The City of Light: Wednesday Afternoon
"Is that where we're headed, then?" Naminé asked, wandering down the street. She was nearly certain it was late morning, at least by Fandom's time, but it was impossible to tell, here, what time was when. Everything had the same brownish haze. "To the castle, to see the White Queen?"
She resisted the urge to slip her hand into Valentine's and lean her head on his shoulder, as they walked.
Valentine, however, had no such compunctions, idly sliding his arm around her shoulder. It fit rather well there, and it was good to have her close in case any hungry sphinx were to leap out.
He hadn't brought the Really Useful Book with him, after all.
"I should hope there aren't any more detours," he mumbled with a shake of his head. "There always are. But I can certainly hope."
"Oh, there won't be," Helena assured him. "I have to talk to the white queen in order to find out exactly what parts of the world I've missed that I can't quite see from my caravan wall, and then I'll have done everything that I need to-"
Need to...
Helena recognized that Mask Shop, there. The one with the huge, colourful feline sprawled out in front of it as a big, lazy sign.
She didn't bother finishing her sentence before making a beeline for the door.
"And so, it begins," Valentine mumbled with a sigh before turning to follow Helena into the shop where the crazy lady with the two dozen sphinxes and the lovely selection of cake was no doubt waiting for them inside.
It was a trade-off, really. Valentine would tolerate the crazy if there was cake in store.
Naminé stopped short, examining the sign.
"Wait," she said, turning to Valentine. "A mask shop?"
"I've learned it's best not to ask about these things," Valentine answered with a shrug. "Especially not when the woman inside is clearly absolutely barking mad."
She made a living by selling faces, after all.
"But that's your proper face, isn't it?" Naminé asked. "You don't go about exchanging them every few years, or do you? Because otherwise ..."
Otherwise, the idea of a mask shop was making her head hurt.
"What? Exchanging my face?" Valentine looked at her curiously. "Why, do you?"
No, really, the woman inside the shop was just batshit.
"Not in the least," Naminé said, feeling somewhat faint. "I can see where this is a very important sort of stop to be making. I can't wait to meet the people who work here."
"At the very least," Valentine said, casually leading her toward the shop, "the cake is very good. Just try to ignore the housepets."
Naminé nodded carefully, stepping inside the doorway.
And was not thrilled to see more of those gryphon-creatures. Smaller ones, but they looked less pleasant.
Naminé had never been less inclined to pet the nice kitty.
The nice kitties weren't very nice, anyhow.
"Those would be sphinxes," Valentine muttered to Naminé. "They'd far sooner eat a book than eat you, though I'm afraid I'm fresh out at the moment."
Again, entirely worth it for the cake.
"Oh, did you bring friends along again, my dear?" An old woman in rather worn clothing shuffled out from what was presumably a kitchen, holding a large tray of cakes and pastries. "I recognize your jester-" this earned a grumble from Valentine, "-but the other face is new. Come in, come in, dears, I'll get more cake. Cake for three, now. Oh, you young people. I'm certain it's still all tea and biscuits and muffins and adventure for you."
Without waiting for a reply, the lady shuffled off again.
'Jester'? How odd.
"Is she ... mad?" Naminé asked in a low voice.
Around what she expected, so she shouldn't be surprised. And yet.
"I'm almost certain of it," Helena replied with a smile, shooing the purring sphinx, Whiskers, off of her lap. "Come on," she laughed, "I'll show you to the bathroom. It's absolutely dreadful in there, but Mrs. Bagwell smacks fingers if you don't wash your hands before eating the cake."
Naminé wanted smacked fingers about as much as she wanted a cuddling sphinx on her lap, and so she followed Helena without a word.
It didn't occur to her that that meant leaving Valentine alone to deal with the crazy Mrs. Bagwell.
Helena pushed open the bathroom door and stepped inside, taking a look around.
It was just as nasty in there as she remembered it, the walls and floors and fixtures caked in grime. Another sphinx was once again (or, perhaps, still) curled up in the toilet bowl, casually ignoring the wad of toilet paper still left on the seat. Another one peered at them curiously from inside the bathtub.
Before saying another word, Helena made her way across the bathroom to peer out the window, just to be sure. She stayed there a moment, and then, satisfied that it was just a window and there was nobody arguing with her dad on the other side, she turned back to smile at Naminé.
"You like him," she said, with all the sly grace of a monkeybird plowing into a wall.
Naminé blushed, furiously, and attempted to cover it by stepping over to the sink.
"I should hope so," she said lightly. "I wouldn't go all this way to rescue someone I didn't like."
She didn't really think that would work, no.
"It's a long way to go, isn't it? All the way to another world?" Helena was grinning as she stepped over to the sink as well. "You're blushing."
Of course it wasn't going to work.
"I blush rather a lot," she said. Look, here she was blushing again. Evidence. "Yes. I do like him. We're ... sort of ... dating."
'Sort of' was putting it lightly, all things considered, but she didn't want to break Helena's brain, if she could help it.
"Sort of?" Helena laughed and leaned back against the wall. Possibly a bad move, hygienically. "It's quite alright if you are, you know. He isn't mine or anything."
Actually, it was kind of cute. In a soppy, kissy sort of way.
"He seems better-behaved now than he was when I first met him, at least. He must 'sort of' really like you, too."
"He does," Naminé said gently. "Quite a bit."
She turned one of the taps, and then frowned and turned it off again when the water came out ... sludgy. So much for that.
She looked over at Helena, tentatively. "I think ... what happened here changed him. Not me. The void, afterwards, and thinking about it all. What he did to you."
"He very nearly apologized for that," Helena said, nodding her head a little before lapsing into what was almost a frown. "I think... Him coming back was enough. I'm sorry he was trapped in the aftermath like that."
She stepped to one of the taps, turning it and watching the not-nearly-water glop out and plug the sink.
"It really wasn't nearly as bad the last time I was here," she added.
"He says it now," Naminé said, carefully. "Not very often. I don't think he'll ever say it very often, just toss it around like it's any other word. But ... when it matters. He says it."
If anyone deserved to know that, Helena did.
"You should have seen him, the first time he said it." Helena smiled faintly. "I didn't think he was going to, really. He had me thinking that maybe his pride was going to get both of us devoured by the Dark Queen's shadows, but he took this really very deep sort of breath and just screamed it. 'I'm sorry!' It was... Surprising. And his tower! I hadn't thought he really had one."
"I think ..." Naminé bit her lip. "I think he wishes he had said it, to you. When it would have meant something. When he should have. I ..."
She flushed. "I heard the story. Well. What he told me. What happened here. I'm sure it'd be a very different story, from anyone else in it; stories always are. I just meant that I ... know some of what happened here. A queen, and her dark counterpart, who wanted to make you her puppet. A mask. Sphinxes and monkeybirds and books. He needed to talk about it, once it was all over. I would imagine you did, as well."
"It didn't end with me getting the mirrormask and waking the White Queen," Helena replied, then instantly gave her head a shake and shut off the sludgy faucet. "There was Mum's operation and everyone leaving dad's circus because they needed to work to earn a living and we held everything up waiting for mum to be better again, and telling anyone right then wouldn't have been the proper time for any of it all, for my impossible stories about a world I made up, and when I said I wanted to run away from the circus to join real life, I hadn't meant it quite like-"
She bit her lip, shook her head, and smiled.
"I imagine Valentine's eaten all of the cake by now."
Naminé waited a moment, and then looked over. "Hadn't meant it quite like what?" she asked gently.
Helena looked at Naminé for a moment more, not quite frowning, really, but not smiling, either.
"A few days before I came here, my mum and I got into an argument. I didn't want to be in the show, I didn't want to perform in dad's circus. I know it's his life, and they needed everyone they could get to pull everything together. But I felt like an idiot. I looked stupid. I wanted to run away and join real life. Mum said I couldn't handle real life. She said I'd be the death of her." Helena chewed her lip before continuing. "I told her I wished I was. It was stupid to say. I was angry and hurt and I shouldn't have said it, but it didn't mean anything. I got ready for the show and went out with Dad to do the juggling act where the gorilla comes out to juggle with us. But it didn't. Mum was supposed to be in the gorilla suit, and it was the strong man instead, and she was back behind the curtain. She'd collapsed."
Helena was now idly playing with the faucets. On and off. Dribble and splat.
"This place was the last break from real life that I got, really, before things started to settle down again so I could draw some more."
"Wishes --"
I wish I had never been here at all
Naminé shook the thought from her head. Helena was real, her life wasn't Fandom.
"Wishes don't make themselves happen," she continued, hoping the other girl hadn't seen the misstep. "People say terrible, hurtful things when they care about each other. It doesn't mean you mean them. She had to know that."
"She kept... being here. She was the White Queen, you know. And the Dark Queen. It was all so very confusing, really."
Helena looked at the window again. Still just a window.
"She knows, now, that I was sorry. Sometimes, you just have to apologize."
Naminé nodded, carefully. "Sometimes, you have to do everything in your power to make things right again," she said. "Did it work? Finding the mask. Was that ... for her, then? Your mother?"
"I think it might have been... As much to help her as it was to spite her." Helena shook her head, the whole thing never did make much sense to her, either. "The moment I saw the White Queen, I had to. And I had to even more after the Dark Queen tried to make me into her daughter."
"To prove ... that you could handle real life?" Naminé asked. And then frowned. "He sold you out, to her. For rubies. I was so furious at him, when he finally told me. I didn't know at first if I could forgive him."
"I didn't think I could, either." Helena was frowning again, herself. "It was all so very... supply and demand, rocks and logs and no, he didn't hog that cake..." She smiled. "But then he came back. I didn't think he would. I was floating up somewhere inside of myself, and he was there, trying to make things right again, and I had to forgive him. He'd fixed it again."
She laughed, then. Couldn't help it. It bubbled up inside of her and she just had to let it out.
"He really did hog the cake, you know."
"That, I believe," Naminé said, smiling again. "Dreadful cake-hogger. Hammy actor, and even worse as a director. No sense of style. Marvelous kisser. Hopeless romantic. And underneath all the grandeur, very sweet."
"He says he's a panther. I'm rather convinced he's more of a kitten," Helena agreed. Though all that kissy romantic stuff could go without being further addressed. She could live with that just fine. "And, no doubt, he's eaten all of the cake once again."
Naminé laughed. "He was somewhat unnerved, by my cat," she admitted. "Was terrified she was a stealth sphinx, I think, and not a very dignified lapcat. They get along much better, now."
She looked back at the doorway. "We should go save him. From ... the rather bizarre lady and her hungry sphinxes. We have a castle to get to, don't we?"
"We do," Helena agreed, already on her way back through the nasty, grimy bathroom door. Her hand-washing could certainly wait. "And I can only imagine what sorts of stories Mrs. Bagwell is telling him about her sphinxes."
When the girls returned to the other room, they might not be surprised in the least to see that Valentine had, indeed, finished all of the cake, and was now sitting with his face down on the coffee table, a sphinx perched lazily upon his back, while Mrs. Bagwell continued her conversation in detail about all of the names of the sphinxes, and their various health problems and veterinarian charges.
(OOC: preplayed with the awesomesauce importantman. NFI, NFB, OOC is love.)