Fic: the world has got no shame, ch. 2
Title: the world has got no shame, ch. 2
Summary: Raven thought she really had it figured out this time, how to beat the system. Emma is going to prove her wrong.
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Word Count: 3748
Rating/Contents: PG-13 for chapter, NC-17 for story, slave AU, face slapping
Pairing: eventual Emma/Raven
Policies: Read my archiving, feedback, and warnings policies here.
A/N: This always goes EXACTLY the same way. I sit down and go, "okay, just round this out and post it, maybe another 500 words or so," and then three hours and two thousand words later, I'm stumbling away from the computer in a daze. JFC. So here's a long-ass chapter where nothing happens. Lord.
ch. 1
The ride was silent; the woman in white went ahead, leaving her alone with the majordomo. Apparently she was the only purchase today, and she sat in the back, wondering if she could jimmy the doors open. She wasn't sure what would happen if she fell out of a moving vehicle and into traffic, but maybe she could mitigate it somehow, pick the biggest form she could think of, do it at a stoplight. But then the jig would be up, and besides, where would she go?
They were moving upwards, into the richest part of the city, but it wasn't all that surprising. For god's sake, she'd just been bought by a woman who apparently went around wearing a fur coat in the middle of the day in March, and people still spoke to her; she had to be very rich to pull off being that crazy.
The van stopped, and the dark-haired man came around and clipped her leash on again, leading her out. She stepped down onto the curb, taking in her new cage. She'd served in bigger places, but probably not one this expensive; by the standards of this neighborhood, it was palatial, taking up the width of two of the other townhouses that lined the narrow streets. It was clearly very well kept, in perfect order while maintaining a whiff of old money, right down to the patina on the delicate scrollwork of the balconies.
Fucking ridiculous.
The inside of the house was sumptuous, living up to the promise of the perfectly constructed façade. As the majordomo led her in, she felt more than a little awkward; these weren't the right clothes, too coarse for being upstairs in a house like this. It wasn't a matter of being comfortable- that wasn't really possible- but it mattered to be appropriate. Nails that stuck out got hammered down, and the more attention was on her, the harder it was to fall through the cracks.
They reached a set of tall double doors, and the majordomo slipped Raven's leash onto his wrist so he could pull them open. The room behind them was almost more like a throne room than anything else. It was decorated in shades of red, gold accents here and there. There was a bar along one wall, everything in tastefully cryptic decanters, an ice bucket at the ready; a sofa sat along the other, one that looked expensive and uncomfortable- purposefully so, Raven imagined. There were one or two chairs sitting in the corners, but there was only one that mattered; the entire room drew the eye to one point, the huge gilt chair that the woman in white was occupying.
She'd taken her coat off, but she was still sort of bundled in it, the hilariously expensive material carelessly tucked in around her. Now Raven knew why she wore it: she was hardly wearing anything else. Her shirt was little more than a glorified bandeau, straps going straight across it and around her biceps, and her skirt was almost as small. The only part of her that was actually covered was her legs, her boots stretching all the way up to the middle of her thigh; all of it was white, of course, titanium white. She was the only really bright thing in the room, shining and stark against everything else.
Raven was right. Very crazy, very, very rich.
"Here he is, Miss Emma," the majordomo said, unclipping Raven's leash and more or less pushing her forward.
"Thank you, Janos," Emma said, nodding at him, and he stepped out, swinging the doors shut behind them.
Once they were alone, Emma looked her up and down. "Come closer," she said, crooking a finger at her. Raven shuffled forward, studying the carpet, trying to act as unassuming and unworthy as she could, matching her form and intentions.
"You can drop the act, honey," Emma said, crossing her long legs; she picked up a tumbler from the end table beside her and took a sip. "We don't hide in this house, not unless it's to our advantage."
Raven's heart stopped for a moment before she could reassure herself that Emma couldn't possibly be talking about her appearance. "I don't know what you mean, Mistress."
Emma tilted her head, giving Raven another one of those strange looks. «I said drop it,» she said, straight into Raven's mind.
Raven's breath caught in her throat; she hadn't heard anybody do that since-
«You're stalling,» Emma warned. «Do it or I do it for you.»
She swallowed hard, shutting her eyes; it was always a little harder when she hadn't changed in a long time, not even to sleep or bathe, but soon enough it melted away. She stood there in what she'd always thought of as her normal body, blonde and female, the way she saw herself in her head.
"Now that's something to look at," Emma said approvingly. "Show me more." Raven paused; it was sort of hard to think of anyone off the top of her head. "Start with a brunette," Emma prompted.
Raven reached into her mind, looking around. She kept people in there, people she'd known, people she'd seen in passing, people she made up out of whole cloth. There was a brunette matron she'd worked under, a short, squat woman who smiled a lot, and Raven took her on, wiping her hands on her apron just as she'd always done when she was proud or nervous. Emma looked delighted, so Raven did it again, a man this time, one she'd lived with on the street, rough but handsome, even despite how grim his expression always was.
Just to prove she could, the next one was a little girl, the daughter of a family she'd been stuck with for a long while, angelic until she opened her filthy little mouth. Feeling oddly wistful all of a sudden, she flipped over into Charles's features, the way she thought he'd look now, if she ever saw him again, if he wasn't dead. Something was wrong with it, apparently, because Emma's brow furrowed; Raven moved on to a birdlike woman, a line drawing she'd seen in a book.
"Nice," Emma said, looking satisfied, sitting back and taking another sip of her drink. "Now show me the real one."
Raven hesitated. This was one of the worst parts; it was inevitable that Emma would see her naked eventually, maybe more so given Emma's reaction to seeing her powers. The first one was just so hard, so humiliating, so much worse than all the other ones.
"I told you what I was going to do," Emma warned, and all of a sudden it was like Raven's mind had been ripped out from under her. Her form changed without her permission, leaving her totally naked, more than naked; she'd been stripped plenty of times, sometimes more roughly than others, but this was something different, devastating in a way she'd never felt before.
Emma stood up, walking over. She circled Raven's body, taking her in as she held Raven still with her mind. Then she was in front of Raven again, giving her a perfectly mild look; Raven didn't expect it at all when Emma slapped her across the face. "I know things didn't work out the way you wanted, and you thought you could do this one on your own terms," she said sweetly. "But you don't set the terms here. I do. You're bought and paid for, honey, and you'd better not forget." She smiled. "Now, what do we say?"
Raven could feel when Emma gave her back control of herself. "Yes, Mistress," she said. The talking was never hard, not when there were so many ways to hide "Fuck you" in any word; she just had the suspicion that this time, everything else was going to be hard.
There was a knock at the door, and Janos stepped in. He stopped short at the sight of Raven standing there, naked and blue and very obviously female; but he just blinked and moved on, the mark of a really good servant. "Ma'am," he said, "Mister Lehnsherr is here."
"Send him in," Emma said, looking Raven up and down. "Cover yourself." She ran a finger along Raven's neck. "Don't forget the collar."
Raven took a deep breath, trying to regain her composure. She'd barely been here any time at all, and already she'd learned that this was going to be the hardest place she'd ever had to get out of.
She slipped back into her normal form, turning around in time to watch as Lehnsherr entered; he was tall, handsome in sort of a sharp way. He somehow managed to be imposing despite the fact that his close-fitting turtleneck did nothing to hide how thin he was. He barely seemed to notice Raven at all; his eyes flicked to her once, examining her like one would examine a target, size up a potential threat.
Apparently they already had something in common.
"Erik, sweetheart," Emma said, smirking, as she walked towards him. "I didn't know you were back yet."
"Unfortunately, I had obligations that required me to leave," he told her, putting his hands on her arms and bending to accept air kisses.
"By which you mean you hated it," she said; he gave her a look, and she laughed. "I don't need to read you to know that. You always do."
Lehnsherr said something else, but Raven didn't hear it at all, because just then, another man stepped in behind him, standing unobtrusively at his side. When he looked up at her, his mouth dropped open; she couldn't look away, transfixed.
«Raven,» he said, like a mental sigh, so much relief and pain pouring out at once.
Lehnsherr stopped abruptly, clearly taking notice. "See, now that's that's interesting," Emma said, looking at the three of them in fascination.
"Explain," Lehnsherr snapped at Charles.
"That's- she's-" He stopped, shaking his head. "We grew up together, Master."
Lehnsherr looked at her, really considering her for the first time; his gaze was cool, professional, superior but not hateful, and he didn't seem to form any particular opinion on her. That was good. For now he'd keep his hands to himself; that seemed even more likely given the way he positioned himself, his stance protective, holding Charles back from her.
Charles. Charles, who wasn't dead or in a work camp or a brothel or something worse; Charles, who looked much better than the last time she'd seen him, when they'd been torn apart. He looked pressed and proper, his hair combed neatly, no bruises where she could see them, no stiffness in his walk. It was how she'd always thought he was supposed to look, instead of dirty and hunted like the rest of them.
"Odd coincidence," Lehnsherr said, raising an eyebrow; he was suspicious already, which could work to her disadvantage, especially because she was suspicious too. She had no idea how this had happened- bizarre coincidence or fate seemed to be the only options.
"I can't decide what to do with her," Emma told Lehnsherr, moving past all that. "I wasn't intending to buy."
Lehnsherr turn back to her, ignoring Raven and Charles for the moment. He snorted. "Only you would buy a slave on a whim."
Emma waved a finger at him. "You won't be able to fault me for it once you can see what she can do."
He crossed his arms. "I'm listening."
Emma gave her a look, and Raven made her features flip; out of sheer mischief, she picked Lehnsherr's face, giving him the same cavalier look he was wearing now. He stared at her, enthralled. "You just walked into an auction house and found a metamorph?"
"See? You'd have done the same thing," she told Lehnsherr. "But here's the part you'll really like." «You better not hold out on me this time »
Raven didn't pause, the threat of the awful sensation of Emma changing her again outweighing her embarrassment at yet another stranger seeing her naked. She let Lehnsherr's face fade away, replacing it with her natural skin.
She looked at Charles first; he was giving her a fond, almost misty-eyed look, smiling softly. Raven smiled back for as long as she dared, not wanting to risk more suspicion from Lehnsherr. She looked to him next, and he was- she wasn't sure she'd ever been looked at like that before. It was hard to even describe, the dark, fierce wonder on his face. Raven was going to have to reevaluate. Now that he'd seen her like this, Lehnsherr might not be so apt to stay away as she thought, and that was dangerous on so many levels.
"I see," was all he said, and Emma laughed, light and silvery.
"I was going to keep her as a personal," Emma said, and Raven's stomach dropped, "but she's very quick. She's certainly already got you all figured out."
Lehnsherr raised an eyebrow, and Raven swore internally; of course Emma would take away any advantage Raven gained at the nearest opportunity. "Does she, now. And what has she decided?"
"I couldn't tell you that, could I?" Emma said. "Then you'd know what to expect."
"I always know what to expect out of you," Lehnsherr told her.
"Do you?"
He smirked. "I expect that you'll do whatever benefits you most at the time."
"You know me too well, darling," Emma cooed. "Still, I can't decide what benefits me most with this one. Something has to go on the census form, after all."
Lehnsherr gave her an amused look. "I can't believe that you're actually pretending to care about role assignments."
"I can't believe you're not proud of me for showing some moral fiber and respect for the tax code," Emma said, acting quite offended.
"I can't believe you got through that whole sentence without one of us laughing," he replied.
"Neither can I, sweetheart," she said, smiling. "But you're exhausted from the drive." She looked pointedly at Charles. "Go lie down."
Something about that bothered Lehnsherr, a sore spot Emma was poking at- deliberately, if Raven had learned anything about her. "Now you're showing concern for my health. What in the hell happened while I was away?"
Emma leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. "I sat around thinking of new ways to bait you."
"There's a surprise," Lehnsherr said. "I imagine I'll see you at dinner."
"You will," she replied. Lehnsherr gave her a polite nod and walked out; Charles dared to give Raven one last look before following him.
"My, my, my," Emma said, still looking towards the door after they'd gone. "That's going to be fascinating." Raven couldn't tell what she meant by that, but she held her tongue. "Watching you and Charles and Erik. Don't bother waiting for permission to talk. I can still hear you, so you might as well just save me the trouble."
"Yes, Mistress," Raven said.
"Plus it lets us be a little nicer to each other, doesn't it?" Emma pointed out. "Because you can just say, 'Yes, Mistress,' and I can pretend not to hear, 'Rot in hell, you horrid bitch.'"
"Yes, Mistress," Raven said.
"There we go," Emma said encouragingly. She turned towards Raven, cocking her head to the side and considering her. "You're going to have to do better than this," she said, waving a hand to indicate Raven's torso. "The body is fine. The clothes just have no imagination. I don't know if you've noticed, but we don't do things halfway around here."
"I picked up on that," she said dryly.
In another house she'd have gotten smacked for that, but it only seemed to amuse Emma. "I'll give you something for free, honey," Emma said. "I get bored very easily." It was a seemingly light statement, a throw-away, but there were a world of things behind it, threats and mischief and promises. "Even if you couldn't look however I wanted, I'd use you as a doll anyway. This just saves me time at the dressmaker's." Emma gave her a smug smile. "And believe me when I say that money is no object. Don't hold something back because you think I couldn't afford it."
"I'll keep that in mind," Raven told her.
"I know you're testing me on protocol," Emma said. "If you forget yourself in front of anyone else, you won't like what happens, but when you try to use it on me, I'll know you're just trying to suck up." She walked away, going back to pick up her drink. "I don't know if you've run this through yet, but I have," Emma told her. "There are only two real choices here. The house is fully staffed, and you'd be a waste at any of the lower positions anyway, so secretarial and personal are the only options."
She looked Raven up and down. "You'd make a good secretary. You've got a sense for people, don't you? I'm not sure if it's a mutation or not, but you read people. I can get into their minds, that's not a problem, but you can read their bodies." She raised an eyebrow. "And I've gotta tell you, it's kind of impressive how much you can get off them and how fast you can do it."
She paced slowly, her footfalls silenced by the deep pile of the carpet, and she reminded Raven of some sleek predator- a jaguar, maybe, or maybe a snow leopard was more appropriate. "You may or may not have noticed, but my opposite number is a little telepathy-shy, and very unfortunately for me, he's got his own pet telepath to let him know if I've been rooting around in his brain." She stopped, looking at Raven. "But Erik can't stop you, can he? He was here ten minutes and you've already got his number."
Raven didn't bother to deny it; Lehnsherr had been all but screaming, and sometimes she honestly forgot that other people couldn't see. "He can't even blame you, not when what you were using was so out in the open, not for doing something that comes so naturally to you. I'm not even sure you could stop yourself from doing it."
Emma smiled, and suddenly Raven caught up with the argument, figured out what was coming next; dread washed over her, collecting in the pit of her stomach. "And that's the trouble, right there- for you, I mean. You can't stop doing it, and I can read your mind. I don't need to act like I care about you to get what I need to know or stay in your good graces to make sure it's accurate. And I certainly don't need the tax break, so." She paused, finishing off her drink. "Personal it is."
Raven's pulse pounded in her ears, her vision swimming; for a moment she thought she'd faint under the weight of it, the crushing weight of the fear and the shock and the disappointment.
Legally, slaves had to be classified according to occupation; different occupations were taxed at different rates, with slaves performing multiple occupations taxed at the rate of the highest- and of course, personals were at the top, the only ones cleared for sexual services. Everyone knew it was a farce, but it just wasn't talked about. Owners classified their property as secretarials and fucked them; they classified them as house workers and fucked them; they classified them as laborers and fucked them.
They classified them as personals and didn't do anything except fuck them.
It sounded great on the surface, your only responsibility consisting of something you'd probably be forced to do anyway, all the rest of your time devoted, presumably, to lazing around; that was until you knew that personals also had the highest suicide rates, the lowest life expectancies, and the highest average number of sales over their lifetimes. If you were a laborer, you could probably labor right on into your fifties, but nobody was going to keep a personal whose best days were behind them.
Raven had done absolutely everything to avoid becoming one, had managed it her entire life, always doing something wrong just at the right time, staying one step ahead. But she was a shapeshifter who never got any older, and now she belonged to a telepath with a short attention span; and unfortunately for Raven, it was a perfect match.
Emma pressed one cold finger to Raven's skin, just below the hollow of her neck. Raven could feel as the collar appeared, cold and heavy against her; even if she'd tried to look, she wouldn't have been able to see it without a mirror, but Emma sent the image right into her mind. A teardrop shape made of braided platinum, meeting in the front at a smooth, polished square; a drop ring hung underneath, and above it, right in the middle of the square, was a flawless oval diamond.
Somehow Raven knew that the collar didn't open.
"Go on and change for me," Emma said, stepping back. Raven picked someone at random, a hulking, ugly man; she expected all Emma's hard work to be gone, but there it was, resting against her skin- it had even gotten bigger, accommodating his neck.
A cold panic settled over Raven, because it was worse than she'd even thought; she didn't know how Emma was doing it, whether it was just an illusion or something she'd done with Raven's own power, produced it then locked it off, placing it out of her mental control. It didn't matter, because even if she managed to get out, she couldn't get it off.
"Change out of that," Emma said, wrinkling her nose. "You look terrible."
Raven let her form shift. Comparatively speaking, today had started off so well, but now she felt more defeated than she had in a very, very long time. Worst of all, there was no hiding it; there were so many things she'd learned to keep her emotions back, to keep projecting exactly the image she wanted to, but they were all useless when she was standing two feet from a telepath.
Emma smiled at her, the close-lipped smile she preferred, sweet and pretty and completely cryptic, the kind that could hide absolutely anything. She held out her glass, tapping it with her fingernail. "I need more of this."
Raven took it from her and walked to the bar, because there was just nothing else for her to do.
This entry was automagically crossposted from http://sabinetzin.dreamwidth.org/399019.html.
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Summary: Raven thought she really had it figured out this time, how to beat the system. Emma is going to prove her wrong.
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Word Count: 3748
Rating/Contents: PG-13 for chapter, NC-17 for story, slave AU, face slapping
Pairing: eventual Emma/Raven
Policies: Read my archiving, feedback, and warnings policies here.
A/N: This always goes EXACTLY the same way. I sit down and go, "okay, just round this out and post it, maybe another 500 words or so," and then three hours and two thousand words later, I'm stumbling away from the computer in a daze. JFC. So here's a long-ass chapter where nothing happens. Lord.
ch. 1
The ride was silent; the woman in white went ahead, leaving her alone with the majordomo. Apparently she was the only purchase today, and she sat in the back, wondering if she could jimmy the doors open. She wasn't sure what would happen if she fell out of a moving vehicle and into traffic, but maybe she could mitigate it somehow, pick the biggest form she could think of, do it at a stoplight. But then the jig would be up, and besides, where would she go?
They were moving upwards, into the richest part of the city, but it wasn't all that surprising. For god's sake, she'd just been bought by a woman who apparently went around wearing a fur coat in the middle of the day in March, and people still spoke to her; she had to be very rich to pull off being that crazy.
The van stopped, and the dark-haired man came around and clipped her leash on again, leading her out. She stepped down onto the curb, taking in her new cage. She'd served in bigger places, but probably not one this expensive; by the standards of this neighborhood, it was palatial, taking up the width of two of the other townhouses that lined the narrow streets. It was clearly very well kept, in perfect order while maintaining a whiff of old money, right down to the patina on the delicate scrollwork of the balconies.
Fucking ridiculous.
The inside of the house was sumptuous, living up to the promise of the perfectly constructed façade. As the majordomo led her in, she felt more than a little awkward; these weren't the right clothes, too coarse for being upstairs in a house like this. It wasn't a matter of being comfortable- that wasn't really possible- but it mattered to be appropriate. Nails that stuck out got hammered down, and the more attention was on her, the harder it was to fall through the cracks.
They reached a set of tall double doors, and the majordomo slipped Raven's leash onto his wrist so he could pull them open. The room behind them was almost more like a throne room than anything else. It was decorated in shades of red, gold accents here and there. There was a bar along one wall, everything in tastefully cryptic decanters, an ice bucket at the ready; a sofa sat along the other, one that looked expensive and uncomfortable- purposefully so, Raven imagined. There were one or two chairs sitting in the corners, but there was only one that mattered; the entire room drew the eye to one point, the huge gilt chair that the woman in white was occupying.
She'd taken her coat off, but she was still sort of bundled in it, the hilariously expensive material carelessly tucked in around her. Now Raven knew why she wore it: she was hardly wearing anything else. Her shirt was little more than a glorified bandeau, straps going straight across it and around her biceps, and her skirt was almost as small. The only part of her that was actually covered was her legs, her boots stretching all the way up to the middle of her thigh; all of it was white, of course, titanium white. She was the only really bright thing in the room, shining and stark against everything else.
Raven was right. Very crazy, very, very rich.
"Here he is, Miss Emma," the majordomo said, unclipping Raven's leash and more or less pushing her forward.
"Thank you, Janos," Emma said, nodding at him, and he stepped out, swinging the doors shut behind them.
Once they were alone, Emma looked her up and down. "Come closer," she said, crooking a finger at her. Raven shuffled forward, studying the carpet, trying to act as unassuming and unworthy as she could, matching her form and intentions.
"You can drop the act, honey," Emma said, crossing her long legs; she picked up a tumbler from the end table beside her and took a sip. "We don't hide in this house, not unless it's to our advantage."
Raven's heart stopped for a moment before she could reassure herself that Emma couldn't possibly be talking about her appearance. "I don't know what you mean, Mistress."
Emma tilted her head, giving Raven another one of those strange looks. «I said drop it,» she said, straight into Raven's mind.
Raven's breath caught in her throat; she hadn't heard anybody do that since-
«You're stalling,» Emma warned. «Do it or I do it for you.»
She swallowed hard, shutting her eyes; it was always a little harder when she hadn't changed in a long time, not even to sleep or bathe, but soon enough it melted away. She stood there in what she'd always thought of as her normal body, blonde and female, the way she saw herself in her head.
"Now that's something to look at," Emma said approvingly. "Show me more." Raven paused; it was sort of hard to think of anyone off the top of her head. "Start with a brunette," Emma prompted.
Raven reached into her mind, looking around. She kept people in there, people she'd known, people she'd seen in passing, people she made up out of whole cloth. There was a brunette matron she'd worked under, a short, squat woman who smiled a lot, and Raven took her on, wiping her hands on her apron just as she'd always done when she was proud or nervous. Emma looked delighted, so Raven did it again, a man this time, one she'd lived with on the street, rough but handsome, even despite how grim his expression always was.
Just to prove she could, the next one was a little girl, the daughter of a family she'd been stuck with for a long while, angelic until she opened her filthy little mouth. Feeling oddly wistful all of a sudden, she flipped over into Charles's features, the way she thought he'd look now, if she ever saw him again, if he wasn't dead. Something was wrong with it, apparently, because Emma's brow furrowed; Raven moved on to a birdlike woman, a line drawing she'd seen in a book.
"Nice," Emma said, looking satisfied, sitting back and taking another sip of her drink. "Now show me the real one."
Raven hesitated. This was one of the worst parts; it was inevitable that Emma would see her naked eventually, maybe more so given Emma's reaction to seeing her powers. The first one was just so hard, so humiliating, so much worse than all the other ones.
"I told you what I was going to do," Emma warned, and all of a sudden it was like Raven's mind had been ripped out from under her. Her form changed without her permission, leaving her totally naked, more than naked; she'd been stripped plenty of times, sometimes more roughly than others, but this was something different, devastating in a way she'd never felt before.
Emma stood up, walking over. She circled Raven's body, taking her in as she held Raven still with her mind. Then she was in front of Raven again, giving her a perfectly mild look; Raven didn't expect it at all when Emma slapped her across the face. "I know things didn't work out the way you wanted, and you thought you could do this one on your own terms," she said sweetly. "But you don't set the terms here. I do. You're bought and paid for, honey, and you'd better not forget." She smiled. "Now, what do we say?"
Raven could feel when Emma gave her back control of herself. "Yes, Mistress," she said. The talking was never hard, not when there were so many ways to hide "Fuck you" in any word; she just had the suspicion that this time, everything else was going to be hard.
There was a knock at the door, and Janos stepped in. He stopped short at the sight of Raven standing there, naked and blue and very obviously female; but he just blinked and moved on, the mark of a really good servant. "Ma'am," he said, "Mister Lehnsherr is here."
"Send him in," Emma said, looking Raven up and down. "Cover yourself." She ran a finger along Raven's neck. "Don't forget the collar."
Raven took a deep breath, trying to regain her composure. She'd barely been here any time at all, and already she'd learned that this was going to be the hardest place she'd ever had to get out of.
She slipped back into her normal form, turning around in time to watch as Lehnsherr entered; he was tall, handsome in sort of a sharp way. He somehow managed to be imposing despite the fact that his close-fitting turtleneck did nothing to hide how thin he was. He barely seemed to notice Raven at all; his eyes flicked to her once, examining her like one would examine a target, size up a potential threat.
Apparently they already had something in common.
"Erik, sweetheart," Emma said, smirking, as she walked towards him. "I didn't know you were back yet."
"Unfortunately, I had obligations that required me to leave," he told her, putting his hands on her arms and bending to accept air kisses.
"By which you mean you hated it," she said; he gave her a look, and she laughed. "I don't need to read you to know that. You always do."
Lehnsherr said something else, but Raven didn't hear it at all, because just then, another man stepped in behind him, standing unobtrusively at his side. When he looked up at her, his mouth dropped open; she couldn't look away, transfixed.
«Raven,» he said, like a mental sigh, so much relief and pain pouring out at once.
Lehnsherr stopped abruptly, clearly taking notice. "See, now that's that's interesting," Emma said, looking at the three of them in fascination.
"Explain," Lehnsherr snapped at Charles.
"That's- she's-" He stopped, shaking his head. "We grew up together, Master."
Lehnsherr looked at her, really considering her for the first time; his gaze was cool, professional, superior but not hateful, and he didn't seem to form any particular opinion on her. That was good. For now he'd keep his hands to himself; that seemed even more likely given the way he positioned himself, his stance protective, holding Charles back from her.
Charles. Charles, who wasn't dead or in a work camp or a brothel or something worse; Charles, who looked much better than the last time she'd seen him, when they'd been torn apart. He looked pressed and proper, his hair combed neatly, no bruises where she could see them, no stiffness in his walk. It was how she'd always thought he was supposed to look, instead of dirty and hunted like the rest of them.
"Odd coincidence," Lehnsherr said, raising an eyebrow; he was suspicious already, which could work to her disadvantage, especially because she was suspicious too. She had no idea how this had happened- bizarre coincidence or fate seemed to be the only options.
"I can't decide what to do with her," Emma told Lehnsherr, moving past all that. "I wasn't intending to buy."
Lehnsherr turn back to her, ignoring Raven and Charles for the moment. He snorted. "Only you would buy a slave on a whim."
Emma waved a finger at him. "You won't be able to fault me for it once you can see what she can do."
He crossed his arms. "I'm listening."
Emma gave her a look, and Raven made her features flip; out of sheer mischief, she picked Lehnsherr's face, giving him the same cavalier look he was wearing now. He stared at her, enthralled. "You just walked into an auction house and found a metamorph?"
"See? You'd have done the same thing," she told Lehnsherr. "But here's the part you'll really like." «You better not hold out on me this time »
Raven didn't pause, the threat of the awful sensation of Emma changing her again outweighing her embarrassment at yet another stranger seeing her naked. She let Lehnsherr's face fade away, replacing it with her natural skin.
She looked at Charles first; he was giving her a fond, almost misty-eyed look, smiling softly. Raven smiled back for as long as she dared, not wanting to risk more suspicion from Lehnsherr. She looked to him next, and he was- she wasn't sure she'd ever been looked at like that before. It was hard to even describe, the dark, fierce wonder on his face. Raven was going to have to reevaluate. Now that he'd seen her like this, Lehnsherr might not be so apt to stay away as she thought, and that was dangerous on so many levels.
"I see," was all he said, and Emma laughed, light and silvery.
"I was going to keep her as a personal," Emma said, and Raven's stomach dropped, "but she's very quick. She's certainly already got you all figured out."
Lehnsherr raised an eyebrow, and Raven swore internally; of course Emma would take away any advantage Raven gained at the nearest opportunity. "Does she, now. And what has she decided?"
"I couldn't tell you that, could I?" Emma said. "Then you'd know what to expect."
"I always know what to expect out of you," Lehnsherr told her.
"Do you?"
He smirked. "I expect that you'll do whatever benefits you most at the time."
"You know me too well, darling," Emma cooed. "Still, I can't decide what benefits me most with this one. Something has to go on the census form, after all."
Lehnsherr gave her an amused look. "I can't believe that you're actually pretending to care about role assignments."
"I can't believe you're not proud of me for showing some moral fiber and respect for the tax code," Emma said, acting quite offended.
"I can't believe you got through that whole sentence without one of us laughing," he replied.
"Neither can I, sweetheart," she said, smiling. "But you're exhausted from the drive." She looked pointedly at Charles. "Go lie down."
Something about that bothered Lehnsherr, a sore spot Emma was poking at- deliberately, if Raven had learned anything about her. "Now you're showing concern for my health. What in the hell happened while I was away?"
Emma leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. "I sat around thinking of new ways to bait you."
"There's a surprise," Lehnsherr said. "I imagine I'll see you at dinner."
"You will," she replied. Lehnsherr gave her a polite nod and walked out; Charles dared to give Raven one last look before following him.
"My, my, my," Emma said, still looking towards the door after they'd gone. "That's going to be fascinating." Raven couldn't tell what she meant by that, but she held her tongue. "Watching you and Charles and Erik. Don't bother waiting for permission to talk. I can still hear you, so you might as well just save me the trouble."
"Yes, Mistress," Raven said.
"Plus it lets us be a little nicer to each other, doesn't it?" Emma pointed out. "Because you can just say, 'Yes, Mistress,' and I can pretend not to hear, 'Rot in hell, you horrid bitch.'"
"Yes, Mistress," Raven said.
"There we go," Emma said encouragingly. She turned towards Raven, cocking her head to the side and considering her. "You're going to have to do better than this," she said, waving a hand to indicate Raven's torso. "The body is fine. The clothes just have no imagination. I don't know if you've noticed, but we don't do things halfway around here."
"I picked up on that," she said dryly.
In another house she'd have gotten smacked for that, but it only seemed to amuse Emma. "I'll give you something for free, honey," Emma said. "I get bored very easily." It was a seemingly light statement, a throw-away, but there were a world of things behind it, threats and mischief and promises. "Even if you couldn't look however I wanted, I'd use you as a doll anyway. This just saves me time at the dressmaker's." Emma gave her a smug smile. "And believe me when I say that money is no object. Don't hold something back because you think I couldn't afford it."
"I'll keep that in mind," Raven told her.
"I know you're testing me on protocol," Emma said. "If you forget yourself in front of anyone else, you won't like what happens, but when you try to use it on me, I'll know you're just trying to suck up." She walked away, going back to pick up her drink. "I don't know if you've run this through yet, but I have," Emma told her. "There are only two real choices here. The house is fully staffed, and you'd be a waste at any of the lower positions anyway, so secretarial and personal are the only options."
She looked Raven up and down. "You'd make a good secretary. You've got a sense for people, don't you? I'm not sure if it's a mutation or not, but you read people. I can get into their minds, that's not a problem, but you can read their bodies." She raised an eyebrow. "And I've gotta tell you, it's kind of impressive how much you can get off them and how fast you can do it."
She paced slowly, her footfalls silenced by the deep pile of the carpet, and she reminded Raven of some sleek predator- a jaguar, maybe, or maybe a snow leopard was more appropriate. "You may or may not have noticed, but my opposite number is a little telepathy-shy, and very unfortunately for me, he's got his own pet telepath to let him know if I've been rooting around in his brain." She stopped, looking at Raven. "But Erik can't stop you, can he? He was here ten minutes and you've already got his number."
Raven didn't bother to deny it; Lehnsherr had been all but screaming, and sometimes she honestly forgot that other people couldn't see. "He can't even blame you, not when what you were using was so out in the open, not for doing something that comes so naturally to you. I'm not even sure you could stop yourself from doing it."
Emma smiled, and suddenly Raven caught up with the argument, figured out what was coming next; dread washed over her, collecting in the pit of her stomach. "And that's the trouble, right there- for you, I mean. You can't stop doing it, and I can read your mind. I don't need to act like I care about you to get what I need to know or stay in your good graces to make sure it's accurate. And I certainly don't need the tax break, so." She paused, finishing off her drink. "Personal it is."
Raven's pulse pounded in her ears, her vision swimming; for a moment she thought she'd faint under the weight of it, the crushing weight of the fear and the shock and the disappointment.
Legally, slaves had to be classified according to occupation; different occupations were taxed at different rates, with slaves performing multiple occupations taxed at the rate of the highest- and of course, personals were at the top, the only ones cleared for sexual services. Everyone knew it was a farce, but it just wasn't talked about. Owners classified their property as secretarials and fucked them; they classified them as house workers and fucked them; they classified them as laborers and fucked them.
They classified them as personals and didn't do anything except fuck them.
It sounded great on the surface, your only responsibility consisting of something you'd probably be forced to do anyway, all the rest of your time devoted, presumably, to lazing around; that was until you knew that personals also had the highest suicide rates, the lowest life expectancies, and the highest average number of sales over their lifetimes. If you were a laborer, you could probably labor right on into your fifties, but nobody was going to keep a personal whose best days were behind them.
Raven had done absolutely everything to avoid becoming one, had managed it her entire life, always doing something wrong just at the right time, staying one step ahead. But she was a shapeshifter who never got any older, and now she belonged to a telepath with a short attention span; and unfortunately for Raven, it was a perfect match.
Emma pressed one cold finger to Raven's skin, just below the hollow of her neck. Raven could feel as the collar appeared, cold and heavy against her; even if she'd tried to look, she wouldn't have been able to see it without a mirror, but Emma sent the image right into her mind. A teardrop shape made of braided platinum, meeting in the front at a smooth, polished square; a drop ring hung underneath, and above it, right in the middle of the square, was a flawless oval diamond.
Somehow Raven knew that the collar didn't open.
"Go on and change for me," Emma said, stepping back. Raven picked someone at random, a hulking, ugly man; she expected all Emma's hard work to be gone, but there it was, resting against her skin- it had even gotten bigger, accommodating his neck.
A cold panic settled over Raven, because it was worse than she'd even thought; she didn't know how Emma was doing it, whether it was just an illusion or something she'd done with Raven's own power, produced it then locked it off, placing it out of her mental control. It didn't matter, because even if she managed to get out, she couldn't get it off.
"Change out of that," Emma said, wrinkling her nose. "You look terrible."
Raven let her form shift. Comparatively speaking, today had started off so well, but now she felt more defeated than she had in a very, very long time. Worst of all, there was no hiding it; there were so many things she'd learned to keep her emotions back, to keep projecting exactly the image she wanted to, but they were all useless when she was standing two feet from a telepath.
Emma smiled at her, the close-lipped smile she preferred, sweet and pretty and completely cryptic, the kind that could hide absolutely anything. She held out her glass, tapping it with her fingernail. "I need more of this."
Raven took it from her and walked to the bar, because there was just nothing else for her to do.
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