[FIC] Reborn!: The Chained Skylark's Tale [Part I of II]
/SCREAMS Oh god this is definitely a labour of love. I don't even know how I managed to write this sgsdg. Atwood's voice? Is a bitch. Hibari's voice? Is a bitch. Fem!Hibari? Is a bitch. AU!fem!Hibari in Atwood's world in her voice? /WRISTS
But it intrigues me farrrr too much to not write. And now it's grown into a monster. Oh self, why.
Click on the Wiki link for info on the book, guys. xD
The Chained Skylark’s Tale
[Part I of II]
Character/Pairings: Female!Hibari, Dino, Yamamoto, Chrome, female!Gokudera. Mentions of Tsuna and Lal Mirch; Dino/fem!Hibari, implied Tsuna/Chrome and Xanxus/Gokudera.
Rating: PG
Words: 2109
Summary: “And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.” The life in Gilead as a Handmaid, as told by Hibari Kyouya Ofdino; a crossover/fusion with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
Warnings: GENDERSWITCH, AU, dystopian world, crack that refuses to stay as crack
i. Monopoly
I let myself into the room. I'm not supposed to - there are a lot of things that I'm restricted from - but he has broken the rules already and I try to rebel as much as I can. Even when chained, I can still move; can still strain.
The Commander is seated behind his desk. There's an ashtray on the table - my eyes are drawn to it and I think how easy it will be to brain him with it. It looks heavy, made of ceramic and none of it is plastic. His skull will crack, I think, blood and brain matter flowing into blond hair, muting that disgusting colour.
But I have been careless; he notices my gaze. His finger moves the ashtray away, into a drawer and I take note of it, slot the information inside my mind. He is my ringmaster, and I intend to break him; break my chains.
"Won't you take a seat?" He still sounds guilty, but I ignore it. He deserves any guilt he gets. It's his fault that I'm here.
I remain standing behind the chair, defiant as much I can be while I still want to survive. But he is soft as always and simply smiles. My hand clenches, but I take a breath, relaxing them because I can't even afford that little luxury, not nowadays. My eyes scan the room, but he is not a stupid man - unfortunate, really - and there are no weapons.
But there is still that ashtray. I linger at the shadow of it, hidden within the drawers. My fingers inch for the taste for metal.
"Sit down," he says again, and this time there is steel in his voice; a different sort of metal that I don't crave. I press my lips together. I want to rebel, I want to refuse, I want him to die, I want to escape.
I want a lot of things.
But now I simply sit down, legs tucked in and skirt pressed flat against my skin. The cloth is rough, stifling, and for a moment I think of wrapping the red cloth around his neck and pulling until he is blue in the face, choking and begging for mercy. I like these thoughts.
They make me feel a little more in control.
He smiles at me, a filthy stretch of the lips and my fingers twitch. It is a repulsive sign of weakness. I fold them in, fingernails pressing against my palm and it is through the pain that I frown. My face remains impassive; I am unwilling to show weaknesses.
It doesn't matter. He makes the rules here, and I have to follow them because I want to survive. (Death clips my wings permanently, and I don't intend to die. To die is not to be free; to be free is not to die.) I can only pretend that he doesn't know any of my weaknesses. That he doesn't have any sort of power over me.
I pretend anyway.
"Will you play a game of Monopoly with me?"
A breath.
The clock is ticking - seconds draining away and I focus on it. With every tick I take in a breath, with every tock I exhale. My eyes remain fixed on his, and I take care to not clench my fists. Tick, in, tock, out-
Playing with fake money and fake property when I have nothing; a game of pretence, that anything belongs to me. He wants to play Monopoly, calling me into this forbidden room like a puppy dogging his heels, to play a game that I have never had much interest in. He has taken everything away from me - not even my name or my body is fully mine anymore.
And now he wants to play Monopoly.
Is he trying to mock me?
I don’t smile. He expects me to, but I don’t. He expects me to be happy about this - that much is obvious. I don’t understand him. Who will be happy about such things? This is like throwing pig ball to a cat. Everything he does frustrate me. It reminds me of my chains, rubbing against my skin, chafing against me.
I hate him.
But still I say, “Of course,” because we are playing a game.
When he smiles and puts the money in my hands, I think of stuffing the paper down his throat. I think of suffocating him with fake money when I have nothing. I think of killing him with the counters and the cards and I realize why he has chosen Monopoly.
He wins.
As always.
***
ii. Night
I’m not very good at telling stories. I don’t like starting in the beginning. I start when I want to, at whatever point I want to, because this is my story to tell. Even though I don’t want to tell it; even though I wish this is something entirely different, it is still my story and I can do anything I like to it.
I used to live like that, being able to do what I want. There used to be a world like that, a world that is mine to live in. A world in which I can be whatever I want to be, do whatever I wish to do; follow no rules but my own.
That world doesn’t exist anymore. There’s only Gilead now.
I’m not so weak as to dream of returning to the past. The past reminds me of who I am; the present is what I live in; the future is what I think of.
My name is Hibari Kyouya - is, because I will never admit to ‘Ofdino’. I am not chattel, no matter how much they try to force me to be. I will never submit.
They only have power over me if I let them. I won’t let them.
This is my mantra every night before I go to sleep.
***
iii. Shopping
They let us out once in a while, opening the cage while keeping a tight leash. Little harmless errands to be run, to keep us busy and occupied so we won’t have time to think.
There is an umbrella rack beside a door: black for the Commander, blue for the Commander’s Wife, and red for me. Our lives are colour-coded, neatly compartmentalized with premade rules that I can’t change or fight against. There’s no sign of rain today - the sky is bright blue like the Wife’s umbrella. (We depend on the skies for weather reports, nowadays. There’s no radio or television, and the Internet is a pipe dream.
Progress.)
I draw up my veil and adjust the wings around my face. In the house I can go bare-headed - no one cares what my face looks like; it is inconsequential. But outside... I place my hand on the doorknob and push it open.
The sun is bright above my head, hot and stifling, but I can no longer see the skies. The veil and wings stop others from seeing, and they also stop me from looking. Like blinkers on horses, forcing me to only look forward. Our eyes must not stray; a stray eye costs lives.
Ahead of me, lingering at the edges of the forbidden, is a man. He is pruning the plants, snipping at branches with the sharp blades of garden shears. They allow men weapons in this house. Not women, never women - we are to be protected, to be coddled and swaddled in wool. They don’t know what we might do with such things.
I want an edge; I live on an edge.
His hair is brown, and he’s humming, the sleeves of his uniform pulled up and the first few buttons undone. I let my eyes linger on his throat and on his collarbones, then drifting upwards to look at that wide smile. He can still smile like he’s free. I want to steal his smile.
I know his name: Yamamoto. I’ve heard the Marthas of the house call him that. I’ve heard the Commander and his Wife call him that: Yamamoto, take care of the car, or Yamamoto, set the gardens right today. I curl the name around my tongue - from the mountain - and I watch his arms as he uses the shears.
He has a name, still.
I turn my face away and walk down the path out of the house, down towards town. I count my steps with my breathing - a breath for each step - before I stop at the Wall. There are three men here today, hanging from a pole limply with bags covering their heads. It’s not for the sake of privacy that they cover the heads - the dead are inconsequential except as warning signs - but for the sake of propriety.
What propriety? I want to tear down those masks. I want to see their bloated faces, lolling and half-rotten. I want to see the corpses with their broken necks and bodies twisted from their last spasms. I sicken of masks. I want to see the truth.
There are footsteps coming up behind me and I turn my head just in time to see a flash of silver hair. She is shorter than I am and perhaps a little curvier, but from a distance we look the same - two dolls wrapped up in red, a basket on our arms, just like in the fairy tales. They call her Ofxanxus.
“Blessed be the fruit,” her voice is a little hoarse, a little rough. The products of too much smoking, perhaps, or too much screaming. Either or, or perhaps even both. I don’t know; I don’t care. All we are left with are idle speculations to pass the time.
“May the Lord open,” it’s mechanical by now. Give in a little, say their expected greetings, and they will avert their eyes from you.
We walk together, and it is still strange. I am used to being alone. But there’s no one is allowed to be alone for long nowadays. We are a family, Aunt Fuyu - named so for her blue hair - says. Families are always together.
I’ve never had a family.
She’s walking beside me in short, jerky steps, as if she’s used to something much longer, much freer. We both are a little unorthodox, a little disobedient, but not enough for them to try to break our necks. Handmaids are getting rarer and rarer, and we are precious. A national resource, like crude oil.
The shops ahead of us are laid in neat little white rows, with wooden signs in front showing pictures of what they sell. There used to be words, Milk and Honey, All Flesh, Daily Bread, but they have painted them out. I still remember them, hovering over the white spaces they used to be.
Like how we hover.
Down the streets, on the other side, someone else is leaving a store. She wears red too, but she’s different from us. Her stomach curves outwards, swollen like an overripe fruit. The streets explode with whispering, hush and low, like hissing snakes. It’s not surprising. I close my eyes, but it doesn’t block the sounds.
“Who is she?”
“Isn’t it obvious? She’s Ofsky.”
A soft hiss comes from beside me, venomous, “Show-off.”
She’s bitter; we’re all bitter. Ofsky - the Handmaid of the one they call the ‘Sky’, the highest-ranked Commander in this world that we now live in. She’s pregnant too - there’s no need for her to be here. Those who have conceived are allowed to stay in the home, served on hands and foot. Birds in a comfortable gilded cage, willing to be chained. They disgust me. I restrain myself from spitting at the side - there’s a gun near her.
She’s cowering - a timid one - but her head is held high and her shoulders are straight. Ofxanxus is right - she is here to show off. She has everything that we are supposed to want; she is filled, she is not empty. She will never be declared an Unwoman now. She has worth, wrapped around that swollen stomach of hers.
That’s all we are valued for, these days.
I turn my head and catch her eyes. It is an accident, but I make it seem deliberate. Everything is meant. She has a wide blue eye, like a deer caught in the headlights. The other eye is covered by a small eyepatch - red. She shrinks away a little, but her gaze shift to my flat stomach still covered, and she shows triumph when she next looks at me.
I let her think she has won as she turns away, because in that moment, I recognize her.
Back in the Red Centre, she once called herself Nagi.
***
Continued in Part II
YES GUYS I'LL BE WRITING THE CEREMONY. It's already written. /facepalm
But it intrigues me farrrr too much to not write. And now it's grown into a monster. Oh self, why.
Click on the Wiki link for info on the book, guys. xD
The Chained Skylark’s Tale
[Part I of II]
Character/Pairings: Female!Hibari, Dino, Yamamoto, Chrome, female!Gokudera. Mentions of Tsuna and Lal Mirch; Dino/fem!Hibari, implied Tsuna/Chrome and Xanxus/Gokudera.
Rating: PG
Words: 2109
Summary: “And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.” The life in Gilead as a Handmaid, as told by Hibari Kyouya Ofdino; a crossover/fusion with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
Warnings: GENDERSWITCH, AU, dystopian world, crack that refuses to stay as crack
i. Monopoly
I let myself into the room. I'm not supposed to - there are a lot of things that I'm restricted from - but he has broken the rules already and I try to rebel as much as I can. Even when chained, I can still move; can still strain.
The Commander is seated behind his desk. There's an ashtray on the table - my eyes are drawn to it and I think how easy it will be to brain him with it. It looks heavy, made of ceramic and none of it is plastic. His skull will crack, I think, blood and brain matter flowing into blond hair, muting that disgusting colour.
But I have been careless; he notices my gaze. His finger moves the ashtray away, into a drawer and I take note of it, slot the information inside my mind. He is my ringmaster, and I intend to break him; break my chains.
"Won't you take a seat?" He still sounds guilty, but I ignore it. He deserves any guilt he gets. It's his fault that I'm here.
I remain standing behind the chair, defiant as much I can be while I still want to survive. But he is soft as always and simply smiles. My hand clenches, but I take a breath, relaxing them because I can't even afford that little luxury, not nowadays. My eyes scan the room, but he is not a stupid man - unfortunate, really - and there are no weapons.
But there is still that ashtray. I linger at the shadow of it, hidden within the drawers. My fingers inch for the taste for metal.
"Sit down," he says again, and this time there is steel in his voice; a different sort of metal that I don't crave. I press my lips together. I want to rebel, I want to refuse, I want him to die, I want to escape.
I want a lot of things.
But now I simply sit down, legs tucked in and skirt pressed flat against my skin. The cloth is rough, stifling, and for a moment I think of wrapping the red cloth around his neck and pulling until he is blue in the face, choking and begging for mercy. I like these thoughts.
They make me feel a little more in control.
He smiles at me, a filthy stretch of the lips and my fingers twitch. It is a repulsive sign of weakness. I fold them in, fingernails pressing against my palm and it is through the pain that I frown. My face remains impassive; I am unwilling to show weaknesses.
It doesn't matter. He makes the rules here, and I have to follow them because I want to survive. (Death clips my wings permanently, and I don't intend to die. To die is not to be free; to be free is not to die.) I can only pretend that he doesn't know any of my weaknesses. That he doesn't have any sort of power over me.
I pretend anyway.
"Will you play a game of Monopoly with me?"
A breath.
The clock is ticking - seconds draining away and I focus on it. With every tick I take in a breath, with every tock I exhale. My eyes remain fixed on his, and I take care to not clench my fists. Tick, in, tock, out-
Playing with fake money and fake property when I have nothing; a game of pretence, that anything belongs to me. He wants to play Monopoly, calling me into this forbidden room like a puppy dogging his heels, to play a game that I have never had much interest in. He has taken everything away from me - not even my name or my body is fully mine anymore.
And now he wants to play Monopoly.
Is he trying to mock me?
I don’t smile. He expects me to, but I don’t. He expects me to be happy about this - that much is obvious. I don’t understand him. Who will be happy about such things? This is like throwing pig ball to a cat. Everything he does frustrate me. It reminds me of my chains, rubbing against my skin, chafing against me.
I hate him.
But still I say, “Of course,” because we are playing a game.
When he smiles and puts the money in my hands, I think of stuffing the paper down his throat. I think of suffocating him with fake money when I have nothing. I think of killing him with the counters and the cards and I realize why he has chosen Monopoly.
He wins.
As always.
***
ii. Night
I’m not very good at telling stories. I don’t like starting in the beginning. I start when I want to, at whatever point I want to, because this is my story to tell. Even though I don’t want to tell it; even though I wish this is something entirely different, it is still my story and I can do anything I like to it.
I used to live like that, being able to do what I want. There used to be a world like that, a world that is mine to live in. A world in which I can be whatever I want to be, do whatever I wish to do; follow no rules but my own.
That world doesn’t exist anymore. There’s only Gilead now.
I’m not so weak as to dream of returning to the past. The past reminds me of who I am; the present is what I live in; the future is what I think of.
My name is Hibari Kyouya - is, because I will never admit to ‘Ofdino’. I am not chattel, no matter how much they try to force me to be. I will never submit.
They only have power over me if I let them. I won’t let them.
This is my mantra every night before I go to sleep.
***
iii. Shopping
They let us out once in a while, opening the cage while keeping a tight leash. Little harmless errands to be run, to keep us busy and occupied so we won’t have time to think.
There is an umbrella rack beside a door: black for the Commander, blue for the Commander’s Wife, and red for me. Our lives are colour-coded, neatly compartmentalized with premade rules that I can’t change or fight against. There’s no sign of rain today - the sky is bright blue like the Wife’s umbrella. (We depend on the skies for weather reports, nowadays. There’s no radio or television, and the Internet is a pipe dream.
Progress.)
I draw up my veil and adjust the wings around my face. In the house I can go bare-headed - no one cares what my face looks like; it is inconsequential. But outside... I place my hand on the doorknob and push it open.
The sun is bright above my head, hot and stifling, but I can no longer see the skies. The veil and wings stop others from seeing, and they also stop me from looking. Like blinkers on horses, forcing me to only look forward. Our eyes must not stray; a stray eye costs lives.
Ahead of me, lingering at the edges of the forbidden, is a man. He is pruning the plants, snipping at branches with the sharp blades of garden shears. They allow men weapons in this house. Not women, never women - we are to be protected, to be coddled and swaddled in wool. They don’t know what we might do with such things.
I want an edge; I live on an edge.
His hair is brown, and he’s humming, the sleeves of his uniform pulled up and the first few buttons undone. I let my eyes linger on his throat and on his collarbones, then drifting upwards to look at that wide smile. He can still smile like he’s free. I want to steal his smile.
I know his name: Yamamoto. I’ve heard the Marthas of the house call him that. I’ve heard the Commander and his Wife call him that: Yamamoto, take care of the car, or Yamamoto, set the gardens right today. I curl the name around my tongue - from the mountain - and I watch his arms as he uses the shears.
He has a name, still.
I turn my face away and walk down the path out of the house, down towards town. I count my steps with my breathing - a breath for each step - before I stop at the Wall. There are three men here today, hanging from a pole limply with bags covering their heads. It’s not for the sake of privacy that they cover the heads - the dead are inconsequential except as warning signs - but for the sake of propriety.
What propriety? I want to tear down those masks. I want to see their bloated faces, lolling and half-rotten. I want to see the corpses with their broken necks and bodies twisted from their last spasms. I sicken of masks. I want to see the truth.
There are footsteps coming up behind me and I turn my head just in time to see a flash of silver hair. She is shorter than I am and perhaps a little curvier, but from a distance we look the same - two dolls wrapped up in red, a basket on our arms, just like in the fairy tales. They call her Ofxanxus.
“Blessed be the fruit,” her voice is a little hoarse, a little rough. The products of too much smoking, perhaps, or too much screaming. Either or, or perhaps even both. I don’t know; I don’t care. All we are left with are idle speculations to pass the time.
“May the Lord open,” it’s mechanical by now. Give in a little, say their expected greetings, and they will avert their eyes from you.
We walk together, and it is still strange. I am used to being alone. But there’s no one is allowed to be alone for long nowadays. We are a family, Aunt Fuyu - named so for her blue hair - says. Families are always together.
I’ve never had a family.
She’s walking beside me in short, jerky steps, as if she’s used to something much longer, much freer. We both are a little unorthodox, a little disobedient, but not enough for them to try to break our necks. Handmaids are getting rarer and rarer, and we are precious. A national resource, like crude oil.
The shops ahead of us are laid in neat little white rows, with wooden signs in front showing pictures of what they sell. There used to be words, Milk and Honey, All Flesh, Daily Bread, but they have painted them out. I still remember them, hovering over the white spaces they used to be.
Like how we hover.
Down the streets, on the other side, someone else is leaving a store. She wears red too, but she’s different from us. Her stomach curves outwards, swollen like an overripe fruit. The streets explode with whispering, hush and low, like hissing snakes. It’s not surprising. I close my eyes, but it doesn’t block the sounds.
“Who is she?”
“Isn’t it obvious? She’s Ofsky.”
A soft hiss comes from beside me, venomous, “Show-off.”
She’s bitter; we’re all bitter. Ofsky - the Handmaid of the one they call the ‘Sky’, the highest-ranked Commander in this world that we now live in. She’s pregnant too - there’s no need for her to be here. Those who have conceived are allowed to stay in the home, served on hands and foot. Birds in a comfortable gilded cage, willing to be chained. They disgust me. I restrain myself from spitting at the side - there’s a gun near her.
She’s cowering - a timid one - but her head is held high and her shoulders are straight. Ofxanxus is right - she is here to show off. She has everything that we are supposed to want; she is filled, she is not empty. She will never be declared an Unwoman now. She has worth, wrapped around that swollen stomach of hers.
That’s all we are valued for, these days.
I turn my head and catch her eyes. It is an accident, but I make it seem deliberate. Everything is meant. She has a wide blue eye, like a deer caught in the headlights. The other eye is covered by a small eyepatch - red. She shrinks away a little, but her gaze shift to my flat stomach still covered, and she shows triumph when she next looks at me.
I let her think she has won as she turns away, because in that moment, I recognize her.
Back in the Red Centre, she once called herself Nagi.
***
Continued in Part II
YES GUYS I'LL BE WRITING THE CEREMONY. It's already written. /facepalm