Backdated from before her log with Ceiro. // also closed
It had taken time for her to figure it out, time for her to wonder why he had wanted to know so much about what her life at home had been like. It also made her wonder why his eyes had held knowledge of something that she had hidden so well over the years, so many lies she’d told to so many people to hide the truth of what had happened as a child. So painstakingly had she hid those scars, slipped on a mask of lies and pretended as if she had never been harmed, lied to her dancing partners when she was dancing, lied to everyone; she had lost friends because they couldn’t come over, because if they had come over, then they’d know the truth of what she dealt with at home. So how could a man who she had met, because she was dancing in the Spades courtyard, know the pain she hid so well? At least, she suspected he did. So time spent wondering about why he had so carefully worded those questions, even with all of her evasions and eventual hedging around the actual answers and she started to put two and two together.
It was rather irritating when she felt that she was completely blanked out and utterly stupid for not realizing it before. She hated secrets, she hated lies. Though some were necessary to be kept, but this particular one? It shined a whole new light on any conversation she had had with the King of Spades. A lot of the excitement, the exuberance, it was all hidden beneath an iron mask that revealed nothing, her eyes held no emotion whatsoever. They were as murky as the gemstone that they were adeptly colored as, revealing nothing and hiding everything. She needed to know the truth, she wanted this truth and though it would hurt her to realize it? She needed to know for sure that she was right and she needed to know the truth behind the conversations she had had with him.
Cayden made her way towards the Spade Castle, in a hurry to get to her destination and she sincerely hoped for no interruptions that would stop her before she reached The King. She needed to ask him something --- and she wanted an honest answer. Though she had already figured it out, the picture of her grandmother in her hand told her enough of the truth; yes, she had it with her. She was going to take it to him and set it on his desk.
Once she reached his office, she lightly tapped on the door and waited for an answer. Once it was received, she’d slip in and set the picture on his desk. Her eyes locked on his face as her hands rested calmly on the desk despite how much they shook as she laid that picture in front of him.
“You can see it, but you can’t keep it. I spent a year of broken fingers to get it; I stole it from my grandfather. He broke my wrist after it went missing but neither he nor my father ever found the picture. I hid it very well, with things that neither of them would dare look at.” After a few moments, she looked into his eyes; those emerald eyes held no deceptions, no lies, and if she received one in return? She would stop coming to the Spade castle just to see him; that didn’t mean she wouldn’t come to see Meghana or Morgan, but she would stop coming to see him. “I have a question, Your Majesty. I need an honest answer. Are you and I related? Please don’t lie to me; I’ve already got it figured out. If I’m correct, then that would make you my Uncle. And if so, then it’s a secret that’s safe with me. I spent the first fifteen years of my life lying about the physical abuse I received from my father, lying away the bruises, the broken bones, the black eyes, the swollen lip, the winces every time I was partnered for ballet and my partners had to throw me into the air and catch me. So I’m not going to tell anyone that we’re related in any way. After all, think of the complications of that. Not to mention the leverage people would think they could use against you by getting to me, not that it would work. After all, I may be your niece, but you don’t know me from Eve down the road. Nor would I tell anyone because this is a secret between you and me, Your Majesty. Something we can’t let anyone find out, because if they did? Inevitably, they’d track my last name back to our so called family and bring their attention to our presence here. I don’t know about you, but my father terrifies me. He is one of the few people in the world that scares me indefinitely and if he came here? ” The panic edging her voice at the thought of that was a good indication what would happen if his brother showed up, the fact that she would do anything to avoid going back to that place, she would even take her own life if it was necessary. “As I said, please don’t lie to me.”
Still, other than that little bit of panic, she let herself reveal nothing. She didn’t want him to know that the idea of him being related to her --- that the idea of having to deal with yet another male from her family --- terrified her to no end. What if he was the same as the others? What if he would react in violence instead of in the way she had predicted from their previous meetings? She was nervous, she was scared, and to be quite honest? She wasn’t sure what she was going to do if she was right --- most definitely avoid him for a while until she came to terms with it. And also came to terms with the idea that he was, indeed, different than they were. Though she doubted she’d escape his office without a long conversation about this matter, she’d deal with that when the time came.
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David’s fingers hesitated over the photo resting on his desk. How had she gotten it? Broken fingers? A broken arm? When he’d run away, David had always thought that would be the end of it, not more chain of abuse to follow him home.
How could he have been so painfully naive?
Touching it, acknowledging it, will make the fact he’s been ignoring for a while now much more real. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted that fact. So instead of touching it, his hand flattened out on his desk next to the picture of his mother that he hadn’t seen in more than two decades. Her eyes are imploring, serious, angry, scared.
Scared. She was right to be afraid - the men in his family were monsters, down to the core, and he couldn’t even begin to pretend he wasn’t just as much of one if a slightly different kind. She should run screaming to the hills, curl up in the safety of the Hearts and Ceiro’s protectiveness.
He couldn’t continue to silently watch her, to attempt not to stare at the picture on his desk. Eventually - what feels like a century and was probably no more than a number of seconds - one finger delicately traced the face staring up at him.
“She was my mother,” he finally told Cayden, eyes soft as he soaked in the face he hadn’t set eyes upon in so long he’d thought they’d forgotten the shape. “Yes, we’re related.” And she was obviously still terrified of the people she called a family - they people they both had abandoned.
Perhaps... Perhaps it was time he went to visit his relatives. Clear up a few points they seemed confused about. Like the appropriateness of hitting little girls. He’d refused to do it for himself, but... for his niece? For a child that obviously needed to be protected from them? Yes, he could do it for her.
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It took her a moment to register the fact that he hadn’t lied to her, a moment to accept that despite all of it, he had not told her a lie. In that moment, her relief along with the fear of the revelation and many other things flashed through her eyes and she carefully settled herself in a chair just across from him. Her hands had stopped shaking, her eyes cleared of any panic and her voice remained perfectly calm. She knew she had to remain calm to deal with this, remain perfectly calm. Because if she didn’t? She’d likely go crazy. Pushing a hand back through her hair, she placed her hands into her lap.
“I started to wonder..” Her voice was soft. “..when you started asking questions about what my life had been like. I wondered why you wanted to know so much about me, beyond the fact that I was clearly a Heart that danced in the Spade’s courtyard. I thought about it, but I never said anything to anyone. Like I said, people like to use others. They like to harm and damage, but everyday? We wake with the conscious choice of who we’re going to be today. I wake every day and make the conscious choice to be different, to be a Heart. To love rather than to hate, but I never ever forget what was done to me. By parents who should never have been given a child, I was neglected. The only good thing my mother ever did for me was put me in ballet, give me the ability to find some beauty and release in a world that had turned drastically dark. I ran off when I was sixteen, a year after I had quit ballet and grew tired of explaining away the bruises and broken bones.”
Her eyes focused on him, then lowered to the picture resting on his desk. “No one spoke of her. I only could imagine what she was like; she is and always will be the most beautiful woman that I’ve ever seen. I imagined what it would be like, if she could come in and save the day.” She laughed, a self depreciating kind of laugh. She knew better. “I learned that no one could save me but myself. The night my father left me bleeding and broken down in spirit on the living room floor, I left. My mother had told me not to make him so angry and proceeded to take more of her pills. I grew to hate her, almost as much as I hated and feared him.” There was so much more she could tell him, so much she could explain about her life. But in the end, what did it matter?
“I always told myself that the only way the past defined me was to give me a core that was unbreakable. I have held to that and will hold to it for the rest of my life. I will never be anything like them; I am a Heart for a reason.” She wanted to withdraw back into herself, she wanted to stay away from him until she figured it all out. But in the end? She couldn’t. She knew that; curiosity if nothing else would bring her back here, it would bring her back time and time again.
After a moment, a wry smile crossed her lips. It was a change of subject and a step back from the emotional, which she thought that they might need. Sensitive to hearts as she was, she knew she was brushing too close to scars that had best remain that. “But we’re both here now and they are there. Unless they find us...” Then she finally said what she had meant to say when she wanted to lighten the mood a little, something to at least step back. If he wanted to know more, he’d ask her. “I met your Ace, his hand was bleeding and I gave him a band aid.” Maybe that would give them both a reason to step back just a little bit.
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Her story is absorbed with silent, blank eyes as the fury built up inside his chest. He should have taken care of the lot of them. Gone back to his family and destroyed them when he’d had the urge after gaining King.
“She was... lovely.” She’s a lost memory at this point, her death too early in his life to make her a solid presence. More of an ethereal drift that smelled of cookies and lemon. “And soft. Her hair was always so soft.”
They should never have been allowed near children. He would handle this.
Behind the blank mask he used, David started to quietly plot a small trip off-Deck. Just long enough to visit them, have a look around. Clean up the mess it seems he left behind. That could work on the back burner, though. Let the plan come together in it’s own way with time. Instead, here and now, he could try to keep the murder out of his bearing and instead let the story about his Ace distract him as it was so obviously meant to.
David let surprise leak onto his face, and eyebrow lifting in disbelieving amusement. “My Ace was bleeding?”
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She nodded after a few moments; her eyes on him rather than the picture. She’d let him see it whenever he wanted, maybe even get him a copy made of it. After all, they were family; it was the least that she could do for him. Her fingers plucked idly at the pants she wore, the usual light in her eyes smothered by the weight of wisdom and knowledge of what the world was capable of. As innocent as she seemed, as sweet as she appeared, she knew things that were better left unsaid. Secrets and lies --- even as a Heart she had to apply them to herself. There were things in her past that she could not bring up, not to anyone there. For now, however, she let her mind focus on the task at hand when she had mentioned The Lord Ace bleeding.
“Mm. I was on my way to see you and happened to notice his hand was bleeding. Well, his hand was wrapped in a napkin.” She waved it off. “It was a few days ago; it didn’t look too bad to be honest. More just a scratch.” Cayden tapped her finger off of her chin though, those green eyes held a touch of amusement now. At least, a little emotion moved through them versus the murky gemstone color they had been moments before. She didn’t say much else on her meeting with him; it was a more or less uneventful introduction that she would not like to repeat. Ever.
Honestly, she wasn’t sure what else to say to him. “I’m sorry, for the way I acted. It’s no excuse, really. But I reacted more out of pain, without consciously thinking about it; I thought you’d lied to me and it kind of cast a different light on any conversation we had had. So I am sorry, Your Majesty.”
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A smile flashed across David’s face. “So you gave him a band-aid?” Of course. That was totally the logical course one would taken when an Ace was stalking down a hallway bleeding into a napkin.
He couldn’t help the small laugh, though it wasn’t up to his usual warm quality - dark thought still simmered in his mind beneath the humor. “Is there a reason you had band-aids with you, my dear?”
The rest... well. It was understandable. David was not a nice man - he didn’t even pretend to be as such, terribly often. That was bound to lead to people disliking him. Her yelling over this? It shouldn’t have been a surprise. “No harm done, Cayden. Don’t think of it again.”
David let his eyes rest on the picture of his mother for a few more moments, soaking in her smile, before handing the photo back to his niece. He might lie to her, sometime soon about something that was probably important. So he wouldn’t even consider promising otherwise.
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“Yes, I gave him a band aid.” She looked amused now, happy to have at least given him this time to step back from the emotional that they had brought up in their previous conversation. She wasn’t sure what else she could say to him on the matter though and at his question, her eyes held a little amusement.
“For all my dancer’s grace, I have accidents. So, when I fall or scrape my knee? I can put a bandaid on it and continue on my way.” She admitted softly, her fingers plucked at her jeans again. A bit absent minded but a tick that helped her a little bit. She watched his face as she did so, her eyes scanning his face.
It could be understandable, to anyone who wasn’t her. Anger only led to more pain and pain led to hatred, it was a winding path to places she never wanted to go. Pain and anger led people that had been influential in her life down a winding, twisting path that left her broken and bleeding on a floor. “Yes, Your Majesty.” She hadn’t dropped that formality, unsure if she was allowed to or even if she should. After all, appearances were best kept up as of this time.
She took the picture back, her fingers brushed against the woman’s face and she looked at it again. “I’ll get you a copy made; I may have been her granddaughter, but you’re her son. You deserve to have a picture of her as much as I do.” Hesitantly, she looked back up at him and smiled a little more. That smile that indicated she had forgiven him and while she couldn’t stand lies, she sometimes knew their necessity. After all, they both had hid their lives and wrapped their past in lies. Though her voice was soft, she bit down on her lip. She wanted to still come to visit, she wanted to get to know him outside of his life as the King of Spades. “Can I come visit more? I’d like to get to know you..”
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“I... would appreciate that,” David said softly. A picture of his mother after all this time? It was a blessing. “Thank you, Cayden.” He means it, more than any thanks he had given in a long time. He doesn’t know how to truly say what he meant, but it was important that he tried at least a little bit. Someday, he would be able to explain just how much that meant to him. Maybe.
“You may come whenever you like, sweetling. I enjoy your visits.” She brought a lightness to his day, the same way Eileen did. He could teach her things, perhaps. Would she like that?
It made him feel useless, that he couldn’t relate honestly with... anyone. Hadn’t that been what Athena had complained about most. He was more a King than a man, but he could open up - he would open up. Somehow.
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A picture of the woman who raised him; if only he could remember her a little more, if only he could tell her stories about a woman she wished with every part of her she could meet. “It’s no problem; you deserve a picture of her. As much, if not more, than I do.” She smiled a little more; he didn’t have to put it in words, his eyes said it all. It was important to him.
Her smile flared up full force, her eyebrow raised ever so slightly. “Are you sure? I don’t want to bother you too much. I know I can be a little..” She hesitated and searched for the right word. “..enthusiastic.” And she loved to learn, anything. She had never finished high school, so she still meandered through her days with a less than high school knowledge. It didn’t matter to her though; she’d learn as she went. It took her a few minutes, but she stood up. Rather than her usual bouncing, but she moved around to hug him. Tentatively, a little nervous at first, but at least it was a start.
Honestly, if he asked her? She’d tell him he wasn’t useless. That he had been a King for so long with no true emotional connections that relating as any other way was alien to him; she had been who she was for so long that being anyone other than herself would be a farce. Yes, she hid many things and wrapped those things in secrets and in lies. She went coldly civil to anyone who brushed too close to one of her scars, but it was something she had to do for the good of herself. She couldn’t let the pain drive her crazy.
“If you..want to know anything about my life, don’t hesitate to ask. Now or then. I’ll tell you, but I try not to let too many people know. No one, I don’t even think my Queen or King knows the truth about my past.”
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He wished he had good stories to tell. Any stories, that hadn’t been warped and destroyed by his father. The would be a gift to carry with him.
“You’re not a bother, sweetling.” His smile says as much, even if those who knew him terribly well would see a slight strain to it. He didn’t want to mold her for the same reason he did Eileen - Cayden didn’t need to learn how to be a good, kind, useful Ace top her Suit. But he enjoyed the role of teacher (he knew how to behave in the role of teacher) so it would have to do.
Hugs... Those were reserved for Eileen and... No one. He didn’t hug people - he generally forcibly kept people from touching him. So the hug was stiff as first, defensive, before his arms came up and he made an effort to properly relax into the embrace.
“You don’t have to tell me anything, Cayden.” He didn’t need specifics to have enough proof that could condemn his family. They would be getting a visit from him - and he was certain they wouldn’t enjoy the fruits of their behavior.
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After a moment, she released him and stepped back, her eyes scanned his face and she moved carefully back over to sit down. It was rare -- she hugged few people. Two Spades had been hugged by her, the King and Meghana. But one could blame Meghana’s hug on pure excitement, the one she gave to David had more to it. The promise of a visit, the promise of being there with him and letting him get to know her as she got to know him.
“All right.” She settled down into the chair and tugged one knee up into it with her, her chin fell to rest on it. What could she tell him about? Dancing. Dancing was her prime choice of anything and she loved it more than she loved life. But he knew that already -- he’d seen her dance with pure bliss in the courtyard.
She hesitated for a few minutes, unsure and really not at all positive on what to say. “Do you know how to dance, Your Majesty? I mean, ballroom dancing. Everyone goes on about it, but it’s the one form of dance I never learned.” There, she fell into a comfortable subject. “I kind of want to, but Meghana is going to teach me a form of dance from where she’s from. I asked Morgan to teach me, but she didn’t say yes or no.”
Cayden had a thirst for knowledge, not just the dance but so much else. She had been reading a book not that long ago where a form of dance had been turned into martial arts. She just couldn’t remember what it was called for the life of her. She wanted to learn that too, if nothing else than to simply say she knew it and knew with confidence that she could do it.
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That. That was something he could give her. He absolutely loved to dance. There wasn’t the wild emotion in his steps, but they always brought joy to him.
“I can teach you to dance,” and he was pleased to be able to offer it. Happy and softer around the eyes at the thought. “If you’d like to come to the castle every week or so, I could give you lessons.”
David sometimes had to wonder how he sounded so very sure of himself. The words came out with no hesitation and no uncertainty, but it always felt like a lie he was telling people.
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“I’d love to!” Not that she wasn’t going to visit him at least every other day. She wanted to learn to dance, she wanted to get to know him. But there would likely be the days that she and he simply worked on the dancing. She had other questions, things she wanted to ask him, but dance was a safe subject. Though she was his niece, it was best if she waited until they knew each other better.
She had a love of the dance that was almost crazy; she could think of nothing else she’d rather do. If her parents hadn’t thrown everything out, she could tell him about the trophies, the pictures, and so much else she had had from dancing. But she was pretty sure it all got thrown out after she had left --- she had dared not take any of it for fear of it being used to find her family or even her.