[Closed] Just the Way You Were Bred

[Tom Cooke]

 Evening on the 39th of Loshis, 2720 

h

e might’ve laughed at that, under different circumstances. You’d be surprised who doesn’t notice, he thought.

You started saying shit like this, you started slipping up and saying worse. He already had. What was he thinking?

He was looking at her now, and there was a frown on her face. It was lean and pale in the dark, jaw characteristically set, stubborn and square. He lifted his brows. To what? To sympathize? To apologize? To be there at all? It’s… fine. He worked his jaw awkwardly, sucking at a tooth. She wasn’t looking at him, so he looked away again, out over the opposite railing. Out into the dark, where the leaves were just shapes edged with gold.

“Well,” he started, then trailed off when she broke off. She wasn’t wrong. He thought to offer to take that off her shoulders, but it seemed damnably insulting, and he didn’t think he could anyway.

Funny. For a year and a half, he’d barely known her name. Signing letters to Brunnhold faculty and paying fees for a stranger had seemed like a hassle; the name in ink on a letter in some adviser’s hand had left his skin crawling, and the name in Diana’s mouth worse. Now, he found himself half wanting to overbear. Like there was always a little worry gnawing at the edge of his mind, harder and harder to let go of. At first, it’d been a tie he couldn’t seem to cut; now, he felt like he was holding on, and very afraid to let go.

Her thanks was as stiff as her posture. In the corner of his eye he could see Sish eying him, craned and unabashed of her their intent to look anywhere but at each other.

Right, then, he thought. Back into the fray. Mask back on; done with all this. His head was awhirl with what he’d let slip out of his mouth.

Then – His eyes caught on a fallen gold feather as her sharp-pointed, red-embroidered toe nudged a leaf nearby it.

Because I felt drawn to it, he wanted to say, putting some aching hiraeth, lovingly-spun from nothing, into his voice. Because I felt somehow like… like it belonged to someone I used to know.

Another twitch shuddered across his face, this one irritatingly hard to ignore; he felt Anatole’s lip jump, as if without his permission. Sish’s head tilted.

Terrible and – understandable, too. The good ones, anyway. Sometimes they're just horrible, but that's not as interesting.

“It, ah – it meant something to you.” Shouldn’t have said that in the least. Being honest, honesty didn’t well become him, as he was now. Because flat-out ignoring you for two years didn’t work, and this didn’t seem more evil, at least. He swallowed. And then something happened.

My own flesh and blood, he almost said. His heart tightened. He should have been horrified at himself. As if he ever could’ve had that; not in life, and certainly not now. His own body wasn’t his flesh and blood.

…she'll live forever, but she can't love anyone without hurting them, so in the end she's always alone. And nobody ever bothers to – to try to find another way. They just decide –

Another twitch. His face itched, and he reached up and scratched it. He half-expected it to peel off underneath his fingers; it didn’t. “And to me, too,” he said. “Because I wanted to know what it meant to you. Because I wanted to know you. And because what you said about it meant something to me, when I felt – when I still feel like a –”

He stopped. He certainly hadn't meant to let that slip out.

Why’d you give it to me? he wanted to retort, like he just about had back in Bethas, but with even more force now.

“I’m allowed to care about you for your own sake, aren’t I?” His voice was a little sharper than usual, surprising him, and more than a little hoarse. “I’m afraid you’ll find I’m very stubborn on this particular point.”

[Cerise Vauquelin]

The Dzed’efo Gallery
Loshis 39, 2720 - Evening

Nineteen years she'd gone, successfully not saying any of this. Some of it admittedly was newly needing to be said—she could hardly imagine her father as he was before taking Mircalla from her to read, but she would have understood his motivations then. She wasn't sure what was different, that she didn't seem as content to carry on as she had.

And he wouldn't have followed her out here. Because he was worried. So she supposed she knew what was different after all. Or these years so completely away from home had made her soft in the head. That seemed just as likely, and she certainly didn't think both couldn't account for her own bizarre impulses.

The little feather was briefly hidden by a kicked leaf. The party seemed incredibly far away now, and the soft patter of rain far too loud. She should have kept her mouth shut and just gone back inside. Or told him to, anyway, and she could have stayed out here a moment longer and nursed her terrible wine and her terrible feelings in peace. As was the proper course of things.

"It meant something to you."

That made her leave off her important rearrangement of the local flora with the toe of her embroidered boot immediately. Froze her in place just as sure as if he'd cast, only that had been plain Estuan and not monite at all. Too plain, in face. Cerise felt like she'd stumbled again, but she hadn't moved a muscle.

She didn't understand. Plain as those words were, she didn't understand them at all. She turned to look, trying to act casual. She felt stiff, a wooden marionette. "You wanted... to know me?" Her eyebrows shot up on her face as she turned to look at him. "Are you a masochi—uh. I just can't imagine why."

Or specifically, why now. It hadn't bothered him to not know her for the nearly two years since his stroke. Or the ten or so years of her life before that, when he didn't even have amnesia as an excuse. Excuse, or motivating factor. She supposed not knowing what he was in for helped with the desire. Except, hadn't she shown him from that first moment she'd come storming into the museum?

(Still feel like like a what? What part of it had meant something? Cerise didn't understand that either, but it felt like a secondary concern to this outlandish claim that he'd borrowed a book from her just because she said she liked it.)

Even more outlandish—he cared about her. She'd always thought—well. In this abstract way, Cerise had thought that her father loved her. She even thought Diana might, as much as she was able to love a child who wasn't her own and was unpleasant to boot. She knew she was much less lovable than Ellie, but she didn't... There was a difference though, to her mind, between loving her as a parent tended to and actually liking her. Between a biological or social obligation and...

...And following her out to the balcony because she was upset. "You can do whatever you want," she managed, and she sounded angrier than she meant to. That was the problem with making her default mode. She didn't know how to sound any other way, for the most part.

Cerise picked again at the threads on the back of her ruined glove. Then in a fit of irritation, just took the whole thing off and crammed it into the pocket of her gown with her pocket watch. After a moment she realized she looked stupid with only one glove on, and chose to risk scandal instead. The other one joined its ruined mate.

"The desert has baked your brain," she grumbled, with much less sting in it than there was before. She sounded horribly moved, in fact. There was a wobble underneath the grumbling. She felt like... Like... Like she was barely bigger than she had been the last time they'd danced together. If even that old.

"It's really unfair that you only want to talk about Mama now that you can't," she added. She meant it to be a joke, but she wasn't sure that it was.

[Tom Cooke]

 Evening on the 39th of Loshis, 2720 

m

asochist?

She cut herself off. Wise. In spite of everything, his lip had already started to curl wryly, and Yes was on the tip of his tongue. But the expression faded; she went on. Her dark brows were high on her forehead.

To that why, he didn’t know he could say much. That’s the question of the decade, lass, he wanted to say. Why does anybody want to know anybody, least of all their bochi? They do, though; I’ve heard it firsthand. Even worse, people have wanted to know me. A bizarre and unpleasant experience, if I’ve ever heard of one.

You can do whatever you want, she snapped.

He scoffed, managed not to roll his eyes, and looked away. In the corner of his eye, she was taking off her glove and putting it brusquely in a pocket of her skirts. Now that was a fashion statement.

A few seconds later, she took off the other, and folded a grumble into the motion. And her voice wavered low, and it struck him in the middle of the chest, welled a lump in his throat.

He sniffed and caught a tear with his palm before it could leave his lashes. “Broiled it,” he said. “Terribly. Pity me.”

Death’ll do that to you, too, apparently, he thought. When he’d blinked his eyes passably dry, he glanced over.

He thought he understood why Anatole hadn’t, before; it would’ve been like asking him about hama now. He thought again of the box in the study, and wondered if Anatole would ever have wanted her to have it. He hadn’t broken the seal on Anatole’s will; he hadn’t even thought about it, before now. He felt even more than usual as if he were walking on someone’s grave.

“And if I could, maybe I wouldn’t want to. It’s unfair,” he rasped in agreement. “And horribly ironic.”

Underneath all that, he wanted to say, You have to know your da cared about you, don’t you? He studied her; if the answer was in her face, he couldn’t see it.

If the answer was in the steady, too-fast-for-his-comfort flicker of Anatole’s heart, or in all of the other things – the cramped muscles that kept him up at night, the slightly-warped frames of his reading glasses… The way sometimes a feeling would tighten his chest unfamiliarly, or wouldn’t, or how tears came sometimes too slow and sometimes too quick, or how being drunk was just different enough to notice – or how sometimes he wondered if he’d’ve liked some things quite as much as he did now, in life, or how he’d stopped liking others…

Funny, how what was left of Anatole couldn’t tell him anything. It could change him, mute and horrible, sometimes like his soul served it, and he was terrified of it – and it still couldn’t explain anything.

He looked back over. “I think Lucrezia can,” he said, “and wants to. When she –” He paused. Rain pattered the leaves. “When she’s calmed down,” he said, taking a deep breath. “She’s stubborn and worried, but she cares about you, too. She wouldn’t’ve done that if she didn’t.”

He knew the second it was out of his mouth what he was inviting. He missed breaking kneecaps.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

The Dzed’efo Gallery
Loshis 39, 2720 - Evening

Cerise hadn't missed that scoff, she simply chose to ignore it. If she acknowledged it she might be obligated to respond, and if she responded—who knew where that would lead? Nowhere good, certainly.

Not that the conversation was going anywhere good as it was. She heard the sniff, too, and ignored that as much as she had the scoff. That she couldn't have responded to at all; he could ask his wife and know that was true. At least with Diana she could pretend the tears were of frustration more than hurt. (For all she knew, that was the case—it wasn't as if she didn't know that her stepmother found her rather frustrating. She worked hard at being so.) Cerise blinked, choosing to focus her eyes on a point somewhere off in the distance.

"At least we agree." Cerise looked down into her glass; there was a little of the date wine left. She set it down on the railing some distance away from her, leaving it there to be collected by some servant or another later. She was tired of holding it, and she certainly didn't want to finish it.

You wouldn't want to, she almost assured him. I should know. We've gotten in awful fights about it before. "Fight" was perhaps stretching it—that implied that the conversation didn't merely end with Cerise being dismissed. She rarely left, and the conversation never continued. Cerise thought she hated him most in those moments.

Her breath skipped sharp, her eyebrows digging a little furrow between themselves. This was some kind of bait-and-switch. He had tricked her, coming out here to... With his talking of concern, and... Cerise tried to be angry, but she couldn't find the argument for it. Mostly she was just guilty, thinking of how she'd swept out of the room.

"I know that, Volpacciotto," she hissed, stung. "I wouldn't apologize if I thought otherwise." She hadn't apologized yet, but she was planning on it. She looked over to glare at him, bare hands balled into fists. It made the state of her knuckles more noticeable.

An irrational part of her thought this was his fault, and Diana's. They wrote letters, didn't they? They could have mentioned it. She wasn't surprised they left that out, but she was irritated. You would think she had taken up bare-knuckle boxing, not the noblest sport on Vita. There were risks, certainly, and more with her chosen focus but—wasn't that what made it worth it? What was the glory in victory without the specter of real consequence?

Besides which, there were very few other places she ever felt like she belonged the way she did on the field. Even losing was thrilling, if the match was good. Not that she would ever admit that out loud, of course. That was grotesquely sentimental. The other places she felt so were even worse, and didn't bear mention or thinking about out here on the balcony.

"I just wish it mattered that it matters to me," she said unthinkingly. Her head was swimming; she hadn't had that much to drink, had she? Her mouth twisted, and she blinked, looking away. "But it's... I get the hint. I'll go apologize."

[Tom Cooke]

 Evening on the 39th of Loshis, 2720 

d

idn’t make much sense, the pang of relief he felt when she set the glass aside. He felt it anyway, as you do most things that don’t make sense.

He heard her breath catch even as he spoke. There it was, that familiar line between her brows, and the razor-sharpening of her grey eyes. He was still frowning, his own brows drawn; he could feel the furrow between them like a strange mirror.

Volpacciotto, Cerise hissed, and he thought there was something a little more bitter than anger in the twist of her thin lips.

She’d teased him with the nickname in there; now, she wasn’t teasing. Now it was a barb, and a bold one, considering its target. He wondered what Anatole would’ve done. It was almost staggering to think of. She wasn’t really talking to Anatole anymore, was she?

Her fists were balled, knuckles flaring white. Even in the dark, he could see the mottled bruising over them in purple and sickly-yellow, and the light scuffs. It didn’t seem like it had only been a few days since he’d come out of the cafe to see her throw that punch at the other lass. He felt another swell of pride, and something alongside it like hurt – none of the things he expected.

I just wish it mattered that it matters to me.

His left eyelid twitched again. He watched Cerise look away; he glanced over and met Sish’s eye. Her clawed golden toes were curled into the shoulders of Cerise’s dress.

“Come now,” he husked, frowning. “No hints, damn it. That’s not what I was saying at all. I'm just saying she might…” He sucked at a tooth. “I don’t know. Might come around, given time. Might – listen, might…”

He took a deep breath, looking away into the dark. The first part, surly agreement to something he hadn’t exactly said – worse than fiery protest – he’d expected. It was infuriating for how you couldn’t do a thing with it. You could make an ass of yourself like he had at the party in Bethas, being surly right back, parrying and parrying until somebody got tired and gave up.

The second part he hadn’t expected at all. Like I can’t be Mama, like every part of this. It was like the opening of a little window; it frightened him more than anything.

“I don’t want you to ever apologize for who you are,” he said, blinking again against another hot prickle in his eyes, sniffing sharply. Floods, what a stupid thing to say – was he trying to embarrass her off the terrace?

It didn’t sound much less flat coming out of his mouth than it had in his head. Especially not on the heels of her clenched hands, of her knit brows. Of her fist in Roumanille’s face and the sound of her grunting and cursing trying to drag a brush through her hair.

Of the bail, and of Emiel.

“It does matter,” he said, clearing his throat. “That’s all, damn it. I mean, if she – if she cares about you this much, then she’ll care how much it matters to you. I sure as hell do. Out there on the field, you’re like a fish in water or a bird in the air. I don’t feel that much at home anywhere.”

He palmed his tears away roughly, though not before a few wet his cheeks. He cursed.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

The Dzed’efo Gallery
Loshis 39, 2720 - Evening

There was a small part of her that thought to wonder at when she had started speaking to her father in this way. She would never have done so before—he wouldn't, she thought, have allowed her to have done so. Maybe that was the difference now: she could push and snap and snarl, and the results she got weren't the ones she might have expected.

Not entirely, anyway. Trying to cajole her into going back inside and apologizing to Grandmother and Aunt Tati this way was perfectly in-character, if gone about in a different way than usual. She was the the problem here, after all.

"Maybe," she groused, not particularly convinced. She sincerely doubted Grandmother had come upon a bout of outlook-changing amnesia in the last fifteen minutes or so. There was of course the distinct possibility that she was being entirely too dramatic, but Cerise was certainly not about to admit that at this moment. Not out loud, not to her father standing next to her trying to make her feel better.

Which is what he was doing. Possibly. It was the strangest thing, in a series of strange things. He didn't even sound that convinced himself, and here he was trying to make her believe that Grandmother would come around eventually. The whole thing had been not worth mention in a single letter since she was in junior varsity, but now he was trying to reassure her about it? The stupidity of it brought warmth to her face and the backs of her eyes.

Good, she thought, narrow jaw still clenched, because I'm not very good at it. She didn't trust herself to say it without making everything worse. She had the distinct feeling that she might do something truly foolish if she tried, like cry. If she started to cry in earnest, she was fair certain she'd have to climb over the side of the terrace and leave the party entirely. Or the country. She made a doubtful noise in the back of her throat instead.

Looking at him instead of finding unwarranted fascination with the shape of the metalwork around the phosphor lamp was a mistake. To her absolute horror, she saw a gleam on his cheeks. This was absolutely worse than making Diana cry, she had been right. She had some sense of what she had done then, at least, and she had—well. She hadn't apologized, not well, but she'd... Damn it.

"I, uh... Do you really think so?" Her voice sounded wobbly. Sish was getting restless on her shoulders, nudging her face and trying to pull on her earrings. Cerise used the distraction of moving Sish to the hold of her arms as an opportunity to gather herself together.

Even so, she didn't think she kept the slightest glimmer of confused gold out of her field. It was hideously embarrassing; she wasn't a little girl, to be so pleased by her father's approval. Approval that she didn't want or need! She had done just fine without it her entire life, hadn't she? Better than fine. So what was wrong with her?

[Tom Cooke]

 Evening on the 39th of Loshis, 2720 

t

hat “maybe” told him it was about as convincing as he’d imagined. Well, he supposed that was fine.

He’d the sense of being on the losing team, of betting a mant manna ging on a fighter the match was rigged against – not a feeling he liked, here nor anywhere else. If how bad this could get were a flight of stairs, they weren’t even close to the bottom step. And he’d his own position to think about, a distant part of him – his loyalty to the cause – whispered. How much scandal was too much?

Cerise’s lean jaw was clenched, and she made a noise in her throat. Then she looked at him. Her expression shifted; he saw her grey eyes widen with what he thought must be horror. Or embarrassment.

The only thing worse than the wetness on his cheeks was drawing attention to it by wiping it away.

The sound of her voice, when it came, surprised him. He’d been expecting a lash of the tongue for that last bit of ridiculousness, the likes of which he seemed to have a penchant for lately. But – did he really–?

Sish was nosing her earrings, glinting silver in the phosphor light. He watched her take Sish off her shoulders, bundling the drakelet up in her arms, all coiling tail and ruffling feathers, craned neck and clinging claws. “Yes,” he said without thinking, his own voice hoarse with surprise.

He felt the gold shiver out in her field, the tiniest echo of earlier. It was a confused wisp, caught up between physical and clairvoyant mona. As if he couldn’t help it, the clairvoyant mona warmed to it.

“I meant what I said in there,” he said, finally reaching up to thumb the tears away from his cheeks. “Every time I said it.” There was a swell of gold shift, firm and not confused, even through the strange airy drift of his field.

It was horribly, horribly wrong, a part of him whispered. Another part of him felt horribly, strangely right.

And what if she found out–? His mask felt so flimsy. He felt like this face could slough off. And what would be underneath it? He was conscious of his borrowed lungs filling up with breath, of the chill creeping down his back. What would she see, if she could really look at him? What was left?

Another twitch shivered up his face. He blinked; Sish looked at him over her feathered shoulder for just a moment, then nestled restlessly back into Cerise.

She would never find out, he told himself. He felt as if he were making a pact at that very moment – as if his other foot were finally over the line.

His fingers tightened on the railing. “Anybody with a clear head and eyes can tell you mean it. That you don’t step over a line with one foot,” he said. “You duel like you throw that fist of yours. It’s worth it to you, the risk, isn’t it? Every bit of it.”

The fighting, the dueling – Emiel, he didn’t say. He lifted his chin, looking at her intently, studying all those familiar-unfamiliar shapes on her face.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

The Dzed’efo Gallery
Loshis 39, 2720 - Evening

Yes, he said, a simple syllable twisted with the tears she was steadfastly pretending weren't there. Cerise grew stiffer by the moment, glued to her spot on the balcony. His caprise was warm, and she knew the edges of her damn eyelashes were wet. They should have just gone to the fight after all.

The party inside was glittering and terrible, but this small bubble of quiet on the darkened balcony was terrifying in a very different way. She knew what she was getting into, at least, with the disapproval of Grandmother and Aunt Tati. (Hells, Uncle Felix too most likely—he'd slipped off to parts unknown before he could get his chance to have an opinion.) She had practically built her whole life around the disapproval of others.

(Even Em, were she being honest with herself, she had been interested in at least a little bit because of the scandal of it all. Only really at the start—he was easy to like for his own sake, too, and thrill only carried you so far. Certainly not to the possibly absurd distance she had gone. So being contrary wasn't all bad, in her experience.)

Who was she, though, without the shadow of Anatole Vauquelin's disapproval to push against? Cerise was annoyed to find that it was in question at all, even just a small sliver. She had plenty of other people to disappoint, anyway. To ignore. She wasn't so paper-thin as that, to be solely formed by the opinions of other people. Not even him.

"So you've said." The gold in the delicate drape of clairvoyant mona wasn't confused at all—Cerise felt a corner of her mouth twitch. What was she becoming, to smile at her father's insistence on pride in her...? And what was he, to have any in the first place?

His face twitched in that funny way it did now; the stroke, she guessed. It was a little unnerving; a reminder of what she tried to forget. She supposed she understood Grandmother's fretting after all. Sort of. Sish squirmed in her arms, trying to settle against her dress. Poor girl, she probably wanted to be inside eating canapes or destroying fine art. Not out here in Cerise's arms while she felt as if she were having some kind of strange, awful bonding moment. With her own father of all people.

For a minute she was silent, the sharp-carved frown of her expression unmoving. He was looking at her, studying her—for what? Cerise found herself looking back, wondering at a line here and another there. Ones she rather thought she'd have herself, in time. It was sort of uncanny.

"You really have changed," she said without thinking. She blinked, but wouldn't relent. It was true, and she didn't precisely regret pointing it out. "I always thought you were waiting for me to grow out of it, before." She didn't specify what she meant—any meaning he could give to the word was likely correct.

Cerise drew in a sharp breath and straightened out her back. "Very little is worthwhile that doesn't carry risk," she pronounced gravely, with a hint of a sharp grin. If her eyes were still a little warm, if her eyelashes caught the low light—she just wasn't going to think about it.

She felt like she'd made some sort of decision, and she couldn't have said what it was. What had he said? "A clear head and eyes"? Perhaps if—if she could convince them to come, to see... If they didn't understand after a demonstration, she didn't know how she could explain better with words.

Sish squirmed again; Cerise felt a sharp claw catch in her sleeve. She tore her eyes away from her father's and looked down at the drakelet, who was getting distinctly fussy. The hint of a grin became a smile proper, less feral than it was fond. Cerise looked back up. "Do you suppose they have any miraan-appropriate hors d'oeuvres in there?"