(no subject)
Author: sofiamerri
Title: Where Your Heart is Set in Stone
Recipient: elviella
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Vanessa, Madame Christmas, Madeline, the girls
Summary: Will Vanessa prove herself worthy of a job at Madame Christmas’ hostess bar?
Notes: 1921 words, title from “Home” by Gabrielle Aplin
They find her outside in the morning, eyes wide and cheeks red from the cold.
Madame Christmas clucks. “Come in, girl. What’s your name?”
She shrugs off her too-thin coat and gratefully gives it to a blonde.
“My name,” she says, “is Vanessa.”
Vanessa gets a bed and meals for the day. Then, Madame says, they’ll have to figure out what to do with her. Vanessa’s grateful. Madame is kind, despite her gruffness, and the other girls are polite. Vanessa just hopes she can stay.
“Okay, girl. Got any smarts?” Vanessa’s sitting at the bar as Madame Christmas cleans glasses. Madame shoots her a birdlike stare and Vanessa fidgets.
“No, ma’m.”
Madame raises an eyebrow. “Is that so?” Vanessa nods.
Madame turns her gaze back to the glasses and wipes one decisively. “Well, we’ll have to see about that. Any talents?”
“I can dance.”
Madame quirks a brow. “Okay. You’ll take a shift tonight, and we’ll see how you do. If you do well, you can stay. How’s that sound?”
Vanessa’s face lights up. “That sounds wonderful, ma’m!”
Madame looks pleased, but she writes off Vanessa’s enthusiasm with a wave. “Calm down, girl.” Vanessa nods and scurries off. “And it’s Madame, not ma’m!”she calls after her.
That night, a girl with brown hair stops by Vanessa’s room right before her shift. Vanessa jumps.
“You’ll be needing this,” the girl says, holding up a shimmering blue dress.
Vanessa looks at it and is surprised at its quality.
“Madame only gets us the best. Says the customers can tell the difference between cheap fabric and the expensive stuff, but I don’t think that’s the whole reason.” The girl smiles at the look on Vanessa’s face. “I knew what you were thinking. It’s not hard to tell you’re from a wealthy family.”
“How did you know?” Vanessa asks, heart dropping.
“That coat is too light for anything but style or autumn. Your posture is perfect. There’s plenty of tells.”
Vanessa looks at her hands, then back up to the girl’s kind smile. “Can you not tell the others?”
She sighs. “Sweetie, they already know.” She lays the dress on a chair. “You’d better go. Customers coming soon.”
“Wait! What’s your name?” Vanessa asks.
The girl stills and looks back at Vanessa. “Honestly, honey, it probably doesn’t matter. Not many people last past the first night. Talk to me if you’re still here tomorrow.”
Vanessa swallows around the lump in her throat and nods.
She slips into her dress and starts down the stairs, but hears voices and stops.
“Do you think she’ll last?” Vanessa recognizes the blonde’s voice.
“No,” someone Vanessa doesn’t recognize says, frank. “But how many do?”
The blonde hums a note of assent, and Vanessa’s heart drops. What if she fails? What if she has to go back to her mother and that big, empty house full of shadows? She raises her chin. She will just have to do well, then. There’s a reason she came here, Vanessa reminds herself. She can flirt. She knows that much, and this hostess bar is as good as any. This will be her escape.
Vanessa sighs and hurries down the stairs. When she reaches the bar, the brunette from earlier appears behind her in a red dress and points out an older man sitting at a table across the room.
“Okay, he’s all yours!”
Vanessa’s stomach clenches. Now that it’s time, she’s nervous. “What do I do?”
“Entertain him. It’ll be easy! Y’know,” she says, leaning in, “he works in the government. It’s not every day do you get to talk to someone so interesting.” She straightens up and winks.
Vanessa watches her go, then takes a deep breath. She can do this. She can be fun and flirty and entertain this man for a night. After all, what else has she done her entire life?
Vanessa walks carefully over to the man’s table.
“Hello, sir.”
“Oh!” he exclaims. “You’re…Vanessa, are you?” he asks, squinting.
“Yes, sir.” She tries to smile.
“You’re very beautiful. Why don’t you take a seat?” Vanessa blushes and sits, nervously twisting and untwisting her fingers.
“My name’s General Hausen.” He preens.
Vanessa relaxes. She can do this. Flattering egos is easy.
“Oh, a General!”
He nods, and Vanessa clutches her hand to her breast. “How brave! You must have to see such awful things.”
Hausen sighs melodramatically. “I do what I must to keep lovely girls like you safe, Vanessa.”
Vanessa thinks back to what the brunette girl told her. “I’m sure you have such interesting stories,” she says, eyes wide. After all, Vanessa’s sure he does, and it’ll pass the time as well as feed her curiosity.
“I really shouldn’t,” he says, uneasy.
Vanessa bites her lip. “That’s alright. What do you want to talk about?” She smiles.
The General wavers visibly. “Maybe, for a lady as pretty as you, I could make an exception.”
Vanessa’s face lights up. “So, is it scary? Do you have to make tough decisions?”
He takes a sip of his whiskey.
“Just yesterday, I had to kill a man.”
Vanessa gasps, half show and half reality.
The General nods. “He was a spy. Collecting information on the Furher for some outside source.” He looks down at his glass of whiskey, then raises his gaze to Vanessa’s and smiles. “Looks like I have had too much whiskey.”
Vanessa fidgets in her chair. She knows what her job is- entertain the customer- but she doesn’t feel right about leaving the conversation there. She makes a decision, ignoring everything her mother taught her about where curious girls end up.
Vanessa leans forward. “Who do you think he was spying for?” The man glances at her, uneasy, and she widens her eyes, just a little. Innocent. Silly. He relaxes.
“There are some very bad men out there, Vanessa,” he says. “Some people inside the military even want to take down our Furher.”
She blinks at him. “Surely not!”
He nods gravely, then glances around. “Have you heard of Roy Mustang?”he asks conspiratorially.
She shakes her head.
“He’s young. Too young to be a colonel, yet that’s exactly what he is.” The man leans back, downing his glass. “Some people think he’s aiming for the top.”
Vanessa looks appropriately worried. Inside, she doesn’t know how to feel. Is ambition such a bad thing? “So, you think this spy may have been working for him.”
“Not think. Know.” He gets an uneasy look on his face again. “Listen, sweetheart, don’t repeat that to anyone, okay? Wouldn't want to lose my job.”
Vanessa nods rapidly. “Of course not!” She leans in and kisses him on the cheek. “I think you’re very brave,” she tells him.
It’s then that she sees the brunette waving to her from across the room.
Vanessa stands. “I think I have to say goodbye now, General.”
“So soon?” he asks.
Vanessa smiles. “I’d love if you came back and talked to me again.”
He winks. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Vanessa gives him one last smile and hurries over to where the brunette is waiting. She sighs, more relieved than she’d expected.
“So, how did it go?” The brunette’s face is guarded.
“It was…easier than I thought it would be.”
“Good, good.” She looks over Vanessa’s shoulder. When she sees Madame Christmas chase the last patron out of the bar, she relaxes. “Okay, Vanessa, come with me.”
Vanessa follows her back past the bar to a small room. All the girls are there, waiting. Soon, the scent of cigar smoke is wafting down the hallway and Madame bustles in, shutting the door decisively.
“Okay, girl,” she says, turning to Vanessa. “It’s a tradition here. Every night we talk about how we did. Boosts job satisfaction and all that.”
One of the girls giggles and another elbows her in the ribs.
Vanessa swallows. She’s nervous all over again, just like that.
“Well, the General was certainly kind.”
Madame’s hawk-gaze is on her. “General who?”
“He said his name was General Hausen.”
Madame makes a sound in the back of her throat. “Okay, go on.”
“He told me a little about his job.”
Now everyone is looking at her, and Vanessa wants to shrink under their scrutiny.
“Like what, girl?”
“How it’s scary and he has to be brave.”
Vanessa can feel this was the wrong answer. The tension immediately vanishes, replaced by disinterest.
“Is that all?” Madame looks bored, now. Vanessa almost misses her intense gaze.
Is it right to tell them everything else the General said? He told her not to say anything…but Vanessa wants to be here. She wants to finally be free of her mother and her father’s ghost and rooms filled with nothing but stale cigarette smoke and her mother’s regrets. So she tells them.
“He said… he said he killed a spy yesterday.”
This was the right thing. Everyone becomes interested again, and Vanessa sets her shoulders.
“He said that the spy was working for Roy Mustang-“ there is a collective intake of breath- “a young colonel who wants to be Furher. General Hausen doesn’t like him.”
For a second, everything is silent. Then, all the girls are clapping and Madame Christmas pats Vanessa on the shoulder.
“Good work, Vanessa,” she says, and Vanessa realizes it’s the first time she’s used Vanessa’s name.
Madame turns to the girls. “We’ll have to tell Roy-boy that Wald’s not just missing, and pay extra attention to how Hausen could have figured out he was giving us information. Most of all, we have to make sure Roy knows Hausen believes Roy planted Wald. Very dangerous.” She pauses a moment. “Yes, very good, Vanessa.”
Vanessa looks around. “You’re all…spies? For Roy Mustang?” There’s a laugh from the group, but it’s not unkind.
The brunette steps forward. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you more earlier, but you seemed to figure out what you had to do. We have to know who’s trustworthy, you see.”
Madame looks at the brunette affectionately, then levels a serious gaze on Vanessa. “You can stay here, if you wish.” Vanessa’s heart soars. “But,” she says, and Vanessa droops. “You have to know, girl. Here, like you said, we’re all spies. Roy Mustang is my adopted son, and if you stay, you’ll have to do what you just did every night and never slip, or we’ll all be dead, like that poor gardener Hausen killed.”
Vanessa can feel the weight of her words settle like a boulder on her shoulders. It’s a large burden to bear, but… Vanessa can be happy here. Her life can mean something, and it can be her own, for once. So she lifts her chin. “I’m ready to do anything.”
Madame Christmas barks out a laugh and puts a heavy hand on Vanessa’s shoulder. “That’s what I like to hear!”
The brunette steps forward. “Hi, Vanessa. My name is Madeline.”
A blonde walks up behind her. “Hi. I’m Claire.”
A redhead. “I’m Sophie.”
“Elizabeth.”
“Laura.”
“Emily.”
The names keep coming, and under the weight of Madame’s hand and the names Vanessa feels more loved than she can remember since she was a little girl. She blinks back tears.
Madame smiles. “Well, that’s enough of that. Claire, what’d you find out?”
Vanessa hears Claire start to speak, and for a minute she doesn’t focus on anything but the words and the warm atmosphere washing over her.
Madeline elbows Vanessa. “Are you okay?” Her eyes are worried and warm, and Vanessa smiles.
“Yes.”
Vanessa’s more than okay.
She’s home.
Title: Where Your Heart is Set in Stone
Recipient: elviella
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Vanessa, Madame Christmas, Madeline, the girls
Summary: Will Vanessa prove herself worthy of a job at Madame Christmas’ hostess bar?
Notes: 1921 words, title from “Home” by Gabrielle Aplin
They find her outside in the morning, eyes wide and cheeks red from the cold.
Madame Christmas clucks. “Come in, girl. What’s your name?”
She shrugs off her too-thin coat and gratefully gives it to a blonde.
“My name,” she says, “is Vanessa.”
Vanessa gets a bed and meals for the day. Then, Madame says, they’ll have to figure out what to do with her. Vanessa’s grateful. Madame is kind, despite her gruffness, and the other girls are polite. Vanessa just hopes she can stay.
“Okay, girl. Got any smarts?” Vanessa’s sitting at the bar as Madame Christmas cleans glasses. Madame shoots her a birdlike stare and Vanessa fidgets.
“No, ma’m.”
Madame raises an eyebrow. “Is that so?” Vanessa nods.
Madame turns her gaze back to the glasses and wipes one decisively. “Well, we’ll have to see about that. Any talents?”
“I can dance.”
Madame quirks a brow. “Okay. You’ll take a shift tonight, and we’ll see how you do. If you do well, you can stay. How’s that sound?”
Vanessa’s face lights up. “That sounds wonderful, ma’m!”
Madame looks pleased, but she writes off Vanessa’s enthusiasm with a wave. “Calm down, girl.” Vanessa nods and scurries off. “And it’s Madame, not ma’m!”she calls after her.
That night, a girl with brown hair stops by Vanessa’s room right before her shift. Vanessa jumps.
“You’ll be needing this,” the girl says, holding up a shimmering blue dress.
Vanessa looks at it and is surprised at its quality.
“Madame only gets us the best. Says the customers can tell the difference between cheap fabric and the expensive stuff, but I don’t think that’s the whole reason.” The girl smiles at the look on Vanessa’s face. “I knew what you were thinking. It’s not hard to tell you’re from a wealthy family.”
“How did you know?” Vanessa asks, heart dropping.
“That coat is too light for anything but style or autumn. Your posture is perfect. There’s plenty of tells.”
Vanessa looks at her hands, then back up to the girl’s kind smile. “Can you not tell the others?”
She sighs. “Sweetie, they already know.” She lays the dress on a chair. “You’d better go. Customers coming soon.”
“Wait! What’s your name?” Vanessa asks.
The girl stills and looks back at Vanessa. “Honestly, honey, it probably doesn’t matter. Not many people last past the first night. Talk to me if you’re still here tomorrow.”
Vanessa swallows around the lump in her throat and nods.
She slips into her dress and starts down the stairs, but hears voices and stops.
“Do you think she’ll last?” Vanessa recognizes the blonde’s voice.
“No,” someone Vanessa doesn’t recognize says, frank. “But how many do?”
The blonde hums a note of assent, and Vanessa’s heart drops. What if she fails? What if she has to go back to her mother and that big, empty house full of shadows? She raises her chin. She will just have to do well, then. There’s a reason she came here, Vanessa reminds herself. She can flirt. She knows that much, and this hostess bar is as good as any. This will be her escape.
Vanessa sighs and hurries down the stairs. When she reaches the bar, the brunette from earlier appears behind her in a red dress and points out an older man sitting at a table across the room.
“Okay, he’s all yours!”
Vanessa’s stomach clenches. Now that it’s time, she’s nervous. “What do I do?”
“Entertain him. It’ll be easy! Y’know,” she says, leaning in, “he works in the government. It’s not every day do you get to talk to someone so interesting.” She straightens up and winks.
Vanessa watches her go, then takes a deep breath. She can do this. She can be fun and flirty and entertain this man for a night. After all, what else has she done her entire life?
Vanessa walks carefully over to the man’s table.
“Hello, sir.”
“Oh!” he exclaims. “You’re…Vanessa, are you?” he asks, squinting.
“Yes, sir.” She tries to smile.
“You’re very beautiful. Why don’t you take a seat?” Vanessa blushes and sits, nervously twisting and untwisting her fingers.
“My name’s General Hausen.” He preens.
Vanessa relaxes. She can do this. Flattering egos is easy.
“Oh, a General!”
He nods, and Vanessa clutches her hand to her breast. “How brave! You must have to see such awful things.”
Hausen sighs melodramatically. “I do what I must to keep lovely girls like you safe, Vanessa.”
Vanessa thinks back to what the brunette girl told her. “I’m sure you have such interesting stories,” she says, eyes wide. After all, Vanessa’s sure he does, and it’ll pass the time as well as feed her curiosity.
“I really shouldn’t,” he says, uneasy.
Vanessa bites her lip. “That’s alright. What do you want to talk about?” She smiles.
The General wavers visibly. “Maybe, for a lady as pretty as you, I could make an exception.”
Vanessa’s face lights up. “So, is it scary? Do you have to make tough decisions?”
He takes a sip of his whiskey.
“Just yesterday, I had to kill a man.”
Vanessa gasps, half show and half reality.
The General nods. “He was a spy. Collecting information on the Furher for some outside source.” He looks down at his glass of whiskey, then raises his gaze to Vanessa’s and smiles. “Looks like I have had too much whiskey.”
Vanessa fidgets in her chair. She knows what her job is- entertain the customer- but she doesn’t feel right about leaving the conversation there. She makes a decision, ignoring everything her mother taught her about where curious girls end up.
Vanessa leans forward. “Who do you think he was spying for?” The man glances at her, uneasy, and she widens her eyes, just a little. Innocent. Silly. He relaxes.
“There are some very bad men out there, Vanessa,” he says. “Some people inside the military even want to take down our Furher.”
She blinks at him. “Surely not!”
He nods gravely, then glances around. “Have you heard of Roy Mustang?”he asks conspiratorially.
She shakes her head.
“He’s young. Too young to be a colonel, yet that’s exactly what he is.” The man leans back, downing his glass. “Some people think he’s aiming for the top.”
Vanessa looks appropriately worried. Inside, she doesn’t know how to feel. Is ambition such a bad thing? “So, you think this spy may have been working for him.”
“Not think. Know.” He gets an uneasy look on his face again. “Listen, sweetheart, don’t repeat that to anyone, okay? Wouldn't want to lose my job.”
Vanessa nods rapidly. “Of course not!” She leans in and kisses him on the cheek. “I think you’re very brave,” she tells him.
It’s then that she sees the brunette waving to her from across the room.
Vanessa stands. “I think I have to say goodbye now, General.”
“So soon?” he asks.
Vanessa smiles. “I’d love if you came back and talked to me again.”
He winks. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Vanessa gives him one last smile and hurries over to where the brunette is waiting. She sighs, more relieved than she’d expected.
“So, how did it go?” The brunette’s face is guarded.
“It was…easier than I thought it would be.”
“Good, good.” She looks over Vanessa’s shoulder. When she sees Madame Christmas chase the last patron out of the bar, she relaxes. “Okay, Vanessa, come with me.”
Vanessa follows her back past the bar to a small room. All the girls are there, waiting. Soon, the scent of cigar smoke is wafting down the hallway and Madame bustles in, shutting the door decisively.
“Okay, girl,” she says, turning to Vanessa. “It’s a tradition here. Every night we talk about how we did. Boosts job satisfaction and all that.”
One of the girls giggles and another elbows her in the ribs.
Vanessa swallows. She’s nervous all over again, just like that.
“Well, the General was certainly kind.”
Madame’s hawk-gaze is on her. “General who?”
“He said his name was General Hausen.”
Madame makes a sound in the back of her throat. “Okay, go on.”
“He told me a little about his job.”
Now everyone is looking at her, and Vanessa wants to shrink under their scrutiny.
“Like what, girl?”
“How it’s scary and he has to be brave.”
Vanessa can feel this was the wrong answer. The tension immediately vanishes, replaced by disinterest.
“Is that all?” Madame looks bored, now. Vanessa almost misses her intense gaze.
Is it right to tell them everything else the General said? He told her not to say anything…but Vanessa wants to be here. She wants to finally be free of her mother and her father’s ghost and rooms filled with nothing but stale cigarette smoke and her mother’s regrets. So she tells them.
“He said… he said he killed a spy yesterday.”
This was the right thing. Everyone becomes interested again, and Vanessa sets her shoulders.
“He said that the spy was working for Roy Mustang-“ there is a collective intake of breath- “a young colonel who wants to be Furher. General Hausen doesn’t like him.”
For a second, everything is silent. Then, all the girls are clapping and Madame Christmas pats Vanessa on the shoulder.
“Good work, Vanessa,” she says, and Vanessa realizes it’s the first time she’s used Vanessa’s name.
Madame turns to the girls. “We’ll have to tell Roy-boy that Wald’s not just missing, and pay extra attention to how Hausen could have figured out he was giving us information. Most of all, we have to make sure Roy knows Hausen believes Roy planted Wald. Very dangerous.” She pauses a moment. “Yes, very good, Vanessa.”
Vanessa looks around. “You’re all…spies? For Roy Mustang?” There’s a laugh from the group, but it’s not unkind.
The brunette steps forward. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you more earlier, but you seemed to figure out what you had to do. We have to know who’s trustworthy, you see.”
Madame looks at the brunette affectionately, then levels a serious gaze on Vanessa. “You can stay here, if you wish.” Vanessa’s heart soars. “But,” she says, and Vanessa droops. “You have to know, girl. Here, like you said, we’re all spies. Roy Mustang is my adopted son, and if you stay, you’ll have to do what you just did every night and never slip, or we’ll all be dead, like that poor gardener Hausen killed.”
Vanessa can feel the weight of her words settle like a boulder on her shoulders. It’s a large burden to bear, but… Vanessa can be happy here. Her life can mean something, and it can be her own, for once. So she lifts her chin. “I’m ready to do anything.”
Madame Christmas barks out a laugh and puts a heavy hand on Vanessa’s shoulder. “That’s what I like to hear!”
The brunette steps forward. “Hi, Vanessa. My name is Madeline.”
A blonde walks up behind her. “Hi. I’m Claire.”
A redhead. “I’m Sophie.”
“Elizabeth.”
“Laura.”
“Emily.”
The names keep coming, and under the weight of Madame’s hand and the names Vanessa feels more loved than she can remember since she was a little girl. She blinks back tears.
Madame smiles. “Well, that’s enough of that. Claire, what’d you find out?”
Vanessa hears Claire start to speak, and for a minute she doesn’t focus on anything but the words and the warm atmosphere washing over her.
Madeline elbows Vanessa. “Are you okay?” Her eyes are worried and warm, and Vanessa smiles.
“Yes.”
Vanessa’s more than okay.
She’s home.