Fourcount - Chocolate Chip Mint, Sour Apple, Fudge Ripple, Chocolate, Cookies N Cream, +Chopped Nuts
Author: Thai
Challenge: Chocolate Chip Mint #29 - invisible, Sour Apple #1 - penny for your thoughts
Rating: PG
Story: blood princess
Timeline: Motherhood arc
Word Count: 367
There was something strangely comforting about having someone to come home to.
Whatever hour Asma stumbled in, scratched and bleeding and panting with exertion, covered with blood more often than not - Hana would be there. If she managed to get away during the day, the human would be sitting by the window, staring out (and Asma always knew it was because she was dreaming of home, or perhaps thinking of throwing herself off the balcony to get away).
If the sun had set before she was allowed to leave, though, then Hana would be sitting farther from the window, reading with a candle throwing light over her shoulder. It made an oddly captivating picture, her red-golden hair glowing in the firelight, her green eyes (how different they were from the blue she was so used to!) devoid of the loathing they filled with when she caught sight of Asma.
If it was nighttime then she could, for a while, watch Hana without feeling her ire. Her eyes would track across the page, lost in whatever she was reading (and once did Asma think of where she had gotten the books?), and every so often she would smile at something inside the pages, or her mouth would crumple down in surprise and sorrow.
Asma caught herself watching Hana more than once, thinking; Was she like that? Did she turn pages in that peculiar way, with her thumbnail beneath each new page? What did she like to read?
Then, always, after that; Why should I care?
Hana would notice her eventually, of course, and those green eyes would fill with her dangerous sort of anger again. She would snap her book shut abruptly, stand up without greeting Asma. She would give only the shortest answers in response to Asma's questions, would only snort in derision if Asma mentioned anything about her day. Nothing, in short, to suggest that they might be friends.
Yes. It was very odd to be so happy about coming back to a person who despised her.
But Asma was strangely comforted by that hatred of her - Hana would never pretend to like her, only for Asma to realize that it was a lie.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Chocolate Chip Mint #20 - uncomfortable, Chocolate #23 - (in)security, Sour Apple #27 - it's just like riding a bicycle
Rating: PG
Story: blood princess
Timeline: Falsehood arc
Word Count: 269
It was strange to have to see Haytham, still.
He still tried to touch her when they were alone - innocent, chaste little brushes of her shoulder, or a hand supporting her elbow. Little motions that she was sure were his way of trying to apologize.
And even now, though she had Astor - still, he continued to prey on her mind. She lay awake at night, thinking - how would it have been, had he not cut her strings? Would their tryst have continued? Would she have remained loving him?
The thoughts seemed sacreligious to think when she could hear Astor's sleep-breaths, and she tried to banish them from her mind. Yet they would not obey, and like circling, buzzing flies returned to her mind. What would it have been like? Come on, Asma, tell us. Tell us.
I won't, she would always think, and curl back into the warmth of Astor until sleep rescued her from her neverending thoughts.
It was almost worse when they were around other people, Astor in particular, who knew what they had been to each other. Haytham continued to look at him with that green anger, that envy - and Asma was torn between laughing and a sickening guilt.
But it was when Astor pressed long fingers against the base of her neck, told her about the faraway places he'd traveled to or lived in, played sonatas and lullabies and light-stepping compositions of his own - the ever-circling and endlessly questioning thoughts went away.
It would not have been like this, they realized, and Asma was once more safe in her decision.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Chocolate #15 - passion, Fudge Ripple #13 - doubt, Sour Apple #23 - and the winner is...
Rating: PG-13
Story: blood princess
Timeline: Motherhood arc
Word Count: 1895
Notes: For added awesome, you should totally listen to Gypsy by Michael Flatley while you read this.
The night that her kingdom fell, Asma danced.
Afterwards she dwelled on how perfectly it was timed - her twenty-first birthday, the day she would be crowned queen and Rocmother, when her name would be cast into oblivion forever. The day when her growth would be arrested and she would remain as she was, frozen into her human face. For decades.
No - centuries.
It was a coronation ceremony to rival that of many human ceremonies; yet the energy and the meaning was sapped from the people of the earth, and it seemed so often that no one cared of their ascension. They had traditions, surely, but they were not bound to them as the humans were.
She dressed in red. That was the custom. The color of blood that had so tainted their small, contained world; it was a sign that she would spill more, as the Rocmothers were expected to do - soldiers in their own right, warrior queens who loved their people as fiercely as they fought their enemies.
She dressed in red, and upon her feet she put the stiff, black shoes that Astor (it was worthless trying to forget his name) had brought her from England. The ones that had been far too large for her years ago fit her now, but the small and delicate pair she had learned to dance with were worn and tattered.
Asma regarded them with pity, and a sort of envy. That girl hadn't had her life torn from her by a woman professing only to love her, hadn't been victimized by those who swore to protect her. Hadn't lost the only honest friend she had ever made.
The ribbons gave Asma trouble, and once or twice she opened her mouth to call for Hana or Janan, but neither came; she didn't call. Yet finally the slick material was wound around her legs in a way that didn't completely strangle her. She tried a few experimental steps, wincing at the way her feet felt in these shoes that had been left for so long. She was fine. This would work.
"Princess Asma," she said aloud, savoring the way her name felt coming from her mouth. Soon she would be nothing but The Rocmother, as if her identity was meaningless, compared to her status. She would be another in a long line of Rocmothers, nothing to differ her from the past.
She regarded herself in the mirror that leaned against the wall. Her shoes were black and alien to the little world of the Rocs, creatures from an entirely different universe that did not have a niche; her dress a welcome and familiar presence of tradition that she was sure no one in this palace had ever expected her to live long enough to wear. Her eyes were blue and brilliant and her hair was long enough to brush her hips, and the silver circlet curled around her forehead like a hungry snake.
She looked, for the first time, every part a princess.
And she was fiercely happy for it.
~*~*~
It was not an odd collection of Rocs that gathered in the throne room, and yet it seemed that there was something off about it - and then Asma realized that there were none of silver hair there. Haytham and Janan were not present - her protectors since childhood, missing the most important day of a princess' life. She felt a surge of anger that passed in the briefest moment.
She was no longer part of their lives. It should not matter.
She stepped forward, her stiff and strange shoes making odd noises against the floor, and the sound froze those assembled. Feathers rustled; human eyes turned to stare curiously at her.
As if from a great distance, those eyes fixed on her; bright indigo, and cold. Her mother (it was useless pretending she was not) watched her. Her voice came down a tunnel: "Princess, you are late."
I always am, aren't I? Asma thought, and the first strains of the music came to her ears.
It was not happy, exactly, but it was quickstepping and passionate in its solemnity. Of course music was part of the ceremony, if Asma wished it to be (and she had, which was why she had arranged for the musicians to be here in the first place). Anything the participants thought was right for the ceremony - dance, music? Done. A ritual battle? Of course. A human sacrifice? Unless you proposed to sacrifice, say, a king, then it could be done the very day of the ceremony.
Anyone in high places of power needed to be captured beforehand.
The music made her think of battle, the strange lightstepping fighting she did that no one had been able to emulate. And it made her think of dance. And it made her think of Astor.
Because he had written it, Asma realized. He had written this, just for her, and for her change into something that was harsher and more dangerous than the hollow puppet-princess she had been.
Though he was long gone, and he did not look at her when they passed in the corridors anymore, he had taken the time to see what she herself had thought could only be guessed at. And turned it into this.
Her first few steps were careful and cautious, testing the floor as if it were swampland; she did not know whether she would slip and fall, in these odd and only vaguely familiar shoes. But the music urged her on, woodwind and the stretched-leather drums forcing her feet faster.
She moved as she had not in years, the red swirling about her knees like water, the cool indifferent regard of the Rocmother a mere distraction to her now. Leaps and spins and the giddy rushing of the dance itself - it seemed like an epiphany; this is a sort of combat, and combat itself a child of this.
She did this with a sword in her hand and a snarl on her face, and it was strange and wonderful to throw those away now and just move.
The music changed, and now it was of Janan and Haytham she was reminded, those she had betrayed when she tried to love them. She stumbled, a heartwrenching instant when her balance threw her forward - and then stepped out, dancing on, for them instead of against them.
Oriana, Hana. The notes seemed to spell out their names.
But instead of falling, she danced faster, a bitter sort of liveliness that took her twirling around the perimeter of the room, a snarl-smile fixed upon her face. Perhaps a few young Rocs stepped forward, hesitantly, as if to join her - she waved them away with a flick of her hand, turning from them in derision and a vague sadness. This was her dance, and like her life, she would do it alone.
Mother.
The last few notes took her from the door to the throne, a whirl in red and black and blue. And on the final note, the Rocmother did something she had not done for Asma in a very long time.
She smiled.
~*~*~
It passed in a blur; brief formalities flew over her head as she knelt, frozen, at the queen's feet. A few words - "yes," "I will," "for the good of our people, I promise" - were all that were needed from her, and she said them automatically. In other situations a princess would be required to display the control of her change, but Asma was the flawed princess - that should be my title, she thought, with a sort of sardonic amusement, Asma the Broken Princess - and of course, she couldn't.
"Princess," the Rocmother's voice came, and there was an odd cool feeling along her skin, a needling of snow against her neck - but she looked up to stare at her mother.
Her smile was gone, and Asma's trepidation grew; a brief motion behind the throne drew her eye, and for a moment relief drowned the sudden fear that had overtaken her. Janan waved timidly from her mother's left, Haytham smiling at her from the queen's right - They were here, she thought. They were here; they wouldn't miss it.
Now her mother was speaking, and she tried to pay attention, but that smile of Haytham's -
It touched the burned wound of her heart, urged it with gentle words to open, open. The scar had healed over long before, a thread pulling shut with every battle, a stitch neatly removed with every victory. It brought to mind memories of a young girl, clutching onto him in the dead of night, biting down the questions she wanted answers to.
Haytham, did you ever really care at all? she almost asked, and then her mother jerked her from her reverie - "Asma," she said, and stood.
Asma remained as she knew she should, at the base of the dais where the throne sat, and watched as her mother reached up. The crown she wore was one Asma knew well, one that had slipped around her shoulder when she tried it on at first (she had been four or five); silver and ornate, feathers overlapping and curling around her mother's forehead almost like vines, with a single teardrop-shaped sapphire that rested squarely on her mother's brow.
It slipped off her head so easily that Asma was almost startled, and she looked so naked without it that a touch of pity crept up on her daughter. The princess reached up to remove her own meager silver circlet, cradling it against her chest - it and its predecessors had been her security blanket through the years; they'd been there when she fought, when she'd run away and hid as a child. Her history was caught up in these crowns.
They made her different. They made her better than the others in this castle, though she was lesser in the most important way. They'd made her a creature to be despised, the human playing at being princess. They'd elevated her even as she fell.
But Astor had never treated her as the pathetic princess, and for a horrible blinding moment she missed him so badly that her eyes watered. But he'd betrayed her, and she couldn't let that go.
The formalities were over. She'd made her vows, this marriage to her country, and now her mother would tell her who she would truly wed - who would be expected to keep her company and pretend to love her. Her mother was lucky; so many times Janan had told her the pretty fairytale, her grandmother placing the crown on her mother's head - "Love," she said simply, instead of the name of the Roc.
Her mother was lucky, but her mother was crazy, and her mother was a monster, and Asma was suddenly afraid again - her fear had nothing to do with the spouse or her ascension or Astor. It was a niggling terror, an unserious one that simply nudged at her to notice it.
She looked up at her mother, and saw the name form on her lips as the Rocmother lowered the crown to her forehead - her heart seized in her chest, and she half-stood, stumbling backwards -
And then the doors burst open, and the Rocs began to fall.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Sour Apple #14 - it followed me home; can I keep it?, Cookes N Cream #21 - offer
Title: needles & pins
Rating: PG-13
Story: blood princess, AU: raining up
Topping: Chopped Nuts
Timeline: Falsehood arc
Word Count: 2750
"I'm done with you!"
She stared at her mother for a moment, breathing heavily, before whirling on her heel and stomping down the foyer to her room. She could hear her mother's voice behind her, calling out her name, probably to apologize - but she was sick of all this fucking drama, everything she did was a blight to the fucking family name -
That bitch had had her fucking lock removed a few years previously, so she had to make do with a chair propped up under the knob. A few textbooks and it was practically impenetrable. Good. Asma let out a loud, angry breath, and yanked her suitcase out of its hiding place under her desk.
"Asma!" There was the sound of someone pounding on the door, and Asma kicked it with a viciousness she didn't know she had. Her fingers were trembling with emotion, and she slipped opening the latch of the case, but eventually it popped open. "Asma Vogel! Open this door now!"
"Fuck you!"
Shirts, jeans, the one skirt that Asma could wear without her mother making snide comments - she wedged them tightly in one corner. Quick, what else did she need - her cell phone was in her pocket, she could get soap and shit at the corner store - money!
The pounding ended, and then she heard the rattling of the doorknob as the woman outside tried to force it open. "Asma! Unblock this door at once! Stop behaving like such a child!"
She ignored it, clambering up to stand on her desk. The ceiling panel lifted up easy - what the hell, they were so fucking rich apparently, why did they live in a house cheap enough to have drop ceilings? - and her hands scrabbled around in the dark for a few moments. There was a horrible, gut-wrenching feeling of panic - oh my God, she found it! That bitch stole all the fucking cash I fucking had! - before her fingers alighted on a cool square of metal.
Relief clouded her anger for a moment, and she pulled the tin from its hiding place. Six hundred dollars from various birthdays, Christmases, even fifty or so from that Starbucks job - and plenty of change, to boot. She popped it open, stuffed ten or so bucks into her pocket, and tossed the money tin into her suitcase.
The rattling had turned into quiet threats, and Asma couldn't resist a snort. Cutting off her allowance hadn't worked when she was twelve, and it still didn't do shit six years later.
She yanked her phone charger out of the wall and threw it in, gathered the few books she could stand - her CD collection she gave only a regretful glance. There was no time to browse. Maybe she'd be able to come back and grab some later, save them from her mother's vengeful grip.
The suitcase snapped closed, and Asma hefted it over her shoulder. The door was out - her mother would probably claw her eyes out as soon as she even cracked it open - so it would have to be the window.
She grimaced. Two-story jumps were never fun.
---
Five bucks for the bus fare. She knew she looked like a wreck - people tended to look like shit when they jumped from second-story windows, even if they did land on soft dirt. She could practically feel the bruise blooming on her cheek. It didn't help that she looked like a juvie runaway - the tats she'd gotten, completely to piss off her mom, were easy to spot if you didn't think they were just smudges at her sleeves.
Asma pressed her forehead against the window, watching Frisco go by. Tourists and people who had nothing better to do than pretend to be tourists. God, she hated California - she missed New York. At least their house there had been something like decent. No drop ceilings in NYC.
Her phone rang. A few people looked at her askance - having her ringtone as The Ballad of Chasey Lain, not the muzak but the actual lyrics, probably didn't help. Ari'd done that - introduced her to the band, that was. She'd set the ringtone herself.
She needed to change it.
Asma rifled through her pockets until she found it, a small green phone with a lightning bolt charm danging from it. She flipped it open, snorted derisively at the caller ID.
She punched the Ignore button. Took the bitch long enough to realize she was gone.
A few seconds later the voicemail rang; this time Bad Romance. Impatiently, she pressed Talk.
"You could have seriously injured yourself jumping out of that window," her mother's voice came over the line. It was more than just chilly - it was absolutely icy with rage. "We will discuss your behavior, and especially that stunt, when you decide to stop being childish and speak to your mother."
Yeah, like that was likely to happen. Asma ended the call, and punched in a new number.
He didn't pick up the phone, but his voicemail was light and whimsical; it was the perfect pick-up to stave off the anger her mother's call had baited back into Asma. "It's me," she mumbled, slumping back to stare through the window. Her reflection looked back at her, dark and dull against the shifting sidewalk.
"I dunno when you're gonna get done with whoever you're seeing now, but you better listen to your voicemail before you get home, 'kay? I got suspended, Mom went batshit, and I'm moving in for a while. Got a spare key?"
Almost as soon as she hung up her phone rang again; she checked. Mom again. Ignore.
She blocked her home number, set her phone to vibrate, and went back to staring out the window. They should be coming up on his street soon - the tourists were gone. This was a neighborhood section of the street. Not much to gawk at here.
Her phone buzzed. It was him, of course - his voice was terse. "Asma, you're moving in on that short of a notice?"
"I got suspended today. She tried to kick my ass. I escaped out the fucking window."
"You couldn't have called as soon as you got the news?"
She felt a pang of hurt and surprise. "What are you saying? That you want me to find somewhere else to hide out?"
There was a hissing sigh of static. "No, I'm not. I'm just worried, that's all - this new client, she's really wearing me out. I'm a little on-edge is all. The spare key's under the bonsai tree."
"Which one? You seriously have about a million out there."
There was a note of grim humor in that voice. "The one right next to the door, in the red pot. It matches the wood, remember?"
"Gotcha."
"Don't unpack yet. I'll be home in a few hours."
Though she knew he couldn't see her, her eyebrows lifted. "But didn't you tell me the room at the end was the guestroom?"
"You're not the average guest," he said cryptically, and then, "Listen, Asma, my next client's here - some guy with anger-management issues, hope he doesn't bash me to a pulp. Wal-Mart's spitting distance from the house if you need it."
"Okay." She hesitated, looking back out the window. Only a block or two to go. "I'm close to it now. Bye."
"Love."
Despite the way her day had gone, Asma found herself smiling slightly. "Love."
There was the click that signified he'd hung up, and she ended the call. She'd gotten three more voicemails from the blocked number, and she deleted each of them with a feeling of irritation.
That bitch should have seen it coming.
---
When he walked in the door, the first thing Astor heard was the sound of the shower running. A tattered, old-fashioned black suitcase was propped up by the stairwell, and he couldn't hold back a tired smile. She'd done what he said for once.
Astor tilted his head slightly. Yes, she was singing in the shower - something that sounded like Christmas carols.
The water stopped running, but the singing didn't - and yes, that was definitely Carol of the Bells. "It's February!" he shouted up the staircase.
"Fuck you!" was her cheery answer, and Astor shook his head slightly, grinning. She hadn't changed - her curses were teasing instead of furious, but she still seemed like the girl who'd glared at him over his desk in his office a few years ago.
He locked the door behind him and hung up his hat by the door. He was in the kitchen when she appeared in the doorway.
Her hair was wet and clung to her neck, and she was dressed only in one of his oversized button-down shirts - the ends barely came to the middle of her thighs. Moisture drew the shirt to her, too, and for a moment as Astor regarded her he felt the quiet stirring of heat in his groin. For a moment he toyed with the idea of removing that shirt, and maybe all of his clothing, too - he was still in work gear after all, and if she needed to shower again, then he might as well go with her.
Then she lurched forward, practically tackling him into the counter, and all thoughts of sex flew from his mind when he realized that she was shaking. Stress, or maybe the shock of the day, or maybe she was just tired -
His arms came up around her shoulders, and she sagged against him almost imperceptibly; but the shaking was lessening. Astor knew she had problems with her mother, but if it had gone so far where she did this -
"I'm sorry," came her muffled voice, and for an odd moment he thought she was apologizing for hugging him, or maybe coming at all. "I didn't have a nightshirt, and this was the best I can find. 's cute."
That it was. Someone had decided that white with red and yellow stripes was an excellent shirt for Astor, but he didn't particularly go for cute. "Looks better on you than it does on me," he noted. "Might want to try some pants with that, though."
He was rewarded with a fierce (but mocking) glare, and Asma stepped back, planting her hands on her hips. "Well, I didn't know where you kept your sweatpants. It took me enough looking to find this thing."
"Should have gotten some at Wal-Mart," he chided, and she stuck out her tongue. "Don't make me lick that," he added, and Asma wrinkled her nose at him.
"You are very, very weird," she informed him.
"Pants are in the third drawer to the right of the door," he responded, and she scampered from the room. He followed her motion critically. Yes, it was just as he'd remembered.
That shirt was a lot shorter in the back than it was in front.
---
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"You're not my shrink anymore, you know."
He slid the glasses off his nose, folding them in his hand, and Asma sighed. Whenever he did that it meant he was getting serious. She'd had enough serious moments sitting in his cushy green chairs and talking about her feelings.
"I would like to know what happened," he said quietly.
Asma shrugged with one shoulder. One leg was lifted up to drape over the chair arm, the other dangling comfortably down onto the floor, with her left hand almost touching the ankle. Sometimes she felt like a cat in these chairs. Or maybe a sort of funky, teenage misfit liquid.
"Not much to tell. I got in a fight with some bitch at school who decided to say some shit things about me. Broke her nose." She shrugged again, blinking idly at the muted television screen. "She needed a rhinoplasty anyway. This way she might be able to get one at a lower price or some shit."
He regarded her with a cool gaze, and she groaned. "Don't tell me you're going to lecture me too. I came here to get away from the shit at my house, not to put up with more."
"I think they were justified in suspending you," he responded calmly. "You should think yourself lucky that you didn't get kicked out. You're three months from graduation - don't you think that would look bad on your record, getting expelled from high school just before you can leave it of your own will?"
"She was insulting you too," Asma said, quite bluntly. His eyes widened. Yeah, she hadn't thought he'd just take it like that. "Apparently I'm famous. Not 'cause I'm the only chick in school to ever have had counseling, but 'cause I'm the only chick in school to ever have had counseling for suicide."
A rather dramatic form of suicide, too. Drowning herself hadn't been the smartest idea, especially in Ari's pool - she wasn't sure what she had intended to accomplish. Framing him? Maybe.
"Especially the reason for the attempted suicide," she added, after a pregnant pause. "I mean, everything's perfect-sunny-perfect for them. Everyone gets laid, no one gets diseases, no one gets knocked up - and if they do, then whatever, they don't have to say a thing about it. Just get an abortion and get out."
"Why would that involve me?"
Asma draped her head back across the chair's arm, closing her eyes. "They seem to think you fucked me happy. Saying a bunch of degrading stuff about you - they didn't even know who the hell you were. The High Bitch herself seemed to think you were about seventy and that I was desperate enough to beg you for sex. She called you a lot of names that I didn't like at all. Me too, actually, I think 'desperate whore' was one of them. I decided to shut her up."
He was silent for a very long moment, long enough for Asma to wonder if she should have just kept her mouth shut.
"When are you going back?"
"I'm on a month's suspension," she responded. "So I'm back on March the... twelfth, I think?"
He made an ambiguous noise, and Asma tilted her head forward to see him sliding his glasses back on again. He often said he looked better without them, but she liked the way they magnified his eyes slightly. They were very blue.
"She was almost right," he pointed out, and Asma jerked up in surprise. What part of that little skank's spiel could have been right?
"Are you insane?" she blurted out, and was rewarded with a smirk.
"I did fuck you happy."
"I was happy before the fucking began," Asma pointed out.
"After you met me."
"But before the fucking."
"Come here."
"Make me."
It could have been the reflection of the television off of his glasses, but the glint in Astor's eye made her very eager for his attempts.
---
"I do love you, you know."
Astor smiled softly, reaching out to stroke her cheek in the darkness. The glow of the clock behind him illuminated her face ever so slightly, letting him see the contours of her cheekbones and the way her eyelashes fluttered when she blinked.
"I love you too."
"You absolutely sure about that?"
"More than I've been before."
She shivered, drew closer to him. Her skin was cold, probably since the bed was right underneath the vent, and he draped an arm over her shoulders to warm her up. "Thank you for letting me stay here."
"I know how you are with your mother," he murmured, pressing a quick kiss to her forehead. "And I'm sorry I made it harder for you to work with your peers."
"They're not my peers," Asma grunted, absently beginning to stroke his sternum. It was a strangely comforting motion that he'd noted was her nervous habit - after sex, watching a movie, anywhere where she could get close to him and they were alone; that hand would always go to the center of his chest. He was surprised the skin wasn't rubbed raw.
"What are they?"
"Stupid people."
He laughed at that, hugging her closer. It was late. He didn't know about her, but he wasn't quite as nocturnal as he often wished to be.
"Sleep, Asma."
"Love."
Astor felt a long, slow smile spread across his face. "Love."
Challenge: Chocolate Chip Mint #29 - invisible, Sour Apple #1 - penny for your thoughts
Rating: PG
Story: blood princess
Timeline: Motherhood arc
Word Count: 367
There was something strangely comforting about having someone to come home to.
Whatever hour Asma stumbled in, scratched and bleeding and panting with exertion, covered with blood more often than not - Hana would be there. If she managed to get away during the day, the human would be sitting by the window, staring out (and Asma always knew it was because she was dreaming of home, or perhaps thinking of throwing herself off the balcony to get away).
If the sun had set before she was allowed to leave, though, then Hana would be sitting farther from the window, reading with a candle throwing light over her shoulder. It made an oddly captivating picture, her red-golden hair glowing in the firelight, her green eyes (how different they were from the blue she was so used to!) devoid of the loathing they filled with when she caught sight of Asma.
If it was nighttime then she could, for a while, watch Hana without feeling her ire. Her eyes would track across the page, lost in whatever she was reading (and once did Asma think of where she had gotten the books?), and every so often she would smile at something inside the pages, or her mouth would crumple down in surprise and sorrow.
Asma caught herself watching Hana more than once, thinking; Was she like that? Did she turn pages in that peculiar way, with her thumbnail beneath each new page? What did she like to read?
Then, always, after that; Why should I care?
Hana would notice her eventually, of course, and those green eyes would fill with her dangerous sort of anger again. She would snap her book shut abruptly, stand up without greeting Asma. She would give only the shortest answers in response to Asma's questions, would only snort in derision if Asma mentioned anything about her day. Nothing, in short, to suggest that they might be friends.
Yes. It was very odd to be so happy about coming back to a person who despised her.
But Asma was strangely comforted by that hatred of her - Hana would never pretend to like her, only for Asma to realize that it was a lie.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Chocolate Chip Mint #20 - uncomfortable, Chocolate #23 - (in)security, Sour Apple #27 - it's just like riding a bicycle
Rating: PG
Story: blood princess
Timeline: Falsehood arc
Word Count: 269
It was strange to have to see Haytham, still.
He still tried to touch her when they were alone - innocent, chaste little brushes of her shoulder, or a hand supporting her elbow. Little motions that she was sure were his way of trying to apologize.
And even now, though she had Astor - still, he continued to prey on her mind. She lay awake at night, thinking - how would it have been, had he not cut her strings? Would their tryst have continued? Would she have remained loving him?
The thoughts seemed sacreligious to think when she could hear Astor's sleep-breaths, and she tried to banish them from her mind. Yet they would not obey, and like circling, buzzing flies returned to her mind. What would it have been like? Come on, Asma, tell us. Tell us.
I won't, she would always think, and curl back into the warmth of Astor until sleep rescued her from her neverending thoughts.
It was almost worse when they were around other people, Astor in particular, who knew what they had been to each other. Haytham continued to look at him with that green anger, that envy - and Asma was torn between laughing and a sickening guilt.
But it was when Astor pressed long fingers against the base of her neck, told her about the faraway places he'd traveled to or lived in, played sonatas and lullabies and light-stepping compositions of his own - the ever-circling and endlessly questioning thoughts went away.
It would not have been like this, they realized, and Asma was once more safe in her decision.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Chocolate #15 - passion, Fudge Ripple #13 - doubt, Sour Apple #23 - and the winner is...
Rating: PG-13
Story: blood princess
Timeline: Motherhood arc
Word Count: 1895
Notes: For added awesome, you should totally listen to Gypsy by Michael Flatley while you read this.
The night that her kingdom fell, Asma danced.
Afterwards she dwelled on how perfectly it was timed - her twenty-first birthday, the day she would be crowned queen and Rocmother, when her name would be cast into oblivion forever. The day when her growth would be arrested and she would remain as she was, frozen into her human face. For decades.
No - centuries.
It was a coronation ceremony to rival that of many human ceremonies; yet the energy and the meaning was sapped from the people of the earth, and it seemed so often that no one cared of their ascension. They had traditions, surely, but they were not bound to them as the humans were.
She dressed in red. That was the custom. The color of blood that had so tainted their small, contained world; it was a sign that she would spill more, as the Rocmothers were expected to do - soldiers in their own right, warrior queens who loved their people as fiercely as they fought their enemies.
She dressed in red, and upon her feet she put the stiff, black shoes that Astor (it was worthless trying to forget his name) had brought her from England. The ones that had been far too large for her years ago fit her now, but the small and delicate pair she had learned to dance with were worn and tattered.
Asma regarded them with pity, and a sort of envy. That girl hadn't had her life torn from her by a woman professing only to love her, hadn't been victimized by those who swore to protect her. Hadn't lost the only honest friend she had ever made.
The ribbons gave Asma trouble, and once or twice she opened her mouth to call for Hana or Janan, but neither came; she didn't call. Yet finally the slick material was wound around her legs in a way that didn't completely strangle her. She tried a few experimental steps, wincing at the way her feet felt in these shoes that had been left for so long. She was fine. This would work.
"Princess Asma," she said aloud, savoring the way her name felt coming from her mouth. Soon she would be nothing but The Rocmother, as if her identity was meaningless, compared to her status. She would be another in a long line of Rocmothers, nothing to differ her from the past.
She regarded herself in the mirror that leaned against the wall. Her shoes were black and alien to the little world of the Rocs, creatures from an entirely different universe that did not have a niche; her dress a welcome and familiar presence of tradition that she was sure no one in this palace had ever expected her to live long enough to wear. Her eyes were blue and brilliant and her hair was long enough to brush her hips, and the silver circlet curled around her forehead like a hungry snake.
She looked, for the first time, every part a princess.
And she was fiercely happy for it.
~*~*~
It was not an odd collection of Rocs that gathered in the throne room, and yet it seemed that there was something off about it - and then Asma realized that there were none of silver hair there. Haytham and Janan were not present - her protectors since childhood, missing the most important day of a princess' life. She felt a surge of anger that passed in the briefest moment.
She was no longer part of their lives. It should not matter.
She stepped forward, her stiff and strange shoes making odd noises against the floor, and the sound froze those assembled. Feathers rustled; human eyes turned to stare curiously at her.
As if from a great distance, those eyes fixed on her; bright indigo, and cold. Her mother (it was useless pretending she was not) watched her. Her voice came down a tunnel: "Princess, you are late."
I always am, aren't I? Asma thought, and the first strains of the music came to her ears.
It was not happy, exactly, but it was quickstepping and passionate in its solemnity. Of course music was part of the ceremony, if Asma wished it to be (and she had, which was why she had arranged for the musicians to be here in the first place). Anything the participants thought was right for the ceremony - dance, music? Done. A ritual battle? Of course. A human sacrifice? Unless you proposed to sacrifice, say, a king, then it could be done the very day of the ceremony.
Anyone in high places of power needed to be captured beforehand.
The music made her think of battle, the strange lightstepping fighting she did that no one had been able to emulate. And it made her think of dance. And it made her think of Astor.
Because he had written it, Asma realized. He had written this, just for her, and for her change into something that was harsher and more dangerous than the hollow puppet-princess she had been.
Though he was long gone, and he did not look at her when they passed in the corridors anymore, he had taken the time to see what she herself had thought could only be guessed at. And turned it into this.
Her first few steps were careful and cautious, testing the floor as if it were swampland; she did not know whether she would slip and fall, in these odd and only vaguely familiar shoes. But the music urged her on, woodwind and the stretched-leather drums forcing her feet faster.
She moved as she had not in years, the red swirling about her knees like water, the cool indifferent regard of the Rocmother a mere distraction to her now. Leaps and spins and the giddy rushing of the dance itself - it seemed like an epiphany; this is a sort of combat, and combat itself a child of this.
She did this with a sword in her hand and a snarl on her face, and it was strange and wonderful to throw those away now and just move.
The music changed, and now it was of Janan and Haytham she was reminded, those she had betrayed when she tried to love them. She stumbled, a heartwrenching instant when her balance threw her forward - and then stepped out, dancing on, for them instead of against them.
Oriana, Hana. The notes seemed to spell out their names.
But instead of falling, she danced faster, a bitter sort of liveliness that took her twirling around the perimeter of the room, a snarl-smile fixed upon her face. Perhaps a few young Rocs stepped forward, hesitantly, as if to join her - she waved them away with a flick of her hand, turning from them in derision and a vague sadness. This was her dance, and like her life, she would do it alone.
Mother.
The last few notes took her from the door to the throne, a whirl in red and black and blue. And on the final note, the Rocmother did something she had not done for Asma in a very long time.
She smiled.
~*~*~
It passed in a blur; brief formalities flew over her head as she knelt, frozen, at the queen's feet. A few words - "yes," "I will," "for the good of our people, I promise" - were all that were needed from her, and she said them automatically. In other situations a princess would be required to display the control of her change, but Asma was the flawed princess - that should be my title, she thought, with a sort of sardonic amusement, Asma the Broken Princess - and of course, she couldn't.
"Princess," the Rocmother's voice came, and there was an odd cool feeling along her skin, a needling of snow against her neck - but she looked up to stare at her mother.
Her smile was gone, and Asma's trepidation grew; a brief motion behind the throne drew her eye, and for a moment relief drowned the sudden fear that had overtaken her. Janan waved timidly from her mother's left, Haytham smiling at her from the queen's right - They were here, she thought. They were here; they wouldn't miss it.
Now her mother was speaking, and she tried to pay attention, but that smile of Haytham's -
It touched the burned wound of her heart, urged it with gentle words to open, open. The scar had healed over long before, a thread pulling shut with every battle, a stitch neatly removed with every victory. It brought to mind memories of a young girl, clutching onto him in the dead of night, biting down the questions she wanted answers to.
Haytham, did you ever really care at all? she almost asked, and then her mother jerked her from her reverie - "Asma," she said, and stood.
Asma remained as she knew she should, at the base of the dais where the throne sat, and watched as her mother reached up. The crown she wore was one Asma knew well, one that had slipped around her shoulder when she tried it on at first (she had been four or five); silver and ornate, feathers overlapping and curling around her mother's forehead almost like vines, with a single teardrop-shaped sapphire that rested squarely on her mother's brow.
It slipped off her head so easily that Asma was almost startled, and she looked so naked without it that a touch of pity crept up on her daughter. The princess reached up to remove her own meager silver circlet, cradling it against her chest - it and its predecessors had been her security blanket through the years; they'd been there when she fought, when she'd run away and hid as a child. Her history was caught up in these crowns.
They made her different. They made her better than the others in this castle, though she was lesser in the most important way. They'd made her a creature to be despised, the human playing at being princess. They'd elevated her even as she fell.
But Astor had never treated her as the pathetic princess, and for a horrible blinding moment she missed him so badly that her eyes watered. But he'd betrayed her, and she couldn't let that go.
The formalities were over. She'd made her vows, this marriage to her country, and now her mother would tell her who she would truly wed - who would be expected to keep her company and pretend to love her. Her mother was lucky; so many times Janan had told her the pretty fairytale, her grandmother placing the crown on her mother's head - "Love," she said simply, instead of the name of the Roc.
Her mother was lucky, but her mother was crazy, and her mother was a monster, and Asma was suddenly afraid again - her fear had nothing to do with the spouse or her ascension or Astor. It was a niggling terror, an unserious one that simply nudged at her to notice it.
She looked up at her mother, and saw the name form on her lips as the Rocmother lowered the crown to her forehead - her heart seized in her chest, and she half-stood, stumbling backwards -
And then the doors burst open, and the Rocs began to fall.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Sour Apple #14 - it followed me home; can I keep it?, Cookes N Cream #21 - offer
Title: needles & pins
Rating: PG-13
Story: blood princess, AU: raining up
Topping: Chopped Nuts
Timeline: Falsehood arc
Word Count: 2750
"I'm done with you!"
She stared at her mother for a moment, breathing heavily, before whirling on her heel and stomping down the foyer to her room. She could hear her mother's voice behind her, calling out her name, probably to apologize - but she was sick of all this fucking drama, everything she did was a blight to the fucking family name -
That bitch had had her fucking lock removed a few years previously, so she had to make do with a chair propped up under the knob. A few textbooks and it was practically impenetrable. Good. Asma let out a loud, angry breath, and yanked her suitcase out of its hiding place under her desk.
"Asma!" There was the sound of someone pounding on the door, and Asma kicked it with a viciousness she didn't know she had. Her fingers were trembling with emotion, and she slipped opening the latch of the case, but eventually it popped open. "Asma Vogel! Open this door now!"
"Fuck you!"
Shirts, jeans, the one skirt that Asma could wear without her mother making snide comments - she wedged them tightly in one corner. Quick, what else did she need - her cell phone was in her pocket, she could get soap and shit at the corner store - money!
The pounding ended, and then she heard the rattling of the doorknob as the woman outside tried to force it open. "Asma! Unblock this door at once! Stop behaving like such a child!"
She ignored it, clambering up to stand on her desk. The ceiling panel lifted up easy - what the hell, they were so fucking rich apparently, why did they live in a house cheap enough to have drop ceilings? - and her hands scrabbled around in the dark for a few moments. There was a horrible, gut-wrenching feeling of panic - oh my God, she found it! That bitch stole all the fucking cash I fucking had! - before her fingers alighted on a cool square of metal.
Relief clouded her anger for a moment, and she pulled the tin from its hiding place. Six hundred dollars from various birthdays, Christmases, even fifty or so from that Starbucks job - and plenty of change, to boot. She popped it open, stuffed ten or so bucks into her pocket, and tossed the money tin into her suitcase.
The rattling had turned into quiet threats, and Asma couldn't resist a snort. Cutting off her allowance hadn't worked when she was twelve, and it still didn't do shit six years later.
She yanked her phone charger out of the wall and threw it in, gathered the few books she could stand - her CD collection she gave only a regretful glance. There was no time to browse. Maybe she'd be able to come back and grab some later, save them from her mother's vengeful grip.
The suitcase snapped closed, and Asma hefted it over her shoulder. The door was out - her mother would probably claw her eyes out as soon as she even cracked it open - so it would have to be the window.
She grimaced. Two-story jumps were never fun.
---
Five bucks for the bus fare. She knew she looked like a wreck - people tended to look like shit when they jumped from second-story windows, even if they did land on soft dirt. She could practically feel the bruise blooming on her cheek. It didn't help that she looked like a juvie runaway - the tats she'd gotten, completely to piss off her mom, were easy to spot if you didn't think they were just smudges at her sleeves.
Asma pressed her forehead against the window, watching Frisco go by. Tourists and people who had nothing better to do than pretend to be tourists. God, she hated California - she missed New York. At least their house there had been something like decent. No drop ceilings in NYC.
Her phone rang. A few people looked at her askance - having her ringtone as The Ballad of Chasey Lain, not the muzak but the actual lyrics, probably didn't help. Ari'd done that - introduced her to the band, that was. She'd set the ringtone herself.
She needed to change it.
Asma rifled through her pockets until she found it, a small green phone with a lightning bolt charm danging from it. She flipped it open, snorted derisively at the caller ID.
She punched the Ignore button. Took the bitch long enough to realize she was gone.
A few seconds later the voicemail rang; this time Bad Romance. Impatiently, she pressed Talk.
"You could have seriously injured yourself jumping out of that window," her mother's voice came over the line. It was more than just chilly - it was absolutely icy with rage. "We will discuss your behavior, and especially that stunt, when you decide to stop being childish and speak to your mother."
Yeah, like that was likely to happen. Asma ended the call, and punched in a new number.
He didn't pick up the phone, but his voicemail was light and whimsical; it was the perfect pick-up to stave off the anger her mother's call had baited back into Asma. "It's me," she mumbled, slumping back to stare through the window. Her reflection looked back at her, dark and dull against the shifting sidewalk.
"I dunno when you're gonna get done with whoever you're seeing now, but you better listen to your voicemail before you get home, 'kay? I got suspended, Mom went batshit, and I'm moving in for a while. Got a spare key?"
Almost as soon as she hung up her phone rang again; she checked. Mom again. Ignore.
She blocked her home number, set her phone to vibrate, and went back to staring out the window. They should be coming up on his street soon - the tourists were gone. This was a neighborhood section of the street. Not much to gawk at here.
Her phone buzzed. It was him, of course - his voice was terse. "Asma, you're moving in on that short of a notice?"
"I got suspended today. She tried to kick my ass. I escaped out the fucking window."
"You couldn't have called as soon as you got the news?"
She felt a pang of hurt and surprise. "What are you saying? That you want me to find somewhere else to hide out?"
There was a hissing sigh of static. "No, I'm not. I'm just worried, that's all - this new client, she's really wearing me out. I'm a little on-edge is all. The spare key's under the bonsai tree."
"Which one? You seriously have about a million out there."
There was a note of grim humor in that voice. "The one right next to the door, in the red pot. It matches the wood, remember?"
"Gotcha."
"Don't unpack yet. I'll be home in a few hours."
Though she knew he couldn't see her, her eyebrows lifted. "But didn't you tell me the room at the end was the guestroom?"
"You're not the average guest," he said cryptically, and then, "Listen, Asma, my next client's here - some guy with anger-management issues, hope he doesn't bash me to a pulp. Wal-Mart's spitting distance from the house if you need it."
"Okay." She hesitated, looking back out the window. Only a block or two to go. "I'm close to it now. Bye."
"Love."
Despite the way her day had gone, Asma found herself smiling slightly. "Love."
There was the click that signified he'd hung up, and she ended the call. She'd gotten three more voicemails from the blocked number, and she deleted each of them with a feeling of irritation.
That bitch should have seen it coming.
---
When he walked in the door, the first thing Astor heard was the sound of the shower running. A tattered, old-fashioned black suitcase was propped up by the stairwell, and he couldn't hold back a tired smile. She'd done what he said for once.
Astor tilted his head slightly. Yes, she was singing in the shower - something that sounded like Christmas carols.
The water stopped running, but the singing didn't - and yes, that was definitely Carol of the Bells. "It's February!" he shouted up the staircase.
"Fuck you!" was her cheery answer, and Astor shook his head slightly, grinning. She hadn't changed - her curses were teasing instead of furious, but she still seemed like the girl who'd glared at him over his desk in his office a few years ago.
He locked the door behind him and hung up his hat by the door. He was in the kitchen when she appeared in the doorway.
Her hair was wet and clung to her neck, and she was dressed only in one of his oversized button-down shirts - the ends barely came to the middle of her thighs. Moisture drew the shirt to her, too, and for a moment as Astor regarded her he felt the quiet stirring of heat in his groin. For a moment he toyed with the idea of removing that shirt, and maybe all of his clothing, too - he was still in work gear after all, and if she needed to shower again, then he might as well go with her.
Then she lurched forward, practically tackling him into the counter, and all thoughts of sex flew from his mind when he realized that she was shaking. Stress, or maybe the shock of the day, or maybe she was just tired -
His arms came up around her shoulders, and she sagged against him almost imperceptibly; but the shaking was lessening. Astor knew she had problems with her mother, but if it had gone so far where she did this -
"I'm sorry," came her muffled voice, and for an odd moment he thought she was apologizing for hugging him, or maybe coming at all. "I didn't have a nightshirt, and this was the best I can find. 's cute."
That it was. Someone had decided that white with red and yellow stripes was an excellent shirt for Astor, but he didn't particularly go for cute. "Looks better on you than it does on me," he noted. "Might want to try some pants with that, though."
He was rewarded with a fierce (but mocking) glare, and Asma stepped back, planting her hands on her hips. "Well, I didn't know where you kept your sweatpants. It took me enough looking to find this thing."
"Should have gotten some at Wal-Mart," he chided, and she stuck out her tongue. "Don't make me lick that," he added, and Asma wrinkled her nose at him.
"You are very, very weird," she informed him.
"Pants are in the third drawer to the right of the door," he responded, and she scampered from the room. He followed her motion critically. Yes, it was just as he'd remembered.
That shirt was a lot shorter in the back than it was in front.
---
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"You're not my shrink anymore, you know."
He slid the glasses off his nose, folding them in his hand, and Asma sighed. Whenever he did that it meant he was getting serious. She'd had enough serious moments sitting in his cushy green chairs and talking about her feelings.
"I would like to know what happened," he said quietly.
Asma shrugged with one shoulder. One leg was lifted up to drape over the chair arm, the other dangling comfortably down onto the floor, with her left hand almost touching the ankle. Sometimes she felt like a cat in these chairs. Or maybe a sort of funky, teenage misfit liquid.
"Not much to tell. I got in a fight with some bitch at school who decided to say some shit things about me. Broke her nose." She shrugged again, blinking idly at the muted television screen. "She needed a rhinoplasty anyway. This way she might be able to get one at a lower price or some shit."
He regarded her with a cool gaze, and she groaned. "Don't tell me you're going to lecture me too. I came here to get away from the shit at my house, not to put up with more."
"I think they were justified in suspending you," he responded calmly. "You should think yourself lucky that you didn't get kicked out. You're three months from graduation - don't you think that would look bad on your record, getting expelled from high school just before you can leave it of your own will?"
"She was insulting you too," Asma said, quite bluntly. His eyes widened. Yeah, she hadn't thought he'd just take it like that. "Apparently I'm famous. Not 'cause I'm the only chick in school to ever have had counseling, but 'cause I'm the only chick in school to ever have had counseling for suicide."
A rather dramatic form of suicide, too. Drowning herself hadn't been the smartest idea, especially in Ari's pool - she wasn't sure what she had intended to accomplish. Framing him? Maybe.
"Especially the reason for the attempted suicide," she added, after a pregnant pause. "I mean, everything's perfect-sunny-perfect for them. Everyone gets laid, no one gets diseases, no one gets knocked up - and if they do, then whatever, they don't have to say a thing about it. Just get an abortion and get out."
"Why would that involve me?"
Asma draped her head back across the chair's arm, closing her eyes. "They seem to think you fucked me happy. Saying a bunch of degrading stuff about you - they didn't even know who the hell you were. The High Bitch herself seemed to think you were about seventy and that I was desperate enough to beg you for sex. She called you a lot of names that I didn't like at all. Me too, actually, I think 'desperate whore' was one of them. I decided to shut her up."
He was silent for a very long moment, long enough for Asma to wonder if she should have just kept her mouth shut.
"When are you going back?"
"I'm on a month's suspension," she responded. "So I'm back on March the... twelfth, I think?"
He made an ambiguous noise, and Asma tilted her head forward to see him sliding his glasses back on again. He often said he looked better without them, but she liked the way they magnified his eyes slightly. They were very blue.
"She was almost right," he pointed out, and Asma jerked up in surprise. What part of that little skank's spiel could have been right?
"Are you insane?" she blurted out, and was rewarded with a smirk.
"I did fuck you happy."
"I was happy before the fucking began," Asma pointed out.
"After you met me."
"But before the fucking."
"Come here."
"Make me."
It could have been the reflection of the television off of his glasses, but the glint in Astor's eye made her very eager for his attempts.
---
"I do love you, you know."
Astor smiled softly, reaching out to stroke her cheek in the darkness. The glow of the clock behind him illuminated her face ever so slightly, letting him see the contours of her cheekbones and the way her eyelashes fluttered when she blinked.
"I love you too."
"You absolutely sure about that?"
"More than I've been before."
She shivered, drew closer to him. Her skin was cold, probably since the bed was right underneath the vent, and he draped an arm over her shoulders to warm her up. "Thank you for letting me stay here."
"I know how you are with your mother," he murmured, pressing a quick kiss to her forehead. "And I'm sorry I made it harder for you to work with your peers."
"They're not my peers," Asma grunted, absently beginning to stroke his sternum. It was a strangely comforting motion that he'd noted was her nervous habit - after sex, watching a movie, anywhere where she could get close to him and they were alone; that hand would always go to the center of his chest. He was surprised the skin wasn't rubbed raw.
"What are they?"
"Stupid people."
He laughed at that, hugging her closer. It was late. He didn't know about her, but he wasn't quite as nocturnal as he often wished to be.
"Sleep, Asma."
"Love."
Astor felt a long, slow smile spread across his face. "Love."