DON'T Call Me Roxanne, Chapter Twelve
Author: Moonstar00125
Story Summary: This is a Total Reversal AU, in which our beloved Roxanne Ritchi is sent off to the planet Cerul when planet Earth is devoured by a black hole.
Chapter Summary: Mace is amazed, Quicksilver makes everything better, and Isst and Roxanne make up.
Warnings: Fluffiness ahoy! :3
Chapter one: http://megamind-movie.livejournal.com/1395219.html
Chapter two: http://megamind-movie.livejournal.com/1398003.html
Chapter three: http://megamind-movie.livejournal.com/1399568.html
Chapter four: http://megamind-movie.livejournal.com/1401591.html
Chapter five: http://megamind-movie.livejournal.com/1407761.html
Chapter six: http://megamind-movie.livejournal.com/1411241.html
Chapter seven: http://megamind-movie.livejournal.com/1413423.html
Chapter eight: http://megamind-movie.livejournal.com/1414493.html?view=23193693#t23193693
Chapter nine: http://megamind-movie.livejournal.com/1416788.html
Chapter ten: http://megamind-movie.livejournal.com/1420598.html?view=23256886#t23256886
Chapter eleven: http://megamind-movie.livejournal.com/1422170.html
"She truly is amazing," Mace laughed, watching as Quicksilver tried to capture a beam of light he shone upon the wall and moved as she got closer. "Look at that! She puts her paw right through it and doesn't even realize that light is immaterial!"
"She's a primal creature," Roxanne said, beaming as she watched the kitten jump up and down, claws extended. "She's practicing to hunt, like vendadire cubs. When we let her outside she'll bring us back dead creatures."
"How did you even get clearance to keep her?" Mace asked, wide-eyed with awe. "I've been trying to get a chiffling from the time I was three, but no matter how many times I apply, they keep denying the request!"
"I guess they kind of had to," Roxanne said with a shrug. "She's as endangered as they get; the last of her kind. And for all anyone knew when I came here, I had as good a memory as any Cerulean and had spent my life getting attached to her."
"Do you?" Mace asked, dropping the light and allowing Quicksilver to catch it.
"No," Roxanne answered, pulling at her bandaging. The knife had cut right across her palm, and she was beginning to bleed through. It was uncomfortable, and if she didn't want to stain her room with crimson liquid, she'd have to change it soon, but she didn't want to get up. "I can't remember anything from before I was three or four." Her voice was soft, but she wasn't stuttering, and her answers were straightforward. After all, she didn't believe in lies.
"Interesting," Mace contemplated, stroking his small beard. "And you're fifteen? How old is she?"
"Fourteen," Roxanne answered before her face fell a little. "She's getting old."
"Fourteen isn't that old!" Mace laughed.
"It is for her," Roxanne said. "She's so small and frail. Her biological clock is ticking, and she hasn't much time left. I think they lived much shorter lives." Mace's face fell as well.
"It's a sad thing to contemplate," he answered in hushed tones. Roxanne nodded.
"It's a sad fact that all things die, and some die before others. Quicksilver!" she called, clicking her tongue and rubbing the thumb and forefinger of her right hand together. "Here, kit-kit-kit-kitten! Quicksilver!" Mace turned the light so that it landed near Roxanne, and Quicksilver changed direction, arching her back as Roxanne ran her hand down her back and purring as Roxanne scratched behind her ears.
Mace watched as Roxanne cooed at the creature, and, ever in the background, Minion floated to the top of his bowl to see. Gilda just watched from the center of her own bowl. She didn't need to get close to know how Quicksilver would react. Instead she dwelled on what the kitten's loss would mean. When they were young, Quicksilver had tried several times to eat her, but after she'd actually managed to get at her and ended up with a large gash in one of her forelegs, there hadn't been any more attempts. Gilda hated to think that the kitten wouldn't live as long as Roxanne and her. She'd taken a liking to the creature, and Roxanne had most certainly grown attached.
"Beautiful," Mace murmured, and Roxanne smiled again.
"Isn't she?" Mace just nodded, unspeaking as he watched them interact. After a time, he said,
"I apologize for Krut's behavior."
"It's not your fault," Roxanne said. "It's not really his either, I guess. I think he thought he was being nice."
"Yes, well, I still feel a need to apologize. It was my fault that I had not informed him earlier of your roots, and perhaps he would have been more understanding if…" Mace trailed off as Roxanne looked up and laughed softly.
"You're flustered," she said, seeing the expression on his face and the purple splashed across it.
"I think I've a right to be. Your meeting with Krut was about as close to complete disaster as you'll find on Cerul."
"Just pet Quicksilver," Roxanne ordered, picking the red kitten up and depositing her in Mace's lap, causing him to flinch involuntarily. "She makes everyone feel better."
Their time together came to a close as a knock sounded at the door. Mace bade a quiet farewell and touched his head to hers. "I'd like to see you again," he said gently as they withdrew from contact. "Will you be available at lunch tomorrow for conversation between you, myself, Minion, and Gilda?"
"S-sure," Roxanne said, blushing as she agreed to the arrangement. "Of-of course!"
"Then I shall see you then!" he exclaimed, and he and Minion left the room with a nod of the head as Isst entered, looking thoroughly surprised to see them come trouncing out. After a moment, Isst shut the door behind her, then thought a moment, and reopened it.
"Gilda," she said softly, "could I speak with Roxanne privately for a moment?" It wasn't a question, and Gilda obeyed, shutting the door behind her and standing out in the hall to wait, her fingers moving anxiously.
"Roxanne," Isst said, seating herself on her daughter's bed. Roxanne pulled herself up beside her, but looked away and said nothing. The area around Isst's eyes were purple and puffy, and Roxanne felt suddenly awful. She didn't think she'd ever made her mother cry before!
But another part of her was still slightly bitter. Why should Isst be upset that she wanted to be Cerulean? Shouldn't her mother be happy that she wasn't obsessing over a culture that had been dead for well over ten years?
"Roxanne," Isst repeated, setting a hand on her daughter's head and beginning to stroke her hair. "I'm sorry." This was not what Roxanne had expected, and she looked up in surprise. Isst smiled wryly. "I know that's not what you expected to hear. What you expected was to be chided or made to apologize, correct?" Roxanne nodded.
"Well, I'm not going to make you apologize for telling the truth," Isst said. "But I'm also going to reprimand you, because it doesn't do a child any good to make their mother cry." Roxanne gave her own small smile, and Isst opened her arms. Roxanne obediently fell into them, allowing her mother to hug her and stroke her hair while she spoke.
"I'm sorry that you can't be Cerulean," Isst said gently. "If I could make it any other way, if there were some sort of pill that turned you into a perfectly average, normal Cerulean, I would get it for you in a heat-beat, no matter what the cost or the damage it would cause me or anyone around you. But that doesn't exist, darling. You weren't born Cerulean, and that's that.
"But you should be proud that you weren't born Cerulean," she added. "You should be proud to be the last living human. You remember that note they sent with you in your pod?"
"How could I forget it," Roxanne asked, point to the spot above her door where the contents of the note had been etched into the wall.
"Well, that's sort of the point," Isst said with an amused smile. "You see right there?" Roxanne nodded. "'Your Destiny is our Legacy,'" Isst read. "And that's exactly what it is. Whatever life you lead, that's how the entirety of the human race is going to be remembered. You should be proud of that. And you should respect that your Father and I decided to keep your name the way it was, not just because your birth parents gave it to you, not just because it's one of very few names we know of from your planet, and not just because it means what it does. We chose to keep your first the name the way it is because we loved the sound of the name. It's beautiful, just like you are.
"And you can deny it all you like behind closed doors and with anyone else, but do not tell me that you aren't beautiful. It isn't a traditional sense of beauty, but sometimes you need to say, 'to ferr with tradition' and forget it. You're beautiful, inside and out. You've got a good complexion, you've got a full figure, and you're intelligent and caring."
"I have hair," Roxanne pointed out.
"I think it's beautiful," Isst proclaimed. "I think it's sad that we've evolved to a point where we don't have any need for hair. But the planet keeps getting warmer, and before we know it, we'll have evolved out of eyebrows and facial hair, and then where'll we be?"
"The day men give up their facial hair is the day the Overlord's line dies out, the dead walk among the living, and Deldja says a kind word to anyone," Roxanne said, rolling her eyes, and Isst laughed. Quicksilver leaped onto the bed with a "mrrow," and Roxanne couldn't help but add, "See? Quicksilver agrees!" Isst laughed harder and Roxanne joined her, and when Mother and Daughter finally settled down, they were on their backs, staring up at the ceiling, painted to an exact scale replica of the sky over the Cerebellum household the night Roxanne landed. One of the stars was inked in red, for that was where Roxanne hailed from. She hated that star, but she declined from saying so.
"Don't you think I could, just maybe, shave my head?" Roxanne asked hopefully.
"When you're seventeen, if you still wanted to go bald, you can," Isst allowed. "But until then you're still legally a child, and I get to impose my will on you, and I here verily decree that no, you cannot. But," she said, sitting up, "I do supposed it could do with a cut. It's gotten rather long these past few years, now hasn't it?" Roxanne smiled, and Isst stood up, beckoning her onwards. "Come on, little miss Aida," she said with a wink, "let's go get the cutting tools. We'll cut it any way you like it but bald."
"Then I want it short," Roxanne commanded as they left the room and were joined by Gilda. "But if I have to keep it I guess it would look better if it was still long enough to hang…"
A chiffling is a puppy, in case anyone wanted to know. :P