one and eighty.

[naughtbutlife]

[Private to Mal]

How is your head?

[Private to Sexby]

If I find that you have done any sort of work today, I am going to send you straight to the infirmary.

Comments

Private

[cauchemal]

Well enough now-no harm done for the future, I think.

Private

[naughtbutlife]

I am glad to hear it; I was worried for you.

And all else? How are you faring?

Private

[cauchemal]

I cannot lie-I've been much unsettled by ... whatever it was that happened this last week. I'm still not entirely sure that I understand it.

Private

[naughtbutlife]

I think it unsettled many people, especially since we cannot seem to recall the cause of it all.

What think you of the woman you had been?

Private

[cauchemal]

I think that some might say that she was a better person than I am. More pleasant to be around, perhaps-even I can't deny that.

But I think she was ... soft.

Private

[naughtbutlife]

Soft how? Not that I disagree, of course. She was certainly a more forgiving person. She also seemed as though she did not dwell too heavily in the past, and was most assuredly not as....did she seem less independent to you as well? That may just be my own opinion though.

Private

[cauchemal]

She clung to her memories of Dom like a life-preserver. The children too, of course -- but they were almost a secondary consideration.

Private

[naughtbutlife]

She clung to her memories despite knowing what he had done to her - what he had taken away from her?

Private

[cauchemal]

She forgave him. She said she understood.

I can remember what it felt like. But now it is as if I'm reading the reactions of a character in a novel -- a character with whom I sympathise, but someone else altogether, who isn't me.

Private

[naughtbutlife]

I feel as though the changes to us were made to be positive, to make us happy and content, but were more distasteful to some than they were to others. My husband was given friends - a positive thing, true enough - and I was made quieter and given a keener awareness of my own self-preservation, and you...well. You were forgiving and devoted. Perhaps too much so.

It is no great crime to feel betrayed by a loved one, nor is it wrong to be angry or bitter. It is very clear that you are not that woman who forgave her husband. But do you look down on her?

Private

[cauchemal]

No.

Well. Perhaps a little.

Private

[naughtbutlife]

A little for what reason?

Private

[cauchemal]

You have probably not heard of a story called The Stepford Wives, have you? It was a novel and a film, in the twentieth century.

Briefly, it's about a woman who discovers that all the wives in her neighbourhood are robots, replicas of ordinary humans, but designed to be completely submissive to the will of their husbands. The title has become a catchphrase; a "Stepford wife" is a woman who has willingly sacrificed all her will to her husband and does it with a smile.

There was something of the Stepford wife in -- her.

Private

[naughtbutlife]

....Oh.

Well. That is....

[Speechless Angelica is speechless. And uncomfortable.]

She was an ideal.

Private

[cauchemal]

Of a sort, yes.

Not one I could ever be, I do not think.

Private

[naughtbutlife]

I...you know, the 'stepford wife' was the expectation in my era. I was told by almost every single man that this was how a wife was supposed to behave--

Madam, it may suit some women to be subservient to their husbands, but certainly not you. And I'd almost forgotten - be wary of the lady Petronilla de Vilers. I know you speak to her, but she is not as she seems.