A/N: Unbetaed. For LadyFest 2010.


Mother used to tell fables of destinies, of predetermined prophecies leading young princesses to their respective dooms or triumphs, and always, in the end, there was a prince.

She never explained that life doesn't work out in such easy black-and-white fashions, that sometimes, when you push the needle through your embroidery, you might end up skewed, veering off on a crooked line; she never explained that sometimes you need to tear out the stitches and rebuild.

- but maybe we should start at the beginning.

Azkadellia was the good girl, the nice one; DG was the terror. She supposes she should find it ironic now that the well-behaved, straitlaced older sister should turn out to be the dark one. She supposes everyone has forgotten now that the darkness wasn't in her - the darkness was placed there. But times change, people change, and all people can remember is the darkness within her as she stole lands and crushed people beneath her. And now there is nothing left of her but the eroding remains of her image in the desert.

Mother says it'd be best if you stayed in today. She's not sure the people are ready to see you yet.

She knows what it means, the hushed whispers, the veiled sentences.

She has frightened people, has terrified and tortured them with the She that she wasn't. She's not sure the people will ever be ready.

She is a ruined princess, one now remembered for sorcery than goodness, and there is no return from that.

She stays indoors and works on her embroidery, and like Penelope, as soon as she finishes, she tears it apart and starts all over.

DG, when can I go and greet the people?

Tomorrow, Az.

Tomorrow.

Prophecies are vague, she understands that. She just wishes there could be a little more character insight into this one. Why was she marked for it? And what does it all mean? Is there darkness lingering within her she should be aware of? Her family has no answers, and DG's friends can't even look her in the eye.

She takes to walking in the prisons.

Her old guards wait there.

She skims her fingers along the rusty bars of the prison, and tries to feel the completeness that she thought she used to feel. Sometimes, her fingers touch another's hand and sometimes, it is only gaps in iron.

Maybe this is the path she was meant to be on, no matter how lost she feels. Maybe she's waiting for a twister to start up beneath her feet so she can whirl through universes and land on The Other Side, one where no one will know who she is or what she was, what she's capable of or what she had become. Maybe she could meet a man there, on The Other Side, with kind eyes and a nice smile who tells her she's pretty and thinks she's delicate when she knows she could crush him with one whispered incantation. Maybe she'll have children of her own On the Other Side who are part-dark and part-Other, who can cull whole towns and look good doing so. Maybe the Other Side will offer her salvation, like it did DG, and maybe it will just turn her into what she is supposed to be.

Dark. Light. Who even knows anymore? She's been back and forth between the two so often, she's lost track.

Mother says wicked girls never win anything.

Azkadellia sits by the window in the tower, sewing til her thumbs are swollen. She spends the evening ripping the stitches out one by one.

Tomorrow, DG says. For sure, tomorrow.

She never thought to prepare for the aftermath; good girls are always prepared.