A/N: I've been trying to get back into the fandom a little. This is going to be at least a three-shot, I think. It's not related to CBOAZ. Enjoy! And please let me know what you think: concrit welcome.
-FoF
Nothing is unplanned.
Nastasia tries her best to ensure this. Something is written for every hour of every day. When the day is over, she tucks the page into the folder for the week and moves it into the filing cabinent, for she might need to refrence it in the future. There are five full folders.
There were more.
Sometimes the others will stray from her schedule.
Sometimes Mimi will stay at Merlee's Mansion for an extra hour without calling, or she'll wake up a half hour late. And sometimes on the weekends she stays out and doesn't say where she is going.
That goes in red ink.
But when Mimi brings coins back to the castle, that goes in blue ink.
O'Chunks stays. She doesn't write much for him on the paper. He exercises in his room, helps her with the renovations, and helps her clean. They put real lights in the hallways and rooms. They moved the torches to a closet.
Sometimes he breaks things by accident, and that goes in red ink.
But when he fixes it, it goes in blue ink.
Yesterday had a lot of red and blue contrasting with the black and white.
5:00 Nastasia wakes up and prepares herself and begins tomorrow's list
6:00 O'Chunks Wakes up and Nastasia makes breakfast
7:00 Mimi wakes up, eats and does dishes 25 minutes late
8:00 Mimi goes to Merlee's Mansion. 20 minutes late
9:00 O'Chunks lifts weights. Nastasia does Tuesday Inspection.
10:00 O'Chunks and Nastasia regroup. Kitchen chair: broken
11:00 Prepare lunch and eat it chair binded together: replace chair asap
12:00 Renovate living room
1:00 Renovate living room
2:00 Renovate living room
3:00 Break
4:00 Mop floors Broken vase glass cleaned: don't replace
5:00 Finish mopping, do quick dusting
6:00 Do lunch dishes and begin making dinner
7:00 Mimi comes home and all eat dinner. 6 hours late
8:00 Do dishes, watch Flint Cragley
9:00 Watch evening television
10:00 Nastasia prepares to go to bed
11:00 Sleep
12:00 Sleep
1:00 Sleep Mimi came home. She's intoxicated. Bed: discuss tomorrow
2:00 Sleep Mimi brought 150 coins: enough for new chair
3:00 Sleep
4:00 Sleep
(Next Sheet)
There's a lie on the sheet that nobody knows about except for Nastasia. At eleven o'clock PM, she is not asleep. Not ever. For one of her six hours of sleep she allows herself to think.
She wallows and remembers. Last night she imagined everything differently. If the count had listened to her and they never accepted that jester into their organization. But she changed it.
If the count had stopped his plan after meeting her. If she could have been enough for him. If that could happen, then perhaps she would live here with him. There would be no schedule. There would be too much to write on a single piece of paper. Their future could be a blank page.
She had to change this schedule to account for Mimi's hangover. Nastasia was not her mother. She did not want to know where she had been. This was not the first time. Her only job as a castle-mate was to make sure she got to her room relatively safely.
O'Chunks was worried the first time it had happened. He was a heavy drinker when he was a general. He quit cold turkey.
He loved cold turkey. That was a joke—perhaps in poor taste.
She could hear her sobbing into his arms. They had a long talk.
It didn't stop her from doing this for the past two weekends. Nastasia didn't expect it to. Mimi had found a way to cope. A not-so-great way, but a way.
Nastasia scheduled, O'Chunks helped, and Mimi worked and drank.
They would talk. Mostly about the present tasks or about money. They would have meetings, but never in the meeting room. The meetings would be around food, or near the end of a pre-selected hour.
The rule was that all three of them would have to agree with big decisions.
In the past it had been whatever the count had said. But that was the past. Those papers had been burned.