingle, but... She frowns at it. Did they have to be so obvious? "I am going to behead them on sight. Your wine is fine. Do you think if I post a notice in the town square, they'll poison my tea instead?"
"No?"
A pinch to his brow, confusion.
"Pity." Rissa takes another sip, rolls it over her tongue to confirm. Poisoned, still. A different kind. Subtler. Weaker. It narrows the possibilities, adds more weight to her theory. "At least it narrows the possibilities," she says aloud. "They poisoned the cup, not the barrel."
Captain Numin drums his fingers on his thigh. A poisoned cup typically points to a servant -- the taster, or the one who delivered it, or poured the bottle, though that wasn't applicable here. This, however, was no servant. "We'll still have to toss the wine."
She slams the chalice down. "But my cup was poisoned. Not the whole supply. My cup."
"It's a precaution," he shrugs. "That's how it is."
The empress downs the rest of his chalice to make her point. "Well, when they've snuck a poisoned cup past the tasters, what's the point? As long as I regulate myself, I'll be fine."
"And what if it's a slow building poison?"
She pouts at the bottom of the chalice. As if she can't recognize a poison on taste. "It's not. This is the standard high-brow stuff." A specialized version of it, but. She shouldn't admit to knowing that. Safety purposes and all. "How is it that they're dedicated enough to slip into the castle but not to get a better poison?"
"We don't want that to happen," he reminds her.
For council's sake. The plan, obviously, was not to have her dead. Yet, at least. They needed time to finalize their plan. As if she'd let the council remain if she didn't have a rat or two on the seat.
"Yeah, yeah." She waves a calming hand at him. She can't die during a personal dinner with him. It was too damning. "Poison is bad for you. I'm just... thinking. It's strange. Is it not?"
"It is. And we're working on it."
She sighs, long and weary. "I would hope so. I miss unpoisoned wine." As fun as the game was, it was getting boring.
Captain Numin clears his throat. "About that."
Her head whips towards him. She gives him the glare she reserves for the worst of prisoners in the dungeon, knowing he'll attribute it to her love of drink. "You're not banning me from wine."
"It's for your safety."
Tricking you into trusting us, his eyes say. Making you weak. The people will riot if their new bastard empress cannot eradicate her first threat.
"I'm the empress. I say you can't."
She knows him too well. Their plan might have worked, maybe, if she hadn't known Numin since they were both children. He could not sit as a rat at her table and have her overlook the vermin because she once called him friend. She was a child then. She knew no better.
Now she did.
"It is a law made by emperors of late and their councils, Your Majesty."
She narrows her eyes further, wonders how he can pretend to be so concerned as he looks her in the face. When did depravity set upon his mind? "Then I will change it."
“You have more important matters to attend to. Like the rebellion.”
A pretty little distraction, that. A well crafted one, but she was always a master of her strategy and negotiation classes. She knew a show when she saw one.
“But my sanity.”
“It’s just wine, Your Majesty.”
A gasp. “Just wine? Just wine? Did your father not raise you respectably? He never would have said such a thing to my father.”
He never would have turned his heel to her father.
“The late emperor was not being poisoned.”
“That is beside the point.”
“It is not.”
She blows a breath out her nose, rubs the bridge of it. Politics, especially when brought into her private matters, were exhausting. She might hold off the beheading and have the man behind this tortured first. Simply out of their lack of taste.
Simply out of their betrayal.
Her eyes linger on Numin. He's giving her the same look he did last time, when she'd actually groaned about the wine. Pride meshed with faux concern. As if he's playing her. As if she doesn't know.
Rissa looks at her dinner and sighs. At least she doesn’t bring out the good wine for these dinners, though as soon as this is over, she’s getting herself a generous pour of the best bottle they had.
She’ll have earned it, for weeding out the corruption plaguing her court.
*****
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